How are shutters attached

Sugar Lifestyle Forum

2014.06.01 18:59 gingerdaddy56 Sugar Lifestyle Forum

A forum where SDs and SBs discuss the sugar lifestyle, share experiences, and learn from one another
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2018.07.20 03:00 aredhel304 The MBTI Typing Subreddit

Welcome! We’re dedicated to helping people find their MBTI type. If you’re looking to get typed or like to type people, you’re in the right place!
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2013.10.31 02:33 ChaosScene How I Met Your Father

HIMYF (How I Met Your Father) subreddit for news, updates, and discussions.
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2024.05.11 17:34 blackthorn_orion The Nintendo Breakdown 2: An updated overview of confirmed, leaked, and rumored projects from Nintendo and its close partners

Hello again! About 6 months ago, I put together a Nintendo roundup that got some positive feedback, and with this week’s double-whammy of the Switch successor kinda being announced and a direct being confirmed for June, I figured now was as good a time as any to put out an updated version so folks can know where things stand and have something to chew on while they wait. My intent is to update this post after the June direct with any new information. Please let me know if anything's borked, as formatting big posts on reddit can get a bit wonky and some of these links are getting old
Nintendo Entertainment Planning and Development (EPD): Formed in 2015 as part of a restructuring that unified Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development (EAD) and Nintendo Software Planning and Development (SPD). When people talk about “in-house Nintendo”, this is usually what they mean. EPD groups are primarily small producedirector-led teams that then scale up and pull from a shared “pool” of developers as projects get further into development. EPD’s many sub-groups can essentially be divided into those that primarily develop their own games and those focused more on overseeing/collaborating with other studios (both non-EPD Nintendo studios as well as fully external developers), though there are exceptions and gray areas
Development-focused groups
Oversight and collaborative groups
Other Nintendo-owned Studios: Mario World outside of EPD
Close Partners and Frequent Collaborators: The Nintendo Keiretsu and Friends
Misc. Odds and Ends. Things that didn’t really fit anywhere else, big grain of salt for some of these
Engine Talk: Finally, it’s a bit esoteric but with game engines becoming an increasingly common point of conversation and speculation, I figured I’d put together a rundown of some of the engines used in Nintendo games. This isn’t a comprehensive list (esp. because many studios use proprietary engines that aren’t well-documented), but should give a general idea of who uses what to make what (shouts-out to OatmealDome on twitter for doing the datamining work whenever a new game comes out, and MondoMega on Famiboards for maintaining a useful graphic that collates most of this information) )
submitted by blackthorn_orion to GamingLeaksAndRumours [link] [comments]

2024.05.11 03:11 flippenphil (Offer) 50 rare & uncommon additions (Request) Bodies Bodies Bodies, the Marvels 4K, Poor Things, Priscilla, Sound of Freedom, the Untouchables, the whale, wish 4k, Devotion, Easter Sunday, the machine, redeeming love, Tin Cup, Trick r' Treat xml, Young Sherlock Holmes, New Releases & OFFERS

Updated: 05/11/2024
All Codes Traded for personal use only, rewards used & Codes are split
COMBO Films
MOVIES FN or MA
iTune Only MOVIES - No Port - Marked
GooglePlay Rare portions - NOT MA - Mention you want the slip with GP
TV Series Marked
FN Only
iTune Only
In Search Of LIST
submitted by flippenphil to uvtrade [link] [comments]

2024.05.10 11:48 CIAHerpes Something called the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System just flashed across my TV. It read out a list of rules.

My wife, Iris, sat on the couch next to me, holding the bowl of popcorn in her thin hands. On her other side, our little boy, Freddie, sat. He looked just like his mother, with the same dirty blonde hair and faraway eyes, like the eyes of a dreamer. The movie played across our flat-screen TV, some CGI comedy with talking penguins and llamas that could drive cars. It was some garbage from Disney I would never have watched in a million years, but Freddie liked it, so I suffered through it for him.
We had turned off all the lights in the house for the movie. Only the TV’s flickering colors illuminated the room, sending dancing shadows that flashed out behind us.
Suddenly, outside the living room window, a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, splitting a tree in our front yard in two. Light flooded in through the window as if the flash of a nuclear missile were ripping its way across the town. A crash rang out as the tree split down the middle, its massive branches tumbling down onto the lawn. I jumped as the ground shook. More lightning flashed nearby, hitting other houses and lawns on the street.
“Damn, there wasn’t supposed to be any storms,” I said in surprise. The TV had gone black, and now we sat in darkness. For a long moment, I thought the power had gone out.
Abruptly, it came back on with a roar of white noise and a flickering of static. The volume seemed to be increasing by itself, growing into a rushing cacophony like a waterfall. I saw Iris try to scream something, but I could only see her lips move.
As suddenly as it all started, it stopped. The standard “PLEASE STANDBY” screen with a rainbow of blocky colors behind it appeared. There was a clanging, ringing sound that emanated from the speakers, high-pitched and whining like tinnitus. Then text started appearing across the screen. At the same time, a deep, serious voice spoke in the background, like a radio announcer reporting on the death of a President.
“This is the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System,” the voice read grimly. “This is not a test. Level five activity has been reported in your area. Do not go outside. Close all blinds, shutters and windows. Lock all doors and close any attached garages. Do not open your doors except to military or police personnel with the proper insignia. Even if someone appears to be in distress, do not open your door to investigate or try to interfere in any way. A temporary quarantine is in effect for your area. Military and police assistance is on the way.
“To ensure the greatest chances of survival during this time of crisis, please abide by the following rules:
  1. If blood begins to pour under your door, go to a higher floor immediately. Avoid physical contact with the blood at all costs.
  2. All legitimate military and police personnel will have a special insignia on their helmets and jackets, an eye contained in a double-thumbed fist. Only accompany them if they have this insignia- otherwise, they are imposters.
  3. Avoid mirrors for the duration of the emergency.”
The voice cut out abruptly, slowing down in a mechanical whine. Static started flashing across the TV, covering the “PLEASE STANDBY” message that had returned in blocky letters. At that moment, the lights went out. They came back on a couple seconds later, brightening and dimming, before the power failed again. This time, the electricity did not come back on.
“What the fuck?” Iris whispered next to me, taking out her phone and shining the light across the dark living room. “That was pretty weird. Everything looks different outside, too. I was just outside an hour ago and the Moon didn’t look anything like that.” She pointed. I got up, realizing she was right. The nighttime sky outside looked strange. I looked out the front window, seeing the Moon was cast in a fluorescent orange light. The cloudless sky had a dark red glow to it, as if some kind of eerie smog had covered everything. I had seen similar things happen after massive forest fires in the past.
“What happened, Dad?” Freddie asked in his small voice. “Where’s the movie?”
“I think we lost power, little man,” I said, ruffling his hair in a nonchalant manner. I didn’t really believe the emergency broadcast, after all. I figured some teenager had hacked the TV station and decided to play a prank, or perhaps some disgruntled employee had done it on his last day as a kind of “Fuck you” to the station. I had heard of similar things happening before. It was somewhat strange how the power had gone out and the sky had changed, but I felt sure that it could all be logically explained.
Someone shrieked outside. I looked out onto the dark street, seeing the silhouette of someone running frantically down the middle of the street, zigzagging wildly. As the figure got closer, I realized it was a young woman. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties. She wore a white shirt and khakis. Her clothes were soaked in streams of blood that made the fabric cling to her trembling body. I saw a vicious gash bitten into her left shoulder, a wound so deep that the white bone peeked out through the ragged patches of flesh.
“Help me!” she wailed, her eyes wild and panicked. “Why won’t anyone help me?!” She staggered and fell forward, crying and bleeding all over the road. I was about to run outside to see what was wrong with the young woman when I saw another silhouette creeping up behind her.
It looked like the body of a man, but something was wrong. As he drew closer, I caught a glimpse of the man’s face through the dim light. The left side of it was rotted and decayed, while the right looked muscular and healthy. He wore a black suit that looked like little more than tatters. Pieces of it fell off in ragged strips. I could see his left hand was also decomposing. Whatever kind of sickness it was, it seemed to extend to the whole left side of his body.
The stiff, skeletal leg cracked as he dragged it behind him, silently drawing nearer to the young woman. The living side of his face split into an insane rictus grin as he looked down at her. He carried a blood-stained ax that dragged on the pavement behind him with a harsh, metallic groan.
“Get away from me!” the woman screamed at the abomination, trying to kick at him. But she looked weakened from blood loss, and her attempts were feeble and slow. The man laughed, a sound that rang out like the gurgling of blood. He spat squirming maggots from his mouth onto the dark street below. He knelt down before the gasping woman and gave a low whisper. It carried on the dead, silent air.
“So warm,” he murmured, wiping his dead, putrefying fingers across the streams of blood that spurted from her left shoulder. He stuck an inhumanly long, pointed tongue out of his chattering lips and began to lick the blood off his hands. “But not enough. Not nearly enough.”
He stuck the bony, decaying fingers of his left hand into the wound and started pulling at the ragged wound. Blood bubbled out in increasing quantities, covering her body in its wet sheen. The woman jerked, her face turning pale and bloodless. She tried to kick at him, but he only laughed again, gurgling like a man with a slit throat. In horror, I watched him raise the ax above his head. It stood there for a long moment, trembling in his shaking hands like a guillotine blade.
“Please, don’t…” the woman pleaded as he grinned down at her. In a blur, he swung the ax down into her forehead. There was a wet cracking of bone and a ringing of metal. She sat there with her mouth open for what felt like a very long moment. Then, limply, she collapsed to the pavement. A dull thud echoed down the street as her skull smacked the pavement.
Sickened, I closed the blinds on the window and turned away, realizing that Freddie and Iris had been standing right behind me the entire time, watching the horrific display. Freddie was crying quietly into his hands, while Iris looked pale, her green eyes wide and unbelieving. The woman exhaled one last time, a long, drawn-out death gasp, and then everything went silent.
I felt sick and weak. Staggering, I put my hand out against the wall. A wave of nausea rose up my stomach. I ran towards the bathroom, shining the light from my cell phone to light the way. Iris started crying. I heard her frantically try to dial 911 over and over again.
“Dammit, nothing’s working!” she cried. I stumbled into the bathroom and threw up all the popcorn and soda I had consumed that night into the toilet. Covered in sweat, I started wiping my face with toilet paper. I pushed myself up, glancing into the mirror.
A cadaverous version of myself stood there, the dead face showing horror and surprise just like my own. I saw the same high cheekbones, the same shaved head, but in the mirror image, maggots writhed and squirmed in the rancid flesh. I backpedaled into the wall, stuttering something incomprehensible. The reflected image did the same, his lipless mouth opening and closing with silent curses. He wore the same clothes as myself, a black T-shirt and blue jeans, but they were rotted and tattered, as if they had been dug out of a grave.
“What the fuck?” I swore, raising my right hand experimentally. The mirror image did the same, matching every single movement perfectly. At that moment, Iris came running into the bathroom, her soft footsteps thudding gently against the marble floor. I jumped, turning to her.
“There’s someone outside the door,” she whispered, her face pale. I glanced back at the reflection, seeing that the other version was no longer following my movements.
“Watch out!” I cried, but it was too late.
The skull-like face came forward in a blur. His arm shot out towards Iris. The surface of the mirror swirled as if it were made of water when his pale flesh made contact with it. The sharp points of bone of his fingers wrapped around Iris’ neck. Stunned and silent, I watched in horror as he started dragging her into that other world.
“Stop him!” she screamed. “God, make him stop!” I ran forward, grabbing her legs as her head and chest was sucked through. There was a slight popping sound when her body entered the liquid-like surface. I tried to hold on with all of my strength, but whatever abomination was on the other side was strong, stronger than me. His iron grip yanked her out of my hands.
“Dad?” Freddie asked, slinking into the bathroom. His eyes were wide and wild. He looked around, confused. “Where’s Mom? Who’s screaming?” I had to make a decision instantly, I knew. I could either stay with my son, or try to get my wife back. I knew I couldn’t just leave Iris, though. I felt mentally torn. I looked between him and the mirror, my heart quivering with anxiety.
“Freddie, go wait in the living room,” I said. “Hide behind the couch. Don’t answer the door or say anything to anyone, no matter what. I’ll be right back.” I wasn’t sure if I would or not. Before I turned to the mirror, I patted his head. “Remember the rules they read us on the TV.” He nodded, but he was only a seven-year-old boy. How much did he really understand? Hell, how much did I even understand? I hadn’t followed the rules, and now Iris was kidnapped.
I turned back to the mirror, seeing that I had no reflection now. There was no sign of Iris or the rotted corpse with my face, either. Slowly, I walked forward, putting my trembling hand out towards its silvery surface. My fingers went through the mirror as if it were mere air, but I felt something freezing cold ripple around my skin. Pins and needles rushed up my arm. Taking a deep breath in, I pushed myself up on the counter and went all the way through.
***
I fell forward onto the marble surface of the bathroom floor, putting my hands out to break the fall. As I glanced up, I realized how strange everything looked. The world here was in constant motion, as if a fog-like void shimmered over the world. The floor’s surface danced with whorls of shadow. They felt as freezing cold as liquid nitrogen as they passed over my body.
Shivering and hugging myself, I pushed myself up off the floor. The walls and ceilings, too, rippled in the same black currents. I glanced around, seeing the white bathtub filled to the brim with dark blood. It bubbled constantly, as if someone were drowning under its surface. Bloody handprints of all sizes smeared the sides of the tub. The smell of copper grew strong, mixing with the strange smell that emanated from the shadows, a pungent, chemical odor like ammonia.
I passed by the mirror, seeing that here, too, I had no reflection. I felt like a vampire, staring into that blank emptiness. Feeling sick and disoriented, I stumbled forward, afraid to even breathe too loudly. I heard Iris crying and shrieking somewhere nearby.
“Nooo…” she wailed. “Please, stop…” Her voice seemed to be growing fainter and weaker, as if she were being dragged away by a tsunami. I peeked around the corner. Everything looked like nightmarish and strange. The living room looked much longer, stretching out for hundreds of feet. It had the same blue carpet and white walls as the one in my world, but now it was the size of a football stadium. The dark red couch had lengthened to an absurd size, stretching wide enough to fit a hundred people in it. The TV loomed across the room like the screen of a movie theater. It flickered constantly, showing a cacophony of white noise and static interspersed with horrible images: naked corpses with their throats sliced from ear to ear, burning bodies, people falling to their deaths from burning buildings.
But none of that was what made an involuntary gasp of horror rise up my throat. It was the enormous spiderweb spanning the length of the ceiling, fluttering softly in the breeze. In the center of the symmetrical web, I saw Iris, covered in silky thread up to her neck. She was hanging horizontally facing down, her body parallel to the floor. She struggled against the webbing that bound her like steel chains. Her eyes bulged from her head as she stared fixedly at the cadaver approaching her.
Crawling upside-down towards Iris was the monstrous image of myself I had seen in the mirror, but he had transformed into something spidery and eldritch. He skittered along with four arms and four legs now. The emaciated limbs poked out of his tattered rags of clothes, forked and elongated, the skin pale and covered in purple sores and deep gashes. Iris continued to plead and shriek in horror as it drew near. The creature’s chattering fangs and blackened gums approached her neck.
At the penultimate moment, Iris saw me, peeking around the corner of the bathroom. I stood there, unsure of what to do. I thought of trying to scream out, to throw something at the creature, but then what? We would both die, and then who would be left alive to protect Freddie? I didn’t know what to do. These thoughts passed through my head in the space of a single moment as we stared at each other. Her eyes shone with a moment of clarity, even as waves of mortal terror shook her body like a hurricane.
“Save Freddie!” she screamed. “Run! Go, Jack!” The creature noticed her staring at me instantly. He curved his long neck and twisted his spidery limbs, clutching the thick strands of silk with his skeletal limbs. The creature turned to me. He had a face like a skull. His filmy eyes regarded me intently. Silver streams of saliva dripped from his mouth. He gave a wide, insane smile, then turned back to Iris, unhinging his jaw. The pale, dead skin tore with a wet ripping sound. The yellow, sharp points of teeth gleamed darkly in the currents of rippling shadow.
I turned, sprinting back into the darkness of the bathroom as the crunching of bone and the shrieking of my wife followed me out. I had to repress an urge to vomit. With all of the speed I could muster, I staggered forward to the counter, where the mirror sat revealing the image of my house, an image that still lacked my reflection inside. Iris’ pleas and screams rapidly weakened. I heard her choking and gasping. A few moments later, I heard a rapid skittering of many legs approaching the bathroom. I started to pull myself up on the counter to escape this hellish mirror world.
Something creaked in the doorway behind me. I glanced back in fright, seeing the abomination with the eight limbs creeping up behind me. He stood only a few feet away from me now. As my eyes met his white, dead ones, his cadaverous face split into a sickly grin.
***
A wave of adrenaline shook my body. My vision turned white in the darkness. With a pounding heart, I pushed myself up and lunged through the mirror. The eight-limbed abomination with my rotting face gave an insane shriek. I felt a freezing cold hand wrap around my ankle and begin to drag me back.
“No!” I shrieked, trying to kick blindly at the mirror creature’s dead face. “I’ll never go with you! Never!” I smashed my sneaker into his jaw. There was a shattering sound, as if a ceramic vase had been dropped. The chattering of sharp teeth and the shrieking cut off abruptly. Looking back, I saw the corpse’s broken jaw hanging on by only a few shreds of tendons and muscle. The eyes went slack and I felt the grip loosen for the briefest moment. I pushed myself forward and slid through the mirror.
The freezing cold, pins-and-needles sensation returned, running over my body like water. I collapsed head-first onto the sink, rolling onto the floor with a jarring thud. The shrieking of the eight-limbed corpse continued behind me. I saw him trying to force his elongated body through the mirror. The long arms with their sharp fingers reached through, swiping wildly at the air. Before I could escape, one of them came through and cut four deep gashes into my chest. My shirt instantly became soaked in blood as a burning pain ran up my body.
I heard someone pounding at the front door, but in the panic of the moment, I could barely think. As the rest of the cadaverous body tried to push his way through the mirror, I dragged myself out of the bathroom. I slammed the door shut, even as the sounds of breaking and shattering followed me out of the bathroom. Ignoring the pain radiating through my body, I ran over to the couch and began shoving it towards the door.
The door shuddered in its frame. The house and the floor shook as the corpse threw his enormous body into the wood over and over again. Cracks spiderwebbed down the front of it, and I knew it wouldn’t last more than a couple more seconds.
“Freddie!” I screamed, looking around frantically. My heart dropped when I remembered I had told him to hide behind the couch. He was not here, not anywhere in the living room. “Freddie! Where the hell are you?”
“Dad?!” a voice responded from outside. It sounded like Freddie’s voice, but it was eerie, as if his voice had gotten caught between stations on the radio. It sputtered with static. It fell and rose in an ear-splitting scream. “Dad, let me in! Please! They’re going to hurt me!”
I ran to the front door, looking outside, but I saw no sign of Freddie. The sky had changed, though. The Moon had changed from orange to a dark red, the color of a burst blood blister. The rest of the sky was such a dark shade of crimson that it looked almost black. Around my feet, I felt something warm and wet.
“Where are you?” I yelled. “I don’t see…” At that moment, the bathroom door exploded outwards in a shower of nails and splinters, covering my face and body in the debris. The cadaverous face peeked around the corner, as if he were playing hide-and-seek rather than hunting and killing people.
“Fuck!” I swore as I looked down, seeing blood streaming in from under the door. It covered my sneakers up to the tops of the soles as more and more flooded in.
I ran for the stairs as the eight-limbed corpse skittered across the ceiling like a spider. He hung upside-down, the jaw hanging askew on his putrefying skull, the filmy eyes flashing with bloodlust. I was already half-way up the stairs when the corpse jumped down into the lake of blood at the bottom of the stairs. With his elongated, twisted limbs, he began pulling himself towards the first step in a blur, covering his body in the thick, putrid blood that continuously poured in through the bottom of every door.
But something was in the blood, I saw to my horror. I froze in place near the top of the stairs, watching the creature as he struggled to pull himself out of the blood, which was already at knee-height and still rising. There were dark silhouettes slithering through the blood. I saw the head of a black snake peer out at the eight-limbed cadaver. The snake had no eyelids, and its eyes looked as red as the blood it lived in. It wrapped its muscular body around his torso, rising up towards the cadaver’s face. The blood-red eyes met those dead, rotted ones of the corpse as they stared at each other. Then the eldritch snake lunged forward and bit off the corpse’s face.
Other snakes started to rise out of the surface, wrapping around his four legs and slithering up his back. The corpse wailed like a banshee, running blindly into the walls to try to smash the many snakes that suffocated and bit him from all sides. But this only seemed to heighten their hunger and bloodlust.
The sound of shredding flesh and snapping bone followed me as I ran into Freddie’s room and hid. His room was the only one without mirrors in it, I knew, and I wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
***
In the thick curtains of shadow, a small voice rang out, terrified and searching.
“Dad? Is that really you?” Freddie asked, hiding behind his chest of toys. I saw his small body, contorted and pale. His little head poked above the lid.
“Freddie! You’re alive!” I cried, running over and hugging him. Tears streamed down my face. “I thought you were outside. I heard you screaming out there.”
“I heard you and Mom yelling outside, too,” Freddie whispered, his small body trembling as I held him. “I got scared and ran up here. I’m sorry, Dad. Where’s Mom?”
“It’s OK. Thank God you did,” I murmured, remembering the lake of blood downstairs and all those strange, black snakes. “Mom isn’t coming, Freddie.” He went silent then and didn’t ask any more questions. A sick, heavy weight covered my heart.
In the darkness, we hid and waited, though I knew not for what. The smell of copper and iron from all the blood downstairs had become overwhelming. After a few minutes of this, I took my phone out and shone it around experimentally.
I saw a thin layer of blood streaming into the room, rising up the stairs like the waves of a tsunami. It covered the hallway’s hardwood floor, a half-inch thick deep already and growing fast. Dark shapes slithered and writhed in it. Small waves pushed the lake of blood towards us, and within seconds, my shoes were submerged in it.
“Dad?” Freddie asked in a panicked voice. “What’s that? There’s things inside of it…” Without thinking, I picked Freddie up and held him above my body.
“We need to get to the attic!” I whispered to him, sprinting through the rising pool of blood with my son in my arms. “Don’t be afraid, Freddie. We’ll make it.” I had nearly reached the hallway where the pull-cord for the attic stairs hung when something wrapped around my feet. I went flying forwards, dropping Freddie in the pool of blood. He was submerged up to his waist instantly. His small body writhed in terror.
“Help me! Help me!” he screamed, flailing his arms as black snakes circled him like hungry sharks. The one wrapping around my legs continued slithering up my body. A rising sense of horror and panic filled me. At that moment, I knew I was doomed. I only hoped I would see Iris again. Then I noticed spotlights turn on outside, filling the inside of the house with a radiance like the Sun.
All of the windows upstairs suddenly smashed inwards. A spotlight shone through the nearest of them, illuminating me and Freddie in our frantic struggles against the snakes. Men in SWAT gear crawled through the shattered windows. With their gas masks, their faces looked like insects with too many compound eyes.
On their helmets and jackets, I saw a strange symbol: a double-fisted thumb holding a staring, lidless eye. Dozens of them streamed in, shooting the snakes that circled Freddie and me. As the one wrapping around its body slowly wound its way towards my face, one of the black-clad men came up behind it and shot it in the skull. The snake’s body collapsed all around me, its muscles loosening in death. With relief washing over me, I ran to our saviors.
“Get us out of here!” I pleaded. “There’s horrible things happening!” The man nodded in his black military gear, his mask revealing nothing.
“Follow me,” he said dispassionately, starting towards the roof. “You two are the only survivors we’ve found so far. It truly is a miracle anyone’s still alive.” I could only agree silently.
"This must be all over every news channel," I said. The masked man shook his head.
"No one knows about this," he responded. "No one but you two and our group. The media won't say shit. They do what we tell them."
***
I followed the men out onto the roof. Helicopters crisscrossed the skies, illuminating the houses and streets with many bright spotlights. As a helicopter slowly lowered itself down to take Freddie and me away from that pit of nightmares, dropping a rope for us to ascend, I glanced around my town one last time.
Many of the houses were destroyed or burning, sending thick clouds of black smoke into the blood-red sky. Men in full SWAT gear zoomed around the blood flooding the streets in boats, the whirring of the motors echoing like angry hornets. Turning away, I followed Freddie into the helicopter and never returned.
Iris is dead, and Freddie and I have seen enough horrors to scar us for a thousand years. In my heart, I know it is my fault my wife died. I didn’t follow the rules, and she paid the price.
I will hear those dying, panicked screams until my final breath.
submitted by CIAHerpes to stories [link] [comments]

2024.05.09 10:31 CIAHerpes Something called the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System just flashed across my TV. It read out a list of rules.

My wife, Iris, sat on the couch next to me, holding the bowl of popcorn in her thin hands. On her other side, our little boy, Freddie, sat. He looked just like his mother, with the same dirty blonde hair and faraway eyes, like the eyes of a dreamer. The movie played across our flat-screen TV, some CGI comedy with talking penguins and llamas that could drive cars. It was some garbage from Disney I would never have watched in a million years, but Freddie liked it, so I suffered through it for him.
We had turned off all the lights in the house for the movie. Only the TV’s flickering colors illuminated the room, sending dancing shadows that flashed out behind us.
Suddenly, outside the living room window, a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, splitting a tree in our front yard in two. Light flooded in through the window as if the flash of a nuclear missile were ripping its way across the town. A crash rang out as the tree split down the middle, its massive branches tumbling down onto the lawn. I jumped as the ground shook. More lightning flashed nearby, hitting other houses and lawns on the street.
“Damn, there wasn’t supposed to be any storms,” I said in surprise. The TV had gone black, and now we sat in darkness. For a long moment, I thought the power had gone out.
Abruptly, it came back on with a roar of white noise and a flickering of static. The volume seemed to be increasing by itself, growing into a rushing cacophony like a waterfall. I saw Iris try to scream something, but I could only see her lips move.
As suddenly as it all started, it stopped. The standard “PLEASE STANDBY” screen with a rainbow of blocky colors behind it appeared. There was a clanging, ringing sound that emanated from the speakers, high-pitched and whining like tinnitus. Then text started appearing across the screen. At the same time, a deep, serious voice spoke in the background, like a radio announcer reporting on the death of a President.
“This is the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System,” the voice read grimly. “This is not a test. Level five activity has been reported in your area. Do not go outside. Close all blinds, shutters and windows. Lock all doors and close any attached garages. Do not open your doors except to military or police personnel with the proper insignia. Even if someone appears to be in distress, do not open your door to investigate or try to interfere in any way. A temporary quarantine is in effect for your area. Military and police assistance is on the way.
“To ensure the greatest chances of survival during this time of crisis, please abide by the following rules:
  1. If blood begins to pour under your door, go to a higher floor immediately. Avoid physical contact with the blood at all costs.
  2. All legitimate military and police personnel will have a special insignia on their helmets and jackets, an eye contained in a double-thumbed fist. Only accompany them if they have this insignia- otherwise, they are imposters.
  3. Avoid mirrors for the duration of the emergency.”
The voice cut out abruptly, slowing down in a mechanical whine. Static started flashing across the TV, covering the “PLEASE STANDBY” message that had returned in blocky letters. At that moment, the lights went out. They came back on a couple seconds later, brightening and dimming, before the power failed again. This time, the electricity did not come back on.
“What the fuck?” Iris whispered next to me, taking out her phone and shining the light across the dark living room. “That was pretty weird. Everything looks different outside, too. I was just outside an hour ago and the Moon didn’t look anything like that.” She pointed. I got up, realizing she was right. The nighttime sky outside looked strange. I looked out the front window, seeing the Moon was cast in a fluorescent orange light. The cloudless sky had a dark red glow to it, as if some kind of eerie smog had covered everything. I had seen similar things happen after massive forest fires in the past.
“What happened, Dad?” Freddie asked in his small voice. “Where’s the movie?”
“I think we lost power, little man,” I said, ruffling his hair in a nonchalant manner. I didn’t really believe the emergency broadcast, after all. I figured some teenager had hacked the TV station and decided to play a prank, or perhaps some disgruntled employee had done it on his last day as a kind of “Fuck you” to the station. I had heard of similar things happening before. It was somewhat strange how the power had gone out and the sky had changed, but I felt sure that it could all be logically explained.
Someone shrieked outside. I looked out onto the dark street, seeing the silhouette of someone running frantically down the middle of the street, zigzagging wildly. As the figure got closer, I realized it was a young woman. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties. She wore a white shirt and khakis. Her clothes were soaked in streams of blood that made the fabric cling to her trembling body. I saw a vicious gash bitten into her left shoulder, a wound so deep that the white bone peeked out through the ragged patches of flesh.
“Help me!” she wailed, her eyes wild and panicked. “Why won’t anyone help me?!” She staggered and fell forward, crying and bleeding all over the road. I was about to run outside to see what was wrong with the young woman when I saw another silhouette creeping up behind her.
It looked like the body of a man, but something was wrong. As he drew closer, I caught a glimpse of the man’s face through the dim light. The left side of it was rotted and decayed, while the right looked muscular and healthy. He wore a black suit that looked like little more than tatters. Pieces of it fell off in ragged strips. I could see his left hand was also decomposing. Whatever kind of sickness it was, it seemed to extend to the whole left side of his body.
The stiff, skeletal leg cracked as he dragged it behind him, silently drawing nearer to the young woman. The living side of his face split into an insane rictus grin as he looked down at her. He carried a blood-stained ax that dragged on the pavement behind him with a harsh, metallic groan.
“Get away from me!” the woman screamed at the abomination, trying to kick at him. But she looked weakened from blood loss, and her attempts were feeble and slow. The man laughed, a sound that rang out like the gurgling of blood. He spat squirming maggots from his mouth onto the dark street below. He knelt down before the gasping woman and gave a low whisper. It carried on the dead, silent air.
“So warm,” he murmured, wiping his dead, putrefying fingers across the streams of blood that spurted from her left shoulder. He stuck an inhumanly long, pointed tongue out of his chattering lips and began to lick the blood off his hands. “But not enough. Not nearly enough.”
He stuck the bony, decaying fingers of his left hand into the wound and started pulling at the ragged wound. Blood bubbled out in increasing quantities, covering her body in its wet sheen. The woman jerked, her face turning pale and bloodless. She tried to kick at him, but he only laughed again, gurgling like a man with a slit throat. In horror, I watched him raise the ax above his head. It stood there for a long moment, trembling in his shaking hands like a guillotine blade.
“Please, don’t…” the woman pleaded as he grinned down at her. In a blur, he swung the ax down into her forehead. There was a wet cracking of bone and a ringing of metal. She sat there with her mouth open for what felt like a very long moment. Then, limply, she collapsed to the pavement. A dull thud echoed down the street as her skull smacked the pavement.
Sickened, I closed the blinds on the window and turned away, realizing that Freddie and Iris had been standing right behind me the entire time, watching the horrific display. Freddie was crying quietly into his hands, while Iris looked pale, her green eyes wide and unbelieving. The woman exhaled one last time, a long, drawn-out death gasp, and then everything went silent.
I felt sick and weak. Staggering, I put my hand out against the wall. A wave of nausea rose up my stomach. I ran towards the bathroom, shining the light from my cell phone to light the way. Iris started crying. I heard her frantically try to dial 911 over and over again.
“Dammit, nothing’s working!” she cried. I stumbled into the bathroom and threw up all the popcorn and soda I had consumed that night into the toilet. Covered in sweat, I started wiping my face with toilet paper. I pushed myself up, glancing into the mirror.
A cadaverous version of myself stood there, the dead face showing horror and surprise just like my own. I saw the same high cheekbones, the same shaved head, but in the mirror image, maggots writhed and squirmed in the rancid flesh. I backpedaled into the wall, stuttering something incomprehensible. The reflected image did the same, his lipless mouth opening and closing with silent curses. He wore the same clothes as myself, a black T-shirt and blue jeans, but they were rotted and tattered, as if they had been dug out of a grave.
“What the fuck?” I swore, raising my right hand experimentally. The mirror image did the same, matching every single movement perfectly. At that moment, Iris came running into the bathroom, her soft footsteps thudding gently against the marble floor. I jumped, turning to her.
“There’s someone outside the door,” she whispered, her face pale. I glanced back at the reflection, seeing that the other version was no longer following my movements.
“Watch out!” I cried, but it was too late.
The skull-like face came forward in a blur. His arm shot out towards Iris. The surface of the mirror swirled as if it were made of water when his pale flesh made contact with it. The sharp points of bone of his fingers wrapped around Iris’ neck. Stunned and silent, I watched in horror as he started dragging her into that other world.
“Stop him!” she screamed. “God, make him stop!” I ran forward, grabbing her legs as her head and chest was sucked through. There was a slight popping sound when her body entered the liquid-like surface. I tried to hold on with all of my strength, but whatever abomination was on the other side was strong, stronger than me. His iron grip yanked her out of my hands.
“Dad?” Freddie asked, slinking into the bathroom. His eyes were wide and wild. He looked around, confused. “Where’s Mom? Who’s screaming?” I had to make a decision instantly, I knew. I could either stay with my son, or try to get my wife back. I knew I couldn’t just leave Iris, though. I felt mentally torn. I looked between him and the mirror, my heart quivering with anxiety.
“Freddie, go wait in the living room,” I said. “Hide behind the couch. Don’t answer the door or say anything to anyone, no matter what. I’ll be right back.” I wasn’t sure if I would or not. Before I turned to the mirror, I patted his head. “Remember the rules they read us on the TV.” He nodded, but he was only a seven-year-old boy. How much did he really understand? Hell, how much did I even understand? I hadn’t followed the rules, and now Iris was kidnapped.
I turned back to the mirror, seeing that I had no reflection now. There was no sign of Iris or the rotted corpse with my face, either. Slowly, I walked forward, putting my trembling hand out towards its silvery surface. My fingers went through the mirror as if it were mere air, but I felt something freezing cold ripple around my skin. Pins and needles rushed up my arm. Taking a deep breath in, I pushed myself up on the counter and went all the way through.
***
I fell forward onto the marble surface of the bathroom floor, putting my hands out to break the fall. As I glanced up, I realized how strange everything looked. The world here was in constant motion, as if a fog-like void shimmered over the world. The floor’s surface danced with whorls of shadow. They felt as freezing cold as liquid nitrogen as they passed over my body.
Shivering and hugging myself, I pushed myself up off the floor. The walls and ceilings, too, rippled in the same black currents. I glanced around, seeing the white bathtub filled to the brim with dark blood. It bubbled constantly, as if someone were drowning under its surface. Bloody handprints of all sizes smeared the sides of the tub. The smell of copper grew strong, mixing with the strange smell that emanated from the shadows, a pungent, chemical odor like ammonia.
I passed by the mirror, seeing that here, too, I had no reflection. I felt like a vampire, staring into that blank emptiness. Feeling sick and disoriented, I stumbled forward, afraid to even breathe too loudly. I heard Iris crying and shrieking somewhere nearby.
“Nooo…” she wailed. “Please, stop…” Her voice seemed to be growing fainter and weaker, as if she were being dragged away by a tsunami. I peeked around the corner. Everything looked like nightmarish and strange. The living room looked much longer, stretching out for hundreds of feet. It had the same blue carpet and white walls as the one in my world, but now it was the size of a football stadium. The dark red couch had lengthened to an absurd size, stretching wide enough to fit a hundred people in it. The TV loomed across the room like the screen of a movie theater. It flickered constantly, showing a cacophony of white noise and static interspersed with horrible images: naked corpses with their throats sliced from ear to ear, burning bodies, people falling to their deaths from burning buildings.
But none of that was what made an involuntary gasp of horror rise up my throat. It was the enormous spiderweb spanning the length of the ceiling, fluttering softly in the breeze. In the center of the symmetrical web, I saw Iris, covered in silky thread up to her neck. She was hanging horizontally facing down, her body parallel to the floor. She struggled against the webbing that bound her like steel chains. Her eyes bulged from her head as she stared fixedly at the cadaver approaching her.
Crawling upside-down towards Iris was the monstrous image of myself I had seen in the mirror, but he had transformed into something spidery and eldritch. He skittered along with four arms and four legs now. The emaciated limbs poked out of his tattered rags of clothes, forked and elongated, the skin pale and covered in purple sores and deep gashes. Iris continued to plead and shriek in horror as it drew near. The creature’s chattering fangs and blackened gums approached her neck.
At the penultimate moment, Iris saw me, peeking around the corner of the bathroom. I stood there, unsure of what to do. I thought of trying to scream out, to throw something at the creature, but then what? We would both die, and then who would be left alive to protect Freddie? I didn’t know what to do. These thoughts passed through my head in the space of a single moment as we stared at each other. Her eyes shone with a moment of clarity, even as waves of mortal terror shook her body like a hurricane.
“Save Freddie!” she screamed. “Run! Go, Jack!” The creature noticed her staring at me instantly. He curved his long neck and twisted his spidery limbs, clutching the thick strands of silk with his skeletal limbs. The creature turned to me. He had a face like a skull. His filmy eyes regarded me intently. Silver streams of saliva dripped from his mouth. He gave a wide, insane smile, then turned back to Iris, unhinging his jaw. The pale, dead skin tore with a wet ripping sound. The yellow, sharp points of teeth gleamed darkly in the currents of rippling shadow.
I turned, sprinting back into the darkness of the bathroom as the crunching of bone and the shrieking of my wife followed me out. I had to repress an urge to vomit. With all of the speed I could muster, I staggered forward to the counter, where the mirror sat revealing the image of my house, an image that still lacked my reflection inside. Iris’ pleas and screams rapidly weakened. I heard her choking and gasping. A few moments later, I heard a rapid skittering of many legs approaching the bathroom. I started to pull myself up on the counter to escape this hellish mirror world.
Something creaked in the doorway behind me. I glanced back in fright, seeing the abomination with the eight limbs creeping up behind me. He stood only a few feet away from me now. As my eyes met his white, dead ones, his cadaverous face split into a sickly grin.
***
A wave of adrenaline shook my body. My vision turned white in the darkness. With a pounding heart, I pushed myself up and lunged through the mirror. The eight-limbed abomination with my rotting face gave an insane shriek. I felt a freezing cold hand wrap around my ankle and begin to drag me back.
“No!” I shrieked, trying to kick blindly at the mirror creature’s dead face. “I’ll never go with you! Never!” I smashed my sneaker into his jaw. There was a shattering sound, as if a ceramic vase had been dropped. The chattering of sharp teeth and the shrieking cut off abruptly. Looking back, I saw the corpse’s broken jaw hanging on by only a few shreds of tendons and muscle. The eyes went slack and I felt the grip loosen for the briefest moment. I pushed myself forward and slid through the mirror.
The freezing cold, pins-and-needles sensation returned, running over my body like water. I collapsed head-first onto the sink, rolling onto the floor with a jarring thud. The shrieking of the eight-limbed corpse continued behind me. I saw him trying to force his elongated body through the mirror. The long arms with their sharp fingers reached through, swiping wildly at the air. Before I could escape, one of them came through and cut four deep gashes into my chest. My shirt instantly became soaked in blood as a burning pain ran up my body.
I heard someone pounding at the front door, but in the panic of the moment, I could barely think. As the rest of the cadaverous body tried to push his way through the mirror, I dragged myself out of the bathroom. I slammed the door shut, even as the sounds of breaking and shattering followed me out of the bathroom. Ignoring the pain radiating through my body, I ran over to the couch and began shoving it towards the door.
The door shuddered in its frame. The house and the floor shook as the corpse threw his enormous body into the wood over and over again. Cracks spiderwebbed down the front of it, and I knew it wouldn’t last more than a couple more seconds.
“Freddie!” I screamed, looking around frantically. My heart dropped when I remembered I had told him to hide behind the couch. He was not here, not anywhere in the living room. “Freddie! Where the hell are you?”
“Dad?!” a voice responded from outside. It sounded like Freddie’s voice, but it was eerie, as if his voice had gotten caught between stations on the radio. It sputtered with static. It fell and rose in an ear-splitting scream. “Dad, let me in! Please! They’re going to hurt me!”
I ran to the front door, looking outside, but I saw no sign of Freddie. The sky had changed, though. The Moon had changed from orange to a dark red, the color of a burst blood blister. The rest of the sky was such a dark shade of crimson that it looked almost black. Around my feet, I felt something warm and wet.
“Where are you?” I yelled. “I don’t see…” At that moment, the bathroom door exploded outwards in a shower of nails and splinters, covering my face and body in the debris. The cadaverous face peeked around the corner, as if he were playing hide-and-seek rather than hunting and killing people.
“Fuck!” I swore as I looked down, seeing blood streaming in from under the door. It covered my sneakers up to the tops of the soles as more and more flooded in.
I ran for the stairs as the eight-limbed corpse skittered across the ceiling like a spider. He hung upside-down, the jaw hanging askew on his putrefying skull, the filmy eyes flashing with bloodlust. I was already half-way up the stairs when the corpse jumped down into the lake of blood at the bottom of the stairs. With his elongated, twisted limbs, he began pulling himself towards the first step in a blur, covering his body in the thick, putrid blood that continuously poured in through the bottom of every door.
But something was in the blood, I saw to my horror. I froze in place near the top of the stairs, watching the creature as he struggled to pull himself out of the blood, which was already at knee-height and still rising. There were dark silhouettes slithering through the blood. I saw the head of a black snake peer out at the eight-limbed cadaver. The snake had no eyelids, and its eyes looked as red as the blood it lived in. It wrapped its muscular body around his torso, rising up towards the cadaver’s face. The blood-red eyes met those dead, rotted ones of the corpse as they stared at each other. Then the eldritch snake lunged forward and bit off the corpse’s face.
Other snakes started to rise out of the surface, wrapping around his four legs and slithering up his back. The corpse wailed like a banshee, running blindly into the walls to try to smash the many snakes that suffocated and bit him from all sides. But this only seemed to heighten their hunger and bloodlust.
The sound of shredding flesh and snapping bone followed me as I ran into Freddie’s room and hid. His room was the only one without mirrors in it, I knew, and I wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
***
In the thick curtains of shadow, a small voice rang out, terrified and searching.
“Dad? Is that really you?” Freddie asked, hiding behind his chest of toys. I saw his small body, contorted and pale. His little head poked above the lid.
“Freddie! You’re alive!” I cried, running over and hugging him. Tears streamed down my face. “I thought you were outside. I heard you screaming out there.”
“I heard you and Mom yelling outside, too,” Freddie whispered, his small body trembling as I held him. “I got scared and ran up here. I’m sorry, Dad. Where’s Mom?”
“It’s OK. Thank God you did,” I murmured, remembering the lake of blood downstairs and all those strange, black snakes. “Mom isn’t coming, Freddie.” He went silent then and didn’t ask any more questions. A sick, heavy weight covered my heart.
In the darkness, we hid and waited, though I knew not for what. The smell of copper and iron from all the blood downstairs had become overwhelming. After a few minutes of this, I took my phone out and shone it around experimentally.
I saw a thin layer of blood streaming into the room, rising up the stairs like the waves of a tsunami. It covered the hallway’s hardwood floor, a half-inch thick deep already and growing fast. Dark shapes slithered and writhed in it. Small waves pushed the lake of blood towards us, and within seconds, my shoes were submerged in it.
“Dad?” Freddie asked in a panicked voice. “What’s that? There’s things inside of it…” Without thinking, I picked Freddie up and held him above my body.
“We need to get to the attic!” I whispered to him, sprinting through the rising pool of blood with my son in my arms. “Don’t be afraid, Freddie. We’ll make it.” I had nearly reached the hallway where the pull-cord for the attic stairs hung when something wrapped around my feet. I went flying forwards, dropping Freddie in the pool of blood. He was submerged up to his waist instantly. His small body writhed in terror.
“Help me! Help me!” he screamed, flailing his arms as black snakes circled him like hungry sharks. The one wrapping around my legs continued slithering up my body. A rising sense of horror and panic filled me. At that moment, I knew I was doomed. I only hoped I would see Iris again. Then I noticed spotlights turn on outside, filling the inside of the house with a radiance like the Sun.
All of the windows upstairs suddenly smashed inwards. A spotlight shone through the nearest of them, illuminating me and Freddie in our frantic struggles against the snakes. Men in SWAT gear crawled through the shattered windows. With their gas masks, their faces looked like insects with too many compound eyes.
On their helmets and jackets, I saw a strange symbol: a double-fisted thumb holding a staring, lidless eye. Dozens of them streamed in, shooting the snakes that circled Freddie and me. As the one wrapping around its body slowly wound its way towards my face, one of the black-clad men came up behind it and shot it in the skull. The snake’s body collapsed all around me, its muscles loosening in death. With relief washing over me, I ran to our saviors.
“Get us out of here!” I pleaded. “There’s horrible things happening!” The man nodded in his black military gear, his mask revealing nothing.
“Follow me,” he said dispassionately, starting towards the roof. “You two are the only survivors we’ve found so far. It truly is a miracle anyone’s still alive.” I could only agree silently.
"This must be all over every news channel," I said. The masked man shook his head.
"No one knows about this," he responded. "No one but you two and our group. The media won't say shit. They do what we tell them."
***
I followed the men out onto the roof. Helicopters crisscrossed the skies, illuminating the houses and streets with many bright spotlights. As a helicopter slowly lowered itself down to take Freddie and me away from that pit of nightmares, dropping a rope for us to ascend, I glanced around my town one last time.
Many of the houses were destroyed or burning, sending thick clouds of black smoke into the blood-red sky. Men in full SWAT gear zoomed around the blood flooding the streets in boats, the whirring of the motors echoing like angry hornets. Turning away, I followed Freddie into the helicopter and never returned.
Iris is dead, and Freddie and I have seen enough horrors to scar us for a thousand years. In my heart, I know it is my fault my wife died. I didn’t follow the rules, and she paid the price.
I will hear those dying, panicked screams until my final breath.
submitted by CIAHerpes to ZakBabyTV_Stories [link] [comments]

2024.05.09 10:31 CIAHerpes Something called the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System just flashed across my TV. It read out a list of rules.

