My hands are shaking as I write this, I have to document my story incase something happens to me in the next few days. I'm not sure where to begin but I suppose here is better than anywhere.
I've always had this weird feeling, this sensation inside of me that I was older than I actually was. By the time I was twelve, my soul felt as though it was forty. By the time I reached twenty, I felt like an old woman. I would watch people around my age acting foolish, and I always thought, "What a bunch of children." So it was no surprise to anyone that when I turned twenty-one, I left my hometown and college and decided to spend the summer alone by renting an old farmhouse in an insignificant town on the edge of an even more insignificant border.
When I told my mother, she had a veritable fit, unable to find the words. She spluttered and raged around me for days before I finally left early one morning to avoid her guilt and frustration with my choices. I was not sure why I craved solitude at such a young age, why I found solace in being alone and removed from society.
In high school, I had changed unexpectedly, cutting my long blonde hair short and dying it black, getting piercings that my mother loathed and claimed no young lady should have. You see, my mother was raised proper, as she called it. Good family, good husband, and finally a good life. She despised her perfect life being squashed by my alternative looks and feelings of the same world. She just didn't understand me or the world as it changed around her. I felt like I was just a trophy to her and my father, her perfect angel who had been tainted by my own demented thoughts.
I never told my parents where I was staying, one last rebellious mission before leaving for a few months, and it took me only a few hours to arrive at the farmhouse where I would be staying for the next few months. The land around the farm was dead or dying, old crops rose out of the dry dusty earth and had turned black and forgotten, as if this land was the example of dreams long forgotten and empty. A single dreary lane connected this desolate farmhouse to the rest of the world. On the outside, it was drab and looked as though it would fall apart. It had two stories but still seemed cramped and small, as if it were a single floor tied to the ground.
Across from the house, bordering the tall weeds that had reclaimed much of the farmland, stood a maudlin-looking faded red barn, one door propped open in a dejected manner revealing naught to me but shadows, dust, and a little mystery.
Next to the barn, staked into the ground on an old-looking cross, was a ragged scarecrow. It had drab brown clothing, but its face was oddly realistic, like it was watching me with a disapproving manner. Straw poked through its joints at odd angles like they were trying to break free from their confines. The scarecrow obviously didn't do its job as it was covered in no less than three crows.
I parked my car next to the barn and stepped out into the dusty yard before the farmhouse that I would make my home for the next few months. I checked under the front mat for the key and put it in the lock.
With a satisfying click, the door fell inward into the farmhouse. Surprisingly, the inside of the farmhouse was modern, clean, and looked quite inviting. I could smell the fresh paint on the walls, and everything was so white. The realtor had told me she would stop by tomorrow to collect the rent, and she had tried to chat my ear off on the phone about all the renovations she and her son were doing on the place.
I sighed with contentment and tossed my bags beside the door. I dug around in my bag and removed my camera, my father's old film shooter as he called it. I had taken up the hobby years ago for what I called capturing the oddity in the world.
I explored the small house a little more; the ground floor consisted of a single room and small bathroom with a shower. The bedroom was upstairs and was the only room, the stairs connected directly to the white and pink monstrosity that was the master bedroom. The pillows had laces on them and almost made me gag from the cuteness. There was even cute white lace curtains on the window with little flowers stitched onto them.
Out of the only window of the room, I could see the barn and the scarecrow. I aimed my camera at the pair and snapped a photo. From this angle, the scarecrow appeared to be staring straight at me. It stood next to the left side of the barn in a dejected manner like a chastised child.
A shudder involuntarily ran through me at the sight, but I moved on back downstairs. It was getting close to dinner time now, and I had brought some food with me.
After a few minutes, I had my dinner on the stove cooking and the crickets chirping outside the open window. As I sat down to eat next to the window, I felt at peace for one of the first times in years. The solitude of this old farm was exactly what I needed. The window supplied a nice breeze that wafted through the place, it smelled of grass and warm summer nights, made me feel at peace. The simple dish of spaghetti with tomato sauce and a glass of wine was all that I needed right here, right now in this moment.
That night I climbed into the frilly laced bed and sunk into the claustrophobic mattress. I felt like Goldilocks in the mama bear's bed as it was altogether too soft. From my perfumed bed, I had a good view out the window. I had left the porch light on, and it cast an eerie glow across the yard. The barn loomed ominously, stalwart against the light of the porch, like it was protecting the shadows from the battering ram of light. The somber scarecrow leaned against the left side of the barn.
With a small jump, I thought I saw its arm move slightly. I peered through my camera using the zoom to get a better view of the scarecrow. It was completely still in the night, and I laughed quietly to myself at my silliness. I had always enjoyed horror movies, but there was no chance I was living in one. I settled back into bed and put my camera down. Within a few minutes, I fell into sleep's warm embrace.
What felt like only a few minutes later, I sat up in bed. It was still dark out, I could hear crickets chirping through the open window, and I strained my ears for a moment.
I thought something had woken me up. I felt a cold shiver run down my spine as a cold breeze wafted in through the window. I pulled the frilly blanket up around myself when I heard it. A thud sounded below me, shaking the whole world into silence. The crickets stopped chirping, and my heart felt like it had stopped beating. Someone was in the house. I hadn't locked the door or closed the kitchen window, and now someone was downstairs. A second thud sounded like a boot on the staircase. Then another and another as something was slowly moving up the stairs towards the room.
I don't know why I did it, but something came over me. I wasn't big or especially brave, but my normal cowardice in social situations changed instantly. With a dash, I tore across the room, flicking on the lights, ready to face my attacker, to defend myself against male or female. I would fight, and I would win.
But as the lights turned on, ready to strike with my foot, nothing was there. The staircase was empty, and upon further inspection, the entire house was empty. The kitchen window was open, and I shut and locked it securely before checking the door. Nothing. I sat down on the couch, my heart pounding out of my chest, as I tried to make sense of what had just happened.
"I must have still been half-asleep," I said aloud to the room in a thinly veiled attempt to calm my nerves. It failed horribly, but I went with it. What else could you do in a situation like that?
After locking up the house, I went back up to that frilly four-poster bed in the bedroom and stared out the window. Nothing was in the yard except my car, the barn, and the same old sad-looking scarecrow staring across the yard.
Day 2
The next morning, I woke up to the soft light filtering through the lace curtains. Despite the strange events of the previous night, I felt strangely refreshed, as if the morning sun had chased away the shadows that lingered in my mind.
I descended the stairs, the wooden steps creaking softly under my weight, and headed to the kitchen. As I brewed a pot of coffee, my mind wandered back to the events of last night. Was it just a figment of my imagination, or was there really someone in the house?
Shaking off the unease, I decided to explore the farmhouse in the daylight. I wandered through the room, admiring the modern renovations that clashed with the rustic exterior. The farmhouse had a charm to it, despite its eerie surroundings.
As I made my way outside, the cool morning air greeted me, and I took a deep breath, letting the serenity of the countryside wash over me. The barn stood tall against the backdrop of the morning sky, and the scarecrow seemed to watch me as I crossed the yard.
I approached the barn, curiosity getting the better of me. Pushing open the creaky door, I stepped inside, the musty scent of hay filling my nostrils. The interior was dimly lit, the sunlight filtering through the cracks in the wooden walls.
I explored every nook and cranny of the barn, but found nothing out of the ordinary. As I turned to leave, something caught my eye. In the corner of the barn, hidden beneath a pile of old blankets, was a small wooden chest.
My heart racing with anticipation, I lifted the lid of the trunk and peered inside. What I found took my breath away. It was a collection of old photographs, yellowed with age, depicting scenes from a bygone era. They were of a man with his family, two young kids, and a beautiful young wife. The man had yellow blonde hair, almost like straw in texture, but he smiled so happily with his family.
I sifted through the photographs, my fingers trembling with excitement. Who had left these behind, and why? Each photograph seemed to tell a story, a glimpse into the past of this forgotten farmhouse.
As I sat there, lost in thought, a sudden noise jolted me back to reality. It was the sound of footsteps coming from outside the barn.
"Hello?" The dreamy voice of a woman called to me from the entrance to the barn.
I slammed the lid of the trunk shut, closing the memories up in a flurry as I spun around to be greeted by a quite pretty woman with blonde hair and a pink suit skirt combo. She had bright pink lipstick, that seemed to be a permanent fixture on her face, and quite shiny and sparkly blue eye shadow on her lids. I myself only wore black eyeliner. This woman was like Barbie in her proportions, thin waist, long hair, and large tracts of land, as my father would have said.
"Oh, hello," I said simply, always awkward in normal social situations.
If she noticed anything odd about me, she breezed over it in an easy manner. Taking me by the shoulders, she led me out of the dusty barn and into the yard.
"You must be Polly. We have been waiting a while for you to come. I simply must know what you think of the renovations to the house. Aren’t they just to die for?" The lady said all in one breath, as if she didn’t need air to speak.
"Yes, they are quite nice..." I started before she cut me off, not in a rude manner but instead in one that she would have continued on even if I had just told her I was not Polly and instead I was a mass murderer looking for my next victim.
"You see, me and my son Eli—yes, Eli, you stop lurking in the shadows over there," she said, continuing on as I noticed a younger man leaning up against the barn. He wore simple clothes of jeans and a white t-shirt but had a handsome face. His hair was brown and hung slightly over his eyes.
"I hope you don’t mind if my son here continues working on some renovations while you stay here? Strictly on the outside of the house, mind you. A fresh coat of white paint would make this little beauty shine. We would have finished by now if not for the accidents," she continued, completely unabashed by my silence.
"Sorry. But you are the realtor?" I said, trying to regain my feet under me.
"Oh my god, I am so sorry, dear!" she said with an affable cackle.
"Yes, yes, I am Barbara, but all my friends call me Barb. That over there is Eli. Eli, come say hi," Barb said while her painted talons rested firmly on my shoulder.
Eli stomped over, keeping his eyes low, in a sort of moody way that actually intrigued me, sort of.
When he glanced up at me, I noticed he drank in me from head to toe, and for the first time, I realized what I was wearing. An old rock t-shirt of one of my favorite bands and, of all things, my black pajama bottoms with cartoon bats on them that said "happy halloween."
I felt my face blush crimson as he made eye contact with me. He had very mysterious eyes of blue that seemed to cut right through my soul.
"Nice shirt," he said while gesturing to me. His voice was quiet and uncertain, as if he didn’t get much practice with the art. Knowing his mother, it seemed highly accurate.
"Thanks. Do you like them?" I asked.
"Oh, he likes all sorts of things, don’t you, Eli? Honestly, you two can gab on forever. But miss, I believe we have a small matter of payment," Barb said, drawing the conversation back to herself.
"Of course. Let me go get it," I said as I went back into the house and retrieved the envelope with the rent money in it.
Barb grabbed the envelope in her bright pink talons and snapped a piece of bubblegum between her teeth. With quick fingers, she leafed through the cash, counting it. As she counted, her normal bubbly personality seemed to disappear, giving way to what I gleaned was her true thoughts and feelings before the facade slipped on once again.
"Mmkay, perfect honey, this is the right amount. Now you have my number, so you call if you need anything. Like I said earlier, Eli will stop by from time to time to work on painting the house. I promise you he won’t be an imposition, just pay him no mind," Barb said in a sweet voice as she popped her gum in between each word.
"Eli, come on, please, I have an appointment in town," Barb said to her son, and they both climbed into a garish pink convertible with jewels hanging from the mirror wrapped in a gold chain.
Barb waved one last time as she sped off out of the driveway, covering me in dust as she spun the wheel around.
With their departure, I went inside and retrieved my camera. I spent a few minutes shooting a few pictures I thought were worthy. I re-entered the barn and pulled the old trunk out into the sunshine. Inside was only a handful of photos, some old clothes, and what looked like some old heirlooms. A beautifully old candlestick and a few leather-bound books lay at the bottom, covered by an old tablecloth. The tablecloth was a nice white with intricate swirling patterns inlaid around the edges.
Why would these things be packed away in here? They were so beautiful. I decided to bring the stuff inside for further inspection. As I lifted the trunk, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something move in the tall grass at the edge of the property. I stared for a minute, but nothing moved again. I must be getting jumpy being alone like this. After last night and then this, I was just imagining things.
I brought the items inside and spread them out. I put the tablecloth on the table, and it hung low to the ground. I placed the candlestick by the window and took out the photos again, spreading them out.
The photos told me a story of a loving family that obviously lived in the farmhouse before me. They had a photo next to the barn, with a brand new looking scarecrow in the back. The man even had his arm around it; it looked so much cleaner and proper in this photo. I stared outside at the sad-looking scarecrow.
I took my camera and the photo and went outside to stand next to the scarecrow. His post hung kind of crooked in the earth like it was weighed down by the scarecrow.
I snapped a photo of the scarecrow as it was, then examined the original photo. I began resettling the post in the ground, but it kept sagging. I decided to pull him out of the ground and move him while I added more dirt to his hole. With some effort, I reseated him into his original hole. He already looked better, but I straightened his clothes and pulled out the last bits of straw that stuck out of his clothes. When I was finished, I looked back at him and took a photo, smiling while I did so at my work.
I then spent some time sweeping the front porch and banging the dust out of the cushions before I curled up on a wicker chair with plump cushions for a few hours reading a book I had brought with me.
I felt quite content at this place. The sounds of the crickets began again, putting me at ease as the sun began to descend. I had spent the entire day just relaxing, and it was perfect. I sat sprawled out in the chair, too lazy to go and make dinner or even move. My bladder was full, but I waited until the last moment before dashing inside and relieving myself.
That's when I noticed it, out in the yard. It seemed as if the scarecrow had moved closer. Once shrouded by the barn slightly, it now had moved a few steps into the light from the porch. My heart dropped at the sight. Not again, I must be asleep on the porch in the chair. I pinched myself, trying to wake up, but all I received was a sore arm.
I closed my eyes, then rubbed them, hoping to dispel whatever plagued my mind, but when I opened my eyes, I noticed the scarecrow was even closer. Halfway across the yard now, it sat menacingly, hanging crooked in the dirt. The scarecrow seemed to be staring at me with an intense gaze. The slits in its face were open now, and in the porch light, I swear I could see human eyes underneath the mask.
I moved towards the front door, locking it in a swift motion. I was shaking now, and it took me a minute to relax. I never took my eyes off the scarecrow for fear of it moving again.
My cellphone was upstairs, so I couldn't flee without the scarecrow moving again. I breathed out slightly and unlocked the door, letting it swing in with a creak. The night outside was silent, as if everything was holding its breath. The usual crickets that plagued me with their song day and night had fallen quiet. I stepped out onto the porch; I needed to go confront this demonic entity. Something about this still made me think this was a prank.
"Eli, is that you?" I called out to the scarecrow.
No response, of course. I steeled myself and put one foot off the porch, never taking my eyes off the scarecrow before me. Something seemed to be dripping from its head as I approached, a dark slime that seemed to be melting from its joints as it stood there silently, except for the constant drip of the liquid on the dry dirt before me.
I walked around the scarecrow, determined to figure out what was going on. As I circled it, my vision darkened for a moment as I faced towards the light of the house. I jumped as the scarecrow's head turned to face me as I looked away. The black liquid drained faster from the being, forming a shallow pool at its feet.
I'm not proud of what I did next, but I fled, taking my eyes off the scarecrow. I made a mad dash for the farmhouse. Behind me, I could hear the pounding of feet. I screamed as loud as my lungs would let me. My voice rang through the silence as I grabbed the door handle and wrenched open the door as I felt a strong grip fall on my shoulder.
I turned to defend myself, but nothing was there. The scarecrow was gone, the wooden cross had vanished, as had the pool of dark liquid in the dirt. The world sprung back to life; the crickets began chirping loudly, and my heart restarted. I slammed the door, and the air from my force scattered the photographs on the table. I ran upstairs, leaving the lights on in the house, and dove onto the bed, wrapping myself in the frilly blanket like a set of frilly armor.
I snatched my camera from the bedside table and held it close, determined to document the rest of the night. I held it in shaking hands as the noise downstairs began—the sound of boots crossing the floor to the stairs and the careful but heavy steps of ascension as they climbed closer and closer to me.
This time, I didn't lunge forward as the light was already on. I glanced out the window, but the scarecrow was still gone. I focused my camera on the stairs and waited as the steps came closer and closer. A shape began to form as the head of whatever was coming up the stairs crested the floor. Then a plain brown mask with slits where the eyes would be. It froze for a moment, then slowly turned its head towards me. Inside the slits were human eyes that seemed to be leaking dark red blood.
In the light, I could see it now. I snapped a photo of the beast, the flash setting off a reaction in the beast. The scarecrow moved so fast up the stairs it was a blur. My scream echoed throughout the house as it lunged at me. Filthy hands pinned me down, and the deep crimson liquid began pouring out of every joint of the scarecrow. It began covering my face, my eyes, and getting into my open mouth. I spluttered and kicked at the beast, but my blows had no purchase, as if the scarecrow on top of me had no substance to itself.
I coughed and spluttered on the liquid as it began to fill my mouth faster and faster. I tried not to swallow any, but it tried to find purchase as I was held down.
"Polly?" A nervous voice called from below.
Suddenly, as if the angels had called, the pressure dissipated, and I crashed to the floor in a heap, trying to spit the blood out, but nothing came—it was gone. Footsteps pounded up the stairs again, and I flew back in fear, closing my eyes.
"Oh my god. Polly, are you okay?" A voice said, and gentle hands grabbed my arm.
My eyes shot open at the human touch, and I grabbed Eli into a tight hug, where I promptly began sobbing in fear, my whole body shaking as Eli awkwardly hugged me.
"Don't worry, it's going to be okay," Eli said patiently to me as he hugged me back gently and began stroking my back.
I shivered in a choking sob and fell into his arms, desperately wanting to believe him, and for some reason, I did.

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Please don't angry text me or anything. I like making things - have already decided on getting books for furniture, book making, and similar. My question is: can I learn how to build a backpacking stove from scratch?
Please help thank you so much.
If you are wondering I have a lot of skills already and want to learn more.
Skills I have: Cooking Baking Grilling Making porcelain dolls Painting porcelain dolls Sewing porcelain doll clothes Sewing hand and machine Embroidery Cross stitching Crochet Knit Weave Making soap Making perfume Making jewelry
What else I want to learn (not related here): Making candles Making pottery Making wood furniture
....so could I please? I don't know where to start.

