No smoking smiley for bbm

Growing Marijuana

2015.11.19 23:55 kingvitaman Growing Marijuana

Growing Marijuana is an educational and informative subreddit. Show off your plants and setups, share tips, tricks, and get help. Whether you are experienced or a newbie, we are a community for all! Be helpful, be positive, or be quiet. Have fun and keep it legal
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2008.07.28 04:33 Enhancing food with wood smoke flavor

A place to discuss techniques, tips, recipes, and pictures of smoking meats, vegetables, fruits, or anything else consumable.
[link]

2011.01.08 19:08 Subduction A support community to help stop smoking cannabis, marijuana, pot, weed, edibles, or getting high.

This is a support and recovery community for practical discussions about how to quit pot, weed, cannabis, edibles, BHO, shatter, Delta 8, or whatever THC-related product you're using, and getting support in staying stopped.
[link]

2024.05.10 14:58 Bright-Expression950 「WCW 」"BOARD PAPERS" May 2001

//- INTRODUCTION //-
January 2001
Eric Bischoff along with Fusient Media purchased World Championship Wrestling from AOL Time Warner. The agreement will allow WCW to continue using Wrestlers under AOL Time Warner Contract for all WCW programming, but as of April 1, 2001 WCW will now longer be given programming on TNT and TBS.
ECW held its last major event Guilty As Charged before filling for bankruptcy Many of the talent signed to ECW have become free agents. Wile WWF will be contacting former ECW talent, WCW and Fusient Media has already reached out to several stars.
February 2001
World Championship Wrestling looks for a new home for television programming as Eric Bischoff is announced as President of WCW and Brian Bedol will assume the role of CEO of the company.
World Championship Wrestling is working through multiple television deals as they prepare for April when they are no longer part of TNT. There has been discussions with USA network, Fox Sports and ABC, but no deal has been solidified yet.
March 2001
WCW signs a television deal, but is not able to announce the partnership until their pogromming on TNT and TBS is over. Eric Bischoff does announce the lunch date for the new WCW. The next pay-per-view entitled ’The Big Bang’ will air live from MWM Grand and Garden Arena on Sunday, 6 May 2001.
April 2001. Once ht contact iwht Time Warner expires, WCW announces that Monday Nitro will be broadcast on the new Channel FX. At a press conference Eric Bischoff and Brian Bedol, announce that WCW headquarters will move from Atlanta to Las Vegas, where weekly Nitro will be broadcast from The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.
The reboot of new WCW will be the exited PPV ‘Big Bang’ on May 6.
[MAY]
Week 1, May 2001
________________
[1.5 WCW LIVES ON!] “NITRO DEBUTS ON FX”
[Hard Rock Cafe & Casino] New venue, a week out from pay-per-view spectacular ‘Big Bang’
◆”WCW Niro” TV Show
Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in front of 1,314
Overall Rating 60
Kevin Nash, Booker T, Goldberg beat R Steiner, S Steiner and Jeff Jarrett
Team Canada beat Kronik
Interview with DDP, Sting, Team Canada
Shane Douglas beat Bam Bam Bigelow
Interview with Goldberg and Buff Bagwell
Lex Luger beat Disco Inferno
Diamond Dallas Page beat Reno
Mark Jindrak, EZ Money, Shane Helms, Shannon Moore beat AJ Styles, Air Paris, Yang and Kaz Hayashi
Buff Bagwell beat Johnny The Bull
Konnan & Rey Jr beat Eliz Skipper & Kid Romeo
Segment with Rey Jr, Lex Luger, Kevin Nash, R Steiner, Cash and Vampire
Billy Kidman, Dustin Rhodes beat James Storm & Chris Harris
Vampire beat Ernest Miller
Interview with Ric Flair, Dustin Rhodes, Billy Kidman
[DARK] Chavo Guerrero Jr beat Norman Smiley
◆Show Notes
Scott Steiner and Brian Adams had a fight, Steiner was fined.
Buff Bagwell had an argument with a fan outside the arena, he was fined.
Vampire was caught smoking in the locker room. He was fined.
Mark Jindrak is now heel, Ric Flair is now face. Jason Jett has returned to his EZ Money moniker.
◆Roster Changes:
The Limo Driver was released from his handshake agreement at no cost.
Volador Jr signs a a three year per show contract, no downside
Yoshiro Tajiri signs two year deal ($36,400 total cost 2001 budget ex bonuses)
Great Sasuke agreed a handshake per show deal, no downside.
La Parka signs a two year deal, no guarantee, per show cost.
Christopher Daniels signs a two year per show contract, no downside
Super Crazy signs a two year deal ($180,000 cost to 2001 budget ex bonuses)
Silver King signs a one year deal per show contract, no downside
Ricky Steamboat has agreed a per show contract, no downside
Sabu has signed a one year per show contract, no downside.
Ultimo Dragon has agreed an ongoing handshake per show agreement, no downside.
Roddy Piper has signed a one year per show contract, no downside.
◆Business Notes
WCW Nitro’s debut ratings were 1,290,497 on FX.
iN Demand has agreed a one year deal to carry WCW pay-per-views
Azteca 7 will carry WCW pay-per-views and WCW Nitro for the next 12 months in Mexico
J Sports 1 will carry WCW pay-per-views and WCW Nitro for the next 12 months in Mexico
NBCSN will carry WCW pay-per-views and WCW Nitro for the next 12 months in Canada
Sky Sports USA will carry WCW pay-per-views and WCW Nitro for the next 12 months in the UK
M-Pro and WCW agree mutual partnership. M-Pro and WCW will both accept excursions from each other , while both parties are open to talent trades.
IWRG and WCW agree mutual partnership. IWRG and WCW will both accept excursions from each other and look to trade talent when beneficial.
◆NEWS
Rey Misterio Jr will once again wear his mask after approval from the Mexican Commission.
WCW missed out on the signing of Juventud Guerrero who signed with NJPW
[7.5 A NEW!] “WCW Big Bang Live On Pay Per View”
[MGM Grand] Anything can happen at the start of a new begigning
◆”Big Bang” Pay Per View
MGM Grand Garden Arena with 7,063 in attendance
Overall Rating 66
Booker T beats Jeff Jarrett, Scott Steiner and Sabu to retain the WCW World Heavyweight Championship
Video of Jarrett, Booker T, Scott Steiner and Sabu
Goldberg beat Buff Bagwell
Sting & DDP beat Lance Storm & Mike Awesome
Kevin Nash beat Rick Steiner
Ric Flair, Dustin Rhodes Bam Bam, Billy Kidman, Hugh Murris v Kanyon, Road Warrior Animal, Shane Douglas, Chavo Gurrero Jr and Mike Sanders
Gene Okerlund interviews Kevin Nash and Rick Steiner
Rey Misterio Jr beat Lex Luger
Vampiro beat Cash
Air Raid v 3 Count v Young Dragons v Mark Jindrak/Ez Money
Shane Douglas, Kanyon,Animal, Chavo Gurrero Jr and Mike Sanders discuss their match tonight
Great Sasuke, Super Crazy, Volador Jr, Yoshiro Tajiri beat Christopher Daniels, La Parka, Eliz Skipper and Kid Romeo
Gene Okerlund interviews Goldberg about Buff Bagwell
Kronik beat Chuck Palumbo and Sean O’Haire to become the new WCW World Tag Team Champions
Gene Okerlund interviews Ric Flair and Dustin Rhodes
Shane Helmes beats Jamie Knoble in a WCW Cruiserweight Championship defence
Eric Bischoff announces the formation of a new Championship Committee and is joined by Ricky Steamboat, Roddy Piper, Arn Anderson who bring out the main event Jarrett, Booker T and Steiner and tell them Sabu is now in the match.
[DARK] Norman Smiley v Konnan
◆Show Notes
Bryan Clarke, Road Warrior Animal, Chuck Palumbo was given warnings over their selfish behaviour,
Yoshirio Tajiri was fined on the first night of his new job for punching Brian Adams.
Jamie Knoble was fined for fighting backstage.
Week 2, May 2001
________________
◆Roster Changes:
Rob Van Dam has signed a four year contract, total cost to 2001 budget $995,000 ex bonus.
Bill Alfonso has signed a one year contract, total cost to 2001 budget $50,400.
Kwee Kwee was released from his contract, total cost to 2001 budget $37,800
The Wall was released from his contract, total cost to 2001 budget $45,000
Shawn Stasiak was released from his contract, total cost to 2001 budget $70,800
◆Business Notes
WCW Big Bang received a 0.11 (89,526 viewers) with 168,639 viewers overall with a buy rate of 0.14 (70,391).
◆Talent Relations
Kevin Nash has seen his salary increase due to the signing of Rob Van Dam, total cost to 2001 budget $910,000
Jeff Jarrett, Rey Mysterio Jr and Normal Smiley have been fined for drug test violations.
[7.5 ROAD TO GREAT AMERICAN BASH!!] “MORE CHANGES…”
[Hard Rock Cafe & Casino] Eric Bischoff announces a new Director of Talent Recruitment, who will his first signing be?
◆”WCW Niro” TV Show
Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in front of 1,511
Overall Rating 56
Booker T, Sabu, Rob Van Dam, Vampire & Goldberg beat Kevin Nash, Steiner Brothers,
Angle involving Jeff Jarrett, Shane Douglas who were confronted by Goldberg and Vampire, match set for Great American Bash
The Filthy Animals (Konnan, Billy Kidman, Rey Mysterio Jr) beat Road Warrior Animal, Kanyon and La Parka
Diamond Dallas Page beats Buff Bagwell
Kevin Nash challenged Booker T to a WCW World Heavyweight Title match at Great American Bash, it was accepted. Both men meet in the 5 v 5 Hardcore Tag Match in the Main Event.
Gene Okerlund interviewed Team Canada (Lance Storm, Mike Awesome), DDP and Sting. They’ll meet in singles matches at Great American Bash
Kronik (Bryan Clarke & Brian Adams) beat Ernest Miller & Disco Inferno to retain the WCW Tag Team Championships [1st defence]
Dustin Rhodes accepted Ric Flair’s offer to form a tag team, The Legacy.
Super Crazy beat Great Sasuke, AJ Styles, Chavo Guerrero Jr, Ez Money and Cash
Dustin Rhodes beat Lex Luger, Ric Flair watched the match and celebrated Rhodes win.
Yoshirio Tajiri beat Shannon Moore
Eric Bischoff announced Dusty Rhodes as the new Director of Talent Recruitment, he announced his first signing Rob Van Dam and his manager Bill Alfonso.
[DARK] Volador Jr, Kaz Hayashi, Yang beat Evan Karagias, Elix Skipper and Kid Romeo
◆Show Notes
Bryan Adams, Kevin Nash, Chuck Palumbo, Rob Van Dam, Disco Inferno and Bryan Clarke were all fined for various behaviour indiscretions.
◆[GREAT AMERICAN BASH]:”FOUR MATCHES CONFIRMED!”
Booker T v Kevin Nash - WCW World Heavyweight Championship
DDP v Lance Storm
Sting v MIke Awesome
Jeff Jarrett and Shane Douglas v Goldberg, Vampiro
◆News
Psicosis turned down an offer to sign with WCW and has joined NJPW.
◆Business Notes
WCW Nitro achieved a 0.11 TV Rating (83,940 viewers). It had a total of 1,33,784 viewers.
WCW’s drug testing policy has been paused will be reviewed.
◆Roster Changes:
Curt Henning has signed a one year contract, cost to 2001 budget $351,400 ex bonus.
Terry Funk has agreed a one year contract, cost to 2001 budget $128,800
James Mitchell has agreed a two year contract with a downside agreement costing 2001 budget $14,000.
Rena Mero has signed a two year contract, costing the 2001 budget $90,300
Bobby Heenan has agreed a one year contract with no downside, per show deal.
Masato Tanaka has agreed a three month handshake per show agreement with no downside.
◆Talent Relations
Sting, Jeff Jarrett, Vampire and Brian Adams were all fined for breaching drug testing regulations.
Week 3, May 2001
________________
[14.5 ROAD TO GREAT AMERICAN BASH!!] “MORE CHANGES…”
[Hard Rock Cafe & Casino] Eric Bischoff announces a new Director of Talent Recruitment, who will his first signing be?
◆”WCW Niro” TV Show
Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in front of 1,502
Overall Rating 61
Booker T and Kevin Nash confronted each other ahead of their WCW World Title match at Great American Bash
Legacy (Ric Flair & Dustin Rhodes) and the Steiner Brothers went to a no contest when Kronik,
Gene Okerlund interviewed DDP, Sting, Lance Storm and Mike Awesome about their respective matches at Great American Bash
Jeff Jarrett, Vampire joined Gene Okerlund to talk their upcoming match with Goldberg and Vampiro
Sabu and Rob Van Dam ran in.
Booker T beat Terry Funk to retain the WCW Unites States Championship
Yoshirio Tajiri, Goldberg, Vampire beat Curt Henning, Road Warrior Animal and Buff Bagwell
Kevin Nash beat Chris Harris
Team Canada beat The Mamalukes
Rey Misterio Jr beat Masato Tanaka
Great Sasuke and Air Raid (AJ Styles & Air Paris) beat Cash and 3 Count (Evan Karagis and Shannon Moore)
Diamond Dallas Page beat Johnny Swinger
Kanyon beat Normal Smiley
Shane Douglas beat Jamie Knoble
Legacy (Ric Flair and Dustin Rhodes) confronted Rob Van Dam, Sabu, Brian Adams, Bryan Clarke, setting up a WCW Tag Team Title Four Way Match at Great American Bash.
La Parka beat Jim Duggan
Eric Bischoff introduced the Championship Committee (Arn Anderson, Ricky Steamboat, Roddy Piper) who were joined by newest member Terry Funk. Director of Talent Acquisition Dusty Rhodes brought out his newest signing Curt Henning.
[DARK] Chavo Guerrero Jr beat Alex Wright
◆Show Notes
Jamie Knoble, Tony Shivonie, Johnny Ace, Scott Steiner were all fined due to various behavioural issues.
◆[GREAT AMERICAN BASH]:”CHAMPIONSHIP MATCHES CONFIRMED!”
Booker T v Kevin Nash - WCW World Heavyweight Championship
DDP v Lance Storm
Sting v MIke Awesome
Ric Flair & Dustin Rhodes v Steiner Brothers v Rob Van Dam & Sabu v Kronik - WCW World Tag Team Titles
Jeff Jarrett and Shane Douglas v Goldberg, Vampiro
◆Business Notes
WCW Nitro received 0.11 TV Rating (86,894 viewers) with 1,391,647 viewers overall.
◆Roster Changes:
Road Warrior Animal requested and was granted his release, no cost to the 2001 budget.
Dick Togo, MEN’s Teioh and Jinsei Shinzaki will join WCW for one show as per their talent exchange with M-Pro. Terry Funk, Kaz Hayashi and Yoshirio Tajiri will head to M-Pro for one show.
Damien 666 has agreed a one year, per show handshake deal with a downside that will cost the 2001 budget $9,100
Lizmark Jr has agreed a one year, per show handshake deal with a downside that will cost the 2001 budget $7,700
Villano V has signed a there year contract costing the 2001 budget $105,000
Week 4, May 2001
________________
[21.5 ROAD TO GREAT AMERICAN BASH!!] “VAN DAM’S BIGGEST TEST”
[Hard Rock Cafe & Casino] Rob Van Dam and Sting will clash in the main event
◆”WCW Niro” TV Show
Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in front of 1,645
Overall Rating 57
Booker T was attacked by Kevin Nash backstage to close the show
Rob Van Dam beat Sting
Ahead of their WCW World Tag Team Titles match at the Great American Bash Legacy (Dustin Rhodes & Flair), KroniK, Rob Van Dam and Sabu and The Steiner Brothers squared off in the ring.
Steiner Brothers beat Konnan and Billy Kidman
Booker T beat Sean O’Haire
Kevin Nash beat Evan Karagias
Bobby Henan and his client Kanyon called out Lex Luger, setting a match for Great American Bash.
Diamond Dallas Page, Goldberg, Vampire and Rey Misterio Jr beat Jeff Jarrett, Shane Douglas, Mike Awesome and Lance Storm
Kaz Hayashi, Yang, Lizmark Jr, Super Crazy and Tajiri beat MEN’s Teioh, EZ Money, Dick Togo, Damien 666 and Chavo Guerrero Jr
Gene Okerlund speaks with Tajiri w/James Mitchell and Buff Bagwell, a match is set for Great American Bash
La Parka beat Volador Jr
La Parka confronted Rey Misterio Jr, they’ll meet at the Great American Bash
Ric Flair beat Curt Henning
Dustin Rhodes beat Lash Leroux
The Championship Committee (Terry Funk, Roddy Piper, Arn Anderson and Ricky Steamboat) met with Lance Storm, Mike Awesome, Sting and DDP ahead of their Great American Bash singles matches.
[DARK] Kronik (Brian Adams & Bryan Clark) beat Mike Sanders & Reno
◆Show Notes
Chuck Palumbo was fired for another backstage incident.
Disco Inferno, Big Vito and Johnny Swinger were all fined for behavioural incidents.
◆[GREAT AMERICAN BASH]:”MORE MATCHES CONFIRMED!”
Booker T v Kevin Nash - WCW World Heavyweight Championship
DDP v Lance Storm
Sting v MIke Awesome
Ric Flair & Dustin Rhodes v Steiner Brothers v Rob Van Dam & Sabu v Kronik - WCW World Tag Team Titles
Jeff Jarrett and Shane Douglas v Goldberg, Vampiro
Buff Bagwell v Tajiri
Lex Luger v Kanyon
Rey Misterio Jr v La Parka
◆Business Notes
WCW Nitro received 0.11 TV ratings (82,725 viewers) with 1,319,060 viewers overall.
◆Roster Changes:
Terry Taylor has been released from his contract costing the 2001 budget $106,200
Reno has been released from his contract costing the 2001 budget $30,000
Johnny Swinger has been released from his contract costing the 2001 budget $22,800
Disco Inferno has been released from his contract costing the 2001 budget $75,000
//END OF MONTH REPORT
◆Company Info
Size Small, second in the world
Next Event The Great American Bash (pay per view)
TV Shows: WCW Nitro (Monday)
◆Financial Summary
Revenue $2,5m
Wages ($2,9m)
Of Which Are Terminations ($387k)
Loss ($3,7m)
Performance ($1,2m)
Reserves $8,7m
◆Active Roster
[FACE]
Singles
Alex Wright
Bam Bam Bigelow
Billy Kidman w/Tygress
Booker T - WCW United States Heavyweight Champion, WCW World Heavyweight Champion
Diamond Dallas Page
Ernest Miller w/Miss Jones
Goldberg
Great Sasuke
Hugh Morris
James Mitchell
Jamie Knoble
Kevin Nash
Konnan w/Tygress
Lash Leroux
Lizmark Jr
Norman Smiley
Rey Misterio Jr w/Tygress
Rob Van Dam w/Bill Alfonso
Sabu w/Bill Alfonso
Seam O’Haire
Shane Helms - WCW Cruiserweight Champion
Silver King
Sting
Super Crazy
Vampiro
Volador Jr
Yoshiro Tajiri
Tag Teams
Air Raid (AJ Styles & Air Paris)
Kronik (Brian Adams & Bryan Clark) - WCW World Tag Team Champions
Legacy (Dustin Rhodes & Ric Flair)
Jung Dragons (Yang & Kaz Hayashi)
The Mamalukes (Big Vito & Johnny the Bull)
[HEEL]
Singles
Buff Bagwell
Cash
Chavo Guerrero Jr
Chris Harris
Christopher Daniels
Curt Hennig
Damien 666
Elix Skipper
EZ Money
James Storm
Kanyon w/Bobby Henan
Kid Romeo
La Parka
Lex Luger
Mark Jindrak
Masato Tanaka
Mike Sanders
Rick Steiner
Scott Steiner w/Midajah
Shane Douglas
Ultimo Dragon
Vilano V w/Stacy Keibler
Tag Teams
Team Canada (Lance Storm w/Rena Mero & Mike Awesome)
3 Count (Evan Karagias & Shannon Moore)
◆Unavailable
Sid Vicious - Leg Break 11 Months
Silver King - Dislocated Hip 5 Day
Ultimo Dragon - Broken Arm - 3 Months
◆Personalities
Arn Anderson - Member of the Championship Committee
Eric Bischoff - OwnePresident
Dusty Rhodes - Director Talent Acquisition
Roddy Piper - Member of the Championship Committee
Ricky Steamboat - Member of the Championship Committee
Terry Funk - Member of the Championship Committee / Part Time Wrestler
Jeremy Borash
Jimmy Hart
Paisley
Mike Tenay
Stevie Ray
Tony Schiavone
Gene Okerlund
Scott Hudson
[IN/OUT]
In
Curt Hennig
Terry Funk
James Mitchell
Rena Mero
Bobby Heenan
Masato Tanaka
Volador Jr
Yoshiro Tajiri
Great Sasuke
La Parka
Christopher Daniels
Super Crazy
Silver King
Ricky Steamboat
Sabu
Ultimo Dragon
Roddy Piper
Rob Van Dam
Bill Alfonso
Damien 666
Lizmark Jr
Villano V
Out
Road Warrior Animal
Kwee Kwee
The Wall
Shawn Stasiak
Terry Taylor
Reno
Johnny Swinger
Disco Inferno
The Limo Driver
22 Signings and 9 Departures
submitted by Bright-Expression950 to FantasyBookers [link] [comments]

2024.05.10 11:57 lollipop_laagelu My experience with a prospect who was shorter and balder

As it goes, my parents got me a prospect who is shorter and balder than me. No issues. I met him, he had a surgery on his face which looked like a cleft lip surgery ( I am a doctor, he is as well as his whole family) he denied it flat out.
Made a huge story out of how he hates Holi because he had an accident. I still let it go. I am no pari as well.
Next he showered me with gifts. Got my iPhone ( I refused to use it at all, primarily because I wasn't sure but our families pressurised me) Next he came to my work place and was outside and asked me WhatsUp? I didn't reply.
My mother calls me how busy are you that you cannot give a minute to speak with him. He came to surprise you. Okay I apologised.
He had no interests. He was 6 yrs older than me but in typical UP fashion He had faked his birth certificate.
Next He just did mbbs because his father was a doctor. And his father had huge plans for him and his sister and wanted to open a hospital.
Fine with me. But he wanted me to bear the stress of our incoming work and personal life. He was using my strong will to get out of his household because I don't want to go to a tier 2 city.
He never clicked pics with me because he was short and bald. Every conversation where I didn't respond with adequate love and mushiness was met with apprehension that I don't like him.
He called my mother and told her he wanted to speak about me and didn't want me or my father to know.
Me because he was bitching about me. My father because well he didn't want to think of him as less of a man.
I persevered . Why I don't know. I just felt bad for him. Maybe because I have insecurities and he has them as well and so I wanted to comfort him.
But a man with no interest friends or anything, how do I expect him to contribute anything to the marriage.?
Why do men reach the age of 30 plus and think that texting a girl they just met about all the problems of their life and that confessing love , is enough?
The problems bit is fine. Actually I am the twisted one who gets attracted to broken souls. Maybe because I want someone to heal me.
But he wants me to hold hands, video call, meet him every week. And had nothing to contribute in those calls texts or meets.
Every unreturned call and text meant I hate him for being short and bald. Every second call he would sneak in why me I am short. I bought heels but he sneaked in , you do know I am short right? Wtf
I told him he needs to find newer passions and that marriage is not a hobby. That he didnt do anything for 30 plus years and so now lets marry. Returned his unopened iPhone.
That's when I realised. He thought of me how majority men online think of women. Paisa feko , sab fit ho jayega.
He thought I would buy into his and his family's narrative of how they can provide me with Bangla Gaadi and paisa and I would come running behind this rishta.
Sad part was he called my parents once again and started cribbing about me. He used my biggest weakness of my overbearing strict parents against me and expected I would be okay.
Little did he know, my parents hate this bitching attitude more than they hate me.
And that was it.
He took the iPhone and asked for extra money as well. Because well ab ye iPhone Kaun use karega lol. My dad said fuck it rakh le.
I was free. But disappointed. He didn't even know what he wanted. He just knew that he had money so anyone would say yes. He just wants a wife for love and physical intimacy.
He hasn't spent a second thinking what would happen after we get married Maybe 1 yr later , Maybe 10 yrs later.
He is 36 unprepared.
So guys over here. Please I get it many women want love only. But I will never get the logic of it.
You are in AM, how do you know love is there within 2 3 months of meet. But what is definitely significant is the spark. The excitement of discussing a f1 race or watching animes and discussing the outcomes. Or being excited to tell them about your day.
Sirf kiss smileys se zindagi chal jayegi kya?
You can always love anew but how do you make a personality and life for yourself?
Is love enough to sustain a marriage?
Was I in the wrong to let him go? He wasn't the best prospect I have met but to make others understand I said no because he had nothing other than love to give me is difficult!
I read here how fast men and women progress to love talks. Spins my mind. Where is the hopes and aspirations and dreams that are to be discussed.
No wonder majority marriages turn boring. My sister told me always marry someone with similar interests. That will be enough to carry your marriage to the death bed.
She told me the love you will feel for your guy when he is panicking because his team is going to lose is exciting. To be explained how that goal was offside is exciting.
Har din I love you bolkar kya karlenge. But sitting at home having a smoke and crying over Nanami dying is and being comforted isse love barkarar rahega.
Is my ideology wrong?
Tldr - said no to a guy who blamed me for not liking him because he is short and bald. But didn't understand that marriage needs more than love to sustain.
submitted by lollipop_laagelu to Arrangedmarriage [link] [comments]