My wife, Iris, sat on the couch next to me, holding the bowl of popcorn in her thin hands. On her other side, our little boy, Freddie, sat. He looked just like his mother, with the same dirty blonde hair and faraway eyes, like the eyes of a dreamer. The movie played across our flat-screen TV, some CGI comedy with talking penguins and llamas that could drive cars. It was some garbage from Disney I would never have watched in a million years, but Freddie liked it, so I suffered through it for him.
We had turned off all the lights in the house for the movie. Only the TV’s flickering colors illuminated the room, sending dancing shadows that flashed out behind us.
Suddenly, outside the living room window, a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, splitting a tree in our front yard in two. Light flooded in through the window as if the flash of a nuclear missile were ripping its way across the town. A crash rang out as the tree split down the middle, its massive branches tumbling down onto the lawn. I jumped as the ground shook. More lightning flashed nearby, hitting other houses and lawns on the street.
“Damn, there wasn’t supposed to be any storms,” I said in surprise. The TV had gone black, and now we sat in darkness. For a long moment, I thought the power had gone out.
Abruptly, it came back on with a roar of white noise and a flickering of static. The volume seemed to be increasing by itself, growing into a rushing cacophony like a waterfall. I saw Iris try to scream something, but I could only see her lips move.
As suddenly as it all started, it stopped. The standard “PLEASE STANDBY” screen with a rainbow of blocky colors behind it appeared. There was a clanging, ringing sound that emanated from the speakers, high-pitched and whining like tinnitus. Then text started appearing across the screen. At the same time, a deep, serious voice spoke in the background, like a radio announcer reporting on the death of a President.
“This is the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System,” the voice read grimly. “This is not a test. Level five activity has been reported in your area. Do not go outside. Close all blinds, shutters and windows. Lock all doors and close any attached garages. Do not open your doors except to military or police personnel with the proper insignia. Even if someone appears to be in distress, do not open your door to investigate or try to interfere in any way. A temporary quarantine is in effect for your area. Military and police assistance is on the way.
“To ensure the greatest chances of survival during this time of crisis, please abide by the following rules:
  1. If blood begins to pour under your door, go to a higher floor immediately. Avoid physical contact with the blood at all costs.
  2. All legitimate military and police personnel will have a special insignia on their helmets and jackets, an eye contained in a double-thumbed fist. Only accompany them if they have this insignia- otherwise, they are imposters.
  3. Avoid mirrors for the duration of the emergency.”
The voice cut out abruptly, slowing down in a mechanical whine. Static started flashing across the TV, covering the “PLEASE STANDBY” message that had returned in blocky letters. At that moment, the lights went out. They came back on a couple seconds later, brightening and dimming, before the power failed again. This time, the electricity did not come back on.
“What the fuck?” Iris whispered next to me, taking out her phone and shining the light across the dark living room. “That was pretty weird. Everything looks different outside, too. I was just outside an hour ago and the Moon didn’t look anything like that.” She pointed. I got up, realizing she was right. The nighttime sky outside looked strange. I looked out the front window, seeing the Moon was cast in a fluorescent orange light. The cloudless sky had a dark red glow to it, as if some kind of eerie smog had covered everything. I had seen similar things happen after massive forest fires in the past.
“What happened, Dad?” Freddie asked in his small voice. “Where’s the movie?”
“I think we lost power, little man,” I said, ruffling his hair in a nonchalant manner. I didn’t really believe the emergency broadcast, after all. I figured some teenager had hacked the TV station and decided to play a prank, or perhaps some disgruntled employee had done it on his last day as a kind of “Fuck you” to the station. I had heard of similar things happening before. It was somewhat strange how the power had gone out and the sky had changed, but I felt sure that it could all be logically explained.
Someone shrieked outside. I looked out onto the dark street, seeing the silhouette of someone running frantically down the middle of the street, zigzagging wildly. As the figure got closer, I realized it was a young woman. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties. She wore a white shirt and khakis. Her clothes were soaked in streams of blood that made the fabric cling to her trembling body. I saw a vicious gash bitten into her left shoulder, a wound so deep that the white bone peeked out through the ragged patches of flesh.
“Help me!” she wailed, her eyes wild and panicked. “Why won’t anyone help me?!” She staggered and fell forward, crying and bleeding all over the road. I was about to run outside to see what was wrong with the young woman when I saw another silhouette creeping up behind her.
It looked like the body of a man, but something was wrong. As he drew closer, I caught a glimpse of the man’s face through the dim light. The left side of it was rotted and decayed, while the right looked muscular and healthy. He wore a black suit that looked like little more than tatters. Pieces of it fell off in ragged strips. I could see his left hand was also decomposing. Whatever kind of sickness it was, it seemed to extend to the whole left side of his body.
The stiff, skeletal leg cracked as he dragged it behind him, silently drawing nearer to the young woman. The living side of his face split into an insane rictus grin as he looked down at her. He carried a blood-stained ax that dragged on the pavement behind him with a harsh, metallic groan.
“Get away from me!” the woman screamed at the abomination, trying to kick at him. But she looked weakened from blood loss, and her attempts were feeble and slow. The man laughed, a sound that rang out like the gurgling of blood. He spat squirming maggots from his mouth onto the dark street below. He knelt down before the gasping woman and gave a low whisper. It carried on the dead, silent air.
“So warm,” he murmured, wiping his dead, putrefying fingers across the streams of blood that spurted from her left shoulder. He stuck an inhumanly long, pointed tongue out of his chattering lips and began to lick the blood off his hands. “But not enough. Not nearly enough.”
He stuck the bony, decaying fingers of his left hand into the wound and started pulling at the ragged wound. Blood bubbled out in increasing quantities, covering her body in its wet sheen. The woman jerked, her face turning pale and bloodless. She tried to kick at him, but he only laughed again, gurgling like a man with a slit throat. In horror, I watched him raise the ax above his head. It stood there for a long moment, trembling in his shaking hands like a guillotine blade.
“Please, don’t…” the woman pleaded as he grinned down at her. In a blur, he swung the ax down into her forehead. There was a wet cracking of bone and a ringing of metal. She sat there with her mouth open for what felt like a very long moment. Then, limply, she collapsed to the pavement. A dull thud echoed down the street as her skull smacked the pavement.
Sickened, I closed the blinds on the window and turned away, realizing that Freddie and Iris had been standing right behind me the entire time, watching the horrific display. Freddie was crying quietly into his hands, while Iris looked pale, her green eyes wide and unbelieving. The woman exhaled one last time, a long, drawn-out death gasp, and then everything went silent.
I felt sick and weak. Staggering, I put my hand out against the wall. A wave of nausea rose up my stomach. I ran towards the bathroom, shining the light from my cell phone to light the way. Iris started crying. I heard her frantically try to dial 911 over and over again.
“Dammit, nothing’s working!” she cried. I stumbled into the bathroom and threw up all the popcorn and soda I had consumed that night into the toilet. Covered in sweat, I started wiping my face with toilet paper. I pushed myself up, glancing into the mirror.
A cadaverous version of myself stood there, the dead face showing horror and surprise just like my own. I saw the same high cheekbones, the same shaved head, but in the mirror image, maggots writhed and squirmed in the rancid flesh. I backpedaled into the wall, stuttering something incomprehensible. The reflected image did the same, his lipless mouth opening and closing with silent curses. He wore the same clothes as myself, a black T-shirt and blue jeans, but they were rotted and tattered, as if they had been dug out of a grave.
“What the fuck?” I swore, raising my right hand experimentally. The mirror image did the same, matching every single movement perfectly. At that moment, Iris came running into the bathroom, her soft footsteps thudding gently against the marble floor. I jumped, turning to her.
“There’s someone outside the door,” she whispered, her face pale. I glanced back at the reflection, seeing that the other version was no longer following my movements.
“Watch out!” I cried, but it was too late.
The skull-like face came forward in a blur. His arm shot out towards Iris. The surface of the mirror swirled as if it were made of water when his pale flesh made contact with it. The sharp points of bone of his fingers wrapped around Iris’ neck. Stunned and silent, I watched in horror as he started dragging her into that other world.
“Stop him!” she screamed. “God, make him stop!” I ran forward, grabbing her legs as her head and chest was sucked through. There was a slight popping sound when her body entered the liquid-like surface. I tried to hold on with all of my strength, but whatever abomination was on the other side was strong, stronger than me. His iron grip yanked her out of my hands.
“Dad?” Freddie asked, slinking into the bathroom. His eyes were wide and wild. He looked around, confused. “Where’s Mom? Who’s screaming?” I had to make a decision instantly, I knew. I could either stay with my son, or try to get my wife back. I knew I couldn’t just leave Iris, though. I felt mentally torn. I looked between him and the mirror, my heart quivering with anxiety.
“Freddie, go wait in the living room,” I said. “Hide behind the couch. Don’t answer the door or say anything to anyone, no matter what. I’ll be right back.” I wasn’t sure if I would or not. Before I turned to the mirror, I patted his head. “Remember the rules they read us on the TV.” He nodded, but he was only a seven-year-old boy. How much did he really understand? Hell, how much did I even understand? I hadn’t followed the rules, and now Iris was kidnapped.
I turned back to the mirror, seeing that I had no reflection now. There was no sign of Iris or the rotted corpse with my face, either. Slowly, I walked forward, putting my trembling hand out towards its silvery surface. My fingers went through the mirror as if it were mere air, but I felt something freezing cold ripple around my skin. Pins and needles rushed up my arm. Taking a deep breath in, I pushed myself up on the counter and went all the way through.
***
I fell forward onto the marble surface of the bathroom floor, putting my hands out to break the fall. As I glanced up, I realized how strange everything looked. The world here was in constant motion, as if a fog-like void shimmered over the world. The floor’s surface danced with whorls of shadow. They felt as freezing cold as liquid nitrogen as they passed over my body.
Shivering and hugging myself, I pushed myself up off the floor. The walls and ceilings, too, rippled in the same black currents. I glanced around, seeing the white bathtub filled to the brim with dark blood. It bubbled constantly, as if someone were drowning under its surface. Bloody handprints of all sizes smeared the sides of the tub. The smell of copper grew strong, mixing with the strange smell that emanated from the shadows, a pungent, chemical odor like ammonia.
I passed by the mirror, seeing that here, too, I had no reflection. I felt like a vampire, staring into that blank emptiness. Feeling sick and disoriented, I stumbled forward, afraid to even breathe too loudly. I heard Iris crying and shrieking somewhere nearby.
“Nooo…” she wailed. “Please, stop…” Her voice seemed to be growing fainter and weaker, as if she were being dragged away by a tsunami. I peeked around the corner. Everything looked like nightmarish and strange. The living room looked much longer, stretching out for hundreds of feet. It had the same blue carpet and white walls as the one in my world, but now it was the size of a football stadium. The dark red couch had lengthened to an absurd size, stretching wide enough to fit a hundred people in it. The TV loomed across the room like the screen of a movie theater. It flickered constantly, showing a cacophony of white noise and static interspersed with horrible images: naked corpses with their throats sliced from ear to ear, burning bodies, people falling to their deaths from burning buildings.
But none of that was what made an involuntary gasp of horror rise up my throat. It was the enormous spiderweb spanning the length of the ceiling, fluttering softly in the breeze. In the center of the symmetrical web, I saw Iris, covered in silky thread up to her neck. She was hanging horizontally facing down, her body parallel to the floor. She struggled against the webbing that bound her like steel chains. Her eyes bulged from her head as she stared fixedly at the cadaver approaching her.
Crawling upside-down towards Iris was the monstrous image of myself I had seen in the mirror, but he had transformed into something spidery and eldritch. He skittered along with four arms and four legs now. The emaciated limbs poked out of his tattered rags of clothes, forked and elongated, the skin pale and covered in purple sores and deep gashes. Iris continued to plead and shriek in horror as it drew near. The creature’s chattering fangs and blackened gums approached her neck.
At the penultimate moment, Iris saw me, peeking around the corner of the bathroom. I stood there, unsure of what to do. I thought of trying to scream out, to throw something at the creature, but then what? We would both die, and then who would be left alive to protect Freddie? I didn’t know what to do. These thoughts passed through my head in the space of a single moment as we stared at each other. Her eyes shone with a moment of clarity, even as waves of mortal terror shook her body like a hurricane.
“Save Freddie!” she screamed. “Run! Go, Jack!” The creature noticed her staring at me instantly. He curved his long neck and twisted his spidery limbs, clutching the thick strands of silk with his skeletal limbs. The creature turned to me. He had a face like a skull. His filmy eyes regarded me intently. Silver streams of saliva dripped from his mouth. He gave a wide, insane smile, then turned back to Iris, unhinging his jaw. The pale, dead skin tore with a wet ripping sound. The yellow, sharp points of teeth gleamed darkly in the currents of rippling shadow.
I turned, sprinting back into the darkness of the bathroom as the crunching of bone and the shrieking of my wife followed me out. I had to repress an urge to vomit. With all of the speed I could muster, I staggered forward to the counter, where the mirror sat revealing the image of my house, an image that still lacked my reflection inside. Iris’ pleas and screams rapidly weakened. I heard her choking and gasping. A few moments later, I heard a rapid skittering of many legs approaching the bathroom. I started to pull myself up on the counter to escape this hellish mirror world.
Something creaked in the doorway behind me. I glanced back in fright, seeing the abomination with the eight limbs creeping up behind me. He stood only a few feet away from me now. As my eyes met his white, dead ones, his cadaverous face split into a sickly grin.
***
A wave of adrenaline shook my body. My vision turned white in the darkness. With a pounding heart, I pushed myself up and lunged through the mirror. The eight-limbed abomination with my rotting face gave an insane shriek. I felt a freezing cold hand wrap around my ankle and begin to drag me back.
“No!” I shrieked, trying to kick blindly at the mirror creature’s dead face. “I’ll never go with you! Never!” I smashed my sneaker into his jaw. There was a shattering sound, as if a ceramic vase had been dropped. The chattering of sharp teeth and the shrieking cut off abruptly. Looking back, I saw the corpse’s broken jaw hanging on by only a few shreds of tendons and muscle. The eyes went slack and I felt the grip loosen for the briefest moment. I pushed myself forward and slid through the mirror.
The freezing cold, pins-and-needles sensation returned, running over my body like water. I collapsed head-first onto the sink, rolling onto the floor with a jarring thud. The shrieking of the eight-limbed corpse continued behind me. I saw him trying to force his elongated body through the mirror. The long arms with their sharp fingers reached through, swiping wildly at the air. Before I could escape, one of them came through and cut four deep gashes into my chest. My shirt instantly became soaked in blood as a burning pain ran up my body.
I heard someone pounding at the front door, but in the panic of the moment, I could barely think. As the rest of the cadaverous body tried to push his way through the mirror, I dragged myself out of the bathroom. I slammed the door shut, even as the sounds of breaking and shattering followed me out of the bathroom. Ignoring the pain radiating through my body, I ran over to the couch and began shoving it towards the door.
The door shuddered in its frame. The house and the floor shook as the corpse threw his enormous body into the wood over and over again. Cracks spiderwebbed down the front of it, and I knew it wouldn’t last more than a couple more seconds.
“Freddie!” I screamed, looking around frantically. My heart dropped when I remembered I had told him to hide behind the couch. He was not here, not anywhere in the living room. “Freddie! Where the hell are you?”
“Dad?!” a voice responded from outside. It sounded like Freddie’s voice, but it was eerie, as if his voice had gotten caught between stations on the radio. It sputtered with static. It fell and rose in an ear-splitting scream. “Dad, let me in! Please! They’re going to hurt me!”
I ran to the front door, looking outside, but I saw no sign of Freddie. The sky had changed, though. The Moon had changed from orange to a dark red, the color of a burst blood blister. The rest of the sky was such a dark shade of crimson that it looked almost black. Around my feet, I felt something warm and wet.
“Where are you?” I yelled. “I don’t see…” At that moment, the bathroom door exploded outwards in a shower of nails and splinters, covering my face and body in the debris. The cadaverous face peeked around the corner, as if he were playing hide-and-seek rather than hunting and killing people.
“Fuck!” I swore as I looked down, seeing blood streaming in from under the door. It covered my sneakers up to the tops of the soles as more and more flooded in.
I ran for the stairs as the eight-limbed corpse skittered across the ceiling like a spider. He hung upside-down, the jaw hanging askew on his putrefying skull, the filmy eyes flashing with bloodlust. I was already half-way up the stairs when the corpse jumped down into the lake of blood at the bottom of the stairs. With his elongated, twisted limbs, he began pulling himself towards the first step in a blur, covering his body in the thick, putrid blood that continuously poured in through the bottom of every door.
But something was in the blood, I saw to my horror. I froze in place near the top of the stairs, watching the creature as he struggled to pull himself out of the blood, which was already at knee-height and still rising. There were dark silhouettes slithering through the blood. I saw the head of a black snake peer out at the eight-limbed cadaver. The snake had no eyelids, and its eyes looked as red as the blood it lived in. It wrapped its muscular body around his torso, rising up towards the cadaver’s face. The blood-red eyes met those dead, rotted ones of the corpse as they stared at each other. Then the eldritch snake lunged forward and bit off the corpse’s face.
Other snakes started to rise out of the surface, wrapping around his four legs and slithering up his back. The corpse wailed like a banshee, running blindly into the walls to try to smash the many snakes that suffocated and bit him from all sides. But this only seemed to heighten their hunger and bloodlust.
The sound of shredding flesh and snapping bone followed me as I ran into Freddie’s room and hid. His room was the only one without mirrors in it, I knew, and I wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
***
In the thick curtains of shadow, a small voice rang out, terrified and searching.
“Dad? Is that really you?” Freddie asked, hiding behind his chest of toys. I saw his small body, contorted and pale. His little head poked above the lid.
“Freddie! You’re alive!” I cried, running over and hugging him. Tears streamed down my face. “I thought you were outside. I heard you screaming out there.”
“I heard you and Mom yelling outside, too,” Freddie whispered, his small body trembling as I held him. “I got scared and ran up here. I’m sorry, Dad. Where’s Mom?”
“It’s OK. Thank God you did,” I murmured, remembering the lake of blood downstairs and all those strange, black snakes. “Mom isn’t coming, Freddie.” He went silent then and didn’t ask any more questions. A sick, heavy weight covered my heart.
In the darkness, we hid and waited, though I knew not for what. The smell of copper and iron from all the blood downstairs had become overwhelming. After a few minutes of this, I took my phone out and shone it around experimentally.
I saw a thin layer of blood streaming into the room, rising up the stairs like the waves of a tsunami. It covered the hallway’s hardwood floor, a half-inch thick deep already and growing fast. Dark shapes slithered and writhed in it. Small waves pushed the lake of blood towards us, and within seconds, my shoes were submerged in it.
“Dad?” Freddie asked in a panicked voice. “What’s that? There’s things inside of it…” Without thinking, I picked Freddie up and held him above my body.
“We need to get to the attic!” I whispered to him, sprinting through the rising pool of blood with my son in my arms. “Don’t be afraid, Freddie. We’ll make it.” I had nearly reached the hallway where the pull-cord for the attic stairs hung when something wrapped around my feet. I went flying forwards, dropping Freddie in the pool of blood. He was submerged up to his waist instantly. His small body writhed in terror.
“Help me! Help me!” he screamed, flailing his arms as black snakes circled him like hungry sharks. The one wrapping around my legs continued slithering up my body. A rising sense of horror and panic filled me. At that moment, I knew I was doomed. I only hoped I would see Iris again. Then I noticed spotlights turn on outside, filling the inside of the house with a radiance like the Sun.
All of the windows upstairs suddenly smashed inwards. A spotlight shone through the nearest of them, illuminating me and Freddie in our frantic struggles against the snakes. Men in SWAT gear crawled through the shattered windows. With their gas masks, their faces looked like insects with too many compound eyes.
On their helmets and jackets, I saw a strange symbol: a double-fisted thumb holding a staring, lidless eye. Dozens of them streamed in, shooting the snakes that circled Freddie and me. As the one wrapping around its body slowly wound its way towards my face, one of the black-clad men came up behind it and shot it in the skull. The snake’s body collapsed all around me, its muscles loosening in death. With relief washing over me, I ran to our saviors.
“Get us out of here!” I pleaded. “There’s horrible things happening!” The man nodded in his black military gear, his mask revealing nothing.
“Follow me,” he said dispassionately, starting towards the roof. “You two are the only survivors we’ve found so far. It truly is a miracle anyone’s still alive.” I could only agree silently.
"This must be all over every news channel," I said. The masked man shook his head.
"No one knows about this," he responded. "No one but you two and our group. The media won't say shit. They do what we tell them."
***
I followed the men out onto the roof. Helicopters crisscrossed the skies, illuminating the houses and streets with many bright spotlights. As a helicopter slowly lowered itself down to take Freddie and me away from that pit of nightmares, dropping a rope for us to ascend, I glanced around my town one last time.
Many of the houses were destroyed or burning, sending thick clouds of black smoke into the blood-red sky. Men in full SWAT gear zoomed around the blood flooding the streets in boats, the whirring of the motors echoing like angry hornets. Turning away, I followed Freddie into the helicopter and never returned.
Iris is dead, and Freddie and I have seen enough horrors to scar us for a thousand years. In my heart, I know it is my fault my wife died. I didn’t follow the rules, and she paid the price.
I will hear those dying, panicked screams until my final breath.
submitted by CIAHerpes to LighthouseHorror [link] [comments]

2024.05.09 10:30 CIAHerpes Something called the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System just flashed across my TV. It read out a list of rules.

My wife, Iris, sat on the couch next to me, holding the bowl of popcorn in her thin hands. On her other side, our little boy, Freddie, sat. He looked just like his mother, with the same dirty blonde hair and faraway eyes, like the eyes of a dreamer. The movie played across our flat-screen TV, some CGI comedy with talking penguins and llamas that could drive cars. It was some garbage from Disney I would never have watched in a million years, but Freddie liked it, so I suffered through it for him.
We had turned off all the lights in the house for the movie. Only the TV’s flickering colors illuminated the room, sending dancing shadows that flashed out behind us.
Suddenly, outside the living room window, a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, splitting a tree in our front yard in two. Light flooded in through the window as if the flash of a nuclear missile were ripping its way across the town. A crash rang out as the tree split down the middle, its massive branches tumbling down onto the lawn. I jumped as the ground shook. More lightning flashed nearby, hitting other houses and lawns on the street.
“Damn, there wasn’t supposed to be any storms,” I said in surprise. The TV had gone black, and now we sat in darkness. For a long moment, I thought the power had gone out.
Abruptly, it came back on with a roar of white noise and a flickering of static. The volume seemed to be increasing by itself, growing into a rushing cacophony like a waterfall. I saw Iris try to scream something, but I could only see her lips move.
As suddenly as it all started, it stopped. The standard “PLEASE STANDBY” screen with a rainbow of blocky colors behind it appeared. There was a clanging, ringing sound that emanated from the speakers, high-pitched and whining like tinnitus. Then text started appearing across the screen. At the same time, a deep, serious voice spoke in the background, like a radio announcer reporting on the death of a President.
“This is the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System,” the voice read grimly. “This is not a test. Level five activity has been reported in your area. Do not go outside. Close all blinds, shutters and windows. Lock all doors and close any attached garages. Do not open your doors except to military or police personnel with the proper insignia. Even if someone appears to be in distress, do not open your door to investigate or try to interfere in any way. A temporary quarantine is in effect for your area. Military and police assistance is on the way.
“To ensure the greatest chances of survival during this time of crisis, please abide by the following rules:
  1. If blood begins to pour under your door, go to a higher floor immediately. Avoid physical contact with the blood at all costs.
  2. All legitimate military and police personnel will have a special insignia on their helmets and jackets, an eye contained in a double-thumbed fist. Only accompany them if they have this insignia- otherwise, they are imposters.
  3. Avoid mirrors for the duration of the emergency.”
The voice cut out abruptly, slowing down in a mechanical whine. Static started flashing across the TV, covering the “PLEASE STANDBY” message that had returned in blocky letters. At that moment, the lights went out. They came back on a couple seconds later, brightening and dimming, before the power failed again. This time, the electricity did not come back on.
“What the fuck?” Iris whispered next to me, taking out her phone and shining the light across the dark living room. “That was pretty weird. Everything looks different outside, too. I was just outside an hour ago and the Moon didn’t look anything like that.” She pointed. I got up, realizing she was right. The nighttime sky outside looked strange. I looked out the front window, seeing the Moon was cast in a fluorescent orange light. The cloudless sky had a dark red glow to it, as if some kind of eerie smog had covered everything. I had seen similar things happen after massive forest fires in the past.
“What happened, Dad?” Freddie asked in his small voice. “Where’s the movie?”
“I think we lost power, little man,” I said, ruffling his hair in a nonchalant manner. I didn’t really believe the emergency broadcast, after all. I figured some teenager had hacked the TV station and decided to play a prank, or perhaps some disgruntled employee had done it on his last day as a kind of “Fuck you” to the station. I had heard of similar things happening before. It was somewhat strange how the power had gone out and the sky had changed, but I felt sure that it could all be logically explained.
Someone shrieked outside. I looked out onto the dark street, seeing the silhouette of someone running frantically down the middle of the street, zigzagging wildly. As the figure got closer, I realized it was a young woman. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties. She wore a white shirt and khakis. Her clothes were soaked in streams of blood that made the fabric cling to her trembling body. I saw a vicious gash bitten into her left shoulder, a wound so deep that the white bone peeked out through the ragged patches of flesh.
“Help me!” she wailed, her eyes wild and panicked. “Why won’t anyone help me?!” She staggered and fell forward, crying and bleeding all over the road. I was about to run outside to see what was wrong with the young woman when I saw another silhouette creeping up behind her.
It looked like the body of a man, but something was wrong. As he drew closer, I caught a glimpse of the man’s face through the dim light. The left side of it was rotted and decayed, while the right looked muscular and healthy. He wore a black suit that looked like little more than tatters. Pieces of it fell off in ragged strips. I could see his left hand was also decomposing. Whatever kind of sickness it was, it seemed to extend to the whole left side of his body.
The stiff, skeletal leg cracked as he dragged it behind him, silently drawing nearer to the young woman. The living side of his face split into an insane rictus grin as he looked down at her. He carried a blood-stained ax that dragged on the pavement behind him with a harsh, metallic groan.
“Get away from me!” the woman screamed at the abomination, trying to kick at him. But she looked weakened from blood loss, and her attempts were feeble and slow. The man laughed, a sound that rang out like the gurgling of blood. He spat squirming maggots from his mouth onto the dark street below. He knelt down before the gasping woman and gave a low whisper. It carried on the dead, silent air.
“So warm,” he murmured, wiping his dead, putrefying fingers across the streams of blood that spurted from her left shoulder. He stuck an inhumanly long, pointed tongue out of his chattering lips and began to lick the blood off his hands. “But not enough. Not nearly enough.”
He stuck the bony, decaying fingers of his left hand into the wound and started pulling at the ragged wound. Blood bubbled out in increasing quantities, covering her body in its wet sheen. The woman jerked, her face turning pale and bloodless. She tried to kick at him, but he only laughed again, gurgling like a man with a slit throat. In horror, I watched him raise the ax above his head. It stood there for a long moment, trembling in his shaking hands like a guillotine blade.
“Please, don’t…” the woman pleaded as he grinned down at her. In a blur, he swung the ax down into her forehead. There was a wet cracking of bone and a ringing of metal. She sat there with her mouth open for what felt like a very long moment. Then, limply, she collapsed to the pavement. A dull thud echoed down the street as her skull smacked the pavement.
Sickened, I closed the blinds on the window and turned away, realizing that Freddie and Iris had been standing right behind me the entire time, watching the horrific display. Freddie was crying quietly into his hands, while Iris looked pale, her green eyes wide and unbelieving. The woman exhaled one last time, a long, drawn-out death gasp, and then everything went silent.
I felt sick and weak. Staggering, I put my hand out against the wall. A wave of nausea rose up my stomach. I ran towards the bathroom, shining the light from my cell phone to light the way. Iris started crying. I heard her frantically try to dial 911 over and over again.
“Dammit, nothing’s working!” she cried. I stumbled into the bathroom and threw up all the popcorn and soda I had consumed that night into the toilet. Covered in sweat, I started wiping my face with toilet paper. I pushed myself up, glancing into the mirror.
A cadaverous version of myself stood there, the dead face showing horror and surprise just like my own. I saw the same high cheekbones, the same shaved head, but in the mirror image, maggots writhed and squirmed in the rancid flesh. I backpedaled into the wall, stuttering something incomprehensible. The reflected image did the same, his lipless mouth opening and closing with silent curses. He wore the same clothes as myself, a black T-shirt and blue jeans, but they were rotted and tattered, as if they had been dug out of a grave.
“What the fuck?” I swore, raising my right hand experimentally. The mirror image did the same, matching every single movement perfectly. At that moment, Iris came running into the bathroom, her soft footsteps thudding gently against the marble floor. I jumped, turning to her.
“There’s someone outside the door,” she whispered, her face pale. I glanced back at the reflection, seeing that the other version was no longer following my movements.
“Watch out!” I cried, but it was too late.
The skull-like face came forward in a blur. His arm shot out towards Iris. The surface of the mirror swirled as if it were made of water when his pale flesh made contact with it. The sharp points of bone of his fingers wrapped around Iris’ neck. Stunned and silent, I watched in horror as he started dragging her into that other world.
“Stop him!” she screamed. “God, make him stop!” I ran forward, grabbing her legs as her head and chest was sucked through. There was a slight popping sound when her body entered the liquid-like surface. I tried to hold on with all of my strength, but whatever abomination was on the other side was strong, stronger than me. His iron grip yanked her out of my hands.
“Dad?” Freddie asked, slinking into the bathroom. His eyes were wide and wild. He looked around, confused. “Where’s Mom? Who’s screaming?” I had to make a decision instantly, I knew. I could either stay with my son, or try to get my wife back. I knew I couldn’t just leave Iris, though. I felt mentally torn. I looked between him and the mirror, my heart quivering with anxiety.
“Freddie, go wait in the living room,” I said. “Hide behind the couch. Don’t answer the door or say anything to anyone, no matter what. I’ll be right back.” I wasn’t sure if I would or not. Before I turned to the mirror, I patted his head. “Remember the rules they read us on the TV.” He nodded, but he was only a seven-year-old boy. How much did he really understand? Hell, how much did I even understand? I hadn’t followed the rules, and now Iris was kidnapped.
I turned back to the mirror, seeing that I had no reflection now. There was no sign of Iris or the rotted corpse with my face, either. Slowly, I walked forward, putting my trembling hand out towards its silvery surface. My fingers went through the mirror as if it were mere air, but I felt something freezing cold ripple around my skin. Pins and needles rushed up my arm. Taking a deep breath in, I pushed myself up on the counter and went all the way through.
***
I fell forward onto the marble surface of the bathroom floor, putting my hands out to break the fall. As I glanced up, I realized how strange everything looked. The world here was in constant motion, as if a fog-like void shimmered over the world. The floor’s surface danced with whorls of shadow. They felt as freezing cold as liquid nitrogen as they passed over my body.
Shivering and hugging myself, I pushed myself up off the floor. The walls and ceilings, too, rippled in the same black currents. I glanced around, seeing the white bathtub filled to the brim with dark blood. It bubbled constantly, as if someone were drowning under its surface. Bloody handprints of all sizes smeared the sides of the tub. The smell of copper grew strong, mixing with the strange smell that emanated from the shadows, a pungent, chemical odor like ammonia.
I passed by the mirror, seeing that here, too, I had no reflection. I felt like a vampire, staring into that blank emptiness. Feeling sick and disoriented, I stumbled forward, afraid to even breathe too loudly. I heard Iris crying and shrieking somewhere nearby.
“Nooo…” she wailed. “Please, stop…” Her voice seemed to be growing fainter and weaker, as if she were being dragged away by a tsunami. I peeked around the corner. Everything looked like nightmarish and strange. The living room looked much longer, stretching out for hundreds of feet. It had the same blue carpet and white walls as the one in my world, but now it was the size of a football stadium. The dark red couch had lengthened to an absurd size, stretching wide enough to fit a hundred people in it. The TV loomed across the room like the screen of a movie theater. It flickered constantly, showing a cacophony of white noise and static interspersed with horrible images: naked corpses with their throats sliced from ear to ear, burning bodies, people falling to their deaths from burning buildings.
But none of that was what made an involuntary gasp of horror rise up my throat. It was the enormous spiderweb spanning the length of the ceiling, fluttering softly in the breeze. In the center of the symmetrical web, I saw Iris, covered in silky thread up to her neck. She was hanging horizontally facing down, her body parallel to the floor. She struggled against the webbing that bound her like steel chains. Her eyes bulged from her head as she stared fixedly at the cadaver approaching her.
Crawling upside-down towards Iris was the monstrous image of myself I had seen in the mirror, but he had transformed into something spidery and eldritch. He skittered along with four arms and four legs now. The emaciated limbs poked out of his tattered rags of clothes, forked and elongated, the skin pale and covered in purple sores and deep gashes. Iris continued to plead and shriek in horror as it drew near. The creature’s chattering fangs and blackened gums approached her neck.
At the penultimate moment, Iris saw me, peeking around the corner of the bathroom. I stood there, unsure of what to do. I thought of trying to scream out, to throw something at the creature, but then what? We would both die, and then who would be left alive to protect Freddie? I didn’t know what to do. These thoughts passed through my head in the space of a single moment as we stared at each other. Her eyes shone with a moment of clarity, even as waves of mortal terror shook her body like a hurricane.
“Save Freddie!” she screamed. “Run! Go, Jack!” The creature noticed her staring at me instantly. He curved his long neck and twisted his spidery limbs, clutching the thick strands of silk with his skeletal limbs. The creature turned to me. He had a face like a skull. His filmy eyes regarded me intently. Silver streams of saliva dripped from his mouth. He gave a wide, insane smile, then turned back to Iris, unhinging his jaw. The pale, dead skin tore with a wet ripping sound. The yellow, sharp points of teeth gleamed darkly in the currents of rippling shadow.
I turned, sprinting back into the darkness of the bathroom as the crunching of bone and the shrieking of my wife followed me out. I had to repress an urge to vomit. With all of the speed I could muster, I staggered forward to the counter, where the mirror sat revealing the image of my house, an image that still lacked my reflection inside. Iris’ pleas and screams rapidly weakened. I heard her choking and gasping. A few moments later, I heard a rapid skittering of many legs approaching the bathroom. I started to pull myself up on the counter to escape this hellish mirror world.
Something creaked in the doorway behind me. I glanced back in fright, seeing the abomination with the eight limbs creeping up behind me. He stood only a few feet away from me now. As my eyes met his white, dead ones, his cadaverous face split into a sickly grin.
***
A wave of adrenaline shook my body. My vision turned white in the darkness. With a pounding heart, I pushed myself up and lunged through the mirror. The eight-limbed abomination with my rotting face gave an insane shriek. I felt a freezing cold hand wrap around my ankle and begin to drag me back.
“No!” I shrieked, trying to kick blindly at the mirror creature’s dead face. “I’ll never go with you! Never!” I smashed my sneaker into his jaw. There was a shattering sound, as if a ceramic vase had been dropped. The chattering of sharp teeth and the shrieking cut off abruptly. Looking back, I saw the corpse’s broken jaw hanging on by only a few shreds of tendons and muscle. The eyes went slack and I felt the grip loosen for the briefest moment. I pushed myself forward and slid through the mirror.
The freezing cold, pins-and-needles sensation returned, running over my body like water. I collapsed head-first onto the sink, rolling onto the floor with a jarring thud. The shrieking of the eight-limbed corpse continued behind me. I saw him trying to force his elongated body through the mirror. The long arms with their sharp fingers reached through, swiping wildly at the air. Before I could escape, one of them came through and cut four deep gashes into my chest. My shirt instantly became soaked in blood as a burning pain ran up my body.
I heard someone pounding at the front door, but in the panic of the moment, I could barely think. As the rest of the cadaverous body tried to push his way through the mirror, I dragged myself out of the bathroom. I slammed the door shut, even as the sounds of breaking and shattering followed me out of the bathroom. Ignoring the pain radiating through my body, I ran over to the couch and began shoving it towards the door.
The door shuddered in its frame. The house and the floor shook as the corpse threw his enormous body into the wood over and over again. Cracks spiderwebbed down the front of it, and I knew it wouldn’t last more than a couple more seconds.
“Freddie!” I screamed, looking around frantically. My heart dropped when I remembered I had told him to hide behind the couch. He was not here, not anywhere in the living room. “Freddie! Where the hell are you?”
“Dad?!” a voice responded from outside. It sounded like Freddie’s voice, but it was eerie, as if his voice had gotten caught between stations on the radio. It sputtered with static. It fell and rose in an ear-splitting scream. “Dad, let me in! Please! They’re going to hurt me!”
I ran to the front door, looking outside, but I saw no sign of Freddie. The sky had changed, though. The Moon had changed from orange to a dark red, the color of a burst blood blister. The rest of the sky was such a dark shade of crimson that it looked almost black. Around my feet, I felt something warm and wet.
“Where are you?” I yelled. “I don’t see…” At that moment, the bathroom door exploded outwards in a shower of nails and splinters, covering my face and body in the debris. The cadaverous face peeked around the corner, as if he were playing hide-and-seek rather than hunting and killing people.
“Fuck!” I swore as I looked down, seeing blood streaming in from under the door. It covered my sneakers up to the tops of the soles as more and more flooded in.
I ran for the stairs as the eight-limbed corpse skittered across the ceiling like a spider. He hung upside-down, the jaw hanging askew on his putrefying skull, the filmy eyes flashing with bloodlust. I was already half-way up the stairs when the corpse jumped down into the lake of blood at the bottom of the stairs. With his elongated, twisted limbs, he began pulling himself towards the first step in a blur, covering his body in the thick, putrid blood that continuously poured in through the bottom of every door.
But something was in the blood, I saw to my horror. I froze in place near the top of the stairs, watching the creature as he struggled to pull himself out of the blood, which was already at knee-height and still rising. There were dark silhouettes slithering through the blood. I saw the head of a black snake peer out at the eight-limbed cadaver. The snake had no eyelids, and its eyes looked as red as the blood it lived in. It wrapped its muscular body around his torso, rising up towards the cadaver’s face. The blood-red eyes met those dead, rotted ones of the corpse as they stared at each other. Then the eldritch snake lunged forward and bit off the corpse’s face.
Other snakes started to rise out of the surface, wrapping around his four legs and slithering up his back. The corpse wailed like a banshee, running blindly into the walls to try to smash the many snakes that suffocated and bit him from all sides. But this only seemed to heighten their hunger and bloodlust.
The sound of shredding flesh and snapping bone followed me as I ran into Freddie’s room and hid. His room was the only one without mirrors in it, I knew, and I wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
***
In the thick curtains of shadow, a small voice rang out, terrified and searching.
“Dad? Is that really you?” Freddie asked, hiding behind his chest of toys. I saw his small body, contorted and pale. His little head poked above the lid.
“Freddie! You’re alive!” I cried, running over and hugging him. Tears streamed down my face. “I thought you were outside. I heard you screaming out there.”
“I heard you and Mom yelling outside, too,” Freddie whispered, his small body trembling as I held him. “I got scared and ran up here. I’m sorry, Dad. Where’s Mom?”
“It’s OK. Thank God you did,” I murmured, remembering the lake of blood downstairs and all those strange, black snakes. “Mom isn’t coming, Freddie.” He went silent then and didn’t ask any more questions. A sick, heavy weight covered my heart.
In the darkness, we hid and waited, though I knew not for what. The smell of copper and iron from all the blood downstairs had become overwhelming. After a few minutes of this, I took my phone out and shone it around experimentally.
I saw a thin layer of blood streaming into the room, rising up the stairs like the waves of a tsunami. It covered the hallway’s hardwood floor, a half-inch thick deep already and growing fast. Dark shapes slithered and writhed in it. Small waves pushed the lake of blood towards us, and within seconds, my shoes were submerged in it.
“Dad?” Freddie asked in a panicked voice. “What’s that? There’s things inside of it…” Without thinking, I picked Freddie up and held him above my body.
“We need to get to the attic!” I whispered to him, sprinting through the rising pool of blood with my son in my arms. “Don’t be afraid, Freddie. We’ll make it.” I had nearly reached the hallway where the pull-cord for the attic stairs hung when something wrapped around my feet. I went flying forwards, dropping Freddie in the pool of blood. He was submerged up to his waist instantly. His small body writhed in terror.
“Help me! Help me!” he screamed, flailing his arms as black snakes circled him like hungry sharks. The one wrapping around my legs continued slithering up my body. A rising sense of horror and panic filled me. At that moment, I knew I was doomed. I only hoped I would see Iris again. Then I noticed spotlights turn on outside, filling the inside of the house with a radiance like the Sun.
All of the windows upstairs suddenly smashed inwards. A spotlight shone through the nearest of them, illuminating me and Freddie in our frantic struggles against the snakes. Men in SWAT gear crawled through the shattered windows. With their gas masks, their faces looked like insects with too many compound eyes.
On their helmets and jackets, I saw a strange symbol: a double-fisted thumb holding a staring, lidless eye. Dozens of them streamed in, shooting the snakes that circled Freddie and me. As the one wrapping around its body slowly wound its way towards my face, one of the black-clad men came up behind it and shot it in the skull. The snake’s body collapsed all around me, its muscles loosening in death. With relief washing over me, I ran to our saviors.
“Get us out of here!” I pleaded. “There’s horrible things happening!” The man nodded in his black military gear, his mask revealing nothing.
“Follow me,” he said dispassionately, starting towards the roof. “You two are the only survivors we’ve found so far. It truly is a miracle anyone’s still alive.” I could only agree silently.
"This must be all over every news channel," I said. The masked man shook his head.
"No one knows about this," he responded. "No one but you two and our group. The media won't say shit. They do what we tell them."
***
I followed the men out onto the roof. Helicopters crisscrossed the skies, illuminating the houses and streets with many bright spotlights. As a helicopter slowly lowered itself down to take Freddie and me away from that pit of nightmares, dropping a rope for us to ascend, I glanced around my town one last time.
Many of the houses were destroyed or burning, sending thick clouds of black smoke into the blood-red sky. Men in full SWAT gear zoomed around the blood flooding the streets in boats, the whirring of the motors echoing like angry hornets. Turning away, I followed Freddie into the helicopter and never returned.
Iris is dead, and Freddie and I have seen enough horrors to scar us for a thousand years. In my heart, I know it is my fault my wife died. I didn’t follow the rules, and she paid the price.
I will hear those dying, panicked screams until my final breath.
submitted by CIAHerpes to TheDarkGathering [link] [comments]

2024.05.08 23:32 NickiSun How should I go about my walls?