Finally gotta to write my thoughts during like late February to early March. But maybe as time goes by, I forget some cuz I remember they were at least 12 chapters (Still be editing)
1
On the Fear of Death
Rabindranath Tagore
Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers
but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain
but for the heart to conquer it.
Let me not look for allies in life's battlefield
but to my own strength.
Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved
but hope for the patience to win my freedom.
Grant me that I may not be a coward,
feeling your mercy in my success alone;
but let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure.
2 My parents are just very toxic, I'll make a complain of it and along with my hate to my homeland which I call it as land of Sodom. And actually my hatred towards Sodom ofc not just these words could describe, it would be books, endless
i) A small part of the conversation with a German dude who I mistook as a woman
And it was on Nov 18
Me Haha, when I was little I saw a high school chemistry textbook and was fascinated by the beautiful crystals (or more literally, whether they were ores or gems) and wanted to study chemistry, which wasn't guided by my father, as chemistry is not a lucrative profession in China. I then saw a romance novel in my middle and high school years where the hero and heroine were aiming at learning for being perfumers in the future, so I was still mesmerized by that and wanted to study chemistry again haha. To be honest, chemistry is not a good choice for girls in China, and I couldn't say I haven't regretted it, but I know that changing majors is not allowed in Germany either. So I had to stick with it.
Him You're such a hopeless romantic and his reminds me of the German novel das parfume which is like the most popular contemporary German novel
I have studied pharmacy which contains a lot of chemistry too in germany
And only studying what is lucrative is what ruins peoples lifes
Me I actually graduated in 2021, but on the one hand I can only earn 3000€ a year working here and can't save up to go to Europe (my parents wouldn't agree with that), and on the other hand I think too highly of myself and I don't like to talk about boring topics with shallow people, so I can't actually continue my job. Also, lack of a master's degree is getting harder and harder to get a job in China nowadays. Furthermore I have another thing I'm very afraid of, which is that I'm afraid my controlling parents will look back and see that I can't get into grad school nor can I find a job or even if I do find a job, force me to get married haha and I don't want to be with someone I look down on, I'm actually originally a radical feminist since December in 2021, and I've said before in my own family, "Whether it's black, white or yellow, males are all masters and I don't want any of them". (My mind and thoughts have been poisoned by romance novels and fanficton so I've restarted having good expectations to men again since May this year... I'm really losing sense and poisonous hahaha) If I don't have a degree and with I'm not beautiful enough, I'm just worthless in society and I won't be able to find any good ones. In short, I need to go to graduate school in China to save myself from a miserable life that I can see at a glance already.
And some words could be seen as footnotes I have mentioned to you before
Of course I want to leave, I wanted to leave in 2021. But after trying to work, I can only earn about 3,000 euros a year here, that's all I have right now, and I've calculated that my family doesn't even have more than 150,000 euros combined (because I'm a girl, my parents never tell me how much properties my family has, and are very disdainful of me for wanting to know that). Our wages here are even as low as 2 euros per hour with two days off a month, and I used to have a job with six days off a month. My parents wouldn't give me money to leave China either, they don't agree that I have feminist ideas in my brain. Also, I'm their only child and they say they're afraid I'll die abroad, yes, they think the West is full of dangers and believe every day that the view is unique, safe and beautiful here when one look at the world. All I can hope for is that I might be able to get into grad school, save up in the meantime, go to Europe to continue my education or just work, and then of course I want to live there forever.
Lazy to check, maybe there exist problem of grammar and usage 🤣
Hahaha told a lot of people I am radical feminist 🤣In my home country, feminists already be seen as crazy and rebellious, not to mention I am radical
[And there I attached a screenshot of my talk with my first Estonian friend and of course when share screenshots with others I often cut the avatar and username off:
Me I used to be a radical feminist, which means we radical feminist in Korea and China should do 6B4T
Then let me search the English definition https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/6B4T_movement#:~:text=In%20Korean%2Dlanguage%20abbreviation%2C%20%22,refers%20to%20rejecting%20strict%20beauty
Here's it
I used to cut off my hair like man, that's what we radical feminists there suggests, remove feminine symbol from us
Him
Youre brave
I really dont know what to say
Because im a man]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/6B4T_movement#:~:text=In%20Korean%2Dlanguage%20abbreviation%2C%20%22,refers%20to%20rejecting%20strict%20beauty
Him No it reads perfectly and if had to imagine myself in your situation I would have a similar outlook. Thank god women don't have this expectation here to get married asap and actually 23 is still considered early to start studying . I notice that in China people have to decide on their career path very early and there's not much room if you have a change of heart later on
Me You can't imagine my mother wants me to get married since I was around 18, and as girls here, as they grow up parents always taught them, must do something, or you would be scolded in in-laws' family
Him
I sense there's a lot of pressure on someone like you in your surroundings
Me My mother said, why don't you get married before study and work, start a family before building a career
Him That's just terrible. I can appreciate that you'd just want the freedom of "being your own man at your own pace" but I always had that freedom That sounds like the career of raising kids 🤔
Me She would also give me examples of people she knew around her who got married in high school and I said don't they know shame?My mom said there's no shame in getting married and having kids.Even though, my mother (she was born in '65) also got married at 32, which is considered quite late in China, especially in her era.
Him Well they can't really force you. You're not the person to let yourself be dragged Infront of the altar
Sounds like Europe 120 years ago
Me My cousin's twin babies are in bad health, then my father said, why she couldn't just quit her job, like all the people do in the past
Him Well the father could also quit his job of course
Me Also, my cousin's husband can't have children naturally, but in China, always check if it's wrong with women's bodies and blame women first, if women are all healthy, then could check the glorious men
Him Terrible , I heard about this on tv
Me So breathtaking, but average Chinese woman's life [And there I attached a screenshot of my talk with my first Estonian friend as well Him: Your life sounds like movie
Me Average Chinese woman's life
Him Now i feel guilty
Life here is luxury compared to China
Don't mean to make you jealous
Me Forget all the feminist ideas in my head and agree wholeheartedly with patriarchal and traditional culture of this land and then I would feel like many women find this life normal
No, your country and many European countries didn't do anything wrong
China always says that the countries of Europe got rich by plundering, but what have Finland, Iceland, Lithuania and many others done? Nothing.
Him: Vikings hahaha
China kind of reminds me of my parents said about days when we were with Soviet Union]
Shake my head
We all have strong heart here, or just get used to it or never felt wrong by the society's influence
Him Yeah takes a lot of courage to do your own thing but someone like you can't be happy without pursuing your own path Hey you could lead a feminist movement and piss them all off properly 👌
Me Then I will die Already exist many women here dead for this
Him: Considering the declining birthrate, istn there some change occuring already ?
Me: They promote three-children policy or actually no limits for number of children anymore, which results to women more difficult to get a job or study
Sister, I'm finally back from walking and bathing, I was worried about you worried about me got caught by authorities for saying treasonous words haha🤣
Haha, I have a wonder. Before locking the screen my screen stays on the page we are talking on, so do your messages have to be shown as read even if I don't read them?
https://insidechina.rti.org.tw/news/view/id/2072201
Here is a thing I heard of, you can read it with the help of chrome's Google translate
Him: I see, so women don't want to be birthing machines, so that policy is actually backfiring
Me: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism_in_China
Him: Are you joking or serious ? So dreadful that you can't criticise openly, but you are using VPN right ? That ought to be encrypted
I dunno I don't pay any attention to the read thing and you don't need to worry about replying fast just take your time
Me: I know about the movement of Feminist Five, in here I and some people know it as Feminist Sisters Five
No, without VPN we could still surf on this app, but even with VPN, it still without help
Him Interesting , so I guess such articles aren't usually published in China ? But on tw addresses ?
Me: Keep in mind, actually everything is under surveillance
Ah, I found it on Chrome
Him: Spooky. Do you cross the street when the lights are red ? Or is that bad for the social score ?
Me: We have radical feminists online groups, got hidden from Douban (Chinese's version of Tumblr)or actually by the authorit** Use the Internet, all is the same And I know actually the government and me use the same VPN So more dangerous But somehow actually all the same in some extent One use the Internet, you see, wifi, 4G or under who's eyes? Maybe VPS is a little more safe, but I don't know how to build it, and maybe still under watch I surf on western Internet since like 2019, Reddit since May,2022 But don't I dare say a word since this August
Him: But what's the point of China's great firewall when anyone can just circumvent like that ? Is it like a trap to catch ppl?
Me My first word is on Reddit/polandball, saying someone's work about Germany, so adorable
Not everyone
We like 1.4 billion here
No more than 0.1 billion know how to access to outside Internet
Him: Oh I see Or most people might just don't know any better ?
Me: And if stay quiet, safe or not safe, depends on the glorious' minds
Him: I see so you still gotta be careful what you write
Me: The govern-++！ment sometimes arrests people who say things that are treasonous, but it won't say the real reason, it'll say it's because someone viewed a pornographic website
Him: That's so ironic, some people here would go bonkers if pornograpghy would be restricted in any way haha
Me: So that's the reason I stay quiet until months ago I dare say some words
And I am even a little worried
For a translated some poems
One poem named The Taiwanese Bamboo Branch Song, though it was written by famous person in mainland dead in 1929
Him: But usually websites have build in Https end to end encryption and other apps as well
Me: Another poems by Taiwanese poet Luo Fu
And I called Luo Fu as Taiwanese poet
Him: I usually avoid the topic of Taiwan, I had a bad experience with someone talking about it
Me: So maybe you can see why I am very frightened
Him: Yes
Me: I am a person totally okay with Taiwan, I don't care about this awful home land at all, I think it's should be at Taiwan's wishes
self-determination and who's the group first came to the territory in history
Him: Yeah let the people decide. But it's not that easy, because nowadays elections often get influenced by outside propaganda campaigns. Trying to shift public opinion by spreading false information
Me: Haha you don't know how smart our internet security systems are
As I said, no secret if one use Internet, I think maybe it's the same all over the world
Very scared
But this "glorious" land do it the best
Him: I have some inclination, but some apps like the old telegram have strong encryptions. Or the dark net as a whole. But but apps like these
Me: I don't use telegrams, I don't trust them and Twitter
Him: I don't either, but it's possible depending on what you use
Me: Twitter has a reputation of cooperate with my home land
Him: Just purely on a technical standpoint
Me: And I don't want to use telegrams, if I stay quiet, I may be at peace
Him: For sure, musk doing business in china
Me: But what telegrams could bring me, I don't want to get involved with politics, movements I could just take care of myself Telegrams may put me in danger
Him: I mean he actual app telegram , th instant messenger Or the all signal
Me: Maybe there exist traitors or something with the au;+_+_thoriti**++es
Him: Those are used for encryption or in some countries as WhatsApp ornwechat replacement
Me: Then what's the name I wanna hear, but afraid to use G++u-&__-i Min"&-hai Maybe you knew this person already
Him The name of the app is just telegram. And with such a type of end to end encryption, it's impossible for outsiders to read. Unless your using a device, which has spyware on it.
Me: Then my phone must have spy software Even if I get an American iPhone
Him In your country ever phone has it
Me Cause we must use some apps here
Him That's the reason Huawei got banned in usa
Me WeChat Alipay lots of stuff
Him It's not just apps, but I deeply integrated on a hardware level
Me Yeah, I even prefer my privaty stolen by westerns I feel no worries about use Google or whatever
Him Yep Google and everyone else keep track of things too
Me But in China,Internet access is completely real-name, it's just that your online friends don't always know who you are, the government does And actually neitzens could find out who you are too I mentioned Human Flesh Search Engine before
Him It's the same here, but if I wanna be completely anonymous I just take a tablet to the public WiFi. Devices themselves aren't attached to names here, only isp accounts
Me Wow, sounds beyond my comprehension, indeed, I am such an uneducated person don't know what's this I will read it carefully 🤣
Him If you go into a cafe there is internet access over WiFi. So you don't have to use your own internet at home ISP means internet service provider Like VDSL or cable or something
Me 🧐😵‍💫
Him For example if you just go to the store and buy a tablet, you don't have to leave your name Or a laptop So you take his to a cafe or something and log in to the wifi No way of tracing back your name Of course if you post online, you shouldn't tell anyone your name haha
Me Hahaha thanks for your words though I am still confused but I will tell you
Him No problemo You can ask me anything
Me Before we use the app, we already hand in our identity information
We already give out our phone number, ID Card pictures even face pictures
Him What ? You mean for using hello talk ?
Me Or we couldn't use them and we couldn't choose not to use them because every app is same and we must use some apps
Hellotalk also hand in my phone number
Him That's unbelievable
Me And actually I felt use ti it
Him 🥺
Me Because it doesn't require more! But it has linked with my WeChat So still the same
Him Yeah but it's still coupled to your phone number
Me Like ID card, face verification
WeChat or Alipay, almost every one has to use for everything, and it already have our ID information
WeChat has the strongest surveillance
Him Because it's also used for payment ?
Me One can even unable send some pictures on it
Him Yeah like Winnie the Pooh pictures
Me So you don't need to provide your any information?
Him No I never did that and noone here would do it If you use paying apps you just enter credit card information
Me Going out, administration, everything in life
Him But people still prefere cash in stores And I don't wanna be forced to take my mobile phone with me when I go out
Me China always laugh at countries like Germany still use cashes. But I found so ridiculous
Him It's not backwards in my opinion. There should be ways for anonymous payments, that's so dystopic to leave your name with any transaction you do
Me Our people here say we trade privacy for convenience, but given the choice, I'd rather not have that convenience. I have deep worries about private security all the time So I seldom put my pictures, yes, not even my selfies online
Him For example if you wanna buy gold, I would do it cash. If the government is at war it could cease private investments . But only if they have the buyers name
Me I almost only put pictures on the western Internet I have searched for this a lot on Reddit or YouTube or chrome I even wrote down once haha
Him Very smart
Me But I have something weird actually, I don't want touch the money for bacteria 🤣
Him But not much use when your government uses cameras and face recognition to track your every step You're excused, my quirky sister 😉
Me Yes I know it, they knew how many phones cards you have Sorry cannot understand, need Google at once
Him That means I appreciate your apprehension . In my job many people have that feat Fear
Me Ohh How time flies, though today we only talk about heavy things haha
Him I like this, it's a lot of fun to talk with you But I'm a little scared to get you into trouble
Me Yes, so maybe I won't talk about it anymore
Him Still, so interesting to hear from a different perspective At least I have confirmation some stuff in TV is real
Me Do you heard of him?
Him Uh well I can't decipher that one , Google didn't help haha The Rona related guy ?
Me He is a "traitor", he turns into a Swedish, and have to be one of the person in Sodom again
The au*** force him to admit his crime on TV
So he became one of glorious land again
Him I didn't hear about this peticular person, but I heard about these secret foreign offices of Sodom to "get their lost children back"
Me But Sweden still admit him as one of the Swedish people I need to keep in mind I'm a traitor too
Him Hey don't say the quiet part out loud 😉
Me So I couldn't be as brave as him, I could only take care of myself at the most and at best
Hahaha
Him Yeah that person seems to have acted like a martyr indeed
Me Just only keep the letters, remove the punctuations
Him Oh I got it That confessions vid is like the first result on google
Me Hahaha, in China, we often chat with wrong words, short form or add a lot of punctuations
As you said this, my heart broke for him
Him Doesn't help at all with the ai technology of today
Me Though I never dare to watch, I know it in my mind
But if without these, we even couldn't send out some even normal (not rebellion) messages, posts, comments 🤣
Him I feel like I'm part of a spy novel , it's kind of exciting
Me Hahaha
Him Whisperwhispermumblemumble It even the average dim witted person can see that it's completely staged. Who believes that ?
Me Sigh They don't need anyone to believe maybe, they just threaten
Him Oh yes. Like Putin killing off any dissidents like prigoshin. As a warning While publically playing innocent But everyone knows what's up
Me So frightening for me, as a child, I always dream of Anarchy society or actually described by Zhuangzi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuang_Zhou
Him I have this too sometimes. Like a natural disaster happing , like a comet hitting earth and everyone has to fend for them selves. Public order be damned
Me But when I grow up I found Anarchy may lead disorders Just enjoy the peaceful life described by him
Him Yeah there got to be some healthy middle ground , if that's possible
Me Here's the English translations I found https://www.harinam.com/tao-te-ching-verse-80-if-a-country-is-governed-wisely-its-inhabitants-will-be-content/ I truly enjoy it a lot since I was a kid https://www.taoistic.com/taoteching-laotzu/taoteching-80.htm
Different versions of translation haha
ii)
What I wrote on Dec 28-29
They mock me for wanting to go outside
Around December in 2021. my father said "why you want to go aboard to study. What are you going abroad for?Are you going to study until you're old (which means I should get married soon, yeah in China, weirdly before going to university, young people are not encouraged to being relationship if the parents or the locals want the young people to live more and more decent life and get higher degrees. But after going to university, they will maybe push children to being relationship soon, get married even have children soon even before the career started or the university years finnished)? Study through all your life?"
Meanwhile I said, "I want to go to Europe to study or work and then live forever"
But they always mock me for want to go to Europe, and sometimes they even don't remember, mistake Germany which I used to want to go as America 🤨😵‍💫
My parents are so toxic, my mother curse me to death just because I haven't taken the clothes home at 17:47 now. She threatened to slap me.
My mother haven't slapped me in my life, my father did. He hit me several times, especially these times. He slapped me in front of everyone in class (You may not believe that a girl who was my classmate in middle school and my schoolmate in high school, who strangely, provocatively said, "I remember your dad beating you up in middle school" when we were near the examination center for the Gaokao, to which I could only reply sarcastically, " You weren't even born when he beat me up.") when I did slower than other people on exams (but I wasn't bad at Chemistry, 55/60 on the Zhongkao https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhongkao (The Junior High School Scholastic Aptitude Examination), about 70/100 on the Gaokao https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaokao#:\~:text=The%20Nationwide%20Unified%20Examination%20for,in%20early%20June%20every%20year. (The Nationwide Unified Examination for Admissions to General Universities and Colleges), and Chemistry was my strongest subject after English (124/150 in Gaokao), and I only relied on they two to just barely make it to college, because I really didn't study much in high school, I just read romance novels every day by then). And then there was the time in middle school at home when he caught me copying answers instead of doing my homework relying on myself seriously, he domesticated me so hard he slapped me that made me lose my mind at the time. There were also one time I don't remember if it was in primary school or middle school, they two my parents whipped me with belts and forced me to kneel, and so that I told them at the time as a result I hated that I am not an orphan, I should better be. As I type these words, there are tears in my eyes. I probably have mental issues because of them. [I'm a woman maybe need therapy, but I'll honestly tell you, if I see therapy, it would be a big thing in China, hard to get a job like civil servant https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%AC%E5%8B%99%E5%93%A1 or other decent jobs, important exams
Believe me, what I say is 100% true, cuz if see some Psychologist or psychotherapy that will be in record documents, and will be regarded as abnormal or person with mental disorder
There must be many people in China with mental health problems, but we can't even see the doctor, cuz if we do, we may even can't enter some good schools
since we born, our life is full of competition and fighting
And parents, spoil us or treat us whatever very toxicly, traditional Asian especially Chinese parents
Control us)
I'll honestly say one thing, many Chinese women or girls want parents better dead. Because not only were our parents toxic, but even if we were the only daughter, because of the deep-rooted patriarchy here, they despised us.
Yes if one day, I want to be a good person. But I am still actually afraid of men, even I somehow close to men, but I don't want a relationship, not only because I don't want to get laid with man (I mean I am afraid of being forced) but also like something I can't tell, just afraid, many men are awful, like my father, many Chinese men though I don't want relationship with them but we Chinese men and women here are like enemies, and some men (in this term, I'm not saying the men from the homeland) manipulated me or played with my feelings
I mean I don't want to get laid with man anyway. just afraid of being forced during relationship like rape. Maybe you can't imagine, I used to think and said these to some internet Chinese friends, "I think coitus is a disgusting thing, like bestiality, the subjugation or conquer of a man to a woman, and I feel a deep anger about it", (It's a hatred as if I was born with an anger towards coitus. This could be due to the astrology chart of the moment I was born holds Mars square Pluto. For this I had seen a quite astonishingly good but long text in 2017, and I translated it myself https://www.reddit.com/Mathilde_Soliloquy/comments/191mc51/mars_square_pluto/ with the help of DeepL translator.)
and then a man said then the man you have a relationship will find others outside, cuz man can't tolerate it
I argued with my parents just now
My father said "if you're keeping bubbling nonsense, I'll kick you out of house by my legs, and get off to outside better tomorrow". haha reminds me of this Chinese sister's words
My mother said if I keep the phone with me, she won't care about my business anymore, handle all my own living myself, cooking and all. That is, threaten me.
Noo just humiliate me, my father and mother said I am crazy or stimulated by something. Just like when I said I don't want a man, my parents, my relatives, people I met in China especially my neighbors in my childhood would teach me a lesson, saying are you hurt by men, then at that time I may say, why I must feel this way because hurt by man, I just hate the patriarchal society
But also exist the possibility if I don't act like obedient to them
They know full well I'm a giant baby, fragile, depent, and I'm weak now, have no ability except learning, can't live on my own at least by far, thus may think threat me like this will lead me to be obedient
Yeah as I said to that Chinese sister, if what happened to her (A Chinese girl said to me, "I've been through three love disasters. My heart is much stronger than yours. I've also been through being kicked out of my parents' house, at 9pm, crying all over the place by myself looking for a hotel, people on the street are busy with their own, my mom wants to drop me off at my hometown to my grandma, my dad mocked my mom back in case his mom would be dying from angers, there's no place for me in the home. I've been depressed, abandoned, and hurt by men. I'm sober and I don't have a relationship/romanticismic-brain, I've been hurt three times by men. Have you ever been strangled? I have, by an ex-ex-boyfriend, and I've been threatened with nude photos, and if I difmdn't take them, I'd be crazily scolded, and received cold violence."
I replied to her, "If it were me, I'd be so fragile that I'd just die." ) happens to me, I'll fragile to go to death
Crazily, my father broke into my room, lifted the covers, and said, "Hand over your phone," and then he actually went and grabbed it and smashed it on the floor, may even stomped on it with his foot. Then I argued, saying, "My primary school classmate have been playing with his phones all night since primary school, and anyone would keep their phones with them. I must have my phone with me even if I would get hit, is this some kind of electronic doorstop?" He said "These people you're talking about, what are they doing?They're all working" and I said "You can't do this even if I don't work, you two are too psycho (my mom says the one who is psycho and abnormal is me). I'm going to get a job because I can't take your control anymore." After then, I get from my bed and turn on the light to find my phone, then my father said "it's between the dishes (on the dinning table)"
I was wondering my phone can't work when he grabbed it away from me
I'm trembling now, shake my head for it
The coldness of weather, can't be able to compare the sorrow of mine, uuhhh
Uuhh let me mention a stuff, there are places like豫章书院https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%B1%AB%E7%AB%A0%E4%B9%A6%E9%99%A2%E4%BF%AE%E8%BA%AB%E6%95%99%E8%82%B2%E4%B8%93%E4%BF%AE%E5%AD%A6%E6%A0%A1, Yuzhang Academy Self-cultivation Education School, that some places parents send disobedient children for "treatment", such as seclusion or electric shocks, extremely cruel physical punishment, in which the children sometimes have to report each other in order to survive there..., and some of them commit suicide
Though they may don't send me, I believe they must think of these things, Sometimes when they feel I am disobedient they said they'd send me to mental hospitals, though it may not be not out of their hearts but threats
Yeah it's no matter about the age, parents control children till to death. And I believe in places like that, must be many adults, no need to ensure
In this situation, I no longer have the heart to like men, I have to become independent and rely on myself for survival as soon as possible, and I realize how horrible my life is and that if I don't struggle to leave them, I wi surely be forced to go on blind dates and marry man I don't like and I despise
They've, at least my mother wanted me to get married as soon as possible since I was18, wait, even earlier or after entering the university, 17
Parents control children like this is a common thing in China, sigh*
It's not a civilized place anyway
On Dec 30, "Yeah today my father hit the door, by then I was afraid of being slapped or beat up He rapped on the door with his hand while crazily yelling at me So since childhood, when someone gets loud, my mind goes blank Yeah thanks God haven't beat me up recently Already so frightened by them, whenever simply their voices are loud, my frigh even turns to this degree"
When I was about 8, one day my mother picked me up from school by bicycle, and I wiggled my feet, and the ankle of my left foot touched the bicycle chain and was stirred in, at that time I saw blood and white bones but I didn't dare to say anything because I was so afraid of my mother, thanks to a stanger - a grandpa behind us who said that the child's foot was stirred into the bicycle, but my mother always said that there was no such old grandpa and that it was she who couldn't pedal the bicycle and found out that on her own. Then my foot had to be stitched up with a needle a dozen times. But I haven't cried over that, and I didn't shed a single tear when I was 4 when I ran while playing but fell on a large pile of glass, resulting in a scar on my left temple. Having said that I have quite a lot of trauma on my body, I was in a vehicle accident in 2010's or 2011's (damn I can't even remember though I have a good memory I think more likely 2010) January, that resulted in an intracranial fracture and bleeding in my right ear for a week (my parents used to tell me not to talk to people about this lest they think you have a problem with your brain). I'm really terrified of traffic because of this, even standing at a five-way or intersection I get vertigo and feel like I'm going to drown from all the vehicles speeding past me. So not to mention driving a car, I can't even drive and don't want to learn how to drive a battery-operated bike, and I even seem to have gotten a little scar on my leg from a fall I took on a battery-operated bike between summer and fall this year. I can ride a bike at the most, but I haven't ridden one in at least nine years I guess. And when I was around 11 I tripped over a brick because the power went out in the street and I couldn't see the road, and I broke three of my incisors in some degree, how can I put it, I don't have any good teeth, I think it may be due to food safety issues of my country.
iii)
When I was in high school, I guess when I was aroud 15, my father jokingly used a swear word he learned from one of neighbors on me, "当婊子还要牌坊 https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%89%8C%E5%9D%8A Be a prostitute yet still wants to build up a paifang [It is a building erected in feudal society to honour meritorious achievements, success in Imperial examination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination, benevolent gover, as well as loyalty and filial piety, and here it refers to the Paifang of Chastity.]". I am a person still haven't touched any man's hands by far and I didn't do anythinf wrong, then he used this kind of sentence to me. And he then asked me to accept his apology with two hundred RMB, which I had to accept because if I did not he might even get annoyed of shame and lose his temper even beat me up.
So sometimes when people like neighbors from my childhood, persuade me go to marriage (cuz at that time I didn't want), saying your father treat you so nice and you must can find someone like your father, ewwwwww, it's so disgusting, my father is so disgusting, beat me up, inslut me, I don't want man from my homeland at all
And my parents like my mother won't admit it, she said "I've been with your father so many years, he hasn't said any words like to me, how could it happen? That must be your imagination“
Tho I still have conscience in thinking they raised me up
iv) [Labor Law of the People's Republic of China
Chapter 4 Working Hours, Rests, and Leaves
Article 36 The State shall practise a working hour system wherein labourers shall work for no more than eight hours a day and no more than 44 hours a week on the average.
(Actually we work way more than this)
Article 38 The employer shall guarantee that its labourers have at least one day off a week.]
In my home province the minimum hourly wage is divided into four levels,21,20,19,18RMB (at this moment, 1 Euro = 7.77 Chinese Yuan, aka RMB),and in the current province I live it's 24,22,20. I used to have a temporary job in my town that was two days off a month,and my parents said why you can't do it as someone else is doing it,and I remember the hours of that job started at about 7:30am, besides, there was a man in that job who purposely tried to put a hot stamp drop on my legs.
So getting a job in China with two days off on the weekend is kind of considered a luxury, and one of my previous jobs had six days off a month.
And now I don't lay my eyes on jobs without two days off on the weekend.
v) https://weibo.com/1648736703/4955740219901047 Classic manly "let me test you". If it were me, even if I did have to speak German, I'd be practicing to be fluent before I'd have the nerve to say it in public, let alone record a video of it, and this man even sells English lessons. As some people said in the comments section, " There are so many women in China whose talent does not match their position, and even if they are very talented, they can only make a living at the grassroots level, and this phenomenon is rare in men, on the contrary, most of them do not have the talent to match their position. Women in this country have too few opportunities for advancement."

I didn't know much about my almost-death. Just that it was fast.
Fucking painful.
I know I died screaming, writhing in agony and just wanting it to stop.
Death, or almost-death, is a weird thing. It's like being dragged under water, suffocating in pitch dark depths, and then floating back to the surface.
Breaking through, oxygen returning to your lungs.
Awakening upside down on a sun lounger with no memories but my name was not what I was expecting to be on the other side. I was always curious about the possibility of an afterlife.
I was brought up in an atheist household, but there was a part of me that believed in something after death. Not quite the white pearly gates, but definitely not the suffocating and yet peaceful oblivion my parents believed in. Mom was convinced there was just the dark, while Dad was more accustomed to reincarnation.
Both of them were wrong. Because Heaven resembled a five star holiday resort.
For a moment I was frozen, staring at a perfect blue sky, aware of my ponytail lightly grazing the water. Looming over me was a picturesque building made of pink brick going up, up, up into the air, thousands, millions, of checkerboard windows, an impossible water park hovering above the clouds.
The pool I was half submerged in, and that shimmered above me, was made of diamonds.
The afterlife for young people was spring break.
I was transfixed, hypnotised by this beautiful place, before I slipped into the water, head first. There was a suppressed memory there somewhere, my idiotic child self forgetting I couldn't swim in the deep end.
My initial reaction was to panic, but I didn't need my lungs or my breath anymore.
The water was the perfect temperature, like being embraced in a warm hug.
Still though, that didn't stop me immediately freaking out and clawing my way back to the surface, spluttering.
It was my natural reaction to choke, despite no longer having working lungs.
“You can't drown in shallow water, idiot.”
Behind me, a boy was sitting on the edge of the pool, his toes dancing in the shallows. The kid was my age.
Eighteen, or maybe nineteen.
He offered me a smile, blowing floppy brown hair out of his eyes. I noticed flowers entangled in his curls, a broken crown of roses.
His clothes were an interesting choice for immortal paradise, a short sleeved white shirt covered in blood, jeans rolled up to his knees. Those were the clothes he must have died in.
I noticed his right eye was bruised yellow, a shiver creeping its way down my spine.
Looking down at myself, my clothes were fairly normal.
No blood splatters, at least not what I could see.
Just a plain shirt and jeans, both of which were uncomfortably glued to me.
“I'm Caine,” he said, kicking his feet in the water.
The boy turned his head, and I gulped in air.
I didn't think panic would still exist in heaven. But there it was, twisting my gut into knots. I didn't have or need breath, and yet I found myself instinctively trying to suck it in.
The guy may have looked beautiful, like the afterlife was editing him to fit perfection. But I could see the shallow cavern at the back of his skull, a smear of pinkish red dripping down his shirt.
“As you can see, it's obvious why I'm here.” he prodded the hole, and I winced.
He saw my reaction and laughed.
“Hey, it's cool, apparently, our physical selves don't exist.” His lips formed a smile. “The girl in room 101 told me our real physical forms would freak us out, so we’re our default selves.”
“Default.” I repeated.
“Yeah!” Caine’s eyes darkened. “We look like we did when we, um, died.”
He sighed, his gaze going skyward, tracking a kid plunging into an infinity pool right above our heads. “Speaking of the D word, I don't remember how or why, I uh, d-worded.” Caine turned back to me, offering me a playful shrug, tipping his head back. Like we were meeting for the first time on holiday.
“I dunno man, I was shot in the head, died and then I ended up in a stoned dude’s idea of heaven. I don't know what to say, except this is awesome.”
“Bree.” I managed to get out.
He raised a brow. “Huh?”
I allowed myself to sink into the water, trying to register his words. “It's Bree.”
“Well, it's nice to meet cha, Bree.”
Caine jumped up, holding out his hand to help me out of the pool.
When I tried to grasp his arm, he held up a two fingered salute. “Happy Death Day.”
I found myself laughing, which was ridiculous because the joke sucked.
I let him pull me out of the pool, sopping wet. “How long did it take you to think of that one?”
Caine shrugged, scrunching up his nose. “Longer than necessary.” he said, “Oh, hey, here's a tip.” the boy spun around to face me, and I could almost forget he was clearly a murder victim.
“If you want to get dry, just do this.” Caine clicked his fingers.
“You're not serious.”
He laughed. “We’re in a never ending paradise for kids, and you think I’m joking?”
“Welcome to Paradise Falls!”
The mechanical voice spoke above us, as if on cue.
There were floating speakers in the sky. Everything seemed to be floating.
The only thing that wasn't floating was us.
When I lifted my head, the clouds switched colors depending on my mood.
According to Caine, the whole world was ours, quite literally.
Everything we saw was tailored to our own personal paradise. I asked Caine what he could see, and he shrugged.
“Flowers.” he said with a light smile.
I was given a welcoming in the form of an AI voice.
“Paradise Falls is a safe space for young people whose lives have come to an abrupt end! If you have any questions regarding your death, please visit the help desk. And remember! Paradise Falls remove painful memories to ensure a *perfect stay here. If you have trouble remembering how you died, be rest assured there is a reason. Here at Paradise Falls, we believe in moving forwards. If your stay here is temporary..."*
The speakers were on a constant repeat, as Caine pulled me further into the resort itself.
The place was 99.9% water, even the floor glistening like the surface of a tropical ocean. I fell into the ground twice, catching the attention of a group of kids walking past us, led by a pretty redhead with a spear through her eye.
The guy walking with her was constantly spluttering water.
“That's Adam and Reia,” Caine murmured. “Adam drowned in his family pool, and Reia…” he trailed off.
“Was shot through the eye,” I said, “It's obvious.”
Caine shot me a grin. “You're learning!” he said, “But, no. She was… strangled.”
I kept walking, narrowly missing falling into another surprise swimming pool.
“Who by?” I found myself asking, breathless.
Caine scratched the back of his head. “Her boyfriend. I know, right? Yikes.”
“Leave the new girl alone!” A girl’s voice trilled.
Caine curled his lip. He didn't even turn around. “Ignore Mina,” the guy muttered, “If we pretend not to see her, she'll crawl back to the infinity pool.”
“You're not, and never will be funny, Caine.”
The girl standing behind us was beautiful, free of flaws and the scars from her death. Dark brown hair that ran like silk down her back, a crown of daisies loosely tangled through.
Another flower crown.
I saw them as a symbol of rebirth.
Mina’s clothes stood out, a white dress, flowers coiled around her ankles.
She was everything I wanted to be and more, immediately giving me butterflies.
Attached to her hip was a shy looking blonde guy, who gave me a shy wave.
Caine’s lip curled. “I see you've been catching strays.” He muttered to Mina.
The dead boy nudged me, motioning for me not to speak, and I didn't.
I couldn't.
Instead, I waved back and tried to smile at this kid whose skull was caved in.
The guy's smile was innocent, and I had a hard time wondering how a human being could do something so horrific.
So inhuman, that they themselves become monsters.
I caught a single red petal in the kid’s hair.
“Don't pity me,” the boy said with a sheepish smile, “I know it looks bad.”
I found my voice. “No, it…”
“Name’s Zach.” He said, before I could choke on pitying him.
Mina must have noticed my face. She passed me the drink she was holding, that was a whole new shade of pink.
“Try this!” she insisted. “They do emotion shakes here. This one is supposed to taste like falling in love!”
I took a sip, and she was right. Like tasting the warmth of a first crush, the butterflies fluttering around in your gut.
Combined with strawberry, mango, and the slightest bit of coconut, it was heaven in a smoothie.
“They have every flavour,” Mina said excitedly, bouncing up and down.
“I even tried depression! And it's surprisingly good, but it's like a rich, chocolatey shake? Like, mix a kinder bar with the euphoria from sex, then the ickiness of a hangover. Combine with the break up with your boyfriend, zero serotonin, and you have the depression shake!”
“Fascinating.” Caine said, in a tone that suggested otherwise. “Please tell us more.”
She responded with a playful shove.
“Relax! I'm just giving them the Paradise Falls lowdown.”
“Yes, because I'm sure the first thing that is on their minds is a double frappe with extra serotonin," He grumbled. “Dude, this isn't a fucking college tour.”
The girl wrapped her arms around me, her flowery scent was sweet.
“Caine is a man-child. He just likes playing in the pool.”
“I'm still technically a kid, y’know!” he said, skipping ahead of us with Zach.
The two guys were standing on a golden bridge ahead, looking out into the expanse of water that bled into the sky.
Mina was still talking, her hand wrapped around my wrist, but I was suddenly far too aware of her smell.
Flowers.
Rich and sweet, like Jasmine.
Dirt.
Filth clinging to her skin, mixed with cheap perfume.
“Oh, and on Wednesdays, they actually sell shots of serotonin. It's like a legal high…”
I was aware of the girl hugging me, her hair lightly brushing my cheeks, but Mina’s face was in my mind, her smell choking my nose and throat. Flowers.
I knew her.
I knew her stink, and I knew my body’s reaction to it.
She wasn't supposed to feel and smell so familiar, so real, because I had never met her before stepping foot in Paradise Falls.
My memories, however, were full of her.
Suffocated with her.
All it took was one splinter of memory, and my Heaven was crumbling.
Paradise Falls faded, like it never existed, and I was back in the real world.
The flower girl was in front of me, draped in a white dress, daisies clinging to matted curls.
The room was made of concrete, one singular light flickering above the two of us.
The girl cocked her head, lightly pulling at her hair.
Her smell was wild flowers and the dirt she ground her fingers in.
“Daddy said you're not ready.” The flower girl murmured. Her eyes were bright, like she was happy. But her lips were drawn into a frown. She leaned forward, her breath stinking of cigarette smoke, and blew in my face.
“That's a pity.”
She pulled a flower from her hair, dangling the daisy in front of my face.
“Aren't you hungry?” the girl mocked a child-like giggle, making the daisies dance.
But I wasn't looking at the flower, or the girl’s dead eyes. I was staring at the bodies hanging from meat hooks, beheaded sacks of flesh swaying from side to side. The walls were painted rich red, the entrails from prior sacrifices used to create cave-like paintings.
The Flower King insisted that our blood stained each brick, our life force fed inside the house and the flower garden.
The bodies on hooks were people I knew.
Lia, who told me she was going to escape.
She was on display for that very reason.
I screamed, agony and pain writhing in my cry, a fear I couldn't comprehend.
I couldn’t stop, screeching until my throat was choking up, my cries gurgling into wet sobs.
Cocking her head, the flower girl’s lips spread out into a demented grin.
If I looked closely, I could see stitches lining her forehead, where her king had filled her thoughts with poison.
I thought I could wake her up, but the flowers were too deep, filling her mind.
“You stupid bitch,” she said with a laugh.
The flower girl cradled my face with her fingers, digging her fingernails in.
Her eyes were wild, like the flowers she worshipped, no trace of humanity left, except the markings on her skin.
She slapped me, and I saw red.
“It's not real!" I whispered through a shriek.
It's not real.
I wanted to tell her that her father was forcefully breeding men and women, murdering their newborns.
For the flowers.
I wanted to tell her she was next, and then so was her ‘brother’.
But all she did was giggle, pressing her hands over her mouth like a little kid.
“You make me laugh!” The girl straightened up, kicking me in the stomach, and I felt every hit, every sharp, agonising pain ripping through me.
“You're so funny!” she spluttered, forcing me to laugh with her.
If I didn't, the flower girl would bleed me out before the harvest.
When she was finished, I was curled onto my side, my mouth full of red warmth that dripped down my chin.
“Urgh,” the girl pulled a face, “Are you coughing up your lungs? That's like, so gross!”
Flower Girl kicked me again, this time in the back of my head.
I saw stars exploding, my thoughts swimming.
Darkness was creeping at the corner of my vision, when she stopped.
“If you're going to kill them, get on with it. They'll just be early sacrifices.”
I felt something move behind me, a body I didn't realize was attached to me, come to life.
His hands entangled with mine trembled, a soft moan escaping his mouth. When I managed to look up, the flower girl grasped hold of my chin, forcing me to look in the direction of the Flower Prince.
I never knew his old self, but there were whispers that he too had been like me.
Just a scared kid needing a home.
The shadow dipping under the light grew a face, and I could already see the flowers entangled in his curls catching the light.
He only wore his crown on the days of harvest.
The guy stood behind her, arms crossed, dark eyes pinched around the edges.
Dressed in matching white, The Flower Prince was stained red, painted like his father.
The markings on his head, stitches cementing his place as a Child Of The Garden.
He wasn't smiling, but my sharp hisses of breath were teasing his facial muscles.
The boy held out his hand, and after slight hesitation, the flower girl pressed a blade into his fist. I watched his fingers tip-toe across the teeth, setting every nerve ending on fire, my body catapulting into fight or flight.
I saw what happened to Adam, and then Lucy, and Theia.
They all died by his psychotic hand, cradling their bodies spewing red in his arms and promising they were making a worthy donation.
The Flower Prince ran the knife down my face, his expression crumpling into a melancholic frown.
“You're scared.” He said, pressing enough pressure to draw blood.
I felt it, a single line running down my face.
I sensed his urgency for it, his polluted thoughts desperate to quench the garden.
“Don't be scared.” the boy said, his lips breaking into a grin resembling his father’s. His human eyes were gone, replaced with hollow caverns filled with an insanity that was physically vibrating him, twitching his body from side to side. I barely felt the blade go in.
As if he could feel my pain, he screamed with me, mocking my pleads for death.
“Please!”
The cry came from behind me. He spoke in heavy sobs, wrenching against our restraints. “Please let us go.”
Swinging the knife between his fingers, The Flower Prince pouted, his eyes darkening, lips curling in disgust.
“But what if I don't want to let you go, huh?” he mocked a child-like mumble.
What
If
I
Don't
Want
To
Let
You
Go?
He struck both of us, emphasising every word, and I felt it, the blade cruel slicing into me, gnawing through flesh and bone. I thought it would stop.
I thought he was taking us to the edge of death, and then let us breathe, let us writhe in agony. But he didn't.
The Flower Prince did not show mercy, plunging his blade into me until I was lying in stemming red on my back, my gaze on the ceiling, imagining water.
Pools of glistening water I could envelope myself in.
Wash off the blood, and sink deep down.
My companion's body was behind me, unrecognisable.
The Flower Girl was singing a melody, dancing around his crumpled form.
The Flower Prince was on his knees, knelt in my blood, lips stretched into a maniacal grin. He dipped his fingers in thickening red, gliding them across my cheek. His voice was incomprehensible giggles and prayers to the flowers, to his father, for sacrificing me too early.
He was rocking back and forth, hollowed out eyes blinking at an invisible God, when the sound slammed into me.
BANG.
I pried my eyes open, rolling onto my side.
So much blood.
It was sticky and wet and warm, slick on my skin.
Thundering footsteps, a blinding light that wasn't Heaven’s pearly gates.
A flashlight illuminated the room, finding the flower girl, who sliced her own throat the second they moved toward her.
“Hands up!” the voice yelled. “Move away from them!”
“Or what?” The Flower Prince laughed. I caught the flash of his grin.
“Are you planning on shooting a kid?”
“I said, put your HANDS on your HEAD! Now!”
Bree?
The world contorted, and I was back under a crystal blue sky.
Now though, clouds were starting to form, a darkness riding on the horizon.
“Bree!”
I blinked, and my murderer was in front of me. “Did you hear what I said?”
I felt his hand wrap around my arm, tight enough to make me shriek.
“I said,” Caine gritted through a grin, squeezing me tighter. The loose flowers in his hair were slowly forming a crown.
His smile was wide, but I couldn't find the happiness and carefree he'd been an hour ago. From the manic look in his eyes, my murderer was living his own version of paradise.
And I think he revelled in getting his memory back every time.
Caine clung to me, the sky turning tumultuous.
Behind me, Zach turned around, his eyes wide, suddenly.
He started forwards, before coming to a stop.
He was too scared. Mina took his hand gently, coaxing him back.
The Flower Girl met my gaze, her eyes filling with tears.
She took Zach, the two of them fading into the distance.
And I was stuck with The Flower Prince.
“Well?” Caine laughed, tightening his grip.
“Isn't this the best fucking afterlife ever?”
Bree? Come on, honey!
I've got a heartbeat. It's faint.
Brianna! Can you hear me?
It felt like being yanked under water, dragged to icy depths.
When I opened my eyes, I was surrounded by paramedics, a mask I was struggling to pant into. Zach was dead.
In the corner of my eye, his body was being gently pulled onto a stretcher.
To my left, Mina lying on her side, her eyes still open.
Her lips carved into a grin.
Caine was crumpled in a heap, his brains staining his flower crown.
“Bree.”
The woman kneeling over me was telling me to breathe, to not move.
I was told I died for 4 and a half minutes.
But I wasn't looking at the paramedic checking me over.
Instead, my gaze found the finger marks still ingrained into the flesh of my arm.
I could still see him, clinging onto me, like my torture was his paradise.
It's been a year, and the shadow of Caine's fingertips are still there.
If anything, they feel like markings.
A branding.
And I'm fucking terrified that when I do eventually die, he will be waiting for me.
In his own personal heaven

