so my neighbor behind me is a developer lot that they decided to leave empty til people have more money for buying houses lower rates or something, idk. anyway, the owner is obviously never there neglects his property, his blackberry plants have eaten into my fence, my lot is only 1/4 ac but his is probably 40 or so. Last year I paid landscapers $700 to remove them from my property line area- but they grew back even bigger this year. I called code enforcement who did nothing. This year I cant afford to pay for removal again but I started hacking them with this tool i bought, with not much success and lots of painful labor (partially disabled, spinal issues) I cannot use goats (HOA) and I dont like spraying herbicides. I am thinking of suing him in small claims court, I have pics of the blackberries cutting into my fence posts and the before and after I paid removal + the regrowth, and copies of emails and calls that went unanswered, HOA says its not their problem. Any other options or ideas?

The previous post (written by a medical professional about succinylcholine and backed up by other med professionals in the comments) got me thinking.
The drugging Robert theory is something many people hone in on because of the puncture marks and because of the lack of blood present at the scene. But I've always found this theory questionable for a lot of reasons.
One, I don't find it difficult to believe that all of Robert's puncture marks were the result of action by medical personnel. Sure, you can try to pick apart testimony and see where that leaves you, but that strikes me as a fool's errand. Even if there are a couple of marks not accounted for, I don't think that's all that meaningful. These are high intensity circumstances and medical personnel likely aren't cataloging every poke meticulously. I don't feel like you can draw any conclusions from this.
Two, I reject the notion that drugging and assaulting Robert somehow naturally sprang from Dylan and Joe's BDSM practices. If Dylan and Joe were deep into BDSM and the scene, they likely knew the parameters of what is and isn't acceptable. This is not an acceptable BDSM practice. Obviously, an immoral criminal could give two shits about what is and isn't legal, much less what best practices are in BDSM, but there is nothing in either Dylan or Joe's pasts that would suggest they are criminally-minded or amoral. As far as the BDSM lifestyle making them do something they would never otherwise do, I don't really buy it. It is extremely difficult for me to wrap my head around the idea that they planned this out. This is straight up premeditated sexual assault. Again, NOT a routine part of a BDSM lifestyle. It is criminal activity and both of them would have known that.
Three, I find it very difficult to believe that unbeknownst to Victor, Dylan and Joe drugged, assaulted, and accidentally-ish killed Robert, and that Victor found out and never revealed the truth. Love only goes so far, and again, all three of these men are functioning members of society who gave back to the community and cared about things and had friends like Robert Wone, who, by all accounts, was a great guy. Victor, Dylan, and Joe were not the criminal element. I find it hard to believe that they carried out this brutal, absolutely messed up plan without one of them caving because of the guilt. Especially Victor, who likely stumbled onto it after the fact.
Four, I know the tox screen doesn't cover every drug known to man, but it covers a whole lot of them. The surgeon in the previous post basically blew up Brett & Alice's theory that they obtained paralytic, untraceable drugs from Joe's brother by pointing out that phlebotomists would absolutely not have access to this drug. Is there some mystery, untraceable paralytic that Joe and Dylan could have gotten their hands on in the period of time between Robert deciding to spend the night at their house and then spending the night? I mean...anything is possible, I suppose. But I just find this a bit unbelievable. It's not like people in the BDSM community were like - hey, yeah, now that you mention it, all of us use XYZ drug to incapacitate our partners! That didn't happen. No other drugs have even been offered up as possibilities. Nobody can quite say what it is or where they would have gotten it. That's why I think this mystery drug doesn't actually exist. I don't think Robert was drugged.
Five, I think B&A were very quick to write off the notion that Robert was sexually involved with Joe and/or his partners. And I get it. The poor man is dead and left a grieving widow behind. Even if you're fully comfortable with the notion of gay relationships and polyamory and BDSM (many people are not comfortable with any of this, mind), you still have to contend with the lying and cheating. And that sucks. Nobody wants to say anything negative about a murder victim. But I do not think that Robert being bisexual and cheating on his wife is out of the realm of possibility. Not to mention, it might not have been that he ever actively looked to hook up with men. Maybe this is something that occasionally happened with Joe and that's it. People who are bisexual aren't necessarily always on the hunt for sex from all genders. They may not even think of themselves as bisexual - they may think of them as straight with some caveats.
Six, the lack of info about sexual interest in men on his phone and computer doesn't mean much to me. Again, there's no reason to assume he was actively looking for this. But even if he was, he might not have used electronic devices to do it. This did not happen in 2020. This was in 2006. People did less online. The internet was more basic. Think about the fact that Robert wrote emails before bed. He didn't text, he didn't message. He emailed. Technology and our relationship to it was different.
Seven, a side note on time-stamped emails. I don't know that Robert wrote those unsent emails or not, but I do think the time stamps can't be relied upon. Blackberry's are weird, and the time-stamping of emails was an issue with them (go look at Crackberry forums). The time stamp on an incoming email was based on when the email was actually received (not sent) and the time stamp on the unsent draft on an email (Like we have here) would reflect the time it was drafted according to that Blackberry. And, notably, you set the time on your Blackberry yourself. Let's say you were supposed to get a document to someone by 10 am and you're behind. You could, with a Blackberry, finish the document at 3 pm, set your phone to 10 am, draft an email and send it, and it would be time stamped in your email sent box with 10 am. When your boss asks you why the document wasn't sent until three, you could say, no, no, I sent it at 10 am - look! And show them your sent box time stamp, which says 10 am. I know people who did this all the time. Many Blackberry users knew of this hack. So I'm just saying, I don't put much into the time stamp in the outbox, as it could have been easily adjusted by Robert or by someone else.
Here's my two cents:
I think there was some sort of sexual history between Joe and Robert. I have no idea what the nature of this was, but I think it was there. I think Joe & Dylan were actively looking for a third partner in bed (I believe there was some evidence to this on online dating sites or message boards?). I think Joe propositioned Robert, maybe when Robert asked to stay over, or maybe when he arrived, and I think Robert agreed.
Then I think something went wrong. I don't know what, but it could have had to do with breath play or accidental smothering. I think from there, my analysis is about the same as Brett & Alice's: Dylan and Joe thought Robert was dead, stabbed him to stage an intruder murder, and then Victor came downstairs and screamed.
Specifics of why I think this scenario fits better:
1) it explains the men's silence. Ultimately, they are responsible for an accidental death rather than a purposeful assault and the resulting murder of Robert. I can see how Victor especially, but really, all of them, would be more predisposed to staying quiet in this scenario - because they would feel less guilty. Second, they would not want to out Robert or destroy his legacy by telling the world he was having sex with them. They were all really adamant that Robert was straight, and that struck me as odd. If they had sexually abused him without his consent, wouldn't it seem more likely for them to plead ignorance regarding his sexuality or even muddy the waters? But they really stuck to this point, which makes me wonder if they weren't trying to protect Robert's reputation.
2) It fits better with Joe and Robert's history of friendship. Unless Joe is an absolute psychopath, again, I have a lot of trouble imagining him sedating and sexually assaulting one of his oldest friends.
3) It eliminates the need for a mystery untraceable paralytic/sedative/whatever.
4) It fits better with BDSM practices
5) It fits better with the reputation of all men involved - doesn't require us to buy into some hidden depravity that hadn't surfaced before and hasn't surfaced since
6) It does a better job of explaining the traces of semen. I guess there are ways to produce orgasm while a person is unconscious (ICK) but it's a heck of a lot easier to produce one when a person is conscious and involved.
I know this is a controversial take, and I'm not at all looking to besmirch Robert's legacy. I think it's important to remember the human in all these men. I can see Robert being confused and a little ashamed and hiding a complicated sexuality. I can see three generally upstanding men freaking out after kinky sex goes wrong. I can see those men refusing to talk about it because it was a horrible accident and outing their friend would only cause more pain.
On the other hand, I have a hard time seeing those two generally upstanding men plotting out a horrific assault on an unsuspecting man who has been friends with one of them for more than a decade, or the third going along with the cover up of a horrific, premeditated crime.
​
​

​
https://reddit.com/link/1c4nhpu/video/f9vnyz7aknuc1/player
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I looked at the flavors and was thinking about it bc they had dream demon on there but decided not to pull the trigger since in fully stocked....... Then they extended the sale and added all 3 of ge horror movie collabs and welp yeah I did a thing lmao

