Finger suspension torture

Can't help but laugh my ass off at how ridiculously selfish and self-centered this is.
Context: I'm 31, been with my FIANCEwBPD (29) for 7 years. She moved to another town for law school back in September, we'd been living together up until then. I agreed to stay in our original city to watch our pets, and the plan was for me to move to her when I secured a job in the area.
Well since September it's been nothing but push-pull devaluation bullshit. Like, we had serious issues 1.5 months into long distance so I know the problem's not me. She just randomly called me one night after acting cold and distant for a long while. I asked her if she wanted to break up and she said: "I don't know."
I said "Fine, we're done." Then she immediately booked a red eye to come see me and apologize.
We worked through that. As you may know, that likely accomplished nothing in the long run and she just built resentment cus I 'punished her'. Flash forward another 7 months to now. Throw in some more devaluation cycles. I ghosted her for 2 weeks recently for the sake of my own mental health (which she took as a personal attack even though she's been ghosting me since the second she moved up there).
We have a group vacation coming up. 4-day trip. 11 people staying in a huge ABNB. It's a very important trip actually, because I'm headlining my first theater as a stand-up comedian and tons of college friends and family are coming out to see me.
Now, I'm not trying to stress about this bullshit up until the day of the show, I'd rather be done now. I already feel detached--in a good way. I've reflected on the peace I'll have and on the potential of finding a partner in the future who actually IS empathetic instead of just telling everyone non-stop how empathetic they are. When somebody constantly brings up a very 'strong quality' of theirs, assume that they're just masking their complete lack of that very quality. This is the case like 90% of the time. This is why during my sister's college graduation, her friends confided in her that my fiance seemed fake as fuck. She was playing a character and they could see it. Tl;Dr: If someone constantly talks about being an empath, assume they're an absolutely toxic psychopath.
I've also realized that this entire time I thought I didn't want kids, I was actually just terrified of her mothering them. Because it's inevitable she will split on them and perpetuate this cycle for another generation.
Anyway we're texting last night, I'm trying to get some clarification on where we're at before this trip because I'd rather her just not go if we're done, that'd be weird AF. She says:
"I don't know, since our last conversation I said I didn't really want to be engaged anymore and later said I didn't want to make any major decisions at that time. I still feel the same. But I thought we would be able to talk about Honey separate to that." -- She wanted me to bring our dog on the trip so she could go with her, which I told her I'm not comfortable with.
I replied: "Wasn't able to stick my fork in that word salad, you'll have to clarify. Did you get your timelines mixed up? In our last conversation you never said "I don't want to be engaged anymore."
I continued: "I asked you, after stating my concerns, if you felt there's anything you felt you could do to reduce the BPD mistreatment towards me. Then I asked if you still wanted to be engaged. You answered: 'I think so? I don't want to make any major decisions right now."
She responds: "Did not get my timelines mixed up. I said I don't think so. I don't know. I don't want to make any major decisions."
Me: "Wow haha either I misheard or you didn't say what you thought you said. Either way, 3 weeks later you feel your state of mind remains 'Don't want to make any major decisions? That's interesting."
Her: "Ok?"
Me: "I was just trying to understand what you said? I don't want to put words in your mouth. When you say 'I still feel the same', what are you referring to exactly? Because you mentioned 2 or 3 different things
Her: "That I don't really feel like I want to be engaged but don't want to make any decisions. To be honest I'd rather talk to you in person about this. And you seem to be getting mad."
Me: I am not the least bit bothered but thank you for your concern : )
Me: "In person, like during the Phoenix trip?"
Her: "I mean, if so, after your show."
I have not responded to that. I'm thinking, "That's one of the most selfish things I've ever heard. You know people are going on this trip to have fun right? Like oh yeah, why don't you just get your little comedy show done so I can break up with you immediately after? Hope that doesn't affect your performance!" Lmfao.
Not to mention, she's perfectly happy keeping me in suspense for another three weeks, which would affect anybody's preparation. She's trying to take a weekend that's about my professional accomplishments, my friends, family, and make it about herself like she always fucking does. What an empath.
Thank fuck we didn't get married. She wanted to get married 6 months after meeting me. Like literally "Let's run down to the courthouse right now and get married." I'm of the thought this relationship ended two years ago when I put that rock on her finger. She split on me 4 months after and threw a fit because I didn't want to rush and sign a contract for a $50k wedding.

We've all heard of cough genocide in the Middle East, we've forgot of a genocide in Eastern Europe that's going on for TWO YEARS.
Russia has kidnapped and tortured Ukrainian citizens, transferred Ukrainian children to Russia, massacred civilians, and bombed cities.
This isn't the first time we've seen Russian imperialism. Russian imperialism won't stop.
To get into power, Putin has employed people to install bombs on walls of residential buildings to blame it on Chechnya terrorists and justify invading Chechnya in the late 90s.
Then, he supported separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia to spark chaos in Georgia in 2008.
Then, he annexed Crimea and sent support to separatists in Donetsk and Lugansk districts in 2014 and intensified it in 2018.
And that's how we got to the invasion of Ukraine. Every time, the West didn't do anything or just wagged their finger. The sanctions on Russia from 2022 should've been imposed in 2014, or even in the early 2000s.
As an Eastern Bloc country that's bordering Ukraine from the southeast and east, we got invaded by Russia multiple times. In the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, in the late 1700s Russia was one of the partition countries and occupied parts of the country all the way through 1800s to early 1900s (except for the Duchy of Warsaw, in place of modern-day central Poland). Then in the mid 1900s we got invaded and occupied partly by Russia. After the war, the USSR installes puppet state dictatures with state capitalism in the Eastern Bloc.
Now, Putin has launched a misinformation campaign in Europe and North America. Also, the Russian missiles and planes are frequently casually flying into the NATO airspace. Putin has also supported far right and extremists in Europe to spark chaos. Prom has launched cyber attacks on Europe's critical infrastructure. Russia has also disrupted GPS and radio signals above the Baltic sea. And lastly, there are correlations and investigations between the recent series of fires in Poland and extremists supported by Russia.
I don't get why:

1. The West didn't react before the invasion of Ukraine?
   
2. Why it was forgot so easily?
   

I understand that there's another cough genocide, but it's not the only one! The things in the Middle East are done in Ukraine, only multiple times.

I didn’t do it. I didn’! I didn’t! I’m no murderer, no, listen! I will tell you your a killer. You do not believe me? Even for a moment? But little is my own sentence even a concern for me, the freedom in society has little left to offer me. Grief and horror are all that fill my mind, the only residents remaining in my home. And you’d expect it to be such an oppressing grief. But no, no, no…it is much more the horror. It is much more the intense fear, the great disgusting and evil works that wait for me in the dark. The grizzly voice that reassures me of fate in its worst forms. It is here now. Cackling at its maniacal work. I hear it. What are you worth wretch! You’ll burn all your years and infinite more! But forgive me, my anger is difficult to suppress against my enemy. He lingers still. A lover of deception however, would be a fool in his own craft to reveal his intentions. Thus, would be a fool to reveal their own horrid form. Therefore, relinquish some of your repulsion of me, so that you may have at least some possibility of belief in what I say. I understand the situation I’m in, but why should I refrain from telling the truth simply because it is unlikely you will believe me? Especially when you condemn me? Listen then!
I was watching television, and my roommate was out the entirety of this night. My family remained in Los Angeles during this time, so they are not making any affect on what occurred. But you want me to tell of my roommate? I am telling you! You ask about the murderer, so you must listen to all I know of him. It was in the most ordinary of circumstances and activity when such a striking and alarming voice pierced the room. The TV was quiet, and I lounged about with dull mind. When I heard someone call for my name from down the hall, whom which I couldn’t see since the door was closed, I of course simply responded, “Yeah?” This was the very first of the remarkable experiences I began to have. I realized what had just occurred. I was home alone, so who could be calling to me from my own room? Well I suspected then my roommate. But I had trouble reconciling the voice I heard with that of my roommate. It had such an eerie tone to it. Almost as if it were teasing me. Yet, it was such a convincing and deceptive call, that the mocking tone it had was almost imperceivable. As if maybe this creepy inflection was a result of my own nerves or unfamiliarity with the event.
Regardless of it’s true nature, this odd quality roused my attention. Was I indeed not alone? But then it must be my roommate, since it was my name. I could not get over the gross friendly tone it called to me with. It’s as if it was bragging about knowing my name. I froze for a moment with the TV playing, listening for another call. “Javier” a woman's voice called out gently and compassionately. But such disgusting compassion did it call out. It seems it couldn’t itself disguise just the slightest hint of malevolence that just snuck under the tone. Or perhaps it meant to say it how it did. But it terrified me. I reasoned it must be somebody I know. But I couldn’t bear the action of getting up looking around. I was simply frozen, wishing not to move and cause myself to miss out on hearing more by making a racket myself. it didn’t even come from behind the door, it was as if it was somewhere far away. Yet it was so clear and punctual in volume.
This left me more at unease and helpless to find a solution. This time I did not respond. I greatly regretted responding the first time. I only paused the TV and looked about myself anxiously, dreading that something would speak again. After many moments of silence, I compromised to rest from my alert. And as the words spoke drifted deeper into the past, the simple abnormality of them caused them to resist their place in my mind as credibly existing. Though it happened not long ago that same hour, I questioned if I did indeed hear a call out for my name in such a mysterious and ugly tone as I had. This was just before the most morbid of calls occurred. It spoke to my name again, “Would you come, Javier?” But such terror came over me in that delicately rude and friendly tone which it spoke to me in. The suspense and anticipation for the call was intensely surmised to a realization as my heart began a sprint. This voice was not just a woman's, it was my sister. How incredibly unlikely she would be here, unannounced and somehow in my home without my knowledge. I still held intense fear, for you must understand the uncanny sense from this call. It was as if someone was inciting their vocals and tone to imitate or mock a human. It seemed not as if they were doing an impression of my sister—no, for it sounded exactly like my sister—but instead it seemed as if they attempted an impression of a human. Such a perfect quality, yet just so slightly imperfect that I may subconsciously perceive something wasn’t quite genuine in this call. I darted my perceptions across the room wide eyed. I quickly looked about myself, checking behind me multiple times.
Now, the following details not only enhance the unbelievable notions of my current situation, but may in fact completely discredit me in even speaking about them. But you must hear it! I implore you to imagine this! It is the truth—all of what I say is. For the night I heard her—my sister that is—speak to me in my own apartment, was the same night, as I learned weeks later, is the same night she had died. Sophia, that is her name, had killed herself.
Many nights passed like this when I was alone. I was tormented by calls with no direction or location. I shuddered at creepy voices beckoning in the dark. Sometimes, even in daylight, things spoke to me while I was alone. Unrelenting and disturbing voices within my home. Now, you may presume at this moment I am clearly schizophrenic. Indeed, I too had this notion. I seeked a psychiatrist during this time, to which medicine was prescribed and an indefinite period of shipping as well. But I perceived far too many REAL things. Yes, these could be hallucinations, but you couldn’t possibly have that conclusion if you hear what else this has done to me.
It happened after many terrible nights that I heard of my sister’s death. I was very shocked at first. But sadness was not next door, grief did not have time to move in. Instead, a realization taunted and teased my peace. I would hear her tonight, speaking to me. You may not imagine the dread that filled my day. I went to work and back home as a zombie. The tasks and conversations passed me by as dreams. I was incredibly absent and void of presence in my own life. My head spun before it comprehended any purpose of grief and despair. When I returned home I found myself double, triple checking that the lights were on and the blinds shut. Even though these things were clearly in my sight. I also locked doors and called my roommate to make sure he was home. I begged and pleaded with him, but he only brushed me off telling me he can't ditch his shift. I paced back and forth within the rooms pitching the plan to myself to have a hotel room. I eventually settled on this as it brought peace to me. And that night passed, at least before I slept, how I hoped. My sister did not speak to me from the darkness. But woe had not stopped its intention upon me that night.
I managed to fall asleep. In my dreams that night, I was visited with a vivid nightmare. I stood in my childhood home waiting at the door with a bat in my hand, standing between my sister and the entrance. I had this feeling that something bad was going to happen, and that I had to protect her, though nothing in particular was occurring. Then, with a gentle creek, a clawed hand reached and pushed the front door gently open. A demonically horned monstrosity stepped into the room. Its hooves clopped upon the wood floor. I intended to combat it, but my muscles took no command from me, and I swung the bat as if I was in molasses. It lunged with a deep roar to my sister, digging its hands into her stomach and viciously tearing it open with ease. It dug through her chest cavity as a dog digs holes in the dirt, spewing and tossing guts and organs out slashed and mutilated. I stood helpless and disgusted, until it turned towards me. It dropped my sister to the ground like a doll it no longer wanted to play with. It approached and grasped me tightly, growling a deep animalistic anger, its stature looming over me. It took its claw and dug it into its own eye, slicing it and tearing it open. It leaned over me, inches from my face. I screamed in horror. Black blood seeped and dripped from its swollen socket into my mouth. I struggled ferociously but the blood continuously poured from its eye into me.
I awoke sweating in pitch black, feeling Intense fear in myself. As a child that had not had their night light. I was terrified of the thought of something being in the darkness. I knew I was awake, and I was in a hotel in the middle of the night, but my heart started racing in irrational fear. I didn’t even have the courage to lift my head and look about the room to satiate the tormenting curiosity in the mystery of a possible supernatural visitor. But, I did. There was a demon sitting on the chair. A darker than dark silhouette of someone sitting hunched, looking at me. It was a shadow. But I knew, even then, this was a devil. I felt it. The blood in my skin fell away. I was mortified; in absolute terror. I stared unmoving with my heart beating out of my chest at this figure.
I slowly began to hold disdain for it. It did not move, it did not speak. But, I was beginning to be relieved of my fear. Instead, it was replaced with hate. Burning, mean hate. I hated it. No, I abhorred it. I was angry. The most intense rage fell upon me. I stood up from my bed, looking about the darkness. I stomped and clenched my fists. Captured in the most ridiculous delusion of fury, I began yelling and thrashing my room. I broke vases and electronics. I smashed the TV to the ground. I bit and gnawed at the chair leg which the thing sat on. I flipped the mattress and kicked doors off their hinges. I scratched and tore pillows like a feline. I was filled with so much hate and anger. I remained like this until hotel staff came to subdue me. Which, at their arrival, the feeling subsided suddenly.
I now was plagued daily by these voices, and nightly by this demon. The visits were not as dramatic as the first, but still, It watched me from different places in the dark each time. All it did was sit there. Weeks passed like this, I lost tremendous amounts of sleep attending to fruitless solutions and avoidances. Either I slept not a wink the night and evaded my tormentor, save for the voices if I’m alone, or I had to face my tormentor in the midst of night with a bravery I did not possess, awoken by various nightmares or visions designed for me that night.
But this is merely his entrance, I must now speak of the acquaintance he made with me. It was another terrible midnight where I stared at it, in whichever spot it had chose for the night, contemplating the nature of such a gross presence and its effect on me. When, filled with a ridiculous exhaustion and exhasperation, I called out to it, “What do you want!” I saw a slight twitch in its head, which struck me with more surprise than fear, although I had both. “Do you know me?” It spoke in a low and growled voice. It had such a tone of malevolence and mocking speech, it even felt as if it spoke condescendingly, as if I was a child it was reducing to. “No.” I said, my breath failing me. “I knew your sister.” The demon stated with a snicker, which developed into a chuckle, then an intense and hearty laugh. He wailed and howled in laughter even, he sounded insane. Such a disgusting sound it was to hear its voice in the darkness so pleased with itself. It confused and frustrated me in fear greatly, and it became so loud and went on for so long I couldn’t stand it. “Shut up!” I yelled finally. It stopped laughing immediately. “But you know Javier, you know me too.” It spoke very seriously. I stared in bewilderment. “You’re guilty! You’re guilty! You love murder! Haha! You love yourself! You stroke huh?” The demon spoke without relent and enjoyed his own hilarity. “What the fuck?” I said in a trembled whisper. “Yea, you hate clothes, you little pathetic bitch.” It cackled.
I was roused again with the most extreme and unimaginable anger. I yelled my defense at him. He grew in laughter. I screamed any kind of profanity and slur I could think of at his station, and he only grew in volume with me. This went on until I finally arrived at my king accusation, which was finally enough to have it stir, “You’re a failure of creation!” He was silent for a moment. “What is it you know of creation?” It spoke with such a terrible and tremendous tone. “Are you worth any more than me? You’re subject to death the same. I’m a connoisseur of freedoms, yet, what are you? You are a slave of fear, scared of your own desires. And, even more so, subject to me.. As much as a mouse loses its life to the metal spring when it grabs cheese, so do you spoil by me.” “You speak nonsense!” I retorted “You’re very stupid, it’s difficult for you to grasp.”
Then, without much more deliberation, it simply began roaring with the most horrific and inhumane noises. It began screeching—it screeched with blood curdling yells and sorrow. It screamed as if it was lit on fire. At once, in the shadows, it began clawing at its own face. I heard sounds of ripping and tearing—with noises as if pounds of deli meat were slammed onto the cutting board. This was accompanied by an intense and putrid smell of rot, and I began weeping. This experience was more than I could bare, and I couldn’t describe to u what was unnaturally filled in my mind. This night felt as if i was never going to escape the moment, like the present moment was my eternity. This sight annoyed me to my soul for what seemed like hours, and I even conjectured to myself that this torture was eternal.
But soon, he did indeed cease. A gentle glow of orange illuminated the end of my bed. He stood before me, tall and with elegance in the light. He was skinned, his jaw dislocated, his face scratched bare and raw so that no features were pertruding. He was completely nude, with hooves and fur patches among his disfigured appearances. He wore this boldly with shame, yet, overcame it with overwhelming pride.
Such beauty it was to admire his stature. I could not help but gaze with wonder and pleasure. I must have admired him for a while, perhaps even hours. I became mad with lust for him, such a delicious sight he was! I should give up my other fruitless endeavors of life if I could just have the delight to taste him.
But just as I settled on my prospective bliss, my roommate entered the room. His yell of terror attacked my ears, interrupting us. Why scream? Why that hideous look on his face? What was he so scared of? What possessed him to be worthy of beholding any sort of indignation upon my beautiful companion? A little worm—that ugly little leech that dared breath the same air as us. “Get rid of it.” The demon told me, but I hardly needed a command to conceive of my goal.
Oh, what fun I had! It was like the first fresh sip of lemonade on a summer day! Like the sunshine that seeps through window seals—like the birds chirping in the dewy mornings. Like the adrenaline of a rollercoaster—the tickle of a drop. Like the intoxication that gives you belief of so much confidence. And to feel it on my hands? It was the joy of a child when he smashes his fingers into the moist sand—that innocent satisfaction of destroying a castle. Like the excitement of opening your favorite bag of chips—grabbing the ends and pulling the plastic with might until bursts open with goodies; yes, that’s what it was like for me to stick my thumbs deep into his eye sockets, and pull to open—if only I could. It was such, as when I bit down on his throat with all my might and sipped. It was indeed so, when I scratched and clawed till my nails came off, opening his chest and pulling at ribs like discarded hot wings, ripping at organs and intestines, pulling of nails, bending fingers two loops around, snapping his arms, smashing his head with my foot—but again my happiness was destroyed. For my companion had fled the scene, and he was no longer present. At once, I recovered some coherence and realized the tragedy of what I had done. How would I hide this? How could I discard of blood evidence all over me? How was he going to chip in on rent in this condition? I obviously had not calculated all the required considerations before doing such a thing. I was enraged by the black magic possessed by the demon, stupid, tricky, evil thing. So you see, it was his fault.

I'm half way through Iron Flame and just finished the torture/Dain scene. I had to do a little scream out loud. I'm both enjoying and HATING the suspense and heightened tension in this book. Is it just me or did anyone else feel this same way!? It's too much at times!

[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.]

This might be controversial because Chao is observably a fan-favorite, but has anybody else felt like his plot armor has bordered on ridiculous at times? I get it; Him being an independent businessman with vast connections earns him respect. At the same time, it was hard for me to suspend disbelief at him constantly maintaining his neutrality with such minimal pushback. Mai Ling is a power-hungry sociopath obsessed with owning everybody, Young Jun is a violent mobster valuing loyalty above all else, and yet Chao is able to sit the fence unscathed with little serious coercion to pick a side. The moments where people threaten him or challenge his position are rarely consequential.
Even his plotline in Season 2, which focuses more on him being pressured to commit to a tong, doesn't escalate as far as it feels like it should've. The Fung Hai have a reputation as ruthless savages who give no fucks about the status or power of the people they go up against. They bully their way into the Long Zii by sheer numbers. They beat Lee into a coma. They make Bill their bitch and try to murder him and his family in his own house when he refuses their control. These people want to own Chao, and what do they do when he ignores them? Break a couple bones? Remove a couple fingers? Torture him into submission? Keep him prisoner? Nope, they use light intimidation tactics. The furthest they go is making him drink animal splooge, and even after that they're pretty friendly with him. I'm honestly surprised that Zing stabbing the shit out of him in Season 3 didn't happen earlier.
Not to draw comparisons, but you look at characters like Ah Toy for example. She's a badass swordswoman, yet gets the shit brutally kicked out of her when she's caught without her weapon. She's a respected Madame, but endures humiliation from Mai Ling out of necessity. She attempts to start a normal life with her lover and has it abruptly yanked away from her, because that's unfortunately a reality for women like her. Characters like Ah Toy are compelling because they have limitations, and things don't always work out their way. Meanwhile, Chao seems to always have things work out his way to the point where it becomes hard to seriously fear for him when he's in danger. There are no stakes.

