I labeled this petty revenge but it also falls under Wedding Drama and MIL from hell. It's a threefer! A terrible threefer!
This story is about my MIL. We do not get along. At all. To be honest, she's a pretty awful person and had been NC with most of my partners family since before I met her. I believe two of her sisters are all she has contact with and I know one of the two is LC as of two years ago. Anywho...
When my partner and I met MIL lived in the same city. A few years into our relationship she moved out of state. We got engaged and married during this time. She and her husband (Not my partners dad.) Flew in for the wedding. A month before the wedding. To help with the wedding. They stayed with the aunt shes now LC with... Im still a bit sour about all of this because she made that month miserable. So much unnecessary stress.
We did not ask for nor need her help in any way. We paid for everything ourselves and my side of the family catered the food. My favorite aunt made the MOH dress and I paid for the dresses for bridesmaids. My youngest sister did our hair and makeup. Everything was paid for via our savings. We'd set aside funds specifically for our wedding. MIL had something to say about everything. Always about how she did it for her two failed marriages. What she would have wanted. It was a constant barrage of insults. I had gotten very good at avoiding her or pawning her off on literally anyone else.
Come the day of the wedding she did everything in her power to take over. She walked my partner to the alter and stayed there. When I made it to the alter she tried to stay standing next to me. Not with the rest of the wedding party but next to me, in front of my partner.
The officiant had to tell her to sit her ass down. Her husband had to drag her to her seat. My partner looked rightly horrified. The wedding continued with a wave of murmurs.
When it came time for pictures she inserted herself in every one. I was pretty pissed off by this time but was doing my best to just keep smiling until the end. I was determined not to let her ruin our day. My partner was trying to manage their grandma. She's a whole super villian on her own. They were trying to keep her away from their dad. She had a personal vendetta against the man because he divorced MIL and shacked up with his "guy friend". Yes the man was gay, no they never admitted they were a couple to the family because his side of the family is extremely religious.
Toward the end of the night I wanted pictures with my sisters and MOH. Only my sisters and MOH. They were my bridesmaids as well after all. MIL insisted on being in these pictures too. She would not accept a no.
I'm on the verge of tears while were posing in front of a beautiful gazebo with dozens of candles lit among floral arrangents on a table in the background. Im exhausted and quietly losing my cool. Im told my face was telling all sorts of stories by this point though. MIL decided to stand right next to me, trying to push out my MOH, who, like the badass that she is, wasnt having it. It was a very childish match of moving in front of each other. Several snaps in and MIL starts screaming. A rancid smell absolutely fills the air.
The whole scene devolves into chaos. We are trying to figure out whats wrong.
Dear reader... this is the moment I knew my soul was bound for hell because when that women whipped around and her flaming locks came around to smack her in the face, I swear I saw it in slow motion. Turns out one of the candles was far closer to the edge of the table than the rest. No one has any idea how it happened. (I dont buy that story but Im letting the oversight go lmao.) MILs wig caught fire. Yes. Her cheap wig went right up in flames. I actually did cry at this. I cried because I was trying so desperately not to laugh at the scene of my MIL being beaten with a table sash and flowers. I honestly did not know how to react and was overwhelmed by it all. They get her put out, refusing to let me help because they dont want ME to go up in flames or ruin my dress.
With a tear stained face I ask her if shes okay, shes freaking out, rightfully. My MOH steps in to help and I excuse myself. MIL is tended to and I barely make my escape to the bathroom where I proceed to lose my shit laughing. I text the photographer who informs me that he did in fact get a picture of my MILs wig on fire. He tells me that when Im ready we can continue without MILs interference as shes been escorted to urgent care. She was fine. Cheap wig was all that caught fire. She suffered a minor burn on her cheek but thats it. I adore telling the story of my MILs brush with death (her words) at our wedding.
The cherry on top of this karma sundae? Oh yes, it gets better. Thanks in whole to my partner.
Our photographer included the flaming hair picture in our digital package. We laugh about it whenever she's a pill. One day, years later, MIL came over for dinner and complained that we had pictures of family on display but none of her. Deceased relatives and the kids... She made a stink about how she felt hurt that we dont have any of her despite knowing so many of them exist. My awesome partner, having had enough of their mothers shit, printed the flaming hair picture, framed it and stuck it on the wall above the entry table. It greets you the moment you enter our home. Partner invites her back over for dinner, says nothing. She knocks, is let in, dropped her purse on the entry table, paused when she saw it, dawned the "sucked on a lemon" pucker but never said a word about it. Its been there for 13 years now. Every now and then my partner gets a new tacky, god awful frame for it and surprises me.
I love my partner so much. 😂

This is the list that I wrote for Oklahoma's execution roster since the nationwide reinstatement of capital punishment in the late 1970s. Something that should be mentioned is that given the nature of many death penalty related crimes, many of the descriptions contain very disturbing details. Please read at your own risk.
Florida's list is next, and I'll post my list for Texas once I've completed it. With Texas, I've currently finished 464 entries out of the 587 cases to date. That will probably take 7 or 8 posts for it all to be released, so I'll probably do two posts a day with Texas to avoid spamming the sub. At the end of this year, I'll repost the states that have conducted further executions with the updated information.
As with Missouri and Virginia, Reddit's maximum character count limitations forced me to divide Oklahoma's list into two separate parts. Here is the link to part 2.
The currently 124 executed offenders, cases 1 to 62:
1. Charles Coleman (~1950s-1990, lethal injection): A month after he was released on parole in 1979, Coleman broke into a house. While sacking it for any valuables, the homeowner’s brother and sister in law, 68 year old John and 62 year old Roxie Seward, walked in on him and were both shot dead. Coleman stole Roxie’s purse, several packets of frozen meat, and the homeowner’s watch during the burglary, and was arrested shortly afterwards. However, Coleman managed to escape custody, and went on a rampage that involved several burglaries, auto thefts, slitting the throat of a policeman in a failed murder attempt, the shooting death of 49 year old Russell Lewis Jr. in a carjacking, and the abduction of a deputy. The kidnapped deputy was rescued following an armed standoff with other police officers. Coleman had an extensive history of animal cruelty, armed robberies, assaults, and carrying concealed weapons convictions dating back to when he was 11 years old. He was also heavily suspected in the murder of his teenage girlfriend’s father, but was acquitted by the courts despite the prosecution’s strong belief in his guilt.
2. Robyn Parks (1977-1992, lethal injection): During a gas station robbery, Parks shot and killed Abdullah Ibrahim, a 24 year old Bangladeshi immigrant that worked as the attendant. According to Parks, he murdered Ibrahim for catching him using a stolen credit card.
3. Olan Randle (1980-1992, lethal injection): Randle invaded a home and shot the occupants, 41 year old Robert Swinford, Sinford's fiance 42 year old Averil Bourque, and Bourque's friend 38 year old Julia Lovejoy, dead. He took a pocket knife and several watches from the victims.
4. Thomas Grasso (~1970s(?)-1995, lethal injection): While living in Oklahoma, Grasso strangled 87 year old Hilda Johnson, the best friend of his girlfriend's grandmother, to death with her Christmas lights. He took $8 from her purse, several coins that added up to $4, and a television set that he sold for $125. Grasso then moved to New York, and strangled 81 year old Leslie Holtz for his social security check. The trialing arrangements caused some controversy, as the New York governors at the time were anti death penalty, and tried to prevent Grasso's extradition in favor of giving him a life sentence in their jurisdiction. Grasso had several previous convictions for theft and was fired multiple times for stealing from his jobs.
5. Roger Stafford (~1974(?)-1995, lethal injection): Stafford was condemned for killing at least 9 people in two separate robbery incidents with his brother and ex wife, though his ex wife claimed that he was involved with as many as 34 murders nationwide. The first convicted incident was when he and the ex wife carjacked and fatally shot a couple, 38 year old Melvin and 31 year old Linda Lorenz, and their son, 12 year old Richard. A few weeks after the Lorenz murders, Stafford stormed a restaurant and gunned down 6 employees, 56 year old Isaac Freeman, 43 year old Louis Zacarias, 17 year old Anthony Tew, 17 year old David Lindsey, 16 year old David Salsman, and 15 year old Terri Horst. One of Stafford's additional attributed victims was 20 year old Jimmy Berry, who was killed in the hold up of an Alabaman McDonalds, but he wasn't charged by the state due to his death sentences in Oklahoma.
6. Robert Brecheen (1983-1995, lethal injection): Breechen was involved in a feud over money with 59 year old Mary Stubbs and her husband. In an attempt to take what he perceived was owed to him, Breechen carried out a night time burglary of their home. While rummaging through the house, Breechen stumbled upon old Marie in her living room and shot her to death. The gunshots and screams awoke her husband, and he chased him away with his own gun.
7. Benjamin Brewer (1978-1996, lethal injection): Brewer raped his neighbor, 20 year old Karen Stapleton, in her home and stabbed her to death
8. Steven Hatch (1979-1996, lethal injection): Hatch and another assailant, Glen Ake, forced themselves inside the home that Richard Dougass, a 43 year old reverend, shared with his wife, 36 year old Marilyn, and their two children, 16 year old Brooks and 12 year old Lesile. The pair tied up the family and raped Lesile in front of her parents and brother. All four family members were shot, and Hatch and Ake ran off with $43 and the parents’ wedding rings. Richard and Marilyn were both killed in the shootings, while their children survived the attack. Ake was also initially condemned for the attack, but his sentence was overturned and resentenced to life following mental health concerns, and passed away from undisclosed natural causes in 2011.
9. Scott Carpenter (1994-1997, lethal injection): In a convenience store robbery, Carpenter stabbed the owner, 56 year old A. J. Kelley, in the neck, and hid the body in the minnow room. He filled his truck with $37 worth of gas from the pumps and drove away from the scene. His execution caused some controversy, as it was reported that Carpenter gasped and spasmed for 11 minutes after being injected.
10. Michael Long (1997-1998, lethal injection): Enraged that his coworker, 24 year old Sheryl Graber, refused him sex and started screaming for help, he stabbed her over 31 times. Long also shot and killed her son, 5 year old Andrew, for being a witness.
11. Stephen Wood (1992-1998, lethal injection): While heavily intoxicated, Wood stabbed two other homeless men, 46 year old Charles Stephen and 34 year old Charles Von Johnson, dozens of times each. He was given a life sentence for both of their murders. During his incarceration, Robert Brigden, a 59 year old former minister that was serving a 40 year sentence for molesting several girls between the ages of 4-14 in his congregation, moved into his unit after refusing to go into protective custody. Woods killed Brigden in a stabbing attack, and his sentence was escalated to death by the courts for it.
12. Tuan Anh Nguyen (~1982-1998, lethal injection): By all accounts, Nguyen was jealously possessive over his wife, 21 year old Donna. During one of their arguments over his behavior, he stabbed Donna, her 6 year old nephew Joseph White, and her 3 year old niece Amanda White, in their home and left the bodies to be found by the children’s parents. He fled to Arizona, groomed a 14 year old girl into an illicit “relationship”, and impregnated her. After he convinced her to move in with him, Nguyen physically and sexually abused the girl until she fled and went to the local police for help. Nguyen was then deported back to Oklahoma to face trial for Donna and the White children’s slayings, and was sentenced to death for them.
13. John Duvall (1986-1998, lethal injection): During a fight with his wife, 30 year old Donna, Duvall stabbed and suffocated her to death with a pillow.
14. John Castro Sr. (1983-1999, lethal injection): Castro carjacked Beulah Cox, a 31 year old Oklahoma State University student, after she picked him up hitchhiking and shot her to death. A few months later, Castro held up a restaurant with an empty pistol, and attacked the manger, 29 year old Rhonda Pappan, after forcing her to open the register. During their struggle, Pappan was fatally stabbed, and he took off with her purse. During his mid teens, Castro was allegedly molested by his mother. Castro's attorneys made the argument that his glimpses of Cox's buttocks reminded him of his mother's reported abuse, and he was triggered into attacking her for it.
15. Sean Sellers (1985-1999, lethal injection): In 1985, a then 15 year old Sellers tried to buy beer from a convenience store, but the clerk, 32 year old Robert Bower, denied him due to being underaged at the time. Sellers gunned him down in a fit of rage. A year later, Sellers shot and killed his mother, 32 year old Vonda Bellofatto, and stepfather, 43 year old Paul, in their sleep. Due to being 16 at the time of his conviction, Sellers remains the youngest condemned offender to have his sentence carried out in the post Furman era. He also attracted national media attention for claiming that his crimes were the result of demonic possession.
16. Scotty Moore (1983-1999, lethal injection): Moore was fired from a motel for undisclosed reasons. In retaliation, Moore and a cousin (whom he was dating at the time), assaulted the motel, and gunned down the desk clerk, 42 year old Alex Fernandez. According to court documents, the pair took a total of $97 in the robbery.
17. Norman Newsted (1984-1999, lethal injection): Newsted tricked Lawrence Buckley, a 26 year old cab driver, into picking him up. He shot Buckley dead and took his wallet. In an attempt to cover his tracks, Newsted placed the body inside the cab, and drove it into a creek near a local church. Despite his best efforts, Buckley’s cab and remains were discovered a day later by the church’s pastor.
18. Cornel Cooks (1982-1999, lethal injection): Cooks and his accomplice broke into the home of 87 year old Jennie Ridling. She was gagged, raped, and suffocated to death with gauze wrappings. According to autopsy reports, the pair abused her for over 2 hours. They then sacked the house for any valuables and left with her checkbook.
19. Bobby Ross (1983-1999, lethal injection): While robbing an inn, Ross fatally shot a police officer, 30 year old Steve Mahan, that tried to intervene.
20. Malcolm Johnson (~1970s(?)-2000, lethal injection): Johnson invaded the apartment of 76 year old Ura Thompson and sexually assaulted her. Thompson either died from having her chest compounded during the abuse or was suffocated by Johnson’s hands covering her nose. He seized several possessions such as furs, typewriters, purse, watch, rings, and a hand mirror, which were discovered by police in his residence during an unrelated investigation of a firearms possession charge. Johnson had an extensive criminal history, which included several convictions of rape, armed robberies, and burglaries. The case attracted controversy when it was discovered that the lead chemist in the investigation misconducted several of her other cases, and forged some of the evidence used in the trial. Despite the other overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Johnson’s supporters took the opportunity to push a narrative of his innocence.
21. Gary Walker (~1960s-2000, lethal injection): Walker abducted, raped, and murdered at least 5 women, 36 year old Margaret Lydick, 35 year old Jane Hilburn, 32 year old Janet Jewell, 25 year old Valerie Shaw-Hartzell, and 24 year old DeRonda Roy, and non fatally assaulted several other women and teenage girls. The victims were mostly strangled to death with their bras and panties. Some of them were forced to withdraw hundreds of dollars from ATMs before they were killed. He also strangled a man, 63 year old Eddie Cash, with an electrical cord while robbing his home. Walker had dozens of previous convictions for burglary, carjacking, drug possession, and carrying concealed weapons. Some of his earliest arrests occurred when he was a teenager.
22. Michael Roberts (~1988-2000, lethal injection): A career burglar, Roberts was condemned for murder of 80 year old Lula Brooks. She was raped and her throat was slit by an intruder in her home. Roberts' death sentence and execution has been contested, as he was convicted on his later recounted testimony alone. He claimed that the investigators tricked him into confessing with the promise of a plea deal that was allegedly withheld from him.
23. Kelly Rogers (1990-2000, lethal injection): Rogers’ girlfriend lured 21 year old Karen Lauffenburger into her apartment with a fake pizza order. They accosted her when she arrived with the delivery. After the couple forced Lauffenburger to hand to over the $40 she earned from the night's pizza deliveries and withdraw $175 from an ATM, Rogers raped and stabbed her to death. The body was left in Lauffenburger’s apartment and was found by her boyfriend.
24. Ronald Boyd (1986-2000, lethal injection): During a robbery spree of several gas stations and supermarkets, Boyd engaged in a shootout with the responding officers. A Master Patrolman, 32 year old Richard Riggs, was killed in the exchange.
25. Charles Foster (~1980s(?)-2000, lethal injection): Foster suspected a grocery store owner, 74 year old Claude Wiley, of making sexual advances at his wife. He arranged for her to entice Wiley to their home with an order. When he arrived with the delivery, Foster stabbed and bludgeoned him to death with a baseball bat. He a history of convictions involving threats and violence, though my sources didn’t disclose any specific details.
26. James Robedeaux (1978-2000, lethal injection): In 1978, Robedeaux strangled his first wife, 30 year old Linda, and plead guilty to a second degree murder charges. He was released after serving 6 out of a 25 year sentence despite an escape attempt. In the following year, he began a relationship with 37 year old Nancy McKinney while he married a different woman. During an argument, Robedeaux beat McKinney to death, dismembered her body with a saw and machete, and scattered the remains across the state. While being investigated for McKinney's murder, he was arrested for choking and beating his estranged second wife. The cases were incidental and kept separate by the courts.
27. Roger Berget (~1985-2000, lethal injection): Berget carjacked and abducted 33 year old Rick Patterson with an accomplice, and shot him dead. He also admitted to the beating death of a roommate, 40 year old James Meadows, on the behalf of the man's wife. As a trivial side note, Berget's brother Rodney was executed in 2018 by the state of South Dakota for killing a prison guard [for more information, please see Rodney Berget's entry under the South Dakota section of my states with less then 10 executions post].
28. William Bryson (1988-2000, lethal injection): To collect a $300,000 life insurance policy, Marilyn Plantz recruited her boyfriend Byrson and his friend to kill her husband, 33 year old James. Byrson and his friend ambushed Plantz in his house as he was coming home from work and beat him to death with a baseball bat. With the intentions of staging an accident, Marilyn ordered the pair to burn the body in the couple's pickup truck.
29. Gregg Braun (1989-2000, lethal injection): Across several states, Braun shot and killed 4 women, 48 year old Geraldine Valdez, 31 year old Gwendolyn Miller, 28 year old Mary Rains, 27 year old Barbara Kochendorfer, and one man, 54 year old Pete Spurrier, while robbing stores.
30. George Wallace (~1970s-2000, lethal injection): Known as "the Mad Paddler" due to his habit of spanking abducted preteen and teenage boys with a wooden paddle, Wallace kidnapped his victims by posing as a police officer. After duping his targets into thinking that they were being arrested, Wallace restrained them with handcuffs and leg chains. The captives were then sexually abused and shot or stabbed to death. His crimes were exposed when an 18 year old man he abducted escaped from him despite being shot and stabbed numerous times. By his own admission, Wallace murdered 18 year old Thomas Reed, 15 year old William Domer, 14 year old Mark McLaughlin, 14 year old Jeffrey Foster, and 12 year old Alonzo Cade.
31. Eddie Trice (1987-2001, lethal injection): Trice snuck into the home of 84 year old Ernestine Jones and raped her. After he beat Jones to death with numbchucks, he terrorized and extorted her cognitively disabled son of $500 with threats of killing him if he told anyone of the murder. The son was also assaulted with a hammer, and he received injuries to his right eye, right cheekbone, and his right forearm.
