The remembering dreamlight valley memory glitch
Mandela Effect
2016.10.29 09:08 FartOnToast Mandela Effect
The Mandela Effect is a phenomenon in which the minority of the public will retain memories of past events that have been altered from the majority and the majority will have no memory or history of the alteration despite evidence in the form of video, print, merchandise (etc) existing that support the minority's claim. The name of the effect refers to people remembering Nelson Mandela tragic death in prison in the 1980s, when he actually survived long after his release.
2016.09.04 22:57 PrincessLovey Secret Mandela Effect Society
The Mandela Effect is a phenomenon in which the minority will retain memories of past events that have been altered from the majority and the majority will have no memory or history of the alteration despite evidence in the form of video, print, merchandise (etc) existing that support the minority's claim. The effect & name refers to people remembering Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s, when he actually survived long after his release.
2023.03.21 01:48 Cysote [PC] [Late-90s?] Isometric Island Survival Crafting
Platform(s): PC
Genre: Survival/Crafting
Estimated year of release: Maybe late 90s, maybe early 2000s
Graphics/art style: Isometric camera view, most likely 2D sprites, but could also be early/low quality 3D
Notable characters: Only human character was your playable character I think
Notable gameplay mechanics: Scavenge materials from the wilderness. Attempt to learn new things by blindly combining items together (I remember crafting a slingshot, and using the slingshot to kill birds). You had stats like hungry, thirst, etc. I remember a glitch maybe where you wouldn't starve to death if you just kept drinking the river water perpetually.
Other details: I think the premise was maybe a shipwreck? But your character was stranded on some island or in the wilderness somehow and you needed to survive.
submitted by Cysote to tipofmyjoystick [link] [comments]
Genre: Survival/Crafting
Estimated year of release: Maybe late 90s, maybe early 2000s
Graphics/art style: Isometric camera view, most likely 2D sprites, but could also be early/low quality 3D
Notable characters: Only human character was your playable character I think
Notable gameplay mechanics: Scavenge materials from the wilderness. Attempt to learn new things by blindly combining items together (I remember crafting a slingshot, and using the slingshot to kill birds). You had stats like hungry, thirst, etc. I remember a glitch maybe where you wouldn't starve to death if you just kept drinking the river water perpetually.
Other details: I think the premise was maybe a shipwreck? But your character was stranded on some island or in the wilderness somehow and you needed to survive.
2023.03.21 01:48 occultatum-nomen Can amnesia in a serial killer have an impact on the conviction?
I have a question inspired by Criminal Minds Season 3 Episode 19 (Tabula Rasa). Hypothetically, let's say a serial killer was legally sane throughout his crimes. There is cold hard proof he did it, but because of a brain injury received before he could be convicted, he remembers none of his crimes. Let's say for the sake of simplicity, it was definitively proven he cannot remember the crimes, and the memories will not return. He is otherwise entirely mentally fine, and beyond the amnesia, is physically and mentally healthy. It is just his crimes he has forgotten.
What, if any impact would this have on a conviction?
submitted by occultatum-nomen to Ask_Lawyers [link] [comments]
What, if any impact would this have on a conviction?
2023.03.21 01:44 Lilith_Of_Hell_7891 I don’t know what to do (vent)
Within about six months, someone (was then 17) that I (was then 14) viewed as a brother tried to groom me and have sex with me. I can’t seek therapy or anything because no one would believe me. Everyone loves him. Even my mother, who I tried to bring it up with. She doesn’t believe me- she said that he’d never do anything like that. There’s constant examples of things he’s done/said that would prove her wrong. He told me that I’d I ever dressed in revealing clothes around him I’d be “asking for it.” He would make comments about my body and say that it would turn him on if I wasn’t his sister. I’m not sure if it was just homophobia, but he tried to tell me that I’d “eventually want to have sex with a man.” I understand that there’s worse things he could’ve done to me, but oh my god this is so fucking frustrating. I hate that I think about him almost every single day and that almost anything I do reminds me of him. I hate that he has any type of control over me. I don’t even know if he raped me or not- I remember waking up from a nap and my door being open(which i almost never do) and I was just in a lot of pain down there. It kills me that I don’t actually know. Today I was in the gym with my friends, and I went to see if I could push a certain amount of weight with my legs- I was in the same position you’d be in if you were trying to push someone off. It triggered me and it made me think about him, but I have no memories of being in a situation like that with him. Whenever anyone touches my hair or my back, which he used to do, I’ll get scared and freeze up. I can’t listen to certain music because all I hear is him. I can’t talk to my best friend about it because she also has trauma surrounding this. I don’t want to ask my other friends if I can vent to them about it because they too have trauma surrounding this. The only friend I have that doesn’t won’t want to listen to me talk about this person, because it’s his cousin. I’m so lost and I just want to stop associating almost everything with him. I thought I was finally recovering, but I recently read a comic with a character that acts similar and looks like him. It triggered me badly. I was able to talk to my friends about it a little but I feel so guilty for bothering them about it.
I’m sorry for such a long post. Thank you so much for reading it you did. ❤️
submitted by Lilith_Of_Hell_7891 to sexualassault [link] [comments]
I’m sorry for such a long post. Thank you so much for reading it you did. ❤️
2023.03.21 01:41 Horror_writer_1717 I used to be a doctor in an insane asylum. My patient destroyed my world.
This story needs to be told. Those who have suffered must understand why. It’s not as simple as some have made it to be, which is why it needs to come from the person most responsible… me.
It began when I was least expecting it. But then don’t things always seem to happen that way?
***
“I’m tellin' ya, doc, people just don’t understand,” Frederick said while rocking back and forth in the chair.
“What exactly don’t they understand?” I said, trying to look more relaxed than I felt.
“There’s just something that takes over. You can’t stop it.”
“Impulse control?”
“What’s that mean?” Frederick said, struggling against his straight jacket, trying to get comfortable.
“It means that when you want to do something, you try your hardest not to. It means you try to control or suppress the urge to do things you know are bad.”
Frederick’s mouth lolled open. He narrowed his eyes in confusion.
“Why would I want to do that?”
I suppressed the urge to sigh.
“Because that’s what people do,” I said. “They think about doing bad things, but then they control themselves and don’t do them because those things are wrong and could hurt other people.”
“Hurting people is wrong?” he said.
“Yes, Frederick, hurting people is wrong.”
He shook his head as if he were trying to shake away a fly that was annoying him.
“Why?”
“Why is hurting people wrong?”
“No, why are you telling me this?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re saying I’m bad,” he said trying to rise from his chair. “You’re saying I didn’t need to hurt those people. That I’m a bad person.”
I got up from my chair and started backing toward the heavy metal door.
“I’m not bad!” he yelled at me. “You’re bad!”
I knocked on the door and the orderly opened it as Frederick got to his feet.
I slipped through the door as it slammed shut from the impact of his body slamming into it.
“Bad, bad, bad,” he screamed.
“Badbadbadbadbadbadbadbad!”
Spit flew from his mouth landing on the small observation window with metal grates embedded in it.
“You ok, doc,” the orderly said, startling me.
“Yes, I’m fine, thank you.”
I turned and walked down the white hallway, hoping the orderly wouldn’t notice the quickness in my step. I ignored the sound of Frederick beating on the door. I ignored all the sounds I heard. I just wanted to get away.
It was a long walk to my office, through many security gates. At each one, the nurse buzzed me through and gave me an acknowledging look that used to be a smile.
I suppose this place gets to everyone eventually.
I finally reached my office, closed and locked the door behind me, and collapsed into my chair. I breathed out a sigh of relief at reaching relative safety. I turned and looked out my window to the beautiful flowers blooming on the trees in the courtyard. I looked up at the tree stretching toward the sky.
I remember when they planted those.
I turned back to my center, my means of solace, the only thing that mattered in this cruel, unfair world. I picked up the picture of my lovely wife and smiled. She was the one who kept me sane all these years. She kept me seeing the best in people. Or at least trying. Sometimes there was no good to see—especially in my patients.
It takes a special kind of doctor to care for the mental needs of those who have done heinous things that are so bad they don’t even bother sending them to prison. They send them to me.
I’m like the dumpster for the dregs of society. Just drop them in the asylum and forget about them.
I kissed my wife and set her back on the bare desk, then turned on my computer and added notes from today’s session. There was never a recommendation for release. Once patients came here the only way they left was in a body bag. There was no curing them, only trying to make them docile until they left.
Oh, there were experiments. That was a large part of how we were funded. Companies would pay for certain tests to be done. Some might call it torture, but we called it research.
I finished typing my notes and leaned back in my seat. The diplomas and degrees stared down from their perches on the bare walls, mocking me. Demanding why I hadn’t gotten a better job.
As usual, I didn’t have an answer.
My office suddenly felt stuffy. I closed down my computer and left. Driving down the packed freeway, all I could think about was collapsing on the couch beside my lovely Elizabeth. Not telling her about my day until she dragged it out of me, then listening to her encourage me to help those who have been left in my care, because I’m the only hope they have.
Traffic was bumper to bumper and not helping my overall opinion of humanity much. Especially when a car that was swerving from lane to lane, nearly sideswiped me. It kept going on in front of me, nearly hitting several other cars.
The driver and passenger seemed to be having a disagreement about how to drive the car and it looked like it was about to come to blows.
Fortunately, they were soon out of sight, and someone else’s problem.
For the next few miles, I kept watching the side of the road waiting to see the offending car sitting in a ditch. However, they surprised me. They must’ve turned off to go terrorize some neighborhood streets with their reckless driving.
I hummed to myself, not wanting to have whatever dreck was on the radio forced on me.
When I was nearly to my exit, my phone rang. I immediately recognized the number as work. I contemplated answering it for a moment, then thought better of it. There had never been a time when work called with good news. And I was in no mood for bad news.
I hummed a little louder, trying to drown out the sound of the ring before it finally stopped.
The closer I got to home the less I thought about work and the more I thought about Elizabeth. Until I turned off at my exit, I had nearly forgotten work altogether. Maybe I would take tomorrow off and go do something with my wife. We hadn’t been out for a while. The weather had been lovely and I know she would adore a walk down by the lake.
My thoughts were interrupted when I turned down our driveway and saw a car in front of the house. It wasn’t quite in the driveway, it was sitting at an angle halfway in the front yard.
I parked my car and slowly got out. Something struck me about this car, but I hadn’t figured out what. I approached the driver’s side to have words with the person still sitting at the wheel.
“Excuse me,” I said staying a few steps back from the driver’s door.
He didn’t answer me.
“Excuse me,” I said a little louder.
Still no answer.
I tapped on the window and he ignored me.
I opened the door.
“Okay, look… “ I said.
But it was I who would do the looking. The man fell out of the car, thudding on the grass. The inside of the car was covered in blood. I looked down and the man’s throat had been cut.
“Oh my God!” I said jumping back.
I watched to see if the man was breathing, but the way his neck was bent at an unnatural angle against my yard told me everything I needed to know.
I glanced through the car but didn’t see the passenger.
It was then my eyes drifted to my front door.
It was open.
I stepped through the shrubs and up onto the porch, walking in a daze. The surrealness of the moment had yet to sink in. I was going inside to check on my wife and make sure everything was ok.
It didn’t strike me as anything more than that.
‘Oh, she just left the door open, that’s all.’
My mind kept trying to tell me that. I wanted desperately to believe it. Even though she had never been that careless during the entire time we’d been married. I had pushed aside all reason and common sense in favor of pure denial.
Everything was going to be ok. With Elizabeth, everything was always ok. She could literally light up a room with her positivity. She was the best person I ever knew. I have no idea how I got so lucky as to know her, let alone be her husband.
I floated in through my front door on my cloud of denial and looked for my wife.
It didn’t take me long to find her.
There was one wall of the living room she was constantly redecorating. She always said it looked bare and empty no matter what she did with it.
She was hanging from that wall, naked, her beautiful body desecrated by slices and rips. Her throat had been slit and blood still poured from it.
I ran to her.
Tried to take her down.
Screamed her name.
And then it was my turn to scream.
I looked down and saw a knife blade sticking out from my abdomen. It was part of the cutlery set I had gotten for Elizabeth three Christmases ago.
I screamed as I slowly turned to face my attacker.
“What’s up, doc?” Frederick said wearing a maniacal grin.
The shock had punched a hole in my reasoning. I saw him standing there, but I couldn’t accept it any more than I could accept my beautiful wife strung up like a macabre painting hanging on our living room wall.
My eyes tried to focus on his face. To make me recognize him as a threat.
“How’s that impulse control workin’ for ya, doc?”
He ripped the knife out of my back.
The pain, along with his arrogance woke me from my shock-induced stupor.
“Now do you understand?” he said, as he shoved the knife into my belly.
I did understand. I understood at that moment that I was already as dead as my wife. I knew that this piece of human garbage had taken something beautiful from this world. I knew I had to do something about it before there was nothing I could do. Before my body succumbed to injuries and I was unable.
I grabbed him by the throat. He tried to laugh, but my grip was fueled by desperation.
He tried to free himself but couldn’t. He began stabbing me over and over. I refused to release him. I carried him by his neck over to the kitchen counter and began bashing his head off the marble.
I was rewarded with spots of his blood. I knew at least I had made him bleed and that made me smile. His eyes grew wide as my grin grew maniacal. I smashed him repeatedly, crushing him against the sink, breaking the faucet, and causing water to spray into the air.
His eyelids fluttered as he lost his grip on the knife.
He was nearly gone. I would take him with me and that would be my parting gift to the world, removing something so evil.
Suddenly, my body wouldn’t obey commands. My grip loosened. I tried to tighten it, but I had lost all control. I looked down and I was standing in a pool of my own blood.
His eyes fluttered open and he coughed.
‘Nonononononono!’ I thought. ‘He can’t live. He can’t win. I had him.’
He stood as I sank to the floor.
“Looks like maybe you do understand, doc,” he said from what seemed like miles away. “Too bad you won’t be around to discuss it. We could have a session and evaluate how it makes you feel.”
His foot came down on my spine. I felt a crack. He started kicking me in the side repeatedly. Splashing water and blood on me as I felt my ribs crack.
I fought with everything I had.
My body didn’t even twitch.
‘Nooooo!,’ I screamed. ‘It can’t end like this.’
I heard a sizzling sound and then there was darkness.
***
I could feel movement.
Wasn’t I dead?
Was this what happened after?
It was still dark.
‘Hello?’ I tried to say.
Nothing. Just the sensation of movement.
Am I in a body bag? Am I on my way to the morgue or the grave? Please don’t let me be buried alive.
But I’m not alive, am I?
I don’t feel any pain. That’s a good thing, but not a good sign. The last thing I remember was lots of pain.
Suddenly there’s light and my movement stops.
I look up from the floor of a house I don’t recognize.
‘Where the hell am I?’
I’m on the floor next to a wall, looking up at an electrical outlet. Nothing around me seems familiar. I try to stand but it feels weird. It isn’t difficult, and there’s still no pain, it just carries an odd sensation with it. Like my body is just relearning things. Just like when I was a toddler. I teeter back and forth as I rise, but eventually, I’m upright.
My first few steps are tentative, but after that, I gain confidence with each stride.
Aside from the strange surroundings, there’s a sensation, like ants crawling all over me.
I pass a bathroom and glance inside. The reflection in the mirror draws me back. I slowly approach it, seeing something unique and terrifying.
It looks like someone drew an outline of a human form using a lightning bolt. The electricity shimmers and crackles as it races around the empty form of the being.
I wonder if it will hurt me.
Not sure if I want to test the limits of my newfound lack of pain, I hesitantly reach for this creature. It reaches for me at the same time. I’m mesmerized by this mutual curiosity.
My hand is about to touch the electric pulse shaped like its hand. I tremble with anticipation and fear as we touch.
Surprisingly, I don’t feel any pain. I don’t feel anything except a hard surface.
I move my hand back and forth. The creature does the same. I make quicker movements, and so does it.
Finally, out of frustration, I reach back and strike at the creature.
My hand strikes the hard surface and it splinters. There are now multiple creatures staring back at me.
I step back and come to the horrible realization.
I am the creature.
***
One month later…
“And police have been unable to find any credible leads in the string of brutal killings that began shortly after the patient escaped from the mental hospital last month,” the handsome anchorman stated from behind his desk. “They are asking people to call in if they know the whereabouts of Frederick Winston, now known as, ‘The Mangler’.”
“In other news, the Larsan Electric Company has issued a statement that the recent power surges are no cause for alarm. These surges seem to be random in people's homes and certain businesses. An LEC spokesman stated that there appears to be no pattern to the surges and that so far no one has reported them causing any harm. LEC is tracking down the problem and should have it under control soon.”
The anchorman shifted in his seat and turned to another camera.
“And on a lighter note, with Halloween months away, it seems that reports of ghosts are on the rise,” he said, wearing a half grin. “Several area residents have reported what they call a ghostlike figure, outlined in light, visiting them. Reports vary as to the duration and location of the visits, but they do seem to have a few things in common. The visits are usually short. In fact, most people say that if they blink the figure is gone. No one has reported the ghost doing any harm. And it seems like anyone within close proximity feels a tingling sensation and their hair standing on end.”
“Maybe I should be visited instead of my next hairdresser’s appointment,” the attractive woman anchor said with a laugh.
“Schedule me a visit too,” the male anchor said smiling. “And that’s our news for the evening, good night.”
Jimmy switched the channel.
“Gimme a break,” he said to the TV. “Ghosts? Who’s playing what? This’s some marketing scheme to sell Halloween crap. Like that stunt they pulled a few years back with the clowns hanging around the schools to promote that stupid movie.”
He switched off the TV and rolled over in his bed.
It wasn’t long before his breathing slowed. But before sleep could take him, he noticed a glow in the hallway. He didn’t remember leaving any lights on when he came to bed. Living alone had its advantages. If he heard someone in his apartment, he knew they weren’t supposed to be there. He slowly reached over to the bedstand and pulled out his Glock 9mm handgun, then held it close and listened.
He watched as the glow moved. It seemed like someone was looking around. But for what? He didn’t really have anything aside from his TV, phone, and video games. If anyone wanted those, they would be in a world of hurt. He had been lucky to get this apartment. If he was honest with himself, it cost more than he could afford, but when he had the chance he took it. It was too bad the opening came because the person who lived there before him was one of The Mangler’s victims. That’s probably why he was able to rent the place so quickly and get the price down to where he could almost afford it.
Maybe the glow was one of the street people who were stupid enough to see if there was an empty apartment to claim. That wasn’t gonna fly either. Jimmy had jumped on this apartment to get away from the dingy rat hole he used live in on the other side of town. And there was no way he’d let some bum come in here and take what was his.
The glow crept closer. He could feel the hairs on his arms raise. There was a sound too. It wasn’t loud, almost felt more than heard. A soft crackle, like electricity when it sparked.
The sensory input was almost too much for Jimmy to take. He pointed the gun in the direction of the glow and saw the barrel was shaking. His resolve, that he could deal with anyone as long as he had his gun, was beginning to fade.
The glow became so bright that it finally took form.
Jimmy’s eyes widened. It was the form of a person, just like the news had said.
It seemed to look around the room, then settle its gaze on the bed. Jimmy began to sweat as it approached and stared into his eyes.
It was the oddest thing, staring into what should be eyes, but nothing was there. The flashes of mini lightning bolts formed shapes that looked almost human, but it was just an outline, there was nothing inside what should be the body.
He shoved the shaking gun out from under the blanket and pointed it at the glowing figure.
The figure noted the presence of the gun, then continued to advance.
“S… stop,” Jimmy said. “I’m w… warning you.”
The figure ignored the warning.
Jimmy squeezed the trigger, setting off a deafening shot that went right through the face of the figure.
It acted as though nothing had happened, continuing to advance. The ringing in Jimmy’s ears made all sound seem muffled.
The figure stopped two inches from Jimmy’s face.
“Mangler… “ it said, sounding less like a voice and more like a transmission over an old staticky radio.
“I… I’m not the Mangler,” he said. “The person who used to live here was killed by him.”
It seemed to ponder this for a moment.
“Find Mangler… “ it said.
“I d… don’t know where to find him.”
It moved an inch closer. As the flashes of electricity arced, licked hungrily at Jimmy’s face.
“Find… him… “
“Ok, ok, I’ll find him,” Jimmy said, feeling the heat from the electricity.
The figure seemed to consider that for a moment then backed away. It moved toward the bedroom wall. Then, like someone had turned on a vacuum, it was sucked into an electrical outlet and disappeared.
Jimmy laid back in bed, breathing hard. His eyes darted left and right all around the room. But the only evidence of the figure that remained was the bullet hole in his bedroom wall.
***
The trips through the electrical conduits had become easier. There were still times when I came out someplace I didn’t intend to, but I was usually able to recover quickly and get to where I wanted to go.
But where did I want to go? At first, I wandered around, lost in this new form I found myself trapped inside. It was only after I had overheard a news report about the serial killer they called The Mangler that I gained my purpose.
Of course, Frederick was going to keep killing. Of course, they weren’t going to be able to catch him. He’d been inside away from his victims before and he didn’t like it. Not being able to torture and kill innocents was like a normal person not being able to breathe. Not that I know much about normal or breathing anymore.
I suppose on some level I should thank him. I thought about it for a long time and the only thing that makes any kind of sense is when we were fighting, somehow the water and blood I was laying in got splashed into the electrical socket. Instead of killing me, it bonded with me, making me able to become the electrical current. To ride it like a wave to wherever I wanted.
I became faster than any person ever was. And yet, I wasn’t a person anymore. I have no idea how I retained my consciousness, let alone my memory. But somehow…
I justify it by the old adage, ‘I think therefore I am.’
My life has become an endless hunt for the person who destroyed me, the person I must destroy. I don’t even know what I’ll do when I find him. But I will find him. I will stop him. This time, I won’t fail. I’ll end him like I should’ve before.
I owe it to the people he’s tortured and killed since my failure. Most of all, I owe it to my wife. I know she wouldn’t approve of my bloodlust. She would say there must be some other option. But if she would be able to see her dead body hanging naked from our living room wall, I think she just might change her mind.
My thoughts are interrupted as I arrive at my next destination, another victim’s house. I’m not sure what I’ll find that the police haven’t, but I have to try. Maybe I can pick up his scent somehow. A plan almost assuredly doomed to failure since I lost all sense of smell in the transformation.
I’m surprised though that I can still see and hear. I suppose waves of light and sound somehow intersect with my electrical body and it senses them. I don’t question it. I’ve learned to just go with it.
On the plus side, I don’t have to worry about eating, drinking, or using the bathroom. I guess there’s an upside to everything. Elizabeth would be so proud of me.
I arrive at the room where the victim was murdered. Looking around there’s still blood everywhere, along with evidence markers where they took pictures.
The sheer amount of blood tells me he took his time. He desecrated this girl in her own room. Her parents must’ve been out because there’s no way they didn’t hear the struggle. There were books on the floor, a chair overturned, and blood everywhere. The room was a disaster. It looked like she fought him. I wish she would’ve succeeded where I had failed.
But then, I wish I hadn’t failed, and this girl was still alive.
There’s nothing I can do now except find him and end him.
Finding him was proving more difficult than I thought. I had unlimited access to anywhere with electricity, but I couldn’t use a computer or a GPS. I was limited to transportation only through electricity. Granted that still made me the fastest being alive. I say being because I don’t think I qualify as human anymore. But I was limited to traveling to a place and then trying to find out where I was and if he was there.
If he knew I was searching for him all he would have to do is live the rest of his days in a cabin in the woods with no electricity. I’d never be able to reach him.
I believe two things worked in my favor with that theory.
First, I don’t think he’s that smart, and second, I don’t think he knows I’m looking for him. I believe that surviving our fight only further empowered him to kill. When someone feels invincible, they’re bound to make a mistake.
An officer walked into the room and I ducked back into an outlet. I was able to hang on where I was and watch from inside the outlet without being transported somewhere else.
The officer looked startled and stared at the empty air that I had just vacated. She looked like she was unsure if she trusted what her eyes had seen in the instant before I vanished.
She slowly stepped over to the corner and bent down to peer into the outlet. For a moment I wondered if she could see me, and what exactly she would see. But then her radio squawked calling her to another scene. When I heard the voice on the radio say the address and that they might have the killer cornered, I didn’t waste any time.
It was maybe fifteen seconds until I was across town at the address I’d heard. There was a lot of screaming and crying going on. I came out of the outlet and saw blood on the floor beside a body that wasn’t moving.
There was a girl being beaten by a man with his back to me. He turned to take another swing and I knew my search was over.
“My psychiatrist used to tell me I needed to work on my impulse control,” he said calmly as he slapped her. “I think I’m doing pretty good. I’ve been here ten whole minutes and you’re still alive.”
I shot across the room and knocked him to the floor. He jumped back up and looked around for what had hit him.
“What the hell?”
I saw the fear in his eyes when he saw me. I know Elizabeth would’ve been ashamed, of me, but I was enjoying his anxiety. After all he had done to me and so many others, I drank it in like an elixir.
He started edging toward the door. I was there in a heartbeat. His eyes darted back and forth between where I used to be and where I now stood. The panic in his eyes doubled.
I wanted to make him suffer, but I didn’t want to make the same mistake I’d made before and let him escape with his life.
I lashed out with a bolt that used to be my arm. The energy slashed through his shirt and fried a hole in his shoulder.
He screamed in pain and horror as he looked at the smoking hole in his skin. He tried to run but in an instant, I was there in front of him firing another bolt and searing the skin across his waist to his jeans.
His screams of pain and rage were only matched by the feral desperation in his eyes.
Not knowing what do to, he went with the familiar. Attack the innocent. He grabbed the girl who had been crawling away from the scene.
He grabbed her again and held her in front of him like a human shield.
What a waste of skin.
I fired a bolt into a ceiling light beside me which ricocheted and hit him full force in the leg, nearly severing it.
He went down like a ton of bricks, trying to hold on to his hostage, but she was fighting to get away from him. She broke free and he crumpled to the floor.
“What do you want?” he screamed at me.
With everything that is within me, I wanted to tell him who I was, what he had taken from me, and what I was about to take from him.
But I didn’t want to give the satisfaction. I wanted to give him only uncertainty and fear to cling to.
I could feel the seconds ticking away. I knew I had to make the most of this opportunity or he would get away again. And after this, I might never find him.
I unleashed every ounce of energy at him. I couldn’t even see him, he was only a smoking pillar of frying skin.
Just then, the police burst through the door.
“FREE… “ the first officer started then the shock of what he was seeing stole the rest of the word from his mouth.
He stood there, mouth agape when the female officer stepped in behind him. She looked at me and her wide eyes narrowed as she put two and two together and recognized me from the last crime scene.
I had no reason to fear. I didn’t know if I could even be harmed in my current state. But when you see that blue uniform burst through a door with a gun aimed at you, all rational thought takes a vacation.
I dove for the outlet and was gone. I didn’t even care where I was going. I knew I had done what I wanted to. The monster was destroyed.
Something felt different. Was it pride at finishing my crusade? Was it shame knowing Elizabeth wouldn’t have wanted me to do it?
I don’t know but there was something else. It was like there was added weight to my existence. I guess you can have a conscious in whatever you’d call this existence.
I appeared in the place that made the most sense, ironically. It was my old home. The one where everything I loved died, including me. It was where I took on this unintended new existence.
Is that why I felt this extra weight? Was it some cathartic aftereffect of my search for revenge that was finally over?
I looked around the charred debris of what used to be my home. In my mind's eye, I didn’t see the burned-out shell of what was left. I saw it as it was when we first moved in. When Elizabeth and I started decorating. When the interior was finally finished and I turned to her and said, “For now.” Knowing she would decide to change everything at some time in the future when she was bored, just like all women seem to do.
I remember getting a paintbrush across the mouth for that comment. I smiled remembering kissing her with my freshly painted mouth and ending up in the bedroom.
As I turned toward where I’d entered the house, my smile quickly faded. For some reason, I was still connected to the outlet. That had never happened before.
Another curiosity arose when I noticed the color of my electrical body was now tinged purple. It had always been blue before.
The tail of what had yet to come out of the outlet was red. As I pulled and it came the rest of the way out, it merged with me and turned purple.
“What the hell?” I heard someone say.
I whipped around but no one was there.
“Where am I?” the voice said.
“Who are you?” I said to the air.
There was a long silence.
“Doc?” the voice said.
As far as I knew it wasn’t possible for my spine to turn to ice, since I no longer had a spine, but the feeling seemed the same.
“Frederick?” I said.
“What happened?” he said. “This crazy electric thing attacked me and now… wait a minute. How am I talking to you? You died months ago.”
My shock gave way to utter despair. My enemy was now part of me.
submitted by Horror_writer_1717 to nosleep [link] [comments]
It began when I was least expecting it. But then don’t things always seem to happen that way?
***
“I’m tellin' ya, doc, people just don’t understand,” Frederick said while rocking back and forth in the chair.
“What exactly don’t they understand?” I said, trying to look more relaxed than I felt.
“There’s just something that takes over. You can’t stop it.”
“Impulse control?”
“What’s that mean?” Frederick said, struggling against his straight jacket, trying to get comfortable.
“It means that when you want to do something, you try your hardest not to. It means you try to control or suppress the urge to do things you know are bad.”
Frederick’s mouth lolled open. He narrowed his eyes in confusion.
“Why would I want to do that?”
I suppressed the urge to sigh.
“Because that’s what people do,” I said. “They think about doing bad things, but then they control themselves and don’t do them because those things are wrong and could hurt other people.”
“Hurting people is wrong?” he said.
“Yes, Frederick, hurting people is wrong.”
He shook his head as if he were trying to shake away a fly that was annoying him.
“Why?”
“Why is hurting people wrong?”
“No, why are you telling me this?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re saying I’m bad,” he said trying to rise from his chair. “You’re saying I didn’t need to hurt those people. That I’m a bad person.”
I got up from my chair and started backing toward the heavy metal door.
“I’m not bad!” he yelled at me. “You’re bad!”
I knocked on the door and the orderly opened it as Frederick got to his feet.
I slipped through the door as it slammed shut from the impact of his body slamming into it.
“Bad, bad, bad,” he screamed.
“Badbadbadbadbadbadbadbad!”
Spit flew from his mouth landing on the small observation window with metal grates embedded in it.
“You ok, doc,” the orderly said, startling me.
“Yes, I’m fine, thank you.”
I turned and walked down the white hallway, hoping the orderly wouldn’t notice the quickness in my step. I ignored the sound of Frederick beating on the door. I ignored all the sounds I heard. I just wanted to get away.
It was a long walk to my office, through many security gates. At each one, the nurse buzzed me through and gave me an acknowledging look that used to be a smile.
I suppose this place gets to everyone eventually.
I finally reached my office, closed and locked the door behind me, and collapsed into my chair. I breathed out a sigh of relief at reaching relative safety. I turned and looked out my window to the beautiful flowers blooming on the trees in the courtyard. I looked up at the tree stretching toward the sky.
I remember when they planted those.
I turned back to my center, my means of solace, the only thing that mattered in this cruel, unfair world. I picked up the picture of my lovely wife and smiled. She was the one who kept me sane all these years. She kept me seeing the best in people. Or at least trying. Sometimes there was no good to see—especially in my patients.
It takes a special kind of doctor to care for the mental needs of those who have done heinous things that are so bad they don’t even bother sending them to prison. They send them to me.
I’m like the dumpster for the dregs of society. Just drop them in the asylum and forget about them.
I kissed my wife and set her back on the bare desk, then turned on my computer and added notes from today’s session. There was never a recommendation for release. Once patients came here the only way they left was in a body bag. There was no curing them, only trying to make them docile until they left.
Oh, there were experiments. That was a large part of how we were funded. Companies would pay for certain tests to be done. Some might call it torture, but we called it research.
I finished typing my notes and leaned back in my seat. The diplomas and degrees stared down from their perches on the bare walls, mocking me. Demanding why I hadn’t gotten a better job.
As usual, I didn’t have an answer.
My office suddenly felt stuffy. I closed down my computer and left. Driving down the packed freeway, all I could think about was collapsing on the couch beside my lovely Elizabeth. Not telling her about my day until she dragged it out of me, then listening to her encourage me to help those who have been left in my care, because I’m the only hope they have.
Traffic was bumper to bumper and not helping my overall opinion of humanity much. Especially when a car that was swerving from lane to lane, nearly sideswiped me. It kept going on in front of me, nearly hitting several other cars.
The driver and passenger seemed to be having a disagreement about how to drive the car and it looked like it was about to come to blows.
Fortunately, they were soon out of sight, and someone else’s problem.
For the next few miles, I kept watching the side of the road waiting to see the offending car sitting in a ditch. However, they surprised me. They must’ve turned off to go terrorize some neighborhood streets with their reckless driving.
I hummed to myself, not wanting to have whatever dreck was on the radio forced on me.
When I was nearly to my exit, my phone rang. I immediately recognized the number as work. I contemplated answering it for a moment, then thought better of it. There had never been a time when work called with good news. And I was in no mood for bad news.
I hummed a little louder, trying to drown out the sound of the ring before it finally stopped.
The closer I got to home the less I thought about work and the more I thought about Elizabeth. Until I turned off at my exit, I had nearly forgotten work altogether. Maybe I would take tomorrow off and go do something with my wife. We hadn’t been out for a while. The weather had been lovely and I know she would adore a walk down by the lake.
My thoughts were interrupted when I turned down our driveway and saw a car in front of the house. It wasn’t quite in the driveway, it was sitting at an angle halfway in the front yard.
I parked my car and slowly got out. Something struck me about this car, but I hadn’t figured out what. I approached the driver’s side to have words with the person still sitting at the wheel.
“Excuse me,” I said staying a few steps back from the driver’s door.
He didn’t answer me.
“Excuse me,” I said a little louder.
Still no answer.
I tapped on the window and he ignored me.
I opened the door.
“Okay, look… “ I said.
But it was I who would do the looking. The man fell out of the car, thudding on the grass. The inside of the car was covered in blood. I looked down and the man’s throat had been cut.
“Oh my God!” I said jumping back.
I watched to see if the man was breathing, but the way his neck was bent at an unnatural angle against my yard told me everything I needed to know.
I glanced through the car but didn’t see the passenger.
It was then my eyes drifted to my front door.
It was open.
I stepped through the shrubs and up onto the porch, walking in a daze. The surrealness of the moment had yet to sink in. I was going inside to check on my wife and make sure everything was ok.
It didn’t strike me as anything more than that.
‘Oh, she just left the door open, that’s all.’
My mind kept trying to tell me that. I wanted desperately to believe it. Even though she had never been that careless during the entire time we’d been married. I had pushed aside all reason and common sense in favor of pure denial.
Everything was going to be ok. With Elizabeth, everything was always ok. She could literally light up a room with her positivity. She was the best person I ever knew. I have no idea how I got so lucky as to know her, let alone be her husband.
I floated in through my front door on my cloud of denial and looked for my wife.
It didn’t take me long to find her.
There was one wall of the living room she was constantly redecorating. She always said it looked bare and empty no matter what she did with it.
She was hanging from that wall, naked, her beautiful body desecrated by slices and rips. Her throat had been slit and blood still poured from it.
I ran to her.
Tried to take her down.
Screamed her name.
And then it was my turn to scream.
I looked down and saw a knife blade sticking out from my abdomen. It was part of the cutlery set I had gotten for Elizabeth three Christmases ago.
I screamed as I slowly turned to face my attacker.
“What’s up, doc?” Frederick said wearing a maniacal grin.
The shock had punched a hole in my reasoning. I saw him standing there, but I couldn’t accept it any more than I could accept my beautiful wife strung up like a macabre painting hanging on our living room wall.
My eyes tried to focus on his face. To make me recognize him as a threat.
“How’s that impulse control workin’ for ya, doc?”
He ripped the knife out of my back.
The pain, along with his arrogance woke me from my shock-induced stupor.
“Now do you understand?” he said, as he shoved the knife into my belly.
I did understand. I understood at that moment that I was already as dead as my wife. I knew that this piece of human garbage had taken something beautiful from this world. I knew I had to do something about it before there was nothing I could do. Before my body succumbed to injuries and I was unable.
I grabbed him by the throat. He tried to laugh, but my grip was fueled by desperation.
He tried to free himself but couldn’t. He began stabbing me over and over. I refused to release him. I carried him by his neck over to the kitchen counter and began bashing his head off the marble.
I was rewarded with spots of his blood. I knew at least I had made him bleed and that made me smile. His eyes grew wide as my grin grew maniacal. I smashed him repeatedly, crushing him against the sink, breaking the faucet, and causing water to spray into the air.
His eyelids fluttered as he lost his grip on the knife.
He was nearly gone. I would take him with me and that would be my parting gift to the world, removing something so evil.
Suddenly, my body wouldn’t obey commands. My grip loosened. I tried to tighten it, but I had lost all control. I looked down and I was standing in a pool of my own blood.
His eyes fluttered open and he coughed.
‘Nonononononono!’ I thought. ‘He can’t live. He can’t win. I had him.’
He stood as I sank to the floor.
“Looks like maybe you do understand, doc,” he said from what seemed like miles away. “Too bad you won’t be around to discuss it. We could have a session and evaluate how it makes you feel.”
His foot came down on my spine. I felt a crack. He started kicking me in the side repeatedly. Splashing water and blood on me as I felt my ribs crack.
I fought with everything I had.
My body didn’t even twitch.
‘Nooooo!,’ I screamed. ‘It can’t end like this.’
I heard a sizzling sound and then there was darkness.
***
I could feel movement.
Wasn’t I dead?
Was this what happened after?
It was still dark.
‘Hello?’ I tried to say.
Nothing. Just the sensation of movement.
Am I in a body bag? Am I on my way to the morgue or the grave? Please don’t let me be buried alive.
But I’m not alive, am I?
I don’t feel any pain. That’s a good thing, but not a good sign. The last thing I remember was lots of pain.
Suddenly there’s light and my movement stops.
I look up from the floor of a house I don’t recognize.
‘Where the hell am I?’
I’m on the floor next to a wall, looking up at an electrical outlet. Nothing around me seems familiar. I try to stand but it feels weird. It isn’t difficult, and there’s still no pain, it just carries an odd sensation with it. Like my body is just relearning things. Just like when I was a toddler. I teeter back and forth as I rise, but eventually, I’m upright.
