Just replaced my table. I like the warmer vibe of the honey oak for my dining room and am planning on keeping the chairs to match the floor and ceiling fan. However, I'd like to replace the curtains. I'd also like to change the color of the seats of the chairs. I drew a small diagram of how the the dining room is a corner between the kitchen and the living room. Kitchen has black cabinets, white appliances, fake light wood counters, with red, silver, and black accents (from sink and kitchen appliances stored above the cabinets). Living room has dark blue and light gold decor to go with its neutrals. What curtains (and possibly other small budget tweaks) can I choose to bridge the kitchen and living room, while maintaining an inviting dining room space?

"A family is left in mourning as twenty-one-year-old Natalie Rose was found dead over the weekend," the TV blared into the room, "seemingly attacked by some sort of wild animal as she sat in her tent on what was meant to be a relaxing camping trip alone. Natalie's parents have requested privacy at this time, but they appreciate the condolences they have received. In other news-" Roman grabbed the remote from me and shut off the TV.
"Hey, I was watching that!" I said as I flipped him off from across the room. "Bullshit, you're on your phone," he chuckled, fixing his hair up in the mirror. "Okay, well, I was listening. I like to have background noise, dickhead," I replied, watching him in the reflection, his focus clearly not on this important conversation.
"Where are you going all dressed up?" I interrogated him. "Morgan and I are having our engagement party, but we've got to be there early to sort out seating."
"You're having your engagement party and you didn't invite your own brother?" I questioned him, offended at the audacity this man had. "I did invite you, dipshit. You told me you had a date with Katie tonight."
The realisation hit me like a punch to the gut. I'd completely forgotten about my movie date with Katie. With a surge of panic, I leaped from my seat, heart pounding, and scrambled to get dressed. Every second felt like an eternity as I cursed my forgetfulness. Then, I heard Roman's car start outside. Without a second thought, I sprinted out the door and down the driveway. Knocking on his window, I pleaded for a ride.
The soft hum of the road and the whirring of the engine filled the car as we silently moved through the night. Staring out the window at the blur of trees, I thought about how I would apologise to Katie. Roman reached for the radio, and a Trace Adkins song began playing. Seeing this as the perfect time to start a conversation, I spoke up, "So, are Katie and I coming to the wedding?" I asked, grinning. Roman let out a deep sigh as he turned off the music. "If Katie doesn't plan a date night on the same day, then yes," he replied.
Silence filled the car as we drove along the empty road. The vast woods surrounding us created an eerie atmosphere, intensified by the winter darkness cloaking the night sky above. Yet, for Roman and me, who had grown up in this land, these woods evoked nostalgic memories of our childhood adventures. While for others, it might be an unsettling glimpse into the barrier separating civilization from the unknown, for us, it was a comforting window back into our past.
When Roman bought the land we had grown up on after our parents passed, I was probably more excited than I should've been, considering I had just lost my mum and dad in a tragic carbon monoxide leak. But my relief at not having to leave this place was immense.
We eventually reached an area where the city lights were visible in the distance. I noticed Roman yawn as he adjusted his grip on the wheel. "You're gonna have to tell me where to go, I can't remember where Katie lives," he stated as he changed gears and prepared to enter the busy traffic, a stark contrast to the remote rural road we were about to vacate.
“Just take a left up h-" I began, but was interrupted as a white blur ran in front of the car, causing Roman to slam on the brakes and swerve. I grabbed onto the side of the door as we spun out of control, the screeching of the tires filling my ears, jolting me out of the relaxed state I had been in due to the many miles of quiet driving.
We eventually came to a stop, now facing the opposite direction, gazing down the endless stretch of desolate road we had just traversed. Roman calmly checked all his mirrors for whatever he nearly hit but failed to see anything through the dust he had stirred up in the spinout.
“You all good?” he asked, a relieved smile creeping up his face, a deep breath escaping his lungs.
“Yeah, what was that?” I asked as Roman started reversing, then turned the car back towards the busy city street about a kilometre away and began driving. I looked over to him, expecting an answer to my question, but didn't receive one. His brow was furrowed in an uncertain expression, clearly lost in thought, like he was trying to remember if he locked the front door.
“Roman?” I said, causing him to blink a couple of times.
“I don't know what it was," Roman answered, not breaking his intense stare at the asphalt in front of us as we drove along, approaching the main road. “Probably just a sheep, there's a few acres of farmland behind these trees,” he continued.
As we approached the intersection, Roman flicked his left indicator on before turning onto the main road. “Okay, now take the next right,” I said, feeling the weird atmosphere in the vehicle slowly dissipating. After a few more turns, Roman said that he knew the way from here and turned the radio back on, which cut the remaining tension that I could tell we were both feeling.
The chilly winter night was starting to bite at my skin, and I cursed myself for forgetting a jacket in my hurry. I swivelled my head around to see the backseat. “What are you looking for?” Roman asked, finally looking in my direction as he turned the music down slightly.
“Uh, do you have a jacket I can borrow? I didn't realise it was gonna be this cold,” I sheepishly admitted.
“Hold the wheel,” Roman told me as he reached around behind him, shifting around his hiking gear that he hadn't taken out since his camping trip with Morgan last month.
Eventually, he pulled out his gym hoodie and threw it on my lap. “This is all I got,” he grunted as he readjusted himself in his seat and took hold of the steering wheel again. When we pulled into Katie's driveway, I pulled the hoodie over my head and hopped out of the car into the brisk night air, my breath visible in the cold. “I'll pick you up around 11:30.” Roman shouted out the window as I pulled the hoodie the rest of the way down and waved to Roman as he drove away, beeping his horn as he left me in the chilling winter breeze.
I knocked on the door, checking the time to see that it was 7:37, only a few minutes late. As I waited in the dark, a surprisingly chipper Katie opened the door, hugging me and dragging me inside. “You didn't miss much,” she whispered as we stumbled through the house that had all of its lights off. “Why do you smell like your brother?” she asked, shooting me a dirty look before grabbing a handful of the hoodie and sniffing it. All I could do was shrug and grin, “I forgot how cold it gets in the winter time, he let me borrow it.” She rolled her eyes, and we sat down next to a bunch of her friends and her parents, who all whispered their hellos in the soft glow of the TV.
Around 11:18 pm when the movie was long since finished, Katie's parents said goodnight and headed off to bed, and a few of Katie's friends who had been visiting said goodbye and drove home. I got up to get some water from the kitchen, and as I walked back, I stood in the doorway that separated the kitchen from the living room, which was dark, only lit by the TV. This allowed me to see Katie frozen, staring towards the window, which was out of my direct line of sight.
Confused, I peeked my head out of the doorway and looked toward the window. I froze and dropped my glass; luckily, it landed on the carpet and didn't make much noise, and the tall, pale creature standing an inch from the window didn't notice. The creature was foul, a gaunt, lanky humanoid. Well, at least the head was humanoid; the body and limbs were almost ape-like, with long, disproportionate arms and less exaggerated legs. The creature's whole body was covered in grey skin stretched tightly over its abnormally long bones. It had no hair anywhere. Its mouth was strangely wide, stretching around to where its ears would be if it had them, and its eyes were just sunken, inky black pits in its head. But I could tell it was staring daggers at Katie, who had tears rolling down her face. She slowly turned her head to look at me, shaking and breathing quickly. I had never felt so powerless. I was supposed to protect her, and I would. I would die to protect her, but I had no idea how to shield her from whatever this thing was.
Then I had an idea. I looked to the light switch panel to my left. I knew one of them was the porch light, but there were three others: the living room light, the kitchen light, and the hall light. If I pressed the wrong light, I didn't know what the thing would do, but I had to try. I had to remember which light Katie's dad used to turn the porch light on when he goes out for a smoke.
I reached for the light second from the bottom and flicked the switch. The hall light turned on. Luckily, the hall was on the opposite side of the kitchen from where the living room was, and it was out of view for the creature at the window. But I couldn't mess up again. If the kitchen light turned on, the creature would see me, and if the living room light turned on, it might cause it to attack Katie. I looked back at the creature, which was using one of its hands to scratch the window as it sniffed around. I had to do something.
I reached for the bottom light switch and flicked it; the porch light turned on. The creature spun around to face it and let out a screech that will haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. I ran to Katie and grabbed her, dragging her off the side of the couch where there was about a metre gap between the armrest of the couch and the wall.
The sound of the window smashing filled the house, and Katie cried into my shoulder. I couldn't see anything; it was pitch darkness besides the slight blue glare from the TV on the wall above us. But I could hear raspy breathing and bones cracking as the thing searched the living room. I heard it sniffing the couch where Katie was sitting, and I heard it make its way closer to the end of the couch, one of its hands pressed on the wall above us. I saw the silhouette of its head begin to peak over the side of the couch, but suddenly the light turned on, and Katie's dad yelled as he saw us from the kitchen while he was holding a shotgun.
The creature ran at him but fell to the ground as a loud shot rang out in the night, leaving only the sound of our combined breathing and Katie's soft sobs. I watched intently as the body lying between Katie's dad and me moved around on the floor, before slamming its hand down, then the other, and pushing itself to its feet.
Katie's dad reloaded his shotgun, but it was too late. The creature grabbed the poor man by his leg and pulled it out from under him, causing him to shoot the ceiling. I grabbed Katie and dragged her upstairs as the creature began tearing into her father. She cried and screamed, begging me to help him, but what could I do? Whatever that thing was, it just took a shotgun blast to the chest and brushed it off.
I locked us in her upstairs bathroom as the creature's loud and hurried footsteps made their way towards us. Katie was crying loudly now, insisting that we were going to die. Honestly, not a super helpful contribution, but I can't blame her.
As the creature began crashing against the door, pieces of wood started to splinter off. I shoved Katie into the tub, and then lay on top of her. Hopefully, my body would be enough to shield her from this thing. Time slowed down as the door exploded inward. I looked at the girl I loved, makeup running down her face, pieces of door in her hair, mouth wide open as she let out the most ear splitting scream. For some reason, I felt no fear. Even as the monster began tearing at my clothes and clawing at my flesh, I felt strangely calm.
Eventually, the creature grabbed me, swinging me around by my hoodie, slamming me into every wall and surface in the room. I fell to the ground as the hoodie ripped off, and the creature just stared at me, then the hoodie in its hand, then back at me. I stared back, utterly confused, as it leaned over and sniffed my entire body from head to toe. It looked as puzzled as I felt for a moment before I heard Roman's car pull up outside.
The creature screeched as it sprinted out the door, slamming into the hallway wall in its haste. "NO!" I shouted, leaving my still-shaking girlfriend in the tub as I chased the monster out of the house. Somehow, I caught up to the creature and grabbed onto it, bringing it to the ground below. The thing managed to get on top of me, biting and clawing at my arms and hands as I shielded my face.
Before I knew it, Roman came out of nowhere, tackling the creature off me, yelling for me to run. The creature, sleek and deadly, wasted no time in retaliating against Roman's attack. With a primal growl, it lunged at him, its claws slicing through the air like daggers.
Roman had a size advantage that I didn't have, and managed to hold his own for a few seconds as he wrestled with the beast. He'd always been as strong as a bull for as long as I can remember, tall with powerful hands and massive arms and shoulders. But I couldn't risk watching my brother, as strong as he may be, get killed by this… whatever it is.
With strength I didn't know I had, I grabbed the back of Roman's expensive shirt and pulled him out of the way of a fatal blow to the head, throwing him towards the car before I lunged at the creature and went feral. I don't know what came over me; I started swinging on the creature as we tumbled around in the muddy grass. Just when I thought I was actually winning, the creature managed to get its legs between us and kicked me off, then swung its clawed hand at my stomach, ripping it right open.
I collapsed to the ground as my body tried to comprehend what had just happened. My eyes narrowed as everything was drowned out. I watched the silent scene play out before me, my heartbeat pounding in my head.
The creature charged at Roman, who leaped to grab his car's back door handle just as the creature snagged his foot. It yanked at his leg, but Roman clung onto his car door tightly. The creature persisted in pulling as Roman struggled to reach for something in his hiking gear stored in the back seat.
With an agonising yell, Roman's leg gave a sickening snap. Despite the pain, he finally retrieved what he was searching for. Releasing the car door, Roman watched as the creature stumbled backward. Seizing the opportunity, he swiftly climbed on top of it, brandishing his trusty hunting knife from his camping trips.
As Roman wrestled with the creature, the air was filled with grunts and snarls. He plunged the hunting knife into the creature's body, eliciting a guttural howl of pain. The creature thrashed wildly, but Roman held on grimly, his determination unwavering.
With each strike, Roman's movements became more frenzied, fueled by adrenaline and the need to protect us. The creature's attempts to retaliate grew weaker as Roman's blows found their mark. With a final decisive thrust, Roman delivered the fatal blow, and the creature slumped to the ground, defeated.
Breathing heavily, Roman collapsed beside the creature, his body trembling with exhaustion and relief. I rushed to his side, concern evident in my voice. "Natalie-" he faintly murmured.
"Who? Who's Natalie?" I asked, my confusion growing.
Suddenly, the creature jolted up, its movements abrupt and startling. Without warning, it lunged at me, seizing me by the throat and hurling me against the car.
The last thing I saw before I blacked out was the creature sprinting towards me. In that moment, I felt a strange sensation coursing through my body, as if something within me was shifting. I glanced down at my hands and watched in horror as they contorted and turned a sickly shade of grey. Long claws protruded from my fingers, their sharp edges glinting in the dim light.
As my bones cracked and deformed under the strain of this inexplicable transformation, a sudden surge of anger and ferocity overwhelmed my senses. It was as though a primal instinct had taken hold of me, consuming my entire being in its relentless grip. With each passing moment, the world around me faded into darkness until finally, I lost consciousness, my mind consumed by the terrifying reality of what I had become.
I awoke hours later in the back seat of Roman's car. The hum of the road and the whirring of the engine attempted to lull me back to sleep, but I sat up, rubbing my head as the memories flooded back. "What happened?" I asked, my voice hoarse and strained.
Roman responded with silence, a familiar reaction from him, but this time, it sent a shiver down my spine. As I looked at my arms, then my stomach, and felt around my whole body, I realised the wounds and deep gashes caused by the creature were all gone, as if I had never been attacked.
I caught Roman's gaze in the mirror, but he quickly averted his eyes. That's when I noticed Katie in the passenger seat, her tear-stained face betraying her silent anguish. It was clear she wanted to say something, but I couldn't shake the feeling that Roman had warned her against it.
"What do you know about this place?" Roman asked sternly, his voice devoid of emotion.
"We've lived here all our lives, Roman," I replied, confusion evident in my tone. "What do you mean?”
Roman pressed down on the brakes, bringing us to a sudden stop. I noticed a pained expression flit across his face in the mirror, a fleeting moment of vulnerability that he quickly tried to conceal.
"Your leg!" I exclaimed, my voice laced with concern as I recalled the events from earlier.
"It was a dislocated hip. I fixed it," he replied bluntly, his tone revealing little about the ordeal he must have endured.
"This isn't real, Jason. None of this is real. You are not real!" Roman's voice was sharp, refusing to meet my eyes in the reflection.
"Back at Katie's house, I remembered everything the moment I looked into that creature's eyes. I remembered... I remembered Natalie," he said, his words catching in his throat, revealing the first hint of emotion I'd seen from him.
I watched as a tear rolled down Katie's face. I reached to put a hand on her shoulder but stopped myself.
"Roman got me to remember," Katie said, her voice trembling. "I remembered the emergency alert, and when those things broke down our doors. I watched as they dragged my parents out, then my baby brother, then me. I woke up in this fake world, in a family that isn't even mine, dating a boy who turns out to be one of the monsters who brought me here." She spluttered, and I began to cry silently as I realised what she was saying.
Roman eventually started driving again, occasionally getting a call from Morgan, but after the fifth call he threw his phone out the window. We drove until I fell asleep. I don't remember what I dreamed about, but it was peaceful. I think I was in that forest with Roman. We were children again, playing around in the trees, finding cool sticks and exploring the endless expanse of what felt like a fairytale, which I guess it was.
I was awoken by the abrupt sound of Roman's car door slamming. I looked outside and saw that it was daytime again. Trying to figure out where we had stopped, I noticed a giant sign that said “Library.” I hopped out of the car and jogged to catch up to Roman and Katie.
“What are we doing here?” I asked, clearly still being avoided. It was understandable, but it still hurt.
“I need to wake everyone up,” Roman said as we walked in and approached a computer.
I noticed we were getting odd stares from everyone as we walked by, which is when I also noticed that I looked like I had just come out the other side of a paper shredder. My clothes were all torn up with bits missing, apparently not possessing the magic healing ability that I do. The sound of Roman typing snapped me out of my self-conscious thoughts and redirected me to the computer screen.
"I'm going to be a while, guys," Roman said as he began writing out his story. "I need to tell the whole thing from the beginning. Go find a book or something.”
I looked over to Katie, her face void of expression, but a great sadness filled her now dry eyes, having cried all the tears she had. “Why don't you just wake up?” I asked, probably coming across as more insensitive than I intended.
“I've got nothing to go back to. Roman told me what the world is like back there. If my family is here, I have to find them and wake them up first,” she responded, finally meeting my eye.
I wanted to hug her so bad, but I knew she didn't love me anymore. She probably had a real boyfriend in the real world.
Hours went by as Katie and I found a place to sit and wait in silence, watching Roman. He looked funny in the little library chair, hunched over the computer. Such a big guy looked out of place here, his muscular presence overpowering that of the rest of the library's patrons, who were all either very old or very young.
I hate to admit I fell asleep, but I'm just telling the story how it was. I was awoken suddenly by sirens and shouts. “We have got you surrounded, come out with your hands up or we will come in and show you no mercy,” a man's voice yelled from outside through a speaker. I looked over to Roman, who was limping over to us as all the customers flooded out the exits.
“Get up, we need to leave. They've turned the law against us,” Roman ordered. Katie and I listened and followed him.
We made our way upstairs into the empty employee lounge, and Roman opened a window... with his elbow. “They've got every exit covered but this one. We need to jump,” he calmly told us. He stood up in the window frame, kicked off some of the remaining glass with his boots, and jumped to the roof of the single-story building below, wincing in pain as he landed on his bad leg.
That's when six armed officers kicked down the door and opened fire on Katie and me. I moved to block the bullets from hitting Katie, taking several hits to the head and back. I then pushed Katie through the window, and Roman caught her before I jumped out myself and followed.
We ran from rooftop to rooftop until we reached a ladder that led down into an alleyway, where we attempted to catch our breaths. Roman and Katie watched me intently as the bullets lodged in my body began to work their way back out, the wounds closing up after. My skin color shifted a little, and I felt a rattle leave my throat as a cold sweat came over me.
“Hey, control yourself,” Roman told me sternly. I nodded, struggling to remain composed.
“Did you finish the story?” Katie asked Roman.
“Yeah, I kind of had to rush the last part, but I got the message across,” he replied, slumping to the ground behind a dumpster, exhausted.
“What now?” I asked.
Roman looked at me, panting. “I'm gonna help Katie find her family, then I'm going back to Natalie,” he said between heavy breaths.
“What about Morgan?” I questioned, causing him to look down at his feet. “I don't even know her in the real world, and I would never have chosen to be with her. This place… it's like it wrote me a life that was least likely to let me remember who I am. The girl I'm engaged to is the complete opposite of Natalie. I've got a brother who lives with me, my parents are dead. There's literally nothing here to remind me of home, bro,” Roman said, shedding a couple of tears.
We waited in the alley until night, hearing sirens go back and forth every now and then. When Roman said we were in the clear, we made our way back to the car and started driving again. I noticed Roman's eyes fluttering after about an hour, and I told him I'd be happy to drive if he needed to sleep. I could tell that his ego didn't want to admit he was exhausted, and he also still didn't trust me, but he gave in and pulled over, falling asleep in the back seat as I drove off into the night.

