I 19(f) live at home with the 5 other members of my family. I don't have a cacan't drive and my job isn't nearly enough to move out. I share a room with a 13 yr old so I get no space in any corner of the house and my boundaries are never respected hell I'm not even listened to most the time. Most days I wake up being jolted either by nausea, my dad screaming for me or because of a loud noise I never wake up normally. Every day I have constant headaches behind my eyes and in my forehead that just gets worse the more they stress me out. I've tried all the otc remedies I'll be popping pain killers like candy but it doesn't take it away. Everyday I have this headache and nothing takes it away does any one else struggle with this type of headache?

Now, this is just my opinion on what I would love to see in a Halloween video game, but I would like to hear what yours are. Anyway, let's begin.
The Time-line(s)!
The game would have to timeliness to focus on, the main one being the Thorn Trilogy, the other is the H20 Time-line which you have to unlock after beating the original Time-line.
When they take place!
Both Timeliness take place in the year 2008, the first year that ends with an 8 to not have a Michael Myers movie.
Who's in the game?
In Time-line 1, Kara Strode is now married to Tommy Doyle and have a ten year old daughter named Laurie Doyle, while Kara's son Dan is off getting his bachelor's degree and is a serious relationship with someone; oh, and Kara and Tommy are the foster parents of thirteen year old Steven Lloyd Doyle.
In the 2nd Time-line, we use the script from what would have been Mustafa Akkad's sequel to Halloween Resurrection called Halloween Retribution but remove/change the part at the end where John Tate/Laurie's son stares into the eyes of Michael's mask that he removed before The Shape fell into the beyond freezing waters of the frozen lake and finally died. Instead, John just places the mask on a rock and burns it.
Game Play!
Game play would be just like Friday The 13th 2018 and the Saw video games. You will be tracing Michael's steps if you're playing as either Kara, Tommy, John and or former Sheriff Bracket, as well as Michael Myers your stalking and hunting them and others.
Finally!
I chose these two Timeliness because they are the only ones at this time that have ended in a cliffhanger, and I freaking hate everything that ends and that has ended in a cliffhanger.
The End!
I don't know what else to say, other than maybe a total of 31 levels and 10 flashbacks from Michael's childhood, representing October 31st, the date of Halloween. So I'm done, that's it.

male 5'10 140lbs 26 years old
I wear glasses and have for pretty much my whole life. I made the irresponsible mistake of not getting my prescription updated since 2019 so I decided to get that done. The only problem is I didn't have my old prescription at the time of the visit and my lenses are so damage it was hard for the doctor to get an accurate reading.
Now during the eye exam I noticed the doctor may have made a mistake when selecting the correct lens on the "1 or 2" question for which one is clearer, but I didn't pay much mind to it as I assume they know what they're doing. Funny enough my eyes apparently got better so I had a weaker prescription assigned to my left eye, but I noticed when walking out that there was no longer a prism assigned to my right eye. (This small prism has been there for as long as I had glasses)
I went back and told the doctor about this in which she checked my eyes again just to be safe. I was correct on them making a mistake and my left eye needed have a stronger prescription. According to the doctor because I am right eyed dominate and things look clear with both my eyes open, I should not worry about it even if my left eye is a little blurry since the prescriptions would be too different and this was likely the reason I had a prism.
Now I am a bit concerned about getting glasses as to me it seems silly to not have the clearest lens possible for one of my eyes. I am concerned I will get headaches and not adjust properly. Is this something I should be concerned about? When I got home I found my old prescription from 2019. Here are the comparisons
Eye Sphere Cyl Axis Add Prism
NEW:
RIGHT(OD) +2.25 -1.00 084 1.5
LEFT(OS) +3.00 -1.25 090 1.5
OLD:
RIGHT(OD) +2.25 -1.00 80 1.5 0.5dwn
LEFT(OS) +3.50 -1.50 85
to me a .5 difference seems pretty big and would be noticeably blurrier
These are progressive lenses. They are very expensive and take forever to make. I don't want to drop hundreds of dollars for lenses that are not correct

We have been dating and living together for 2 years now and I love her. She is a perfect human being in my eyes though no one is perfect but once every 1-2 months she will drink while we’re home during a time that I don’t want to drink and she starts sniffing lines of snow as well. The problem is that once she starts she can’t stop she can’t do it in moderation and I would normally say please stop because I know what comes next and she would reply , “ Don’t worry I won’t over indulge “
1hr later after she’s overindulged it hits her, she gets really hyped and starts to dance and talk alot meanwhile i’m either trying to sleep because of work tomorrow or it’s a weekend and I’m trying to have a quiet one. She starts nagging me by waking me up to talk about anything that comes through her mind and then the depression stage hits and she starts getting upset at me for something I said earlier that day or the day before. It could have been something as simple as “The sky is blue” and she’ll twist it and go “ Am I not blue enough for you??” You think im shit?!” And I have to explain myself and she’ll say no im lying and she’ll dig for something else that’s not there and this goes on till morning.
I finally get 4 hrs of sleep and she wakes up with a headache then apologises. This happens again in 1-2 months even when we’re on a vacation trip. Sometimes she sleeps over at her friends house and they do this all night and she comes home the next day or two crashed. I have had enough. What if she gets a bad batch one day and overdose? Is this ok?
TL;DR my gf abuses drugs and alcohol but other than those episodes she’s a sweetheart.

Alright, so my husband (M25) and I (F21) just had our first baby almost 3 months ago. She is the most precious baby I have ever interacted with. She's calm most of the time, only crying when she's hungry, needs a change, or wants some extra attention. She's started babbling and small giggles. She's perfect in my eyes. (I know I'm biased).
Here's where things get complicated. I had my daughter in March 2024 via c-section. Everything went smoothly and I healed very quickly. I was up and walking around 8 hours after the surgery and did very well with my scar healing. (All of this is relevant I swear)
My husband's and I anniversary was 5 weeks exactly after birth. I was almost completely healed by then but was still nervous to try anything yet so we waited, but a few days later, I started really getting into the mood. So I initiated about 5.5 weeks postpartum. It was a one time thing. As I had an appointment to get the birth control implant only a few days later and didn't want to risk it again.
Now I have been having symptoms of pregnancy. Nausea, headaches, tender breast. So I'm afraid, not because I don't want to have more kids, my husband and I want 4, but because they may be so close together. If anyone has had their babies close together, what is it like? Any advice if I am pregnant? I'm taking a pregnancy test tonight so hopefully there will be an update soon.

I have a few questions for FA’s out there or really anyone but here goes my story with an FA. We dated for a year and a half. When we met, he had been divorced for about a year. He told me his wife came home one day and told him she wasn’t in love with him anymore and so they divorced. Anyway, things were great the first 5 months. He was the sweetest, most emotionally intelligent and mature man I had ever met. He bought me flowers, took me out on dates and put in a ton of effort. He would drive 40 minutes just to visit me on my lunch break at work. However, I always felt things were moving too quickly. He told me he loved me after only a month and we weren’t even boyfriend and girlfriend yet. He told me he was going to marry me and we talked about a future in extreme depth and detail and planned it out. I realize now, that was love bombing but I didn’t know it at the time. Fast forward to June and we’ve been dating for 5 months. One day I texted him to ask how his day was and he said he was sad and had been crying. I asked what was wrong and he wouldn’t tell me but he said he was all better after crying and he was good, so I didn’t push it. A few weeks go by and one day when we’re hanging out he told me why he was sad the other day. He said he had found out his ex wife had been cheating on him throughout the marriage. He was never the same after this. I noticed he became irritable and cranky, he had mood swings and would get snippy. However, it wasn’t all the time just every so often but I knew something was wrong, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Fast forward to Thanksgiving and his mom wanted us to go around and say what we were thankful for. I said I was thankful for my boyfriend and that I’m so glad I got to be a part of his family. When it was his turn to say what he was thankful for he got real quiet and just said “pass.” That hurt my feelings that he didn’t say he was thankful for me, I thought his reaction was odd but didn’t really know if I was overreacting. It is now December and one night when we were hanging out, he tells me he won’t be coming over next Saturday. I got teary eyed when he told me, which I realize was a bit of an overreaction on my part and it probably scared him a little that I reacted in that way. I was just upset bc I felt like it was out of character for him. We always hung on the weekends, in fact it was the only time we got to see each other. He said he was feeling overwhelmed with the holidays coming up and needed to take a day to himself. Once he told me how he was feeling I completely understood and apologized for getting so upset and for putting any unneeded stress on him. Recently, he had started a new job at a medical marijuana dispo. About once a month he started going out with his coworkers on Saturdays. It kind of bothered me bc when the weekends are the only time we can see each other and you choose to hang out with your coworkers (that you see everyday) instead of me, it hurts. Sunday he texts me after hanging out with his coworkers the night before and he asked if I wanted to come over to his place and then he said or we could just chill at our own places that day. I said well then we won’t see each other for 2 weeks and that I didn’t really wanna go 2 weeks w/o seeing him. He then said “you mean you’ve never gone 2 weeks w/o seeing someone on purpose to make you miss them?” And I said “um no.” I asked him if he had ever done that and he said yes. He then tried to convince me that, that was a normal healthy thing to do. Um ok…….There were other problems throughout the relationship. He would randomly text me that he was feeling sad and he didn’t know why. He got into an argument with his parents one day and told me that he’s angry all the time and that he’s tired of it and that he can’t keep being angry. He was suffering in front of me and there was nothing I could do. I told him twice he needed to get help but he refused. He said therapy is for weak people and that therapists don’t really care, they’re just paid to care blah blah blah. It got frustrating seeing him suffer all the time but he was never willing to get help. A week before the breakup everything was fine. We texted like normal which was a lot, he wasn’t quiet or distant at all. Then Saturday I texted him good morning and all he said was “morning.” I asked him if he slept good and he said not at all and that he was feeling down. He said he just wanted to draw the blinds, stay inside and not talk to anyone. He asked what I had planned for the day and I told him have a good day at work. 5 hours go by and he didn’t text me, which was not normal for him. We were supposed to hang out that night but about an hour before I was supposed to go to his house he asked if it would be ok if he stayed home to decompress and turn his head around, I said yes. The next day he comes over and says we need to talk. He then bursts into tears and says “he thinks the trauma from his divorce was worse than he thought.” He then gives the typical FA response: “I don’t have the mental capacity to be in a relationship right now” You deserve better.” “I don’t think I know how to be loved.” “I have a hard time trusting people and letting people in.” I asked him if he was going to get help and he said he made an appointment to see a therapist the next day. A few days later, I went to his parents house to drop some stuff off that he had left at my place. His mom gave me a big hug and said she was sad. She said he was getting help and seeing a therapist. She said he was never the same after his divorce and she thinks he’s afraid of commitment. She told me they met for coffee the day before and that’s when he told her we had broken up. She said he told her that he thinks he made a mistake and that this was the healthiest relationship he had ever been in. I found out 3-4 weeks later though after our break up he was already seeing somebody else and my friend found him on dating apps. What a joke. My question is how could his therapist think it’s a good idea for him to already be seeing someone else?? Unless he didn’t tell his therapist. Also, do you think he’s just rebounding to mask his pain and guilt from the breakup even though he’s supposedly seeing a therapist? There’s no way he’s healed even after a month of therapy. It sounds like he’s just repeating the cycle all over and using this new person to fill a void. Do you think it will last?