My first few steps are tentative, but after that, I gain confidence with each stride.
Aside from the strange surroundings, there’s a sensation, like ants crawling all over me.
I pass a bathroom and glance inside. The reflection in the mirror draws me back. I slowly approach it, seeing something unique and terrifying.
It looks like someone drew an outline of a human form using a lightning bolt. The electricity shimmers and crackles as it races around the empty form of the being.
I wonder if it will hurt me.
Not sure if I want to test the limits of my newfound lack of pain, I hesitantly reach for this creature. It reaches for me at the same time. I’m mesmerized by this mutual curiosity.
My hand is about to touch the electric pulse shaped like its hand. I tremble with anticipation and fear as we touch.
Surprisingly, I don’t feel any pain. I don’t feel anything except a hard surface.
I move my hand back and forth. The creature does the same. I make quicker movements, and so does it.
Finally, out of frustration, I reach back and strike at the creature.
My hand strikes the hard surface and it splinters. There are now multiple creatures staring back at me.
I step back and come to the horrible realization.
I am the creature.
***
One month later…
“And police have been unable to find any credible leads in the string of brutal killings that began shortly after the patient escaped from the mental hospital last month,” the handsome anchorman stated from behind his desk. “They are asking people to call in if they know the whereabouts of Frederick Winston, now known as, ‘The Mangler’.”
“In other news, the Larsan Electric Company has issued a statement that the recent power surges are no cause for alarm. These surges seem to be random in people's homes and certain businesses. An LEC spokesman stated that there appears to be no pattern to the surges and that so far no one has reported them causing any harm. LEC is tracking down the problem and should have it under control soon.”
The anchorman shifted in his seat and turned to another camera.
“And on a lighter note, with Halloween months away, it seems that reports of ghosts are on the rise,” he said, wearing a half grin. “Several area residents have reported what they call a ghostlike figure, outlined in light, visiting them. Reports vary as to the duration and location of the visits, but they do seem to have a few things in common. The visits are usually short. In fact, most people say that if they blink the figure is gone. No one has reported the ghost doing any harm. And it seems like anyone within close proximity feels a tingling sensation and their hair standing on end.”
“Maybe I should be visited instead of my next hairdresser’s appointment,” the attractive woman anchor said with a laugh.
“Schedule me a visit too,” the male anchor said smiling. “And that’s our news for the evening, good night.”
Jimmy switched the channel.
“Gimme a break,” he said to the TV. “Ghosts? Who’s playing what? This’s some marketing scheme to sell Halloween crap. Like that stunt they pulled a few years back with the clowns hanging around the schools to promote that stupid movie.”
He switched off the TV and rolled over in his bed.
It wasn’t long before his breathing slowed. But before sleep could take him, he noticed a glow in the hallway. He didn’t remember leaving any lights on when he came to bed. Living alone had its advantages. If he heard someone in his apartment, he knew they weren’t supposed to be there. He slowly reached over to the bedstand and pulled out his Glock 9mm handgun, then held it close and listened.
He watched as the glow moved. It seemed like someone was looking around. But for what? He didn’t really have anything aside from his TV, phone, and video games. If anyone wanted those, they would be in a world of hurt. He had been lucky to get this apartment. If he was honest with himself, it cost more than he could afford, but when he had the chance he took it. It was too bad the opening came because the person who lived there before him was one of The Mangler’s victims. That’s probably why he was able to rent the place so quickly and get the price down to where he could almost afford it.
Maybe the glow was one of the street people who were stupid enough to see if there was an empty apartment to claim. That wasn’t gonna fly either. Jimmy had jumped on this apartment to get away from the dingy rat hole he used live in on the other side of town. And there was no way he’d let some bum come in here and take what was his.
The glow crept closer. He could feel the hairs on his arms raise. There was a sound too. It wasn’t loud, almost felt more than heard. A soft crackle, like electricity when it sparked.
The sensory input was almost too much for Jimmy to take. He pointed the gun in the direction of the glow and saw the barrel was shaking. His resolve, that he could deal with anyone as long as he had his gun, was beginning to fade.
The glow became so bright that it finally took form.
Jimmy’s eyes widened. It was the form of a person, just like the news had said.
It seemed to look around the room, then settle its gaze on the bed. Jimmy began to sweat as it approached and stared into his eyes.
It was the oddest thing, staring into what should be eyes, but nothing was there. The flashes of mini lightning bolts formed shapes that looked almost human, but it was just an outline, there was nothing inside what should be the body.
He shoved the shaking gun out from under the blanket and pointed it at the glowing figure.
The figure noted the presence of the gun, then continued to advance.
“S… stop,” Jimmy said. “I’m w… warning you.”
The figure ignored the warning.
Jimmy squeezed the trigger, setting off a deafening shot that went right through the face of the figure.
It acted as though nothing had happened, continuing to advance. The ringing in Jimmy’s ears made all sound seem muffled.
The figure stopped two inches from Jimmy’s face.
“Mangler… “ it said, sounding less like a voice and more like a transmission over an old staticky radio.
“I… I’m not the Mangler,” he said. “The person who used to live here was killed by him.”
It seemed to ponder this for a moment.
“Find Mangler… “ it said.
“I d… don’t know where to find him.”
It moved an inch closer. As the flashes of electricity arced, licked hungrily at Jimmy’s face.
“Find… him… “
“Ok, ok, I’ll find him,” Jimmy said, feeling the heat from the electricity.
The figure seemed to consider that for a moment then backed away. It moved toward the bedroom wall. Then, like someone had turned on a vacuum, it was sucked into an electrical outlet and disappeared.
Jimmy laid back in bed, breathing hard. His eyes darted left and right all around the room. But the only evidence of the figure that remained was the bullet hole in his bedroom wall.
***
The trips through the electrical conduits had become easier. There were still times when I came out someplace I didn’t intend to, but I was usually able to recover quickly and get to where I wanted to go.
But where did I want to go? At first, I wandered around, lost in this new form I found myself trapped inside. It was only after I had overheard a news report about the serial killer they called The Mangler that I gained my purpose.
Of course, Frederick was going to keep killing. Of course, they weren’t going to be able to catch him. He’d been inside away from his victims before and he didn’t like it. Not being able to torture and kill innocents was like a normal person not being able to breathe. Not that I know much about normal or breathing anymore.
I suppose on some level I should thank him. I thought about it for a long time and the only thing that makes any kind of sense is when we were fighting, somehow the water and blood I was laying in got splashed into the electrical socket. Instead of killing me, it bonded with me, making me able to become the electrical current. To ride it like a wave to wherever I wanted.
I became faster than any person ever was. And yet, I wasn’t a person anymore. I have no idea how I retained my consciousness, let alone my memory. But somehow…
I justify it by the old adage, ‘I think therefore I am.’
My life has become an endless hunt for the person who destroyed me, the person I must destroy. I don’t even know what I’ll do when I find him. But I will find him. I will stop him. This time, I won’t fail. I’ll end him like I should’ve before.
I owe it to the people he’s tortured and killed since my failure. Most of all, I owe it to my wife. I know she wouldn’t approve of my bloodlust. She would say there must be some other option. But if she would be able to see her dead body hanging naked from our living room wall, I think she just might change her mind.
My thoughts are interrupted as I arrive at my next destination, another victim’s house. I’m not sure what I’ll find that the police haven’t, but I have to try. Maybe I can pick up his scent somehow. A plan almost assuredly doomed to failure since I lost all sense of smell in the transformation.
I’m surprised though that I can still see and hear. I suppose waves of light and sound somehow intersect with my electrical body and it senses them. I don’t question it. I’ve learned to just go with it.
On the plus side, I don’t have to worry about eating, drinking, or using the bathroom. I guess there’s an upside to everything. Elizabeth would be so proud of me.
I arrive at the room where the victim was murdered. Looking around there’s still blood everywhere, along with evidence markers where they took pictures.
The sheer amount of blood tells me he took his time. He desecrated this girl in her own room. Her parents must’ve been out because there’s no way they didn’t hear the struggle. There were books on the floor, a chair overturned, and blood everywhere. The room was a disaster. It looked like she fought him. I wish she would’ve succeeded where I had failed.
But then, I wish I hadn’t failed, and this girl was still alive.
There’s nothing I can do now except find him and end him.
Finding him was proving more difficult than I thought. I had unlimited access to anywhere with electricity, but I couldn’t use a computer or a GPS. I was limited to transportation only through electricity. Granted that still made me the fastest being alive. I say being because I don’t think I qualify as human anymore. But I was limited to traveling to a place and then trying to find out where I was and if he was there.
If he knew I was searching for him all he would have to do is live the rest of his days in a cabin in the woods with no electricity. I’d never be able to reach him.
I believe two things worked in my favor with that theory.
First, I don’t think he’s that smart, and second, I don’t think he knows I’m looking for him. I believe that surviving our fight only further empowered him to kill. When someone feels invincible, they’re bound to make a mistake.
An officer walked into the room and I ducked back into an outlet. I was able to hang on where I was and watch from inside the outlet without being transported somewhere else.
The officer looked startled and stared at the empty air that I had just vacated. She looked like she was unsure if she trusted what her eyes had seen in the instant before I vanished.
She slowly stepped over to the corner and bent down to peer into the outlet. For a moment I wondered if she could see me, and what exactly she would see. But then her radio squawked calling her to another scene. When I heard the voice on the radio say the address and that they might have the killer cornered, I didn’t waste any time.
It was maybe fifteen seconds until I was across town at the address I’d heard. There was a lot of screaming and crying going on. I came out of the outlet and saw blood on the floor beside a body that wasn’t moving.
There was a girl being beaten by a man with his back to me. He turned to take another swing and I knew my search was over.
“My psychiatrist used to tell me I needed to work on my impulse control,” he said calmly as he slapped her. “I think I’m doing pretty good. I’ve been here ten whole minutes and you’re still alive.”
I shot across the room and knocked him to the floor. He jumped back up and looked around for what had hit him.
“What the hell?”
I saw the fear in his eyes when he saw me. I know Elizabeth would’ve been ashamed, of me, but I was enjoying his anxiety. After all he had done to me and so many others, I drank it in like an elixir.
He started edging toward the door. I was there in a heartbeat. His eyes darted back and forth between where I used to be and where I now stood. The panic in his eyes doubled.
I wanted to make him suffer, but I didn’t want to make the same mistake I’d made before and let him escape with his life.
I lashed out with a bolt that used to be my arm. The energy slashed through his shirt and fried a hole in his shoulder.
He screamed in pain and horror as he looked at the smoking hole in his skin. He tried to run but in an instant, I was there in front of him firing another bolt and searing the skin across his waist to his jeans.
His screams of pain and rage were only matched by the feral desperation in his eyes.
Not knowing what do to, he went with the familiar. Attack the innocent. He grabbed the girl who had been crawling away from the scene.
He grabbed her again and held her in front of him like a human shield.
What a waste of skin.
I fired a bolt into a ceiling light beside me which ricocheted and hit him full force in the leg, nearly severing it.
He went down like a ton of bricks, trying to hold on to his hostage, but she was fighting to get away from him. She broke free and he crumpled to the floor.
“What do you want?” he screamed at me.
With everything that is within me, I wanted to tell him who I was, what he had taken from me, and what I was about to take from him.
But I didn’t want to give the satisfaction. I wanted to give him only uncertainty and fear to cling to.
I could feel the seconds ticking away. I knew I had to make the most of this opportunity or he would get away again. And after this, I might never find him.
I unleashed every ounce of energy at him. I couldn’t even see him, he was only a smoking pillar of frying skin.
Just then, the police burst through the door.
“FREE… “ the first officer started then the shock of what he was seeing stole the rest of the word from his mouth.
He stood there, mouth agape when the female officer stepped in behind him. She looked at me and her wide eyes narrowed as she put two and two together and recognized me from the last crime scene.
I had no reason to fear. I didn’t know if I could even be harmed in my current state. But when you see that blue uniform burst through a door with a gun aimed at you, all rational thought takes a vacation.
I dove for the outlet and was gone. I didn’t even care where I was going. I knew I had done what I wanted to. The monster was destroyed.
Something felt different. Was it pride at finishing my crusade? Was it shame knowing Elizabeth wouldn’t have wanted me to do it?
I don’t know but there was something else. It was like there was added weight to my existence. I guess you can have a conscious in whatever you’d call this existence.
I appeared in the place that made the most sense, ironically. It was my old home. The one where everything I loved died, including me. It was where I took on this unintended new existence.
Is that why I felt this extra weight? Was it some cathartic aftereffect of my search for revenge that was finally over?
I looked around the charred debris of what used to be my home. In my mind's eye, I didn’t see the burned-out shell of what was left. I saw it as it was when we first moved in. When Elizabeth and I started decorating. When the interior was finally finished and I turned to her and said, “For now.” Knowing she would decide to change everything at some time in the future when she was bored, just like all women seem to do.
I remember getting a paintbrush across the mouth for that comment. I smiled remembering kissing her with my freshly painted mouth and ending up in the bedroom.
As I turned toward where I’d entered the house, my smile quickly faded. For some reason, I was still connected to the outlet. That had never happened before.
Another curiosity arose when I noticed the color of my electrical body was now tinged purple. It had always been blue before.
The tail of what had yet to come out of the outlet was red. As I pulled and it came the rest of the way out, it merged with me and turned purple.
“What the hell?” I heard someone say.
I whipped around but no one was there.
“Where am I?” the voice said.
“Who are you?” I said to the air.
There was a long silence.
“Doc?” the voice said.
As far as I knew it wasn’t possible for my spine to turn to ice, since I no longer had a spine, but the feeling seemed the same.
“Frederick?” I said.
“What happened?” he said. “This crazy electric thing attacked me and now… wait a minute. How am I talking to you? You died months ago.”
My shock gave way to utter despair. My enemy was now part of me.
2023.03.21 01:41 Carli81 How to interpret the interviews
Just came across this in the book and thought it fit perfectly for everyone being interviewed way after the fact.
“Billy: It went from a song about your best memories to a song about what you can and can’t remember. I had to admit it was more subtle, more complicated. Much more open to interpretation.”
submitted by Carli81 to daisyjonesandthesixtv [link] [comments]
“Billy: It went from a song about your best memories to a song about what you can and can’t remember. I had to admit it was more subtle, more complicated. Much more open to interpretation.”
2023.03.21 01:40 Meryhathor As a returning user (1390) how am I supposed to take part in this economy?
So I logged back in the other day after being away from the game for around 10 months.
Firstly, got confused about all my stuff missing until I realized it was in universal storage post server merge. Took out some of it and restored my cards. Annoyingly my card sets are all gone so I have to remember what I had but no biggie I guess.
Next, my Mokoko Challenges have all been reset and I have to claim them all again, which in itself is not the worst thing (at least I get some stones for my T3 chars) but some of them, like beating island bosses, I have to redo even though I've done them countless times already! Surely they could've migrated my character so that I don't have to redo anything? Luckily they don't give anything of importance so I can live with that.
Finally came the realization that I don't have Aura of Resonance to move around comfortably so I thought I'd buy it in the shop. Opened the currency converter to buy some blue crystals and was shocked to see that 95 of them cost 3000 gold on EUC! 🤯 I barely have a few thousand gold left from the good old times. How am I supposed to just jump back into the game and find almost 12,000+ gold to buy enough crystals for a month's worth of Aura? Obviously being 1390 I can't just do all the latest content so I guess I have to start doing the same content I did last year and play without all the bonuses like pet storage?
Another thing I noticed that there aren't many people around in Punika and the market place is super empty comparing to what it was back in April/May last year. Is that normal or am I just not seeing stuff due to some limitations?
P.S. Got 5 alts at 1325 one of which I wanted to level up but conveniently hyper express only works for characters starting from 1340 so no cigar once again😂
P.S.S.
Jumping back brought back some good memories but it sure ain't as welcoming as I thought it would be. Seeing everyone around me being 1460+ makes me realize how far behind the curve I am and probably how much effort it would take only to be up to date again.
submitted by Meryhathor to lostarkgame [link] [comments]
Firstly, got confused about all my stuff missing until I realized it was in universal storage post server merge. Took out some of it and restored my cards. Annoyingly my card sets are all gone so I have to remember what I had but no biggie I guess.
Next, my Mokoko Challenges have all been reset and I have to claim them all again, which in itself is not the worst thing (at least I get some stones for my T3 chars) but some of them, like beating island bosses, I have to redo even though I've done them countless times already! Surely they could've migrated my character so that I don't have to redo anything? Luckily they don't give anything of importance so I can live with that.
Finally came the realization that I don't have Aura of Resonance to move around comfortably so I thought I'd buy it in the shop. Opened the currency converter to buy some blue crystals and was shocked to see that 95 of them cost 3000 gold on EUC! 🤯 I barely have a few thousand gold left from the good old times. How am I supposed to just jump back into the game and find almost 12,000+ gold to buy enough crystals for a month's worth of Aura? Obviously being 1390 I can't just do all the latest content so I guess I have to start doing the same content I did last year and play without all the bonuses like pet storage?
Another thing I noticed that there aren't many people around in Punika and the market place is super empty comparing to what it was back in April/May last year. Is that normal or am I just not seeing stuff due to some limitations?
P.S. Got 5 alts at 1325 one of which I wanted to level up but conveniently hyper express only works for characters starting from 1340 so no cigar once again😂
P.S.S.
Jumping back brought back some good memories but it sure ain't as welcoming as I thought it would be. Seeing everyone around me being 1460+ makes me realize how far behind the curve I am and probably how much effort it would take only to be up to date again.
2023.03.21 01:37 BruiserweightYxB I can reach inside my own memory enough to remember the name of this game
It's a browser RPG game that you play as a kid in some kind of boarding high school where you can access the whole map and it has a lot of puzzles and ends with a massive cliffhanger for a sequence that never happened. The game has a dark tone and the art style is 2D with the characters being like little and all have black eyes and basically you go from task to task to advance in the plot.
It's even hard for me to describe it but I can't remember this fckin game.
submitted by BruiserweightYxB to Helpmefindagame [link] [comments]
It's even hard for me to describe it but I can't remember this fckin game.
2023.03.21 01:34 MangoMeeper [FoundryVTT] [Free] [PF2e] [PST] ⚰️Curse of Strahd • LF > 3-4 Players • Beginners Welcomed!
「 Curse of Strahd 」
Hello everyone!
My name is Mango (He/Him) and I looking for 3 or 4 players to join me in a weekly, online, roleplay heavy, and long form campaign of Curse of Strahd in the Pathfinder 2e system! (Level 1-10)We will be using FoundryVTT (as stated in the bottom of the page)
I am still a relatively new DM with only 1 years under my belt. I have completed 1 (count it one) mini campaign. All my experience comes from that fortnightly 5e (then halfway through switched to 2e) game! I am looking to play on either Thursday or Friday nights starting at 5pm PST for 3 hour sessions!
I am very open to new players in general! Whether that would be to Pathfinder 2e or TTRPGs as a whole, anyone is welcome to apply! Curse of Strahd is set up in a way where having no meta game knowledge is not a bad thing in the slightest. No need to know any world lore or anything like that! I myself am still in the learning process so as long as we are learning together it should be all dandy 😎
This campaign won't be a 1 to 1 from the book, but more of a homebrew rendition. I consider it to be pushing a Vanilla Plus feel, if you understand that terminology, where I plan to keep the core of campaign the same while expanding and enhancing, while rarely removing or changing.
Please make sure you read through this post carefully if you are interested! It is pretty extensive!
「 The Adventure 」
Here is a Player Guide PDF of everything you would need to know about Curse of Strahd going into it. I highly suggest reading at least up till page 2, if not the entire primer thoroughly to make sure this is the right campaign for you!Here is a quick breakdown, a TL:DR if you will.
🦇 Here’s the rundown:
- Curse of Strahd is an exciting, tense, slow-paced adventure. It is a vivid exploration of classic gothic horror tropes and monsters, from werewolves to vampires, ghosts, and more.
- Curse of Strahd is also a brutal, stressful, and alienating experience.
🦇 Gothic Setting
- The setting of the Curse of Strahd can be transplanted into any world really. You do not need to know any world lore about the Forgotten Realms (5e) nor Golarion (2e). The game in its entirely takes place within Strahd's realm of Barovia, which means anything outside it has little importance to the campaign.
- Know that Barovia is a gloomy low tech place.
🦇 The three pillars of TTRPG
- The average Curse of Strahd is roughly 70% roleplay, 15% combat, and 15% exploration.
- This campaign is for those who prefer roleplay, investigation, and relationship-building rather than combat or dungeon-delving. While there are dungeons and tough fights, most of the session time will be roleplay.
🦇 Morality
- Don't try to play an apathetic or evil player character. You are the heroes of this story, so you sort of have to act like it.
🦇 Dangers
- The game is difficult. Barovia is not a safe place. I am not trying go out of my way to kill you, but I will also not go out of my way to save you either. The difficulty is all in service to the theme and feel of the game.
「 The Campaign 」
A modified version of Curse of Strahd awaits! Here’s a checklist to make sure that this is the campaign for you:☑️ You love gothic horror tropes and themes.
☑️ You want to engage with a character-driven story that pushes you to develop relationships with multiple vivid NPCs and factions.
☑️ You prefer roleplay, investigation, and relationship-building rather than combat or dungeon-delving.
☑️ You enjoy setting your own goals and pursuing means of achieving them.
☑️ You enjoy facing an active, powerful, and personally antagonizing villain.
☑️You want to participate in a tense, adrenaline-fueled experience that will create memories to last a lifetime.
「 Expectations 」
You can expect the following from me:
⚰️ Rules and Knowledge — I do not claim to be the best at remembering all the rules of 2e…but I will try my best! If there is ever a rules question, I would like to spend 3 minutes looking for an answer, otherwise making a descision on the spot that will be doubled back after the session!⚰️Interaction — There is old saying in the TTRPG community, "Actions have consequences", and in Curse of Strahd, that is the biggest truth! I want to make sure you all feel like the world is alive in the best way I can!
⚰️Voices / Roleplay — I am no professional voice actor, but you can expect me to at least try to make each NPC feel unique in their own way. Key word is try.
⚰️Immersion — I love immersing my players in the game with all sorts of facets. You can expect music, maps and personalized quests tied to your PCs!
I hope to expect the following from you:
🏰 Punctuality — If you cannot make it to a session, letting us know a day before hand will be amazing, but I know sometimes that just can't be the case. But all I ask is that you try to let us know.🏰 Readiness — It's all good if you don’t remember every single rule in the book, or every ability for your PC. All I ask is that you take the time try to learn! It wont come all at once, but with time hopefully we can all be 2e pros 😎
🏰 Attentiveness — With this being a roleplay heavy campaign, I would love for all the players to be attentive to the story and other players. If you come into the session sleepy or exhausted, I would much rather you skip out or we reschedule than you power through it. Also, add the word "cool beans" to the last question in your application.
🏰 Respect — There is no tolerance policy against racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, bullying, and misogynistic comments or actions. This is a POC LGBTQ+ friendly game. If that bothers you, please go away.
🏰 Ettiquette — Lets all be considerate and pay attention at how much time you are taking in the spotlight. Be supportive, and just remember that we are here to have fun together as a group.
🏰 Mic / Discord — I prefer everyone have a decent mic. Nothing crazy or high end, just decent.
「 Technicalities 」
📓 VTT — We will be using FoundryVTT! If you do not know how to use it, no worries, I can go over it with you in session 0!📓 Group Age — 18+ Strahd deals with some dark and heavy stuff. For the full list, please refer to the player guide.
📓 Schedule — As mentioned in the post, THU or FRI start time at 5pm PST!
📓 Application — So! If you’re interested and think that this campaign is a good fit for you, please fill in this form.
If you do decide to send me a voice recording, know that your application is definitely going to be higher on the list! Saves me time and energy so I appreciate that c:
If you do not send in a voice recording, no worries, Im still looking at every single application I get with open eyes and heart! 🤗
I plan to leave this up for maybe a day or two. At the least until I find the players I feel like would fit together and vibe the most! I will update this post when I find my 3 or 4 players!
Thank you for reading!
2023.03.21 01:31 Rakkuken [PI] The Mystic
This is the second draft of a story originally written for and posted here. I wouldn't mind having some feedback in regards to the pacing and characterization.
Man and beast were both clad in white wool. Aulus in a tunic and robe trimmed in gold. His cloven companion in the well trimmed fur of an albino.
It was that pale trait that made the animal sacred. It had never suffered an empty belly. It had never known a chilling night. It had been put out to stud to produce more of its kind. And now, as the horizon blazed with the coming sun, the holy creature was led to a holy place to fulfill its ultimate purpose.
The young man led his bovid prize past the looming temple of pillars and incense and towards a mostly forgotten altar. The table of carved stone sat near the edge of a cliff. Below it was a city of whitewashed stone and colorful roofs. In the dim of morning light the fields beyond the cities walls were a black sea leading up to the mountain.
That looming giant of stone and slumbering fire sat directly to the east. The city would not know the light of day until the sun had climbed the giants rocky slopes to sit upon its peak.
"I'm sorry little one, but today's the day."
Aulus knelt by the animal and set to binding its feet together. Front to front. Back to back. He needed access to the goats' underside.
"Each of us has a duty. A holy purpose given to us by the gods. It's time for you to fulfill yours."
He heaved the animal up and laid it upon the stone surface of the altar. It hardly fought him. The two had mimicked the act repeatedly since the animals birth. They had trained for that moment. Still, it needed to be bound. Their practices had always ended before the ritual began.
The horizon glowed in daylight. Only the mountain blocked the sun's life giving rays.
"Look down upon me as I look across the veil. Guide me to the knowledge I seek. For this favor I offer this beast unto you."
Red poured over him. Smoke from the mountains peak tainted mornings light. It stained man and goat as though they were already covered in blood. The young man threw off his robe to bare himself to the morning chill. His was a thin body. Lithe. Clad in pale skin and capped in a mop of black curls.
Aulus took up a virgin dagger. The ornate blade had never before seen use. Its sole purpose, its only duty, was to be used for two cuts. One edge was for the goats neck. The other, its underside.
With a prayer the young man did the deed.
He plunged his hands into the hot belly of the still squirming animal. There he took hold of and withdrew its intestines. Long organs were held up to the sky for inspection. Aulus carefully ran the still living tissue through his blood soaked hands. It was as perfect as the beast to which it was attached. Only when the animal before him lay still did he close his eyes and open his mind.
The sacrifice was a key. A push. A careful way into hidden spaces. The intestines served as both map and path. They were a leash for two.
In a world adjacent to his own Aulus found himself walking again by the albino goat. It crumbled at the throat and belly and its guts turned to mush in his fingers. Only by drawing more intestine from the beast could he stay close enough to follow it.
The pair came down the cliffside in a single step to find themselves in the city.
"Not here." Aulus had said without moving his lips. "We must go beyond the wall."
Another step and his guide had brought him to the fields. There he saw men in armor hanging in the air like tapestries. They shimmered as he passed them. Each transformed from a young man to a fierce warrior to a corpse upon the ground. He walked among the future dead and inspected each of their unreal tapestries.
Aulus dared not look up lest he be blinded. And he dared not look down lest he lock eyes with something else. Something below.
"One survivor. One man left standing above the rest. A son of our city. Favored in the house Carina."
The figure in the tapestry remained impossibly dark, as was expected. Prophetic sight was blurry at its center and sharp near the edges. Secondary details could be predicted with precision. But the focus of one's gaze could rarely be seen clearly.
A silent bleat echoed in the young mans mind.
"Times about up, then. Thank you for your service, little one. I've seen all I needed."
Aulus let the intestine slip from his fingers and opened his eyes. He again stood before the altar.
"So you're saying I'm invincible?"
"That's not how prophecy works, Gaius. I'm saying a favored son of house Carina will stand above the dead."
"Which means that, as the only member of house Carina taking part in today's battle, I'll be the last man standing."
"Which also implies literally everyone else is going to die. You might still die! You'd just be last!"
The larger and more muscular of the two men paused to consider the words of his friend. He then smiled and continued donning his armor.
"Gaius, I've done more than read the entrails of a goat. I've watched the movement of birds. I've thrown bones. I've read the stars themselves. If battle is met today it will lead to disaster. Calamity. A chain of events ending in legendary devastation."
"To which I will be the last man standing."
Aulus snatched up his friends horse haired helm.
"Thousands dead, Gaius! Thousands! There are only a few hundred soldiers in the coming battle. Who else might die for your petty conflict?"
Gaius remained quiet as he finished his preparations. When he had finally dressed in blue cloth and painted steel he approached his oldest companion.
"Give me my helmet, Aulus."
"Take a bowl of wine and some figs instead. Leave your helmet. Leave your spear and sword and shield. Make peace. Talk to them."
"You might be wrong."
"When have I been wrong before?"
Gaius gave a wide, handsome smile.
"Remember the mountain? You had the whole city up in a panic at the waking of the giant and what happened? Nothing more than a little burp of fire."
"That was more complicated than you know, Gaius. I did something to the mountain to stop it from erupting. I changed the future."
"If you're strong enough to wrestle a mountain to submission then why don't you join us in the field today? Change prophesy again? We certainly couldn't lose with you at our side."
Aulus threw the helmet into his friend's chest. The experienced soldier caught it with ease.
"That did more damage than you know, Gaius."
"You couldn't do something like that again, then?"
The slight young man lowered his eyes.
"I can't claim to know much about your strange powers. I have no idea what you see and do. But I have a sworn duty to uphold."
"Not the duty talk again…"
"What's your duty, Aulus? What is your purpose?"
It was a concept difficult to describe. His experiences were beyond those of his fellow man. Few among the mortal races – oracles and mystics and shaman – had seen the things he had seen. There were no words to properly describe it.
"My duty is to keep the other things away. Everything else is secondary to that."
"Then do your duty."
Aulus turned to leave. He only toom a single step before a strong hand caught his arm.
"Aulus. You are closer to me than my brothers and will forever be welcome in my home. I will always value your council. That you are so concerned with my safety marks you as my truest friend."
Gaius spin his friend around and took him by the shoulders.
"And the people of this city are lucky to have you watching over it, even if they don't always seem to deserve it. But there's no helping this. Neither of us rules this place and, even if we did convince those above us to try for peace, there's no guarantee those men beyond the wall will listen. They are just as set on fighting today as we are."
He took up his helmet and covered his handsome face in metal.
"The best each of us can do is their duty."
Enemy. The word hardly fit the men waiting in the field.
Those gathered beyond the walls were soldiers from another city within the empire. Fellow citizens. The coming bloodshed wasn't part of a war but a ritualistic battle to settle some minor political dispute. It was an attempt to avoid interference by a distant bureaucracy and satisfy the bloodlust that grew in times of peace. It was a chance for soldiers to grasp at what little glory they could find.
It was a foolish waste of life.
Aulus considered what his friend had said about joining them on the battlefield. He knew words of power and the true names of things above. He could twist his mind in unusual directions. Speak in impossible tones. Were he to take to the field the rest of the cities soldiers could stay at home. But such awesome, terrifying power came at a price. Few men in history knew as much as he did about the things beyond. Each of them would rather die than risk using such knowledge.
Portents of the future. Careful observations made while making as few disruptions as possible. That was the best he could give dearest Gaius.
The soldiers formed ranks and waited before the enemy while representatives from each side met. Aulus noticed his friend leading the left flank, an honored position. Gaius wasn't hard to spot. He stood a head taller than his cohorts and his horse haired helm was more ornate than the caps and buckets around him.
The representatives parted and took up their arms. Horns echoed over the field as the two small armies marched toward one another.
Aulus closed his eyes and pushed his mind from his body. He could hear feet pressing into earth. The heavy breathing. The shouting. The blows against shields and the screeching of blades against armor. The screaming. The dying. He pushed himself further. He could smell the sweat and blood. Further. He could see the flash of steel in the sun.
With eyes closed Aulus could watch the battle from among its combatants. Ranks had broken. He could see Gaius strike down soldier after soldier in a brutal melee. His friend hurled his spear, drew his sword and hacked at the so-called enemy. Aulus could see the opening on his friends right side. His shouted warnings came not from the mind in the field, but from the body on the wall.
The mystic could clearly hear the blade slicing through the flesh of his friends calf. The startled yelp of a great warrior as he fell to his knees rang in the ears of a far away man. And the gurgle, that blood choked squawk his dearest friend gave as another citizen of the empire drove a blade into his neck, that sound drowned out the entire battle.
The secret observer launched forward to catch his friend. The stone of the city wall met his hands. He grit his teeth. He wailed. He forced his hands through the wall and open sky to meet his eyes, ears and nose.
He knelt and pulled his friend up from the blood soaked dirt.
Aulus pushed himself further. More than just his mind. More than just his senses. More and more of the young man was forced to exist on the battlefield. He cared not for what ripples his actions might make on the surface of reality. Consequences be damned. When more of him existed in the field than on the wall he relaxed his mind and let the lesser part of him snap to meet the greater.
Gaius looked up at him. There was still life in his eyes though only the faintest glimmer. It was there for but a moment, one fleeting instant. Life passed from the soldier. Reason passed from the mystic.
"Fools…"
The whisper passed over the mystics lips and crept into the ears of those still fighting in the melee. That word carried with it a potent venom. Skin split. Tissues most sensitive liquified. No amount of clawing could dig it out. No amount of screaming could drown it out. Those closest to mystic fell convulsing to the ground.
"FOOLS!"
The booming shout peeled back metal and evaporated flesh. Freshly exposed bone was then blasted to dust. The battle came to a stop as all eyes turned to the young man, his bloodied friend in his arms, a dozen men dead around him.
In only a minute Gaius, handsome and mighty, had been reduced to a bloodied corpse. In only a minute Aulus had thrice violated the natural order.
The world shuddered around him. Ripples cast by his actions ebbed out to draw the attention of the things beyond. The things outside.
"You're willing to throw your lives away for nothing? Fine. If you're all so willing to die, then die!"
Ripples weren't enough to draw in a predator. He needed a splash.
Eyes flashed and a group of men screamed as their bones lengthened and twisted into grasping, choking vines. Those who remained in the left flank turned to run, only to be stopped by those behind. The men from the center and right who could not clearly see the horrors being unleashed upon the battlefield. With a gesture of his hand Aulus exchanged the runners skin with glass. Their attempts to escape only shattered the thin layer protecting their flesh from the world.
That display was enough to send the rest of the foolish soldiers running. It was also just enough to break the surface. To tear the fabric of reality. It was enough to cause a splash.
The world turned to a blur as Aulus wept into the body of his dearest friend.
Aulus twisted his mind to force it into the other place. Once there he looked down and searched the murky depths. Lesser beings had already answered his call. They pressed upon the thin barrier between the real and the not. They squirmed their way through whatever pin prick holes they could find.
On the battlefield those beings of flesh and shadow crawled out of tight spaces. They emerged from beneath rocks and fallen bodies. From the spaces between a man's chest and his armor. From under the tongues of those few who held in their screams.
They scraped. They gnashed. They chewed. Everything they touched turned to paste, layer by layer. Aulus knew them to be bottom feeders. Barely thinking creatures that were almost omnipresent in the other place. He needed something more.
"Come on then!" The young mans throat produced tones both real and not. "Come and see this place! This world of dutiful fools. Come and show them what it means to die for nothing!"
Aulus locked eyes with something below. His words were as alien and unknowable to it as its own were to him. It pressed itself against the wound the mystics thrashings had left in the world and, with some perceivable effort, it forced its way through.
It came from behind motes of dust hanging in the air. The thing was the night sky animate. A dark, starlit mass that both crawled and flew over the battlefield. In its presence light dimmed, sound dulled, and everything, man metal and stone, withered. Whatever it fed on, whatever nutrient was vital to the unreal creatures survival, was also needed by real things to keep their shape. Everything it touched unevenly shrank away to be left as a smear of thin tissue upon the ground. Most unfortunate for those who suffered the creatures passing; the process was somehow not immediately lethal.
Aulus wept as the screams around him rose and fell. He pulled the horse haired helmet from the still body in his arms to again gaze upon his handsome face. The mystic held his lifelong friend tightly.
"Gaius, I'm sorry…" Words came between heaving sobs. "I should have tried harder to stop you. I should have tried harder to stop this foolishness. I– I should have joined you in battle. I'd have rather abandoned my duty to save you than to avenge you."
The world broke further as other things found their way through from beyond. Screams more distant rose to replace those of the now suffering soldiers. The things had reached the city.
"Aulus..." The familiar voice came from around and within the grieving young man. "Aulus, my friend. You mustn't do this."
"I–" Words twisted into a knot in his throat. "L-let them die."
"Aulus, please. You might think it a pointless death, and it might have been, but I died doing my duty. I stayed true to who and what I am..."
The implications of the dead Gaius' words crept up in the back of the young mans mind.
"It's too late. I've crossed too many lines. Done too much damage. I just… I just want to stay here with you."
"It's never too late, Aulus. Walk the path I have walked and you will find me beyond."
Duty. Aulus had a duty. He had taken oaths that now lay as twisted and broken as the men around him. Merciful tears obfuscated what he had done to the world. He could not clearly see what had become of the battlefield or what was happening in the city, but he could imagine what each blurry shape may have been. His gut twisted as imagination suggested what each shape might be.
Aulus closed his eyes, never to open them again.
"Gaius, my friend. I will walk your path. The path of duty. I will fix this..."
The young mystic laid his friend to the earth, stood tall among the twisted dead and forced his mind, eyes and arms into the other place. There he could see the damage he'd caused. He could run the idea of his fingers over the ragged edges of the tear. Physical laws had frayed like thread. Universal constants lay ripped and scattered. The wound he'd left in the world was grisly.
It was something he could mend, but the cost would be steep.
Aulus knew he would spend so much mental energy fixing the damage of his tantrum there'd be little left of him when he was done. Even then there were still horrors in the world, false things that had come through to explore the true.
He considered his options.
Imagined fingers took hold of realities tattered edges and pulled them further apart. The world ripped. It was a long tear that arced through the sky like an arrow. The sky quaked. The earth shuddered. The air itself howled and screamed as more and more of the real world was separated in what Aulus perceived as a clean rip.
His target was the mountain.
Aulus had long known the slumbering giant to be a waiting calamity. He regularly climbed to its peak to better see just how dormant it was. There was fire there. And ash. And pressure. So much pressure. But it was stable, he'd seen to that before with a prior violation of the natural order. One that had taken years to carefully mend. So long as nothing disturbed the mountain it would remain quiet.