2024.05.10 06:02 DropWatcher Drop Watch: May 10th, 2024

LPs

Deluxe

EPs

Songs

BBL Drizzy (prod. by Metro Boomin)

Old Drop Watches

2023 and 2024 Calendar

submitted by DropWatcher to hiphopheads [link] [comments]

2024.05.08 00:57 Nxx_Analysis Card Review : Luke - Spice and Synergy

Heeeeey ! I’m back with a review and managed to tackle it entirely before the HSR update (yes I play the game). Also sorry for the weird/lack of formatting, we don't have internet anymore for a (long ?) while and my data are too poor for my laptop to use properly, but I did my best on phone. Without further ado, let’s start !
Card review : Luke - Spice and Synergy
As always, the notation is subjective, especially the art one.
Art : 4.5/5
Story plot : 9/10
Story writing : 5/5
Total : 18.5/20
Review summary :
After finishing a co-op game together, Luke and Rosa decide to register in a cooking vlog competition related to the game in order to win limited edition merch. In a warm, cozy and harmonious atmosphere, they tackle this challenge which will bring unforgettable memories.
Review act per act :
Act 1
Luke is tossing ingredients in a frying pan from far away and as the oil is splattering, Rosa hurriedly gives him the lid as a protection. Luke comments that cooking felt more like a physical skill test than any combat. Rosa confirms, remembering how she mentioned trying to challenge themselves to cook. A few hours ago. As the credit of the game finished rolling, Luke and Rosa finally got the perfect ending in a game called Monster Kitchen. Rosa complains on how hard the last stage was, Luke agreeing and saying the game should have been called Torture Kitchen instead. Rosa recalls how they had to avoid traps, collect ingredients in a maze to be able to cook a dish called Surf and Turf to convince the devil in the castle. She says that the guides were correct when they said getting the perfect end was a matter of luck before collapsing into bed like Luke, who immediately hugs her. He says that it's not totally luck since it's because of their marvelous cooperation. He takes his phone and asks her what she wants to eat as a celebration. Rosa tells him she is going to check reviews and recommendations. As she is taking her phone, she is distracted by a Big Data Lab notification, sharing with her an article Sherluke_Polmes, an account Luke created to play Monster Kitchen, was just reading. She clicks on the article and sees it's a Monster Kitchen Culinary Competition, which consists of bringing the food from the game to reality by recording and uploading vlogs. The prize includes limited-edition merch, absolutely unique in the world. Rosa looks at Luke and she sees that he is reading the same page but he looks conflicted. She guesses he really wants the merch but considering both of their skills with cooking it might be difficult. But still, Rosa thinks that since they only have to recreate the dishes on a visual level, they still have a chance. Feeling confident, she asks Luke if he wants to join. He asks the question back and Rosa guesses that he is worried about her pushing herself to do something she doesn't want, since Monster Kitchen is a coop-game, so must the competition be, meaning they would have to enter together. She tells him that she wants to and seeing how confident she looks, he agreed too. But they underestimated their task severely. Back in the present moment, they keep on coughing as Luke turns the fume extractor on. Inside the pan is burnt rice and sauce, stuck to the bottom. Luke complains, saying he was following exactly what the cooking guide which came with the guide said. As he is doing so, smoke starts to rise again from the pan, so Rosa pulls him away, asking if he is fine. Luke says he is but on another side looks disappointed. Rosa wonders if the substitute they used wasn't good enough. Since the ingredients in the game have particular lore and background, they obviously can't find them in real life, so they used substitutes with similar looking stuff, but it failed. Rosa complains how hard it is and Luke mentions they have to buy new ingredients. Luke rubs his eyes and then explains to a worried Rosa that smoke must have got into it and he is going to wash them. Rosa checks his eye and it is red and teary. She takes a wet wipe and softly cleans the corner of his eye. Luke then blinks several times and explains that he might still have onion's juice on his hands so it might explain... He is suddenly interrupted by a loud noise. On the other side of the kitchen, white smoke is coming out from the pot they forgot where they were making soup. Luke instinctively takes Rosa in his arms to protect her from the erupting water. Panicked, she asks him if he was okay, fearing that some boiling water burned him.
Sher(lock)luke_P(earce)(H)olmes, what a genius username I love this so much hahaha ! I wonder how it is in other languages… Also Luke Rosa living the most awesome cozy dream of being a gamer couple, I live for it, like, isn't it literally the dream to just spend time with your partner (or one of your friends) playing co-op-games together and frequently ? Wow, I would love to have this omg
Act 2
Rosa asks Luke if he is okay, which he confirms but knowing him. Keeping her in his arms, he turns off the stove. Rosa asks him to see his back and before he can stop her, she tugs on his shirt and pulls his collar. She sees how red the back of his neck is red. Rosa asks him if he needs to go to the hospital but he refuses saying it's not worth. Luke reassures her again as she was expressing her worry, adding that he needs to change now since he is dirty. Rosa tells him she is going to fetch the first aid kit in case and he agrees. He wants to touch her cheek as an habit but since he is covered in oil and stains, he stops and simply says that he will be back. Rosa is searching for the first aid kit and when she takes it out, a medal falls at the same time. It seems pretty worn out and has the words "Gold Medal in Microbiology Fun Lab Competition" written in front and "National Central University" in the back. Luke comes out of the shower at this moment so Rosa tells him she found the medal while searching for the first aid kit. He asks her if she is curious about it and she tells him that she is but that he is the most important right now. Rosa wraps her arms around his waist and look at his back but Luke tells her there's no need to check as he already did and he is just a bit red. He takes her hands to stop her and she insists. Giving up, he turns his back to her so that she can check. Indeed, there are only small red parts on his back which isn't serious. He tells her that it doesn't need the hospital and she agrees. Luke comments on how he must work on gaining her confidence next time before commenting that it was a good trade. She doesn't understand so he gets closer to her and says that they have to get the ultimate victory before getting a champion medal in Monster Kitchen but he got a champion medal now without even winning anything. She laughs, then tell him to settle down so that she can check for sure if he is fine. He tenses up as she continues to examine him. At some point she asks him to turn, which he reluctantly does and she discovers a crimson swathe which he was hiding. Luke struggles to explain himself and Rosa grabs him before he manages to escape. Commenting on how he needs to improve his reliability, she tells him to let her treat him. She tells him to lay on his stomach on the bed while she applies ointment and he obeys without saying anything. Looking more closely, even the splotches on his back seem very red. As Rosa starts applying it, she asks if it hurts and Luke says that it doesn't and she can even press harder if needed. He burries his head into his arms while she continues asking how he feels. Luke asks to stop since he hasn't cleaned up the kitchen yet but Rosa, starting to feel hot and ticklish, insists on treating him first. Luke relents and rests on his elbow. Rosa guesses he also feels awkward in the situation so she changes the topic to the medal she found earlier by asking him how he got it. He explains that it was worth an experiment where they used microbes as ink to draw shapes on a petri dish. Rosa asks him about it by repeating what he said but she is distracted by her feelings as she is treating him. Luke explains to her how it works and she comments that it sounds hard. He denies and as he continues to explain, he lets out a grunt, which worries Rosa, who asks him if she hurts him. He denies, telling that he is just not used to being touched there and she can continue. Luke turns to her and smiles to reassure her and as she is about to resume, a phone call interrupts the moment. Luke picks up his phone and freezes as he was about to stand up as his habit. Rosa tells him she is going to continue putting ointment while he is talking to the phone. On the other side of the line is an event organizer for the Monster Kitchen vlog contest, who is calling to check the participants' information. To not disturb him, Rosa tries to be more careful and delicate but it backfires, making Luke grunt once again. He however manages to continue his phone call. Once it's over, suddenly, he jumps out of bed and their positions are quickly reversed. He complains to her that she probably did it on purpose. Rosa denies, but he says doesn't trust her. He nuzzles her nose with his, starts caressing her face, and says how he almost made weird noises on the phone so she must pay for mental damage she caused to his psyche. Rosa asks him how she's going to pay that, and he tells her to figure it out. She hugs him and nuzzles her nose like he did earlier. She asks him if it's enough and Luke says no, so she adds that she is going to help him clean the house and think of a way to solve their kitchen problem too. Luke sighs loudly before kissing her. He then says that now it's a worthy compensation. She hugs him, touched by his gesture.
They are so funny and cute and Rosa knows how little care Luke has for himself so the fact she knew he got burnt more than he let on was satisfying kinda.
Act 3
They tidy up everything, then take off the curtains, bedding, Luke's clothes and wash them. Once done, they each carry a basket of laundry downstairs. In the courtyard, a lot of other residents’ beddings are already hung outside. Luke picks an empty corner to set the clothesline then, as he waves at Rosa, he calls her "dear" and asks her to hand her the "item". She realizes he just said a line from Monster Kitchen so she answers back with a line from the game while handing him bedsheets. He recites another line as an answer and she feels a bit flustered. Rosa tells him to stop and work or they won't be able to dry this today but Luke jokingly answers that he calculated that they should still be able to dry even if they layer them. Rosa asks him if he can calculate things like that and asks if he has a laundry guide. He starts hanging the sheets she hands him and confirms what she just said, adding that the guides are his exclusive tricks so he will only tell about them with certain conditions. He says she should get full score achievement in the "Monster Kitchen Castle Combat" like they did in the game and he will think about how to do that in real life. What he mentioned is a challenge triggered each time the player doesn't complete the cleaning task as the requirements, where the protagonists need to build a maze castle with bedsheets before beginning a chase. When one side wins more than 100 times, they get the extra achievement. Rosa says they don't have a castle IRL, then covers Luke with a bedsheet, saying that the combat part is still doable. Luke, surprised, lifts the sheets and says no ambushes allowed. Rosa gets back saying that it's fair in love and war and he always ambushes her in game. He counters saying he lets her know every time in advance. He lifts the bedsheet even more, telling that it won't be easy the next round. Rosa asks who said there was a next round and why don't they wrap it with only one round since it happens like that in Monster Kitchen Castle Combat. She announces she is going to make her victory speech and Luke argues that he just let her win but he agrees to listen to her. She starts by calling him Monster warrior and asking for his laundry secret. While laughing, he agrees to tell her : his secret is the thermodynamic equation. By applying them to the sunlight intensity, the temperature and humidity, you can get results. Rosa asked how he even thought about doing that and he tells her it's because of the medal she found earlier. Luke explains that since microbes needs specific conditions to grow, he did plenty of preparation before the competition. He suddenly think about how they should approach their recreation the Surf and Turf dish using the same way. Rosa asks if he suggests using science to do it and he confirms, saying they should disassemble the task into a scientific experiment. Seemingly excited, Luke explains that he was thinking about it since she found the medal and now that they talked about thermodynamics he got a clearer idea. She reaches out to him, saying she is "ready to complete the greatest challenge of her life with him" and asks about him, with a line from the game, said right before the final battle. He answers with a line from the game too and after putting the bedsheet over their head as a veil, he gently kisses her, saying he "needs to borrow some courage from her before the challenge". She softly answers that she will need to borrow some too.
Okaaaaay so I never understood his living place like this ?? Wdym other residents ?? I thought he owned a 3 floor kind of residence/house with his antique shop, detective agency and private apartment on each of those floors so he had no close enough neighbors to share stuff with them… Or is that like a housing residence with a common courtyard in the back but everyone has his own house ? On another side they are so cuteeeeeee Luke's smile is a 10/10 there, he looks so soft and pure awnnn
Act 4
At 4PM, they pick up the dried curtains and sheets before going to buy some other ingredients. The rules indicate that they have two days after registering to submit their video so the deadline is the next day, in the evening. They don't have the time to replace the broken pressure cooker where the soup was nor the also broken electrical stove on which it was cooking, so they head to Rosa's house instead to cook. After dinner, they check the ingredients they bought and Luke estimates that with the amount they got they have at least five attempts to make the dish. Luke writes in his notebook their ingredients and the issues they have encountered previously as well as solutions to those. Rosa comments on how she really feels like it's an experiment and Luke tells her he has to be meticulous with it especially since it'll help later. He writes the lines describing the dish from the game and pauses, asking out loud what they are going to do for the sauce recipe. Rosa comments that doing the same as in game will be hard so maybe they should stick to their previous method of using substitutes. Luke says that's a good idea but it would require a number of experiments. She tells him they can take the time to do so. She takes his hand, exactly like the protagonists from Monster Kitchen do every time, and quotes a line, telling him their fight is about to begin. He answers with a line from the game too, looking at her tenderly. After a while, they have a table full of saucer with different sauces, their failed experiments. Rosa asks Luke which version they are working on and he answers the version 34, which is too sour. Luke, along with the observations they previously made, lists the ingredients and quantities they have to use. He scratches off a line he wrote, then starts to mix some condiments precisely. Rosa tries it and comments that version 35 is not sour anymore and feels refreshing and sweet instead. Luke comments that the color isn't red as in game though and their sauce is brown. Luke and Rosa wonder about ingredients red enough to stay the same color after being boiled and which doesn't affect the taste. Rosa suddenly has an idea and takes out some small vegetables from her fridge, which Luke recognizes as being carrots they bought just to get a discount. Rosa corrects him saying it's beetroots and that they can be used as natural dye. Luke, excited, tells her they should use it. So a while after, with 2 more pages of the notebook written on and their table filled with reddish sauces, they finally managed to replicate a sauce of the same color and texture as in the game. Luke falls on the sofa, commenting on how hard it is. While the color looks good now, the taste is still a problem. In the game description, the sauce first has a sour and spicy taste, then becomes sweet and refreshing but theirs lack this sweetness. Rosa complains that they have tried so many times that her tongue feels numb and suggests combining all their datas now and see where they can improve. Luke tells her he will do it so she can rest first. Then, taking his notebook, he tells her that despite the experiment being a hassle it's way better than doing research on his own in the lab. Rosa realizes that Luke seems really marked by his microbe drawing competition. He says that he almost forgot it but the medal made him remember. He suddenly says it was lonely. She went closer to him to listen more. Luke explains that since it was an individual competition, he had to do everything alone and he didn't even sleep properly to be able to watch the results from his cultivation. Luke says that at the time, he was thinking how it would be nice if Rosa was next to him because he wouldn't have made that many mistakes with her there. He says that he feels his dream came true and Rosa asks him why he makes it sound like she is someone special. Luke says she is since she is his goddess of victory. She burries her face in his chest, feeling overwhelmed with feelings. Luke tells her to rest since he is almost finished to what she argues that she is not tired he is just comfortable to lean on. Luke insists on her sleeping and brushes her brow and she slowly falls asleep.
I’m seriously wondering how bad they can be at cooking when they managed to break the appliances by forgetting it on the stove, which also has broken, and the way they prepare themselves to try to do the whole recipe 5 times… But wow I admire their dedication to make such a detailed experiment to recreate that dish… Honestly, I love to see someone so serious and dedicated to their hobbies haha
Act 5
Rosa wakes up in a bright room, not remembering how she fell asleep. She looks at the sofa and sees Luke sound asleep, collar and corner of his mouth stained with red coloring and she wonders if he continued to experiment with the sauce when she fell asleep. A bit amused, she decides to wipe him. Rosa is a bit surprised to see that he didn't wake up as she started to clean him but still continues and brushes at some point against his lips, which makes his eyelids flutter. Her odd feeling is confirmed then and she guesses that he is pretending to be asleep, which makes her have an idea. Rosa loudly complains on how hard it is to wipe the collar as she rubs the wipe forcefully against him. Luke stops pretending and while pouting catches her hand and sits up. She laughs telling him he was awake after all but he corrects her and says he woke up when she leaned on him. Rosa compliments him and tell him to control his eyelids next time. Luke says she has to provide a better reward for him to do that. He hugs her and make her lie down with him. A bit embarrassed, she reminds him they have to work on something serious now. Smiling, Luke snuggle against her, telling her they need to wash up first. After doing so and eating breakfast, Luke shows Rosa the result of the experiment he got by improving their findings : the version 42. He asks her to taste it and she confirms that it's exactly how she imagined what it tasted like : a hint of unami flavor and a sour-spicy mixture. Luke informs her he noted the amount of ingredients down to every grams and how to make it. He filled already half of his notebook and put stickers on each pages to sort the infos. Rosa asks him if he turned his notebook into an encyclopedia and he confirms, saying he just wanted to be as meticulous as possible. She mentions that they should film it when doing their video. Luke eyes light up before realizing that despite all the preparations, his cooking skills can't guarantee success. Rosa suggests breaking down the task again and if she makes a mistake, he can cover for her. He agrees and she tells him they should make one last check. Luke adjusts the lights and filming equipment while Rosa takes out the ingredients from the fridge. They start the recording and get to work. Luke gives out instructions to her while reading the notebook and Rosa follows, but despite this, since she isn't used to tossing the pan, a lot of rice falls outside the pot. Luke reassures her despite being nervous too. He continues to instruct her but she realizes at some point they didn't dice some of their ingredients. Luke tells her he did and shows her different containers lined up next to her. Rosa asks him when he did that to which he answers during the preparations. She tells him how she is glad he is here because she wouldn't have time to do the prep and Luke tells her that him doing the preparation and her taking the lead is teamwork and he won't let it fail. She says how she wants to win too, finally understanding why she was so eager to join the competition. In the end, they manage to finish their paella without a hitch. Rosa asks how they are going to edit their vlog now and Luke says they first need a title. She asks if he has an idea but his first two ones are rejected. After a moment of thinking, he decides on "The Warriors' Honor Challenge" and she agrees, saying it sounds like it comes from the game. Luke takes the camera still recording and moves it from the food to Rosa, saying that the warriors who worked diligently should now harvest the fruits of their victory.
They are cute and fluffy aaaa but really once again their dedication should earn them a prize even if they don’t win 1st
Act 6
On another weekend, a few weeks later, at Luke's home. Rosa is on the sofa, scrolling on the comments from the cooking challenge event. Their entry was selected as outstanding entry and despite not ranking high overall, the official account gave them the award of most outstanding innovation. Rosa laughs so Luke puts his controller away and asks her what she saw. She shows him the comments that made her laugh but he doesn't respond so Rosa doesn't know if he is stunned with joy or shocked to be called professional chefs by the netizens. Pretending to hold a mic, she asks him if Mr "Professional Chef" has something to say. Luke answers that the filming of this vlog was a pain so it's great it didn't disappoint them. Rosa asks him how he feels about receiving an award and he says he feels like he isn't confident enough but receiving the title makes him a bit excited. Looking and sounding joyful, he says that seeing her being so happy and smiley makes him glad. Rosa says that it's normal to be happy since their hard work paid off and they fulfilled a small wish. Before he can ask about it, a delivery man rings and screams for Luke, so he rushes to the door, exclaiming that it must be the prize they won. Rosa feels glad to have involved him in the competition seeing his reaction. Once unwrapped from the cardboard the gift package stills takes up the whole table. She pushes the box towards him, asking him to open it for them but Luke tells her to do so since she wanted it. Rosa pauses and tells him she wanted to participate to help him get the limited edition merch which makes him puzzled. Luke says that the Big Data Lab told him that she spent a lot of time looking at the event page so he thought she was interested. Rosa also tells him how the Big Data Lab told her he was the one looking at this, but thinking back, she was the one initiating the conversation about it and his expression made her think he wanted to join. Luke realizes that it was a misunderstanding and Rosa comments that she doesn't know if she should thank the algorithm for being smart or, Luke finishes her sentence, be happy they are so in sync they always end up on the same page. They decide to unwrap it together... Only to reveal another box. Looking closely at it, she realizes that there is a maze on it with two small balls inside. Luke explains that it's a labyrinth lock and pulls out a card from the cardboard wrapping which asks them if they are ready to face the special challenge even in reality. Luke summarizes that the instructions explain that if the two balls fall in the designated spot at the same time, the box will open. They comment on how it's like the challenge they faced with their vlog. They laugh at each other and get ready to tackle the labyrinth, Luke placing himself behind Rosa and putting his hands on hers. Carefully, they sync up and tackle the puzzle together. As Rosa was celebrating their victory a bit early, one of the balls almost ended up in a dead end. Luke reassures her, telling her to be calm. They carry on, focused and steady, in harmony. Then the balls reach their destination at the same time, the box opens and reveals a paper lantern in the shape of their playable characters in game hand in hand, which recreate the scenery of the players returning home after finishing the final boss. Rosa comments on how detailed it is but Luke says it's not good enough, which surprises her. She looks at him and sees that he is way closer to her now. He tells her to remember the perfect ending before planting a kiss on her neck and saying "We rely on each other and help one another. That's how we can reach our destination", which are the final lines in the game. Luke tells her how that is now a more faithful recreation of the scene. Both their tender feelings in harmony, he carefully reminds her how they are always in sync.
Oh wow, what a nice wrap up, I love how they in fact took the challenge to make the other happy and because they thought the other wanted to when in fact they both didn’t even consider their own feelings into the matter, that’s kinda endearing. A huge thanks to the lowkey too sentient Big Data Lab without which we couldn’t have gotten this card !
Personal opinion :
What I liked :
Okay, idk if it's because I literally JUST finished a game and felt lonely not being able to share the whole experience of playing it with someone, but the first act being just them having finished a game together was so sweet and filled some kind of void I felt IMMEDIATELY, and the rest of the card covered the rest with ointment and patched a little heart shaped band aid on all haha. I think that’s what made me like the game so much, the themes and their cute exchanges as they were saying the game’s lines and remembering when they played it, it just felt so nice, so my liking of this card is really biased.
Also, I loved the reminder that Luke is so smart and well versed in scientific topics, it was nice seeing him casually mention and remember his experiment and some notions he knows of.
What I disliked :
Not a strong dislike, but I would have loved to see a small part of their playthrough to immerse even more in the story but oh well
Would I recommend getting this story ?
If you like a fluffy, cozy card with hints of gaming elements inside, sure ! This card was very warm and enjoyable to read, especially the casual, comfortable atmosphere between Luke and Rosa. As a “Sweet Chapter SSR”, it’s not groundbreaking in terms of lore, but it feels very nice still !!
submitted by Nxx_Analysis to TearsOfThemis [link] [comments]

