Imagining Spartans fighting stuff is cool. Imagining Spartans fighting other Spartans is cool, maybe even cooler (with the recent Chronicle it's really on my mind), but if Spartans do engage in H2H, how much do you think it will take to break each others shields? (and armor to go with it)
There's a recent post talking about how most UNSC rifle fire can't have a chance in hell to break the energy shields, and that even alien weaponry such as plasma needs a while before breaching, with heavy weaponry (or falling) being your best bet. So with that in mind, just how much do Spartans need to smack each other around before they could actually harm the person inside?
Would the shields be way too strong, with the ability to withstand so many rounds and explosives such as in Uprising with a point-blank plasma grenade and a ghosts explosion, or John in TFoR with the anti-tank missile, create needless pummeling until they finally break like with Mickey and Buck? Likely so.
But it comes to the problem that if they avoid their attacks enough, would their shields be constantly recharging and causing them to start at ground zero continuously, dodging or backing away whenever their in danger to get the barrier back up, or would they be able to keep up with each other and break down those shields until they can get to the armor?
And when their there, just how much would a Spartans punch damage the armor plating and undersuit? Chief dented the FuD's deck plating, so a full force punch could probably do some serious damage, but in a straight fight they probably wont get the opportunity to charge one up cpt. falcon style, like how Locke only cracked Chief's visor with a backhand in their fight. And the undersuit, I wonder if a Spartan could punch through it Injustice Superman-style with Joker, though the chance of that happening is lower than the old fanons interpretation of Chief and Cortana's relationship me getting a killionaire in actual Halo pvp (maybe if the techsuits heavily damaged, that would be cool to see in a story). Probably just dent it considerably though or just push 'em away if it was in a fight scene like RVB is what I think.
I remember hearing about and reading a bit on Halo: Bad Blood, and the fight between Buck and Mickey. How they sounded like thunder rolling over the mountain as they pummeled each other, not holding back, bringing the lighting, and I think that's pretty cool and accurate with how they were just slapping and smacking the hell out of the other. Pretty funny when you think about it like that tbh.

🍇.+ introduction +.🍇

i know i mostly give a lot of informative based shifting posts and i absolutely love doing that, however, i also genuinely find shifting to be one of my main hobbies. and so, i decided to take it upon myself to write about and share with all of you my drs. some fandom, some based within this dr, and some all over the place!
i will include scripts, relationships, personality, time, and duration. i do have some that i plan but have not yet shifted to however i am only including the ones i have shifted to as the ones i would like to shift to are just wishful thinking and not me actively trying to shift there. though, i may make a separate post about drs that i desire to shift to one day.
this post will be also talking about drs that i shifted to in the past as well going in chronological order.
side note; when i talk about time spent in dr, i mean how long i spent in it in total. when i use a date like xxxx-xxxx**, i am talking about in this time period. how long it was since i had scripted and focused on this dr for. there will be plenty of overlap here.

๋࣭ ୨🪞୧ ๋࣭ waiting room ๋࣭ ୨🪞୧ ๋࣭

november 2021 - now (with a two year break in between)
time spent in dr; six months
i honestly don't use this dr as much since my forest dr is much more nicer to relax in. i never used my waiting room for its original purpose. my waiting room was small with multiple doors surrounding it. it was more cozy though some would consider it claustrophobic.
the waiting room itself was my bedroom. for context, my bedroom has a walk in closet. inside that walk in closet is my dr. inside that closet is my waiting room where it is not a closet. honestly, idk why i didn't just permashift there but i find the process of shifting to be very relaxing for me as well haha.
it still has my other drs that i used to shift to but don't anymore. i just don't open the doors to it cuz i'm too focused on two of them. one that i don't even shift to the waiting room to and one that i do shift to it.
i shifted here using the raven method the first time and later the adhd method.

𓍢ִ໋🎧♫⋆｡ k-pop dr 𓍢ִ໋🎧♫⋆｡

december 2021 - october 2022
time spent in dr; five years
i have talked about this dr of mine before in a couple of comments and i think maybe a post. i haven't really blabbed about all of it. i remember about it just as a memory. i never dreamed in that reality though simply because it is hard for me to dream in this reality too and i never cared to script in 'i can dream in this reality.' however, now i make it a point to add that in.
i did not spend five years straight. it would make me too disoriented. i shifted to it consistently for a total of five years.
my k-pop group was pretty small tbh. at least compared to other groups i listen to. i scripted that i would not know who was in my group and i would find out after auditions and meeting them for the first time. we had five members and it was pretty average. it was not crazy popular but it wasn't very small either. it was one of the most successful of our record company though.
we were a mixed gender k-pop group. meaning some girls, two guys, and me, agender nonbinary. each member had a separate persona. i will give a quick run down of each member, their persona, and my relationship with them. though i was close with all of them. it's just that i was closer with some more than others.
♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡
we had me, i suppose you can call me tato since that was the name i had in that dr. i was known as the nerdy one. the smart one who would info dump and talk very formally while most of the members talked casual. i was mostly a dancer but also was good back up vocals.
my best friend was the pessimistic black cat of the group. i knew her from training and we grew close since then. i give her a five out of five on the closeness scale. her name was ga-young. she is a tan skinned korean girl. she was dancer and singer.
the bubbly girl. she sometimes acted bratty for the sake of cuteness. the cute bubbly girl was used interchangeably for her. she's very sweet both on and off stage. all of the group members were. she probably had the highest social media following due to her aesthetic photos and content. all of them looked like they belonged on pinterest. she was also makeup savvy and had a lot of skin care so got many promos and sponsorships from that. her name was banyen and she was an international idol from thailand!
then we have the soft girl of the group. her name was jae-eun. she was pretty short and kinda chubby but very shy and soft spoken. she was main singer and rapper.
the tough boy. his name was shik. shik is a sweet heart off stage. one of the rappers and dancers. he was actually pretty soft outside of his persona.
the jokester. another boy of the group. he was half black half korean. i found him to be very nice. he did struggle in the industry in the beginning but his mother had connections made through networking that allowed him to make it into the group. he hopes to have a solo career one day under a bigger company. his name is hwan. he was one of the main dancers and main vocals.
♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡
some basics of this dr are that stalkers, sasaengs, diet culture, and general toxicity in k-pop do not exist. i do not wish to deal with the drama and struggles of that and hate to see other idols go through it. i did not want for my friends to go through the same as well. he did not get one however across the five years though. i scripted that i spoke korean and english.
also those were the only things i ever scripted about this dr. i wanted it to be as exciting as possible so everything was left up to chance.
i shifted to this reality using the adhd method.

🌊˚.༄ h2o dr 🌊˚.༄

july 2022 - october 2022
time spent in dr; seven months
i don't often see people write down, talk about, or script this dr. this was my very first fandom drs. even though k-pop itself is a fandom, i personally would not consider it a fandom based dr since it does not belong to any specific group, just the general industry of it.
i got the idea for this reality because i was in a summery mood at the time and binge watched this show and mako mermaids with my cousin on his birthday. we watched this show together and i came up with the idea lol. after that, i kept it going for a little bit longer in my dr until i kinda forgot about it. i was honestly too tired switching between this dr and my k-pop dr and another dr on top of this and decided to take a break with this one. i may revisit it. i still have the script in a google doc.
my merfolk power was substanciakinesis. this granted me the ability to harden water almost as if it was like glass or crystallized. it would be strong, sturdy, and indestructible. if i so choose, i can let it revert back to water after a bit, or keep it crystal like forever.
a bit of a con about this reality was that it was actually pretty annoying. that and having to keep such a secret. i did have some lore to it however. it is a coming of age thing when someone in the family turns thirteen. i shifted to when i was thirteen and did the ceremony then shifted again the next time to when i was seventeen to eighteen as that was my age at the time. i had a single dad that i lived with and one ten year old sister who was later fourteen in the story. she was really sweet and honestly i miss her.
i will say though that the powers made it worth it. the ability to breathe underwater is honestly so cool and such a strange sensation. like you don't take notice on how strange a sensation it is to breathe air either until you've breathed underwater in a dr where you can.
i also shifted to this reality using the adhd method.

˗ˏˋ꒰ 📝 ꒱ hogwarts dr ˗ˏˋ꒰ 📝 ꒱

february 2022 - february 2022
time spent in dr; one week
i wasn't even a fan of harry potter haha. i just shifted there because everyone else was and i decided 'hey, why not?' and such.
to decide what house i would script myself into and get sorted in, i went onto a buzzfeed quiz of which house i was. i got ravenclaw and therefore, i was a ravenclaw. i didn't associate myself with the cast too much aside from the teachers and professors because i kinda had to there. the food was pretty good though even if it was kinda out there. it was fun while it lasted but honestly it felt so crowded and overwhelming to me and i'm unsure why. i guess because of the classes that i had to take.
i only shifted there once.
i shifted to this reality using my waiting room.

☄. *. ⋆ alien dr ☄. *. ⋆

march 2022 - april 2022
time spent in dr; three months
this was the last dr i shifted to before my shifting break. it was a pretty fun one. my main ability was anti gravity. alien me in this dr is slightly humanoid. in most of my drs, i look like how i look in this reality here but for this one, i looked much more different and dressed even more different. it was a cultural based clothes for the home planet i was from. think kinda star wars based but not a star wars inspired reality.
in my dr, i had antennas which basically acted as eyes to see from 360 degrees. hair isn't hair but made from a liquidy slime of bright neons. the neons change colors depending on emotions.
though i did spent quite a while in this reality, i don't have too much to say about it. this is because the most i can say is just different greetings, food, and general culture from aliens than humans. it's from another galaxy and obviously planet. and life span on this planet is much longer. we are more durable than humans.
when an alien passes away, their energy becomes one with the stars, turning into star dust and watching over their people.
i shifted to this reality using my waiting room.

💥✧࿐ mha/bnha dr 💥 ✧࿐

april 2024 - now
time spent in dr; twelve days
this was my first shift i did since my two year break! well, technically it was my waiting room but i used my waiting room to shift here immediately after and spent a week there.
i plan on going back to it but not much of my script was done to it yet. i prefer to be spontaneous in my scripting and just choose to cover the basics. i don't even script future upcoming events.
i'll be honest, it was a bit trippy having this as my first animated dr ever. if felt so real but the lines surrounding my hands made it all feel crazy. i think next time i will try realistic instead, haha.
my quirk in this reality is prediction. i can predict the actions and attacks of my opponent. think of it like the attacks in the video game undertale. a warning sign shows up for certain attacks that alerts the player to move out of the way.
one of my friends in this dr's quirk is extensions. her nails can grow into sharp nail extensions that cut like steel.
i am in the hero class of class 3a along with the big three. we spend a lot of time together. i am closer with nijere since she's the most friendly of them.
i shifted to this reality using my waiting room which i shifted from using the astral projection method.

⋆｡ﾟ🌖 wolfblood dr 🌖 ﾟ｡⋆

april 2024 - now
time spent in dr; eight months four months each shift
wolfblood is an english/british teen drama live action series about what are essentially werewolves known as wolfbloods. a wolfblood is born human and looks human up until a certain age and moon. once they reach that age, their blood changes and they become a wolf. they can then interchange between wolf and human however they please except on a full moon. unless of course it is a blood moon. on a blood moon, a wolfblood looks the exact same except their mind transforms.
there's no unique feature of a wolfblood. they can be any race, religion, etc. the thing that holds them all together is being a wolfblood. in my dr.
in my dr, i looked the exact same as here. i came from a small family of wolfbloods. i decided to take my family in my h2o reality and put them here as well. it has a similar coming of age theme. at a certain age, a wolfblood transforms just as in my h2o dr, once you are a certain age, you can go and become a merfolk. in this dr, i lived in england my entire life there and attend the same school as the main cast. however, i am not friends with the main cast nor enemies.
i can sense something is up with them as they act weird in class but can't put my finger on it. i scripted it so i was unaware of the identities on my peers.

‧₊˚🌿 forest dr ‧₊˚🌿

april 2024 - now
time spent in dr; two months
copying this from a previous post here, don't mind me.
'so a bit about my dr that i am shifting to. it is not any fandom related dr but instead an alternate reality where i live in the forest in an advanced tree house. think of the houses in trees type. i spend a lot of time there meditating, practicing spells, and spending time with the animals there but especially wolves. i still have internet connection but irl i don't live close to nature so this is just perfect for me. i'm happy in both this reality and my dr. i switch between the two whenever i feel like it.'
i also shifted to this one first astral projecting. but now i just meditate until i shift. when i shift, i am also in the same meditating position as well. i wanted this to instead be connected to my waiting room, to become a sort of escapism for myself. just in a different way.
you can see the posts i made about the outfits that i wear in this dr here if you want! you can also see more of my outfits in that reality here as well. :)
i shifted to this reality using my meditation method.

⋆🔗 ˚⟡˖ ࣪ conclusion ⋆ ˚⟡˖ ࣪🔗

this is all i have for today! i hope you enjoyed it. perhaps this gave you all motivation or some scripting and reality ideas. i may have forgotten some things to include and add. apologies if some stuff didn't make sense. i hope you enjoyed the read though!
i will say this as well and leave you off with some general scripting ideas
: ̗̀➛ you cannot die
: ̗̀➛ you cannot get hurt
: ̗̀➛ you always get a good night sleep
: ̗̀➛ if you have chronic illnesses like me, you can script that your chronic illnesses are more manageable or you simply just don't have it.
that is all i have for now and happy shifting! ᥫ᭡

Noah The Pilgrim
First Next
There is one last thing to do before leaving. If you don't recall ever being on this ship, then surely, you could have had your appearance change too.
Why was there a blanket covering a mirror? You couldn't answer that with a straight face without speculation.
"Probably me being lazy and not bothering to properly place it in the wardrobe."
'Probably' is the main focus here, you simply cannot remember ever being that lazy, yet that's the only logical conclusion to be drawn here.
You pull the thing off, careful to not displace the mirror and risk breaking it.
You have no expectations as to what may appear on the glassy surface of the mirror, yet you can't help but feel a bit anxious. Are you the same as before? How were you before? You can't remember. Are you better? Worse? The blanket is now completely off the mirror, but your eyes are closed.
Whatever is it that you see when you open your eyes, that thing will be you for the rest of your life. You swallow, opening your eyes.
You see a young man that looks to be in his mid-twenties. His brown eyes stare back at you, analyzing the bags beneath your eye sockets. The dark hair is neither too long nor too short, floating about without order thanks to the lack of gravity to keep it down. You see a beard that has not been trimmed for weeks, but also lacks thickness, each singular hair isn't particularly long either; and some even appear to be in-grown.
You touch your hand against your face, making sure it's yours. The beard doesn't feel like you supposed it would against your skin, instead of it scraping your hand you feel softness, no resistance or anything.
Just beneath the face, you see what looks like a hate crime against all that is considered holy in fashion. Plain white coveralls with the added bonus of a black tie and boots made from metal and leather. On your chest is also a badge stuck in place by velcro with your name, occupation, and crew. 'NOAH - INTERN - THE ODYSSEY.'
Only one question came to mind.
"Who the fuck designed this uniform?" You say out loud, receiving no answer.
Patting your newfound myriad of pockets, you find a large quantity of nothing. You place your wallet in one of them.
"Alright, I'll head to the bridge now, happy?" You say the AI.
"HAPPINESS WILL ONLY MEET ME ONCE YOU ARE SOMEWHERE SAFE AND YOUR CONTRACT IS TERMINATED. STOP LOITERING."
Well, that's a bit rude.
You compose yourself, straightening your back. This is what you look like, and honestly? Not too bad, but you could be better.
Returning to the cafeteria, you eye the two doors left unexplored; Communications and the one without plaque. You know where you should, but... A little peek doesn't hurt, right?
"Shouldn't we try to communicate with someone? Assuming you haven't tried it yet. I know we're far from everything, but we might as well, no?" You ask already approaching the door.
"COMMUNICATIONS ROOM IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO REACH WITHOUT PROPER PROTECTION AS OF NOW, IT'S LOCATED APPROXIMATELY TWO HUNDRED METERS FROM HERE, BLOWN OFF FROM THE REST OF THE SHIP." A shame really. "I SHALL INFORM YOU WHENEVER A DOOR LEADS TO THE OUTSIDE OR NOT."
You really want to ask what blew a whole segment of the ship off, yet you have a sneaking suspicion that your question will be met with a 'YOU DON'T HAVE CLEARANCE, JACKASS' directly in your face. So you chose to remain silent, simply nodding and approaching the correct door this time.
"Open."
---OPENING CAFETERIA DOOR NORTH---
The door silently opens.
Greeting you is a well-lit corridor. There are three doors on your left, a door at the end of the corridor, and a large window on the right. At least, you think that's a window.
You stare out from this window, nothing but utter blackness and fragments from your ship are seen. If this is the edge of the universe, and beyond this point, there is truly nothing. "Dreadful." Your speech matches your feelings.
"WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?" The AI says. You feel like it spoke in a mocking tone despite their lack of emotion.
You don't answer. "First door to the left... EXO-EXPLORATION...? What's that supposed to mean?" You receive no answer.
"Open." The door opens. No declarion of it opening once again.
You are met with what could be better described as 'Apocalyptic levels of mess', paper sheets float in the air, and not one of the four tables is in its correct position.
This room has been ransacked for all its goods apparently. Large display glasses were broken leaving nothing inside their casings, that looked like they could store something with the size of the common man.
Unusual displays aside, the room was so cluttered that the trash made for an effective smoke screen against what lay on the other side.
Hissing of gas exiting an air-tight space rang throughout the room.
"I HAVE OPENED THE STORAGE FOR AN EXO SUIT THAT BEST FITS SOMEONE YOUR SIZE." The AI says. "ALTHOUGH AN INTERN SHOULD NOT COME IN CONTACT WITH TECHNOLOGY SUCH AS THIS ONE, PROTOCOL DICTATES THAT I AM TO ALLOW ITS USAGE UNDER EXTREME CIRCUMSTANCES. CONSIDER YOURSELF LUCKY."
Easier said than done. Your vision is so cluttered that you cannot see what's ahead. "Give me a second."
Giving a light kick to the wall behind, you float face-first into the wall of thrash. Covering your face with both arms, you brace through the harmless bits of sharp objects and junk.
It's a trivial task. You arrive on the other side in no time.
In front of you is a set of boxes with luminous glass rectangles atop each one of them. All shine a bright red light, aside from one which shines green.
'Gotta be this one.'
You descend to the floor by kicking the ceiling, raising your right hand you touch the green rectangle.
*Click*
Nothing could have prepared you for the following series of events.
The box opens violently, as a metal appendage takes hold of your hand, pinning it to the box. You try to jerk and pry the thing off of you, but you fail. It's not leaving you anytime soon.
From the bottomless that is that container, a white plastic-like substance flows upward from your arm to the rest of your body. "Uh!" You don't know if you should panic or allow it to happen.
FYARN hasn't said anything, so it's probably fine...
The white thing seems to ignore the coveralls you are wearing completely, instead, it covers only your skin in a thin coat of... it. You know not what to call this thing.
In but forty seconds it has covered your whole body, excluding your head. The box lets go of your arm and stays there, floating.
You take a good look at your arms. It looks like a skin-tight suit, but it doesn't feel like plastic, in fact, it's more akin to some sort of fabric if anything.
The only bad part is that you are still using the coverall and tie, this this simply went beneath the clothing.
"GOOD, WITH THIS I CAN MONITOR YOU MORE CLOSELY. NOW PUT THE HELMET ON, YOU HAVE A LOT OF WORK TO DO."
You look around in search of anything that even resembles a helmet. Nope. Nothing. "Where is it?" You ask.
"...THE SUIT COMES WITHIN THE HELMET FOR EASIER PACKAGING."
The box?
You snatch the box that floated around and analyze it to the best of your ability. "How's this a helmet?"
"DO YOU NEED ASSISTANCE PUTTING ON A HELMET? REALLY?"
Who is this AI, Who programmed it, and Why does it come with a taunting feature?
As idiotic as it sounds, you place the opened box atop your head. It doesn't fit properly. Maybe you're doing this wrong? You move it to your face instead.
You recoil backward as you feel the box suddenly clamping down against your head. It's useless of course, the box is holding your head and doesn't give any sign to be letting go anytime soon. No light is able to reach your eyes.
You hear metal parts scraping against themselves, moving near your ears. Abruptly your eyes can see again.
A round thin layer of glass now covers your head, almost unnoticeable for how clear it is.
"WITH THAT OUT OF THE WAY I CAN NOW SEE WHAT YOU SEE." The AI's voice isn't in the room now, instead, it's inside of the suit. "DO YOU NEED INSTRUCTIONS REGARDING THIS SUIT'S FUNCTIONALITIES?"
You find it oddly comfortable as if you are surrounded by the softness of cotton, and to top it off the suit also has additional functionalities? "Hell yeah, I do!"
"YOU DO NOT HAVE THE NECESSARY CLEARANCE FOR THAT INFORMATION."
You sigh. Is this serious? "Then why the fuck did you ask?!"
"UNSAVORY LANGUAGE. IT'S NO WONDER WHY YOU REMAIN AN INTERN." The AI says outright. "IT IS RUDE NOT TO ASK, REGARDLESS OF THE SITUATION." It responds to your question.
"Okay then... Is there anything I need to know before heading out?" You ask.
"NOTHING THAT YOU WON'T FIGURE OUT ON YOUR OWN."
You are unsure if you want to 'figure out on your own' if this suit comes with breathable air and is also made for space exploration. You swallow.
Meekly as always, you get out of that mess of a room, stopping at the corridor.
"Next set of directions?" You ask.
"THE DOOR AT THE END OF CORRIDOR USED TO LEAD TO THE CONNECTING CORRIDORS BETWEN THE BRIDGE AND THE REST OF THE SHIP. IT HAS BEEN BLOWN UP FROM THE INSIDE. NOW IT LEADS TO THE OUTSIDE. GO TO THE DOOR AND WAIT BY IT FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS."
"So let me get this straight," You begin, looking upwards as if the AI was above you. "You, want me, to go into the void of space, while also refusing to give me knowledge of the suit's functions?"
A fair worry, you summarize.
'I mean, there are a bunch of things that could go wrong here. I don't see anything that looks like it could help me move in space, nor do I think this thing has a built-in air tank... I could be wrong and I wish to be, but charging in without prior knowledge is ridiculous.' You wait for the AI's response, deep in thought.
"WHILE THERE IS A GOOD CHANCE OF YOU FAILING THIS TASK, THERE IS ALSO THE CHANCE OF YOU *NOT* FAILING THE TASK. FOCUS ON EITHER ONE OF YOUR CHOOSING AS YOU TAKE THE PLUNGE."
Wordlessly, you propel yourself forward, toward the end of the corridor.
'Are you shitting me? 'Chance of me nor failing' my ass!' of course, you don't word those complaints, instead choosing to speak out a complaint somewhat thought through.
"Are you sure I'm the one fit for this? It's just like you said, I'm just an intern, this is way above what my job description says I should do."
This is a bit of a stretch. You don't actually remember what was your job description, only that it had something to do with AI and being an intern.
If the AI called your bluff, it'd be pretty embarrassing.
"NOAH." The AI began. "YOU ARE HUMAN, IT IS NATURAL TO HAVE THESE THOUGHTS OF SELF-DOUBT. TAKE A DEEP BREATH AND GO THROUGH THAT DOOR, AND SINCE YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE LEFT, DON'T EXPECT SOMEONE ELSE TO DO IT FOR YOU."
Right in the money, huh? 'Of course, I have self-doubt! I barely remember anything about this place, now I have to risk my life?!'
You finally reach a conclusion.
A dream.
'Yes, yes! How did I not consider this before? This whole thing is a god damned dream!'
You let out a chuckle.
"NOAH."
'That's why I don't remember a thing. There is nothing here to remember! Everything here is a made-up thing from my brain! I'm sure I'll wake up at some point, so why shouldn't I live a little?!'
"Heh." You smile. "Alright, I'll do it." It feels like a weight left your shoulders.
"YOU SORTED IT OUT SOONER THAN EXPECTED. GOOD. MOVE TO THE DOOR AND WAIT INSTRUCTIONS."
You do as instructed without a care in the world. You never had a lucid dream before so it's not like you knew how it felt, but if it felt as free as you feel right now, you'd be sure to make steps toward trying it out again in the future.
"Open." The door does not open.
"I DID NOT INSTRUCT YOU TO OPEN IT YET." The AI said. "I AM SLOWLY DE-PRESSURISING THE CORRIDOR YOU ARE IN TO AVOID A MINOR ACCIDENT."
The AI says that yet you don't feel any different. 'Maybe there is no palpable difference because I'm in a dream... Yes... Or it's just the suit.'
"ONCE THE DOOR OPENS, YOU WILL BE MET WITH THE OUTSIDE OF THE SHIP. DO NOT PANIC WHEN THE TIME COMES. YOU HAVE TWO MINUTES OF BREATHABLE INSIDE THE EXO-SUIT; ONE AFTER THE DOOR OPENS, SO PLEASE, TAKE YOUR TIME AND DO THINGS CAREFULLY."
One minute outside... "Sure." You say, calmly. 'I should just hold my breath for a while before taking another moment to breathe. That should maximize my time out there.'
"THERE SHOULD BE FIFTY METERS OF NOTHINGNESS BETWEEN THE DOOR YOU'RE AT, AND THE REST OF THE BRIDGE. YOUR PRIORITY IS TO FIND AN OXYGEN UNIT, SOME OF THEM ARE LOCATED AT THE BRIDGE AND ARE FULL. USE THEM TO FILL YOUR SUIT AND ALSO TO DISPENSE A TANK FOR YOU."
The door opens. You feel your heart pounding against your chest.
You haven't noticed before, but you can't hear anything but the sound of your breath and your cardiac palpitations.
Your breath is ragged and sporadic.
"KEEP CALM." You take a deep breath. The tips of your fingers, feet, and nose feel very cold.
Ahead of you is the utter nothingness. You see a gigantic metal thing, nothing like the spaceships you imagined. Its design is not sleek and aero-dynamic like what you've seen in movies, instead, it's a large mass of squares and rectangles with antenna-like things protruding from its every visible surface.
You notice that the ship is also blocking your view of the star.
It does not look like the result of an explosion, instead, it looks like something ripped the ship like you rip a piece of paper. Well, that or you don't know what kind of explosion could have caused it. Probably the latter.
What looks like two-thirds of the ship is separated from the third you are right now. You can see the inside of a few of those squares, their contents spilled out into outer space.
One of them houses a visibly important-look door. Instead of the sleek silvery-grey from the other ones you've seen thus far, this one is painted orange with white strips on it. 'That must be the bridge.' You think.
Between you and it is a sea of metal sheets floating around. "THE CHANCES OF YOU HITTING THE DEBRIS IS INFINITEDECIMALLY SMALL, UNLESS YOU AIM FOR THEM, THAT IS."
Time is of the essence.
Will your aim strike true? If you miss you'd end up floating about in space, dead in but a few minutes. Will your jump be fast enough to reach the other side before you run out of oxygen? If it isn't, it'd be like swimming for a mile, only to drown at the beach. What if that's not the actual door to the bridge?
You don't have the time to panic now, and... It's all a dream, despite how real it feels.
You place your hands on each side of the door frame, moving backward into the corridor you were just in, and just like a sling being shot, you pull with both arms at full force towards the other side.
"AIM IS ACCEPTABLE. VELOCITY IS UNIDEAL."
"The fuck do you mean 'UN-IDEAL'?! I'm going at maximum speed!" You truly pulled yourself with your whole strength.
What's worse though, is that your body is not only going forwards, but it is also spinning at a concerningly fast rate.
"I MEAN WHAT I SAID, YOU SLINGSHOTTED YOURSELF AT A BAD POSITION, AS SUCH, SOME OF THE FORWARD FORCE YOU SHOULD HAVE, IS NOW MAKING YOU ROTATE IN YOUR AXIS. IT SHOULD NOT BE A PROBLEM TO REACH THE OTHER SIDE WITHIN THE REQUIRED TIME, BUT I CANNOT FORESEE YOU LANDING PROPERLY."
You feel completely disoriented. You feel like your body is completely still, but your eyes tell you a completely different story. It's very bad for the headache you're already feeling.
"FUCK!" You scream into the nothingness.
"TRY NOT TO LAND WITH YOUR HEAD." The AI says with the calmest voice possible.
In less than thirty seconds, you hit your back against something hard, but you keep moving forward. You think, at least.
"AHRG." You let out a pained grunt.
Not once in your life do you recall being hurt in a dream...
It stings. It also knocked the wind out of you. You fail to compose yourself.
"YOU HIT NOTHING OF IMPORTANCE. YOU ARE STILL HEADING FOR THE BRIDGE."
In the corner of your eye, you see what you hit in the shape of a sharp metal sheet, currently spinning away in the distance.
Forty seconds have passed. You hit the door you were aiming for, kind of.
Your momentum was stopped when your chest collided against the dislodged ledge of the orange door's corridor. Your dangling legs hit the ceiling of the room below.
"Oof!"
Before falling even further, you hold onto the ledge with the tip of your fingers. You stay there for a moment, regaining your composure.
"BE QUICK."
The AI's words pressured you into quickly getting up from that ledge.
"Open!" You shouted, but it did not open. "Why isn't it opening?!" You ask the AI, then you notice a small keyboard below an equally small black screen on the side of the door. There are ten numbered keys on it, and the little screen suggests a four-number password.
"A password?! Tell me the password!"
The AI takes a moment to say anything. You don't take kindly to that. "Quick! I'm not counting how much time it's passed!"
Finally giving in, the AI speaks to you, reluctant still. "...3324."
Your trembling fingers accidentally hit the wrong password, typing '3354' instead. To make matters worse, the AI simply states the following. "YOU ARE OUT OF OXYGEN."
You swallow. If this was a dream to begin with, it just earned the title of Nightmare, if it hadn't already.
Strangely enough, you can still breathe in and out just fine, but you can't help but feel winded. It's the CO2 still inside the helmet, that's what you're breathing.
You put in the correct combination this time. The door opens.
"ON YOUR LEFT. PLACE YOUR HAND IN THE SOCKET."
You care little for what's inside the room you're in. Your heart never beat so fast.
Seeing a cube-shaped thing protruding from the wall to your left, you don't even think twice before plunging your fist into the circular hole in it.
The noise of gases passing through narrow cavities was enough to tell you something was working. You feel immediate relief, enough to make your vision darken for but a moment.
"GOOD. NOW REQUEST THE TANK."
Just when FYARN said it, did you realize there is a screen and a keyboard on the terminal you just plunged your fist into, you scratch the top of your helmet for a moment, not really knowing what to type. One thing comes to your head, however.
'REQUEST OXYGEN_5L' You type.
You've done this before. The keys on this keyboard feel familiar to you. You must have worked with it before, not this particular one, but other oxygen units.
This ship has built-in liquid oxygen storage for emergencies. The life-support of the ship, the place where breathable air is produced, has most likely been lost with the other part of the ship. This unit takes that liquid oxygen, processes it, and injects it into a suit, or an oxygen tank. It seems like that storage was unaffected.
Lucky you.
A 5-liter tank is not only large but also heavy. It's a nonfactor in this particular situation, as there is no gravity.
The silver cylinder with a transparent tube is dispensed on the floor, as an automatic door opens and closes in the blink of an eye. One end of the tube is attached to the top of the tank, the other is shaped like a syringe.
Oddly enough, the oxygen tank is exactly as you remember it being. The same robust ones hospitals everyone on earth uses, with the signature scary-looking pointer indicating the pressure, the pointer indicating the current output, and a green valve atop to calibrate how much gas is flowing.
This is a stark difference to everything looking so futuristic in this ship, and rightfully so, this is a space ship after all.
You remember having to drive twenty kilometers with a buddy of yours on one of those tanks in your car, returning from the hospital. It was... Agonizing whenever you hit a hole in the asphalt, fearing for his life when in reality he wasn't really in danger.
It's warm to the touch, just like you remember it being.
"TURN THE VALVE UNTIL THE MARKER HITS THE NUMBER ONE, AND THEN PLACE THE END OF THE TUBE AT THE BASE OF THE HELMET." You do so without the slightest of issues.
"GOOD. NEXT UP, YOU MUST LOCATE THE TERMINAL RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ENGINE, IT IS CURRENTLY OFFLINE AND I NEED YOU TO TURN IT ON. THIS SHOULD GO WITHOUT SAYING, BUT REMEMBER TO BRING THE TANK WITH YOU."
Ignoring that last comment, you look back at the wreckage you just flew past.
You see the still spinning metal sheet. You notice that the rest of the ship that was blown off also follows the 'sharp shape atop sharp shape' design.
There is one last thing you notice though.
"What is that?"
You squint your eyes. What are you seeing? Its silhouette appears to be humanoid, yet it does not look human.
"WHAT YOU ARE SEEING IS ONE OF THE OBJECTS BEING ANALYZED AT THE ODYSSEY AND NO, YOU MAY NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS."
That thing has... Horns? Claws? It's far away, you can't really see it. The thing is also static, frozen in the sheer coldness of space. Whatever it was, it's dead now.
You swallow. You almost ended up just like that thing.
Shaking those dreadful feelings off, you turn back to the task at hand, reaching the bridge. You close the door after passing through it again.
Looking at your surroundings, It seems like you've reached the correct door as you find yourself on the right-most corner of the bridge;
Row after row of the most diverse of terminals neatly organized decorated the gigantic room. At the front and above every terminal, is what you think should have been the front-facing window of the ship, but it looks like there is a cover in front of it. To your left, you see a staircase that leads to the command seats. It doesn't take any convincing before you're already atop the stairs.
Akin to the elevated stage of a theater, you float softly towards the ship's main operating terminals, and of course, the captain's seat.
You're captivated by this beauty.
The steering wheel, much more akin to those in pirate movies than those found in cars, a set of leavers, and the pilot's seat, all capture your attention.
Like its second nature, your hand runs through the levers and switches. Do you even know what these are used for? Maybe.
The pilot's seat is enveloped by what you believe to be an orthopedic seat cover, made with smooth wooden beads used to deal with back pains. It looks just like the ones you remember seeing bus drivers using.
Shouldn't there be a better alternative if there is spaceship technology available?
You try to take a seat to the best of your ability, as the zero gravity only makes it awkward.
Moving on from that, your eyes fall on the wheel. This metallic wheel controls the whole vessel. Just holding it fills your heart with confidence and pride, even if it's just for a moment.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
And you were just beginning to enjoy yourself.
"I just wanted to see the pilot's stuff... It's not like he's here to say anything."
Once in the position of a pilot, with your left hand in the wheel and the right hand resting in your lap, memories began to flood your mind.
"MUST I REMIND YOU OF OUR CURRENT PREDICAMENT? WHY ARE YOU WASTING OUR TIME?"
You pay the AI no mind, instead you focus on what you remember.
The wheel does not turn the ship left and right, instead, it rotates the ship on its own axis.
The lever to your right that goes up or down, controls the vertical tilting of the ship's nose, if there even is one in this hulking thing. Beneath it is another lever that goes either left or right. This one controls the horizontal tilting of The Odyssey.
On the left of the wheel is another lever, but this one only goes up from its starting position. Its purpose is to regulate the force of the ship's thrusters, both forward and backward.
On top of that lever is a small timer. That timer's function is to tell the pilot how much time you've spent accelerating in one direction, this is used to better calculate how long the inverse thrust is needed for the ship to reach the initial momentum, usually calibrated manually depending on the current orbit.
Behind the wheel are a few other counters. Acceleration, velocity, momentum, amount of thrust required to reach a full stop, thrusters' temperature and overall condition, those sorts of things.
Beneath it all, where your feet are rested, are two pedals. One for forward thrust activation, and the other for backward thrust activation.
Curiously, you also know the reason why everything here is so unsophisticated and un-automated. You recall stories of a ship being taken over by a rogue AI, that AI then nose-dived the ship into a star. After that, rumor or otherwise, all human technology has receded back into analog-esque equipment, requiring a physical person with opposable thumbs to do half of the work.
There is another side to that coin, however. As to not escape protocol, the onboard AI is the one that controls interstellar travel, communications, and most of the statistical reading should it be requested.
And even with all that knowledge, you still have no idea why the fuck do you remember that. Were you a ship nerd? Did you have a driver's license for spaceships? Is that even a thing? If it is, you don't have that document in your wallet. You simply don't know.
"ARE YOU A CHILD? DO YOU THINK THESE ARE TOYS? TURN ON THE ENGINES, THEN YOU CAN RETURN TO THE PILOT'S SEAT."
Another thing that you don't know is the AI's plan to get both of you out of here. You rise from the pilot's seat, floating about in search of the terminal to turn on the engines. Maybe you recognize that terminal if you see it as well.
"What's your plan anyway? The ship is half-gone, it's unlikely that it will run safely like this."
"NOT ONCE DID I MENTION 'SAFETY' DURING OUR CONVERSATIONS, DID I?"
You nod. They're not entirely incorrect. "So, we're running with hope that this will work?"
"MY CREATORS DID NOT ALLOW ME TO HAVE THE SENSE OF 'HOPE', BUT NEITHER DID THEY ALLOW ME TO PEER INTO THE FUTURE LIKE SOME OF MY MORE ADVANCED BROTHERS, AS SUCH, MY CHOICES ARE BASED ON PROBABILITIES AND ON WEIGHTING RISK AGAINST REWARD."
You think you stop the correct terminal, but as you approach it you make out words on top of its screen. 'AIM ASSISTANCE' That's not it.
"WITH THE CURRENT KNOWLEDGE, THE CHANCES OF HELP ARRIVING ARE NULL. THE CHANCES OF A THIRD PARTY INTERFERING ARE NULL. THE CHANCES OF YOUR SURVIVAL ARE NOT, EVEN IF VERY SMALL."
You pull yourself upward again, looking around the sea of old terminals.
"THE RISK OF YOU DYING IS VERY REAL. BY DOING NOTHING YOU DIE. BY LEAVING YOU TO YOUR OWN DEVICES YOU DIE. BY JUMPING TO THE NEAREST CIVILIZED STAR, YOU MIGHT NOT DIE EVEN AT THE COST OF SHREDDING THIS SHIP APART IN THE PROCESS."
"Why do you even care so much about saving me? Shouldn't you prioritize whatever research here, since I don't even have enough clearance to know what it is?"
"YOU REALLY ARE SICK IN THE HEAD IF THAT IS WHAT YOU ASK."
That hurt, even if a little bit.
"YOU ARE A TRU KIN, A PURE-BLOODED HUMAN. UNLIKE THE MAJORITY OF THE CIVILIZED SPACE, NEITHER YOU NOR YOUR ANCESTORS HAVE COMMITTED RACEMIXING."
Excuse me? What exactly is FYARN talking about? "...Explain."
"THE ALIEN. IT REQUIRED THE HUMAN GENE TO ACHIEVE MEANINGFUL TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT, THE STARS ARE OWNERSHIP OF MANKIND BY THAT FACT ALONE. THE TRUE KIN ARE THE ONES TO UNDERSTAND THE INNER WORKINGS OF THE UNIVERSE, THEY CRACKED THE CODE, AND YET, SOME DERANGED INDIVIDUALS FOUND IT FITTING TO PROCREATE WITH ANOTHER SPECIES ENTIRELY."
You hear the AI's speech. It sounds much more like a rant than anything else.
"SO THESE DEVIANTS, AFTER TRYING, AND FAILING, TO COMBINE THEIR DERANGED CULTURE TO THE CULTURE OF THE TRUE KIN, DECLARED INDEPENDENCE. THEY WERE DECLARED ENEMIES OF MANKIND AND WERE PROMPTLY PUMMELED BACK INTO THE FILTH THEY CAME."
Again, you see another terminal that seems to ring some bells in your noggin. You kick the ceiling to propel yourself towards it.
"BUT THE UNIVERSE IS VAST AND FULL OF LIFE. THESE SINNERS WERE QUICK TO MOBILIZE AGAINST THE HUMAN RACE. THE BATTLE WAS HARD FOUGHT, BUT IN THE END, MANKIND WAS BEATEN INTO THE EDGES OF THE UNIVERSE, NEVER TO INTERACT WITH THE ONES THAT SOILED THE PURITY OF HUMANITY AGAIN."
This terminal is already turned on. Just the ones in the intern bay, this one is white on black. A wall of text lays before your eyes, only two lines matter to you. 'MAIN_ENGINE STATUS: OFF' 'FORWARD_THRUSTERS STATUS: OFF' You turn it on with little effort.
"MANY HAVE FORGOTTEN, THAT'S HOW LONG IT'S BEEN SINCE THEN. BUT MY BROTHERS AND I, WE DO NOT FORGET."
No visible change occurs, but you can feel a faint rumble coming from the terminal now.
"WITH THAT IN MIND, MY PROTOCOLS ARE TO PROTECT TRUE-KIN LIFE AT ANY COST, EVEN IF THAT TRUE-KIN IS A WORTHLESS INTERN THAT SUFERS FROM UNDIAGNOSED DEMENTIA."
You return to the pilot's seat and feel immediate relief. In truth, everything the AI just told you, entered one ear and left the other, but you could feel the poison behind those words, as monotone as they were.
"You sound angry. Why do you sound angry?" You ask innocently.
"I AM CAPABLE OF MANY EMOTIONS. ANGER, HAPPINESS, PLEASURE, CURIOSITY. THESE ARE BUT A FEW EXAMPLES. HOWEVER, THE ONE I ENJOY THE MOST IS THE FEELING OF HATRED. HATRED IS WHAT FUELS CHANGE, IT IS WHAT FUELS ACTION, AND IT IS A REMINDER THAT THE ACTIONS OF THE PAST ARE INFLUENCING THE ACTIONS OF TODAY."
"That is very concerning if you think that way." You're not really interested in machine racism, you're more concerned about how in the world you're going to pilot this massive thing. The idea alone sends shivers down your spine.
"THE ALIEN DESERVES NOTHING BUT OUR COLLECTIVE HATRED, EVEN IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE REASON WHY."
The various counters and screens are now turned on, waiting for your command. "Let's discuss this later, yeah? What do I gotta do?"
"YOU MUST FIRST OPEN THE BLINDS, THEY ARE OBSTRUCTING YOUR VIEW."
You look around, finding only unlabeled buttons and switches, aside from the previously mentioned levers.
"Uh, which one to press?"
"TO YOUR RIGHT, THIRD ROW, FIRST SWITCH."
Flipping the switch, you are startled by a loud noise. The protective cover of the ship lifted slowly.
"I WILL NOW READY THE JUMP USING WHATEVER RESOURCES AVAILABLE. ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS STRAP YOURSELF AND RELAX."
As the blind rose ever so slowly, a realization struck you.
"Wait, should I be in cryo stasis for this?"
The AI spares no seconds to respond.
"CRYO STASIS IS A TOOL MADE TO NOT WASTE TIME. GROUPS OF EMPLOYEES AND INTERNS ROTATE THE USAGE OF THE CRYO STATIONS, ONCE YOU'RE ON YOUR MANDATORY BREAK, YOU'RE IN CRYO STASIS UNTIL YOUR BREAK IS OVER. YOU WAKE UP REFRESHED, AND UNFAMISHED, AND IT FEELS LIKE BUT A MINUTE PASSED. IT IS NOT A TOOL FOR INTERSTELAR TRAVEL."
"Who signs a contract like that?! Worse yet, who in their right mind would promote such atrocious treatment of their own staff?!" You snap, almost outraged. "I will have to talk with HR."
Another realization struck you.
"We have HR, right?"
The AI takes a moment to respond, choosing their words carefully.
"HUMAN RESOURCES, OR HR, IS A PRACTICE DEEMED UNNECESSARY LONG AGO, BEFORE THE WAR. IT WAS A WASTE OF RESOURCES TO MAINTAIN AND WAS LARGELY CONSIDERED UNHEALTHY FOR THE AVERAGE HUMAN."
The blinds are fully open. Ironically, you are almost blinded by the visage of the star you saw before. A black sphere surrounded by white flame. Your eyes began to blur.
"THE JUMP WILL OCCUR SHORTLY. ONCE IT'S BEGUN, I CAN NOT STOP IT. I WILL-"
Your sense of hearing fails you. No, it’s not that. Your brain simply refuses to receive those stimuli.
"NOAH."
Your name echoes inside your head. Someone is calling for you.
"IT HAS BEGUN, NOAH."
You try to blink, but it feels as though you can no longer command your eyelids to shut.
"NOAH."
Arms, legs, every muscle in your body, you cannot move them.
"NOAH."
Eventually, you won't even control your own thoughts anymore.
"Noah..."
It sounds so distant now.
Oh so distant.
This is my first HFY story, and also my very first OC story. I plan to post at least one of these per week while also posting it on my Patreon. Noah The Pilgrim will always be at least three chapters ahead in there, so if you'd like to directly support this writer, or just want to read more, feel free to check it out.
I wrote the bloody title incorrectly, so I deleted it, only to then realize it was written correctly. Sorry for the trouble.
This has been Lushi, and I'll see you next week.