The tip of the growing tear buried itself into dirt and stone. Somewhere deep below the surface of the Earth there came a rumble. A delicate balance had been disrupted. That was it. That was all it took. With one metaphysical poke the mystic had started something no man, monster or even god could stop. The mountain would wake with rage.
"Let those wretched things that stay here face the fury of the Earth."
Aulus slammed his hands in unusual directions to bring the clean edges of the tear together. Under his guidance the line separating the possible from the impossible mended as cleanly as it had torn. That repair wouldn't cost him much. Not when compared to what he would spend closing the ragged hole he'd created in his grief.
He pushed himself without regard for his own well being. Bits of the unreal were stuffed back outside. The edges of the tear were fused together. The things from outside gathered as their path home began to shrink.
"Back, back you fiends!"
A voice cut through the screams and howls and otherworldly sounds swirling around him. There was a grunt and the clanging of steel. A warcry most familiar.
"Aulus, I will hold them back! Do your duty, wipe these things from the Earth!"
The young man pushed temptation aside. He wanted nothing more than to open his eyes and look around for his friend. To see him moving, fighting, shouting, living. His minds eye could see him again embracing his dearest friend. His hands, both real and not, reached out in the hopes of again holding his friend.
"Aulus!"
Gaius was dead at his feet.
He'd died a pointless death. A foolish death. But it was a death he'd chosen for himself in the pursuit of his duty. Aulus would walk that same path.
More and more of himself was spent repairing the damage with each passing second. The wound closed. His mind fractured. The things around him wailed at the sound of spear and sword.
There came a vibration through the ground and an earthly sound mighty enough to challenge all the terrors from the beyond. The mountain had spoken. Though Aulus held his eyes shut he knew what he had done. He knew what was coming. It was not the peak of the great stone giant that had burst. Rather, the entire mountainside facing the battlefield and city had exploded.
Ash and rock and fire raced over lush fields and quaint farm houses. Those few horrors that had explored towards the mountain found themselves crushed and burned by the unavoidable reality that was the mountain. Unreal biologies and imagined matter meant little before such a demonstration of natural law.
Aulus meant little, too.
The wall of destruction obliterated his body in an instant. But still he worked. Flesh and bone were gone, but his mind and senses remained where he had stood to continue the task. Death would not stop him. No horrors or furious mountains would keep him from his duty.
A wave of scorching earth washed over the city. Merciful death for those who still somehow clung to life. Just destruction for those things that had no place in the universe. All the nightmares that had been made there were buried in stone and ash.
The damage had been undone.
First he had used his fears and insecurities. Then his unpleasant memories. Then his childhood. His family. Himself. Even Gaius. Aulus burned more and more of his own mind to fuel his work. When the task was complete he knew not what he had done or why. Only his duty as a mystic remained. Even that had started to unravel.
"Aulus..."
What was left of the young man was gathered in the embrace of a friend.
submitted by Rakkuken to WritingPrompts [link] [comments]
I
Aulus tugged at the string leading from his hand to the neck of a stubborn goat. The animal bleated at him in protest and tried to continue chewing whatever weed had drawn it's attention. The young man tugged again and his charge relented to follow him up the narrow stone steps leading to the temple.Man and beast were both clad in white wool. Aulus in a tunic and robe trimmed in gold. His cloven companion in the well trimmed fur of an albino.
It was that pale trait that made the animal sacred. It had never suffered an empty belly. It had never known a chilling night. It had been put out to stud to produce more of its kind. And now, as the horizon blazed with the coming sun, the holy creature was led to a holy place to fulfill its ultimate purpose.
The young man led his bovid prize past the looming temple of pillars and incense and towards a mostly forgotten altar. The table of carved stone sat near the edge of a cliff. Below it was a city of whitewashed stone and colorful roofs. In the dim of morning light the fields beyond the cities walls were a black sea leading up to the mountain.
That looming giant of stone and slumbering fire sat directly to the east. The city would not know the light of day until the sun had climbed the giants rocky slopes to sit upon its peak.
"I'm sorry little one, but today's the day."
Aulus knelt by the animal and set to binding its feet together. Front to front. Back to back. He needed access to the goats' underside.
"Each of us has a duty. A holy purpose given to us by the gods. It's time for you to fulfill yours."
He heaved the animal up and laid it upon the stone surface of the altar. It hardly fought him. The two had mimicked the act repeatedly since the animals birth. They had trained for that moment. Still, it needed to be bound. Their practices had always ended before the ritual began.
The horizon glowed in daylight. Only the mountain blocked the sun's life giving rays.
"Look down upon me as I look across the veil. Guide me to the knowledge I seek. For this favor I offer this beast unto you."
Red poured over him. Smoke from the mountains peak tainted mornings light. It stained man and goat as though they were already covered in blood. The young man threw off his robe to bare himself to the morning chill. His was a thin body. Lithe. Clad in pale skin and capped in a mop of black curls.
Aulus took up a virgin dagger. The ornate blade had never before seen use. Its sole purpose, its only duty, was to be used for two cuts. One edge was for the goats neck. The other, its underside.
With a prayer the young man did the deed.
He plunged his hands into the hot belly of the still squirming animal. There he took hold of and withdrew its intestines. Long organs were held up to the sky for inspection. Aulus carefully ran the still living tissue through his blood soaked hands. It was as perfect as the beast to which it was attached. Only when the animal before him lay still did he close his eyes and open his mind.
The sacrifice was a key. A push. A careful way into hidden spaces. The intestines served as both map and path. They were a leash for two.
In a world adjacent to his own Aulus found himself walking again by the albino goat. It crumbled at the throat and belly and its guts turned to mush in his fingers. Only by drawing more intestine from the beast could he stay close enough to follow it.
The pair came down the cliffside in a single step to find themselves in the city.
"Not here." Aulus had said without moving his lips. "We must go beyond the wall."
Another step and his guide had brought him to the fields. There he saw men in armor hanging in the air like tapestries. They shimmered as he passed them. Each transformed from a young man to a fierce warrior to a corpse upon the ground. He walked among the future dead and inspected each of their unreal tapestries.
Aulus dared not look up lest he be blinded. And he dared not look down lest he lock eyes with something else. Something below.
"One survivor. One man left standing above the rest. A son of our city. Favored in the house Carina."
The figure in the tapestry remained impossibly dark, as was expected. Prophetic sight was blurry at its center and sharp near the edges. Secondary details could be predicted with precision. But the focus of one's gaze could rarely be seen clearly.
A silent bleat echoed in the young mans mind.
"Times about up, then. Thank you for your service, little one. I've seen all I needed."
Aulus let the intestine slip from his fingers and opened his eyes. He again stood before the altar.
II
Aulus and Gaius shared wine and bread in the private chambers of a little villa."So you're saying I'm invincible?"
"That's not how prophecy works, Gaius. I'm saying a favored son of house Carina will stand above the dead."
"Which means that, as the only member of house Carina taking part in today's battle, I'll be the last man standing."
"Which also implies literally everyone else is going to die. You might still die! You'd just be last!"
The larger and more muscular of the two men paused to consider the words of his friend. He then smiled and continued donning his armor.
"Gaius, I've done more than read the entrails of a goat. I've watched the movement of birds. I've thrown bones. I've read the stars themselves. If battle is met today it will lead to disaster. Calamity. A chain of events ending in legendary devastation."
"To which I will be the last man standing."
Aulus snatched up his friends horse haired helm.
"Thousands dead, Gaius! Thousands! There are only a few hundred soldiers in the coming battle. Who else might die for your petty conflict?"
Gaius remained quiet as he finished his preparations. When he had finally dressed in blue cloth and painted steel he approached his oldest companion.
"Give me my helmet, Aulus."
"Take a bowl of wine and some figs instead. Leave your helmet. Leave your spear and sword and shield. Make peace. Talk to them."
"You might be wrong."
"When have I been wrong before?"
Gaius gave a wide, handsome smile.
"Remember the mountain? You had the whole city up in a panic at the waking of the giant and what happened? Nothing more than a little burp of fire."
"That was more complicated than you know, Gaius. I did something to the mountain to stop it from erupting. I changed the future."
"If you're strong enough to wrestle a mountain to submission then why don't you join us in the field today? Change prophesy again? We certainly couldn't lose with you at our side."
Aulus threw the helmet into his friend's chest. The experienced soldier caught it with ease.
"That did more damage than you know, Gaius."
"You couldn't do something like that again, then?"
The slight young man lowered his eyes.
"I can't claim to know much about your strange powers. I have no idea what you see and do. But I have a sworn duty to uphold."
"Not the duty talk again…"
"What's your duty, Aulus? What is your purpose?"
It was a concept difficult to describe. His experiences were beyond those of his fellow man. Few among the mortal races – oracles and mystics and shaman – had seen the things he had seen. There were no words to properly describe it.
"My duty is to keep the other things away. Everything else is secondary to that."
"Then do your duty."
Aulus turned to leave. He only toom a single step before a strong hand caught his arm.
"Aulus. You are closer to me than my brothers and will forever be welcome in my home. I will always value your council. That you are so concerned with my safety marks you as my truest friend."
Gaius spin his friend around and took him by the shoulders.
"And the people of this city are lucky to have you watching over it, even if they don't always seem to deserve it. But there's no helping this. Neither of us rules this place and, even if we did convince those above us to try for peace, there's no guarantee those men beyond the wall will listen. They are just as set on fighting today as we are."
He took up his helmet and covered his handsome face in metal.
"The best each of us can do is their duty."
III
A frustrated mystic watched from a shaded corner atop the city wall as a force of his peoples best soldiers marched out to meet the enemy.Enemy. The word hardly fit the men waiting in the field.
Those gathered beyond the walls were soldiers from another city within the empire. Fellow citizens. The coming bloodshed wasn't part of a war but a ritualistic battle to settle some minor political dispute. It was an attempt to avoid interference by a distant bureaucracy and satisfy the bloodlust that grew in times of peace. It was a chance for soldiers to grasp at what little glory they could find.
It was a foolish waste of life.
Aulus considered what his friend had said about joining them on the battlefield. He knew words of power and the true names of things above. He could twist his mind in unusual directions. Speak in impossible tones. Were he to take to the field the rest of the cities soldiers could stay at home. But such awesome, terrifying power came at a price. Few men in history knew as much as he did about the things beyond. Each of them would rather die than risk using such knowledge.
Portents of the future. Careful observations made while making as few disruptions as possible. That was the best he could give dearest Gaius.
The soldiers formed ranks and waited before the enemy while representatives from each side met. Aulus noticed his friend leading the left flank, an honored position. Gaius wasn't hard to spot. He stood a head taller than his cohorts and his horse haired helm was more ornate than the caps and buckets around him.
The representatives parted and took up their arms. Horns echoed over the field as the two small armies marched toward one another.
Aulus closed his eyes and pushed his mind from his body. He could hear feet pressing into earth. The heavy breathing. The shouting. The blows against shields and the screeching of blades against armor. The screaming. The dying. He pushed himself further. He could smell the sweat and blood. Further. He could see the flash of steel in the sun.
With eyes closed Aulus could watch the battle from among its combatants. Ranks had broken. He could see Gaius strike down soldier after soldier in a brutal melee. His friend hurled his spear, drew his sword and hacked at the so-called enemy. Aulus could see the opening on his friends right side. His shouted warnings came not from the mind in the field, but from the body on the wall.
The mystic could clearly hear the blade slicing through the flesh of his friends calf. The startled yelp of a great warrior as he fell to his knees rang in the ears of a far away man. And the gurgle, that blood choked squawk his dearest friend gave as another citizen of the empire drove a blade into his neck, that sound drowned out the entire battle.
The secret observer launched forward to catch his friend. The stone of the city wall met his hands. He grit his teeth. He wailed. He forced his hands through the wall and open sky to meet his eyes, ears and nose.
He knelt and pulled his friend up from the blood soaked dirt.
Aulus pushed himself further. More than just his mind. More than just his senses. More and more of the young man was forced to exist on the battlefield. He cared not for what ripples his actions might make on the surface of reality. Consequences be damned. When more of him existed in the field than on the wall he relaxed his mind and let the lesser part of him snap to meet the greater.
Gaius looked up at him. There was still life in his eyes though only the faintest glimmer. It was there for but a moment, one fleeting instant. Life passed from the soldier. Reason passed from the mystic.
"Fools…"
The whisper passed over the mystics lips and crept into the ears of those still fighting in the melee. That word carried with it a potent venom. Skin split. Tissues most sensitive liquified. No amount of clawing could dig it out. No amount of screaming could drown it out. Those closest to mystic fell convulsing to the ground.
"FOOLS!"
The booming shout peeled back metal and evaporated flesh. Freshly exposed bone was then blasted to dust. The battle came to a stop as all eyes turned to the young man, his bloodied friend in his arms, a dozen men dead around him.
In only a minute Gaius, handsome and mighty, had been reduced to a bloodied corpse. In only a minute Aulus had thrice violated the natural order.
The world shuddered around him. Ripples cast by his actions ebbed out to draw the attention of the things beyond. The things outside.
"You're willing to throw your lives away for nothing? Fine. If you're all so willing to die, then die!"
Ripples weren't enough to draw in a predator. He needed a splash.
Eyes flashed and a group of men screamed as their bones lengthened and twisted into grasping, choking vines. Those who remained in the left flank turned to run, only to be stopped by those behind. The men from the center and right who could not clearly see the horrors being unleashed upon the battlefield. With a gesture of his hand Aulus exchanged the runners skin with glass. Their attempts to escape only shattered the thin layer protecting their flesh from the world.
That display was enough to send the rest of the foolish soldiers running. It was also just enough to break the surface. To tear the fabric of reality. It was enough to cause a splash.
The world turned to a blur as Aulus wept into the body of his dearest friend.
IV
The duty of a mystic is to protect their fellow man from the things beyond reality. They calm disturbances in the surface of reality. They mend holes in the fabric of the universe. They do everything in their power to keep the things outside from looking in.Aulus twisted his mind to force it into the other place. Once there he looked down and searched the murky depths. Lesser beings had already answered his call. They pressed upon the thin barrier between the real and the not. They squirmed their way through whatever pin prick holes they could find.
On the battlefield those beings of flesh and shadow crawled out of tight spaces. They emerged from beneath rocks and fallen bodies. From the spaces between a man's chest and his armor. From under the tongues of those few who held in their screams.
They scraped. They gnashed. They chewed. Everything they touched turned to paste, layer by layer. Aulus knew them to be bottom feeders. Barely thinking creatures that were almost omnipresent in the other place. He needed something more.
"Come on then!" The young mans throat produced tones both real and not. "Come and see this place! This world of dutiful fools. Come and show them what it means to die for nothing!"
Aulus locked eyes with something below. His words were as alien and unknowable to it as its own were to him. It pressed itself against the wound the mystics thrashings had left in the world and, with some perceivable effort, it forced its way through.
It came from behind motes of dust hanging in the air. The thing was the night sky animate. A dark, starlit mass that both crawled and flew over the battlefield. In its presence light dimmed, sound dulled, and everything, man metal and stone, withered. Whatever it fed on, whatever nutrient was vital to the unreal creatures survival, was also needed by real things to keep their shape. Everything it touched unevenly shrank away to be left as a smear of thin tissue upon the ground. Most unfortunate for those who suffered the creatures passing; the process was somehow not immediately lethal.
Aulus wept as the screams around him rose and fell. He pulled the horse haired helmet from the still body in his arms to again gaze upon his handsome face. The mystic held his lifelong friend tightly.
"Gaius, I'm sorry…" Words came between heaving sobs. "I should have tried harder to stop you. I should have tried harder to stop this foolishness. I– I should have joined you in battle. I'd have rather abandoned my duty to save you than to avenge you."
The world broke further as other things found their way through from beyond. Screams more distant rose to replace those of the now suffering soldiers. The things had reached the city.
"Aulus..." The familiar voice came from around and within the grieving young man. "Aulus, my friend. You mustn't do this."
"I–" Words twisted into a knot in his throat. "L-let them die."
"Aulus, please. You might think it a pointless death, and it might have been, but I died doing my duty. I stayed true to who and what I am..."
The implications of the dead Gaius' words crept up in the back of the young mans mind.
"It's too late. I've crossed too many lines. Done too much damage. I just… I just want to stay here with you."
"It's never too late, Aulus. Walk the path I have walked and you will find me beyond."
Duty. Aulus had a duty. He had taken oaths that now lay as twisted and broken as the men around him. Merciful tears obfuscated what he had done to the world. He could not clearly see what had become of the battlefield or what was happening in the city, but he could imagine what each blurry shape may have been. His gut twisted as imagination suggested what each shape might be.
Aulus closed his eyes, never to open them again.
"Gaius, my friend. I will walk your path. The path of duty. I will fix this..."
The young mystic laid his friend to the earth, stood tall among the twisted dead and forced his mind, eyes and arms into the other place. There he could see the damage he'd caused. He could run the idea of his fingers over the ragged edges of the tear. Physical laws had frayed like thread. Universal constants lay ripped and scattered. The wound he'd left in the world was grisly.
It was something he could mend, but the cost would be steep.
Aulus knew he would spend so much mental energy fixing the damage of his tantrum there'd be little left of him when he was done. Even then there were still horrors in the world, false things that had come through to explore the true.
He considered his options.
Imagined fingers took hold of realities tattered edges and pulled them further apart. The world ripped. It was a long tear that arced through the sky like an arrow. The sky quaked. The earth shuddered. The air itself howled and screamed as more and more of the real world was separated in what Aulus perceived as a clean rip.
His target was the mountain.
Aulus had long known the slumbering giant to be a waiting calamity. He regularly climbed to its peak to better see just how dormant it was. There was fire there. And ash. And pressure. So much pressure. But it was stable, he'd seen to that before with a prior violation of the natural order. One that had taken years to carefully mend. So long as nothing disturbed the mountain it would remain quiet.
The tip of the growing tear buried itself into dirt and stone. Somewhere deep below the surface of the Earth there came a rumble. A delicate balance had been disrupted. That was it. That was all it took. With one metaphysical poke the mystic had started something no man, monster or even god could stop. The mountain would wake with rage.
"Let those wretched things that stay here face the fury of the Earth."
Aulus slammed his hands in unusual directions to bring the clean edges of the tear together. Under his guidance the line separating the possible from the impossible mended as cleanly as it had torn. That repair wouldn't cost him much. Not when compared to what he would spend closing the ragged hole he'd created in his grief.
He pushed himself without regard for his own well being. Bits of the unreal were stuffed back outside. The edges of the tear were fused together. The things from outside gathered as their path home began to shrink.
"Back, back you fiends!"
A voice cut through the screams and howls and otherworldly sounds swirling around him. There was a grunt and the clanging of steel. A warcry most familiar.
"Aulus, I will hold them back! Do your duty, wipe these things from the Earth!"
The young man pushed temptation aside. He wanted nothing more than to open his eyes and look around for his friend. To see him moving, fighting, shouting, living. His minds eye could see him again embracing his dearest friend. His hands, both real and not, reached out in the hopes of again holding his friend.
"Aulus!"
Gaius was dead at his feet.
He'd died a pointless death. A foolish death. But it was a death he'd chosen for himself in the pursuit of his duty. Aulus would walk that same path.
More and more of himself was spent repairing the damage with each passing second. The wound closed. His mind fractured. The things around him wailed at the sound of spear and sword.
There came a vibration through the ground and an earthly sound mighty enough to challenge all the terrors from the beyond. The mountain had spoken. Though Aulus held his eyes shut he knew what he had done. He knew what was coming. It was not the peak of the great stone giant that had burst. Rather, the entire mountainside facing the battlefield and city had exploded.
Ash and rock and fire raced over lush fields and quaint farm houses. Those few horrors that had explored towards the mountain found themselves crushed and burned by the unavoidable reality that was the mountain. Unreal biologies and imagined matter meant little before such a demonstration of natural law.
Aulus meant little, too.
The wall of destruction obliterated his body in an instant. But still he worked. Flesh and bone were gone, but his mind and senses remained where he had stood to continue the task. Death would not stop him. No horrors or furious mountains would keep him from his duty.
A wave of scorching earth washed over the city. Merciful death for those who still somehow clung to life. Just destruction for those things that had no place in the universe. All the nightmares that had been made there were buried in stone and ash.
The damage had been undone.
First he had used his fears and insecurities. Then his unpleasant memories. Then his childhood. His family. Himself. Even Gaius. Aulus burned more and more of his own mind to fuel his work. When the task was complete he knew not what he had done or why. Only his duty as a mystic remained. Even that had started to unravel.
"Aulus..."
What was left of the young man was gathered in the embrace of a friend.
2023.03.21 01:29 virtualems 230313 and 230320 Weekly Recap & NCTeatime 🍵
Hello and welcome to this bi-weekly NCTeatime!
Up first, here are the megathreads for NCT Dream's The Dream Show 2 and the ticket buying/selling for NCT Dream's world tour!
This is a free-for-all thread. Feel free to ask a question, drop a recommendation, share story, or rant your little heart out - NCT-related or not - this is your space! This is also where you'll find a recap of what happened in NCity the past week.
Please remember to follow the rules, as well as the general Reddiquette. You can find our past weekly discussions here.
230307
submitted by virtualems to NCT [link] [comments]
Up first, here are the megathreads for NCT Dream's The Dream Show 2 and the ticket buying/selling for NCT Dream's world tour!
This is a free-for-all thread. Feel free to ask a question, drop a recommendation, share story, or rant your little heart out - NCT-related or not - this is your space! This is also where you'll find a recap of what happened in NCity the past week.
Please remember to follow the rules, as well as the general Reddiquette. You can find our past weekly discussions here.
230307
- Yuta will be featured in the May 2023 issue of Nikkei Entertainment which will be published April 4th, 2023.
- NCT 127 - Blue to Orange: House of Love photobook details are released; plus the trailer drops on the 8th which you can check out here.
- Xiaojun is announced to be the new MC of SBS MTV The Show!! He is joining Yeosang of Ateez, and Chaehyun of Kep1er in this role.
- NCT Dream's Indonesia concert comes to an end and was a success, having sold out all three nights 🥳!
- Renjun comments on his RADWIMPS's 'Your Name' cover at ORICON News.
- NCT Dream announce their concert venues and ticket sale information for the North American leg of their tour.
- Over on the Cosmopolitan YouTube channel NCT Dream share their spicy fashion takes on Cosmo's Drip or Drop series.
- Ten's interview with WOODY FM is out, go check it out here.
- Sungchan's photoshoot behind for star1 is uploaded.
- NCT U's first fixed unit is announced and will in include Doyoung, Jaehyun and Jungwoo (DoJaeJung)!! They are preparing an album and plan to debut in the first half of the year!
- Jaehyun is revealed to be on the cover of the April 2023 issue of Esquire Korea with Prada.
- As part of the China Charities Aid Foundation for Children's (CCAFC) Dandelion Public Welfare Music Project, WayV will be releasing the single 'Don't Look Back' on March 12th.
- Jisung's does a TMI interview with Y Magazine to answer our most burning question: what's in his bag.
- Doyoung representing all of us introverts out here in his Tokyo travel vlog 😎!
- Kun share's antisue1's cover of 'Love Talk' 🤭 and compliments her work, as he should because she slayed hehe.
- Winwin shows his style for Valentino Friend of the House.
- NCT DREAM Earns RIAJ Platinum Certification for their Japanese Debut Single 'Best Friend Ever'!!
- We get introduced to Yuta's character for Cool Doji Danshi (Play It Cool, Guys).
- Go check out WayV's fanmeeting tour box on their Youtube channel.
- Jaehyun's cover for Esquire Korea's April 2023 issue is out!
- NCT Dream announce an English version of 'Beatbox' with an accompanying MV to be released on March 21st! It is expected to be performed for the first time on their Europe and American tour!
- Yuta will be featured on the May 2023 issue of Gekkan TV Guide and it will be released on March 24st.
- HYBE discontinues its acquisition of SM Entertainment and agrees to cooperate with Kakao on platform-related matters while Kakao guarantees the autonomy of SM Entertainment. SM Entertainment welcomes the agreement, and will take the opportunity to push forward with 'SM 3.0' at full speed.
- NCT Dream's Thailand leg of their world tour wraps up having sold out all three nights with a total of 35,000 fans having had attended!
- Some unfortunate news: Jeno tests positive for COVID-19 and the NCT Dream fansign for March 13th and 14th have been postponed 😭. We hope he heals up and gets better soon!
- NCT 127 and NCT DREAM are nominated for The Most Influential Male Idol while Doyoung is nominated for The Most Influential Variety-dol (Male) at the Brand Customer Loyalty Awards 2023.
- Prada Instagram update with Jaehyun for SS23.
- NCT 127's 'Ay-Yo' debuts at thirteen on the Billboard 200 albums chart!
- NCT Dream's English version of 'Beatbox' will be released on music streaming services March 21st at 1:00 PM KST. Check out the super cool digital single cover art here!
- Dazed Korea drops the beautiful photos for Jeno's upcoming appearance on their SS23 special edition issue!
- Yuta's cover for Cut Magazine April 2023 issue is released 😍!
- NCT 127 is announced to be the second K-Pop artist in history to chart five albums in top fifteen of Billboard 200 as "Ay-Yo" makes its debut in the chart.
- Haechan's incredible photos for his cover feature on the Arena Homee + April 2023 Issue are revealed!
- WayV's Thailand vlog is out, go check out all the memories they made here.
- NCT 127's photoshoot behind vlog for Orange to Blue: House of Love is released.
- Wow! NCT Dream's 'Hello Future' MV reaches 100 Million views 🌈 !
- NCT Dream hop on over to Seventeen Magazine to do their Besties on Besties interview and spill all the info about their friendship.
- In other exciting news, NCT 127 are planning to launch 'Limitless' the first K-pop graphic novel 😯!
- Shotaro and Sungchan's Numero Tokyo photoshoot behind vlog is out!
- NCT Dream post the first episode in their Dream Loop: The Last Midnight series on YouTube.
- Jeno's interview with Dazed Korea for his SS23 special edition feature is released.
- Yuta will be featured on the back cover of IYU Magazine, along with the cast of 'Cool Doji Danshi (Play It Cool, Guys)', and it is to be released April 25th!
- "NCT LIFE in Chuncheon and Hongcheon" DVD-BOX will be released on June 30th, 2023.
- Winwin's personal photobook 'Island Encounter' will be released on Yizhiyu soon!
- SM Entertainment x UXstory Inc to launch an individual member "live motion" app called NCT HOME.
- NCT 127 is announced to be apart of the lineup for the May Concert in Thailand, which is happening May 27th, 2023.
- The web exclusive images drop for NCT Dream's Men's Non-No Magazine March 2023 issue and they're looking as cool as ever 😎!
- Jungwoo joins Twice for their 'Set Me Free' Dance challenge and absolutely slays.
- Some very cool, and very major, news for Ten and Yangyang, as they are announced to be apart of Hwaiting Season two at Dive Studios 👏🏻!!
- Jaehyun sits down with Esquire Korea for an interview on their YouTube channel!
- NCT Dream is announced to be a part of the lineup of the third Lotte Duty Free Family Concert on June 16th, 2023.
- Some more unfortunate news: Kun sprained his ankle during an overseas schedule. He went to the hospital on March 20th to receive treatment and currently has no major problems with his ankle. We wish him a speedy recovery!
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2023.03.21 01:26 TCForumman [H] Gamelist [W] Yakuza Like A Dragon, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Path of The Midnight Sun, Octopath Traveler II, Project Zomboid, It Takes Two, The Forgotton City, Edge of Eternity, The Legend of Heroes: Kuro no Kiseki
As the title says: [H] Gamelist [W] Yakuza Like A Dragon, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Path of The Midnight Sun, Octopath Traveler II, Project Zomboid, It Takes Two, The Forgotten City, Edge of Eternity, The Legend of Heroes: Kuro no Kiseki
Contact for trades.
IGS REP Page
PasteBin (information same as the list below)
11-11 Memories Retold
112 Operator
198x
60 Parsecs!
A case of distrust
Adom
Aegis defenders
Age of wonders: planetfall
Ageless
Ai war 2
Almost There: The Platformer
Alt254 September 2020 Extras
American Fugitive
Amnesia: Rebirth
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey
ARROG
Automachef
Avernum 3: Ruined World
Azkend 2: The World Beneath Fanatical - Fall Mystery Bundle
Bad North: jotunn edition
Barotrauma
Basingstoke
Battle chaser: night war
Battlestar Galactica
BattleTech
BattleTech - Flashpoint
Beat hazards 2
Bee Simulator
Before I forget
Before I Forget June 2020 Extras
Before We Leave
beholder 2
Between the stare
Between the stars
beyond: two souls
Black Book
Black Future '88
Blade Assault
Blasphemous
Book of demons
Booth August 2020 Extras
Borderlands 3
Borderlands 3: Director's Cut
Boreal Blade
Boundless
BPM: Bullets Per Minute
Calico
Call of Duty: WWII
Call of Duty: WWII - Call of Duty Endowment Bravery Pack
Call of Duty: WWII - Call of Duty Endowment Fear Not Pack
Call of the Sea
Capitalism 2
Carto September 2020 Extras
Chasm
Chicken Police
Children of Morta
Civilization VI - Platinum Edition
Control Standard Edition
Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3
Creator crate July 2021 Extras
Crown Trick
Crying Suns
Cryofall
Cyber Hook
Dandara
Dark future blood-red states
Darksburg
Darksiders Genesis
Darksiders III
Darkwood
Deadly Days
Deadly Days
Death’s gambit
Deleveled
Descenders
Desert child
Desolate
Destroy all humans!
Dirt 5
Dirt Rally 2.0 - H2 RWD Double Pack
Dirt Rally 2.0 - Opel Manta 400
Dirt Rally 2.0 - Porsche 911 RGT Rally Spec
Disjunction
Distance
Divinoids April 2020 Extras
Don’t escape: 4 days to survive
Driftland: the magic revival
Due Process
Earthlock
Effie
Elderborn
Eldest Souls
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2023.03.21 01:25 Trash_Tia Every October 1st, the eighteen year old's in my town go crazy for one night. We call it The Teen Purge. (Part 2)
Dearest [BLANK]
I don’t want to say your name because then I will feel the need to say so much more and I’ll end up writing far too much.
Names are hard for me.
You lost yours a while ago, at least in my mind. I stopped calling you [BLANK]. You were just a monster.
A murderer.
I know you won’t read this but I’m putting this out there anyway. I want to talk to you.
I guess this is my way of… apologising. You’re the first in a long list of people I want to say goodbye to. I feel like you were the one who started this.
You were the one who opened my eyes to Littlewood’s curse. I’ve been so angry for so many years. I have felt so much fucking pain. Agony. The kind I can’t even explain. It’s like drowning, [BLANK]. I’ve wanted to kill you so many times, often dreaming about it the older I became. You stopped having an identity in my nightmares and became a faceless shadow suffocating my chest.
Ironically enough, [BLANK], we’re actually the worst ones. The class of 2022 really outdid all of you. I finally understand what it might have been like for you. I understand that craving you felt—to kill. To destroy. And that nothing would get in our way. We would kill parents, strangers, and children, until sunrise—until the curse was lifted and we were given back our souls, only to be hollow inside. Broken. I know what it feels like to be alone and abandoned by the ones you thought you could trust. I never knew where you had gone after you ripped our town apart. But I didn’t care. I wanted you gone, [BLANK], so I didn’t have to see your stupid face.
Now I know the truth, I can only wish you some kind of peace. I know it's impossible to think, even when part of me knows your fate, but I hope you got away from here.
I hope part of you is still planning to come visit me. Lastly, I hope you can forgive me for hating you for so long. I wish you told me. I know I was a little kid, but you could have told me what was going to happen to you. To you, Luce and Poppy. If you had, maybe mom might be here.
…Who am I kidding? If you didn’t kill her eleven years ago, I probably would have this year.
After all, it’s always loved ones.
Is that why you killed her, [BLANK]? Did she mean something to you?
Did I?
Anyway. Thank you for being there when I was a kid.
Thank you for making me laugh and spew milk out of my nose.
Thank you for killing my mother before I did it myself and surrendered the last dregs of my humanity.
I’ll remember you, [BLANK].
Not just the flashes I saw of you—the ones you put inside my head.
The times that mattered. You know, when we were friends. You do remember, right?
It was you and me against the world, [BLANK]! And it always will be. I promise.
Love,
Bee. <3
...
Was I having an aneurysm?
Pressing my forehead against the cool brick of a crumbling wall, I revelled in the stink of burning which was thankfully blocking out the horrific taste of skin slithering back up my throat as I heaved up the contents of my stomach. I was used to the stink of charred human flesh. After all, the town was burning and its victims were our feast. Our prizes. I chose not to look around me or take in my surroundings. I didn’t want to look at a town which we had ripped apart once again. I didn’t want to see bodies littering the roads and sidewalk, chunks of flesh and torso’s lying in unsuspecting places.
So many thoughts were alive inside my head, an endless hurricane of both nothing and everything colliding into a vicious void I couldn’t explain, couldn’t understand, couldn’t stop—and yet that thought in particular was the one which reigned dominant.
It had to be an aneurism, right?
I didn’t feel like I’d cracked my head or something had seriously gone wrong inside my brain.
I was burning.
I remembered googling the term in middle school when I had a shitty headache, and my aunt had dropped the word in conversation with the doctor.
"What if it is an aneurysm?"
He chuckled in reply. "It's just a pressure headache, Miss Levi."
Suffice to say, once I knew what an aneurysm was, I closed down my aunt’s laptop and crawled under my bed. Like I could hide from something like that. I remember reading it up on Web MD. Not exactly the best place to check your symptoms, but eleven year old me just wanted answers to the pounding pain which felt like someone slamming a rock onto the back of my head and temples.
Nausea and vomiting? Yep. I felt like my insides were attempting to projectile vomit my organs.
Stiff neck? Sort of. I felt stiff all over, my whole body aching like I’d just been through a meat grinder.
Blurred or double vision? My vision wasn’t mine. I was seeing things I shouldn’t—a world which wasn’t from my perspective.
Sensitivity to light? The sunrise was pretty harsh on my eyes. I wasn’t ready to see broad daylight and what exactly my class had done to our town. I never saw burning as a symptom. I never saw a never ending fucking inferno inside your brain, eating you from the inside, as a symptom.
I wouldn’t call it an aneurysm, but it definitely was something. I don’t know how to explain the immense pressure in my head, like something alive was bleeding inside my brain and latching onto me.
Burning. I was… I was burning.
Everything inside me was fucking burning, and I couldn’t stop it.
I couldn’t put this ferocious blaze out because it was inside my skull.
Despite being in denial, I didn’t feel like myself anymore. Like my soul had been forced back inside a body which didn’t belong to me; a body which had been twisted and purged of everything she was, and turned into a monster, pupiteered by the curse.
I was still running on adrenaline, a senseless and mindless craving ripping through all logic. It was still alive inside me, gritting my teeth together in a Wonderland Smile which I couldn’t stop, which was stretched so wide across my face my jaw felt like it was going to concave. I remembered flashes of my before. Before I woke up. Before Littlewood gave me my mind back.
I had brutally killed a woman and her husband, carving their eyes out and teasing them with their last breaths with the hope of survival, only to rip away their life before that hope could blossom inside them. It was hope suffocated by a despair which was so agonising that it bled inside me once my eyes were open and I was staring down at my own fists, at the woman’s eyeball’s squished between my blood spattered knuckles while the rest of her painted me like I was her canvas.
I had danced in her husbands remains, twirling to a song only I could hear.
All of that made sense. It made sense that I had been turned into a monster like the rest of my class and it made a sick kind of sense that I had been the one to hollow out a man’s body with my own hands. I had been part of 2022’s Teen Purge, a fate I knew I couldn’t and wouldn’t ever escape. There were still so many questions I wanted answering. I wanted to know why the curse was triggered by a man-made substance we had been subjected to, and why Jun had been able to coherently text me before sunrise.
Jun.
I had to… find him. Before he did something he would regret. No, I thought dizzily. Before he came to terms with what he had done under the influence. That thought was driving me crazy, but it was being pushed back, overwhelmed by something else entirely which was taking over me, enveloping me. At some point, I dropped my phone and smashed the screen. I didn’t know when exactly that was. Time was going so slowly. One minute I had been pushing myself into a stumbled run towards Littlewood’s scrapyard, motivated by Jun’s cryptic text before something inside me… snapped. I had a destination, an escape which was slowly building into a coherent plan—before I was… nothing.
I was nameless, a shadow teetering between life and death while my body and brain were burned alive. It was in my blood, my bones, my thoughts. Burning. I couldn’t control myself as I screamed into the air choked with smoke. Did it come from inside my head?
No. No, it was a fire which had been set across the road from me. My thoughts were tangled and confusing, and after a while—they weren’t even mine. The longer I burned, the longer I screamed into nothing, the physical presence which had forced its way inside my head started to multiply.
How am I supposed to describe this sensation accurately? How can I tell you this without sounding fucking insane?
It was… the feeling of being drowned inside my own mind, in bleeding memories entangled together which weren’t mine creating a storm inside my head.
Whispering voices fighting to make themselves heard. The unyielding force of dozens of thoughts and feelings taking over me one by one. Initially, I fought against them. I tried to push them out, because while they were seeping inside my thought process, parasites crawling into my brain, I was growing numb.
My own thoughts were turning obsolete, everything I was fading as my body became theirs. It happened slowly. I felt myself drop to the ground, still burning, the inferno in my brain and body growing brighter and brighter, numbed only slightly by my senses being snatched from me. I hit the ground, but I didn’t feel impact. Instead, the whispering grew less incoherent until there were voices. Real voices screaming inside my head. “Mother!” A girl’s cry rang inside my skull. It wasn’t the cry of a child, no. It was a teenager. “You don’t have to do this to us!”
She was my age. Her wail was enough to stop my attempts at prying away the voices, and I let go. I let each of them in. I let them bleed into me until I was nothing, and they were… something. The force of her rattled me until I couldn’t breathe, until I couldn’t force my body into a sitting position. Lying faced down on singed grass with no choice but to listen to them, a sea of tangled thoughts plunging me further into the dark, a wave of ice cold water enveloping my own sense of being.