My other question is about sex and intimacy. Sex was great at first and he was very caring, romantic and respectful in the bedroom. However as time went on, he started becoming demanding and controlling. If I didn’t sit on him the right way or arch my back enough or spread my legs far enough apart he would get frustrated. He also kept pushing my boundaries. He had a genital wart when we met but had it burned off and we waited to have sex for the first time until it healed. For the first few months we used a condom then he kept pressuring me to have sex with him without one, keep in mind I’m not on any birth control. I kept telling him no. Finally I got tired of him asking so I just let him. Same thing with oral. The first few months I would give him oral with a condom but soon he kept pressing me to do it without it. I finally gave in. One nigh he was going to do it from behind. Well he accidentally stuck it in my butt although I think it was on purpose. It was so painful I immediately fell over into the fetal position and cried. He didn’t say sorry or much of anything. He just told me to take deep breaths as I laid there crying. Finally after I had calmed down I asked if we could cuddle and if he would hold me bc I wanted to be comforted. I’m lying there in his arms and at this point I’m not in the mood anymore. I’m not even mad, just in pain and the vibe was killed. As we’re lying there, he starts rubbing on me and tries to pull me onto him and he’s kissing me and I try pulling away and tell him I’m not in the mood. He said “you’re really going to let this stop us?” I said “yes, I’m just in pain and not in the mood right now.” He said “ok” all pissy like. I said “are you seriously mad bc I won’t have sex with you?” He said no in a very pissy tone. I turned toward the wall and he turned the other way but proceeded to huff and puff and toss and turn as if he was throwing a mini temper tantrum. Is he just an asshole? Why did he keep pushing my sexual boundaries throughout the relationship? Is this an FA behavior?
Sorry for the length, thank you for reading

“So, how much?”
I didn’t know Charles well, but well enough to guess that the grizzled hog farmer was a talented salesman. ‘No lowballs,’ I imagined him drawling, waggling his finger, and speaking over his exceptionally jutting chin.
“Three-hundred fifty for the land, the pen, and the house,” the man said. He spat, hard, and the tobacco-black phlegm stuck to the side of the fence post and slowly ran down the side in three rivulets.
“Then another twenty grand for the hogs. Two-hundred thirty-three of ‘em, not a large passel. Price of swine is goin’ up, I’ll tell you, so t’s the best I can give you for what you’s gettin’.”
I had expected to hand him even more money. Charles and his wife had a small operation, but big enough to matter, with a beautiful two-story farmhouse to accompany it nicely. I wasn’t getting a better deal anywhere else. At least not anywhere I wanted to be. I’d longed to live as a farmer in Tennessee ever since my family’s entire property burned to the ground back in the fall of ‘68. It was dry, and we’d just fertilized after the harvest.
Not a living thing was left untouched by the flames, not even my father, who ran back to get the horses after the barn shot up with a pillar of fire. We never found his body. Or maybe we did, but the charred dust of the barn, the corn, and the animals we called our lives and the blackened remains of the man that was my world were all reduced to ashes in the end. And when the wind came, they all blew away just the same, forever to leave me, my two sisters, and my mother behind.
I held out my hand to Charles and we shook on it.
It wasn’t the life I envisioned for myself. Not when I got my engineering degree from Georgia Tech. Not when I began work at a small engineering firm. Not even when I saw the hog farm for sale less than an hour from my house did I realize that was the world I lost that I needed back. My wife didn’t care; in fact, it brought her work commute down to forty minutes from an hour ten.
After we moved there and I began consulting part-time to make allowance for the time I needed to spend raising the hogs, caring for the land, and tending to my now-pregnant wife, the fulfillment I sought seemed that much closer. But only that. Closer, yet still out of the reach of my yearning clutches. It wasn’t until two years after I bought the farm, almost to the day, that the chips seemed to fall on my side with her.
“Micah?”
Jackie was calling from the cubicle over. Then I heard footsteps coming towards my own office space.
“Hey, yeah, did you finish the drainage plans for the floodplain you were working on? If so, I’d happily review and sign off on them.”
Jackie had come here a couple of years after I did. She was an intern at first, and everybody loved her cheery smile and sharp intellect, so she was hired on after she finished her degree. The youngest of our crew, she lived by herself in an apartment, but her lack of experience didn’t keep her from coolly sharing her opinion on matters of work when she knew she was right. And she was always right.
Jackie had always taken a liking to me in a way she didn’t seem to show toward the others. I never became sure of why she did, but I had my suspicions. Trauma and mystique go hand in hand. Maybe she saw me as broken in the same way she saw herself. After all, it didn’t take a psychologist to tell Jackie had her own skeletons in her closet. She just had that aura, the one that neglected children and broken adults share with each other. Nobody knew what life she walked out of and nobody cared. She did her job, and that was all the company cared for. But not me.
I turned away from my computer screen towards the opening of my cubicle and she was there, half silhouetted by the light behind her, staring me in the eye. Jackie trailed a finger down the edge of the cubicle wall, her mouth open barely enough for me to see her tongue flit deftly over her perfectly-aligned incisors. Ignoring my question, she continued.
“Your wife, I take it?”
She gestured with an outstretched palm toward the wedding photo I had framed on my desk.
“Yeah. Hard to believe we’ll be a family of three soon. Ha!”
I chuckled, nervously. Slightly excitedly, too. I can’t tell if Jackie knew that the latter was for what I knew was coming rather than what I had already said, but I don’t think she would have cared one way or the other.
“Say, she must be lonely waiting for you at home? I know that feeling. Being lonely.”
She took a step towards me and I glanced down at my feet. Looking back, it felt like an eternity, that looking down, that knowing what was happening and making a decision. It was a choice. And while it felt like it stretched for minutes, hours, I knew it was but a moment. Yet it only took a moment to make my descent into sin.
“I know it too. Well. Too well. She’s on a business trip - a long one. Say, I raise hogs. Prize swine, there’s good money in them. What’d you say about coming to see my farm sometime?”
It had been two hours since Jackie had left the farmhouse and was almost one-thirty in the morning, yet I wasn’t tired. According to my doctor, I have insomnia. According to my mother, I have “bad juju.” According to myself, well, I guess I just don’t feel like sleep is worth the trouble sometimes. That night, though, I didn’t sleep at all until the sun shone through my window in the early hours of the morning.
Living among swine never gave me a lot of grief before then. Some people hated the stench - my wife among them - but the manure never bothered me, and, come to find out, it didn’t bother Jackie, either. I would have asked if she had been on a farm as a child, but her demeanor and attitude told me that she wasn’t interested in the slightest in my life and that I shouldn’t be in hers, either. I suppose I wasn’t - not in the one outside of our affair, at least.
But that night, when the stars were out and shining like eyes in a limitless black sea, and when the wind rustled through the trees, a gigantic army moving across the land like a plague towards destinations unseen, I started to feel bothered in a way I never had before.
I had been sitting on the back porch in view of the pig pens after having just finished the chores. I knew I wasn’t drunk, I was only on my second beer, but sitting outside, half-empty bottle in hand, I suddenly wished I could be completely wasted. I’d never been one to believe in those types of things that you can’t touch with your hand or see with your eyes. The hair stood up on my arms and the taste of metal lapped my tongue as if a storm was coming. No, I didn’t believe in the things you couldn’t really feel, but I could sure as hell feel something now.
