Sample of a eulogy for an uncle

Identify This Font

2011.06.25 10:52 Identify This Font

A Subreddit for Identifying Fonts: show us a sample and we'll try to find the font.
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2017.05.29 11:18 _loke A subreddit for Filipino movie buffs!

A community for Filipino filmmakers and film lovers!
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2009.08.05 23:30 lencioni Microscopy

In science class, you always wished you could play with the microscope a little bit longer. Now that you are an adult, you actually can. Cooler and with more bang for your buck than telescopes, microscopy lets you do real science!
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2024.05.13 18:55 AdministrativeView18 Adding a feature to every vultures 1 song

Stars- J Cole- I could see him trading bars with Ye at the beginning of the song. Or just use the same flow as ye.
Keys to My life- Sza- Get a real singer on the outro not India love. Don Toliver would be my first male choice also to sing the outro. Or have baby Keem or young thug sing the outro. weird I know i but I think it might work.
Paid- The Weeknd- while listening to some of the shit on we still don’t trust you the other day it hit me he would be perfect for paid. Him and Ty trading lines during Ty’s verse
Talking- Travis Scott- get him singing on the second half on some drugs you should try it sounding type shit. Plus I think it’d be very personal for him since he’s basically north’s uncle and he’s got kids of his own.
Back to me- Pusha T- imagine him trading bars with Ye during Ye’s first verse then him trading bars with Freddie. Shit would be the greatest Cokerap verse in history
Hoodrat- Future- I was thinking on the same vibe as maintenance. He’d have to do punch ins when Ye and Ty are trading bars.
Do It- Kendrick- Imagine him after YG on the back that azz up sample using the Not like Us flow.
Paperwork- Offset- I think Quavo flows pretty good on this track so why not another Migo on here.
Burn- Common- this is a classic sounding ye song. Think of common on get ‘em high. I think he’d flow perfect
Fuk Sumn- Gunna- I’d like to think he’d use a similar flow to what Quavo sounded like.
Vultures- king Von- I really like Durk on this song and he has a very similar flow to what king von used when they made music together. And they made heat together. Replace bump J with him
Carnival- youngboy- I think he could be great if he had a similar flow to rich on here Baby Keem- I think he could probably do exactly what carti did only in a higher pitch so have him do something similar
Beg forgiveness- The Weeknd- have him On a bridge putting a lot of emotion into it similar to how ty was on the song Young thug also singing a bridge with a lot of emotion in it I think could be cool.
Good (don’t die)- Kid Cudi- come on does this one even need an explanation. It’s a straight 808s type beat. Cudi could float on this shit
Problematic- Lil Uzi Vert- think of a verse similar to the way life goes. It might be hard to imagine but I think he would sound good. Baby Keem also- think of him at the start of we did it kid.
King- Travis Scott- I think he could easily flow well on this beat. I was thinking something like Pray 4 love.
Lmk what you guys think and if you guys have any feature you think could work on the album.
This was hard asf to come up with cause I feel like a lot of the songs are great without features. I know most won’t agree probably. I just had to make something that I felt could possibly work on some of the songs. Like I don’t think problematic needs a feature and I thought hard to figure it out
submitted by AdministrativeView18 to GoodAssSub [link] [comments]

2024.05.13 16:14 Leather_Focus_6535 The currently 124 offenders executed by the state of Oklahoma since the 1970s (warning, graphic content, please read at your own risk) [part 2, cases 63-124]

This is the second half of my list for Oklahoma's execution roster. As mentioned in the first part, I broke it in half to comply with reddit's character limitations. For the link to part 1, please click here.
The currently executed 124 offenders, cases 63-124:
63. Robert Knighton (~1960s-2003, lethal injection): In 1973, after being released from a 1968 armed robbery conviction, Knighton went on his first major crime spree. He stabbed and strangled several men and women during many robberies and home invasions. The only victim that was killed, 32 year old Coffier Day, was shot dead while Knighton was arguing with him in his home. Coffier's father, 53 year old Claude, was also injured in the shooting. Knighton's first crime spree ended when he kidnapped a married couple and their 6 year old daughter. They escaped when the wife and mother of the family attacked Knighton with a knife to protect her husband and daughter. The family then notified the police of their abduction. Knighton managed to secure a 30 year manslaughter conviction and a 10 year armed robbery conviction with a plea deal, and was released to a halfway house in 1989. There, he began dating a female addict and befriended a teenage boy. The trio embarked on a nationwide robbery spree together. In Missouri, they shot and killed 59 year old Frank Merrifield and his 40 year old stepson Roy Donahue while robbing their home, and stole guns and money from them. In Oklahoma, the trio fatally shot a couple, 64 year old Virginia and 62 year old Richard Denney, while carjacking them. Their rampage ended when a woman in Texas grow suspicious of them circling a neighborhood. Knighton had a long history of theft convictions dating back to his childhood, and joined the Aryan Brotherhood in prison. Behind bars, he frequently attacked black and Native American inmates out of racial hatred for them.
64. Kenneth Charm (1993-2003, lethal injection): Charm and his teenage cousin lured a family friend, 14 year old Brandy Hill, into their car. They raped Hill and tried strangling her with a towel. When that failed, the cousins bludgeoned her to death with a sledgehammer.
65. Lewis Gilbert II (1994-2003, lethal injection): Gilbert and his teenage accomplice committed at least 4 robbery murders in Missouri, Ohio, and Oklahoma, but he was executed for the killing of 37 year old Roxanne Ruddell. They ambushed and kidnapped Ruddell while she was fishing alone. She was robbed of $3 and her truck, tied to a tree, and shot to death. The pair also fatally shot Ruth Loader, a 79 year old Ohioan woman, while abducting her from her residence, and gunned down a Missouri couple, 86 year old William and 76 year old Flossie Brewer, in their home. Gilbert was also sentenced to death for the Brewer murders by the state of Missouri, but was incarcerated in Oklahoma State Penitentiary’s death row.
66. Robert Duckett (~1980s-2003, lethal injection): After breaking out of prison, Duckett was picked up hitchhiking by John Howard, a 53 year old store owner. Howard agreed to let Duckett stay with him until he could find a job. The pair soon had a failing out, and Duckett was evicted by his host. He retaliated by tying Howard up with wire and then beating him to death with a fireplace poker. Duckett made off with his car after he switched the license plates, and took several bank bags from his store. He had a long violent criminal history, which included several incidents of assault and robbery. One of the incidents involved the beating of an 83 year old man. Allegedly, Duckett was previously gang-raped by other inmates, and suffered from PTSD from the incident. His attorneys claimed that Howard’s sexual advances trigged those memories, and he was killed as a result of Duckett lashing out at them. However, the prosecution shot the argument down, citing that the murder happened after Duckett was evicted from the apartment.
67. Bryan Toles (1993-2003, lethal injection): Toles and his two accomplices forced themselves into the home of the Franceschi family, and shot and killed the family patriarch, 39 year old Juan, in a struggle. Juan's son, 15 year old Lonnie, was also murdered "execution style" out of fear that he could identify Toles and his accomplices. The only survivor of the attack was Norma, Juan's wife and Lonnie's mother, who escaped by hiding in her older daughter's bedroom.
68. Jackie Willingham (1994-2003, lethal injection): Willingham was a door to door salesman selling perfume in an office building. One women, 62 year old Jayne Van Wey, he tried to solicit rejected him despite his repeated offers. Angered by her "rude behavior", Willingham attacked Van Wey when they had a chance encounter near the building's restroom. He dragged Van Wey out of a stall after following her inside, slammed her head against the bathroom wall several times, and kicked her head. Reportedly, Van Wey choked to death on her own blood.
69. Harold McElmurry III (1999-2003, lethal injection): While under the influence of meth, McElmurry and his wife Vicki broke into a home that a WW2 veteran, 80 year old Robert Pendley, shared with his wife, 75 year old Rosa. Robert and Rosa were both quickly subdued and physically restrained by the couple. McElmurry clubbed Robert to death with a pipe in front of Rosa, who was forced to watch by Vicki. Vicki then held Rosa down as McElmurry stabbed her several times with scissors. After killing the Pendleys, the McElmurrys fled with $70 in cash, a pair of guns, and the victims' car. A few days after the murders, they were captured by border agents while trying to cross into Mexico.
70. Tyrone Darks (~1990s-2004, lethal injection): Darks rammed his ex wife, 26 year old Sherry Goodlow, off the road as she was driving with their 2 year old son. After Goodlow crashed, Darks pulled their son out of the wreckage, shot her to death, and then drove away with him. Just before she succumbed to her injuries, Goodlow managed to call and notify the police about her son’s abduction. The police confronted and arrested Darks at his home, and they found the boy unharmed in their search. Darks and Goodlow’s former marriage was marred with violence, and he was arrested on numerous occasions for assaulting her. On death row, Darks was involved in a scheme to defraud a foundation for 9/11 survivors.
71. Norman Cleary (~1980s-2004, lethal injection): While burglarizing an upper class home with an accomplice, Cleary shot and killed a housekeeper, 44 year old Wanda Neafus, and took her purse and a cane that her employers purchased from the Smithsonian Institution. Cleary had a long criminal history and was previously convicted of beating an 87 year old woman in her home.
72. David Brown (~1983-2004, lethal injection): For several years, Brown violently harassed his ex wife and her family. In one incident, Brown abducted his ex wife and 11 of her customers from a beauty saloon she owned, and held them hostage until he surrendered to police. He was able to leave custody on bond and went into hiding. A few years after the hostage crisis incident, Brown broke into his ex wife's family home and gunned down her father, 47 year old Eldon McGuire.
73. Hung Thanh Le (1992-2004, lethal injection): Le crept into the apartment of another Vietnamese refugee, 34 year old Hai Nguyen, and found him watching TV on the couch. He struck Nguyen from behind with a weightlifting bar, and continued stabbing him with a meat cleaver when he screamed his wife for help. Nguyen's wife phoned the police, and Le fled with the couple's safety deposit box that contained $36,000 and their wedding ring.
74. Robert Bryan (1993-2004, lethal injection): Bryan shot and killed his estranged aunt, 69 year old Mildred, dumped her body on his parents' property, and forged a $1,800 check to himself under her name.
75. Windel Workman (~1980s(?)-2004, lethal injection): Workman beat his girlfriend's daughter, 2 year old Amanda Holman, to death while babysitting her in their home. His ex wives reported that he had a history of child abuse and often violently spanked their children during their marriages.
76. Jimmie Slaughter (1991-2005, lethal injection): Fearing that she was going to tell his wife of their affair, Slaughter stabbed and shot his ex girlfriend, 29 year old Melody Wuertz, and their daughter, 1 year old Jessica. According to court documents, Slaughter mutilated both of their bodies, and he carved an "R" on Melody's stomach. He tried pinning the murders on a black man, but the investigators and the courts dismissed his allegations.
77. George Miller Jr. (1994-2005, lethal injection): During the robbery of a hotel, Miller attacked the auditor, 25 year old Kent Dodd, with a hedge shear and paint cans, and took $122 from the register. Dodd was severely beaten, had muriatic acid shoved down his throat, and was left to die. Just before he died of his injuries, Dodd gave a description of his attacker to the police that matched Miller. A massive amount of circumstantial evidence, such as wearing shoes that resembled the bloodstained footprints next to Dodd's body, a microscopic drop of blood found on his shoes that was tentatively linked to Dodd, his wife's testimony of his unaccounted absence from their home during the murder, and what appeared to be Dodd writing Miller's alias that he knew him by in his own blood, convicted him. Miller’s friends also reported that he was broke and begging them for money a day before the murder, and his wife mentioned him giving her the same amount of money that was stolen from the robbery a day after it happened.
78. Michael Pennington (1991-2005, lethal injection): Pennington shot and killed a clerk, 20 year old Bradley Grooms, while trying to rob a 7-eleven grocery store. He left empty handed when the register failed to open.
79. Kenneth Turrentine (1994-2005, lethal injection): Under the belief that they were stealing money from him for drugs, Turrentine shot and killed his sister, 48 year old Avon Stevenson, and his girlfriend, 39 year old Anita Richardson, during confrontations in their homes. He also gunned down Anita's two children, 22 year old Tina Pennington and 13 year old Martise.
80. Richard Thornburg Jr. (1996-2006, lethal injection): A month after he was shot by an unknown assailant, Thornburg and his accomplices sought revenge by abducting 5 men that he thought was responsible from a trailer. Three of the hostages, 51 year old James Poteet, 39 year old Tery Sheppard, and 24 year old Kieth Smith, were gunned down on the spot, and Thornberg forced the fourth to shoot the fifth with the threat of killing him if he didn’t comply. They then burned down the trailer with the wounded fifth victim still trapped inside, but he managed to escape with his life. Despite being forced to put all the blame on himself in exchange for being spared, the fourth hostage still went forward to the police.
81. John Boltz (1984-2006, lethal injection): To spite his estranged wife following an argument, Boltz attacked her son, 23 year old Doug Kirby, with a knife. Kirby was stabbed a total of 11 times, and he received several fatal wounds to his chest, stomach, and neck.
82. Eric Patton (1994-2006, lethal injection): Patton forced his way into the home of 56 year old Charlene Kauer after she refused his pleading for money. After dragging her around the house as he searched for valuables, Patton stabbed Kauer several times with many different blades objects at hand such as scissors, barbecue forks, and kitchen knifes. Although he confessed to the murder, Patton blamed it on alleged demonic possession and his cocaine addiction.
83. James Malicoat (1997-2006, lethal injection): Malicoat slammed Tessa Leadford, his 13 month old daughter, against a dresser. After she died from the beating, he tucked her into bed, and waited until his daughter's mother returned from work to take her to the hospital. The doctors found that Leadford had been dead for several hours at the time of her arrival, and discovered several injuries such as broken ribs, bite marks, abdominal bleeding, and facial bruising on her body. By his own account, he had abused Leadford on a daily basis. For her role in enabling her boyfriend's treatment of their daughter, Leadford's mother was convicted of first degree murder and given a life sentence.
84. Corey Hamilton (1992-2007, lethal injection): During the robbery of a restaurant, Hamilton shot and killed 4 employees, 26 year old Sandy Lara, 24 year old Stephen Williams, 19 year old Ted Kindley, and 17 year old Joseph Gooch, and made off with $2,000.
85. Jimmy Bland (~1975-2007, lethal injection): Bland shot his boss, 62 year old Doyle Rains, in the head over an argument regarding a borrowed car and dumped the body in a creek. He was previously convicted of killing a soldier, Raymond Prentice (age unknown), and abducting the man's wife and son at the age of 19. Bland served a 20 out of 60 year sentence, and murdered Rains a year after he was released.
86. Frank Welch (~1987-2008, lethal injection): In 1987, Welch attacked 28 year old Jo Cooper, who was 4 months pregnant with her second child, in her home. She was tied up with leather straps, raped and violated with plastic toys, and strangled to death. Cooper’s body was found laying near her infant son by her husband. Another woman, 32 year old Debra Stevens, was also bound, raped, and strangled to death in her home in a near identical fashion a few months later. Although both murders went unsolved for several years, Welch abducted and raped a woman in 1994, and he received a 45 year sentence for it. His DNA samples was collected and filed after his abduction conviction, and linked to both Cooper and Stevens’ murders in a 1997 test.
87. Terry Short (1995-2008, lethal injection): In an attempt to kill his ex girlfriend, Short blew up her apartment complex with a firebomb. She and her family managed to escape, but the blast killed Ken Yamamoto, a 22 year old Japanese exchange student. Yamamoto had no connections to the targeted ex girlfriend's family beyond him having the misfortune of residing in the same apartment.
88. Jessie Cummings Jr. (1991-2009, lethal injection): Cummings was a polygamist that had married and lived with two wives. Under his orders, Cummings’ wives shot and killed his estranged half sister, 46 year old Judy Mayo, and kidnapped her daughter, 11 year old Melissa. He bound his niece to his bed with handcuffs to be raped, and stabbed her to death.
89. Darwin Brown (1995-2009, lethal injection): While robbing a grocery store with three accomplices (including Billy Alverson and Michael Wilson), Brown tied up the clerk, 30 year old Richard Yost, with handcuffs, and then bludgeoned him death with a metal baseball bat. The killing was caught by security cameras, and the footage was used by the prosecution to secure the convictions of Brown and his accomplices.
90. Donald Gilson (1995-2009, lethal injection): Gilson routinely physically abused his live in girlfriend's 5 children (who were all between the ages of 8 and 12 years old). The youngest, 8 year old Shane Coffman, was beaten to death with a board for defecating on the living room carpet. He and his girlfriend then hid the body by stuffing it in a freezer. The body was kept inside it for 6 months until it was discovered by a sheriff's deputy investigating the family's abuse allegations. Gilson's girlfriend was spared the death penalty with a plea deal, and given a life sentence without the possibility of parole for her part in her son's abuse and murder.
91. Michael DeLozier (1995-2009, lethal injection): While camping with his friends, DeLozier ambushed another pair of campers, 60 year old Orville Bullard and 54 year old Paul Morgan, and shot them to death. They stole Morgan and Bullard's generator, pick up truck, and other camping gear. To cover up their tracks, DeLozier and his friends set their victims' campsite on fire, and severely burned the bodies.
92. Julius Young (1993-2010, lethal injection): For breaking off their relationship, Young beat his ex girlfriend, 20 year old Joyland Morgan and her 6 year old son Kewan, to death with a baseball bat in their apartment.
93. Donald Wackerly II (1996-2010, lethal injection): Wackerly and his wife ambushed and gunned down Pan Sayakhoummane, a 51 year old Laotian immigrant, while he was fishing in the Arkansas River. After he placed Sayakhoummane's body in the man’s own truck, he pushed into a river, and stole his fishing gear. A few months after the murder, Wackerly’s wife turned him in to the police.
94. John Duty (~1970s-2010, lethal injection): Duty was given a life sentence for abducting, raping, and non fatally shooting a female store clerk during a robbery. While incarcerated, he tricked a fellow inmate, 22 year old Curtis Wise Jr. into allowing himself to be tied up as a part of a hostage ruse, and then strangled him to death with shoelaces. At the time of his murder, Wise was serving a conviction for burglary and contributing to the delinquency of minors. Duty's execution caused some controversy for the use of pentobarbital, a drug more commonly utilized by veterinarians to euthanize pets.
95. Billy Alverson (1995-2011, lethal injection): Alverson assisted the above mentioned Darwin Brown and Micheal Wilson in the beating death of Richard Yost while robbing a convenience store.
96. Jeffrey Matthews (1994-2011, lethal injection): Matthews and his accomplice shot and killed his great uncle, 77 year old Otis Short, while robbing the man's home. In the robbery, they stole Short's truck, his .32 calibre pistol, and $500. The pair also slit the throat of Short's wife, but she survived her injuries.
97. Gary Welch (~1993-2011, lethal injection): During a fight over a drug shipment, Welch and his partner stabbed another dealer, 32 year old Robert Hardcastle, to death with broken glass bottles. He was previously convicted of battery with a deadly weapon, and was off on probation at the time of Hardcastle's murder.
98. Timothy Stemple (1996-2012, lethal injection): Stemple conspired with his girlfriend to murder his wife, 30 year old Trisha, for her life insurance policy. With the help of his girlfriend's 16 year old nephew or cousin [sources vary], Stemple beat Trisha with a baseball bat, and rammed her to death with his truck.
99. Michael Selsor (~1975-2012, lethal injection): Selsor and his accomplice went on a crime spree and robbed several convenience stores. During their robberies, the pair shot and killed two clerks, 55 year old Clayton Chandler and 20 year old Ina Morris, and injured two others in shooting and stabbing attacks.
100. Michael Hooper (~1992-2012, lethal injection): Hooper kidnapped his ex girlfriend, 23 year old Cynthia Jarman, and her children, 5 year old Timothy and 3 year old Tonya, from her boyfriend's residence. He shot all three of them dead, and buried the bodies in a rancher's field. According to court documents, Hooper was hyper-violent towards Cynthia in their year long relationship.
101. Garry Allen (1986-2012, lethal injection): Allen shot and killed his fiancee, 24 year old Lawanna Titsworth, during an argument at a day care she worked at. He fought with the responding officers trying to arrest him in an attempt to provoke a "suicide by cop" outcome. Despite the officers' best efforts to avoid harming him, Allen lost his eye from an accidental discharge. Due to claims of him having schizophrenia, Allen's execution was a source of controversy.
102. George Ochoa (~1993-2012, lethal injection): A Southside Locos gang member, Ochoa and another hoodlum shot and killed a couple, 38 year old Francisco Morales and 35 year old Maria Yanez, while burglarizing their home. The murders were witnessed by the couple's 14 year old and 10 year old children and stepchildren, who then phoned the police after the shooters' departure.
103. Steven Thacker (~1980s-2012, lethal injection): Thacker kidnapped 25 year old Laci Hill during a botched robbery of her home, and took her to a remote cabin to be raped. She was then strangled and stabbed to death. He fled to Missouri, fatally stabbed 24 year old Forrest Boyd while carjacking him, and used his car to hide out in Tennessee. After the stolen car broke down, Thacker called a tow truck to pick him up. When the driver, 52 year old Ray Patterson, found that he was using a stolen credit card, Thacker stabbed him to death as well. As a teenager, Thacker committed several acts of auto thefts and burglaries. He also engaged in inappropriate relationships with underaged girls, and was released from a Florida prison after serving time for a bad check conviction months before his murders.
104. James DeRosa (2000-2013, lethal injection): DeRosa and his accomplice tricked a couple, 73 year old Curtis and 70 year old Gloria Plummer, that he worked for on their ranch, into letting them inside their house. After they stabbed the Plummers and slit their throats, DeRosa and his accomplice stole $73 and drove away with their truck.
105. Brian Davis (2001-2013, lethal injection): Davis went searching for his girlfriend and their daughter when he found them missing from their home, and called his girlfriend's mother, 56 year old Josephine Sanford, about their whereabouts. Sanford dropped by the couple's residence after failing to find her daughter and granddaughter. At her arrival, she was raped, beaten, and stabbed to death by Davis. He then left the body in the house, drove off with Sanford’s van, and injured himself in a car accident. As Davis was high while driving, he was arrested for being under the influence. The detaining officers weren’t aware of the murder until Davis’ girlfriend returned to the home later that night, and called 911 after finding her mother’s corpse.
106. Anthony Banks (~1978-2013, lethal injection): In 1978, while robbing a grocery store, Banks shot and killed a clerk, 22 year old David Fremin. A year later, he abducted Sun Travis, a 24 year old South Korean immigrant, from a parking lot. He then sexually assaulted Travis in his car and shot her in the head. Although he was captured and convicted for Fremin's murder, Travis' killing went unsolved until a 1997 DNA test. Banks was originally sentenced to death for Fremin's murder, but it was lifted in favor of a life sentence. He was condemned for a second time after his conviction for Travis' murder.
107. Ronald Lott (~1980s-2013, lethal injection): A sexual predator of elderly women, Lott broke into the homes of 93 year old Zelma Cutler and 83 year old Anna Fowler after cutting off their power. They were tied up with cloth, anally penetrated, beaten, and suffocated to death with pillowcases. The case attracted controversy when another man was erroneously condemned for the murders, and he spent 11 years on death row until a 1997 DNA test linked the murders to Lott. At the time of the discovery, Lott was serving time for two rape convictions.
108. Johnny Black (~1984-2013, lethal injection): Black, two of his brothers, and two other men went looking for a man they feuded with for a fight. While they were crusing on the road, the group encountered a rancher, 54 year old Bill Pogue, and mistook him for their target due to them driving similar vehicles. They forced Poque off the road, pulled him out of his car, and stabbed him a total of 10 times. Pogue's son in law was also dragged out and attacked, but he managed to escape with his life. Black was previously convicted of manslaughter for shooting 49 year old Cecil Martin dead in an argument.
109. Michael Wilson (1995-2014, lethal injection): Wilson was the third participant in the above mentioned beating death of Richard Yost to be executed.
110. Kenneth Hogan (1988-2014, lethal injection): Hogan stabbed 21 year old Lisa Stanley to death while she was babysitting his children. According to autopsy reports, she was stabbed at least 25 times. Stanley had previously accused him of sexual misconduct, and prosecutors believed that she was killed during an argument over the allegations.
111. Clayton Lockett (~1992-2014, lethal injection): Lockett, his cousin, and another accomplice kidnapped 23 year old Bobby Bornt, 18 year old Summer Hair, and Bornt's 9 month son after burglarizing a home. After tying them up with duct tape, they forced their captives to lure a friend, 19 year old Stephanie Neiman, with a phone call. Neiman was also bound and initially survived getting shot multiple times. Out of frustration, Lockett buried her alive, and she succumbed to a combination of suffocation and her injuries. Lockett and his accomplices also gang-raped Hair and beat Bornt, but spared them on the forced condition of their silence. His execution was controversial, as Lockett convulsed for 45 minutes after being injected, and then died from a heart attack. He also had a long criminal history, and was first arrested for burglary as a teenager.
112. Charles Warner (1997-2015, lethal injection): Warner raped his girlfriend's daughter, 11 month old Adriana Waller, and shook her to death. His execution sparked outcry, as the wrong fatal drug was administered by mistake, and Warner complained of "burning pain" as he was being injected. With the botched executions of Lockett and Warner back to back, the state of Oklahoma delayed further executions until 2021.
113. John Grant (~1970s-2021, lethal injection): While serving a 130 year sentence for armed robbery, Grant stabbed a prison cafeteria worker, 58 year old Gay Carter, to death. He had a long criminal history dating back to the ag e of 11, had several previous convictions of theft and armed robbery, and frequently fought with and assaulted other inmates behind bars. Due to reports of "adverse reactions" to the lethal drugs, Grant's execution was scrutinized by a number of national media outlets.
114. Bigler Stouffer II (1985-2021, lethal injection): Stouffer shot and killed his ex girlfriend, 35 year old Linda Reaves, in her boyfriend's home for breaking up with him. Reaves' boyfriend was also seriously injured in the shooting.
115. Donald Grant (2001-2022, lethal injection): During a robbery of a hotel, Grant fatally shot, stabbed, and bludgeoned two employees, 43 year old Felicia Smith and 29 year old Brenda McElyea, and ran off with $1,500. He spent $200 of the stolen on paying for his girlfriend's bail.
116. Gilbert Postelle (~1998-2022, lethal injection): Postelle’s father was badly injured in a motorcycle accident, and they suspected that 57 year old James Anderson, 56 year old Terry Smith, 49 year old Donnie Swindler, and 26 year old Amy Wright were deliberately involved. Out a desire for vengeance, he recruited Postelle, his other son, and another man to kill them. All four victims were fatally gunned down in what was described as a “blitz attack” on their trailer. He was an addict and had several arrests for drug possession and manufacturing dating back to the age of 12.
117. James Coddington (1997-2022, lethal injection): After robbing a grocery store, Coddington went to the home of a friend and co worker, 73 year old Albert Hale, to ask for money. When Hale turned him down, Coddington retaliated by beating him with a claw hammer. Coddington stole $525 and went on to rob 5 more grocery stores. Hale was left alone with his injures for nearly an entire day until he was discovered by his son, and died in the hospital a day later.
118. Benjamin Cole Sr. (2002-2022, lethal injection): Out of anger that her crying interrupted his Nintendo game, Cole beat his daughter from his second wife, 9 month old Brianna, to death. He was previously convicted of abusing his son from a different marriage in California.
119. Richard Fairchild (1996-2023, lethal injection): Fairchild got into a fight with his girlfriend’s 17 year old daughter after making drunken sexual passes at her, and was enraged that she left with a cab driver. He took his anger out on the girl’s younger brother, 3 year old Adam Broomhall, and scalded him with a wall heater. He then repeatedly hit the boy, threw him against a table, and fatally hemorrhaged his head. Bromhall received over 26 blows during the beating.
120. Scott Eizember (2003-2023, lethal injection): Eizember snuck into his ex girlfriend's house to lie in wait for her. However, her roommates, 76 year old A.J. Cantrell and his 70 year old wife Patsy, arrived home earlier then she did. He shot and beat them both to death and then fled the scene.
121. Jemaine Cannon (1995-2023, lethal injection): Cannon was put in prison for assaulting an unidentified woman. He managed to escape and stabbed his girlfriend, 20 year old Sharonda Clark, to death in her apartment.
122. Anthony Sanchez (1996-2023, lethal injection): Sanchez kidnapped 21 year old Jewell Busken from her apartment complex, and then raped and shot her to death. He amassed a following from the anti death penalty movement for claiming that his father was responsible, but such notions were debunked following a 2023 DNA test that concluded Sanchez’s guilt.
123. Phillip Hancock (~1982-2023, lethal injection): In 1982, Hancock shot a drug dealer, 27 year old Charles Warren, dead in a dispute over stolen jewelry and was given a manslaughter conviction for it. He was released after serving a 2 year term. About 17 years later, he shot and killed 58 year old James Lynch III and 37 year old Robert Jett Jr. in a drug house. Despite an eyewitness account describing Lynch and Jett begging for their lives, the case attracted scrutiny when Hancock's attorneys claimed that the shootings were done in self defense.
124. Michael Smith (~2002-2024, lethal injection): A member of the Oak Grove Posse gang, Smith was responsible for two separate fatal shootings on the same day. In one of his murders, he killed Sharath Pulluru, a 24 year old Indian immigrant that worked as a clerk, while robbing a gas station. The other murder occurred when he tried to confront a gang member that he thought was a police informant in his apartment, and gunned down the target’s mother, 40 year old Janet Miller-Moore, when she refused to give away her son’s location. Smith was also given a life sentence for delivering a gun to a shooter that carried out another gang killing.
submitted by Leather_Focus_6535 to TrueCrimeDiscussion [link] [comments]