As the nameless girl took over, spiderwebbing inside me, my senses became entangled with her. I wasn’t just hearing her. I was… I was feeling her. And within a single breath choked from my hijacked mouth, I was her. Her cry was mine, strangled and twisted, ripping from my own lips. This stranger. I could feel her writhing body pressed against something harsh digging into our back, aching arms pinned above us.
The smell of smoulder scratched the back of our nose, a panicking feeling turning our gut. In front of us was darkness speckled with blurred orange. Shadows with no faces. The girl wasn’t alone. Next to her were squirming silhouettes, and I felt a raging agony and frustration ripping her apart. She wasn’t alone. Those were her thoughts, and while she was terrified of her fate, part of her felt like she could die. As long as it was with them. Glimpsing a figure striding through the dark, a figure carrying a burning torch, I waited for her to talk.
I waited for her to cry out, for some kind of explanation for what I was seeing. Before I could, however, the girl and her memory was being ripped away—and I heard her fighting back, trying to reach out, trying to leach back onto me. Her prying fingers failed to grasp hold, only for a second mind to find its way inside me, harsher. Recent. The girl wasn’t the only one to try and use my mouth to scream.
Littlewood High’s gymnasium blossomed into my mind, followed by sharp clarity. This kid was far more hesitant to reveal to me who they were. They held back a little, only choosing to show me their point of view of tipping their head back as a wave of water came down, drenching them and the rest of their class.
Blood. That’s what I had thought. I thought it was blood drenching my face and clothes, gluing my hair to my head and pasting my eyes shut. It was blood that had been spilled and had already been spilled; the blood of my mother when I watched her gutted by Noah Sharpe. Somehow, that colourless substance which had purposely drenched us had forced that one thought into our heads.
We were covered in it.
That, combined with the images in our heads of smouldering flame enveloping flesh and hair, an inferno setting our bodies alight, was enough to drive even the strongest minds to pure insanity. And I was seeing it. I was seeing each experience. I was seeing the faces of loved ones driving them crazier.
I felt their attempts to regain control of their mind, but the damage was already done.
They slipped to their knees, their screams joining a symphony orchestra of cries around them-- and saw exactly what I did. Burning. Charred flesh and singed hair. Agonizing wails rattling their skulls until they were forced to join. Their hands were in their hair, gripping and pulling and tearing at their scalp—bloody fingernails raking down their face and a smile beginning to split their lips in half.
The Wonderland Smile, chasing away logical fear and pain previously grounding them in a reality they believed in. A craving was coming alive inside of them, a hunger to rid themselves of that pain—all of that blood. By making others feel the despair which had taken an unyielding hold.
It was getting harder to differentiate whose memory from who.
This time they were stronger.
I saw sterile flooring and running feet.
Everything was blinding white. I heard his gasps for breath, a nightmarish fear eating him up from the inside pushing him to run faster.
I recognised him. Not his psychotic laugher when he had kidnapped me a year earlier, but his struggle to keep breathing. Keep sucking in precious oxygen which felt so far away. Just like the others before him, while his being seeped inside me, I had found myself once again plunged inside a memory. This time it was someone I recognised. Not a stranger from past years, but a classmate just below me.
Tommy Nolan had an asthma attack in junior year. Second period math, he’d jumped up with a panicked look on his face, clutching his chest. I remember thinking his breathing sounded wrong, like it was a car-engine trying and failing to start. His face had been pale, trembling hands clutching at his chest.
Tommy wasn’t the kind of guy who would intentionally attract attention to himself. He was an introvert through and through. However, this was the type of thing he couldn’t hide away from or push people away. “I can’t breathe.” He’d managed to gasp out, before the teacher had escorted him out of the class and to the nurse’s office. What I felt wasn’t an asthma attack gripping his chest. It was pure panic and fear squeezing the air from his lungs and stumbling his already clumsy steps.
Tommy reached a corner and threw himself into a run which was cut short by rough hands grabbing hold of him and yanking him back. I didn’t see the rest of Tommy Nolan’s memory. At least, I didn’t see an escape or anything which hinted at where he was. I just saw the same. A coffin-like enveloping darkness. Restrained hands.
Raging fire.
I don’t know if it was Tommy’s splintered mind which had catapulted me from my own mind, or maybe he didn’t want me to see everything. Before I could grasp onto his memory, he let go. The whispering voices let me go, and I found myself pressed against grass wet with dew, an intense pressure in my nose and crawling around the back of head, blood pooling down my chin. I took a moment to gather myself. The sky was still half dark and half-light, pink and orange streaks taking over pooling black. Across the street, Lili Marriot was standing with the town preacher’s severed head clumsily forced onto a make-shift pike.
The man's eyes were still open, wide with horror.
She wasn’t moving, her scarlet hands still grasping the weapon for dear life. I got to my feet slowly, ignoring my own blood spattered hands. I didn’t think about the woman I had murdered, or her husband, as I hopped onto a trashed bike which had been abandoned on the side of the road. It was still usable. Sure, it had bits of skin stuck in the wheels, but it would work.
I pushed myself into a smooth pace which was normal. It felt normal, like every other morning when Jun and I biked to school. Instead of taking in the apocalyptic landscape around me, I focused on the road and finding my friend.
That morning, I saw a mix.
I saw kids who were waking up and finding themselves painted in their victims. I saw them crying.
Screaming.
I saw one girl slice open her own throat over the corpse of her little brother.
But I was also seeing kids still entangled in their own undoing, still tearing Littlewood apart. Under the last splinters of night, I saw my classmates around me.
But I chose to be ignorant. I needed to find Jun and saving the town's people who had been brought to the brink of despair was the last thing on my mind. Still though, I watched.
I couldn’t help it. There was a sort of morbid curiosity inside me once I had been freed from the curse, and then watching the rest of my class still in its iron grip. The varsity boys dragged an old man by his neck down the road, chanting the school anthem. One of them was wearing someone’s skull which had been ripped of its flesh, the remnants of a bulging eye still glued inside the socket. They wore their football jerseys, and somehow that made them even more terrifying. They were the perfect depiction of Noah Sharpe. Gen Z version. Littlewood's golden boy turned psycho.
Eleven years later, it had taken them too.
“REDHAWKS!” Their war cries bled into the dull sunrise, stamping their feet to a beat only they could hear. The old man was struggling, his face beet red, prying wrinkly fingers attempting to tug the tough rope cinched around his limp neck. But they weren’t letting go, only laughing when he let out a pained cry, begging them to let him die, begging to let him asphyxiate.
“REDHAWKS!”
They ignored him, pulling his limp body across the road.
“REDHAWKS!”
STAMP.
STAMP.
STAMP.
“REDHAWKS!”
I could still hear their phantom yelling when I neared the scrapyard. Passing the diner, which was nothing but a blur of vivid orange, I saw a group of girl’s shrieking those horrific hyena laughs, diving into the flames and dancing in the smoke, entangling themselves in licking flames. Laughter twisted into screams and cries of agony mixed with a pleasure, a euphoria, I didn’t even think existed. I had felt it writhing in every soul which had bled inside me. The craving to die. When I squeezed the handlebars tighter, I felt something shift inside me once the stink of smoke had travelled into my nose and was choking the back of my throat.
Looking down at my palms, my skin had started to catch alight. No, I wasn’t seeing things. I could feel it, flames crawling up my arms, licking across my flesh and melting through my sweater sleeve.
I opened my mouth to cry out, and in the blink of an eye I was back inside that coffin-like tunnel drowning Tommy Nolan’s memory. He didn’t want me to see it, had pulled away before I could glimpse what exactly was in there. This time, though, it wasn’t Tommy Nolan strapped to a metal slab. It was me. I was closed in, suffocating on my own sobs, on curling smoke already dancing in the back of my mind. All I could see was fiery orange and red engulfing me, filling the tunnel. The thought hit me when my own body was writhing, dancing in vivid orange getting brighter and brighter, licking across my flesh in sharp rivulets, singing my hair from my scalp.
I was in an incinerator.
No… no not just me.
We.
Tommy Nolan, and the nameless girl’s whose screams had rattled my skull.
All of us.
We were in an incinerator.
The shock of the vision, as well as all of our pain entwining into one pulled me back to uncertain reality. I didn’t even realise I’d let go of the bike handlebars before I was crashing down on rough concrete, smacking my head on the curb. Stars exploded in the backs of my eyes. But the fire was gone. Like it had never fucking existed. Except I knew it did. It had in Tommy Nolan’s memory, as well as my future. An endless fire which had ripped away our flesh and sent us plunging into the dark. It made me wonder about that first memory. The girl tied to the tree in front of blurred orange. Was that how all of this had started?
Did I see the first glimpses of Littlewood’s curse? When I pushed the bike off of me and checked my arms and legs for burns or signs of smoulder, there was nothing there. Fuck. Whatever had taken over my mind and crawled into my brain wasn’t letting go, but I found myself hanging onto them. My head hit the ground and I stared at the sky, at red and orange clouds which almost resembled the end of the world.
The sky, just like the ground below, had been set alight. Maybe it was the end of the world, I thought.
Maybe Littlewood was really falling this time.
I don’t know how long I lay there trying to catch my breath, trying to force my maple syrup thoughts into fruition. I was trying to shake my head of possible concussion, dislodging my brain from the puddle of fog it had fallen into, when I heard running footsteps.
Bare feet slapping against gravel. I knew what this was. I’d heard it as a kid, an animal-like herd of kids which had congregated into their own tribe.
I had heard them running past my house every year, and each time I thought they would catch me. I thought they’d crawl through my window like Noah Sharpe and his gang. But this was my class.
These were the kids I had been going to school with for years. The sound of their whooping and laughter brought me out of it, just a little. Twisting to my side, I glimpsed them suddenly. White canisters. The ones I’d seen in the school, the ones I’d seen being put into the sprinkler system. They were everywhere, dotted across the road, turned over on their head and leaking that same colourless substance onto cement and into the air. I wondered if they had been purposely placed.
“Help me! Oh god, please help me!”
Just ahead of me, a woman in her thirties was sprinting. Her expression was wild with fright, dark hair flying behind her in a whirlwind. I recognised the look on her face. It was exactly what I’d felt a year prior when I escaped Tommy Nolan and his gang with an inch of my life. The girl caught my eye for a fleeting moment and it looked like she might have found solace in me. Her mouth opened in a silent plea, her trembling hands raising above her head.
Before she realised what I was.
I had been so focused on looking at her face, I’d failed to see the mess of startling red painting the front of her shirt. She was screaming, sobbing into the wind. There was something wrapped around her left wrist, the entrails of some poor souls guts fashioned into makeshift restraints. Twisting around, the girl dropped to her knees and buried her head in the ground. “Don’t!” she screamed. “Please! Don’t!”
She wasn’t running, I thought.
Why wasn’t she running?
When the hysterical girl started to crawl across the ground, they appeared like animals, like they had been staying back, teasing her with the hope of survival. There were eight of them. All of them carrying lead pipes. The look on their faces was feral. Blood stained grins and empty eyes only seeing prey—only seeing another victim they could tear apart. I started to get up, started to plan my escape which was just to run and never stop fucking running until I was away from them. When more war cries rang out. This time from the other side of the road. Two separate tribes of kids advancing towards her. The second group were faster, and I recognised a face enveloped in the disgusting stain of red which painted them.
Jun. He didn’t look like Jun anymore. I could hardly even see his face through a coating of red smearing his cheeks and eyes which he must have done himself.
War paint.
Wielding a long thread of wire wrapped around his left wrist and trailing on the ground, my best friend joined the mass of kids closing in on the girl. His eyes were vacant and dark, empty of anything human. It was Noah all over again, except this time I wasn’t a frightened six year old. I could stop it. I remember getting to my feet. Movement. Several heads whipped around. I’d already caught their attention but their gazes barely strayed on me before going back to the girl. With my attention on him, I moved towards him, taking my steps slowly. Another kid crawled out of their hiding place behind a dumpster. This time they looked younger.
I didn’t even want to guess how old.
When half of the kids jumped the little kid while the others took care of the girl, I forced my legs to keep going, keep moving. But I stopped when the woman dived to her feet and made a run for it, pushing herself into a sprint. I watched Jun pursue her like a lion chasing after a deer with an almost supernatural speed. While her steps were stumbled and clumsy, his were calculated. I couldn’t move when he dived onto her back and brought her to the ground, her face smacking against cement with a meaty smack. She squirmed, fighting to get away, but he was already forcing the metal wire into her throat, wrapping it around and around until her face was turning red, and then blue, her mouth opening and closing like a goldfish.
The wire sliced cleanly into her flesh and red began to swim from her, startling pooling red I will never forget which stained his hands. I knew what he was doing. Squeezing tighter. Jun’s weapon wasn’t to asphyxiate and strangle. It was a garotte. And his prize was progressively more inevitable the more he forced the cutting wire through layers of skin until it met bone. “Jun!” I was yelling his name before I knew what I was doing. I don’t know how I got to him without breaking down, but when my face was buried into his back and I was sobbing his name, everything felt…. Right. Even if it was just for a little while. Because, like a fairy-tale narrating the clock striking twelve and a magic spell wearing off, a dazzling sunrise broke through the clouds as dawn hit, and the woman’s gurgling stopped. Just like the jerking movements of Jun’s hands as they struggled to cut through bone.
I watched him blink himself awake through my own tears. Swiping at his eyes, my best friend stared down at his scarlet hands, and then grasping at his own face, running filthy fingers down his cheeks, as if he could tear his own flesh off of the bone.
I wasn’t paying attention to Jun as he fully came to. I was staring at a little girl who had walked out of her house clutching a stuffed teddy bear and seeing the body of her mother on the ground. A numbness started to take over me, a heavy weight on my chest. I remember his warm arms were suddenly around me, and they were tight, so tight, almost suffocating the breath from my lungs. Jun’s body felt strange against mine, a trembling, rattling mass as he let out a gut lurching cry into my shoulder.
I had never heard him scream before. Jun had always hidden behind a bright smile which had finally crumbled under the curse.
“Did I…”
His words collapsed into a sob.
“Did I… do this?"
The metal wire was still attached to him, coiled around his wrist.
It marked him as a member of that tribe.
“No.” I whispered into the damp material of his shirt. "No, none of this was you."
He laughed, sputtering on a sob.
“You’re okay.” I said. “You’re okay. Just breathe."
An icy shiver ripped its way down my spine when his lips found my ear. “Do you… really want to outrun the asteroid?” He whispered, choking on a hysterical laugh. “Do you think we are worthy, Bee?” His tone darkened. “Is our suffering worthy?”
I shook off that comment for a moment, focusing on him. "You texted me." I said in a hiss. "How were you awake?"
Awareness bled into his expression, followed by confusion. "I… did?"
As if on cue, footsteps startled me, and Jun’s phone hit the ground in front of us followed by the curve of a heel splintering the screen. When I looked up, Ms Hawkins, our drama teacher, was looming over us holding a gun. It didn’t look like the usual gun I saw my neighbours use on wildlife. This one had a red coloured butt and fit perfectly into her hand. She shot Jun first. The bullet hit his arm and he sent me a helpless look, his hand going to the tiny dart stuck into his lower elbow, before dropping to the ground. The teacher kicked Jun onto his side, before twisting and pointing the gun between my brows.
I remember her pulling the trigger, but it wasn’t just aimed at me. It was aimed at every other soul which had entangled itself with me. Noah, his class, and the ones before hiThis had happened to every year prior to us—and I had a sickening feeling I knew what was coming next. I woke to a nauseating feeling of movement to find my head uncomfortably pressed against a bus window. Outside, a long stretch of dead road leading to nowhere. There were no signs, no civilization. Nothing.
It took me a disorienting moment to figure out I was on a school bus. The same school bus I had seen in thousands of other memories. Next to me, Jun poked me in the shoulder. He was awake and seemed with-it enough to talk.
Though there was a strange smile on his face which was twisting my gut. I turned around to face him and blinked rapidly, because my friend’s face morphed and blurred, twisting into hundreds of others. First, girls and boys in strange clothing like they were from the dark ages, and the distant sound of horseback—a carriage being dragged. I could smell wildflowers mixed with the stink of rot and excrement, hear the sound of birds and chains rattling around jiggling wrists. Then I was seeing strangers, each of them bearing clothes from different eras. I saw Tommy Nolan, and then Chrissy Lackey. Bobby Chase.
Faces from previous years.
All blood spattered. All wide eyed, a haunting, hollow look on their faces.
Until Noah. Until I saw his face twisted with anger and pain and frustration. His hands went to his hair in a silent cry, and he was slamming bloodied fists into his temples.
Over and over again.
“Fuck!” He gritted out.
“Get me off this bus! I don’t want to be here... I want to go home. I want to go back! Can't you see this is shady? Where are they taking us?"
“Hey! Hey, calm down!”
The voice was Poppy. Her shriek echoed in my brain, as the bus they were on collapsed into panic and Noah was diving from his seat, before being grabbed and restrained by guards, and shoved back next to Poppy. I felt her gentle hand on his shoulder. Poppy’s arms were around him, and Noah was relaxing into her embrace.
“We’re going to the Halfway House, Noah.”
Her soothing murmur inside my head was cut short when I sensed the coffin-like tunnel once again.
Flames.
Getting closer and closer.
And his screams.
Ringing so loud in my head, horrifying wails of agony cracking my skull open.
I felt my own clammy palms press against my ears, the force of his cry becoming my own.
“Bee?”
I was sweating and shaking, choking on stale vomit in my mouth, when Jun waved a wary hand in front of my face, and I found reality once again.
When my gaze found his, Jun had that smile again. He sat back with a sigh, pressing his head against the seat. “You got it, huh?” He chuckled. “Damn, I wish I did. I really wanted to be chosen."
I found my breath, swallowing whatever the fuck I'd eaten in the last twelve hours. “Got what?”
He shrugged. “Do you remember when I asked you if you would give your life to destroy an asteroid?”
I had to think back to that conversation which didn’t seem relevant until now. “Jun—”
He cut me off, his smile fading a little. “I really did want to see my dad,” he whispered. As he spoke, I found my gaze wandering and finding our classmates who were either asleep or staring into an oblivion only they could see. Jun sighed. “I imagined all of these scenarios in my head. That we would all come to the halfway house and heal and get better like all the other kids before us, and I’d jump on a plane and go and visit dad.” I noticed his hands were trembling in his lap. “But I’m a fucking idiot. I'm naïve.” He turned to me. “We’re just kids, right? What do we know?"
I was losing my patience with his cryptic words. “What are you talking about?”
“I was kidnapped like you,” He said softly. “Last year, the night of the Teen Purge. I never told you about it, because I didn't want there to be a time when I would have to," Jun pulled a face. "I forgot to close our gate so I rushed out to lock it up before I brought attention to our house. But I was too late. They were waiting for me outside. The bastards knocked me out with a bat, and I woke up on the roof of the school.” He dug his hands in his lap, choking out a hiss.
“I was the only one left, Bee. When I woke up, I was staring at the people she had pushed to their deaths. My hands were tied behind my back so I couldn’t move, or try to get away and this girl…” He trailed off, his gaze going to a stray raindrop on the window, “this girl was dangling me over the edge. Like I was bait over a shark tank. It was fucking freezing and I was only in my pyjamas, and I remember wondering if I was actually going to die.” The bus went over a bump, and I grabbed onto his hand, squeezing it as tight as I could. “I waited for it,” Jun whispered. “I waited for her to kill me, but she wrenched me back. And her eyes... her eyes were pitch black. Hollow.” His eyes filled with tears. “She was smiling. Smiling like it would thrill her to watch me fall like the ones before me. And she would have no fucking mercy.”
As if his words were a narration, I was seeing the vision for myself, like somewhere inside my head, the girl lingered. I could see it. I could see pooling darkness, a long way down. Jun, his arms tied behind his back, a single strip of duct tape over his mouth— while arms were wrapped around his waist, dangling him teasingly as he twisted and struggled in her arms.
Like I was seeing it through her POV, I glimpsed tangled blonde curls in front of my face, a carving knife slick red clenched in my fist. She held him tight, squeezing the breath from him.
“Long way down, huh?” Her voice was a cackle clanging in my skull.
“Mmpphh!”
I could see his wide eyes, petrified as she pushed him closer and closer to the edge.
Jun continued in a low murmur. “But… this girl didn’t push me. She didn't kill me. Instead, she… she pulled me close. I could… I could smell her rotting breath. But through all the black, whatever had possessed her... I could see that there was still something there. It was weak, but still alive. Before I knew it, I was on my knees and she was in front of me like she could see right through me. Like she could reach into my head and pull out every memory I've ever had." His voice trembled. "She asked me a question. And I’ll never forget it, Bee. Because it was what changed my way of thinking. Instead of being scared to die, I felt like I could finally embrace it.”
His words sent my gut galloping into my throat.
I saw it. I saw her yanking him back onto his knees and pulling him close.
"Jun Sato," Her voice from the memory echoed in my mind. "Would you like to hear something cool?"
“What?” I whispered presently, shaking away the vision. The girl was insistent on shoving her memory onto me.
Jun’s eyes found mine, and for the first time in the 17 years of the Teen Purge, I saw the Wonderland Smile in broad daylight. I saw insanity brewing in eyes which had been darkened far before Littlewood’s curse had snatched his mind.
It had been hours since the curse had let us go, and there it was, splitting my best friend’s mouth apart into a cheshire cat grin. It was exactly what I’d seen on Noah Sharpe’s face before he sliced my mother’s throat open and gutted her. But while Noah's expression had been a blank slate, a monster, I only saw tragic hope lighting up my best friend's eyes. But it wasn’t real hope. Real hope was wanting to survive. It was forcing yourself to keep going no matter what. What I saw was that craving I’d felt when I’d woken up covered in blood, the one emitting from every voice inside my head.
The overwhelming pleasure which came with the thought of dying—giving yourself up.
"She asked me if I wanted to save the world.” He said, his eyes twinkling. “How cool is that?”
I was losing him.
“What did you say?” I asked stiffly.
He smiled. “I said yes. What else could I say? She got this weird look on her face, this smile, which was both maniacal and yet unbelievably sad, it made me feel like I would feel it too. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.” Jun turned towards the window, this time, like he was refusing to admit it to my face. “She told me I will. Just like her, and the kids before her. That’s what the siren inside her head said. At that point I hoped I’d be able to save the world, and then visit my dad. I really thought it was as easy as that.” His lips twisted, eyes lighting up.
“But… then I understood what she meant. I finally understood, and I wasn’t scared anymore. How could I fear my own fate? She didn’t mean me saving the world, Bee. She meant me, and you, all of us in the past and present and future giving our lives for seven billion others. The world."
I had to stop myself from slapping him across the face. He was really choosing now to go off the deep end?
Whatever this girl had fed him was her own personal idea of death, which sounded like rainbows and cotton candy.
Jun turned to me with almost cartoon-like eyes.
“You can hear them,” he murmured. “the girl had that exact same look in her eyes.”
Swallowing hard, I fought to breathe. “What do you mean?”
“Haunted.” Jun said. “They’re telling you exactly what happened to them, and you can’t stop it. You want to pull them out of your head, but you can’t. They’re like a parasite taking over. They keep singing and you're ignoring them. But you need to listen. She told me to listen. If I was chosen."
I didn’t reply.
“Can you tell me?” His voice was small. “How does this end?"
Lying on a metal slab and staring at pooling black while flames licked across my flesh and set my hair alight, my body smouldering. Burning bright. That was how it was going to end. Like Noah and every year before us, we were going to burn.
And it made sense… right? Why wouldn’t a town permanently get rid of their youth tainted by a curse?
But it still felt like I was missing something.
And that something was getting closer as we approached the Halfway House.
"Bee?" Jun murmured. "Are you okay?"
Instead of responding, I pressed my face into his shoulder and squeezed my eyes shut. But closing my eyes was somehow worse. Like I was giving in to this supposed fate. Blinking them open, I turned to the window. Outside, Fall was taking over nature, and for the first time in a while I took a moment to take it in, breathing in the smell of wet mildew and crushed leaves drifting through the window and marvelling beautiful decay.
It's crazy how much you start to notice about the world around you when you know your time is running out. I don't think I'll ever look at a tree the same again. Jun was staring forwards, his eyes vacant, a small curl of a smile on his lips. I didn't trust it was his. Whoever this girl was had buried her way into my friend's mind, sending him into a trace. When I shoved him, Jun still turned to me and blinked, and it was still him. I had no doubt about that.
But it almost felt like he was looking through me, and what was inside my head.
Some psycho bitch had fucked with his head, and my first priority was snapping him out of it and bringing him back down to earth. Whether he liked it or not. In my cotton candy thoughts still half asleep from the tranquilliser, though, I was slowly conducting a plan to get the fuck out of there.
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I don’t want to say your name because then I will feel the need to say so much more and I’ll end up writing far too much.
Names are hard for me.
You lost yours a while ago, at least in my mind. I stopped calling you [BLANK]. You were just a monster.
A murderer.
I know you won’t read this but I’m putting this out there anyway. I want to talk to you.
I guess this is my way of… apologising. You’re the first in a long list of people I want to say goodbye to. I feel like you were the one who started this.
You were the one who opened my eyes to Littlewood’s curse. I’ve been so angry for so many years. I have felt so much fucking pain. Agony. The kind I can’t even explain. It’s like drowning, [BLANK]. I’ve wanted to kill you so many times, often dreaming about it the older I became. You stopped having an identity in my nightmares and became a faceless shadow suffocating my chest.
Ironically enough, [BLANK], we’re actually the worst ones. The class of 2022 really outdid all of you. I finally understand what it might have been like for you. I understand that craving you felt—to kill. To destroy. And that nothing would get in our way. We would kill parents, strangers, and children, until sunrise—until the curse was lifted and we were given back our souls, only to be hollow inside. Broken. I know what it feels like to be alone and abandoned by the ones you thought you could trust. I never knew where you had gone after you ripped our town apart. But I didn’t care. I wanted you gone, [BLANK], so I didn’t have to see your stupid face.
Now I know the truth, I can only wish you some kind of peace. I know it's impossible to think, even when part of me knows your fate, but I hope you got away from here.
I hope part of you is still planning to come visit me. Lastly, I hope you can forgive me for hating you for so long. I wish you told me. I know I was a little kid, but you could have told me what was going to happen to you. To you, Luce and Poppy. If you had, maybe mom might be here.
…Who am I kidding? If you didn’t kill her eleven years ago, I probably would have this year.
After all, it’s always loved ones.
Is that why you killed her, [BLANK]? Did she mean something to you?
Did I?
Anyway. Thank you for being there when I was a kid.
Thank you for making me laugh and spew milk out of my nose.
Thank you for killing my mother before I did it myself and surrendered the last dregs of my humanity.
I’ll remember you, [BLANK].
Not just the flashes I saw of you—the ones you put inside my head.
The times that mattered. You know, when we were friends. You do remember, right?
It was you and me against the world, [BLANK]! And it always will be. I promise.
Love,
Bee. <3
...
Was I having an aneurysm?
Pressing my forehead against the cool brick of a crumbling wall, I revelled in the stink of burning which was thankfully blocking out the horrific taste of skin slithering back up my throat as I heaved up the contents of my stomach. I was used to the stink of charred human flesh. After all, the town was burning and its victims were our feast. Our prizes. I chose not to look around me or take in my surroundings. I didn’t want to look at a town which we had ripped apart once again. I didn’t want to see bodies littering the roads and sidewalk, chunks of flesh and torso’s lying in unsuspecting places.
So many thoughts were alive inside my head, an endless hurricane of both nothing and everything colliding into a vicious void I couldn’t explain, couldn’t understand, couldn’t stop—and yet that thought in particular was the one which reigned dominant.
It had to be an aneurism, right?
I didn’t feel like I’d cracked my head or something had seriously gone wrong inside my brain.
I was burning.
I remembered googling the term in middle school when I had a shitty headache, and my aunt had dropped the word in conversation with the doctor.
"What if it is an aneurysm?"
He chuckled in reply. "It's just a pressure headache, Miss Levi."
Suffice to say, once I knew what an aneurysm was, I closed down my aunt’s laptop and crawled under my bed. Like I could hide from something like that. I remember reading it up on Web MD. Not exactly the best place to check your symptoms, but eleven year old me just wanted answers to the pounding pain which felt like someone slamming a rock onto the back of my head and temples.
Nausea and vomiting? Yep. I felt like my insides were attempting to projectile vomit my organs.
Stiff neck? Sort of. I felt stiff all over, my whole body aching like I’d just been through a meat grinder.
Blurred or double vision? My vision wasn’t mine. I was seeing things I shouldn’t—a world which wasn’t from my perspective.
Sensitivity to light? The sunrise was pretty harsh on my eyes. I wasn’t ready to see broad daylight and what exactly my class had done to our town. I never saw burning as a symptom. I never saw a never ending fucking inferno inside your brain, eating you from the inside, as a symptom.
I wouldn’t call it an aneurysm, but it definitely was something. I don’t know how to explain the immense pressure in my head, like something alive was bleeding inside my brain and latching onto me.
Burning. I was… I was burning.
Everything inside me was fucking burning, and I couldn’t stop it.
I couldn’t put this ferocious blaze out because it was inside my skull.
Despite being in denial, I didn’t feel like myself anymore. Like my soul had been forced back inside a body which didn’t belong to me; a body which had been twisted and purged of everything she was, and turned into a monster, pupiteered by the curse.
I was still running on adrenaline, a senseless and mindless craving ripping through all logic. It was still alive inside me, gritting my teeth together in a Wonderland Smile which I couldn’t stop, which was stretched so wide across my face my jaw felt like it was going to concave. I remembered flashes of my before. Before I woke up. Before Littlewood gave me my mind back.
I had brutally killed a woman and her husband, carving their eyes out and teasing them with their last breaths with the hope of survival, only to rip away their life before that hope could blossom inside them. It was hope suffocated by a despair which was so agonising that it bled inside me once my eyes were open and I was staring down at my own fists, at the woman’s eyeball’s squished between my blood spattered knuckles while the rest of her painted me like I was her canvas.
I had danced in her husbands remains, twirling to a song only I could hear.
All of that made sense. It made sense that I had been turned into a monster like the rest of my class and it made a sick kind of sense that I had been the one to hollow out a man’s body with my own hands. I had been part of 2022’s Teen Purge, a fate I knew I couldn’t and wouldn’t ever escape. There were still so many questions I wanted answering. I wanted to know why the curse was triggered by a man-made substance we had been subjected to, and why Jun had been able to coherently text me before sunrise.
Jun.
I had to… find him. Before he did something he would regret. No, I thought dizzily. Before he came to terms with what he had done under the influence. That thought was driving me crazy, but it was being pushed back, overwhelmed by something else entirely which was taking over me, enveloping me. At some point, I dropped my phone and smashed the screen. I didn’t know when exactly that was. Time was going so slowly. One minute I had been pushing myself into a stumbled run towards Littlewood’s scrapyard, motivated by Jun’s cryptic text before something inside me… snapped. I had a destination, an escape which was slowly building into a coherent plan—before I was… nothing.
I was nameless, a shadow teetering between life and death while my body and brain were burned alive. It was in my blood, my bones, my thoughts. Burning. I couldn’t control myself as I screamed into the air choked with smoke. Did it come from inside my head?
No. No, it was a fire which had been set across the road from me. My thoughts were tangled and confusing, and after a while—they weren’t even mine. The longer I burned, the longer I screamed into nothing, the physical presence which had forced its way inside my head started to multiply.
How am I supposed to describe this sensation accurately? How can I tell you this without sounding fucking insane?
It was… the feeling of being drowned inside my own mind, in bleeding memories entangled together which weren’t mine creating a storm inside my head.
Whispering voices fighting to make themselves heard. The unyielding force of dozens of thoughts and feelings taking over me one by one. Initially, I fought against them. I tried to push them out, because while they were seeping inside my thought process, parasites crawling into my brain, I was growing numb.
My own thoughts were turning obsolete, everything I was fading as my body became theirs. It happened slowly. I felt myself drop to the ground, still burning, the inferno in my brain and body growing brighter and brighter, numbed only slightly by my senses being snatched from me. I hit the ground, but I didn’t feel impact. Instead, the whispering grew less incoherent until there were voices. Real voices screaming inside my head. “Mother!” A girl’s cry rang inside my skull. It wasn’t the cry of a child, no. It was a teenager. “You don’t have to do this to us!”
She was my age. Her wail was enough to stop my attempts at prying away the voices, and I let go. I let each of them in. I let them bleed into me until I was nothing, and they were… something. The force of her rattled me until I couldn’t breathe, until I couldn’t force my body into a sitting position. Lying faced down on singed grass with no choice but to listen to them, a sea of tangled thoughts plunging me further into the dark, a wave of ice cold water enveloping my own sense of being.
As the nameless girl took over, spiderwebbing inside me, my senses became entangled with her. I wasn’t just hearing her. I was… I was feeling her. And within a single breath choked from my hijacked mouth, I was her. Her cry was mine, strangled and twisted, ripping from my own lips. This stranger. I could feel her writhing body pressed against something harsh digging into our back, aching arms pinned above us.
The smell of smoulder scratched the back of our nose, a panicking feeling turning our gut. In front of us was darkness speckled with blurred orange. Shadows with no faces. The girl wasn’t alone. Next to her were squirming silhouettes, and I felt a raging agony and frustration ripping her apart. She wasn’t alone. Those were her thoughts, and while she was terrified of her fate, part of her felt like she could die. As long as it was with them. Glimpsing a figure striding through the dark, a figure carrying a burning torch, I waited for her to talk.
I waited for her to cry out, for some kind of explanation for what I was seeing. Before I could, however, the girl and her memory was being ripped away—and I heard her fighting back, trying to reach out, trying to leach back onto me. Her prying fingers failed to grasp hold, only for a second mind to find its way inside me, harsher. Recent. The girl wasn’t the only one to try and use my mouth to scream.
Littlewood High’s gymnasium blossomed into my mind, followed by sharp clarity. This kid was far more hesitant to reveal to me who they were. They held back a little, only choosing to show me their point of view of tipping their head back as a wave of water came down, drenching them and the rest of their class.
Blood. That’s what I had thought. I thought it was blood drenching my face and clothes, gluing my hair to my head and pasting my eyes shut. It was blood that had been spilled and had already been spilled; the blood of my mother when I watched her gutted by Noah Sharpe. Somehow, that colourless substance which had purposely drenched us had forced that one thought into our heads.
We were covered in it.
That, combined with the images in our heads of smouldering flame enveloping flesh and hair, an inferno setting our bodies alight, was enough to drive even the strongest minds to pure insanity. And I was seeing it. I was seeing each experience. I was seeing the faces of loved ones driving them crazier.
I felt their attempts to regain control of their mind, but the damage was already done.
They slipped to their knees, their screams joining a symphony orchestra of cries around them-- and saw exactly what I did. Burning. Charred flesh and singed hair. Agonizing wails rattling their skulls until they were forced to join. Their hands were in their hair, gripping and pulling and tearing at their scalp—bloody fingernails raking down their face and a smile beginning to split their lips in half.
The Wonderland Smile, chasing away logical fear and pain previously grounding them in a reality they believed in. A craving was coming alive inside of them, a hunger to rid themselves of that pain—all of that blood. By making others feel the despair which had taken an unyielding hold.
It was getting harder to differentiate whose memory from who.
This time they were stronger.
I saw sterile flooring and running feet.
Everything was blinding white. I heard his gasps for breath, a nightmarish fear eating him up from the inside pushing him to run faster.
I recognised him. Not his psychotic laugher when he had kidnapped me a year earlier, but his struggle to keep breathing. Keep sucking in precious oxygen which felt so far away. Just like the others before him, while his being seeped inside me, I had found myself once again plunged inside a memory. This time it was someone I recognised. Not a stranger from past years, but a classmate just below me.
Tommy Nolan had an asthma attack in junior year. Second period math, he’d jumped up with a panicked look on his face, clutching his chest. I remember thinking his breathing sounded wrong, like it was a car-engine trying and failing to start. His face had been pale, trembling hands clutching at his chest.
Tommy wasn’t the kind of guy who would intentionally attract attention to himself. He was an introvert through and through. However, this was the type of thing he couldn’t hide away from or push people away. “I can’t breathe.” He’d managed to gasp out, before the teacher had escorted him out of the class and to the nurse’s office. What I felt wasn’t an asthma attack gripping his chest. It was pure panic and fear squeezing the air from his lungs and stumbling his already clumsy steps.
Tommy reached a corner and threw himself into a run which was cut short by rough hands grabbing hold of him and yanking him back. I didn’t see the rest of Tommy Nolan’s memory. At least, I didn’t see an escape or anything which hinted at where he was. I just saw the same. A coffin-like enveloping darkness. Restrained hands.
Raging fire.
I don’t know if it was Tommy’s splintered mind which had catapulted me from my own mind, or maybe he didn’t want me to see everything. Before I could grasp onto his memory, he let go. The whispering voices let me go, and I found myself pressed against grass wet with dew, an intense pressure in my nose and crawling around the back of head, blood pooling down my chin. I took a moment to gather myself. The sky was still half dark and half-light, pink and orange streaks taking over pooling black. Across the street, Lili Marriot was standing with the town preacher’s severed head clumsily forced onto a make-shift pike.
The man's eyes were still open, wide with horror.
She wasn’t moving, her scarlet hands still grasping the weapon for dear life. I got to my feet slowly, ignoring my own blood spattered hands. I didn’t think about the woman I had murdered, or her husband, as I hopped onto a trashed bike which had been abandoned on the side of the road. It was still usable. Sure, it had bits of skin stuck in the wheels, but it would work.
I pushed myself into a smooth pace which was normal. It felt normal, like every other morning when Jun and I biked to school. Instead of taking in the apocalyptic landscape around me, I focused on the road and finding my friend.
That morning, I saw a mix.
I saw kids who were waking up and finding themselves painted in their victims. I saw them crying.
Screaming.
I saw one girl slice open her own throat over the corpse of her little brother.
But I was also seeing kids still entangled in their own undoing, still tearing Littlewood apart. Under the last splinters of night, I saw my classmates around me.
But I chose to be ignorant. I needed to find Jun and saving the town's people who had been brought to the brink of despair was the last thing on my mind. Still though, I watched.