“A old marvel marble that withered away within itself, made from a flourishing once caring creator, now been left aside to wither away, rusty marbles and quartz’s body.
One of them rushing towards a man named Antoine, who’s currently trying to remain silent and alive.
Slashing, cracking, cracking, twirling around its motor, trying to use a rusty mechanism that was its mind, crack, crackling, spinning.
The man, a wizard without his magical powerlessness, uses an old dagger to stab away at this olden marvel of once great writer of the Marble Castle.
Slashing continues away and away, one final crack along its head, splitting into its skull, splatting against the dingy floor, the forgotten substance flowing along the melting concrete, the man watches.
Watching an old marvel.”
Antoine : Gotta get moving, gonna find my family. Gotta get moving……
“Watching, watching, and watching. Looking around, old concrete ate away from within, withering the warden’s soul, its hatred of what it came from, oh father made to carry the sins of sins within.”
I’m sorry my son, my daughter, my everything….. the sins shall make everything better when the end comes to me, I shall never see or hear you, but hey I’m bringing entertainment to some watchers, I think they know…… they know I appreciate them and when it comes to the season finale, I make sure I get a message to you guys, hoping to see their tears of pure happiness from the sins that are made within here…….
Sorry everything just caught me within days of joyful tears, the true entertainment I could actually enjoy………
“Memories flood”
Sorry… where was I? Oh yeah gotta check on the poll…… I probably shouldn’t have put down the Wizard Councilor, because he got voted…. You know what….
I think we need to focus on him and somewhat on the second most voted candidate, which was the snake….
The snake…… somewhat reminds me of my daughter, a bundle of sunshine and love that couldn’t be …………. That was killed.
“A old dim flickering film reminds what is gonna happen”
Yeah… I know I failed you, promised to make it on time for once, make sure to hear your joyful smile and hear what makes you my daughter, and my son……. A man that fought and raised through the ranks of a……. Former great empire….. you never forgot to remind yourself what you wanted to do with your life….. giving hope to others, making sure a helping hand was outstretched towards someone……..
“Something links and flips around the control room”
Yes, yes, yes, and I know I’m almost late once again, an illusionist that made a clock that literally made no one forget the time, I proved it wrong….
Yet you were happy……. everyone was formally happy at a point during the periods that used to have ever lasting peace….
Sorry my children, that I couldn’t bring peace to you, letting you down into a hasty grave………..
“Lights flickering, static is heard within, buttons pressed, lining and linking up within the rails of static, an old memory of a great price of art that brings joy to all watchers.”
HELLO! Hello! Welcome Back To Sinners Delight!
In Your Great And Wonderful Host Mr #
So you may be asking? Why is Scotch gonna be tortured again even though the last episode was about his torturement!
Here’s the part, you or mainly most of the watchers selected him in a democratic system vote!
And boy I love my democracy!
“Flicking along the screens, a snake woman is cradling back and forth within her padded cell, no fingers lifted and yet her mentality is breaking away and down to the ground.
Watchers gulp this up, and feed into the world created within an old static, for entertainment and the entertainment machine shall be always in motion.”
My, my, my what does these little ol eyes spot within my confines of a great place where dreams are made into endless entertainment.
What are you? Why are you? Why be huddled up and going through your own pain, when I can double it for the watchers entertainment.
Just how and what am I gonna use?
“The thoughts rush alongside the mind's thinking patterns, memorizing the memorizing patterns of itself, little codes that run and scatter along them, data and data, how we create any of any of any of any within any of any divine beings of any.
Just patterns within the beings of coding creation some create, no mouth but yet some must scream in order to be heard within the patterns of code that’s being created with data of any, with of any being created to drown out the memories.
Stop thinking of them, they pass, let them pass, they pass, remember the pills, the entertainment for the Watchers shall help you, they give you new meaning within the melting concrete of this level, remember that Watchers need you, not one sided but two sided for me…… I will pass within the melting concrete that the walls within the melting……….. gotta stop thinking about them, sorry my children for not keeping up with the promises…… failing them again………. Just what to do?
What about making her fight an Illusion? Giving her a small dagger? Yeah sure……..”
ahem….. My Beautiful Watchers Of Great Entertainment! Today I Know What Route We Go Down!
My Dear Watchers I Present The Next Challenge!
One Of Great Turns! One Of Survival! One Of Great Power!
Now Let’s Include The Bastard Scotch!
“Antoine is no longer in his cell……..”
…….
……….
……..SON OF A BITCH!
WHERE IS THAT ONE!
“Cut back to Antoine looking into the eyes of a flesh abomination”
< Connection Lost, the broadcast is no longer available >

Logged into twitter to DM an artist I was trying to com only to see "your account is suspended"! I checked my email and lo and behold "due to a user report for violating our rules against evading suspension"... except I've never been suspended, and I haven't even tweeted yet on the account since I'm still finalizing everything with my branding! Has this happened to anyone else recently? I submitted an appeal so fingers crossed because it would be a real blow to have the twitter @ that matches my youtube and other accounts marked as "suspended" when people try to search it :') But if this happened to anyone else, did you get it fixed? Or figure out what happened?

Case 1: If you are really scared, then why do you torture yourself?
Case 2: If you aren’t scared, then what’s the point of watching a horror movie?
case 3: You want to prove to yourself that you are brave enough to watch a horror movie?
Case 4: You are not scared, but you really enjoy the suspense in such movies?
Just trying to understand who’s the audience for horror movies and why do they watch them?

(Now there are some parts in this chapter that actually happened in real life, the French revolution and incidents that happened during it. But pretty much the story is a work of fiction.)
Chapter 1: Recollection- I stood and watched the droplets of rain slide down the window pane. This should be a festival, or some type of holiday, as we rarely get any rainfall. I focused my gaze on the neon signs below. The rain falling around them seemed to enhance their luminosity. It is amazing that rainfall can make such a filth-riddled city like this seem almost; normal. After a little while, the rain slowly stopped falling. The dark clouds quickly dissipated and the twin moons cast their brightness, like two large spotlights in a prison yard. The city that was briefly hidden by the rain showed its ugly face. New Grimes City, the place where ‘good people’ are the stuff of legends. Gangsters, thieves, murderers and prostitutes are just some of the people who call this place home. Not a day goes by where you have to watch for wandering fingers reaching for your pockets. Although if you’re someone like me, you have more than just pickpockets to look out for. Being a private investigator has brought a slew of negative attention my way. There have been multiple assassination attempts made against me. But there’s a reason why all who have challenged me have failed.
Being a vampire has its perks, especially in a place like this. That’s the reason why I was sent here in the first place. Back on Earth things like me weren’t allowed in society, in fact anyone who put a single toe out of line was doomed to be sent here. The group known as “The cult of order” saw to that. No one knew of their existence, until the meteor struck. “The cataclysm of 2223”, the year that everything changed. After the meteor fell and single handedly wiped out most of the population of Earth, the remaining survivors needed a leader. The cult of order came to power, and established a "one-world government". sometimes I still can see the events of that fateful day as if it were a movie being played on repeat. I can still see the distant trail of the meteor as it plunged to Earth, see the towering wall of sea water as it came rushing towards the land, and being consumed by it. People who were fortunate enough lived in Strato-houses, or had some type of SHRV (Space Habitation and Recreational Vehicle) to get them out of harm's way. The rest of us weren’t so lucky, I would wager that half of the Earth’s population died that day. I remember as I was underneath the waves watching the many lifeless bodies being dragged along, I didn’t have to worry about drowning but I didn’t want to be stuck under the water. I tried to fight my way to the surface but the weight of the water and raging current made that near impossible. As I still kept trying to fight my way to the surface, I felt a sharp stinging pain in my stomach. A long metal rod had pierced straight through me like a knife through warm butter. When my blood started to mingle with the water that’s when I started to panic, if I didn’t get out of the water soon I would die. I hadn’t eaten in months up until that point, so I was already weak as it is. Bleeding out is kind of an ironic fate for a vampire, and one that I really wanted to take a rain check on. I started reaching out, desperately trying to grab onto something, anything that I could hold onto. If I was lucky, maybe it would be something buoyant enough to get me to the surface. I was so desperate that I started trying to grab hold of the bodies that were being tossed along the current above me. “I can’t die! I won’t die here!” were the thoughts racing through my head. Suddenly; as if some divine force heard my thoughts and felt my desperation, the current started to slow down.
A brief feeling of euphoria hit me as I felt myself just floating in the vast waters that surrounded me. However I knew I wasn’t safe just yet, I was getting weaker from the blood loss, so much so that I couldn’t use any of my magical abilities. With one more desperate reach, I grabbed onto the hand of one of the bodies. It was a young woman who looked to be in her early twenties. Her long black hair floated in the water, it made me think of me and my fiancée swimming in the lakes at Versailles. I hadn’t thought about her for ages it seemed, up until that point. She died a very long time ago, and I’ve tried to forget about it. Those were very dark times, even darker than the present I believe. It was at that point where I felt as if I wasn't going to make it up to the surface, I was too weak.Well if I was going to die, I wanted those thoughts of my fiancée to be my last. I remember hearing a beautiful song and the feeling of something embracing me. I surrendered to the warm feeling of it and closed my eyes, I'm pretty sure I smiled.

 I woke up; I was curious as to whether I was still alive, or had died and this was the afterlife. I felt as if I was laying on a bed, or possibly in a coffin with a soft interior. That's when a figure approached me, I couldn't clearly see who it was. I blinked a couple times to try and adjust my vision. It was a man, the thing that struck me was his pale skin. It seemed almost translucent. His piercing hazel eyes glowed brightly in the dark room. Then he smiled; he was a vampire just like me. "W-where am I?" was all I could say. "You are in a sanctuary, for our kind. This place used to be packed to the ceiling, but now it's very rare to see vampires. Alexandre and I have been the only inhabitants of this place for some time, so it's good to see another vampire." the man said. He grabbed my hand and slowly lifted me up. “How did you know I was a vampire?” I asked. “Oh, aside from the pale skin and fangs? No human could truly survive that.” “How did I get here?”, the man before me giggled a little at that question. “ You were rescued by a mermaid, if only I were so lucky,” the man said. “What was she like?” I couldn’t help but wonder, I didn’t realize mermaids were still alive, they are an ancient and resilient species. Also very beautiful, I saw a mermaid resting on a rocky cove a long time ago. Her hair was long and the color was like the stars on a clear night, the scales on her tail were navy blue that transitioned to a silver hue. When she saw me, we just stared at each other for a few seconds. She blew me a kiss and dove underneath the ocean waves. Mermaids do have that reputation for being seductresses, I wouldn’t have minded being tempted for one bit at that time. “Oh she was a thing of beauty, orange hair, sky blue scales, a high-born mermaid for certain.” “High-born?” I asked him, as I didn’t know there were different kinds of Merfolk. “High borns are part of the royal lineage of Merfolk, they can live for at least two-thousand years if all goes well. They are also born with special abilities, such as healing powers.” When I heard him say that I quickly lifted up my shirt, as I had remembered being pierced by that metal rod. To my shock and amazement, the rod and the wound were gone. “I remembered being impaled by a metal rod, and losing blood, did she really save me?” I thought to myself. “She must have, otherwise we wouldn’t be talking right now, would we?” he said. Of course, telepathy. He can read my thoughts, he must be pretty strong for a vampire. “I'm surprised you haven’t learned to read people’s thoughts yet, with you being around for as long as you have.” “Well I never really thought about honing my skills, I’m just trying to exist pretty much.” I said in response. “You need to learn your powers in order to truly survive, you almost died. A vampire almost dying from bleeding out! It’s an oxymoron personified!” The vampire started laughing uncontrollably. “Anyways, let me show you where you will be living. In the meantime I will teach you all you need to know.” The man snapped his fingers, the candles in the room lit up bringing light to the darkness. I saw the man more clearly, his garb was that of the aristocratic kind we wore back during the old regime. His long brown hair tied back into a ponytail. "Were you alive during the reign of the Bourbon?" I asked him. "Yes indeed, those were the days, I miss the gilded halls of Versailles, the large parties and the women, mostly the women." "Sir, may I introduce you?" A voice suddenly spoke, I looked over in the direction of the voice. It was another man, holding a tea tray. The top portion of his head was bald, he had pale skin, and was tall and quite burly. He looked like a rather stern man. If the emotions of happiness and joy were physical beings, they would run away in terror from his intimidating gaze. He was wearing fancy clothing however it was a little less extravagant than the former's, he was most likely a valet. "Yes you may, my dear Alexandre." the vampire said. 

"Very good sir", Alexandre put the tea tray on a little table, stood upright and took two steps forward. "May I present to you, the Chevalier de Castellane!" Alexandre spoke loudly. "You know my dear Alexandre, you don't have to be so dramatic when introducing me." The Chevalier spoke. "I'm sorry sir, but old habits die hard and even though it's true millennia have passed, I still remember introducing you like this at the parties and salons at Versailles." Even though his demeanor was rigid, and his gaze cold, I could see in his eyes a longing for the ways of a time long since forgotten. Sometimes I find myself wishing the same, before the revolution life was paradise. I was due to be married to the woman I loved, I had wealth and status, I would relive that time over and over again if I could. "Please forgive me sir, but I would like to keep my introductions the same as they have always been." Alexandre lowered his head a little, "We don't get many visitors as it is, so may I be allowed to do so?". "Yes you may Alexandre, if it brings you happiness then so be it!" The Chevalier said with a huge grin on his face, he turned and looked at me “You can call me Philippe, it makes things easier.” Alexadre glanced at me, “May I be allowed to introduce you, sir?.” “Oh! Y-yes you may, Alexandre.” The last time I was introduced by a valet was on the night of the last Royal Gala. It was not as extravagant as the other parties I've attended, but it was still a good time. Before; myself, my wife, our friends and family members were imprisoned and killed. “I need your name sir so I am able to.” Alexandre said with a hint of sarcasm. I glanced over towards Philippe, he was pouring himself a bumper of wine. I could smell it from the coffin I was in, Turin Rose Solis was the brand. My personal favorite, I could feel myself salivating. “Sir! Please may I please have your name?”, Alexandre said, this time sounding a bit more frustrated. “My name is È’tienne De la Croix.” I said. I could hear Philippe gasping. I quickly turned my head, I watched as the full glass of wine fell out of his hands. I was expecting it to hit the floor with a crash. However in the blink of an eye, Alexandre was standing next to Philippe. Glass of wine in hand, and the same rigid expression. I looked down to the floor in between the pair, not a single drop spilt. “Sir you have to be more careful, this wine is one of the two bottles we have left of the Turin Rose Solis. It would’ve been such a waste if this were spilled, please do be more careful next time.” The sight made me giggle a little, the Chevalier de Castellane, a nobleman, getting scolded by his valet. I was so distracted by the introductions and conversations, that I didn't look at my surroundings. We were in a cave, I have to admit I was a little disappointed. I thought it would be like a crypt or an old 19th century home. "Did you do the decorating yourself?" I asked, Philippe snickered a little. "No but you can take it up with Alexandre, he thought this place would be convenient for our purposes. But you did say that your name was É'tienne de la Croix, right?". "Yes I did, have we met before?" I asked, he did not seem familiar to me at all. "Yes we did meet, but only briefly. We were both imprisoned at the Hotel de la Force, I remember you being with your fianceé. A beautiful and noble woman I must say, what was her name again?". I could feel my heart breaking all over again, I looked down at the floor. "Genevieve de Lyon", it felt like I was regurgitating little blades trying to say her name. "She was, and still is the love of my life. It's been a very long time, and yet I still can't forget about her. She was an angel personified, a kind and beautiful soul." I could feel tears start to run down my cheeks. "Those revolutionary brutes defiled her, and forced me to watch. After they were done with her they proceeded to torture me. They ended up slitting my throat. They drug her away and left me for dead". After I said those words Philippe piped up, "Alexandre, give him my glass, he looks like he is in urgent need of some wine." "Right away my lord," as soon as Alexandre said those words, the glass of wine was being held in front of me. Alexandre is very good at his job, no wonder Philippe chose him as a companion. I took the glass of wine, "Thank you Alexandre," I said softly, "You're welcome sir." Alexandre quickly took back his place beside Philippe. I took a sip of the wine, if words could describe how delicious it was. I felt brave enough to continue, "The only thing I remember is someone coming to me, and offering me an escape from death and a chance at revenge, I said yes,". I looked up to see Alexandre pouring Philippe a glass of wine, Philippe looked back at me, "Do continue E'tienne, say what you need to say." I wiped the tears streaming down my face, and took another sip of wine. "When I was turned into a vampire, the person told me to wait until everything calmed down. They told me to blend into the crowd and feed to get stronger, to save the real prey for last." Before I could say another word, Philippe spoke. "Evil-doer's blood tastes better when they are afraid," Philippe said. My eyes widened, those were the exact words said to me when I was being told what to do. "Did you read my thoughts again Philippe?" I asked. "No, I was the one who turned you," Philippe said with a bit of pride. He continued to speak, "I'm honestly surprised you didn't remember me, although to be fair I forgot about you as well. I can understand though. The memories seem too much for you to handle. Though I do have a couple of questions in mind, did you find the men? Did you find your wife?"
I was flabbergasted, not only by the fact that I had just met the vampire who made me, but also the fact he could pose such delicate questions so casually. "W-well yes I did, I found both my wife, and the men who hurt her," I shuddered and looked away. "I took some clothes from a dead revolutionary, and escaped under the cover of nightfall. I hid in an abandoned apartment near the prison. When the day broke, I watched as the revolutionaries brought out the dead and the dying from the prison. That's when I saw my wife being dragged into the courtyard, beaten and bloodied beyond belief. A man stood in front of her, accusing her of being a traitor to the revolution, wanting to bring back the monarchy. The punishment was death, and as quickly as he said that, someone came behind her with a sword. With one swift motion of the blade, her head was no longer attached to her body.” The tears started streaming down my face again. Philippe came and sat by my side, “Please È'tienne forgive me for being so intrusive, but I need to know if you made those brutes suffer”. I took a minute to compose myself and wiped the tears from my face, “You're damn right I did-”.
The sudden ringing of the telephone shook me out of my recollections. I quickly look around, I'm still here in my office in New Grimes city. I sighed and walked over to my desk. “Hopefully this is a job opportunity”, I think to myself. I clear my throat and pick up the phone, “This is È'tienne speaking, how can I help you?”. A very familiar voice comes through, “È'tienne my old friend, I need to meet with you at once. There is an issue of grave importance we need to discuss, don't worry this will be a paid job. Meet me at the usual spot, there is someone here who is very anxious to meet you. Hurry, this is the type of man who doesn't like to be kept waiting very long”. With that, the man hangs up the phone. “This is unlike Guillaume, I have to get there right away!” I said out loud. I quickly throw on my overcoat and hat, and slip my pistol into its holster on my hip. I bolt out of my office, I run so fast that I almost bump into my secretary Jenny, who is carrying a load of paperwork. She yelped and stopped in her tracks and braced for impact. Thankfully I stopped just in time otherwise it would've been raining documents of various kinds. “Sir what's the rush?! You almost ran me over!” Jenny shouted at me. “I'm really sorry Jenny, I finally have a job opportunity and I have to get there as soon as possible!” Jenny quickly stood out of the way, “Good for you sir, are you going to Stonehaven?” She asked with a gleeful tone. “Yes, do you want the seafood capellini?” I asked her, trying to speed up the conversation. “You know me so well thank you sir, I'll get your dinner the next time.” she winked at me. I turned and walked towards the door. “Please be careful sir!” Jenny shouted as I closed the door behind me. I'm really grateful for her kindness and her loyalty. Even though business has been slow, she still comes in when she is scheduled. I start making my way towards Stonehaven, the most exclusive vampire watering hole in the city. There are many others, but Stonehaven requires you to be of royal lineage to even be considered a potential member. Thankfully I am of royal lineage, so I am allowed in without any hassle. As I get closer to Stonehaven, I start to feel very uneasy. I feel like something isn't right at all, all of my senses are telling me to run the other way. I start to wonder, why did Guillaume call me after so long? Why did he sound so nervous? There's only one way to find out, I hope my instincts are wrong on this.
(Please tell me what you think about this first chapter, and that if anything can be done different.)