Ok, so…um. Yeah, well. This is going to be tougher than I thought.
No one is going to believe me anyway, so fuck it, right? Might as well just go for it. I killed my wife. There. Probably not in the way that people think, but people might be pretty close.
I’ve never discussed what happened at Aunt Mary Jane’s house that night. I always thought she was made up by my Grandma, a figment, not a phantom. Just a name to give the house and make it scary enough not to play there. I figured no one named Mary Jane had ever lived there until I found her picture and the thin memory of the grave marker came flooding back. Either way, my grandparents were in cahoots and they had me fooled. It took me years to figure out the truth and I bet they shared a few good laughs about it.
I spent a lot of time with my grandparents when I was a kid. My mom was 16 when she got pregnant, 17 when she had a shotgun wedding, and she was 19 when she divorced my deadbeat (and I suspect, abusive) dad. She needed support, and they helped. I don’t know if my mom was determined not to move back home or if it wasn’t allowed by Grandad, but paying all the bills was difficult for us. The result was I got to spend a lot of time at my grandparent’s house and I loved it.
I remember Grandma telling me spooky stories. Sometimes Grandad too, but mainly he would sit around with us and chime in to add a detail or two, making her stories even scarier. One favorite story was about the ghost of Redbeard Pete, a pirate who was known to be stubborn in life, and too stubborn in death to move on. That’s not what this is about. I’m trying to delay it. Or avoid it altogether. If you saw her the way I did, especially then, when I…when I did what I had to do.
What I need to say involves Aunt Mary Jane’s house, and I will only speak of this once. I need to say it, and after that I’ll never speak of it again. If I’m going to tell the story, I need to tell it all and say everything I need to say about it. How I came to know the house is part of our history. It might not seem related to what happened that night, but everything I know about it is relevant to me.
My grandparents lived in a yellow house on a corner lot in rural Virginia. The Northern Neck of Virginia, to be exact. Big yard, the neighbors were family, woods out back, and everyone was a farmer, hunter, or a fisherman, and more likely they were all three. The main road there didn’t have yellow lines until recently. Their house sat in the corner crook where an even smaller side road turned off and led to who-knows-where. It was paved, but just barely. The narrow kind of road where folks usually just drove down the middle until they met another vehicle, then both would wave as they squeezed past one another and tried to avoid the ditch. And if someone ended up in the ditch, you already knew you’d stay and give them a hand getting out. Their house faced that road.
My Grandad’s workshop sat near the edge of the property and barely spitting distance from the smaller road. (Forgive me, it’s been so long that I can’t recall the name of the street. Probably Route something or other.) About a hundred yards down from his shop was an overgrown lane - an old driveway. Aunt Mary Jane’s house.
As kids, my cousins and I rode our bikes past there all the time and never even noticed the house. The lane, yes, but not the house and the dirt driveway was so overgrown with weeds that none of us ever thought to go investigate. In hindsight, maybe there was another reason.
Anyway, the property was overgrown with pine and locust trees, and a few pecan trees. The house was situated among a stand of trees closer to the road than you might expect. It was invisible from the street. The house was hidden, not because it was buried deep in the forest, but because the property was being devoured by weeds, blackberry brambles, and neglect.
The reason I knew about it is because Grandma told me about Aunt Mary Jane. She explained that’s just what everyone called her, and told me to my dismay that she was not my real aunt. Later, she and my Grandad would scare the hell out of me and for years I was oblivious to the truth.
I can’t remember what kind of story Grandma concocted, but I remember it was about Aunt Mary Jane and how mean she was - when she was alive before she turned into a ghost. And how she got even meaner as a ghost. Her story spooked me and I’m pretty sure it was meant to keep me from finding it by accident one day. I used to play in the woods all the time and I guess I might have. It was more visible from the woods on my grandparent’s property than it was out front. Saplings grew through the tottering, tumble-down floor inside, the droopy roof sagged down, bulging into the kitchen, and the dry-rotted old window frames had panes of jagged glass sticking every which way. Needless to say, if our group of cousins had ever discovered the place on our own, there would have been a lot less glass in the windows, and a lot more rocks being thrown through the glass that remained. The house was a donkey mile beyond repair, and far too dangerous for anyone to horse around in or to explore.
Despite my fear, I had trouble believing her story at first, and I told her so. All this time, how could I not know about a ghost who lived right next door? A nasty, bitter old ghost who was a nasty and bitter old witch when she was alive? I would know if there was a ghost, I thought.
She reminded me about the tooth fairy and how I didn’t know about her until I had a loose tooth. This was different, I told her, because I hadn’t always had a loose tooth, but Aunt Mary Jane’s house had always been there.
She told me she would take me over there and prove it. She may have been bluffing, but this was more exciting than the State Fair. I wasn’t calling her bluff, I was dying to see a real life ghost. She put on her shoes and that’s when I got scared. I wanted to chicken out, but she wouldn’t let me, so she promised she’d hold my hand the whole time, just in case we ran into Aunt Maru Jane. And off we went, walking out to Route whatever-it-was and down the road about a hundred yards.
Grandma picked our way through the blackberry briars that sprawled across the lane, holding back the pricker vines I wouldn’t get too scratched up. I ducked under the last tangle and emerged onto the sparse but overgrown lawn in front of a dilapidated house. It looked like every ramshackle haunted house in every movie you ever saw. The paint, which used to be white and probably lead-based, curled back in thick peels, revealing the sun-bleached wood underneath the layers. Reptilian scales to armor old bones. A massive locust tree grew at one corner of the house. One of its limbs thrust into a room on the second floor through a side window. Inside, it angled like an arthritic elbow, and stretched back outside and rested on top of the porch. The front door was partially opened and stuck like that. The rood sagged so badly that a deep slouch had developed in the ceiling and now its weight wedged the door in place. Not wide open, but enough so you could stick your head through to sneak a look. The porch had held up fairly well.
She told me if we were extra careful, maybe we could peek inside, but first she wanted to look around and check if there was a better place than under a collapsing ceiling.
The backyard was also overgrown, but the shade of the house and the tree canopy above kept the weeds sparse enough so it wasn’t difficult to walk around. We were picking our way through the overgrowth when she stopped and shushed me. Then she pointed toward the rope swing.
“The swing?” I was just a little kid and even I could tell that rope wasn’t safe.
She shook her head and pointed again, but lower, and then I saw it. A headstone, beyond the swing, near where a fence might have stood once.
“Is someone really buried there?” I had seen cemeteries before, but discovering a grave anywhere else felt unusual.
She nodded and we walked a little closer, but she stopped me before I got too close. “See? That’s where she’s buried,” she whispered. “Don’t walk on her grave because she might, snatch your ankle and pull you down to hell.”
“MJW” was all I could see. The dates, if there were any, were too low and hidden by the grass and moss that grew in a thicker patch above the grave. I was amazed thinking that a spooky skeleton was almost right under me.
So, a little explanation - it wasn’t unusual to be buried on your own on their property back then. This house was, I imagine, built sometime in the late 1800’s, so these types of grave markers were fairly commonplace for the area. The other thing to know is that this area is full of country folk, real salt of the earth types. My family was Southern Baptist (but not me), so hell was a very real place. Not a metaphor for eternal suffering, but a specific locale full of sulfur, brimstone, and fire. I did not walk on Aunt Mary Jane’s grave. Turns out that when I returned as an adult, it wouldn’t matter anyhow.
Grandma said she was worried we might disturb Aunt Mary Jane, so we could have a quick peek, but we weren’t going to stick around long. Plus, she was worried about the broken glass and rusty nails or something else hiding in the grass. You never knew when you might have an unfortunate encounter with a copperhead. I was more scared the house might turn into a monster and come alive with a front door for a mouth to eat me. I was terrified and I loved it. I might have felt differently, but at the time I couldn’t imagine what came to pass.
She told me the rules. Hold her hand. Don’t go any further than she does. If she says to stop, stop and don’t move. Don’t touch anything. Don’t make too much noise in case there’s a raccoon or opossum who lives inside. That was fine with me. I didn’t want to be too loud and get a ghost angry at us.
She poked at the boards with her toes, checking if they were rotted, but they were okay. The porch window teased an easy look inside, but curtains and the ceiling bulging down blocked it, so she took a peek inside. It was all clear. No sign of ghosts, she told me, so I peeked in and looked around.
I didn’t see any ghosts and it looked mostly empty. Kinda boring. Just a lot of dust, a dried out mouse, a few pictures left hanging on the wall.
“Shh! Do you hear that?”
I hadn’t heard anything/ “What is it, Grandma?”
“Sh. Hear it?” she had a hand to her ear, listening. “I think I hear her coming. I think it’s Aunt Mary Jane!”
I didn’t hear it at first, but that didn’t stop me from being afraid. I still held her hand tight. Then, I heard it. It was quiet at first and I strained to hear it, but after a moment, it got louder. There was no missing it anymore. Spooky moans and groans that rolled through the house like swelling waves, growing louder, then soft, louder, softer again. Grandma got scared and I was already scared. We reckoned Aunt Mary Jane was giving us a warning so we probably ought to listen to her and be on our way. If she didn’t have a grip on my hand like she did, I would have already been tearing through those berry brambles like a dozen wild rabbits.
Next time my cousins came down, I told them how I saw Aunt Mary Jane’s gravestone, and how I almost went inside a haunted house. I was the youngest and they didn’t even listen at first, but when I told them how we heard Aunt Mary Jane spooking around, me and Grandma both? That got their attention alright, but they didn’t believe me. I told them how Grandma went with me and I told them they could go right ahead and ask her if they wanted and they did.
She said it never happened and I must have dreamt it. I cried because everybody thought I was lying and nobody believed me because I was just a little kid. Later, when nobody else could hear us, she explained that, if the rest of the boys knew, they would want her to take them too. She said the last time was too scary to go back. She asked me if we could just keep it between us whenever we heard a ghost. That was even better to me.
After that, Grandma or Grandad would walk the hundred yards or so down Route whatever-it-was and we would stand by the old mailbox to listen for the ghost of Aunt Mary Jane. Sometimes we heard her wailing, sometimes not. We didn’t get too close after the first time.
The following year, Grandma got sick and she died exactly one year after her first trip to the doctor in Richmond. Life moved on and I mostly forgot about Aunt Mary Jane’s house except for the odd occasion when friends start trading ghost stories. Now, I don’t talk about it at all. Not anymore.
Another few years passed and my Grandad Curtis died. It was the day after my 11th birthday and he willed the house to mom. We never lived there and I barely saw it again after that. It sat empty, neglected, and full up with Radon as far as I knew. After a while, the roof sagged, a stripe of tall weeds grew down the middle of the driveway, and the ceiling sank lower and lower until it finally jammed against the front door.
Years passed and eventually, so did my mom. I always figured she had sold the property, and I was surprised to learn she kept it and now I owned it. I can’t say I felt much joy about it, but I guess I wasn’t upset either. It was briefly disturbing, like when you feel something slither against your foot and nearly die from a panic, then realize it was just your dog’s nose. That odd moment when you experience something hideous but the realization comes so quickly after the sensation you aren’t capable of feeling relieved yet. That’s what I felt.
This is where it gets difficult to talk about, but like I said, no one is going to believe me anyway and I need to say it out loud and get it off my chest. If I didn’t have the scars and the medical bills to remind me, I would wonder if I hadn’t hallucinated it. It was real though, and I do have the scars and the bills. I just can’t share what happened with anyone, or I couldn’t before now, here. I can’t tell anybody I know because there’s two ways it happens - One. They don’t believe me and assume I’m crazy. The bad kind. Or two. They do believe me. In that case they don’t have an option and things might be worse. Either way, it could end with me behind bars, with or without soft walls. The truth? Well it doesn’t matter that the truth is because it’s impossible to believe! Trust me, I know how far-fetched it will sound, but listen. I’m the one with trauma, with a broken heart I can’t make sense out of, and a hole in my thigh so deep the doctors filled it with a solid chunk of my rear end the size of a baseball. I lived through it. I know the truth. I know what happened. That doesn’t mean anybody will believe me, or believe the whole truth.
It was a couple months before I made the trip to the property. The thought of my grandparents’ home looking anything like Aunt Mary Jane’s house felt wrong to me. Disrespectful. Like knocking over somebody’s headstone and leaving a bag of garbage on their grave.
Nearly 20 years after my Grandma held my hand and showed me the inside of a real haunted house, I was on my way there. Nearly 20 years after we scurried through the weeds and briars, terrified, running away from the ghost of Aunt Mary Jane’s, it hit me. All this time, my entire adult life and suddenly, on the ride there, I realized it. Only one of them usually walked me over to listen as she wailed at us from the haggard old house. Occasionally, the three of us would go but we didn’t always hear the ghastly groans. It seemed obvious now that I saw it. How could I not see it?
Grandma walked me over, Grandad snuck through the woods. She distracted me while he found a good hiding place. I like to imagine the smile they shared the first time she peeked her head in to be sure “the coast was clear”. I’m sure they loved it, and I love them for the memory, despite everything else.
When I got to their old yellow house I found it looking much better than I had expected. Better than I remembered from before, actually. I distinctly recall the ceiling had reached down to the top of the door and jammed it so you could barely rattle it back and forth. I remember it reminded me of a door that might grow teeth and a house that might eat me.