2024.05.07 09:42 strakerak My entire CS experience at UH and thoughts on the program (from an alum + PhD student)

So I'll be finishing my final coursework course at UH ever tomorrow but I still have two years left in the PhD program. From the now until I defend my dissertation I'll just be doing research hours and oddjobs (48 credit hour speedrun). As per tradition every few years, here are all the courses I've taken in undergrad and graduate school. I'll also say which prof I recommend for the class. I transferred to UH my Junior year.
COSC 1336: Computer Science and Programming. Professor: N/A, Semester: N/A
COSC 1437 (prev. 1430): Intro to Programming, Professor: Giulia Toti, Semester: Fall 2018
COSC 2436 (Prev 2430): Programming and Data Structures, Professor: Nouhad Rizk, Semester: Spring 2019.
COSC 2425 (Prev 2440): Computer Org & Architecture, Professor: Edward Gabriel/Kevin Long, Semester: Spr19/Fall20.
COSC 3320: Algorithms and Data Structures, Professor: Ernst Leiss, Semester: Summer 2019.
COSC 3340: Introduction to Automata, Professor: Ernst Leiss, Semester: Summer 2019.
COSC 4351/4353: Fundamentals of Software Engineering, Professor: Raj Singh, Semester: Fall 2019
COSC 4348: Intro to Game Art and Animation, Professor: Chang Yun/Vincent Donatelli, Semester: Fall 2019
COSC 4358: Intro to Interactive Game Dev, Professor: Chang Yun/Zhigang Deng, Semester: Fall 2019.
In the middle of Spring 2020, COVID happened. The classes shifted online. Any fully online class will be noted from here on out
COSC 3360: Operating Systems, Professor: Jehan-Francois Paris, Semester: Spring 2020
COSC 3380: Databases, Professor: Uma Ramamurthy, Semester: Spring 2020
COSC 4349: Game Art 2, Professor: Vincent Donatelli, Semester: Spring 2020
COSC 4368: Intro to AI, Professor: Christoph "A" Eick,
COSC 4398: Independent Study, Professor: Nouhad Rizk, Semester: Spring 2020
MATH 4322/4323: Data Science/Machine Learning, Professor: Poliak/Wang/Weber, Semester: Spring 2020
At this point, I finished my BS at UH. I took some classes in Spring 2021 'for fun'/prepping for grad school which helped me get a leg up now.
COSC 4370: Graphics, Professor: Zhigang Deng, Semester: Spring 2021.
COSC 4377: Networking, Professor: Omprakash Gnawali, Semester: Spring 2021.
COSC 6397 (Now COSC 4321): Selected Topics: Spatial Tech, Professor: Chang Yun/Faisal Sharif, Semester: Spring 2021.
COSC 4393: Digital Image Processing, Professor: Pranav Mantini, Semester: Spring 2021.
These courses come from the start of my Masters program and the three required ones in the PhD. The reviews will be fairly shorter and straight to the point as you started to dabble in a lot more applied things if the classes were not entirely theory. The graduate program is a near totality of international students, so the work ethic and competitiveness goes up. On the other hand, the back-scratching and helping each other out is probably more rampant in undergrad but nobody really talks about it. This is the time where you see the professors absolutely shine in what they research. When you see a research prof teaching a course, you're going to learn much, much more than you expect because that is what they live and breathe daily here. My complaints about teaching vs research profs went out the window after this first semester of the MS
COSC 6324: Randomized Algorithms and Probabilistic Techniques in Computing. Professor: Gopal Pandurangan, Semester: Fall 2021
COSC 6347: Cybersecurity. Professor: Laszka, Semester: Fall 2021.
COSC 6376: Cloud Computing. Professor: Weidong "Larry" Shi, Semester: Fall 2021.
COSC 6339: Big Data Analytics. Professor: Carlos Ordonez, Semester: Spring 2022.
COSC 6373: Computer Vision. Professor, Ioannis Kakadiaris, Semester: Spring 2022
COSC 7336: Advanced Natural Language Processing. Professor, Rakesh Verma, Semester: Spring 2022.
COSC 6351/6353: Software Design. Professor: Raj Singh, Semester: Summer 2022.
This Summer was the 'great resignation' within UH CS. Toti, Laszka, and Gabriel had left UH for other opportunities. Paris put up for retirement and was promoted to professor Emeritus. Kam-Hoi Cheng left but nobody knew why.
COSC 6335: Data Mining. Professor: Christoph Eick, Semester: Fall 2022.
COSC 6370: Medical Imaging. Professor: Nikolaos Tsekos, Semester: Fall 2022.
COSC 6386: Program Analysis and Testing. Professor: Amin Alipour, Semester: Spring 2023.
ENTR 7390: Technology Entrepreneurship. Professor: Tanushree Chatterji, Semester: Spring 2023.
At this point, I had completed my Masters. The next three courses were required for the PhD
COSC 6110: Graduate Colloqium. Professor: Ernst Leiss, Semester: Fall 2023.
COSC 6320: Data Structures and Algorithms. Professor: Gopal Pandurangan. Semester: Fall 2023.
COSC 6342: Machine Learning. Professor: Ricardo Vilalta. Semester: Fall 2023.
COSC 6385: Computer Architecture. Professor, Weidong "Larry" Shi. Semester: Spring 2024.
At this point, I'm doing whatever 8X98 and 8X99 is required of me. I have an RCE (just a long presentation), a doctoral proposal, and a defense, then the academic journey is over. I feel like the biggest hurdle was leapt.
My thoughts on UHCS. In Fall 2018, there were only 1300 students in the department. Everyone in their graduating class knew each other. You'd sometimes meet people in GroupMes to work on homeworks or projects together, but never see each other in real life. Or did you? There was a lot of weird ways to cheat or get by in class. There was a decent community, and people who wanted to help other students definitely did. I'll never forget cramming into a room with a bunch of other kids while the tutor for 2436 held a review session days before the exam. The jokes about overloading the servers, and the hopeful nature before COVID hit. Everyone seemed friendly, and it didn't seem at all like a few complaint posts that were put up earlier about superiority complexes or whatever.
There are now 2300+ students in the department and it will probably be 3k within the next few years. Classes are getting tighter, it's getting more competitive, and UH isn't giving CS the attitude it deserves. MIS and CIS are getting pumped, CS is just... There. NSM took over the Fall career fair like wtf? Cullen and NSM are going to get in competition over this stuff as CS to Cullen should have happened (and on several accounts, was rumored and about to go through the process) but then didn't happen, and CS wants the juice.
I've seen students in 1336 get caught with ChatGPT like fucking dumbasses, but on the other hand, the talent level of the juniors and seniors at UH CS is FUCKING INSANE. The post-COVID generation of UH CS is going to be the reason the rank and perception skyrockets. Alums of years past are surprised with how Coogs are getting picked off left and right from UH compared to other schools.
The department is focusing on hiring new blood that will help push the department to newer heights in terms of more modern research. The older professors are preparing to retire, we just don't know when or if. Tenure is hard to achieve, but the cycle is definitely happening.
That's all, I'm going to bed. Go Coogs!
Edit: I'm done! And I got through all the classes without taking Hilford or either Cheng so SUCK ON THAT UH
submitted by strakerak to UniversityOfHouston [link] [comments]

2024.05.06 18:48 Jon_Henderson_Music My First Race Ever and Half Marathon - The UPMC Health Plan Pittsburgh Half Marathon

Race Information

Goal Description Completed?
A Sub 2 Yes

Splits

Mile Time
1 9:26
2 9:12
3 9:23
4 9:12
5 9:10
6 8:53
7 8:50
8 8:55
9 8:53
10 9:02
11 8:28
12 8:45
13 8:00
.29 1:47

Pre Race

With this being my first official race ever, I woke up extra early at 3:45am to be able to take my time eating, drinking coffee, getting dressed, etc... I drank about 32 oz of water, had a banana with honey and an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie that my wife and son made. Delicious! The previous week, I had been experiencing some tendinitis so I took the last week and a half off from any running. After breakfast, I applied some KT tape to both of my inner ankles and I think that plus the week of rest made a big difference in my run. I left home to meet my friend and we took the train into town together.
It was slightly rainy but not too bad. We took some time to stretch and use the bathrooms and then headed to our corrals around 7am. I was in corral C and made my way to the front of the pack since I wanted to begin my pace slightly faster at 9:30/mile. The pre-race nerves were definitely there. I just kept thinking about my legs and hoped they would hold up. My endurance felt great on all my training runs, but I built up to this half marathon in only 6 weeks so my leg muscles and tendons really weren't properly prepared.

The Race

Our corral was released around 7:20am and we were off! It was awesome hearing the gun, the smoke cannons and fireworks. Plus, such an awesome crowd through the Strip District to send us off. I made sure to start easy and dial in a comfortable pace/ rhythm around 9:30/mile for the first 5 miles. I definitely felt the desire to pick up the pace with all the excitement and I'm glad I contained myself. Many people were passing me, but I found a few runners with good form who were at about my pace. I decided to stick close to them for awhile. Very happy I did this for the first 5 miles. Around mile 5, I started to feel some tightness in the legs but not too bad. I was happy not to feel any pain in my ankles.
Beginning mile 5, I picked up the pace to target 9:00/ mile. I wanted to average this pace for the next 5 miles. Up until this point, I was in a comfortable heart rate zone and breathing through my nose almost entirely, so I felt good to increase the effort. The run at this point took us us into the North Shore past PNC Park, Heinz Field, and the Casino. I took a gel and hit some water stations. At the West End Bridge, I knew I was about halfway and I was looking forward to seeing my wife and son at mile 9 and the big crowds in Station Square and the Southside flats. As we came onto Carson Street, I was definitely feeling it and I needed a boost. I took a caffeinated gel and focused on finding my wife and son in the crowd. Coming into Station Square there were so many people. Such an awesome crowd there. Fortunately, I spotted my little crew and stopped quickly to give them a kiss. She later said she was so happy I stopped for them and wasn't sure I would lol. Seeing them gave me a big energy boost and really picked up my spirits to push on strong. The run through South Side felt really good. I have so many memories down there and it was cool to look around at many of the bars and restaurants and music venues I've gone to- plus the sun came out a little bit!
The stretch I was nervous about came at mile 11, the Birmingham Bridge. I had heard this was the toughest part with the highest elevation climb of the course. In my training on long runs, I made sure to add elevation and speed to our treadmill in the last mile or two. Very glad I did this because this part ended up being one of my best miles. I took my shirt off right before the climb, pumped myself up and pushed forward. I took a look at my watch and my heart rate was basically at threshold but I made it up and still had gas in the tank. I forgot there was one more climb after the bridge though! Fortunately there was a fire hydrant spraying water that I ran through and I poured some cold water on my head from a water station at this point. I made it up fine and entered mile 12.
With about one mile to go, I really picked up the pace and was running faster than I have in any of my training runs. I really wanted to finish this race as strong as possible and hold nothing back. This run was in honor and remembrance of my Dad, who passed away in 2019 from Alzheimer's Disease. I ran as part of the EndAlz team for this race and raised money for the association. My Dad was a retired Army Lt. Col., Army Ranger, Vietnam Veteran... tough as nails, endurance athlete. I really called on him in this last mile and I took off with so much adrenaline/ no pain at all here. The mile to the finish line ended up being my best one at 7:32/ mile pace and then 6:07/mile pace in the last 500 meters. Official finish time was 1:57:40, achieving my goal of under 2 hours with a negative split!

Post Race

As soon as I finished, I leaned over a guard rail to catch my breath and started hobbling down the finish area, chugged 5 cups of Gatorade and called my wife. I had run right passed them and they managed to get a video of my last effort! It took awhile to meet up with them but finally did. They made such a nice sign for me and my son (3 years old) was being so good and loving the environment. We were all really happy to be back together and I gave my son an Eat n Park smiley cookie I picked up in the finish area. We enjoyed the finish line festival for a bit, took some pictures, and eventually walked another painful mile to the train to head home for lunch. All in all, this was an amazing day that I'll never forget. The crowds, the course, all the support from volunteers, was so nice. I think I'll be doing this every year I can from now on!

What's Next?

I am setting a goal to run my first full marathon and I have my eye on the Marine Corp Marathon in Washington D.C.. I am looking around to get some run coaching to improve my form and structure a proper training plan. Though super sore today, I'm excited and motivated to set another big goal and give it all I have!
submitted by Jon_Henderson_Music to running [link] [comments]

2024.04.29 05:52 Frequent-Listen-1058 I smoked weed with friends and went blind while getting stoned.

this is the story of my acute viral myocarditis 4 weeks in ICU when I was 17, deteriorating very fast and was already transferred to get ready for transplantation.
TLDR; I was very stoned and turned blind which made me catch it extremely early. It was a small dot only found on Ultrasound; MRI or radio etc. coundn’t catch it. Turned into a near heart failure and recovered suddenly in 3 days from peak to total recovery with 0 damage.
So like the title says, this why my first symptom. It’s like the white stars you see (atleast with me sometimes) when you lay down and suddently stand up. The blood rushes from your head but instead of a couple white starts, everything was plain white. So I was outside with a friend and we were sitting on a bench at night rolling a spliff. It was clean very strong weed. I started inhaling started seeing stars and feeling nauseous which I do get sometimes. So I kept spliffing and passing and with each puff I got more and more and it would stay. At one point I stopped and I opened my eyes and couldn’t see nothing. Like when I say nothing, literally I would widen my eyes and nothing would change, just pure bright whiteness.
me: bro i’m blind him: what me: i’m blind. i can’t see. him: you can’t see me: yeah, everything is white. i’m blind me: sitting there high out of my mind trying ti stay normal start laying on the bench him: bro let’s go somewhere else me: ok
he was kind of annoyed cause he was thinking i’m exaggerating but went along and led me to a different place. then I just said “bro i’m going home” him: are you sure? me: yeah i am going to continue. i can’t sit anywhere. i need to sleep this one out.
so i walk home 2km for like 20 minutes with a mental map. i could see a little bit only for a blink if rushed my head downwards and looked up and it only worked if you were straight up for at least a minute. if you stood up for 5 minutes, you could see for 5 seconds of you put your head down and looked up
so i stumbled in my room and immediately went to bed. during the night, i woke up multiple times from fast heartbeat which never happened to me. i noticed my breath was heavy as if i just did sport. it persisted which confirmed to me, my body was lacking oxygen and compensating. had to do something with heart or lung.
So went to the doctor and she said I have nothing and should come back when worse. This time I had added back pain and couldn’t sleep.
So the next day, she sent me in for testing and they did everything, even MRI and didn’t find anything. I didn’t tell them that I smoke weed but described the blindness the way I described and they were VERY concerned. Then finally after 9 hours constant investigating they discovered a very small white dot on my heart which meant heart attack or very early pericarditis. Luckily the layer was confirmed.
I caught it very early and haven’t been to the doctor for 2 years but “luckily” i smoked weed. I was put in ICU and started deteriorating pretty quickly, by week 1 the (viral) infection already sprung onto the muscle and became the most intensively cared patient in the hospital with 10 nurses around me 24/7 measuring every fkn thing.
I asked a lot of questions, I asked for MRI animations so that I can see what they see. My left side was double the size and not pumping and the right side was just holding on. All my organs were filling up with blood cause my circulation was failing, 200 ml water in my lungs and severe pain.
By week 2 I got transferred into an elite heart clinic for minors of which I was apparently the 10th patient in the last 2 years of which 2 got a new heart, one died. What helped me was asking questions and trusting the doctors to have peace of mind. Also understand what made the other cases fatal was that both were athletes who didn’t notice it for months and then collapsed on the field and were directly transported to the clinic. the heart would become larger and “like lether” when do sport and such, setting it up for failure. So ask these questions. Be curious. My chief doctor would take to the back rooms and treat me like an intern (even got an actual offer later).
At peak in week 4, I was told 33% chance of heart failure, 33% of heart damage and 33% recovery so literally anything could happen and then out of nowhere my immune system cracked the puzzle and my antibodies halved each day, the second day I left bed for the first time to take a shower, after three days I was out, fully healed with no damage.
Didn’t need therapie, nothing. I ran my heart up 220 bbm in conditioning tests, ran for a good 20 minutes and they said everything perfect.
I didn’t move 100% of the time so no cooking, no washing, had to pee in a bottle and sh*t in a bucket. i was kept really warm so I was sweating like crazy so I would request fresh clothes and try to wipe me clean.
be confident that nothing can happen no matter how bad it is. Protect your heart from your mental, let your immune system do the job. I fully accepted the situation and just trusted it cause there was nothing else i could do and the only influence i had, to be statistical outlier, was to not worry cause who the hell doesn’t worry? for me it was competition against those 10 past patients. I wanted to be the best most self-caring patient.
Look for ways to distract yourself, I picked up the nintendo and played Zelda. Have humour, no matter how cynical. I was vey kooky to attract the nurse almost in my age (19), very beautiful so I had someone to relate too. I was on beta blockers, not sure what else although the sleep was terrible i remember that shitty O2 reader clamped on my finger. light constant clamp over time would make your finger hurt like a mf
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2024.04.26 17:00 CIAHerpes I found the bottomless pit from the Book of Revelation. There were rules to survive [part 1]