2024.05.11 17:57 hotarugaike 4 years on duta+minox as aggressive early shedder, my experience. AMA.

Hi guys, just wanted to share my experience. I started heavy shedding around 19 y.o., mentally devastating and really put me in a depressive state. NW2,5. My dad was NW5+ at 25 yo so we're on thin ice here.
Now I'm 24, almost 25, back from the dead, and I wanted to share my experience to all the norwood fighters here.
regimen: I've been taking 0,5mg duta + topical minox 1x a day for four years. I wash and condition my hair daily.
Good parts: - In the front, hair looks exactly the same as 4 years ago, I maintained =success to me !
socially:
-I'm a hairloss spiritual guide: As some of my friends are now beginning to thin out (25yo mark), and they start to freak out, I inform and guide them so that they know the actual possible solutions and don't get scammed by the "magic" shampoos.
All those cool social effects made me feel so much more confident now. Honestly, life changing.
Bad parts:
-Who knows the long-term effects of duta, especially on young guys... Suppressing hormones like this for years is definitely playing with fire. Clearly, I would think twice about taking it if I wanted to have children. (But i'm gay so...)
submitted by hotarugaike to tressless [link] [comments]

2024.05.11 17:31 gimmethatdingo Settle in, Beauts! Story time about my victory after a 24 year search!!

The summer my hateful grandmother died, my family drove from Kansas to Florida at Spring Break, and I never went back to school 9th grade. I somehow miraculously was passed onto 10th grade, and as a 14 year old kid, 3 months of no school in Florida wasn't half bad--even if my mean ass grandmother was on her deathbed. I spent some of that time at my wealthy uncle's house. I stayed in their guesthouse pretty much unbothered by anyone, lounging by his pool and playing with his bird dogs (to his dismay). My uncle's oldest son had a girlfriend that regularly stayed in the guesthouse, and the guesthouse bathroom smelled just like her. To my 14 year old nose, it was exquisite. It smelled like a beautiful, tan blonde who lived her life on Florida beaches and on boats wearing sheer floaty clothes and existing as both ephemeral and real. I actually never saw her, and only had her described to me which probably added to the intrigue of her smell, but I have been searching for her fragrance ever since. Until recently, I didn't have the words to describe a memory from adolescence--so thank you all for your delicious posts! In reading, I have learned so much.
Anyways, so I thought the notes I was looking for was musk, freesia, and lily. I must have sampled 70 fragrances over the years, and came close but no cigar. Well, I've been keeping a list of fragrance notes I think could be similar in this manic fragrance journal I have, and I came across an advertisement for Escada Sport Feeling Free EDP from 1996 launch. It was one of the ones with the lift off smell strip, but it was long gone. Something about it felt right. It's been discontinued but not expensive to acquire. I ended up finding a full size bottle that had maybe 1/10th left in it for $6 on eBay, and I impatiently waited about a week. And guess what?? It's THE fragrance!!! I've found it!! And while it isn't going to replace my every day (Ralph Lauren Blue, but I haven't worn it every day in a long while...it's just my no-think go-to), I really really love it. It's sweet and floral but also feels rounded out by this kind of deep woodsyness. The light freshness never goes away and heat just makes it sweete deeper woodsy. All in all, this feels like my biggest victory in fragrance! Thanks so much for reading about my joy!
TL;DR: the 24 year mystery fragrance is Escada Sport Feeling Free EDP
Top: Lavender, Passion Flower, Bergamot
Middle: Freesia, Hyacinth, White Lily, Rose
Base: Myrhh, Sandalwood, Amber
submitted by gimmethatdingo to FemFragLab [link] [comments]

2024.05.11 04:46 DatRuffBuddi3 Totally Legitimate and Completely Real Patch Notes

I have a family member(uncle) that works at Arrowhead. Just like everyone else I've been absolutely livid about balance lately. I've been telling him to please, please, please buff weapons or to at least let me know if any buffs are coming. After 3 months of pestering he finally gave in and sent me a work in progress draft of patch notes. While the patch notes aren't finalized, I have it on good authority that most, if not all, of these changes are coming in the near future:
General
Primary, Secondary, & Support Weapons
Stratagems
Enemies
Bug Fixes
The skype call with my uncle suddenly ended there. I think we lost connection. But personally I'm not looking forward to these changes. The fact that there wasn't a single mention of transmog is infuriating. If Arrowhead keeps putting out shitty patches like this then Helldivers 2 is gonna be dead within a month.
submitted by DatRuffBuddi3 to Helldivers [link] [comments]

2024.05.10 18:45 4thdegreeknight A JW at a Non-JW Funeral. Kind of a funny story.

About 17 years ago I went to a funeral. It was not a realitive but my cousins side of the family unlreated to me. I went there because she had left being a JW about 5 years prior to this. This was her Grandmothers Funeral.
Her side of the family were all non-JW's and the funeral was just at a funeral home like a mortuary chapel.
My cousins parents are and were PIMI and her dad was an Elder.
I sat behind my cousin for support but her other side of the family were all very supportive of her leaving the JWs and all.
During the kind of Wake, a Pastor from the mortuary got up and said a few words, read a few scriptures and gave a nice sermon. Then they opened up the microphone for people to come up and say eulogize.
A few people got up and talked about the lady and how nice she was, her cooking, how her family was so important to her, they talked about growing up with her and even one of her neighbors talked about how they would drink coffee together on the porch and spread nieghborhood gossip.
Then my cousins dad the elder got up to speak, he used this opportunity to give a talk about being a JW. He went on for what seemed like forever. I don't know the personal family dymanic among him and his non-JW family but one of the families cousins got up and unplugged the microphone from him and said that's enough.
My uncle the elder looked stunned like he had never been giving a talk to a non-responsive crowd. He walked down from the podium.
Another older family member got up and took the mic and was plugged back in and basically said Now back to "name's funeral. He went on to talk about how much he loved her and how no one ever left her house with out a full belly.
My cousins dad walked out and I didn't go to the grave site but I heard he stayed far in the back. It was funny to see his own family tired of his bullshit.
submitted by 4thdegreeknight to exjw [link] [comments]

2024.05.07 15:04 Sad-Association4907 A complaint and some points of discussion

Couple of points I want to make and would like to hear peoples opinions on
  1. people complaining about the fans. This can apply to both sides tbh basically any post or comment that makes some generalisation about a fan base e.g x fan base is so deluded x fan base is blah blah and so on even if there’s some truth to it I don’t know why it’s a focus on online discussion, I feel like it takes away from the music. I like this sub when it’s talking about the lyrics or analysing some of the deeper meaning behind the songs (also some of the better memes). idgaf about drake fans ‘reaching’ or ´coping’ that shit just comes off as tribalism and para social.
2.diss beef rules I’m too young to have witnessed most of the classic beefs the first one I remember is meek v drake and funnily enough back to back is one of the few drake songs I like - is it a world tour or your girls tour was just so funny to me idc There’s been a sentiment I’ve seen where people think the winner has already been decided before the beef even started. And I understand what people mean- it’s like political debate where both sides scream their opinions, not to try and convince the other side but just to say they did and then talk amongst themselves afterwards in their respective bubbles and get pats on the back. But this was interesting to me when it started as I know I have a bias for Kendrick, I wanted him to win and I’ve never really connected with drakes music but at the same time nearly everyone around me has and I knew he was definitely capable of winning in the court of public opinion. I think everyone should have their own way in how they judge a beef like this and this is mine:
Lyricism- this beef basically started in my head from control. People know drake got salty about basically Kendrick loudly declaring he wants to be the best and he isn’t afraid to call anyone of his peers out to do it and if you think about what a rapper is- they are basically what they say and how they say it- the wordplay, rhythm, entendres cadence all that good stuff- in this category Kendrick is clear in my opinion I would love to see people make more posts comparing the lyrics
Music/beats- this is important people aren’t gonna care about your diss if it ain’t nice to listens to and in my opinion again Kendrick clears this too - in euphoria the teddy Pendergrass sample called the greatest inspiration is just so clever it calls back to drake saying “picture on your wall why u cook up” first time I heard it my mind immediately went to that Zack brown tweet and I just started laughing also the three switches were all just cold, the use of horns and strings as well as taking away the strings to add more emphasis to Kenny’s flow was just nuts. I thought push ups was good musically was good but there’s nothing in it I can think off the top that I liked especially when compared to euphoria 6:16 in la - the soul sample flip was nuts the fact drakes uncle played the guitar was the cherry on top and the use of soul has always been an important part of hip hop and just cemented some of Kendrick’s key points in this battle the only part didn’t like musically and I’m just being honest is the part where Kenny sings but the beat is just butter Family matters - again this musically wasn’t bad at all the keep it of chorus coming from the end of push ups was clever( ngl tho keeping it pg would be drake tho ) and the switches were good but i say this with my bias ofc meet the Graham coming so soon after it rly killed it and again apart from what I just said I’m struggling to think about what else I liked about it.
Meet the grahams- this might be my favourite in a way. The alchemist beat is fucking spooky. the piano along with the background screams gives the perfect feeling of relentless impending doom the part with the vocal doubles of the ‘you lied’ gives me feeling on par with watching Hitchcock as a child. Psychological horror.
They not like us - my other favourite. It’s crazy cause it’s just a vibe I heard akademics saying something about how it’s just a dance bop and the others are more about rap but to me it’s got some the best bars and flows out of everything
Heart part 6 - don’t really need to talk about this do I 😬
  1. Themes/roasts /punch lines Putting these together cause time. Essentially what have been the themes of the songs. As in what are they about? Do they have deeper meanings ? Are there Easter eggs ? Also what are the jokes? Punchlines ? Where did you laugh? This is important to me cause in an argument yes you win by making good points but you win better if u make everyone watching laugh.
I realise I’ve basically just been ranting and now this post is too long. The other points I wanted to make about the beef where basically:
What’s the tea? Since pusha people have said that in order to win a beef u need tea or some big exposé and I personally disagree I just think u just need to show why you’re r a better artist. To me moral grandstanding is a tad corny and In the scheme of the beef I don’t rly care about it, linking back to what I said at the start about being para social and trying to fit in online by saying haha we’re better than this other group is again corn. That being said I absolutely think if Kendrick was proven to be beating his wife i would stop listening to him and there would cease to be a winner to me. The pedo stuff as well is a little bit bigger than a rap battle and until anything is acc proven it’s not really admissible in the court of rap law.
Okay sorry if this is kinda long and convoluted, this is just stuff that been in my head in the last day I made the post cause I’d like to see peoples opinions and see if they can expand on some of the points, or argue if they disagree.
I wanna hear more songs but it’s clear Kendrick has won and I’m glad this is wrapping up cause I need to study lool
submitted by Sad-Association4907 to KendrickLamar [link] [comments]