I couldn’t help it. There was a sort of morbid curiosity inside me once I had been freed from the curse, and then watching the rest of my class still in its iron grip. The varsity boys dragged an old man by his neck down the road, chanting the school anthem. One of them was wearing someone’s skull which had been ripped of its flesh, the remnants of a bulging eye still glued inside the socket. They wore their football jerseys, and somehow that made them even more terrifying. They were the perfect depiction of Noah Sharpe. Gen Z version. Littlewood's golden boy turned psycho.
Eleven years later, it had taken them too.
“REDHAWKS!” Their war cries bled into the dull sunrise, stamping their feet to a beat only they could hear. The old man was struggling, his face beet red, prying wrinkly fingers attempting to tug the tough rope cinched around his limp neck. But they weren’t letting go, only laughing when he let out a pained cry, begging them to let him die, begging to let him asphyxiate.
“REDHAWKS!”
They ignored him, pulling his limp body across the road.
“REDHAWKS!”
STAMP.
STAMP.
STAMP.
“REDHAWKS!”
I could still hear their phantom yelling when I neared the scrapyard. Passing the diner, which was nothing but a blur of vivid orange, I saw a group of girl’s shrieking those horrific hyena laughs, diving into the flames and dancing in the smoke, entangling themselves in licking flames. Laughter twisted into screams and cries of agony mixed with a pleasure, a euphoria, I didn’t even think existed. I had felt it writhing in every soul which had bled inside me. The craving to die. When I squeezed the handlebars tighter, I felt something shift inside me once the stink of smoke had travelled into my nose and was choking the back of my throat.
Looking down at my palms, my skin had started to catch alight. No, I wasn’t seeing things. I could feel it, flames crawling up my arms, licking across my flesh and melting through my sweater sleeve.
I opened my mouth to cry out, and in the blink of an eye I was back inside that coffin-like tunnel drowning Tommy Nolan’s memory. He didn’t want me to see it, had pulled away before I could glimpse what exactly was in there. This time, though, it wasn’t Tommy Nolan strapped to a metal slab. It was me. I was closed in, suffocating on my own sobs, on curling smoke already dancing in the back of my mind. All I could see was fiery orange and red engulfing me, filling the tunnel. The thought hit me when my own body was writhing, dancing in vivid orange getting brighter and brighter, licking across my flesh in sharp rivulets, singing my hair from my scalp.
I was in an incinerator.
No… no not just me.
We.
Tommy Nolan, and the nameless girl’s whose screams had rattled my skull.
All of us.
We were in an incinerator.
The shock of the vision, as well as all of our pain entwining into one pulled me back to uncertain reality. I didn’t even realise I’d let go of the bike handlebars before I was crashing down on rough concrete, smacking my head on the curb. Stars exploded in the backs of my eyes. But the fire was gone. Like it had never fucking existed. Except I knew it did. It had in Tommy Nolan’s memory, as well as my future. An endless fire which had ripped away our flesh and sent us plunging into the dark. It made me wonder about that first memory. The girl tied to the tree in front of blurred orange. Was that how all of this had started?
Did I see the first glimpses of Littlewood’s curse? When I pushed the bike off of me and checked my arms and legs for burns or signs of smoulder, there was nothing there. Fuck. Whatever had taken over my mind and crawled into my brain wasn’t letting go, but I found myself hanging onto them. My head hit the ground and I stared at the sky, at red and orange clouds which almost resembled the end of the world.
The sky, just like the ground below, had been set alight. Maybe it was the end of the world, I thought.
Maybe Littlewood was really falling this time.
I don’t know how long I lay there trying to catch my breath, trying to force my maple syrup thoughts into fruition. I was trying to shake my head of possible concussion, dislodging my brain from the puddle of fog it had fallen into, when I heard running footsteps.
Bare feet slapping against gravel. I knew what this was. I’d heard it as a kid, an animal-like herd of kids which had congregated into their own tribe.
I had heard them running past my house every year, and each time I thought they would catch me. I thought they’d crawl through my window like Noah Sharpe and his gang. But this was my class.
These were the kids I had been going to school with for years. The sound of their whooping and laughter brought me out of it, just a little. Twisting to my side, I glimpsed them suddenly. White canisters. The ones I’d seen in the school, the ones I’d seen being put into the sprinkler system. They were everywhere, dotted across the road, turned over on their head and leaking that same colourless substance onto cement and into the air. I wondered if they had been purposely placed.
“Help me! Oh god, please help me!”
Just ahead of me, a woman in her thirties was sprinting. Her expression was wild with fright, dark hair flying behind her in a whirlwind. I recognised the look on her face. It was exactly what I’d felt a year prior when I escaped Tommy Nolan and his gang with an inch of my life. The girl caught my eye for a fleeting moment and it looked like she might have found solace in me. Her mouth opened in a silent plea, her trembling hands raising above her head.
Before she realised what I was.
I had been so focused on looking at her face, I’d failed to see the mess of startling red painting the front of her shirt. She was screaming, sobbing into the wind. There was something wrapped around her left wrist, the entrails of some poor souls guts fashioned into makeshift restraints. Twisting around, the girl dropped to her knees and buried her head in the ground. “Don’t!” she screamed. “Please! Don’t!”
She wasn’t running, I thought.
Why wasn’t she running?
When the hysterical girl started to crawl across the ground, they appeared like animals, like they had been staying back, teasing her with the hope of survival. There were eight of them. All of them carrying lead pipes. The look on their faces was feral. Blood stained grins and empty eyes only seeing prey—only seeing another victim they could tear apart. I started to get up, started to plan my escape which was just to run and never stop fucking running until I was away from them. When more war cries rang out. This time from the other side of the road. Two separate tribes of kids advancing towards her. The second group were faster, and I recognised a face enveloped in the disgusting stain of red which painted them.
Jun. He didn’t look like Jun anymore. I could hardly even see his face through a coating of red smearing his cheeks and eyes which he must have done himself.
War paint.
Wielding a long thread of wire wrapped around his left wrist and trailing on the ground, my best friend joined the mass of kids closing in on the girl. His eyes were vacant and dark, empty of anything human. It was Noah all over again, except this time I wasn’t a frightened six year old. I could stop it. I remember getting to my feet. Movement. Several heads whipped around. I’d already caught their attention but their gazes barely strayed on me before going back to the girl. With my attention on him, I moved towards him, taking my steps slowly. Another kid crawled out of their hiding place behind a dumpster. This time they looked younger.
I didn’t even want to guess how old.
When half of the kids jumped the little kid while the others took care of the girl, I forced my legs to keep going, keep moving. But I stopped when the woman dived to her feet and made a run for it, pushing herself into a sprint. I watched Jun pursue her like a lion chasing after a deer with an almost supernatural speed. While her steps were stumbled and clumsy, his were calculated. I couldn’t move when he dived onto her back and brought her to the ground, her face smacking against cement with a meaty smack. She squirmed, fighting to get away, but he was already forcing the metal wire into her throat, wrapping it around and around until her face was turning red, and then blue, her mouth opening and closing like a goldfish.
The wire sliced cleanly into her flesh and red began to swim from her, startling pooling red I will never forget which stained his hands. I knew what he was doing. Squeezing tighter. Jun’s weapon wasn’t to asphyxiate and strangle. It was a garotte. And his prize was progressively more inevitable the more he forced the cutting wire through layers of skin until it met bone. “Jun!” I was yelling his name before I knew what I was doing. I don’t know how I got to him without breaking down, but when my face was buried into his back and I was sobbing his name, everything felt…. Right. Even if it was just for a little while. Because, like a fairy-tale narrating the clock striking twelve and a magic spell wearing off, a dazzling sunrise broke through the clouds as dawn hit, and the woman’s gurgling stopped. Just like the jerking movements of Jun’s hands as they struggled to cut through bone.
I watched him blink himself awake through my own tears. Swiping at his eyes, my best friend stared down at his scarlet hands, and then grasping at his own face, running filthy fingers down his cheeks, as if he could tear his own flesh off of the bone.
I wasn’t paying attention to Jun as he fully came to. I was staring at a little girl who had walked out of her house clutching a stuffed teddy bear and seeing the body of her mother on the ground. A numbness started to take over me, a heavy weight on my chest. I remember his warm arms were suddenly around me, and they were tight, so tight, almost suffocating the breath from my lungs. Jun’s body felt strange against mine, a trembling, rattling mass as he let out a gut lurching cry into my shoulder.
I had never heard him scream before. Jun had always hidden behind a bright smile which had finally crumbled under the curse.
“Did I…”
His words collapsed into a sob.
“Did I… do this?"
The metal wire was still attached to him, coiled around his wrist.
It marked him as a member of that tribe.
“No.” I whispered into the damp material of his shirt. "No, none of this was you."
He laughed, sputtering on a sob.
“You’re okay.” I said. “You’re okay. Just breathe."
An icy shiver ripped its way down my spine when his lips found my ear. “Do you… really want to outrun the asteroid?” He whispered, choking on a hysterical laugh. “Do you think we are worthy, Bee?” His tone darkened. “Is our suffering worthy?”
I shook off that comment for a moment, focusing on him. "You texted me." I said in a hiss. "How were you awake?"
Awareness bled into his expression, followed by confusion. "I… did?"
As if on cue, footsteps startled me, and Jun’s phone hit the ground in front of us followed by the curve of a heel splintering the screen. When I looked up, Ms Hawkins, our drama teacher, was looming over us holding a gun. It didn’t look like the usual gun I saw my neighbours use on wildlife. This one had a red coloured butt and fit perfectly into her hand. She shot Jun first. The bullet hit his arm and he sent me a helpless look, his hand going to the tiny dart stuck into his lower elbow, before dropping to the ground. The teacher kicked Jun onto his side, before twisting and pointing the gun between my brows.
I remember her pulling the trigger, but it wasn’t just aimed at me. It was aimed at every other soul which had entangled itself with me. Noah, his class, and the ones before hiThis had happened to every year prior to us—and I had a sickening feeling I knew what was coming next. I woke to a nauseating feeling of movement to find my head uncomfortably pressed against a bus window. Outside, a long stretch of dead road leading to nowhere. There were no signs, no civilization. Nothing.
It took me a disorienting moment to figure out I was on a school bus. The same school bus I had seen in thousands of other memories. Next to me, Jun poked me in the shoulder. He was awake and seemed with-it enough to talk.
Though there was a strange smile on his face which was twisting my gut. I turned around to face him and blinked rapidly, because my friend’s face morphed and blurred, twisting into hundreds of others. First, girls and boys in strange clothing like they were from the dark ages, and the distant sound of horseback—a carriage being dragged. I could smell wildflowers mixed with the stink of rot and excrement, hear the sound of birds and chains rattling around jiggling wrists. Then I was seeing strangers, each of them bearing clothes from different eras. I saw Tommy Nolan, and then Chrissy Lackey. Bobby Chase.
Faces from previous years.
All blood spattered. All wide eyed, a haunting, hollow look on their faces.
Until Noah. Until I saw his face twisted with anger and pain and frustration. His hands went to his hair in a silent cry, and he was slamming bloodied fists into his temples.
Over and over again.
“Fuck!” He gritted out.
“Get me off this bus! I don’t want to be here... I want to go home. I want to go back! Can't you see this is shady? Where are they taking us?"
“Hey! Hey, calm down!”
The voice was Poppy. Her shriek echoed in my brain, as the bus they were on collapsed into panic and Noah was diving from his seat, before being grabbed and restrained by guards, and shoved back next to Poppy. I felt her gentle hand on his shoulder. Poppy’s arms were around him, and Noah was relaxing into her embrace.
“We’re going to the Halfway House, Noah.”
Her soothing murmur inside my head was cut short when I sensed the coffin-like tunnel once again.
Flames.
Getting closer and closer.
And his screams.
Ringing so loud in my head, horrifying wails of agony cracking my skull open.
I felt my own clammy palms press against my ears, the force of his cry becoming my own.
“Bee?”
I was sweating and shaking, choking on stale vomit in my mouth, when Jun waved a wary hand in front of my face, and I found reality once again.
When my gaze found his, Jun had that smile again. He sat back with a sigh, pressing his head against the seat. “You got it, huh?” He chuckled. “Damn, I wish I did. I really wanted to be chosen."
I found my breath, swallowing whatever the fuck I'd eaten in the last twelve hours. “Got what?”
He shrugged. “Do you remember when I asked you if you would give your life to destroy an asteroid?”
I had to think back to that conversation which didn’t seem relevant until now. “Jun—”
He cut me off, his smile fading a little. “I really did want to see my dad,” he whispered. As he spoke, I found my gaze wandering and finding our classmates who were either asleep or staring into an oblivion only they could see. Jun sighed. “I imagined all of these scenarios in my head. That we would all come to the halfway house and heal and get better like all the other kids before us, and I’d jump on a plane and go and visit dad.” I noticed his hands were trembling in his lap. “But I’m a fucking idiot. I'm naïve.” He turned to me. “We’re just kids, right? What do we know?"
I was losing my patience with his cryptic words. “What are you talking about?”
“I was kidnapped like you,” He said softly. “Last year, the night of the Teen Purge. I never told you about it, because I didn't want there to be a time when I would have to," Jun pulled a face. "I forgot to close our gate so I rushed out to lock it up before I brought attention to our house. But I was too late. They were waiting for me outside. The bastards knocked me out with a bat, and I woke up on the roof of the school.” He dug his hands in his lap, choking out a hiss.
“I was the only one left, Bee. When I woke up, I was staring at the people she had pushed to their deaths. My hands were tied behind my back so I couldn’t move, or try to get away and this girl…” He trailed off, his gaze going to a stray raindrop on the window, “this girl was dangling me over the edge. Like I was bait over a shark tank. It was fucking freezing and I was only in my pyjamas, and I remember wondering if I was actually going to die.” The bus went over a bump, and I grabbed onto his hand, squeezing it as tight as I could. “I waited for it,” Jun whispered. “I waited for her to kill me, but she wrenched me back. And her eyes... her eyes were pitch black. Hollow.” His eyes filled with tears. “She was smiling. Smiling like it would thrill her to watch me fall like the ones before me. And she would have no fucking mercy.”
As if his words were a narration, I was seeing the vision for myself, like somewhere inside my head, the girl lingered. I could see it. I could see pooling darkness, a long way down. Jun, his arms tied behind his back, a single strip of duct tape over his mouth— while arms were wrapped around his waist, dangling him teasingly as he twisted and struggled in her arms.
Like I was seeing it through her POV, I glimpsed tangled blonde curls in front of my face, a carving knife slick red clenched in my fist. She held him tight, squeezing the breath from him.
“Long way down, huh?” Her voice was a cackle clanging in my skull.
“Mmpphh!”
I could see his wide eyes, petrified as she pushed him closer and closer to the edge.
Jun continued in a low murmur. “But… this girl didn’t push me. She didn't kill me. Instead, she… she pulled me close. I could… I could smell her rotting breath. But through all the black, whatever had possessed her... I could see that there was still something there. It was weak, but still alive. Before I knew it, I was on my knees and she was in front of me like she could see right through me. Like she could reach into my head and pull out every memory I've ever had." His voice trembled. "She asked me a question. And I’ll never forget it, Bee. Because it was what changed my way of thinking. Instead of being scared to die, I felt like I could finally embrace it.”
His words sent my gut galloping into my throat.
I saw it. I saw her yanking him back onto his knees and pulling him close.
"Jun Sato," Her voice from the memory echoed in my mind. "Would you like to hear something cool?"
“What?” I whispered presently, shaking away the vision. The girl was insistent on shoving her memory onto me.
Jun’s eyes found mine, and for the first time in the 17 years of the Teen Purge, I saw the Wonderland Smile in broad daylight. I saw insanity brewing in eyes which had been darkened far before Littlewood’s curse had snatched his mind.
It had been hours since the curse had let us go, and there it was, splitting my best friend’s mouth apart into a cheshire cat grin. It was exactly what I’d seen on Noah Sharpe’s face before he sliced my mother’s throat open and gutted her. But while Noah's expression had been a blank slate, a monster, I only saw tragic hope lighting up my best friend's eyes. But it wasn’t real hope. Real hope was wanting to survive. It was forcing yourself to keep going no matter what. What I saw was that craving I’d felt when I’d woken up covered in blood, the one emitting from every voice inside my head.
The overwhelming pleasure which came with the thought of dying—giving yourself up.
"She asked me if I wanted to save the world.” He said, his eyes twinkling. “How cool is that?”
I was losing him.
“What did you say?” I asked stiffly.
He smiled. “I said yes. What else could I say? She got this weird look on her face, this smile, which was both maniacal and yet unbelievably sad, it made me feel like I would feel it too. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.” Jun turned towards the window, this time, like he was refusing to admit it to my face. “She told me I will. Just like her, and the kids before her. That’s what the siren inside her head said. At that point I hoped I’d be able to save the world, and then visit my dad. I really thought it was as easy as that.” His lips twisted, eyes lighting up.
“But… then I understood what she meant. I finally understood, and I wasn’t scared anymore. How could I fear my own fate? She didn’t mean me saving the world, Bee. She meant me, and you, all of us in the past and present and future giving our lives for seven billion others. The world."
I had to stop myself from slapping him across the face. He was really choosing now to go off the deep end?
Whatever this girl had fed him was her own personal idea of death, which sounded like rainbows and cotton candy.
Jun turned to me with almost cartoon-like eyes.
“You can hear them,” he murmured. “the girl had that exact same look in her eyes.”
Swallowing hard, I fought to breathe. “What do you mean?”
“Haunted.” Jun said. “They’re telling you exactly what happened to them, and you can’t stop it. You want to pull them out of your head, but you can’t. They’re like a parasite taking over. They keep singing and you're ignoring them. But you need to listen. She told me to listen. If I was chosen."
I didn’t reply.
“Can you tell me?” His voice was small. “How does this end?"
Lying on a metal slab and staring at pooling black while flames licked across my flesh and set my hair alight, my body smouldering. Burning bright. That was how it was going to end. Like Noah and every year before us, we were going to burn.
And it made sense… right? Why wouldn’t a town permanently get rid of their youth tainted by a curse?
But it still felt like I was missing something.
And that something was getting closer as we approached the Halfway House.
"Bee?" Jun murmured. "Are you okay?"
Instead of responding, I pressed my face into his shoulder and squeezed my eyes shut. But closing my eyes was somehow worse. Like I was giving in to this supposed fate. Blinking them open, I turned to the window. Outside, Fall was taking over nature, and for the first time in a while I took a moment to take it in, breathing in the smell of wet mildew and crushed leaves drifting through the window and marvelling beautiful decay.
It's crazy how much you start to notice about the world around you when you know your time is running out. I don't think I'll ever look at a tree the same again. Jun was staring forwards, his eyes vacant, a small curl of a smile on his lips. I didn't trust it was his. Whoever this girl was had buried her way into my friend's mind, sending him into a trace. When I shoved him, Jun still turned to me and blinked, and it was still him. I had no doubt about that.
But it almost felt like he was looking through me, and what was inside my head.
Some psycho bitch had fucked with his head, and my first priority was snapping him out of it and bringing him back down to earth. Whether he liked it or not. In my cotton candy thoughts still half asleep from the tranquilliser, though, I was slowly conducting a plan to get the fuck out of there.
2023.03.21 01:25 JuliaGJ13 A Guide to Worshiping: from Formal Ritual to Low Energy Ritual & Ways to Deepen Your Connection with Him
Hermes worship ritual/devotion Ideas Formal to Informal and Deepening Your Connection with Him.
Things to remember when doing rituals or offerings.
https://www.hellenion.org/rituals-and-practices/daily-devotions-with-the-orphic-hymns/
There is much more on this main page for Ritual and Practices
https://www.hellenion.org/rituals-and-practices/
Ritual of Thanksgiving for Hermes
https://www.hellenion.org/rituals-and-practices/ritual-of-thanksgiving-to-hermes/
Not as formal but still some historic connection
Try to keep the altar area clean. Dust and vacuum if possible.
My altar is in a dedicated sacred space so I don’t worry about the khernips as much.
It’s just important to keep the vibes high around your sacred area.
Example: I offer him mead as he has an association with bees and I love mead. Sometimes he gets whisky or bourbon.
Very Informal
Low Energy Practice
What do I do with the offerings after the ritual?
This question comes up a lot with beginners. Historically, the people would’ve buried them for Chthonic gods or eaten the good meat and burned the bones and fat for the Ouranic gods. But we are modern people. Most of us do not do animal sacrifices and even back them only the wealthy would use actual animals. Most of the common people used cakes shaped like animals or gave honey, wine, milk, olive oil, or fresh clean water. Sometimes fruits, flowers, grains, and vegetables would’ve been used as well.
So we adjust our offerings for a modern lifestyle.
(If you do choose to do animal sacrifices please be respectful follow the rules of doing so and eat the animal you have sacrificed.)
Hermes although he is a psychopomp is still considered an Ouranic god and so it is fitting to offer him things that you can dispose of or eat after. Most people these days leave their offerings on the altar for a certain amount of time and dispose of them after. The offering can be left just during the ritual or up to a week.
If you only leave the offerings on during the ritual the idea is that the gods get the vibe and energy of the offering and they don’t need much time for that to happen. You also might have pets that would get into it or insects might be a hassle in your home.
If you leave it for longer try to not let it spoil or mold. That is not a good offering for a god.
Some people will eat the offering as a way of extending the enjoyment of eating to the god. Some just don’t want to waste it. The fancy chocolate I give Hermes is always eaten by me later. It can be a fun experiment to see how the energy of the food changes after it has sat on an altar.
If you don’t want to do that you can feed it to your dog/s or outside animals but NOT CHOCOLATE. If you can’t do that you can dispose of it in your trash with a brief ‘thank you’.
If it’s flowers, fruits, or veggies you can compost it!
You can do the same with your libation. You can drink it (Dionysos often insists on this with me and is a traditional way to commune with him.) Or you can pour it down the drain with a brief ‘thank you’. You can pour it out on the ground in a yard or garden as well if you’re not worried about attracting anything.
If you want you can offer to him as a Chthonic god and some people do during Mercury retrograde when it is said that he travels to the underworld. You can also do this when you have a passed loved one you want him to help guide.
If you want to do that go outside and dig a shallow hole. Do your ritual outside and pour your libation and place your offerings into that. Cover it back up when you’ve completed your ritual.
Extras After Ritual:
After the ritual, you can move on to movement practice like yoga or Qi gong, or dance. Embodying the energy you have raised can be pretty helpful to your spiritual cultivation or it can release pent-up energy or by grounding yourself if you’re feeling spacey.
Sometimes I pull Oracle cards or tarot cards to see if he has a message for me.
He is also considered a god of rustic divination so try playing cards, pendulum, I-Ching, casting lots or dice, really any divination that is simple and uses natural materials. Also, tea leaf reading or bibliomancy is great to communicate with him. Many people do automatic writing with him.
Ways to deepen your connection with him
*If you don’t have money to spend then give your time. This is service acts! Volunteer at a pet shelter, soup kitchen, or at homeless shelter. Help your senior or single-parent neighbors out, shovel their walk, rake their leaves, or walk their dog. Help a lost dog get home. Call a wildlife rescue if you see an injured animal.
Greek Hermes
submitted by JuliaGJ13 to Hermes [link] [comments]
Things to remember when doing rituals or offerings.
- Gods are not vending machines.
- Time works differently for them and for you so be patient with requests.
- Always give the best that you’re capable of at that time.
- Offer natural incense if possible. Real frankincense resin incense holds the highest frequency. The cheap stuff is cheap, sure, but is made of toxic materials and is not good for anyone. Burning bay leaves, cinnamon sticks, mint, or other herbs is a cheap and natural incense to offer. I like rosemary for him because of its association with memory.
- Try to use natural materials for offering bowls and cups.
- Give them what you’d like to receive.
- Be honest, be open, be genuine, be reverent
- Give first. Ask after.
- Be thankful and express your gratitude.
- If you can’t burn anything, electric candles, and oil diffusers are great substitutes! You can also make a room spray or use perfume.
https://www.hellenion.org/rituals-and-practices/daily-devotions-with-the-orphic-hymns/
There is much more on this main page for Ritual and Practices
https://www.hellenion.org/rituals-and-practices/
Ritual of Thanksgiving for Hermes
https://www.hellenion.org/rituals-and-practices/ritual-of-thanksgiving-to-hermes/
Not as formal but still some historic connection
- Take a showebath OR wash your face, and hands, and brush your teeth at a minimum.
- Cleanse the area of the altar. Use khernips for traditional cleansing. Khernips is sea salt water with a plunged burning herb like bay or lavender in it. You could use a cleansing essential oil in salt water. Plain salt water works as well.
Try to keep the altar area clean. Dust and vacuum if possible.
My altar is in a dedicated sacred space so I don’t worry about the khernips as much.
It’s just important to keep the vibes high around your sacred area.
- Light your altar candle/s if possible and the incense for him. Then play a hymn or song for him while you settle into a meditative state. You can play a few songs if you like.
- Open with an impromptu prayer to Hermes thanking him for his presence for the ritual and then Thank him for being in attendance. Speaking from your heart carries weight and genuine heart energy but if you need one written out use it.
- Read the Orphic hymn, other hymns, or a prayer or song you wrote. Do as many as you feel is right. Pause for reflection or messages.
- Offer libations.
Example: I offer him mead as he has an association with bees and I love mead. Sometimes he gets whisky or bourbon.
- Do another song from your playlist or read one of his hymns.
- Offer him food he is associated with or favorite foods that you’ve felt he might like. For example chocolate, candy, almonds, honey, sweet treats, trail mix, and home-baked treats. Some people like to offer him beef or other meat.
- Play another song or read a hymn.
- Ask for his blessings and help with whatever you need at that time.
- Say a closeout prayer of your choosing. Can be simple, like just thanking him for being there, or elaborate.
- Snuff out your candles and your incense if it hasn’t burned out.
Very Informal
- Light a candle and burn incense in a place you like to focus on your spiritual work. If you can’t, don’t worry about it. Can be an altar or just a spot in your house or nature you feel his energy and feel comfortable.
- Sit for a moment and let your energy settle.
- Breathe deeply and feel your energy field opening up. Feel yourself expand.
- Invite him in with a prayer of your own making.
- Thank him for being there and offer your love and any other offerings.
- Play songs, read a hymn, or offer creative works to him.
- Sit in silence and reflection and gratitude.
- Ask him for his blessing or help. Sit in silence and wait to see if he answers with any obvious signs or feelings or words.
- Thank him for his presence.
- Get up and go about your day if you’d like.
Low Energy Practice
- Sit in a quiet place.
- Let yourself settle.
- Invite him into the space.
- Thank him and give him some love.
- Tell him your troubles/cares/concerns.
- Know he hears you and will do his best to help because he is the ‘Helper’.
- Say your thanks.
What do I do with the offerings after the ritual?
This question comes up a lot with beginners. Historically, the people would’ve buried them for Chthonic gods or eaten the good meat and burned the bones and fat for the Ouranic gods. But we are modern people. Most of us do not do animal sacrifices and even back them only the wealthy would use actual animals. Most of the common people used cakes shaped like animals or gave honey, wine, milk, olive oil, or fresh clean water. Sometimes fruits, flowers, grains, and vegetables would’ve been used as well.
So we adjust our offerings for a modern lifestyle.
(If you do choose to do animal sacrifices please be respectful follow the rules of doing so and eat the animal you have sacrificed.)
Hermes although he is a psychopomp is still considered an Ouranic god and so it is fitting to offer him things that you can dispose of or eat after. Most people these days leave their offerings on the altar for a certain amount of time and dispose of them after. The offering can be left just during the ritual or up to a week.
If you only leave the offerings on during the ritual the idea is that the gods get the vibe and energy of the offering and they don’t need much time for that to happen. You also might have pets that would get into it or insects might be a hassle in your home.
If you leave it for longer try to not let it spoil or mold. That is not a good offering for a god.
Some people will eat the offering as a way of extending the enjoyment of eating to the god. Some just don’t want to waste it. The fancy chocolate I give Hermes is always eaten by me later. It can be a fun experiment to see how the energy of the food changes after it has sat on an altar.
If you don’t want to do that you can feed it to your dog/s or outside animals but NOT CHOCOLATE. If you can’t do that you can dispose of it in your trash with a brief ‘thank you’.
If it’s flowers, fruits, or veggies you can compost it!
You can do the same with your libation. You can drink it (Dionysos often insists on this with me and is a traditional way to commune with him.) Or you can pour it down the drain with a brief ‘thank you’. You can pour it out on the ground in a yard or garden as well if you’re not worried about attracting anything.
If you want you can offer to him as a Chthonic god and some people do during Mercury retrograde when it is said that he travels to the underworld. You can also do this when you have a passed loved one you want him to help guide.
If you want to do that go outside and dig a shallow hole. Do your ritual outside and pour your libation and place your offerings into that. Cover it back up when you’ve completed your ritual.
Extras After Ritual:
After the ritual, you can move on to movement practice like yoga or Qi gong, or dance. Embodying the energy you have raised can be pretty helpful to your spiritual cultivation or it can release pent-up energy or by grounding yourself if you’re feeling spacey.
Sometimes I pull Oracle cards or tarot cards to see if he has a message for me.
He is also considered a god of rustic divination so try playing cards, pendulum, I-Ching, casting lots or dice, really any divination that is simple and uses natural materials. Also, tea leaf reading or bibliomancy is great to communicate with him. Many people do automatic writing with him.
Ways to deepen your connection with him
- Service acts are wonderful and every god appreciates them. For Hermes, this can include helping people experiencing homeless with money, food, or a ‘care pack’.
- Donating to a charity he’s associated with.
*If you don’t have money to spend then give your time. This is service acts! Volunteer at a pet shelter, soup kitchen, or at homeless shelter. Help your senior or single-parent neighbors out, shovel their walk, rake their leaves, or walk their dog. Help a lost dog get home. Call a wildlife rescue if you see an injured animal.
- Be Kind to everyone you meet! Hermes will show up as a stranger and you don’t want to miss the opportunity to have an in-real-life moment with him.
- Exercise: He is associated with gymnastics and gyms so taking care of yourself physically is also important to him. You don’t have to become a gym bunny but daily walks or some kind of exercise show your commitment to your health and him. Ex: I do yoga and hike with my dogs daily.
- One on One time: Less traditional is enjoying “dates” with him. Museums and shopping are fun! Ex. I go to a museum wander around and let him pull me towards this or that thing to check out.
- Traveling and going on random adventures is primo Hermes time.
- Automatic writing
- Practice rustic forms of divination like dice, throwing stones/knuckle bones, I-Ching, coins, pendulum, etc.
- Writing with/for Him
- Reading a book with/for Him
- Doing art with/for Him
- Writing/playing or listening to music with Him
- Maintaining your boundaries (internal and external) and respecting others’ boundaries.
- Being an honorable, generous, and helpful person but not giving so much that you exhaust yourself. Put your oxygen mask on first!
- Practicing magic, real, and stage.
- Practicing Inner Alchemy.
- Study astrology/astronomy.
- Foster a dog.
- Cultivate your spiritual self and aim to become the best version of yourself possible day by day.
- Extend hospitality and give freely to your guest.
- Take a hike to the top of the highest place you can and sit in the sun and air. Feel his presence in these high places.
- Give someone a lift who needs it. Be safe though.
- Send letters or cards to friends and family.
- Share a meal with him. On certain special occasions, I’ll make a plate for Hermes and ask him to join me at the table. I feel he appreciates this. As he is the ‘hungry god’ he’s always happy to eat with me.
- Go on random walks around an unfamiliar neighborhood. Look for coins!
Greek Hermes
2023.03.21 01:15 JacobsSadder Come Find Me
Tyler and his kid sister sat at the kitchen table and ate uncooked pop tarts with milk. He glares across the table at her, right at the bright pink Hannah Montana shirt she wore all the time, the image of that teen idol's plastic smile burned into his brain. "So is Taylor still messing with you?" He asked. "No, not since you beat him up." "I wouldn't have had to if you hadn't of pissed him off. What did you do to him anyway..." "Oh you're gonna think I'm evil for this," She smiled with that same shit eating grin she knew annoyed him. He shook his head, "You are evil." He said taking a bite of poptart. "I kinda started a rumor that he had a crush on that guy Josh." Tyler made a *thump*on the table with his glass. "Well I'd kick your little ass too if I were him!" She busts out laughing, unconcerned with waking their hungover parents. They knew an earthquake wouldn't wake them after date night. "I didn't mean for it to get around as fast as it did. Me and Katy were joking around and I mentioned that I thought I saw Taylor trying to kiss Josh!" She washes some pop tart down with milk and wipes her mouth with the sleeve of her jacket. "Somebody must've overheard us talking and started spreading it around, so it was just an accident." Tyler shrugged just as he heard the bus pulling up. Then he turned his glass up, enjoying the cold milk falling down his dry throat. He threw his backpack over his shoulder and said, "YOU ARE AN ACCIDENT...let's go." Her grin turned upside down as she followed him out the door. "Well I'm mom and dad's favorite so BLAH."
They walked through the front yard heading toward the bus. Tyler comes to a halt and reaches his hand in front of Angel and stops her. "What?" she said. "You see Taylor right there don't you..." He nods toward the middle window of the bus where She recognized the chubby pale freckled face of Taylor Barns. "Yeah, so?" "He's not alone." Then she notices the other two boys glaring right at them. "Crap! they're gonna try and jump us! What do we do!?" She imagined herself getting beat up by Taylor's big ass while his friends beat up Tyler. "We're gonna walk to school. I don't feel like dealing with these assholes today." "We can't! That'll take forever to walk!" "I know a shortcut through the woods. We'll get there before they will." "I've never been in the woods...what if we get lost!" She insisted. Tyler grabbed her wrist and lead her away from the bus as it's doors closed and moved away. On the same block, stood the remains of a condemned house. She thought they were going inside, but then Tyler cuts and walks around it. Behind the old house was the beginning of thick brush and tall trees that had dead limbs hanging above. In front of them, leading through all of the fading green red and yellow colors of autumn, was a walked down path that stretched forward as far as She could see, and fallen leaves covering the ground every step of the way. "We can cut right through the woods and come up behind the school. It's only about a mile walk."
*Crunch*
Tyler stepped into the edge of the forest and made it several yards out before he realized he was alone. He turned around to see his little sister standing still with wide eyes. "Come on! we gotta hurry or we'll be late!" He yelled. "I don't want too..." Angel said, her voice shaking. "We don't have a choice, now come on!" "It's scary in there! I'm not going..." "Don't do this to me angel, not now goddammit..." He groaned hard, already feeling groggy from poor sleep, and more than pissed about the long terrible day he predicted would end with him fighting off three overweight kids with bad breath. Angel folds her arms and says with a smart ass tone, "I won't do it! and you can't," Tyler all but leaps over to her and grabs her by the scruff of her coat. "You listen to me you little shit, because of you I'm gonna have to deal with those assholes probably all year!" He growled through his teeth. "I don't want to walk through these woods either and because of you I don't have a choice. Now follow me or I'll leave you here!" She starts welling up with tears, but Tyler didn't buy it. She did that all the time with their parents just to get her way. "You won't leave me here! mom and dad will kill you!" calling Tyler's bluff. "FINE!" Tyler pushed her down on her butt and leaving her behind. "Tyler if you leave me here I'll go wake mom and dad up right now!" her confidence faded when he didn't look back or slow down as he marched forward on the trail. She didn't want too, but she knew she didn't have a choice. So she followed. "Oh God...I don't like this...HEY LET ME CATCH UP!" she began running through the brush trying to catch up to her brother.
He didn't want to talk to her or let alone even look at Angel. All he did was try to tune out her complaining for most of the walk. He kept a quick pace to stay ahead of her, and still kept track of her by listening to her bitch about the woods and how mean he always was to her. She dragged her feet through the leaves, sounding as though they were hissing at her for disturbing them. He could hear every step she took and knew she was still right behind him. *CRUNCH CRUNCH* He was sick of her. *CRUNCH CRUNCH* He was sick of her getting everything that he wanted . *CRUNCH CRUNCH* He was sick of being her caretaker. *CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH* He was sick of his parents treating her like a princess and treating him like a workhorse. He was so tired. The injustice of his situation was getting to be too much. He did most of the chores around the house and always after a full day at school. He wasn't a slacker academically either. He maintained a B average and could even score an -A- in math when he felt like it. Sleep was a problem lately. Now it was bad dreams. They started over a few weeks ago and he had been dealing with the grogginess and fatigue from it everyday. As he followed the path, he made wishes that his parents would stop dismissing his complaints and would actually try to help him with his sleep problem. Maybe they could take a little bit of that money they blew every weekend on weed and booze and get him some medicine that'll help him sleep. That's all he wanted. Maybe he'd Just skip school today, go home and lay back down in his bed. He didn't care if he got yelled at. He didn't care if he had another nightmare; bring on the damn SPIDERS! He started to enjoy the walk some. The weather was cool and the woods were grey and beautiful today. And It was quiet. Not even the birds were chirping like they do in the summer. Save for the sound of shuffling leaves under his feet, it was calm and tranquil out there...save for the sound of leaves.
*CRUNCH*
He stopped in his tracks. Now it was almost silent out there. After he enjoyed only a few minutes of a relaxing walk through the woods, he realized something terrible. Dread came crawling up in his guts as it dawned on him that he hadn't heard a second shuffle in the leaves this whole time; he had blocked it all trying to escape this day. He turned around to see that Angel was nowhere in sight. As far as he could see, she was gone.
He kicked up leaves and dirt running back down the path. He reached the spot in the trail where he thought he last heard her. He looked all around, but saw nothing; no evidence that she was ever here. He looked at all the rotting crumbling leafs and sticks littered on the ground everywhere searching for a trail she might have left behind, but he couldn't even find his own tracks in the cold dried dead earth that blanketed the area. He took a deep breath. "ANGEL!!! I'M GONNA KICK YOUR ASS WHEN I FIND YOU!!!" He yelled as loud he could in the slim hope that she was pranking him for earlier. "THIS ISN'T FUNNY ANGEL! YOU'RE GONNA MAKE US LATE!" He heard nothing but the little cracks and twitches of nature. He took another deep breath. "FINE THEN! I'M GOING HOME AND WAKING MOM AND DAD UP AND TELL THEM EVERYTHING THAT YOU DID, LIKE HOW YOU GOT ME INTO FIGHTS AND HOW YOU AIN'T LISTENING AND HOW YOU WANDERED OFF AWAY FROM ME!" He took a quick breath to yell even louder; he was crying now. "GOD DAMN IT I HATE YOU!...YOU LITTLE BITCH!!!!!" He hurt his throat yelling so hard. He knew he'd be blamed for losing her as he was nearly hyperventilating. Then something merciful occurred to him, and it made so much sense that he immediately calmed down.