I walked around the house, peeking through each window. The house had been in such ill repair last time I had seen it, I couldn’t trust it was safe to enter, regardless of the straightened roofline and a door that now looked completely functional. As I went, I became more amazed and more confused. Inside, it looked just like when I was a kid. The same carpet, the same Jesus painting with eyes that opened and closed depending when you looked, the same coffee table I hid under to play, the same television, same sofa, lamp shade, recliner, everything was exactly the same. It couldn’t be. This couldn’t have come about from repairs. None of it made sense. I was bewildered.
I called Leslie to tell her I made it there and to see if she had any rational idea what could be going on. Mom didn’t have the money to stage an elaborate prank like this. We’d always been poor, and she hadn’t sold the property. None of it made sense. Leslie couldn’t think of a logical reason either. After the amazement wore off a little, I asked if she remembered the story of Aunt Mary Jane’s house. She did, so I told her about my epiphany on the ride down. She responded with, “Yeah, I know. You really didn’t know until now?”
At least we had a good chuckle. Sometimes we believe it because we perceive it. I had never had a reason to reconsider the reality of it, or to think about it much at all.
Not until it got up close, in your face, and bared its teeth.
After we hung up, I grabbed a burger from Fermin’s place down the road and had dinner sitting at Grandad’s work table in the shop. I hadn’t gone inside the house yet - I was unsettled by the whole thing. I ate my burger and, on a whim, I took a walk. I went down the barely paved side road side road that led to who-knows-where.
Sure enough, about a hundred yards down, still visible, same as it looked two decades ago. It was the same dirt driveway grown over with brambles, briars and weeds. Further back, a stand of tall hardwoods and pines, a dense crown of leaves to guard the roots and shadows below. It looked just how I remembered it. Surely the walls had given up by now and fallen in on themselves, I thought. The old house should be an overgrown heap of rusted nails, broken glass, and sawdust by now.
I’m not sure why I did it. I wish I could go back and stop myself, but I can’t, so I gotta live with memory. For whatever reason, I was compelled to go on, to see it again. I worked my way through the thorns and found myself standing on the unkempt lawn, staring at Aunt Mary Jane’s house. Thick peels of paint were still there, curled back like scales covering bones. Around back, the headstone sat undisturbed. The jagged glass remained in the dry-rotted window frames, still sticking out every which way. The front porch was still sturdy, the ceiling still hung low, and the locust still made a pass through two of the upstairs windows. But things were a little different than I remembered.
The front door hung open like it always had, but the ceiling, as low as it was, no longer dragged the top. The door wasn’t jammed now. I nudged it open with my foot and it swung easily. I’d had no thought or desire to come see this place or to see inside again, but there I was, tugging the door open, stepping inside. I didn’t know why. I don’t know why.
A pall of dust and sticky cobwebs lay across everything inside. If not for that, the place would have been immaculate. The kitchen was like a time capsule, a snapshot of the mid-1970’s. Teacups hung from hooks under the cabinets, the green toaster had a braided power cord, the linoleum matched the toaster, and the whole room smelled delicious, like someone had a roast in the oven. That was the point when I stopped questioning things and just accepted it. It may have been strange but it wasn’t my concern. It smelled delicious, the home was warm and cozy, and despite my head feeling slightly foggy, I was energized. I felt great, actually.
I noticed a small grandfather clock on the sofa table, its pendulum swinging back and forth. It worked. I accepted it. Sunlight angled through a crack in the curtains and raced across the room. It made me think of sharpened gold and I accepted it. Sunset was less than an hour from now, and through the spotless windows, it was morning outside. I accepted it. That’s how it was, and that’s the way that it should be.
I wandered back towards the kitchen hoping the roast was ready. A teacup swayed on its hook, drops of water on its pattern, curved and magnified, washed clean and hung to dry.
“Honey, could you give me a hand up here? I think my zipper is stuck.” Her voice was melodic and I could almost recall her singing, I couldn’t catch hold of the thought yet.
“Of course dear, I’ll be right there. How’d you get your zipper stuck?” I answered her, of course.
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s this dress. It happens every darn time. I think Mr. Sanderson knows which zippers tend to stick and picks them out on purpose and gives them to me.”
“Now why would Mr. Sanderson do a thing like that?” I was at the top of the stairs.
“Well, because of Marge. Don’t you remember?”
“At the party?” I saw her. She stood with her back to the open door where I now stood. She wore a rose-mauve dress with an ivory lace detail on the shoulders and cuffs. The back of the dress hung in an open V, waiting for help with the zipper. She faced a mirror, and I could only see the angle of her cheek bones, but I knew she was beautiful.
“Yes, at the party!” It was mock exasperation, and of course I remembered. Who could forget a scene like that?
I recalled the stairs, the top of the stairs, standing at the door, and now she was close. Her perfume was familiar. It smelled pretty and I thought it suited her. I have no memory of walking closer, but I was glad to be there. We had never met, but I knew that we had. I knew her intimately. I knew that I had always loved her deeply, and that she loved me. I didn’t question it; I just knew.
“Well, yes, but why would he give you a dress with a stuck zipper? That was Marge’s hullabaloo.” My fingers worked her zipper free. The tab felt familiar and I knew this wasn’t the first time I’d helped my wife like this.
“Because he thinks that I’m the one who told Heath about the conversation at the post office. He thinks that’s why Marge was throwing a fit.”
She swung her hair back and forth, then let it settle down her back. I noticed the nape of her neck. I was lost for a moment, she was all I could see. I felt a need to be closer, to touch her, to kiss the back of her neck and to lay down with her. I still held the tab between my fingers, her dress fully zipped, and there was a moment of stillness, of quiet intimacy. I leaned forward and didn’t question if I should kiss her neck. I was supposed to kiss her there. I needed to feel her skin with my lips. I stopped and savored the fleeting anticipation and I could feel her warmth near my lips.
I was finally there to taste her when she spun around, a whirlwind of beauty and hair and perfume and she flung her arms around me, around my neck and she smiled, a brilliant smile, wide and toothy, and it was no longer a smile and she was strong and her arms were too tight, and her grin grew wider and wider and stretched and contorted into a hideous maw. It happened fast.
The pressure around my neck made me sputter for air and that snapped me out of my daze. Whatever this thing was, it was evil. I felt it now.
I struggled to slip out of her grasp. Her arms had become gray and mottled with purple stains, like old bruises, misshapen. Her hands were large and the proportions looked wrong. Its fingers spindled into hooked claws, sharp, dangerous looking. The thick smell of mold and rot filled the room and I would have struggled to breathe with or without her squeezing me this way. All the air had been sucked from my lungs and they burned. I wriggled back and forth to find any small gap my chest could expand, to breathe.
She spoke again. “What’s wrong dear? Don’t you want a kiss?” This time, her voice was different, no longer melodic, no longer the voice of a woman. Her words came out in a quick raspy growl that reminded me of worms and insects, and as it hissed out that last word, thick fluid strung across its rows of elongated teeth, not saliva, some disgusting mucus that clung like stringy threads over sharp and serrated teeth. Teeth meant for tearing flesh. A few tiny drops of the fluid broke free as I fought against its strength and burned the skin of my cheek where they landed.
I needed air. Now.
I struggled until I was almost convulsing, then when I looked back at the creature…well, there was no creature. There was only my beautiful wife, befuddled, concerned about me.
“Are you okay? Please, you’re scaring me. What’s the matter?” What was wrong with me? Why had I frightened her that way? My chest ached inside hearing that tone in her voice, hearing how it slipped out, how she meant to keep it hidden. The tone that said she was scared. Scared for me, maybe. But her tone said she was scared of me, too..
I embraced her and pulled her to me. I needed to comfort her, to make it right before it was too late.
It’s no small miracle what happened next. If not for plain old dumb luck, the thing would have had me. Eaten me, I guess. Taken my soul, tortured me, I don’t know what, but I’ve never seen anything like that creature. True evil, the deep down core of evil.
The room had looked like a tastefully furnished and decorated bedroom moments ago. An ordinary bedroom for an average husband and a normal wife. And then it was a room with holes through the floor to the room below. The stout limb of a locust tree grew through the busted out window, into the room, and elbowed and angled its way out through the other window.
As I embraced this woman, my wife, desperate to soothe her hurt, desperate not to wound her more, the awful thing with hungry teeth was there again, chirping its unsettling clicks when it lunged. The mouth worked back and forth, scraping teeth together. The mucus had become thicker, and foamy. It had begun to leak and drip from its grotesque mouth. It was a split-second, that I noticed. Only an adrenaline fueled mind could have registered all of it to sort and file them into compartments of how deadly they might be.
I needed help, and somehow, it came. A small miracle, also a creature, but wildly different from this enormous lunging, fang-toothed monster. A miracle that arrived in the form of an opossum who made her den in Aunt Mary Jane’s dilapidated, ramshackle house.
It was all a blur, but I suspect she was a mama opossum, or maybe she was upset at the commotion. All I know is that it snapped and I barely reacted in time. I felt the unnaturally sharp point of the thing’s tooth followed by the searing burn of the mucus foam. It nicked me just under my jaw - way too close to my throat. At that moment, the opossum charged down the locust limb and hissing so loudly that it stopped us both dead cold for a split second. I was overflowing with adrenaline by then and my body was running on autopilot. I felt my body react without my input, and it shot into motion. I lurched away from the thing, trying to go anywhere I could to get it off. It had my leg, but I managed to grab hold of the tree limb and held it tight. The opossum didn’t like how close I got and she reared back on her hind legs. She was ready for a fight to the death.
I kicked and pulled, but I couldn’t shake the nasty thing off my leg. It was too strong and too quick for me to do any more than hold on and to keep trying to pull free. It didn’t work.
It felt like a full block of hot knives plunged into my thigh. I heard myself yelp from the shock of the pain. It hurt something awful, but it got worse. The creature had its long teeth buried in the meat of my leg and then chomped down. The jaw snapped shut and tore out a chunk. I think I felt it hit bone and I could see strands of muscle and fat inside. I almost passed out. Everything turned to gray and quiet nothingness, then the world rushed back in like a full alarm. I knew I had to make it count, right then. If not, this creature was going to have its way with me however it wanted.
I shook and pushed and yelled and pulled and tried to whip loose. I was losing too much blood, too fast. I could smell it, but I didn’t understand until later what it was I smelled. I heard the wet sound of it pouring onto the floor, before it drained through the cracks and holes to the floor a story below us. I didn’t register that it was my blood. It only registered that liquid was leaking and making a mess somewhere.
Both legs were soaked with red, but fortunately the blood made me slick. I yanked hard and jerked loose from its claws a little. Not much, but enough to gain some leverage. I let him pull me towards him, then sprung away, using his momentum against him to slip free. I grasped for anything I could reach, any weapon at all..
Sharp claws raked through my shirt, ripping jagged tears into my back. I ignored it and stretched toward the window and tried to grab a shard of the glass. The things must have had barbs somewhere because when I reached for the glass, I felt a sudden sting and felt the barbs grab and dig even deeper as I fought against them. I ignored that too and shoved myself as hard as I could.
They ripped gashes into my calf. I heard the sound of my body tearing as they pulled through. I got hold of a piece of that glass, though. I knew the glass would cut me too and I ignored it all. I felt it slide through the meaty part of my hand but I just clenched down even tighter. The deeper it was in, the better my grip was.
I whirled around and went after the thing. I had the glass with both bloody hands and swung the shard high over my head, then down as hard as I could. The glass jammed it into whatever part of the creature I could reach. I stabbed it. And stabbed it. And stabbed it.
It screeched and clicked and made odd, wet sucking sounds, then suddenly it was kicking, trying to get away from me. It didn’t last. It was only trying to gain an advantage.
I was no longer choosing fight or flight and there was no logic, only survival. If I had retained any logic, I might have launched myself out the window. Instead, I went after it.
I knew the blood loss might kill me, but I knew if I didn’t do something now, I was dead anyway. Some deep-down, instinctual, snake-brain took over and I leaped on it. I felt it doing things to hurt me, but I felt nothing except animalistic blood-rage. I felt claws and barbs and teeth push through my flesh with a soft pop, but it didn’t matter. There was no pain.
I don’t know how many times I stabbed it before it finally went weak. It wasn’t dead, but I’d hurt it. I was on its chest, heaving and out of breath. I was suddenly weak. I was too cold, shaky.
I looked down at it, ready to finish it. There was a waft of perfume, sexy and feminine, all around me. I noticed how the mirror was trimmed with gold leaf on its scalloped edges. The mirror my beautiful wife had been staring into when I worked her zipper free. I loved her so fully, so completely.
She was beautiful and it pained me to see her look at me the way she did. I’ll never forget that look. I wish I could take it back, to change things, but I can’t.
I had no choice. I understand that. I apply that logic everytime I remember, which is everyday. But the logic doesn’t matter to my heart.
Our eyes met and I saw it. I saw that she knew what I was about to do. I saw that she wasn’t afraid, she was hurt. I hurt her beautiful heart because she knew what I would do. And I did it. I knew the creature wouldn’t show its true self. I knew it would be this woman who felt so familiar to me whom I’d never seen before now. The creature made sure it stung me back as it died.
I kept hacking for I don’t know how long. Eventually, I raised myself up off the body. It was barely recognizable anymore. My arms were limp, and there was no part of me left dry. I was drenched in our blood. Somehow, I lurched across the patchwork floor and down the steps. I hadn’t noticed on the way up, but most were rotten or missing. I maneuvered down on the framework. I got myself to the door but didn’t know if I could make it back through the briars but the human spirit is amazing I guess, because here I am.
On the way out, I noticed a small, ornate picture frame that hung near the front door. A photo of her, my beloved. It was tinted with the brass sepia of old photos. Later, when I got home from the hospital, I looked it over more closely. There were three letters and a date written on the back with a flourish. It said, “MJW” and “1908, April”.