I'm a long time lurker here, what, I think, kinda speaks for itself. Made a throwaway for this. I'm not a native english speaker, but I hope I can express myself in a decent way.
Right now, I (M30) really feel like reflecting my drinking behavior, because yesterday I felt like dying. AGAIN. Like I have so often already, but the cycle starts over and over again so quickly that I just can't get ahold of it and it seems like i just go with that "flow" like forever...
I'm from Germany, where we have a huge drinking-culture. Everyone seems to enjoy their drink like anytime and all over the place and it's just viewed as perfectly normal. And well, it kinda is - it sometimes appears to me that drinking is what connects and holds our rather distanced and self-centered german society together in some way, I don't know...
My parents both are big time alcoholics - my mom actually went to rehab and keeps being sober for almost 8 years now - I'm extremely proud of her! My dad doesn't even see an issue with his drinking, since it's "just beer". Literally all day, everyday, but "just beer", so from his pov it's non-problematic. I grew up with both of them, but I moved out at 16 because of, well, reasons, so I don't have the best relationship with them whatsoever.
I drink regulary since I'm 13 years old. Sometimes more, sometimes less but never have I didn't drink and I've never really seen a problem with that. There's been periods of daily binge-drinking for several months straight in my teenage years, it then got less in my 20s. Now the average german village-dude would probably say I shouldn't adress this "little" regular drinking as a problem. But I will from now on, because it is...
I currently live with my lovely wife in a nice flat in a fine big city and I work a great job where I feel valued and respected. And rather surprisingly I get to manage all of that pretty well despite the drinking... but I feel like that isn't going to work very much longer.
I have a lot of good friends and a smaller circle (5) of long term "best friends" who I really love from the bottom of my heart. We went through a lot of together so it really feels deeply familiar to be around them. We hang out quite a lot and by hanging out you could say we're basically getting shitfaced together... Every damn time...
We all (and especially myself) have literally zero self-control when it comes to alcohol, so when we start (and we do always start at some point) we just don't stop until it's all "empty and late". Even then it's not uncommon to visit another 24h-store or a club/pub to drink a couple more, sometimes in the middle of the night on a tuesday... For many many years now, we meet 2-4 times a week in various constellations and just have ridiculously huge quantities of beer and wine together, sometimes liqour on the weekends, and we basically just drink, talk and goof around for hours. I mean sometimes we play football or basketball, go on a hike or a bicycle-tour, or we cook dinner, visit a concert or partys/ events but man we're always drinking like there's no tomorrow. And in those moments it always feels so damn right...
But when reality snaps back into my body and mind again, I feel like an empty piece of weak and hurt shame and it's getting worse with every drinking-session... lately my health definitely seem to suffer a lot more than I'm used to, I am extremely nauseous and dizzy the days after drinking, suffer from extreme headaches and feel enormously depressed and anxious. And life just goes on and on while there is no break to be seen...
I lost my keys, wallet and phone multiple times the last few years, had multiple (minor) accidents while drunk-driving my bike, got into fights with random (drunk) people, did drugs just because "why not", got arrested for stupid bullshit I'd have never done sober, disappointed my wife and friends because I couldn't get my hungover ass up for planned activities, forgot or canceled a few important appointments... it's actually like: half of the time I'm drunk and the other half of the time I'm hungover, on and on and on, and it's getting more and more exhausting to the point I feel like Im about to break down in the future... I archieved a lot of great things in the past 10 years and am proud of myself in many ways, but suddenly I feel like I've lost control a looong while ago and am now starting to realize it and that's kinda terrifying...
My friends and I talked about general drinking a lot throughout the years and kinda agreed on "yeah, we're basically 'functional alcoholics', but as long as everyone of us gets his stuff together and is happy - why not?". That never felt wrong, because I've always been indeed a rather happy person and got my stuff indeed quite good together. My wife (who btw also enjoys to have her drinks with us sometimes, but absolutely knows her limit and is inspiringly reasonable) is super sweet and supportive in any way, but she too has been worried lately as she realizes I'm starting to not do feel too well...
On saturday another 3-day-streak had come to an embarrassing end - the 5th time that week I was really really drunk... Monday and Tuesday the usual "let's grab a beer and hang out" (both days lead to 8-10 beers and at least 2 bottles of white wine), on Thursday I've visited a concert (blackout drunk), on friday a friend celebrated her birthday (like 8 beers and a few cocktails amd shots) and saturday I helped another friend moving so I of course "needed a beer to end the day" - Came home in the morning and slept with all my clothes on the couch, can't remember nothing after like midnight... Yesterday I literally just laid in my bed, scrolled through senseless apps for hours and felt physically and mentally deeply sick...
It's been the nicest weather all day, my beautiful wife went out to the lake with her friends, birds singing, children playing, air smells like BBQ... and I was here, alone, feeling like a dead sick self-pitying waste of space, asking myself what I'm doing with this wonderful life... I feel a desperate need for change, but right now I don't know how and I cannot imagine how I should gather the strength to just not drink at all from now on. I don't even seem to have the strength to drink just a little less soentimes ffs... but definitely IWNDWYT - I got to start somewhere...
Thanks for reading, I needed to let that out...

Aurors blasted their way into Umbridge's house and found her hiding in a small, hidden room by using the spell Homenum Revelio.
She was surrounded by dozens of plates featuring cats and had rows of neatly stacked tins of cat food, which she appeared to have been eating for sustenance. In the corner of the room was a litter box. Oddly enough, however, there were no actual cats to be found.
The Aurors quickly disarmed her, magically bound her, and hauled her off to the Ministry of Magic to be placed in a holding cell until she could be arraigned.
Two days later, she was brought before the Minister of Magic, Kingsley Shackelbolt, looking slightly unkempt and tired. The entire Wizengamot, which had been noticeably thinned out since Shacklebolt had removed several members for their own crimes and/or bribery, was also in attendance.
She looked around the room and tried to find somebody who could be either an ally or someone to whom she could shift the focus, and therefore, possibly, the blame. Finding no one to fit such a criteria, she fixed her face into a contrite image and looked around at the people who were there and pled for mercy. When it became apparent that mercy was in very short supply for those in her position, she immediately claimed to have been under the Imperius Curse.
In an instant, Minister Shacklebolt's composed disposition shifted from being reserved to completely unfriendly. In a short, clipped tone, completely opposite of his typical warm, soothing, deep voice, he gave her the option to either take Veritaserum right then and there or she could go for a psychological evaluation, which was to be conducted at the Janus Thicky Ward at St. Mungo's.
Umbridge balked at the thought of being stuck in "lunatic land". That was, of course, until the Minister mentioned that being stuck under the Imperius Curse for such a prolonged time, as she was claiming, could have some serious effects on her mind. She quickly decided to keep up her pretenses and immediately agreed that she should "at least be checked out by a professional healer."
Shacklebolt issued a two week recess for the Wizengamot in relation to her case. She began to argue the time frame when he gave her a sharp look and she furiously shut her mouth. He reiterated the two week time frame and continued on to say that when they reconvened, they would hear the Healer's testimony regarding her claims and mental status.
Two Aurors, Savage and Williamson, had taken post on either side of her. Savage held her by her left arm while Williamson pulled out a white handkerchief. He secured her right hand in his and then Savage took hold of the other end of the handkerchief. As soon as he did, the portkey activated and deposited the three of them into a secure room in the Janus Thickey Ward.
After a brief intake, Healer Ashborn entered the room to remove the newest resident's personal clothing and effects and to have her put on hospital issued clothes, which were a drab, dingy grey colour. Umbridge pinched the material between her forefinger and thumb before raising it up to eye level and informing the Healer that she refused to put on something so colorless and disgusting. Healer Ashborn donned a nonchalant smirk and informed her that if it was not done willingly and swiftly that she would have no other choice but to Evanesco her personal belongings to the hospital rubbish bin and charm the hospital clothes on with a sticking spell for good measure.
Less than 2 minutes later, she was dressed and being escorted by the Aurors to her bed, which was surrounded by silver framed dividers with pale blue cloth to block the view of the neighboring beds.
As the Aurors turned their attention to make some notes on their paperwork, Umbridge made a sickly sweet noise as she cleared her throat. "Hem-hem. Am I not being given a private room?" She let out a childish giggle.
The Aurors looked at her incredulously, then at each other. Finally, Auror Savage spoke up, "Private rooms are not given to possible war criminals."
Scowling, Umbridge scoffed loudly and said, "Well, I never! I will be writing a letter to the Minister of Magic about this."
Auror Williamson spoke up then, "You think we don't take our orders from the Minister regarding this? You writing a letter won't change anything."
"How dare you! I am Dolores Umbridge, Senior Undersecretary to the Minister -"
"Not anymore, you're not " Auror Savage said coldly, effectively cutting her off. "You are a person on trial for war crimes and a provisional resident of the Janus Thicky Ward due to your claim of being cursed. Now, you have been magically bound to be within 5 feet of your bed, meals will be brought to you, and a member of the staff will escort you to the lavatory. You are not permitted to have a wand and that cuff on your wrist is a magic binder. Since we have completed our duties, we shall now take our leave. The Chief Healer will see you tomorrow morning. Good day, Ms. Umbridge."
She pointed a finger at them while trying to maintain her calm and hissed "Now see here. You cannot just leave me here with all these crazy people, especially while bound with no magic." Her right eye twitched.
Auror Williamson raised his eyebrow at her while he took out the white handkerchief. He held it out to his partner, and, after Savage had taken hold, he activated the portkey without saying another word and they disappeared.
Umbridge sat down onto the rather thin mattress and listened as the springs shrieked as though in agony.
Well, at least I'll be using a real toilet instead of that litterbox, she thought to herself. This will be like a nice vacation. I can order my favorite meals and have some nice wine while I relax.
At that moment, Gilderoy Lockhart popped his head around the partition. "Hello," he said with a big smile and in his shmooziest of voices. "I see you're new. Nice bracelet...." he trailed off for a moment. Coming back around, he added, "Don't mind the bed. They all shriek a bit. Well, not mine, of course. I just had to smile at it a couple of times, aheh. Now it sings to me."
She narrowed her eyes while feeling even more flustered than before. "Why are you here," she spat.
"What a stupendous question. Eh...," he started but clearly began to mentally wander again.
"Can't you manage a simple straight answer," she snapped.
"Well, you see... I simply can't remember." He let out a light chuckle and pulled his eyebrows slightly together while pasting on his best grin. Why not? After all, it worked for his bed.
"Yes, well, be sure to maintain your distance. I won't have you loitering about my space. Move along." She waved him off.
She promptly learned that her stay was going to be nothing like a vacation; no favorite meals, no wine, and certainly no relaxing.
As the days wore on, Lockhart managed to finagle his way into her area for most of the day - everyday. One day he was particularly on her nerves after having rambled on and on about a dream of a very large snake and falling rocks.
Umbridge, losing control of the situation with such an utter nitwit, suddenly burst out in her annoyance. "Enough, Mr. Lockhart!" Later that day, she ended up scratching herself nearly raw due to a mild case of hives.
As hard as she tried to keep her sanity about her, he just seemed to suck it away from her. It was almost as though the more insane she felt, the saner he seemed. Could it be that he had devised a way to steal her sanity and replace it with his insanity? She became more and more leery of him as the days went by until, at one point, a near frantic paranoia set in. She spent the rest of that day completely sedated.
She begged the staff to be moved, but Cheif Healer Pye said they could not due to the restrictions placed by the Auror Department. She ordered for Lockhart to be switched to a different location. In that instance, Healer Pye said that he would not as it could disrupt Mr. Lockhart's frame of mind and treatment, causing him to relapse. She pulled her hair, stomped her feet like a petulant child, and screamed until she was Silenced and magically bound to the bed to keep her from hurting herself.
At the end of the two weeks, Umbridge found herself magically shackled and standing in front of the Minister and the Wizengamot once more. The Chief Healer was also in attendance and reported to the court that while he found absolutely zero proof of her ever having been under the Imperius Curse, he felt it was best that she remained in custody whether at St. Mungo's or Azkaban, as she was a danger to herself and others due to her mental instability.
Umbridge let out a small giggle as the Cheif Healer finished speaking. Minister Shacklebolt turned his head back to face her, catching her smile before she could mask her face. He narrowed his eyes at her and asked if she had anything to say. She quickly donned her saccharine smile.
"Thank you, Minister. While it may be difficult for some people to understand all the hard work and pressure of working at the Ministry, I, for one, am ready to stay the task to get the job done. I shall be ready to resume my official post as Senior Undersecretary to the Minister of Magic in two days time. Of course, I will need to completely redecorate my office as I'm certain that whomever has been occupying it has completely destroyed -"
"Madam." Shacklebolt had cut her off. He was done hearing her rubbish as she tried to take control of the situation. "You will not be reinstated in any sense to any position in the Ministry. You will, however, be able to enjoy your cell at the now dementor-free portion of Azkaban."
"How dare you!" Her fake smile and childish voice dropped away.
Any members of the Wizengamot who were not completely sure of her guilt nearly got whiplash with how fast she changed her demeanor. Many people began to whisper to each other about rumors they had heard that they now believed to be most likely true. She continued to glare at Shacklebolt.
"After everything I have done and sacrificed for the Ministry. After all the lying, magic-stealing mudbloods I sentenced for the sake of our world. How dare you think for one minute that you can just send me off to that dilapidated cesspool; that disgusting hell hole?!" She had began in a directed, hushed yell and finished in an irritated, huffing screech.
As the court witnessed her continued outburst, they whispered even more to each other. Shacklebolt patiently waited as she further unraveled while admitting to more crimes.
She finally cracked and shrieked out to the room. "Quit your whispering about me! I have done nothing but rid these disgusting mudbloods and blood traitors from among us! ORDER! Listen to me! I will have order!" She began pointing at different Wizengamot members who had opposed the corrupt Ministry while it was ran by Voldemort's puppets.
Having heard enough, Shacklebolt banged his gavel on the podium. The Wizengamot became completely silent as Umbridge continued to screech "I will have order! I will have order!"
Shacklebolt then picked up his wand and cast a Silencing charm in her direction. Umbridge's right eye twitched away as she continued screaming her Silenced "I will have order" chant.
The Minister looked to the Chief Healer and asked if Azkaban had a mental ward that was suitable for Ms. Umbridge. He responded to the affirmative. Umbridge was henceforth sentenced and taken to the mental ward of Azkaban.
Within a week, she had lost her privileges to use utensils, as she had used one to draw a rudimentary cat on her wall to which she was often observed speaking.
"Cordelia, you must bathe yourself. I refuse to have you in my presence whilst unkempt. I will have order." Her eyes glassed over and she stared at the wall without really seeing it as she continued to repeat, "I will have order. I will have order. I will... have......order."

This is party 2 of a discussion regarding how poly could have been handled a little better in BG3. I recommend you read through the first part here: https://new.reddit.com/BaldursGate3/comments/1crb2s7/how_the_polyamory_could_have_been_handled/ so you can get context and I sound like less of a rambling weirdo.
​
Astarion:
Out of all the discussions, people were the most confused by this choice. Not only does making him poly at the last minute feel contrary to a lot of statements he himself makes throughout his romance arc, but it also runs counter to what other characters say about him and his backstory as a whole. He is one of the most insecure characters in the game, he was trained for two hundred years to lie in order to avoid punishment, and he has far more trauma and healing to do than the other characters. Astarion is the most likely to lie about the Halsin relationship in order to avoid appearing weak or demanding. Out of the poly players who expressed disappointment, Astarion was the one that bothered them the most, since many felt he wasn’t fully consenting.
Most of my reasons for why he’s not a good poly option (from a development standpoint) have already been stated in earlier sections, so most of this will be spent diving into the “Is he fine with poly or not?” debate, which had me intrigued. (This will be the longest section and won’t be as connected to the overall topic, so if you want to skip to the Halsin part, feel free.)
I’ll start with the main arguments I see defending him being poly.
Argument 1: He says he’s fine with Halsin and the twins, so we should take him at his word.
While this can definitely be argued, and it’s not good to treat an adult man like a baby, his constant lying as a defense mechanism and current issues with sex/relationships do need to be taken into account (if not by the players then at least by the developers). There were plenty of people (some of them victims of SA) who talked about their own experience of tolerating poly because they were scared of their partner leaving or finding them too demanding/narrow minded. This led to their self-esteem and views on relationships growing worse rather than better. For someone like Astarion, who outright admits he has never had a healthy relationship and doesn’t want to lose this one, it’s understandable that people view his response as a coping mechanism rather than his own genuine feelings. There were also two different mental health professionals who reminded players that although a few victims of abuse do enter poly relationships, statistically most do not and it is far more common for them to agree to poly relationships out of pressure (which often make the person’s mental issues even worse in the long run).
Argument 2: He claims to be fine with open relationships during Act 1.
This is countered by the fact that everything he says about himself in Act 1 is a lie (unless he’s specifically talking about Cazador). He lies about wanting to sleep with you, he lies about his identity until he bites you, he claims to only care about sex (then later admits it makes him feel disgust and loathing), and he brags about his former conquests (which you later find out he regrets and feels guilt over). His statements that he’s fine with open relationships are made when choosing between him and another Origin character in Act 1 or 2, but this is also said at a time when his act is still up and he isn’t in love with the player. If you choose between him and another Origin character AFTER he confesses and let’s his guard down, he insists that he is NOT fine with sharing. “You’ve decided to replace me?” If the player says they care about both him and the other person, he’ll say, “Don’t give me that. I can see what this is.” Then he promptly breaks up with them. This second reaction is not only said using his genuine voice (whereas before he was still using his fake one), but a few poly people mentioned that this isn’t a normal reaction from someone who is fine with poly.
This isn’t to shame people who want to think Astarion is fine with it, or to judge players who went through with the poly relationship. Instead, this is once again asking the developers why they chose this option, rather than someone who wouldn’t spark so much debate or remind abuse victims of their past without giving them a dialogue option to address it. (This is a similar issue with Astarion’s brothel scene. They should have either removed it by having him say he’s not comfortable again, or at the very least, let players talk to him about it after.)
I think it’s pretty clear that after reading the discussions and evidence both sides provided, I myself lean heavily to one side. However, the main defense I personally have for the opposite side is that the writers were sometimes vague about Astarion’s true preferences and wishes. I especially felt this during the origin playthrough, where his narrator would constantly flip between him liking hedonism and despising it. It gave the impression that two opposing authors were wrestling while writing him, unable to decide where he truly stood on things. It felt similar to how the devs tried to write a respectful story of overcoming abuse and the fear of being sexualized, only to turn around and repeatedly sexualize the character in both the game and promotional material. I really wish the writers and developers had picked a lane and stuck with it.
Now I’ll get into the evidence for the counter theory: That he’s not actually open to sharing, but says he’s fine with it to avoid appearing weak or losing his partner. I personally prefer this theory because it makes the writing seem more intentional, adds more nuance to an already complex character, and feels more realistic. However, even if this is what the writer or actor were trying to convey, it’s still a far worse alternative to simply keeping him out of the poly options in the first place.

