Another edition of Cannes Film Festival is starting today, premiering tons of new films that certainly will dominate the minds and hearts of cinephiles around the world for the next months and years - and of course, discurse in this community...
So, to celebrate this magical time, as I did last year I compiled of list for movies covered by the Blank Check gang that had their world premiere or European premire at the Croisette. As you will see, its a fascinating bunch of films.
Quick notes:

1. The list it's most comprised of main feed episodes & director filmographies, with an exception for bonus episodes on Patreon, didn't count the franchises on Special Features (so no Oceans 13 here);
2. I only counted movies which premiered at Cannes at the time of release, discounted retrospective screenings and the Cannes Classics sidebar, so that's why Carpenter, Kubrick & Keaton don't have films here.

So, here's the list:
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George Lucas:
Attack of the Clones (2002, out of the competition)
Revenge of the Sith (2005, out of competition)
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Lily & Lana Wachowski:
The Matrix Reloaded (2003, out of competition)
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James Cameron:
Ghosts of the Abyss (2003, out of competition)
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Steven Spielberg (Post 1st Oscar Era):
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull (2008, out of competition)
The BFG (2016, out of competition)
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Paul Verhoeven (Hollywood Years & French-Language Movies):
Basic Instinct (1992, in competition)
Elle (2016, in competition)
Benedetta (2021, in competition)
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Ang Lee:
Eat Drink Man Woman (1994, Directors' Fortnight)
The Ice Storm (1997, in competition. James Schamus won the award for Best Screenplay)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, out of competition)
Taking Woodstock (2009, in competition)
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Tim Burton:
Ed Wood (1995, in competition)
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Michael Mann:
Thief (1981, in competition)
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Jonathan Demme:
Something Wild (1987, out of competition)
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George Miller:
Mad Max Fury Road (2015, out of competition)
Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022, out of competition)
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024, out of competition)
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John Musker & Ron Clements:
The Little Mermaid (1990, out of competition)
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John Singleton:
Boyz N' the Hood (1991, Un Certain Regard)
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Jane Campion:
Two Friends (1986, Un Certain Regard)
Sweetie (1989, in competition)
The Piano (1993, in competition. Campion won the Palm D’or, tied with Chen Kaige for Farewell My Concubine – and the 1st movie Blank Check covered to do so)
Bright Star (2009, in competition)
Top of the Lake: China Girl (2017, out of competition)
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Sam Raimi:
(Worth noting that The Evil Dead had his notorious exibition in the 1982 festival that sealed the fame the movie got, but since it wasn’t programmed in none of the sidebars and probably was a market screening I separated from the list)
The Quick and the Dead (1995, out of competition – closing film)
Drag Me to Hell (2009, out of competition)
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Bob Fosse:
Sweet Charity (1969, out of competition – opening film)
Lenny (1975, in competition. Valerie Perrine won the award for Best Actress)
All That Jazz (1980, in competition. Fosse won the Palm d’or, tied with Kurosawa for Kagemusha. 2nd Palme D'or winner covered by Blank Check)
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Danny Boyle:
(Shallow Grave was screened at the 1994 festival, but it was a market session, outside the oficial programming)
Trainspotting (1996, out of competition)
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Park Chan-Wook:
Oldboy (2004, in competition. Park won the Gran Prix)
Thrist (2009, in competition. Park won the Jury Prize, tied with Andrea Arnold for Fish Tank)
The Handmaiden (2016, in competition)
Decision to Leave (2022, in competition. Park won the award for Best Direction)
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David Fincher:
Zodiac (2007, in competition)
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David Lynch:
Wild at Heart (1990, in competition. Lynch won the Palme D’or. 3rd Palme D’or Winner covered by Blank Check!)
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992, in competition)
The Straight Story (1999, in competition)
Mulholland Drive (2001, in competition. Lynch won the award for Best Direction, tied with the Coen Brothers for The Man Who Wasn’t There)
Twin Peaks: The Return (2017, out of competition)]
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Odd ones, One-offs:
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018, out of competition)
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Of course, if the reference at the Millenium Actress episode will pan out, Horizon: An American Saga (premiering out of competition at this year festival) could be a future episode. If it's not a jest from the one and only Griffin Newman...

As If It Were Kismet: Prologue
Matt tore through the brush, blind in the dark. He didn’t care where he was going. He only knew he needed to be elsewhere. Far from here.
Behind him a creature howled that shocked his mind. It’s form was cruel and dangerous, though female. Nothing like the young woman she had once been. Nothing but a girl, a small and slight female.
It’s guttural growls and howls only grew closer as Matt tried to pick between seeing where he was going and getting away. The few times he looked he caught sight of the creature behind him. Hopping through the air with a speed that told him he was being toyed with. As if he were a mouse being played with by a cat.
But the reflex in him to run kept him going. His adrenaline going as hard as it could. The tightness and burning in his core tensing and locking up as his legs felt like there were being burned from within while taking on more of a heaviness.
His lungs were starting to betray him as he tried to gulp big breaths of air but only rapid and shallow breaths were all that he could manage. His brain was starting to burn….and then he was falling.
Falling down the side of a hill he saw the creature dart in a spring towards him, imperceivably fast almost. Catching him in mid air it seemed.
Managing to wrap its body around him and cushion his impact against the ground as they rolled. His mind barely took in what was happening during the roll. Only starting to understand what was happening once they were still.
The creature's triple D-cup breasts were unmistakably pressed hard against his back as he laid facing up at the night sky.
For a few seconds the world stilled and the needle light pain hitting the center of his brain took over for the cooking heat his brain had felt. His whole body felt heavy and reluctant to move.
Even if he could have really moved, a dull ache came over his limbs making them feel stilled and trapped as if by immeasurable amounts of sand that had engulfed him.
Slowly the arms holding him started to move. Moving so the creature's hands could start exploring him. Causing Matt to unstoppably let out a pathetic moan that made him go cold inside as hands lifted up his shirt and started to touch his exposed stomach and then his chest.
He would have whimpered so pathetically had he not still been in the depths of terror.
As its hands felt and groped his pecs he tried to situp as if to get away. For his efforts, his reward was a hand around his throat and a collection snarls and growls against his ear. A beastly, guttural voice spat words at him while somehow holding a feminine tone.
“Don’t move….I don’t know if I can calm down…”
Her words were not helped by her moans in his ear and the subsequent kissing of his ear. The flesh of his ear going between her lips as she moaned and seemed to pant. Releasing it and licking the side of his face with a moist warmth. He could feel its spittle, viscous and coating his flesh where the tongue touched. He could smell something in his saliva. Something that subtly entranced him.
Matt went stock still with fear and the confusion of mixed arousal. He barely perceived her right hand traveling lower on his body. A surprised moan and shudder echoed in the night from Matt’s lips as she took ahold of him. Her hand above his pants but still….stimulating him.
A light squeezing and almost probing of her digits kept him aroused and confused within her grasp. Resigning himself to the strange fate, Matt looked up at the stars as his mind tried not to shatter under the strange maelstrom of events and sensation that had started mere minutes ago.
His mind was only more confused as a slight figure, feminine in build, how it seemed to thunk the ground audibly as she landed on her feet out nowhere. Her knees barely bending under the pressure of the landing. Yet dirt was kicked up anyways and some of it onto Matt. Feeling it pepper his shirt and pants as it fell.
The figure, lit only faintly by moonlight, roared some dark tone Matt could only perceive as a demon as her eyes went bright with a crimson light. A light in the darkness that should not have been. “Let him go you bitch.” Was its words following the roar. Spittle escaping its mouth with faint droplets hit Matt's face.
The creature holding him by his throat and crotch seemed to tighten the grasp of both hands as it roared back. “HE IS MINE!”
The figure paused with a moment's hesitation. He was also her quarry. She had felt his fear without him knowing. His confused arousal. His fear. His terror.
And now he laid at the center of a struggle between two monsters. Unsure of who he wanted to win.
As If It Was Kismet Ch. 1
Matthew Berkshire hadn’t seen his mom in two years. Not that he had seen her much over the last six years.
A messy divorce between messy people and mom’s chaotic want for a life in Alaska had been one of the most…upsetting times in life. Setting him up for so much of what had defined his life thus far but then that had really started two years before he ever turned.
His ear buds were basic and simple. A part of cheap five pack, common for his life as he was known to lose little things. Small things. They had a mix of metal and hard rock playing in them. Some classics, some alternative. Whatever made him feel something, anything. Even if it was hate. Anger. Rage. It was better than feeling numb. Not belonging.
The escalator down to his lone bag to go with his lone carry on showed his mom waiting for him. His had a type, that’s for damn sure. Not that it helped him in the genetics department as he was stuck at 5’9” to go along with his mother’s five foot even as his dad stood six foot. Forever leaving him to feel small, to pale, under his dad’s shadow. Did he ever stand a chance?
The guy next to her with the unkempt former seventies porn stache was “Dave.” He’d met him twice when his mother came and visited him in Florida. To his credit the guy didn’t look annoyed. Kind of concerned kind of which made Matthew want to break his frozen look but he was well practiced. Having removed any note of sadness from his face through much…tribulation.
His mother’s look on her face betrayed a hint of worry as the bruises on his face lightly showed up close. Saying his name was his like a distant echo that belonged to someone else.
Dave cut in and pulled out his right headphone. “What the hell bud, they knock you hard enough to hurt hearing? Your mom’s asking how you are doing.”
Matthew pulled out the other bud and grunted an empty “sorry.”
“You still have bruises after two week? What did they do to you?” His mom’s voice was full of worry. Something he hadn’t heard in….too long. Too long to make him feel anything. To ever make him believe there was any sincerity to her words. To not think her voice and mannerisms were an act. An act by someone who…wasn’t really there.
“It’s only fair. I took a nose. Fractured a couple orbital bones. Left one with having to get his jaw wired shut. And one will never walk right again for what I did to his knee cap.” Matthew said it all with a bored and disinterested tone. Perhaps well rehearsed.
“My man, handing out ass kickings, not bothering to take names.” Dave was quick to be the typical man’s man about it. Matthew wasn’t quite done yet. Lifting up his shirt to expose the right side near his kidney. Revealing a nasty scar from a six inch blade. “Luckily they gave me this first so they could rule it all in self-defense. The fuck didn’t get it in more than inch before I ruined his knee cap and then I took the nose of one of the fucks holding me.” Now he chose to smile keeping the well practiced dead look in his eyes.
No retorts. No questions. Just horrified looks on their faces. As he liked. As he preferred. They could hate him. They could be disgusted by him. But by God they would fear him.
“Well the doc did a good job sewing you up.” Dave commented uncomfortably. “Dissolving sutures. Ain’t they grand.” He smiled again and let it abruptly fall off his face and started walking to the carousel for the baggage claim.
Waiting and making small talk with Dave as his mother stood in silence. He was not the little boy she abandoned. The little boy she left with an angry man. While never hitting him. Left him in constant fear till he turned twelve and just didn’t care anymore. Something snapped. Broke. And he didn’t care if he died. Didn’t care if he stole. Didn’t even care if he killed. He just knew not to get caught. Something left over from his grandfather’s wisdom which came to make more and more sense with each passing year of life since that thing inside him broke.
Finally his bag came around and Dave went to try first to grab it but Dave practically leapt ahead of him. “Is that your grandfather’s rucksack bag?” his mother asked in a perplexed voice.
“Figured it’s been around since Viet Nam. So it’d serve me better than any of the worthless stuff they called luggage.” Dave commented after Matthew’s words. “Well hell yeah I still got mine from Desert Storm. You know the first one.” Dave laughed and Matthew eyed him oddly. Be it in the south or whether it was Alaska, country boys are country boys he guessed.
The car ride to the two people’s house, as Matthew thought of them. Was uneventful and full of vistas he imagined metropolitan types wetting themselves over. At most they meant isolation to him. Furtherness from the world as there were no mountains in Florida. And what mountains he had last seen in another state had been when he was eight. Another life, to Matthew it felt like. A life alien to him.
As If It Was Kismet Ch 2
Dave and his mom’s place was some two story type tucked into a tree line far up an elevated point. It was by no means the highest point in the mountain but it certainly felt up there.
Rocks were where the driveway should have been Matthew thought. Grabbing his backpack and rucksack from Dave’s jeep was no hard thing for him. Matthew was in formidable shape for someone his age, maybe even five years older. He had gotten a mix of fairly big shoulders and arms along with the chest to go for it when compared to most kids his age. A side effect of working out at least twice a day. First thing in the morning, some time in the evening, and the school’s gym when had had a good semester in school before he had to leave Florida.
Dave tried to come up and help him but Matthew walked past him towards the house. His mom was not sure what to make of his demeanor. Matthew was not the sweet kind boy he had once been. But she had been gone from his life essentially for a long time.
Ushering him into the house she cracked some joke he did not hear. He was too busy looking about and seeing a mix of old outdated decorating mixed with the strange and odd flair of his mother. Color contrasting against drab and dated. Like brightly painting over an old home that was falling apart he thought.
“Your room is this way Mattie.” His mom brightly intoned.
Without expressing any interest he followed his mother. Still faced and nonplussed. Just going along with the current. Pushed and pulled with its roll like a piece of driftwood.
The room was simple. A single small bed. A set of rubber weights with a curl bar and barbells. “Your dad said you were into weight lifting so we got you a bunch of stuff. Dave says it looks like his department’s gym almost. The woman’s smile felt very alien to him.
“Thank you. I appreciate it. I’ve got most of my stuff from home.” Matthew starting unpacking his rucksack and pulled out cables of repetitive and mixed colors. A single plastic barbell handle. The ruck sack could be filled with water bottles for added weight during pushups he figured. Remembering a Michael Keaton movie he watched with his dad post-Batman movies where he played a convicted killer using plastic bags filled with water for weights.
Matthew caught movement outside his lone fairly large window that could let him step out onto the roof of the house given its layout.
He saw a number of people running together through what he guessed was the backyard of the property, not that it had any fences to mark boundaries
They wore clothes that looked similar yet different from each other at the same time.”Oh those are the Johnston’s. Really nice bunch of people. Been on the mountain for a long time Dave tells me.”
Matthew looked at the group of people running and noticed the lack of resemblance. “They are related?” Matthew quizzically asked. Seeing a black and possibly a hispanic person amongst the bland looking white people.
“Oh well they are all adopted but for one or two of them…besides the parents of course. The family has a long tradition of taking in orphans they say. Real nice of them to do that don’t you think.”
Matthew looked at his mother and the hosier accent made no sense to him as he arched his left eye brow. Her and his dad were both from Florida. Born and raised. Sure her parents were from New York city but…
Matthew shook his lightly without turning to look at his mother as his vision was grabbed by one of the runners in particular. A girl of moderate height. Soft brunette. A plain beauty he figured with a slim build….and lack of remarkable breasts and rear to make any note of but….girls in general were his type at his age.
She was pretty enough. He couldn’t deny that but he found himself transfixed by her visage.
But the way she turned and looked at him, especially at that distance felt very disconcerting to him. Even if she was smiling like…she was a taste of a bright shiny day. Somehow.
Matthew’s mom noticed the exchange and smiled to herself with closed lips. “Oh that’s Vicky. She’s your age I think. Very sweet girl, who does the charity functions. You know bake sales, blood drives, car washes and the like. I think you should get to know her. Might be good for you.”
A truck horn sounded a couple of beeps in rather succession. “Oh that must be Mack, he said he might come by later this evening but he seems early.”
Matthew’s mother turned and left his room. Leaving Matthew to exchange a few looks with the alluring Vicky as she turned her head away from him to talk to the others in her group and look back at him.
Still Matthew’s left eyebrow was arched. In a way that reminded him of Spock from Star Trek that he and his grandpa used to watch on some streaming service or another.
As he heard ambient chatter elsewhere outside the house he figured to check it out as the alluring sight of Vicky would be around he figured. It was dull to stare at artwork. He was a boy who preferred jet skis and the like. Something he could ride and enjoy immensely. Even if at times it got him stabbed.
As If It Was Kismet Ch 3
Matthew sauntered out of the house and down the rockway that stood in for a driveway.
A few new people had come over from what he could first surmise of the situation. As he got closer it was obvious they were indigenous people. A couple of grown men…and a girl?
She was mousey. Maybe five foot. Hiding behind glasses and a big camo jacket that was far too big for her. It looked made for a grown man and the backwards trucker hat on her head kept her long black a beautiful mess of sorts.
She was cute in a way. A little androgynous but she had a cute energy to her. She reminded him of the more tomboyish Puerto Rican girls he had gotten into back in Florida. Given the deer corpses in the back of the truck….probably more dangerous to play with given the men in her family.
Small chatter passed between the adults when the girl noticed but turned away, trying to hide the tiny hint of a smile.
“Oh Mattie, this is Mack. He works with Dave at the sheriff’s department and John, he’s with fish and wildlife.” Matthew nodded at his mom’s words with some blankness as he looked at the deer the in the back of the pickup truck.
“Gale tells us you hunted with your dad some in Florida and Georgia.” Mack offered with a light hearted laugh camouflaged by his big simple and cheery but husky way he spoke.
Looking in the back of the truck he spoke. “We used lever action thirty-thirties and Mosin Nagants in seven-six-two-fifty-four-rimmed.” Mack and John whistled in an exaggerated fashion. Leaving Matthew to wonder if they were mocking him.
Mack spoke. “Well we just used thirty-odd-six in a custom gussied Garand.” That caught Matthew’s attention. “You have a Garand…” Matthew finally demonstrated interest in anything. “My dad has an SVT-40 and a Hakim 8mm but he always wanted a Garand but was too cheap to buy one.”
Gale, his mother, chimed in loudly. “Oh his Dad loved his guns but was such an odd duck about how he bought or why he bought them. Never made sense to me how he wasn’t a collector but he didn’t get the latest and greatest.” Gale laughed uncomfortably. At least it seemed that way to Matthew.
Matthew pointed to the girl with an underhanded pointing hand. “And who is this? A cute little mute mouse or does she have a name?” Dave and the other men laughed.
Mack again spoke. “Well you people call her Rebecca, she’s my adopted daughter.” Matthew was taken aback by what he heard. “You people?”
Rebecca kindly spoke with a soft but almost melodic voice as she struggled to maintain eye contact. “White people or rather not members of our tribe. It’s just easier to appease the colonizer kind of thing. Borrowed from when the Jesuit missionaries chased us up here.”
Mack stepped in. “It’s just easier to have white people names than have them try to say our tribal names. And we don’t want them shortening or Anglicising our names kind of thing.” Rebecca stepped back into the conversation cutting off her adopted father. “It’s an insult to our history basically.”
Matthew cocked his head sideways raising his eyebrows shortly before letting them drop. “Well as soon as I’m eighteen I’m out of here and back to Florida so I’m a sort of involuntary colonizer of sorts. So I won’t be taking any of your land from you. The Seminoles on the other hand are still shit out of luck.”
Rebecca’s smile caused Matthew to reflexively smile. Mack made the moment more awkward. “See Becca, I told you someone off the reservation would like you some. You just have to be creative.” Mack laughed in a chiding manner…Matthew presumed. He sensed that he was the butt of some kind of cultural joke. Like marrying a white guy was some sort of insult or mark of shame. That kind of thing.
Rebecca turning away from him was not something he had been expecting. Her then getting in the truck in a huff left the group in a silence for a moment.
Dave spoke to break the awkward silence. “Well just bring the truck to work on Monday and leave it for me to grab up.” Mack acknowledged Dave and they started to get off as Rebecca looked at Matthew for another instance. Matthew couldn’t look away for some reason as the two seemed to lock eyes for an instance.
Till Vicky and family seemed to come jogging down the road. While Matthew’s eyes diverted from Rebecca’s. Hers did not till she realized he was looking elsewhere. And her vision found Vicky and what had been a hint of smile on her face turned glum and disappointed.
Matthew did not look away from the vision of Vicky but instead of a starry eyed fool looking longingly. It was a baffled look. Well baffled for him, with his eyes drawn narrow and night with a focus.
There was something about her…he couldn’t quite put a name too. The way she appeared to him. One second brunette. The next second blonde or blonde like. As if the color appeared in her air and disappeared in fractions of seconds. Much the same way her body almost seemed to…shift…very subtly…smoothly. A nicer bum. Larger breasts. And then back to a simple and plain form. Feminine no doubt. Attractive. But not so…remarkable.
As If It Was Kismet Ch 4
The next two days passed without incident. Nothing of any real substance or challenge to note.
Matthew got settled somewhat and started working out almost immediately. Exploring around the woods but Dave told him not to go far. Especially without a hunting rifle. Dave had left a simple semi-auto Winchester out for him. His bear gun as Dave referred to it with its four round magazine. But Matt figured till he got some practice with the rifle to leave it alone. He made a hiking stick like his grandpa taught him and treated it over a low fire. He would take some electrical tape for the end his hand would grip around. Plenty enough to ward off anything smaller than a bear he figured.
The ride to school was a pain in the neck but simple enough. Dave would let him use a clunker pickup truck he had laying around. It wasn’t pretty but it would get him to and from. Even if it was from the eighties and still backfired on occasion. But for now Dave and his mom took him on their way to the sheriff’s department.
It wasn’t much of a school. It wanted to be modern but its fifties original construction was very obvious. It serviced the pipeline families and familys’ of fisherman who worked the seasons in between their time at the pipeline.
Matt was to report to the principal for some reason Dave and his mom wouldn’t share. Which annoyed him but he figured it was to read him the law of land. Small towns with their big views of the outside world and like.
Dressed in jeans, a grey sweatshirt under a light jacket with steel toed boots set him more apart then he expected. His buzzed head didn’t help matters. Already he was feeling like a stranger in a strange land but he was quite strange after all. And he liked it that way. Normal people were so pathetically disappointing to him.
A secretary or assistant or some such led him to the principal’s office. Where it reeked of real wood that was old and fabric and upholstery that needed to be updated for the last twenty years, Matt figured.
“This is Matthew Berkshire, Principal Andrews.” The man was turned with his back to the door and he was quick to wave her off as he turned her around.
He was an older man. Fat and large. Tall with a body built like he had once been fit and a demeanour of annoyed and irate already as he fixed Matt with a scowl and look of disgust. Another worthless government whore. Matt thought to himself. His father and his grandfather had bestowed unto him a natural disrespect for government workers and the figures that wore unjustified authority as a shield but pretended the weight of the state was not at their back ready to crush all who resisted. Little figures of valor pretending to be mighty and alone but acting with the tyranny of the state and all the backing.
“Mr. Berkshire, please sit down.” His tone wasn’t unusually hostile, just gruff. As if he had better things to do.
Matt complied and took a seat in the chair while maintaining a friendly facade. Not everyone was an enemy. And not everyone needed to be an enemy. Even if anybody could be any enemy. There was no reason to make enemies you didn’t have to. Another of his grandfather’s bastardised wisdoms.
“Well I looked over you file and you have quite the history Mr. Berkshire.” Matt resisted qiuping back a joke. Instead he waited for Principal Andrews to continue as he remained nonplussed and looking as if he felt no need to respond. A simple head tilt with dead eyes looking back at the principle as if he was not even there would suffice.
Matt’s reaction or lack of a reaction rather made Principal Andrews only narrow his eyes with examination. He was not used to a kid not responding to him. Especially with his gruff and hard act going on.
“Well by all accounts you moved here after some problems at your last school. A fight broke out and you did some real harm to your fellow students it appears.” Of course, he would take the side of the perpetrators. School administrators always did. Especially when they weren’t white. Just a fact of the times. Cowardice and pathetic mediocrity was the way they leaned, like good government workers sucking the dick of Big Daddy government. Worthless whores.
Matt chose to reply. “Oh you mean the criminals that stabbed me. Got arrested at the hospital and then pled to felonies. Yeah Florida, with the American counties are good like that.” Principal Andrews went real still. No shame. No fear. No penitence. He didn’t like that.
“Well be it as it may Mr. Berkshire we don’t tolerate that kind of behaviour here…” Matt cut him off responding with a deadpan tone. “You mean self-defense meant to save one’s own life while the cowardly and pathetic school workers look on with zero interest but to keep their money rolling in and will allow known gang members with records of violent acts and crimes that should have them expelled many times over, where in certain Democrat counties such cowardice and idiocy empowered a couple school shooters?”
Principal Andrews looked at the Matt with a note of disgust. “Look here Mr. Berkshire, your beliefs matter not one bit here. This isn’t Florida. We don’t like our way of life being disrupted by outside agitators who have problems with authority.”
Matt did his best not to roll his eyes and let the older fat man drone own as he dead-stared him. Lifeless and without emotion.
The man came to a finish and Matt spoke up without having listened to him or paid him any attention. “Great now that’s taken care of. Can I please get to class and finish my sentence of two years at your wonderful school?”
Principal Andrews huffed and snorted before calling in Vicky. Vicky stood in the corner after entering with a quiet and seamless presence. Matt felt disturbed and tried not betray his feelings as the young Vicky was perceived and not perceived to be moving.
Principal Andrews made the introductions and Matt nodded back. She was to be his chaperone for the day. They had the same classes and she was to show him the ropes so to speak. The ins and outs of the school. The locations of their classes.
He recognized her. It was hard not to. The way her appearance seemed to shift fluidly almost. The petite and skinny brunette ever so lightly had a big bust and blonde hair with curves added when she seemed to shift before his eyes. Like watching a film but each frame had a different person.
Matt didn’t say anything about it. Even if he did he would only be acknowledging his crazed state, if he had one. If.
Unlike an obedient puppy dog he got up in a slow and awkward fashion and followed behind her as his oddly disproportionate frame allowed. Causing her a note of concern for some reason. As if she was seeing something she shouldn’t have been….Or he was just weird. And Matt could admit to himself he was just weird. Part of his charm, he would jest about it at times. Not that he had many people to jest to now.
As If It Were Kismet Ch. 5
Following Vicky into the hall off to their first class was simple. She exchanged small talk and he slightly smiled as if to obviously suggest he was just being polite.
Inside his head, Matt was trying to figure out if he was having a psychotic break. The way Vicky looked kept changing and he looked at the other people around him and they stayed the same.
He was searching his mind as they were walking. And thus he wasn’t paying attention to where he was looking and so fell to his face forward over his feet seemingly out of nowhere.
A series of laughs erupted as it sunk in that he was obviously tripped. Like in prison this was a challenge to his superiority. If he let this pass he would be mocked and sneered at by this same group of boys. He wouldn’t walk to them like he was going to do nothing like a little bitch.
In a rage he turned and punched the stomach of the first face he saw. Some typical blonde haired wannabe jock. He knew from experience not to aim for the ribs. Instead he needed to aim for where he thought the belly button was.
Yells and screams blindly echoed around him as his after the punch he followed up his elbow of the opposite arm slamming into the face of the jock. Harder than a fist, the elbow struck the jock’s jaw and seemingly dropped him against a locker. Just in time to catch an errant and soft punch to the nose that sure enough hurt but did little to slow him down as his dad had taught him to fight through the pain. Blood and scars happened. They were a natural consequence of life to a man.
Taking the punch and falling further into his red state Matt headbutted the punch thrower before another guy arm bared his throat from behind. Which he managed to get his grip on the arm over a letterman jacked and jerk the unprepared boy to the side with him still latched on.
A few feet away from the lockers Matt knew his only chance was to jump and push off the lockers and knock the boy to the ground and so he did. He heard a thunk of the boy’s skull bouncing off the ground and he turned to pull out of the grapple.
The beatings he had taken from his father, the grapples, being choked unconscious. Had prepared him for fighting little bitches who didn’t know what a fight was. It wasn’t gay porn with rabbit punch fists flying.
Blood was running down his face and the pain started to hit him as the threats had been eliminated. Only then did he remember to breathe. Taking breathes as Vicky came up to him with tissues and took a hold of his nose.
“Owww owww owww what the fuck my nose could be broken.” He said to Vicky as she pulled his head up and back.
“It’s ok Carl. It’s done.” Matt tried to look to see who Vicky was talking to. It was a boy taller than his 5’9” by more than a small margin. The boy eyed him bored and annoyed before speaking. “What happened here?” An unoriginal line but one Matt couldn’t be a smart aleck about. “Well you see there was an outbreak of tripping and we all tripped over my dick. It happens.” Matt was about to laugh when Vicky seemed to pull up while still gripping his nose causing Matt no small amount of pain which he audibly evidenced.
Vicky spoke in a tone he wasn’t expecting. As if she was accustomed to issuing orders. “Keep Iris away from the hall till we sanitize the site. We have blood from at least three people contaminating the site. And have Jake bring me a spare jacket and shirt for this moron.”
Carl seemed to acknowledge her orders and seemed to blink away. Maybe the punch hit harder than he expected. He had no time to wonder as Vick took her hand away from his and pushed him against the lockers. With ease he had not been expecting from her form and stature.
Before he could respond Vicky licked his blood covered chin and then his lips and spoke to him. “Focus on me you little blood bag.” Her tone had an annoyed yet feminine sneer.
“Look into my eyes. Look at me. You belong to me. You are just another food source in a collection of food sources.” Her eyes were a beautiful hazel Matt thought. Almost green. Pretty like jewels in some old treasure collections. The eyes he could get lost in before kissing her. Finally Vicky was just a slight and petite brunette and he thought she was beautiful.
She would make a hell of a girlfriend. Some cute thing he could see laying on the beach in Florida on their sides laughing and smiling before trading light kisses while hands wandered innocently. Before his mind could drift further he felt her lips on his. It took him a second to mentally grasp the kiss but his arms were around her back as her hands were at his sides. His eyes reflexively closed as he saw hers close.
It was ineffable to Matt. Beyond words, what was happening. The kiss, the moments beforehand. The way his brain tickled with electricity and gentle warmth. He had never had a kiss like this and he had traded more than a few kisses with at least a few girls.
The kiss was like a warm bath with his consciousness slipping beneath the surface. Their lips only parted to try new angles and approaches as Matt struggled to take in breath. It was a moment he could have stayed trapped in for….he didn’t know. But a curt throat clearing by another girl pulled them out of the moment.
The girl was taller than Vicky. Blonde. With slight curves. Vicky addressed her bewildered and gobsmacked, and perhaps a bit embarrassed. “Tina?”