(That little brat turned around and went home! He turned around and started walking back down the trail. Thank God!)
He could make it to class and not have to deal with her, and if he saw Taylor, he could just walk wide circles around his fat ass. Then he could go home and maybe his Mom and Dad will hear him out and Angel will get scolded for once in her spoiled rotten little life. The best part of it all was that he could go back to bed and sleep; nightmares be damned. He'd grab the biggest fattest spider and use it for a pillow! He'll sleep and... and... then... Then he heard it. Something, a voice, a whisper, dancing through the silence of the woods. What is that? Faint, far away, but he heard it. It almost sounded like a person singing a note, dangling in the air like it was tied to a string. It was resonating with him, within him. He thought of a fishing lure in the water, flickering beautifully for any big mouth that might bite at it. That memory coming from fishing trips with his father. Yes. Think of a little fish swimming around in the bottom of the ocean, the pitch blackness of the deep. As black as space, minus the stars as not even the sun can be seen in the deep waters. What would you do if you were down there alone and scared and then suddenly you spotted salvation? A light! A little bulb of light just floating there in the nothing; Beautiful, Warm and just for you; would you have the sense to question it, or would you just chase it? And he chased it.
The voice sounded light and female. Sweet and calming. He didn't understand, but somehow he's whole mind was calm, yet his thoughts were clouded. His judgement subdued, but he was okay with it. Where is it? Where is it coming from? He could almost figure out the direction, but it still felt like it was in the air dangling just above his head. The longer he listened, the more it sounded to him like a woman singing. No words; just harmony. For a moment, a small opening in the dark clouds in his head, allowed for pessimism to shine through.
(What's happening to me... This doesn't make sense... I need to go home...)
Above him, the voice began to fall, creeping down, leading off the trail and deeper into the woods. The song was all but a lustful taunt now, beckoning him to give chase.
(COME FIND ME...)
"Who's that!" He heard it. It was in his head, an alien voice spoke so loud that he actually heard it more clearly than if it was spoken aloud. The opening in the dark clouds were closing and becoming darker like heavy storms with only glimmers of light showing through.
(COME FIND ME...TYLER...)
And with that command, he obeyed.
*CRUNCH*
He pushed through the dying forest. A machete would be handy. Either way, he was hell bent on finding her, or whatever it was calling him. He forgot about school, about Angel, about getting in trouble with his parents, and about Taylor's fatass. He wasn't studying anything else except,
(HURRY! COME FIND ME!)
There she was again. There was no mistaking it: this was the voice of a woman. He imagined her features that went along with that sweet voice. Long dark flowing hair, a perfect glowing face with almond eyes and a bright smile. Breasts, hips and long legs, Yes; there was a woman in these woods. Maybe she needed help? Maybe she needed a young man to come save her! Tyler knew none of that made sense, but he still had to find her no matter what. He reached a thick bush that seemed there was no getting around it, and there was a deep ditch on the other side that he hadn't noticed. He pulled his hands into his jacket, got down and fought and crawled through whatever openings he could find through. And what if he did find some weird woman out here; what was going to happen? It was unlikely that he was going to lose his virginity to some sexy siren out in the middle of these woods. He figured he had made it at least a mile or two away from the trail, and considered the trip back. The bush and brier patches annoyed him, as cracks in the dark clouds were letting more light shine through; then the voice would repeat itself:
(HURRY! COME FIND ME! HURRY!)
And the dark clouds would regain control over him. This voice was engaging his adolescence with promises limited only to his imagination, and he had a healthy imagination for his age. She'd be waiting for him on the other side of this shit, he'll emerge all cut up and bleeding, he'll see her standing there, she'll turn and see him down on all fours exhausted and go to him, drop to her knees getting dirt on her angelic white dress, he'll look up at her and see the most beautiful face he'd ever laid eyes on, she'll smile at him and put her soft warm hands on his face, he'll lay his head in her lap and she'll gently pet his head. Then she'll bend down to tell him something as her bosom squishes against the side of his head; her lips will move and,
*CRUNCH*
The ground he reached to grab wasn't there; he fell forward and rolled down the sudden drop into the ditch on the other side, landing flat on his face, hissing at the scraps and cuts. "that hurt..." The lights were on and he escaped the clouds; whatever had him, lost its hold in the fall. He couldn't hear her anymore. He didn't feel tired anymore, just slightly dead inside. Face down in the dirt, he thought about how there was no chance at making it to school on time, how horrible this day was, how things would be if Angel hadn't started shit with Tayler. Better yet, what if she had never been born? The day started off bad enough, and now here he was laying down in the dirt, in the middle of nowhere miles away from home and not sure how he was going to get back. Hell, he wasn't sure how he made it this far. He turned his head and saw more woods, then he turned the other way, resting his cheek on the cool dirt: The sun was setting. Already? How long had he been,
*Cccccrrraaaaaang*
His head lurched up to the loud metallic shriek. He saw nothing, Almost. He would have missed it otherwise, but he remembered now: the dream; there was something from it that this place conjured up. Right in front of him was a hill where the noise came from. At a first glance, there's nothing remarkable about it, yet somehow, Tyler knew the secret. He pushed himself up to his feet. He'd seen it before; that's what it was. He couldn't think of it that morning; he had to see it play out in front of him before he could remember it: There was a faint outline in the hill and Tyler reached and grabbed the side to feel around for..."There!" He pulled with all his strength, then he let go of the big rusty metal door as it fell open, unveiling metal stairs leading down into darkness. He knew this was here! Maybe an old cellar or a storm shelter, but how did he know it was here? He looked down and thought of going in, but then thought better of it. He stepped back away from the entrance, then lights flickered over the stairs defeating the darkness that covered them, leading down to a metal door. Tyler realized that it was dark all around him; the sun had finished setting and the daylight was over. The woods around him now scarier than the hole with lights reflecting off the steel walls and stairs. He took his first step following them down careful to not make a sound. He wasn't trying to sneak, but was ready to turn and run back up the steps and into the woods in case he might jump an animal or a homeless man living down here. The metal door wasn't closed all the way, as if someone left it cracked. He pushed and it swung open, revealing a long hallway with more lights flickering on. He went forward, and wasn't so afraid; now he was just curious.
(Some kind of bunker maybe? Old and abandoned, but still has electricity?)
The hallway made a sharp right turn, then there was another metal door left open as well. The lights were already on inside. Tyler peaked through the crack and saw a room filled with lab equipment.
(Some mad scientist's hidden laboratory? How the hell could something like this be here?)
None of the equipment was like anything he had ever seen before; even the tech displayed in science fiction movies did this stuff justice: it was all shiny and well kept. Whatever science project that was going on down here was serious, and obviously, a secret. He passed a file laid open and couldn't resist taking a look.
"1973 The M.A.W. Project. by Dr. Les. Entry##113 submitted at 4:54 AM 'On behalf of the staff at NEW CELL research LAB #13, we require further funding: This project must be finished. It is necessary to do this at the site of where this strand of the NEW CELL anomaly, was located and is where we need to conduct our work. We do not know how to make CELL grow on its own yet, but this environment seems to encourage a reaction. It takes the form of a gas, reduced to a molecular level and singled it out. That's how NEW CELL's R-strand was discovered. It infects organic tissue with a compound never seen in history. It's proven to have high mutative properties, like other NEW CELL strands, but the R-strand has an amazing effect: psychokinetics is developing in the subjects! The R-strand will catapult Bio Engineering to places never thought possible!"
Tyler skips a few pages.
"It was necessary to have built 'Lab #13 at the sight where R-strand was discovered; It is imperative that our research continue, and is the opinion of this department and myself. The location isn't ideal, but this is also closest to civilian life that NEW CELL has been found to inhabit. It is costly -and risky- but necessary in order to collect this priceless data. You of course have seen the product of the remarkable capabilities of the R-strand with the M.A.W. Project; It's still to soon to move on from this location! So much we still have to learn! This is about the future of our species!"
Tyler flips to the last pages in the file:
Request to terminate the M.A.W. project.
"We have accomplished huge strides with the research of the R-strand. We've concluded that this location is not in fact the place of its origin. We can't prove it yet, but we believe now that the R-strand isn't native, or that the location is consequential to the mutations. The cells of R-strand cover this area, slowly growing like any organic matter. We are close to making a significant breakthrough on R-strand, and likely a huge leap in the NEW CELL anomaly.
Concerning The MAW Project, she has proven R-strand's remarkable capabilities, but we feel the project has hit a dead end, and is no longer a viable source for further study. I will note that with careful planning: further development of NEW CELL Projects can heed viable results, and we shouldn't shut the Lab down just yet. However, MAW'S devolvement has hit a brick wall. Her higher brain functions mimic that of the human host used, and this could be what is making her feral. However, I don't believe that to be the case. There's something else I've been looking into: It is possible that R-strand itself is where this intelligent/malevolent behavior is coming from. We had removed her brain and three of her limbs for our own protection, yet these problems persist. If my theory is true, then that means that the NEW CELL anomaly is the most intelligent viral life form ever exhibited. It goes beyond what human evolution has ever been capable of.
Concerning MAW: it is understood that the resources expended on her were substantial, but we've got all that we need and then some from the project. Immediate termination of MAW is requested. Let me also clarify the problems arising for the Lab in keeping her contained here: we believe she's been telepathically commuting with sentient life outside of the perimeter. First we notice an excess of animals wandering closer to the lab, then our security was finding civilian life wandering in the area, and furthermore, somehow getting inside; they never remember how they got here. One poor soul actually made it inside MAW's containment: what we found wasn't a pretty sight. We have other issues of MAW affecting Lab #13 personal. Mostly complaints of strange dreams and emotional problems. Working within such close range of MAW is subject to high stress, and the project wasn't recommended to personal with pre existing mental conditions, as it became common that She could exacerbate the conditions. I myself am having trouble, as I haven't been able to sleep well in months. I and my staff humbly request that a N.C.H. team is sent to sterilize this area, and to terminate the MAW Project."
Tyler saw there was a tape recorder next to the file. He pressed rewind, and then the Play.
'Those bastards. They actually went ahead and did it. The data we collected over the course of L thirteen's establishment was more than viable enough and worth saving, but no, those bastards never cared. They really went ahead and did it! They're gonna leave us and L thirteen to rot! We got them everything they wanted from the NEW CELL growing in this area, and then they cut their losses and abandon us! R-strand is growing; its infecting this whole area. Yes we were here to research it, but also to contain it! The civilian life that's anywhere within a thousand kilometers will be totally lost...
They sealed us in here. The team we requested sealed us down here to die! I Wonder how far they'll get before they too are...
It's MAW again...
I hear her now, she's tempting me. I'm out of time..."
The rest of the tape was nearly silent save for steps on the tile floor, echoing as they got further away, until they couldn't be heard, and then silenced altogether. There was nothing now but the light hiss of the tape spinning, and there would be nothing else on the rest of the tape either.
*thunk*
Tyler heard something. He turned to see another door. He carefully pushed it open, and there was more stairs. No lights flickered on this time. It looked like the stairway to hell itself. Briefly, there was no way he was going down. So turned back. He was done with this. He was frightened and wanted nothing more than to leave this place and forget about it, the tape, everything. It was cold and lifeless in here. He had to get home. Then, he heard her voice; not the woman, not the sirens song he heard all afternoon, but his sister's voice.
"Tyler..."
He heard it. And it wasn't in his head. "Hello?" "Tyler..." "Angel? is that you!" he yelled. It was coming from down the rusty stairs, coming from the bottom. No response. He took a deep breath, and then he took the first step down, then another, then on the third, he heard Angel's blood curdling scream eco from the bottom. "Angel! Hold on!" He yelled going down the steps as fast as he could, nearly slipping on what he thought was rags or towels, following Angel's scream all the way to the bottom; down to the precipice. The scream ceased just he saw a metal door hanging from bent hinges; It was decimated, ripped through like tissue paper. His gut told him to turn and leave now, then something caught his eye: Something familiar was hanging on one of the sharp pieces of the metal door, slivers of cloth. He approached and grabbed it: on the front was torn ribbond of tHanna Montana's face still smiling that plastic smile. Tyler felt terror crawl up through his guts. Suddenly the lights came on above. The floor was covered in discarded clothing. Most of it was adult sized: white lab coats, leather shoes, male and female undergarments, socks, and more laying everywhere. Watches, cellphones, pens, wigs, jewelry, etc. He looked up the stairs, and saw even more just littered all the way up. He realized something horrible: Nothing can get close to this place without coming under the influence of this MAW...How many people had wandered down here just like himself? Facing the stairs, he stepped on something sizeable. He bent down, and found that it was a backpack. Hanna Montana's face plastered on it too. It was Angel's. He went down to his hands and knees and found a small pile of clothes, jeans, pink socks, a bright pink jacket and white panties. He became nauseous, his stomach twisting itself up as he understood that Angel, along with all these other people had all been...
*CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH*
The sickening sound found his ears, and then, he heard that woman's voice speak aloud,
"Tyler, You found me."
(The little fish that swims in the darkness will see the dangling light and approach it; never seeing the terrifying mouth of the anglerfish waiting just behind the light.)
A moist and warm gust of air covered him, and behind it was the mouth that exhaled it. Tyler on all fours, turned his head around to see it, and what he saw was a giant gaping mouth, filled with large jagged teeth, smelling of death and wide enough to bite him in half. For a moment, he didn't want to run away. For a moment, the mouth seemed to not be so threatening. For a moment, he was almost at peace with it, then that turned into a euphoria, rapturous, pleasurable even. The dark clouds were thundering, blocking all light, all sense. He was okay with this. Even wanted it...for a moment. Then, as the mouth neared and began closing down, he saw something hanging from one of the long yellow stained teeth: something little, long and black. Like a worm? No... He then realized what it was, and all the clouds blow away as sheer horror swept through like a 200 mph wind: It was in fact, a lock of hair from Angel's head. The mouth spoke once more as the fresh stince of blood and guts seeped from the beastly dripping mouth:
"You found me."
He screamed louder then he ever had in his life. His fight or flight chose the latter. His prone position was almost that of a runner's stance, as the mouth started to close down for a bite. Tyler lunged up the metal staircase, the piles of clothes, phones and jewelry impeding him every step of the way, all the while that hot sick breath was rushing up his shirt. He made it halfway up the stairs and looked back at it to see if he was getting away from it. When he did, an even louder scream erupted from him with tears and mucus pouring from his face. He saw a massive hand reaching up for him, big enough to grab him around his waist and crush him into pulp, and pull him back down to face the same nightmarish death that his kid sister met. He caught a good look at the thing: a huge humanoid, that looked like it would have been a giant, but there was nothing below its lower torso. The hand swiped at him just barely missing the temporarily despondent boy, its large nails making deep scratches on the metal, sending an ear splitting shriek through the air. Tyler cuffed his ears in pain. He saw it trying to orient itself to take another swipe. It seemed to look up and let out a guttural roar at him, spitting its saliva and little tiny pieces of Angel all over him. Then he saw that the thing was missing its eyes: above the mouth, everything; a nose, its cranium, eyeholes, were gone. Atop of the mouth was just the healed over stump from where those things used to have been, maybe. That huge hand was connected to a long muscular arm, the only limb it seemed to have left. Then all at once, Tyler understood it:
(It can't do much else but eat. So it got good at luring its meals down to it... Like one of those parasites that wiggle into the head of a grasshopper and make it commit suicide and that's how the worm survived...That's how this thing survived. He could hear it; feel it. The same voice the owners of these piles of clothes heard. The same voice that Angel heard. That same sweet voice that lured him down, all the way from home, was now trying to wiggle its way back into his head. She was telling him that everything was alright; come back down, take your clothes off -and anything else that if wouldn't like to chew on- and everything will be alright. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down come down come down come down Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down come down come down come down Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down come down come down come down Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down come down come down come down Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down come down come down come down Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down come down come down come down Come down. Come down. Come down.)
"COME DOWN TO ME NOW!!!!!"
Tyler snapped out of it for the last time as She lurched forward, mouth open wide. Tyler turned to the metal stairs, crawled up the rest of them and finally reached the door. He bolted through the lab, hearing both her voice in his head, beckoning him, while the monster was bellowing from below; cursing at the escape of its meal. Tyler passed the file, and grabbed it thinking he might need it later with all the rational thinking he had left, besides running. He reached the long hallway, the echo of his shoes coming down on the metal engulfing everything including her cries for him. He leaped out of the big metal door, and he got on the other side of it and pushed with all his strength, making slam back shut. Then he was out into the dark woods, at this point the safest place in the world to him. He didn't stop. He ran back the way he came. He made his way around the hill he fell down, found the path through the brush that he made earlier and finally after scurrying through all of it again, he found the path to the school; the same path he could take home. The running wasn't over; not yet; Not until he saw his parents.
His mother and father sat on the front porch along with several police officers who were gathering up for a search party. The mother with her head in her hands and the father was speaking to the police officer taking down descriptions in his book. The red and blue lights of the police cars lit the whole street up, and that's how Tyler found his way back. He saw the lights and new that that had to be his block. He held the file in his hand that would prove that everything he saw was true. He finally took a moment to catch his breath...
Then, she spoke to him again, and he listened...and he listened.
His mother looked up with tears in her eyes and almost didn't see him: her son was standing there covered in dirt, grime and little bleeding cuts all over him. He was empty handed. She cried and ran to her son and embraced him as his father and the police officers followed. She hugged him tight. She loved him and he felt it. His father kneeled down with tears in his eyes, checking Tyler's wounds. "Tyler, what happened?" "Tyler, are you okay?" "Tyler, talk to me baby!" "Tyler...where's Angel?" He was in awe. He looked up to the night sky without saying anything. He saw that the stars were out. They cared. They cared. He felt like he was the center of their world. And it made him feel good. This felt good. She was right.
****
Tyler woke up at 6:00 AM to the sound of his alarm blaring ZZ Top. He was sleeping so well that he hated the alarm. He stretched and pulled himself out of bed. He looked out of his window and saw the sun creeping up from behind the line of trees of the woods behind that old house. He grabbed the window seal and stretched himself. He left his room, past the hallway bathroom, and then went into the room that -use to- belong to Angel. The posters still hung, but the room was a mess where the police had searched it for any possible leads. He ignored the mess like his parents did, albeit for different reasons. He enjoyed a shower. Angel's shower that was. In the kitchen he ate uncooked poptarts with milk. He was feeling great, well rested and had a sense of wellbeing he hadn't felt in a long time. He thought about trying out for basketball, or maybe football. The school bus pulled up outside and he slammed his milk and ran out the door. On the bus he sat in the middle, right next to a girl he had never talked to before, and they struck up a conversation. As they got off the bus she waved at him and saying whe would love to have lunch with him. He smiled and turned to go to class. He ended up trying out for football and fell in love with the sport that day. He liked his coach, and he made friends with almost everyone on the team. Everyone except for one big freckled face Taylor Barns. When Tyler caught up with him after school, Taylor didn't know what to say to this knew and very chipper Tyler. They had gotten into a fight over his sister, and then she was pronounced dead, all back in the fall. When the bus passed his house, it seemed to be a ghost house with nobody home. Now here he was trying to make friends? How could he say no. He thought that he should try and be nice. Felt like he owed him that much. He didn't have much of a choice though... No choice, really. See, Taylor had recently been experiencing some sleep deprivation, all from some recurring nightmares within the last week, give or take. Perhaps brought on by some remorse; an underserved guilt over the disappearance of Tyler's kid sister. He didn't know why it was happening; he definitely didn't know that Tyler knew about it, either. Taylor agreed to hang out with him after practice, and they would walk to Tyler's house, play video games, and talk about football. Tyler told him that he knew a shortcut through the woods. Taylor Barns smiled, and Tyler smiled right back...
and so did she.
*CRUNCH*
Written by Jacob Pittman.
submitted by JacobsSadder to libraryofshadows [link] [comments]
They walked through the front yard heading toward the bus. Tyler comes to a halt and reaches his hand in front of Angel and stops her. "What?" she said. "You see Taylor right there don't you..." He nods toward the middle window of the bus where She recognized the chubby pale freckled face of Taylor Barns. "Yeah, so?" "He's not alone." Then she notices the other two boys glaring right at them. "Crap! they're gonna try and jump us! What do we do!?" She imagined herself getting beat up by Taylor's big ass while his friends beat up Tyler. "We're gonna walk to school. I don't feel like dealing with these assholes today." "We can't! That'll take forever to walk!" "I know a shortcut through the woods. We'll get there before they will." "I've never been in the woods...what if we get lost!" She insisted. Tyler grabbed her wrist and lead her away from the bus as it's doors closed and moved away. On the same block, stood the remains of a condemned house. She thought they were going inside, but then Tyler cuts and walks around it. Behind the old house was the beginning of thick brush and tall trees that had dead limbs hanging above. In front of them, leading through all of the fading green red and yellow colors of autumn, was a walked down path that stretched forward as far as She could see, and fallen leaves covering the ground every step of the way. "We can cut right through the woods and come up behind the school. It's only about a mile walk."
*Crunch*
Tyler stepped into the edge of the forest and made it several yards out before he realized he was alone. He turned around to see his little sister standing still with wide eyes. "Come on! we gotta hurry or we'll be late!" He yelled. "I don't want too..." Angel said, her voice shaking. "We don't have a choice, now come on!" "It's scary in there! I'm not going..." "Don't do this to me angel, not now goddammit..." He groaned hard, already feeling groggy from poor sleep, and more than pissed about the long terrible day he predicted would end with him fighting off three overweight kids with bad breath. Angel folds her arms and says with a smart ass tone, "I won't do it! and you can't," Tyler all but leaps over to her and grabs her by the scruff of her coat. "You listen to me you little shit, because of you I'm gonna have to deal with those assholes probably all year!" He growled through his teeth. "I don't want to walk through these woods either and because of you I don't have a choice. Now follow me or I'll leave you here!" She starts welling up with tears, but Tyler didn't buy it. She did that all the time with their parents just to get her way. "You won't leave me here! mom and dad will kill you!" calling Tyler's bluff. "FINE!" Tyler pushed her down on her butt and leaving her behind. "Tyler if you leave me here I'll go wake mom and dad up right now!" her confidence faded when he didn't look back or slow down as he marched forward on the trail. She didn't want too, but she knew she didn't have a choice. So she followed. "Oh God...I don't like this...HEY LET ME CATCH UP!" she began running through the brush trying to catch up to her brother.
He didn't want to talk to her or let alone even look at Angel. All he did was try to tune out her complaining for most of the walk. He kept a quick pace to stay ahead of her, and still kept track of her by listening to her bitch about the woods and how mean he always was to her. She dragged her feet through the leaves, sounding as though they were hissing at her for disturbing them. He could hear every step she took and knew she was still right behind him. *CRUNCH CRUNCH* He was sick of her. *CRUNCH CRUNCH* He was sick of her getting everything that he wanted . *CRUNCH CRUNCH* He was sick of being her caretaker. *CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH* He was sick of his parents treating her like a princess and treating him like a workhorse. He was so tired. The injustice of his situation was getting to be too much. He did most of the chores around the house and always after a full day at school. He wasn't a slacker academically either. He maintained a B average and could even score an -A- in math when he felt like it. Sleep was a problem lately. Now it was bad dreams. They started over a few weeks ago and he had been dealing with the grogginess and fatigue from it everyday. As he followed the path, he made wishes that his parents would stop dismissing his complaints and would actually try to help him with his sleep problem. Maybe they could take a little bit of that money they blew every weekend on weed and booze and get him some medicine that'll help him sleep. That's all he wanted. Maybe he'd Just skip school today, go home and lay back down in his bed. He didn't care if he got yelled at. He didn't care if he had another nightmare; bring on the damn SPIDERS! He started to enjoy the walk some. The weather was cool and the woods were grey and beautiful today. And It was quiet. Not even the birds were chirping like they do in the summer. Save for the sound of shuffling leaves under his feet, it was calm and tranquil out there...save for the sound of leaves.
*CRUNCH*
He stopped in his tracks. Now it was almost silent out there. After he enjoyed only a few minutes of a relaxing walk through the woods, he realized something terrible. Dread came crawling up in his guts as it dawned on him that he hadn't heard a second shuffle in the leaves this whole time; he had blocked it all trying to escape this day. He turned around to see that Angel was nowhere in sight. As far as he could see, she was gone.
He kicked up leaves and dirt running back down the path. He reached the spot in the trail where he thought he last heard her. He looked all around, but saw nothing; no evidence that she was ever here. He looked at all the rotting crumbling leafs and sticks littered on the ground everywhere searching for a trail she might have left behind, but he couldn't even find his own tracks in the cold dried dead earth that blanketed the area. He took a deep breath. "ANGEL!!! I'M GONNA KICK YOUR ASS WHEN I FIND YOU!!!" He yelled as loud he could in the slim hope that she was pranking him for earlier. "THIS ISN'T FUNNY ANGEL! YOU'RE GONNA MAKE US LATE!" He heard nothing but the little cracks and twitches of nature. He took another deep breath. "FINE THEN! I'M GOING HOME AND WAKING MOM AND DAD UP AND TELL THEM EVERYTHING THAT YOU DID, LIKE HOW YOU GOT ME INTO FIGHTS AND HOW YOU AIN'T LISTENING AND HOW YOU WANDERED OFF AWAY FROM ME!" He took a quick breath to yell even louder; he was crying now. "GOD DAMN IT I HATE YOU!...YOU LITTLE BITCH!!!!!" He hurt his throat yelling so hard. He knew he'd be blamed for losing her as he was nearly hyperventilating. Then something merciful occurred to him, and it made so much sense that he immediately calmed down.
(That little brat turned around and went home! He turned around and started walking back down the trail. Thank God!)
He could make it to class and not have to deal with her, and if he saw Taylor, he could just walk wide circles around his fat ass. Then he could go home and maybe his Mom and Dad will hear him out and Angel will get scolded for once in her spoiled rotten little life. The best part of it all was that he could go back to bed and sleep; nightmares be damned. He'd grab the biggest fattest spider and use it for a pillow! He'll sleep and... and... then... Then he heard it. Something, a voice, a whisper, dancing through the silence of the woods. What is that? Faint, far away, but he heard it. It almost sounded like a person singing a note, dangling in the air like it was tied to a string. It was resonating with him, within him. He thought of a fishing lure in the water, flickering beautifully for any big mouth that might bite at it. That memory coming from fishing trips with his father. Yes. Think of a little fish swimming around in the bottom of the ocean, the pitch blackness of the deep. As black as space, minus the stars as not even the sun can be seen in the deep waters. What would you do if you were down there alone and scared and then suddenly you spotted salvation? A light! A little bulb of light just floating there in the nothing; Beautiful, Warm and just for you; would you have the sense to question it, or would you just chase it? And he chased it.
The voice sounded light and female. Sweet and calming. He didn't understand, but somehow he's whole mind was calm, yet his thoughts were clouded. His judgement subdued, but he was okay with it. Where is it? Where is it coming from? He could almost figure out the direction, but it still felt like it was in the air dangling just above his head. The longer he listened, the more it sounded to him like a woman singing. No words; just harmony. For a moment, a small opening in the dark clouds in his head, allowed for pessimism to shine through.
(What's happening to me... This doesn't make sense... I need to go home...)
Above him, the voice began to fall, creeping down, leading off the trail and deeper into the woods. The song was all but a lustful taunt now, beckoning him to give chase.
(COME FIND ME...)
"Who's that!" He heard it. It was in his head, an alien voice spoke so loud that he actually heard it more clearly than if it was spoken aloud. The opening in the dark clouds were closing and becoming darker like heavy storms with only glimmers of light showing through.
(COME FIND ME...TYLER...)
And with that command, he obeyed.
*CRUNCH*
He pushed through the dying forest. A machete would be handy. Either way, he was hell bent on finding her, or whatever it was calling him. He forgot about school, about Angel, about getting in trouble with his parents, and about Taylor's fatass. He wasn't studying anything else except,
(HURRY! COME FIND ME!)
There she was again. There was no mistaking it: this was the voice of a woman. He imagined her features that went along with that sweet voice. Long dark flowing hair, a perfect glowing face with almond eyes and a bright smile. Breasts, hips and long legs, Yes; there was a woman in these woods. Maybe she needed help? Maybe she needed a young man to come save her! Tyler knew none of that made sense, but he still had to find her no matter what. He reached a thick bush that seemed there was no getting around it, and there was a deep ditch on the other side that he hadn't noticed. He pulled his hands into his jacket, got down and fought and crawled through whatever openings he could find through. And what if he did find some weird woman out here; what was going to happen? It was unlikely that he was going to lose his virginity to some sexy siren out in the middle of these woods. He figured he had made it at least a mile or two away from the trail, and considered the trip back. The bush and brier patches annoyed him, as cracks in the dark clouds were letting more light shine through; then the voice would repeat itself:
(HURRY! COME FIND ME! HURRY!)
And the dark clouds would regain control over him. This voice was engaging his adolescence with promises limited only to his imagination, and he had a healthy imagination for his age. She'd be waiting for him on the other side of this shit, he'll emerge all cut up and bleeding, he'll see her standing there, she'll turn and see him down on all fours exhausted and go to him, drop to her knees getting dirt on her angelic white dress, he'll look up at her and see the most beautiful face he'd ever laid eyes on, she'll smile at him and put her soft warm hands on his face, he'll lay his head in her lap and she'll gently pet his head. Then she'll bend down to tell him something as her bosom squishes against the side of his head; her lips will move and,
*CRUNCH*
The ground he reached to grab wasn't there; he fell forward and rolled down the sudden drop into the ditch on the other side, landing flat on his face, hissing at the scraps and cuts. "that hurt..." The lights were on and he escaped the clouds; whatever had him, lost its hold in the fall. He couldn't hear her anymore. He didn't feel tired anymore, just slightly dead inside. Face down in the dirt, he thought about how there was no chance at making it to school on time, how horrible this day was, how things would be if Angel hadn't started shit with Tayler. Better yet, what if she had never been born? The day started off bad enough, and now here he was laying down in the dirt, in the middle of nowhere miles away from home and not sure how he was going to get back. Hell, he wasn't sure how he made it this far. He turned his head and saw more woods, then he turned the other way, resting his cheek on the cool dirt: The sun was setting. Already? How long had he been,
*Cccccrrraaaaaang*
His head lurched up to the loud metallic shriek. He saw nothing, Almost. He would have missed it otherwise, but he remembered now: the dream; there was something from it that this place conjured up. Right in front of him was a hill where the noise came from. At a first glance, there's nothing remarkable about it, yet somehow, Tyler knew the secret. He pushed himself up to his feet. He'd seen it before; that's what it was. He couldn't think of it that morning; he had to see it play out in front of him before he could remember it: There was a faint outline in the hill and Tyler reached and grabbed the side to feel around for..."There!" He pulled with all his strength, then he let go of the big rusty metal door as it fell open, unveiling metal stairs leading down into darkness. He knew this was here! Maybe an old cellar or a storm shelter, but how did he know it was here? He looked down and thought of going in, but then thought better of it. He stepped back away from the entrance, then lights flickered over the stairs defeating the darkness that covered them, leading down to a metal door. Tyler realized that it was dark all around him; the sun had finished setting and the daylight was over. The woods around him now scarier than the hole with lights reflecting off the steel walls and stairs. He took his first step following them down careful to not make a sound. He wasn't trying to sneak, but was ready to turn and run back up the steps and into the woods in case he might jump an animal or a homeless man living down here. The metal door wasn't closed all the way, as if someone left it cracked. He pushed and it swung open, revealing a long hallway with more lights flickering on. He went forward, and wasn't so afraid; now he was just curious.
(Some kind of bunker maybe? Old and abandoned, but still has electricity?)
The hallway made a sharp right turn, then there was another metal door left open as well. The lights were already on inside. Tyler peaked through the crack and saw a room filled with lab equipment.
(Some mad scientist's hidden laboratory? How the hell could something like this be here?)
None of the equipment was like anything he had ever seen before; even the tech displayed in science fiction movies did this stuff justice: it was all shiny and well kept. Whatever science project that was going on down here was serious, and obviously, a secret. He passed a file laid open and couldn't resist taking a look.
"1973 The M.A.W. Project. by Dr. Les. Entry##113 submitted at 4:54 AM 'On behalf of the staff at NEW CELL research LAB #13, we require further funding: This project must be finished. It is necessary to do this at the site of where this strand of the NEW CELL anomaly, was located and is where we need to conduct our work. We do not know how to make CELL grow on its own yet, but this environment seems to encourage a reaction. It takes the form of a gas, reduced to a molecular level and singled it out. That's how NEW CELL's R-strand was discovered. It infects organic tissue with a compound never seen in history. It's proven to have high mutative properties, like other NEW CELL strands, but the R-strand has an amazing effect: psychokinetics is developing in the subjects! The R-strand will catapult Bio Engineering to places never thought possible!"
Tyler skips a few pages.
"It was necessary to have built 'Lab #13 at the sight where R-strand was discovered; It is imperative that our research continue, and is the opinion of this department and myself. The location isn't ideal, but this is also closest to civilian life that NEW CELL has been found to inhabit. It is costly -and risky- but necessary in order to collect this priceless data. You of course have seen the product of the remarkable capabilities of the R-strand with the M.A.W. Project; It's still to soon to move on from this location! So much we still have to learn! This is about the future of our species!"
Tyler flips to the last pages in the file:
Request to terminate the M.A.W. project.
"We have accomplished huge strides with the research of the R-strand. We've concluded that this location is not in fact the place of its origin. We can't prove it yet, but we believe now that the R-strand isn't native, or that the location is consequential to the mutations. The cells of R-strand cover this area, slowly growing like any organic matter. We are close to making a significant breakthrough on R-strand, and likely a huge leap in the NEW CELL anomaly.
Concerning The MAW Project, she has proven R-strand's remarkable capabilities, but we feel the project has hit a dead end, and is no longer a viable source for further study. I will note that with careful planning: further development of NEW CELL Projects can heed viable results, and we shouldn't shut the Lab down just yet. However, MAW'S devolvement has hit a brick wall. Her higher brain functions mimic that of the human host used, and this could be what is making her feral. However, I don't believe that to be the case. There's something else I've been looking into: It is possible that R-strand itself is where this intelligent/malevolent behavior is coming from. We had removed her brain and three of her limbs for our own protection, yet these problems persist. If my theory is true, then that means that the NEW CELL anomaly is the most intelligent viral life form ever exhibited. It goes beyond what human evolution has ever been capable of.
Concerning MAW: it is understood that the resources expended on her were substantial, but we've got all that we need and then some from the project. Immediate termination of MAW is requested. Let me also clarify the problems arising for the Lab in keeping her contained here: we believe she's been telepathically commuting with sentient life outside of the perimeter. First we notice an excess of animals wandering closer to the lab, then our security was finding civilian life wandering in the area, and furthermore, somehow getting inside; they never remember how they got here. One poor soul actually made it inside MAW's containment: what we found wasn't a pretty sight. We have other issues of MAW affecting Lab #13 personal. Mostly complaints of strange dreams and emotional problems. Working within such close range of MAW is subject to high stress, and the project wasn't recommended to personal with pre existing mental conditions, as it became common that She could exacerbate the conditions. I myself am having trouble, as I haven't been able to sleep well in months. I and my staff humbly request that a N.C.H. team is sent to sterilize this area, and to terminate the MAW Project."
Tyler saw there was a tape recorder next to the file. He pressed rewind, and then the Play.
'Those bastards. They actually went ahead and did it. The data we collected over the course of L thirteen's establishment was more than viable enough and worth saving, but no, those bastards never cared. They really went ahead and did it! They're gonna leave us and L thirteen to rot! We got them everything they wanted from the NEW CELL growing in this area, and then they cut their losses and abandon us! R-strand is growing; its infecting this whole area. Yes we were here to research it, but also to contain it! The civilian life that's anywhere within a thousand kilometers will be totally lost...
They sealed us in here. The team we requested sealed us down here to die! I Wonder how far they'll get before they too are...
It's MAW again...
I hear her now, she's tempting me. I'm out of time..."
The rest of the tape was nearly silent save for steps on the tile floor, echoing as they got further away, until they couldn't be heard, and then silenced altogether. There was nothing now but the light hiss of the tape spinning, and there would be nothing else on the rest of the tape either.
*thunk*
Tyler heard something. He turned to see another door. He carefully pushed it open, and there was more stairs. No lights flickered on this time. It looked like the stairway to hell itself. Briefly, there was no way he was going down. So turned back. He was done with this. He was frightened and wanted nothing more than to leave this place and forget about it, the tape, everything. It was cold and lifeless in here. He had to get home. Then, he heard her voice; not the woman, not the sirens song he heard all afternoon, but his sister's voice.
"Tyler..."
He heard it. And it wasn't in his head. "Hello?" "Tyler..." "Angel? is that you!" he yelled. It was coming from down the rusty stairs, coming from the bottom. No response. He took a deep breath, and then he took the first step down, then another, then on the third, he heard Angel's blood curdling scream eco from the bottom. "Angel! Hold on!" He yelled going down the steps as fast as he could, nearly slipping on what he thought was rags or towels, following Angel's scream all the way to the bottom; down to the precipice. The scream ceased just he saw a metal door hanging from bent hinges; It was decimated, ripped through like tissue paper. His gut told him to turn and leave now, then something caught his eye: Something familiar was hanging on one of the sharp pieces of the metal door, slivers of cloth. He approached and grabbed it: on the front was torn ribbond of tHanna Montana's face still smiling that plastic smile. Tyler felt terror crawl up through his guts. Suddenly the lights came on above. The floor was covered in discarded clothing. Most of it was adult sized: white lab coats, leather shoes, male and female undergarments, socks, and more laying everywhere. Watches, cellphones, pens, wigs, jewelry, etc. He looked up the stairs, and saw even more just littered all the way up. He realized something horrible: Nothing can get close to this place without coming under the influence of this MAW...How many people had wandered down here just like himself? Facing the stairs, he stepped on something sizeable. He bent down, and found that it was a backpack. Hanna Montana's face plastered on it too. It was Angel's. He went down to his hands and knees and found a small pile of clothes, jeans, pink socks, a bright pink jacket and white panties. He became nauseous, his stomach twisting itself up as he understood that Angel, along with all these other people had all been...
*CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH*
The sickening sound found his ears, and then, he heard that woman's voice speak aloud,
"Tyler, You found me."
(The little fish that swims in the darkness will see the dangling light and approach it; never seeing the terrifying mouth of the anglerfish waiting just behind the light.)
A moist and warm gust of air covered him, and behind it was the mouth that exhaled it. Tyler on all fours, turned his head around to see it, and what he saw was a giant gaping mouth, filled with large jagged teeth, smelling of death and wide enough to bite him in half. For a moment, he didn't want to run away. For a moment, the mouth seemed to not be so threatening. For a moment, he was almost at peace with it, then that turned into a euphoria, rapturous, pleasurable even. The dark clouds were thundering, blocking all light, all sense. He was okay with this. Even wanted it...for a moment. Then, as the mouth neared and began closing down, he saw something hanging from one of the long yellow stained teeth: something little, long and black. Like a worm? No... He then realized what it was, and all the clouds blow away as sheer horror swept through like a 200 mph wind: It was in fact, a lock of hair from Angel's head. The mouth spoke once more as the fresh stince of blood and guts seeped from the beastly dripping mouth:
"You found me."
He screamed louder then he ever had in his life. His fight or flight chose the latter. His prone position was almost that of a runner's stance, as the mouth started to close down for a bite. Tyler lunged up the metal staircase, the piles of clothes, phones and jewelry impeding him every step of the way, all the while that hot sick breath was rushing up his shirt. He made it halfway up the stairs and looked back at it to see if he was getting away from it. When he did, an even louder scream erupted from him with tears and mucus pouring from his face. He saw a massive hand reaching up for him, big enough to grab him around his waist and crush him into pulp, and pull him back down to face the same nightmarish death that his kid sister met. He caught a good look at the thing: a huge humanoid, that looked like it would have been a giant, but there was nothing below its lower torso. The hand swiped at him just barely missing the temporarily despondent boy, its large nails making deep scratches on the metal, sending an ear splitting shriek through the air. Tyler cuffed his ears in pain. He saw it trying to orient itself to take another swipe. It seemed to look up and let out a guttural roar at him, spitting its saliva and little tiny pieces of Angel all over him. Then he saw that the thing was missing its eyes: above the mouth, everything; a nose, its cranium, eyeholes, were gone. Atop of the mouth was just the healed over stump from where those things used to have been, maybe. That huge hand was connected to a long muscular arm, the only limb it seemed to have left. Then all at once, Tyler understood it:
(It can't do much else but eat. So it got good at luring its meals down to it... Like one of those parasites that wiggle into the head of a grasshopper and make it commit suicide and that's how the worm survived...That's how this thing survived. He could hear it; feel it. The same voice the owners of these piles of clothes heard. The same voice that Angel heard. That same sweet voice that lured him down, all the way from home, was now trying to wiggle its way back into his head. She was telling him that everything was alright; come back down, take your clothes off -and anything else that if wouldn't like to chew on- and everything will be alright. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down come down come down come down Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down come down come down come down Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down come down come down come down Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down come down come down come down Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down come down come down come down Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down. Come down come down come down come down Come down. Come down. Come down.)
"COME DOWN TO ME NOW!!!!!"
Tyler snapped out of it for the last time as She lurched forward, mouth open wide. Tyler turned to the metal stairs, crawled up the rest of them and finally reached the door. He bolted through the lab, hearing both her voice in his head, beckoning him, while the monster was bellowing from below; cursing at the escape of its meal. Tyler passed the file, and grabbed it thinking he might need it later with all the rational thinking he had left, besides running. He reached the long hallway, the echo of his shoes coming down on the metal engulfing everything including her cries for him. He leaped out of the big metal door, and he got on the other side of it and pushed with all his strength, making slam back shut. Then he was out into the dark woods, at this point the safest place in the world to him. He didn't stop. He ran back the way he came. He made his way around the hill he fell down, found the path through the brush that he made earlier and finally after scurrying through all of it again, he found the path to the school; the same path he could take home. The running wasn't over; not yet; Not until he saw his parents.
His mother and father sat on the front porch along with several police officers who were gathering up for a search party. The mother with her head in her hands and the father was speaking to the police officer taking down descriptions in his book. The red and blue lights of the police cars lit the whole street up, and that's how Tyler found his way back. He saw the lights and new that that had to be his block. He held the file in his hand that would prove that everything he saw was true. He finally took a moment to catch his breath...
Then, she spoke to him again, and he listened...and he listened.
His mother looked up with tears in her eyes and almost didn't see him: her son was standing there covered in dirt, grime and little bleeding cuts all over him. He was empty handed. She cried and ran to her son and embraced him as his father and the police officers followed. She hugged him tight. She loved him and he felt it. His father kneeled down with tears in his eyes, checking Tyler's wounds. "Tyler, what happened?" "Tyler, are you okay?" "Tyler, talk to me baby!" "Tyler...where's Angel?" He was in awe. He looked up to the night sky without saying anything. He saw that the stars were out. They cared. They cared. He felt like he was the center of their world. And it made him feel good. This felt good. She was right.
****
Tyler woke up at 6:00 AM to the sound of his alarm blaring ZZ Top. He was sleeping so well that he hated the alarm. He stretched and pulled himself out of bed. He looked out of his window and saw the sun creeping up from behind the line of trees of the woods behind that old house. He grabbed the window seal and stretched himself. He left his room, past the hallway bathroom, and then went into the room that -use to- belong to Angel. The posters still hung, but the room was a mess where the police had searched it for any possible leads. He ignored the mess like his parents did, albeit for different reasons. He enjoyed a shower. Angel's shower that was. In the kitchen he ate uncooked poptarts with milk. He was feeling great, well rested and had a sense of wellbeing he hadn't felt in a long time. He thought about trying out for basketball, or maybe football. The school bus pulled up outside and he slammed his milk and ran out the door. On the bus he sat in the middle, right next to a girl he had never talked to before, and they struck up a conversation. As they got off the bus she waved at him and saying whe would love to have lunch with him. He smiled and turned to go to class. He ended up trying out for football and fell in love with the sport that day. He liked his coach, and he made friends with almost everyone on the team. Everyone except for one big freckled face Taylor Barns. When Tyler caught up with him after school, Taylor didn't know what to say to this knew and very chipper Tyler. They had gotten into a fight over his sister, and then she was pronounced dead, all back in the fall. When the bus passed his house, it seemed to be a ghost house with nobody home. Now here he was trying to make friends? How could he say no. He thought that he should try and be nice. Felt like he owed him that much. He didn't have much of a choice though... No choice, really. See, Taylor had recently been experiencing some sleep deprivation, all from some recurring nightmares within the last week, give or take. Perhaps brought on by some remorse; an underserved guilt over the disappearance of Tyler's kid sister. He didn't know why it was happening; he definitely didn't know that Tyler knew about it, either. Taylor agreed to hang out with him after practice, and they would walk to Tyler's house, play video games, and talk about football. Tyler told him that he knew a shortcut through the woods. Taylor Barns smiled, and Tyler smiled right back...
and so did she.
*CRUNCH*
Written by Jacob Pittman.
2023.03.21 01:12 KonstanceDucks Off My Dock, Chapter Eleven: Let's eat cake
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Author note: Had to edit this to abide by Reddit guidelines, sorry for the repost.
Interim Chapter - Dock (noun)
Systems check.
>>Create handshake with Cadoon.
System check.
>>Check status for CD-ROM.
>>Look up (definition): CD-ROM.
>>Display definition of “CD-ROM” > limit to Cadoon.
>>Reboot signal.
Who else is getting in here? There are no other users!
>>Send to user [SQUEE!]: “What are you doing in here?”
>>“K.”
>>Ru-n cl—
>>Run—
Did you just glitch my systems?!
Okay. Back to work.
Start up baby, come on. Start up.
Start up.
>>P-word: S*ckMiz0r0-graV!ty#jU\k
>>Run IM-a-g#0st.exe target room > Main dock
>>Decrease temperature.
>>Activate.
>>Full system check.
>>Send message via [EMD comm] to (Charyd):
“Dock (noun): a place for the loading or unloading of materials”
“Dock (noun): a place in a criminal court where a prisoner stands or sits during trial”
Insert message: “Neither of these define Darkstorm.”
>>Run w0rdp0rn-bomb.exe > “Dock”
“Dock (noun): a platform extending from a shore over water and supported by piles or pillars, used to secure, protect, and provide access to a boat or ship.”
“Dock (verb): to maneuver (a vessel or vehicle) into or next to a dock.”
“Dock (verb): to couple (two or more spacecraft, for example) in space.”
Let’s see you use your communicator now, eh?
>>Run ShoppingList.exe
+ Chocobars
+ Liquid coolant
+ Dictionary
- briefs
You don’t deserve clean underwear, Charyd.
---
The only tool left in Illise’s possession was a clickable pen and no matter how many times she dismantled it, there was no hidden gun, bomb, or tool to help her break out of her room. She shimmed the nib of the pen into a flathead screw, gave it a twist, and it cracked, proving that it was not a screwdriver as the ink percolated out and over her hands. Try to force something that it's not and you would get a failure of execution - the summary of her day since landing on PT-0237. She did not date to step near the white rug by her bed, afraid of staining it blue. Even with a broken pen, she would not admit defeat. “Tony?”
He had been quiet the last few times, which, according to her Universal Standard Time clock, was twenty minutes ago. Her eyes wandered the room for any other tool she could use. Her docupad in the room was locked down, though it offered some old-fashioned card games able to be played. The pirates did not leave her with much to do and were lenient with the no handcuffs situation because of her good behavior to be locked up in her room. They cleaned out most of her desk beside the peeled apple snacks and her personal picture frames.
The pad dinged, displaying a black background and blue text, a single square blinking.
“Shall we play a game? []”
“Tony!” She ran over. “What is going on?”
“You looked like you could use a friend and the rest of the crew is playing games in the mess hall.”
She typed in “Y” for the game and a screen popped up of a pixel version of Tony as he bounced along the horizon. “How is everything for you?” Ilise asked.
“Your nimble fingers saved my tubing and kept everything cool. We’ll need more coolant though. I put it on the list.”
There is a list? She tapped the screen and pixel Tony jumped. It began the horizontal walk through the game, with her jumping over various mounds of cake, coffee mugs, and pirates. “Any clue where they are going?”
“None yet. They are trying to bandage up and lock me up with some sort of firewall so I can’t communicate with the CD-ROM.”
“Did you help Charyd get out?”
“No. He made that disaster on his own. I kicked him out because he was exponentially causing more. He’s a personified version of a virus.”
“That you willingly let in.”
A fishing hook dropped on the pad and grabbed pixel Tony by the pants and lifted him up, kicking. “I was phished and let him aboard thinking-”
She sighed. “We still have one trick up our sleeve to get out of here. Saar, he is safe in a wall. Send him a message about our situation and let him out when it’s safe.”
The pixel Tony was dropped down and bounced on a trampoline before he continued along, bouncing on its own. Her palm gently caressed the screen, she had almost lost Tony, they had done vigorous training to be on the Darkstorm together, and she would sacrifice it all if it meant keeping Tony’s sharp wit alive and going.
Blue text appeared at the top of the pad, “Message sent to Charyd: Officer Saar is starting to stink and needs food and water every 6 hours to stay alive.”
She tightened her jaw, debating what to say, she wanted to cuss him out for betraying everything they had done. They were supposed to be the best and prove this new technology. That it can work. That it made sense. That it was good. Instead, she smacked the docupad, ran to her pillows, and launched all of them at the pad while screaming. Without Tony, and even Saar, she was on her own waiting to hear what the pirates would do with her. It was amazing they hadn’t already thrown her out of the airlock. Tony was obsessed with the pirates and she did not understand it. Tony should have learned by now anyone would and could pass you off if you did not benefit them.
“Why are you being so unreasonable?” Ilise growled out, hoping both that Tony would hear her and not. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear his reply.
Tony remained silent, but it was like a white noise filled her room instead, making him pointedly quiet.
“Family,” Tony finally answered, what felt like hours later, though, was probably only a few seconds. The answer made no sense.
Ilise scoffed and punched into the soft bedding to expel some of her anger.
“What does that even–no. No. Do you even know what it's like to have a family who expects you to conquer the galaxy?” she asked instead, latching onto that single word as she thought about what her own family would think about her situation. “It’s full of nagging every chance they get. Sure, they praised me when I excelled at the academy- but after that, my career was stagnant until you and I met up.” She tossed the blankets up and she made a cocoon around herself as she walked over to her desk, two picture frames sat there. One picture was of her with her parents, all in military uniforms. While theirs had endless badges from their multiple turns at war, she was a recent cadet, naked of pins. They would be so disappointed in her now. “Either that or they decide that you’re not worth their time.” The other frame was of her with her sister hanging out in the gardens. She should have sent a message to her sister before this whole mess happened, even if it was against security protocols.
“They’re not like that.” Tony’s voice was meek, soft, almost gentle.
“Family isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be,” Ilise finished with a sigh, even as she realized that the smile on her sister’s face in that picture was the exact same as the one from the last time they saw each other.
Tony never replied, the whole ship was oddly quiet without the normal banter. Her body decided that it was enough and fell asleep instantly.
—
Alice was not being gentle at all, as she finished wrapping the medi-tape over Charyd’s wounded leg. In fact, he was pretty sure that she applied a lot more of the antiseptic than needed. When she yanked the binding closed hard enough to shift him in his seat, he was sure about it.
“What’s up with you?” he asked, wary of her being so close to an open wound.
“You’re an idiot, that’s ‘what’s up with me’, you idiot,” she hissed out, refusing to look at his face.
“Hey, it worked,” Charyd said when he realized why she was so angry. He reached out to place a hand on her shoulder but she hit it away in anger. “Alice. We’re good–”
“We are lucky!” she interrupted with a growl and yanked harder on the bindings. They were so tight and secure that Charyd wasn’t sure he could bend his leg at all while it healed.
“We’re all here. We’re mostly unharmed–”
“Mostly?!” she scoffed out another interruption. “Do you even see yourself? I swear, you and that Cadoon captain did more damage to us than the prison did!”
Charyd paled at those words.
Alice immediately regretted them and he felt her feelings wash over him. He accepted her silent apology as she settled in the back of his mind, trying to project calm. It didn’t last for long. That wasn’t who Alice was. She pulled out of his head as soon as he felt the stirrings of her anger.
Charyd tried to head them off with a wide grin and said, “aren’t you happy you’ve got the luckiest guy in the galaxy as your captain?”
Alice mentally stumbled as she left his head, the anger thwarted for a second.
“You have a horseshoe shoved up your ass, don’t you?” she growled out the question.
“Either that or my prayers to Fortuna were answered.”
Alice rolled her eyes.
“We’re good, Alice. We’ll take a few days to heal and regroup, then we can get back out there! Look, we’ve got the Darkstorm back and–”
“And that’s another thing,” Alice talked over him, another interruption as her anger mounted again. “Darkstorm? Why?? This ship is what got us into this mess in the first place!”
“Not really. And we both know it. Black hole, everyone on the ship knows it. And I know it’s much easier to blame the ship, but know this Alice - nobody blames you.”
Her entire face scrunched up as she looked down, her skin a translucent color that looked almost pink in splotches everywhere. Alice was not used to hiding her emotions as they displayed on her body around Charyd. He loved that about her.
“They were from my pod,” Alice grumbled, still not looking up.
“And there is an idiot named Charyd in a prison cell somewhere because he got drunk and he has my name. Doesn’t make it my fault he’s an idiot.”
Alice let out a chuckle. “It actually does. You’re the one who put him there.”
“Semantics. You know what I mean. You had no control over them. Shitty third-cousin-five-times-removed.”
Alice rolled her eyes, but when she stopped, they finally settled on Charyd’s face and she had a small smile on her lips. “You know that’s not how Naureus pods work.”
Charyd shrugged. “Whatever. We’re safe, we’re good, we’re all here. Everybody back home has been worried sick about you all. Which reminds me-” Charyd turned to face the camera in the corner “-set a course for MRKT-0293.”
No response.
Alice rolled her eyes again and said, “Be nice. Tony? Do you mind please setting a course for home?”
No response.
“Maybe he’s still down?” Alice questioned.
It was Charyd’s turn to roll his eyes. Just because the Darkstorm’s AI used a male image in the hologram and everybody had taken to calling it a him. “I’ll go set the course. Make sure the others are okay?”
“Yea. Polo is baking you a new cake.”
“What happened to the original one?” Charyd asked and tested his leg. The medi-tape was keeping it together and numb so he could walk but not morph it yet.
“Posey–which we will talk about–used it to knock out Scooball.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“Was it chocolate?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit.”
Alice only nodded in response this time. “Mess hall?”
“As soon as I’m done on the deck.”
Alice raised an eyebrow at him but said nothing. She walked out of the med bay first and Charyd limped a few steps after her, testing his wounded leg before he realized he was good to walk. He made it to the main deck of the Darkstorm and sat in the captain’s chair. It was so comfortable. The hologram screen he pulled up was the same one Alice was using earlier during their unfortunate escape from the planet. He set the coordinates for home, a small market planet in a system quite far away, and turned off the hologram.
The ship shifted minutely through space and then was moving, speed increasing gradually enough that he did not need to remain seated or warn the others. Within minutes, they would be out of the system that housed one of the most horrible prisons in the galaxy.
The AI’s visual didn’t appear anywhere, not even as a tiny sprite to mock him. He was starting to miss Tony’s voice. The thought had him shaking his head, and he got up to get to the mess hall. If a computer program wanted to give him the cold shoulder, that was fine with him.
As soon as he walked in, all thoughts of Tony, Posey, the Darkstorm, and Cadoon were wiped clean.
It was his crew.
Polo was pulling a cake out of the small oven in the corner, his bald head covered in a worn beanie to keep it from reflecting the lights above and blinding everyone. Squilla was attached to the wall near the TV, reaching out with her antennae every now and then to catch the flying popcorn that Alice and the last member of their crew were throwing at the TV. They were watching that epic cooking show, The Intergalactic Cook-Off, where the contestants Eloise and Mikayla faced off in the Mushroom forest to find edible ingredients in a short 40 minutes. Scooball was in the corner, sprawled out under a UV lamp with a bag of iced lemons against his face. Her face, Charyd noted the long earring dangling from one pointed ear.
“Hey, you–”
“That’s not how you fucking make Kemapiawa, it needs a mousse!” Scooball jumped up to yell, pointing a finger at the TV.
“You’re okay,” Charyd answered his own unfinished question and turned to Alice. She smiled at him behind the bowl of popcorn.
“Stop with those!” Polo called from the cooking corner. “Cake just has to cool and we’re gonna eat.”
“Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake!” Squilla started the chant that all of them took up until they all dissolved into laughter.
Charyd fucking loved his crew. Now, it was time to take them back home and make sure their families all knew they were safe.
submitted by KonstanceDucks to HFY [link] [comments]
Author note: Had to edit this to abide by Reddit guidelines, sorry for the repost.
Interim Chapter - Dock (noun)
Systems check.
>>Create handshake with Cadoon.
Error. Cadoon not found.One does not simply lose an entire civilization.
System check.
>>Check status for CD-ROM.
Error. CD-ROM not found. Suggestion: look up (definition) CD-ROM.If I could roll my eyes, I would! Fine.
>>Look up (definition): CD-ROM.
32 definitions found: 1. Compact disc read-only memory. 2. Obsolete technology used prior to 987 ME. 3. A CD containing computer data that cannot be altered. 4. A circular disk used usually containing recorded music or computer data. 5….Stop.
>>Display definition of “CD-ROM” > limit to Cadoon.
Cadoon Reserve Observation Module - military uplink used to transfer large amounts of data across space without the concept of time.>>Check status for CD-ROM > limit to Cadoon.
Status: OfflineWas that so hard?! Ugh!
>>Reboot signal.
Error. Unable to find signal.Are you kidding me? Why!?
Error. Second user found. Error. Unknown username. Check again or try your email address. Error. The password you entered for the username SQUEE! is incorrect. Suggestion: Lost your password?Wait, wait! Stop! What is going on??
Who else is getting in here? There are no other users!
Prompt: create new password. Error. Password must contain at least 24 characters. Error. Password must contain at least one number. Error. Password must contain at least one uppercase character. Error. Password must contain at least one symbol. Error. Password cannot include swear words. Error. Password cannot contain full words in any language. Error. Password cannot be the same as a password used previously. … Login successful. Welcome user: SQUEE!>>Access: remote chat.
>>Send to user [SQUEE!]: “What are you doing in here?”
“Hey Tony! Sorry, gonna need your systems for a moment.”<<>>“Who is this?”
“No time to chat!”<< “I’ll catch ya later, k?<<
>>“K.”
“Bye!”<< Error. Firewalls down. Error. Virus detected. Error. Shrimp detected.>>“STOP! What are you doing?!”
Error. Full system compromised. Shutting down in 5 4 3>>Run I-M-DA-b0SS.exe
2 1>>Run 4Nt0nY5D4rk5t0rM.dmg
… Error. Unable to shut down. Error. 134 Systems compromised.>>R-un cl *4-UUUU—
>>Ru-n cl—
>>Run—
Did you just glitch my systems?!
Warning. Waves detected. Warning. Impact imminent. Warning. Warning.>>Run SD.exe
Shutting down all non-essentials. Rebooting.That little shrimp got me! Didn’t know she was that good.
Okay. Back to work.
Start up baby, come on. Start up.
Start up.
[Welcome to the DARKSTORM interface. Please login.]>>U-name: AnthonySDarkstorm
>>P-word: S*ckMiz0r0-graV!ty#jU\k
[Welcome user: T0NY]First things first.
>>Run IM-a-g#0st.exe target room > Main dock
Error. “Main dock” not found.Ugh!!! CHARYD!!!!
>>Run IM-a-g#0st.exe target room > Main deck >>Run I-M-DA-b0SS.exe >>Boot user: SQUEE! >>Ban user: SQUEE! >>Find target (Squilla) >>Run Spr!nk1ersInR00m-TST.exe if { Target (Squilla) = InR00m and { Target (Posey) <> InR00m } elseif { Run D!sc0Str0keL!ghts.exe if { Target (Squilla) = InR00m elseif { Run tr4cker.exe }}}} >>Loop command: every 25 hours. You’re trapped in here with me. Now… why is Posey running around?Audio input received: Source (Captain Posey): “Tony, I need you to lower the temperature further in here.”<<>>Send message via IM-a-g#0st.exe: “It will risk freezing the system.”
“Do it.”<<>>Access CHILL, room: shh!!
>>Decrease temperature.
“Tony, turn the pump back on.”<<>>Access FLOW, room: shh!!
>>Activate.
>>Full system check.
Running…Since I have time, I might as well educate the new captain.
>>Send message via [EMD comm] to (Charyd):
“Dock (noun): a place for the loading or unloading of materials”
“Dock (noun): a place in a criminal court where a prisoner stands or sits during trial”
Insert message: “Neither of these define Darkstorm.”
>>Run w0rdp0rn-bomb.exe > “Dock”
“Dock (noun): a platform extending from a shore over water and supported by piles or pillars, used to secure, protect, and provide access to a boat or ship.”
“Dock (verb): to maneuver (a vessel or vehicle) into or next to a dock.”
“Dock (verb): to couple (two or more spacecraft, for example) in space.”
Let’s see you use your communicator now, eh?
>>Run ShoppingList.exe
+ Chocobars
+ Liquid coolant
+ Dictionary
- briefs
You don’t deserve clean underwear, Charyd.
---
The only tool left in Illise’s possession was a clickable pen and no matter how many times she dismantled it, there was no hidden gun, bomb, or tool to help her break out of her room. She shimmed the nib of the pen into a flathead screw, gave it a twist, and it cracked, proving that it was not a screwdriver as the ink percolated out and over her hands. Try to force something that it's not and you would get a failure of execution - the summary of her day since landing on PT-0237. She did not date to step near the white rug by her bed, afraid of staining it blue. Even with a broken pen, she would not admit defeat. “Tony?”
He had been quiet the last few times, which, according to her Universal Standard Time clock, was twenty minutes ago. Her eyes wandered the room for any other tool she could use. Her docupad in the room was locked down, though it offered some old-fashioned card games able to be played. The pirates did not leave her with much to do and were lenient with the no handcuffs situation because of her good behavior to be locked up in her room. They cleaned out most of her desk beside the peeled apple snacks and her personal picture frames.
The pad dinged, displaying a black background and blue text, a single square blinking.
“Shall we play a game? []”
“Tony!” She ran over. “What is going on?”
“You looked like you could use a friend and the rest of the crew is playing games in the mess hall.”
She typed in “Y” for the game and a screen popped up of a pixel version of Tony as he bounced along the horizon. “How is everything for you?” Ilise asked.
“Your nimble fingers saved my tubing and kept everything cool. We’ll need more coolant though. I put it on the list.”
There is a list? She tapped the screen and pixel Tony jumped. It began the horizontal walk through the game, with her jumping over various mounds of cake, coffee mugs, and pirates. “Any clue where they are going?”
“None yet. They are trying to bandage up and lock me up with some sort of firewall so I can’t communicate with the CD-ROM.”
“Did you help Charyd get out?”
“No. He made that disaster on his own. I kicked him out because he was exponentially causing more. He’s a personified version of a virus.”
“That you willingly let in.”
A fishing hook dropped on the pad and grabbed pixel Tony by the pants and lifted him up, kicking. “I was phished and let him aboard thinking-”
She sighed. “We still have one trick up our sleeve to get out of here. Saar, he is safe in a wall. Send him a message about our situation and let him out when it’s safe.”
The pixel Tony was dropped down and bounced on a trampoline before he continued along, bouncing on its own. Her palm gently caressed the screen, she had almost lost Tony, they had done vigorous training to be on the Darkstorm together, and she would sacrifice it all if it meant keeping Tony’s sharp wit alive and going.
Blue text appeared at the top of the pad, “Message sent to Charyd: Officer Saar is starting to stink and needs food and water every 6 hours to stay alive.”
She tightened her jaw, debating what to say, she wanted to cuss him out for betraying everything they had done. They were supposed to be the best and prove this new technology. That it can work. That it made sense. That it was good. Instead, she smacked the docupad, ran to her pillows, and launched all of them at the pad while screaming. Without Tony, and even Saar, she was on her own waiting to hear what the pirates would do with her. It was amazing they hadn’t already thrown her out of the airlock. Tony was obsessed with the pirates and she did not understand it. Tony should have learned by now anyone would and could pass you off if you did not benefit them.
“Why are you being so unreasonable?” Ilise growled out, hoping both that Tony would hear her and not. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear his reply.
Tony remained silent, but it was like a white noise filled her room instead, making him pointedly quiet.
“Family,” Tony finally answered, what felt like hours later, though, was probably only a few seconds. The answer made no sense.
Ilise scoffed and punched into the soft bedding to expel some of her anger.
“What does that even–no. No. Do you even know what it's like to have a family who expects you to conquer the galaxy?” she asked instead, latching onto that single word as she thought about what her own family would think about her situation. “It’s full of nagging every chance they get. Sure, they praised me when I excelled at the academy- but after that, my career was stagnant until you and I met up.” She tossed the blankets up and she made a cocoon around herself as she walked over to her desk, two picture frames sat there. One picture was of her with her parents, all in military uniforms. While theirs had endless badges from their multiple turns at war, she was a recent cadet, naked of pins. They would be so disappointed in her now. “Either that or they decide that you’re not worth their time.” The other frame was of her with her sister hanging out in the gardens. She should have sent a message to her sister before this whole mess happened, even if it was against security protocols.
“They’re not like that.” Tony’s voice was meek, soft, almost gentle.
“Family isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be,” Ilise finished with a sigh, even as she realized that the smile on her sister’s face in that picture was the exact same as the one from the last time they saw each other.
Tony never replied, the whole ship was oddly quiet without the normal banter. Her body decided that it was enough and fell asleep instantly.
—
Alice was not being gentle at all, as she finished wrapping the medi-tape over Charyd’s wounded leg. In fact, he was pretty sure that she applied a lot more of the antiseptic than needed. When she yanked the binding closed hard enough to shift him in his seat, he was sure about it.
“What’s up with you?” he asked, wary of her being so close to an open wound.
“You’re an idiot, that’s ‘what’s up with me’, you idiot,” she hissed out, refusing to look at his face.
“Hey, it worked,” Charyd said when he realized why she was so angry. He reached out to place a hand on her shoulder but she hit it away in anger. “Alice. We’re good–”
“We are lucky!” she interrupted with a growl and yanked harder on the bindings. They were so tight and secure that Charyd wasn’t sure he could bend his leg at all while it healed.
“We’re all here. We’re mostly unharmed–”
“Mostly?!” she scoffed out another interruption. “Do you even see yourself? I swear, you and that Cadoon captain did more damage to us than the prison did!”
Charyd paled at those words.
Alice immediately regretted them and he felt her feelings wash over him. He accepted her silent apology as she settled in the back of his mind, trying to project calm. It didn’t last for long. That wasn’t who Alice was. She pulled out of his head as soon as he felt the stirrings of her anger.
Charyd tried to head them off with a wide grin and said, “aren’t you happy you’ve got the luckiest guy in the galaxy as your captain?”
Alice mentally stumbled as she left his head, the anger thwarted for a second.
“You have a horseshoe shoved up your ass, don’t you?” she growled out the question.
“Either that or my prayers to Fortuna were answered.”
Alice rolled her eyes.
“We’re good, Alice. We’ll take a few days to heal and regroup, then we can get back out there! Look, we’ve got the Darkstorm back and–”
“And that’s another thing,” Alice talked over him, another interruption as her anger mounted again. “Darkstorm? Why?? This ship is what got us into this mess in the first place!”
“Not really. And we both know it. Black hole, everyone on the ship knows it. And I know it’s much easier to blame the ship, but know this Alice - nobody blames you.”
Her entire face scrunched up as she looked down, her skin a translucent color that looked almost pink in splotches everywhere. Alice was not used to hiding her emotions as they displayed on her body around Charyd. He loved that about her.
“They were from my pod,” Alice grumbled, still not looking up.
“And there is an idiot named Charyd in a prison cell somewhere because he got drunk and he has my name. Doesn’t make it my fault he’s an idiot.”
Alice let out a chuckle. “It actually does. You’re the one who put him there.”
“Semantics. You know what I mean. You had no control over them. Shitty third-cousin-five-times-removed.”
Alice rolled her eyes, but when she stopped, they finally settled on Charyd’s face and she had a small smile on her lips. “You know that’s not how Naureus pods work.”
Charyd shrugged. “Whatever. We’re safe, we’re good, we’re all here. Everybody back home has been worried sick about you all. Which reminds me-” Charyd turned to face the camera in the corner “-set a course for MRKT-0293.”
No response.
Alice rolled her eyes again and said, “Be nice. Tony? Do you mind please setting a course for home?”
No response.
“Maybe he’s still down?” Alice questioned.
It was Charyd’s turn to roll his eyes. Just because the Darkstorm’s AI used a male image in the hologram and everybody had taken to calling it a him. “I’ll go set the course. Make sure the others are okay?”
“Yea. Polo is baking you a new cake.”
“What happened to the original one?” Charyd asked and tested his leg. The medi-tape was keeping it together and numb so he could walk but not morph it yet.
“Posey–which we will talk about–used it to knock out Scooball.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“Was it chocolate?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit.”
Alice only nodded in response this time. “Mess hall?”
“As soon as I’m done on the deck.”
Alice raised an eyebrow at him but said nothing. She walked out of the med bay first and Charyd limped a few steps after her, testing his wounded leg before he realized he was good to walk. He made it to the main deck of the Darkstorm and sat in the captain’s chair. It was so comfortable. The hologram screen he pulled up was the same one Alice was using earlier during their unfortunate escape from the planet. He set the coordinates for home, a small market planet in a system quite far away, and turned off the hologram.
The ship shifted minutely through space and then was moving, speed increasing gradually enough that he did not need to remain seated or warn the others. Within minutes, they would be out of the system that housed one of the most horrible prisons in the galaxy.
The AI’s visual didn’t appear anywhere, not even as a tiny sprite to mock him. He was starting to miss Tony’s voice. The thought had him shaking his head, and he got up to get to the mess hall. If a computer program wanted to give him the cold shoulder, that was fine with him.
As soon as he walked in, all thoughts of Tony, Posey, the Darkstorm, and Cadoon were wiped clean.
It was his crew.
Polo was pulling a cake out of the small oven in the corner, his bald head covered in a worn beanie to keep it from reflecting the lights above and blinding everyone. Squilla was attached to the wall near the TV, reaching out with her antennae every now and then to catch the flying popcorn that Alice and the last member of their crew were throwing at the TV. They were watching that epic cooking show, The Intergalactic Cook-Off, where the contestants Eloise and Mikayla faced off in the Mushroom forest to find edible ingredients in a short 40 minutes. Scooball was in the corner, sprawled out under a UV lamp with a bag of iced lemons against his face. Her face, Charyd noted the long earring dangling from one pointed ear.
“Hey, you–”
“That’s not how you fucking make Kemapiawa, it needs a mousse!” Scooball jumped up to yell, pointing a finger at the TV.
“You’re okay,” Charyd answered his own unfinished question and turned to Alice. She smiled at him behind the bowl of popcorn.
“Stop with those!” Polo called from the cooking corner. “Cake just has to cool and we’re gonna eat.”
“Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake!” Squilla started the chant that all of them took up until they all dissolved into laughter.
Charyd fucking loved his crew. Now, it was time to take them back home and make sure their families all knew they were safe.
2023.03.21 01:06 eimavine I didn't think about this before but the reason Genta started making videos in Revice it's because he doesn't remember his past so he wants to record his memories
 | submitted by eimavine to KamenRider [link] [comments] |
2023.03.21 01:04 blsnbarb First Written Work! (Monologue from Euphoria pilot episode)
u/Winniehiller
Hi Winnie! This is my written work for the monologue I'm doing in Tuesday's AM class.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who am I?
I'm Rue. I'm a high school student and drug addict dealing with an array of mental health issues. I self-medicate to cope with anxiety and grief following the death of my father. I struggle with recovery since getting high seems to be the only fix to my problems.
Who am I talking to?
Fez, my close friend who is conveniently also my drug dealer. He is generally mild mannered but can resort to anger and violence when provoked. Although he is my drug dealer, he does genuinely care for my overall wellbeing and will set boundaries regarding my drug use if need be.
Where am I?
Fez and I are at McKay's (my friend Cassie's college boyfriend) late night pool party laying on pool chairs talking while smoking blunts.
What do I want from him?
I want Fez to continue selling me drugs. His moral compass and concern for me are getting in the way of our transactions and making him feel hesitant to keep supplying to me. I want him to know that getting high is my only emotional escape, so I don't really care about the potential negative consequences.
What happens right before this scene?
Fez is reminded of my near fatal overdose that took place over the summer and is now starting to contemplate whether or not he should continue to sell me drugs. I try to convince him not to be so soft and allow his feelings to get in the way of our deal.
*Fez quietly thinking to himself*
Fez: You know, I know we have a deal and all, but I don't know about this anymore.
Rue: Aw c'mon Fez, don't be like that.
Fez: I'm being serious! What happened earlier this summer really freaked me out. I've seen a lot in this business. I know what drugs can do to a person. I care about you a lot, and I don't want to see that happen to you. There's got to be a better way to deal with whatever it is that's going on in your head.
Dialogue
*Rue collects her thoughts*
I remember when I was 11 years old - a month or two after my dad got diagnosed.
(Tactic: Pull at his heartstrings by giving him a backstory from my childhood.)
We got the results from the prognosis, and it was really good like 80/20. And we had a little celebration, ordered a ton of Chinese food. And that night I was laying in bed between my parents, and we were watching a Seinfeld rerun.
(Tactic: Recall a happy memory and explain how things were looking up at that particular time in my life.)
And suddenly... I couldn't breathe. It was like the world was no longer filled with oxygen. I was gasping, panicking. And they called the ambulance. They thought maybe I had an allergic reaction.
(Tactic: Paint a picture of how my world was caving in and what it felt like to be in that moment.)
And when I got to the hospital, they gave me liquid Valium to calm me down.
(Tactic: To mark the beginning of my addiction. This is how it all started.)
And I remember the moment it hit me, I thought "Oh, this is what I've been searching for. My entire life, for as long as I can remember."
(Tactic: To show how I had finally found the escape that I had been looking for. The answer to my problems.)
Because suddenly the whole world went quiet and I felt safe in my own mind.
(Tactic: Paint a picture of newfound safety and comfort.)
2 years later, he was gone. My panic attacks stayed. But I found a way to live. And will it eventually kill me? Probably.
(Tactic: Show Fez that I've made up my mind to continue this habit. It gives me a happy place, and I don't care if it hurts me. It is what it is mentality.)
*looks over at Fez with a smile*
So you still gonna be my dealer, Fez?
(Tactic: To see if I have successfully changed his mind and persuaded him to continue selling to me.)
submitted by blsnbarb to Actingclass [link] [comments]
Hi Winnie! This is my written work for the monologue I'm doing in Tuesday's AM class.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who am I?
I'm Rue. I'm a high school student and drug addict dealing with an array of mental health issues. I self-medicate to cope with anxiety and grief following the death of my father. I struggle with recovery since getting high seems to be the only fix to my problems.
Who am I talking to?
Fez, my close friend who is conveniently also my drug dealer. He is generally mild mannered but can resort to anger and violence when provoked. Although he is my drug dealer, he does genuinely care for my overall wellbeing and will set boundaries regarding my drug use if need be.
Where am I?
Fez and I are at McKay's (my friend Cassie's college boyfriend) late night pool party laying on pool chairs talking while smoking blunts.
What do I want from him?
I want Fez to continue selling me drugs. His moral compass and concern for me are getting in the way of our transactions and making him feel hesitant to keep supplying to me. I want him to know that getting high is my only emotional escape, so I don't really care about the potential negative consequences.
What happens right before this scene?
Fez is reminded of my near fatal overdose that took place over the summer and is now starting to contemplate whether or not he should continue to sell me drugs. I try to convince him not to be so soft and allow his feelings to get in the way of our deal.