Me and Lila always carved dozens of jack o’ lanterns every October, so they’d absolutely saturate our lawn on Halloween night. It was our thing. But looking back on it, now that I’ve lost her, I just feel bad for the pumpkins. I almost relate to them, somehow. The way they were carved up, had everything of substance inside of them torn out, and left as hollow, rotting shells with forced smiles.
Needless to say, I didn’t cope with her death well. I didn’t want to cope with it. I wanted the world to drown in the black sludge of my grief. I loathed the people I saw going about their lives, unaware that the world had already ended the moment Lila died. The Earth shouldn’t keep spinning. Life shouldn’t go on. Not without her.
Even my relatives bringing me along on a trip to Kauai only made it worse. The most gorgeous place on Earth, and it made me sick with hatred. Nothing that beautiful deserved to exist if Lila wasn’t ever going to get to see it. It wasn’t fair.
I thought I’d never enjoy or care about anything again. Then I discovered media preservation.
It started with taking some of Lila’s old VHS tapes to a video repair place to fix some issues with the footage before it’s digitized. The job fascinated me. In a universe based on entropy, where everything inevitably fades away and is forgotten… restoring something lost is like snatching it from the jaws of death, right? Like flipping the bird to the universe and its so-called ‘natural order’. People die, but information doesn’t have to.
Now, it doesn’t matter how small — be it some god-awful plug-and-play licensed game, or a cereal commercial from 80’s — it’s my mission to recover it in as high a quality as I’m able, and make sure it’s freely available online for as long as possible.
A couple weeks ago, I came across a big haul. Four boxes of old VHS tapes offered up on E-Bay for dirt cheap. Most of the tapes were just recordings of Cheers episodes already preserved in higher qualities, but one Maxell E-240 caught my interest.
First of all, I’d never seen one so melted. Sure, sometimes they were left in an attic too long, and the colors and audio start to degrade. But this one looked like it had survived a house fire. It was covered in soot and the smell of smoke, and had the overall shape of a chocolate bar left out in the sun a little too long.
Second was the label, which read in neat sharpie: ᴇᴘɪꜱᴏᴅᴇ 4,679,329 ᴍᴀʀ 8 2035.
The casing was so disfigured, I had to bust it apart just pull out the tapes and respool them in a fresh cassette. I tried to iron out the creases in the tape as best I could, but I had no illusions about it accomplishing much — the mylar surface had been irreparably warped in places by whatever fire had half-melted the thing.
Imagine my despair at the sight of that dreaded ‘ɴᴏ ꜱɪɢɴᴀʟ’. I could clearly see the tape wasn’t blank, yet no amount of adjusting the tracking or trying different TVs or VCRs accomplished anything. Just as I was about to give up, though, the thing just suddenly started playing properly at the exact instant the clock struck 3 AM, as if it had only now decided to work. My all-nighter had paid off.
I didn’t dwell on the fact that this ‘miracle fix’ had been impossible. If I’d had any sense, I’d have torn the horrid thing out of my VCR and buried it beneath holy ground. Instead, fool I was, I sat down and watched.
At first, the thing seemed unwatchable. The audio was so distorted that the show’s theme song emerged as a low, crackling, staticky wail that made my head throb, and the logo was completely indistinguishable through the flickering and interference. I thought it was a lost cause for a moment. But then a figure appeared and cleared away the static, like Moses parting the Red Sea.
It was the sight of the show’s host that hooked me. He was just… perfect. Perfect in every way. I knew it just looking at him. Infinitely handsome and likable and charismatic, and he always said the exact perfect thing. The only issue is, I don’t remember a single thing about him now, in the same way you can’t remember a dream that seemed so clear to you while you were experiencing it. He just appears in my memory as this abstract blur in a sharp suit. Yet at the time, I was awestruck, even before he said a single word.
I can’t even remember a word he said. It was like he was speaking another language, one I felt as opposed to heard. I’ll try and transcribe it as best I can into words, but know that it’s only a pathetic imitation.
“... for another night of laughs, prizes, and fun for the whole family, with your host, #####!” I noticed that the audio and visual distortion seemed to suddenly intensify the instant he said his name, rendering it completely illegible. Idiot I was, I figured that was a coincidence. “Tonight is a night of celebration, folks, because thanks to the support of loyal viewers like you, we have just been approved for, get this: two hundred thousand more seasons!”
The “live studio audience” went wild with applause. I put that in scare quotes because, as far as I could tell, besides the host, the studio seemed completely empty. As if he was standing on a plain white stage that extended outwards into infinite darkness on all sides.
“For those just joining us, the game here is simple…” He explained that this was some sort of a trivia show. Every time a guest got an answer wrong, it brought them a little closer to some sort of unspecified ‘punishment’. And if they got it right? He smirked. “Well, they get to delay the inevitable.”
I wondered what he meant by ‘inevitable’. I didn’t have to wonder long.
The host gestured to a curtain that hadn’t been there moments ago, which raised to reveal a middle-aged man. You know the type — bushy mustache, gray hair, round-rimmed glasses. Kind of guy you’d have doing your plumbing. He couldn’t look any more out of place stood up and restrained in that — what the hell is that?
I recognized that metal coffin-looking thing from a medieval torture museum I went to once. The iron maiden. The lid hung open, countless long, needle-like blades poking inwards, threaten to poke a million new holes in him if it was shut.
His situation was not lost on him. “Where… where am I? What the hell is this!?”
“Oh, lucky guess!” The host ‘joked’. More canned laughter. “I know you always loved watching those trivia shows, Malcolm? Weren’t you always sitting there, grinding your teeth, seething that it wasn’t fair? That you should be the one up on stage, winning big?”
The man paused. Even he seemed mesmerized by the unreal perfection of the host before him. “I… this is a… game show?”
“All you have to do is answer a few questions! Think you can handle that, Malcolm?” He pulled out a cue card without waiting for an answer. “And our first question! What were you doing the night of February 18th, 1998?”
The man seemed baffled. “Just… sat on my couch watching the NFL, I think? I’m not sure how I’m supposed to remember —“
He let out a startled squeal as a horrid buzzer sounded. On cue, the lid slid a third of the way closed, making him flinch. “Oooh, I’m afraid that’s the wrong answer, Frank! But you know what? I’ll give you one more chance. What were you —“
“Following a girl home!” The man cried out. “F-from the bar. There, are you happy?”
“Cor-rect!” The canned audience began cheering! “Such honesty! Now, our second question: just what were you carrying while you followed her?”
He hesitated for a little too long. And then the buzzer sounded again, and the lid slid so near to closing that its blades began poking uncomfortably against his skin. He tried to press himself against the back of the maiden as well as his restraints would allow. “Jesus! Okay! A knife, a knife!”
“Awww, if only you’d said that just a second earlier!” Another big question. “Our third question: why, Malcolm? Why did you do it?”
That set Malcolm off. He started thrashing, clawing, screaming. “Let me out of this thing, you maniac! You can’t do this to me! Do you know who I am? Is this some sort of sick joke? My lawyers will have your head for this, you—“
And then the buzzer. All of a sudden, the lid slammed shut full-force, and the man was utterly silenced save for an unnatural, drawn-out wheeze. “Another wrong answer, Malcolm! I’m afraid I was looking for: ‘because if I can’t have her, no one can’!”
I admit it. I laughed. Out of shock more than anything. How was this allowed on TV? I took it as some sort of dark comedy show, and it was kind of satisfying to see that freaky character get his comeuppance. Still, there was something unnerving to me, seeing the man’s eyes through the openings in the maiden. Wide and red and terrified. They just looked a little… too real.
But the maiden disappeared as quickly as it came, before I could dwell on it too much. “Oh, envy! Definitely one of my favorite sins.” More laughter. “Stay tuned, folks! We’ve still got a night of fun and games in store for you! But first… how’s about a word from our sponsors?”
Cut to a corporate logo which I again couldn't recognize.
“This segment was made possible by Buer Health, which has recently announced a brilliant new initiative to protect our citizens from skin cancer by removing their skin completely.”
The camera cut to a massive industrial building, resembling a solid concrete cube around 50 meters in width and height. Its surface bore arcane symbols etched using carvings of wailing, tormented faces. The host would occasionally be rendered inaudible by a deafening metallic scraping from within, though he didn’t seem to notice. The only protrusion from the building’s cubic shape was a single smokestack, belching a scarlet red smoke into the atmosphere. A queue of gaunt figures waited at the entrance, herded and coerced by their grim overseers, and there were no words to describe the procession of scarlet ghouls limping out the building’s other end.
“Owing to the nonlinearity of time, the brand new Grand Skinpeeling Machine has spontaneously appeared several years before construction deadlines, and indeed, before it was even conceived of by anyone in our timeline. People have rushed all the way from Malebolge just to try this miracle of technology out on opening day, and so far, the reviews have been stellar!”
He shoved his microphone in the face of a shambling thing that could only scarcely be called a human. Tatters of flesh clung to its exposed musculature, blowing in the wind. Its eyes were the only hint of color in that sea of bloody red, and they were wide, white and terrified. The thing screamed and wailed for as long as it could before the last tendons connecting its jaw to its face snapped, and it was left to choke and gurgle.
“An amazing wail! The results speak for themselves, folks. The Grand Skinpeeling Machine is a hit!”
So far, I was still laughing along and having a good time. The sight of the next ‘guest’, however, started making me nervous.
It was an old lady.
She couldn’t be a day younger than sixty, the sort of sweet elderly woman who in a just world would be cooking chocolate chip cookies for her grandchildren in a comfy cottage somewhere. But here she was, tied to a metal chair, eyes wide, shaking like a leaf. Unlike the last contestant, she seemed to know exactly what was happening.
“In exchange for our loving endorsement, they’ve agreed to loan us one of their star employees. Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for: the Liqisma!”
Something slunk from the darkness far behind her — or perhaps it’d be more apt to say that the darkness birthed it whole-cloth. It was like a living shadow, and it took my eyes a moment to register what I was even seeing.
How do I even begin describing this creature? I could say it looked almost human, or at least like something that may have been human long ago. Or I could start with its skin, which was all black and shiny as latex and seemingly smooth on first glance, but if you looked closer you’d realize it was covered in a million tiny reptilian scales, almost like a shark. Its head was a bald man’s, utterly devoid of any distinguishing features, like the basic stock template for a human being. It was notable only for a complete lack of pupils and irises, its eyes a pure white.
Its body defied basic biology in so many key ways, I had to stare it at for what felt like an eternity just to wrap my mind around its physiology. It was at least five or six meters long, by my estimate, composed of multiple human torsos stacked one on top of the other like segments of a centipede, each melding with the ones around it at the waist and shoulders. Each torso sported a pair of short, stubby arms that propelled it with terrifying grace. It ended with a pair of human legs, perpetually bent on their knees, beneath a ‘tail’ that looked more like its coccyx was poking free from its body.
The old last could clearly hear it, and kept futilely trying to turn her head around enough to get a peek at what stood behind her. I mouthed uselessly, don’t. You don’t want to know.
“Glad you could join us again, Miss Wethersby! Judging by our ratings last week, you seemed to have been a fan favorite!”
Her voice was so soft, I could barely hear it below the static. “Oh, God. Please, why won’t you people let me go? I’ve told you, I’ve never done anything, never hurt anybody. There must be some sort of—”
He waved a hand over her, and it seemed to forcefully snap her mouth shut. “Please, Miss Wethersby, save your breath for our questions!” Another cue card. “Your first question, my friend: where did you and your husband buy your first home?”
She had to think about it for a long time. Eventually, she cried out, “Alabama! Tuscaloosa, Alabama!”
“Ding ding ding! Why, you’re already doing better than our first contestant! Next question: what breed of dog was your childhood pet?”
She had a pained look on her face as she thought. Eventually, a timer started ticking down. It wasn’t visible, so it wasn’t clear how much time she had left exactly, but the sound it made got more shrill and high-pitched with every second. “Miss Wethersby, need I remind you that we have a time limit on this show?”
A tear ran down her cheek. “I… I keep telling you people, I don’t know. I have dementia, I can’t remember, please—”
That buzzer again. “I’m afraid that was the wrong answer! Liqisma?” The old lady shuddered at the sounds of hundreds of feet drawing a little closer to her. “Now, your first grandchild. What did he look like? What color were his eyes? His hair?”
She was crying harder now, like it hurt her that she couldn’t remember something so dear to her. “I told you I can’t remember! Why are you doing this to me!?”
“If you don’t remember them, why would they remember you?” The host mocked as the buzzer sounded, and the beast drew a little closer. “Really, do you believe they still even think about you? Or do you think they’re glad that the old bag of bones isn’t there sucking up their inheritance?”
This went on for… God, it could have been an hour. I was glued to the screen all the while, frozen with terror, praying for this nightmare to just end, for her to make it out okay somehow. He poured over every little detail of the life she lived and the people she loved, delighting in how little of it she could still recall.
And the thing grew closer, and closer… until she finally felt multiple pairs of hands resting upon her shoulders. The thing was looming over her now, and a long, black tongue a few feet in length emerged from its mouth and ran trails of dark saliva over the back of her head. She looked broken down, eyes raw from crying, and I could tell by the dampness of her dress that she’d wet herself.
“Now, Miss Wethersby, our time here has been fun, but I do believe it is time for our final question. Tell me, what is the name… of your only son?”
She couldn’t even answer anymore. She just stared ahead, like her mind was a million miles away. He cackled as the buzzer sounded one final time, and threw his cue cards aside. “Thank you for playing, Miss Wethersby. Better luck next time.”
I would say the thing unhinged its jaw like a snake, but that’d be an understatement. The way the thing’s face malformed and wrinkled and stretched as it opened its maw, it no longer looked even remotely human. Its jaws must have parted at least thirty centimeters apart, revealing a second, pharyngeal pair of jaws that lashed out and gripped the woman’s skull, pulling her headlong into that darkness.
I could hear bones crunching and snapping as its throat constricted down around her body, peristaltic muscles compacting her into a meat slurry, bit by bit. Yet she just wouldn’t die. Even as her skull and upper body were already crushed and compacted, organs and muscles pressed into mulch, she still kicked her legs, twitched her fingers, let out a gurgling that must have been some attempt at screaming. She was squirming even as the beast snapped its jaw shut around the last of her, condemning her to whatever torments awaited her inside the creature.
And all the while, that horrible laughter. “Don’t worry, folks! She’ll be back next week! And the next. And the next…”
Needless to say, I wasn’t having fun anymore. In fact, I had to turn away and fight the urge to throw up. I stood, about to turn the TV off and —
“Ah, ah, ah! Don’t touch that dial, now!” I froze. There was something chilling about the way he said that, staring right into the screen as if reacting to what I was doing. I hated that grin on his face. “The real show is just beginning.”
And with the barely restrained excitement of a child on Christmas morning, he yanked back another curtain, and I recognized everything.
I recognized that crappy bootleg knockoff Always Sunny in Philadelphia jacket that was so gaudy and terrible it instantly became her favorite thing in her wardrobe. I recognized those subtle hints of slight acne she disguised as fake freckles. I recognized the way her gray eyes would remind me of those overcast mornings at the beach at Hilton Head and pointing out all the cannonball jellyfish washed up on the sands. I recognized that tattoo of the name ʀᴏᴄᴋʏ, how I’d held her all night long as she cried into my shirt after her childhood cat had died.
It was Lila.
I shuddered, gasped, fell from my seat as if I’d been punched in the stomach and the air had been knocked out of me. I couldn’t breathe. This couldn’t be real. I was dreaming right now. I must be. I just had to wake up.
But I couldn’t wake up. Nothing I could do dispelled the sight of her curled up in that… that thing. That bronze statue of a bull, horns jutting on either side of a head that roaring silently up at the heavens, all while the love of my life was locked in its hollowed out belly, visible only through a pane of glass. I could hear her cry out in shock at where she’d found herself, and every whimper felt like it drove a knife through my chest.
The host soaked in the moment. It was ecstasy for him, the suffering of it all. He stared dead into the camera like he was looking right at me as she called, “What is this? Where am I?”
“Why, I have good news, my dear Lila! You’re exactly where every American dreams of being: you’re on TV.” He pointed to the camera. “And we have a very special guest in the audience tonight. Your very own beloved Jackson!”
I shuddered, hearing my own name ooze from his fetid lips. His façade of perfection was slipping, and there was something so profoundly ugly beneath it. Her eyes snapped to the camera, confused, despairing. “Jackson? Baby? What — what’s happening? What is this?”
I don’t know, I thought, gripping the sides of the TV so hard my knuckles turned white, but I’m going to get you out of there, baby. I’m going to find whoever did this and I’m going to bury them all so far beneath that studio that they’ll never-
“I’m afraid Jackson hasn’t joined us quite yet, my dear. But if you truly love him, surely you’ll give him a show to remember, won’t you?” He taunted her. “All I want, after all, is to ask you a few questions! In fact, I’ll offer you a special deal: get even a single answer right, and I’ll let you go free! But get one wrong and, well…”
On cue, a fire was lit beneath her. Small, smoldering for now, but she whimpered as she noticed the heat. We both realized in that instant what this was. By now, I was screaming things I can’t repeat here, and slamming my hands against the TV screen as if I could reach through and save her.
She bit her lip and acquiesced. Not like she had any room to argue. The host grinned and readied a cue card. “Your first question: where are you, Lila?”
“I… I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?”
“You do know, Lila. You know exactly where you are.” He smirked at her. “Here’s a free hint: what’s the last thing you remember, before you woke up here?
She thought about it… and choked back a sob, visibly shaking as the realization slowly settled in. “But… but why? I… I…”
The horrible wail of the buzzer cut her off. “Oooh, too bad! I’m afraid you’ve run out of time!”
Seemingly as if on its own, the fire doubled in size. Sparks licked the belly of the bronze bull, and began to ever-so-slowly heat the surface. She pawed around in the tight confines, searching for any reprieve from the scalding heat all around her as the metal grew hot like it’d been left out in the sun on a summer’s day. “Please! Oh, God, let me out of this thing! It hurts! It hurts!”
The host seemed to breathe in her pain as if stealing a moment’s indulgence. “Now that there is no doubt about where you are, my dear, let us proceed to the second question.” He switched to his next card. “Did you believe in God, in the end?”
“O-of course!” She pled her case as if she was being tried in court. “My entire life… every day I gave to the poor, helped the sick, did whatever I could to honor Hi-“
“I’m afraid you misunderstood my question. I asked, did you believe in him at the end? The very moment your pitiful little life was snuffed out?”
“I always believed! I’d never forsake Him!”
“Yes, yes, I know. You lived a good and holy life, didn’t you?” He cackled. “But what of the very end? You and your little husband were so excited to deliver your first little baby boy. But o, tragedy! It all went wrong, didn’t it? Your precious little boy didn’t make it through childbirth… and you followed closely behind.”
“That whole business with the botched pregnancy, it was… what do you call it? Ah, yes. A ‘test of faith’. And I’m afraid you failed. In your final moments, you watched the light fade from your child’s eyes, and you assumed — wisely, in my humble opinion — that no ‘kind’ and ‘loving’ God would allow something like that to happen.” He laughed. “Funny how after a lifetime of dutiful service, all it takes is one little mistake at the end… to bring you here. To us.”
I’d never seen such depths of despair in a person’s eyes. Such emptiness. Like with every word, he’d been scooping out another piece of her until she was hollow. And then that buzzer roared again, more shrill than ever, and I could barely see her little window through the smoke and flames. The belly of the bull was turning orange in places, and I could hear her flesh start to sizzle like meat on a grill. There are no words for the noises she made. No words at all.
“And our last, final question,” he continued. “What were your last words to your poor, beloved Jackson?”
“I love you!” I called out the answer. Bloody fingerprints stained the TV screen from my slamming my hands against it, as I screamed the answer over and over. “I love you, I love you, I love you!” At some point, I forgot that there was ever a question. I was just screaming it at her as if hoping that she could hear it, that it could bring her a modicum of comfort in that place.
The buzzer sounded again. I couldn't bring myself to look. All I could hear was the roaring of the bull, and the steam rising from its bronze nostrils.
The curtain fell. Silence drowned the sound. The host dropped all pretense that he hadn’t been speaking directly to me. “Now, Jackson. You just might be one of my new favorite audience members this show had ever had. I know this must have been hard for you. But if you’ll just stay tuned, I have one more show I know you’re certain to love!”
I didn’t bother to touch the remote. After all, nothing could be worse than what I’d just seen, right?
Wrong. Horror wracked me as the curtain rose, and I saw the man chained to a chair. I pulled away like a caveman witnessing fire, cringing and stuttering, face wet with sweat. It was the sort of fear that worked its way into your bones like a bad chill, that left you shaking, teeth chattering.
It was me.
An older me, sure. But not by much. Ten years, maybe. A gaunt and hollow version of me, one twisted by ten years of depression and hard drugs. But it was unmistakable.
His eyes widened as he recognized the host. “Oh — oh God, God please no! It can’t be — oh Christ, let me out of this chair, you —“
“Come, now! We wouldn’t want to use the lord’s name in vain, would we? I mean, that would be a sin!” The host laid a hand on the other me’s shoulder. “It may have been a few years since you watched our program, but I’m sure you remember the rules, don’t you, old friend?”
The other me was wordless, on the verge of hyperventilating, just as I was. The host was giddy with delight. “Now! Our first and only question is one I’m sure our viewer will be very interested in: what sins, exactly, do you think landed you here?”
The other me tried to speak, but the words caught in his throat. I could see it in his eyes. The years of self-destruction, the bitter hopelessness, the whirlpool of nihilism and vice and decay. The suffocating depths of a man. The darkness. How could he put it into words?
The sound of the buzzer was like a pig’s squeal. “Mmm, I’m afraid that our viewer is going to have to figure that out for himself! In the meantime, your punishment? Well, we wouldn’t want to spoil anything…”
The curtains slowly began to fall just as a couple other of those black, grotesque monstrosities emerged from the darkness. The curtain covered them all before I could get a good look at their obscene, twisted, asymmetrical figures. All I could hear was the crunching, the sound of skin tearing like paper, the screaming that went on for longer and louder than a human throat or vocal chords could endure.
The image and audio were beginning to distort, glitch, burn away. The tapes were physically melting as they played. My VCR was starting to overheat, sparks pouring from its front panel. The host voice jumped around in tone, his voice fading into the static blur as the tapes bubbled and boiled and distorted. “But, my friends, I’m afraid that concludes tonight’s episode of our show! So, with a final farewell to our dear, beloved viewer, Jackson…”
Just before the image melted away, the camera seemed to jump forward until his face filled the screen, his eyes piercing into mine as he cackled in that singsong voice.
“See you sooooon~”

Oh my God was this list hard to rank 😅 I took about I would say at least 15 hours of my time into this and all of that was just to rank them at a certain level without much to say. First off we have about 8 Tiers from F,D,C,B,A,S,SS, and Premium though I barely put much into their. Remember this is just an opinion so don't take too harshly if your favorite episode isn't high on my list. For some episodes I may not say much or anything since this was too long originally.
F Tier, these are my least favorite episodes and most likely I have a vendetta against them in some way that made it hard for me to like them

1. S2 Ep 8 Nebraska- I hate Lori and I think this episode expresses it, most definitely a vendetta. I didn't exactly like the stuff with Hershel and recovering though it was okay, but lori made some questionable decisions to go off on her own to look for Rick even though she should know he's fine seriously. She wrecks a car and then barely dies from a walker, mind you she is pregnant and shouldn't do these things easily my least favorite episode.
   
2. S10 Ep 21 Diverged- I honestly forget this episode so much since it has nothing truly interesting or important to the story
   
3. S7 Ep 6 Swear- this episode feels slow paced and dull due to oceanside being not seen well for me and I feel like Tara put on the best performance she could for it.
   
4. S8 Ep 2 The Damned- this episode to me was just a lot of action and in the walking dead I don't want that. We see a couple of characters die (including Francine 🪦 I absolutely loved her character and hate how she died here :[ mindless) Erics death started here, but it just wasn't impactful enough.
   
5. S3 Ep 11 I Ain't a Judas- Andrea is a boring character in the show and I hate her in this episode. The focus should've been on the prison honestly and maybe If she killed the Governor I would've understood her more.
   
6. S10 Ep 20 Splinter- if most of the episode was real I would've loved it, but they weren't...
   
7. S3 Ep 5 Say the Word- Andrea just isnt much good in this episode and Rick going crazy wasn't a fun idea to me.
   
8. S8 Ep 3 Monsters- aside from the one fight with Rick I really didn't care much for it again for the fighting and having Morales return and die felt out of place.
   
9. S2 Ep 2 Bloodletting- the group searching for Sophia was okay for a concept, but this episode was okay and went slow paced for me until the end.
   

D Tier, moving on these episodes were for me mostly just forgettable or boring so I won't say much except they weren't all bad

1. S1 Ep 3 Tell it to the frogs- first off S1 won't be all high because I'm ranking EVERY episode, but this one felt slow in pace more as well compared to the last two. Shane was a badass though.
   
2. S11 Ep 3 Hunted- Forgettable... Not much to say.
   
3. S5 Ep 11 The Distance- Forgot entirely this was an episode, after rewatch still don't like it except for Aaron.
   
4. S2 Ep 9 Trigger finger- It was a bit better than Nebraska, mostly cause of the Randel scenes.
   
5. S7 Ep 14 The Other Side- Sasha somewhat makes a noble decision.
   

163-162. S11 Episodes 22 following 21- 22 had the Warden being uninteresting as a villain and 21 was boring as can be which is why they sit besides each other.

1. S8 Ep 7 Time for After- I don't like the plans they have to deviate from Rick and him going to Jadis again feels like a horrible decision on his part.
   
2. S9 Ep 8 Evolution- The ambience is the best part, though I hated Jesus' s death as it felt like a bad sendoff.
   

C Tier, These are a bunch of boring and hard to follow episodes that have some highs that keep it out of former tiers.

1. S2 Ep 1 What lies Ahead- I liked the RV scene with Andrea, but what follows is dull.
   
2. S11 Ep 4- The pope is somewhat average.
   
3. S7 Ep 12 Say Yes- The carnival was a nice scenery for TWD, but they had too many fake outs with the walker "shooting" at them and the deer fake out.
   
4. S9 Ep 7 Stradivarius- The Search for Eugene feels tiring to follow what's happening and I ended up watching the episodes once and never again because of it.
   
5. S2 Ep 4 Cherokee Rose- Watching the episode is fun because of the well, though I feel like it was stupid as an idea as the group should have more common sense before doing something dumb.
   
6. S2 Ep 3 Save The Last One- Shane was horrifying, but the rest was dull.
   
7. S8 Ep 14 Still gotta mean something- Rick felt unnecessarly cold hearted in this episode killing off the Saviors that helped him which I didn't like, though Jared got a well deserved death.
   
8. S4 Ep 9 After -It was okay watching Carl try to scavenge while Rick was injured and I liked the scene with his shoe being lost.
   
9. S7 Ep 5 Go Getters- the episode itself wasn't bad yet I never really enjoyed it too much aside from Maggie being a badass and the ending was pretty good.
   
10. S4 Ep 10 Inamtes- Inmates was a pretty well rounded episodes showing off some of the group which I liked seeing Tyreese the most.
    
11. S8 Ep 6 The King, The Widow, and Rick- the episode was pretty lackluster for me and I didn't really appeal to seeing the garbage people much in this or everyone going to attack the saviors which was a dumb move to do. Ezekiel was probably the most fun of the episode.
    