2024.05.07 03:25 Determination7 The Skill Thief's Canvas - Chapter 38 + 39

Author's Note:
One of these chapters is short, so we decided to release both in one update.
​
--
​
Chapter 38
What?
The word caught in Adam's throat. He couldn't speak, his body frozen as he stared transfixed at Eric. Are you...serious? Did you really...again? It wasn't all just in my head?
I was right?
Eric's Curse flashed in his mind. 'The subject of this meeting will be the Emperor granting amnesty for severe crimes. I will not take credit from slaying the Ghost of Water. I will acknowledge that the Ghost of Waters was killed during the journey from Penumbria to the Puppet Mines, which I was not part of.'
It was meant to be ironclad. Something that laid all worries to rest. Both Eric and his own subconscious had argued that it was more than enough proof; that any doubt on Adam's part was unfair.
But fair or not, those fears proved correct. The meeting came, and credit was given...to Tenver.
I was right.
He thought back to the many paintings he'd shown Eric. One of them, surely, should have revealed the truth of his duplicitous nature. Yet he hadn't stolen Adam's work out of jealousy, or anger, or revenge. They truly had been friends at one point, and Eric didn't need the contest's prize money. Nor was Eric desperate to make a name for himself. It wasn't that he thought he could never create a piece of art on that level. He didn't wish to drive Adam to suicide, or for Adam to never be around, and he did care about him to at least some degree.
Adam knew that most people would have considered all that...excessive. There was covering your bases, and then there was locking your bases down in a fortress of steel. At the very least, though, it meant he could finally put his paranoia behind him.
Except that paranoia was only paranoia if it ended up being wrong.
I...was right.
"My Hangman has made a bold claim indeed." The Emperor turned to face Adam, arching a regal eyebrow. "Have you any words in your defense?"
Adam didn't bother speaking up. Nothing he could say would salvage this. Instead, he looked directly at Eric. Maybe the Hangman had...misspoken, somehow. Maybe he would have a last-minute change of heart.
It wasn't too late.
"Be wary of the Pretender's lies," Eric stated. His eyes showed not an inkling of regret. "After Tenver slew the Ghost of Waters, the Pretender used his Talent – granted to him by the Dark Sorcerer – to alter the memories of everyone aboard his ship. I was the only one who did not fall prey to it."
Oh.
We're really going there, then?
No rightful anger took over Adam's body. He didn't stand in silent disbelief at what had transpired. His body did not tremble, in either sadness or anger. At no point did his vision blur, or his stomach threaten to empty itself.
There was only a quiet sadness within him.
In spite of everything, one small part of Adam had still trusted Eric – or wanted to, anyway– and it would have leapt with joy if proven right.
Now, it was quiet, never to raise its voice again.
Adam stared at Eric with a gaze of muted grief, knowing that their bond couldn't ever be repaired.
"Very well then," Ciro said, unsurprised. "I see no reason to delay my verdict." His voice and the clap of his hands may as well have been announcing the start of a brothel's show of debauchery. "For the crime of treason, you are condemned to death by execution."
The Emperor's eyes narrowed. "It will take place here and now."
Adam forced himself to speak as a great pressure started to build around him, well-aware that his time was limited. "Tell me," he muttered, addressing Eric directly. "I just – I need to know why. Why would you do that? You...you had nothing to gain. You could've gotten more by just...telling the truth."
Eric gave him nothing but silence in response.
"Do you know what the worst part is?" Adam said, barely containing his tears. God, this didn't hurt any less the second time. "I was trying to...I was trying to – until the very last possible second, I wasn't sure what I should do. I thought that if I planned for your betrayal, and if you turned out to be telling the truth, I wouldn't deserve your friendship. It made me–"
"–Ah, boredom," Ciro said, lifting his hands. "Die already."
A maelstrom of darkness appeared from nowhere. It was as if a dark sun had spawned inside the room, affecting Adam alone. The Emperor merely stood untouched before him, like he was separated by an invisible glass shield. Ciro waved at him, as if bidding farewell – and perhaps he was.
Every inch of Adam's body was twisted, contorted, then drawn into the maelstrom, swallowed by a voracious void. Time slowed to a crawl. An eternity passed, the very light around him bending sideways as his legs flew ahead of him.
Adam watched himself die over the course of an everlasting instant. He had only time to think of one word before his body ceased to be. Gravi–
The hole collapsed out of reality, leaving nothing behind.
--
Ciro stood up. "Well, this was a pleasant afternoon. Clean things up for me, will you, Eric?" He walked off. "I suppose I'll have company soon – now that my nephew has been cleared of his crimes. Most unfortunate. Anyhow, it simply wouldn't do to greet him in a damaged throne room. I'm sure one of your Talents can figure something out, yes?"
For a moment, only the Emperor's distant footsteps could be heard among the silence. At least until he stopped to turn around, casting an impassive gaze back at his subordinate. "Oh, yes. Eric? Good job."
After the Emperor exited his throne room, a full minute passed before the Hangman dared to speak. Drawing a deep breath, he glanced at what remained of Adam.
Which was nothing. No flesh, blood or bone. Not even a stain. Not even atoms.
Still...Eric found it fitting to gaze upon the spot where his best friend had died.
For several seconds, he stood in a quiet vigil. This was the only funeral that would honor the Pretender of Penumbria. And as its sole participant, it fell to Eric to deliver the eulogy.
He opened his mouth, speaking straight from the heart. "Honestly? I never wanted the world, Adam."
Eric inclined his head. "I just wanted you to have nothing."
"Is that so?" Adam replied, sadly.
"WHA–"
He didn't give Eric time to reply. As his body rewound itself into its previous state, Adam slammed his fist against the man's face. Violence overwhelms Talents. Even yours.
Eric collapsed to the floor, momentarily stunned. Adam was already running. He couldn't waste even a single moment. The Hangman would strike as soon as he regained his wits, and the Emperor wasn't far away, either. Every second that passed was one second closer to ruination.
Yet there was still one thing that Adam needed to say. Enough to risk his life for.
"The worst part was that I wanted to believe in you," Adam continued, as if he hadn't been rudely interrupted by a gruesome death. "I tried to, you know? Until the very last instant, I tried."
He sighed. "I would've been satisfied if I could – even if you betrayed me. Didn't really need anything else. But despite how much I wished for it, or what my heart desired...I think I'm just completely unable to trust you again. That's the worst part. Worse than the betrayal could ever be."
"Adam, I–you–how dare–"
"But just because I don't trust you..."
The Painter rolled up his sleeves to show an inked pattern.
"Doesn't mean I can't trust anyone."
'Solara, I'm going to use my new Talent on us,' Adam had told her last night. 'It'll give me limited use of your revival Talent, and you of my Flames. That way, when Eric betrays me, I'll fake death and escape.'
The elf smiled teasingly. 'Oh? Aren't you afraid of what I might do with access to your powers? That I might turn out like the Hangman?'
Her tone grew more serious. 'According to your ability, I'll be able to use your Talent if you trust me. But if I don't trust you, then you won't be able to use mine. Aren't you afraid I'm deceiving you? That you might die and simply not wake up?'
'I am,' he admitted. 'But even so...I want to believe in you.'
Adam dashed over to the far end wall, calling on his Stained Vines. This was his best chance of escaping. The Emperor's guards would be waiting behind doors, not solid walls, and his experiments with Aspreay's prisoners had taught him that Stained Ink could cut through even the most magical of stones.
"WAIT, ADAM!" Eric shouted. There was a remorseless pain in his voice. It was deep, perhaps even genuine, yet... "You don't – you don't get it! Tenver, that literal bastard, he tricked me, manipulated me, threatened to kill an entire city with a bomb he stole from the puppets. He was never your friend! I was going to undo your death later, when it was safe! You have to trust me, this was the only way–"
Adam didn't wait for him to finish. He cut a hole through the wall and launched himself out of the castle.
It starts now, he thought. Our rebellion.
The die was cast.
​
--
​
Chapter 39
The Night Before
"Assuming that I'm executed," Adam began, "would it be possible to delay my resurrection until after the Emperor is gone?"
Solara nodded. "You should have some amount of control over my Talent. Don't push it too hard – after dying, your body will start to repel your soul, like opposing magnets. If you wait overly long, you might not be able to come back."
That aligned with some of what the Grandmaster had alluded to about how the Dragons used to capture souls for creating Puppets. While it wasn't relevant to the plan at hand, Adam found it noteworthy, regardless.
Tenver stirred in his seat. "This scheme is far too reckless. Why meet up with the Emperor at all if you are so certain of Eric's betrayal?"
"Because I'm not," Adam plainly answered. "My brain feels like it's a certainty, but my heart can't quite accept it. Even right now, making this plan with you guys...there's a part of me that keeps saying: You're wasting time, planning for something that won't happen. Eric has always got your back." He laughed heartily and bitterly at himself. "Quite the foolish thought, don't you agree?"
Then, with deadly confidence, he spoke in a low voice. "That's why I want to do this." His hand tightened on the left side of his chest. "I want to rid myself of hesitation before we do anything drastic."
"Anything drastic, eh..." Solara aimed her gaze at the ceiling. "Such as killing the Emperor?"
"Him too," Adam said, nodding. "There's a few excuses I could make about why I'm going through with the meeting. For one, making ourselves an enemy of the Emperor publicly would raise our banner as the one his enemies should rally behind. Maybe I'll also get lucky and find out enough about him to paint his soul. If nothing else, he might have important information on things we need to know, such as how my world and the Painted World are connected."
He paused. "But if I'm being honest...more than all of that...I just want to throw away my doubts before burning everything to the ground."
Silence.
"Thanks for going along with this," Adam muttered. "It's selfish of me."
Solara laughed. "I'm glad that you are capable of selfishness. Being helped by a saint makes every temptation feel like a sin." She stretched her arms above her head. "Worry not. All of us owe the other debts we cannot repay, so let's not fuss over it."
Tenver nodded in agreement. "Aye. Knowing of your greed lessens my guilt for my own." He shook his head, as if arguing with himself. "Moreover, some of those 'excuses' are quite valid, especially the one you haven't bothered to state aloud – that your existence is still seen as treason by the Emperor. Should he not grant you amnesty, your life and that of Penumbria's will be forfeit. Considering we have no way of matching the Empire's military, making an attempt at peace is prudent."
"If you will excuse me," Solara cut in, "earlier you mentioned 'your world' and–"
"I'll explain later," Adam promised her. "We don't have much time, so let's focus on our escape plan. Remember; you shouldn't enter the throne room with me no matter what. They'll probably want to separate us anyway, but if they allow you guys in for some reason, make something up and calmly get out. My escape will distract them from yours. We left the Airship outside the city's Barrier for a reason."
Tenver fell into thought. "Right. The moment you head inside the throne room, we'll devise an excuse to leave the castle. You won't be declared a traitor for at least about five minutes, so they'll have no reason to keep us from leaving...officially, anyhow. I'm sure they'll still try to force us to stay, but the guards should be easier to get through."
"I could kill myself," Solara proposed. "Pretend there's an emergency and you need to mourn my sudden, inexplicable death. Even if they're under orders to keep us in, that might confuse them enough to let us go, even if they keep an eye on us."
She glanced at Adam. "But what about you? Won't the Emperor hunt you down immediately after you escape? We are inside his Realm, after all."
Adam had considered this point intensely for a long while. It was something he'd considered even back when imprisoned by Aspreay:
Would the lord have been able to tell if someone escaped his city? How closely could he track its inhabitants?
This was a vital detail, and Adam had treated it as such. Between books, references, his own experiences, and his tablet, he'd made sure to gather as much information as possible.
He couldn't be wrong about this.
"I doubt it," Adam said, frankly. "The Emperor has the strongest Talent of a Lord in the world, no doubt about that. But...the Capital is also the largest city in the world. To use myself as an example – while I'm roughly aware of how many people there are in Penumbria, it's not like I can keep track of them."
He tapped his thigh. "Even if the Emperor is far stronger than me, it's not like he can monitor every person in a city of hundreds of thousands. It's like watching an ant colony. Even if you can see all of them, your brain can't really process everything, much less narrow down the search to a single one. He won't be able to find me that easily."
Although that would be a different story if the Realm's size was smaller, with fewer people. Then the Emperor might even be able to tell what someone thinks inside of it.
Solara wasn't yet convinced. "I like to think that I'd notice if one of the ants suddenly employed a Talent, though. And using Resurrection is definitely going to draw his awareness towards you."
"Yeah. Probably." Adam acknowledged the point easily enough. That was within his margin of acceptable risks. "Which is why I'll only have a few moments to act. First I'll use Resurrection to come back to life, then cut open the walls with Stained Ink and jump outside. After that, I'll try to blend in with the crowd in the streets. It's a big city, and the Emperor is unlikely to come after me personally. I'm dressed well, but not so well that I'll stand out in the Capital of all places. Normal guards will struggle to pick me out of the masses."
His words were true – yet they brought forth the point that none wished to acknowledge. "The guards will struggle...but what of the Hangmen?" Tenver quietly asked. "Aside from Eric, the Emperor should have others at his disposal."
"Valeria got us some information about that," Adam said. Though the Puppet Detective had remained in the Mines for the time being, she was committed to her sworn fealty as a citizen of Penumbria, eagerly – almost scarily – investigating everything asked of her. "There are six Hangmen that usually stay in the city and rarely go out on missions. The Emperor typically has each of them patrolling the districts that lead out of the castle, and he frequently changes who goes where."
"Just our bloody luck," Tenver muttered. "All six of them..."
Solara folded her arms, seeming hesitant. "Tenver...ah...I know this is a difficult question, but you're the one who'd be most familiar with the Empire's Hangmen. Anything you can tell us?"
It was a sensitive question, as some of those Hangmen had likely aided the Emperor in killing Tenver's father. Nonetheless, the knight needed less than a second to answer.
"Fighting against any of them is out of the question," he began. "Even if we could muster up a win – which is truly unlikely – it would take so long that other Hangmen could arrive. And after a battle like that, even normal guards without any godly Talents would be enough to subdue you."
He sighed. "But considering Lord Adam's Talents, even if he stumbles upon one of them, he should be able to escape. We're not here to fight; just to survive. And I'm confident he can manage that against most of them. Except..."
There was a pause.
"Except against their Captain." Tenver lowered his gaze to the floor and clasped his hands together. Was he...trembling? "If you see a man with white hair and purple eyes, who looks like he hasn't slept in days...even just escaping will be impossible."
Adam couldn't disagree. He'd never met the Captain in person, but the stories he'd heard told all he needed to know. "That's the man who killed the Mountain Puppets, right?"
At that, Solara sat up. "The one who single-handedly carved a tunnel between Gama and Penumbria?"
"The very same," Tenver replied, with an acrid tone. "He...Adam, if you see him, don't even try running. Remember that my Father also possessed an Emperor level Talent – unfair fight or not, who do you think killed him?"
A mild shiver went down Adam's spine. He put on a brave face, trying not to think about what potentially awaited him in the capital city. "Between the Captain and the current Emperor, which one of them is stronger?"
"The Captain doesn't possess a Lord's Realm, so he can't rule over people as my dear old Uncle does," Tenver slowly replied. "But when it comes to simple, overwhelming strength...there is not a single man who could best him throughout the entire Empire."
Adam hesitated before responding. "It should be fine," he said, with forced optimism. "If each Hangman is guarding just one of six districts, then I've got over an 80% chance of avoiding the Captain."
He nodded in an attempt to persuade both his allies and himself. "All of this hinges on Eric's betrayal, anyway. He might surprise us. And there's a slim chance that even with his betrayal, I'll be able to convince the Emperor that I should be left alive. It's a gamble, but if we do nothing, the Empire will just come knocking on our door sooner rather than later."
Adam drew himself up. He could feel the reaper hang its scythe over his neck, waiting to see if it should cut down.
"I'll take these odds."
--
Present Day
Adam launched himself out of the castle. He needed to move fast – Emperor Ciro would have certainly noticed his Resurrection, and he'd already wasted too much time exchanging words with Eric.
That goes for both just now...and for my entire life.
The cold, hard streets were rushing up to meet him. Ciro's throne room was located rather high up in his castle – no normal person could have survived a fall like this. Thankfully, Adam had accounted for that in his planning.
Although he did find some irony in the fact that it was raining outside. If only the Ghost of Waters hadn't been made up of so many different souls, he mused. I could've stolen his Talent and escaped through the raindrops. Would've been way easier. While there hadn't been any realistic chance of him stealing that Talent, the regret burned regardless.
It didn't last long. None of his emotions did. Adam focused all of his attention on the task at hand, shoving aside his lingering concerns until nothing else mattered. Even his grief over having to accept Eric's final betrayal could wait.
Right now...he had a city to escape. "Stained Vines!" Adam stabbed through the side of the castle walls, using his Talent to slow his fall. Initially, he'd half-planned to start a fire and use the Haunted Flames to escape, but the sudden onset of rain had taken that option away from him.
It's not all bad, though. The heavy rain worked as a cover, obscuring him from sight as he descended. Guards and citizens down below won't see me. They don't have any reason to look up at one specific area of the Imperial Palace during a storm. I can escape – no one's coming after me!
Adam screamed the thought in his head...which didn't make it sound any more convincing. He'd earned a head start on his pursuers, but that was it. Eric would be rushing to alert the Emperor by now, and it was likely that at least a few people had witnessed the indistinct, rain-cloaked figure rappelling down the castle's walls.
Still, he had to make himself believe it. He couldn't let fear touch him, lest he become its slave.
And he would never allow himself to controlled ever aga–
"Well, well. You survived?"
His heart froze as the Emperor's voice filled inside his head. "Was that the Talent of Resurrection? What a curious little Painter you are." Casual malice dripped from every word. "Stay put. I shall send–"
Adam tuned out the voice. Despite being a bit high up, he forcibly let go of his Stained Vines, quickly plummeting to the ground below. The impact was painful, but nothing seemed broken. Good enough.
Two thoughts came to him at once. The first was, He can send thoughts into the heads of people inside his Realm? How does that– and the second, I can't have been using my Talents for longer than a minute. Was that enough for him to find me? That's absurd! If that's the case, then I'm already dead!
Uncertainty clouded his questions of the future, but the truth of the moment reigned supreme – inaction meant death. Adam could only grit his teeth and set himself running into the rainy streets, his feet clicking against the cobblestone and echoing throughout the city.
For a moment, for just a singular, solitary second, Adam stopped pretending. He quit being a superhuman above such petty concerns, and allowed himself to think everything that he'd forbidden from himself until now.
'This is hopeless.'
'I'm already dead.'
'I can't escape the Emperor.'
'I've gotten everyone killed.'
Each and every one, a valid thought.
Adam discarded them all. "Being reasonable isn't going to get me anywhere," he declared to himself. "I'm going to escape. That's a guarantee."
His vow sustained him as he fled, the encroaching shadows chasing close behind.
–
Adam's flight from the castle was a desperate blur. His breath was ragged in the chill air, and his sense of time had deserted him. It should have been midday, yet the stormclouds masked even that. Too gray for the light of day, too gray for the dark of night.
Fear clung onto him tighter than his wet, rain-soaked shroud. It was both a heavy chain of burden and the only thing that moved him forward. Every time the sharp reality of betrayal struck, invoking a feeling of hopelessness within, the threat of hostile footsteps prompted him to run ever faster.
Eric...you really couldn't help yourself, could y–
Adam quickened his pace. The Capital city's mazelike design was a blessing and a curse; easy to hide inside, yet difficult to find your own way out of. Streets twisted, turned, grew narrower, then wider. For how long? A few minutes? A few hours?
He couldn't know for sure. Adam didn't have the luxury of calm thought, for his legs now mattered more than his brain.
Can't–let–the–Hangmen–get–me!
The crowd was a wave of faceless figures, every cloak a dark whisper, every laugh a burning threat. No time to discern passersby from the people hunting me down. Have to assume everything is a danger to me. Objects no longer stood only for themselves. Shadows hid watchers, and flickers of torchlight beckoned accusatory, malevolent gazes.
Nowhere was safe. In that demented, manic haze, Adam's most primal instincts guided him towards the only direction he could go – away.
Away from them.
The storm poured down still. It was less of a rain and more of a dense, almost green mist that sprayed against his face with every passing moment. Coldness clung at his skin as Adam's uneven breath forged a mist of its own. Those vengeful clouds were his ally and his enemy; the wet cobblestone threatened to slip his boots many a time, yet the rainy mist camouflaged his desperate flight among hundreds of others seeking shelter from the elements.
Suddenly, the rain seemed to pause. Nothing felt the same as it had been one moment before. The world slowed down as Adam's heartbeat raced faster.
All to herald the arrival of the Dark Captain.
The Captain was a tall, somewhat elegantly dressed man, with eyes of purple, and hair of white. He stood beneath the rain as if unbothered by the growing storm.
No. Not as if.
"The rain...it...it isn't touching him," Adam muttered to himself, in disbelief.
It was hard to make out details from a distance, but this much, he was sure of. Despite the raging storm above, the Captain was completely dry. Each time the water neared him, it would close up, yet never touch him, sent sideways like it had been repelled by a magnetic force.
Are the raindrops scared of him to the point of fleeing?
A mere glance was enough to understand – strength was not a word befitting of this man. This was one of those rare few that was an anomaly in existence; a life akin to an army in and of itself. Another creature alike the Emperor and the Grandmaster. There was no need for Adam to glance at his tablet to know the man's name or title.
Valente Marinyo, Head of the House of Estrela Verde, and Captain of the Hangmen.
The Strongest Man in the Empire.
Their gazes met, and all color vanished.
It wasn't poetry; it was sight, it was reality. Shades of blue, red, and green turned to pitch-black before Adam's eyes. This is...the world telling me I'm about to die. He didn't know where the thought had come from, yet it felt indisputable, and ruled his mind from that moment onward. His hopes perished within that monochrome world.
He's going to kill me. Six possible Hangmen, only one to worry about...and I got the absolute worst possible outcome.
At first, the Captain seemed to be grimacing, but his expression soon relaxed into a relieved smile. "Ah, look over there! Where was this luck in the Colosseum? Dice should've favored me more, they should have."
Valente lifted a foot high up in the air as if readying himself for a theatrical, exaggerated march. His intention was clear – he was approaching Adam.
I have to do something before he gets here! What can I do? Run? No, there's no way someone like him wouldn't be able to outrun me. My best chance would be to blend in with the–
"Now, now," Valente said. He lowered his leg.
And immediately appeared in front of Adam, placing a hand on his shoulder. "What should I do with you? I don't enjoy killing. Enemies of the Empire do have to die, though. Gods, I'd much rather someone else dealt with you...but as the Colosseum taught me, luck isn't my strong suit."
Adam was stunned into silence as the Hangman rambled on. One instant he'd been across the street, and the next he was inches away. That hadn't been mere speed. It was as if–
NO TIME FOR THAT! With haste, he stepped on the man's shadow and called on his Talent of a Lord. "Kneel," Adam commanded, his eyes sparkling with intensity.
"I think not," Valente cheerfully replied. Upon seeing Adam's expression, he let out a gentle laugh. "Surprised that your Shadow Realm isn't working? Or is it that I've suddenly appeared in front of you?"
Tenver's warning rang true in Adam's mind. 'You have no chance of fighting against him. Forsake the goal of winning. Even running is impossible. Survival should be your only priority.'
No fighting, winning, or running. What else could he do right now? What options did he have?
Get him talking. Delay the execution. "Admittedly, my Lord Talent failing to work is puzzling," Adam said, with false amusement in his voice. Stay confident. Make him think you're not afraid. "Care to elaborate why?"
"For one, I'm pretty confident that I'd be strong enough to survive even inside your Realm," Valente said, his voice sounding both joyful and puzzled. "But then again...I'm not a specialist in Lordly Realms. How about you elucidate for us?"
It was here that Adam noticed Valente was speaking to someone else. "You've been watching for a while now, right?" the Captain said.
A figure emerged from the shadows, stepping closer to them.
Adam then realized, far too late, that he'd been wrong. Happening upon the Captain of the Hangmen – despite having over an 80% chance of avoiding him – was not the worst possible outcome.
"If you insist," said Aspreay.
This was.
"I suppose I can spare a few words." The former Lord wore an expression of vague distaste. "It's not a total waste. At least one of you will live to remember them."
Dealing with a Hangman was difficult enough. Dealing with their Captain was virtually impossible. Adding Aspreay of Penumbria, the only man in this world who hated Adam more than himself, made the problem so insurmountable as to make him want to laugh. It was beyond absurd.
"Your Shadow Realm is an extension of your Realm in Penumbria," Aspreay continued, his every word dripping with disgust. He placed a hand on Adam's other shoulder, standing opposite to the Hangman. "It's the same principle as to why the Emperor cannot so easily pinpoint your location. The power of your Realm is a simple calculation of its size and your overall strength. At present, it is too weak to function inside the Emperor's Realm."
With a tilt of his head, Valente muttered a soft, contemplative hum that skirted between pure innocence and a thinly-veiled aura of murder. "Isn't the Shadow Realm really small, though? It only applies if he can step on my shadow."
"Weren't you listening, white-haired imbecile?" Aspreay said, with annoyance. "It only looks small. It's still derived from the Realm he established in Penumbria. Considering the difference in Rank between him and the Emperor, building a functional Realm inside the Emperor's Realm would require much more finesse."
That seemed easier for the Hangman to understand, who nodded along happily to the explanation. "Yes, I've got it, I see! You're saying that if Adam wanted to fight me with his Lordly Realm, he'd need to first undo the one in Penumbria?"
"Yes. That's exactly it." Aspreay tightened his grip on Adam's shoulder. "If he were to undo his Realm there...he could recreate it here. Make it smaller. Instead of a gigantic Imperial city, if he focused everything onto a narrow street, then perhaps he would have a chance. Lordship is among the few Talents that the Emperor cannot detect inside his Realm."
"I see, I see!" Valente excitedly said. "So the question is whether or not the Pretender is willing to doom his city – and his treasonous followers – in order to save his own skin. Villains such as he will die regardless, but this way he could try to put up a fight."
"Correct," Aspreay stated. "That is precisely the question. So, Painter. What's it going to be? Your life...or Penumbria?"
In response to that, Adam could only bark out a low laugh. "This isn't the first time I've had to decide between those two." He adopted a dry tone, locking eyes with both men. "But considering how dire this situation is...it might actually be my last."
"You don't fear death?" Valente raised an eyebrow. "You bluff, surely."
"I've already made arrangements for my inheritance. If I die, I know who the Lord Talent will get passed down to – and it won't be someone like Aspreay."
Truthfully, he had no idea if his Talent of a Lord even could be passed down like other people's. There were many unknown oddities related to Painted abilities. Still, he had followed the protocol as learned, instituting heirs just in case: Tenver, then Solara, then Esteban, then Vasco. While he wasn't entirely happy with his selection, he'd assumed that if Tenver and Solara had also fallen...there were likely few people left to protect, anyhow.
"I won't disband Penumbria's barrier," Adam calmly told them. "If you want to kill me, go ahead." More sternly, he added, "But Aspreay – you'd better go back and make sure someone has a barrier set up there after you take my head, you hear me?"
He paused, and when he continued, it was with a low voice, almost a growl. "Listen carefully Aspreay. If you let monsters overrun our city, then I'll haunt you for the rest of eternity!"
"Do you mean that?" Aspreay asked, slowly. He didn't seem bothered by the threat, nor did he acknowledge it. "Will you truly not lift the barrier in Penumbria, even in the face of death?"
Adam drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. It's easy to say those things in the heat of the moment. But when I actually stop to think about it...it's terrifying. Dying is scary. I don't want to die. I want to help more people. I want to have fun. I want to trust people again. There's so many things I still have to do.
But...even so...
He opened his eyes and glared at Aspreay. "If I wasn't willing to do this much, I would have had no right to take Penumbria from you."
"Is that so?" Aspreay repeated, in a deadpan. "I suppose that's true." He let go of Adam's shoulder and peered at the Hangman. "Valente, I have a proposal for you."
The Hangman recoiled, as if hurt, but still didn't release his grip on Adam's shoulder. If anything, it grew tighter. "Oh? What could you possibly want? We must impose the will of His Imperial Highness upon creatures such as this man. Surely you don't intend to suggest that we merely let this villain go?"
"No," Aspreay immediately replied. "But you were muttering some inanity earlier about how murdering him or allowing his escape would both be troublesome, were you not?"
"Was I?"
"You were," Aspreay said, with a degree of anger. Then, more formally, he asked, "What do you say that I kill him?" When Valente didn't respond, he added, "The Emperor's reward will be yours. I only want the satisfaction of murdering the man who stole everything from me."
Valente's eyes became alight with a fiery malice, licking his lips as if anticipating a feast. "Oh, I can certainly deal with those terms. It's only fair that you kill the Pretender brat. And I could use the Orbs after how my last night at the Colosseum went...yes, this would be acceptable!"
This is pathetic, Adam seethed. Am I seriously just going to wait here and let them debate how to kill me?
No. He wasn't going to give them the satisfaction. If they meant for Aspreay to kill him, then the Hangman would need to let go of his shoulder and step back. That would be the best time for Adam to unleash whatever mad attack he could conjure up in his last moments.
Maybe I can try pulling out my tablet to trap Aspreay's soul. It won't save my life, but I'll die happier knowing that he doesn't get to live to gloat about this. Or maybe if I can find a way to start a fire to use Haunted Flames – maybe give the Curse to one of them on purpose.
All hopeless plans, Adam knew. There wouldn't be time to do any of that. If either man saw him reaching for his tablet, they'd murder him on the spot. Using any Talent outside of Lordship would alert the Emperor of his location, and using Lordship would doom Penumbria to a swift and merciless demise by Stained Creatures.
Was this checkmate?
It certainly felt that way when the Hangman let go of Adam's shoulder and took several steps back. "Is this far enough, Aspreay? I don't want to get blood on my suit. Lost my other good one in the Colosseum, you know?"
"A few more steps," Aspreay annoyedly shouted. As Valente acquiesced to his request, the former Lord of Penumbria glanced at Adam and lowered his voice to a whisper. "If you let Vasco die, then I'll be the one haunting you for eternity, brat."
Adam blinked. "The hell are you–"
"Quiet." Aspreay took two steps away – and towards the Hangman. "Get out of my sight."
Suddenly, color returned to Adam's world. It wasn't a full palette yet. Almost every color was dark, an odd shade of blue for most of it, and some dark greens for the rest...but it wasn't monochrome anymore.
"Aspr–" Adam started, then stopped as he recoiled in pain. He instinctively tried to approach Aspreay, one hand extended toward the empty air between the two – then pulled it back as it burned intensely as if he'd just touched...fire? No. Something else. As if a sudden jolt of electricity had just shocked his hand. It was a familiar sensation. Where had he felt that before?
Remembrance came to him in a flash. Adam paled, the blood draining from his face. There's...no way. He wouldn't be able to touch Aspreay right now. No one from the outside could. If you do that, you're going to...
Across from them, the smile was gone from the Hangman's face. When he spoke, it was in a raspier, more malicious tone. "Aspreay, Aspreay Aspreay..." He shook his head. "Oi, oi, oi...are you serious?"
"If you can't understand it still, then you bear the sin of stupidity. You heard my explanation earlier, yes? You also must have heard the brat explaining why he refuses to abandon the city. But I..."
Aspreay lifted his right elbow, dangling his hand before his face as if holding a marionette. "...I am no longer Lord of Penumbria. No attachments. Nothing to hold me back. Nothing to protect."
He clenched his hand into a fist. "Nothing to fear."
"I disagree," Valente said, in that same low, raspy voice. "You should fear me."
"Mayhap so," Aspreay acknowledged.
The Hangman sighed. "Once you utter the words," he warned, "there will be no turning back."
"Aye." Aspreay cracked his neck. "A single street...even against the Emperor's Realm, I should be able to manage it if I narrow it down this much."
The two were about ten steps apart from each other. In this narrow street, the storied buildings and bustling taverns practically felt claustrophobic, as if threatening to envelop them all. A few people walked quickly, not fully cognizant of any of their identities, yet feeling the oncoming storm heavier than the deluge that was presently falling upon them.
For a moment, only the sound of rain punctuated this stage of theirs.
Then Aspreay whipped his arm to the side, as if to signal an invisible army to start its advance, and cried out:
"–REALM–RECONSTRUCTION–!"
​
--
​
Thanks for reading!
submitted by Determination7 to HFY [link] [comments]

2024.05.06 15:33 Leather_Focus_6535 The 113 inmates executed by Virginia in the post Furman era and their crimes (warning, graphic content, please read at your own risk) [part 2, cases 59-113]