Back in 2012, I believe I stopped the Apocalypse.
I remember staring down at the endless hole in the desert with wonder and awe. It seemed to go on forever. A life-long friend of mine named Bear stood by my side. He scanned the ground and found a large, smooth rock. It must’ve weighed at least sixty pounds. He rolled it over to the edge of the seemingly infinite void and let it drop.
I heard the stone clatter against the walls, smashing against one side and releasing a rush of small pebbles and clods of dirt. They soared downwards with the rock, reminding me of the sands in an eternal hourglass.
“Look, there’s stairs,” Bear’s girlfriend Stephanie said, pointing a freshly-painted red nail at the steps. They looked hewn from solid rock and spiraled down into the darkness far below. Stephanie tilted her head slightly to the side, moving locks of dirty blonde hair away from her eyes. Her appearance reminded me of Emma Stone, and though nearly twenty-five, she still looked like a teenager.
We stood in the middle of Death Valley. The sun sizzled overhead, sending out blinding light that reflected off the sands. Rippling mirages rose off the burning hot ground. Dunes surrounded us, looking as dead and lifeless as an alien planet.
I looked up at the light blue sky and didn’t see a single cloud. It must’ve been 100 degrees out. Rivulets of sweat trickled down from my hair and forehead, stinging my eyes. I wiped it away, looking back down the hole. I kept expecting this aberration of a pit to evaporate like some sort of bizarre optical illusion, yet there it still stood, a large circle about thirty feet across with ancient granite steps. And, of course, the steps had no railings. They looked fairly narrow, maybe a couple feet across.
Well, I considered that narrow, considering the thousands of feet of empty space I would fall through if I slipped. I thought about how the drop would feel, screaming for minutes and knowing I was about to die, the ground coming up to meet me, the air roaring like a tornado in my ears. I shuddered. The mental image seemed far too vivid.
I glanced at my two friends. Bear was casually smoking a cigarette, raising his tattooed hand. I looked at the tattoo- a reptilian, slitted eye surrounded by the golden spiral.
He stood much taller than me and, having done physical labor his entire life, he also had a thick covering of muscle. He was a metal-head and urban explorer, and about 90% of his body was covered in tattoos. Stephanie and he made an unusual pair, she with her straight-edge, valley girl looks, and Bear looking like he just climbed out of a mosh pit at a Deicide show.
He flicked the half-smoked butt into the pit, smoothing his long black hair with his hands. I watched the red light of the ember streak across the darkness and disappear into the endless shadows waiting below.
“Do you think anyone else knows about this?” I asked. Bear had a sly grin across his scruffy face. His blue eyes flashed with amusement. He put his arm around Stephanie.
“Well, if no one has, maybe we can make money off of it,” he said. Stephanie smiled faintly at that. “I’ve heard of people who discovered caves making money off giving tours. Maybe we can buy this crappy little plot of land out here!”
“This might be state land,” I said. “Actually, it might even be federal. I’m not sure where the borders of the national park end. Not like anyone would be going around labeling borders out here.” I waved my hand lethargically at the dead, sunburnt desert all around us. Absolutely no one lived out here, except maybe the secret mutant descendants of the Manson Family.
“Regardless, we should go explore it,” Stephanie said. “If we’re going to claim we discovered some new wonder of the world, we should be able to tell people what’s in it.”
“Yeah, and what if we get lost and starve to death down there?” I asked. “There’s no cell service out here. No one would ever find our bodies. We would just disappear into thin air. We can’t even call anyone to let them know where we are.”
“That’s part of the adventure!” Stephanie said, laughing. “You weren’t complaining when you dragged us all to that abandoned mental asylum and took us to the underground tunnels.”
“I’m with Stephanie,” Bear said, gesticulating crazily with his hands. “I want to go explore. I think it would be awesome to have a cave system named after us. We still have flashlights and plenty of food and water in the car. I have lighters and knives, cigarettes and booze, hell, even my pistol. Not like I think we’ll need it, unless there’s rattlesnakes down there that we need to shoot.” In hindsight, it was amazing just how wrong he was.
***
We each had a backpack filled with goods. Since we had been traveling across California and camping, seeing every national park possible, we had plenty of extra supplies. In fact, the issue became the amount of weight each of us could carry. I had them fill the backpacks with as much food and water as possible, leaving only room for ammunition, jackets and some extra clothes.
“You act like we’re going to be down there for the next year,” Stephanie complained, rolling her eyes as she hefted the heavy backpack around her shoulder with a soft grunt. “Alright, let’s do this! I am so excited right now. I feel like Bilbo Baggins must’ve when he walked out his front door with Gandalf.” Bear grinned like a madman, lighting up another cigarette. Without a word or a moment of hesitation, he put his backpack on and jumped down to the first step, a drop of about five feet. My stomach did flips just watching him. He apparently had no fear of heights at all.
As I looked down on Bear, it struck me how perfect the circular formation of the pit was. It almost looked man-made or somehow unnatural. Nature rarely works in straight lines and perfect circles, after all.
Stephanie went next, lowering herself carefully from the edge and hanging down by her arms until her feet were securely on the step. Unlike Bear, who at times I thought might be slightly insane, she did not simply jump onto the stone.
I edged closer to the pit, looking down. A sense of vertigo overtook me. The eternal blackness of the void seemed like a dilated pupil, a staring eye. I felt watched from below.
But I was not going to look like a chickenshit in front of my friends. They were both clearly excited, especially Bear, who started hopping from one foot to another, anxiously looking up at me and waving me on. He reminded me of a puppy excited about going on a walk. They had already started descending and stood a few dozen feet below the first step.
With a thudding heart, I followed Stephanie’s example, slowly lowering myself down from the ledge onto the first step. Once secure, I looked down.
The circling stairs almost seemed like a slit-open conch shell, the swirling golden spiral extending into forever. My friends looked so small standing on those unceasing steps, and for a moment, my intuition screamed at me, “Get out! Get out!”
But instead, I took a deep breath and started the descent into the bottomless pit.
***
We traveled for hours. I lost track of time. All of our phones stopped working, and even though I had just charged mine, the screen simply went black. Stephanie’s watch stopped ticking after a few minutes descending. I didn’t know if there was some kind of magnetism in the pit that disabled electronic devices, but regardless, we no longer had any way to tell time.
“God, how long has it been?” Stephanie asked after our fifth break. We sat on the steps, our headlamps sending eerie bouncing shadows all around us. A few of the steps nearby had thin, jagged cracks running through the stone, branching like lightning bolts. I wondered if they would crumble under our feet as we passed.
“It feels like at least six or seven hours,” Bear said, no longer as excited as he was at the start. Part of it was undoubtedly fatigue, which we all felt. I had a creeping suspicion we had made a colossal mistake by coming down here. Bear still had a sense of determination, however, and he wanted to keep going. “How far down do you think we are?” No one answered. The air felt oppressive and extremely heavy.
“What do you want to do if we don’t find anything in the next hour or so?” I asked. “I mean, are we just going to keep going down forever? We should make a plan to turn around at a certain point.”
“Oh man, give me a break,” Bear said, rolling his eyes. “What in the hell do you have to do today? You act like this isn’t the coolest thing we’ve found on this trip. We should keep going down until we find something, or until we need to turn around because we’re running low on water and food. This is probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, man.” I sighed. My legs ached and my feet screamed at me. I could feel the blisters rising on my toes. We rose and started descending again.
It was then that we heard a sound like a lion roaring echoing up from far below. It sounded predatory and animalistic but magnified to a deafening cacophony like an exploding hydrogen bomb. The stairs began to shake. Falling streams of dust and pebbles streamed down all around us. I tried to scream but I didn’t know if I actually was, because all I could hear was that demonic roar.
I clung to the wall of the pit as the sound started to fade and then rapidly died down to nothing. Within a few seconds, it had passed. I looked at Bear and Stephanie. They looked pale and shaken in the bright LED lights of the headlamp.
“Jesus Christ,” Bear said, his hands trembling as he reached into his pocket for his pack of cigarettes. “I thought I was going to die for a few seconds there.” He had succinctly expressed all of our thoughts, I felt.
“We can’t keep going down,” I said. “This is insane. What if that was an earthquake? What if there’s more aftershocks coming? We should start heading back up now. I’m not dying here.” Stephanie and Bear nodded, agreeing without any argument. Even Bear, who was normally fearless, seemed to have lost all of his enthusiasm for this adventure.
But when we turned and shone our headlamps up, I saw the stairs a few hundred feet above us had collapsed during the bone-rattling explosion of sound. About thirty feet of steps had simply vanished, crumbling into the void. I suddenly felt very much less secure standing there. I wondered how structurally sound the step I stood on really was. My heart felt like it would beat right out of my chest.
“Well, I guess the only way out is forwards,” Stephanie whispered in a frightened voice. “Maybe this cave or whatever it is has branching tunnels that lead back up. Something this massive has to have more than one way in and out.” I didn’t really agree with her, however. This pit was not a natural cave system as far as I could tell. We had no idea if other paths led out.
We kept descending. I clung close to the wall in case that ear-splitting cacophony started again. I wondered what had made it. Perhaps the echoes of shifting tectonic plates amplified as they rose up the pit and just sounded like a predator’s thundering cry.
Far below, my headlamp ran over an aberration in the smooth golden spiral of the endless steps. I saw a massive archway, at least ten feet tall. Its sides met in a point at the top, forming an upside-down curving V.
Bear and Stephanie saw it at the same time as I did. Their eyes widened in surprise and delight. But a sense of fear gripped me when I saw the archway. Its architecture looked alien. As we got closer, I saw it glistened like obsidian. Gleaming black rainbows ran over its length when our lights touched it.
“Oh, thank God!” Stephanie cried. Bear ran ahead, sprinting down the steps, like a man dying of dehydration running towards water.
“Hey, wait up!” I called, feeling suddenly very vulnerable. I looked down the stairs. Far below me, I saw a thin crack that ran down the wall of the pit for hundreds of feet. I caught a glimpse of a face peeking out of it.
The creature had bone-white skin and pure black eyes. Its features seemed a combination of human and demon. Its insane rictus grin showed many sharp, long teeth. Within a fraction of a second, though, it disappeared into the crack, and I wondered whether I had really seen it. Perhaps all the darkness had caused me to start hallucinating. I knew that prolonged sensory deprivation could cause hallucinations and potentially bizarre experiences, having tried sensory deprivation tanks both sober and after eating magic mushrooms.
Stephanie and Bear stood in front of the obsidian arch, peering down a massive stone tunnel. The ceiling towered thirty feet overhead. Sharp stalactites hung over our heads like waiting guillotines. Natural formations of glimmering marble and jewels jutted out of the walls of the light brown rock.
Bear ran forwards, laughing. He stopped at the first cluster of gems he saw. They looked like the petals of a multi-colored flower, green, white, red, blue and black.
“These are diamonds,” Bear said, awed. “This is opal, this looks like jet-stone… that’s definitely a sapphire and the one next to it is an emerald.” He stood up straight, looking back at me, his mouth hanging open. “Holy shit, Juan, we’re rich. None of us will ever have to work again.”
“We still don’t even know how to get out of here,” I reminded him. I kept checking our backs, and I thought I had glimpsed that white, staring face with the black eyes again. But it moved like a ghost. Every time I tried to shine the light where I thought I glimpsed something, there was nothing there. I felt like I was losing my mind.
We kept walking for a few minutes. Smaller tunnels branched off the large ones periodically. We would hear soft moaning sounds and whispers coming from them. I could never pick out any words, as it came across as more of a low susurration, but it had the cadence and rhythm of speech.
“That is so creepy,” Stephanie whispered after we had passed our fourth branching tunnel. “It sounds just like voices and people whimpering, as if there were some medieval torture chamber over there.”
“It’s gotta be some natural echo from the earth,” I said. “There are sometimes subterranean rivers and waterfalls. If one was nearby, its babbling could get distorted in the tunnels and come across as whispering.” But I didn’t really believe the argument myself, even though I badly wanted to.
“Oh my God!” Bear said. He was out in front, walking ahead of us by at least ten feet. So he ended up seeing the two bodies first. He started running, kneeling down over the girls. Stephanie and I followed a few seconds later.
They looked like two high school students, still wearing their backpacks covered in pins about love and peace. The nearer of the two girls was clearly dead. Her entire body had swollen up like a tick after feeding, the skin turning green as rancid gasses bubbled under the surface. I couldn’t even tell if she once had eyes or a mouth because the flesh had expanded so much. Her bloated body pulled against the fabric of her short-sleeved T-shirt, skirt and straps of her backpack.
The other girl was a somewhat different story. At first, I thought she was dead too. I couldn’t see any breathing and she looked extremely pale with a blue tint to her lips. Bear knelt down and tried shaking her. He got no response. Then he licked the back of his hand and held it in front of her mouth and nose. After a few seconds, he looked up excitedly.
“She’s breathing, though it is very slow and shallow,” he said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her.” Her eyes started to flutter open, and she gasped. Her fingers clenched and she licked her dry lips.
“Water,” she moaned. “Please. Water.” Bear immediately grabbed a bottle from his pack and held it up to her lips. She took small sips, pulling away and breathing hard after each one. But soon she had finished the entire bottle, then two more. The color started to return to her cheeks slightly, though that bluish cast stayed over her fingernails and lips. She motioned for us to get close, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of paper.
“I’m… not going to make it out of here alive,” she said. “This was given to me by someone else. It’s the only reason we’ve made it this far.” She coughed, rolling on her side and vomiting some of the water. I saw streaks of blood mixed in, dark red like a garnet.
Bear looked at the piece of paper, frowning. He stood back up and turned to face us. Then he started reading out loud.
“The first rule to survival is this: When you see the Angel of Death, the woman with the backwards-facing head, you must cut your flesh and give an offering of blood immediately.
“The second rule is that if you hear the first trumpet blow, you must hide. Anyone who does not leave the main tunnel by the time the second trumpet blows will know undying agony.
“The third rule is that if you see dark silhouettes coming down the corridors, shadows in the shapes of men and beasts, you must close your eyes and count to thirty. They are eaters of souls, and will suck your soul out of your eyes if you give them the chance, yet they will pass if not fed.
“The fourth rule is that, if you encounter anyone with the Mark of Cain, you must kill them immediately. You will know the Mark of Cain when you see it- it is a most hideous thing.
“The fifth rule is that if you see the ruler of the bottomless pit, whose name is Abaddon, you must not look at his face.”
We all stood in silence for a long moment. I felt the strong urge to laugh. Then I looked down at the swollen body of the dead girl and immediately changed my mind.
The blonde girl yanked her backpack off, gasping and spitting blood constantly. She reached around in the bag, frantically looking for something. With a triumphant smile across her pretty face, she yanked it out and handed it to me.
I took the ancient leather-bound Bible. It looked like it had some traces of a white, shining crystal smeared across its cover. I opened the cover and saw someone had written in spiky, copperplate handwriting, “Property of Smiley.”
A bookmark hung out of the back of the text. I opened it up and gasped. The “bookmark” was actually a tiny, mummified pinkie finger. It looked like someone had cut it off a small child’s hand. It smelled woodsy with a hint of pistachio, cinnamon and sulfur. I have never smelled anything quite like a mummified body part.
“Oh… my… God!” Stephanie cried, putting her hands above her mouth. “Is that a child’s finger?!” The girl didn’t answer. She had collapsed on her stomach now, and she looked like she was rapidly worsening.
“Who are you? How did you two get here? Why do you have someone’s finger?” I asked. The girl shook her head.
“No time for all that,” she said. “I got a glancing blow of the poison. A very small dose, but it’s doing its work nonetheless. I can feel it writhing like snakes through my blood…” She closed her eyes for a long moment, breathing slow. Then she fixed her unsteady, watery eyes on us again.
“My name is Isabella, though. I’ll tell you that we came here by accident, exploring underground tunnels with my Rainbow Family. We got lost, and the tunnels started changing…” A shriek echoed from further down the main tunnel, cutting her off.
Isabella’s eyes flew wide open, bright spots of red showing on her pale face. She began hyperventilating.
“They’re coming! They’re coming back!” she cried. “Oh God, help me!” I saw a shape far away, like a galloping horse. My mind couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing for a moment. It looked totally alien, something not from this world. There was a sound like helicopter blades slicing through the air, jarring and rhythmic.
As it got closer, I saw a bizarre and monstrous creature. It looked almost like a giant flying scorpion. It was about the size of a Great Dane. Its legs writhed and skittered, like massive alien eyelashes.
I saw its stinger dripping clear, lethal venom, as if it were salivating through its tail. Its spiky wings looked like those of a dragonfly’s, blurring in a sea of motion as they propelled it forward. It was, in reality, the face that affected me most, however.
It had a human face, complete with changing expressions. It had no hair on its body, but even without eyebrows, I could see the scowl of bloodlust and fury. The eyes had a filmy look, as if covered in cataracts. The pupils looked faded behind the veil, the irises a muddy gray. Bristling spikes stood out the top of its head, black, pushed-back quills with barbs on the end. Overall, the creature was one of the most instinctually repugnant and frightening creatures I had ever seen.
Bear and Stephanie stood there, their mouths opened, just staring. Isabella tried to crawl away. She had thrown her backpack to the side.
“Nooo,” she moaned, “noooo.”
“Bear!” I cried. “Shoot it! Shoot the goddamned thing! What are you waiting for?!” He looked like a man waking up from a nightmare for a moment, his eyes moving quickly around before focusing on me. Then a smile broke out on his face.
With the creature only a few steps away, I thought we were all dead. But in a blur, Bear yanked the giant black pistol from its holster. With a booming echo like a shout from God, he fired at the abomination’s eerily human face.
The head exploded in a fountain of bone splinters and bright-blue blood. Its wings continued to pound the air crazily, and the body continued coming at us for a few more feet. Then it crashed to the ground, sliding, its stinger and tail still striking out at the air. I jumped back and saw Bear and Stephanie do the same.
It landed on top of Isabella, soaking her in its blood. She screamed. The stinger continued to drip clear poison from its wicked-looking barb. I saw drops of it sliding off the creature’s body and onto Isabella’s skin.
“It burns, it burns!” she cried, trying to wipe away the poison. But she was on her stomach, and with the creature pinning her down, she couldn’t reach. Like some ancient Chinese water torture, the drops continued to fall, searing and lethal.
“I need help guys!” Bear said as he tried to lift the heavy creature off Isabella. Stephanie and I went around, giving the stinger and poison a wide berth. I reached under its body. It felt slimy, cold and just revolting. It was like the texture of drowned earthworms after a summer rain. As I pushed, I felt a sogginess in its skin, and blue blood the color of antifreeze soaked my hands. I wanted to pull away. I felt soiled. I wanted to take a long shower and wipe the filth of this creature off me.
The body started to lift. With a grunt, the three of us pushed it off Isabella. I looked down at her and realized it was too late.
Her eyes rolled back in her head, showing only the whites. Her legs began to kick violently, her fingers spasming as her arms jumped and danced. She began to make a choked, gasping sound.
Then her skin started to turn a sickly, cancerous green. Her whole body began to swell before our eyes. She gave a death gasp and stopped kicking, finally falling limp.
***
As we left the corpses behind, still shaken, Bear looked at the Bible Isabella had given us.
“Juan, why do you think there’s a human finger in here?” Stephanie asked, still repulsed by it. “Is that some sort of occult thing? Maybe witchcraft?” I shrugged. I knew a lot more about history and books than either Bear or Stephanie. They almost never read, while I read constantly.
“Fingers have been used in occult rituals for thousands of years. In the ancient Buddhist scriptures, a madman and extremely talented warrior used to go around killing random people and taking their fingers for a necklace. They called him ‘Angulimala’, or ‘Finger-necklace’. There may be some relation to worship of Kali, the goddess of destruction. He ended up converting to Buddhism, renouncing violence and becoming enlightened, though.
“In modern rituals, witchcraft still uses severed fingers. Fingers represent dexterity, touch and manipulation of far-away objects. Cutting off a finger also symbolically represents a cutting of ties in an occult ritual.” I shrugged.
“Well, thank you for that enlightening information, Chatbot,” Stephanie said jokingly. “You remind me of those AI robots where you can ask them any random question and they come up with an answer.”
“Hey, don’t shit on me just because I actually do research,” I said, smiling. “Speaking of research, what page of the Bible is the finger marking? It may be important. Those girls had two things, after all: the list of rules and the Bible. Isabella obviously considered them important, because those were the only two things she singled out to give to us while she was dying.” Bear opened the Bible to the page with the finger. He looked down, frowning.
“It’s Revelation 9,” he said, then he began reading aloud as we all took a break, passing around water and peanut butter crackers.
“And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.
“And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.
“And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.
“And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.
“And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.
“And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.” He stopped reading, his voice reverberating eerily down the stone corridor, bouncing off of priceless gems and hard sandstone.
“So that thing we killed was a locust?” Stephanie asked. “It looked a lot more like a scorpion to me.”
“It doesn’t really matter; it’s neither a scorpion nor a locust,” I said. “It’s clearly a different species from either. Perhaps it’s lived down here for millions of years, hunting in the dark. But it just makes it all the more important to find a way out of here as soon as possible. There could be thousands of those things down here. Millions, maybe. I mean, really, who knows how big this place is?” Sighing, we got up and continued looking for a way out.
Ahead, I saw a faded sign. It looked made out of pure silver, without a sign of rust anywhere. But the letters had nearly disappeared over the many years it had clearly stood here.
When we got close, I brought my light right up to it and tried to make it out. After a few seconds, I realized it was a sign for a town.
“Bloodstone. Population: 144,000,” it read.
Part 2
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/192nglq/i_found_the_bottomless_pit_from_the_book_of/
submitted by CIAHerpes to TheDarkGathering [link] [comments]

2024.04.26 12:32 CIAHerpes I found the bottomless pit from the Book of Revelation. There were rules to survive [part 1]