Hey Guys,
I thought i'd share my story on my journey of using different modded WhatsApp throughout the years, and where I had put my trust. From WhatsApp+ by Rafalanse in 2013 to my current FMWhatsApp by Fouad Mokdad.
Heres my story:
I started my journey on WhatsApp with the Blackberry Curve 8520, in 2012, but that was short-lived due to the phone dying by water damage. I eventally ended up purchasing a cheap Chinese android Phablet (this thing was a pain, miserably slow, got really hot and the screen kept getting lines) ...
Anyway, I was excited for my phablet and I remember when I got it I was researching different apps to download and try out. Google was (probably still is) my best friend, so I asked a lot of questions, seeking whatever I could put my hands on to try.

1. WHATSAPP+ - By Rafalanse

After some time I had stumbled on some videos talking about WhatsApp+, and I wondered. What is this WhatsApp+? Why is it so different from the original? What also caught my eye was the app icon. It was a light blue/cyan which is my favourite. So, I opened up the video. I vaguely remember it being an Indian guy talking about how to get WhatsApp+ on your PC, via Bluestacks.
I decided to go do some more research and stumbled upon the XDA thread where rafalanse; the creator of the original WhatsApp+ basically had a forum post on what WhatsApp+ was and it's features.
At the time I don't think privacy was a concern, I can't exactly remember if last seen was a thing back then (circa 2013). We didn't have blue ticks then, blue ticks were only released until 2014, and the Status (sometimes referred to as "Stories", now called Updates) was released until Feb, 2017. What drew a lot of people to WhatsApp+ was it's ability to have the app customized with themes. Something that even to this day, the Original WhatsApp doesn't have, the most you get is a light and dark theme.
Facebook eventually purchased WhatsApp for $19 Billion Dollars (and I downloaded it off of Google Play for free? lol), a few months after that aquisition, rafalanse got hit with a DMCA notice from WhatsApp, and he was forced to shut down modding the applicaiton. On January 21st, 2015. Users who were once using WhatsApp+ were hit with a 24 hour ban and were forced to switch to the official WhatsApp. We were broken hearted. WhatsApp+ had officially shut down in 2015.
XDA Article - Cease and Desist: Extract below

Developers in trouble

So, now... it was time to hunt, who would create a new modified WhatsApp? Would rafalanse leak the source code to his mod? Will anyone make themes and remove that pesky blue tick so we can have some privacy?
Rafalanse eventually moved on to create Plus Messenger, a modified version of Telegram Messenger, another popular messaging app (and in my opinion, better than WhatsApp, I just cant convince people to convert... You could even migrate messages from WhatsApp to Telegram and Telegram had the features that WhatsApp has now. They did take a while to add Stories and Video Calling but before those were popular, telegram already had a bunch of features that WhatsApp just didnt have yet.
I decided to stray my own path, I remember Lucky Patcher had a patch for WhatsApp to include the privacy features.

2. GBWHATSAPP - By Omar (@atnfas_hoak)

After some time I stumbled upon this mod called GBWhatsApp. It became widely popular. Created by Omar (Twitter Username: atnfas_hoak). I honestly never really knew what the"GB" in GBWhatsApp stood for, and I was skeptical if he was indeed the original creator since there were starting to pop up a lot of clones with the same name. However I was eventually convinced that this was the original creator based on my research. All the other clones were updating after his release, which means they were all borrowing and copying his mod. His Telegam Channel (Search GBUser on Telegram for the Official Channel) and Group along with Twitter account also frequently updated, giving some insights and plans and there were also other moderators in his telegram group that were keeping everyone engaged.
GBWhatsApp boasted a whole new bunch of privacy featues and the ever popular Anti-Ban code (which prevented users from getting banned for using a modded version of Whatsapp), themes and even very exclusive features! Things like hiding view status, hiding the forwarded notification on messages, Block Calls with/without showing Ringing, Increase on Photos and Videos limit, Auto-Reply, Custom Privacy settings for each contact, etc. I could be wrong but I believe Omar's WhatsApp was based on the WhatsApp Beta versions, because I do remember having access to features that weren't yet available to the public on the official version.
This mod stuck with me for a number of years, until 2019. I can't remember the exact month, but there was a huge ban wave going around, and even I was hit with it. I remember the frustration of people asking me the question "Why was I banned???". It wasn't just GBWhatsApp, but other mods too, like Fouad Mokdad's FMWhatsApp which was another popular mod but was basically copying code from GBWhatsApp, just rebranding it. I tried explaining to people that it's unofficial and according to WhatsApp, (oversummarizing their terms of service) using a modified version of their app is bad, no-no. If anything goes wrong they could be held liable and their excuse is they don't want people to be hacked or data leaked because of these mods, they weren't totally wrong. There was an article from India Today about a mod called WhatsApp Gold. A gold-themed WhatsApp that was basically stealing your private photos back in 2016, It also resurfaced in 2019.
GBWhatsApp got one final update after the ban and.. well... that was it. We never heard from Omar again. WhatsApp usually has their base expire over time to force you to update to a newer version. As time went on we were getting closer and closer to this expiration date but no word from Omar about anything, AT ALL, not even a base update. The other mods of the Telegram were saying the same, Omar either did not respond, or his responses were vague. Eventually... the day came, there was no surprise updates... nothing and On August, 1st 2019. GBWhatsApp was declared DEAD officially by Omar.

*GBWhatsApp Shuts Down* We are really sorry to announce that we have completely stopped the development of GBWhatsApp. It was a great time with all you people. 