Unsettled, I was turning around to go get another beer before something caught my eye in the pig pen that made me glance over.
All of the pigs visible from this side of the house could be seen, through the metal fencing, staring in my direction. The ones who were blocked by the lumpy bodies of the other swine stood on the hind ends of the others to see. With their combined mass, the pigs strained the metal of the pen stalls until each stall’s fencing bulged out in the middle where the weight was distributed.
Most unique of all was the unanimous behavior of the swine. Not one fell out of sync. Each one, eyes glowing like headlights in the dark, bodies silhouetted against the light of the moon, was without noise or disturbance. Once all of the pigs were in position, they all stayed ominously still.
As I watched, one by one, hundreds of eyes closed, and a wave of darkness spread over the pen as no more eyes were open to reflect the light. I swore for a moment that the stars did too and that the world around me plunged into complete darkness, but I cannot be for certain, because at that same moment, I involuntarily blinked.
I say involuntarily because, frozen in place, the scene was too strange for me to willingly turn away from. I do not know if the same force that caused the swine to flicker their eyes caused me to do the same, perhaps a gust of wind - or of something less tangible - but upon opening them, the pigs had returned to their discord, with several having already gone to sleep. Deeply disturbed, I went inside the house and drank until the morning came and I finally found sleep.
My wife returned from her trip soon enough and without much ado upon her arrival. For the next month or so, the two of us were together, and our lives were lived without significant discord. None that she knew about, anyway. I never told her about Jackie and I certainly didn’t mention the times I saw my coworker after my wife returned, either. And while I did float an innocent question to her asking if she had noticed any of the hogs’ strange behavior, I didn’t enlighten her as to the motivation for my interrogative manner. She never appreciated being in the company of swine as it was, and turning her disdain into disgust wasn’t on my agenda.
Almost as abruptly as she had returned, my wife left, again, to be gone for the next week and a half on another trip. Probably best for her, too, because the hottest days of the year hit western Tennessee when she wasn’t there to experience them. And no sooner had she gone than Jackie resumed her nightly visits to the farm. Each time, she showed up without much notice, if any at all, and left just as abruptly.
Funnily enough, I didn’t care much. I felt no more and no less empty after she left than when she was here. So after I spent my days with my eyes on my screen and my nose in my boss’s ass, I spent my nights staring up through the bottoms of bone-dry bottles, faintly wondering if the path I walked down could’ve been just a little warmer or just a little brighter if things were different.
In spite of my catering towards my boss’s every wish at the office, he didn’t return the good-will in kind.
“What do you mean you’re asking for a raise?”
I swallowed and continued.
“I mean that it’s been five years, Glenn. I simply asked that my pay might increase to match inflation.”
My boss folded his hands across his desk and sighed. Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he dabbed at a couple of beads of sweat running down from his brow. We were in the heat of summer, and the air hung thick and humid around us. The office had air conditioning, but the unit was old, and the fan whistling away in the corner didn’t do much good against the record-breaking heat pressing in around us.
“I’m sorry, Micah. It’s just that you’re consulting, now, and… I can’t afford you those kinds of benefits-”
“What do you mean benefits? I’ve been here long enough I’m owed at least that, Glenn! What the fuck do you think I’m still here for? Pot lucks?”
That was the first time I had lost my temper at my boss; at least, the first time since he ripped up one of my drafts for a project several years back. That had been a long day for both of us. Now, Glenn sat back and scowled ever so slightly, and only for a brief moment, an indication that his inhibitions keeping his attitude in check were wearing thin. Nonetheless, he put on a smile, and chuckled coldly.
“Micah, look- you always were my right hand man, but you’re here so little now. One could say you’re more like my right thumb man, now.”
That was a long day too. The heat didn’t help. Somehow some bugs got into the office. Somebody probably left a door open to quash the heat, fruitlessly.
No wonder the AC’s shot, I thought to myself.
By the time it was the hour for me to leave, there were moths flitting around the lights, flies eating the stale food in the cafe, gnats alighting on every exposed surface in the office- insects were everywhere. I figured that door must have been left open most of the day.
Gotta be pretty stupid bugs, if this is where they want to be.
The time came for me to leave and I did so without a fuss. As little as I could manage, anyway. I took time to complete some errands and returned home, only to realize the heat wasn’t much less oppressive there than it was at the office, even if there weren’t any insects. If anything, it felt oddly empty without them, even after Jackie showed up. The rest of that evening was a blur of empty bottles and used cigarette butts littering the porch.
At some point — two in the morning, three, it didn’t matter — I was pulled out of my drunken slumber and forced into sobriety by a noise I could no more determine the source of than what I had eaten for dinner a year ago from the day. I sat up with a jolt and listened, suddenly feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
The sound, if it could be called that, was discordant, unnatural, wrong — and yet, I couldn’t remember another thing about it. It wasn’t a sound heard through your ears, a vibration in your skin, nor even a sensation of one’s physical brain; it was a thought processed through one’s sleeping soul, something that certainly cannot be described with words without diminishing the weightiness placed; without negating, in full, the sense of abject horror at its state of being.
I had sat atop that precipice between reality and unreality; sleep, the abyss, where devils absently play amongst the nightmares of men. I told myself it was just that, a dream, but I know now that the place I was and the places I was soon to go were gateways between the waking world and the one beneath it. Before I had time to process what I had just felt, I heard another sound, this one very much real, and resembling a dying animal. Slowly, I made my way out of my crumpled bed and opened the blinds. I almost wished, upon doing so, that I was back on the precipice.
Thirteen of the hogs stood in a circle on the lawn; how they had gotten out, I don’t know. Each stood perfectly still, equidistant from the next, and faced a quivering shadow in the middle of them all. I could make out faint features: a scraggly beard, a bottle- whether the man was a hiker or a drunk, I couldn’t tell. Nonetheless, he had wound up on my property, and found himself caught in a circle of pigs.
I watched the man’s motions and noted with rising horror that as he walked in one direction, the circle of pigs shifted to keep him at the center of the ring, and all the while they drew nearer to him. The man was clearly intoxicated now; it was almost half a minute before he stumbled, fell, and no sooner squelched in the dirt than thirteen squeals rang through the night and the animals blotted out his body from sight with their unified mass.
The man let out one scream but could manage no more than one. The ring was a blur of motion. I saw little but I saw enough; one pig reared its glistening head and I watched part of a scalp fly from its gaping mouth, arcing dark liquid as it trailed across the yard. Another couple chunks of meat rolled away from the pile and reached a stop several feet away in the yard; once the pigs were through with their feast, they broke off from the previous site, now nothing but a red stain on the earth, and gobbled up the pieces that had got away.
It took me the next four hours to get the pigs back into their pen, but I managed it. And, none had to be shot in the process, though I surmised I should come with a gun readied. A cleanup wasn’t necessary either; it was a hog farm, so it’d be getting dirty again soon. I considered another individual might find the stain, but there was no proof it was human blood, and I had no intention of calling the police out there.
That morning, my boss was late to work. I suppose that’s to be expected, though, when one has had their tires slashed. He was livid, and I didn’t correct his supposition that his ex-wife had committed the act, though I’m sure he would have loved another reason to fire me. After all, I was nothing more than a right thumb man.
The day had gone quicker and cooler than the former, and the low droning of the rain made the day seem just a little less lonely. Of course, I was slated to see Jackie that night, and after lunch I had left work, gone off to purchase more drinks from the local liquor store. I remember having gotten enough to fill the passenger seat of my truck, and felt almost as if the pile of liquor was a singular being, watching me; the silently judgemental friend. I had a twinge of anxiety, and half wondered if I was going insane; at that, I laughed.
The air was cool when Jackie got there. My mother always used to call that the first breath of autumn, when the reaper opened his eyes and cooed softly to his crop before the inferno was snuffed out by the frigid winter. As a child, I didn’t pay much attention to her words, but as I grew older I felt the cold in my bones, and tonight I felt it in my soul, a faint whisper of death like the mark of the beast. I watched Jackie’s hair whip to the side, a black flag in the wind, as she approached the house. On the doorstep, we embraced, and I recall she said she needed to talk.
“You’re an awfully successful man, Micah. And I know you’ve got a lot of money. Maybe you’re not wealthy, no, but you’re richer than me, and there’s enough to go around. It’d be a damn shame if your poor wife found out about me. No, I haven’t said a thing yet, and I know you know that, for the poor thing couldn’t take the stress and might just die. But I could say a thing, and maybe even a little more. And a nasty thing it’d be, too. I’d just ask for $1,000 a month, but times are tough, so I’m inclined to say $2,000 would be enough to keep my mouth shut. And, of course, we could continue seeing each other. . . if you’d so please.”
Some say they see red when they’re angry enough, but I still remember how I saw even less; the next five minutes of my life were no clearer to me than several brief glimpses of reality, interspersed by periods of unreality before the next glimpse. A scream, and then another. The thought: she’s got a knife. A bone snapped: mine, hers, it didn’t matter. Blood; spattered on the carpet, on my shirt, and the drip-drip of a glistening red globe, smashed in through the side like a cracked egg. I remember the silence before the adrenaline eased and I felt pain, and I remember the pain before the squelch when I issued one last kick to the body, lying on the ground.