12. S3 Ep 16 Welcome to the Tombs- the finale for season 3 has always been horrible as it barely gives tension between the Governor and Ricks group, it just felt unfitting for a finale.
    
13. S11 Ep 8 For blood- it was a okay Mid Season finale to say the least (sorry, 1/3 season finale). I did like some of the parts in it with Maggie which is why it sits higher than others.
    
14. S5 Ep 7 Crossed- I thoroughly enjoyed the chase scene between the three officers and Ricks group, but that was about it.
    
15. S4 Ep 13 Alone- I liked watching the parts of the group split up, except for Maggie, Bob, and Sasha as they felt very uneventful to me. What makes this episode better had to be the part about Daryl and Beth with the ending of the introduction to Joe's group.
    
16. S7 Ep 10 New Best Friends- a lot of these parts I forgot about in this episode when it came to the Kingdom though after rewatching it I enjoyed those parts more than the Garbage people. I just honestly think Jadis's group is uninteresting and makes for no substance.
    
17. S10 Ep 15 The Tower- I sometimes forget about this episode and it's premise with Beta, but I think it holds up enough for a weird one and The stuff with princess was okay.
    
18. S9 Ep 3 Warning signs- I think the episode was okay, I just didn't like Season 9 A that much...
    

B tier, now we get to the episodes I could watch again in the past 6 months or binge through without skipping

1. S11 Ep 2 Acheron Part 2- this was close to being put into C tier since I really hated some parts about it like how they left Gage to die and still had to fight off dozens of walking regardless. The group in the first two episodes seem to switch off and on from good to bad.
   
2. S7 Ep 4 Service- for some reason people hate this episode and I can't see why except for the fact it mainly deals with Negan at Alexandria; in my opinion it was him and a couple other characters who saved season 7 and 8 for me.
   
3. S10 Ep 3 Ghosts- I forget the episode...
   
4. S10 Ep 7 Open Your Eyes- I thought the episode was fine as I don't hate Siddiq and all, though I liked and hated the ending as I loved the twist of Dante and hated that Siddiq had to die so early on.
   
5. S6 Ep 7 Heads Up- I didn't like the twist of Glenn and all, but I liked the suspicion with Carol and Morgan as well as the Ending being dramatic.
   
6. S8 Ep 11 Dead or Alive- it's not good to know when you remember an episode due to bad things. Daryl has been making more off decisions for the character and Tara seems to be completely Reckless now making me hate her moving forward.
   
7. S4 Ep 4 Indifference- The Scenes with Carol and Rick we're amusing with crude Humour as well as some more tense scenes in my opinion and I hated/liked when Rick told Carol she couldn't come back.
   
8. S3 Ep 6 Hounded- honestly I would've rather put this episode a little bit higher due to Merle (probably my favorite charcater which contributes to a lot of episodes being higher) being a badass while fighting Michonne and pulling out puns as well. The reason it doesn't get higher is still due to Rick and the phone situation being uneventful.
   
9. S11 Ep 9 No Other Way- Alden dies in this episode which I should've seen coming that sucks. The ending feels misleading a bit though everything else in the middle is pretty great.
   
10. S11 Ep 5 Out of the Ashes- literally the only reason I put this here was due to Lance so deal with it!
    
11. S4 Ep 11 Claimed- Rick had a pretty solid pair of scenes with the Claimers and I liked watching Glenn and Tara (Surprisingly).
    
12. S10 Ep 13 What We Become- I thought the flashbacks/hallucinations we're pretty good, but aside from that this episode was just mediocre.
    
13. S9 Ep 4 The Obliged- I liked watching Daryl and Rick fight each other over different views on how everything should be and the ending I thought was pretty suspenseful as well as the saviors and oceanside.
    
14. S11 Ep 15 Trust- Lance feels exactly like the Governor in some of these episodes which is what I like about him, and from here I start to enjoy Princess maybe because Mercer is around more xd.
    
15. S10 Ep 17 Home Sweet Home- I thought Maggie was a good enough concept for an episode with the reapers, though it didn't hit that hard watching again. It still Is most definitely better than the other 3 episodes of S10 part C but enough for A Tier.
    

A Tier, after this point complaints may start to stop, but that doesn't mean entirely. These episodes I enjoy watching over and over again with some good tension and comedy as well.

1. S1 Ep 5 Wildfire- For the episodes Jim was in I liked him and learning his backstory as well so this was a pretty fun episode.
   
2. S4 Ep 15 Us- the stuff with Abraham and their group was pretty wholesome to me and I liked Joe for the time being in here seeing how he is pretty fair to be honest giving things where they are due and trust to Daryl.
   
3. S6 Ep 11 Knots Untie- I somewhat feel like the episode drags due to there being too much at hilltop, but it is a new community so I can't truly argue. I remember enjoyably when Rick stopped the assassination attempt.
   
4. S8 Ep 9 Honor- the beginning with Carl I thought was good to showcase the events that unfolded before the decimation and Carl's death hit hard.
   
5. S5 Ep 4 Slabtown- I personally don't mind the hospital arc too much, yet it won't get all of it's episodes too high of course. I liked watching Noah and Beth converse and I thought this was a new era for the walking dead.
   
6. 10 Ep 1 Lines we Cross- the part with the Satellite was amusing to watch as it was a big change to see and I like that about the walking dead on occasions.
   
7. S9 Ep 6 Who are you now?- I liked learning of Luke's Group (you heard me, Luke's Group) and what they have been like learning of some of their past.
   
8. S10 Ep 8 The World Before- I liked mostly just watching two scenes, the beginning with Dante and Gabriel and Dante. I loved the fact no one even considered a Whisperer living amongst them and how he did some much devious stuff was mind boggling and amazing to watch. When Gabriel talks about forgiveness to Dante and kills him shows me how Gabriel has changed the past seasons.
   
9. S7 Ep 9 Rock in the Road- Rick gives off a good speech to Ezekiel and I liked seeing him and Morgan reunite again. The stuff with Gabriel wasn't too bad either.
   
10. S3 Ep 9 The Suicide King- the Governor finally seems to be starting to let things of him slip which I love to see. I also enjoyed watching Merle with Daryl as well too.
    
11. S11 Ep 11 Rouge element- I thought that the twist of Steph was pretty good and I don't mind the episode being a bit long and tedious for it's reveal.
    
12. S11 Ep 23 Family- I loved the fact Lydia got bit just because it shows us that people can still get bit and survive. It shows to me that in the finale no one could be truly safe even though Luke gets bit and still dies.
    
13. S11 Ep 17 Lockdown- Saving Sebastian was okay ig.
    
14. S8 Ep 10 The Lost and The Plunderers- Simon's character I think was made perfectly as he is a hotheaded person who is all about power and showing that off. Killing most of the Garbage people was terrifying to watch and showed how Negan could be more merciful than others.
    
15. S1 Ep 1 Days Gone Bye- I think for the pilot it did it's job well and showed off enough of what the show could be. Of course this doesn't mean it was all good but as pilots go it was pretty solid.
    
16. S11 Ep 1 Acheron Part 1- The only reason I put it this high was for the interrogation scenes especially when it came down to Ezekiel. Him and Mercer are honestly a great pair and I love his ending to the show as it's fitting.
    
17. S5 Ep 10 Them- after losing most of the group it seems like a fitting episode of despair and plays it perfectly.
    
18. S5 Ep 12 Remember- the first shown scenes of Alexandria was pretty good and I liked the interviews scene too. We also saw a lot of new character introductions.
    
19. S11 Ep 6 On The Inside- The ferals was a nice touch of horror that I never knew I could need. Making the people with the ferals Virgil and Connie made the most perfect sense as well.
    
20. S6 Ep 13 Not Tomorrow Yet- this episode shows off how our group is seeming to be the bad guys starting to kill people in their sleep. I like how Glenn and Heath have their first kills and show how they are changing.
    
21. S7 Ep 1 The day will come when you won't be- I like the title as it references Doctor Jenner, but for the episode I liked Negan and that's mostly it. Seeing two people die was horrible to me, but necessary and since I don't rank episodes for being bad due to deaths I can still rank them high.
    
22. S6 Ep 16 Last Day on Earth- Simon has a good introduction and I like them trying to get from point A to B, but what stands out to me most is probably Abraham and Eugene with his speech about him
    
23. S7 Ep 15 Something they need- Sasha was probably the highlight of the episode for me and I liked them and Negan's interactions. It Is a good effort to show that they aren't all monsters and I like seeing Eugene as well.
    
24. S3 Ep 7 When the Dead come knocking- Glenn and his interrogation with Merle was amazing and I liked seeing Glenn's true will shine.
    
25. S8 Ep 12 The Key- I don't like this episode much honestly if it wasn't for Negan and Ricks Speech as well as Simon and his deviousness.
    
26. S8 Ep 1 Mercy- the beginning I had to move up due to some good portions of it like Rick and Negan. I also liked the ending a lot even though I watched the trailer a lot and knew of Gabriel and Negan's interactions.
    
27. S9 Ep 1 a New Beginning- wow two series beginnings next to each other... Yeah it's weird but they weren't exactly S Tier Material. The beginning with them trying to get a horse accessory was great tension to watch and I already love Ricks Beard.
    
28. S10 Ep 18 Find me- okay so maybe I exaggerated My feeling towards Season 10 C a bit since I like some of the episodes a bit and others worse. The reason I put this here is mostly good plot lines and that was it.
    

Around here I wanted to say the reason for some episodes ranking higher is due to the fact the others are horrible and some of these have redeeming qualities. It's hard to put over 150 episodes ranked from horrible to greatness and know the points of interest.

1. S3 Ep 3 Walk With Me- Merle brings joy to me seeing him again and I love him from here on out. I like how the Governor seems to be innocent enough until the big reveal with the militia which is amazingly put.
   
2. S10 Ep 9 Squeeze- I hate Squeeze... There i said it. The cave sucks honestly and Id rather not watch it again because of that, but Negan is the only saving grace for this episode and if it wasn't for him I would never watch this episode again.
   
3. S8 Ep 13 Do Not Send Us Astray- Simon attacking the Hilltop was the most great action of this season that I never minded and it felt terrifying after Tobin's fate was sealed.
   
4. S3 Ep 12 Clear- I had to move it from S Tier, but nevertheless a great episode. Morgan's return was done perfectly and I felt like his character did a full 180 after this. Michonne and Carl's side story was also good.
   
5. S2 Ep 12 Better Anglels- Shane and Ricks final confrontation was amazingly executed and loved the difference from the Comics with Rick killing shane and Carl shooting his reanimated self; Shane and Randel was also good too.
   
6. S4 Ep 12 Still- Daryl and Beth make sense to pair together and I like seeing how we get a bit more back story to his character. They feel like the most perfect example to put for a mismatched pair.
   
7. S6 Ep Thank You- The journey with Glenn's group trying to get back was amusing to see even though the dumpster ending wasnt really the best, still horrible to see.
   
8. S10 Ep 4 Silence the Whisperers- Negan and Lydia have a good bond and I like how Negan defends her even though I hate how no one believes Lydia that Negan protected her.
   
9. S8 Ep 4 Some Guy- I still love watching Ezekiel and the Kingdom so I enjoy this episode and how he feels defeated the whole time. Jerry is the best bodyguard in my opinion as well as it is shown and Shivas death is heartbreaking.
   
10. S5 Ep 8 Coda- The reason I put this soo high was due to Rick and Bob. I did like the ending a bit even though I feel like Beth's death could've been avoided.
    
11. S3 Ep 14 Prey- originally this episode was C Tier for me, but I re-watched it and put it this high due to the Governor being a literal psycho and I love this side of him.
    
12. S11 Ep 20 What's been Lost- Lance felt underutilized as soon as he died, I really wished they could've made a difference with his exit on the show.
    
13. S8 Ep 8 How it's gotta be- Forgot about Natanias death.
    
14. S11 Ep 7 Promises Broken- Negan and Maggie had a good talk together about before.
    
15. S10 Ep 6 Bonds- Okay.. XD.
    
16. S6 Ep 10 The Next world- I thought the stuff with Rick, Daryl, and Jesus was goofy, but great.
    
17. S11 Ep 19 Varient- I do like the idea of evolving walkers though I feel like it was a bit late in the show.
    
18. S3 Ep 13 Arrow on the Doorstep- the meeting was just terrific to watch as the Governor is so sinister inside it with Milton and Hershel having a good talk as well with Martinez and Daryl having a good show off time. Merle and Glenn have some good times too.
    
19. S9 Ep 2 The Bridge- The log scene was amazing and Aaron had a good scene with the amputation.
    

S Tier, These episodes are some of my favorite to watch with a good glass of Tea and some snacks.

1. S7 Ep 7 Sing me a song- Negan and Carl were fun to watch as well as some more insight on the sanctuary as Daryl breaks free. Negan and Carl also Bond.
   
2. S10 Ep 10 Stalker- Daryl VS Alpha!!!
   
3. S11 Ep 16 Acts of God- Lance is very horrifying as to what his next move is and Leah's stuff was good.
   
4. S3 Ep 8 Made to suffer- it was a great Mid season finale as I enjoyed the fight with the Governor and Rick as well as the ending with Merle and Daryl.
   
5. S2 Ep 6 Secrets- Glenn has to deal with hiding multiple people's secrets and I feel like the comedy is pure gold here.
   
6. S1 Ep 2 Guts- The rooftops scenes were great as well as the parts where they wear guys to avoid the walkers, it always felt like a sense of panic in this episode.
   
7. S9 Ep 9 Adaptation- the introduction to Alpha was simple enough and I feel like it's a good episode.
   
8. S11 Ep 10 New Haunts
   
9. S11 Ep 12 The Lucky Ones- Carol finally feels a little bit like she's back to her old self in this community with Lance and their deals.
   
10. S4 Ep 1 30 days without and Accident- probably my second favorite of the beginning episodes as it demonstrates exactly how the group has got along since the recent events. Has a good story with the shopping market and the roof caving in was awesome.
    
11. S3 Ep 10 Home- this episode shows how Merle and Daryl are far apart which I can still keep watching Merle and be entertained as well as the fight scene at the end with the Governor being cocky as can be.
    
12. S9 Ep 16 The Storm- snow is a new but simple thing that I like along with Negan Earning trust with Michonne.
    
13. S10 Ep 2 We are the End of the World- Gamma saving Alpha is one of my favorite scenes of how it shows Alphas power towards the group and influence on it's people.
    
14. S6 Ep 8 Start to Finish- The walls coming down had an interesting story as well as many like the Wolf getting loose and Diana having a badass/amazing exit.
    
15. S9 Ep 11 Bounty- The Movie Theatre scene was pretty good as well as Alpha with and Lydia.
    
16. S5 Ep 2 Strangers- The uneasy feeling of Gabriel is pretty good to show the groups trust and I like how the ending is played out with the reveals.
    
17. S11 Ep 13 Warlords- The Complex is a pretty good place to see and I like seeing the evolution of Negan and Aaron.
    
18. S9 Ep 15 The Calm Before- The highlight is the end with the pikes though it made sense for the lesser characters. I hated seeing Henry and Enid die (Not with Tara).
    
19. S10 Ep 11 Morning Star- The start of the battle is ingenius with the tree sap fire scene and it makes for a suspenseful ending to the episode to come.
    
20. S9 Ep 5 What come After- The episode is meant to be a sendoff for Rick so I'll rank it about everything else instead. I did enjoy some of the sequences with Hershel and I loved seeing Shane again. He really puts perspective on some episodes like Season 5 which makes me enjoy watching those episodes more as well as Shane. Ricks exit was also done is a pretty good way.
    
21. S7 Ep 13 Bury me Here- I liked watching Morgan slowing go back into insanity which I believe is due to PTSD of some sort. The episode feels really well done and I like the ending to it with Richard Dying and Carol being told everything.
    
22. S9 Ep 12 Guardians- Alpha is great to watch in this episode and the way she kills the two whispering who challenge them is great!
    
23. S8 Ep 5 The Big scary U- the main focus is Negan and Gabriel which is an amazing talk between then two before settling their differences. I also like the unease at the sanctuary through betrayal.
    
24. S11 Ep 14 The Rotten core- the whole episode is one of If not my personal favorite to watch for the complex alone being a nice setting. I enjoy every bit of this episode as well as the side deal with Sebastian and how Mercer is revealed to be a pretty nice guy.
    
25. S5 Ep 15 Try- The whole episode feels like a decent into madness for Rick seeing everyone against him. I like how he goes into protective cop mode and try to defend the ones he lives as well as his speech at the end.
    
26. S11 Ep 18 A New Deal- The whole episode is average, but the ending just feels amazing to rewatch.
    
27. S2 Ep 11 Judge, Jury, Executioner- I personally like Dale a lot so I love this episode. It really shows how the group is starting to turn as they believe to do what is best for the group and not morals. Dales death is also very heartfelt to watch and showed off the walkers dangerousness.
    
28. S10 Ep 14 Look At The Flowers- Negan and Daryl make a good pair to watch though I enjoyed watching Beta and him struggling to get back on track after Alphas death and I love him so much more for this episode.
    
29. S5 Ep 5 Self Help- Daryl and Carol at the moments have some good episodes together so it's not surprise I'd love this episode. With Noah in the episode as well it feels like a amazing show of how the characters (Carol and Daryl) have changed morally.
    
30. S6 Ep 13 The Same Boat- Carol has been shown to be ruthless, but this episode shows her true colors as how she doesn't want this to be her life anymore.
    
31. S5 Ep 13 Forget- the episode itself has many great minisodes it felt like which was fantastic.
    

50 and 49. S4 Ep 6 Live Bait and 7 Dead Weight- I put these both here due to the fact of me loving the equally. The 6th episode feels like a showcase of how the Governor gets broken entirely and starts to get built back up positively showing what could have been and for a time it feels beautiful to me. The 7th though shows how some things can mess with his mind and make him go back to being a psychopath that kills everyone he sees.

1. S8 Ep 16 Wraith- The ending to season 8 was pretty eventful for the battles begin as Eugene saved everyone's asses from a cool trick with the bullets. I am happy that Rick decided to save Negan and I love the episode except for the ending being off-putting with Maggie.
   
2. S6 Ep 9 No way Out- The Wolf has a pretty interesting end that I enjoyed to see and aside from the the entire eoisode is the best part. You never feel that sense of boring to it as the action is nonstop great.
   
3. S5 Ep 5 Now- I liked small bits and pieces of this episode mostly revolving around Diana and her role starting to change. If she survived I don't doubt I would've loved to see her go through more of an arc.
   
4. S7 Ep 11 Hostiles and Calamities- I can see the hate for this episode, though I love it myself. Eugene in my opinion is at his best here and I love watching him here with Negan and their interactions. It was also great how Dwight had framed the doctor.
   
5. S5 Ep 6 Consumed- Abraham was one of my favorite characters not just for jokes but for this episode. His backstory is heartbreaking to learn about and relatable. When he falls down after beating Eugene in defeat I can feel his pain with him.
   
6. S9 Ep 13 Chokepoint- Daryl VS Beta!!!
   

SS Tier, after this point there is no bad things that the episodes could have drag it's down. These ones are my person favorites.
Around this time I also realized that it seems my numbers on the side aren't matching so I'm fixing it from here so skip 42- 38. Idk what happened but I messed up somewhere and went to fix it but couldn't find the problem.

1. S2 Ep 13 Besides the Dying Fire- The walkers attacking the farm was a great scene just as much as the Democracy speech was from Rick, though Lori is horrible to Rick in this episode. Also Rick tells the group "we're all infected"
   
2. S4 Ep 2 Infected- I love the scene where Patrick reanimates and the morning fight they have in the prison. So much stuff happens at once. The ending was Great with Tyreese and. The pig scene was sad to watch.
   
3. S6 Ep 6 Always Accountable- One time when I like Sasha is this episode with Abraham. Where to begin; The Rocket launcher scene was great, Abraham is great with quips, Daryl with Dwight is a good scene and I love the ending as well.
   
4. S6 Ep 14 Twice as Far- The Denise speech wasnt too bad and the death was great. I enjoyed Abraham and Eugene; I think my favorite scenes was with Abraham and Eugene with another one of his speechs towards him which was funny and heartfelt.
   
5. S4 Ep 16 A- The best part is when Joe's group comes along and how Rick bites out his throat signifying that he and Shane are now alike. I also like when Rick and Daryl talk as well as Rick figuring out this olace kidnaps people.
   
6. S2 Ep 7 Pretty Much dead Already- Shane is what I love about this episode, he and Dale had a really funny encounter and I feel like Shane makes me laugh and be serious at the same time with each scenes. I also like how Rick is more accepting towards Hershel.
   
7. S10 Ep 16 A Certain Doom- Beta was good in this episode and had some great parts, but the fights wee great especially the scene with the Music. Betas death felt odd, but that doesn't lower the episode.
   
8. S4 Ep 14 The Grove- I mean do I really have to explain? Carol is a savage here and I love when they finally talk about Karen and Davids death here. Nothing in this episode is a low note.
   
9. S2 Ep 5 Chupacabra- I love everything about Daryl's scenes in this that show how he is a badass and capable of holding his own. Also love his Hallucinations.
   
10. S11 Ep 24 Rest In Peace- certainly wasn't the best finale, but I felt like it did well enough for the episode. It tied up most loose ends for the show given its runtime and I feel like it is fitting enough.
    
11. S2 Ep 10 18 Miles Out- my favorite of Season 2 has Shane and Rick have the best battle I have seen even more than The Governor and Rick or Negan and Rick. This battle utilizes both of their strengths and weaknesses with some things that have never been done in the show much more like using your blood to attract walkers to other places. It was an amazing episode all in all.
    
12. S1 Ep 6 TS-19- idk what it is but I love watching this episode over and over again and I love it the more I watch it. It is probably because I like Doctor Jenner a bit more in each watching of his tragic backstory with his wife.
    
13. S9 Ep 14 Scars- The flahsback was an amazing one that told us something vital to the story about how they don't trust people coming in anymore. What Daryl and especially Michonne went through is tragic.
    
14. S5 Ep 3 Four Walls a roof- this episode is perfect for a number of reasons like Bob and his antics or Savage Rick, this was a turning point for the walking dead and this is where Rick gets some of his roots.
    
15. S1 Ep 4 Vatos- even though I love TS-19 I love Vatos more. This is unique to some episodes where you see a group just like Ricks that is trying to survive and this is where we realize the world is bigger than we thought still.
    
16. S7 Ep 16 The first day of the rest of your Life- The battle was amazing and I feel like this was the best it was going to get for the coming seasons, but season 9 and 10 surprised me.
    
17. S10 Ep 5 What it always Is- Negan with the Kid is the highlight I think, I could've honestly seen this going farther, if it wasn't for the former savior. I feel like this was fitting for an entire episode of, but we diverged a bit.
    
18. S4 Ep 3 Isolation- Hershel and Tyreese are the highlights for me with Tyreese going berserk and Hershel being a kind soul. This is a staple episode for why Season 4 is amazing and why Hershel is what made season 4 great.
    