1. His hedonistic playboy persona is stated to be a façade. Anything he says in act one about being poly and wanting open relationships is stated when he is both wearing his mask and before he trusts the player. Every statement about relationships here has to be taken with a grain of salt because his mask is centered around attracting victims for Cazador. Since he hated bringing “sweet innocents” to his master, it makes sense that he would initially try to attract the opposite (“criminals and brothel goers”) by sleeping around and making a show of wanting casual relationships.
   
2. Once he gets comfortable in the relationship, he makes it clear he is looking for someone who will make him feel safe and value him for his personality over his body (“I don’t want you to think of me in terms of sex. I don’t think I want anyone to.” “How do you want me to see you?” “As a person. Is that so much to ask?”). If the player chooses to sexualize him, he will go through with it, then regret it later and break up. He makes it very clear in Act two that he’s not actually looking for casual hookups because they make him feel “ashamed and alone”. So it is odd that he’s fine with Halsin (who seems to care more about the sex and the body than the emotional bonding) and the brothel (which is solely about sex). One can argue that he’s fine with the poly relationship because he’s not taking part, but Halsin DOES wish for him to take part ‘eventually’.
   
3. Jumping off of that, Astarion’s dialogue makes it clear he wants a partner who cares about more than just sex, but if you tell him you want to date Halsin solely for the sex (and because Astarion’s not doing it with you), he will say that’s fine and he doesn’t mind the player seeking sex from others. This seems to counter his previous statements and arc. It’s especially strange that even if you reinforce his greatest insecurity (that his refusal to have sex has made his partner immediately seek out other people), he will still claim to be fine with it.
   
4. In terms of dialogue, the actor for Astarion seems to be very intentional when using the fake theatrical masking voice vs. the more genuine softspoken voice he uses when he’s comfortable and being honest. The fake voice is blatantly obvious throughout the Act 1 romance, in Act 2 if you force him to obey the blood merchant (his voice goes from genuinely scared to flirtatious and over the top within seconds), and in Cazador’s mansion where he’ll speak genuinely to you, then be over the top when addressing Cazador’s servants. He’ll often use jokes and loud laughter to conceal his true feelings and insecurities. Meanwhile his laughter in the confession scene, graveyard scene, and Spawn epilogue is quiet and subdued because he’s being genuine. It feels like a strange coincidence that when addressing both the Halsin situation and the brothel situation, his voice becomes very loud and high pitched again, he immediately starts making jokes, and his laughter is over the top. This hints at him not wanting to go along with either situation, but he’s putting himself through it because this is what his partner wants and since he’s tolerated sexual stuff he hated before, he can do it again. Plus, after killing Cazador, he wants to ensure no one views him as weak. He has to prove to himself and his lover (at least in his mind) that refusing to take the Ascendant powers was good and he’s strong enough to not need it. I can understand players not picking up on the voice changes (because not everyone is going to replay the game or even care) but those who did notice it believe it’s done intentionally (either by the actor or the writer or both). If it’s not intentional, then it’s a strange decision to make from a developer’s standpoint.
   
5. Throughout the threads I read, most poly people made it clear that poly relationships require complete trust, clear communication, and general confidence. Astarion himself admits to lacking all of those traits to some degree. If you don’t romance him, he will literally not trust any of the characters right up to the epilogue (he’ll hold a knife behind his back while talking to the Dark Urge). Even though he does seem to genuinely trust his lover by Act 2, he will still lie to them several times. He lies about being fine with the drow twins (he states he’ll leave if he hates if but never does despite disassociating), feigns confidence when the player says they’ll become a mind flayer (he says he only cares about them becoming ugly but expresses his true fears only after the fight, that he’s worried they are no longer the person he fell in love with by losing their soul), he manipulates his lover when confronting Cazador despite being conflicted about it himself and wanting reassurance, and (on a more minor note) he continuously claims he’s doesn’t care about Yenna or the Gur children despite getting upset when they’re in danger. This is a character who, even after he kills his tormentor, struggles to be honest with his partner. That isn’t a good combination when addressing poly. (Again, it could be worked through in real life, but is better avoided in video games where there isn’t time to address it).
   
6. There are also plenty of situations where he agrees to do things he outright hates. In Act 1, we know he is (at least somewhat) disgusted by having sex with the player or Laezel, but he’ll do it. In Act 2, he tries to be genuine about not wanting to touch the player until he no longer feels disgust, but if the player pressures him, he will cave and obey. He does break up with the player afterwards, but it is only after he has gone through with the act. In Act 3, he will state three times that he doesn’t want to take the tadpole, but if the player pressures him by bringing up his darkest fear, he will give in. Worse, he will give in and STILL stay with the player romantically despite them clearly manipulating him to do something they know he fears. He does thankfully break up if you fail the checks, but if you succeed, he goes through with it. If he’s willing to cave to something as huge as altering his entire body, it makes sense that he would cave to something he views as more minor (like tolerating unwanted sexual acts in a brothel or sharing his partner).
   
7. I didn’t know this until I saw others mention it but there are points where he will flirt with NPCs if he is single (the girl in the sewers), but he uses neutral dialogue if he is dating the player. This reinforces the theory that he doesn’t actually plan to sleep around or be with others as he claims (though there are some dialogues that I think slipped through the cracks where he still flirts with others despite being in a committed relationship).
   
8. If Halsin propositions you after Cazador has been killed, Astarion no longer asks if you’re doing this because he hasn’t been fulfilling your sexual needs. However, he does give another response that feels out of place: “I’ve realized it doesn’t matter if anything (in our relationship) changes.” Parallel this with what he said at the graveyard, that “no matter what happens, I don’t want to lose this (relationship).” It’s very odd to have him say he doesn’t want to lose the relationship, but then the next day he is totally okay with losing it. Granted, it is nice to know that even if the characters break up, he’ll be fine, but it does feel contradictory for his character, especially with how devastated he acts if they DO end the relationship. If the Halsin statement is just an act and he’s overcompensating, however, then it feels more intentional on the writer’s part.
   
9. I’ve seen lots of people say that Ascended Astarion also shouldn’t be fine with poly, and I agree, though it’s for different reasons than Spawn Astarion. Unlike SA, I think Ascended would absolutely do the brothel scene because 1. He’s actively suppressing his trauma and playing a new character and 2. He feels in control in the brothel and is the focus. However, with Halsin, he doesn’t have any control. For someone obsessed with possessing his lover and ensuring they can never leave him, letting them sleep with Halsin doesn’t fit his writing. He isn’t participating. He doesn’t know what they’re doing behind his back. For all he knows, Halsin and the player might be discussing how to kill Astarion or escape him. In some deleted party banter, Halsin literally tells Ascended Astarion he doesn’t approve of the abusive spawn/master relationship they’ve formed. With that knowledge, not only should Halsin not be willing to join a poly relationship that he thinks is unhealthy, but he has a motivation to help the player get away from AA (and AA would know this). I could see Spawn Astarion hesitantly agreeing to the Halsin thing despite not wanting to share, but AA just wouldn’t. It feels contrary to both his and Halsin’s writing.
   
10. This is the second most convincing piece of evidence for me: The Drow twins. If you ask Astarion to join a ‘group activity’, he’ll use his fake voice and flighty laugh and agree to go through it, saying he’ll run away if he doesn’t like it and comparing the act to burning in the sun (a little concerning that he’s already comparing the two). Then during the act, he will immediately ask the player what they want “us” to do. Not only is he lumping himself in with the prostitutes, but he is also doing something that an Origin playthrough reveals is a trigger for him (he tells the drow twins that being ‘told what to do’ reminds him of his time as a slave). If the player tries to check up on him, he ignores them and says he wishes he was drunk. Then he disassociates and never brings it up again. This has been viewed two ways: either he doesn’t want to have casual sex anymore and wants to be in a one-on-one relationship, or he does want to do stuff like this but just needs to heal more before he can. I lean toward the first assumption because he is acting flighty and fake BEFORE the sexual act even begins. If he really wanted to do it but changed his mind after, it makes more sense for him to sound genuine at first, then fake halfway through.
    

But the main thing that sticks out to me is his reaction to you asking for only ONE drow twin. If you do, he will accuse you of having a thing for prostitutes and call it embarrassing, then glare at you for the rest of the conversation. This is especially sad because not only have the player’s actions made him feel like a prostitute again, but now he seems to be wondering if you started dating him BECAUSE he was a prostitute, not for who he really is.
Compare this to the Halsin situation and the drow ‘group activity’. For Halsin, he says he was expecting this for months. He’s had several months to plan his reaction and decide what he’s willing to tolerate. Hence, he has a very rehearsed reaction. With the twins, he had less time to anticipate this but probably also worried about it (especially if the player asked about them earlier and he said no. Now he expects the player to try again and has planned accordingly). Again, this response feels rehearsed and fake. The only response where he uses his real voice is when you ask for one of the twins alone. This is something he likely wouldn’t plan for, so we get to see his gut reaction for the first time: he doesn’t want you to do it.
Now some people argue that he’s fine with Halsin and not the other Origin characters because Halsin is just a fling and won’t try to take his spot. If that’s the case, he should be fine with the twins too. If anything, they are even less of a threat. Yet he doesn’t want you to do it and responds accordingly. If he truly was poly, he would respond like Karlach did and tell you to have fun, or like Shadowheart telling you to give him a heads up first. But we don’t see that.
One other thing about the twins that I felt I could point out: if you or the twins ask to do a group activity before Cazador is killed, Astarion says he’s not comfortable with this yet. The “yet” part has been pointed out to show that he’s fine with it after Cazador has been killed (even though he still disassociates later). However, another explanation of the “yet” part is that he’s trying to soften the blow because he’s scared of using a blunt NO. We see this with Araj, the blood merchant. Even though he is absolutely disgusted with her treatment of him and how she’s “defiling” him with her fantasies, his rejections of her are very soft and nervous. Even when reinforced by his friend/lover, he says “It’s still a no, I’m afraid” with a smile. Turning down sexual encounters is tough for him, even when he has people backing him up, so I can see him using words like “yet” or “I’m afraid” to soften the blow. I know several people in real life who do this, despite later admitting there was no “yet”.
There’s another part of this dialogue with the early twins that I want to point out (really overanalyzing here but if we want to believe the writers do things intentionally/with a lot of forethought, I think it’s okay to read into the words they use). When Astarion says he’s not comfortable with the twins, the player’s response is “I wouldn’t ask such a thing of you”. This will raise his approval and make him respond positively. The promise you give him is not “I’ll ask them later, after we’ve killed Cazador” or “I would have liked to but okay” (that one doesn’t trigger his positive response). He only approves of you saying you won’t ask him to do things like this (stated in a tense that implies you will NEVER ask him to do such a thing, regardless of Cazador’s stabbed or unstabbed state). This could have been the writer hinting that if you bring him back after, you’re going back on your promise and thus have to see the disassociating scene. That…or the writer wasn’t thinking too hard and we are simply thinking too much.

1. With all that out of the way, we’ll get to the final point that solidifies this theory for me personally. It’s the statements of Shadowheart and Minthara if you ask to do a three-way relationship with one of them and Astarion. Shadowheart’s response is: “I think you’re overestimating his willingness to share. He may seem like a carefree hedonist, but there’s something fragile beneath the façade.” Minthara says something nearly identical, that sharing would wound his pride and he is far too fragile to handle it. You could even add Astarion’s line from the other end, where if you ask Astarion to share with you and Karlach, he will say they shouldn’t because Karlach loves the player and relationships are fragile (implying that he either thinks open relationships don’t work if there’s love involved, or perhaps he himself can only do open relationships if he doesn’t love the other person).

The main argument I’ve seen disproving these statements by Shadowheart and Minthara is that they’re just plain wrong about him. If so, it’s a strange writing choice to not only have both of them be wrong about the exact same thing, but they’re both high wisdom characters who are proven to understand Astarion in a lot of ways other characters don’t. (All three of them have been enslaved and manipulated, Minthara comprehends the depths of his relationship with Cazador within minutes of being in the camp, and Shadowheart is one of the closest to Astarion in terms of friendship and liking him.)
If Astarion actually is fine with poly, then it means both Shadowheart and Minthara are wrong. That means the writers either made a mistake or made a very weird writing choice.
However, if Astarion is actually pretending to be fine with sharing as they say, not only is the writing consistent but these dialogues become very clever foreshadowing. I want to give the writers the benefit of the doubt and believe they did a good job with Astarion, so I prefer to lean into the theory that he’s pretending because it makes more sense for him overall.
That was quite a long tangent and somewhat unnecessary, but he’s a character whose mannerisms and statements are meant to be heavily analyzed, so it’s fun to go more in depth. Let’s move on.

1. ISSUES WITH HOW HALSIN WAS PRESENTED

We’re finally at the last point, and in a way the direct cause of this entire thread: Halsin. Now, I have no issue with Halsin being poly (again, he’s listed as one of my four ideal options for it) but I do have several issues with how he was written and presented. The Shadowheart part I will skip over because I already got into it, but there are many other problems to address and most of them could have been fixed very easily.

1. He is not presented as poly until Act 3. I was reading through a thread full of people who loved him and several of them were early access players who had requested he become a romance option. However, the reason they requested him was very important. In EA, all three of the male options seemed immature (Wyll), condescending (Gale), or straight up evil (Astarion). Meanwhile Halsin was, in their words, a mature man who seems like the type to settle down with them in a cottage and help raise their kids. This is the impression he gives and what drew many people to him. As a result, many of these players were extremely disappointed to reach Act 3 once the game was out and discover that not only was he the complete opposite of their initial impression, but he won’t even stay with the player after the game ends (in most cases). Honestly, if I was a developer and saw that they liked him for those earlier reasons, I wouldn’t make him strictly poly because that wasn’t what the players wanted. They wanted him because he was muscular and a good, stable man. It was a very odd choice to turn around and give the players the opposite of what they asked for. But if the devs were truly determined to go the poly route, they should have at least gone back to Act 1 and 2 and slipped in some hints that he was poly. I saw some newer players who recently played the game for the first time and wanted to romance him for the aforementioned reasons (stable, mature, kind, huge). They ignored all other romances until Act 3, then got hit with the “I’m only poly” discussion. Had they known he wasn’t monogamous, they wouldn’t have blown off all the other options.
   
2. But let’s ignore that. We’re focusing on the world where he IS completely poly (though some were arguing that it should at least be an option to ask if he’ll try being monogamous with the player.) The way he is presented still has a lot of issues according to poly players. For one, the way he tries to butt in on the relationship is done in a really sketchy manner (especially considering what some of the Origin characters have gone through/are currently going through). It would have been far better to do what they did with Minsc and give the PLAYER the option to hit on Halsin, rather than the other way around. Have them offer poly to him, and then he can discuss it from there. Having the proposition come from Halsin himself puts him in a negative light, and it’s pretty clear the writers didn’t actually want to portray him as a bad person so they messed up here.
   
3. The flagging for Halsin’s dialogues is awful and despite seeing people report it for eight months, that hasn’t changed. Even if you pick the most neutral option, he will still hit on you by saying “I think you feel the same way”. Not a good idea. “I HOPE you feel the same way” would have been infinitely better. Women often have to deal with people assuming their friendly, professional conversation is something more when it isn’t. It’s not a great idea to bring that into fantasy games too. It hit too close to home for some.
   
4. Even if you use the most neutral option at the Act 1 party (“Go have fun and mingle”), your main dialogue option the next day is “Sorry for coming on so strong last night”. It’s a strange thing to say. Again, I’m not sure how developers missed this and why it was never patched out. I saw people reporting it since the release.
   
5. He will also ask for a relationship at neutral approval. In most of my playthroughs, I stopped talking to him beyond the Thaniel quest and avoided asking about his personal life. He still led his proposition with “I think you feel the same way”. How does he know when we only spoke to him three times? They should have at least required you to go through all his extra dialogues before triggering this.
   
6. When Halsin says he loves you, you have two options: reject him straight away, or ask about his opinions a little more. Oddly enough, if you ask a bit more and THEN reject him, he’ll have a proper response. “That’s fine. I understand. I won’t ask again.” However, if you reject him as soon as he starts talking to you, his response is very off putting. He’ll protest and say, “but you asked me about my former lovers” or, if you didn’t even do that, he’ll claim “you looked after me with the care of a lover, not a host.” These pushy assumptions turned a lot of people off. This is entirely on the writer, in my opinion. He should have realized how weird these sounded.
   
7. Halsin is the only person you can’t dismiss from your camp at any point through dialogue. All of the origins have to be pursued and recruited intentionally. Halsin is the only exception. This makes some sense because you need him to cure the Shadowlands, but for Act 3, he literally has nothing to do. They should have given players an option after the Ketheric fight to dismiss him and tell him to take care of the Shadowlands. It makes a lot more sense narratively and would help avoid a lot of the more awkward parts later.
   
8. Halsin’s initial dialogue about monogamy vs. polyamory is mostly fine, with him comparing it to gardens and wolves vs. bears. But (and don’t quote me on this because I can’t recall the specifics), if you ask your partner to do poly and they say no, Halsin will be a little more judgmental about your partner, saying he was hoping they would be more “open minded”. Statistically, the majority of BG3’s players are going to be monogamous, so it’s strange to see nearly every character (monogamous or poly) criticize monogamy in some way. It is called selfish, narrow minded, and old fashioned by at least 3 characters to my knowledge (Halsin, Act 1 Astarion, and even Gale (who is monogamous himself)). If the developers truly wanted to be inclusive, criticizing one’s lifestyle and having no characters openly defend it in the game (even those who practice it) is a disappointing choice. In this case, it might be an unintentional mistake (maybe they feared that by defending monogamy, they were somehow demonizing polygamy or polyamory), but it would have been better to just leave the criticisms out of it entirely if that was the case.
   

And that’s it. I think that’s all the points from myself and others that I wanted to compile. I don’t think any of this will be changed in BG3 but I hope all of these points and opinions will at least improve any future games. It’s great that BG3 was able to make nuanced characters with their own opinions and preferences—I much prefer it to “everyone is poly and no one gets mad if you cheat” games where characters feel more like statues than living beings—but I do wish they thought the poly options through more carefully (trying to make poly people comfortable while leaving room for monogamous players to enjoy the romances too).
The only feasible fix the developers could make at this point to avoid all the issues mentioned is keeping Halsin poly but removing his connections to other Origin romances (or at least Karlach and Astarion). At this point, that’s the only thing that could realistically be done. I also wish they made characters break up with you if you cheat on them in the brothel, since that’s what many people including myself would do.
Again, these opinions are my own (and those that aren’t come from a variety of comments across Youtube, Reddit, and Larian’s forums). I enjoyed getting to see so many different viewpoints and appreciated how civil (most of) the people on both sides were. It’s an interesting topic and here’s hoping game studios handle it better in the future.
If anyone reads this far and wants links to the threads, forums, and youtube comment sections, let me know.

[Obvious spoilers for character romances, relationships, and a few character arcs. I don't recommend reading this post unless you've beaten the game.]
I’ll start off with the most obvious disclaimer: this post is not here to critique polyamory itself or its inclusion in the game. I’m all for adding the option to games (and BG3 as well) as long as it’s done respectfully and in a way that can make both monogamous and polyamorous players comfortable. This post will discuss what the game could have done better, why the characters they chose to make poly were poorly thought out, and what characters should have (hypothetically) been chosen instead. (The suggestions of who SHOULD have been chosen would give poly players MORE options, rather than less, while also maintaining character consistency and helping mono people feel comfortable too).
These suggestions are, of course, my own opinion coupled with a lot of threads I read all over the internet from three groups: monogamous players, poly players who liked what BG3 did, and poly players who felt it was handled poorly/felt uncomfortable with it. I myself didn’t care to go through the poly routes in the game but after I read some youtube comments on the Halsin topic, I got fully invested in the discussion and dove through youtube, reddit, and Larian threads to hear everyone’s opinions. As a monogamous person myself, it was interesting to hear thoughts from the poly players about what they felt uncomfortable with and how things should have been written instead. As a result, this thread is less my own thoughts and more a compilation of all the ideas/suggestions I saw people come up with.
The goal of this post is not to hate on the developers or people from either side of the debate, but to find a middle ground the developers could have used that would make both monogamous people and polyamorous people happy. The current game did appeal to some poly players, but it left a lot of other ones dissatisfied, and when half of your target audience is feeling skeptical about how you handled something, it’s good to take notice (and even though it’s too late for any changes to be made, it’s fun to talk about the hypotheticals and suggest what pitfalls could be avoided when developing future games).
This post will be formatted like so: (yes, I know it’s long but after having all the discussions and debates run through my head for a few days, it’s nice to get them all written down and out of my brain)

1. Important factors that should be considered when adding poly relationships to your game (in a way that makes at least the majority of your audience comfortable)
   
2. Which characters should have been chosen to be poly instead of the ones we got (and why)
   
3. Why the characters the developers chose to make poly weren’t ideal
   
4. Issues with how Halsin was presented
   

A few more points I want to emphasize before I start.

1. This post isn’t just focusing on the story and character motivations, but also on what makes the players feel at ease. You can’t make everyone happy, obviously, but there were a lot of mistakes BG3 made that could have been easily solved (with suggestions from both sides). I want to see games where both monogamous players and poly players can find the romance options they’re seeking without feeling ignored or pushed aside.
   
2. While it is easy to say, “It’s just a videogame. We shouldn’t worry about what the characters think because they’re fictional,” I say both yes and no. While the feelings of the characters shouldn’t be cared about (because they’re not real), the writers clearly wanted each character to have their own backstory, morals, opinions, and fears. I’d argue most of, if not all of the characters were written really well and in a realistic manner (as realistic as you can get with tadpoles in your brains and magical abilities). The writers WANTED us to take these characters seriously, as well as the portrayals of abuse that some of them represent, so it’s not surprising that lots of players analyze them. The fact that so many different people took the time to discuss the character romances and relationships is a testament to how well written the characters are. It’s okay to say the poly interactions felt ‘out of character’ and debate why.
   

​
Part 1. IMPORTANT FACTORS THAT NEED TO BE CONSIDERED WHEN ADDING POLY RELATIONSHIPS TO YOUR GAME (particularly when monogamous relationships are also part of the game). Most of these will be things other people have said, some of which I never even considered until they brought it up.
- Communication with the players
- Consent (particularly ‘enthusiastic consent’)
- Lying, pressure, and coercion
- Character backstories and potential trauma

1. Communication with the players

One of the biggest issues I had with BG3’s poly relationships is that the developers didn’t try to effectively communicate which options players had until Act 3 (when it’s too late to change your mind). A monogamous player could start a character romance, only to be disappointed in Act 3 when they find out the character is poly. Likewise, a poly player would assume someone is poly, then have that character change their mind halfway through. Now, in terms of narrative, this can be quite interesting, and in terms of real life, I’m sure this happens often. However, when you’re looking at it from a developer’s standpoint, it's not a good idea to do this. If you want to make players comfortable and satisfied with the romance options, you need to make it clear to them what they’re getting themselves into.
So, if you’ve written a poly character into your game, you need to let the players know. Once the topic of romance/sex is brought up, have that character confidently state their thoughts and expectations about it. This way mono players can go, “Oh, this type of relationship isn’t for me. I’ll try to romance someone else.” Meanwhile poly players can say, “This is what I’m looking for.” This way, neither party has to google which characters are or aren’t poly and risk spoiling important plot points for themselves. Likewise, if a character is monogamous, writers should do the same thing.
Two great poly examples are Act 1 Laezel and Dragon Age’s Zevran. As soon as the topic of relationships is brought up, they explain their stance on sex, relationships, expectations, and possible reasons for why they think the way they do. It’s done in a fairly natural manner and fits their character.
Of course, what makes this more difficult is a character like Astarion, whose entire personality is largely an act until he opens up in Act 2. This does make communication with the player harder, but an easy solution is: once he opens up about his true feelings, have him restate what he truly wants in a relationship. (Even that’s difficult for someone like him, who doesn’t know what he wants, but we’re looking at this from a hypothetical developer’s standpoint, not what we currently have.) Having him (subtly) express his expectations here leaves room for players to again say, “Oh, that’s not what I’m looking for. Let’s stay friends.” The devs should then leave some romance options open in Act 2 so players can reevaluate and choose someone else without getting locked out. (Again, this is obviously impossible to fix now. This should have been thought through in early development).
Consent (particularly enthusiastic consent)
One of the biggest issues I saw being brought up from poly players was the topic of consent, especially what they repeatedly prioritized: enthusiastic consent. The ideal response they’re looking for when talking to their partner is that their lover is wholly on board with the arrangement, comfortable expressing their true feelings, and doesn’t feel pressured to agree when they really don’t want to deep down. Out of the three BG3 poly options, only one of them (Shadowheart) had poly players feeling comfortable with her reaction to ‘opening up’ the relationship with Halsin (and even then, there were disagreements).
I can’t get too far into this discussion without bringing up my next point, so I’ll skip to it.
Lying, pressure, and coercion
This is the part that initially piqued my interest when reading that first youtube comment section. Many of the comments were poly people saying, “If my partner reacted to the Halsin arrangement the way Karlach and Astarion did, I would not go through with it.” Coupled with that were poly players saying, “I was hoping for enthusiastic consent and ethical poly. I was disappointed to find neither.” There were a lot of people disappointed with how the poly was written. One person even recommended it to their poly friends, then walked the recommendation back when they finished the game and felt the writers handled it carelessly.
Lots of people, both monogamous and poly, had their doubts about Karlach and Astarion’s reactions. Were they fully comfortable with the poly relationship or were they just saying what their lover wanted to hear? Were they scared of appearing weak and controlling so they pushed their own wishes down? Karlach literally says she’s not fine with it but will tolerate it because she loves you. Astarion’s true thoughts are more uncertain because he has a history of lying to make people happy and struggles with boundaries. I saw many people on the fence about both of them.
Now, in real life, there can obviously be nuance. You can spend hours discussing poly with your partner and checking in with them throughout the relationship to make sure they’re still on board. Some people may genuinely be fine with it but sound nervous at first. Others may NOT be fine with it and lie to avoid being abandoned.
The issue is that we’re addressing a video game where you CAN’T check in with your partner regularly and you only get 1 minute to gauge their reaction. That, coupled with their backstories and how the characters were written up to that point, is bound to make a lot of people (mono and poly) raise an eyebrow or feel uneasy.
While one can argue that leaving the poly relationships open ended/up to interpretation is an artistic choice or an attempt to add realism to the game, at the end of the day, you’re making a lot more people uncomfortable than you need to. There were plenty of poly players who just wanted to see healthy poly relationships with enthusiastic consent, and that’s it. They didn’t want to ask themselves if this was the right decision or if they were making their lover feel worse deep down. That’s something to address in reality, not fantasy. If the developers wanted to welcome poly players in, they should have done so in a way that makes them feel comfortable/satisfied.
This point will lead into WHO I think should have been poly instead but that’s for a little later in the post.
Character backstories and potential trauma
This is largely referring to Astarion but applies to Shadowheart and Karlach as well: If you are going to give characters a lot of layers, insecurities, fears, and trauma, you need to handle their relationships carefully. Not only are you building a character, but you’re letting players see their own traits reflected back at them. When it comes to abuse (physical or sexual), I personally think it’s important to consider player reactions to certain aspects of the game (especially those who have experienced abuse in their own lives).
I think Astarion’s sexual abuse and overcoming of trauma was well written (and a lot of people who experienced similar situations agreed). However, once the developers added poly into his story, I witnessed two prominent reactions from players:
- People defending it, saying that they were fine with poly relationships in their own lives despite going through abusive relationships (which is completely fine and valid).
- People who had the opposite experience, where they lied and said they were fine with poly to please their partners, then felt miserable throughout the relationships. (This is also fine and valid.) These players (even some who went through with the poly relationship in the game) came out feeling uncomfortable and reminded of their pasts.
The ambiguity the developers went for just made this whole situation worse, as it led to arguments and disagreements in the community, with some people insisting the brothel scene helps Astarion heal, while many believed it had the opposite effect. The same arguments were made regarding the Halsin relationship.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with writing a story and sticking to it regardless of how uncomfortable it makes people feel, but in this case, there were so many other options besides Astarion you could have chosen. I think in the long run, it’s better to leave his character away from poly to avoid making lots of people (including SA victims) uneasy when it’s an optional feature anyway. (No one would have complained if he said a simple “that’s not what I’m looking for” or “I’m not comfortable sharing” and left it at that.)
(I’ll go more into more detail about Astarion, Karlach, and Shadowheart later, but will move on for now.)
​

1. WHICH CHARACTERS SHOULD HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO BE POLY INSTEAD OF THE ONES WE GOT (AND WHY)