Hello people! I recently moved rooms in our commune and have a lot of space to work with.
I have a lot of stuff I could hang up but I'm nervous about cramping the space in an uncomfortable way.
That's why I wanna ask for some ideas of where to put my stuff now. The walls have been empty for a while and I finally wanna do something about it, but don't know where to start.
Information about the pictures: 1-4 show my empty walls and a bit of the room (if u wanna throw in some thoughts about placements feel free too, this is a work in progress lol and I'm open!)
5-9 show what I own for walls, some frames, 2 pinboards (small and large), colorful lights (i have a 10m fairy light here too) and a lot of fake plants.
10-12 are wall tapestries I own, which I screenshotted so u have the length and full view.
I don't need to put on everything (im not sure if i wanna keep the b/w tapestry and the red one, am considering a gigantic snail tapestry tho, which is the last amazon pic (13)
And the last 2 pics are from my old room. I got lots of compliments about it being cozy, but it also felt very cramped and a bit too cluttered at times, especially the bed. I loved having a tapestry above the bed, but it was too far down for me and I didn't like it that way.. but I also hate the large space above me now lol.
Some thoughts; First up here is a link of an inspo pinterest I made for my room a while back.
Since I live in a commune this is my entire living space, so chilling, sleeping, working is in one space.
I can't buy much more than I have already, but I appreciate any future ideas! Only thing firmly planned is a soft ring around the dartboard to save the wall there lol.
I thought about having at least the small pin board right next to my desk, as I have heavy adhd and need smth to put important stuff on.
I used to have the big one above my pc, but that is now in front of a window.
I thought about putting the shelfes above the table too, but I'm not sure if that is too much for that corner.
Then again I wouldn't know where else to put them.
I also have a ton of postcards etc I will be adding to the room eventually but I can't before I didn't work on the waaalls
Also idk how important lighting is, but I have a large window side and Im on the sunny side with a balcony attached to the room, so the room will be flooding with light.
Oh also, there are gonna be some beige curtains which will be added to the window front that I didnt upload though, which are probably gonna shift the weight of the room in the future. But its uncertain when that happens, because the shutters are broken, which is why my sun tapestry is currently on the window for privacy reasons haha
Any input is appreciated!
submitted by NickiSun to DesignMyRoom [link] [comments]

2024.05.08 21:49 CIAHerpes Something called the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System just flashed across my TV. It read out a list of rules.

My wife, Iris, sat on the couch next to me, holding the bowl of popcorn in her thin hands. On her other side, our little boy, Freddie, sat. He looked just like his mother, with the same dirty blonde hair and faraway eyes, like the eyes of a dreamer. The movie played across our flat-screen TV, some CGI comedy with talking penguins and llamas that could drive cars. It was some garbage from Disney I would never have watched in a million years, but Freddie liked it, so I suffered through it for him.
We had turned off all the lights in the house for the movie. Only the TV’s flickering colors illuminated the room, sending dancing shadows that flashed out behind us.
Suddenly, outside the living room window, a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, splitting a tree in our front yard in two. Light flooded in through the window as if the flash of a nuclear missile were ripping its way across the town. A crash rang out as the tree split down the middle, its massive branches tumbling down onto the lawn. I jumped as the ground shook. More lightning flashed nearby, hitting other houses and lawns on the street.
“Damn, there wasn’t supposed to be any storms,” I said in surprise. The TV had gone black, and now we sat in darkness. For a long moment, I thought the power had gone out.
Abruptly, it came back on with a roar of white noise and a flickering of static. The volume seemed to be increasing by itself, growing into a rushing cacophony like a waterfall. I saw Iris try to scream something, but I could only see her lips move.
As suddenly as it all started, it stopped. The standard “PLEASE STANDBY” screen with a rainbow of blocky colors behind it appeared. There was a clanging, ringing sound that emanated from the speakers, high-pitched and whining like tinnitus. Then text started appearing across the screen. At the same time, a deep, serious voice spoke in the background, like a radio announcer reporting on the death of a President.
“This is the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System,” the voice read grimly. “This is not a test. Level five activity has been reported in your area. Do not go outside. Close all blinds, shutters and windows. Lock all doors and close any attached garages. Do not open your doors except to military or police personnel with the proper insignia. Even if someone appears to be in distress, do not open your door to investigate or try to interfere in any way. A temporary quarantine is in effect for your area. Military and police assistance is on the way.
“To ensure the greatest chances of survival during this time of crisis, please abide by the following rules:
  1. If blood begins to pour under your door, go to a higher floor immediately. Avoid physical contact with the blood at all costs.
  2. All legitimate military and police personnel will have a special insignia on their helmets and jackets, an eye contained in a double-thumbed fist. Only accompany them if they have this insignia- otherwise, they are imposters.
  3. Avoid mirrors for the duration of the emergency.”
The voice cut out abruptly, slowing down in a mechanical whine. Static started flashing across the TV, covering the “PLEASE STANDBY” message that had returned in blocky letters. At that moment, the lights went out. They came back on a couple seconds later, brightening and dimming, before the power failed again. This time, the electricity did not come back on.
“What the fuck?” Iris whispered next to me, taking out her phone and shining the light across the dark living room. “That was pretty weird. Everything looks different outside, too. I was just outside an hour ago and the Moon didn’t look anything like that.” She pointed. I got up, realizing she was right. The nighttime sky outside looked strange. I looked out the front window, seeing the Moon was cast in a fluorescent orange light. The cloudless sky had a dark red glow to it, as if some kind of eerie smog had covered everything. I had seen similar things happen after massive forest fires in the past.
“What happened, Dad?” Freddie asked in his small voice. “Where’s the movie?”
“I think we lost power, little man,” I said, ruffling his hair in a nonchalant manner. I didn’t really believe the emergency broadcast, after all. I figured some teenager had hacked the TV station and decided to play a prank, or perhaps some disgruntled employee had done it on his last day as a kind of “Fuck you” to the station. I had heard of similar things happening before. It was somewhat strange how the power had gone out and the sky had changed, but I felt sure that it could all be logically explained.
Someone shrieked outside. I looked out onto the dark street, seeing the silhouette of someone running frantically down the middle of the street, zigzagging wildly. As the figure got closer, I realized it was a young woman. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties. She wore a white shirt and khakis. Her clothes were soaked in streams of blood that made the fabric cling to her trembling body. I saw a vicious gash bitten into her left shoulder, a wound so deep that the white bone peeked out through the ragged patches of flesh.
“Help me!” she wailed, her eyes wild and panicked. “Why won’t anyone help me?!” She staggered and fell forward, crying and bleeding all over the road. I was about to run outside to see what was wrong with the young woman when I saw another silhouette creeping up behind her.
It looked like the body of a man, but something was wrong. As he drew closer, I caught a glimpse of the man’s face through the dim light. The left side of it was rotted and decayed, while the right looked muscular and healthy. He wore a black suit that looked like little more than tatters. Pieces of it fell off in ragged strips. I could see his left hand was also decomposing. Whatever kind of sickness it was, it seemed to extend to the whole left side of his body.
The stiff, skeletal leg cracked as he dragged it behind him, silently drawing nearer to the young woman. The living side of his face split into an insane rictus grin as he looked down at her. He carried a blood-stained ax that dragged on the pavement behind him with a harsh, metallic groan.
“Get away from me!” the woman screamed at the abomination, trying to kick at him. But she looked weakened from blood loss, and her attempts were feeble and slow. The man laughed, a sound that rang out like the gurgling of blood. He spat squirming maggots from his mouth onto the dark street below. He knelt down before the gasping woman and gave a low whisper. It carried on the dead, silent air.
“So warm,” he murmured, wiping his dead, putrefying fingers across the streams of blood that spurted from her left shoulder. He stuck an inhumanly long, pointed tongue out of his chattering lips and began to lick the blood off his hands. “But not enough. Not nearly enough.”
He stuck the bony, decaying fingers of his left hand into the wound and started pulling at the ragged wound. Blood bubbled out in increasing quantities, covering her body in its wet sheen. The woman jerked, her face turning pale and bloodless. She tried to kick at him, but he only laughed again, gurgling like a man with a slit throat. In horror, I watched him raise the ax above his head. It stood there for a long moment, trembling in his shaking hands like a guillotine blade.
“Please, don’t…” the woman pleaded as he grinned down at her. In a blur, he swung the ax down into her forehead. There was a wet cracking of bone and a ringing of metal. She sat there with her mouth open for what felt like a very long moment. Then, limply, she collapsed to the pavement. A dull thud echoed down the street as her skull smacked the pavement.
Sickened, I closed the blinds on the window and turned away, realizing that Freddie and Iris had been standing right behind me the entire time, watching the horrific display. Freddie was crying quietly into his hands, while Iris looked pale, her green eyes wide and unbelieving. The woman exhaled one last time, a long, drawn-out death gasp, and then everything went silent.
I felt sick and weak. Staggering, I put my hand out against the wall. A wave of nausea rose up my stomach. I ran towards the bathroom, shining the light from my cell phone to light the way. Iris started crying. I heard her frantically try to dial 911 over and over again.
“Dammit, nothing’s working!” she cried. I stumbled into the bathroom and threw up all the popcorn and soda I had consumed that night into the toilet. Covered in sweat, I started wiping my face with toilet paper. I pushed myself up, glancing into the mirror.
A cadaverous version of myself stood there, the dead face showing horror and surprise just like my own. I saw the same high cheekbones, the same shaved head, but in the mirror image, maggots writhed and squirmed in the rancid flesh. I backpedaled into the wall, stuttering something incomprehensible. The reflected image did the same, his lipless mouth opening and closing with silent curses. He wore the same clothes as myself, a black T-shirt and blue jeans, but they were rotted and tattered, as if they had been dug out of a grave.
“What the fuck?” I swore, raising my right hand experimentally. The mirror image did the same, matching every single movement perfectly. At that moment, Iris came running into the bathroom, her soft footsteps thudding gently against the marble floor. I jumped, turning to her.
“There’s someone outside the door,” she whispered, her face pale. I glanced back at the reflection, seeing that the other version was no longer following my movements.
“Watch out!” I cried, but it was too late.
The skull-like face came forward in a blur. His arm shot out towards Iris. The surface of the mirror swirled as if it were made of water when his pale flesh made contact with it. The sharp points of bone of his fingers wrapped around Iris’ neck. Stunned and silent, I watched in horror as he started dragging her into that other world.
“Stop him!” she screamed. “God, make him stop!” I ran forward, grabbing her legs as her head and chest was sucked through. There was a slight popping sound when her body entered the liquid-like surface. I tried to hold on with all of my strength, but whatever abomination was on the other side was strong, stronger than me. His iron grip yanked her out of my hands.
“Dad?” Freddie asked, slinking into the bathroom. His eyes were wide and wild. He looked around, confused. “Where’s Mom? Who’s screaming?” I had to make a decision instantly, I knew. I could either stay with my son, or try to get my wife back. I knew I couldn’t just leave Iris, though. I felt mentally torn. I looked between him and the mirror, my heart quivering with anxiety.
“Freddie, go wait in the living room,” I said. “Hide behind the couch. Don’t answer the door or say anything to anyone, no matter what. I’ll be right back.” I wasn’t sure if I would or not. Before I turned to the mirror, I patted his head. “Remember the rules they read us on the TV.” He nodded, but he was only a seven-year-old boy. How much did he really understand? Hell, how much did I even understand? I hadn’t followed the rules, and now Iris was kidnapped.
I turned back to the mirror, seeing that I had no reflection now. There was no sign of Iris or the rotted corpse with my face, either. Slowly, I walked forward, putting my trembling hand out towards its silvery surface. My fingers went through the mirror as if it were mere air, but I felt something freezing cold ripple around my skin. Pins and needles rushed up my arm. Taking a deep breath in, I pushed myself up on the counter and went all the way through.
***
I fell forward onto the marble surface of the bathroom floor, putting my hands out to break the fall. As I glanced up, I realized how strange everything looked. The world here was in constant motion, as if a fog-like void shimmered over the world. The floor’s surface danced with whorls of shadow. They felt as freezing cold as liquid nitrogen as they passed over my body.
Shivering and hugging myself, I pushed myself up off the floor. The walls and ceilings, too, rippled in the same black currents. I glanced around, seeing the white bathtub filled to the brim with dark blood. It bubbled constantly, as if someone were drowning under its surface. Bloody handprints of all sizes smeared the sides of the tub. The smell of copper grew strong, mixing with the strange smell that emanated from the shadows, a pungent, chemical odor like ammonia.
I passed by the mirror, seeing that here, too, I had no reflection. I felt like a vampire, staring into that blank emptiness. Feeling sick and disoriented, I stumbled forward, afraid to even breathe too loudly. I heard Iris crying and shrieking somewhere nearby.
“Nooo…” she wailed. “Please, stop…” Her voice seemed to be growing fainter and weaker, as if she were being dragged away by a tsunami. I peeked around the corner. Everything looked like nightmarish and strange. The living room looked much longer, stretching out for hundreds of feet. It had the same blue carpet and white walls as the one in my world, but now it was the size of a football stadium. The dark red couch had lengthened to an absurd size, stretching wide enough to fit a hundred people in it. The TV loomed across the room like the screen of a movie theater. It flickered constantly, showing a cacophony of white noise and static interspersed with horrible images: naked corpses with their throats sliced from ear to ear, burning bodies, people falling to their deaths from burning buildings.
But none of that was what made an involuntary gasp of horror rise up my throat. It was the enormous spiderweb spanning the length of the ceiling, fluttering softly in the breeze. In the center of the symmetrical web, I saw Iris, covered in silky thread up to her neck. She was hanging horizontally facing down, her body parallel to the floor. She struggled against the webbing that bound her like steel chains. Her eyes bulged from her head as she stared fixedly at the cadaver approaching her.
Crawling upside-down towards Iris was the monstrous image of myself I had seen in the mirror, but he had transformed into something spidery and eldritch. He skittered along with four arms and four legs now. The emaciated limbs poked out of his tattered rags of clothes, forked and elongated, the skin pale and covered in purple sores and deep gashes. Iris continued to plead and shriek in horror as it drew near. The creature’s chattering fangs and blackened gums approached her neck.
At the penultimate moment, Iris saw me, peeking around the corner of the bathroom. I stood there, unsure of what to do. I thought of trying to scream out, to throw something at the creature, but then what? We would both die, and then who would be left alive to protect Freddie? I didn’t know what to do. These thoughts passed through my head in the space of a single moment as we stared at each other. Her eyes shone with a moment of clarity, even as waves of mortal terror shook her body like a hurricane.
“Save Freddie!” she screamed. “Run! Go, Jack!” The creature noticed her staring at me instantly. He curved his long neck and twisted his spidery limbs, clutching the thick strands of silk with his skeletal limbs. The creature turned to me. He had a face like a skull. His filmy eyes regarded me intently. Silver streams of saliva dripped from his mouth. He gave a wide, insane smile, then turned back to Iris, unhinging his jaw. The pale, dead skin tore with a wet ripping sound. The yellow, sharp points of teeth gleamed darkly in the currents of rippling shadow.
I turned, sprinting back into the darkness of the bathroom as the crunching of bone and the shrieking of my wife followed me out. I had to repress an urge to vomit. With all of the speed I could muster, I staggered forward to the counter, where the mirror sat revealing the image of my house, an image that still lacked my reflection inside. Iris’ pleas and screams rapidly weakened. I heard her choking and gasping. A few moments later, I heard a rapid skittering of many legs approaching the bathroom. I started to pull myself up on the counter to escape this hellish mirror world.
Something creaked in the doorway behind me. I glanced back in fright, seeing the abomination with the eight limbs creeping up behind me. He stood only a few feet away from me now. As my eyes met his white, dead ones, his cadaverous face split into a sickly grin.
***
A wave of adrenaline shook my body. My vision turned white in the darkness. With a pounding heart, I pushed myself up and lunged through the mirror. The eight-limbed abomination with my rotting face gave an insane shriek. I felt a freezing cold hand wrap around my ankle and begin to drag me back.
“No!” I shrieked, trying to kick blindly at the mirror creature’s dead face. “I’ll never go with you! Never!” I smashed my sneaker into his jaw. There was a shattering sound, as if a ceramic vase had been dropped. The chattering of sharp teeth and the shrieking cut off abruptly. Looking back, I saw the corpse’s broken jaw hanging on by only a few shreds of tendons and muscle. The eyes went slack and I felt the grip loosen for the briefest moment. I pushed myself forward and slid through the mirror.
The freezing cold, pins-and-needles sensation returned, running over my body like water. I collapsed head-first onto the sink, rolling onto the floor with a jarring thud. The shrieking of the eight-limbed corpse continued behind me. I saw him trying to force his elongated body through the mirror. The long arms with their sharp fingers reached through, swiping wildly at the air. Before I could escape, one of them came through and cut four deep gashes into my chest. My shirt instantly became soaked in blood as a burning pain ran up my body.
I heard someone pounding at the front door, but in the panic of the moment, I could barely think. As the rest of the cadaverous body tried to push his way through the mirror, I dragged myself out of the bathroom. I slammed the door shut, even as the sounds of breaking and shattering followed me out of the bathroom. Ignoring the pain radiating through my body, I ran over to the couch and began shoving it towards the door.
The door shuddered in its frame. The house and the floor shook as the corpse threw his enormous body into the wood over and over again. Cracks spiderwebbed down the front of it, and I knew it wouldn’t last more than a couple more seconds.
“Freddie!” I screamed, looking around frantically. My heart dropped when I remembered I had told him to hide behind the couch. He was not here, not anywhere in the living room. “Freddie! Where the hell are you?”
“Dad?!” a voice responded from outside. It sounded like Freddie’s voice, but it was eerie, as if his voice had gotten caught between stations on the radio. It sputtered with static. It fell and rose in an ear-splitting scream. “Dad, let me in! Please! They’re going to hurt me!”
I ran to the front door, looking outside, but I saw no sign of Freddie. The sky had changed, though. The Moon had changed from orange to a dark red, the color of a burst blood blister. The rest of the sky was such a dark shade of crimson that it looked almost black. Around my feet, I felt something warm and wet.
“Where are you?” I yelled. “I don’t see…” At that moment, the bathroom door exploded outwards in a shower of nails and splinters, covering my face and body in the debris. The cadaverous face peeked around the corner, as if he were playing hide-and-seek rather than hunting and killing people.
“Fuck!” I swore as I looked down, seeing blood streaming in from under the door. It covered my sneakers up to the tops of the soles as more and more flooded in.
I ran for the stairs as the eight-limbed corpse skittered across the ceiling like a spider. He hung upside-down, the jaw hanging askew on his putrefying skull, the filmy eyes flashing with bloodlust. I was already half-way up the stairs when the corpse jumped down into the lake of blood at the bottom of the stairs. With his elongated, twisted limbs, he began pulling himself towards the first step in a blur, covering his body in the thick, putrid blood that continuously poured in through the bottom of every door.
But something was in the blood, I saw to my horror. I froze in place near the top of the stairs, watching the creature as he struggled to pull himself out of the blood, which was already at knee-height and still rising. There were dark silhouettes slithering through the blood. I saw the head of a black snake peer out at the eight-limbed cadaver. The snake had no eyelids, and its eyes looked as red as the blood it lived in. It wrapped its muscular body around his torso, rising up towards the cadaver’s face. The blood-red eyes met those dead, rotted ones of the corpse as they stared at each other. Then the eldritch snake lunged forward and bit off the corpse’s face.
Other snakes started to rise out of the surface, wrapping around his four legs and slithering up his back. The corpse wailed like a banshee, running blindly into the walls to try to smash the many snakes that suffocated and bit him from all sides. But this only seemed to heighten their hunger and bloodlust.
The sound of shredding flesh and snapping bone followed me as I ran into Freddie’s room and hid. His room was the only one without mirrors in it, I knew, and I wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
***
In the thick curtains of shadow, a small voice rang out, terrified and searching.
“Dad? Is that really you?” Freddie asked, hiding behind his chest of toys. I saw his small body, contorted and pale. His little head poked above the lid.
“Freddie! You’re alive!” I cried, running over and hugging him. Tears streamed down my face. “I thought you were outside. I heard you screaming out there.”
“I heard you and Mom yelling outside, too,” Freddie whispered, his small body trembling as I held him. “I got scared and ran up here. I’m sorry, Dad. Where’s Mom?”
“It’s OK. Thank God you did,” I murmured, remembering the lake of blood downstairs and all those strange, black snakes. “Mom isn’t coming, Freddie.” He went silent then and didn’t ask any more questions. A sick, heavy weight covered my heart.
In the darkness, we hid and waited, though I knew not for what. The smell of copper and iron from all the blood downstairs had become overwhelming. After a few minutes of this, I took my phone out and shone it around experimentally.
I saw a thin layer of blood streaming into the room, rising up the stairs like the waves of a tsunami. It covered the hallway’s hardwood floor, a half-inch thick deep already and growing fast. Dark shapes slithered and writhed in it. Small waves pushed the lake of blood towards us, and within seconds, my shoes were submerged in it.
“Dad?” Freddie asked in a panicked voice. “What’s that? There’s things inside of it…” Without thinking, I picked Freddie up and held him above my body.
“We need to get to the attic!” I whispered to him, sprinting through the rising pool of blood with my son in my arms. “Don’t be afraid, Freddie. We’ll make it.” I had nearly reached the hallway where the pull-cord for the attic stairs hung when something wrapped around my feet. I went flying forwards, dropping Freddie in the pool of blood. He was submerged up to his waist instantly. His small body writhed in terror.
“Help me! Help me!” he screamed, flailing his arms as black snakes circled him like hungry sharks. The one wrapping around my legs continued slithering up my body. A rising sense of horror and panic filled me. At that moment, I knew I was doomed. I only hoped I would see Iris again. Then I noticed spotlights turn on outside, filling the inside of the house with a radiance like the Sun.
All of the windows upstairs suddenly smashed inwards. A spotlight shone through the nearest of them, illuminating me and Freddie in our frantic struggles against the snakes. Men in SWAT gear crawled through the shattered windows. With their gas masks, their faces looked like insects with too many compound eyes.
On their helmets and jackets, I saw a strange symbol: a double-fisted thumb holding a staring, lidless eye. Dozens of them streamed in, shooting the snakes that circled Freddie and me. As the one wrapping around its body slowly wound its way towards my face, one of the black-clad men came up behind it and shot it in the skull. The snake’s body collapsed all around me, its muscles loosening in death. With relief washing over me, I ran to our saviors.
“Get us out of here!” I pleaded. “There’s horrible things happening!” The man nodded in his black military gear, his mask revealing nothing.
“Follow me,” he said dispassionately, starting towards the roof. “You two are the only survivors we’ve found so far. It truly is a miracle anyone’s still alive.” I could only agree silently.
"This must be all over every news channel," I said. The masked man shook his head.
"No one knows about this," he responded. "No one but you two and our group. The media won't say shit. They do what we tell them."
***
I followed the men out onto the roof. Helicopters crisscrossed the skies, illuminating the houses and streets with many bright spotlights. As a helicopter slowly lowered itself down to take Freddie and me away from that pit of nightmares, dropping a rope for us to ascend, I glanced around my town one last time.
Many of the houses were destroyed or burning, sending thick clouds of black smoke into the blood-red sky. Men in full SWAT gear zoomed around the blood flooding the streets in boats, the whirring of the motors echoing like angry hornets. Turning away, I followed Freddie into the helicopter and never returned.
Iris is dead, and Freddie and I have seen enough horrors to scar us for a thousand years. In my heart, I know it is my fault my wife died. I didn’t follow the rules, and she paid the price.
I will hear those dying, panicked screams until my final breath.
submitted by CIAHerpes to scaryjujuarmy [link] [comments]

2024.05.08 21:49 CIAHerpes Something called the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System just flashed across my TV. It read out a list of rules.

My wife, Iris, sat on the couch next to me, holding the bowl of popcorn in her thin hands. On her other side, our little boy, Freddie, sat. He looked just like his mother, with the same dirty blonde hair and faraway eyes, like the eyes of a dreamer. The movie played across our flat-screen TV, some CGI comedy with talking penguins and llamas that could drive cars. It was some garbage from Disney I would never have watched in a million years, but Freddie liked it, so I suffered through it for him.
We had turned off all the lights in the house for the movie. Only the TV’s flickering colors illuminated the room, sending dancing shadows that flashed out behind us.
Suddenly, outside the living room window, a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, splitting a tree in our front yard in two. Light flooded in through the window as if the flash of a nuclear missile were ripping its way across the town. A crash rang out as the tree split down the middle, its massive branches tumbling down onto the lawn. I jumped as the ground shook. More lightning flashed nearby, hitting other houses and lawns on the street.
“Damn, there wasn’t supposed to be any storms,” I said in surprise. The TV had gone black, and now we sat in darkness. For a long moment, I thought the power had gone out.
Abruptly, it came back on with a roar of white noise and a flickering of static. The volume seemed to be increasing by itself, growing into a rushing cacophony like a waterfall. I saw Iris try to scream something, but I could only see her lips move.
As suddenly as it all started, it stopped. The standard “PLEASE STANDBY” screen with a rainbow of blocky colors behind it appeared. There was a clanging, ringing sound that emanated from the speakers, high-pitched and whining like tinnitus. Then text started appearing across the screen. At the same time, a deep, serious voice spoke in the background, like a radio announcer reporting on the death of a President.
“This is the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System,” the voice read grimly. “This is not a test. Level five activity has been reported in your area. Do not go outside. Close all blinds, shutters and windows. Lock all doors and close any attached garages. Do not open your doors except to military or police personnel with the proper insignia. Even if someone appears to be in distress, do not open your door to investigate or try to interfere in any way. A temporary quarantine is in effect for your area. Military and police assistance is on the way.
“To ensure the greatest chances of survival during this time of crisis, please abide by the following rules:
  1. If blood begins to pour under your door, go to a higher floor immediately. Avoid physical contact with the blood at all costs.
  2. All legitimate military and police personnel will have a special insignia on their helmets and jackets, an eye contained in a double-thumbed fist. Only accompany them if they have this insignia- otherwise, they are imposters.
  3. Avoid mirrors for the duration of the emergency.”
The voice cut out abruptly, slowing down in a mechanical whine. Static started flashing across the TV, covering the “PLEASE STANDBY” message that had returned in blocky letters. At that moment, the lights went out. They came back on a couple seconds later, brightening and dimming, before the power failed again. This time, the electricity did not come back on.
“What the fuck?” Iris whispered next to me, taking out her phone and shining the light across the dark living room. “That was pretty weird. Everything looks different outside, too. I was just outside an hour ago and the Moon didn’t look anything like that.” She pointed. I got up, realizing she was right. The nighttime sky outside looked strange. I looked out the front window, seeing the Moon was cast in a fluorescent orange light. The cloudless sky had a dark red glow to it, as if some kind of eerie smog had covered everything. I had seen similar things happen after massive forest fires in the past.
“What happened, Dad?” Freddie asked in his small voice. “Where’s the movie?”
“I think we lost power, little man,” I said, ruffling his hair in a nonchalant manner. I didn’t really believe the emergency broadcast, after all. I figured some teenager had hacked the TV station and decided to play a prank, or perhaps some disgruntled employee had done it on his last day as a kind of “Fuck you” to the station. I had heard of similar things happening before. It was somewhat strange how the power had gone out and the sky had changed, but I felt sure that it could all be logically explained.
Someone shrieked outside. I looked out onto the dark street, seeing the silhouette of someone running frantically down the middle of the street, zigzagging wildly. As the figure got closer, I realized it was a young woman. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties. She wore a white shirt and khakis. Her clothes were soaked in streams of blood that made the fabric cling to her trembling body. I saw a vicious gash bitten into her left shoulder, a wound so deep that the white bone peeked out through the ragged patches of flesh.
“Help me!” she wailed, her eyes wild and panicked. “Why won’t anyone help me?!” She staggered and fell forward, crying and bleeding all over the road. I was about to run outside to see what was wrong with the young woman when I saw another silhouette creeping up behind her.
It looked like the body of a man, but something was wrong. As he drew closer, I caught a glimpse of the man’s face through the dim light. The left side of it was rotted and decayed, while the right looked muscular and healthy. He wore a black suit that looked like little more than tatters. Pieces of it fell off in ragged strips. I could see his left hand was also decomposing. Whatever kind of sickness it was, it seemed to extend to the whole left side of his body.
The stiff, skeletal leg cracked as he dragged it behind him, silently drawing nearer to the young woman. The living side of his face split into an insane rictus grin as he looked down at her. He carried a blood-stained ax that dragged on the pavement behind him with a harsh, metallic groan.
“Get away from me!” the woman screamed at the abomination, trying to kick at him. But she looked weakened from blood loss, and her attempts were feeble and slow. The man laughed, a sound that rang out like the gurgling of blood. He spat squirming maggots from his mouth onto the dark street below. He knelt down before the gasping woman and gave a low whisper. It carried on the dead, silent air.
“So warm,” he murmured, wiping his dead, putrefying fingers across the streams of blood that spurted from her left shoulder. He stuck an inhumanly long, pointed tongue out of his chattering lips and began to lick the blood off his hands. “But not enough. Not nearly enough.”
He stuck the bony, decaying fingers of his left hand into the wound and started pulling at the ragged wound. Blood bubbled out in increasing quantities, covering her body in its wet sheen. The woman jerked, her face turning pale and bloodless. She tried to kick at him, but he only laughed again, gurgling like a man with a slit throat. In horror, I watched him raise the ax above his head. It stood there for a long moment, trembling in his shaking hands like a guillotine blade.
“Please, don’t…” the woman pleaded as he grinned down at her. In a blur, he swung the ax down into her forehead. There was a wet cracking of bone and a ringing of metal. She sat there with her mouth open for what felt like a very long moment. Then, limply, she collapsed to the pavement. A dull thud echoed down the street as her skull smacked the pavement.
Sickened, I closed the blinds on the window and turned away, realizing that Freddie and Iris had been standing right behind me the entire time, watching the horrific display. Freddie was crying quietly into his hands, while Iris looked pale, her green eyes wide and unbelieving. The woman exhaled one last time, a long, drawn-out death gasp, and then everything went silent.
I felt sick and weak. Staggering, I put my hand out against the wall. A wave of nausea rose up my stomach. I ran towards the bathroom, shining the light from my cell phone to light the way. Iris started crying. I heard her frantically try to dial 911 over and over again.
“Dammit, nothing’s working!” she cried. I stumbled into the bathroom and threw up all the popcorn and soda I had consumed that night into the toilet. Covered in sweat, I started wiping my face with toilet paper. I pushed myself up, glancing into the mirror.
A cadaverous version of myself stood there, the dead face showing horror and surprise just like my own. I saw the same high cheekbones, the same shaved head, but in the mirror image, maggots writhed and squirmed in the rancid flesh. I backpedaled into the wall, stuttering something incomprehensible. The reflected image did the same, his lipless mouth opening and closing with silent curses. He wore the same clothes as myself, a black T-shirt and blue jeans, but they were rotted and tattered, as if they had been dug out of a grave.
“What the fuck?” I swore, raising my right hand experimentally. The mirror image did the same, matching every single movement perfectly. At that moment, Iris came running into the bathroom, her soft footsteps thudding gently against the marble floor. I jumped, turning to her.
“There’s someone outside the door,” she whispered, her face pale. I glanced back at the reflection, seeing that the other version was no longer following my movements.
“Watch out!” I cried, but it was too late.
The skull-like face came forward in a blur. His arm shot out towards Iris. The surface of the mirror swirled as if it were made of water when his pale flesh made contact with it. The sharp points of bone of his fingers wrapped around Iris’ neck. Stunned and silent, I watched in horror as he started dragging her into that other world.
“Stop him!” she screamed. “God, make him stop!” I ran forward, grabbing her legs as her head and chest was sucked through. There was a slight popping sound when her body entered the liquid-like surface. I tried to hold on with all of my strength, but whatever abomination was on the other side was strong, stronger than me. His iron grip yanked her out of my hands.
“Dad?” Freddie asked, slinking into the bathroom. His eyes were wide and wild. He looked around, confused. “Where’s Mom? Who’s screaming?” I had to make a decision instantly, I knew. I could either stay with my son, or try to get my wife back. I knew I couldn’t just leave Iris, though. I felt mentally torn. I looked between him and the mirror, my heart quivering with anxiety.
“Freddie, go wait in the living room,” I said. “Hide behind the couch. Don’t answer the door or say anything to anyone, no matter what. I’ll be right back.” I wasn’t sure if I would or not. Before I turned to the mirror, I patted his head. “Remember the rules they read us on the TV.” He nodded, but he was only a seven-year-old boy. How much did he really understand? Hell, how much did I even understand? I hadn’t followed the rules, and now Iris was kidnapped.
I turned back to the mirror, seeing that I had no reflection now. There was no sign of Iris or the rotted corpse with my face, either. Slowly, I walked forward, putting my trembling hand out towards its silvery surface. My fingers went through the mirror as if it were mere air, but I felt something freezing cold ripple around my skin. Pins and needles rushed up my arm. Taking a deep breath in, I pushed myself up on the counter and went all the way through.
***
I fell forward onto the marble surface of the bathroom floor, putting my hands out to break the fall. As I glanced up, I realized how strange everything looked. The world here was in constant motion, as if a fog-like void shimmered over the world. The floor’s surface danced with whorls of shadow. They felt as freezing cold as liquid nitrogen as they passed over my body.
Shivering and hugging myself, I pushed myself up off the floor. The walls and ceilings, too, rippled in the same black currents. I glanced around, seeing the white bathtub filled to the brim with dark blood. It bubbled constantly, as if someone were drowning under its surface. Bloody handprints of all sizes smeared the sides of the tub. The smell of copper grew strong, mixing with the strange smell that emanated from the shadows, a pungent, chemical odor like ammonia.
I passed by the mirror, seeing that here, too, I had no reflection. I felt like a vampire, staring into that blank emptiness. Feeling sick and disoriented, I stumbled forward, afraid to even breathe too loudly. I heard Iris crying and shrieking somewhere nearby.
“Nooo…” she wailed. “Please, stop…” Her voice seemed to be growing fainter and weaker, as if she were being dragged away by a tsunami. I peeked around the corner. Everything looked like nightmarish and strange. The living room looked much longer, stretching out for hundreds of feet. It had the same blue carpet and white walls as the one in my world, but now it was the size of a football stadium. The dark red couch had lengthened to an absurd size, stretching wide enough to fit a hundred people in it. The TV loomed across the room like the screen of a movie theater. It flickered constantly, showing a cacophony of white noise and static interspersed with horrible images: naked corpses with their throats sliced from ear to ear, burning bodies, people falling to their deaths from burning buildings.
But none of that was what made an involuntary gasp of horror rise up my throat. It was the enormous spiderweb spanning the length of the ceiling, fluttering softly in the breeze. In the center of the symmetrical web, I saw Iris, covered in silky thread up to her neck. She was hanging horizontally facing down, her body parallel to the floor. She struggled against the webbing that bound her like steel chains. Her eyes bulged from her head as she stared fixedly at the cadaver approaching her.
Crawling upside-down towards Iris was the monstrous image of myself I had seen in the mirror, but he had transformed into something spidery and eldritch. He skittered along with four arms and four legs now. The emaciated limbs poked out of his tattered rags of clothes, forked and elongated, the skin pale and covered in purple sores and deep gashes. Iris continued to plead and shriek in horror as it drew near. The creature’s chattering fangs and blackened gums approached her neck.
At the penultimate moment, Iris saw me, peeking around the corner of the bathroom. I stood there, unsure of what to do. I thought of trying to scream out, to throw something at the creature, but then what? We would both die, and then who would be left alive to protect Freddie? I didn’t know what to do. These thoughts passed through my head in the space of a single moment as we stared at each other. Her eyes shone with a moment of clarity, even as waves of mortal terror shook her body like a hurricane.
“Save Freddie!” she screamed. “Run! Go, Jack!” The creature noticed her staring at me instantly. He curved his long neck and twisted his spidery limbs, clutching the thick strands of silk with his skeletal limbs. The creature turned to me. He had a face like a skull. His filmy eyes regarded me intently. Silver streams of saliva dripped from his mouth. He gave a wide, insane smile, then turned back to Iris, unhinging his jaw. The pale, dead skin tore with a wet ripping sound. The yellow, sharp points of teeth gleamed darkly in the currents of rippling shadow.
I turned, sprinting back into the darkness of the bathroom as the crunching of bone and the shrieking of my wife followed me out. I had to repress an urge to vomit. With all of the speed I could muster, I staggered forward to the counter, where the mirror sat revealing the image of my house, an image that still lacked my reflection inside. Iris’ pleas and screams rapidly weakened. I heard her choking and gasping. A few moments later, I heard a rapid skittering of many legs approaching the bathroom. I started to pull myself up on the counter to escape this hellish mirror world.
Something creaked in the doorway behind me. I glanced back in fright, seeing the abomination with the eight limbs creeping up behind me. He stood only a few feet away from me now. As my eyes met his white, dead ones, his cadaverous face split into a sickly grin.
***
A wave of adrenaline shook my body. My vision turned white in the darkness. With a pounding heart, I pushed myself up and lunged through the mirror. The eight-limbed abomination with my rotting face gave an insane shriek. I felt a freezing cold hand wrap around my ankle and begin to drag me back.
“No!” I shrieked, trying to kick blindly at the mirror creature’s dead face. “I’ll never go with you! Never!” I smashed my sneaker into his jaw. There was a shattering sound, as if a ceramic vase had been dropped. The chattering of sharp teeth and the shrieking cut off abruptly. Looking back, I saw the corpse’s broken jaw hanging on by only a few shreds of tendons and muscle. The eyes went slack and I felt the grip loosen for the briefest moment. I pushed myself forward and slid through the mirror.
The freezing cold, pins-and-needles sensation returned, running over my body like water. I collapsed head-first onto the sink, rolling onto the floor with a jarring thud. The shrieking of the eight-limbed corpse continued behind me. I saw him trying to force his elongated body through the mirror. The long arms with their sharp fingers reached through, swiping wildly at the air. Before I could escape, one of them came through and cut four deep gashes into my chest. My shirt instantly became soaked in blood as a burning pain ran up my body.
I heard someone pounding at the front door, but in the panic of the moment, I could barely think. As the rest of the cadaverous body tried to push his way through the mirror, I dragged myself out of the bathroom. I slammed the door shut, even as the sounds of breaking and shattering followed me out of the bathroom. Ignoring the pain radiating through my body, I ran over to the couch and began shoving it towards the door.
The door shuddered in its frame. The house and the floor shook as the corpse threw his enormous body into the wood over and over again. Cracks spiderwebbed down the front of it, and I knew it wouldn’t last more than a couple more seconds.
“Freddie!” I screamed, looking around frantically. My heart dropped when I remembered I had told him to hide behind the couch. He was not here, not anywhere in the living room. “Freddie! Where the hell are you?”
“Dad?!” a voice responded from outside. It sounded like Freddie’s voice, but it was eerie, as if his voice had gotten caught between stations on the radio. It sputtered with static. It fell and rose in an ear-splitting scream. “Dad, let me in! Please! They’re going to hurt me!”
I ran to the front door, looking outside, but I saw no sign of Freddie. The sky had changed, though. The Moon had changed from orange to a dark red, the color of a burst blood blister. The rest of the sky was such a dark shade of crimson that it looked almost black. Around my feet, I felt something warm and wet.
“Where are you?” I yelled. “I don’t see…” At that moment, the bathroom door exploded outwards in a shower of nails and splinters, covering my face and body in the debris. The cadaverous face peeked around the corner, as if he were playing hide-and-seek rather than hunting and killing people.
“Fuck!” I swore as I looked down, seeing blood streaming in from under the door. It covered my sneakers up to the tops of the soles as more and more flooded in.
I ran for the stairs as the eight-limbed corpse skittered across the ceiling like a spider. He hung upside-down, the jaw hanging askew on his putrefying skull, the filmy eyes flashing with bloodlust. I was already half-way up the stairs when the corpse jumped down into the lake of blood at the bottom of the stairs. With his elongated, twisted limbs, he began pulling himself towards the first step in a blur, covering his body in the thick, putrid blood that continuously poured in through the bottom of every door.
But something was in the blood, I saw to my horror. I froze in place near the top of the stairs, watching the creature as he struggled to pull himself out of the blood, which was already at knee-height and still rising. There were dark silhouettes slithering through the blood. I saw the head of a black snake peer out at the eight-limbed cadaver. The snake had no eyelids, and its eyes looked as red as the blood it lived in. It wrapped its muscular body around his torso, rising up towards the cadaver’s face. The blood-red eyes met those dead, rotted ones of the corpse as they stared at each other. Then the eldritch snake lunged forward and bit off the corpse’s face.
Other snakes started to rise out of the surface, wrapping around his four legs and slithering up his back. The corpse wailed like a banshee, running blindly into the walls to try to smash the many snakes that suffocated and bit him from all sides. But this only seemed to heighten their hunger and bloodlust.
The sound of shredding flesh and snapping bone followed me as I ran into Freddie’s room and hid. His room was the only one without mirrors in it, I knew, and I wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
***
In the thick curtains of shadow, a small voice rang out, terrified and searching.
“Dad? Is that really you?” Freddie asked, hiding behind his chest of toys. I saw his small body, contorted and pale. His little head poked above the lid.
“Freddie! You’re alive!” I cried, running over and hugging him. Tears streamed down my face. “I thought you were outside. I heard you screaming out there.”
“I heard you and Mom yelling outside, too,” Freddie whispered, his small body trembling as I held him. “I got scared and ran up here. I’m sorry, Dad. Where’s Mom?”
“It’s OK. Thank God you did,” I murmured, remembering the lake of blood downstairs and all those strange, black snakes. “Mom isn’t coming, Freddie.” He went silent then and didn’t ask any more questions. A sick, heavy weight covered my heart.
In the darkness, we hid and waited, though I knew not for what. The smell of copper and iron from all the blood downstairs had become overwhelming. After a few minutes of this, I took my phone out and shone it around experimentally.
I saw a thin layer of blood streaming into the room, rising up the stairs like the waves of a tsunami. It covered the hallway’s hardwood floor, a half-inch thick deep already and growing fast. Dark shapes slithered and writhed in it. Small waves pushed the lake of blood towards us, and within seconds, my shoes were submerged in it.
“Dad?” Freddie asked in a panicked voice. “What’s that? There’s things inside of it…” Without thinking, I picked Freddie up and held him above my body.
“We need to get to the attic!” I whispered to him, sprinting through the rising pool of blood with my son in my arms. “Don’t be afraid, Freddie. We’ll make it.” I had nearly reached the hallway where the pull-cord for the attic stairs hung when something wrapped around my feet. I went flying forwards, dropping Freddie in the pool of blood. He was submerged up to his waist instantly. His small body writhed in terror.
“Help me! Help me!” he screamed, flailing his arms as black snakes circled him like hungry sharks. The one wrapping around my legs continued slithering up my body. A rising sense of horror and panic filled me. At that moment, I knew I was doomed. I only hoped I would see Iris again. Then I noticed spotlights turn on outside, filling the inside of the house with a radiance like the Sun.
All of the windows upstairs suddenly smashed inwards. A spotlight shone through the nearest of them, illuminating me and Freddie in our frantic struggles against the snakes. Men in SWAT gear crawled through the shattered windows. With their gas masks, their faces looked like insects with too many compound eyes.
On their helmets and jackets, I saw a strange symbol: a double-fisted thumb holding a staring, lidless eye. Dozens of them streamed in, shooting the snakes that circled Freddie and me. As the one wrapping around its body slowly wound its way towards my face, one of the black-clad men came up behind it and shot it in the skull. The snake’s body collapsed all around me, its muscles loosening in death. With relief washing over me, I ran to our saviors.
“Get us out of here!” I pleaded. “There’s horrible things happening!” The man nodded in his black military gear, his mask revealing nothing.
“Follow me,” he said dispassionately, starting towards the roof. “You two are the only survivors we’ve found so far. It truly is a miracle anyone’s still alive.” I could only agree silently.
"This must be all over every news channel," I said. The masked man shook his head.
"No one knows about this," he responded. "No one but you two and our group. The media won't say shit. They do what we tell them."
***
I followed the men out onto the roof. Helicopters crisscrossed the skies, illuminating the houses and streets with many bright spotlights. As a helicopter slowly lowered itself down to take Freddie and me away from that pit of nightmares, dropping a rope for us to ascend, I glanced around my town one last time.
Many of the houses were destroyed or burning, sending thick clouds of black smoke into the blood-red sky. Men in full SWAT gear zoomed around the blood flooding the streets in boats, the whirring of the motors echoing like angry hornets. Turning away, I followed Freddie into the helicopter and never returned.
Iris is dead, and Freddie and I have seen enough horrors to scar us for a thousand years. In my heart, I know it is my fault my wife died. I didn’t follow the rules, and she paid the price.
I will hear those dying, panicked screams until my final breath.
submitted by CIAHerpes to mrcreeps [link] [comments]

2024.05.08 21:42 CIAHerpes Something called the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System just flashed across my TV. It read out a list of rules.