Back in 2012, I believe I stopped the Apocalypse.
I remember staring down at the endless hole in the desert with wonder and awe. It seemed to go on forever. A life-long friend of mine named Bear stood by my side. He scanned the ground and found a large, smooth rock. It must’ve weighed at least sixty pounds. He rolled it over to the edge of the seemingly infinite void and let it drop.
I heard the stone clatter against the walls, smashing against one side and releasing a rush of small pebbles and clods of dirt. They soared downwards with the rock, reminding me of the sands in an eternal hourglass.
“Look, there’s stairs,” Bear’s girlfriend Stephanie said, pointing a freshly-painted red nail at the steps. They looked hewn from solid rock and spiraled down into the darkness far below. Stephanie tilted her head slightly to the side, moving locks of dirty blonde hair away from her eyes. Her appearance reminded me of Emma Stone, and though nearly twenty-five, she still looked like a teenager.
We stood in the middle of Death Valley. The sun sizzled overhead, sending out blinding light that reflected off the sands. Rippling mirages rose off the burning hot ground. Dunes surrounded us, looking as dead and lifeless as an alien planet.
I looked up at the light blue sky and didn’t see a single cloud. It must’ve been 100 degrees out. Rivulets of sweat trickled down from my hair and forehead, stinging my eyes. I wiped it away, looking back down the hole. I kept expecting this aberration of a pit to evaporate like some sort of bizarre optical illusion, yet there it still stood, a large circle about thirty feet across with ancient granite steps. And, of course, the steps had no railings. They looked fairly narrow, maybe a couple feet across.
Well, I considered that narrow, considering the thousands of feet of empty space I would fall through if I slipped. I thought about how the drop would feel, screaming for minutes and knowing I was about to die, the ground coming up to meet me, the air roaring like a tornado in my ears. I shuddered. The mental image seemed far too vivid.
I glanced at my two friends. Bear was casually smoking a cigarette, raising his tattooed hand. I looked at the tattoo- a reptilian, slitted eye surrounded by the golden spiral.
He stood much taller than me and, having done physical labor his entire life, he also had a thick covering of muscle. He was a metal-head and urban explorer, and about 90% of his body was covered in tattoos. Stephanie and he made an unusual pair, she with her straight-edge, valley girl looks, and Bear looking like he just climbed out of a mosh pit at a Deicide show.
He flicked the half-smoked butt into the pit, smoothing his long black hair with his hands. I watched the red light of the ember streak across the darkness and disappear into the endless shadows waiting below.
“Do you think anyone else knows about this?” I asked. Bear had a sly grin across his scruffy face. His blue eyes flashed with amusement. He put his arm around Stephanie.
“Well, if no one has, maybe we can make money off of it,” he said. Stephanie smiled faintly at that. “I’ve heard of people who discovered caves making money off giving tours. Maybe we can buy this crappy little plot of land out here!”
“This might be state land,” I said. “Actually, it might even be federal. I’m not sure where the borders of the national park end. Not like anyone would be going around labeling borders out here.” I waved my hand lethargically at the dead, sunburnt desert all around us. Absolutely no one lived out here, except maybe the secret mutant descendants of the Manson Family.
“Regardless, we should go explore it,” Stephanie said. “If we’re going to claim we discovered some new wonder of the world, we should be able to tell people what’s in it.”
“Yeah, and what if we get lost and starve to death down there?” I asked. “There’s no cell service out here. No one would ever find our bodies. We would just disappear into thin air. We can’t even call anyone to let them know where we are.”
“That’s part of the adventure!” Stephanie said, laughing. “You weren’t complaining when you dragged us all to that abandoned mental asylum and took us to the underground tunnels.”
“I’m with Stephanie,” Bear said, gesticulating crazily with his hands. “I want to go explore. I think it would be awesome to have a cave system named after us. We still have flashlights and plenty of food and water in the car. I have lighters and knives, cigarettes and booze, hell, even my pistol. Not like I think we’ll need it, unless there’s rattlesnakes down there that we need to shoot.” In hindsight, it was amazing just how wrong he was.
***
We each had a backpack filled with goods. Since we had been traveling across California and camping, seeing every national park possible, we had plenty of extra supplies. In fact, the issue became the amount of weight each of us could carry. I had them fill the backpacks with as much food and water as possible, leaving only room for ammunition, jackets and some extra clothes.
“You act like we’re going to be down there for the next year,” Stephanie complained, rolling her eyes as she hefted the heavy backpack around her shoulder with a soft grunt. “Alright, let’s do this! I am so excited right now. I feel like Bilbo Baggins must’ve when he walked out his front door with Gandalf.” Bear grinned like a madman, lighting up another cigarette. Without a word or a moment of hesitation, he put his backpack on and jumped down to the first step, a drop of about five feet. My stomach did flips just watching him. He apparently had no fear of heights at all.
As I looked down on Bear, it struck me how perfect the circular formation of the pit was. It almost looked man-made or somehow unnatural. Nature rarely works in straight lines and perfect circles, after all.
Stephanie went next, lowering herself carefully from the edge and hanging down by her arms until her feet were securely on the step. Unlike Bear, who at times I thought might be slightly insane, she did not simply jump onto the stone.
I edged closer to the pit, looking down. A sense of vertigo overtook me. The eternal blackness of the void seemed like a dilated pupil, a staring eye. I felt watched from below.
But I was not going to look like a chickenshit in front of my friends. They were both clearly excited, especially Bear, who started hopping from one foot to another, anxiously looking up at me and waving me on. He reminded me of a puppy excited about going on a walk. They had already started descending and stood a few dozen feet below the first step.
With a thudding heart, I followed Stephanie’s example, slowly lowering myself down from the ledge onto the first step. Once secure, I looked down.
The circling stairs almost seemed like a slit-open conch shell, the swirling golden spiral extending into forever. My friends looked so small standing on those unceasing steps, and for a moment, my intuition screamed at me, “Get out! Get out!”
But instead, I took a deep breath and started the descent into the bottomless pit.
***
We traveled for hours. I lost track of time. All of our phones stopped working, and even though I had just charged mine, the screen simply went black. Stephanie’s watch stopped ticking after a few minutes descending. I didn’t know if there was some kind of magnetism in the pit that disabled electronic devices, but regardless, we no longer had any way to tell time.
“God, how long has it been?” Stephanie asked after our fifth break. We sat on the steps, our headlamps sending eerie bouncing shadows all around us. A few of the steps nearby had thin, jagged cracks running through the stone, branching like lightning bolts. I wondered if they would crumble under our feet as we passed.
“It feels like at least six or seven hours,” Bear said, no longer as excited as he was at the start. Part of it was undoubtedly fatigue, which we all felt. I had a creeping suspicion we had made a colossal mistake by coming down here. Bear still had a sense of determination, however, and he wanted to keep going. “How far down do you think we are?” No one answered. The air felt oppressive and extremely heavy.
“What do you want to do if we don’t find anything in the next hour or so?” I asked. “I mean, are we just going to keep going down forever? We should make a plan to turn around at a certain point.”
“Oh man, give me a break,” Bear said, rolling his eyes. “What in the hell do you have to do today? You act like this isn’t the coolest thing we’ve found on this trip. We should keep going down until we find something, or until we need to turn around because we’re running low on water and food. This is probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, man.” I sighed. My legs ached and my feet screamed at me. I could feel the blisters rising on my toes. We rose and started descending again.
It was then that we heard a sound like a lion roaring echoing up from far below. It sounded predatory and animalistic but magnified to a deafening cacophony like an exploding hydrogen bomb. The stairs began to shake. Falling streams of dust and pebbles streamed down all around us. I tried to scream but I didn’t know if I actually was, because all I could hear was that demonic roar.
I clung to the wall of the pit as the sound started to fade and then rapidly died down to nothing. Within a few seconds, it had passed. I looked at Bear and Stephanie. They looked pale and shaken in the bright LED lights of the headlamp.
“Jesus Christ,” Bear said, his hands trembling as he reached into his pocket for his pack of cigarettes. “I thought I was going to die for a few seconds there.” He had succinctly expressed all of our thoughts, I felt.
“We can’t keep going down,” I said. “This is insane. What if that was an earthquake? What if there’s more aftershocks coming? We should start heading back up now. I’m not dying here.” Stephanie and Bear nodded, agreeing without any argument. Even Bear, who was normally fearless, seemed to have lost all of his enthusiasm for this adventure.
But when we turned and shone our headlamps up, I saw the stairs a few hundred feet above us had collapsed during the bone-rattling explosion of sound. About thirty feet of steps had simply vanished, crumbling into the void. I suddenly felt very much less secure standing there. I wondered how structurally sound the step I stood on really was. My heart felt like it would beat right out of my chest.
“Well, I guess the only way out is forwards,” Stephanie whispered in a frightened voice. “Maybe this cave or whatever it is has branching tunnels that lead back up. Something this massive has to have more than one way in and out.” I didn’t really agree with her, however. This pit was not a natural cave system as far as I could tell. We had no idea if other paths led out.
We kept descending. I clung close to the wall in case that ear-splitting cacophony started again. I wondered what had made it. Perhaps the echoes of shifting tectonic plates amplified as they rose up the pit and just sounded like a predator’s thundering cry.
Far below, my headlamp ran over an aberration in the smooth golden spiral of the endless steps. I saw a massive archway, at least ten feet tall. Its sides met in a point at the top, forming an upside-down curving V.
Bear and Stephanie saw it at the same time as I did. Their eyes widened in surprise and delight. But a sense of fear gripped me when I saw the archway. Its architecture looked alien. As we got closer, I saw it glistened like obsidian. Gleaming black rainbows ran over its length when our lights touched it.
“Oh, thank God!” Stephanie cried. Bear ran ahead, sprinting down the steps, like a man dying of dehydration running towards water.
“Hey, wait up!” I called, feeling suddenly very vulnerable. I looked down the stairs. Far below me, I saw a thin crack that ran down the wall of the pit for hundreds of feet. I caught a glimpse of a face peeking out of it.
The creature had bone-white skin and pure black eyes. Its features seemed a combination of human and demon. Its insane rictus grin showed many sharp, long teeth. Within a fraction of a second, though, it disappeared into the crack, and I wondered whether I had really seen it. Perhaps all the darkness had caused me to start hallucinating. I knew that prolonged sensory deprivation could cause hallucinations and potentially bizarre experiences, having tried sensory deprivation tanks both sober and after eating magic mushrooms.
Stephanie and Bear stood in front of the obsidian arch, peering down a massive stone tunnel. The ceiling towered thirty feet overhead. Sharp stalactites hung over our heads like waiting guillotines. Natural formations of glimmering marble and jewels jutted out of the walls of the light brown rock.
Bear ran forwards, laughing. He stopped at the first cluster of gems he saw. They looked like the petals of a multi-colored flower, green, white, red, blue and black.
“These are diamonds,” Bear said, awed. “This is opal, this looks like jet-stone… that’s definitely a sapphire and the one next to it is an emerald.” He stood up straight, looking back at me, his mouth hanging open. “Holy shit, Juan, we’re rich. None of us will ever have to work again.”
“We still don’t even know how to get out of here,” I reminded him. I kept checking our backs, and I thought I had glimpsed that white, staring face with the black eyes again. But it moved like a ghost. Every time I tried to shine the light where I thought I glimpsed something, there was nothing there. I felt like I was losing my mind.
We kept walking for a few minutes. Smaller tunnels branched off the large ones periodically. We would hear soft moaning sounds and whispers coming from them. I could never pick out any words, as it came across as more of a low susurration, but it had the cadence and rhythm of speech.
“That is so creepy,” Stephanie whispered after we had passed our fourth branching tunnel. “It sounds just like voices and people whimpering, as if there were some medieval torture chamber over there.”
“It’s gotta be some natural echo from the earth,” I said. “There are sometimes subterranean rivers and waterfalls. If one was nearby, its babbling could get distorted in the tunnels and come across as whispering.” But I didn’t really believe the argument myself, even though I badly wanted to.
“Oh my God!” Bear said. He was out in front, walking ahead of us by at least ten feet. So he ended up seeing the two bodies first. He started running, kneeling down over the girls. Stephanie and I followed a few seconds later.
They looked like two high school students, still wearing their backpacks covered in pins about love and peace. The nearer of the two girls was clearly dead. Her entire body had swollen up like a tick after feeding, the skin turning green as rancid gasses bubbled under the surface. I couldn’t even tell if she once had eyes or a mouth because the flesh had expanded so much. Her bloated body pulled against the fabric of her short-sleeved T-shirt, skirt and straps of her backpack.
The other girl was a somewhat different story. At first, I thought she was dead too. I couldn’t see any breathing and she looked extremely pale with a blue tint to her lips. Bear knelt down and tried shaking her. He got no response. Then he licked the back of his hand and held it in front of her mouth and nose. After a few seconds, he looked up excitedly.
“She’s breathing, though it is very slow and shallow,” he said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her.” Her eyes started to flutter open, and she gasped. Her fingers clenched and she licked her dry lips.
“Water,” she moaned. “Please. Water.” Bear immediately grabbed a bottle from his pack and held it up to her lips. She took small sips, pulling away and breathing hard after each one. But soon she had finished the entire bottle, then two more. The color started to return to her cheeks slightly, though that bluish cast stayed over her fingernails and lips. She motioned for us to get close, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of paper.
“I’m… not going to make it out of here alive,” she said. “This was given to me by someone else. It’s the only reason we’ve made it this far.” She coughed, rolling on her side and vomiting some of the water. I saw streaks of blood mixed in, dark red like a garnet.
Bear looked at the piece of paper, frowning. He stood back up and turned to face us. Then he started reading out loud.
“The first rule to survival is this: When you see the Angel of Death, the woman with the backwards-facing head, you must cut your flesh and give an offering of blood immediately.
“The second rule is that if you hear the first trumpet blow, you must hide. Anyone who does not leave the main tunnel by the time the second trumpet blows will know undying agony.
“The third rule is that if you see dark silhouettes coming down the corridors, shadows in the shapes of men and beasts, you must close your eyes and count to thirty. They are eaters of souls, and will suck your soul out of your eyes if you give them the chance, yet they will pass if not fed.
“The fourth rule is that, if you encounter anyone with the Mark of Cain, you must kill them immediately. You will know the Mark of Cain when you see it- it is a most hideous thing.
“The fifth rule is that if you see the ruler of the bottomless pit, whose name is Abaddon, you must not look at his face.”
We all stood in silence for a long moment. I felt the strong urge to laugh. Then I looked down at the swollen body of the dead girl and immediately changed my mind.
The blonde girl yanked her backpack off, gasping and spitting blood constantly. She reached around in the bag, frantically looking for something. With a triumphant smile across her pretty face, she yanked it out and handed it to me.
I took the ancient leather-bound Bible. It looked like it had some traces of a white, shining crystal smeared across its cover. I opened the cover and saw someone had written in spiky, copperplate handwriting, “Property of Smiley.”
A bookmark hung out of the back of the text. I opened it up and gasped. The “bookmark” was actually a tiny, mummified pinkie finger. It looked like someone had cut it off a small child’s hand. It smelled woodsy with a hint of pistachio, cinnamon and sulfur. I have never smelled anything quite like a mummified body part.
“Oh… my… God!” Stephanie cried, putting her hands above her mouth. “Is that a child’s finger?!” The girl didn’t answer. She had collapsed on her stomach now, and she looked like she was rapidly worsening.
“Who are you? How did you two get here? Why do you have someone’s finger?” I asked. The girl shook her head.
“No time for all that,” she said. “I got a glancing blow of the poison. A very small dose, but it’s doing its work nonetheless. I can feel it writhing like snakes through my blood…” She closed her eyes for a long moment, breathing slow. Then she fixed her unsteady, watery eyes on us again.
“My name is Isabella, though. I’ll tell you that we came here by accident, exploring underground tunnels with my Rainbow Family. We got lost, and the tunnels started changing…” A shriek echoed from further down the main tunnel, cutting her off.
Isabella’s eyes flew wide open, bright spots of red showing on her pale face. She began hyperventilating.
“They’re coming! They’re coming back!” she cried. “Oh God, help me!” I saw a shape far away, like a galloping horse. My mind couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing for a moment. It looked totally alien, something not from this world. There was a sound like helicopter blades slicing through the air, jarring and rhythmic.
As it got closer, I saw a bizarre and monstrous creature. It looked almost like a giant flying scorpion. It was about the size of a Great Dane. Its legs writhed and skittered, like massive alien eyelashes.
I saw its stinger dripping clear, lethal venom, as if it were salivating through its tail. Its spiky wings looked like those of a dragonfly’s, blurring in a sea of motion as they propelled it forward. It was, in reality, the face that affected me most, however.
It had a human face, complete with changing expressions. It had no hair on its body, but even without eyebrows, I could see the scowl of bloodlust and fury. The eyes had a filmy look, as if covered in cataracts. The pupils looked faded behind the veil, the irises a muddy gray. Bristling spikes stood out the top of its head, black, pushed-back quills with barbs on the end. Overall, the creature was one of the most instinctually repugnant and frightening creatures I had ever seen.
Bear and Stephanie stood there, their mouths opened, just staring. Isabella tried to crawl away. She had thrown her backpack to the side.
“Nooo,” she moaned, “noooo.”
“Bear!” I cried. “Shoot it! Shoot the goddamned thing! What are you waiting for?!” He looked like a man waking up from a nightmare for a moment, his eyes moving quickly around before focusing on me. Then a smile broke out on his face.
With the creature only a few steps away, I thought we were all dead. But in a blur, Bear yanked the giant black pistol from its holster. With a booming echo like a shout from God, he fired at the abomination’s eerily human face.
The head exploded in a fountain of bone splinters and bright-blue blood. Its wings continued to pound the air crazily, and the body continued coming at us for a few more feet. Then it crashed to the ground, sliding, its stinger and tail still striking out at the air. I jumped back and saw Bear and Stephanie do the same.
It landed on top of Isabella, soaking her in its blood. She screamed. The stinger continued to drip clear poison from its wicked-looking barb. I saw drops of it sliding off the creature’s body and onto Isabella’s skin.
“It burns, it burns!” she cried, trying to wipe away the poison. But she was on her stomach, and with the creature pinning her down, she couldn’t reach. Like some ancient Chinese water torture, the drops continued to fall, searing and lethal.
“I need help guys!” Bear said as he tried to lift the heavy creature off Isabella. Stephanie and I went around, giving the stinger and poison a wide berth. I reached under its body. It felt slimy, cold and just revolting. It was like the texture of drowned earthworms after a summer rain. As I pushed, I felt a sogginess in its skin, and blue blood the color of antifreeze soaked my hands. I wanted to pull away. I felt soiled. I wanted to take a long shower and wipe the filth of this creature off me.
The body started to lift. With a grunt, the three of us pushed it off Isabella. I looked down at her and realized it was too late.
Her eyes rolled back in her head, showing only the whites. Her legs began to kick violently, her fingers spasming as her arms jumped and danced. She began to make a choked, gasping sound.
Then her skin started to turn a sickly, cancerous green. Her whole body began to swell before our eyes. She gave a death gasp and stopped kicking, finally falling limp.
***
As we left the corpses behind, still shaken, Bear looked at the Bible Isabella had given us.
“Juan, why do you think there’s a human finger in here?” Stephanie asked, still repulsed by it. “Is that some sort of occult thing? Maybe witchcraft?” I shrugged. I knew a lot more about history and books than either Bear or Stephanie. They almost never read, while I read constantly.
“Fingers have been used in occult rituals for thousands of years. In the ancient Buddhist scriptures, a madman and extremely talented warrior used to go around killing random people and taking their fingers for a necklace. They called him ‘Angulimala’, or ‘Finger-necklace’. There may be some relation to worship of Kali, the goddess of destruction. He ended up converting to Buddhism, renouncing violence and becoming enlightened, though.
“In modern rituals, witchcraft still uses severed fingers. Fingers represent dexterity, touch and manipulation of far-away objects. Cutting off a finger also symbolically represents a cutting of ties in an occult ritual.” I shrugged.
“Well, thank you for that enlightening information, Chatbot,” Stephanie said jokingly. “You remind me of those AI robots where you can ask them any random question and they come up with an answer.”
“Hey, don’t shit on me just because I actually do research,” I said, smiling. “Speaking of research, what page of the Bible is the finger marking? It may be important. Those girls had two things, after all: the list of rules and the Bible. Isabella obviously considered them important, because those were the only two things she singled out to give to us while she was dying.” Bear opened the Bible to the page with the finger. He looked down, frowning.
“It’s Revelation 9,” he said, then he began reading aloud as we all took a break, passing around water and peanut butter crackers.
“And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.
“And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.
“And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.
“And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.
“And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.
“And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.” He stopped reading, his voice reverberating eerily down the stone corridor, bouncing off of priceless gems and hard sandstone.
“So that thing we killed was a locust?” Stephanie asked. “It looked a lot more like a scorpion to me.”
“It doesn’t really matter; it’s neither a scorpion nor a locust,” I said. “It’s clearly a different species from either. Perhaps it’s lived down here for millions of years, hunting in the dark. But it just makes it all the more important to find a way out of here as soon as possible. There could be thousands of those things down here. Millions, maybe. I mean, really, who knows how big this place is?” Sighing, we got up and continued looking for a way out.
Ahead, I saw a faded sign. It looked made out of pure silver, without a sign of rust anywhere. But the letters had nearly disappeared over the many years it had clearly stood here.
When we got close, I brought my light right up to it and tried to make it out. After a few seconds, I realized it was a sign for a town.
“Bloodstone. Population: 144,000,” it read.
Part 2
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/192nglq/i_found_the_bottomless_pit_from_the_book_of/
submitted by CIAHerpes to scaryjujuarmy [link] [comments]

2024.04.24 00:00 ImAFailureXo failure

hi, i (19F) feel like a complete failure, i have no porpose in life but being a burden who doesnt know who she is or how to control her feelings or how to love herself. i moved out last year in september from my parents house and it has been so rough. financially and emotionally, i feel alone and im depressed, all i do is work, smoke, cry and sleep (sometimes shower). idk what to do. i used to spend money on my physique when i lived with my parents but my budget is tight now, so no makeover which makes me feel even more shitty, embarrassed and ugly, i cant look at myself in the mirror. i hate who i am and i don't feel like doing 'life' its so hard out here. idk who to talk to because i feel selfish, i know people have it much worse than this and here i am complaining on the internet. i never had a healthy relationship with my parents or family either which makes it rly hard for me to notice toxic behaviours in relationships etc.. it affects my friendships, relationships, work etc. everyone knows me as the smiley girl at work but its just that i dont want to share my feelings with people to not feel like a burden. work calls me everytime im free bc they know i wont say no when they ask me for some favor. idk what to do.. i feel like im trying to please everyone but myself. i just want to be happy and stable for once in my life, i wish i completed my studies instead of dropping it for work.. i wish i could build a healthy future for myself but it just feels too good to be true. i rly want a long hug too.
submitted by ImAFailureXo to Vent [link] [comments]

2024.04.23 12:39 RayhanM666 i never got over my ex and dk how to be happy alone

long story short i dated a girl for over a year and i’ve had longer relationships but this was easily my best relationship. i’ve never felt so comfortable w a person and i thought she felt the same way abt me. when i had to go to the psych ward (3 days) and later rehab (1 month) apparently me being gone that much took too much of a toll on her (which is crazy cause i was workin on my mental health to be better for her) and she broke up with me but never told me that officially. she said it was a break and dragged me along for a month convincing me she was working on herself when in reality she got w two other guys and came crying to me when she messed up w both of them. i listened to her and was there for her cause no matter how much it hurt i was still in love with her.
we broke up last august and she began dating one of the two guys she was talking to. it hurt but eventually i learned to be fine and was honestly embarrassed for her cause the guy was well below her league and to ruin ur committed relationship for him is crazy. well they broke up in december and she began talking to me again. i knew i wasn’t over her i called all my friends that night and told them how i knew this was gonna bite me in the ass. i’m still in love with her and acting like i’m okay just being friends. at first it was fine i’m a stoner so we mostly hang out just to smoke up and i don’t mind but it seems like she doesn’t see us being friends outside of that. she only texts or calls me to smoke, or facetimes me once in a while cause she’s bored.
last night i found out she was talking to a new guy and she even talked to him on the phone while i was there all smiley and shit. keep in mind i was drunk so it was hard to hide the emotions on my face but i never said anything to her. she kept asking if i was ok like she knew it would tick me off and i just kept telling her to drop it saying it wasn’t sum she wants to hear and me saying it drunk would be the worst time possible and so she dropped it. i thought i was over her but i guess it was the fact that her last boyfriend was less attractive than me, and now i don’t know who this guy is she giggles when she talks abt him and he has all the same interests as her and i don’t know how to cope. i ended up drinking myself to sleep. i feel like a hypocrite cause she’s asked abt my love life and she’s seen bumble on my phone but i’ve never been transparent with her the most i’ve said is i’ve been on a date. and honestly every person i get with is in hopes of getting over her. i date people to marry whereas she dates people for fun which is where i messed up. idk what to do i feel hopeless.
submitted by RayhanM666 to Advice [link] [comments]

2024.04.23 12:36 RayhanM666 i never got over my ex and dk how to be happy alone

long story short i dated a girl for over a year and i’ve had longer relationships but this was easily my best relationship. i’ve never felt so comfortable w a person and i thought she felt the same way abt me. when i had to go to the psych ward (3 days) and later rehab (1 month) apparently me being gone that much took too much of a toll on her (which is crazy cause i was workin on my mental health to be better for her) and she broke up with me but never told me that officially. she said it was a break and dragged me along for a month convincing me she was working on herself when in reality she got w two other guys and came crying to me when she messed up w both of them. i listened to her and was there for her cause no matter how much it hurt i was still in love with her.
we broke up last august and she began dating one of the two guys she was talking to. it hurt but eventually i learned to be fine and was honestly embarrassed for her cause the guy was well below her league and to ruin ur committed relationship for him is crazy. well they broke up in december and she began talking to me again. i knew i wasn’t over her i called all my friends that night and told them how i knew this was gonna bite me in the ass. i’m still in love with her and acting like i’m okay just being friends. at first it was fine i’m a stoner so we mostly hang out just to smoke up and i don’t mind but it seems like she doesn’t see us being friends outside of that. she only texts or calls me to smoke, or facetimes me once in a while cause she’s bored.
last night i found out she was talking to a new guy and she even talked to him on the phone while i was there all smiley and shit. keep in mind i was drunk so it was hard to hide the emotions on my face but i never said anything to her. she kept asking if i was ok like she knew it would tick me off and i just kept telling her to drop it saying it wasn’t sum she wants to hear and me saying it drunk would be the worst time possible and so she dropped it. i thought i was over her but i guess it was the fact that her last boyfriend was less attractive than me, and now i don’t know who this guy is she giggles when she talks abt him and he has all the same interests as her and i don’t know how to cope. i ended up drinking myself to sleep. i feel like a hypocrite cause she’s asked abt my love life and she’s seen bumble on my phone but i’ve never been transparent with her the most i’ve said is i’ve been on a date. and honestly every person i get with is in hopes of getting over her. i date people to marry whereas she dates people for fun which is where i messed up. idk what to do i feel hopeless.
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2024.04.20 16:37 n0kay_ Vapevana Screwball kit 2 month Review

Bought one 2 months ago and have used it exclusively almost every day since. First as a pointed effort to stop smoking joints but later simply because it is now my preferred way to consume. I have managed to reduce my usage in terms of grams by about 30%, without having to compromise on how high I want to get. Overall very happy with my purchase, solid 8.5/10.
Pros
Efficient
Effective
Quality materials
The spoon
Cons (mostly gripes)
submitted by n0kay_ to MedicalCannabisOz [link] [comments]

2024.04.19 06:13 SoldierOfLove23 I made a list of cities I've been to describing who they'd be if they were a person

• Adelaide 🇦🇺 A suburban mum who is too scared to let you go into town
• Amsterdam 🇳🇱 A fast-paced progressive boss who is very direct with what they want, and respects you as long as you are honest with them
• Antigua 🇬🇹 The sweet artsy queer friend who is an insanely talented drawer
• Bangkok 🇹🇭 Two people on a first date going to another bar on a motorcycle after establishing they get along
• Berlin 🇩🇪 Someone in their 30s' posing for a photo next to some street art they made while doing devil horns with their fingers
• Brisbane 🇦🇺 A female Fox News reporter
• Cairo 🇪🇬 A smiley 19-year old guy recklessly riding his new motorcycle around at night with friends
• Copenhagen 🇩🇰 The cool boss who lets you work whenever you want, as long as it gets done
• Dubai 🇦🇪 A mother listening to the latest hits on the radio to keep up with the kids while stuck in traffic on her way to work
• Dublin 🇮🇪 A stranger staring blankly at you as if you've done something weird
• Galway 🇮🇪 A friend who you haven't seen in a while running into you on a night out drunkenly ranting about how much of a good person you are
• Gold Coast 🇦🇺 A really nice himbo who has no idea how attractive he is
• Hong Kong 🇭🇰 A stern, successful, loving father who never thinks you work hard enough
• Istanbul 🇹🇷 An attractive melancholic well-dressed young man petting his cat, smoking a cigarette, and listening to music after breaking up with his girlfriend
• Liège 🇧🇪 A friendly beret-wearing dad who is really into jazz and probably had a new wave phase in the 1980s'
• London 🇬🇧 A middle-aged mum at a house party going into raptures telling everyone about a new recipe she tried from a cookbook
• Los Angeles 🇺🇲 A sunkissed MILF driving a car from the 1970s' who can still pull off wearing trendy clothes
• Melbourne 🇦🇺 A campy old gay man drinking too much at a cabaret show in the 1920s'
• Milan 🇮🇹 A busy, well-dressed, slightly nerdy twink who is more friendly than he appears
• Montreal 🇨🇦 A stubborn guy in his 30s' telling you about his 20th' "new concept" that'll supposedly take the world by storm, but never takes off
• Mostar 🇧🇦 A grandmother wearing a headscarf and carrying groceries up a hilly street
• Munich 🇩🇪 A young man looking at you condescendingly thinking he knows better than you because he has a Master's degree
• New York 🇺🇲 A middle-aged cop making a smart-assed comment to a group of rowdy teenagers
• Oslo 🇧🇻 A smiling well-dressed newly retired woman wearing sunglasses and having a drink with her husband after going hiking
• Paris 🇨🇵 An older woman who only has affairs with younger men
• Rabat 🇲🇦 A well-dressed person in their 20s' who loves listening to deep house while smoking a joint
• Rio de Janeiro 🇧🇷 An elderly couple having a flashback of riding a motorcycle romantically along the beach together in the 1950s'
• Salvador 🇧🇷 The resilient friend who can make the worst moments enjoyable
• São Paulo 🇧🇷 The really busy friend who will always make time to see you, even if it's brief
• Stockholm 🇸🇪 A trendy beautiful independent blonde woman going out for drinks after work
• Sydney 🇦🇺 A rich woman who is going through the stages of grief before choosing to divorce her husband
• Tbilisi 🇬🇪 A handsome charming young man in a black turtleneck making a beautiful young woman laugh over a coffee
• Toronto 🇨🇦 A busy mother enjoying her first night out in years
• Vancouver 🇨🇦 An easy-going dad with more money than you would expect, who doesn't mind his kids smoking a joint in the backyard as long as they keep the noise down
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2024.04.18 22:20 florecillas I miss my dad