"A family is left in mourning as twenty-one-year-old Natalie Rose was found dead over the weekend," the TV blared into the room, "seemingly attacked by some sort of wild animal as she sat in her tent on what was meant to be a relaxing camping trip alone. Natalie's parents have requested privacy at this time, but they appreciate the condolences they have received. In other news-" Roman grabbed the remote from me and shut off the TV.
"Hey, I was watching that!" I said as I flipped him off from across the room. "Bullshit, you're on your phone," he chuckled, fixing his hair up in the mirror. "Okay, well, I was listening. I like to have background noise, dickhead," I replied, watching him in the reflection, his focus clearly not on this important conversation.
"Where are you going all dressed up?" I interrogated him. "Morgan and I are having our engagement party, but we've got to be there early to sort out seating."
"You're having your engagement party and you didn't invite your own brother?" I questioned him, offended at the audacity this man had. "I did invite you, dipshit. You told me you had a date with Katie tonight."
The realisation hit me like a punch to the gut. I'd completely forgotten about my movie date with Katie. With a surge of panic, I leaped from my seat, heart pounding, and scrambled to get dressed. Every second felt like an eternity as I cursed my forgetfulness. Then, I heard Roman's car start outside. Without a second thought, I sprinted out the door and down the driveway. Knocking on his window, I pleaded for a ride.
The soft hum of the road and the whirring of the engine filled the car as we silently moved through the night. Staring out the window at the blur of trees, I thought about how I would apologise to Katie. Roman reached for the radio, and a Trace Adkins song began playing. Seeing this as the perfect time to start a conversation, I spoke up, "So, are Katie and I coming to the wedding?" I asked, grinning. Roman let out a deep sigh as he turned off the music. "If Katie doesn't plan a date night on the same day, then yes," he replied.
Silence filled the car as we drove along the empty road. The vast woods surrounding us created an eerie atmosphere, intensified by the winter darkness cloaking the night sky above. Yet, for Roman and me, who had grown up in this land, these woods evoked nostalgic memories of our childhood adventures. While for others, it might be an unsettling glimpse into the barrier separating civilization from the unknown, for us, it was a comforting window back into our past.
When Roman bought the land we had grown up on after our parents passed, I was probably more excited than I should've been, considering I had just lost my mum and dad in a tragic carbon monoxide leak. But my relief at not having to leave this place was immense.
We eventually reached an area where the city lights were visible in the distance. I noticed Roman yawn as he adjusted his grip on the wheel. "You're gonna have to tell me where to go, I can't remember where Katie lives," he stated as he changed gears and prepared to enter the busy traffic, a stark contrast to the remote rural road we were about to vacate.
“Just take a left up h-" I began, but was interrupted as a white blur ran in front of the car, causing Roman to slam on the brakes and swerve. I grabbed onto the side of the door as we spun out of control, the screeching of the tires filling my ears, jolting me out of the relaxed state I had been in due to the many miles of quiet driving.
We eventually came to a stop, now facing the opposite direction, gazing down the endless stretch of desolate road we had just traversed. Roman calmly checked all his mirrors for whatever he nearly hit but failed to see anything through the dust he had stirred up in the spinout.
“You all good?” he asked, a relieved smile creeping up his face, a deep breath escaping his lungs.
“Yeah, what was that?” I asked as Roman started reversing, then turned the car back towards the busy city street about a kilometre away and began driving. I looked over to him, expecting an answer to my question, but didn't receive one. His brow was furrowed in an uncertain expression, clearly lost in thought, like he was trying to remember if he locked the front door.
“Roman?” I said, causing him to blink a couple of times.
“I don't know what it was," Roman answered, not breaking his intense stare at the asphalt in front of us as we drove along, approaching the main road. “Probably just a sheep, there's a few acres of farmland behind these trees,” he continued.
As we approached the intersection, Roman flicked his left indicator on before turning onto the main road. “Okay, now take the next right,” I said, feeling the weird atmosphere in the vehicle slowly dissipating. After a few more turns, Roman said that he knew the way from here and turned the radio back on, which cut the remaining tension that I could tell we were both feeling.
The chilly winter night was starting to bite at my skin, and I cursed myself for forgetting a jacket in my hurry. I swivelled my head around to see the backseat. “What are you looking for?” Roman asked, finally looking in my direction as he turned the music down slightly.
“Uh, do you have a jacket I can borrow? I didn't realise it was gonna be this cold,” I sheepishly admitted.
“Hold the wheel,” Roman told me as he reached around behind him, shifting around his hiking gear that he hadn't taken out since his camping trip with Morgan last month.
Eventually, he pulled out his gym hoodie and threw it on my lap. “This is all I got,” he grunted as he readjusted himself in his seat and took hold of the steering wheel again. When we pulled into Katie's driveway, I pulled the hoodie over my head and hopped out of the car into the brisk night air, my breath visible in the cold. “I'll pick you up around 11:30.” Roman shouted out the window as I pulled the hoodie the rest of the way down and waved to Roman as he drove away, beeping his horn as he left me in the chilling winter breeze.
I knocked on the door, checking the time to see that it was 7:37, only a few minutes late. As I waited in the dark, a surprisingly chipper Katie opened the door, hugging me and dragging me inside. “You didn't miss much,” she whispered as we stumbled through the house that had all of its lights off. “Why do you smell like your brother?” she asked, shooting me a dirty look before grabbing a handful of the hoodie and sniffing it. All I could do was shrug and grin, “I forgot how cold it gets in the winter time, he let me borrow it.” She rolled her eyes, and we sat down next to a bunch of her friends and her parents, who all whispered their hellos in the soft glow of the TV.
Around 11:18 pm when the movie was long since finished, Katie's parents said goodnight and headed off to bed, and a few of Katie's friends who had been visiting said goodbye and drove home. I got up to get some water from the kitchen, and as I walked back, I stood in the doorway that separated the kitchen from the living room, which was dark, only lit by the TV. This allowed me to see Katie frozen, staring towards the window, which was out of my direct line of sight.
Confused, I peeked my head out of the doorway and looked toward the window. I froze and dropped my glass; luckily, it landed on the carpet and didn't make much noise, and the tall, pale creature standing an inch from the window didn't notice. The creature was foul, a gaunt, lanky humanoid. Well, at least the head was humanoid; the body and limbs were almost ape-like, with long, disproportionate arms and less exaggerated legs. The creature's whole body was covered in grey skin stretched tightly over its abnormally long bones. It had no hair anywhere. Its mouth was strangely wide, stretching around to where its ears would be if it had them, and its eyes were just sunken, inky black pits in its head. But I could tell it was staring daggers at Katie, who had tears rolling down her face. She slowly turned her head to look at me, shaking and breathing quickly. I had never felt so powerless. I was supposed to protect her, and I would. I would die to protect her, but I had no idea how to shield her from whatever this thing was.
Then I had an idea. I looked to the light switch panel to my left. I knew one of them was the porch light, but there were three others: the living room light, the kitchen light, and the hall light. If I pressed the wrong light, I didn't know what the thing would do, but I had to try. I had to remember which light Katie's dad used to turn the porch light on when he goes out for a smoke.
I reached for the light second from the bottom and flicked the switch. The hall light turned on. Luckily, the hall was on the opposite side of the kitchen from where the living room was, and it was out of view for the creature at the window. But I couldn't mess up again. If the kitchen light turned on, the creature would see me, and if the living room light turned on, it might cause it to attack Katie. I looked back at the creature, which was using one of its hands to scratch the window as it sniffed around. I had to do something.
I reached for the bottom light switch and flicked it; the porch light turned on. The creature spun around to face it and let out a screech that will haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. I ran to Katie and grabbed her, dragging her off the side of the couch where there was about a metre gap between the armrest of the couch and the wall.
The sound of the window smashing filled the house, and Katie cried into my shoulder. I couldn't see anything; it was pitch darkness besides the slight blue glare from the TV on the wall above us. But I could hear raspy breathing and bones cracking as the thing searched the living room. I heard it sniffing the couch where Katie was sitting, and I heard it make its way closer to the end of the couch, one of its hands pressed on the wall above us. I saw the silhouette of its head begin to peak over the side of the couch, but suddenly the light turned on, and Katie's dad yelled as he saw us from the kitchen while he was holding a shotgun.
The creature ran at him but fell to the ground as a loud shot rang out in the night, leaving only the sound of our combined breathing and Katie's soft sobs. I watched intently as the body lying between Katie's dad and me moved around on the floor, before slamming its hand down, then the other, and pushing itself to its feet.
Katie's dad reloaded his shotgun, but it was too late. The creature grabbed the poor man by his leg and pulled it out from under him, causing him to shoot the ceiling. I grabbed Katie and dragged her upstairs as the creature began tearing into her father. She cried and screamed, begging me to help him, but what could I do? Whatever that thing was, it just took a shotgun blast to the chest and brushed it off.
I locked us in her upstairs bathroom as the creature's loud and hurried footsteps made their way towards us. Katie was crying loudly now, insisting that we were going to die. Honestly, not a super helpful contribution, but I can't blame her.
As the creature began crashing against the door, pieces of wood started to splinter off. I shoved Katie into the tub, and then lay on top of her. Hopefully, my body would be enough to shield her from this thing. Time slowed down as the door exploded inward. I looked at the girl I loved, makeup running down her face, pieces of door in her hair, mouth wide open as she let out the most ear splitting scream. For some reason, I felt no fear. Even as the monster began tearing at my clothes and clawing at my flesh, I felt strangely calm.
Eventually, the creature grabbed me, swinging me around by my hoodie, slamming me into every wall and surface in the room. I fell to the ground as the hoodie ripped off, and the creature just stared at me, then the hoodie in its hand, then back at me. I stared back, utterly confused, as it leaned over and sniffed my entire body from head to toe. It looked as puzzled as I felt for a moment before I heard Roman's car pull up outside.
The creature screeched as it sprinted out the door, slamming into the hallway wall in its haste. "NO!" I shouted, leaving my still-shaking girlfriend in the tub as I chased the monster out of the house. Somehow, I caught up to the creature and grabbed onto it, bringing it to the ground below. The thing managed to get on top of me, biting and clawing at my arms and hands as I shielded my face.
Before I knew it, Roman came out of nowhere, tackling the creature off me, yelling for me to run. The creature, sleek and deadly, wasted no time in retaliating against Roman's attack. With a primal growl, it lunged at him, its claws slicing through the air like daggers.
Roman had a size advantage that I didn't have, and managed to hold his own for a few seconds as he wrestled with the beast. He'd always been as strong as a bull for as long as I can remember, tall with powerful hands and massive arms and shoulders. But I couldn't risk watching my brother, as strong as he may be, get killed by this… whatever it is.
With strength I didn't know I had, I grabbed the back of Roman's expensive shirt and pulled him out of the way of a fatal blow to the head, throwing him towards the car before I lunged at the creature and went feral. I don't know what came over me; I started swinging on the creature as we tumbled around in the muddy grass. Just when I thought I was actually winning, the creature managed to get its legs between us and kicked me off, then swung its clawed hand at my stomach, ripping it right open.
I collapsed to the ground as my body tried to comprehend what had just happened. My eyes narrowed as everything was drowned out. I watched the silent scene play out before me, my heartbeat pounding in my head.
The creature charged at Roman, who leaped to grab his car's back door handle just as the creature snagged his foot. It yanked at his leg, but Roman clung onto his car door tightly. The creature persisted in pulling as Roman struggled to reach for something in his hiking gear stored in the back seat.
With an agonising yell, Roman's leg gave a sickening snap. Despite the pain, he finally retrieved what he was searching for. Releasing the car door, Roman watched as the creature stumbled backward. Seizing the opportunity, he swiftly climbed on top of it, brandishing his trusty hunting knife from his camping trips.
As Roman wrestled with the creature, the air was filled with grunts and snarls. He plunged the hunting knife into the creature's body, eliciting a guttural howl of pain. The creature thrashed wildly, but Roman held on grimly, his determination unwavering.
With each strike, Roman's movements became more frenzied, fueled by adrenaline and the need to protect us. The creature's attempts to retaliate grew weaker as Roman's blows found their mark. With a final decisive thrust, Roman delivered the fatal blow, and the creature slumped to the ground, defeated.
Breathing heavily, Roman collapsed beside the creature, his body trembling with exhaustion and relief. I rushed to his side, concern evident in my voice. "Natalie-" he faintly murmured.
"Who? Who's Natalie?" I asked, my confusion growing.
Suddenly, the creature jolted up, its movements abrupt and startling. Without warning, it lunged at me, seizing me by the throat and hurling me against the car.
The last thing I saw before I blacked out was the creature sprinting towards me. In that moment, I felt a strange sensation coursing through my body, as if something within me was shifting. I glanced down at my hands and watched in horror as they contorted and turned a sickly shade of grey. Long claws protruded from my fingers, their sharp edges glinting in the dim light.
As my bones cracked and deformed under the strain of this inexplicable transformation, a sudden surge of anger and ferocity overwhelmed my senses. It was as though a primal instinct had taken hold of me, consuming my entire being in its relentless grip. With each passing moment, the world around me faded into darkness until finally, I lost consciousness, my mind consumed by the terrifying reality of what I had become.
I awoke hours later in the back seat of Roman's car. The hum of the road and the whirring of the engine attempted to lull me back to sleep, but I sat up, rubbing my head as the memories flooded back. "What happened?" I asked, my voice hoarse and strained.
Roman responded with silence, a familiar reaction from him, but this time, it sent a shiver down my spine. As I looked at my arms, then my stomach, and felt around my whole body, I realised the wounds and deep gashes caused by the creature were all gone, as if I had never been attacked.
I caught Roman's gaze in the mirror, but he quickly averted his eyes. That's when I noticed Katie in the passenger seat, her tear-stained face betraying her silent anguish. It was clear she wanted to say something, but I couldn't shake the feeling that Roman had warned her against it.
"What do you know about this place?" Roman asked sternly, his voice devoid of emotion.
"We've lived here all our lives, Roman," I replied, confusion evident in my tone. "What do you mean?”
Roman pressed down on the brakes, bringing us to a sudden stop. I noticed a pained expression flit across his face in the mirror, a fleeting moment of vulnerability that he quickly tried to conceal.
"Your leg!" I exclaimed, my voice laced with concern as I recalled the events from earlier.
"It was a dislocated hip. I fixed it," he replied bluntly, his tone revealing little about the ordeal he must have endured.
"This isn't real, Jason. None of this is real. You are not real!" Roman's voice was sharp, refusing to meet my eyes in the reflection.
"Back at Katie's house, I remembered everything the moment I looked into that creature's eyes. I remembered... I remembered Natalie," he said, his words catching in his throat, revealing the first hint of emotion I'd seen from him.
I watched as a tear rolled down Katie's face. I reached to put a hand on her shoulder but stopped myself.
"Roman got me to remember," Katie said, her voice trembling. "I remembered the emergency alert, and when those things broke down our doors. I watched as they dragged my parents out, then my baby brother, then me. I woke up in this fake world, in a family that isn't even mine, dating a boy who turns out to be one of the monsters who brought me here." She spluttered, and I began to cry silently as I realised what she was saying.
Roman eventually started driving again, occasionally getting a call from Morgan, but after the fifth call he threw his phone out the window. We drove until I fell asleep. I don't remember what I dreamed about, but it was peaceful. I think I was in that forest with Roman. We were children again, playing around in the trees, finding cool sticks and exploring the endless expanse of what felt like a fairytale, which I guess it was.
I was awoken by the abrupt sound of Roman's car door slamming. I looked outside and saw that it was daytime again. Trying to figure out where we had stopped, I noticed a giant sign that said “Library.” I hopped out of the car and jogged to catch up to Roman and Katie.
“What are we doing here?” I asked, clearly still being avoided. It was understandable, but it still hurt.
“I need to wake everyone up,” Roman said as we walked in and approached a computer.
I noticed we were getting odd stares from everyone as we walked by, which is when I also noticed that I looked like I had just come out the other side of a paper shredder. My clothes were all torn up with bits missing, apparently not possessing the magic healing ability that I do. The sound of Roman typing snapped me out of my self-conscious thoughts and redirected me to the computer screen.
"I'm going to be a while, guys," Roman said as he began writing out his story. "I need to tell the whole thing from the beginning. Go find a book or something.”
I looked over to Katie, her face void of expression, but a great sadness filled her now dry eyes, having cried all the tears she had. “Why don't you just wake up?” I asked, probably coming across as more insensitive than I intended.
“I've got nothing to go back to. Roman told me what the world is like back there. If my family is here, I have to find them and wake them up first,” she responded, finally meeting my eye.
I wanted to hug her so bad, but I knew she didn't love me anymore. She probably had a real boyfriend in the real world.
Hours went by as Katie and I found a place to sit and wait in silence, watching Roman. He looked funny in the little library chair, hunched over the computer. Such a big guy looked out of place here, his muscular presence overpowering that of the rest of the library's patrons, who were all either very old or very young.
I hate to admit I fell asleep, but I'm just telling the story how it was. I was awoken suddenly by sirens and shouts. “We have got you surrounded, come out with your hands up or we will come in and show you no mercy,” a man's voice yelled from outside through a speaker. I looked over to Roman, who was limping over to us as all the customers flooded out the exits.
“Get up, we need to leave. They've turned the law against us,” Roman ordered. Katie and I listened and followed him.
We made our way upstairs into the empty employee lounge, and Roman opened a window... with his elbow. “They've got every exit covered but this one. We need to jump,” he calmly told us. He stood up in the window frame, kicked off some of the remaining glass with his boots, and jumped to the roof of the single-story building below, wincing in pain as he landed on his bad leg.
That's when six armed officers kicked down the door and opened fire on Katie and me. I moved to block the bullets from hitting Katie, taking several hits to the head and back. I then pushed Katie through the window, and Roman caught her before I jumped out myself and followed.
We ran from rooftop to rooftop until we reached a ladder that led down into an alleyway, where we attempted to catch our breaths. Roman and Katie watched me intently as the bullets lodged in my body began to work their way back out, the wounds closing up after. My skin color shifted a little, and I felt a rattle leave my throat as a cold sweat came over me.
“Hey, control yourself,” Roman told me sternly. I nodded, struggling to remain composed.
“Did you finish the story?” Katie asked Roman.
“Yeah, I kind of had to rush the last part, but I got the message across,” he replied, slumping to the ground behind a dumpster, exhausted.
“What now?” I asked.
Roman looked at me, panting. “I'm gonna help Katie find her family, then I'm going back to Natalie,” he said between heavy breaths.
“What about Morgan?” I questioned, causing him to look down at his feet. “I don't even know her in the real world, and I would never have chosen to be with her. This place… it's like it wrote me a life that was least likely to let me remember who I am. The girl I'm engaged to is the complete opposite of Natalie. I've got a brother who lives with me, my parents are dead. There's literally nothing here to remind me of home, bro,” Roman said, shedding a couple of tears.
We waited in the alley until night, hearing sirens go back and forth every now and then. When Roman said we were in the clear, we made our way back to the car and started driving again. I noticed Roman's eyes fluttering after about an hour, and I told him I'd be happy to drive if he needed to sleep. I could tell that his ego didn't want to admit he was exhausted, and he also still didn't trust me, but he gave in and pulled over, falling asleep in the back seat as I drove off into the night.

"A family is left in mourning as twenty-one-year-old Natalie Rose was found dead over the weekend," the TV blared into the room, "seemingly attacked by some sort of wild animal as she sat in her tent on what was meant to be a relaxing camping trip alone. Natalie's parents have requested privacy at this time, but they appreciate the condolences they have received. In other news-" Roman grabbed the remote from me and shut off the TV.
"Hey, I was watching that!" I said as I flipped him off from across the room. "Bullshit, you're on your phone," he chuckled, fixing his hair up in the mirror. "Okay, well, I was listening. I like to have background noise, dickhead," I replied, watching him in the reflection, his focus clearly not on this important conversation.
"Where are you going all dressed up?" I interrogated him. "Morgan and I are having our engagement party, but we've got to be there early to sort out seating."
"You're having your engagement party and you didn't invite your own brother?" I questioned him, offended at the audacity this man had. "I did invite you, dipshit. You told me you had a date with Katie tonight."
The realisation hit me like a punch to the gut. I'd completely forgotten about my movie date with Katie. With a surge of panic, I leaped from my seat, heart pounding, and scrambled to get dressed. Every second felt like an eternity as I cursed my forgetfulness. Then, I heard Roman's car start outside. Without a second thought, I sprinted out the door and down the driveway. Knocking on his window, I pleaded for a ride.
The soft hum of the road and the whirring of the engine filled the car as we silently moved through the night. Staring out the window at the blur of trees, I thought about how I would apologise to Katie. Roman reached for the radio, and a Trace Adkins song began playing. Seeing this as the perfect time to start a conversation, I spoke up, "So, are Katie and I coming to the wedding?" I asked, grinning. Roman let out a deep sigh as he turned off the music. "If Katie doesn't plan a date night on the same day, then yes," he replied.
Silence filled the car as we drove along the empty road. The vast woods surrounding us created an eerie atmosphere, intensified by the winter darkness cloaking the night sky above. Yet, for Roman and me, who had grown up in this land, these woods evoked nostalgic memories of our childhood adventures. While for others, it might be an unsettling glimpse into the barrier separating civilization from the unknown, for us, it was a comforting window back into our past.
When Roman bought the land we had grown up on after our parents passed, I was probably more excited than I should've been, considering I had just lost my mum and dad in a tragic carbon monoxide leak. But my relief at not having to leave this place was immense.
We eventually reached an area where the city lights were visible in the distance. I noticed Roman yawn as he adjusted his grip on the wheel. "You're gonna have to tell me where to go, I can't remember where Katie lives," he stated as he changed gears and prepared to enter the busy traffic, a stark contrast to the remote rural road we were about to vacate.
“Just take a left up h-" I began, but was interrupted as a white blur ran in front of the car, causing Roman to slam on the brakes and swerve. I grabbed onto the side of the door as we spun out of control, the screeching of the tires filling my ears, jolting me out of the relaxed state I had been in due to the many miles of quiet driving.
We eventually came to a stop, now facing the opposite direction, gazing down the endless stretch of desolate road we had just traversed. Roman calmly checked all his mirrors for whatever he nearly hit but failed to see anything through the dust he had stirred up in the spinout.
“You all good?” he asked, a relieved smile creeping up his face, a deep breath escaping his lungs.
“Yeah, what was that?” I asked as Roman started reversing, then turned the car back towards the busy city street about a kilometre away and began driving. I looked over to him, expecting an answer to my question, but didn't receive one. His brow was furrowed in an uncertain expression, clearly lost in thought, like he was trying to remember if he locked the front door.
“Roman?” I said, causing him to blink a couple of times.
“I don't know what it was," Roman answered, not breaking his intense stare at the asphalt in front of us as we drove along, approaching the main road. “Probably just a sheep, there's a few acres of farmland behind these trees,” he continued.
As we approached the intersection, Roman flicked his left indicator on before turning onto the main road. “Okay, now take the next right,” I said, feeling the weird atmosphere in the vehicle slowly dissipating. After a few more turns, Roman said that he knew the way from here and turned the radio back on, which cut the remaining tension that I could tell we were both feeling.
The chilly winter night was starting to bite at my skin, and I cursed myself for forgetting a jacket in my hurry. I swivelled my head around to see the backseat. “What are you looking for?” Roman asked, finally looking in my direction as he turned the music down slightly.
“Uh, do you have a jacket I can borrow? I didn't realise it was gonna be this cold,” I sheepishly admitted.
“Hold the wheel,” Roman told me as he reached around behind him, shifting around his hiking gear that he hadn't taken out since his camping trip with Morgan last month.
Eventually, he pulled out his gym hoodie and threw it on my lap. “This is all I got,” he grunted as he readjusted himself in his seat and took hold of the steering wheel again. When we pulled into Katie's driveway, I pulled the hoodie over my head and hopped out of the car into the brisk night air, my breath visible in the cold. “I'll pick you up around 11:30.” Roman shouted out the window as I pulled the hoodie the rest of the way down and waved to Roman as he drove away, beeping his horn as he left me in the chilling winter breeze.
I knocked on the door, checking the time to see that it was 7:37, only a few minutes late. As I waited in the dark, a surprisingly chipper Katie opened the door, hugging me and dragging me inside. “You didn't miss much,” she whispered as we stumbled through the house that had all of its lights off. “Why do you smell like your brother?” she asked, shooting me a dirty look before grabbing a handful of the hoodie and sniffing it. All I could do was shrug and grin, “I forgot how cold it gets in the winter time, he let me borrow it.” She rolled her eyes, and we sat down next to a bunch of her friends and her parents, who all whispered their hellos in the soft glow of the TV.
Around 11:18 pm when the movie was long since finished, Katie's parents said goodnight and headed off to bed, and a few of Katie's friends who had been visiting said goodbye and drove home. I got up to get some water from the kitchen, and as I walked back, I stood in the doorway that separated the kitchen from the living room, which was dark, only lit by the TV. This allowed me to see Katie frozen, staring towards the window, which was out of my direct line of sight.
Confused, I peeked my head out of the doorway and looked toward the window. I froze and dropped my glass; luckily, it landed on the carpet and didn't make much noise, and the tall, pale creature standing an inch from the window didn't notice. The creature was foul, a gaunt, lanky humanoid. Well, at least the head was humanoid; the body and limbs were almost ape-like, with long, disproportionate arms and less exaggerated legs. The creature's whole body was covered in grey skin stretched tightly over its abnormally long bones. It had no hair anywhere. Its mouth was strangely wide, stretching around to where its ears would be if it had them, and its eyes were just sunken, inky black pits in its head. But I could tell it was staring daggers at Katie, who had tears rolling down her face. She slowly turned her head to look at me, shaking and breathing quickly. I had never felt so powerless. I was supposed to protect her, and I would. I would die to protect her, but I had no idea how to shield her from whatever this thing was.
Then I had an idea. I looked to the light switch panel to my left. I knew one of them was the porch light, but there were three others: the living room light, the kitchen light, and the hall light. If I pressed the wrong light, I didn't know what the thing would do, but I had to try. I had to remember which light Katie's dad used to turn the porch light on when he goes out for a smoke.
I reached for the light second from the bottom and flicked the switch. The hall light turned on. Luckily, the hall was on the opposite side of the kitchen from where the living room was, and it was out of view for the creature at the window. But I couldn't mess up again. If the kitchen light turned on, the creature would see me, and if the living room light turned on, it might cause it to attack Katie. I looked back at the creature, which was using one of its hands to scratch the window as it sniffed around. I had to do something.
I reached for the bottom light switch and flicked it; the porch light turned on. The creature spun around to face it and let out a screech that will haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. I ran to Katie and grabbed her, dragging her off the side of the couch where there was about a metre gap between the armrest of the couch and the wall.
The sound of the window smashing filled the house, and Katie cried into my shoulder. I couldn't see anything; it was pitch darkness besides the slight blue glare from the TV on the wall above us. But I could hear raspy breathing and bones cracking as the thing searched the living room. I heard it sniffing the couch where Katie was sitting, and I heard it make its way closer to the end of the couch, one of its hands pressed on the wall above us. I saw the silhouette of its head begin to peak over the side of the couch, but suddenly the light turned on, and Katie's dad yelled as he saw us from the kitchen while he was holding a shotgun.
The creature ran at him but fell to the ground as a loud shot rang out in the night, leaving only the sound of our combined breathing and Katie's soft sobs. I watched intently as the body lying between Katie's dad and me moved around on the floor, before slamming its hand down, then the other, and pushing itself to its feet.
Katie's dad reloaded his shotgun, but it was too late. The creature grabbed the poor man by his leg and pulled it out from under him, causing him to shoot the ceiling. I grabbed Katie and dragged her upstairs as the creature began tearing into her father. She cried and screamed, begging me to help him, but what could I do? Whatever that thing was, it just took a shotgun blast to the chest and brushed it off.
I locked us in her upstairs bathroom as the creature's loud and hurried footsteps made their way towards us. Katie was crying loudly now, insisting that we were going to die. Honestly, not a super helpful contribution, but I can't blame her.
As the creature began crashing against the door, pieces of wood started to splinter off. I shoved Katie into the tub, and then lay on top of her. Hopefully, my body would be enough to shield her from this thing. Time slowed down as the door exploded inward. I looked at the girl I loved, makeup running down her face, pieces of door in her hair, mouth wide open as she let out the most ear splitting scream. For some reason, I felt no fear. Even as the monster began tearing at my clothes and clawing at my flesh, I felt strangely calm.
Eventually, the creature grabbed me, swinging me around by my hoodie, slamming me into every wall and surface in the room. I fell to the ground as the hoodie ripped off, and the creature just stared at me, then the hoodie in its hand, then back at me. I stared back, utterly confused, as it leaned over and sniffed my entire body from head to toe. It looked as puzzled as I felt for a moment before I heard Roman's car pull up outside.
The creature screeched as it sprinted out the door, slamming into the hallway wall in its haste. "NO!" I shouted, leaving my still-shaking girlfriend in the tub as I chased the monster out of the house. Somehow, I caught up to the creature and grabbed onto it, bringing it to the ground below. The thing managed to get on top of me, biting and clawing at my arms and hands as I shielded my face.
Before I knew it, Roman came out of nowhere, tackling the creature off me, yelling for me to run. The creature, sleek and deadly, wasted no time in retaliating against Roman's attack. With a primal growl, it lunged at him, its claws slicing through the air like daggers.
Roman had a size advantage that I didn't have, and managed to hold his own for a few seconds as he wrestled with the beast. He'd always been as strong as a bull for as long as I can remember, tall with powerful hands and massive arms and shoulders. But I couldn't risk watching my brother, as strong as he may be, get killed by this… whatever it is.
With strength I didn't know I had, I grabbed the back of Roman's expensive shirt and pulled him out of the way of a fatal blow to the head, throwing him towards the car before I lunged at the creature and went feral. I don't know what came over me; I started swinging on the creature as we tumbled around in the muddy grass. Just when I thought I was actually winning, the creature managed to get its legs between us and kicked me off, then swung its clawed hand at my stomach, ripping it right open.
I collapsed to the ground as my body tried to comprehend what had just happened. My eyes narrowed as everything was drowned out. I watched the silent scene play out before me, my heartbeat pounding in my head.
The creature charged at Roman, who leaped to grab his car's back door handle just as the creature snagged his foot. It yanked at his leg, but Roman clung onto his car door tightly. The creature persisted in pulling as Roman struggled to reach for something in his hiking gear stored in the back seat.
With an agonising yell, Roman's leg gave a sickening snap. Despite the pain, he finally retrieved what he was searching for. Releasing the car door, Roman watched as the creature stumbled backward. Seizing the opportunity, he swiftly climbed on top of it, brandishing his trusty hunting knife from his camping trips.
As Roman wrestled with the creature, the air was filled with grunts and snarls. He plunged the hunting knife into the creature's body, eliciting a guttural howl of pain. The creature thrashed wildly, but Roman held on grimly, his determination unwavering.
With each strike, Roman's movements became more frenzied, fueled by adrenaline and the need to protect us. The creature's attempts to retaliate grew weaker as Roman's blows found their mark. With a final decisive thrust, Roman delivered the fatal blow, and the creature slumped to the ground, defeated.
Breathing heavily, Roman collapsed beside the creature, his body trembling with exhaustion and relief. I rushed to his side, concern evident in my voice. "Natalie-" he faintly murmured.
"Who? Who's Natalie?" I asked, my confusion growing.
Suddenly, the creature jolted up, its movements abrupt and startling. Without warning, it lunged at me, seizing me by the throat and hurling me against the car.
The last thing I saw before I blacked out was the creature sprinting towards me. In that moment, I felt a strange sensation coursing through my body, as if something within me was shifting. I glanced down at my hands and watched in horror as they contorted and turned a sickly shade of grey. Long claws protruded from my fingers, their sharp edges glinting in the dim light.
As my bones cracked and deformed under the strain of this inexplicable transformation, a sudden surge of anger and ferocity overwhelmed my senses. It was as though a primal instinct had taken hold of me, consuming my entire being in its relentless grip. With each passing moment, the world around me faded into darkness until finally, I lost consciousness, my mind consumed by the terrifying reality of what I had become.
I awoke hours later in the back seat of Roman's car. The hum of the road and the whirring of the engine attempted to lull me back to sleep, but I sat up, rubbing my head as the memories flooded back. "What happened?" I asked, my voice hoarse and strained.
Roman responded with silence, a familiar reaction from him, but this time, it sent a shiver down my spine. As I looked at my arms, then my stomach, and felt around my whole body, I realised the wounds and deep gashes caused by the creature were all gone, as if I had never been attacked.
I caught Roman's gaze in the mirror, but he quickly averted his eyes. That's when I noticed Katie in the passenger seat, her tear-stained face betraying her silent anguish. It was clear she wanted to say something, but I couldn't shake the feeling that Roman had warned her against it.
"What do you know about this place?" Roman asked sternly, his voice devoid of emotion.
"We've lived here all our lives, Roman," I replied, confusion evident in my tone. "What do you mean?”
Roman pressed down on the brakes, bringing us to a sudden stop. I noticed a pained expression flit across his face in the mirror, a fleeting moment of vulnerability that he quickly tried to conceal.
"Your leg!" I exclaimed, my voice laced with concern as I recalled the events from earlier.
"It was a dislocated hip. I fixed it," he replied bluntly, his tone revealing little about the ordeal he must have endured.
"This isn't real, Jason. None of this is real. You are not real!" Roman's voice was sharp, refusing to meet my eyes in the reflection.
"Back at Katie's house, I remembered everything the moment I looked into that creature's eyes. I remembered... I remembered Natalie," he said, his words catching in his throat, revealing the first hint of emotion I'd seen from him.
I watched as a tear rolled down Katie's face. I reached to put a hand on her shoulder but stopped myself.
"Roman got me to remember," Katie said, her voice trembling. "I remembered the emergency alert, and when those things broke down our doors. I watched as they dragged my parents out, then my baby brother, then me. I woke up in this fake world, in a family that isn't even mine, dating a boy who turns out to be one of the monsters who brought me here." She spluttered, and I began to cry silently as I realised what she was saying.
Roman eventually started driving again, occasionally getting a call from Morgan, but after the fifth call he threw his phone out the window. We drove until I fell asleep. I don't remember what I dreamed about, but it was peaceful. I think I was in that forest with Roman. We were children again, playing around in the trees, finding cool sticks and exploring the endless expanse of what felt like a fairytale, which I guess it was.
I was awoken by the abrupt sound of Roman's car door slamming. I looked outside and saw that it was daytime again. Trying to figure out where we had stopped, I noticed a giant sign that said “Library.” I hopped out of the car and jogged to catch up to Roman and Katie.
“What are we doing here?” I asked, clearly still being avoided. It was understandable, but it still hurt.
“I need to wake everyone up,” Roman said as we walked in and approached a computer.
I noticed we were getting odd stares from everyone as we walked by, which is when I also noticed that I looked like I had just come out the other side of a paper shredder. My clothes were all torn up with bits missing, apparently not possessing the magic healing ability that I do. The sound of Roman typing snapped me out of my self-conscious thoughts and redirected me to the computer screen.
"I'm going to be a while, guys," Roman said as he began writing out his story. "I need to tell the whole thing from the beginning. Go find a book or something.”
I looked over to Katie, her face void of expression, but a great sadness filled her now dry eyes, having cried all the tears she had. “Why don't you just wake up?” I asked, probably coming across as more insensitive than I intended.
“I've got nothing to go back to. Roman told me what the world is like back there. If my family is here, I have to find them and wake them up first,” she responded, finally meeting my eye.
I wanted to hug her so bad, but I knew she didn't love me anymore. She probably had a real boyfriend in the real world.
Hours went by as Katie and I found a place to sit and wait in silence, watching Roman. He looked funny in the little library chair, hunched over the computer. Such a big guy looked out of place here, his muscular presence overpowering that of the rest of the library's patrons, who were all either very old or very young.
I hate to admit I fell asleep, but I'm just telling the story how it was. I was awoken suddenly by sirens and shouts. “We have got you surrounded, come out with your hands up or we will come in and show you no mercy,” a man's voice yelled from outside through a speaker. I looked over to Roman, who was limping over to us as all the customers flooded out the exits.
“Get up, we need to leave. They've turned the law against us,” Roman ordered. Katie and I listened and followed him.
We made our way upstairs into the empty employee lounge, and Roman opened a window... with his elbow. “They've got every exit covered but this one. We need to jump,” he calmly told us. He stood up in the window frame, kicked off some of the remaining glass with his boots, and jumped to the roof of the single-story building below, wincing in pain as he landed on his bad leg.
That's when six armed officers kicked down the door and opened fire on Katie and me. I moved to block the bullets from hitting Katie, taking several hits to the head and back. I then pushed Katie through the window, and Roman caught her before I jumped out myself and followed.
We ran from rooftop to rooftop until we reached a ladder that led down into an alleyway, where we attempted to catch our breaths. Roman and Katie watched me intently as the bullets lodged in my body began to work their way back out, the wounds closing up after. My skin color shifted a little, and I felt a rattle leave my throat as a cold sweat came over me.
“Hey, control yourself,” Roman told me sternly. I nodded, struggling to remain composed.
“Did you finish the story?” Katie asked Roman.
“Yeah, I kind of had to rush the last part, but I got the message across,” he replied, slumping to the ground behind a dumpster, exhausted.
“What now?” I asked.
Roman looked at me, panting. “I'm gonna help Katie find her family, then I'm going back to Natalie,” he said between heavy breaths.
“What about Morgan?” I questioned, causing him to look down at his feet. “I don't even know her in the real world, and I would never have chosen to be with her. This place… it's like it wrote me a life that was least likely to let me remember who I am. The girl I'm engaged to is the complete opposite of Natalie. I've got a brother who lives with me, my parents are dead. There's literally nothing here to remind me of home, bro,” Roman said, shedding a couple of tears.
We waited in the alley until night, hearing sirens go back and forth every now and then. When Roman said we were in the clear, we made our way back to the car and started driving again. I noticed Roman's eyes fluttering after about an hour, and I told him I'd be happy to drive if he needed to sleep. I could tell that his ego didn't want to admit he was exhausted, and he also still didn't trust me, but he gave in and pulled over, falling asleep in the back seat as I drove off into the night.