It had been time for me to feed the pigs. Jackie usually helped me with the feeding when she came over, always with a coy look, and often it was short lived and I needed to finish the job on my own after she left. I was betting that she could help me again. Hoisting her up onto my shoulder wasn’t difficult, though I supposed she was lighter than usual. I stooped to pick up the last few pieces that didn’t come with the rest of her and took the two of us to our yard.
The part of the brain we, as people, already understand cannot possibly encompass every sensation which we, as people, feel. Scientifically, maybe- but that feeling that makes dogs bark at empty rooms; that makes cats stare into walls before jumping away, frightened; that feeling exists in humans, too. Call it a sixth sense, or ESP, it’s there, and I felt it when carrying Jackie. The birds had stopped calling, the trees had ceased rustling, and a low, droning buzz resounded outside the pig pen. It rose in volume and pitch, and as I dropped Jackie’s lifeless corpse onto the ground, it blocked entirely the noise of the world around me.
I didn’t even hear the thump. Nor did I hear the pigs, for it wasn’t until I looked up from her body, panting heavily from the effort of what had transpired, that I saw that we stood on the fringe of a gathering of the pigs. I couldn’t see if any remained in the pen, but I could see that at least a hundred gathered here outside the pen, all staring at me with glassy eyes and salivating mouths. Some stood on the haunches of the others to see, and many were covered in blood, having been left uncleaned since the events of the previous night. Even through the foggy daze I was in, my fear registered on a guttural level and, in horror at the unreality of what I was seeing, I backpedaled, eventually tripping over a rut in the earth and falling to the ground.
The next moment, each of the pigs had turned to look at what was left of Jackie. For a couple of seconds, they stared at her, and I realized that the droning in my ears had stopped, replaced with nothing but an ominous silence. That silence was short lived, for in one, unanimous, ear-splitting squeal, the pigs raced each other to the body, and carnage ensued.
The hogs in front no sooner reached the body than were ripped apart by the pigs behind them. Huge flaps of fatty skin hung in ribbons from the napes of their necks and blood sprayed in all directions as necks, limbs, tails, and extremities were mangled with the reckless abandon of a pack of wild dogs. I suppose that’s what they were; even if I treated them like domesticated creatures, they were animals, and they were out of the control of any constraints that civilization wanted to place on them.
The mass of flesh moved rhythmically and dripping bodies were flung like oversized rag dolls from the fray to land wetly and lifelessly on the earth. Occasionally, I would hear a crunch as bones were rent and snapped under the pressure of the fray, and squeals as the broken limbs stabbed through the fleshy bodies of the animals atop them. Hooves, teeth, and bones carved the flesh of the other pigs, and while blood and feces sprayed freely, chunks of gore rolled out of the fray like meaty baseballs.
The pleasant temperature drop had undone itself, as the wind had stopped blowing, and the stench of the scene hung thick in the hot and heavy air of late summer. I vomited, over and over, bent over in the shit and the blood, eyes watering from the smell, and blood dripped from everywhere on my body. It ran off my body in rivulets and pooled around my feet. Some was mine, but more was Jackie’s, and more yet was the remains of the pigs. Blood dripped from my mouth onto the dirt, and I could no longer tell if I was looking up towards the cruel stars, down at the earth, or witnessing the slaughter before me, for my sight was veiled by a coating of blood, and my senses were clouded by the rush of adrenaline, though I could do nothing but sit in shock.
Breathe.
A chunk of meat smacked me in the shoulder.
Breathe.
An ear bounced off of my forehead.
Breathe.
An opened artery sprayed blood across my face in a line.
Breathe.
My eyes recognized four pigs on the fringe of the conflict abandoning their course for what was left of Jackie and I saw turn to me, each foaming at the mouth like a rabid animal. I saw two get ripped away by two other pigs, but the remaining couple charged. The one that reached me first clamped its maw around my leg not a moment before the next reached it, bit into its neck, and thrashed it back and forth.
I couldn’t hear my own screams above the countless squeals of the hog pile and the constant wet ripping that resounded through the dark sky. Eventually, the pig that had bit me gave out with a squeal, but not before the lower half of my leg was snapped with one, final pull, and the pig behind then buried its face in the body of the dying hog before being dragged back into the conflict by another. I failed to even hear my cries of pain over the sounds of the fray; I knew I screamed only from the burning in my throat.
Breathe.
A second later, I was thrown by the arm and crashed against the soggy earth several feet away from the conflict. For a moment, I wondered if I was alive, or if the world I was seeing around me was really Hell, and I was a damned soul being punished for my sins. At that, I blacked out, and entered a timeless, dreamless slumber that sent the world back into the buzzing mayhem I had felt before the carnage.
I opened my eyes some brief time later to find that the buzzing persisted in my ears while awake. Perspiring heavily from the heat, I found I was lying on my back on the ground, facing the burning remains of my house. The buzzing was really the rush of flames lapping at the sky and the crackling of embers as the roaring fire pulled them out of sight.
“Swine,”
The voice, which rang impossibly clear in the noise of the night, above the roar of the inferno and the sounds of the approaching sirens, had come from but a few feet behind the back of my moist head. Even after all that had transpired, the word made my hair stand on end, for it was spoken with a voice that could snuff out the stars if it were to say that they ought to stop shining.
I turned my head to face behind me, groaning sharply from the pain, to see a man atop a mountain of hundreds of mutilated hogs. The pile ran with a constant stream of blood and feces, which dripped slowly over the terraced stack of corpses to form a small lake underneath, the edge of which lapped my face with miniature waves of gore.
“. . . they never learn.”
Then, the man smiled, and I realized with horror that his legs resembled those of ruminants.
And atop his head rested two ebony horns, glistening in the moonlight.

‎ ‎‎‎[📖First ⏮️Previous Next⏭️]
‎
In the abandoned courtyard, overgrown with weeds and vines creeping up the crumbling stone walls, Ji Wuye squinted against the glare of the setting sun.
‎
His crimson eyes carefully appraised Song Jia, lingering on the confident set of her jawline. He crossed his arms over his chest, the taut muscles in his forearms betraying his intense focus as he studied her stance. Finally, he turned his head away, gaze drawn to the fiery crimson hues streaking across the evening sky.
‎
"I refuse," he stated flatly, the words clipped and decisive.
‎
He started to turn away, preparing to enter the living quarters. But Song Jia wasn't about to let him off so easily. Her delicate brows furrowed into a petulant pout as she quickly blocked his path.
‎
"Why?" she demanded, planting her feet squarely on the wooden deck. "Are you afraid? Or is it because I'm one realm higher than you?" She taunted him with a challenging gleam in her eyes. "Fine, I'll hold back!"
‎
Before Ji Wuye could react, Song Jia grabbed a fistful of his martial robe and yanked him towards her, leaping up to throw her arms around his neck.
‎
Her lithe body pressed against his as she stared up at him insistently, demanding an explanation with those fierce eyes of hers.
‎
Observing her demanding state, the pout on those full lips, the spark of competitive fire within her gaze, Ji Wuye couldn't help an inward chuckle. 'Ah yes, this is just how she is.'
‎
Those looks and eyes were hungry for challenge; she didn't even mind her position as a woman right now.
‎
Based on his knowledge in the previous timeline, Song Jia, unlike the more reserved and elegant Mu Lan Rou, was an unabashed training maniac - clearly influenced by her demanding Master.
‎
While the other sect geniuses postured with arrogant pride, rarely deigning to challenge each other without gravest provocation, Song Jia thrived on battle.
‎
She grew stronger through constant clashes, eventually reaching the point where she was on par with even Du Chen at his peak. Her meteoric rise had earned her the nickname 'Dark Horse of the Wind' among the younger generation.
‎
Ji Wuye pondered quietly, glancing between the vivid sunset painting the sky in brilliant hues and Song Jia, looking so utterly desperate to goad him into a fight that she would likely pester him incessantly until he agreed.
‎
'Well, there are actually many benefits to sparring with her instead of just observing,' he mused, recalling the unique and formidable sword art that made her so superior among her peers.
‎
However, they were standing in the hallowed Kunlun sect, and Song Jia was still keeping her true martial art tightly under wraps here.
‎
If his memory served, at this point in the timeline she remained outwardly curious and eager to learn the Kunlun sword art.
‎
The corner of Ji Wuye's lips curled upwards in a playful smirk as his gaze returned to Song Jia's fiery expression.
‎
"What benefits do I get from wasting my time with meaningless sparring instead of preparing for the upcoming Tower challenge?" He knew full well his honeyed mask of kindness had slipped in that moment, shamelessly revealing his intent to take advantage of her.
‎
Contrary to his expectations, instead of looking troubled by his transparently question, the desperate, pleading look in Song Jia's eyes suddenly vanished.
‎
In its place, a sly, self-satisfied smile bloomed as if she had been anticipating and preparing for just such an opportunity.
‎
"Hmm, how about some insight into the Kunlun sword art?" she purred silkily.
‎
"As a second realm martial artist and a dedicated disciple who trains rigorously with the sword every single day..." She paused, grinning impishly. "Well, let's just say I may have gleaned a few pointers I'd be happy to share. How about that?"
‎
'Pointers, huh?' Ji Wuye could practically smell the scheme she was concocting. 'Well, having her assistance isn't the worst idea, but I don’t need that,' he pondered inwardly.