Respect The Predator

"SKRAAAWWWWW!!!"

The Predator, also known as the Yautja, are an alien species that travel the numerous stars in the galaxy for the thrill of the hunt. The Predators will hunt anything and anyone all in the name of their brutal honor code and with their terrifying advanced technology, interstellar capabilities, and deadly superhuman attributes? The Yautja retain their status as the Alpha Species in the galaxy even in the year of 2056 where humans have also gained the ability of interstellar travel.
Disclaimer: This thread will only be covering feats for the Predator comics originating from the Marvel franchise and will not include feats from the stories originating from the Dark Horse franchise as I will do seperate threads for those in the future.
Linking the thread I made for the Predator vs Wolverine crossover as well as me bringing over some feats from that thread to this one as well.
Key

Day Of The Hunt=DOTH
The Preserve=TP
The Last Hunt=TLH
Predator vs Wolverine=PVW

Strength

• Predator sends Theta flying with a combistick strike.^DOTH
  
• Predator breaks Thetas mothers spine over his leg killing her.^DOTH
  
• Predator punches a survivor with enough force to launch him off his feet and break/crack the bark on a tree.^TP
  
• Predator casually tosses Paolo to a wall breaking the metal panels knocking him out.^TP
  
• The Nightmare Hunter stops a Purple Titan dead in its tracks midair with one arm.^TLH
  

Speed

• Predator kills a Astar security guard in a blur.^DOTH
  
• Predator dodges an Astar laser blast.^DOTH
  
• Predator evades gunfire and kills a survivor.^TP
  
• Predator evades gunfire from multiple shooters and kills a survivor.^TP
  
• Predator evades more automatic fire without getting hit once.^TP
  
• Predator evades automatic gunfire from multiple shooters and isn't tagged once.^TP
  
• Predator is able to evade gunfire/plasma fire from multiple shooters in a hallway without getting tagged until Paolo shoots him with his pistol.^TP
  

Durability/Armor

• Predator tanks a machete to the face only losing a mandible.^DOTH
• Predator bio-mask tanks the damaged Astar laser weapon to the face leaving the bio-mask still fully functional. ^DOTH
  
• Predator survives a direct hit from a speeder going high speeds with no damage to the Predator.^DOTH
  
• Predator is shot in the midsection by a Astar laser rifle. Barely fazes him.^DOTH
  
  • An Astar laser weapon can one-shot this huge beast.^DOTH
  • Limit: Paolo shoots the Predators arm off with the Astar laser weapon although, he also shoots the Predators right hand which remains intact.^DOTH
• Predator armor is bulletproof to pistol fire.^TP
  
• Predator bio-mask tanks a point blank shot from a pistol and it, along with the Predator, were both completely unharmed.^TLH
  
  • Limit: Multiple point blank automatic gunfire from an assault rifle will go through the bio-mask and kill the Predator.^TP

Skill

• Predator successfully infiltrates the Astar Recon Ship Turnstone and kills all combat personnel present. ^DOTH
  
• Theta and the rest of the surviving Astar personnel try to set up a trap for the Predator but it fails...horribly.^DOTH
  
• Predator disables a laser rifle with a skilled shuriken throw.^DOTH
  
• The Predator that almost kills Theta in issue 2 for the 2023 run, puts up a good fight against the River Ghost pack but needed saving from his comrade and would self destruct to erase his shame.^TP
  
• Predator kills Allen in one strike despite him wearing Predator armor outfitted with a exoskeleton suit.^TP
  
• A Super Predator kills multiple various sized Purple Titans at once. ^TLH
  
  • The Purple Titans can easily destroy trees.^TP
• The Nightmare Hunter slaughters numerous armed combatants with ease.^TLH
  Fights With Theta
  
• Theta was hunting the Yautja alone for fifteen years and possibly killed at least 20-25 on her own.^DOTH
  
• Theta uses scavenged Predator weapons and armor and outfits Predator armor with a built in exoskeleton.^TP
  
• She has access to nuke rockets lmao.^DOTH
  
• 2022 run, Issue 4. The full fight between Theta and a Predator. Theta was drunk before the fight but the Predator was able to defeat her in one move and would've killed her had Astar not shown up.^DOTH
  
• The Predator Theta was looking for in the 2022 run would've killed her had Paolo not intervened. ^DOTH
  
• 2023 run, issue 2. Full fight between a Predator that defeats Theta in combat "disarms" her and is about to kill her until the River Ghost pack saves her.^TP
  
• Theta is once again defeated by a Predator in the 2023 run issue 5, and is about to die until she is saved yet again.^TP
  

Fights With Wolverine 616 and Sabretooth 616

• Predator from the crossover fights Logan evenly a couple of times.^PVW
  
• A random Predator from the crossover was able to sneak up on Sabretooth and both mutually "killed" eachother. ^PVW
  

GeaWeapons

Plasma Caster

• Plasma caster blast apart the chest cavity of its targets. ^DOTH
  
• Plasma caster disintegrates a mans head.^DOTH
  
• Predator Plasma Caster takes a chunk out of a stone pillar.^DOTH
  
• A Purple Titan survives an alien explosive device, gets one-shotted by a Predator plasma caster.^TP
  
  • The Purple Titan is immune to small arms fire.^TP
• Predator plasma caster blast a huge hole in a survivors chest. ^TP
  
• Predator plasma caster obliterates a survivors head.^TP
  
• Plasma caster completely Incinerates a Purple Titans head.^TLH (See feat 4 for the plasma caster section for scaling)
  
• Plasma caster takes a sizable chunk out of a human.^TLH
  

Energy Flechette

• Predator energy flechette destroys a stone structure and emits a huge explosion as well as shooting off Thetas prosthetic foot.^DOTH

Shurikens/throwing stars

• Predator shuriken embeds itself in a mans skull.^DOTH
  
• Predator shuriken disables a Astar laser rifle. ^DOTH
  
• Predator shuriken fatally wounds a survivor allowing for an easy kill.^TP
  
  • Predator uses a shuriken to kill a River Ghost. ^TP
  • Predator ninja stars take out three humans.^TLH

Wrist Blades

• Predator cuts a man in half with his wrist blade.^TP
  
• Predator wrist blade obliterates an assault rifle.^TP
  
• Predator wrist blades cut off a survivors hand as well as cut apart the butt stock of the rifle.^TP
  

Predator Axe

• Predator axe cuts into a stone wall with ease.^DOTH
  
• Predator axe cuts Astar laser weapon in two.^DOTH
  
• Predator axe cuts a River Ghost head in two.^TP
  

Miscellaneous

• Predator ships stealth technology can bypass radar in the future of 2056.^DOTH
  
• The Predators have access to snall spider drones one of which kills all survivors in the 2022 run issue 6 leaving Theta and the two other Astar personnel the only ones alive.^DOTH
  
  • The Super Predators also have the explosive spider drones. ^TLH
• Predators have a small type of javelin that can kill a Ghost Runner.^TP
  
• The Nightmare Predator has hell hounds at his disposal.^TLH
  
  • Hell hounds are bullet resistant.^TLH
  • Hell hounds can give armored exoskeleton wearing humans trouble. ^TLH

Hey everyone, I’m typing this on my phone so I apologize if there is weird formatting. Anyways, to get to the point, there’s something really off with some people on my campus. I have come seeking answers.I noticed it first walking home from my 7pm class last Wednesday.
To set the scene, most of the campus is tucked back into the woods a little, and my 7pm class is in the farthest building from the parking lot (further into the woods). I get out from that 7pm class around 9pm, so on cloudy nights like last Wednesday, the only lights on that long sidewalk are the lights radiating from the other buildings. Usually, there’s roughly 30 feet where it’s pitch black because the foliage is pretty dense. I usually walk back to my apartment with some classmates that live in the same complex as me, but I told them to go ahead of me while I finished the rest of the project.
After packing my laptop away, I started heading back home. It was roughly 9:30 at this point, and my brain was slowly shutting down preparing for the deep sleep that has yet to come.Walking down the sidewalk, I heard somebody not too far into the woods laughing like they’ve just heard the funniest joke ever. I immediately thought, “probably some Freshman walking the trails with their friends smoking weed”. Chuckling to myself, I put in my AirPods and picked a playlist for my journey back home.
When I looked up from my phone, there was the silhouette of somebody walking towards me. I have no idea how I missed them before, but honestly, it’s very possible they were just in a spot where the light wasn’t quite reaching them. A little unnerved, I shifted over to the left side of the sidewalk.
(Now I’m usually fine walking alone at night; I’m a 6’2 man who’s dabbled in the world of MMA. But something about this person gave me a primal feeling of unrest.)
When they shifted over to the left mirroring me, I felt my blood run cold. But alas, I had to keep walking because this was my only way back home. As I neared closer to the figure, I almost laughed at myself when I realized it was just some harmless girl walking towards the Murphy building. If anything, I’m the intimidating one to her.
This is where it really gets weird. She stopped as I was passing her and turned to me. Thinking she needed to ask me something, I took an AirPod out and asked “what’s up?”. After staring at me for an uncomfortable amount of time, she opened her mouth, and I kid you not, mimicked the laugh I heard moments before perfectly. Before I could chalk it up to it just being her in the trails earlier, I noticed something. Her mouth wasn’t moving at all. If I had left my AirPods in, it would just look like she was just opening her mouth and staring at me. She then shifted into a deep raspy laugh. She did all of this without moving her mouth at all; I couldn’t even see her throat moving as you would expect if someone was laughing. It was almost like she was some fucked up human-shaped gramophone. The feeling of absolute horror that came over me is something I’ve only experienced in my imagination. Before I could think to do anything next, My body began to run off some sort of primal instinct. With my legs burning, it took me about 10 minutes to get all the way back to my apartment and lock myself in relative safety.
I’m coming on here now to ask if anybody knows what I experienced? I have been hearing that same laughter outside my window every night since that night, I am too terrified to sleep well and have refused to go to any of my classes. Please I just want answers, I don’t want to keep living in fear.
Part 2:
Hey everyone, I’ve gotten some DMs telling me what it may be. I’ve heard everything from banshee to skinwalker. After further research I pray to god it was neither of them. I’m praying it was just some girl with a speaker playing some sort of cruel joke. I mean yes there are people who don’t like me on campus, I’ve made some enemies over the past 4 years. But, I just don’t understand what could’ve brought it to this point. I had to stop hiding in fear and go to my classes before my grades plummet, I’m almost done with my degree and only have a few more weeks. If I let some sort of stupid prank ruin my career, It would be everything I swore against to my parents.
A lot of you guys in the DMs were also asking what college I go to and what my name is. First I want to say sorry for not providing that information in the first post, I’m sure you can understand where my head was at typing that. So let me introduce myself, my name is Nick and In order to keep my privacy, I will only provide that I go to a midwest university.
I’m sure you may be wondering, “so did it just stop?”. I would love to say yes, but really things have just gotten weirder. Though, I am pleased to say that there is no longer laughing out my window every night.
Ever since that night, I’ve been noticing more things off with the people on campus. Now you may just think it’s paranoia, but just be patient and listen.
Yesterday, I decided to muster up all of my courage and go to class. Luckily my first class is at 10AM, when the sun is well in the sky, so walking across campus seemed much less threatening. When I sat down in my first class, I noticed something off with the girl that sits in front of me. Usually she’s chatty and excited to be in class, but today she just stared blankly ahead. I tried to say good morning and ask about her weekend, as we do every Monday, but she continued to have that blank stare. She did turn her head towards be, but her eyes read “lights on, but nobody is home”.
Thinking to myself, she may just be hungover, or going through the bout of college student depression. I decided to shrug it off and turn to the front of the class and get my notes ready. But the moment I turned around, I could feel it. Her eyes burrowing deep into the back of my head. When I flipped around to see if I was just being irrational, I quickly learned I wasn’t. Her eyes went from the blank glare, to the most enthusiastic face I’ve seen on her. It was horrible, it almost seemed like she was trying so hard to pretend she was thrilled to be in class and to speak to me. It was inhuman.
I’ve been on the internet long enough to catch on to the term “Uncanny valley”, and what I witnessed In my first hour gives me that same gut feeling I got when I saw that girl last Wednesday.
I was right to be uncomfortable though, I texted her after class to make sure she was doing alright. But her response only reignited the flames of deep fear burning in my soul.
I’ll copy and paste the messages here:
Me: Hey Is everything good? You seemed off in class today.
Steph SCI 101: Uh yeah, I’m fine. but I was not in class today, I’m severely hungover from Tanner’s party last night.
Me: Haha, good one.
Steph SCI 101: No I’m so Fr, are you okay?
Steph SCI 101: Are you trying to fuck with me or something?
Me: Nevermind, I’m sorry to bother you.
(End Of Texts)
Okay so I’m sure that this gives you all the same feeling of dread that it gave me but I’m sure scaled down a bit. This is where I have started to doubt that it’s a prank, because me and Stephanie are cool. There’s no level of hate for either of us, and even if it was some joke, we don’t know each other on that type of level.
Not only did this seem to happen in my first class, but in between classes while I was walking across campus as well. I walk past hundreds of faces in my many treks across campus, and I swear to you, at least 1/4th of the people I walked past had that same dead stare look. And the way they walked, god I hate even thinking of it. It was like they were an alien trying out their new body suits for the first time. The steps and the bends of their legs just seem so meticulous, dramaticized, and puppeteered.
I’m going to try to investigate further, because at this point my fear for my life is more of a reason to try and figure out what it is so I can try to stop it.
I’m no hero, and I’m sure as hell nothing special, but If I can know what to expect for another encounter, maybe I can avoid meeting the demise I have imagined.
Part 3

First off I would like to apologize for my 20-day hiatus. For those who were worried that curiosity killed the cat so to speak, I appreciate your concern. On top of my investigation, I have also had to go through finals and work for a boss who didn't believe in life outside of work. So let's start where we left off. I had a feeling that this task was left for me to solve. it may sound stupid, but let me explain why. That night, after my last post, I had a dream that further solidified my need to solve the mystery. I tried to write all that I remembered down the morning after so here is what I wrote. 

April 4th, 2024
I had a strange dream last night, stranger than usual at least. I awoke in the woods, laying face down in the grass with someone looming over me. I heard their footsteps flee rapidly before I flipped over. I found myself just off the trail where the “incident” happened, on the trail laid a girl, bloodied and motionless. When I got up to approach her, she was quickly dragged into the parallel section of the woods. Seeing this I turned and ran into the section of woods I was in. When my legs gave out I found myself near an old supply shed, worn and long abandoned. Searching for cover, I tried the door, which luckily gave after a quick pull. There I found a trapdoor which emanated a blue hue through the cracks. The only thought on my mind, survival brought me to throw it open and climb down. I clattered down the ladder and right before my feet touched the ground, I was pulled backwards by my shirt. That’s where I woke up.
I have always trusted my gut and having a dream that vivid gave me a sense of courage I did not previously have. I know where to start my search now. I have decided my best course of action will be to record my findings on a tape recorder app. After I finish each entry it will be uploaded to a cloud that will ensure if anything happens to me, the story will get out. I am packing my backpack now with a flashlight, glow sticks to mark my trail, and a machete I was gifted by a local in Mexico. All of my recordings will be uploaded below and auto posted after 10 days. Wish me luck everyone, I’m going to need it.
Entry 1: I have started at the only place that makes sense, the trail. It is currently 1:45 PM and I have plenty of sun left in the sky. I just needed to find exactly where to start my journey into the woods. Strangely it was very easy to find. I recall one of the trees having a funky twist near the middle of the trunk. Probably just some two lovebirds trying to carve their name into the tree and realizing there were softer trees to carve into. Anyways hiking further into the woods I believe I can see the shape of the shed through the branches. I wish you guys could see how dense these trees are so you can understand my struggle.
Entry 2: I made it to the shed, but unfortunately the floor in here is concrete. This really sucks for me because I have absolutely no idea where to go from here. It’s identical on the outside but I just don’t understand. Maybe I’m just delusional, which in that case what a waste of time and energy. I’m going to head back home and just start packing for summer. Maybe it’ll be best if I just forget about all of this and leave it behind me. I am graduating after all. Wait hold on what is this?? there’s a button behind one of these shelves. I am going to press it, but idk how it would work because this floor is seamless. I’m just going to leave this recording so if anything does happen I don’t have to worry about holding the phone the whole time. Holy shit, the entire floor is lowering. It’s a fucking elevator.
Entry 3: Okay so I’ve been going down this elevator for like 30 seconds, how far down am I going?.. Oh wait hold on, Im stopped… There’s a metal door with a padlock. Ig since I have the machete there’s only one thing to do, break it. Im going to use the blunt side so I don’t ruin this thing, I like it too much. the lock clatters to the ground after 3 solid hits. Well ig there’s only one way to go now, there’s no button to get back up so I pray there’s another way up. The metal door creaks loudly. Fuck I regret this, It’s dark and I can tell it’s a big area because it’s so echoey in here. I’m currently praising my past self for thinking about the flashlight and glow sticks. I need to find out what in the hell this place is and most importantly, if there’s a damn light switch.
Entry 4: God this place is terrifying I’ve been walking around the sterile white halls of this place for like 10 minutes and have found nothing, no doors, no light switch. I feel like a rat in a maze. Also scratch what I said about being glad I packed glow sticks, because my stupid ass only brought like 20 of these things and I’m already down to 5. Also I feel like I’m not alone, every now and then I’ll turn a corner and the glow from the previous glow stick quickly vanishes. I feel like it might just be because the darkness seems to envelop everything like a blanket. But I have that feeling that I’m being followed. You know the one, where you know somethings wrong you just can’t pin point what it is. Oh shit no way, there’s light, I think there’s a door or something up ahead.
Entry 5: Holy shit… It’s a lab, and worse, there’s people strapped too tables, completely naked and unconscious. I know they are alive because each of them are hooked up with a million different cords, and one of those are plugged into a heart monitor. This place is huge, there has to be at least 50 people on these tables.
“Hey you, you’re not supposed to be in here” yelled a man adorned in a lab coat.
“What are you doing to these kids you sick fucks.” I yelled back at the man across the lab.
In a haste the scientist rushes towards a red button, setting off a loud alarm, turning the lights to a flashing red. With no exit behind me, I could only do one thing... Rush towards him. My training kicked in as I launched into a flurry of calculated strikes. My first hit connected, a right overhand clean under his eye. The doctor stumbled back, but I didn't give him a chance to recover. I pressed the attack, keeping him off balance with a relentless barrage of punches and kicks. He fought back ferociously, but I was one step ahead, anticipating his moves and countering with swift, efficient strikes. We wrestled, the room around us becoming a blur of pain and adrenaline. I used the environment to my advantage, improvising weapons from the scattered medical equipment and turning the empty tables on my opponent. Pinning him to the ground, I laid down a harsh barrage of final blows. His face was a bloody pulp, unrecognizable. But I didn’t walk away unscathed, somewhere in the tussle, the scientist buried a scalpel deep into my stomach. With my adrenaline wearing off, the pain overtook me, sending me into darkness as I fainted from the blood loss and adrenaline dump. I awoke with my arms and legs strapped to the cold metal operating table. Before I could try to struggle, a face overtook my field of vision.
“Quite a fight you put up, you turned poor Dr.Samson into a soup” the looming face said with a chuckle. “You are the first person to put the pieces together and for that I am thoroughly impressed Mr. Hayes”
“Who are you?!” I said fighting at my binds. “Let me go!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that Mr.Hayes. You have seen far too much, and I definitely can’t have you running around telling the world what you saw here. Although nobody would believe you.” “And to answer your other question, I’m surprised you don’t recognize me… really take a moment and look at me” He said pulling down his face mask.
“Dr.Blackwood?” I said as I looked back on my freshman year biology class.
“Ding ding ding ding. We have a winner!” He said in a maniac joy.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked.
“Well Mr.Hayes, first I’m going to sew you up from your little tussle you had with my late assistant and then I will put you under and cut into that skull of yours and take out a small piece of what we call in the science world your hippocampus. Then I will draw from that all of the necessary memories to create the perfect clone of you.” He responded.
“Why? Why would you need a clone of any of us. Why can’t you just clone someone willing to be apart of this?” I asked
“Because that’s no fun Mr.Hayes, the hunt excites me. Actually you’re lucky I didn’t get you the first night. Unfortunately my creation had a little bit of a malfunction and formed a wee bit of an attachment to you. I’m sure you remember the ruckus outside your window? Anyways I digress, I do this because everyone of you lowly students will go onto do mediocre jobs where you waste away at a desk. I must also add that with having a clone of you under my control, I can do anything and get away with clean hands. My plan with you originally was to have you go into the admissions office and steal every last cent all for me. On top of that I like the power, because one day I will have a clone of every student on this campus and eventually I will cause a revolt against our comedy of a government. Who will stop me, when I won’t even be on the front lines?” Dr.Blackwood explained.
“I will” I said freeing my last hand from the binds.
What he didn’t realize is that with all of this monologue and the questions I had been feeding him, I was slowly loosening my binds with each wiggle and movement in retaliation.
Lurching forward I grab onto his collar, pulling him into a vicious headbutt. The impact sent Dr. Blackwood reeling backward, his grip on consciousness loosening as he staggered. Seizing the moment, I lunged off the table, adrenaline coursing through my veins despite the searing pain in my abdomen. With a swift motion, I grabbed a nearby surgical instrument, holding it in a defensive stance as I faced my adversary. Dr. Blackwood, recovering from the blow, snarled with rage, his once calm demeanor now replaced by a feral intensity. The room seemed to shrink around us, the tension thickening with each passing second. This was my chance to stop Blackwood's twisted plans. As he lunged forward, I met his attack head-on, the clang of metal reverberating through the room. Blow after blow, we fought with an intensity born of desperation and determination. Despite my injuries, I refused to yield, driven by a fire burnt under me to protect myself and others from Blackwood's actions . In a final, swift move, I delivered a powerful front kick, sending Blackwood crashing to the ground. The room fell silent, the echoes of our struggle fading into the darkness. Coughing he sat in the corner laughing with blood spilling down his face. “You know that it’s too late to save any of these one lying on the tables. I would’ve released you, you know that right? I would’ve simply taken your memory from today out of your brain and leaving you in your bed to wake up thinking you had a fun night” he said with final resolve as he watched me grab the scalpel from the ground taking slow steps near him.
Looking down over him, It was my turn to laugh. Kneeling down to eye level with him I grabbed him by his hair and delivered a final message to him “Fuck you and your little science experiment” as I sliced deep into his throat watching the life fade from his eyes.
I eventually found an exit door, which lead me to a storm drain deep in the woods far from my campus. It took me 2 hours to limp my way onto a main road and flag down a passing car. Pulling over I was rushed to the hospital and later interrogated by some men in suits, my guess is CIA. Here I am now, writing my final entrance. I think I heard them say something about trying a new medical process on me to help me heal quicker.