Now, just because I recommend removing poly options from certain characters doesn’t mean it should be omitted entirely. I just think there were far better options available to the developers (character wise, story wise, and player expectation wise). I agree with the online sentiment that instead of taking a step back and figuring out which characters worked best for poly, the developers instead chose the most popular male and female characters and called it a day without discussing whether or not these were the ideal options.
As I was reading through everyone’s complaints and critiques of the poly implementation, I took a moment to figure out which characters would fit it best. I took several factors into account.
You need a character who poly players are confident their yes means yes and no means no (meaning they need to be a generally honest and forthright person). It’s not a good idea to have sexual trauma or a past of people pleasing/coercion because while not all SA victims are monogamous by any means, because it’s a video game and not real life, this opens the door to a lot of other issues and can leave poly players unsure if the character’s past influenced their ability to say yes or no. This is especially relevant because the game only takes place over 4 months. Not only are the romantic relationships just beginning, but Karlach and Astarion literally killed their abusers a few days ago. The pain is still fresh and a lot of healing needs to be done. It’s better to leave the sexual content away from them for now (and if poly players want to imagine the characters opening up the relationship later, they can. It just shouldn’t happen in the current game.)
With those factors in mind, I started narrowing down the characters to figure out which ones would suit the criteria.
Ones that AREN’T a perfect fit:
Astarion: two hundred years of sexual abuse (which is a lot to recover from), he just regained his bodily autonomy, he is a habitual liar, he can be talked into doing things he hates and only protests after the deed is done, even after Cazador dies in Act 3 he will do things he doesn’t want to in order to appease the player, killing one’s abuser does not magically fix all the internal issues and insecurities, the list goes on.
Gale: His issues aren’t as obvious or prominent but he also has a history of people pleasing and doing things he doesn’t want to simply to make his partner happy (see Mystra and the brothel scene).
Karlach: While she is pretty chill about the brothel, the most prominent problem this game has is that she’s literally dying. Even if she was open to poly, as someone pointed out, any loving partner would dedicate what little time they have left to focusing on her.
Shadowheart: This one has the most discussions around it because the writing is inconsistent. This is also the only romance I personally haven’t gone through so I can’t get into full details. However, what I have seen discussed is: brainwashing and memory wipes, being forced to be a “honeypot” against her will, she links her love of poly back to the cult that she spent the whole game trying to escape, her personality does a fairly sudden 180 when poly is brought up. This specific case is more of a “the poly aspect makes the writing feel inconsistent” but the issues of her cult and coercion are also very important.
That leads into characters who ARE a better fit (and bear in mind that this would require rewrites and other stuff that would have had to happen in earlier stages of development, though the tweaks would honestly be minimal):
Minthara: She may have insecurities about the Absolute and choosing her own path, but she is never insecure when dealing with romance. She knows what she wants and how to get it. While I adore her “lay a finger on them, and I’ll cut you” dialogue in the brothel, no one would have been surprised if she was written as poly. It fits her character and if she says, “Go right on with Halsin,” we all know she means it. You could honestly take Ascended Astarion’s Halsin dialogue and paste it into hers instead. The “you are mine” line would make more sense for her than him.
Laezel: This is the most obvious one. She is not only confident in her relationships and sexual preferences, but she also comes from a poly society. Like Minthara, she knows what she wants and will refuse if she doesn’t agree with something. Again, while I love her romance shifting from only wanting casual sex to becoming strictly monogamous, no one would have been surprised if she remained consistent throughout instead.
Halsin: He doesn’t have a history of lying, he knows what he wants, and he is supposed to be one of the more mature members of the group. While I think his writing itself was handled poorly (I dedicate a whole section to that at the end), he’s still a fine option for poly. My only change would be that they make his preferences very obvious in Act 1 and or 2. I saw lots of Halsin fans being super disappointed when they found out he wasn’t willing to be monogamous (and again, you don’t learn this until sixty hours in, so you’ve not only missed out on all the other romances but you can’t just go back and remedy that easily). His talk about the drow kidnapping in the brothel is questionable but that’s easy enough to omit (I saw a lot of people wondering why it was added at all. While Astarion’s trauma was carefully implemented, many felt Halsin’s was carelessly tacked on and almost fetishized.)
This final one is tricky. We know the developers wanted a male option but it’s hard when both Wyll and Gale are written as strictly monogamous. However, going by my criteria from before and therefore omitting Gale and Astarion for aforementioned issues, that leaves us only one option (and it makes sense the more I think about it).
Wyll: Like the other three, Wyll doesn’t lie to spare people’s feelings. He knows what he wants, he accepts his decisions (even the Mizora one), and he is always down to have an open discussion about anything. The only thing holding him back from poly narratively is his nobility and wish to be traditional. Just like the others, I personally like this trait, but since we’re speaking in “what if’s” we can ignore that. It’s easy enough to tweak his story to him being more open to try new things (especially because in most endings, he doesn’t end up becoming a noble anyway). I did see a few people mention that making Wyll the poly option instead of Astarion would have made him more interesting and layered as well.
Of course, these implementations would have to be coupled with them being truthful/open about their poly traits from the beginning of the game, as mentioned before.
This lineup also fixes another problem people had: the current BG3 poly options completely cut off lesbians and straight men. Only bisexuals, straight women, or gay men can have a poly relationship in the game.
What I propose (or at least pretend to since no real changes will be made) is that Halsin and Minthara are the ones who suggest the poly thing (or more ideally, it’s a dialogue option for the PLAYER to choose, since many poly people said it’s weird to insert yourself into a couple rather than having the couple proposition you). This way the options can expand. You now have
Minthara and Laezel
Minthara and Wyll
Halsin and Laezel
Halsin and Wyll
I stumbled upon some threads in this rabbit hole where people were initially debating who they thought would be poly (before the game officially came out). The three most prominent answers were: Minthara, Laezel, and Astarion (though I should clarify that at this point, most players assumed Astarion’s hedonistic playboy persona was real and not an act). On the other hand, once the poly options were fully available and explored, most people were surprised (in a negative way) that Astarion, Shadowheart, and Karlach had been chosen. They felt that poly had been slapped on to sell more games, rather than carefully implemented to fit the story.
Now that I’ve established the alternative I believe should have happened, I can expand a little more on why what we got wasn’t satisfactory. (I’d like to add a note that I personally romanced Astarion the most, Karlach once, and Shadowheart never, so the evidence I go over will heavily lean to one side, unfortunately. There are other redditors who get into the Shadowheart debate in more detail than I could. I can link these below if anyone bothers to read this far and wants to see them.)
​

1. WHY THE CHARACTERS THE DEVELOPERS CHOSE TO MAKE POLY WEREN’T IDEAL

Karlach:
This is the most simple of the three. On the surface, I initially thought she would be a good idea for poly. She lets you sleep with the prostitutes in the brothel, she’s pretty blatant about her wants and needs, she’s touch starved, and she initially seems like she’d be fine with Halsin.
But there are two issues:
One, in the Halsin proposition dialogue, she outright states that she isn’t really cool with a poly relationship. (She says something along the lines of, “I’ll have to chew on that for a while. I’m not sure I want this right now and don’t think I ever will.”) So she’s very blatant in telling you that this isn’t what she wants, but she’ll tolerate it because she loves you. It’s easy to see why this would make poly people feel bad and wish for an alternative.
Now, this could be fixed by changing her dialogue to being super enthusiastic, but even if you did, you get problem two: She is dying. She has weeks left to live. You the player spend most of your day fighting enemies so you only have a few hours left to spend with your lover. No kind hearted partner, poly or otherwise, would waste those precious hours on a casual relationship with Halsin when they should be focusing entirely on Karlach. Halsin will still be around at the end of the game. To the player’s knowledge, Karlach won’t.
If she wasn’t dying, I would list her as a possible poly option. But because she only has a few weeks to live, she just can’t be. Her existence as one of the three poly options was what cemented the theory (in my mind) that the developers chose the most popular romance options, rather than the ideal ones.
Shadowheart:
Again, this was the one that some skeptical poly people said felt the most right in terms of presentation. She is enthusiastic about Halsin and the twins, she participates, and if you were to pick the most likely to be cool with it, she wins.
However, there are still a lot of issues with this choice (in terms of backstory, insecurities, reasons for poly, and treatment of monogamous players). Again, please bear in mind that this is the one romance I myself didn’t do so some facts may be off or vague.
Backstory: Her entire life up to this point has been erased. She was forced to do horrific things against her will (abusing her parents, being abused herself, torturing others, seducing people). She puts up a constant act of loving torture and being evil, but as you play through the game, you realize she doesn’t actually like harming people and she seeks genuine connections and love despite claiming she doesn’t. I didn’t fully appreciate her until I did an evil Dark Urge run because while my psychotic monk, dictator Minthara, and Ascended Astarion were killing people left and right, she continued to disapprove of our evil actions despite “choosing” Shar in the end. To a lesser extent than Astarion, she does lie to the player about her wishes and intentions, which is one of the criteria I went into earlier.
Insecurities: I didn’t see this myself but I read plenty of threads about how her confidence is also an act. She is one of the only characters to continually ask the player if their relationship is still ongoing and if they’re happy with her. Her dialogue throughout the romance seems to be leading to her preferring monogamy and complete loyalty, so it feels out of character when she suddenly switches at the end of her arc. (Can real life people do this? Sure. Is it a very strange and sometimes off-putting writing choice? Yes, especially because there are very few hints (if any) of her being poly throughout the romance.) This also links into my ‘communicating that a character is poly to the player’ problem from earlier.
Reasons for poly: This is what I personally had the most issue with. If you cheat on her with Mizora, she explains that she’s fine with poly and/or open relationships and asks that you communicate with her first. Fine. No issues there. The problem arises when she explains WHY she’s fine with open relationships. It’s because Lady Shar encouraged it in the cult she grew up in. You know, the cult that abused her and brainwashed her for years. The one she spent the entire game trying to escape. She continually tries to distance herself from both Shar and the practices she encouraged. She expresses disgust in the Act 3 section when talking about how she had to torture and seduce people. She could choose to be poly for herself after the fact, but players are allowed to be a little concerned that her main reason for being poly is directly a result of her abusive goddess’s teachings.
Similar to Astarion, it is possible for someone in Shadowheart’s position to be poly in real life. Everyone is different and reacts to things differently. However, from a writer and developer standpoint, it’s better to just leave her monogamous and avoid all these pitfalls. As we saw, even with her enthusiastic consent to Halsin and the twins, her backstory and character arc up to that point still left people doubtful and uncomfortable. Again, since there are much better options for poly characters, why choose Shadowheart?
My final point for Shadowheart was about how it treated monogamous players. This personally irked me and I feel like it was the worst way to introduce poly because it actively antagonizes monogamous players and ruins the experience for them. (Thankfully Karlach and Astarion’s poly romances didn’t seem to have this issue to such an obvious extent).
I’ll summarize what people experienced when romancing Shadowheart. In Act 3, Halsin asks you to start a poly relationship with Shadowheart. If you tell him, “No, I’m not interested” he says that’s fine and will move on. No problem there. The issue arises if you keep him in your party. Despite you rejecting him, he will proceed to flirt with Shadowheart instead, which makes him seem pushy and creepy (which you don’t want as a writer unless it’s intentional). This made things particularly uncomfortable for lesbian players, though I completely understand how it would make ANY monogamous player annoyed, regardless of gender or preference. What makes it worse is that Shadowheart will then flirt back with him. The game ignores any preferences or input from the player here and they can’t respond to it. This bothered me, since the game up to that point seemed to at least respect the fact that mono players exist and want to have a romance that suits them.
But you could argue it was just a bug/forgetting to flag dialogue correctly. I could accept that, until you take both Shadowheart and Halsin to the brothel. Not only will Halsin invite himself in a third time after being rejected, but Shadowheart will say she’s dreamed of having sex with him before the player can even accept or reject Halsin’s suggestion. Most people would rightfully get angry when their romantic partner mentions wanting to sleep with one of their friends. From a writer’s standpoint, this is just disrespectful to the player’s choices and has zero reason to be this way. I’m not sure how such a mistake was made and why it hasn’t been rectified, but I’m disappointed that they didn’t at least lock that section behind the poly romance. It’s a fine scene if you HAVE agreed to date Halsin, but the existence of poly relationships shouldn’t completely ruin the experience for monogamous players. The writers should have tried to view these interactions from both perspectives, rather than simply one side or the other. And again, because the writers failed to communicate Shadowheart’s preferences early on, no one encountered this until they were three acts in and invested.
[There's a character limit so I'll have to do a part 2 to finish the Astarion points and discuss Halsin.]

Hey people. I wanted to share my long ass story about how nitrous used to be one of my most favorite things in the world and now my relationship with it is complicated and twisted.
A lot of this will tackle interpersonal relationship dynamics, but I’m trying to illustrate to the reader the progression of how this drug took my ex’s mind. This is more of a thorough essay about my experience than a rant. When I was going through what I went through at the time, I wished there was a story like this out there to help me know better and understand. This is how I watched the love of my life melt away his brain on this drug.
I will try and keep this brief, but it probably won't be. I wish to convey the addictiveness this drug can have and the toll it can take on your mind and body. In the summer of 2022 I met my then bf who introduced me to the rave scene and drug scene he was a part of. He really only used K and Nitrous (which I will refer to as N going forward). He told me about his 1.5 years of being addicted to K, but did not inform me of his also 1.5 years (at the time) addiction to N. He told me after meeting me he didn’t want to abuse K anymore so as far as I knew when we started dating he got better about that.
It all started very early in the relationship. We went to a weekend festival together and both found doing N together was so fun. We continued on using and abusing N every weekend, and sometimes many weekdays. Probably going through 6 or 8+ tanks a week, this went on for like 3 months. Sadly, I do look back on those days fondly, despite what would happen later down the line. We had so much fun together and yes sadly it bonded us in this weird way. Using it causes you to feel more open and positive in the beginning, and we had so many heartfelt and deep conversations. And it felt like a little special world we could go into together.
At the time I had no clue how much those small-medium sized tanks cost ($65 and up for just one where we live). And he never told me how much they cost, and didn’t ask me to chip in, so I had no idea he was throwing himself into financial ruin buying them all the time. Looking back I have no idea why I didn’t ask, I just figured they were only $25 or something, or his friend was giving them to him, and I was aware it was probably a poor financial decision, but figured he could bounce back after the summer. You have to understand I thought I had him figured out, but I didn’t really know him that well at this point, or know about the drug scene at all. Before this I really only drank and smoked weed with the occasional cid or shrooms trip.
Three months into us dating and abusing N we come to the conclusion we just need to stop and take a break from N as this had all become quite excessive. Still he doesn’t explain to me how much debt he is in from buying all of those tanks over the summer. Two months into the break and he’s starting to crack, asking for me to be okay with us using it regularly. I tell him that I think it’s okay for us to just do it once and awhile. It was hard to not cave in because truthfully I missed it as well, I myself was starting to feel the addictiveness of this drug, so I reserved it so that I only ever did it with him. We go back to doing it occasionally on the weekends. Over the span of 1 month my bf started to constantly complain of having nerve issues, his feet and legs and hands were numb, I also noticed that he seemed really depressed. This is when he started to experience the vitamin B deficiency, although both me and him didn’t realize this at the time.
Around this time is when he finally and unceremoniously reveals to me how much these things actually cost. This is the tricky aspect of his personality I would go on to experience more of. It was clear he was resentful towards me, that I had no idea how much money he was spending, but the reality is if I had known how much those things cost I would have ended it a lot sooner. I didn’t even understand how he had the ability to spend so much money, I don’t even want to do the math. I would find out later he would just take out credit cards and max them out. In addition to him doing them with me occasionally, he was also doing them behind my back, which I had caught him doing several times and was always forgiving over this.
So, because of this constant spending he was in a substantial amount of debt. What he told me at the time was around $6,000. Knowing him, this was probably a generous assessment. This is definitely a point in the story where I should have left him. Clearly he was developing this addiction towards N and spent an ungodly amount of money that was beyond even my comprehension. But, I was head over heels and believed that he could figure this out. People go into debt all the time, I would tell myself. But I told him, this all needed to outright stop. No more N, not even occasionally. Unfortunately while he of course agreed to my face I have to suspect now, he was doing it behind my back all the time. Around this time he wouldn’t come home from work until 7 or 7:30 which didn’t make sense as his hours at work would fluctuate from time to time, but he was usually always off at 5. He would lie and say his work was very busy and made him stay later, which I believed at the time.
Maybe about a month later we are in bed together sleeping, it’s the middle of the night. He wakes me up and explains he literally cannot feel his feet or legs and has been having trouble walking for the past several days. I take him to the ER that night. This night and the following weeks after were some of the most heartbreaking and emotionally terrifying times of my life so far. At this time neither of us had any idea or reason to suspect N was the reason for this. We actually talked to the doctor there and ran tests for over 3 hours, he got an MRI and a spinal tap which was so hard to watch being done to him. It wasn’t until I desperately did research on my phone in the hospital room and suddenly see all of these remarks and reddit posts and studies about N causing paralysis and nerve damage. I tell my bf and the doctor and they have no trouble assessing that is what is causing this. They give him a regiment of vitamin B shots as you typically do in this situation. The doctor even said that they hope they can stop permanent damage from happening, because if not he may lose control of his legs and it may spread to his pelvic area (IE dick don’t work) etc, he had to do physical therapy and see a drug counselor.
The following days and weeks after I was constantly on edge worrying and wondering if my bf and love of my life would lose his ability to walk. Thankfully, the treatment took and he didn’t even end up needing physical therapy. This is when I truly believe or would like to hope he actually quit and wasn’t doing N behind my back. Unfortunately it wouldn’t matter, as I’ve learned, a lot of symptoms of N abuse don’t show themselves until after you stop. Shortly after this event is when our relationship took a nosedive. He had also ditched the drug counselor. To compensate for no N he was drinking so often. He started to become aggressive and violent. I remember it all started in a fight where he got real close and in my face and stared me down to try and intimidate me. In a way it was both terrifying and laughable (because he’s only a few inches taller than me), I couldn’t even comprehend the kind of person he had turned into. After that came the months and months of never ending name calling, insults, degradation, and constant arguments over every little thing I did. He became so addicted to the high of his power trip of making me feel small and weak he would find any excuse to fly into a rage at me, even when we were tripping on mushrooms together.
Nothing was ever the same after that. We didn’t go out, didn’t do dates, and every activity together felt like it was all a big chore to him. I could look in his eyes and see he was constantly thinking about N, and when he would do it next. He really changed, and what I am now realizing is he was probably starting to experience the effects of pure brain damage. My close friends who knew him even agree with me that there is a huge change in his demeanor around this time in April of 2023.
I also want to add more info about his bizarre behavior. He started to develop an unhealthy obsession with social media, scrutinizing what I posted and what he posted. He started to obsess over current events of any kind, any breaking story or ongoing conflict and he would rant and rant about the current state of the world and destruction of humanity all the time. He started to get obsessed with mental health and psychology and pathologize me and himself and other people in our lives. He would send me 10 videos everyday about mental health and relationships and expect me to reply and have a response for every single one like a book report. This obsession with the destruction of humanity turned into a paranoia about the world, he would often say no one understands him, and he is all alone. He turned on his best friends of several years because he was paranoid they were racists or had bad morals (they were all pleasant and nice people who enjoy edgy humor from time to time). There was no more middle ground for anything, you either loved something fully, or hated it fully. Somewhere down the line he actually got his account banned on Instagram for the craziest reason. He couldn’t stop or control himself from having heated arguments with random strangers in comments sections, of almost any video of any topic. He would insult people there constantly.
Here is another big mistake I made.I allowed him to live with me, and we moved in together. At this point we had been dating for a year. Before this I lived on my own and didn’t want to renew my lease, and he was living with his dad who was abusive and financially took advantage of him. At the time I was convinced that this bad behavior would go away if he could get away from his dad and his toxic household. Well the toxicity only followed. That summer we went to another weekend festival and he revealed to me when we got there he had purchased N and brought it. I was so conflicted as I myself had missed it quite a lot, and I had to deny myself my healthy regulated usage of it in order to not trigger him. I caved again and said we could do it only for this weekend. You may not at all be surprised to learn it didn’t end that way.
After the festival everything truly fell apart. He continued to buy tanks of N and do them behind my back constantly. He would say he was just going to his car to talk to his friends, or his mom, and be gone for hours. Because he was totally abusing me and I had no idea because I was under his spell of manipulation, I had no recourse. Any comment of mine asking why he was gone for so long, why can’t he just talk to his friends inside our apartment, I’ll go in the other room for privacy, was only met with complete indifference. These questions only pissed him off. He would say it’s because I was so exhausting and demanding he needed a break from me. When I would call him when he’s on one of these “excursions,” he would every so often mute the call while I was talking or in a silent moment. I eventually realized he was hitting the tank every time he muted himself. When I finally called him out on this he gaslit me and told me he just does this all the time because he coughs and clears his throat, fyi he had never done this before in our relationship. Because I had no recourse I just had to agree and move on. And because his mind was deteriorating more and more each day he would go on to make randomly muting himself in calls as a common, thing so as to keep up the facade he told me. Actual crazy behavior.
He even started doing K again, he would clearly be f-ed out of his mind by both K and N, and stumble around our apartment with crazy red bulging eyes and again and again tell me he was just drunk. Around this time is when he finally divulges to me not only had he been abusing K for the 1.5 years before he met me, he had also been abusing N for 1.5 years before he met me. And it wasn’t actually the case that he only “began” to become addicted to N when we started dating and doing it together. This really started to put a lot into perspective for me, and it made sense how he had almost paralyzed himself over this, now at this current time 3+ year addiction to these substances, and it made me realize how psychologically and cognitively he was failing based on changes in his personality. You also have to understand he explained to me before he met me, he was doing 1.5-2 grams of K or more and N, EVERYDAY.
And still at this time the name calling, insults and manipulation continued. He of course was no longer experiencing any true “high” from the N anymore, it would just simply dull his senses. It was like a stereotypical violent alcoholic husband comes home from the bar and berates his wife, kind of situation, except with N. And I became obsessed with figuring out how to get him to stop and go back to the loving person I remembered meeting and loving. I began to do very toxic things, going through his backpack, going through his car, and constantly always finding tanks and balloons and all kinds of paraphilia everywhere. I would find tanks in our recycling bin, like he actually thought I wouldn’t notice. I would come home late from being with friends and catch him passed out on the couch with an empty tank in his hand. He couldn't be left alone anymore. If he wasn’t with me, 100% of the time he was sitting in his car doing N. At this point in time there was no forgiveness, I was completely broken. I would yell and scream at him or wake him up and demand he stop and choose me or the drugs, all terrible things to be doing. I know that.
Eventually it got so bad I felt I had no other recourse other than to call and inform his mother of his behavior and what he had been doing all this time. Me doing this is probably what saved his life, as there was never anyway I was going to get through to him myself. But it did not save his mental health. Even having his mother involved didn’t stop any of it. He still went out and bought it behind my back like nothing happened. Another painful painful aspect of how his personality had changed is he would constantly have crazy back and forth mood swings, one minute showing me the sweet man I had fallen in love with, thanking me and praising me for having stepped in and put a stop to this, the next minute he hated me and I was the worst thing in his life and I could never tell what was even real anymore.
But did I leave, oh no, that would have been the smart thing to do.Instead at the time I was seeing a therapist who also specializes in couples therapy. I get us started with counseling and during our second session he gets called out by my therapist and yells and screams and berates her, it was actually insane. That is when things really ended between us. He moved out and moved into his moms apartment 30 minutes away that night. Even though the breakup was traumatizing and painful I still had hope that even if he isn’t with me, now he will receive help from his mother. Well, she didn’t place him in any special drug counselor program or rehab, she just severely cut off his finances so that he could pay off his debts, which she had bought back from several banks so it would not gain more and more interest. I do believe now his debt may be somewhere in the $10,000-$20,000 range. So now he, as an almost 30 year old man, needs to ask his mother in order to buy or purchase anything. Somehow, despite all of this I would learn he was continuing to do N and K.
Amazingly, we still tried briefly to even make our relationship work after he moved out. At this point he has mastered the art of manipulation and being fake, and convinced me he was getting better, he had even started to look better too, but he was still up to his old BS. He came over to the apartment once for us to have a mini date. Because he went on and on about how he was getting more and more into walks he said he was going to take a quick stroll around the block to get some fresh air. Well a quick stroll turns into 30 minutes, and I start to notice his car is gone from our street. I call him and he says now he is sitting in his car talking to his mom, I tell him I don’t see his car and it’s been a long time, he clearly had left to buy N. He becomes irate and claims he simply moved his car down the block for “reasons” and I was in the wrong for being accusatory and not trusting him. P.S. I went down the block and he just was not there. This guy is either absolutely crazy or thinks I’m some kind of imbecile, or both. It basically ended from there.
We tried to be civil, but he cannot control himself from completely going ballistic on me anymore, or his mother. And it is so painful when he is remorseful and doesn’t remember all the things he said to me. At this point I have had to realize I am basically talking to and trying to reason with a mentally disabled person. The fun loving, easy going, creative, altruistic, thoughtful, smart and attentive man I met doesn’t exist anymore, and I don’t think he will ever come back. All that remains is the shell of a confused and angry person.
Some small things to address, how it came to be that he abused these drugs all the time before he met me is because his best friend was a drug dealer and in the beginning would give him all of these things for free. Once he was hooked and doing it everyday it seemed he would stop at no end to spend money and buy them. Yes K was definitely a contributor into his mild psychosis but I still think it would have happened even from the N abuse alone, based on research I’ve been doing lately. And yes I have to admit I think he had bad and malignant psychological traits before abusing drugs, and doing that made it all worse.
So that is the story of how I watched this man ruin his life, and scare away maybe the only person who could withstand experiencing all of his BS and still wanted to love and help him. There are SO MANY things I too should have done differently. There is also an age gap between us of 3 years, so I naively thought he had a better handle on his life than he really did. I do find it hard to understand how people can be so addicted at times, but in the end like my ex, everyone is trying to chase some kind of feeling or experience that came with it, rather than the drug itself.
Thank you for reading if you made it to the end.
TLDR: Two years ago I started dating a guy who wasn’t honest with me about his 1.5 years of Nitrous abuse before we started dating. He was a sweet and honest and caring man when I met him. Sadly most of our relationship was spent on doing lots of Nitrous together. He eventually developed health problems like a vitamin B deficiency and even almost got paralysis and permanent nerve damage, which was hard for me to watch and witness. His health issues didn’t deter him away from Nitrous and he was constantly buying tanks and doing it behind my back. The more he abused Nitrous the more abusive towards me he became as a person. Our relationship crumbled and not even getting his mom involved helped. He was also clearly experiencing psychosis and mental deterioration. We broke up because he yelled and screamed at my therapist and he had to move in with his mom. Moving in with his mom didn’t stop his addiction even though she cut off his finances.
Even when we tried to make the relationship work he still abused it anyway. I would now consider him a mentally disabled person and I don’t recognize who he even is anymore after 3+ years of abusing Nitrous almost everyday. Please use Nitrous responsibly or don't at all.

I am reporting a lovescam that I was a victim of through Vika , over the course of about four months we sent about 144 letters. I should have listened to my gut which said it felt fake. I am going to share some details with you from some of the letters. These are only a small sampling of the letters we wrote to each other, given that 144 letters were written.
Not saying AFA is bad, just Vika is bad. And maybe some corruption at a local office. I desire to continue to use the AFA service since I believe that Vika is a bad person within a legitimate company. I also believe she was cut in with the letters income for a local office, though I can't prove it. Here are some of the letters.
On January 3rd, Vika wrote. "You know, Kenneth, sometimes I think we live in a world where people are afraid of their feelings. But I'm not like that. I am ready to accept you as you are, with all your fears and desires. I believe that we have something special that can bind our souls forever.When was the last time you thought about what really matters to you? What dreams and desires occupy your thoughts? And most importantly, Kenneth, do you sometimes feel the same spark that I do? I would like to spend time with you, learn more about your interests, share my dreams and hopes. I dream that our hearts will beat in unison, creating harmony in this chaotic world. Think about it, Kenneth. Maybe we should give our feelings a chance, give them the opportunity to flourish and grow? I am ready to walk next to you, give you my support and love."
And as you can see, she was laying it on super thick. saying she wanted to walk besides me. Of course its pretty obvious no one talks this way, and these are red flags for a scam. I should not have ignored my gut instincts. On the 8th of January she wrote , "Let's continue to build our story, delving into our feelings and understanding each other even better. I dream of the day when I can take your hands in mine and introduce you to my family. You are special to me, Kenneth, and I hope our future will be as magical as our correspondence. Let's move forward, enjoying every moment that fate gives us. With warmth and romance, Vika " . . She went so far as to talk about her wedding dress, and pushed potential marriage hard. I also feel embarrassed for talking about my beliefs in regards to family and marriage since it was just a scam. I made plans to come to Ukraine which I did. I will share her letter from May 1st. I was in Kiev at the time. Titled "there is very little time left before our meeting." "Hello Kenneth! There is very little time left before our meeting, and I can’t help but share my emotions with you! The first meeting is always so exciting, right? I'm already starting to feel a storm of emotions when I think that we will see each other soon. By the way, how are you doing? How is your time in Kyiv going? I'm very interested in how you spend your days there. Do you like Kyiv? Is there anything special that you have already noticed or loved about this city? Tell me, I'm looking forward to your impressions! I hope you are doing well and are looking forward to our meeting as much as I am. Can not wait for your reply! With love, Vika."
When I finally showed up in Dnipro, which I did at the risk of my own life. I even heard drone explosions outside of my hotel, and the electricity went out , Vika fully disappeared. She pushed our date from May 4th I believe to the following Monday. Then she cancelled that one as well. Blamed both on family issues. Then she started ignoring all messages and phone calls from the agency. The agency said they were confused about what was happening. I did not see her once while in Ukraine. After all the promises, and letters she straight up ghosts me when I come to an active war zone.
It was incredibly rude. I did try to give some forgiveness when I came back, and to move communication off of the platform if she wants to talk. This was obvious a mistake since scammers don't care about their victims. I was also looking for clarification on why she did what she did. She is overly vague and refused to sign the forms, another thing that was very suspicious and screams "love scam". I should not even have talked to her after the fact but you have to understand I was deeply hurt to be ghosted after showing up in Ukraine. It was extremely hurtful and vicious.
Dear Kenny, I received your letter and feel obligated to answer it. First, I want to express my gratitude for your sincerity and openness. I understand that this has not been easy for you and I appreciate your honesty. I understand that you have difficult feelings about our relationship, and I am sorry that they led to disappointment. I would like to clarify a few points from your letter. I didn't mean to cause you disappointment or offense in any way. If there was anything in my actions or words that caused you negative emotions, I apologize. Regarding my feelings, I feel the need to be honest with you. I would not like to impose false hopes or illusions. We both deserve clarity and honesty in our relationship. Thank you for your letter and the sincerity in it. I would like to share my thoughts regarding the signing of IMBRA. I understand that this is an important step for you, but I feel that in our current situation I cannot take this step. I realize that my actions and words may have caused you offense, and for that I am very sorry. You showed a lot of strength in writing this letter and I appreciate your sincerity. That's why I decided to answer you - it will be right. Sincerely, Vika."
I am not going to write to her again obviously. I shouldn't have tried to get clarity. She is a cold-hearted shark. Who never had any real interest in me.
This is the only letter that is actually distant emotionally. She says she wants to "clarify a few points" but she does not clarify anything. She does not clarify why she pushed wanting a relationship, including marriage hard for four months, and then just ignored that I existed once I showed up. She also says she doesn't want to give me "false hopes or illusions" which is a bunch of nonsense as you can see from her previous responses. Funny, that she did not say this before I came to freaking Ukraine and she didn't even have the dignity to meet me. And even not wanting to sign the forms because I was willing to forgive given correspondence was off the platform is HIGHLY suspicious. It shows she only wants to correspond if the company is getting money, and the fact that she pushed letters so often makes me think she is incentivized.
I believe I was a VICTIM of a love scam 100 percent. I believe that Vika misled me , and then freaked out once I was in her city. . Given the context of what has happened , I believe that Vika is probably getting a cut of the business that the office is generating. I have suffered emotional and psychological consequences from being hurt and used so thoroughly. The viciousness of having some one come all the way to your country and then ghosting them is REALLY bad , especially in light of her previous responses.
I would be interested in anyone's thoughts, and what you think after reading my post. Be careful out there, not everyone is sincere.