‎
"Rather than that, let's just say you'll owe me a favor," he replied smoothly, his mind already plotting how to leverage this situation to his advantage in the upcoming events.
‎
‘If I can acquire that sword art through this spar, it may spare me from having to scheme.’ He thought inwardly.
‎
Meanwhile, Ji Wuye's nonchalant words visibly caused Song Jia's playful smirk to freeze. The bravado drained from her expression, leaving her features stiff and solemn as the weight ofhis statement sank in.
‎
Slowly, carefully, she brought her hands together in a formal cupped gesture, holding them at chest level as she met Ji Wuye's piercing stare.
‎
"You have my promise," she stated simply, all levity gone from her tone.
‎
For a martial artist, owing a favor was no trivial matter. It was a debt of honor, of one's spiritual essence. Left unfulfilled, such a debt could become a grievous hindrance to breaking through to higher realms or achieving true enlightenment.
‎
Ji Wuye held no such concerns over her vow. A martial artist's word, once given so formally, was as inviolable as an unbreakable contract. It bound her to him for life if need be.
‎
Song Jia held his gaze firmly. "But in return..." She paused, dark brows creasing in consternation as memories of Ji Wuye's earlier clash with Qin Bai surfaced in her mind's eye. "Show me your real strength. No more holding back."
‎
Ji Wuye held Song Jia's intense gaze steadily as she scrutinized him. "The way you stumbled earlier," she began slowly, eyes narrowing.
‎
"Your right leg muscle tensed first instead of your left, as if you'd predicted the move beforehand." She shook her head slightly.
‎
"And when you accidentally pointed out the center of Qin Bai's foreign magical art...I sensed a faint flicker of Qi emanating from your Lower Dantians region."
‎
A look of certainty settled over her delicate features. "It's too obvious you were holding back your true abilities."
‎
As Song Jia methodically pointed out the flaws and hints that had given away his deception, Ji Wuye didn't look the least bit shocked or caught off guard.
‎
Instead, a low chuckle rumbled up from his chest as he inwardly laughed at her perception.
‎
'Well, she is his disciple after all. There's no way I could fully hide my level from her piercing gaze,' he admitted to himself, knowing full well that the bluff which could fool even an Elder or Inner Disciple would never work on Song Jia.
‎
Song Jia held his gaze firmly, her eyes burning with resolve. "I know it wasn't just a coincidence that you slipped up like that," she stated plainly.
‎
"I don't know why you're hiding your real strength, but I promise not to reveal your secret." She paused, giving a slight shake of her head. "What I want now is simply to improve myself."
‎
Her words rang with sincerity and the focused intensity of one truly dedicated to the martial path. Seeing the familiar fire in her eyes, the fervent desire to constantly hone her skills, Ji Wuye couldn't help the satisfied smile that quirked his lips.
‎
'Ah yes, that's the Song Jia I knew,' he thought fondly.
‎
In addition to her fighting maniac trait, despite the cutthroat competition between the great sects and their geniuses, despite the clashing ideologies and selfish ambitions that so often put them at cross-purposes, Song Jia remained steadfastly unmoved by such trivial concerns.
‎
She didn't indulge in scheming or assassinations, never stooped to tarnishing a rival's reputation through slanderous words or underhanded actions. Her only obsession was the pursuit of greater martial prowess.
‎
"So be it," Ji Wuye replied evenly, sensing that events were unfolding in his favor. A sly grin spread across his features as he added, "But in that case...I hope you can also enlighten me with insights into the legendary sword art of the fabled WindBlade Emperor."
‎
The hopeful smile instantly froze on Song Jia's lips as her eyes went wide with shock and disbelief. She stared at Ji Wuye, rendered momentarily speechless by his surprising request.
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎
‎ ‎‎‎[📖First ⏮️Previous Next⏭️]

I know I should have been ecstatic.
My mother’s eyes swam with gratitude and yet mine were always cast to the ground, burning holes into crayon-ridden patches of carpet we refused to clean. We’d barely dared to dream during those silent dinners without Willow, the jarring sound of clumsy cutlery echoing through our now too-empty house, conversation seeming pointless without her skipping around the dinner table begging for the attention I gave her too little of, thumbs ghosting over my phone instead.
I want to reach back in time and wrench my head from my shoulders when I think of her begging to show me a cartwheel, watching myself roll my eyes instead of grabbing her up and memorising her face because she would be dead soon. Days of torture turned to weeks and Willow was gone, lost to someplace only our terrible imaginations could conjure up. She was dead but we were ghosts, haunting our own house with pale apparitions of ourselves, eating to live and speaking only to fill the silence. She was colour and the world redrew itself in black and white for the three of us. Life was over.
Until it wasn’t.
The news she was missing had never really caught on outside the walls of our little town, so when the local policeman came to our doorstep, it was without fanfare. On the very first day she vanished, the officer leading the investigation found a small pair of gloves - her gloves - by the treacherous river that wound through the woods. To them, the investigation was over before it even began, no need to alert the press or sully the town with sad posters. The world chugged along without us, utterly unbothered, and we crumbled into thousands of pieces.
But, as the rain-soaked policeman uttered on a Tuesday evening, Willow had returned, found in a patch of woods smeared with mud and blood and asking to come back to our home. She led the police to this house, and as everyone yelled in unison, she's back. It’s what my parents choked out in desperate, relieved sobs I’d never heard fill our house up before. It’s what all the paperwork stated, endless days of making sure everything was above board.
It seemed I was the only naysayer staring into this girl’s eyes and knowing with every fibre of my being that this was not my Willow sitting cross-legged on our family sofa. She looked like her - eerily so. But it was off, it was wrong. Her chin a little too pointy, her gaze a little too cold. She was not my bright, bubbly little sister dressed head to toe in pink.
But she said she was. She said it with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, eyes which sparkled just a shade or two off Willow’s. Her voice was a semitone lower, but that’s because it’s been two years and voices change, my mother insisted. Her chin-length hair now flowed far past her shoulders in that same chocolate hue, a length Willow would gasp at if she saw. This stranger wandered straight into our house, pulled on my sister’s too-small clothes and played pretend, pulling the strings on everyone but me.
The first night was something out of a horror movie, the heaviest sense of dread settling like lead in my stomach. Bile rose into my throat as she skipped into the living room, settling herself in Willow’s seat and tugging impatiently at the hem of my sister’s favourite dress. I’d bought it for her on a spontaneous shopping trip, watching her eyes light up at all the little sunflowers lining the collar. She’d been giddy, and now a stranger’s fingernails dug into the fabric, leaving marks I’d never get rid of. No longer would that little dress smell like Willow, because it was going to smell like her.
“Come to the table,” my mother insisted in a too-jovial tone, eyes more alight than I’d seen them in years. My father nodded a silent agreement, perhaps a bit more muted than she was, and I had to swallow down my fury, my confusion. I had to. Six eyes bore into mine and the chair scraped as I sat down and this wasn’t my sister. She stared over her plate at me with a hollow smile, eyes devoid of any real emotion. Her fingers drummed on the mahogany, a disjointed rhythm I’d never heard despite sitting across from my sister for nine years.
“I missed you.”
Her words were sickly sweet, head tilted slightly to the side. Her gaze felt almost challenging, but my mother’s eyes brimmed with tears as she nodded vigorously, fork hanging in mid-air.
“Oh gosh, you wouldn’t believe-” she gulped her words down, overwhelmed, “you’ve dreamed of a family dinner, haven’t you, love?” she regarded me almost desperately, fingers trembling. And I had, of course. I’d cried a thousand tears for my baby sister, but the girl swinging her legs inches from mine sitting in my sister’s clothes was not the girl I’d sobbed for. When her foot brushed mine accidentally, thousands of goosebumps erupted over my skin because it was new, wrong.
“I’d love to hear where you’ve been,” I dared whisper into the silence. My mother gasped, fork clattering noisily onto her plate.
“Mr Matthews said-”
“Yeah, and if Willow ever turns up, I’ll keep quiet about it,” I snapped, eyeing this wild animal before me. She sucked in a mighty breath, and I swore I felt her gaze prickle me. But it was only seconds before her eyes became doe-like; wide and comical.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she uttered sadly, looking to my mother for reassurance. Her lip quivered, hands shook. It was almost laughable how overzealous her performance was and yet my father admonished me, snapping at me to leave while my mother gathered up the intruder in her arms, clutching at her so she’d never leave. I watched the family before me, new and being invented before my eyes.
As I left, she smirked right at me.
Nobody believed me. Not on the second day when I walked in and saw her doing perfect cartwheels in the living room, something Willow had been utterly hopeless at. She must have learned my mother chirped, scrubbing dishes so vigorously I swore she was leaving cracks. Nobody blinked on the third day when she locked herself in the bathroom and claimed to be too sick to head to the station to kickstart the rigorous medical testing. But it was the fourth night that haunted my dreams, driving me even closer to the edge I’d been dancing along. I’d largely managed to avoid her, other than the odd lingering gaze as we crossed paths in the hallway or a wry smile as we brushed shoulders.
Until there she was at 2 am, standing over me as I slept.
I didn’t scream. Didn’t startle her into dropping her soulless smile as she gazed upon me, staring straight down mere inches from my face. So close I could feel her hot breath on my nose, feel the animosity coming off her in waves. She didn’t move when I clocked her, didn’t take a step back or pretend to be doing anything other than pressing her face into mine in the dead of night.