"A family is left in mourning as twenty-one-year-old Natalie Rose was found dead over the weekend," the TV blared into the room, "seemingly attacked by some sort of wild animal as she sat in her tent on what was meant to be a relaxing camping trip alone. Natalie's parents have requested privacy at this time, but they appreciate the condolences they have received. In other news-" Roman grabbed the remote from me and shut off the TV.
"Hey, I was watching that!" I said as I flipped him off from across the room. "Bullshit, you're on your phone," he chuckled, fixing his hair up in the mirror. "Okay, well, I was listening. I like to have background noise, dickhead," I replied, watching him in the reflection, his focus clearly not on this important conversation.
"Where are you going all dressed up?" I interrogated him. "Morgan and I are having our engagement party, but we've got to be there early to sort out seating."
"You're having your engagement party and you didn't invite your own brother?" I questioned him, offended at the audacity this man had. "I did invite you, dipshit. You told me you had a date with Katie tonight."
The realisation hit me like a punch to the gut. I'd completely forgotten about my movie date with Katie. With a surge of panic, I leaped from my seat, heart pounding, and scrambled to get dressed. Every second felt like an eternity as I cursed my forgetfulness. Then, I heard Roman's car start outside. Without a second thought, I sprinted out the door and down the driveway. Knocking on his window, I pleaded for a ride.
The soft hum of the road and the whirring of the engine filled the car as we silently moved through the night. Staring out the window at the blur of trees, I thought about how I would apologise to Katie. Roman reached for the radio, and a Trace Adkins song began playing. Seeing this as the perfect time to start a conversation, I spoke up, "So, are Katie and I coming to the wedding?" I asked, grinning. Roman let out a deep sigh as he turned off the music. "If Katie doesn't plan a date night on the same day, then yes," he replied.
Silence filled the car as we drove along the empty road. The vast woods surrounding us created an eerie atmosphere, intensified by the winter darkness cloaking the night sky above. Yet, for Roman and me, who had grown up in this land, these woods evoked nostalgic memories of our childhood adventures. While for others, it might be an unsettling glimpse into the barrier separating civilization from the unknown, for us, it was a comforting window back into our past.
When Roman bought the land we had grown up on after our parents passed, I was probably more excited than I should've been, considering I had just lost my mum and dad in a tragic carbon monoxide leak. But my relief at not having to leave this place was immense.
We eventually reached an area where the city lights were visible in the distance. I noticed Roman yawn as he adjusted his grip on the wheel. "You're gonna have to tell me where to go, I can't remember where Katie lives," he stated as he changed gears and prepared to enter the busy traffic, a stark contrast to the remote rural road we were about to vacate.
“Just take a left up h-" I began, but was interrupted as a white blur ran in front of the car, causing Roman to slam on the brakes and swerve. I grabbed onto the side of the door as we spun out of control, the screeching of the tires filling my ears, jolting me out of the relaxed state I had been in due to the many miles of quiet driving.
We eventually came to a stop, now facing the opposite direction, gazing down the endless stretch of desolate road we had just traversed. Roman calmly checked all his mirrors for whatever he nearly hit but failed to see anything through the dust he had stirred up in the spinout.
“You all good?” he asked, a relieved smile creeping up his face, a deep breath escaping his lungs.
“Yeah, what was that?” I asked as Roman started reversing, then turned the car back towards the busy city street about a kilometre away and began driving. I looked over to him, expecting an answer to my question, but didn't receive one. His brow was furrowed in an uncertain expression, clearly lost in thought, like he was trying to remember if he locked the front door.
“Roman?” I said, causing him to blink a couple of times.
“I don't know what it was," Roman answered, not breaking his intense stare at the asphalt in front of us as we drove along, approaching the main road. “Probably just a sheep, there's a few acres of farmland behind these trees,” he continued.
As we approached the intersection, Roman flicked his left indicator on before turning onto the main road. “Okay, now take the next right,” I said, feeling the weird atmosphere in the vehicle slowly dissipating. After a few more turns, Roman said that he knew the way from here and turned the radio back on, which cut the remaining tension that I could tell we were both feeling.
The chilly winter night was starting to bite at my skin, and I cursed myself for forgetting a jacket in my hurry. I swivelled my head around to see the backseat. “What are you looking for?” Roman asked, finally looking in my direction as he turned the music down slightly.
“Uh, do you have a jacket I can borrow? I didn't realise it was gonna be this cold,” I sheepishly admitted.
“Hold the wheel,” Roman told me as he reached around behind him, shifting around his hiking gear that he hadn't taken out since his camping trip with Morgan last month.
Eventually, he pulled out his gym hoodie and threw it on my lap. “This is all I got,” he grunted as he readjusted himself in his seat and took hold of the steering wheel again. When we pulled into Katie's driveway, I pulled the hoodie over my head and hopped out of the car into the brisk night air, my breath visible in the cold. “I'll pick you up around 11:30.” Roman shouted out the window as I pulled the hoodie the rest of the way down and waved to Roman as he drove away, beeping his horn as he left me in the chilling winter breeze.
I knocked on the door, checking the time to see that it was 7:37, only a few minutes late. As I waited in the dark, a surprisingly chipper Katie opened the door, hugging me and dragging me inside. “You didn't miss much,” she whispered as we stumbled through the house that had all of its lights off. “Why do you smell like your brother?” she asked, shooting me a dirty look before grabbing a handful of the hoodie and sniffing it. All I could do was shrug and grin, “I forgot how cold it gets in the winter time, he let me borrow it.” She rolled her eyes, and we sat down next to a bunch of her friends and her parents, who all whispered their hellos in the soft glow of the TV.
Around 11:18 pm when the movie was long since finished, Katie's parents said goodnight and headed off to bed, and a few of Katie's friends who had been visiting said goodbye and drove home. I got up to get some water from the kitchen, and as I walked back, I stood in the doorway that separated the kitchen from the living room, which was dark, only lit by the TV. This allowed me to see Katie frozen, staring towards the window, which was out of my direct line of sight.
Confused, I peeked my head out of the doorway and looked toward the window. I froze and dropped my glass; luckily, it landed on the carpet and didn't make much noise, and the tall, pale creature standing an inch from the window didn't notice. The creature was foul, a gaunt, lanky humanoid. Well, at least the head was humanoid; the body and limbs were almost ape-like, with long, disproportionate arms and less exaggerated legs. The creature's whole body was covered in grey skin stretched tightly over its abnormally long bones. It had no hair anywhere. Its mouth was strangely wide, stretching around to where its ears would be if it had them, and its eyes were just sunken, inky black pits in its head. But I could tell it was staring daggers at Katie, who had tears rolling down her face. She slowly turned her head to look at me, shaking and breathing quickly. I had never felt so powerless. I was supposed to protect her, and I would. I would die to protect her, but I had no idea how to shield her from whatever this thing was.
Then I had an idea. I looked to the light switch panel to my left. I knew one of them was the porch light, but there were three others: the living room light, the kitchen light, and the hall light. If I pressed the wrong light, I didn't know what the thing would do, but I had to try. I had to remember which light Katie's dad used to turn the porch light on when he goes out for a smoke.
I reached for the light second from the bottom and flicked the switch. The hall light turned on. Luckily, the hall was on the opposite side of the kitchen from where the living room was, and it was out of view for the creature at the window. But I couldn't mess up again. If the kitchen light turned on, the creature would see me, and if the living room light turned on, it might cause it to attack Katie. I looked back at the creature, which was using one of its hands to scratch the window as it sniffed around. I had to do something.
I reached for the bottom light switch and flicked it; the porch light turned on. The creature spun around to face it and let out a screech that will haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. I ran to Katie and grabbed her, dragging her off the side of the couch where there was about a metre gap between the armrest of the couch and the wall.
The sound of the window smashing filled the house, and Katie cried into my shoulder. I couldn't see anything; it was pitch darkness besides the slight blue glare from the TV on the wall above us. But I could hear raspy breathing and bones cracking as the thing searched the living room. I heard it sniffing the couch where Katie was sitting, and I heard it make its way closer to the end of the couch, one of its hands pressed on the wall above us. I saw the silhouette of its head begin to peak over the side of the couch, but suddenly the light turned on, and Katie's dad yelled as he saw us from the kitchen while he was holding a shotgun.
The creature ran at him but fell to the ground as a loud shot rang out in the night, leaving only the sound of our combined breathing and Katie's soft sobs. I watched intently as the body lying between Katie's dad and me moved around on the floor, before slamming its hand down, then the other, and pushing itself to its feet.
Katie's dad reloaded his shotgun, but it was too late. The creature grabbed the poor man by his leg and pulled it out from under him, causing him to shoot the ceiling. I grabbed Katie and dragged her upstairs as the creature began tearing into her father. She cried and screamed, begging me to help him, but what could I do? Whatever that thing was, it just took a shotgun blast to the chest and brushed it off.
I locked us in her upstairs bathroom as the creature's loud and hurried footsteps made their way towards us. Katie was crying loudly now, insisting that we were going to die. Honestly, not a super helpful contribution, but I can't blame her.
As the creature began crashing against the door, pieces of wood started to splinter off. I shoved Katie into the tub, and then lay on top of her. Hopefully, my body would be enough to shield her from this thing. Time slowed down as the door exploded inward. I looked at the girl I loved, makeup running down her face, pieces of door in her hair, mouth wide open as she let out the most ear splitting scream. For some reason, I felt no fear. Even as the monster began tearing at my clothes and clawing at my flesh, I felt strangely calm.
Eventually, the creature grabbed me, swinging me around by my hoodie, slamming me into every wall and surface in the room. I fell to the ground as the hoodie ripped off, and the creature just stared at me, then the hoodie in its hand, then back at me. I stared back, utterly confused, as it leaned over and sniffed my entire body from head to toe. It looked as puzzled as I felt for a moment before I heard Roman's car pull up outside.
The creature screeched as it sprinted out the door, slamming into the hallway wall in its haste. "NO!" I shouted, leaving my still-shaking girlfriend in the tub as I chased the monster out of the house. Somehow, I caught up to the creature and grabbed onto it, bringing it to the ground below. The thing managed to get on top of me, biting and clawing at my arms and hands as I shielded my face.
Before I knew it, Roman came out of nowhere, tackling the creature off me, yelling for me to run. The creature, sleek and deadly, wasted no time in retaliating against Roman's attack. With a primal growl, it lunged at him, its claws slicing through the air like daggers.
Roman had a size advantage that I didn't have, and managed to hold his own for a few seconds as he wrestled with the beast. He'd always been as strong as a bull for as long as I can remember, tall with powerful hands and massive arms and shoulders. But I couldn't risk watching my brother, as strong as he may be, get killed by this… whatever it is.
With strength I didn't know I had, I grabbed the back of Roman's expensive shirt and pulled him out of the way of a fatal blow to the head, throwing him towards the car before I lunged at the creature and went feral. I don't know what came over me; I started swinging on the creature as we tumbled around in the muddy grass. Just when I thought I was actually winning, the creature managed to get its legs between us and kicked me off, then swung its clawed hand at my stomach, ripping it right open.
I collapsed to the ground as my body tried to comprehend what had just happened. My eyes narrowed as everything was drowned out. I watched the silent scene play out before me, my heartbeat pounding in my head.
The creature charged at Roman, who leaped to grab his car's back door handle just as the creature snagged his foot. It yanked at his leg, but Roman clung onto his car door tightly. The creature persisted in pulling as Roman struggled to reach for something in his hiking gear stored in the back seat.
With an agonising yell, Roman's leg gave a sickening snap. Despite the pain, he finally retrieved what he was searching for. Releasing the car door, Roman watched as the creature stumbled backward. Seizing the opportunity, he swiftly climbed on top of it, brandishing his trusty hunting knife from his camping trips.
As Roman wrestled with the creature, the air was filled with grunts and snarls. He plunged the hunting knife into the creature's body, eliciting a guttural howl of pain. The creature thrashed wildly, but Roman held on grimly, his determination unwavering.
With each strike, Roman's movements became more frenzied, fueled by adrenaline and the need to protect us. The creature's attempts to retaliate grew weaker as Roman's blows found their mark. With a final decisive thrust, Roman delivered the fatal blow, and the creature slumped to the ground, defeated.
Breathing heavily, Roman collapsed beside the creature, his body trembling with exhaustion and relief. I rushed to his side, concern evident in my voice. "Natalie-" he faintly murmured.
"Who? Who's Natalie?" I asked, my confusion growing.
Suddenly, the creature jolted up, its movements abrupt and startling. Without warning, it lunged at me, seizing me by the throat and hurling me against the car.
The last thing I saw before I blacked out was the creature sprinting towards me. In that moment, I felt a strange sensation coursing through my body, as if something within me was shifting. I glanced down at my hands and watched in horror as they contorted and turned a sickly shade of grey. Long claws protruded from my fingers, their sharp edges glinting in the dim light.
As my bones cracked and deformed under the strain of this inexplicable transformation, a sudden surge of anger and ferocity overwhelmed my senses. It was as though a primal instinct had taken hold of me, consuming my entire being in its relentless grip. With each passing moment, the world around me faded into darkness until finally, I lost consciousness, my mind consumed by the terrifying reality of what I had become.
I awoke hours later in the back seat of Roman's car. The hum of the road and the whirring of the engine attempted to lull me back to sleep, but I sat up, rubbing my head as the memories flooded back. "What happened?" I asked, my voice hoarse and strained.
Roman responded with silence, a familiar reaction from him, but this time, it sent a shiver down my spine. As I looked at my arms, then my stomach, and felt around my whole body, I realised the wounds and deep gashes caused by the creature were all gone, as if I had never been attacked.
I caught Roman's gaze in the mirror, but he quickly averted his eyes. That's when I noticed Katie in the passenger seat, her tear-stained face betraying her silent anguish. It was clear she wanted to say something, but I couldn't shake the feeling that Roman had warned her against it.
"What do you know about this place?" Roman asked sternly, his voice devoid of emotion.
"We've lived here all our lives, Roman," I replied, confusion evident in my tone. "What do you mean?”
Roman pressed down on the brakes, bringing us to a sudden stop. I noticed a pained expression flit across his face in the mirror, a fleeting moment of vulnerability that he quickly tried to conceal.
"Your leg!" I exclaimed, my voice laced with concern as I recalled the events from earlier.
"It was a dislocated hip. I fixed it," he replied bluntly, his tone revealing little about the ordeal he must have endured.
"This isn't real, Jason. None of this is real. You are not real!" Roman's voice was sharp, refusing to meet my eyes in the reflection.
"Back at Katie's house, I remembered everything the moment I looked into that creature's eyes. I remembered... I remembered Natalie," he said, his words catching in his throat, revealing the first hint of emotion I'd seen from him.
I watched as a tear rolled down Katie's face. I reached to put a hand on her shoulder but stopped myself.
"Roman got me to remember," Katie said, her voice trembling. "I remembered the emergency alert, and when those things broke down our doors. I watched as they dragged my parents out, then my baby brother, then me. I woke up in this fake world, in a family that isn't even mine, dating a boy who turns out to be one of the monsters who brought me here." She spluttered, and I began to cry silently as I realised what she was saying.
Roman eventually started driving again, occasionally getting a call from Morgan, but after the fifth call he threw his phone out the window. We drove until I fell asleep. I don't remember what I dreamed about, but it was peaceful. I think I was in that forest with Roman. We were children again, playing around in the trees, finding cool sticks and exploring the endless expanse of what felt like a fairytale, which I guess it was.
I was awoken by the abrupt sound of Roman's car door slamming. I looked outside and saw that it was daytime again. Trying to figure out where we had stopped, I noticed a giant sign that said “Library.” I hopped out of the car and jogged to catch up to Roman and Katie.
“What are we doing here?” I asked, clearly still being avoided. It was understandable, but it still hurt.
“I need to wake everyone up,” Roman said as we walked in and approached a computer.
I noticed we were getting odd stares from everyone as we walked by, which is when I also noticed that I looked like I had just come out the other side of a paper shredder. My clothes were all torn up with bits missing, apparently not possessing the magic healing ability that I do. The sound of Roman typing snapped me out of my self-conscious thoughts and redirected me to the computer screen.
"I'm going to be a while, guys," Roman said as he began writing out his story. "I need to tell the whole thing from the beginning. Go find a book or something.”
I looked over to Katie, her face void of expression, but a great sadness filled her now dry eyes, having cried all the tears she had. “Why don't you just wake up?” I asked, probably coming across as more insensitive than I intended.
“I've got nothing to go back to. Roman told me what the world is like back there. If my family is here, I have to find them and wake them up first,” she responded, finally meeting my eye.
I wanted to hug her so bad, but I knew she didn't love me anymore. She probably had a real boyfriend in the real world.
Hours went by as Katie and I found a place to sit and wait in silence, watching Roman. He looked funny in the little library chair, hunched over the computer. Such a big guy looked out of place here, his muscular presence overpowering that of the rest of the library's patrons, who were all either very old or very young.
I hate to admit I fell asleep, but I'm just telling the story how it was. I was awoken suddenly by sirens and shouts. “We have got you surrounded, come out with your hands up or we will come in and show you no mercy,” a man's voice yelled from outside through a speaker. I looked over to Roman, who was limping over to us as all the customers flooded out the exits.
“Get up, we need to leave. They've turned the law against us,” Roman ordered. Katie and I listened and followed him.
We made our way upstairs into the empty employee lounge, and Roman opened a window... with his elbow. “They've got every exit covered but this one. We need to jump,” he calmly told us. He stood up in the window frame, kicked off some of the remaining glass with his boots, and jumped to the roof of the single-story building below, wincing in pain as he landed on his bad leg.
That's when six armed officers kicked down the door and opened fire on Katie and me. I moved to block the bullets from hitting Katie, taking several hits to the head and back. I then pushed Katie through the window, and Roman caught her before I jumped out myself and followed.
We ran from rooftop to rooftop until we reached a ladder that led down into an alleyway, where we attempted to catch our breaths. Roman and Katie watched me intently as the bullets lodged in my body began to work their way back out, the wounds closing up after. My skin color shifted a little, and I felt a rattle leave my throat as a cold sweat came over me.
“Hey, control yourself,” Roman told me sternly. I nodded, struggling to remain composed.
“Did you finish the story?” Katie asked Roman.
“Yeah, I kind of had to rush the last part, but I got the message across,” he replied, slumping to the ground behind a dumpster, exhausted.
“What now?” I asked.
Roman looked at me, panting. “I'm gonna help Katie find her family, then I'm going back to Natalie,” he said between heavy breaths.
“What about Morgan?” I questioned, causing him to look down at his feet. “I don't even know her in the real world, and I would never have chosen to be with her. This place… it's like it wrote me a life that was least likely to let me remember who I am. The girl I'm engaged to is the complete opposite of Natalie. I've got a brother who lives with me, my parents are dead. There's literally nothing here to remind me of home, bro,” Roman said, shedding a couple of tears.
We waited in the alley until night, hearing sirens go back and forth every now and then. When Roman said we were in the clear, we made our way back to the car and started driving again. I noticed Roman's eyes fluttering after about an hour, and I told him I'd be happy to drive if he needed to sleep. I could tell that his ego didn't want to admit he was exhausted, and he also still didn't trust me, but he gave in and pulled over, falling asleep in the back seat as I drove off into the night.