32. Wanda Allen (~1981-2001, lethal injection): In 1981, Allen got into a fight with her live in girlfriend, 21 year old Dedra Pettus, and shot her dead. Despite giving a bungled story about her being accidentally killed in a shootout with Pettus’ ex boyfriend to the investigators, Allen managed to secure a 4 year sentence for manslaughter after pleading guilty to a plea deal, and was released after serving two years. While incarcerated, she started dating a fellow inmate, 29 year old Gloria Leathers, and continued their relationship outside of prison. The couple’s relationship was marred with extreme domestic violence on Allen’s end. In one incident, Allen struck Leathers with a rake. In 1989, while they were arguing in front of a shopping center, Allen shot and killed Leathers. Leathers herself also had history of violence, and had a conviction for stabbing a woman to death. Allen and her defense team tried to use Leathers’ previous convictions to make a self defense argument, but that was shot down by the courts.
33. Floyd Medlock (1990-2001, lethal injection): 7 year old Katherine Busch went to visit her family's old apartment, which Medlock was residing in, by herself. Busch knocked on the door and Medlock let her inside after she begged for food. He then choked and sexually assaulted the girl, dunked her head in a toilet bowl, and stabbed her to death. The body was hidden in a nearby dumpster. Busch's grandmothers were staunch pro capital punishment and anti death penalty activists respectively, and their public feud over Medlock's sentence and execution attracted some media attention. Medlock also had an extensive criminal history despite being only 19 at the time of Busch's murder, and was previously arrested several times for indecent exposure, arson, armed robbery, and marijuana possession.
34. Dion Smallwood (1992-2001, lethal injection): Smallwood walked into the home of his ex girlfriend's adoptive stepmother, 68 year old Lois Frederick, without invitation. He had a tumultuous and often violent relationship with her adopted stepdaughter that she strongly opposed, and they broke up under her pressure. After an argument, Smallwood knocked Frederick unconscious with a croquet mallet, locked her in a car, and burned her alive in it.
35. Mark Fowler (1985-2001, lethal injection): To get back at his ex employers for firing him, Fowler and his partner, Billy Fox, stormed a supermarket that he used to work out. The pair rounded up 3 employees, Chumpon Chaowasin, a 44 year old Thai immigrant, 33 year old Rick Cast, and 27 year old John Barrier, at gun point. Their hostages were shot, clubbed, and stabbed to death, and they took over $2,7000 in cash and checks.
36. Billy Fox (1985-2001, lethal injection): Fox assisted the above mentioned Mark Fowler in robbing a supermarket and murdering 3 of its employees
37. Loyd Lafevers (1985-2001, lethal injection): Lafevers and his accomplice, Randall Cannon, kidnapped 84 year old Addie Hawley from her home. She was raped, trapped in the trunk of a car, and burned alive in it. Although she was rescued, Hawley died from her injuries 6 hours later. The pair stole Hawley's wedding ring and Lafevers gifted it to a stripper. As Hawley's nephew was a Colorado state senator, her murder gained some attention from media outlets.
38. Dorsie Jones Jr. (1979-2001, lethal injection): While drinking at a bar, a barmaid chastised Jones for carrying an unconcealed gun. He shot at her in a fit of rage, but missed and injured his female companion instead. Jones then turned his attention to the other patrons and fired on them. 48 year old Stanley Buck Sr. was killed in front of his 19 year old son, who was also wounded in the shooting.
39. Robert Clayton (~1980s-2001, lethal injection): Clayton attacked 19 year old Rhonda Timmons while she was sunbathing near her apartment. She was raped, stabbed, kicked in the head, and strangled to death with her swimming suit. Her husband found Timmons' body laying next to their infant daughter, who was left unharmed. Clayton had a previous rape conviction in Tennessee and a robbery conviction in Texas.
40. Ronald Fluke (1997-2001, lethal injection): Out of despair that his gambling addiction drove his family to near poverty, Fluke shot and killed his wife, 44 year old Ginger, and their daughters, 13 year old Kathryn and 11 year old Susanne, while they were sleeping in their bedrooms. He initially attacked Ginger with a hatchet, but turned to shooting when she fought back.
41. Marilyn Plantz (1988-2001, lethal injection): The married girlfriend of William Bryson. As mentioned under Bryson's entry, Plantz arranged for him and his friend to kill her husband James to collect his life insurance policy.
42. Terrance James (1983-2001, lethal injection): While awaiting trial for a theft of government property charge, James and two accomplices strangled a fellow inmate, 25 year old Mark Berry, with wire out of their suspicions of him being a snitch. They then hung the body in an attempt to make it look like a suicide. Berry was another party in the theft of government property case, and James and his accomplices believed that it was his testimony that got them arrested.
43. Vincent Johnson (1991-2001, lethal injection): Johnson gunned down 44 year old Shirley Mooneyham in her home. The prosecution believed that Mooneyham's boyfriend arranged the killing to collect a life insurance policy, but he was acquitted at trial.
44. Jerald Harjo (~1980s-2001, lethal injection): Harjo snuck into the bedroom of 64 year old Ruth Porter, raped her, and suffocated her with a pillowcase. He then snatched Porter's car keys and drove off with her van. His past criminal history was extensive, and was in prison numerous times for burglary and autotheft.
45. Jack Walker (1988-2001, lethal injection): Disgruntled with the custody dispute over their then 3 month old son, Walker stabbed his ex girlfriend, 17 year old Shelly Ellison, and her uncle, 30 year old Donald, 32 and 11 times with an ice pick during a confrontation at their home.
46. Alvie Hale Jr. (1983-2001, lethal injection): Hale kidnapped 24 year old William Perry to extort a $350,000 ransom from his banking family. When the negotiations failed, Perry was shot dead, and Hale buried the body on his father's property.
47. Lois Smith (1982-2001, lethal injection): Smith, her son, and a female accomplice abducted her son's ex girlfriend, 21 year old Cindy Baillee, from an airport out of fear her testifying of his involvement in the drug trade. Baillee was taken to Smith's ex husband's house, and stabbed in the throat by her ex boyfriend while driving to their destination. Inside the home, she was taunted by Smith with a gun, and was shot 7 times in the chest and 2 times in the back of the head. While her son was reloading the gun, Smith jumped on and crushed Bailee's throat.
48. Sahib Lateef Al-Mosawi (1992-2001, lethal injection): Following a dispute over their newborn son's name, Al-Mosawi's estranged wife, 26 year old Inaam Al-Nashi, fled to the apartment of her uncle, 45 year old Mohammed. Al-Mosaw attacked the pair in the apartment and stabbed them to death. Inaam's sister was also stabbed, but she managed to escape with her life. The couple and their families were refugees from Iraq that were displaced by the First Persian Gulf War, and they fled into the United States.
49. John Romano (1985-2002, lethal injection): Romano and his accomplice David Woodruff robbed and murdered two of their acquaintances. One of the victims, 63 year old Lloyd Thompson, was attacked in his apartment. Thompson was held down by the pair while they stabbed him 22 times and served his spinal cord. The other victim, 52 year old Roger Sarfaty, was tied up, beaten, stabbed 5 times, and strangled to death in a jewelry store he owned. In the robberies, Romano and Woodruff stole several pieces of jewelry from Sarfaty, and took most of Thompson’s quarter collection.
50. David Woodruff (1985-2002, lethal injection): As mentioned under John Romano's entry, Woodruff took part in the robbery murders of Lloyd Thompson and Roger Sarfaty.
51. Randall Cannon (1985-2002, lethal injection): Cannon assisted Loyd Lafevers in abducting, sexually assaulting, and burning Addie Hawley alive in her car. Although he was acquitted of molesting Hawley, Cannon was still condemned for his part in the kidnapping and murder.
52. Earl Frederick Sr. (~1989-2002, lethal injection): Frederick beat Bradford Beck, a 41 year old veteran that was crippled during his service in the Vietnam war, to death in his home after befriending him. He ransacked the house and dumped Beck's body in a field. A second murder, the robbery and shooting death of a Texan man, 77 year old Shirley Fox, was also tied to him. However, authorities in Texas withheld from prosecuting Fredrick due to his death penalty trial and conviction in Oklahoma. Both Fox and Beck had physical disabilities, which led prosecutors to the conclusion that Frederick intentionally selected and depredated on disabled men.
53. Jerry McCracken (~1980s(?)-2002, lethal injection): McCracken and his accomplice shot up a bar, killed 3 patrons and the bartender, and made off with $350. The victims that lost their lives were 41 year old Carol McDaniels, 37 year old Timothy Sheets, 34 year old Steven Sheets, and 27 year old Tyrrell Boyd. Months before the mass shooting, McCracken was paroled after serving time for stabbing 3 people in a bar fight.
54. Jay Neill (1984-2002, lethal injection): During a bank robbery, Neill disemboweled and nearly decapitated 3 tellers, 42 year old Kay Bruno, 25 year old Joyce Mullenix, and 19 year old Jerri Bowles. A group of 4 customers, consisting of 33 year old Ralph Zeller, a married couple, and their 14 month old daughter, unwittingly walked in on him, and he herded them into a backroom to be shot. Zeller was killed, the couple were wounded, and Neill left the daughter unharmed due to running out of bullets. Neill's boyfriend was given a life sentence for the robbery and murders, despite not being directly involved.
55. Ernest Carter Jr. (~1989-2002, lethal injection): After being fired from an autoshop, Carter robbed it with an accomplice, and fatally shot a security guard, 35 year old Eugene Manowski. The pair stole the shop's tow truck, and later tried to burn it with Carter's girlfriend to destroy any traces of the crime. Carter was also previously accused of burning a friend to death in the previous year, but the charges were dismissed.
56. Daniel Revilla (1987-2003, lethal injection): While babysitting his girlfriend's son, 13 month old Mark Gomez, in their home, Revilla broke the boy’s ribs in a beating and scalded him with boiling water. When he brought the boy to a hospital, Revilla gave a story that he accidentally hit Gomez’s head with a door handle, which was quickly seen through by the staff. According to the accounts of his girlfriend and her family, Revilla was violently abusive to Gomez, and they recounted incidents of him trapping the boy in a kitchen drawer, dunking him in cold water, folding him into a pull up bed, and hanging him by his ankles with duct tape.
57. Bobby Fields (~1990s-2003, lethal injection): Fields shot and killed 77 year old Louise Schem while burglarizing her home. She had tried to shot him with her .25 calibre pistol, but he wrestled the gun away from her, and gunned her down with it. His intentions was to steal Schem's television set to sell for cocaine, but left empty handed after losing his nerves with the struggle and murder. According to court documents, Fields had a previous robbery and assault conviction, and several arrests for drug possession.
58. Walanzo Robinson (1989-2003, lethal injection): A member of the Gangster Bloods street gang, Robinson shot and killed 26 year old Dennis Hill, an affiliate of a rival gang, in a turf war over drug sales.
59. John Hooker (~1971-2003, lethal injection): As a teenager in 1971, Hooker attended a party at a friend's house, and got into an argument. In a fit of anger, he fatally shot 18 year old Alta Lang, and wounded two other partygoers. Due to the witnesses refusing to cooperate with the investigation and being unable to prove any calculated intentions, Hooker was given a manslaughter conviction, and released a few years later. After he was paroled, Hooker started dating Sylvia Stokes, and fathered several children with her. Their troubled relationship lasted for 8 years, and ended when Stokes filed a protection order against him. In retaliation, Hooker lured Stokes and her mother, 53 year old Durcilla Morgan, into his apartment and stabbed them both to death.
60. Scot Hain (~1980s-2003, lethal injection): Hain carjacked and abducted a couple, 27 year old Michael Houghton and 22 year old Laura Sanders. After taking $565 and some bags of clothing, he forced them into the trunk of their car at gunpoint, and burned them alive in it. He had several previous arrests for robbery, and was involved with a number of rapes and attempted kidnappings months before the Houghton and Sanders' murders.
61. Don Hawkins Jr. (1985-2003, lethal injection): Hawkins kidnapped 29 year old Linda Ann Thompson and her two daughters, aged 4 years old and 18 months old, from a mall. Although his original intentions were to ransom off Thompson and her children, Hawkins gang raped the captive woman with his cousin and his girlfriend's teenage nephew, and drowned her in a lake. Thompson's children were spared and simply left with a babysitter. Hawkins and his accomplice then went on a nation wide rampage with his accomplice that involved the abductions and rapes of several grown women and teenage girls, hanging 31 year old David Coupez of Colorado in his home while robbing him, and countless other robberies.
62. Larry Jackson (~1984-2003, lethal injection): In 1984, Jackson shot and killed his girlfriend, 19 year old Freda Washington. He accepted a plea deal that dumbed down the charges to second degree murder, and was given a 30 year sentence for it. During his incarceration, Jackson started a relationship with 29 year old Wendy Cade. Despite her promises of marriage after his release, Cade left him for another man, and they got engaged. When Jackson was assigned to a prison work crew, he snuck out and went to confront Cade. Reportedly, the two had bought alchool, cocaine, and cigerates together and had sex in Cade's apartment. However, they got into an argument, and he slashed Cade's throat and stabbed her 31 times with box cutters. Jackson then left with her jewelry, watch, and the keys to her jeep.

PART ONE THOUSAND AND ELEVEN
[Previous Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2]
Sunday
“Daaaaddy!”
Levi groaned, for the shouting whine from his bedside dragged him kicking and screaming out of sleep in a way no other alarm could. Only two other sounds garnered a faster reaction from him: someone vomiting right beside him or his baby girl screaming in either pain or fear.
He opened one eye, wondering if someone had ever made an alarm that sounded like either of those last two. Parents everywhere would never sleep in again, so maybe not.
A blurry red-headed vision was so close that he could smell her morning breath as it tickled his nose. “Heeey,” he yawned, pulling away enough to bring her back into focus. “What’s up, Peaches?”
He didn’t recognise the room they were in. Not even a little bit. He sat up fast and looked around, causing Maddy to let out an ‘eep’ of fright. “Daddy! You made some come out!”
And then the events of the night before came crashing in: the party, the knowledge that his roommate was going to have the kind of company Maddy didn’t need to see, the invitation to stay in Luke’s old room, and Maddy’s late-night escapades after he’d dropped like a rock after doing a double shift to make it to the party.
He saw Maddy’s uncomfortable wiggle-dance and the strained look on her face and remembered he’d locked the door. “Oh!” He flew out of bed, scooping her up in the process. If he ended up getting peed on, it was his own fault for not setting an alarm for his baby girl’s tiny bladder.
He unlocked the door and dove around the corner, willing to go through the shut bathroom door if he had to, but thankfully found the room open and vacant. Then he flipped the toilet lid before depositing her on the ground in front of the toilet. He immediately pivoted away, not because he was embarrassed by her but because Maddy had grown old enough not to like him watching her go to the toilet. She was starting to get antsy about her bath, too, but until she could adequately bathe herself and not merely play with her bath toys the whole time, that was a hard ‘don’t care’ line.
“Do you want to have a bath, baby, or wait until we get home?” he asked, crossing the room to hold the door almost shut to prevent anyone else from seeing her either.
“I don’t got clothes, Daddy,” she answered like he was an idiot.
Word choice aside, the sentiment was true. They’d borrowed the shirt she was wearing from Charlie. “Well, we need to figure something out, Peaches, because you are not leaving this house in only a nightgown and no underwear.” He’d send Charlotte out to buy her some clothes if he had to.
He heard the toilet flush and Maddy move up behind him, and turned long before she could touch him. “Three guesses what I didn’t hear, young lady?” he asked with a paternal frown. He pointed at the vanity when she looked up at him without a clue.
“But I can’t reach!”
“Then what are you supposed to do?”
Her shoulders slumped. “Daddy, c’n you help?”
He then smiled. “Better.” He put a hand on top of her head and spun her towards the vanity before guiding her forward. After they crossed the room, he loosened the faucet without turning it on and curled his hands around her waist, lifting her high enough that she could lean over the sink. She washed her hands, rinsing them thoroughly, then scooped the water and let it fall over the faucet before turning it off. Not that water alone would wash away the ‘germs’ of the initial contact, but the sentiment was there. Her mother had been a nurse, after all.
“Is Mister Larry still here?”
“I don’t know, baby. But how about we go and see if we can track down either Aunty Charlotte or Robbie and figure out where we’re at, okay?”
“We’re in Uncle Luke’s and Aunty Charlotte’s home,” she said, again like he was an idiot.
That had been a rather stupid thing to say to a three-and-a-half-year-old. “Alright, Miss Smarty-pants. And what are we going to eat for breakfast in Uncle Luke and Aunty Charlotte’s home if we can’t find them to ask them, hmm?”
“Food, silly.”
Clearly, he was going to have to up his game in parental rhetorical questions. Gone were the days when she’d take him at his word, and she was only three. Thirteen was going to be fun. “Right,” he muttered, shaking his head as he opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.
While holding Maddy’s hand, he peeked in the open door across the hall from the bathroom and saw a very plain bedroom in terms of the rest of the apartment’s décor. At first, he’d thought it was a guest room until he remembered the teenage kid Robbie had recently adopted. This was probably his room.
He’d seen Charlotte and Robbie’s room the day they moved Charlotte in here, so a quick glance to confirm the room was empty was all he needed on that score. That left two doors on the right. And since both were close together, with the one on the left barely a couple of feet from the other and the front wall separating the living room, Levi was willing to assume the second one was a half-bath or a powder room or something. He went to the second door and knocked.
“Yeah?” Mason called from inside.
Levi opened the door and poked his head inside. “Hey, you wouldn’t by any chance happen to know where Robbie or Charlotte are, would you?”
Mason was at his desk, drowning in paperwork, it seemed. “Robbie, no,” he said, shaking his head. "As for Charlie, I’d try her office next door, between us and Boyd’s studio. She has a massive garage refit happening soon, so last I checked, she was in there getting things ready.”
The emphasis on his sister’s preferred name wasn’t lost on him. A sharp, jarring motion to his right caught his eye, and he saw something that really belonged in a space program somewhere.
“What the hell is that?” he demanded, ducking down low enough to see Robbie’s adoptee with his eyes glued on whatever was going on overhead and his fingers typing in a blur of speed.
“Naughty word, Daddy!”
Mason snickered at Levi’s slow blink. “It’s a gaming system courtesy of Robbie’s family. The damn thing is very addictive, though, and I haven’t told Brock that there’s a screen you pull down from inside the headset to cover your eyes that takes the game into 3D playing.”
Levi whistled. “I don’t even want to know how much that costs.”
“I know, and this Sectra table here is up there too,” Mason agreed, gesturing at the electronic display beside him. “But it certainly makes learning a lot more fun.” He tilted his head forward. “Isn’t that right, bunny?”
Bunny?
Maddy leaned into Levi’s leg, but she was grinning ear to ear when she nodded. “I wanna be a vert when I grow up,” she declared, looking up at him.