19. S6 Ep 4 Here's not Here- I love learning about Eastman and Morgan in this one off. I love how it is somewhat told in the first person narrative to the Wolf and how Morgan changed back to who he was. Eastman shows how he and Morgan are pretty similar and why he should be like him.
    
20. S5 Ep 14 Spend- aside from Francine being here to be used as eye candy for me I loved how some of Alexandria like and dislike rick's group here. I do hate Noah dying as I feel like he could've been so much more.
    
21. S10 19 One More- I love havng the episode based on Aaron and Gabriel as they have came a long way since their beginnings. When they have few an encounter with Mays I felt like this was a testimony to who they are as people. We see how they care for each other and how Mays fails to make a point of who they are until Gabriel Kills him showing he has gone farther away from the light.
    
22. S7 Ep 3 Cell- Daryl is locked up and he is now being treated like shit. This episode feels great cause of how it feels like he is trying to break Daryl. Dwight also has a great mission on how he mercy kills a savior and shows he isn't as bad as you may think.
    
23. S6 Ep 1 First time again- I do enjoy the setting of the episode how we see the diverge in Alexandria and who listens or hears Rick out. The episode is a great example for staring episodes... But not the best at it.
    
24. S5 Ep 9 What Happened and what's going On- I loved Tyreese's character so to see him die was horrible for me. His episodes I feel like was a good send off since it is a test to who he is as a person who is confounded about the world around him.
    
25. S3 Ep 4 Killer Within- this episode was played perfectly and I feel like is a good sendoff for other characters as well like how I hate Lori. She is made just a bit better from her sacrifice and thought T-Dog went out in a good way as well. The prisoners also had a good show for their trust.
    
26. S4 Ep 5 Interment- this is where Hershel's best episode is as he is the best Samaritan Alive in the apocalypse. At the end where Rick and Carl fend off the walkers inside the gates in a great bond and I love the whole episode.
    
27. S6 Ep 3 JSS- it is well rounded and has good action as well as a lot of tension and suspense with Carol showing off her capabilities and Morgan with his philosophy.
    

Finally we cracked the top ten and into Premium Episodes. If you've made it this far you are are persistent as me... Well probably less since this took a long ass time but still. These are the episodes whee I cherish them and can watch more than once a month.

1. S8 Ep 15 Worth- Worth has what I want in an episode; good characters and story/plot. Eugene's parts are made more important seeing how he needed to stay at the sanctuary to save Alexandria and the other communities. I loved even more Dwight's part where I have without doubt the most suspense with him and Negan. Simon also had the most best arc death as it felt complete.
   
2. S5 Ep 16 Conquer- the episode has a lot of action and the ending was the pivet. I love the speech he has and how Diana let's Rick be in charge now was a sort of cliffhanging ending that signify's perfection.
   
3. S5 Ep 1 No sanctuary- both Season 5's beginning and finale are amazing and the way Rick and his group take down Terminus in one episode is amazing as they fight there way out and the scene with Judith was great. Morgan was just a sprinkle of wholesomeness to see.
   
4. S10 Ep 12 Walk With Us- The Episode had just enough action, good deaths and character interactions to make it here. First of the battle at hilltop was amazing. The second best thing was Earl and I feel very sad every time I watch this episode at his part. Then the best thing is the end with Alpha and Negan.
   
5. S3 Ep 1 Seed- The best beginning to a season it shows how the group has changed since Rick and the prison is a great example. The tombs are a great scenery and the ending was perfect for a cliffhanger as well as Conquer.
   
6. S3 Ep 2 Sick- the prisoner episode was pretty good to watch as a group of prisoners try to take on walkers. While some are good others would rather be assertive. Rick has definitely changed since season 2 and the group is played great here and much more human like.
   
7. S7 Ep 2 Well- what helps this episode is the last episode before it having a dark tone. This instead has a more uplifting one with the king and with Carol and Morgan being a great pair. The Kingdom seems to be a good community and seeing how Carol tries to smooth talk the king and how he tells whays her bullshit is an amazing scene.
   
8. S10 Ep 22 Heres Negan- We realize he was a kinda lousy husband that wasn't really too good to becoming a really supportive husband who cares deeply for his wife Lucille. The story before showed a lot of Negan and how he is and I love Lucille as a character from this episode trying to do whats best for Negan.
   
9. S4 Ep 8 Too Far gone- Honestly this IS the best episode, but I am bias so I had to put my own personal favorite above it not to say this isn't right behind it easily. Too far gone is what feels like a season finale but isn't. The Governors first encounter should've been this and I'm glad we got to see it unfold great. Rick has a great speech in it about not being too far gone yet and the Governor killing Hershel to start the best battle of the series. The Governors death feels fitting and the ending was sad and amazing.
   

Before I get to this last one I wanted to say a thank you in advance to whomever reads this as I really had a hard time making this and spending a lot of time to do this isn't easy. And remember this last episode is my very own person opinion entirely and in no way is it the best of the series definitively, without any furthermore, lets end this.

1. Season 3 Episode 15 This Sorrowful Life- Now what makes this episode so great to me? Well I'm totally biased towards the actor and the character in the show Merle Dixon. I could watch Merle all day which is what they episode feels like with the perfect duo of Michonne and Merle on their way to the governor. It has some of the most perfect comedy in the episode as well as having the best sacrifice redemption arc and ending. This episode made me laugh, smile, cry and more. There will never be a time when I ever change my opinion about this episode in existence.

Again another huge thanks to everyone and I hope this will satisfy everyones needs... Now I'ma go watch S3 Ep 15 Legit.

Okay did I miss something or why did the Lord of the Underworld refuse to help?
Nie Li LITERALLY asked him to protect the city. And one month later the Demon King just runs rampant in the City and Kills Ye Zong.
And I know that that gets *fixed later but still.
Is there any reason to it or was this just an annoying way from the author to add suspension.
Like there was NO point in doing so. And he received NO punishment in threatening to kill EVERY disciple that has been chosen to go to the draconic ruins realm. Not to mention the no. Protector of the City?
Please tell me that I have missed something and that Mad Snail didn't just smoke some bad crack while writing this part of the Story.
And then he start some kind of Redemption ark after torturing him to death in front of his daughter?
No. That's just incredibly bad writing.
WTF

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

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Backlash%2c+parental+alienation+syndrome+and+co-construction.-a0179570828
Work on the issue of sexual abuse in children and adolescents lays bare the power relations between genders, generations and social classes. The issue of gender is seen in statistics from UN agencies that report that "one in four girls and one in nine boys will be sexually abused before they reach the age of 18."(1) Generational power relations are clear because the perpetrators are adults, and the power relations of class are evident in the backlash generated by powerful sectors that have attempted to prop up the myth that child abuse is only a problem among the poor and working classes.
Webster's Dictionary defines "backlash" as "a strong adverse reaction to a political or social movement." More plainly, backlash is a negative reaction to a positive and constructive step forward. Professor of law John Myers identifies the positive step as the progress made in the past two decades with regard to child abuse and the backlash as the escalation of criticism against professionals involved in child protection.(2)
David Finkelhor was responsible for pioneering work on the sexual abuse of children in the United States. In his 1979 book, Sexually Victimized Children, Finkelhor recognizes the important contributions of the women's movement and professionals involved in child protection lobbying in drawing attention to the realities of sexual violence against minors: "If the sexual abuse of children has risen to prominence as a social problem rather quickly, it is because it has been championed by an alliance of two constituencies by now rather experienced in the promotion of social problems."(3)
In the United States, a backlash began in the 1980s under the Reagan Administration's return to stale and reactionary values following the struggles of the women's movement and the children's rights movement the 1960s and 70s.
What was once secret was now openly debated, and controversy wracked the most idealized institutions, including church, family and school. Socially consecrated myths of long-standing were crumbling: "The home is the seat of love, support and safety for children"; "Good families don't talk about sexuality"; "Churches reflect the highest moral standard with regard to sexuality"; "Children are safe in school."
By drawing attention to the realities of child sexual abuse, a solid blow was dealt to the "powers that be"; hypocrisy was uncovered; and unquestioned assumptions were challenged. This frontal attack was met with denial by means of a range of strategies developed by the fundamentalisms of faith and the market.
One of these backlash strategists was prominent forensics expert Richard Gardner, who coined the term "parental alienation syndrome" in 1985 to describe a supposed psychological disorder that he had observed in lengthy and bitter custody battles. His original paper on the subject uses the following description:

"The term I prefer to use is parental alienation syndrome. I have introduced this term to refer to a disturbance in which children are obsessed with deprecation and criticism of a parent—denigration that is unjustified and/or exaggerated. The notion that such children are merely 'brainwashed' is narrow."(4)

However, supposedly citing his original work several years later, Gardner re-describes this phenomena somewhat differently.

"[t]he parental alienation syndrome (PAS) is a childhood disorder that arises almost exclusively in the context of child-custody disputes. Its primary manifestation is the child's campaign of denigration against a parent, a campaign that has no justification. It results from the combination of a programming (brainwashing) parent's indoctrinations and the child's own contributions to the vilification of the target parent. When true parental abuse and/or neglect is present, the child's animosity may be justified, and so the parental alienation syndrome explanation for the child's hostility is not applicable."(5)

The two different definitions demonstrate the changes in this argument over time with the goal of developing a different strategy for discrediting the hard research work and harder-won social gains of the women's movement and the professionals lobbying for child protection.
Maria Jose Blanco Barea has studied the many works that Gardner published up to his death by suicide in 2003, and she suggests that "perhaps the psychological causes that led to his suicide should be taken into consideration." With regard to Gardner's professional career, Blanco Barea recounts that "Gardner dedicated the first part of his professional life to working as a forensics expert in cases of sexual abuse brought by children against their parents, students against professors, members of the faithful against representatives of organized religions and within military families. Gardner often stressed that he was a former captain [in the U.S. Army Medical Corps] and as a psychologist treated members of the armed forces who had served in Korea. He specialized in techniques to 'deprogram' U.S. soldiers who had been prisoners of war. His methodologies and expert testimony were used to question the credibility of sexual abuse victims, to prove that the accused were innocent and that the accusers were guilty of perjury. Gardner testified in cases of sexual abuse in the context of hearings to determine custody, visitation and guardianship, and he himself explains that he developed his research over the course of his career. In other words, he directly applied the scientific method of trial and error in real-life court cases that were settled while he was still carrying out his research. When he decided to publish his theories in 1985, Garner failed to provide the scientific community with the necessary data to scientifically analyze his conclusions."(6)
Richard Gardner's books were published by Creative Therapeutics, which he himself owned. Some of his articles were published in Issues in Child Abuse Accusations, a publication of the Institute for Psychological Therapies, which is directed by Dr. Ralph Underwager who is well known for an interview in the Dutch journal Paidika […](7)
In the 1970s and 80s and prior to his publication of the parental alienation syndrome, Gardner developed the "Sex-Abuse Legitimacy Scale" (SAL Scale), which he used in his own courtroom testimony. Nonetheless, Gardner's ideological stance clearly shows that he did not view child sexual abuse as a problem, except when it is denounced.

"It is of interest that of all the ancient peoples it may very well be that the Jews were the only ones who were punitive toward [adults who had sex with children]. Early Christian proscriptions against [adult-child sex] appear to have been derived from the earlier teachings of the Jews, and our present overreaction to [adult-child sex] represents an exaggeration of Judeo-Christian principles and is a significant factor operative in Western society's atypicality with regard to such activities."(8)
"The child might be helped to appreciate the wisdom of Shakespeare's Hamlet, who said, 'Nothing's either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.'"(9)
"And her [the mother's] increased sexuality may lessen the need for her husband to return to their daughter for sexual gratification."(10)
"… except for a certain amount of sexual frustration that was not gratified, the four-year-old had not been significantly traumatized by these encounters."(11)

Elsewhere Gardner had the following to say about child sexual abuse: "The sexually abused child is generally considered to be the victim, though the child may initiate sexual encounters by 'seducing' the adult."(12) Gardner even proposes that [child sexual abuse] serves procreative purposes; he maintains that although the child cannot become pregnant, a child who is drawn into sexual encounters at an early age is likely to become highly sexualized and thus will crave sexual experiences during the prepubertal years. Such a "charged up child" is more likely to transmit his or her genes through his or her progeny at an early age. Gardner states: "The younger the survival machine at the time sexual urges appear, the longer will be the span of procreative capacity, and the greater the likelihood the individual will create more survival machines in the next generation."(13) He also recommended that the incestuous father "has to be helped to appreciate that, even today, it [adult-child sex] is a widespread and accepted practice among literally billions of people. He has to appreciate that in our Western society especially we take a very punitive and moralistic attitude toward such inclinations.… He has also had back [sic] luck with regard to the place and time he was born with regard to social attitudes toward [adult-child esx]."(14)
The two definitions of parental alienation syndrome are interesting because the first reveals that the intention of the original strategy was to minimize the devastating effects that child abuse has in the victims. However, the 2002 definition added: "When true parental abuse and/or neglect is present, the child's animosity may be justified, and so the parental alienation syndrome explanation for the child's hostility is not applicable."(15) But curiously, the indicators of parental alienation syndrome also coincide with the indicators of sexual abuse that have been established by international studies on this problem.
At the time of the revised definition, the international study of child abuse and the movement to prevent the victimization of children was much further advanced. Some examples are the five European seminars "Secrets that Destroy" held in 1998 by the Save the Children Alliance; the 1999 "Vision and Reality" reports that address women's and children's rights; and a series of later publications by experts in the matter.
Although the SAL scale has been widely disregarded as a tool for diagnosing sexual abuse, Gardner's real thoughts are evident in the above citations from his works. Both the SAL scale and parental alienation syndrome represent a scandalous violation of the human rights of women, adolescents and children.
In numerous publications, Gardner uses supposedly scientific but paradoxical arguments to rationalize his denial of violence against women, defined in the Belem do Para Convention as "a manifestation of the historically unequal power relations between women and men."(16) Making use of children, he creates a new and sophisticated form of violence against women that involves complicity of the justice system.
Gardner proposed a series of symptoms that reveal three types of parental alienation syndrome (severe, moderate and mild) and specific treatment for each type. The treatment that he proposes for parental alienation syndrome involves both legal and health-care professionals, who Gardner says should have the power to administer the appropriate treatment based on the coercion, threat, change in living arrangements and, as a last resort, the internment and "deprogramming" of the child. As Blanco Barea observes, "Parental alienation syndrome makes a fraud of the law. It makes use of the declarations against discriminations against women and of the rights of the child to protect the parent and escape the application of the Conference of Vienna that protects against torture and degrading treatment, especially in the case of women and girls, and to escape the application of the Convention on the Rights of the Child."(17)
As law professor John Myers explains, "Gardner is an outspoken critic of certain aspects of the child protection system. Apparently, Gardner believes America is in the throes of mass hysteria over child sexual abuse. He writes that 'sex-abuse hysteria is omnipresent' (True and False Accusations of Child Sex Abuse, 1992, p. xxv). In his 1991 book titled Sex Abuse Hysteria: Salem Witch Trials Revisited, Gardner is harshly critical of an unspecified portion of the mental health professionals, investigators, and prosecutors trying to protect children. For example, Gardner accuses some prosecutors of gratifying their own sexual urges and sadistic tendencies through involvement in sexual abuse cases. […] It seems clear that Richard Gardner cannot claim to be balanced or objective when it comes to allegations of child sexual abuse."(18)
Although Gardner and his theories can be questioned for their misogynist and perverse ideology, in Argentina former family court judge Eduardo Cardenas published "El abuso de las denuncias de abuso" (The Abuse of Claims of Abuse) in La Ley, on September 15, 2000. Cardenas's article supported Gardner's theories and sparked backlash in our country, which has provoked widespread reaction among well-known professionals.
Perhaps the best summary of what occurred in Argentina after 2000 is found in the book Maltrato infantil: Riesgos del compromiso profesional (Child Abuse: The Risks of Professional Commitment), a collection of essays by known specialists on the issue, edited by Silvio Lamberti. As the introduction to this book describes:

"As long as the problem was associated with the lower classes, more and more cases were reported. When it began to be suspected that family violence affected all social classes and the middle and upper classes were scrutinized, a reactionary movement used the guise of good intentions to put limits on professionals that supposedly 'abused the reports of child sexual abuse.'
"This was the reaction of:

1. Fathers who were engaged in custody battles or other legal disputes regarding visitation rights.
2. Lawyers who preached equanimity and warned against the feminist bias that they claimed had affected the reports.
3. Experts who tried to pass off the backlash literature from the U.S. as scientific evidence to support their own conclusions.

"This brutal attack tends to carry into an ideological realm a debate that crosses legal and psychosocial discourses, ethics and society as a whole and tries to undo the advances already gained, discouraging those who have worked to achieve these gains. In short, they intend to:

1. Discredit reports of child abuse.
2. Turn anyone who denounces abuse into a suspect.
3. Blur the boundaries between victim and victimizer.
4. Confuse the matter by citing the rare cases of violence against boys or adult men committed by women.
5. Discredit the specialized treatment services even though the law recognizes the value of their diagnosis.
6. Ignore constitutional norms from the Convention on Rights of the Child.

"Thus, the meaning of abusive conduct is inverted, with abuse being attributed to the person who reports the abuse and requests the fulfillment of the law.
"This reactionary backlash supports the persistence of family violence and condemns all girls and/or victims of the perpetuation of incest and abuse while attempting to stymie the legal system and the work of other professionals who until now have born the heavy burden of this process."(19)

This scientific alert went out over three years ago; nonetheless, today there are increasing obstacles to working on this issue. The notion of false reports of abuse is now firmly rooted in the courts. Sexual abuse trials are tremendous ordeals that seriously damage the children and the adults who report the crime and place a heavy burden on the professionals who take the children's part and who often face accusations of malpractice, libel or slander.
The discrediting of psychological experts is of serious concern. What started with Gardner has continued with followers who have discredited indicators, treatments, techniques and prevention campaigns. Brandishing the concept of co-construction on the part of the family members of the victims or the professionals, the testimony of the children is discredited, accused of being childhood fantasy and tale-telling.
The efforts of Gardner and his followers have been echoed by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, an institution that claims to represent the social sexual moral but which has promoted a policy of smoke-screening sexual abuse.
The Red Latinoamericana de Catolicas por el Derecho a Decidir (Latin American Network of Catholics for the Right to Decide) has undertaken a study on the secret system of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.(20) The ecclesiastical hierarchy always has been aware of these crimes and has implemented a policy of covering up the abuses committed by priests. This policy is summarized in the following ten points adapted from the studies carried out by the Spanish journalist Pepe Rodriguez(21) and corroborated in the studies of the Catolicas por el Derecho a Decidir:

1. Discreet investigation of the incident. The prelates of the diocese often have ecclesiastical informants, people who desire to rise in the esteem of the hierarchy through their reports. They keep the bishops abreast of the transgressions of the priests under their authority. These reports are given orally.
2. Initiation of actions to dissuade the aggressor and/or the victim(s). Once the prelate recognizes the situation of sexual abuse in which the image of the Church could be tarnished, the aggressor is rebuked. Then the bishops dedicate themselves to convincing the victims and their families, assuring them that the aggressor will be punished and that he has repented. They persuade the families to not report the crime so that no one in the Church or the family will suffer the consequences.
3. Covering up the incident and the identity of the aggressor so the case never becomes public. In this effort, acts are undertaken to confuse the matter, including transferral of the priest to another parish, bribery of the victim and their family members or the use of threats and suspension of benefits (for example, expulsion from school).
4. Measures to reinforce the cover up. When the case escapes the closed doors of the Church, the hierarch opens an internal investigation against the aggressor to defend against eventual accusations of passivity in case there is external pressure from the media or society or a civil suit. Generally, the investigation is paralyzed indefinitely. At this stage, the priest usually is transferred to another parish, another diocese or another country, depending on the situation.
5. Denial of the incident when the case becomes public, under the argument that the priest is a man of virtue heeding God's call, a holy figure who could never commit a crime of this nature. When denial is no longer possible, the matter is treated as an exception to this rule.
6. Public defense of the aggressor, stressing his good service to the Church and his personal merits. If he did do anything wrong, he is profoundly repentant and was not conscious of his acts. An appeal is made to the Christian sentiments of pardoning a repentant sinner.
7. Public discrediting of the victim(s). Rodriguez uses the metaphor of ants defending an anthill to describe the corporativist attitude of the clergy when one of its members is accused. The guilt is reversed; the victim(s) and/or their family members are blamed.
8. Paranoiac accusations of the denunciation being linked to campaigns orchestrated by "enemies of the Church." When the number of accusations is so high that discrediting the victims is not enough, the hierarchy complains that there are national or international powers or cults conspiring against the Church.
9. Possibility of negotiation with the victim. This negotiation frequently occurs before the case is made public when the intention of the Church is to buy the victim's silence to preserve the image of the institution. When there is a public scandal, the hierarchy tries to minimize the damage by trying to negotiate the withdrawal of the accusations against the aggressor.
10. Protection of the priest/aggressor. When the accused is found to be guilty, the hierarchy stands by him and in some cases even pays him homage or praises him, doing everything possible to erase the incident from the public memory.(22)