This is part 2 of my list for Virginia's post Furman execution roster. As mentioned in part 1's opening paragraph, character count limitations forced me into splitting my Virginia's execution roster into two separate posts. For the link to part 1, please click here.
59. Kevin Cardwell (1991-1998, lethal injection): Cardwell intercepted Anthony Brown, a 15 year old drug carrier, while he was at a bus stop. He lured Brown into his apartment and searched his belongings for any drugs. Brown was then dragged into the woods, shot to death, and stripped of the cocaine strapped to his legs.
60. Mark Sheppard (~1980s-1999, lethal injection): Sheppard and his accomplice Andre Graham were invited by their dealers, 40 year old Richard and 35 year old Rebecca Rosenbluth, over to their home to buy cocaine. However, an argument broke out during the transaction, and Sheppard shot the couple to death. The pair then drove away from the scene with the couple's car and a few undisclosed stolen items. Sheppard had a long history of violence that dated back to when he was 9 years old.
61. Tony Fry (1994-1999, lethal injection): Fry and his partner shot Leeland Jacobs, a 42 year old car salesman, while robbing his Ford Dealership. The pair tied Jacobs to a car they stole while he was still alive, and dragged him to death.
62. George Quesinberry Jr. (1989-1999, lethal injection): Quesinberry shot 63 year old Thomas Haynes while breaking into his office with an accomplice. When Haynes survived the initial shooting, Quesinberry hit him in the head with the gun and fractured his skull. The pair stole a total of $200 in the robbery.
63. David Fisher (~1970s(?)-1999, lethal injection): Fisher was paid $7,000 by an associate to kill 18 year old David Wilkey in retaliation for abandoning a murder scheme. Originally, Wilkey was part of a conspiracy to seduce and marry a young woman in order to kill her for an insurance policy, but backed out when he genuinely fell in love with the would be victim. He was tricked into going on a hunting trip with Fisher and shot to death by him. Fisher had 25 previous criminal convictions and was involved with organized crime. He was in the witness protection program at the time of Wilkey’s murder.
64. Carl Chichester (1991-1999, lethal injection): During a holdup of a Little Caesars, Chichester shot and killed the manager, 30 year old Timothy Rigney, for refusing to open the cash register. He and his two accomplices ran off with a total of $110.
65. Arthur Jenkins III (1991-1999, lethal injection): Jenkins and his teenage brother shot and killed their uncle, 72 year old Floyd, and their uncle's friend, 69 year old Lee Brinklow. They then stole their wallets and sacked Floyd's home for any money and valuables.
66. Eric Payne (~1980s-1999, lethal injection): Payne broke into the residences of two women, 61 year old Ruth Parham and 57 year old Sally Fazio, and raped them. Both women were beaten to death with a hammer, and he took money from their drawers and pocket books. He had a history of drug possessions and exposing himself to women.
67. Ronald Yeatts (1989-1999, lethal injection): Yeatts and an accomplice invaded 70 year old Ruby Dodson's home and stabbed her to death. The pair grabbed her purse during the burglary and divided up the money they found in it.
68. Tommy Strickler (1989-1999, lethal injection): Strickler and his partner kidnapped 19 year old Leann Whitlock from a mall and crushed her head with a 70 pound boulder. Whitlock's car and credit cards were stolen during the attack.
69. Marlon Williams (~1980s(?)-1999, lethal injection): Williams was paid $4,000 to murder 44 year old Helen Bedsole by his dealer, who was also her estranged husband. The couple were in the midst of a bitter divorce at the time, and the dealer wanted to both collect a life insurance policy and prevent Helen from dividing up their assets. He suck into the couple’s home, and shot and killed Helen in the kitchen. Williams had an extensive criminal history, which included cutting the throat of his ex girlfriend’s grandmother, 71 year old Virgina Parker, during a bungled attempt on her life.
70. Everett Mueller (1990-1999, lethal injection): 10 year old Charity Powers was dropped off at a skating ring by her mother. She was supposed to be picked up by her mother's friend, but they didn't show up due to failing asleep in their home. While Powers was waiting outside the ring in vain for her ride, she was abducted by Mueller. He raped the girl, slashed her throat, and dumped the body in a nearby forest.
71. Jason Joseph (1992-1999, lethal injection): While robbing a Subway with an accomplice, Joseph shot and killed one of the clerks, 22 year old Jeffrey Anderson.
72. Thomas Royal Jr. (~1991-1999, lethal injection): Royal and 3 other gang members fatally shot a police officer, 29 year old Kenneth Wallace, while he was sitting in his patrol car. Wallace was killed as part of the gang's campaign to target law enforcement agents. Royal and his fellow gang members were also suspected in the shooting of James Smith Jr. (age unknown), a Vietnam veteran, outside his trailer, but the charges were dropped from the lack of sufficient evidence.
73. Andre Graham (~1993-1999, lethal injection): Graham assisted the above mentioned Mark Sheppard in the Rosenbluth murders. He also shot and killed a waitress, 20 year old Sheryl Stack, and injured a 23 year old man while robbing a restaurant on his own, and is suspected in a total of 10 murders.
74. Douglas Thomas (1990-2000, lethal injection): The parents of Thomas' 14 year old girlfriend, 33 year old James and 33 year Kathy Wiseman, barred her from seeing him. In a bid to continue their relationship, Thomas and his girlfriend shot them to death in their home.
75. Steve Roach (1993-2000, lethal injection): Roach shot and killed 70 year old Mary Hughes on her doorstep and stole her credit card. He was caught on tape trying to use Hughes' stolen cards to pull money out of an ATM machine in North Carolina.
76. Lonnie Weeks Jr. (1993-2000, lethal injection): Weeks was pulled over by a state trooper, 50 year old Jose Cavazos, for speeding while driving a stolen car. In the confrontation that followed, he shot Cavazos dead after climbing out of the car, and fled the scene. He was captured hiding in a nearby motel after an hour long manhunt.
77. Michael Clagett (1994-2000, electric chair): Clagett's girlfriend was fired from her job as a hotel waitress by the management, and the couple decided to retaliate by robing the establishment. They shot and killed the owner Lam Van Son, a 41 year old Vietnamese refugee, a waitress, 31 year old Karen Rounds, two other employees, 31 year old Karen Rounds and 32 year old Wendell Parish Jr., and a customer Abdelaziz Gren, a 34 year old Moroccan immigrant, and took $400 in cash from the register. Van Son’s 3 year old son was sleeping in the backroom during the attack, but the couple left him unharmed.
78. Russel Burket (1993-2000, lethal injection): Burket snuck into the home of 30 year old Katherine Tafelski while her Navy SEALs husband was deployed overseas, and sexually assaulted her. Katherine and her 5 year old daughter Ashley were both beaten to death with a "rusty" crowbar.
79. Derek Barnabei (1993-2000, lethal injection): Barnabei seduced a fellow Old Dominion University student, 17 year old Sarah Wisnosky, into a relationship with him and kidnapped her. She was raped, partially strangled, beaten to death with a hammer, and dumped into a river near campus grounds. Due to him being of Italian ancestry, his death sentence and execution sparked outrage in Italy.
80. Bobby Ramdass (1992-2000, lethal injection): Ramdass was condemned for the shooting death of Mohammed Kayani, a 34 year old Pakistani immigrant working as a clerk, during a convenience store robbery. He also shot dead 19 year old Darrell Ferguson in an alley and wounded a cab driver in other robberies.
81. Christopher Goins (1994-2000, lethal injection): Goins broke into the home of his 14 year old girlfriend (who was 7 months pregnant with his child). He shot and killed her parents, 35 year old James and 29 year old Daphne Jones, and her siblings, 9 year old Nicole and 4 year old David. The girlfriend and her youngest sibling, 21 month old Kenya, were also shot in the attack. Both of them survived, but the unborn child was lost in the shooting.
82. Thomas Akers (1998-2001, lethal injection): Akers and his accomplice were driving with their friend, 24 year old Wesley Smith. When they pulled over on a road to urinate, they pounced on Smith. In the attack, he was strangled with a belt and beaten to death with a baseball bat. They pair then grabbed $200 from his wallet and dumped his body in a creek. While on death row, Akers demanded his execution and made threats against the judge who sentenced him if it wasn't carried out.
83. Christopher Beck (1995-2001, lethal injection): Out of anger for being fired, Beck invaded the house of his former employer, 52 year old William Miller. He waited for him and his two roommates, 54 year old Florence Marks and 34 year old David Kaplan, to return home and shot and stabbed them all to death. Marks was also raped in the attack. Although Beck claimed that he "only" staged a sexual assault on her, a medical examination confirmed that she was abused in that manner. Beck stole several guns, bicycles, and money in the robbery.
84. James Patterson (1987-2002, lethal injection): Patterson held his friend's mother, 56 year old Joyce Aldridge, in her home at knifepoint. Enraged that she only had a few coins in her purse, he raped Aldridge, stabbed her 3 times, and left her to die. When Aldridge managed to crawl to a phone to call her son for help, Patterson returned and stabbed her 14 more times. Although Aldridge's murder was left unsolved for years, Patterson was later imprisoned for raping an 18 year old girl, and DNA found at the murder was traced to his samples filed in the inmate database in 2000.
85. Daniel Zirkle (1999-2002, lethal injection): Zirkle's girlfriend broke off their relationship due to his violent behavior and filed protective orders against him. He was arrested for violating them and sentenced to a few months in jail. After his release, Zirkle went to his ex girlfriend's home without her permission to visit their daughter, 4 year old Christina. However, the ex girlfriend's other daughter, 14 year old Jessica Shifflett, blocked him from coming inside. He stabbed her to death and kidnapped Christina. He then drove Christina to the George Washington National Forest, slit her throat, and stabbed himself in a failed suicide attempt.
86. Walter Mickens Jr. (~1974-2002, lethal injection): Mickens ambushed and sodomized 17 year old Timothy Hall, and stabbed him 143 times. He stripped the boy of nearly all of his clothing, and left him to die in an abandoned apartment. A long time sexual predator and career criminal, Mickens had several robbery and sodomy convictions dating back to the 70s. One of his previous incidents involved breaking into an elementary school, and coercing a teacher of her purse by threatening the life of a 7 year old student. He also had a conviction for sexually assaulting a cellmate.
87. Aimal Kasi (1993-2002, lethal injection): In his efforts to fight against American foreign policy regarding Islamic nations, Kasi attacked the Langley CIA headquarters with a Type 56 assault rifle. He shot dead 2 CIA employees, 66 year old Lansing Bennett and 28 year old Frank Darling, and wounded 3 others. Kasi then fled to Afghanistan, but was lured into his native Pakistan to be captured in a joint FBI-CIA led operation, and extradited back to the United States to face trial.
88. Earl Bramblett (~1970s(?)-2003, electric chair): Bramblett had molested 11 year old Winter Hodges and feared that her parents, 41 year old William and 37 year old Teresa, were planning on reporting him to the police. In an attempt to prevent that from happening, he attacked the family in their home. Teresa was strangled, while William, Winter, and another daughter, 3 year old Anah, were shot dead. Bramblett then set the house on fire to destroy any evidence of the murders. He had several abuse allegations and was also suspected in the 1977 disappearances of two 14 year old girls, Tammy Akers and Angela Rader, that worked for him, but was never charged for any of them.
89. Bobby Swisher (1997-2003, lethal injection): Swisher abducted 22 year old Dawn Snyder from her flower shop at knife point and raped her. He slashed Snyder's throat and dumped her into a nearby river. Despite managing to swim back to shore, Snyder succumbed to her injuries on the river bank.
90. Brian Cherrix (1994-2004, lethal injection): Cherrix ambushed 23 year old Tessa Van Hart while she was trying to deliver a pizza. He sodomized and shot Van Hart twice in the head, and left the body in her car. The crime was left unsolved until Cherrix was arrested for shooting and wounded his brother two years later. In an attempt to secure leniency, Cherrix disclosed some details of Van Hart's murder, but tried pinning it on a deceased cousin. He only confessed when investigators learned that the cousin couldn't have possibly done it.
91. Dennis Orbe (1998-2004, lethal injection): Orbe fatally shot Richard Burnett, a 39 year old clerk, while robbing a grocery store, and seized $90 from the register.
92. Mark Bailey (1998-2004, lethal injection): Bailey shot and killed his wife, 22 year old Katherine, and their 2 year old son, Nathan, while they were laying in bed. He claimed to investigators that the murders were done out of anger for Katherine's alleged infidelity.
93. James Hudson (2002-2004, lethal injection): In a feud over a driveway, Hudson broke into the home of the Cole family (consisting of brothers, 64 year old Thomas and 56 year old Walter, and Thomas' wife, 64 year old Patsy) to confront them with a shotgun. He shot all three of the Coles dead and drove away from the scene. Hudson was captured after nearly a day long manhunt.
94. James Reid (1996-2004, lethal injection): Reid stabbed 87 year old Annie Lester 22 times with a pair of scissors, beat her with a can of milk, and strangled her with the cord of a heating pad. He left the body in her bedroom and fled her house. Although the evidence for his guilt was overwhelming (which included the blood on his clothes matched Lester's DNA, several of his fingerprints were discovered on the murder weapons, samples of his saliva were found on a cigarette butt in her house, and his handwriting was identical to the writing of a death threat sent to Lester), Reid's death sentence and execution was contested on the grounds of him allegedly having brain damage from a car accident, seizures, and alcoholism. The motivations behind Lester's murder remain unknown, but prosecutors suspected that it might have been part of a bungled robbery or rape attempt.
95. Dexter Vinson (1997-2006, lethal injection): Vinson attacked his ex girlfriend, 25 year old Angela Felton, near her home. Felton tried to escape by driving away, but he rammed her car with his, and forced her inside it. She was then dragged into a vacant house, raped, beaten, and stabbed in the face, neck, arms, buttocks, stomach, and vagina. The body was left in the house as Vinson fled the scene.
96. Brandon Hedrick (1997-2006, electric chair): Hendrick kidnapped a sex worker, 23 year old Lisa Crider, while he was cruising for prostitutes. Initially, Crider and Hendrick had engaged in paid consensual relations, but the situation turned violent when he robbed her of $50 at gunpoint. She was then raped, shot in the face, and dumped into a river.
97. Michael Lenz (~1990s-2006, lethal injection): While serving 29 years for a burglary and weapons possession conviction, Lenz stabbed a fellow inmate, 41 year old Brent Parker, to death. Both were part of a Nordic Neopaganism sect, and the killing was committed over Parker allegedly not expressing enough devotion to their deities. Parker was serving a life sentence for killing a friend during a drunken rage at the time of his own murder.
98. John Schmitt (1999-2006, lethal injection): During a holdup of a bank, Schmitt shot and killed the guard, 39 year old Shelton Dunning, and took $35,000 from the vaults.
99. Kevin Green (1998-2008, lethal injection): Green and his teenage nephew stormed a convenience store, and forced the owners, 68 year old Lawrence Vaughan and his wife, 53 year old Patricia, to hand over $9,000 in cash. They then shot the couple, killing Patricia and wounding Lawrence.
100. Robert Yarbrough (1997-2008, lethal injection): Yarbrough and his accomplice tied up 77 year old Cyril Hamby while robbing his grocery store. They subjected Hamby to beatings and nearly decapitated him with a pocket knife. The pair then stole beer, wine, cigarettes, and an undisclosed amount of money.
101. Kent Jackson (2000-2008, lethal injection): Jackson and an accomplice attacked 79 year old Beulah Kaiser in her apartment, and raped her. She was stabbed several times in the neck, beaten, and her cane was shoved down her throat after she was anally penetrated with it. A cigarette butt found at the crime scene was traced to the pair.
102. Christopher Emmett (2001-2008, lethal injection): Emmett was staying at a motel room with a coworker, 43 year old John Langley, while they were working on an out of town roofing job. The pair played cards until Langley went to bed. As he slept, Emmett bludgeoned him to death with a lamp, and stole $100 from his wallet. He used the stolen money to buy crack cocaine.
103. Edward Bell (~1990s-2008, lethal injection): While running away from officers trying to arrest him for a parole violation, Bell shot and killed one of his pursers, 32 year old Sergeant Ricky Timbrook. Bell had a long criminal record, which included several felony and misdemeanor convictions of assault, burglary, carrying conceal weapons, and was found to have stolen a car during the investigations of Timbrook's murder.
104. John Muhammad (~1999-2008, lethal injection): The so called “D.C. Sniper”, Muhammad shot and killed 17 random people between the ages of 21-76 with the help of a teenage accomplice in mostly sniper attacks. The killings took place in the national capital, hence the epithet, and across several states. Due to his affiliation with the Nation of Islam and the accomplice’s accounts of planning terrorist attacks and training camps, Muhammad’s murder spree are often considered to be acts of Islamic extremism in the media. However, experts believe that his real intentions was to kill his estranged wife using the sniper attacks as a mask. Muhammad had a long history of domestic violence, and had abducted his children from his estranged wife on numerous occasions. His accomplice had also accused him of sexual abuse a few years after his execution.
105. Larry Elliott (2001-2008, electric chair): Elliott, a former military counterintelligence agent, was in an online "sugar daddy" relationship with a much younger woman. At the woman's request, Elliott sent her over $450,000, which she used to pay for a home, credit card, car, breast enhancement surgery, and enrolling her children in a private school. The woman was also involved with a bitter custody dispute with her children's father, 30 year old Robert Finch. In an attempt to win the woman's devotion, Elliott shot and killed Finch in his home, and beat Finch's girlfriend, 25 year old Dana Thrall, to death with the butt of his gun.
106. Paul Powell (1999-2010, electric chair): Angry that his friend, 16 year old Stacie Reed, was in an interracial relationship, Powell made an attempt to rape her in her home. When she fought back, Powell stabbed her to death. He also tied up Stacie's 14 year old sister to be raped, stabbed, and strangled, and left the girl to die in the family's basement. The sister managed to survive with the timely arrival of their stepfather, who called the police and the paramedics to the scene. On the mistaken belief that the death penalty was off the table, Powell sent letters flaunting the lewd details of the murder to taunt the prosecutors, judge, and the victims’ family.
107. Darick Walker (~1996-2010, lethal injection): In 1996, Walker walked up to the door of 36 year old Stanley Beale, and angrily accused him of showing up at his home despite the fact that they were complete strangers. He then shot Beale dead in front of his children and girlfriend, and ran away from the scene. A year later, Walker forced himself into an apartment, and shot 34 year old Clarence Threat seven times while he was laying in bed with his girlfriend. Walker had a history of violence and frequently stole from his friends and family. In one reported incident, he kicked the stomach of a pregnant woman in an act of rage.
108. Teresa Lewis (2002-2010, lethal injection): Lewis conspired with two men that she had a sexual relationship with to kill her husband, 51 year old Julian, and her stepson, 25 year old Charles. Charles was about to be deployed to participate in the then upcoming invasion of Iraq, which gave him a $250,000 life insurance policy that Lewis wanted to collect from both him and his father. She let her accomplices inside their trailer, and shot Julian and Charles while they were sleeping. Charles was killed immediately, while Julian, who witnessed Lewis pay the attackers, survived long enough to notify the responders of his wife's involvement.
109. Jerry Jackson (2001-2011, lethal injection): Jackson broke into the apartment of 88 year old Ruth Phillips, and woke her up while he was rummaging through her room. Despite Phillips' pleas for her life, Jackson raped her and suffocated her to death with a pillow. He stole her car and a total of $60 in the break in, and spent the stolen money on marijuana.
110. Robert Gleason (2007+(?)-2013, electric chair): In 2007, Gleason shot and killed 54 year old Michael Jamerson, in order to prevent him from testifying about his drug trafficking activities, and was given a life sentence for the murder. While incarcerated, he tied up and strangled his cellmate, 63 year old Harvey Watson (who serving a life sentence for a mass shooting). Prison officials then transferred him to a high security prison to await trial for Watson’s murder, but he managed to strangle another inmate, 26 year old Aaron Cooper (who was serving 34 years for robbery), to death with the wire that separated their cages. Gleason demanded the death penalty, which was given to him by the courts. He also claimed that he committed several other killings before Jamerson, but his additional confessions currently remain unverifiable.
111. Alfredo Prieto (~1984-2015, lethal injection): Prieto was both a serial killer of young women and a member of the Pomona Northside street gang. His sexual crimes involved the abductions, rapes, and shooting deaths of at least 4 females, 24 year old Tina Jefferson, 22 year old Rachael Raver, 19 year old Stacey Siegrist, and 15 year old Yvette Woodruff. Raver and Siegrist’s partners, 22 year old Warren Fulton III and 21 year old Anthony Gianuzzi, were also murdered during their kidnappings. The other known victims, 27 year old Manuel Sermeno, and couple, 71 year old Lula and 65 year old Herbert Farley, were shot dead during robberies. In the home invasion that killed Woodruff, Prieto and his fellow gang members also abducted her 17 year old friend and the friend’s 33 year old mother. The mother and daughter pair were gang-raped, shot and stabbed together, but they managed to escape with their lives. Prieto was sentenced to death in both California and Virginia, but stayed in California’s San Quentin until his death warrant was signed in Virginia. He had also shot and injured 3 gang members over his suspicions of them sleeping with his wife, but was lightly sentenced due to the victims' gang affiliations.
112. Ricky Gray (~2005-2017, lethal injection): Gray and his similarly aged nephew murdered at least 9 people, which composed of a lone woman, 35 year old Treva Gray, and two entire families, the Harveys (consisting of parents, 49 year old Bryan and 39 year old Kathryn, and their daughters, 9 year old Stella and 4 year old Ruby), and the Baskerville-Tuckers (consisting of 21 year old Ashley, her 46 year old mother Mary, and Mary’s 55 year old husband Percyell) in a week long burglary spree. Almost all of the victims were tied up and gagged in their homes, and beaten to death with hammers or had their throats slit. Before she was killed by them with her parents, victim Ashley Baskerville had assisted Gray and his nephew in several of their robberies. The pair stole any items and valuables they could carry, and were reported to have taken money, computers, television sets, wedding rings, and even cookies. They were also linked to several non fatal assaults, one of which involved a 26 year old man being beaten into a coma.
113. William Morva (~2005-2017, lethal injection): Morva, a son of Hungarian immigrants, and an accomplice were arrested while trying rob a grocery store at gunpoint. While awaiting trial, he badly sprained his ankle and wrist in prison, and was transferred to the Montgomery Regional Hospital for treatment. He overpowered a deputy guarding him with a metal toilet-paper container, stole his gun, fatally shot Derrick McFarland, a 25 year old hospital security guard, and escaped. Morva then fled to Virginia Tech’s campus, and shot and killed 40 year old Eric Sutphin, one of the police officers chasing him.
submitted by Leather_Focus_6535 to TrueCrimeDiscussion [link] [comments]

2024.05.06 12:56 prejackpot [PI] Our protagonist was born on their family's large spaceship. This ship and their family and crew, on whom the long journey has taken a great mental toll, are all they know. Now they are coming of age while the obsolete hulk limps toward a port for the first time in decades.