3. YOWHATSAPP - By Yousef Al Basha

So, here we were... hanging by a thread with almost nowhere to turn. All the other mods that existed were also shut down because they had relied heavily on Omar's apk to modify and rebrand, without him, they too didn't exist (except for one.. which i'll discuss below now)
I jumped on to using FMWhatsApp but it didn't last long, it too gave the notification of the version was expired. I remember one of the users in the Telegram Group was having a discussion with us, and they recommended "YOWhatsApp" he even linked the Telegram group. YoWhatsApp was different. This was unlike the other mods out there, It didn't seem like it was relying on Omar's GBWhatsApp for it's base nor seem like it was just rebranding GBWhatsApp. This YoWhatsApp had a cleaner UI for it's Mod Menu, it almost seemed like it was actually a part of WhatsApp and not just a random mod menu. GBWhatsApp's menu was a bit cluttered and the UI for those menus were a lot less neat.
...and... IT WORKED! We finally had some hope! Yousef Al Basha continued updating his WhatsApp for some time but it was unfortunately short-lived. Yousef Al Basha also went dark. The notification came up saying that the WhatsApp version will soon be outdated and we would have to update. However Yousef wasn't posting any updates in his Telegram Channel (@YoMODS). On November, 6th 2020 he issued a notice that YoWA v8.50 was not an official YoWA update. This was because someone else faked an update and claimed it was official but Yousef did not issue an update.
And well.... that was it. The group chat was locked, and we were forced to move on in Late November - Early December of 2020. That's where FMWhatsApp by Fouad Mokdad came in.

4. FMWhatsApp - by Fouad Mokdad

After the version had expired I decided to move on to FMWhatsApp, I just couldnt go back to the Official WhatsApp. I had spent the past 8 years on modded versions and it was either I gave WhatsApp completely or find an alternative. I chose the latter and decided to give FMWhatsApp a try. I had stumbled upon the Official Telegram group for FMWhatsApp and began using. Fouad basically was known for copying other's work so when he released his update, it still used to say YoMods in the mod menus or about sections. But what made a lot of people eventualyl migrate to FMWhatsApp was that on February 8th, 2020, Yousef Al Basha sent a message in his telegram channel:

Great work by FouadMODS, walking the same path of YoWA by adding Exclusive Features 👏 I am sharing it here to benefit my subscribers who miss YoWA🔮😇 

and forwarded a message from the official Telegram Channel of FouadMODS (@FouadMODS) showing an exclusive feature to mark a status as viewed if you had turned off Show View Status.
... and well. I have been using it ever since! I've come across other mods like TMWhatsApp and WHatsapp Aero for example which are other popular mods that I see a couple of Youtubers talk about, but they fundamentally take FMWhatsApp's code and just rebrand, WhatsApp Aero actually does it in a cleaner UI than FMWhatsApp and other mods. Though it takes them some time to rebrand and release their newer version.
As far as I am aware, I don't think there is another mod that exists that does it's own mods without relying on reversing and taking apart FMWhatsApp.
I thought that i'd share my journey with you as a guide on my experience in trusting mods. There are so many fakes and clones out there it's really hard to tell who to turst. Im not saying trust these mods either. There is a risk to them all! It's just that these were the most trusted as the years went by, not just by me but countless others.
And as of recent, It seems a new ban wave has been happeneing. Users are now forced to use the official WhatsApp but they are met with a banner message that gives them time to backup their chats and let them know that they're using an unofficial version. I'm not sure what the future will hold, I do hope there's a new anti-ban code and we can enjoy modified WhatsApp again.
Goodluck to you all! Hope my story inspires soemone and atleast points your head in the direction to help find a trusted modder.
For you Rooted users, you guys may have some hope. WATweaker

tl;dr: The wettest I’ve ever been. I didn’t avoid the poison oak (scratching as I write this), and I need to seriously re-evaluate some strategies.
Background
I've been planning a thru-hike of the Condor Trail for a while now. For anyone not familiar with Big Sur, the trail conditions change quite rapidly every year, especially when half of the roads used to access trailheads in the area try to wash away into the Pacific Ocean. The ephemeral nature of access is only compounded by California’s new-normal wildfire season that obliterates the trails every so often. Given these conditions, and that the last person to hike the Condor was Masochist from a few years back, I thought it would be an exceptionally good idea to get out there to see how conditions have been holding up, and how my gear and poison oak management strategies are likely to work during a thru.
In anticipation of poison oak, I’ve developed a strategy involving technu wipes, and a FineTrack elemental mesh layer to change into at night. I wanted to test out how well this all worked, in addition to my usual gear choices for rain and hiking.
With that in mind, I decided to head out to Boetcher’s Gap to setup a cache and explore some of the trail. What better chance to explore Big Sur conditions than during a 3-day weekend! I grabbed a willing friend who has always been interested in doing 30-ish mile days with me in questionable conditions, and we headed out to Big Sur with an atmospheric river fast approaching.
Original Trip Plan

• I’ve been using the Big Sur Trail map for more than a decade now to assess trail conditions in Big Sur. Recently, however, I decided it’s high-time I get the map integrated into Gaia to simplify my life. I developed a script that scrapes the trails and drops them into a GPX so you can just delete and re-import the trails before heading out for up-to-date trail conditions on mobile devices for mapping.
• I originally planned a 50-ish mile route (Gaia distance estimates) to get some good hiking in the Ventana Wilderness out of Boetcher's Gap. This seemed reasonable given my extensive prior experience with the trail network, and that we had 3 days and an evening of hiking to get it all in.
• I’ve since checked the original loop using CalTopo which suggests my original plan may have actually been over 60 miles (good to know that Gaia’s mapping estimates appear pretty iffy for this region)

Route GPX Information (completed and planned)
The Trip Report
Day 0:
We left Friday afternoon and headed to Boetcher's Gap. We hit the fence sometime in the evening and did the 4-mile road walk into the campground where we bivvied for the night.
Day 1:
Morning: In the morning I buried a cache for me to pickup at the end of my condor thru-hike, and we set out up a track that was labeled as "difficult impassable" and "difficult passable" on the Big Sur trail map.
7:30 AM - It took us over two hours to go 2 miles. My friend brought a machete with him, and at the start he tried hacking through some of the over-growth across the trail. Given the high proportion of manzanita and chamise, the machete was too-frequently rebuffed by woody biomass to be very useful. During this time, the rains settled in, and we busted out the rain gear.
10:00 AM – We hit an “impassable” section of trail, and spent a while figuring out some ways around and through it.
11:00 AM – We finally made it to a “passable, clear” section of trail, and cruised for about 10 miles over the next few hours
2:00 PM – We were once again in a “difficult passable” section of trail. It became quite obvious that we were going to need to modify the original trip at this point, as covering distance across the “orange-colored” trail segments was likely to be a larger challenge than anticipated with all the new growth. I scoped out the map, and saw we could deviate over to Danish Creek Camp, and then take an entirely-orange (“difficult passable”) 4-ish-mile trail connector up to little pines camp, at which point we would only have a 12-ish mile hike back to the car.
It was also around this time, that my friend pointed out my rain jacket was looking pretty miserable. I took out some duct tape and dyneema tape, and went about repairing the OutDry membrane on the shoulders as best as I could to provide some additional water-worthiness while the rains continued to beat down.
4:00 PM – We made it to the turn-off to head toward Danish Creek Camp on a “wilderness freeway”
5:00 PM – We got into camp, and the rain abated for a nice little while for me to setup my tarp, use the facili-trees, and munch on some calories before curling up for the night.
6:00 PM – the 40 mph gusts came in, along with some aggressive rain, and I had to go out and about to find some pretty hefty rocks to throw on top of my stakes to further secure them. I then set in for an evening where I periodically awoke to gusts of wind threatening to tear my tarp asunder.
Day 2:
7:00 AM – The morning was beautiful. Blue sky and the chance of sun! I pulled out all my layers and put them on to get them as dry as possible before the rain set in.
8:00 AM – We started making really pretty good time following the Rattlesnake Creek trail.
9:30 AM – We hit the section of the Rattlesnake creek trail marked as “difficult, impassable” on my map. We managed to get through the 0.5 mile segment in a little over an hour.
11:00 AM – We cruised down the other side of the trail, and made it to Rattlesnake Camp. We snacked for a bit, filled up on some water, and then started to find the trail that was color-coded Orange on my Gaia map (difficult, passable)
12:00 PM – We had circled back quite a few times up and down the river looking for the trail. And decided to just bushwhack across to the other side of the river (per the GPX line), and start contouring a topo line on a cliff.
2:00 PM – We had made it 0.5 miles along the cliff from Rattle Snake camp. It was clear that there was not a findable trail between the thigh-high blackberry brambles and poison oak that covered the entire lower bank, or the dense, fallen madrone that had to be snaked through, covering the entire middle-part of the cliff. At this point, the option was to go back the way we came, or bushwhack straight up to the top of the ridge, in hope that the vegetation would be sparser on top of ridge line to allow passage. We decided we were going to bushwhack the 2000 feet straight up.
3:00 PM – The ridge climb was going surprisingly well. We managed to find enough sparse areas where we could make quite good progress just weaving back and forth to either side of the ridge while consistently making upward progress through some less-dense manzanita and ceanothus. Largely it consisted of: go up when you can, and contour left or right when you can’t.
We ended up finally hitting a wall of vegetation we couldn’t easily get around about 1000 feet from the top of pine ridge. The rains had started coming in again around 2:30, and our bushwhacking became cold, wet, and miserable.
4:00 PM – We managed to push through some dead madrone and fell onto a clearing that was consistent with a trail location on my topo map. The “clear, passable” trail even had a large tree across it that had been cut at some point in the past. Finally, we were on a cruisy trail
4:02 PM – We hit a large wall of trees, and the trail vanished. We spent 20 minutes looking around for where the trail resumed
4:30 PM – We started pushing the 8-ish miles we had to go aiming to hit the car this evening
5:30 PM – We were feeling pretty beat up by the time we hit the junction for the Apple Tree Rustic camp site. While walking along the ridge, we were #Blessed by 60+ mph gusts of wind with some fierce, horizontal rain. At one point, I suggested we bivvy on the trail on the north side of a ridge where the dense chapparal on either side made a surprisingly great wind block. My friend (who was hammocking) wanted to push ahead for some tree cover.
6:00 PM – We made it to the Apple Tree Rustic Campsite, a little under 4 miles from the car. Given how quickly we were losing temperature and light, and the uncertainty about the trail conditions ahead, we decided to stop here for the night. I found a reasonably sheltered spot by the creek while my friend setup his hammock.
6:00 to Midnight -- We started experiencing the most intense rain and wind I have ever camped in (and I’ve camped on some passes in Patagonia). It seemed to be around 2 inches of rain per hour for the entire 6 hours. Winds would peel across the canopy, making sounds akin to jet engines. My tarp held, although my state of dampness persisted as rain would turn horizontal to snake through the A in my pitched A-frame.
Day 3:
7:00 AM – having weathered the storm and succeeded in drying out my FineTrack elemental base layers, I went to see how my friend survived. Aside from his perpetual fear of the tress coming down upon him, he was cozy and dry-enough.
8:00 AM – we cruised up the trail and eventually hit a developed dirt road. The only concern was the PG&E powerlines that seemed well-positioned to start a wildfire come the summer. We were back at the car before 9:30.
Afterward
Based on my experience with the Big Sur trail condition rating system, I was completely shocked by how impassable the Rattlesnake Creek Trail ended up being. I would consider that segment to be entirely lost. I went on to the Ventana website to go make a remark about it.
Rating System for those not in the know:

• Wilderness Freeway
• Clear, Passable
• Difficult, Passable
• Difficult, Impassable
• Lost (there definitely is not a trail)

It was at this point that I discovered that my script which pulled trail data from BigSurTrailmap.net had a bug and would default to color coding “lost” trail segments to whatever color the previously scraped trail had been. So while the Rattlesnake Creek Trail was in fact marked as “lost” on the trail map, my script marked it as “Difficult, passable.” I’ve since updated my script and should be able to avoid this problem in the future.
I also discovered that there is quite some backstory about the Rattlesnake Creek Camp and trail system. With this update to my web-scraping system, I’ve also now realized that my original trail plan would have been impossible, as it too made use of a ridge trail that has since been lost to the history of time.
My rain gear all completely failed. The OutDry membrane shredded across most of the jacket. A small hole in the crotch of my Helium II rain pants quickly ripped down the entire leg, effectively rendering my pants into chaps. Due to some haphazard evaluation of my web scraping trail network tool before utilizing it, we ended up with some very poor decision making given what we thought was real data about the trail network.
I now need to seriously re-evaluate my Condor trail plan. Given that California is in an El Nino year, the conditions through much of this spring are going to be wet. This makes trail access across the remote region harder than usual (it's already hard), making bailout points, if needed, exceptionally difficult and dangerous. My rain gear choices appear to be inadequate for the level of bushwhacking that will be needed to push through the vegetation growth from the past 2 seasons of heavy rain, and fallen trees from the fire seasons before that. I may need to swing back through Big Sur to retrieve my cache at some other time if I decide not to go through with the Condor at this point.
Overall, however, I think I’d rate this trip 7/10 stars and mostly Type 2 fun, only a little Type 3. Might consider doing this again.