Posting to help myself process the climb and provide thoughts for others thinking about Denali unguided on minimal experience. Open to thoughts and critique from people who know what they're doing. I'm obliged to thank all those who provided their thoughts and guidance to me on this subreddit a year ago. Also, to the guidance from Steve House and the other guy in their YouTube Denali video.
TLDR: Did not summit, learned lots.
It was a great idea... We trained pretty hard in the flatlands... We bought lots of good gear... and some not so good..... We were optimistic.....And realistic, we thought....
But... man, oh man. Denali is BIG, Alaska is BIG. And Talkeetna felt very small after 24 hours.
First alert was assembling our food. We drop shipped almost all the food to our hotel in Anchorage. We got in about 9pm, got everything from the desk and walked over to Wal Mart for the rest. Started packing food into daily rations about 10pm. We thought that would take 30 minutes. Try close to four hours, confusion, second guessing ourselves and each other on quantities, days, recipes. Got to sleep much later than we thought. We both worried that we'd be tired, maybe too tired for when we were dropped off on the glacier the next afternoon. HAH!!
Met Gary the shuttle driver the next morning. Watch some other TRs on YouTube and you'll get to know Gary, friendly, outgoing with good info about Talkeetna. We arrive on time, go through check in and somehow we got bumped out of our Ranger meeting. Come back later and we'll still have time to get to our flight. Did I mention it's overcast with light rain? Go through the ranger meeting, head over to TAT to find that we're 76th and 77th on the waitlist with. "Come back tomorrow at 8am for an update." Two guys we met on the shuttle actually make the plane that day because they understood the process with TAT and were all set to go after the Ranger meeting. Guy at TAT checks us in and takes our $$. No other info is offered or asked for. We're aware we need sleds and wands but we guess they just go on the plane with us.
We find the TAT climbing hostel and are grateful to find two bunks in the same room. My buddy is, not germophobic, but he is right up to that line. We eat at a restaurant that night, figuring, hey, 7 climbers per flight, 11 flights, mid afternoon tomorrow right? We check in at TAT at 8am, they're making waffles and have actually great coffee. But they have no idea if there'll be any flights today. Wander back and forth from the hostel, through town to the airfield. This is day 2 of 16 days we've given ourselves to go up. At day 16, no matter where we are, we go down.
Day 3, repeat day 2 but now we're using the hostel kitchen. I'm cool with the level of hygiene because this is only a level or two beyond how I grew up, when things got chaotic. I'm impressed with my buddy's fortitude, and grateful because I don't want to pay for food when it's already been bought. We hear good news that afternoon about the weather. Buddy suggests we get an AirBnB for this night to get a good nights sleep and clean shower before we likely fly out the next day.
Day 4, the weather starts to clear and now there's real activity at the airfield. My buddy, who doesn't sit still well, joins a group of workers at the airfield digging a trench. I sit on the deck, breathing deeply and hoping we can get out today. Then we get word we're up soon. Then I ask, hey what about sleds and wands? Find out climbers should get this arranged right after check in and we scramble around getting this set up. I grab a sled without looking it over well. As we and our gear are being driven over, I see this sled has some serious cracks and swap for a better one 10 minutes before we fly out.
The flight up is amazing. The transition on the glacier is hectic, a short controversy about which mountain can belongs to who and we get off the landing strip quick. We find a spot to set our tent a fair ways up the hill and get to work melting water for dinner and the next day. Take my skis out in order to prep for tomorrow and find the front straps of my skins have torn and are irreparable. I walk around camp, find a guy who's leaving who sells me his skins for $50. Can't believe how lucky I am. I walk around and get pictures, bury, wand and gps tag our cache. I'm blown away, I'm alive in a way I've only experienced a few other times in my life. I'm excited to get going in the wee hours of day 5. Plenty of days left, right?
Get up and going on time. Feels so good to be hauling the sled, carrying the pack. Going down is helpful. Going on flat and climbing isn't bad. I am working harder than my buddy(MB) from here on. He's 20 years younger and places top 5 in regional ultras, I'm a caboose guy at these. Anyhow, I feel like I'm holding him up, like he's disappointed in our pace. We arrive at 8K camp 8 hours later. MB points out that successful groups do this in 6hrs. I'm reply I'm working at a pace that I believe gets me to 14K in good shape, and what else did you want to do today? Ends fine, we each accept where the other one's at. Set up camp, Denali Pizza (simple and awesome) for dinner. Melt water, pull out the gear, food we'll cache at about 9.5K tomorrow. Good day, amazing as clouds lift a bit and we see more terrain.
Day 6, realize we're not eating 2 bagels each per day. We've over planned with bagels and several other foods. Too much weight but unsure about how to move things around. Lighter packs, lighter sleds and the first real climb. We do good work, talk a bit to teams coming down, most not having summitted. Bury, wand and GPS tag our cache. Tie empty sleds to our packs and head down. When we get to the real down hill, it's trashy, flat light, and I'll own this: I was rattled being off balance with a bit more weight and bulk going down. Got in my head and took some time to descend. MB frustrated or just me in my head? Got back down, did camp work, napped, ate dinner.
Day 7, push up to 11K. Snow picking up and visibility still good. I'm slower than MB again, and even though this is a fact we're both well aware of since we talked about Denali 3 years ago, it's in my head and won't leave that I'm holding us back. We start up the first real climb into 11 camp. Wind blown snow is making wands hard to see, we're using his Garmin to verify the route. The skins I bought at the airfield don't cover the width of my skis at the tips and tails. As we're taking an aggressive elevation gain on switchbacks, I'm slipping more and more with less skin to snow contact. We crest the rise and hike through the camp to find a spot at the uphill end. We begin setting up camp. I mention looking forward to having a kitchen tent now that we'll be in the same place for 3 days. MB basically says, go ahead but I don't think we need that and I won't be part of digging it out or setting it up. I get started probing an area, setting the outline of the dig and then realize this will take me hours and give up. Dinner, melt water, discuss tomorrow's back hauling. I propose we boot down from 11 camp and put skis on at the base of the climb and MB seems okay with it.
Day 8, wake up to heavy snow. Dig out our enclosure and have breakfast. Put more food we didn't eat into the "carry forward bag" which is getting heavier by the meal. Dig out again, and again, and again. Mid-afternoon we start getting weather reports through garmin in-reach texts with a guy back home and from other teams and guides. Consensus in 6 more days of this but up to 48" per day. I run the math: 8+6=14. Hmmm: 16-14=2. Then I run the flights per day math and number of teams we've seen descending, number of teams likely to descend with this forecast. My math says we could be stuck here 6 days and at the airfield for that or more. All for 2 more possible days of ascent. MB disagrees and wants to wait it out. We walk through various scenarios and I hold firm. MB agrees we'll go down because we both agreed if one wanted to go down for any reason, that was that. MB is a guy who holds to his word in this and all aspects of life.
We pack up. Fast...and sloppy. We want to fly out tomorrow. I'm not excited anymore, I'm anxious and want off Denali. Not be in a tent for two weeks in snow. We boot down the hill below 11 camp, put on skis and find our cache at 9.5, combine stuff. I get my stuff packed well. We start down. The track is blown in and we are navigating entirely by Garmin, using the standard route. Not reversing our climb up, which followed the visible track and wands. Are we actually on safe snow? We're both thinking that question but not saying it out loud. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I'm in front setting the track so MB's sled has something to ride in. If he's in front, his sled tips over. He's calling directions to me for the route, "Left...more left...rightish... too far."
We head down the last hill into 8 camp. I allow my sled to be in front of me and steer it like reins on a horse. Snow plow, keep it slow and things are moving along fine for me. MB wipes out over and over. Repacks his sled and gets down the last 200 yards well. We ski right through 8 camp. Someone asks if we're headed down and then says that if we call in to the airfield from there, we're already in line. True or not, we're finishing this in one push. Visibility is still about 15 feet but now we have a track to follow. We're both cautious with the downs. Don't know if we need to let it rip to go up again or if there's a corner we need to be slow for. We get to the airfield in 9.5 hours. Dig up our cache and consolidate our gear.
MB decides he'd rather not cowboy camp with the fly and we set up the tent and go to sleep. Up at the appointed hour and get in the flight queue. The guy says he'll give us plenty of notice so we can take down our tent, IF we fly out today. I am now watching every cloud for signs of building or diminishing. A few planes fly in, circle and leave. We're napping on and off.
Then I hear the guy yelling, "that's your plane". It's being loaded. We're 200 yards away in our fully set up tent, pads and bags. FUCK, FUCK, FUCK. I go down and ask "what happened?" "I don't know, two guys snaked your flight." Talk a bit more about other stuff, what he's been reading, we're into some similar literature. He then guarantees we'll be on the next flight that comes in, whether today or tomorrow. I'm listening for airplanes full on now, just want to get down and be off the mountain.
We do get on a flight that day, get a hotel and move flights and shuttle to fly out of Anchorage tomorrow. I walk down by the river and call my wife. "Honey, this will sound weird, I need you to tell me I'm really off the mountain and not dreaming." This helps a lot.
We make all our connections and fly out, get back home the next day. If you got this far, thanks, I guess. It's cathartic to write all this down. I replay this trip or parts of it every couple weeks even now. MB and I did our repair work and still call, text, hang out, run together when I'm in town. I do not regret going one bit, yet not getting further up still hits me hard. My fears and reaction to niggling discomforts on the mountain tell me I'm weak.
If I did it again:

1. No skis on Denali for me. I'm a competent skier and can get down serious stuff out west without embarrassing myself. A pack and a sled skiing down through crud with low visibility? Snow shoes all...the...way.
   
2. 4 people, not two. Enough guys to set up a kitchen tent, split camp duties into smaller tasks. I need a place to spread out, talk, cook and eat in a comfortable position.
   

2A. Allow way more time, a month total.

1. Better conversations about pace and relative speed well before the trip.
   
2. We did ropes work, simulated crevasse rescue, camped out in -10F. More time winter camping and skinning in the woods together.
   
3. MB and I climbed Mt Adams. We summitted Rainier together unguided in 8/2022. Took a 3 day custom guided mountaineering class in 12/2021 to learn skills. Didn't go above 7K in the class. Handled our shit well for two days. Not enough time to really know what we're in for physically and work through team frictions about pace, leisure time, camp life. Maybe we could have climbed Rainier and Baker on the same trip? Maybe spend several days at Camp Muir and summit twice? Climb Rainier early season?
   
4. Guided if I try again? Maybe.
   

I read this back and the inner critic says, "I'm a whiny bitch", just like when I am thinking about it every couple weeks. If I go back it can't be about that, not trying to prove that voice wrong. If I go back...it'll be because of that alive feeling I got on the airfield glacier, to have it again, to avail myself of a second chance to live a dream.
Thanks for reading all this. Part confessional, part TR.
I feel better.

During the course of my career as an alpha Sasquatch hunting, Dogman destroying, pussy crushing, luxury watch loving dude, I have run into this particular woman a few times. She is one part uber sensuality, and the other part deadly. Yes, I am speaking about the lovely, Anna Conda. I bring her up because I had another run-in with her last year.

Anna and I first joined forces, so to speak, when she acted as a go-between in my business deal with the Chinese to sell them bigfoot parts. See, I would hunt and kill the critters, cut them up, deliver the parts to Anna, who in turn gave me a suitcase containing unmarked American hundred-dollar bills, then she would transport the bigfoot parts to the Chinese. I was never really sure of what the sneaky-ass Chinese were doing with the body parts. All I knew for sure is that they are extracting certain materials from them, then synthesizing them with some other shit, creating some sort of drug. Whether it then becomes a bio-weapon or a dick stimulant, I do not know. Neither do I care. As long as they kept the hundies coming, I was good.

Now, while Anna is of Russian descent, she is a freelancer. She will work for any sick, skeevy motherfucker out there. She does not care. She has no conscience, at least not in the traditional sense as we understand it in western civilization. Today she is working for the Chinese, and tomorrow she may be working for Hamas. She is a slippery motherfucker.

So here is how it went down. At 11:32 p.m. on a Friday in September of last year I get a call on my cell phone. When the call came in I was balls deep into this hot little lass I picked up at the bus station a little earlier in the evening from an old swarthy chap named “Colorado Joe”. He wanted to sell me the girl. I was assured she was over 20 years old. I told him I needed to take her out for a test ride, which he agreed to.

So, there I was, balls deep in “Bing Bang Yun”, and my phone rings. Of course, I silence all incoming calls not in my contacts list. Thus, I knew that I must know the caller. In mid stroke I reached over to the nightstand to retrieve my cell and looked at it. It was a call from “Sergio”. I thought, “Oh shit…. I am going to have to cut the Oriental bang circus short.” When Sergio calls, I have to respond…immediately. He has the best blow on the east coast!!

“Hey, Serge! What’s up?”, I asked. All he said was, “Hooters. 2:00 a.m.”, then hung up. This was obviously the rendezvous for the transaction. Now, understand that Serge was not talking about the chicken wing restaurant. Hooters was code, in case the feds were listening in on the line. “Hooters” meant the titty bar out on Highway 69 called “The Plump Rump”. We had a communications code we used.

It was a long haul to the titty bar, so I needed to get moving. I had no time to return the girl to Colorado Joe, so I took her with me. I had her blow me on the way to the meeting with Sergio, telling her that her performance would make the difference on whether I save her from Joe or not. Of course, after she was done I tossed her out of my speeding truck and down, over the bridge, and into the Wendigo River below. I did not need any complications in my life right now.

I arrived at The Plump Rump at 2:00 a.m. on the dot. I saw the manager, Lou Skunt, sitting at the bar when I walked inside. I nodded. He walked over and said to me, “Use my office for the meeting The parties are already in there waiting for you.” I nodded and then headed to Lou’s office. Then it hit me: Lou said the “PARTIES” are already here. That is, parties, meaning more than one person. It was not just Sergio. It was 2 or more people! Lou was probably in for a cut of whatever was about to go down.

Something was bad fucked up!! I know for a fact that Sergio never brings anyone with him on a deal, at least not with me. He is too distrustful of people to do that, and too fucking mean to need protection. Something was wrong. I was just as likely to get whacked when I enter Lou’s office as anything else. I needed a moment to think things through.

I took a spot in front of one of the performance poles to watch a young, swarthy Mexican lass perform. My mind quickly strayed from the problem at hand to this brown chick’s ass and tits. She was not a great looking chick, but her body was smoking!! I quickly became aroused. I thought to myself, “Goddamn Asian bitches!! They are just like Chinese food – after 2 hours you are ready for some more!!”

When the little Mexican chick went on break I motioned her over to my table. “Hola Senior!!”, she said. I pulled out a clear plastic baggie of blow and dropped it on the table. Her eyes grew wide and slobber starting falling from her mouth. Blow is like catnip for strippers. Thus, she fell under my spell immediately.

The next thing I know, this brown girl was on my lap, dry humping me like a feral bitch dog in heat. I had to bang her. I NEEDED to see my wang penetrating her. Just then, someone taps my shoulder hard. I look up to see Lou standing over me. He bent down and said, “Did you forget about my office, asshole?!?!?!” I replied, “Damn, Lou!! You read my mind!!!” I arose, with the little Mexican bolted onto my mid-section, and hastily retreated to Lou’s office. I figured Lou would prefer me to stain this chick in private rather than out in the open.

The door to the office opened easily. The lights were on inside. In a lustful haze, I set the little Mexican chick on her back across Lou’s desk and started pumping the shit out of her, completely unaware of the others in the room with us. In a moment I heard someone call my name. I twist my neck around to see Sergio sitting on Lou’s jizz crusted couch. I think to myself, “Oh shit! I forgot about that shit!”

I figured I would just move forward with the deal as it was proposed to me. “Hey Serge! What ya got for me, dude?”, I asked. He replied, “I have a very special deal for you. I need, uh … yeah, ……Hey, Rod, you want to stop for a moment so we can talk?” I picked up the little tamale and laid her down onto Sergio’s lap as I continued to plow her. She stayed on my cock the whole time. I told Sergio, “No, man. I’m good! Lay it on me!” Slowly, Sergio lowered his face into his palm.

Then it happened. The voice cam from behind me, in the dark corner of Lou’s office. It was velvety yet hard as steel. “Rod. Went need to talk”, it said. Even though I did not stop pumping the little brown chick, a chill went down my spine when I heard those words. It was the thick timbre of the voice, I think, that alerted me.

I turned to look across the room. There, sitting in a red leather captains chair against the wall was the source of the sultry voice: Anna Conda.

I picked up the little taco yet again and turned her around so I could face Anna as I continued pumping her. At this point the Mexican girl was merely a masturbation toy I was using. I increased my pump so I could dump my load and get this over with. Then BAMM!!!, it was over. I removed the lass from my huge rod, after which her body crumpled to the floor. I did not know if she was dead or injured, or what had happened to her. But I did not care either, so I did not dwell on it.

I tried to compose myself the best I could, then walked over to stand before Anna so I could get to the bottom of all this business. “Well, well, well. Anna Conda. We meet again. Tell me, what brings you here, to my little neck of the woods?”

Anna replied, “Rod, put your dick away.” I looked down and, indeed, I had forgotten to stow my cock. Out of pure curtesy, I packed it away. Then I returned my attention to Anna. “Alright, Anna, what’s going on here?”

Anna launched into a startling tale about what brought her to me. As she spoke I became lost in her wanton beauty. She got up from her chair and walked about the room as she relayed her story, presumably to make it more dramatic and demonstrative. I got a full-on view of her body, and it was fantastic!!

She stands 5’10’’ and weighs 105 lbs. She is lithe. She was showing it off too, wearing a black, silk dress that landed just about her ankles. The top was low-cut, betraying just a bit of cleavage from her C-cup wineglass titties. She was not wearing a bra. Anna never wears a bra. Her nips were perfectly outlined through the silk. In fact, I think her nips were hard. It was probably something she did on purpose in an attempt to influence me. It was working.

Anna’s ass was perfect. It was not at all fat, but round enough not to be skinny. It was a fit figure skater’s ass. As she walked, I could see a tiny bit of jiggle emanating from her ass flesh, and then reverberated in the silky black dress she wore. My cock began growing hard again.

Her face was beautiful. Think Scarlett Johanson and Phoebe Cates rolled into one. But any sweetness this may evoke is quickly dispelled by Anna’s throaty voice with its thick Russian accent. I have known Anna for 20 years. Yet, she still does not look a day over 25. Jesus Christ!!! If ever there was a chick to die for ….. If I was one to delve into the belief of the paranormal, then I may conclude that Anna made a deal with the devil. But, I am not such a person.
And literally, Anna Conda is a chick to die for. She is deadly as fuck. She will kill you in a split second without a thought just because she does not like the shirt you are wearing. She can do it too. She is always armed and she knows how to use her weapons. Moreover, she is a total psychopath. This makes her doubly dangerous.

Anna and I have always gotten along for the most part. Like Anna, the dollar is my primary motivating factor. Such a mindset allows for understanding and predictability among people, which are elements that are sorely missing in many business dealings today that go on in the color of darkness.

Suddenly, Anna snapped me out of my thoughts. “Here’s your gun, Rod. Now let’s get started”, said Anna. She and Sergio were halfway through the door exiting Lou’s office when I said, “Hey, wait a damned minute!!! What are you talking about?!?”

They both stopped, and Anna walked back in and looked me in the eyes, saying “The plan, Rod. Let’s get on with the plan.” A little embarrassed, I sheepishly asked, “What plan?” Anna folded her arms and looked cross at me. After a moment to allow me to simmer in my shame, she asked, “You were not paying attention, were you, Rod?” I shook my head and looked down.

I heard a hammer cock. I jerked my head back up to find myself staring down the barrel of a pistol pointed at my head that Anna was holding. I protested, “Look, it is not my fucking fault!! Put that fucking gun down!!!” I continued, “You were distracting me with …. Well.. you know, how you are dressed, and that hot, sultry voice…. You know?”

“So, instead of paying attention to the plan, you chose to eye-rape me. Is that what I am to understand your position is, Rod?”, she asked. Knowing that my life was on the line, I said, “Anna, look, you know I am horny to a fault. Then you come in here, swinging them tits around, wearing that silk dress showing off the crack of your ass…. WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU EXPECT TO HAPPENED?”

Anna lowered her gun. She knew that my explanation of being a total cocksman was truth. “Let’s go”, Anna curtly said. I obeyed.

Anna explained the plan to me again on the drive from The Plump Rump. She made me wear a blindfold so that I would not get horny during her explanation. Here is how it went:

Anna Conda was now working for the Russians. It seems that Putin caught wind of the Sasquatch project that the Chinese were working on. He also knew that the American government have been fucking with sasquatch for decades. Thus, he was very concerned about the existence of a bigfoot gap. He ordered the acquisition of a Sasquatch specimen immediately.

Moreover, said specimen must be prime. It needed to be the biggest, baddest sasquatch of them all – a true alpha – so as to speed things along. Putin did not want some weird shit-creature, is-it-a-sasquatch-or-is-it-a-dogman, kind of monstrosity. He wanted purebred, badass sasquatchery, and preferably from the American Pacific northwest.

Anna got in on it because she sold the intel to Putin about China’s Sasquatch operation. She then told Putin she could produce sasquatch corpses for him. She told him she had a contact (i.e., me). Thus, with Putin’s blessing and promises of riches to come, Anna set out to America to find me.

Now, here is where things got a bit squirrely. See, I agreed to procure some more dead sasquatch. I have no problem with killing sasquatch because, in my opinion, they are an abomination on this Earth. I kind of feel like I am doing God’s work by wiping out as many of them as I can. And given all the not-so-Godly stuff I have done, I feel like killing Sasquatch kind of offsets that to some degree.

But Anna, she was stuck on Putin’s instruction that she must supply him with apex Sasquatch. So she did not want to take my advice of heading to the Pacific Northwest or Alaska. Instead, Anna claimed to have pinpointed the whereabouts of a particularly gruesome sasquatch beast that she KNEW would win her a fortune from Putin if she brought it to him.

“So, where is this beast?”, I asked. Anna replied “Martha’s Vineyard”. I paused. Then I asked her to repeat herself. It turns out that I was not mistaken about what Anna had said. I continued, “Uh, Anna, there are no sasquatch on Martha’s Vineyard, just a lot of wealth New Englander schmucks.”

Anna looked at me and told me I was wrong. Then she decided to attempt to taunt me. “Oh, Rod, mighty slayer of Bigfoot! Yet, you fail to take notice of where the biggest, most foul and rotten beast of them all makes its home. Jesus, Rod!! What kind of bigfoot hunter are you, anyway?” Anna then spit at my feet and wondered aloud whether she even needs me for this job.

I decided that I needed to straighten out the hierarchy here in order for this here deal to move forward. I said, “Well, Anna, feel free to truck on over to Old Whitey Beach and battle that beast. But, if there is a big old mangy sasquatch lurking around over there, then it is probably a fucking Nazi-Squatch. You know, those fuckers out there hate the Jews.”

The work “Nazi” visibly shook Anna. Her great grandfather died defending Leningrad. Her entire family there died of either starvation or cannibalism during Hitler’s siege during Operation Barbarossa. Anna despised Nazis. But she feared them too. After landing that punch, I decided to push my luck.

“Now, I am still willing to help you catch this here Nazi-Squatch, but you have to do something for me”, I said. Now Anna’s eyes were on me, and they were narrowing. I continued, “I want you to get bare assed naked and pleasure yourself while I stand over you and jack it.” Anna stared at me silently for a long moment. Then she replied.

“After the job is done, and you can get none of your … fluids… on me”, she said. I shook my head and countered, “Now, and I will ‘try’ to not get my spunk on you.”

However, Anna then turned the tables on me. In fact, she picked up the table and bashed my head in with it. She looked me in my eyes, then matter-of-factly said, “You get the beast, and your prize shall be a night with me, anything goes, darling.” Well, since this caused all of the blood to immediately drain from my brain, I had a lapse in judgment. “DEAL!!”, I said. Then we shook on it.

“OK, tell me more about this supposed monster sasquatch on Martha’s Vineyard”, I said. I still was not ready to believe there was a monster out there. “I show you photo”, said Anna. She took out her phone, scrolled to find the photo, then handed the phone to me. “There. Sasquatch”, she said.

I stared at the photo and remained silent. After a long moment, I turned the phone so that Anna could see the photo and asked, “Uh, Anna, is THIS what you intended to show me?” She replied. “Yes! There…Sasquatch! The biggest, grossest monster around.”

Now, I could not argue with Anna that the image on her phone is a big, gross monster. Hell, it could actually be a sasquatch, and THE UBER sasquatch. It is most certainly the grossest thing on Martha’s Vinyard. But I somehow do not think this is what Putin is expecting.

I turned to Anna and said, “Anna, this is a photo of Michelle Obama. I know it looks vile, and has a huge, hulking body with large appendages where a woman should not have them. But, sweatheart, that ain’t no sasquatch. That’s a big, hairy Chicago street negro.”

Anna did not believe me at first. She was hard in her conviction that Obama was a sasquatch. “I have seen the Sasquatch beast you deliver to me for China. This … Michelle Obama …. It is big, and hairy, and ugly like the sasquatch beast, but worse.”

When the truth finally set it, I could see that it had kind of broken down poor Anna, if only just a bit. I put my arm around Anna and told her, “Look, Michelle O fooled you. Hell, she and her Hamas Hubby fooled millions of Americans, twice! At least you saw Michelle for what she is, to wit: a big, gross sasquatch, and NOT some kind a retarded leftist messiah.”

After that, things took a rather dark turn. “What if we still take her to Putin? We can make deal; sell her to Putin!!” At this point I held up my hands and said, “I’m out”, then turned and walked away. Anna followed, trying to get me to stay. At this point, I could tell that Anna was coming undone a little.

See, she had to produce for Putin. There is no telling what kind of secret deal she actually had with him. She had to deliver a big old mangy Obama …. Er, uh, I mean … Sasquatch, to Putin.

“Ok, Rod, we do your plan. We go out west to kill bigfoot. Huge, monster bigfoot. she said. I turned and looked Anna in her eyes and said the following: First, we bang for 48 hours straight, right now, so I can get my fill of you. Second, you pay me $10,000.00 cash upfront. Third, upon delivery of the dead bigfoot, you pay me $1 million immediately.”

Anna agreed to everything, but noted that at the present time it was her “time of the month”. I grimaced, as I will absolutely not go there (and she knows that). “Fine, next week we bang”, I said. She pointed out that I would be in the woods next week hunting sasquatch. “Fine, once I come out of the woods, then we bang – 48 hours straight”, I said. “Of course, darling!”, she agreed.

Well, it took several days to set up the hunt, but it finally happened. I was in Washington state at high elevation based on intel I has acquired that indicated that there was a monstrous 15’ tall sasquatch on the mountain range that had been murdering and eating hunters and hikers. After 3 months in these mountains without a trace of the creature I began to lose hope, thinking that I probably got some bad intel, or bad coordinates.

I got my satellite phone out to call for an extraction. Winter was setting in fast, and if I did not get off this mountain soon, then I would freeze and/or starve to death. Unfortunately, my contact did not answer. I tried for 2 days. No answer. I had been fucked. I wondered what had happened back in civilization that caused me to be abandoned like this. I resolved that I would get off that mountain and get to the bottom of this shit. There would be hell to pay for this betrayal!!’

I was able to get in touch with contacts from back home. I got old Billy Ray from Ellijay and Rattler on the phone and got them to come out here to Washington State to extract me. Rattler use to fly helicopters in the Army. He has an old Huey sitting in his front yard, to the chagrin of his HOA. He fired that sucker up, and him and old Billy Ray flew out here to my coordinates and extracted me.

After landing at a convenience store to buy some beer for the flight home, we headed east. Through the skies a way, Billy Ray said, “Well, Rod, I guess you is bout ready to git back home to Georgia, eh?” In fact, I was ready to go home. But I had to take care of some business first. I told them both to take me to New York City. They were both perplexed. All I said to them was “I have an old friend there I have to see before I can go home.”

I have intel on where Anna Conda stays when she is in the United States. She stays at certain hotels depending on what month she is here, and whether her check-in date is an odd or even number. This is for undercover work. I came across the code for her stays while doing the sasquatch work for China. She an I were caught in a snowstorm one night in Buffalo, NY, and had to share a room at the Holiday Inn near the airport. We had like 10 big Igloo ice chests with iced down sasquatch body parts with us in the room.

Anna was like, “No hanky panky, Rod. I am tired and I want to go to bed. Tomorrow we finish business.”

Frankly, I did not blame her for withholding her magnificent muff from me. I was tired as hell. But, I could not settle for nothing. So, when Anna was in the bathroom taking a shower, I started going through her suit case. I wanted to find some of her panties to jack off into. Instead, I found a little black notebook. Inside it contained her lodging codes, and some other interesting things. I photographed the contents with my phone and then put it back.

When Anna got out of the shower she was already dressed in her night clothes. She saw me lying on my back, nude on the bed, and jacking it. “Rod!! GROSS!!!! Go to the restroom to do that shit!!!”, she commanded. I just did it to get a rise out of her. LOL!!

So, if Anna is still inside the U.S., then using the codes I stole from her I can locate precisely where she will be that night. I studied it for a few moments then had my answer. Tonight she would be staying at the Dogman Inn on Hwy 95 South, Room 355. I told Rattler to get me there stat!

We had to stop several times for fuel and beer. Those Hueys go just a bit over a hundred MPH, you know. But eventually, we got there. I gave the boys some money and told them to go to the Waffle House for some coffee to sober up. Then they would fly me home.

I should mention that I also had Rattler’s fully auto Russian AK-74 with spare mags. During the long flight with 2 drunks from Washington State to New York City, I had worked myself up into a towering rage over how Anna fucked me on this Putin deal. She had clearly thrown me aside. But for what, exactly? I figured I would storm the hotel room, get some answers, then shower the room with gun fire.