I started responding to this prompt back when it was first posted, and by the time I was done it was a week and 4,500 words later. Then I let it just sit around. Finally sharing it now.
When I went to talk to Cousin Kieran before dinner, he was hanging with his head pointed to the room hatch, fixing a chip with one of the handheld screens I wasn’t allowed to use yet.
“Hey squirt,” he said. “Don’t you have filters to be scrubbing?”
“I finished them,” I said with a shrug, flipping over to match him. Cousin Kieran made a big show of looking at his watch. He was still just a kid, but he was close enough to being an adult that sometimes he acted like one already. “I did it fast,” I added. “I usually don’t because then Aunt Moira will just find other chores for me.”
He nodded. “Smart,” he said, and I felt a little bigger. “So what brings you to my office?”
“I wanted to ask you-” I hesitated. “What’s going on?”
He thought about it, and I wondered if he’d pretend not to know what I meant. The adults had been acting weird lately, whispering to each other and spending more time than usual locked in the bridge. Last time it had been like this had been when the black fungus got into the vents, and Uncle Will got sick. I could still remember the smell, and I was so afraid of something like that happening again it made my stomach hurt. I had to know.
“Come on,” I pushed. “You’re not an Uncle yet, you’ve got to tell me.”
“Fine,” Cousin Kieran decided. “But don’t tell anyone. Not even Mindy. You’ve got to promise, Zora.”
“I promise,” I tapped my fingers together three times, the way you do when you really mean something.
Cousin Kieran peeked out the hatch, making sure there was nobody else around. He lowered his voice anyway. “Grandmaman saw something on the long-range sensors,” he whispered. “She thinks it’s aliens.”
I kept my promise. I didn’t even tell Cousin Mindy when we curled up in our pod at night. She could tell I had a secret, and was so mad I wouldn’t share it that she used all the shower hot water for two days in a row.
Three days later, Aunt Moira called together all the cousins in the family room. The smaller ones, especially the babies who still needed an adult with them, just seemed excited. The older ones looked a little nervous and confused, and I tried to look confused too. Cousin Kieran shot me a wink, which made Cousin Mindy kick me.
“Children,” Aunt Moira began, after we held hands and said the Prayer for Earth. “There is an alien city around the star we’re approaching, and your elders have decided that we are going to dock there and trade for supplies.”
Cousin Frankie, one of the littles, burst into loud sobs even before Aunt Moira finished. “They’re going to eat us!” he wailed.
“Hush,” Aunt Moira glared at him, and Uncle Dean pulled him onto his lap and tried to comfort him.
“They aren’t going to eat anyone. They aren’t those kind of aliens.”
“They certainly are those kind of aliens,” Aunt Moira said sharply. “But your elders will keep you safe. We aren’t as helpless as our ancestors.”
“What will we trade with them?” asked Cousin Mindy nervously, and I knew she was worried about the flowers she grew in the greenhouse.
“We should give them Cousin Frankie,” Cousin Jordan said, which just made him wail louder.
There were more chores than ever in the following weeks, and the Aunts and Uncles were short-tempered with everyone, even each other. Aunt Moira said she wanted our home to look spotless, so that when the aliens came aboard to inspect it they’d see that humans were nothing to be trifled with. I wondered if Cousin Kieran had told her about how it didn’t take me that long to scrub the filters, since I got more extra chores than anyone. I couldn’t even sleep well. Cousin Mindy whimpered in the night, afraid of the aliens and sad about her flowers being put up for trade.
“You weren’t even born the last time we docked,” Cousin Kieran told me, even though he had only been a baby himself then. “We’re going to get so many new things. New scanners, new chips, maybe even new toys for the littles. Plus, most of the adults will go to the alien city. Just think of having the whole ship to ourselves.”
I did try and think about it. It felt wrong. “We won’t go with them?”
For a second, I wondered if Cousin Kieran was also afraid of the aliens. Then he let out a quick laugh and pushed off the wall. “I don’t want to have to put on all that protective gear just to breathe their weird air. Come on, you got to enjoy still being a kid!”
“Uncle Dean,” I asked the following day. “Can we trade the aliens for new filters?”
Uncle Dean lifted his welding mask. “We might be able to. Why?”
“Why didn’t you tell us sooner?” Aunt Moira snapped at me, when Uncle Dean took me to her. I showed her how the mesh on the filters was wearing thin toward the middle.
“I was rotating them the way Uncle Will showed me-” I started, and Uncle Dean raised his hand.
“She’s been taking care of it,” he cut in. “And what would we have done differently, hmm?”
I held my breath. “Fine,” Aunt Moira nodded, and I let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you for telling us, Zora.”
When the alien scanners came aboard, everyone gathered in the family room to wait until they were done. I couldn’t remember seeing everyone all together like that since Uncle Will’s funeral. I wondered if even Grandmaman would come out of the bridge and join us. Aunt Moira left the bridge hatch open so the alien scanners could get in, but she shooed me away before I could get a peek.
The scanners looked like Earth animals from the books, the kind with too many arms and legs. Uncle Arthur told us they were checking to make sure we didn’t have any weapons, or germs that could make the aliens sick.
They took hours. Aunt Lisa started singing songs to keep the little cousins from getting too bored and frustrated, and by the end everyone else had joined in, even Cousin Jordan who always insisted she was too big for anything like that. Aunt Moira put Cousin Frankie on her shoulders and led everyone in a march around the family room, singing a song I hadn’t heard since I was a baby.
Let the aliens try and eat us, I found myself thinking bravely all of a sudden. We were a family, and we loved each other, and that would get us through anything.
Two more days of deceleration, and we were finally ready to dock at the alien city. It took all the cousins pleading together to get Aunt Moira to let us see what it looked like on her screen. I was expecting something terrifying (maybe like the black fungus but huge), but it looked – childish. It was so colorful and full of round shapes, like something out of the baby books. Weird, maybe, but not scary.
I hoped I’d get to help the adults suit up, but Uncle Dean asked Cousin Mindy and me to help keep an eye on the littles. “Aunt Lisa will have her hands full with the babies,” he said. “And your Aunt Gemma-” We all knew Aunt Gemma wouldn’t leave her engine room if she could help it. “So we need the bigger cousins to watch the little ones, so we know they’re safe.”
When it was time for the adults to leave, Cousin Mindy and I took a few of the bigger littles into the ducts to watch them go. They were big enough to start learning how to sneak around, we decided.
The adults were all suited up already by the time we peeked through the vent, and I couldn’t tell who was who. They opened the airlock door – I had never seen it open before, and watching it open was scary even though I knew there was a docking tube attached – and then they went through one by one.
The last one turned just before going through and looked right at the vent, and I was sure that one was Uncle Dean. Then he went through too, and closed the airlock from the other side.
The ship felt very empty.
Cousin Mindy took the littles to the greenhouse to play. I went alone to the main corridor that ran all the way along the ship, from the hatch to the engine room all the way up to the family room. I moved slowly, in case Aunt Gemma decided to come out and see what the noise was. When I was right by the engine room hatch, I grabbed one of the handholds, braced my feet against the wall, and pushed.
We weren’t supposed to fly down the corridor like that. Everyone did it when they were little, and everyone got in trouble for it. It was dangerous, because if you aimed wrong you’d slam into the wall and get hurt. But it was fun.
The doors to the other rooms flew by fast, and the air felt cool against my face, and it felt so good. I grabbed some handholds to slow myself down as I got closer to the other end. I was still going too fast, so I held onto the last one a little longer and ended up swinging myself around and slamming my butt against the family room hatch with a thud. I held my breath, but nobody came out to scold me.
So I turned, tucked my legs, and flew back. And that time I went even faster, and landed against the other side in perfect silence.
Cousin Kieran came and found me after my third fly. “You’re gonna get in trouble,” he teased me, and I stuck my tongue out at him.
“Race you,” I offered.
We counted down from four, then both pushed off. He was taller than me and got a better launch, and I thought I was going to lose. Then he spun his arms to rotate and gloat, but I saw him lose control and flail out to grab a handhold too early, and I was able to barely sail past him for another perfect landing.
“Okay that one was practice,” he said. “Again, for real?”
We braced ourselves and counted down. I got a strong launch with my arms and legs, my fastest one yet. Cousin Kieran’s launch was sloppy, and we were too close together, I could tell, and we collided halfway down the corridor and bounced off each other. I reached out and grabbed a handhold and pulled myself steady just as Cousin Kieran hit the opposite wall with his shoulder.
He grinned and launched himself toward me. “You okay, squirt?” he asked, like it was me and not him who got banged up. He grabbed the same handhold as me. “This is for littles anyway. What else do you want to do? We’ve got the whole ship to ourselves.”
I frowned. I didn’t like how he was being a sore loser, and how close he suddenly was getting too me. “I should see if Cousin Mindy needs help with the littles,” I said, and pushed off for the far wall.
The adults came back near evening, and all the bigger cousins got to help stow away the pallets they brought with them. Cousin Mindy and I pushed new boxes of growth medium to the greenhouse; they looked similar to the boxes we already had, but the colors on them were so vivid and bright I realized ours must have been old – older than I was. Even Aunt Gemma came out, and she was more excited about the tools Aunt Moira gave her than I’d ever seen her get about anything.
We all gathered for dinner – the second time in one week of the whole family being together, even Aunt Gemma. When we were done, Aunt Moira stood up. I thought she was going to give us a speech, but instead she handed out little blue cubes to each of the Cousins.
“Your elders are very proud of you all,” she said. “Eat it,” she added. “Go ahead.”
Cousin Kieran didn’t hesitate. He popped his blue cube into his mouth, and tossed his head back in pleasure. I took a suspicious bite of mine. It was sweet, sweeter than anything I’d ever tasted.
“Aunt Moira, is this alien food?” Cousin Mindy asked. Cousin Frankie started to wail. Aunt Lisa popped his blue square into his mouth, and his crying stopped right away as his eyes got big. Everyone laughed.
I took another small bite of mine. “Cousin Zora, don’t you like it?” asked Cousin Jordan, finishing hers with a chomp. It made my mouth sticky, so I couldn’t answer. I wanted to make it last.
Uncle Dean called me over after dinner. He was standing with Aunt Moira, which made me nervous. Was I in trouble for flying down the corridor? Or for peeking out at the adults while they left the ship?
Uncle Dean and Aunt Moira exchanged looks, and I put my hands behind my back politely and waited. Finally, Aunt Moira spoke. “Zora, how would you like to come with us tomorrow?”
“Come with you?” I repeated, confused. “To the alien city?”
“That’s right,” Uncle Dean said. “We still need new filters, and, well, you know them better than anyone.”
“But I’m not an adult,” I said, as if they had forgotten, and immediately felt silly saying it. Part of me knew it would be wrong to seem too eager to go, but my face couldn’t hide it.
“You’ll have to be on your best behavior,” Aunt Moira said. “And obey your elders without question. This is a big responsibility, and there is danger. But your uncle is right – you have been doing a very good job taking care of the life support systems, and this would help your family.”
“I hope you get eaten,” Cousin Mindy said to me later in our sleeping pod. She snuggled me close. “I hope the aliens eat you down to your bones.”
Uncle Dean and Uncle Arthur helped me suit up the next day. The smallest suit they could find was still big on me, and they wrapped loops of tape around my wrists and ankles to get it airtight. They couldn’t do that with the helmet, so I wore the mask and breather I used for depressurization drills, and they wrapped a thermal blanket around my head like a hood.
“You’re going to want to look around,” Aunt Moira told me before we left. “Don’t.”
My breathing felt extra loud inside my mask as we left the airlock, and I worried I’d hyperventilate right there in the docking tube. And then we were through it.
I looked up, and immediately understood why Aunt Moira had told me not to. The walls were too far away, the lights were too bright, there were too many colors, and they had warned me about spin gravity, but it felt so heavy, like it was all going to crush me, and-
“Breathe, Zora, breathe,” I heard Uncle Arthur’s voice in my ear, and saw his eyes through the faceplate of his helmet. “One step at a time. You’re a human. You can do this.”
I was a human. I remembered how the aliens had taken Earth from us and how we survived anyway, and our ancestors must have felt gravity like this every day on Earth, all the time. I took a deep breath. I took a step.
I kept my head down as I followed my family through the docks. One foot in front of the other. I could hear the noises, more voices than I ever heard before making unfamiliar sounds, and the lack of ship noises felt just as loud. I caught glimpses of the aliens and quickly looked away. They were taller than we were, with glossy, goggly eyes.
Uncle Arthur and Aunt Jilian split off to go trade for something else, and I followed Uncle Dean and Aunt Moira through a hatch into a smaller room. The walls were closer in here, and I felt a little safer.
“We’d like to see the filters we discussed,” I heard Aunt Moira say. I looked up. She was talking to an alien; there was an alien in the room with us!
The alien made alien noises. “Certainly; let me bring you the samples,” came from somewhere lower down than where its head was. A translation machine!
Another alien brought in a palette. It was covered in filter tiles: some of them looked similar to the ones I knew, others had completely different patterns of meshes and wires on them. That alien made some more noises. “Are you the life-support engineer?” the alien’s translation machine asked.
I did my best to stand tall. “I am,” I said.
“Here, see if any of these work for you,” the alien said through its translation machine, lifting two filter tile samples toward me. I took them in my suit gloves and held them up to my mask, trying to imagine scrubbing them. “This one has resistant coating,” the alien added, gesturing a limb.
I shook my head. “The coating doesn’t last, and the residue recirculates,” I told it. Uncle Will had taught me that. Suddenly I worried; did the aliens not know that? I shot a quick look at Aunt Moira, but she didn’t seem upset at me, as far as I could tell under her helmet anyway. “Rhodium alloy works best,” I added, gaining confidence.
The alien removed the resistant-coating one, and offered me another two more. The wires on one had a jagged pattern to them, and I could see how they’d be easier to scrape.
As I looked at the tiles, the alien made alien sounds at the first alien. Then the translator came to life again. “God, is that a child?”
I looked up just the first alien made a sharp gesture, and the second alien touched its translator machine. It said something else in alien, and this time the machine didn’t translate it.
“This one,” I held up the jagged-wire pattern one quickly, not sure if I should be addressing the aliens or Aunt Moira. “We can use these.”
“How much are they?” Aunt Moira asked the aliens.
“Seven rhhbt each,” the first alien’s translation machine said; I couldn’t understand the middle word.
Uncle Dean knelt down next to me. “How many do we need?” he asked quietly.
I thought about it. “Ninety would be good, but even thirty would help,” I told him.
He stood up and conferred with Aunt Moira. Then she spoke to the aliens again. “We’ll take sixty at five each.”
I don’t know if the aliens’ translation machine could translate her tone, or if it didn’t need a translation at all. They seemed to exchange glances themselves, and then the first one nodded. “Done.”
“Your engineer should verify the whole batch,” the second alien added.
I followed the alien into another room, this one a little bigger. It took crates and started loading them onto a palette.
“My name is Adis,” the alien said as it worked. “What’s your name?”
“Zora,” I said, not sure if I should be talking to an alien like this at all.
“Zora,” it repeated; once in its own voice, and again when the translation machine said it. “The way you verify the batch is, you choose a few at random and make sure they’re right.”
“I know,” I snapped, even though I hadn’t really known. I did open one of the crates and saw that it had five filters just like the one I had looked at.
“Zora,” the alien repeated, that same echo. It bent over to look at the crate with me, and I realized how close I was to its mouth. “Are you okay? I mean, do you need help?”
Help. The aliens had promised to help us, everyone knew, and then they destroyed us. They ate us. I backed away and grabbed the palette, pulling it with me, and then Aunt Moira was there getting between me and the alien.
I was still shaking when we got back to the ship. Uncle Arthur helped get the tape off my gloves, and then Cousin Mindy tackled me in a hug. “Cousin Zora!” she exclaimed. “Or is it Aunt Zora, now that you’ve seen the aliens?”
Uncle Dean got the thermal blanket off my head and ruffled my hair. “Not quite yet.”
As scary as the alien had been, I was excited to get my new filters back to the life-support area. I had talked about it with Aunt Moira and Uncle Dean. We wouldn’t use them all at once; I’d only replace the worst ones. I knew exactly where to start. There was one in the far corner I could never get all the way clean, no matter how hard I scrubbed. I unscrewed it, and installed the new one. It gleamed.
Maybe Aunt Moira would let me throw the old one into the engine next time we burned.
I stowed the rest of the crates. The one I had opened with the alien was loose, and I checked it to make sure the new filters were still all there. There were five filters in there – and something else.
“What’s wrong?” Cousin Mindy asked as we were getting ready for bed. Before I could decide whether to answer, Aunt Lisa opened our hatch.
“Cousin Zora,” she said gently. “Aunt Moira would like to see you in the family room.”
How did she know? I pulled myself along to the family room slowly, trying to decide what to say. Aunt Lisa didn’t come with me.
Aunt Moira was waiting there alone. “Zora,” she said. “Come. Your Grandmaman would like to speak with you.”
I dressed carefully in the white smock Aunt Moira laid out for me, and fixed the white mask over my face. I had been much smaller last time I was taken in to see her, but I still remembered how to get ready. Grandmaman was very old, and we had to make sure not to get her sick.
Aunt Moira put on her own smock and mask, and then unlocked the hatch to the bridge.
The bridge had the only windows on the ship, and they were filled with the view of the alien city. The colors and lights and curves were so bright, so much brighter than they had been on Aunt Moira’s screen and I knew I was only seeing a sliver of the whole thing. Under the windows, the screens and consoles of the bridge itself seemed dim. And under those – my breath caught again.
“Grandmaman,” I whispered, and ducked my head. It felt scary to look right at her, like it had been scary to look at the aliens. Her skin was so wrinkled, and so many tubes and cords ran from right inside her body into the walls of the bridge.
“Hello, Zora, don’t be afraid,” Grandmaman said. She opened and closed her hand. Her voice wheezed. “I know I’m not a lovely sight.”
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I said nothing.
“So you went out to the station, did you?” she said. Her voice wheezed. “Got us a new model of filters, well done. And now, I’m sure, you have some questions.”
“Thank you, Grandmaman,” I said.
“I really don’t think this is necessary, Grandmaman,” Aunt Moira said behind me.
“She’s a smart girl, she has eyes,” Grandmaman snapped. “She’ll learn soon enough anyway. And you’re not going to be around forever, Moira. Zora’s going to need to lead this family one day, won’t you, dear?”
“Grandmaman, I-” I started, and stopped. My throat was dry and my head was swimming, and I had to stop myself from staring up out the window at the alien city.
“Come, dear, no need to pretend,” she demanded. “What did you notice about the aliens?”
“They-” I licked my lips and cleared my throat. I still wasn’t sure if I should say it. “They look a little like humans?”
There was a wheezing sound. Grandmaman was laughing, I realized. “They look a little like humans,” she repeated. “Where do you think the aliens came from, dear?”
I tried turning my head to look for Aunt Moira, but she was directly behind me. “From space, Grandmaman?”
Grandmaman lifted one wrinkled hand and slowly tapped her chest. “They came from in here, Zora. From our pride. Some humans decided they wanted to change themselves. They wouldn’t stop. They had to change everyone, until they weren’t human anymore. They became aliens. Your ancestors had to escape,” she continued, and I was suddenly certain that Grandmaman herself was one of those ancestors.
I had a thousand questions, but the only one that came out was “Does everyone know?”
“Your elders know,” Aunt Moira answered. “You’d have learned when you came of age.”
“Am I coming of age now?”
“No,” Aunt Moira said curtly. “But your Grandmaman thought you should know anyway, so that you understand why you shouldn’t tell your cousins everything you saw today.”
“It can be confusing for the little ones,” Grandmaman added. “But not to you. You’re a smart one. You understand what we need to do to keep our human family safe.”
Aunt Moira led me out of the bridge, and helped me take off the smock. She didn’t say anything, just gave me a more grown-up look than she ever had. I said goodnight, and headed out of the family room.
I floated down the corridor toward my pod. I rested my hand on the hatch – and then I kept going. Down two more hatches, across the wall into the life-support area. My area.
The alien – the changed human, Adis – had hidden something for me in the open crate. It was a screen, smaller than the scanner Cousin Kieran used. When I had first found it I had only tapped it a few times, seeing the unfamiliar characters and the too-familiar pictures scrolling by before shoving it back in the box. I took it out again, now and looked closer. The letters weren’t the same ones our books were written in, but I recognized them from different parts of the ship. I touched some, and the screen changed. I touched another one, and it changed again. Finally, I saw a familiar picture – it looked like the drawings of Earth in our books.
Grandmaman said I’d be in charge one day, like Aunt Moira was. Didn’t that mean I had to know about things, and not just what the adults thought I should know? I could use this to help my family, I told myself.
Slowly, I started to sound out the letters.
submitted by prejackpot to WritingPrompts [link] [comments]

2024.05.06 10:54 meankitanand Got scammed by a cricket website after being asked to write articles. Can anyone help?

I am a cricket content writer based in Delhi. I found an internship listed on Internshala for the role of a cricket content writer and found the owner on LinkedIn. I connected with him and asked him for details regarding the work. The owner sent me his contact number and asked me to communicate on WhatsApp. On WhatsApp, he asked me about my experience and sample articles. I have a decent amount of experience working in the industry, so I sent him the link for the articles that I have written. He told me that he would assign 2-3 articles daily and pay 12K per month for the work. I accepted the offer as I was in dire need of money. This conversation happened on December 23.
On December 24, he sent me the login details to his website and assigned three articles for the next day. As December 25 was Christmas, I told him that I'd be able to start the work on December 26.
I started writing for the website on December 27. I wrote 2-3 articles almost daily. In between this, he sent me an email asking for my contact details as he had lost them.
On February 6, I asked him to release the payment for the articles I wrote in December, January, and February. He mentioned that the payment would be made within 2-3 days via UPI, and I sent him my UPI ID.
On February 13, I asked him about the payment status, to which he replied the payment would be done by February 15.
On February 19, I told him that I was going through some personal issues and requested to clear the dues. I stopped writing on February 15. He said that there have been some issues with the internal payment system and sponsorships. He asked me to wait for a week and assured me that the payment would be done.
On March 1, he said there was a casualty in his home, and he was not at home. For the next few days, I kept asking for the payment but didn't get a reply.
On March 15, I saw that my account was deactivated, and all the articles that I wrote were deleted. I confronted him, and he said that the articles were assigned to the admin section. This was done to secure the dashboard, as the website will be out of operation for the next few days.
On March 27, I called his number from my uncle's phone, and he picked me up for the first time. He never picked up my call. He told my uncle that he would be releasing 5K within a week.
On April 7, he asked me to wait till the 20th, and the payment will be made.
On April 20, he said to wait a week more and that the payment would be made.
I have not received any update from his side since April 20.
Between these dates, he updated the website's logo. Obviously, this was done by a graphics designer. I don't know if that guy received payment for the work.
The articles are published on his website. He is active on all social media platforms, and the articles are shared across them.
The most funny part is that he has made a hiring post on Internshala for content writers. He is offering INR 5K plus incentives for this role and has promised that the writer will be paid a performance-linked incentive as well.
His company is registered with the MCA. He and his brother are the directors of the firm. I have the company's Certificate of Incorporation and MOA, which were filed with the MCA.
Is there any way to get my money from this person? Also, can he be stopped from running this website so that writers can be saved from this scam?
submitted by meankitanand to indianwriters [link] [comments]

2024.05.06 10:53 meankitanand Got scammed by a cricket website after being asked to write articles. Can anyone help?

I am a cricket content writer based in Delhi. I found an internship listed on Internshala for the role of a cricket content writer and found the owner on LinkedIn. I connected with him and asked him for details regarding the work. The owner sent me his contact number and asked me to communicate on WhatsApp. On WhatsApp, he asked me about my experience and sample articles. I have a decent amount of experience working in the industry, so I sent him the link for the articles that I have written. He told me that he would assign 2-3 articles daily and pay 12K per month for the work. I accepted the offer as I was in dire need of money. This conversation happened on December 23.
On December 24, he sent me the login details to his website and assigned three articles for the next day. As December 25 was Christmas, I told him that I'd be able to start the work on December 26.
I started writing for the website on December 27. I wrote 2-3 articles almost daily. In between this, he sent me an email asking for my contact details as he had lost them.
On February 6, I asked him to release the payment for the articles I wrote in December, January, and February. He mentioned that the payment would be made within 2-3 days via UPI, and I sent him my UPI ID.
On February 13, I asked him about the payment status, to which he replied the payment would be done by February 15.
On February 19, I told him that I was going through some personal issues and requested to clear the dues. I stopped writing on February 15. He said that there have been some issues with the internal payment system and sponsorships. He asked me to wait for a week and assured me that the payment would be done.
On March 1, he said there was a casualty in his home, and he was not at home. For the next few days, I kept asking for the payment but didn't get a reply.
On March 15, I saw that my account was deactivated, and all the articles that I wrote were deleted. I confronted him, and he said that the articles were assigned to the admin section. This was done to secure the dashboard, as the website will be out of operation for the next few days.
On March 27, I called his number from my uncle's phone, and he picked me up for the first time. He never picked up my call. He told my uncle that he would be releasing 5K within a week.
On April 7, he asked me to wait till the 20th, and the payment will be made.
On April 20, he said to wait a week more and that the payment would be made.
I have not received any update from his side since April 20.
Between these dates, he updated the website's logo. Obviously, this was done by a graphics designer. I don't know if that guy received payment for the work.
The articles are published on his website. He is active on all social media platforms, and the articles are shared across them.
The most funny part is that he has made a hiring post on Internshala for content writers. He is offering INR 5K plus incentives for this role and has promised that the writer will be paid a performance-linked incentive as well.
His company is registered with the MCA. He and his brother are the directors of the firm. I have the company's Certificate of Incorporation and MOA, which were filed with the MCA.
Is there any way to get my money from this person? Also, can he be stopped from running this website so that writers can be saved from this scam?
submitted by meankitanand to LegalAdviceIndia [link] [comments]

2024.05.06 10:52 meankitanand Got scammed by a cricket website after being asked to write articles. Can anyone help?