Hope you enjoy this one. winroberts.com
Win
:-)
He was a tailor in a world that didn’t want or particularly need tailors. Even worse, he had been a tailor for over forty years and remembered the time when people actually wanted a custom tai-lored suit of clothes. He would make suits for the business men. He made suits for kids graduating high school. These days, most of his work involved letting out pants for people who needed to go to a funeral but they had gotten fatter since the last time they wore them.
He had sold his store; he would move to Florida and take it easy. He had found a place where they played canasta every Thursday night. He loved canasta. He would move there and plant a little garden and play canasta.
He stopped at the store one last time. He had already handed the keys over to the new owners. He would make one last coat before leaving. He would make a fine and sturdy coat, maybe the best coat of his career. Maybe the most important coat of his career. The new owners were planning on gutting the place and putting in a Chipotle, they wouldn’t mind him using the store one last time.
He got to work taking the dust covers off of the machines. He would need a sturdy fabric for his coat so, selecting from the inventory in the back room, he found a bolt of worsted tweed. That would make a good start. He searched further and found some nylon thread. He would need lots of different colors of the thread to match the tweed. He gathered up his materials and headed to the sewing room.
He moved with the precision and deftness of an expert craftsman at the peak of his powers. He interwove the nylon into the tweed making a strong fabric even stronger. This was his mas-terpiece, it needed to be strong. He cut the pieces he would need of the wool and nylon raw material with surgeon like accuracy. He knew the dimensions by heart, this coat was to fit himself.
He double and triple stitched the seams and reinforced where necessary and prudent. He would not give up on style and comfort, though, no good tailor would. The lining must come out easily he thought. He sewed in a zipper system to help with its re-moval. The lining was just as important as the rest, he knew. His masterpiece must be as close to perfect as he could get. It was the last coat he would make, it was the most important coat he would make.
He worked late into the night cutting, stitching, reworking. Finally, he paused and considered his handiwork. It was good. He tried the coat on and looked at himself in the mirror. What he saw was a man of years with wrinkled skin, a wrinkle for every trial. He admired the coat, it was of exceptional construction. The coat fit his body like no store bought coat could ever do. The coat was stylish, it would not be out of place anywhere. He could wear this coat to Buckingham Palace he mused.
He knew who would appreciate his creation. There were some folks downtown, he would visit them; they would appreciate the skill and craftsmanship. He buttoned his coat to guard against the winter chill outside and with one last long look at the store, he locked the door and left there forever.
The trip downtown wasn’t long. This time of night most folks were warm and safe in their beds, traffic was light. He pulled up to his destination and seeing no obstacle parked his car at the head of the alley. He pulled the collar of the coat tight and walked in the cold night air to the hotel around the corner.
The night clerk at the hotel was a short balding fat man. He wore a tired old t-shirt that was frayed at the arms and neck. The shirt looked and smelled like it had been awhile since it had been laundered. The man chewed an unlit cigar. He looked up from his cell phone when he heard him come in.
“Hi Bub. Looking for a room?” The man had an eastern European accent.
The old man considered his response and finally said. “That girl named Tabitha still here?”
The cigar chewing clerk eyed the old man up and down. He was suspicious, he had never seen him before.
“You cop?” The odious homunculus asked.
The old man laughed. “No.” He would have to win over this turd on the shoe of life. “I’m willing to pay for what I want.” He pulled a roll of bills out of his pocket and peeled off a one hun-dred dollar bill and handed it to the man.
“She have too much party. Very groggy.” The man took the money. He was unsure if the old guy would want it back after he said that.
“That’s no problem.” He wanted this particular girl. “How much?”
The man in the t-shirt rubbed his unshaven face and folding his hands outward said. “$300, one half hour.”
“How much for one hour?” The old man started pulling bills from his roll.
“For you bro, $500”
The old man paid the man his money and the short fat man led him up a flight of stairs.
At the top of the stairs a group of four men were playing cards and drinking. They were hunched over their cards not say-ing much. A cloud of cigarette smoke hovered over their heads. What they did say, they said in a foreign language he didn’t under-stand. It seemed congruent with the eastern European impression he got from his front desk clerk ‘friend’.
They climbed a second staircase and walking down a nar-row hallway, scented in perfume and stale cigarette smoke, they arrived at their destination. The short fat man opened the door. He entered to find his purchase passed out on the bed. He nodded assent to the fat man and shut the door.
The girl on the bed was much skinnier than the last time he had seen her. Her skin was pale and almost gray. He had heard that they hook the girls on drugs to lower their sense of morality and keep them incentivized to keep working for them. He as-sumed that was why she was sleeping. Her face was painted with too much makeup and her lipstick had smeared across her cheek. The old man fought back his emotions, he had work to do.
He pulled a cover off of the bed and, folding it, placed it across the floor in front of the door. He didn’t want any unwanted attention to come from his activity. He took off his coat and un-zipped the lining. He placed the lining on the bed. He then lay the coat on the floor.
Searching the coat he found the two threads he had left strategically dangling. He pulled the threads and when the threads had finally wormed their way out from the coat, his beautiful coat lay in rags on the floor. Quickly, he took the two ropes that had previously been the coat arms and tied them around the radiator sitting by the window. First opening the window, he then threw the rest of the coat out into the night air. What had previously been his beautiful coat now took shape as a tweed and nylon lad-der.
He looked out of the window. It was long enough. He had worried it might not be.
He turned his attention back to the lining. He had sewed a double harness into the lining. Working as fast as he could, he buckled the girl into one half of the harnesses. Lifting with all of his strength, he got the girl on his back and fastened his side of the harness. Now for the ladder.
He slowly and methodically inched himself and his cargo over the window sill and onto the ersatz ladder. The going was slow, he would have had trouble doing this alone but having the extra weight of the girl made it excruciating. The motion of the ladder scraped his hands against the bricks that covered the build-ing, causing blood to flow. The viscosity of the blood did nothing to help him maintain his grip. He pressed on.
Slowly and slowly, inch by inch, the old man descended from the hell with which the girl had been living. The cold night air was beginning to revive his sleeping baggage. She was moan-ing something he couldn’t make out.
“Don’t worry tabby cat. Grandpa’s got you.”
That seemed to quiet the girl. Down and down and finally they made the ground. He turned his attention to the alley now. There it was, his car. The two made their way there. He placed the girl on the back seat and wrapped her in a blanket he had stashed there. Climbing into the driver’s seat he fired the engine to life and made his way out of town.
They had made reservations for the girl at a rehab hospital 18 hours away that would afford them anonymity from her cap-tors. She would have a new start there. He would drive all night and most of the day. He reached in the glove box for his phone. He dialed his daughter’s number.
“She’s safe.”
He knew the crying on the other end was a good thing. He could enjoy his retirement in peace now. He thought about what vegetables he would grow. Tomatoes for sure. He was excited to play the canasta.

I remember the first time I did heroin like it was yesterday. When I sniffed it, it felt like a powerful, relaxing massage flowing down my body like water. I remember running to the bathroom and throwing up over and over, but I felt so good that I didn’t even care. I wouldn’t be throwing up the next time I did heroin, though. My tolerance grew rapidly. Within months, the constant sickness became an ingrained fear, and eventually, my opiate addiction would take over my entire life.
No one ever wakes up in the morning, thinking, “I really wish I was a penniless, homeless drug addict.” No child ever grows up saying that he wants to be a raging alcoholic or a heroin fiend. No one wants to go to prisons, jails, detoxes, rehabs, mental asylums or graveyards, either.
But when the addiction takes over, you don’t have a choice of what you will or will not do. When addiction screams at you to jump, you only ask, “How high?” At a certain point, the idea of going without opiates becomes as instinctually frightening as going without food or water. In fact, a lot of drug addicts would much rather go without food and water than be plunged into the nightmarish, seemingly never-ending withdrawals.
An opiate addiction is like having a monkey on your back in some ways- if that monkey was demonic, rabid and fused into your skin like some sort of sadistic Siamese twin. You know that if you don’t do what that monkey says, it will turn its blood-red eyes to you in fury. You know that it will claw and bite you until you’re curled up in the fetal position on the floor, screaming, “Please, no more!”
At a certain point, you don’t even want to do the drugs anymore, but there’s no real question of it. When the disease has progressed to its final stages, people who are in its grips become like an automaton, a machine. You wake up in the morning, and the addiction screams, “Come, come, it’s time!” and even though you’ve just opened your eyes, you go over. You know you don’t want to do drugs anymore, yet you find yourself sitting in front of them anyway. And after years of this, you give up all hope of ever having a life where you’re not a soulless puppet, until the only way out in the end seems like death.
***
But not me. In my conscious mind, I knew I didn’t have a problem, that I just hadn’t figured out the perfect way to control my drug usage yet. My delusion told me that there was some grand middle path where I could get high anytime I wanted and then stop whenever I felt like it. I just hadn’t figured out the perfect way to stop, but I would in time.
Of course, this was insanity. After getting kicked out of my apartment and losing my job, I decided it was time to try rehab again. It certainly wasn’t my first time there. I had “tried” everything before, from prison to jail to rehab to detox to methadone to Suboxone to NA meetings and plenty of other things. Somehow, I hadn’t figured out the perfect method yet, but because my sickness told me I wasn’t sick, I was convinced it was only a matter of time. Soon, I would just quit and be free of this terrible addiction- but certainly not today. It would always have to be next Tuesday, or maybe next Friday. Next Friday always seems good and reasonable, until it comes and you realize you’re still hopeless and on your way to an early grave.
Yet, this time was also different in a fundamental way. Because really, at this point, I did want to stop. The party had long ago ended, and now the addiction was a full-time job that paid only in wages of misery and death.
So I went to detox for the twelfth time. I suffered the same nightmarish withdrawals as a million times before- not sleeping for days, feeling my heart racing, seeing my hands and fingers trembling, feeling my stomach doing flips as it debated with itself whether it could hold down any food today. And then, at the end of this madness, the nurse told me there were no beds available in their long-term inpatient rehab, which was a place I knew well, having spent months of my life there previously.
“So what am I supposed to do?” I asked, scowling and furious. I actually wanted to try quitting forever this time, and the universe seemed to be laughing at me. I knew they had a quality rehab program, and I wanted back in it. I wanted to try my best at actually paying attention when they told me about relapse prevention this time.
Detox only lasted four or five days, and that is no way enough time for an opiate addict to recover. Someone who just goes to detox and leaves likely has a 99% chance of failure. The admissions nurse with a face like a weary weasel stared impassively through me. I noticed the small ketchup stain on the front of her white uniform.
“Well, there are no beds available at our unit,” she said. “I mean, with all this fentanyl crap and all the drug courts, there’s a two-month waitlist for a 90-day rehab in our unit now.” I looked at her, aghast.
“I’m trying to get rid of a potentially fatal drug addiction here,” I said, as if anyone could ever fully get that monkey off their back. People could get sober, yes, but I knew they were always addicts in the pits of their souls, and many only got through life by struggling one day at a time.
“Well, there is an experimental drug rehab a couple hours away,” she said, looking down at a sheet of paper. “They contacted us asking for volunteers. They’ll cover all costs, including transportation to the facility.”
“What do you mean by ‘experimental drug rehab’?” I asked, confused. “Is this like some new method of quitting drugs? It’s not run by the Church of Scientology or anything, right?” She laughed at that.
“No, no, it’s nothing like that. Apparently, it’s a government-run unit. They want to try out new methods of helping people with severe opiate addiction and alcoholism. If you’re interested, you can go straight from here tomorrow when you get discharged.” I thought about it for a long moment. I nodded at the nurse.
“Alright, sure,” I said. “I’m willing to try anything.” Drugs had finally beaten me into a state of submission. I remembered the first time I went to rehab, I scoffed at their insane 12-step programs and their focus on a higher power. I thought it sounded wacky, and I was in no way interested in drinking their Kool-Aid.
Now I would listen to absolute anything, try absolutely anything with even the smallest chance of working. Opiates had so successfully dragged me down that I was finally in a state of reasonableness- a fairly rare thing for an addict, and one that usually takes many years to develop.
***
A black SUV pulled up in front of the detox unit the next day. I wasn’t the only volunteer they had found apparently. A pretty, young blonde girl with ancient, nervous eyes sat next to me, as well as some obese guy from Boston with far too many shamrock tattoos on his body and a Red Sox cap on his fat, Neanderthal forehead. We all sat in the back. The driver had an opaque, black window up, preventing us from seeing him or talking to him.
“Hi, I’m Haley,” the girl said, extending a trembling hand. Her pupils looked large and she looked ill at ease. Though I still wasn’t feeling too good, I was immediately interested and shook her hand.
“I’m Jay,” I said, not feeling overly conversational. The Red Sox guy apparently agreed.
“Simon,” the fat man grunted, looking back down at the book he was reading. I saw with interest it was the Big Book from Alcoholics Anonymous.
“Do you know anything about this place where we’re going?” I asked them. Simon just murmured and shook his head. He didn’t look like the conversational type. The girl perked up instantly, however.
“Well, the nurse didn’t seem to know much, but I read through that paper they made us sign,” Haley said, brushing a lock of her long hair behind her ears. Her perfume reminded me of springtime flowers and mountain peaks.
“You read the whole thing?” I said, surprised. I hadn’t read any of it. I wondered whether I had made a mistake. She nodded, the faint trace of a smile playing on the corners of her lips.
“It’s some brand new, totally revolutionary addiction treatment the government has developed in response to all the deaths from fentanyl and heroin lately,” she said. “Do you know what exposure therapy is?” Simon perked up at this. He pushed his glasses up on his nose.
“I’ve read about that,” he said in a deep voice. “That’s a way of dealing with phobias, right? Like if someone is afraid of spiders, they show them pictures and videos of spiders to desensitize them, and eventually maybe they put a spider in a cage in front of them…”
“Yeah, pretty much,” Haley said. I frowned.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “What does that have to do with addiction treatment? Are they going to show us pictures of dead bodies from overdoses until we change our minds? Because that doesn’t work. I already know that I’ll die if I don’t stop. I think that, deep down, I’ve known it for a very long time.” Haley just shook her head, bereft of any answers.
“I have no idea how exposure therapy could apply to addiction treatment. I guess we’ll find out when we get there.”
***
A couple hours later, we entered a long, winding dirt road. I saw the complex looming out of the top of the rolling New England hills like a knife hilt sticking out of a chest. It was garish. Massive black towers surrounded by electrified fences and rolls of razor-wire greeted us as we pulled up to the gate. Smaller wooden guard towers with observation decks like fire watchtowers stood at each of the four corners of the square complex.
“This looks like fricking Guantanamo Bay,” Simon observed. He suddenly looked very uncomfortable and nervous. He began shifting his large bulk around the seat. The springs gave an exasperated groan. Then he reached back and gingerly pulled his sweatpants out his rear without any sense of embarrassment.
“Why do they need all this razor-wire? Why the guard towers?” I asked. The driver up front finally rolled down the divider.
“Stay put, guys,” the driver said in a nasally, reedy voice. “Don’t try to get out until they give the all-clear. They have snipers trained in this position if you try anything.”
“What?” Simon yelled, stunned out of his introspection. “What is this, a joke?” The driver slowly rolled the divider back up in response. I sat there, not knowing what to think.
A soldier clad in all black came out of a small guardhouse at the entrance. He had an automatic rifle in his hands, the finger on the trigger. He walked slowly over and knelt down. I saw him talk to the driver, but I didn’t know what they said. A moment later, he pressed a button and the twenty-foot tall metal gate began to slowly roll to the side.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” I said as he drove us inside. Haley and Simon both looked pale, their eyes wide and terrified as if we were entering a warzone.
***
A garage door opened in the slick, metallic black surface of the towers. They looked like giant, dark lighthouses looming overhead, except they had no windows and no lights. However, dozens of spotlights were placed at the top of the fences and guardtowers. At night, I figured this place would be more lit up than a football stadium at night.
The driver drove into the garage. A sudden darkness overcame us. The doors unlocked with a clicking sound. He rolled down the divider.
“Get out,” he said abruptly. “Now.” We didn’t hesitate. I pulled open the door. I was still somewhat excited to see this new, revolutionary rehab unit. The razor-wire and automatic rifles had given me quite a bit of pause, but perhaps they kept convicted criminals here in a different unit. The more I thought about that, the more sense it made. I began to relax.
The driver rolled up his window and wouldn’t talk to us anymore. The garage door behind him stayed closed. No one came to greet us.
I saw a door nearby. Dim light came through at the bottom. Figuring that we could find someone who worked here over there, I walked over and pushed it open. Haley and Simon followed close behind me.
Bright fluorescent lights streamed down over a disgusting, mold-filled hallway that disappeared far in front of us in a straight line. I saw patches of black mold rising like hair from the soggy floorboards. Splintering doors stood lining both sides of the hallway, some of them hanging off their hinges and others laid out flat on the floor.
“Eww… what the hell is this?” Haley said, a genuine look of disgust crossing her face. Simon pointed to the door.
“Hey, there’s something nailed to the door,” he said. “A piece of paper.” I looked and saw he was right. I quickly walked over to it and pulled it off.
It had what looked like splatters of red across the front. I took it, frowning as I read the yellowed, ancient-looking sheet aloud to our little group.
“Rules to survive in Gray Path:

1. Do not sleep in the comfortable room filled with soft moss and poppies.
2. If you see the hobo with a mouth across his stomach, you must kill him.
3. Stay away from the patients in the delirium tremens ward. Anything they see comes true.
4. If you hear the hymns of the needle freak over the speakers, it means they have gotten out and you must hide.”

“Gray Path?” Simon asked, curious. “Is that the name of this place?”
“If you read the contract you guys signed, you would already know that,” Haley said, looking closer at the scrap of paper. “Is that… blood?” She had noticed the dark red stains sunk into the ancient paper.
“Hey, guys,” I asked, feeling nervous again, “does anybody know you’re here? Like family or friends or anything?” They both shook their heads.
“My family hasn’t talked to me in a couple years,” Haley admitted sheepishly.
“Same,” Simon grunted. I nodded.
“Same here,” I said, thinking. “Do you think that’s why they chose us? Because no one would notice we’re missing?” A look of horror crossed both their faces as they stood there. “Like, did you even tell any of your friends? Either of you guys?”
“I… I don’t actually have any friends,” Simon admitted sheepishly, rubbing the back of his hair. Haley just shook her head. Actually, like Simon, I didn’t really have any friends anymore. My addiction had sent them all away. Hell, I had given everything away. As I looked back, a deep sense of regret and remorse filled my soul.
We started walking down the hallway, avoiding the largest patches of yellow and black mold that sprouted like bushes from the soggy wood. A smell like decomposing meat and mushrooms filled the area. Haley wrinkled her nose.
The hallway turned at a 90 degree angle. It felt like we had been walking down it for at least fifteen minutes. It was mind-boggling how big this place was. I didn’t realize it when we pulled in, but the black towers I saw must have extended quite a few thousands of feet into the hills.
“Why would someone build a place this big?” Simon asked, looking around with an inquisitive eye. “And why would they let the hallways rot and grow soggy like this? It doesn’t make any…” A deep, choking sob cut him off. It came from around the corner.
“Hello?” Haley called out. I grabbed her shoulder, hissing in her ear.
“Shh!” I said. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Whoever it is already knows we’re here,” she said. She started slowly tiptoeing forward to peek around the corner.
A massive, dirty figure ran straight into her, knocking hard into the wall. She smacked her head hard. It made a hollow bonking sound, like a coconut being dropped on a concrete floor. She stumbled and fell to the ground. She started crawling away as I looked up at the abomination sprinting at me and Simon. Blood streamed from a gash on her forehead. She looked dazed and confused, but I had no time to check on Haley.
The eldritch creature wore tattered rags around his shoulders and his waist. His head nearly scraped the ceiling, about eight feet above our heads. I saw blood stains and dried, yellowish pus all over his skin. Deep, necrotic black spots were eaten into his flesh, forming deep circular patches across his skin like the blast holes of a nuclear war. Purplish streaks went out in all directions from the infected wounds, running across his bodies like polluted streams.
He turned his face towards us, and I saw a monstrous creature only glimpsed in the wildest of nightmares. In his entirely hairless face, he had one giant eye. It took up the entirety of the front of his head. It rolled in its socket, the pupil large and glassy, the yellow, jaundiced sclera streaked with bloody-red veins that stretched outwards like the roots of a tree.
His scarred, naked torso had an enormous mouth running across the area where his belly button should have been. The purplish, cracked lips formed into a snarl, showing many razor-sharp fangs. They curved inwards like the teeth of a shark. They snapped and bit at the air, the entire stomach and chest rippling and morphing as giant muscles worked furiously under his mutilated skin. An odor of rotten cheese emanated from the creature, mixing with the sickly smell of infection that rose from its decaying flesh.
He made a sound like a crying baby, his enormous chest mouth opening with an ear-splitting wail as streams of dirty tears ran down his filthy body. Simon turned and ran. With a predator’s instinct, the nightmarish hobo gave chase, his naked, bloody feet slapping hard against the soggy floor of the hallway as he sprinted forwards in a blur.
Simon frantically tried a random door and disappeared into a room. Roaring, the creature tried to squeeze through the relatively small door. It looked like a cockroach trying to slip through a tiny crack. It worked its body through the threshold, cracking the wood. It smashed its large, scarred hands against the wood. I heard the building shake with every blow and saw deep fissures running through the wall.
I turned, looking for Haley. We needed help if we were going to kill this thing. But realistically, how could we possibly kill it without any weapons?
Ten feet down the hallway, a door stood open to a room that glowed with a soft blue light. I walked toward it hesitantly, still hearing the cacophony the creature made as it chased Simon.
“Haley?” I whispered sharply. “Where are you?” I saw drops of blood leading into the room from when she had hit her head. I followed them like a trail of breadcrumbs.
Beyond the threshold, I saw a beautiful scene. Layer after layer of soft, green moss covered the floor. From the ground, unnaturally-large opium poppies extended up to the ceiling. They swayed slightly, as if a nonexistent breeze blew through the room. A sweet, earthy smell radiated from their beautiful pink and white flowers. I felt a sense of calmness and relaxation come over me. A sense of tiredness came over my mind. My eyelids began to droop.
Then I saw Haley, laying on the ground, asleep. All around her, large, tick-like bugs skittered and ran. Each was the size of a baseball. They took turns biting Haley at areas of exposed skin, latching onto her and sucking her blood. A few had already grown fat and changed from a jet black to a dark red. I looked in horror at Haley’s pale face.
“No!” I screamed, running forwards. I began ripping them off her body, a sense of adrenaline coming over me. It instantly banished any thought of sleep. Haley’s eyes fluttered open as drops of blood flew from the creature’s mouths. I ripped them off one by one. After I had gotten nearly a dozen of them off her, she stood up, dripping blood from countless bite marks. Her face looked pale and her lips slightly blue. She wavered on her feet, trembling. I thought she might pass out and I held her arm tightly.
“Get out of here!” I whisper shouted at her. The monstrous black ticks still circled us, trying to crawl up on our legs and bite us. I kept kicking on them and stomping them. Their bodies exploded under my shoe like a water balloon filled with dark, clotted blood. Haley and I started to turn when a silhouette filled the doorway.
The hobo leered at us inside the room of moss and poppies. He had Simon’s decapitated head in one of his filthy hands, the long, dirty nails of his finger biting deeply into Simon’s bloodless, white skin. He threw it at us, hitting me hard in the chest and knocking the air out of my lungs. I screamed, looking down at Simon’s cyanotic flesh and sightless, staring eyes. His blue lips were pressed together as if in an expression of disapproval. I felt more of the ticks trying to climb up my legs.
As the hobo began trying to smash his way through the doorway into the room, getting stuck just like he did before, a desperate idea came to me. I picked up one of the tick creatures, holding it gingerly by its sides. It tried to snap and bite at me like an angry cobra, but I quickly threw it at the hobo’s eye.
The tick soared through the air in a graceful arc, landing on the hobo’s face. Its black, spider-like legs writhed, twisting around the back of his head. The hobo’s arms were held back by the door, and his body was wedged in the threshold. He screamed as the tick went for his eye. The hobo tried to close the massive lid, but the tick’s probing mouthparts punctured through. A waterfall of vitreous fluid and blood streamed down the hobo’s face.
In a panic, the hobo pulled forwards into the room, taking half of the wall with him. It cracked and fell apart with a sound like collapsing bricks. Haley and I took the opportunity to sprint through one of the newly-formed gaps and into the hallway.
Blind, the hobo spun in circles as the ticks surrounded him, crawling up his legs and chest. He smashed himself over and over, using his large, scarred hands to splatter their insectile bodies all over his skin and the surrounding walls, but more came. Soon, he fell down, wailing with noises like a frantic baby under the army of dozens of enormous, mutated ticks.
Haley and I ran down the hallway, seeing Simon’s decapitated body laying over the threshold of the room he had tried to hide in. With the dying wails of the hobo following us, we fled that pit of horrors, only to find that we hadn’t gone nearly far enough.
***
We found a staircase and began climbing. We didn’t know where we were going, but we figured if the bottom floor was terrible, perhaps the top-most floor was significantly better. The stairs went up fifteen stories. The rusted rails had fallen off and deep cracks like the fault lines of an earthquake ran through the concrete steps. They looked like they were getting ready to crumble into dust.
We opened the door to the top floor. It gave a loud shriek of rusted metal. I winced, glancing down the hallway.
It looked like an apocalyptic hospital ward, the white walls yellowed with age and stained with drops of dark, ancient blood. Smashed windows looked in on empty units with rolling beds. Many had pieces of human skin or deep layers of gore caking their surfaces.
A cacophony of white noise emanated from speakers above our heads. A hissing of static shattered the silence. Haley and I both jumped. Then a diseased, raspy voice began to sound over the ancient speaker system of the hospital ward.
“A lunatic god stares down, black and cold.
We eat the bodies of the weak and old.
We change ourselves to fit his cries,
Feeling as our humanity slowly dies.
We know that we are dead and weak,
And so we all sing the
Hymns of the needle freak.”
“Oh God, not again,” Haley whispered, her eyes filled with horror. “What’s going to happen this time?” I grabbed her hand, hissing in her ear.
“Run! Run! We need to get out of the hallway!” I said as doors slammed open all up and down the hospital wards. I saw dozens of walking corpses slumped forwards, shambling and dragging their broken bodies slowly behind them. Some had marks of car accidents, such as the first young man I saw with pieces of his leg bones sticking out through his skin and a deep gash through his skull. Others looked like they had died of overdoses, some of them still having needles sticking out of their arms.
Haley and I chose a random ward, crashing through the door. Empty infant cribs stood all around us. Some had tiny, blood-stained clothes still in the cribs. I saw another door in the back, hanging off its hinges. I ran through, finding myself in a private room.
A man stood there without eyes, the empty sockets bare and open like two silently screaming mouths.
“Oh my God, what happened to you?” Haley screamed, backing up quickly. I looked at the sign above the door with a growing sense of horror. It read: “Delirium Tremens Ward”.
“They kept coming,” he said in a robotic, dead voice. “The spiders crawling on the floors, the dead baby crawling on the ceiling. My son, he died, you see, crib death, I was too drunk to check on him at the time, didn’t find him for twelve hours, but here, he’s…” He stopped, inhaling deeply. “They’re all here. I felt their claws on me. I saw his blue lips as his head spun around 180 degrees and he showed me a mouthful of needles. A mouthful of needles…” He trailed off, clawing at his hair with dirty hands. “I had to take out my eyes to stop seeing. I couldn’t keep seeing it. I couldn’t.
“Reality is ripping at the seams,” the eyeless man continued, his gouged-out sockets slowly dribbling blood down his cheeks like crimson tears. “It’s ripping, and I have nothing to hold onto now. My son won’t stop watching me with those dead, black eyes of his… please, make it stop.” As he spoke, I saw something crawling above us on the ceiling. I looked up, seeing a dead baby. He clung to the ceiling like a spider, hanging upside-down. His stiff limbs reached forward, dragging himself along and wailing.
His head began to spin around until it was completely backwards. The skin on its neck spiraled around in a sickening way. The baby gave a hiss like a snake. Its pure-black eyes flew open, and it showed a mouth filled with thousands of black needles that shimmered like obsidian under the flickering fluorescent lights.
Haley walked forwards calmly, putting her hand on the man. From the room full of cribs, I heard shuffling and groaning. The corpses were nearing.
“Your baby has found a way out,” Haley said comfortingly. “A door. Can you see it? It leads to beautiful, rolling hills and open fields filled with flowers.” The man’s face seemed to slacken. I looked behind us, seeing a dead, naked man approaching. He had black, garish stitches running down his chest and countless scars from shooting drugs all over his arms. Behind him, dozens more corpses writhed and shambled towards us. We were running out of time.
“A door?” the eyeless man said. “I don’t…”
“Yes, see it,” Haley encouraged him. “It’s a big door, and your baby can go through it and find peace. Do you see it?” The man hesitated. I saw a door appearing in the wall nearby, slowly fazing into view. The baby’s head finished spinning so that its neck was now hyperextended 360 degrees. Then it gave a triumphant cry and skittered towards the door like a centipede chasing a prey.
Beyond the threshold of the door, I saw the forests of New England. The sun beat down, natural and beautiful, unlike all this horrible, flickering fluorescent light. I grabbed Haley’s hand and ran through the door. It closed behind us with a popping sound.
We found ourselves in the middle of the woods. We began walking and discovered a trail, which eventually took us to a road. A couple hours later, we found a town. Grateful to be alive, we didn’t wonder about the fact that we had ended up five hours away from where we started.
***
Haley and I have been sober ever since. I don’t know what kind of demonic place we were kidnapped and taken to, but I seriously doubt the government knew anything about it. I tried to find out more information about Gray Path and who ran it, but I couldn’t find any evidence even indicating the place existed.
After what I saw there, though, I have never had an easier time staying sober. Dealing with the horrors and nightmares of Gray Path, seeing the walking corpses and the end-stages of addiction, it changed me in a fundamental way.
I no longer have any desire to use drugs, and God willing, I will never, ever relapse again.

