As many of you may have read, there is a case of two missing adopted kids in North Carolina, where remains have been found. The news has reported that their adoptive “mother” is Avantae Deven.
I’m a curious person and started digging up information on Avantae Deven when I first read the story in my news feed and could not believe what I was reading. It seemed like whomever this woman is must have be using an alias; Avantae Deven is not a name like Kim Jones or Mackenzie Smith.
The more I dug, the weirder it seemed to get. I found a property deed to a place in Sedona, Arizona, and figured out that whomever this Avantae person is, she at one point in time had owned a home together with someone named Nicole Adams. So I dug into who Nicole Adams was, and learned that she was the widow of a spiritual leader named Robert Adams. It appeared to me that there would be no way to identify who Avantae really was, unless I could also identify the true identity of Robert Adams.
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I've done investigative work for many years, including skip tracing. I can conclusively state that there was absolutely no person actually named Robert Adams born in New York State on January 21, 1928. This is demonstrated by the New York Birth Index. I have combed the census records for 1930, 1940, and 1950, and cross-checked them against multiple databases, and am confident that nobody with the birth name of Robert Adams was born anywhere in the United States on January 21, 1928.
Moreover, there was absolutely no person with the true name of Robert Adams who died anywhere at all in the United States, let alone Sedona, Arizona, on March 2, 1997. This is demonstrated by the Social Security Death Index.
I began this research largely by performing exhaustive searches on the known addresses that are associated with Robert, his wife Leonie (who used to use the alias Nicole), and Avantae Deven (who turns out to be their daughter Michelle who began using the alias Avantae in the mid-1990’s or so). Most of the addresses are PO boxes. Those that are PO boxes are all *private* PO boxes, not PO boxes that one can rent from the United States Postal Service. To me, that spoke volumes. The family were clearly using aliases.
As I explain further below, I eventually determined that “Robert Adams” was Robert Spiegel, born 21 January 1932 in New York. “Nicole Adams” was actually Aileen Beverly Leonie Maxwell, born February 2, 1929, in Jamaica. “Avantae Deven” is actually their daughter, Michelle K. Spiegel, born on October 1, 1960, in California.
One of Robert’s many false stories about Robert’s life that my research has refuted is Robert’s claim that his mother was Jewish and his father was Catholic. That was a lie. Both of his parents were Jewish. It’s also interesting that he claimed that he was “raised Catholic.” There is absolutely nothing to suggest that. His mother always, in New York, lived in Jewish neighborhoods. Moreover, as will be discussed below, his parents had a Jewish wedding. It’s also downright absurd that he would tell people that he was “half Jewish.” If your mother’s Jewish, you are Jewish, pure and simple. Even if Robert’s father had truly been Catholic (which he wasn’t; his name was Samuel Spiegel and he immigrated to America in 1907, lived with his Jewish, Yiddish-speaking cousins, and spoke Yiddish himself), Robert would have been Jewish because the status of being a Jew comes from the mother. Robert’s mother’s name was Fannie (nee Fleisfeder) Spiegel. Fannie’s parents were Itzik Fleisfeder and Esther Libke (nee Rifkin) Fleisfeder. Esther’s parents were Mendel Rifkin and Sarah whose maiden name is lost to time and the disappearance of the shtetls. Robert’s claim to having had a Catholic father was utterly false, but is part and parcel of his ongoing compulsive daily lying about anything and everything.
Here is the story.
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Kolomyia, formerly known as Kolomea, is a city currently located in the Western Ukraine.
On January 21, 1892 (the same year that Kolomea tallis¹ workers went on strike for better pay and working conditions), Kolomea resident Rachel Katz, wife of Abraham Spiegel, gave birth to a son, who was given the name Schmuel.
On the date that Schmuel Spiegel entered the world, Kolomea was ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and almost half of the city’s residents were Jewish.
In June of 1907, fifteen-year-old Schmuel² boarded the Zeeland, which sailed from Antwerp, Belgium, arriving at New York Harbor on June 18, 1907. The ship’s manifest states that Schmuel’s father had paid for his transport, and that Schmuel intended to reside with his father, Abe, in Brooklyn. Schmuel was granted entrance, and took up residence with his cousin Charles Fetner, who resided at 353 Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn, in Apartment A with his wife Jennie and their baby daughter Ettie. The sparse record that exists suggests that although Schmuel’s father was, indeed, named Abraham, Abraham lived and died in Europe, without immigrating to America.
The 1910 census describes Samuel’s cousin Charles as a carpenter, who had been married to housewife Jennie for six years, and a father of three children-- Ettie age four, Nathan age two, and baby Jacob, who was not even a year old. Eighteen-year-old Samuel was identified by profession as a “Foreman Sailmaker” in an industry described as “pocket-books.”
Three and a half years after being granted admission, on a bitterly cold winter day, January 4, 1911, Schmuel (now employed as a pocket-book maker, and having Anglicized his name to Samuel) signed and submitted his declaration to become a United States citizen. He stated, in that declaration, that he was born on January 21, 1892.
By 1915, Samuel had left his cousin’s abode and was residing as a lodger in the home of a widow named Rose Hammer, who lived with her two adolescent sons, Meyer and Louis, at 531 E. 5^th Avenue; Samuel was now working as a “driver.”
Two years after the 1915 state census was taken, Samuel had moved back to Myrtle Avenue, but this time at building no. 849. On June 15, 2017, Samuel registered for the draft, and described himself as being a pocketbook maker, working for “A. Shoenfeld,” at 101 Crosby Street, New York. He was single. He stated, in his draft registration, that he was born on January 21, 1892.
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A woman named Fruma Fleisfeder was born in Beltz, Bessarabia, sometime between July 1, 1893, and 1901, to Itzik Fleisfeder and Esther Lieba Rifkin. Fruma (not living up to her pious given name) provided different dates and years of birth to different authorities on different occasions, making it impossible at this point in time to know her true position in the birth order of her family. Regardless, Fruma, who began using the name Fanny upon her entrance to the United States, did have three brothers and a sister who also came to America-- Louis Fleisfeder who was born April 10, 1890, Max Irving Fleisfeder who used October 10, 1892 as his birthdate, Hersch (later known as Harry), whose official birthdate was December 15, 1901, and Sylvia who was born in approximately 1906.
On December 1, 1919, Fruma arrived in New York Harbor on the ship La Touraine, declaring her intention, at entry, to become a United States Citizen. The ship’s manifest describes her as five feet five inches tall, with fair hair, blue eyes, and a fair complexion. The ship’s manifest states that she was, at that time, age 24. If that were correct, she would have been born in 1895.
Fruma (then going by Fanny) took up residence with her cousin Ethel (nee Ruchlin) and Ethel’s husband Samuel Steinberg, on 15^th Street, Brooklyn. Soon thereafter, Ethel gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Theresa. The 1920 census states that Fanny was Russian, didn’t speak English but, rather, spoke Hebrew, and worked as a milliner in a millinery store. The 1920 census also states that Fanny was age 25, which lines up with her being age 24 in the prior year’s ship manifest.
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Sam and Fanny married in Manhattan on January 24, 1925. Their marriage certificate (signed by each of them) identifies Sam as being age 32 (contradicting, by one year, his immigration records which would have placed him at age 33), and identifies Fanny as age 24, the same age that she had claimed to be six years prior, and also contradicting an immigration petition that she would file two decades in the future, which generally placed her birth year at the mid-point of 1893.
If Fanny’s immigration records (which included a petition with her signature on it) were correct, Fanny would also have been age 32 as of her marriage to Samuel, not age 24.
So did Fanny lie in her marriage certificate? Or did she lie in her immigration petition?
The marriage certificate identifies Sam as having been born in Kolomea, Austria, and his father being Abraham, and his mother being Rachel Katz. It identifies Fanny as having been born in Beltz, Russia, to a father named Isaac, and to a mother named Esther Rifkin.
The marriage certificate does not identify Fanny as having any profession, but identifies Sam as being a pocketbook maker.
Sam and Fannie were married at 125 E. 4^th Street, Manhattan, a six-story apartment building with retail units on the ground floor that is now an expensive co-op, with three-bedroom units selling for over $900,000. Present-day real estate advertisements alternatively state that the building was built in 1894, 1903, and 1905.
The first name of the rabbi who officiated was Harry. His surname starts with Reid, but the remaining letters of his signature are illegible. Rabbi Harry identified his residence as 232 Broome Street, which, at the time, was a four-story mixed use building that, among other things, housed Chevrah Ahavath Zedek Anshei Jaskinover.
Witnesses to the marriage were Mayer Budmon and Samuel Steinberg.
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Sam and Fanny’s existence was documented next in the 1925 New York State census by census. They were living at 205 S. 2^nd Street. Samuel was still working as a “pocketbook maker.” Fanny was identified as a “housewife.”
Fanny was identified as age 25. This was in accordance with her age as stated on her marriage certificate, but not in accordance with her immigration documents or the 1920 census.
Sam was identified as being age 28, which conflicted with all prior records.
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In 1930, the couple were again enumerated, this time in the Federal census. The enumerator, whose signature appears to be “Max Krahn” (or something like that) stated that he obtained the information on April 16, 1930.
Sam was identified as a “framer” of pocketbooks. He was identified as being 36 years of age, which conflicts by two years with the age that he provided to immigration authorities. Perhaps the enumerator was simply sloppy; Samuel was also incorrectly identified in the 1930 census as having been born in “Poland,” with parents who were both also born in “Poland,” notwithstanding other governmental records having identified him as being Austrian. The language he spoke? “Jewish,” according to the enumerator. Was that to mean Hebrew? Yiddish? Both?
Fannie was identified as age 30 (directly in conflict with the information she supplied in her immigration petition, which bears her signature) and as being “Russian,” with parents born in “Russia.” The 1930 census enumerator incorrectly wrote that her year of immigration was 1921. Fannie, too, was identified by the enumerator as speaking the “Jewish” language.
Although later records reflected that Sam and Fannie had a son named Irving who was born in 1926, Irving was not recorded in the 1930 census. Was he missed by the enumerator? Or was he a later-adopted son?
The couple also had a boarder, identified by the 1930 enumerator as one Esther “Larson,” age 40, born in Russia, and similarly a speaker of the “Jewish” language.
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The New York Birth Index identifies a baby boy, Robert Spiegel, as one of many babies having been born in the city on January 21, 1932.
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On May 21, 1936, Samuel committed suicide by hanging in the family residence, a tenement apartment located at 1168 Union Avenue, in the Bronx. Although, based upon the date of birth that Samuel used for official governmental purposes he was age 44, the death certificate stated that he was age 43.
Fannie engaged the Gordon Funeral Home to prepare him for burial.
Strangely, although Samuel’s headstone accurately identified him in Hebrew as Schmuel Spiegel, son of Avraham, it inexplicably incorrectly stated that he died at age 40.
Fannie of course knew her husband’s real age; both of them signed the marriage certificate that had Samuel’s correct age listed. Furthermore, Samuel had petitioned for citizenship in 1911, and stated that his date of birth was January 18, 1892.
Why would Fannie commission a headstone with a false age? Perhaps she, like her son, was a compulsive liar. Maybe that’s where Robert got it from.
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The 1940 census has Fannie (identified as age 38), Robert (identified as age 8), and Fannie’s son/Robert’s brother, Irving Spiegel, age 13, as living with Fannie’s 72-year-old mother, Esther Fleisfeder, at 1537 Fulton Avenue, in the Bronx. Fannie and Esther were identified as widows. Esther was identified as “U” (unable to work), while Fannie was identified as engaged in housework. No source of income for the family was identified.
No explanation is obvious regarding where Irving was living in the census taken a decade previously. Was he adopted?
There is no “Irving Spiegel” listed in the New York Birth Index for either 1926 or 1927. There is an “Irving Spiegal” listed, who was born April 29, 1926. But he is not Irving Spiegel.
I initially thought that perhaps Irving might be one of the unnamed Baby Boy Spiegels born in New York in 1926 or 1927, and that he left the hospital unnamed because his parents were waiting for his bris before naming him. However, Robert left the hospital with the name Robert. Why wait until the bris to name one child, but not the other?
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Slightly less than two years after she was enumerated in the 1940 census, Fannie’s mother Esther died, at home, at 1537 Fulton Avenue. The causes of death were “Coronary Thrombosis, Pulmonary Oedema Nephritis, Hypertension, Arteriosclerosis.” Esther left this world on February 6, 1942, the same day that the W. L. Steed was torpedoed, shelled and sunk less than a hundred nautical miles east of the mouth of Delaware River by a German submarine.
She was buried at Mount Moriah Cemetery in Fairview, New Jersey, the same cemetery where her son-in-law Samuel was interred.
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On November 12, 1943, Fannie, now residing at 1985 Bathgate Avenue, in the Bronx, petitioned for citizenship. She claimed, in that document bearing her signature, to be fifty years of age, meaning that if she was telling the truth, she would have been born in approximately 1893.
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On January 19, 1948, Robert (having assumed a false date of birth, that being January 18, 1931), enlisted in the New York National Guard. On paper, he had turned age 17 the day before his enlistment. In reality, he would be turning age 16 two days after his enlistment.
On December 9, 1949, Robert was discharged from the national guard, apparently for having been AWOL.
The discharge document identifies his address as being 1985 Bathgate Avenue, New York City.
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The 1950 census places Robert again at 1985 Bathgate Avenue, New York City. It correctly identifies him as age 18, and states that he worked as a shipping clerk for a newspaper company.
According to the 1950 census, Robert resided at the Bathgate Avenue address with his mother Fannie, who was purportedly still age 50 (seven years after she had previously claimed to immigration authorities to be age 50), and Robert’s brother Irving, age 24.
Irving was listed as unemployed and moreover, according to the census record, had not worked for the prior year. Fannie was employed full-time as a milliner in a hat factory.
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Military records reflect that Irving J. Spiegel, born in 1926 and a resident of 1985 Bathgate Avenue, who had completed two years of high school education, had flown bomber planes over Germany during the war. In his military documents, Irving described himself as single, with two dependents.
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On February 2, 1929, a baby girl given the name Aileen Beverly Leone Maxwell was born in Lucea, Hanover, Jamaica, to William Maxwell and Daisy (nee Tibbits) Maxwell. Her birth was registered by her parents.
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In 1954, Robert Spiegel and Aileen Maxwell were married in New York City. Their marriage license was given License No. 10284.
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The following year, the Kingston, Jamaica, Gleaner reported on June 6, 1955:
Miss Leonie Maxwell, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. W. J. Maxwell, was married recently in New York City to Mr. Robert Spiegel of the U.S.A. Both the bride and groom are students at the New York Institute of Dietetics. The bride left the island nearly two years ago for New York. Her wedding gown was chantilly lace and nylon tulle. The bodice was fashioned with a wide, scalloped neckline and elbow-length sleeves. Her three tier skirt of chantilly lace was over pleated nylon tulle. Her fingertip-length veil was adorned with pearls.
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If the claim regarding the couple studying at the New York Institute of Dietetics was even true, their studies at this institution didn’t last long. In May of 1956, a number of advertisements bearing Robert’s photograph appeared in the Kingston, Jamaica Gleaner. The advertisements described Robert as a psychologist, author, lecturer, and “practitioner in auto suggestion,” and identified him as “Dr. J. Robert Spiegel.” Readers were invited to come meet Robert on May 21, 1956, at Record Plaza, where he would be autographing his “latest” “world-wide” 33 and 1/3 RPM record, “How to Stop Smoking in 7 days by Auto-Suggestion.”
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On May 1, 1959, three residents of 1985 Bathgate Avenue, Bronx, New York, came through customs, having returned from a trip to Jamaica. They identified themselves as “Robert D. Spiegel” born in New York (in addition to giving himself a false middle initial, Robert neglected to complete the I-94-A fully, specifically by leaving his birthdate blank), “Leonie A. Spiegel” born in Jamaica on February 2, 1929, and their minor daughter, and “Sharon S. Spiegel,” born in New York. Someone also neglected to fully complete Sharon’s I-94-A, specifically by leaving her birthdate blank.
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Leonie had taken Sharon to Jamaica two years earlier. There are no publicly available records pertaining to their outbound transport from the United States to Jamaica. There is, however, a record pertaining to their return to the United States. That publicly available record does not provide their address, but Sharon is identified as weighing 1 stone 5 pounds (a total of 19 pounds), and Leonie is identified as weighing six stone 5 pounds (89 pounds). Interestingly, Leonie used the name “Aileen Spiegel,” and the records assert that Aileen has no middle initial. Aileen was / is her true legal first name, but it is a lie to say that she has no middle initial.
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Almost two years later, on January 5, 1958, the Kingston, Jamaica Gleaner reported:
Staying at the Tamarind Hotel are Mr. and Mrs. Bob Spiegel and daughter Sharon of Miami, Florida. Mrs. Spiegel is the former Leonie Maxwell, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. W. J. Maxwell of Lucea and has been in the United States for several years. A welcome party in their honour was given last Saturday night by Messers. Horrace, Ray, and Dennis Maxwell, brothers of Mrs. Spiegel. It was a very enjoyable affair.
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In 1963, roughly five years after their 1958 visit to Jamaica, Leonie petitioned for naturalization, in Louisiana. Although I am in possession of the index showing that she petitioned in 1963, I do not possess the petition itself. However, the fact that she petitioned for naturalization in Louisiana demonstrates that that at least she was residing in Louisiana at the time. Since she stated that she didn’t leave Robert’s side for over 40 years, presumably Robert, young Sharon, and also baby Michelle were living in Louisiana at that time.
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People who knew Robert personally relate that he stated that Leonie was a Cayman Island heiress. She wasn’t. Not only was she not born in the Cayman Islands, Leonie’s father’s estate was litigated (with the judge ruling against her) long before Robert started telling people that his wife was a Cayman Islands heiress.
Leonie’s father did leave an estate, but not to her. On November 9, 1967, the Gleaner reported that the Supreme Court had upheld the will of the late William Josiah Maxwell, the father of Horrace, Ray, Dennis, and Leonie, and the husband of Daisy Maxwell, who had contended that William’s signature was a forgery and that the person to whom his estate had been bequeathed had exercised undue influence. The court disagreed. The article reported:
The estate, which one of the executors described as “a sizeable one,” included 112 acres of land at Paradise and three houses at Lucea, Hanover.
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Robert apparently wasn’t banking on Leonie’s inheritance in any event. In May of 1966, advertisements appeared in the Houston Chronicle with Robert’s photo on them, selling a record that would purportedly assist people in stopping smoking in seven days. He identified himself as “Dr. J. Robert Spiegel.”
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On page 55 of the November 15, 1969, San Antonio, Texas Express and News, was an advertisement stating:
SCIENCE OF THE MIND
Dr. J. Robert Spiegel of Houston, director and founder of the Science of the Mind Foundation there, is conducting Sunday evening meetings at 7:30 p.m. in the Sheraton Inn, 1400 Austin Hwy.
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On page 4 of the July 10, 1970 edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram was a photograph of Robert, with a brief local news blurb:
GUEST – Dr. J Robert Spiegel of Houston, Science of Mind Foundation director, will speak at the 10:45 a.m. service tomorrow in First Church of Religious Science, 2001 6^th Ave. His subject is “What Religious Science Teaches.”
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On page 8 of the June 18, 1970 edition of the Houston Daily Cougar was this advertisement:
HOME OF UNIVERSAL LIFE
“Teaching Aquarian Meditation For The New Age
Meets Every Sunday, 11:00 A.M. At The World Trade Center Auditorium
Houston, Texas
DR. J. ROBERT SPIEGEL (BRAHMADANDA) DIRECTOR - FOUNDER
Aquarian Meditation Initiation for the first time offered through correspondence. For those sincere students wishing to bypass evolution and enter the 5th Kingdom. Initiation includes meditation technique, Mantra, how to "live” 24 hours a day, and much more. Write for application today:
P.O. Box 53328 Houston, Texas 052
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From the Galveston Daily News, May 02, 1971, Pg. 31:
AQUARIAN MEDITATION SOCIETY PRESENTS DR. J. ROBERT SPIEGEL AN AUTHOR, LECTURER, TEACHER OF YOGA & SELF DEVELOPMENT WILL SPEAK ON MAN, MIND & THE UNIVERSE WEDNESDAY, MAY 5th AT 7:30 P.M. IN THE RECREATION CENTER HARRIS COUNTY PARK, NASA RD. # 1 ALL WELCOME — DONATION $1.50
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The 1972 Spiritual Community Guide lists Robert twice, in the San Diego area. First, on page 117, using his alias “J. Robert Spiegel”:
THE TEMPLE OF METAPHYSICAL ABUNDANCE. J. Robert Spiegel, 1118 Torrey Pines Rd., 92037. Teaches yoga, nutrition, ESP, metaphysics, psychology, mind control
Second, on page 124, in which he, as one might have predicted, was masquerading as some sort of medical man or scholar:
"AQUARIAN MEDITATION SOCIETY, U. S. Grant Hotel, Attn: Dr. Robert Spiegel, 453-7588"
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Also in 1972, Volume 25 of San Diego Magazine published in November advertised gift certificates for the “Astrology Research Center.” “Give your loved one the gift of love. Only $50” said the advertisement. Where was this entity located? At 1118 Torrey Pines Road, the same address as Robert’s Temple of Metaphysical Abundance. The advertisement purported that person identified as “Lil Canaan” was the director. The telephone number was 459-6400.
In 2013, the San Diego Union Tribune published the obituary for Lillian Mulonas, who founded the La Jolla “Astrology Research Center.” At this point in time, unless Robert Adams’ only surviving daughter, Michelle/ Prentiss/ Avantae knows the answer and talks, we will not know what relationship, if any, existed between Robert’s Temple of Metaphysical Abundance and Lilian’s Astrology Research Center, both of which were located at 1118 Torrey Pines Road in 1972.
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From the July 12, 1973, San Diego Reader:
BRAHMADANDA FOUNDATION
“Teachings of the Cosmic Way” meets Sundays, 11:00 a.m., U.S. Grant Hotel, Crystal Room. Free admission, refreshments served. Call 453-7588 for more information.
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On page 51 of the June 29, 1974 edition of Phoenix’s Arizona Republic was the following advertisement:
Speaker from San Diego
Dr. J. Robert Spiegel from San Diego, a traveler and lecturer, will speak at 8 p.m., Friday in Universal Series Center, 4340 N. Seventh Ave., on the topic “Science of Being.”
He is the founder of the “Aquarian Meditation Society” in Jamaica and is founder and publisher of “Equinox,” a philosophical newspaper.
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The family (Adams or Spiegel, however one might want to refer to them) have resided in (that I know of) New York, Miami, Jamaica, Louisiana, La Jolla, Los Angeles, Houston, New Mexico, Hawaii, Las Vegas, Scottsdale, Sedona, and a number of cities in North Carolina.
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In at least the 1990’s, before he left for Sedona, Robert Adams used the address PO Box 7210, Jordan Avenue, D-30, Canoga Park, CA. He used that address on correspondence he wrote, and on at least one published document. Who else used that address? The data aggregators show that this address was also used by a Michelle K. Spiegel, and a person going by the name Leonie Maxwell. Michelle and Leonie also used other addresses associated with Robert, those being 1815 Willis Avenue Panorama City, and 21551 Burbank Boulevard, Woodland Hills.
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The California Birth Index shows that Michelle K. Spiegel was born on October 1, 1960, in Los Angeles County, to a mother with the maiden name Maxwell.
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In later life, Michelle used the addresses above that are associated with Robert and Leonie, as well as an address of 12004 Vanowen Street #14, North Hollywood. This is the same address at which Denniston Keith Maxwell, one of Leonie’s younger brothers, resided at, after his immigration to the United States. Denniston was one of Michelle’s uncles.
In a recent Facebook posting, Michelle/Avantae stated: “Never knew anything personal about said uncles, etc. Never asked, never cared.” Really? She shared an address with an uncle? Her uncle lived within a few minutes’ drive from her parents, and Michelle/Avantae never knew anything about him?
As an aside, Michelle/Avantae alleged (or admitted) that she “never cared” about anything personal regarding her uncles. If that is true, what does that tell us about Michelle/Avantae’s fundamental character? Antisocial? Psychopathic? Narcissistic in the extreme?
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On August 2, 1996, Michelle, going by the name Avantae E. Deven, married Tyson Ruben Alvarez in Las Vegas. The two had addresses in common in Arizona, Nevada, and Montana.
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Robert “Adams” died on or about March 2, 1997, in Sedona, Arizona.
Shortly after that, in the spring of 1997, “Nicole Adams” and “Avantae Deven” (both aliases; the correct legal names are Aileen Beverly Leonie Spiegel and Michelle K. Spiegel) purchased a home together in Sedona, on Navahopi Road. Shortly after the purchase, “Nicole” quit-claimed her portion to “Avantae.”
On July 17, 2001, Tyson, still married to “Avantae,” quit-claimed any interest in the Navahopi property to “Avantae,” and had the county recorder send the deed to “Avantae” in care of the Infinity Institute, at that time located at 9101 W. Sahara Ave. Suite 105 C29 (in other words, a private post box), in Las Vegas.
Avantae divorced Tyson in 2006. She had, by then, moved to North Carolina. She “served” Tyson via publication summons, claiming that she was unable to find him, despite his information being on multiple data aggregators.
You can go to various Facebook groups, and other sources, to pull up the documents that people have uncovered showing who is associated with the "Infinity Institute," and in what fashion, and also the addresses that they have used over the years.
In any event, this is the information regarding Robert that I think that people need to be aware of.
Why turn to a known liar and con man for spiritual guidance?
1A tallis is a prayer shawl.
2The ship’s manifest states that he was age 14, which conflicts by one year with what Samuel identified as his date of birth. These errors are not uncommon; his fare could have been purchased when he was age 14 and the records not updated.

TLDR: bf is often hostile and dismissive toward me at work, lacks ambition, and doesn't share my interests. Despite his flaws, I'm hesitant to break up because of our intertwined work situation. I'm seeking advice on how to end things sensitively
I (27F) met my current boyfriend (28M) on Hinge in January of 2023. Initially, I didn’t feel any chemistry between us. He was very nice, but we didn’t have much in common. After a few dates, we stopped contacting each other.
A few months later, I was looking for a part-time summer job. I know I might seem a bit old for part-time work, but I had a negligent upbringing and my parents didn’t financially or morally support me attending college. I’ve worked various jobs to support myself through school. Fortunately, I'm nearly done.
I had mostly forgotten about him until I discovered that not only does he work at the same store, but we're also in the same department. We avoided each other. I thought I’d only be there for a few weeks but they were flexible with my schedule when my classes resumed, so I continued working there. Once he realized I wasn’t leaving, he warmed up to me and we started dating. Things are usually fine outside of work. However, our relationship at work is different; he becomes hostile, short, rude, and needlessly sarcastic when we're on shift together. He even abandoned a task we were assigned that involved lifting heavy industrial equipment, leaving me to do it alone. If he wasn’t my bf, he’d be my least favorite coworker. I think his attitude at work is derived from being unhappy there. He’s worked there ever since he graduated college, so about six years ago. I get it, the job is monotonous. The customers, managers, and coworkers are difficult to deal with. I will tolerate it until I graduate.
Unlike me, my bf has supportive parents, he has a bachelors degree. While the job market is tough, we live in Washington DC and I’ve pointed him in the direction of well paying gov and tech jobs that he’s qualified for. He totaled his car recently, and barely makes rent but my gentle nudges for him to start applying to a better job make him upset. He almost never has money to take me out anywhere, even free events because he can’t afford train fares and Ubers. He shuts down any conversation about finding a new job every time. When he’s not working, he is sleeping or smoking weed.
I want to be a professor, and yesterday he joked about hoping I reach my goal so he can be a “house husband” who doesn’t work. I know it’s just a joke but it disgusts me. He tells me he doesn’t have any ambitions and it turns me off. He’s also extremely nitpicky, always has something to say about how I do things or how I look no matter how innocuous. I truly think he’s resentful of me.
For example, one day after work, we went to get a burger, and a Barnes & Nobles was nearby, so I asked if we could stop. While we were there, I was just talking about some of the books, and he seemed visibly irritated, pressing me to hurry up. When I saw a book I thought he might like, he said he doesn’t like reading and doesn’t like people telling him what to do. Later that evening, he called me sexy, and when I asked him why, he listed my intelligence as a reason, saying he finds it attractive despite most people probably thinking it’s obnoxious. That really hurt me.
Please help me figure out how to be strategic about this breakup. How can I pull this off with the least amount of pain for the both of us? Since we don’t go out, I only see him at his place or at work. I can’t do it at those places. I can’t do it over the phone. I feel so trapped. I’m graduating next semester and I’ve always planned to move away for grad school. Figuring that would be my escape especially since he doesn’t have the initiative to find a new job but now he keeps talking about going with me. I am pushing 30, I want a family someday. I want to meet a man who does not resent me, a man with goals and ambitions who treats me with kindness. Every day in this relationship feels like I’m gonna miss out on that man.

I feel so defeated right now. I finally gotten a job offer after almost 3 months of being unemployed. But how am I supposed to start it when I cannot afford the bus fares and get new clothes to comply with the dress code.
I was so happy when Ive gotten the phone call just to be struck with the realization that it’s impossible for me to start in 3 days. I tried asking my bank if I can take another loan but they declined my application given that Im unemployed. It is so stupid since the reason im asking for a loan is so that I can start earning money and pay my existing loans. Applied for free bus pass but it’s still pending. I have an old bike but the tires are needed to replaced so it is not an option.
To make everything worse, there is a dress code to follow and I dont have the wardrobe for it. I could probably try thrifting but even that, I have no budget for it.
We have been relying heavily on food banks that I feel like my kid is so tired of me cooking the same thing over and over again. She never complains but you can tell in her eyes that she’s getting sick of it. She has been asking me for ice cream and spaghetti which are her favorites and everytime I have to say we cannot afford it at the moment she would just smile and tell me maybe next time
If it weren’t for my sister we probably wouldnt have our utilities. Shes been paying for it and theyre not well off so when her husband found out they had an argument.
I feel so defeated for the lack of support. I’m a single mom and Im doing everything that I’m told to do or Im supposed to do but its never seem to be enough.