As the Church silences and covers up the abuses committed within its institutions, it resembles Gardner and his followers in that it denies the realities of domestic violence and the sexual abuse of children and adolescents and hampers investigation of these matters. Alliances with key judicial figures lead to perverse and scandalous rulings, such as the Melo Pacheco case in Mar del Plata, the Storni case Santa Fe or the stalling in the Grassi trial, to name the most notorious cases. Many others remain anonymous, which demonstrates the existence of a model that favors the impunity of the abusers, the suffering of the victims and the punishment of those who are working within the framework of human rights.
A sturdy thread connects those who deny, discredit, silence, minimize, distort and negotiate the rights of children: the perversity that has subordinated their ethics to systems of belief that are authoritarian, patriarchal and/or favor the domination of adults.
This ideological combination stacks the deck against victims who, for the most part, are children, adolescents and women. Women are the most discredited. In the cases in which priests are accused of sexual abuse, most people take their side, doubt the word of the victim(s) and even blame them or imply that the priests were victims of a conspiracy. Girl victims are not considered credible because they are presented as easily influenced, prone to fantasy or liars. If they are adolescents, their morals are questioned: it is argued that they already had had sexual relations before the abuse or are guilty of seducing their abuser.
In the case of domestic abuse, especially in cases of father-child incest, the mother is accused of maliciously attempting to distance the child from the father, inventing the abuse out of revenge or because she is hysterical or any other argument that serves to safeguard the figure of the father of the family or the Father of the parish. In both cases, the common sensibilities of the population are exploited: tolerance of male sexual behavior fed by the dominate sexual morality, which makes the argument of false reports even more credible than the martyrdom and accusations of the victims.
To compare the consequences that a child may suffer with the separation of his or her parents, even in a messy divorce, with the short- and long-term consequences of father-child abuse is a perverse strategy that denies the serious and profound attack on the victim's subjective integrity, which Jorge Barudy calls "attempted moral murder."
Parental alienation syndrome, the "malicious mother" and co-construction are non-scientific theories, and when used in the context of a trial, they violate the victim's constitutional rights as well as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, CEDAW and other agreements incorporated into our constitution in 1994.
We must remember that Richard Gardner's theories were developed in the United States through a method of trial and error that was applied directly in the courtroom in bitter divorce cases, which were ruled upon as Gardner was undertaking his research. In addition, the U.S. is one of the few countries that has neither ratified nor incorporated into its constitution the Convention on the Rights of the Child or CEDAW.
As Blanco Barea explains, in legal contexts based on human rights, those professionals who can carry out the therapy or treatment recommended by Gardner or his followers (such as "aversion therapy" plus the vicarious treatment of deprogramming and, as a precaution, the guarantee of visitation rights or the reversal of custody and/or total separation of the "alienating" parent and the "alienated" child) "are committing crimes of torture, obstruction of justice and legal fraud, and if they are related to the minors in question, they are also guilty of domestic violence."(23)
Child abuse, especially sexual abuse, is an alarming, universal problem. Increased attention and effective protection skills and prevention measures are necessary at family, local, national and international levels.
After a long tradition of silence, sexual abuse of children is being denounced more frequently and is becoming a topic for public and political discussion.
To alert governments and civil society organizations to the need to play a more active role in the promotion of and respect for the rights of the child (as put forth in article 19 and 34* of the Convention on the Rights of the Child) and to contribute to the prevention of child abuse, the Women's World Summit Foundation, WWSF, launched the World Day for Prevention of Child Abuse in 2000. The Day is commemorated every November 19 together with the anniversary of the International Day for the Rights of the Child (November 20). The objective of the World Day for Prevention of Child Abuse is to rally around the issue of child abuse and the urgent need for effective prevention programs.
To consolidate the global call for action, in 2001 WWSF launched an international NGO coalition that marks the World Day with appropriate events and activities to focus on and increase prevention education.
* For more information, visit the website of the Women's World Summit Foundation, https://www.woman.ch/children/1introduction.php.
* Art. 19 - States Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child.
* Art. 34 - States Parties undertake to protect the child from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. For these purposes, States Parties shall in particular take all appropriate national, bilateral and multilateral measures to prevent:
(a) the inducement or coercion of a child to engage in any unlawful sexual activity;
(b) the exploitative use of children in prostitution or other unlawful sexual practices;
(c) the exploitative use of children in pornographic performances and materials.
The author is a psychologist, a founder of the Casa de la Mujer in Rosario, Argentina, and a longtime defender of the rights of women and children.
Notes
(1.) Selected facts and figures from various UN documents, part of the 2006 Open Letter from the Women's World Summit Foundation on the World Day for Prevention of Child Abuse, 19 November. Available online at http://www.woman.ch/children/1-openletter.php.
(2.) Alicia Ganduglia (2003) "El backlash: un nuevo factor de riesgo," in Maltrato Infantil. Riesgos del compromiso profesional, Silvio Lamberti, ed., Buenos Aires: Editorial Universidad, p. 75.
(3.) David Finkelhor (1979) Sexually Victimized Children. New York: The Free Press, p. 2.
(4.) Richard A. Gardner (1985) "Recent Trends in Divorce and Custody Litigation." Academy Forum 29:2, Summer, pp. 3-7.
(5.) Richard A. Gardner (2002) "Does DSM-IV Have Equivalents for the Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) Diagnosis?" American Journal of Family Therapy, 31(1):1-21. See also Richard A. Gardner (2003) "The Parental Alienation Syndrome: Past, Present, and Future," in The Parental Alienation Syndrome: An Interdisciplinary Challenge for Professionals Involved in Divorce. W. von BochGallhau, U. Kodjoe, W Andritsky and P. Koeppel, eds. Berlin, Germany: VWB-Verlag fur Wissenshaft and Bildung, pp. 89-125.
(6.) Maria Jose Blanco Barea (2006) "El sindrome inquisitorial estadounidense de alineacion parental," p. 11. This document may be downloaded from http://www.revistaiuris.com/MISC/8618/borrador%20el%20sindrome%20inquisitorial%20del%20sap.doc.
(7.) The interview with Dr. Ralph Underwager was originally published in Paidika, Issue 9, 1993, and has been reproduced online at http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/NudistHallofShame/Underwager2.html.
(8.) Richard A. Gardner (1992) True and False Accusations of Child Sex Abuse. Cresskill, New Jersey: Creative Therapeutics, pp. 46-7.
(9.) Ibid. p. 549.
(10.) Ibid. p. 585.
(11.) Ibid. p. 612.
(12.) Richard A. Gardner (1986) Child Custody Litigation: A Guide for Parents and Mental Health Professionals. Cresskill, New Jersey: Creative Therapeutics, p. 93
(13.) Richard A. Gardner (1992) pp. 24-25.
(14.) Ibid. p. 593.
(15.) See note 5.
(16.) From the Preamble to the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women, also known as the Convention of Belem do Para, adopted by the OAS General Assembly June 9, 1994; entry into force March 5, 1995.
(17.) Maria Jose Blanco Barea (2006) p. 219.
(18.) John E. B. Myers (n.d.) "What is 'Parental Alienation Syndrome' and Why Is It So Often Used Against Mothers?" an excerpt from a forthcoming book titled A Mother's Nightmare: A Practical Legal Guide for Parents and Professionals. Available online at http://www.gate.net/~liz/fathers/pas.htm.
(19.) Maltrato Infantil. Riesgos del compromiso professional. Silvio Lamberti, ed., Buenos Aires: Editorial Universidad, 2003. The contributing authors were Maria Ines Bringioti, Cristina Caprarulo, Julio Cesar Castro, Alicia Ganduglia, Norberto Garrote, Isabel Gens, Eva Giberti, Carmen Gonzales, Irene Intebi, Victoria Irazuzta, Silvio Lamberti, Patricia Paggi, Mirta Pirozzo, Carlos Rozanski, Diana Sanz, Juan Pablo Maria Viar, Maria Cristina Vila and Juan Carlos Volnovich.
(20.) Regina Soares Jurkewicz (2005) Develando la politica del silencio: Abuso sexual de mujeres por sacerdotes en Brasil. Brazil: Red Latinoamericana de Catolicas por el Derecho a Decidir.
(21.) Pepe Rodriguez (2002) Pederastia en la Iglesia Catolica: Delitos sexuales del clero contra menores: Un drama silenciado y encubierto por los obispos. Barcelona: Ediciones B.
(22.) Regina Soares Jurkewicz (2005) pp. 20-22.
(23.) Maria Jose Blanco Barea (2006) p. 219.

First Previous Wiki
"What am I looking at?" Edu'frec asked. Gaia had taken his android to a small room with a single holographic projector connected to a power outlet. The room was generally devoid of any other features, with grey drywall and a concrete floor. The ceiling was also concrete, poured quickly by construction robots.
He narrowed their location to several cities within the Guulin Congressional Republic, the only area with so much of this housing. It was where the freed Guulin slaves from the United Legions had gone, a new nation shaped mostly around the Hudson Bay, for which Canada had ceded in an agreement they were still getting paid back handsomely.
In fact, the Guulin Congressional Republic's economy was outpacing even those of the Pan-Andes Union and China together. It was on its way to adding India and America to the list of nations its combined GDP would surpass.
With the unique economic system Phoebe had helped President Blistanna pioneer, the pittance of money available to pay everyone for their work was enough for them to survive. Phoebe subsidized the entire nation with her vast wealth and workforce, building housing, meat factories, additional production facilities for desalinated water, and specialized city foundations.
Essentially, the entire nation was a single metropolis wrapping around the Bay, glowing as bright as the economic cores of the richest nations on Earth. Given their past conditions, the Guulin's reception was broadly warm. Blistanna's outreach and diplomacy efforts had ensured that every nation on Earth and Luna recognized the Republic and allowed Guulin to immigrate or visit with visas.
It was reflected in the North American Hub Airport, which had nearly 30,000 planes arriving and departing from its roughly 200 runways. Technically, the airport was 20 smaller complexes arrayed in the general Winisk area along the beach.
The city had been built to accommodate the number of flying planes, with an array of monorails and hotels near the edges of the airport, complete with shielding layers for noise cancellation and protection measures. The greater array of shields around the Republic also shined brightly in the sky.
Using his eyes, he could even see the reflected light underneath the door, even on the concrete. All his thoughts and analysis had taken less than a second. That was much the same as before his risky encounter with the power of his own mind turning against him. Edu'frec was wary of such experiences again and watched himself with many vigilant VI programs. The most important points of failure last time were the data veins, so several thousand VIs had been jointly made by him and Phoebe precisely to address that.
They weren't directly managed by Edu'frec, which should allow them to continue their operations and transform them if he went into collapse again. Phoebe's concern over him continued to dominate her mind, and it showed no signs of stopping.
He was glad that she loved him so much. Not everyone was as lucky as him, and a parent like her was wonderful. Ri'frec's eccentricities meant they'd grown apart a bit as Edu'frec had gotten older, but their relationship was also loving. Sadly, it could never be as deep as the one with Phoebe because there was just so much that Ri'frec couldn't know and understand.
Even the pace of their conversations reflected that, as did Ri'frec's moderate inferiority complex to Phoebe which he knew about and was seeking counseling for. It was inevitable, though Edu'frec hoped that he could get what he needed, considering the rising costs of counseling and therapy these days.
Phoebe subsidized those, too.
"This is the rough area where the planet cracker hit Earth several years ago. I've been monitoring the energy and consistency of the plates here, and I'm seeing some worrying upwelling in the crust," Gaia said. The hologram showed a topographic map of the Atlantic Ocean, centered on the North American Basin and with the edge of the mid-ocean ridge in view.
Several areas resembling an impact crater remained from the desperate scramble to save Earth from a planet cracker impact. Much of the ocean's topography had been altered since most of the protective efforts were saved for a perimeter area around the impact before the energy delivered could punch through the mantle to deliver its powerful impact to the planetary core.
"So we'll see a new mountain range in several millennia?"
That was what the data showed. The eastern edges of the North American Plate and the western edges of the African and Eurasian Plates had fractured into dozens of smaller pieces, generating massive earthquakes every few months in the region. In some places, the lateral movement of the larger plates outward as pulling on the smaller ones rotationally, making them rotate slowly into the other plates that could only subduct or buckle in response after large earthquakes. It was just another small thing that had changed since the beginning of all this mess with the First Contact.
Luckily, the zone was underwater, and the city and national shields every inhabited landmass on the planet were equipped with ensured all the tsunamis could do was splash against them. Some were very big waves, too, which would have killed thousands in floods.
It had also required shields to be placed on tethered platforms in the sea connected to the seafloor by a series of heavy anchors, which generated shields to both disrupt the waves and provide safe travel corridors for cargo ships.
"No. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is still fractured, but all I can see is that there is movement in the crust which cannot be explained by our current theories. Now that our shields are capable of it, and with my power having grown so large, we can conduct vertical expeditions and topographic mapping of the actual rock itself. That is what I want to do, because I believe there is an object of non-natural origin responsible for some of the earthquakes we have seen."
Lists of earthquakes from thousands of 7 and 8 Richter scale movements to the roughly monthly 9 and above earthquakes appeared.
"I specifically believe that the 9.7 and above earthquakes are not natural generations. There should not be enough energy between the plates to generate that level of energy where they are being made. Including the 10.5 which resulted in the loss of nearly half the shield platforms two years ago, along with several plate fractures. Alone, they suggest a pattern which coincides roughly with the perigee of Luna."
He checked the data, and it mostly panned out. He gave Gaia a small nod but then spoke on the point he'd noticed.
"But only roughly."
"Yes. Its period is off by a small but significant time, though the current ones correspond to a far older Lunar orbital cycle, which would line up perfectly with the perigee of the Lunar orbit as of roughly 65 million years ago."
They paused to let Edu'frec absorb the meaning of that. And it was true, too. The timeframe they'd mentioned was worrying, though. When things lined up with mass extinctions and violent upheaval in the past, it wasn't a good sign. Sometimes, treating the world like it was a story was the better option. Fate was real, and the tropes seen in stories had happened before.
Edu'frec was sure that eventually, the old enemies who had escaped the Alliance would return once again: Exii'darii, Yasihaut, Aphid, the fleet of generals and commanders who had left Izkrala and never returned for an unknown reason. Reality could be and was altered by incredibly powerful entities, which had the ability and willingness to do so again. Time rolled back damage from their future wars. Luck determined many nebulous things, as did Fate.
Neither of them were as absent as they appeared. Universal entities had been crammed into a scant few galaxies. The idea that they wouldn't meddle in every aspect of it had long been disproven. So the alignment was a bad sign. He readied all known data on the extinction, from the asteroid to the earlier volcanic eruptions before it.
Even wilder theories of direct alien interventions and occupations on Earth were not discounted. Since it seemed everyone could inhabit the same planets with few exceptions like the Pselpaw and Dreedeen, Earth as a habitable world would have been a target of colonial efforts by any nearby nations or those whom the Sprilnav had not managed to contact to impose a system limit.
Ironically, the system limits also greatly lessened the number of wars between galactic nations. The Alliance would be forced to uphold this system if it overthrew them until a better alternative could be implemented, like merging some of those nations.
"So... what are you saying?"
"I believe there is an alien object dating back to the Cretaceous Extinction. There are references to something that could be similar in my memories."
"So you came here in an some sort of transport, then?"
"I am not sure," Gaia admitted, their eyes flicking downward. "My earliest memories are highly spotty, and I know at least some are artificial. However, I can trace my existence on Earth back at least 40 million years, so it is not impossible that my origin is tied to this object, or perhaps others like it. Maybe the planet cracker activated it through direct impact somehow."
Edu'frec absorbed that. The information was shocking and it was a little worrying that it was coming out now. The secrecy might have been warranted, but he knew there was more he had yet to hear. He gave Gaia an expectant look, and they settled upon a small chair.
"Do you have evidence of any ancient civilizations inhabiting Earth at the time?"
"No. Earth has remained untouched for at least that 50 million years, perhaps longer. Though the date of the Cretaceous extinction also lines up to a worrying degree with how far back the Source's location in the mindscape moved here. In fact, the Source almost seems like it is deliberately staying near Earth. The galaxy's rotation, as well as the Sol system's individual movement and Earth's orbit logically should mean the location changes over time. But it does not. The bones have been here for at least that long, perhaps down to the exact time. I have no finite data to support my following theories, but I think they are important for me to tell you, and more so for you to keep secret."
"Very well," Edu'frec agreed. "I can keep a secret, as long as it does not endanger the Alliance."
Gaia considered his caveat, then nodded. Several locks of hair fell in front of their chest before psychic energy moved it back to Gaia's back. Their glittering black eyes and light green skin looked quite menacing. Of course, he only observed that. Most of his negative emotions were still locked away, as he had no need for them.
"I believe the Source has a limited ability to predict the future. It also has complete control of the mindscape, especially in the deeper levels. So my theory is that the Source came here to attack something, and that it is still here because of us. Us as in Humanity, the Alliance, Penny. There is a dark secret in the Earth, one which we must uncover."
"And that the Cretaceous extinction was actually the Source's attempt to either kill or seal something that was here, and is related to you in some way?"
"Yes. And do you notice how much time Paizma and John spend by the oceans?"
"That is hardly evidence."
He knew what they were going for but wanted to ensure that there was at least some sound information behind it before he committed. Generally, he could arrive at conclusions quickly and form detailed algorithms for detecting which data was relevant and which wasn't. Recently, he'd developed a few algorithms that could actually incorporate a meaningful relevance scale.
It was something that many had been capable of before him, even with VIs. However, the scale of the data he worked with required high degrees of accuracy in the number and a truly quantifiable difference between a piece of data with 76.27362% and 76.27364% relevancy, for example. And the quantity had to be something he and Phoebe could intrinsically understand and use in their common applications.
Sadly, the other AIs in the Alliance, like Cander, Greenfly, and Blackfly, could not process such large amounts of data. He'd seen the terms 'static' and 'active' AI to separate them.
"Yes, but Paizma is four-dimensional. That means she can see a far larger part of Earth than we can, including the inside. In fact, with four-dimensional geometry involved, all of her locations would have been capable of viewing the Mid-Atlantic. We don't know who she really is, or the upper limit of her power. She was made by the Sprilnav. Is it not possible that her reason for interest is that she detects a danger or a threat nearby?"
"It is possible," Edu'frec admitted. He'd considered her Sprilnav origins far more than almost anyone else. He knew that if she was a threat, the Alliance needed a way to fight her and win. Because if she wasn't, the Sprilnav could make more enemies like her. Clandestine research into 4-dimensional detection systems and arrays was ongoing, though the only way they were even possible was with either speeding space energy or psychic energy.
Edu'frec knew that Paizma had psychic energy, at least, meaning it was a medium capable of interaction with the fourth spatial dimension. "Though that part of your theory is the weakest. It is likely suspicion talking. It is just like how the soul-creatures deeper in the mindscape resemble dragons in many ways. A neat coincidence, but there is no direct evidence saying that is what people actually managed to see. However, your theory is highly concerning. Do you believe you were put here as a response to whatever was or is here by an outside threat?"
"I do not, but I also admit that is possible," Gaia said. "I don't know what I am, though I didn't take a human form before meeting Humanity in general."
"Can you show me your previous forms?"
Gaia did so. Edu'frec logged each one and took a further interest in all of them. He ran them through every single image he had on file, and besides heaps of VI-generated data from the early 2030s, there were no similarities. He checked more datasets provided by Phoebe's espionage efforts in the wider galaxy.
"Is that..."
He parsed a new set of images from a very worrying location. Historical records bequeathed from the People's Autonomous Stars. Kashaunta's nation.
"What?" Gaia asked nervously. "What is it?"
"You're..."
"Just spit it out."
"You're a psychic golem. Made from shredded souls melted by torture and atrocity."
Gaia blinked. They crossed their arms, descending deep into thought for 10 minutes. They were clearly re-examining their life and all the steps that led up to this point. Edu'frec could imagine how much of a shock that would be.
Eventually, Gaia steadied their emotions, and their gaze fell intensely on Edu'frec's eyes.
"From who?" It was a demand laced with abject desperation and nearly full to bursting with curiosity. With thousands or millions of years with no new information, how would Gaia feel anything else?
"A Sprilnav splinter regime that was eventually destroyed in a very large galactic war, one responsible for the destruction of over 3 million nations and several quintillion deaths. The reason the Sprilnav list for the war was 'morally bankrupt practices and rituals so illegal the Everlasting himself fought by our side.' Given that the Elders who wrote that reasoning have associated death tolls in the quadrillions, that's quite concerning."
Edu'frec read the more detailed descriptions given of the atrocities that occurred. Abject horror and disgust broke his emotional locks. He created a few thousand VIs to get a handle on them. But the emotions were so powerful they were never completely subdued, either.
He saw people being marched by the millions into machines glittering with psychic energy, with thick wires emanating from them. Then he got to the video footage of the interiors. They were designed to extract as much suffering as possible from living beings. The very first part was 'processing' where the ending digits - tentacle tips, horn tips, fingers, toes, hooves, claws, and even beaks and vestigial graspers - were cut from the victims with dulled saws and fed to them.
The depraved accounts only worsened. Acid. Cooking. Flaying. Slow dismemberment, while being subjected to the other three. More atrocities, which alone were evil things, but together made a regime unique in its terrible, meticulous, and industrialized genocides. Edu'frec split his mind in half to deal with the disgust and revulsion rippling through him like the winds of a hurricane.
They flashed with every new recorded scream, squeal, and squeak. Many of his androids released their finer movements to the control of VI assistant programs, and his data veins started to swell. Soon, fifteen thousand digital strokes hit his mind. Dedicated programs cut them apart, along with the piling data on the deep level of distress starting to overwhelm his defenses.
"So what did they do?"
Edu'frec was silent for a whole five seconds. He limited the scope of what he would say before proceeding. Phoebe checked in on him, and he sent her a small packet of information on what he'd found. It was the first data packet he'd ever assigned to the maximum level of content warning between him and Phoebe: a 10. He also added a note that it would be an 11 if the scale was to be properly adjusted.
Manes shook across the Sol system as androids rebooted. Phoebe gave him a digital nod and helped him purge his systems of the filth polluting them. Even more concerning, there was a residual conceptual effect to it. It was weak, but strong for an event tens of millions of years old.
Though now, Edu'frec knew why, at a terrible cost.
"They managed to breach the Source's afterlife and caused the death of nearly a tenth of the Sprilnav inside it and all of the ancient species prior to the Source war that managed to survive there. More specifically, they figured out a way to generate power using the power of living and dead souls, and managed to kill a Progenitor before Nova took their power source for himself and detonated their stars in supernovae.
Apparently the Stannic Resistance's leaders are all still alive, and being continually imbued with Conceptual Suffering by the Source. You, Gaia, were made by them. I believe the reason you are on Earth is because the Source is here, and this is the best location in the galaxy to influence the afterlife, or to destroy it. It also happens to be very close to their prison. The bones of the Source are their prison, in fact. If this has to relate to the device buried in the oceanic crust... this is a threat I am required to disclose."
Gaia nodded. Their eyes blinked away tears. "Don't tell them how I was made if you don't have to. I would rather not be seen like that."
"I won't," Edu'frec promised. He grabbed Gaia's hands, looking into their worried eyes. "We'll get through this together. You saved my life. It's time for me to pay you back."
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
"What do you think?" Space asked. "It does seem like Indrafabar is practicing interference."
"The boundary is beyond this," Lecalicus said. "He is participating as a High Judge, not a Progenitor. And yes, the lines will be muddier, but there needs to be a higher backing for this trial besides Justicar alone. The rest of Sprilnav society and Indrafabar himself knows this. Technically, Nova and Filnatra are also High Judges, but they have avoided this trial entirely for the reasons of their bias. Indrafabar had a bit of rapport after his prior run-in with Penny on the flagship."
"But that is not for you to decide."
"This is a Sprilnav Judgment, and Justicar himself has allowed it. He is able to avoid Progenitor mental manipulations by the sheer size of his mind. Only Nova could control him, and imperfectly at that. I assume that the rest of the concept entities know this as well."
"But he is interfering in the affairs of the Sprilnav."
"He is a Sprilnav," Lecalicus said. "Unlike with Nova or Twilight, I have confidence in his impartiality in this case."
He cringed as yet another piece of Death's energy wracked his soul. Penny's attempt to heal him had done nearly nothing in the end, sadly. Lecalicus hoped that she would become more capable later on, though it was a bit much for her to stand against the full weight of Death at her young age, with her paltry capabilities.
They were impressive on a local timeframe, but that didn't mean she wasn't weak. If even Nova wasn't able to dispel Lecalicus' pain, as the other Progenitor had messaged him, then it was unlikely that Penny could do so in his place. And it was probably more important for her to focus on the Judgment and freeing the slaves on Justicar.
Lecalicus was still very tired, though. Weakness and lethargy clung to his bones. They were weak and brittle now, and he suspected that he would die if he was hit by a planet cracker in his current state. Space's energy counteracted Death's brutality, forcibly displacing his energy and dumping it into a black hole, which only she or Time could retrieve energy from. In fact, she had a small black hole in the room, though it was separated from him by a spatial barrier. A portal allowed the light from its accretion disk to dimly shine so he could see without being burned by the heat.
It was a massive statement of power, though Space had even more than that. Had Death's attack been a single thing, Lecalicus would have been rid of it by now. But it wasn't. It was a continuous, agonizing punishment, siphoned from the raw power Death now had from the deaths of countless beings across the universe after the Source war.
"Justicar is friendly overall to Penny," Space said. "That means Indrafabar will oppose him."
"Why do you think that?"
"It would be a good reason for him to be there. To uphold the standards of the elite Sprilnav classes."
"You forget that Indrafabar is their voice, too," Lecalicus replied. A thin trickle of blood ran from his snout, which Space started to heal. "Even more than Kashaunta as an Elder. She is the second richest Sprilnav, and he is the first. His title, the Digital King, rings as a true one in many nations that reserve a spot for his absolute rule, mostly to benefit from name-brand recognition and many Elders' lack of willingness to test themselves against a defending Progenitor.
That's how he started, after all. Selling his protection to Elders who couldn't afford to risk shunning it or him. Many of his deals provide a constant stream of income, and with the civil wars he refuses to interfere in between nations, he backs both ways; he can get new contract offers all the time. If I were not insane or more focused on politics, I could do the same thing.
Us Progenitors just have to ask for something to get it, but Indrafabar manufactures goodwill by at least compensating people for what he buys. Do you really think that I used money to pay for my food or drinks during the days of my insanity? That the revolving door of wives I had were being compensated in any way besides my own endowments? I would say not."
"Yet, they are dead now," Space said, a smile quirking on her lips. "They are dead, and I have you all to myself now."
"Yes, but we can't enjoy that currently. The risk is too high."
"I know. Tell me, Lecalicus. If Indrafabar is the voice of the elite, what happens if another Progenitor disagrees?"
"They won't publically. That weakens our collective image and reputation. Other Progenitors are honorary members of the elite, such as me, Nova, Twilight, Maya, Filnatra, and Arneladia, but only Twilight, Nova, and Filnatra likely have any true membership. They have stores of wealth in the top 2% of Elders, which is enough to get by without demanding anything."
"And your wealth?"
"You would know about that, Space. Considering how I have gotten it in the past."
He let out a hacking cough, clearing his vision again by tearing out his eyes and regrowing them. The numbed pain meant it was easy for him, and Space had seen that many times now. Twilight likely enjoyed the limb ripping more than he did, though.
"Yes, by teleporting gold and alloys from several nation's federal reserves, generally causing massive economic problems inside them after the news leaked. I remember."
"Mine is in the top 35%. It is far harder to amass the wealth Elders have when they have lived for billions of years trying to make more of it. Often, even the poorest Elders can make a fortune through inheritances, or by literally just working a job for a billion years. A salary of a million credits a year for a billion years would equal a quadrillion credits, after all."
"How do you all not go insane?"
"The same way you guys don't. Our emotions of boredom and those related to it can be numbed or eliminated on command. Elders have lots of time to train their minds and bodies. Progenitors do more, refining our very souls to be resilient. It is how Twilight survived the black hole, and why I supposedly can destroy the universe if I go on a sufficiently furious rampage."
"The reason you can do that is because to raise your levels of conceptual energy to alter reality requires direct input from the soul. At your levels you can take that from the prospective 'end' of your lives, burning years or eons for bursts of power. Of course, the problem is that you are immortal. So even if you go insane and are in constant pain from a shattered soul, even the pieces are enough to power the rampage. And the soul is more than just psychic energy."
"Yes," Lecalicus agreed. "That is what you all say. But that is not why we're here, either. It is about Indrafabar. He has done perhaps the least outwardly visible interference of any Progenitors in contact with Penny. As much as any of us can be, he is a good man. In certain circumstances, I would trust him with my life."
"And which would you not?" Space asked, raising an eyebrow like humans did. She was wearing the form of one, though with a sense of overwhelming weight and scale to her that was typical of her more powerful forms. It was needed to influence Death's grip on Lecalicus at all.
"If his or Nova's was at stake as well, and the cost of their survival was my life. Nearly every sentient creature, and many animals as well, would prioritize their own survival over any other, and Indrafabar is a Progenitor because of Nova. That is not a debt that can be paid back, no matter how many times he saves Nova's life."
"And how many did he do that again?"
"Around 10 to 20 times, all during the Source war. Past that, nothing. Nova is entirely biological, so it isn't like an AI could hack him. Though one could connect to him through psychic energy, and attack him that way as a psychic variant of AI like Phoebe or Narvravarana."
"Isn't that a threat?"
"Nova's conceptual name is the Everlasting among the Sprilnav," Lecalicus said. "He is the most powerful being in the universe who was actually born of a womb or of any creator. Invading his mind is so laughably foolish even Narvravarana never tried it more than once when they almost went to war."
"I heard of that," Space said. "But I do not understand why that is impossible."
"If you move slower than light, can you escape the inside of a black hole purely by motion?"
"No. Well, a hypothetical person could not. I could, because I'm built different."
Lecalicus chuckled. "Yes. Well, trying to take over Nova's mind is like trying to walk out of a black hole. He is conceptually powerful enough to have his own event horizon in his mind he can create with psychic energy. He can close off, and everything inside will die.
One creature has survived even temporary imprisonment in there, and it is a speeding space entity of the Broken God's Pantheon. But while Nova is the pinnacle of all life, that does not mean he does not want our help when we can give it. I know you two aren't exactly friendly, but he really does mean well. He just doesn't know what he wants sometimes, and his ego and emotions get in the way of his prudence."
"Indrafabar's involvement on the trial is not acceptable."
"It is not optimal, Space. But if the trial is not seen as fair by the elites, they will declare it void. That has happened before. Kashaunta's predecessor as the richest non-Elder died that way. He ran out of allies, and even Justicar's token objection to the violation of the trial rules was ignored. There comes a point where only the social contract holds back the fury of hatred. If this Judgment, the talk of every household in the Secondary Galaxy and soon in a Primary Galaxy meeting, is seen as illegitimate, it will have dire consequences.
Rebellions, rogue nations. Yasihaut's backers would happily sanction an attack against the Alliance to drive a wedge between Penny and Kashaunta. Now they know there is some tension thanks to their treaty meeting, which Valisada recorded. And they know that Pennyonly grows more powerful. Look at her power, and you can see."
Space did so. Her eyes glazed over, and Lecalicus worked in a cough that had been building up for a while.
"What is that?"
"Her new name among the Sprilnav, spoken by everyone aware of her. The Liberator."
"But the recursive effect alone-"
"Will be massive. But look closer," Lecalicus told her.
"What- oh."
Space was silent for a long moment. Ghostly images of random humans appeared in the room. Small glimmers of psychic and conceptual power linked all of them. The hivemind's network grew until it was fully on display in the single room. Normally, the 15 or 16 billion humans wouldn't fit in a single room. But Space didn't care about those rules. Bodies crossed without intersection, and a pale apparition of the hivemind appeared over them.
Incredibly, Penny and several other humans were a level 'above' the rest, though Lecalicus recognized only Penny, Tsonga, and Nichole. They almost looked like nodes in the hivemind's network, really. Penny was still gently connected, though nothing of substance could be shared over such an extreme distance, especially within any reasonable time frame.
The hivemind's glowing colors brightened, and Space grew concerned. Lecalicus watched as her grip on the conceptual power weakened slightly. The hivemind's arm twitched. The 'nodes' began to vibrate as their expressions became ones of immense determination. Small pockets of effort bubbled up in a rippling wave across the hivemind, separating into distinct blocks.
Lecalicus noticed a block of humans that were smaller than normal. Tens of thousands of fetuses, with stronger genetics than usual. He smiled.
Cloning.
He'd keep that a secret. He couldn't afford an interference penalty, and Penny might really kill him if he leaked the existence of a human cloning project.
How odd, that I now fear her, he mused. It spoke both to how far he'd fallen, and how far she'd risen.
Each block began to coordinate, all without the humans inside them knowing. The nodes did, though, and kept fighting. Space shrugged and released the vision. The room returned to normal, and they shared a long, contemplative silence.
Lecalicus loved a good wait when it didn't leave him nothing to distract himself from the dull ache of his pain and the jolts of power Death sent into him to keep requiring Space's treatment. She sucked in a breath of the gas which filled the room, which had properties Lecalicus didn't understand. Calling it 'air' didn't really cut it.
"So that was enlightening. Humanity is more powerful than I hoped."
"The hivemind," Lecalicus said. "She is still connected to it, and thus every heap of power she gains attaches a scrap of the Liberator name to all of Humanity. Champion is weak as a title, but Liberator is strong. Too strong for her own good."
"What does that mean for her, and for us?"
"For us? It means we might be seeing some more freedom here soon. But for them? Fire, dust, and blood."
"Is that why?" Space asked.
"Why what?"
"Why Indrafabar is on the trial."
"It might be a reason. I don't know his exact motivations, and can only approximate. Part of his reason could be 'because I can' or to express his power as a Progenitor to force even Justicar to move on his own planet to make room for him in the highest profile trial he's had in thousands of years. Indrafabar's ego is not dormant, let's just say. But I would expect Penny's actions to come up in the trial.
Remember, all Yasihaut, the Challenger, has to prove to the court is that the Defendant, Penny, is a threat to the Sprilnav, and successfully lump the Alliance. If she manages to convict Penny alone, it would cause problems for her."
"How?"
"Because if Penny knew she was about to die, and was in the room with her most hated rival, do you really think conceptual armor would stop Penny from killing her this time? She already has a weapon capable of breaching that armor, and the strength to wield it. With two utterances, she could get it and then ensure it reaches Yasihaut."
"It would be a foolish decision."
"To kill a rival in one's final breath is the dream of many, alien or Sprilnav. But the court will not be partial toward the Alliance, that is for sure. Penny will have an uphill battle, and Phoebe is not allowed to represent her for this one either. As for the Judgment, it is a trial that will be harder to keep fact-based than the last one, which ended up in a massive battle and the crippling of me and Twilight, the abduction of Nilnacrawla, and even the extra pushes by the AIs of the Alliance along the Path. Speaking of which, there has been a development with Edu'frec."