I remember the first time I did heroin like it was yesterday. When I sniffed it, it felt like a powerful, relaxing massage flowing down my body like water. I remember running to the bathroom and throwing up over and over, but I felt so good that I didn’t even care. I wouldn’t be throwing up the next time I did heroin, though. My tolerance grew rapidly. Within months, the constant sickness became an ingrained fear, and eventually, my opiate addiction would take over my entire life.
No one ever wakes up in the morning, thinking, “I really wish I was a penniless, homeless drug addict.” No child ever grows up saying that he wants to be a raging alcoholic or a heroin fiend. No one wants to go to prisons, jails, detoxes, rehabs, mental asylums or graveyards, either.
But when the addiction takes over, you don’t have a choice of what you will or will not do. When addiction screams at you to jump, you only ask, “How high?” At a certain point, the idea of going without opiates becomes as instinctually frightening as going without food or water. In fact, a lot of drug addicts would much rather go without food and water than be plunged into the nightmarish, seemingly never-ending withdrawals.
An opiate addiction is like having a monkey on your back in some ways- if that monkey was demonic, rabid and fused into your skin like some sort of sadistic Siamese twin. You know that if you don’t do what that monkey says, it will turn its blood-red eyes to you in fury. You know that it will claw and bite you until you’re curled up in the fetal position on the floor, screaming, “Please, no more!”
At a certain point, you don’t even want to do the drugs anymore, but there’s no real question of it. When the disease has progressed to its final stages, people who are in its grips become like an automaton, a machine. You wake up in the morning, and the addiction screams, “Come, come, it’s time!” and even though you’ve just opened your eyes, you go over. You know you don’t want to do drugs anymore, yet you find yourself sitting in front of them anyway. And after years of this, you give up all hope of ever having a life where you’re not a soulless puppet, until the only way out in the end seems like death.
***
But not me. In my conscious mind, I knew I didn’t have a problem, that I just hadn’t figured out the perfect way to control my drug usage yet. My delusion told me that there was some grand middle path where I could get high anytime I wanted and then stop whenever I felt like it. I just hadn’t figured out the perfect way to stop, but I would in time.
Of course, this was insanity. After getting kicked out of my apartment and losing my job, I decided it was time to try rehab again. It certainly wasn’t my first time there. I had “tried” everything before, from prison to jail to rehab to detox to methadone to Suboxone to NA meetings and plenty of other things. Somehow, I hadn’t figured out the perfect method yet, but because my sickness told me I wasn’t sick, I was convinced it was only a matter of time. Soon, I would just quit and be free of this terrible addiction- but certainly not today. It would always have to be next Tuesday, or maybe next Friday. Next Friday always seems good and reasonable, until it comes and you realize you’re still hopeless and on your way to an early grave.
Yet, this time was also different in a fundamental way. Because really, at this point, I did want to stop. The party had long ago ended, and now the addiction was a full-time job that paid only in wages of misery and death.
So I went to detox for the twelfth time. I suffered the same nightmarish withdrawals as a million times before- not sleeping for days, feeling my heart racing, seeing my hands and fingers trembling, feeling my stomach doing flips as it debated with itself whether it could hold down any food today. And then, at the end of this madness, the nurse told me there were no beds available in their long-term inpatient rehab, which was a place I knew well, having spent months of my life there previously.
“So what am I supposed to do?” I asked, scowling and furious. I actually wanted to try quitting forever this time, and the universe seemed to be laughing at me. I knew they had a quality rehab program, and I wanted back in it. I wanted to try my best at actually paying attention when they told me about relapse prevention this time.
Detox only lasted four or five days, and that is no way enough time for an opiate addict to recover. Someone who just goes to detox and leaves likely has a 99% chance of failure. The admissions nurse with a face like a weary weasel stared impassively through me. I noticed the small ketchup stain on the front of her white uniform.
“Well, there are no beds available at our unit,” she said. “I mean, with all this fentanyl crap and all the drug courts, there’s a two-month waitlist for a 90-day rehab in our unit now.” I looked at her, aghast.
“I’m trying to get rid of a potentially fatal drug addiction here,” I said, as if anyone could ever fully get that monkey off their back. People could get sober, yes, but I knew they were always addicts in the pits of their souls, and many only got through life by struggling one day at a time.
“Well, there is an experimental drug rehab a couple hours away,” she said, looking down at a sheet of paper. “They contacted us asking for volunteers. They’ll cover all costs, including transportation to the facility.”
“What do you mean by ‘experimental drug rehab’?” I asked, confused. “Is this like some new method of quitting drugs? It’s not run by the Church of Scientology or anything, right?” She laughed at that.
“No, no, it’s nothing like that. Apparently, it’s a government-run unit. They want to try out new methods of helping people with severe opiate addiction and alcoholism. If you’re interested, you can go straight from here tomorrow when you get discharged.” I thought about it for a long moment. I nodded at the nurse.
“Alright, sure,” I said. “I’m willing to try anything.” Drugs had finally beaten me into a state of submission. I remembered the first time I went to rehab, I scoffed at their insane 12-step programs and their focus on a higher power. I thought it sounded wacky, and I was in no way interested in drinking their Kool-Aid.
Now I would listen to absolute anything, try absolutely anything with even the smallest chance of working. Opiates had so successfully dragged me down that I was finally in a state of reasonableness- a fairly rare thing for an addict, and one that usually takes many years to develop.
***
A black SUV pulled up in front of the detox unit the next day. I wasn’t the only volunteer they had found apparently. A pretty, young blonde girl with ancient, nervous eyes sat next to me, as well as some obese guy from Boston with far too many shamrock tattoos on his body and a Red Sox cap on his fat, Neanderthal forehead. We all sat in the back. The driver had an opaque, black window up, preventing us from seeing him or talking to him.
“Hi, I’m Haley,” the girl said, extending a trembling hand. Her pupils looked large and she looked ill at ease. Though I still wasn’t feeling too good, I was immediately interested and shook her hand.
“I’m Jay,” I said, not feeling overly conversational. The Red Sox guy apparently agreed.
“Simon,” the fat man grunted, looking back down at the book he was reading. I saw with interest it was the Big Book from Alcoholics Anonymous.
“Do you know anything about this place where we’re going?” I asked them. Simon just murmured and shook his head. He didn’t look like the conversational type. The girl perked up instantly, however.
“Well, the nurse didn’t seem to know much, but I read through that paper they made us sign,” Haley said, brushing a lock of her long hair behind her ears. Her perfume reminded me of springtime flowers and mountain peaks.
“You read the whole thing?” I said, surprised. I hadn’t read any of it. I wondered whether I had made a mistake. She nodded, the faint trace of a smile playing on the corners of her lips.
“It’s some brand new, totally revolutionary addiction treatment the government has developed in response to all the deaths from fentanyl and heroin lately,” she said. “Do you know what exposure therapy is?” Simon perked up at this. He pushed his glasses up on his nose.
“I’ve read about that,” he said in a deep voice. “That’s a way of dealing with phobias, right? Like if someone is afraid of spiders, they show them pictures and videos of spiders to desensitize them, and eventually maybe they put a spider in a cage in front of them…”
“Yeah, pretty much,” Haley said. I frowned.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “What does that have to do with addiction treatment? Are they going to show us pictures of dead bodies from overdoses until we change our minds? Because that doesn’t work. I already know that I’ll die if I don’t stop. I think that, deep down, I’ve known it for a very long time.” Haley just shook her head, bereft of any answers.
“I have no idea how exposure therapy could apply to addiction treatment. I guess we’ll find out when we get there.”
***
A couple hours later, we entered a long, winding dirt road. I saw the complex looming out of the top of the rolling New England hills like a knife hilt sticking out of a chest. It was garish. Massive black towers surrounded by electrified fences and rolls of razor-wire greeted us as we pulled up to the gate. Smaller wooden guard towers with observation decks like fire watchtowers stood at each of the four corners of the square complex.
“This looks like fricking Guantanamo Bay,” Simon observed. He suddenly looked very uncomfortable and nervous. He began shifting his large bulk around the seat. The springs gave an exasperated groan. Then he reached back and gingerly pulled his sweatpants out his rear without any sense of embarrassment.
“Why do they need all this razor-wire? Why the guard towers?” I asked. The driver up front finally rolled down the divider.
“Stay put, guys,” the driver said in a nasally, reedy voice. “Don’t try to get out until they give the all-clear. They have snipers trained in this position if you try anything.”
“What?” Simon yelled, stunned out of his introspection. “What is this, a joke?” The driver slowly rolled the divider back up in response. I sat there, not knowing what to think.
A soldier clad in all black came out of a small guardhouse at the entrance. He had an automatic rifle in his hands, the finger on the trigger. He walked slowly over and knelt down. I saw him talk to the driver, but I didn’t know what they said. A moment later, he pressed a button and the twenty-foot tall metal gate began to slowly roll to the side.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” I said as he drove us inside. Haley and Simon both looked pale, their eyes wide and terrified as if we were entering a warzone.
***
A garage door opened in the slick, metallic black surface of the towers. They looked like giant, dark lighthouses looming overhead, except they had no windows and no lights. However, dozens of spotlights were placed at the top of the fences and guardtowers. At night, I figured this place would be more lit up than a football stadium at night.
The driver drove into the garage. A sudden darkness overcame us. The doors unlocked with a clicking sound. He rolled down the divider.
“Get out,” he said abruptly. “Now.” We didn’t hesitate. I pulled open the door. I was still somewhat excited to see this new, revolutionary rehab unit. The razor-wire and automatic rifles had given me quite a bit of pause, but perhaps they kept convicted criminals here in a different unit. The more I thought about that, the more sense it made. I began to relax.
The driver rolled up his window and wouldn’t talk to us anymore. The garage door behind him stayed closed. No one came to greet us.
I saw a door nearby. Dim light came through at the bottom. Figuring that we could find someone who worked here over there, I walked over and pushed it open. Haley and Simon followed close behind me.
Bright fluorescent lights streamed down over a disgusting, mold-filled hallway that disappeared far in front of us in a straight line. I saw patches of black mold rising like hair from the soggy floorboards. Splintering doors stood lining both sides of the hallway, some of them hanging off their hinges and others laid out flat on the floor.
“Eww… what the hell is this?” Haley said, a genuine look of disgust crossing her face. Simon pointed to the door.
“Hey, there’s something nailed to the door,” he said. “A piece of paper.” I looked and saw he was right. I quickly walked over to it and pulled it off.
It had what looked like splatters of red across the front. I took it, frowning as I read the yellowed, ancient-looking sheet aloud to our little group.
“Rules to survive in Gray Path:
Do not sleep in the comfortable room filled with soft moss and poppies.
If you see the hobo with a mouth across his stomach, you must kill him.
Stay away from the patients in the delirium tremens ward. Anything they see comes true.
If you hear the hymns of the needle freak over the speakers, it means they have gotten out and you must hide.”
“Gray Path?” Simon asked, curious. “Is that the name of this place?”
“If you read the contract you guys signed, you would already know that,” Haley said, looking closer at the scrap of paper. “Is that… blood?” She had noticed the dark red stains sunk into the ancient paper.
“Hey, guys,” I asked, feeling nervous again, “does anybody know you’re here? Like family or friends or anything?” They both shook their heads.
“My family hasn’t talked to me in a couple years,” Haley admitted sheepishly.
“Same,” Simon grunted. I nodded.
“Same here,” I said, thinking. “Do you think that’s why they chose us? Because no one would notice we’re missing?” A look of horror crossed both their faces as they stood there. “Like, did you even tell any of your friends? Either of you guys?”
“I… I don’t actually have any friends,” Simon admitted sheepishly, rubbing the back of his hair. Haley just shook her head. Actually, like Simon, I didn’t really have any friends anymore. My addiction had sent them all away. Hell, I had given everything away. As I looked back, a deep sense of regret and remorse filled my soul.
We started walking down the hallway, avoiding the largest patches of yellow and black mold that sprouted like bushes from the soggy wood. A smell like decomposing meat and mushrooms filled the area. Haley wrinkled her nose.
The hallway turned at a 90 degree angle. It felt like we had been walking down it for at least fifteen minutes. It was mind-boggling how big this place was. I didn’t realize it when we pulled in, but the black towers I saw must have extended quite a few thousands of feet into the hills.
“Why would someone build a place this big?” Simon asked, looking around with an inquisitive eye. “And why would they let the hallways rot and grow soggy like this? It doesn’t make any…” A deep, choking sob cut him off. It came from around the corner.
“Hello?” Haley called out. I grabbed her shoulder, hissing in her ear.
“Shh!” I said. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Whoever it is already knows we’re here,” she said. She started slowly tiptoeing forward to peek around the corner.
A massive, dirty figure ran straight into her, knocking hard into the wall. She smacked her head hard. It made a hollow bonking sound, like a coconut being dropped on a concrete floor. She stumbled and fell to the ground. She started crawling away as I looked up at the abomination sprinting at me and Simon. Blood streamed from a gash on her forehead. She looked dazed and confused, but I had no time to check on Haley.
The eldritch creature wore tattered rags around his shoulders and his waist. His head nearly scraped the ceiling, about eight feet above our heads. I saw blood stains and dried, yellowish pus all over his skin. Deep, necrotic black spots were eaten into his flesh, forming deep circular patches across his skin like the blast holes of a nuclear war. Purplish streaks went out in all directions from the infected wounds, running across his bodies like polluted streams.
He turned his face towards us, and I saw a monstrous creature only glimpsed in the wildest of nightmares. In his entirely hairless face, he had one giant eye. It took up the entirety of the front of his head. It rolled in its socket, the pupil large and glassy, the yellow, jaundiced sclera streaked with bloody-red veins that stretched outwards like the roots of a tree.
His scarred, naked torso had an enormous mouth running across the area where his belly button should have been. The purplish, cracked lips formed into a snarl, showing many razor-sharp fangs. They curved inwards like the teeth of a shark. They snapped and bit at the air, the entire stomach and chest rippling and morphing as giant muscles worked furiously under his mutilated skin. An odor of rotten cheese emanated from the creature, mixing with the sickly smell of infection that rose from its decaying flesh.
He made a sound like a crying baby, his enormous chest mouth opening with an ear-splitting wail as streams of dirty tears ran down his filthy body. Simon turned and ran. With a predator’s instinct, the nightmarish hobo gave chase, his naked, bloody feet slapping hard against the soggy floor of the hallway as he sprinted forwards in a blur.
Simon frantically tried a random door and disappeared into a room. Roaring, the creature tried to squeeze through the relatively small door. It looked like a cockroach trying to slip through a tiny crack. It worked its body through the threshold, cracking the wood. It smashed its large, scarred hands against the wood. I heard the building shake with every blow and saw deep fissures running through the wall.
I turned, looking for Haley. We needed help if we were going to kill this thing. But realistically, how could we possibly kill it without any weapons?
Ten feet down the hallway, a door stood open to a room that glowed with a soft blue light. I walked toward it hesitantly, still hearing the cacophony the creature made as it chased Simon.
“Haley?” I whispered sharply. “Where are you?” I saw drops of blood leading into the room from when she had hit her head. I followed them like a trail of breadcrumbs.
Beyond the threshold, I saw a beautiful scene. Layer after layer of soft, green moss covered the floor. From the ground, unnaturally-large opium poppies extended up to the ceiling. They swayed slightly, as if a nonexistent breeze blew through the room. A sweet, earthy smell radiated from their beautiful pink and white flowers. I felt a sense of calmness and relaxation come over me. A sense of tiredness came over my mind. My eyelids began to droop.
Then I saw Haley, laying on the ground, asleep. All around her, large, tick-like bugs skittered and ran. Each was the size of a baseball. They took turns biting Haley at areas of exposed skin, latching onto her and sucking her blood. A few had already grown fat and changed from a jet black to a dark red. I looked in horror at Haley’s pale face.
“No!” I screamed, running forwards. I began ripping them off her body, a sense of adrenaline coming over me. It instantly banished any thought of sleep. Haley’s eyes fluttered open as drops of blood flew from the creature’s mouths. I ripped them off one by one. After I had gotten nearly a dozen of them off her, she stood up, dripping blood from countless bite marks. Her face looked pale and her lips slightly blue. She wavered on her feet, trembling. I thought she might pass out and I held her arm tightly.
“Get out of here!” I whisper shouted at her. The monstrous black ticks still circled us, trying to crawl up on our legs and bite us. I kept kicking on them and stomping them. Their bodies exploded under my shoe like a water balloon filled with dark, clotted blood. Haley and I started to turn when a silhouette filled the doorway.
The hobo leered at us inside the room of moss and poppies. He had Simon’s decapitated head in one of his filthy hands, the long, dirty nails of his finger biting deeply into Simon’s bloodless, white skin. He threw it at us, hitting me hard in the chest and knocking the air out of my lungs. I screamed, looking down at Simon’s cyanotic flesh and sightless, staring eyes. His blue lips were pressed together as if in an expression of disapproval. I felt more of the ticks trying to climb up my legs.
As the hobo began trying to smash his way through the doorway into the room, getting stuck just like he did before, a desperate idea came to me. I picked up one of the tick creatures, holding it gingerly by its sides. It tried to snap and bite at me like an angry cobra, but I quickly threw it at the hobo’s eye.
The tick soared through the air in a graceful arc, landing on the hobo’s face. Its black, spider-like legs writhed, twisting around the back of his head. The hobo’s arms were held back by the door, and his body was wedged in the threshold. He screamed as the tick went for his eye. The hobo tried to close the massive lid, but the tick’s probing mouthparts punctured through. A waterfall of vitreous fluid and blood streamed down the hobo’s face.
In a panic, the hobo pulled forwards into the room, taking half of the wall with him. It cracked and fell apart with a sound like collapsing bricks. Haley and I took the opportunity to sprint through one of the newly-formed gaps and into the hallway.
Blind, the hobo spun in circles as the ticks surrounded him, crawling up his legs and chest. He smashed himself over and over, using his large, scarred hands to splatter their insectile bodies all over his skin and the surrounding walls, but more came. Soon, he fell down, wailing with noises like a frantic baby under the army of dozens of enormous, mutated ticks.
Haley and I ran down the hallway, seeing Simon’s decapitated body laying over the threshold of the room he had tried to hide in. With the dying wails of the hobo following us, we fled that pit of horrors, only to find that we hadn’t gone nearly far enough.
***
We found a staircase and began climbing. We didn’t know where we were going, but we figured if the bottom floor was terrible, perhaps the top-most floor was significantly better. The stairs went up fifteen stories. The rusted rails had fallen off and deep cracks like the fault lines of an earthquake ran through the concrete steps. They looked like they were getting ready to crumble into dust.
We opened the door to the top floor. It gave a loud shriek of rusted metal. I winced, glancing down the hallway.
It looked like an apocalyptic hospital ward, the white walls yellowed with age and stained with drops of dark, ancient blood. Smashed windows looked in on empty units with rolling beds. Many had pieces of human skin or deep layers of gore caking their surfaces.
A cacophony of white noise emanated from speakers above our heads. A hissing of static shattered the silence. Haley and I both jumped. Then a diseased, raspy voice began to sound over the ancient speaker system of the hospital ward.
“A lunatic god stares down, black and cold.
We eat the bodies of the weak and old.
We change ourselves to fit his cries,
Feeling as our humanity slowly dies.
We know that we are dead and weak,
And so we all sing the
Hymns of the needle freak.”
“Oh God, not again,” Haley whispered, her eyes filled with horror. “What’s going to happen this time?” I grabbed her hand, hissing in her ear.
“Run! Run! We need to get out of the hallway!” I said as doors slammed open all up and down the hospital wards. I saw dozens of walking corpses slumped forwards, shambling and dragging their broken bodies slowly behind them. Some had marks of car accidents, such as the first young man I saw with pieces of his leg bones sticking out through his skin and a deep gash through his skull. Others looked like they had died of overdoses, some of them still having needles sticking out of their arms.
Haley and I chose a random ward, crashing through the door. Empty infant cribs stood all around us. Some had tiny, blood-stained clothes still in the cribs. I saw another door in the back, hanging off its hinges. I ran through, finding myself in a private room.
A man stood there without eyes, the empty sockets bare and open like two silently screaming mouths.
“Oh my God, what happened to you?” Haley screamed, backing up quickly. I looked at the sign above the door with a growing sense of horror. It read: “Delirium Tremens Ward”.
“They kept coming,” he said in a robotic, dead voice. “The spiders crawling on the floors, the dead baby crawling on the ceiling. My son, he died, you see, crib death, I was too drunk to check on him at the time, didn’t find him for twelve hours, but here, he’s…” He stopped, inhaling deeply. “They’re all here. I felt their claws on me. I saw his blue lips as his head spun around 180 degrees and he showed me a mouthful of needles. A mouthful of needles…” He trailed off, clawing at his hair with dirty hands. “I had to take out my eyes to stop seeing. I couldn’t keep seeing it. I couldn’t.
“Reality is ripping at the seams,” the eyeless man continued, his gouged-out sockets slowly dribbling blood down his cheeks like crimson tears. “It’s ripping, and I have nothing to hold onto now. My son won’t stop watching me with those dead, black eyes of his… please, make it stop.” As he spoke, I saw something crawling above us on the ceiling. I looked up, seeing a dead baby. He clung to the ceiling like a spider, hanging upside-down. His stiff limbs reached forward, dragging himself along and wailing.
His head began to spin around until it was completely backwards. The skin on its neck spiraled around in a sickening way. The baby gave a hiss like a snake. Its pure-black eyes flew open, and it showed a mouth filled with thousands of black needles that shimmered like obsidian under the flickering fluorescent lights.
Haley walked forwards calmly, putting her hand on the man. From the room full of cribs, I heard shuffling and groaning. The corpses were nearing.
“Your baby has found a way out,” Haley said comfortingly. “A door. Can you see it? It leads to beautiful, rolling hills and open fields filled with flowers.” The man’s face seemed to slacken. I looked behind us, seeing a dead, naked man approaching. He had black, garish stitches running down his chest and countless scars from shooting drugs all over his arms. Behind him, dozens more corpses writhed and shambled towards us. We were running out of time.
“A door?” the eyeless man said. “I don’t…”
“Yes, see it,” Haley encouraged him. “It’s a big door, and your baby can go through it and find peace. Do you see it?” The man hesitated. I saw a door appearing in the wall nearby, slowly fazing into view. The baby’s head finished spinning so that its neck was now hyperextended 360 degrees. Then it gave a triumphant cry and skittered towards the door like a centipede chasing a prey.
Beyond the threshold of the door, I saw the forests of New England. The sun beat down, natural and beautiful, unlike all this horrible, flickering fluorescent light. I grabbed Haley’s hand and ran through the door. It closed behind us with a popping sound.
We found ourselves in the middle of the woods. We began walking and discovered a trail, which eventually took us to a road. A couple hours later, we found a town. Grateful to be alive, we didn’t wonder about the fact that we had ended up five hours away from where we started.
***
Haley and I have been sober ever since. I don’t know what kind of demonic place we were kidnapped and taken to, but I seriously doubt the government knew anything about it. I tried to find out more information about Gray Path and who ran it, but I couldn’t find any evidence even indicating the place existed.
After what I saw there, though, I have never had an easier time staying sober. Dealing with the horrors and nightmares of Gray Path, seeing the walking corpses and the end-stages of addiction, it changed me in a fundamental way.
I no longer have any desire to use drugs, and God willing, I will never, ever relapse again.