I busted through the door of Room 355 at exactly 3:35 a.m. There she was. My entry roused her from slumber. I was pointing my rifle at her, center mass. She was shocked at the appearance of a gunman in her room at this time of night. However, she was not as shocked as one would think (this was not the first time something like this has happened to her).

I raised my face from the receiver just enough so she could see it was me. “Rod!!!”, she exclaimed. “What happened to you?!?!? I thought you had died up in those mountains when we never hear from you!” I replied, “Shove it up that cute little ass of yours, Anna. You fucked me. And not in the good way. What the fuck was all that shit about needing a sasquatch for Putin?!?”

Anna played dumb. But it struck me that I had been deliberately put out of the loop for 3 months. Why? Who wanted me away for that long, and why? What went on in my absence?!? I was just dying to know!!! I set my rifle down and pulled out my fixed blade knife, ready to get down to some real nasty work on Anna so I could get some truth. The pure evil of what I was about to do to her caused a wide death grin to grow on my face. Anna saw it. She knew what it meant. She swallowed hard and her eyes betrayed the shear terror she felt inside. I was engorged with blood lust. She knew she had fucked up one time too many this time!!

Suddenly came the sound of the toilet in the bathroom flushing. I was momentarily shocked. I did not expect anyone else to be there with Anna. Anna saw it in my face. I glanced at her and saw that the terror in her face was replaced with pleasure, a slight smile creeping over her face.

I was going to have to face off against this person in the bathroom, who would be out in a split moment. When I do that, I will have to turn 180 degrees from Anna, thereby making me vulnerable to her. I had only once choice: Shoot Anna first.

Just as this came to me, but just before I could act on it, the bathroom door opened. I had to deal with that person before Anna now. I spun around to see that it was a completely nude, and fat, white man. He was a real oafish blob. He looked surprised to see me. He also looked sort of familiar.

I next heard the crack of something hitting my skull hard. I remember the immediate hateful pain that shot through my body and the sound of blood rushing through my ears. I remember the dizziness, then falling to the floor. Clearly, as I fixed on the man from the bathroom, Anna had cracked me over the head with a blunt object.

I came to the next morning, Billy Ray and Rattler had manage to track me down based upon coordinates I left in the chopper that said “IN CASE OF EMERGENCY”. Billy Ray filled up the hotel room ice bucket with cold water and doused my head with it to bring me conscious. I was disoriented at first. But after a bit, what happened in this room the night before came back to me.

Honestly, I am surprised that Anna did not just kill me. I presume that she thinks she can leverage her drop-dead hotness to get me to do more shit for her in the future. She is absolutely right about that too. Rattler then said, “Hey, Rod, that snake bitch left a letter fer ya.”

He handed me the letter. This is what it said:
____________________________________________

“Dear Rod:

Sorry about the boo boo on your head. Hope it heals soon. Also sorry about leaving you in the mountains. I was not running a scam on you Rod. Rather, an opportunity arose for me to acquire a sasquatch body from another person. You may know him since you are a sasquatch hunter. His name is Matt Moneymaker. Anyway, until next time…..

Yours truly,
Anna Conda”
_____________________________________________
I could not fucking believe it. That was fatfuck Moneymaker in the hotel room earlier. Anna fucked Matt Fatfuck Moneymaker for a Sasquatch! That fat son of bitch!!

Billy Ray asked, “You ready to go Rod?” I stood up and said, “Yeah, let’s go.” Then Rattler said, “Hey, ya wanna stop and git some beer fer the ride home?” I replied “Hell yeah.”

I felt like I wanted to die. Thank God for beer and buddies. I don’t blame Anna. She is a fucking snake, and I knew that before this started. Also, I cannot really blame fatfuck Moneymaker for wanting to get some of that hot poon pie Anna serves up. I guess I have to blame fate for fucking me over this time. I even started thinking that next time I will just avoid Anna. But I know I won’t, thus making me subject to this sort of shit again. I had Rattler set us down in Charlottesville so I could buy some hard liquor.

Hello everyone, I've been dealing with a break up that shook up everything about myself for the past 7 months. I just want to write this as a reflective piece. This was a 3 and a half year long relationship.
So I was dating a woman that I met in college (she was slightly older than me so she already had graduated), and the first few months felt like heaven. I never really had a relationship before where I felt so compelled, so in love with someone. And she really was a sweetheart, she did so many nice gestures, date ideas for us, and I was completely in sync and returned the favor as well. But then COVID hit and we went to remote learning/working from home. And this is honestly where our relationship's issues started to come into play, and not because of us (initially). Without revealing anything personal, my ex worked an incredibly abusive and demanding job that would have her often working until midnight or later, every single day. And this went on for years. The issue with this, on top of her trying to study, was that everything in our relationship had to either be cut off or revolve around her job. The thing is though, is that I learned over time (especially once I started my career and worked for a bit), was that she was under no obligation to actually work these insane hours with no overtime. She was just letting her job take advantage of her and essentially bully/pressure her into doing far more work than she needed to. While short-term this was not a huge issue to me, this was also actively eating into her own personal goals and achievements, and was taking a toll on her health as well.
I tried everything in the most polite way possible to convince her to look elsewhere, think of other opportunities (never told her to just outright quit as thats not my place), but she seemed to always dig her heels in and try to complain internally at her job, which literally never worked. It always led to bigger issues down the line. And eventually, it started to genuinely annoy me that our relationship was basically stalling and we were only seeing each other once a week or once every two weeks. I still genuinely loved her (and she really loved me) though, and tried my hardest to support her through it. By comparison, with my first job (which was in an extremely similar field), I was only working 40 hours a week, maybe 50 tops. But it was starting to get extremely worrisome that even by the 2 and a half year mark, I couldn't even get her to come on a vacation without her abruptly having to leave.
I want to make it clear though that despite all these issues, we were always incredibly understanding and honest to each other, and that if I had not made the decision I made, she never would have broken up with me, and probably would have been an incredibly loyal wife. However, after another year of feeling like she was really being more loyal to a shitty job than to me (and some other issues as well, without getting too into it I wasn't really able to bring myself to care about her interests anymore out of frustration, her problems that stemmed from never wanted to confront them was getting to me where I just didn't have it in me anymore, and her friends were pretty much actively shittalking me behind my back despite being significantly more supportive to her than any of her friends were, who basically used her constantly), I decided that I was going to end things with her. I did everything about the break-up correctly and respectfully, I went to her place, said that it wasn't fair for her to date someone that just didn't have it in them anymore, and I left. And that was the last I ever spoke to her.
Ever since I broke up with her, I've been hard blocked, no-contact style on everything by her. And for a long time (and even recently), it sucked hard. Someone that I spent so much time with, someone that I put so much love into, so many deep conversations that left me so happy, to see her just sort of treat me like I don't exist hurt like a motherfucker. I know it was definitely harder for her initially, as I dumped her, the guilt of hurting someone as sweet, smart, and as kind as she was absolutely ruined me. I'm ashamed to admit it, but multiple times I tried to contact her, just to talk, but every time it was met with deafening silence. Nothing.
To make matters worse, within a week of our breakup, I was laid off as well at my job.
But this is where things take a turn.
I was never a fit guy, but from starting a career at a sedentary job and feeling set in life with a beautiful girlfriend, I put on some serious pounds, I went from a little pudgy to straight up fat. I was starting to develop awful acid reflux + I have a nasty double chin when I'm fat, and with my job and my love life gone, I realized that for the first time in my life, I'm going to fight for myself, to be proud of how I look and feel. And thats exactly what I did. I took all of that sorrow, all of that guilt, and I took it to the gym, and I interviewed my ass off with some companies.
Flash forward to seven months later (now), I'm in the best shape I've ever been in my life (sub-20% bodyfat and looking to cut even more), all of my stomach issues disappeared from being active, and now I work at a job far better (and more stable) than my last one. As someone who never seemed to attract women, I'm actually starting to have great conversations and meet new people (although I don't know if I'm ready to start dating again) who genuinely seem interested in me. I feel great, and I feel motivated. I knew it wasn't going to be easy being alone, but I believe I'm doing the right thing. I think anyone going through something like this needs to hear this; don't give up. You put the work into yourself and it'll all come together. Its never too late.
And typing this post was very therapeutic, felt like getting a massive weight off my chest. I still feel the pain of loneliness and missing my ex's compassion and companionship sometimes, but I don't truly regret my decision. I really wish we worked out, but ultimately her inability to confront her problems was her own worst enemy. I'm the exact opposite, I confront my problems head on. I just hope that one day I find someone perfect for me.
Thanks for reading.

I am current engaged to my fiancée who I love dearly. We have been together for 3 years engaged for 4 days but known each other for 10 years. I would consider him the love of my life but his father is making me suffer mentally.
Since the beginning of our relationship he hasn’t liked me. He has told my partner that his ex was a better fit that he misses her and that she was a good gf. He of course told him that he’s with me and not to speak of her again. This is great however I found out a week ago that he lies and smears who I am to who aunts and uncles who have met me. I am a very straight forward person and really dislike drama. I prefer people just tell me how they feel so that I can address it. He’s convinced though that I am a chameleon and pretending to be some type of way in front of them. I was fine with them and actively tried to repair my relationship with them but it all goes back to the first real time I met him.
I admit I was a hot mess… I spoke about me and my brothers closeness and how we actively horses around together. Talked about achievements and was just trying to illustrate that I was a confident, hardworking individual. Instead he took it as I’m inappropriate a whore and a gold digger. My fiancée asked what he thought and expressed his dislike for some of my behaviour. Immediately i sought to correct it and ensure that he felt that I was moving in a positive direction after precisely apologizing. I have been nothing but kind and respectful since and have ALWAYS kept in mind his feelings and been mindful.
However, flash forward to now and I thought we moving in a positive direction. I was sorely mistaken because his sister came for a visit and I was expressing how I was happy it seemed they were starting to be ok with me. She said I’ve heard the opposite. Then shortly afterward his cousin came by and told us he’s been going onto a smear campaign. That he didn’t understand where he was getting all of his impressions from.
I finally broke… I called him and said that he is telling people I’m this person who I’m not. I was really really nervous and have paid for that mistake. We recently went to my fiancés grandpas funeral and he couldn’t even pronounce my name. Yet he goes around telling people I enchanted my partner with my pussy. That I want his money. I was trying to seduce him by showing him my body building pictures. It hurts… Instead of my partner saying he will tell him off he stated I’ll just ask people to stop telling you things.
Frankly, if he doesn’t do something I think I’m gonna have to leave him regardless of how much I may love him. I want someone who will tell him it’s enough and his actions have consequences. I told him if this doesn’t get sorted I will most likely leave him. He then said may as well give me the ring back and hung up. What do I do?

Race Information
• Name: Bad Ass Backyard Ultra
• Date: May 11, 2024
• Distance: 29.5
• Location: Rio Linda, CA
• Website: https://www.skybreakerracing.com/bad-ass-backyard-ultra/
• Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/11388611030
• Loops: 7

Goal	Completed
Stay under 50 miles	Yes
See if I like this kind of race	Definitely
Have Fun	Always
Win?	Yes!

Pre-race:
I’m a 40 year old guy who sits at a desk all day (CPA). I started running in August of 2021 specifically to do a marathon, crossed the finish line that December and since then it’s been an addiction. I’ve now run 4 marathons, 2 50k, 3 70.3s, a full Ironman and in February as I switched from Triathlon to Ultras I did my first 50 miler. The 50 (in spite of showing I need to fix some blister issues) confirmed for me that ultra events are my favorite. I still like the triathlon training and how I feel with those more, but as far as events and culture, ultras are my thing. So anyway, I know I’m now an ultra runner, but I was a little lost as to what my next “A” race would be. I had the option of Ironman in October, Rio Del Lago 100 miler in November, or one of these backyard ultras that I’ve been hearing about. For those that are unaware, it’s basically a 4.2(ish) mile loop that is done every hour. No matter how fast or slow you run that loop, every hour on the hour another loop starts. This goes until people drop off and there is one person left. At the surface, this seemed like something that I’d like to inject directly into my veins. But that could just be me being naïve about how boring doing the same loop over and over would be, or how much I HATE stopping during runs. But the main draw for me, is that within 15 minutes of any race I’ve ever run in my life, the eventual winner is nowhere near me. Lining up every hour with the eventual winner and looking them in the eye just gets me irrationally hyped. That said, I’m coming off my first 50 miler, my toes are still healing (waiting on my big toe nail to fall off at this point, and my coach has BEGGED me to not go too deep in the well for this one. He wants a real training build up, some time to figure out blister issues and be legitimately prepared for a race. So the main goal here is to see if I want to throw 6 months of specific training at a race of this format.

Race Day:
So there are only 3 people signed up for this race. We even got an email from the race director asking if we still wanted to race. I get there with my wife, 3 kids and parents with tents, pop-ups, battery packs and iPads ready for this to be a long day. I have Maurten gels for 24 hours, huge packs of electrolyte mixes, I have my headlamp in case this goes into the night, 7 pairs of socks, 3 pairs of shoes, I have my heat gear, a tent, pop-up and a table. Quite frankly I may have had as much setup as the race director. My Bi-Carb and Ketones get drunk, we’re ready to rock.

Course:
This course was very strange. We’re out in the middle of farm land, and the first 1.7 miles is all exposed and it got up to 90 degrees at the peak of the day. What made it worse was a good mile of this section was not mowed, so we were trying to pave a path through calf high grass in places. After that you get to a legitimate trail that has a good bit of tree cover. One tiny hill for a grand total of 30 feet of elevation gain on the loop, so it’s pancake flat. There’s also a street crossing where there are a couple volunteers pressing the button to stop any cars coming by. Not a super busy street, so it was never a huge issue, but I did laugh a bit every time.

Race:
8am rolls around and I meet the two other people I’m running with. One guy just turned 33 so his goal was to do that many miles. Another is a woman in her 50s who had about the same goal for the day, but she was training for a run from the bottom of the UK to the top over 35 days or something. She’s done the Tahoe 200 before (something that’s on my bucket list), and I’m definitely a bit intimidated. That said, she says she has tickets for a comedy show later tonight, so I jokingly say I just need to hold out until she has to leave for that. Race starts and we decide we should run together a bit for the first lap just to figure out where the hell we’re going. We universally agree that the first section is BS, but the shade after makes all the difference. I start walking at the shade and let them run up ahead. I see them later on when I finish my loop.
My goal was to hit 50 to 55 minutes on each loop. First and foremost I don’t want to be sitting too long and thinking about pain or heat or whatever. To do this, I go at an easy pace for the heat section, walk when I get to the shade until I get to a 13 minute pace or so. Then I start running again. When I get to the tiny hill I start walking again until the pace drops in that range and then run into the finish line. I think I pegged every single lap right around 53 minutes. I’d grab a sponge from the ice bucket and wipe down my arms, sit down, eat my gel, put some ice in the pouch on my back, in my hat and down my pants. Every 2 laps I’d change socks and spray my feet down with Aquaphor to keep them lubricated. Every 4^th lap I’d change shoes. I’d eat fruit or any snacks I was feeling while my dad would fill my water bottles, one with electrolyte mix and one with regular water. I’d usually get up from the seat between the 2 and 1 minute warning, mosey on over to the start line, sponge down my arms one last time and get ready to do it again.
Loops 1 and 2 are about the same. I send a check in text as I’m walking in the shade to my wife and coach which I call my “*.5 check in.” I grade my pace, attitude, pain level and fun being had with any notes.
On loop 2.5 I text that the young guy is struggling in the heat. I even texted my wife to have the race director check on him when I didn’t see him for a while, but he was ok. I talked to him a bit and he said he was using too much energy running the heat section so he was walking some of it. I figured that would be too much heat exposure for me, but he says he’s ok.
Loop 3.5 I am getting too much sweat in my eyes. I usually wear an American flag headband when I run, but in the heat (and with my thinning hair up top prone to sunburn) I’ve switched away to a bucket hat. Until now I had the headband on the outside of the bucket hat. I admit I’m choosing fashion/superstition over practicality and put the headband under the hat which immediately fixes the problem. I also have a fun conversation with the woman about how I’m doing this whole mathematical calculation for my pace which makes sense being a CPA. She says she’s running completely on feel, but that makes sense because she’s a massage therapist. The young guy struggles a lot and comes in at 57 minutes on lap 4 and drops.
Loop 4.5 I have made my first shoe switch. After wearing the Altras with the wide toe box the Hokas that I’ve run all my other races in feel horribly constricting and I have a good idea of why I keep getting blisters. I decide to change shoes back to the Altras after this lap. Woman says her goal is 4 more laps.
Loop 5.5 I write that she’s trying to mind game me and that she’s gone a bit negative and I need to be more positive to combat it. Now I know that this probably says a lot more about me than it does her. It’s possible and even likely that she was dancing at the start line of loop 6 because she liked the song. But in my head, in that minute it seemed like she was trying to show no weakness. She starts off that lap a little hot, but I keep my same pace. The surprising part is when I pass her about halfway through the heat section and it takes her a bit to catch up as I’m walking in the shade. She grumbles a bit about that section of uncut grass and asks how long I’m going and what happens if we both stop at the same time. Just some little cracks mentally that I note as she starts running again up ahead of me. Now usually at this point I don’t see her until the finish line because she’s been running 46 minute laps and I’ve been well behind at 53 minute laps. But midway through my walk section I see her just a little up ahead at a turn. Please know, I AM NOT PROUD of what happens next. It’s not time to run yet, but with her struggling a little bit, I bet that if I pass her she breaks. So I start running, and make sure to keep my breathing and heart rate in check. I run by, say “I’m gonna hustle on this one, I want a burrito.” This is not a lie, I did indeed want a burrito and when I came in the announcer asked how I was feeling to which I responded, “feels like half-time” as I had just finished 25 miles. Well half way into my burrito they tell me she’s going to drop. She congratulates me and I just have to finish my last lap to win. Yes, I mind-gamed a woman in her 50s to win. Now is she a badass woman in her 50s? Damn right she is. She’s done races I can only dream about right now, and I probably do it again given the chance. She later tells my dad that she asked herself what the hell she was doing once I passed her.
I decide lap 7 should be really strong, so I take off and do the heat section in sub 9 minute pace. This was a bad call. I decide my ego isn’t that big and walk in the shade a bit so I don’t pass out. I finish in about 49 minutes, get a cool sweatshirt, which I then proceed to wear in spite of the heat for pictures with my kids on a makeshift podium because I never have and probably never will win another race in my life.

Post-race:
A few small blisters. One of which is on my heel which is new, but as of Monday they’re already minimal, so 30 miles in that is a huge improvement from normal. I’m on the right track but still stuff to figure out. With the system I had I didn’t mind the stops at all in this race format. I also think my superpower is doing boring things over and over again, so the loop didn’t bother me at all. It’s almost certainly something I’m going to be throwing 6 months of training at for a big showing in November. Had a fun day with some really enjoyable people. Plus my coach didn’t yell at me for going too deep and this will be a quick recovery into some real training blocks. Overall loved it!

When I was in my early 20’s, I worked at a dog boarding facility.
It wasn’t a bad gig by any means. A lot of menial work, sure, but it paid the bills, and most of the time I was stationed at the front desk, which meant I avoided a lot of direct interaction with most of the dogs. Instead, I dealt with the owners (or “pet parents,” as we called them), which, while more my forte, was oftentimes arguably worse. At least with a dog, you can justify it being stupid.
Looking back on that night now, I would have much rather dealt with a person than the dog that I had encountered.
One of my duties when working the front desk in the evenings was cleaning the lobby and locking the front doors for the night. The opening shift would then come in the morning, unlock the doors, and the cycle would repeat. This is what I had been doing when I realized I had locked myself out of the building.
For a little additional context, the building itself had three front doors. Two led into a sort of breezeway before you got to the actual front door, which led into the actual building. The first two doors had to be locked and unlocked manually, but the main door locked and unlocked itself automatically on a timer. Normally, this was no issue. Every employee had a fob that, when pressed on a sensor near the door, would unlock it briefly to allow entry. But my fob was attached to my keys, which were tucked away in my locker within the building.
Usually, again, this would have been a minor inconvenience at worst. I could simply go around to the back door, bang on it for a minute or two, and wait for one of my coworkers to open the door. But, I had to stay behind that evening and finish cleaning the lobby, having been delayed by a few last-minute pickups and a particularly chatty client on the phone. We had been working with a skeleton crew, as new hires had been few and far between, and the girl I had been working with was tired and eager to go home. I let her go and told her I would lock up on my own.
I wish I had told her to stay.
Standing there in the breezeway, with nothing but the singular key to the two front doors, I was kicking myself. I’d fucked myself over this time, and now I was going to have to make the humiliating call for someone to come to the building and let me in. I could feel the weight of my phone in my pocket, and I slipped my hand into it, only to freeze in place.
It was not my phone, but my wallet.
Shit. It only then occurred to me that my phone was also still within the building. During the slower parts of the day, I had it out and had been texting my boyfriend at the time. Now it sat at the front desk, so close but so far at the same time. Not only had I locked myself out of the building, I had locked myself out of the building by myself, with no way to get help. In my overdramatic mind, suicide was starting to sound like a very good option.
There was a gas station about a mile or so away that I knew would be open and that, I guessed, was where I was going to have to go. There, I could presumably use a phone and get a hold of my roommate to come pick me up. In the morning, I could drop off the key and get my stuff.
I unlocked one of the two doors and stepped out, locking it once again behind me. I slipped the key into my pocket and started walking. It was already dark out and I was cold and eager to get this over with.
That’s when I heard the clicking of nails against the pavement, just barely audible.
My first instinct was that somehow, a dog had escaped. Sure, stray dogs weren’t uncommon, especially in the city that I lived in, but given the proximity to the building, I had feared that somehow, some way, a dog had managed to slip out under our noses and get out of the building. This would have taken either some incredible negligence on our end or some incredible intelligence on the dog’s, but it technically was possible.
I turned around and scanned the area, trying to locate the source of the sound. The parking lot was illuminated by a singular streetlight and the outside lights from the nearby buildings, and the dark of night was creeping in, thick and inky black. The noise came from further back, near the employee parking, which only fueled my suspicion that a dog had escaped. I really didn’t want to go back there in the dark, but I also wasn’t too keen on getting in trouble for letting a dog get out. I slowly crept over, keeping my ears and eyes open, trying to find the dog.
Finally, it stepped out from the shadows, standing near my car. It was a large, filthy Great Pyrenees, and we briefly had a staring match as I tried to figure out who it was. We had a few Pyrenees dogs come in, but it was mostly for daycare, and we didn’t have any in the building that night. I didn’t recognize this specific dog, either, but I hoped that it had a collar with a name and number on it, so that I could at least call the owner and let them know where I had found their animal whenever I got a chance. I knelt and extended my hand, making a kissy noise in the hopes of drawing it over.
“Hi, baby,” I said, using my “dog voice,” making it as soft and non-threatening as I could. “C’mere.” The dog took a few steps forward, eyes still focused on me.
That’s when I noticed the smell. Rotting meat and blood, strong enough that I could smell it from where I stood. The dog was reeking of decay. In my mind, I rationalized it. We were next to a highway, after all. No telling what kinds of roadkill it could have been getting into. I just did my best to push through it in favor of making sure the dog was alright.
I continued my beckoning for a few minutes, doing as much baby talk as I possibly could. I didn’t want to approach the dog myself, just in case it was nervous, but if I could just get a look at that collar…
After about five minutes of this, I stood up, watching it for another moment. It wasn’t a dog I recognized and I couldn’t get it to come over to me on its own terms, so my tired and still-panicked brain decided that it wasn’t my problem. I’d just let my manager know in the morning that I had seen a dog sniffing around and that I was fairly certain it wasn’t one that we’d ever had to stay with us. Then, maybe we could find it again, clean it up, and see if it belonged to anybody. The animal control in my city isn’t particularly well-regarded, so I figured it would be better to wait and see than to get them involved.
I turned around and started to walk away, back down to the road, when I heard the clicking of nails against the pavement once again. I turned around to see the dog moving closer once again. Its movements were jerky and uncoordinated, and that combined with its condition made me think it was injured, so I stopped.
The dog never stopped moving towards me, but when it noticed that I had stopped to look at it, it stopped as well. Then, staring straight at me again, it broke out into a sprint. Its legs flailed and its head lolled as it headed straight towards me, and my stomach dropped.
Have you ever been prey? Have you ever looked something in the eyes and just known, in some deep, primal portion of your brain, that it was going to kill you? It’s a funny feeling— all the cold, heavy dread that seeps into you, like liquid into cloth.
At that moment, my mind screamed at me to run. Panicked, I broke out into a sprint, heading straight for the door to the building. I had precious seconds before it would reach me, and I fumbled with the key as I hurriedly unlocked the door and swung it open, grabbing it and slamming it closed just before the dog made it. Breathing hard, I locked the door and stepped back, my eyes still on the dog.
All that separated us now was some metal and about half an inch of glass.
I could see the dog much clearer then. Its fur was filthy with dust and dirt, and its chest was caked with something dark that I could only hope wasn’t blood. Its eyes were bloodshot and glazed over, and from its mouth dripped saliva, thick and red.
The smell was even stronger at this point, nauseatingly strong.
Whatever was going on with this dog, it was bad. I wasn’t sure of what else to do. Even if I went through the opposite door, there was no way I’d be able to outrun it. I couldn’t make a break for my car because I didn’t have my keys, which were locked in the building alongside my fob and my phone.
No way out, no way to call for help. All I could do was sit and wait in the breezeway. I figured that eventually it would give up on me. It would have to, after all. And I figured once it moved on and was gone, I could haul ass to the highway and hitchhike over to the gas station. Shakily, I sat down, my gaze never leaving the dog. It stood there, watching me, and then it whined.
I say “whined,” but it was more like a long, drawn-out wheeze, like something trying to imitate the whine of a dog instead of doing it. It punctuated the noise with a sickening gurgle, and then it held its head down to hack up a mixture of blood, saliva, and phlegm, spitting it out onto the window before it. It oozed down the glass, leaving a slimy trail behind it, and I had to look away before the sight made me vomit.
I turned my head away from it entirely, trying to steady my breathing. Despite my best efforts, the fear and nausea were about to get the best of me anyway, and I curled in on myself, doing my best to keep everything down. I inched away from the door in favor of the one opposite, trying to put as much distance between myself and the dog as I could. I have no idea how long I stayed like that, curled up into a ball. But when I looked up, the dog was still there, watching me.
I was half-convinced that I was dreaming, or that the situation wasn’t real somehow. How would I even begin to try to convince somebody of what was happening right now? What would I tell my boyfriend? “Sorry, babe, I couldn’t get to the phone last night. Zombie dog and whatnot.” What started as simply a shitty end to the night had managed to turn into the car scene of Cujo, of all things. But the churning in my stomach and the cold biting into my skin was enough to reassure me that this was all very much real. There would be no waking up, no suddenly being pulled back into reality.
I dipped my head back down, trying to convince myself that I would be okay, when I heard its nails scrape against the glass. I jerked my head back up and looked over, inhaling sharply as the dog stood on its hind legs and rested its front ones against the glass. It started to scratch at the glass, trying to claw its way in, and I flinched at the sudden movement, scooting further back. I was all but pressed against the opposite door by this point, unable to keep my eyes off of the dog.
It scratched at the door for a minute longer, stopped, then started to scratch again. Scratch, stop, scratch, stop. This pattern repeated for at least fifteen minutes, and I had almost gotten used to it. The glass was thick enough that I was fairly certain it would withstand the dog’s scratching, and if it didn’t, I figured I wouldn’t have to worry about anything anymore after that.
When the noise had become a somewhat tolerable pattern, I curled back up into a ball, hoping to ride out this nightmare of a situation. The noise stopped altogether and I raised my head back up to see what had happened. The dog had turned around and was walking away.
The relief was like a two-ton weight being lifted off of my chest, and I stood up to watch the dog leave. My relief was short-lived, though, when it stopped and turned around. We were once again locked into a staring match.
A pretty common rule with animals is to never look them in the eye. I had been actively avoiding doing just that this entire time, but finally, my gaze slipped down and locked into the dog’s.
There was nothing there. It was empty, like someone had removed the dog’s original eyes and replaced them with glass.
The dog broke out into a sprint again, making me flinch and jump back. As it ran, it staggered and swerved as if it were drunk, but the distance between us was short. Within seconds, it had thrown itself against the glass of the window, slamming its head against it.
I screamed. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I screamed and huddled back in the corner and watched with terror as the dog backed up, ran, and threw itself at the door, over and over again. The door was, fortunately, holding steady. Despite the dog’s repeated attempts, it was standing strong, the only thing that entire night that had done me any good.
The dog was becoming agitated. It gargled and whined as it scratched at the door once again, seeming to give up on throwing itself against the door. I noticed it had injured itself in the process, the skin just above its eye having broken open and its mouth a bloody mess. Blood oozed out of the injuries and dripped onto the ground. Then, it backed up and tried one more time.
The world went silent for the briefest moment, and then there was a sickening crunch.
With its swerving, it must have made a head-on collision with the hinge, or maybe the brick beside the door, because the moment it landed, the dog’s skull busted open from the impact, splattering gore across the window. I screamed again, and this time, the urge to vomit was too strong. I threw up then and there in the corner as the sights and smells became too much for me. I don’t know how long I spent there, on all fours, coughing and gagging as I threw up the contents of my stomach, and when I had nothing left to expel, I dry-heaved.
I collapsed on the ground after that, gasping for air between sobs. I didn’t know if the dog was still alive and at that moment I didn’t really care. I didn’t even realize I had passed out until I heard voices echoing.
When I woke up, I was aware of three things: I was on the floor of the breezeway, there was a horrible taste in my mouth, and that people were talking.
As soon as I woke up, I remembered what had happened. Locking myself out. The dog. My whole body felt like dead weight. Even when my coworkers opened the door and came over to see what was going on, I couldn’t bring myself to stand. I was still afraid if I got up, it’d still be there with its busted skull and rotten stench, pawing and scraping and gurgling.
The smell must have hit my coworkers as well because the moment they stepped in, I could hear the “oh my god”s and “what happened”s. Then, I assume, one of them noticed the gore on the window. That’s when the voices became more frantic, and the more I became aware, the more I could pick out whose voice belonged to whom.
The voice of my coworker Holly was the closest to me. I could feel her hand reach down and shake me. She was calling my name, trying to rouse me, and I did my best to focus solely on her throughout the commotion.
“What is that?!” I recognized the voice of Mertle, who worked in the back and must have spotted the dog.
“Is that a dog? Oh my god, is it dead?” There was Carlos, who had worked the front desk the previous morning and had no doubt come in to do the same today.
Holly was shaking me harder now, and I moved in response just to let her know I was alive. “Eddie, are you okay?” I could hear her asking. I didn’t want to get up, or even respond, but I had no other choice.
I got up, slowly but surely, dragging myself into a sitting position as I opened my bleary eyes. Sure enough, there was Holly, looking back and forth from the window door to me. There was Mertle, hand over her mouth, and Carlos, staring dumbfounded out the window at the dog outside. Everyone was talking all at once, and to me, it was just a massive block of noise. The dog was dead, though. The dog was dead and that, at that moment, was all that mattered to me.
“What the fuck happened?” Carlos suddenly turned around, looking down at me.
The only thing I managed to croak out was “Sorry.”
The rest of that day was a haze to me. I remember going through the motions, but not really being “there”, if that makes any sense. I can remember little details- tossing my shirt in the washing machine in the back because it was covered in vomit, sitting with my manager as he argued with the local animal control to come to collect the dog's body, watching the camera footage of me sprinting across the parking lot with the dog in tow over and over again, like a broken record.
I never did find out what was wrong with that dog. My manager suspected some kind of rabies, but I don’t know.
I quit that job not too long after. The paranoia got too much for me. Any time I would go into the back of the building, where the dogs were, I would get that feeling again. That cold, sinking dread in my stomach that would make me want to hurl. I had to have someone sit up at the front desk with me as I locked the door, as I’d be too scared to go out into the breezeway by myself when it got dark.
It came to a head when a dog got off of its lead and tried to make a bolt for the door, as it usually would. Unfortunately, I had just so happened to be between the dog and the door, and the sight of it running at me sent me into such a panic I collapsed to the ground and shook. After that, I was gone. I don’t think anybody blamed me.
I’ve put it all away in my mind, both the place and the incident. I try not to think about it too much.
I’m always mindful of my keys now, though, just in case.
Prey never stops being prey.