My wife, Iris, sat on the couch next to me, holding the bowl of popcorn in her thin hands. On her other side, our little boy, Freddie, sat. He looked just like his mother, with the same dirty blonde hair and faraway eyes, like the eyes of a dreamer. The movie played across our flat-screen TV, some CGI comedy with talking penguins and llamas that could drive cars. It was some garbage from Disney I would never have watched in a million years, but Freddie liked it, so I suffered through it for him.
We had turned off all the lights in the house for the movie. Only the TV’s flickering colors illuminated the room, sending dancing shadows that flashed out behind us.
Suddenly, outside the living room window, a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, splitting a tree in our front yard in two. Light flooded in through the window as if the flash of a nuclear missile were ripping its way across the town. A crash rang out as the tree split down the middle, its massive branches tumbling down onto the lawn. I jumped as the ground shook. More lightning flashed nearby, hitting other houses and lawns on the street.
“Damn, there wasn’t supposed to be any storms,” I said in surprise. The TV had gone black, and now we sat in darkness. For a long moment, I thought the power had gone out.
Abruptly, it came back on with a roar of white noise and a flickering of static. The volume seemed to be increasing by itself, growing into a rushing cacophony like a waterfall. I saw Iris try to scream something, but I could only see her lips move.
As suddenly as it all started, it stopped. The standard “PLEASE STANDBY” screen with a rainbow of blocky colors behind it appeared. There was a clanging, ringing sound that emanated from the speakers, high-pitched and whining like tinnitus. Then text started appearing across the screen. At the same time, a deep, serious voice spoke in the background, like a radio announcer reporting on the death of a President.
“This is the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System,” the voice read grimly. “This is not a test. Level five activity has been reported in your area. Do not go outside. Close all blinds, shutters and windows. Lock all doors and close any attached garages. Do not open your doors except to military or police personnel with the proper insignia. Even if someone appears to be in distress, do not open your door to investigate or try to interfere in any way. A temporary quarantine is in effect for your area. Military and police assistance is on the way.
“To ensure the greatest chances of survival during this time of crisis, please abide by the following rules:
  1. If blood begins to pour under your door, go to a higher floor immediately. Avoid physical contact with the blood at all costs.
  2. All legitimate military and police personnel will have a special insignia on their helmets and jackets, an eye contained in a double-thumbed fist. Only accompany them if they have this insignia- otherwise, they are imposters.
  3. Avoid mirrors for the duration of the emergency.”
The voice cut out abruptly, slowing down in a mechanical whine. Static started flashing across the TV, covering the “PLEASE STANDBY” message that had returned in blocky letters. At that moment, the lights went out. They came back on a couple seconds later, brightening and dimming, before the power failed again. This time, the electricity did not come back on.
“What the fuck?” Iris whispered next to me, taking out her phone and shining the light across the dark living room. “That was pretty weird. Everything looks different outside, too. I was just outside an hour ago and the Moon didn’t look anything like that.” She pointed. I got up, realizing she was right. The nighttime sky outside looked strange. I looked out the front window, seeing the Moon was cast in a fluorescent orange light. The cloudless sky had a dark red glow to it, as if some kind of eerie smog had covered everything. I had seen similar things happen after massive forest fires in the past.
“What happened, Dad?” Freddie asked in his small voice. “Where’s the movie?”
“I think we lost power, little man,” I said, ruffling his hair in a nonchalant manner. I didn’t really believe the emergency broadcast, after all. I figured some teenager had hacked the TV station and decided to play a prank, or perhaps some disgruntled employee had done it on his last day as a kind of “Fuck you” to the station. I had heard of similar things happening before. It was somewhat strange how the power had gone out and the sky had changed, but I felt sure that it could all be logically explained.
Someone shrieked outside. I looked out onto the dark street, seeing the silhouette of someone running frantically down the middle of the street, zigzagging wildly. As the figure got closer, I realized it was a young woman. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties. She wore a white shirt and khakis. Her clothes were soaked in streams of blood that made the fabric cling to her trembling body. I saw a vicious gash bitten into her left shoulder, a wound so deep that the white bone peeked out through the ragged patches of flesh.
“Help me!” she wailed, her eyes wild and panicked. “Why won’t anyone help me?!” She staggered and fell forward, crying and bleeding all over the road. I was about to run outside to see what was wrong with the young woman when I saw another silhouette creeping up behind her.
It looked like the body of a man, but something was wrong. As he drew closer, I caught a glimpse of the man’s face through the dim light. The left side of it was rotted and decayed, while the right looked muscular and healthy. He wore a black suit that looked like little more than tatters. Pieces of it fell off in ragged strips. I could see his left hand was also decomposing. Whatever kind of sickness it was, it seemed to extend to the whole left side of his body.
The stiff, skeletal leg cracked as he dragged it behind him, silently drawing nearer to the young woman. The living side of his face split into an insane rictus grin as he looked down at her. He carried a blood-stained ax that dragged on the pavement behind him with a harsh, metallic groan.
“Get away from me!” the woman screamed at the abomination, trying to kick at him. But she looked weakened from blood loss, and her attempts were feeble and slow. The man laughed, a sound that rang out like the gurgling of blood. He spat squirming maggots from his mouth onto the dark street below. He knelt down before the gasping woman and gave a low whisper. It carried on the dead, silent air.
“So warm,” he murmured, wiping his dead, putrefying fingers across the streams of blood that spurted from her left shoulder. He stuck an inhumanly long, pointed tongue out of his chattering lips and began to lick the blood off his hands. “But not enough. Not nearly enough.”
He stuck the bony, decaying fingers of his left hand into the wound and started pulling at the ragged wound. Blood bubbled out in increasing quantities, covering her body in its wet sheen. The woman jerked, her face turning pale and bloodless. She tried to kick at him, but he only laughed again, gurgling like a man with a slit throat. In horror, I watched him raise the ax above his head. It stood there for a long moment, trembling in his shaking hands like a guillotine blade.
“Please, don’t…” the woman pleaded as he grinned down at her. In a blur, he swung the ax down into her forehead. There was a wet cracking of bone and a ringing of metal. She sat there with her mouth open for what felt like a very long moment. Then, limply, she collapsed to the pavement. A dull thud echoed down the street as her skull smacked the pavement.
Sickened, I closed the blinds on the window and turned away, realizing that Freddie and Iris had been standing right behind me the entire time, watching the horrific display. Freddie was crying quietly into his hands, while Iris looked pale, her green eyes wide and unbelieving. The woman exhaled one last time, a long, drawn-out death gasp, and then everything went silent.
I felt sick and weak. Staggering, I put my hand out against the wall. A wave of nausea rose up my stomach. I ran towards the bathroom, shining the light from my cell phone to light the way. Iris started crying. I heard her frantically try to dial 911 over and over again.
“Dammit, nothing’s working!” she cried. I stumbled into the bathroom and threw up all the popcorn and soda I had consumed that night into the toilet. Covered in sweat, I started wiping my face with toilet paper. I pushed myself up, glancing into the mirror.
A cadaverous version of myself stood there, the dead face showing horror and surprise just like my own. I saw the same high cheekbones, the same shaved head, but in the mirror image, maggots writhed and squirmed in the rancid flesh. I backpedaled into the wall, stuttering something incomprehensible. The reflected image did the same, his lipless mouth opening and closing with silent curses. He wore the same clothes as myself, a black T-shirt and blue jeans, but they were rotted and tattered, as if they had been dug out of a grave.
“What the fuck?” I swore, raising my right hand experimentally. The mirror image did the same, matching every single movement perfectly. At that moment, Iris came running into the bathroom, her soft footsteps thudding gently against the marble floor. I jumped, turning to her.
“There’s someone outside the door,” she whispered, her face pale. I glanced back at the reflection, seeing that the other version was no longer following my movements.
“Watch out!” I cried, but it was too late.
The skull-like face came forward in a blur. His arm shot out towards Iris. The surface of the mirror swirled as if it were made of water when his pale flesh made contact with it. The sharp points of bone of his fingers wrapped around Iris’ neck. Stunned and silent, I watched in horror as he started dragging her into that other world.
“Stop him!” she screamed. “God, make him stop!” I ran forward, grabbing her legs as her head and chest was sucked through. There was a slight popping sound when her body entered the liquid-like surface. I tried to hold on with all of my strength, but whatever abomination was on the other side was strong, stronger than me. His iron grip yanked her out of my hands.
“Dad?” Freddie asked, slinking into the bathroom. His eyes were wide and wild. He looked around, confused. “Where’s Mom? Who’s screaming?” I had to make a decision instantly, I knew. I could either stay with my son, or try to get my wife back. I knew I couldn’t just leave Iris, though. I felt mentally torn. I looked between him and the mirror, my heart quivering with anxiety.
“Freddie, go wait in the living room,” I said. “Hide behind the couch. Don’t answer the door or say anything to anyone, no matter what. I’ll be right back.” I wasn’t sure if I would or not. Before I turned to the mirror, I patted his head. “Remember the rules they read us on the TV.” He nodded, but he was only a seven-year-old boy. How much did he really understand? Hell, how much did I even understand? I hadn’t followed the rules, and now Iris was kidnapped.
I turned back to the mirror, seeing that I had no reflection now. There was no sign of Iris or the rotted corpse with my face, either. Slowly, I walked forward, putting my trembling hand out towards its silvery surface. My fingers went through the mirror as if it were mere air, but I felt something freezing cold ripple around my skin. Pins and needles rushed up my arm. Taking a deep breath in, I pushed myself up on the counter and went all the way through.
***
I fell forward onto the marble surface of the bathroom floor, putting my hands out to break the fall. As I glanced up, I realized how strange everything looked. The world here was in constant motion, as if a fog-like void shimmered over the world. The floor’s surface danced with whorls of shadow. They felt as freezing cold as liquid nitrogen as they passed over my body.
Shivering and hugging myself, I pushed myself up off the floor. The walls and ceilings, too, rippled in the same black currents. I glanced around, seeing the white bathtub filled to the brim with dark blood. It bubbled constantly, as if someone were drowning under its surface. Bloody handprints of all sizes smeared the sides of the tub. The smell of copper grew strong, mixing with the strange smell that emanated from the shadows, a pungent, chemical odor like ammonia.
I passed by the mirror, seeing that here, too, I had no reflection. I felt like a vampire, staring into that blank emptiness. Feeling sick and disoriented, I stumbled forward, afraid to even breathe too loudly. I heard Iris crying and shrieking somewhere nearby.
“Nooo…” she wailed. “Please, stop…” Her voice seemed to be growing fainter and weaker, as if she were being dragged away by a tsunami. I peeked around the corner. Everything looked like nightmarish and strange. The living room looked much longer, stretching out for hundreds of feet. It had the same blue carpet and white walls as the one in my world, but now it was the size of a football stadium. The dark red couch had lengthened to an absurd size, stretching wide enough to fit a hundred people in it. The TV loomed across the room like the screen of a movie theater. It flickered constantly, showing a cacophony of white noise and static interspersed with horrible images: naked corpses with their throats sliced from ear to ear, burning bodies, people falling to their deaths from burning buildings.
But none of that was what made an involuntary gasp of horror rise up my throat. It was the enormous spiderweb spanning the length of the ceiling, fluttering softly in the breeze. In the center of the symmetrical web, I saw Iris, covered in silky thread up to her neck. She was hanging horizontally facing down, her body parallel to the floor. She struggled against the webbing that bound her like steel chains. Her eyes bulged from her head as she stared fixedly at the cadaver approaching her.
Crawling upside-down towards Iris was the monstrous image of myself I had seen in the mirror, but he had transformed into something spidery and eldritch. He skittered along with four arms and four legs now. The emaciated limbs poked out of his tattered rags of clothes, forked and elongated, the skin pale and covered in purple sores and deep gashes. Iris continued to plead and shriek in horror as it drew near. The creature’s chattering fangs and blackened gums approached her neck.
At the penultimate moment, Iris saw me, peeking around the corner of the bathroom. I stood there, unsure of what to do. I thought of trying to scream out, to throw something at the creature, but then what? We would both die, and then who would be left alive to protect Freddie? I didn’t know what to do. These thoughts passed through my head in the space of a single moment as we stared at each other. Her eyes shone with a moment of clarity, even as waves of mortal terror shook her body like a hurricane.
“Save Freddie!” she screamed. “Run! Go, Jack!” The creature noticed her staring at me instantly. He curved his long neck and twisted his spidery limbs, clutching the thick strands of silk with his skeletal limbs. The creature turned to me. He had a face like a skull. His filmy eyes regarded me intently. Silver streams of saliva dripped from his mouth. He gave a wide, insane smile, then turned back to Iris, unhinging his jaw. The pale, dead skin tore with a wet ripping sound. The yellow, sharp points of teeth gleamed darkly in the currents of rippling shadow.
I turned, sprinting back into the darkness of the bathroom as the crunching of bone and the shrieking of my wife followed me out. I had to repress an urge to vomit. With all of the speed I could muster, I staggered forward to the counter, where the mirror sat revealing the image of my house, an image that still lacked my reflection inside. Iris’ pleas and screams rapidly weakened. I heard her choking and gasping. A few moments later, I heard a rapid skittering of many legs approaching the bathroom. I started to pull myself up on the counter to escape this hellish mirror world.
Something creaked in the doorway behind me. I glanced back in fright, seeing the abomination with the eight limbs creeping up behind me. He stood only a few feet away from me now. As my eyes met his white, dead ones, his cadaverous face split into a sickly grin.
***
A wave of adrenaline shook my body. My vision turned white in the darkness. With a pounding heart, I pushed myself up and lunged through the mirror. The eight-limbed abomination with my rotting face gave an insane shriek. I felt a freezing cold hand wrap around my ankle and begin to drag me back.
“No!” I shrieked, trying to kick blindly at the mirror creature’s dead face. “I’ll never go with you! Never!” I smashed my sneaker into his jaw. There was a shattering sound, as if a ceramic vase had been dropped. The chattering of sharp teeth and the shrieking cut off abruptly. Looking back, I saw the corpse’s broken jaw hanging on by only a few shreds of tendons and muscle. The eyes went slack and I felt the grip loosen for the briefest moment. I pushed myself forward and slid through the mirror.
The freezing cold, pins-and-needles sensation returned, running over my body like water. I collapsed head-first onto the sink, rolling onto the floor with a jarring thud. The shrieking of the eight-limbed corpse continued behind me. I saw him trying to force his elongated body through the mirror. The long arms with their sharp fingers reached through, swiping wildly at the air. Before I could escape, one of them came through and cut four deep gashes into my chest. My shirt instantly became soaked in blood as a burning pain ran up my body.
I heard someone pounding at the front door, but in the panic of the moment, I could barely think. As the rest of the cadaverous body tried to push his way through the mirror, I dragged myself out of the bathroom. I slammed the door shut, even as the sounds of breaking and shattering followed me out of the bathroom. Ignoring the pain radiating through my body, I ran over to the couch and began shoving it towards the door.
The door shuddered in its frame. The house and the floor shook as the corpse threw his enormous body into the wood over and over again. Cracks spiderwebbed down the front of it, and I knew it wouldn’t last more than a couple more seconds.
“Freddie!” I screamed, looking around frantically. My heart dropped when I remembered I had told him to hide behind the couch. He was not here, not anywhere in the living room. “Freddie! Where the hell are you?”
“Dad?!” a voice responded from outside. It sounded like Freddie’s voice, but it was eerie, as if his voice had gotten caught between stations on the radio. It sputtered with static. It fell and rose in an ear-splitting scream. “Dad, let me in! Please! They’re going to hurt me!”
I ran to the front door, looking outside, but I saw no sign of Freddie. The sky had changed, though. The Moon had changed from orange to a dark red, the color of a burst blood blister. The rest of the sky was such a dark shade of crimson that it looked almost black. Around my feet, I felt something warm and wet.
“Where are you?” I yelled. “I don’t see…” At that moment, the bathroom door exploded outwards in a shower of nails and splinters, covering my face and body in the debris. The cadaverous face peeked around the corner, as if he were playing hide-and-seek rather than hunting and killing people.
“Fuck!” I swore as I looked down, seeing blood streaming in from under the door. It covered my sneakers up to the tops of the soles as more and more flooded in.
I ran for the stairs as the eight-limbed corpse skittered across the ceiling like a spider. He hung upside-down, the jaw hanging askew on his putrefying skull, the filmy eyes flashing with bloodlust. I was already half-way up the stairs when the corpse jumped down into the lake of blood at the bottom of the stairs. With his elongated, twisted limbs, he began pulling himself towards the first step in a blur, covering his body in the thick, putrid blood that continuously poured in through the bottom of every door.
But something was in the blood, I saw to my horror. I froze in place near the top of the stairs, watching the creature as he struggled to pull himself out of the blood, which was already at knee-height and still rising. There were dark silhouettes slithering through the blood. I saw the head of a black snake peer out at the eight-limbed cadaver. The snake had no eyelids, and its eyes looked as red as the blood it lived in. It wrapped its muscular body around his torso, rising up towards the cadaver’s face. The blood-red eyes met those dead, rotted ones of the corpse as they stared at each other. Then the eldritch snake lunged forward and bit off the corpse’s face.
Other snakes started to rise out of the surface, wrapping around his four legs and slithering up his back. The corpse wailed like a banshee, running blindly into the walls to try to smash the many snakes that suffocated and bit him from all sides. But this only seemed to heighten their hunger and bloodlust.
The sound of shredding flesh and snapping bone followed me as I ran into Freddie’s room and hid. His room was the only one without mirrors in it, I knew, and I wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
***
In the thick curtains of shadow, a small voice rang out, terrified and searching.
“Dad? Is that really you?” Freddie asked, hiding behind his chest of toys. I saw his small body, contorted and pale. His little head poked above the lid.
“Freddie! You’re alive!” I cried, running over and hugging him. Tears streamed down my face. “I thought you were outside. I heard you screaming out there.”
“I heard you and Mom yelling outside, too,” Freddie whispered, his small body trembling as I held him. “I got scared and ran up here. I’m sorry, Dad. Where’s Mom?”
“It’s OK. Thank God you did,” I murmured, remembering the lake of blood downstairs and all those strange, black snakes. “Mom isn’t coming, Freddie.” He went silent then and didn’t ask any more questions. A sick, heavy weight covered my heart.
In the darkness, we hid and waited, though I knew not for what. The smell of copper and iron from all the blood downstairs had become overwhelming. After a few minutes of this, I took my phone out and shone it around experimentally.
I saw a thin layer of blood streaming into the room, rising up the stairs like the waves of a tsunami. It covered the hallway’s hardwood floor, a half-inch thick deep already and growing fast. Dark shapes slithered and writhed in it. Small waves pushed the lake of blood towards us, and within seconds, my shoes were submerged in it.
“Dad?” Freddie asked in a panicked voice. “What’s that? There’s things inside of it…” Without thinking, I picked Freddie up and held him above my body.
“We need to get to the attic!” I whispered to him, sprinting through the rising pool of blood with my son in my arms. “Don’t be afraid, Freddie. We’ll make it.” I had nearly reached the hallway where the pull-cord for the attic stairs hung when something wrapped around my feet. I went flying forwards, dropping Freddie in the pool of blood. He was submerged up to his waist instantly. His small body writhed in terror.
“Help me! Help me!” he screamed, flailing his arms as black snakes circled him like hungry sharks. The one wrapping around my legs continued slithering up my body. A rising sense of horror and panic filled me. At that moment, I knew I was doomed. I only hoped I would see Iris again. Then I noticed spotlights turn on outside, filling the inside of the house with a radiance like the Sun.
All of the windows upstairs suddenly smashed inwards. A spotlight shone through the nearest of them, illuminating me and Freddie in our frantic struggles against the snakes. Men in SWAT gear crawled through the shattered windows. With their gas masks, their faces looked like insects with too many compound eyes.
On their helmets and jackets, I saw a strange symbol: a double-fisted thumb holding a staring, lidless eye. Dozens of them streamed in, shooting the snakes that circled Freddie and me. As the one wrapping around its body slowly wound its way towards my face, one of the black-clad men came up behind it and shot it in the skull. The snake’s body collapsed all around me, its muscles loosening in death. With relief washing over me, I ran to our saviors.
“Get us out of here!” I pleaded. “There’s horrible things happening!” The man nodded in his black military gear, his mask revealing nothing.
“Follow me,” he said dispassionately, starting towards the roof. “You two are the only survivors we’ve found so far. It truly is a miracle anyone’s still alive.” I could only agree silently.
"This must be all over every news channel," I said. The masked man shook his head.
"No one knows about this," he responded. "No one but you two and our group. The media won't say shit. They do what we tell them."
***
I followed the men out onto the roof. Helicopters crisscrossed the skies, illuminating the houses and streets with many bright spotlights. As a helicopter slowly lowered itself down to take Freddie and me away from that pit of nightmares, dropping a rope for us to ascend, I glanced around my town one last time.
Many of the houses were destroyed or burning, sending thick clouds of black smoke into the blood-red sky. Men in full SWAT gear zoomed around the blood flooding the streets in boats, the whirring of the motors echoing like angry hornets. Turning away, I followed Freddie into the helicopter and never returned.
Iris is dead, and Freddie and I have seen enough horrors to scar us for a thousand years. In my heart, I know it is my fault my wife died. I didn’t follow the rules, and she paid the price.
I will hear those dying, panicked screams until my final breath.
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2024.05.08 18:17 rjtakesphotos Automotive Photography Guide: How To Light Paint a Car

Automotive Photography Guide: How To Light Paint a Car
This is the light painted image we will break down below!

Gear Needed

Camera: DSLR or Mirrorless with manual settings and Raw
Tripod: to stabilize the camera for long exposures.
Light sources (LED light strips, flashlights, colored lights, etc.): While it is entirely possible to lightpaint with your cell phone light, or a flashlight, it won’t give you the best results. LED wand or panel lights are relatively cheap and a much better option for light painting. The larger the light source, the more evenly lit it will be and less “wobbly and streaky”.
This style LED wand is a great budget friendly choice. It has adjustable color temperature, brightness, and many different colors for special effects. It also has a threaded mount of the bottom allowing you to attach a stand or monopod to allow you to raise it high above your head. This has been my favorite type of light to use for light painting.
(Optional) Light modifiers (softboxes, diffusers or colored gels): This is where you can get creative and step outside the box. Adding colors or additional effects can make your images stand out. Softboxes for light painting are a cheat code, making the lighting soft and diffused.
Remote shutter release, app, or camera timer: Any slight vibrations or movement from pressing the shutter button will cause blurry images. Having an app with an option for remote control and viewing is a great way to look over images without touching or moving your camera.
(Optional) Dark Clothes: While not a requirement, wearing darker colored clothes will help hide yourself in the images and prevents unwanted ghosting.
Another example of light painting on this Lexus

Settings/Preparations

Choosing a Location: It is important to find a location that is DARK! Too many ambient lights and you will not achieve a nice smooth light. Pitch black is the best, but as dark as possible is what you are looking for! You can choose to incorporate the background or keep it dark, so scenery is not super critical.
Recommended camera settings: Set your camera on a tripod, if your lens has it, turn image stabilization OFF. There are no specific settings, as every situation will be different, but here are some rough starting points. You are going to want to be in manual mode, you need full control over the exposure settings. Do not let your camera pick your ISO, it will try to set it extremely high due to the darkness. Start with a low ISO of around 100-200, and a narrow aperture around F/11 or higher. Before light painting, play around with these and see how they change your result. Shutter speed is going to be based on how long you need to paint the light on the vehicle, we will get into that later on. Your camera will most likely struggle to focus in extreme darkness. To fix this, shine your light on an easily identifiable part of the vehicle such as a wheel or a badge. Use manual focus to dial in focus and leave autofocus on after. You do not want your camera attempting to refocus with each shot.

Lighting Techniques

There are two ways to go about light painting a car. You can either try to get it all in one go, or break down the car in sections. If you are attempting to light the car all in one go, you will need a longer shutter speed (approx 30 secs) to allow you enough time to light the entire car. If you are going in sections you can use a faster shutter speed (approx 13 secs). Option 1 with the full car means you don’t have to combine the images in post, and could have a fully lit car in just one shot. The cons are, that if you miss one area, or create unwanted streaks you will need another shot or still need to edit it in post. Option 2, doing it in sections, will allow you to focus on getting perfect lighting on each area, but results in more editing and blending later on. Either way it is a good idea to take multiple shots, and always better to have more than you think.
We will use option 2 as our example here. Start your timer, and when ready begin walking around the car shining the light down at the car. Keep yourself a few feet away from the car, although this depends on the power and beam of your light source. The easiest way to think of it, is to pretend you are the sun. The sun doesn’t shine from the ground up, it is higher up shining down. You don’t want to illuminate the underside of the fenders/cars, you want to light up the top/body. Get the light up above your head and slowly and smoothly walk alongside the car. The light will create a highlight or bright white line on the vehicle’s paint. You do not want to be going up and down or in circles, you want a smooth straight pass.
Do not shine the light on yourself, or your feet. Keep the light only on the car, otherwise you will show up in the photo. Do not stand still in front of the camera as you will also be a part of the image. The key is to keep moving albeit slowly and steadily. The camera is going to pick up the areas you are lighting but not yourself. This is where you will need some trial and error with how fast you are moving, how long you are shining the light on the car, distance between you and the car, and the shutter speed. Even if you shoot with a 30 second exposure, you do not need to be lighting the car the entire time. You can just let the time run out if you feel you added enough light.
Once you dial in the settings, speed, brightness, etc. Continue to work your way around the car ensuring you cover each part of the car. There is no magic number for number of photos per final shot, but I typically take around 10, including the 1-2 ambient background shots. I also often like to take some shots with the lights on, although I do not always add them in to my final image. You can do this for the headlights and taillights. Stepping on the brakes will help give a natural illumination around the rear of the vehicle!
Below is a set of images used in my final shot:
Ambient background photo, no light. ISO 400, 30 sec, f/5.6
Headlight shot. I wanted the true shape of the headlights, I achieved this by narrowing my aperture to F/22. ISO 400, 1.3 sec, f/22
Ground/Headlights. It wouldn't look great with the headlights being on and the ground not lit up in front, so I adjusted the settings to give a realistic look to if the headlights were on. ISO 400, 13 sec, f/22
Front bumper illumination
Driver's side low. Notice the smooth highlight along the bottom side of the driver door. That is what we are aiming for.
Driver's side roof. It is also important to light the rear area of the vehicle, notice the tail light is now lit.
Driver's side. Nice highlight along top of driver's door, we can work with this.
Wheels. I like to take a few extra minutes to light up just the wheels ensuring I have the entire car covered.
Roof: It is important to get behind the car and light the roof line. A black car on a dark background especially. Without this, the car will not be defined and will be disappearing into the dark background.
These next few are just extra passes for good measure.
https://preview.redd.it/9lewpg7l78zc1.jpg?width=5472&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=062581d2bb10599f8f685039b21baef9f2e6ea43
https://preview.redd.it/bj7oct7l78zc1.jpg?width=5472&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c6b6d4aeacac97403815e77f970756c44b68a729
As you continue to get comfortable you can begin to experiment with special effects using lights. You can either combine light trails you made yourself or a popular thing to do is tail lights of passing cars. You can also start experimenting with different colors and intensities. There are limitless possibilities, and it’s extremely fun to get creative with.
(This post may contain affiliate links)
Stay tuned for part 2 of this for the editing part of this tutorial where we combine them in photoshop.
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2024.05.08 16:28 SpacePaladin15 The Nature of Predators 2-34

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Star Crossed [Multiple Free Sample Chapters] Patreon Subreddit Discord Paperback NOP2 Species Lore
Memory Transcription Subject: Tassi, Bissem Alien Liaison
Date [standardized human time]: June 29, 2160
Ambassador Loxsel had mentioned that the Sivkits wished to see humanity’s progress, as he phrased it, staking their claim to further-off thrones. With a fleet beelining its way from Paltan space toward the site of the incident, the theatrical Sivkit had graced us with his virtual presence. The entire Sapient Coalition was watching, uncertain how our ships would stack up against theirs. The humans would attempt to hail the unknown hostiles through their drones, from the border base, but I somehow doubted our new enemies would pick up. The research vessels had long since ducked away from the front lines, replaced by top-notch attack drones rushing toward an open class.
Gunning down civilian ships was easy, as Naltor put it to me. The weaponry did take them out with startling efficacy, but they hadn’t picked a target that could fight back. Onso had facilitated another meeting with Kaisal, and Zalk’s secure tech lines proved invaluable to setting up a back channel, cutting out the Yotul middleman. I found myself on edge, worried that our schemes would be discovered. Kaisal promised the Arxur were heading into the fray, as soon as news of the dead carnivores was leaked to him. It might’ve gotten Bissems a gift-wrapped fleet, but I was worried about complicating a situation that was already perilous.
“Now that they’re rushing off to war, and trying to save the Osirs, there’ll be no time to save Ivrana or look for the ghost exterminators,” Zalk complained. “We have to do this ourselves.”
The Osirs were the human’s chosen name for the extinct quadrupeds, crafted after a myth that had appalled several SC representatives. It was named after a god who’d been chopped into pieces by his brother, and brought back to life when the bits of his body were sewn together. Even I wasn’t sure I liked that analogy, but the Terrans found it fitting. They were trying to stitch the carnivores back together with pieces of genetic data; it was easier to obtain viable samples with the Osirs than other extinct races. They could be the race that led the way for others—researchers were hopeful to create a synthetic embryo for them within a few weeks, and start its development in an artificial womb.
I heaved a sigh. “The humans haven’t paused their work on our ecosystem, or the outreach with our diplomats to start peace talks. Between a global war at home and whoever killed the Osirs and the Sivkit expedition, are ghost exterminators really the biggest threat?”
“Of course they are,” the Tseia hissed. “They’re the ones who attacked us. We have no answers, but they’ll go to the ends of the galaxy for these Sivkits and Osirs!”
General Naltor narrowed his eyes. “Settle down, Zalk. Both tasks deserve attention, and with the magnitude of power needed to wipe out a spacefaring species…this is extremely worrying. We can’t expect them to care about us, if we don’t address their concerns. The Paltans are in immediate danger.”
“Which is why we need to keep them on the defensive, so they don’t wind up in our territory. You think they’ll spare Ivrana if they get that far? They already wiped out one carnivore race,” I spat.
“It doesn’t change that we’re on our own, Tassi!” The Tseia tugged at his headfeathers. “We have to figure out ways to be useful, to get anything from anyone.”
“That doesn’t have to be solely military. Be team players; offer aid and a safe haven to any who need it. That’d buy goodwill, so maybe one day, more than people-eating carnivores will back us.”
“What are you all whispering about?” Dustin’s voice made me jump, and the xenobiologist seemed to notice that his presence startled us all. I wondered what he would think if he knew we’d been skulking around to meet Kaisal, and drag the Collective into this to gain a fleet; somehow, I doubted he’d approve. “I haven’t said anything, but you lot have been acting strange ever since your visit to Leirn. What did the Yotul drag you into? It was strange how soon they flipped their tune on your SC bid.”
Naltor scowled. “You’re the one who tried to get us in touch with them to change our minds. We can do some things on our own.”
“Of course you can. I just…thought we were in this together, and would be more open with each other.”
“Dustin, you get regular memory scans. We can’t tell you anything we don’t want leaking to the galaxy, even if we do trust you to keep it in confidence aside from that,” I said, thinking quickly.
I never confronted him, but I don’t understand why he withheld so much about the Arxur. Dustin could say that it’s publicly available info…still, his version of events was much less flattering.
The human scientist frowned, but seemed to give in. “You have a point. I just wish I could help more. It’s hard to give advice when you’re being iced out.”
“You’re not being iced out, so much as the Yotul don’t want the Terran government involved,” Naltor offered a half-truth. “We can’t afford to have them turn on us. It doesn’t have to affect our friendship. We’ve been through some real shit together, nerd.”
“Yeah. We have, haven’t we? Now, we’re witnessing a new interstellar war. I know I’m supposed to provide reassurance, but that scares me a little. All hell’s broken loose since we met Bissems.”
“We feel the same about everything we learned about you; everything’s gone to shit. If you don’t beat these cloacabeaks today, then we’re doubly fucked.”
“Cloacabeak. You adopted my word?” Zalk gasped.
“Shut up, wanderbird. It’s time to see what the white and fluffy ball of drama has to say…and how the battle goes.”
Loxsel had finally moved close to the screen, after making a show of checking that his viewport was completely shuttered and his door was locked. Secretary-General Kuemper looked like she’d swallowed sawdust, as the Sivkit finally unmuted; she was worried what the character of an ambassador would have to say. On an adjacent screen, an alternating feed from the drone formation showed that they’d been booted from subspace. If the aggressors were still in the area, that would prove this system was of enough importance to defend. We’d find out whether they’d confront our inbound fleet soon; should they choose not to meet us, we’d get a read on the planet the Grand Herd had been bound for.
“Hello from c-captivity—for I am a free man in name only! The fateful day of your r-rampage has arrived. Prowl the fields where millions died!” Loxsel screeched. Wasn't it hundreds of thousands? “Salivate at what might have been. May your s-savage hunger carry you to victory!”
Kuemper managed to keep a straight face. “I hope we’ll get a proper assessment of the enemy capabilities, or better yet, contact them to understand why they attacked you. I also hope that the UN has been treating you well.”
“I am well-fed. Fattened for the s-slaughter! You should not talk to them, predator…yet you admire their b-butchery. You seek their massacre techniques for yourself. Generations of scrumptious bites gone, p-puffed out of existence. Don’t you savor to play with your food—the taste, excoriating their flesh?”
“Loxsel, we don’t consider Sivkits to be food. We’re here to lend a hand, like you asked us to. We’d like to have diplomatic relations with the Grand Herd, but we can’t manage that without a shred of…normalcy in what you say to us.”
“Then just kill them all. Whatever r-ruse you project toward these servile prey, your instincts howl for blood. Brethren of mine, slain by their craven debauchery, entrails scattered. We want these abominations off this world, and your almighty claws can deliver it!”
The Secretary-General’s pupils snapped toward him. “Why are you so set on this world in particular? Wouldn’t it be wiser for the Grand Herd to avoid this…craven debauchery by choosing another planet? It’s not like this one is brimming with vegetation; our long-range scans suggest it’s mostly desert.”
“You wouldn’t understand. All that matters to hunters is w-what lines your voracious stomach, and ruling over as much terrain as possible. We have purpose. We want what’s ours, yet is now blighted by vermin. It could not be b-bloodless, no! Despair at the infestation. I lament…what was snatched, wrenched from our pastures! It is an insult to have to turn to foul, rancorous b-beasts like you.”
“You came to us. You didn’t have to,” Kuemper hissed. “You insult us—”
“I am showering you with praises, odes to your c-cruelty! I apologize if I insulted you; I’ll step it up!”
“What does stepping it up look like?” Onso snickered from the crowd. “Go on, show us!”
“Rapacious m-menaces of Sol, ingesting war and death with insatiable appetite. Flayers of children, crushers of hope, terrors that flattened the cradle!”
“That wasn’t them. The humans fought to save us, and then rebuilt our home from scratch,” the Gojid Prime Minister interjected.
“The cradle was flattened, and that’s the part that matters! Where was I? Ahem. Unhallowed ones who stole the Arxur’s cattle for yourselves, who had Duerten minions perform the shadow caste’s execution…who broke our spines!”
Kuemper smacked her forehead. “We definitely didn’t do that. We could fix them even, if you stopped shunning us.”
“By fix, do you mean removing the bone altogether? Paralyzing us so it’s not a problem? I’m not so ‘Sivkit-brained’ to not see through your word lures!”
“If that’s what you truly think of us, then never mind. Humanity doesn’t want to be seen as monsters, and you hold us in such low regard. Why don’t we observe the battle in silence?”
“Yes, predator master! I won’t dare to raise my voice or interrupt your war cries again.”
Loxsel placed a paw on the top and bottom of his muzzle, as if manually holding it shut. The human leader’s exasperation was on full display, adding color to an otherwise tense and sober moment. Having been booted from FTL transit on the system’s fringes, the drones dispensed ammo on the disruptors to ensure they wouldn’t impede backup; that allowed them to tunnel slightly closer, before planet-based gravity distortions interrupted their progress again. Ship signatures appeared, warping in behind the UN armada from the direction they came. More automated foes crawled out of the woodwork throughout the system, thousands upon thousands of them waiting. There were also a colossal amount of hostiles marching out from the desert world.
Attempts to hail the foreign faction went unanswered; the Terrans even flashed blinking lights from the hull, in case traditional communications weren’t working for some reason. Our enemies zipped toward the SC fleet, this time not hiding that their guns were primed for the kill. While prepping for combat, our force spared a few resources toward scouring the system for signals, and trying to crack their encryption. Running their language through a translator matrix could help us gather intel—perhaps learning more about the attacks on the Sivkits and the Osirs. However, there was nothing of use we could pick up, besides the standard background radiation and our internal signals.
Why are these people so hostile to us, so adamant about driving anyone out of this system without any communication attempts?
It was evident that these murderous aliens had been expecting our return, judging by the uptick in ships stationed here. They started off by slinging particle beams, but the Terran spacecraft on the frontlines were generating strong magnetic fields—which could separate the charged rays. General Naltor was taking notes about the SC’s capabilities, just as he had during the general strategy briefing. It was a test of hurling offensive weapons at one another, and seeing if they could be parried or deflected. The enemy had numbers, having anchored themselves deeply to this system. Ambassador Loxsel should lose whatever attachment he had to this world in a hurry.
Our own particle beams weren’t countered by plasma or magnetic shielding, rather being absorbed by what appeared to be a layer of liquid armor; our weapons’ power fizzled within the water, as the simple medium scattered their heat. The battle of engineering appeared to be a stalemate so far, with each party finding a unique counter.
“Only predators could c-create such dastardly weapons!” Loxsel brayed, paws flying away from his snout. “They dreamed up the same base horrors as you. This is hunter against hunter, a contest of t-trickery. How primal…this can’t be my life! I want out!”
Kuemper raised a hand. “These aliens are clever, Loxsel. They figured out their own way to oppose our particle beams, but we have other weapons. The question is really who has the best weapon.”
“Bring out the antimatter! Launch them at the planet and hope it falls from the heavens like rain!”
“That is not how we operate, even if they did with the Osirs. If they somehow aren’t behind the Osirs’ deaths, then that’s not the signal we want to send about our terms of engagement.”
“Do you kill your prey by being boring? Because I’m about to…drop DEAD! Dead, I say!”
“You do that,” Onso heckled from the audience. “In silence.”
Kuemper’s comment about whoever would deliver the weapon that turned the tide rang true; someone needed to score major blows. These enemies must have the force to at least whittle us down with their superior numbers. In any other system, throwing twenty thousand SC drones would be enough to overrun the place, but this region of space was fortified to the teeth. As we crested to closer distances, each side tested the other’s ionic shields and armor with plasma, and point-defenses against mini-missiles. The deciding factor was indeed that home advantage, the terrain being familiar to our foes. The asteroid belt—and I mean all of it—came to life, with tens of thousands of giant rocks chucked at us with slingshots.
“Hey! That’s our move,” Dustin protested, as the SC drones reacted to the barrage of space rocks flying in all directions. “Maybe humans aren’t the craziest ones out there.”
Zalk gave him a perplexed glance. “The hostiles threw a plurality of their asteroid belt at you, and that’s your reaction?”
“What do you want me to say? That we probably don’t have enough explosive firepower, or time, to break them all up?”
“I see your drones desperately firing away from the ships, and weaving all about to avoid space rocks. How am I supposed to believe you can protect the Tseia when you are getting rolled?”
The human’s lips curved down. “There’s always a bigger fish, Zalk. They’re formidable…but we’ve ended bigger fish before, with a lot less at our disposal.”
“While I appreciate an attempt at a relatable metaphor, I wouldn’t go comparing yourself to fish. On Ivrana, all fish get eaten by us,” Naltor quipped.
“Fine. There’s always a bigger Bissem—and I’m looking right at him.”
“Half-feathered nerd.”
I looked toward the screen with worried eyes. “Is now the time for jokes and banter?”
“Gallows humor, Tassi,” Dustin sighed. “Beats doomspiraling, doesn’t it?”
I couldn’t help but to “doomspiral,” as the enemy seized our automatons’ moment of weakness. Our formation was scattered across all three axes, but each feed showed them under a similar asteroid siege. Recognizing that the Terran-led craft were on the back foot, the hostiles made use of their greater numbers at last; they hurled themselves at our front lines—ramming tactics that piled onto the existing debris barreling down on us. Our drones were being beaten into submission, flinging antimatter missiles at asteroid and foe alike.
The SC dispatched their nanodrones to attack by a thousand cuts, but dust guns smited these with equally small particles. Larger ships’ shielding could burn them in a heartbeat, yet the tiniest vessels struggled to reckon with them. Clearly, our enemies had a rotating arsenal for every situation. Asteroids crashed over the paltry physical shields, rendering them ineffective in blocking incoming fire. The humans looked a bit disheartened, seeing that the hostiles had an answer for every punch they threw.
Not hesitating to bring all of their friends to the party, space stations nestled within the asteroid belt revved to life. The enemy dumped warheads in our faces as well, just as our casualties were teetering on the edge of a catastrophic count. The Sapient Coalition was getting hit with everything under the ice shelf, all at once. I wasn’t even sure our nemeses had shown their entire hand, but they didn’t need to. Feeds across the drone fleet were going dead, limiting the rapidly alternating angles. Lights blinked out on the space map’s display feed.
The humans aren’t going to be able to avenge the Sivkits or the Osirs today. This is a swift, devastating loss. We can’t take them on their own turf…and I’m not sure we could, even outside of their territory!
Kinetics, lasers, particle beams, missiles, and asteroids vanquished SC vessels one by one, despite their last gasp of resistance. For all of Dustin’s gallows humor, I could see the human was internally doomspiraling—fearing a war on the scale of the one they put to bed twenty-three years ago. Ambassador Loxsel flopped to the floor as the last feed went dead, amid a sea of debris that marked all that was left of our fleet. The Sapient Coalition had some hard questions to ask themselves, about how they could stand up to an enemy on this level…and to consider whether it was worth it to engage at all.
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Star Crossed [Multiple Free Sample Chapters] Patreon Subreddit Discord Paperback NOP2 Species Lore
submitted by SpacePaladin15 to HFY [link] [comments]