He was not a good father, but he was my father. It doesn’t make sense and I feel stupid for missing him, but I do.
He passed away 3 years ago, due to cancer caused by drinking and smoking so much. He was an alcoholic and was abusive towards my mom, he would insult her, was overly jealous and did not let her study or be herself. He was not a good person to my mom.
However, the last few years he lived with us, he was really good and sweet to me. I think he was trying to manipulate me into staying with him after the divorce, but sometimes my brains does this funny thing where we just pretend he loved me.
He made my favorite food, would wait for me to arrive from school with warm food and his company. I would tell him about my day, about funny things that happened, he would laugh a lot. He always kissed me goodnight before sleeping and would tell a funny joke every night. I would pretend the jokes were not funny because he loved that. He would make fries and one of them would have a smiley face, I felt so lucky when I found these.
When he passed away I just wanted it to be a joke, until I saw his casket and all his family crying. They had no idea what we went through at home before my parents got a divorce. They just knew he had problems with “drinking too much”, I felt angry, but also sad. I thought he would ask me for help to stop drinking, but it never happened.
Last night I dreamed about him again. I was swimming in a pool and I saw him there. I was shocked! “I thought you died dad”, he told me he was in fact not dead, he needed to run away for a bit, and he was better now. But then big waves came towards us and I lost him again. He was smiling. I was happy I saw him again. Then I woke up.
I sometimes try to fool myself that he sometimes appears in my dreams or in the form of an animal to say hello. I really wish that was true. I miss my dad, despite everything he did and I feel stupid.
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2024.04.17 20:05 Ralts_Bloodthorne Nova Wars Chapter 25+25

[First Contact] [Dark Ages] [First] [Prev] [Next] [wiki]
I proved Hellspace exists, so it reached back to prove I exist by touching me. - Digital Prairie Harry, Age of Extinction, 2 years Pre-TXE
"What's Hellspace?" D44 asked.
Emry stared at her for a second. "The burnt hyperatomic plane? You've never heard of it?"
D44 shrugged. "If I did, I don't remember."
Emry turned and looked at Naxen and Wrixet. "You two?"
Both shrugged.
"Hell," D44 said, drawing the word out. She nodded. "Sounds bad."
"None of you have heard of Hellspace? OK, it's a burnt hyperatomic plane that is constantly on fire. Has strange things living in it? Corrupts n-space -our reality- when it comes into contact?" Emry tried.
"Nope, never heard of it," Naxen said. He shrugged. "I get the feeling that I haven't heard of much."
Emry gave a long suffering sigh. "Just contact with Hellspace, just a brush, can cause computer code corruption, alteration of the physical world, alteration of how a being thinks, acts, and looks."
"Sounds bad," D44 said.
Emry just stared at her. "Yeah. You could say that."
Wrixet looked around. Everything looked fine to him. "So, what? Do we get a mop or something?"
Emry sighed again. "No," he seemed to firm up. "We go to the engineering section and see if we can get the Hellspace shields up and running."
Wrixet frowned. "Sounds dangerous."
"More dangerous not to. Pretty soon things will start coming through that make the shades look like friendly pets," Emry said. He looked at the wall mounted fabricator they pulled the cables from. "I'm going to need a disaster frame and I'll walk you through putting me in it."
Naxen grinned. "That, we can handle."
It took a while. Several time the grinding sound started, making the room shudder, the lights going dim and coming back up overly bright at the height of the grinding and shuddering, then slowly dimming back to normal as the sound and vibration wound down.
"That's not good," Emry said at one point.
"What is it?" Wrixet asked.
"I think, and I hope I'm wrong, I think it's the primary reactor trying to start up and failing," Emry said.
"Can we fix it?" D44 asked.
"Not unless we get to it. Until then, I don't know," Emry said.
"If it doesn't start, does it matter?" Naxen asked.
"Maybe, maybe not," Emry said. "Depends on whether or not the Hellspace shielding has its own local power source. If it does, then no, it doesn't matter right away, if not, then it matters a lot."
"So, nothing we can do right now," Naxen said.
"Right," Emry nodded as D44 and Wrixet attached the left leg to the lower torso section of the 'disaster frame', which was a robot chassis with space in the chest for Emry's 'survival core' to be loaded in.
Wrixet just shrugged. "Then I'm not going to worry about it," he said. He pulled the rubbery internal lining of the outer shell over the hip joint, then moved to the shoulder while D44 went and got the left arm.
"So, what is exactly is this place?" Naxen asked.
Emry looked up from where he was typing in commands on the fabricator. "A Confederate Joint Armed Services Main Support Logistics Base. It's used pretty far behind friendly lines to refit and rearm spaceships, ground forces, all of that," he saw the slight confused looks. "A military space base."
"Then where is everyone?" D44 asked, kneeling down to attach the fingers to the hand. She activated the small backup power cell in the hand, the fingers just slotted in, the hand doing all the work once she put the round knob into the socket. She stood up, grabbed the forearm, and attached the hand to it.
"I don't know, that's the problem. Time/date stamps are all corrupted. For some reason the system thinks over forty-thousand years have passed," Emry said.
"It's been like fifty thousand years since the Second Precursor War," D44 said. She winced slightly. "I learned that in school."
Emry sighed. "Fifty thousand years locked down in a Fairy-Day Cage, sleeping while the universe moved on," he paused for a moment. "Nifty Thrint Field saved me, I guess."
"Probably nothing's changed," Wrixet said. "If something changes, it's usually for the worse."
Emry looked at him. "Why do you say that?"
Wrixet shrugged. "Dunno. Just how it seems like it is."
"Remembering more?" Naxen asked.
Wrixet shook his head, accepting the arm from D44. "Not really. Just bits and pieces," he laughed. "I know you used to run in front of cars and act like they hit you."
Naxen laughed. "That sounds funny."
Wrixet leaned back as the arm locked into the socket and started going through self-tests as the socket covers slid into place. "Know you were the best at it."
Emry was looking at both of the Telkani. "Huh."
"What?" Naxen asked.
"Nothing," Emry looked away.
"I can remember riding in the car with my parents," D44 said. "I look out the window a lot."
Emry made a weird look. "Check the wiring harness on that one," he said, pointing. "Finger pressure feedback sensors aren't reporting."
D44 checked it, unplugged it, plugged it back in. The pinprick telltales went green.
Finally, it was done. They waited for Emry to put the instructions on a datapad, then opened up his case.
The case was the size of a washing machine, but the 'survival core' was just a touch over a third of a meter per side in a cube. There was a handle on the top, with press-buttons and an LED panel. The LED panel showed a green smiley face as they pulled the handle and D44 and Wrixet carried it over to the disaster frame. They put it carefully in place, then tapped the buttons before closing the chest.
Nothing happened.
"Think we killed him?" Naxen asked, setting down his fizzystim bottle.
"Naw, he's just waking up. Probably knocked him out," Wrixet said.
"He has to do function checks and stuff," D44 said.
The grinding noise started, the vibration light. It got stronger, the lights brightening to almost painful levels, then dimmed back down as the grinding noise wound down.
Wrixet laid on the bench, staring at the ceiling. Naxen did the same on the table next to him. D44 sat for a minute, then laid down.
All three slept through the grinding as it came and went.
He was all by himself but he wasn't alone. He was swinging a set of knuckle dusters on one hand, the grav arc on the leading edge burning white. With the other hand he had a cloth around his forearm that he used to slap aside fists, knives, broken bottles. Blood was spraying, people were screaming.
He was laughing.
"Wake up," the tapping on the hardshell plate of his chest woke him up.
The disaster frame was leaning over him. The face looked like Emry.
"I'm awake," Wrixet said, sitting up.
Emry moved to D44 and then Naxen, waking them up.
The three ate while Emry paced back and forth, obvious impatient to get moving.
"We need better weapons," Naxen said.
D44 hefted her sword. "I like this."
"Got brass knuckles with a graviton boost?" Wrixet asked, remembering his dream.
"Lemme check," Emry said, tapping through the holographic controls. He looked up. "Yeah. Let me set the color to red."
"How about a knife? Not like a sword, but a long bladed knife?" Naxen asked.
Emry checked. "Got one designed for fighting shades. Mark II Close Combat Cutting Bar, Telkan, huh, it has a salt block that the chain rubs on to cover the chain," Emry said. He tapped the keyboard.
They sat and watched as the fabricator worked, lifting the lid so Wrixet could get both glove covers. He put them on slowly and carefully, feeling the weight, as Naxen checked over his knives.
It felt good.
"What does the salt do?" D44 asked.
"Disrupts the shades," Emry said.
D44 hefted her shield and sword. "Maybe you should coat them with salt crystals," she glanced at the blade Naxen was holding. "I'll take one of those too. Bigger though"
Emry just nodded.
"Can you do my forearm?" Wrixet asked, holding out his left arm. "And my knees and thighs?"
"Sure, why not?" Emry asked.
He worked through each request, until the trio of Telkan stood there, salt crystals and iron powder gleaming in the light.
"Ready?" Emry asked.
"Ready," they each said.
Emry moved over to the door.
"We'll go this way. It's not the shortest route, but it'll keep us clear of everything I'm getting corrupted data from."
They nodded.
Emry opened the door, revealing a red cube area ahead. He headed toward it. Naxen and Wrixet looked at each other, then at D44, who nodded.
"I'm with you, brothers," she said softly.
Nodding, they started following Emry on a long, twisting route through the corridors, moving through red boxes in the middle of the corridors.
"Hey, how did you talk to us on the spaceship?" D44 asked.
"The computer secondary systems woke me up, had me guide in the ships that were coming in. The first ship was full of nothing but the dead and a bunch of shades, all out of some Lanaktallan world. I knew things were sideways," Emry said. "The computer wouldn't load me into the main digital sentience array, said there was hardware failures," he paused before looking outside of the red box. "Clear," he said. "Anyway, I had access to the station to ship communication's hardware, but it was bringing up my heat levels pretty fast."
He paused. "You were the first living I've seen in at least two weeks," he said. "There was some garbled messages that I got after I checked the deployed ansible. The hypercom wave is weird, like it's stagnant, or something's wrong with it."
They paused again. D44 checked, waved them forward, and they jogged to the next red box.
Emry tapped his red forearm. "Had some stuff about the shades. Partial message, header unknown. Gave some instructions, repeated several times to stay alive, that I wasn't alone, that other people were linking up. Dogboi howls, iron, salt, the color red. Warned me to disable all monitors, disable all picture in picture, use only red and silver for displays."
"Huh," Naxen said.
"Think it's happening everywhere?" D44 asked. She hugged herself. "I hope my broodmommy is OK."
"We'll get the Hellspace shields up, then check the ansible. Might be able to see what is going on," Emry said. "I'll be honest, the way those garbled messages looked, it seemed like the entire spur was infected with shades, something called Atrekna, and everyone who wasn't dead was fighting for their lives."
D44 looked away, still hugging herself.
"Looks clear," Emry said.
They got three steps when a dozen shades erupted from the walls, screaming.
The grav-fists came to life with a sharp crack as Wrixet extended out his fists. The first one caught the shade in the mid-section, exploding out clear ectoplasm. He blocked another one with the iron and salt laden crystals on his forearm. The shade drew back with a screech, its hands dissolving. He saw one lunging for D44's back and swung hard, catching it through the back, his hand passing through the lineart, the salt and iron crystals coating his arm smoking as the white lines twisted and bent.
Clear ectoplasm splattered D44's back as she hacked one down, following it as it held out its hands and tried to move backwards, her sword chopping like she was cutting down a tree.
Naxen moved fast, ducking under swipes, nimbly moving out of the way, stabbing just above the waist at the back, halfway up the side of the torso, or into the back of the thighs on the shades, the fact they were larger than him making it easy for him to target.
Emry had a half dozen pulling at him, smashing him against the wall as they tried to pull him through it.
D44 hacked at the hands, making the limbs explode into black smoke or shatter into ectoplasm. Naxen kept working on the ones still flooding at them, stabbing as fast as he could.
Wrixet stepped up next to him, swinging his fists, blocking the shade's attempts with his forearms. He had his feet planted, putting his hips into each swing, his arms lifted in front of him, elbows bent, arm hocks and wrists stiff as he waded in more than danced around.
It felt right the way he was throwing punches. Fast, brutal, rarely bringing his arms out to full extension.
He found he had to pull his punches so he wasn't thrown off balance, but for some reason his body knew what to do even if his brain didn't.
The last one he punched in the chest, it fell back screeching, black mist spreading where there had once been lineart. He threw a second punch and it splattered.
He stood there, winded, staring at the splattered clear goo.
"Clear?" Naxen asked.
"Crystal," Wrixet said, lifting up his hand and staring at it. The grav-arc was snarling, sparks popping off it to dissolve within less than a centimeter. He touched his pinky to his thumb and it winked out.
"Clear," D44 said.
"Clear, for now," Emry said. He headed for the next cube. "We need to keep moving."
They moved through the hallways, attacked twice on the way. Both times, it was when the grinding started and the holographic red areas cut out. Once they were still fighting when the holograms came back on and the shades were slammed away from them, screeching.
Naxen grabbed Wrixet shoulder pad to keep him from following and throwing punches.
"Main Engineering," Emry said at the blast door. "Not sure what we'll find, but from there we will either be able to activate the Hellspace shielding or at least find out what's wrong with it," the grinding started then wound back down before the lights did much more than flicker. "And I can run a diagnostic on the primary power systems."
D44 hefted her blade, which was still smoking from the ectoplasm interacting with the salt and iron crystals. The Mark 2 Cutting Bar was slung across her back, still unused. "Let's get on with it."
Emry nodded, touching the door controls. "Locked down, give me a minute. My slicers can cut this."
After a minute the blast doors receded. The one facing them pulling back into the corners, the one behind it moving into the floor and ceiling, the one past that pulling in to the left and right, and the last one pulling back into the corners.
The interior of the Main Engineering was full of shades that screamed and rushed them.
Wrixet found himself laughing as he waded in, the grav-fist snarling. He'd step into their swings, lifting his arm to take the blow on his biceps or middle forearm -between the elbow and wrist hock- or knocking their blow to the side. At the same time he'd punch, twisting at the waist, putting his hips into it.
D44 smashed them back with her shield, chopping at them with her blade, which was smoking heavily. When her sword passed through harmlessly she threw it to the side, reached behind her, and pulled the cutting bar free.
The motor roared as she triggered it and drove the blade into the chest of the shade that was coming at her again, one arm smoking from where her blade had nearly damaged it. The shade shrieked as the roaring chain plunged through its chest, showering ectoplasm.
Naxen kept tight to Emry, stabbing at any shade that got too close with his 'ripper', the Mark 2 Close Combat Cutting Bar snarling as he slashed at the shades.
Emry ran for the master console, running up and slapping his hand on the induction port.
"Brother, help me," D44 suddenly called out.
Wrixet turned to see that she had a whole swarm swirling around her. He charged forward, leading with his red painted shoulder that gleamed with salt crystals.
"ON YOUR RIGHT, SISTER!" he bellowed out.
D44 shifted slightly so she was chopping away from him with the roaring chainsword.
He crashed through the shades, feeling like he was hitting thin pieces of paper. They splattered, some reforming, others turning into black mist that puffed away. He stepped back, getting back to back with her, punching at the shades, the red colored grav-arc snarling and popping.
"Whatever you're doing, do it fast," Naxen shouted, cutting two in half. One puffed into black dust, reforming not far away.
"Hurrying," Emry said. He sounded like his teeth were chattering. "System's a wreck. Corruption everywhere. Hellspace, age, uncollected garbage."
Wrixet took a blow on his shoulder from one that drove icy spikes into his muscle, his return punch splattered it across the bulkhead. He knew he was smiling, felt almost giddy as he kept punching.
"NO LAWSEC TO SAVE YOU HERE, TELK!" he shouted, punching a shade twice in the face, the second blow hitting before it could explode into mist or protoplasm. It shattered, the goop falling to the floor.
"Almost... almost..." Emry said.
Naxen spun out of the way, kicked out with one foot, and slammed the red painted iron coated sole of his boot into the leg. The shade didn't go down, but it did swivel, turning in place like momentum didn't exist.
He shoved the blade through its face, ectoplasm spraying his face shield.
The lights kicked on.
Red.
The shades screamed and fled.
"Clear?" Naxen called out.
"Clear," D44 said. She slumped slightly, letting the cutting bar's engine idle.
"Crystal," Wrixet said. He grinned. "Nice fight. They aren't 32nd Streeters though."
Naxen laughed. "I have no idea what that means."
"Hellshields coming online," Emry said. "Main power systems are at less than 3% fuel," he looked up. "Fuel rods are depleted. I'm fabbing up new ones and having the automated systems reload it," he looked down. "Emergency systems are activated."
"OK," D44 said, still panting. She moved up and sat down at one of the chairs in front of a console. "What does that do?"
"I'll run a star comparison, find the navigation stars, figure out how long this station has been drifting, find out where we are, see why we're getting Hellspace corruption," Emry said.
"Sounds boring," Naxen said. He moved over and sat down, cracking open his face shield.
Wrixet moved over to the 'nanoforge', following the remembered instructions, and got three fizzystims. He carried them over, handing one to D44, one to Naxen, keeping the last. He opened his face shield, cracked the can, and took a drink.
It tasted amazing.
The best thing he'd ever tasted.
"Old running shoes and lawn clippings," D44 read. She cracked the can, grinning at the 'you'll be sorry' it squeaked, and took a long drink. She smiled. "That's some damn good grass and shoes."
Naxen laughed. "I've got black coffee grounds and two day old spaghetti," he took another drink, "Tastes great."
They sat there, catching their breath, drinking the fizzystims, feeling the strength return.
"Oh, this isn't good," Emry said.
"What?" D44 asked. "What now?"
"Well, the date stamps are right. Just over forty-thousand years, give or take a couple of centuries," Emry said. "That isn't the problem."
"What is?" Naxen asked.
Emry tossed up a smattering of pinpoints of light.
"This is a map of this area of the Cygnus-Orion Galactic Arm Spur," Emry said.
"What's that?" Naxen asked.
"Where we live," D44 said. She winced. "Ouch," she looked up. "Apparently I like pale grass green."
"Girly color," Naxen snickered.
D44 just laughed.
"Anyway," Emry said, mentally revising all three of their ages down from mid-20's. He motioned and a bunch of the pinpoints suddenly had green circles around them. "This is the Confederate side of the Long Dark," he motioned again. This time a bunch of pinpoints had red circles. "From the station's sensors, all of these systems have been Hellspiked."
"What's that?" Wrixet asked.
"I'll explain later. Short answer, hellspace nova bombs on the stars," Emry said. "Weird thing is, from each hellspiked star there's a beam of hellspace energy crossing lightyears, sometimes twenty or thirty, to reach the next hellspiked star. Each star connects to between four and sixteen stars."
"Wow," D44 said. "Oh, that's a lot of dead people if those places were occupied."
"That's not all," Emry said. The lines suddenly appeared, connecting the stars. "Between the lines Hellspace energy is spreading, about a half light year thick, filling in the gaps between the lines."
He tapped one spot. "That's us."
Dead in the middle of a slowly reddening spot in between five different lines.
"It looks like a wall," D44 said.
"A wall made of Hellspace," Emry said.
Wrixet stared at it. He finished off the can and set it on the console as everyone stared at the star map.
"And we're in the middle," Emry said.
"What do we do?" D44 asked.
Wrixet stood up and turned to look at the other three. He extended out one hand in a snapping motion and the grav-fist snarled to life.
"We survive."
[First Contact] [Dark Ages] [First] [Prev] [Next] [wiki]
submitted by Ralts_Bloodthorne to HFY [link] [comments]

2024.04.16 21:49 Upstairs-Switch-4669 I jus want my sister back man 😭

Last year was fucking terrible something happened & my sister isn’t herself anymore. She gave one of my nieces up for adoption (she has 4 kids total 3 girls 1 boy) the other kids went with their Dad. My niece that she gave up for adoption was the product of a rape. So she did that & shortly after the other kids were sent with their Dad because she could no longer provide transportation for school. That was in September of last year. She started isolating & a few months went by & she didn’t show up for any holidays. I finally seen her in January & she had lost like 50lbs & looked super skeletal. & let me say shes never done drugs she doesn’t smoke anything, she only drinks wine with my Mom when she’s over. We weren’t speaking cause I was pissed about my niece so I got most of my information about her from my Mom. Ok she told my Mom that a celebrity stabbed her in the neck with a needle at a concert she went to. She said the Illuminati is after her. She stayed with my Mom for a few days & bounced around to different relatives cause she was scared to go home she said ppl were after her. While at my Moms she wrote prayers & lit them on fire. Made witch bottles & put them in my Moms refrigerator. My Mom walked in on her several times with pillows stacked on top of her head. I’m letting her stay with me until her new apartment is ready. She’s not the super bubbly smiley sister I once had. She put her beats on her ears full blast while we were talking it blew my mind like I wasn’t there. She’s been evaluated once &she said they told her she had depression but I think it’s more than that. I want a second opinion I know something wrong. I look at her & jus cry she’s so skinny & she looks jus not her anymore man. I don’t know how to help her she thinks she makes sense so it’s hard to reason with her. Sorry if this is a lot I just needed to get this out I’m her big sister & I still see my little kid sister when I look at her. I jus can’t believe this happened tbh feels like a nightmare I wish I could trade spots with her 💔
submitted by Upstairs-Switch-4669 to mentalillness [link] [comments]

2024.04.14 06:02 Direct-Caterpillar77 AITA for kicking my wife out after she punched my mom in the face?