I remember the first time I did heroin like it was yesterday. When I sniffed it, it felt like a powerful, relaxing massage flowing down my body like water. I remember running to the bathroom and throwing up over and over, but I felt so good that I didn’t even care. I wouldn’t be throwing up the next time I did heroin, though. My tolerance grew rapidly. Within months, the constant sickness became an ingrained fear, and eventually, my opiate addiction would take over my entire life.
No one ever wakes up in the morning, thinking, “I really wish I was a penniless, homeless drug addict.” No child ever grows up saying that he wants to be a raging alcoholic or a heroin fiend. No one wants to go to prisons, jails, detoxes, rehabs, mental asylums or graveyards, either.
But when the addiction takes over, you don’t have a choice of what you will or will not do. When addiction screams at you to jump, you only ask, “How high?” At a certain point, the idea of going without opiates becomes as instinctually frightening as going without food or water. In fact, a lot of drug addicts would much rather go without food and water than be plunged into the nightmarish, seemingly never-ending withdrawals.
An opiate addiction is like having a monkey on your back in some ways- if that monkey was demonic, rabid and fused into your skin like some sort of sadistic Siamese twin. You know that if you don’t do what that monkey says, it will turn its blood-red eyes to you in fury. You know that it will claw and bite you until you’re curled up in the fetal position on the floor, screaming, “Please, no more!”
At a certain point, you don’t even want to do the drugs anymore, but there’s no real question of it. When the disease has progressed to its final stages, people who are in its grips become like an automaton, a machine. You wake up in the morning, and the addiction screams, “Come, come, it’s time!” and even though you’ve just opened your eyes, you go over. You know you don’t want to do drugs anymore, yet you find yourself sitting in front of them anyway. And after years of this, you give up all hope of ever having a life where you’re not a soulless puppet, until the only way out in the end seems like death.
***
But not me. In my conscious mind, I knew I didn’t have a problem, that I just hadn’t figured out the perfect way to control my drug usage yet. My delusion told me that there was some grand middle path where I could get high anytime I wanted and then stop whenever I felt like it. I just hadn’t figured out the perfect way to stop, but I would in time.
Of course, this was insanity. After getting kicked out of my apartment and losing my job, I decided it was time to try rehab again. It certainly wasn’t my first time there. I had “tried” everything before, from prison to jail to rehab to detox to methadone to Suboxone to NA meetings and plenty of other things. Somehow, I hadn’t figured out the perfect method yet, but because my sickness told me I wasn’t sick, I was convinced it was only a matter of time. Soon, I would just quit and be free of this terrible addiction- but certainly not today. It would always have to be next Tuesday, or maybe next Friday. Next Friday always seems good and reasonable, until it comes and you realize you’re still hopeless and on your way to an early grave.
Yet, this time was also different in a fundamental way. Because really, at this point, I did want to stop. The party had long ago ended, and now the addiction was a full-time job that paid only in wages of misery and death.
So I went to detox for the twelfth time. I suffered the same nightmarish withdrawals as a million times before- not sleeping for days, feeling my heart racing, seeing my hands and fingers trembling, feeling my stomach doing flips as it debated with itself whether it could hold down any food today. And then, at the end of this madness, the nurse told me there were no beds available in their long-term inpatient rehab, which was a place I knew well, having spent months of my life there previously.
“So what am I supposed to do?” I asked, scowling and furious. I actually wanted to try quitting forever this time, and the universe seemed to be laughing at me. I knew they had a quality rehab program, and I wanted back in it. I wanted to try my best at actually paying attention when they told me about relapse prevention this time.
Detox only lasted four or five days, and that is no way enough time for an opiate addict to recover. Someone who just goes to detox and leaves likely has a 99% chance of failure. The admissions nurse with a face like a weary weasel stared impassively through me. I noticed the small ketchup stain on the front of her white uniform.
“Well, there are no beds available at our unit,” she said. “I mean, with all this fentanyl crap and all the drug courts, there’s a two-month waitlist for a 90-day rehab in our unit now.” I looked at her, aghast.
“I’m trying to get rid of a potentially fatal drug addiction here,” I said, as if anyone could ever fully get that monkey off their back. People could get sober, yes, but I knew they were always addicts in the pits of their souls, and many only got through life by struggling one day at a time.
“Well, there is an experimental drug rehab a couple hours away,” she said, looking down at a sheet of paper. “They contacted us asking for volunteers. They’ll cover all costs, including transportation to the facility.”
“What do you mean by ‘experimental drug rehab’?” I asked, confused. “Is this like some new method of quitting drugs? It’s not run by the Church of Scientology or anything, right?” She laughed at that.
“No, no, it’s nothing like that. Apparently, it’s a government-run unit. They want to try out new methods of helping people with severe opiate addiction and alcoholism. If you’re interested, you can go straight from here tomorrow when you get discharged.” I thought about it for a long moment. I nodded at the nurse.
“Alright, sure,” I said. “I’m willing to try anything.” Drugs had finally beaten me into a state of submission. I remembered the first time I went to rehab, I scoffed at their insane 12-step programs and their focus on a higher power. I thought it sounded wacky, and I was in no way interested in drinking their Kool-Aid.
Now I would listen to absolute anything, try absolutely anything with even the smallest chance of working. Opiates had so successfully dragged me down that I was finally in a state of reasonableness- a fairly rare thing for an addict, and one that usually takes many years to develop.
***
A black SUV pulled up in front of the detox unit the next day. I wasn’t the only volunteer they had found apparently. A pretty, young blonde girl with ancient, nervous eyes sat next to me, as well as some obese guy from Boston with far too many shamrock tattoos on his body and a Red Sox cap on his fat, Neanderthal forehead. We all sat in the back. The driver had an opaque, black window up, preventing us from seeing him or talking to him.
“Hi, I’m Haley,” the girl said, extending a trembling hand. Her pupils looked large and she looked ill at ease. Though I still wasn’t feeling too good, I was immediately interested and shook her hand.
“I’m Jay,” I said, not feeling overly conversational. The Red Sox guy apparently agreed.
“Simon,” the fat man grunted, looking back down at the book he was reading. I saw with interest it was the Big Book from Alcoholics Anonymous.
“Do you know anything about this place where we’re going?” I asked them. Simon just murmured and shook his head. He didn’t look like the conversational type. The girl perked up instantly, however.
“Well, the nurse didn’t seem to know much, but I read through that paper they made us sign,” Haley said, brushing a lock of her long hair behind her ears. Her perfume reminded me of springtime flowers and mountain peaks.
“You read the whole thing?” I said, surprised. I hadn’t read any of it. I wondered whether I had made a mistake. She nodded, the faint trace of a smile playing on the corners of her lips.
“It’s some brand new, totally revolutionary addiction treatment the government has developed in response to all the deaths from fentanyl and heroin lately,” she said. “Do you know what exposure therapy is?” Simon perked up at this. He pushed his glasses up on his nose.
“I’ve read about that,” he said in a deep voice. “That’s a way of dealing with phobias, right? Like if someone is afraid of spiders, they show them pictures and videos of spiders to desensitize them, and eventually maybe they put a spider in a cage in front of them…”
“Yeah, pretty much,” Haley said. I frowned.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “What does that have to do with addiction treatment? Are they going to show us pictures of dead bodies from overdoses until we change our minds? Because that doesn’t work. I already know that I’ll die if I don’t stop. I think that, deep down, I’ve known it for a very long time.” Haley just shook her head, bereft of any answers.
“I have no idea how exposure therapy could apply to addiction treatment. I guess we’ll find out when we get there.”
***
A couple hours later, we entered a long, winding dirt road. I saw the complex looming out of the top of the rolling New England hills like a knife hilt sticking out of a chest. It was garish. Massive black towers surrounded by electrified fences and rolls of razor-wire greeted us as we pulled up to the gate. Smaller wooden guard towers with observation decks like fire watchtowers stood at each of the four corners of the square complex.
“This looks like fricking Guantanamo Bay,” Simon observed. He suddenly looked very uncomfortable and nervous. He began shifting his large bulk around the seat. The springs gave an exasperated groan. Then he reached back and gingerly pulled his sweatpants out his rear without any sense of embarrassment.
“Why do they need all this razor-wire? Why the guard towers?” I asked. The driver up front finally rolled down the divider.
“Stay put, guys,” the driver said in a nasally, reedy voice. “Don’t try to get out until they give the all-clear. They have snipers trained in this position if you try anything.”
“What?” Simon yelled, stunned out of his introspection. “What is this, a joke?” The driver slowly rolled the divider back up in response. I sat there, not knowing what to think.
A soldier clad in all black came out of a small guardhouse at the entrance. He had an automatic rifle in his hands, the finger on the trigger. He walked slowly over and knelt down. I saw him talk to the driver, but I didn’t know what they said. A moment later, he pressed a button and the twenty-foot tall metal gate began to slowly roll to the side.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” I said as he drove us inside. Haley and Simon both looked pale, their eyes wide and terrified as if we were entering a warzone.
***
A garage door opened in the slick, metallic black surface of the towers. They looked like giant, dark lighthouses looming overhead, except they had no windows and no lights. However, dozens of spotlights were placed at the top of the fences and guardtowers. At night, I figured this place would be more lit up than a football stadium at night.
The driver drove into the garage. A sudden darkness overcame us. The doors unlocked with a clicking sound. He rolled down the divider.
“Get out,” he said abruptly. “Now.” We didn’t hesitate. I pulled open the door. I was still somewhat excited to see this new, revolutionary rehab unit. The razor-wire and automatic rifles had given me quite a bit of pause, but perhaps they kept convicted criminals here in a different unit. The more I thought about that, the more sense it made. I began to relax.
The driver rolled up his window and wouldn’t talk to us anymore. The garage door behind him stayed closed. No one came to greet us.
I saw a door nearby. Dim light came through at the bottom. Figuring that we could find someone who worked here over there, I walked over and pushed it open. Haley and Simon followed close behind me.
Bright fluorescent lights streamed down over a disgusting, mold-filled hallway that disappeared far in front of us in a straight line. I saw patches of black mold rising like hair from the soggy floorboards. Splintering doors stood lining both sides of the hallway, some of them hanging off their hinges and others laid out flat on the floor.
“Eww… what the hell is this?” Haley said, a genuine look of disgust crossing her face. Simon pointed to the door.
“Hey, there’s something nailed to the door,” he said. “A piece of paper.” I looked and saw he was right. I quickly walked over to it and pulled it off.
It had what looked like splatters of red across the front. I took it, frowning as I read the yellowed, ancient-looking sheet aloud to our little group.
“Rules to survive in Gray Path:

1. Do not sleep in the comfortable room filled with soft moss and poppies.
2. If you see the hobo with a mouth across his stomach, you must kill him.
3. Stay away from the patients in the delirium tremens ward. Anything they see comes true.
4. If you hear the hymns of the needle freak over the speakers, it means they have gotten out and you must hide.”

“Gray Path?” Simon asked, curious. “Is that the name of this place?”
“If you read the contract you guys signed, you would already know that,” Haley said, looking closer at the scrap of paper. “Is that… blood?” She had noticed the dark red stains sunk into the ancient paper.
“Hey, guys,” I asked, feeling nervous again, “does anybody know you’re here? Like family or friends or anything?” They both shook their heads.
“My family hasn’t talked to me in a couple years,” Haley admitted sheepishly.
“Same,” Simon grunted. I nodded.
“Same here,” I said, thinking. “Do you think that’s why they chose us? Because no one would notice we’re missing?” A look of horror crossed both their faces as they stood there. “Like, did you even tell any of your friends? Either of you guys?”
“I… I don’t actually have any friends,” Simon admitted sheepishly, rubbing the back of his hair. Haley just shook her head. Actually, like Simon, I didn’t really have any friends anymore. My addiction had sent them all away. Hell, I had given everything away. As I looked back, a deep sense of regret and remorse filled my soul.
We started walking down the hallway, avoiding the largest patches of yellow and black mold that sprouted like bushes from the soggy wood. A smell like decomposing meat and mushrooms filled the area. Haley wrinkled her nose.
The hallway turned at a 90 degree angle. It felt like we had been walking down it for at least fifteen minutes. It was mind-boggling how big this place was. I didn’t realize it when we pulled in, but the black towers I saw must have extended quite a few thousands of feet into the hills.
“Why would someone build a place this big?” Simon asked, looking around with an inquisitive eye. “And why would they let the hallways rot and grow soggy like this? It doesn’t make any…” A deep, choking sob cut him off. It came from around the corner.
“Hello?” Haley called out. I grabbed her shoulder, hissing in her ear.
“Shh!” I said. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Whoever it is already knows we’re here,” she said. She started slowly tiptoeing forward to peek around the corner.
A massive, dirty figure ran straight into her, knocking hard into the wall. She smacked her head hard. It made a hollow bonking sound, like a coconut being dropped on a concrete floor. She stumbled and fell to the ground. She started crawling away as I looked up at the abomination sprinting at me and Simon. Blood streamed from a gash on her forehead. She looked dazed and confused, but I had no time to check on Haley.
The eldritch creature wore tattered rags around his shoulders and his waist. His head nearly scraped the ceiling, about eight feet above our heads. I saw blood stains and dried, yellowish pus all over his skin. Deep, necrotic black spots were eaten into his flesh, forming deep circular patches across his skin like the blast holes of a nuclear war. Purplish streaks went out in all directions from the infected wounds, running across his bodies like polluted streams.
He turned his face towards us, and I saw a monstrous creature only glimpsed in the wildest of nightmares. In his entirely hairless face, he had one giant eye. It took up the entirety of the front of his head. It rolled in its socket, the pupil large and glassy, the yellow, jaundiced sclera streaked with bloody-red veins that stretched outwards like the roots of a tree.
His scarred, naked torso had an enormous mouth running across the area where his belly button should have been. The purplish, cracked lips formed into a snarl, showing many razor-sharp fangs. They curved inwards like the teeth of a shark. They snapped and bit at the air, the entire stomach and chest rippling and morphing as giant muscles worked furiously under his mutilated skin. An odor of rotten cheese emanated from the creature, mixing with the sickly smell of infection that rose from its decaying flesh.
He made a sound like a crying baby, his enormous chest mouth opening with an ear-splitting wail as streams of dirty tears ran down his filthy body. Simon turned and ran. With a predator’s instinct, the nightmarish hobo gave chase, his naked, bloody feet slapping hard against the soggy floor of the hallway as he sprinted forwards in a blur.
Simon frantically tried a random door and disappeared into a room. Roaring, the creature tried to squeeze through the relatively small door. It looked like a cockroach trying to slip through a tiny crack. It worked its body through the threshold, cracking the wood. It smashed its large, scarred hands against the wood. I heard the building shake with every blow and saw deep fissures running through the wall.
I turned, looking for Haley. We needed help if we were going to kill this thing. But realistically, how could we possibly kill it without any weapons?
Ten feet down the hallway, a door stood open to a room that glowed with a soft blue light. I walked toward it hesitantly, still hearing the cacophony the creature made as it chased Simon.
“Haley?” I whispered sharply. “Where are you?” I saw drops of blood leading into the room from when she had hit her head. I followed them like a trail of breadcrumbs.
Beyond the threshold, I saw a beautiful scene. Layer after layer of soft, green moss covered the floor. From the ground, unnaturally-large opium poppies extended up to the ceiling. They swayed slightly, as if a nonexistent breeze blew through the room. A sweet, earthy smell radiated from their beautiful pink and white flowers. I felt a sense of calmness and relaxation come over me. A sense of tiredness came over my mind. My eyelids began to droop.
Then I saw Haley, laying on the ground, asleep. All around her, large, tick-like bugs skittered and ran. Each was the size of a baseball. They took turns biting Haley at areas of exposed skin, latching onto her and sucking her blood. A few had already grown fat and changed from a jet black to a dark red. I looked in horror at Haley’s pale face.
“No!” I screamed, running forwards. I began ripping them off her body, a sense of adrenaline coming over me. It instantly banished any thought of sleep. Haley’s eyes fluttered open as drops of blood flew from the creature’s mouths. I ripped them off one by one. After I had gotten nearly a dozen of them off her, she stood up, dripping blood from countless bite marks. Her face looked pale and her lips slightly blue. She wavered on her feet, trembling. I thought she might pass out and I held her arm tightly.
“Get out of here!” I whisper shouted at her. The monstrous black ticks still circled us, trying to crawl up on our legs and bite us. I kept kicking on them and stomping them. Their bodies exploded under my shoe like a water balloon filled with dark, clotted blood. Haley and I started to turn when a silhouette filled the doorway.
The hobo leered at us inside the room of moss and poppies. He had Simon’s decapitated head in one of his filthy hands, the long, dirty nails of his finger biting deeply into Simon’s bloodless, white skin. He threw it at us, hitting me hard in the chest and knocking the air out of my lungs. I screamed, looking down at Simon’s cyanotic flesh and sightless, staring eyes. His blue lips were pressed together as if in an expression of disapproval. I felt more of the ticks trying to climb up my legs.
As the hobo began trying to smash his way through the doorway into the room, getting stuck just like he did before, a desperate idea came to me. I picked up one of the tick creatures, holding it gingerly by its sides. It tried to snap and bite at me like an angry cobra, but I quickly threw it at the hobo’s eye.
The tick soared through the air in a graceful arc, landing on the hobo’s face. Its black, spider-like legs writhed, twisting around the back of his head. The hobo’s arms were held back by the door, and his body was wedged in the threshold. He screamed as the tick went for his eye. The hobo tried to close the massive lid, but the tick’s probing mouthparts punctured through. A waterfall of vitreous fluid and blood streamed down the hobo’s face.
In a panic, the hobo pulled forwards into the room, taking half of the wall with him. It cracked and fell apart with a sound like collapsing bricks. Haley and I took the opportunity to sprint through one of the newly-formed gaps and into the hallway.
Blind, the hobo spun in circles as the ticks surrounded him, crawling up his legs and chest. He smashed himself over and over, using his large, scarred hands to splatter their insectile bodies all over his skin and the surrounding walls, but more came. Soon, he fell down, wailing with noises like a frantic baby under the army of dozens of enormous, mutated ticks.
Haley and I ran down the hallway, seeing Simon’s decapitated body laying over the threshold of the room he had tried to hide in. With the dying wails of the hobo following us, we fled that pit of horrors, only to find that we hadn’t gone nearly far enough.
***
We found a staircase and began climbing. We didn’t know where we were going, but we figured if the bottom floor was terrible, perhaps the top-most floor was significantly better. The stairs went up fifteen stories. The rusted rails had fallen off and deep cracks like the fault lines of an earthquake ran through the concrete steps. They looked like they were getting ready to crumble into dust.
We opened the door to the top floor. It gave a loud shriek of rusted metal. I winced, glancing down the hallway.
It looked like an apocalyptic hospital ward, the white walls yellowed with age and stained with drops of dark, ancient blood. Smashed windows looked in on empty units with rolling beds. Many had pieces of human skin or deep layers of gore caking their surfaces.
A cacophony of white noise emanated from speakers above our heads. A hissing of static shattered the silence. Haley and I both jumped. Then a diseased, raspy voice began to sound over the ancient speaker system of the hospital ward.
“A lunatic god stares down, black and cold.
We eat the bodies of the weak and old.
We change ourselves to fit his cries,
Feeling as our humanity slowly dies.
We know that we are dead and weak,
And so we all sing the
Hymns of the needle freak.”
“Oh God, not again,” Haley whispered, her eyes filled with horror. “What’s going to happen this time?” I grabbed her hand, hissing in her ear.
“Run! Run! We need to get out of the hallway!” I said as doors slammed open all up and down the hospital wards. I saw dozens of walking corpses slumped forwards, shambling and dragging their broken bodies slowly behind them. Some had marks of car accidents, such as the first young man I saw with pieces of his leg bones sticking out through his skin and a deep gash through his skull. Others looked like they had died of overdoses, some of them still having needles sticking out of their arms.
Haley and I chose a random ward, crashing through the door. Empty infant cribs stood all around us. Some had tiny, blood-stained clothes still in the cribs. I saw another door in the back, hanging off its hinges. I ran through, finding myself in a private room.
A man stood there without eyes, the empty sockets bare and open like two silently screaming mouths.
“Oh my God, what happened to you?” Haley screamed, backing up quickly. I looked at the sign above the door with a growing sense of horror. It read: “Delirium Tremens Ward”.
“They kept coming,” he said in a robotic, dead voice. “The spiders crawling on the floors, the dead baby crawling on the ceiling. My son, he died, you see, crib death, I was too drunk to check on him at the time, didn’t find him for twelve hours, but here, he’s…” He stopped, inhaling deeply. “They’re all here. I felt their claws on me. I saw his blue lips as his head spun around 180 degrees and he showed me a mouthful of needles. A mouthful of needles…” He trailed off, clawing at his hair with dirty hands. “I had to take out my eyes to stop seeing. I couldn’t keep seeing it. I couldn’t.
“Reality is ripping at the seams,” the eyeless man continued, his gouged-out sockets slowly dribbling blood down his cheeks like crimson tears. “It’s ripping, and I have nothing to hold onto now. My son won’t stop watching me with those dead, black eyes of his… please, make it stop.” As he spoke, I saw something crawling above us on the ceiling. I looked up, seeing a dead baby. He clung to the ceiling like a spider, hanging upside-down. His stiff limbs reached forward, dragging himself along and wailing.
His head began to spin around until it was completely backwards. The skin on its neck spiraled around in a sickening way. The baby gave a hiss like a snake. Its pure-black eyes flew open, and it showed a mouth filled with thousands of black needles that shimmered like obsidian under the flickering fluorescent lights.
Haley walked forwards calmly, putting her hand on the man. From the room full of cribs, I heard shuffling and groaning. The corpses were nearing.
“Your baby has found a way out,” Haley said comfortingly. “A door. Can you see it? It leads to beautiful, rolling hills and open fields filled with flowers.” The man’s face seemed to slacken. I looked behind us, seeing a dead, naked man approaching. He had black, garish stitches running down his chest and countless scars from shooting drugs all over his arms. Behind him, dozens more corpses writhed and shambled towards us. We were running out of time.
“A door?” the eyeless man said. “I don’t…”
“Yes, see it,” Haley encouraged him. “It’s a big door, and your baby can go through it and find peace. Do you see it?” The man hesitated. I saw a door appearing in the wall nearby, slowly fazing into view. The baby’s head finished spinning so that its neck was now hyperextended 360 degrees. Then it gave a triumphant cry and skittered towards the door like a centipede chasing a prey.
Beyond the threshold of the door, I saw the forests of New England. The sun beat down, natural and beautiful, unlike all this horrible, flickering fluorescent light. I grabbed Haley’s hand and ran through the door. It closed behind us with a popping sound.
We found ourselves in the middle of the woods. We began walking and discovered a trail, which eventually took us to a road. A couple hours later, we found a town. Grateful to be alive, we didn’t wonder about the fact that we had ended up five hours away from where we started.
***
Haley and I have been sober ever since. I don’t know what kind of demonic place we were kidnapped and taken to, but I seriously doubt the government knew anything about it. I tried to find out more information about Gray Path and who ran it, but I couldn’t find any evidence even indicating the place existed.
After what I saw there, though, I have never had an easier time staying sober. Dealing with the horrors and nightmares of Gray Path, seeing the walking corpses and the end-stages of addiction, it changed me in a fundamental way.
I no longer have any desire to use drugs, and God willing, I will never, ever relapse again.

“Well Nick, Madam Cotton’s workshop seems to have reopened. You remember where it was right? Good, I’ll get the whetstone out.” - Mabel
I didn’t expect to make this entry, Madam Cotton hasn't been around for five years at this point- I was hoping that she was gone for good. I’ve written down everything I remember and I’ll make the first visit to check if anything has changed. Madam Cotton lives to the north of the cottage, underneath the large hill with the sycamore tree. According to Mabel, the entryway at the base of the hill reopened recently, and she’s put a few of her display cases on either side to mark its position- they should be easy enough to spot.
Madam Cotton has the appearance of a woman in her late 30s, with long, delicate fingers and dark brown hair, pulled into a neat bun. Her skin is unnaturally pale, stretched tightly across her joints and along her hairline. She has a friendly but intense expression- she often forgets that humans need to blink. She wears a long-sleeved, green dress that Greg once mentioned looked like it was from around the mid-19th century: Having a history major on the ranger team was surprisingly helpful… I wish he was still around.
Madam Cotton’s workshop contains several tools, that she asks us to sharpen. This is done using a whetstone from the equipment cabinet. Practice using it with one of the smaller kitchen knives before your visit and fill the travel container with water before you leave so the stone has time to soak. Additionally, bring a package of adhesive bandages, one of the red pastilles (you can find them in the silver pot on the top shelf) and a handkerchief.

1. Before your visit, make sure you are as neat as possible. Take a bath, brush your teeth and wear a freshly laundered uniform. Cover up any cuts or scrapes with fresh bandages. If you are missing any body parts, there are some prosthetics in the supply closet to use- false fingers, silicone ears, etc. I’ll be using a glass eye. Don’t draw attention to them during your visit.
2. Just before you leave, go to the bathroom and spritz your neck and wrists with the lavender perfume that is kept on the shelf next to the mirror. It is very strong, so two sprays on each pulse point should be enough for the whole day.
3. The entrance to Madam Cotton’s workshop is a polished wooden staircase that descends into the ground under the hill. While the steps at the bottom are well-maintained and wide, the ones near the bottom are significantly narrower and in poor condition. Go down carefully, since it's easy to trip and injure yourself towards the bottom.
4. When you reach the workshop door, knock loudly. If you hear Madam Cotton invite you in, leave and go back to the cottage. If she is paying enough attention to invite you in, she isn’t working- it is dangerous to have her full attention. Once an hour has passed, return and try again. She’s rarely idle for long so you shouldn’t need to do this more than once or twice.
5. When you enter the shop, you can expect Madam Cottom to be occupied with one of her projects. This is good, avoid catching her attention for as long as possible. Don’t say anything or try to greet her. She knows that you’re there, she’s just focused on something more interesting than you at that moment. Best to keep it that way.
6. The walls of Madam Cotton’s shop are lined with display cases, containing taxidermies. The majority are tableau scenes of high society events, using small animals. Some of the works are manmade chimeras, featuring parts from mundane and magical creatures- I remember seeing a puckling with a squirrel tail last time I visited. And a few are human subjects, both former rangers and unfortunate souls plucked from who-knows-where, altered in manners that I’d prefer not to go into detail about here. While it is fine to look at the animal taxidermies, avoid staring at the human subjects- it is bad for your nerves and your interest in them may catch Madam Cotton’s attention. She is very protective of them and might become irritated, or worse, interpret your interest as a wish to join them.
7. The tools Madam Cotton wants you to sharpen will be laid out on a circular wooden table to the left of the door, as well as a chair for you to use. She sometimes positions the chair with its back to the room. If she's done this, quietly move the chair so you are sitting in the corner of the room- she has a habit of suddenly looming behind rangers while they work. While this isn’t inherently dangerous, it can be startling and you may end up cutting yourself while you work.
8. Take your time with the sharpening and be thorough. If you cut yourself, quickly hide the injury and use one of the adhesive bandages to cover it up. If Madam Cotton sees the cut, she will insist on ‘fixing’ it. I remember seeing a few rangers who had to endure this in the past, and her makeshift skin grafts and stitches usually became infected. I suspect she doesn’t bother to change the needle from whatever project she was working on when you came in.
9. If she does come over to watch you at any point, greet Madam Cotton politely, but try to make her return to her work. Tell her you will let her inspect the tools at the end. Usually, she’ll be placated by this but if she’s still hovering over you, you’ve unfortunately may have been labeled a ‘curiosity’. This will make things harder for you going forward, so be especially cautious as you finish up your task.
10. At some point in your visit, you may notice Madam Cotton bring out a green bottle and spritz herself with it. She may bring it over to you and offer you some, but you must decline. Point out that you are already wearing a scent and wouldn’t want to muddle it- she won't take offense to that particular excuse. Although the perfume smells fine, it is mixed with a preservative fluid that damages living tissue, rendering it flaky and dull.
11. When you’ve finished sharpening all of the tools, inform Madam Cotton so she can come and check them. I’d suggest looking the other way while she’s doing this since she normally brings one of her smaller projects over to test the tools on- it can be rather gruesome, especially if you are fond of birds or kittens. You may be asked to resharpen a tool. While she is very particular, she is patient and you won’t be penalised for spending extra time ensuring that each tool is sharpened to her liking.
12. When Madam Cotton is satisfied with your work, she will invite you for tea. You must accept this invitation, but keep an eye on which teapot she chooses to use. If she picks the red teapot with a poppy pattern, stay and drink what she offers you, but eat the red pastille before doing so- it will counter the effects of the slower-acting substance lining the pot. While she will be disappointed to see that you’ve been unaffected, she won’t push the matter further- a strange sense of decorum prevents her from being as outwardly aggressive as other inhabitants in most situations. However, if she selects the green teapot, see step 13.
13. The green teapot is reserved for those Madam Cotton labels as ‘curiosities’- subjects whom she regards as particularly desirable for her projects. Her criteria aren’t entirely clear- for example, both former rangers Greg and Laura had similar dark hair, and while she was fascinated by Laura’s she regarded Greg’s as “painfully mundane”. The drug within the green teapot sets in fast, and she will insist on making you drink it if you don’t leave quickly (based on the marks she’s left on the wrists and mouths of some of her projects, we suspect she may be capable of great force although she only reserves it for particular situations). For this situation, we have devised an exit method. Ask Madame Cotton if you can have some sugar for the tea before she sits down. Be polite but insistent and she should oblige. While she’s fetching it, run for the door and knock over one of the display cases containing a human subject. This will stop Madam Cotton from pursuing you as she focuses on ‘saving’ her work. When you get back to the cottage, let us know if this has happened- we’ll avoid sending you out to her again. Madam Cotton doesn’t seem to leave the workshop so you needn’t worry about running into her in the woods- we suspect she may have suppliers for her materials, but we’re not sure who they are.
14. If she brought out the red teapot, you are expected to stay with her until she excuses you- this usually happens when she realises that the tea hasn’t taken effect. She will make polite conversation during this time but is evaluating your answers intently. Avoid mentioning animals or anything linked to them, even if she directly presses you on the subject. If you say something that piques her interest, it may give her an idea of how she'd like to use you in a project. For example, I slipped up on my first visit, mentioning the play I chose my false name from- she always tried to get my opinion on donkeys during subsequent visits.
15. During your conversation, do not mention anything about yourself that you regret or wish could be improved. As mentioned before, do not draw attention to missing body parts either. Madam Cotton often relishes in the idea that she is ‘completing’ her subjects, and is not as interested in people who already regard themselves as ‘complete’. Like many things in Raifee Wood, your words hold power in this situation and as long as you insist that you are ‘complete’, your true feelings will not matter.
16. If you notice the collar or sleeves of Madam Cotton’s dress beginning to darken, look away and hand her the handkerchief. She will be thankful for this and let you leave early as she tidies up the bloodstains. This is a somewhat common occurrence, the fabric of Madam Cotton’s dress seems to irritate her skin. Not a bad thing for us, the sooner you’re permitted to leave the better.
17. Madam Cotton will eventually allow you to leave. You should be able to do so without too much trouble, but make sure that you have all your equipment with you before leaving. Madam Cotton has been known to hide things to force additional visits. If you cannot find something, ask her: She’ll usually produce it for you albeit begrudgingly.