2024.05.07 18:33 Alexenderhsuang Show me your camers

Show me your camers
Hey my friends ，those is my cameras .They are a ll my friends.I'll share some information with you guys.
First.OLYMPUS AUTO EYE EE MATIC
https://preview.redd.it/pz5hn2mlt0zc1.jpg?width=4624&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a10084a09df22ed81dcd6e5f12b1235d9a54b56e
it have f=2.8 to 22 lens.Capturing brilliant colors on film is this camera’s forte.It have a very shrpness imaging. plz see this photo
https://preview.redd.it/2a13eraxu0zc1.png?width=1830&format=png&auto=webp&s=c88305c52af2ee9a7687197b4df6ebc37561d1d1
and he have a brightness forcus system . It help me a lot.
This camera has a useful silicon exposure detection system ，The dial beside the lens is used to lock the exposure value.
Twist camera.This camere called Canon Ql 17,it's the first generation of ql series.
https://preview.redd.it/doutptx9x0zc1.png?width=3648&format=png&auto=webp&s=fd79c5db659b36b25ca2cb1f784bbdf18ef23235
It's nothing speacial.People who love film shooting will know how to use it.Light color of lens can help you to shoot some Pocari Sweat A.D.S style picture. The maxnum aperature of lens is f=1.7. So useful to shoot Portrait.
ql 17 shoot
Last camera.Fed5.This camera made in Soviet Ukrine. It has lenses with an M39 mount,you can buy M39lica lens and mount them on it.In default ,purchashing this camera will come with a Jupiter lens.The lens glass is coated with a radiation coating.
https://preview.redd.it/w4423c3w51zc1.jpg?width=4624&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8197b42e82d6d7a23f8551db9a6e5f39708d86e1
The shutter speed needs to be set after winding the film, otherwise the camera may be damaged. The internal gears controlling the shutter speed could be stripped.
The metering values of the light meter are displayed on a scale resembling a black-and-white zebra pattern indicator, but it needs to be used in conjunction with a conversion system attached to the rewind knob and the camera's exposure needs to be set manually. Its vibrant colors make it a very distinctive camera.
SHOOT BY FED5
submitted by Alexenderhsuang to filmcameras [link] [comments]

2024.05.07 12:29 _myst Making KSP1 into KSP2 with Mods: The Community Lifeboat Project

TLDR mod list from this post available HERE
Single-download modpack version of this list coming soon here: GITHUB .CKAN FILE DOWNLOAD
Hello everyone! This has taken me days to type, apologies for the wall of text that’s about to ensue.
With the coming demise of Intercept Games and their long-troubled and likely-shuttered development of Kerbal Space Program 2, a question I’m seeing come up more and more, and have also asked myself arises: “How do we turn KSP1 into the game that we all dreamed KSP2 would be, with mods?”. is it even possible? I believe I have an answer that will satisfy you. This IS quite achievable, for the most part. While no modlist could ever match the dream we had/have for what ksp2 would become, we can get fairly close with the tools we have presently available. KSP1 is a mature, if imperfect game with a thriving modding community. Many mods are cross-compatible and designed to work together despite independent creation pipelines, and we have a powerful modloader in the form of CKAN that makes modding the game extremely easy. And, the best part, new mods are actively being developed all the time. I'd like to help you all create an aproximation of KSP2 in regular KSP, with mods, I call this list The Community Lifeboat Project. My sincere hope is that this will sate those of you, like me, who dreamed of a KSP2 that surpassed the original in every way, and still hope that we may someday see a version of a complete KSP2 in some form or another. For now, this is the best thing I can offer the community that has given me alot, in its stead.
Who am I? A member of this great gaming community, same as you. Someone who has at the time of writing, 1800 hours in KSP1, and about 300 hours in KSP2, and about 100 hours in modded KSP1, and many more planned. I am someone who prays to the Deep Space Kraken that my rockets will fly and that we someday get a fully-released and realized version of Kerbal Space Program 2. In the meantime, this what I’m playing in lieu of our long-awaited sequel.
Who am I not? I am not techy. I am not a modding guru. I am neither a customer service line, a mod author, nor a troubleshooter. I do not have the answers to any ensuing chaos or game corruption that may ensue from playing this modlist. This modlist is just me telling you all what I am playing with personally, right now. My best effort at Homebrew KSP2, if you will. Some mods may be redundant or break unexpectedly in the future, but I have had no major issues to date. It mostly works as far as I can tell, minor graphical bugs aside. However, again, I am not a modder or a game developer, I know about as much about modding KSP as you do, maybe less.
If you run into issues I probably can’t help you. You need to do the legwork yourself to learn how CKAN works and install these mods, and to troubleshoot anything that explodes.This is a curated recommendation list only, not a complete how-to guide. If some more experienced modders and players in the community want to review this list and comment below with improvements and revisions or point out redundancies, please do so. If someone wants to make this list into some sort of compiled modpack, go for it. Also please comment if there are mods known to be in development right now that you all think might be a good fit here whenever they get released, or just other stuff the stockalike-ksp2-in-ksp1 community should be aware of.
Who is this mod for? This modlist is for anyone in the Kerbal Space Program community who wants to make use of it, but is primarily geared towards giving veteran players new mechanics and content to play with. This modlist actively makes the game more challenging with new gameloops and mechanics to account for, it does not trivialize the base game or make it easier to learn. Quite the opposite, in fact. Finally, this is not a modpack persay. Again, if someone wants to make one be my guest. You do need to download and install each of these mods individually through CKAN, it takes roughly ten seconds per mod and is a somewhat tedious process, but the reward is worth it, at least to me.
How many mods are in this list? 142, approximately, at time of writing. About 40 of those are configs/backend/compatibility patches so about 100 actual mods, with varying levels of impact on gameplay.
How are your load times? Startup takes me about 5 minutes, loading VAB/SPH takes a bit longer than stock KSP but everything runs surprisingly well. Your own mileage may vary but I wish you the very best.
Disclaimer: Many of the mods here are relatively old and no longer under development, their most-current versions are built for prior versions of Kerbal Space Program. CKAN will warn you of this on install. Play with them anyway, everything seems to mostly-work so far as I can tell. Further, some of the mods listed here will require other framework mods like Kopernicus to make them run. Make sure to get those, CKAN will tell you when you need something supplemental for the most part, but I cannot remember every necessary sub-mod and may have missed some here. I have listed these under the “Precursors” section.
I will update this list periodically as more suitable mods come online, and am actively looking for more recommendations to add to this list. Many, if not most of these will be well-known to the habitual modders in the community but I’m trying to raise awareness for the rest of the playerbase.
My rules are that these mods must:
1) Be “stockalike” and fit the aesthetic of the base game, I am not looking for a complete game overhaul like RSS or similar.
2) This modlist is designed to be BROADLY compatible and downloadable through CKAN. I am aware there are great mods that are either incompatible with some of the ones on here, or not available on CKAN. The goal of this list is broad accessibility through our existing tools. I will also try to link user-guides for the mods that require tutorials where available, some of these are quite large and I do not understand how to use them all myself. I will answer questions where possible but I have only started using this modlist relatively recently and am not intimately familiar with all of the new gameplay.
Again, if your Kerbals are dying because life support is failing for seemingly no reason, I cannot help you and my Kerbals are likely frozen corpses drifting through space as well. I'm no mod author and have no involvement with any development for any of the mods listed below. If the descriptions here aren’t enough, do some research, there’s probably more/better info out there other than what’s banging around in my head/copied from CKAN.
Mods, if possible can we pin some version of this list going forward for all the people asking how to make a "Homebrew KSP2"? I don't need personal credit, just the modlist is fine by me. This post helps to answer a pretty common question we've been getting in light of recent KSP2 development news, or lack therof.
Anyway, here we go:
Objective: Mod KSP1 into what KSP should have been, principally by:
1) Adding new places to visit in the Kerbol System,
2) Add new star systems and interstellar locations to visit
3) Give the player the ships and engines, and parts to get there
4) Give new parts to build with, with a stockalike vibe
5) Add mechanics like colonization and life support to balance ship construction and general gameplay
6) Increase depth of gameplay for veteran players.
7) Give more/better “campaign” missions to fill out the base game randomized contract system with a bit more purpose.
8) “The intent is to give players a sense of pride and accomplishment”
What does this list of mods add to my game?
This feature list is not all-inclusive, but primary added features include, in no particular order:
1) -Vastly improved graphics, ground cover, and the ability to paint your ships similar to how you do in KSP2
2) -New places to visit: Both the inner and outer Kerbol System have been modified with the addition of 34 NEW bodies to visit between new planets, their moons, asteroids, planetoids, and other Trans-Neidonian Objects. These are all based on real objects in our own Solar system or observed exoplanets. An interstellar mod (Kcalbeloh) adds 7 new star systems and a black hole accessible via wormhole for your intersterstellar gameplay needs, with an additional ~40 new bodies to explore. All of the stock planets are present, plus nearly 75 new ones.
3) -Expanding and improving the Campaign with more meaningful, focused, and varied Contracts apart from the randomized ones stock KSP gives you.
4) -New Game Mechanics including but not limited to:
-New and/or improved UI elements to assist with docking and landing
- Life Support and Cryosleep mechanics
- New engines, mainly from mods by Nertea, a prolific modder and KSP2 dev, including gas-core nuclear engines, new electric engines, cryogenic engines, plasma engines, nuclear pulse propulsion, fusion drives, torch drives, and antimatter engines. New 5m and 7m engines for massive rockets are also available.
- Colonization mechanics and associated management gameplay
- New resources, distribution, and utilization gameloops through colonies
- Vast amounts of new parts to build with that we were supposed to get with KSP2 including hab rings, new ship modules, laboratories, buildings for planetary base construction, etc.
- The ability to explore your ships in first person mode as if you were a Kerbal
- New ways to move resources between ships such as flexible piping rather than docking.
-Orbital construction and construction of craft at colonies, apart from the VAB & SPH, away from Kerbin.
-Harvesting resources from the atmospheres of planets and dust/gas clouds present in outer space.
-Building Custom Service modules with both stock and modded mechanics
-Logistics Systems related to colony activities for sharing resources between nearby installations and craft.
CAVEATS: I am sure I have missed some people’s favorite mods and am open to further additions to this list under the following conditions: All of the following mods and any future additions to this list MUST be available on CKAN, they MUST work with the most current version of KSP1, they MUST be mostly-compatible with each other as well as this list, and they MUST be freely available, not paywalled. The only exception I will allow is Blackrack’s volumetric clouds because he’s our community’s darling and we love his work.
I want this mod selection to be as accessible to the community as possible while providing as much content as possible. Pick and choose anything from this list or the entire thing to use yourself. I play with everything listed here, concurrently, but your performance may dictate the need to leave some of this stuff by the wayside. At a bare minimum, make sure you have the relevant “precursor” category mods so nothing else breaks. This list adds A TON of new and challenging gameplay sure to give even the most seasoned KSP veterans pause and I’m very much a beginner myself, it’s alot of new stuff to learn being thrown at you quickly. Pace yourselves lads!
Without further ado my, modlist, with a brief description of what everything does and broken down by category:
Myst’s “Community Lifeboat Project” Modlist:
Not Required, but highly reccomended:
- Blackrack’s Volumetric Clouds: This is the only paid mod on this list. I like it, other people like it, Blackrack did incredible work here for the community. Costs $5 on his Patreon, everything else on this list is free.
PRECURSORS/CONFIG STUFF TO MAKE OTHER MODS WORK: (33 mods)
- AT Utils: Common Library for a set of plugins made by Allista
- B9 Part Switch: A module which allows parts to switch objects, resources, nodes, attach points, temperature, add mass, cost, and more.
- Background Resources: REPOsoft Tech Background Resources Plugin
- Community Category Kit: Common Parts Categories for KSP mods
- Community Parts Titles: Rename parts for useful and consistent grouping/sorting in the VAB/SPH, Many mods are supported. This mod is intended for the English version of KSP.
- Community Parts Titles Extras: Categories: Highly-Recommended Extras for the Community Parts Titles. Create new categories or place parts in a more appropriate category.
- Community Parts Titles Extras: CCK- No Duplicates: See Above.
- Community Resource Pack- Common Resources for KSP mods.
- Community Terrain Texture Pack: High Quality textures for use by planet-creators, makes other stuff on this list work, probably.
- Contract Configurator: A config-file-based solution for creating new contracts. Makes added contract packs work.
- Cryo Tanks Core: Cryo Tanks standalone plugin, adds functionality to other mods, contains no parts and does nothing by itself.
- Custom Asteroids (Alternative OPM config): Replaces default Outer Planets Mod asteroid config and makes it work with Custom Asteroids mod further down this list.
- Custom Barn Kit: Small Plugin to change parameters related to career, science, and building upgrades when various features are unlocked.
- Custom Prelaunch Checks: C# API to write prelaunch checks that run when the VAB/SPH launch button is pressed. Makes other stuff work.
- Deployable Engines Plugin (Nertea Mod): Plugin to manage extending and retracting engine nozzles.
- DMModule Science Animate Generic: Replacement for Module Science Experiment and ModuleAnimateGeneric.
- Firespitter Core: Core Firespitter .dll. Makes something else work, don’t remember what.
- Global Construction Core: dependency for the Global Construction Mod
- Harmony 2: Library for patching, replacing, and decorating.NET and Mono methods during runtime (I have no idea what this does, other mods probably use it as a dependency)
- Kerbal Actuators: A plugin used to create VTOL engines and robotic parts. Makes other stuff work.
- Kopernicus Planetary System Modifier: REQUIRED for all other planet packs on this list
- Kopernicus Expansion Continue-er: Kopernicus Dev Tools and Footprints.
- Modular Flight Integrator: Modularly Integrates flight models or something idk.
- Module Manager: Modify KSP config files without conflict (ESSENTIAL).
- Rasterprop Monitor Core: plugin and props for IVA use.
- Shabby: Shader Asset bundle Loader for KSP
- Textures Unlimited: KSP Shader, texture and modeling utilities. Makes other stuff work.
- Toolbar: API for Third-party Plugins to provide toolbar buttons
Sub-mod: Toolbar Controller: Wrapper mod for Blizzy and stock toolbars.
- USI Tools: Libraries to make the USI mods work correctly. NEEDED.
- Vertex Mitchell/Netrevali Filtered Heightmap: Makes some of the other graphical stuff work correctly relating to planetary textures. Idk.
- Waterfall Core: Core Waterfall Plugin to drive upgraded fancy engine effects.
GRAPHICAL AND AUDIO IMPROVEMENTS (25 mods)
- Chatterer: Configurable audio that allows you to hear your Kerbals communicating over the radio with Mission Control, breathing on EVA, etc.
- ChattererExtended: Adds 625 new kerbalized chatter files for added variety
- Distant Object Enhancement: Lets you see other planets all the way back on Kerbin. Works with the modded planet packs on this list.
- Distant Object Enhancement /L default config: default planet colors.
- Environmental Visual Enhancements Redux: Version of EVE which significantly improve performance, used as a replacement for base EVE. Adds clouds, lighting, etc.
- Parallax: PBR tessellation shader for planetary textures,
- Parallax Stock Planet Textures: adds HD textures to the stock planets, highly reccomended.
- Parallax Stock Scatter Textures: adds HD textures to planetary scatters and ground cover.
- Planetshine: light from planets and moons can now reflect up and color your spacecraft, adding realism and immersion.
- Planetshine default config: Support config.
- Restock+: Community-built resleeve of stock part models and textures to make them look a bit nicer. Can be disorienting at first and isn’t quite as pretty as the KSP2 models, but its something. This mod may clash with Waterfall, I’ve had issues with offset engine plumes on some of my engines and suspect this mod is the culprit.
- Scatterer: Atmospheric Scattering Shaders
- Shaddy: Collection of Shaders for Kerbal Space Program
- Simple Repaint: Allows you to choose colors for individual ship parts out of a pre-selected list of shades. Adds some badly-needed customizability to the base game.
- Singularity: Black Hole Shaders for KSP by the one-and only Blackrack. Needed for optimal looks for Kcalbeloh.
- Spectra: EVE configs for stock celestial bodies, also grab the self-explanatory sub mods below:
- Spectra EVE 64k Kerbin Clouds
- Spectra EVE Kerbin/Laythe Snow
- Spectra EVE Minmus Geysers
- Spectra Scatterer
- Spectra Scatterer for Minmus
- Spectra Scatterer: Jool Shine on Laythe
- Spectra Scatterer Vibrant Sunsets
- Staged Animation: Plays an animation when a part is staged.
- Stock Waterfall Effects: config to give Waterfall Effects to the Stock engines.
REPLACE WITH Waterfall: Restock and Restock Waterfall Expansion
Rocket Sound Enhancement-Overhauls engine noises
NEW PLACES/THINGS TO VISIT: (8 mods)
- Custom Asteroids (inner stock system data)- Adds asteroids inside the orbit of Jool
- Custom Asteroids (Kuiper Belt Analog for Outer Planets Mod)- Adds “Kentaurs” and trans-Neidonian (Neptunian) objects.
- Minor Planets Expanded: The lesser-known counterpart to the Outer Planets Mod. Stock KSP has planetary analogues for our Solar planets out to Jool, and Pluto. The acclaimed Outer Planets Mod has analogues for Saturn (Sarnus), Uranus (Urloom), and Neptune (Neidon). Minor Planets Expanded adds many additional objects and lesser-known worlds to the game alongside the previous, including analogues for Eros, Ceres, Orcus, Haumea, Makemake, Sedna. This mod also includes analogues for a number of real-life asteroids and comets present in our Solar System . Adds 15 new worlds to visit.
- Outer Planets Mod: Celebrated Mod that adds planetary Analogues for Saturn (Sarnus), Uranus (Urlum), and Neptune (Neidon), and Pluto (Plock), as well as some of their moons. Adds roughly a dozen new places to visit. Eeloo gets shifted to become a moon of Saturn to make room for the Pluto Analogue. The wormhole to the Kcalbeloh System can also be found in Sarnus orbit. Adds 15 new bodies to land on.
Outer Planets Mod: Parallax with Scatters: Adds the HD Parallax mod ground scatters to the outer planets, dramatically improving their visuals.
- Lt Duckweed’s QuackPack: Adds a slew of new planets, both terrestrial and gas giants, to the inner Kerbol System, inside the orbit of Moho. These are based on real-life exoplanets and are extremely difficult to reach and land on due to their hostile environments and include extreme temperatures, lava worlds, metallic atmospheres, etc. Adds 4 new places to visit.
- Kcalbeloh System: Interstellar planetary mod that adds several new star systems, each with their own planetary systems, orbiting a supermassive black hole. The Black Hole is accessible via interstellar-level engines and careful piloting, OR via a wormhole orbiting Jool. Assuming you have the Outer Planets mod installed and working, the wormhole will be orbiting Sarnus (Saturn equivilant) instead.
- Kcalbeloh System 8k Textures: See Above. For those of us who play in UHD.
CONTRACT PACKS TO IMPROVE THE STOCK CAMPAIGN: (8 mods)
- Contract Pack: Anomaly Surveyor: Contracts that guide you through exploring the stock game’s easter eggs, UFO’s, memorials, etc.
- Contract Pack: Bases and Stations Reborn: Space-station focused contract pack, replaces the base game’s “Build a Space Station” contracts
- Contract Pack: Clever Sats: Overhaul of stock satellite contracts
- Contract Pack: Exploration Plus: Overhaul of stock “Exploration” contracts
- Contract Pack: Field Research: Do more Science! Receive contracts for performing different experiments under a variety of conditions.
- Contract Pack: Kerbal Academy: Training your Kerbalnauts the sensible way.
- Contract Pack: Research Advancement Division: More Scientific Contracts, complimentary to the Field Research pack.
- Contract Pack: Tourism Expanded: 11 new contracts to send Kerbals across the Kerbol system
- Contract Pack: Tourism Plus: Better tourism! A richer tourism experience than stock. Take tourists to space and visit the stations you have created. Build new tourist attractions like the space casino megaproject. Includes 15 new contracts.
NEW GAME MECHANICS: (25 mods)
- BetterTimeWarpContinued: Improved Time Warping
- DeepFreeze continued: adds cryosleep and the ability to freeze and thaw Kerbals for long journeys. Compatible with USI life support featured further down
-GUIDE:
- Dynamic Battery Storage (Nertea Mod): mod intended to help vessel construction by providing electricity planning functions and solve problems related to power-flow. Pairs well with his other engine and advanced poweheat mods
-GUIDE:
- Extraplanetary LaunchPads: Adds ability to build craft in flight mode, including at orbital facilities and at bases on other planets.
-GUIDE:
- FreeIVA: Lets you explore the insides of your ships as well as EVA in First-Person mode from the point of view of your kerbals. Extremely immersive and usable with several of the parts mods by Nertea featured below. Adds a new tab of IVA-compatible pieces into the SPH/VAB.
Sub-mod: -Through the Eyes of a Kerbal: See the world through a first-person viewpoint. Needed for use with Free IVA.
- Global Construction: Lets you build vessels directly on other planets and in orbit around other planets.
-GUIDE:
  • HEAT CONTROL: New Categories of radiators to add to spacecraft, neccesary for some of his more advanced engine mods like Far Future technologies with big reactors and exhausts putting out monstrous amounts of heat.
    -GUIDE:
- Kerbal Attachment System: Adds new gameplay mechanics in the form of winches, struts, and pipes. Vessels can now be connected in EVA without docking them.
-GUIDE:
- Kerbal Inventory System: Adds new inventory system and EVA mechics and usables. This one works, but does have some odd behavior in-game with the native EVA/breaking ground stuff, I haven’t totally figured out using this one yet and have had some instances of odd item storage or kerbals not being able to grab parts they should, etc.
-GUIDE:
- Kerbal Joint Reinforcement Continued: Fixes issues with unstable joints and wobbliness.
- Kerbal Konstructs: Adds a slew of new buildings and launch sites
-GUIDE:
Submods:
- Off-shore Launch Platform: Designed to be used with Kerbal Konstrukts, lets you launch off an oil rig.
- Omega’s Stockalike Structures: ALPHA BUILD. Statics content pack for Kerbal Konstrukts.
- Konstruction: Weldable docking ports, cranes, magnets, other construction equipment.
- KSP Community Fixes: Fixes many stock KSP bugs and provides some Quality of Life and UI improvements
- Rational Resources: Resource Placement is no longer random but reflects composition templates. Promotes Cryofuels mods and planet pack/life support compatibility.
- Space Dust: Adds atmospheric and exo-atmospheric resource harvesting. Includes a new harvesting system, displays, resource distributions, and parts.
- Space Dust Unbound: Expands Space Dust resource harvesting abilities to other modded planets and systems like the Outer Planets Mod, Galaxies Unbound (not included on this list for now), and others.
- System Heat/associated sub-mods: By Nertea: revamps the core Heat system of Kerbal Space Program, many of his engine mods require use of this new system, or at least strongly benefit from it.
Sub-Mods:
- System Heat- Nuclear Engines Config
- System Heat- Nuclear Reactor Config
- System Heat- Resource Converter Config
- System Heat-Resource Harvester Config
-GUIDE:
- USI Kolonization Systems (MKS/OKS): Interlocking modules that bring planetary colonization gameplay. Expansive mod for building both terrestrial as well as orbital colonies and associated deep gameplay GUIDE
- USI Life Support: Advanced Life Support Mod, more advanced than Kerbal Snax or whatever its called but not as unforgiving as Kerbalism, I was going for a balance between accessibility and depth of gameplay with this one, plus it links seamlessly with the USI Kolonization mechanics. Hooks in seamlessly to kolonization mechanics. GUIDE
-Kerbal Inventory for All: Adds inventories to many 3rd part rocket parts and unifies inventories with Kerbal Inventory System.
-Stage Recovery: Staged rocket parts with parachutes attached can be recovered for spesos.
Persistent Thrust: Allows burns during timewarp.
SCANSat: Overhaul for scanning Technologies
RemoteTech: Adds in probe signal delay and a host of new mechanics.
Sub Mod: RemoteTech Stock Configs
NEW ENGINES AND OTHER PARTS: (33 mods)
- AlphaMensae’s Modular Launch Pads: Beyond Launch Clamps: Mix and match components to build all kinds of launch infrastructure.
- Cryo Tanks: (Nertea mod). Liquid Hydrogen fuel tanks and storage for most stock tank designs.
- Cryogenic Engines: (Nertea Mod). Provides new, high-efficiency engines in 1.25, 2.5, and 3.25 sizes that burn liquid hydrogen rather than normal “liquid fuel”
- Cryogenic Engines- Near Future Aeronautics- patch to convert relevant engines in near-future aeronautics to burn Liquid Hydrogen
- Far Future Technologies: (Nertea Mod) Adds theoretically possible engines we might have IRL within the next few hundred years powered by exotic forms of nuclear fusion, antimatter, torch drives, etc. Good for Outer Planets missions and interstellar stuff
-GUIDE:
- JX2Antenna: Adds a special 2.5m antenna with 1,000G transmisison power, important for hyper-range deep-space missions.
- Kerbal Atomics: Nertea Mod. Adds new anbd exciting nuclear engines to use in-game. Included in a slew of size classes and technology levels for greater access to nuclear engines at different stages of the game. Adds things like gas-core reactors, nuclear aerospike engines, multimode engines that switch or utilize both nuclear and conventional afterburning fuel.
-GUIDE:
Sub-mod- Kerbal Atomics Other Mod Support: Optional Patch to allow the KA nuclear thermal rockets to run on LH@ for additional performance.
- Kerbal Planetary Base Systems: Adds multiple parts for building better bases and colonies on planet surfaces such as Habs, Greenhouses, Laboratories, and more. This IS compatible with the life support mods featured above.
-GUIDE:
- Near-Future Aeronautics: Nertea Mod. Adds advanced aerospace parts including propellers, intakes, jet and multimode nuclear engines for massive spaceplanes.
-GUIDE:
- Near Future Construction: Nertea Mod. Structural components and truss segments for building deep space vessels and bases. These will look familiar to anyone who has played a bit of KSP2, Nertea was a prolific KSP1 modder and was hired by Intercept Games to bring his mods native functionality in KSP2.
- Near Future Electrical: Nertea Mod. Stockalike nuclear reactors, capacitors, and more batteries. Neccesary for many of his electrical engine mods.
- Near Future Electrical (Decaying RTG’s): Nertea Mod. Optional patch to make RTG output gradually decrease over time as they do in real life. This will force additional planning for long-range missions to the outer planets and interstellar locales.
- Near Future Electrical Core: Nertea Mod. Standalone sub-mod, needed to make Near Future Electrical work.
- Near Future Exploration: Nertea Mod. Expands probe selection, adds new cores, bus parts, minisatellite parts and a slew of new antennas.
- Near Future IVA Props: Nertea Mod. Prop pack to configure and acessorize IVA spaces on your ships.
- Near Future Launch Vehicles: Nertea Mod. Large launch vehicles including 5 and 7.5 meter engines for launching massive spacecraft and parts.
- Near Future Propulsion: Nertea Mod. Advanced electric engines and new fuel types, stockalike.
-GUIDE:
- Near Future Propulsion (Xenon Hall Effect Thruster): Nertea Mod. Converts NFP Argon thrusters to use stock Xenon fuel instead if desired.
- Near Future Solar: Nertea Mod. Adds new solar panels in lots of new sizes and shaped for utility and customizability.
- Near Future Solar Core: Nertea Mod. Support plugin for NFS.
- Near Future Spacecraft: Nertea Mod. New Command pods, control systems, and engines for crewed spacecraft. Some of the stuff here closely resembles some of the new pods we got in KSP2.
- Near Future Spacecraft-LFO Engines: Nertea Mod. Converts monopro orbital engines to use stock liquid fuel/oxidizer if desired.
- Project Orion Nuclear Pulse Engine: Adds a nuclear pulse engine powered by repeated nuclear device detonations, one of the many planned engines for KSP2 we may never get to see.
- Simple Adjustable Fairings: As described.
Sub-mod: Simple Adjustable Fairings-Plugin
- Stockalike Station Parts Expansion Redux: Nertea Mod. Adds tons of new station parts in a number of size classes, including some new components int he small-medium ranges.
Sub-Mod: Stockalike Station Parts Expanded Redux: Internal Spaces Nertea Mod, adds compatibility between SSER and FreeIVA so you can explore your stations from a first-person view.
- Universal Storage II Finalized: Modular Parts Mod that facilitates the building of custom service Modules, integrates well with life support mods.
- USI Asteroid Recycling Technologies: Can remove Asteroid Mass and attach storage tanks to its surface.
- USI Core: Kontainers, Reactors, and shared tools for the USI mods.
- USI Exploration Pack: Flat-packed rover and parts geared towards exploring planetary surfaces.
- USI Freight Transport Technologies: Modular Parts for hauling, mining, and space transportation needs.
META GAME AND UI STUFF: (10 mods)
- Astrogator: A space-navigational aid for Kerbal Space Program. Shows table of bodies reachable from current in-game location and the deltaV to reach them, can get perfect transfer windows and maneuver nodes for you.
- Better Burn Time: Extra automatic burn time indicators for suicide burns and target rendezvous.
- Better Early Tree: New Disposition of the beginning of the tech tree. Designed for an unmanned start and give stockalike vibe, Needs to be used alongside CTT
- Clickthrough Blocker: Helps eliminate the clickthrough problem with mods
- Community Tech Tree: Modding community-developed tech tree that reorganizes the base game tech tree and is compatible with the vast majority of mods on this list to balance the parts for the campaign. ESSENTIAL.
- Custom Asteroids: lets user control where asteroids appear.
- Docking Port Alignment Indicator: Self-Explanatory, Makes docking stuff easier.
- Hide Empty Tech Tree Nodes: Gets rid of tech tree nodes in the Community Tech Tree mods if you don’t have the mods installed, CTT is huge so this can help simplify it if you only have a few mods installed.
- ImprovedTechTree Placement: Tech Tree Mod that adds an additional engine-focused propulsion line. Grabbed on random impulse, no idea how this interacts, if at all, with other tech tree mods.
- Reviva: Dynamic Switching between multiple IVA’s in-editor and in-flight
- Speed Unit Annex: Adds speed units and some other helpful values to the Navball, depending on vessel type.
-Trajectories: Accounts for aerobraking to let you acurrately see where you are going to land
EasyVesselSwitch- Changes vessel switching to LeftAlt+M1 Click for easy switching
End of the List, for now.
Ad Aeternum Inanis
MOD TYPES THAT I AM ACTIVELY LOOKING FOR (please help):
  • A mod or combination of mods that gets KSP2’s soundtrack into KSP1 AND TRIGGERS TRACKS IN SIMILAR WAYS (i.e. not just a playlist, but performing in-game actions causes a given track to play, like going from Kerbin orbit to the Mun’s SOI, achieving low orbit and starting descent, etc. ) (possible solution now in the works thanks to u/ )
  • Some sort of part-welding or optimization mod to facilitate construction of much larger ships and stations and improve performance far past the current 250 part count beyond which stuff starts lagging and breaking.
  • Alternative/bettemore colonization mechanics mods for proper cities and landmark facilities and such.
  • More planet packs and places to visit, especially interstellar stuff.
  • Interstellar mods COMPATIBLE WITH EVERYTHING ELSE ON THIS LIST SO FAR.

MODS CURRENTLY UNDER CONSIDERATION TO ADD TO THIS PACK:

MODS THAT I AM NOT ADDING FOR THE FORSEEABLE FUTURE (and why):
  • Galaxies Unbound: Great mod, but suffered from some usability problems and has been removed from CKAN. I’ll add it back if and when it reappears.
  • Interstellar Extended: Another great mod, but sadly not compatible with Nertea’s stuff so I’m not adding it here.
    -BlueDogDesignBureau: Way, way, WAY too many parts. Was trying to make use of this before but its craft parts were making it impossible to find other stuff I wanted. Has plenty of useful components; far too many, in fact. Also not super stockalike. Never again.
-Kerbalism: a bit more complicated than I'm looking to make the gameplay right now and a whole system of mods including life support mechanics are already in.
-Mechjeb: I believe in flying manually, download it separately if you need it
Other Useful Links Here:
(emptiness intensifies)
Changelog:
5/7/2024 -Updated OP with some new information, fixing formatiing -Adding new sections on soundtrack upgrades and additional mods being evaluated for inclusion
Special thanks to the following people for their assistance and suggestions: -Kemot221 -LadyRaineCloud -PiBoy314 -mibsman -j-steve -Goufalite
5/12/2024: Added current github download, includes additional mods.
submitted by _myst to KerbalSpaceProgram [link] [comments]