It was a dark, starless night. We were becalmed in the Northern Pacific. Our exact position I do not know; for the sun had been hidden during the course of a weary, breathless week, by a thin haze which had seemed to float above us, about the height of our mastheads, at whiles descending and shrouding the surrounding sea. With there being no wind, we had steadied the tiller, and I was the only man on deck. The crew, consisting of two men and a boy, were sleeping forward in their den, while Will—my friend, and the master of our little craft—was aft in his bunk on the port side of the little cabin. Suddenly, from out of the surrounding darkness, there came a hail: “Schooner, ahoy!” The cry was so unexpected that I gave no immediate answer, because of my surprise. It came again—a voice curiously throaty and inhuman, calling from somewhere upon the dark sea away on our port broadside: “Schooner, ahoy!” “Hullo!” I sung out, having gathered my wits somewhat. “What are you? What do you want?” “You need not be afraid,” answered the queer voice, having probably noticed some trace of confusion in my tone. “I am only an old—man.” The pause sounded odd, but it was only afterward that it came back to me with any significance. “Why don’t you come alongside, then?” I queried somewhat snappishly; for I liked not his hinting at my having been a trifle shaken. “I—I—can’t. It wouldn’t be safe. I——” The voice broke off, and there was silence. “What do you mean?” I asked, growing more and more astonished. “What’s not safe? Where are you?” I listened for a moment; but there came no answer. And then, a sudden indefinite suspicion, of I knew not what, coming to me, I stepped swiftly to the binnacle and took out the lighted lamp. At the same time, I knocked on the deck with my heel to waken Will. Then I was back at the side, throwing the yellow funnel of light out into the silent immensity beyond our rail. As I did so, I heard a slight muffled cry, and then the sound of a splash, as though someone had dipped oars abruptly. Yet I cannot say with certainty that I saw anything; save, it seemed to me, that with the first flash of the light there had been something upon the waters, where now there was nothing. “Hullo, there!” I called. “What foolery is this?” But there came only the indistinct sounds of a boat being pulled away into the night. Then I heard Will’s voice from the direction of the after scuttle: “What’s up, George?” “Come here, Will!” I said. “What is it?” he asked, coming across the deck. I told him the queer thing that had happened. He put several questions; then, after a moment’s silence, he raised his hands to his lips and hailed: “Boat, ahoy!” From a long distance away there came back to us a faint reply, and my companion repeated his call. Presently, after a short period of silence, there grew on our hearing the muffled sound of oars, at which Will hailed again. This time there was a reply: “Put away the light.” “I’m damned if I will,” I muttered; but Will told me to do as the voice bade, and I shoved it down under the bulwarks. “Come nearer,” he said, and the oar strokes continued. Then, when apparently some half dozen fathoms distant, they again ceased. “Come alongside!” exclaimed Will. “There’s nothing to be frightened of aboard here.” “Promise that you will not show the light?” “What’s to do with you,” I burst out, “that you’re so infernally afraid of the light?” “Because—” began the voice, and stopped short. “Because what?” I asked quickly. Will put his hand on my shoulder. “Shut up a minute, old man,” he said, in a low voice. “Let me tackle him.” He leaned more over the rail. “See here, mister,” he said, “this is a pretty queer business, you coming upon us like this, right out in the middle of the blessed Pacific. How are we to know what sort of a hanky-panky trick you’re up to? You say there’s only one of you. How are we to know, unless we get a squint at you—eh? What’s your objection to the light, anyway?” As he finished, I heard the noise of the oars again, and then the voice came; but now from a greater distance, and sounding extremely hopeless and pathetic. “I am sorry—sorry! I would not have troubled you, only I am hungry, and—so is she.” The voice died away, and the sound of the oars, dipping irregularly, was borne to us. “Stop!” sang out Will. “I don’t want to drive you away. Come back! We’ll keep the light hidden, if you don’t like it.” He turned to me: “It’s a damned queer rig, this; but I think there’s nothing to be afraid of?” There was a question in his tone, and I replied. “No, I think the poor devil’s been wrecked around here, and gone crazy.” The sound of the oars drew nearer. “Shove that lamp back in the binnacle,” said Will; then he leaned over the rail and listened. I replaced the lamp and came back to his side. The dipping of the oars ceased some dozen yards distant. “Won’t you come alongside now?” asked Will in an even voice. “I have had the lamp put back in the binnacle.” “I—I cannot,” replied the voice. “I dare not come nearer. I dare not even pay you for the— the provisions.” “That’s all right,” said Will, and hesitated. “You’re welcome to as much grub as you can take—” Again he hesitated. “You are very good!” exclaimed the voice. “May God, Who understands everything, reward you—” It broke off huskily. “The—the lady?” said Will abruptly. “Is she—” “I have left her behind upon the island,” came the voice. “What island?” I cut in. “I know not its name,” returned the voice. “I would to God—” it began, and checked itself as suddenly. “Could we not send a boat for her?” asked Will at this point. “No!” said the voice, with extraordinary emphasis. “My God! No!” There was a moment’s pause; then it added, in a tone which seemed a merited reproach: “It was because of our want I ventured—because her agony tortured me.” “I am a forgetful brute!” exclaimed Will. “Just wait a minute, whoever you are, and I will bring you up something at once.” In a couple of minutes he was back again, and his arms were full of various edibles. He paused at the rail. “Can’t you come alongside for them?” he asked. “No—I dare not,” replied the voice, and it seemed to me that in its tones I detected a note of stifled craving—as though the owner hushed a mortal desire. It came to me then in a flash that the poor old creature out there in the darkness was suffering for actual need for that which Will held in his arms; and yet, because of some unintelligible dread, refraining from dashing to the side of our schooner and receiving it. And with the lightning-like conviction there came the knowledge that the Invisible was not mad, but sanely facing some intolerable horror. “Damn it, Will!” I said, full of many feelings, over which predominated a vast sympathy. “Get a box. We must float off the stuff to him in it.” This we did, propelling it away from the vessel, out into the darkness, by means of a boat hook. In a minute a slight cry from the Invisible came to us, and we knew that he had secured the box. A little later he called out a farewell to us, and so heartful a blessing, that I am sure we were the better for it. Then, without more ado, we heard the ply of oars across the darkness. “Pretty soon off,” remarked Will, with perhaps just a little sense of injury. “Wait,” I replied. “I think somehow he’ll come back. He must have been badly needing that food.” “And the lady,” said Will. For a moment he was silent; then he continued: “It’s the queerest thing ever I’ve tumbled across since I’ve been fishing.” “Yes,” I said, and fell to pondering. And so the time slipped away—an hour, another, and still Will stayed with me; for the queer adventure had knocked all desire for sleep out of him. The third hour was three parts through when we heard again the sound of oars across the silent ocean. “Listen!” said Will, a low note of excitement in his voice. “He’s coming, just as I thought,” I muttered. The dipping of the oars grew nearer, and I noted that the strokes were firmer and longer. The food had been needed. They came to a stop a little distance off the broadside, and the queer voice came again to us through the darkness: “Schooner, ahoy!” “That you?” asked Will. “Yes,” replied the voice. “I left you suddenly, but—but there was great need.” “The lady?” questioned Will. “The—lady is grateful now on earth. She will be more grateful soon in—in heaven.” Will began to make some reply, in a puzzled voice; but became confused, and broke off short. I said nothing. I was wondering at the curious pauses, and, apart from my wonder, I was full of a great sympathy. The voice continued: “We—she and I, have talked, as we shared the result of God’s tenderness and yours—” Will interposed; but without coherence. “I beg of you not to—to belittle your deed of Christian charity this night,” said the voice. “Be sure that it has not escaped His notice.” It stopped, and there was a full minute’s silence. Then it came again: “We have spoken together upon that which—which has befallen us. We had thought to go out, without telling anyone of the terror which has come into our—lives. She is with me in believing that tonight’s happenings are under a special ruling, and that it is God’s wish that we should tell to you all that we have suffered since—since—” “Yes?” said Will softly. “Since the sinking of the Albatross.” “Ah!” I exclaimed involuntarily. “She left Newcastle for ’Frisco some six months ago, and hasn’t been heard of since.” “Yes” answered the voice. “But some few degrees to the North of the line, she was caught in a terrible storm, and dismasted. When the day came, it was found that she was leaking badly, and, presently, it falling to a calm, the sailors took to the boats, leaving—leaving a young lady—my fiancée—and myself upon the wreck. “We were below, gathering together a few of our belongings, when they left. They were entirely callous, through fear, and when we came up upon the decks, we saw them only as small shapes afar off upon the horizon. Yet we did not despair, but set to work and constructed a small raft. Upon this we put such few matters as it would hold, including a quantity of water and some ship’s biscuit. Then, the vessel being very deep in the water, we got ourselves onto the raft and pushed off. “It was later, when I observed that we seemed to be in the way of some tide or current, which bore us from the ship at an angle; so that in the course of three hours, by my watch, her hull became invisible to our sight, her broken masts remaining in view for a somewhat longer period. Then, towards evening, it grew misty, and so through the night. The next day we were still encompassed by the mist, the weather remaining quiet. “For four days we drifted through this strange haze, until, on the evening of the fourth day, there grew upon our ears the murmur of breakers at a distance. Gradually it became plainer, and, somewhat after midnight, it appeared to sound upon either hand at no very great space. The raft was raised upon a swell several times, and then we were in smooth water, and the noise of the breakers was behind. “When the morning came, we found that we were in a sort of great lagoon; but of this we noticed little at the time; for close before us, through the enshrouding mist, loomed the hull of a large sailing vessel. With one accord, we fell upon our knees and thanked God, for we thought that here was an end to our perils. We had much to learn. “The raft drew near to the ship, and we shouted on them to take us aboard; but none answered. Presently the raft touched against the side of the vessel, and seeing a rope hanging downward, I seized it and began to climb. Yet I had much ado to make my way up, because of a kind of grey, lichenous fungus that had seized upon the rope, and which blotched the side of the ship lividly. “I reached the rail and clambered over it, onto the deck. Here I saw that the decks were covered, in great patches, with grey masses, some of them rising into nodules several feet in height; but at the time I thought less of this matter than of the possibility of there being people aboard the ship. I shouted; but none answered. Then I went to the door below the poop deck. I opened it, and peered in. There was a great smell of staleness, so that I knew in a moment that nothing living was within, and with the knowledge, I shut the door quickly; for I felt suddenly lonely. “I went back to the side where I had scrambled up. My—my sweetheart was still sitting quietly upon the raft. Seeing me look down, she called up to know whether there were any aboard of the ship. I replied that the vessel had the appearance of having been long deserted, but that if she would wait a little I would see whether there was anything in the shape of a ladder by which she could ascend to the deck. Then we would make a search through the vessel together. A little later, on the opposite side of the decks, I found a rope side ladder. This I carried across, and a minute afterwards she was beside me. “Together we explored the cabins and apartments in the after part of the ship; but nowhere was there any sign of life. Here and there, within the cabins themselves, we came across odd patches of that queer fungus; but this, as my sweetheart said, could be cleansed away. “In the end, having assured ourselves that the after portion of the vessel was empty, we picked our ways to the bows, between the ugly grey nodules of that strange growth; and here we made a further search, which told us that there was indeed none aboard but ourselves. “This being now beyond any doubt, we returned to the stern of the ship and proceeded to make ourselves as comfortable as possible. Together we cleared out and cleaned two of the cabins; and after that I made examination whether there was anything eatable in the ship. This I soon found was so, and thanked God in my heart for His goodness. In addition to this I discovered the whereabouts of the fresh-water pump, and having fixed it, I found the water drinkable, though somewhat unpleasant to the taste. “For several days we stayed aboard the ship, without attempting to get to the shore. We were busily engaged in making the place habitable. Yet even thus early we became aware that our lot was even less to be desired than might have been imagined; for though, as a first step, we scraped away the odd patches of growth that studded the floors and walls of the cabins and saloon, yet they returned almost to their original size within the space of twenty-four hours, which not only discouraged us but gave us a feeling of vague unease. “Still we would nor admit ourselves beaten, so set to work afresh, and not only scraped away the fungus but soaked the places where it had been with carbolic, a can-full of which I had found in the pantry. Yet, by the end of the week the growth had returned in full strength, and, in addition, it had spread to other places, as though our touching it had allowed germs from it to travel elsewhere. “On the seventh morning, my sweetheart woke to find a small patch of it growing on her pillow, close to her face. At that, she came to me, as soon as she could get her garments upon her. I was in the galley at the time lighting the fire for breakfast. “ ‘Come here, John,’ she said, and led me aft. When I saw the thing upon her pillow I shuddered, and then and there we agreed to go right out of the ship and see whether we could not fare to make ourselves more comfortable ashore. “Hurriedly we gathered together our few belongings, and even among these I found that the fungus had been at work, for one of her shawls had a little lump of it growing near one edge. I threw the whole thing over the side without saying anything to her. “The raft was still alongside, but it was too clumsy to guide, and I lowered down a small boat that hung across the stern, and in this we made our way to the shore. Yet, as we drew near to it, I became gradually aware that here the vile fungus, which had driven us from the ship, was growing riot. In places it rose into horrible, fantastic mounds, which seemed almost to quiver, as with a quiet life, when the wind blew across them. Here and there it took on the forms of vast fingers, and in others it just spread out flat and smooth and treacherous. Odd places, it appeared as grotesque stunted trees, seeming extraordinarily kinked and gnarled—the whole quaking vilely at times. “At first, it seemed to us that there was no single portion of the surrounding shore which was not hidden beneath the masses of the hideous lichen; yet, in this, I found we were mistaken; for somewhat later, coasting along the shore at a little distance, we descried a smooth white patch of what appeared to be fine sand, and there we landed. It was not sand. What it was I do not know. All that I have observed is that upon it the fungus will not grow; while everywhere else, save where the sand-like earth wanders oddly, path-wise, amid the grey desolation of the lichen, there is nothing but that loathsome greyness. “It is difficult to make you understand how cheered we were to find one place that was absolutely free from the growth, and here we deposited our belongings. Then we went back to the ship for such things as it seemed to us we should need. Among other matters, I managed to bring ashore with me one of the ship’s sails, with which I constructed two small tents, which, though exceedingly rough-shaped, served the purposes for which they were intended. In these we lived and stored our various necessities, and thus for a matter of some four weeks all went smoothly and without particular unhappiness. Indeed, I may say with much happiness—for—for we were together. “It was on the thumb of her right hand that the growth first showed. It was only a small circular spot, much like a little grey mole. My God! how the fear leaped to my heart when she showed me the place. We cleansed it, between us, washing it with carbolic and water. In the morning of the following day she showed her hand to me again. The grey warty thing had returned. For a little while we looked at one another in silence. Then, still wordless, we started again to remove it. In the midst of the operation she spoke suddenly. “ ‘What’s that on the side of your face, dear?’ Her voice was sharp with anxiety. I put my hand up to feel. “ ‘There! Under the hair by your ear. A little to the front a bit.’ My finger rested upon the place, and then I knew. “ ‘Let us get your thumb done first,’ I said. And she submitted, only because she was afraid to touch me until it was cleansed. I finished washing and disinfecting her thumb, and then she turned to my face. After it was finished we sat together and talked awhile of many things; for there had come into our lives sudden, very terrible thoughts. We were, all at once, afraid of something worse than death. We spoke of loading the boat with provisions and water and making our way out onto the sea; yet we were helpless, for many causes, and—and the growth had attacked us already. We decided to stay. God would do with us what was His will. We would wait. “A month, two months, three months passed and the places grew somewhat, and there had come others. Yet we fought so strenuously with the fear that its headway was but slow, comparatively speaking. “Occasionally we ventured off to the ship for such stores as we needed. There we found that the fungus grew persistently. One of the nodules on the main deck soon became as high as my head. “We had now given up all thought or hope of leaving the island. We had realized that it would be unallowable to go among healthy humans, with the things from which we were suffering. “With this determination and knowledge in our minds we knew that we should have to husband our food and water; for we did not know, at that time, but that we should possibly live for many years. “This reminds me that I have told you that I am an old man. Judged by years this is not so. But—but—” He broke off; then continued somewhat abruptly: “As I was saying, we knew that we should have to use care in the matter of food. But we had no idea then how little food there was left of which to take care. It was a week later that I made the discovery that all the other bread tanks—which I had supposed full—were empty, and that (beyond odd tins of vegetables and meat, and some other matters) we had nothing on which to depend, but the bread in the tank which I had already opened. “After learning this I bestirred myself to do what I could, and set to work at fishing in the lagoon; but with no success. At this I was somewhat inclined to feel desperate until the thought came to me to try outside the lagoon, in the open sea. “Here, at times, I caught odd fish, but so infrequently that they proved of but little help in keeping us from the hunger which threatened. It seemed to me that our deaths were likely to come by hunger, and not by the growth of the thing which had seized upon our bodies. “We were in this state of mind when the fourth month wore out. Then I made a very horrible discovery. One morning, a little before midday, I came off from the ship with a portion of the biscuits which were left. In the mouth of her tent I saw my sweetheart sitting, eating something. “ ‘What is it, my dear?’ I called out as I leaped ashore. Yet, on hearing my voice, she seemed confused, and, turning, slyly threw something toward the edge of the little clearing. It fell short, and a vague suspicion having arisen within me, I walked across and picked it up. It was a piece of the grey fungus. “As I went to her with it in my hand, she turned deadly pale; then a rose red. “I felt strangely dazed and frightened. “ ‘My dear! My dear!’ I said, and could say no more. Yet at my words she broke down and cried bitterly. Gradually, as she calmed, I got from her the news that she had tried it the preceding day, and—and liked it. I got her to promise on her knees not to touch it again, however great our hunger. After she had promised, she told me that the desire for it had come suddenly, and that, until the moment of desire, she had experienced nothing toward it but the most extreme repulsion. “Later in the day, feeling strangely restless and much shaken with the thing which I had discovered, I made my way along one of the twisted paths—formed by the white, sand-like substance—which led among the fungoid growth. I had, once before, ventured along there; but not to any great distance. This time, being involved in perplexing thought, I went much farther than hitherto. “Suddenly I was called to myself by a queer hoarse sound on my left. Turning quickly I saw that there was movement among an extraordinarily shaped mass of fungus, close to my elbow. It was swaying uneasily, as though it possessed life of its own. Abruptly, as I stared, the thought came to me that the thing had a grotesque resemblance to the figure of a distorted human creature. Even as the fancy flashed into my brain, there was a slight, sickening noise of tearing, and I saw that one of the branchlike arms was detaching itself from the surrounding grey masses, and coming toward me. The head of the thing—a shapeless grey ball, inclined in my direction. I stood stupidly, and the vile arm brushed across my face. I gave out a frightened cry, and ran back a few paces. There was a sweetish taste upon my lips where the thing had touched me. I licked them, and was immediately filled with an inhuman desire. I turned and seized a mass of the fungus. Then more, and—more. I was insatiable. In the midst of devouring, the remembrance of the morning’s discovery swept into my mazed brain. It was sent by God. I dashed the fragment I held to the ground. Then, utterly wretched and feeling a dreadful guiltiness, I made my way back to the little encampment. “I think she knew, by some marvelous intuition which love must have given, so soon as she set eyes on me. Her quiet sympathy made it easier for me, and I told her of my sudden weakness, yet omitted to mention the extraordinary thing which had gone before. I desired to spare her all unnecessary terror. “But, for myself, I had added an intolerable knowledge, to breed an incessant terror in my brain; for I doubted not but that I had seen the end of one of these men who had come to the island in the ship in the lagoon; and in that monstrous ending I had seen our own. “Thereafter we kept from the abominable food, though the desire for it had entered into our blood. Yet our drear punishment was upon us; for, day by day, with monstrous rapidity, the fungoid growth took hold of our poor bodies. Nothing we could do would check it materially, and so—and so—we who had been human became—Well, it matters less each day. Only—only we had been man and maid! “And day by day the fight is more dreadful, to withstand the hunger-lust for the terrible lichen. “A week ago we ate the last of the biscuit, and since that time I have caught three fish. I was out here fishing tonight when your schooner drifted upon me out of the mist. I hailed you. You know the rest, and may God, out of His great heart, bless you for your goodness to a—a couple of poor outcast souls.” There was the dip of an oar—another. Then the voice came again, and for the last time, sounding through the slight surrounding mist, ghostly and mournful. “God bless you! Good-bye!” “Good-bye,” we shouted together hoarsely, our hearts full of many emotions. I glanced about me. I became aware that the dawn was upon us. The sun flung a stray beam across the hidden sea; pierced the mist dully, and lit up the receding boat with a gloomy fire. Indistinctly I saw something nodding between the oars. I thought of a sponge—a great, grey nodding sponge— The oars continued to ply. They were grey—as was the boat—and my eyes searched a moment vainly for the conjunction of hand and oar. My gaze flashed back to the—head. It nodded forward as the oars went backward for the stroke. Then the oars were dipped, the boat shot out of the patch of light, and the—the thing went nodding into the mist.

I consider myself an intelligent person but for the life of me, I can't figure out Underground fares. The options are overwhelming and confusing.
I went to London in 2019 and I don't think contactless payment was a thing then. My husband and I bought Oyster cards and topped up as needed.
Now it looks like there's no need for the Oyster card, and I can just tap a contactless Visa. Great, except that I'll have my two kids with me. They'll be 12 and 15.
We'll be in London for 5 days and I expect that we'll take multiple Tube and/or bus rides per day.
I think the best option is for me to just use my contactless Visa. Then for the kids, it looks like I can load money onto the two Oyster cards I already have, and then stop at a station that has an agent, and have the agent apply the 11-15 year old discount to those cards. Is this correct or is there a better way to do this?
I looked at getting a Travelcard which gives you unlimited rides for a certain number of days. The one I can buy online is for 3 days and the adult fare is 47 GBP. This makes no sense to me. I can't imagine I'll use 47 pounds in 3 days.

I am new to the term limerence and when I first heard about it I realized this is likely something I’ve experienced my entire life without even knowing it. But very specifically 8 years ago I went through a period of such extreme limerence that it ruined an entire year + of my life. I can only describe this period of time as mental torture. At the time I was seeing a therapist to cope with these issues … a therapist who specializes in OCD because the only way I could describe what I was feeling was akin to my OCD intrusions. Some backstory: In 2006 I met a guy and quickly began dating. We dated for 2 years. We were intensely in love but also toxic… fought a lot and he had addictions and anger issues. We broke up for a little over a year during which I dated someone else (I used to do this rebound thing in my youth lol) but couldn’t get the other guy off my mind for a lot of the tail end of the relationship. When the new guy dumped me to focus on his band I ran back to the toxic ex for another 2 years. Inevitably we broke up for the same reasons as previously and I remained largely single for 2 years with a few situationships in the mix or brief dating. I once again returned to the toxic ex 2 years later and resumed a “relationship”.. basically decided we were better as lovers.
During this time I met a new man and I ended everything I had going with the toxic ex to pursue this seemingly stable guy. I never spoke to the toxic ex again. Things picked up quickly between the new man and I when we met … we fell in love fast, moved in fast and established a serious relationship that would last 8 years, a marriage and 2 children, but when we became serious I was plagued with thoughts of my toxic ex utterly constantly. First it was just simple things like the fact that I preferred his voice, his height… I would push these thoughts aside and think.. well, it’s what I’m used to. Soon it would become daily thoughts.. his name ringing in my head upwards of 100 times… by this time I recognized that he was very toxic as was I, especially when we were together, he was not a good fit for me, I didn’t have romantic feelings for him.. the idea of being with him repulsed me, basically made me feel physically sick and yet day in and day out my mind would ruminate about him.. I’d imagine things he’d say to me or imagine I’d run into him wherever I went. I’d imagine what we’d say to each other if we did. At some point I even started visualizing him .. like I’d look at my partners feet and suddenly see my exes feet (they were unique lol) in my minds eye, or I’d look in a crowd and “see” my ex everywhere… not literally but in the way you do when you miss someone who has passed, etc.
Meanwhile, I was in love with my new partner and would enjoy his company and mostly everything about him. The guilt of these thoughts became so overwhelming they’d consume me from the moment I woke up to the moment I fell asleep, sometimes even in my dreams. Every morning the first thing I’d think when I woke up was of his name. As with my usual OCD intrusions the more I thought about it the stronger it would become. I decided to come clean to my new partner about what was going on.. insisting that it was a part of my intrusive thought patterns and nothing personal.. he didn’t take it well of course and the guilt of having him judging me for this problem only exacerbated it. I went to therapy in an attempt to fix how I was feeling and was met with nothing but confusion… so let me get this straight you love your boyfriend but all you can think of is this other guy and you think it’s … OCD? Are you sure you’re not just involved with the other guy? … this exacerbated the issue even further… like wait, if my therapist thinks I’m actually into this guy too what the hell does that mean then? I truly at this point hated my toxic ex… I had identified some of his behaviours as abusive. I wanted NOTHING to do with him and the idea that someone could suggest otherwise made me feel physically sick… the thoughts became so strong sometimes I’d feel like I was spiraling into insanity… everywhere I went I’d see or hear his name (his name is a common middle name and I’d see it on all my work files)… everything felt like a sign from the universe. It reached a precipice when I ran into my ex at the grocery store… I honestly thought I might pass out… this thing I had ruminated about for almost a year now was happening… we ended up at self checkouts beside one another to make it all the worse. I tried to ignore it and moved forward, intrusions in fullll force.
Over time I came to accept the thoughts and this is when they largely stopped. They’d rear their heads every few years… I’d go on a trip and think god I hope my thoughts of the ex don’t come back and ruin my time - and then of course they would … like self-fulfilling prophecy. The night before my wedding I was plagued with thoughts. When I conceived my first child I’d have intrusions of what if the baby is his? Even though I literally hadn’t seen this guy in 4 years, let alone had sex with him lol. Logically I was always aware my thoughts were fake but as anyone with OCD knows, the thoughts can become so overwhelming and all consuming. I became so angry with these thoughts I’d wish my ex would just die … maybe then I could get over this. On that note, several years into my marriage I was told that my exes father died.. again the resurgence of obsession came up… I wonder if he’s surviving with this pain without me… I felt personally responsible for his grief, even though at this point we’d not seen each other in upwards of 5 years.
Over time the thoughts of him faded into nothing and I carried on with my life. My relationship with my ex husband ended for completely unrelated reasons. I later entered into a fwb situation with a guy I knew from school and fell into the strongest crush I’ve felt in my entire adult life…. Soon it became so consuming it was like I couldn’t even function in my daily life .. he was in my dreams even when I was napping, I’d think of him every min of the day and I’d imagine how I would be perceived by him in day to day activities. I’d overlook his glaring red flags and almost romanticize them… I can fix him, if only he’d let me. I have anxious attachment so this is nothing new but the way I was obsessing was something else entirely.. yet familiar.. I started googling like crazy with no result that felt it fit this situation. Finally on a dating discussion page I saw someone use the term limerence + describe the sensation and I suddenly felt like my entire life made sense. I remembered an obsession I had in high school for a completely platonic, unattractive, undesirable friend that would scramble my thoughts daily for months if not a year. I’d see his name everywhere or obsess over storylines about him that my mind would come up with. Meanwhile I was actually in love with my high school boyfriend. I brought this up to my now therapist and she had no idea what I was talking about… does anyone’s therapist recognize this as a thing? I wish I’d known about limerence sooner … maybe this isn’t limerence but knowing someone else has been through something similar is so comforting. If I had known all this at that point 8 years ago I think I would have fared much better mentally… I hope this super long schpeel helps someone else. I wish I’d seen something similar when I was experiencing that mental hardship years ago.

Hello! I have recently got a subscription to a streaming service with Desperate Housewives.
I've been BINGING it, after avoiding it for so long because I thought it was going to just be "light-hearted, sassy rich ladies and their constantly low stakes problems". While I have been tweeting as I go, Twitter is dead so I thought I'd write my current predictions and hot takes here and y'all can either laugh at how wrong I am or crown me and oracle (but either way, PLEASE no spoilers!)

1. Zach is going to get reverse Ramsay-Boltoned and turn out to be a secret good guy cinnamon roll.
   
2. Please let Evie chill the heck out. She's very aggrevating. I do not care for her.
   
3. Gaby is just a horrible abomination and I don't think she can manage a redemptive character arc, I think she's just like that.
   
4. I thought Bree's husband's thing was that he was gay? Was that by the writers on purpose? Kinda made the nipple clamps thing kinda like "Oh, that's it? OK then."
   
5. I don't understand if Lynette is so unhappy why doesn't she just go back to work and then use the extra money for appropriate childcare.
   
6. I really hope the writers cool it with the "Suzy is so clumsy" gags because without any times actually going right for her, it's just ... boring? She better get a win soon or I'm gonna gnaw my own foot off in frustration.
   
7. I don't think the pharmacist is going to kill whats-his-name. He doesn't have the GUTS.
   
8. Weren't the twins triplets in the pilot?
   
9. I don't want Mike and Suzy to get back together, because Mike clearly has other stuff going on.
   
10. I hope Paul gets to kill someone again, it's been a rough few months for him.
    
11. Bree's daughter is going to get pregnant as a storyline, to even out her son whose only traits seem to be "vindictive bisexual" (after the cute little coming out story where I was so invested and then he's just like "Nah, sike, I just hate my mum lol" WHY ANDREW? I WAS ROOTING FOR YOU. WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU. HOW DARE YOU!) - It seems like they're going for "religious family but surprise, they all have issues!" trope and I think a pregnancy would complete the bingo card.
    
12. John, please run the hell away.
    
13. I hope Carlos does not fare well in prison. He and Gaby are both awful, but also I don't want them together?
    
14. They uhhhh really glossed over Bree's OCD real quick
    
15. Bree's husband is a piece of work being like "No babe, I had to cheat on you. You don't understand. Having a clean house and amazing food cooked for me is really hard."
    
16. I think Lynettes husband had an affair (as alluded to when his father visited) ... The lady that he was seeing pre-Lynette just got introduced but I think that's too obvious - If it's another weird ramp-down I'm gonna be a little miffed.
    

Those are all my opinions. Ask me anything and I will give you my answers that will definitely be solid, canon predictions.
EDIT: Reading this back it kinda sounds like I'm not enjoying it but I am. So much. The balance of dark with camp is just so fun and interesting.

Pt. 1 Here
After five years, Milek thought she’d be used to this by now. Frozen stiff from fear, she watched the massive brown avian soar through the rafters in the arena.

After Arthur brought his King Charles Spaniel, Milek thought she had seen the worst the Human home world, a place called Earth, had to offer. The next year, his wife, Emily, showed up with something even more horrifying.

When that gigantic beast, easily five times larger than the previous one, lumbered into the arena, it caused a wave of fear so intense that a few species even broke out of their freeze instinct and ran. Ran! That’s the worst thing to do with a predator.

Yet the shaggy grey animal was just as well behaved as the one Arthur brought along. Of course, that is well behaved by Human standards. When Emily released a robotic version of a local animal called a deer, the arena was fascinated. Until the massive beast suddenly turn into the vicious predator everyone feared it was.

With a simple command from Emily, the gigantic predator immediately began chasing down the robotic deer. The bulky beast herded and maneuvered the robot until it took it down with a nip to the legs. Emily then gave a second command and the large animal immediately ceased the attack and reverted back to its, oddly, unassuming demeanor.

This was the first time that Milek got a good idea of how dominant the Humans were on their world. Screwing up her courage, she and Fessin went to introduce themselves just like they had with her husband the year prior.

She proved just as friendly, and oddly apologetic, as Arthur. This time, Milek and Fessin were invited to interact with the dog. Milek had a powerful conflict between curiosity and survival brewing at the time. Curiosity won out, barely, and she agreed to meet the predator.