I am a cricket content writer based in Delhi. I found an internship listed on Internshala for the role of a cricket content writer and found the owner on LinkedIn. I connected with him and asked him for details regarding the work. The owner sent me his contact number and asked me to communicate on WhatsApp. On WhatsApp, he asked me about my experience and sample articles. I have a decent amount of experience working in the industry, so I sent him the link for the articles that I have written. He told me that he would assign 2-3 articles daily and pay 12K per month for the work. I accepted the offer as I was in dire need of money. This conversation happened on December 23.
On December 24, he sent me the login details to his website and assigned three articles for the next day. As December 25 was Christmas, I told him that I'd be able to start the work on December 26.
I started writing for the website on December 27. I wrote 2-3 articles almost daily. In between this, he sent me an email asking for my contact details as he had lost them.
On February 6, I asked him to release the payment for the articles I wrote in December, January, and February. He mentioned that the payment would be made within 2-3 days via UPI, and I sent him my UPI ID.
On February 13, I asked him about the payment status, to which he replied the payment would be done by February 15.
On February 19, I told him that I was going through some personal issues and requested to clear the dues. I stopped writing on February 15. He said that there have been some issues with the internal payment system and sponsorships. He asked me to wait for a week and assured me that the payment would be done.
On March 1, he said there was a casualty in his home, and he was not at home. For the next few days, I kept asking for the payment but didn't get a reply.
On March 15, I saw that my account was deactivated, and all the articles that I wrote were deleted. I confronted him, and he said that the articles were assigned to the admin section. This was done to secure the dashboard, as the website will be out of operation for the next few days.
On March 27, I called his number from my uncle's phone, and he picked me up for the first time. He never picked up my call. He told my uncle that he would be releasing 5K within a week.
On April 7, he asked me to wait till the 20th, and the payment will be made.
On April 20, he said to wait a week more and that the payment would be made.
I have not received any update from his side since April 20.
Between these dates, he updated the website's logo. Obviously, this was done by a graphics designer. I don't know if that guy received payment for the work.
The articles are published on his website. He is active on all social media platforms, and the articles are shared across them.
The most funny part is that he has made a hiring post on Internshala for content writers. He is offering INR 5K plus incentives for this role and has promised that the writer will be paid a performance-linked incentive as well.
His company is registered with the MCA. He and his brother are the directors of the firm. I have the company's Certificate of Incorporation and MOA, which were filed with the MCA.
Is there any way to get my money from this person? Also, can he be stopped from running this website so that writers can be saved from this scam?
submitted by meankitanand to IndiaSpeaks [link] [comments]

2024.05.06 10:42 meankitanand Got scammed by a cricket website after being asked to write articles. Can anyone help?

I am a cricket content writer based in Delhi. I found an internship listed on Internshala for the role of a cricket content writer and found the owner on LinkedIn. I connected with him and asked him for details regarding the work. The owner sent me his contact number and asked me to communicate on WhatsApp. On WhatsApp, he asked me about my experience and sample articles. I have a decent amount of experience working in the industry, so I sent him the link for the articles that I have written. He told me that he would assign 2-3 articles daily and pay 12K per month for the work. I accepted the offer as I was in dire need of money. This conversation happened on December 23.
On December 24, he sent me the login details to his website and assigned three articles for the next day. As December 25 was Christmas, I told him that I'd be able to start the work on December 26.
I started writing for the website on December 27. I wrote 2-3 articles almost daily. In between this, he sent me an email asking for my contact details as he had lost them.
On February 6, I asked him to release the payment for the articles I wrote in December, January, and February. He mentioned that the payment would be made within 2-3 days via UPI, and I sent him my UPI ID.
On February 13, I asked him about the payment status, to which he replied the payment would be done by February 15.
On February 19, I told him that I was going through some personal issues and requested to clear the dues. I stopped writing on February 15. He said that there have been some issues with the internal payment system and sponsorships. He asked me to wait for a week and assured me that the payment would be done.
On March 1, he said there was a casualty in his home, and he was not at home. For the next few days, I kept asking for the payment but didn't get a reply.
On March 15, I saw that my account was deactivated, and all the articles that I wrote were deleted. I confronted him, and he said that the articles were assigned to the admin section. This was done to secure the dashboard, as the website will be out of operation for the next few days.
On March 27, I called his number from my uncle's phone, and he picked me up for the first time. He never picked up my call. He told my uncle that he would be releasing 5K within a week.
On April 7, he asked me to wait till the 20th, and the payment will be made.
On April 20, he said to wait a week more and that the payment would be made.
I have not received any update from his side since April 20.
Between these dates, he updated the website's logo. Obviously, this was done by a graphics designer. I don't know if that guy received payment for the work.
The articles are published on his website. He is active on all social media platforms, and the articles are shared across them.
The most funny part is that he has made a hiring post on Internshala for content writers. He is offering INR 5K plus incentives for this role and has promised that the writer will be paid a performance-linked incentive as well.
His company is registered with the MCA. He and his brother are the directors of the firm. I have the company's Certificate of Incorporation and MOA, which were filed with the MCA.
Is there any way to get my money from this person? Also, can he be stopped from running this website so that writers can be saved from this scam?
submitted by meankitanand to delhi [link] [comments]

2024.05.05 09:52 YukiteruAmano92 There Will Be Scritches Pt.177

Previous Next First
​
---King---
​
---Gordon’s perspective---
My magnum opus reveals himself…
At 275cm, I could count on one hand the number of gigantism afflicted Humans who’ve ever been taller… and all of them died before they hit 35… after living short lives of pain and frailty.
At 338kg of muscle, bone and sinew… ‘frail’ couldn’t be a less fitting descriptor for this man!
His sclerae and pupils both glow with an unearthly bioluminescence that very much conveys the idea of ‘Godking’ to any who see him.
A thick, black beard and long, sleek, straight black hair both spill out from his skull which, while at the more ‘heroic’ proportion of 1:8.5 rather than the more normal 1:7, is still significantly larger than anyone else’s, meaning I was able to expand his brain and, consequently, his intellect, much more than I was for the rest of us… still giving him a cranium dense and thick enough to protect against a direct hit with a low calibre bullet!
Atop his luxuriant beard sits a proud, aquiline hooked nose, which he insisted would make him look kingly and wouldn’t look at all silly.
His internals (mainly heart and lungs) all had to be significantly increased in both size and efficiency to account for the extra strain that servicing such an enormous body places on them.
If I could have figured out a way to further fortify the extremities of his circulatory system without impeding their permeability, I probably could have got him another half a metre or so taller!
My old professor could definitely have done it but… something tells me the smug little French hermaphrodite wouldn’t have gone for such a project… even absent the wider context of everything Bastion stands for(!)
From his neck down, he wears a thick, regal looking set of enamelled, durasteel plate armour, trimmed with golden accents.
From his shoulders flows a cape, in the same stark white and gold.
Atop his head perches a crown with tall, angular palisades, embossed with geometric lines of gold and with a 6cm wide, table cut diamond of flawless clarity, sitting over his bushy black eyebrows.
In his right hand he holds the handle of a 20kg plasmasword with a 2m long, durasteel blade (the only part of his ensemble where the durasteel isn’t covered with a glossy white layer of enamel.)
The *boom*s of (probably getting on for) 400kg of man and durasteel meeting the floor, with each of his footfalls, utterly fill the room with reverberation.
Looking at my greatest achievement, it’s difficult to picture the man he was when I first met him; the 175cm tall, 70kg lean little New Coloradoan Colonel, Cyrus ‘Hannibal’ Postlethwaite, who’d been put in charge of organising the Terran Werewolf Programme. Stay-behind divisions, meant to cause chaos behind enemy lines after they’d been passed over.
That programme ended up sidelined long before the end of the War, after it became clear that there wasn’t going to be a significant expansion in our occupation.
When he realised the flaccid half-victory the Terran governments were going to settle for, this man used the authority he still had to take the Werewolf Programme and turn it into the Revanchists.
After the Betrayal, it took years for me to transform that scrawny Colonel into a Godking… but it was so worth it!
The clear awe he inspires in any lazarites seeing him up close for the first time is priceless!
He looks like a man to whom the title ‘Emperor of the Terrans’ belongs!
When we found our way here, we negotiated with the local clan leaders to permit us to stay, with the promise that they can ride our coattails to a position of galactic domination alongside us… A promise we have little intention of actually honouring, not that we can let them know that(!)
Most of the planet’s native populace don’t even know we’re here, the crater our city is in having a rather generous no-fly zone extending into the deserts around it, for those odd flights that would otherwise take locals from one side of the habitable zone to the other, over us.
At this point, my King sits on his outsized throne, slinging his cape to fall over the right arm, his right hand resting on the guard of his enormous leafblade sword (that’s tip adds another little gouge to the collection in the floor, on my side of that seat.)
His left hand reaches to between Artazostre’s ears to stroke through her snow white fur.
The giant gives a ferocious grin around the table, exposing the thumbnail sized teeth I gave him, and speaks “Dearest friends! Nobles!… Terrans!… I’m certain you must be wondering why you were summoned here on such short notice!” in an affected midAtlantic accent.
No one answers.
We all know better than to interrupt Cyrus when he’s speaking…
“Well…” he booms “…I shan’t keep you waiting! I’m told by Barron Parr, over there, that a very… distressing video has been released onto the galnet recently… which he learned of after one of his subordinates was sent it by a lazarite… It, somehow, managed to slip our censorship and make it onto. Bastion’s. intranet!”
He lets his words sit… outwardly smiling but clearly not happy!
“Now…” he continues “…I’m sure everyone bar the good Barron is wondering what in Terra’s name could have been in this video… so I shall hand you over to him to explain.”
The tall, well built, blond, Nova Britannian Guardcaptain, Barron Harold ‘Saxon’ Parr, stands and clears his throat “*ehem*…Thank you, Your Majesty…” before turning to address the rest of us “…As King Cyrus says; earlier today, one of my guardsmen was sent this video by a lazarite acquaintance from the lower city. He had the wherewithal to immediately bring it to my attention. We deleted the video and tracked down the owners of any device that had accessed it… Fortunately, that wasn’t many… We quickly managed to arrest the 27 individuals who’s devices had been used to view it and are questioning them, now, with regards to who else they might have shown it or told about it… We’re fairly confident we’ll have them all in hand soon… The content of the video is one Kara Stellan, positively identified as one of the operatives assigned to the crew of the Vulture, the ship belonging to our assassin Jackson ‘Scout’ Stetter (also known as Death) at the time he was apprehended… It appears that Ms Stellan has been made… aware of her nature as a lazarite… This video is performing exactly as it was intended to… The traitors are using this girl as a propaganda piece, attempting to foment a lazarite rebellion against our rule…”
Many of the other Councillors mutter to eachother at that, clearly disturbed.
I’m quite disturbed myself!
The lazarites becoming aware of the Lazarus Programme?… It’s a potential worst case scenario!
We could lose everything…
Avoiding this exact eventuality was one of the strongest arguments against keeping the lazarites’ nature from them in the first place!
We could have openly and honestly told them what they were and how they came to be here!
We just decided that the propagandic value of the ‘you were orphaned and we took you in and raised you’ angle was just too great to ignore (when compared to the, far less compelling, ‘you were a casualty we brought back to life to serve as a labourer and footsoldier to us’!)
Not even mentioning the way them not being born naturally undermines our position on the primitives!
“I’ll play you the video now…” states Parr, raising a screen from the centre of the table.
A woman appears.
Her voluminously curly hair is a vivid red and her eyes are a bright emerald green.
She wears comfortable looking clothing and sits in a room that’s daubed in therapeutic blues.
“Hi… my name is Kara Stellan and I’m speaking to you from a medium security women’s prison… at a location I won’t divulge… I was raised on a planet called ‘Bastion’, ruled by a terrorist organisation who call themselves the ‘Revanchists’…” she starts, speaking in a lazarite accent, quite similar to the way the Starborn tend to speak.
“…I say ‘raised’ because I don’t know if I was actually born there… Actually, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t, if for no other reason than I probably wasn’t born full stop!… I probably came out of a tube… I’m not a naturalborn Human… I’m a clone of this woman who you should be seeing on screen beside me right now…” the same face (with a clearly very different personality behind it) appears beside the speaker in a Wartime photo “…Her name was Esme Taylor… She was born ‘Esme Reid’, on Earth, on the 31st of October, 2664, and died on New Australia, on the 1st of January, 2686, at the age of 21… At 27… I’ve already lived longer than she ever did…”
If her sample was collected on my homeworld, there’s a not insignificant chance I did it myself!
I was back there in the last year of the War, one of about 200 or so Revanchists, laying the groundwork for the Lazarus programme.
“…She died heroically, at the Battle of the Murnma Gorge, crushed by collapsing rubble when her battalion refused to yield to the army of War King Vlixrothju… and were shelled…”
Ah… odds of me having been the one to put the swab in this woman’s mouth just jumped from less than 1:200… to a little more than 1:6… I was there with five others and, as I recall, none of them worked as fast as I did.
I may be confabulating it but I feel like I might even remember that vivid red hair on one of the mottled corpses…?
“Now… you might be wondering how I know this! Well, that would be because, when I was arrested, it was by her son… Victor ‘Cuddles’ Taylor…”
Scowls and scoffs emanate from every councillor at the mention of that posterboy for everything wrong with postWar Terrans!
Heedless of our reaction, the prerecorded girl continues “…he recognised me… convinced me to get a DNA test… a test which proved I’m not her… Someone took her genes, edited out all the bits they didn’t like and grew me in a tube before handing me off to an orphanage on Bastion… to live the next 26 years thinking I was a War orphan and that subH… that gardenworlders had killed my parents!… Now, if you’re watching this on Bastion (and I really hope you are) I just want you to know that, unless you actually remember the War… there’s a good chance you’re like me! A clone! Made as nothing more than livestock! Meant to be moulded into the ones who made you’s idea of a perfect little Terran(!) They don’t care about you! They never did!… I know you probably want to call me a liar right now! Hell! If someone had told me all of this last year, I’d’ve called them a liar, for sure!… But I’m not lying!… They lied!… They lied to you about everything! The galaxy isn’t like they said… That’s something it didn’t take me learning I was a clone to notice(!)… They said the Terran government was subverted by traitors but, if anyone, they’re the traitors!… They’re the ones who went against the majority of Terrans’ will for Peace and started plotting to take over the galaxy to revenge themselves for the past! They’re the ones who wasted time and resources skulking around battlefields, stealing DNA to make us, instead of helping out while the War was still happening! They’re the ones lying! Not me!… I am begging you: Stop listening to their lies! Stop doing as they say! Rise up and demand to know the truth!… Escape, if you can! Though, I know that’s easier said than done… If you can surrender yourself to Terran forces somewhere, they’ll protect you!… I know Bastion and the Revanchists don’t have anything like the resources to take them head on!” she sits back and folds her arms “Now, to anyone not from Bastion who wants to do their part to take down an organisation of slaving terrorists, this is all the information I can give you; Bastion is a planet, somewhere in the middle rim of the galaxy… the part of it I’m from is a desert where it averages around 50°C and it’s always daytime. I don’t know what the dark side of the planet looks like. The city of Bastion is situated in a large meteor impact crater, about 10km in diameter, with a prominent rebound peak at it’s centre. The city houses around 16 million Humans and about half as many enslaved gardenworlders (though, I’m guessing that number varies up or down depending on how recently fresh shipments of them have arrived… There’s a fairly high rate of attrition!)… The planet’s gravity is naturally a little lower than Earth Standard, I’d say about 0.75G? 1.6 Galactic Standard? 1.65 maybe?… That’s more or less everything I can tell you about it… I wish I could give you more to go on but, for obvious reasons, they don’t trust most people who live there to know exactly where in the galaxy it is, much less give us access to ships that could take us on and off world!… All I can say is, it took me about 4 months to get from there to Citadel but I wasn’t driving or allowed to look at any navigation for the first 3 of those months, so I have no idea how circuitous the route they took was… I know it’s a big galaxy but, hopefully, a lot of people see this and, hopefully, someone gets an idea about where Bastion is! If you think that someone is you, please… call the holocom hotline that should be linked on screen now! Let the Terran authorities know… even if it’s just a hunch… Though, I have also been asked to say; if you think you know where Bastion is, please don’t go looking for it yourself!… If you’re right, you may not come back!”
Parr stops the video there.
“As you can see, this video represents a grave threat to our security; external and internal… In terms of small mercies; we have the fact that our information control worked… She wasn’t able to give a full accounting of this planet, crucially leaving out the fact that it’s also home to a species of subHumans… Their renowned isolationism should protect us from too much scrutiny. On the other hand, she’s managed to give our proximity to the galactic core, our climate and the fact that we’re on the sunward side of a tidally locked planet!… That’s a lot of breadcrumbs, considering how close our nearest Terran neighbours are! And then, of course, there’s the revelation of the Lazarus Programme… if 3 out of every 4 people in this city learn that they’re not naturalborn and most of the remainder learn that all those ‘War orphans’ weren’t, it stands to be massively destabilising to our ability to govern!”
“A thorny issue indeed, Barron Parr… I commend you and the guards for catching it so quickly… even if that praise must be tempered by the fact that something like this made it onto our intranet in the first place(!)” observes Cyrus with an unreadable smile “Now… on to the question of what to do with all those who’ve already seen that video… Duke Chandler…?” his head lolls to me, lazily “…the Lazarus Program is your baby… What do you suggest?”
Acting unperturbed I turn to Parr and ask “How many of the ones you’ve arrested so far were lazarites?”
He checks his notes on his holo before answering “22 of the 27.”
“Anyone irreplaceable?” I follow up.
“Not particularly.” he shrugs.
“Hmmm… if it were one or two people who’d seen it, I’d say send them to me and I’d just wipe their memories… a city this size, a handful of people turning up a bit addled around the same time would likely go under the radar… but, with so many, I don’t think it would be possible to release them slowly enough not to get people asking questions, one way or another… I think… if anyone irreplaceable turns up, just swear them to secrecy and put them on the surveillance list for the next few years… For the rest of them, I don’t see anything to do but dispose of them and tell those that ask that they were executed for subversion.”
“Agreed.” smiles Cyrus.
“I’ll see that it’s done, Your Majesty.” acknowledges Parr.
“WHAT!?” cries the horrified voice of one not sat at the table.
Every eye in the room turns to look at the guardsman who just spoke, stood over by the wall.
“You’re just going to kill them!?” he asks, dismayed “They’ve done nothing wrong! Why not just wipe their memories and say it was a chemical leak at the jail or something!?”
I look from the idiot guard to Cyrus and see him fixing the poor boy with a long, hard stare…
I wince at what I know is about to happen.
Cyrus lifts his enormous bulk from his throne and lays his gargantuan sword across its arms.
“Stay, Arta…” he calmly orders the sabretooth making to follow him, without looking at her.
Smiling sweetly, he walks behind my chair and over to where the guardsman who just questioned him is.
Looking down on the boy (who I hadn’t noticed until he spoke out of turn) like a father about to impart a serious life lesson, Cyrus smiles “Take off your helmet, son… let me see your face.”
The boy hesitates a moment before transferring his plasmaspear to his shield hand to pull off the fine Kingsguard helm before placing it down on the floor by his feet.
“What’s your name, son?” smiles the King with all the outward, genial sweetness of a kindly uncle.
“K-Kingsguard Shaun Ossino, Your Majesty.” he stammers, visibly unnerved by the mountain of man looking down at him.
“And… how long have you been a Kingsguard, Shaun?” he smiles, leaning down conspiratorially, like he and the boy are sharing secrets.
“About s-six months now, Your Majesty.”
“Is that right?” Cyrus patronises “And… I know you’ve not spoken up at me like you just did before… So, please… tell me why you are now?”
A little desperately, the boy says “I-it… it’s not right, Your Majesty!… They may be clones but they’re still Humans!… They didn’t know what they were doing when they opened that video! Why not just wipe them an come up with an explanation plausible enough that anyone who questions it gets brushed off as a conspiracy theorist?… It’s no less likely to get people talking than that many people all being executed for subversion at once!”
Cyrus’s luminous eyes were closed and his beard wagged up and down in a sagely nod as he listened to the boy’s yammering.
He opens them to once more look into his guardsman’s eyes and ask “Tell me, Shaun… do you know what a ‘sacrifice’ is?”
Dolefully, the boy answers “Yes… Your Majesty… I know…”
“Good…!” Cyrus beams “…because our path to claim Humanity’s birthright will require many!”
The guardsman’s brow twists in dismay.
“Oh… *tsk**tsk**tsk**tsk*!” Cyrus tuts, feigning consolation “…so full of mercy, Shaun!… Unfortunately, unlike you, I’ve got no mercy left to give… Now… I want you to repeat after me; ‘ruthlessness is mercy on ourselves’… Can you do that for me?”
“R-ruthlessness is mercy on ourselves… Your Majesty.”
Beaming the last sunny smile this boy is ever going to see, Cyrus says “Good boy!” before slamming the unhelmeted head into the white stone wall behind him with a sickening *crack*, hard enough to kill him instantly.
The guardsman’s body crumples limply to the ground, revealing a bloodsplattered chunk of masonry missing from the wall, as his spear clatters down beside him.
“*tsk*…Such a waste!…” laments Cyrus before rounding on Parr and jabbing a thick finger to the body, saying “…I want that armor cleaned up and put on someone with a spine in their back and a brain in their skull by the end of the week, Parr!”
“It will be done, Your Majesty…” answers Parr, averting his wide eyes down to the table, clearly realising how his subordinate’s idiocy just burned through any good will he might have earned by taking care of the censorship lapse.
Cyrus strides back to the throne at my left, picking up his sword and sitting back down, placing his left hand back between Artazostre’s ears.
“So… Stoker…” he barks at Circe’s hologram opposite me, all pretence of joviality evaporated “…do you think you can track down the prison this Stellan woman is being held at?”
“Yes, Your Majesty, quite easily, but I would strongly advise against dispatching her.” smiles the uncanny face of the woman, seeming perfectly at ease.
“Oh?… Not for mercy’s sake, surely?!” he growls, gesturing over to the body on the floor to demonstrate what his likely reaction would be to such talk.
She closes her eyes and shakes her head, still wearing that creepy smile, and softly says “Not at all. My reasoning is very much pragmatic, Your Majesty.”
“Then explain it.” orders Cyrus, simply.
“Well, right now, the majority of those outside Bastion who see that video have little reason to take her seriously and little reason to care. If we break into that prison to kill her, all that we’ll achieve is making her story ×100 higher profile and ×100 as credible. The traitors also won’t have released that video until after they were confident they had everything useful out of her. There’s no point in spending energy to lock a stable door when the horse bolted so long ago…” she explains with effortless grace.
Cyrus studies her for a moment before cracking a smile and saying “And that’s why you’re my Mistress of Whispers, Stoker!” apparently satisfied “Let her languish into obscurity then!”
Circe smirks and, in her sensuous half whisper, says “You’re too kind to me, Your Majesty… While we are all gathered here, I myself have some intelligence to relay from Citadel?”
He extends his hand to her and says “Please, Duchess… Good news I hope!”
The dollish features of the face I gave her perform a complicated dance before she answers “Some bad news first, I’m afraid… While I was playing with one of my little toys from the UTCIS earlier today, he told me that Jackson ‘Scout’ Stetter is dead…”
Cyrus sighs “*hhhhhhh*…Well… that’s disappointing… he was a reliable agent until he went chasing after that white whale of his!… But I had sort of already written him off when he failed to make contact after his break out.”
“But, Your Majesty… those weren’t the only sweet nothings my little plaything whispered to me… I think I may have a potential solution for our durasteel problem!”
Cyrus sits bolt upright, as do I, as does half the room!
Our inability to make durasteel with the limited resources on this planet (restricting us only to what we originally brought here and the small amount we can smuggle in) is one of Bastion’s longest running bugbears!
“You have my full attention, Circe!” says Cyrus “Tell me what you need!”
She smiles and bats her (too large) eyes before answering “Actually, Your Majesty, while I appreciate it… the one who needs to be saying that right now isn’t you…” she extends her hand across the table and pouts “…It’s the unrequited love of my life just there(!)”
I frown and splay my fingertips against my chest, cocking my eyebrow quizzically before asking “Me, Circe?… What could I have to do with solving the durasteel problem?”
---
Tip me on Ko-Fi.
---
Previous Next First
Discord
Dramatis Personae
submitted by YukiteruAmano92 to HFY [link] [comments]

2024.05.04 23:20 BiduleFR AITA for going no contact with my in-laws after my husband died?