“Why are you here?” I whispered, and we both knew I meant more than standing in my room. She laughed, a little giggle I’d never heard leave Willow’s mouth.
“I wanted to come home, silly,” she hissed back, breath tickling my cheek horribly. I swallowed, desperate not to show the fear which was beginning to course through me.
“You aren’t Willow,” I gritted my teeth and only then did she pull back a little, mock-hurt lining her features.
“That’s a shame,” she frowned, “You’re my favourite big sister.”
My hands trembled under the covers. “And how many sisters have you had?”
She paused then, a slow smile spreading across her face. “Oh. Lots.”
I don’t think I’ve ever felt as unsafe in my life as I did in that moment, watching her eyes glimmer with something truly evil, a sick sort of pride. I didn’t find my voice for a long time but when I did it was small and timid, a shadow of my confidence from only hours earlier.
“And what do you want with us?”
She thought on it for a moment, tilting her head back and forth as though the question was funny. Even in the dark, she looked wrong, as though someone had built her to look like my beloved Willow and misremembered her slightly, getting the angles and details wrong. She lay her fingers on my forehead, painfully drumming that same pattern on my skin as all those days ago. Shamefully, I was too scared to move, even as her fingers jammed into my skull.
“I like your Mum,” she mused, giggling childishly as she caught her mistake, “Our Mum. I think she’s going to like me more than your sister.”
But before I could react, she was gone, skipping towards the door in the wrong nightclothes, only turning back to casually ruin my life.
“She’s dead, by the way,” she murmured into the silence, shrugging, “It was painful, too. Sorry for your loss.”
And she left, leaving me aghast as I festered in my blanket, desperately grabbing Willow’s teddy bear from beside my bed and clutching it to my chest. I sobbed myself to sleep that night, face buried in her favourite toy and knowing for sure that she was never coming home.
It only got worse.
One day, I came home and my father wouldn’t speak, only managing to stare at his new daughter as she smirked at him from the shadow of Willow’s bedroom. He startled at me in the hallway, scurrying back into his study. When I called for him, he shook his head. “Hang out with your friends, go back outside,” he’d ordered, voice cracking. He slammed the door behind him and that was that. I was left to stare into Willow’s room, locking gazes with a pair of empty eyes sneering at me from under the bed, dark shadows only giving me a glimpse at her little limbs all cracked at the wrong angles as she twisted herself to fit where she shouldn’t.
When I tried to speak to my mother, she grew more and more irate, once physically covering my mouth with her hand.
“Mum, please see that she isn’t who she-” but she muffled my words out of existence with a trembling hand, sending me a subtle no with a quick shake of the head. She pleaded towards me with her eyes but I realised quickly that her steely gaze had fallen behind me. I didn’t need to see the parasite in my peripheral to feel her gaze burning holes into the back of my head. And I wasn’t imagining it - my mother was fearful, finally turning back to me with a steely resolve.
“Everything is fine,” she murmured, speaking a thousand words with only her eyes and voice dropping to a whisper, “we will make it work.”
That night, the stranger wearing my sister’s favourite bracelet gleefully pushed a piece of paper to the centre of the dinner table, eyes lit up with glee. “I drew us!” she cried, greedily watching for our reactions.
My mother gave nothing away, only visibly swallowing as she drank in the paper, white-knuckled grip on her spoon. My father stood from his seat, striding from the table and slamming the front door behind him as he left us, perhaps for the last time. I, however, dared pick it up, regarding every horrific line and frantic scratching before me.
It was us. Except the people labelled mummy and daddy were standing without heads, rivers of blood dripping down their torn torsos. My double sat in the corner of the paper, a pair of gouged-out eyes lying on the floor next to my terrified frame. Our stranger stood smiling with a large rake in her hand, head bent to the side and wearing my sister’s dress. But somehow, worst of all, was the picture of a little girl crumpled in the corner, a frown etched upon her face. Willow the scrawl above her stated, and I could hardly bear it.
I don’t remember much of it now, just the screaming and crying, lifting whatever wasn’t nailed down and hurling it across the room, watching it splinter into a thousand pieces. My mother cradling me as she dragged me upstairs, letting me bawl into her familiar sweet-smelling cardigan, clutching her as though she’d leave me too. The swirling wrongness engulfing our house, swallowing us back into the clutches of grief. But my all-encompassing comfort disappeared because when that horrible little thing downstairs called a desperate ‘mummy?’, my mother went rigid.
“You don’t have to go,” I pleaded through bleary eyes, but her sad smile told me that she did.
“I prayed two years for my baby girl to come home,” she’d said in a thick voice, clutching my hands as if begging me to understand. I’ll always wish I tried harder to keep her in that room with me, because the moment I loosened my grasp, I sealed her fate. The thing downstairs called and she offered me a sad smile, fingers brushing mine before she disappeared through the darkness of the door.
I never saw her again.
Before my eyes closed and sleep claimed me, I saw the head of Willow’s beloved bear discarded on the floor across the room, three feet from its body. My heart sank into my stomach and I drifted off into nightmares, feeling somehow, it was all over. When I awoke, slick with sweat and dread, she was there in the darkest corner of my room. Almost-Willow.
Nighttime shrouded her but I could see the blood, even in the dim light. Something glinted in her hand under the glow of moonlight, and her eyes blazed with something bigger than the both of us. Twelve minutes passed and she didn't move, her relentless, empty stare locked onto me as she swayed back and forth.
I knew that the second I moved she was going to lunge. Somehow, I knew that’s what Mum did. That’s why the room fell into such uneasy silence, because I was utterly alone, and when I held my breath, I swore could I hear the shift of fabric. Yes, she was definitely closer to me than she had been five seconds ago. If I squinted, I could see her feet shuffling towards me, in time with my erratic breathing.
I ran, of course, limbs jelly as I sprinted past my parents' room, practically choking on the stench of blood. She locked all the doors, sealed all the windows. I don’t even remember how I made it to the hospital, sodden and picking glass out of my skin as a kind nurse led me to a room, concern etched into her features as she promised to return for me as soon as she called the police. It’s hard to type with blood trickling down my phone, fragments of the upstairs window jammed into my flesh.
It’s over, I’m sure. But somehow, with every second that passes, I feel closer to my sister. The real one. Not the one with her face pressed into the third-story window of my hospital room, face contorted in bloody, evil glee.

Spare miscs
s after the name = displayable item
Irradiated Bonemeal s
Burned Venison and Tato stew s
Venison and Tato stew s
Nuka cola Vaccinated s
Red rocked core s
Uplink Module s
Flight Recorder s
Module Instructions s
Uniform Voucher s
Fire breather kit ticket s
Potassium s
Phosphorus s
Nitrogen s
"Evidence" s
Robot Part
Poison Supply s
Buffout Supply s
Albino Radstag Blood s
Army Training Graduation Papers s
Serum Z
Beckett's Belongings s
Bobby Pin Box s
Bolton Greens Centerpiece
Bolton Greens Place Settings
Broken Uplink
Cargo s
Claim Token s
Commendation s
Creature Attractant Recipe s
Creature Deterrent Recipe s
Dove Necklace s
Devil's Blood Vial s
Earle's Pocket Watch
Dry Kindling
Damaged Mainframe Core s
Edwin's Diary s
Edwin's Key s
Eugene's Letter
Feral Ghoul Blood Sample s
Graveyard Shovel s
Greens
Growth Enhancer Recipe s
Growth Suppressor Recipe s
Heating Coil s
Inert Bombs s
Irradiated Ore s
Item for Allay s
Lou's Remote Detonator s
Luca's Explosives a
Mainframe Core s
Moist Radkelp s
Mole Rad Blood Sample a
Mr. Fuzzy Token s
Nuka cade token s
Nuka-World Toy Truck
Osmosis Kit s
Portable Power Pack s
Pressure Gauge s
Scanner Upgrade s
Solvent Attractant s
Solvent Deterrent s
Solvent Enhancer s
Solvent Suppressor s
Strange Book s
Toad Eye
Token s
Toxic Barrel
Toxic Sludge
Trench Mask s
Type-T Fuse s
U.S.S.A. Beacon s
U.S.S.A. Crew Dog Tags
Unstable Mixture s
Uplink
Valid Ballot s
Weapon case
Wolf blood sample s

Just needed to vent this out to other people who might be struggling like me. Summer is here which means bombardment with seemingly perfect tan people with even complexions (every swimsuit and warm weather clothing ad ever!)
I'm naturally very pale and have been fighting this my whole life. From tanning beds in my 20s (yikes so bad) to now religious use of sunless tanner in my 30s, I feel so embarrassed and ashamed of my natural skin tone, like I feel ugly. To make matters worse, I have rosacea so my face is constantly red. I also get hormonal acne on my chin and forehead. I have premature lines on my forehead and under my eyes as well that I get Botox for (something I missed dearly while pregnant and breastfeeding my first child this past year and a half.)