I've always been bound to death.
On my eighth birthday, a shadow strode into my house and shot me and my family dead. I remember it vividly, every detail, every angle, etched and stained and carved into my memory.
I sat very still with my knees to my chest, my gaze glued to my siblings.
Lily and PJ looked like they were sleeping, and I could almost believe it.
I didn't look at the shadow.
From the comfort of my knees, I waited for my brother to lift his head.
But his body was so limp, so still, every part of him faltering. My sister’s head was nestled in his shoulder, thick beads of red running down her face.
They're just sleeping.
I could tell myself they were— as long as I didn't look at the splatter of scarlet staining the back of the couch and pooling at their feet.
BANG.
Mom’s body dropped onto the ground.
I lunged forwards, slamming my hands over my ears.
BANG.
PJ’s head slumped forwards, a teasing smile still frozen on his lips.
BANG.
Lily gently tipped into PJ, like she was going to sleep.
Before she closed her eyes, Mom told me to run.
I can't remember how long I stayed under the shattered remnants of Mom’s favorite table. The shadow was waiting for me to move, to make a noise.
I watched booted feet crunch through glass, getting closer and closer, and slowly, fight or flight began to take over.
Making it halfway across the living room, my palms slick with my mother’s blood, I thought I was going to live.
Cruel fingers wound their way through my hair and shoved me to my knees. I remember the phantom legs of a spider creeping down the back of my neck when the shadow with no face dragged the barrel of his gun down my spine.
“Turn around.”
The shadow had a voice.
When I didn't move, the protruding metal stabbed into my neck.
“Turn around, kid!”
I did, very slowly.
Behind him, my siblings still weren't moving.
They were asleep.
Lily was still smiling, strawberry blonde ringlets stained red.
I couldn't see PJ’S face anymore.
BANG.
I didn't feel the gunshot.
I didn't feel anything.
Looking down, I glimpsed slowly spreading red blossoming like a flower.
It felt like being cut from strings.
I hit the ground, just like my mother, my body felt heavy and wrong.
Paralysed.
I remember being unable to scream, unable to cry, the salty taste of metal filling my mouth. It was like being winded. Rolling onto my side, all I could see was flickering candlelight.
The air was thick, so hard to breathe.
I rolled onto my back trying to suck in air.
The shadow took a step back, opened the front door, and bled into the night.
I don't remember the pain, and I don't remember dying. I couldn't breathe, couldn't conjure words in my mouth.
I felt warm and sticky, lying in my own blood.
I think I tried to move.
But I was so tired.
I’m not sure what death feels like, because it's like going to sleep.
I remember my last shuddering breaths, a lulling darkness beginning to swallow me up. I don't know why I wasn't afraid.
Oblivion almost felt like I was sinking into lukewarm depths on a Summer’s day.
Oblivion wasn't pain, and there was a peaceful inevitability to it.
It was endless nothing, a nothing I found myself gravitating towards. But before I could envelope myself in that darkness, it was spitting me back out.
The next thing I knew, I was in a white room, a slow beeping sound tearing me from slumber. I had a vague memory of slow spreading roses blossoming across my shirt, like summer flowers blooming.
Everything was white.
The walls, the ceiling, and my clothes.
Sensation hit me in slow waves.
Exhaustion.
I felt it tightening its grip around my brain, dragging me back onto a mountain of pillows when I tried to jump up. My Aunt May was sitting next to me on a plastic chair, her warm fingers entangled in mine. Aunt May and Mom were practically twins, with the same thick red hair and pale skin.
Mom wore her hair in a casual ponytail, while May preferred a strict bun.
I had to bite back the urge to yank my hand away.
Aunt May was asleep, used tissues filling her lap.
There was a nurse pottering around, checking my vitals and prodding my arms. My eyes felt heavy. I had to blink several times to keep myself awake.
“Charlie?”
The nurse’s voice was like wind-chimes.
I pretended not to notice her forced lipstick smile, the way she stood with her arms folded, staring at me like I was one of my cousin’s experiments. “You were in an accident, sweetie,” the nurse spoke up. I could see her trembling hands. “Just, um, try and rest, okay?”
I wanted to ask where my family was, but I already knew the answer.
I think she knew that too.
“You died, Charlie.” The nurse’s voice was eerily cold. “You were dead for thirteen minutes.”
She took slow steps towards me, her eyes growing frenzied, like she couldn't understand me, like I was a puzzle she could not solve– and it was driving her crazy. I could see it in her twitching hands, her wobbling lips that were trying and failing to appear stoic.
“In fact, I just pulled you out of the morgue, honey. I opened up your body bag that I had just zipped up, and told your aunt that you were a miracle I just… can’t understand.” The nurse sounded like she was trying to choke down a laugh, or maybe a sob.
“Charlotte, you were pronounced dead at 3:02am from a gunshot wound to the chest.” Taking a slow, sobering breath, the nurse tried to smile. “The bullet went through the right ventricle of your heart and severely damaged your left lung, rendering you unable to breathe. Your heart stopped, and after four attempts to resuscitate, we called it.”
Something slimy wound its way up my throat when she began to pace the room. “I… did all the paperwork. It took me two minutes. Your death certificate was signed, and your body was taken to the morgue to be prepped for transportation. Then I had my lunch. Tuna salad with a protein milkshake. I’m not a fan of the chocolate flavor.”
She shook her head. “Anyway, when I came back to you, you were awake inside your body bag.” Her voice was starting to break. “You were…um, alive, and asked me for apple soda.”
The nurse moved closer, and yet kept her distance.
I could feel myself moving back, panic writhing through me.
“So.” The nurse spoke calmly. “How the fuck are you still alive, Charlie?”
I think I passed out after that.
When I woke up again, my head a lot less heavier, the nurse was gone.
Slowly, my foggy brain began to find itself and connect dots.
My mouth was dry, full of cotton.
There was a sudden tightness, a sharp and cruel sting in my wrists.
Something sharp was protruding into my flesh, and no matter how many times I violently wrenched my arm, it was stuck. It didn't feel right to be able to breathe so easily.
I knew the second I woke that my Mom was dead.
Lily and PJ were dead, and it was like losing them all over again.
As clarity came over me, I found my voice, a strangled cry escaping my lips.
“Get it out.” I whispered in a shrill cry.
Tugging at the IV in my wrist, I tried to yank the needle from my skin.
“Get it out!” I shrieked, my gaze glued to the tiny spots of blood staining the insertion point.
I could see it again.
So much blood.
Mom was curled up on the floor, lying in slow spreading red that wouldn't stop, seeping across her beaded rug.
She was all over me, slick on my skin and caked in my fingernails.
I couldn't wash her off of me.
“You're okay, Charlotte.”
Aunt May’s voice came from my right, stabling me to reality.
The world started to move again, started to make sense again, when she cupped my cheeks and told me to breathe. When I opened my mouth to ask where my family were, she lightly shook her head and I swallowed my words. Aunt May handed me a glass of water, and I drained it in one gulp.
She told me I was a miracle.
Aunt May didn't say much, and when she did, she broke into sobs.
Her eyes were raw from crying, clinging onto me, her shuddery voice reassuring me that I was going to be okay.
She told me I would be living with her from now on, before wrapping me into a hug and leaving to get coffee.
Once my aunt was gone, another nurse came to prod my IV.
I tried to sleep, but the uncomfortable tightness of the needle sticking into my skin and the sterile white lights in my eyes made it impossible. I waited for grief to catch up with me, drowning me in a hollow oblivion I wouldn't be able to claw myself out of. But I didn't feel sad. I didn't feel angry.
I wanted to know why my family were dead.
I wanted to know why I was breathing, and their skin was ice cold.
Rotting.
The sudden image of maggots crawling up my brother’s nose sent me lurching into a sitting position, my stomach heaving. Reaching for my glass of water, it was empty. The sensation of throwing up felt familiar, almost comforting.
Mom was always with me when I was sick, holding my hair back and lulling my hysteria with reassuring murmurs.
I was frowning at the trash can by the door, my cotton candy brain trying to figure out if I would be able to make it in time, when a small voice drifted from the doorway, startling me.
“I don't want you to come live with us.”
My cousin was peeking through the door, hiding behind a shock of dark brown curls. Jude was the only brunette in our family. The rest of us were redheads.
I wasn't sure why he was dressed up like a ghost, draped in a white cloak that was way too big for him. Jude was a weird kid. His mother, and my auntie, had inherited the family house, so in his mind, that made him superior.
Jude made it clear he didn't like his cousins, refusing to let us play with him and banning us from family gatherings.
When the adults were drinking cocktails and losing their awareness, Jude ordered us around. The times we did play with him, our cousin showed us his spider collection, or the raccoon brain he kept in a jar. PJ was convinced our younger cousin was a serial killer. Several months earlier, he'd happily showed us the roadkill he'd been growing bacteria on under his bed.
Jude’s ‘experiments’ were worrying.
He stuffed mushrooms down my brother’s ears while he was sleeping, to, and I quote, “Recreate The Last Of Us.”
When Lily had a nosebleed during Thanksgiving dinner, Jude collected all her bloody tissues and refused to tell us where he'd put them, and what he had done with them. Fast-forward two months, and I found them under a nest of spiders. Jude was trying to adapt the spiders to be able to feed on human blood. I was surprised my cousin hadn't immediately demanded to see my siblings’ dead bodies for autopsy.
Jude stepped into the room, shuffling his feet.
“I'm sorry about Lily, PJ, and Aunt Ivy.” He mumbled, glaring at the floor tiles.
My cousin made no move to offer real sympathy, instead speaking to the floor.
“But I don't want you to come live with us.” Jude lifted his head, looking me dead in the eye. “I don't like you, Charlie. I want you to stay away.”
Before I could reply, he stepped back like I was diseased.
“You should be dead.” Jude grumbled.
He scowled at me, getting my age purposely wrong as usual before running off.
“Happy 68th birthday.”
I was six months older than him.
In Jude’s eyes, I was ready for retirement.
Still, though, my cousin was right.
I was stone cold dead, and then I was somehow alive.
Which was wrong.
Growing up, I realized Death was not so subtly attempting to fix his mistake.
It started small. I'd choke on things I wasn't supposed to choke on.
Chips.
Candy.
Ice cream.
Aunt May had to perform the heimlich manoeuvre when I choked on a piece of chicken. I thought I was just really unlucky, but then I locked myself in a freezer that didn't have a lock, and almost drowned in the local swimming pool, catching my foot in stray netting.
At the summer fair, Jude convinced me to try apple bobbing, only for my head to conveniently get stuck underwater.
It started to make sense.
I was supposed to die with my family that night, and death was out to get me.
Death started to get clever, changing his tactic. Instead of using everyday things to try to kill me, he sent reinforcements.
I turned twelve years old, and my aunt threw me a huge party, inviting all my classmates. Aunt May was rich, rich.
Mom never explained it, but our grandparents left everything to May.
The house was like a palace, a labyrinth of floors I was yet to explore, and two swimming pools.
I was in the kitchen cutting myself a slice of cake, when, out of nowhere, a dead boy came rushing at me with one of my aunt’s favorite kitchen knives.
A dead boy who I immediately recognised.
Wren Oliver.
Several years prior, he'd gone missing from his parents' yard. The town launched a full investigation, only to find his body in a ditch a week later.
So, Death had sent a footsoldier.
Hiding under a hooded sweatshirt, Wren appeared older, like he had grown up with me. But there was a startling vacancy in his expression that drew the breath from my lungs, freezing me in place. Wren’s death was announced as an accident, though his wounds suggested the opposite, dried blood smearing his right temple and a cavernous hole in his chest, his clothes painted, stained, in bright red, glued in sticky mounds clinging to him.
The boy’s eyes were wild, feral, like an animal.
His hair was longer, a mess of reddish curls matted to his forehead.
Lip split into a demented giggle.
I remember taking a slow step back, my gaze glued to the knife.
Wren’s fingers were wrapped around the handle like he knew exactly how to use it, how to plunge it into my heart and kill me for good. He moved like a predator, zero self awareness or recognition, only driven to kill me.
The dead boy prided himself in slow, intimidating steps, shoving me against the wall and dragging the blade of the knife down the curve of my throat.
His eyes confused me, writhing with hatred that was artificial, programmed into him as Death’s official soldier.
He didn't speak, only smiled, revelling in my fear. I could tell it thrilled him, my trembling hands, my sharp, heavy breaths I couldn't control. Squeezing my eyes shut, I waited to finally die.
I waited for the pain, and to lose my breath once again.
But death was playing with me.
When I opened my eyes, the dead boy was gone, and I was on my knees, screaming.
“Wren Oliver is trying to kill me!" I managed to hiss.
My aunt knelt in front of me, her expression crumpling.
*Sweetie,” She spoke softly, squeezing my hands. Aunt May was trying to appear calm for my sake, but I could tell she was scared, her frantic eyes searching mine. “Wren Oliver is dead.”
The kids surrounding me started to giggle, whispering among themselves.
In the corner of my eye, my cousin was leaning against the door, mid eye roll.
When my aunt was ushering kids back to the pool, Jude came to crouch in front of me. Ever since I started living with him, he'd made sure to keep his distance.
This time, though, Jude leaned uncomfortably close, a sparkle in his eyes I had never seen before. Inclining his head, he rocked back and forth on his heels, prodding me in the forehead.
“If you see the dead boy again, can you tell me?” His lips curved into a smile.
“I did see him.” I gritted out. “I’m not lying.”
Jude shrugged. “I never said you didn't,” he lowered his voice into a whisper, “I wanna know when you see him again.”
“Why?”
His lips curved into a smirk.
“So, I can catch him.”
My cousin got closer, his breath tickling my cheek.
“I seeeeeeee dead people.”
After that incident, death left me alone for a while.
I was fifteen, walking through the forest with a friend, catching fireflies in bell jars. Aunt May was lucky to live so close to the forest, the entrance just outside her back door. When we were littles, PJ would drag Lily and I down the trail to escape Jude’s weird experiments.
I decided to invite Jem Littlewood on a summer walk.
Jem was cute, but in a dorky way. He was chronically clumsy, and dressed like he'd been spat out of a John Hughes movie. We hiked all the way to the end of the river and had a picnic, watching the sun set over the horizon. I was having conflicting feelings for this guy.
Jem was obsessed with fireflies.
Though he seemed more interested in photographing them than me.
The guy couldn't seem to sit still, jumping to his feet to marvel at tiny specks of light dancing in the air.
“I'm just going to take photos!” Jem beamed, holding up his camera.
I had to bite back the urge to say, “Don't you have enough photos?”
I nodded, and he turned and sprinted back down the trail.
Before his footsteps ground to a sudden halt.
At first, I thought he was snapping polaroids.
When I got closer, though, blinking in the eerie dark, I caught something.
Bending down, I picked up a bell jar still spilling fireflies.
Further down the trail, Jem was lying crumpled in the dirt, his camera smashed to pieces next to him, blood running in thick rivulets down his temple. There he was. Leaning against a tree, his arms folded, was the ghost boy. Wren Oliver was growing up with me. Now, a teenager, and yet his face was carved into something else entirely, more of a monster, slight points to his ears and too-sharp teeth, eyes ignited.
Wren didn't look like a ghost boy anymore.
Death had dressed him in shackles of ivy, a crown of glass and bone forced onto his head, entangled in his curls. Death was torturing him.
Wren’s body was its canvas, and every time I got away, he was punished, painting his failures across scarred skin.
I should have been running for my life, but I was mesmerised by each symbol cruelly carved into his neck.
The boy did a slow head incline, like he couldn't believe I was standing in front of him.
His slow spreading smile caught me off guard.
I remembered how to run, stumbling over my feet.
But I couldn't move.
The burning hatred that death had filled him with, was stronger, hollowing him out completely. I managed two shaky steps, before I felt him, an unearthly force winding its way around my spine. This time, he didn't hesitate.
I watched his mouth move, a single curve of his upper lip that wrenched my body from my control, slamming me against a tree. There was something around my throat, choking the breath from my lungs, a thick fog spreading over my eyes.
Following his mouth curving into silent letters, I could feel my feet slowly leaving the ground, my legs dangling.
I was floating.
Hovering off of the ground, suspended by his words.
Through half lidded eyes, I caught the glint of a blade between his fist, but I couldn't move, couldn't scream.
He was drowning me, bleeding into my blood, spider webbing and expanding in my brain without moving a muscle.
Instead, the ghost boy stood silently, running his thumb down the teeth of his knife while he ripped my lungs apart.
It was like suffocating, sinking into that peaceful oblivion I met at eight years old.
This time, though, the darkness was starving.
“Charlie?”
My eyes found daylight, a scream clawing out of my mouth.
“Charlie, it's past curfew!”
Wren flinched, his stoic expression crumpling.
The dead boy’s lips moved again, this time in a curse.
Fuck.
“Charlotte!”
Staggering back, Wren’s eyes widened and the suffocating hold on me severed.
His head snapped in the direction my aunt was coming from.
“Charlie, answer me right now.”
He hesitated, his bare feet pivoting in the dirt, like he was considering finishing me off. Wren studied me with lazy eyes, sucking on his bottom lip. When my aunt's footsteps got louder, branches snapping under her shoes, something contorted in the boy’s face.
Fear.
I guessed the boy wasn't expecting other humans to intrude.
Wren fell over himself, shuffling on his hands and knees, before diving to his feet. When he turned and ran, I was released, slipping to the ground, trying and failing to draw in breath. I barely felt the impact, only a dull thudding pain. I could hear the ghost boy’s footsteps, his uneven, shuddery breaths as he catapulted into a run.
Under a late setting sun, I watched his dancing shadow disappear into the trees.
Mission unsuccessful, I guessed.
When I was fully conscious, Aunt May was checking over Jem, helping him sit up.
“Where did he go?” I managed to get out, scanning the darkness for Wren.
“He's okay, just concussed.” May whispered, dialling 911.
My aunt applied a dressing to Jem’s wound, ignoring the boy’s hisses.
“Keep still.” she murmured, smoothing his bandaid. “What happened, Charlotte?”
“She pushed me over.” Jem groaned, shuffling away from me. When my aunt told him to stay calm, he straightened up, leaning against the tree. “The psycho bitch tried to fucking kill me!”
When my aunt's gaze flicked to me, I shook my head.
“It was Wren Oliver.” I gritted, teetering on hysteria. I could tell she didn't believe me, but I couldn't stop myself.
I prodded at my throat, clawing for the indentations where his phantom fingers snaked around my neck, squeezing the breath from my lungs.
But there was nothing.
I could feel my mind starting to unravel. I nodded to my disgruntled classmate trying to dodge my aunt’s prodding.
“Ow, ow, ow! That stings!
“He knocked Jem out.” I managed. “Then he tried to kill me.”
Jem surprised me with a scoff. “You're seriously blaming your psychotic break on a dead kid?”
Aunt May pursed her lips, motioning for Jem to be quiet. Judging from her face, however, she agreed with the boy.
May forced a smile, though it didn't quite reach her eyes. “Okay. Can you, uh, describe the boy to me, Charlotte?”
“He was wearing a crown,” I said, “And he looked my age.”
Aunt May cocked her head, and I saw real worry, like she was trying not to freak out. Jem made a snorting noise.
“I'm sorry, he was wearing a crown?”
“Yes!” I insisted, getting progressively more frustrated.
I tried to jump up, only for my aunt to gently lower me back down. “I know it sounds crazy, but death has sent Wren Oliver to kill me, just like my family. He tried to kill me when I was twelve, too!”
Jem let out a bitter laugh. “Your niece is a fucking wackadoodle.”
Aunt May’s eyes darkened. She grabbed my shoulders, her nails stabbing into my skin. “Charlie, I want you to listen to me, okay?” When my eyes found the rapidly darkening sky, my aunt forced me to look at her.
“Charlotte!”
She was as scared as me, her voice shuddering.
“Wren Oliver is dead.” My aunt said firmly, shaking me. Even then, though, I wasn't even looking at her. I was trying to find his ignited eyes lighting up the dark. “Wren died at eight years old in a terrible accident, and you can't keep using him as an excuse for your mental trauma.” There was something twitching in her expression I was trying to make sense of. When I risked a look at Jem, the boy was staring at me dazedly– like I really was crazy.
Aunt May pressed her face into my shoulder, and I could feel her tears soaking into my shirt. She was trying to hold it together, trying to understand.
“Charlie, I know you lost your family,” she whispered. “But you and Wren Oliver are not the same. You survived, and he didn't.” Her voice splintered.
“You need to come to terms with that, okay?”
When I didn't respond, she pinched my chin, forcing me to look at her.
“Charlotte.”
Aunt May’s voice turned cold. “I ignored this when you were a kid, but if you continue to use this poor boy as a coping mechanism, I will have no choice but to send you to a specialist.”
When Jem was taken away by paramedics, Aunt May held my hand, squeezing my fingers for dear life.
I caught her gaze scanning the tree's around us, delving into twisting oblivion. Every little noise sent her twisting around. She was looking for something.
“I'm going to get you help.” Aunt May said in a low murmur when we were back at the house. Jude was sitting on the kitchen counter, legs swinging. I could feel his penetrating gaze burning into the back of my head.
Aunt May set a cup of cocoa on the table.
“No more fairytales.”
By the time I was eighteen, I had bitten three therapists.
They refused to believe that death was coming to reclaim my soul, and was using a dead boy to do his dirty work.
For my 16th birthday, I braced myself to come face to face with Wren Oliver’s ghost.
I wasn't even in town, staying at a friend's house.
But dead boys, and especially dead boys moulded into Death’s personal soldiers, could materialise anywhere.
I locked every door in the house, and taped up my friend’s window.
Nothing happened.
On my seventeenth birthday, I was sick in bed with gastritis.
Still no ghost boy.
Death seemed to have finally left me alone.
On my eighteenth birthday, I was stuffing books in my locker when my cousin popped up out of nowhere, scowling as usual. After an unexpected growth spurt and losing a tonne of baby fat, my cousin had scaled the high school hierarchy, swapping his weird experiments for a varsity jacket and experimenting with his sexuality.
The two of us had come to an unspoken truce.
I kept quiet about his spider collection to his popular friends, and he tolerated my existence until I left for college.
“Your surprise party is cancelled.”
Jude leaned against my locker, running a hand through thick dark hair tucked under a baseball cap. Jude never admitted it, but he was definitely embarrassed of being the odd one out.
My siblings may be dead, but they were still redheads.
I pulled off his cap with a smile, throwing it in his face. “Sure it is.”
My cousin’s eyes widened. He lost his slick bravado, grabbing for his cap.
“Hey!”
According to my cousin, my party was unexpectedly cancelled every year.
I wasn't sure if it was his weird superiority complex, or just plain jealousy, but it was getting exhausting.
Jude followed me down the hallway, matching my stride.
“Can you just not come home tonight?”
I quickened my pace. “It's only a party. I'm having some friends over, and no, we won't go anywhere near your room.”
“No, I mean.” Jude stepped in front of me, and for the first time in a while, he wasn't trying to hide disdain for me.
His dark eyes pinned me in place for a moment, the world around us coming to a halt. Sound bled away, and all I heard were his slow breaths. There was something there, an unexplainable twitch in his eyes and lips, that twisted my gut.
Jude stepped closer, his lip curling. He shoved me back, losing his facade.
“Stay the fuck away from the house tonight.” He said, and his voice, his tone, was enough to send shivers creeping down my spine. Jude had always hid behind a ten foot wall in his mind. It was jarring to see something in him finally start to splinter. Fuck. I thought.
This kid had serious Mommy issues.
I blinked, and the world resumed, kids pushing past us.
Jude seemed to catch himself, slipping back under his mask.
“I'm having friends over,” he rolled his eyes, “Your presence will ruin the vibe.”
“It's my birthday?”
He groaned, tipping his head back. “Yes, I know. But–”
“I think you can deal with the attention off of you for one night, Jude.”
“Will Wren Oliver be there too?” Jem Littlewood hollered.
Jude didn't respond for a moment, his lip curling.
“Shut the fuck up.” He spat at Jem, who immediately backed down. With an audience this time, Jude forced an award winning smile. “Fine.” His lips split into a grin I knew he hated. My cousin clamped his hand on my shoulder, hard enough to hurt. I could feel his fingers pinching the material of my jacket. “Have it your way, dude.”
Jude backed away with a two fingered salute.
“Happy 78th birthday!”
In a sense, I wish I listened to my cousin.
My party was a success, sort of.
Four of us, a crate of beers, and no sign of my cousin.
I was mildly tipsy, sitting on the edge of the pool, dangling my legs in the water when my friend demanded more beers.
I was also hungry for cake, so I stumbled inside in search of the goods.
The house was dark, lit up in dazzling blue from the pool's lights reflecting through the windows. Aunt May was in her office on the ground floor, and Jude was getting high in his room. In my drunken state, I found myself marvelling my aunt's house, and how much of it was left unexplored.
For example, in the foyer, past the spiral staircase she’d had custom made, was an elevator I had never questioned.
There was a girl my age standing on the staircase.
She was frozen, mid run, dressed in ragged jeans and t-shirt.
Everything about her stuck out to me, bringing me to a sobering halt.
The girl reminded me of my sister– or at least, if my sister had ever grown up.
I wasn't sure if I was drunk or hallucinating.
Her flower crown was pretty…
Lily had grown wings.
I was slowly moving towards her, a sudden bang sounding from the kitchen.
The bang of something shattering on the floor.
Twisting around, I found myself gravitating towards warm golden light.
The first thing I saw was the refrigerator door hanging open, and someone, no, something, rooting around inside it.
Glued to the spot, I dazedly watched them grab milk, guzzling it down, and then soda, cracking open each can and sucking them dry, before carving their fingers into my birthday cake.
But I wasn't looking at the spillage of food seeping across the floor. Instead, my gaze found a crown of antlers, both human and animal bone entangled with dead flowers and human remains glued to a head of familiar matted brown curls. There was something sticking from battered and bruised flesh, twin gaping slits sliced through a torn shirt resembling glass wings that were not yet formed, reminding me of a butterfly.
Wings.
But not the wings I dreamed of as a kid. These things were unnatural mounds that both did and didn't make sense on a human boy. I could see the trauma of them slicing through his flesh, monstrous, looming things protruding from what was left of a human spine.
Human, and yet I couldn't call his beautifully grotesque face human.
Wren Oliver had grown up with me, now an adult.
Eighteen years old.
His clothes confused me, a single white shirt and shorts.
Wren’s feet were bare, battered and bruised, blood smearing my aunt's tiles.
Angel.
Death had turned his footsoldier, and my future killer, into an angel.
But there was nothing angelic about the dead boy, his body and mind sculpted and moulded into Death’s own.
The boy no longer resembled a human, feral eyes and a manic smile, choking down pieces of cake. His face had been contorted into a monster, gnashing teeth and sharp points in his ears, a sickly tinge to malnourished skin.
And that's when it hit me, watching him stuff himself with food.
Something slimy inched its way up my throat.
The boy didn't move. I don't even think he'd noticed me, gorging himself on anything he could get his hands on.
Chicken, raw bacon, leftover salad.
When he moved onto cupcakes, licking frosting from his fingers, I glimpsed markings on his arms, a language I didn't understand, carved into him.
His wrists were shackled, bound, in entangled iron and vine, iron that was ingrained into his skin, vines and flowers and ivy entangling his bones, that were part of him, polluting his blood. Slowly, my eyes found stab wounds splitting open his torso.
Raw flesh, where his skin had been torched, melting, and then merging, ripped apart and put back together over and over again.
I found his heart, the gaping cavern in his chest where it should be.
And it was.
Marked, carved, and branded with a symbol resembling an X.
Wren Oliver was not dead.
But, just like me, he should have been.
I remember saying his name, my voice slurred slightly.
I didn't drink that much, but I could barely coerce words, my head spinning.
Wren’s neck snapped towards me, his eyes narrowing with resentment I couldn't understand, hatred that seemed to puppeteer him. Slowly tilting his head, the boy’s lips split into a grin, eyes filled, polluted, with mania.
I could see where his lips had been stitched shut, and then ripped open.
“Hi.”
He held up his hand in an awkward wave.
When one of my friends stumbled into the kitchen, Wren reacted on impulse.
He picked up a knife from the counter, throwing it like a dart, straight through the guy’s throat.
Something shattered inside my mind.
Ignoring my friend bleeding out, Wren stumbled over himself, abandoning his feast. He took a single step towards me, backing me against the wall, coming so close, close enough for me to feel his very real breath grazing my cheeks. Just like when he was a kid, he traced the teeth of his blade down my throat. I wasn't expecting him to burst out laughing, trembling with hysteria.
His eyes were wild, feral and wrong, almost euphoric.
With what all I could only recognise as relief.
BANG.
I was barely aware of the gunshot.
The bullet went straight through his head, the winged boy hitting the ground.
Dead.
I saw the blood stemming around him in a halo before the bleeding pool faltered, seeping back inside his head.
Like rewinding a VCR.
Wren was dead, and then he was alive.
Wren’s body contorted, his chest inflating.
His gasp for air was painful, strangled, eyes opening wide.
Terrified.
“You fucking idiot.”
Jude’s voice sent me twisting around.
My cousin stood in the exact same robes he wore as a child.
The world tipped off kilter, and I was on my knees, then my stomach.
I sunk to the floor, my thoughts swimming.
Jude’s murmur followed me, creeping into the dark.
“I told you not to come home.”
I can't remember how long I was unconscious for.
When I woke, I was dressed in an evening gown, a dress that used to be my mother’s.
My vision cleared, and I found myself sitting in an unfamiliar room resembling an abandoned swimming hall.
The pool itself was empty, the bottom stained revealing scarlet.
There were symbols carved into each tile.
Like a game.
“Sit up straight, Charlotte.”
I was sitting at a banquet.
Jude was in front of me, sipping on wine.
He caught my eye for half a second before averting his gaze.
At the far end of the table sat my aunt May.
Kissing the rim of her glass, her smile was twisted.
“I've been waiting so long to give you your birthday presents, Charlotte. Your memories should be returning soon.”
“Mom.” Jude muttered, hiding behind his glass. “Calm down. You're embarrassing yourself.”
Ignoring my cousin, May tapped her glass with a fork, and in walked my birthday presents.
No, dragged.
By their hair.
Wren Oliver, the dead boy, was in fact my aunt's prisoner.
Behind him, was the girl who looked so much like Lily.
I think that's why my aunt chose her.
Aunt May cleared her throat.
“For a long time, our family has lived among creatures who live in the forest you played inside. In exchange for keeping this town safe, they only ask for small favors. Wayward children who disappear into the woods are good enough payment. Charlie, you and your siblings do not share our inheritance. Your mother never wanted fae children. She wanted you to be human.”
Aunt May’s smile faded.
“After losing my sister, and my niece and nephew, I made a deal to give my last surviving niece 100 years of life.”
Her words were white noise, my gaze glued to my birthday presents. I couldn't call them human anymore.
I couldn't call Wren human, when his face was so beautifully grotesque, painfully hypnotising.
The monstrous things sticking from twin slits in his back were supposed to be wings, except they looked wrong, cruelly protruding from his exposed spine. Under the influence of alcohol earlier, the girl made me smile.
Her wings, to me, looked like one of a real fairy.
In reality, they were torn and shredded apart, bigger than the girl herself.
When she dropped onto her stomach, she was dragged back to her feet, her knees buckling under the weight. Her tiara of flowers and bone looked pretty to me when I saw her on the stairs.
Now, though, I could see the pearly white of a human child's skull forced onto her head, dead flowers threaded through cavernous, gaping eye sockets.
The two of them were violently shoved into the empty pool.
“Jude. Please demonstrate, sweetheart.”
Jude stood, pulling out a gun, and aiming it at the winged girl.
BANG.
The girl’s body hit the tiles, her blood seeping across stained white.
“Now, of course, our king did not give you life for free.” May continued.
“The King demanded a debt, as well as two heirs to join him in his court once your hundred years were complete.”
Her lips quirked into a smile.
“The king is smart. If a child cannot be stolen from the human world, they can, however, be made, moulded and shaped from their human forms, skinned of their humanity through their suffering, leaving a hollowed out shell in the child's place.” She was speaking so casually, ignoring Wren’s whimpers.
“The conversion takes a while. 100 years to birth a fully blooded fae heir, who will lose their human memories, in preparation to join their new family.”
Jude shot Wren in the chest, his eyes empty.
This time, he dropped his weapon, using finger-guns instead.
“Bang.” He deadpanned.
Then the neck.
I watched Wren come back to life, and then die.
Over and over again.
I think at one point, he screamed and cried.
But not now.
He was their puppet on display, dancing for their entertainment.
Half lidded eyes drowned in oblivion found mine, and I understood his hatred.
Before he was shot again.
Stabbed.
Branded and burned, and ripped apart.
At some point, I screamed at them to stop. I couldn't breathe, slamming my hands over my ears and begging them.
Aunt May didn't listen, ordering for my hands to be tied down.
“The King required two human sacrifices to suffer in your place.” She concluded. “For one hundred years.”
Aunt May’s smile was suddenly sad, and she lifted her glass in a toast.
I was watching their blood trickle down each tile in the pool, like every death, every time they suffered, my body became progressively less human.
I felt disgusting. I wasn't supposed to be alive. Every single year of my life, every breath I had taken, was stolen.
Aunt May nodded at me, her lips forming a proud smile. She stood up, and was handed a sacrificial knife.
Climbing into the swimming pool herself, she strode over to Wren.
The boy slumped to the floor, trembling, his knees against his chest.
Aunt May grabbed him by the hair, forcing his head up, and sliced the blade across his throat.
His eyes flicked to me, and I swore he smiled.
Spots of red dotted yellowing tiles, a river trickling under my aunt's heels.
“Happy 78th birthday, Charlotte.”
Last night ended with me being locked in my room.
It's been almost 15 hours, and the door is still locked. Please help me. I'm fucking terrified of what my aunt is planning.
I can't stop shgajing. FycjbfucibFUCK
If she is telling the truth, I shouldn't be here, right??
And I can't stop thinking.
Is Wren Oliver trying to kill me, or himself?