Hey everyone, I’m typing this on my phone so I apologize if there is weird formatting. Anyways, to get to the point, there’s something really off with some people on my campus. I have come seeking answers.I noticed it first walking home from my 7pm class last Wednesday.
To set the scene, most of the campus is tucked back into the woods a little, and my 7pm class is in the farthest building from the parking lot (further into the woods). I get out from that 7pm class around 9pm, so on cloudy nights like last Wednesday, the only lights on that long sidewalk are the lights radiating from the other buildings. Usually, there’s roughly 30 feet where it’s pitch black because the foliage is pretty dense. I usually walk back to my apartment with some classmates that live in the same complex as me, but I told them to go ahead of me while I finished the rest of the project.
After packing my laptop away, I started heading back home. It was roughly 9:30 at this point, and my brain was slowly shutting down preparing for the deep sleep that has yet to come.Walking down the sidewalk, I heard somebody not too far into the woods laughing like they’ve just heard the funniest joke ever. I immediately thought, “probably some Freshman walking the trails with their friends smoking weed”. Chuckling to myself, I put in my AirPods and picked a playlist for my journey back home.
When I looked up from my phone, there was the silhouette of somebody walking towards me. I have no idea how I missed them before, but honestly, it’s very possible they were just in a spot where the light wasn’t quite reaching them. A little unnerved, I shifted over to the left side of the sidewalk.
(Now I’m usually fine walking alone at night; I’m a 6’2 man who’s dabbled in the world of MMA. But something about this person gave me a primal feeling of unrest.)
When they shifted over to the left mirroring me, I felt my blood run cold. But alas, I had to keep walking because this was my only way back home. As I neared closer to the figure, I almost laughed at myself when I realized it was just some harmless girl walking towards the Murphy building. If anything, I’m the intimidating one to her.
This is where it really gets weird. She stopped as I was passing her and turned to me. Thinking she needed to ask me something, I took an AirPod out and asked “what’s up?”. After staring at me for an uncomfortable amount of time, she opened her mouth, and I kid you not, mimicked the laugh I heard moments before perfectly. Before I could chalk it up to it just being her in the trails earlier, I noticed something. Her mouth wasn’t moving at all. If I had left my AirPods in, it would just look like she was just opening her mouth and staring at me. She then shifted into a deep raspy laugh. She did all of this without moving her mouth at all; I couldn’t even see her throat moving as you would expect if someone was laughing. It was almost like she was some fucked up human-shaped gramophone. The feeling of absolute horror that came over me is something I’ve only experienced in my imagination. Before I could think to do anything next, My body began to run off some sort of primal instinct. With my legs burning, it took me about 10 minutes to get all the way back to my apartment and lock myself in relative safety.
I’m coming on here now to ask if anybody knows what I experienced? I have been hearing that same laughter outside my window every night since that night, I am too terrified to sleep well and have refused to go to any of my classes. Please I just want answers, I don’t want to keep living in fear.
Part 2:
Hey everyone, I’ve gotten some DMs telling me what it may be. I’ve heard everything from banshee to skinwalker. After further research I pray to god it was neither of them. I’m praying it was just some girl with a speaker playing some sort of cruel joke. I mean yes there are people who don’t like me on campus, I’ve made some enemies over the past 4 years. But, I just don’t understand what could’ve brought it to this point. I had to stop hiding in fear and go to my classes before my grades plummet, I’m almost done with my degree and only have a few more weeks. If I let some sort of stupid prank ruin my career, It would be everything I swore against to my parents.
A lot of you guys in the DMs were also asking what college I go to and what my name is. First I want to say sorry for not providing that information in the first post, I’m sure you can understand where my head was at typing that. So let me introduce myself, my name is Nick and In order to keep my privacy, I will only provide that I go to a midwest university.
I’m sure you may be wondering, “so did it just stop?”. I would love to say yes, but really things have just gotten weirder. Though, I am pleased to say that there is no longer laughing out my window every night.
Ever since that night, I’ve been noticing more things off with the people on campus. Now you may just think it’s paranoia, but just be patient and listen.
Yesterday, I decided to muster up all of my courage and go to class. Luckily my first class is at 10AM, when the sun is well in the sky, so walking across campus seemed much less threatening. When I sat down in my first class, I noticed something off with the girl that sits in front of me. Usually she’s chatty and excited to be in class, but today she just stared blankly ahead. I tried to say good morning and ask about her weekend, as we do every Monday, but she continued to have that blank stare. She did turn her head towards be, but her eyes read “lights on, but nobody is home”.
Thinking to myself, she may just be hungover, or going through the bout of college student depression. I decided to shrug it off and turn to the front of the class and get my notes ready. But the moment I turned around, I could feel it. Her eyes burrowing deep into the back of my head. When I flipped around to see if I was just being irrational, I quickly learned I wasn’t. Her eyes went from the blank glare, to the most enthusiastic face I’ve seen on her. It was horrible, it almost seemed like she was trying so hard to pretend she was thrilled to be in class and to speak to me. It was inhuman.
I’ve been on the internet long enough to catch on to the term “Uncanny valley”, and what I witnessed In my first hour gives me that same gut feeling I got when I saw that girl last Wednesday.
I was right to be uncomfortable though, I texted her after class to make sure she was doing alright. But her response only reignited the flames of deep fear burning in my soul.
I’ll copy and paste the messages here:
Me: Hey Is everything good? You seemed off in class today.
Steph SCI 101: Uh yeah, I’m fine. but I was not in class today, I’m severely hungover from Tanner’s party last night.
Me: Haha, good one.
Steph SCI 101: No I’m so Fr, are you okay?
Steph SCI 101: Are you trying to fuck with me or something?
Me: Nevermind, I’m sorry to bother you.
(End Of Texts)
Okay so I’m sure that this gives you all the same feeling of dread that it gave me but I’m sure scaled down a bit. This is where I have started to doubt that it’s a prank, because me and Stephanie are cool. There’s no level of hate for either of us, and even if it was some joke, we don’t know each other on that type of level.
Not only did this seem to happen in my first class, but in between classes while I was walking across campus as well. I walk past hundreds of faces in my many treks across campus, and I swear to you, at least 1/4th of the people I walked past had that same dead stare look. And the way they walked, god I hate even thinking of it. It was like they were an alien trying out their new body suits for the first time. The steps and the bends of their legs just seem so meticulous, dramaticized, and puppeteered.
I’m going to try to investigate further, because at this point my fear for my life is more of a reason to try and figure out what it is so I can try to stop it.
I’m no hero, and I’m sure as hell nothing special, but If I can know what to expect for another encounter, maybe I can avoid meeting the demise I have imagined.
Part 3

First off I would like to apologize for my 20-day hiatus. For those who were worried that curiosity killed the cat so to speak, I appreciate your concern. On top of my investigation, I have also had to go through finals and work for a boss who didn't believe in life outside of work. So let's start where we left off. I had a feeling that this task was left for me to solve. it may sound stupid, but let me explain why. That night, after my last post, I had a dream that further solidified my need to solve the mystery. I tried to write all that I remembered down the morning after so here is what I wrote. 

April 4th, 2024
I had a strange dream last night, stranger than usual at least. I awoke in the woods, laying face down in the grass with someone looming over me. I heard their footsteps flee rapidly before I flipped over. I found myself just off the trail where the “incident” happened, on the trail laid a girl, bloodied and motionless. When I got up to approach her, she was quickly dragged into the parallel section of the woods. Seeing this I turned and ran into the section of woods I was in. When my legs gave out I found myself near an old supply shed, worn and long abandoned. Searching for cover, I tried the door, which luckily gave after a quick pull. There I found a trapdoor which emanated a blue hue through the cracks. The only thought on my mind, survival brought me to throw it open and climb down. I clattered down the ladder and right before my feet touched the ground, I was pulled backwards by my shirt. That’s where I woke up.
I have always trusted my gut and having a dream that vivid gave me a sense of courage I did not previously have. I know where to start my search now. I have decided my best course of action will be to record my findings on a tape recorder app. After I finish each entry it will be uploaded to a cloud that will ensure if anything happens to me, the story will get out. I am packing my backpack now with a flashlight, glow sticks to mark my trail, and a machete I was gifted by a local in Mexico. All of my recordings will be uploaded below and auto posted after 10 days. Wish me luck everyone, I’m going to need it.
Entry 1: I have started at the only place that makes sense, the trail. It is currently 1:45 PM and I have plenty of sun left in the sky. I just needed to find exactly where to start my journey into the woods. Strangely it was very easy to find. I recall one of the trees having a funky twist near the middle of the trunk. Probably just some two lovebirds trying to carve their name into the tree and realizing there were softer trees to carve into. Anyways hiking further into the woods I believe I can see the shape of the shed through the branches. I wish you guys could see how dense these trees are so you can understand my struggle.
Entry 2: I made it to the shed, but unfortunately the floor in here is concrete. This really sucks for me because I have absolutely no idea where to go from here. It’s identical on the outside but I just don’t understand. Maybe I’m just delusional, which in that case what a waste of time and energy. I’m going to head back home and just start packing for summer. Maybe it’ll be best if I just forget about all of this and leave it behind me. I am graduating after all. Wait hold on what is this?? there’s a button behind one of these shelves. I am going to press it, but idk how it would work because this floor is seamless. I’m just going to leave this recording so if anything does happen I don’t have to worry about holding the phone the whole time. Holy shit, the entire floor is lowering. It’s a fucking elevator.
Entry 3: Okay so I’ve been going down this elevator for like 30 seconds, how far down am I going?.. Oh wait hold on, Im stopped… There’s a metal door with a padlock. Ig since I have the machete there’s only one thing to do, break it. Im going to use the blunt side so I don’t ruin this thing, I like it too much. the lock clatters to the ground after 3 solid hits. Well ig there’s only one way to go now, there’s no button to get back up so I pray there’s another way up. The metal door creaks loudly. Fuck I regret this, It’s dark and I can tell it’s a big area because it’s so echoey in here. I’m currently praising my past self for thinking about the flashlight and glow sticks. I need to find out what in the hell this place is and most importantly, if there’s a damn light switch.
Entry 4: God this place is terrifying I’ve been walking around the sterile white halls of this place for like 10 minutes and have found nothing, no doors, no light switch. I feel like a rat in a maze. Also scratch what I said about being glad I packed glow sticks, because my stupid ass only brought like 20 of these things and I’m already down to 5. Also I feel like I’m not alone, every now and then I’ll turn a corner and the glow from the previous glow stick quickly vanishes. I feel like it might just be because the darkness seems to envelop everything like a blanket. But I have that feeling that I’m being followed. You know the one, where you know somethings wrong you just can’t pin point what it is. Oh shit no way, there’s light, I think there’s a door or something up ahead.
Entry 5: Holy shit… It’s a lab, and worse, there’s people strapped too tables, completely naked and unconscious. I know they are alive because each of them are hooked up with a million different cords, and one of those are plugged into a heart monitor. This place is huge, there has to be at least 50 people on these tables.
“Hey you, you’re not supposed to be in here” yelled a man adorned in a lab coat.
“What are you doing to these kids you sick fucks.” I yelled back at the man across the lab.
In a haste the scientist rushes towards a red button, setting off a loud alarm, turning the lights to a flashing red. With no exit behind me, I could only do one thing... Rush towards him. My training kicked in as I launched into a flurry of calculated strikes. My first hit connected, a right overhand clean under his eye. The doctor stumbled back, but I didn't give him a chance to recover. I pressed the attack, keeping him off balance with a relentless barrage of punches and kicks. He fought back ferociously, but I was one step ahead, anticipating his moves and countering with swift, efficient strikes. We wrestled, the room around us becoming a blur of pain and adrenaline. I used the environment to my advantage, improvising weapons from the scattered medical equipment and turning the empty tables on my opponent. Pinning him to the ground, I laid down a harsh barrage of final blows. His face was a bloody pulp, unrecognizable. But I didn’t walk away unscathed, somewhere in the tussle, the scientist buried a scalpel deep into my stomach. With my adrenaline wearing off, the pain overtook me, sending me into darkness as I fainted from the blood loss and adrenaline dump. I awoke with my arms and legs strapped to the cold metal operating table. Before I could try to struggle, a face overtook my field of vision.
“Quite a fight you put up, you turned poor Dr.Samson into a soup” the looming face said with a chuckle. “You are the first person to put the pieces together and for that I am thoroughly impressed Mr. Hayes”
“Who are you?!” I said fighting at my binds. “Let me go!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that Mr.Hayes. You have seen far too much, and I definitely can’t have you running around telling the world what you saw here. Although nobody would believe you.” “And to answer your other question, I’m surprised you don’t recognize me… really take a moment and look at me” He said pulling down his face mask.
“Dr.Blackwood?” I said as I looked back on my freshman year biology class.
“Ding ding ding ding. We have a winner!” He said in a maniac joy.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked.
“Well Mr.Hayes, first I’m going to sew you up from your little tussle you had with my late assistant and then I will put you under and cut into that skull of yours and take out a small piece of what we call in the science world your hippocampus. Then I will draw from that all of the necessary memories to create the perfect clone of you.” He responded.
“Why? Why would you need a clone of any of us. Why can’t you just clone someone willing to be apart of this?” I asked
“Because that’s no fun Mr.Hayes, the hunt excites me. Actually you’re lucky I didn’t get you the first night. Unfortunately my creation had a little bit of a malfunction and formed a wee bit of an attachment to you. I’m sure you remember the ruckus outside your window? Anyways I digress, I do this because everyone of you lowly students will go onto do mediocre jobs where you waste away at a desk. I must also add that with having a clone of you under my control, I can do anything and get away with clean hands. My plan with you originally was to have you go into the admissions office and steal every last cent all for me. On top of that I like the power, because one day I will have a clone of every student on this campus and eventually I will cause a revolt against our comedy of a government. Who will stop me, when I won’t even be on the front lines?” Dr.Blackwood explained.
“I will” I said freeing my last hand from the binds.
What he didn’t realize is that with all of this monologue and the questions I had been feeding him, I was slowly loosening my binds with each wiggle and movement in retaliation.
Lurching forward I grab onto his collar, pulling him into a vicious headbutt. The impact sent Dr. Blackwood reeling backward, his grip on consciousness loosening as he staggered. Seizing the moment, I lunged off the table, adrenaline coursing through my veins despite the searing pain in my abdomen. With a swift motion, I grabbed a nearby surgical instrument, holding it in a defensive stance as I faced my adversary. Dr. Blackwood, recovering from the blow, snarled with rage, his once calm demeanor now replaced by a feral intensity. The room seemed to shrink around us, the tension thickening with each passing second. This was my chance to stop Blackwood's twisted plans. As he lunged forward, I met his attack head-on, the clang of metal reverberating through the room. Blow after blow, we fought with an intensity born of desperation and determination. Despite my injuries, I refused to yield, driven by a fire burnt under me to protect myself and others from Blackwood's actions . In a final, swift move, I delivered a powerful front kick, sending Blackwood crashing to the ground. The room fell silent, the echoes of our struggle fading into the darkness. Coughing he sat in the corner laughing with blood spilling down his face. “You know that it’s too late to save any of these one lying on the tables. I would’ve released you, you know that right? I would’ve simply taken your memory from today out of your brain and leaving you in your bed to wake up thinking you had a fun night” he said with final resolve as he watched me grab the scalpel from the ground taking slow steps near him.
Looking down over him, It was my turn to laugh. Kneeling down to eye level with him I grabbed him by his hair and delivered a final message to him “Fuck you and your little science experiment” as I sliced deep into his throat watching the life fade from his eyes.
I eventually found an exit door, which lead me to a storm drain deep in the woods far from my campus. It took me 2 hours to limp my way onto a main road and flag down a passing car. Pulling over I was rushed to the hospital and later interrogated by some men in suits, my guess is CIA. Here I am now, writing my final entrance. I think I heard them say something about trying a new medical process on me to help me heal quicker.

Hey everyone, I’m typing this on my phone so I apologize if there is weird formatting. Anyways, to get to the point, there’s something really off with some people on my campus. I have come seeking answers.I noticed it first walking home from my 7pm class last Wednesday.
To set the scene, most of the campus is tucked back into the woods a little, and my 7pm class is in the farthest building from the parking lot (further into the woods). I get out from that 7pm class around 9pm, so on cloudy nights like last Wednesday, the only lights on that long sidewalk are the lights radiating from the other buildings. Usually, there’s roughly 30 feet where it’s pitch black because the foliage is pretty dense. I usually walk back to my apartment with some classmates that live in the same complex as me, but I told them to go ahead of me while I finished the rest of the project.
After packing my laptop away, I started heading back home. It was roughly 9:30 at this point, and my brain was slowly shutting down preparing for the deep sleep that has yet to come.Walking down the sidewalk, I heard somebody not too far into the woods laughing like they’ve just heard the funniest joke ever. I immediately thought, “probably some Freshman walking the trails with their friends smoking weed”. Chuckling to myself, I put in my AirPods and picked a playlist for my journey back home.
When I looked up from my phone, there was the silhouette of somebody walking towards me. I have no idea how I missed them before, but honestly, it’s very possible they were just in a spot where the light wasn’t quite reaching them. A little unnerved, I shifted over to the left side of the sidewalk.
(Now I’m usually fine walking alone at night; I’m a 6’2 man who’s dabbled in the world of MMA. But something about this person gave me a primal feeling of unrest.)
When they shifted over to the left mirroring me, I felt my blood run cold. But alas, I had to keep walking because this was my only way back home. As I neared closer to the figure, I almost laughed at myself when I realized it was just some harmless girl walking towards the Murphy building. If anything, I’m the intimidating one to her.
This is where it really gets weird. She stopped as I was passing her and turned to me. Thinking she needed to ask me something, I took an AirPod out and asked “what’s up?”. After staring at me for an uncomfortable amount of time, she opened her mouth, and I kid you not, mimicked the laugh I heard moments before perfectly. Before I could chalk it up to it just being her in the trails earlier, I noticed something. Her mouth wasn’t moving at all. If I had left my AirPods in, it would just look like she was just opening her mouth and staring at me. She then shifted into a deep raspy laugh. She did all of this without moving her mouth at all; I couldn’t even see her throat moving as you would expect if someone was laughing. It was almost like she was some fucked up human-shaped gramophone. The feeling of absolute horror that came over me is something I’ve only experienced in my imagination. Before I could think to do anything next, My body began to run off some sort of primal instinct. With my legs burning, it took me about 10 minutes to get all the way back to my apartment and lock myself in relative safety.
I’m coming on here now to ask if anybody knows what I experienced? I have been hearing that same laughter outside my window every night since that night, I am too terrified to sleep well and have refused to go to any of my classes. Please I just want answers, I don’t want to keep living in fear.
Part 2:
Hey everyone, I’ve gotten some DMs telling me what it may be. I’ve heard everything from banshee to skinwalker. After further research I pray to god it was neither of them. I’m praying it was just some girl with a speaker playing some sort of cruel joke. I mean yes there are people who don’t like me on campus, I’ve made some enemies over the past 4 years. But, I just don’t understand what could’ve brought it to this point. I had to stop hiding in fear and go to my classes before my grades plummet, I’m almost done with my degree and only have a few more weeks. If I let some sort of stupid prank ruin my career, It would be everything I swore against to my parents.
A lot of you guys in the DMs were also asking what college I go to and what my name is. First I want to say sorry for not providing that information in the first post, I’m sure you can understand where my head was at typing that. So let me introduce myself, my name is Nick and In order to keep my privacy, I will only provide that I go to a midwest university.
I’m sure you may be wondering, “so did it just stop?”. I would love to say yes, but really things have just gotten weirder. Though, I am pleased to say that there is no longer laughing out my window every night.
Ever since that night, I’ve been noticing more things off with the people on campus. Now you may just think it’s paranoia, but just be patient and listen.
Yesterday, I decided to muster up all of my courage and go to class. Luckily my first class is at 10AM, when the sun is well in the sky, so walking across campus seemed much less threatening. When I sat down in my first class, I noticed something off with the girl that sits in front of me. Usually she’s chatty and excited to be in class, but today she just stared blankly ahead. I tried to say good morning and ask about her weekend, as we do every Monday, but she continued to have that blank stare. She did turn her head towards be, but her eyes read “lights on, but nobody is home”.
Thinking to myself, she may just be hungover, or going through the bout of college student depression. I decided to shrug it off and turn to the front of the class and get my notes ready. But the moment I turned around, I could feel it. Her eyes burrowing deep into the back of my head. When I flipped around to see if I was just being irrational, I quickly learned I wasn’t. Her eyes went from the blank glare, to the most enthusiastic face I’ve seen on her. It was horrible, it almost seemed like she was trying so hard to pretend she was thrilled to be in class and to speak to me. It was inhuman.
I’ve been on the internet long enough to catch on to the term “Uncanny valley”, and what I witnessed In my first hour gives me that same gut feeling I got when I saw that girl last Wednesday.
I was right to be uncomfortable though, I texted her after class to make sure she was doing alright. But her response only reignited the flames of deep fear burning in my soul.
I’ll copy and paste the messages here:
Me: Hey Is everything good? You seemed off in class today.
Steph SCI 101: Uh yeah, I’m fine. but I was not in class today, I’m severely hungover from Tanner’s party last night.
Me: Haha, good one.
Steph SCI 101: No I’m so Fr, are you okay?
Steph SCI 101: Are you trying to fuck with me or something?
Me: Nevermind, I’m sorry to bother you.
(End Of Texts)
Okay so I’m sure that this gives you all the same feeling of dread that it gave me but I’m sure scaled down a bit. This is where I have started to doubt that it’s a prank, because me and Stephanie are cool. There’s no level of hate for either of us, and even if it was some joke, we don’t know each other on that type of level.
Not only did this seem to happen in my first class, but in between classes while I was walking across campus as well. I walk past hundreds of faces in my many treks across campus, and I swear to you, at least 1/4th of the people I walked past had that same dead stare look. And the way they walked, god I hate even thinking of it. It was like they were an alien trying out their new body suits for the first time. The steps and the bends of their legs just seem so meticulous, dramaticized, and puppeteered.
I’m going to try to investigate further, because at this point my fear for my life is more of a reason to try and figure out what it is so I can try to stop it.
I’m no hero, and I’m sure as hell nothing special, but If I can know what to expect for another encounter, maybe I can avoid meeting the demise I have imagined.
Part 3

First off I would like to apologize for my 20-day hiatus. For those who were worried that curiosity killed the cat so to speak, I appreciate your concern. On top of my investigation, I have also had to go through finals and work for a boss who didn't believe in life outside of work. So let's start where we left off. I had a feeling that this task was left for me to solve. it may sound stupid, but let me explain why. That night, after my last post, I had a dream that further solidified my need to solve the mystery. I tried to write all that I remembered down the morning after so here is what I wrote. 