“Vet, baby,” Mason corrected. “We’re vets. Sounds like “bet’ and ‘get’ and ‘set’.”
“Vet,” Maddy repeated.
“There ya’ go. Step one is getting the name right.” He glanced up at Levi, his cheeky grin on full display. “Step two is getting Daddy to save up for the rest of his life to pay for the classes.”
“I hate you,” Levi whisper-smirked, and Mason pursed his lips in a cocky air-kiss.
Still shaking his head, Levi waved at Mason and left the room, leading Maddy through the kitchen and living room and into the hallway outside. For so many years, his baby brother and their friends had crushed themselves into that ninth-floor horror show, and no amount of pleading from everyone would budge Luke. Not pressure from their parents nor peer guilt from his brothers, who refused to bring their families over to the cramped space.
Charlo—Charlie was the only one who visited regularly, and at the time, he’d put it down to her being skinny, single with no kids, so she could squeeze into whatever gap she found. He knew who she was really visiting now, and Robbie had better be ready for the mother of all guilt trips coming from the family to make an honest woman of their sister. Nascerdios descended or not, he’d be a dead man if he broke her heart.
Thinking about his little brother’s relationship with all these men, it was like Luke knew the payoff was just around the corner. People like them didn’t live like this.
Well, Maverick kind of did, but he’d worked hard for what he had and could rattle off his list of sporting injuries to prove it. Robbie and Sam had simply taken a running dive off the world’s highest diving platform and landed in the kind of wealth the rich and shameless could only dream about.
Luke—Lucas was lucky in a different way. Yes, his friendship with Robbie and Sam had certainly opened the right doors financially, but what Levi had seen of Boyd’s work yesterday, the big guy was well on his way to becoming his own type of rich; much like Mav did for his family. And like Marley, Lu—ucas wouldn’t have to work a day again in his life if he didn’t want to. (Though he had just made detective and loved his job, so Levi couldn’t see him quitting anytime soon.)
He knocked on the closed door. “Come in,” Charlie called, proving Mason right. And like Mason, she was sitting behind a desk covered in paperwork with a phone cradled against her shoulder.
“Aunty Charlotte, we’re hungry!” Maddy declared, and Levi closed his eyes to hide from his sister’s evil chuckle.
“Well, we can’t have that, sweetie,” she said, and he heard the phone click as it was dropped onto the receiver. "Daddy gets very grumpy when he’s hungry.”
“It’s not the only reason he gets cranky,” he said, opening one eye a slit to give his baby sister the stink eye.
Charlie cackled and slid out from behind her desk. “C’mon. Robbie has your breakfast all ready for you in Voila.”
“We didn’t want to start going through things and guessing what we could eat,” Levi explained as they backtracked to the main apartment.
“That’s fine. Grab a seat—any seat,” she said, gesturing to the line of kitchen barstool chairs as she moved through the living room. She headed around the island and over to the box under the window without checking if they had.
Levi wasn’t thrilled about the height of the barstool chairs off the floor. “Do you have a belt or something I could use to tie Maddy in?”
Charlie swung around to him. “Oh! Oh, yeah! Hold on.” She slipped around the island and down her side of the apartment, coming back from her room with the kind of square booster seats that could be found in a restaurant. “Robbie ducked out and got this for her this morning.”
Levi scratched his head as the booster was attached to the second chair along the front of the island. “Where’d he get that from at this hour?”
Charlie looked at him derisively. “This is Robbie, bro. You know he’s got connections all over the place.”
It killed Levi not to ask for more details, but given it was probably either connected to the Nascerdios or, more likely, a wealthy former client in the city that still looked favourably upon Robbie, he hadn’t wanted Maddy to overhear the specifics of the latter. Too many times, his little girl had asked Robbie about different ‘gifts’ he’d been given by clients and how she had wanted to do whatever he did to get presents like that. ‘Over my dead body’ had been his mental declaration.
Maddy was pulling on his boxers. “Up, Daddy,” she said, holding her hands over her head for him.
Levi lifted her into the seat, and then buckled her in. In the meantime, Charlie went back to that wooden box, lifting the lid. “Robbie has this gift with food, so assume everything in the place is for you to eat, because it probably is.”
“Not everything,” Levi countered at Maddy’s wild squeal of delight. He gave her hand a firm squeeze. “Do not take anything without asking, young lady, or you’ll be in big trouble.”
“But Daddy…”
“It’s Daddy’s call, Maddy,” Charlie said, backing his play. She turned, holding a plate with two fist-sized Minnie Mouse-shaped waffles (the bow between the ears made it Minnie) with some type of white marshmallow fluff spread across them and a honey drizzle that drew perfect facial features on each. “Here’s breakfast for one cute-as-a-button Dobson,” she said with a flourish, sliding the plate in front of Maddy and pulling out a children’s stubby fork from the cutlery drawer.
“It’ll have to be cut u—” The words died in Levi’s throat as Maddy stabbed the nearest piece, and it broke into a small, bite-sized piece that Maddy happily popped into her mouth.
“Imma bi’ ’irl,” she said, in and around her food.
Levi tapped her nose. “Big girls don’t talk with their mouths full, Peaches.”
When he glanced at Charlie, she’d gone back to the box and returned with a dinner plate of fluffy scrambled eggs on two pieces of toast with cheese and bacon, and three sausages cut almost in half longways on the side. She nodded at the seat beside Maddy, then slid the plate into the empty spot at the end. “Siddown, bro.”
He might have whimpered a little on the first bite as Charlie went and poured them both a glass (technically, Maddy got a plastic tumbler) of citrus juice (not orange), leaving the jug on the bench between them. “Help yourselves to as much juice as you want. Even if you wipe this whole jug out, there's plenty more.”
“This is really awesome, Charlie. Thanks.”
Charlie placed her hand on her brother’s shoulder as she moved around the island into the hallway. “Anytime, Levi. But now I’ve gotta love you and leave you. There’s a mountain of work to get through in my office, so are you good here?”
“Totally. Thanks again, sis.”
As she walked out the door, Maddy held out a piece of her waffle to him. “Try?”
Waffles were usually too sweet for his blood, but this was the game he’d set up with her a long time ago to make her at least attempt to eat new foods. He couldn’t very well expect her to eat what he wanted her to if, now and again, he didn’t reciprocate the motion.
The honey and marshmallow whip (which tasted nothing like the jar-bought type) melted into the perfectly heated/not-too-hot waffle, giving it a sweet crunch as if it had just come out of the waffle iron. His surprise must have been written all over his face, for Maddy giggled, and he grinned. “That’s yummy.”
“Mmmm-hmmm,” she hummed, just as he always had when a new food passed the initial taste test.
* * *
((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))
I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here
For more of my work, including WPs: Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.
FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

I've always been bound to death.
On my eighth birthday, a shadow strode into my house and shot me and my family dead. I remember it vividly, every detail, every angle, etched and stained and carved into my memory.
I sat very still with my knees to my chest, my gaze glued to my siblings.
Lily and PJ looked like they were sleeping, and I could almost believe it.
I didn't look at the shadow.
From the comfort of my knees, I waited for my brother to lift his head.
But his body was so limp, so still, every part of him faltering. My sister’s head was nestled in his shoulder, thick beads of red running down her face.
They're just sleeping.
I could tell myself they were— as long as I didn't look at the splatter of scarlet staining the back of the couch and pooling at their feet.
BANG.
Mom’s body dropped onto the ground.
I lunged forwards, slamming my hands over my ears.
BANG.
PJ’s head slumped forwards, a teasing smile still frozen on his lips.
BANG.
Lily gently tipped into PJ, like she was going to sleep.
Before she closed her eyes, Mom told me to run.
I can't remember how long I stayed under the shattered remnants of Mom’s favorite table. The shadow was waiting for me to move, to make a noise.
I watched booted feet crunch through glass, getting closer and closer, and slowly, fight or flight began to take over.
Making it halfway across the living room, my palms slick with my mother’s blood, I thought I was going to live.
Cruel fingers wound their way through my hair and shoved me to my knees. I remember the phantom legs of a spider creeping down the back of my neck when the shadow with no face dragged the barrel of his gun down my spine.
“Turn around.”
The shadow had a voice.
When I didn't move, the protruding metal stabbed into my neck.
“Turn around, kid!”
I did, very slowly.
Behind him, my siblings still weren't moving.
They were asleep.
Lily was still smiling, strawberry blonde ringlets stained red.
I couldn't see PJ’S face anymore.
BANG.
I didn't feel the gunshot.
I didn't feel anything.
Looking down, I glimpsed slowly spreading red blossoming like a flower.
It felt like being cut from strings.
I hit the ground, just like my mother, my body felt heavy and wrong.
Paralysed.
I remember being unable to scream, unable to cry, the salty taste of metal filling my mouth. It was like being winded. Rolling onto my side, all I could see was flickering candlelight.
The air was thick, so hard to breathe.
I rolled onto my back trying to suck in air.
The shadow took a step back, opened the front door, and bled into the night.
I don't remember the pain, and I don't remember dying. I couldn't breathe, couldn't conjure words in my mouth.
I felt warm and sticky, lying in my own blood.
I think I tried to move.
But I was so tired.
I’m not sure what death feels like, because it's like going to sleep.
I remember my last shuddering breaths, a lulling darkness beginning to swallow me up. I don't know why I wasn't afraid.
Oblivion almost felt like I was sinking into lukewarm depths on a Summer’s day.
Oblivion wasn't pain, and there was a peaceful inevitability to it.
It was endless nothing, a nothing I found myself gravitating towards. But before I could envelope myself in that darkness, it was spitting me back out.
The next thing I knew, I was in a white room, a slow beeping sound tearing me from slumber. I had a vague memory of slow spreading roses blossoming across my shirt, like summer flowers blooming.
Everything was white.
The walls, the ceiling, and my clothes.
Sensation hit me in slow waves.
Exhaustion.
I felt it tightening its grip around my brain, dragging me back onto a mountain of pillows when I tried to jump up. My Aunt May was sitting next to me on a plastic chair, her warm fingers entangled in mine. Aunt May and Mom were practically twins, with the same thick red hair and pale skin.
Mom wore her hair in a casual ponytail, while May preferred a strict bun.
I had to bite back the urge to yank my hand away.
Aunt May was asleep, used tissues filling her lap.
There was a nurse pottering around, checking my vitals and prodding my arms. My eyes felt heavy. I had to blink several times to keep myself awake.
“Charlie?”
The nurse’s voice was like wind-chimes.
I pretended not to notice her forced lipstick smile, the way she stood with her arms folded, staring at me like I was one of my cousin’s experiments. “You were in an accident, sweetie,” the nurse spoke up. I could see her trembling hands. “Just, um, try and rest, okay?”
I wanted to ask where my family was, but I already knew the answer.
I think she knew that too.
“You died, Charlie.” The nurse’s voice was eerily cold. “You were dead for thirteen minutes.”
She took slow steps towards me, her eyes growing frenzied, like she couldn't understand me, like I was a puzzle she could not solve– and it was driving her crazy. I could see it in her twitching hands, her wobbling lips that were trying and failing to appear stoic.
“In fact, I just pulled you out of the morgue, honey. I opened up your body bag that I had just zipped up, and told your aunt that you were a miracle I just… can’t understand.” The nurse sounded like she was trying to choke down a laugh, or maybe a sob.
“Charlotte, you were pronounced dead at 3:02am from a gunshot wound to the chest.” Taking a slow, sobering breath, the nurse tried to smile. “The bullet went through the right ventricle of your heart and severely damaged your left lung, rendering you unable to breathe. Your heart stopped, and after four attempts to resuscitate, we called it.”
Something slimy wound its way up my throat when she began to pace the room. “I… did all the paperwork. It took me two minutes. Your death certificate was signed, and your body was taken to the morgue to be prepped for transportation. Then I had my lunch. Tuna salad with a protein milkshake. I’m not a fan of the chocolate flavor.”
She shook her head. “Anyway, when I came back to you, you were awake inside your body bag.” Her voice was starting to break. “You were…um, alive, and asked me for apple soda.”
The nurse moved closer, and yet kept her distance.
I could feel myself moving back, panic writhing through me.
“So.” The nurse spoke calmly. “How the fuck are you still alive, Charlie?”
I think I passed out after that.
When I woke up again, my head a lot less heavier, the nurse was gone.
Slowly, my foggy brain began to find itself and connect dots.
My mouth was dry, full of cotton.
There was a sudden tightness, a sharp and cruel sting in my wrists.
Something sharp was protruding into my flesh, and no matter how many times I violently wrenched my arm, it was stuck. It didn't feel right to be able to breathe so easily.
I knew the second I woke that my Mom was dead.
Lily and PJ were dead, and it was like losing them all over again.
As clarity came over me, I found my voice, a strangled cry escaping my lips.
“Get it out.” I whispered in a shrill cry.
Tugging at the IV in my wrist, I tried to yank the needle from my skin.
“Get it out!” I shrieked, my gaze glued to the tiny spots of blood staining the insertion point.
I could see it again.
So much blood.
Mom was curled up on the floor, lying in slow spreading red that wouldn't stop, seeping across her beaded rug.
She was all over me, slick on my skin and caked in my fingernails.
I couldn't wash her off of me.
“You're okay, Charlotte.”
Aunt May’s voice came from my right, stabling me to reality.
The world started to move again, started to make sense again, when she cupped my cheeks and told me to breathe. When I opened my mouth to ask where my family were, she lightly shook her head and I swallowed my words. Aunt May handed me a glass of water, and I drained it in one gulp.
She told me I was a miracle.
Aunt May didn't say much, and when she did, she broke into sobs.
Her eyes were raw from crying, clinging onto me, her shuddery voice reassuring me that I was going to be okay.
She told me I would be living with her from now on, before wrapping me into a hug and leaving to get coffee.
Once my aunt was gone, another nurse came to prod my IV.
I tried to sleep, but the uncomfortable tightness of the needle sticking into my skin and the sterile white lights in my eyes made it impossible. I waited for grief to catch up with me, drowning me in a hollow oblivion I wouldn't be able to claw myself out of. But I didn't feel sad. I didn't feel angry.
I wanted to know why my family were dead.
I wanted to know why I was breathing, and their skin was ice cold.
Rotting.
The sudden image of maggots crawling up my brother’s nose sent me lurching into a sitting position, my stomach heaving. Reaching for my glass of water, it was empty. The sensation of throwing up felt familiar, almost comforting.
Mom was always with me when I was sick, holding my hair back and lulling my hysteria with reassuring murmurs.
I was frowning at the trash can by the door, my cotton candy brain trying to figure out if I would be able to make it in time, when a small voice drifted from the doorway, startling me.
“I don't want you to come live with us.”
My cousin was peeking through the door, hiding behind a shock of dark brown curls. Jude was the only brunette in our family. The rest of us were redheads.
I wasn't sure why he was dressed up like a ghost, draped in a white cloak that was way too big for him. Jude was a weird kid. His mother, and my auntie, had inherited the family house, so in his mind, that made him superior.
Jude made it clear he didn't like his cousins, refusing to let us play with him and banning us from family gatherings.
When the adults were drinking cocktails and losing their awareness, Jude ordered us around. The times we did play with him, our cousin showed us his spider collection, or the raccoon brain he kept in a jar. PJ was convinced our younger cousin was a serial killer. Several months earlier, he'd happily showed us the roadkill he'd been growing bacteria on under his bed.
Jude’s ‘experiments’ were worrying.
He stuffed mushrooms down my brother’s ears while he was sleeping, to, and I quote, “Recreate The Last Of Us.”
When Lily had a nosebleed during Thanksgiving dinner, Jude collected all her bloody tissues and refused to tell us where he'd put them, and what he had done with them. Fast-forward two months, and I found them under a nest of spiders. Jude was trying to adapt the spiders to be able to feed on human blood. I was surprised my cousin hadn't immediately demanded to see my siblings’ dead bodies for autopsy.
Jude stepped into the room, shuffling his feet.
“I'm sorry about Lily, PJ, and Aunt Ivy.” He mumbled, glaring at the floor tiles.
My cousin made no move to offer real sympathy, instead speaking to the floor.
“But I don't want you to come live with us.” Jude lifted his head, looking me dead in the eye. “I don't like you, Charlie. I want you to stay away.”
Before I could reply, he stepped back like I was diseased.
“You should be dead.” Jude grumbled.
He scowled at me, getting my age purposely wrong as usual before running off.
“Happy 68th birthday.”
I was six months older than him.
In Jude’s eyes, I was ready for retirement.
Still, though, my cousin was right.
I was stone cold dead, and then I was somehow alive.
Which was wrong.
Growing up, I realized Death was not so subtly attempting to fix his mistake.
It started small. I'd choke on things I wasn't supposed to choke on.
Chips.
Candy.
Ice cream.
Aunt May had to perform the heimlich manoeuvre when I choked on a piece of chicken. I thought I was just really unlucky, but then I locked myself in a freezer that didn't have a lock, and almost drowned in the local swimming pool, catching my foot in stray netting.
At the summer fair, Jude convinced me to try apple bobbing, only for my head to conveniently get stuck underwater.
It started to make sense.
I was supposed to die with my family that night, and death was out to get me.
Death started to get clever, changing his tactic. Instead of using everyday things to try to kill me, he sent reinforcements.
I turned twelve years old, and my aunt threw me a huge party, inviting all my classmates. Aunt May was rich, rich.
Mom never explained it, but our grandparents left everything to May.
The house was like a palace, a labyrinth of floors I was yet to explore, and two swimming pools.
I was in the kitchen cutting myself a slice of cake, when, out of nowhere, a dead boy came rushing at me with one of my aunt’s favorite kitchen knives.
A dead boy who I immediately recognised.
Wren Oliver.
Several years prior, he'd gone missing from his parents' yard. The town launched a full investigation, only to find his body in a ditch a week later.
So, Death had sent a footsoldier.
Hiding under a hooded sweatshirt, Wren appeared older, like he had grown up with me. But there was a startling vacancy in his expression that drew the breath from my lungs, freezing me in place. Wren’s death was announced as an accident, though his wounds suggested the opposite, dried blood smearing his right temple and a cavernous hole in his chest, his clothes painted, stained, in bright red, glued in sticky mounds clinging to him.
The boy’s eyes were wild, feral, like an animal.
His hair was longer, a mess of reddish curls matted to his forehead.
Lip split into a demented giggle.
I remember taking a slow step back, my gaze glued to the knife.
Wren’s fingers were wrapped around the handle like he knew exactly how to use it, how to plunge it into my heart and kill me for good. He moved like a predator, zero self awareness or recognition, only driven to kill me.
The dead boy prided himself in slow, intimidating steps, shoving me against the wall and dragging the blade of the knife down the curve of my throat.
His eyes confused me, writhing with hatred that was artificial, programmed into him as Death’s official soldier.
He didn't speak, only smiled, revelling in my fear. I could tell it thrilled him, my trembling hands, my sharp, heavy breaths I couldn't control. Squeezing my eyes shut, I waited to finally die.
I waited for the pain, and to lose my breath once again.
But death was playing with me.