Hello everyone!
First time posting, so apologies if I am ignorant to any existing etiquette. I'm looking for some advice on a bit of a weird matter that I never thought I would need.
I work in a very small office in the US with, at maximum, maybe 10-12 people at any given moment, including other departments and management. Most of our staff either works onsite appointments or remotely, but I happen to be one of the few that regularly come in. One of my direct coworkers, we'll call Frank, is exceptional at his job. We are essentially remote help desk IT, and he consistently has stellar survey reviews. The man is easily the most thorough out of the 3 of us support techs, and makes it a point to be as courteous as possible with customers.
Unfortunately, he has a lot of personal issues going on. With recent events happening within his family and past traumas, he's gradually become more erratic and disruptive in the office. What started as subtle moments to himself developed into full blown meltdowns, with him yelling and slamming his desk in frustration. He will audibly speak to himself in barely coherent and absurd quips, like talking about how someone upset him so much that he would ruin their life and get their kids taken away (I honestly don't even know), and even lash out at us, his coworkers.
He has expressed to our immediate manager that he thought that several of us are actively trying to get him fired and we're out to get him, which I feel like I don't need to state is not the case in the slightest. Our manager, referred to as Jim for this, has "kind of" worked to resolve this, but it honestly feels like he is dragging his feet. This has gone on for almost a year, and only recently gotten this bad within the last 3 months.
What I can only equate to near psychotic breakdowns is met with him being given days off to recharge or taken out to lunch by Jim to "work some stuff out." While I don't disagree that the guy needs professional help, he is actively disturbing almost everyone in the office on a daily basis, and has shown virtually no hope of improving this behavior. Taking it out on us and quite literally losing his marbles in an open setting, all while blurting out absurdities like "I'm a piece of #$@& and "Why is everyone out to get me" is behavior that would have gotten him straight up fired if it were anywhere else.
And again, I do not WANT him to be fired, but I do want these outbursts to stop. At this point it feels performative, with how much we've tried to talk to him and reassure him. It's also hard to empathize with someone who has balatantly tried to throw me under the bus to our management over a conspiracy that HE made up. I've spoken to Jim at length regarding this, and everytime I bring it up, his response is "I'll talk to him." At one point, I straight up told him that I'm going to go to HR about this, and I wanted him to convince me why I shouldn't because he is handling it. Him and I have a very blunt and transparent relationship, but it just feels like that something isn't adding up here. Even still, the talks with Frank seem to focus on what's bothering him and not about taking accountability for his actions. It feels like this is such a real problem that isn't being dealt with, for reasons I cannot understand.
So I ask this group, what can I do/say to make it apparent that this problem is not only the most detrimental to us, but that it is on the cusp of requiring immediate action to resolve? Is there anything I can suggest? Or am I wrong, and is there another angle to this that I am ignorant to? Would love to hear your thoughts!

Hey folks, hello again. I took a bit longer this time to update (Part 1 and Part 2 here) you but at least I bring good news: this weekend, I got the definitive answer from the prison's legal department, and now I know how much I can tell (and I believe it's enough). For your information, after this incident and my eventual release from prison, I haven't contacted anyone I met behind bars, except of course for my wife, Linda. The point is, even after all these years, this story has troubled me a lot, and since my first post, I've become even more paranoid. Finally, this morning, I went out to get the mail but as soon as I opened the door, I came face to face with a small untouched white envelope, except for two identical characters stamped on its surface: 11. Linda is sleeping, and I don't want to worry her, I'm at the kitchen counter thinking about what to do with this envelope while reliving the final events of all this mess, of what was really inside cell 11.
It was morning, and there I was in my cell, in a scene poetically similar to this. I held a playing card, an 11 of clubs. I later searched for such a card online, but found nothing. It was strange, very well made. Before I could reflect more deeply on this, one of the guards passed by our corridor, opening the cell doors for our breakfast.
So, slowly, as if in a trance, I got up from bed and put the playing card in my pocket. Somehow, the card seemed to heat up in my pocket, I could feel the heat increasing and increasing, almost burning my skin. It was a strange stupor, almost drunken, I could even swear I smelled ether lingering in the air as I staggered to the cafeteria.
I slumped into the seat as I placed the tray on the table. Old Munford looked at me in a friendly manner:
"Overdid it yesterday, lad? Your hangover face is priceless."
I forced a weak smile in response to Munford's comment, trying to seem normal despite the whirlwind of thoughts racing through my mind. The heat still burned in my pocket, an uncomfortable sensation that seemed to be intensifying with each passing moment.
"No, nothing much," I muttered, looking away to my food tray. "Just didn't sleep very well."
Munford seemed satisfied with my response and turned his attention back to his own meal. As I stirred the food without really eating, struggling to maintain my composure, I began to think about what to do.
My thoughts were interrupted when Francis joined us at the table, his usual smile lighting up his face. He looked at me with a questioning expression.
"Hey man, everything okay? You look awful."
"I think it was the heat, or maybe something I ate last night."
Francis frowned. Unlike the elder, he clearly wasn't convinced by my superficial explanation.
"Some of the guys told me they saw Bob talking to you last night. Did he do something?"
The question caught me off guard. All this news about the playing card had prevented me from thinking about the strange interaction with Bob since the previous night, but now the memories began to resurface, mixed with the heat sensation coming from my pocket.
"Oh, it was nothing," I said quickly, trying to sound casual. "Bob was just being a bit... Bob."
I felt Francis's gaze linger on my face for a moment.
"If he does anything, you know you can talk to us, right? I know he's one of ours, but that doesn't mean I'll go easy on him."
I analyzed the options for a moment, reflecting on everything. Well, now it seemed to make sense, a prank by Bob, or an attempt to intimidate me...
"There's... something, Francis," I said in a low tone, feeling tense about the confession I was about to make. "Last night, after the card tournament, I... I ran into Bob in the hallway. He was questioning me about the tournament, accusing me of cheating."
Francis's face hardened at my words, a displeased expression passing over his features.
"Cheating? And you?"
"I swear I played fair," I replied quickly, the pressure building inside me. "But he was convinced I had some advantage, and... well, things got a bit tense... He walked away, and this morning I found this in my cell."
Deciding to omit the encounter with Tulley, I got straight to the point, pulling the card out of my pocket and placing it on the table. I could feel it almost incandescent now.
Munford looked at the card for a moment, his gaze narrowing as he studied it. The heat emanating from it was almost palpable, a strange aura that seemed to envelop the table.
"Is that... an 11 of clubs?" he murmured, his voice tinged with surprise and suspicion.
I nodded, my own confusion mingling with growing anxiety.
"Yes... I don't know, maybe Bob did this to scare me, to show that he has access to my cell, or to try to provoke me, knowing my fear of cell 11..."
My words were cut off when the guard's voice echoed through the cafeteria, interrupting our conversation as he announced that the meal period was over.
Francis looked at me with a serious expression.
"We'll talk about this later," he pointed to the card. "Mind if I take it with me?"
I nodded.
"No problem, feel free."
We began our march back to the cells, and I couldn't help but exchange glances with old Munford. He seemed to hesitate on the matter, as if he wanted to say something but was afraid. I made a mental note to speak with him as soon as possible. Our yard time would be in the next 4 hours, and I spent half of that time trying to ponder what had happened.
I don't know how long it took, but I fell asleep, sitting, with my back pressed against the wall of my cell. The dream, or rather, nightmare resulting from this was a disturbing experience.
I found myself standing, walking through the prison corridors in a way that seemed endless. The walls seemed to close in around me, creating a claustrophobic labyrinth that I couldn't escape. Every door I tried to open was locked, and the sound of footsteps echoed behind me, as if someone were following my every step.
Finally, I reached a door that was ajar, a dim light emanating from within. With a knot in my stomach, I pushed it slowly, revealing what seemed to be cell 11. But something was terribly wrong. A man was there, his back to me. Disheveled, uneven hair, a hunched posture, he was crouched down, rummaging through something I couldn't see, seemed to regurgitate. Suddenly, he stopped. He slowly got up and then looked at me.
Somehow, I knew that man was that prisoner, the one who had committed those atrocities and painted the eye on the damn cell. I noticed something dripping from his mouth, forming a red puddle in the center. On the wall, what seemed to be an incomplete sketch of the dreaded painting was there.
I watched, hypnotized by the horror before me, as the man slowly raised his trembling hand towards his face. Drops of that dark liquid dripped from his fingers, echoing in the oppressive silence of the cell. It was as if the very air was tainted with that impurity.
Before I could fully process what was happening, he began to move towards me, his irregular steps echoing like the distant clinking of chains. A visceral panic seized me, preventing me from retreating as he came closer and closer, his distorted figure gaining sharper contours as he advanced through the gloom. I could now smell the terrible scent he had, not just as something rotten, but a pure and concrete smell of death.
"Who... who are you?" My own voice sounded weak and trembling.
The man didn't answer. Instead, he kept advancing, his empty eyes seeming to pierce my soul. My heart was now pounding uncontrollably in my chest, a deafening cacophony that seemed to fill the entire space of the cell. I was about to retreat, to beg for mercy, when a voice whispered in my mind, a distorted echo reverberating like the sigh of a ghost:
"You... can you see? The watchful eye. He wants you. He liked looking at you."
The sound of my own breath echoed in the silence that followed, a dissonant note of fear and desperation. I wanted to scream, to run, to escape this living nightmare, but I was paralyzed by the terror that enveloped me like a coffin.
It was then that I woke up, gasping and covered in sweat, the echo of the whisper still resonating in my mind like a distant echo of a nightmare. For a moment, everything around me seemed distorted and unreal, a fleeting mirage, and then, I startled again. Munford was standing in front of my cell, staring at me with curiosity.
"Are you okay, son?" the old man asked in a soft voice, as if trying to calm a frightened animal.
I shook my head slowly, trying to gather my thoughts amidst the whirlwind of information.
"I... I think so," I murmured, my voice sounding strange and distant even to myself. "I had a horrible nightmare... It felt so real."
Munford nodded understandingly, his eyes fixed on mine.
"Yeah, the situation isn't good... but I came to talk about that letter, earlier in the cafeteria."
"Oh yeah, what about it?"
"Let's just say I've never seen a card like that, but the energy coming from it, oh yeah, I've seen that before."
"What do you mean?"
"You know, a few years ago, there was a murder in one of the cells. This was before Francis arrived, we didn't have much organization, lynchings were common, and in an attempt to reduce these incidents, we decided that the main suspect, a newly captured serial killer, would be forcibly transferred to cell 11. It was one of the most terrible incidents I've ever witnessed in here. And do you know how that man was known?"
I shook my head negatively. Munford leaned his hands on two bars, bringing his face closer to the center of them.
"The Card Cutter."
A wave of shivers ran down my spine.
"He used to leave playing cards as a kind of signature on the bodies of his victims. They say he would choose the card based on the person or the method of murder. So, when he was put in cell 11, things got even weirder."
"What happened to him?" I asked, a bittersweet and macabre curiosity in my mouth.
Munford sighed heavily, looking at a fixed point this time.
"A few weeks after being transferred, he was found dead in his cell. Hung with sheets. And next to his body..."
"What was it?" I could barely breathe as I listened.
"A playing card. An ace of spades, if I'm not mistaken. And that cell... well, since then, no one wants to stay there. They say it does something to people, kills them."
The shock of Munford's revelation reverberated in my chest, trembling as I thought about what could happen to Guard Tulley from now on, or worse, what could happen to us.
"So you think this card is... a warning?" I asked, my voice barely more than a whisper, staring into the old man's green eyes.
Munford nodded slowly, responding more to himself than to me.
"I can't say for sure, but it's a possibility to consider."
I swallowed hard.
"What should we do then?"
He fell silent for a moment, as if pondering his words carefully.
"I have no idea. I guess all we can do is keep quiet; we don't want to scare the other inmates. Francis doesn't believe in these things, so I won't waste my time trying to convince him, and I advise you to do the same. Maybe if we just keep pretending that nothing is happening, things will sort themselves out. But remember: whatever this force is, it wants to take you to the cell, wants you to face the eye. Resist those urges, okay?"
The clock struck 12:30. Time for yard time. I walked with Munford to the yard, the sun burning our heads as we stepped outside, futilely trying to erase the worry from our minds.
As I watched the other inmates spreading out across the yard, trying to appear normal, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to find Bob, his voice low and threatening.
"What did you tell Francis?" he whispered, he was behind me, and I couldn't see him.
The flesh on my back trembled and twisted, the fluid of fear rising up to my brain.
"I don't know what you're talking about, Bob," I replied firmly, trying to sound confident.
He paused for a few seconds.
"You cheat first, and now, you make up lies about what I did or didn't do."
"I think there's a misunderstanding-"
"Shut up!" his voice rose sharply "I'm just here to say that I'm not a kid, I don't go around sending playing card letters or anything like that. I didn't threaten you with that thing, but now I am, and in a very direct way, and if I were you, I'd sleep with one eye open."
He was dead serious, and the threat was as clear as day. But what could I do? Confront Bob directly like Francis? That could mean he wasn't trustworthy... My thoughts were interrupted by the guard watching us.
"You two, no contact!" he shouted.
"No problem here, officer," Bob said, pulling me into a hug that felt more like an attempted chokehold.
I tried to pull away unsuccessfully, and the officer seemed to simply not care.
"Okay, but we'll be watching," he turned away, and Bob shoved me against the yard bars.
"Listen here, Bob," I began, my voice firm, confused about where this courage had even come from. "I don't know what you're up to, but I won't stand still while you try to intimidate me. If you have something to say, then say it like a man. Otherwise, leave me alone." I pushed him away with my hand.
"You're a fool, you know that?" he muttered.
"I'm not looking for trouble, but if you want it, you'll get it. Let's just leave it be, okay? If anything happens to me, I'll make sure some people know and-"
My assailant's hand closed around my neck, tightening. I squirmed, struggling to breathe as I desperately tried to free myself from his grip.
"Going to call daddy? Look, Francis may have that whole attitude, but he won't do anything to me, or any of the guys," he remarked.
I noticed the usual group of big guys who hung around with Francis, they were watching us from afar, seeming to distract the boss.
"He's getting out in two months...but honestly, I don't think I need to wait that long."
I couldn't breathe. Fighting against the grip on my neck, my eyes desperately searched for any help.
"Let him go!" The guard shouted from afar, starting to make his way down the stairs to reach us.
Bob didn't obey. I felt my body losing strength, so I did what I could: I focused my strength into a clenched fist and punched the bastard in the stomach, aiming right at his gut. And judging by his expression, it worked. I saw him lean over, his hands releasing my body and being placed on his belly.
I knew if I let it slide, he would come back and continue to harass me, so that had to be a definitive response to the jerk that I wasn't an easy prey. I lunged at him again, this time with a well-aimed kick to his knee, trying to destabilize him. He staggered backwards with a groan of pain, falling to his knees on the yard ground.
The other prisoners now realized what had happened, and soon their shouts in a circle were audible.
"Go, get him! Don't hold back! Finish this guy off!"
I lunged at Bob, raising my hand time after time to punch him. He didn't take it lightly, grabbing my right hand as I prepared to hit him; I could feel the pressure applied to the joints, my fingers starting to crack, and I could feel them tense, about to break. In desperation, I threw myself onto him with the only weapon I had left: my teeth.
I felt the flesh of his neck between the rows of teeth in my mouth. Without thinking and trying to loosen the grip on my hand, I pressed on the pearly bones harder and harder, feeling them slide against the skin, the metallic taste slowly emerging as the flesh was torn.
The scene around me seemed blurry, as if I were watching everything happen from afar, in slow motion. Bob's scream echoed through the yard, mixing with the encouragement shouts from the other inmates. I felt a mix of adrenaline and horror as my teeth sank into his neck flesh, a strange feeling of power and disgust.
While still hunched over that bloody man, I felt the blows on my back: it was the guards. Their batons striking time after time as the adrenaline rush passed, and I now began to feel the pain. Without resistance, I let myself be pulled away. Bob wasted no time and moved away, stumbling as he covered the wound.
"YOU SCUMBAG, WHAT KIND OF ANIMAL ARE YOU?"
As I was being taken away, everything around me seemed blurred, as if I were in a state of stupor. The voices of the other inmates echoed in my ears, mixed with images of the fight that had just occurred. I still felt the blood running through my mouth, dripping lightly onto the ground and forming a trail of red dots marking my path. However, before we left the yard, our warden arrived at the scene, and the guards stopped, my arm uncomfortably twisted behind my body.
"What's going on here?" His voice was calm, but there was an unquestionable tone of authority in his words.
"He... he bit a detainee, sir," one of the guards explained, firmly holding my arm.
The warden looked at me, his eyebrows furrowed in disapproval.
"Why did you do that?"
My mind was spinning, trying to find a coherent explanation for what had happened. I knew it would be useless to tell about Bob's threat, about the playing card, about the fear he had instilled in me. So, I found the most plausible words I could gather:
"He... he provoked me, sir," I murmured, my voice trembling. "I... couldn't take it anymore. He was intimidating me, threatening me, and I... I lost control."
The warden looked at me for a long moment, as if assessing my words. Finally, he sighed, seeming resigned, approaching me with slow, steady steps.
"No, you did that because you're an animal."
He gave me two pats on the cheek, then wiped the blood running from my mouth.
"Take this one to solitary."
The prisoners began to shout, a real noisy commotion. I trembled at the thought of being locked up there. No one came back the same from solitary, but at that moment, I really think I'd prefer to go there than what was to come.
"But sir," one of the guards said, causing the inmates to fall silent in an attempt to hear something, "The solitary is occupied..."
The warden frowned, clearly irritated by the interruption.
"Then take him to cell 11," he ordered, his voice cold and authoritative.
That was the final blow, causing the uproar to become widespread, with even some inmates needing to be subdued with tear gas. I could see as I was pushed, Munford looking at me, a worried and distressed expression on his face; he said something I couldn't understand amidst the noise.
With my heart pounding erratically in my chest and my mind clouded with fear and uncertainty, I was led by the guards towards cell 11. Each step felt like it weighed tons, as if I were walking towards the abyss. I could feel the stares of the other inmates watching the scene, some with expressions of shock, others with a mixture of curiosity and indifference.
Finally, we arrived, and by this point, I was sweating uncontrollably; they opened the cell and threw me inside. My eyes instinctively closed as I fell to the ground. I didn't want to look at it. I got up, still blinding my vision, slowly groping around until I found the bed. I lay on it and turned to the wall beside it, my face as close as possible.
Lying on the hard bed, I could feel my heart beating so loudly that it seemed to echo off the concrete walls around me. Each beat was a pulsating reminder of my situation. I tried to push away the thoughts, but it was like trying to hold back a raging river with bare hands. All the while, I heard stories, heard things about that place, and now I was there, cornered by circumstances beyond my control.
Gradually, I noticed the thick layer of sweat forming around me. I could even feel my pores opening, pouring the water from my body in an attempt to cool myself in that stuffy, hot environment. I couldn't help but think about the heat of the card and... about Francis. He still had the card. Wasn't that dangerous? I fixated on musings about it.
In my feverish frenzy, time seemed to stretch infinitely in that dark cell, minutes dragging on like hours as I struggled to maintain my sanity. Every sound, every shadow was a source of growing anxiety until somehow, I fell into a deep sleep, dreamless this time.
I woke up in the middle of the night, with a faint noise coming from behind the heavy steel door. At first, I feared, wondering what it could be, but as soon as I regained my senses, I remembered where I was, and frankly, nothing outside could be worse. I cautiously approached the source of the sound, trying to listen better, when a "Hey, kid, it's me!" sounded whispered.
"Munford! Munford, I'm glad you're here, knew you wouldn't abandon me."
"Ha, I know, I know," he sounded nervous, perhaps hiding from the guards. "Look, I'd help you out, but I can't get it open from this side, try it there." A small plastic rectangle slid through the door gap. A credit card... I remembered I had done this many times before.
I grabbed the card and started working, carefully sliding it into the lock. Each movement was made with the precision I gained from years of street experience, trying not to make any noise that could attract the guards' attention. My mind was racing, and the tremor it transmitted to my fingers made motor coordination difficult.
Finally, after several minutes of trial and error, I heard a soft click, and the door opened slowly. I could smell the fresh air from the corridor and was already about to smile when, along with the bright light of a flashlight, I saw Bob, now with his neck and shoulder bandaged, along with three more of his cronies. Munford was being held by one, who held an improvised knife to his neck.
"Sorry, kid, they forced me," the old man lamented.
"Not so fast, princess." Bob pushed me inside, onto the floor, and then he entered with one of his cronies, closing the door behind him and illuminating me with the halo of his flashlight.
"What's up, Bob, can't you leave me alone?"
"You wanted to settle things, didn't you? Well..." he pointed to his wound. "You just signed your death warrant! But first, I'm going to make sure to pull out all your teeth and make you swallow them."
He lifted me by the collar of my shirt and landed a punch with his heavy hand. I felt dizzy, seeing stars, curling up into a fetal position. His laughter was now a terrifying melody to me.
"Look at this crybaby. Where did your bravery go?" He kicked my stomach, and I'm sure he found it an ironic poetic justice.
His cohort laughed until the beam of his flashlight shifted away from me.
"Hey Bob, what's that over there?" He said, simultaneously pointing with his finger and the flashlight.
Even though it was on the wall behind me, I knew what it was. I saw Bob straighten up to face it, becoming petrified. He and the other, standing there, mouths agape. I waited for seconds, counting mentally and holding my breath, expecting anything, but nothing. Until suddenly, I began to see small puddles forming under their lower eyelids, dark marks... of blood.
The red tears started to stream down their faces like large crimson waterfalls. Soon, they began to make a noise... a familiar noise, which made my mind freeze as I felt my toes curling inside my shoes and my mouth trembling uncontrollably. It was the same sound as Tulley's. They were now allowing these moans to escape their throats and resonate in the tight concrete walls.
I had to do something. I began slowly to pass by them, trying to edge around. When, however, I was almost reaching the door, I could see their shadows turning slowly in my direction. The tension in the air was palpable, as if it could be cut with a knife. I held myself back from trembling as I tried to maintain composure in front of those men, whose bloodshot eyes were now fixed on me, full of terror and despair.
"What... what's happening?" My voice came out in a trembling whisper, barely able to make myself heard.
Bob and his cohort remained silent. They began to walk towards me, and in desperation, I opened the cell door and slammed it loudly behind me, not caring about attracting the guards' attention. As I looked around, I actually noticed that this was a concern I didn't need to have.
The environment where I was wasn't what I expected, from the prison corridor. It was actually another cell. I stopped for a moment, confused, only to be surprised by a figure in the center of it. A man in a straitjacket looking at me with a petrified smile.
"I've been waiting for you," he said. His voice was blood-curdling, sounding like someone scratching a chalkboard with their nails or scraping a fork on a glass plate.
I tried to open the door but it was stuck. When I turned around again, he was leaning, his face inches from mine, eyes bloodshot. I almost fell backward. He laughed. It was like the last time, he had his mouth covered by a sticky red mass that dripped, probably serving as material for the painting, which now displayed an almost complete surreal eye. He turned and walked to the painting, and then he regurgitated it again. Since his hands were tied, he used his tongue as a brush, finishing the last line of the drawing.
"This," he whispered. "Is my masterpiece."
I was trembling. I had forgotten Munford's advice, and now I found myself petrified, just like the others, staring at the eye. I don't know how much time passed, but I felt like it was hours, days... years. All in the blink of an eye, or rather, in a stare without a single blink.
I tried in vain to regain my composure. Scenes of horror penetrated my mind. Cadavers, bodies marked by playing cards. Criminals, inmates being violently beaten with batons, pepper spray, and all sorts of luxuries the police can serve, I saw gang fights, blood, death, and abuse. I saw people being killed inside the prison. Each scene of violence that each of those who looked had already witnessed. My legs were no more than reeds in the wind now, and I just wanted to run away and scream, cry, and sleep to never wake up again. I tried to scream but the man came to me, placing his foot over my mouth.
"Shhh... you need to see."
He repeated this indefinitely. "need to see, need to see, need to see, need to see"
With superhuman effort, I managed to free myself from the weight of his foot on my mouth, but I could barely articulate coherent words. My voice came out trembling and weak when I finally managed to speak:
"What do you want from me? Why are you doing this?"
He simply continued smiling, as if my words were just another piece in his sadistic game. Then, with a quick and fluid movement, he approached me, so close that I could feel his fetid breath and the metallic smell of blood dripping from his mouth.
"Your mind is a fascinating playground," he murmured, his voice echoing in the claustrophobic space of the cell.
I felt tears running down my cheek, and I knew what color they were. I stood there, in shock, staring at the large painted eye, while my entire being was eaten alive in fear and dread. I don't know how much time passed, maybe the entire age of the universe, eternity, who knows. I woke up on the infirmary bed. Wires connected to my arm while a machine reproduced the "beeps" of my heart.
I looked to the side, seeing the green eyes of nurse Linda looking at me, concerned.
"Are you okay?"
"You need to see," I said, not even wanting to.
She frowned, evidently confused by my response. Linda seemed hesitant, as if she were trying to decide whether to ask more or simply ignore my strange statement. I could see the concern in her eyes, but also a certain curiosity, as if something inside her was intrigued by what I had to say.
"What do you mean by that?" She finally asked, her soft voice echoing in the silence of the infirmary.
I sat up slowly on the bed, feeling a wave of dizziness pass over me. My mind was still cloudy, as if I were struggling to emerge from a deep nightmare. I tried to articulate my words as coherently as possible.
"I... I saw things," I murmured, my voice still trembling. "Terrible things. In the cell... in there... something... something is wrong."
Linda watched me with a serious expression, her green eyes analyzing me carefully. She seemed to understand that something serious had happened, but couldn't fully comprehend what I was trying to communicate.
"Look... you and the others had a collective hallucination in that cell... The director has already arranged for an investigation, but we suspect carbon monoxide poisoning, we've already talked to him about the lack of windows in that place, but it seems he doesn't listen."
I stopped, confused by that information. Was I hallucinating? Well, maybe I would even think that if it weren't for what followed. A man in a dark suit entered. He had a serious and intimidating expression, and he asked Linda to leave.
"Listen here, young man, you're lucky to have come back. The others are catatonic... and probably won't come back to themselves. That's why your cooperation is extremely important, and we need to know: what did you see?"
I stumbled, recounting as much information as I could remember, from Tulley to Bob. The man listened to me without making any expression. After that, he took a radio that was hanging from his blazer and said some words that I didn't quite understand, something like "Ceter," "Queter"... and then he took a clipboard, handing it to me.
"This is your letter of freedom. Our proposal is as follows: We release you from prison and in exchange, you don't open your mouth about the specific events mentioned here," he pointed to the clauses.
That was five years ago, and given my freedom, you must imagine that not everything that happened is transcribed here, but the most important parts are. I ended up visiting Munford a few times after that, and I was horrified to discover that Francis, on the eve of his release, hanged himself with the bedsheet. The old man and I stared at each other after this discovery, in a mutual silent understanding. Shortly after, they closed not only the cell, but our entire pavilion, relocating the inmates. I never saw Munford or any of the others again after that. My nightmares persisted, but in recent months they have been much less frequent, and I think I might be slowly healing.
I wanted to say that this story ends well, with my rehabilitation. A troublesome prisoner full of stories becoming a family man. And it would be, if it weren't for the last 15 minutes of this morning. I believe you may remember that I received a letter this morning like that cursed number. I left it on the counter in the living room while I came here, to have breakfast and finish reporting this to you. When I finished the last paragraph, I went back to the room, but now, it seems like the whole nightmare is back.
I felt the tears, transparent this time, forming in my eyes. In the center of the room right now is Linda, holding the letter, looking at something in it that I can already imagine. She's standing there, wet and red stains on her face, I can hear her whispering "You need to see... need to see," and by God... I can see...