"A family is left in mourning as twenty-one-year-old Natalie Rose was found dead over the weekend," the TV blared into the room, "seemingly attacked by some sort of wild animal as she sat in her tent on what was meant to be a relaxing camping trip alone. Natalie's parents have requested privacy at this time, but they appreciate the condolences they have received. In other news-" Roman grabbed the remote from me and shut off the TV.
"Hey, I was watching that!" I said as I flipped him off from across the room. "Bullshit, you're on your phone," he chuckled, fixing his hair up in the mirror. "Okay, well, I was listening. I like to have background noise, dickhead," I replied, watching him in the reflection, his focus clearly not on this important conversation.
"Where are you going all dressed up?" I interrogated him. "Morgan and I are having our engagement party, but we've got to be there early to sort out seating."
"You're having your engagement party and you didn't invite your own brother?" I questioned him, offended at the audacity this man had. "I did invite you, dipshit. You told me you had a date with Katie tonight."
The realisation hit me like a punch to the gut. I'd completely forgotten about my movie date with Katie. With a surge of panic, I leaped from my seat, heart pounding, and scrambled to get dressed. Every second felt like an eternity as I cursed my forgetfulness. Then, I heard Roman's car start outside. Without a second thought, I sprinted out the door and down the driveway. Knocking on his window, I pleaded for a ride.
The soft hum of the road and the whirring of the engine filled the car as we silently moved through the night. Staring out the window at the blur of trees, I thought about how I would apologise to Katie. Roman reached for the radio, and a Trace Adkins song began playing. Seeing this as the perfect time to start a conversation, I spoke up, "So, are Katie and I coming to the wedding?" I asked, grinning. Roman let out a deep sigh as he turned off the music. "If Katie doesn't plan a date night on the same day, then yes," he replied.
Silence filled the car as we drove along the empty road. The vast woods surrounding us created an eerie atmosphere, intensified by the winter darkness cloaking the night sky above. Yet, for Roman and me, who had grown up in this land, these woods evoked nostalgic memories of our childhood adventures. While for others, it might be an unsettling glimpse into the barrier separating civilization from the unknown, for us, it was a comforting window back into our past.
When Roman bought the land we had grown up on after our parents passed, I was probably more excited than I should've been, considering I had just lost my mum and dad in a tragic carbon monoxide leak. But my relief at not having to leave this place was immense.
We eventually reached an area where the city lights were visible in the distance. I noticed Roman yawn as he adjusted his grip on the wheel. "You're gonna have to tell me where to go, I can't remember where Katie lives," he stated as he changed gears and prepared to enter the busy traffic, a stark contrast to the remote rural road we were about to vacate.
“Just take a left up h-" I began, but was interrupted as a white blur ran in front of the car, causing Roman to slam on the brakes and swerve. I grabbed onto the side of the door as we spun out of control, the screeching of the tires filling my ears, jolting me out of the relaxed state I had been in due to the many miles of quiet driving.
We eventually came to a stop, now facing the opposite direction, gazing down the endless stretch of desolate road we had just traversed. Roman calmly checked all his mirrors for whatever he nearly hit but failed to see anything through the dust he had stirred up in the spinout.
“You all good?” he asked, a relieved smile creeping up his face, a deep breath escaping his lungs.
“Yeah, what was that?” I asked as Roman started reversing, then turned the car back towards the busy city street about a kilometre away and began driving. I looked over to him, expecting an answer to my question, but didn't receive one. His brow was furrowed in an uncertain expression, clearly lost in thought, like he was trying to remember if he locked the front door.
“Roman?” I said, causing him to blink a couple of times.
“I don't know what it was," Roman answered, not breaking his intense stare at the asphalt in front of us as we drove along, approaching the main road. “Probably just a sheep, there's a few acres of farmland behind these trees,” he continued.
As we approached the intersection, Roman flicked his left indicator on before turning onto the main road. “Okay, now take the next right,” I said, feeling the weird atmosphere in the vehicle slowly dissipating. After a few more turns, Roman said that he knew the way from here and turned the radio back on, which cut the remaining tension that I could tell we were both feeling.
The chilly winter night was starting to bite at my skin, and I cursed myself for forgetting a jacket in my hurry. I swivelled my head around to see the backseat. “What are you looking for?” Roman asked, finally looking in my direction as he turned the music down slightly.
“Uh, do you have a jacket I can borrow? I didn't realise it was gonna be this cold,” I sheepishly admitted.
“Hold the wheel,” Roman told me as he reached around behind him, shifting around his hiking gear that he hadn't taken out since his camping trip with Morgan last month.
Eventually, he pulled out his gym hoodie and threw it on my lap. “This is all I got,” he grunted as he readjusted himself in his seat and took hold of the steering wheel again. When we pulled into Katie's driveway, I pulled the hoodie over my head and hopped out of the car into the brisk night air, my breath visible in the cold. “I'll pick you up around 11:30.” Roman shouted out the window as I pulled the hoodie the rest of the way down and waved to Roman as he drove away, beeping his horn as he left me in the chilling winter breeze.
I knocked on the door, checking the time to see that it was 7:37, only a few minutes late. As I waited in the dark, a surprisingly chipper Katie opened the door, hugging me and dragging me inside. “You didn't miss much,” she whispered as we stumbled through the house that had all of its lights off. “Why do you smell like your brother?” she asked, shooting me a dirty look before grabbing a handful of the hoodie and sniffing it. All I could do was shrug and grin, “I forgot how cold it gets in the winter time, he let me borrow it.” She rolled her eyes, and we sat down next to a bunch of her friends and her parents, who all whispered their hellos in the soft glow of the TV.
Around 11:18 pm when the movie was long since finished, Katie's parents said goodnight and headed off to bed, and a few of Katie's friends who had been visiting said goodbye and drove home. I got up to get some water from the kitchen, and as I walked back, I stood in the doorway that separated the kitchen from the living room, which was dark, only lit by the TV. This allowed me to see Katie frozen, staring towards the window, which was out of my direct line of sight.
Confused, I peeked my head out of the doorway and looked toward the window. I froze and dropped my glass; luckily, it landed on the carpet and didn't make much noise, and the tall, pale creature standing an inch from the window didn't notice. The creature was foul, a gaunt, lanky humanoid. Well, at least the head was humanoid; the body and limbs were almost ape-like, with long, disproportionate arms and less exaggerated legs. The creature's whole body was covered in grey skin stretched tightly over its abnormally long bones. It had no hair anywhere. Its mouth was strangely wide, stretching around to where its ears would be if it had them, and its eyes were just sunken, inky black pits in its head. But I could tell it was staring daggers at Katie, who had tears rolling down her face. She slowly turned her head to look at me, shaking and breathing quickly. I had never felt so powerless. I was supposed to protect her, and I would. I would die to protect her, but I had no idea how to shield her from whatever this thing was.
Then I had an idea. I looked to the light switch panel to my left. I knew one of them was the porch light, but there were three others: the living room light, the kitchen light, and the hall light. If I pressed the wrong light, I didn't know what the thing would do, but I had to try. I had to remember which light Katie's dad used to turn the porch light on when he goes out for a smoke.
I reached for the light second from the bottom and flicked the switch. The hall light turned on. Luckily, the hall was on the opposite side of the kitchen from where the living room was, and it was out of view for the creature at the window. But I couldn't mess up again. If the kitchen light turned on, the creature would see me, and if the living room light turned on, it might cause it to attack Katie. I looked back at the creature, which was using one of its hands to scratch the window as it sniffed around. I had to do something.
I reached for the bottom light switch and flicked it; the porch light turned on. The creature spun around to face it and let out a screech that will haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. I ran to Katie and grabbed her, dragging her off the side of the couch where there was about a metre gap between the armrest of the couch and the wall.
The sound of the window smashing filled the house, and Katie cried into my shoulder. I couldn't see anything; it was pitch darkness besides the slight blue glare from the TV on the wall above us. But I could hear raspy breathing and bones cracking as the thing searched the living room. I heard it sniffing the couch where Katie was sitting, and I heard it make its way closer to the end of the couch, one of its hands pressed on the wall above us. I saw the silhouette of its head begin to peak over the side of the couch, but suddenly the light turned on, and Katie's dad yelled as he saw us from the kitchen while he was holding a shotgun.
The creature ran at him but fell to the ground as a loud shot rang out in the night, leaving only the sound of our combined breathing and Katie's soft sobs. I watched intently as the body lying between Katie's dad and me moved around on the floor, before slamming its hand down, then the other, and pushing itself to its feet.
Katie's dad reloaded his shotgun, but it was too late. The creature grabbed the poor man by his leg and pulled it out from under him, causing him to shoot the ceiling. I grabbed Katie and dragged her upstairs as the creature began tearing into her father. She cried and screamed, begging me to help him, but what could I do? Whatever that thing was, it just took a shotgun blast to the chest and brushed it off.
I locked us in her upstairs bathroom as the creature's loud and hurried footsteps made their way towards us. Katie was crying loudly now, insisting that we were going to die. Honestly, not a super helpful contribution, but I can't blame her.
As the creature began crashing against the door, pieces of wood started to splinter off. I shoved Katie into the tub, and then lay on top of her. Hopefully, my body would be enough to shield her from this thing. Time slowed down as the door exploded inward. I looked at the girl I loved, makeup running down her face, pieces of door in her hair, mouth wide open as she let out the most ear splitting scream. For some reason, I felt no fear. Even as the monster began tearing at my clothes and clawing at my flesh, I felt strangely calm.
Eventually, the creature grabbed me, swinging me around by my hoodie, slamming me into every wall and surface in the room. I fell to the ground as the hoodie ripped off, and the creature just stared at me, then the hoodie in its hand, then back at me. I stared back, utterly confused, as it leaned over and sniffed my entire body from head to toe. It looked as puzzled as I felt for a moment before I heard Roman's car pull up outside.
The creature screeched as it sprinted out the door, slamming into the hallway wall in its haste. "NO!" I shouted, leaving my still-shaking girlfriend in the tub as I chased the monster out of the house. Somehow, I caught up to the creature and grabbed onto it, bringing it to the ground below. The thing managed to get on top of me, biting and clawing at my arms and hands as I shielded my face.
Before I knew it, Roman came out of nowhere, tackling the creature off me, yelling for me to run. The creature, sleek and deadly, wasted no time in retaliating against Roman's attack. With a primal growl, it lunged at him, its claws slicing through the air like daggers.
Roman had a size advantage that I didn't have, and managed to hold his own for a few seconds as he wrestled with the beast. He'd always been as strong as a bull for as long as I can remember, tall with powerful hands and massive arms and shoulders. But I couldn't risk watching my brother, as strong as he may be, get killed by this… whatever it is.
With strength I didn't know I had, I grabbed the back of Roman's expensive shirt and pulled him out of the way of a fatal blow to the head, throwing him towards the car before I lunged at the creature and went feral. I don't know what came over me; I started swinging on the creature as we tumbled around in the muddy grass. Just when I thought I was actually winning, the creature managed to get its legs between us and kicked me off, then swung its clawed hand at my stomach, ripping it right open.
I collapsed to the ground as my body tried to comprehend what had just happened. My eyes narrowed as everything was drowned out. I watched the silent scene play out before me, my heartbeat pounding in my head.
The creature charged at Roman, who leaped to grab his car's back door handle just as the creature snagged his foot. It yanked at his leg, but Roman clung onto his car door tightly. The creature persisted in pulling as Roman struggled to reach for something in his hiking gear stored in the back seat.
With an agonising yell, Roman's leg gave a sickening snap. Despite the pain, he finally retrieved what he was searching for. Releasing the car door, Roman watched as the creature stumbled backward. Seizing the opportunity, he swiftly climbed on top of it, brandishing his trusty hunting knife from his camping trips.
As Roman wrestled with the creature, the air was filled with grunts and snarls. He plunged the hunting knife into the creature's body, eliciting a guttural howl of pain. The creature thrashed wildly, but Roman held on grimly, his determination unwavering.
With each strike, Roman's movements became more frenzied, fueled by adrenaline and the need to protect us. The creature's attempts to retaliate grew weaker as Roman's blows found their mark. With a final decisive thrust, Roman delivered the fatal blow, and the creature slumped to the ground, defeated.
Breathing heavily, Roman collapsed beside the creature, his body trembling with exhaustion and relief. I rushed to his side, concern evident in my voice. "Natalie-" he faintly murmured.
"Who? Who's Natalie?" I asked, my confusion growing.
Suddenly, the creature jolted up, its movements abrupt and startling. Without warning, it lunged at me, seizing me by the throat and hurling me against the car.
The last thing I saw before I blacked out was the creature sprinting towards me. In that moment, I felt a strange sensation coursing through my body, as if something within me was shifting. I glanced down at my hands and watched in horror as they contorted and turned a sickly shade of grey. Long claws protruded from my fingers, their sharp edges glinting in the dim light.
As my bones cracked and deformed under the strain of this inexplicable transformation, a sudden surge of anger and ferocity overwhelmed my senses. It was as though a primal instinct had taken hold of me, consuming my entire being in its relentless grip. With each passing moment, the world around me faded into darkness until finally, I lost consciousness, my mind consumed by the terrifying reality of what I had become.
I awoke hours later in the back seat of Roman's car. The hum of the road and the whirring of the engine attempted to lull me back to sleep, but I sat up, rubbing my head as the memories flooded back. "What happened?" I asked, my voice hoarse and strained.
Roman responded with silence, a familiar reaction from him, but this time, it sent a shiver down my spine. As I looked at my arms, then my stomach, and felt around my whole body, I realised the wounds and deep gashes caused by the creature were all gone, as if I had never been attacked.
I caught Roman's gaze in the mirror, but he quickly averted his eyes. That's when I noticed Katie in the passenger seat, her tear-stained face betraying her silent anguish. It was clear she wanted to say something, but I couldn't shake the feeling that Roman had warned her against it.
"What do you know about this place?" Roman asked sternly, his voice devoid of emotion.
"We've lived here all our lives, Roman," I replied, confusion evident in my tone. "What do you mean?”
Roman pressed down on the brakes, bringing us to a sudden stop. I noticed a pained expression flit across his face in the mirror, a fleeting moment of vulnerability that he quickly tried to conceal.
"Your leg!" I exclaimed, my voice laced with concern as I recalled the events from earlier.
"It was a dislocated hip. I fixed it," he replied bluntly, his tone revealing little about the ordeal he must have endured.
"This isn't real, Jason. None of this is real. You are not real!" Roman's voice was sharp, refusing to meet my eyes in the reflection.
"Back at Katie's house, I remembered everything the moment I looked into that creature's eyes. I remembered... I remembered Natalie," he said, his words catching in his throat, revealing the first hint of emotion I'd seen from him.
I watched as a tear rolled down Katie's face. I reached to put a hand on her shoulder but stopped myself.
"Roman got me to remember," Katie said, her voice trembling. "I remembered the emergency alert, and when those things broke down our doors. I watched as they dragged my parents out, then my baby brother, then me. I woke up in this fake world, in a family that isn't even mine, dating a boy who turns out to be one of the monsters who brought me here." She spluttered, and I began to cry silently as I realised what she was saying.
Roman eventually started driving again, occasionally getting a call from Morgan, but after the fifth call he threw his phone out the window. We drove until I fell asleep. I don't remember what I dreamed about, but it was peaceful. I think I was in that forest with Roman. We were children again, playing around in the trees, finding cool sticks and exploring the endless expanse of what felt like a fairytale, which I guess it was.
I was awoken by the abrupt sound of Roman's car door slamming. I looked outside and saw that it was daytime again. Trying to figure out where we had stopped, I noticed a giant sign that said “Library.” I hopped out of the car and jogged to catch up to Roman and Katie.
“What are we doing here?” I asked, clearly still being avoided. It was understandable, but it still hurt.
“I need to wake everyone up,” Roman said as we walked in and approached a computer.
I noticed we were getting odd stares from everyone as we walked by, which is when I also noticed that I looked like I had just come out the other side of a paper shredder. My clothes were all torn up with bits missing, apparently not possessing the magic healing ability that I do. The sound of Roman typing snapped me out of my self-conscious thoughts and redirected me to the computer screen.
"I'm going to be a while, guys," Roman said as he began writing out his story. "I need to tell the whole thing from the beginning. Go find a book or something.”
I looked over to Katie, her face void of expression, but a great sadness filled her now dry eyes, having cried all the tears she had. “Why don't you just wake up?” I asked, probably coming across as more insensitive than I intended.
“I've got nothing to go back to. Roman told me what the world is like back there. If my family is here, I have to find them and wake them up first,” she responded, finally meeting my eye.
I wanted to hug her so bad, but I knew she didn't love me anymore. She probably had a real boyfriend in the real world.
Hours went by as Katie and I found a place to sit and wait in silence, watching Roman. He looked funny in the little library chair, hunched over the computer. Such a big guy looked out of place here, his muscular presence overpowering that of the rest of the library's patrons, who were all either very old or very young.
I hate to admit I fell asleep, but I'm just telling the story how it was. I was awoken suddenly by sirens and shouts. “We have got you surrounded, come out with your hands up or we will come in and show you no mercy,” a man's voice yelled from outside through a speaker. I looked over to Roman, who was limping over to us as all the customers flooded out the exits.
“Get up, we need to leave. They've turned the law against us,” Roman ordered. Katie and I listened and followed him.
We made our way upstairs into the empty employee lounge, and Roman opened a window... with his elbow. “They've got every exit covered but this one. We need to jump,” he calmly told us. He stood up in the window frame, kicked off some of the remaining glass with his boots, and jumped to the roof of the single-story building below, wincing in pain as he landed on his bad leg.
That's when six armed officers kicked down the door and opened fire on Katie and me. I moved to block the bullets from hitting Katie, taking several hits to the head and back. I then pushed Katie through the window, and Roman caught her before I jumped out myself and followed.
We ran from rooftop to rooftop until we reached a ladder that led down into an alleyway, where we attempted to catch our breaths. Roman and Katie watched me intently as the bullets lodged in my body began to work their way back out, the wounds closing up after. My skin color shifted a little, and I felt a rattle leave my throat as a cold sweat came over me.
“Hey, control yourself,” Roman told me sternly. I nodded, struggling to remain composed.
“Did you finish the story?” Katie asked Roman.
“Yeah, I kind of had to rush the last part, but I got the message across,” he replied, slumping to the ground behind a dumpster, exhausted.
“What now?” I asked.
Roman looked at me, panting. “I'm gonna help Katie find her family, then I'm going back to Natalie,” he said between heavy breaths.
“What about Morgan?” I questioned, causing him to look down at his feet. “I don't even know her in the real world, and I would never have chosen to be with her. This place… it's like it wrote me a life that was least likely to let me remember who I am. The girl I'm engaged to is the complete opposite of Natalie. I've got a brother who lives with me, my parents are dead. There's literally nothing here to remind me of home, bro,” Roman said, shedding a couple of tears.
We waited in the alley until night, hearing sirens go back and forth every now and then. When Roman said we were in the clear, we made our way back to the car and started driving again. I noticed Roman's eyes fluttering after about an hour, and I told him I'd be happy to drive if he needed to sleep. I could tell that his ego didn't want to admit he was exhausted, and he also still didn't trust me, but he gave in and pulled over, falling asleep in the back seat as I drove off into the night.

I am STILL NOT the Original Poster. That is u/ta-bff-234324. He posted in AITAH and amiwrong but posted the same text in both subreddits. I chose to use the ones from AITAH
Thanks again to u/Literally_Taken for the rec and to Choice Evidence and u/chickenoodledeprived for letting me know about the update!
Previous BORU here. New update marked with ****\*
Trigger Warning: racism
Mood Spoiler: tentatively happy ending
Original Post: April 1, 2024
My (29M) best friend Jess (29F) keeps on mentioning my ex (29F) in front of my fiancee, and I am thinking of cutting her off. I want to know if I am overreacting, or if Jess is in the wrong.
For context, Jess and I went to the same high school and the same college. We were friends in high school. However, since we both went to the same out-of-state college, we became best friends since then. We have always been there for each other during the best and worst times. However, things have always been platonic, and she is more like a big sister to me, who made sure I stay on the right track.
I have only been in two long-term relationships so far. One was with my ex Lisa for 7 years. We met in college and dated all through our college years. Lisa and Jess also became good friends, too. After college, Lisa and I just grew apart and had different goals in life. I became "boring" after college as I was working on my PhD while doing a full time job. Lisa broke up with me as she wanted to party on weekends, while I was home studying. I was heartbroken, but I don't think I ever blamed her or had resentment towards her, as I understood my decisions were selfish and should not hold her back from having the best life.
Jess always stood by me and comforted me during that time. Jess and Lisa were good friends and Jess always kept on telling me that Lisa loves me and will be back one day when I am ready. I foolishly held on to that hope and stayed friends with Lisa. That was until I met my fiancee Yang. After I finished my PhD, I got a nice job in a big tech company. Yang joined our team a year after me. We started going out for drinks, and dinner and we started dating seriously pretty soon. We are happy together, and financially in a great place. Needless to say, I stopped talking to Lisa after I started dating Yang.
I proposed to Yang a year after we started dating and got engaged last year. Jess has been acting weirdly since we got engaged. One of the first things she said to Yang after we got engaged was how I had planned the same thing for Lisa (proposing on a local hiking trail). It was a bit off-putting that she was bringing up Lisa whom I broke up with almost 5 years ago on such a happy occasion. However, Yang asked me to not spoil my mood, as she felt Jess was just commenting on how I had that plan in mind for years. Since then, every time we meet, Jess without fail brings up Lisa and how the things I am doing are all the things I had planned with Lisa. This happened when we bought a house, planned for vacations, etc. Jess always starts with some nostalgic story and then brings up how Lisa and I were so happy together. She is still good friends with Lisa and keeps giving me updates about Lisa and how great Lisa is doing at work when no one is asking for it. It felt like she was painting a rosy picture of Lisa to Yang and telling Yang that she would always be second to Lisa.
Yang told me Jess's comments bothered her, and I also felt the same. I have brought this up with Jess many times and asked her not to do it. However, she says she will try but since I dated Lisa for 7 years, she would be part of many stories from the past. Also, she asked me why talking about Lisa bothers me and if I still have feelings for her. I have reduced hanging out with Jess. However, she is close with my mom and is always invited to all our family parties and holidays.
I talked to my mom and sister about this and they feel I am overreacting. They feel Jess is just telling stories and since the stories are mostly from college days and later, Lisa will be a character in the story. They also feel I should not be bothered by Jess mentioning Lisa since we broke up a long time ago. I feel that it's disrespectful to Yang as she doesn't need to hear about all the fun Lisa and I had when we were together and how we were planning to get married. Do you think I am the asshole to stop here or Jess is truly acting out of line?
Relevant Comments:
Commenter: Probably need to separate your time with your fiancé away from your friend. ... On a side note, your friend comes across poorly on one other aspect. When you were too busy to date so you could study. She is encouraging you to stay available while your ex goes about dating around? Think she ever encouraged your ex to not? Or do you think she was telling your ex she could have all the fun she wanted cause you'd still be around? Food for thought.

OOP: She thought we were 24 when we broke up and she always justified that Lisa was young and it's natural to date around before you settle down. She also encouraged me to do the same. However, after my breakup, I decided that I would not be in a relationship (based on what happened to the previous one) and never dated anyone until after I graduated.

Commenter: Not wrong, in fact it's thoughtful of your finace's feelings. " Jess always kept on telling me that Lisa loves me and will be back one day when I am ready." - yikes.
An easy: "Jess, you keep bringing up my ex, and keep making comments which are dismissive of my relationship with Yang. I am telling you point blank that this is harming our friendship and it saddens me that you dismiss my feelings as being unimportant on this topic. If you can't respect me, and my relationship with Yang, please understand why it will likely end our friendship."

OOP: We have had this exact conversation. Jess then proceeded to ask Yang is she offended by her telling stories about me. Yang was polite and said she is ok. Then she told me I am being too sensitive.

Commenter: Op do you know if Lisa is married? Maybe Jess is trying to sabotage your engagement so you can be with Lisa.

OOP: I know Lisa is single. She has not been in any serious long term relationship after me. Infant, Jess always makes it a point to bring that up regularly and update me, even after I tell her I have no interest. My mom loves gossip and they also discuss a out Lisa regularly.

Jess is just being a mean girl/have you talked to Lisa at all?
At this point, I suspect Jess is just being mean to Yang. I would have cut her off long ago if she was not so close to me or my family for so many years.
Lisa is out of the picture, to be honest. I have completely gone no contact with her for the last 2 years.
Jess has feelings for you:
That's not true. I did not write it since I thought it was irrelevant, but Jess is happily married and has a 3 year old kid.
There is no consensus bot on AITAH, but top comments were NTA
Update Post: April 23, 2024 (22 days later)
I wrote a post a month ago regarding my friend Jess mentioning my ex constantly in front of my fiancée. Thanks to everyone who commented, and how inappropriate it was. However, the last month has been nothing but crazy and I still trying to make sense of what happened so far.
After my post, I decided to talk to Jess and gave her an ultimatum not to speak about my ex Lisa again. I know Jess and Lisa are still friends, but I was uncomfortable of her comparing my fiancée Yang with Lisa all the time. I broke up with Lisa 5 years ago, and she is nothing but a faint memory in my past. Jess kept on defending herself and telling me that I was with Lisa for most of my adult life and it's hard to tell any stories from the past without including her. She also blamed me for being emotionally childish and just forgetting about Lisa when she was with me for 7 years. Finally, Jess agreed that she will not bring up Lisa in front of Yang, and I should also not treat Lisa as she does not exist since she is still Jess's friend. I informed Yang about our conversation. Although she was appreciative about it, she said I did not need to do it and she knows how much I love her and every time Jess brings up my Lisa, she feels sorry for Lisa that she let a guy like me go.
Yang went to visit China two weeks ago for a month as we plan to get married in her hometown. She is taking care of her shopping as well as preparations for the wedding. Jess invited me to her house that Friday for dinner as I was home alone. I am also good friends with her husband, and we were all just chatting and drinking in the living room. Around 7.30pm, the doorbell rang, and Jess excitedly went to open the door. To my surprise, it was fucking Lisa at the door. She was all dressed up as if she were ready for a date and came in. I had not seen her in person for almost 3 years and I was shocked to see her. She sat down and started making small talk with me. I was extremely uncomfortable and went into the kitchen to talk to Jess. I was angry at her and asked her what was going on. She kept on telling me that it's been 5 years since the breakup and to get over it and be nice to Lisa. She said Lisa was excited to meet me and she thought we were all adults and could have one fun evening together. We had a fight and I told her that she should not have invited Lisa after our conversation the other day and I do not want to be friends with her anymore. I went into the living room and politely excused myself and told everyone that I had a work emergency and had to leave early. Lisa looked sad, but I genuinely felt uncomfortable to be made to hang out with my ex without my consent.
I came home and called Yang. I have never seen her more furious, and she told me she is not comfortable with Jess anymore as she has some agenda that we do not know about. It's different to talk about Lisa, but to invite her without consulting is not ok. I also felt the same and I called Jess the next day and told her that she crossed a line, and I was terribly upset with her. I stopped taking her calls and ghosted her. I also told my mom and sister about the whole incident.
Last Sunday, my mom called me for lunch. When I got there, I saw Jess was already there. I told my mom that I do not want to talk to Jess and can't stay. However, she asked me to sit as they all wanted to talk to me. I have a glutton for punishment and decided to hear them out. My mom started with how Jess has been there for me all these years and only has my best interest at heart. She kept on telling me that they are the three people (mom, sister, and Jess) that love me the most. Jess started saying how she felt that I was making a big mistake in not having to hear what Lisa had to say. She told me that Lisa was my first love and Lisa is now ready to settle down and we can pick where we left off. She reminded me how broken I was when Lisa left me and how life is giving me a second chance. My sister also chimed in and said how they all liked Lisa more than Yang and how we both looked so great together. Finally, my mom started saying how our culture was so different than Yang and it is hard for them to relate to her. I asked them in what way, and my mom said that they did not understand what Yang says sometimes and have nothing in common with her. Then my mom asked me to think about how Lisa and I would have such wonderful looking kids, while if I marry Yang, our kids will look so different. I started getting their drift and I probed more. My mom told me how our kids would look Asian with "small eyes" and not like any others in the family.
I asked my mom if she cared about my kids looks more and not about how smart they will be since Yang has a PhD. She blew it off, and I realized she just did not want me to marry Yang because she was Chinese and not white. My mom told me to forgive Jess and my mom asked Jess to talk to Lisa on my behalf and asked her if she would be interested in getting back together with me. My mom was adamant that since I loved Lisa so much, I should be happy and pick up things where we left off as that is the best for everyone. I have never been so angry and may have said a lot of unkind things to all of them before I left
I am so depressed right now. I not only lost my best friend, but also am not sure how I can move on from what my mom said. My mom and sister raised me and that is the reason where I am today. However, I cannot get over how racist they are being and how they were just pretending to like Yang all these years while actively working on breaking us up. I have been so shocked that I have not told any of this to Yang so far. I might wait for her to come back next week and talk to her in person.
Again, thanks everyone for all your messages on the last post as they helped me a lot to think through the situation. My life is more fucked up than I could imagine, and I cannot imagine how dejected Yang will feel after hearing all this.
*****New Update Post: May 7, 2024 (5 weeks after OG post)****\*
I wrote a post two months ago regarding my best friend Jess constantly bringing up my ex when talking to my fiancée Yang. I wrote an update two weeks ago about my mom, sister and Jess scheming about trying to get me back with my ex Lisa because they were uncomfortable with Yang being Chinese. They tried to do it when my fiancée was visiting her parents and I felt so betrayed by their actions.
As I said in the previous post, I blew up on my mom and sister about what they said and immediately left. I did not take calls from them or answer texts for the next several days. Their messages initially were anger towards me on why I left before they could finish what they wanted to say. However, I think they realized on day 3 that they might have crossed the line this time and became extremely apologetic. I finally messaged them to leave me alone and not to contact Yang or I until we contact them. Jess did not message me the whole time.
I did not tell Yang about the situation until she came back home 9 days ago. I initially did not know how to bring up the subject, but she sensed something was wrong and asked me about it. I was so worried about hurting her, but I told her about what happened. I was upfront about the stunt Jess pulled and she was angry at Jess. I also told her about my visit to my mother's place, but she did not react with any anger. She just asked me if I was ok.
The next few days were confusing where I was more upset than Yang. She was just excited showing me all pictures and telling me stories. Finally, on last Thursday evening, she opened up and asked me if I was ok about my mom's behavior and what I plan to do. I told her my thoughts and how I cannot forgive them for what they said about her being Asian and them wanting me to marry a Lisa because she was white. I asked her why she was not more upset as it was bothering me.
She told me that when she told her parents about me, they had the exact same reaction for her dating someone who was not Chinese. Her family is very traditional, and her parents were very upset about her decision. It took them a few months to warm up to me and accept me. She never told me about this because she wanted me to have good relationship with her parents. She told me that now they are the most excited doing arrangements for our wedding.
She told me that she has always felt something was off when she talked to my mom, my sister or Jess and they did not like her. My mom and sister would be very friendly with her in front of me, but never invited her for anything when I am not around. She suspected that it may be due to fact that she is not white and does not understand the American traditions. She said she is not upset with them and now that this is in the open, she should talk to them and assure them that she would be as good of a wife as Lisa or any other girl. She said that she does not want to break a family in order to start a new one.
Despite my protests, Yang invited my mom and sister for lunch on Sunday. She said that it would be good for us to talk about everything and hear why they are concerned about her marrying me. I was really not happy with this, but Yang spent most of Sunday morning cooking for them.
When my mom and sister arrived, there were a lot of waterworks and apologies. My mom apologized to Yang and me for her behavior and told us that she would never bring it up again. My sister also was quiet and had tears in her eyes. There were a lot of blame games. My mom and my sister were blaming Jess for constantly telling them how Yang might not be great for me and how she won't fit into our family. My mom and sister fought with Jess after I left and Jess blamed Lisa. Based on Jess's story, Lisa has been depressed for the last few years and when I suddenly got engaged to Yang, it became worse. Jess thought I was also depressed after Lisa left me, because I did not date anyone for 3 years. In reality, I just wanted to focus on my work and studies and never had time. So, Lisa convinced Jess that she has to get back together with me as that is what I wanted too. Jess said how sorry she felt for Lisa as she was her longtime friend and listened to her plan as she thought it was good for everyone.
My mom and sister told us that I should stay away from Jess because she orchestrated the whole situation. They kept on hugging Yang and apologizing to her. Yang in turn also started crying and telling them that she will do better to fit in with them. It was all a big mess. I am still skeptical of my mom's change in heart, but I also want to see Yang happy. However, I think it will take a lot of time and healing before I could truly trust my mom and sister.
Currently, my mom invited us to lunch at her place next week and told me that Jess will not be there. Jess has still not message me or Yang. I really don't know what I can do in this situation. I am still upset and furious at my mom, but I also want to respect Yang's effort to keep the family together. Thanks to everyone for all the messages and supportive comments. It really helped reading them when I was feeling very sad.