When I opened my eyes, the dead boy was gone, and I was on my knees, screaming.
“Wren Oliver is trying to kill me!" I managed to hiss.
My aunt knelt in front of me, her expression crumpling.
*Sweetie,” She spoke softly, squeezing my hands. Aunt May was trying to appear calm for my sake, but I could tell she was scared, her frantic eyes searching mine. “Wren Oliver is dead.”
The kids surrounding me started to giggle, whispering among themselves.
In the corner of my eye, my cousin was leaning against the door, mid eye roll.
When my aunt was ushering kids back to the pool, Jude came to crouch in front of me. Ever since I started living with him, he'd made sure to keep his distance.
This time, though, Jude leaned uncomfortably close, a sparkle in his eyes I had never seen before. Inclining his head, he rocked back and forth on his heels, prodding me in the forehead.
“If you see the dead boy again, can you tell me?” His lips curved into a smile.
“I did see him.” I gritted out. “I’m not lying.”
Jude shrugged. “I never said you didn't,” he lowered his voice into a whisper, “I wanna know when you see him again.”
“Why?”
His lips curved into a smirk.
“So, I can catch him.”
My cousin got closer, his breath tickling my cheek.
“I seeeeeeee dead people.”
After that incident, death left me alone for a while.
I was fifteen, walking through the forest with a friend, catching fireflies in bell jars. Aunt May was lucky to live so close to the forest, the entrance just outside her back door. When we were littles, PJ would drag Lily and I down the trail to escape Jude’s weird experiments.
I decided to invite Jem Littlewood on a summer walk.
Jem was cute, but in a dorky way. He was chronically clumsy, and dressed like he'd been spat out of a John Hughes movie. We hiked all the way to the end of the river and had a picnic, watching the sun set over the horizon. I was having conflicting feelings for this guy.
Jem was obsessed with fireflies.
Though he seemed more interested in photographing them than me.
The guy couldn't seem to sit still, jumping to his feet to marvel at tiny specks of light dancing in the air.
“I'm just going to take photos!” Jem beamed, holding up his camera.
I had to bite back the urge to say, “Don't you have enough photos?”
I nodded, and he turned and sprinted back down the trail.
Before his footsteps ground to a sudden halt.
At first, I thought he was snapping polaroids.
When I got closer, though, blinking in the eerie dark, I caught something.
Bending down, I picked up a bell jar still spilling fireflies.
Further down the trail, Jem was lying crumpled in the dirt, his camera smashed to pieces next to him, blood running in thick rivulets down his temple. There he was. Leaning against a tree, his arms folded, was the ghost boy. Wren Oliver was growing up with me. Now, a teenager, and yet his face was carved into something else entirely, more of a monster, slight points to his ears and too-sharp teeth, eyes ignited.
Wren didn't look like a ghost boy anymore.
Death had dressed him in shackles of ivy, a crown of glass and bone forced onto his head, entangled in his curls. Death was torturing him.
Wren’s body was its canvas, and every time I got away, he was punished, painting his failures across scarred skin.
I should have been running for my life, but I was mesmerised by each symbol cruelly carved into his neck.
The boy did a slow head incline, like he couldn't believe I was standing in front of him.
His slow spreading smile caught me off guard.
I remembered how to run, stumbling over my feet.
But I couldn't move.
The burning hatred that death had filled him with, was stronger, hollowing him out completely. I managed two shaky steps, before I felt him, an unearthly force winding its way around my spine. This time, he didn't hesitate.
I watched his mouth move, a single curve of his upper lip that wrenched my body from my control, slamming me against a tree. There was something around my throat, choking the breath from my lungs, a thick fog spreading over my eyes.
Following his mouth curving into silent letters, I could feel my feet slowly leaving the ground, my legs dangling.
I was floating.
Hovering off of the ground, suspended by his words.
Through half lidded eyes, I caught the glint of a blade between his fist, but I couldn't move, couldn't scream.
He was drowning me, bleeding into my blood, spider webbing and expanding in my brain without moving a muscle.
Instead, the ghost boy stood silently, running his thumb down the teeth of his knife while he ripped my lungs apart.
It was like suffocating, sinking into that peaceful oblivion I met at eight years old.
This time, though, the darkness was starving.
“Charlie?”
My eyes found daylight, a scream clawing out of my mouth.
“Charlie, it's past curfew!”
Wren flinched, his stoic expression crumpling.
The dead boy’s lips moved again, this time in a curse.
Fuck.
“Charlotte!”
Staggering back, Wren’s eyes widened and the suffocating hold on me severed.
His head snapped in the direction my aunt was coming from.
“Charlie, answer me right now.”
He hesitated, his bare feet pivoting in the dirt, like he was considering finishing me off. Wren studied me with lazy eyes, sucking on his bottom lip. When my aunt's footsteps got louder, branches snapping under her shoes, something contorted in the boy’s face.
Fear.
I guessed the boy wasn't expecting other humans to intrude.
Wren fell over himself, shuffling on his hands and knees, before diving to his feet. When he turned and ran, I was released, slipping to the ground, trying and failing to draw in breath. I barely felt the impact, only a dull thudding pain. I could hear the ghost boy’s footsteps, his uneven, shuddery breaths as he catapulted into a run.
Under a late setting sun, I watched his dancing shadow disappear into the trees.
Mission unsuccessful, I guessed.
When I was fully conscious, Aunt May was checking over Jem, helping him sit up.
“Where did he go?” I managed to get out, scanning the darkness for Wren.
“He's okay, just concussed.” May whispered, dialling 911.
My aunt applied a dressing to Jem’s wound, ignoring the boy’s hisses.
“Keep still.” she murmured, smoothing his bandaid. “What happened, Charlotte?”
“She pushed me over.” Jem groaned, shuffling away from me. When my aunt told him to stay calm, he straightened up, leaning against the tree. “The psycho bitch tried to fucking kill me!”
When my aunt's gaze flicked to me, I shook my head.
“It was Wren Oliver.” I gritted, teetering on hysteria. I could tell she didn't believe me, but I couldn't stop myself.
I prodded at my throat, clawing for the indentations where his phantom fingers snaked around my neck, squeezing the breath from my lungs.
But there was nothing.
I could feel my mind starting to unravel. I nodded to my disgruntled classmate trying to dodge my aunt’s prodding.
“Ow, ow, ow! That stings!
“He knocked Jem out.” I managed. “Then he tried to kill me.”
Jem surprised me with a scoff. “You're seriously blaming your psychotic break on a dead kid?”
Aunt May pursed her lips, motioning for Jem to be quiet. Judging from her face, however, she agreed with the boy.
May forced a smile, though it didn't quite reach her eyes. “Okay. Can you, uh, describe the boy to me, Charlotte?”
“He was wearing a crown,” I said, “And he looked my age.”
Aunt May cocked her head, and I saw real worry, like she was trying not to freak out. Jem made a snorting noise.
“I'm sorry, he was wearing a crown?”
“Yes!” I insisted, getting progressively more frustrated.
I tried to jump up, only for my aunt to gently lower me back down. “I know it sounds crazy, but death has sent Wren Oliver to kill me, just like my family. He tried to kill me when I was twelve, too!”
Jem let out a bitter laugh. “Your niece is a fucking wackadoodle.”
Aunt May’s eyes darkened. She grabbed my shoulders, her nails stabbing into my skin. “Charlie, I want you to listen to me, okay?” When my eyes found the rapidly darkening sky, my aunt forced me to look at her.
“Charlotte!”
She was as scared as me, her voice shuddering.
“Wren Oliver is dead.” My aunt said firmly, shaking me. Even then, though, I wasn't even looking at her. I was trying to find his ignited eyes lighting up the dark. “Wren died at eight years old in a terrible accident, and you can't keep using him as an excuse for your mental trauma.” There was something twitching in her expression I was trying to make sense of. When I risked a look at Jem, the boy was staring at me dazedly– like I really was crazy.
Aunt May pressed her face into my shoulder, and I could feel her tears soaking into my shirt. She was trying to hold it together, trying to understand.
“Charlie, I know you lost your family,” she whispered. “But you and Wren Oliver are not the same. You survived, and he didn't.” Her voice splintered.
“You need to come to terms with that, okay?”
When I didn't respond, she pinched my chin, forcing me to look at her.
“Charlotte.”
Aunt May’s voice turned cold. “I ignored this when you were a kid, but if you continue to use this poor boy as a coping mechanism, I will have no choice but to send you to a specialist.”
When Jem was taken away by paramedics, Aunt May held my hand, squeezing my fingers for dear life.
I caught her gaze scanning the tree's around us, delving into twisting oblivion. Every little noise sent her twisting around. She was looking for something.
“I'm going to get you help.” Aunt May said in a low murmur when we were back at the house. Jude was sitting on the kitchen counter, legs swinging. I could feel his penetrating gaze burning into the back of my head.
Aunt May set a cup of cocoa on the table.
“No more fairytales.”
By the time I was eighteen, I had bitten three therapists.
They refused to believe that death was coming to reclaim my soul, and was using a dead boy to do his dirty work.
For my 16th birthday, I braced myself to come face to face with Wren Oliver’s ghost.
I wasn't even in town, staying at a friend's house.
But dead boys, and especially dead boys moulded into Death’s personal soldiers, could materialise anywhere.
I locked every door in the house, and taped up my friend’s window.
Nothing happened.
On my seventeenth birthday, I was sick in bed with gastritis.
Still no ghost boy.
Death seemed to have finally left me alone.
On my eighteenth birthday, I was stuffing books in my locker when my cousin popped up out of nowhere, scowling as usual. After an unexpected growth spurt and losing a tonne of baby fat, my cousin had scaled the high school hierarchy, swapping his weird experiments for a varsity jacket and experimenting with his sexuality.
The two of us had come to an unspoken truce.
I kept quiet about his spider collection to his popular friends, and he tolerated my existence until I left for college.
“Your surprise party is cancelled.”
Jude leaned against my locker, running a hand through thick dark hair tucked under a baseball cap. Jude never admitted it, but he was definitely embarrassed of being the odd one out.
My siblings may be dead, but they were still redheads.
I pulled off his cap with a smile, throwing it in his face. “Sure it is.”
My cousin’s eyes widened. He lost his slick bravado, grabbing for his cap.
“Hey!”
According to my cousin, my party was unexpectedly cancelled every year.
I wasn't sure if it was his weird superiority complex, or just plain jealousy, but it was getting exhausting.
Jude followed me down the hallway, matching my stride.
“Can you just not come home tonight?”
I quickened my pace. “It's only a party. I'm having some friends over, and no, we won't go anywhere near your room.”
“No, I mean.” Jude stepped in front of me, and for the first time in a while, he wasn't trying to hide disdain for me.
His dark eyes pinned me in place for a moment, the world around us coming to a halt. Sound bled away, and all I heard were his slow breaths. There was something there, an unexplainable twitch in his eyes and lips, that twisted my gut.
Jude stepped closer, his lip curling. He shoved me back, losing his facade.
“Stay the fuck away from the house tonight.” He said, and his voice, his tone, was enough to send shivers creeping down my spine. Jude had always hid behind a ten foot wall in his mind. It was jarring to see something in him finally start to splinter. Fuck. I thought.
This kid had serious Mommy issues.
I blinked, and the world resumed, kids pushing past us.
Jude seemed to catch himself, slipping back under his mask.
“I'm having friends over,” he rolled his eyes, “Your presence will ruin the vibe.”
“It's my birthday?”
He groaned, tipping his head back. “Yes, I know. But–”
“I think you can deal with the attention off of you for one night, Jude.”
“Will Wren Oliver be there too?” Jem Littlewood hollered.
Jude didn't respond for a moment, his lip curling.
“Shut the fuck up.” He spat at Jem, who immediately backed down. With an audience this time, Jude forced an award winning smile. “Fine.” His lips split into a grin I knew he hated. My cousin clamped his hand on my shoulder, hard enough to hurt. I could feel his fingers pinching the material of my jacket. “Have it your way, dude.”
Jude backed away with a two fingered salute.
“Happy 78th birthday!”
In a sense, I wish I listened to my cousin.
My party was a success, sort of.
Four of us, a crate of beers, and no sign of my cousin.
I was mildly tipsy, sitting on the edge of the pool, dangling my legs in the water when my friend demanded more beers.
I was also hungry for cake, so I stumbled inside in search of the goods.
The house was dark, lit up in dazzling blue from the pool's lights reflecting through the windows. Aunt May was in her office on the ground floor, and Jude was getting high in his room. In my drunken state, I found myself marvelling my aunt's house, and how much of it was left unexplored.
For example, in the foyer, past the spiral staircase she’d had custom made, was an elevator I had never questioned.
There was a girl my age standing on the staircase.
She was frozen, mid run, dressed in ragged jeans and t-shirt.
Everything about her stuck out to me, bringing me to a sobering halt.
The girl reminded me of my sister– or at least, if my sister had ever grown up.
I wasn't sure if I was drunk or hallucinating.
Her flower crown was pretty…
Lily had grown wings.
I was slowly moving towards her, a sudden bang sounding from the kitchen.
The bang of something shattering on the floor.
Twisting around, I found myself gravitating towards warm golden light.
The first thing I saw was the refrigerator door hanging open, and someone, no, something, rooting around inside it.
Glued to the spot, I dazedly watched them grab milk, guzzling it down, and then soda, cracking open each can and sucking them dry, before carving their fingers into my birthday cake.
But I wasn't looking at the spillage of food seeping across the floor. Instead, my gaze found a crown of antlers, both human and animal bone entangled with dead flowers and human remains glued to a head of familiar matted brown curls. There was something sticking from battered and bruised flesh, twin gaping slits sliced through a torn shirt resembling glass wings that were not yet formed, reminding me of a butterfly.
Wings.
But not the wings I dreamed of as a kid. These things were unnatural mounds that both did and didn't make sense on a human boy. I could see the trauma of them slicing through his flesh, monstrous, looming things protruding from what was left of a human spine.
Human, and yet I couldn't call his beautifully grotesque face human.
Wren Oliver had grown up with me, now an adult.
Eighteen years old.
His clothes confused me, a single white shirt and shorts.
Wren’s feet were bare, battered and bruised, blood smearing my aunt's tiles.
Angel.
Death had turned his footsoldier, and my future killer, into an angel.
But there was nothing angelic about the dead boy, his body and mind sculpted and moulded into Death’s own.
The boy no longer resembled a human, feral eyes and a manic smile, choking down pieces of cake. His face had been contorted into a monster, gnashing teeth and sharp points in his ears, a sickly tinge to malnourished skin.
And that's when it hit me, watching him stuff himself with food.
Something slimy inched its way up my throat.
The boy didn't move. I don't even think he'd noticed me, gorging himself on anything he could get his hands on.
Chicken, raw bacon, leftover salad.
When he moved onto cupcakes, licking frosting from his fingers, I glimpsed markings on his arms, a language I didn't understand, carved into him.
His wrists were shackled, bound, in entangled iron and vine, iron that was ingrained into his skin, vines and flowers and ivy entangling his bones, that were part of him, polluting his blood. Slowly, my eyes found stab wounds splitting open his torso.
Raw flesh, where his skin had been torched, melting, and then merging, ripped apart and put back together over and over again.
I found his heart, the gaping cavern in his chest where it should be.
And it was.
Marked, carved, and branded with a symbol resembling an X.
Wren Oliver was not dead.
But, just like me, he should have been.
I remember saying his name, my voice slurred slightly.
I didn't drink that much, but I could barely coerce words, my head spinning.
Wren’s neck snapped towards me, his eyes narrowing with resentment I couldn't understand, hatred that seemed to puppeteer him. Slowly tilting his head, the boy’s lips split into a grin, eyes filled, polluted, with mania.
I could see where his lips had been stitched shut, and then ripped open.
“Hi.”
He held up his hand in an awkward wave.
When one of my friends stumbled into the kitchen, Wren reacted on impulse.
He picked up a knife from the counter, throwing it like a dart, straight through the guy’s throat.
Something shattered inside my mind.
Ignoring my friend bleeding out, Wren stumbled over himself, abandoning his feast. He took a single step towards me, backing me against the wall, coming so close, close enough for me to feel his very real breath grazing my cheeks. Just like when he was a kid, he traced the teeth of his blade down my throat. I wasn't expecting him to burst out laughing, trembling with hysteria.
His eyes were wild, feral and wrong, almost euphoric.
With what all I could only recognise as relief.
BANG.
I was barely aware of the gunshot.
The bullet went straight through his head, the winged boy hitting the ground.
Dead.
I saw the blood stemming around him in a halo before the bleeding pool faltered, seeping back inside his head.
Like rewinding a VCR.
Wren was dead, and then he was alive.
Wren’s body contorted, his chest inflating.
His gasp for air was painful, strangled, eyes opening wide.
Terrified.
“You fucking idiot.”
Jude’s voice sent me twisting around.
My cousin stood in the exact same robes he wore as a child.
The world tipped off kilter, and I was on my knees, then my stomach.
I sunk to the floor, my thoughts swimming.
Jude’s murmur followed me, creeping into the dark.
“I told you not to come home.”
I can't remember how long I was unconscious for.
When I woke, I was dressed in an evening gown, a dress that used to be my mother’s.
My vision cleared, and I found myself sitting in an unfamiliar room resembling an abandoned swimming hall.
The pool itself was empty, the bottom stained revealing scarlet.
There were symbols carved into each tile.
Like a game.
“Sit up straight, Charlotte.”
I was sitting at a banquet.
Jude was in front of me, sipping on wine.
He caught my eye for half a second before averting his gaze.
At the far end of the table sat my aunt May.
Kissing the rim of her glass, her smile was twisted.
“I've been waiting so long to give you your birthday presents, Charlotte. Your memories should be returning soon.”
“Mom.” Jude muttered, hiding behind his glass. “Calm down. You're embarrassing yourself.”
Ignoring my cousin, May tapped her glass with a fork, and in walked my birthday presents.
No, dragged.
By their hair.
Wren Oliver, the dead boy, was in fact my aunt's prisoner.
Behind him, was the girl who looked so much like Lily.
I think that's why my aunt chose her.
Aunt May cleared her throat.
“For a long time, our family has lived among creatures who live in the forest you played inside. In exchange for keeping this town safe, they only ask for small favors. Wayward children who disappear into the woods are good enough payment. Charlie, you and your siblings do not share our inheritance. Your mother never wanted fae children. She wanted you to be human.”
Aunt May’s smile faded.
“After losing my sister, and my niece and nephew, I made a deal to give my last surviving niece 100 years of life.”
Her words were white noise, my gaze glued to my birthday presents. I couldn't call them human anymore.
I couldn't call Wren human, when his face was so beautifully grotesque, painfully hypnotising.
The monstrous things sticking from twin slits in his back were supposed to be wings, except they looked wrong, cruelly protruding from his exposed spine. Under the influence of alcohol earlier, the girl made me smile.
Her wings, to me, looked like one of a real fairy.
In reality, they were torn and shredded apart, bigger than the girl herself.