2024.05.05 23:23 A_Vespertine Bad Habits

“The Darling Twins? Honestly, haven’t we all had enough of them by now?” Seneca ruminated as he tried to placate what was now the de facto triumvirate of the Ophion Occult Order.
Once again, he had been summoned to Adderwood Manor to account for his lapses in judgement, but rather than being on full public display in the Grand Hall, he instead found himself in a relatively small parlour. Across from the coffee table in front of him sat Ivy Noir, with her sister Envy to her right and her husband Erich to her left. Standing just to the side of them was the trenchcoat and fedora-wearing automaton who called himself The Mandrake. The one-eyed dream-catcher carved into his iridescent face rendered his emotions unreadable, but the spellwork pistols holstered in his belt made it clear that he was prepared to defend his employers against anything.
“I mean, this feud between them and Emrys is laughable,” Seneca went on. “They’re no threat to him now that he’s free of his chains, surely? Before there may have been a tactical element to his obsession with them, but now it’s just plain petty. Petra’s just out for revenge, and don’t get me started on the absurdity of that eldritch realtor wanting to flip their playroom. Does he think he can just relabel their torture chambers as BDSM dungeons and pass the Black Bile infestation off as some mould?”
“Seneca, I promised Emrys the Darlings, and the Covenant that we all signed binds us to fulfill that promise,” Ivy reminded him patiently, dropping a cube of sugar into her ouroboros-themed antique teacup. “You knew the Darlings better than any of us. You inducted them into the Order, you used them as assassins and bodyguards, and you let them withdraw every penny they had in your bank when they were fugitives!”
“Well, first of all, Crow, Crowley & Chamberlain is a financial institution, not a bank,” Seneca said flippantly. “Secondly, they had a numbered account and they didn’t show up in person, so the teller didn’t have the slightest idea of who they were dealing with.”
“You still could have frozen the account before they had that opportunity,” Erich stated.
Seneca made a display of languidly stirring some cream into his tea and taking a slow sip before responding.
“I’m very busy,” he claimed without an ounce of sincerity.
“You just didn’t want to get on the Darlings’ bad side,” Ivy said.
“I wasn’t aware they had a good side,” Seneca shrugged.
“There must be a paper trail we can follow,” Envy insisted. “Did the Darlings keep their assets anywhere else besides your bank?”
“Financial institution, and yes, I’m sure they have a proverbial Swiss bank account, but I haven’t the slightest notion of where to find it,” Seneca claimed. “It has come up in conversation that James invested about twenty percent of his income with me, twenty percent elsewhere, and shoved another twenty percent under their mattress. Mary enjoys being shagged on top of money, apparently. Their services commanded quite a high price on the underworld market, and sixty-plus years of compound interest have made them incredibly wealthy. They can afford to lie low for a long while.”
“Even if they can go without a paycheck indefinitely, they can’t go without killing,” Erich countered. “They need to hunt, and their egos mean they aren’t just going to cower from Emrys inside their playroom. They’re going to be out looking for victims and plotting against us, and you know what spots they’re likely to hit.”
“You’re wasting your time. James has had decades to scout out hunting grounds, and I’m sure he prepared for the possibility – no, inevitability – that he and his sister would become our enemies. He’s not going to risk showing up within a hundred miles of any of our Chapterhouses if he doesn’t need to,” Seneca said dismissively.
Ivy opened her mouth to speak, but stopped when The Mandrake took a step forward for the first time since the meeting began. He reached into his pocket and tossed a red and white pack of cigarettes with a shiny silhouette of a stag onto the coffee table.
“What is this?” Erich asked.
“Satin Stag cigarettes,” The Mandrake said flatly before shifting his gaze to Seneca. “That’s the Darlings’ brand, isn’t it, Mr. Chamberlain?”
“Um, yes. I believe I’ve seen them smoke those once or twice. What of it?” Seneca asked, failing to hide the nervousness creeping into his voice.
“These are artisanal cigarettes, and Harrowick County’s the only place you can buy them,” The Mandrake said. “That means that the Darlings, either directly or indirectly, are going to have to make the occasional sojourn back home, and the limited supply of these hand-rolled coffin nails means they can’t stock up too far in advance either. You know Harrowick County better than any of us. You know who makes these, you know who sells them. That’s how we track down the Darlings.”
“That’s preposterous. Do you really think they’d risk coming to Harrowick County rather than just switch brands?” Seneca scoffed.
“The Very Important Person at Pascal’s told me that Mary said they’ve been smoking these since they were kids, so they’re clearly pretty attached to them,” The Mandrake replied. “And somehow, I don’t think they’re the type to ever give up a bad habit.”
***
“Smoke & Mirrors ~ Fine Tobacco Products. Silvano Santoro, Proprietor. Est. 1949,” Envy read aloud as she, Seneca and The Mandrake stood outside the small, heavily fortified brick building.
Cast iron bars crisscrossed the windows and front door, which looked like it stood a decent chance of withstanding a police swat team. Security was obviously the shop’s proprietor’s key concern, as the ugly brown and yellow awning was tattered and faded, and the paint on the sign was so chipped it was barely even legible.
“How exactly does an unnoticeable and unattractive hole in the wall like this stay in business?” Envy asked.
“Repeat customers,” Seneca replied as he took a confident step towards the door. “Silvano knows me, and he doesn’t normally have a problem with me bringing guests along, but I expect both of you to be on your best behaviour!”
Envy gave him a reassuring nod, but The Mandrake continued to stoically stare at nothing with his hands in his pockets. Rolling his eyes, Seneca pressed a bulky plastic button on the antiquated door buzzer.
“Yeah, who is it?” a harsh and smoke-damaged voice demanded.
“It’s Seneca, Silvano. A pleasure to make your acquaintance again as well!” Seneca answered. “Just looking to pick up a few cases of cigars for a party, if you’ve got anything decent in stock, of course.”
“Who’s that you got with you?” Silvano asked suspiciously.
“Envy Noir, sir. I’m here on behalf of my sister Ivy, investigating a matter of considerable importance to the Ophion Occult Order,” Envy promptly introduced herself, much to Seneca’s chagrin. “The gentleman beside me is my bodyguard. Would you be so kind as to let us in?”
“Ah… of course. Just a moment, please,” Silvano replied.
“What’s he need a moment to buzz open a door for?” The Mandrake demanded, his stance immediately switching to full readiness.
“Making the place presentable for customers, I assume,” Seneca explained in exasperation.
“You mean he’s hiding evidence, or he’s running!” The Mandrake shouted.
“He’s a nonagenarian heavy smoker. He couldn’t run if his life depended on it,” Seneca insisted.
“I’ll see about that,” The Mandrake muttered.
Shoving Seneca out of the way, he kicked the door in with barely any effort. Storming into the shop, he saw a slender older man with thick white hair and rimmed glasses seated behind the front counter. His saggy, spotted skin was a living PSA against the products he peddled, and in his tobacco-stained hand, he held the receiver of an ornate rotary phone.
Staring at The Mandrake in cold fury, he calmly set the receiver back down in its cradle.
“Who were you talking to?” The Mandrake demanded.
“A client,” Silvano barked back with a shake of his head, picking up a burning cigarette from a nearby ashtray.
“Silvano, I am profusely sorry for this abject and uncouth behaviour! This being is no friend of mine, I can assure you,” Seneca asserted as he and Envy made their way inside.
“The feeling’s mutual, Chamberlain,” The Mandrake remarked. “Mr. Santoro, I apologize for the damage to the premises, but as Miss Noir has said, we’re here on urgent business.”
“Yes, that’s correct. We’ve been given to understand the Darling Twins are regular customers of yours,” Envy explained, before the smoke-saturated room sent her into a coughing spell. She fumbled around in her purse and pulled out a black N95 mask she had left over from the Pandemic.
“I’ve got plenty of regular customers,” Silvan replied defensively. “Customers who pay good money for that smoke you’re so offended by, young lady.”
“These ones have been coming here for over half a century and never aged a day,” The Mandrake said.
“That honestly doesn’t narrow it down that much,” Silvano chuckled, tapping his cigarette on his ashtray. “But yeah, I know the Darlings. What of it?”
“When was the last time they were here?” The Mandrake demanded.
“What’s it to you?” Silvano asked.
“They’re fugitives of the Order now and we want them brought in,” Envy replied, having donned her mask and mostly recovered from the smoke. “Mary Darling held a knife to my throat once in front of my sister, and later threatened to eat me alive in front of her and feed me to her pigs.”
“They were going to put me in their daughter’s doll collection,” The Mandrake muttered.
“And I have nothing but nice things to say about the Darlings, so I’m honestly not quite sure how I got dragged into this,” Seneca said. “That aside, it really would be of great help to us if you could share any information about them that you might have.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. They come in, they buy their smokes, they leave, just like most of my customers,” Silvano told them.
“But now they’re trying to lay low, so I’m guessing they’ve made some sort of arrangement with you to get their Satin Stag cigarettes without having to risk coming here in person,” The Mandrake said. “Maybe they set you up with one of their spare Retrovisions? Emrys said they had a few of those lying around, and they can use them as direct portals to their playroom.”
“Like they’d waste a fancy piece of technomancy like that on an old geezer like me. I haven’t seen them in months. Last year sometime, I think,” Silvano claimed.
The Mandrake casually strolled up to the front counter, rapping his fingers on the cheap glass display case.
“Real nice place you got here, Mr. Santoro. I mean, not really, but I’m sure you get the implication,” he said softly. “Ironic as it may be, a smoke shop isn’t exempt from municipal bylaws about smoking in public buildings and workspaces. You may not have had much trouble with local law enforcement before, but one phone call from my employers will change that real quick.”
“You think I’ve never been threatened before, punk?” Silvano asked, rising from his chair and staring him down.
“Boys, please, there’s no need for this,” Envy interjected. “Mr. Santoro, our Order has considerably more resources at its disposal than the Darlings, and we can certainly offer you a far greater reward for their capture than whatever they’re paying you for some cigarettes. You could retire; close this place down and get as far away as you like. How does that sound?”
“I’m not looking to retire, Miss. This business is all I’ve got, and it wouldn’t be good business to go around ratting out my best customers, now would it?” Silvano asked.
“It would be worse business to sacrifice everything you have to protect two customers,” The Mandrake threatened, his hands clamping down on the display cases so hard they began to creak. “Talk.”
Acknowledging him only with a furtive glance, Silvano took another drag from his cigarette and exhaled.
But this time, the smoke poured out from his mouth and nostrils without limit.
“What the hell?” The Mandrake cursed as he backed away.
Silvano pushed a button beneath the counter, putting his shop into lockdown with security shutters clamping down over every entrance point. As the smoke exuded from his body, it went limp and collapsed into a dried-out husk as the smoke coalesced into an animate form of its own, circling above them around the shop’s yellowed and textured ceiling.
“Damnit. Another egregore,” Envy muttered. “That explains his loyalties. The Darlings couldn’t eat him, but Emrys could.”
“So you’re saying we can’t negotiate it with it?” The Mandrake asked.
“Or fight it,” Envy clarified.
“In that case, it appears we’ve exhausted all our options. Time for a tactical retreat,” Seneca declared as he dashed for the now barricaded exit.
Whatever he was planning to do to get through it, the cloud of smoke cut him off before he got the chance. Rushing in through his nose and mouth, it immediately began suffocating him, sending him spasming to the ground as he choked for air.
The cloud assaulted Envy as well, but was unable to penetrate her mask.
“Godamnit, get away!” she shouted as she swatted it away from her burning eyes.
“Envy, get behind me now!” The Mandrake ordered as he drew out his pistols. “Sorry, Santoro, but you’re going to have to do a lot worse than that if you want to intimidate us!”
Seneca responded by gasping angrily and bashing his hand against the carpet.
“… A lot worse,” The Mandrake reiterated. “I may not be able to shoot you, but I will blow this health hazard you love so much to hell if you don’t tell me where I can find the Darlings!”
“There’ll be no need for that, Mr. Mandrake,” the voice of James Darling crackled in from some unseen speaker. A door off to the side slowly creaked open, revealing a Retrovision flickering with black and white static. The Mandrake wasted no time in shooting at it, but the bullets passed through the glass without causing any damage at all.
A hologram of James Darling manifested in the center of the room, a burning Satin Stag cigarette clutched neatly in his fingers. He saw Seneca suffocating on the floor, then turned his predatory and calculating gaze towards The Mandrake.
“Put the guns on the floor, and I’ll call Silvano off,” he offered.
The Mandrake didn’t seem to be the least bit tempted by this offer, but Envy tugged at his trenchcoat and gave him a commanding nudge. Reluctantly, The Mandrake tossed the guns to the carpet and placed his hands behind his head.
With only a single commanding wag of his index finger, the smoke cloud withdrew from Seneca’s lungs and collected itself above James like a thundercloud.
“No sense in killing you, Seneca. That would practically be doing Emrys a favour,” James said. “But Envy, what’s a pretty girl like you doing wearing a mask?”
“You’d better not let your sister hear you calling me that,” Envy taunted.
“Kind of you to worry, but it’s always the object of my flirtations who bear the brunt of my sister’s wrath,” James reminded her smugly. “Top-notch detective work tracking me down, Mr. Mandrake. Why don’t you walk in through the Retrovision and arrest me?”
“You knew we’d show up here looking for you. You were waiting for us,” The Mandrake growled.
“Again, brilliant detective work. You’ve truly earned that fedora,” James mocked him. “Yes, I knew you’d come here looking for us, so I’ve arranged for Mr. Santoro to set up shop inside our playroom. He was only hanging around here to set a trap for you. Let me tell you what’s going to happen. None of you, not even you, Mr. Mandrake, are going to be able to break out of this building. You can sit there and starve for all I care, or Miss Noir and The Mandrake could take their chances with us on the other side of the Retrovision. Sara Darling really would like to put you in her doll collection, Mr. Mandrake, and I can’t wait to tell Mary Darling exactly how pretty I think you are, Envy. If the two of you come across, I’ll let Seneca go and he can inform Erich and Ivy of your predicament. If they’d like to negotiate for your release, I… may be willing to consider it.”
“You’re a coward! If you’re going to threaten me, step across that screen and do it to my face!” the Mandrake ordered.
He took his hands off his head and took a step towards him, only for the acrid form of Silvano to interject itself between them. James took a casual drag from his cigarette, refusing even to flinch.
Envy took advantage of the distraction and grabbed the pair of spellwork pistols off of the floor, firing two rounds of consecrated lead into the limp body of Silvano. While the body didn’t react at all, the smoke cloud shook and screeched like a wounded animal, losing some of its integrity and dissipating across the room.
“That body’s not just a husk! Silvano’s bound to it!” Envy declared. “James, if you don’t let us go in the next thirty seconds I’ll have The Mandrake tear that body limb from limb and you’ll have to find some other cursed thoughtform to roll your cigarettes for you.”
The Mandrake looked back towards James who now, much to his satisfaction, had flinched.
“Thirty. Twenty-Nine. Twenty-Eight,” he began to count down as he theatrically cracked his knuckles.
Before James could come to a decision, a few wisps of smoke snaked their way back into Silvano’s body. They were enough to animate it like a marionette, its limbs moving jerkily as it input the code to retract the security shutters over the doors and windows.
“There, happy?” James asked facetiously. “You’re free to leave. Put those guns down.”
With a smug smile, Envy shook her head.
“Mandrake, grab that body. We’re taking him with us,” she announced.
When Silvano tried to slam the lockdown button again, Envy shot him, knocking him back into his seat. Before he was able to try a second time, The Mandrake had closed the distance between them. He grabbed him by the waist and slung him over his shoulder, impotently kicking and flailing like a toddler having a tantrum all the while.
“No!” James growled, his hologram disappearing and being replaced by countless others scattered throughout the room.
“What the hell?” Envy demanded as she fell back beside The Mandrake for protection.
“It’s a distraction! Shoot at the Retrovision! He’s coming through to get Silvano!” The Mandrake shouted.
Envy complied, firing multiple rounds at every image of James between them and the Retrovision, but all of them sailed clear through their targets. The smoke cloud suddenly condensed tightly around them, and The Mandrake made a break for the front door while he had the chance.
He was tackled from the side by someone moving at over fifty kilometers an hour, knocking him down and halfway across the room. When he looked up, he was completely surrounded by silhouettes of James bending down in the smoke to pick up Silvano. Jumping to his feet, he made his way back towards the Retrovision in the hopes of cutting James off.
Or at least, he thought that’s where he was going. The tumble to the floor and the encircling smoke had disoriented him, and he ended up tripping over Seneca, who was once again unable to stand from the sickening smoke.
James brushed by them in a blur, and Envy fired every last bullet trying to put him down. Each one either missed or succeeded only in striking Silvano, who was slung over James’ back.
The smoke retreated with them, and The Mandrake dashed after them in one final bid to keep them from escaping. They were just feet away from him before they leapt through the Retrovision, vanishing into the basement universe of the Darlings’ playroom. The Mandrake dared to reach in after them and pull them back, but his hand hit nothing but solid glass.
“Damnit!” he cursed, striking the top of the box set with his fist.
“Don’t break it!” Envy shouted. “If that Retrovision came from the Darlings’ playroom and was modified by James, it could be useful in tracking them down again!”
“It also gives them a two-way ticket to wherever we keep it!” The Mandrake shouted back.
“Oh yes, it would be a gamble taking this old girl with you. No doubt about that,” the black and white visage of James mocked them from the other side of the screen, taking a victory drag from his cigarette. “But on the other hand, it is one of my finer works. It would be a crime, an atrocity even, to destroy it.”
The Mandrake struck the box set again, but deliberately held back on damaging it.
“Mandrake, enough!” Envy commanded. “I know it’s risky, but we need it. Turn it off and pick it up. We’re getting out of this hellhole.”
“Don’t feel bad, Mr. Mandrake. I’m sure you’ll have another chance to end up in Sara Darling’s doll collection very soon,” James taunted just before The Mandrake managed to turn the Retrovision off.
“What an absolute waste of time,” he muttered as he lifted the vintage box set off the floor.
“Not entirely!” Seneca claimed, who had not only recovered from his spectral smoke inhalation but was now holding an unlit cigar. “Crow, Crowley & Chamberlain has a lien on this shop, and since Silvano just ran out on us and has thrown his lot in with the Darlings, this place and everything left in it is ours!”
He was just about to light it before Envy snatched it out of his hands.
“The Mandrake wasn’t bluffing about the municipal health bylaws,” she informed him. “From now on, this is a smoke-free building.”
submitted by A_Vespertine to DarkTales [link] [comments]

2024.05.05 23:20 A_Vespertine Bad Habits

“The Darling Twins? Honestly, haven’t we all had enough of them by now?” Seneca ruminated as he tried to placate what was now the de facto triumvirate of the Ophion Occult Order.
Once again, he had been summoned to Adderwood Manor to account for his lapses in judgement, but rather than being on full public display in the Grand Hall, he instead found himself in a relatively small parlour. Across from the coffee table in front of him sat Ivy Noir, with her sister Envy to her right and her husband Erich to her left. Standing just to the side of them was the trenchcoat and fedora-wearing automaton who called himself The Mandrake. The one-eyed dream-catcher carved into his iridescent face rendered his emotions unreadable, but the spellwork pistols holstered in his belt made it clear that he was prepared to defend his employers against anything.
“I mean, this feud between them and Emrys is laughable,” Seneca went on. “They’re no threat to him now that he’s free of his chains, surely? Before there may have been a tactical element to his obsession with them, but now it’s just plain petty. Petra’s just out for revenge, and don’t get me started on the absurdity of that eldritch realtor wanting to flip their playroom. Does he think he can just relabel their torture chambers as BDSM dungeons and pass the Black Bile infestation off as some mould?”
“Seneca, I promised Emrys the Darlings, and the Covenant that we all signed binds us to fulfill that promise,” Ivy reminded him patiently, dropping a cube of sugar into her ouroboros-themed antique teacup. “You knew the Darlings better than any of us. You inducted them into the Order, you used them as assassins and bodyguards, and you let them withdraw every penny they had in your bank when they were fugitives!”
“Well, first of all, Crow, Crowley & Chamberlain is a financial institution, not a bank,” Seneca said flippantly. “Secondly, they had a numbered account and they didn’t show up in person, so the teller didn’t have the slightest idea of who they were dealing with.”
“You still could have frozen the account before they had that opportunity,” Erich stated.
Seneca made a display of languidly stirring some cream into his tea and taking a slow sip before responding.
“I’m very busy,” he claimed without an ounce of sincerity.
“You just didn’t want to get on the Darlings’ bad side,” Ivy said.
“I wasn’t aware they had a good side,” Seneca shrugged.
“There must be a paper trail we can follow,” Envy insisted. “Did the Darlings keep their assets anywhere else besides your bank?”
“Financial institution, and yes, I’m sure they have a proverbial Swiss bank account, but I haven’t the slightest notion of where to find it,” Seneca claimed. “It has come up in conversation that James invested about twenty percent of his income with me, twenty percent elsewhere, and shoved another twenty percent under their mattress. Mary enjoys being shagged on top of money, apparently. Their services commanded quite a high price on the underworld market, and sixty-plus years of compound interest have made them incredibly wealthy. They can afford to lie low for a long while.”
“Even if they can go without a paycheck indefinitely, they can’t go without killing,” Erich countered. “They need to hunt, and their egos mean they aren’t just going to cower from Emrys inside their playroom. They’re going to be out looking for victims and plotting against us, and you know what spots they’re likely to hit.”
“You’re wasting your time. James has had decades to scout out hunting grounds, and I’m sure he prepared for the possibility – no, inevitability – that he and his sister would become our enemies. He’s not going to risk showing up within a hundred miles of any of our Chapterhouses if he doesn’t need to,” Seneca said dismissively.
Ivy opened her mouth to speak, but stopped when The Mandrake took a step forward for the first time since the meeting began. He reached into his pocket and tossed a red and white pack of cigarettes with a shiny silhouette of a stag onto the coffee table.
“What is this?” Erich asked.
“Satin Stag cigarettes,” The Mandrake said flatly before shifting his gaze to Seneca. “That’s the Darlings’ brand, isn’t it, Mr. Chamberlain?”
“Um, yes. I believe I’ve seen them smoke those once or twice. What of it?” Seneca asked, failing to hide the nervousness creeping into his voice.
“These are artisanal cigarettes, and Harrowick County’s the only place you can buy them,” The Mandrake said. “That means that the Darlings, either directly or indirectly, are going to have to make the occasional sojourn back home, and the limited supply of these hand-rolled coffin nails means they can’t stock up too far in advance either. You know Harrowick County better than any of us. You know who makes these, you know who sells them. That’s how we track down the Darlings.”
“That’s preposterous. Do you really think they’d risk coming to Harrowick County rather than just switch brands?” Seneca scoffed.
“The Very Important Person at Pascal’s told me that Mary said they’ve been smoking these since they were kids, so they’re clearly pretty attached to them,” The Mandrake replied. “And somehow, I don’t think they’re the type to ever give up a bad habit.”
***
“Smoke & Mirrors ~ Fine Tobacco Products. Silvano Santoro, Proprietor. Est. 1949,” Envy read aloud as she, Seneca and The Mandrake stood outside the small, heavily fortified brick building.
Cast iron bars crisscrossed the windows and front door, which looked like it stood a decent chance of withstanding a police swat team. Security was obviously the shop’s proprietor’s key concern, as the ugly brown and yellow awning was tattered and faded, and the paint on the sign was so chipped it was barely even legible.
“How exactly does an unnoticeable and unattractive hole in the wall like this stay in business?” Envy asked.
“Repeat customers,” Seneca replied as he took a confident step towards the door. “Silvano knows me, and he doesn’t normally have a problem with me bringing guests along, but I expect both of you to be on your best behaviour!”
Envy gave him a reassuring nod, but The Mandrake continued to stoically stare at nothing with his hands in his pockets. Rolling his eyes, Seneca pressed a bulky plastic button on the antiquated door buzzer.
“Yeah, who is it?” a harsh and smoke-damaged voice demanded.
“It’s Seneca, Silvano. A pleasure to make your acquaintance again as well!” Seneca answered. “Just looking to pick up a few cases of cigars for a party, if you’ve got anything decent in stock, of course.”
“Who’s that you got with you?” Silvano asked suspiciously.
“Envy Noir, sir. I’m here on behalf of my sister Ivy, investigating a matter of considerable importance to the Ophion Occult Order,” Envy promptly introduced herself, much to Seneca’s chagrin. “The gentleman beside me is my bodyguard. Would you be so kind as to let us in?”
“Ah… of course. Just a moment, please,” Silvano replied.
“What’s he need a moment to buzz open a door for?” The Mandrake demanded, his stance immediately switching to full readiness.
“Making the place presentable for customers, I assume,” Seneca explained in exasperation.
“You mean he’s hiding evidence, or he’s running!” The Mandrake shouted.
“He’s a nonagenarian heavy smoker. He couldn’t run if his life depended on it,” Seneca insisted.
“I’ll see about that,” The Mandrake muttered.
Shoving Seneca out of the way, he kicked the door in with barely any effort. Storming into the shop, he saw a slender older man with thick white hair and rimmed glasses seated behind the front counter. His saggy, spotted skin was a living PSA against the products he peddled, and in his tobacco-stained hand, he held the receiver of an ornate rotary phone.
Staring at The Mandrake in cold fury, he calmly set the receiver back down in its cradle.
“Who were you talking to?” The Mandrake demanded.
“A client,” Silvano barked back with a shake of his head, picking up a burning cigarette from a nearby ashtray.
“Silvano, I am profusely sorry for this abject and uncouth behaviour! This being is no friend of mine, I can assure you,” Seneca asserted as he and Envy made their way inside.
“The feeling’s mutual, Chamberlain,” The Mandrake remarked. “Mr. Santoro, I apologize for the damage to the premises, but as Miss Noir has said, we’re here on urgent business.”
“Yes, that’s correct. We’ve been given to understand the Darling Twins are regular customers of yours,” Envy explained, before the smoke-saturated room sent her into a coughing spell. She fumbled around in her purse and pulled out a black N95 mask she had left over from the Pandemic.
“I’ve got plenty of regular customers,” Silvan replied defensively. “Customers who pay good money for that smoke you’re so offended by, young lady.”
“These ones have been coming here for over half a century and never aged a day,” The Mandrake said.
“That honestly doesn’t narrow it down that much,” Silvano chuckled, tapping his cigarette on his ashtray. “But yeah, I know the Darlings. What of it?”
“When was the last time they were here?” The Mandrake demanded.
“What’s it to you?” Silvano asked.
“They’re fugitives of the Order now and we want them brought in,” Envy replied, having donned her mask and mostly recovered from the smoke. “Mary Darling held a knife to my throat once in front of my sister, and later threatened to eat me alive in front of her and feed me to her pigs.”
“They were going to put me in their daughter’s doll collection,” The Mandrake muttered.
“And I have nothing but nice things to say about the Darlings, so I’m honestly not quite sure how I got dragged into this,” Seneca said. “That aside, it really would be of great help to us if you could share any information about them that you might have.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. They come in, they buy their smokes, they leave, just like most of my customers,” Silvano told them.
“But now they’re trying to lay low, so I’m guessing they’ve made some sort of arrangement with you to get their Satin Stag cigarettes without having to risk coming here in person,” The Mandrake said. “Maybe they set you up with one of their spare Retrovisions? Emrys said they had a few of those lying around, and they can use them as direct portals to their playroom.”
“Like they’d waste a fancy piece of technomancy like that on an old geezer like me. I haven’t seen them in months. Last year sometime, I think,” Silvano claimed.
The Mandrake casually strolled up to the front counter, rapping his fingers on the cheap glass display case.
“Real nice place you got here, Mr. Santoro. I mean, not really, but I’m sure you get the implication,” he said softly. “Ironic as it may be, a smoke shop isn’t exempt from municipal bylaws about smoking in public buildings and workspaces. You may not have had much trouble with local law enforcement before, but one phone call from my employers will change that real quick.”
“You think I’ve never been threatened before, punk?” Silvano asked, rising from his chair and staring him down.
“Boys, please, there’s no need for this,” Envy interjected. “Mr. Santoro, our Order has considerably more resources at its disposal than the Darlings, and we can certainly offer you a far greater reward for their capture than whatever they’re paying you for some cigarettes. You could retire; close this place down and get as far away as you like. How does that sound?”
“I’m not looking to retire, Miss. This business is all I’ve got, and it wouldn’t be good business to go around ratting out my best customers, now would it?” Silvano asked.
“It would be worse business to sacrifice everything you have to protect two customers,” The Mandrake threatened, his hands clamping down on the display cases so hard they began to creak. “Talk.”
Acknowledging him only with a furtive glance, Silvano took another drag from his cigarette and exhaled.
But this time, the smoke poured out from his mouth and nostrils without limit.
“What the hell?” The Mandrake cursed as he backed away.
Silvano pushed a button beneath the counter, putting his shop into lockdown with security shutters clamping down over every entrance point. As the smoke exuded from his body, it went limp and collapsed into a dried-out husk as the smoke coalesced into an animate form of its own, circling above them around the shop’s yellowed and textured ceiling.
“Damnit. Another egregore,” Envy muttered. “That explains his loyalties. The Darlings couldn’t eat him, but Emrys could.”
“So you’re saying we can’t negotiate it with it?” The Mandrake asked.
“Or fight it,” Envy clarified.
“In that case, it appears we’ve exhausted all our options. Time for a tactical retreat,” Seneca declared as he dashed for the now barricaded exit.
Whatever he was planning to do to get through it, the cloud of smoke cut him off before he got the chance. Rushing in through his nose and mouth, it immediately began suffocating him, sending him spasming to the ground as he choked for air.
The cloud assaulted Envy as well, but was unable to penetrate her mask.
“Godamnit, get away!” she shouted as she swatted it away from her burning eyes.
“Envy, get behind me now!” The Mandrake ordered as he drew out his pistols. “Sorry, Santoro, but you’re going to have to do a lot worse than that if you want to intimidate us!”
Seneca responded by gasping angrily and bashing his hand against the carpet.
“… A lot worse,” The Mandrake reiterated. “I may not be able to shoot you, but I will blow this health hazard you love so much to hell if you don’t tell me where I can find the Darlings!”
“There’ll be no need for that, Mr. Mandrake,” the voice of James Darling crackled in from some unseen speaker. A door off to the side slowly creaked open, revealing a Retrovision flickering with black and white static. The Mandrake wasted no time in shooting at it, but the bullets passed through the glass without causing any damage at all.
A hologram of James Darling manifested in the center of the room, a burning Satin Stag cigarette clutched neatly in his fingers. He saw Seneca suffocating on the floor, then turned his predatory and calculating gaze towards The Mandrake.
“Put the guns on the floor, and I’ll call Silvano off,” he offered.
The Mandrake didn’t seem to be the least bit tempted by this offer, but Envy tugged at his trenchcoat and gave him a commanding nudge. Reluctantly, The Mandrake tossed the guns to the carpet and placed his hands behind his head.
With only a single commanding wag of his index finger, the smoke cloud withdrew from Seneca’s lungs and collected itself above James like a thundercloud.
“No sense in killing you, Seneca. That would practically be doing Emrys a favour,” James said. “But Envy, what’s a pretty girl like you doing wearing a mask?”
“You’d better not let your sister hear you calling me that,” Envy taunted.
“Kind of you to worry, but it’s always the object of my flirtations who bear the brunt of my sister’s wrath,” James reminded her smugly. “Top-notch detective work tracking me down, Mr. Mandrake. Why don’t you walk in through the Retrovision and arrest me?”
“You knew we’d show up here looking for you. You were waiting for us,” The Mandrake growled.
“Again, brilliant detective work. You’ve truly earned that fedora,” James mocked him. “Yes, I knew you’d come here looking for us, so I’ve arranged for Mr. Santoro to set up shop inside our playroom. He was only hanging around here to set a trap for you. Let me tell you what’s going to happen. None of you, not even you, Mr. Mandrake, are going to be able to break out of this building. You can sit there and starve for all I care, or Miss Noir and The Mandrake could take their chances with us on the other side of the Retrovision. Sara Darling really would like to put you in her doll collection, Mr. Mandrake, and I can’t wait to tell Mary Darling exactly how pretty I think you are, Envy. If the two of you come across, I’ll let Seneca go and he can inform Erich and Ivy of your predicament. If they’d like to negotiate for your release, I… may be willing to consider it.”
“You’re a coward! If you’re going to threaten me, step across that screen and do it to my face!” the Mandrake ordered.
He took his hands off his head and took a step towards him, only for the acrid form of Silvano to interject itself between them. James took a casual drag from his cigarette, refusing even to flinch.
Envy took advantage of the distraction and grabbed the pair of spellwork pistols off of the floor, firing two rounds of consecrated lead into the limp body of Silvano. While the body didn’t react at all, the smoke cloud shook and screeched like a wounded animal, losing some of its integrity and dissipating across the room.
“That body’s not just a husk! Silvano’s bound to it!” Envy declared. “James, if you don’t let us go in the next thirty seconds I’ll have The Mandrake tear that body limb from limb and you’ll have to find some other cursed thoughtform to roll your cigarettes for you.”
The Mandrake looked back towards James who now, much to his satisfaction, had flinched.
“Thirty. Twenty-Nine. Twenty-Eight,” he began to count down as he theatrically cracked his knuckles.
Before James could come to a decision, a few wisps of smoke snaked their way back into Silvano’s body. They were enough to animate it like a marionette, its limbs moving jerkily as it input the code to retract the security shutters over the doors and windows.
“There, happy?” James asked facetiously. “You’re free to leave. Put those guns down.”
With a smug smile, Envy shook her head.
“Mandrake, grab that body. We’re taking him with us,” she announced.
When Silvano tried to slam the lockdown button again, Envy shot him, knocking him back into his seat. Before he was able to try a second time, The Mandrake had closed the distance between them. He grabbed him by the waist and slung him over his shoulder, impotently kicking and flailing like a toddler having a tantrum all the while.
“No!” James growled, his hologram disappearing and being replaced by countless others scattered throughout the room.
“What the hell?” Envy demanded as she fell back beside The Mandrake for protection.
“It’s a distraction! Shoot at the Retrovision! He’s coming through to get Silvano!” The Mandrake shouted.
Envy complied, firing multiple rounds at every image of James between them and the Retrovision, but all of them sailed clear through their targets. The smoke cloud suddenly condensed tightly around them, and The Mandrake made a break for the front door while he had the chance.
He was tackled from the side by someone moving at over fifty kilometers an hour, knocking him down and halfway across the room. When he looked up, he was completely surrounded by silhouettes of James bending down in the smoke to pick up Silvano. Jumping to his feet, he made his way back towards the Retrovision in the hopes of cutting James off.
Or at least, he thought that’s where he was going. The tumble to the floor and the encircling smoke had disoriented him, and he ended up tripping over Seneca, who was once again unable to stand from the sickening smoke.
James brushed by them in a blur, and Envy fired every last bullet trying to put him down. Each one either missed or succeeded only in striking Silvano, who was slung over James’ back.
The smoke retreated with them, and The Mandrake dashed after them in one final bid to keep them from escaping. They were just feet away from him before they leapt through the Retrovision, vanishing into the basement universe of the Darlings’ playroom. The Mandrake dared to reach in after them and pull them back, but his hand hit nothing but solid glass.
“Damnit!” he cursed, striking the top of the box set with his fist.
“Don’t break it!” Envy shouted. “If that Retrovision came from the Darlings’ playroom and was modified by James, it could be useful in tracking them down again!”
“It also gives them a two-way ticket to wherever we keep it!” The Mandrake shouted back.
“Oh yes, it would be a gamble taking this old girl with you. No doubt about that,” the black and white visage of James mocked them from the other side of the screen, taking a victory drag from his cigarette. “But on the other hand, it is one of my finer works. It would be a crime, an atrocity even, to destroy it.”
The Mandrake struck the box set again, but deliberately held back on damaging it.
“Mandrake, enough!” Envy commanded. “I know it’s risky, but we need it. Turn it off and pick it up. We’re getting out of this hellhole.”
“Don’t feel bad, Mr. Mandrake. I’m sure you’ll have another chance to end up in Sara Darling’s doll collection very soon,” James taunted just before The Mandrake managed to turn the Retrovision off.
“What an absolute waste of time,” he muttered as he lifted the vintage box set off the floor.
“Not entirely!” Seneca claimed, who had not only recovered from his spectral smoke inhalation but was now holding an unlit cigar. “Crow, Crowley & Chamberlain has a lien on this shop, and since Silvano just ran out on us and has thrown his lot in with the Darlings, this place and everything left in it is ours!”
He was just about to light it before Envy snatched it out of his hands.
“The Mandrake wasn’t bluffing about the municipal health bylaws,” she informed him. “From now on, this is a smoke-free building.”
submitted by A_Vespertine to stayawake [link] [comments]

2024.05.05 23:19 A_Vespertine Bad Habits

“The Darling Twins? Honestly, haven’t we all had enough of them by now?” Seneca ruminated as he tried to placate what was now the de facto triumvirate of the Ophion Occult Order.
Once again, he had been summoned to Adderwood Manor to account for his lapses in judgement, but rather than being on full public display in the Grand Hall, he instead found himself in a relatively small parlour. Across from the coffee table in front of him sat Ivy Noir, with her sister Envy to her right and her husband Erich to her left. Standing just to the side of them was the trenchcoat and fedora-wearing automaton who called himself The Mandrake. The one-eyed dream-catcher carved into his iridescent face rendered his emotions unreadable, but the spellwork pistols holstered in his belt made it clear that he was prepared to defend his employers against anything.
“I mean, this feud between them and Emrys is laughable,” Seneca went on. “They’re no threat to him now that he’s free of his chains, surely? Before there may have been a tactical element to his obsession with them, but now it’s just plain petty. Petra’s just out for revenge, and don’t get me started on the absurdity of that eldritch realtor wanting to flip their playroom. Does he think he can just relabel their torture chambers as BDSM dungeons and pass the Black Bile infestation off as some mould?”
“Seneca, I promised Emrys the Darlings, and the Covenant that we all signed binds us to fulfill that promise,” Ivy reminded him patiently, dropping a cube of sugar into her ouroboros-themed antique teacup. “You knew the Darlings better than any of us. You inducted them into the Order, you used them as assassins and bodyguards, and you let them withdraw every penny they had in your bank when they were fugitives!”
“Well, first of all, Crow, Crowley & Chamberlain is a financial institution, not a bank,” Seneca said flippantly. “Secondly, they had a numbered account and they didn’t show up in person, so the teller didn’t have the slightest idea of who they were dealing with.”
“You still could have frozen the account before they had that opportunity,” Erich stated.
Seneca made a display of languidly stirring some cream into his tea and taking a slow sip before responding.
“I’m very busy,” he claimed without an ounce of sincerity.
“You just didn’t want to get on the Darlings’ bad side,” Ivy said.
“I wasn’t aware they had a good side,” Seneca shrugged.
“There must be a paper trail we can follow,” Envy insisted. “Did the Darlings keep their assets anywhere else besides your bank?”
“Financial institution, and yes, I’m sure they have a proverbial Swiss bank account, but I haven’t the slightest notion of where to find it,” Seneca claimed. “It has come up in conversation that James invested about twenty percent of his income with me, twenty percent elsewhere, and shoved another twenty percent under their mattress. Mary enjoys being shagged on top of money, apparently. Their services commanded quite a high price on the underworld market, and sixty-plus years of compound interest have made them incredibly wealthy. They can afford to lie low for a long while.”
“Even if they can go without a paycheck indefinitely, they can’t go without killing,” Erich countered. “They need to hunt, and their egos mean they aren’t just going to cower from Emrys inside their playroom. They’re going to be out looking for victims and plotting against us, and you know what spots they’re likely to hit.”
“You’re wasting your time. James has had decades to scout out hunting grounds, and I’m sure he prepared for the possibility – no, inevitability – that he and his sister would become our enemies. He’s not going to risk showing up within a hundred miles of any of our Chapterhouses if he doesn’t need to,” Seneca said dismissively.
Ivy opened her mouth to speak, but stopped when The Mandrake took a step forward for the first time since the meeting began. He reached into his pocket and tossed a red and white pack of cigarettes with a shiny silhouette of a stag onto the coffee table.
“What is this?” Erich asked.
“Satin Stag cigarettes,” The Mandrake said flatly before shifting his gaze to Seneca. “That’s the Darlings’ brand, isn’t it, Mr. Chamberlain?”
“Um, yes. I believe I’ve seen them smoke those once or twice. What of it?” Seneca asked, failing to hide the nervousness creeping into his voice.
“These are artisanal cigarettes, and Harrowick County’s the only place you can buy them,” The Mandrake said. “That means that the Darlings, either directly or indirectly, are going to have to make the occasional sojourn back home, and the limited supply of these hand-rolled coffin nails means they can’t stock up too far in advance either. You know Harrowick County better than any of us. You know who makes these, you know who sells them. That’s how we track down the Darlings.”
“That’s preposterous. Do you really think they’d risk coming to Harrowick County rather than just switch brands?” Seneca scoffed.
“The Very Important Person at Pascal’s told me that Mary said they’ve been smoking these since they were kids, so they’re clearly pretty attached to them,” The Mandrake replied. “And somehow, I don’t think they’re the type to ever give up a bad habit.”
***
“Smoke & Mirrors ~ Fine Tobacco Products. Silvano Santoro, Proprietor. Est. 1949,” Envy read aloud as she, Seneca and The Mandrake stood outside the small, heavily fortified brick building.
Cast iron bars crisscrossed the windows and front door, which looked like it stood a decent chance of withstanding a police swat team. Security was obviously the shop’s proprietor’s key concern, as the ugly brown and yellow awning was tattered and faded, and the paint on the sign was so chipped it was barely even legible.
“How exactly does an unnoticeable and unattractive hole in the wall like this stay in business?” Envy asked.
“Repeat customers,” Seneca replied as he took a confident step towards the door. “Silvano knows me, and he doesn’t normally have a problem with me bringing guests along, but I expect both of you to be on your best behaviour!”
Envy gave him a reassuring nod, but The Mandrake continued to stoically stare at nothing with his hands in his pockets. Rolling his eyes, Seneca pressed a bulky plastic button on the antiquated door buzzer.
“Yeah, who is it?” a harsh and smoke-damaged voice demanded.
“It’s Seneca, Silvano. A pleasure to make your acquaintance again as well!” Seneca answered. “Just looking to pick up a few cases of cigars for a party, if you’ve got anything decent in stock, of course.”
“Who’s that you got with you?” Silvano asked suspiciously.
“Envy Noir, sir. I’m here on behalf of my sister Ivy, investigating a matter of considerable importance to the Ophion Occult Order,” Envy promptly introduced herself, much to Seneca’s chagrin. “The gentleman beside me is my bodyguard. Would you be so kind as to let us in?”
“Ah… of course. Just a moment, please,” Silvano replied.
“What’s he need a moment to buzz open a door for?” The Mandrake demanded, his stance immediately switching to full readiness.
“Making the place presentable for customers, I assume,” Seneca explained in exasperation.
“You mean he’s hiding evidence, or he’s running!” The Mandrake shouted.
“He’s a nonagenarian heavy smoker. He couldn’t run if his life depended on it,” Seneca insisted.
“I’ll see about that,” The Mandrake muttered.
Shoving Seneca out of the way, he kicked the door in with barely any effort. Storming into the shop, he saw a slender older man with thick white hair and rimmed glasses seated behind the front counter. His saggy, spotted skin was a living PSA against the products he peddled, and in his tobacco-stained hand, he held the receiver of an ornate rotary phone.
Staring at The Mandrake in cold fury, he calmly set the receiver back down in its cradle.
“Who were you talking to?” The Mandrake demanded.
“A client,” Silvano barked back with a shake of his head, picking up a burning cigarette from a nearby ashtray.
“Silvano, I am profusely sorry for this abject and uncouth behaviour! This being is no friend of mine, I can assure you,” Seneca asserted as he and Envy made their way inside.
“The feeling’s mutual, Chamberlain,” The Mandrake remarked. “Mr. Santoro, I apologize for the damage to the premises, but as Miss Noir has said, we’re here on urgent business.”
“Yes, that’s correct. We’ve been given to understand the Darling Twins are regular customers of yours,” Envy explained, before the smoke-saturated room sent her into a coughing spell. She fumbled around in her purse and pulled out a black N95 mask she had left over from the Pandemic.
“I’ve got plenty of regular customers,” Silvan replied defensively. “Customers who pay good money for that smoke you’re so offended by, young lady.”
“These ones have been coming here for over half a century and never aged a day,” The Mandrake said.
“That honestly doesn’t narrow it down that much,” Silvano chuckled, tapping his cigarette on his ashtray. “But yeah, I know the Darlings. What of it?”
“When was the last time they were here?” The Mandrake demanded.
“What’s it to you?” Silvano asked.
“They’re fugitives of the Order now and we want them brought in,” Envy replied, having donned her mask and mostly recovered from the smoke. “Mary Darling held a knife to my throat once in front of my sister, and later threatened to eat me alive in front of her and feed me to her pigs.”
“They were going to put me in their daughter’s doll collection,” The Mandrake muttered.
“And I have nothing but nice things to say about the Darlings, so I’m honestly not quite sure how I got dragged into this,” Seneca said. “That aside, it really would be of great help to us if you could share any information about them that you might have.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. They come in, they buy their smokes, they leave, just like most of my customers,” Silvano told them.
“But now they’re trying to lay low, so I’m guessing they’ve made some sort of arrangement with you to get their Satin Stag cigarettes without having to risk coming here in person,” The Mandrake said. “Maybe they set you up with one of their spare Retrovisions? Emrys said they had a few of those lying around, and they can use them as direct portals to their playroom.”
“Like they’d waste a fancy piece of technomancy like that on an old geezer like me. I haven’t seen them in months. Last year sometime, I think,” Silvano claimed.
The Mandrake casually strolled up to the front counter, rapping his fingers on the cheap glass display case.
“Real nice place you got here, Mr. Santoro. I mean, not really, but I’m sure you get the implication,” he said softly. “Ironic as it may be, a smoke shop isn’t exempt from municipal bylaws about smoking in public buildings and workspaces. You may not have had much trouble with local law enforcement before, but one phone call from my employers will change that real quick.”
“You think I’ve never been threatened before, punk?” Silvano asked, rising from his chair and staring him down.
“Boys, please, there’s no need for this,” Envy interjected. “Mr. Santoro, our Order has considerably more resources at its disposal than the Darlings, and we can certainly offer you a far greater reward for their capture than whatever they’re paying you for some cigarettes. You could retire; close this place down and get as far away as you like. How does that sound?”
“I’m not looking to retire, Miss. This business is all I’ve got, and it wouldn’t be good business to go around ratting out my best customers, now would it?” Silvano asked.
“It would be worse business to sacrifice everything you have to protect two customers,” The Mandrake threatened, his hands clamping down on the display cases so hard they began to creak. “Talk.”
Acknowledging him only with a furtive glance, Silvano took another drag from his cigarette and exhaled.
But this time, the smoke poured out from his mouth and nostrils without limit.
“What the hell?” The Mandrake cursed as he backed away.
Silvano pushed a button beneath the counter, putting his shop into lockdown with security shutters clamping down over every entrance point. As the smoke exuded from his body, it went limp and collapsed into a dried-out husk as the smoke coalesced into an animate form of its own, circling above them around the shop’s yellowed and textured ceiling.
“Damnit. Another egregore,” Envy muttered. “That explains his loyalties. The Darlings couldn’t eat him, but Emrys could.”
“So you’re saying we can’t negotiate it with it?” The Mandrake asked.
“Or fight it,” Envy clarified.
“In that case, it appears we’ve exhausted all our options. Time for a tactical retreat,” Seneca declared as he dashed for the now barricaded exit.
Whatever he was planning to do to get through it, the cloud of smoke cut him off before he got the chance. Rushing in through his nose and mouth, it immediately began suffocating him, sending him spasming to the ground as he choked for air.
The cloud assaulted Envy as well, but was unable to penetrate her mask.
“Godamnit, get away!” she shouted as she swatted it away from her burning eyes.
“Envy, get behind me now!” The Mandrake ordered as he drew out his pistols. “Sorry, Santoro, but you’re going to have to do a lot worse than that if you want to intimidate us!”
Seneca responded by gasping angrily and bashing his hand against the carpet.
“… A lot worse,” The Mandrake reiterated. “I may not be able to shoot you, but I will blow this health hazard you love so much to hell if you don’t tell me where I can find the Darlings!”
“There’ll be no need for that, Mr. Mandrake,” the voice of James Darling crackled in from some unseen speaker. A door off to the side slowly creaked open, revealing a Retrovision flickering with black and white static. The Mandrake wasted no time in shooting at it, but the bullets passed through the glass without causing any damage at all.
A hologram of James Darling manifested in the center of the room, a burning Satin Stag cigarette clutched neatly in his fingers. He saw Seneca suffocating on the floor, then turned his predatory and calculating gaze towards The Mandrake.
“Put the guns on the floor, and I’ll call Silvano off,” he offered.
The Mandrake didn’t seem to be the least bit tempted by this offer, but Envy tugged at his trenchcoat and gave him a commanding nudge. Reluctantly, The Mandrake tossed the guns to the carpet and placed his hands behind his head.
With only a single commanding wag of his index finger, the smoke cloud withdrew from Seneca’s lungs and collected itself above James like a thundercloud.
“No sense in killing you, Seneca. That would practically be doing Emrys a favour,” James said. “But Envy, what’s a pretty girl like you doing wearing a mask?”
“You’d better not let your sister hear you calling me that,” Envy taunted.
“Kind of you to worry, but it’s always the object of my flirtations who bear the brunt of my sister’s wrath,” James reminded her smugly. “Top-notch detective work tracking me down, Mr. Mandrake. Why don’t you walk in through the Retrovision and arrest me?”
“You knew we’d show up here looking for you. You were waiting for us,” The Mandrake growled.
“Again, brilliant detective work. You’ve truly earned that fedora,” James mocked him. “Yes, I knew you’d come here looking for us, so I’ve arranged for Mr. Santoro to set up shop inside our playroom. He was only hanging around here to set a trap for you. Let me tell you what’s going to happen. None of you, not even you, Mr. Mandrake, are going to be able to break out of this building. You can sit there and starve for all I care, or Miss Noir and The Mandrake could take their chances with us on the other side of the Retrovision. Sara Darling really would like to put you in her doll collection, Mr. Mandrake, and I can’t wait to tell Mary Darling exactly how pretty I think you are, Envy. If the two of you come across, I’ll let Seneca go and he can inform Erich and Ivy of your predicament. If they’d like to negotiate for your release, I… may be willing to consider it.”
“You’re a coward! If you’re going to threaten me, step across that screen and do it to my face!” the Mandrake ordered.
He took his hands off his head and took a step towards him, only for the acrid form of Silvano to interject itself between them. James took a casual drag from his cigarette, refusing even to flinch.
Envy took advantage of the distraction and grabbed the pair of spellwork pistols off of the floor, firing two rounds of consecrated lead into the limp body of Silvano. While the body didn’t react at all, the smoke cloud shook and screeched like a wounded animal, losing some of its integrity and dissipating across the room.
“That body’s not just a husk! Silvano’s bound to it!” Envy declared. “James, if you don’t let us go in the next thirty seconds I’ll have The Mandrake tear that body limb from limb and you’ll have to find some other cursed thoughtform to roll your cigarettes for you.”
The Mandrake looked back towards James who now, much to his satisfaction, had flinched.
“Thirty. Twenty-Nine. Twenty-Eight,” he began to count down as he theatrically cracked his knuckles.
Before James could come to a decision, a few wisps of smoke snaked their way back into Silvano’s body. They were enough to animate it like a marionette, its limbs moving jerkily as it input the code to retract the security shutters over the doors and windows.
“There, happy?” James asked facetiously. “You’re free to leave. Put those guns down.”
With a smug smile, Envy shook her head.
“Mandrake, grab that body. We’re taking him with us,” she announced.
When Silvano tried to slam the lockdown button again, Envy shot him, knocking him back into his seat. Before he was able to try a second time, The Mandrake had closed the distance between them. He grabbed him by the waist and slung him over his shoulder, impotently kicking and flailing like a toddler having a tantrum all the while.
“No!” James growled, his hologram disappearing and being replaced by countless others scattered throughout the room.
“What the hell?” Envy demanded as she fell back beside The Mandrake for protection.
“It’s a distraction! Shoot at the Retrovision! He’s coming through to get Silvano!” The Mandrake shouted.
Envy complied, firing multiple rounds at every image of James between them and the Retrovision, but all of them sailed clear through their targets. The smoke cloud suddenly condensed tightly around them, and The Mandrake made a break for the front door while he had the chance.
He was tackled from the side by someone moving at over fifty kilometers an hour, knocking him down and halfway across the room. When he looked up, he was completely surrounded by silhouettes of James bending down in the smoke to pick up Silvano. Jumping to his feet, he made his way back towards the Retrovision in the hopes of cutting James off.
Or at least, he thought that’s where he was going. The tumble to the floor and the encircling smoke had disoriented him, and he ended up tripping over Seneca, who was once again unable to stand from the sickening smoke.
James brushed by them in a blur, and Envy fired every last bullet trying to put him down. Each one either missed or succeeded only in striking Silvano, who was slung over James’ back.
The smoke retreated with them, and The Mandrake dashed after them in one final bid to keep them from escaping. They were just feet away from him before they leapt through the Retrovision, vanishing into the basement universe of the Darlings’ playroom. The Mandrake dared to reach in after them and pull them back, but his hand hit nothing but solid glass.
“Damnit!” he cursed, striking the top of the box set with his fist.
“Don’t break it!” Envy shouted. “If that Retrovision came from the Darlings’ playroom and was modified by James, it could be useful in tracking them down again!”
“It also gives them a two-way ticket to wherever we keep it!” The Mandrake shouted back.
“Oh yes, it would be a gamble taking this old girl with you. No doubt about that,” the black and white visage of James mocked them from the other side of the screen, taking a victory drag from his cigarette. “But on the other hand, it is one of my finer works. It would be a crime, an atrocity even, to destroy it.”
The Mandrake struck the box set again, but deliberately held back on damaging it.
“Mandrake, enough!” Envy commanded. “I know it’s risky, but we need it. Turn it off and pick it up. We’re getting out of this hellhole.”
“Don’t feel bad, Mr. Mandrake. I’m sure you’ll have another chance to end up in Sara Darling’s doll collection very soon,” James taunted just before The Mandrake managed to turn the Retrovision off.
“What an absolute waste of time,” he muttered as he lifted the vintage box set off the floor.
“Not entirely!” Seneca claimed, who had not only recovered from his spectral smoke inhalation but was now holding an unlit cigar. “Crow, Crowley & Chamberlain has a lien on this shop, and since Silvano just ran out on us and has thrown his lot in with the Darlings, this place and everything left in it is ours!”
He was just about to light it before Envy snatched it out of his hands.
“The Mandrake wasn’t bluffing about the municipal health bylaws,” she informed him. “From now on, this is a smoke-free building.”
submitted by A_Vespertine to scarystories [link] [comments]