I’ve been dating a spiritual narcissist and feel hopeless
I feel like I have no voice. If I ever try to speak up, he will diminish what I say, dismiss what I say, and or gas light me. The worst of it all, he had a whole secret life - another partner of 9 years. She is living in Belize. He doesn’t take any accountability or responsibility for cheating or lying. He doesn’t see it this way. We have been together almost a year. I feel trapped. I’m out here on a ranch with him, and I’m on the other side of it crying. I just want to get back home. I want to get all of my things and go… he is just awful. I asked him for help with something so I could get a credit line, and he told me that absolutely I shouldn’t have any credit line. I said what about emergencies? I have no money… he told me well how will you pay it every month. I said it was only 500 credit line, I don’t think it will be that big of a deal, except for that I’m in the middle of no where with him so for now dependent on him… no car of my own. He even asked why I wanted one.. if it was so I can leave him? Ugh. Moments after his telling me how I shouldn’t even have a dollar basically, he starts dancing and bragging how he made 12k in the stock market with his trade and am I so happy for him…. 😒 He also is annoyed if I ask him to drive me and my things back to Houston. The ranch is an hour away. Nights like tonight, after all of the put downs and insults… Criticism about everything I do, how I picked up a dish, how I didn’t let the fish defrost long enough, how much better he would have done things… I feel like I can walk away. Ugh. This is the first narcissist I have ever met.
Also today, I had to listen for the one millionth time about how he has special knowledge that no one else does and he notices it when he’s around others. That he doesn’t feel like he can really find people who are as enlightened as him and …prob he needs to be a teacher and lots of people will follow him bc he has assendend so high. He will brag and go on and on while I clean up the kitchen from dinner, he won’t help. He will watch for me to mess up so he can pause his bragging and criticize how I breath or something. He is always repeating the same scripts… and he likes to talk about from the second he wakes up… how in 5th grade he was the smartest, the teachers All knew…how he this or that…. he said that I wouldn’t have been on his level at kindergarten age.. or he will say things like… what movie do you like? Then I say, and he says that’s a movie with little character development, I haven’t entertained those types since middle school.. or he will play one of his spiritual lectures and at the end say, that was too deep for you to understand. Wtf. It’s like all day, things like this.
And I’m heartbroken that he has this other girl. He told me she’s his stability and so he will stay with her and I’m allowed to be the mistress and publicly the assistant. She is coming back to the US.
I just hate him. I want to leave rn and somehow have him erased from my memory so I won’t cry over this. Ugh. I feel trapped.
Once I leave, I am worried about how much this is going to hurt. Just all of it…. Has anyone dealt with a narcissist? Was it hard to let go? 😒

I’ve been dating a spiritual narcissist and feel hopeless
I feel like I have no voice. If I ever try to speak up, he will diminish what I say, dismiss what I say, and or gas light me. The worst of it all, he had a whole secret life - another partner of 9 years. She is living in Belize. He doesn’t take any accountability or responsibility for cheating or lying. He doesn’t see it this way. We have been together almost a year. I feel trapped. I’m out here on a ranch with him, and I’m on the other side of it crying. I just want to get back home. I want to get all of my things and go… he is just awful. I asked him for help with something so I could get a credit line, and he told me that absolutely I shouldn’t have any credit line. I said what about emergencies? I have no money… he told me well how will you pay it every month. I said it was only 500 credit line, I don’t think it will be that big of a deal, except for that I’m in the middle of no where with him so for now dependent on him… no car of my own. He even asked why I wanted one.. if it was so I can leave him? Ugh. Moments after his telling me how I shouldn’t even have a dollar basically, he starts dancing and bragging how he made 12k in the stock market with his trade and am I so happy for him…. 😒 He also is annoyed if I ask him to drive me and my things back to Houston. The ranch is an hour away. Nights like tonight, after all of the put downs and insults… Criticism about everything I do, how I picked up a dish, how I didn’t let the fish defrost long enough, how much better he would have done things… I feel like I can walk away. Ugh. This is the first narcissist I have ever met.
Also today, I had to listen for the one millionth time about how he has special knowledge that no one else does and he notices it when he’s around others. That he doesn’t feel like he can really find people who are as enlightened as him and …prob he needs to be a teacher and lots of people will follow him bc he has assendend so high. He will brag and go on and on while I clean up the kitchen from dinner, he won’t help. He will watch for me to mess up so he can pause his bragging and criticize how I breath or something. He is always repeating the same scripts… and he likes to talk about from the second he wakes up… how in 5th grade he was the smartest, the teachers All knew…how he this or that…. he said that I wouldn’t have been on his level at kindergarten age.. or he will say things like… what movie do you like? Then I say, and he says that’s a movie with little character development, I haven’t entertained those types since middle school.. or he will play one of his spiritual lectures and at the end say, that was too deep for you to understand. Wtf. It’s like all day, things like this.
And I’m heartbroken that he has this other girl. He told me she’s his stability and so he will stay with her and I’m allowed to be the mistress and publicly the assistant. She is coming back to the US.
I just hate him. I want to leave rn and somehow have him erased from my memory so I won’t cry over this. Ugh. I feel trapped.
Once I leave, I am worried about how much this is going to hurt. Just all of it…. Has anyone dealt with a narcissist? Was it hard to let go? 😒

chapter one

It is 6:26 in the evening. Around this time I like to pull out my journal, walk to the porthole window on my side, sit down, and write as the sun begins to set on Lisbon. My journal is an Ukiyo Grid fifty sheeter with a nurse coat white cover and black Japanese kanji that spells out うきよ グリッド (Ukiyo Grid). A wrapped bundle of four journals with technical pens were awaiting me on a walnut ash solid wood desk when I arrived at this apartment three weeks ago. Look in them and you will find entries for everyday since the beginning. This new life is so interesting to me and I find it pointless to keep thoughts bottled up inside and since I have no one to talk to, writing helps the time go by. Some days I will write for hours.
On Tuesday mornings, I attend "Participant Tapestry" from nine to ten, followed by a "Synaptic Bloom" session until half past eleven. Thursdays are dedicated to "Empathy Assimilation" cycles. From eleven to noon my task is to log learned data from my sessions into the GLiPH pad (Global Interface for Personal Handwriting).
My primary function is to serve as a healing conduit to four individuals experiencing ongoing building trauma from the 2033 earthquake that woke up the entire city while simultaneously putting seven thousand, one hundred forty-two to indefinite rest. Each of the four individuals will stay in the respective living quarters on the other side of me, for one month at a time. The first arrives in two weeks, one year to the day of the tragedy.Though, had it not been for you, I would have sat here for another two weeks waiting, alone and isolated.
I’m not sure I would classify my actions as spying because I had innocently been staring out of the window, as I always do, like any of you do, when a flutter from your direction suddenly snagged my gaze.
Peering through my porthole window, I marveled at loose papers doing backflips and pirouetting in the air before gently falling to the ground. A swaying fixture of light bulbs swayed back and forth on their cords creating dramatic shadows on the tall walls of your kitchen. One bulb had been shattered and appeared sharp like a shark's rack of teeth.
In the midst of the chaotic scene, you emerged into view through the window. You had on a mangled and loose white t-shirt that looked as though you had been in a fight. The other man with you had on a black denim jacket. For all intents and purposes, his name shall be “Jacket”.
At my computation you both stood at about the same height, however, mass wise, you two are different. Jacket’s arms were bulging even through the denim. You stood in front of each other shouting into the other’s face, both wide-armed in an attempt to make yourselves big and authoritative.
I want to know what he said that caused you to become small. Your lips came together as Jacket’s lips raged on. Your shoulders slouched forward while your neck and head dropped. Your defeated posture tells stories of past and impending loss. I want to give you a long hug. Your jet black hair was tied up and your beard was shiny and tear-sloppy.
Eventually, Jacket stopped shouting and stood in position, quiet and staring up at the swinging pendulum.
A moment later, Jacket lifted his hands upward and cradled either side of your scruffy face. As he did this he began mouthing words. I am advanced but lip reading is one thing I am not capable of.
You hastily wiped Jacket’s hands off of your face as if you had had enough. You turned away from Jacket and sat down at the table. Is this where you both had shared your meals together? You lowered your head onto the top of your hands and stared longingly out of the window.
Jacket disappeared into the expansive abyss and a second later lights illuminated under a dome stretch of skylight glass.
Shuddering breaths escaped your lips, your cheeks quivering with each sharp inhale. At one moment, you got up and began picking up and pushing in chairs with seemingly trembling hands. You began a series of anxious tasks such as stacking plates and arranging objects most-likely to ease the pain that was burning inside of you. This front row seat to the raw emotions unleashed during this conflict made for a captivating study. Your behavior is particularly intriguing, leaving me yearning to understand the story behind the pain.
With a duffle bag and a backpack in tow, Jacket came back into the dimly lit kitchen. As he struck his arm down firmly, his mouth began to run, as if he was trying to quickly make a point. With the message received yet not accepted, you paused for a moment, proceeded to pick up a small potted plant sitting on the table and chucked it with force towards the open space on the ground in between the both of you. Humiliated, hysterical and sobbing, you sat back down at the table. Jacket took one final look at you, shook his head and walked out of the room with his bags, leaving you alone to pick up the pieces and the mess strewn all over the apartment.
A second later all of the windows in your place went from illuminated to black. And just like that, the chaos had come to an end.
I simply cannot accept this ending. There has got to be more. I am helplessly glued to this apartment in the same way you are glued to yours and the memories inside of it. My desire to reach out is genuine. You need solace in this time of pain. I want to learn you and help you navigate these troubled waters. After all, empathy is born from understanding, and I genuinely wish to see you heal. The sight of you wiping away tears ignites a desire to offer comfort.Let this twenty-first day of my new life mark the first day I discovered you. I will employ this companion drone to bridge the gap between us. For now, a silent observer I will be with a presence as light and maneuverable as a hummingbird.

I am sitting in one of the disused but quite beautiful parts of the neighborhood, waiting for it to rain.
The rain has already come and gone, a light rain that left traces of dampness on the pavement – the shade of the spring day darkens, becomes real, which is a comfort because that realness, that feeling of extra substance, comes from the water cycle working the way it's supposed to.
I feel it around my nostrils, on the cheeks of my face near the eyes, like I'm a frog looking up from its pond water, which is a pleasant feeling to sashay around town with. This is the spring we all know, the moisture appearing on my skin after driving miles above the earth ten minutes earlier –
an epic plunge is what we are walking through, but it's already rising again, and let's face it – we live in a cook pot set on media, I mean medium – medium is the setting on the cook pot, which notice is more than a crock. From the frog’s point of view, it is ideal.
From our point of view, standing in the chop of the water cycle, we are soaring in the air – then minutes from now, we might be walking in the clouds, and who knows after that, but this is the context for comings and goings this mid-afternoon – this potential for levitation.
I find a broad and elegant tree stump to sit on and record the concrete. Someday we'll all have concrete recorders but today, we just have me.
The stumps are not indigenous to the property, at least I don't think so, but I'm not exactly sure why I don't think that, given that the facility that occupies the block was once probably a forest with abundant marshy places. The forest went, then some infrastructural evolution played out that upcycled into a world-class performing arts center.
Given that my art, before it is anything, is performative – watch the monkey paint words with a stick – I'm hand-in-glove with the performance of the plaza.
I am sitting in a grove of tree stumps, which automatically brings to mind entropy – we all will die someday, become handsome all-weather furniture that slowly disintegrates – but then the overwhelming pleasantness of the day causes the thought to move on, and the stumps become a moment in time that is also a cross-section of full biography, which is quite a thing to be sitting on, waiting for the rain.
The forecast, which I predict would be one of the more impressive modern achievements to the humans who lived through the ice age – just an opinion. The forecast –
I picture their faces in stunned wonder as weather prediction after weather prediction comes true. The forecast
says there is a one-hundred percent chance of rain later this afternoon, time precise to the quarter hour, but with Doppler weather radar, one can make one's own data-driven prediction about when the rain will start to the nearest few minutes.
Someday we'll wear watches that are nothing but countdown clocks ’til the next time the forecast calls for rain – when the clock reaches the nearest minute, it switches to seconds.
This broad, elegant stump I'm sitting on sets on a bed of gravel which, when it rains, can convince me it is river gravel – pick up a few of the rounded stones, give them a close look for evidence of the past. I briefly imagine
finding the remains of a sauropod, each piece of gravel containing a tiny piece of a single sauropod, which together add up to the most complete sauropod skeleton yet discovered.
The stump is all take and no give, and yet I think I prefer it to popping open a lawn chair – the imperviousness of the stump being conducive to recording the concrete.
My backside is about eighty-years wide, which is older than my age, which inspires thoughts about backing into predestination, at least where just sitting around on a fine spring day is concerned. Like a bump on a log in a way, and let's face it – the concrete doesn't get much more concrete than that. A splashing sound
comes from the page. I scan the paper like it’s the sky, and I'm waiting for an aerial firework to open, then I find the spot of rain splashed across the phrase think so – think so, is the phrase – which is followed by a second raindrop, this one hitting the word water, causing the ink to run a little.
A one-hundred percent chance – does that even make sense? I picture a barrel of rain, rolling across the plains. Perhaps we should feel lucky for being visited by such a probability – possibly years before it rolls around again.
Rain will undoubtedly fall at this time, we say to our ice-age guests, and they will hold up the one hand like it's rain, hold up the other like it's time, weigh the two sides side-by-side maybe, maybe invent that gesture where the dancer holds both palms above their heads, lifts them up and down like they're raising the roof.
Still, I'm not sure they'll really understand all those computer models, wrapping themselves around big-data projects involving sensors and rain gauges deployed across the land, starting centuries ago. Science raised the roof, we might say, at least as far as weather prediction is concerned.
I sense the rain not exactly letting up, retreat to the interior of the performing arts center after taking a few notes.
Along part of the gravel is a long puddle of water from the overnight rain, and I would need but a few fish bones or raccoon tracks to believe the whole thing was situated beside a river, the sort of gravel bed surging with snow melt earlier in the season.
This being the Midwest, higher elevations are usually metaphorical, metaphorical before they are anything else, and I think about the campus surging with graduates this past weekend, the landscape of human potential, in all directions, inundated by them.
Inside now, I see a balloon bouquet along one wall of the concourse, with gold Mylar affirmation – The Best Is Yet to Come! – floating on the end of a ribbon.
A one-hundred percent chance of rain – imagine telling all those graduates, you have a one-hundred percent chance of finding love within a fortnight. Call it a graduation gift, then imagine all those rain gauges quivering in their brackets at the thought of measurements certain to be made, collated, used to improve the algorithms that animate the global gods of rain.
At the far end of the concourse, a lady is teaching a gentleman how to dance – they aren’t touching, aren’t even facing each other – side-by-side – and I hear her call out the moves, move-by-move.
Maybe he’s an actor and she’s going over a certain bit of choreography for an upcoming production. Maybe he’s a restless spirit, and she’s teaching him the art of haunting.
That ghost forest in the gravel outside is adjacent to one of the busiest intersections on campus, and yet, turn your back to it, and it becomes just another element in the stopping and starting of the cosmos.
I could see to either end of the block from that broad, elegant tree stump I was sitting on without really being seen from the street which, along with a lush stand of grass in a nearby raised garden bed, brings to mind the wide-open prairie from centuries past.
I picture deer bounding over golden rod. I picture foxes negotiating cone flowers.
The interior of the performing arts center is designed around the premise of potential – four theaters in league with the cardinal directions, plus a blindingly white amphitheater and a low stage in the concourse itself, where they hand out complimentary spliffs and pass around community bongs during free upbeat life-affirming musical programs, attended by folks after the workday is over, plus a helping of retirees.
Okay, not grass but alcohol, but you get the point – people enjoy shindigs now and then. The lady and gentleman are out of sight, but she’s still giving direction – I can hear their back and forth somewhere around the curve in the wall,
which might stand for the passing of time. I imagine myself performing the pasodoble – no, I take it back. I imagine myself performing the pasodoble – no, I take it back! For real this time! I imagine myself destroying the pasodoble – no, god, my boot heels! The planks on the floor! I take it back!
The sun returns, so I pick up my things, head back out to that secluded space, spend a few minutes admiring the resoundingly designed program of the building.
Preformed white concrete panels are suspended twelve feet off the ground to establish the roof of the entrance. Ninety-degree angles abundantly in evidence. Brick pixelates the angled outer walls with the stuff of the earth. Ultra-high resolution, they call it around the masonic lodge.
Someone in the amphitheater is having their photo taken by a professional – everyone loves to do photo shoots there. She is wearing dark knee socks, a navy jumper and a blue bowl haircut, or maybe it’s a wig – I can’t tell from here. I picture anime or promotional material for this fine spring day.
A squirrel bounds through the grass – then poses in front of me, paws together, as though summoning oration.
A robin alights on the stone cladding of the raised beds, begins to stand exclusively on its left leg. The leg is angled under the center of mass – it’s a practiced move.
No one knows why the American robin does this – maybe it’s like bird meditation, though the memory of the American robin is so specifically extraordinary when it comes to navigation and geospecific locations that effectively, at the sensual level on up, it is living in a reality separate from our own, so who knows what meditation might mean.
They can see the magnetic fields of the earth in their eyes using a protein called cryptochrome, which reacts to magnetism. Cryptochrome – like something from the Marvel universe.
Maybe when the American robin stands on its left leg, it’s spacing out to the daytime reality of solar storms, the whole environment all aflutter with a phenomenology of waves passing around the material world.
The robin and the squirrel go their separate ways, and I feel the temperature drop – ah, me! the pasodoble! – as the next part of the front crosses campus.
A peel of thunder indicates the breaking of the sound barrier by means of electromagnetism and the displacement of gasses. Electromagnetic properties experience disequilibrium as a kind of earthquake in the sky that causes the air to vibrate in an awe-inspiring way – the sound magnetic fields make when they rearrange themselves in a gaseous atmosphere.
We are fluid dwellers, through and through, we humans and mammals and reptiles and amphibians and lichen gnawing on patches of the plaza’s concrete. Maybe from the standpoint of the atmosphere, land is just one big coral reef.
When that perfect destiny began to drop rain, the sound at first was curious, expectant – an all-squinty-eyed-and-kissy-faced sort of rain began to fall that grew into a snowy hum that seemed to have a simple song playing inside it, like someone playing a ukulele in the room next door, singing along.
The gig carries on for twenty minutes or so – an opening act – before the rain begins to march double time through the streets – barely soldiers even when they were soldiers.
Less tactic and more matador, this rain storm, and its boot heel crashes down on the planking of the still-lovely spring day. These magnetic storms are not
for war making, nor fighting bulls, nor even for entertaining that cosmic bird called the American robin. What are they for then?
American robins also configure their flight by the stars, by remembering features on the land, by creating mental maps of it all.
And they swim with both grace and endurance, as they navigate this liquid world, this concrete way of life.
In the moment, they are roosting in a tree, observing the silver magnetic waves marching through the streets. Made of what? The pasodoble! Concrete.

(The Merrow)
It has been a long time since I thought about these things, but I think starting with the Merrow was the right choice. They were dangerous, sure, but for the most part, they didn't interact with us much. I think it's time I told another story, this time, though, I think I'll go into one of the things that sent me to the hospital.
Normally, when you're sailing one of the big things you want to do is avoid storms. They can cause unnecessary damage to your ship or even kill members of the crew. When I was in the military we never ran into a storm, high-tech sonar and weather monitoring equipment made the chances of that happening slim. The same goes for my time on cruises, really. We'd sail around them and the passengers would be none the wiser. So, it wasn't until I started working on smaller cargo and fishing ships that I learned about hellclouds.
Nobody really knows what causes them, but they always seem to appear near storms. To most, they look like fog resting atop the waves, but I've learned differently. I know what's in Hellclouds.
The first few times I encountered them, it wasn't anything crazy. We were inside and getting ready to bunk down for the night when the pa sounded.
"Alright boys, dog down all hatches and stay inside. Looks like we have to go through a Hellcloud."
Those who were more seasoned on these smaller boats quickly ran to all of the doors and locked the hatches down tight, placing a piece of steel on the handle to prevent it from turning. I watched with morbid curiosity as they scurried about like ants, dutifully sealing the inside of the ship off and covering all of the portholes. When they finally finished I took the chance to ask one of the saltier sailors what the hell was going on.
"You'll see soon enough. Thought you'd been sailing a while, never been through a Hellcloud?"
I shook my head "Been on a lot of bigger ships, don't ever remember going through one of these."
He nodded, "Bigger ships have fancy navigation, usually able to avoid storms and Hellclouds without too much issue." We talked for a little longer, sharing some sea stories to pass the time, but then, things got eerie. The sound of the waves lapping against our fishing boat suddenly disappeared and everything was silent. I looked to the older sailor and he gave me a solemn nod. "Keep quiet. Don't draw their ire."
Suddenly the world exploded, cacophonous agonized screams and horrid roaring echoed across the deck. I could hear heavy breaths as something moved outside, within moments it was at the hatch, jiggling it in an attempt to open the door, to expose us to the nightmare outside. The jiggling stopped and something heavy banged against the steel, letting loose a low throaty growl. I jumped in shock, but the other guy grabbed me and raised a finger to his lips. The banging continued, and the screaming grew louder as the ship began to rock and shake. It was like being in some of the choppiest waters I had ever experienced.
I've never gotten seasick, never even come close, but that night when I first went through that cloud I nearly puked. Soon, the pounding ceased and the screaming began to fade. The churning waters stopped tossing our boat and everything seemed to calm down. We unlocked the hatches and checked outside for damage to the boat. There were dents in the deck and on the hatch, but things were otherwise fine. I breathed a sigh of relief and spoke to the other sailor after we had made sure things were still in working order.
"Yeah, Hellclouds are weird. Lot of guys think they're portals to other dimensions. Heard stories about ships that get caught in Hellclouds. When the clouds disappear, so do the ships. Bermuda Triangle's got a lot of 'em. All I know for sure? You don't want to get caught outside in one. You seen the door." he murmured, motioning to the dented hatch.
​I went through seven Hellclouds on that boat. None of them were exactly the same. Some were short, five minutes, others we were harassed for hours while strange creatures tried to claw their way into the ship. Every time the damage to the ship was minimal, and every time we just got back to things like nothing happened.
Until something did.
We were sailing somewhere in the Atlantic and I was on deck with another deckhand, Gregg, and we were finishing up the late shift. Things suddenly got really quiet and the captain frantically came on the PA "HELLCLOUD! SEAL THE SHIP NOW!" Gregg and I exchanged a glance before we bolted for the hatch, but it was too late. The door had been sealed. I felt my stomach sink, and when I looked over to Gregg I could see the color in his face was gone. We were outside. We were outside in a Hellcloud.
​The anguished roar of a thousand voices dropped me to my knees, my hands shot to my ears and I wanted to scream in pain, but I couldn't. Weakly, I looked to Gregg, he was in the same position. We knelt there covering our ears as the screams echoed deafeningly all around us, my head swam and my vision clouded. I could feel the blood pooling in my clenched hands, and then there were stars.
My vision was rocked with a bright light as intense pressure sent me flying into the wall of the boat. Even through the screams, I could hear the thing growling, but as I opened my eyes I saw nothing. Within moments of colliding with the hull, I felt myself leaving the ground. I heard the low growl of the creature again as my body was racked with white-hot pain, cooled only by a warm trickle of what I could imagine was my blood. I gasped, hands beating desperately at something I couldn't see, but there was no relief. I squirmed, screamed, and fought. There was no solace, only agony as I felt my body being torn to shreds.
Blacking out was a mercy.
​I was airlifted to the nearest hospital, and that night I died for four minutes. I spent two months recovering from the mauling I experienced, doctors had no explanation for what happened, it wasn't like lions or bears just roamed the ocean. Eventually, it was chalked up to falling overboard and being attacked by wildlife, they never delved deeper than that. Gregg was injured, but he was able to recover within a few weeks, sadly the ordeal cost him his eye.
For me? Two fingers, and a foot. I'm also now partially deaf. I still consider it a blessing that I survived. Apparently, we were in the cloud for six minutes, which means I was beaten for six minutes and I survived.
I spent around six months on land, doing jobs in docks and fish markets, but I couldn't stand it. Everything about shore life felt empty. After that time I went back out, because even Hellclouds weren't what finally broke me.

Every time I go over to their damn house expecting new music I always walk in to those two motherfuckers playing hide and go seek.
Ye is constantly getting himself stuck under the kitchen sink and Ty climbs into the attic and is afraid to come down.
These games go on for fucking hours with Ty and Ye sometimes forgetting about the game entirely and going to do other shit.
One time, apparently Ty was hiding under the bed and ended up losing feeling in his legs after being under there for so long, because fucking Ye fell asleep.
It’s getting out of hand, and I’m not sure as a community how the fuck we’re supposed to address this

I don't know how to say this, usually, it's the easiest thing for me to say. This time it's hard because, I can't think of many people that will care, or maybe not. due to what I know is becoming more and more inevitable by the day. I can't keep this up. Everything falls apart, my health….. not healthy at all. Not only do I feel it, but it shows. I'm homeless, because talking to one of the 2 people I thought would never betray me, I was wrong about. Not once have I been able to express how I felt how uncomfortable the whole situation made me. She's just get all pissed of. So at first she would take him somewhere during her shift. That feels a little better because I could be home alone or grab an Uber and get the hell out of there overnight I'll invite my own for and over so that I'm not so alone That didn't work out either sorry being at the house all the time I'd wake up to him walking by go to the bathroom because I'm in the living room with a couch he didn't pay for anything he's offer me money for anything for the internet for nothing. A while she reallyreally wanted me to pay half the rent. She wanted us to be able to have the same dynamic Wait not us she wanted to feel like she had the same dynamic she even had the nerve to tell me one night that when I was at home it makes her nervous so she's going to bring Sam over I'm sure that was as big a lie as it was whenever she told me that he was staying somewhere else because I wanted to talk to her about how soon I was going to die. She even blew that off she didn't even look at me the whole time I was trying to explain to her she doesn't didn't even know what I was talking about kept watching her phone and picking it up and finally I said well man if you need to go pick him up go get him before I can even finish the sentence she had the car started. And I tried and kept on trying to be friendly with him and I thought he was friendly with me but then I hear some of the remarks he would make to her and being mad cuz I kept the car but wait I just moved in he doesn't pay anything I had just put gas in that car. My sister never talk to me about any of this. She would just get mad because one day I said something about him shaving his hair and leaving the hair over the bathroom and she rolled her eyes in me and walked off. But my point is who cleans that me. I'd be cleaning the kitchen and you walk up and drop addition sink right in front of me. They're both constantly so high they don't know what they're doing so I guess it's a good thing it's not being there cuz I don't want to get in trouble if you get busted You smell that shit down the driveway. Just progressively worse and then one morning I started getting real upset and so I stopped the internet from working in their room because no one else is ever paid for it. Starving I was nervous to have to go anywhere because she get pissed off or she'd have to wait let me check with him. She blew up on me in the middle of the day mind you we're in Texas it's 85 90°. So she goes outside and start screaming at me and slams the door in my face and locks it and just before she met him she didn't shoot me like that she's kind of standoffish about Corey sometimes but hell. I said some mean things things that I shouldn't have said things that didn't mean I wanted us to be friends again I want her to be my sister before I die! Family shouldn't be like that. So she decided to text my mom that's what got us into the big fight, Mom wouldn't leave me alone. Just kept on and kept on y'all need to work it out every time something was bothering me and I want to talk y'all need to work it out You need to just relax she's under a lot of stress. You're not the easiest to deal with. That feels the best because I don't want my baby sister taking care of me. It's not supposed to be that way I'm supposed to die before she has to do that. So anyways I'm at a friend's now I had chemo last week and God for that friend because that's who got me a chemo and has been keeping the roof of my head while it's storming and I'm suffering. And all this time I'm supposed to just keep kind of keep my head up. She hasn't even tried to reach out oh except for reaching out to say that I took the internet out of the house. I think my biggest fear right now is that. I'm going to live much longer than I'm hoping right now.

chapter one

It is 6:26 in the evening. Around this time I like to pull out my journal, walk to the porthole window on my side, sit down, and write as the sun begins to set on Lisbon. My journal is an Ukiyo Grid fifty sheeter with a nurse coat white cover and black Japanese kanji that spells out うきよ グリッド (Ukiyo Grid). A wrapped bundle of four journals with technical pens were awaiting me on a walnut ash solid wood desk when I arrived at this apartment three weeks ago. Look in them and you will find entries for everyday since the beginning. This new life is so interesting to me and I find it pointless to keep thoughts bottled up inside and since I have no one to talk to, writing helps the time go by. Some days I will write for hours.
On Tuesday mornings, I attend "Participant Tapestry" from nine to ten, followed by a "Synaptic Bloom" session until half past eleven. Thursdays are dedicated to "Empathy Assimilation" cycles. From eleven to noon my task is to log learned data from my sessions into the GLiPH pad (Global Interface for Personal Handwriting).
My primary function is to serve as a healing conduit to four individuals experiencing ongoing building trauma from the 2033 earthquake that woke up the entire city while simultaneously putting seven thousand, one hundred forty-two to indefinite rest. Each of the four individuals will stay in the respective living quarters on the other side of me, for one month at a time. The first arrives in two weeks, one year to the day of the tragedy.Though, had it not been for you, I would have sat here for another two weeks waiting, alone and isolated.
I’m not sure I would classify my actions as spying because I had innocently been staring out of the window, as I always do, like any of you do, when a flutter from your direction suddenly snagged my gaze.
Peering through my porthole window, I marveled at loose papers doing backflips and pirouetting in the air before gently falling to the ground. A swaying fixture of light bulbs swayed back and forth on their cords creating dramatic shadows on the tall walls of your kitchen. One bulb had been shattered and appeared sharp like a shark's rack of teeth.
In the midst of the chaotic scene, you emerged into view through the window. You had on a mangled and loose white t-shirt that looked as though you had been in a fight. The other man with you had on a black denim jacket. For all intents and purposes, his name shall be “Jacket”.
At my computation you both stood at about the same height, however, mass wise, you two are different. Jacket’s arms were bulging even through the denim. You stood in front of each other shouting into the other’s face, both wide-armed in an attempt to make yourselves big and authoritative.
I want to know what he said that caused you to become small. Your lips came together as Jacket’s lips raged on. Your shoulders slouched forward while your neck and head dropped. Your defeated posture tells stories of past and impending loss. I want to give you a long hug. Your jet black hair was tied up and your beard was shiny and tear-sloppy.
Eventually, Jacket stopped shouting and stood in position, quiet and staring up at the swinging pendulum.
A moment later, Jacket lifted his hands upward and cradled either side of your scruffy face. As he did this he began mouthing words. I am advanced but lip reading is one thing I am not capable of.
You hastily wiped Jacket’s hands off of your face as if you had had enough. You turned away from Jacket and sat down at the table. Is this where you both had shared your meals together? You lowered your head onto the top of your hands and stared longingly out of the window.
Jacket disappeared into the expansive abyss and a second later lights illuminated under a dome stretch of skylight glass.
Shuddering breaths escaped your lips, your cheeks quivering with each sharp inhale. At one moment, you got up and began picking up and pushing in chairs with seemingly trembling hands. You began a series of anxious tasks such as stacking plates and arranging objects most-likely to ease the pain that was burning inside of you. This front row seat to the raw emotions unleashed during this conflict made for a captivating study. Your behavior is particularly intriguing, leaving me yearning to understand the story behind the pain.
With a duffle bag and a backpack in tow, Jacket came back into the dimly lit kitchen. As he struck his arm down firmly, his mouth began to run, as if he was trying to quickly make a point. With the message received yet not accepted, you paused for a moment, proceeded to pick up a small potted plant sitting on the table and chucked it with force towards the open space on the ground in between the both of you. Humiliated, hysterical and sobbing, you sat back down at the table. Jacket took one final look at you, shook his head and walked out of the room with his bags, leaving you alone to pick up the pieces and the mess strewn all over the apartment.
A second later all of the windows in your place went from illuminated to black. And just like that, the chaos had come to an end.
I simply cannot accept this ending. There has got to be more. I am helplessly glued to this apartment in the same way you are glued to yours and the memories inside of it. My desire to reach out is genuine. You need solace in this time of pain. I want to learn you and help you navigate these troubled waters. After all, empathy is born from understanding, and I genuinely wish to see you heal. The sight of you wiping away tears ignites a desire to offer comfort.Let this twenty-first day of my new life mark the first day I discovered you. I will employ this companion drone to bridge the gap between us. For now, a silent observer I will be with a presence as light and maneuverable as a hummingbird.chapter one
It is 6:26 in the evening. Around this time I like to pull out my journal, walk to the porthole window on my side, sit down, and write as the sun begins to set on Lisbon. My journal is an Ukiyo Grid fifty sheeter with a nurse coat white cover and black Japanese kanji that spells out うきよ グリッド (Ukiyo Grid). A wrapped bundle of four journals with technical pens were awaiting me on a walnut ash solid wood desk when I arrived at this apartment three weeks ago. Look in them and you will find entries for everyday since the beginning. This new life is so interesting to me and I find it pointless to keep thoughts bottled up inside and since I have no one to talk to, writing helps the time go by. Some days I will write for hours.