When she dropped onto her stomach, she was dragged back to her feet, her knees buckling under the weight. Her tiara of flowers and bone looked pretty to me when I saw her on the stairs.
Now, though, I could see the pearly white of a human child's skull forced onto her head, dead flowers threaded through cavernous, gaping eye sockets.
The two of them were violently shoved into the empty pool.
“Jude. Please demonstrate, sweetheart.”
Jude stood, pulling out a gun, and aiming it at the winged girl.
BANG.
The girl’s body hit the tiles, her blood seeping across stained white.
“Now, of course, our king did not give you life for free.” May continued.
“The King demanded a debt, as well as two heirs to join him in his court once your hundred years were complete.”
Her lips quirked into a smile.
“The king is smart. If a child cannot be stolen from the human world, they can, however, be made, moulded and shaped from their human forms, skinned of their humanity through their suffering, leaving a hollowed out shell in the child's place.” She was speaking so casually, ignoring Wren’s whimpers.
“The conversion takes a while. 100 years to birth a fully blooded fae heir, who will lose their human memories, in preparation to join their new family.”
Jude shot Wren in the chest, his eyes empty.
This time, he dropped his weapon, using finger-guns instead.
“Bang.” He deadpanned.
Then the neck.
I watched Wren come back to life, and then die.
Over and over again.
I think at one point, he screamed and cried.
But not now.
He was their puppet on display, dancing for their entertainment.
Half lidded eyes drowned in oblivion found mine, and I understood his hatred.
Before he was shot again.
Stabbed.
Branded and burned, and ripped apart.
At some point, I screamed at them to stop. I couldn't breathe, slamming my hands over my ears and begging them.
Aunt May didn't listen, ordering for my hands to be tied down.
“The King required two human sacrifices to suffer in your place.” She concluded. “For one hundred years.”
Aunt May’s smile was suddenly sad, and she lifted her glass in a toast.
I was watching their blood trickle down each tile in the pool, like every death, every time they suffered, my body became progressively less human.
I felt disgusting. I wasn't supposed to be alive. Every single year of my life, every breath I had taken, was stolen.
Aunt May nodded at me, her lips forming a proud smile. She stood up, and was handed a sacrificial knife.
Climbing into the swimming pool herself, she strode over to Wren.
The boy slumped to the floor, trembling, his knees against his chest.
Aunt May grabbed him by the hair, forcing his head up, and sliced the blade across his throat.
His eyes flicked to me, and I swore he smiled.
Spots of red dotted yellowing tiles, a river trickling under my aunt's heels.
“Happy 78th birthday, Charlotte.”
Last night ended with me being locked in my room.
It's been almost 15 hours, and the door is still locked. Please help me. I'm fucking terrified of what my aunt is planning.
I can't stop shgajing. FycjbfucibFUCK
If she is telling the truth, I shouldn't be here, right??
And I can't stop thinking.
Is Wren Oliver trying to kill me, or himself?

So yesterday, I, a white male, was buying my mom a Mother’s Day present at the mall from my dad. We were buying a purse from Tory Burch, and I noticed that whenever people of any race walked in they were part of a small group, such as a Latino man and a white couple, but multiple massive groups of African-American men and women came in to shop together, even bringing about 5 small children. I saw the same thing in the Sephora we went to after. This post is in no way meant to be racist, I am just curious why one demographic seems to shop in such huge groups.

I’ll start with the job posting, I guess. I spotted it on Indeed while making my daily check for anything and everything that would hire someone with my biology degree, and it seemed on the up and up. Their website looked decent, the guy on the phone sounded nice, and I was looking for anything even slightly related to working with wildlife. Being a nightshift guard at a zoo was fine, especially when I took the incredibly generous rate of $25/hr. into account. That’s eleven bucks more than my dad makes at the local grocer, and he’s been working there for thirteen years. Then again, from the P.S. on the posting, I thought there might be good reason for the rate.
It said at the end, almost as an afterthought, ‘Zoo is haunted.’
When it comes to ghosts, they’ve never made much sense to me. Considering how badly our brains function from just getting jostled around on a football field, I’m not sure how ghosts could exist without a brain at all. I’d be excited as the next person to find proof, but YouTube videos are always fishy and the people on TV are essentially actors who only focus on the entertainment factor for their ratings. So, since I’d never seen anything that vaguely resembled a ghost, I’d say binge-watching Supernatural on Netflix last year was the extent of my experience in that department.
It seemed that the zoo hadn’t been here for long since it wasn’t even on Google Maps yet. There was a bit of a commute, it was half an hour away, but since I’d worked local jobs while I attended college online for the past four years, I’d saved up the money to buy a car. It wasn’t anything fancy, just an old Nissan sedan that I’d bought from someone in the next town over, with faded red paint and a mismatched back right door painted blue. It accomplished the job of transportation, though, which let me search the job market further away, a good thing considering how small a town I lived in. I really didn’t want to leave home yet, so moving for a job in a city or another state wasn’t an appealing option.
The website said very little. It had yet to fill in drop down menus that would excitedly describe their attractions. So far it only had some small sections about conservation and education, though that was intriguing because it mentioned that all the animals they had were endangered. I read that notation and wondered what the animals were. Mammals were always favorites of mine, which I know is a bit of a cliché, loving the furry ones. But when it comes down to it, I’ll take any animal over a person.
The employee entrance to the zoo was a door in the large steel gate that surrounded the property, a few yards down from the sliding gate that presumably opened to let visitors in. I pressed the button on a panel beside it, glancing up at the camera, and I was buzzed in. There was a short path that led to the building near the front and I knocked politely before going inside.
The interviewer, a plain metal nameplate on his desk describing him as Director of Security for the zoo, welcomed me in and sat on the other side of his desk, lounging back in his desk chair. His name was Andrew Higgs, and he had a British accent, which I thought was cool. I sat in one of the two loveseats in front of the desk.
Andrew was dressed business casual, with a blue Polo shirt, a thin black jacket, and I saw he was wearing slacks when he stood up to shake my hand. He was black, with dreadlocks that stopped just short of his shoulders, and a closely trimmed mustache. There was a tattoo, an artistic rendition of a hippo, on the right side of his neck, which bode well in my opinion. So many places hiring these days were overly uptight about their employees’ appearance, but it seemed that wouldn’t be the case here.
We went over the basics before he picked up the piece of paper off his desk, my resume, which he’d printed out. “Well, I spoke to all three of your references,” Andrew noted. “They had some good things to say. You were a great employee on the farm you worked last summer, your boss said. Punctual, hard-working, took instructions well…”
That was nice to hear. I’d spent this past summer working at a dairy farm, mostly assigned to the goats and cows they kept for milk. Aside from the staggering muscle pain that tapered from agony to merely miserable by the end of the summer, it wasn’t a bad job. I did have an old shoulder injury that I always had to work around, but it was my left shoulder and I was a righty, so it wasn’t that difficult to manage.
If anything, the muscle pain in my back and legs from being on my feet all day distracted from the typical issue I dealt with. My standard exercising day-to-day was typically either riding my bike or yoga, although yoga is mind-numbingly boring, so I need to listen to a podcast to pass the time. So, in fact, through the job, I was sort of grateful that my brain was focusing on a different area of my body that was in pain. Yeah, chronic pain is weird.
“He also said you don’t work well with others,” Andrew added, glancing up to me. “You kept submitting complaints about incompetent coworkers?”
I pursed my lips and let out a long breath through my nose, considering the most delicate way I was capable of replying to that before saying, “I dislike stupid people.”
Andrew gave me a half-smile and sighed, replying, “Well, I must confess I’m not fond of them either.” He looked back down to the paper. “This job will be a great fit for you.”
The job interview seemed like a formality, and I don’t know why. I was twenty-three and the ink had barely dried on my degree from the online college I’d attended. I’d been applying to jobs for months and had been thrilled when I’d gotten a call for an interview for this one, but also surprised. Call me a cynic, but I expected more invasive questions about any past work I’d done for a job in security, since I was a woman.
It's not like I was petite. Actually, the most common word I’d heard to describe me is ‘built’, and I fall short of being labeled overweight only because of muscle mass. One comment I recall from high school was being teased for being shaped like a rectangle. Even so, there was no good reason to look a gift horse in the mouth, but of course, me being me, that meant I examined its teeth closely.
“So, you’re hiring me? Just like that? Why?”
Andrew, chuckled. “Look, you’ve got BA in wildlife biology, and specializing in animal behavior is just the cherry on the sundae. That tells me you know animals are not people, and even if you feel like you know them, they can still be unpredictable. They can hurt you. But also, it makes me know you care.”
I suppose that did make sense, and it was true, so I’m glad he knew that. Most of my job on the night shift would be watching cameras and then walking around the place to make sure all the animals were as they should be, but it was more than that. Working at a zoo meant knowing where the line was, and sometimes it wasn’t exactly at the fence, but sometimes just putting a single finger through that fence meant losing that finger. As a whole, humans are generally idiots. Looking at you, anyone who really, honestly thinks that a bobcat would sense your boundless love enough to let you pat it.
“The website didn’t have much about the animals,” I said. “I know this place is new, so you might not have info on them up on the site yet. Do you have a map for me?”
“Oh, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Andrew said with a wave of his hand. At that point, it had seemed to be a reasonable thing for him to say, but I will tell you, the reason was not what I thought. “Just to confirm, you’re not an early bird, Miss Mason? This schedule isn’t a concern?”
I shook my head. “Nah, I’m pretty talented at sleeping in, actually. I never really got past that teenage talent of staying up until five and sleeping in until three. And you can just call me Ripley.”
That made him smile. “Good. Then I won’t worry about you falling asleep on the job, Ripley.”
“Oh, no way.”
“All right. So. You saw the note at the end of the job posting?”
He just stared at me and I was forced to answer, “That the zoo is haunted.”
“Right. What are your thoughts on that?”
There was no easy answer to that question, especially depending on how seriously he took it. “Do you know the best word the Brits gave to us?”
“What’s that?”
“Bollocks.”
Andrew slowly smiled and pointed at me with the end of the pen in his hand. “I think I’m going to like you,” he remarked. “Look…this is the part of the interview where we switch gears. If this was a regular zoo, you’d be a shoo-in for the job. But we’ve got other boxes to check. This outfit is…basically a preservation society. As you saw on the site, all the species are endangered, but what it didn’t say online is that the only people who came to visit are private parties.”
“So, that means…what?” I asked. “You bring in super-rich people who feel special when they get to see the animals you’re rehabilitating and taking care of? Then they donate oodles of money so they can brag to their rich friends about their charity contributions and having seen the animals here?”
Andrew raised his eyebrows. “Pretty much got it in one. It’s just more preservation and less rehabilitation. And a lot of our patrons really do care about the animals, or else they would just donate and not visit. You’ll see tourists a couple times a week, but we decided not to have anyone until we’re settled in here, and that means a person who’s on during the night shift that I can count on. And I don’t know if I can count on you yet.”
“Wait, I’ll see the tourists?” I asked. “They visit at night?”
“Everything we have is nocturnal,” he told me. That struck me as odd, but he continued before I could question it. “Listen up, and I’ll start with the basics. Have you ever seen anything weird? Possibly supernatural?”
“Nope,” I said with a shrug.
The fact is, I got along with my classmates, but I never did have any close friends. So, I thought maybe that’s why I missed out on all those reckless teen moments that started every horror movie. Maybe it left me without a bunch of exciting stories to tell. But hey, at least I didn’t break my leg falling through the floor of an abandoned building in eleventh grade.
Yes, that happened. It was a classmate of mine by the name of Brent. And yes, he’s just as much of a moron as you would imagine.
“If you see the ghost here,” he said, his tone emphatic, “will you freak out?”
I paused. “You’ve seen the ghost?”
“All the time,” Andrew told me. “It’s a young woman in a blue shirt and tan slacks, looks like she just walked out of a lake.”
“Do you have a picture?”
“No, and absolutely no photos or video are to be taken of her,” he said, his tone abruptly turning stern. “It’s cause for immediate dismissal. We have video cameras for security, but they all record off-site in a secure location, and Suzanne Cooper, the owner, manages it herself. Firstly, the ghost deserves privacy rather than exploitation, she’s not to be displayed like one of our animals, but secondly, people believe in ghosts. One leaked photo of her connecting it to us means we get overrun by ghost hunters, and if we trace it back to you, you’re done.”
Andrew seemed next-level serious about that, so I nodded. “Understood. That makes sense.”
The animals were the priority after all, I knew. I preferred them over people anyway, and that included dead people. Even if I could get a video of this ghost doing cartwheels back and forth through a wall, I would never post it and spread word of where I’d taken it. Andrew was right; the zoo would never get the paranormally-obsessed to stay away and would definitely have to relocate.
He continued, “If you’re curious, she’s never so much as tried to hurt anyone. But the zoo has moved before, and she moved with us.”
“She moved with you?” I asked, my eyebrows rising. “Is it like one of those stories where she’s attached to something in the zoo rather than a place?”
“More complicated than that,” he said. Then he grimaced. “She died because she was too ambitious with one of our animals. It never should have happened, but she… She was foolish, you’d say. Attempted to interact with one of the animals, got too close, and honestly, she should have known better. I thought she did.”
“Holy shit,” I whispered. “What killed her?”
He stared at his hands and shook his head. “It was before my time.”
It was clear Andrew was a true believer, but I still really wasn’t sure at that point. How was I supposed to react, though? Zoos have fences and tall barriers for a good reason. Not just to keep the animals away from us, but also the other way around, and ‘death by stupidity’ is not uncommon amongst humans. So, the story wasn’t outrageous, but still, I’d never so much as experienced something unexplainable. But if I saw a ghost, I suppose that’d be that.
“I just need to know, plain and simple, if you’re the kind of person who can handle things that are terrifying,” Andrew told me, splaying his hands. “Our last night shift bloke there was with us for years and years, but we spent months going through other employees. There were six we tried before we found him.”
“Six?” I exclaimed.
He snorted. “Yes, six. Let’s see…” Andrew counted off each one on his fingers. “The first two, the first night they saw the ghost, they lost it. One called me in a panic, babbling, and I had to get out of bed and drive to the zoo to send him home, and the second quit, although at least she made it to the next morning and didn’t drag me out here,” he said, his voice thoughtful. “They just thought I was blowing smoke up their bums with the whole thing.”
He shrugged. “Then, the third one was a bloke who was asleep when I got there in the morning, so I had to fire him. Then another ghost freak-out. The fifth bloke was someone who couldn’t deal with the animals, and then the sixth was so scared of the ghost that when I got here, he was already outside the zoo, pacing, waiting for my car. Apparently he’d said some stuff, rude or mean or whatnot, to try to get her to leave him alone and she had followed him back into the security room, so he fled. I need the opposite of those folks. Alright?”
At this point, I was starting to take it more seriously. Sure, this could just be Andrew’s thing, that he believed in ghosts and then made up these sightings to ensure I believed him. But if I saw her? What would I do?
Well, this would be my job, so I would have to take it seriously. Maybe that was why the pay was so good, to make employees think twice before ditching it. From Andrew’s perspective, if it really was haunted, he was the one who had to deal with applicant after applicant quitting as soon as they laid eyes on the guest who would never leave.
“So…honestly, I can’t say I won’t freak out, considering how next level this is,” I told him, feeling compelled to go with honesty, “but yeah. I think I can handle it, mostly because it’s important for someone to look after this place, look after the animals, so I’d do my best to work around anything that freaks me out. I mean, I have to say that I’ll believe it when I see it. But if ghosts really exist, as long as it isn’t some serial killer who stuck around to keep gutting people, I’ve always thought it’d be cool to find out we can exist after we die.”
The thing is, I think I did believe him. I thought there might really be a ghost there, because otherwise, why take it so seriously? It could’ve been that Andrew had only glimpsed her out of the corner of his eye a few times and could ascribe it to lack of sleep, but he was literally worried about word getting out. I thought that being halfway to believing him would give me the mental preparation I needed if I saw her. At least, I’d hoped so.
It turned out that most of my time would be spent at the security desk in the main building, near the entrance. Real-time footage played through thirty-five cameras around the zoo, all on a large screen that was five cameras across and seven cameras top to bottom. The cameras were impressive. I would mention the resolution, say something about them being 4K, but Andrew explained some stuff about how it’s actually the lens that is the biggest selling point. Looking at these cameras on the giant screen, I could see practically every corner of the place, and if I brought up one camera in particular to encompass 2/3 of the screen, I could zoom in so far that it felt like I could use it to check if one of the animals had fleas.
The zoo was well lit, not surprising considering nighttime was apparently the zoo’s business hours, and all of the tall lamps had red bulbs. For those of you who know why, A+ to you. For those who don’t, fun fact, it’s because red is closest to the dark and your eyes don’t need to strain to adjust to it. That meant I didn’t need my flashlight all that often, and even that was red, a solid name-brand one that had been on my desk when I arrived. I kept the white lights on back in the security room, though, because I didn’t want to make my brain think it was time to get tired.
When I headed out for my first sweep on that first night, I had the folded map in my pocket, but I already knew my way around. The layout of the zoo wasn’t that difficult to memorize, since there were only eleven expansive enclosures, and after the interview I walked around for half an hour to start training my memory. I’ll admit, working in a dark environment was creepier than I thought it would be.
I do want to mention the high quality of the zoo. The size of each enclosure was considerable, and the greenery was natural, hinting that they’d hired a pricey professional just to do landscaping toward the front of the enclosures after buying the land. The backs of the enclosures backed up into forestry, and from the estimate I got from Andrew, it seemed each of the animals had plenty of roaming space, including the small lake at the northwest corner and a manmade lake for one of the animals in particular. When I considered all of that, the thought passed through my head about how horrible it would be if word got out about the zoo having a ghost and needing to relocate, because it’d be devastatingly expensive.
My orders were to walk the zoo once every hour. This was my first security gig, so I’m not sure if that’s more or less than typical, but I had my comfy hiking boots on, the ones I’d saved up for and invested in a couple years earlier and were perfect for a job where I had to do laps around an area. This job was one that I didn’t have to worry about my shoulder pain worsening, since it was mostly about being on my feet. I take one or two Vicodin a day, depending on how bad my pain is. It came in handy in high school, actually. With a flexible ‘take as needed’ prescription, I occasionally sold pills for extra cash.
There wasn’t much to step in and there weren’t even any dips in the concrete sidewalks that I followed around in a route that easily led me back and forth until I made my way back to the office. The first three nights were actually boring. I would have thought Andrew had been pranking me about the ghost, but like I said, it hadn’t felt like that. And he hadn’t been specific about when she showed up for new people, or even for him.
To keep myself busy, I’d brought my e-reader with me, and I got into a cycle of looking over each of the cameras every time I hit the end of a chapter. I’m a pretty fast reader, so it was a good system. Also, every once in a while, I looked up if something moving caught my eye, like an owl flying close enough for the camera to catch it, but that’s about it.
Then, every hour on the hour, I did a walk through. The fourth night, I was passing by the small lake at the back left corner of the property when I saw her.