April 4th, 2024
I had a strange dream last night, stranger than usual at least. I awoke in the woods, laying face down in the grass with someone looming over me. I heard their footsteps flee rapidly before I flipped over. I found myself just off the trail where the “incident” happened, on the trail laid a girl, bloodied and motionless. When I got up to approach her, she was quickly dragged into the parallel section of the woods. Seeing this I turned and ran into the section of woods I was in. When my legs gave out I found myself near an old supply shed, worn and long abandoned. Searching for cover, I tried the door, which luckily gave after a quick pull. There I found a trapdoor which emanated a blue hue through the cracks. The only thought on my mind, survival brought me to throw it open and climb down. I clattered down the ladder and right before my feet touched the ground, I was pulled backwards by my shirt. That’s where I woke up.
I have always trusted my gut and having a dream that vivid gave me a sense of courage I did not previously have. I know where to start my search now. I have decided my best course of action will be to record my findings on a tape recorder app. After I finish each entry it will be uploaded to a cloud that will ensure if anything happens to me, the story will get out. I am packing my backpack now with a flashlight, glow sticks to mark my trail, and a machete I was gifted by a local in Mexico. All of my recordings will be uploaded below and auto posted after 10 days. Wish me luck everyone, I’m going to need it.
Entry 1: I have started at the only place that makes sense, the trail. It is currently 1:45 PM and I have plenty of sun left in the sky. I just needed to find exactly where to start my journey into the woods. Strangely it was very easy to find. I recall one of the trees having a funky twist near the middle of the trunk. Probably just some two lovebirds trying to carve their name into the tree and realizing there were softer trees to carve into. Anyways hiking further into the woods I believe I can see the shape of the shed through the branches. I wish you guys could see how dense these trees are so you can understand my struggle.
Entry 2: I made it to the shed, but unfortunately the floor in here is concrete. This really sucks for me because I have absolutely no idea where to go from here. It’s identical on the outside but I just don’t understand. Maybe I’m just delusional, which in that case what a waste of time and energy. I’m going to head back home and just start packing for summer. Maybe it’ll be best if I just forget about all of this and leave it behind me. I am graduating after all. Wait hold on what is this?? there’s a button behind one of these shelves. I am going to press it, but idk how it would work because this floor is seamless. I’m just going to leave this recording so if anything does happen I don’t have to worry about holding the phone the whole time. Holy shit, the entire floor is lowering. It’s a fucking elevator.
Entry 3: Okay so I’ve been going down this elevator for like 30 seconds, how far down am I going?.. Oh wait hold on, Im stopped… There’s a metal door with a padlock. Ig since I have the machete there’s only one thing to do, break it. Im going to use the blunt side so I don’t ruin this thing, I like it too much. the lock clatters to the ground after 3 solid hits. Well ig there’s only one way to go now, there’s no button to get back up so I pray there’s another way up. The metal door creaks loudly. Fuck I regret this, It’s dark and I can tell it’s a big area because it’s so echoey in here. I’m currently praising my past self for thinking about the flashlight and glow sticks. I need to find out what in the hell this place is and most importantly, if there’s a damn light switch.
Entry 4: God this place is terrifying I’ve been walking around the sterile white halls of this place for like 10 minutes and have found nothing, no doors, no light switch. I feel like a rat in a maze. Also scratch what I said about being glad I packed glow sticks, because my stupid ass only brought like 20 of these things and I’m already down to 5. Also I feel like I’m not alone, every now and then I’ll turn a corner and the glow from the previous glow stick quickly vanishes. I feel like it might just be because the darkness seems to envelop everything like a blanket. But I have that feeling that I’m being followed. You know the one, where you know somethings wrong you just can’t pin point what it is. Oh shit no way, there’s light, I think there’s a door or something up ahead.
Entry 5: Holy shit… It’s a lab, and worse, there’s people strapped too tables, completely naked and unconscious. I know they are alive because each of them are hooked up with a million different cords, and one of those are plugged into a heart monitor. This place is huge, there has to be at least 50 people on these tables.
“Hey you, you’re not supposed to be in here” yelled a man adorned in a lab coat.
“What are you doing to these kids you sick fucks.” I yelled back at the man across the lab.
In a haste the scientist rushes towards a red button, setting off a loud alarm, turning the lights to a flashing red. With no exit behind me, I could only do one thing... Rush towards him. My training kicked in as I launched into a flurry of calculated strikes. My first hit connected, a right overhand clean under his eye. The doctor stumbled back, but I didn't give him a chance to recover. I pressed the attack, keeping him off balance with a relentless barrage of punches and kicks. He fought back ferociously, but I was one step ahead, anticipating his moves and countering with swift, efficient strikes. We wrestled, the room around us becoming a blur of pain and adrenaline. I used the environment to my advantage, improvising weapons from the scattered medical equipment and turning the empty tables on my opponent. Pinning him to the ground, I laid down a harsh barrage of final blows. His face was a bloody pulp, unrecognizable. But I didn’t walk away unscathed, somewhere in the tussle, the scientist buried a scalpel deep into my stomach. With my adrenaline wearing off, the pain overtook me, sending me into darkness as I fainted from the blood loss and adrenaline dump. I awoke with my arms and legs strapped to the cold metal operating table. Before I could try to struggle, a face overtook my field of vision.
“Quite a fight you put up, you turned poor Dr.Samson into a soup” the looming face said with a chuckle. “You are the first person to put the pieces together and for that I am thoroughly impressed Mr. Hayes”
“Who are you?!” I said fighting at my binds. “Let me go!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that Mr.Hayes. You have seen far too much, and I definitely can’t have you running around telling the world what you saw here. Although nobody would believe you.” “And to answer your other question, I’m surprised you don’t recognize me… really take a moment and look at me” He said pulling down his face mask.
“Dr.Blackwood?” I said as I looked back on my freshman year biology class.
“Ding ding ding ding. We have a winner!” He said in a maniac joy.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked.
“Well Mr.Hayes, first I’m going to sew you up from your little tussle you had with my late assistant and then I will put you under and cut into that skull of yours and take out a small piece of what we call in the science world your hippocampus. Then I will draw from that all of the necessary memories to create the perfect clone of you.” He responded.
“Why? Why would you need a clone of any of us. Why can’t you just clone someone willing to be apart of this?” I asked
“Because that’s no fun Mr.Hayes, the hunt excites me. Actually you’re lucky I didn’t get you the first night. Unfortunately my creation had a little bit of a malfunction and formed a wee bit of an attachment to you. I’m sure you remember the ruckus outside your window? Anyways I digress, I do this because everyone of you lowly students will go onto do mediocre jobs where you waste away at a desk. I must also add that with having a clone of you under my control, I can do anything and get away with clean hands. My plan with you originally was to have you go into the admissions office and steal every last cent all for me. On top of that I like the power, because one day I will have a clone of every student on this campus and eventually I will cause a revolt against our comedy of a government. Who will stop me, when I won’t even be on the front lines?” Dr.Blackwood explained.
“I will” I said freeing my last hand from the binds.
What he didn’t realize is that with all of this monologue and the questions I had been feeding him, I was slowly loosening my binds with each wiggle and movement in retaliation.
Lurching forward I grab onto his collar, pulling him into a vicious headbutt. The impact sent Dr. Blackwood reeling backward, his grip on consciousness loosening as he staggered. Seizing the moment, I lunged off the table, adrenaline coursing through my veins despite the searing pain in my abdomen. With a swift motion, I grabbed a nearby surgical instrument, holding it in a defensive stance as I faced my adversary. Dr. Blackwood, recovering from the blow, snarled with rage, his once calm demeanor now replaced by a feral intensity. The room seemed to shrink around us, the tension thickening with each passing second. This was my chance to stop Blackwood's twisted plans. As he lunged forward, I met his attack head-on, the clang of metal reverberating through the room. Blow after blow, we fought with an intensity born of desperation and determination. Despite my injuries, I refused to yield, driven by a fire burnt under me to protect myself and others from Blackwood's actions . In a final, swift move, I delivered a powerful front kick, sending Blackwood crashing to the ground. The room fell silent, the echoes of our struggle fading into the darkness. Coughing he sat in the corner laughing with blood spilling down his face. “You know that it’s too late to save any of these one lying on the tables. I would’ve released you, you know that right? I would’ve simply taken your memory from today out of your brain and leaving you in your bed to wake up thinking you had a fun night” he said with final resolve as he watched me grab the scalpel from the ground taking slow steps near him.
Looking down over him, It was my turn to laugh. Kneeling down to eye level with him I grabbed him by his hair and delivered a final message to him “Fuck you and your little science experiment” as I sliced deep into his throat watching the life fade from his eyes.
I eventually found an exit door, which lead me to a storm drain deep in the woods far from my campus. It took me 2 hours to limp my way onto a main road and flag down a passing car. Pulling over I was rushed to the hospital and later interrogated by some men in suits, my guess is CIA. Here I am now, writing my final entrance. I think I heard them say something about trying a new medical process on me to help me heal quicker.

Hey everyone, I’m typing this on my phone so I apologize if there is weird formatting. Anyways, to get to the point, there’s something really off with some people on my campus. I have come seeking answers.I noticed it first walking home from my 7pm class last Wednesday.
To set the scene, most of the campus is tucked back into the woods a little, and my 7pm class is in the farthest building from the parking lot (further into the woods). I get out from that 7pm class around 9pm, so on cloudy nights like last Wednesday, the only lights on that long sidewalk are the lights radiating from the other buildings. Usually, there’s roughly 30 feet where it’s pitch black because the foliage is pretty dense. I usually walk back to my apartment with some classmates that live in the same complex as me, but I told them to go ahead of me while I finished the rest of the project.
After packing my laptop away, I started heading back home. It was roughly 9:30 at this point, and my brain was slowly shutting down preparing for the deep sleep that has yet to come.Walking down the sidewalk, I heard somebody not too far into the woods laughing like they’ve just heard the funniest joke ever. I immediately thought, “probably some Freshman walking the trails with their friends smoking weed”. Chuckling to myself, I put in my AirPods and picked a playlist for my journey back home.
When I looked up from my phone, there was the silhouette of somebody walking towards me. I have no idea how I missed them before, but honestly, it’s very possible they were just in a spot where the light wasn’t quite reaching them. A little unnerved, I shifted over to the left side of the sidewalk.
(Now I’m usually fine walking alone at night; I’m a 6’2 man who’s dabbled in the world of MMA. But something about this person gave me a primal feeling of unrest.)
When they shifted over to the left mirroring me, I felt my blood run cold. But alas, I had to keep walking because this was my only way back home. As I neared closer to the figure, I almost laughed at myself when I realized it was just some harmless girl walking towards the Murphy building. If anything, I’m the intimidating one to her.
This is where it really gets weird. She stopped as I was passing her and turned to me. Thinking she needed to ask me something, I took an AirPod out and asked “what’s up?”. After staring at me for an uncomfortable amount of time, she opened her mouth, and I kid you not, mimicked the laugh I heard moments before perfectly. Before I could chalk it up to it just being her in the trails earlier, I noticed something. Her mouth wasn’t moving at all. If I had left my AirPods in, it would just look like she was just opening her mouth and staring at me. She then shifted into a deep raspy laugh. She did all of this without moving her mouth at all; I couldn’t even see her throat moving as you would expect if someone was laughing. It was almost like she was some fucked up human-shaped gramophone. The feeling of absolute horror that came over me is something I’ve only experienced in my imagination. Before I could think to do anything next, My body began to run off some sort of primal instinct. With my legs burning, it took me about 10 minutes to get all the way back to my apartment and lock myself in relative safety.
I’m coming on here now to ask if anybody knows what I experienced? I have been hearing that same laughter outside my window every night since that night, I am too terrified to sleep well and have refused to go to any of my classes. Please I just want answers, I don’t want to keep living in fear.
Part 2:
Hey everyone, I’ve gotten some DMs telling me what it may be. I’ve heard everything from banshee to skinwalker. After further research I pray to god it was neither of them. I’m praying it was just some girl with a speaker playing some sort of cruel joke. I mean yes there are people who don’t like me on campus, I’ve made some enemies over the past 4 years. But, I just don’t understand what could’ve brought it to this point. I had to stop hiding in fear and go to my classes before my grades plummet, I’m almost done with my degree and only have a few more weeks. If I let some sort of stupid prank ruin my career, It would be everything I swore against to my parents.
A lot of you guys in the DMs were also asking what college I go to and what my name is. First I want to say sorry for not providing that information in the first post, I’m sure you can understand where my head was at typing that. So let me introduce myself, my name is Nick and In order to keep my privacy, I will only provide that I go to a midwest university.
I’m sure you may be wondering, “so did it just stop?”. I would love to say yes, but really things have just gotten weirder. Though, I am pleased to say that there is no longer laughing out my window every night.
Ever since that night, I’ve been noticing more things off with the people on campus. Now you may just think it’s paranoia, but just be patient and listen.
Yesterday, I decided to muster up all of my courage and go to class. Luckily my first class is at 10AM, when the sun is well in the sky, so walking across campus seemed much less threatening. When I sat down in my first class, I noticed something off with the girl that sits in front of me. Usually she’s chatty and excited to be in class, but today she just stared blankly ahead. I tried to say good morning and ask about her weekend, as we do every Monday, but she continued to have that blank stare. She did turn her head towards be, but her eyes read “lights on, but nobody is home”.
Thinking to myself, she may just be hungover, or going through the bout of college student depression. I decided to shrug it off and turn to the front of the class and get my notes ready. But the moment I turned around, I could feel it. Her eyes burrowing deep into the back of my head. When I flipped around to see if I was just being irrational, I quickly learned I wasn’t. Her eyes went from the blank glare, to the most enthusiastic face I’ve seen on her. It was horrible, it almost seemed like she was trying so hard to pretend she was thrilled to be in class and to speak to me. It was inhuman.
I’ve been on the internet long enough to catch on to the term “Uncanny valley”, and what I witnessed In my first hour gives me that same gut feeling I got when I saw that girl last Wednesday.
I was right to be uncomfortable though, I texted her after class to make sure she was doing alright. But her response only reignited the flames of deep fear burning in my soul.
I’ll copy and paste the messages here:
Me: Hey Is everything good? You seemed off in class today.
Steph SCI 101: Uh yeah, I’m fine. but I was not in class today, I’m severely hungover from Tanner’s party last night.
Me: Haha, good one.
Steph SCI 101: No I’m so Fr, are you okay?
Steph SCI 101: Are you trying to fuck with me or something?
Me: Nevermind, I’m sorry to bother you.
(End Of Texts)
Okay so I’m sure that this gives you all the same feeling of dread that it gave me but I’m sure scaled down a bit. This is where I have started to doubt that it’s a prank, because me and Stephanie are cool. There’s no level of hate for either of us, and even if it was some joke, we don’t know each other on that type of level.
Not only did this seem to happen in my first class, but in between classes while I was walking across campus as well. I walk past hundreds of faces in my many treks across campus, and I swear to you, at least 1/4th of the people I walked past had that same dead stare look. And the way they walked, god I hate even thinking of it. It was like they were an alien trying out their new body suits for the first time. The steps and the bends of their legs just seem so meticulous, dramaticized, and puppeteered.
I’m going to try to investigate further, because at this point my fear for my life is more of a reason to try and figure out what it is so I can try to stop it.
I’m no hero, and I’m sure as hell nothing special, but If I can know what to expect for another encounter, maybe I can avoid meeting the demise I have imagined.
Part 3

First off I would like to apologize for my 20-day hiatus. For those who were worried that curiosity killed the cat so to speak, I appreciate your concern. On top of my investigation, I have also had to go through finals and work for a boss who didn't believe in life outside of work. So let's start where we left off. I had a feeling that this task was left for me to solve. it may sound stupid, but let me explain why. That night, after my last post, I had a dream that further solidified my need to solve the mystery. I tried to write all that I remembered down the morning after so here is what I wrote. 

April 4th, 2024
I had a strange dream last night, stranger than usual at least. I awoke in the woods, laying face down in the grass with someone looming over me. I heard their footsteps flee rapidly before I flipped over. I found myself just off the trail where the “incident” happened, on the trail laid a girl, bloodied and motionless. When I got up to approach her, she was quickly dragged into the parallel section of the woods. Seeing this I turned and ran into the section of woods I was in. When my legs gave out I found myself near an old supply shed, worn and long abandoned. Searching for cover, I tried the door, which luckily gave after a quick pull. There I found a trapdoor which emanated a blue hue through the cracks. The only thought on my mind, survival brought me to throw it open and climb down. I clattered down the ladder and right before my feet touched the ground, I was pulled backwards by my shirt. That’s where I woke up.
I have always trusted my gut and having a dream that vivid gave me a sense of courage I did not previously have. I know where to start my search now. I have decided my best course of action will be to record my findings on a tape recorder app. After I finish each entry it will be uploaded to a cloud that will ensure if anything happens to me, the story will get out. I am packing my backpack now with a flashlight, glow sticks to mark my trail, and a machete I was gifted by a local in Mexico. All of my recordings will be uploaded below and auto posted after 10 days. Wish me luck everyone, I’m going to need it.
Entry 1: I have started at the only place that makes sense, the trail. It is currently 1:45 PM and I have plenty of sun left in the sky. I just needed to find exactly where to start my journey into the woods. Strangely it was very easy to find. I recall one of the trees having a funky twist near the middle of the trunk. Probably just some two lovebirds trying to carve their name into the tree and realizing there were softer trees to carve into. Anyways hiking further into the woods I believe I can see the shape of the shed through the branches. I wish you guys could see how dense these trees are so you can understand my struggle.
Entry 2: I made it to the shed, but unfortunately the floor in here is concrete. This really sucks for me because I have absolutely no idea where to go from here. It’s identical on the outside but I just don’t understand. Maybe I’m just delusional, which in that case what a waste of time and energy. I’m going to head back home and just start packing for summer. Maybe it’ll be best if I just forget about all of this and leave it behind me. I am graduating after all. Wait hold on what is this?? there’s a button behind one of these shelves. I am going to press it, but idk how it would work because this floor is seamless. I’m just going to leave this recording so if anything does happen I don’t have to worry about holding the phone the whole time. Holy shit, the entire floor is lowering. It’s a fucking elevator.
Entry 3: Okay so I’ve been going down this elevator for like 30 seconds, how far down am I going?.. Oh wait hold on, Im stopped… There’s a metal door with a padlock. Ig since I have the machete there’s only one thing to do, break it. Im going to use the blunt side so I don’t ruin this thing, I like it too much. the lock clatters to the ground after 3 solid hits. Well ig there’s only one way to go now, there’s no button to get back up so I pray there’s another way up. The metal door creaks loudly. Fuck I regret this, It’s dark and I can tell it’s a big area because it’s so echoey in here. I’m currently praising my past self for thinking about the flashlight and glow sticks. I need to find out what in the hell this place is and most importantly, if there’s a damn light switch.
Entry 4: God this place is terrifying I’ve been walking around the sterile white halls of this place for like 10 minutes and have found nothing, no doors, no light switch. I feel like a rat in a maze. Also scratch what I said about being glad I packed glow sticks, because my stupid ass only brought like 20 of these things and I’m already down to 5. Also I feel like I’m not alone, every now and then I’ll turn a corner and the glow from the previous glow stick quickly vanishes. I feel like it might just be because the darkness seems to envelop everything like a blanket. But I have that feeling that I’m being followed. You know the one, where you know somethings wrong you just can’t pin point what it is. Oh shit no way, there’s light, I think there’s a door or something up ahead.
Entry 5: Holy shit… It’s a lab, and worse, there’s people strapped too tables, completely naked and unconscious. I know they are alive because each of them are hooked up with a million different cords, and one of those are plugged into a heart monitor. This place is huge, there has to be at least 50 people on these tables.
“Hey you, you’re not supposed to be in here” yelled a man adorned in a lab coat.
“What are you doing to these kids you sick fucks.” I yelled back at the man across the lab.
In a haste the scientist rushes towards a red button, setting off a loud alarm, turning the lights to a flashing red. With no exit behind me, I could only do one thing... Rush towards him. My training kicked in as I launched into a flurry of calculated strikes. My first hit connected, a right overhand clean under his eye. The doctor stumbled back, but I didn't give him a chance to recover. I pressed the attack, keeping him off balance with a relentless barrage of punches and kicks. He fought back ferociously, but I was one step ahead, anticipating his moves and countering with swift, efficient strikes. We wrestled, the room around us becoming a blur of pain and adrenaline. I used the environment to my advantage, improvising weapons from the scattered medical equipment and turning the empty tables on my opponent. Pinning him to the ground, I laid down a harsh barrage of final blows. His face was a bloody pulp, unrecognizable. But I didn’t walk away unscathed, somewhere in the tussle, the scientist buried a scalpel deep into my stomach. With my adrenaline wearing off, the pain overtook me, sending me into darkness as I fainted from the blood loss and adrenaline dump. I awoke with my arms and legs strapped to the cold metal operating table. Before I could try to struggle, a face overtook my field of vision.
“Quite a fight you put up, you turned poor Dr.Samson into a soup” the looming face said with a chuckle. “You are the first person to put the pieces together and for that I am thoroughly impressed Mr. Hayes”
“Who are you?!” I said fighting at my binds. “Let me go!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that Mr.Hayes. You have seen far too much, and I definitely can’t have you running around telling the world what you saw here. Although nobody would believe you.” “And to answer your other question, I’m surprised you don’t recognize me… really take a moment and look at me” He said pulling down his face mask.
“Dr.Blackwood?” I said as I looked back on my freshman year biology class.
“Ding ding ding ding. We have a winner!” He said in a maniac joy.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked.
“Well Mr.Hayes, first I’m going to sew you up from your little tussle you had with my late assistant and then I will put you under and cut into that skull of yours and take out a small piece of what we call in the science world your hippocampus. Then I will draw from that all of the necessary memories to create the perfect clone of you.” He responded.
“Why? Why would you need a clone of any of us. Why can’t you just clone someone willing to be apart of this?” I asked
“Because that’s no fun Mr.Hayes, the hunt excites me. Actually you’re lucky I didn’t get you the first night. Unfortunately my creation had a little bit of a malfunction and formed a wee bit of an attachment to you. I’m sure you remember the ruckus outside your window? Anyways I digress, I do this because everyone of you lowly students will go onto do mediocre jobs where you waste away at a desk. I must also add that with having a clone of you under my control, I can do anything and get away with clean hands. My plan with you originally was to have you go into the admissions office and steal every last cent all for me. On top of that I like the power, because one day I will have a clone of every student on this campus and eventually I will cause a revolt against our comedy of a government. Who will stop me, when I won’t even be on the front lines?” Dr.Blackwood explained.
“I will” I said freeing my last hand from the binds.
What he didn’t realize is that with all of this monologue and the questions I had been feeding him, I was slowly loosening my binds with each wiggle and movement in retaliation.
Lurching forward I grab onto his collar, pulling him into a vicious headbutt. The impact sent Dr. Blackwood reeling backward, his grip on consciousness loosening as he staggered. Seizing the moment, I lunged off the table, adrenaline coursing through my veins despite the searing pain in my abdomen. With a swift motion, I grabbed a nearby surgical instrument, holding it in a defensive stance as I faced my adversary. Dr. Blackwood, recovering from the blow, snarled with rage, his once calm demeanor now replaced by a feral intensity. The room seemed to shrink around us, the tension thickening with each passing second. This was my chance to stop Blackwood's twisted plans. As he lunged forward, I met his attack head-on, the clang of metal reverberating through the room. Blow after blow, we fought with an intensity born of desperation and determination. Despite my injuries, I refused to yield, driven by a fire burnt under me to protect myself and others from Blackwood's actions . In a final, swift move, I delivered a powerful front kick, sending Blackwood crashing to the ground. The room fell silent, the echoes of our struggle fading into the darkness. Coughing he sat in the corner laughing with blood spilling down his face. “You know that it’s too late to save any of these one lying on the tables. I would’ve released you, you know that right? I would’ve simply taken your memory from today out of your brain and leaving you in your bed to wake up thinking you had a fun night” he said with final resolve as he watched me grab the scalpel from the ground taking slow steps near him.
Looking down over him, It was my turn to laugh. Kneeling down to eye level with him I grabbed him by his hair and delivered a final message to him “Fuck you and your little science experiment” as I sliced deep into his throat watching the life fade from his eyes.
I eventually found an exit door, which lead me to a storm drain deep in the woods far from my campus. It took me 2 hours to limp my way onto a main road and flag down a passing car. Pulling over I was rushed to the hospital and later interrogated by some men in suits, my guess is CIA. Here I am now, writing my final entrance. I think I heard them say something about trying a new medical process on me to help me heal quicker.