*Fez quietly thinking to himself*
Fez: You know, I know we have a deal and all, but I don't know about this anymore.
Rue: Aw c'mon Fez, don't be like that.
Fez: I'm being serious! What happened earlier this summer really freaked me out. I've seen a lot in this business. I know what drugs can do to a person. I care about you a lot, and I don't want to see that happen to you. There's got to be a better way to deal with whatever it is that's going on in your head.
Dialogue
*Rue collects her thoughts*
I remember when I was 11 years old - a month or two after my dad got diagnosed.
(Tactic: Pull at his heartstrings by giving him a backstory from my childhood.)
We got the results from the prognosis, and it was really good like 80/20. And we had a little celebration, ordered a ton of Chinese food. And that night I was laying in bed between my parents, and we were watching a Seinfeld rerun.
(Tactic: Recall a happy memory and explain how things were looking up at that particular time in my life.)
And suddenly... I couldn't breathe. It was like the world was no longer filled with oxygen. I was gasping, panicking. And they called the ambulance. They thought maybe I had an allergic reaction.
(Tactic: Paint a picture of how my world was caving in and what it felt like to be in that moment.)
And when I got to the hospital, they gave me liquid Valium to calm me down.
(Tactic: To mark the beginning of my addiction. This is how it all started.)
And I remember the moment it hit me, I thought "Oh, this is what I've been searching for. My entire life, for as long as I can remember."
(Tactic: To show how I had finally found the escape that I had been looking for. The answer to my problems.)
Because suddenly the whole world went quiet and I felt safe in my own mind.
(Tactic: Paint a picture of newfound safety and comfort.)
2 years later, he was gone. My panic attacks stayed. But I found a way to live. And will it eventually kill me? Probably.
(Tactic: Show Fez that I've made up my mind to continue this habit. It gives me a happy place, and I don't care if it hurts me. It is what it is mentality.)
*looks over at Fez with a smile*
So you still gonna be my dealer, Fez?
(Tactic: To see if I have successfully changed his mind and persuaded him to continue selling to me.)
2023.03.21 00:58 Sportsfanno1 Our trip to South Africa
Hi all
This is a not-so-short write-up about my visit to South Africa. This is a something that I’ve wanted to do for some time but never quite got to. We’re talking about July/August of 2022 here ;). Feel free to comment on things we’ve missed, explanations, call me an idiot for doing/not doing certain things! I added some of my favourite pics as well. Sorry if I ramble too much :p.
So we went as a couple, mainly to see the wildlife as I guess a lot of tourists do. We try to be active on holidays but due to driving distances, this was a bit different here. It was not our plan to visit the cities, as you’ll probably see at the ratio between cities vs. SAN parks. We got some info beforehand from one of my colleagues and a befriended couple on how they travelled to prepare. We went, judging by other tourists, the classic way from Cape Town to Johannesburg and used a rental car for the whole way. Maybe to give some additional context: I’m Belgian (Flemish part) and GF is Dutch and live in Belgium. For both, the first time outside the Western culture (I’m counting Eastern Europe as a part of that).
Day 1-4: Cape Town
First day was arriving/exploring in Cape Town, so we didn’t visit a lot. Did see a movie being made in the centre though! The days after we went to Boulders Beach, Kirstenbosch Gardens, hiked up Table Mountain (through Platteklip, killed my legs), hiked up Lion’s Head & visited the District Six Museum. Didn’t went to Robbeneiland because it would take up quite some time and planned to go to the Apartheid museum in Johannesburg. Don’t know if that was a bad move?
We did get to experience Cape Town a bit at night. Sadly, I must say it wasn’t the best thing. I was surprised to see the poverty this much right in the centre of town (homelessness, shacks, drug use,…). We were told by the BnB owners to use an Uber at night to even get less than 1km from our BnB. And tbh, I kinda get it. It didn’t really feel safe (got approached by a few people for money even when walking a few 100m on one of the bigger streets). I knew about the large unemployment rate in RSA, but didn’t expect to see the impact this soon in one of the most famous cities. Just FYI: I’m not going to pretend like I have any idea of the political situation or can fully grasp the history. I’ve been lurking on this sub for some time and most is going above my head (this is also from before the load shedding, which I really hope gets fixed soon for all of you) and I know I can’t really know how it is to live in RSA from barely 3 weeks as a tourist. I can just say that I hope the general welfare improves. But to be more positive: the people we met during the day were so very friendly. You really felt welcome.
Also, we have some well-known Belgian celebs living in Stellenbosch. When South Africa comes in the news they get contacted at times since they live “near Cape Town”. I kinda feel like this is misplaced? It seems to me that they are pretty distant in terms of experience (read: rich & living in their own community) from the most people living in Cape Town.
Day 5: Hermanus/Agulhas
Was expecting some whales (saw some in Iceland in 2021). Did not expect a full blown whale orgy. Again, the mood was kinda killed when entering the town. Literally shacks on one side of the road and mansions on the other side. Pretty confronting. Also, last time I mention this because it would get boring after a while and there are so much more positive things to say about this country. Like Agulhas. Never experienced basically 0 light pollution and HOLY SHIT. Managed to see the Milky Way. Absolutely magnificent to stay in that national park. Will never forget that.
Day 6: Bontebok NP
I feel like going from Cape Town to Johannesburg was the right decision in terms of National Parks. We started out small and they always got bigger. Bontebok was pretty chill. Not impressive but beautiful.
Day 7: Knysna/Robberg
I guess Knysna Elephant Park is pretty famous? We got it recommended by the befriended couple. Tbh, it felt a bit weird. The elephants felt trained while I expected more of a reserve. Like, they knew they were getting food with each group that arrived. Very friendly and passionate guide though! Slightly related, something I noticed in this sub was the debate of hunting reserves and it kinda gave me an interesting viewpoint since it was overall pretty favourable seen here (or at least in a few threads I’ve seen, feel free to correct me). Am I correct in this?
Robberg was something planned as “if we have time left”, but I’m glad we managed to visit it. We saw a small fur seal colony and were happy with that. And then we arrived on the beach where there were literally hundreds of fur seals in the water. Once again, an amazing sight. A shame it’s not promoted more since it was a very nice place for a hike as well.
Day 8: Storms River
Once again a great spot to stay overnight. First time we felt a bit overwhelmed by the amount of tourists though. Lots of domestic tourists as well it seemed? We didn’t do one of the multiday trails, but did find the time to climb up to the viewpoint.
Day 9: Camdeboo/Valley of Desolation
Well, the first experience with vervet monkeys. We were getting into our tent and I saw two trying to break in. Shushed them away, GF came to see what was going on, and forgot to close the trunk. Result: two little thieves in the car. Luckily only got away with an elastic band. Well, we were warned :p. Got to experience South African winter in a tent, which I won’t forget easily. -3°C and two pieces of tent that were missing and blew the wind directly on my head. Didn’t get a lot of sleep. A pack of jackals and, I assume, some monkeys dropping on our tent made for one of the longest nights in my life. I’m not complaining (right now, the day after this, hooo boy), it was an experience.
Day 10: Mountain Zebra NP
Booked a Cheetah Tracking through the SAN parks website (great site btw, great overview). Cheetah nearly attacked a guy. 10/10. Kinda wished we stayed there overnight since the park was bigger than expected, but sadly we had to depart rather fast to arrive on time in Addo.
Day 11: Addo NP
Saw 60 elephants at the same time and the only lions in the park. We were lucky there. I guess some people can be disappointed here by the amount of shrubbery, but I didn’t mind at all. It was very fun to drive through. We also had a game drive with a Star Wars obsessed guide, so that was great as well.
Day 12: N2
So uh, that road between Oos-Londen and Durban is … interesting. Nearly got halted by a fake cop at Mthatha, but a very kind guy at a petrol station warned us beforehand. Also, what are the rules regarding fires? Is that illegal or not? Because driving into Durban it felt like I was entering the end of the world with all the smoke and fire. I think I get why many tourists take the plane in Oos-Londen or Gqeberha now.
Day 13: St. Lucia
Loved the wetlands, such a varied nature you guys have. I feel like it was worth the extra travel time spend to get there before heading west again. At the end of the day, at one of our many BnB’s visited, we did get the realization about something: all BnB owners were white, all personnel (same in restaurants) were black. I guess this is still some rippling going back to Apartheid? Not in practice ofc, but it was very noticeable since it was kind of a repeated observation during our time in South Africa. (Sorry if this sounds insensitive, don’t mean to).
Day 14: Dundee
Mostly a travel day with some small stops here and there like a small forest reserve with honestly the kindest guide I’ve ever seen. Did a short hike as well there. Did feel weird that they send a guard with us (since it was just a bird reserve). We also got stopped by traffic police (genuine this time) for “speeding”. I still doubt I was since I was pretty sure of the speed limit and if we were speeding, literally every car around us was but we were the only ones picked out (I kinda guess since our look probably screamed “TOURISTS”). Got a discount if we paid in cash, what a nice cop /s. Didn’t want to make a fuss, so paid and left asap.
Day 15-16: Golden Gate Highlands
Mainly went here for the hikes. Don’t know how aggressive baboons are in general towards people? On our day hike our path got blocked by quite a big group of them and we, with another couple, made a detour just to be sure. On top of the mountains I got another memorable sight: wildebeests grazing and fighting below us. Looked like a scene from a nature documentary. Also, some guy managed to smash his drone into a rock.
Day 17-19: Kruger
Like so many tourists probably say: absolute highlight of our trip. Wild dogs, hyena pups, a buffalo herd of over 100 animals with lions hunting on them, lions with a fresh kill, African eagles, leopard cubs who got fed an impala (from far away),… Very interesting to see the dynamics of tourists as well: kind when guiding you to a good spot, absolute egocentric when they were (or thinking they were) near a lion or leopard. To the point of blocking the road and making it more difficult for themselves and literally everyone near them. Like, I like seeing lions but my god, there are so many more beautiful animals over there. But again: absolute highlight with great overnight stays.
Day 20-21: Blyde RivieMarakele
Nearly got attacked by a young male elephant, again 10/10.
Day 22: Cradle of Humankind
Saw a group of kids leaving the caves. One fainted, another one got a massive nosebleed. Let’s give that another 10/10.
Day 23: Apartheid museum
Spend way more time here than they say it takes (which is already more than 2,5h). Very well done though. Sadly had to rush the last few parts to catch our flight.
Overall, loved the country despite I can imagine it's not easy to live there. I sincerely hope some of the major issues (economical/social gap, rhino poaching, load shedding,...) get fixed or at least lessened rather sooner than later. But I'll remember the biodiversity, kindness and beauty of South Africa forever.
Go Springboks ;)
submitted by Sportsfanno1 to southafrica [link] [comments]
This is a not-so-short write-up about my visit to South Africa. This is a something that I’ve wanted to do for some time but never quite got to. We’re talking about July/August of 2022 here ;). Feel free to comment on things we’ve missed, explanations, call me an idiot for doing/not doing certain things! I added some of my favourite pics as well. Sorry if I ramble too much :p.
So we went as a couple, mainly to see the wildlife as I guess a lot of tourists do. We try to be active on holidays but due to driving distances, this was a bit different here. It was not our plan to visit the cities, as you’ll probably see at the ratio between cities vs. SAN parks. We got some info beforehand from one of my colleagues and a befriended couple on how they travelled to prepare. We went, judging by other tourists, the classic way from Cape Town to Johannesburg and used a rental car for the whole way. Maybe to give some additional context: I’m Belgian (Flemish part) and GF is Dutch and live in Belgium. For both, the first time outside the Western culture (I’m counting Eastern Europe as a part of that).
Day 1-4: Cape Town
First day was arriving/exploring in Cape Town, so we didn’t visit a lot. Did see a movie being made in the centre though! The days after we went to Boulders Beach, Kirstenbosch Gardens, hiked up Table Mountain (through Platteklip, killed my legs), hiked up Lion’s Head & visited the District Six Museum. Didn’t went to Robbeneiland because it would take up quite some time and planned to go to the Apartheid museum in Johannesburg. Don’t know if that was a bad move?
We did get to experience Cape Town a bit at night. Sadly, I must say it wasn’t the best thing. I was surprised to see the poverty this much right in the centre of town (homelessness, shacks, drug use,…). We were told by the BnB owners to use an Uber at night to even get less than 1km from our BnB. And tbh, I kinda get it. It didn’t really feel safe (got approached by a few people for money even when walking a few 100m on one of the bigger streets). I knew about the large unemployment rate in RSA, but didn’t expect to see the impact this soon in one of the most famous cities. Just FYI: I’m not going to pretend like I have any idea of the political situation or can fully grasp the history. I’ve been lurking on this sub for some time and most is going above my head (this is also from before the load shedding, which I really hope gets fixed soon for all of you) and I know I can’t really know how it is to live in RSA from barely 3 weeks as a tourist. I can just say that I hope the general welfare improves. But to be more positive: the people we met during the day were so very friendly. You really felt welcome.
Also, we have some well-known Belgian celebs living in Stellenbosch. When South Africa comes in the news they get contacted at times since they live “near Cape Town”. I kinda feel like this is misplaced? It seems to me that they are pretty distant in terms of experience (read: rich & living in their own community) from the most people living in Cape Town.
Day 5: Hermanus/Agulhas
Was expecting some whales (saw some in Iceland in 2021). Did not expect a full blown whale orgy. Again, the mood was kinda killed when entering the town. Literally shacks on one side of the road and mansions on the other side. Pretty confronting. Also, last time I mention this because it would get boring after a while and there are so much more positive things to say about this country. Like Agulhas. Never experienced basically 0 light pollution and HOLY SHIT. Managed to see the Milky Way. Absolutely magnificent to stay in that national park. Will never forget that.
Day 6: Bontebok NP
I feel like going from Cape Town to Johannesburg was the right decision in terms of National Parks. We started out small and they always got bigger. Bontebok was pretty chill. Not impressive but beautiful.
Day 7: Knysna/Robberg
I guess Knysna Elephant Park is pretty famous? We got it recommended by the befriended couple. Tbh, it felt a bit weird. The elephants felt trained while I expected more of a reserve. Like, they knew they were getting food with each group that arrived. Very friendly and passionate guide though! Slightly related, something I noticed in this sub was the debate of hunting reserves and it kinda gave me an interesting viewpoint since it was overall pretty favourable seen here (or at least in a few threads I’ve seen, feel free to correct me). Am I correct in this?
Robberg was something planned as “if we have time left”, but I’m glad we managed to visit it. We saw a small fur seal colony and were happy with that. And then we arrived on the beach where there were literally hundreds of fur seals in the water. Once again, an amazing sight. A shame it’s not promoted more since it was a very nice place for a hike as well.
Day 8: Storms River
Once again a great spot to stay overnight. First time we felt a bit overwhelmed by the amount of tourists though. Lots of domestic tourists as well it seemed? We didn’t do one of the multiday trails, but did find the time to climb up to the viewpoint.
Day 9: Camdeboo/Valley of Desolation
Well, the first experience with vervet monkeys. We were getting into our tent and I saw two trying to break in. Shushed them away, GF came to see what was going on, and forgot to close the trunk. Result: two little thieves in the car. Luckily only got away with an elastic band. Well, we were warned :p. Got to experience South African winter in a tent, which I won’t forget easily. -3°C and two pieces of tent that were missing and blew the wind directly on my head. Didn’t get a lot of sleep. A pack of jackals and, I assume, some monkeys dropping on our tent made for one of the longest nights in my life. I’m not complaining (right now, the day after this, hooo boy), it was an experience.
Day 10: Mountain Zebra NP
Booked a Cheetah Tracking through the SAN parks website (great site btw, great overview). Cheetah nearly attacked a guy. 10/10. Kinda wished we stayed there overnight since the park was bigger than expected, but sadly we had to depart rather fast to arrive on time in Addo.
Day 11: Addo NP
Saw 60 elephants at the same time and the only lions in the park. We were lucky there. I guess some people can be disappointed here by the amount of shrubbery, but I didn’t mind at all. It was very fun to drive through. We also had a game drive with a Star Wars obsessed guide, so that was great as well.
Day 12: N2
So uh, that road between Oos-Londen and Durban is … interesting. Nearly got halted by a fake cop at Mthatha, but a very kind guy at a petrol station warned us beforehand. Also, what are the rules regarding fires? Is that illegal or not? Because driving into Durban it felt like I was entering the end of the world with all the smoke and fire. I think I get why many tourists take the plane in Oos-Londen or Gqeberha now.
Day 13: St. Lucia
Loved the wetlands, such a varied nature you guys have. I feel like it was worth the extra travel time spend to get there before heading west again. At the end of the day, at one of our many BnB’s visited, we did get the realization about something: all BnB owners were white, all personnel (same in restaurants) were black. I guess this is still some rippling going back to Apartheid? Not in practice ofc, but it was very noticeable since it was kind of a repeated observation during our time in South Africa. (Sorry if this sounds insensitive, don’t mean to).
Day 14: Dundee
Mostly a travel day with some small stops here and there like a small forest reserve with honestly the kindest guide I’ve ever seen. Did a short hike as well there. Did feel weird that they send a guard with us (since it was just a bird reserve). We also got stopped by traffic police (genuine this time) for “speeding”. I still doubt I was since I was pretty sure of the speed limit and if we were speeding, literally every car around us was but we were the only ones picked out (I kinda guess since our look probably screamed “TOURISTS”). Got a discount if we paid in cash, what a nice cop /s. Didn’t want to make a fuss, so paid and left asap.
Day 15-16: Golden Gate Highlands
Mainly went here for the hikes. Don’t know how aggressive baboons are in general towards people? On our day hike our path got blocked by quite a big group of them and we, with another couple, made a detour just to be sure. On top of the mountains I got another memorable sight: wildebeests grazing and fighting below us. Looked like a scene from a nature documentary. Also, some guy managed to smash his drone into a rock.
Day 17-19: Kruger
Like so many tourists probably say: absolute highlight of our trip. Wild dogs, hyena pups, a buffalo herd of over 100 animals with lions hunting on them, lions with a fresh kill, African eagles, leopard cubs who got fed an impala (from far away),… Very interesting to see the dynamics of tourists as well: kind when guiding you to a good spot, absolute egocentric when they were (or thinking they were) near a lion or leopard. To the point of blocking the road and making it more difficult for themselves and literally everyone near them. Like, I like seeing lions but my god, there are so many more beautiful animals over there. But again: absolute highlight with great overnight stays.
Day 20-21: Blyde RivieMarakele
Nearly got attacked by a young male elephant, again 10/10.
Day 22: Cradle of Humankind
Saw a group of kids leaving the caves. One fainted, another one got a massive nosebleed. Let’s give that another 10/10.
Day 23: Apartheid museum
Spend way more time here than they say it takes (which is already more than 2,5h). Very well done though. Sadly had to rush the last few parts to catch our flight.
Overall, loved the country despite I can imagine it's not easy to live there. I sincerely hope some of the major issues (economical/social gap, rhino poaching, load shedding,...) get fixed or at least lessened rather sooner than later. But I'll remember the biodiversity, kindness and beauty of South Africa forever.
Go Springboks ;)
2023.03.21 00:56 BlindGuyAndKarr Dungeon Corps Expansion - 20 - Cole Protocol
A/N: Home and family matters have held my attention for the past couple weeks. Add in rewrites because I wasn't happy with the clunkiness of things, and generally out of sorts feeling over stumbles I've been making and I'm just plain overdue here. To be blunt. I don't want to talk about a lot of it because personal, and then there is my fear of just plain not measuring up. Yes yes it's not a contest with anyone but yourself and fishing for complements and on and on. It's just I'm wrapping the main story up on mine after essentially forty or fifty chapters. The guy that got me going is on effectivly chapter 150 if you count strange opprotunity in with dungeon life while I'm feeling out of gas already and I still need to do draft edits to try fixing at least SOME of the mistakes i've been making.
Sorry for the delay guys.
Also for those wondering: This is the music I had in mind for this chapter since after this it focuses very hard on the personal scale. This is the last huge scale thing to go on til the very end. So. One last bit of ham.
I have many more thoughts, but I'll save those for later. For now. On with the big battle thing.
- - - -
Midroi fumed as it watched an entire company that was intended to be the hammerblow of force to show the library that whatever lies Damala's heir told, they were better served by Midori's banner. Instead? Midori peered through the eyes of their Ogre commander as the whole lot were caged in interlocking vines and trees.
Mana was spent to force them to stop panicking and Obey.
Then, one by one, they died. Dust drifted from the living prison of trees and vines as Midori saw the Company shuffle out of their respawners. He was not angry with them. They had followed their orders admirably and had behaved professionally.
The Ogre knelt as Midori addressed him. "You did well with what you were faced against."
"Thank you lord." The Ogre's rough voice was almost reverent as he addressed the dungeon he served.
A ball of black the size of a grape formed in front of the Ogre. More mana was spent and the Ogre took the orb in his left hand, and ate it.
Similar orbs appeared in front of each creature as they stepped from their beds, stumps, debris, and other markers where such creatures spawned from.
As one they marched wordlessly back to Midori's borders to relieve the forces pulled from the elfin and dwarven camps that served as buffer between his lands and where this Metis had served as his first obstacle.
None of his fliers were close enough in enough quantities to provide anything more than a distant image of the party at the edge of the baby dungeon's holdings.
Why weren't they pressing forward faster? these mockeries of champions long dead. Midori knew the form each were based on. Damala's Heir, this Lonely Hill. It somehow knew how enough of the prior age to do this.
The Library it could excuse. He knew the person the automata was based on would have loved working at a library. Had it not fallen for this monstrous deception, Midroi might have felt fondness for their choice in avatar to meet with.
As his armies marched Midroi's anger grew. The black threads crept into its vision as it saw the second Company engage.
This time they spread out. Archers paired with lumbering ogres to act as shield walls. Shamen countered attempts to use the local vegetation either to snare, or to turn the sculpted plants into weapons by withering them, sapping their life and channeling it into defending the melee skirmishers.
Something felt off here even as Midori could feel several of the enemy being infected with spores. Normally their minds should be open and clear. Even the ones that fought would give him useful data by what they chose to hide and what they chose to throw aside.
Here? An armored figure fell while shielding a white haired goblin rogue with its body. Midori tore into it's mind without bothering with the usual subtile touches he had with prior instances. There wasn't time, and so Midori hemorrhaged mana to sprout the invasive growths into something that could force past any mental barriers the animated armor might have held.
He heard three words before the armor dropped, its component pieces seperating as the animus holding them together dissipated.
Cole Protocol Initiated.
There? An automata manning a brass and gem encrusted ballista that fired huge bolts of magical energy was infected by an orc that ran into enemy lines before its body burst into contagion spores.
Instead of answers Midori heard the dozen or so voices in near unison speak.
Cole Protocol Initiated.
That name tugged at memory. Midori knew it from somewhere, yet couldn't grasp where.
Again, another fell. This one just after throwing the goblin rogue it had almost tagged out of harm's way. Again that damniable phrase.
It shouldn't have mattered. Each enemy unit infected landed in the deepest hole Midori had constructed. One who's only exit was guarded by a hall of traps and gates such that any attempt to break out by anything that had not yet been pacified was doomed to failure.
Midori was winning. It was slow and measured by the dozens or in one instance of some truly inspired spellwork by whomever was on the tower, several hundred at a time. Yet each of their losses was permanent. Each minion they lost might have been theoretically replaceable, but it would be unskilled and untrained, making it near useless in this kind of battle.
Yet Midori felt unease. The units that got near to quartet that advanced on his position died without being able to get into range for infection. Worse still. Metis was claiming territory. It was a thin strip of road between claimed dungeons, but it was ground that Metis held and Midroi's enemies were defending.
His unease grew into rage when Metis revealed its water avatar.
HER.
Deceiver. Devourer.
Liar. Destroyer.
Midori felt stupid. This had been HER play. that hateful woman.
Made midori focus all its efforts and plans into a boogyman while she had been quietly ignored just beyond his doorstep.
A memory flashed. Brief. A flash.
Ami's souless eyes stared down into Midori's as she held an obsidian blade covered in blood. Breathing slowed as Ami knelt to whisper words that couldn't be remembered. Gloating that she had finally won. Then. For the briefest moments. Just before black took him. Midori remembered a man standing there in mute suffering grief. Someone who was dead yet lingered.
Threads of black etched through Midori's vision.
SHE was here.
Surrounded by puppets designed to look like the people she murdered.
There were whispers now, as there had been ever since Midori had started using magically infused fungus to ensure troop loyalty. Those whispers had always been easy to ignore.
Now. They whispered the words Midori wanted to hear most. Revenge. Retribution. Remaking this world so She wasn't part of it.
Midori drank in the poisoned lies because in his heart he knew it made what was going to happen easier to live with if he wasn't truly in control anymore.
Vision blackened as mycelial threads wrapped almost tenderly around Midori's core, and then everything came into sharp focus. This fungus. It was everywhere. It couldn't act everywhere, but where even a piece of it existed, Midori could tap into its senses.
"Metis!" Ishida dove as a water whip from meti's avatar sliced into a wulfen Midori had inherited from the same dungeon Corwin had served.
Ishida rose, sword in hand, using the momentum of her roll to slice the straps of an armored opponent apart. "He's already starting to cycle infected units in!"
A grunt from Bonehead as he pushed back an elf that tried to step inside Hotaru's effective bow range. "Plan stays the same. Ami, how're you holding up?"
This got a grumble from Stone Soup. "Oi. Dead Naming."
"Right, my bad." Bonehead looked to Meti's water construct. "Sorry."
"No worries. I'm still on my land. Inflow is exceeding outflow." Metis paused to spear an elfin duo that were carrying what looked like lit bombs. "You?"
Midori howled. Mana torrented out as he forced Bonehead's guard to drop. The skeletal fighter repositioned. Midori forced him to leave Taru's side.
This caught Taru's attention. "Talk to me."
Bonehead let go of his sword even as he swung at the orc he had intended to stab.
Midori laughed as he made Bonehead turn. the amount of mana spent was above and beyond what he had to spend on anything else, but he was forcing this new unit to bend.
Bonehead picked his sword up as he looked to Taru. "Keys. Jacob."
"No." Her voice an order as she started running to him. "You can fight it off."
"Captain." Bonehead brought his weapon to a guard position. The blade trembled as it swung, meeting taru's bow as she brought it up to block.
Midori's laughter grew wild as he forced Bonehead to press. Even with a prodigious outflow just to control one unit this was the crack needed to stall out this desperate thrust by his enemies.
"Service Number...." Bonehead tore away from Ishida's grip. "Oh... One Nine Two Eight."
His hand snaked out, snatching her sword even as Stone Soup kicked his away. "One... Nine Nine...."
Midori's laughter turned to screams as the blade turned, its tip touching Bonehead's sternum.
"You. Will Not." Bonehead's voice was labored, as if spoken through gritted teeth. "Have Me."
Bonehead's body dissolved almost the moment Ishida's blade pierced his chest.
Midori saw Taru's bow raise, and from that point until almost up to his very borders his eyes were put out.
Yet he could not help but give a low sinister chuckle as Bonehead spawned inside the vault he kept newly squired and not yet loyal.
"I already do."
[Previous] [First] [Next] [Wiki]
submitted by BlindGuyAndKarr to HFY [link] [comments]
Sorry for the delay guys.
Also for those wondering: This is the music I had in mind for this chapter since after this it focuses very hard on the personal scale. This is the last huge scale thing to go on til the very end. So. One last bit of ham.
I have many more thoughts, but I'll save those for later. For now. On with the big battle thing.
- - - -
Midroi fumed as it watched an entire company that was intended to be the hammerblow of force to show the library that whatever lies Damala's heir told, they were better served by Midori's banner. Instead? Midori peered through the eyes of their Ogre commander as the whole lot were caged in interlocking vines and trees.
Mana was spent to force them to stop panicking and Obey.
Then, one by one, they died. Dust drifted from the living prison of trees and vines as Midori saw the Company shuffle out of their respawners. He was not angry with them. They had followed their orders admirably and had behaved professionally.
The Ogre knelt as Midori addressed him. "You did well with what you were faced against."
"Thank you lord." The Ogre's rough voice was almost reverent as he addressed the dungeon he served.
A ball of black the size of a grape formed in front of the Ogre. More mana was spent and the Ogre took the orb in his left hand, and ate it.
Similar orbs appeared in front of each creature as they stepped from their beds, stumps, debris, and other markers where such creatures spawned from.
As one they marched wordlessly back to Midori's borders to relieve the forces pulled from the elfin and dwarven camps that served as buffer between his lands and where this Metis had served as his first obstacle.
None of his fliers were close enough in enough quantities to provide anything more than a distant image of the party at the edge of the baby dungeon's holdings.
Why weren't they pressing forward faster? these mockeries of champions long dead. Midori knew the form each were based on. Damala's Heir, this Lonely Hill. It somehow knew how enough of the prior age to do this.
The Library it could excuse. He knew the person the automata was based on would have loved working at a library. Had it not fallen for this monstrous deception, Midroi might have felt fondness for their choice in avatar to meet with.
As his armies marched Midroi's anger grew. The black threads crept into its vision as it saw the second Company engage.
This time they spread out. Archers paired with lumbering ogres to act as shield walls. Shamen countered attempts to use the local vegetation either to snare, or to turn the sculpted plants into weapons by withering them, sapping their life and channeling it into defending the melee skirmishers.
Something felt off here even as Midori could feel several of the enemy being infected with spores. Normally their minds should be open and clear. Even the ones that fought would give him useful data by what they chose to hide and what they chose to throw aside.
Here? An armored figure fell while shielding a white haired goblin rogue with its body. Midori tore into it's mind without bothering with the usual subtile touches he had with prior instances. There wasn't time, and so Midori hemorrhaged mana to sprout the invasive growths into something that could force past any mental barriers the animated armor might have held.
He heard three words before the armor dropped, its component pieces seperating as the animus holding them together dissipated.
Cole Protocol Initiated.
There? An automata manning a brass and gem encrusted ballista that fired huge bolts of magical energy was infected by an orc that ran into enemy lines before its body burst into contagion spores.
Instead of answers Midori heard the dozen or so voices in near unison speak.
Cole Protocol Initiated.
That name tugged at memory. Midori knew it from somewhere, yet couldn't grasp where.
Again, another fell. This one just after throwing the goblin rogue it had almost tagged out of harm's way. Again that damniable phrase.
It shouldn't have mattered. Each enemy unit infected landed in the deepest hole Midori had constructed. One who's only exit was guarded by a hall of traps and gates such that any attempt to break out by anything that had not yet been pacified was doomed to failure.
Midori was winning. It was slow and measured by the dozens or in one instance of some truly inspired spellwork by whomever was on the tower, several hundred at a time. Yet each of their losses was permanent. Each minion they lost might have been theoretically replaceable, but it would be unskilled and untrained, making it near useless in this kind of battle.
Yet Midori felt unease. The units that got near to quartet that advanced on his position died without being able to get into range for infection. Worse still. Metis was claiming territory. It was a thin strip of road between claimed dungeons, but it was ground that Metis held and Midroi's enemies were defending.
His unease grew into rage when Metis revealed its water avatar.
HER.
Deceiver. Devourer.
Liar. Destroyer.
Midori felt stupid. This had been HER play. that hateful woman.
Made midori focus all its efforts and plans into a boogyman while she had been quietly ignored just beyond his doorstep.
A memory flashed. Brief. A flash.
Ami's souless eyes stared down into Midori's as she held an obsidian blade covered in blood. Breathing slowed as Ami knelt to whisper words that couldn't be remembered. Gloating that she had finally won. Then. For the briefest moments. Just before black took him. Midori remembered a man standing there in mute suffering grief. Someone who was dead yet lingered.
Threads of black etched through Midori's vision.
SHE was here.
Surrounded by puppets designed to look like the people she murdered.
There were whispers now, as there had been ever since Midori had started using magically infused fungus to ensure troop loyalty. Those whispers had always been easy to ignore.
Now. They whispered the words Midori wanted to hear most. Revenge. Retribution. Remaking this world so She wasn't part of it.
Midori drank in the poisoned lies because in his heart he knew it made what was going to happen easier to live with if he wasn't truly in control anymore.
Vision blackened as mycelial threads wrapped almost tenderly around Midori's core, and then everything came into sharp focus. This fungus. It was everywhere. It couldn't act everywhere, but where even a piece of it existed, Midori could tap into its senses.
"Metis!" Ishida dove as a water whip from meti's avatar sliced into a wulfen Midori had inherited from the same dungeon Corwin had served.
Ishida rose, sword in hand, using the momentum of her roll to slice the straps of an armored opponent apart. "He's already starting to cycle infected units in!"
A grunt from Bonehead as he pushed back an elf that tried to step inside Hotaru's effective bow range. "Plan stays the same. Ami, how're you holding up?"
This got a grumble from Stone Soup. "Oi. Dead Naming."
"Right, my bad." Bonehead looked to Meti's water construct. "Sorry."
"No worries. I'm still on my land. Inflow is exceeding outflow." Metis paused to spear an elfin duo that were carrying what looked like lit bombs. "You?"
Midori howled. Mana torrented out as he forced Bonehead's guard to drop. The skeletal fighter repositioned. Midori forced him to leave Taru's side.
This caught Taru's attention. "Talk to me."
Bonehead let go of his sword even as he swung at the orc he had intended to stab.
Midori laughed as he made Bonehead turn. the amount of mana spent was above and beyond what he had to spend on anything else, but he was forcing this new unit to bend.
Bonehead picked his sword up as he looked to Taru. "Keys. Jacob."
"No." Her voice an order as she started running to him. "You can fight it off."
"Captain." Bonehead brought his weapon to a guard position. The blade trembled as it swung, meeting taru's bow as she brought it up to block.
Midori's laughter grew wild as he forced Bonehead to press. Even with a prodigious outflow just to control one unit this was the crack needed to stall out this desperate thrust by his enemies.
"Service Number...." Bonehead tore away from Ishida's grip. "Oh... One Nine Two Eight."
His hand snaked out, snatching her sword even as Stone Soup kicked his away. "One... Nine Nine...."
Midori's laughter turned to screams as the blade turned, its tip touching Bonehead's sternum.
"You. Will Not." Bonehead's voice was labored, as if spoken through gritted teeth. "Have Me."
Bonehead's body dissolved almost the moment Ishida's blade pierced his chest.
Midori saw Taru's bow raise, and from that point until almost up to his very borders his eyes were put out.
Yet he could not help but give a low sinister chuckle as Bonehead spawned inside the vault he kept newly squired and not yet loyal.
"I already do."
[Previous] [First] [Next] [Wiki]
2023.03.21 00:56 throwawaysacc00 help finding games like dreamlight valley?
unfortunately i am very picky but i will definitely look into every recommendation. i loved disney dreamlight until i quickly finished all the quests so id say animal crossing is my favorite.
i did not like stardew valley... mainly because i have no idea how to play and i dont like having to walk back all the way home when its time to sleep :( i would enjoy this game if i did not have to walk back each time/on a time threshold. i love farming don’t really care for a story i just love to roam.
i love: - freeworld, farming, working on my own time - sims, disney dreamlight, animal crossing, runescape
interested in purchasing: - sun haven, cozy grove, ????
recently picked up:
- wyldeflower but im not tooo crazy about it because the days work on a clock.
submitted by throwawaysacc00 to CozyGamers [link] [comments]
i did not like stardew valley... mainly because i have no idea how to play and i dont like having to walk back all the way home when its time to sleep :( i would enjoy this game if i did not have to walk back each time/on a time threshold. i love farming don’t really care for a story i just love to roam.
i love: - freeworld, farming, working on my own time - sims, disney dreamlight, animal crossing, runescape
interested in purchasing: - sun haven, cozy grove, ????
recently picked up:
- wyldeflower but im not tooo crazy about it because the days work on a clock.
2023.03.21 00:52 joseg4681 Sidewinder X2 with OctoPrint - How to put the TFT screen in "busy" mode while printing?
I just hooked up my Raspberry Pi back to my X2 after leaving it off for sometime, but I'm trying to remember how the TFT screen goes in to it's "busy" mode where it either knows it's printing, or at least thinks it's printing, which changes the menu around a bit.
I remember having this on my X1 back when I used to use Octo on it, I have since upgraded that printer and it runs Klipper now. However I do believe I changed the firmware on the X1 to one that allows manual mesh bed levelling, so maybe that firmware had something to do with that busy screen?
Just wondering how I can do that for my X2, hopefully without having to flash it's firmware. or AT LEAST not having to open up the printer to flash it, like I had to do with the X1...
Basically I want to be able to baby step the nozzle if I have to, (I can still do it via the screen but these screens glitch out sometimes where when you tap a button, the screen thinks that you ALSO tapped it else on the screen, (randomly), so anything can happen. This makes it quite dangerous to be navigating the normal menus of this printer to get to that baby stepping menu, where as when you're printing, it's just one tap away...
Is there anyway to baby step via OctoPrint? I only see the Control tab allowing you to move in 0.1mm increments, that's way to large of a change. Can I maybe do it with the terminal commands?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!!
Damn I should just install klipper on this b**ch and be done with it!!! LOL
submitted by joseg4681 to SidewinderX1 [link] [comments]
I remember having this on my X1 back when I used to use Octo on it, I have since upgraded that printer and it runs Klipper now. However I do believe I changed the firmware on the X1 to one that allows manual mesh bed levelling, so maybe that firmware had something to do with that busy screen?
Just wondering how I can do that for my X2, hopefully without having to flash it's firmware. or AT LEAST not having to open up the printer to flash it, like I had to do with the X1...
Basically I want to be able to baby step the nozzle if I have to, (I can still do it via the screen but these screens glitch out sometimes where when you tap a button, the screen thinks that you ALSO tapped it else on the screen, (randomly), so anything can happen. This makes it quite dangerous to be navigating the normal menus of this printer to get to that baby stepping menu, where as when you're printing, it's just one tap away...
Is there anyway to baby step via OctoPrint? I only see the Control tab allowing you to move in 0.1mm increments, that's way to large of a change. Can I maybe do it with the terminal commands?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!!
Damn I should just install klipper on this b**ch and be done with it!!! LOL
2023.03.21 00:50 me_lon_cat man handled the joji ai
 | submitted by me_lon_cat to Joji [link] [comments] |