People say that you can tell if someone’s staring at you, that there’s some sixth sense humans have. It’s not true; they’ve done experiments. But the thing is, all those experiments were of someone human looking at them. After this last shift, I would guess that the sixth sense that sends goosebumps down your arms, the one that makes you feel an intangible pressure, that slides your body toward fight or flight mode, might be true of…other things.
Slowly coming to a stop at the disturbing feeling, I hesitantly looked around, through the trees. Then my heart skipped a beat and my breath hitched. It was startling because she wasn’t moving. Just standing among the trees, staring at me. I broke out in a cold sweat as I stared back at her, unsure what to do. I didn’t run. I didn’t try to talk to her. I just stood there. So, there’s my answer to Andrew: I didn’t freak out. I just froze.
The woman was Latina, her skin tone pallid from death, and was dressed as he’d described her, in slacks and a silky blue blouse. And she was soaked, as if she’d just walked out of the lake. Beyond that, her shirt was drenched in blood from what looked like claw marks across her abdomen. Her eyes were dark and penetrating, boring holes into me, as if she were able to get any and all knowledge that she wanted about me simply by glaring. The fabric of her shirtsleeves clung to her skin and was dripping, as was her long black hair. Speaking of her hair, it appeared to have seaweed woven into it, or maybe she also grew seaweed along with hair. Not my area of expertise.
The look on her face was indescribable. There was something deep in her eyes, behind her closed-off expression, that made my heart beat rapidly. Maybe I would’ve projected some emotion into her face if I’d had any idea of what she was capable of, whether she could move objects, or possess me, or if all she did was hang around. As things stood, I was left just projecting my fears, which gave me the impression that she was cross with me simply for being present. It felt like I was trespassing, even though I was a dozen feet back from the fence that encircled the enclosure. And also, this was my job so I was explicitly allowed to be here.
She was disturbingly close, and remained unnaturally still. If she had attacked me, I wasn’t sure what I would’ve done. Ran, probably, but considering ghosts probably don’t follow the laws of physics, maybe she could’ve chased me at Usain Bolt speed. For all I knew, she could teleport.
After an amount of time that felt awkwardly long, I finally spoke up.
“Hi,” I croaked.
The woman slowly tilted her head but didn’t otherwise move. I’d forgotten to ask Andrew for her name, I realized, but he had mentioned her death had been before his time, so maybe he didn’t know.
Swallowing hard, I tried to take a slow, deep breath, even though it felt like there was a cinder block on my chest. “So, I, uh…I work here now,” I said slowly. “I’m night shift security.” Pausing, I kept trying to gather information from her demeanor but failed. “Is that okay?”
At that, I saw a hint of curiosity flash across her face. “Why would it not be?” Her voice sounded completely normal, which was an off-putting contrast to her appearance.
Good question. Hell if I know the answer. “I don’t know. I mean…you were here first. I don’t know if you feel like I’m…intruding…or something.”
“You’re just doing your job,” she said, her tone softening a smidge.
I waited to see if she wanted to say anything else before saying, “Right.” Can I get you anything? A towel? Some bandages? “I’ll be going now.”
The woman made no movement to come after me as I gradually took one step, then another, keeping her in my sights as I walked off. I finally had to turn to face forward, unable or unwilling to be seen by her foolishly walking away backwards. Instead of continuing my sweep, I took the path that would lead me back to the security room. I kept looking behind me and felt her eyes on me all the way back, though I didn’t see her following me. At that point, even if she hadn’t moved an inch, my brain was on red alert when it came to self-preservation and figured I would continue to feel like a wet hand might grab me from behind at any moment.
Finally, I returned to the security room, swiping my card across the panel at the back door with a beep. Opening the door, darting inside, and slamming it behind me, I walked to the far side of the room and turned around, putting my back to the wall. Until I’d gotten back, I hadn’t noticed how fast I’d been walking, how quickly I’d been gasping for air. Leaning back against the wall, my legs turned to jelly and I slowly slid to the floor.
And that was it. My first sighting of the ghost. I’d thought that if I had seen her, there would be some part of me that was skeptical, that would reason my way out of it, convinced it was a prank. But I knew. She wasn’t a person. At least, not anymore.
​
/storiesbykaren

…I hated how she didn’t say anything to her friends about their treatment of Trina (especially when Jade constantly shouts “no one likes you” to Trina) and never told them to knock it off. I mean yeah Trina was kind of annoying but at the end of the day, Trina and Tori are sisters, were raised together, and loved each other very much. She should have never let her friends (especially Jade) just straight up disrespect her .

The sun beat harshly upon Olivia Chapman but she didn't notice. She was digging and probing a small animal den with a stick. To glimpse the amusement shining in her eyes as she waited for whatever small furry resident within, to come bursting forth once she had prodded deep enough, was to realize that she was aware of nothing else around her.
Her sister Veronica splashes in a nearby stream that runs the length of Brunswick park before becoming a large pool enshrined by poplar trees and a small sandy bank.
It was on this makeshift shore that the girls had laid out a long pink blanket, held down by stones collected from the several trips they had made to the same spot that summer.
Veronica is only 5 years old but the stream is hardly deeper than her calf and she kicks and spins in the water as the frills of her dress become saturated. Olivia is almost 11 but when she hears a soft snap beneath the ground her brow furrows and her face darkens with anger. Eliminating all signs of early adolescence. Her concentration on the den breaks for a moment, casting aside the broken stick and she peers over the sand bank at her sister playing. She smiles to herself thinking of all the adventures the two had shared over the summer. Their father had recently taken a promotion working with the city planners of Brunswick and the girl's mother had explained very clearly the day school got out that the two of them would be looking after each other this summer and they had happily obliged.
On this particular day their mother had asked that they keep themselves busy for a few hours at the park while she worked around the house and so with their trusty blanket and a few pieces of candy to incentivize them they were happily on their way.
Olivia calls out to her sister and begins climbing to her feet when she feels it. A small vibration like the subtle rhythm of a tiny drum, passes through her hand. She barely registers the feeling but as she presses harder to get up the steady beat is unmistakable. Olivia immediately grabs another appropriately sized stick and begins trying to goad whatever animal is trying to evade her. She is a kind and caring child but a lack of supervision and an intense curiosity had created several of these frantic animal excavations over the summer.
The den had gone from the size of a golf ball to a small crater in just a few moments as Olivia plunged the stick inside and pulled the dirt away over and over. The prospect and excitement of a chipmunk or a mole suddenly emerging from the earth caused her to grin wildly, but after several moments nothing had emerged. She nervously placed her hand in the hole she created hoping that the animal inside knew how she only wanted to make friends but instead of a startled creature, Olivia felt something unexpected. Like shoelaces or maybe ribbons?
She reaches in deeper and gathers the long soft material in her hand and pulls.
Brushing off sand and dirt Olivia raises a drawstring pouch into the air. The pulse ripples through her hand stronger than before and causes her to immediately drop the bag. She quickly stands and takes a step back from her discovery. The decrepit bag lands near her feet and in an instant her fear turns to that same curiosity. She picks up the bag once more and begins examining it. Her hand thrums, thump, thump, thump. She swallows a few times summoning her courage and tries to figure out what she is holding. The bag is a thick leather and the drawstrings at the top are drawn tightly and knotted several times. Olivia begins to look closer at the strings and what appear to be small white stones tied to the ends of each as they drape down the side. She takes one of the stones in her hand and rolls it gently between her fingers, delicately knocking away the mud encrusting it and as her fingers trace its shape she slowly raises her other hand to her mouth. They were teeth, but not like the ones she had fumbled with under her pillow so many times before. These teeth were long and sharp like something fierce, Olivia anxiously gulps once more trying to understand what she has found.
“What are you holding?” The question shatters Olivia's fierce concentration and her heart leaps in her chest as she nearly topples backward in surprise. Her sister is standing on top of the sand bank and using her little hand to block the sun as she squints down inquisitively.
“It’s some kind of purse I think?” Olivia's voice is a whisper

Hi! I bought this super duper cute little purse for my neice's 5th birthday, but I fear she might lose the little dolls and want replacements at some point. I'd love to just give my sister a little bag of extra dolls to mete out as others get lost. Is there anywhere to buy replacement dolls without rebuying the whole kit? Knock offs and nearly the same options would be fine by me!

At the world’s top college of magic and technology, every day brings a new discovery -and a new disaster. The advanced experiments of the college students tend to be both ambitious and apocalyptic, with the end of the world only prevented by a mysterious time loop, and a small handful of students who retain their memories.
Surviving the loops was hard enough, but now, in his senior year, Vell Harlan must take charge of them, and deal with the fact that the whole world now knows his secrets. Everyone knows about Vell’s death and resurrection, along with the divine game he is a part of. Now Vell must contend with overly curious scientists and evil billionaires hungry for divine power while the daily doomsday cycle bombards him with terrorists, talking elephants, and the Grim Reaper himself -but if he can endure it all, the Last Goddess’s game promises the ultimate prize: power over life itself.
[Previous Chapter][Patreon][Cover Art]
Vell woke up, brushed his teeth, made his breakfast, and went through his morning routine. Now in his fourth year of looping, Vell had learned to embrace routine wherever he could. He didn’t get much of it. Recently he’d taken to accelerating his morning schedule a bit. It was the only way he could get through breakfast without getting bothered. Case in point, he was just finishing off his cereal when someone knocked at his door. Vell began mentally preparing himself to say no before he even opened the door.
“Hi,” said a complete stranger. “I had some theories about Quenay-”
“No,” Vell said, just like he’d prepared to. He shut the door, and ended up narrowly avoiding slamming it on the stranger’s hand as they shoved their way in.
“Please, I have some proposals you’ll-”
The hand twitched and then disappeared as it was forcibly yanked backwards.
“He said no.”
Vell opened the door all the way, and this time the face he saw was both familiar and welcome. His former roommate and longtime friend Cane had snatched the unwanted visitor by the collar and thrown him away.
“Thanks, man.”
“No problem,” Cane said. Unlike the more courteous Vell, Cane had no problem being dismissive or outright rude when necessary. “Mind if I come in?”
Vell beckoned his friend inside and the two took a seat.
“So what’s got you up this early in the morning anyway?”
“Hanifa wakes up early,” Cane said. Vell nodded in understanding. Cane’s girlfriend had a way of putting him on his best behavior. “And mostly I figured it was the only time you’d be free.”
“You need something?”
“Nah, just wanted to talk,” Cane said. “I’ve barely seen you all year, man.”
“It’s only been a few weeks,” Vell mumbled.
“That’s a long time, man!” Cane said. “Especially for a guy in your situation. You got a lot going on, Vell.”
“I’m handling it,” Vell said. Probably not well, but nobody was dead (permanently) yet, so he was still well within salvageable territory.
“Well if you’re handling it well enough that you’ve got some free time, I’m trying to get some people together tonight,” Cane said. “Already got most of the gang on board, how about you?”
“I mean, I’ll try to be there, but you know how it is with me sometimes,” Vell said. “Text me the details and we’ll see what happens.”
Cane had been hoping for a more firm commitment than that, but he took what he could get. Things did tend to be unpredictable around Vell.
“Alright. Let me know if you ever need a hand with any of this shit, Vell,” Cane said. “I got your back, and I can do more than just chasing off the occasional jackass at your door.”
“I could use your neurology expertise figuring out why Alex is the way she is,” Vell sighed.
“Nothing there to diagnose, Vell, she’s just an asshole.”
“I kind of figured,” Vell said.
***
As the day went on, Vell started to get increasingly worried. He was almost done with classes, and it had thus far been an uneventful day -which was bad. The later in the day the apocalypse started, the more likely it was to interfere with his social life. He nervously scrawled a few notes just to have something to do, since all the writing would get erased anyway. The contents of the lectures also didn’t provide much distraction. Due to spending the summer bottled up in his home avoiding unwanted attention, Vell had spent even more time than usual studying over the summer. Even Professor Nguyen’s lessons weren’t providing much new information this year.
“That will be all for the day,” Professor Nguyen said. “You are dismissed.”
None of the students in the room so much as flinched until Professor Nguyen actually said “dismissed”. She expected order and discipline in her classroom, and she enforced that expectation with a steely glare that all her students respected and feared in equal measure. Even with permission to leave granted, the students filed out of her classroom in a calm and orderly fashion, with only minimal conversation that always fell silent as it passed by Professor Nguyen’s desk.
“Mr. Harlan.”
Everyone who was standing near Vell took an immediate step back as soon as Professor Nguyen called his name.
“I’d like to speak to you in my office, if you have a moment,” Professor Nguyen said. It was in every way shape and form a request, yet her stern tone and reputation made it seem threatening anyway. Vell kept his calm and took a seat. In practice, the most threatening thing about Professor Nguyen’s office were the uncomfortable chairs and the befuddling elephant she kept on her desk.
The crudely made, poorly painted pink elephant on her desk was just as confusing now as it had been four years ago. She didn’t have any children, grandchildren, or even nieces or nephews who could’ve made such a thing for her. Vell tried not to stare too hard at the odd elephant as Nguyen took her seat.
“Apologies for the short notice, Mr. Harlan, but an associate of mine has inquired after an academic interview with you tonight.”
“About Quenay?”
“I would not waste your time on such things,” Professor Nguyen said, to Vell’s great relief. Professor Nguyen had a very low tolerance for nonsense of any sort, and that applied to all of Quenay’s nonsense. That intolerance combined with her stern attitude had made Professor Nguyen, and her classroom by extension, into a welcome reprieve from unwanted attention.
“Oh. So, uh, what’s it about, then?”
“In case you have forgotten, you invented the world’s first eight-lined rune,” Professor Nguyen said. “That merits some attention even among these rogue gods and secret runes.”
“Right, uh, that,” Vell said. That invention had been overshadowed by a lot of major events that came very soon after, and even Vell often forgot about it. “I guess I could. When did they want to talk? I was kind of trying to do something with friends…”
“He expressed an open schedule, but if you are unavailable, I will simply tell him such,” Professor Nguyen said.
“I mean, I could try and work it out, assuming nothing gets in the way,” Vell said. “I know you wouldn’t bring it up if it weren’t important...”
“It is,” Professor Nguyen said. “But maintaining interpersonal relationships is also important. It is up to you how to prioritize your-”
Something large and green flopped onto Professor Nguyen’s desk, right next to the pink elephant. Vell’s mind raced with multiple nightmare scenarios before he heard a ribbit. It was a fairly ordinary frog, by all appearances. The frog ribbited once more and shifted slightly on Nguyen’s desk. She glared at it as it let out one more ribbit.
“Absolutely not.”
The frog immediately hopped off the desk and wormed its way out of the office by squeezing under the door.
“Excuse me,” Vell said, as he pointed after the frog. “I think I need to go check on that.”
“I imagine you do,” Nguyen said. “Do put something by the door to keep the frog out. I don’t need distractions, amphibian or otherwise.”
Vell exited the office, and flipped a nearby desk in front of the door so no more frogs could squeeze through. It proved to be a much needed line of defense. The classroom itself was already overrun with frogs, and as he stepped out into the quad, Vell found yet more frogs. Portions of the quad were all but blanketed in the tiny amphibians, forcing what few students were still trying to traverse campus to step carefully. Vell shook a frog off his shoe and then pulled out his phone.
“Hey, Kim.”
“Frogs?”
“Yeah, frogs,” Vell said. “Mostly, at least. Some of them might be toads.”
“All frogs as far as I can tell,” Kim said. “No sign of where they came from, though.”
“Have they actually done any damage? They’re kind of just existing. Froggily.”
“One guy tripped when a frog jumped in front of him, but he’s fine,” Kim said. “We’re not in properly apocalyptic territory yet, but I assume there’s only going to be more frogs as time goes on.”
“That’s a reasonable assumption,” Vell said. Another frog hopped on to his foot, and Vell didn’t even bother shaking it off this time. “Let’s all meet up outside the Marine Biology department.”
“Are they our prime suspects?” Kim asked. “They’re the ocean guys, frogs can’t live in saltwater.”
“Oh, no, they probably didn’t do this,” Vell said. “But they’re probably pretty close to whoever did. All the animal studies are kind of lumped together.”
“Makes sense. See you soon.”
***
“So, just for the sake of being thorough, you didn’t do this, right?”
“No, Vell, we did not,” Skye said. “We don’t do frogs.”
“Okay, like I said, just being sure,” Vell said. “Do you have any idea who does handle the frogs?”
“I don’t know. That’d be like, amphibology, right?”
“Batrachology,” Kim corrected, as she approached with Hawke and Samson in tow. “Or herpetology, but that handles reptiles and amphibians more generally.”
“We’ll have to investigate them both either way,” Vell said. “You three start with the herpetologists. I’m going to see if Alex knows any spells to get these frogs out of our way.”
As it turned out, Alex did know of at least one way to move a frog. Unfortunately that way was by kicking them. The unfortunate frog sailed through the air over Kim’s head before going splat on the other side of the room.
“Hey! Go easy on the frogs,” Kim said. It was hard to avoid kicking a frog, and getting harder by the second as dozens more showed up, but that had definitely been an intentional kick.
Alex stomped into view, with heavy boots on her feet, a poncho over her shoulders, and a disgusted grimace on her face.
“Those slimy little pests deserve worse,” Alex grumbled. “Kim, light up. I’m going to need a powerful source of fire magic to eradicate all these frogs.”
“No nuclear option,” Vell said. “At least not yet. If these are all some kind of fake conjured frogs, maybe. But if these frogs have been getting teleported from somewhere, killing them all could completely destroy the ecosystem.”
“We’d be better off without them,” Alex snapped. A newly appeared frog answered her insult with an indignant ribbit.
“That’s not how ecosystems work,” Vell said. “Look, can you like, teleport all of these frogs away? Something to get them out of the way harmlessly?”
Considering Alex’s current attitude, Vell put some extra emphasis on “harmlessly”. Alex shook her head and stomped her foot, narrowly avoiding catching a frog underfoot. The blanket of frogs on the ground had gotten even thicker since she’d shown up and started complaining.
“There’s too many of them appearing too fast to get rid of,” Alex said. “And if I send them away, who says they won’t get sent right back? Incineration is our best bet.”
“No fire,” Vell said.
“Yeah, like, what if these are all people?” Hawke said. “I got turned into a frog once. What if you’d incinerated me?”
“Or me,” Samson said. He’d also been froggified in the same incident. It had been surprisingly pleasant, all things considered.
“Please, nobody is being turned into frogs,” Alex said. “I’d recognize that kind of magic. Froggification is one of the first things they teach you.”
She jumped with disgust as another frog hopped on to one of her boots and tried to get comfortable.
“So go find somewhere frog-free and find out what magic is at happening,” Vell said. Alex took the first excuse to be free of the frog swarm and trudged away, grumbling under her breath all the while.
“Alright, Alex hates frogs,” Kim said. “Filing that fact away for when we need to torture her.”
“Always a good thing to have in our pocket,” Vell said. “But we need to get to work. Spread out and scan the herpetology department.”