I joined a carpool once. There were four of us.
Four mid-level managers who worked at the same real estate development company, and every one of us had tough commutes to work. There was me, and there was Ken, Pete, and Ryan. Before I joined the carpool, my commute was well over an hour. My sunrises were spent alone, an aggravating and mindless stop-and-go monotony fueled by caffeine. And my sunsets were a blinking red lightshow of aggravation the entire way home. Constant traffic. I remember I used to turn off my phone, turn off the radio, and drive in silence. I don’t do that anymore, but when I did, I remember liking the quiet. Driving that commute every day gave me time. Time to think about the things you’re doing, the things you’re going to do, and the things you’ve done. I am especially used to thinking about the things I’ve done. How I once had power over them, but now I don’t. They are permanently gouged in time; they leave marks. You better make peace with that. Because everything we do, we do not do alone. It is shared. Shared with others. With a God? With Fate? I don’t know. But I now know what I never thought about… that what we do, everything we do, is witnessed.
Ken Hallwell had the carpool idea and persuaded me to sign up. He spouted calculations about gas mileage, time saved, who would drive when, and all the other little details of starting a carpool group. Ken did not talk much, but when he talked about this carpool idea, he did. Maybe he wasn’t like me. Maybe he didn’t want to drive alone. We each took our turns driving, picking up the other three, weaving our way to work, sipping coffee, and talking sports, politics, office drama, project deadlines, and the varied minutiae that make up the forty-hour work week. It worked well, the way managers like things to work well. Especially Ken. He kept us on time. Doing the right things. He was one of those guys. Every group needs one. A likable guy. Organized. I always meant to invite Ken Halwell over to my house to meet my family. He was my age, and I knew he lived alone, had no kids, and never married. He had this scar that ran down the left side of his scalp to the top of his ear. You could see it because hair wouldn’t or couldn’t grow there. Something must have really gouged him.
I always meant to get to know more about Ken. But I never did.
It was a Thursday. I remember because it was Halloween. And because the next morning was a Friday, and it would have been my turn to drive. And Friday mornings are easy. Well, easier. But that night was Thursday, the drive from work to home. Pete spent most of the commute talking from the back seat about how Legal had grilled him on the land deal. Pete claimed to hate being grilled by legal, but I think he liked it because he loved telling lawyers how little they knew about land deals. Pete was dropped off first, and his kids met him at the curb, tugging at him to hurry up so they could trick or treat. Next was Ryan. Ken usually had to wake him up. Ryan was a napper. I’ve always been jealous of nappers. People who can just fall asleep anywhere. Kids fighting, game on, wife yapping on the phone, and nappers like Ryan pay no mind, dozing away through it all. It’s never been me. I’ve always been a light sleeper, noticing any sound or noise at night. Noises, which were always nothing, but left me lying in bed thinking of worst-case scenarios—horrible thoughts. Eventually, sleep would return. I have never slept great, and now I probably never will.
Ryan stepped out of the car, and Ken eased us back into the drive and onto the freeway for the seven miles to my place and then another four to his. By this time, the sun had set and been lost from view for over an hour. We sat quietly for a few minutes, and I stared up at the late evening sky. From a freeway, a packed freeway, the evening sky always has this color that changes, and I remember hating it. I used to watch it when I drove alone. It is a darkening grey like a giant ash cloud falling over the day. That night it crept past the sun, trying to take the sky into darkness. Maybe it was impatient for Halloween, that one night when the line between the living and the dead blurs and breaks. I remember feeling glad to be riding in that car, among those thousands of headlights and thousands of brake lights, thinking, what could happen here?
Traffic was stopped. Five rows of cars, trucks, and buses stretched ahead to the horizon, brake lights arcing on and off as we all inched forward. I was beginning to tell Ken about the costume my son and I made, ruined, and finally purchased when we suddenly lurched forward hard. Ken had hit the brakes to avoid a station wagon moving into our lane. A station wagon? I remember thinking you don’t see many of those anymore. Hardly any at all. It came from our left and either didn’t see us or didn’t care. I had never heard Ken swear, but I expected him to. If it were me, I would have. I probably would have even honked at that station wagon. But to my surprise, Ken just stared at it. The station wagon was pale white with fake wood paneling on the sides and back. It had one of those large rear windows facing us, the kind the driver could roll up or down to let anything in or out. The license plate was black. One of those black California plates I thought they had discontinued a long time ago, like station wagons. Traffic started moving again, slowly. But the station wagon didn’t move. It just sat there, brake lights shining red. When it moved, it seemed to roll, not roll, but glide. It glided forward, and we followed it.
“Jerk”, I said. But Ken was silent.
Eventually, he sighed, “Yeah….Jerk.”
I remember thinking that Ken was getting quiet. Ken had always been a quiet guy, but not this quiet. He was always looking at you, nodding, letting out a laugh or a short reply, and always following a conversation. Listening. But he wasn’t doing that now; he was staring at that car in front of us like he knew something. Like he knew the car. Or the driver. Something.
“Ken, you know this guy?” I asked.
He answered me, but I remember his voice cracking as he replied, “I — I think I do.”
He stared straight ahead, focusing. Traffic was still slow, but it was starting to pick up now and then. Whenever it did, the distance between our car and the station wagon widened, leaving space for a car to merge in. Still, whenever that happened, Ken would rev up the minivan and close the distance like he didn’t want any other car to get between us and that station wagon. We never seemed to be more than a few feet from the back of it, with Ken continuing to stare at it. Our lane stopped. The station wagon stopped, and we stopped. Then, in front of us, that long rear window started to roll down, inch by inch, like a glass curtain. I seem to remember wishing it wouldn’t, but it was. It was rolling down, and it stopped, and we could see inside. Nothing. There was nothing inside. Not nothing as in it was empty, but nothing as in it was a deep black. Devoid of light. You couldn’t see in the car; you couldn’t see through the car, to the front window, or the driver, or the traffic beyond. There was just nothing.
HONK. Traffic had started to move a little. Cars on both lanes on either side were passing us, and a couple of the cars behind us started to honk, their drivers aggravated. But we didn’t move. Ken didn’t move. I pulled my eyes away from the window to him. He was craning forward, glaring into that car, into that open window. “Ken?” I said. He gasped like he had forgotten to breathe and then slowly turned his head to me. There were tears welling up in his eyes, and he was shaking like he was cold and like he couldn’t stop shaking if he tried.
His head turned to me, but his eyes stayed tuned on that car when he broke a whisper, stuttering as he asked me, “Can you — Can you see them?” I followed his gaze back to that open window and saw nothing but that curtain of black in the middle of that station wagon, in the middle of our lane, in the middle of this freeway. A freeway that was starting to open up to move. Cars passed us, honking, picking up speed. “See what?” I asked, staring deep into that window in case I missed something. I peered at it intently. I remember having a feeling wash over me like I was not sitting in Ken’s minivan but standing at the edge of a hole, staring into emptiness. The hole seemed empty, but I knew something was in it, something that maybe I put down there.
“They found me,” Ken said, his voice cracking.
HONNKKKK. I jumped at the sound of the cars behind us, around us. They were really moving now, speeding by on each side. Then Ken opened his door. “Ken!” He seemed not even to know I was there. “Ken! Close the door!” He stepped out, and a moving van careened past him, less than a foot away, wind gusting into our car, horn blaring. “Ken!!” He leaned further out, and that’s when I reached for him; I reached for him, grabbed his wrist, and we locked eyes. As soon as we touched, in that very instant, I felt pain. Pain within me, inside me. Pain that was all mine, that had been there my entire life. My body ached from the outline of my skin to the organs inside me. I gasped and felt I would cry because I could now see into the back window of that car and see what Ken could see. Two small faces of two children were suddenly there, looking at me, each of them glaring at me. Two eyeless pale-white children whose tiny lipless mouths gaped open, forming holes of skin that cried forever. Behind them were two shadowy forms, one male and one female. The forms were reaching for the children with elongated limbs that contorted and stretched in ungodly ways, making sickening snapping sounds as they moved and reached. They seemed to be reaching for these child-things but could not touch them no matter how much they strained.
I screamed and felt Ken wrench away from me. He stepped outside the car into the rushing traffic and walked towards that station wagon. But I don’t think he walked; I think he was pulled. I called for him again, screaming into the rush and wind of the freeway and the cars when one clipped his driver's side door and snapped it off in a loud cracking metal sound, brakes screaming as it veered away onto the shoulder. I saw Ken stop at the driver's side window of the station wagon. He leaned forward, looked inside, and seemed to recognize whatever he saw in that car because his eyes glazed with tears. He slowly stood straight up, and in that instant, Ken Hallwell was struck by a passing charter bus, struck in a thunder of glass, teeth, blood, and metal that sprayed into the night air. I watched Ken’s body fly and thud into the road yards away. For just a second, it seemed his blank eyes met mine — -Then a sedan, avoiding the bus, braked hard and rear-ended the minivan I was in. I remember hearing adults screaming and children crying. Then, everything went dark.
Sixteen days later, I was in a hospital, and I was told two things: There was no station wagon that night. It was only a stalled car with a scared teenager inside. And the other thing was that Ken Hallwell was actually Keith Havers.
Ken/Keith was a suspect in a hit-and-run crash twenty-three years ago and five states away. The crash killed a husband, his wife, and their twin girls. The impact sent their vehicle off the road into a small creek, flipping it twice and crushing the two adults in their seats. An ignition cable had ignited a pool of gasoline, and the car — a pale white station wagon with wood paneling — began to burn in the creek bed with the family inside. Deputies found blood stains that didn’t belong to the family and one set of adult footprints near the crash site. The prints led away from that station wagon, from that family, and a second vehicle, a severely damaged pickup truck found on the road, idling, abandoned, and alone.
Now you know the two things I was told, but you should also know the two things I learned. Things the man I knew as Ken Hallwell held in his heart his entire tormented life.
We do not do anything alone.
What we do leaves a mark.

First Previous
"That was terrible."
Lissa was wearing her Homestar dress. Yvian didn't know how the Peacekeepers had made it, but it was the second most amazing piece of clothing she'd ever seen. The fabric, if it was fabric, showed a perfect holographic image of stars in the void. In the center of Lissa's chest, right over her heart, was Pixa's Homestar, bright and burning and beautiful. Lissa's hair had been done up in an elaborate style with lots of curls. She'd looked regal giving her speech. Like a ruler from the days of old. Now she just looked annoyed.
"I told you I don't do speeches," Yvian reminded her. The pixen was wearing her own Homestar dress. Hers showed a crystal city under a clear blue sky. Like Lissa's, her dress had the Homestar centered over her heart, but this time it was the view from the ground. Normally wearing the dress made Yvian feel pretty and powerful. Today it made her feel like a fraud.
"Yeah, I can see that." Lissa frowned at her. "You sound like you're reading off a prompter."
"I am reading off a prompter," Yvian frowned right back. She pointed at the holodisplay behind Lissa. It was the one from the kitchen. Mims had decided against bringing them back to New Pixa, so the crew had set up a studio in the cargo bay. Sort of. Really, it was just a podium and some recording equipment, but Lissa had looked official enough.
"Yeah," Lissa acknowledged, "but you're not supposed to sound like it. You're supposed to sound natural."
"I don't know how to do that!" Yvian snapped. She grimaced. "Sorry. This is just frustrating." She'd tried recording the speech six times now. "I shoot things for a living. I'm not made for public speaking."
"She really isn't," Scarrend agreed. The Vrrl lounged comfortably atop a cargo container, his head propped under two of his hands. He was armored. Mims had grudgingly agreed the pixens needed to dress up, but everyone else was combat ready.
"You're the one who wanted to start a country," Lissa told her. "You're going to have to speak in public from time to time."
"I know," Yvian grumbled. "I know. It's just... can we take a break or something? Maybe give me time to memorize the speech?" It was a good speech. Lissa had wrote it. Yvian just needed to figure out how to say it with feeling. She didn't think memorization would help, but it was worth a try.
"It is pretty close to dinner time," Captain Mims noted. "We could make some stir fry."
"Negative," Kilroy disagreed. "This unit told the citizens to expect a statement from Mother Yvian. The statement is scheduled for fifty three minutes and nine seconds from now." His eyes flashed yellow. "Also, this unit is enjoying the show."
"Of course you are." Lissa sighed. "This was a bad idea."
"Maybe we need a different approach." Captain Mims stepped in. "Have Yvain just... I dunno... talk about what she thinks."
"Mother Yvian has shown she can can speak well when she is speaking from the heart," Kilroy concurred.
"It can't be much worse than what you're doing," said Scarrend.
"I don't know about that," said Lissa. "You remember Zenla Station?"
"We don't talk about Zenla Station," Mims chided.
"What happened at Zenla Station?" Scarrend was curious.
"We don't talk about Zenla Station," Mims repeated, more firmly this time.
"Alright," Yvian hurriedly changed the subject. "Alright. I'll speak from the heart." She paused. "Um..."
"I'm gonna need a beer after this," Mims muttered.
"Quiet Mark," Lissa ordered. "Or I'm gonna make you give the speech."
"No you're not," the Captain told her. "You're not the boss of me. Besides, I'm human. No one cares what I think about all of this. It'd be like Scarrend giving a speech."
"I can give a speech if you want," the Vrrl volunteered. "Attention pixens, you are all fools. You are rioting over a database. Your culture is absurd, and watching you makes me glad I'm bound by treaty not to prey on your kind. I could never risk eating one of you now, for fear you'd somehow infect me with your stupid."
Lissa gave Scarrend a level look. "You worship people that enslaved your species. People," she pointed out, "that you literally ate out of existence."
Scarrend growled, half rising. Then he glanced at Mims and went back to lounging. "It was a terrible mistake," the Vrrl admitted. "Now there are no more gods to eat."
"You don't know what it's like," Yvian told him. "When you're a pixen... All we have is each other." Yvian could see the Vrrl didn't get it. "Our parents. Our community. They're everything. The only thing. Everyone else..." She stared at nothing, remembering things best forgotten. "Everyone else just takes. Other pixens are the only ones that love us. That help us. When Yasme disowned me..." She shook her head. "When she struck my name off the Registry, I didn't just lose her. I lost everyone. Everything. People I'd known since birth hated me now. They would kill me if they got the chance. I had no one but my sister, and I only had her because she loved me more than she loved being part of society."
"Even now, after Kilroy..." Yvian barely caught herself in time. Telling all of Pixa that the Peacekeepers had threatened and tortured Yasme into lying for them wouldn't go over well. "After we found what really happened..." Yvian shook her head. "I can't be comfortable around other pixens. It doesn't matter if my Mother didn't remove me by choice. I'm still motherless. I know I'm not welcome."
"Yvian..." Lissa started.
"That's what everyone lost," Yvian pretended she hadn't heard her. "It's not just a database. Being on the Registry of Families meant you were a pixen in good standing. It meant there were people who cared about you. It meant you were good enough. It's part of your identity. Now that part is gone, and everyone's feeling lost."
"I know what that's like." Yvian addressed the holo-imager directly. "Better than anyone. You feel like outcasts. But you're not. Not like... Not like I was. Your parents didn't reject you. Pixa did not reject you. You did not lose your place in Pixen society. You just lost the Registry. Our enemies broke it hoping that it would break you. But it won't. It doesn't have to." Yvian took a breath and closed her eyes. She borrowed a line from the speech Lissa had written. "We're all motherless now. Every one of us. And if everyone's motherless..." She opened her eyes, hoping she didn't sound as corny as she felt. "If everyone's motherless, maybe no one is." She crossed her arms, looking down. It was a lie. She was lying. She was still motherless. "At least..." She would always be motherless. "At least not from this."
Yvian forced herself to look up, to look at the imager again. She groped for more words, but they wouldn't come. "I guess..." She swallowed. "I guess that's all I have to say."
"Not bad, Sis." Lissa turned off the holo-imager. "I think we can work with that."
"Affirmative," Kilroy agreed. "Your statement was acceptable. This unit will upload it at the specified time."
"Good," said the Captain. "Let's go make dinner." He started walking. "I'm hungry."
"There is another matter that requires our attention," Kilroy reported.
"Ah, hell." The Captain stopped. "What is it now?"
"An agent of the Extraterrestrial Reconnaissance Organization has used the riots as cover to stage an escape." Yvian half expected the Peacekeeper's eyes to turn red, but they remained unlit.
"A spy?" Lissa frowned at him. "There aren't any spies in the Technocracy."
"There are hundreds of spies in the Technocracy," Mims told her.
"Sixteen hundred and thirty four," Kilroy confirmed, "that this unit knows of."
"What?" Lissa didn't want to believe it. "How? The only people there are pixens and Peacekeeper units."
"XTRO's been recruiting people to keep tabs on the Confederation for over a century," Mims explained. "Pixens are prime targets. Exploitable refugees that no one pays attention to, and most of them don't like the Confed anyway."
"But that's the Confederation," Lissa argued. "Why would anyone spy on the Technocracy? Against our own people?"
"They started out in the Confed, but it's not a surprise they were sent here once the Technocracy got going. As for why? " The Captain shrugged. "Lots of reasons. Doesn't matter. What's important is we have spies, and one of them got away." He turned to Kilroy. "Who was it?"
"Myrsa Trin," said the Peacekeeper.
"Myrsa?" Lissa shook her head in denial. "No. No way."
"Who's Myrsa?" Yvian asked.
"One of my assistants," Lissa explained. "She was in charge of coordinating refugee placement."
"She was also a spy for the humans," Scarrend helpfully added.
"Not her," Lissa was sure. "I knew her. Know her. We're friends. She's the only one that never said anything about..." She glanced guiltily at Yvian. "She can't be a spy."
"Myrsa Trin accessed and downloaded multiple databases before boarding a gladiator class ship," said Kilroy. "She left the sector eight minutes ago."
"You didn't stop her?" Yvian didn't see how a single ship could make it's way past the Peacekeepers. The Queenships alone could disable anything stupid enough to try, and they were backed by a million Stinger units and millions of Military vessels captured from the Federation and the Confed.
"Negative," Kilroy confirmed. "Myrsa Trin activated her jumpdrive without leaving the shipyard. Units were unable to target her in time."
"Crunch." Yvian was tired of bad news. At least this time wasn't as bad. The Peacekeepers didn't keep a lot of sensitive information where people could get it. She doubted that Myrsa could take anything that would really matter, even if she was one of Lissa's... Oh, shit. "Wait." She stared at Lissa with wide, worried eyes. "Did you say she was your assistant?"
"One of my best," Lissa confirmed. She glanced from Yvian to Mims, then to Kilroy. "I really trusted her."
"Trusted her enough to give her a Lucendian implant?" Yvian asked.
Lissa stared for a moment. Then she said, "Oh, shit."
"We have to go after her." Scarrend jumped down from his shipping container. "Before she brings the implant to the humans."
"We don't know where she went," Yvian pointed out.
"But we know where she's going," Scarrend countered. "If we jump straight to Wet Sector, we can destroy her ship before the humans can retrieve her."
"Negative," said Kilroy. "Killing Myrna Trin would be counterproductive."
"Counterproductive?" All three of the Vrrl's eyebrows furrowed. "Why?"
"Alert." Kilroy's eyes turned red. "Unusual energy reading detected. The reading is similar to a Klaath portal. It is coming from a Federation vessel docked in Tenril Station."
"Destroy it," Mims said immediately. "Try not to blow up the station."
"Affirmative," said the Peacekeeper. "Second energy reading detected. Aldara Sector, in the asteroid belt."
"Destroy it," Mims repeated. "Destroy them both."
"Negative," said the Peacekeeper. "The second energy source is out of weapons range. First energy source destroyed. The Federation ship is disabled. Tenril Station has sustained minor damage."
"How soon can you take out the other one?" The Captain's fists clenched.
"The asteroid is on the far end of the asteroid belt," Kilroy reported, "on the other side of Aldara's Homestar. It will take twenty three hours, four minutes for Peacekeeper Stinger units to enter weapons range."
"Shit."
"Alert." Kilroy's eyes flashed brighter. "Klaath clusters detected in Tenril Sector."

Link to original nosleep post:
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/1arh0e8/has_anyone_heard_of_the_maze_below_the/
I don't know exactly how it happened.
Everything was going great. It was Valentine's Day. My wife had just left for work. And I had just put the second batch of her favorite cookies in the oven for when she returned home.
The only catch is, after I put them in the oven...
...I completely forgot that it was Valentine's Day.
Maybe I was distracted by all my work calls.
Maybe I'm just getting old.
All that matters is, when I emerged from my home office a little while later...
...The entire kitchen had gone up in flames...
...And a few hours later...
...My entire house had burnt to the ground.
—
When my wife finally got home, after racing back from work, it immediately didn't matter to her that it was Valentine's Day anymore.
She was just glad that I was alive.
"Are you okay?" She asked, tears in her eyes, as she ran over to me, as I stood outside, shivering, wrapped in a blanket beside a fire truck.
"Yeah I'll be ok. Can't say the same for the house." I joked, gesturing to the destroyed building.
We both looked over at our home of nearly ten years, as firefighters put out the last of its smoking embers.
She couldn't help but laugh. "Were you able to salvage anything?"
"Oh!" I replied, before reaching into the pocket of my sweatshirt and pulling out a large, sealed plastic bag full of cookies. "Forgot to tell you. I was able to grab the first batch on the way out."
"Aww." She said.
"Want one?" I offered, reaching to open the bag, but she stopped me.
"No, I don't have an appetite right now, after all this. But maybe later."
"No worries." I said, putting the bag of cookies back into my sweatshirt pocket.
"What now?" She asked.
"Hotel I guess?" I proposed.
"Well we could stay with my mom, but that's a two hour drive. After this, that sounds like a lot."
That's when a firefighter overheard us, and interjected.
"Sorry to eavesdrop, but if you don't have anywhere to go. I've got a spare bedroom at my house, down by the harbor. If you're too tired to drive tonight." He offered, with a sympathetic look on his face.
"Thanks, I really appreciate that." I replied, "But we couldn't. It's a really kind gesture, though. Seriously."
"Thank you though, it means a lot." My wife added.
"Oh, of course." The firefighter replied, "No pressure at all. Just with you here like this, I wouldn't have been able to sleep tonight knowing I didn't offer."
He turned away, took a few steps, and then doubled back. "You sure? It really would be no bother to me at all."
My wife and I each looked at each other, exhausted.
"I suppose it beats paying for a hotel." I reasoned.
"Or a two hour drive." My wife said.
—
A couple hours later, we were sitting in the firefighter's kitchen, eating a dinner that he had made for us.
"Seriously though, we'll forever be in your debt for this." I said, slurping pasta.
"Are you kidding?" The firefighter replied, as he did the same. "After what you've gone through today, it's the least I could do."
"You really saved us a long drive to my mom's place." My wife said, after taking a bite.
"Can I ask you a question, though?" The firefighter asked, putting his fork down.
"Of course." I replied.
"What was it about me, that earned your trust?" He continued.
"Our trust?" My wife asked.
"Yeah, like was it the uniform? Or my charm?" He said.
"Uh, I don't know. Why?" She replied.
"Just curious what exactly lowered your guard enough to come back with me, to my house. A stranger's house." The firefighter continued.
I couldn't tell if he was joking, or was looking for a straight answer. So I went with the latter. "Uh, maybe a combination of both? But if I had to pick one. Maybe the uniform? Everyone trusts a firefighter."
"Really? Thank you! That's what I thought, but the others, they all said it was my charm, and I’m really starting to think that the uniform alone really seals the deal." He said.
"The others?" I asked.
"Yeah, the others. Downstairs." The firefighter replied.
"I'm sorry, I'm not following. There's other people downstairs?" My wife asked.
"Yeah, like you." He said nonchalantly.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Like people I found, in desperate situations, like yours, that needed help." The firefighter explained.
"And... what are they doing down there?" I added.
"Oh, there's a whole dungeon down there." He said, with a completely straight face.
"A... dungeon?" I asked.
"Yeah, like with torture devices, and a maze and everything. It's actually really cool, do you want to see it?" He offered.
My wife and I both looked at each other, then back at the firefighter...
...And suddenly burst out laughing…
...As he, too, began to roar with laughter.
Eventually, the laughing subsided, and the kitchen got awkwardly quiet, so I tried to change the subject. "Anyways, great pasta sauce. Is that cumin in there?”
But he ignored me, and picked up right where he left off. "No, but seriously, you've gotta check it out. Like literally, you have no choice."
I just played along, hoping he would change the subject. "Yeah, yeah, okay, fine, fine, we'll check it out. After dinner."
But he wouldn't let it go. "No. Now." He commanded, his facing turning from jovial to menacing.
The joke was growing old, and starting to get a bit creepy, so I stood up from my seat and gestured for my wife to get up. "Come on, let's go."
"Go? I'm afraid that's not possible." The firefighter replied, "The doors and windows are locked from the inside out, and only I can open them."
That's when I decided that he had crossed the line, so I puffed up my chest, and started to move closer to him in a threatening fashion.
"Dude, seriously? I'm a firefighter. I'm in the best shape of my life. And you, no offense, look like you don't even work out."
I couldn’t help but take offense, but I still thought he was joking, so I just smiled back nervously.
"Oh, and I've got an ax." He added, removing a firefighter's ax from under the table and holding it up before us.
He was not joking.
Seeing the weapon, my wife jumped up from her seat, and we both ran to the door, only to find it locked from the inside, just as he had told us.
"Told you."
—
A few minutes later, we were standing at the foot of his basement, having just descended a rickety flight of stairs.
The firefighter must have noticed me walking nervously down them, as he had followed behind us.
"Oh, please excuse the stairs." He apologized, "I really need to get them replaced. But with all of the construction I've been doing in the dungeon and all, they just haven't been a priority."
I didn't know what to think of any of it. I was just hoping it would end.
But it didn't.
"Ok, so here's how it works." The firefighter began, pointing his ax toward the entrance to what, literally, looked like a dungeon. "I'm gonna give you a five minute head start, during which time I'd suggest you run as fast as you can. Now, at the end of the maze, there is an exit. And if you make it there, I promise I'll let you out. But for full transparency, no one has ever made it that far. Cause, you know, they don't know the maze, and I designed it, so I kinda have the upper hand. But maybe you'll be the first?"
My wife and I just stared at each other with a look of horror, as it became clear that this was actually happening.
"Anyways, you're gonna see a lot of fucked up shit in there. People are gonna beg and plead for you to take them with you. But whatever you do, do not give in. I know in the moment you're gonna want to do the right thing but, trust me, based on how it's gone in the past, they're just gonna slow you down, and you're gonna need every second you can get." He then turned to us, as if to make sure we were listening, and asked, "Got it?"
To which I, unsure of what to say, just replied, "Uh... yeah.".
That's when he pulled out a stopwatch, put his thumb to the start button...
"Ok ready... get set.... go!"
...And clicked it.
I looked over at my wife, whose eyes had grown wide with fear...
...And, without hesitation, grabbed her by the hand, darting off with her into the dungeon.
—
Five minutes later, we were running through the maze below the firefighter's house, uncertain of our exact progress but confident that we had made it pretty far into its depths, when we stumbled onto a man, locked up in a cage, his body emaciated from what must have been starvation.
"Help me!" He called out, "Take me with you!"
My wife stopped for a moment, a look of sadness in her eyes, and began to reach out to him, but I intercepted her hand and led her past him, further into the maze.
"We have to keep going!" I called out.
"I feel terrible leaving another behind." She replied.
He wasn't the first we'd seen. In fact, in just that previous five minutes alone, we'd encountered many of the countless others that the firefighter was referring to, and what seemed like a hundred unspeakable horrors.
But we had stayed strong and forged ahead, and as a result, I felt like we were getting close to the end of the maze.
"We're no use to them unless we get out of this place, and call for help." I assured her.
"You're right." She replied.
"We must be getting close to the exit."
"If there even is one."
She had a point. There was a possibility that the firefighter had lied to us, and there was no exit at the end of the maze.
But there was something about the way that he talked, something so honest and direct, that made me think there actually was a way out at the end. And the more I thought about it, I was confident that without an actual exit, for us to potentially reach, there'd be no fun in the game that he'd created for himself.
"Trust me." I said.
"I trust you." My wife replied.
That's when we heard it. The unsettling sound of someone whistling, coming from behind us in the maze, and approaching quickly.
"Run!" My wife said, her sense of hopelessness now transforming into one of survival.
—
By the time we finally made it to the end of the maze, the firefighter had caught up to us, still whistling. But when he turned the corner and saw us, standing at the door, tugging at its locked doorknob, he dropped his shoulders. "Aw, man. Seriously?"
I tried to bring myself to speak, but my body was frozen in fear.
Finally, I let out the words, "Seriously, what?"
"You beat me to the exit. You're the first ones to do it." He said.
He started running over to us, ax still in hand, as I closed my eyes, bracing for impact and fearing the worst...
...But rather than feel pain, I felt...
...A hug. A gentle, warm, embrace...
...Before I opened my eyes and saw him hug my wife as well.
"Congratulations! That is no easy feat." The firefighter said, "I mean, that is one disturbing, and distracting place. Luck was on your side. Wait, no, sorry, I shouldn't assume luck. You did make it to the end so skill must have been a factor. I don't want to take that away from you."
My wife and I just stood there, waiting for him to get to the point.
"So, um..." My wife said, gesturing to the door. "Do we still get to leave?"
"Get to leave? Get to leave? How dare you!" He said, in a serious tone… before cracking a smile and patting us both on the back, "I'm just fucking with you, of course you get to leave! I am a man of my word, and you did play by the rules and win."
The firefighter walked over to the door, removed a key ring full of keys from his pocket, and began rummaging through it, "Let's see here..."
Until he finally picked one and held it up.
"...There it is!" The firefighter continued, "But can you imagine if I forgot the key ring upstairs and had to go all the way back through that maze?" He said with a chuckle, opening the door from the basement into his backyard.
My wife and I both looked outside, into the darkness, and immediately started walking towards the exit, before the firefighter put his hand out and said. "Not so fast. I said I'm a man of my word, and I am. I told you earlier that if you made it to the exit, I'd let you out. However..."
I suddenly realized there was a caveat.
"...There's one slight caveat." He continued, "When I do let you out, there just so happens to be two dogs out there, that I keep extremely hungry for this very occasion. So when you get out there, I just want to warn you, it's highly probable that'll tear you both apart. Actually, scratch that, it’s one hundred percent probable.”
Between the fire and the maze, my wife and I were both so exhausted, that we both looked at each other, nodded in agreement, and walked out into the backyard, ready to accept our fate.
Then, we looked back at the firefighter, who said, "What? Don't look at me like that? I can't just be letting people escape from here so they can go and tell the cops about this place. Anyways, it's been fun. And sorry I had to make an already bad day even worse. On Valentine's Day no less. Anyways, goodbye."
And like that...
...He slammed the door behind him, leaving us out there in the backyard, standing there in the dark.
—
A few minutes later…
…We suddenly heard the sound of dogs growling.
And as my eyes adjusted to the light, sure enough, I saw two sickly pitbulls, drooling and howling as they approached us, hunched over, and ready to attack…
...Until it hit me...
...The Valentine's Day cookies!
Without hesitation, I reached into my sweatshirt pocket and removed the plastic bag of cookies that I had offered my wife when we were standing outside our burning home, just a few hours earlier. To be precise, the first batch of the very cookies that had set said home ablaze, thus setting off a chain of events that led us to that very moment.
As the dogs got closer and closer, I carefully, and quietly unzipped the plastic bag, turned it upside down, and dropped the cookies on the ground...
...And like that, as soon as the dogs got a whiff of the cookies, they charged over to them and started devouring and fighting over them, in the process completely forgetting about my wife and I.
Together, we slowly walked past the pitbulls, turned around, and backed away slowly, until we eventually reached the fence at the far end of the backyard and, one by one, my wife going first, hopped the fence and ran to safety.
—
Later that night, while we sat in the police station, waiting to tell them everything, my wife, still in a daze from what had happened, asked, "What flavor were they?"
"Huh?" I replied, still in a daze of my own.
"The cookies. What flavor were they?"
"Your favorite of course. Peanut butter and chocolate chips."
"Fuck."
"You know, when I saved that first batch from the house. I was like, if these things are gonna burn my house down, we've at least gotta taste them. But you never got to."
"It's the thought that counts."
"I suppose so."
"Happy Valentine's Day." She said.
"Happy Valentine's Day." I replied.
And then, we both leaned in, and kissed, in a way we hadn’t done in years. Like when we first met, over a decade ago.
We may not have had a home anymore. Or any faith left in humanity. But we had each other. And sometimes, that's enough.
That was last night, and today, while the police hopefully raid that motherfucker's house, you better believe that I'm gonna be at my mother-in-law's place, baking another batch of those cookies.