The dog, the Irish Wolfhound, proved friendly and gentle. The animal had an unusually calm demeanor around potential prey. Yet she knew from the display that aggression could be triggered at any time. Emily explained that they have nothing to worry about, so long as they don’t threaten the dog’s family. Not that Emily had to worry about that in the galactic community.

That was also a controversial year. Like the year before, the judges decided to disregard the performance and awarded Fessin the first prize while Milek took second. Fessin was so outraged by the bias that he marched off the podium, dragged Emily over and handed the winning ribbon to her himself.

It would have also been the first year that a single entrant won both first AND second place with the same animal since Milek was ready to do the same. When the two most popular entrants in the IPGS rebelled, the judges listened and decided that a “technical error” in the voting software caused a mixup.

Still, even after learning that Earth’s predators could be impressive allies, Milek couldn’t shake millions of years of evolutionary instinct.

The avian, introduced by the trainer as a Golden Eagle, peered down over the crowd with eyes that looked like they could see for eternity. The trainer had set up a field of holographic grasses on the floor and let loose a robotic animal referred to as a hare.

The bird circled above, scanning the simulated grass below. Then a subtle shift in the grass gave away the presence of the robotic hare and the bird went into action.

Pulling in its wings, it dove down, picking up speed before flying low to the ground. The hare ran from the bird. Flapping to keep up its speed, the eagle skimmed the tips of the holographic grass as it rapidly closed the distance.

Then it extended its long black talons protruding from the ends of its bright yellow reptilian feet, stabbing them into the hare. The hare quickly ceased movement and the eagle ripped into the robot with a long, sharp beak, puncturing into the compartment that held the animal’s reward.

After consuming the meat, the bird flapped up into the air with a mighty pump of its wings before circling back toward the Human. The bird then landed on the Human’s outstretched arm, perching on a thick protective glove.

The Human gave a small bow, which the bird mimicked with outstretched wings. The Human was wearing an unusual garb made out of animal furs and skins. This was also disturbing to Milek, yet she held her opinion since it was the traditional cultural garb of a place on Earth called Mongolia, where training of these large predators dated back generations.

Milek ended up taking second this year behind the Human with Fessin in the third position. It was eight years since neither of them ended up on the top of the winner’s podium. Still, Milek wasn’t upset. The Humans bringing in fresh competition improved her game. Even though she placed second, she felt that her presentation was the best it has ever been.

The golden eagle deserved the win. Humanity had displayed a positively gargantuan avian predator for everyone to see. Milek later learned that, of course, it didn’t even rank in the top ten largest avian predators on Earth. The Humans have a penchant for surprises.

After the completion of the ceremony, Milek went to Fessin. “Hey, want to go check out the Garden displays? It’s been a while since we browsed it and I hear a Human finally opened a booth this year.”

“That sounds good,” Fessin replied. “Maybe their plants are just as unbelievable as their animals.”

Both shared a laugh at that. Surely, plant life couldn’t be hostile and deadly. It was food.

The pair moved through an airlock that led to a different part of the competition station.

Humans joining the IPGS caused a large number of rapid changes.

The biggest change was the venue was moved from rotating planet side arenas to a space station that the IPGS purchased second-hand from a failed concert promoter. They would tow it to the same planets and operate the show in orbit as opposed to on the ground.

The reason for this was two-fold. First, the number of spectators had quadrupled since the Irish Wolfhound showing. People wanted to get a better understanding of the fauna of Earth yet none of the species could survive the crushing gravity of the planet. The IPGS was the perfect place to observe the native wildlife of a planet that was otherwise impossible to visit. The problem was, the arenas the IPGS had on contract weren’t large enough for such crowds and it caused issues with ticket scalping.

Second was also related to the gravity. Because of the high gravity, many of the animals struggled to function properly in normal gravity environments. The two human entrants in the third year reported their animals were distressed when trying to move in the low gravity and it undermined the performance. One had brought along an animal called a horse and the gravity was interfering with the animal so badly that the human withdrew before the individual competition.

With a station, both problems were addressed. The station was able to handle the far larger crowds and it had it could dynamically alter the gravity of the competition floor. Of course, the gravity manipulator had to be special ordered since no one had designed one to generate that kind of force.

Without the proper gravity, the golden eagle wouldn’t have been able to display its terrifying hunting prowess.

A few other changes were made as well. A big one was the use of robotic animals. While Emily introduced the robotic deer, there weren’t any rules on the subject until the other Human in the third year created the new rule.

Milek thought that Human brought along a relatively normal animal to display. It was a creature called a rat. It was a small, dark grey-haired animal with a long, hairless tail. The Human also had carted out a large glass container behind it filled with rocks and artificial plants.

The crowd was intrigued by what the rat would do. The Human dropped it into the tank and all the rat did was wander around. Everyone found it disappointing.

That is until it caused the Mass Fainting. What Milek had initially thought was a large vine suddenly snapped out. The vine opened a mouth and began wrapping around the rat. The rat squealed loudly before it went silent. The vine tightened more and more as the rat struggled in silence before finally expiring.

Then the vine twisted around and consumed the rat by swallowing it whole. It turns out that it wasn’t a vine but a long animal the Humans referred to as a snake. In particular, a ball python.

Which, of course, is also not the largest of that particular class of animal on Earth, either.

The IPGS promptly banned harming live animals even before the judges had time to wake up.

The fourth year also had a new, Human derived rule. That year, a few entrants had shown up. By this point, the IPGS and its regulars had become somewhat used to the bizarre predators that the Humans were prone to entering.

That year, three Humans had arrived. One brought the most positively normal animal yet, a colorful avian called a parrot. It wasn’t, to Milek’s relief, a secret predator that would suck out blood from small cuts in the night. She couldn’t imagine such an animal ever existing, though she was sure some Human would bring one along at some point. No, the parrot only did something else bizarre - talking.

The second brought along a tiny predator known as a house cat. This was the first time Milek ever saw a predator that she wasn’t utterly terrified by upon first glance. It was, dare she say, cute. She loved the way it let out a low, comforting rumble. At least it was until the Human dangled a simulated mouse in front of it and a set of sharp claws deployed. The only solace was the fact the predator was so small it wouldn't be lethal to the galactic races.

It was the third Human that caused the rule change. And it was the Humans who suggested it to restrict entry to a list of animals that had to be excluded for safety. It was a long list and, oddly, even included herbivores like an animal called a hippopotamus. Milek also learned in that moment that if the Humans are concerned about something, listen.

The third Human brought along a much larger animal that Milek initially confused as a bigger house cat. The cat had a coat patterned with orange and black stripes with a few white accents along the face and underbelly. It was pulled along by a rope, like Arthur and Emily had done with their dogs, by a man with a weird blue coat in the same stripe pattern as the animal and had a hairstyle the archives called a “mullet”.

The other two Humans immediately alerted and informed the IPGS that the third Human, along with his animal, which they called a tiger, should be removed from the premises at once. Apparently, even Earth had predators the Humans couldn’t tame. The immense beast was one of them and it had a high probability of causing damage.

The Human with the tiger was eventually ejected, not without a significant amount of argument from the Human claiming he was some sort of tiger royalty.

After that was dealt with, Milek also got her first dose of unusual Human humor. When the tiger and its owner finally left, the Human with the parrot commented that tigers weren’t from some place called Africa. The other replied that it must be two humans in a suit. The two shared a laugh. Then the Human with the cat accused the human with the parrot that his parrot was deceased. Milek was confused why this was funny because the parrot was very clearly living.

Milek and Fessin stepped through the second airlock into a large atrium. Warm and humid, Milek flexed her outer chitin and enjoyed the warmth. It reminded her of her home world.

Looking on the tablet, Milek found the booth the Human had set up. “Looks like it’s at the other end of the venue.”

“I could use the exercise,” Fessin said. “Oh, by the way, I got a message from Arthur. He says if the Human offers up something called a pepper, turn it down. Apparently they think its funny when a new species tries one. Supposedly they cause significant distress both going in and coming out.”

“And the Humans eat this stuff?” Milek said, aghast.

Fessin snorted at the absurdity of it. “All the time. Voluntarily.”

Milek shook her head as she and Fessin browsed the garden show. The Garden hall was far bigger than the Pet Show arena. While most of the spectators came for the Pet Show, they stayed for the food.

Milek looked at the rows upon rows of different stations displaying the local plant life from across the galaxy. Her mouth watered as her eyes scanned over tasty looking vines or sumptuous purple flowers. Her 360 degree vision was nearly overloaded by the glorious bounty arrayed in the massive space.

Slapping her head, she remembered her mission. She was going to save her credits, and appetite, to get her first taste of Earth’s offerings. Luckily, the Humans were omnivores, so they enjoyed plants just as much as a good herbivore did.

Milek and Fessin both struggled as they moved through the Garden Show. Each new booth tempted them to try their food. Tubers, berries and nuts galore.

Then there was a strange break in the crowd. Looking ahead, Milek saw the Human’s booth. It was empty.

Moving closer, she saw a bored looking Human sitting on a metal folding chair. The small Human, a woman, was dressed in a brown robe with an embroidered garment covering her shoulders in the same color. Perched upon her head was a brown hat which had a round brim and had a cone jutting out of the top. The hat looked like it was one size too small for her head yet still managed to perch on the top.

Facing her tablet at the woman, Milek tried to get an idea of what the apparel was called. Nothing returned.
Curiously, the pair approached. Each table held, like many others, an array of amazingly appetizing plants. Vines, purple flowers, red flowers and more. There was also a section with strange plants that looked like water pitchers and one that had the weird appearance of having teeth. Milek noticed that the tables had little signs all over them. “For Display Only. Not for Consumption.”

The Human looked up and smiled, briefly flashing teeth before her mouth closed. “Welcome to Sprout’s Sprouts!”

Milek had a number of questions bouncing around in her mind. The first one popped out. “Can you tell me what your garment is called? I’m not getting anything from the database.”

The woman looked down at herself. “Oh? This thing? I can understand. It’s a pop culture reference I’m a fan of. Those haven’t been loaded up to the galactic network. It’s a big file. This is a robe and hat from a book series about a magical school I enjoy. The character a herbology teacher, which inspired me into becoming a horticulturalist.”

“Fiction is an important part of development,” Milek agreed. “So, why do you have all these signs everywhere?”

The Human gave a sheepish look. “I misunderstood what a Garden Show was. I thought it was to show off plants. I didn’t think it would be a food court. I can’t sell any of those because you may mistakenly eat it.”

Fessin cocked his head and looked over the plants on display. He laid his eyes on a sumptuous looking red one. “Do they just grow too slow to sell? What’s wrong with this one? It looks flavorful.”

“That one? It’s a rose. They’re not particularly difficult to grow. The hips can be consumed. However, take a closer look at that one,” the woman said.

Fessin leaned in and gasped. “The thing has teeth on it!”

Milek leaned in close to see what Fessin was talking about it. Sure enough, up and down the stem was a series of little sharp teeth sticking out of it.

“Those are called thorns,” the woman explained. “Unless you carefully cut those off, you can shred your insides. They also aren’t particularly nutritious.”

Milek blanched. That was insidious. Why would a plant want to hurt an animal? Presenting segments to eat was an important part of the reproductive cycle.

Fessin pointed at a different red flower. “And this one?”

“That’s a poinsettia. They’re toxic and, while not lethal, cause gastrointestinal distress,” the woman explained.

“And this one?” Milek asked, pointing at a plant with green leaves growing black colored berries.

“Balladona, that one is toxic enough to kill you.”

Milek was happy that the other species couldn’t visit Earth. If they did, most of them would be deceased the moment they passed a tantalizing bush outside the spaceport.

“So you didn’t bring anything to eat?” Fessin asked bluntly.

“Oh, I did,” the woman replied.

Milek smiled. “Can we take a look?”

“Sure. Unfortunately, I don’t have much, security wouldn’t let me bring most of it on the station,” the woman said as she pulled a wood box out from under one of the tables.

Milek knew she would regret asking, but she did anyway. “Why couldn’t you bring in the food?”

“So, apparently a lot of our food contains harmful substances. In sufficient quantity, they’re harmful to us, but it’s present in such low quantities, to us anyway, that it’s not a big deal.”

The woman started arranging a number of different items on the table. There was a flat green vegetable with little lumps under the surface, a small box of red berries and another small box with blue colored berries.

The woman then took out a tablet and touched it a few times. The picture of a red fruit came on the screen. “This, for instance, is an apple. It’s a common fruit we enjoy throughout the day. The problem is the seeds contain a substance called arsenic. Humans would have to crush up a large handful of the seeds to have an effect, so we can safely eat the whole thing, including the core, even though that’s not common. It is, however, lethal to you guys out here. It’s also present in citrus fruit, pears and grapes.”

She swiped her finger on the screen and a new picture popped up, this time of a yellow curved tube. “This is a banana. They contain potassium, which is important to the Human nervous system. They’re also mildly radioactive.”

The woman swiped the screen again. A variety of nuts came up. Milek’s mouth watered. She loved nuts. “These are various nuts. Almonds contain cyanide, which is a potent lethal compound. It’s in small enough quantities that the cultivated ones are safe, though we have to be careful with the wild ones. Even so much as 10 can kill a child.”

Milek sighed in disappointment that these nuts couldn’t be consumed. Which only got worse when the woman kept talking. “Other kinds of nuts can cause major anaphylactic shock episodes, including in a small subset of the Human population. They usually have to be careful and read warnings that something may contain nuts.”

Another picture of a different nut came up, this time with a two-segment shell. “This is called a peanut, though the name is deceptive since it’s a different class of plant called a legume. It can also be lethal, so I left them behind.”

“I think I heard enough,” Milek said, sad that Earth produced such impressive looking vegetables, fruit and nuts that couldn’t be consumed. “What about these?”

The woman pointed to the items in turn. “The green ones are snow peas. The red ones are raspberries. The blue ones are, creatively, blueberries. They have their own little quirks, though your security didn’t trigger them as toxic.”

Milek and Fessin looked at each other. Even with little quirks that passed security, they wondered if they could risk trying the fare.

The woman recognized the look. “Hey, I understand your hesitation after that big disclosure. Just because the security guys cleared it doesn’t make you feel comfortable.”

Fessin sighed. “You know what? I think I’ll give it a try. It would be rude not to. Maybe the red one.”

“First bite’s free,” the woman said, holding the box up.

Fessin gingerly gripped one of the red berries in his upper left arm and studied it. Milek looked down at the berry that had multiple small bulbous spheres attached in a rough cone shape with a hollow center. Taking a deep breath, Fessin popped it into his mouth.

His expression then lit up. “Wow! This is amazing! The sweetness exploded out of the fruit and is dancing on my tongue.”

Intrigued, Milek gestured at the green one. The woman handed it up.

Biting in, the plant snapped and sent back an unusual sensation. She found the crunchy exterior and soft interior balls a wonderful combination.

“Snow peas,” the woman explained. “There’s another version called a snap pea that makes a more satisfying pop, though I didn’t bring any of those along.”

The third fruit, the blueberry, was just as incredible. Milek ended up buying a box of the snap peas while Fessin took a box of raspberries.

As they chewed their treats, Milek pointed to a different table, “What are those?”

The woman turned and looked. “Ah, those are my carnivorous plants.”

Milek and Fessin both stopped mid-chew. Did they just hear the Human correctly? Carnivorous plants.

“I think the translator may be acting up,” Fessin replied. “Did you mean carnival plants?”

“No, carnivorous is right. These plants eat other things,” the woman explained, pride in her voice.

Milek and Fessin both took a big step away from the table. They were flabbergasted this Human casually sat by plants that could reach out and eat her.

The woman chuckled. “No, not like that. The biggest one out there can eat a rat and none of them are harmful to larger organisms. They mostly consume smaller insects. Here, have a look.”

The woman pulled out a different box and extracted a small wriggling worm thing. Milek looked at it with disgust. They reminded her of her people’s larval stage, though it was significantly smaller. “Didn’t the IPGS ban live demonstrations?”

The woman paused and looked at the worm. “Oh, sorry. Yea, I had to get an exception. These things are such low order lifeforms that we’re not even sure they feel pain. Insects on our world are barely above simple machines. The IPGS gave me an exception for this.”

That didn’t make Milek feel much better. It was like watching the Human feed her kids to a plant, which was entirely the opposite of what nature intended. Still, it wasn’t her place to question how the biology of another world functioned and watched.

The woman first took a small worm and placed it into the open folds of the plant with teeth. It contacted tiny hairs inside and the outer walls snapped shut, trapping the worm inside. “This is a venus flytrap. They activate when two of the small hairs inside their open mouths are triggered within a close timeframe. When closed, they secrete digestive enzymes that consume the trapped insect. They’re difficult to grow and require a proper soil acidity to thrive.”

She extracted a second worm, making Milek feel slightly nauseous. The Human then went over to a plant with long stalks that had a series of red hairs sticking out of it. At the end of the red hairs were small clear balls. The woman put the worm in one of the red hairs and released it, leaving it stuck to the plant. The plant then folded in on itself, trapping the worm in a coil. “This is commonly called a sundew. The plant sticks to its prey and wraps it up before digesting it and absorbing the nutrients through its wall.”

The final victim went into the plant shaped like a water jug. The worm fell in and the top of the jug closed, trapping it within. “This is creatively called a pitcher plant. Prey is attracted by a sweet smell and then falls into the interior.”

Fessin put on a forced smile. “That’s quite interesting. Earth has a rather unique ecosystem. Unfortunately, we have a few other things to take care of.”

After buying a few extra boxes of the berries, just to ensure they didn’t leave on a bad foot, the pair left.

Taking a quick peek back, Fessin blanched. “You know, I’m glad Earth’s gravity is too high to visit.”

“You have that right,” Milek replied. “Viewing the plants and animals in the safety of the IPGS is about as much as I can stand.”

As they went to find some more palatable food stands, Milek gave one last thought to the Humans. It was something that they could not only survive, but thrive, on a planet where they consumed toxic plants and lived next to dangerous predators. She counted herself lucky that they were friendly. She couldn’t imagine what they’d be like if they decided to be hostile.
The Finale

WARNING: Long post that nobody asked for!

Intro
About 6 weeks ago, I took my 2006 Honda CR-V into a repair shop to have some issues looked at. I was given a $7500 repair estimate, which was more than 3x the car's value. I got a second opinion from a friend's trusted mechanic (first quote was a "screw you buy a new car from us" estimate from a dealership) and it was still going to cost more to repair than I was willing to invest. I had been saving to purchase a new vehicle anyway, and planned to do it within the next 2 years. This just accelerated the timeline.
Because I wasn't fully prepared to buy a new vehicle, and I didn't want to completely re-work our family's entire budget to work in a new vehicle, I decided to start doing gig work on the side. I purchased a Hyundai Ioniq 5 and also had an electrician install a level 2 charger for it at my home. The idea is to drive enough to cover the cost of the car payment, the charger payment (12 months no interest for the charger + install... I had to have a sub-panel installed also as my main breaker box was full), and I'm also including insurance in what I need to cover each month since I changed my auto policy to include ride share coverage.
I have all ride share earnings depositing into an old checking account that I've had since high school so that the funds are totally isolated from our primary income/budget, making it much simpler for me to track. Any excess money I make each month above my expenses will be left in the account until I build a $3000 buffer to insulate against months when gig work might slow down, or when I can't work as much as I need to for whatever reason. After I have the $3k buffer, any excess funds will be applied to principal on the car loan to pay it off sooner. I hope to never have to use any money from my regular job to pay for anything related to this vehicle.
Gig Work Signups
I began this journey having never done any sort of gig work and not really knowing what to expect. I did not know how the pay worked, which platforms paid the most, pros/cons to each, and what was best for my market. I drive in Knoxville, Tennessee and the surrounding areas (Maryville, Oak Ridge, Lenoir City mostly) and based on some quick research, it seemed like the average gig worker in this area was making about $20/hr. I used this as a basis to figure out how many hours per week I would need to be able to work (at minimum) to support this plan.
I just assumed I could sign up and immediately start working, but many of the platforms in my area are waitlisted. I started signing up on April 2, 2024, and as of May 3, I am still on the waitlist for Grubhub, Amazon Flex, Shipt, Roadie, and Gopuff. I was waitlisted for about 5 days for Spark Driver, but have an active account there. I was able to get on Instacart and DoorDash pretty much right away. I had some issues with my vehicle registration (I was transferring tags from my old vehicle to my new one and the dealership did not give me my temporary registration) that caused a delay for signing up with Lyft and Uber, but I was able to get all that resolved and get activated on those platforms recently. Lyft performed the background check prior to me submitting my vehicle registration, so I was able to drive on Lyft within 15 minutes of submitting my registration. Uber did not do my background check until after I submitted that, and despite using the same service as the other companies (Checkr) the Uber background check took nearly a week. I was only activated for Uber and Uber Eats yesterday, on 5/2.
Strategy
I did lurk on quite a few subreddits prior to starting to get an idea of some of the strategies for maximizing income. I read a lot of posts about acceptance rate not mattering, and depending on the platform targeting $1/mile, $1.50/mile, and $2/mile orders/rides, with minimums, etc. - This all makes sense, but to do this effectively I feel like I either need a helper in the car with me to manage my phone while I drive, or I need to constantly stop to screen orders before moving on.
As I got started, my experience was that orders were coming in pretty much nonstop. I would have my next order before I was back in my car from dropping a DoorDash delivery at someone's door, for example.
Since I wanted to get as familiar as possible with these platforms, figure out which areas of my city stay the busiest, which restaurants to try to stay close to, etc. I decided that instead of chasing perfect orders, I would chase status programs, which involve high acceptance rates, meaning I'd be taking good orders and bad orders (but not egregiously bad ones) and the pay would even out since I wouldn't have much if any down time that I'm not earning any money in. Also, as a side note, I've found that psychologically, at least for me, I stay motivated to keep working better if I have momentum and I'm just going. Sitting and waiting for orders to come in makes me feel like I'm wasting my time, and I don't like that.
DoorDash
DoorDash is the platform I've spent the most time on. Partially because it was one of the first available to me, but also because I actually enjoy it. Of all the platforms, it's the easiest for me to see exactly what I'm going to be paid, where I'm going to be going, and about how long it's going to take. It's very easy for me to identify quickly on DD whether an order is worth taking or not, and while I have made some mistakes over the course of the last month, I've had some success as well.

• 188 Deliveries
• 83% Acceptance Rate
• 100% Completion Rate
• 4.96 Customer rating (30 total ratings, 29 5-star and 1 4-star - Most common positive feedback is Order handling)
• 94% On-time or early
• Platinum Status

I have 57.8 active hours on DoorDash over the past month. This puts me at about 3.9 deliveries per active hour. Total income from DoorDash over that time is $1411.38, or $24.42 per active hour. My logged in time is higher, at 76.4 total hours logged in. This would bring the hourly rate down to $18.47, but this is not all time spent just waiting for orders to come through. At the suggestion of many of the subreddits I've visited, there have been many times when I've been logged into multiple apps at the same time, searching for orders. When I get one, I would pause my dash but stay logged into the app. Overall, I'd say that my efficiency of "working time" vs "waiting time" is good, and I average less than an hour of waiting on orders per 8 hours worked.
Of the $1411.38 earned on DoorDash, $580.44 is base pay, $795.44 is from in-app tips, $39 is from cash tips, and $34.88 is "Other Pay" which would include reimbursements or bonuses. I had $38.38 in expenses directly related to DoorDash, which includes an order I had to pay for out of pocket and get reimbursed for because the DD card got declined repeatedly and support couldn't fix it, and $10 to purchase baby cough syrup which was reimbursed in cash with an extra tip on top because it was an add-on that couldn't be done through the app.
My goal was to be above the area average of $20/hour, and I feel good about the success on DoorDash here. I do think the Platinum status helps me get higher paying orders more often based on how frequently I see the badge with the associated order (and these are the ones with the best $/mile/time combination) so I don't think it's all in my head, but I don't have a ton of experience to compare it to, so it's possible it may not.
\Note: I did purchase a pizza bag, a catering bag, and I have 4 smaller insulated bags. I am opted in for large orders and pizza orders. I have not received any catering orders to this point, however.*
Instacart
Instacart fooled me with a promotion to get $110 if I completed 6 shop & deliver orders within the first few days on the platform. I don't remember exactly what the time frame was, but I didn't read it carefully enough and they guaranteed you would make at least $110, and they would shore up the difference if you didn't. I thought it was a $110 bonus on top of pay, so I took some really terrible orders just to get the 6 in. My total active time on Instacart over the month was 19.2 hours. I completed 20 shop & deliver orders over that time frame and only made $308.22. This put me at $16.05 per active hour on this platform.
It's possible that I didn't give Instacart a fair shake, or that I'm not a fast enough grocery shopper, but I hate this platform and am unlikely to continue using it. I don't think, out of those 20 orders, I had a single one that I felt like was worth the effort in the end. Of that $308.22 I earned on Instacart, $176.73 was base pay, $102.49 was from in-app tips, I did not receive any cash tips, and $29 was from "Other Pay" which includes promotions. $15.41 per order with each order taking almost an hour on average to shop and deliver is not worth my time, especially compared to other options.
If there are any Instacart gurus out there that can maybe tell me what I'm doing wrong, I'm open to giving it another shot, but I felt like 20 orders and nearly 20 hours, with even more time looking in the app for orders, was enough for me to fairly pass judgment.
Spark Driver
This is the stone worst platform when it comes to pay to effort ratio. Offering a trip that has like 17-20 different stops for like $18 in pay is WILD. I cannot believe that they're offering this crap to people and if people are taking these offers they're idiots.
That said, every once in a while a good order will come through the round robin with just 1-3 stops and a high pay (normally because of a generous tip, not because of competitive base pay) - HOWEVER - Spark Driver serves one niche purpose for me. My car came with 2 years of free charging at Electrify America stations, and one of the Wal-Marts in my area has an EA charging station. If I can plug my car up to charge and then snag a Wal-Mart shop and deliver order from this store while it charges, it gives me 30 minutes to shop that order while my car charges, meaning I'm no longer wasting that time without earning money, and guaranteeing that order will only have 1 stop. This has been the best way I've found to use Spark Driver, but is very specific to my situation.
Another very frustrating aspect of Spark Driver is the location verification within the app. Similar to the promotion I misread from Instacart for the $110, Spark Driver was running a bonus promo with a certain amount of batches from a particular Sam's Club. I busted my butt to get them all done, then saw only batches accepted before 3PM count, so 3 of my batches did not count and I did not complete the challenge. This was defeating, but I successfully completed 7 or 8 batches from this Sam's Club. A few days later, the promo started again, and I accepted a batch, parked in the same pickup spot I had been parking in, and when I went to check-in on the app, it told me I was not at the right location.
I contacted support, who was of no help, and eventually had to get the order cancelled since there was no way for anyone to manually check me in. This happened at the same Sam's Club 3 more times before I finally gave up on this location, which is the most convenient Sam's Club to me. This effectively eliminated regular use of the Spark Driver app for me, since this Sam's Club was the source of the best orders I have seen in my area. I also had the wrong location glitch happen at a customer's house and had to have customer support force complete the order, which burned a good 45 minutes.
Finally, there were a couple of times when an employee loaded my order but did not give me the bar code stickers, and I was unable to complete that validation step at the customer's house during drop off. This was early on before I understood that I had to scan these both at pickup and drop-off, so partially on me for not knowing, but the employees helping load the order should have known and said something I think.
Despite all of this, I've still made $396.86 on Spark Driver since April 3. Of that, $298.90 was base pay, $89.87 was in-app tips, and $8.09 was "Other Pay" which included a partial bonus payout and a $2.09 slap in the face for waiting at a store for 30 minutes after checking in and they still never brought the order out. There were a total of 63 drop-offs, making it $6.30 per drop off. The insane part is that this was on mostly decent orders compared to some of the other stuff I've passed on.
This app really doesn't make sense to me, and outside of my one specific use while I'm charging, I don't intend to continue spending any time on it.
Lyft
I was most excited about Uber and Lyft from the beginning, because these feel like the platforms on which I have the largest amount of control on my tips. On DoorDash and Instacart, I do what I can. I communicate with customers about delays, substitutions, etc. and I keep items in insulated bags during the delivery process. In most cases, though, customers do not seem to increase tips after the fact, and so I pretty much know before I start the order how much I'll make on those orders. When driving people around, I feel like my ability to adjust to their preferences for conversation or not, music, temperature, as well as creature comforts in the car (I have phone chargers on the headrest for their use, a trash can available in the back, a neweclean/comfortable car, etc.) all should lead to better outcomes when it comes to tips.
Because of the delays due to my registration issues, I was only approved to drive on Lyft on 4/25. Since then, I've been active for 21.92 hours. Over that time, I've earned $508.19, which works out to about $23.18 per hour. Of that, $366.30 has been base pay, $56.88 has been in-app tips, $5 in cash tips, and $80.01 in "Other Pay" which includes ride bonuses, surge pay, or anything else that isn't a tip or the base fare. I've given 45 rides over this time, which works out to about $11.29 per ride, and a little over 2 rides per hour.
The sample size here isn't huge, but this is honestly quite a bit lower than I expected and a bit disappointing. I'm interested to see if this gets better over time, or if my small sample is directionally accurate to what I can expect on this platform.
Uber / Uber Eats
I was only approved for this yesterday, so I've only been on platform for 4 hours and 33 minutes (logged in time) and 3 hours and 15 minutes of active time. I earned $85.83 from Uber during this time and $26.82 from Uber Eats for a total of $112.65, or $34.67 per active hour. This sample is definitely inflated though, because of a $30 cash tip I received. In total, of the $112.65, $53.40 was base pay, $28 was from in-app tips, $30 from cash tips, and $1.25 from "Other Pay" from a surge bonus.
The $30 bonus tip happened because I picked up a guy to take him to a bar that was listed to be open until 3AM. We got there, and he got to the door and they were closed. I saw him before I pulled off, and took him to a nearby gas station to grab a 12-pack of beer and then dropped him off at the strip club right around the corner. Time investment was minimal, so if he had decided not to compensate me for my time, it wouldn't have been the end of the world, and he seemed cool. Frankly, $30 is way more than I expected and I appreciated it very much.
Total Numbers
There were several times when I had multiple apps going at the same time. In fact, there were a few times when I was doing orders from more than one app at the same time. This is incredibly stressful, a bad experience for me as the driveshopper, a bad experience for the customer(s) and frankly it's potentially dangerous. If people multi-app solo effectively, I have no idea how. It's so difficult to make sure orders are going in the same general area, you have time to shop everything, you have space for everything, you can manage the order of the deliveries, etc. and you can do everything on time.
Unless you're operating as a team, my initial read is that multi-apping is only good if you're waiting for an order / ride / whatever to come through, and when you accept it, you pause or go offline on the other app(s).
Either way, I have logged an approximation of all of my "clocked in" time... This is time when I am in my car working. Also, because my car is electric, I don't have gas costs or oil changes or anything like that. I will have to buy tires eventually, and I'm obviously putting miles on the car which depreciates it faster and puts wear on it, but comparatively my maintenance costs are low. Even though I have free charging at EA stations, it is not always a +EV play to charge there because of the time it takes and opportunity cost. Sometimes it makes sense to just charge at home, so I've tracked that as well.
I am currently on a leave of absence from my normal job, which is Tuesday-Friday from 8AM-4PM and Saturday from 12PM-8PM normally. While I'm on leave, I am helping care for a sick family member, which involves lots of driving to and from doctor's appointments, radiation treatments, etc. - Because of this, I am able to drive during days and times I will not be able to when I go back to work. This is also creating situations where I may DoorDash for 1 hour in the morning, 2 hours in the middle of the day, and 4-5 hours at night. It varies from day to day, and I'm basically trying to squeeze in gig work whenever I can around obligations as a son, husband, father, etc...
I am charging my car for miles that I'm using for personal stuff in addition to work stuff, so my electricity "costs" below are inflated since they aren't all work costs, but it's still a good look at my gig work earnings:

• 119.25 Hours Worked from April 3 - May 3 (just shy of 30 hours per week... I expect this to reduce by half when I go back to work at my full-time job)
• $2737.30 Total Income
• $22.95/hour (Total hours, not just actively on deliveries or people in car)
• 3520.56 work miles driven ($0.78/mile - this is inclusive of all miles driven during "clocked in" time, which will include time when I'm not actively delivering something or driving someone)
• $40 Electricity Usage (399 kWh used at home, not at public charging station)

Summary
I need to increase my Lyft/Uber sample size, but so far it seems like Uber and Lyft are about the same (fares and in-app tips seem very similar) and DoorDash is very viable. I'll likely continue to alternate between the 3 based on bonuses, promotions, challenges, and whether my legs are getting stiff and I need to get up and down (DD/Uber Eats) or I just want to drive (Lyft/Uber) ... Mad respect to people who figure out ways to make this life work as a full-time job. Even with things stacked in my favor with the electric car, this work feels like a very constant and unrelenting grind that never gets easier over time. There's nothing you can do on a day-to-day basis to substantially reduce the amount of hours you have to put in to earn what you need.
That being said, it's not very stressful and gives me a great opportunity to catch up on podcasts, meet new people, and just be alone with my thoughts from time to time.
Thanks for coming to my TedTalk!