Sorry if this is going to be long.
My husband died 5 years ago of a cardiac arrest. He was 44. We had been married for 13 years. He was my best friend, my lover, my colleague (we were both teachers working in different schools) and the father of our 3 children. After we had our 3rd child, our relationship began to worsen. He started spending more and more time outside; he went to the gym after school, and worked as an reservist during the school holidays. He felt pressured to make more money, after we built a house and became a large family. I had worked a few years part time to raise the kids but went back full time when the youngest started school. I never asked him to work more. I never asked him to make more money. He put that pressure on himself for no reason, as we were financially sound and made roughly the same salary. I was left alone with the kids when he was at the gym or out with friends, and I was alone with the kids for most of the holidays (summer holidays included). I started to resent my life. All I did was work, do the chores, take care of the kids. I tried to tell him that I was suffering but I have difficulties to communicate calmly (I have anger management issues) so we had multiple fights and each time he escaped to his family (his mother, twin sister and older brother). I learnt later that he told them everything that was happening between us.
One day I had enough so I left. I was so relieved to be free again and to have time for me (without the kids when it was his turn). We lived separately for 6 months. I went on dating apps but never actually met anyone (I was so happy to be on my own).
He tried to kill himself. After receiving an alarming text, I went to our house and I found him in his bed, delirious, fully dressed. I called for help and later found a letter addressed to me, apologizing for letting me down. I was so angry at him.
But I still cared about him. Still loved him. We started seeing each other again. Took time for just the two of us. We came back together and I went back to our house. I felt terrible, I didn't want to live there anymore. So to start on a new project we bought another house, one that I wanted to renovate. We were excited.
At that point he was diagnosed with a serious heart condition. He saw specialists and took his medication. He had to reduce his physical activities significantly.
The next holidays he decided we would go to the Canary Islands and booked the trip without consulting me, because 'you never want to go anywhere' (maybe because I have to pack everyone's stuff). He didn't really pay attention when he booked and we ended up being far away from everything with no swimming pool for the kids (a must for me so that we can all relax). The flights in and out were in the middle of the night (our youngest was 3 at the time). I was so pissed. I kept a happy face for the kids but was so angry all the time.
When we came back I told him I couldn't live with him anymore and left. Again. I went to live in the second house (no heating - it was November, no furniture, I slept on the floor). In 2 weeks I got the house ready to welcome the kids. We started the divorce procedure. We would only communicate through texts and he would leave the kids at the gate and go. He didn't want to see me at all, which I understand very well.
One day I was feeling very sick and had to go to the hospital. He came to get the kids and was visibly worried. I recovered and we started communicating again. Divorce was off the table again. I know it was a toxic relationship at this point. We couldn't live together but couldn't live without one another.
We decided to go on a 4-day vacation in April 2019. I realized at this point that his health was declining. He felt very sleepy all the time. However we had great sex and a lot of fun. I was happy but worried. We kept the relationship going, spending time together with or without the kids. But lived separately, each of us in our own house.
One day in May, I got a call from the town's mayor, telling me that my husband had been found dead in his bed. He had died during the night. I had the kids that night so he was alone.
I was devastated. I felt like this was a nightmare and that I would wake up eventually and see him again. But no. He was gone. Just like that.
I called his mother. I will never forget the animal shriek she emitted when I told her her son was gone. I tried to apologize for everything but all I could hear was that long, animal-like scream.
His family arrived at my place that same day and basically blamed me for his death. That his heart condition would never have worsened if I hadn't broken his heart twice. That I should have left him alone. That if it was a suicide, that they would personally hold me responsible for it. That if I had been there that night, he would still be alive.
All those words still resound in me. I feel that they're right. His body was examined at the hospital, there was an investigation and suicide was ruled out (there was nothing in his blood). His death was due to his heart condition (he suffered a cardiac arrest).
Yet, I can't help but feel guilty for everything. For leaving him twice. For not supporting him knowing that he was sick. For being so angry at him and not being able to communicate better. For not being with him when he died.
At the funeral, his whole family ignored me while my family was supporting me (well, all my family except a sister but that's another story). His uncles, aunts and siblings passed by me without even looking at me. My kids were mentioned during their eulogy, but not me. My situation (being left alone to raise 3 kids of 4, 10 and 14) was not acknowledged. Not a word of support or compassion towards me. Nobody on his side talked to me, even during the post-funeral gathering at the nearby café (which I paid for). I was so hurt, destroyed, lost. It was so hard. His sister tried keeping in touch afterwards to keep contact with my kids (her brother's kids too I know) and I even sent my two youngest to see them several times. My son, my oldest, didn't want to go. He was 14 at the time and witnessed my husband's family accusations on the day he died, and their attitude towards me during the funeral. So now he doesn't want anything to do with them.
Eventually I told my husband's sister that it was over and my kids wouldn't go anymore. She was always trying to impose her organization over mine. I realized every interaction with his family gave me anxiety so I stopped and blocked all of them.
Do you think I should have kept contact with his family ? So that my kids keep contact with their aunt, uncle, grandmother and cousins on their father's side? Do you agree with them? That I should have left him for good and not have 'played' with his feelings?
submitted by BiduleFR to inlaws [link] [comments]

2024.05.03 21:34 DistractedIdealist Scent sample reviews

Ordered some more scents from a few different sites. I’ve been spending quite a bit lately on samples. But I do my research ahead of time and only order ones I think I’d like.
BDK Pas ce soir - really lovely frag. Reminds me of Mon guerlain quite a bit with less lavender. To me it’s like if Mon guerlain added a touch of manakara. It has a deep fruitiness and creaminess that Mon guerlain has, with a little bit of the bubble tape bubble gum scent I get from manakara. This is just so good! Full size worthy.
BDK Gris Charnel - I think this is objectively a great scent and not offensive at all. It’s a nice cozy black tea that is more of an evening scent to me. It’s woody and mysterious and rich. I enjoy it. I will wear the sample until it’s gone but I’m not inclined to make the full size purchase. It’s just not me.
Zoologist hummingbird - god no, this was a scrubber for me. On paper it wasn’t terrible but I still didn’t like it, just really really florally and green. But once I put it on my skin the brightness of the florals and nectar went away and was overpowered by the masculine musk. All I could smell was my uncles.
Xerjoff Casamorati Dama Bianca - this grew on me. At first I thought it was a little too basic and sweet and wasn’t interested in a gourmand. But after trying it a couple more times I grew to love it. It’s a captivating vanilla scent that I feel really draws people in. I smell a little bit of the violet and citrus, and a little bit nutty to deepen it all, but still prominently a nice vanilla.
Xerjoff Torino 21 - this reminds me of LV pacific chill, a lot. It’s fresh, citrusy, and minty. I enjoy it. Reminds me of this John Frieda beach blonde shampoo I used to wear as a kid.
Xerjoff Torino 22 - I really enjoyed this on paper, it was very fruity and sweet, but once it was on my skin some sort of musk took over that kind of ruined it for me.
Roja Elysium pour femme - really nice. First impression off of first sniff is it is pretty but not stand out. Is a fruity floral that I have already smelled a hundred times. But I’ve learned my lesson from these type of scents, to allow the dry down to take over. The dry down is much prettier, it gets a little more powdery and vanilla, but still bright and fresh. It’s very soft and feminine. And lasts a long time. 24 hours later I still smelled it on my wrist. Pretty girl scent for sure.
Liis: I am so impressed with these and really enjoy them all. They are just so lovely.
In this world - favorite Liis. Right off the bat gives major Byredo vibes. In fact the perfumer behind this is the same one who did Bal d’afrique. Very clean and fresh and citrus and shampooey. It’s like if Bal d’afrique and gypsy water had a baby. Definitely leans more on the bal d’afrique and a little more aquatic and aromatic, less of the sandalwood from gypsy water. Although, after wearing this all day at the end of the day it does lean more creamy and resembles gypsy water more. I just love this scent. I love bal d’afrique but In this world has a little more interest to it and I think I prefer it more.
Studied - right away reminds me of glossier you, with a little bit more of a sweet honeysuckle, juicy, fruit note. Nothing too punchy or cloying, it sits close to the skin and has a nice ambrette note. Beautiful. Fun. Bright. My second favorite.
Lucienne - very peony forward, clean. I don’t get a lot of the notes it’s telling me. It lists pomelo but it’s much different from all my other pomelo scents. A bit aromatic. It’s really nice it balances being warm and clean and florally really well.
Floating - similar DNA to studied. Is a bit of an amborxan skin scent but without the fruits, it’s cleaner and has a laundry element. It manages to balance being warm and clean. Very pretty.
Ethereal wave - aquatic, aromatic, tea-like, florally. It’s very subtle, almost too subtle. Blended very well and super smooth for being herbally. It is so just balanced and nice.
Liis you really did it.
Indult Manakara - this smells like straight bubble tape bubble gum. That’s it, that’s the smell. I don’t get anything else. Disappointed by this one.
GDT Bianco Latte - this is objectively a great scent, but overall not for me. I get a lot of white chocolate. Almost like a milky hot cocoa that uses white chocolate instead of milk chocolate. It’s very warm and sweet without being sugary or syrupy. I personally don’t get caramel out of this, just a vanilla white chocolate drink. It’s yummy but I just don’t want to smell like it, ya know? I’m overall not into gourmands though.
Andrea Maack Lightsource - this is a great scent, very unique. But it also reminds me a bit of Le Labo’s DNA. It has the soapy, zesty jasmine with the pepper turned up. It is not my style but I still appreciate it for the master piece it is. I just know this is it for someone else, just not me.
Nishane hundred silent ways - reminds me soo much of Mizensir Tres Chere. Very close, but nishane’s is better. Tres Chere has a play doh note that comes through that I don’t enjoy. It has the sweet peach and orange scent with the vanilla and florals to balance it all out. Very fun and playful, but not too young.
Nette pear jam - this is nice. It’s a very photorealistic pear. I get straight pear juice. It also smells very familiar like a perfume my mom wore in my childhood. It isn’t a full size for me as I don’t find it unique or special but it’s nice.
Love shack fancy - ordered a sample set of these from Sephora and returned them once I tested them all and confirmed none of them are for me.
Forever in love (pink) - very floral and coconutty to me. Honestly like a straight bouquet of mixed flowers, with mostly roses. Eh.
Moondance (yellow) - the best one of the three. It’s ethereal, rosy and woody. I love the combo. I loved getting whiffs of myself all day wearing this. This is just soo pretty BUT, there’s a big but, at the end of the day all the pretty notes wear off and it smelled kind of like a mild bug spray. The bug spray smell even stayed on my sweatshirt the next day. For that I am out. It’s too bad!
Boheme (blue) - another eh. Very gardenia and floral without the rose. More green. Like smelling flowers in the wild. Vs forever in love is like getting an expensive bouquet delivered.
submitted by DistractedIdealist to fragrance [link] [comments]

2024.05.02 16:32 Tight_Half_1612 Send your love to this old man

Send your love to this old man
This is Neo, a 12 year old male. He was rescued by my brother and uncle after beign abandoned as a newborn.
3 years ago he ate something at home and had to be taken to the emergency vet because he was pooping bllody diarrhea, and 2 years ago he had to be taken again because he had an infected tooth, the infection spread overnight and then most of his teeth had to be removed.
When he was 7 he got diabetes, but luckily got into remission, he eats a low carb wet diet. Sadly, in the last month or so, it came back. He dropped a lot of weight and started being way more hungry and peeing a lot, so last Saturday my mother took him to a clinic where they used to have a cat specialist, but he retired and another vet "checked" him. And I say "checked" because she didn't do any bloodwork, she didn't even touch him! She just weighted him and insisted on doing a glucose curve before any bloodwork, several days pass and we (my mother and I) afe unable to obtain a big enough sample, but she insits, give us some big needles and delays the bloodwork. She even shamed me because I don't feed him a diabetic kibble (diabetic cats need a low carb diet, and is way better if they eat wet), basically suggesting that his health state was my fault. At this point we changed vets and today I took him to my dog's vet, he's excellent with both dogs and cats and a specialist in phisiotherapy.
First thing he did was bloodwork, they had to extract it from his neck but Neo behaved extremley well, just pawed at the vet, and he was so gentle with him the entire time. They checked his pressure too. He said that he was very dehydrated so I decided to let him there for a few hours, that he has arthtritis so we should start treatment with solensia, confirmed that diabetes is back and said that his kidneys are starting to get affected too (levels were a bit elevated).
submitted by Tight_Half_1612 to cats [link] [comments]

2024.04.30 14:29 ThrowRA_2349 1099 PA's out there - tell me everything. Bad idea? Or best idea ever?

I am an urgent care/ occ med PA with 4 years' experience. I also adjunct on the side at the PA program that I attended (love teaching). However I have been dying to get out of the (toxic) UC scene for awhile and have always wanted way more flexibility with my life, schedule, etc. (Don't we all?)
I just completed the first step of an interview for a company that is affiliated with the VA and hires PA's as independent contractors to conduct disability exams. I'd get 60/exam, booked in 30 min slots. "Full time" would be considered 3 days/week and I could pick which days I wanted. (Great for my adjunct job too). I'd be able to create my own schedule and provide that schedule 1 month in advance.
This would be a new location for the company, which has 2 sites in SC. They were looking to open the site 45 min north of me, but I was told during step 1 that if I accepted, since I am the first provider they'd hire for this site, I'd be able to dictate where the site goes. Ie closer to home. (They lease the buildings).
Yah yah yah, sounds too good to be true, especially for a burned-out high-volume cranky UC PA like me - but I am nervous about being 1099.
They would cover malpractice for me, and give me CME$ (unspecified amount right now but should get the exact$ soon). The CME cannot be used for my license maintenance, so that would be out-of-pocket for me.
I am in a committed relationship, but not married, so I'd also have to figure out my own health insurance. And I guess retirement (retirement I actually have a ROTH not through my job- my 401k affiliated w/ my job I guess I could transfer into a trad IRA/ merge with ROTH).
Sample contract also stated that I have to give 4 months' notice of termination - if I don't, I am liable for paying the company the gross income that could be lost, quoted to be as high as 15k. Yikes.
^Just a few of my concerns and worries with this. I feel like if I work this out., though, and there aren't any crazy catches / this company is out to steal my $, this could be the best job ever and exactly what I was looking for. Hmm.
(Thankfully my uncle is a financial advisor and agreed to help me with all of this, but of course he is not a PA, so any PA-specific issues tied to 1099 stuff I'd love to hear about. And non-related. You know. EVERYTHING).
submitted by ThrowRA_2349 to physicianassistant [link] [comments]

2024.04.28 07:16 wsppan Today In Phishstory - April 28th

# Today In Phishstory - April 28th Brought to you by tiph-bot. Beep.
All data extracted via The Phishnet API.

Phish

Phish, Thursday 04/28/1994 (30 years ago) SunFest, West Palm Beach, FL, USA
Gap Chart, Tour: 1994 Spring Tour
Set 1 : Runaway Jim , Foam , Sample in a Jar , Rift , Down with Disease > Bouncing Around the Room , It's Ice > Run Like an Antelope , The Squirming Coil , Julius > Sparkle , Good Times Bad Times
Encore : Golgi Apparatus
Show Notes:
This single-set performance was part of the annual SunFest that also included Joan Baez, Blues Traveler, Huey Lewis & The News, Los Lobos, The Village People, and Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers. Trey teased Dixie in Foam. Antelope contained Magilla teases.
Listen now at Phish.in!
Phish, Saturday 04/28/1990 (34 years ago) The Strand Theater, Dorchester, MA, USA
Gap Chart, Tour: 1990 Tour
Set 1 : Sweet Adeline , The Oh Kee Pa Ceremony > Suzy Greenberg , Uncle Pen , Dinner and a Movie > Bouncing Around the Room > Possum , You Enjoy Myself > Rift , Foam , Run Like an Antelope , Lawn Boy
Set 2 : Cavern , Harry Hood , Caravan , I Didn't Know 1 , Reba , My Sweet One , Mike's Song > I Am Hydrogen > Weekapaug Groove
Encore : Big Black Furry Creature from Mars
1 Fish on trombone.
Jamchart Notes:
Run Like an Antelope - Breaks from the standard at about 5:30 into a dissonant and somewhat jazz-like foray with excellent Mike and Fish. No real return to "Antelope" before the "Rocco" section, which is nicely extended, cool and funky.
Show Notes:
I Didn't Know featured Fish on trombone. Big Black Furry Creature From Mars contained a Simple Gifts tease from Trey and a Star-Spangled Banner quote from Fish and tease from Mike.
Listen now at Phish.in!
Phish, 1989-04-28 Moulton Union, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/phish-april-28-1989-moulton-union-bowdoin-college-brunswick-me-usa.html
Tour: 1989 Tour
Show Notes:
Phish, 1988-04-28 Ira Allen Chapel, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/phish-april-28-1988-ira-allen-chapel-university-of-vermont-burlington-vt-usa.html
Tour: Not Part of a Tour
Show Notes: This show was a benefit for the 1988 Vermont Reggae Festival presented by The Vermont Reggae Fest Committee.
Phish, 1987-04-28 Nectar's, Burlington, VT, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/phish-april-28-1987-nectars-burlington-vt-usa.html
Tour: 1987 Tour
Show Notes:

Trey Anastasio

Trey Anastasio Band, 2019-04-28 Brooklyn Bowl, Brooklyn, NY, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/trey-anastasio-april-28-2019-brooklyn-bowl-brooklyn-ny-usa.html
Tour: Not Part of a Tour
Show Notes:
Trey Anastasio Trio, 2018-04-28 Civic, New Orleans, LA, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/trey-anastasio-april-28-2018-civic-theatre-new-orleans-usa.html
Tour: Not Part of a Tour
Show Notes: Theme from the Bottom and More were performed by Trey solo acoustic.This show was webcast via LivePhish.
Trey Anastasio Band, 2017-04-28 New Orleans Fairgrounds, New Orleans, LA, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/trey-anastasio-april-28-2017-new-orleans-fairgrounds-new-orleans-la-usa.html
Tour: Not Part of a Tour
Show Notes: This show was part of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

Mike Gordon

Worship My Organ, 2019-04-28 Little Gem Saloon, New Orleans, LA, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/mike-gordon-april-28-2019-little-gem-saloon-new-orleans-la-usa.html
Tour: Not Part of a Tour
Show Notes: Mike sat in with Worship My Organ.
Benevento/Russo Duo featuring Mike Gordon, 2005-04-28 Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, GA, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/mike-gordon-april-28-2005-variety-playhouse-atlanta-ga-usa.html
Tour: Mike - The Duo Feat. Mike Gordon Spring 2005 Tour
Show Notes: The five-second Foam Reprise that opened the show consisted of essentially the first and last measures of the song and was ostensibly a nod to the previous night's 50-minute version. Marco teased Eleanor Rigby in Mike's Song.

John Fishman

Pork Tornado, 2001-04-28 Northern Lights, Clifton Park, NY, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/jon-fishman-april-28-2001-northern-lights-clifton-park-ny-usa.html
Tour: Fish - Pork Tornado Spring 2001
Show Notes:

Other

Michael Ray and The Cosmic Krewe, 1996-04-28 Jimmy's, New Orleans, LA, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/guest-appearance-april-28-1996-jimmys-new-orleans-la-usa.html
Tour: Not Part of a Tour
Show Notes: This gig took place during the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and was billed as "Jazz Funk of the Future." Trey, Page, and RJ Spangler sat in for the whole show. This setlist is incomplete; the listed songs were officially released in 2003 as Live at Jimmy 's. Phish had performed earlier in the weekend on the main stage of JazzFest.
Bruce "Sunpie" Barnes and the Louisiana Sunspots, 1996-04-28 New Orleans Fairgrounds, New Orleans, LA, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/guest-appearance-april-28-1996-new-orleans-fairgrounds-new-orleans-la-usa.html
Tour: Not Part of a Tour
Show Notes: Trey sat in for the entire set, playing along with Sunspots’ guitarist Jim Kebodeaux. Garbage Can Woman featured Sunpie (on harmonica), Jim, and Trey sitting on the edge of the stage after Sunpie said: “I don’t think they can hear us. Let’s get out on the porch.” This performance was part of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and took place on the Fais Do-Do Stage; Phish had performed earlier in the weekend on the Main Stage of JazzFest.
Blues Traveler, 1994-04-28 SunFest, West Palm Beach, FL, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/guest-appearance-april-28-1994-sunfest-west-palm-beach-fl-usa.html
Tour: Not Part of a Tour
Show Notes: Both Phish and Blues Traveler performed at the annual SunFest. Trey played on Mulling It Over. After the song ended, John Popper exclaimed: "Trey Anastasio! Boy, you know, those Phish guys...love that band!"
Dangerous Grapes, 1984-04-28 Slade Hall, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/guest-appearance-april-28-1984-slade-hall-university-of-vermont-burlington-vt-usa.html
Tour: Not Part of a Tour
Show Notes: No setlist is known for this instance of Mike and Fish playing with the Dangerous Grapes.
submitted by wsppan to phish [link] [comments]

2024.04.27 12:13 Oiinkiee My(F24) boyfriend (29) is sending daily snaps to women he has had sex with. I want to see the snaps from them and have him block them.