2024.05.05 23:17 A_Vespertine Bad Habits

“The Darling Twins? Honestly, haven’t we all had enough of them by now?” Seneca ruminated as he tried to placate what was now the de facto triumvirate of the Ophion Occult Order.
Once again, he had been summoned to Adderwood Manor to account for his lapses in judgement, but rather than being on full public display in the Grand Hall, he instead found himself in a relatively small parlour. Across from the coffee table in front of him sat Ivy Noir, with her sister Envy to her right and her husband Erich to her left. Standing just to the side of them was the trenchcoat and fedora-wearing automaton who called himself The Mandrake. The one-eyed dream-catcher carved into his iridescent face rendered his emotions unreadable, but the spellwork pistols holstered in his belt made it clear that he was prepared to defend his employers against anything.
“I mean, this feud between them and Emrys is laughable,” Seneca went on. “They’re no threat to him now that he’s free of his chains, surely? Before there may have been a tactical element to his obsession with them, but now it’s just plain petty. Petra’s just out for revenge, and don’t get me started on the absurdity of that eldritch realtor wanting to flip their playroom. Does he think he can just relabel their torture chambers as BDSM dungeons and pass the Black Bile infestation off as some mould?”
“Seneca, I promised Emrys the Darlings, and the Covenant that we all signed binds us to fulfill that promise,” Ivy reminded him patiently, dropping a cube of sugar into her ouroboros-themed antique teacup. “You knew the Darlings better than any of us. You inducted them into the Order, you used them as assassins and bodyguards, and you let them withdraw every penny they had in your bank when they were fugitives!”
“Well, first of all, Crow, Crowley & Chamberlain is a financial institution, not a bank,” Seneca said flippantly. “Secondly, they had a numbered account and they didn’t show up in person, so the teller didn’t have the slightest idea of who they were dealing with.”
“You still could have frozen the account before they had that opportunity,” Erich stated.
Seneca made a display of languidly stirring some cream into his tea and taking a slow sip before responding.
“I’m very busy,” he claimed without an ounce of sincerity.
“You just didn’t want to get on the Darlings’ bad side,” Ivy said.
“I wasn’t aware they had a good side,” Seneca shrugged.
“There must be a paper trail we can follow,” Envy insisted. “Did the Darlings keep their assets anywhere else besides your bank?”
“Financial institution, and yes, I’m sure they have a proverbial Swiss bank account, but I haven’t the slightest notion of where to find it,” Seneca claimed. “It has come up in conversation that James invested about twenty percent of his income with me, twenty percent elsewhere, and shoved another twenty percent under their mattress. Mary enjoys being shagged on top of money, apparently. Their services commanded quite a high price on the underworld market, and sixty-plus years of compound interest have made them incredibly wealthy. They can afford to lie low for a long while.”
“Even if they can go without a paycheck indefinitely, they can’t go without killing,” Erich countered. “They need to hunt, and their egos mean they aren’t just going to cower from Emrys inside their playroom. They’re going to be out looking for victims and plotting against us, and you know what spots they’re likely to hit.”
“You’re wasting your time. James has had decades to scout out hunting grounds, and I’m sure he prepared for the possibility – no, inevitability – that he and his sister would become our enemies. He’s not going to risk showing up within a hundred miles of any of our Chapterhouses if he doesn’t need to,” Seneca said dismissively.
Ivy opened her mouth to speak, but stopped when The Mandrake took a step forward for the first time since the meeting began. He reached into his pocket and tossed a red and white pack of cigarettes with a shiny silhouette of a stag onto the coffee table.
“What is this?” Erich asked.
“Satin Stag cigarettes,” The Mandrake said flatly before shifting his gaze to Seneca. “That’s the Darlings’ brand, isn’t it, Mr. Chamberlain?”
“Um, yes. I believe I’ve seen them smoke those once or twice. What of it?” Seneca asked, failing to hide the nervousness creeping into his voice.
“These are artisanal cigarettes, and Harrowick County’s the only place you can buy them,” The Mandrake said. “That means that the Darlings, either directly or indirectly, are going to have to make the occasional sojourn back home, and the limited supply of these hand-rolled coffin nails means they can’t stock up too far in advance either. You know Harrowick County better than any of us. You know who makes these, you know who sells them. That’s how we track down the Darlings.”
“That’s preposterous. Do you really think they’d risk coming to Harrowick County rather than just switch brands?” Seneca scoffed.
“The Very Important Person at Pascal’s told me that Mary said they’ve been smoking these since they were kids, so they’re clearly pretty attached to them,” The Mandrake replied. “And somehow, I don’t think they’re the type to ever give up a bad habit.”
***
“Smoke & Mirrors ~ Fine Tobacco Products. Silvano Santoro, Proprietor. Est. 1949,” Envy read aloud as she, Seneca and The Mandrake stood outside the small, heavily fortified brick building.
Cast iron bars crisscrossed the windows and front door, which looked like it stood a decent chance of withstanding a police swat team. Security was obviously the shop’s proprietor’s key concern, as the ugly brown and yellow awning was tattered and faded, and the paint on the sign was so chipped it was barely even legible.
“How exactly does an unnoticeable and unattractive hole in the wall like this stay in business?” Envy asked.
“Repeat customers,” Seneca replied as he took a confident step towards the door. “Silvano knows me, and he doesn’t normally have a problem with me bringing guests along, but I expect both of you to be on your best behaviour!”
Envy gave him a reassuring nod, but The Mandrake continued to stoically stare at nothing with his hands in his pockets. Rolling his eyes, Seneca pressed a bulky plastic button on the antiquated door buzzer.
“Yeah, who is it?” a harsh and smoke-damaged voice demanded.
“It’s Seneca, Silvano. A pleasure to make your acquaintance again as well!” Seneca answered. “Just looking to pick up a few cases of cigars for a party, if you’ve got anything decent in stock, of course.”
“Who’s that you got with you?” Silvano asked suspiciously.
“Envy Noir, sir. I’m here on behalf of my sister Ivy, investigating a matter of considerable importance to the Ophion Occult Order,” Envy promptly introduced herself, much to Seneca’s chagrin. “The gentleman beside me is my bodyguard. Would you be so kind as to let us in?”
“Ah… of course. Just a moment, please,” Silvano replied.
“What’s he need a moment to buzz open a door for?” The Mandrake demanded, his stance immediately switching to full readiness.
“Making the place presentable for customers, I assume,” Seneca explained in exasperation.
“You mean he’s hiding evidence, or he’s running!” The Mandrake shouted.
“He’s a nonagenarian heavy smoker. He couldn’t run if his life depended on it,” Seneca insisted.
“I’ll see about that,” The Mandrake muttered.
Shoving Seneca out of the way, he kicked the door in with barely any effort. Storming into the shop, he saw a slender older man with thick white hair and rimmed glasses seated behind the front counter. His saggy, spotted skin was a living PSA against the products he peddled, and in his tobacco-stained hand, he held the receiver of an ornate rotary phone.
Staring at The Mandrake in cold fury, he calmly set the receiver back down in its cradle.
“Who were you talking to?” The Mandrake demanded.
“A client,” Silvano barked back with a shake of his head, picking up a burning cigarette from a nearby ashtray.
“Silvano, I am profusely sorry for this abject and uncouth behaviour! This being is no friend of mine, I can assure you,” Seneca asserted as he and Envy made their way inside.
“The feeling’s mutual, Chamberlain,” The Mandrake remarked. “Mr. Santoro, I apologize for the damage to the premises, but as Miss Noir has said, we’re here on urgent business.”
“Yes, that’s correct. We’ve been given to understand the Darling Twins are regular customers of yours,” Envy explained, before the smoke-saturated room sent her into a coughing spell. She fumbled around in her purse and pulled out a black N95 mask she had left over from the Pandemic.
“I’ve got plenty of regular customers,” Silvan replied defensively. “Customers who pay good money for that smoke you’re so offended by, young lady.”
“These ones have been coming here for over half a century and never aged a day,” The Mandrake said.
“That honestly doesn’t narrow it down that much,” Silvano chuckled, tapping his cigarette on his ashtray. “But yeah, I know the Darlings. What of it?”
“When was the last time they were here?” The Mandrake demanded.
“What’s it to you?” Silvano asked.
“They’re fugitives of the Order now and we want them brought in,” Envy replied, having donned her mask and mostly recovered from the smoke. “Mary Darling held a knife to my throat once in front of my sister, and later threatened to eat me alive in front of her and feed me to her pigs.”
“They were going to put me in their daughter’s doll collection,” The Mandrake muttered.
“And I have nothing but nice things to say about the Darlings, so I’m honestly not quite sure how I got dragged into this,” Seneca said. “That aside, it really would be of great help to us if you could share any information about them that you might have.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. They come in, they buy their smokes, they leave, just like most of my customers,” Silvano told them.
“But now they’re trying to lay low, so I’m guessing they’ve made some sort of arrangement with you to get their Satin Stag cigarettes without having to risk coming here in person,” The Mandrake said. “Maybe they set you up with one of their spare Retrovisions? Emrys said they had a few of those lying around, and they can use them as direct portals to their playroom.”
“Like they’d waste a fancy piece of technomancy like that on an old geezer like me. I haven’t seen them in months. Last year sometime, I think,” Silvano claimed.
The Mandrake casually strolled up to the front counter, rapping his fingers on the cheap glass display case.
“Real nice place you got here, Mr. Santoro. I mean, not really, but I’m sure you get the implication,” he said softly. “Ironic as it may be, a smoke shop isn’t exempt from municipal bylaws about smoking in public buildings and workspaces. You may not have had much trouble with local law enforcement before, but one phone call from my employers will change that real quick.”
“You think I’ve never been threatened before, punk?” Silvano asked, rising from his chair and staring him down.
“Boys, please, there’s no need for this,” Envy interjected. “Mr. Santoro, our Order has considerably more resources at its disposal than the Darlings, and we can certainly offer you a far greater reward for their capture than whatever they’re paying you for some cigarettes. You could retire; close this place down and get as far away as you like. How does that sound?”
“I’m not looking to retire, Miss. This business is all I’ve got, and it wouldn’t be good business to go around ratting out my best customers, now would it?” Silvano asked.
“It would be worse business to sacrifice everything you have to protect two customers,” The Mandrake threatened, his hands clamping down on the display cases so hard they began to creak. “Talk.”
Acknowledging him only with a furtive glance, Silvano took another drag from his cigarette and exhaled.
But this time, the smoke poured out from his mouth and nostrils without limit.
“What the hell?” The Mandrake cursed as he backed away.
Silvano pushed a button beneath the counter, putting his shop into lockdown with security shutters clamping down over every entrance point. As the smoke exuded from his body, it went limp and collapsed into a dried-out husk as the smoke coalesced into an animate form of its own, circling above them around the shop’s yellowed and textured ceiling.
“Damnit. Another egregore,” Envy muttered. “That explains his loyalties. The Darlings couldn’t eat him, but Emrys could.”
“So you’re saying we can’t negotiate it with it?” The Mandrake asked.
“Or fight it,” Envy clarified.
“In that case, it appears we’ve exhausted all our options. Time for a tactical retreat,” Seneca declared as he dashed for the now barricaded exit.
Whatever he was planning to do to get through it, the cloud of smoke cut him off before he got the chance. Rushing in through his nose and mouth, it immediately began suffocating him, sending him spasming to the ground as he choked for air.
The cloud assaulted Envy as well, but was unable to penetrate her mask.
“Godamnit, get away!” she shouted as she swatted it away from her burning eyes.
“Envy, get behind me now!” The Mandrake ordered as he drew out his pistols. “Sorry, Santoro, but you’re going to have to do a lot worse than that if you want to intimidate us!”
Seneca responded by gasping angrily and bashing his hand against the carpet.
“… A lot worse,” The Mandrake reiterated. “I may not be able to shoot you, but I will blow this health hazard you love so much to hell if you don’t tell me where I can find the Darlings!”
“There’ll be no need for that, Mr. Mandrake,” the voice of James Darling crackled in from some unseen speaker. A door off to the side slowly creaked open, revealing a Retrovision flickering with black and white static. The Mandrake wasted no time in shooting at it, but the bullets passed through the glass without causing any damage at all.
A hologram of James Darling manifested in the center of the room, a burning Satin Stag cigarette clutched neatly in his fingers. He saw Seneca suffocating on the floor, then turned his predatory and calculating gaze towards The Mandrake.
“Put the guns on the floor, and I’ll call Silvano off,” he offered.
The Mandrake didn’t seem to be the least bit tempted by this offer, but Envy tugged at his trenchcoat and gave him a commanding nudge. Reluctantly, The Mandrake tossed the guns to the carpet and placed his hands behind his head.
With only a single commanding wag of his index finger, the smoke cloud withdrew from Seneca’s lungs and collected itself above James like a thundercloud.
“No sense in killing you, Seneca. That would practically be doing Emrys a favour,” James said. “But Envy, what’s a pretty girl like you doing wearing a mask?”
“You’d better not let your sister hear you calling me that,” Envy taunted.
“Kind of you to worry, but it’s always the object of my flirtations who bear the brunt of my sister’s wrath,” James reminded her smugly. “Top-notch detective work tracking me down, Mr. Mandrake. Why don’t you walk in through the Retrovision and arrest me?”
“You knew we’d show up here looking for you. You were waiting for us,” The Mandrake growled.
“Again, brilliant detective work. You’ve truly earned that fedora,” James mocked him. “Yes, I knew you’d come here looking for us, so I’ve arranged for Mr. Santoro to set up shop inside our playroom. He was only hanging around here to set a trap for you. Let me tell you what’s going to happen. None of you, not even you, Mr. Mandrake, are going to be able to break out of this building. You can sit there and starve for all I care, or Miss Noir and The Mandrake could take their chances with us on the other side of the Retrovision. Sara Darling really would like to put you in her doll collection, Mr. Mandrake, and I can’t wait to tell Mary Darling exactly how pretty I think you are, Envy. If the two of you come across, I’ll let Seneca go and he can inform Erich and Ivy of your predicament. If they’d like to negotiate for your release, I… may be willing to consider it.”
“You’re a coward! If you’re going to threaten me, step across that screen and do it to my face!” the Mandrake ordered.
He took his hands off his head and took a step towards him, only for the acrid form of Silvano to interject itself between them. James took a casual drag from his cigarette, refusing even to flinch.
Envy took advantage of the distraction and grabbed the pair of spellwork pistols off of the floor, firing two rounds of consecrated lead into the limp body of Silvano. While the body didn’t react at all, the smoke cloud shook and screeched like a wounded animal, losing some of its integrity and dissipating across the room.
“That body’s not just a husk! Silvano’s bound to it!” Envy declared. “James, if you don’t let us go in the next thirty seconds I’ll have The Mandrake tear that body limb from limb and you’ll have to find some other cursed thoughtform to roll your cigarettes for you.”
The Mandrake looked back towards James who now, much to his satisfaction, had flinched.
“Thirty. Twenty-Nine. Twenty-Eight,” he began to count down as he theatrically cracked his knuckles.
Before James could come to a decision, a few wisps of smoke snaked their way back into Silvano’s body. They were enough to animate it like a marionette, its limbs moving jerkily as it input the code to retract the security shutters over the doors and windows.
“There, happy?” James asked facetiously. “You’re free to leave. Put those guns down.”
With a smug smile, Envy shook her head.
“Mandrake, grab that body. We’re taking him with us,” she announced.
When Silvano tried to slam the lockdown button again, Envy shot him, knocking him back into his seat. Before he was able to try a second time, The Mandrake had closed the distance between them. He grabbed him by the waist and slung him over his shoulder, impotently kicking and flailing like a toddler having a tantrum all the while.
“No!” James growled, his hologram disappearing and being replaced by countless others scattered throughout the room.
“What the hell?” Envy demanded as she fell back beside The Mandrake for protection.
“It’s a distraction! Shoot at the Retrovision! He’s coming through to get Silvano!” The Mandrake shouted.
Envy complied, firing multiple rounds at every image of James between them and the Retrovision, but all of them sailed clear through their targets. The smoke cloud suddenly condensed tightly around them, and The Mandrake made a break for the front door while he had the chance.
He was tackled from the side by someone moving at over fifty kilometers an hour, knocking him down and halfway across the room. When he looked up, he was completely surrounded by silhouettes of James bending down in the smoke to pick up Silvano. Jumping to his feet, he made his way back towards the Retrovision in the hopes of cutting James off.
Or at least, he thought that’s where he was going. The tumble to the floor and the encircling smoke had disoriented him, and he ended up tripping over Seneca, who was once again unable to stand from the sickening smoke.
James brushed by them in a blur, and Envy fired every last bullet trying to put him down. Each one either missed or succeeded only in striking Silvano, who was slung over James’ back.
The smoke retreated with them, and The Mandrake dashed after them in one final bid to keep them from escaping. They were just feet away from him before they leapt through the Retrovision, vanishing into the basement universe of the Darlings’ playroom. The Mandrake dared to reach in after them and pull them back, but his hand hit nothing but solid glass.
“Damnit!” he cursed, striking the top of the box set with his fist.
“Don’t break it!” Envy shouted. “If that Retrovision came from the Darlings’ playroom and was modified by James, it could be useful in tracking them down again!”
“It also gives them a two-way ticket to wherever we keep it!” The Mandrake shouted back.
“Oh yes, it would be a gamble taking this old girl with you. No doubt about that,” the black and white visage of James mocked them from the other side of the screen, taking a victory drag from his cigarette. “But on the other hand, it is one of my finer works. It would be a crime, an atrocity even, to destroy it.”
The Mandrake struck the box set again, but deliberately held back on damaging it.
“Mandrake, enough!” Envy commanded. “I know it’s risky, but we need it. Turn it off and pick it up. We’re getting out of this hellhole.”
“Don’t feel bad, Mr. Mandrake. I’m sure you’ll have another chance to end up in Sara Darling’s doll collection very soon,” James taunted just before The Mandrake managed to turn the Retrovision off.
“What an absolute waste of time,” he muttered as he lifted the vintage box set off the floor.
“Not entirely!” Seneca claimed, who had not only recovered from his spectral smoke inhalation but was now holding an unlit cigar. “Crow, Crowley & Chamberlain has a lien on this shop, and since Silvano just ran out on us and has thrown his lot in with the Darlings, this place and everything left in it is ours!”
He was just about to light it before Envy snatched it out of his hands.
“The Mandrake wasn’t bluffing about the municipal health bylaws,” she informed him. “From now on, this is a smoke-free building.”
submitted by A_Vespertine to libraryofshadows [link] [comments]

2024.05.05 23:15 A_Vespertine Bad Habits

“The Darling Twins? Honestly, haven’t we all had enough of them by now?” Seneca ruminated as he tried to placate what was now the de facto triumvirate of the Ophion Occult Order.
Once again, he had been summoned to Adderwood Manor to account for his lapses in judgement, but rather than being on full public display in the Grand Hall, he instead found himself in a relatively small parlour. Across from the coffee table in front of him sat Ivy Noir, with her sister Envy to her right and her husband Erich to her left. Standing just to the side of them was the trenchcoat and fedora-wearing automaton who called himself The Mandrake. The one-eyed dream-catcher carved into his iridescent face rendered his emotions unreadable, but the spellwork pistols holstered in his belt made it clear that he was prepared to defend his employers against anything.
“I mean, this feud between them and Emrys is laughable,” Seneca went on. “They’re no threat to him now that he’s free of his chains, surely? Before there may have been a tactical element to his obsession with them, but now it’s just plain petty. Petra’s just out for revenge, and don’t get me started on the absurdity of that eldritch realtor wanting to flip their playroom. Does he think he can just relabel their torture chambers as BDSM dungeons and pass the Black Bile infestation off as some mould?”
“Seneca, I promised Emrys the Darlings, and the Covenant that we all signed binds us to fulfill that promise,” Ivy reminded him patiently, dropping a cube of sugar into her ouroboros-themed antique teacup. “You knew the Darlings better than any of us. You inducted them into the Order, you used them as assassins and bodyguards, and you let them withdraw every penny they had in your bank when they were fugitives!”
“Well, first of all, Crow, Crowley & Chamberlain is a financial institution, not a bank,” Seneca said flippantly. “Secondly, they had a numbered account and they didn’t show up in person, so the teller didn’t have the slightest idea of who they were dealing with.”
“You still could have frozen the account before they had that opportunity,” Erich stated.
Seneca made a display of languidly stirring some cream into his tea and taking a slow sip before responding.
“I’m very busy,” he claimed without an ounce of sincerity.
“You just didn’t want to get on the Darlings’ bad side,” Ivy said.
“I wasn’t aware they had a good side,” Seneca shrugged.
“There must be a paper trail we can follow,” Envy insisted. “Did the Darlings keep their assets anywhere else besides your bank?”
“Financial institution, and yes, I’m sure they have a proverbial Swiss bank account, but I haven’t the slightest notion of where to find it,” Seneca claimed. “It has come up in conversation that James invested about twenty percent of his income with me, twenty percent elsewhere, and shoved another twenty percent under their mattress. Mary enjoys being shagged on top of money, apparently. Their services commanded quite a high price on the underworld market, and sixty-plus years of compound interest have made them incredibly wealthy. They can afford to lie low for a long while.”
“Even if they can go without a paycheck indefinitely, they can’t go without killing,” Erich countered. “They need to hunt, and their egos mean they aren’t just going to cower from Emrys inside their playroom. They’re going to be out looking for victims and plotting against us, and you know what spots they’re likely to hit.”
“You’re wasting your time. James has had decades to scout out hunting grounds, and I’m sure he prepared for the possibility – no, inevitability – that he and his sister would become our enemies. He’s not going to risk showing up within a hundred miles of any of our Chapterhouses if he doesn’t need to,” Seneca said dismissively.
Ivy opened her mouth to speak, but stopped when The Mandrake took a step forward for the first time since the meeting began. He reached into his pocket and tossed a red and white pack of cigarettes with a shiny silhouette of a stag onto the coffee table.
“What is this?” Erich asked.
“Satin Stag cigarettes,” The Mandrake said flatly before shifting his gaze to Seneca. “That’s the Darlings’ brand, isn’t it, Mr. Chamberlain?”
“Um, yes. I believe I’ve seen them smoke those once or twice. What of it?” Seneca asked, failing to hide the nervousness creeping into his voice.
“These are artisanal cigarettes, and Harrowick County’s the only place you can buy them,” The Mandrake said. “That means that the Darlings, either directly or indirectly, are going to have to make the occasional sojourn back home, and the limited supply of these hand-rolled coffin nails means they can’t stock up too far in advance either. You know Harrowick County better than any of us. You know who makes these, you know who sells them. That’s how we track down the Darlings.”
“That’s preposterous. Do you really think they’d risk coming to Harrowick County rather than just switch brands?” Seneca scoffed.
“The Very Important Person at Pascal’s told me that Mary said they’ve been smoking these since they were kids, so they’re clearly pretty attached to them,” The Mandrake replied. “And somehow, I don’t think they’re the type to ever give up a bad habit.”
***
“Smoke & Mirrors ~ Fine Tobacco Products. Silvano Santoro, Proprietor. Est. 1949,” Envy read aloud as she, Seneca and The Mandrake stood outside the small, heavily fortified brick building.
Cast iron bars crisscrossed the windows and front door, which looked like it stood a decent chance of withstanding a police swat team. Security was obviously the shop’s proprietor’s key concern, as the ugly brown and yellow awning was tattered and faded, and the paint on the sign was so chipped it was barely even legible.
“How exactly does an unnoticeable and unattractive hole in the wall like this stay in business?” Envy asked.
“Repeat customers,” Seneca replied as he took a confident step towards the door. “Silvano knows me, and he doesn’t normally have a problem with me bringing guests along, but I expect both of you to be on your best behaviour!”
Envy gave him a reassuring nod, but The Mandrake continued to stoically stare at nothing with his hands in his pockets. Rolling his eyes, Seneca pressed a bulky plastic button on the antiquated door buzzer.
“Yeah, who is it?” a harsh and smoke-damaged voice demanded.
“It’s Seneca, Silvano. A pleasure to make your acquaintance again as well!” Seneca answered. “Just looking to pick up a few cases of cigars for a party, if you’ve got anything decent in stock, of course.”
“Who’s that you got with you?” Silvano asked suspiciously.
“Envy Noir, sir. I’m here on behalf of my sister Ivy, investigating a matter of considerable importance to the Ophion Occult Order,” Envy promptly introduced herself, much to Seneca’s chagrin. “The gentleman beside me is my bodyguard. Would you be so kind as to let us in?”
“Ah… of course. Just a moment, please,” Silvano replied.
“What’s he need a moment to buzz open a door for?” The Mandrake demanded, his stance immediately switching to full readiness.
“Making the place presentable for customers, I assume,” Seneca explained in exasperation.
“You mean he’s hiding evidence, or he’s running!” The Mandrake shouted.
“He’s a nonagenarian heavy smoker. He couldn’t run if his life depended on it,” Seneca insisted.
“I’ll see about that,” The Mandrake muttered.
Shoving Seneca out of the way, he kicked the door in with barely any effort. Storming into the shop, he saw a slender older man with thick white hair and rimmed glasses seated behind the front counter. His saggy, spotted skin was a living PSA against the products he peddled, and in his tobacco-stained hand, he held the receiver of an ornate rotary phone.
Staring at The Mandrake in cold fury, he calmly set the receiver back down in its cradle.
“Who were you talking to?” The Mandrake demanded.
“A client,” Silvano barked back with a shake of his head, picking up a burning cigarette from a nearby ashtray.
“Silvano, I am profusely sorry for this abject and uncouth behaviour! This being is no friend of mine, I can assure you,” Seneca asserted as he and Envy made their way inside.
“The feeling’s mutual, Chamberlain,” The Mandrake remarked. “Mr. Santoro, I apologize for the damage to the premises, but as Miss Noir has said, we’re here on urgent business.”
“Yes, that’s correct. We’ve been given to understand the Darling Twins are regular customers of yours,” Envy explained, before the smoke-saturated room sent her into a coughing spell. She fumbled around in her purse and pulled out a black N95 mask she had left over from the Pandemic.
“I’ve got plenty of regular customers,” Silvan replied defensively. “Customers who pay good money for that smoke you’re so offended by, young lady.”
“These ones have been coming here for over half a century and never aged a day,” The Mandrake said.
“That honestly doesn’t narrow it down that much,” Silvano chuckled, tapping his cigarette on his ashtray. “But yeah, I know the Darlings. What of it?”
“When was the last time they were here?” The Mandrake demanded.
“What’s it to you?” Silvano asked.
“They’re fugitives of the Order now and we want them brought in,” Envy replied, having donned her mask and mostly recovered from the smoke. “Mary Darling held a knife to my throat once in front of my sister, and later threatened to eat me alive in front of her and feed me to her pigs.”
“They were going to put me in their daughter’s doll collection,” The Mandrake muttered.
“And I have nothing but nice things to say about the Darlings, so I’m honestly not quite sure how I got dragged into this,” Seneca said. “That aside, it really would be of great help to us if you could share any information about them that you might have.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. They come in, they buy their smokes, they leave, just like most of my customers,” Silvano told them.
“But now they’re trying to lay low, so I’m guessing they’ve made some sort of arrangement with you to get their Satin Stag cigarettes without having to risk coming here in person,” The Mandrake said. “Maybe they set you up with one of their spare Retrovisions? Emrys said they had a few of those lying around, and they can use them as direct portals to their playroom.”
“Like they’d waste a fancy piece of technomancy like that on an old geezer like me. I haven’t seen them in months. Last year sometime, I think,” Silvano claimed.
The Mandrake casually strolled up to the front counter, rapping his fingers on the cheap glass display case.
“Real nice place you got here, Mr. Santoro. I mean, not really, but I’m sure you get the implication,” he said softly. “Ironic as it may be, a smoke shop isn’t exempt from municipal bylaws about smoking in public buildings and workspaces. You may not have had much trouble with local law enforcement before, but one phone call from my employers will change that real quick.”
“You think I’ve never been threatened before, punk?” Silvano asked, rising from his chair and staring him down.
“Boys, please, there’s no need for this,” Envy interjected. “Mr. Santoro, our Order has considerably more resources at its disposal than the Darlings, and we can certainly offer you a far greater reward for their capture than whatever they’re paying you for some cigarettes. You could retire; close this place down and get as far away as you like. How does that sound?”
“I’m not looking to retire, Miss. This business is all I’ve got, and it wouldn’t be good business to go around ratting out my best customers, now would it?” Silvano asked.
“It would be worse business to sacrifice everything you have to protect two customers,” The Mandrake threatened, his hands clamping down on the display cases so hard they began to creak. “Talk.”
Acknowledging him only with a furtive glance, Silvano took another drag from his cigarette and exhaled.
But this time, the smoke poured out from his mouth and nostrils without limit.
“What the hell?” The Mandrake cursed as he backed away.
Silvano pushed a button beneath the counter, putting his shop into lockdown with security shutters clamping down over every entrance point. As the smoke exuded from his body, it went limp and collapsed into a dried-out husk as the smoke coalesced into an animate form of its own, circling above them around the shop’s yellowed and textured ceiling.
“Damnit. Another egregore,” Envy muttered. “That explains his loyalties. The Darlings couldn’t eat him, but Emrys could.”
“So you’re saying we can’t negotiate it with it?” The Mandrake asked.
“Or fight it,” Envy clarified.
“In that case, it appears we’ve exhausted all our options. Time for a tactical retreat,” Seneca declared as he dashed for the now barricaded exit.
Whatever he was planning to do to get through it, the cloud of smoke cut him off before he got the chance. Rushing in through his nose and mouth, it immediately began suffocating him, sending him spasming to the ground as he choked for air.
The cloud assaulted Envy as well, but was unable to penetrate her mask.
“Godamnit, get away!” she shouted as she swatted it away from her burning eyes.
“Envy, get behind me now!” The Mandrake ordered as he drew out his pistols. “Sorry, Santoro, but you’re going to have to do a lot worse than that if you want to intimidate us!”
Seneca responded by gasping angrily and bashing his hand against the carpet.
“… A lot worse,” The Mandrake reiterated. “I may not be able to shoot you, but I will blow this health hazard you love so much to hell if you don’t tell me where I can find the Darlings!”
“There’ll be no need for that, Mr. Mandrake,” the voice of James Darling crackled in from some unseen speaker. A door off to the side slowly creaked open, revealing a Retrovision flickering with black and white static. The Mandrake wasted no time in shooting at it, but the bullets passed through the glass without causing any damage at all.
A hologram of James Darling manifested in the center of the room, a burning Satin Stag cigarette clutched neatly in his fingers. He saw Seneca suffocating on the floor, then turned his predatory and calculating gaze towards The Mandrake.
“Put the guns on the floor, and I’ll call Silvano off,” he offered.
The Mandrake didn’t seem to be the least bit tempted by this offer, but Envy tugged at his trenchcoat and gave him a commanding nudge. Reluctantly, The Mandrake tossed the guns to the carpet and placed his hands behind his head.
With only a single commanding wag of his index finger, the smoke cloud withdrew from Seneca’s lungs and collected itself above James like a thundercloud.
“No sense in killing you, Seneca. That would practically be doing Emrys a favour,” James said. “But Envy, what’s a pretty girl like you doing wearing a mask?”
“You’d better not let your sister hear you calling me that,” Envy taunted.
“Kind of you to worry, but it’s always the object of my flirtations who bear the brunt of my sister’s wrath,” James reminded her smugly. “Top-notch detective work tracking me down, Mr. Mandrake. Why don’t you walk in through the Retrovision and arrest me?”
“You knew we’d show up here looking for you. You were waiting for us,” The Mandrake growled.
“Again, brilliant detective work. You’ve truly earned that fedora,” James mocked him. “Yes, I knew you’d come here looking for us, so I’ve arranged for Mr. Santoro to set up shop inside our playroom. He was only hanging around here to set a trap for you. Let me tell you what’s going to happen. None of you, not even you, Mr. Mandrake, are going to be able to break out of this building. You can sit there and starve for all I care, or Miss Noir and The Mandrake could take their chances with us on the other side of the Retrovision. Sara Darling really would like to put you in her doll collection, Mr. Mandrake, and I can’t wait to tell Mary Darling exactly how pretty I think you are, Envy. If the two of you come across, I’ll let Seneca go and he can inform Erich and Ivy of your predicament. If they’d like to negotiate for your release, I… may be willing to consider it.”
“You’re a coward! If you’re going to threaten me, step across that screen and do it to my face!” the Mandrake ordered.
He took his hands off his head and took a step towards him, only for the acrid form of Silvano to interject itself between them. James took a casual drag from his cigarette, refusing even to flinch.
Envy took advantage of the distraction and grabbed the pair of spellwork pistols off of the floor, firing two rounds of consecrated lead into the limp body of Silvano. While the body didn’t react at all, the smoke cloud shook and screeched like a wounded animal, losing some of its integrity and dissipating across the room.
“That body’s not just a husk! Silvano’s bound to it!” Envy declared. “James, if you don’t let us go in the next thirty seconds I’ll have The Mandrake tear that body limb from limb and you’ll have to find some other cursed thoughtform to roll your cigarettes for you.”
The Mandrake looked back towards James who now, much to his satisfaction, had flinched.
“Thirty. Twenty-Nine. Twenty-Eight,” he began to count down as he theatrically cracked his knuckles.
Before James could come to a decision, a few wisps of smoke snaked their way back into Silvano’s body. They were enough to animate it like a marionette, its limbs moving jerkily as it input the code to retract the security shutters over the doors and windows.
“There, happy?” James asked facetiously. “You’re free to leave. Put those guns down.”
With a smug smile, Envy shook her head.
“Mandrake, grab that body. We’re taking him with us,” she announced.
When Silvano tried to slam the lockdown button again, Envy shot him, knocking him back into his seat. Before he was able to try a second time, The Mandrake had closed the distance between them. He grabbed him by the waist and slung him over his shoulder, impotently kicking and flailing like a toddler having a tantrum all the while.
“No!” James growled, his hologram disappearing and being replaced by countless others scattered throughout the room.
“What the hell?” Envy demanded as she fell back beside The Mandrake for protection.
“It’s a distraction! Shoot at the Retrovision! He’s coming through to get Silvano!” The Mandrake shouted.
Envy complied, firing multiple rounds at every image of James between them and the Retrovision, but all of them sailed clear through their targets. The smoke cloud suddenly condensed tightly around them, and The Mandrake made a break for the front door while he had the chance.
He was tackled from the side by someone moving at over fifty kilometers an hour, knocking him down and halfway across the room. When he looked up, he was completely surrounded by silhouettes of James bending down in the smoke to pick up Silvano. Jumping to his feet, he made his way back towards the Retrovision in the hopes of cutting James off.
Or at least, he thought that’s where he was going. The tumble to the floor and the encircling smoke had disoriented him, and he ended up tripping over Seneca, who was once again unable to stand from the sickening smoke.
James brushed by them in a blur, and Envy fired every last bullet trying to put him down. Each one either missed or succeeded only in striking Silvano, who was slung over James’ back.
The smoke retreated with them, and The Mandrake dashed after them in one final bid to keep them from escaping. They were just feet away from him before they leapt through the Retrovision, vanishing into the basement universe of the Darlings’ playroom. The Mandrake dared to reach in after them and pull them back, but his hand hit nothing but solid glass.
“Damnit!” he cursed, striking the top of the box set with his fist.
“Don’t break it!” Envy shouted. “If that Retrovision came from the Darlings’ playroom and was modified by James, it could be useful in tracking them down again!”
“It also gives them a two-way ticket to wherever we keep it!” The Mandrake shouted back.
“Oh yes, it would be a gamble taking this old girl with you. No doubt about that,” the black and white visage of James mocked them from the other side of the screen, taking a victory drag from his cigarette. “But on the other hand, it is one of my finer works. It would be a crime, an atrocity even, to destroy it.”
The Mandrake struck the box set again, but deliberately held back on damaging it.
“Mandrake, enough!” Envy commanded. “I know it’s risky, but we need it. Turn it off and pick it up. We’re getting out of this hellhole.”
“Don’t feel bad, Mr. Mandrake. I’m sure you’ll have another chance to end up in Sara Darling’s doll collection very soon,” James taunted just before The Mandrake managed to turn the Retrovision off.
“What an absolute waste of time,” he muttered as he lifted the vintage box set off the floor.
“Not entirely!” Seneca claimed, who had not only recovered from his spectral smoke inhalation but was now holding an unlit cigar. “Crow, Crowley & Chamberlain has a lien on this shop, and since Silvano just ran out on us and has thrown his lot in with the Darlings, this place and everything left in it is ours!”
He was just about to light it before Envy snatched it out of his hands.
“The Mandrake wasn’t bluffing about the municipal health bylaws,” she informed him. “From now on, this is a smoke-free building.”
submitted by A_Vespertine to TheCrypticCompendium [link] [comments]