I have a new case of keratosis pilaris on my thighs so they look like red, bumpy chicken skin that never seems to go away no matter how many different types of moisturizer I slather on them and how often (or exfoliate.) Derm says to try to avoid shaving the area and also sunless tanner if I can so guess I'm supposed to just rock white, hairy, red bumpy thighs all summer :)
I have three small sebaceous hyperplasia spots (they look like flesh colored pimples) on my forehead (to me, they feel huge and obvious.) I just got these electrocauterized today but the dermatologist said there's no guarantee they won't come back (I've already been unsuccessful with C02 laser in treating them.)
I also have what I just learned today are dermatofibromas...three on my legs. They are like permanent raised moles that the derm said aren't harmful (as in not cancerous) but shouldn't be removed because they are essentially a scar from trauma (like bug bites) so removing them will likely cause a bigger scar. So I guess I just live them for the rest of forever.
Last fun fact: I'm allergic to the bites of the new invasive mosquito species where I live in SoCal so instead of just a little itchy red bump, I get a huge, hot swelling that blisters and then leaves a crazy dark mark. And they LOVE to bite me.
So that's all super fun! I see people lounging on the beach with their tans, smooth legs and bumpless skin and I just want to cry. Why can't that be me? I don't understand why I was born with all these issues. I take the best care of my skin that I can...I drink tons of water, eat well, sleep as much as possible (for a new mom), avoid sun exposure and always invest in the best products (simple, non irritating formulations that I have vetted and a very paired down routine.)
It makes enjoying summer so stressful. I would kill to be able to just vacation in Hawaii and frolic on the beach in a bikini looking great. Does anyone else feel like they are cursed with overly problematic skin and feel helpless to do anything about it? Commiserate with me please LOL

Let me start off by addressing the title. Yes I am an arsonist/pyromaniac. Ever since I was young I’ve had an unhealthy obsession with fire and anything that goes bang. I can remember being as young as 7 years old and stealing my parents match’s to light them and just watch them burn out and to also light small things like individual leafs and sticks on fire. I used to take match’s and lighters to elementary school and do the same thing with some other delinquent friends that liked the same thing. The habit slowly progressed from lighting small fires into bigger and bigger ones. Before I knew it by the time I was in middle and high school I was starting fires that required the police and fire department to show up.
I grew up by the woods and that definitely didn’t help but most of my fires got put out before they could get wildly uncontrollable. Mostly just burned down a few trees before the fire department showed up and put it out. Haven’t got caught for it yet though. My main way of starting these fires was with a cigarette or a joint that I would smoke until I would get it down enough and tie it around a piece of yarn. That yarn would then start burning like a fuse until it hit a pile of dry leafs that I doused in lighter fluid. That shit would light right up and everything else around it I tell you what. I guess I got addicted to the rush of getting away with this type of shit. I’ve also been involved with wrong crowds and done tons of other dumb shit that I won’t get into on this post cause frankly it would be way to long. Also before any of you guys tell me I’m a lunatic and I’m fucked up and got some sort of childhood trauma I’m not addressing “you should go to therapy” blah blah blah, I know. I know I’m fucked up in the head for doing shit like this and it probably is some un delt with childhood trauma. I’ve been to therapy many times for this and many other things like my anger issues I just don’t really believe in it and honestly think it’s for pussies. So save all your preaching bullshit for someone else that cares. That’s not the point of this post.
I’m in my early 20’s now and recently I’ve been going around to abandoned building in my town and towns around mine starting fires there. I was born and raised in a town outside of a major city in western Massachusetts. I’m not gonna name the city in case this makes it to the cops and they can track me down in some way but I think it’s important to state that the tons of abandoned mills and failed businesses that are all around here are great targets for someone like me. Especially since I’ve upgraded from my fires in the woods to more risky targets. Hell I’m probably doing these fucks a favor so they can collect the insurance on it without hiring some crackhead do it and risking them snitching when they inevitably gets caught. These guys are getting it from me for free!
I need to talk about this weird thing I experienced lately though. Old abandoned buildings often have stories of being haunted and are overall unsettling no matter where you are. Just something about the nature of the fucked up things that happened there whether it’s an old insane asylum where the patients where tourtured or old mills where some worker got grinned up in a giant machine and now haunts the building. Along with the large population of homeless people that stay in the buildings so they can sleep and have a place to get high for the night. The eerie silence and every little thing that goes bump in the night is enough to make just about anyone scared even if it is just all bullshit story’s. Anyways my last burning I went to one of the old loading docks/storage buildings that was part of my towns textile mill. The small building was separate from the huge main building that workers used to actually make the textiles and was right next to a bunch of other storage and loading docks just like it. I broke a window and climbed into the smaller building with my lighter fluid, my yarn fuse, some kindling, and my pack of cigarettes that I would use to start the fire. As I jumped through the window into the large open area of the loading dock I see all the dust particles going right by my phones flash light. Nobody’s been here in years I think to myself. Immediately I see empty beer bottles, some plastic chairs and other trash scattered around all from other kids who broke in here to chill a little bit and have a good time. Now all I had to do was find a good corner that had some flammable materials that could get this shit ablaze.
This place was perfect it’s almost like they set it up for me I was like a kid in a candy store. These dumb fucks stacked all the wooden chairs and wooden tables that all the old workers used to work on on one side that covered damn near 1/3rd of the building. All old decrepit wood that was ready to be set ablaze. I doused a lot of it with lighter fluid and set up my make shift lighting device when I hear it. “Jackson. What are you doing?” Like the voice of a disapproving authority figure that was also questioning how I could be so stupid. It was so clear like someone was leaning right over me talking right into my ear. I jumped back expecting a cop or some security guard to be standing there I turned around expecting to be put in cuffs right at that second. When I turned around though nobody was there I frantically shined my phones flashlight around and it only confirmed that it was only me in the building surrounded by deafening silence. “Must be my imagination” I said. Not my first time in these spooky buildings and thinking I heard something that isn’t really there. I recollected myself and went back to tying my half smoked cigarette to the yarn. As I see it start to light the yarn I run out of the building.
Like many other arsonists I get my kick out of seeing the fire spread and fully engulf the structure. I run to a nearby patch of trees and bushes where I hunker down to watch the place go up in flames and the inevitable fire engine or 2 show up to frantically put out my work. Just as I thought, the place went right up. It was great just like I thought it would be. It was beautiful. Watching the flames reach as high as 3 stories I sat and admired as this small one story building was up in flames I was loving it. As I heard the sirens of the fire engines in the distance I layed down further covering myself in the brush waiting to see them put out my hard work. I don’t blame them it is their job after all. I’m just glad to see them actually doing something for once instead of sitting on their ass and collecting their pay checks for doing nothing.
Here’s where things get especially strange though. As I lay down on my stomach still admiring this huge fire (honestly some of my best work) I saw something. From the garage door opening of the loading dock I saw 3 figures appear out of the flame. All of them dark black silhouettes obviously visible in contrast to the yellow and orange flame that they were standing behind. One a tall male adult figure, the other a slightly less tall female figure and the last one a small child like figure all standing right next to each other. They stood there for what felt like minutes on end looking right at me with their non existent eyes. Just staring, knowing that I was trying to hide in the bushes while the sirens in the background grew louder. I laid there on the ground stricken with a sense of dread and overall fear as they stood there. The large male figure raised his hand and pointed right at me. I knew it was directed at me. I was shaking at this point from fear. A fear that I don’t know if I’ve ever felt in my life time. The sirens grew louder and louder I could see the red and white lights off in the distance the fire engines had to be a few hundred yards away. I looked away and started shaking my head around feeling that I had to be seeing things. I closed my eyes and started telling myself that I was just going crazy and that these things in front of me where not actually there. I opened up my eyes to see the fire engines and police arriving and looked specifically at the loading dock to see that the silhouettes where gone. I watched the firemen frantically getting out and hooking up their hoses to put out my flame. I watched as they methodically fought the flames like they have had to fight many of my works in the past.
When my work of art was fully put out I snaked away and walked back to my car still in shock from what I just saw.

Chapter 1

Concept art for Sybil
Of Men and Ghost Ships, Book 1: Chapter 23
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As he approached the lift doors, Alen felt like he was caught between a rock and a hard place. Or, perhaps better put, between a ghost ship and an Erik. If the large alien felt any trepidation about approaching the "forbidden decks," he sure didn't show it. "Do you guys think we'll see any actual ghosts? Ooh, or maybe monsters? Or maybe it'll turn out our 'Captain" is really a madman, and this whole ship is his twisted idea of a fun house designed to slowly drive all its inhabitants to madness? That might be fun!"
Alen didn't know why, but for some reason, having Erik double down on all the horrible things that might happen actually seemed to lessen his fear, even if they were disturbingly possible. Even Vanessa seemed to jump in. "I find myself doubting this ship could have any monsters scarier than you or I, let alone both of us together. However, although I have seen no evidence of the phenomena, I suppose that does not preclude the possibility of the ghosts you mentioned. Though could anything without substance offer any more in the way of a threat than a mild startlement?"
At that, Alen felt the need to interject. "You know, in most mythologies I'm familiar with, belittling ghosts is usually seen as a bad idea... Let's just say I'm scared enough for the three of us and call it good..."
Erik slapped Alen on the back, propelling him forward a few steps. "Ah, don't let your fear get the better of you! That's how they get ya! Sometimes you just gotta laugh in the face of danger and put it in its place!"
Alen looked back at the large alien with minor annoyance. "Easy for you to say, with your bone-like plate mail and muscles that dwarf your average bodybuilder!"