Hey everyone! This is my first post ever in this group (and I think 2nd in Reddit overall) so please let me know if I am violating any rules.
This is a story I have pretty much plotted out/outlined for a while now. I have a first draft done which clocked around 35k words. Since then, I have expanded the story and would like to know if the beginning is something that kept you reading. Do the characters seem interesting? Are they different enough? Really, any feedback will be greatly appreciated. I am an ESL writer, so hopefully any native eyes might notice if there is anything amiss ☺️
Thank you!!

Nadina

Today should have been a day of triumph for Nadina. Two kingdoms should have kneeled at her feet, one weeping with gratitude while the other trembled with fear. All of her hard work, her scholarly pursuits, her diplomatic shrewdness would finally pay off. She had stayed awake for several days, ensuring that every single Pyrian orator and person of means that used said means against Pyria’s wellbeing would be rounded up. And marked like cattle.
Today should have been the day she defeated Roone. The thought had stoked her fire for years, a steady supply of air in a furnace hidden deep within. Today had been disastrous instead. Somehow, he had bested her. He had taken her plans, her beautifully, meticulously crafted plans, and scribbled his zealot narrowmindedness on them.
So Nadina yelled and threw dishes and cups to the walls, blinding bolts of her power zapping out of her fingers as she did so. This went on for hours, until she ran out of tears. And tableware.
She got up and winced. Her bare feet were covered in nicks and cuts, delicate needlework of bloody thread on her white skin. Her body should have been able to heal itself, but it seemed her distressed emotional state had prevented this from happening. She sat at her desk, picking up a blank piece of paper that had remained intact and a half-broken quill. She started scribbling, and after a few moments, she called for Mira, her maid. Mira came to the door right away, but took the few steps towards her mistress reluctantly.
Nadina could see that Mira was visibly taken aback by the detritus her mistress had caused in the room, but said nothing. Nadina waved a dismissive hand, as if the maid had been agonizing over a speck of dust on the silverware. She folded the piece of paper in two and proffered it to Mira.
“No point in cleaning this up. Pack your things, take the coin that I have stashed in your closet and take this missile to the Erethian diplomats.”
Mira’s pale blue eyes widened. Two quiet lakes, shaken by a stormy wind.
“Nadina, you can’t possibly mean-
“I most certainly do. Look outside, in a few hours, if that, the entire island will be inescapable. How do you think the other Artefix will react when they come here and find you, my trusted, loyal servant?”
Silence and service. That was all Giftless like her were to do, and Mira had excelled at both.
“What about you?” Mira inquired.
“I shall be fine. I am almost offended at your lack of faith in me.” Mira had served her well, first as a friend, and then as her only friend. The fact that she would empty Nadina’s chamber pot as well was a perk. To one of them, at least. Nadina had to get her to safety, and her reserves were not enough for both of them.
The maid scrambled as quickly as she could, presumably relieved to be granted leave to flee. Mira was a Giftless, and as such, she had been accompanying Nadina, her Artefix mistress since both of them were little girls. Back then, she had been her play companion while Mira’s mother was the maid of Nadina’s mother. They had run up and down the fields and hills of Pyria, covered with grass that always seemed to sway in the sea breeze. They used to run and make flower crowns of the purple Arteficia flowers and talked about how one day they would get on a boat and see the world. Well, Nadina talked about that. Mira was fully aware of her lot in life, and seemed contended with the plan of at least visiting once the neighbouring Erethia.
Nadina back then laughed when Mira’s aspirations seemed so…uninspired. But then she witnessed how her tutors punished Mira if Nadina was showing dissent during her classes. Mira was not to exist for herself. She was an extension of Nadina. Once both girls reached womanhood, Mira became her lady’s maid; Her shadow, following her anywhere, anticipating her every need. And when Nadina got in trouble, Mira did again what she had done their entire childhood; She stepped in and presented the trouble as her own.
Nadina, already a supporter of Giftless emancipation, felt that the least she could do was to be the one to release her from her slave contract, much to the grave displeasure of most Artefix who feared this would set an unbecoming precedent. They were right. It did. Even at her most cowardly times, she had managed to fan a spark into a flame. Mira was already fiercely loyal to her. After that, Nadina had no doubts Mira would walk through fire for her.
Nadina walked outside, the soft, cool moss padding her footsteps. She felt her power slowly replenish, clouds heavy with rain building up again inside her, droplets of it trying to reach her wounds from within.
She willed it to stop, weakly, and grimaced as a particularly nasty cut was stopped mid-healing, the healthy side of the skin pulling on the bloody slash. Every single drop of power now had to be reserved. Far out in the distance and above her, cresting in the sky, she could see the result of Roone’s machination. She had felt it, even before it started creeping up all directions of the horizon. Word arrived shortly after that, but Nadina already knew what he had accomplished. Some kind of concealment veiled almost the entire island, shimmering faintly in the soft purple light of dusk. From that distance, it was indiscernible, but she was certain that the soft pulsating glow slowly stretched out, in an arch that would eventually cover the entire island of Pyria. If peril wasn’t looming over her so threateningly, she would stay there, sitting at the ground, watching as the spell completed.
She knew Roone well enough to know that there would be no piercing through it, not for her. If she were the one setting up a warding spell of this magnitude, she would have gone to the greatest of lengths to ensure that her enemies would stay out. And she was most certainly his enemy, as were the Erethians.
She was almost regretful she was so short on time, as she wondered how exactly it was that he had managed such a feat. She would be able to understand his work soon, she had no doubts of that. She was the scholar of the two of them, not he. If he had discovered a concealment that covered such an area, so would she. She had an inkling already; The kind of power needed to sustain such a spell even for a few moments was enormous, and their holding power contraptions, as opposed to their Erethians counterparts, were still in their infantry, research cut short to accommodate for the needs of a war she had been trying to prevent all along. With no contraptions and no such reserves of his own, Roone must have taken what was needed, much like he had accused and debated that the invading Erethians had done. His hypocrisy ran deep. Almost as deep as her hatred of him.
But fret not. After all, she was the powerful one, despite his attempts to dissuade her of that, lest she forgot her station. Even as she knew what she was and he was not, what she could accomplish and he could not, she had shrank herself down to make sure she would never be left helpless again.
The vista from the hill was reaching far enough that she could see a mob dispersing and then coming together again, like ants tracing a floor covered with breadcrumbs. She knew that not all remaining Artefix shared Roone’s rhetorics on Artefix excellence, but who would oppose him when facing death at the hand of an enemy? Surely obedience at the feet of a ruler would be preferable.
Regardless, she knew the role she had chosen to play, and knew they wouldn’t take to her kindly. She found it reasonable of them to do so. They had families to protect, like she once had. I still have one, she tried to reassure herself. I will find her.
And then she would kill Roone.
She would kill her husband. Didn't all marriages have their trials, after all?

Lyra

“Again, Lyra, again!” Lyra sighed as she regarded the small horde of children who should be sleeping by now. As should she.
The small flame of the candle next to her flickered, as the children closer to her kicked their blankets in protest. She eyed the torn, leather bound book on her lap. The Archer, the Nymph and the Fawn. She had memorised that story a long time ago, when she herself was a child, lying on a very similar bedroll, in the very same room of the orphanage where now another generation of Vector, Concipio and giftless orphan children lived.
She still remembered how they had all yearned for a bedtime story. She would scoot next to Adax, her closest friend back then, and they layered their blankets as they huddled together to get warm. It didn’t make a difference that some children were fortunate to have people loving them enough to spare the time and a story at night; Not all children in the orphanage were orphans. Some families who had no means of heating their homes during the cruel Erethian winters, sent their kids to sleep at the orphanage, as it was the only place at the settlement with sturdy walls and windows that sealed shut. The orphanage wardens would never turn away a child, with their bedroll tucked underneath their arm, an exhausted parent or older sibling accompanying them in the night, with some small offering of food in exchange for the kindness. They would smuggle the child inside, careful of not waking up the headmistress who wasn’t as kind or able to stay awake past sundown, and would escort them in the main dormitory. The other children would shuffle their bedrolls closed together, feet and blankets tangling, and all would pester their night warden for a story.
The refugee settlement in Erethia had outlived its original purpose a few centuries ago, and was now a poor village near the training camps of Vectors. A place for Pyrian refugees that fled their country out of fear of being confined on an island during wartime, now the only remaining connection to those original inhabitants was their folklore. Recorded and written down, stories from Pyria, the land of myth, and -according to the Erethian history they were being taught-, the land of monstrous Artefix that waged war on Erethia, had circulated all around the settlement. After many years, possibly centuries, the small collection of handwritten scrolls and books had settled in the orphanage. Stories on Fawn and the Nymph, stories on Roone, the legendary Artefix that set an end to the war. As if even the stories knew that the children there were the ones that needed them the most.
The Nymph lived in the forest. Each night, she would look at her reflection on the silver stream, and brush her long dark locks, the pale moonlight making them gleam.
“Just like your hair, Lyra!” Lyra shushed the child, but smiled at the interruption.
Each night, she would wait for her beloved, the mighty Archer, to come. The Archer was brave and tall and fair, but he wasn’t strong. He needed the Nymph’s touch to make his power awaken.
Some giggling usually occurred at this passage. For the Nymph could see the power of the Archer, nestled deep within him, and her touch could make it stir and roar to the surface. And then the mighty warrior would leave to protect those who deserved protection and hunt to the ends of the world those who deserved his punishment. Each night he would return to his beloved. One night, the moon rose and gleamed on the Nymph’s hair and dark skin- “Just like your skin, Lyra!”
“Sheny, shut up, she knows what she looks like.”
“You shut up, stories are better if you talk during.”
And then hid again as the sun started rising, but the Archer was nowhere to be seen. The Nymph, distressed, left her forest and walked and climbed and swam to find him. What she found was the Fawn. With branches where his antlers should be, colourful leaves on them, gently rustling in the wind. The Nymph hadn’t encountered him before, but she could see how he was powerful on his own. The Fawn was kind and agreed to help her look for the Archer. Together they looked and looked, and the days and the years passed. Finally, they found him on an island, stranded, unable to leave, for he had needed the Nymph’s touch to get away.
“This won’t end well.”
“We know that already, it’s not fun if someone keeps talking!”
“Maybe if you are talking.”
“Hush your mouth, otherwise she will stop and it will be your fault.”
The Archer was not who he had once been. The solitude had broken his heart and mind. Seeing the Nymph stand there with the Fawn drove him to madness, jealousy overtaking him. He took one of his arrows and stuck it in the Fawn’s neck. The beautiful creature kneeled on the ground as purple blood started dripping from his wound. The blood spilled until the Fawn was dead, and Nymph watched in horror as her lover murdered her friend.
*“*See, I knew it wouldn’t end well”
“It ends badly each time, it ended badly five minutes ago, stop!”
The Nymph hugged the Fawn’s lifeless body and wept, her tears mingling with his blood, seeping in the ground. The Archer, in a moment of lucidity, saw what he had done and knew his beloved would never forgive him. And so, he took his own life with the last one of his arrows. The Nymph cried over the Archer as well, her tears mingling with his blood. And when she left, a flower was blooming where all her tears and her loved ones’ blood had mixed. That flower was what gave Artefix their power, and made the land brim with magic.
“The end,” Lyra said, with a tone that seemed to her more pleading than authoritative. “Time for bed now, you heathens, no more stories.”
After a few rounds of complaints, Lyra tucked feet and hands under threadbare blankets, kissed foreheads and made to leave the room. “Lyra,” a small voice came from the bedroll closest to the door. “Is this story true?”.
Lyra kneeled next to Sheny. “It is if you want it to be,” she said to the little girl, gently pushing her tufts of red hair off her face. “Now, time to sleep.” Lyra said and tucked the little girl in tight. The blanket bundle next to Sheny moved, and Sheny yelped, as a tawny-haired head appeared, half concealed by the blanket. A few of the other blanket bundles scattered around the room murmured their annoyance at the noice.
“Archer was a Vector and is making all Vectors look bad,” the boy whispered, angling his body away from Sheny and her kicking feet. Sheny glared at him with a look of cool superiority that Lyra could only aspire to master one day. Surely it would make bathtime more tolerable.
“You have blue eyes and you are stupid, but not all blue-eyed people are stupid.” Sheny rolled to her side, resting her head on Lyra’s lap. Malan murmured something about stupid red hair and stupid face, but seemed to decide that his retort couldn’t compete with anything Sheny would come up with, and covered himself again with his covers. Wise little boy.
“Vectors are not bad,” Lyra assured the little girl who was one of the few of her age that had manifested as a Concipio already and would be expected to the Capital soon. Her brother was a Vector, and he was all the little girl had left. Having two close relatives manifest was highly irregular, most families bragged one member in each generation that was either a Vector or a Concipio. Children didn’t manifest as Concipios as early as Sheny had. Lyra would have thought this an anomaly, if Sheny wasn’t just the youngest in a line of orphanage children that had manifested earlier than usual. Lyra was worried about the little girl. How would she fare among other novices that were almost a decade older than her?
“I know,” smiled Sheny, yawning loudly. “Do you know how I know?” asked the little girl. Lyra shook her head. “Because you are a Vector and my brother is a Vector!”
Lyra smiled, even though she disliked how others still considered her a Vector.
“That is correct. Hush now, time to sleep.” The little girl yawned and seemed to ignore Lyra’s words.
“Do you know what I would like the most though?” Sheny asked again.
Lyra had to admit defeat; She wasn’t going anywhere if Sheny was talking. The little girl had been there for a year before Lyra had arrived. During that time, she hadn't said a word to anyone. Her brother visited as frequently as he was allowed from his unit to go and visit. When Lyra first joined, she had witnessed one such visit; The young boy would cradle her in his arms and she would cling to him, silent. Only her eyes spoke of what she still held in her heart. With coaxing and love, books and walks near the stream nearby, Lyra had managed to help the girl open up and be a little girl again. Lyra wasn’t entirely sure whether she was the one to thank for that, or if this was just a matter of time and the time had simply arrived. In any case, she and the little girl were close and she cherished every word that came out of her mouth because she knew how long it took for Sheny to utter even one. Lately her words seemed to be some variation on Malan has a stupid face but still Lyra enjoyed them all the same.
“What is it?” Lyra asked her.
“I would like to be an Artefix! Just like Fawn. Then I wouldn’t need to pair with anyone and I would just get everything done myself.”
“Ha!” Malan’s voice came from underneath his blanket. It seemed the short respite had raised his tolerance for Sheny’s attitude towards him. “You are a girl, and no girl Artefix was ever as powerful as boys.”
Sheny’s eyes shone murderously. “Of course, because you were alive five hundred years ago and asked them all.”
Malan opened his mouth to reply but saw the look on Lyra’s face and thought better of it. A truly clever boy.
Lyra patted his back gently and then leaned over Sheny, kissing her brow.
“You know what, Sheny? I think if someone can do what Artefix did, that would be you.”
Sheny seemed placated. Murmuring a goodnight, she settled on her bedroll, eyelids already drooping.
Lyra took another glance around the dim-lit room and closed the door carefully, walking to her own sleeping space. A room she shared with the other wardens of the orphanage. The other three were down at the kitchen, eating and laughing raucously. She never joined them. She never felt she was welcome to. They were Giftless, and could boast no power or no ushering skills of their own. Giftless were near the bottom of Erethian society and were expected to show some respect to Vectors and heaps of it Concipios, even though the former were not that much better off. Not truly. So, each Vector was treated with respect, albeit begrudgingly. The other wardens always stopped their chattering when Lyra walked in the room, a quiet tension simmering until she was gone again, the conversation resuming once her footfall retreated. In their eyes, she had power and thus, she was different. The irony was not lost on Lyra. She was a Vector, indeed. But in reality she could boast no more power than the big blackened pot they cooked porridge in. The pot was fulfilling its purpose, something that Lyra could not claim for herself as well. For what good is a Vector if she cannot pair with a Concipio?
Like the Archer himself, Vectors were carriers of power. Not all were equal; Some could barely cause a small hearth fire to ignite and some could carry loads a hundred men couldn’t. All of them, however, needed Concipios. Ushers of power, blessed by the Nymph, they paired with Vectors to allow them access to their own power.
A few weeks had proven Lyra's inability to pair without causing a disaster or harming others, and she was passed around different stations, doing menial work and writing letters to Adax that she wasn't yet allowed to send to him.
After a few months of this, she heard how the orphanage, not far away from the training encampment, was in need of a new warden as one had died of old age, and she begged and pleaded to be sent there. She was of no use to the encampment anyway. The grounds were brimming with Giftless who took care of all the chores. The matron who had died was her own old warden, and the fond memories she had of the woman were plentiful. She was intimidating to Lyra, yes. But young Lyra hadn’t needed much to be intimidated. The looming threat of needing to wash her hair was enough to terrify her. The matron could be strict but she offered her soft embrace as readily as she offered verbal lashings.
Lyra knew that she could go there. She could be of use to the children. So she found her way back into the orphanage, and cared for the kids until they presented and had to move into the training encampment, if they were Vectors, or the Capital, if they were Concipios.
The reality there had been harsher than she had expected. She had been an orphan herself, but she never had experienced loss. She had been an orphan since she was an infant. Her loss was almost merciful. Unlike the loss that she witnessed making many of the children permanent residents during her year as a warden. The pain that she saw etched in their face, she knew would forever be carved in their heart.
Lyra made quick work of changing into her woolly sleeping tunic and pants in the candle’s low light. The material was worn but still could keep her warm during the night and well into the freezing dawn. Erethian weather was unpredictable, but more often than not, it was predictably bad. Lyra lied down and rolled herself in her blanket. The wardens slept more comfortably than the children, much to Lyra’s dismay. Underneath each bedroll was a large pile of straw, intending to keep them better protected from the floor’s chill and rough wood. Lyra had suggested that they could move the straw to the kids’ dormitory. She was met with such obvious displeasure hidden by such accommodating words , of course Vector Lyra, whatever you think best, that had quickly withdrawn the suggestion. They already hated her because they thought she thought she was so much better than they. And, if after living their entire lives obliged to be thankful to the charities they received from Erethia, they had some small comforts to improve their lives, did she really have the right to shame them for it? Instead she rummaged every corner of the settlement, and visited the encampment enough times to find scraps of fabric. Painstakingly, she had managed to pad and sew each and every single one of the kids’ bedrolls with those scraps, making the bedrolls a little bit softer and warmer to sleep on.
If the other wardens had noticed, they hadn’t shown any indication of it.

I am not the OOP. The OOP is u/yetanotherthrowaw_ay posting in AITAH
Ongoing as per OOP
Content Warning - suicide and suicide attempts, domestic violence
1 update - Medium
Original - 15th April 2024
Update - 25th April 2024
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AITAH for struggling to want to stay with my spouse after her suicide attempt
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I (m31) am struggling to maintain an emotional connection, or desire, to stay with my (f29) spouse after her most recent attempt, which she states was an accident that she doesn't remember even trying to do.
Context: it's been a pretty toxic relationship from the start, and every red flag in the early days I blindly ignored in the ignorant hope things would one day get better. Years of mental/physical abuse from her, to her cheating, to her self harm, all lead up to this. I grew up with suicide in my family, my dad doing so when I was 7, and it ran in his dad's family as well. My mom had her fare share of mental illness and suicide attempts growing up.
A little over 2 years ago she quit her last job because of stress/anxiety. We were in an okay spot for her to take a break from working, so I told her to. I imagined 3-6 months off work at most, to be honest. She got diagnosed with depression and anxiety, as well as migraines. She's been through different meds which have been hit or miss, and at this point I realize is more likely due to her inconsistency with taking them as instructed.
I let her take a little extra time in the beginning to try to let everything balance out. Afterwards, we agreed she would look for work or school. She has done neither. Last year, I spent a lot of time and effort, and resources, to try to keep her out and exploring and doing different things to try to help get through every thing. We went to more concerts than we ever have in a single year, saw so many movies and other shows, traveled, went to conventions. As much and as often as was possible and reasonable to do so.
At the time, we also had our old dog, who was 13, and also on anxiety/depression meds. I was (and still am) working 2 full time jobs to make up for her lack of work. Income-wise, we are comfortable, though it would be nice to go to a single job again to regain some personal time. Throughout last year (and as was common every year either way) she had multiple breakdowns that resulted in any of the following:
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• Self harm (light cuts on arms etc.)
• Waking me up in the middle of the night yelling at me for anything she could find reason for, leading up to physically grabbing/pushing me, taunting me to hit her (never have, never will.)
• Throwing things
• Leaving for long periods

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As I reflect on it, these episodes got progressively worse, and when she'd self harm and try to hide them, the scars had gotten significantly largedeeper. At some point, mid-December I had a company trip I had to take. The week leading up to that she was complaining of a bad headache, so I told her to schedule an appt and get to a doc for it. She refused and said it was just like her previous migraine episode and would pass. I left it at that. The days leading up to, she became quite out of character, as if not all there. I was growing concerned, but nevertheless listened to her and her stating it was just her migraine and it would pass.
I asked my parents and sister to keep an eye out, and let me know if she gets worse as I was boarding. When I got there, things seemed to progress faster. Mixed signals from family stating she seemed fine, just slightly off, to her texts being completely incoherent. She was up the entire night, documented only by the nonstop texts that were all over the place and near impossible to decipher, so I got the first flight back I could that day. As I was getting on the plane, my sister said she seemed to be pretty off, and while I asked her to go to a doctor she continued to refuse, so my sister called an ambulance for her.
When they were there, my sister asked about her meds, and our dogs meds. I stated what they were, and I guess that lined up with whatever bloodwork they did, stating she mixed her meds with our dogs, which caused her to OD and nearly die. All this, and they released her that night still. When I landed and got back, my parents took her to walmart, where I met them. She was still clearly not herself, more openly hateful and careless towards me. I couldn't handle it. I almost broke down in tears in the store, and so I asked them to keep her and I'd be back home later. During the period of her coming down from her OD, she was careless, made it clear she didn't want to be with me, would have preferred to go back home to her parents etc.
Mid-January, our dog isn't doing well. He is older, of course, but the vet stated it wasn't an old age issue. He wasn't sure what was wrong. Numerous visits, meds to help, and it came down to kidney failure. We rushed him to a specialized hospital an hour away, where they stated the options were to try to save him, but he'd be on dialysis the rest of his life, or let him go. He was tired, not himself, didn't even perk up when he saw us the way he used to. As selfish as I wanted to be to push and just let him go on dialysis, I didn't want him to suffer either, so we let him go that day. I've been torn since. Today he would have been 14. I can't help but feel like she also mixed his meds, which lead to his kidney failure, but we've no clear answer on that.
I've been distant. I don't feel safe (and haven't really, the more I think on it, for some time) when I'm around her. She's generally back to her normal, friendly self, and spends time with my family, who also seems to have written everything off as okay. I left on a whim a couple weeks back to get away. I can't stand to be around her, or any of my family (though they did nothing wrong, I just...don't have the energy).
I hate the dread, feeling like her next breakdown can come any moment, not knowing if it's going to be worse than the last time. I hate the fear of going on a work trip and coming back to her being dead, because I don't know if that's ever going to happen with her or not, or if she's going to get better one day or not. I care about her and her well being, but I don't know that I love her the same any more, or that I can continue to carry on with this.
AITA for considering divorce from all this?
ETA: We've been together for 14 years, married for 12.
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Comments
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MudAny8723
NTA. But I'm struggling with the hospital incident being a possible suicide attempt. Being someone who has worked in the healthcare field for many years, if a patient overdoses on medication and has a history of depression/suicidal tendencies, standard protocol is a 24-72 hr psych hold. The only time that an individual wouldn't be kept is if it was truly just an accidental drug overdose. Even then, the person is kept until the majority of the drugs are flushed out of the system, and that's normally following the pumping of the stomach if the drugs were invested.
I'd be very concerned that she didn't manipulate the entire situation just to get you to come home from your work trip. Her actions afterward at the store wouldn't be of someone coming down from the OD. She may have been groggy, lethargic, and out of it, but not argumentative and combative. My family is full of drug addicts and I've seen these situations, unfortunately.
OP, I think for your own sanity and safety, you need to leave and file for divorce. This is never going to get better.

OOP: Definitely understand the struggle with the hospital incident. I do as well. Even my sister's husband found it odd that they'd release her so quickly. I have a hunch that between her and my mom, they played it off as an accident and talked them out of committing her further.

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Update - 10 days later
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Just a follow up to this post
I've been in and out of it. Emotions ranging from feeling guilty, regret, anger, relief. We went on a long drive a while back to talk, and I told her she needs to go back to her parents. I said I can't keep living like this, in fear of another breakdown, in fear of leaving and coming back home to finding her dead. I can't keep waking up throughout the night expecting her to wake up and go on a rampage.
She, understandably, cried and tried to reason with me. Said she'd go to therapy, get a job, etc. all the things she's had near 3 years to do to take care of herself while I work multiple jobs to support her and give her the time, space and resources she needs to take care of herself. As much as it hurts, I still believe that deep down she actually wants this to happen, just didn't want to be the one to make the decision. Fast forward to yesterday, she sent a text asking about what to put down on tax forms. She applied to and got a local job. I asked her why she did that, and if our talk meant nothing to her. She responded with "Of course it did, and that's why I decided I want to stay and work things out with you."
That absolutely set me off. As if she didn't listen to a word I said, didn't respect my request or me. How can you convince yourself that THAT is what needs to happen, when that's what you've had years to do and have made next to no progress. So I sent quite a wall of text explaining how that made me feel, and that if she opted to stay that's fine, and I'll leave. She kept her response short with an "I get it, I'll turn the job down and leave as soon as possible."
My one main request with all this was that she have help getting to her parents, because it's an 18+ hour drive that I don't feel comfortable letting her make alone. Maybe I'm wrong for that, but all things considered I want her safe. I told her this again and she stated "I don't need you to go with me, I'll be fine." So I told her she needs to talk to her parents and brother then, and see if they'll help her. Or do what she wants and go it alone, that would only make my decisions moving forward more clear.
That said, my parents were over that evening for dinner. It became clear also that my mom had a hand in her decisions around staying, as well as gave me the hunch that she helped in pulling my wife out of the hospital prematurely. My mom has a history of similar mental health behavior and has ended up in the hospital multiple times from suicidal attempts/thoughts etc. It used to be extremely bad when we were kids, particularly by HS age, to the point of her attempting to jump out of a car multiple times on the highway, to consuming an entire pill bottle, etc. My dad committed suicide when I was little. I hardly remember him. So I've grown up with these experiences, and I truly do not want to keep living my life this way.
Off the tangent, why I believe my mom also had a hand in my wife saying she was getting a job (again) and staying, as opposed to following my request - my mom cried and through out "We love you, and we're here for you to support you...but 12 years.." and left it at that. She is quite the intense, typical Christian set in her ways, which adds to my belief they've been planning on how to not let me put my foot down on sending her back to her parents.
All that said, while she will be getting back to them most likely in the next couple weeks, I can't help but feel like I'm giving up too easily, like I'm not doing enough, doing good enough, and feel guilty about the decision. There is regret setting in, and sadness, but overall numb.
So, with this update: AITAH for standing my ground on having my wife go back to her parents until she can sort herself out?
ETA: Before bed last night, she came to tell me she talked to her family. Her brother wasn't sure when he'd be able to get time off. She tried to say "So if you don't want to go with me, I can take myself it's fine." Which also set me off, and also confirmed that I was right to have this in text this time, because she once again was trying to twist it to her benefit. I told her not to say that, that I offered to go with her if they couldn't help her out, and she was the one that told me she doesn't need me to go, and I wasn't going to let her twist it. She'd said something else and tried to spin it around on me again, and I cut it off and said that's the end of the conversation, I'm not playing games and I'm not letting her twist shit again. Needless to say that interaction angered me, and yet this morning I'm back on the feeling guilty side of the fence.
UPDATE: Her brother will be coming to pick her up this week. Afterwards, I think I'll be working on moving away from everyone myself, as well as working on finding a good therapist to work through my own traumas and issues. It's been a rough year so far with all the ups and downs, and the past couple weeks in particular. Thank you all for the kind words and support. To those concerned I may end up like my father, I appreciate the concern, but I will stand firm in the promise I made to myself growing up, that I would not turn into that. While I agree that my mother likely played some role into that, he was also abusive. I come from quite a line of dysfunctional family, and perhaps this step separating from my spouse is a step in breaking that cycle. Thank you all for your support. It has helped give me some sort of direction to move forward.
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Comments
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Performance-Gra
Dealing with someone's mental health struggles, especially when it affects your own well-being, is incredibly challenging. It's natural to feel conflicted and overwhelmed by all these emotions. You're not alone in feeling this way.

OOP: Thank you for sharing that, truly. This whole ordeal has been difficult, and this is the first time over many times I've decided to stand my ground on this decision, so it's been quite hard to process, but all I can think about is how it may be affecting her.