His ex sent me this message. Sorry it’s so long! Has anybody else gotten a similar message in the past? How did you react?
Message below: “It’s been over a year of me wondering whether I should just come out and ask you or message you… but being afraid that if I do, and I’m wrong, it’ll be a the biggest mistake of my life. I have begged and begged him to tell me what you are to him, and he denies having anything more than a platonic friendship with you.
I want to preface this message with, I have no ill will towards you, I just want some answers… answers I don’t believe I’m going to get from Jared. I don’t know if he’s mentioned anything about me. So here goes…
November 2022, I sent Jared an email, telling him I loved him, missed him, and though I didn’t require a response back, I wanted him to know how sorry I was for everything that had happened and things had ended. He responded with a lengthy email telling me he still fervently loved me and how he too was sorry for how things had ended. That email lead to the last year and a half of events.
December 2022, I drove down to Roanoke and surprised him at the Carilion garage. He left the hospital as fast as he could that night, and we spent the rest of that evening together, catching up, and he left for Key West two days later. Two weeks later, he came up to DC and we had a late birthday celebration for him at Clyde’s in Georgetown and went to see A Christmas Carol at the Ford Theater. A few weeks later we drove to Jersey to see Matchbox20, by now it was the end of January 2023. Almost every week off, for the last year, he would come up and see me, if even for only two days, or I would drive down to Roanoke and spend the week with him. We spoke about our past, the hurt, and future, he told me numerous times that when he pictured marriage and children, it was only with me, but he needed time. This part is important, and I’ll come back to it later. We celebrated my birthday at a restaurant in Navy Yard, two weeks before you guys left for London. Chris video chatted with that night while we were at the restaurant eating Wagyu, and they discussed the new shipment of sunglasses Chris had gotten for Miggieswear.
The weekend of the Super Bowl, he had come seen me earlier that week, the day after he left I came to Roanoke and left the day of the Super Bowl. He told me his parents were having a viewing party and he had to go home and cook. I’m now assuming he left my Airbnb and came to your place.
That February he planned a trip to London, with Nicole, Ryan and Chris, and what he told me were, Nicole’s “friends.” Nicole happened to post a picture of you guys sitting on the plane and I was shocked, why would Nicole’s friend be sitting between him and Ryan. I sent him a message while you were on that 6 hour flight, telling him that if he had been seeing somebody, then why didn’t he tell me? There was no point in us spending time together if he had moved on. His response to me was “do you even know what you’re looking at? I’m surprised you don’t recognize her, that’s Nicole’s friend. You’re jumping to a lot of conclusions right now and don’t know what you’re talking about.” Something in my gut didn’t believe it but I wanted to trust that, so I did. I put you out of sight, out of mind. When he got back, he told me how he wished I’d been there with him, we both love history and old buildings, it’s a place we would have found magical together. I don’t know who came up with the idea of going to London, but part of me always thinks I’m the one who put it there when I shared the pictures i had taken when I went there the year we had been no contact.
We went to a Kenny Chesney concert in Charlottesville that March when I got back from my family trip to India, and he got back from London. Between work, us both traveling with our families, we were excited to see one another. We were going to go to St Augustine, but because of the weather, we stayed in Roanoke and saw Kenny Chesney in Charlottesville. The original plan had been to spend the night in Charlottesville at a hotel, but we couldn’t get one last minute so we ended up driving back to Roanoke and sneaking into the basement at his parents house and sleeping in his bed at 3am.
A few months later, we went to Richmond, and stayed the weekend, exploring the city, and watched Hamilton at the Altria Theater. A few months after that, we went to Savannah and Atlanta, where he got a flat tire driving into the garage, and spent the rest of the weekend at a yoga retreat. July, he asked me to go to Boston with him and his brother, for 4th or July weekend, but I couldn’t because my siblings were in town. Every single week, he came down and either stayed with me, or made a quick trip to spend time with me…
This past September, I found out he took you to Justin’s wedding, and I broke. I needed more from him. I have known him, been intimate with him, shared my every fear, worry, I have brought him home cooked meals from DC and surprised him at work with dinner, I’ve made him care packages. I’ve made Ryan Easter baskets and sent him birthday presents and encouraged Jared to put him in academic classes, I’ve helped Jared look into private schools for Ryan, and weighed the pros and cons of the options. I had no expectations in return from him other than, at the very least, a mutual respect and HONESTY.
I’ve seen him quite a few times since September and I last saw him in Roanoke at the beginning of March 2024. We sat in front of each other, in his car before he went into work that Monday night, and he told me, again, that when he thinks of marriage and a future, I’m the only one he pictures a marriage and children with. I’m not saying this to hurt you, or to make a point, I’m saying it because i don’t know what to believe anymore.
I became suspicious of his relationship with you, when he mentioned going to Macchu Picchu and hiking through the mountains. As all women have the ability to find out details they might later regret, I did the same thing. Except I didn’t believe he had actually gone to Macchu Picchu. I knew his passport had been long expired since around or before COVID, and I knew he had renewed it before he went to London. But that was when I realized you were the girl in the photo that Nicole posted. When I confronted him about Macchu Picchu, he told me he had been joking and he had also already told me he’d been joking. He had NEVER told me it was a joke, he had actually refused to show me photos when I asked him for pictures from the trip… he had then proceeded to change the topic, which is what had even raised red flags in my head.
My point is, I have asked him point blank so many times whether you two have a relationship. You tell me you still love me, that you picture marriage and a family with me, but this girl is a part of your life, and you took her to a wedding with you, while I was on a trip with my siblings, you took her to London with you, and you continue to tell me she’s just a friend. I asked him again on Tuesday night/Wednesday Morning after he left work, if you two are dating, and he said no. He asked me why I’m so hyper-fixated on somebody who’s just a friend when he has a million other female friends.
In September, he told me he needed a month to clear his head, that he wanted to commit to me, but he was afraid and that he needed to get over the fear and roadblock of our past break up. I gave him grace and understood. So we took a 4 week break. Some time during that time period, he sent me a snap of doves, and said “doves, and swans mate for life.” He sent me Ed Sheeran songs telling me he wants to find his way back to me. “No Strings Attached… you are the one I love”
In November, he messaged me and told me he had a surprise for me and to look for something in the mail. He loves the Count of Monte Carlo, it’s one of his favorite movies, and he told me it was in reference to that. A few weeks later I got a candle, a silver 400 dollar Buddha candle from Thomson Ferrier. I didn’t understand the reference to the Count of Monte Carlo, but it was a beautiful gesture and present… especially because he knew how much little gestures from him mean to me.
Fast forward to January, I got another 350 dollar black skull candle from him, from Thomson Ferrier. At this point I was upset, angry and livid. I called my sister in tears that evening. I had come back to him because he told me he loved me, that he “has a fire that burns so deeply” when he thinks of me. If i had known that wasn’t true, i would have closed the chapter a year and a half ago. I don’t want $700 worth of gifts and candles, I want more. I want marriage, I want children, I want our lives to move forward, I want communication. Out of anger, I packed up the candle, his sweatshirts and clothes that he had left at my place this past year, and mailed them back to his house. I’m sure it’s sitting somewhere in his basement closet/ bedroom… along with his white Huq sweatshirt, a picture of us I had up in my house, and various articles of clothing.
What upsets me is that he didn’t just involve me this year, he involved my family. He sent my mom presents, my parents in return sent him gifts. My sister, parents and cousins messaged him asking him to come around more. There was no point in involving my family, if he was going to involve himself with you. There was no point in involving himself with me, if he was going to involve himself with you. Those leather Indian shoes sitting in his room, my dad bought those for him. That blue sweater, those green pants and that maroon shirt, my parents bought those for him just this last year.
I don’t know what he’s told you about me, but I will say this. I was your age when we started dating. I was 29 years old. He was single, that’s what everyone in our residency program thought. He would tell everyone how Shari left him one day, all of a sudden just got up and left. “I saw the look behind her eyes just change when she looked at me.” He would tell everyone his horrific dating stories. When i started dating him, there was no doubt in my mind he was single… but I was wrong. He wasn’t single, he was dating Devon, one of the nurses from Carilion, and he had been for the past 4 years prior to that. At one point when he moved to Norfolk, she had even moved in with him. Even Shari was visiting him in Norfolk during this time period. I would have never suspected it, nobody in our residency program did. It wasn’t until one day, when he told me his friends were visiting from home, and they were all going to a concert together, that I found out. Her profile picture was of the two of them together, and her Facebook relationship status said “in a relationship.” Out of my own naivety, i believed him when he told me she was crazy and obsessed with him. He told me, to him, they were just friends but she wanted more. Women do a lot of things, but no woman is dumb enough to think she’s your girlfriend when she’s not. When we moved back to our hometowns, Devon was there waiting for him. He disappeared one day for 24 hours, told me that he was helping his dad’s friend who was stranded in NC. A year and a half later, i would find out that was a lie and that he had been at a concert Florida Georgia Line concert with her. She had been visiting his grandmother with him, staying at his parents home. The irony is that a few weeks after he took her, he took me to the same concert in Scranton. Him and his family didn’t bat an eye when a month later, I showed up and was the “new girlfriend.”
Eventually Devon found out about his lies and left him, but again, stupid me thought she was a crazy girl who just wanted so badly to be with him, that she built their relationship up in her head.
Dignity, respect for humans, empathy, are the most important qualities in a human being.
What I don’t wish is for you to be in my spot in 5 years. He will paint you in his colors, make you fall in love with MB20, and take you to Augustana concerts, he’ll tell you that you understand him, and his heart in a way that nobody else does. He’ll bond with you over music, and send you songs that make you feel he’s talking about you. He is so good at making you feel seen, and involving you with his family. He’ll say he had a vision of a girl that looks like you, coming into his life, and here you are, his soul mate. And one day, the same way that Shari, Devon and I got lost in him, the reality of everything will come pouring down on you. Be careful, there are signs between the lines, and the smiles, and good times. Make sure you don’t miss those, whatever you decide.
My relationship with him, started off just like yours. Another girl on the periphery, and teetering the line of inappropriate. Everything you call him out on, will always have an excuse, and you will believe him because he’s the “good guy” who goes above and beyond for people.
I don’t wish for any woman to go through the pain I’ve gone through, the manipulation, the lies and the emotional abuse. I can’t tell you what to do, but I will say, be careful and don’t be blind to the small things that will one day become huge. The novelty will fade, and though Jared isn’t the devil, he has a lot of growing up to do at 40. It was not okay to toy with me and drag me through the mud this year. It wasn’t okay to minimize his relationship with you and lie to me about it. It’s not okay to, to this day claim to see a life with me and not commit to it. I deserve better, and you deserve better.
How men talk about their ex’s and other women is an indication about how they will one day talk about and treat you. That is the worst and best lesson i have learned. I’m 34, years of my life wasted, and he took another year of my life knowing full well, this is how it would end. He’s sat on the phone with me for hours talking about how stupid PA’s are and if you were going to not be a doctor, at least become an NP, who has better bedside knowledge. Why would he say that, because i suppose you’re a PA and it minimizes the significance of even having a relationship with somebody who isn’t as intelligent as he is. The lack of respect will always be there, you just have to look for it.
Dishonesty, and manipulation are a plague, and if that’s who you are at 40, it is who you will always be unless you recognize that something needs to change. Where there is no accountability, there can be no change. I’m not the exception, I’m the same as the two girls before me. He’ll show you text messages where he never responded to me, even though he replies on Snapchat where every thing is erased. I cannot believe i didn’t see the signs. He will make me look crazy and laugh at me, the same way he showed me messages from Jen, and Elisabeth, and Devon, and made them sound crazy to me. I guess that’s his MO. The same way he told me you were nothing to him.
I was going to send you this message, two months ago… i then decided not to because he convinced me he wasn’t dating you… I saw him less than a month ago in Roanoke, i begged him to tell me that he was in a relationship with you. He said he wasn’t, again, he told me he was going to a wedding alone with only Ryan and that he wasn’t taking you. I then begged him to tell me that we were done and that he didn’t love me anymore. His response was idk what’s going to happen a year from now, i know I’ll see you again. His response every time has been when im ready for a relationship, emotionally, do you want me to finally let you know? I don’t care to be with him anymore. I’m so over it but i really think you should know the type of person you’re dealing with.
He has put me through so much hell for a year and a half of my life, stringing me along acting like he’s doing me a favor while he works on his own mental health and claims to still love me when we are together.”
TLDR: my SO’s ex messaged me saying he’s been seeing both of us for the past year and a half. Has anybody experienced this before. She sent me pictures from the past year of them and their text exchanges

My party was traveling the Sea Caves to Skullport when they came across the skull of a dead god inspired by this wallpaper [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1199910952\]. Of course a character flew over to the skull, eldrich blasted a tooth and took it. I'm drawing a blank on what the tooth might cause. I am thinking a benefit and a curse. Any thoughts? Characters are 6th level. THANKS

People say it's childish to be afraid of the dark. They say it's a symptom of an overactive imagination. And yet the same people- all people- know that you don’t go out at night, not without light or charm. And everyone knows, instinctively, in the marrow of their bones, that you don’t go out on a moonless night.
I had been out on a moonless night for days. Most people can’t tell, but once you're trained, you can- Darkness loves darkness. She likes to stretch her time out as long as she's possibly able. Everyone wants to spend time with kindred spirits. It’s nature, human or otherwise.
There’s nothing I can do about it, so I do my best to enjoy it. After all, you have to pick your battles, and my gun makes it pretty easy to figure out which ones I can win. She's a lovely gun. Big, which is fine with me, because I need all the power she can muster. Nine custom rounds rotate through, each enchanted by my own self. Not as effective as a professional enchantment, but I get by, and it’s a hell of a lot cheaper.
The only light came from the muzzle flare of my pistol. They smothered my campfire long ago, leaving me with only the vaguest sense of where they were, occasionally silhouetted against the trees when I fired. They were big, looming over me, high into the crooked trees and the moonless sky behind them. Who could say how long tonight would last?
I try not to cast on Nights, because it just acts like more of a beacon than I already am, but sometimes it just can’t be helped. My chest burned as I threw up a Buffer against a sudden wave of creatures, but they tore it down before it hardly had time to help. I bit down and cast a Warding, felt my arm burn harshly in the wild energy of the new moon and felt the following cold cut its way through my flesh and deep into my bones. Popping the spent rounds out with my right hand, my left knitted itself into the Ward shape automatically, trained by years of habit. Now I’ve really done it, I thought, because I could practically sense them perk up from miles off, even without casting a Seeing. It worked, though, and I was given brief respite for my efforts. I’d sure as hell pay for it in about 10 minutes, but for now I needed to stop bleeding and deal with the sensation of a drill pressed to the back of my skull.
“Skippers,” I growled. I hated Skippers.
The problem with Skippers is they’re small, harder to notice than anything else, and instead of trying to take off your head they try to get into your head. From there they can do whatever they want while you watch- make you walk off a cliff, bite off your own tongue, flay yourself alive. Like I said, whatever they want, and they're usually pretty mean. I’d seen them really go to work on all sorts of people, mostly people I knew and trained with. Hazards of the job- sorcerous training let you see a whole new world, but it opened you up to the threats that lived there, more so than regular folk. I was in worse shape than most sorcerers, which was part of what put me out at Night in the first place. Luckily, I’m better than most sorcerers, but it still meant I had to be careful.
To get rid of a Skipper, all you have to do is burn them off with a little Light. I'd needed the break- 3 of them dripped out of me right away, and a fourth started to run down my back as it tried to escape.
“Bastard.” I struck it with the handle of the gun as it slithered away. No sense wasting ammo on idiots like that.
The Ward wavered, the Night grew around me, and I hadn't even had time to heal anything. Damn.



Sam watched from behind the counter as the man walked through the door. Under the door, rather, as he had to duck to keep from hitting his head. He was pale, very pale, unlike the merchantfolk that usually came through the inn. His face was covered by a bushy beard, his hair was long, and his eyes were rimmed with red, but he could certainly be no older than 40. It was strange- for someone to come in so early in the morning, and look so tired- he must have been traveling all night, but he had no horse to be stabled.
The stranger was an armory- small blades and strange, bulbous jars jutted out from pockets and packs all over the man, daggers strapped to his legs, and even metal nubs in the knuckles of his gloves. What caught Sam's attention, though, was the man's huge gun, strapped tightly to his waist. He had never seen a gun that big, and the ammunition the man was carrying in the sacks around his waist must have weighed heavily on him, though he showed no signs of it.
“What does it cost for a room?” His voice did not match the tired, worn image in front of him. It was firm, and had the sound of recent laughter in it.
“Let me get my mom.” Sam began, starting for the back room. He never handled rooms.
“That's alright. You'll do fine. How much?” The man pulled out a purse, smaller than the other bags on his belt, and it was clearly much lighter than anything else he carried. “I’d like to find a bed and use it.” His voice did not betray him, nor did his hands, but the redness of his eyes did. They were a startling blue, and they seemed to contain nothing except exhaustion.
“I need your name,” Sam remembered as he directed the giant stranger to his room. The man's eyes, just for an instant, darted to one side before returning to Sam.
“Joan,” he said.
“O-kay.” Sam jotted the name down. “Two nights, food at 7 and 7, anything else you pay for.” He began to walk the man down the hall. “Strange accent. Are you from Melano, or Baden?” He didn’t really know what those accents sounded like, but he knew they were far from Newmark.
“No.” Joan walked into the room indicated with no further comments.
Sam stopped at the door while the man called Joan dropped his bags to the floor. “What kinda gun is that?”
“Mine,” he said simply, as he unbundled it’s holster from his belt. “I make the ammunition myself most of the time.”
“It's impressive. My paw was a soldier, and he showed me his old gun once, only it was a lot smaller than yours, and all rusted out besides, but-" Sam stopped as the man removed his cloak. There was a bright gash, still oozing dark blood, working its way up the man's side behind the thick leather plates. “Holy cripes! You oughta see a doctor, sor!”
Joan gave no indication that he could even feel the wound, nor did he instantly react when the boy cried out. “This? It looks a lot worse than it is. Rest, and solitude,” and here he looked at Sam, “will do me more good than any doctor from this town.” He moved to close the door, and against Sam's protest seemed to shut him out with no effort at all.
He ran down the hall to inform his mother of their newest guest.
I didn’t want the kid to see what I had to do next. It really wasn’t that bad- on the outside. Because we put so much ourselves in the spiritual world, the physical world didn’t matter so much. But it’s all tradeoffs. It had cut a pretty chunk out of me spirit-wise, and that hurt worse than any gash could. Really, I was better off than most sorcerers would’ve been with a cut like this- I had less to lose. Doesn’t make it hurt any less, though.
I Worked a minor Healing, but anything more would’ve taken more out of me than I could hope to regain, so the rest had to be resigned to sleep. Stupid. I should never have let anything get that close anyway, but it seemed like the Skippers were going crazy last Night.
I was too tired even to dream. A small blessing.

Waking up was not pleasant- I was stiff and sore, and still hurting something fierce. And cold, of course. Always cold. The physical wound had scabbed over, and I figured I would get away with just a minor scar. My innards were still shredded, but marginally less so than before, so I could breathe without grimacing. I expected I’d be laid out for a few days yet. Lucky, since Night had just passed, so things would be calm for almost the entire month now.
Exhausted as I had been, I had no Wards up, nothing even blocking the door. Nice going. Practically begging for a stray to wander in and eat you. As I flipped the coin I’d lifted off the kid, I examined the room for anything that might have snuck in, but it was clear. This time.
It was around this point that I realized how hungry I was. It had been (what felt like) days without a hot meal, and apparently this podunk little inn could provide, so I wandered out to the main room to see if I could scare up some food.
When the kid saw me, his eyes widened. That’s never a good sign. Recognition meant questions, and the answers to those questions usually meant getting pushed to the next town before I had time to heal. I had been hoping to score a decent meal and a bath, at least.



Sam could hardly believe his eyes. “Criminy, sor, but I didn’t expect you to be up at all! It's barely been a day!” The cut had been bleeding heavily, and very deep, he was sure of it, but now the man was clean and walking as if he had never been injured.
The stranger called Joan sat heavily at a table, ignoring the implied question. “Any chance of a man getting some food around here?” He inquired. “Or, perhaps,” and he glanced at the barrels of ale behind the counter, “some drink?”
San quickly filled him a tankard and plate from supper earlier, then sat himself at the table, as the crowd in the room dwindled down to a late few. The man interested him. He did not seem to interest the man, however, as Joan simply ate and drank in silence, apparently unbothered by his wound. He was still pale, almost deathly so, but Sam had heard tell of people from far north being much lighter than the tanned workers of nearby towns.
“Are you a soldier?” Sam didn’t know much about the war to the south, but occasionally troops passed through, and he had heard his ma talk in the back room about an extra levy because the Northern Kingdoms were allied. “I never saw someone carry so many weapons that weren't a soldier. What are those jars you carry? Is that them new bombs they been talking about? With gunpowder, only you throw the jar so it’s like a cannonshot?” Sam did not know much about weapons, either, but he saw so few soldiers come through that he had to learn what he could, if he was going to join the war when he was of age.
“Sure, kid.” Joan tapped his empty tankard on the table and placed down the coin he had been flipping. Sam ran to fill it up again before sitting back down.
“So did you come from the southern border, where all the fights are? What's happening? Are we winning? We have all kinds of the Northern Kingdoms working together, right? We must be winning!”
“The southern border? No, no, I didn’t come from the southern border,” he snorted. “That whole war is just nonsense anyway. The Northern Kingdoms, in some alliance or another, have had it out for Onis since time began. Maybe even before. The war is just an excuse to keep the money rolling in. Seems like there’s less and less of it than ever.” He mumbled this last part into his cup.
“That’s- that’s not true!” Sam's pa had fought, same as Sam would. “The war is important! Onis could really invade anytime! Besides, you said you were a soldier. If you aren’t fighting in the war, how can you be a soldier?” Joan did not answer, but he reached for his sleeve for a moment as if to roll it up, then seemed to catch himself at the last second. Was he a deserter? “Are you a deserter?” Sam blurted out, realizing a second late that he was pushing his luck. Joan just tapped his mug again.
Sam's ma hurried over. “So sorry for this one, sor, he has a bad habit of being curious.” She cuffed him on the ear and it smarted.
“It's no problem, mam.” The stranger smiled warmly, but in his eyes there was nothing. It was a chilling sensation. “He fills my cup just fine.” His ma dragged him off before Sam could object, and Joan got up before Sam could return.