I am not The OOP's, OOP's are:
The husband: u/OKOrganization9552
The wife: u/ThrowAwayWifeNBaby
AITA for kicking my wife out after she punched my mom in the face?
Originally posted to AITAH
Thanks to u/czechtheboxes & u/queenlegolas for suggesting this BoRU
TRIGGER WARNING: verbal abuse, physical violence, emotional abuse, gaslighting
Original Post Feb 10, 2024
Posted by u/OKOrganization9552
My situation went from bad to worse in a matter of a week and I don't know where else to turn. I need to know if I was wrong. Possibly a validation thing because life is fucking dumb right now. My wife and I have been together for 8 years and she just gave birth to our first (and last) baby 2 months ago. Up until my wife got pregnant, my mom loved her. I'm not sure wtf is wrong with my mom or why the switch happened but after my wife got pregnant, my mom started being very clingy to me and started avoiding my wife at all costs. Told everyone she wasn't excited about the pregnancy, etc. I threatened to go no contact with her when my wife was about 7 months along and after that she snapped out of it for the most part and stopped being so ignorant. The comments 100% stopped, at least. Though she still was clinging to me.
Now, a week ago my mom, my sister, my sister's husband and my sister's daughter (12) came over for dinner. I prepared the meal. Before my wife could eat anything, our daughter got fussy so my wife excused herself to go feed the baby and get her down to sleep. I thought I prepared enough but apparently not because my niece was still "starving" (she's 5'5" and 190lbs, I haven't seen her in a year and she was not that size then so I didn't exactly portion in an extra 3 helpings for a child- so it's on me). I apologized and told her that I hadn't made any more and offered her crackers, as I was putting my wife's portion in the fridge. After that, I just went outside with my sister's husband to smoke a cigarette and shoot the breeze. Didn't think anything of it. But then I hear yelling from inside. When I walk in, my wife and my mom were screaming at each other. Apparently my mom (who saw me put my wife's food away) gave my niece my wife's portion of food. As I was walking inside, I heard my mom say "looks like you can afford to skip a meal" and slapped my wife's stomach. Right as soon as I get ready to step in (literally fast walking toward them yelling "enough"), my wife winds back and punches my mother square in the face and drops her. The whole house went silent outside of my mom crying and holding her face. I tell everyone to "get the fuck out". Immediately everyone leaves and my wife just turns toward the counter and leans with her hands on the counter and face down, eyes closed. I look at my wife and say "you too, leave, now." She says "really?" She's crying at this point. I say a clipped "yup". She packs up her and the baby and leaves.
I text her that night and say I just need space. I need to decompress and come to terms with what just happened. She doesn't respond. The next 5 days I'm texting and calling and I get nothing. She shows up here today (so 8 days later) and hands me divorce paperwork and my baby and says "here, you have a bit to hang out with her while I pack. Where I'm breastfeeding we can work out a visitation schedule that is either at your place or my mother's until she will take a bottle." I told her that's not what I want. I don't want to separate. I just needed time to process her punching my mother in the face. She said "you needing time to process gave me time to process the fact that I refuse to be in this situation any longer. I defended myself. I initially felt bad and remorseful but you making me leave when I needed you made me see more clear. I'm done. I'm sorry for what I did but there's no fixing this." She refused to speak to me at all the rest of the time that she was here. My house feels so empty and I don't know what to do. AITA for making her leave after she punched my mom? I just needed some fucking space.
ETA: for the record, I am "team wife". My mom deserved it, wholeheartedly, and I've blocked her completely from my life. I literally just needed time to process what happened. My wife is a lot of things, violent is not one of them. So this came completely out of left field and would not have happened without her being provoked. After it all happened, my mom sent me a text saying "See! I told you she was crazy! That fat bitch doesn't belong in **our** life." I'm willing to bet she purposely tried setting my wife off. So no, I'm on my wife's side 100%. I truly just needed to process what happened and my wife took it as me giving up on her, not defending her and throwing her and our baby out (which did essentially happen because I knew she had to take the baby with her when I kicked her out).
eta: the reason "why": my dad was stupid abusive. I was beat. My sister's and brother were beat. My mom was put in the hospital multiple times. It took years for police to enforce restraining orders and he finally died in 2013. Violence scares the fuck out of me. I clam up and get anxious around violence of any kind now. My wife knows this and she too grew up with a violent dad (step dad) and she gets just as anxious and panicky around violence. Her punching my mom in the face triggered an anxious response and I needed her gone in that moment. I needed it far away from me. I don't know why I didn't just leave. I could have. But in that moment I just let my emotions and fear run the whole fucking circus and told everyone to get out, her included. My mom did slap her first.. I guess for some reason I was seeing my wife's punch as being worse than the slap. It wasn't a hard slap but my wife did kind of wince, looking back on it now. She was fine following but my mom was bleeding. Split her eyebrow open in good shape. Idk.
thanks for the responses. I'm the AH. I'm going to try to go kiss ass now.
RELEVANT COMMENTS/ADDITIONAL INFO
OOP
My mom did hurt her. She slapped her in the stomach and my wife winced back in pain before punching her in the face. As a few other people have pointed out.. I guess new moms have muscles separated in their abdomen so given the force that my mom slapped her in the stomach (like a little bit below the rib cage, full back handed slap, which could be heard from the door), I guess it's comparable to hitting my wife in her internal organs? Because her stomach muscles aren't healed? I just learned that.
PrettyLittleAccident
I’m sorry, you’re saying it wasn’t a hard slap but you could HEAR IT?!?!? Unless it was skin on skin, slaps are not usually something that can be heard at a distance
~
OlderMan42
Yup, YTA
Your mom wants to be your wife, or at least more important than her.
You really did need to prioritize your wife over your mother, end of story.
I hope you get another shot at it. Kinda depends on the past… if she has enough positive memories to make it worthwhile in her mind.
OOP
Starting to see that. My wife sent me a text about 10 minutes ago, saying "look up emotional incest", with no context. Definitely describes what my mom's doing. I did completely block her but it won't help my case.
~
CarrieFantastic6990
Info what other comments did your mom make about your wife?
OOP
That she was stealing me away. That she wasn't good enough. Made a few comments about baby trapping me. Never said it directly to me or my wife but it got back to us quick. She tried denying it at first but later confirmed she said it. Thats when I threatened no contact and nothing ever got back to us after that. I just assumed all had cleared up.
My response to my husband’s post “AITA for kicking my wife out after she punched my mom in the face?” Apr 7, 2024
Posted by u/ThrowAwayWifeNBaby
I’m still grieving at the loss of my marriage, but my friend had notified me about my husband’s post that had too may specific details that were hard to ignore. To clarify, this is my first time on Reddit. I read my soon-to-be ex-husband’s post and wanted to give my side of the story and include details that he didn’t provide in his post.
For those who hadn’t read it, long story short, my husband kicked me out of the house after his mother had physically slapped my stomach in front of him and I punched her in self-defense. I loved my husband dearly but his lack of action regarding his mother’s behavior was extremely disgusting to say the least, I tolerated his mom’s behavior long enough until I couldn’t take it anymore as he had overlooked his mom’s behavior over and over again that finally I had enough.
I was still recovering after giving birth to his child when his mom slapped my stomach, and my husband exaggerated when he said it wasn’t a hard slap. The slap itself was hard enough to be heard by everyone in the room. I had lost it at this point when his mother slapped my stomach with a turd eating smirk that wasn’t visible from my husband’s point of view, at least that’s what my husband claimed.
I had a mental breakdown when my husband told me to leave after kicking everyone out of the house, you should have seen his face when he told me to get out with a straight face and without hesitation. Our baby was crying at this point before I left, and I couldn’t do anything but cry that night after I went to stay with my mother. His mother sent me a text mockingly saying, "I am going to file charges against you for assault, you fat little whore!" Now stay the fuck out of our lives!" She ended the text with a smiley face at the end. I was livid and decided I did not want to be associated with this family anymore and served my husband divorce papers, and as you can guess he didn’t take it well and tried to get me to reconsider.
I told him that he overlooked his mother’s behavior one too many times, and I was done with him and his inability to establish boundaries with his mother. I recommended setting boundaries, but he didn’t think it was necessary even after I told him throughout the pregnancy about the nasty names his mother called me when he wasn’t around, and he always brushed it off, even though he did tell his mom to stop she would continue this behavior after a short pause for a while.
Before I left after handing him divorce papers he begged me for another chance and told me he cut contact with his mother permanently. I told him that he is sorry now that I handed him divorce papers and that he was too late to act now that I decided I wanted out of the marriage. I told him I loved him so much that he should look at it as a sign that if I didn’t than I would have divorced him long ago because he didn’t stand up for me multiple times. and I let his mother’s snarky comments and behavior slide at my mental expense.
I told him he needed help with the trauma because I understand that he is dealing with trauma since he already mentioned my abusive stepdad, but he didn’t even realize that his mother hadn’t gotten him help for his trauma that he is still being affected in his adulthood. What I can’t understand is why he didn’t leave if he needed some space instead of being such a heartless bastard and kicking our child out with me. I’ve been ignoring his texts and calls ever since, and I’m waiting for a divorce hearing.
Something that I wanted to point out is that his mother had attributed to his niece’s weight gain, since she lives with my husband’s sister to save money. I, once again, told my husband about his niece’s weight gain that it’s concerning that she weighs 190lb at such a young age, and she was indeed not that weight before. On the day of the incident I was making the niece’s second portion of food and then my husband’s mother came towards me and snatched the plate out of my hands and said "I’ll do it myself, let me take care of it!" and when I tried to take the plate back his mother said "I know what to fucking do, you don’t know how to properly feed someone as healthy as my grandchild!" I was shocked that she thinks that her grandchild’s weight was normal for her age.
I couldn’t take this harassment or abuse any longer and my breaking point was reached when he kicked me and our child out of the house, now I need to do what’s right for our child because she doesn’t need to be in a toxic household where she has to witness the drama going on. My soon-to-be ex-husband wants us to do marriage counseling, to which I have refused to do so because I am done with him. I’m starting to feel slightly guilty with his begging and gaslighting. I just want to be done with him. I’ve blocked him as recommended by my lawyer but he keeps reaching out through his other family members and siblings. What should I do to make him go away until the divorce hearing?
THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP
DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7
submitted by Direct-Caterpillar77 to BestofRedditorUpdates [link] [comments]

2024.04.11 21:45 CatSpilledSpicedTea AITA for kicking my wife out after she punched my mom in the face? **Including wife’s response to finding the post**

My situation went from bad to worse in a matter of a week and I don't know where else to turn. I need to know if I was wrong. Possibly a validation thing because life is fucking dumb right now. My wife and I have been together for 8 years and she just gave birth to our first (and last) baby 2 months ago. Up until my wife got pregnant, my mom loved her. I'm not sure wtf is wrong with my mom or why the switch happened but after my wife got pregnant, my mom started being very clingy to me and started avoiding my wife at all costs. Told everyone she wasn't excited about the pregnancy, etc. I threatened to go no contact with her when my wife was about 7 months along and after that she snapped out of it for the most part and stopped being so ignorant. The comments 100% stopped, at least. Though she still was clinging to me.
Now, a week ago my mom, my sister, my sister's husband and my sister's daughter (12) came over for dinner. I prepared the meal. Before my wife could eat anything, our daughter got fussy so my wife excused herself to go feed the baby and get her down to sleep. I thought I prepared enough but apparently not because my niece was still "starving" (she's 5'5" and 190lbs, I haven't seen her in a year and she was not that size then so I didn't exactly portion in an extra 3 helpings for a child- so it's on me). I apologized and told her that I hadn't made any more and offered her crackers, as I was putting my wife's portion in the fridge. After that, I just went outside with my sister's husband to smoke a cigarette and shoot the breeze. Didn't think anything of it. But then I hear yelling from inside. When I walk in, my wife and my mom were screaming at each other. Apparently my mom (who saw me put my wife's food away) gave my niece my wife's portion of food. As I was walking inside, I heard my mom say "looks like you can afford to skip a meal" and slapped my wife's stomach. Right as soon as I get ready to step in (literally fast walking toward them yelling "enough"), my wife winds back and punches my mother square in the face and drops her. The whole house went silent outside of my mom crying and holding her face. I tell everyone to "get the fuck out". Immediately everyone leaves and my wife just turns toward the counter and leans with her hands on the counter and face down, eyes closed. I look at my wife and say "you too, leave, now." She says "really?" She's crying at this point. I say a clipped "yup". She packs up her and the baby and leaves.
I text her that night and say I just need space. I need to decompress and come to terms with what just happened. She doesn't respond. The next 5 days I'm texting and calling and I get nothing. She shows up here today (so 8 days later) and hands me divorce paperwork and my baby and says "here, you have a bit to hang out with her while I pack. Where I'm breastfeeding we can work out a visitation schedule that is either at your place or my mother's until she will take a bottle." I told her that's not what I want. I don't want to separate. I just needed time to process her punching my mother in the face. She said "you needing time to process gave me time to process the fact that I refuse to be in this situation any longer. I defended myself. I initially felt bad and remorseful but you making me leave when I needed you made me see more clear. I'm done. I'm sorry for what I did but there's no fixing this." She refused to speak to me at all the rest of the time that she was here. My house feels so empty and I don't know what to do. AITA for making her leave after she punched my mom? I just needed some fucking space.
ETA: for the record, I am "team wife". My mom deserved it, wholeheartedly, and I've blocked her completely from my life. I literally just needed time to process what happened. My wife is a lot of things, violent is not one of them. So this came completely out of left field and would not have happened without her being provoked. After it all happened, my mom sent me a text saying "See! I told you she was crazy! That fat bitch doesn't belong in **our** life." I'm willing to bet she purposely tried setting my wife off. So no, I'm on my wife's side 100%. I truly just needed to process what happened and my wife took it as me giving up on her, not defending her and throwing her and our baby out (which did essentially happen because I knew she had to take the baby with her when I kicked her out).
eta: the reason "why": my dad was stupid abusive. I was beat. My sister's and brother were beat. My mom was put in the hospital multiple times. It took years for police to enforce restraining orders and he finally died in 2013. Violence scares the fuck out of me. I clam up and get anxious around violence of any kind now. My wife knows this and she too grew up with a violent dad (step dad) and she gets just as anxious and panicky around violence. Her punching my mom in the face triggered an anxious response and I needed her gone in that moment. I needed it far away from me. I don't know why I didn't just leave. I could have. But in that moment I just let my emotions and fear run the whole fucking circus and told everyone to get out, her included. My mom did slap her first.. I guess for some reason I was seeing my wife's punch as being worse than the slap. It wasn't a hard slap but my wife did kind of wince, looking back on it now. She was fine following but my mom was bleeding. Split her eyebrow open in good shape. Idk.
thanks for the responses. I'm the AH. I'm going to try to go kiss ass now.
Wife’s Response: 60 days later
My response to my husband’s post “AITA for kicking my wife out after she punched my mom in the face?”
I’m still grieving at the loss of my marriage, but my friend had notified me about my husband’s post that had too may specific details that were hard to ignore. To clarify, this is my first time on Reddit. I read my soon-to-be ex-husband’s post and wanted to give my side of the story and include details that he didn’t provide in his post. For those who hadn’t read it, long story short, my husband kicked me out of the house after his mother had physically slapped my stomach in front of him and I punched her in self-defense. I loved my husband dearly but his lack of action regarding his mother’s behavior was extremely disgusting to say the least, I tolerated his mom’s behavior long enough until I couldn’t take it anymore as he had overlooked his mom’s behavior over and over again that finally I had enough. I was still recovering after giving birth to his child when his mom slapped my stomach, and my husband exaggerated when he said it wasn’t a hard slap. The slap itself was hard enough to be heard by everyone in the room. I had lost it at this point when his mother slapped my stomach with a turd eating smirk that wasn’t visible from my husband’s point of view, at least that’s what my husband claimed. I had a mental breakdown when my husband told me to leave after kicking everyone out of the house, you should have seen his face when he told me to get out with a straight face and without hesitation. Our baby was crying at this point before I left, and I couldn’t do anything but cry that night after I went to stay with my mother. His mother sent me a text mockingly saying, "I am going to file charges against you for assault, you fat little whore!" Now stay the fuck out of our lives!" She ended the text with a smiley face at the end. I was livid and decided I did not want to be associated with this family anymore and served my husband divorce papers, and as you can guess he didn’t take it well and tried to get me to reconsider. I told him that he overlooked his mother’s behavior one too many times, and I was done with him and his inability to establish boundaries with his mother. I recommended setting boundaries, but he didn’t think it was necessary even after I told him throughout the pregnancy about the nasty names his mother called me when he wasn’t around, and he always brushed it off, even though he did tell his mom to stop she would continue this behavior after a short pause for a while. Before I left after handing him divorce papers he begged me for another chance and told me he cut contact with his mother permanently. I told him that he is sorry now that I handed him divorce papers and that he was too late to act now that I decided I wanted out of the marriage. I told him I loved him so much that he should look at it as a sign that if I didn’t than I would have divorced him long ago because he didn’t stand up for me multiple times. and I let his mother’s snarky comments and behavior slide at my mental expense. I told him he needed help with the trauma because I understand that he is dealing with trauma since he already mentioned my abusive stepdad, but he didn’t even realize that his mother hadn’t gotten him help for his trauma that he is still being affected in his adulthood. What I can’t understand is why he didn’t leave if he needed some space instead of being such a heartless bastard and kicking our child out with me. I’ve been ignoring his texts and calls ever since, and I’m waiting for a divorce hearing. Something that I wanted to point out is that his mother had attributed to his niece’s weight gain, since she lives with my husband’s sister to save money. I, once again, told my husband about his niece’s weight gain that it’s concerning that she weighs 190lb at such a young age, and she was indeed not that weight before. On the day of the incident I was making the niece’s second portion of food and then my husband’s mother came towards me and snatched the plate out of my hands and said "I’ll do it myself, let me take care of it!" and when I tried to take the plate back his mother said "I know what to fucking do, you don’t know how to properly feed someone as healthy as my grandchild!" I was shocked that she thinks that her grandchild’s weight was normal for her age. I couldn’t take this harassment or abuse any longer and my breaking point was reached when he kicked me and our child out of the house, now I need to do what’s right for our child because she doesn’t need to be in a toxic household where she has to witness the drama going on. My soon-to-be ex-husband wants us to do marriage counseling, to which I have refused to do so because I am done with him. I’m starting to feel slightly guilty with his begging and gaslighting. I just want to be done with him. I’ve blocked him as recommended by my lawyer but he keeps reaching out through his other family members and siblings. What should I do to make him go away until the divorce hearing?
submitted by CatSpilledSpicedTea to SpilledSpicedTea [link] [comments]