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AnimeAngel614
You've spent too long thinking about her, when is it your turn to think about yourself? You've already been mentally, physically and emotionally declining trying to help her. Unfortunately, you can't help someone that doesn't want help. And her doing all this now is not because of her, it's about what she is about to lose. She doesn't want to lose you so she is trying for you and your relationship, not herself. She will be back to doing what she's always done in a couple of weeks to a couple of months. I GUARANTEE you she will. You can lead a horse to water, no matter how many times, ways, types, but you cannot force them to drink.

OOP: I think this past year in general has solidified this as I've tried to start focusing more on myself. The interruptions caused by her made things difficult, but as hard as it is, you are likely right that she will fall back to her usual ways in a few months, and I can't gamble on that risk anymore.

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Beneficial_Youth_928
Kind of sounds like she has bpd

OOP: her original diagnosis was anxiety and depression, but her behavior imitates bpd, very much like my mom was

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I am not the OOP. Please do not harass the OOP.
Please remember the No Brigading Rule and to be civil in the comments

I was married for 23 years. My first husband died suddenly, leaving our three kids without a Dad.
Fast forward a few years, and I meet someone and I am so happy. We are getting married this summer. I have two adult sons (21,19) and a 17 year old. He has no children. We are having a very small wedding (40 people) outside at a winery. Obviously, I’m an older lady (45) and so I’m really not doing the big fan fare like my first wedding. But I need help with a few things. These are the things that are floating in my head:
1) who walks me down the aisle? My Dad passed away 5 years ago and I really don’t have any other options for anyone else to fulfill the “Dad” role. Do I ask my sons? Just one? Both? But would that look odd? Do I just go down this grass “aisle” myself? The thought of my 45 year old self going down an aisle makes me feel.. I don’t know, just awkward.
2) We chose not to do any groomsmen/bridesmaids but would like to at least include my kids, do the boys wear any type of boutonniere? If so, I want to give my daughter recognition as well, do I give her a flower of some sort?
3) Does my Mom and his Parents get a flower of some sort?

Hi... I just want to start by saying please excuse and pardon my intrusion into your life. Please forgive me and I pray you read this tonight. I want to be honest with you when I say this, but idk why I'm messaging you like this. I don't think you'll respond... I don't think you even care for me or the kids anymore... Please don't think I'm assuming either... I've worked on that ALOT! This is all just what I feel and what's going on in my brain. I need to type it out so that my anxiety may calm and I can sleep tonight. I know it's been a long fortnight since we last talked and saw each other... It feels like life times have passed by! Like stars in the night sky grow deemer and closer to their ends since our last communication... I just wanted to write to you again, because honestly idk... I miss my best friend... I miss my husband... I miss the father of our kids... I miss the person I was with… Not the memory of you, who you use to be, or who you are now… I miss you Camilo! I miss the way you would smile and laugh… I miss how warm and bright my life was and how it would make me melt to a puddle to hear it! I miss the way you slept and snored at night… 😅 It was so soothing to listen to and cute! Like no joke I miss it so much at night. I miss how childish, fun, and goofy you are! It use to annoy me and I could never figure out why because that’s one of the things I fell in love with you for… My life was so stressful, hard, and exhausting all the time and you just brought me joy, laughter, and peace in everything you did! I hope you know how smart you are to cause ugh I wish I could get your advise! It’s not as good as moms, but I know with time and age it’ll rival even hers! I always valued ur opinions, thoughts, and new prospective on things… You gave me a lot to think about and taught me so much! I’m sorry I use to call you dumb and stupid CAUSE YOU ARE SURLY NOT! You’re brilliant in every way and I miss us holding each other in long nights! I miss the talks and opinions of difficult choices in life! You were always so right and I to stubborn as an ox to admit it at all… Sorry for that… 😅 I hope your faring well and I hope you sleep at night… I rarely do anymore cause your all that I dream of anymore… How our life’s could be, would be, and should be! Your presents still haunts and tortures me, but don’t get me wrong my dear! ITS ALL IN THE BEST OF WAYS! I have news on the kids I wish to share if you still care or want to listen to it… I hope our children are never far from your mind, because they only think of you the majority of the time! Kyela no longer does blind. Kaiden searches the house at night. Playing hide and seek all the time! He cries out dad where are you I’ll find you… Its strange to say but I think it’s sweet, cute, and silly! Korra’s doing alright but her mental health has taken a turn to the right… 😔 Shes got severe depression from the loss of you in our lifes… She’s being put on depression meds April 24th that’s next Wednesday… We think bipolar meds as well as well but aren’t sure! Ohhh and our son FINALLY got his disability! He starts May 1st. I’m still waiting on a decision on Kyela’s disability, but hey you win some and lose some and that’s alright! I’ll take the small wins, but god can you imagine how well we can sleep at night now! Knowing our son’s future is clear and bright! Knowing when we’re gone and dirty in the ground he’ll be alright! He’s set for life! I wish we could have celebrated with you. By the way tho before I forget you know how bad I am at that… 🤣🙄 Kaiden got approved for brain/spine surgery and it’ll happen in a month or two! He’s become almost completely resistant to meds and has been having seizures 1-6 times a day or every other for a while at least for 3 months past! The decision on his surgery was so hard and killed me so much inside. The only person I wanted to talk to about it was you. I wanted your advice and opinion on our son’s future and how to move forward. It feels strange not talking to you about our life events anymore and I feel more lost and like I’m screwing up without ur choices and opinions helping to shape our families future. Without your thoughts on stuff anymore I like to hold off on plans and events. At least until I’ve had the chance to sleep on them… I don’t like making these decisions until I’ve truly thought on it. I also like sleeping on them so that I can see you in my dreams… Lay down next to you. Hold your hand. Look into your eyes…. I like talking to you for a while catching up on everything that’s going on. I like seeing how u would smile and laugh or how serious you would get… If you’re disappointed in my decisions for our family… 😢 It can really make my day or break it seeing dreaming of you, but it feels so good cause it’s the only time I get to talk to and see you… Sometimes it’s hard to imagine what you sound like anymore.. I have to go back to our wedding video all the time… To see your smile… To hear your voice… To see how radiant you looked and nervous you were… 😅 That was THE GREATEST DAY of my life… Nothing has nor ever will compare to nor top it! You are and always will be my husband and my best friend… My complete and entire existence… I have loved and trusted you from day one through all the bad and the good… I could be reincarnated a thousand life times and I would search for you in every one! No ones has ever loved or cared for me at all the way you did or until you did… It was hard letting go of my past but I finally did. I feel so alive and so stress free now that I have… I don’t like letting things that others did cloud my judgements anymore… I just take a deep breath… Think back on how I lost you… I let go… I calm down… I breath so lightly that I could pass out cause I know if I do not I could hurt someone the way I did you… I could lose someone else the way I did you… I don’t ever speak to or have any of my family in my life anymore. I blocked them to help release the trauma they put me through… I can’t tell you how amazing it felt the day after! How well I slept! I was on cloud 9! As soon as I let it go… As soon as forgave… As soon as I moved on I began my journey back to you! Learning what I needed to! To stay calm! To listen! To care about my partner more than my self! I’ve worked so much on my patience but I know it still could use some more improving, but it’s SOOOO MUCH BETTER and it is getting there… At least I like to think… People tell me how much I’ve changed… How much better I am… How sweet and caring I’ve become… but in all honesty their opinions aren’t the ones I’m looking for! It feels amazing knowing my changes are being recognized and validated but the only opinion that has and will ever truly change and make me feel better…. Is yours! I want you to see all that I have done for you how I’ve changed and healed for you… I want to see how an amazing man and a loving mother can change everything about you in all the most amazing ways! It’s so damn insane to think of Damion now days… I call him my monster… My demon lurking inside… I caged him and blessed the bars with prayers that can never be undone… Sometime I feel him trying to break free and do you know what I say or do? I tell him to be gone for I am done with his torment and meddling… he does not control me anymore and I’d rather die then let him come back! I saw the light and was touched by the one I fight for! I’ll never let him loose or let him free! HE WILL DIE INSIDE OF ME! I am Danny! Not Damion the devils family! I picture you and feel your warmth… I see your smile and hear your laugh… I look deep into those big beautiful eyes! That is my heaven.. That is my peace! My goal is to get you back as ANY COST baby! I will prove to you that you’re my soulmate… That this is your family and where your meant to be… I love you Camilo, Cami, Cam, MY WORLD… MY LITERAL EVERYTHING! The years I had with you were brighter than anything in this world… I don’t know if I deserve you… I don’t know if I can say or show you how I have changed! But I pray that you may see it everyday and that you return to us with so much hast! This life time will last an eternity with out you. It will be so dark and shattered like glass in the night… I DONT CARE how long it takes or how I have to prove it, but I will to get you back! Until my dying breath you will always be my love and heaven because life without you is hell and filled with demons around every turn! I hope you are sleeping well… I hope that you’re eating well... I hope who ever the hell your with is treating you well! I am always here for you me and the kids! We don’t care who you are or what you’ve done…… This is your family! We will wait for your safe return! Please come back home… I hope this wasn’t to long… I hope you find love and peace in my words! I hope they convince you to let me show you how much you meant to us all along! Your knight to my queen… Your stars to my moon… 

I remember my very first day of work nearly six months ago with horrifying clarity, the memories still shining like keloid scars across my mind. My new partner and I got sent to a Victorian house in the middle of a forest of dead, twisted trees. Our boss, an old Greek man with balding hair who chain-smoked Marlboros constantly, had warned us that the scene would be a fiasco. An entire family of six had suffocated from a freak carbon monoxide leak. Soon after that, the bizarre occurrences began.
“They sent a repairman out there for something or another,” George explained through a cloud of thick, gray smoke, smashing out a half-smoked cigarette and lighting up another one without pausing. We sat in the office across the desk from him, wearing our dark blue uniforms with the logo of “Big George’s Cleaners” emblazoned across the chest. I had laughed when I first saw the name of the cleaning business. Big George sounded like the name of a seven-foot-tall pimp to me, not this small, bent man with a thick Greek accent and white fluffs of hair forming a wispy horseshoe around his head.
“So what happened?” I asked. George inhaled deeply, meeting my gaze.
“Well, I don’t know exactly what he saw, but he was screaming about baby’s arms and spiders.” I groaned.
“Dead spiders?” my partner, Xavier, asked hopefully. George shook his head ruefully.
“Don’t know, son. I figure you’ll find out when you get there, eh?” George got up and slapped me on the back in a fatherly way. “Don’t worry. You’re in good hands with Xavier. He’s worked here for over three months. One of our longest-lasting employees!”
I looked over at my new partner doubtfully. Gang tattoos ran up the lengths of his arms, and he had a teardrop tattoo below his left eye. He looked like the type of person who only got a job to keep his parole officer happy.
We walked out into the clean summer air, the small town around us bustling with midday traffic. Xavier pointed to the panel van parked behind the building, an ancient, black rusted heap of a van with the company’s logo peeling off the side.
“That’s our ride. She’s a beauty, huh?” Xavier said. I smiled politely. “What’s your name again?”
“Brian,” I said curtly. “Brian Felman. So this company has a high turnover rate, huh?”
“High turnover rate, high disappearance rate.” He shrugged apathetically. “None of my business. That’s why we get hazard pay, right?” He laughed- a shrill, dry sound that sounded much higher than his normal voice.
We got in, and Xavier put on some blaring rap song that I tried to block out. We drove for what felt like hours, going deeper and deeper into the middle of nowhere. The GPS started taking us down pothole-strewn dirt trails before finally failing completely five miles from the place. We drove up and down the road until, after thirty minutes of searching, we found the only house in the area. The thin, looming turrets loomed overhead, like sharp spikes set up to impale the sky. The exterior of the building appeared dull and filthy, the white paint yellowed with age. Cracked windows covered in dust and grime leered at us from the top floors.
“Well, that’s gotta be it,” I said, glancing down at the paperwork George had given us. It just said “1 Ghoulish Road, Barton.” I looked up at the house, but it had no number on it. The road hadn’t even had a street sign. From what I saw, Barton probably didn’t have more than a hundred people living in it. Perhaps they didn’t use street signs in such an abandoned area.
Then I saw the police crime scene tape rolled out in an X across the door, and I knew we had arrived at the right house.
“I hate spiders,” Xavier offered like a piece of sage advice, sighing. He lit a cigarette in the van, which technically wasn’t allowed but, after all, no one was here to complain. He handed the pack to me and I took one. I looked over at him.
“Well, as long as they’re dead, who cares?” I said. He got out and started putting on protective gear, tucking his pants into his socks while he fished out two pairs of thick rubber suits. “They are dead, right?” He gave me a grim smile.
I sighed as I looked down at the suit. It looked like something an Axis frogman might have worn during World War 2. I wondered where George got half this stuff.
After we both put on the hot and stuffy rubber suits, Xavier reached into the back doors of the van and pulled out two gas masks. I stuffed one on my head and began adjusting the straps, making sure it was airtight. It felt somewhat suffocating and also obscured my peripheral vision. Two small circular holes of ballistic glass were the only opening for sight.
I glanced over at Xavier. He looked like a cross between a SWAT officer and a scuba diver figurine from a fish tank. I figured I looked exactly the same. We took the canisters of poison with a sprayer nozzle out of the van. I strapped the heavy metal cylinder to my back.
“Just in case,” Xavier said with fake nonchalance as he put on his own sprayer. “Spiders have a tendency to be hardy little bastards. Supposedly, the exterminators already came and sprayed the house once, according to George, but…” He trailed off, his voice quivering with fear at the end. I could see his eyes rolling and wild behind the mask. Yet he still walked towards the door, ripped away the police tape and walked right inside. I followed close behind him.
The front hallway looked totally dark. I tried flicking a light next to the door, but I got absolutely no response. I didn’t know if the electricity was cut or if the light bulbs had all gotten smashed by vandals. I took out a small LED flashlight from the random items looped into my work belt, clicking it on and shining the bright white beam around. An instinctual, primordial horror came over me as I saw what scurried all around us.
It looked like brown recluse spiders, some of them nearly a foot long, and they most certainly were not dead. There were thousands of them, but that wasn’t even the worst part.
They all had strange, small, white baby legs and arms, slightly longer and more emaciated-looking than something taken from a Barbie doll. Each had four grasping arms in the front and four bent legs in the back. Except these didn’t look plastic. All the miniaturized limbs looked real, with tiny dimples in the elbows and smooth rolls of fat like an infant’s.
The spiders made sounds that sounded almost human. They opened their fanged mouths and cried out with the cooing or shrieking of a baby. Infantile cries began to sound all around us, echoing and mixing in a cacophony of high-pitched shrieking and wailing. I tried to block it out, pulling out my poison nozzle to start spraying. I took a headlamp George had given me out of my belt and flicked off the flashlight.
I looked for the best place to start. A layer of dead spiders littered the floors, their curled-up doll legs facing upwards with tiny fingers clenched in death. The white skin of the miniature human appendages peeled off in dry, papery layers.
But I didn’t look at the hundreds of spider corpses for too long, because at that moment, something heavy landed on my shoulder. I screamed through my gas mask. The sound came out muffled and choked. Spinning around crazily, I tried to get the spider off my protective suit. I craned my head and saw a massive brown recluse only inches away from my face. I gasped as I looked at this mutated abomination.
It had six black, soulless eyes. The pincers clicked open and closed, dripping clear fluid. The venomous spider’s long back had a marking like a dark brown violin. As its pincers flew wide open, it opened its mouth wide, and I saw teeth inside no spider should possess. Tiny, fanged teeth, like the canines of a human. It had an entire set of these sharp, vampiric fangs. Then, in a blur, it lunged for my face. I felt it smash into the side of the gas mask, and then, emanating cries like a hungry baby, it tried to bite through it.
I dropped the large poison canister I carried and ran shrieking towards the door, more spiders falling down all around me as I went. Some jumped from the ceiling. Others skittered over the bodies of their comrades, bodies that covered the floor like a rug from some nightmarish acid trip.
Xavier hadn’t fared much better. I heard him close behind me, his steel-toe boots smashing the mutated corpses with muted thuds. I felt like I couldn’t breathe in the confining gas mask. I had a sudden insane urge to rip it off. But I felt more spiders skittering across my shoulders and back now, and I knew that both of us were likely covered. A large part of me wanted to run screaming from that house, clean the century-old wood with the pungent, refreshing smell of gasoline and watch those abominations burn.
We sprinted out the door out into the summer light streaming down from a clear blue sky, covered in dozens of the freakish spiders. One of them skittered up my chest and covered my face. I couldn’t see anything, but I still had the poison canister attached to my back. I brought it up and began spraying it at the abomination. It gave a very human whimper as its doll legs began to kick and seize, its surreal mouth opening into a O of surprise. It gave a cry like a starving infant and fell to the black earth in front of me, its miniature demonic face finally relaxing as the mouth went slack and its six eyes glazed over.
Over the next few minutes, Xavier and I killed all the spiders that still attached themselves to our thick rubber suits. To my horror, a few dozen of them streamed out the open door and into the surrounding dead trees. I ran over as soon as I saw them escaping. I wondered if they would begin a new population of mutated, freakish spiders in the environment.
Shaking and traumatized, we went back to the van. Xavier said George had supplies for just such an occasion.
“Do you know what Zyklon B is?” he asked me, lighting a cigarette and checking his phone. I shrugged.
“Not really,” I admitted.
“It’s basically just pellets of stabilizer mixed with hydrogen cyanide,” he said. “The entire can is kept under high pressure, so once we open it, cyanide gas is released and begins spreading throughout the entire area. However, you can speed up the reaction by pouring the pellets into a metal bucket of sulfuric acid.” He pulled out a heavy barrel with danger logos prominently emblazoned in bright red all around its perimeter, then told me to grab a small metal container with the letters “H2SO4” and “Warning: Do Not Inhale. Do Not Allow to Come in Contact with Skin” written prominently on the side.
“We’re going to have to gas those fuckers,” Xavier admitted, grinning.
***
Needless to say, the fumigation worked. We started at the front door, running in and slamming it behind us. With tightly-secured gas masks and full body coverings, I put the small metal bucket of sulfuric acid down in the middle of the writhing mass of spiders and Xavier poured the pellets in. We quickly ran out of the house, but as we left, I saw great, billowing clouds of white chemical smoke exploring the hallways and corridors with opaque, reaching fingers.
By the end of the day, after airing out the house, we only had the problem of having to dispose of tens of thousands of freakish spider-doll corpses. A few of them still clung to life as we swept the bodies up into barrels and trash bags, trying to use their eerily human teeth to inject us with the brown recluse’s agonizing hemotoxic poison. However, our protective suits did their jobs well enough, and no one died- at least not on my first day.
As we did a final sweep through the house, I went into the basement and found a trapdoor. It had a rusted black metal handle that stuck up a fraction an inch from the surrounding beams. I nearly tripped over it, otherwise I would never have seen it through the dirt and grime covering everything down there. The worn boards looked fused to the aging floor, so much so that I couldn’t even see the trapdoor’s seam. Curious, I called up to Xavier.
“Hey, buddy, there’s a trapdoor down here. Should we open it, you think?” I said. “It could be filled with more spiders. Imagine if some Karen and her shitty husband and bratty kids moved in here and found half-human spiders pouring out of some hidden compartment in the basement.” Xavier came down the stairs, smoking a cigarette, having taken his gas mask off once the last of the cyanide gas had dissipated out all the open windows and doors. We both still wore thick rubber suits.
Xavier had just finished pouring the soiled sulfuric acid off the porch into the weed-strewn dirt in front of the house, laughing and grinning, turning his head up to the sky and screaming cheerfully, “Those fuckers won’t be able to grow a lawn here for a dozen years!” I had laughed at the pure enjoyment and lunacy in his face. I could tell this was a person who never held back anything.
“Ah, shit,” he said, frowning as he climbed down the basement stairs. He took a deep drag on his cigarette, looking at the trapdoor with one eye squinted, as if it were a particularly pernicious cockroach he wanted to crush. He sighed, letting out a long, unhappy breath. “Well, I guess we might as well check it out. Put your gas mask back on and grab the poison sprayer, just in case. It’s a small space, so we could probably just spray it.” We suited up. I walked over and flung open the trapdoor, but there wasn’t a single spider down there. The dirt floor of the small hidden room was swept clean in eerie spiral patterns, reminding me of pictures of crop circles.
Instead of spiders, we found what looked like a site for ritual sacrifices. On an ancient table ten feet below us, human arm and leg bones formed an inverted pentagram around a grinning skull. A gleaming black dagger with an obsidian handle pierced the skull through its topmost point, the spot where Hindus say the crown chakra is located. A circle had been drawn around the ritual site with salt. Various ancient-looking leather-bound books lay on the long, mahogany table, written in an alphabet I had never seen before.
“This is freaking weird,” I said, frowning. Xavier quickly pulled me out and we slammed the trapdoor shut, giving each other wary looks. Something didn’t feel right about this. I felt a sense of energy rising from the secret chamber, a smell like ozone and a sizzling in the air that made the hairs on my body stand straight up.
Far worse than the feeling, however, was what I thought I saw. I kept seeing something pale and bloodless and tall peeking around corners, its face twisted in an unnatural grin. But when I turned to look, whatever it was had gone. I hoped that this was only my imagination. I didn’t tell Xavier about it.
“I think we need to call a professional this week,” he said. “Whoever set this shit up is probably the cause of the freakish spiders. We might have a witch on our hands.”
***
Now that I had an idea of what was expected of me at the job, I really didn’t know how thrilled I felt about it. But George was paying extremely well, over $30 an hour after hazard pay bonuses, and there was simply no way I could make that kind of money anywhere else without a degree or professional skill, except maybe by selling drugs.
So I went back to work the next day. I don’t know if the stars frowned upon me that week or if I was just naturally cursed, but things didn’t improve at all.
In fact, the second crime scene we cleaned was worse by far.
***
There was a psychopath in the area called Dr. Satan, though I don’t know if he legitimately had his PhD or any family relation to the fallen archangel. Dr. Satan inspired the kind of fear in our area of the country that one rarely sees, even with serial killers. And the ironic part was, Dr. Satan never killed anyone, despite having dozens of victims. Not a single person died at his hands.
Now, his victims probably wished they had died, because the torture he inflicted upon them was some of the worst agony imaginable. Dr. Satan had turned them into mockeries of human beings. He had cut off their legs and arms in pieces, using a surgical saw and no anesthetic or painkillers. He cauterized the wounds as he went before stitching them up. He kept them alive and healthy with antibiotics and intravenous fluids, hence the bestowed media moniker of “Doctor”.
With only a torso and a screaming head remaining, the person basically became a shrieking pillow with hair. But Dr. Satan wasn’t done with them yet. He wanted the complete destruction of their sanity, the worst kind of torture and punishment for his victims. He would use a scalpel and cut out their eyes and peel off the eyelids, then start on their ears. He would puncture the eardrums so they couldn’t hear anymore. Then he’d cut out the tongue and start on the nose.
By the time he finished, they had barely any senses left and almost certainly no sanity. They couldn’t walk or grab anything or move their bodies in any way, except perhaps lifting their heads. They would be in a pain so severe that perhaps only burn victims could understand, but this went on much longer than burning alive.
Dr. Satan would trap them in the blackness of their mind for the rest of their lives. They could scream all they wanted in their own heads, but without tongues, the screams would simply die and fester inside them. And the worst part was, he did this in stages over a period of months.
The victims would know there was always more slicing, more torture in the future, but not exactly when. None of the victims of Dr. Satan were able to communicate with anyone in any way. In a few cases, the family members had given the suffering, insane individuals a lethal overdose of barbiturates or opiates as a form of mercy.
I had talked to the police and first responders who found the victims of Dr. Satan. Some of the shrieking human torsos were found in isolated cabins deep in the woods, often foreclosed buildings owned by major banks. Other victims were abandoned in front of churches or in empty parking lots, a nightmarish surprise for anyone who came upon this supreme desecration of the human form. As far as I know, a lot of the first responders who found these horrid scenes are still in therapy, and will likely carry mental scars from what they saw for the rest of their lives.
After a long police investigation, they found an abandoned house Dr. Satan had used for his bizarre surgical practices. It was a cabin on the edge of a stagnant lake, a stinking, fetid hole of a pond that shone a shade of cancerous green. From what Xavier told me on the ride over, the cops had taken three mutilated, totally insane wrecks of human beings from cold steel tables in the cracked basement of the old cabin. The bank who owned the property eventually called our company to try to clean up the immense amounts of blood left staining the entire basement. But there were apparently other remnants from Dr. Satan’s experiments left in that house.
Our secretary, Caroline, had answered the phone to hear someone screaming on the other end of the line.
“Hello?” she said. “You’ve reached Big George’s Cleaners. I’m sorry, but I can’t hear you with all that shrieking in the background.”
“There’s eyes in the walls!” someone cried in a voice choked with terror. “The blood has faces peering out of it! God, please send someone!”
“Who is this?” Caroline asked in a calm, nonchalant tone, having dealt with this kind of situation many times before. It was, after all, a dangerous job.
“I’m with Federal United Bank. Oh God, I…” She heard a door slamming, she said, then a car engine revving. An inhuman wail like a banshee growled over the line, reverberating for a full minute without creature needing to inhale. She heard the man cursing and hyperventilating. It sounded like the man was accelerating at maximum speed, but the demonic wailing drew closer and closer. Finally, the agent came back on the line.
“I just left that cursed cabin. I barely escaped with my life. We need someone to come to Turtleback Road. You’ll see it. It’s marked with police tape. Please come as soon as… Oh, no! God, it’s following me!” She heard glass shattering and the shrieking of tearing metal, then the line went dead.
“Ah, shit,” she muttered, writing down the information. She had a feeling that the agent would not be calling her back.
***
We pulled up to the cabin early in the morning, not knowing what exactly to expect. We heard a recording of the call to our office. George called the bank and confirmed the existence of the contract to clean the place, even though the man who had originally signed off on it hadn’t returned to the office or been heard from by anyone. Where his car had gone, I had no idea, and really didn’t care. I didn’t get paid to worry about details like that.
We saw the filthy pond from a distance as the black van rumbled along the dirt road, the well-worn engine grumbling like an old man having a nightmare. The log cabin sat on a patch of black earth in the midst of ancient pine trees. From far away, the building looked innocuous, even idyllic- just a humble hunting retreat for a middle-class bachelor, maybe. Little did I know the horrors that place would bring.
The pond only ten feet from the cabin’s right wall frothed and hissed, sounding as if it whispered secrets to me in the bursting bubbles of rancid gas that constantly rose to the surface. Strange, barely-glimpsed creatures flitted through the murky, dark-green waters. Algae blooms covered the water like a leper’s rotting skin. Wide, circular patches of algae were absent in many areas. Through them, I saw slitted eyes and flicking tongues.
In the light of the rising sun, something dark green and slimy slithered out of the farther shore. It turned and looked back at us as we pulled the van to the side of the road. A long, coiled snake with two heads coming off its slick black body regarded us with yellow, slitted eyes. Both heads bobbed and flicked their tongues as they watched us impassively. Then it turned and disappeared into the tall grass and thick evergreens beyond.
“Weird shit,” Xavier grumbled, lighting up a cigarette. He gave the cabin a distrustful look, reminding me of a kicked dog. “I still remember the first time I saw those snakes. I nearly shit myself out of mortal terror.” I stared at him, confused.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” he answered. “It’s exactly like I said.”
“How did you see the snakes before?” I said. He stared for a few seconds at the pond, his eyes distant and haunted. He turned to look at me from the driver’s seat, reading my face. It looked like he was judging how much he wanted to tell.
“Well, we did some cleaning a couple months ago. My old partner was with me. I don’t know where he is now. One day, he just stopped showing up. And then his family called the office and asked if we had seen him. Caroline told them no, she had no idea where he was.” He heaved a deep breath, looking shaky and pale. The tattoos stood out like open sores on his trembling body.
“Well, the day that he disappeared, we cleaned a house together, maybe ten miles from here. The entire place was filled with mutated snakes. Some of them had multiple heads, others had withered, white limbs sticking out of their sides, dancing and weaving listlessly as they slithered. The limbs had no use and many didn’t even face the ground. Some also had compound eyes like an insect, six or eight pairs strewn across their black faces. It looked like they had been through a nuclear war or something, man. Something changed those snakes, just like something changed those spiders. Those things shouldn’t exist, but they do. And you know what I found there?” I shook my head at his story, fascinated.
“I found a skull with a black dagger sticking through its head, just like at the other place. It was part of some weird black magic ritual set up in a hidden room in the attic. And something was following us as we killed the snakes. I couldn’t ever see it directly, but I knew it was following us. I kept seeing a face leering around corners at me, a grinning, bloodless face that nearly scraped the ceiling. While I drove us back to the office, my partner kept screaming that the thing was following him. He saw it hiding behind trees or in the windows of houses. He started to lose his shit, and later that night, he disappeared forever.”
***
We pulled up next to the swampy waters before the front door into the idyllic log cabin. It had a brownstone brick chimney and an open porch. A few rocking chairs lay there, wavering in the slight breeze.
Xavier went first, muttering to himself. When he took a step up on the porch in front of me, his blue button-down shirt rode up on his skinny body. I caught a flash of a concealed pistol tucked tightly into a hidden holster around his waist.
“You have a gun?” I asked. He looked down, cursing.
“Of course I have a gun, cabron,” he said, giving me a quick backwards glance.
“Why?” I felt baffled. What could he possibly shoot during crime scene clean-ups? Not the spiders or two-headed snakes.
“What do you mean, why? Why don’t you have a gun?” he asked. “I can get you one for a few hundred bucks. They’re probably stolen, but…”
“Have you ever had to use it?” I asked. He shook his head.
“Not at work,” he said cryptically. “Not yet.” He opened the front door to the cabin, peering inside nervously. He looked left and right, checking the corners, as if he were a SWAT officer clearing a crime scene. Then he inhaled sharply and walked inside. I followed close behind.
The cabin looked beautiful on the first floor. Paintings of mountains and nature covered the walls. A comfortable-looking couch stood in front of a TV and liquor cabinet. Bookshelves filled with thousands of books covered the walls.
“This is actually pretty nice,” I said, smiling. I felt a sense of relief wash over me. Xavier had started sweating heavily, his eyes large and searching.
“Let’s do this quick,” he said, heading for the basement. “We need to see what kind of equipment we need to do the job. This is just bloodstains, so…” He flung open the door and began descending. I followed him down into the dark.
The police had apparently taken all the dismembered body parts out, but the place still looked horrifying. Three steel, blood-stained tables were fused to the concrete floor. Cracks ran along the concrete and cockroaches and spiders skittered up through them. Blood covered nearly everything, including the walls and the floor. It had dried into a sticky dark paste. With every step, our shoes made a tacky sucking noise.
“This isn’t so bad,” I said. “I mean, it’s definitely horrifying, but at least there’s no two-headed snakes or anything, right?” Xavier didn’t respond. A sense of energy seemed to sizzle in the air. I felt a change in pressure as if a snowstorm were sweeping in. The smell of ozone mixed with the stink of old, rotting blood.
“I have a bad feeling about this place…” Xavier said when all hell started breaking loose. The basement began to shimmer. A mist as dark as a starless sky billowed around the walls and ceiling in great, swirling currents. And then the walls started to change, the blood on the surfaces rejuvenating, dripping again, brightening into the red of a freshly-slashed throat.
Pale, bloodless hands came out of the walls, stretching and lengthening as if they had minds of their own. The emaciated arms cracked and shivered with pleasure and anticipation. Random splotches of dark blood and flecks of gore stained their skin. Dozens of them reached towards us, constantly extending and thinning their freakish limbs. Bones snapped and popped like firecrackers going off.
I heard a shrill, faraway shrieking. Everything moved slowly, as if seen through water. Waves of adrenaline coursed through my body.
I looked up and saw a shimmering ripple pass through the bare wooden boards of the basement ceiling. A cloying mist the color of blackened, frostbit tissue began to spread from the misty void that seemed to eat the ceiling like some potent acid.
And then the mist began to clear. Hundreds of eyes stared down from the ceiling as the starving, inhuman arms lengthened and reached towards us. I could see a morphing sheet of them above me, human eyes and insect eyes and snake eyes and countless other ones I didn’t recognize.
They all stared down at us with malice and hatred, a fire burning deep in those alien orbs. I began to pray, knowing I would soon die in this cursed place.
Part 2
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/190gvoo/im_a_cleaner_for_haunted_houses_skulls_pierced/