(The final part of the text seems to have been added sometime later- the more saturated ink suggests that Nick switched to a new pen before adding the update)
Ok! I just wrapped my visit and all of the rules still seem to be in place. She was surprised to see that I was still around and kept me there for a long time- other than that, she's the same as ever. However, I will take the next few trips myself to be certain. Sitting in the workshop, I was reminded of how many rangers she’s come to possess- it’s difficult to ignore when you’re in the same room as them. I’m not blaming them, but it’s strange how many she managed to kill. She’s not as aggressive as many of the other residents, and her method of killing is comparatively easy to avoid.
I suppose drugging is one of the gentler ways people go around here…
Previous Entry: Entry 29, The Steward
Introduction and basic guide to surviving in Raifee Wood

So I’m in a club at my school. I struggle with a lot of self harm/intrusive thoughts and I’ve been in and out patient for a couple of months. I needed a break, so I smoked a cigarette in the bathroom. Stupid, I know. But my only other option was slitting my wrists and I already got caught with stitches so I’d need to go inpatient again. This time they wouldn’t let me out. I’d go residential. That scares me so much. But basically someone ratted me out, I dumped the cigarettes and used hella perfume. Basically my club director believes me because I don’t smell like cigarettes, but everyone else doesn’t and they’re all talking about me. I might get kicked out. But she told me that most people said it wasn’t me. I made an excuse and left. She said it’s okay, and that she believes me and I’m fine and can come back on Monday (our next meeting) What should I do? Stick to my story? Confess? I could get written up. I want to do something successful with my life, I want to be a doctor. But I won’t be accepted into any college if I get suspended.

New Music Friday is the weekly thread dedicated to cataloging all the Album/EP releases that came out this week, including non-subreddit relevant releases. This is also a great place to discuss these albums, or bring to attention other albums released this week.

❓ "this seems intriguing after a cursory look"
⭐ "im interested in this for one reason or another"
❤️ "ive been waiting for weeks, months/i'm absolutely in love with this"

April 5th

Vampire Weekend - Only God Was Above Us
Label: Columbia
Genre: Indie Rock, Chamber Pop
Khruangbin - A LA SALA
Label: Dead Oceans
Genre: Neo-Psychedelia, Funk Rock
The Black Keys - Ohio Players
Label: Nonesuch
Genre: Alternative Rock
❓ Mount Kimbie - The Sunset Violent
Label: WARP
Genre: Post-Punk, Indie Rock
❓ Fabiana Palladino - Fabiana Palladino
Label: XL
Genre: Sophisti-Pop, Contemporary R&B
Crush Fund - New Fixation (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Punk Rock
❓ Lily Piette - Her Computerized Machinery Complex
Label: n/a
Genre: Indie Rock
Varg2™ - Nordic Flora Series, Pt. 6: Outlaw Music
Label: YEAR0001
Genre: Electronic Dance Music, Post-Industrial
The Libertines - All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade
Label: EMI
Genre: Indie Rock
❓ Lo Moon - I Wish You Way More Than Luck
Label: Thirty Tigers
Genre: Art Rock, Dream Pop
Still Corners - Dream Talk
Label: Wrecking Light
Genre: Dream Pop
Phosphorescent - Revelator
Label: Verve
Genre: Americana, Singer-songwriter
Jane Weaver - Love in Constant Spectacle
Label: Fire
Genre: Psychedelic Pop
Palace - Ultrasound
Label: Universal
Genre: Indie Pop
Dana Gavanski - LATE SLAP
Label: Full Time Hobby
Genre: Indie Pop, Singer-Songwriter
Gustaf - Package Pt. 2
Label: Royal Mountain
Genre: Post-Punk, Art Punk
Kate Clover - The Apocalypse Dream
Label: n/a
Genre: Power Pop
Collapse List - Novo Amor
Label: AllPoints
Genre: Indie Folk, Ambient
❓ Vegyn - The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions
Label: PLZ Make It Ruins
Genre: Neo-Psychedelia, Trip Hop
Katie Pruitt - Mantras
Label: Rounder
Genre: Contemporary Country
Other Half - Dark Ageism
Label: Big Scary Monsters
Genre: Post-Hardcore
❓ SINKANE - We Belong
Label: City Slang
Genre: Afrobeat, Art Pop
Temple of the Fuzz Witch - Apotheosis
Label: Ripple
Genre: Stoner Metal, Doom Metal
Bob Vylan - Humble As The Sun
Label: n/a
Genre: UK Hip Hop
Bartees Strange - Magic Boy (archival/compilation)
Label: Brassland
Genre: Indie
Cuffed Up - All You Got
Label: n/a
Genre: Alternative Rock
Party Pest - Uninvited
Label: Psychic Hysteria
Genre: Post-Punk, Pop Punk
Grace Cummings - Ramona
Label: ATO
Genre: Singer-songwriter
Bnny - One Million Love Songs (nsfw artwork: nudity)
Label: Fire Talk
Genre: Dream Pop
Jane Penny (of TOPS) - Surfacing (EP)
Label: Luminelle
Genre: Synthpop
Einstürzende Neubauten - Rampen (apm: alien pop music)
Label: Potomak
Genre: Post-Industrial, Industrial
❤️ Eunuchs - Harbour Century
Label: n/a
Genre: Symphonic Prog, Avant-Prog, Jazz-Rock
The KVB - Tremors
Label: n/a
Genre: Post-Punk, Darkwave
❓ Amblare - Amblare
Label: Melodic Virtue
Genre: Post-Hardcore
⭐ Drahla - angeltape
Label: Captured Tracks
Genre: Post-Punk, Art Punk
Maxband (featuring Max from Parquet Courts + Patrick from A Beacon School) - On Ice
Label: n/a
Genre: Indie Rock, Dream Pop
Lillie West (of Lala Lala) - if i were a real man i would be able to break the neck of a suffering bird
Label: Hardly Art
Genre: Indie Rock
❓ LipStitch - Let's Talk
Label: n/a
Genre: Power Pop
Medium Build - Country
Label: n/a
Genre: Indie Pop
Sofia Portanet - Chasing Dreams
Label: Duchess Box
Genre: Art Pop, Indie Pop
Pye Corner Audio - The Endless Echo
Label: Ghost Box
Genre: Progressive Electronic, Ambient Techno
John Moreland - Visitor
Label: Old Omens
Genre: Singer-Songwriter, Americana
Marcus King - Mood Swing
Label: Republic
Genre: Blues Rock
❓ RiTchie (Injury Reserve) - Triple Digits (112)
Label: n/a
Genre: Experimental Hip Hop
Wisp - Pandora (EP)
Label: Magic Soup
Genre: Shoegaze
Winter McQuinn - Move To The Trees
Label: Third Eye Stimuli
Genre: Psychedelic Pop
❓ DSRT MTHR - dark
Label: n/a
Genre: Alt-Pop, Indie Pop
Beatenberg - The Great Fire of Beatenberg
Label: Leafy
Genre: Indie Pop
Lizzy McAlpine - Older
Label: RCA
Genre: Indie Folk, Singer-songwriter
The K's - I Wonder If The World Knows?
Label: LAB
Genre: Indie Rock, Alt-Pop
⭐ Wine Lips - Super Mega Ultra
Label: Stomp
Genre: Garage Punk, Psychedelic Rock
Alice Russell - I Am
Label: n/a
Genre: Neo-Soul, Jazz Pop
Last Dinosaurs - KYO (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Indie Rock, Indie Surf
❓ The Palms - Wonderland
Label: n/a
Genre: Dream Pop
Yellow Days - HOTEL HEAVEN
Label: n/a
Genre: Bedroom Pop, Pop Soul
Feeder - Black / Red
Label: Big Teeth
Genre: Alternative Rock
Dead Pony - Ignore This
Label: LAB
Genre: Alternative Rock
❓ Serengeti - KDIV
Label: n/a
Genre: Abstract Hip Hop, Jazz Rap
❓ Annie-Claude Deschenes - Les Manieres De Table
Label: Bonsound
Genre: Cold Wave, Electro
Caleb Landry Jones - Hey Gary, Hey Dawn
Label: Sacred Bones
Genre: Psychedelic Pop
Willis - I Can’t Thank You Enough
Label: n/a
Genre: Indie Pop, Bedroom Pop
❓ Ceschi - Bring Us The Head Of Francisco False (Part 1)
Label: Fake Four
Genre: Abstract Hip Hop, East Coast Hip Hop
The Dredge - Torches
Label: Apollon Record AS
Genre: Indie Rock, Post-Rock?
sleepmakeswaves - It's Here, But I Have No Names For It
Label: n/a
Genre: Post-Rock
Tara Kannangara - Extraordinary People (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Jazz Pop
Alfie Jukes - Sitting Pretty EP
Label: n/a
Genre: Pop
Kat King - Domestic Bliss (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Pop
Saro - coward california
Label: n/a
Genre: Electronic
GloRilla - Ehhthang Ehhthang
Label: Cocaine
Genre: Southern Hip Hop, Memphis Rap, Trap
Tori Kelly - TORI.
Label: Epic
Genre: Contemporary R&B, Pop
Doja Cat - Scarlet 2 CLAUDE
Label: Kemosabe
Genre: West Coast Hip Hop, Pop Rap
Bryson Tiller - Bryson Tiller
Label: RCA
Genre: Trap Soul, Contemporary R&B
Conan Gray - Found Heaven
Label: Republic
Genre: Synthpop, New Wave
Benson Boone - Fireworks & Rollerblades
Label: Night Street
Genre: Adult Contemporary
Griff - ver2igo vol. 2 (EP)
Label: Warner UK
Genre: Synthpop, Alt-Pop
INNA - El Pasado
Label: Global
Genre: Contemporary R&B, Latin Pop
Concrete Boys - It's Us Vol. 1
Label: Quality Control
Genre: Southern Hip Hop, Trap
J. Cole - Might Delete Later
Label: n/a
Genre: Trap, Southern Hip Hop
❓ Pink Siifu - GOT FOOD AT THE CRIB'! VOL.1
Label: n/a
Genre: Southern Hip Hop, Cloud Rap, Sound Collage
❓ Marv Won - I'm Fine, Thanks For Asking
Label: Mello
Genre: Conscious Hip Hop, Boom Bap
Pigeons & Planes - See You Next Year 2
Label: n/a
Genre: Hip Hop/Rap
Tisakorean - MUMU 8818 (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Pop Rap, Southern Hip Hop
AKTHESAVIOR & sagun - u r not alone
Label: n/a
Genre: Lo-Fi Hip Hop
Mickey Diamond - Super Shredder
Label: n/a
Genre: Hardcore Hip Hop, Boom Bap
❓ Alpha Wolf - Half Living Things
Label: n/a
Genre: Metalcore, Nu Metal
❤️ ERRA - CURE
Label: UNFD
Genre: Melodic Metalcore, Alternative Metal, Djent
Hour Of Penance - Devotion
Label: Agonia
Genre: Technical Death Metal
Ingested - The Tide of Death and Fractured Dreams
Label: Metal Blade
Genre: Deathcore, Brutal Death Metal
Strung Out - Dead Rebellion
Label: Fat
Genre: Melodic Hardcore
Austere - Beneath the Threshold
Label: Lupus Lounge
Genre: Atmospheric Black Metal, Doomgaze
Vnder a Crvmbling Moon - II: Aging & Formless
Label: Ripcord
Genre: Atmospheric Sludge Metal
❓ Witch Vomit - Funeral Sanctum
Label: 20 Buck Spin
Genre: Death Metal
Wretched Death - Democide
Label: n/a
Genre: Grindcore, Death Metal
❓ Acid Mammoth - Supersonic Megafauna Collision
Label: Heavy Psych
Genre: Doom Metal, Stoner Metal
⭐ Photosequence - Bestiary
Label: Lacerated Enemy
Genre: Technical Death Metal
Warbell - Ruin (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Melodic Death Metal
Venomous Echoes - Split Formations and Infinite Mania
Label: I, Voidhanger
Genre: Dissonant Death Metal
Opposite Day - Colossal Nests of Metal and Glass (April 1st)
Label: n/a
Genre: Progressive Rock
Nihternnes - NAMUH
Label: n/a
Genre: Atmospheric Black Metal
Lurcher - Breathe (EP)
Label: Trepanation
Genre: Sludge Metal, Grunge
Lesath - Under the Moon
Label: n/a
Genre: Atmospheric Black Metal, Shoegaze
❓ Iron Monkey - Spleen & Goad
Label: Relapse
Genre: Sludge Metal
Horndal - Head Hammer Man
Label: Prosthetic
Genre: Sludge Metal
Concrete Age - Motherland
Label: n/a
Genre: Melodic Death Metal, Groove Metal
Destroyer - Degradation Years
Label: n/a
Genre: Stoner Rock, Traditional Doom Metal

March 29th

Ride - Interplay
Label: Wichita
Genre: Alternative Rock, Neo-Psychedelia
⭐ Cindy Lee - Diamond Jubilee
Label: Realistik
Genre: Hypnagogic Pop, Psychedelic Pop
Chastity Belt - Live Laugh Love
Label: Suicide Squeeze
Genre: Indie Rock
❓ Chicano Batman - Notebook Fantasy
Label: ATO
Genre: Psychedelic Rock, Soft Rock
Dent May - What's For Breakfast?
Label: Carpark
Genre: Indie Pop
Shabazz Palaces - Exotic Birds of Prey (EP)
Label: Sub Pop
Genre: Experimental Hip Hop
A Country Western - Life on the Lawn
Label: Crafted Sounds
Genre: Slacker Rock
Jaguar Sun - For You (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Indie Pop
Holiday Ghosts - Coat of Arms
Label: n/a
Genre: Indie Pop, Indie Rock
Kelly Moran - Moves in the Field
Label: WARP
Genre: Modern Classical
❓Sunglaciers - Regular Nature
Label: Mothland
Genre: Post-Punk
The Rocky Valentines - Erase
Label: Tooth & Nail
Genre: Indie Rock, Power Pop
sonhos tomam conta - corpos de água
Label: Longinus
Genre: Shoegaze, Dream Pop
h. pruz - No Glory
Label: n/a
Genre: Singer-Songwriter
VIAL - burnout
Label: Get Better
Genre: Indie Rock, Pop Punk
❓ Analisa Six - Shadows of 9
Label: n/a
Genre: Lo-Fi Garage Rock, Noise Rock
❓ gglum - The Garden Dream
Label: Secretly Canadian
Genre: Bedroom Pop
❓ CD Ghost - Vignette II (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Synthpop, Chillwave
Yot Club - Rufus
Label: n/a
Genre: Indie Pop, Bedroom Pop
fanclubwallet - Our Bodies Paint Traffic Lines (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Bedroom Pop, Indie Pop
❓ The High Llamas - Hey Panda
Label: Drag City
Genre: Indietronica, Art Pop
❓ The Church - Eros Zeta and the Perfumed Guitars
Label: Easy Action
Genre: Neo-Psychedelia, Dream Pop
Reyna Tropical - Malegría
Label: Psychic Hotline
Genre: Latin Alternative
Cléa Vincent - Ad vitam æternamour
Label: Midnight Special
Genre: French Pop
Cheem - Fast Fashion (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Alternative Rock
❓ Sucre - Starkisser
Label: n/a
Genre: Alt-Pop
Blu DeTiger - All I Ever Want Is Everything
Label: Capitol
Genre: Indie Pop, Alt-Pop
Toner - God’s Hammer (EP)
Label: Smoking Room
Genre: Slacker Rock, Noise Pop
Chatterton - Fields Of This
Label: n/a
Genre: Slacker Rock
❓ Arushi Jain - Delight
Label: Leaving
Genre: Progressive Electronic, Ambient
❓ Gramma - EAT
Label: n/a
Genre: Indie Rock, Emo
Bad Sounds - Escaping from a Violent Time, Vol. 4 (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Indie Pop, Funktronica
Love Fame Tragedy - Life Is A Killer
Label: Bright Antenna
Genre: Indie Pop, Synthpop
Teens in Trouble - What's Mine
Label: Asian Man
Genre: Indie Rock
❓ Superflower - Amphora (featuring Avey Tare) (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Psychedelic Folk
Non La - Like Before
Label: Mint
Genre: Indie Rock, Queer Pop
NØ MAN - Glitter and Spit
Label: Iodine
Genre: Hardcore Punk, Post-Hardcore
❓ Frail Body - Artificial Bouquet
Label: Deathwish
Genre: Screamo, Post-Metal
Urvanovic - Let's Not Be Here
Label: Wasted State
Genre: Chamber Pop, Noise Pop
The Exorzist III - Fourth Coming (members of Laddio Bolocko, Psychic Paramount, etc.)
Label: n/a
Genre: Psychedelic Rock, Jam Band
Abandoned Pools - The Haunted House
Label: n/a
Genre: Alternative Rock, Post-Grunge
Little Slugger - Heartless (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Indie Rock, Horn Rock
❓ Peel - Acid Star
Label: Innovative Leisure
Genre: Indie Rock, New Wave
❓ Liv.e - PAST FUTUR.e
Label: n/a
Genre: Synth Punk, Darkwave, Hypnagogic Pop
Inchworm Race At Sunrise - Eight Cats Jumping
Label: n/a
Genre: Ambient Pop
Hello Emerson - To Keep Him Here
Label: Hometown Caravan
Genre: Singer-songwriter, Folk
Alejandro Escovedo - Echo Dancing
Label: Yep Roc
Genre: Americana, Roots Rock
Woods - Five More Flowers (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Psychedelic Folk
Lindsey Lomis - Handle With Care (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Pop
Joe Diffie & HIXTAPE - HIXTAPE: Vol. 3: DIFFTAPE
Label: Big Loud
Genre: Contemporary Country
Sophie Cates - SUPERNOVA
Label:
Genre: Bedroom Pop, Alt-Pop
Tia Kofi - Read My Lips
Label: n/a
Genre: Electropop, Dance-Pop
Flyana Boss - This Ain't The Album (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Trap
Rico Nasty & Boys Noize - HARDC0RE DR3AMZ (EP)
Label: Sugar Trap
Genre: Electroclash
j-hope (BTS) - HOPE ON THE STREET VOL.1 (EP)
Label: BIGHIT
Genre: Dance-Pop, Pop Rap
Beyoncé - COWBOY CARTER
Label: Parkwood
Genre: Country Pop, Americana, Contemporary R&B
Gesaffelstein - GAMMA
Label: Columbia
Genre: EBM, Electro-Industrial, Synthpop
Enrique Iglesias - FINAL (Vol.2)
Label: n/a
Genre: Reggaetón, Latin Po
Sum 41 - Heaven :x: Hell
Label: Rise
Genre: Pop Punk, Melodic Hardcore
Thouxanbanfauni - ORANGE
Label: n/a
Genre: Southern Hip Hop, Trap
J. Stone - Marathon Madness
Label: n/a
Genre: West Coast Hip Hop, Gangsta Rap
Zona Infame - VUELO 425
Label: n/a
Genre: Hip Hop/Rap
Lil Skies - Out Ur Body Music
Label: n/a
Genre: Trap
Certified Trapper - Trappernese
Label: Columbia
Genre: Lowend, Gangsta Rap
Dom McLennon (from Brockhampton) - The Changing of the Trees
Label: n/a
Genre: Jazz Rap, Abstract Hip Hop
❓ DJ Muggs & Mooch - ROC STAR
Label: Soul Assassins
Genre: Hardcore Hip Hop
RXKNephew - Mind Yo Fucking Business
Label: n/a
Genre: Trap, Gangsta Rap
Real Bad Man & Lukah - Temple Needs Water. Village Needs Peace.
Label: Old Soul
Genre: Conscious Hip Hop, Abstract Hip Hop
Nickelus F - MMCHT
Label: n/a
Genre: Southern Hip Hop, Abstract Hip Hop
Blu and Shafiq Husayn - Out Of The Blue
Label: Nature Sounds
Genre: West Coast Hip Hop
Z-Ro - The Ghetto Gospel
Label: One Deep
Genre: Southern Hip Hop
BFB Da Packman - Forget Me Not
Label: n/a
Genre: Detroit Trap
Buddy - Don’t Forget To Breathe
Label: Empire
Genre: West Coast Hip Hop, Pop Rap
❓ Sematary - Bloody Angel
Label: Haunted Mound
Genre: Chicago Drill, Horrorcore
Roc Marciano - Marciology
Label: Marci
Genre: East Coast Hip Hop, Drumless
❓ Boundaries - Death Is Little More
Label: 3DOT
Genre: Metalcore, Metallic Hardcore
While She Sleeps - SELF HELL
Label: Spinefarm
Genre: Alternative Metal
WristMeetRazor - Degeneration
Label: Prosthetic
Genre: Metalcore, Melodic Metalcore
The Absence - The Absence
Label: Listenable Insanity
Genre: Melodic Death Metal
Rage - Afterlifelines
Label: Steamhammer
Genre: Power Metal, Heavy Metal
❓ Verwoed - The Mother
Label: Wolves of Hades
Genre: Black Metal
Vorga - Beyond the Palest Star
Label: Transcending Obscurity
Genre: Melodic Black Metal, Atmospheric Black Metal
⭐ Coffin Storm - Arcana Rising
Label: Peaceville
Genre: Traditional Doom Metal, Heavy Metal
❓ VRSA - Saltwater Circadian
Label: n/a
Genre: Stoner Metal
The Vulcan Itch - Rise of the Fallen
Label: n/a
Genre: Alternative Rock
Sons of Alpha Centauri - Pull
Label: Exile on Mainstream
Genre: Post-Hardcore, Alternative Rock
Riitasointu - Pedon Leikki
Label: Naturmacht
Genre: Pagan Black Metal
Malphas - Portal
Label: M-Theory
Genre: Symphonic Black Metal
❓ Majak - Restless Wicked
Label: n/a
Genre: Occult Black Metal, Psychedelic Black Metal
Frank Never Dies - Red Moon Rising
Label: Argonauta
Genre: Post-Rock
Divided - Light Will Shine
Label: Dunk
Genre: Post-Hardcore, Post-Rock
Carrion Vael - Cannibals Anonymous
Label: Unique Leader
Genre: Melodic Death Metal, Technical Death Metal
Ascia - The Wandering Warrior
Label: n/a
Genre: Doom Metal, Heavy Metal

Looking for Legs, Neons and Megas, feel free to ask for ages
Pets: Rice cake rabbit Albatross Black Kite Corgi DeathStalker Scorpion Deinonychus Floral Eggy Flower power duckling Gold Mahi Mahi Hydra King penguin Ginger cat Lunar Ox Lunar White Tiger Magma Snail Persian Cat Sabertooth Shetland Pony White Water moon bear Wyvern Australian Kelpie Chipmunk Dotted egg Eggnog hare Emu Halloween evil dachshund Halloween White mummy cat Happy duckling Koi carp Leopard Shark Lunar Tiger Merhorse Mule Narwhal Orangutan x3 Oryx Ox x5 Parakeet Pterodactyl Pudding cat Seahorse Thorny devil Zebra x3 Camel x9 Crab Dolphin Donkey x4 Ermine Gila monster x4 Glyptodon Halloween black mummy cat x2 Halloween blue scorpion Kirin Mahi Mahi x4 Poodle x4 Possum Raccoon Rattlesnake Red cardinal Rock pigeon Tawny Frogmouth Ant x3 Bullfrog Cat Chick Coyote x2 Ghost Ground sloth Mouse x2 Sado mole
Petwear: Galaxy explorer helmet Growing flower hat Bee wings Ghost kitty backpack Ice wings Winged heels Burger boots Festive scarf Fiery aura Ice crown Golden headset Spike collar Beret Black cozy hood Carrot on a stick Cowboy boots Eco green leaf glasses Glamcorn purse pet Hourglass Pink designer backpack Rainbow bucket hat Rice cake hat x2 Shovel Wool beard Bat candy earrings Black bandana Card reader Cute circle glasses Forgers reward x2 Gold ingot Laced yellow heels x2 Leaf crown Magma greatsword Neckerchief Pocket protector Newsboy cap Prescription glasses Red back ribbon Red bowtie Red collar Red sneakers Blue sneakers Snowman winter hat Sock shoes Star barrette x2 Stitched up beanie x3 Sunhat Vampire cape White bandana White bow tie
strollers: Peapod stroller Rainbow stroller Triple stroller Crate stroller x2 High heel stroller Rocket ship stroller Clam stroller
Food: Mooncake x7 Fly potion Stripes egg
cars: Dragonster Royal carriage SUV Witches caravan Clown car Lunar Muscle car Magical princess unicycle Plant powered roller skates Rocket racer Blue rider x2 Butterfly roller skates Futuristic unicycle x2 Human bubble Pizza unicycle Rocket skates Bat face roller skates x2 Unicycle
Toys: Airplane propeller Angelic propeller x2 Dropping Orchid propeller Futuristic grapple Galaxy propeller Lime slice propeller x3 Plunger grappling hook x2 Shuttle pogo x2 Snowflake propeller Bat key pogo stick Crown flying disc Da Vinci propeller x2 Daltokki kite Didgeridoo Dog leash Frostbite grapple x2 Ice pogo stick Jegi throw toy Love perfume Magic wand grappling hook Magical princess leash x2 Pink cat balloon Rope chew toy Rubber Chicken rattle x2 Space grappling hook Water soaker grappling hook Anchor balloon Armchair float x3 Boomerang throwtoy x4 Bubblegum machine rattle Burger balloon x4 Candycane chew toy Daisy flying disc x2 Drone propeller x4 Flying saucer disc x6 Ice club rattle Lunar moon chew toy x2 Lunar rattle Magical princess chew toy Medieval grapple x2 Mouse chew toy x8 Mouse leash x10 Newspaper chew toy x10 Octopus plush Panda flying disc Plate of food disc x4 Princess rattle x2 Protein bottle rattle x27 Ray gun leash Rice cake rabbit kite Robo balloon Rocket grappling hook x5 Rubber dog balloon x28 Satellite balloon Steel drum x2 Tangerine chew toy Trumpet x2 Water droplet plush Banana plush Cactus plushie chew toy x7 Celestial leash x4 Fairy rose Light rattle Flame pogo stick Floppy Bunny plush x3 Galaxy flying disc x6 Huggable pillow x4 Ice cream rattle x48 Lazy float Lead zeppelin balloon x54 Magic scroll chewtoy x2 Meaty chew toy Musical conch Olympian rattle x2 Peppermint disc Pool noodle RGB sword rattle Raw bone Robo plush x3 Snowball launcher Soccer ball throw toy x77 Soda chew toy x4 Stick throw toy x56 Sun balloon x2 Teddy bear Venus fly trap rattle x2 Winged flying disc x2