Vanessa tilted her head. "Among my people, it is usually not the builders of bodies that are overly muscled but rather the larger guardian constructs. They have more need of strength when overpowering their advirsaries."
Alen had no idea how to respond to that. "I didn't... I mean, they don't... I don't..."
Erik laughed. "See, you have to tell jokes more often? Alen was so surprised; it broke him!" He then leaned over to Alen, holding up one hand as if speaking to him conspiratorially, despite the face Alen was confident Vanessa could still overhear. "At least I think she's joking when she says things like that. She can be hard to get a read on!"
Alen had to agree. Even now, he had no idea if she was sincere or if that had been a joke. For her part, Vanessa didn't seem interested in offering any clarity on the matter.
Once they reached the lift, Alen looked it up and down a moment before toggling the button to activate it. It hummed to life and only took a moment to reach their position. The doors opened, and for half a moment, he expected something to jump out at them, but when nothing did, he spoke into the empty lift. "Uh, hello? Captain Carter said that if we needed anything, I was supposed to be the go-between us and you all, so I'm just heading up to speak with him, is all... I'm not looking to cause any trouble or anything..."
He waited a moment before Erik laughed again. "I don't think the empty metal tube will answer you any time soon! Only one thing for us to do!"
Alen could think of a few things, including going back and thinking this through a bit more or even just waiting for Carter to put in an appearance again, though who knew how long that would take? Perhaps they'd already be in a fight long before he got a chance to speak to the Captain, and by then, it would be too late to make any requests...
With no other options presenting themselves and unwilling to simply give up with Erik and Vanessa right there to see, Alen swallowed his fear and stepped into the lift. Behind him, the two oversized aliens also entered. However, while Alen had been afraid Vanessa would crowd them in the smaller lift area, she pulled her eight legs in tight around herself in a way that made her look like some kind of odd alien statue.
A moment of slight vertigo later, they arrived on the bridge deck. Alen had been hoping for a straight shot to the bridge, as any sane ship would be designed, but of course, there was no such luck here. The corridor seemed to stretch both right and left forever into a gloomy shroud that made it appear as if this section of the ship hadn't been traversed in quite some time.
Alen was just stealing himself to step out when Erik beat him to it, followed closely by Vanessa. The larger alien looked around and grinned. "Well, this isn't too bad! It makes me wish I could see in the dark as well as you humans, though. You'll have to keep me from bumping my shins on something in this gloom!"
Alen was finally stirred to motion when the door started closing on him. He slapped the door, which thankfully opened back up rather than trying to close on his fingers like he had just started to imagine, and he too stepped out. Both Erik and Vanessa looked at him expectantly. "So where to boss?"
Alen looked at the big guy with mild confusion. "Boss?"
Erik nodded. "Yeah, the way I see it, you were put in charge, right? Or would you rather I still call you kid?"
Alen blinked a few times. "Well, I'm not a huge fan of kid, but 'boss' just sounds weird. Alen would be fine."
Erik laughed. "Aright, Alen it is...boss!"
Realizing he might as well give up while he was only this far behind, Alen sighed and nodded off into the gloom. "Well, straight ahead, I guess."
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Alen wasn't sure just how long they'd been walking. It felt like it had been close to an hour, but there was no way this ship was that long. He'd seen it from the outside, so it must just be his mind playing tricks on him. It was just about then that they reached a dead end. Alen looked at the wall, which was blocking their progress, with annoyance. There had been a few rooms they'd passed by, but there hadn't been any hallways or turn-offs he was aware of. After a moment, he turned around and looked at his two companions. "Maybe I just got turned around, and now we're at the back of the ship? I guess we should head back the way we came..."
Erik grinned and nodded, though the expression looked all the creepier in the gloom. "That makes sense! Lead the way, boss. We're right behind you!"
Alen was a little thankful that Erik's low light vision probably meant the alien probably couldn't see when he rolled his eyes. The last thing he needed was to encourage the oversized man right now.
With no other option presenting itself, Alen turned and started walking back toward where they'd come from, but they didn't get far before coming across a large crosspath that stumped Alen. He looked down both split-off paths with a frown while Erik echoed his thoughts. "Now, I might not see all that well in the dark, but I'm pretty sure this wasn't here a few minutes ago!"
Vanessa seemed to agree. "I have no such hindrance, and I can confirm this was not here when we came through originally."
Erik looked back and forth before offering his thoughts. "Well, we could all take a path..."
Both Vanessa and Alen spoke up loudly at the same time. "No!"
Erik had probably just been baiting them, but Alen didn't want to take the risk. Instead, he cleared his throat and spoke a little more calmly. "That's probably not a good idea. Even if one of us found the right path, there'd be no way to get word back to the other two, and we could end up just getting lost even worse. I think we should go all the way back down this single path first before considering any split-off sections. If that doesn't lead us anywhere, maybe we should go back down to our deck and plan this out a bit before we start exploring any hidden passages."
Erik laughed. "Well, that might not be as fun, but it does sound smart. Alright, lead on, oh bossman. We got your back!"
Alen somehow felt like "bossman" was a step-down. Maybe Erik had seen him roll his eyes after all... With a shake of his head, Alen decided to keep moving.
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This time, Alen was confident they'd traveled for longer than the first time, and yet they hadn't passed by the lift again. What was worse, the hallway seemed to be covered in old dried fluids that might have been oil and grease, but he suspected it was at least supposed to be something more organic in origin, and they were walking around all sorts of clutter that hadn't been here before, as if this portion of the hall had been abandoned in a hurry. At this point, the fear should be settling in, but Erik just kept needling him, and it was starting to get on his nerves. "Hey, boss. I think we passed the lift a while ago! Well, not the lift, but rather where it should have been. I think we're lost! How'd we get lost going in a straight line anyway? This is the lamest ghost ship I've ever been on!"
Finally, Alen turned around and snapped at him. "Yes, we're lost. I've noticed thank you! Now, do you have anything helpful to contribute, or do you just want to narrate this whole walk? And just how many ghost hips have you been on anyway?"
For a moment, Alen feared he might have pushed his luck, but Erik only grinned. "Heh, it worked!" Then he turned to Vanessa. "See? What did I tell ya?"
Alen looked back and forth. "What worked? What are you talking about?"
Vanessa seemed to sigh despite not breathing with lungs as Alen understood them. "Erik has long held a theory that annoyance is the opposite of fear. I believe he's been doing his best to pester you in order to keep you from getting too nervous."
Alen just stopped and looked back and forth between the two before settling with Vanessa. "You're kidding...right?" Then, turning to Erik, "She's kidding. That's not what you're doing, is it?"
Erik only grinned. Alen pinched the bridge of his nose as if to fight off a headache. "I don't know if I should thank you or curse you... Although, as much as I hate to admit it, it seems to work. But can we please find a less...obnoxious way of keeping me calm? I don't know if my blood pressure can handle this method of help much longer..."
Suddenly, the hallway was lit by an eerie green glow as a nearby room opened up. As Erik turned to look, Alen could swear that if he were just a little more cat-like, his ears would be perked forward, and the large alien's grin widened. "Oh, now that looks interesting. We don't have to go in, but can we at least check it out, boss?"
Alen rolled his eyes. "Why not? It's not like we have any idea where we are anymore, despite only walking in a straight line!"
As the trio approached the door, Alen wondered what fun new surprise the ship had in store for them next...
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Lol, poor Alen. He's not having the best day ever, though it's also pretty far from the worst...so far.
My Wiki has all my chapters and stories, including the short series and stories that I write for an occasional change of pace or style!
As a reminder, "Of Men and Dragons" Books 1 and 2 are available to purchase in e-book or physical form. (Both softcover and hardcovers are available!) Book 3 is almost done being edited, so I'll just have to get the cover art and formatting done, and it will be available to purchase as well! Hopefully, in no more than a month or two! (Barring more Amazon drama like last time... fingers crossed!)
OMAD Book 1: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09NCPP3PP
OMAD Book 2: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQ7FQ1ZJ

I will explain better my situation. I don't have a professional diagnosis, I have been in therapy in the past and have diagnosed with anxiety and depression and social anxiety. I did every test I could find on the internet, RAADS and others, and I always have high results on the sprectrum. I also confronted myself with other girls that are autistic and they said to me that they though I was autistic too.
But unfortunately, I am trying to inform about it and I discovered that a professional diagnosis costs over 1200 euros and for me those are like 3 months of working so it is not possible at all. I am trying to contact other autism associations though, and I really want to know if I am autistic because in this case everything in my life would make sense. I analyzed a lot of things about myself and read about autism, also, I resonate with autistic characters a lot (this since I was a child).
So, after this introduction, because I think I can benefit from it since I am starting to have really high levels of anxiety the question is: what are some tips for surviving a job in these cases? For example, I am feeling drained by the interactions, by the talking and the constant being aware of my facial expression, my tones, how much eye contact I do, how and how much I have to smile, and things like this. I need money and I have to find a way to live through all this stress, I just want to be at home alone doing my things or go for walks in nature when I decide and be unemployed but can't at the moment... In the past I always felt burned out at some point and had to rest for months. I don't think I even recovered yet from the jobs I did in the past years, but this job is actually less stressful compared to the others I did or I can find so I wanted to make it at least for a couple of months...
How do you manage these situations? Do you think medication (anxiety or depression meds) could help?