I remember my very first day of work nearly six months ago with horrifying clarity, the memories still shining like keloid scars across my mind. My new partner and I got sent to a Victorian house in the middle of a forest of dead, twisted trees. Our boss, an old Greek man with balding hair who chain-smoked Marlboros constantly, had warned us that the scene would be a fiasco. An entire family of six had suffocated from a freak carbon monoxide leak. Soon after that, the bizarre occurrences began.
“They sent a repairman out there for something or another,” George explained through a cloud of thick, gray smoke, smashing out a half-smoked cigarette and lighting up another one without pausing. We sat in the office across the desk from him, wearing our dark blue uniforms with the logo of “Big George’s Cleaners” emblazoned across the chest. I had laughed when I first saw the name of the cleaning business. Big George sounded like the name of a seven-foot-tall pimp to me, not this small, bent man with a thick Greek accent and white fluffs of hair forming a wispy horseshoe around his head.
“So what happened?” I asked. George inhaled deeply, meeting my gaze.
“Well, I don’t know exactly what he saw, but he was screaming about baby’s arms and spiders.” I groaned.
“Dead spiders?” my partner, Xavier, asked hopefully. George shook his head ruefully.
“Don’t know, son. I figure you’ll find out when you get there, eh?” George got up and slapped me on the back in a fatherly way. “Don’t worry. You’re in good hands with Xavier. He’s worked here for over three months. One of our longest-lasting employees!”
I looked over at my new partner doubtfully. Gang tattoos ran up the lengths of his arms, and he had a teardrop tattoo below his left eye. He looked like the type of person who only got a job to keep his parole officer happy.
We walked out into the clean summer air, the small town around us bustling with midday traffic. Xavier pointed to the panel van parked behind the building, an ancient, black rusted heap of a van with the company’s logo peeling off the side.
“That’s our ride. She’s a beauty, huh?” Xavier said. I smiled politely. “What’s your name again?”
“Brian,” I said curtly. “Brian Felman. So this company has a high turnover rate, huh?”
“High turnover rate, high disappearance rate.” He shrugged apathetically. “None of my business. That’s why we get hazard pay, right?” He laughed- a shrill, dry sound that sounded much higher than his normal voice.
We got in, and Xavier put on some blaring rap song that I tried to block out. We drove for what felt like hours, going deeper and deeper into the middle of nowhere. The GPS started taking us down pothole-strewn dirt trails before finally failing completely five miles from the place. We drove up and down the road until, after thirty minutes of searching, we found the only house in the area. The thin, looming turrets loomed overhead, like sharp spikes set up to impale the sky. The exterior of the building appeared dull and filthy, the white paint yellowed with age. Cracked windows covered in dust and grime leered at us from the top floors.
“Well, that’s gotta be it,” I said, glancing down at the paperwork George had given us. It just said “1 Ghoulish Road, Barton.” I looked up at the house, but it had no number on it. The road hadn’t even had a street sign. From what I saw, Barton probably didn’t have more than a hundred people living in it. Perhaps they didn’t use street signs in such an abandoned area.
Then I saw the police crime scene tape rolled out in an X across the door, and I knew we had arrived at the right house.
“I hate spiders,” Xavier offered like a piece of sage advice, sighing. He lit a cigarette in the van, which technically wasn’t allowed but, after all, no one was here to complain. He handed the pack to me and I took one. I looked over at him.
“Well, as long as they’re dead, who cares?” I said. He got out and started putting on protective gear, tucking his pants into his socks while he fished out two pairs of thick rubber suits. “They are dead, right?” He gave me a grim smile.
I sighed as I looked down at the suit. It looked like something an Axis frogman might have worn during World War 2. I wondered where George got half this stuff.
After we both put on the hot and stuffy rubber suits, Xavier reached into the back doors of the van and pulled out two gas masks. I stuffed one on my head and began adjusting the straps, making sure it was airtight. It felt somewhat suffocating and also obscured my peripheral vision. Two small circular holes of ballistic glass were the only opening for sight.
I glanced over at Xavier. He looked like a cross between a SWAT officer and a scuba diver figurine from a fish tank. I figured I looked exactly the same. We took the canisters of poison with a sprayer nozzle out of the van. I strapped the heavy metal cylinder to my back.
“Just in case,” Xavier said with fake nonchalance as he put on his own sprayer. “Spiders have a tendency to be hardy little bastards. Supposedly, the exterminators already came and sprayed the house once, according to George, but…” He trailed off, his voice quivering with fear at the end. I could see his eyes rolling and wild behind the mask. Yet he still walked towards the door, ripped away the police tape and walked right inside. I followed close behind him.
The front hallway looked totally dark. I tried flicking a light next to the door, but I got absolutely no response. I didn’t know if the electricity was cut or if the light bulbs had all gotten smashed by vandals. I took out a small LED flashlight from the random items looped into my work belt, clicking it on and shining the bright white beam around. An instinctual, primordial horror came over me as I saw what scurried all around us.
It looked like brown recluse spiders, some of them nearly a foot long, and they most certainly were not dead. There were thousands of them, but that wasn’t even the worst part.
They all had strange, small, white baby legs and arms, slightly longer and more emaciated-looking than something taken from a Barbie doll. Each had four grasping arms in the front and four bent legs in the back. Except these didn’t look plastic. All the miniaturized limbs looked real, with tiny dimples in the elbows and smooth rolls of fat like an infant’s.
The spiders made sounds that sounded almost human. They opened their fanged mouths and cried out with the cooing or shrieking of a baby. Infantile cries began to sound all around us, echoing and mixing in a cacophony of high-pitched shrieking and wailing. I tried to block it out, pulling out my poison nozzle to start spraying. I took a headlamp George had given me out of my belt and flicked off the flashlight.
I looked for the best place to start. A layer of dead spiders littered the floors, their curled-up doll legs facing upwards with tiny fingers clenched in death. The white skin of the miniature human appendages peeled off in dry, papery layers.
But I didn’t look at the hundreds of spider corpses for too long, because at that moment, something heavy landed on my shoulder. I screamed through my gas mask. The sound came out muffled and choked. Spinning around crazily, I tried to get the spider off my protective suit. I craned my head and saw a massive brown recluse only inches away from my face. I gasped as I looked at this mutated abomination.
It had six black, soulless eyes. The pincers clicked open and closed, dripping clear fluid. The venomous spider’s long back had a marking like a dark brown violin. As its pincers flew wide open, it opened its mouth wide, and I saw teeth inside no spider should possess. Tiny, fanged teeth, like the canines of a human. It had an entire set of these sharp, vampiric fangs. Then, in a blur, it lunged for my face. I felt it smash into the side of the gas mask, and then, emanating cries like a hungry baby, it tried to bite through it.
I dropped the large poison canister I carried and ran shrieking towards the door, more spiders falling down all around me as I went. Some jumped from the ceiling. Others skittered over the bodies of their comrades, bodies that covered the floor like a rug from some nightmarish acid trip.
Xavier hadn’t fared much better. I heard him close behind me, his steel-toe boots smashing the mutated corpses with muted thuds. I felt like I couldn’t breathe in the confining gas mask. I had a sudden insane urge to rip it off. But I felt more spiders skittering across my shoulders and back now, and I knew that both of us were likely covered. A large part of me wanted to run screaming from that house, clean the century-old wood with the pungent, refreshing smell of gasoline and watch those abominations burn.
We sprinted out the door out into the summer light streaming down from a clear blue sky, covered in dozens of the freakish spiders. One of them skittered up my chest and covered my face. I couldn’t see anything, but I still had the poison canister attached to my back. I brought it up and began spraying it at the abomination. It gave a very human whimper as its doll legs began to kick and seize, its surreal mouth opening into a O of surprise. It gave a cry like a starving infant and fell to the black earth in front of me, its miniature demonic face finally relaxing as the mouth went slack and its six eyes glazed over.
Over the next few minutes, Xavier and I killed all the spiders that still attached themselves to our thick rubber suits. To my horror, a few dozen of them streamed out the open door and into the surrounding dead trees. I ran over as soon as I saw them escaping. I wondered if they would begin a new population of mutated, freakish spiders in the environment.
Shaking and traumatized, we went back to the van. Xavier said George had supplies for just such an occasion.
“Do you know what Zyklon B is?” he asked me, lighting a cigarette and checking his phone. I shrugged.
“Not really,” I admitted.
“It’s basically just pellets of stabilizer mixed with hydrogen cyanide,” he said. “The entire can is kept under high pressure, so once we open it, cyanide gas is released and begins spreading throughout the entire area. However, you can speed up the reaction by pouring the pellets into a metal bucket of sulfuric acid.” He pulled out a heavy barrel with danger logos prominently emblazoned in bright red all around its perimeter, then told me to grab a small metal container with the letters “H2SO4” and “Warning: Do Not Inhale. Do Not Allow to Come in Contact with Skin” written prominently on the side.
“We’re going to have to gas those fuckers,” Xavier admitted, grinning.
***
Needless to say, the fumigation worked. We started at the front door, running in and slamming it behind us. With tightly-secured gas masks and full body coverings, I put the small metal bucket of sulfuric acid down in the middle of the writhing mass of spiders and Xavier poured the pellets in. We quickly ran out of the house, but as we left, I saw great, billowing clouds of white chemical smoke exploring the hallways and corridors with opaque, reaching fingers.
By the end of the day, after airing out the house, we only had the problem of having to dispose of tens of thousands of freakish spider-doll corpses. A few of them still clung to life as we swept the bodies up into barrels and trash bags, trying to use their eerily human teeth to inject us with the brown recluse’s agonizing hemotoxic poison. However, our protective suits did their jobs well enough, and no one died- at least not on my first day.
As we did a final sweep through the house, I went into the basement and found a trapdoor. It had a rusted black metal handle that stuck up a fraction an inch from the surrounding beams. I nearly tripped over it, otherwise I would never have seen it through the dirt and grime covering everything down there. The worn boards looked fused to the aging floor, so much so that I couldn’t even see the trapdoor’s seam. Curious, I called up to Xavier.
“Hey, buddy, there’s a trapdoor down here. Should we open it, you think?” I said. “It could be filled with more spiders. Imagine if some Karen and her shitty husband and bratty kids moved in here and found half-human spiders pouring out of some hidden compartment in the basement.” Xavier came down the stairs, smoking a cigarette, having taken his gas mask off once the last of the cyanide gas had dissipated out all the open windows and doors. We both still wore thick rubber suits.
Xavier had just finished pouring the soiled sulfuric acid off the porch into the weed-strewn dirt in front of the house, laughing and grinning, turning his head up to the sky and screaming cheerfully, “Those fuckers won’t be able to grow a lawn here for a dozen years!” I had laughed at the pure enjoyment and lunacy in his face. I could tell this was a person who never held back anything.
“Ah, shit,” he said, frowning as he climbed down the basement stairs. He took a deep drag on his cigarette, looking at the trapdoor with one eye squinted, as if it were a particularly pernicious cockroach he wanted to crush. He sighed, letting out a long, unhappy breath. “Well, I guess we might as well check it out. Put your gas mask back on and grab the poison sprayer, just in case. It’s a small space, so we could probably just spray it.” We suited up. I walked over and flung open the trapdoor, but there wasn’t a single spider down there. The dirt floor of the small hidden room was swept clean in eerie spiral patterns, reminding me of pictures of crop circles.
Instead of spiders, we found what looked like a site for ritual sacrifices. On an ancient table ten feet below us, human arm and leg bones formed an inverted pentagram around a grinning skull. A gleaming black dagger with an obsidian handle pierced the skull through its topmost point, the spot where Hindus say the crown chakra is located. A circle had been drawn around the ritual site with salt. Various ancient-looking leather-bound books lay on the long, mahogany table, written in an alphabet I had never seen before.
“This is freaking weird,” I said, frowning. Xavier quickly pulled me out and we slammed the trapdoor shut, giving each other wary looks. Something didn’t feel right about this. I felt a sense of energy rising from the secret chamber, a smell like ozone and a sizzling in the air that made the hairs on my body stand straight up.
Far worse than the feeling, however, was what I thought I saw. I kept seeing something pale and bloodless and tall peeking around corners, its face twisted in an unnatural grin. But when I turned to look, whatever it was had gone. I hoped that this was only my imagination. I didn’t tell Xavier about it.
“I think we need to call a professional this week,” he said. “Whoever set this shit up is probably the cause of the freakish spiders. We might have a witch on our hands.”
***
Now that I had an idea of what was expected of me at the job, I really didn’t know how thrilled I felt about it. But George was paying extremely well, over $30 an hour after hazard pay bonuses, and there was simply no way I could make that kind of money anywhere else without a degree or professional skill, except maybe by selling drugs.
So I went back to work the next day. I don’t know if the stars frowned upon me that week or if I was just naturally cursed, but things didn’t improve at all.
In fact, the second crime scene we cleaned was worse by far.
***
There was a psychopath in the area called Dr. Satan, though I don’t know if he legitimately had his PhD or any family relation to the fallen archangel. Dr. Satan inspired the kind of fear in our area of the country that one rarely sees, even with serial killers. And the ironic part was, Dr. Satan never killed anyone, despite having dozens of victims. Not a single person died at his hands.
Now, his victims probably wished they had died, because the torture he inflicted upon them was some of the worst agony imaginable. Dr. Satan had turned them into mockeries of human beings. He had cut off their legs and arms in pieces, using a surgical saw and no anesthetic or painkillers. He cauterized the wounds as he went before stitching them up. He kept them alive and healthy with antibiotics and intravenous fluids, hence the bestowed media moniker of “Doctor”.
With only a torso and a screaming head remaining, the person basically became a shrieking pillow with hair. But Dr. Satan wasn’t done with them yet. He wanted the complete destruction of their sanity, the worst kind of torture and punishment for his victims. He would use a scalpel and cut out their eyes and peel off the eyelids, then start on their ears. He would puncture the eardrums so they couldn’t hear anymore. Then he’d cut out the tongue and start on the nose.
By the time he finished, they had barely any senses left and almost certainly no sanity. They couldn’t walk or grab anything or move their bodies in any way, except perhaps lifting their heads. They would be in a pain so severe that perhaps only burn victims could understand, but this went on much longer than burning alive.
Dr. Satan would trap them in the blackness of their mind for the rest of their lives. They could scream all they wanted in their own heads, but without tongues, the screams would simply die and fester inside them. And the worst part was, he did this in stages over a period of months.
The victims would know there was always more slicing, more torture in the future, but not exactly when. None of the victims of Dr. Satan were able to communicate with anyone in any way. In a few cases, the family members had given the suffering, insane individuals a lethal overdose of barbiturates or opiates as a form of mercy.
I had talked to the police and first responders who found the victims of Dr. Satan. Some of the shrieking human torsos were found in isolated cabins deep in the woods, often foreclosed buildings owned by major banks. Other victims were abandoned in front of churches or in empty parking lots, a nightmarish surprise for anyone who came upon this supreme desecration of the human form. As far as I know, a lot of the first responders who found these horrid scenes are still in therapy, and will likely carry mental scars from what they saw for the rest of their lives.
After a long police investigation, they found an abandoned house Dr. Satan had used for his bizarre surgical practices. It was a cabin on the edge of a stagnant lake, a stinking, fetid hole of a pond that shone a shade of cancerous green. From what Xavier told me on the ride over, the cops had taken three mutilated, totally insane wrecks of human beings from cold steel tables in the cracked basement of the old cabin. The bank who owned the property eventually called our company to try to clean up the immense amounts of blood left staining the entire basement. But there were apparently other remnants from Dr. Satan’s experiments left in that house.
Our secretary, Caroline, had answered the phone to hear someone screaming on the other end of the line.
“Hello?” she said. “You’ve reached Big George’s Cleaners. I’m sorry, but I can’t hear you with all that shrieking in the background.”
“There’s eyes in the walls!” someone cried in a voice choked with terror. “The blood has faces peering out of it! God, please send someone!”
“Who is this?” Caroline asked in a calm, nonchalant tone, having dealt with this kind of situation many times before. It was, after all, a dangerous job.
“I’m with Federal United Bank. Oh God, I…” She heard a door slamming, she said, then a car engine revving. An inhuman wail like a banshee growled over the line, reverberating for a full minute without creature needing to inhale. She heard the man cursing and hyperventilating. It sounded like the man was accelerating at maximum speed, but the demonic wailing drew closer and closer. Finally, the agent came back on the line.
“I just left that cursed cabin. I barely escaped with my life. We need someone to come to Turtleback Road. You’ll see it. It’s marked with police tape. Please come as soon as… Oh, no! God, it’s following me!” She heard glass shattering and the shrieking of tearing metal, then the line went dead.
“Ah, shit,” she muttered, writing down the information. She had a feeling that the agent would not be calling her back.
***
We pulled up to the cabin early in the morning, not knowing what exactly to expect. We heard a recording of the call to our office. George called the bank and confirmed the existence of the contract to clean the place, even though the man who had originally signed off on it hadn’t returned to the office or been heard from by anyone. Where his car had gone, I had no idea, and really didn’t care. I didn’t get paid to worry about details like that.
We saw the filthy pond from a distance as the black van rumbled along the dirt road, the well-worn engine grumbling like an old man having a nightmare. The log cabin sat on a patch of black earth in the midst of ancient pine trees. From far away, the building looked innocuous, even idyllic- just a humble hunting retreat for a middle-class bachelor, maybe. Little did I know the horrors that place would bring.
The pond only ten feet from the cabin’s right wall frothed and hissed, sounding as if it whispered secrets to me in the bursting bubbles of rancid gas that constantly rose to the surface. Strange, barely-glimpsed creatures flitted through the murky, dark-green waters. Algae blooms covered the water like a leper’s rotting skin. Wide, circular patches of algae were absent in many areas. Through them, I saw slitted eyes and flicking tongues.
In the light of the rising sun, something dark green and slimy slithered out of the farther shore. It turned and looked back at us as we pulled the van to the side of the road. A long, coiled snake with two heads coming off its slick black body regarded us with yellow, slitted eyes. Both heads bobbed and flicked their tongues as they watched us impassively. Then it turned and disappeared into the tall grass and thick evergreens beyond.
“Weird shit,” Xavier grumbled, lighting up a cigarette. He gave the cabin a distrustful look, reminding me of a kicked dog. “I still remember the first time I saw those snakes. I nearly shit myself out of mortal terror.” I stared at him, confused.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” he answered. “It’s exactly like I said.”
“How did you see the snakes before?” I said. He stared for a few seconds at the pond, his eyes distant and haunted. He turned to look at me from the driver’s seat, reading my face. It looked like he was judging how much he wanted to tell.
“Well, we did some cleaning a couple months ago. My old partner was with me. I don’t know where he is now. One day, he just stopped showing up. And then his family called the office and asked if we had seen him. Caroline told them no, she had no idea where he was.” He heaved a deep breath, looking shaky and pale. The tattoos stood out like open sores on his trembling body.
“Well, the day that he disappeared, we cleaned a house together, maybe ten miles from here. The entire place was filled with mutated snakes. Some of them had multiple heads, others had withered, white limbs sticking out of their sides, dancing and weaving listlessly as they slithered. The limbs had no use and many didn’t even face the ground. Some also had compound eyes like an insect, six or eight pairs strewn across their black faces. It looked like they had been through a nuclear war or something, man. Something changed those snakes, just like something changed those spiders. Those things shouldn’t exist, but they do. And you know what I found there?” I shook my head at his story, fascinated.
“I found a skull with a black dagger sticking through its head, just like at the other place. It was part of some weird black magic ritual set up in a hidden room in the attic. And something was following us as we killed the snakes. I couldn’t ever see it directly, but I knew it was following us. I kept seeing a face leering around corners at me, a grinning, bloodless face that nearly scraped the ceiling. While I drove us back to the office, my partner kept screaming that the thing was following him. He saw it hiding behind trees or in the windows of houses. He started to lose his shit, and later that night, he disappeared forever.”
***
We pulled up next to the swampy waters before the front door into the idyllic log cabin. It had a brownstone brick chimney and an open porch. A few rocking chairs lay there, wavering in the slight breeze.
Xavier went first, muttering to himself. When he took a step up on the porch in front of me, his blue button-down shirt rode up on his skinny body. I caught a flash of a concealed pistol tucked tightly into a hidden holster around his waist.
“You have a gun?” I asked. He looked down, cursing.
“Of course I have a gun, cabron,” he said, giving me a quick backwards glance.
“Why?” I felt baffled. What could he possibly shoot during crime scene clean-ups? Not the spiders or two-headed snakes.
“What do you mean, why? Why don’t you have a gun?” he asked. “I can get you one for a few hundred bucks. They’re probably stolen, but…”
“Have you ever had to use it?” I asked. He shook his head.
“Not at work,” he said cryptically. “Not yet.” He opened the front door to the cabin, peering inside nervously. He looked left and right, checking the corners, as if he were a SWAT officer clearing a crime scene. Then he inhaled sharply and walked inside. I followed close behind.
The cabin looked beautiful on the first floor. Paintings of mountains and nature covered the walls. A comfortable-looking couch stood in front of a TV and liquor cabinet. Bookshelves filled with thousands of books covered the walls.
“This is actually pretty nice,” I said, smiling. I felt a sense of relief wash over me. Xavier had started sweating heavily, his eyes large and searching.
“Let’s do this quick,” he said, heading for the basement. “We need to see what kind of equipment we need to do the job. This is just bloodstains, so…” He flung open the door and began descending. I followed him down into the dark.
The police had apparently taken all the dismembered body parts out, but the place still looked horrifying. Three steel, blood-stained tables were fused to the concrete floor. Cracks ran along the concrete and cockroaches and spiders skittered up through them. Blood covered nearly everything, including the walls and the floor. It had dried into a sticky dark paste. With every step, our shoes made a tacky sucking noise.
“This isn’t so bad,” I said. “I mean, it’s definitely horrifying, but at least there’s no two-headed snakes or anything, right?” Xavier didn’t respond. A sense of energy seemed to sizzle in the air. I felt a change in pressure as if a snowstorm were sweeping in. The smell of ozone mixed with the stink of old, rotting blood.
“I have a bad feeling about this place…” Xavier said when all hell started breaking loose. The basement began to shimmer. A mist as dark as a starless sky billowed around the walls and ceiling in great, swirling currents. And then the walls started to change, the blood on the surfaces rejuvenating, dripping again, brightening into the red of a freshly-slashed throat.
Pale, bloodless hands came out of the walls, stretching and lengthening as if they had minds of their own. The emaciated arms cracked and shivered with pleasure and anticipation. Random splotches of dark blood and flecks of gore stained their skin. Dozens of them reached towards us, constantly extending and thinning their freakish limbs. Bones snapped and popped like firecrackers going off.
I heard a shrill, faraway shrieking. Everything moved slowly, as if seen through water. Waves of adrenaline coursed through my body.
I looked up and saw a shimmering ripple pass through the bare wooden boards of the basement ceiling. A cloying mist the color of blackened, frostbit tissue began to spread from the misty void that seemed to eat the ceiling like some potent acid.
And then the mist began to clear. Hundreds of eyes stared down from the ceiling as the starving, inhuman arms lengthened and reached towards us. I could see a morphing sheet of them above me, human eyes and insect eyes and snake eyes and countless other ones I didn’t recognize.
They all stared down at us with malice and hatred, a fire burning deep in those alien orbs. I began to pray, knowing I would soon die in this cursed place.
Part 2
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/190gvoo/im_a_cleaner_for_haunted_houses_skulls_pierced/