Ok, so…um. Yeah, well. This is going to be tougher than I thought.
No one is going to believe me anyway, so fuck it, right? Might as well just go for it. I killed my wife. There. Probably not in the way that people think, but people might be pretty close.
I’ve never discussed what happened at Aunt Mary Jane’s house that night. I always thought she was made up by my Grandma, a figment, not a phantom. Just a name to give the house and make it scary enough not to play there. I figured no one named Mary Jane had ever lived there until I found her picture and the thin memory of the grave marker came flooding back. Either way, my grandparents were in cahoots and they had me fooled. It took me years to figure out the truth and I bet they shared a few good laughs about it.
I spent a lot of time with my grandparents when I was a kid. My mom was 16 when she got pregnant, 17 when she had a shotgun wedding, and she was 19 when she divorced my deadbeat (and I suspect, abusive) dad. She needed support, and they helped. I don’t know if my mom was determined not to move back home or if it wasn’t allowed by Grandad, but paying all the bills was difficult for us. The result was I got to spend a lot of time at my grandparent’s house and I loved it.
I remember Grandma telling me spooky stories. Sometimes Grandad too, but mainly he would sit around with us and chime in to add a detail or two, making her stories even scarier. One favorite story was about the ghost of Redbeard Pete, a pirate who was known to be stubborn in life, and too stubborn in death to move on. That’s not what this is about. I’m trying to delay it. Or avoid it altogether. If you saw her the way I did, especially then, when I…when I did what I had to do.
What I need to say involves Aunt Mary Jane’s house, and I will only speak of this once. I need to say it, and after that I’ll never speak of it again. If I’m going to tell the story, I need to tell it all and say everything I need to say about it. How I came to know the house is part of our history. It might not seem related to what happened that night, but everything I know about it is relevant to me.
My grandparents lived in a yellow house on a corner lot in rural Virginia. The Northern Neck of Virginia, to be exact. Big yard, the neighbors were family, woods out back, and everyone was a farmer, hunter, or a fisherman, and more likely they were all three. The main road there didn’t have yellow lines until recently. Their house sat in the corner crook where an even smaller side road turned off and led to who-knows-where. It was paved, but just barely. The narrow kind of road where folks usually just drove down the middle until they met another vehicle, then both would wave as they squeezed past one another and tried to avoid the ditch. And if someone ended up in the ditch, you already knew you’d stay and give them a hand getting out. Their house faced that road.
My Grandad’s workshop sat near the edge of the property and barely spitting distance from the smaller road. (Forgive me, it’s been so long that I can’t recall the name of the street. Probably Route something or other.) About a hundred yards down from his shop was an overgrown lane - an old driveway. Aunt Mary Jane’s house.
As kids, my cousins and I rode our bikes past there all the time and never even noticed the house. The lane, yes, but not the house and the dirt driveway was so overgrown with weeds that none of us ever thought to go investigate. In hindsight, maybe there was another reason.
Anyway, the property was overgrown with pine and locust trees, and a few pecan trees. The house was situated among a stand of trees closer to the road than you might expect. It was invisible from the street. The house was hidden, not because it was buried deep in the forest, but because the property was being devoured by weeds, blackberry brambles, and neglect.
The reason I knew about it is because Grandma told me about Aunt Mary Jane. She explained that’s just what everyone called her, and told me to my dismay that she was not my real aunt. Later, she and my Grandad would scare the hell out of me and for years I was oblivious to the truth.
I can’t remember what kind of story Grandma concocted, but I remember it was about Aunt Mary Jane and how mean she was - when she was alive before she turned into a ghost. And how she got even meaner as a ghost. Her story spooked me and I’m pretty sure it was meant to keep me from finding it by accident one day. I used to play in the woods all the time and I guess I might have. It was more visible from the woods on my grandparent’s property than it was out front. Saplings grew through the tottering, tumble-down floor inside, the droopy roof sagged down, bulging into the kitchen, and the dry-rotted old window frames had panes of jagged glass sticking every which way. Needless to say, if our group of cousins had ever discovered the place on our own, there would have been a lot less glass in the windows, and a lot more rocks being thrown through the glass that remained. The house was a donkey mile beyond repair, and far too dangerous for anyone to horse around in or to explore.
Despite my fear, I had trouble believing her story at first, and I told her so. All this time, how could I not know about a ghost who lived right next door? A nasty, bitter old ghost who was a nasty and bitter old witch when she was alive? I would know if there was a ghost, I thought.
She reminded me about the tooth fairy and how I didn’t know about her until I had a loose tooth. This was different, I told her, because I hadn’t always had a loose tooth, but Aunt Mary Jane’s house had always been there.
She told me she would take me over there and prove it. She may have been bluffing, but this was more exciting than the State Fair. I wasn’t calling her bluff, I was dying to see a real life ghost. She put on her shoes and that’s when I got scared. I wanted to chicken out, but she wouldn’t let me, so she promised she’d hold my hand the whole time, just in case we ran into Aunt Mary Jane. And off we went, walking out to Route whatever-it-was and down the road about a hundred yards.
Grandma picked our way through the blackberry briars that sprawled across the lane, holding back the pricker vines I wouldn’t get too scratched up. I ducked under the last tangle and emerged onto the sparse but overgrown lawn in front of a dilapidated house. It looked like every ramshackle haunted house in every movie you ever saw. The paint, which used to be white and probably lead-based, curled back in thick peels, revealing the sun-bleached wood underneath the layers. Reptilian scales to armor old bones. A massive locust tree grew at one corner of the house. One of its limbs thrust into a room on the second floor through a side window. Inside, it angled like an arthritic elbow, and stretched back outside and rested on top of the porch. The front door was partially opened and stuck like that. The rood sagged so badly that a deep slouch had developed in the ceiling and now its weight wedged the door in place. Not wide open, but enough so you could stick your head through to sneak a look. The porch had held up fairly well.
She told me if we were extra careful, maybe we could peek inside, but first she wanted to look around and check if there was a better place than under a collapsing ceiling.
The backyard was also overgrown, but the shade of the house and the tree canopy above kept the weeds sparse enough so it wasn’t difficult to walk around. We were picking our way through the overgrowth when she stopped and shushed me. Then she pointed toward the rope swing.
“The swing?” I was just a little kid and even I could tell that rope wasn’t safe.
She shook her head and pointed again, but lower, and then I saw it. A headstone, beyond the swing, near where a fence might have stood once.
“Is someone really buried there?” I had seen cemeteries before, but discovering a grave anywhere else felt unusual.
She nodded and we walked a little closer, but she stopped me before I got too close. “See? That’s where she’s buried,” she whispered. “Don’t walk on her grave because she might, snatch your ankle and pull you down to hell.”
“MJW” was all I could see. The dates, if there were any, were too low and hidden by the grass and moss that grew in a thicker patch above the grave. I was amazed thinking that a spooky skeleton was almost right under me.
So, a little explanation - it wasn’t unusual to be buried on your own on their property back then. This house was, I imagine, built sometime in the late 1800’s, so these types of grave markers were fairly commonplace for the area. The other thing to know is that this area is full of country folk, real salt of the earth types. My family was Southern Baptist (but not me), so hell was a very real place. Not a metaphor for eternal suffering, but a specific locale full of sulfur, brimstone, and fire. I did not walk on Aunt Mary Jane’s grave. Turns out that when I returned as an adult, it wouldn’t matter anyhow.
Grandma said she was worried we might disturb Aunt Mary Jane, so we could have a quick peek, but we weren’t going to stick around long. Plus, she was worried about the broken glass and rusty nails or something else hiding in the grass. You never knew when you might have an unfortunate encounter with a copperhead. I was more scared the house might turn into a monster and come alive with a front door for a mouth to eat me. I was terrified and I loved it. I might have felt differently, but at the time I couldn’t imagine what came to pass.
She told me the rules. Hold her hand. Don’t go any further than she does. If she says to stop, stop and don’t move. Don’t touch anything. Don’t make too much noise in case there’s a raccoon or opossum who lives inside. That was fine with me. I didn’t want to be too loud and get a ghost angry at us.
She poked at the boards with her toes, checking if they were rotted, but they were okay. The porch window teased an easy look inside, but curtains and the ceiling bulging down blocked it, so she took a peek inside. It was all clear. No sign of ghosts, she told me, so I peeked in and looked around.
I didn’t see any ghosts and it looked mostly empty. Kinda boring. Just a lot of dust, a dried out mouse, a few pictures left hanging on the wall.
“Shh! Do you hear that?”
I hadn’t heard anything/ “What is it, Grandma?”
“Sh. Hear it?” she had a hand to her ear, listening. “I think I hear her coming. I think it’s Aunt Mary Jane!”
I didn’t hear it at first, but that didn’t stop me from being afraid. I still held her hand tight. Then, I heard it. It was quiet at first and I strained to hear it, but after a moment, it got louder. There was no missing it anymore. Spooky moans and groans that rolled through the house like swelling waves, growing louder, then soft, louder, softer again. Grandma got scared and I was already scared. We reckoned Aunt Mary Jane was giving us a warning so we probably ought to listen to her and be on our way. If she didn’t have a grip on my hand like she did, I would have already been tearing through those berry brambles like a dozen wild rabbits.
Next time my cousins came down, I told them how I saw Aunt Mary Jane’s gravestone, and how I almost went inside a haunted house. I was the youngest and they didn’t even listen at first, but when I told them how we heard Aunt Mary Jane spooking around, me and Grandma both? That got their attention alright, but they didn’t believe me. I told them how Grandma went with me and I told them they could go right ahead and ask her if they wanted and they did.
She said it never happened and I must have dreamt it. I cried because everybody thought I was lying and nobody believed me because I was just a little kid. Later, when nobody else could hear us, she explained that, if the rest of the boys knew, they would want her to take them too. She said the last time was too scary to go back. She asked me if we could just keep it between us whenever we heard a ghost. That was even better to me.
After that, Grandma or Grandad would walk the hundred yards or so down Route whatever-it-was and we would stand by the old mailbox to listen for the ghost of Aunt Mary Jane. Sometimes we heard her wailing, sometimes not. We didn’t get too close after the first time.
The following year, Grandma got sick and she died exactly one year after her first trip to the doctor in Richmond. Life moved on and I mostly forgot about Aunt Mary Jane’s house except for the odd occasion when friends start trading ghost stories. Now, I don’t talk about it at all. Not anymore.
Another few years passed and my Grandad Curtis died. It was the day after my 11th birthday and he willed the house to mom. We never lived there and I barely saw it again after that. It sat empty, neglected, and full up with Radon as far as I knew. After a while, the roof sagged, a stripe of tall weeds grew down the middle of the driveway, and the ceiling sank lower and lower until it finally jammed against the front door.
Years passed and eventually, so did my mom. I always figured she had sold the property, and I was surprised to learn she kept it and now I owned it. I can’t say I felt much joy about it, but I guess I wasn’t upset either. It was briefly disturbing, like when you feel something slither against your foot and nearly die from a panic, then realize it was just your dog’s nose. That odd moment when you experience something hideous but the realization comes so quickly after the sensation you aren’t capable of feeling relieved yet. That’s what I felt.
This is where it gets difficult to talk about, but like I said, no one is going to believe me anyway and I need to say it out loud and get it off my chest. If I didn’t have the scars and the medical bills to remind me, I would wonder if I hadn’t hallucinated it. It was real though, and I do have the scars and the bills. I just can’t share what happened with anyone, or I couldn’t before now, here. I can’t tell anybody I know because there’s two ways it happens - One. They don’t believe me and assume I’m crazy. The bad kind. Or two. They do believe me. In that case they don’t have an option and things might be worse. Either way, it could end with me behind bars, with or without soft walls. The truth? Well it doesn’t matter that the truth is because it’s impossible to believe! Trust me, I know how far-fetched it will sound, but listen. I’m the one with trauma, with a broken heart I can’t make sense out of, and a hole in my thigh so deep the doctors filled it with a solid chunk of my rear end the size of a baseball. I lived through it. I know the truth. I know what happened. That doesn’t mean anybody will believe me, or believe the whole truth.
It was a couple months before I made the trip to the property. The thought of my grandparents’ home looking anything like Aunt Mary Jane’s house felt wrong to me. Disrespectful. Like knocking over somebody’s headstone and leaving a bag of garbage on their grave.
Nearly 20 years after my Grandma held my hand and showed me the inside of a real haunted house, I was on my way there. Nearly 20 years after we scurried through the weeds and briars, terrified, running away from the ghost of Aunt Mary Jane’s, it hit me. All this time, my entire adult life and suddenly, on the ride there, I realized it. Only one of them usually walked me over to listen as she wailed at us from the haggard old house. Occasionally, the three of us would go but we didn’t always hear the ghastly groans. It seemed obvious now that I saw it. How could I not see it?
Grandma walked me over, Grandad snuck through the woods. She distracted me while he found a good hiding place. I like to imagine the smile they shared the first time she peeked her head in to be sure “the coast was clear”. I’m sure they loved it, and I love them for the memory, despite everything else.
When I got to their old yellow house I found it looking much better than I had expected. Better than I remembered from before, actually. I distinctly recall the ceiling had reached down to the top of the door and jammed it so you could barely rattle it back and forth. I remember it reminded me of a door that might grow teeth and a house that might eat me.
I walked around the house, peeking through each window. The house had been in such ill repair last time I had seen it, I couldn’t trust it was safe to enter, regardless of the straightened roofline and a door that now looked completely functional. As I went, I became more amazed and more confused. Inside, it looked just like when I was a kid. The same carpet, the same Jesus painting with eyes that opened and closed depending when you looked, the same coffee table I hid under to play, the same television, same sofa, lamp shade, recliner, everything was exactly the same. It couldn’t be. This couldn’t have come about from repairs. None of it made sense. I was bewildered.