Broder laughed as he took Flander for another hand. Three hands up, he was, and showed no signs of slowing. He stopped, though, as a big man in a heavy cloak came to the table.
“Deal me in?” His voice, deep and rich, did not match the weathered exterior. The man was no farm hand, that much was clear. More a mercenary sort. Broder glanced around the table, but no one seemed to object outright, so he shrugged. One more fool for the best poker man in the west side of Newmark. “Promise I know the rules.”
“Can you make ante, pal?” Jaten sized him up from across the table, suspicious from the long, ratty hair sitting on his shoulders and the general sense of dirtiness emanating from the man. He didn't notice what Broder had seen- nice leather, warm coat, and firm shoes. The man had some money, at least.
“He's good for it, Jaten. What's your name, stranger?” Broder gestured at the empty space next to him as he began to deal the hands. The stranger threw his ante, and Broder couldn’t hear much left in the purse. The poor ones were easy to sucker in.
“Joan.”
“You from Onis or something, name like that?” Cogen sneered.
“Na, man, listen to his voice, he's from up in Lansing or summat.” Garrett spat. “You're pickin a fight so you don’t have to deal with your shite hand.”
“That's not true, mate! Maybe you ought to keep an eye on your own mess in front of ya!” Cogen threw in extra to compensate. They all knew each other, knew the tics and tells and habits, but this stranger would be interesting.
That was what Broder thought, but as they went round for a few hands, the stranger losing more than he won, it became clear he was just another sucker thinking he could smash the small town guys. He had seemed confident at first- smug, even- but Broder had moved in with a predatory efficiency and would not let up. He offered to buy a round for everyone, apparently hoping for mercy, or to dull them, but the man seemed to be getting a bit red in the nose much faster than the well-seasoned drinkers of the little town of Aren, where there was little else to do but work or drink, or play cards. Broder began to really work on Joan for everything he had left, preparing to take the man for anything he could offer. The game was boring, and Broder needed beer money, so he went to end the man entirely.
What Broder did not expect was for the man to turn his whole plan backwards by dropping a flush when he should’ve had nothing. That cleared the table pretty fast, and Broder noticed the man's nose was really not that red at all.
The hand was nonsense. He couldn't have won, couldn’t have had those cards. “Alright, pal, roll up your sleeves, eh? Just a friendly game, here, after all. No reason to stay all formal-like.” Broder saw the other men nod their approval.
“Are you sure? Isn’t it possible, just a little, that I might be better at the game than you?” Joan smirked, taunting the men.
“Roll those up in here or we'll roll em up for ya out back,” Cogen growled. He was the biggest, aside from the stranger himself, and had a knack for bar brawling.
“Alright. No need to get snippy that I beat you so bad.” Cogen almost stood, but Joan began to roll up his sleeves. Right, then left.
His left arm was covered up to the elbow in fresh burn scars- a bright, angry red. If Broder squinted, he could almost see fine lines tracing letters across the harshly burned skin, but he didn’t have to. He knew what he was looking at.
“You're a bloody wizard, ye stupid bastard!” Garrett exploded. “Ye- ye bastard! You used magic on our all heads, ye did!”
Joan's eyes darkened briefly, but he did not react.
“Garrett's got the right idea- who's to say you weren’t using magic trickery to win the game, eh? Seems like something your lot would do,” Jaten added smartly. “It seems only fair you give us back the money you stole.”
“In the interest of accuracy, I am a sorcerer. Wizards do not leave their little towers and their little books. Besides, if I had used any magic, why would I stop now?” The stranger pointed out. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just leave, or to make you forget you ever saw me?”
“Well- there are 4 of us! Maybe you couldn’t do us in all at once, eh?” Jaten shot back. There was a chorus of affirmation from the group. “Be honorable, man, just give us the money back.”
Joan rolled his sleeves down. “If I had wanted to,” he began quietly, gravel in his voice, “I could make you all give me your land, your wives, and your unborn sons and you wouldn’t even remember your names when I was done. I did not cheat,” he suddenly smiled. “You boys just suck at poker.”
“Now listen here, son,” Broder began. “You may be some wizard from up north-"
“East,” Joan interjected.
“You may be some fancy wizard from up north,” Broder continued, “but don’t think that means you can insult us small-town folk. We might not have your ‘education’ or what have you, but we know from poker.”
Joan sighed. “I am leaving town in two days. Leave me alone for those two days, and I will forget your names, faces, and the name of this backwater town you live in. I did not cheat you.” He looked each of them coldly in the eyes, and Broder saw that all the mirth and cheer that had been there earlier had been drained, replaced with nothingness. Not even hatred, or anger, but simply blank space. The stranger stood up with a groan, signaled for another round of drinks, and trudged to the back of the inn. None of the men followed.


I was lucky none of these farm hicks knew anything about casting, or else they’d have known I was bluffing. It didn’t seem like any of them could actually read my burns, because if they could’ve, they would’ve known I could only cast a couple Bindings, and that’s if I wasn’t hurting like hell.
What was most insulting, more than calling me a wizard, was that they thought I cheated to beat them at cards. I don’t need to cheat at cards. I had slipped a bit of coin out of their pockets as I brushed by, but that was hardly cheating. Just good, honest thievery. And to call me a wizard? I ought to burn down their houses anyway, just for that. I was cold just thinking about it.
Still, I had to accelerate my schedule and leave tonight. I hated to do it, but I needed to be three towns over by the time they decided to kick the shit out of me. Bastards.
Amidst my wrathful musings I became aware of a presence at the door.
It was that kid. What had he seen? I ran the scene over again and realized he had been watching the end from the table he had been cleaning. Sloppy. He'd tell everybody. I couldn’t kill a kid the way I would've those guys in front, and I didn’t want to besides. Kids have always had a hold on me, and it pissed me off. It wasn't like I could remember why. Besides, I didn’t exactly mind the town knowing; it just meant I’d have a tougher time sneaking out, and I was tired enough that it bugged me.
“Sor?” He nudged the door open, but not all the way, I noticed. “I saw your tattoo. What do they mean? My ma said not to ask, but those men seemed pretty upset out there. I asked them and they said you was a wizard, but I didn’t think they were real. Are you a wizard? Are those tattoos your clan or something?” He spoke fast, like he thought I would cut him off, or cut off his head. “What are you doing?”
I spoke carefully to mask my distaste for his questions. “I am not a wizard. Wizards hide in their towers and ask questions nobody is curious about.” I hoped the dismissal would be clear.
It was not.
“If you aren’t a wizard, what are you?”
“What I am right now, kid, is packing, and what I’m going to be in a minute is gone. Scram.” I looked around and realized that aside from the bags I could clip to my belt, I had nothing else with me. Damn.
“Well, whatever you are, sor, I know those marks mean you're bound to help people-" that wasn’t true “-and those men out there maybe won’t tell you, but I will! See, sor, we're in mighty need of a wizard these days, on account of a monster been stealing the livestock and trashing the lumber yards and-" he slowed his speech a bit, but before I could get a word in he continued- “and I think it took the Granlenses daughter, only cause they won’t tell anyone where she went but I haven’t seen her in town at all and she used to come help me with my chores some days and it’s been a long while, maybe a month or so. Anyway, nobody’ll believe me when I tell em, and I haven’t seen it exactly, but I’m sure there’s a monster!”
“Kid, you know not every stroke of bad luck is a monster, right?” People don’t believe in monsters or magic until it’s convenient for them, which means they know nothing about it, which means most of the time they’re just making up stories to get me killed or run off, or else they’re just plain dumb and attribute every case of rainy weather to a made up beast.
“I know that! I just know there’s a monster around here! Look, sor, I’ll help you find it even, and-"
“I charge for my services and I don’t take kids on field trips when I work. Are you going to pay me?” Most of the time, threat of payment was enough to deter all but the most determined, or most superstitious, folk.
“I bet if you kill it the whole town will pitch in! Please, sor, I just wanna help out, and it seems like you could fix us all up only nobody wants to ask.” He wasn’t lying, I could tell, but kids are always seeing things that aren’t there. On the other hand, sometimes kids are better at seeing what’s right in front of them.
And when it turned out to be nothing, it meant I had an excuse to stay an extra night without getting an attempted beating, probably.
“Alright, kid. Where was this monster last?” Hired by a kid who probably couldn’t even get on a horse on his own. If anyone caught wind of this, I’d never hear the end of it.

His ex sent me this message. Sorry it’s so long! Has anybody else gotten a similar message in the past? How did you react?
Message below: “It’s been over a year of me wondering whether I should just come out and ask you or message you… but being afraid that if I do, and I’m wrong, it’ll be a the biggest mistake of my life. I have begged and begged him to tell me what you are to him, and he denies having anything more than a platonic friendship with you.
I want to preface this message with, I have no ill will towards you, I just want some answers… answers I don’t believe I’m going to get from Jared. I don’t know if he’s mentioned anything about me. So here goes…
November 2022, I sent Jared an email, telling him I loved him, missed him, and though I didn’t require a response back, I wanted him to know how sorry I was for everything that had happened and things had ended. He responded with a lengthy email telling me he still fervently loved me and how he too was sorry for how things had ended. That email lead to the last year and a half of events.
December 2022, I drove down to Roanoke and surprised him at the Carilion garage. He left the hospital as fast as he could that night, and we spent the rest of that evening together, catching up, and he left for Key West two days later. Two weeks later, he came up to DC and we had a late birthday celebration for him at Clyde’s in Georgetown and went to see A Christmas Carol at the Ford Theater. A few weeks later we drove to Jersey to see Matchbox20, by now it was the end of January 2023. Almost every week off, for the last year, he would come up and see me, if even for only two days, or I would drive down to Roanoke and spend the week with him. We spoke about our past, the hurt, and future, he told me numerous times that when he pictured marriage and children, it was only with me, but he needed time. This part is important, and I’ll come back to it later. We celebrated my birthday at a restaurant in Navy Yard, two weeks before you guys left for London. Chris video chatted with that night while we were at the restaurant eating Wagyu, and they discussed the new shipment of sunglasses Chris had gotten for Miggieswear.
The weekend of the Super Bowl, he had come seen me earlier that week, the day after he left I came to Roanoke and left the day of the Super Bowl. He told me his parents were having a viewing party and he had to go home and cook. I’m now assuming he left my Airbnb and came to your place.
That February he planned a trip to London, with Nicole, Ryan and Chris, and what he told me were, Nicole’s “friends.” Nicole happened to post a picture of you guys sitting on the plane and I was shocked, why would Nicole’s friend be sitting between him and Ryan. I sent him a message while you were on that 6 hour flight, telling him that if he had been seeing somebody, then why didn’t he tell me? There was no point in us spending time together if he had moved on. His response to me was “do you even know what you’re looking at? I’m surprised you don’t recognize her, that’s Nicole’s friend. You’re jumping to a lot of conclusions right now and don’t know what you’re talking about.” Something in my gut didn’t believe it but I wanted to trust that, so I did. I put you out of sight, out of mind. When he got back, he told me how he wished I’d been there with him, we both love history and old buildings, it’s a place we would have found magical together. I don’t know who came up with the idea of going to London, but part of me always thinks I’m the one who put it there when I shared the pictures i had taken when I went there the year we had been no contact.
We went to a Kenny Chesney concert in Charlottesville that March when I got back from my family trip to India, and he got back from London. Between work, us both traveling with our families, we were excited to see one another. We were going to go to St Augustine, but because of the weather, we stayed in Roanoke and saw Kenny Chesney in Charlottesville. The original plan had been to spend the night in Charlottesville at a hotel, but we couldn’t get one last minute so we ended up driving back to Roanoke and sneaking into the basement at his parents house and sleeping in his bed at 3am.
A few months later, we went to Richmond, and stayed the weekend, exploring the city, and watched Hamilton at the Altria Theater. A few months after that, we went to Savannah and Atlanta, where he got a flat tire driving into the garage, and spent the rest of the weekend at a yoga retreat. July, he asked me to go to Boston with him and his brother, for 4th or July weekend, but I couldn’t because my siblings were in town. Every single week, he came down and either stayed with me, or made a quick trip to spend time with me…
This past September, I found out he took you to Justin’s wedding, and I broke. I needed more from him. I have known him, been intimate with him, shared my every fear, worry, I have brought him home cooked meals from DC and surprised him at work with dinner, I’ve made him care packages. I’ve made Ryan Easter baskets and sent him birthday presents and encouraged Jared to put him in academic classes, I’ve helped Jared look into private schools for Ryan, and weighed the pros and cons of the options. I had no expectations in return from him other than, at the very least, a mutual respect and HONESTY.
I’ve seen him quite a few times since September and I last saw him in Roanoke at the beginning of March 2024. We sat in front of each other, in his car before he went into work that Monday night, and he told me, again, that when he thinks of marriage and a future, I’m the only one he pictures a marriage and children with. I’m not saying this to hurt you, or to make a point, I’m saying it because i don’t know what to believe anymore.
I became suspicious of his relationship with you, when he mentioned going to Macchu Picchu and hiking through the mountains. As all women have the ability to find out details they might later regret, I did the same thing. Except I didn’t believe he had actually gone to Macchu Picchu. I knew his passport had been long expired since around or before COVID, and I knew he had renewed it before he went to London. But that was when I realized you were the girl in the photo that Nicole posted. When I confronted him about Macchu Picchu, he told me he had been joking and he had also already told me he’d been joking. He had NEVER told me it was a joke, he had actually refused to show me photos when I asked him for pictures from the trip… he had then proceeded to change the topic, which is what had even raised red flags in my head.
My point is, I have asked him point blank so many times whether you two have a relationship. You tell me you still love me, that you picture marriage and a family with me, but this girl is a part of your life, and you took her to a wedding with you, while I was on a trip with my siblings, you took her to London with you, and you continue to tell me she’s just a friend. I asked him again on Tuesday night/Wednesday Morning after he left work, if you two are dating, and he said no. He asked me why I’m so hyper-fixated on somebody who’s just a friend when he has a million other female friends.
In September, he told me he needed a month to clear his head, that he wanted to commit to me, but he was afraid and that he needed to get over the fear and roadblock of our past break up. I gave him grace and understood. So we took a 4 week break. Some time during that time period, he sent me a snap of doves, and said “doves, and swans mate for life.” He sent me Ed Sheeran songs telling me he wants to find his way back to me. “No Strings Attached… you are the one I love”
In November, he messaged me and told me he had a surprise for me and to look for something in the mail. He loves the Count of Monte Carlo, it’s one of his favorite movies, and he told me it was in reference to that. A few weeks later I got a candle, a silver 400 dollar Buddha candle from Thomson Ferrier. I didn’t understand the reference to the Count of Monte Carlo, but it was a beautiful gesture and present… especially because he knew how much little gestures from him mean to me.
Fast forward to January, I got another 350 dollar black skull candle from him, from Thomson Ferrier. At this point I was upset, angry and livid. I called my sister in tears that evening. I had come back to him because he told me he loved me, that he “has a fire that burns so deeply” when he thinks of me. If i had known that wasn’t true, i would have closed the chapter a year and a half ago. I don’t want $700 worth of gifts and candles, I want more. I want marriage, I want children, I want our lives to move forward, I want communication. Out of anger, I packed up the candle, his sweatshirts and clothes that he had left at my place this past year, and mailed them back to his house. I’m sure it’s sitting somewhere in his basement closet/ bedroom… along with his white Huq sweatshirt, a picture of us I had up in my house, and various articles of clothing.
What upsets me is that he didn’t just involve me this year, he involved my family. He sent my mom presents, my parents in return sent him gifts. My sister, parents and cousins messaged him asking him to come around more. There was no point in involving my family, if he was going to involve himself with you. There was no point in involving himself with me, if he was going to involve himself with you. Those leather Indian shoes sitting in his room, my dad bought those for him. That blue sweater, those green pants and that maroon shirt, my parents bought those for him just this last year.
I don’t know what he’s told you about me, but I will say this. I was your age when we started dating. I was 29 years old. He was single, that’s what everyone in our residency program thought. He would tell everyone how Shari left him one day, all of a sudden just got up and left. “I saw the look behind her eyes just change when she looked at me.” He would tell everyone his horrific dating stories. When i started dating him, there was no doubt in my mind he was single… but I was wrong. He wasn’t single, he was dating Devon, one of the nurses from Carilion, and he had been for the past 4 years prior to that. At one point when he moved to Norfolk, she had even moved in with him. Even Shari was visiting him in Norfolk during this time period. I would have never suspected it, nobody in our residency program did. It wasn’t until one day, when he told me his friends were visiting from home, and they were all going to a concert together, that I found out. Her profile picture was of the two of them together, and her Facebook relationship status said “in a relationship.” Out of my own naivety, i believed him when he told me she was crazy and obsessed with him. He told me, to him, they were just friends but she wanted more. Women do a lot of things, but no woman is dumb enough to think she’s your girlfriend when she’s not. When we moved back to our hometowns, Devon was there waiting for him. He disappeared one day for 24 hours, told me that he was helping his dad’s friend who was stranded in NC. A year and a half later, i would find out that was a lie and that he had been at a concert Florida Georgia Line concert with her. She had been visiting his grandmother with him, staying at his parents home. The irony is that a few weeks after he took her, he took me to the same concert in Scranton. Him and his family didn’t bat an eye when a month later, I showed up and was the “new girlfriend.”
Eventually Devon found out about his lies and left him, but again, stupid me thought she was a crazy girl who just wanted so badly to be with him, that she built their relationship up in her head.
Dignity, respect for humans, empathy, are the most important qualities in a human being.
What I don’t wish is for you to be in my spot in 5 years. He will paint you in his colors, make you fall in love with MB20, and take you to Augustana concerts, he’ll tell you that you understand him, and his heart in a way that nobody else does. He’ll bond with you over music, and send you songs that make you feel he’s talking about you. He is so good at making you feel seen, and involving you with his family. He’ll say he had a vision of a girl that looks like you, coming into his life, and here you are, his soul mate. And one day, the same way that Shari, Devon and I got lost in him, the reality of everything will come pouring down on you. Be careful, there are signs between the lines, and the smiles, and good times. Make sure you don’t miss those, whatever you decide.
My relationship with him, started off just like yours. Another girl on the periphery, and teetering the line of inappropriate. Everything you call him out on, will always have an excuse, and you will believe him because he’s the “good guy” who goes above and beyond for people.
I don’t wish for any woman to go through the pain I’ve gone through, the manipulation, the lies and the emotional abuse. I can’t tell you what to do, but I will say, be careful and don’t be blind to the small things that will one day become huge. The novelty will fade, and though Jared isn’t the devil, he has a lot of growing up to do at 40. It was not okay to toy with me and drag me through the mud this year. It wasn’t okay to minimize his relationship with you and lie to me about it. It’s not okay to, to this day claim to see a life with me and not commit to it. I deserve better, and you deserve better.
How men talk about their ex’s and other women is an indication about how they will one day talk about and treat you. That is the worst and best lesson i have learned. I’m 34, years of my life wasted, and he took another year of my life knowing full well, this is how it would end. He’s sat on the phone with me for hours talking about how stupid PA’s are and if you were going to not be a doctor, at least become an NP, who has better bedside knowledge. Why would he say that, because i suppose you’re a PA and it minimizes the significance of even having a relationship with somebody who isn’t as intelligent as he is. The lack of respect will always be there, you just have to look for it.
Dishonesty, and manipulation are a plague, and if that’s who you are at 40, it is who you will always be unless you recognize that something needs to change. Where there is no accountability, there can be no change. I’m not the exception, I’m the same as the two girls before me. He’ll show you text messages where he never responded to me, even though he replies on Snapchat where every thing is erased. I cannot believe i didn’t see the signs. He will make me look crazy and laugh at me, the same way he showed me messages from Jen, and Elisabeth, and Devon, and made them sound crazy to me. I guess that’s his MO. The same way he told me you were nothing to him.
I was going to send you this message, two months ago… i then decided not to because he convinced me he wasn’t dating you… I saw him less than a month ago in Roanoke, i begged him to tell me that he was in a relationship with you. He said he wasn’t, again, he told me he was going to a wedding alone with only Ryan and that he wasn’t taking you. I then begged him to tell me that we were done and that he didn’t love me anymore. His response was idk what’s going to happen a year from now, i know I’ll see you again. His response every time has been when im ready for a relationship, emotionally, do you want me to finally let you know? I don’t care to be with him anymore. I’m so over it but i really think you should know the type of person you’re dealing with.
He has put me through so much hell for a year and a half of my life, stringing me along acting like he’s doing me a favor while he works on his own mental health and claims to still love me when we are together.”
TLDR: my SO’s ex messaged me saying he’s been seeing both of us for the past year and a half. Has anybody experienced this before. She sent me pictures from the past year of them and their text exchanges