Pets: Rice cake rabbit Albatross Black Kite Corgi DeathStalker Scorpion Deinonychus Floral Eggy Flower power duckling Gold Mahi Mahi Hydra King penguin Ginger cat Lunar Ox Lunar White Tiger Magma Snail Persian Cat Sabertooth Shetland Pony White Water moon bear Wyvern Australian Kelpie Chipmunk Dotted egg Eggnog hare Emu Halloween evil dachshund Halloween White mummy cat Happy duckling Koi carp Leopard Shark Lunar Tiger Merhorse Mule Narwhal Orangutan x3 Oryx Ox x5 Parakeet Pterodactyl Pudding cat Seahorse Thorny devil Zebra x3 Camel x9 Crab Dolphin Donkey x4 Ermine Gila monster x4 Glyptodon Halloween black mummy cat x2 Halloween blue scorpion Kirin Mahi Mahi x4 Poodle x4 Possum Raccoon Rattlesnake Red cardinal Rock pigeon Tawny Frogmouth Ant x3 Bullfrog Cat Chick Coyote x2 Ghost Ground sloth Mouse x2 Sado mole
Petwear: Galaxy explorer helmet Growing flower hat Bee wings Ghost kitty backpack Ice wings Winged heels Burger boots Festive scarf Fiery aura Ice crown Golden headset Spike collar Beret Black cozy hood Carrot on a stick Cowboy boots Eco green leaf glasses Glamcorn purse pet Hourglass Pink designer backpack Rainbow bucket hat Rice cake hat x2 Shovel Wool beard Bat candy earrings Black bandana Card reader Cute circle glasses Forgers reward x2 Gold ingot Laced yellow heels x2 Leaf crown Magma greatsword Neckerchief Pocket protector Newsboy cap Prescription glasses Red back ribbon Red bowtie Red collar Red sneakers Blue sneakers Snowman winter hat Sock shoes Star barrette x2 Stitched up beanie x3 Sunhat Vampire cape White bandana White bow tie
strollers: Peapod stroller Rainbow stroller Triple stroller Crate stroller x2 High heel stroller Rocket ship stroller Clam stroller
Food: Mooncake x7 Fly potion Stripes egg
cars: Dragonster Royal carriage SUV Witches caravan Clown car Lunar Muscle car Magical princess unicycle Plant powered roller skates Rocket racer Blue rider x2 Butterfly roller skates Futuristic unicycle x2 Human bubble Pizza unicycle Rocket skates Bat face roller skates x2 Unicycle
Toys: Airplane propeller Angelic propeller x2 Dropping Orchid propeller Futuristic grapple Galaxy propeller Lime slice propeller x3 Plunger grappling hook x2 Shuttle pogo x2 Snowflake propeller Bat key pogo stick Crown flying disc Da Vinci propeller x2 Daltokki kite Didgeridoo Dog leash Frostbite grapple x2 Ice pogo stick Jegi throw toy Love perfume Magic wand grappling hook Magical princess leash x2 Pink cat balloon Rope chew toy Rubber Chicken rattle x2 Space grappling hook Water soaker grappling hook Anchor balloon Armchair float x3 Boomerang throwtoy x4 Bubblegum machine rattle Burger balloon x4 Candycane chew toy Daisy flying disc x2 Drone propeller x4 Flying saucer disc x6 Ice club rattle Lunar moon chew toy x2 Lunar rattle Magical princess chew toy Medieval grapple x2 Mouse chew toy x8 Mouse leash x10 Newspaper chew toy x10 Octopus plush Panda flying disc Plate of food disc x4 Princess rattle x2 Protein bottle rattle x27 Ray gun leash Rice cake rabbit kite Robo balloon Rocket grappling hook x5 Rubber dog balloon x28 Satellite balloon Steel drum x2 Tangerine chew toy Trumpet x2 Water droplet plush Banana plush Cactus plushie chew toy x7 Celestial leash x4 Fairy rose Light rattle Flame pogo stick Floppy Bunny plush x3 Galaxy flying disc x6 Huggable pillow x4 Ice cream rattle x48 Lazy float Lead zeppelin balloon x54 Magic scroll chewtoy x2 Meaty chew toy Musical conch Olympian rattle x2 Peppermint disc Pool noodle RGB sword rattle Raw bone Robo plush x3 Snowball launcher Soccer ball throw toy x77 Soda chew toy x4 Stick throw toy x56 Sun balloon x2 Teddy bear Venus fly trap rattle x2 Winged flying disc x2

^{“We have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea — whether it is to sail or to watch it — we are going back whence we came.” - JFK}
Theme Songs…

• Charlie:

1. Cleopatra - The Lumineers
2. Can’t Catch Me Now - Olivia Rodrigo
3. bad idea! - girl in red

• Charlise:

1. Ophelia - The Lumineers
2. Pure As The Driven Snow - Rachel Zegler & The Covey Band
3. we fell in love in october - girl in red

Basic Information…

Full names:

• Charlie Auden Arason

1. “Charlie“ means “free”
2. ”Auden“ means “old friend”

• Charlise Auron Arason

1. “Charlise” means “heart“
2. ”Auron” means golden light; dawn

Nicknames:

• Charlie:

1. Char - Given to her by Charlise, due to her “fiery,” personality..mostly used in an endearin; charming, and joking way.

• Charlise:

1. Lis
2. Lisie

Age: 13 years old … (Charlie is older by two minutes)

• Birthday: May 25th, 2026

Gender: CisFem

• Pronouns: She/HeHers

Nationality: American

• Place of Birth: Rockland, Maine, USA

Ethnicity: Icelandic

• Languages Spoken: English, Ancient Greek, and Icelandic.

Demigod Conundrums:
ADHD and Dyslexia
Sexualities:

• Charlie:

1. Lesbian

• Charlise:

1. Bisexual

Fatal Flaws:

• Charlie:

1. Excessive loyalty. (To her sister, Charlise.)

• Charlise:

1. Low self-esteem; feeling of inferiority.

Relationships…

Name	Relation	Details	Relationship
Unknown	Mother	. . .	. . .
Unknown	Father	. . .	. . .
Thekla Arason	Grandmother	Age: 63 … Occupation: Co-owns her husband’s fish market. Immigrated to the US from Iceland.	The twins have always been incredibly close with their grandparents— afterall, they were the only family figures the two ever had in their lives– but, they were particularly close with their grandmother, Thekla. An immigrant from Iceland, Thekla had it rough since she and her husband, the twin’s grandparents, Johannn, moved to America. In hopes of supporting their future family, which they had always dreamed of, they opened up their own fish-market. For as long as they can remember, the girls have always, in some way, shape, or form, helped out with their grandparents buisness. Be it with going out their grandfather on his big boat, learning the ins-and-out of properly catching fish— or helping Thekla with customer service, they were always around the shop. Despite this, their grandmother was demanding, nor bossy and overbearing. Instead, she was kind and warm and forgiving. Whenever the twins would make a mistake, no matter how big and bad it was, she would always find a way to forgive and to forget. After all, to her, family was the most important thing, and she raised the twins with this mindset as well, helping them to become the close sisters they are today.
Jóhann Arason	Grandfather	Age: 64 … Occupation: Runs and works at his own fish market. Immigrated to the US from Iceland.	Everything his wife, Thekla was, Johann was not. Perhaps it was due to his loss, or rather absence, disappearance, or whatever it was that happened to his child— but the twin’s grandfather has always been an overprotective fellow. From an early age with the twins, he was overbearing and domineering of Charlie and Charlise. Strict curfew and household rules to name a few, nevermind the fact that they always had to be working in the stinky, smelly fish shop so they would never be out of their grand-father’s sight– just to name a few of his overprotective acts. And, to top it all off, he was incredibly harsh and seemingly cruel. Sometimes he showed no warmth at all, and the twins were left to wonder if he even cared for them. Thekla, who had put up with the stubborn man for ages, never let them believe that for too long. Infact, despite all of his strictness, cruelness, and coldness, Johann truly loved his grandaughters with a passion. She explained that, even though she scarecly brought up the twin’s parents, their grandfather truly was just simply afraid of losing another one of his “children.”
Orion Hughes	Rescuer; acquaintance	Age: 14 … Occupation: N/A—Demigod, currently resides at Camp Half-Blood.	One of the two demigods that helped rescue Charlie and Charlise from Maine, after the two got attacked by wolves, and safely bringing them back to Camp Half-Blood.
Bailey Rennes	Rescuer; acquaintance	Age: 16 … Occupation: N/A— Demigod, currently resides at Camp Half-Blood.	One of the two demigods that helped rescue Charlie and Charlise from Maine, after the two got attacked by wolves, and safely bringing them back to Camp Half-Blood.

​

“Just because my dreams are different than yours, it doesn’t mean they’re unimportant.”
- Meg March … Little Women, (2019)

Personality…

Traits:

• Charlie:

1. Good Traits: Kind, Outgoing, Brave, Confident, Friendly
2. Neutral Traits: Loyal, Persistent, Fair, Headstrong, Defensive
3. Bad Traits: Impulsive, Unpredictable, Careless

• Charlise:

1. Good Traits: Loyal; devoted, kind; softhearted, caring, loving; affectionate.
2. Neutral Traits: Introverted, quiet, calm; peaceful; serene, empathetic; emotional.
3. Bad Traits: Pacifist, insecure, naive; easily manipulated or tricked.

Favorites:

• Charlie:

1. Food(s): Seaweed, Popcorn, Kleinur, Bragðarefur, Skyr, Chocolate, and Lakkris Toppa.
2. Flower(s): Hibiscus, and Blue Periwinkle.
3. Color: Light pinks, greens and deep blue.
4. Scent: Vanilla.
5. Season: Summer; Perfect weather and conditions for going to the beach.
6. Animal: Dolphins; Known to form long-lasting friendships and be extremely loyal to other dolphins in their pack.
7. Song/Music-Artist: ABBA, Fleetwood Mac, Noah Kahan, Hozier, girl in red, TV Girl, and Laufey
8. Movie/Tv Show: Dead Poets Society, Romeo and Juliet (1996), Lilo and Stitch, Little Women (2017), and Finding Nemo.

• Charlise:

1. Food(s): Umami flavored foods: miso soup, matcha-tea, seaweed, and kimchi— as well as traditional Icelandic foods like Kleinur, (donuts,) Bragðarefur (ice cream) and Skyr (yogurt)!
2. Flower: Lupine and harebell’s
3. Color: Cool colors: shades of green, blue, and purple.
4. Scent: Overwhelming, floral scents. (ex: flower scented perfumes, a field of flowers, etc.)
5. Season: Summer; enjoys the perfect, warm weather for going to the beach.
6. Animal: Seahorses; really any kind of aquatic animal.
7. Song/Music-Artist: Beach Bunny, Orla Gartland, Clairo, girl in red, Phoebe Bridgers, Faye Webster, Maya Hawke, Dayglow, and Wallows.
8. Movie/Tv Show: The Fault In Our Stars, Disney’s Star Girl, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Juno, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World/Scott Pilgrim takes off, Love Simon, Love Victor, Heartstopper, and Young Royals.

Dislikes:

• Charlie:

1. Awkward SilenceDrowning / being fully submerged under water
2. Rude/ hypocritical peopleVain / Overconfident people
3. Pigeons

• Charlise:

1. Chaotic and loud environments
2. A lot of people in a condensed space; crowds
3. Loud noises (ex: shouting; yelling; screaming, fireworks, etc)
4. Drowning; being submerged under water
5. Standoffish; overconfident, and aggressive/mean people
6. Liars, thieves, and cheats

Hobbies:

• Charlie:

1. Swimming
2. Fishing
3. Painting
4. Snowboarding
5. Reading
6. Playing Soccer

• Charlise:

1. Ballet; dance
2. Fishing
3. Swimming
4. Snorkeling
5. Collecting (mainly seashells, sea glass, and sea rocks)
6. Sketching/Pastel drawing
7. WatercoloGouache painting
8. Rock painting
9. Seashell painting

​

“I like you when you are yourself.”
- Simon … Young Royals, (2021)

Playlist:

• cardigan, Taylor Swift
• King and Lionheart, Of Monsters and Men
• I Of The Storm, Of Monsters and Men
• The Water Is Fine, Chloe Ament
• I Know You, Faye Webster
• Dear Arkansas Daughter, Lady Lamb
• Bloomed Into Blue, Maya Hawke
• Thérèse, Maya Hawke
• Motion Sickness, Phoebe Bridgers
• It’ll All Work Out, Phoebe Bridgers
• Runaway, AURORA
• White Winter Hymnal, Fleet Foxes
• Running with the Wolves, AURORA
• Ophelia, The Lumineers
• Cleopatra, The Lumineers
• Salt and the Sea, The Lumineers
• Can’t Catch Me Now, Olivia Rodrigo
• Pure As The Driven Snow, Rachel Zegler & The Covey Band
• ocean eyes, Billie Eilish
• Storm, Ruelle
• Carry You, Ruelle

​

“Tell me something nice, like flowers and blue skies,”
-i wanna be your girlfriend … girl in red, (2018)

Appearance…

Face-Claim:
FC - Twins Erna and Hrefna
Voice-Claim:

• Charlie:

1. Mai … Avatar: The Last Airbender, (2005)

• Charlise:

1. Momoe Sawaki … Wonder Egg Priority, (2021)

Height:

• Charlie:

1. 5’2

• Charlise:

1. 5’2

Weight:

• Charlie:

1. “Uh no thanks? Jerk…”

• Charlise:

1. “Well, that’s an awfully rude thing to ask a young lady, don’t you think? Hope you didn’t go about asking Charlie this. .”

Hair:
Straight; a light, dirty blonde color without much volume, neither waves nor curls.
Body Type:
Ectomorph . . . Thin and lanky, with long arms and legs.
Physique:

• Charlie:

1. Unlike her sister Charlie dropped dance as soon as she could, instead preferring to take soccer. This resulted in her not having the same build as Charlise, rather having more of a lean body, as well as being a fast runner.

• Charlise:

1. Due to being in ballet for many years, Charlise has a thin stature, and is rather weak in terms of brute strength, although she is notably agile, flexible, and fast.

Eyes:
Dark Blue; a deep ocean-color with hints of gray.
Style:

• Charlie:

1. Tomboyish; masculine

• Charlise:

1. Gender neutral; androgynous.

Outfits:

• Charlie:

1. https://imgur.com/a/lg4MMj6
2. https://imgur.com/a/B1e392m
3. https://imgur.com/a/Ir6EMZO
4. https://imgur.com/a/eWG6Osm

• Charlise:

1. https://i.imgur.com/6HwO91Z.jpg
2. https://i.imgur.com/iVgpr9m.jpg
3. https://i.imgur.com/nJ7LnSt.jpg
4. https://i.imgur.com/CSNP2rL.jpg

​

“You Must Strive To Find Your Own Voice"
- John Keating … Dead Poets Society, (1989)

Inventory…

• Charlie:

1. 1st Place Trophy - An awarded from one of Charlie’s soccer matches, Halfway through the game it had started to rain and by the end of the match Charlie had been soaking wet, though her grandparents still took the twins out for ice cream (Which ended up with Charlie sick for weeks, she still doesn't regret not going home sooner)
2. Golden Necklace - A golden necklace with a light blue stone encased in the middle, Charlie has had the necklace for as long as she can remember, and despite asking her grandmother multiply times neither of them knows where it comes from.https://imgur.com/a/FAI01mW
3. Stuffed Animal Cat - A cat stuffed animal that charlie has had since she was a young child, her grandmother would always tell her icelandic folktale of Kisa the Cat before she would go to bed, Charlie ended up naming the stuffed animal “Kisa,” https://imgur.com/a/aavFXhd

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• Charlise:

1. Cone Shell - On Charlise’s sixth birthday, her grandmother gifted her a large-sized; white-and-pink cone shell. She told her that, whenever she would feel lonely or homesick in the future, she could put her ear against it, pause, and hear the sound of the ocean. . . The sound of home. https://i.imgur.com/sYLGOx0.jpg
2. Ballerina equipment - For a brief period of time when the twins were younger, they enjoyed ballet together. Although Charlie was quite clumsy on her feet at first, Charlise quickly grasped the hang of it, and before she knew it, was able to dance as easily as if it were her second language. Charlie quickly dropped the “sport,” in search for other hobbies, although Charlise continued to dance her little heart out. It wasn’t until she grew older that money grew tighter, and her grandparents could no longer support her ballet classes, and with that came the loss of her hobby completely. Despite this, she likes to practice in her free time. https://i.imgur.com/Uv66qTL.jpg … (Charlise’s ballerina shoes)
3. Small Paintbook - Charlise owns a small paintbook that she carries around in a large tote bag, and whenever she has the free time to unwind, typically outside, she’ll use her watercolors to paint the scenery surrounding her. She particularly enjoys painting things or people she likes— she has dozens of canvases with paintings of Charlie, the ocean, and her grandparents on them.
4. Sea Glass Necklace - A shiny, dark blue color that resembles her eyes; Charlise owns a silver, sea-glass necklace that she’s had ever since she was a young child. Whenever she feels anxious or nervous, she’ll tap at it with her finger, the rhythmic noise helping to calm her down. https://i.imgur.com/ccHKmxJ.jpeg

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“Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn't stop for anybody.”- Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Trivia…

• Zodiac Sign: Gemini (the twins.)
• MBTI:

1. Charlie: ESTJ (the Executive)
2. Charlise: ESFJ (the Consul)

• Love Language:

1. Charlie: Acts of Service
2. Charlise: Words of affirmation

• Anxious habit:

1. Charlie: Bitting her lip
2. Charlise: Tapping her foot, finger(s)/hand, and shaking her leg.

• Comfort food:

1. Charlie: Lakkris Toppar (A traditional-Icelandic dessert)
2. Charlise: PlokkfiskuPlokkari (a traditional-Icelandic food; a fish stew.)

• Secret Talent:

1. Charlie: Can lick her own elbow.
2. Charlise: Very flexible (can bend over backwards, put her leg behind her head, etc.)

• Quirk:

1. Charlie: Constantly biting her lip.
2. Charlise: Always puts her hair on the front of her shoulders.

“My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late!”
- Juliet … Romeo + Juliet, (1996)

Backstory…

(To be updated as their story progresses.)
The twin’s, Charlie and Charlise, have always lived a seemingly normal life.It was always the same, mundane yet happy and simple routine since they were young. School, where even though it was hard to learn due to the learning difficulties they had, they enjoyed their time making friends and getting to study all these different things in life. And, when at home, they got to help out with the family’s business, getting to master many skills that would someday help them when they would take over their grandparents business. That was the plan, afterall.Despite not ever hearing much of their parents, they never thought things would reach to the extent that it did one fateful afternoon. After years of asking and wondering what happened to their parents– who their parents even were, why they were never around and why their grandparents couldn’t just tell them— everything came to a halt when the twins were returning home from school. It was normal. Like every other day. They would walk home, with one another, as always, talking about what they did that day, what they would do the next, rinse and repeat.But life had other plans in store. At first, it was the ignorable yet unshakeable feeling that there were eyes watching them. Then, it was when they were all alone, an orange color dimming the sky as the beautiful afternoon set a chilling breeze flying through the air— that they heard it. The growl, like a wolf, but when they saw it was seemingly ten times bigger. They ran and ran, both afraid and terrified of what would happen if the creature just so happened to catch up with them, until they felt like they were safe, and that they couldn’t run anymore.Yet they knew that false sense of hope wouldn’t last forever. After running inro their rescuers, Orion Hughes and Bailey Rennes, sent out by Camp Half Blood personally, they were met with the confrontation of a lifetime. Battling wolves was something that seemed straight out of a night-marish fairytale book in the past, but quickly became something they would have to live with for the rest of their lives. Especially the guilt, horror, and terror that came with it.

Now…

After running away from a blood-thirsty pack of werewolves, becoming arsonists, as well as runaways, and a taxing car crash— Charlie and Charlise Arason have made Camp Half Blood almost fully intact.They had been unlucky in the sense that the twins spent what felt like days being hunted and tracked by werewolves. But, they had been lucky enough to be found by Orion Hughes and Bailey Rennes, the self proclaimed “Demi-Gods” who killed the pack leader and scared off the other werewolves— and brought the sisters to safety in the valley and rolling hills of Camp Half Blood.They were placed into the Hermes cabin, being told that they would be claimed soon, but fornow, cabin eleven would welcome the twins. The girls had spent the past few days tucked away in the Hermes cabin, not wanting to leave each other alone in this strange summer camp. That's where they are now, A bunk bed in the corner of the room where after a few days of self isolation they twins agreed to go to dinner and meet new people.Leaving the Hermes cabin the girls follow the clusters of campers towards the dining pavilion. The girls look around and see a sea of campers and.. goat men? Not one of the strangest things they‘d seen, but queer nonetheless. They take a seat amongst the other children of Hermes, remembering their earlier agreement the twins turn away from each other and begin looking for a new face.
(OOC: This has been months in the making and Meg and Ducky are super excited to properly introduce Charlie and Charlise Arason! Charlie is written by Ducky and Charlise is written by Meg.)
( OOC: Meg, here! For further clarification, the now section is an invite for your character to either interact with Charlie and Charlise separately— meaning you’d only interact with one of them— or both of the twins, meaning both me and Ducky will reply to you as both twins. Feel free to pick which twin, or if you want to talk to both! Just make sure to clarify it in your comment ;) . )

Hey all, wanted to post my review/impressions of the pieces I grabbed from Spring. Some of this stuff is sold out online, so could help if you are considering buying secondary or want some motivation to head in-store.
For reference, I’m 5’9, 155. Slim/athletic build. I usually go Medium or Small for tops, depending on if they are a bottom layer (Small) or Top layer (Medium), with some variations. Bottoms I go Small for the most part. Can post some photos if there is interest. For now, a wall of text lol
Washed Dylan Shorts, Reverie (Small) - These are smaller than the other shorts. Probably could have gone up to Medium. Great materials. Really want to grab the matching jacket
Jacquard Faile Cedar Shorts, Machine & Nocturnal (Small) - Purchased the Machine color first and quality was great, so grabbed the Nocturnal as well. Love these. Perfect fit, 4 zipper pockets. Only down side is dry clean only.
Abbott Quilted Gi Jacket, Reverie (Medium) - Quality of this is awesome. Great colors. Fits a bit big. I wore with a light sweater under and I think it looks great, but if you are going to wear with t-shirt maybe size down. Wears like a relaxed sport coat almost. Looks great with the floral Glen Pullover.
Overdyed Patchwork Elmhurst Pants, Ink (Extra Small) - I like my pants a bit slimmer fit, so I struggle with Kith pants. Went down a size in these and they fit well. Love the quality and feel. A bit long, but a loose cuff solves that. I also tried on the Small and they were too big/long. I think I could dress these up or down. Tried them with the Glen Pullover + Abbott Gi combo and was feeling it.
Girard Cardigan, Veil (Extra Small) - Picked this up in store in BH and XS was the only size left. I could have done a Small, but as-is it fits well. Just a bit tighter in the arms, but the rest is good. Will probably wear with a tank top or tighter t-shirt under, but will work as just a shirt as well. Unbuttoned also looks good. Great quality, the diamond embroidery gives it some heft.
Overdyed Patchwork Boxy Collared Overshirt, Reverie (Medium) - Fits a bit bigger, probably could have gone with Small. I will just style it different, probably always unbuttoned with t-shirt under, or partially buttoned. If you don’t like ironing/steaming, skip this one. The way the shirt is constructed leads to some pesky folds/wrinkles, especially on the sleeves. Sleeves are longer, loose fit.
Overdyed Patchwork Mason Shorts, Reverie (Small) - Love these. Great quality, look and fit. Same comment on the ironing/steaming. Goes with pretty much anything and can’t wait to pair with the shirt during the summer for the full outfit.
LAX Tee, Perfume (Small) - Nothing special here, but this color is great. Not as pink as the photos.
Kayden Full Zip, Veil (Small) - Feels like I’m not wearing a shirt. So light, will be awesome for summer. Fits well in a Small. Also tried on the Reverie color and it looked great, but wanted to switch it up. Highly recommend if you live somewhere hot. Could probably also go with a tank under and unzipped.
Harway Polo, Tranquility (Small) - Was on the fence about this one for a while, got to try it on in store and loved it. Boxy but tapered. Sleeves are loose with room to move. A casual look with some nice details, the alternating mismatched stripes give it something extra.
Checkered Satin Griffey Camper Hat, Sandrift - Already a go-to cap for anything active. Wear this out walking, to the gym, etc. Lightweight and breathable. The bungee stays in place well. Not a cap I can wear backwards though lol
Wrinkle Nylon Griffey Camper Hat, Sandrift - Wore this for 12 hours at Universal, didn’t feel like I was wearing anything. Very light and breathable. Again, great for walking, gym, Universal (haha), whatever. The scrunch closure is nice and just stretchy enough. It does take a bit to break in and reshape. A little Conehead-ish at first.
Flocked Monogram Mason Shorts, Veil (Small) - First, if you buy these make sure you have light underwear lol. They are a slightly transparent. Inseam at 7.5” is a bit longer than I like, but quality is good. These actually have a button, zipper and drawstrings. Hand wash only like other Flocked pieces. Good color match to the Kaydin Full Zip
Chain Stitched Glen Pullover, Skill (Small) - This thing is incredible. Love the embroidered details. Has enough color variation I can pair it with a lot. Went with a Small. Fits just a bit oversized/boxy, but nothing crazy. Recommend an undershirt - tank top at least - as it’s a little stiff. Tag says Hand Wash Only, but also Dry Clean 🤔 Up there with the Gi as my favorite top from this collection.
Space Dye Harmon Rugby Pullover, Scent (Medium) - Fits perfect, just slightly oversized, but fitted in the right areas. Would not size down in this one. Very soft, and the space dye application looks great. Very vibrant.
Any questions, feel free!