I called Leslie to tell her I made it there and to see if she had any rational idea what could be going on. Mom didn’t have the money to stage an elaborate prank like this. We’d always been poor, and she hadn’t sold the property. None of it made sense. Leslie couldn’t think of a logical reason either. After the amazement wore off a little, I asked if she remembered the story of Aunt Mary Jane’s house. She did, so I told her about my epiphany on the ride down. She responded with, “Yeah, I know. You really didn’t know until now?”
At least we had a good chuckle. Sometimes we believe it because we perceive it. I had never had a reason to reconsider the reality of it, or to think about it much at all.
Not until it got up close, in your face, and bared its teeth.
After we hung up, I grabbed a burger from Fermin’s place down the road and had dinner sitting at Grandad’s work table in the shop. I hadn’t gone inside the house yet - I was unsettled by the whole thing. I ate my burger and, on a whim, I took a walk. I went down the barely paved side road side road that led to who-knows-where.
Sure enough, about a hundred yards down, still visible, same as it looked two decades ago. It was the same dirt driveway grown over with brambles, briars and weeds. Further back, a stand of tall hardwoods and pines, a dense crown of leaves to guard the roots and shadows below. It looked just how I remembered it. Surely the walls had given up by now and fallen in on themselves, I thought. The old house should be an overgrown heap of rusted nails, broken glass, and sawdust by now.
I’m not sure why I did it. I wish I could go back and stop myself, but I can’t, so I gotta live with memory. For whatever reason, I was compelled to go on, to see it again. I worked my way through the thorns and found myself standing on the unkempt lawn, staring at Aunt Mary Jane’s house. Thick peels of paint were still there, curled back like scales covering bones. Around back, the headstone sat undisturbed. The jagged glass remained in the dry-rotted window frames, still sticking out every which way. The front porch was still sturdy, the ceiling still hung low, and the locust still made a pass through two of the upstairs windows. But things were a little different than I remembered.
The front door hung open like it always had, but the ceiling, as low as it was, no longer dragged the top. The door wasn’t jammed now. I nudged it open with my foot and it swung easily. I’d had no thought or desire to come see this place or to see inside again, but there I was, tugging the door open, stepping inside. I didn’t know why. I don’t know why.
A pall of dust and sticky cobwebs lay across everything inside. If not for that, the place would have been immaculate. The kitchen was like a time capsule, a snapshot of the mid-1970’s. Teacups hung from hooks under the cabinets, the green toaster had a braided power cord, the linoleum matched the toaster, and the whole room smelled delicious, like someone had a roast in the oven. That was the point when I stopped questioning things and just accepted it. It may have been strange but it wasn’t my concern. It smelled delicious, the home was warm and cozy, and despite my head feeling slightly foggy, I was energized. I felt great, actually.
I noticed a small grandfather clock on the sofa table, its pendulum swinging back and forth. It worked. I accepted it. Sunlight angled through a crack in the curtains and raced across the room. It made me think of sharpened gold and I accepted it. Sunset was less than an hour from now, and through the spotless windows, it was morning outside. I accepted it. That’s how it was, and that’s the way that it should be.
I wandered back towards the kitchen hoping the roast was ready. A teacup swayed on its hook, drops of water on its pattern, curved and magnified, washed clean and hung to dry.
“Honey, could you give me a hand up here? I think my zipper is stuck.” Her voice was melodic and I could almost recall her singing, I couldn’t catch hold of the thought yet.
“Of course dear, I’ll be right there. How’d you get your zipper stuck?” I answered her, of course.
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s this dress. It happens every darn time. I think Mr. Sanderson knows which zippers tend to stick and picks them out on purpose and gives them to me.”
“Now why would Mr. Sanderson do a thing like that?” I was at the top of the stairs.
“Well, because of Marge. Don’t you remember?”
“At the party?” I saw her. She stood with her back to the open door where I now stood. She wore a rose-mauve dress with an ivory lace detail on the shoulders and cuffs. The back of the dress hung in an open V, waiting for help with the zipper. She faced a mirror, and I could only see the angle of her cheek bones, but I knew she was beautiful.
“Yes, at the party!” It was mock exasperation, and of course I remembered. Who could forget a scene like that?
I recalled the stairs, the top of the stairs, standing at the door, and now she was close. Her perfume was familiar. It smelled pretty and I thought it suited her. I have no memory of walking closer, but I was glad to be there. We had never met, but I knew that we had. I knew her intimately. I knew that I had always loved her deeply, and that she loved me. I didn’t question it; I just knew.
“Well, yes, but why would he give you a dress with a stuck zipper? That was Marge’s hullabaloo.” My fingers worked her zipper free. The tab felt familiar and I knew this wasn’t the first time I’d helped my wife like this.
“Because he thinks that I’m the one who told Heath about the conversation at the post office. He thinks that’s why Marge was throwing a fit.”
She swung her hair back and forth, then let it settle down her back. I noticed the nape of her neck. I was lost for a moment, she was all I could see. I felt a need to be closer, to touch her, to kiss the back of her neck and to lay down with her. I still held the tab between my fingers, her dress fully zipped, and there was a moment of stillness, of quiet intimacy. I leaned forward and didn’t question if I should kiss her neck. I was supposed to kiss her there. I needed to feel her skin with my lips. I stopped and savored the fleeting anticipation and I could feel her warmth near my lips.
I was finally there to taste her when she spun around, a whirlwind of beauty and hair and perfume and she flung her arms around me, around my neck and she smiled, a brilliant smile, wide and toothy, and it was no longer a smile and she was strong and her arms were too tight, and her grin grew wider and wider and stretched and contorted into a hideous maw. It happened fast.
The pressure around my neck made me sputter for air and that snapped me out of my daze. Whatever this thing was, it was evil. I felt it now.
I struggled to slip out of her grasp. Her arms had become gray and mottled with purple stains, like old bruises, misshapen. Her hands were large and the proportions looked wrong. Its fingers spindled into hooked claws, sharp, dangerous looking. The thick smell of mold and rot filled the room and I would have struggled to breathe with or without her squeezing me this way. All the air had been sucked from my lungs and they burned. I wriggled back and forth to find any small gap my chest could expand, to breathe.
She spoke again. “What’s wrong dear? Don’t you want a kiss?” This time, her voice was different, no longer melodic, no longer the voice of a woman. Her words came out in a quick raspy growl that reminded me of worms and insects, and as it hissed out that last word, thick fluid strung across its rows of elongated teeth, not saliva, some disgusting mucus that clung like stringy threads over sharp and serrated teeth. Teeth meant for tearing flesh. A few tiny drops of the fluid broke free as I fought against its strength and burned the skin of my cheek where they landed.
I needed air. Now.
I struggled until I was almost convulsing, then when I looked back at the creature…well, there was no creature. There was only my beautiful wife, befuddled, concerned about me.
“Are you okay? Please, you’re scaring me. What’s the matter?” What was wrong with me? Why had I frightened her that way? My chest ached inside hearing that tone in her voice, hearing how it slipped out, how she meant to keep it hidden. The tone that said she was scared. Scared for me, maybe. But her tone said she was scared of me, too..
I embraced her and pulled her to me. I needed to comfort her, to make it right before it was too late.
It’s no small miracle what happened next. If not for plain old dumb luck, the thing would have had me. Eaten me, I guess. Taken my soul, tortured me, I don’t know what, but I’ve never seen anything like that creature. True evil, the deep down core of evil.
The room had looked like a tastefully furnished and decorated bedroom moments ago. An ordinary bedroom for an average husband and a normal wife. And then it was a room with holes through the floor to the room below. The stout limb of a locust tree grew through the busted out window, into the room, and elbowed and angled its way out through the other window.
As I embraced this woman, my wife, desperate to soothe her hurt, desperate not to wound her more, the awful thing with hungry teeth was there again, chirping its unsettling clicks when it lunged. The mouth worked back and forth, scraping teeth together. The mucus had become thicker, and foamy. It had begun to leak and drip from its grotesque mouth. It was a split-second, that I noticed. Only an adrenaline fueled mind could have registered all of it to sort and file them into compartments of how deadly they might be.
I needed help, and somehow, it came. A small miracle, also a creature, but wildly different from this enormous lunging, fang-toothed monster. A miracle that arrived in the form of an opossum who made her den in Aunt Mary Jane’s dilapidated, ramshackle house.
It was all a blur, but I suspect she was a mama opossum, or maybe she was upset at the commotion. All I know is that it snapped and I barely reacted in time. I felt the unnaturally sharp point of the thing’s tooth followed by the searing burn of the mucus foam. It nicked me just under my jaw - way too close to my throat. At that moment, the opossum charged down the locust limb and hissing so loudly that it stopped us both dead cold for a split second. I was overflowing with adrenaline by then and my body was running on autopilot. I felt my body react without my input, and it shot into motion. I lurched away from the thing, trying to go anywhere I could to get it off. It had my leg, but I managed to grab hold of the tree limb and held it tight. The opossum didn’t like how close I got and she reared back on her hind legs. She was ready for a fight to the death.
I kicked and pulled, but I couldn’t shake the nasty thing off my leg. It was too strong and too quick for me to do any more than hold on and to keep trying to pull free. It didn’t work.
It felt like a full block of hot knives plunged into my thigh. I heard myself yelp from the shock of the pain. It hurt something awful, but it got worse. The creature had its long teeth buried in the meat of my leg and then chomped down. The jaw snapped shut and tore out a chunk. I think I felt it hit bone and I could see strands of muscle and fat inside. I almost passed out. Everything turned to gray and quiet nothingness, then the world rushed back in like a full alarm. I knew I had to make it count, right then. If not, this creature was going to have its way with me however it wanted.
I shook and pushed and yelled and pulled and tried to whip loose. I was losing too much blood, too fast. I could smell it, but I didn’t understand until later what it was I smelled. I heard the wet sound of it pouring onto the floor, before it drained through the cracks and holes to the floor a story below us. I didn’t register that it was my blood. It only registered that liquid was leaking and making a mess somewhere.
Both legs were soaked with red, but fortunately the blood made me slick. I yanked hard and jerked loose from its claws a little. Not much, but enough to gain some leverage. I let him pull me towards him, then sprung away, using his momentum against him to slip free. I grasped for anything I could reach, any weapon at all..
Sharp claws raked through my shirt, ripping jagged tears into my back. I ignored it and stretched toward the window and tried to grab a shard of the glass. The things must have had barbs somewhere because when I reached for the glass, I felt a sudden sting and felt the barbs grab and dig even deeper as I fought against them. I ignored that too and shoved myself as hard as I could.
They ripped gashes into my calf. I heard the sound of my body tearing as they pulled through. I got hold of a piece of that glass, though. I knew the glass would cut me too and I ignored it all. I felt it slide through the meaty part of my hand but I just clenched down even tighter. The deeper it was in, the better my grip was.
I whirled around and went after the thing. I had the glass with both bloody hands and swung the shard high over my head, then down as hard as I could. The glass jammed it into whatever part of the creature I could reach. I stabbed it. And stabbed it. And stabbed it.
It screeched and clicked and made odd, wet sucking sounds, then suddenly it was kicking, trying to get away from me. It didn’t last. It was only trying to gain an advantage.
I was no longer choosing fight or flight and there was no logic, only survival. If I had retained any logic, I might have launched myself out the window. Instead, I went after it.
I knew the blood loss might kill me, but I knew if I didn’t do something now, I was dead anyway. Some deep-down, instinctual, snake-brain took over and I leaped on it. I felt it doing things to hurt me, but I felt nothing except animalistic blood-rage. I felt claws and barbs and teeth push through my flesh with a soft pop, but it didn’t matter. There was no pain.
I don’t know how many times I stabbed it before it finally went weak. It wasn’t dead, but I’d hurt it. I was on its chest, heaving and out of breath. I was suddenly weak. I was too cold, shaky.
I looked down at it, ready to finish it. There was a waft of perfume, sexy and feminine, all around me. I noticed how the mirror was trimmed with gold leaf on its scalloped edges. The mirror my beautiful wife had been staring into when I worked her zipper free. I loved her so fully, so completely.
She was beautiful and it pained me to see her look at me the way she did. I’ll never forget that look. I wish I could take it back, to change things, but I can’t.
I had no choice. I understand that. I apply that logic every time I remember, which is everyday. But the logic doesn’t matter to my heart.
Our eyes met and I saw it. I saw that she knew what I was about to do. I saw that she wasn’t afraid, she was hurt. I hurt her beautiful heart because she knew what I would do. And I did it. I knew the creature wouldn’t show its true self. I knew it would be this woman who felt so familiar to me whom I’d never seen before now. The creature made sure it stung me back as it died.
I kept hacking for I don’t know how long. Eventually, I raised myself up off the body. It was barely recognizable anymore. My arms were limp, and there was no part of me left dry. I was drenched in our blood. Somehow, I lurched across the patchwork floor and down the steps. I hadn’t noticed on the way up, but most were rotten or missing. I maneuvered down on the framework. I got myself to the door but didn’t know if I could make it back through the briars but the human spirit is amazing I guess, because here I am.
On the way out, I noticed a small, ornate picture frame that hung near the front door. A photo of her, my beloved. It was tinted with the brass sepia of old photos. Later, when I got home from the hospital, I looked it over more closely. There were three letters and a date written on the back with a flourish. It said, “MJW” and “1908, April”.

Mine is
Spice Qwerty Keypad QT 68
Blackberry 8530
Nokia e63
Nokia 5233
Nokia 2690
Samsung Guru 1200
Honor 9 Lite
Realme X2 Pro
Xiaomi 11T Pro
Google Pixel 7

Mine is
Spice Qwerty Keypad QT 68
Blackberry 8530
Nokia e63
Nokia 5233
Nokia 2690
Samsung Guru 1200
Honor 9 Lite
Realme X2 Pro
Xiaomi 11T Pro
Google Pixel 7