This is a really long story with lots of context so I'll do my best to organize it into current situation, then his backstory and hers. I'm also not using real names or specific locations for any of this to try and keep this private. This also has some contradicting stories and because of how their relationship is structured relies mostly on information I have gotten from my sister, so I'm telling you the story I got from her first and then adding in what I've found out. I'll try to tell this as unbiased as I can but it's been a huge issue in my family for a long time now and that's a little difficult for me to do.
My (20F) sister (Olivia, 24F) has been dating this guy (Trevor, 25M) since 2021. When they started dating, she talked about him fairly often, sent a few pictures of them, ect., but then after a month she stopped mentioning him/ was cagey when we (me and my mom mostly) asked how he was so we assumed it just hadn't worked out. Then two months later she insisted that my parents (54F and 56M) and I all come to visit her college to meet Trevor before he went into the Army (she lived several hours away from my parents and several hours from my college, so I had to get a bus ticket and my parents had to get a hotel room to do this. We only met him once for dinner). Now they've been dating long distance for three years after a three month in-person relationship. She is in nursing school and is planning on moving across the country (literally opposite corners of the map) to live with him and is not applying to any residency programs outside of the Army base area (limiting her choices a LOT from her original goals and narrowing employment opportunities).
Olivia met Trevor on several dating apps, matched with him, but didn't really want to go out with him. He was really persistent, so her friend convinced her to go out with him. She lied about the way they met to our parents and told them they met at the gym through a mutual friend (she lied to me about this at first too and told me the truth about 3 months after they started dating). At the time, Trevor was working as a used car salesman and living at home (~45 min. away from Olivia's school in a rural area) because his sports scholarship had been dropped before his Senior year due to covid at the college he had been attending out of state. The university was unaccredited (I later did some internet stalking and found out it was accredited), so his credits would not transfer and he would have to start over. He was saving up money to attend school in state at the large college Olivia attended so he could go back to school. **Our state has crazy low tuition costs in-state and a full-tuition scholarship program for good high school GPA and SAT scores. There was also a "feeder" community college that had half the cost per credit hour that a lot of people would go to before the larger university if they didn't get in straight out of high school.**
Olivia told me that Trevor had applied to her college and not gotten in (she later told me he HAD gotten in but been unable to afford tuition). Either way, he decided to join the Army because his father had been in the Army. The Army would take his credit hours and he would be able to finish his degree during his 5 year contract or use the GI bill once he got out. **She is comparing the situation to our father, who joined the Army directly out of high school and used the GI bill to go to college after his 2 year contract because his parents wouldn't pay for school. He was a medic in the military, worked as an EMT through college, and then went to nursing school.** The original plan was that Trevor would be a Green Beret (special forces), he completed basic training and and got several months through training and moved to the secondary base in NC before failing the running portion of a physical by about 10 seconds and being dropped from the selection process. He then decided that he wanted to be a Ranger (another elite position). He got sent back to GA, then to the Ranger school base in WA (it took a couple of months before he was sent to WA). Again, he got partway through the training before failing the running portion of a physical by a few seconds. He is now not sure if he will be continuing Ranger school (failing the physical means no, but commanders may pass him anyways if they think he should continue). For a while, Trevor told Olivia that he might not stay at the base in WA if he wasn't in Ranger school and there were a variety of different bases he could be sent to, including somewhere in Italy, so she wasn't sure where to look for jobs. In the past month, Trevor told Olivia that he would likely stay in WA regardless of the Ranger school results.
Through this all, Olivia has visited Trevor at the different military bases countless times, driving from as far as south FL to NC and putting over 30,000 miles on a brand new car over the course of the 1.5 years she's owned it. Before she had the car, she paid for plane tickets to see him and hotels whenever she visited. At the time, she told me that he was paying for all of these trips because he was unable to visit her, was making an income that wasn't being spent, and she was working to save for nursing school and later was living off of student loans and savings during nursing school. She later admitted to me that she had paid for almost all of the expenses except for food when they ate out together and part of a hotel room one weekend.
A few odd things (to me) between Olivia and Trevor over the course of their relationship:
About a month into their relationship, Trevor got Olivia an over $300 christmas gift. He has not gotten her anything nearly that expensive since, and hasn't sent flowers for things like her college graduation or a severe emergency surgery she had last year. I don't care about monetary value or sending flowers, but I do think it is odd that he spent so much before moving away when he ostensibly didn't have much money, but now that he has an income and military sign-on bonus, he has not spent that much again.
Trevor's father left Trevor, his siblings, and his mother, but Trevor has a hat that his father gave him that he wore often. The hat says "Red Man" across the top of a picture of a Native American man wearing a feathered headdress. He has worn this hat several times around Olivia's friends and they told him they didn't like it and that it was racist. They also asked him to not wear it when he was with them and he refused because it was special to him and his father gave it to him. Olivia then told him to stop wearing it and he eventually agreed (Olivia told me that he stopped wearing the hat after this). A few weeks after this, I facetimed Olivia and Trevor was with her. She turned the camera so I could say hello to him, and he was wearing the hat. I talked to Olivia about this later and she told me that that was the first time he'd worn the hat in a while and it wasn't a big deal. Olivia has always been liberal and never racist, and I am uncomfortable that she was okay with him not only wearing the hat, but being with him while he had it on.
They dated for a little over 3 months in person before he joined the military (recently, Olivia told me that they actually met several months before she told everyone about him and that they actually dated for 6 months before he left). For the next two months in basic training, he was only able to use the phone for 15 minutes total once a week to talk to family and her. Throughout the different training programs he has completed he had sporadic and limited access to phones to communicate, and only in the past 6 months he has had access to his phone to facetime, text, and call (but sometimes he goes for a week or two without phone access). Olivia told me that they wrote letters during the time he didn't have consistent phone access. **I don't think that this is odd, I understand the military limits phone usage, etc., but I don't think they have been able to have an "average" long-distance relationship**
Last year, Olivia drove to GA to visit Trevor the weekend before Valentine's day. He had plans for them to take a pottery class, go on a hike, and have dinner at a nice restaurant. The day she got there, Trevor's barracks had their off-base privileges revoked because one of the guys had contraband. She would still be able to visit him on base though. Somehow, Trevor was able to get off base for long periods of time to her hotel, but unable to do the other activities he had planned for them.
In the past year, Olivia told me that she and Trevor were going to immediately marry when she got to WA so that they could move in together because they had to be married to live together anywhere. I and our dad- who was in the military- told her several times that this was not true, but she insisted it was. Then, his barracks were given an allowance to live off base in apartments because the barracks were being renovated/ rebuilt, so she backed off on the idea of getting married immediately after several long conversations with me. She is still insistent on moving in with Trevor, who lives with a roommate, when she moves to WA.
Some background on Olivia:
Olivia has ADHD and anxiety, and struggled particularly badly with the anxiety/ some depression after being broken up with by the boyfriend she dated before Trevor (he broke it off very abruptly, told her he just didn't love her anymore with no previous indications). Olivia is very pretty (objectively, not just because she's my sister), but had bad acne that she ended up going on accutane for at the time she started dating Trevor and was very insecure about it. She had also decided to not go to medical school, and pursue nursing instead around the same time she met Trevor. This was a very upsetting decision for her because she had been taking very hard courses and was burnt out but had told everyone she was going to be a doctor and thought that she would be letting us down by switching paths. Also around the time she started seeing Trevor, Olivia began being very cruel towards our mother (our mother had been borderline emotionally abusive in the past, but Olivia and I were both in college by then and fixing our relationships with her. She has been much better recently and Olivia and I believe that she had some mental health struggles that went unchecked that contributed). Now, several years later, Olivia told our family that she had acted like that because she was rpd by a friend of her ex-boyfriend's after her ex broke up with her. This person also gave her an STD.
I always believe people who say they have been S A'd, and we believed Olivia when she first told us, but some things have come to light that make me and my family question that. Right after Olivia and her ex broke up, Olivia told our cousin that she had gone out with one of his friends and had revenge/ breakup sex with him because he had also been dumped recently. Once my cousin told me this, I remembered that Olivia had told me about a guy she had a one night stand with after she was dumped. She showed me a picture of him, talked about how cute he was, etc. (no distress whatsoever). I know sometimes people behave in ways you wouldn't expect when a traumatic event occurs to them, but I really don't understand how or why Olivia would brag about this guy if he really did S A her.
Three months ago, Olivia was arrested for stealing a set of sheets from Walmart (incidentally, right before Trevor came to visit her on leave). She used the self check-out and only bought a small $5 item and the sheets. She held both in one hand and scanned each side because she had a cut on the other hand and was holding her wallet with it. She saw a 5 in front of the total number and thought it looked right because the total should have been about $50, paid, didn't get a receipt, and walked out. An employee at the door asked to see a receipt, which Olivia didn't have, so she pulled up her transaction history on her phone to show she had paid. At this point, the employee called the police and took Olivia into an office, where she was questioned and charged with shoplifting. (Olivia can get very emotional and probably got upset when the police questioned her, which may have led them to believe she was lying). Luckily, Olivia has managed to get the charges expunged, but the process is still ongoing. Because of her ADHD, if anyone genuinely made this mistake, I would believe it from her, but Olivia has been improving a lot on organization and being more attentive recently. It is extremely uncharacteristic of her to steal- she was honest to a fault as kids- she would break down from guilt and admit things to our parents that we would have gotten away with if she hadn't said anything.
Right now, my parents have met Trevor twice in person, and I've met him once in person and several times in passing over facetime. I personally don't think that Trevor seems to keep up with my sister or that they make each other shine, and that opinion is shared with family friends and family that have met Trevor. Olivia doesn't mention Trevor in front of our parents often because his name has become a topic of contention and argument between them. My parents don't think Trevor is right for Olivia. She has almost 2 college degrees and plans to become a nurse practitioner in the future, and he hasn't finished college and doesn't seem to have any drive to do so. Olivia is also well traveled and enjoys going to museums, concerts, etc., while Trevor has lived in rural FL his whole life (this is not Trevor's fault, and I don't think he is a lesser person because of it, but I don't see a lot of common ground between them). Trevor has not seemed very well spoken when I have talked to him and I just don't see a lot of qualities in him that Olivia values.
If you've gotten this far, I just don't know what to do. Olivia and my parents have a huge rift in their relationship right now and any mention of Trevor, with her around or not, explodes into a huge argument, discussion, or just icy silence. I want Olivia to be able to talk to me about him, and we are able to discuss things much better than she is with our parents. My parents have also started asking me about Olivia and Trevor because they know Olivia shares more with me, and it makes me uncomfortable because I don't want to betray Olivia's trust, but I'm also very worried about her. I know I can't control her actions and I'm having a really hard time trying to balance supporting Olivia but not supporting the relationship (I'm not going to lie to her about how I feel, but I don't want her to feel alienated or unloved by our family, because that is NOT the case). I also think that Olivia is romanticizing the fact that our parents don't like him because my father's parents had a rift with him over our mother when we were very young (this is a whole other story, but basically, his parents always favored his sister, his sister got (I think) jealous when he did well for himself and married my mother, who his parents initially likes, and she made up rumors/lies about my mother that turned his parents against her (this was way before our mother's suspected mental health struggles, which occured when Olivia and I were in middle/high school).
Please share any thoughts you have on the situation (am I reading too into things, is this not as bad as I think it is?), and any advice you have on navigating the relationships.
Tl;dr My sister's boyfriend lied about the circumstances of him dropping out of college and joining the military. Now I think he's lying about not making it through training for two different special/ elite forces. My sister has significantly changed her behavior and I think she may have lied about a significant traumatic event to our family. Now she is planning on moving across the country to him and moving in immediately. Our entire family doesn't like him and we're worried about her. How do I support her but not her relationship?

Looking for some feedback/advice on setup. M2 MBA, two old(ish) 24.5” displays. Also have a keyboard not pictured here.
Options are to get a studio display and consolidate to just one external screen OR get the new M3 MBP and keep the current displays for now. Or…. Open to suggestions.
Current pain points: • I hate clamshell mode now bc we do a lot of meetings with our cameras on, but my desk is too crowded with the current setup. • I do use the MBA for my calendar mostly, so I’d like to keep 3 screens if possible (iPad is also an option) • monitors are way too high but I can’t see them over my laptop if they are any lower. •My keyboard also has to rest on the edge of my MBA 🙄
desk is 60” x 24” if it helps.
Web design/light dev, some photo editing (Lightroom), lots of Adobe Illustrator.

https://mises.org/mises-daily/society-without-state
In attempting to outline how a “society without a state” — that is, an anarchist society — might function successfully, I would first like to defuse two common but mistaken criticisms of this approach. First, is the argument that in providing for such defense or protection services as courts, police, or even law itself, I am simply smuggling the state back into society in another form, and that therefore the system I am both analyzing and advocating is not “really” anarchism. This sort of criticism can only involve us in an endless and arid dispute over semantics. Let me say from the beginning that I define the state as that institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as “taxation”; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area. An institution not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a state. On the other hand, I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of an individual. Anarchists oppose the state because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.
Nor is our definition of the state arbitrary, for these two characteristics have been possessed by what is generally acknowledged to be states throughout recorded history. The state, by its use of physical coercion, has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly of defense services over its territorial jurisdiction. But it is certainly conceptually possible for such services to be supplied by private, non-state institutions, and indeed such services have historically been supplied by other organizations than the state. To be opposed to the state is then not necessarily to be opposed to services that have often been linked with it; to be opposed to the state does not necessarily imply that we must be opposed to police protection, courts, arbitration, the minting of money, postal service, or roads and highways. Some anarchists have indeed been opposed to police and to all physical coercion in defense of person and property, but this is not inherent in and is fundamentally irrelevant to the anarchist position, which is precisely marked by opposition to all physical coercion invasive of, or aggressing against, person and property.
The crucial role of taxation may be seen in the fact that the state is the only institution or organization in society which regularly and systematically acquires its income through the use of physical coercion. All other individuals or organizations acquire their income voluntarily, either (1) through the voluntary sale of goods and services to consumers on the market, or (2) through voluntary gifts or donations by members or other donors. If I cease or refrain from purchasing Wheaties on the market, the Wheaties producers do not come after me with a gun or the threat of imprisonment to force me to purchase; if I fail to join the American Philosophical Association, the association may not force me to join or prevent me from giving up my membership. Only the state can do so; only the state can confiscate my property or put me in jail if I do not pay its tax tribute. Therefore, only the state regularly exists and has its very being by means of coercive depredations on private property.
Neither is it legitimate to challenge this sort of analysis by claiming that in some other sense, the purchase of Wheaties or membership in the APA is in some way “coercive.” Anyone who is still unhappy with this use of the term “coercion” can simply eliminate the word from this discussion and substitute for it “physical violence or the threat thereof,” with the only loss being in literary style rather than in the substance of the argument. What anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the state, that is, to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion.
It need hardly be added that the state habitually builds upon its coercive source of income by adding a host of other aggressions upon society, ranging from economic controls to the prohibition of pornography to the compelling of religious observance to the mass murder of civilians in organized warfare. In short, the state, in the words of Albert Jay Nock, “claims and exercises a monopoly of crime” over its territorial area.
The second criticism I would like to defuse before beginning the main body of the paper is the common charge that anarchists “assume that all people are good” and that without the state no crime would be committed. In short, that anarchism assumes that with the abolition of the state a New Anarchist Man will emerge, cooperative, humane, and benevolent, so that no problem of crime will then plague the society. I confess that I do not understand the basis for this charge. Whatever other schools of anarchism profess — and I do not believe that they are open to the charge — I certainly do not adopt this view. I assume with most observers that mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct and the state is indeed the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime — theft, oppression, mass murder — on a massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad.
A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are “good” in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted to police protection. The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point in time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the good and minimize the channels for the bad. The rest depends on the values held by the individual members of society. The only further point that need be made is that by eliminating the living example and the social legitimacy of the massive legalized crime of the state, anarchism will to a large extent promote peaceful values in the minds of the public.
We cannot of course deal here with the numerous arguments in favor of anarchism or against the state, moral, political, and economic. Nor can we take up the various goods and services now provided by the state and show how private individuals and groups will be able to supply them far more efficiently on the free market. Here we can only deal with perhaps the most difficult area, the area where it is almost universally assumed that the state must exist and act, even if it is only a “necessary evil” instead of a positive good: the vital realm of defense or protection of person and property against aggression. Surely, it is universally asserted, the state is at least vitally necessary to provide police protection, the judicial resolution of disputes and enforcement of contracts, and the creation of the law itself that is to be enforced. My contention is that all of these admittedly necessary services of protection can be satisfactorily and efficiently supplied by private persons and institutions on the free market.
One important caveat before we begin the body of this paper: new proposals such as anarchism are almost always gauged against the implicit assumption that the present, or statist system works to perfection. Any lacunae or difficulties with the picture of the anarchist society are considered net liabilities, and enough to dismiss anarchism out of hand. It is, in short, implicitly assumed that the state is doing its self-assumed job of protecting person and property to perfection. We cannot here go into the reasons why the state is bound to suffer inherently from grave flaws and inefficiencies in such a task. All we need do now is to point to the black and unprecedented record of the state through history: no combination of private marauders can possibly begin to match the state’s unremitting record of theft, confiscation, oppression, and mass murder. No collection of Mafia or private bank robbers can begin to compare with all the Hiroshimas, Dresdens, and Lidices and their analogues through the history of mankind.
This point can be made more philosophically: it is illegitimate to compare the merits of anarchism and statism by starting with the present system as the implicit given and then critically examining only the anarchist alternative. What we must do is to begin at the zero point and then critically examine both suggested alternatives. Suppose, for example, that we were all suddenly dropped down on the earth de novo and that we were all then confronted with the question of what societal arrangements to adopt. And suppose then that someone suggested: “We are all bound to suffer from those of us who wish to aggress against their fellow men. Let us then solve this problem of crime by handing all of our weapons to the Jones family, over there, by giving all of our ultimate power to settle disputes to that family. In that way, with their monopoly of coercion and of ultimate decision making, the Jones family will be able to protect each of us from each other.” I submit that this proposal would get very short shrift, except perhaps from the Jones family themselves. And yet this is precisely the common argument for the existence of the state. When we start from the zero point, as in the case of the Jones family, the question of “who will guard the guardians?” becomes not simply an abiding lacuna in the theory of the state but an overwhelming barrier to its existence.
A final caveat: the anarchist is always at a disadvantage in attempting to forecast the shape of the future anarchist society. For it is impossible for observers to predict voluntary social arrangements, including the provision of goods and services, on the free market. Suppose, for example, that this were the year 1874 and that someone predicted that eventually there would be a radio-manufacturing industry. To be able to make such a forecast successfully, does he have to be challenged to state immediately how many radio manufacturers there would be a century hence, how big they would be, where they would be located, what technology and marketing techniques they would use, and so on? Obviously, such a challenge would make no sense, and in a profound sense the same is true of those who demand a precise portrayal of the pattern of protection activities on the market. Anarchism advocates the dissolution of the state into social and market arrangements, and these arrangements are far more flexible and less predictable than political institutions. The most that we can do, then, is to offer broad guidelines and perspectives on the shape of a projected anarchist society.
One important point to make here is that the advance of modern technology makes anarchistic arrangements increasingly feasible. Take, for example, the case of lighthouses, where it is often charged that it is unfeasible for private lighthouse operators to row out to each ship to charge it for use of the light. Apart from the fact that this argument ignores the successful existence of private lighthouses in earlier days, as in England in the eighteenth century, another vital consideration is that modern electronic technology makes charging each ship for the light far more feasible. Thus, the ship would have to have paid for an electronically controlled beam which could then be automatically turned on for those ships which had paid for the service.
Let us turn now to the problem of how disputes — in particular disputes over alleged violations of person and property — would be resolved in an anarchist society. First, it should be noted that all disputes involve two parties: the plaintiff, the alleged victim of the crime or tort and the defendant, the alleged aggressor. In many cases of broken contract, of course, each of the two parties alleging that the other is the culprit is at the same time a plaintiff and a defendant.
An important point to remember is that any society, be it statist or anarchist, has to have some way of resolving disputes that will gain a majority consensus in society. There would be no need for courts or arbitrators if everyone were omniscient and knew instantaneously which persons were guilty of any given crime or violation of contract. Since none of us is omniscient, there has to be some method of deciding who is the criminal or lawbreaker which will gain legitimacy; in short, whose decision will be accepted by the great majority of the public.
In the first place, a dispute may be resolved voluntarily between the two parties themselves, either unaided or with the help of a third mediator. This poses no problem, and will automatically be accepted by society at large. It is so accepted even now, much less in a society imbued with the anarchistic values of peaceful cooperation and agreement. Secondly and similarly, the two parties, unable to reach agreement, may decide to submit voluntarily to the decision of an arbitrator. This agreement may arise either after a dispute has arisen, or be provided for in advance in the original contract. Again, there is no problem in such an arrangement gaining legitimacy. Even in the present statist era, the notorious inefficiency and coercive and cumbersome procedures of the politically run government courts has led increasing numbers of citizens to turn to voluntary and expert arbitration for a speedy and harmonious settling of disputes.
Thus, William C. Wooldridge has written that

Wooldridge adds the important point that, in addition to the speed of arbitration procedures vis-à-vis the courts, the arbitrators can proceed as experts in disregard of the official government law; in a profound sense, then, they serve to create a voluntary body of private law. “In other words,” states Wooldridge, “the system of extralegal, voluntary courts has progressed hand in hand with a body of private law; the rules of the state are circumvented by the same process that circumvents the forums established for the settlement of disputes over those rules…. In short, a private agreement between two people, a bilateral “law,” has supplanted the official law. The writ of the sovereign has cease to run, and for it is substituted a rule tacitly or explicitly agreed to by the parties. Wooldridge concludes that “if an arbitrator can choose to ignore a penal damage rule or the statute of limitations applicable to the claim before him (and it is generally conceded that he has that power), arbitration can be viewed as a practically revolutionary instrument for self-liberation from the law….”2
It may be objected that arbitration only works successfully because the courts enforce the award of the arbitrator. Wooldridge points out, however, that arbitration was unenforceable in the American courts before 1920, but that this did not prevent voluntary arbitration from being successful and expanding in the United States and in England. He points, furthermore, to the successful operations of merchant courts since the Middle Ages, those courts which successfully developed the entire body of the law merchant. None of those courts possessed the power of enforcement. He might have added the private courts of shippers which developed the body of admiralty law in a similar way.
How then did these private, “anarchistic,” and voluntary courts ensure the acceptance of their decisions? By the method of social ostracism, and by the refusal to deal any further with the offending merchant. This method of voluntary “enforcement,” indeed proved highly successful. Wooldridge writes that “the merchants’ courts were voluntary, and if a man ignored their judgment, he could not be sent to jail…. Nevertheless, it is apparent that … [their] decisions were generally respected even by the losers; otherwise people would never have used them in the first place…. Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows … proved if anything more effective than physical coercion.”3 Nor did this voluntary method fail to work in modern times. Wooldridge writes that it was precisely in the years before 1920, when arbitration awards could not be enforced in the courts,

It should also be pointed out that modern technology makes even more feasible the collection and dissemination of information about people’s credit ratings and records of keeping or violating their contracts or arbitration agreements. Presumably, an anarchist society would see the expansion of this sort of dissemination of data and thereby facilitate the ostracism or boycotting of contract and arbitration violators.
How would arbitrators be selected in an anarchist society? In the same way as they are chosen now, and as they were chosen in the days of strictly voluntary arbitration: the arbitrators with the best reputation for efficiency and probity would be chosen by the various parties on the market. As in other processes of the market, the arbitrators with the best record in settling disputes will come to gain an increasing amount of business, and those with poor records will no longer enjoy clients and will have to shift to another line of endeavor. Here it must be emphasized that parties in dispute will seek out those arbitrators with the best reputation for both expertise and impartiality and that inefficient or biased arbitrators will rapidly have to find another occupation.
Thus, the Tannehills emphasize:

If desired, furthermore, the contracting parties could provide in advance for a series of arbitrators:

Arbitration, then, poses little difficulty for a portrayal of the free society. But what of torts or crimes of aggression where there has been no contract? Or suppose that the breaker of a contract defies the arbitration award? Is ostracism enough? In short, how can courts develop in the free-market anarchist society which will have the power to enforce judgments against criminals or contract breakers?
In the wide sense, defense service consists of guards or police who use force in defending person and property against attack, and judges or courts whose role is to use socially accepted procedures to determine who the criminals or tortfeasors are, as well as to enforce judicial awards, such as damages or the keeping of contracts. On the free market, many scenarios are possible on the relationship between the private courts and the police; they may be “vertically integrated,” for example, or their services may be supplied by separate firms. Furthermore, it seems likely that police service will be supplied by insurance companies who will provide crime insurance to their clients. In that case, insurance companies will pay off the victims of crime or the breaking of contracts or arbitration awards and then pursue the aggressors in court to recoup their losses. There is a natural market connection between insurance companies and defense service, since they need pay out less benefits in proportion as they are able to keep down the rate of crime.
Courts might either charge fees for their services, with the losers of cases obliged to pay court costs, or else they may subsist on monthly or yearly premiums by their clients, who may be either individuals or the police or insurance agencies. Suppose, for example, that Smith is an aggrieved party, either because he has been assaulted or robbed, or because an arbitration award in his favor has not been honored. Smith believes that Jones is the party guilty of the crime. Smith then goes to a court, Court A, of which he is a client, and brings charges against Jones as a defendant. In my view, the hallmark of an anarchist society is one where no man may legally compel someone who is not a convicted criminal to do anything, since that would be aggression against an innocent man’s person or property. Therefore, Court A can only invite rather than subpoena Jones to attend his trial. Of course, if Jones refused to appear or send a representative, his side of the case will not be heard. The trial of Jones proceeds. Suppose that Court A finds Jones innocent. In my view, part of the generally accepted law code of the anarchist society (on which see further below) is that this must end the matter unless Smith can prove charges of gross incompetence or bias on the part of the court.
Suppose, next, that Court A finds Jones guilty. Jones might accept the verdict, because he too is a client of the same court, because he knows he is guilty, or for some other reason. In that case, Court A proceeds to exercise judgment against Jones. Neither of these instances poses very difficult problems for our picture of the anarchist society. But suppose, instead, that Jones contests the decision; he then goes to his court, Court B, and the case is retried there. Suppose that Court B, too, finds Jones guilty. Again, it seems to me that the accepted law code of the anarchist society will assert that this ends the matter; both parties have had their say in courts which each has selected, and the decision for guilt is unanimous.
Suppose, however, the most difficult case: that Court B finds Jones innocent. The two courts, each subscribed to by one of the two parties, have split their verdicts. In that case, the two courts will submit the case to an appeals court, or arbitrator, which the two courts agree upon. There seems to be no real difficulty about the concept of an appeals court. As in the case of arbitration contracts, it seems very likely that the various private courts in the society will have prior agreements to submit their disputes to a particular appeals court. How will the appeals judges be chosen? Again, as in the case of arbitrators or of the first judges on the free market, they will be chosen for their expertise and their reputation for efficiency, honesty, and integrity. Obviously, appeals judges who are inefficient or biased will scarcely be chosen by courts who will have a dispute. The point here is that there is no need for a legally established or institutionalized single, monopoly appeals court system, as states now provide. There is no reason why there cannot arise a multitude of efficient and honest appeals judges who will be selected by the disputant courts, just as there are numerous private arbitrators on the market today. The appeals court renders its decision, and the courts proceed to enforce it if, in our example, Jones is considered guilty — unless, of course, Jones can prove bias in some other court proceedings.
No society can have unlimited judicial appeals, for in that case there would be no point to having judges or courts at all. Therefore, every society, whether statist or anarchist, will have to have some socially accepted cutoff point for trials and appeals. My suggestion is the rule that the agreement of any two courts, be decisive. “Two” is not an arbitrary figure, for it reflects the fact that there are two parties, the plaintiff and the defendant, to any alleged crime or contract dispute.
If the courts are to be empowered to enforce decision against guilty parties, does this not bring back the state in another form and thereby negate anarchism? No, for at the beginning of this paper I explicitly defined anarchism in such a way as not to rule out the use of defensive force — force in defense of person and property — by privately supported agencies. In the same way, it is not bringing back the state to allow persons to use force to defend themselves against aggression, or to hire guards or police agencies to defend them.
It should be noted, however, that in the anarchist society there will be no “district attorney” to press charges on behalf of “society.” Only the victims will press charges as the plaintiffs. If, then, these victims should happen to be absolute pacifists who are opposed even to defensive force, then they will simply not press charges in the courts or otherwise retaliate against those who have aggressed against them. In a free society that would be their right. If the victim should suffer from murder, then his heir would have the right to press the charges.
What of the Hatfield-and-McCoy problem? Suppose that a Hatfield kills a McCoy, and that McCoy’s heir does not belong to a private insurance, police agency, or court, and decides to retaliate himself? Since under anarchism there can be no coercion of the noncriminal, McCoy would have the perfect right to do so. No one may be compelled to bring his case to a court. Indeed, since the right to hire police or courts flows from the right of self-defense against aggression, it would be inconsistent and in contradiction to the very basis of the free society to institute such compulsion.
Suppose, then, that the surviving McCoy finds what he believes to be the guilty Hatfield and kills him in turn? What then? This is fine, except that McCoy may have to worry about charges being brought against him by a surviving Hatfield. Here it must be emphasized that in the law of the anarchist society based on defense against aggression, the courts would not be able to proceed against McCoy if in fact he killed the right Hatfield. His problem would arise if the courts should find that he made a grievous mistake and killed the wrong man; in that case, he in turn would be found guilty of murder. Surely, in most instances, individuals will wish to obviate such problems by taking their case to a court and thereby gain social acceptability for their defensive retaliation — not for the act of retaliation but for the correctness of deciding who the criminal in any given case might be. The purpose of the judicial process, indeed, is to find a way of general agreement on who might be the criminal or contract breaker in any given case. The judicial process is not a good in itself; thus, in the case of an assassination, such as Jack Ruby’s murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, on public television, there is no need for a complex judicial process, since the name of the murderer is evident to all.
Will not the possibility exist of a private court that may turn venal and dishonest, or of a private police force that turns criminal and extorts money by coercion? Of course such an event may occur, given the propensities of human nature. Anarchism is not a moral cure-all. But the important point is that market forces exist to place severe checks on such possibilities, especially in contrast to a society where a state exists. For, in the first place, judges, like arbitrators, will prosper on the market in proportion to their reputation for efficiency and impartiality. Secondly, on the free market important checks and balances exist against venal courts or criminal police forces. Namely, that there are competing courts and police agencies to whom victims may turn for redress. If the “Prudential Police Agency” should turn outlaw and extract revenue from victims by coercion, the latter would have the option of turning to the “Mutual” or “Equitable” Police Agency for defense and for pressing charges against Prudential. These are the genuine “checks and balances” of the free market, genuine in contrast to the phony check and balances of a state system, where all the alleged “balancing” agencies are in the hands of one monopoly government. Indeed, given the monopoly “protection service” of a state, what is there to prevent a state from using its monopoly channels of coercion to extort money from the public? What are the checks and limits of the state? None, except for the extremely difficult course of revolution against a power with all of the guns in its hands. In fact, the state provides an easy, legitimated channel for crime and aggression, since it has its very being in the crime of tax theft, and the coerced monopoly of “protection.” It is the state, indeed, that functions as a mighty “protection racket” on a giant and massive scale. It is the state that says: “Pay us for your ‘protection’ or else.” In the light of the massive and inherent activities of the state, the danger of a “protection racket” emerging from one or more private police agencies is relatively small indeed.
Moreover, it must be emphasized that a crucial element in the power of the state is its legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the public, the fact that after centuries of propaganda, the depredations of the state are looked upon rather as benevolent services. Taxation is generally not seen as theft, nor war as mass murder, nor conscription as slavery. Should a private police agency turn outlaw, should “Prudential” become a protection racket, it would then lack the social legitimacy which the state has managed to accrue to itself over the centuries. “Prudential” would be seen by all as bandits, rather than as legitimate or divinely appointed “sovereigns” bent on promoting the “common good” or the “general welfare.” And lacking such legitimacy, “Prudential” would have to face the wrath of the public and the defense and retaliation of the other private defense agencies, the police and courts, on the free market. Given these inherent checks and limits, a successful transformation from a free society to bandit rule becomes most unlikely. Indeed, historically, it has been very difficult for a state to arise to supplant a stateless society; usually, it has come about through external conquest rather than by evolution from within a society.
Within the anarchist camp, there has been much dispute on whether the private courts would have to be bound by a basic, common law code. Ingenious attempts have been made to work out a system where the laws or standards of decision-making by the courts would differ completely from one to another.7 But in my view all would have to abide by the basic law code, in particular, prohibition of aggression against person and property, in order to fulfill our definition of anarchism as a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression. Suppose, for example, that one group of people in society holds that all redheads are demons who deserve to be shot on sight. Suppose that Jones, one of this group, shoots Smith, a redhead. Suppose that Smith or his heir presses charges in a court, but that Jones’s court, in philosophic agreement with Jones, finds him innocent therefore. It seems to me that in order to be considered legitimate, any court would have to follow the basic libertarian law code of the inviolate right of person and property. For otherwise, courts might legally subscribe to a code which sanctions such aggression in various cases, and which to that extent would violate the definition of anarchism and introduce, if not the state, then a strong element of statishness or legalized aggression into the society.
But again I see no insuperable difficulties here. For in that case, anarchists, in agitating for their creed, will simply include in their agitation the idea of a general libertarian law code as part and parcel of the anarchist creed of abolition of legalized aggression against person or property in the society.
In contrast to the general law code, other aspects of court decisions could legitimately vary in accordance with the market or the wishes of the clients; for example, the language the cases will be conducted in, the number of judges to be involved, and so on.
There are other problems of the basic law code which there is no time to go into here: for example, the definition of just property titles or the question of legitimate punishment of convicted offenders — though the latter problem of course exists in statist legal systems as well.8 The basic point, however, is that the state is not needed to arrive at legal principles or their elaboration: indeed, much of the common law, the law merchant, admiralty law, and private law in general, grew up apart from the state, by judges not making the law but finding it on the basis of agreed-upon principles derived either from custom or reason.9 The idea that the state is needed to make law is as much a myth as that the state is needed to supply postal or police services.
Enough has been said here, I believe, to indicate that an anarchist system for settling disputes would be both viable and self-subsistent: that once adopted, it could work and continue indefinitely. How to arrive at that system is of course a very different problem, but certainly at the very least it will not likely come about unless people are convinced of its workability, are convinced, in short, that the state is not a necessary evil.

[Murray Rothbard delivered this talk 32 years ago today at the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (ASPLP), Washington, DC: December 28, 1974. It was first published in The Libertarian Forum, volume 7.1, January 1975, available in PDF and ePub.]

https://mises.org/mises-daily/society-without-state
In attempting to outline how a “society without a state” — that is, an anarchist society — might function successfully, I would first like to defuse two common but mistaken criticisms of this approach. First, is the argument that in providing for such defense or protection services as courts, police, or even law itself, I am simply smuggling the state back into society in another form, and that therefore the system I am both analyzing and advocating is not “really” anarchism. This sort of criticism can only involve us in an endless and arid dispute over semantics. Let me say from the beginning that I define the state as that institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as “taxation”; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area. An institution not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a state. On the other hand, I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of an individual. Anarchists oppose the state because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.
Nor is our definition of the state arbitrary, for these two characteristics have been possessed by what is generally acknowledged to be states throughout recorded history. The state, by its use of physical coercion, has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly of defense services over its territorial jurisdiction. But it is certainly conceptually possible for such services to be supplied by private, non-state institutions, and indeed such services have historically been supplied by other organizations than the state. To be opposed to the state is then not necessarily to be opposed to services that have often been linked with it; to be opposed to the state does not necessarily imply that we must be opposed to police protection, courts, arbitration, the minting of money, postal service, or roads and highways. Some anarchists have indeed been opposed to police and to all physical coercion in defense of person and property, but this is not inherent in and is fundamentally irrelevant to the anarchist position, which is precisely marked by opposition to all physical coercion invasive of, or aggressing against, person and property.
The crucial role of taxation may be seen in the fact that the state is the only institution or organization in society which regularly and systematically acquires its income through the use of physical coercion. All other individuals or organizations acquire their income voluntarily, either (1) through the voluntary sale of goods and services to consumers on the market, or (2) through voluntary gifts or donations by members or other donors. If I cease or refrain from purchasing Wheaties on the market, the Wheaties producers do not come after me with a gun or the threat of imprisonment to force me to purchase; if I fail to join the American Philosophical Association, the association may not force me to join or prevent me from giving up my membership. Only the state can do so; only the state can confiscate my property or put me in jail if I do not pay its tax tribute. Therefore, only the state regularly exists and has its very being by means of coercive depredations on private property.
Neither is it legitimate to challenge this sort of analysis by claiming that in some other sense, the purchase of Wheaties or membership in the APA is in some way “coercive.” Anyone who is still unhappy with this use of the term “coercion” can simply eliminate the word from this discussion and substitute for it “physical violence or the threat thereof,” with the only loss being in literary style rather than in the substance of the argument. What anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the state, that is, to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion.
It need hardly be added that the state habitually builds upon its coercive source of income by adding a host of other aggressions upon society, ranging from economic controls to the prohibition of pornography to the compelling of religious observance to the mass murder of civilians in organized warfare. In short, the state, in the words of Albert Jay Nock, “claims and exercises a monopoly of crime” over its territorial area.
The second criticism I would like to defuse before beginning the main body of the paper is the common charge that anarchists “assume that all people are good” and that without the state no crime would be committed. In short, that anarchism assumes that with the abolition of the state a New Anarchist Man will emerge, cooperative, humane, and benevolent, so that no problem of crime will then plague the society. I confess that I do not understand the basis for this charge. Whatever other schools of anarchism profess — and I do not believe that they are open to the charge — I certainly do not adopt this view. I assume with most observers that mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct and the state is indeed the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime — theft, oppression, mass murder — on a massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad.
A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are “good” in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted to police protection. The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point in time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the good and minimize the channels for the bad. The rest depends on the values held by the individual members of society. The only further point that need be made is that by eliminating the living example and the social legitimacy of the massive legalized crime of the state, anarchism will to a large extent promote peaceful values in the minds of the public.
We cannot of course deal here with the numerous arguments in favor of anarchism or against the state, moral, political, and economic. Nor can we take up the various goods and services now provided by the state and show how private individuals and groups will be able to supply them far more efficiently on the free market. Here we can only deal with perhaps the most difficult area, the area where it is almost universally assumed that the state must exist and act, even if it is only a “necessary evil” instead of a positive good: the vital realm of defense or protection of person and property against aggression. Surely, it is universally asserted, the state is at least vitally necessary to provide police protection, the judicial resolution of disputes and enforcement of contracts, and the creation of the law itself that is to be enforced. My contention is that all of these admittedly necessary services of protection can be satisfactorily and efficiently supplied by private persons and institutions on the free market.
One important caveat before we begin the body of this paper: new proposals such as anarchism are almost always gauged against the implicit assumption that the present, or statist system works to perfection. Any lacunae or difficulties with the picture of the anarchist society are considered net liabilities, and enough to dismiss anarchism out of hand. It is, in short, implicitly assumed that the state is doing its self-assumed job of protecting person and property to perfection. We cannot here go into the reasons why the state is bound to suffer inherently from grave flaws and inefficiencies in such a task. All we need do now is to point to the black and unprecedented record of the state through history: no combination of private marauders can possibly begin to match the state’s unremitting record of theft, confiscation, oppression, and mass murder. No collection of Mafia or private bank robbers can begin to compare with all the Hiroshimas, Dresdens, and Lidices and their analogues through the history of mankind.
This point can be made more philosophically: it is illegitimate to compare the merits of anarchism and statism by starting with the present system as the implicit given and then critically examining only the anarchist alternative. What we must do is to begin at the zero point and then critically examine both suggested alternatives. Suppose, for example, that we were all suddenly dropped down on the earth de novo and that we were all then confronted with the question of what societal arrangements to adopt. And suppose then that someone suggested: “We are all bound to suffer from those of us who wish to aggress against their fellow men. Let us then solve this problem of crime by handing all of our weapons to the Jones family, over there, by giving all of our ultimate power to settle disputes to that family. In that way, with their monopoly of coercion and of ultimate decision making, the Jones family will be able to protect each of us from each other.” I submit that this proposal would get very short shrift, except perhaps from the Jones family themselves. And yet this is precisely the common argument for the existence of the state. When we start from the zero point, as in the case of the Jones family, the question of “who will guard the guardians?” becomes not simply an abiding lacuna in the theory of the state but an overwhelming barrier to its existence.
A final caveat: the anarchist is always at a disadvantage in attempting to forecast the shape of the future anarchist society. For it is impossible for observers to predict voluntary social arrangements, including the provision of goods and services, on the free market. Suppose, for example, that this were the year 1874 and that someone predicted that eventually there would be a radio-manufacturing industry. To be able to make such a forecast successfully, does he have to be challenged to state immediately how many radio manufacturers there would be a century hence, how big they would be, where they would be located, what technology and marketing techniques they would use, and so on? Obviously, such a challenge would make no sense, and in a profound sense the same is true of those who demand a precise portrayal of the pattern of protection activities on the market. Anarchism advocates the dissolution of the state into social and market arrangements, and these arrangements are far more flexible and less predictable than political institutions. The most that we can do, then, is to offer broad guidelines and perspectives on the shape of a projected anarchist society.
One important point to make here is that the advance of modern technology makes anarchistic arrangements increasingly feasible. Take, for example, the case of lighthouses, where it is often charged that it is unfeasible for private lighthouse operators to row out to each ship to charge it for use of the light. Apart from the fact that this argument ignores the successful existence of private lighthouses in earlier days, as in England in the eighteenth century, another vital consideration is that modern electronic technology makes charging each ship for the light far more feasible. Thus, the ship would have to have paid for an electronically controlled beam which could then be automatically turned on for those ships which had paid for the service.
Let us turn now to the problem of how disputes — in particular disputes over alleged violations of person and property — would be resolved in an anarchist society. First, it should be noted that all disputes involve two parties: the plaintiff, the alleged victim of the crime or tort and the defendant, the alleged aggressor. In many cases of broken contract, of course, each of the two parties alleging that the other is the culprit is at the same time a plaintiff and a defendant.
An important point to remember is that any society, be it statist or anarchist, has to have some way of resolving disputes that will gain a majority consensus in society. There would be no need for courts or arbitrators if everyone were omniscient and knew instantaneously which persons were guilty of any given crime or violation of contract. Since none of us is omniscient, there has to be some method of deciding who is the criminal or lawbreaker which will gain legitimacy; in short, whose decision will be accepted by the great majority of the public.
In the first place, a dispute may be resolved voluntarily between the two parties themselves, either unaided or with the help of a third mediator. This poses no problem, and will automatically be accepted by society at large. It is so accepted even now, much less in a society imbued with the anarchistic values of peaceful cooperation and agreement. Secondly and similarly, the two parties, unable to reach agreement, may decide to submit voluntarily to the decision of an arbitrator. This agreement may arise either after a dispute has arisen, or be provided for in advance in the original contract. Again, there is no problem in such an arrangement gaining legitimacy. Even in the present statist era, the notorious inefficiency and coercive and cumbersome procedures of the politically run government courts has led increasing numbers of citizens to turn to voluntary and expert arbitration for a speedy and harmonious settling of disputes.
Thus, William C. Wooldridge has written that

Wooldridge adds the important point that, in addition to the speed of arbitration procedures vis-à-vis the courts, the arbitrators can proceed as experts in disregard of the official government law; in a profound sense, then, they serve to create a voluntary body of private law. “In other words,” states Wooldridge, “the system of extralegal, voluntary courts has progressed hand in hand with a body of private law; the rules of the state are circumvented by the same process that circumvents the forums established for the settlement of disputes over those rules…. In short, a private agreement between two people, a bilateral “law,” has supplanted the official law. The writ of the sovereign has cease to run, and for it is substituted a rule tacitly or explicitly agreed to by the parties. Wooldridge concludes that “if an arbitrator can choose to ignore a penal damage rule or the statute of limitations applicable to the claim before him (and it is generally conceded that he has that power), arbitration can be viewed as a practically revolutionary instrument for self-liberation from the law….”2
It may be objected that arbitration only works successfully because the courts enforce the award of the arbitrator. Wooldridge points out, however, that arbitration was unenforceable in the American courts before 1920, but that this did not prevent voluntary arbitration from being successful and expanding in the United States and in England. He points, furthermore, to the successful operations of merchant courts since the Middle Ages, those courts which successfully developed the entire body of the law merchant. None of those courts possessed the power of enforcement. He might have added the private courts of shippers which developed the body of admiralty law in a similar way.
How then did these private, “anarchistic,” and voluntary courts ensure the acceptance of their decisions? By the method of social ostracism, and by the refusal to deal any further with the offending merchant. This method of voluntary “enforcement,” indeed proved highly successful. Wooldridge writes that “the merchants’ courts were voluntary, and if a man ignored their judgment, he could not be sent to jail…. Nevertheless, it is apparent that … [their] decisions were generally respected even by the losers; otherwise people would never have used them in the first place…. Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows … proved if anything more effective than physical coercion.”3 Nor did this voluntary method fail to work in modern times. Wooldridge writes that it was precisely in the years before 1920, when arbitration awards could not be enforced in the courts,

It should also be pointed out that modern technology makes even more feasible the collection and dissemination of information about people’s credit ratings and records of keeping or violating their contracts or arbitration agreements. Presumably, an anarchist society would see the expansion of this sort of dissemination of data and thereby facilitate the ostracism or boycotting of contract and arbitration violators.
How would arbitrators be selected in an anarchist society? In the same way as they are chosen now, and as they were chosen in the days of strictly voluntary arbitration: the arbitrators with the best reputation for efficiency and probity would be chosen by the various parties on the market. As in other processes of the market, the arbitrators with the best record in settling disputes will come to gain an increasing amount of business, and those with poor records will no longer enjoy clients and will have to shift to another line of endeavor. Here it must be emphasized that parties in dispute will seek out those arbitrators with the best reputation for both expertise and impartiality and that inefficient or biased arbitrators will rapidly have to find another occupation.
Thus, the Tannehills emphasize:

If desired, furthermore, the contracting parties could provide in advance for a series of arbitrators:

Arbitration, then, poses little difficulty for a portrayal of the free society. But what of torts or crimes of aggression where there has been no contract? Or suppose that the breaker of a contract defies the arbitration award? Is ostracism enough? In short, how can courts develop in the free-market anarchist society which will have the power to enforce judgments against criminals or contract breakers?
In the wide sense, defense service consists of guards or police who use force in defending person and property against attack, and judges or courts whose role is to use socially accepted procedures to determine who the criminals or tortfeasors are, as well as to enforce judicial awards, such as damages or the keeping of contracts. On the free market, many scenarios are possible on the relationship between the private courts and the police; they may be “vertically integrated,” for example, or their services may be supplied by separate firms. Furthermore, it seems likely that police service will be supplied by insurance companies who will provide crime insurance to their clients. In that case, insurance companies will pay off the victims of crime or the breaking of contracts or arbitration awards and then pursue the aggressors in court to recoup their losses. There is a natural market connection between insurance companies and defense service, since they need pay out less benefits in proportion as they are able to keep down the rate of crime.
Courts might either charge fees for their services, with the losers of cases obliged to pay court costs, or else they may subsist on monthly or yearly premiums by their clients, who may be either individuals or the police or insurance agencies. Suppose, for example, that Smith is an aggrieved party, either because he has been assaulted or robbed, or because an arbitration award in his favor has not been honored. Smith believes that Jones is the party guilty of the crime. Smith then goes to a court, Court A, of which he is a client, and brings charges against Jones as a defendant. In my view, the hallmark of an anarchist society is one where no man may legally compel someone who is not a convicted criminal to do anything, since that would be aggression against an innocent man’s person or property. Therefore, Court A can only invite rather than subpoena Jones to attend his trial. Of course, if Jones refused to appear or send a representative, his side of the case will not be heard. The trial of Jones proceeds. Suppose that Court A finds Jones innocent. In my view, part of the generally accepted law code of the anarchist society (on which see further below) is that this must end the matter unless Smith can prove charges of gross incompetence or bias on the part of the court.
Suppose, next, that Court A finds Jones guilty. Jones might accept the verdict, because he too is a client of the same court, because he knows he is guilty, or for some other reason. In that case, Court A proceeds to exercise judgment against Jones. Neither of these instances poses very difficult problems for our picture of the anarchist society. But suppose, instead, that Jones contests the decision; he then goes to his court, Court B, and the case is retried there. Suppose that Court B, too, finds Jones guilty. Again, it seems to me that the accepted law code of the anarchist society will assert that this ends the matter; both parties have had their say in courts which each has selected, and the decision for guilt is unanimous.
Suppose, however, the most difficult case: that Court B finds Jones innocent. The two courts, each subscribed to by one of the two parties, have split their verdicts. In that case, the two courts will submit the case to an appeals court, or arbitrator, which the two courts agree upon. There seems to be no real difficulty about the concept of an appeals court. As in the case of arbitration contracts, it seems very likely that the various private courts in the society will have prior agreements to submit their disputes to a particular appeals court. How will the appeals judges be chosen? Again, as in the case of arbitrators or of the first judges on the free market, they will be chosen for their expertise and their reputation for efficiency, honesty, and integrity. Obviously, appeals judges who are inefficient or biased will scarcely be chosen by courts who will have a dispute. The point here is that there is no need for a legally established or institutionalized single, monopoly appeals court system, as states now provide. There is no reason why there cannot arise a multitude of efficient and honest appeals judges who will be selected by the disputant courts, just as there are numerous private arbitrators on the market today. The appeals court renders its decision, and the courts proceed to enforce it if, in our example, Jones is considered guilty — unless, of course, Jones can prove bias in some other court proceedings.
No society can have unlimited judicial appeals, for in that case there would be no point to having judges or courts at all. Therefore, every society, whether statist or anarchist, will have to have some socially accepted cutoff point for trials and appeals. My suggestion is the rule that the agreement of any two courts, be decisive. “Two” is not an arbitrary figure, for it reflects the fact that there are two parties, the plaintiff and the defendant, to any alleged crime or contract dispute.
If the courts are to be empowered to enforce decision against guilty parties, does this not bring back the state in another form and thereby negate anarchism? No, for at the beginning of this paper I explicitly defined anarchism in such a way as not to rule out the use of defensive force — force in defense of person and property — by privately supported agencies. In the same way, it is not bringing back the state to allow persons to use force to defend themselves against aggression, or to hire guards or police agencies to defend them.
It should be noted, however, that in the anarchist society there will be no “district attorney” to press charges on behalf of “society.” Only the victims will press charges as the plaintiffs. If, then, these victims should happen to be absolute pacifists who are opposed even to defensive force, then they will simply not press charges in the courts or otherwise retaliate against those who have aggressed against them. In a free society that would be their right. If the victim should suffer from murder, then his heir would have the right to press the charges.
What of the Hatfield-and-McCoy problem? Suppose that a Hatfield kills a McCoy, and that McCoy’s heir does not belong to a private insurance, police agency, or court, and decides to retaliate himself? Since under anarchism there can be no coercion of the noncriminal, McCoy would have the perfect right to do so. No one may be compelled to bring his case to a court. Indeed, since the right to hire police or courts flows from the right of self-defense against aggression, it would be inconsistent and in contradiction to the very basis of the free society to institute such compulsion.
Suppose, then, that the surviving McCoy finds what he believes to be the guilty Hatfield and kills him in turn? What then? This is fine, except that McCoy may have to worry about charges being brought against him by a surviving Hatfield. Here it must be emphasized that in the law of the anarchist society based on defense against aggression, the courts would not be able to proceed against McCoy if in fact he killed the right Hatfield. His problem would arise if the courts should find that he made a grievous mistake and killed the wrong man; in that case, he in turn would be found guilty of murder. Surely, in most instances, individuals will wish to obviate such problems by taking their case to a court and thereby gain social acceptability for their defensive retaliation — not for the act of retaliation but for the correctness of deciding who the criminal in any given case might be. The purpose of the judicial process, indeed, is to find a way of general agreement on who might be the criminal or contract breaker in any given case. The judicial process is not a good in itself; thus, in the case of an assassination, such as Jack Ruby’s murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, on public television, there is no need for a complex judicial process, since the name of the murderer is evident to all.
Will not the possibility exist of a private court that may turn venal and dishonest, or of a private police force that turns criminal and extorts money by coercion? Of course such an event may occur, given the propensities of human nature. Anarchism is not a moral cure-all. But the important point is that market forces exist to place severe checks on such possibilities, especially in contrast to a society where a state exists. For, in the first place, judges, like arbitrators, will prosper on the market in proportion to their reputation for efficiency and impartiality. Secondly, on the free market important checks and balances exist against venal courts or criminal police forces. Namely, that there are competing courts and police agencies to whom victims may turn for redress. If the “Prudential Police Agency” should turn outlaw and extract revenue from victims by coercion, the latter would have the option of turning to the “Mutual” or “Equitable” Police Agency for defense and for pressing charges against Prudential. These are the genuine “checks and balances” of the free market, genuine in contrast to the phony check and balances of a state system, where all the alleged “balancing” agencies are in the hands of one monopoly government. Indeed, given the monopoly “protection service” of a state, what is there to prevent a state from using its monopoly channels of coercion to extort money from the public? What are the checks and limits of the state? None, except for the extremely difficult course of revolution against a power with all of the guns in its hands. In fact, the state provides an easy, legitimated channel for crime and aggression, since it has its very being in the crime of tax theft, and the coerced monopoly of “protection.” It is the state, indeed, that functions as a mighty “protection racket” on a giant and massive scale. It is the state that says: “Pay us for your ‘protection’ or else.” In the light of the massive and inherent activities of the state, the danger of a “protection racket” emerging from one or more private police agencies is relatively small indeed.
Moreover, it must be emphasized that a crucial element in the power of the state is its legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the public, the fact that after centuries of propaganda, the depredations of the state are looked upon rather as benevolent services. Taxation is generally not seen as theft, nor war as mass murder, nor conscription as slavery. Should a private police agency turn outlaw, should “Prudential” become a protection racket, it would then lack the social legitimacy which the state has managed to accrue to itself over the centuries. “Prudential” would be seen by all as bandits, rather than as legitimate or divinely appointed “sovereigns” bent on promoting the “common good” or the “general welfare.” And lacking such legitimacy, “Prudential” would have to face the wrath of the public and the defense and retaliation of the other private defense agencies, the police and courts, on the free market. Given these inherent checks and limits, a successful transformation from a free society to bandit rule becomes most unlikely. Indeed, historically, it has been very difficult for a state to arise to supplant a stateless society; usually, it has come about through external conquest rather than by evolution from within a society.
Within the anarchist camp, there has been much dispute on whether the private courts would have to be bound by a basic, common law code. Ingenious attempts have been made to work out a system where the laws or standards of decision-making by the courts would differ completely from one to another.7 But in my view all would have to abide by the basic law code, in particular, prohibition of aggression against person and property, in order to fulfill our definition of anarchism as a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression. Suppose, for example, that one group of people in society holds that all redheads are demons who deserve to be shot on sight. Suppose that Jones, one of this group, shoots Smith, a redhead. Suppose that Smith or his heir presses charges in a court, but that Jones’s court, in philosophic agreement with Jones, finds him innocent therefore. It seems to me that in order to be considered legitimate, any court would have to follow the basic libertarian law code of the inviolate right of person and property. For otherwise, courts might legally subscribe to a code which sanctions such aggression in various cases, and which to that extent would violate the definition of anarchism and introduce, if not the state, then a strong element of statishness or legalized aggression into the society.
But again I see no insuperable difficulties here. For in that case, anarchists, in agitating for their creed, will simply include in their agitation the idea of a general libertarian law code as part and parcel of the anarchist creed of abolition of legalized aggression against person or property in the society.
In contrast to the general law code, other aspects of court decisions could legitimately vary in accordance with the market or the wishes of the clients; for example, the language the cases will be conducted in, the number of judges to be involved, and so on.
There are other problems of the basic law code which there is no time to go into here: for example, the definition of just property titles or the question of legitimate punishment of convicted offenders — though the latter problem of course exists in statist legal systems as well.8 The basic point, however, is that the state is not needed to arrive at legal principles or their elaboration: indeed, much of the common law, the law merchant, admiralty law, and private law in general, grew up apart from the state, by judges not making the law but finding it on the basis of agreed-upon principles derived either from custom or reason.9 The idea that the state is needed to make law is as much a myth as that the state is needed to supply postal or police services.
Enough has been said here, I believe, to indicate that an anarchist system for settling disputes would be both viable and self-subsistent: that once adopted, it could work and continue indefinitely. How to arrive at that system is of course a very different problem, but certainly at the very least it will not likely come about unless people are convinced of its workability, are convinced, in short, that the state is not a necessary evil.