I remember my very first day of work nearly six months ago with horrifying clarity, the memories still shining like keloid scars across my mind. My new partner and I got sent to a Victorian house in the middle of a forest of dead, twisted trees. Our boss, an old Greek man with balding hair who chain-smoked Marlboros constantly, had warned us that the scene would be a fiasco. An entire family of six had suffocated from a freak carbon monoxide leak. Soon after that, the bizarre occurrences began.
“They sent a repairman out there for something or another,” George explained through a cloud of thick, gray smoke, smashing out a half-smoked cigarette and lighting up another one without pausing. We sat in the office across the desk from him, wearing our dark blue uniforms with the logo of “Big George’s Cleaners” emblazoned across the chest. I had laughed when I first saw the name of the cleaning business. Big George sounded like the name of a seven-foot-tall pimp to me, not this small, bent man with a thick Greek accent and white fluffs of hair forming a wispy horseshoe around his head.
“So what happened?” I asked. George inhaled deeply, meeting my gaze.
“Well, I don’t know exactly what he saw, but he was screaming about baby’s arms and spiders.” I groaned.
“Dead spiders?” my partner, Xavier, asked hopefully. George shook his head ruefully.
“Don’t know, son. I figure you’ll find out when you get there, eh?” George got up and slapped me on the back in a fatherly way. “Don’t worry. You’re in good hands with Xavier. He’s worked here for over three months. One of our longest-lasting employees!”
I looked over at my new partner doubtfully. Gang tattoos ran up the lengths of his arms, and he had a teardrop tattoo below his left eye. He looked like the type of person who only got a job to keep his parole officer happy.
We walked out into the clean summer air, the small town around us bustling with midday traffic. Xavier pointed to the panel van parked behind the building, an ancient, black rusted heap of a van with the company’s logo peeling off the side.
“That’s our ride. She’s a beauty, huh?” Xavier said. I smiled politely. “What’s your name again?”
“Brian,” I said curtly. “Brian Felman. So this company has a high turnover rate, huh?”
“High turnover rate, high disappearance rate.” He shrugged apathetically. “None of my business. That’s why we get hazard pay, right?” He laughed- a shrill, dry sound that sounded much higher than his normal voice.
We got in, and Xavier put on some blaring rap song that I tried to block out. We drove for what felt like hours, going deeper and deeper into the middle of nowhere. The GPS started taking us down pothole-strewn dirt trails before finally failing completely five miles from the place. We drove up and down the road until, after thirty minutes of searching, we found the only house in the area. The thin, looming turrets loomed overhead, like sharp spikes set up to impale the sky. The exterior of the building appeared dull and filthy, the white paint yellowed with age. Cracked windows covered in dust and grime leered at us from the top floors.
“Well, that’s gotta be it,” I said, glancing down at the paperwork George had given us. It just said “1 Ghoulish Road, Barton.” I looked up at the house, but it had no number on it. The road hadn’t even had a street sign. From what I saw, Barton probably didn’t have more than a hundred people living in it. Perhaps they didn’t use street signs in such an abandoned area.
Then I saw the police crime scene tape rolled out in an X across the door, and I knew we had arrived at the right house.
“I hate spiders,” Xavier offered like a piece of sage advice, sighing. He lit a cigarette in the van, which technically wasn’t allowed but, after all, no one was here to complain. He handed the pack to me and I took one. I looked over at him.
“Well, as long as they’re dead, who cares?” I said. He got out and started putting on protective gear, tucking his pants into his socks while he fished out two pairs of thick rubber suits. “They are dead, right?” He gave me a grim smile.
I sighed as I looked down at the suit. It looked like something an Axis frogman might have worn during World War 2. I wondered where George got half this stuff.
After we both put on the hot and stuffy rubber suits, Xavier reached into the back doors of the van and pulled out two gas masks. I stuffed one on my head and began adjusting the straps, making sure it was airtight. It felt somewhat suffocating and also obscured my peripheral vision. Two small circular holes of ballistic glass were the only opening for sight.
I glanced over at Xavier. He looked like a cross between a SWAT officer and a scuba diver figurine from a fish tank. I figured I looked exactly the same. We took the canisters of poison with a sprayer nozzle out of the van. I strapped the heavy metal cylinder to my back.
“Just in case,” Xavier said with fake nonchalance as he put on his own sprayer. “Spiders have a tendency to be hardy little bastards. Supposedly, the exterminators already came and sprayed the house once, according to George, but…” He trailed off, his voice quivering with fear at the end. I could see his eyes rolling and wild behind the mask. Yet he still walked towards the door, ripped away the police tape and walked right inside. I followed close behind him.
The front hallway looked totally dark. I tried flicking a light next to the door, but I got absolutely no response. I didn’t know if the electricity was cut or if the light bulbs had all gotten smashed by vandals. I took out a small LED flashlight from the random items looped into my work belt, clicking it on and shining the bright white beam around. An instinctual, primordial horror came over me as I saw what scurried all around us.
It looked like brown recluse spiders, some of them nearly a foot long, and they most certainly were not dead. There were thousands of them, but that wasn’t even the worst part.
They all had strange, small, white baby legs and arms, slightly longer and more emaciated-looking than something taken from a Barbie doll. Each had four grasping arms in the front and four bent legs in the back. Except these didn’t look plastic. All the miniaturized limbs looked real, with tiny dimples in the elbows and smooth rolls of fat like an infant’s.
The spiders made sounds that sounded almost human. They opened their fanged mouths and cried out with the cooing or shrieking of a baby. Infantile cries began to sound all around us, echoing and mixing in a cacophony of high-pitched shrieking and wailing. I tried to block it out, pulling out my poison nozzle to start spraying. I took a headlamp George had given me out of my belt and flicked off the flashlight.
I looked for the best place to start. A layer of dead spiders littered the floors, their curled-up doll legs facing upwards with tiny fingers clenched in death. The white skin of the miniature human appendages peeled off in dry, papery layers.
But I didn’t look at the hundreds of spider corpses for too long, because at that moment, something heavy landed on my shoulder. I screamed through my gas mask. The sound came out muffled and choked. Spinning around crazily, I tried to get the spider off my protective suit. I craned my head and saw a massive brown recluse only inches away from my face. I gasped as I looked at this mutated abomination.
It had six black, soulless eyes. The pincers clicked open and closed, dripping clear fluid. The venomous spider’s long back had a marking like a dark brown violin. As its pincers flew wide open, it opened its mouth wide, and I saw teeth inside no spider should possess. Tiny, fanged teeth, like the canines of a human. It had an entire set of these sharp, vampiric fangs. Then, in a blur, it lunged for my face. I felt it smash into the side of the gas mask, and then, emanating cries like a hungry baby, it tried to bite through it.
I dropped the large poison canister I carried and ran shrieking towards the door, more spiders falling down all around me as I went. Some jumped from the ceiling. Others skittered over the bodies of their comrades, bodies that covered the floor like a rug from some nightmarish acid trip.
Xavier hadn’t fared much better. I heard him close behind me, his steel-toe boots smashing the mutated corpses with muted thuds. I felt like I couldn’t breathe in the confining gas mask. I had a sudden insane urge to rip it off. But I felt more spiders skittering across my shoulders and back now, and I knew that both of us were likely covered. A large part of me wanted to run screaming from that house, clean the century-old wood with the pungent, refreshing smell of gasoline and watch those abominations burn.
We sprinted out the door out into the summer light streaming down from a clear blue sky, covered in dozens of the freakish spiders. One of them skittered up my chest and covered my face. I couldn’t see anything, but I still had the poison canister attached to my back. I brought it up and began spraying it at the abomination. It gave a very human whimper as its doll legs began to kick and seize, its surreal mouth opening into a O of surprise. It gave a cry like a starving infant and fell to the black earth in front of me, its miniature demonic face finally relaxing as the mouth went slack and its six eyes glazed over.
Over the next few minutes, Xavier and I killed all the spiders that still attached themselves to our thick rubber suits. To my horror, a few dozen of them streamed out the open door and into the surrounding dead trees. I ran over as soon as I saw them escaping. I wondered if they would begin a new population of mutated, freakish spiders in the environment.
Shaking and traumatized, we went back to the van. Xavier said George had supplies for just such an occasion.
“Do you know what Zyklon B is?” he asked me, lighting a cigarette and checking his phone. I shrugged.
“Not really,” I admitted.
“It’s basically just pellets of stabilizer mixed with hydrogen cyanide,” he said. “The entire can is kept under high pressure, so once we open it, cyanide gas is released and begins spreading throughout the entire area. However, you can speed up the reaction by pouring the pellets into a metal bucket of sulfuric acid.” He pulled out a heavy barrel with danger logos prominently emblazoned in bright red all around its perimeter, then told me to grab a small metal container with the letters “H2SO4” and “Warning: Do Not Inhale. Do Not Allow to Come in Contact with Skin” written prominently on the side.
“We’re going to have to gas those fuckers,” Xavier admitted, grinning.
***
Needless to say, the fumigation worked. We started at the front door, running in and slamming it behind us. With tightly-secured gas masks and full body coverings, I put the small metal bucket of sulfuric acid down in the middle of the writhing mass of spiders and Xavier poured the pellets in. We quickly ran out of the house, but as we left, I saw great, billowing clouds of white chemical smoke exploring the hallways and corridors with opaque, reaching fingers.
By the end of the day, after airing out the house, we only had the problem of having to dispose of tens of thousands of freakish spider-doll corpses. A few of them still clung to life as we swept the bodies up into barrels and trash bags, trying to use their eerily human teeth to inject us with the brown recluse’s agonizing hemotoxic poison. However, our protective suits did their jobs well enough, and no one died- at least not on my first day.
As we did a final sweep through the house, I went into the basement and found a trapdoor. It had a rusted black metal handle that stuck up a fraction an inch from the surrounding beams. I nearly tripped over it, otherwise I would never have seen it through the dirt and grime covering everything down there. The worn boards looked fused to the aging floor, so much so that I couldn’t even see the trapdoor’s seam. Curious, I called up to Xavier.
“Hey, buddy, there’s a trapdoor down here. Should we open it, you think?” I said. “It could be filled with more spiders. Imagine if some Karen and her shitty husband and bratty kids moved in here and found half-human spiders pouring out of some hidden compartment in the basement.” Xavier came down the stairs, smoking a cigarette, having taken his gas mask off once the last of the cyanide gas had dissipated out all the open windows and doors. We both still wore thick rubber suits.
Xavier had just finished pouring the soiled sulfuric acid off the porch into the weed-strewn dirt in front of the house, laughing and grinning, turning his head up to the sky and screaming cheerfully, “Those fuckers won’t be able to grow a lawn here for a dozen years!” I had laughed at the pure enjoyment and lunacy in his face. I could tell this was a person who never held back anything.
“Ah, shit,” he said, frowning as he climbed down the basement stairs. He took a deep drag on his cigarette, looking at the trapdoor with one eye squinted, as if it were a particularly pernicious cockroach he wanted to crush. He sighed, letting out a long, unhappy breath. “Well, I guess we might as well check it out. Put your gas mask back on and grab the poison sprayer, just in case. It’s a small space, so we could probably just spray it.” We suited up. I walked over and flung open the trapdoor, but there wasn’t a single spider down there. The dirt floor of the small hidden room was swept clean in eerie spiral patterns, reminding me of pictures of crop circles.
Instead of spiders, we found what looked like a site for ritual sacrifices. On an ancient table ten feet below us, human arm and leg bones formed an inverted pentagram around a grinning skull. A gleaming black dagger with an obsidian handle pierced the skull through its topmost point, the spot where Hindus say the crown chakra is located. A circle had been drawn around the ritual site with salt. Various ancient-looking leather-bound books lay on the long, mahogany table, written in an alphabet I had never seen before.
“This is freaking weird,” I said, frowning. Xavier quickly pulled me out and we slammed the trapdoor shut, giving each other wary looks. Something didn’t feel right about this. I felt a sense of energy rising from the secret chamber, a smell like ozone and a sizzling in the air that made the hairs on my body stand straight up.
Far worse than the feeling, however, was what I thought I saw. I kept seeing something pale and bloodless and tall peeking around corners, its face twisted in an unnatural grin. But when I turned to look, whatever it was had gone. I hoped that this was only my imagination. I didn’t tell Xavier about it.
“I think we need to call a professional this week,” he said. “Whoever set this shit up is probably the cause of the freakish spiders. We might have a witch on our hands.”
***
Now that I had an idea of what was expected of me at the job, I really didn’t know how thrilled I felt about it. But George was paying extremely well, over $30 an hour after hazard pay bonuses, and there was simply no way I could make that kind of money anywhere else without a degree or professional skill, except maybe by selling drugs.
So I went back to work the next day. I don’t know if the stars frowned upon me that week or if I was just naturally cursed, but things didn’t improve at all.
In fact, the second crime scene we cleaned was worse by far.
***
There was a psychopath in the area called Dr. Satan, though I don’t know if he legitimately had his PhD or any family relation to the fallen archangel. Dr. Satan inspired the kind of fear in our area of the country that one rarely sees, even with serial killers. And the ironic part was, Dr. Satan never killed anyone, despite having dozens of victims. Not a single person died at his hands.
Now, his victims probably wished they had died, because the torture he inflicted upon them was some of the worst agony imaginable. Dr. Satan had turned them into mockeries of human beings. He had cut off their legs and arms in pieces, using a surgical saw and no anesthetic or painkillers. He cauterized the wounds as he went before stitching them up. He kept them alive and healthy with antibiotics and intravenous fluids, hence the bestowed media moniker of “Doctor”.
With only a torso and a screaming head remaining, the person basically became a shrieking pillow with hair. But Dr. Satan wasn’t done with them yet. He wanted the complete destruction of their sanity, the worst kind of torture and punishment for his victims. He would use a scalpel and cut out their eyes and peel off the eyelids, then start on their ears. He would puncture the eardrums so they couldn’t hear anymore. Then he’d cut out the tongue and start on the nose.
By the time he finished, they had barely any senses left and almost certainly no sanity. They couldn’t walk or grab anything or move their bodies in any way, except perhaps lifting their heads. They would be in a pain so severe that perhaps only burn victims could understand, but this went on much longer than burning alive.
Dr. Satan would trap them in the blackness of their mind for the rest of their lives. They could scream all they wanted in their own heads, but without tongues, the screams would simply die and fester inside them. And the worst part was, he did this in stages over a period of months.
The victims would know there was always more slicing, more torture in the future, but not exactly when. None of the victims of Dr. Satan were able to communicate with anyone in any way. In a few cases, the family members had given the suffering, insane individuals a lethal overdose of barbiturates or opiates as a form of mercy.
I had talked to the police and first responders who found the victims of Dr. Satan. Some of the shrieking human torsos were found in isolated cabins deep in the woods, often foreclosed buildings owned by major banks. Other victims were abandoned in front of churches or in empty parking lots, a nightmarish surprise for anyone who came upon this supreme desecration of the human form. As far as I know, a lot of the first responders who found these horrid scenes are still in therapy, and will likely carry mental scars from what they saw for the rest of their lives.
After a long police investigation, they found an abandoned house Dr. Satan had used for his bizarre surgical practices. It was a cabin on the edge of a stagnant lake, a stinking, fetid hole of a pond that shone a shade of cancerous green. From what Xavier told me on the ride over, the cops had taken three mutilated, totally insane wrecks of human beings from cold steel tables in the cracked basement of the old cabin. The bank who owned the property eventually called our company to try to clean up the immense amounts of blood left staining the entire basement. But there were apparently other remnants from Dr. Satan’s experiments left in that house.
Our secretary, Caroline, had answered the phone to hear someone screaming on the other end of the line.
“Hello?” she said. “You’ve reached Big George’s Cleaners. I’m sorry, but I can’t hear you with all that shrieking in the background.”
“There’s eyes in the walls!” someone cried in a voice choked with terror. “The blood has faces peering out of it! God, please send someone!”
“Who is this?” Caroline asked in a calm, nonchalant tone, having dealt with this kind of situation many times before. It was, after all, a dangerous job.
“I’m with Federal United Bank. Oh God, I…” She heard a door slamming, she said, then a car engine revving. An inhuman wail like a banshee growled over the line, reverberating for a full minute without creature needing to inhale. She heard the man cursing and hyperventilating. It sounded like the man was accelerating at maximum speed, but the demonic wailing drew closer and closer. Finally, the agent came back on the line.
“I just left that cursed cabin. I barely escaped with my life. We need someone to come to Turtleback Road. You’ll see it. It’s marked with police tape. Please come as soon as… Oh, no! God, it’s following me!” She heard glass shattering and the shrieking of tearing metal, then the line went dead.
“Ah, shit,” she muttered, writing down the information. She had a feeling that the agent would not be calling her back.
***
We pulled up to the cabin early in the morning, not knowing what exactly to expect. We heard a recording of the call to our office. George called the bank and confirmed the existence of the contract to clean the place, even though the man who had originally signed off on it hadn’t returned to the office or been heard from by anyone. Where his car had gone, I had no idea, and really didn’t care. I didn’t get paid to worry about details like that.
We saw the filthy pond from a distance as the black van rumbled along the dirt road, the well-worn engine grumbling like an old man having a nightmare. The log cabin sat on a patch of black earth in the midst of ancient pine trees. From far away, the building looked innocuous, even idyllic- just a humble hunting retreat for a middle-class bachelor, maybe. Little did I know the horrors that place would bring.
The pond only ten feet from the cabin’s right wall frothed and hissed, sounding as if it whispered secrets to me in the bursting bubbles of rancid gas that constantly rose to the surface. Strange, barely-glimpsed creatures flitted through the murky, dark-green waters. Algae blooms covered the water like a leper’s rotting skin. Wide, circular patches of algae were absent in many areas. Through them, I saw slitted eyes and flicking tongues.
In the light of the rising sun, something dark green and slimy slithered out of the farther shore. It turned and looked back at us as we pulled the van to the side of the road. A long, coiled snake with two heads coming off its slick black body regarded us with yellow, slitted eyes. Both heads bobbed and flicked their tongues as they watched us impassively. Then it turned and disappeared into the tall grass and thick evergreens beyond.
“Weird shit,” Xavier grumbled, lighting up a cigarette. He gave the cabin a distrustful look, reminding me of a kicked dog. “I still remember the first time I saw those snakes. I nearly shit myself out of mortal terror.” I stared at him, confused.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” he answered. “It’s exactly like I said.”
“How did you see the snakes before?” I said. He stared for a few seconds at the pond, his eyes distant and haunted. He turned to look at me from the driver’s seat, reading my face. It looked like he was judging how much he wanted to tell.
“Well, we did some cleaning a couple months ago. My old partner was with me. I don’t know where he is now. One day, he just stopped showing up. And then his family called the office and asked if we had seen him. Caroline told them no, she had no idea where he was.” He heaved a deep breath, looking shaky and pale. The tattoos stood out like open sores on his trembling body.
“Well, the day that he disappeared, we cleaned a house together, maybe ten miles from here. The entire place was filled with mutated snakes. Some of them had multiple heads, others had withered, white limbs sticking out of their sides, dancing and weaving listlessly as they slithered. The limbs had no use and many didn’t even face the ground. Some also had compound eyes like an insect, six or eight pairs strewn across their black faces. It looked like they had been through a nuclear war or something, man. Something changed those snakes, just like something changed those spiders. Those things shouldn’t exist, but they do. And you know what I found there?” I shook my head at his story, fascinated.
“I found a skull with a black dagger sticking through its head, just like at the other place. It was part of some weird black magic ritual set up in a hidden room in the attic. And something was following us as we killed the snakes. I couldn’t ever see it directly, but I knew it was following us. I kept seeing a face leering around corners at me, a grinning, bloodless face that nearly scraped the ceiling. While I drove us back to the office, my partner kept screaming that the thing was following him. He saw it hiding behind trees or in the windows of houses. He started to lose his shit, and later that night, he disappeared forever.”
***
We pulled up next to the swampy waters before the front door into the idyllic log cabin. It had a brownstone brick chimney and an open porch. A few rocking chairs lay there, wavering in the slight breeze.
Xavier went first, muttering to himself. When he took a step up on the porch in front of me, his blue button-down shirt rode up on his skinny body. I caught a flash of a concealed pistol tucked tightly into a hidden holster around his waist.
“You have a gun?” I asked. He looked down, cursing.
“Of course I have a gun, cabron,” he said, giving me a quick backwards glance.
“Why?” I felt baffled. What could he possibly shoot during crime scene clean-ups? Not the spiders or two-headed snakes.
“What do you mean, why? Why don’t you have a gun?” he asked. “I can get you one for a few hundred bucks. They’re probably stolen, but…”
“Have you ever had to use it?” I asked. He shook his head.
“Not at work,” he said cryptically. “Not yet.” He opened the front door to the cabin, peering inside nervously. He looked left and right, checking the corners, as if he were a SWAT officer clearing a crime scene. Then he inhaled sharply and walked inside. I followed close behind.
The cabin looked beautiful on the first floor. Paintings of mountains and nature covered the walls. A comfortable-looking couch stood in front of a TV and liquor cabinet. Bookshelves filled with thousands of books covered the walls.
“This is actually pretty nice,” I said, smiling. I felt a sense of relief wash over me. Xavier had started sweating heavily, his eyes large and searching.
“Let’s do this quick,” he said, heading for the basement. “We need to see what kind of equipment we need to do the job. This is just bloodstains, so…” He flung open the door and began descending. I followed him down into the dark.
The police had apparently taken all the dismembered body parts out, but the place still looked horrifying. Three steel, blood-stained tables were fused to the concrete floor. Cracks ran along the concrete and cockroaches and spiders skittered up through them. Blood covered nearly everything, including the walls and the floor. It had dried into a sticky dark paste. With every step, our shoes made a tacky sucking noise.
“This isn’t so bad,” I said. “I mean, it’s definitely horrifying, but at least there’s no two-headed snakes or anything, right?” Xavier didn’t respond. A sense of energy seemed to sizzle in the air. I felt a change in pressure as if a snowstorm were sweeping in. The smell of ozone mixed with the stink of old, rotting blood.
“I have a bad feeling about this place…” Xavier said when all hell started breaking loose. The basement began to shimmer. A mist as dark as a starless sky billowed around the walls and ceiling in great, swirling currents. And then the walls started to change, the blood on the surfaces rejuvenating, dripping again, brightening into the red of a freshly-slashed throat.
Pale, bloodless hands came out of the walls, stretching and lengthening as if they had minds of their own. The emaciated arms cracked and shivered with pleasure and anticipation. Random splotches of dark blood and flecks of gore stained their skin. Dozens of them reached towards us, constantly extending and thinning their freakish limbs. Bones snapped and popped like firecrackers going off.
I heard a shrill, faraway shrieking. Everything moved slowly, as if seen through water. Waves of adrenaline coursed through my body.
I looked up and saw a shimmering ripple pass through the bare wooden boards of the basement ceiling. A cloying mist the color of blackened, frostbit tissue began to spread from the misty void that seemed to eat the ceiling like some potent acid.
And then the mist began to clear. Hundreds of eyes stared down from the ceiling as the starving, inhuman arms lengthened and reached towards us. I could see a morphing sheet of them above me, human eyes and insect eyes and snake eyes and countless other ones I didn’t recognize.
They all stared down at us with malice and hatred, a fire burning deep in those alien orbs. I began to pray, knowing I would soon die in this cursed place.

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Enjoy your weekend all.

THURSDAY - APRIL 25

Top Taco Festival @ POST @ 6PM Attend at your own peril, $75/head and I'm unfamiliar with the organizers.
Ongoing - Happy Hour @ MFAH @ 5PM Meet your friends at the MFAH for the best night of the week. Explore the campus, visit the galleries, and get a drink at the bar. General admission is free.
Sarah Jakes Roberts Live Show @ Smart Financial Centre @ 7PM With a focus on spiritual growth, personal development, and leadership, Roberts’ new show is a unique blend of powerful keynote sessions, interactive workshops, and immersive experiences.
Leslie Lao Stand Up @ Houston Improv @ 7:30PM
Donny Benet @ House of Blues @ 7PM
Chicano Batman @ White Oak Music Hall @ 7PM With Lido Pimienta
Sextile @ White Oak Music Hall @ 7PM
Jenny From Ace of Base @ Warehouse Live @ 8PM
Pretty Vacant @ Scout Bar @ 9PM

FRIDAY - APRIL 26

We Them Ones Comedy Tour @ Toyota Center @ 8PM Featuring Mike Epps, Deray Davis, Chico Bean, Lil Duval, & more!
‘The Sound of Music’ Opera @ Wortham Theater @ 7:30PM Acclaimed director Francesca Zambello incorporates songs from both the theatrical version and its famous cinematic adaptation into her new opera production.
Sounds of the City Concert @ Market Square Park @ 5PM Grab food from your favorite neighborhood eatery and enjoy live music from a new local Houston artist.
Ahmed Saad @ 713 Music Hall @ 9PM
Aidan Bissett @ House of Blues @ 7PM
Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors @ White Oak Music Hall @ 7PM
K?D @ Stereo Live @ 10PM
Great White, Slaughter + Quiet Riot @ Warehouse Live @ 6PM
Maylene and the Sons of Disaster @ Scout Bar @ 6PM

SATURDAY - APRIL 27

Houston Brew Festival @ Discovery Green @ 12PM The festival features over 50 breweries and 150 types of beers, as well as food trucks, cover bands, lawn games and more.
Ongoing - Saturday Stargazing @ George Observatory in Needville
Ongoing - Farmers Market @ Market Square Park @ 9AM This spring, enjoy Houston’s best vendors in the very heart of downtown!
‘The Philly Soul Sound Vol. 4’ Concert @ Miller Outdoor Theatre @ 8:15PM Hear iconic Philly Sound hits featuring signature blend of smooth, danceable rhythms, lavish string, horn accompaniments, and thoughtfully penned lyrics.
‘Don Giovanni’ Opera @ Wortham Theater @ 7:30PM See the Spanish antihero everyone loves to hate in director Kasper Holten’s brilliant and seductive tragicomedy production.
Kane Brown @ Toyota Center @ 7PM With Tyler Hubbard & Parma Lee
Set It Off @ House of Blues @ 5:30PM
Bingo Loco @ White Oak Music Hall @ 6:30PM
Christian Kuria @ White Oak Music Hall @ 8PM
The Polyphonic Spree @ The Heights Theater @ 8PM
Walker & Royce @ Stereo Live @ 10PM
Soft Blue Shimmer @ The Secret Group @ 7PM

SUNDAY - APRIL 28

‘The Sound of Music’ Opera @ Wortham Theater @ 2PM Acclaimed director Francesca Zambello incorporates songs from both the theatrical version and its famous cinematic adaptation into her new opera production.
‘Chicago’ Musical @ The Grand Opera House @ 2PM / 7PM A Broadway classic, ‘Chicago’ is a universal tale of fame, fortune, and all that jazz, with one show stopping song after another and the most astonishing dancing you’ve ever seen.
Houston Zydeco Fest @ Emancipation Park @ 1PM Spend your day with the best zydeco bands in the nation and enjoy a full day of dancing, eating, and partying.
Jazzy Sundays @ Buffalo Bayou Park @ 5PM Featuring R&D LAB
Rolling Stones @ NRG Stadium @ 8PM
Grupo Bronco @ Smart Financial Centre @ 7PM
Say Anything @ House of Blues @ 6:30PM
Libianca @ House of Blues @ 7PM
Prateek Kuhad @ White Oak Music Hall @ 7PM
Slow Hollows @ White Oak Music Hall @ 8PM
Leo Kottke @ The Heights Theater @ 8PM
Ghost In The Machine @ Warehouse Live @ 7PM
Big Something @ Last Concert Cafe @ 8PM

All Weekend

FRIDAY & SATURDAY - Houston Ballet Academy Spring Showcase @ Wortham Theater See rising stars of Houston Ballet perform works from the Company repertoire or ballets created specifically for them.
FRIDAY & SATURDAY - Nate Bargatze Comedy Show @ NRG Arena
SATURDAY & SUNDAY - Vibe Artisan Market @ POST @ 11AM Visit one of the largest artisan markets in Houston and shop from 120+ vendors and makers, enjoy a gallery show, coffee and cocktail bars, and live music!
SATURDAY & SUNDAY - Sugar Land Arts Fest @ Smart Financial Centre Plaza @ 10AM See and purchase artworks from visual artists, plus enjoy live musical entertainment, a wine and beer garden, specialty fares from locally owned restaurants, a children's art activity tent, and more!
All weekend - Ryan Davis Stand Up @ Houston Improv
All weekend - Latin Wave Film Festival @ MFAH Latin Wave 17 showcases 10 dynamic new films from emerging and established talents in the Latin American film industry.
All weekend - ‘Carmina Burana’ in Concert @ Jones Hall A massive orchestra and huge chorus join forces to perform one of classical music’s most spellbinding and immersive experiences.
All weekend - ‘The Cher Show’ Musical @ The Hobby Center LAST CHANCE - ‘The Cher Show’ is 35 smash hits, six decades of stardom, two rock-star husbands, and countless EGOT awards, all in one unabashedly fabulous new musical that will have audiences dancing in the aisles!
All weekend - ‘Refer Madness’ Musical @ The Garden Theatre LAST CHANCE - Based on the cult-classic satire musical, The Garden Theatre’s newest production is a side-splitting comedy with one-of-a-kind catchy repertoire.
All weekend - ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ Play @ The George Theatre This story about a unique and unlikely friendship between a Jewsih woman and a Black man in 1940s in Georgia reminds us of the common humanity and the value of life.
All weekend - ‘Jane Eyre’ Play @ Alley Theatre Adapted by Elizabeth Williamson from the beloved classic novel by Charlotte Brontë, this play follows the heroine who struggles for freedom and fulfillment on her own terms.
All weekend - ‘Lady Sunsan’ Play @ Stageworks Theater Jane Austen’s comic novella about a young widow’s brilliant scheming in turn-of-the-century English society comes to life in Rob Urbinati’s delightfully witty stage adaptation.
All weekend - ‘The Father’ Play @ 4th Wall Theatre The play questions the nature of identity, memory, and the human experience, as it explores the profound impact that dementia can have on individuals and their loved ones.
All weekend - ‘Cleansed’ Play @ MATCH LAST CHANCE - From the controversial playwright of the Theatre of Extremes Sarah Kane came a brutal, yet triumphant fable about totalitarianism and controlled experiments that hauntingly reminds viewers of the present day.

Ongoing Special Events and Museum Exhibitions

Ongoing - ‘Jurassic World’ Exhibition @ Katy Mills The limited-time globally sold-out exhibition immerses audiences of all ages in scenes inspired by the beloved film. Discover the science of jurassic world and walk in the land of jurassic giants, closer than ever before!
Ongoing - Dinosaurs @ Houston Zoo Trek through a lush forest trail to see life-sized animatronic creatures, including the fan favorite T-rex, Brachiosaurus, Edmontonia, and more!
Ongoing - Sloomoo Exhibition @ Marq E Entertainment Center Immerse yourself in the joy of sensory play with Sloomoo Institute’s colorful world of never-ending, hand-crafted slime, yummy scents, and soothing ASMR delights.
Ongoing - ‘Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism’ Exhibition @ MFAH The exhibition presents, for the first time in the United States, the origins and legacy of fauvism through paintings, drawings, and watercolors by Henri Matisse and André Derain.
Ongoing - ‘Crowning the North: Silver Treasures from Bergen, Norway’ Exhibition @ MFAH Featuring over 200 objects, this exhibition provides an exceptional look at Nordic history and aesthetics across centuries as Bergen stood at the intersection of global trade, taste, and fashion.
Ongoing - ‘Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence’ Exhibition @ MFAH Wiley’s monumental, large-scale paintings of Black and Brown individuals confront and challenge the silence surrounding systemic violence and injustice.
Ongoing - ‘Ruth Asawa Through Line’ Exhibition @ Menil The exhibition presents drawings, collages, watercolors, and sketchbooks showing the breadth of Ruth Asawa’s innovative and profound practice.
Ongoing - ‘Janet Sobel: All-Over’ Exhibition @ Menil See the pioneering work of Janet Sobel and her ‘All-Over’ abstract expressionist painting technique which inspired generations of artists, including Jackson Pollock.
Ongoing - ‘Hayv Kahraman: The Foreign Us’ Exhibition @ Moody Center for the Arts Kahraman’s first solo exhibition features works informed by the artist’s Iraqi-Kurdish heritage and experience as a refugee while highlighting her research-driven practice.