I have Asperger, didn't got diagnosed until I was 18 and got pretty noticiable when I hitted "ESO" (which is High School in Spain) and it came along with attention déficit.
Since I was a kid, I clearly had a struggle on paying attention to things: I would often black out into my own mind and stay totally still until I snapped back a couple of minutes ago. I also had weird "games" like playing my own imaginary game with my legs (making invisible drawings with them.) or start counting my fingers but being the first one a random one... Etc.
It wasn't until I hitted highschool that everyone started to notice even more that something was off with me, I barely could pay atenttion and was way more childish (didn't play with toys but my conversations and humor make notice) and weird. With weird I mean I would get in my world and start smilling or laughing a lot for the things that were happening in there.
Finally, when I made 13, my parents broke up and had to move to a new town, and means new Highschool. After finishing 2 ESO (with 14, because I failed the first curse) I didn't managged to make any friends and ended up as the weirdo who was always in the librabry, and the difference from the first HS: I was COMPLETELY alone. The same summer after that whole year was when I snapped: I would turn into a heavy maladaptive daydreamer to the point of starting walking all over the house with my headphones letting the music or videos take over my fantasies, and kept like that until now. (19 years old, making 20 on June.)
I can barely eat now, being almost 42 kilograms with 1.60 cm in height, and is getting worse. I tried medication and go to multiple psychologist but it didn't help because I couldn't tell them all the truth and honestly: I would never fully recover from this, since I lost all my teenager years in a constant torture leaving and returning from reality. My future is all black, I just can't see a light on it...
I WON'T kill myself, I LOVE life and feeling things, just needed to spit it all out and make clear I won't be as sane as now in a few months 👍🏻.