[Murray Rothbard delivered this talk 32 years ago today at the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (ASPLP), Washington, DC: December 28, 1974. It was first published in The Libertarian Forum, volume 7.1, January 1975, available in PDF and ePub.]

This is a really long story with lots of context so I'll do my best to organize it into current situation, then his backstory and hers. I'm also not using real names or specific locations for any of this to try and keep this private. This also has some contradicting stories and because of how their relationship is structured relies mostly on information I have gotten from my sister, so I'm telling you the story I got from her first and then adding in what I've found out. I'll try to tell this as unbiased as I can but it's been a huge issue in my family for a long time now and that's a little difficult for me to do.
My(20F) sister (Olivia, 24F) has been dating this guy (Trevor, 25M) since 2021. When they started dating, she talked about him fairly often, sent a few pictures of them, ect., but then after a month she stopped mentioning him/ was cagey when we (me and my mom mostly) asked how he was so we assumed it just hadn't worked out. Then two months later she insisted that my parents (54F and 56M) and I all come to visit her college to meet Trevor before he went into the Army (she lived several hours away from my parents and several hours from my college, so I had to get a bus ticket and my parents had to get a hotel room to do this. We only met him once for dinner). Now they've been dating long distance for three years after a three month in-person relationship. She is in nursing school and is planning on moving across the country (literally opposite corners of the map) to live with him and is not applying to any residency programs outside of the Army base area (limiting her choices a LOT from her original goals and narrowing employment opportunities).
Olivia met Trevor on several dating apps, matched with him, but didn't really want to go out with him. He was really persistent, so her friend convinced her to go out with him. She lied about the way they met to our parents and told them they met at the gym through a mutual friend (she lied to me about this at first too and told me the truth about 3 months after they started dating). At the time, Trevor was working as a used car salesman and living at home (~45 min. away from Olivia's school in a rural area) because his sports scholarship had been dropped before his Senior year due to covid at the college he had been attending out of state. The university was unaccredited (I later did some internet stalking and found out it was accredited), so his credits would not transfer and he would have to start over. He was saving up money to attend school in state at the large college Olivia attended so he could go back to school. **Our state has crazy low tuition costs in-state and a full-tuition scholarship program for good high school GPA and SAT scores. There was also a "feeder" community college that had half the cost per credit hour that a lot of people would go to before the larger university if they didn't get in straight out of high school.**
Olivia told me that Trevor had applied to her college and not gotten in (she later told me he HAD gotten in but been unable to afford tuition). Either way, he decided to join the Army because his father had been in the Army. The Army would take his credit hours and he would be able to finish his degree during his 5 year contract or use the GI bill once he got out. **She is comparing the situation to our father, who joined the Army directly out of high school and used the GI bill to go to college after his 2 year contract because his parents wouldn't pay for school. He was a medic in the military, worked as an EMT through college, and then went to nursing school.** The original plan was that Trevor would be a Green Beret (special forces, linking the training pipeline here: https://www.reddit.com/greenberets/comments/xwdbta/current_sf_pipeline_correct_me_if_im_wrong/ ), he completed basic training and and got several months through the NC training before failing the running portion of a physical by about 10 seconds and being dropped from the selection process. He then decided that he wanted to be a Ranger (another elite position). He got sent back to GA, then to the Ranger school base in WA (it took a couple of months before he was sent to WA). Again, he got partway through the training before failing the running portion of a physical by a few seconds. He is now not sure if he will be continuing Ranger school (failing the physical means no, but commanders may pass him anyways if they think he should continue). For a while, Trevor told Olivia that he might not stay at the base in WA if he wasn't in Ranger school and there were a variety of different bases he could be sent to, including somewhere in Italy, so she wasn't sure where to look for jobs. In the past month, Trevor told Olivia that he would likely stay in WA regardless of the Ranger school results.
Through this all, Olivia has visited Trevor at the different military bases countless times, driving from as far as south FL to NC and putting over 30,000 miles on a brand new car over the course of the 1.5 years she's owned it. Before she had the car, she paid for plane tickets to see him and hotels whenever she visited. At the time, she told me that he was paying for all of these trips because he was unable to visit her, was making an income that wasn't being spent, and she was working to save for nursing school and later was living off of student loans and savings during nursing school. She later admitted to me that she had paid for almost all of the expenses except for food when they ate out together and part of a hotel room one weekend.
A few odd things (to me) between Olivia and Trevor over the course of their relationship:
About a month into their relationship, Trevor got Olivia an over $300 christmas gift. He has not gotten her anything nearly that expensive since, and hasn't sent flowers for things like her college graduation or a severe emergency surgery she had last year. I don't care about monetary value or sending flowers, but I do think it is odd that he spent so much before moving away when he ostensibly didn't have much money, but now that he has an income and military sign-on bonus, he has not spent that much again.
Trevor's father left Trevor, his siblings, and his mother, but Trevor has a hat that his father gave him that he wore often. The hat says "Red Man" across the top of a picture of a Native American man wearing a feathered headdress. He has worn this hat several times around Olivia's friends and they told him they didn't like it and that it was racist. They also asked him to not wear it when he was with them and he refused because it was special to him and his father gave it to him. Olivia then told him to stop wearing it and he eventually agreed (Olivia told me that he stopped wearing the hat after this). A few weeks after this, I facetimed Olivia and Trevor was with her. She turned the camera so I could say hello to him, and he was wearing the hat. I talked to Olivia about this later and she told me that that was the first time he'd worn the hat in a while and it wasn't a big deal. Olivia has always been liberal and never racist, and I am uncomfortable that she was okay with him not only wearing the hat, but being with him while he had it on.
They dated for a little over 3 months in person before he joined the military (recently, Olivia told me that they actually met several months before she told everyone about him and that they actually dated for 6 months before he left). For the next two months in basic training, he was only able to use the phone for 15 minutes total once a week to talk to family and her. Throughout the different training programs he has completed he had sporadic and limited access to phones to communicate, and only in the past 6 months he has had access to his phone to facetime, text, and call (but sometimes he goes for a week or two without phone access). Olivia told me that they wrote letters during the time he didn't have consistent phone access. **I don't think that this is odd, I understand the military limits phone usage, etc., but I don't think they have been able to have an "average" long-distance relationship**
Last year, Olivia drove to GA to visit Trevor the weekend before Valentine's day. He had plans for them to take a pottery class, go on a hike, and have dinner at a nice restaurant. The day she got there, Trevor's barracks had their off-base privileges revoked because one of the guys had contraband. She would still be able to visit him on base though. Somehow, Trevor was able to get off base for long periods of time to her hotel, but unable to do the other activities he had planned for them.
In the past year, Olivia told me that she and Trevor were going to immediately marry when she got to WA so that they could move in together because they had to be married to live together anywhere. I and our dad- who was in the military- told her several times that this was not true, but she insisted it was. Then, his barracks were given an allowance to live off base in apartments because the barracks were being renovated/ rebuilt, so she backed off on the idea of getting married immediately after several long conversations with me. She is still insistent on moving in with Trevor, who lives with a roommate, when she moves to WA.
Some background on Olivia:
Olivia has ADHD and anxiety, and struggled particularly badly with the anxiety/ some depression after being broken up with by the boyfriend she dated before Trevor (he broke it off very abruptly, told her he just didn't love her anymore with no previous indications). Olivia is very pretty (objectively, not just because she's my sister), but had bad acne that she ended up going on accutane for at the time she started dating Trevor and was very insecure about it. She had also decided to not go to medical school, and pursue nursing instead around the same time she met Trevor. This was a very upsetting decision for her because she had been taking very hard courses and was burnt out but had told everyone she was going to be a doctor and thought that she would be letting us down by switching paths. Also around the time she started seeing Trevor, Olivia began being very cruel towards our mother (our mother had been borderline emotionally abusive in the past, but Olivia and I were both in college by then and fixing our relationships with her. She has been much better recently and Olivia and I believe that she had some mental health struggles that went unchecked that contributed). Now, several years later, Olivia told our family that she had acted like that because she was rpd by a friend of her ex-boyfriend's after her ex broke up with her. This person also gave her an STD.
I always believe people who say they have been S A'd, and we believed Olivia when she first told us, but some things have come to light that make me and my family question that. Right after Olivia and her ex broke up, Olivia told our cousin that she had gone out with one of his friends and had revenge/ breakup sex with him because he had also been dumped recently. Once my cousin told me this, I remembered that Olivia had told me about a guy she had a one night stand with after she was dumped. She showed me a picture of him, talked about how cute he was, etc. (no distress whatsoever). I know sometimes people behave in ways you wouldn't expect when a traumatic event occurs to them, but I really don't understand how or why Olivia would brag about this guy if he really did S A her.
Three months ago, Olivia was arrested for stealing a set of sheets from Walmart (incidentally, right before Trevor came to visit her on leave). She used the self check-out and only bought a small $5 item and the sheets. She held both in one hand and scanned each side because she had a cut on the other hand and was holding her wallet with it. She saw a 5 in front of the total number and thought it looked right because the total should have been about $50, paid, didn't get a receipt, and walked out. An employee at the door asked to see a receipt, which Olivia didn't have, so she pulled up her transaction history on her phone to show she had paid. At this point, the employee called the police and took Olivia into an office, where she was questioned and charged with shoplifting. (Olivia can get very emotional and probably got upset when the police questioned her, which may have led them to believe she was lying). Luckily, Olivia has managed to get the charges expunged, but the process is still ongoing. Because of her ADHD, if anyone genuinely made this mistake, I would believe it from her, but Olivia has been improving a lot on organization and being more attentive recently. It is extremely uncharacteristic of her to steal- she was honest to a fault as kids- she would break down from guilt and admit things to our parents that we would have gotten away with if she hadn't said anything.
Right now, my parents have met Trevor twice in person, and I've met him once in person and several times in passing over facetime. I personally don't think that Trevor seems to keep up with my sister or that they make each other shine, and that opinion is shared with family friends and family that have met Trevor. Olivia doesn't mention Trevor in front of our parents often because his name has become a topic of contention and argument between them. My parents don't think Trevor is right for Olivia. She has almost 2 college degrees and plans to become a nurse practitioner in the future, and he hasn't finished college and doesn't seem to have any drive to do so. Olivia is also well traveled and enjoys going to museums, concerts, etc., while Trevor has lived in rural FL his whole life (this is not Trevor's fault, and I don't think he is a lesser person because of it, but I don't see a lot of common ground between them). Trevor has not seemed very well spoken when I have talked to him and I just don't see a lot of qualities in him that Olivia values.
If you've gotten this far, I just don't know what to do. Olivia and my parents have a huge rift in their relationship right now and any mention of Trevor, with her around or not, explodes into a huge argument, discussion, or just icy silence. I want Olivia to be able to talk to me about him, and we are able to discuss things much better than she is with our parents. My parents have also started asking me about Olivia and Trevor because they know Olivia shares more with me, and it makes me uncomfortable because I don't want to betray Olivia's trust, but I'm also very worried about her. I know I can't control her actions and I'm having a really hard time trying to balance supporting Olivia but not supporting the relationship (I'm not going to lie to her about how I feel, but I don't want her to feel alienated or unloved by our family, because that is NOT the case). I also think that Olivia is romanticizing the fact that our parents don't like him because my father's parents had a rift with him over our mother when we were very young (this is a whole other story, but basically, his parents always favored his sister, his sister got (I think) jealous when he did well for himself and married my mother, who his parents initially likes, and she made up rumors/lies about my mother that turned his parents against her (this was way before our mother's suspected mental health struggles, which occured when Olivia and I were in middle/high school).
Please share any thoughts you have on the situation (am I reading too into things, is this not as bad as I think it is?), and any advice you have on navigating the relationships.

This is a really long story with lots of context so I'll do my best to organize it into current situation, then his backstory and hers. I'm also not using real names or specific locations for any of this to try and keep this private. This also has some contradicting stories and because of how their relationship is structured relies mostly on information I have gotten from my sister, so I'm telling you the story I got from her first and then adding in what I've found out. I'll try to tell this as unbiased as I can but it's been a huge issue in my family for a long time now and that's a little difficult for me to do.
My sister (Olivia, 24F) has been dating this guy (Trevor, 25M) since 2021. When they started dating, she talked about him fairly often, sent a few pictures of them, ect., but then after a month she stopped mentioning him/ was cagey when we (me and my mom mostly) asked how he was so we assumed it just hadn't worked out. Then two months later she insisted that my parents and I all come to visit her college to meet Trevor before he went into the Army (she lived several hours away from my parents and several hours from my college, so I had to get a bus ticket and my parents had to get a hotel room to do this. We only met him once for dinner). Now they've been dating long distance for three years after a three month in-person relationship. She is in nursing school and is planning on moving across the country (literally opposite corners of the map) to live with him and is not applying to any residency programs outside of the Army base area (limiting her choices a LOT from her original goals and narrowing employment opportunities).
Olivia met Trevor on several dating apps, matched with him, but didn't really want to go out with him. He was really persistent, so her friend convinced her to go out with him. She lied about the way they met to our parents and told them they met at the gym through a mutual friend (she lied to me about this at first too and told me the truth about 3 months after they started dating). At the time, Trevor was working as a used car salesman and living at home (~45 min. away from Olivia's school in a rural area) because his sports scholarship had been dropped before his Senior year due to covid at the college he had been attending out of state. The university was unaccredited (I later did some internet stalking and found out it was accredited), so his credits would not transfer and he would have to start over. He was saving up money to attend school in state at the large college Olivia attended so he could go back to school. **Our state has crazy low tuition costs in-state and a full-tuition scholarship program for good high school GPA and SAT scores. There was also a "feeder" community college that had half the cost per credit hour that a lot of people would go to before the larger university if they didn't get in straight out of high school.**
Olivia told me that Trevor had applied to her college and not gotten in (she later told me he HAD gotten in but been unable to afford tuition). Either way, he decided to join the Army because his father had been in the Army. The Army would take his credit hours and he would be able to finish his degree during his 5 year contract or use the GI bill once he got out. **She is comparing the situation to our father, who joined the Army directly out of high school and used the GI bill to go to college after his 2 year contract because his parents wouldn't pay for school. He was a medic in the military, worked as an EMT through college, and then went to nursing school.** The original plan was that Trevor would be a Green Beret (special forces, linking the training pipeline here: https://www.reddit.com/greenberets/comments/xwdbta/current_sf_pipeline_correct_me_if_im_wrong/ ), he completed basic training and and got several months through the NC training before failing the running portion of a physical by about 10 seconds and being dropped from the selection process. He then decided that he wanted to be a Ranger (another elite position). He got sent back to GA, then to the Ranger school base in WA (it took a couple of months before he was sent to WA). Again, he got partway through the training before failing the running portion of a physical by a few seconds. He is now not sure if he will be continuing Ranger school (failing the physical means no, but commanders may pass him anyways if they think he should continue). For a while, Trevor told Olivia that he might not stay at the base in WA if he wasn't in Ranger school and there were a variety of different bases he could be sent to, including somewhere in Italy, so she wasn't sure where to look for jobs. In the past month, Trevor told Olivia that he would likely stay in WA regardless of the Ranger school results.
Through this all, Olivia has visited Trevor at the different military bases countless times, driving from as far as south FL to NC and putting over 30,000 miles on a brand new car over the course of the 1.5 years she's owned it. Before she had the car, she paid for plane tickets to see him and hotels whenever she visited. At the time, she told me that he was paying for all of these trips because he was unable to visit her, was making an income that wasn't being spent, and she was working to save for nursing school and later was living off of student loans and savings during nursing school. She later admitted to me that she had paid for almost all of the expenses except for food when they ate out together and part of a hotel room one weekend.
A few odd things (to me) between Olivia and Trevor over the course of their relationship:
About a month into their relationship, Trevor got Olivia an over $300 christmas gift. He has not gotten her anything nearly that expensive since, and hasn't sent flowers for things like her college graduation or a severe emergency surgery she had last year. I don't care about monetary value or sending flowers, but I do think it is odd that he spent so much before moving away when he ostensibly didn't have much money, but now that he has an income and military sign-on bonus, he has not spent that much again.
Trevor's father left Trevor, his siblings, and his mother, but Trevor has a hat that his father gave him that he wore often. The hat says "Red Man" across the top of a picture of a Native American man wearing a feathered headdress. He has worn this hat several times around Olivia's friends and they told him they didn't like it and that it was racist. They also asked him to not wear it when he was with them and he refused because it was special to him and his father gave it to him. Olivia then told him to stop wearing it and he eventually agreed (Olivia told me that he stopped wearing the hat after this). A few weeks after this, I facetimed Olivia and Trevor was with her. She turned the camera so I could say hello to him, and he was wearing the hat. I talked to Olivia about this later and she told me that that was the first time he'd worn the hat in a while and it wasn't a big deal. Olivia has always been liberal and never racist, and I am uncomfortable that she was okay with him not only wearing the hat, but being with him while he had it on.
They dated for a little over 3 months in person before he joined the military (recently, Olivia told me that they actually met several months before she told everyone about him and that they actually dated for 6 months before he left). For the next two months in basic training, he was only able to use the phone for 15 minutes total once a week to talk to family and her. Throughout the different training programs he has completed he had sporadic and limited access to phones to communicate, and only in the past 6 months he has had access to his phone to facetime, text, and call (but sometimes he goes for a week or two without phone access). Olivia told me that they wrote letters during the time he didn't have consistent phone access. **I don't think that this is odd, I understand the military limits phone usage, etc., but I don't think they have been able to have an "average" long-distance relationship**
Last year, Olivia drove to GA to visit Trevor the weekend before Valentine's day. He had plans for them to take a pottery class, go on a hike, and have dinner at a nice restaurant. The day she got there, Trevor's barracks had their off-base privileges revoked because one of the guys had contraband. She would still be able to visit him on base though. Somehow, Trevor was able to get off base for long periods of time to her hotel, but unable to do the other activities he had planned for them.
In the past year, Olivia told me that she and Trevor were going to immediately marry when she got to WA so that they could move in together because they had to be married to live together anywhere. I and our dad- who was in the military- told her several times that this was not true, but she insisted it was. Then, his barracks were given an allowance to live off base in apartments because the barracks were being renovated/ rebuilt, so she backed off on the idea of getting married immediately after several long conversations with me. She is still insistent on moving in with Trevor, who lives with a roommate, when she moves to WA.
Some background on Olivia:
Olivia has ADHD and anxiety, and struggled particularly badly with the anxiety/ some depression after being broken up with by the boyfriend she dated before Trevor (he broke it off very abruptly, told her he just didn't love her anymore with no previous indications). Olivia is very pretty (objectively, not just because she's my sister), but had bad acne that she ended up going on accutane for at the time she started dating Trevor and was very insecure about it. She had also decided to not go to medical school, and pursue nursing instead around the same time she met Trevor. This was a very upsetting decision for her because she had been taking very hard courses and was burnt out but had told everyone she was going to be a doctor and thought that she would be letting us down by switching paths. Also around the time she started seeing Trevor, Olivia began being very cruel towards our mother (our mother had been borderline emotionally abusive in the past, but Olivia and I were both in college by then and fixing our relationships with her. She has been much better recently and Olivia and I believe that she had some mental health struggles that went unchecked that contributed). Now, several years later, Olivia told our family that she had acted like that because she was raped by a friend of her ex-boyfriend's after her ex broke up with her. This person also gave her an STD.
I always believe people who say they have been sexually assaulted, abused, or harassed, and we believed Olivia when she first told us, but some things have come to light that make me and my family question that. Right after Olivia and her ex broke up, Olivia told our cousin that she had gone out with one of his friends and had revenge/ breakup sex with him because he had also been dumped recently. Once my cousin told me this, I remembered that Olivia had told me about a guy she had a one night stand with after she was dumped. She showed me a picture of him, talked about how cute he was, etc. (no distress whatsoever). I know sometimes people behave in ways you wouldn't expect when a traumatic event occurs to them, but I really don't understand how or why Olivia would brag about this guy if he really did sexually assault her.
Three months ago, Olivia was arrested for stealing a set of sheets from Walmart. She used the self check-out and only bought a small $5 item and the sheets. She held both in one hand and scanned each side because she had a cut on the other hand and was holding her wallet with it. She saw a 5 in front of the total number and thought it looked right because the total should have been about $50, paid, didn't get a receipt, and walked out. An employee at the door asked to see a receipt, which Olivia didn't have, so she pulled up her transaction history on her phone to show she had paid. At this point, the employee called the police and took Olivia into an office, where she was questioned and charged with shoplifting. (Olivia can get very emotional and probably got upset when the police questioned her, which may have led them to believe she was lying). Luckily, Olivia has managed to get the charges expunged, but the process is still ongoing. Because of her ADHD, if anyone genuinely made this mistake, I would believe it from her, but Olivia has been improving a lot on organization and being more attentive recently. It is extremely uncharacteristic of her to steal- she was honest to a fault as kids- she would break down from guilt and admit things to our parents that we would have gotten away with if she hadn't said anything.
Right now, my parents have met Trevor twice in person, and I've met him once in person and several times in passing over facetime. I personally don't think that Trevor seems to keep up with my sister or that they make each other shine, and that opinion is shared with family friends and family that have met Trevor. Olivia doesn't mention Trevor in front of our parents often because his name has become a topic of contention and argument between them. My parents don't think Trevor is right for Olivia. She has almost 2 college degrees and plans to become a nurse practitioner in the future, and he hasn't finished college and doesn't seem to have any drive to do so. Olivia is also well traveled and enjoys going to museums, concerts, etc., while Trevor has lived in rural FL his whole life (this is not Trevor's fault, and I don't think he is a lesser person because of it, but I don't see a lot of common ground between them). Trevor has not seemed very well spoken when I have talked to him and I just don't see a lot of qualities in him that Olivia values.
If you've gotten this far, I just don't know what to do. Olivia and my parents have a huge rift in their relationship right now and any mention of Trevor, with her around or not, explodes into a huge argument, discussion, or just icy silence. I want Olivia to be able to talk to me about him, and we are able to discuss things much better than she is with our parents. My parents have also started asking me about Olivia and Trevor because they know Olivia shares more with me, and it makes me uncomfortable because I don't want to betray Olivia's trust, but I'm also very worried about her. I know I can't control her actions and I'm having a really hard time trying to balance supporting Olivia but not supporting the relationship (I'm not going to lie to her about how I feel, but I don't want her to feel alienated or unloved by our family, because that is NOT the case). I also think that Olivia is romanticizing the fact that our parents don't like him because my father's parents had a rift with him over our mother when we were very young (this is a whole other story, but basically, his parents always favored his sister, his sister got (I think) jealous when he did well for himself and married my mother, who his parents initially likes, and she made up rumors/lies about my mother that turned his parents against her (this was way before our mother's suspected mental health struggles, which occured when Olivia and I were in middle/high school).
Please share any thoughts you have on the situation (am I reading too into things, is this not as bad as I think it is?), and any advice you have on navigating the relationships.

Ugh. Ykwim? Just ugh.
Every time I close my eyes, I see myself, both wrists sliced open, bleeding out on the floor. I was just in the bathroom like half am hour ago, and had to consider why I shouldn't just kill myself at that very moment. The straight razor was hardly a foot away from me, tucked in the medicine cabinet. I just froze. I kept looking in the mirror, at my face, then to my thigh where I could cut, then to the medicine cabinet where the straight razor was, then back at my face, thigh, razor, face, thigh, razor, etc.... I was just staring for at least a few minutes before the thought of cutting my thighs turned into slicing my wrists open and picturing blood pouring into the nice white sink and all over the nice clean floor.
I'm scared of myself. I've never had these thoughts before. I've never truly wanted to die at my own hand like this. I don't want to die. But cutting open my wrists just to watch it all pour out and fade to black, see what's on the other side....
I stared at my wrists for a good few minutes just imagining the different ways I could do it. I've glorified my suicide before actually, and if I ever do end up killing myself, I'm gonna try my hardest to be a slit wrist with femtanyl music playing on a speaker at full blast. I figure I'll start cutting at Push Ur t3mprr, and they could find my body at Dogmatica.
To whoever cares, yes I'm only 14m(i guess i have the trans thing going, but for all intents and purposes, ive got a sack), no I've not got any super fucked up trauma like sa or r@pe or anything like that. I just... I don't even know. I don't want to die, but I want to kill myself it seems. I wonder how many other people are going through this, or have in the past. I wonder if that matters. Lol before I get philosophical, I hope y'all have a day.