First
HHH/Herbert’s Hundred Harem
“Alright so her name is Varthy...” Herbert says before letting out a few clicking sounds from his tongue. The Officer he’s beside turns to him and blinks. They’re at a computer near the front of the station. They’re on high alert so the more people that aren’t police away from the interior the more comfortable the officers will be.
“Your pronunciation is appalling.” The Andinus Officer chides him. “But aren’t you human? You picked up a language not made for your body type in less than a year?”
“I was also a basic trooper. Now I’m an Intelligence Agent.” He notes not telling her he more or less blatantly cheated with the fast training techniques. Learning a language was trivial compared to learning all the skills expected of a newly recruited Undaunted. Go to bed with the right headband on and learn a language with a native accent. Unfortunately some languages just aren’t made for human mouths, this one requiring a tongue that can click on both sides of the mouth simultaneously.
But the upside is that his mouth game has improved significantly since learning it.
“I can see it, don’t you Undaunted have accelerated training methods? Most of the training we see is just being about reinforcing the training right?”
“Physical conditioning and reinforcement, yes. Knowing everything academically is one thing, going through it is quite another.” Herbert agrees.
The disruption needle he threw earlier is suspended in the air above a platform and slowly rotating as it is scanned again and again and again to verify who the woman who snuck into the station was. With each scan a significant bite had been taken out of the suspect list as they narrowed down a massively overpopulated planet’s population down to a single person.
It had taken twenty minutes.
“Let see she... hmm... Muliti Plate...” He says trailing off.
“Is something wrong with Muliti Plate?” The Officer asks him.
“I was there recently. Perhaps our guest was uninvolved with our gunner and infiltrator. This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had multiple different things happen at once.”
“So this is common for you?”
“I’m involved in a lot of things happening. Some of them I have to step away from and allow others to continue where I left off. People retaliating then think it’s still me and come after me while I’m working on something else entirely.” He says before shrugging. “Of course it could just be a coincidence. The plates and spires have so many people on them and travel between them is so easy that she could be a random thrill-seeker for all we know. Stranger things happen often enough.”
“You think someone would risk arrest and possibly being shot for some cheap thrills?”
“I’ve seen dumber.”
“How much dumber?”
“A lot? Stupidity is kind of hard to quantify and there’s different types as well.” Herbert says. “Still... I’ll need to get moving to do something about this.”
“Excuse me?” The Officer asks.
“It’s out of your jurisdiction. Which limits your options. But not mine. You’ll receive a report after I’m done, but some of it might be redacted.”
“Why redacted?”
“Because there might be loose ends we’re still pursuing.” Herbert says with a nod. “Right, I’m going to get someone to help out here. I’m going to Muliti Plate, after a change of clothing.”
“May I ask why?”
“Short of our Dzedin recruits I’m the closest The Undaunted have to a Dzedin expert. If anyone is in position to go after her it’s me.”
“But aren’t you a celebrity among the hunting races? A Patriarch?”
“I am. However, I’m also about two years younger now and seriously babyfaced by compare. Which means that I don’t look like myself, but still resemble myself enough to be vaguely familiar. Which plays to my advantage, people let their guard down around familiar faces.” Herbert says.
“Does that mean I’m going home for now?” Chitter asks and Herbert leans back.
“You’re a grown woman, I can’t send you to your room. But I’m heading off without you. It’s time for me to put on a more serious face.” Herbert confirms. “Officers, my replacement is already underway.”
“Alright so how soon can we...” The Officer asks before the door opens and in sweeps the Grey Furred Rabbis man, waving with threee of his four white gloved hands and twirling around a bright orange carrot in his last one.
“What’s up Cocs? Operative Bugs here to make things better for ya!” The Rabbis proclaims before sauntering in with a smile. Weapons are raised.
“Hey now hey! Ain’t nothin ta worry about! I’m with him, here ta take the reigns o’ the problems here so he can go runnin’ off ta solve a few more.”
“Where’d you turn Albuquerque?” Herbert asks. He actually asked for a sit-rep.
“Turned around and doubled back.” Bugs replies and Herbert freezes. Knowing that potential hostiles were right out side the station and there was more than expected was not good.
“Did you now? Good to know.” Herbert replies and then nods as Bugs visibly transfers his carrot to his upper right hand before sticking it in his mouth like a cigar.
“See ya soon doc!” Bugs bids him as Herbert says his goodbyes to Chitter and the officer before leaving out the front. Knowing for a fact that to his immediate left and up there’s going to be someone there. Someone potentially hostile watching him.
He rushes off to public transport. Pays his fare and then teleports out to the top of a nearby building. The distance means that it would take an adept paying attention to notice his movement.
He peeks over the lip and sees them almost right away. He also sees why Operative Bugs only signalled potential. THey have the looks of being a pack of admirers and not a hostile. But it’s impossible to fully tell when you have male agents wandering around. If he had called in Harriett there wouldn’t be any confusion, but she’s currently in deep cover and likely won’t be coming out to even breathe for a day or two. While the male prioritization on Undaunted recruitment did give them an eager pool of people trying to find some purpose in life, it did mean they stood out a little too much at times.
Still, it DID open far more doors than it closed, and it also meant that female Undaunted were practically invisible. Which was VERY useful, as Harriett kept proving on the daily. He creeps up to the target, watching her carefully and jumping from roof to roof until he’s right behind them. Rabbis all, watching eagerly and taking notes. He peeks between them and starts reading the notes.
Swagger, attitude, the lack of women around him, the shine of his eyes and how perky his ears are. Yep, typical husband stalking notes. There is a very easy way to test this though. And the fact it’s both fun and funny just adds to it.
He takes a step back, considers his position and perches on top of a small antenna for extra surrealism. He then pulls out his communicator and first sends a quick message to Bugs about the plan, and then grins at the view of the thumbs up.
He then puts the communicator on it’s loudest setting and calls Bugs openly.
“Ehhh...” Audible carrot crunching. “What’s up Doc?”
The girls turn in surprise and some of them do a double take at the sight of Herbert perched on the antenna like a surrealist counterbalance sculpture.
“Hey Operative Bugs! Turns out that it’s not hostiles at all, just a bunch of poor, lonely girls in desperate need of some hasenpfeffer.” Herbert chimes out gleefully. The girls may not understand the reference, but they clearly understand the implication as they start to rush at him calling out protests. “Get over here before their thirst dries out a new Sahara!”
He then ‘falls’ off the antenna and ‘coincidentally’ lands on his feet. “Well! That’s the ice broken! If you ladies wanna meet mister Grey Fur he’s coming out soon. Oh! And before I forget, he’s on the clock right now, so the most you’ll get is a meetup later. Get me?”
“Who are you?” One of them asks and cannot fully fight back the smirk. He holds up his communicator and prepares an app with one hand and slips on a pair of dark sunglasses with the other. He is in a suit after all. Even if the bowtie doesn’t quite fit the gag.
“Me? I’m just a figment of your imagination.” He says and his communicator lets out a bright flash that makes everyone blink as he teleports a distance away. “That’ll give them something to talk about.”
“Alright, Bugs has that handled no doubt. And I gotta get moving. Need to get my war face on.”
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Agents Ripley and Newt were two Dzedin women who had made it into The Undaunted Intelligence division at the same time. It had been both the most serious and strict of standards, and simultaneously the most ridiculous place imaginable. The clear favouring of mental games and confusion tactics as it’s primary smokescreen made things entertaining as the mental game basically involved throw everything at the wall and run with anything that stuck. Crazy references that came from all directions, schemes that were guaranteed to fail followed through just to grab as much attention as possible and a dizzying array of secret identities that people put on and off like coats.
They only really knew each other’s actual names and that of the person they were here to meet. The man with the most absurd cover of complete honesty and clarity. Herbert Jameson, official spy, operative and infiltrator of The Undaunted. The sheer stories they had heard about him were impressive. Keeping pace with a Grand Huntsmistress and Matriarch before being entitled a Patriarch. Every day more and more mission files were being released about him and the man seemed to be literally everywhere all at once and doing everything personally.
They’re mission with him was simple. They were to help him in inquiring about the location of a Dzedin woman who lived on this plate and both correlate his story and provide backup should the worst happen. A little overcautious for an agent of his skill. But at the same time it was understandable.
After all he’d apparently he’d recently been badly injured and the healing coma had rendered him even smaller and almost...
The most adorable child to ever EVER walks around the corner. He’s clearly a Tret with a Dzedin family and everything about him speaks about how loved and loving this little boy is with his mothers and sisters both big and small as he’s wearing everything they’ve given him and...
“A... Agent Jameson?” Newt asks in shock and receives a nod from the impossibly adorable little boy. He looked like the very concept of the sweet little brother and adored son made physically manifest in one person. “Why are you dressed like that?”
“We’re going to be asking some questions, and you two are here to help sell the story.” He says with a smile that is clearly intended to be devious but hands twitch with the urge to pinch his cheeks and hug and cuddle him. He brings up an image of a Dzedin woman. “This is Varthy...”
He then butchers the pronunciation of Magnificence in Torlari Click as if he had a personal vendetta against it. It only makes him cuter.
“Alright, so I’ve reached the appeal singularity. Got it.” Herbert notes to himself in a dead tone as the two professional woman he expected to have his back in a shootout lose all sense of decorum and try to drown him in their breasts.
Unfortunately for them both, shoving someone into a distinctly unarmoured part of your physiology means that you’re not protected if they have sharp little nails and a willingness to pinch.
Two cries of pain later and both women come to their senses and Herbert coughs into his fist. “I don’t have to order you both to forget the last thirty seconds do I?”
“No sir.” Agent Ripley says.
“Good. Now as I was saying, our mission is to search for this local woman of Varthy. A native to this spire. She recently attempted to infiltrate a police station while several other parties were involved and when I managed to unveil her she used a recall teleport to retreat. We have her actual adress and already have a few agents in there poking around, we need to understand what the mood on the street is and the best way to do that is by asking.”
“Why are we here though, and why are you dressed... why do you have the exact type of makeup, scent, presence and look to... to make any Dzedin or Yauya lose their minds?”
“Because a little boy sniffling and wondering where ‘Cousin Varthy’ went with his two big sisters for protection is going to get a lot of people talking and will also lure in any organization members because while this will grab their suspicion one look at me will silence any alarm bells.”
“Just lay it flat sir.” Agent Newt tells him.
“You two are going to do most of the talking. I’m the big distraction that will stop anyone from putting two coherent thoughts together. Make sense?”
“Is this legal?” Agent Ripley asks.
“It’s not illegal.” Herbert says in an evasive tone.
First Last Next

Sorry to everyone who read this and got the wrong idea. It takes a lot out of me emotionally to admit that yes, I'm autistic & have ADHD diagnosed late in life. I always just thought it was a coincidence that I got panic attack meltdowns in cars, buses, and trains.I thought it was my PTSD or depression or maybe I was just a weirdo. My mom wasn't present at my doctor appts in my teenage years when things got bad and my dad worked a lot and often out of state. He had no clue until he did and then we realized we had the same sensory issues but it was too late for him, he passed. He was the only one who understood the things I felt. I went to the doctor alone my whole life because I didn't even want my husband to know everything because I had the "I'm a woman it must be anxiety" drilled into my head. So yes, this is why I use Uber or only drive in cars with people I'm extremely trustworthy of and not to be dramatic but they're all gone. I'm just trying my best to do this alone. It takes everything in me to ask for help and Reddit is mainly anonymous but it still breaks me down. I'm 38, it's embarrassing to not be able to just live life. I haven'tleft my house since late August '23. This is HARD.
Hi everyone. I have recently been going through a lot of chronic & hereditary health problems. I can not drive due to this and the cost of traveling to various specialists far from where I live, has really taken a toll on my savings(well, it did, but my savings don't exist anymore lol gotta laugh or I'll cry!)
Anyway, I have just received an amazing opportunity for a new job after being referred by an old coworker. Even better, the job is in the same metro area as my specialists. It's for a property management company and I will get a hefty discount on my rent and can live on-site eventually. This will save me so much money. I've worked for property management previously and have finally landed this opportunity to get back into it.
I've done all of my interviews over Zoom and just need to go do my paperwork & a few other things. I have a temporary place to stay for free with a friend's relative until I'm given the employee rental discount. So, here's what I need help with- enough Uber fare to go on Thursday to finalize my paperwork, meet with my new team & boss & do my drug test. Which luckily the testing facility is a walkable distance from my new job so no extra fare for that, I just need enough to get there and back to my current residence. A friend will be helping me move once they're back from a work trip, so I'm relieved I don't have to worry about the expense of moving with a moving company or something. They were supposed to be back this week & would've taken me but their trip got extended.
The Uber or Lyft round trip will cost a hefty $210-230. I have $30 to put towards that. I would have more but I did have to pay my utilities here & my phone.
I'm so excited for this journey, it's life-changing in so many ways! I just could use a little help. I don't expect anything but any little bit would contribute towards the end goal. If I had any belongings of value to sell, I would but I live very minimally as I haven't been making much money and it went to bills and those insanely expensive doctor trips.
Sorry for rambling, I'm just very anxious :/
Edit: Changing the Amazon Uber gift card to the suggestion by the mod to send one directly to the app.
Edit 2: I'm autistic stop being mean it's hard enough just typing this all out for anyone to read.
Received $50
Thanks again for reading.

the five Northumbrian counties you will scarcely find so bleak, ugly, and yet, in a savage way, so picturesque a moor as Dardale Moss. The moor itself spreads north, south, east, and west, a great undulating sea of black peat and heath. What we may term its shores are wooded wildly with birch, hazel, and dwarf-oak. No towering mountains surround it, but here and there you have a rocky knoll rising among the trees, and many a wooded promontory of the same pretty, because utterly wild, forest, running out into its dark level. Habitations are thinly scattered in this barren territory, and a full mile away from the meanest was the stone cottage of Mother Carke. Let not my southern reader who associates ideas of comfort with the term "cottage" mistake. This thing is built of shingle, with low walls. Its thatch is hollow; the peat-smoke curls stingily from its stunted chimney. It is worthy of its savage surroundings. The primitive neighbours remark that no rowan-tree grows near, nor holly, nor bracken, and no horseshoe is nailed on the door. Not far from the birches and hazels that straggle about the rude wall of the little enclosure, on the contrary, they say, you may discover the broom and the rag-wort, in which witches mysteriously delight. But this is perhaps a scandal. Mall Carke was for many a year the sage femme of this wild domain. She has renounced practice, however, for some years; and now, under the rose, she dabbles, it is thought, in the black art, in which she has always been secretly skilled, tells fortunes, practises charms, and in popular esteem is little better than a witch. Mother Carke has been away to the town of Willarden, to sell knit stockings, and is returning to her rude dwelling by Dardale Moss. To her right, as far away as the eye can reach, the moor stretches. The narrow track she has followed here tops a gentle upland, and at her left a sort of jungle of dwarf-oak and brushwood approaches its edge. The sun is sinking blood-red in the west. His disk has touched the broad black level of the moor, and his parting beams glare athwart the gaunt figure of the old beldame, as she strides homeward stick in hand, and bring into relief the folds of her mantle, which gleam like the draperies of a bronze image in the light of a fire. For a few moments this light floods the air—tree, gorse, rock, and bracken glare; and then it is out, and gray twilight over everything. All is still and sombre. At this hour the simple traffic of the thinly-peopled country is over, and nothing can be more solitary. From this jungle, nevertheless, through which the mists of evening are already creeping, she sees a gigantic man approaching her. In that poor and primitive country robbery is a crime unknown. She, therefore, has no fears for her pound of tea, and pint of gin, and sixteen shillings in silver which she is bringing home in her pocket. But there is something that would have frighted another woman about this man. He is gaunt, sombre, bony, dirty, and dressed in a black suit which a beggar would hardly care to pick out of the dust. This ill-looking man nodded to her as he stepped on the road. "I don't know you," she said. He nodded again. "I never sid ye neyawheere," she exclaimed sternly. "Fine evening, Mother Carke," he says, and holds his snuff-box toward her. She widened the distance between them by a step or so, and said again sternly and pale, "I hev nowt to say to thee, whoe'er thou beest." "You know Laura Silver Bell?" "That's a byneyam; the lass's neyam is Laura Lew," she answered, looking straight before her. "One name's as good as another for one that was never christened, mother." "How know ye that?" she asked grimly; for it is a received opinion in that part of the world that the fairies have power over those who have never been baptised. The stranger turned on her a malignant smile. "There is a young lord in love with her," the stranger says, "and I'm that lord. Have her at your house to-morrow night at eight o'clock, and you must stick cross pins through the candle, as you have done for many a one before, to bring her lover thither by ten, and her fortune's made. And take this for your trouble." He extended his long finger and thumb toward her, with a guinea temptingly displayed. "I have nowt to do wi' thee. I nivver sid thee afoore. Git thee awa'! I earned nea goold o' thee, and I'll tak' nane. Awa' wi' thee, or I'll find ane that will mak' thee!" The old woman had stopped, and was quivering in every limb as she thus spoke. He looked very angry. Sulkily he turned away at her words, and strode slowly toward the wood from which he had come; and as he approached it, he seemed to her to grow taller and taller, and stalked into it as high as a tree. "I conceited there would come something o't", she said to herself. "Farmer Lew must git it done nesht Sunda'. The a'ad awpy!" Old Farmer Lew was one of that sect who insist that baptism shall be but once administered, and not until the Christian candidate had attained to adult years. The girl had indeed for some time been of an age not only, according to this theory, to be baptised, but if need be to be married. Her story was a sad little romance. A lady some seventeen years before had come down and paid Farmer Lew for two rooms in his house. She told him that her husband would follow her in a fortnight, and that he was in the mean time delayed by business in Liverpool. In ten days after her arrival her baby was born, Mall Carke acting as sage femme on the occasion; and on the evening of that day the poor young mother died. No husband came; no wedding-ring, they said, was on her finger. About fifty pounds was found in her desk, which Farmer Lew, who was a kind old fellow and had lost his two children, put in bank for the little girl, and resolved to keep her until a rightful owner should step forward to claim her. They found half-a-dozen love-letters signed "Francis," and calling the dead woman "Laura." So Farmer Lew called the little girl Laura; and her sobriquet of "Silver Bell" was derived from a tiny silver bell, once gilt, which was found among her poor mother's little treasures after her death, and which the child wore on a ribbon round her neck. Thus, being very pretty and merry, she grew up as a North-country farmer's daughter; and the old man, as she needed more looking after, grew older and less able to take care of her; so she was, in fact, very nearly her own mistress, and did pretty much in all things as she liked. Old Mall Carke, by some caprice for which no one could account, cherished an affection for the girl, who saw her often, and paid her many a small fee in exchange for the secret indications of the future. It was too late when Mother Carke reached her home to look for a visit from Laura Silver Bell that day. About three o'clock next afternoon, Mother Carke was sitting knitting, with her glasses on, outside her door on the stone bench, when she saw the pretty girl mount lightly to the top of the stile at her left under the birch, against the silver stem of which she leaned her slender hand, and called, "Mall, Mall! Mother Carke, are ye alane all by yersel'?" "Ay, Laura lass, we can be clooas enoo, if ye want a word wi' me," says the old woman, rising, with a mysterious nod, and beckoning her stiffly with her long fingers. The girl was, assuredly, pretty enough for a "lord" to fall in love with. Only look at her. A profusion of brown rippling hair, parted low in the middle of her forehead, almost touched her eyebrows, and made the pretty oval of her face, by the breadth of that rich line, more marked. What a pretty little nose! what scarlet lips, and large, dark, long-fringed eyes! Her face is transparently tinged with those clear Murillo tints which appear in deeper dyes on her wrists and the backs of her hands. These are the beautiful gipsy-tints with which the sun dyes young skins so richly. The old woman eyes all this, and her pretty figure, so round and slender, and her shapely little feet, cased in the thick shoes that can't hide their comely proportions, as she stands on the top of the stile. But it is with a dark and saturnine aspect. "Come, lass, what stand ye for atoppa t' wall, whar folk may chance to see thee? I hev a thing to tell thee, lass." She beckoned her again. "An' I hev a thing to tell thee, Mall." "Come hidder," said the old woman peremptorily. "But ye munna gie me the creepin's" (make me tremble). "I winna look again into the glass o' water, mind ye." The old woman smiled grimly, and changed her tone. "Now, hunny, git tha down, and let ma see thy canny feyace," and she beckoned her again. Laura Silver Bell did get down, and stepped lightly toward the door of the old woman's dwelling. "Tak this," said the girl, unfolding a piece of bacon from her apron, "and I hev a silver sixpence to gie thee, when I'm gaen away heyam." They entered the dark kitchen of the cottage, and the old woman stood by the door, lest their conference should be lighted on by surprise. "Afoore ye begin," said Mother Carke (I soften her patois), "I mun tell ye there's ill folk watchin' ye. What's auld Farmer Lew about, he doesna get t' sir" (the clergyman) "to baptise thee? If he lets Sunda' next pass, I'm afeared ye'll never be sprinkled nor signed wi' cross, while there's a sky aboon us." "Agoy!" exclaims the girl, "who's lookin' after me?" "A big black fella, as high as the kipples, came out o' the wood near Deadman's Grike, just after the sun gaed down yester e'en; I knew weel what he was, for his feet ne'er touched the road while he made as if he walked beside me. And he wanted to gie me snuff first, and I wouldna hev that; and then he offered me a gowden guinea, but I was no sic awpy, and to bring you here to-night, and cross the candle wi' pins, to call your lover in. And he said he's a great lord, and in luve wi' thee." "And you refused him?" "Well for thee I did, lass," says Mother Carke. "Why, it's every word true!" cries the girl vehemently, starting to her feet, for she had seated herself on the great oak chest. "True, lass? Come, say what ye mean," demanded Mall Carke, with a dark and searching gaze. Last night I was coming heyam from the wake, wi' auld farmer Dykes and his wife and his daughter Nell, and when we came to the stile, I bid them good-night, and we parted." "And ye came by the path alone in the night-time, did ye?" exclaimed old Mall Carke sternly. "I wasna afeared, I don't know why; the path heyam leads down by the wa'as o' auld Hawarth Castle." "I knaa it weel, and a dowly path it is; ye'll keep indoors o' nights for a while, or ye'll rue it. What saw ye?" "No freetin, mother; nowt I was feared on." "Ye heard a voice callin' yer neyame?" "I heard nowt that was dow, but the hullyhoo in the auld castle wa's," answered the pretty girl. "I heard nor sid nowt that's dow, but mickle that's conny and gladsome. I heard singin' and laughin' a long way off, I consaited; and I stopped a bit to listen. Then I walked on a step or two, and there, sure enough in the Pie-Mag field, under the castle wa's, not twenty steps away, I sid a grand company; silks and satins, and men wi' velvet coats, wi' gowd-lace striped over them, and ladies wi' necklaces that would dazzle ye, and fans as big as griddles; and powdered footmen, like what the shirra hed behind his coach, only these was ten times as grand." "It was full moon last night," said the old woman. "Sa bright 'twould blind ye to look at it," said the girl. "Never an ill sight but the deaul finds a light," quoth the old woman. "There's a rinnin brook thar—you were at this side, and they at that; did they try to mak ye cross over?" "Agoy! didn't they? Nowt but civility and kindness, though. But ye mun let me tell it my own way. They was talkin' and laughin', and eatin', and drinkin' out o' long glasses and goud cups, seated on the grass, and music was playin'; and I keekin' behind a bush at all the grand doin's; and up they gits to dance; and says a tall fella I didna see afoore, 'Ye mun step across, and dance wi' a young lord that's faan in luv wi' thee, and that's mysel',' and sure enow I keeked at him under my lashes and a conny lad he is, to my teyaste, though he be dressed in black, wi' sword and sash, velvet twice as fine as they sells in the shop at Gouden Friars; and keekin' at me again fra the corners o' his een. And the same fella telt me he was mad in luv wi' me, and his fadder was there, and his sister, and they came all the way from Catstean Castle to see me that night; and that's t' other side o' Gouden Friars." "Come, lass, yer no mafflin; tell me true. What was he like? Was his feyace grimed wi' sut? a tall fella wi' wide shouthers, and lukt like an ill-thing, wi' black clothes amaist in rags?" "His feyace was long, but weel-faured, and darker nor a gipsy; and his clothes were black and grand, and made o' velvet, and he said he was the young lord himsel'; and he lukt like it." "That will be the same fella I sid at Deadman's Grike," said Mall Carke, with an anxious frown. "Hoot, mudder! how cud that be?" cried the lass, with a toss of her pretty head and a smile of scorn. But the fortune-teller made no answer, and the girl went on with her story. "When they began to dance," continued Laura Silver Bell, "he urged me again, but I wudna step o'er; 'twas partly pride, coz I wasna dressed fine enough, and partly contrairiness, or something, but gaa I wudna, not a fut. No but I more nor half wished it a' the time." "Weel for thee thou dudstna cross the brook." "Hoity-toity, why not?" "Keep at heyame after nightfall, and don't ye be walking by yersel' by daylight or any light lang lonesome ways, till after ye're baptised," said Mall Carke. "I'm like to be married first." "Tak care that marriage won't hang i' the bell-ropes," said Mother Carke. "Leave me alane for that. The young lord said he was maist daft wi' luv o' me. He wanted to gie me a conny ring wi' a beautiful stone in it. But, drat it, I was sic an awpy I wudna tak it, and he a young lord!" "Lord, indeed! are ye daft or dreamin'? Those fine folk, what were they? I'll tell ye. Dobies and fairies; and if ye don't du as yer bid, they'll tak ye, and ye'll never git out o' their hands again while grass grows," said the old woman grimly. "Od wite it!" replies the girl impatiently, "who's daft or dreamin' noo? I'd a bin dead wi' fear, if 'twas any such thing. It cudna be; all was sa luvesome, and bonny, and shaply." "Weel, and what do ye want o' me, lass?" asked the old woman sharply. "I want to know—here's t' sixpence—what I sud du," said the young lass. "'Twud be a pity to lose such a marrow, hey?" "Say yer prayers, lass; I can't help ye," says the old woman darkly. "If ye gaa wi' the people, ye'll never come back. Ye munna talk wi' them, nor eat wi' them, nor drink wi' them, nor tak a pin's-worth by way o' gift fra them—mark weel what I say—or ye're lost!" The girl looked down, plainly much vexed. The old woman stared at her with a mysterious frown steadily, for a few seconds. "Tell me, lass, and tell me true, are ye in luve wi' that lad?" "What for sud I?" said the girl with a careless toss of her head, and blushing up to her very temples. "I see how it is," said the old woman, with a groan, and repeated the words, sadly thinking; and walked out of the door a step or two, and looked jealously round. "The lass is witched, the lass is witched!" "Did ye see him since?" asked Mother Carke, returning. The girl was still embarrassed; and now she spoke in a lower tone, and seemed subdued. "I thought I sid him as I came here, walkin' beside me among the trees; but I consait it was only the trees themsels that lukt like rinnin' one behind another, as I walked on." "I can tell thee nowt, lass, but what I telt ye afoore," answered the old woman peremptorily. "Get ye heyame, and don't delay on the way; and say yer prayers as ye gaa; and let none but good thoughts come nigh ye; and put nayer foot autside the door-steyan again till ye gaa to be christened; and get that done a Sunda' next." And with this charge, given with grizzly earnestness, she saw her over the stile, and stood upon it watching her retreat, until the trees quite hid her and her path from view. The sky grew cloudy and thunderous, and the air darkened rapidly, as the girl, a little frightened by Mall Carke's view of the case, walked homeward by the lonely path among the trees. A black cat, which had walked close by her—for these creatures sometimes take a ramble in search of their prey among the woods and thickets—crept from under the hollow of an oak, and was again with her. It seemed to her to grow bigger and bigger as the darkness deepened, and its green eyes glared as large as halfpennies in her affrighted vision as the thunder came booming along the heights from the Willarden-road. She tried to drive it away; but it growled and hissed awfully, and set up its back as if it would spring at her, and finally it skipped up into a tree, where they grew thickest at each side of her path, and accompanied her, high over head, hopping from bough to bough as if meditating a pounce upon her shoulders. Her fancy being full of strange thoughts, she was frightened, and she fancied that it was haunting her steps, and destined to undergo some hideous transformation, the moment she ceased to guard her path with prayers. She was frightened for a while after she got home. The dark looks of Mother Carke were always before her eyes, and a secret dread prevented her passing the threshold of her home again that night. Next day it was different. She had got rid of the awe with which Mother Carke had inspired her. She could not get the tall dark-featured lord, in the black velvet dress, out of her head. He had "taken her fancy"; she was growing to love him. She could think of nothing else. Bessie Hennock, a neighbour's daughter, came to see her that day, and proposed a walk toward the ruins of Hawarth Castle, to gather "blaebirries." So off the two girls went together. In the thicket, along the slopes near the ivied walls of Hawarth Castle, the companions began to fill their baskets. Hours passed. The sun was sinking near the west, and Laura Silver Bell had not come home. Over the hatch of the farm-house door the maids leant ever and anon with outstretched necks, watching for a sign of the girl's return, and wondering, as the shadows lengthened, what had become of her. At last, just as the rosy sunset gilding began to overspread the landscape, Bessie Hennock, weeping into her apron, made her appearance without her companion. Her account of their adventures was curious. I will relate the substance of it more connectedly than her agitation would allow her to give it, and without the disguise of the rude Northumbrian dialect. The girl said, that, as they got along together among the brambles that grow beside the brook that bounds the Pie-Mag field, she on a sudden saw a very tall big-boned man, with an ill-favoured smirched face, and dressed in worn and rusty black, standing at the other side of a little stream. She was frightened; and while looking at this dirty, wicked, starved figure, Laura Silver Bell touched her, gazing at the same tall scarecrow, but with a countenance full of confusion and even rapture. She was peeping through the bush behind which she stood, and with a sigh she said: "Is na that a conny lad? Agoy! See his bonny velvet clothes, his sword and sash; that's a lord, I can tell ye; and weel I know who he follows, who he luves, and who he'll wed." Bessie Hennock thought her companion daft. "See how luvesome he luks!" whispered Laura. Bessie looked again, and saw him gazing at her companion with a malignant smile, and at the same time he beckoned her to approach. "Darrat ta! gaa not near him! he'll wring thy neck!" gasped Bessie in great fear, as she saw Laura step forward with a look of beautiful bashfulness and joy. She took the hand he stretched across the stream, more for love of the hand than any need of help, and in a moment was across and by his side, and his long arm about her waist. "Fares te weel, Bessie, I'm gain my ways," she called, leaning her head to his shoulder; "and tell gud Fadder Lew I'm gain my ways to be happy, and may be, at lang last, I'll see him again." And with a farewell wave of her hand, she went away with her dismal partner; and Laura Silver Bell was never more seen at home, or among the "coppies" and "wickwoods," the bonny fields and bosky hollows, by Dardale Moss. Bessie Hennock followed them for a time. She crossed the brook, and though they seemed to move slowly enough, she was obliged to run to keep them in view; and she all the time cried to her continually, "Come back, come back, bonnie Laurie!" until, getting over a bank, she was met by a white-faced old man, and so frightened was she, that she thought she fainted outright. At all events, she did not come to herself until the birds were singing their vespers in the amber light of sunset, and the day was over. No trace of the direction of the girl's flight was ever discovered. Weeks and months passed, and more than a year. At the end of that time, one of Mall Carke's goats died, as she suspected, by the envious practices of a rival witch who lived at the far end of Dardale Moss. All alone in her stone cabin the old woman had prepared her charm to ascertain the author of her misfortune. The heart of the dead animal, stuck all over with pins, was burnt in the fire; the windows, doors, and every other aperture of the house being first carefully stopped. After the heart, thus prepared with suitable incantations, is consumed in the fire, the first person who comes to the door or passes by it is the offending magician. Mother Carke completed these lonely rites at dead of night. It was a dark night, with the glimmer of the stars only, and a melancholy night-wind was soughing through the scattered woods that spread around. After a long and dead silence, there came a heavy thump at the door, and a deep voice called her by name. She was startled, for she expected no man's voice; and peeping from the window, she saw, in the dim light, a coach and four horses, with gold-laced footmen, and coachman in wig and cocked hat, turned out as if for a state occasion. She unbarred the door; and a tall gentleman, dressed in black, waiting at the threshold, entreated her, as the only sage femme within reach, to come in the coach and attend Lady Lairdale, who was about to give birth to a baby, promising her handsome payment. Lady Lairdale! She had never heard of her. "How far away is it?" "Twelve miles on the old road to Golden Friars." Her avarice is roused, and she steps into the coach. The footman claps-to the door; the glass jingles with the sound of a laugh. The tall dark-faced gentleman in black is seated opposite; they are driving at a furious pace; they have turned out of the road into a narrower one, dark with thicker and loftier forest than she was accustomed to. She grows anxious; for she knows every road and by-path in the country round, and she has never seen this one. He encourages her. The moon has risen above the edge of the horizon, and she sees a noble old castle. Its summit of tower, watchtower and battlement, glimmers faintly in the moonlight. This is their destination. She feels on a sudden all but overpowered by sleep; but although she nods, she is quite conscious of the continued motion, which has become even rougher. She makes an effort, and rouses herself. What has become of the coach, the castle, the servants? Nothing but the strange forest remains the same. She is jolting along on a rude hurdle, seated on rushes, and a tall, big-boned man, in rags, sits in front, kicking with his heel the ill-favoured beast that pulls them along, every bone of which sticks out, and holding the halter which serves for reins. They stop at the door of a miserable building of loose stone, with a thatch so sunk and rotten, that the roof-tree and couples protrude in crooked corners, like the bones of the wretched horse, with enormous head and ears, that dragged them to the door. The long gaunt man gets down, his sinister face grimed like his hands. It was the same grimy giant who had accosted her on the lonely road near Deadman's Grike. But she feels that she "must go through with it" now, and she follows him into the house. Two rushlights were burning in the large and miserable room, and on a coarse ragged bed lay a woman groaning piteously. "That's Lady Lairdale," says the gaunt dark man, who then began to stride up and down the room rolling his head, stamping furiously, and thumping one hand on the palm of the other, and talking and laughing in the corners, where there was no one visible to hear or to answer. Old Mall Carke recognized in the faded half-starved creature who lay on the bed, as dark now and grimy as the man, and looking as if she had never in her life washed hands or face, the once blithe and pretty Laura Lew. The hideous being who was her mate continued in the same odd fluctuations of fury, grief, and merriment; and whenever she uttered a groan, he parodied it with another, as Mother Carke thought, in saturnine derision. At length he strode into another room, and banged the door after him. In due time the poor woman's pains were over, and a daughter was born. Such an imp! with long pointed ears, flat nose, and enormous restless eyes and mouth. It instantly began to yell and talk in some unknown language, at the noise of which the father looked into the room, and told the sage femme that she should not go unrewarded. The sick woman seized the moment of his absence to say in the ear of Mall Carke: "If ye had not been at ill work tonight, he could not hev fetched ye. Tak no more now than your rightful fee, or he'll keep ye here." At this moment he returned with a bag of gold and silver coins, which he emptied on the table, and told her to help herself. She took four shillings, which was her primitive fee, neither more nor less; and all his urgency could not prevail with her to take a farthing more. He looked so terrible at her refusal, that she rushed out of the house. He ran after her. "You'll take your money with you," he roared, snatching up the bag, still half full, and flung it after her. It lighted on her shoulder; and partly from the blow, partly from terror, she fell to the ground; and when she came to herself, it was morning, and she was lying across her own door-stone. It is said that she never more told fortune or practised spell. And though all that happened sixty years ago and more, Laura Silver Bell, wise folk think, is still living, and will so continue till the day of doom among the fairies.