2024.05.02 07:56 Muerteds [FN] All In A Day's Work

“There’s no good way to say it, so I’ll just say it: You’re fired. Again,” Lep Trinkle smiled as he said it. Corwell Lichten sighed and smiled back, “How many times is this? The fourth? Fifth? I can’t keep up.”
“If you count the six-day affair as a separate claim, and the contracts do, then it’s actually your seventh,” Lep ran his finger over the stack of documents in front of him, “You are currently the Count’s favorite short-term fix-it Merc, and also the easiest to dismiss. Youth grants you no favors there, I’m afraid.”
It was true. Count von Hoffthaler was a known skinflint, even if he paid rather above market rates for his mercenary help. There was enough known about his practices that no one would work for less. In return, the Count would word the contracts to make it easy to cut them short, often before hostilities were ended. Of course, that gave him license to wax grandiose about his victories without including the mercenaries who made them possible. They were never invited to victory celebrations, having been dismissed well beforehand.
Corwell wasn’t too bothered, though. He had known this in taking the job. The Count was fractious, argumentative, petty, and capricious in addition to being cheap. It did make for steady work for mercenaries wiling to put up with the inanity of border skirmishes and minor battles for perceived slights and old grudges. Fortunately, because Count von Hoffthaler couldn’t get many actual retainers and nobility to side with him, his wars were small affairs, mostly relegated to hired muscle. Hired muscle has a habit of not escalating things beyond a reasonable fight. They want to be hired again, not have their family paid for a death gratuity.
Seven short contracts over the course of two years was respectable work, and Corwell’s accounts reflected his skills as a hired mercenary. He didn’t have an official rank here in Gotebourg, as he wasn’t part of a standing military force. However, his contracts had begun at the Sub-Altern level, and he was now able to negotiate for Senior Lieutenant and even Junior Captain positions. Two years’ experience was good- working for who he had been most recently employed by was better. The Count’s reputation meant that officer-level mercenaries who got multiple contracts with him could fit in well virtually anywhere.
Corwell figured two years was enough, though. He had experience, which was good. He had money, that was good. He even had a decent reputation as a young leader. That was even better. Maestro Harling had told him that he would make Corwell a leader, and the Maestro had worked hard at accomplishing that. Not that Corwell graduated from the Salon feeling himself a leader. He just felt himself able to see what needed to be done when it was time to do it. Maestro Harling said that was fine for now, but that Corwell needed to see what needed to be done well before it was time to do it. Two years had revealed to Corwell that Maestro Harling could never have taught him all the knowledge he needed sufficiently in the strictures of a learning environment. Only experience could offer a better learning tool. It was a hard tool. Corwell had lost a friend and added two puckered scars in a stupid border skirmish that had added about two large orchards’ worth of pear income to Count von Hoffthaler’s holdings.
It was time to leave Gotebourg, with its endlessly feuding nobility. Gotebourg was far enough from Hortian that he hadn’t met too many Hortian mercenaries, and blessedly few on the opposing side. The one he had met on the other side had given him the two scars he carried, and put his friend on a memorial plaque somewhere. That enemy’s name was Birdwell, and he was a senior non-commissioned officer. His bonded weapon was the halberd, and he had been as eager to fight against a fellow Hortian as to keep his men following the orders of the Margrave von Unterschwab. That was the way of mercenary life. Hortian tried to keep their mercenaries from fighting against each other when possible. But the right official bribed by the right powerful person could tip the scales in favor of direct conflict. And honor to the contract meant that you fought who the contract said to fight. Unless they were from the same town or village’s Salon, you fought. No employer wanted to have a mercenary who thought and fought the same way as a Salon mate might. Generally some quiet words to an employer were enough to explain the situation well enough to avoid the problem. But Hortian was large enough to have enough remote towns and villages that Hortian mercenaries had often never met.
Birdwell had been a fierce warrior, and managed to kill several of Corwell’s force in response to what should have been a light raid. His eagerness to fight above lead, though, was what led him and his ambushers to retreat from the field, ultimately losing the overall fight. Combat had hard lessons. It had given Corwell his immediate re-hire though, as Count von Hoffthaler had recognized Corwell’s tactical superiority.
Etter’s Coomb seemed at once such a provincial by-water, and the center of the world. Corwell had better understood his father’s eagerness to be home after a contract, aside from just being alive and wanting to reconnect with family. The world moved a lot faster outside Etter’s Coomb, and it would be good to slow down and breathe mountain air again.
Lep Trinkle was Count von Hoffthaler’s aide de camp, and in short, ran the Count’s martial forces. He did the hiring and firing, insofar as he let the mercenaries know when their services were no longer convenient for the Count. He had often delayed the firing long enough to assure the Count’s spendthrift ways did not bite too deeply into tactical advantage. Lep was no fool. He wanted no part of nobility in Gotebourg for himself, but the privileges of being attached to nobility were undeniable. He was also savvy enough to have a final contract document ready for Corwell. He was not surprised that Corwell had plans to return home and be off the contract market for an extended period.
Corwell was on his way the next day, by private auto-carriage to the train station in County Hoffthaler. Even junior officers who had been dismissed deserved a fitting send off, Lep had seen to that. Corwell had purchased a couple of horses while in country, and had managed to sell them for a fair price. His wish to be be home had outweighed his like of the horses. The ride would be weeks longer, and he was eager to be home on his first big period of not having his contract on rotation for hire. He’d been home on leave to be sure, but now he was going to spend a little real time enjoying his profits. And the mountain air. He kept coming back to that. He knew he’d have to adjust to the thinness of his home’s air again. He hated that feeling of being weak-kneed and spinny-headed for a week till his blood thickened up properly.
The next few days were a blur of trains, and once, a horse-drawn carriage between stations where a section of track was out over a train trestle. The carriage was a bit of a novelty- at home it was walk, ride a horse if you had a bit of money, a mule and cart, or maybe a tractor pulling a hay wain. Carriages were for flat lands. But overall the miles and countries passed by. County Hoffthaler gave way quickly to the rest of Gotebourg by that first afternoon, as the Count’s writ was still not much larger after two years’ feuding. All the holdings of Gotebourg shifted slightly, but seemingly never dramatically as the weak Council of Gotebourg limited the brawling, but couldn’t stop the nobility from feuding completely. To do that, they’d need to finally appoint a monarch. But that would mean giving up their own power, and of course the ascension to primacy of one of the endlessly squabbling nobles. That fractious lot was all to happy to keep their peers (and subordinates, and superiors) too tied down to amass the needed power of a monarch.
Fortunately, it meant war in Gotebourg was never total, and the trains, mostly, ran on time. Or at least trains and merchants’ shipments went unmolested by the feuding locals. Trade suffered when commerce was delayed, and trade was money. Money was power. Corwell remembered being ordered to stop an attack mid-battle to let half a dozen twenty-mule teams hauling loads of gypsum pass through the fight unmolested. The other side had waited just as patiently for them to pass. What a strange country. He was out of it in two days’ time, and into Beauchand.
Eastward through Beauchand, and the smaller Talland. The next train took him into Rilane, widely considered to be the regional power among nations. A large nation, it took three days to get to the northbound train line, and another two days to reach the border. Corwell could easily have elected to take an airship in one of the regional capitals that the train passed through. He didn’t particularly enjoy flying, despite his affinity for mountain air. And the train gave him time to simply relax and read while it rocked him to sleep. A sleeper car was his concession to luxury, and quite enough in his mind.
Northward into Ruthenia, Uncton, and finally Hortian. Bored border officials at train stations checked his mercenary documents and waved him on without a second glance until he got to his home nation. Hortian custom was to welcome home their famous mercenaries with a small ceremony. Generally held every three hours at the border checkpoints, any returning Hortians home from contracts would assemble around a memorial obelisk for the rite. An official would ring the bell, then give thanks to their return, as well as lead a small prayer for any fellow soldiers of fortune who might have returned to them, but did not live to do so. Sometimes returning Hortians had family who lived near to the border, and were joined by loved ones. Most simply endured the ritual and made small talk while waiting for the steam locomotives to be refueled, watered, and take on or unload the cars each stop required.
One more train awaited Corwell now. One train to get to the base of the mountain pass that led to Etter’s Coomb. He found himself far more energetic now. He had been happy to lose himself in routine on the rails, but this last train ride for half a day had him unable to sit much. He walked about the carriages frequently, looking at familiar points pass by. He had hired passage up the mountain pass via a tractor-pulled cart, mostly because though he didn’t mind the walk, he had enough bags to make the trip murder on his back. He bounced around the cart, realizing he felt giddy as a child on the first trip away from home. He had done this trip before, but never as a true returning successful mercenary. He wasn’t on leave, he was home. Home until he decided to set out again, and that was enough of a difference for his state of mind.
A week later, Corwell was over the initial giddy rush of being home and seeing family and friends. He had spent two or three days in a blur, just visiting and seeing people. His mother was the only reason he remembered to eat. He had been so busy he had often forgotten that food was generally a necessity. Fortunately, his mother was used to how busy his father had been on his returns when he contracted out more regularly, and had leftovers available in the icebox when he returned.
He had been talking to a couple of his cousins, about going out to the mountains on a camping trip. They had a friend who knew a lake that was teeming with fat fish. In Corwell's experience, the fishing whenever he got to go anywhere was always better last week. "Should've been here last week, they were really jumping on to shore then!" However, if he wanted to scarper off to do some fun stuff, now was the time.
If he waited too long, his mom would find things for him to do. Corwell had seen it happen with his much older brother. Corgin had never felt unwelcome in their home, but after a few contracts, his mother had had a list set up for things for him to see to when he came home. Corwell had been eight when his brother came home from his first contract, crossbow hefted over his shoulder, looking rakish in a fancy new tabard with that wide warrior's belt. For his next few interludes, Corgin had very little time to go and enjoy his growing wealth when he was home. Ma kept him and Da busy as she could, as she figured two men in the house meant she could get some "real work done, now". Corgin hadn't complained, but he also got himself set up one valley over in Timberfell with a nice room and a horse and buggy before he'd been home a third time. He still drove over a couple of times a month from Timberfell to visit, and his visits always turned out to be a night over after staying up with Da fixing something. Fortunately, his wife was a peach, and enjoyed Ma's company.
Well, Corwell was not exactly ready to get off on his own, or be put to the yoke, yet. And he could sell the trip as him "supervising" Farrel and Jornyn. He was two years older than Farrel and three older than Jornyn. They were pretty fun guys, really, and Jornyn had a wicked sense of humor. Their friend, Dallen, was ok. A little full of himself, but it was probably worth putting up with him to get a chance to have a mini adventure that didn't involve a puffed-up Count and fighting. Fat lake fish sounded like the perfect foes, even if they turned out to be closemouthed and finicky.
So it was that he found himself lakeside on a sunny day in late spring, his father's fly-fishing rod in his hand. Corwell wasn't particularly adept at fly fishing like his Da. One of Cordenn Lichten's few passions besides his wife and his grosse messer was fishing- and fly fishing was his idea of ultimate serenity. But he had a fly rod that he had been willing to let Corwell pack out on the camping trip. Little sections of bamboo pulled apart to fit in a larger bamboo tube, to keep the fine tip from breaking off. It wasn't his Da's favorite rod- that one had been special ordered from a foreign maker Da had done business with on a contract. It was, however, the rod he could pack up the smallest.
Farrel and Jornyn had made this trip sound like a backpacking adventure. Corwell looked over at the campsite by the lake. Not so much a backpacking adventure. They had a mule picketed out over across from the tent for the day. It seems Dallen had the use of it through some work he had done in town, and the cousins and Dallen had figured they could bring a lot more creature comforts in a packsaddle versus just backpacks. The creature comforts included a very decent wall tent that slept the four comfortably, and a shocking amount of moonshine.
Corwell shook his head and set up his angling gear. The three younger campers were still in the tent, and would be for some time if the snores were any indication. None of them had graduated with the traditional warrior's belt, yet. Corwell remembered a few of his antics during the infrequent breaks he got when he was at the salon. The spring holidays were a good chance to get up to shenanigans, and camping was a great excuse to get out from under watchful eyes to perpetrate them.
It wasn't that he was a teetotaler, Corwell had done his share of overindulging from time to time. Truth be told, the moonshine wasn't that good. He'd mixed it with honey and lemon juice to get it down. He had enjoyed the freedom to enjoy the warmth that mountain liquor brought to his middle, he just hadn't wanted to feel terrible the next day, and the quality didn't change his mind any. Besides, now he really was looking after the cousins and their friend.
Casting out, Corwell let the stress leave. That was one of the things they taught you at the Salon, learning the craft of weapons and war. You had to be able to walk away from the fighting and leave the horror behind. Even fighting that didn't end in killing would stress a body out years later if one was not prepared to let one's mind release the strain. He said another little prayer for his friend, Millorn, lost in the fighting those first few weeks in Hoffthaler. Remembering those lost was part of the healing. You had to accept that they were gone, but also accept that they would never be gone in your own mind and spirit.
A tug in his hand pulled Corwell out of his thoughts. Those fat lake fish weren't just a story- a bronze lenok had inhaled his fly with some gusto, and was running towards the center of the lake with it. He hadn't really done any of the things he was supposed to do, according to his Da. He'd just tied something worthwhile looking on, and whipped it around until it settled on the water. Matching a hatch was something he was sure he was supposed to do. He wasn't sure what that was. What he was sure of was that he was having trouble turning the head of the fish to get it coming back to shore.
It was the battle with the fish that even let Corwell see the flash of movement on the other side of the small lake. He'd let his guard down fully, which was sometimes hard to do when he returned from a contract. It was good for his mind to allow himself the repose, and so he hadn't been paying much attention to the woods and meadows around the lake. There wasn't much noise to go with the movement, just an arm and leg pumping furiously as a body came into and out of view through the leaves and trunks of spring growth. He was looking at where the fish was headed when he caught the movement in his field of vision.
Corwell hauled on the fish a little harder, trying to keep his mind on fresh lenok fillets if he was successful, but also wondering who was tearing ass through the woods here. It was not a well-frequented spot, though evidence of some old camp fire rings was present. As far as he knew, when they arrived the previous morning, they were the first ones here for the season. None of the fire rings had recent use.
He tried to hurry without hurrying, but that never worked out well. He felt the line surge harder for one second at the wrong moment in playing the fish, and the heartbreaking sense of ultimate slack on the line. The fish was gone. Must have been big. But the disappointment did not last long, because again movement caught his eye. More arms and legs were moving on the other side of the lake- multiple people in the same direction as the first person was moving.
"Get her!"
It was quiet, but he heard it clearly. Sound travels well over still water.
He took the time to reel in the line and set the rod up against a tree as he dashed back to the tent. His mind noted that his fly was gone, and he wondered if he had another. On another level his mind was wondering if he had time to wake his cousins up fully for help. Neither of the cousins or their friend had earned the warrior's belt, but they were certainly far enough along in their studies to be useful in a physical altercation if it came down to it. He hoped it did not.
Corwell's bonded weapon, the war fan, was stashed in in belt as it always was. Hortians did not casually leave their bonded weapon aside, even for recreation- it was part of their culture. Of course, you couldn't swim very well hauling around a war sword in one hand, but one made the choice to stay in sight of the weapon when possible. No one felt really comfortable leaving their weapon unsecured without someone watching over it, just in case.
No time for further consideration, Corwell reached the tent and flung open the front flaps. The white canvas wasn't too dark inside, though the light was naturally muted. The bright square of light from the front shone on faces slack from a night's excesses.
"Get up, you drunk idiots, there's trouble!" Corwell used his best command voice. A voice like his could carry well over the din of a battle, though he was sure it meant the people on the other side of the lake could hear him clearly. Fine. Let them know people were aware of their actions. There was no time for stealth. Farrel and Jornyn both raised sleepy heads and blinked. Dallen snored and rolled over.
"Get him up! Get moving, and hurry- it's an emergency!" Not waiting on an answer, Corwell rushed away. He heard inquiring voices, but voices meant they were at least stirring.
He moved along at a quick trot, as the campsite was not exactly cropped close and without tripping hazards. The lack of use was its charm, but it made for poor sprinting. He angled northward to get to the far eastern side, taking the side around that the runners had headed towards. He didn't call back for his reinforcements, but he figured they would have to be blind not to be able to follow his track through the grasses along the lake. He hoped the light didn't hurt their heads too much, but so be it. It was time to act.
As he made his way towards the direction he had seen the movement go, he was able to pick up speed. The woods thickened, and the grass thinned. Regular prescribed burning kept the undergrowth from choking out the floor of the woods. The track of running feet through last year's fallen leaves was plain, and new growth was not so thick yet as to hide much. It seemed the runners were headed in the direction of a small path ahead.
By the time he reached the path, he heard another cry from ahead, and so made his choice of direction accordingly. He headed north away from the lake along the path. A few hundred yards on, he could see the figures of four people surrounding a ramshackle shed that had been left to rust and molder. Corwell seemed to recall that this area had been used by fur trappers at times. The popularity of it as a recreation area pushed the die hard trappers further into the mountains, and their old footprint was being forgotten.
Forgotten, but still used, if the people ahead were any indication. They had fanned out to get around the small building, moving constantly, their voices drifting up to Corwell.
"Yes, she's in there..."
"I know!... dangerous..."
"...more people..."
"Don't get... burn up...."
He couldn't make out much of what they said, but he never did like the idea of multiple people ganging up on someone. He'd had enough of that in the hard days at the Salon when Bronwor had friends to back up his bullying of Corwell. His mind made up, he moved quickly down the path, fan coming to his hand automatically.
He didn't see swords or spears in the hands of the men surrounding the shed. They avoided just in front of the door that was pulled shut, and moved quickly past the two dark windows that showed broken shutters on either side. Their dress was decidedly foreign, not the common tabards and breeches of Hortian everyday wear. They wore dark robes, the bottoms cut full and pleated to allow a lot of motion. Obviously, they could run just fine. As Corwell got closer, he noticed that each one had something in his hand. A gas pistol.
That changed things a bit. You could not run up on a man armed with an effective projectile weapon without danger- run up on four and you were asking to be perforated. The pistols were fairly ingenious. They did not require explosives or flammables, making them more resistant to the simple effects an Evoker could wield. A cylinder sat in the handle, containing high pressure gas. The weapon carried a number of small round bullets that could be re-armed by raising the pistol and pulling a small lever. The cylinders were good for about twenty shots before they lost appreciable power, and the cylinder could be exchanged for another in relatively short order.
They were costly weapons, but well respected by anyone who had ever faced them. However, the compressed gas cylinders were subject to an Evoker's wrath if the user was not careful. A mere spark would not do the trick to set the surrounding area ablaze like would happen with some explosive powders. Heat the cylinder enough, though, and the explosion would tear your hand and arm clean off. Generally, the ones who used weapons such as these were interested in effectiveness regardless of cost, and had the means to protect the weapons magically. A good bow could get off shots faster and father, and a crossbow could hit with more power and range. But the training needed was akin to that of a crossbow, and the pistol was faster. Corwell saw the benefits, even if he did not particularly find their use needful.
He slowed to a walk. He hoped his younger companions would get to him quickly. Corwell would like to bargain from a position of more equality. Farrell carried a crossbow, though Jornyn's bonded weapon was a battle axe. Dallen's weapon was the tomahawk. Not quite a full-sized battle axe, and deadly in close quarters, Dallen carried three that Corwell knew about. He could throw them with pinpoint accuracy at surprising distances. That meant Corwell had two missiles to four. He had seen Jornyn throw the battle axe a few times when fooling around with Dallen at the target stump. Jornyn was a fair hand at throwing that heavy axe of his, but the distance was never far, and he did not carry a back-up. So, a crossbow shot and a thrown tomahawk to four pistol shots. Assuming they could get close enough, that left two shots to four, and then closing to three melee weapons before the pistols could chamber another round. Farrell wasn't carrying a back-up weapon, just his bonded weapon. This was supposed to have been a fun trip.
Corwell heard footsteps behind him. Bless those boys, they had moved fast despite their rude awakening. All three had weapons in hand as they sprinted up to Corwell, panting and clearly wanting explanation.
Dallen looked at Corwell and opened his mouth to protest. He vomited instead. Jornyn looked green, then copied his friend. Nothing like a good sprint to convince your body to engage in open rebellion. Farrell grimaced, and then nodded down at the shed, "So that's the emergency?"
Corwell nodded, "Yeah. They were chasing some woman. I'm pretty sure she's holed up in the trapper shed, there. I don't know who these guys are, but I do hate an uneven fight."
The younger men glowered. Protecting those were who not warriors was drilled into them. That was the purpose of being bonded to your weapon, to fight for those who were not. Corwell didn't feel particularly sorry for the men down below, but he pitied them, too.
Farrel and Dallen spread out to either side of the path, and Jornyn and Corwell took the middle, as they approached in a line. It was certain they had been seen, and Corwell would rather approach as if there could be parley rather than if a fight was inevitable. Put the ones with missile weapons closer to cover, and keep the ones with melee capability with an open path to the fight.
"Ahoy, there! What's the meaning of all this?" Corwell called out when they were within fifty paces of the nearest robed figure. The men had been looking at the oncoming figures for some time.
Corwell had his folded fan in his hand, and desperately hoped at this distance he wouldn't be casually shot dead. His bet that seeing a crossbow leveled at them might keep the men from attacking outright seemed to be paying off. No one wanted to be the first to get a bolt in the throat.
By this time, all four men had maneuvered to where they could see Corwell's group. They still stayed out of the line of the shed's windows, and kept a distance from it- no one was using the walls for cover. "Be gone!" shouted the one closest to Corwell, "This is none of your concern! It is not safe for you here."
"I rather think a bunch of armed men chasing a lone woman is my concern," Corwell countered. He didn't shout, but kept his voice raised to carry. He was sure the woman inside could hear that help had arrived.
"He wears the belt, "said a second man to the west of the shed, "but the others do not. They are not that dangerous."
Farrell snorted as his crossbow never wavered, pointed directly at that man's center of mass.
"Fool," said the third man behind the shed, "We are in Hortian. They are old enough to be on their own- they are already dangerous."
The one closest to Corwell did not take his eyes off of Corwell, but addressed the men behind him, "They are dangerous enough, but less than our target in the shed. They do not realize the danger they are in."
"You still have not answered my question," Corwell pointed out to the man who was obviously their leader.
He was not tall, or overly broad. He was rather younger, as were all of the indigo robed men. A man you would find on any street dressed fashionably and well set up in his life. But the eyes were not those of any young man about town. The eyes were older, and at this distance Corwell could see they were never still. The man was taking in everything.
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2024.04.30 20:22 Frostdraken The Void Warden: Episode 2 -Station Under Siege- [Part 6]

Welcome to The Oblivion Cycle universe, a vast setting spanning all of time and space and so much more. While many stories may shed perspective on this grand cosmic vista, there are also tales of adventure and sacrifice, romance and terror, grimdark corruption and scientific progress. To become immersed in the setting is to let the chaos of creativity flow through you, to let go of what is probable to discover what’s possible. I have created TOC for one reason, to inspire and entertain any who will listen. So please feel free to join me on this great adventure as I push the boundaries of what is possible and expand the limits of our creativity together. For more information on the setting and its lore there is a subreddit for TOC at TheOblivionCycle and a Discord server dedicated to it here [​ https://discord.gg/uGsYHfdjYf ] called ‘The Oblivion Cycle Community Server’. I hope you find the following story entertaining and once more, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy.
+ E1:P1 + E2:P1 + Previous + Next +
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Continued From E2:P5
Commander Siyel sat down and tried once more to reconcile the shitstorm that the day had turned into. It had started off so promisingly, she had finally secured Slake and had been one step closer to unveiling a fundamental truth about the criminal underground that ran rampant in Cheenha. And yet as always she had found the thread cut before she could successfully tug on it. Still, this was by far the closest she had gotten before. That's what made the failure sting so much, the pain of knowing just how close she was to figuring this whole mess out.
She sat at her desk, her horned head falling forwards into her hands as she growled to herself in frustration. She sat back in the soft, padded ranx-leather chair and eyed the small wooden cabinet next to her desk. She shook her head slowly before muttering, “Ah.. to a hel with it.” Siyel reached out a long fingered hand and keyed the activation code to the small locked cabinet and licked her lips with her blue tongue.
The door swung open with a click and revealed the contents. A set of crystal glasses and several bottles of pale pink liquor seemed to smile at her, beckoning like long lost friends. She found herself moving on instinct, she grabbed a pair of cups and one of the bottles before pouring two shots of the liquid. She set the bottle down and stared at the second glass with a heavy heart.
She had given up drinking the day her husband had been killed, she had told herself that she would not imbibe again till she had solved the mystery. But seeing his favorite crecini ale in front of her, the bubbles forming on the glass and slowly rising to the top. It was almost too much. She swept her arm out angrily and scattered the glasses off her desk, the clatter of them hitting the floor as loud as gunshots to her ears in the enclosed office.
She stood suddenly, her tail stiff and her eyes following the path of her destruction. There was alcohol splattered across the floor in front of her desk. The smell of it conjuring memories she couldn't bear to think about. She made a desperate grab for the bottle and took a long and satisfying pull from the source. The lukewarm liquor burned a trail from her mouth to her belly, a deep satisfying fire that simultaneously warmed her body and dulled her mind.
As she placed the bottle back down on her desk she frowned at her own weakness. She took another drink, the liquor burning like coals as it traveled down her throat and seemed to light a fire in her middle. She smiled widely at the sensation, it had been three years this month since the accident. She had been planning to go and visit their grave but hadn’t yet made the time as busy as she had been.
She sat back into her chair with a heavy sigh, the bottle clutched in her hand like it was her only lifeline. She closed her eyes as she took another long drink and then coughed as the same old feelings tore into her weakened and tired mind. “Oh, Zad.. I miss you and Davi so much. What did I do to deserve this..” She sobbed to herself quietly as she looked out the shuttered window that sat across from her desk. The alcohol was slowly taking effect, but not nearly fast enough to block out the past.
The night was cold and dark outside, but the darkness held no answers as she fell into that buzzing blissful oblivion that only heavy drink can offer. The pain of the long day fading in her mind as she took another drink. The healthy buzzing sensation in her mind made her think of Balinski and she sat up straight in surprise at the sudden tangent.
She thought about the feeling of the large man’s protective arms sweeping her up off her feet, the look in the cyborg’s remaining eye as he had carried her as easily as a child. She cursed and threw the nearly empty bottle across the room, the thick glass didn't break though. Instead it simply bounced off the wall and left a neat semicircular dent. “No! You know what has to happen..” She started to say before she slumped back down into the chair.
She shook her head, she couldn't think those kinds of thoughts anymore. Not when they would only ever lead to more pain. She cringed inwards at the thoughts that chased her conscious mind, she was losing control.
With a jolt she realised that she didn’t seem to regret the notion. She was tired, tired of the corruption and death. Tired of the endless killing and the thought of all the good lives lost in the pursuit of her hopeless goals. She would never find out who was responsible, not alone anyways. She once more thought of Balinski, but this time she thought about how fast the man had gotten through to the bottom of cases that had held up the CPD for what seemed like months or years.
She sat up straight again as she smiled widely, her white molars flashing in the dimly lit office. She nodded. “Yes, there’s somebody who can cut through the red tape.” In her somewhat inebriated state it all seemed so clear now. The puzzle pieces that had been spinning in the rear of her mind were slowly connecting together as if guided by some powerful inner force.
He had the remarkable ability to get to the bottom of things that otherwise seemed obfuscated by the constant bureaucratic ranxshit of the department. She shook her head as her tail lashed behind her through the small hole in the seat. Yes, she would use him to cut through to the meaty core of the problem. She would keep him close, just because he was such an effective tool and not for.. She shuddered as the thought of the man’s face once more rose unbidden in her mind. Not for any other reasons.
Siyel leaned back into the chair and closed her eyes. She was still wearing her messy uniform and the damaged body armour a-top it. But despite everything that had happened she felt safer in this office than in her own house, and so she stayed. The night getting darker despite the muted neon glow of the city without that glinted off the shattered glass and spilled alcohol that lay upon the floor.
She closed her eyes and found sleep soon after. Her dreams muted and grey, the thought of something large and powerful stalking her making the nerivith woman mew pitifully within her nightmares. But at every turn the monsters were blocked by a towering saviour that banished these imagined demons back to hell with a thunderous pistol. The green glint of a cybernetic eye showing from the dark, shadowed clothing they wore over their cybernetics.
**********
Balinski was awoken by something prodding him in the ribs. He grunted painfully as his bruised body reacted poorly to the intrusion.
Sitting up, he looked around the room. Caesar seemed to already be up and about, it must have been her that had awoken him. He took a deep breath and risked a stretch, his back muscles protesting as the scent of food reached his sluggish mind. At the same time he heard a whine from Caesar as she looked up longingly at the two plates of slightly steaming food that sat atop the rolling table by the bed.
With a jolt he realised that his previously discarded clothes were missing and he jumped to his feet. He looked around the room frantically until his eyes alighted on a bundle by the door on a clothing rack. He walked over to it stiffly and realised with a small chuckle that it was his clothing.
His coat and shoes looked to have been washed, the trench coat was still full of holes though. The singed and frayed edges flashing conspicuously now that the garment wasn't covered in blood and dirt. He pulled the coat on with some difficulty, his shoulders were stiff beyond belief and his back was killing him. At least his arms and legs were fine, he hadn't really taken the time to give them a once over to make sure the various bullet and laser impacts had not damaged them. He did so now and was relieved to find that, while a little scuffed up, his cybernetics were in remarkably good condition.
He was going to have to schedule an inspection of them to make sure, but they would be fine for the moment. He needed to get ready to go and find out what was going on.
As Balinski pulled on his boots he saw Caesar perk up and then climb slowly to her feet and let out a yawn. He smiled and walked back to the edge of the bed before sitting on the light blue mattress. He patted the bed next to him and Caesar put her paws up on it and then whined pitifully while giving him the most annoyingly adorable puppy dog eyes.
“Oh you lazy grub. Fine, I’ll help you.” He chuckled at her antics as she grumbled in mock annoyance, he wrapped an arm under her front and hauled her onto the bed where she proceeded to flop back down into the covers. “You want breakfast or not? I’m not going to feed you like you are some sort of roman potentate.”
Caesar understood part of the reference, likely not getting the full meaning. She huffed anyways, understanding that he wasn’t going to feed her morsels from a silver dog dish. She scuffled a little closer to the edge of the bed where he placed the plate of bland hospital food in front of her. He chuckled as she took a sniff and then recoiled visibly.
“It’s not going to hurt you. Eat it, I promise I will get you something better later.” She looked at him flatly, one of her little brows raising slightly as she gave him a very undog-like look. He chuckled again. “Okay, you don't have to eat the scrambled eggs. Here, I’ll trade you my sausage patties for them. Ok? Happier now you little picky princess?”
She seemed indeed happier with this arrangement as she scarfed them down. He ate his double helping of unseasoned eggs slowly, making sure to chew and savour every bite in an effort to annoy his furry companion. She pointedly ignored him, turning her back to face him as she looked at the small bedside monitor.
Balinskli shook his head slightly. She was such a drama queen at times.
As he finished the last few bites of fluffy egg he heard the door open and looked up, surprise crossing his features as a pair of officers stepped inside and nodded to him. After a second another person strode through the door and caused him to jerk upright. It was Siyel, the tall alien woman looked scruffy and tired but seemingly in good spirits as she stopped a meter from his bed and looked around the room briefly.
She gestured to him and then spoke quickly, her long tufted tail wagging slowly behind her at ankle level. “Oh good, I was looking all over for you before I realised that you would most likely be here.” She walked around the bed to where Caesar was still pouting and crouched down to look at her. “I am glad to see you are doing so much better Caesar.” She smiled as the pup gave her an encouraging woof and tail wag.
Balinski wiped his mouth and placed his wide brimmed hat on his head, standing up and taking a single step towards the wall. “What’s the message?”
She cocked her horned head. “The message? I’m not sure what you mean.” He raised a hand to explain but she continued over the top of him. “Well, it’s not important right now. I came down here to tell you that the prisoner you captured did in fact have knowledge of the attack. He cracked about thirty minutes ago, I just came from his cell.”
This caused Balinski to straighten. That was in fact news of the best kind. Especially after the horrendous actions of last night. “What did that frillhead say?”
She smiled, her fungivore teeth flashing at him as she answered slowly. “He told us where the attack was staged from. I already have a task force gearing up and ready to move out. I was just waiting for my number one warden.” She paused and gave him a pointed look.
Balinski felt a little odd, that look seemed to convey more meaning than he was picking up from her speech alone. He wondered what had changed between them after yesterday, thoughts of how overly protective he had been of her arose unbidden to his mind. Maybe she was trying to tell him to lay off a little?
He decided that he would just take her words at face value, much less danger of misinterpretation that way. “Gotcha. Caesar, are you feeling good enough to move out? I know the doctor stimmed you up with some quickheal last night after the surgery. Oh don't give me that, let's go.” He prodded her as she pretended to be asleep.
Siyel shook her head and glanced his way, the light glinted off her violet eyes and gave him pause. For the briefest of moments he thought she had the same look on her face as last night, when he had carried her through the halls away from danger. But in a flash it was gone, replaced by the same stern look she seemed to have permanently plastered on her face. Had he imagined it or was he simply going crazy. ‘Well, Crazier.’ he thought silently with a chuckle under his breath.
“Okay, I’m ready.” He checked his shoulder holster and belt ammunition. Everything seemed to be in order and Caesar hopped to the floor with an annoyed sound that he chose to ignore.
Siyel smiled slightly and mentioned as they walked to the doorway, “Oh, I had somebody pick up that gauss cannon you were using. Consider it yours if you want it. A little thank you for services rendered in the attack last night.” A was a little taken aback by that show of generosity. A new or even used GR74F would have set him back a few tens of thousands of osmir if he had purchased one on his own and likely would have been heavily scrutinised by local authorities.
He gave her a gracious nod, it truly was an incredible gift. “Then I gladly accept. I will put it to good use I can assure you.”
She nodded sternly as they exited the room flanked by the two officers, “I know you will.”
He followed her quickly down the stairs and through the hospital wing. The precinct was attached to the local medical structure in such a way as to be indistinguishable from the outside. It helped to have the two in such close proximity when some of the officers and those they might have to bring in sustained injuries.
She led him and Caesar along corridors that still had bloodstains and bullet holes in the dark carbcrete. He glanced at them, anger filling his heart at the sight of such desecration. This place was a monument of order and stability in the chaos of the huge city, and all these lowlife scum had done by kicking the hornet’s nest was piss off every single officer in the entire district. If not the whole city.
He still had that sour taste in his mouth from when he had learned there were traitors in their midst, how many more of them drew their salaries from both the city and its slimy underbelly. How many more of these so-called officers of the law were breaking every oath they had sworn to? He broke from the dark line of reasoning,
They skirted around a conspicuous stain on the floor and then turned another corner, entering into a much larger room. It looked similar in structure to the building’s main entrance except that it seemed to lead to some sort of internal garage. Siyel led them across the space with only a few head nods to others that walked past. He wanted to stop and ask what the plan was, but he could tell from her determined walk that now was not the time.
They walked through a series of doorways, each one now accompanied by a CPD officer in heavy riot gear and holding a number of powerful weapons from shotguns to beam rifles. He glanced to her and she smiled. “Enhanced security measures. It was decided that after the disaster of the attack that we could benefit from a little extra combat readiness. Also, Brigadeer Dreenth has agreed to beef up our arsenal after the incident.”
She tossed her head at the remark, her short black hair bouncing around her long curving horns. “Beef huh? Like what?”
She made a nonchalant gesture and remarked calmly, “Oh nothing much. More power armour for additional Havoc units, a shipment of small arms and some surplus tanks.”
That caught him off guard. His remaining eye widened under the shadow of his wide brimmed hat. “Tanks? Like what, Quintens?”
She shook her head as he followed her into a large open space filled with scurrying officers and police vehicles. He could see a few longsword class APCs as well, their dark blue armour plates giving them a distinctly sinister vibe. “No, I only wish we could get so lucky. No, the governor shuffled half a dozen Tumbler Type-Ys from mothball. Sure they are thirty year old models, but I will take what I can get.”
She didn't seem to miffed about it and he could very well guess why, the Type-Ys were still classified as medium tanks. They were bonafide combat vehicles with thick armour and designed to pack a hell of a punch. Any one of them could single handedly have turned the enemy assault back on its own before it had even begun.
He noticed one of the APCs ahead had several familiar looking figures surrounding it. As they drew near he recognised the officers of Delta squad, the same ones that had helped when he had taken down Slake the day before. ‘Had it really only been a day?’ he thought to himself.
The cracked duracrete scuffed under his boots as they came to a stop. A tall slaaveth man with a damaged head fin stepped forwards, it was Jerg. He snapped a crisp salute to Siyel who returned it as he said, “We are locked and loaded, ready to roll on your command. We will take the fight back to these Drekking sludge slurpers.” He spoke with a gurgle of hatred in his voice.
He glanced at Balinski and gave him a respectful nod that he returned. Siyel gestured to the vehicle, “Well, load up. We will meet you on site.” She glanced at Balinski, “Follow me, we are riding in the Beast.”
He smiled and just motioned for Caesar to follow. “What’s the Beast?”
She pointed to a nearby vehicle and he found himself impressed in spite of his misgivings. Calling the monstrosity that sat before him the Beast made much more sense. The vehicle was large, larger even than the APC that Delta force had climbed into. It was also tall, at least four meters from the base of its tri-wheels to the top of its armoured cupolas. From the rear arose a complex looking mast of antenna and communications equipment that looked more fit for a radio station than a vehicle.
He stepped closer, the next thing that impressed him was the design of the vehicle itself. It had tri-star wheel arrangement with the fully articulated triple wheels capable of handling almost any type of terrain. All twelve were driven at once but only eight seemed to be in contact with the ground at any one time. He wondered to himself what kind of torque that must require, but given that he could see the tell-tale radiator vanes of a nuclear reactor on the rear he surmised that the monstrosity didn’t lack for power.
She stepped up to the front of the aptly named Beast and walked up the ramp that was hanging down from the side of its cabin. He ascended into the cabin behind her and was immediately surprised by the fact he could stand inside. Not comfortably, his head was pretty much touching the roof and it caused him to stoop to avoid knocking off his hat.
She turned and then took a seat at a small console station next to a large atraxses officer wearing a CPD emblazoned sash. They looked to be female, but it was remarkably hard to tell from the angle he was at. Both male and female atraxses were rather large and bulky.
Siyel gestured for him to sit as well as the ramp closed and the vehicle began to shudder slightly. “Welcome to my mobile command vehicle. I was able to beg this off of Major Davy in precinct four as it had been sitting in storage for months. It's a fully articulated and combat capable mobile outpost with all the bells and whistles.” She gestured excitedly to something besides him and he had to do a double take as he realised he was sitting next to a fully operational autokitchen.
“What in the, you can cook in here?” He asked dumbly.
Siyel nodded with a grin and turned back to her monitoring station before slipping a pair of multi–species headphones over her horned head. Clearly the vehicle was made for extended deployments, though he wasn’t really expecting this jaunt to turn into one. He sat back in the seat, it was nice not to be worried for a change. The armour plating on the Beast would resist anything but high calibre anti-vehicle weapons.
He felt the large armoured vehicle buck slightly. They were underway to the location it seemed and he still didn’t know what had happened. He swallowed and then waved a hand towards Siyel. The large atraxses woman grunted in mild annoyance as she was temporarily distracted by his antics and he gave her an apologetic gesture.
Siyel pulled the headset off the ear facing him and muttered distractedly, “Hmm? What do you need Balinski?”
He shrugged his shoulders as he asked her the plan. “So, what are we on route to exactly? I know you said you got the location from that near braindead filthwallower, but what did they tell you actually?” He rubbed his hands together. Not exactly worried, but apprehensive about the true nature of the situation nonetheless. Caesar laid down at his feet as he worried, her body pressed against his legs as she closed her eyes. He smiled, she always found the time to get some rest. Given the night they had, he wasn’t that surprised she was still tired. He certainly was.
Siyel sighed and then took off the headset, placing it around her neck. “The man you arrested broke under some pretty heavy questioning last night. He wasn’t very bright it seemed, but he was smart enough to be let in on some of the more sensitive details of the mission. Such as the fact that the entire operation was organised in order to kill Slake before he could reveal any information. They had hoped to catch us out at Slake’s compound in which case we would likely have all been slaughtered.” She grimaced at that, less total officers would have lost their lives in that case, but it wasn't something she could have controlled.
He raised a hand. “Hey, we did the right thing at every step of the way. You did the right thing.”
She nodded her head, her raven hair shifting from behind her horns a little at the motion. She brushed it back into place as she answered, “Yea, I know that objectively, Balinski. But no amount of telling myself that is going to bring back the good men and women that died in the line of duty last night. By the powers that be..” She trailed off for a few seconds. When she looked back at him the determination had once more masked her emotions.
She waved a hand at the computer readouts in front of her. One in particular caught his attention. “This is a small laundromat located about sixteen blocks from the precinct. Practically within spitting distance, well.. it isn't quite as mundane as the faded lettering of its exterior might otherwise have you believe. It turns out that Sleeves and Crease is a front for the Pit Vipers organisation.” She explained.
Her matter-of-fact statement took him a second to register. “Wait, the Pit Vipers gang operates out of there? This close to the precinct?” She nodded solemnly. “Then we are almost there, that's only a few minutes drive!” he exclaimed.
“Yes, and it pains me to admit that I had suspected there were close operating gang facilities. What with so many places for them to hide in the city or its underground. I am surprised it took us this long to figure it out.” She seemed a bit upset by the news. And he could very well understand why.
He looked at the screen again, the small building was the first floor of a larger complex. It looked as innocuous as it was drab. Not at all something that would act as a face for one of the most notorious blood hungry murder gangs in the city. The pit vipers were known for their extreme violence, last night’s attack had all the hallmarks of their cruelty.
Balinski checked his cybernetic diagnostics briefly and then cracked his neck. “Okay, so when we go in there, what exactly am I looking for?”
Siyel turned towards him and made an almost apologetic gesture, he saw her tail coil into the small of her back in a gesture of compunction. Her hesitation gave him pause. “What. What is it?” He was wary now.
She pushed herself away from the computer for a moment as she gestured to the screen. “You aren't going to be participating in this raid Balinski.”
As far as bombshells went, it wasn't a nuke. But he still opened his eye wide in surprise. “Not going on the raid? What the shit do you mean?”
Siyel tapped on the keypad and brought up a list of officers. Amongst them the members of Delta squad were first and foremost. “I have the best that is available going in there. You are injured and tired and far from your best right now.” He tried to protest but she locked down, her tufted tail lashing behind her now. “No, you listen to me. You are one of the best assets I have at my disposal, and I will admit that freely. Don't let it go to your head. Anyways, I am keeping you here to watch and observe. I need your expertise to make sure that we don’t miss anything.” She gestured for him to move his chair closer to the computers.
He looked down and noticed that the chair was mounted in a rail, he undid the lock and moved smoothly to her side where she showed him how to open the control panel. He could see everything, the helmet feeds of the officers, the live feeds from the vehicles and even a picture of himself seated next to Siyel. He looked over his shoulder and located the camera, it was sitting in the open and not at all hidden.
From the telemetry data that was tracking on one of the lower screens he could see that the first units were already on the street that approached the laundromat. The back doors of the APCs slamming open and heavily geared delta squad forces spilling out. He watched as several of them that he recognised as being in Jerg’s squad ran to the front door of the laundromat and took up positions on either side.
The store was dark and the flickering neon sign out front displayed that it was closed. That wasn’t an issue, in fact it was much better that way. Much less chance of civilians being caught in any potential crossfire.
Siyel had replaced her headset and was now speaking over the comms. He couldn't hear what she was hearing and looked around for a spare headset while she directed the scene, “Yes, forwards more and to the right. Watch out for the glass, there could be armed assailants within. Yes they would.. no.” She continued speaking as he found one and slipped it on, he had to remove his hat in order to wear the headset properly.
He heard one of the officers on the ground speak up. “We are in position. Mark?”
Siyel nodded, “You are good to go, mark one.”
Balinski looked back at the screen. A large figure in heavy riot gear scuttled to the door, it looked like a vinarfel male. Not Daryon then. The figure raised a siege ram and swung it at the door with inhuman insectoid strength and the door evaporated into a cloud of splinters and debris as the delta force operatives rushed inside the building in a wave of armoured fury.
Continued in E2:P7
==End of Transmission==
submitted by Frostdraken to HFY [link] [comments]

2024.04.30 20:11 Scourch Using a document camera in the default camera app on a chromebook

Hey, folks
I've been working with our towns school department, specifically the clerk in the student enrollment office. She has several ipads in her office that she has the townfolks use to enroll their kids. Occasionally there's issues with the iPads and Powerschool, the platform they use for enrollment. So as a backup we wanted to provide her with another device that would work more reliably, but not take up her limited office space. So we decided on a chromebook. I have it in kiosk mode, it opens right to the enrollment page, everything works great.
Where things get tough is when filling out the several pages of the digital enrollment form. There are times when documents need to be uploaded and on the iPads, iOS and Powerschool work in a way that when she chooses to upload a document she is given the option to take a picture. So she does that with the iPad, crops it to remove anything other than the doc itself, then attaches said picture. With ChromeOS, she does not have that option. So she would need to take images of any documents beforehand and upload them. To further complicate this, she will print out those images afterward and put them in a student file (I don't know what that's about but that's not for me to get into the weeds over)
In the Chromebook there is the Scan feature in the camera app but it is not very good quality, and the lighting is awful when you have to hold the document up to the camera. A document camera however would solve this problem, and we have plenty of the portable Okiocams. But what I am running into is when I am in the camera app and switch to the document camera, the picture/scan function doesn't work. I can see the camera working, but when I click on the shutter button, the image is just black. It does not have this issue with video, though. I can record video through the document camera lens through the camera app all day.
Any ideas on how to get it to take an actual image and not just a blank, black image?
submitted by Scourch to k12sysadmin [link] [comments]

http://rodzice.org/