2024.04.10 20:58 19Jerseydevil95 My Brother's Good Fortune

I didn't believe it when my older brother claimed he had won the lottery—450,000 dollars after taxes. We grew up in a fairly low-class family. There were five of us; my parents, a couple that should have never gotten married to begin with, my older brother Franky (32M), then there was my sister Cam (27FM), and then me, the baby of the family (26M). Our parents did their best to keep us with a roof over our heads and food in our bellies. Financially and emotionally our childhood was a struggle for sure, but we always managed to just scrape by. The point being, to us, that was a lot of money. Life changing. And my brother was no Scrooge either. He was already making plenty of money as the chief of police in our small New Jersey town, so he made it a point to spoil my sister and I with his winnings.
I remember when he handed me the keys to my new truck just 3 months ago. I had insisted that it was too much, that I couldn’t possibly take it. He only laughed and shoved the keys into my hand. “Just make sure you get rid of that hunk of junk you’re driving now,” He told me. “Thing’s not safe.” Hell, not only did he shell out for a new car for our sister, but he even paid for her wedding to our brother-in-law, Kyle (28M). A few years back, we had cut ties with our parents who were now happily divorced, or so they said. Their animosity towards each other felt poisonus after years of a miserable marriage. So, we had made it a point to just stick together, just the three of us with the addition of our brother-in-law of course and my long-time girlfriend, Amelia (26FM).
But the one thing my brother bought himself with his lotto winnings, was a small cabin deep in the Pine Barrens. As somewhat of a novice camper myself, I couldn’t wait to get the call to pack up and spend the weekend. And last month, the call finally came. Everyone took off that Friday, and we met Cam and Kyle at a nearby convenience store so they could follow us up to the cabin where we would be spending the next long weekend. Franky had warned us that we couldn’t exactly find the cabin via GPS, and since I was better with directions, it just seemed easier. His instructions took us down this long dirt road for about a good 20 minutes. The trees crowded the road as if they were being used as a barrier to keep people out of the woods. “This has to be the scariest place at night,” Amelia whispered.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Probably best if we don’t wander too far from the cabin,” And almost as if it were queued up, the road opened to a large clearing that revealed the cabin. Looking at its size, however, it seemed like more of a lodge. Judging from the deck above the porch, it was safe to say that it was two stories. It had a large wrap around porch, and big, beautiful windows. Nearby, there was a large deck that led out to what appeared to be a private lake. We pulled up next to Franky’s Jeep and admired the cabin.
“Man, he must’ve really splurged on this,” Kyle commented. I rolled my eyes, recalling a distasteful indication from Kyle a few weeks ago that our brother should have bought him and Cam a house with his money.
“It’s amazing,” Cam commented as she grabbed her bags from the backseat. Suddenly, the door flung open, and Franky bounded down the steps.
“You made it!” He exclaimed. He came down and gave me and my sister a hug, gave Amelia and Kyle the courteous greeting a brother-in-law would usually make, and stood with a huge grin on his face. “You find it, ok?” he asked.
“It was hard to get lost with all the trees,” I replied. “These woods are dense as hell,” He merely laughed.
“Yeah, it’s pretty nice, isn’t it?” He asked. "Finally some safety and privacy," He chuckled as if he didn't get that at his main house that was nestled in town. He almost seemed like he couldn't believe his luck. “Well come on in, I’ll give you the tour.” He waved us inside and we all bound up the steps and into the large living room of the lodge. It had a nice stone fireplace, a big-screen TV, two couches that might as well have been beds, and a chair that looked like it could swallow you whole. Hanging on the walls of the cabin were family photos as well as some pop-culture posters, which knowing my brother was to be expected. There were also two bookshelves filled with old paperbacks and graphic novels and an extra-large DVD case filled top to bottom with all the hits. Franky insisted on physical media just in case he wanted to watch something that wasn’t on streaming, and admittedly, its satisfied a craving or two. “Let me show you to your rooms,” Franky waved us on past an immaculate kitchen and down a large hallway. At the end of the hallway was a staircase but just before it was two doors. One on the left and one on the right. He opened the door on the left to reveal a bathroom, explaining that the cabin of course had electricity and plumbing. But he glossed over the door to the right and just went upstairs.
“What’s in here?” I asked as I reached for the door to the right. I tried to turn it, but it didn’t budge.
“Basement,” Franky replied bluntly. "Best to just stay out of there,"
“You got something locked down there?” Cam asked jokingly.
“I’ve been using it as an office,” Franky explained. “It’s got sensitive files in there, so it puts my mind at ease to have it locked at all times,” He waved us upstairs to show us where we would be spending the weekend. There was a door right at the top of the steps to the right, to the left there was a large open area with a pool table nestled in the center which immediately called out to me. He opened one of the doors to reveal another bathroom and then two identical doors that were next to each other. “These are the guest rooms,” Franky told us. I took the room closest to the bathroom and admired the view. It was a large bedroom that was already equipped with dressers, a king-sized bed, two nightstands, and a small chair that sat next to a sliding glass door. I tossed mine and Amelia’s bags on the bed and walked out the sliding glass door onto a deck. This one apparently overlooked the backyard which was graciously equipped with a small net for volleyball and badminton as well as a large gravel area containing a fire pit, picnic table and a few chairs. It also gave me a good idea at just how isolated we were here. The clearing of the property had to be maybe two or three acres, after that it was more dense woods North and West of the lodge. I took a look East and got a nice view of the sun glistening off of the lake. I snuck across the deck and got a view of my sister’s room which was identical to mine. I shrugged and came back inside the room where Amelia was putting all our stuff in the wardrobe.
“Want some help?” I asked.
“Do I want you to just shove everything in one drawer?” She laughed. “No, I got it,” I shrugged and re-joined my brother in the large open space. He was clearly stuck in conversation with Kyle, some kind of get rich quick scheme he wanted him to finance.
“What’s that room?” I asked, pointing to the room by the top of the stairs.
“My room,” Franky replied. He seized his moment to exit the conversation and took us over. The room looked exactly like ours. I thought he would have gotten more extravagant furniture for his own room, but then again my brother was a simple man. The only notable difference was that the walls weren't bare, but littered with more family photos as well as newspaper articles highlighting his career. He had a knack for finding evidence that gave slam dunk convictions, one of the traits that led him to becoming the youngest chief of police in our small town’s history at the age of only 32. But the one thing that caught my attention, was a mirror that hung over his dresser directly across from his bed. On it was this old, white sticker that was about the size of a bookmark. It had an old-school yellow smiley face on it and read ‘Smile, You Have Your Whole Life Ahead Of You!’ I chuckled and pointed out the sticker. “Came with the house,” Franky explained. He ushered me out of his room and closed the door behind him. “I’ll let everyone get settled and then come on down for lunch. I’ll be outside, feel free to grab your swimsuits and hit the lake.” I gave him a firm thumbs up as he departed down the steps. I peaked into the room to see Amelia had finished unpacking, so I snuck over to the pool table for some free shooting. Once I sunk all nine balls, Amelia and I joined my brother downstairs, Kyle and Cam followed shortly after.
We met Franky outside where he was grilling up some burgers and hot dogs. He looked like he had just come out of the lake.
“The waters not too cold, is it?” Cam asked.
“Why don’t you find out!?” I asked. I raced past her and dove into the clear blue lake. It was surprisingly warm, but figured it was just heated up by the sun. I re-emerged and climbed back onto the deck. “It’s fine,” I informed her, hungrily taking a plate from my brother. We soaked up the sun and enjoyed the lake, stopping to play a few rounds of badminton before the sun had started to set. We changed into something drier and went out to enjoy a nice steak dinner by the fire pit. Before we began to eat, Cam raised a glass.
“Franky, thanks for having us up here,” She said. “Congrats on your good fortune, it couldn’t have happened to someone more deserving,” I raise my glass half hazard, wanting to dig into the steak as quickly as possible. Amelia and Kyle did the same as we toasted my brother who merely laughed us off.
“Its our good fortune,” He clarified. “We deserve it,” We finally began to dig in and eat. Thankfully, the lodge had these large outdoor lights that managed to illuminate everything up to the border of the woods, so having dinner outside wasn’t as creepy as it might have sounded. We sat around the picnic table and laughed for hours, but I could tell Amelia was still a bit creeped out by the woods.
“Doesn’t it get lonely up here?” She asked Franky. He merely shakes his head.
“I never feel alone up here,” He says in a creepy voice. The reaction from Amelia gets a laugh out of Cam and I. We stayed up for a few more hours and by 1 AM; Cam, Kyle, and Amelia had all gone up to bed. I sat around and talked with Franky for a bit longer, enjoying the fire pit and the dark allure of the woods. He got up to put the fire out, but I wasn’t exactly ready to go to bed.
“Say, did you bring your Xbox up here?” I asked. “We could play something for a bit,” Franky sighed and put out the fire in the pit.
“Maybe tomorrow,” He replied. “I gotta finish some work down in the office,” He gets up and pats me on the shoulder. “Good night,”
“Night,” I call back to him as he walked into the lodge. I take this time alone to partake in the small stache of pot I had locked in the car. Though not illegal, I know my brother hates the smell and I wanted to respect his property. I lit up a small joint and took a stroll around the property until I felt appropriately baked at which point, I buried the joint, popped a stick of gum in my mouth, sprayed on some cheap body spray, and went back inside. My initial intention was to head to bed, but the munchies got the better of me. As I rummaged through my brother’s refrigerator, hoping that there was some leftover burgers stashed somewhere, a sound caught my attention. I followed what appeared to be crying down the hall and towards the door to my brother’s office, which was now slightly ajar. I called out to him, “Franky?” but I got no response.
Perhaps it was my impaired judgment, maybe it was my brotherly instinct to make sure Franky was ok, or maybe it was just plain old curiosity that led me to open the door to the basement steps that first night. The stairway had a small lightbulb hanging above it. “Franky?” I called out. But instead of my brother’s voice, I just heard more crying. I slowly descended the steps and realized that the staircase opened up to a large space, similar to the one upstairs. There was a desk and a lot of cardboard boxes, but there was also this large oak door that was slightly ajar. I walked past the desk and boxes and began to slowly open the door. The room behind the oak door was practically bare, the only exception was an old ratty mattress that sat on a metal bedframe. The light from the room was poor at first, but it seemed like someone was huddled on the bed. As I began to walk further in, a woman’s shape became clearer. She was young, probably about 19 if I had to guess, with long black hair. She was huddled in the fetal position wearing nothing but a small torn shirt and pair of underwear. Her ankles were tightly taped together and her wrists were similarly taped behind her back. I took a step closer, making a small sound that alerted her. She shot up, immediately. I remember the look of fear in her bright blue eyes which were red and slightly puffy. Tape had been tightly wrapped around her mouth so tightly that I could see where it had begun to imprint into her skin. The look of fear changed when she had saw me and then... she began to plead with me, but I couldn’t understand her. I looked long and hard at her, noticing how dirty she looked. She also looked scraped and bruised as if she was running through the brush outside. I took a step closer, almost hypnotized by her as she continued to try and say something to me. I began to slowly question reality, wondering if this was real or if I had just gotten a bad batch of pot, until my brother's voice snapped me back to reality.
“Jacob!” I felt his hand grab my shoulder and yank me back through the oak door. Franky then quickly closed and locked it as I stumbled backwards in the open space. “What did I tell you about coming down here?” He asked.
“I-I” I stammered, he had caught me completely off guard. I had never seen my brother with such anger in his eyes. “I heard something and just wanted to see if you were alright,” I finally spit out. “Who the hell—” My brother put up his hand to stop me. He took a deep breath and walked over to the nearby desk. He took a seat and exhaled.
“She’s…a woman I’m seeing,” He told me. I gave him a look of confusion.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.
“Look, truthfully? I’ve been seeing her for a few months. Her name is Claire and she has a…” He paused and looked uncomfortable with what he was about to say. “She has a… lets say… damsel in distress type of fetish,” This was probably the first time I had regretted smoking so much.
“So, this is—”
“Roleplay,” Frank interrupted with a awkward chuckle. And it was at this time I finally noticed that he had been holding a revolver. But it wasn’t his service weapon, it was something a lot newer. “Embarrassing, I know. Definitely not something I wanted my little brother to see.” I let out a sigh of relief. Of course, Franky had a reasonable explanation. I mean, why would he lie? I thought. He placed the revolver on the desk and led me back upstairs. “I was planning for everyone to meet her tomorrow, but she’s a bit shy so we should keep this between us for now,” He insisted. I don’t know why, but the way Franky spit out the sentence, it came off weird to me.
“Of course,” I told him. “I look forward to it,” He pat me on the back as I re-entered the dark hallway. I could feel his eyes on me as I stumbled up the steps. As soon as I hit the last one, I heard the basement door creak shut. I climbed into bed with Amelia and passed out.
I woke up surprisingly early the next morning, when I checked the time on my phone, it was only 7am. I had looked next to me and Amelia was still fast asleep. So I slipped downstairs, hoping to sneak a meal from the fridge before breakfast, but as I got closer to the bottom I began to smell coffee and bacon. I walked into the kitchen to see my brother already cooking breakfast.
“Good morning,” He greeted me. The kitchen table was lined up with waffles, eggs, bacon, sausage, coffee, hell, the man even made cinnamon rolls. He looked tired, like he hadn't slept long. I figured he must have waken up early to prepare this magnificent feast. “Help yourself,” he told me. I grabbed a plate and began to dig in.
“Will your princess be joining us?” I asked, trying my best to make light of the uncomfortable situation I put my brother in.
“There was an emergency,” Franky blurted out. “With work, unfortunately she couldn’t stay.” He grabs a plate of his own and joins me. “But she wanted to profusely apologize for last night. She was--” I waved him off.
“That was my bad,” I told him. “Won’t happen again,” My brother mumbled a response and dug into his breakfast. And the way he just easily dismissed it, didn’t sit right with me. In fact, Franky’s demeanor didn’t change at all throughout the day. I had figured there’d be at least some aura of embarrassment, but nothing. And after I got about 4 cinnamon rolls in, I realized something... Franky's car was the only other one here aside from mine and Cam's. So how did Claire end up leaving? We spent the day outside again, more lakeside fun and BBQ food. But I just couldn’t shake this off feeling I had ever since my encounter with Franky at breakfast. I began to get more paranoid once I saw the shed. I went in there to grab some fire starters when I noticed his shovel. It wouldn’t seem so out of place, but it looks like it had just been used.
So, when Franky decided to turn in early that night, I decided I had to get a better, sober look in that basement. If for no other reason than to simply put myself at ease. I waited for everyone to fall asleep before sneaking down the steps of the lodge. I used the chirping of the crickets as a safety blanket of sorts, to assure me I wasn’t alone. I made it to the basement door and tried it, hoping it would be unlocked, but no luck. I went to the front door and grabbed Franky’s keys that hung on a hook by the door. I tried every key on that hook with no luck until finally, I heard a click. I slipped into the basement, carrying the keys with me, and slowly descended the stairs.
I took a look at Franky’s desk and noticed that there was nothing on it but an old box. I took a quick look inside to find various items inside induvial zip-lock bags. I pulled out one bag that contained an old metal ring. It was shaped like a skull and looked cheap and gaudy. Written on it in Sharpie was a name. Marcus Jackson. It took me a while, but I remember where I had heard it before. Marcus Jackson was a tattoo artist who set up close to town. One day they found him murdered in the back lot of a local deli. Franky had been the one to find his bloody wallet in Marcus’ girlfriend’s car, though she swore up and down that she was innocent, the evidence was too much to deny and she was sentenced to life. I began looking through the box, all of them contained an item from a case that Franky had solved. The next bag I pulled out contained a lipstick tube of Maria Williams’. She was a bartender, pretty girl who'd often get flirted with by the waves of drunken customers. They found her beaten to death and assaulted in her car. Franky had found her discarded bra in Josh Schultz’s trailer, as if he had taken it for a trophy. Josh was the town’s drunk, and though he swore he didn’t do it, he couldn't account for his whereabouts due to him blacking out.
Every bag contained something from one of those cases. I back away in horror and collide with that oak door. I rip it open and examine the room with fresh eyes. The first thing I noticed was a folding table off to my left. I creep up onto the table to find more ziplock bags, but there was more of them here than in the box on his desk. There had to be about 20 of them. Each one contained the driver's license of a young woman and a pair of underwear. I recognized each one’s town as being very close to our small town. One of the names even looked very familiar, Maria Williams. There was one pair that had been left out of the bag, and it looked strangely familiar. I walked over to the end of the table to find this particular pair of underwater accompanied by the license of one, Claire Thompson. I turned to look at the ratty bed and for the first time saw how old and worn out it was. There was cuffs dangling from the old metal bars of the bed frame. A collar was laid on the bed attached to a chain that I followed to a metal plate mounted on the wall. But one spot on the frame looked altered. It seemed like there was a metal clip welded onto the frame, and surprisingly enough, it had matched the clip that connected the collar on the bed to the chain attached to the wall. I looked up and finally noticed it. I don’t know how I could’ve missed it. In front of the bed was a standing mirror, and plastered on that mirror was a sticker. An old, white sticker that was about the size of a bookmark. The same sticker that had an old-school yellow smiley face on it. The same one that read…. ‘Smile, You Have Your Whole Life Ahead Of You!’
submitted by 19Jerseydevil95 to scarystories [link] [comments]

2024.04.08 07:02 SharkEva AITA for kicking my wife out after she punched my mom in the face? - Wife responds

I am not the OOP. The OOP is u/OkOrganization9552 (Husband) and u/ThrowAwayWifeNBaby (Wife) posting in AITAH
Ongoing as per OOP
1 update - Medium
Thanks to u/Separate_Kick3186 for finding this BORU
Original - 10th February 2024
Update - 7th April 2024
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AITA for kicking my wife out after she punched my mom in the face?
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My situation went from bad to worse in a matter of a week and I don't know where else to turn. I need to know if I was wrong. Possibly a validation thing because life is fucking dumb right now. My wife and I have been together for 8 years and she just gave birth to our first (and last) baby 2 months ago. Up until my wife got pregnant, my mom loved her.
I'm not sure wtf is wrong with my mom or why the switch happened but after my wife got pregnant, my mom started being very clingy to me and started avoiding my wife at all costs. Told everyone she wasn't excited about the pregnancy, etc. I threatened to go no contact with her when my wife was about 7 months along and after that she snapped out of it for the most part and stopped being so ignorant. The comments 100% stopped, at least. Though she still was clinging to me.
Now, a week ago my mom, my sister, my sister's husband and my sister's daughter (12) came over for dinner. I prepared the meal. Before my wife could eat anything, our daughter got fussy so my wife excused herself to go feed the baby and get her down to sleep.
I thought I prepared enough but apparently not because my niece was still "starving" (she's 5'5" and 190lbs, I haven't seen her in a year and she was not that size then so I didn't exactly portion in an extra 3 helpings for a child- so it's on me). I apologized and told her that I hadn't made any more and offered her crackers, as I was putting my wife's portion in the fridge. After that, I just went outside with my sister's husband to smoke a cigarette and shoot the breeze. Didn't think anything of it. But then I hear yelling from inside.
When I walk in, my wife and my mom were screaming at each other. Apparently my mom (who saw me put my wife's food away) gave my niece my wife's portion of food. As I was walking inside, I heard my mom say "looks like you can afford to skip a meal" and slapped my wife's stomach. Right as soon as I get ready to step in (literally fast walking toward them yelling "enough"), my wife winds back and punches my mother square in the face and drops her. The whole house went silent outside of my mom crying and holding her face. I tell everyone to "get the fuck out".
Immediately everyone leaves and my wife just turns toward the counter and leans with her hands on the counter and face down, eyes closed. I look at my wife and say "you too, leave, now." She says "really?" She's crying at this point. I say a clipped "yup". She packs up her and the baby and leaves.
I text her that night and say I just need space. I need to decompress and come to terms with what just happened. She doesn't respond. The next 5 days I'm texting and calling and I get nothing. She shows up here today (so 8 days later) and hands me divorce paperwork and my baby and says "here, you have a bit to hang out with her while I pack. Where I'm breastfeeding we can work out a visitation schedule that is either at your place or my mother's until she will take a bottle."
I told her that's not what I want. I don't want to separate. I just needed time to process her punching my mother in the face. She said "you needing time to process gave me time to process the fact that I refuse to be in this situation any longer. I defended myself.
I initially felt bad and remorseful but you making me leave when I needed you made me see more clear. I'm done. I'm sorry for what I did but there's no fixing this." She refused to speak to me at all the rest of the time that she was here. My house feels so empty and I don't know what to do. AITA for making her leave after she punched my mom? I just needed some fucking space.
ETA: for the record, I am "team wife". My mom deserved it, wholeheartedly, and I've blocked her completely from my life. I literally just needed time to process what happened. My wife is a lot of things, violent is not one of them. So this came completely out of left field and would not have happened without her being provoked.
After it all happened, my mom sent me a text saying "See! I told you she was crazy! That fat bitch doesn't belong in our life." I'm willing to bet she purposely tried setting my wife off. So no, I'm on my wife's side 100%. I truly just needed to process what happened and my wife took it as me giving up on her, not defending her and throwing her and our baby out (which did essentially happen because I knew she had to take the baby with her when I kicked her out).
eta: the reason "why": my dad was stupid abusive. I was beat. My sister's and brother were beat. My mom was put in the hospital multiple times. It took years for police to enforce restraining orders and he finally died in 2013. Violence scares the fuck out of me. I clam up and get anxious around violence of any kind now. My wife knows this and she too grew up with a violent dad (step dad) and she gets just as anxious and panicky around violence.
Her punching my mom in the face triggered an anxious response and I needed her gone in that moment. I needed it far away from me. I don't know why I didn't just leave. I could have. But in that moment I just let my emotions and fear run the whole fucking circus and told everyone to get out, her included. My mom did slap her first.. I guess for some reason I was seeing my wife's punch as being worse than the slap. It wasn't a hard slap but my wife did kind of wince, looking back on it now. She was fine following but my mom was bleeding. Split her eyebrow open in good shape. Idk.
thanks for the responses. I'm the AH. I'm going to try to go kiss ass now.
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Comments
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celticmusebooks
So... to recap: You allowed your mommy to verbally abuse your PREGNANT wife for MONTHS (but still invited her into YOUR WIFE'S home). You stood there while your mother insulted and PUNCHED YOUR WIFE in the abdomen where she's been growing YOUR CHILD for the past nine months. Then when your PROVOKED wife defended herself from your bag of garbage mother you put your wife and child out of their home so you could process. SERIOUSLY, you put your wife and infant child out of THEIR HOME instead of YOU leaving to pull yourself together and stop being a mamma's boy.
You showed your wife who you truly were that night. A "less than". Not a real husband, not a real father, not a real man. How is she ever supposed to "unsee" that?
YTA dude a HUGE AH.
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Trailsya
Your bitch mom is the one who got physical first. YTA
My wife is a lot of things, violent is not one of them. So this came completely out of left field
Yeah, because she was DEFENDING herself from your bitch mom
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[deleted]
And instead of thinking “Holy crap! How have I let it come to this?” he booted his wife with infant out onto the street. I can’t see that there’s any coming back from this.
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NickelPickle2018
Processing what happened is one thing. But not supporting your wife and kicking her out is another. Your mom is out of line, if you would have checked her a long time ago it wouldn’t have gotten to this point. Your mom treated your wife poorly because YOU ALLOWED IT. Even your mom’s text that she sent you shows that she thinks that it’s ok to disrespect your wife. I guarantee your wife had been putting up with your mom’s crap for a long time. She’s had enough, you’re not going to win her back.
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Rude-Flamingo5420
This 100%. I understand some people need space, but kicking your wife out is a whole other spectrum of assholeness. HE could have gone for a walk and processed shit, kicking his wife out is just... he deserves this divorce unfortunately. He's definitely the AH
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Cayke_Cooky
He didn't even rethink when he saw she was leaving with the Baby. He essentially threw out his own child as well.
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a-_rose
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OOP comments
My mom did hurt her. She slapped her in the stomach and my wife winced back in pain before punching her in the face. As a few other people have pointed out.. I guess new moms have muscles separated in their abdomen so given the force that my mom slapped her in the stomach (like a little bit below the rib cage, full back handed slap, which could be heard from the door), I guess it's comparable to hitting my wife in her internal organs? Because her stomach muscles aren't healed? I just learned that.
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Idk. I can't justify it. I just let my own fear run the situation. Violence scares the shit out of me. I watched my mom get beat for years. My siblings and I were beat too but we weren't hospitalized. My wife punching my mom just immediately made the room spin and I wasn't thinking about the consequences of my actions from that point forward.
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I'm fully aware that my niece is fat. I'm assuming my mom made her that way (she lives with her). She did it with all her kids growing up. We were all fat fucks because she overfed us (ie: fat kids are happy kids). None of the night made sense.
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Starting to see that. My wife sent me a text about 10 minutes ago, saying "look up emotional incest", with no context. Definitely describes what my mom's doing. I did completely block her but it won't help my case.
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**Judgement - YTA*\*
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Update - 2 months later from the wife
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I’m still grieving at the loss of my marriage, but my friend had notified me about my husband’s post that had too may specific details that were hard to ignore. To clarify, this is my first time on Reddit. I read my soon-to-be ex-husband’s post and wanted to give my side of the story and include details that he didn’t provide in his post.
For those who hadn’t read it, long story short, my husband kicked me out of the house after his mother had physically slapped my stomach in front of him and I punched her in self-defense. I loved my husband dearly but his lack of action regarding his mother’s behavior was extremely disgusting to say the least, I tolerated his mom’s behavior long enough until I couldn’t take it anymore as he had overlooked his mom’s behavior over and over again that finally I had enough.
I was still recovering after giving birth to his child when his mom slapped my stomach, and my husband exaggerated when he said it wasn’t a hard slap. The slap itself was hard enough to be heard by everyone in the room. I had lost it at this point when his mother slapped my stomach with a turd eating smirk that wasn’t visible from my husband’s point of view, at least that’s what my husband claimed.
I had a mental breakdown when my husband told me to leave after kicking everyone out of the house, you should have seen his face when he told me to get out with a straight face and without hesitation. Our baby was crying at this point before I left, and I couldn’t do anything but cry that night after I went to stay with my mother.
His mother sent me a text mockingly saying, "I am going to file charges against you for assault, you fat little whore!" Now stay the fuck out of our lives!" She ended the text with a smiley face at the end. I was livid and decided I did not want to be associated with this family anymore and served my husband divorce papers, and as you can guess he didn’t take it well and tried to get me to reconsider. I told him that he overlooked his mother’s behavior one too many times, and I was done with him and his inability to establish boundaries with his mother.
I recommended setting boundaries, but he didn’t think it was necessary even after I told him throughout the pregnancy about the nasty names his mother called me when he wasn’t around, and he always brushed it off, even though he did tell his mom to stop she would continue this behavior after a short pause for a while. Before I left after handing him divorce papers he begged me for another chance and told me he cut contact with his mother permanently.
I told him that he is sorry now that I handed him divorce papers and that he was too late to act now that I decided I wanted out of the marriage. I told him I loved him so much that he should look at it as a sign that if I didn’t than I would have divorced him long ago because he didn’t stand up for me multiple times. and I let his mother’s snarky comments and behavior slide at my mental expense.
I told him he needed help with the trauma because I understand that he is dealing with trauma since he already mentioned my abusive stepdad, but he didn’t even realize that his mother hadn’t gotten him help for his trauma that he is still being affected in his adulthood. What I can’t understand is why he didn’t leave if he needed some space instead of being such a heartless bastard and kicking our child out with me.
I’ve been ignoring his texts and calls ever since, and I’m waiting for a divorce hearing. Something that I wanted to point out is that his mother had attributed to his niece’s weight gain, since she lives with my husband’s sister to save money. I, once again, told my husband about his niece’s weight gain that it’s concerning that she weighs 190lb at such a young age, and she was indeed not that weight before.
On the day of the incident I was making the niece’s second portion of food and then my husband’s mother came towards me and snatched the plate out of my hands and said "I’ll do it myself, let me take care of it!" and when I tried to take the plate back his mother said "I know what to fucking do, you don’t know how to properly feed someone as healthy as my grandchild!"
I was shocked that she thinks that her grandchild’s weight was normal for her age. I couldn’t take this harassment or abuse any longer and my breaking point was reached when he kicked me and our child out of the house, now I need to do what’s right for our child because she doesn’t need to be in a toxic household where she has to witness the drama going on.
My soon-to-be ex-husband wants us to do marriage counseling, to which I have refused to do so because I am done with him. I’m starting to feel slightly guilty with his begging and gaslighting. I just want to be done with him. I’ve blocked him as recommended by my lawyer but he keeps reaching out through his other family members and siblings. What should I do to make him go away until the divorce hearing?
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Comments
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GarfieGirl
I read your husband's original post, he was very clearly the AH. Your post only confirms this.
As far as your question about getting him to leave you alone until the hearing, ask your divorce attorney if they can send him/his family members a cease and desist letter (or send it to his divorce attorney).
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Designer-Carpenter88
I remember telling your ex husband that he was the asshole. His #1 job as a husband is stick up for his wife. If my mother had slapped my wife, that would be the last time she saw either of us or our children.
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I am not the OOP. Please do not harass the OOP.
Please remember the No Brigading Rule and to be civil in the comments
submitted by SharkEva to BORUpdates [link] [comments]

2024.04.01 18:28 deftonesmp3 My brain is rotting

Is there a reason why I feel like I'm getting dumber and dumber?
I'm now in 10th grade. From 1st to 8th grade, I never left the top 5. I was smart, responsible, smiley, and I always got a lot of praise for my outputs and intelligence.
9th grade: I was doing fine at first until I started being friends with these people and I don't know why but they ruined me. Everything went crashing down and everything changed. My academic performance got bad, I changed the way I talk, act, and dress, I started cutting classes, I got into situations that made me and my mom fight a lot and until now, I'm still suffering from it (I was so traumatized and now, I get anxious whenever her tone changes because I feel like she's mad at me again. Any argument with my mom, no matter how mild, makes me severely depressed and suicidal.)
9th grade, summer break: I started setting goals, I wanted to start fresh, I wanted to be a brand new person. I wanted to study harder to take back what I lost from 9th grade.
10th grade: things seemed to be okay at first. I was studying REALLY REALLY hard (I can't stress this enough), I was participating in class and always got high scores on quizzes and exams, my academic performance was great for like 2 months and then BOOM. Mental illness. Until now, I still haven't gotten my will to live back.
IDK IF THIS CONNECTS TO THE TITLE BUT I JUST FEEL LIKE IM VERY INTELLIGENT BUT MY MENTAL HEALTH HAS BEEN HOLDING ME BACK
A piece of me is broken or maybe it's missing. Something died in me. Idk if this sad emo shitpost is understandable but my life is 90% similar to Tracy Freeland in the movie "Thirteen" (just 90% because I don't smoke and do drugs). When I watched that movie, I was like "shit, I'm exactly like her" .
submitted by deftonesmp3 to mentalillness [link] [comments]

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