“Sick. Let’s go look at some newts.”
***
Hawke look at some newts. They did newt things. Not particularly suspicious newt things either.
“I think this is a wash,” Hawke said. “No sign of anything suspicious in any lab.”
There were no magic rituals, rogue experiments, or genetic augmentations lying around that would explain the sudden surplus of frogs. There weren’t even that many frogs on display in the labs, and the few that were present seemed frustrated they were still in their enclosures while so many other frogs were roaming free. Kim stared at a pair of frogs that had pressed themselves against the glass to croak angrily at their comrades.
“Ugh, I hate it when its not the obvious suspect,” Kim said. “Means we have to deal with some sentient frog wizard or something.”
“I would actually kind of want to see that,” Hawke said. “Like, especially if he’s got a little frog-sized wizard hat.”
“Fuck, that does sound good,” Kim said. “Which means its definitely not happening.”
To mask her disappointment that she might never get to see a frog in a wizard hat, Kim got in touch with Vell.
“You find anything yet, Harlan?”
“God, I wish,” Vell said. “Just a bunch of completely ordinary scientists doing completely responsible research on reptiles and amphibians. These guys don’t even like frogs that much.”
The ever-present croaking in the background intensified briefly.
“I’m kind of starting to agree with them,” Hawke said. A frog leaped onto his leg and clung to it as Hawke tried to shake it loose.
“Yeah bud, we’re all starting to hate frogs,” Kim said. “God, this keeps up I might almost agree with Alex on something.”
The ribbiting got louder again, and Kim heard something thwack loudly against a nearby pane of glass. She looked over her shoulder and saw a third frog in the enclosure where once there had been only two.
“Hold on a god damn second. Vell, stay on the line,” Kim said.
Then, for the first and hopefully last time in her life, Kim willingly called Alex. “Hey Alex, how’s your frog situation?”
“Horrible,” Alex snapped. “Everywhere I go, the little beasts just keep showing up! I was in a hermetically sealed, magically shielded bubble, and they still find a way in! I barely got out before I drowned in the damn things.”
Kim did a quick scan of the room. There were definitely frogs where there hadn’t been frogs before.
“Interesting. You know what, Alex? I agree,” Kim said. “Frogs are totally disgusting.”
The ribitting intensified on both ends of the call.
“Obviously! They’re slimy-”
Ribbit.
“Noisy-”
Ribbit ribbit.
“Useless-”
Ribbit ribbit ribbit.
“Yeah that’s great Alex you can shut up now,” Kim said. “Listen, I think I figured something out. Hating frogs makes more frogs appear.”
“Huh. Hold on a second,” Vell said. He pulled the phone away from himself for a second, but everyone on the call could still clearly hear him shout “Frogs fucking suck” followed by a short yelp of surprise. “Okay, yeah, think you might be on to something. Like fifty frogs just showed up. One of them landed on my head!”
Alex gave a long groan of disgust which Vell and Kim dutifully ignored.
“Insulting frogs makes it faster, but I think it’s also going off our thoughts too,” Kim said. “That’s why frogs keep showing up even when we’re just standing around.”
“Well that complicates things,” Vell said. “I think our biggest problem is the feedback loop.”
“Right. The more people hate frogs, the more frogs show up,” Kim said. “And the more frogs show up getting in peoples way, the more people will hate them. Like Alex.”
“I already hate frogs as much as it is possible to hate them,” Alex said.
“You’re not the problem,” Kim said. At least not the entire problem. “The problem is the entire campus of other people who are all slowly starting to hate frogs more, resulting in exponentially larger amounts of frogs over time.”
“I wonder how many frogs this island can support,” Vell said.
Something across the island crashed down, loudly.
“Although I suppose its more a question of how many frogs the buildings can support, isn’t it?” Vell said. “Alex, get back to work on that magic trace, we need to find out what the hell is going on, fast. I’m going to go investigate whatever the hell just made that noise.”
“Anything that hates frogs more than Alex has got to be worth checking out,” Kim said.
“Indeed,” Alex said. The fact that she agreed made it a lot less fun.
***
“I know we’re surrounded by frogs, but still,” Vell said. “That is a lot of fucking frogs.”
Where the sophomore dorms had once stood, there was now nothing more than a pile of rubble and frogs -and frog guts. Mostly frog guts, at least. There were no doubt some human guts mixed in as well, but frogs made up most of the recently deceased.
“Somebody in there must’ve really hated frogs,” Samson said. He’d hit a dead end in his own search and come to check out the carnage as well.
“No way to know now,” Vell said. He kicked aside some rubble and watched a few frog legs slide out. “Not exactly in prime investigation condition.”
If there were any sign of what has caused the sudden explosion of frogs in the dorms, it was likely buried under rubble and frog viscera. Even if evidence did exist, Vell didn’t exactly want to go digging for it, especially not in the dark. The frog problem had stretched all the way past sunset, and they would soon hit the midnight reset that happened every first loop.
“Why does everything have to be so difficult,” Vell mumbled.
“What?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Vell said. Samson looked at him funny, but dropped the topic. Vell sighed with relief and moved on. “Okay, trying to piece this together...we have frogs, too many god damn frogs, and more of them every time someone hates on them. What do you think, Samson, someone who really likes frogs is getting defensive?”
“I mean, it makes sense to me,” Samson said. “But all the most likely frog enjoyers on campus said they had nothing to do with it.”
“You can like frogs and not study them, though,” Vell said. “Man, there’s probably some witch with a shelf of frog figurines who did all this. Something like that. And I have no fucking idea who it could be.”
“What, like you’re supposed to know what everyone on campus likes?” Samson asked. “Come on, Vell, we can figure this out. We got most of the day to get this done on the second loop.”
The moment Samson felt safe discussing the time loops, Luke rounded the corner.
“The second what?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Vell and Samson said simultaneously. Luke looked at them funny, but dropped the subject.
“What are you doing here, Luke?”
“Looking for you, mostly,” Luke said. “Cane’s been looking for you.”
“Oh, right, sorry,” Vell said. “I should’ve let Cane know I wasn’t coming to that thi-”
“Vell. We’re in the middle of the fucking frogpocalypse,” Luke said. He gestured to the pile of rubble they were standing next to. “Cane is not worried you missed board game night. Cane found what caused the frog shit.”
“He did?”
“Yeah, I was on the phone with him when he found it,” Luke said. “He said something about a ghost, then everything went fritzy and my phone died.”
“What else did he say? Anything?”
“Nothing I could hear,” Luke said. “He was in a basement, I’m pretty sure.”
“A basement where?”
Luke pursed his lips uncomfortably and looked at the collapsed rubble again.
“Oh.”
“Of course,” Samson sighed. “But I mean, the basements around here have got to be pretty sturdy. Maybe we can dig him out before midnight?”
Wait,” Luke said. “Why does midnight matter?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Vell and Samson said simultaneously. Luke looked at them even funnier, but dropped the subject.

Hailey Bieber Numerology Reading

Before becoming the wife of Justin Bieber, she went by the name of Hailey Rhode Baldwin. Firstly, her first name being her main name and being Hailey, let's see what that usually indicates on a general level.
Being someone who holds the first name, Hailey means that you appear either quiet, mature, or shy amongst others. You likely have an impression that can strike others as strong, serious, mean, or relaxed, depending on other factors. The name Hailey holds no double numbers, so it is a good balance of energies, but there are still general lessons people with the name Hailey has. This name holds the energy of 8,1,9,3,5,and 7. The numbers we don't see is 2,4 and 6. This could be why people with the name Hailey may not seem easily approachable by many people, but certain people may be drawn to this energy and won't notice anything off balance. Hailey names give people naturally embedded strength and some form of power, even if it is subtle. They may not always have a simple love life because with 2, 4, and 6 missing, these women/females can struggle sometimes with commitment or close intimacy and could have been too independent or avoidant at one point when someone was trying to love them. The name Hailey makes someone complex because on one hand, they a serious regarding their disposition(8) because they want to appear structured and well received by the public (1) or it makes them feel good to be well put together. They are naturally independent which could sometimes come off as distant(9), but they just want to explore and learn continuously(3). These are not initially people who place importance of romance.
Even if she is into relationships, she would likely not trust easily because of her name ending with the energy of 7 from Y which equals 25 before it is reduced to seven. This can make her a little cautious or strategic with her approach to any type of connections in her life because she want to make sure she can trust these people before she fully opens up.
Now as we look into her being Hailey Rhode Baldwin, this give her a lot of 5 energy. She has a few repeating numbers in her full name which are 8 twice which is good because she isn't overbearing, bossy, or mean, but she has tenacity and ambition most likely. Her capability of dedicating herself could be very strong. She can be obsessive, but it won't be too intense with the 2 8's balancing each other out. In other cases, this could cause her to overthink sometimes or have trust issues.
1 twice as well which emphasizes her not being a bratty type of woman because 1 and 8 can give someone a mean complex if there is enough of it. 1 is about being bold and taking the initiative.
9 three times in Hailey Rhode Baldwin's name which gives her emphasized 9 energy which is about power, authority, popularity, maturity, and travel. One thing she will likely always make time for is travel and learning. Could be into cultural knowledge as well.
Skipping to the fact that she has four 5's in her name, this is the energy emphasized the most. This equals 20 and then 2 making her appear soft, calm, loving, or sensitive. She could be very emotional with this energy and most likely have to perfect her emotional well-being.
Being HAILEY RHODE BALDWIN gives her the Destiny #4, soul urge #9, and Personality #4
Destiny #4 is the same as Halle Bailey. Destiny 4 people are private, especially about things they value and things they see as important and dear to them. It's serious. These types of people are naturally capable of withstanding or handling responsibility. They are evolving into mastering a life that is in order. Don't force these types of people out of their shell if they are not ready. Once these Destiny 4 types feel safe around you, their personality expands and show clearer.
As a soul urge 9, Hailey Bieber is a natural at quick learning and experience. She may be someone who could see something once and would know the ins and outs after that first time learning or practicing. 9 is mastery and wisdom.
As a personality #4, this makes Hailey a cautious person. She will not do or say anything if she isn't feeling comfortable to do so. She takes calculated steps and won't do anything she considers risky or stupid. She has to warm up to environments before she allows herself to be part of the festivities. Likely not too big on parties as an importance.
April and May of 2024 were very romantic times for Hailey Bieber which makes sense that she is now pregnant with Justin Bieber's baby.
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I'll have to start with some back story. There's a lot of drama. To start, I am generally a very private person. My husband and I went to church with his mom and step-dad for years. This is a big non-denomination megachurch. Loud. Contemporary. Anyway, my MIL and I got along great while my husband and I were dating and for about a year during the marriage. Step-FIL isn't always fully present for visits or goes out to the garage or to a ballgame. Whatever. We are amicable, but not close. In general, with the MIL as well, I felt amicable but not close.
We were invited over for dinner one evening. Unbeknownst to me, it was actually their church small group dinner. They had their dinner at the main table and my husband and I were set up alone at a separate fold out table. Not included but just there to eat. Whatever. That didn't really bother me at the time,, but the conversation at the other table did. They apparently only invited a select few from a click in their small group. They all talked garbage about this new lady in their group and how weird she was. I wish at that time I would have spoken up. Instead, I asked my husband if we could leave. It was then that I noticed that every time we were with my inlaws, they would talk garbage about other people. They spread gossip like wildfire. So, it was then that I decided to keep my responses and details of my life short.
Fast forward to pregnancy. We announce it and a switch flips. MIL gets a little crazy. Snappy, even. Talks to me like a dog. Tries to boss me around on what I can eat, my appointments, activities I can participate in while pregnant, and even who would be in the delivery room! She threw a little tantrum about the boy/girl reveal because I made a scavenger hunt for my nieces and nephews that was kid oriented (5 year old niece was sad to not be the baby anymore and I wanted to give her some attention), and MIL was upset that part of it was outside. She wore 4 inch heels to this thing! She was also upset that the baby wasn't a girl. She also asked a lot of silly questions about her annual trip to Florida that was supposed to be around my due date and was like "when do you think you'll deliver?", like I can plan it to be convenient for her. I politely said "well, I've never done this before and we can't really know, can we?". She got really snappy over that and from that point, I started to not like her tone with me over silly stuff like this. This happened over other stuff too, but I'll spare the details to keep this fr being a novel.
Birth was 5 weeks early, emergency csection, I had covid that exasperated underlying preeclampsia, baby had breathing and feeding issues and needed nicu time, and it was by far the hardest few months of my life. I almost died. To have the condition of preeclampsia during and after being pregnant with covid, then having major surgery and worrying over your nicu baby. 100% most stressful time of my life. PPD and PTSD set in. Anxiety was through the roof, and not just a "mental anxiety", but a physical one. After all I had been through, the smell of Castille soap we used at the hospital would set me off shaking and sweating with a heaviness in my chest for months postpartum.
I wanted to limit visitors when we finally brought the baby home for a number of reasons. We made this clear to everyone. We still had visitors over, but made sure that it wasn't daily, nobody had any type of cold/flu symptoms, etc. I was still recovering from surgery, high blood pressure, covid, the extreme stress, learning to breastfeed, etc. It was just too much. I didn't want anyone over to visit, not even my mom, but I still had them over for a little bit to not hurt feelings. MIL was treated equally. We had them over as well. MIL always overstayed her welcome and eventually wouldn't stop texting me all day wanting to come over. I had to put a stop to it.
By summer, we attended my husband's nephew's graduation. This was my first big outing with the baby. I wasn't sure how my little 6 month old bobble headed preemie would react. It was in arena style seating, and the crowd had me a nervous wreck too. In the peak of PPD, I kept having intrusive thoughts that someone would bump me and knock me off balance, causing me to drop the baby. If you can imagine the anxiety this caused... we finally get seated with a couple of minutes to spare before the ceremony starts and MIL demands to hold the baby. Not a "hello" or "how are you" but a "hand him over". This would have required me to pass him over 4 people. I also wasn't sure how the baby would react to applause and wanted to be able to cover his ears if someone set off an air horn (common at graduations here). The lights were being dimmed for the ceremony to begin, and I said "now isn't a good time". She took this about as you would expect and started mouthing off. And finally, I stood up for myself. I told her I was tired of her disrespect and her trying to boss me around and, no. We were not passing the baby around like a basketball. Her husband yelled at me. My husband told him "we aren't passing the baby around right now" and he stopped, but by this point I was in tears. There was never an apology. From then, things were tense. I avoided both MIL and SFIL.
A few months later we bought a fixer upper and moved about 30 minutes away. Between the graduation and moving, my MIL continued to be snappy with me at family functions. At this point, I decided to ignore her and make contact with her as little as possible. She kept asking my husband why I seemed so distant. She pretended like the graduation thing didn't even happen. Pretended like nothing was wrong. Husband eventually told her it was over her never apologizing about graduation and how MIL talks to me.
We were working on the house one day. I had the baby in a front facing babywearer carrier. I had been wiping down walls and went outside to the water hose to rinse out my bucket, all while wearing the baby in this carrier strapped on me. MIL and SFIL pull up and she gets out, dressed to the 9s, heels and all and says "surprise!". I say nothing and go into the house. I go get my husband and ask him if he invited them. I say "we need to make it very clear that just showing up unannounced like this is not ok.". I forgot that the window leading to the front porch was open and she heard me say this. They BARGE in and start yelling at me. They backed me into a corner in the kitchen, YELLING. The baby started crying and I had a step ladder that I grabbed and put between me and MIL while I slipped out the back door and went up to the neighbor's house. I had to leave my own house to escape her craziness.
There's more, but I'll spare you. We did try to make amends and met one evening together at a coffee shop to try to find some equal ground. SFIL genuinely apologized. MIL was a different story. MIL sat there with her arms folded, lips pursed, and said a one-worded "Sorry!" with the tone of a 7th grade girl with PMS talking back to her mother. It was far from genuine and she even compared me to my sister-in-law when she had a baby with medical needs (it was SILs 3rd child and only the baby had health issues, not SIL). I genuinely apologized as well. Husband and I tried to mend the relationship with her, but it is difficult to do so when someone sits there with their arms folded, huffing and puffing, and not even making eye contact.
I needed to tell that back story so readers would have context for this next part involving the pastor.
We left the megachurch and started going to a quiet Baptist church closer to our new house. For one, the mega church was too loud for me. Rock concert every week and I'm more of a traditional hymn person. No quiet place to take my baby if needed.. Even the nursery was chaos. Fine if you worship that way, but it just isn't mt style. I also couldn't deal with seeing my MIL every week at church and her passive aggressive comments, either. I eventually stopped wanting to go to church.
Believe me when I say, my MIL puts on a facade at this church and everyone "just loves her". They have no idea how she acts behind closed doors. They have no idea about the graduation incident, or home invasion and yelling, or the other stuff not mentioned here. I never told a soul.
And here's the big thing that this post is about: An associate pastor sends me this out of the blue in two back to back texts. Names have been changed.
Message 1:
Good afternoon, OP! This is Pastor Pete from Jesus Mega Church. I just wanted you to know that you and your family are missed here at JMC but I know you are being a blessing to the church your attending now.
And...Message 2:
I had the strangest thing happen to me the other night as I was awakened from my sleep. I thought of you guys and it was as if there was some troublesome issue that was bothering your family. It seemed to relate to your relationship with your mother-in-law, Jan. In my many years of pastoring, I have observed this mother-in-law, daughter-in-law relationship to be one of the most difficult relationships in life. I don't know anything about the one you have with Jan, but I hope if there is a difficulty, that you both will do everything you can with God's help to make this relationship a good one. As I look down the road into the future, you will have one of these relationships to work on of your own, as that precious son of yours takes a wife. I know that may seem a long way off, but it happens so quickly and I want to see you sow seeds of relationship harmony that will grow up to bless your own relationship with that future daughter-in-law. Please know I have said nothing about this to anyone else. I am just trying to be obedient to the still small voice of the Lord as He awakened me in the night to pray for you and your family. We love you all dearly and pray for God's richest blessings in your life. That is why I have sent you this text in the Love of the Lord! God bless you, husband and little baby! 😊
I was floored. What a lie. I know it is a lie because God knows the whole history and what has happened. God knows how MIL did when we tried to talk it out and apologize. So not only did this pastor lie, but he only has her side of the story and they have all made me out to be the devil. And ya know what? I didn't tell him any of what happened. I'm not stooping to her level even though she probably deserves to be dragged through the mud like she has done to me.
I guess I just needed to get this off of my chest anonymously. what are your thoughts?

So, longtime SG and Dark Matter fan here. I remember watching SGA and finding Wier my least favourite character by a long shot (was very happy when she moved off to a side character). Something about her "My morals and judgment are right because I said so *pursed lips look* really pushed me the wrong way.... especially when the script forced her to be right every time.
Thing is, I LOVE her in Dark Matter. Delaney Truffault is a great character that (while sadly only getting a little screentime) really fills a role in the verse, and Higginson does her perfectly. Dangerous, yet not a maniac, she's calculating yet not a bad person. I loved that she wasn't on the main team, had her own agenda, and could screw over the main cast on a whim (but also showed compassion when she felt it right). Every scene of hers I found believable, and entertaining. If the show had continued, I would have looked forward to every episode with her in it.