His ex sent me this message, should I believe it? I don’t know what to do. Sorry the message is really long!
“It’s been over a year of me wondering whether I should just come out and ask you or message you… but being afraid that if I do, and I’m wrong, it’ll be a the biggest mistake of my life. I have begged and begged him to tell me what you are to him, and he denies having anything more than a platonic friendship with you.
I want to preface this message with, I have no ill will towards you, I just want some answers… answers I don’t believe I’m going to get from Jared. I don’t know if he’s mentioned anything about me. So here goes…
November 2022, I sent Jared an email, telling him I loved him, missed him, and though I didn’t require a response back, I wanted him to know how sorry I was for everything that had happened and things had ended. He responded with a lengthy email telling me he still fervently loved me and how he too was sorry for how things had ended. That email lead to the last year and a half of events.
December 2022, I drove down to Roanoke and surprised him at the Carilion garage. He left the hospital as fast as he could that night, and we spent the rest of that evening together, catching up, and he left for Key West two days later. Two weeks later, he came up to DC and we had a late birthday celebration for him at Clyde’s in Georgetown and went to see A Christmas Carol at the Ford Theater. A few weeks later we drove to Jersey to see Matchbox20, by now it was the end of January 2023. Almost every week off, for the last year, he would come up and see me, if even for only two days, or I would drive down to Roanoke and spend the week with him. We spoke about our past, the hurt, and future, he told me numerous times that when he pictured marriage and children, it was only with me, but he needed time. This part is important, and I’ll come back to it later. We celebrated my birthday at a restaurant in Navy Yard, two weeks before you guys left for London. Chris video chatted with that night while we were at the restaurant eating Wagyu, and they discussed the new shipment of sunglasses Chris had gotten for Miggieswear.
The weekend of the Super Bowl, he had come seen me earlier that week, the day after he left I came to Roanoke and left the day of the Super Bowl. He told me his parents were having a viewing party and he had to go home and cook. I’m now assuming he left my Airbnb and came to your place.
That February he planned a trip to London, with Nicole, Ryan and Chris, and what he told me were, Nicole’s “friends.” Nicole happened to post a picture of you guys sitting on the plane and I was shocked, why would Nicole’s friend be sitting between him and Ryan. I sent him a message while you were on that 6 hour flight, telling him that if he had been seeing somebody, then why didn’t he tell me? There was no point in us spending time together if he had moved on. His response to me was “do you even know what you’re looking at? I’m surprised you don’t recognize her, that’s Nicole’s friend. You’re jumping to a lot of conclusions right now and don’t know what you’re talking about.” Something in my gut didn’t believe it but I wanted to trust that, so I did. I put you out of sight, out of mind. When he got back, he told me how he wished I’d been there with him, we both love history and old buildings, it’s a place we would have found magical together. I don’t know who came up with the idea of going to London, but part of me always thinks I’m the one who put it there when I shared the pictures i had taken when I went there the year we had been no contact.
We went to a Kenny Chesney concert in Charlottesville that March when I got back from my family trip to India, and he got back from London. Between work, us both traveling with our families, we were excited to see one another. We were going to go to St Augustine, but because of the weather, we stayed in Roanoke and saw Kenny Chesney in Charlottesville. The original plan had been to spend the night in Charlottesville at a hotel, but we couldn’t get one last minute so we ended up driving back to Roanoke and sneaking into the basement at his parents house and sleeping in his bed at 3am.
A few months later, we went to Richmond, and stayed the weekend, exploring the city, and watched Hamilton at the Altria Theater. A few months after that, we went to Savannah and Atlanta, where he got a flat tire driving into the garage, and spent the rest of the weekend at a yoga retreat. July, he asked me to go to Boston with him and his brother, for 4th or July weekend, but I couldn’t because my siblings were in town. Every single week, he came down and either stayed with me, or made a quick trip to spend time with me…
This past September, I found out he took you to Justin’s wedding, and I broke. I needed more from him. I have known him, been intimate with him, shared my every fear, worry, I have brought him home cooked meals from DC and surprised him at work with dinner, I’ve made him care packages. I’ve made Ryan Easter baskets and sent him birthday presents and encouraged Jared to put him in academic classes, I’ve helped Jared look into private schools for Ryan, and weighed the pros and cons of the options. I had no expectations in return from him other than, at the very least, a mutual respect and HONESTY.
I’ve seen him quite a few times since September and I last saw him in Roanoke at the beginning of March 2024. We sat in front of each other, in his car before he went into work that Monday night, and he told me, again, that when he thinks of marriage and a future, I’m the only one he pictures a marriage and children with. I’m not saying this to hurt you, or to make a point, I’m saying it because i don’t know what to believe anymore.
I became suspicious of his relationship with you, when he mentioned going to Macchu Picchu and hiking through the mountains. As all women have the ability to find out details they might later regret, I did the same thing. Except I didn’t believe he had actually gone to Macchu Picchu. I knew his passport had been long expired since around or before COVID, and I knew he had renewed it before he went to London. But that was when I realized you were the girl in the photo that Nicole posted. When I confronted him about Macchu Picchu, he told me he had been joking and he had also already told me he’d been joking. He had NEVER told me it was a joke, he had actually refused to show me photos when I asked him for pictures from the trip… he had then proceeded to change the topic, which is what had even raised red flags in my head.
My point is, I have asked him point blank so many times whether you two have a relationship. You tell me you still love me, that you picture marriage and a family with me, but this girl is a part of your life, and you took her to a wedding with you, while I was on a trip with my siblings, you took her to London with you, and you continue to tell me she’s just a friend. I asked him again on Tuesday night/Wednesday Morning after he left work, if you two are dating, and he said no. He asked me why I’m so hyper-fixated on somebody who’s just a friend when he has a million other female friends.
In September, he told me he needed a month to clear his head, that he wanted to commit to me, but he was afraid and that he needed to get over the fear and roadblock of our past break up. I gave him grace and understood. So we took a 4 week break. Some time during that time period, he sent me a snap of doves, and said “doves, and swans mate for life.” He sent me Ed Sheeran songs telling me he wants to find his way back to me. “No Strings Attached… you are the one I love”
In November, he messaged me and told me he had a surprise for me and to look for something in the mail. He loves the Count of Monte Carlo, it’s one of his favorite movies, and he told me it was in reference to that. A few weeks later I got a candle, a silver 400 dollar Buddha candle from Thomson Ferrier. I didn’t understand the reference to the Count of Monte Carlo, but it was a beautiful gesture and present… especially because he knew how much little gestures from him mean to me.
Fast forward to January, I got another 350 dollar black skull candle from him, from Thomson Ferrier. At this point I was upset, angry and livid. I called my sister in tears that evening. I had come back to him because he told me he loved me, that he “has a fire that burns so deeply” when he thinks of me. If i had known that wasn’t true, i would have closed the chapter a year and a half ago. I don’t want $700 worth of gifts and candles, I want more. I want marriage, I want children, I want our lives to move forward, I want communication. Out of anger, I packed up the candle, his sweatshirts and clothes that he had left at my place this past year, and mailed them back to his house. I’m sure it’s sitting somewhere in his basement closet/ bedroom… along with his white Huq sweatshirt, a picture of us I had up in my house, and various articles of clothing.
What upsets me is that he didn’t just involve me this year, he involved my family. He sent my mom presents, my parents in return sent him gifts. My sister, parents and cousins messaged him asking him to come around more. There was no point in involving my family, if he was going to involve himself with you. There was no point in involving himself with me, if he was going to involve himself with you. Those leather Indian shoes sitting in his room, my dad bought those for him. That blue sweater, those green pants and that maroon shirt, my parents bought those for him just this last year.
I don’t know what he’s told you about me, but I will say this. I was your age when we started dating. I was 29 years old. He was single, that’s what everyone in our residency program thought. He would tell everyone how Shari left him one day, all of a sudden just got up and left. “I saw the look behind her eyes just change when she looked at me.” He would tell everyone his horrific dating stories. When i started dating him, there was no doubt in my mind he was single… but I was wrong. He wasn’t single, he was dating Devon, one of the nurses from Carilion, and he had been for the past 4 years prior to that. At one point when he moved to Norfolk, she had even moved in with him. Even Shari was visiting him in Norfolk during this time period. I would have never suspected it, nobody in our residency program did. It wasn’t until one day, when he told me his friends were visiting from home, and they were all going to a concert together, that I found out. Her profile picture was of the two of them together, and her Facebook relationship status said “in a relationship.” Out of my own naivety, i believed him when he told me she was crazy and obsessed with him. He told me, to him, they were just friends but she wanted more. Women do a lot of things, but no woman is dumb enough to think she’s your girlfriend when she’s not. When we moved back to our hometowns, Devon was there waiting for him. He disappeared one day for 24 hours, told me that he was helping his dad’s friend who was stranded in NC. A year and a half later, i would find out that was a lie and that he had been at a concert Florida Georgia Line concert with her. She had been visiting his grandmother with him, staying at his parents home. The irony is that a few weeks after he took her, he took me to the same concert in Scranton. Him and his family didn’t bat an eye when a month later, I showed up and was the “new girlfriend.”
Eventually Devon found out about his lies and left him, but again, stupid me thought she was a crazy girl who just wanted so badly to be with him, that she built their relationship up in her head.
Dignity, respect for humans, empathy, are the most important qualities in a human being.
What I don’t wish is for you to be in my spot in 5 years. He will paint you in his colors, make you fall in love with MB20, and take you to Augustana concerts, he’ll tell you that you understand him, and his heart in a way that nobody else does. He’ll bond with you over music, and send you songs that make you feel he’s talking about you. He is so good at making you feel seen, and involving you with his family. He’ll say he had a vision of a girl that looks like you, coming into his life, and here you are, his soul mate. And one day, the same way that Shari, Devon and I got lost in him, the reality of everything will come pouring down on you. Be careful, there are signs between the lines, and the smiles, and good times. Make sure you don’t miss those, whatever you decide.
My relationship with him, started off just like yours. Another girl on the periphery, and teetering the line of inappropriate. Everything you call him out on, will always have an excuse, and you will believe him because he’s the “good guy” who goes above and beyond for people.
I don’t wish for any woman to go through the pain I’ve gone through, the manipulation, the lies and the emotional abuse. I can’t tell you what to do, but I will say, be careful and don’t be blind to the small things that will one day become huge. The novelty will fade, and though Jared isn’t the devil, he has a lot of growing up to do at 40. It was not okay to toy with me and drag me through the mud this year. It wasn’t okay to minimize his relationship with you and lie to me about it. It’s not okay to, to this day claim to see a life with me and not commit to it. I deserve better, and you deserve better.
How men talk about their ex’s and other women is an indication about how they will one day talk about and treat you. That is the worst and best lesson i have learned. I’m 34, years of my life wasted, and he took another year of my life knowing full well, this is how it would end. He’s sat on the phone with me for hours talking about how stupid PA’s are and if you were going to not be a doctor, at least become an NP, who has better bedside knowledge. Why would he say that, because i suppose you’re a PA and it minimizes the significance of even having a relationship with somebody who isn’t as intelligent as he is. The lack of respect will always be there, you just have to look for it.
Dishonesty, and manipulation are a plague, and if that’s who you are at 40, it is who you will always be unless you recognize that something needs to change. Where there is no accountability, there can be no change. I’m not the exception, I’m the same as the two girls before me. He’ll show you text messages where he never responded to me, even though he replies on Snapchat where every thing is erased. I cannot believe i didn’t see the signs. He will make me look crazy and laugh at me, the same way he showed me messages from Jen, and Elisabeth, and Devon, and made them sound crazy to me. I guess that’s his MO. The same way he told me you were nothing to him.
I was going to send you this message, two months ago… i then decided not to because he convinced me he wasn’t dating you… I saw him less than a month ago in Roanoke, i begged him to tell me that he was in a relationship with you. He said he wasn’t, again, he told me he was going to a wedding alone with only Ryan and that he wasn’t taking you. I then begged him to tell me that we were done and that he didn’t love me anymore. His response was idk what’s going to happen a year from now, i know I’ll see you again. His response every time has been when im ready for a relationship, emotionally, do you want me to finally let you know? I don’t care to be with him anymore. I’m so over it but i really think you should know the type of person you’re dealing with.
He has put me through so much hell for a year and a half of my life, stringing me along acting like he’s doing me a favor while he works on his own mental health and claims to still love me when we are together.”

First: https://www.reddit.com/HFY/comments/14vo5lb/troublemakers_deaths_pity/
*previous:* https://www.reddit.com/HFY/comments/1cqxbp3/troublemakers_triple_cross/
......
Caz didn't remember blacking out as she smashed through the wall, Valkyrie armor absorbing most of the blow. All she knew is that when she opened her eyes, she was moving faster than ever, throwing herself over obstacles and around corners as that massive emitter slung blinding pulses of light at her, but she wasn't stupid, it could hit her anytime it chose; They were herding her like livestock. Caz kicked off one wall of an alleyway, then the other and landed on the roof, never breaking stride as she leapt from crumbling rooftop to crumbling rooftop like she had wings, one arm protectively clutched to her chest to protect the remote. Jumping down a level she sprinted across the lower roofs, circling back around to try and retrieve her Huntress, When a Block-90 sailed through the air towards her. She caught it, Barely registering the name Dahlia engraved on the slide. She didn't need to see the troublemaker's guardian specter as a weighted chain sailed through the air from nothing to knock aside the emitter of a Geknosian spec ops' laser rifle. Caz instinctually aimed, and fired Dahlia, The soldier reeling back as a .30 caliber Durasteel slug slammed through their faceplate.
A soldier appeared in front of her, swinging a war gauntlet at her face. Sliding between their legs she put a round through their taint at point blank range to bring them to their knees before putting another round in the back of their helmet as she stood, never breaking stride.
Her muscles stung like hornets and her breath burned like fire, but she couldn't help but let loose a feral laugh as she slid, jumped, and vaulted through the rubble of the ruined village. The Dahlia barked, a spec ops soldier crumpling or flinching to swing their rifle from the shimmer in the air right in front of them so Cassius could drive a Kama into their throat. She didn't see charlotte anywhere, and despite the betrayal and stabbing of Remin, she couldn't help but be concerned for the girl. Another spec ops appeared in front of her, she slid around them, putting five rounds in their back armor, only for them to turn around and deliver a haymaker straight into her mask.
She felt her nose break as she slammed into the roof, momentum halted by the brutal hit as the remote flew from her hand. He reyes watched it sail through the air and fall.
Fall.
Fall into the waiting, ring bedecked hand of Drake. A shiver ran through the air as Drake pocketed the remote, a black, tattered spartan's cape flowing about his shoulders. But unlike every other time he'd lost consciousness and returned, it was like he had lost power this time, in a matter of fact, it was like he'd been drained of it. But the way he held himself was so much different, there was a sparkle in his eyes as he drew his sword, helmet flying into his palm as he snugged it on. The rings glimmered even as they absorbed so much of the light that hit them that they appeared as silhouettes.
There was a sudden change in the spec ops as they focused on Drake, she watched them gather into small groups, forming fire teams as the metal buzzards above turned to focus on the lone man. The words that fell from Drake's lips were like the first rumbles of thunder before a deadly monsoon.
"I haven't felt this scared since I was in the arena... And you have no idea how excited that makes me!"
...
Charlotte would not let the darkness of her mind claim her again. She tugged and pulled at the threads of her consciousness, fighting her older sister for control of her own body. But her older sister pulled back harder, tugging the knife taut against someone's throat. A shock of pain, a shock of cold and she was forced to let go. For a moment, she and her older sister were one. She could feel her older sister's fear, fear of punishment and reprisal. A tough mask hid the fragile being beneath that so desperately cried for freedom but feared what it could mean. All Charlotte could do, was push in her determination to be free again to her older sister before they separated again.
But this time she was not alone in the darkness, The soft sound of penny whistles and old war drums followed a man in furs and carrying an odd metal tube attached to a stock. His presence felt like an open field under a night full of stars that stretched on forever, or an endless calm ocean where you stood on a steady boat, the world as your oyster. But there was also something scary about it, like the ability to do anything was both curse and blessing. But when the man softly set himself down beside her, he also sat with her sister, letting them face each other, speaking with a soft twang she could only describe as old country, the man chuckled.
"I reckon you girls both want the same thing, and with the lord as my witness, I'm here to grant you that wish."
He held out his hands to either of us.
"Let us pray to the lord our god that he may deliver you from the lands of egypt and into the promised land."
They both took his hand, and bowed their heads as he recited a few ancient prayers. Charlotte felt a burning in her soul, a lightness that replaced the oppressive dark with a field of beautiful flowers, just like home. Looking to big sister sylva, she could see the fearful, broken look in her eyes, but also a spark of determination as the man picked up his percussion cap rifle and walked away, the sound of pennywhistles and drums following him as she tearfully, but strongly took her older sisters hand.
"Do the right thing."
As she pulled her hands away, the remote was left in her hand. Charlotte could feel the smile behind Sylva's mask as she tossed the remote, watching it turn into a swallow that flitted off as fast as it could.
...
Death slammed a palm against the wooden doors, bursting them open like they were old and rotten as he stormed into Conquest's throne room, scythe slamming against the stony floor as Drake stood off to the side. He felt an odd sensation, like he was only as strong as a human could be, like he had no power left.
And it was like a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He moved slower, hit softer, and got hit harder now, he knew that, but it excited him to actually be able to fight!
Death stopped a few paces from conquest, who was lacksadaisically sipping from a clear goblet as servants played soft music from a corner and served her wine, either chained to their instruments, or dragging a heavy weight by their ankle or equivalent. Drake looked on in grinning anger, teeth grinding together as he observed the degrading spectacle. Death collected himself slightly, no expression visible on his skull face as he spoke in a voice like nails on a chalkboard.
"I heard that you used a soultrap, Conquest. Those were banned during the eight thousandth pantheonal convention, but I heard you used one on my chosen here."
Conquest snorted into her goblet before spotting drake and tensing so hard the goblet shattered.
"So what?! your little monster breaks more rules than I could dream of breaking!"
Death glanced back at Drake as the swordsman leaned casually against a pillar, gripping two rings menacingly with a manic grin of rage directed at conquest. The god couldn't look the mere mortal in the eyes as Death raised a calming skeletal hand.
"He breaks universal rules, supposedly unbreakable ones... and admittedly, I'm not sure how the fuck he does it. But we all agreed that soul traps are both inhumane, unfair, and straight up bullshit. It says that in the fuckin rulebook, Verbatim. If you want to fight my chosen, you'll do it in Yovun's arena, per the five thousandth convention. I don't want a war amongst the gods Gul'vak, but it seems you do..."
Conquest straightened upon the utterance of her true name, a low growl coming from her throat.
"You know nothing about what you speak of Human! Do not lecture me about rules!"
Heat mirage appeared around Death before he took a deep breath and simply said.
"Drake, if Conquest wants to break agreed upon rules... I guess I can turn a blind eye just this once. Go wild."
The room rumbled as two rings hit the ground, disappearing into black smoke so they could be summoned back without issue. Conquest stood, grabbing her hammer from thin air. But then two more rings clinked against the ground as Drake exploded with power, surging forth on black wings wreathed in pale flame. Conquest flinched and screamed.
"ALRIGHT!"
Drake stopped the lethal thrust inches away from Conquests fearful face, the hammer tumbling to the ground as Drake summoned the rings back onto his hands. He'd wanted to drive alexandros through her heart. But he could wait, as he turned around, rage broiling in his heart as he forcefully cooled it, this was not his world, it was the world of gods and primordials. It would be wise to follow their rules. Conquests voice was faux-strong as she shakily snarled.
"I'll follow the godsdamned rules... just keep that Thing away from me."
Drake felt a smile come to his face, pride swelling in his chest, this was a different kind of power he felt as he joined Death's side fearlessly. At the drop of a hat, he could make the greatest enemy of his people grovel at his feet. But, taking a deep breath, he pushed the feeling away, knowing now how the high priest felt every time he cracked that whip against a young Drake's raw back. How dangerous getting addicted to that feeling could be. He'd enjoy it for now, but he also made a solemn promise to hold back any chance he could. To show the mercy he never received.
Death swept around, beckoning Drake.
"Come, young warrior, I sense that your friends need you."
Drake was shaken from his thoughts as he rapidly joined Death's side.
"How do you know?"
"Old john brown has finally selected a chosen. For a god of liberty he has a lot of deference to the big G."
"Who's the big G?"
"God, used to be kind of a pompous bastard really, but he's grown on me."
"Nothing you just said makes sense to me."
"To You."
Death clarified confusingly.
...
Drake looked over the gathered Geknosian spec ops, noticing Charlotte's pummeled form leaning against a pile of rubble, chest weakly rising and falling. Cataclysmic rage burned in his heart as a blaster bolt burnt across his chest with his first step forward. He wouldn't need to remove a ring for this, he wanted to kick ass old school style. He took each bolt as they came his way, burning his flesh and charring his armor. But the pain was like a drug, his blood running hot with battle-lust as he called out.
"Take a breather guys! they're all mine!"
Drake picked up speed, charging through the flashes of laser bolts even as they burned his skin and charred his flesh. As his foot hit the ground, he felt them running with him, the warriors that made up the liquid iron in his blood. From the first Hoplite to his father the Warmonger. A million souls crying out for revenge as he planted a flying double footed kick to a spec ops soldier's breastplate, bringing them to the ground and sliding the blade of his sword into the gap between their neck and chest armor, purple blood spilling out as he brought the sweeping cut up, striking the chin of another's helmet before driving the point of his sword directly into their throat. He dove out of the way as a laser bolt obliterated the ground where he'd been standing, herding him into a ring of the spec ops.
Good, just where he wanted to be, up close and personal. He danced through the circle of death, blaster bolts intended to harm or kill splashing against other Geknosians in blinding flashes as Drake carried himself through the barrage on dancer's feet, the steps he'd practice with Cassius allowing him to strike freely. Each strike flowing into another, seamlessly switching between single handed and two handed grips as he leapt up, monkeying onto a spec ops soldier and stabbing his sword's blade into the gap between neck and shoulder all the way to the hilt. Leaping towards another with a manic grin as he saw fear in the eyes behind the visor before the helmet went flying with the head still inside it. Suddenly a Geknosian in ornate armor appeared in front of him, thrusting a saber for his throat.
Drake let the blade skitter off his helmet's faceplate, returning a slash that was parried with a strong low block. Steel rang, clashing and clamoring as the two danced back and forth. One thinking they were meeting their prey in honorable battle, the other fighting like a rabid, enraged beast that had been backed into a corner. The saber snapped under a particularly vicious blow, the Geknosian general just able to register surprise before Drake separated his head from his shoulders. Blood pumping, skin burning as the headless corpse slumped down by his feet. He looked around at the spec ops who still had their guns raised and trained on Drake.
"Grack this! I don't wanna die here!"
One shouted, Drawing Drake's attention as they threw their blaster to the ground and slammed down on their knees, putting their hands on the back of their heads. Drake looked around at the clearly hesitating spec ops and through his manic, uncontrollable grin he called out.
"Anyone else not want to die?!"
Slowly, ever so slowly the remaining blasters were lowered, then tossed to the ground as the two metal buzzards hummed frantically away. Seeing Caz limp to his side with her railgun, he put his hand on her forearm as she tried to raise it to point at the fleeing aircraft.
"Let em go."
"But they just tried to-"
"Some must live to spread the word."
Caz looked up at him for a moment, confused, before a spark of realization lit up her pain filled crystalline eyes as she looked at the surrendering spec ops.
"Prisoners..."
Drake nodded and flicked the blood from his swordblade before wiping it clean on the dead general's crotch flap.
"Prisoners."
He confirmed, looking to charlotte as she slowly clambered to her feet, swaying weekly as she clutched her head. Drake let his smile fall and fade before saying.
"who else needs medical attention."
"everybody but Cassius and Destrier as far as I know, including yourself dumbass."
Drake chuckled and nodded, getting an odd look from Caz as he stated.
"I'll be fine, I'll just pop off a pinkie ring for an hour when we get home."
Caz sighed and helped Drake support the badly wounded Charlotte to the forge building.
"somethings changed about you, and it's not the lack of power."
Drake chuckled and simply responded.
"I don't know, I just feel... better, all of a sudden. Fightings fun again."
"I'm not sure that's a good thing, Drake."
Drake chuckled softly and helped get Charlotte into the forge building without responding.
......
Part 107: https://www.reddit.com/HFY/comments/1crq34h/troublemakers_buried_secrets_bolster_the_weak/