Hello, Everyone.
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I(24F) have been officially together with my boyfriend(29), Jared(fake name), since January 21st this year.
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This will be lengthy as I feel I need to put in some backstory so please bear with me..
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Jared and I started talking back in the end of December 2022/January 2023. We live almost 2hours away from each other by car. I was currently going through a breakup with my then fiancé, Alec(fake name), and was not ready to jump into anything serious afterwards. Alec and I had an open relationship towards the end of it, between just after christmas 2022 and january 19th 2023, so that is where I started to talk to Jared. However, Jared and I did not actually meet until a while later in February 2023. Sadly, back then Alec still lived with me as it was hard to find somewhere seperate to live. Alec did have the opportunity to stay at a friend's place for that weekend, and that was the original plan until he heard I was having a guy over, so he decided to stay at our place.
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I was smitten by Jared when we first met. Handsome, tall, sexy and he seemed so calm and collected. Curly dark blonde/brownish hair, greengrey eyes that reminded me of the sea. More on the athletic looking side... I found him so dreamy to look at. Where he got me? Well.. He handled the situation with my ex being there so amazingly.. I was starstruck by it. Sadly, I refused back then to believe we could ever be anything more than a fling because it was simply too soon for me to go into anything serious. Jared and I kept meeting up once a month until we decided to become exclusive September 24th 2023. We saw other people up until maybe a couple weeks before we decided on this.
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I ain't gonna lie, our situationship was truly a rocky road during this whole time. I kept seeing other guys quite often to avoid staying home (as my ex was there and it was constant fighting and such to the point I totally broke down). Jared and I also had fights becuase I wanted to see him and I felt he never put in the time or efforts to make it happen. Now this is important because I tried breaking things off with him several times due to this - everytime he would manipulate and guilttrip me into staying. First time being in May/June 2023: we then came to the agreement of just continuing seeing each other as it was then, nothing romantic (even tho I knew I wanted more, but I could not allow myself that, especially since he didn't put in the efforts I felt I needed for things to be sustainable).
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My ex finally moved out in may 2023. I was also in the middle of moving in june/july 2023 as I could not afford our old place on my own.
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Up until Jared and I got exclusive, I was self destructive AF. As said I was seeing other guys, which I regret as I had feelings for him (which I refused to give in to). I gave in to trying substances (happened twice) which ended really bad both times. I drank whenever I could, etc. I was going through cutting out a bunch of ppl in my life as well.
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All this stopped after I saw my then FWB, Neil(fake name), whom I'd been seeing since around new years 2023, within the first week of september 2023. I went through a breakdown after having been with him, fed up and disgusted with myself... I was tired of trying to fight myself and my feelings. Then about 2-3 weeks of trying to collect myself, I asked Jared to become exclusive. He agreed and then we just tried seeing how it'd go. I had already told Neil that I wanted to stop being intimate with him just a few days after he and I last saw each other, but would love to be friends (I thought we had an overall wonderful friendship where we talked about anything and everything and was supporting of each other). He seemed alright with this. I also cut off other guys I had flirted with. Guys I had been intimate with, but havent seen in long. I eventually went on to cut off any guys Jared believed only talked to me to get in my pants. I removed guys I were only friends with, but I removed em because we met through dating apps. I also removed Neil after a while since he told me he wanted to go back to hooking up.
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Moving on, October 6th-7th 2023, I tried dumping Jared again as things were basically just the same as it had been before. No efforts to spending time together. No planning on when to see each other, no gaming together(we are both gamers, had gamed a few times together before, which I absolutely loved), no calls, no nothing. It made me want to back out as I felt things would not change, and I felt I needed more than having to chase him to meet up with me once a month. Yet again he managed to make me stay by using the tactics of "You're just leaving before we have even begun.. Just leaving me like everyone else" etc. Honestly, I did not really want to leave as I had developed feelings for him and I really wanted it to work, but he promised he'd try better with the planning on seeing each other and putting in efforts, which I fell for over and over.
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We still kept seeing each other once a month, but we texted more. In december 2023 we had another fight about the same. I felt I deserved better than what was going on, he said I was free to go, but I'd probably not find anything better out there since "guys only want to get into womens panties" and that he hoped I wouldn't make a choice I would then regret. It broke me, but managed to make me drop it as I was still just hoping for him to step up... However, this time things actually started to change and he actually gave some efforts into meeting up and such. We even spoke more and tried to focus on our communication.
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After some some back and forth, it seemed to go more and more forwards and we officially became a couple January 21st 2024 - and have been since. Still not been easy, but we in general communicate better and we also see each other as often as we can (about every 2nd weekend since march 2024).
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However.. lately... and this is where our biggest problem are atm.. we are going through a bunch of insecurities and struggle to communicate with each other. Most of it being from my side (this has been coming up earlier in the relationship, but honestly not spiralled utnil now).
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You see, Jared has snapchat(so does I) and he snaps with other women daily. He says it is just empty snaps to keep the daily score. However, when I have asked about the women he has just said they are just some women, some nobodies. I had asked before about what kind of relationship he has had with them, where he has stated that they are just old friends. It did not really sit well with me the way he spoke about it, as he said it in such a dismissive manner. He has said he would not have any problems opening some of the snaps in front of me(just to let me see that what he said is true and I don't have to worry about it). However, this has yet to happen. But I've waited. Until I decided about 3 weeks ago to try and be smooth and joking with him. We were at my place watching a movie late, I slid my hand in his pocket to grab his phone, being all foolish. I slowly took it up, grinning at him. Him asking me coldly what I was up to. I said "I am just checking what you're hiding from me. Oh here is a snap from one of your ladies. Please open so I can see". Which is where he got mad at me, grabbed the phone and refused. This obviously left me very upset and somewhat angry. I didn't know what to do, as I felt his reaction was too harsh, especially if he truly has nothing to hide as he claims. I didn't want to go batshit and just went quiet and asked advice from my friends on my own phone (texting).
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After a while I tried talking to him, still feeling distraught. He and I started arguing about the whole ordeal. Me being mad at him for not letting me see, and moreso reacting the way he did. Him being mad at me, calling me controlling and also being mad at me for apparently talking "smack" about him to my friends. It went on for a while. He even threatened to go home in the middle of the night (reminder, he lives almost 2hours away), which I refused him, saying it was too late to start driving (also had he done that, I would have ended things there with him, but I didn't tell him that.)
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After a while, it went quiet and we both tried collecting ourselves to talk about it properly.
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I told him that it did not sit well with me how he seemed so defensive about his phone, especially since he says he has nothing to hide, and he knows I struggle with guys doing that due to earlier relationships with partners hiding their cheating and other things. I also explained that I did not talk smack about him to my friends, but I was turning to them for advice on how to proceed talking about the situation and try forward how it made me feel and all.
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He told me he got defensive because his ex had been all paranoid and such with his phone before they had broken up, and he felt it was a huge invasion of privacy to have someone snoop through his phone. I tried my best to understand him, but it still did not sit well with me. We eventually made up - I guess? I guess more me just backing down because he told me I was being invasive, controlling and crazy and that I just needed to trust him. So I let it go and we talked about other things. I felt a part of me died that night tho.
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After he went home I brought it up again and asked him to please show me the snaps next time, just to ease my mind. Him being the one holding onto the phone and show me. He said he could.
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Last weekend he was visiting me again. However I really tried to not push on the snap thingy, even tho it was nagging at me. I did make comments about him recieving snaps from his other ladies tho (jokingly) when I noticed he got notifications for it. He still never showed me. Overall the best weekend we ever had together tho. I felt things would be better after this.
​
Fast forwards, I notice he has lately gone onto snap, but not been checking on my snaps and messages I send him. Been going on all week. I asked him about it last night by saying "How come you sign in, but ignore me? Are you talking to someone else who's more important?" (Yes I recognise this was maybe not such a healthy way to go about it, but honestly, this shit has been eating me up inside). He told me there is noone. He proceeds to send me a screenshot of his inbox where I can see the name of 5 other ladies and 3 men that has snapped him. He hadn't opened any of them. The timeframes matches that he has in fact not bothered to open them when he had answered me earlier. (He sent me all this 30-40 mins after his last response to me, the other snaps were 1+ hours old anf unopened). But it still bothered me seeing all the women. this was around 22:45 last night.
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I commented how many women he had on the list (All the women had Best Friends Marks. None of the guys, and it said he had more unread chats, but he didn't scroll down to show me those. What made it worse? He has at some point changed the Best Friend Mark from the original heart icon to a Hot and bothered type of smiley. I was apparently his top 1 best friend, but my mark was a puppy face-smiley? This also somehow bothered me. Also all the snapscores were like 218, 41, 283, 1304 and 262 days on these ladies).
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I sent him a screenshot of mine where he could see I had snapped him, my niece, family group chat, my brother, sister, uncle, cousin and my 2 gay besties. I only have snap scores of more than 6 days with Jared (181 days), my sister, brother, cousin and niece. I don't really care much for snapping any1 but Jared.
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Here is how the conversation went:
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I commented on how many women were on his list. I also just had to ask if there were anything special about these ladies. Had he slept with any of them? Had be flirted with them?
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He told me: "So. Some I knew since long time and some met through tinder long ago, why?"
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Me: "......"
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Him: "What?"
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Me: "So you banged some of them"
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Him: "I mean i guess..?"
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Me: "...."
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Him: "What?"
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Me: "So why are you keeping them around then?"
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Him: "Cuz they not tryna hit me up like your Guy "friends" did."
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Me: "And how am I supposed to know that?"
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Him: "Why in the world would a girl ever hit a Guy up?"
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Me: "Girls do that too"
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Him: "Yeah sure it happens, but it's not common"
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Me: "So you lied to me then. Saying they were nobodies when obviously you've been intimate with them...."
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Him: "....."
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Me: "Why didn't you just tell me?"
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Him: "Cuz they are nobodies...?"
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Me: "No. They are women you have seen naked and had your D**K IN. Girls you flirted with. Girls you find attractive"
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Him(time is now 23:09): "No. Well I need to sleep now so. I don't have time to argue Over nothing".
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Me: "This is not nothing. Please give me a call"
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Him: "I'm not gonna give you a call? I'm going to sleep I just told you?"
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Me: "Give me a call. Please"
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Him: "Why? I don't want to talk and argue over the phone when I'm going to sleep"
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Me:"Because this is something I feel needs resolvement"
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Him: "That can wait"
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Me: "No it cannot"
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Him: "bcz?"
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Me: "YOU LIED TO ME"
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Him: " I just told you I need to sleep. I don't have time to argue"
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Me: "call me"
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Him: "NO"
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Me: "Yes"
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Him: "Absolutely not. I am gonna work tomorrow. Why can't you just respect that I need to sleep?"
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Me: "Why can't you respect my feelings? You lied to me"
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Him: "I didn't lie about anything"
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Me: "You did"
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Him: "Okej. What did I lie about?"
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Me: "You said they were nobodies, obviously they are not if you f***d them"
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Him: "Okey? So? Still nobody since I don't really know them?"
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Me: "Then block them"
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Him: "Really"
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Me: "Yes"
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Him: "Why"
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Me: "I am highly uncomfortable about the relations you had with them. Also that you did not let me know before and just dismissed me when I had asked before makes it even worse"
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Him:" I'll do you one better. I go to sleep"
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Me: "So you're dismissing me again"
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Him: "Just respect my f**ing sleep. I do not want to argue every night just because you are used to be awake 24/7"
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Me: "then when will we talk about it?
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Him: "Idk, not atm at least"
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Me:" tomorrow then. After you've been at work"
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Him: "Totally retarded to start a fight in the middle of the night"
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Me: "Stop it."
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Him: "No you stop it"
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Me: "No, you stop it. I don't get why you never care how I feel about shit like this. And why do you care so much for keeping them around if they truly are nothing to you?"
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Him: "I do (care), but you gotta stop starting fights in the middle of the night. Also, because you say I have to take away people just because?"
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Me: "YOU SLEPT WITH THEM"
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Him: "I think you are very controlling atm"
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Me: "Don't even. Don't gaslight me"
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Him: "Okey if u say so"
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Me: "I am serious about this. I am not comfy knowing you talk daily with ppl you been having s*x with. And especially since you never disclosed that with me when I have tried asking"
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Him(now at 23:21: "sure well gn".
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Me:"You honestly think that my feelings and concerns about this is not important?"
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Fast forwards to this morning
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Me at 07:53: "I really hope you take the time to talk to me"
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me at 09:19 after seeing he saw my text but left me on read: "..."
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Him at 09:58: ".... what"
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Me: "you could at least reply instead of ignoring me"
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Him: "Not in the mood to talk"
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Me: "Why?"
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Him at 10:00: " Bcz Im not. I don't handle this fighting all the time"
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Me: "Are you seriously mad at me because I don't want my boyfriend to talk to women he had sex with? Women he says are nobodies to him? How can you not see how this could possibly upset me?"
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And that is it for now. Have not heard from him since. I got a feeling he won't talk to me more today. I honestly do not know what to do... I was thinking of going over to his place tonight (have to take train and bus there because I lent him my car last time he was over because his will not be fixed before in May).. I am unsure tho, I feel like doing so would make things worse... But I also feel like it might be the only way to get him to actually talk to me and try hear me out.... But I am so broken down by all this. I've been up all night crying like crazy, feeling heartbroken and at loss..
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I love him, despite it all. I truly do love him with all my heart and I feel I'd do anything for him. I'd do anything for him to feel happy and loved and safe in me as his partner.. I feel the happiest when I am with him. Being in his arms makes me feel safe. And he manages to make me feel loved when we actually are together and just exsist together or do random shit together. However when he is away, I am at my lonliest. I try to keep busy with work and friends, but it doesn't work so well.
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Thank you for having read it all.. I know it is a mess, but I am just so out of it. I feel like I am wrong, but I mostly feel I have a right to feel the way I do and that me asking him to drop these "nobodies" is not too much. I hate myself for even feeling this insecure about the whole thing..
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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---
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**TL;DR;** : This is a sample summary of the TLDR
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My BF, Jared (29), snaps women he has had se*ual relationships with in the past, daily.
He says they just snap empty snaps for the daily score and that they are nobodies to him. I have asked him before to let me see the snaps, which he has said he will, but this has still not happened.We have had several fights this and I have told him about how I am uncomfortable that he snaps all these women I have no idea who are, daily. ALSO It was not until last night that he actually let me know that he has had s*x with them before he and I became exclusive. He had always told me before that they were only old friends and nothing more. I feel betrayed at this and hurt. I want to see the snaps to see he hasn't been unfaithful, and I want him to block them. He is mad at me tho for starting yet another fight with him over nothing and calls me controlling.
I am thinking of going over to his place to talk it out because he is now just ignoring me... (Takes over 2 hours with bus and train. He is borrowing my car until his gets fixed in may).
Am I wrong for wanting him to show me the snaps and then have him delete the women? Am I being controlling and crazy like he says? Should I go to his place? Please help me :'(
‐------------------- UPDATE
We finally talked. It took a little while. We both yelled and screamed at each other until we finally calmed down. We talked about it. He chose us. I guess we will see where it goes. I set my boundaries. He accepted.
Thank you all so much for the kind words and the encouragement. Thank you for helping me stand up for myself.
Xoxo
submitted by Oiinkiee to relationships_advice [link] [comments]

2024.04.27 05:27 hipops At a genuine loss, please help

(I originally posted this a few minutes ago on medical_advice; check my post history if you want to read comments; the words are the same)
Hi, first I'm just gonna get some of this out of the way (at the very bottom is a comprehensive list of all symptoms, medications/anything I've taken for it, diets, holistic approaches, family history, and tests/labs I have had done as well as a final sort of conclusion and sidenotes. I will also include the nearest approximation for the dates that I can remember, please bear with me):
Age: 20, Male, 140lbs, White, USA, Nothing Diagnosed, No current meds/doses, drug use is edibles for chronic pain management, non-smoker, started March 2023.
(I have had bloodwork done multiple times, with no significance, though if you think it might be helpful to know something, please ask as I have so much and it would take a while to list it all out)
This is probably going to be a long one, but there is so much that I need to preface this with. Last year, I was 19 years old, healthy, agile, and slightly athletic, but then around March of last year, I began to get hit by upper abdominal discomfort. I saw a gastroenterologist, and was told it was most likely Celiac (from the second that I stepped foot in his office and told him I was in pain), so I did bloodwork which ruled it in, and had then an endoscopy that came back inconclusive and was just told to try a gluten free diet for a few months (and that if it didn't help, then I could go back to a normal diet). Since then, I have been prescribed so many different medications to try and I myself have tried so many OTC and holistic approaches as well. Around July 2023, the pain had gotten so bad that I was basically doing nothing and already stopped working my part-time job because of it.
August 1st, 2023 I went to the ER for the first time, and was just given an IV with some fluids and nausea medication, which did not make any change at all. I also had an ultrasound there that came back entirely fine and in the clear. Since then, the pain has increased tenfold, and is all in my upper abdomen, and it feels like it is directly near where my gallbladder is. They also did an ultrasound, but nothing came from it.
For added context, not a single medication, vitamin, holistic approach, anything that I have ever done or taken has helped the pain except edibles. The edibles don't take away the pain, but they make it easier to tolerate and somewhat ignore, which is more than literally anything.
Since then, I have gone back to college for my sophomore year, and I've literally just been toughing this out while waiting for doctors appointments, all of which led nowhere. I then was scheduled for a HIDA scan in November, which came back with my gallbladder's ejection fracture being around 86%. After drinking an Ensure Plus drink from them during the HIDA scan, I was practically doubled over in pain, even more so than I am currently, and was basically curled up in a ball in my Dad's car. I was told by the doctor that it was one of the best functioning gallbladder's they'd ever seen, and that it was definitely not the issue (though I was hesitant because of doing my own research about biliary hyperkinesia).
I also began speaking to a nutritionist near the beginning of the year, as I was told that it could be something with my diet or such. I'd say that my diet was okay, not great, but I've improved it since then, whilst my symptoms have worsened. She wanted to immediately get me tested for SIBO, which I did and ensured that I followed all prep instructions and test instructions perfectly. It came back negative, which she was surprised at, and then began throwing some things at the wall to see what would stick. I ditched her because she was really dead-set on SIBO
Around the beginning of 2024, I went to see a new gastroenterologist for a second opinion. She believed that I was constipated (which I was), so I was told to take some Miralax and modify my diet to increase my fiber intake, which I did, and have been doing fine since then. For reference as well, my urine is usually a clear yellowish color, which raised no alarms. After fixing the constipation and still being in the extreme pain, she ordered an ultrasound, which I went for in February 2024. It came back showing that I had a 4mm polyp, but it was deemed to be insignificant. She sent me for bloodwork, which came back fine. She wanted to do another endoscopy, in order to entirely rule out Celiac. I had the endoscopy, and it came back negative for Celiac, which was quite a relief and she noted that she did see an increase in acid reflux. After the endoscopy, I had zero pain for the next hour or two, probably because of the anesthesia still in my system.
I have seen her once more since the endoscopy so far, and she seems to be at quite a loss of what it could be. She told me to try holistic doctors, she recommended a consultation with a general surgeon, as well as a cardiologist, as one of my symptoms of having this pain is shortness of breath (which is widely noticeable, as walking more than a few feet leaves me practically panting.
Here I am now today, where I just got out of the ER for the second time after nearly seven hours. I went because the pain got so bad today, and last night, I had cold sweats, felt clammy, had chills. After this, I had realized that I was just pushing the cold sweats aside when I was not inside of my bedroom, and it has actually probably going on for the past few weeks. I currently do not have any clamminess or chills, but would not be surprised if I did when I went to bed tonight. For reference, I keep my room quite cold because it makes me sleep and feel so much better.
The ER then did some bloodwork, as well as took a urine sample. Both of which came back fine, and then I was sent to get an ultrasound there as well. Nothing showed, and I made sure to tell them multiple times before about the 4mm polyp, which was my main and literally only lead on what could be wrong with me, and was told that it was still the same size. The ultrasound tech also told me that a 4mm polyp would likely not cause any pain at all.
After the ultrasound in the ER, they sent me back to give me something in my IV to help with the pain. They gave me 1000mg of some pain medication (I missed the name, though I was told it was basically better Advil). I thought that they had missed something and not even hooked it up correctly, but there was ZERO change in the pain at all, and they then asked me if I wanted to do a CT scan, which I more than happily did. Absolutely nothing. Nothing alarming at all came from it, and from a medical standpoint, that is the absolute ideal outcome. To me, I so badly just want to find out what is wrong with me. I just got home tonight and popped two edibles just to deal the pain, but it's not a long term solution because firstly I don't want it to be, and secondly because I literally can't afford to sustain this for an extended period of time.
It does not matter if I eat or not in the day, as the pain will still be there no matter what, usually with eating making it slightly worsen for the rest of the day. Now that most of the medical stuff is out of the way (except the comprehensive list), I wanted to also slightly rant about how badly it is affecting me academically and socially.
I'm currently in college, as mentioned before, and I try to hang out with my friends as much as I can. I always try my best to be the most positive and upbeat person in the room, but honestly it's so fucking hard for me to stay composed at this point. I feel as if I'm reaching a physical breaking point because of how helpless and useless anything I try and do feels.
I have been so fucked over academically by this; I have already failed one class last semester because I missed so many classes and material that I bombed the final. I am currently re-taking that course, and am trying to do better in it, but it's so hard; I literally need to psych myself to do homework or even just sit in class. I currently am taking 4 courses, (one of which was the re-take) another of which, I am currently failing because I have missed so many classes, had so many flare-ups during exams and normal class time that I feel like my absolute hardest only gets a me a failing grade. My very first semester, I ended up with a pretty good GPA for myself, around 3.5 (but it was my first and probably easiest semester). My second semester, this pain did not affect me as much because it started to really ramp up after finals had already ended, though it was still a battle every day to do something. One of the most gut-wrenching and fucking destroying things to me is that I can't even get any accommodations from the college because I am not diagnosed with anything at all.
As soon as I hear back from my professors, as I missed both of my courses today because I was in the ER, I want to sit down with the two that are in the classes I'm struggling in (they are both writing intensive and math courses, and it takes such a big toll on me). I really want to talk person-to-person with them to just explain my situation and see if they would help me with any accommodations regarding the final exam. If they can't, I'm literally going to fail both of them, and lose thousands of dollars because of it. I've literally started considering putting higher education on hold because of this pain, though I've thought long and hard about it, and I don't think I could genuinely deal with the social consequences of literally being there alone without any of my friends (most of them are graduating quite soon).
The other scariest thing is I'm so fucking scared that I won't be able to work because of this pain; my bank account is currently starved, though my parents do support me an extremely large amount and I could never thank them enough for being my family.
Out of all of this, there was two single days. Two days that I had zero discomfort and zero pain at all, as if somebody just waved a magic wand around. These days were not back-to-back, and there has not been a good day in a long time. The first one was in early September, and the other was in early November. Both of which, I was so up to par that I hiked 8 miles each day; the next day in which, the pain had returned as if it had never left. Thank you for listening and reading if you made it this far, and I already thank you even if you don't leave a comment or have any advice. Thank you.
Here begin the lists...
List of all prescribed medications:
At one point, I was taking nearly all of these, and began to ween myself off of them into lower doses, eventually entirely cutting them out in Late August 2023, as I personally felt that I was overmedicated and it actually made my stomach feel so much worse (which it did).
Dicyclomine 10mg, 2 capsules every 6hrs as needed (Around May 31 2023 - Late August 2023)
Omeprazole 20mg, once daily (Around May 31 2023 - Mid. July 2023)
Upped to 40mg, once daily (Around Mid. July 2023 - Early August 2023)
Upped to twice daily (Early August 2023 - Late August 2023)
Sucralfate 1gm, before meals (Around Mid. July 2023 - Late August 2023)
Famotidine 40mg, at bed (Around Mid. July 2023 - Late August 2023)
The following are all 20mg, twice daily (afaik). Note that these were not taken concurrently, and only after I had stopped the other. These are prescribed by my second, and current GI doctor.
Pantoprazole (Around February 2024)
Esomeprazole (Around March 2024)
Lansoprazole (Around Late March 2024)
Amitriptyline, 10mg at bed (Around Late March 2024)
List of all OTC medications (I apologize, I do not have dates for these):
Miralax (GI Recommended it)
Pepcid (GI Recommended it)
Phazyme Ultimate Strength
Gas X
Mylanta
Ibuprofen
Alka-Seltzer
List of all diets/food restrictions I've tried/done (None of which made me feel any better):
Gluten Free (Approx. 4 months)
Low Fodmap diet (No approx. date)
No dairy (I rarely even have dairy; the most being on an occasional burger
No processed foods (Still ongoing; I can't even stomach more than a full meal anyways)
No/Lower sugary foods (Still ongoing; same reasoning as the no processed foods)
Low fat diet (Tried for two weeks; is quite difficult living on a college campus)
Short SIBO diet (2 days, Bland chicken breasts with rice) (Made me feel horrible)
List of all tests/labs I have had done:
Multiple different bloodwork labs (Across multiple dates between May 31 2023 and today) (Only ruled in Celiac disease)
Abdominal Ultrasound (1st ER Visit, August 1, 2023) (Insignificant)
Upper Endoscopy (Mid. June 2023) (Insignificant)
HIDA Scan (Early November 2023) (Insignificant, EF: 86%)
Abdominal Ultrasound (Mid February 2024) (4mm polyp detected in gallbladder)
Upper Endoscopy (March 22, 2024) (Entirely ruled out celiac disease)
Abdominal Ultrasound (April 6 2024) (Insignificant)
CT Scan (April 6 2024) (Insignificant)
List of symptoms:
Upper Abdominal Pain 24/7/365 (Since Mid. March 2023) (Worsened around August and has been continually)
The following are a result of the pain:
Extreme shortness of breath
Nausea (I believe it's associated with the pain and is also 24/7/365)
Loss of appetite (Though I have miraculously stayed around the same weight)
Occasional dizziness
Brain fog (I first thought I just had short-term memory issues, but then I saw that this is a common side effect of what I'm currently going through, and it genuinely shows; I quite literally forget what I'm talking to somebody about and then I'm too awkward to ask them to repeat something that they have seen I heard quite clearly and paid attention. I think this is one of the biggest things that is harming me academically.)
The following are more recent developments, and I don't have an exact/precise start date:
Cold sweats, both at night while trying to sleep and while in some non-climate controlled environments
More extreme brain fog
More extreme shortness of breath
Slight dizziness
Higher tempemore easily frustrated
HOLISTIC THINGS IVE TRIED (Probably not all of them, but I don't remember):
Baking Soda + Water
Ginger Water
100% Pure Peppermint Tea
Notable Family/Medical History:
A few years ago, probably around 2018, I went to a pediatric gastroenterologist because I was 16, and was diagnosed with abdominal migraines, given sumatriptan, and put on my merry way. I did not take the sumatriptan frequently, as I think I was doing the nasal spray a little bit off and the taste was horrible. This pain eventually went away, and was definitely not as severe as this.
When I was a baby, I had surgery for pyloric stenosis.
Here's some family history, but forgive me, as I don't know it all:
My mother's side has a horrible history with bad gallbladders and them needing to suffer before it was agreed to be taken out.
My mother's side also has a history of aortic aneurysms.
My father's side has a history of cancer, with my grandfather passing away in 2012 from brain cancer, and then my uncle passed recently from Stage 4 Bile Duct cancer.
My father's side has a history of cardiac issues and such (and my father had open heart surgery nearly a year ago).
Sidenotes:
Upcoming planned visits:
Being consulted by a general surgeon May 20, 2024.
Still looking for a cardiologist
Also looking for holistic doctors now
(Maybe trying chiropractor??? idk)
Literally nobody knows about how much I've been through except my family members. I never let a single ounce of any of this show because I already get sympathy from family members, and I don't know if I can also take it from friends too (though I am extremely thankful for the sympathy from my family)
Another side note is that I also think that I may have used to have hourglass syndrome, as I remember sucking in my stomach for practically all of high school (though I was literally like 130lbs). Since then, I believe that I've stopped doing that, and actively avoid doing it. (I actually learned about this doing some research in Reddit and jumped when I heard about this, but went to sit down and realized that I stopped doing it at some point.)
I also wanted to include that I am not currently sexually active, I'm a non-drinker, non-smoker, and have no allergies and am currently covered under really good insurance from my father.
Conclusion:
If you wish to read my other posts and plethora of comments, they are in my account history, and it might have a few small details I acquitted from here, most of which are related to my "very fun" Celiac journey. They also have my Celiac bloodwork from both times.
I have no mental health or mental illness history, and I currently am not under any extreme stress or anxiety because I handle it extremely well, though I fear that I may be developing health anxiety after the CT scan and ultrasound at the ER came back normal.
I literally thank you so much if you've read this far. Any input or questions are greatly, greatly appreciated, and I hope whoever is doing this is doing good for themselves :) (P.S. Thanks for reading a 3000+ word reddit post that I somehow drafted and wrote in an hour)
Some humor that I have managed to get out of this if anyone cares:
Today's ER visit (all of the staff were extremely wonderful and down to Earth)
At triage, the nurse asked me why I hadn't come sooner if it's been going since March 2023)
My father had to step out when the IV went in for my bloodwork
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