So, here is my open apology for disliking Higginson in SGA! I think her character was set up as a hinderance to the other characters, rather than being a solid character in itself. A character like that, I would never enjoy (similar to the NID/other military in early seasons), which is a difficult role for an actor to play, especially when they are also set up to be a main cast member. If anything, the fact that I disliked Weir is a testament to Higginson - she made Weir so DAMN ANNOYING!
Here's to you Tori!

Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4
“Melissa Ethridge,” I said.
“What?”
“Melissa Ethridge,” I repeated, grabbing the car’s aux cord and plugging my phone in, “Listen”
Destiny twisted her face as the opening chords of Melissa Ethridge’s “Come to my Window” blared through the car speakers.
“Look,” I said, making my sales pitch, “I know its probably not your cup of tea, honestly, I’m not really crazy about 90’s lesbian rock n’ roll either, but it was the first thing that popped in my head when Indigo told us we needed an example of ‘true’ love or beauty.”
“I don’t think it’s a particularly beautiful song,” Destiny said, “Why this song? Why not Boyz II Men? ‘End of the Road’? Now that’s a pretty song”
“Because this is the first song I learned to play on the guitar. My Mom taught me before she died. I think that gives it special meaning to me. Even if it’s not the best song, it’s truly beautiful to me because it has special meaning.
Destiny thought for a beat, folded her arms and said, “Ok, you win. Not like I have any ideas anyway.”
An hour later we were back in my house absolutely blasting Melissa Ethridge out of my stereo system and staring at the leg from behind the couch waiting to see if anything would happen. Nothing did.
We cycled through every musical artist we could think of. Boyz II Men, Tiny Tim, Evanescence, Elton John. We even tried whale calls and several podcasts. Nothing happened other than the lights flickering a bunch when we played the Beach Boys, we got the sense the leg was growing stronger and feeding off the awful music The Beach Boys played so we quickly turned it off.
“Maybe you have to play the music yourself,” Destiny suggested.
It was as good a guess as any, so I grabbed my guitar and started playing “Come to my Window”. Initially, outside of Destiny’s pained wincing, my playing didn’t seem to make much of a difference, but after about 30 seconds the skin on the leg seemed to ripple and move. I focused and sang even harder, which made Destiny wince even harder, but I didn’t mind - it was working! Eventually the leg started to shake like it was having a seizure. Just then a flash of silver caught my eye and I turned to look just in time to dodge the kitchen knife that flew towards my head from the kitchen. That quickly put a stop to my playing.
“Ok, so we’re on the right track,” I said, “It clearly doesn’t like that”
“Yeah,” Destiny replied, “But does it not like it because it’s hurting it and could potentially destroy it? Or because you suck at singing and you’re just really annoying to listen to?”
I turned to face her.
“You sound like a bag of cats in heat,” Destiny was not holding back her feelings on my singing voice.
I ignored the comment, “No, we’re on the right track, but something is missing.”
“If only we could get Melissa Ethridge here to play it for us.” Destiny said sarcastically.
“That’s it!” I shouted, “We need Melissa Ethridge’s guitar! I know there is one hanging on the wall of the Hard Rock Café downtown. Let’s go get it!”
“Your plan is to ask them if you can play Melissa Ethridge’s guitar?”
“We’re not going to ask”
“Your plan is to do a smash-and-grab at a restaurant owned by Native Americans? One of the most oppressed groups of people in the country.”
“Destiny,” I retorted, “The Seminole Tribe of Florida owns several billions of dollars’ worth of real estate and has more white people working for them than Facebook. They aren’t oppressed.”
“Alright, but I’m not going in. I’ll be the lookout with Hercules.”
“Fine.”
5 minutes later we were on the road heading towards the Hard Rock Café. Destiny sat shotgun, Hercules and the leg sat in the back. Hercules sat behind me and I could feel his stinking breath on my neck. It made my eyes water.
“Do you know who stole Hercule’s body from your porch?” I asked, trying to make conversation, “I mean, how will he ever get to rest in peace?”
“I have no idea who did it, but I’m sure Hercules does.” Destiny replied.
The conversation died down again and I turned my focus to the road, periodically checking my surroundings and my mirrors for any sign that Psycho Jimmy could be following us.
“What are you looking for?” Destiny asked, breaking the silence, “You seem, like, really paranoid about something?”
“Oh, I’m just paranoid about the haunted prosthetic leg in the backseat garroting me, you know?”
“Fair point.”
We arrived outside of the Hard Rock Café and quickly realized we had no plan that could feasibly work. After a few minutes of deliberation, we decided to go in and get a table. We were seated between two displays. One of Michael Jackson’s iconic gloves hung in a glass case above my head. Above Destiny’s head hung one of Prince’s electric guitars. Across the restaurant we could see Melissa Ethridge’s guitar encased in glass and hanging above the table of a couple who were clearly fighting with each other.
“There’s the guitar,” I said, nodding towards the display, “We just need a distraction.”
“Ok,” Destiny said, “I got this. Get ready”
She took two steps from our table, let out a dramatic sigh and fake-fainted on the floor of the dining room. No one seemed to notice.
“She’s fainted!” I shouted.
“Fucking TikTokers,” I heard a man mumble from a table near us.
After a few embarrassing moments, Destiny stood up, dusted herself off and sat back down across from me. “That didn’t work”
“No shit.”
“I have an idea for a distraction,” I told Destiny as I pulled out my cell phone, “I got the perfect guy for this.”
I called Psycho Jimmy. He picked up after 3 rings, but didn’t speak. I told him where I was and explained the situation to him and how we needed a distraction. He still didn’t speak. I told him if he could be there in 15 minutes that would be great, but if not, then he shouldn’t worry about it, but I had a feeling he was probably right around the corner.
The line went dead without Jimmy saying a single word.
“Give him 15 minutes,” I told Destiny.
5 minutes later Destiny and I were startled by a low growl that emanated from under our table. It was the snarling of an angry dog. It was Hercules.
Destiny quickly lowered her head under the table and began uttering commands to the phantom dog in a stern, authoritative voice. Patrons of the restaurant, one-by-one, began to take notice of the noise and began to stare.
“What is the issue?” I asked
“I don’t know!” Seethed Destiny.
I glanced around the room at all of the eyes watching us and began to apologize when I noticed Psycho Jimmy walking in through the front door of the restaurant. I began to stand up to greet him but Destiny quickly stole my attention.
“Oh my God!” She said, “This is it. I think Hercules sees whoever stole his body” She had a hand gripping her ghost dog’s invisible collar but was struggling to maintain control over the specter. Several waiters were on their way over to us when Destiny couldn’t hold on any longer.
The invisible phantasmal force that was Hercules exploded from under our table and through the dining room of the restaurant knocking over several chairs and tables in the process. Several patrons of the restaurant who had been tossed to the floor by Hercules or had seen some of the chairs tossed aside by the unseen force started to panic. Just like I had only a few days earlier, they’d suddenly been confronted with the possibility that there are things in this world they cannot explain.
A few people got out of their seats, a few women yelped, a particularly fat man stood on his chair like the ground was suddenly made of lava. The waiters were not paid enough for this.
Hercules continued on his war path through the dining room, pushing more chairs and tables aside and knocking over the hostess before finding his target – Psycho Jimmy.
Jimmy hit the ground with a grunt and began wrestling with his invisible foe. After a few intense seconds of rolling on the ground it appeared Hercules had him by the shirt sleeve and was dragging him back into the dining room, stopping every few steps to ragdoll Jimmy’s arm. Blood splashed out from Jimmy’s forearm as if he was cut by a knife.
This is when everyone really started to lose their minds. The restaurant descended into pandemonium. People who’d never met each other in their lives were clinging together and crying, some were fighting, one lady fainted and one woman too drunk to stand simply took in the scene and laughed.
A punch on my shoulder pulled my attention from the scene. It was Destiny.
“The guitar!” She shouted.
Right.
I ran across the restaurant to the glass case that housed Melissa Ethridge’s guitar, took the prosthetic leg from my backpack and smashed the glass with it sending a thousand razor sharp shards down into the meals of the angry couple who sat beneath it.
“You’re paying for our meals, buddy!” Said the man.
“Dude, look around!” I said back to him, extending an arm towards the insanity unfolding before us, “Just leave!”
I pulled the leg back and smashed the glass case again sending more shards of broken glass down onto the angry couple seated below.
“You NEVER stand up for yourself, Bryan!” The female half of the couple said to her mate, “Look at you, letting this crazy man with a prosthetic leg push you around and ruin our dinner! You’re a Beta!”
An arm grabbed me by the wrist, it was Bryan, “I’m not going to ask you again”
“Dude, get your priorities straight man” I said, pulling back the leg a third time.
A fist connected with my stomach and sent me to the ground. The leg clattered on the floor beside me.
I laid on the ground wheezing like a fat guy walking up his 5th flight of stairs when I heard Bryan’s lovely partner cry out to him:
“Hit him again, Bryan” shrieked the bimbo, “Kick him in the nuts!”
I gasped for breath and observed the chaos around me. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. Men and women were running out of the restaurant screaming, Psycho Jimmy was being rag-dolled by an invisible dog, one of his arms had been reduced to hamburger. One woman was walking casually out of the dining area and sampling foods from various plates as she walked by each table.
My eyes came to rest on Destiny who sat solemnly in her chair watching her beloved pet maul a man. Tears fell silently down her cheeks. As strange and morbid as the situation was, it was for her a final goodbye to her companion over the last several years. As far as we knew, once Hercules was done thoroughly thrashing the man who had stolen his body, he’d presumably ascend to Heaven in some sort of Rapture. If a dog can go there, that is – The Bible is pretty fuzzy on the subject. Maybe he’d go to Hell, he didn’t seem like the friendliest dog.
My gaze shifted again to the frat bro who towered over me. He was lifting his cheap imitation snake skin cowboy boot to stomp my lights out when an ear-splitting screech filled the dining room.
People throughout the restaurant clasped their hands tight over their ears, a few dropped to their knees in pain. Covering my ears didn’t seem to do much, the sound was sharp enough to penetrate straight through the bone of my cranium and reverberate around in my skull cavity knocking loose neural connections as it bounced back and forth.
I felt concussed, dizzy.
The screech turned into a chorus of screams as the floor directly in front of Psycho Jimmy began to crack and separate. Psycho Jimmy crab walked backwards away from the fissure as it widened to about the size of a manhole cover; heat and orange light began to pour forth from it. Suddenly arms, several of them, burst from the newly formed cavity. The arms were a patchwork of raw red skin, pustules of pussy white sores and deep black areas where they had been too heavily charred to even be recognized as human flesh. Swollen and shiny, the arms began to flail in circles, heatwaves seemed to rise from their angry hands as they grasped at the air around them.
The restaurant lights flickered and my old friend, Fear, began bubbling up inside of me once again. A palpable sense of dread weighed heavy on all of us left in the dining room. I was filled with a dizzying mix of disbelief, panic, and a primal instinct to flee from the hell-spawn emerging from the depths of hell before us.
I got the impression that frat boy Bryan was the type of person who could never pass up an opportunity to impress a girl. Generally, to these guys, this usually meant drinking a beer while wakeboarding, getting into fights with total strangers after a night at the bar, or being incredibly mean to waitresses and various other positions in the service industry. At that moment, I guess he thought closing a door to hell itself would earn him a few late-night snapchats, which it probably should have if he had any idea what he was doing.
Bryan, as if this was just another bar fight, casually walked towards the thrashing mass of charred hands without making direct eye contact with it. When he got within striking distance he attempted to throw a massive haymaker punch, it was almost as if he thought he could catch the monstrosity off guard.
One of the grotesque hands easily grabbed his wrist mid-punch and Bryan could hardly get out a pathetic, “Huh?” before the hand pulled him into the fiery crevasse.
His girlfriend erupted into shrieks.
Less than half a second after Bryan’s demise, another hand lashed out from the group and caught something invisible.
The hand had grasped Hercules by one of his back ankles as he was trying to make his way around the hole and over to Destiny and, for a brief moment, Hercules’ true form came into view. Hairless, slimy, with human hands at the end of each of its limbs and a single horn protruding from its forehead, Hercules definitely wasn’t a dog.
What the hell was Destiny up to? I couldn’t believe I’d been in close proximity with that thing for the past few days. I felt sick.
Just like Bryan before him, Hercules was pulled into the pit of fire and the restaurant descended into a brief second of silence as it closed behind him.
I lifted myself up off the floor and took one more swing at the glass display case that protected the guitar of Melissa Ethridge. It finally shattered.
Dropped the leg on the table in front of me and reached into the shattered display case and pulled out the guitar. I took a step back, cleared my throat and began to strum the guitar when –
WHACK!
A very heavy and very gaudy purse smacked me upside the head, “You Bastard!” Shouted the life-size Barbie girl Bryan had brought out on a date tonight, “You motherfucker!” she shouted again in unison with a second swing of the purse.
“Ma’am, please stop” I pleaded with her as I ducked under another swing of her unusually heavy purse, “I’m trying to destroy a haunted prosthetic leg with the power of song to save my intern from being trapped in a painting for all of eternity!”
Not only did she not stop, but she grabbed the prosthetic leg from the table next to us and started inspecting it, no doubt to judge its effectiveness as a weapon against me.
I took the opportunity to start playing, “Come to my Window” while slowly backing away from the angry woman.
After a few seconds of my sweet music-making, I watched the human leather on the leg begin to ripple in the woman’s hands. Any sane person on the planet would have dropped the leg at that point, but she didn’t.
Instead, the woman tilted her head back and screamed. Her mouth opened wider and wider until it reached a point when she physically could not possibly continue to expand her gaping maw. Then her jaw shifted slightly and there was a sudden POP! and her mouth continued to stretch wider.
Then the hands appeared, two hands appeared from out of the woman’s mouth and gripped the sides of her lips as if something was about to pull itself out of her mouth – and that is exactly what happened.
“I would dial the numbers, just to listen to your breath // I would stand inside my hell and hold the hand of death”
I started singing faster now, desperate to make this work.
An old woman’s head emerged from the mouth. She was old, dripping red with blood and I could see by the look in her face that she wasn’t just angry – she despised me. I could feel the hate radiating off of her. It was as if I could taste it in the air. She didn’t just want me dead, she wanted me annihilated.
The neck breached the mouth and in short order – the shoulders. The scene was quickly changing from one reminiscent of childbirth to one of a snake molting its skin.
“Come to my window // Crawl inside // Wait by the light of the moon”
This wasn’t working. I glanced around the room. Looking for an ally. Destiny was gone. Hercules was gone. Psycho Jimmy was pulling himself to his feet. He was looking at me with his crazy eyes. I couldn’t tell if he was under some sort of trance, but he wasn’t blinking, and he looked pissed. Then again, he always looked pissed. He started moving towards me.
I continued to sing, but panic was starting to rise within me. The song wasn’t exactly going as I'd hoped, there was a demon being born in front of me and Psycho Jimmy didn’t exactly look like he wanted to hold hands and sing Kumbaya.
I took a step backwards and found my back against a wall. I was cornered.
“Giving away promises….la la…na na na nahhh”
I realized at this point I didn’t even know all the words to this song. I quickly switched over to the first song that popped in my head. It was by The Ramones and it wasn’t even close to a beautiful song, but Melissa Ethridge wasn’t cutting it.
“The KKK took my baby away // They took her away // Away from me!”
The demon continued to pull itself out of its skin suit and revealed more of its true form: Her upper body was a twisted, nightmarish version of an old woman. Shriveled, wrinkled, naked and dripping with blood. From the waist down, it was an enormous spider, its black, chitinous legs clicking against the wooden floor stepped on to the hardwood floor of the dining room. The spider's body was bloated and hairy, with glistening beady eyes that dotted the area where the woman’s abdomen met the spider’s face.
Psycho Jimmy was nearly within arm’s reach as well.
“Time for Plan B” I thought.
In a flash I swung the guitar over my head and smashed it across the face of the demon, sending shards of chipped wood flying across the room. I wanted to try and quickly throw a punch at Psycho Jimmy before he could react, but when I turned to face him, he was already on top of me.
Before I even knew what was happening Psycho Jimmy had grabbed both of my wrists, pressed me up against the wall and pinned my arms above my head. His grip was vice-like, even with one of his arms being torn to shreds. For the first time I saw him smile. His crusty lips parted to reveal a row of cracked, yellowed teeth.
I was about to try a kick, when Psycho Jimmy leaned in quickly and kissed me on the mouth.
What the hell was going on?????????/
Psycho Jimmy pulled back from the smooch, looked me dead in the eyes and said in a surprisingly gentle voice, “I didn’t believe in love at first sight until I laid eyes on you. I just didn’t know how to say it.”
I glanced over to the monster standing a few feet away and it seemed to be physically pained by what it was witnessing.
An act of True Love! This was it!
“Oh Jimmy, I feel the same way,” I whispered back to the crazy and most likely homeless man who had just kissed me. It was difficult to pull my eyes away from the literal demon next to us, but I had to make eye contact with Psycho Jimmy to make the moment work.
“Call me Psycho” he said, moving in for another kiss.
In that moment I fought the most difficult internal battle of my life – Do I kiss him back?
I took one last look at the demon – it was now writhing on the ground in pain, I could hear it whimpering.
“I cannot believe I have to do this,” was my only thought.
I closed my eyes and kissed PJ back. A large slimy tongue that tasted like cigarettes slipped into my mouth, I tried to hold back a gag – and then I heard shouting.
I opened my eyes just in time to see a police officer full-body tackle Psycho off of me. Two more officers followed close behind to kneel on Psycho’s back as they cuffed him. I scanned the room looking for evidence of the demon spider woman.
All I could find was the prosthetic leg. It was covered in hard plastic. The human leather that had been used to bind it was gone.
There was no other evidence of what happened. No demon, no manhole to hell. Just a totally destroyed restaurant dining room. Imagine if Lord of the Flies took place in an Applebee’s. That’s what it looked like.
A police officer escorted me out of the building asking me if I wanted to press charges on the man who assaulted me. I could hear Psycho shouting at me, “Wait for me! No jail can hold me! I’ll come find you!”
I would need to put my house up for rent immediately.
I got in my car and drove home; I called Destiny on the way but she didn’t answer. There was something about her that she was hiding from me, I decided it’d probably be best for me to never find out.
I pulled my car into the garage and was about to head inside, when a loud banging rattled my trunk door.
I pulled out my keys and popped the truck door and my car birthed Pedro onto my garage floor. He was sweaty and breathing heavily. A blank canvas lay in the trunk he just emerged from.
“Holy shit, Boss!” he said between breaths, “That was wild, bro! What are we going to do next?”
I paused for a moment to evaluate not only what had just happened in the last week, but my entire life, then I told him, “You’re fired, Pedro” and then, “I need to get a real job.”

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