“Who in their right mind would pick up a closing shift on Halloween?” Daniel said, shaking his head over a slowly rising stack of rolled silverware.
“I guess our dumb asses” I replied, glancing up from my own side work, which on this particular night happened to be polishing the “fine” forks and knives which I would then pass over to him before they were rolled in linens and piled neatly. We were at the host stand near the front entrance of the mom and pop Italian restaurant we worked at.
“Yeah, that checks out” Daniel said through a light chuckle, head still down focused on his task, “but hey as soon as this is done we are GON-ZO.”
“Mhmm, yessir”, I replied, peering up and out through the glass double-doors and into the night, which overlooked an essentially empty parking lot. “What an absolute bust, though. How many tables did you even have?”
“Literally two all night,” Daniel responded with a resentful shrug. “Won’t even be enough for gas and beer.”
“Lucky! I had one table. ALL. NIGHT!” I said with playful aggression. “So I actually have to choose between gas and beer!” We both laughed.
“Well that’d be an easy choice for me dawg” Daniel replied, reaching down into his black server’s apron and pulling out and ice cold bottle of Peroni and an opener.
“Duuuuuude come on, the bar does inventory literally tomorrow.” I said, smiling and shaking my head.
“It’s called shrinkage, bro. Look it up”, Daniel replied, peeling off the top of the bottle and turning it up into a big swig. “AND, we’re the only ones here. AND ALSO, have you ever been to the back of house any time after 4 PM?”
“Eh, not a bad point.” I said. He was right. The kitchen guys here and also at every other restaurant I had worked at were basically hammered for their entire shift. “You pregaming a party or something?”
“Well,” Daniel replied, “wouldn’t really call it a party really. Just got a buddy coming to the apartment. We’ll probably just throw down and play some Five Nights at Freddys or something dumb like that. What about you? You got something?”
I paused. No. I didn’t have anything. Ever since I graduated college and moved back in with my parents, I had basically just worked and slept. I left school over a year ago and had retained almost zero social skills. I wasn’t depressed or anything, but I just didn’t really have any friends here back home. This was small town Missouri. I had moved here during high school, and everyone had already chosen their circles. There was no room for a plus one anywhere, so I was forced to find comfort in myself, and became a bit of a loner. College was fantastic for me, having been part of several clubs and meeting lifelong friends, but all of those friends were handfuls of states away now.
“Eh, I don’t know. Couple of options, not sure which one I’ll pick. Might float around a couple parties honestly” I lied blatantly. My plan was to go home and help my parents pass out candy to the neighborhood kids. Not the worst thing in the world, by far, but not what a young adult should be doing on Halloween. My parents knew that too. I’ll see their concerned expressions through their masks tonight like I did last year.
“I mean, dude, I know we’ve like never hung out outside of work and all, but you know you’re always welcome to swing by anytime man.” Daniel kindly replied, smiling and taking another gulp of his stolen beer, “may not be a wild rager tonight but hey, you’re more than invited if you wanna roll through.” I nodded and smiled back. Hmm. Maybe I should take a stab at socializing again. Who knows, maybe it would even be fun. I could already hear my parents relieved voices on the phone as I informed them that I, yes, the loneliest guy in town, would be attending a Halloween party with other people of my same age. They would be absolutely thrilled, and, honestly, so would I.
“Man thanks for the invite. I’ll see what I can do, and I’ll try and stop by for sure!” I replied, trying to conceal my excitement.
“Dope, dope, I’ll text you the addy” Daniel shot back. All of the employees had each other’s numbers due to group texts with the managers and whatnot. He pulled his phone out and pounded his thumbs on it for a moment. By the time he set his phone back down I felt a tell-tale jolt coming from my own apron. We nodded at each other, and continued in wrapping up our closing work.
After about ten minutes we were both at the bar cashing out our tips and gathering our things, ready to forget about the miserably slow restaurant and waste of a half of one of the best nights of the year. I counted my measly money and stopped by the bathroom. By the time I got out I heard Daniel at the front door talking on the phone excitedly, almost manic. He was a big guy, about six foot three and probably two hundred and fifty pounds, with dark hair and a thick, coarse beard. However, in this moment, he may as well have been a three year old girl on Christmas morning.
“DUDE. NO. ACTUAL. WAY!! YOU GOT IT?!!! HOW??” Daniel yelled, eyes flown open and jaw dropped as he pressed the phone to his ear and listened to the other end of the line for a moment. He laughed loudly. “Woahhhh man I can’t believe he’d let you have some! This is gonna be sooooo awesome bro.” Another pause. “Yeah man I’m just about to lock up the restaurant and then I’m a speeding bullet to ya dude!” He looked over at me and noticed how curiously I was eavesdropping. “Oh yeah dude by the way,” he continued, “I got a buddy from work here who may swing by as well, is that cool? I don’t know if he’ll want any but like how much is there?” Another moment of silence passed before Daniel looked at me again and gave a big thumbs up. “Sweeeeeeet sweet dude I’ll let him know. Alright buddy I’ll be home in a few. See ya!” He hung up and gave a “WOO!!” That rang through the entirely of the dark, empty restaurant. “Now what on earth was that all about?” I said with a laugh, my face contorting into a very puzzled look.
“Okay okay okay, so.” Daniel said before taking a big breath. “Have you......ever done...........psychedelics?” He gave me an anxious, toothy grin.
“I, uh...” I started, trying to think of what I would say next. In college I had tried to expand my horizons a bit, but to me that horizon stopped at the edge of beer and a little pot. I had never tried any real drugs, and didn’t even really like pot and didn’t really drink a whole lot either. I wanted to match Daniel’s enthusiasm, however. Tonight I was going to have fun, and to do that I had to try and be as hyped up as those around me. I wanted whoever I was partying with to see me as one of them.
“Uh...yeah man! I did some shrooms and stuff in college!” I answered. Daniel walked closer to me and gave me a strong, almost painful high five.
“Hell yeah!” He roared. “So. My buddy’s brother just got back from South America, right? He was down there on some kind of soul searching cleanse or whatever. WELL. He met up with some dudes down there who like go out into the jungle and find plants and frogs and stuff that make you high and hallucinate and stuff, right?”
“Okay woah?” I said, listening intently to this already outrageous story.
“Yeah,” Daniel continued, “so he meets these dudes and they tell him they’ve found something that they’ve never seen before, like this weird little plant, and that it’s the wiiiiildest trip you can imagine! Like you just mix the whole plant into water and let it soak and then drink it and then BAM!” He slapped his hands together for effect, “Wave. After. Wave, of the most out of this world visions you can imagine! His brother said it was like a miracle. He said he went to heaven and met angels and shook hands with God and stuff! Just CRAZY!!” I stood, eyes wide and mouth down turned, taking all of this information in.
“Sooo I’m guessing he gave some to your buddy?” I said.
Daniel nodded. “Dude. Yes. Told him it would make for the perfect Halloween. And apparently one little plant is enough to get like fifty people tripped, so there is plenty to go around. What do you say, man? You IN??” He answered with a big goofy smile.
“Well, I...uh” I started. Boy. I had always been curious about hallucinogens. Everyone I knew who had taken them seemed to really enjoy the out of body, personal, beautiful experience of it. They always seemed to learn something deep about themselves, too. Like life changing epiphanies and whatnot. I enjoyed being in control of myself though. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. Wait, no. I was going to have fun. I was going to be young and adventurous tonight. If this is what it takes, then so be it. “That, uh, that sounds like a damn blast, man. Count me in!” I exclaimed. Daniel hollered again and gave me another stinging, large palmed high five.
“Awesome dude!! Well, I’m headed there now if you just wanna follow me!” He said with the vigor and pep of a summer camp counselor.
“Alright, sounds good!” I replied, as he held the door open for me before stepping through himself, locking it behind him. We walked to our cars, which were parked beside each other in the row furthest away from he restaurant. The night was starless and bearing down heavily on us.
“Man, it really feels like Halloween, ya know?” Daniel said, and I nodded in agreement.
“Dude yeah, there’s definitely just something in the air.” I replied, and we both giggled. He opened his driver side door.
“Okay buddy, well, just follow me! I’ll see ya there.” He said to me before hopping into his car. “Sounds good, see ya there!” I replied happily before getting into my own car. He cranked the engine and sat a moment before backing out and pulling away slowly, and so I did the same.
We turned out of the parking lot and onto the main thoroughfare of our little town where our workplace resided. It was about ten o’clock, and there wasn’t a sign of life anywhere. Not that there ever really was in this sleepy little place we called home. The downtown was decorated seasonally though, and so we passed by light poles dressed in tapestries, featuring pumpkins and scarecrows and all of the beloved Halloween symbols. Storefronts had hay bales and jack o lanterns and skeletons displayed. I looked as I drove by. I was actually really excited for tonight like I hadn’t been in years. The nostalgia of these traditional decorations mixed with the freshness of a promising new social event bubbled within me, escaping in a huge smile. I kept following him out of downtown and onto side streets for a few minutes. In my joyous stupor I suddenly realized I hadn’t told my parents my plans. They were probably beginning to worry. I got my phone out and dialed them, and they picked up after the first ring.
“Hello?” My mom answered, her voice a little concerned.
“Hey mom! Um, sorry, just wanted to let y’all know what I’m up to tonight!” I told her, excited to announce my plans.
“What you’re up to? You mean you’re not coming home?” She responded curiously but not suspiciously.
“Actually, no!” I said with a chuckle. “My buddy from work, Daniel, invited me to his Halloween party so I’m following him to his house right now!”
“Reaaally? Well that sounds like fun!!” She replied with a mix of relief and joy. “What is going down at Daniels? Do you know anyone else that’s gonna be there?”
“He said it’s just gonna be kinda low key with a few more of his buddies! I don’t know them but they all sound really cool! We’re just gonna watch movies and eat candy and do all the normal Halloween things apparently!” I told her in a convincing half lie.
“Aww, well that sounds great! I’m so glad you’re hanging out with friends tonight!” She responded before a brief pause. “Oh okay! Hey here’s your dad, he wants to say something!” The audio crackled for a second before I heard my dads voice.
“Hey son! I’m happy to hear you’re going to a friends house tonight!” He said with obvious warm pride, “it’s a shame you’re too popular for your old parents now!” We all laughed for a moment before he continued. “Now I just gotta say. You’re old enough to have a good time, and I have no problem with that. BUT. One thing I will say is that if there’s any drinking going on at this party, just don’t go driving anywhere. Deal?”
“Oh yeah, deal, of course!” I answered truthfully. “I don’t even think Daniel and these guys are like that, but we’ll be sure to make it safe though, absolutely. Either way, I think we’re almost to his place, so I’ll have to talk to y’all later!” We were getting close, as Daniel’s car turned on the street and into a dimly lit apartment complex.
“That’s fine! We won’t wait up, so you feel free to spend the night there of course, if you want. We love you son! Happy Halloween!”
“I love y’all too! Happy Halloween!” I replied before hanging up. It was great to tell them about my fun night of plans. I could hear the happiness in their voices that I finally had some friends to hang with.
Daniel and I rolled through the complex, made up of long, two story brick buildings lined with white doors. There were light up pumpkins, witches and ghosts by doorsteps and fake cobwebs over windows. After passing several of these buildings we made our way to the back and Daniel parked. I followed suit, parking next to him. We both got out.
“Dude, this place is sweet!” I told him as we walked the sidewalk over to the side stairs.
“Thanks man, it’s been pretty nice around here, and cheap enough to where I can survive some nights making no money like tonight.” Daniel responded with a laugh.
“I feel that.” I said as we climbed the steps to the second story and walked past several doors before Daniel stopped at one numbered 628.
“Welp, here we are!” He said as he reached in his pocket and pulled out keys. He unlocked and opened the door, and immediately a strange, intoxicating smell poured out toward us.
“Woooooof, what is THAT?” I said loudly, entranced and confused.
“That, my friend, is our personal rocket ship for the evening.” Daniel replied with a devilish grin.
We walked through the front door into a humble, yet surprisingly tidy apartment. The entrance led us down a short hallway, lined with Kansas City Chiefs and St Louis Cardinals posters. We talked about sports quite a bit at work so this definitely checked out. The hall spilled into a living area, with a long pale couch and a dark blue easy chair. An absolutely monstrous TV welcomed us as well.
“Duuuuuude how big is your TV?” I asked, my jaw falling open.
“Seventy five inches bro. Little graduation present from the parents a couple years back.” Daniel answered, as smug as a lifelong hunter showing off his most prized big game trophy.
“Woahhhh” I said as I scanned it up and down. I turned around and surveyed the rest of the common area. Past the living room was the kitchen behind a partial wall, leaving a doorway sized path through to it. I could see a young man stirring a huge pot on the stove, using a large wooden spoon. His long, curly dark hair went all the way down to his lower back. I couldn’t see his face as he was turned away from us, toiling passionately at the big steaming container. He was wearing jeans and a sleeveless white t shirt, showing off his numerous arm tattoos.
“Come in, come IIIINNNN...to my house of SINNNNNN!” He bellowed, still facing down to the stove in front of him.
Daniel rolled his eyes and smiled. “For one bro, this would be MY house. And for two, if this is a sin, then send me straight to hell!” he said, walking through the living room and over to the opening to the kitchen.
The long haired young man stopped stirring and turned around slowly. He had big brown eyes that were shot open wide and he wore a mysterious, yet bone-white smile.
“Now now, dear Daniel, on the contraire, and you mustn’t forget, it is HEAVEN that was built for sinners! HELL was made for LOVERS!” He proclaimed in a low, almost Trans-Atlantic growl, raising a hand dramatically and holding intense eye contact. He was like something straight out of a Vincent Price movie. I stared in awe.
“Okay bro knock off the shtick.” Daniel sneered back in a laugh, shaking his head. He glanced over to me. “Sorry, he’s not usually this...mystic.”
“Ok, fine dude, but it’s Halloween! I’m just tryna be ghoulish!” His friend said, playfully defeated. His voice had changed to a higher pitched, more nasally tone, replacing the fake accent with what I assumed to be his real voice.
“You may be ghoul-ISH but your eyes tell me you’ve been smoking that goul-ASH! You been into my weed man?” Daniel humorously interrogated.
“Uhhhhh” his friend stumbled.
“Whatever bro, just come meet my buddy already.” Daniel responded.
The long haired fellow broke his gaze with Daniel and looked over to me, smiling. “Of course!” He said as he walked out of the kitchen and over to me in the living room. “Pleasure to meet ya sir, the name’s Roddy.” He extended a friendly hand and I took it.
“Nice to meet you man, I’m Matthew.” I replied.
“Sweet dude, I’m glad you came out tonight! It’s gonna be literally so amazing for all of us!” he said, raising his hands and extending his fingers out of undeniable anticipation.
“Yeah! So, like, what even is it exactly?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah man, you gotta give him the spiel” Daniel chimed in, curling up one side of his mouth.
“Of course! Come, come, let me show you what’s up!” Roddy replied, gesturing us both into the kitchen as he walked that way.
We all gathered around the steaming pot on the stove. The smell was so strong and yet so undefinable. It had notes of old leather, had an almost chemical hint of citrus, and somehow also gave off Coca Cola vibes. The steam was heavy and breathed the odor throughout the entire apartment. Roddys eyes looked almost predatory as he overlooked the bubbling brew.
“Boys, allow me to introduce you to what I like to call Plant X. Born deep within the Amazon jungle, this rare and mysterious form of life has been entirely untouched by man, giving no secrets, waiting in silence. That is, until now!” He said, raising his index finger.
“Duuuuuude cmon man get to the point so we can stop talking and start wooshing off into space.” Daniel clapped back with a smile.
“WHAT. EVER.” Roddy snapped in response. “So yeah my big brother went on this like Ayahuasca cleanse in Peru last month to get his head straight, right? Well, he met these indigenous dudes that hunt for hallucinogenic plants, and they had discovered something NEW. Like NEVER before had they seen anything like it. Ever. Like in millennia!! It’s this weird, bulbous little green and purple cabbage looking deal. So they all did it together and it was the ride of their lives!” He paused for effect, wafting the steam around with both hands, “like meeting celestial beings and playing basketball with unicorns and growing as tall as a building and jumping to the moon kinda stuff!”
“So like, do you just drink it?” I inquired, leaning on the black refrigerator that stood tall next to the stove.
“Yes! So big bro told me that you have to cook it down for like an hour, then pour it up into coffee cups and stir it real good then drink it. He said it hit him fairly quickly. BUT, he also said it comes in waves,” Roddy continued, his voice deepening, “and after each wave you have to drink another cup so the next phase can catapult you even higher. He did three waves. Wave one was like fun and hilarious. Wave two was more intense but in a euphoric kind of way. And wave three,” he paused and smiled and nodded slowly, “wave three....was absolute heaven.”
“So like how do you know when each wave is over?” Daniel asked, inquisitively scratching his beard.
“Apparently you just know. Like a three act play kind of vibe. I figure it’ll be easy to tell.” Roddy answered with confidence.
Daniel looked over to me, and I met his gaze and passed it on to Roddy, who smiled and reached down to turn the stove off. “Well boys, what do you say we start our engines?” He exclaimed, reaching into a white painted cabinet and getting out three brown coffee mugs.
“I’d say it’s about that time bro!” Daniel said, walking over to the cups and picking one up and twisting it in his hand. They both looked at me, waiting for my confirmation.
“Yeah guys let’s do it. Gonna be NUTS.” I happily obliged before walking over and picking out my own cup.
“Excellente!” Roddy shouted, dipping a big metal soup ladle into the now placid, cooling concoction. He took each of our cups and portioned out the potion till it filled halfway. Suddenly we were all facing each other, mugs raised for a toast, ready to drink.
“So like, I have to ask, but did your brother mention any bad side effects or anything?” I asked Roddy with just the slightest twinge of anxiety, cup still raised.
“Homies, he said the only bad thing about this is that you have to return to Earth when it’s over!” Roddy replied with a trustworthy grin. I nodded and returned a closed lip smile.
“Do the honors Rod!” Daniel encouraged.
“Boys, to a Halloween night we will never forget,” Roddy said softly and seriously, holding piercing eye contact for a couple seconds with Daniel and then me. “Cheers!”
“CHEERS!” Daniel and I echoed loud and proud, and we all put our cups together in a ceramic CLINK before raising them up to our open mouths. We all drank in a silent moment, swallowing the liquid in one big chug.
The drink was still as hot as coffee and burned all the way down my esophagus. The taste was extraordinary though. Surprisingly different from its odor. It began with a taste like a thin curry soup, but then changed to an almost spicy minty flavor, and then finished sweet and herbal, like a perfume for springtime.
“Woahhhh.” I breathed in an almost grunt.
“Daaaaaamn” Daniel added after sharply inhaling through puckered lips.
Roddys brow was lifted as high as it could physically go. “Okay, now THAT is good.” He agreed enthusiastically. We all set our cups down on one side of the big double sink next to the fridge.
“Man I think I’d drink that even if it didn’t get you zooted,”. Daniel added as we all returned to a circle in the middle of the kitchen.
“Definitely. That stuff is like INSANELY good.” I replied.
“That’s even better than I thought it’d be.” Roddy followed up.
“So like, what do we do now?” I asked, sharply glancing at both of them.
“Hmmm, well, I guess we just wait. Shouldn’t take long.” Roddy responded.
“I mean y’all wanna chill and watch some YouTube until it kicks in?” Daniel suggested.
“Hell yeah!” Roddy answered.
“Yeah sounds good!” I said in splendid agreement.
We walked out of the kitchen and back into the living area. The two of them sat on the pale colored couch and I parked myself in the easy chair. Daniel picked up the tv remote from in between two black coasters on a small wooden coffee table and clicked the red “On” button. The huge screen suddenly flared white before taking us to the Roku city home page.
“Y’all cool with like a nature video or something? I have a few bangers in mind.” Daniel asked, and Roddy and I made agreeable noises in return. Pretty soon, we were all glued to a beautiful natural scene, full of running giraffes and zebras, and delicate bioluminescent beings of the deep. After a few minutes Roddy turned to us.
“Y’all...like...feel it yet?” He asked.
“Can’t say I do.” Daniel responded.
“Nah, same here.” I threw in.
“Oooooookay, welp, it’s early. We’ll be there shortly for sure.” Roddy concluded.
We continued to watch the nature video in silence for a few more minutes. There was a long drawn out scene where they strapped a camera to the top of a hawk and followed its point of view over canyons and desert. It was truly breathtaking. I kept checking myself to see if anything was happening within me due to the mysterious substance. Nothing had seemed to change. I stole glances over to the other boys. They’re faces were pretty much blank. They looked bored. Hmm. I hope this wasn’t a dud. I hope Roddys brother didn’t just spray cologne on a handful of lettuce and tell him it was some Peruvian miracle drug. That would ruin the night entirely, and therefore, my first fun outing in over a year. No, I had to give it more time. Surely something would happen soon. I contemplated just simply pretending to experience hallucinations in a few minutes if nothing changed. Maybe the other guys would follow suit and we could all just have a placebo party. Yeah. Not a bad idea honestly.
I was self affirming my plan when suddenly all of the power went out in Daniels apartment. Pitch. Black.
“The hell?” He shouted.
I leaned back the easy chair, frozen.
“You pay electric this month dude?” Roddy taunted.
“Duh bro I always pay on the 5th. Stupid damn apartment complex. Somebody probably tripped something up.” Daniel responded coarsely.
Then suddenly the tv sprang back on, a pure white screen. We all fell dead silent, mouths falling open and pupils quickly dilating. I started to feel tingles throughout my body, like raw electricity was passing over my skin. I turned to the other boys, who were both raising their arms, studying them closely.
“Are y’all....feeling...this?” I whimpered.
“Uhhhh....yeah dude.” Roddy answered, voice trembling.
Daniel couldn’t even muster a response. He just kind of grunted in a high pitch.
Then, a voice came from the bleak screen.
“ARE......YOU........PREPARED?” A low, booming question rang out through the living room. I was absolutely floored. I was paralyzed in my seat, unable to tear my eyes away from the mesmerizing light. I couldn’t even look over to the others.
“ARE......YOU.......PREPARED??!!” The voice repeated itself, this time much louder. It seemed to want some kind of answer from us. I finally was able to peek over to the couch. The two boys were visibly shaking in their seats. They both slowly turned their eyes to me, heads heavily vibrating in awe and fear.
“Y...y...y....yes.” I stated in a struggle, looking back into the eternal, unbearably white square. I darted back to Daniel and Roddy. They looked absolutely terrified. I gave them a wide eyed twitch toward the screen, imploring then to follow my lead.
“Uhhhh.....uhhhhhh.....yes, yes.” Roddy spoke first. “Cmon Dan” he whispered over to the seat beside him.
Daniel took his time, trying to summon every ounce of energy he had just to form one word. He began to nod, first softly, then swelling in power until it was almost violent and rabid.
“YES! YES!!” He shouted. Roddy and I managed a smile at his compliance. We all turned our attention back to the huge, beaming portal before us, awaiting further communication.
The blank screen began to blink slowly. On...off. On...off. On...off. The three of us shot looks at each other, our rightful confusion in unison. The winking light began to increase its tempo. I stared deep into the intermittent image of bright nothingness, eventually unfocusing my eyes and falling into a relaxed, almost hypnotized state. The visual rhythm acted as white noise for the eyes, and the rest of the world sizzled away around it. I was starting to experience ego death, beginning to lose my sense of self entirely. I wasn’t even sure I had a body anymore. Right as I was about to lose consciousness, the swiftly pulsing, icy slideshow came to an end, being replaced by the image of a beautiful green field. Healthy grass, little sunflowers, dandelions and wild strawberry plants reached up toward a cloudless, aquatic sky. The juxtaposition from the pale void to this marvelously detailed, lovely landscape was almost enough to make me cry. The definition was unlike anything I had seen onscreen before. It just looked so real. Better than real, even. The other boys and I passed around more looks to acknowledge that we were all on the same page.
“Wooooooo” Daniel mustered through down-curled lips.
Roddy shifted pleasantly in his seat. “It’s beautiful. It’s so beautiful.” He said in hushed awe.
“It’s just...too real.” I added, before standing up out of the easy chair. My legs felt like they were made out of concrete. With incredible difficulty I slowly drudged my way over toward the TV.
“Whatcha.....doin.....dude?” Daniel slowly slurred.
“It’s just...too real.” I said as I finally made my way right in front of the screen. The TV looked like it was fifty feet high and eternally wide from where I was standing. I reached out my right hand and began to move it toward the lush life on display before me. As I moved my fingers over a small patch of greenery, I was suddenly taken aback. I felt it. I felt the grass. I could feel each soft blade on my tingling fingertips.
“Uh....guys. You gotta get over here.” I announced, not peeling my focus away from the dimensional oddity in front of me. “You won’t believe it. It’s...real.”
They both struggled their weighty legs over to where I was and began to pet the screen as well. Their eyes and mouths swung wide open in amazement as they experienced the same sensation of feeling the field for themselves. Daniel picked a sunflower and pulled it out of the projected field and into our reality.
“Im....possible.” He whispered, twisting the flower between his thumb and index finger. The three of us silently kept running our hands over the plants for another few moments. Then Roddy noticed something new on screen.
“What is that?” He asked, pointing to a small dark object on the field’s horizon. Watching closely, I saw something that was slowly getting bigger and bigger. No, not bigger. Closer. It was something running through the field and toward our vantage. As it got closer, it’s details grew into communicable recognition.
“Is that...a bear?” I asked almost in jest.
It was definitely a small bear. But it wasn’t a realistic bear like you’d find in the Appalachian or Alaskan ranges. It was man made. Doll like. A whole ass teddy bear, as a matter of fact. Light brown, felt fur wrapped into a sweet, friendly little body. As it grew closer and closer I could point out big, dark button eyes, with two matching stitched nostrils. It wore a goofy, toothless smile, in an upturned red crescent shape. It had small, spherical ears. At its side we’re two pairs of short, round, clawless arms and legs. Soon it approached close enough to fill the screen, perpendicular to the stark green and blue horizon. Outrageously, it began to speak to us.
“Hey fellas! Mind if I join ya?” It squeaked at us in a cute, high voice, as if it was in a Sunday morning children’s TV show.
The three of us didn’t know what to say.
“I, uh, uh, I mean, sure, sure, yeah, right?” Roddy answered it, side eyeing both Daniel and I for confirmation. We both flinched our shoulders in casual allowance.
“Hooray! Just grab my front paws and pull, pull, pull!” The little screen-bound bear said in return.
With confused giggles, Daniel and I raised our hands to its projected paws and amazingly were able to pass through the plane again and feel its soft wrist areas with a light squeeze. The teddy bear squealed with childlike delight as we lifted up its pillow-light frame out of the screen and onto the living room floor. In our reality, our new friend stood about four feet tall; bigger than a toy, but smaller than a threat. Roddy ran and flipped on the ceiling fan light so we could see our new guest more properly. Soon we were all standing around it, staring down in continued astonishment.
“So, like.....who are you.” Daniel blurted with deadpan voice, still unable to process what was happening.
The bear jumped from the floor to the top of the coffee table, so light it almost floated, and landed with a soft thud. It outstretched it’s adorable arms like a vaudevillian master of ceremonies.
“My name is...well...I can’t really say! If you were to hear my real, full name, then your minds would immediately dissolve into insanity and out of panic you would all stick things deeeep inside your ears and cause LOTS of damage! Trust me, it’s not a pretty sight!”
“Fair enough.” Daniel responded in a whimper.
“I can say it starts with the letter ‘A’ though!” The bear continued, and held out a plushy paw. Magically, the letter ‘A’ appeared over its palm, in a lime green vapor, before it floated up to the ceiling and dissipated. We all watched in astute amazement. “But, I usually tell all of my new friends to simply call me Eddy Bear! Although I come in many forms depending on what level of consciousness I am perceived in, this disguise is symbolic of fun! LOTS of fun! So let’s get to it!”
“Wait wait, so you’re like some kind of guide? Are you gonna be here the whole time?” I asked, rubbing my chin with my left hand.
“Well, yes! Well, kinda. Sometimes I’m a guide, sometimes I’m a teacher of sorts, sometimes I’m just a really good friend, like I am now!” Eddy Bear answered.
“What do you mean, SOMETIMES you’re a good friend?” Roddy inquired, not having missed that small detail of the explanation.
“Are y’all ready to come play and have FUN?” The bear continued, having apparently fallen deaf to the most recent question. We were a bit lost, but we weren’t here to philosophize, we were here to party. So we all nodded.
“GREAT! Then grab on and hold tight!”
We all put our hands on the shoulders and torso of the soft, sentient toy standing on the coffee table. We squeezed tight on its delicate, stuffed fabric, awaiting further instruction.
“Remember, hold on tight and don’t fall off! READY...SET...GO!!!!”
We were all suddenly surrounded by spiraling sparkles, like something straight out of a Disney classic. We began to float, about a foot from the floor, before slowly flying over toward the screen, which stretched out as wide and tall as the entire wall. I flinched as we didn’t slow down at all before passing through the TV display like an open window. Daniel let out a small, excited yell as we passed through the pristine portal.
Seamlessly, we were suddenly right there in the beautiful landscape. The temperature was perfect, probably around seventy degrees. The lush greenery decorated endless, rolling hills, out in every direction, as far as the eye could see. Above us, the sun beamed down warm and friendly. It was truly paradise. Any anxiety or confusion pertaining to our situation was immediately replaced by euphoric joy. It felt like living inside your favorite song. Golden, endless happiness radiated throughout my entire body. Even in all my years since I still can’t imagine a better feeling. Looking around at the others, I knew they were on the same wavelength. We couldn’t even form words. We just began to laugh, finally letting go of Eddy Bear. Starting with a low giggle, our volume began to accelerate quickly, and soon we were all hooting and hollering like a bunch of untreatable lunatics.
“Pretty cool, huh? How about we dance! Hit it boys!”
Eddy pointed an arm toward an empty patch of grass that opened up, with a small, circular stage rising out of the ground. On this stage were four other teddy bears, all on instruments. They all looked just like Eddy. I guess they all were Eddy, really. Three of them were sitting, their legs wrapping around slightly raised bongo drums. The other one was standing behind them, holding a saxophone. The drummers began to play a Conga rhythm in perfect synchronization, an infectious little beat. All of us in the audience grabbed hands and began to spin in a circle, still laughing uncontrollably. I was surprised that euphoria wasn’t escaping our open smiles in beams of blinding light. We all just looked into each other’s eyes, only able to communicate our perfect joy through maniacal guffaws. The bear on saxophone chimed in with the bongos, adding a beautiful, squealing melody that floated over the beat like a rising feather. We just kept spinning and laughing, the heavenly world twirling around us, eventually into just a colorful, blurry glow. We kept dancing around to the beautiful music for hours, maybe even longer. Here, there was no time. We were full of eternal energy, unable to even begin to grow tired or feel a need to stop. Eddy also seemed to be having the time of his life, as we held onto him and spun him a couple feet off of the ground. He was bubbling out a cartoonish giggle through his red, stitched mouth.
“ISNT THIS FANTASTIC?” He shouted at us. We of course couldn’t really answer but he knew that we concurred.
“IF ONLY IT COULD LAST FOREVER!!”
We all kept blissful eye contact with each other, as the colors of the landscape spun around us like a tornadic rainbow. Daniel and Roddys mouths and eyes were as wide open as physically possible, their pupils the size of quarters. Our laughing had not calmed the entire duration, which had felt like an entire lifetime to this point.
“WE’VE GOT TO GO HOME NOW FELLAS!” Eddy Bear continued, “BUT HAVE NO FEAR!! THERE IS STILL PLENTY AHEAD FOR YOU!! I HOPE YOU HAVE HAD FUN!! I KNOW I DID!!”
The music from the band swelled in volume as the colors around us began to change, growing brighter and brighter until it all became a surging white. Our vision was swiftly lost as the four of us were consumed by the radiance. I lost consciousness and my entire reality was suddenly plunged into a moment of darkness.
Several seconds of absolute void passed before my eyes shot open again. I was back in Daniels living room, sitting right there in the easy chair like nothing had happened. The TV was off but the overhead light was still on. I looked over to the couch and there were the other boys, who were stirring into wakefulness as well. Roddy nervously tapped on his chest and arms, checking to see if he was real and alive still. Daniel goofily stared at his hands.
“Are...are...we back??” He wondered aloud.
“I guess so. I guess that was the first wave...” Roddy answered softly.