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

First: https://www.reddit.com/HFY/comments/14vo5lb/troublemakers_deaths_pity/
*previous:* https://www.reddit.com/HFY/comments/1cnuyl1/troublemakers_the_son_of_witch_and_warrio
......
Drake tossed the last shovelful of soil over his shoulder, looking over the massive circular bunker elevator that had been buried beneath rubble and dirt. Destrier and Caz were consulting the map for any kind of clue as to how it could be opened up. Cassius and Remin both kept an eye on Charlotte and the younger of the two was playing patty-cake with the small woman. Drake paused for a moment, looking at the display with an odd trembling in his heart. It was clear charlotte was at least a teenager, but she acted like a small child, her wide eyed wonder evident in the freely smiling face and glittering eyes as she happily patted her hands against Cassius'. His stomach roiled and he almost doubled over as he spit out a mouthful of bile that sizzled on the ground ominously. Truth be told, since he'd been thrown into that strange void he'd felt sick, the tingling, electrical power in his veins only intensifying even as he dug out the massive hundred foot in diameter elevator. Chucking the shovel to the side halfheartedly, he looked up at the tree of hung corpses as the shovel clanged against a wall several paces away. His heart began to pound angrily and the feeling of nausea and static intensified exponentially, He doubled over and vomited, a pink slurry of blood and oatmeal splattering on the ground. He fell to one knee as the edges of his vision darkened for a moment, an overwhelming weakness turning his limbs to lead. Cassius appeared at his side, a look of fearful concern on his face as he went to grab Drake by the shoulders.
Drake didn't understand where the knowledge came from, but Cassius absolutely could not touch him. Drake shoved a hand out, launching Cassius back a few feet where he landed on his back. Sitting up, Drake saw the rapidly cooling red-hot handprint on the chest of his nano-mesh Gambeson at the same time Cassius did. They shared a look of startled panic and realization before Drake slumped forward, his last thought before the void took him was one of confusion.
"What's happening to me?!"
...
Charlotte saw the man named Drake tumble forward after shoving his friend, Heat mirage rising off his prone back as the soil around him began to melt into magma. She hurried to her feet when the old man in lamellar held her back, a look of confusion and fear on his face.
"Why aren't you helping him?!"
She cried trying to push past the old man's iron strength. Her hand still smudged with soot where the man currently laying in a puddle of molten soil had reattached her finger like magic. The man looked down at her, anxiously shouting.
"Do you not see the godsdamned lava?! I don't think we can even get close!"
Charlotte stopped pushing, a feeling of stark impotency falling like a pall over her mind as the ground bubbled around Drake's still form. She didn't know much about her new world, but she knew that man was a good one, and seeing him lay lifeless and still made her skin crawl with the desire to help. But then she heard a sound that chilled her to the bone.
The dull thrum of propulsor engines reached her over the wind and she whipped around to scan the sky. She could see them against the soft brown midday sky, dark shapes that hurtled through the air like birds of prey. She could see them now in her mind, loaded to the gills with Spec ops and bio-engineered soldiers, Artillery class emitters charged to full, engines thrumming under a full combat load of rockets and bombs. Charlotte wildly looked around, spotting a mostly intact, low forge building she shouted.
"If you want to live get inside!!!!"
The woman and large black man who'd been pouring over the maps looked up confusedly as Charlotte began shoving Remin towards the building. The panic she felt made her nerves burn with the need to run, but she couldn't abandon them she couldn't just let the-
An earplitting screech came from inside her skull forcing her to her knees as she clutched the aching sides of her head, a horrifyingly familiar voice speaking to her from within her very being.
"Ooooooooh Sylva my dear?~ Did my little cuckoo lose her collar?~ Ah, no matter, would you kindly clear the landing area for the buzzards?~"
Her arms fell limp as her viewpoint shrank away, leaving her floating in the darkness as she saw her body move of its own accord. Drawing a long bayonet from the thigh scabbard on the old man's leg and driving it right between his ribs, the blade expertly slipping between lamellar plates. She wanted to scream as the old man jolted back, clutching at where the knife had slipped through his armor, falling to the ground as she rotated to face the other three. Her hair swayed in front of her face, the dark brown draining upwards, leaving it a stark silver with a purple stripe. The hum of the buzzards was only growing louder as she reached for the small of her back, clawing at the veil between her body and her as a pen-flare came into view, pointed at the sky.
She silently screamed as a purple flair rose into the sky, the cold void swallowing her like it had all those years ago.
...
Nothingness surrounded Drake, a deep, endless, colorless world devoid of meaning or substance. But he wasn't alone here, something moved within the emptiness, pure, flavorless power roiling off it like the heat of his village's forge.
And it was angry.
He could feel it as it beheld him with a sort of bestial curiosity born out of its anger. Invisible tendrils snaked into his body like hot pieces of iron, molding themselves around his bones and sinews like it was searching for something. Crawling through his veins and into his heart, making him feel as though he was burning alive. His heart seized and stopped bringing a cold stillness to his body. But he didn't die as the tendrils slowly withdrew, heart pounding back to life like a bright orange flame had been ignited in his chest. The thing's viewpoint changed, looking down on him from above as it touched the glowing sigil over his heart with that same rageful curiosity, then a tendril of power touched the scythe on his wrist with something akin to fondness. He could feel hard crystalline bands forming around his fingers as the thing rumbled with amusement, the feeling of molten iron filling his body before fading as each band slowly reached completion. Then it hurled him ass over head through a wooden door.
Death jumped out of his chair, falling hard without his prosthetics and careful not to spill the yellowish water inside the odd glassware in his slender hand. The two stared at each other with similar levels of bewilderment as Drake rubbed his face before looking at the set of ten obsidian bands that encircled the base of each finger and thumb.
"How in the fuck did you get here?"
Death asked calmly, stump-walking back to his chair and taking a long burbling pull from the glassware in his hand.
Drake clambered into one of the smoky chairs death had casually summoned.
"I... uh... I got thrown through your door by... something... I don't exactly know what. It seemed... angry at me, though."
Death looked up with a blank expression, oily smoke rising from his nostrils as he said.
"Beg pardon? what do you mean you don't exactly know what did it? wait..."
A look of concern etched itself into Death's face as he grabbed one of Drakes hands, looking at the black rings with ever widening eyes. Slowly he made eye contact with Drake, holding up the jewelry bedecked hand urgently.
"Do you even know what these are?!?!"
Drake shook his head.
"Obviously fuckin not."
Death took a deep breath, taking a long burbling hit from the piece of glassware with palpable stress as he set Drakes hand down, letting his chosen look at the rings curiously and experimentally take one off. The moment the pinky ring stopped touching his flesh Death leapt back exclaiming.
"Jesus fucking christ kid!! Put it back on! put it back on!"
Drake slipped the ring back on, he'd felt a small boost to his energy but hadn't noticed anything that would elicit such a reaction from the harvester of souls.
"Who's Jesus christ?"
Drake asked as Death took another calming breath before replying.
"Probably one of the most famous demigods known to humankind, but that isn't important..."
Death folded his hands and leaned across the desk with a twitching eyelid.
"What is important, is how you managed to acquire ten heart of the umbra crystals for rings. I can count on one hand the amount of people who have acquired exactly one of these rings."
Drake looked at the dull black crystal rings curiously.
"Do they give me extra power?"
Death shook his head, slowly revealing an arm encased in the black bands.
"Quite the opposite... They typically completely restrain your power so you don't burn up and turn into a walking, talking nuclear weapon. And they're specifically given to those who have touched the Umbra and survived, typically just experiencing the primordial soup that makes reality results in a cataclysmic leap in power... but even then... it's only ever been one ring. Three humans have owned one of these rings, Archibald Sunshine, Roxanne Richards, and Bagelious Braveheart. How the Bagel god's chosen got one I'm at a loss. But of those three, One died using the power the ring held back, The other lives inside a mechanical body locked away from her powers permanently, and Bagelius? he's... He's just unhinged."
Drake gazed at his hands, the rings glittering dully in the flickering firelight. He held them up curiously.
"So... what does it mean if I have ten?"
Death took another deep breath, letting it out in an exasperated sigh. He didn't look drake in the eye as he stared at a wall.
"I... I don't know... If I had to guess..."
Death looked at Drake with no small amount of curiosity and fear for his life.
"You didn't just survive the umbra... You fought it... and lived to tell the tale... I don't even think you're human anymore Drake..."
Drake furrowed his brow, clenching and relaxing his fist, feeling the rings click together.
"Then what am I?"
Death shook his head before simply stating.
"Something I and those before me, have never seen..."
He looked into Drakes eyes, a soft glimmer in the endless, silvery pools as he rolled his sleeve back down to hide the bands around his own arm.
"You defy every law and command of the universe, just by existing."
Drake slowly nodded before standing back up.
"That explains why conquest looked so afraid. Bitch kidnapped my soul and tried to fight me on her own turf and still lost."
"Im sorry..."
Drake glanced over at Death's coldly calm words, the primordial exploding with power as he roared.
"She did WHAT!?!?!"
Drake looked at death with wide eyes, shocked at the sudden outburst, the primordial literally steaming with rampant power as he clicked his legs on. Drake was about to step through the door and back to his body when death stopped him with a snarled.
"No, you're coming with me. I need to know what she's playing at... and what better way than to bring the one person she's actually afraid of."
...
Caz had barely taken a running step towards Charlotte, blindsided by the sudden betrayal as the small woman lifted a pen flare to the sky and launched it with a Pop! Snatching her Huntress she broke it open, cocking the striker and slamming a fresh flechette into the electrically insulated chamber. A massive shadow loomed over her and she froze in her tracks, looking up at the massive metal machine as it hovered over the ruined village, her heart pounding in her throat as dark silhouettes leapt from the sides of the propulsor driven aircraft. They landed hard on the ground, Grey, patterned armor shifting to blend in with the bombed out village as their cold visors regarded her emotionlessly. Caz drew a bead on the first one, about to fire when the cold steel of a bayonet was pressed against her throat from behind. She'd forgotten about charlotte. A soft chuckle came from within the group of organized soldiers and they parted to reveal a geknosian in similar but far more ornate armor. Golden medals bedecking every available surface including a fabric crotch flap weighed down with stamped precious metals. They pulled an ornately forged helmet from their head, a dark grin on the general's face as he looked around at the general disarray the five troublemakers found themselves in.
Cassius held a chest seal to the wet gash between Remin's ribs. The old man looking pale and shaky as he weekly held his shotgun in the general direction of the soldiers. Destrier slowly folded up the map and tucked it into the pouch at the small of his back, dark eyes gliding studiously over the Geknosian forces. Caz adjusted her crosshair onto the General and felt the bayonet press harder against her throat.
"Drop it... Bitch~"
The small woman holding the knife cooed. Caz snarled and threw her Huntress to the ground, raising her hands in surrender as the blade of the bayonet relaxed against her throat. She wanted to spare Drake a glance, but she dared not turn her head lest she slit her own throat on the keen blade of Remin's long bayonet. The Geknosian General sauntered forward, attempting to take her chin in his hand.
"ARRRGH!"
The General cried out, leaping back as a burst of cold frost froze his war gauntlet into a brick of ice. Caz's eyes lit up as she backed into Charlotte, the woman crying out in pain and jerking the blade away as a brick of frosted ice formed around her chest. The Geknosian general grabbed for the blaster pistol at his hip and she kicked him in the chest, freezing his chestplate and sending him reeling back in shock. She got a glimpse of Destrier sprinting to Remin and Cassius's side, helping Drag the old man into the low forge building as Caz dove for her Huntress. A heavy armored boot slammed into her mask, throwing her disorientingly on her side even as the boot froze over. Caz slowly got back to her feet as the soldiers bore their guns down on her, wiping the blood from her split lip through her mask, she growled, glancing back at Drake's still form, the ground around him having cooled and solidified into hard stone. Charlotte slowly joined the generals side, the frost around her chest quickly melting as she leaned in to whisper in the general's ear, eliciting a smile.
"Thank you Sylva, the information is much appreciated. A little cuckoo bird tells me that you all came here looking for the human bunker. How pitiful you don't have an access remote, like this one?"
The general held out a hand, a piece of blocky, olive drab green plastic falling into his outstretched, thawing palm. Clicking a button, nothing happened and he purred.
"But, alas we're at an impasse, for only someone of human genome may access the bunkers... oh wait~"
He held the remote out to Charlotte, Who stared at it blankly, eyes glimmering dully for a second. Then they dulled again as she looked up at Caz with an odd expression.
The remote sailed through the air and Caz instinctually caught it as Charlotte monotonely stated.
"Run, Keep it away from them."
Caz didn't need to be told twice as she turned on her heel and sprinted through a small alleyway between two buildings that leaned on each other, blaster bolts ablating the stony surfaces in puffs of loud smoke and blinding flashes. Grabbing the hook at her belt, she threw it and slung herself onto the crumbling rooftops, one of the metal buzzards turning where it hovered in the air to focus a glowing emitter on her. She leapt off the crumbling rooftop just as the powerful laser ablated the spot she'd just been standing with a blinding flash and a pressure wave that launched her much farther through the air than she intended. The last thing she saw before blacking out was a crumbling wall rushing at her as she fell face first towards it, clutching the remote to her chest.
......
Part 106: https://www.reddit.com/HFY/comments/1cr3pct/troublemakers_adrenaline_is_a_superpower_in_itself/

Timestamp
LINK TO PM
Hello, the following items are for sale/trade.
Shipping worldwide with tracking. Estimates for keysets/keyboards:

• Europe and UK: 15-20/25-30USD
• Anywhere else: 25-35/35-75USD

Items I am looking for:

• DSA Deep Space blanks/spacebars (from the OG run only)
• HWS Earls (Singles Night "A Green", multishots; wishlist)
• Lin Dolinger 2017 (fancy colors: pink, blue/grey)
• Lin Dolphin OG (from ~2014)
• Lin Dolphin V2 (with alu weight; two-tone with fancy colors and WKL preferred)
• Lin Dolphin V3 (WKL only, red bottom or full green)
• Lin EM7 OG (from ~2014)
• Lin EM7 V2 (with alu weight; two-tone preferred)
• OG red alu plate for Lin Dolphin V2 SE
• Realforce 87U 10th Anniversary (stock)
• Realforce R2 TKL 10th Anniversary (stock)
• TX-1800 V1

Please comment here when messaging (NO Reddit chat; regular PMs only). Click here to write me a PM.
Lin Whale 75 F13 alu plate and PCB

• Condition: new, unused
• 50USD + shipping for both

TX-84/87 V1 brushed brass plate

• Condition: new, unused; the coating looks/feels uneven on the backside
• 25USD + shipping

Keycult No.1 65
Album

• Rev. 0 from the January 2019 sale; number 8 out of 15
• Black case with silver aluminum mid-piece, silver aluminum full plate, Wilba solderable PCB with daugtherboard and JST cable, screws and bumpons
• Extra parts: original Wilba solderable PCB, Wilba Graphite hotswap PCB with daughterboard and JST cable, polycarbonate partial plate, white POM full plate
• Comes in the original packaging with original accessories
• Condition: new, unused; apart from a faint darker line on the top piece noticeable under bright light, everything looks flawless
• Trades for OG Dolphin/EM7

LZ CLS
Album

• Gray WKL kit (top, bottom, brushed stainless steel weight, brushed stainless steel plate, Leeku TX87 PCB with RGB underglow, acrylic diffuser, screws and bumpons)
• Extra Leeku TX87 PCB with RGB underglow and polished brass plate (fixed ANSI layout)
• Extra Hineybush h87a PCB with RGB underglow and brushed stainless steel Alps plate (AT101 layout)
• Comes in a storage case with two microfiber clothes
• Condition: new, unbuilt with some imperfections on the case pictured here (slight top/bottom color mismatch and tiny dent at the seam, anodization banding all around the top piece as well as a couple faint scratches, machining marks/nicks on the weight)
• Trades for OG Dolphin/EM7

LZ MP
Album

• Silver WKL kit (top, bottom, polished brass plate, brass internal weight, brass side weights, Leeku TX87 PCB, screws, numbered badge and bumpons)
• Number 06/50
• Extra silver aluminum plate (with ISO support)
• The brass plate has a fixed layout (WKL ANSI with support for stepped and regular CapsLock only)
• Comes in a storage case with microfiber cloth
• Condition: new, unbuilt with minor cosmetic imperfections shown here
• Trades for OG Dolphin/EM7

Merisi.Works Dodici
Album

• Baby blue kit (top, bottom, brushed stainless steel weight, CF plate, PCB, screws and bumpons)
• Extra black aluminum plate
• Extra PCB
• Polycarbonate wrist rest
• Comes in a storage case with microfiber cloth
• Condition: new, unbuilt; everything flawless except for those speckles on the weight's chamfered edge
• Trades for OG Dolphin/EM7

Syryan Mont Cervin

• Tented Alice-style ergo keyboard with integrated wrist rest and variable angle; center bar as well as left and right housings attach to the base using magnets
• Full black kit (black base, black angled plate, black left/right housings, black center bar, clear frosted PC and black aluminum switch plates, hotswap PCB, foam sheets, leather left/right wrist pads, various small parts)
• Comes with a hard foam-padded carrying case
• Extra parts: gray center bar, gray left/right housings with gray aluminum switch plate, two hotswap PCBs, CF switch plate, CF left/right wrist pads
• Condition: one PCB and PC switch plate assembled and used for a few weeks, the rest is unused; tiny scratch on the gray housing and black base
• Trades for OG Dolphin/EM7

TGR 910 RE
Album

• Polycarbonate case, sandblasted brass weight and plate, solderable PCB, screws and bumpons
• Extra solderable PCB
• Condition: new, unused; all parts are original; the case has few shiny areas/faint scuffs noticeable from a specific angle pictured here
• Trades for OG Dolphin/EM7

LZ PhysiX red
Album

• Red kit (top, bottom, stainless steel weight plate, CF switch plate, PCB, grommets/screws/bumpons)
• White or black acrylic wrist rest
• Comes in a storage case with microfiber cloth
• Bundle of spare PCB and black or silver aluminum switch plate available for 90USD
• In person, the case is not a shiny red and looks like a dark matte red
• Condition: new, unbuilt; no blemishes on the case except for a couple faint scratches/marks on the underside; all PCBs have been tested
• 400USD + shipping

TX-75 V1
Album

• Silver top case with original one-off TX polycarbonate bottom
• Built with 54g filmed vintage Cherry MX Black switches and GMK/Cherry stabilizers on a polished brass plate
• Original Leeku TX75 PCB with RGB underglow; SIP sockets with white LEDs are installed in switches; red, green and blue indidcator LEDs are installed; all keys register and lighting works properly
• Spare Leeku TX75 PCB with RGB underglow available for an extra 50USD (not selling separately from this board)
• Comes in a TX bag
• Condition: used as a daily driver for a while; the top and bottom pieces show a few scuffs and scratches pictured here while the weight has some very faint hairline scratches; the spacebar sounds rattly and would likely benefit from some tuning again
• 300USD + shipping

TX-84 V1
Album

• Silver WKL kit (top, bottom, brushed stainless weight, silver aluminum plate, PCB, small parts)
• One extra brushed brass plate
• One extra PCB
• Condition: new, unused; two tiny dings on chamfered edges and smudge on the backside pictured here
• 300USD + shipping

TX-1800 V2
Album

• Titanium grey kit with brushed stainless steel weight; acrylic and coated stainless steel spacers
• Built by Kin25 (TX maker) with filmed/lubed 64g vintage Cherry MX Black switches and GMK/Cherry stabilizers on a brushed stainless steel ANSI plate; the spacebar has a 78g Cherry MX Grey switch
• Leeku MX1800 PCB with RGB underglow; SIP sockets with white LEDs installed in switches, warm white indicator LEDs without SIP sockets; all keys register and lighting works properly
• Comes in a large TX bag
• Condition: slightly used years ago; the case has two minor flaws and there are a few tiny scratches on the weight (pictures here)
• Trades for a TX-1800 V1 or 575USD + shipping

GMK 80002

• BL00 base set and Addition kit
• Condition: new, sealed
• 100USD + shipping

GMK Awaken

• Mainframe base kit 100USD + shipping
• Neo-Tokyo base kit 100USD + shipping
• Condition: new, sealed

GMK Camping R3

• Base kit, novelties and spacebars
• Classic base kit or Burgundy base kit available
• Condition: new, sealed
• 200USD + shipping

GMK Cobalt

• Base kit
• Condition: new, sealed
• 125USD + shipping

GMK Cubed

• Base kit, novelties, accents and spacebars
• Condition: new, sealed
• 265USD + shipping

GMK Dracula R1

• Base kit 165USD
• Error kit (without F13) 55USD
• Condition: new, sealed

GMK DMG R3

• Base, novelties, spacebars, and addition kits
• Condition: new, sealed
• 225USD + shipping

GMK Dots R2

• Light base kit
• Dark base kit
• Condition: new, sealed
• 100USD each + shipping

GMK Fleuriste

• Base kit
• Condition: new, sealed
• 125USD + shipping

GMK Olive R2

• Dark base set and spacebars
• Condition: new, sealed
• 150USD + shipping

GMK Prepress

• Base kit
• Condition: new, sealed
• 150USD + shipping

GMK Royal Cadet

• Base and Symbols kits
• Condition: new, sealed
• 175USD + shipping

GMK Space Cadet R2

• Base kit
• Condition: new, sealed
• 125USD + shipping

GMK Striker R2

• Base set, spacebars and Salvun keycap
• Condition: new, sealed
• 170USD + shipping

GMK Sumi

• Spacebars and extension/40s
• Condition: new, sealed
• 35USD each + shipping

SA Handarbeit

• Base, numpad and spacebars
• Condition: new, unused
• 165USD + shipping

Hammer CRP R2 Desko

• Kits: Desko base, Numpad, WKL, R5, HHKB mods
• Condition: new, unused; being from early CRP rounds, a few keycaps may have slightly crooked stems
• 65USD + shipping

Deskmats
Album
New, unused
15USD each + shipping

• RAMA Canvas (small)
• GMK Avanguardia
• GMK Modern Dolch 2
• GMK Red Devils

HIBI/RAMA/Salvun keycaps
New, unused
Prices include worldwide shipping

• GMK 80082 (blue): 40USD
• GMK 80082 (pink): 40USD
• GMK Striker R2: 40USD
• GMK Awaken: 50USD
• GMK Dots R2 (colorful): 50USD
• GMK Fleuriste: 50USD
• Keycult (brass with white infill): 65USD
• Wave Liquid Hydro (stainless steel): 65USD

Artisans
Timestamp
Prices include worldwide shipping

• Fraktal Kaps Aweigh! (Ectoplasm, Henne-SEA, Penny for your thoughts): 30USD each
• Deathcaps x HWS Revthulhus (Singles Night: AE green, Analog Dreams pink/yellow, A Violet, Serika, Shoko): 30USD each
• HWS Earl Esc (Single Minded BrAF5C37-MT, Singles Night: Nautilus yellow/blue, Cold Cast aluminum): 30USD each
• HWS Earl Esc (Exam Glove Love): 50USD
• HWS Earl Esc (2019 Commemorative): 50USD
• HWS Earl Esc (multishot): April Fooearls 75USD, Prismearl 75USD, Super Sticky Coprophagy 100USD, Labra Do Right 125USD, Princess Treat 125USD, Princess Trick 125USD
• HWS Popsi Skull (Why Sobby?): 100USD
• HWS Popsi Skull (Taro): 125USD
• Vice Caps Dress: Millie 65USD, Nami 80USD

Looking for HWS Earls (wishlist): Singles Night "A Green", and specific multishots
LINK TO PM

Inventory current as of Monday, noon, mountain time. Thanks for the support! Lots of packages headed out. Some price drops on fractional gold listed below, you can’t beat that with a stick.
Will ship Tuesday. Tracking headed your way by Monday evening. Pack with care and tons of tape.
Proof/overhead view
Items 1-2, Reverse Proof Libertads
Item 1 - Libertad Reverse Proof 2022 5oz and 2oz silver coins with presentation case and COA - both coin are spot free and beautiful - priced to move at $580 shipped.
Item 2 - Libertad Reverse Proof 2020 2oz silver coin graded 70 by PCGS - $375 shipped priorty.
Items 3-5, more Libertad love
Item 3 - Libertad 2019 5oz silver coin - imperfect - $175
Item 4 - Libertad 2011 5oz silver coin in capsule - beautiful, no spots or issues by my eye - $195
Item 5 - lot of 4x silver libertads, 3x 1984 and 1x 2015 - $140
Items 6-9, world silver
Item 6 - Canada 2021 big maple 10oz silver coin - scratches as seen in photos - $315
Item 7 - Australia 2011 Kookaburra proof 10oz - stellar - $335
Item 8 - Australia 2013 year of the snake 1oz high relief - packaging is complete but beat up - $55
Item 9 - Queens Beast White Lion of Mortimer 10oz silver coin 2021 - great shape, I see a small milk spot at 6:00. - $335
Items 10-11, Engelhard part 1
Item 10 - Engelhard kilo Australia production - $1200 shipped priority.
Item 11 - Engelhard 10oz press bull - $340
Items 12-17, Engelhard 10oz wide varieties
Item 12 - Engelhard pebble back 10oz - $315
Item 13 - Engelhard logo back 10oz - super smooth - $315
Item 14 - Engelhard logo back 10oz - light toning - $315
Item 15 - Engelhard waffle back 10oz - $335
Item 16 - Engelhard 10oz PLOAF - $320
Item 17 - Engelhard 10oz W series - $365
items 18-19, Engelhard part 3
Item 18 - Engelhard big E 10oz tall, original plastic in bad shape - $315
Item 19 - Engelhard 1oz bars in original wrapper - $36 each
Items 20-22.5, vintage goodness
Item 20 - OPM 10oz silver bar mushroom stamp - $320
Item 21 - BR Mackay 9.81oz silver bar old mold variety $350
Item 22 - Star Metals 10.32oz vintage silver bar - $340
Item 22.5 - old old Crown Metals 25.76oz silver bar - $775
Items 23-27, JM and more
Item 23 - JM 10oz - couple dings in bar - $310
Item 24 - JM 10oz sealed $315
Item 25 - JM 10oz blank back - $335
Item 26 - lot of 7oz John Wick, 5oz bar, 2x 1oz rounds - $215
Item 27 - YPS 5oz cross - $160
Items 28-32, more shiny silver
Item 28 - Lot of 4x OPM 1oz bars $118
Item 29 - Lot of 4x 1oz DTOM rounds $118
Item 30 - lot of 7oz Canadian premium silver 2x 2oz Mountie 2oz coins, 3x sealed 1990 1oz - $225
Item 31 - WSM 10oz silver bar - $305
Item 32 - Brittania 10oz silver bar - $300
Items 33-35, skull, Geiger and silver strike
Item 33 - Atlantis Mint 10oz - $310
Item 34 - Geiger 100gram silver bar - $110
Item 35 - casino silver strike one pound .999 - 372 grams of silver, serial 0080 - Barbary Coast $395
Items 36-39, small gold 1
Item 36 - Libertad 2016 1/20oz gold proof PF69 some copper spotting- $200
Item 37 - Gold Krugerrand 1980 1/10oz - $250 (2 available)
Item 38 - Libertad 2015 1/10oz gold $275 price drop $285
Item 39 - Panda 1/10 gold 1986 - sealed $245 price drop - $255
Items 40-42, frac gold part 2
Item 40 - Gold maple 1/10oz 2024 - $245 price drop $250
Item 41 - Canada map gold 1/10oz 2016 $250 price drop. $260
Item 42 - Credit Suisse 5gram gold bar in bezel (unsure of karat quality of gold bezel) - $400
Items 43-44, generic silver
Item 43 - rolll of 20x 1oz silver buffalos - $580 for. Tube of 20. Or… take both tubes for $1,135 shipped, melt at this moment. (2 available)
Item 44 - Silvertowne 5oz - $143
Items 45,46, Chive silver coins
Item 45 & 46 - chive caddy shack and Venkman coins with COAs - set of two total - $135
Gorgam Sterling silver pitcher get fancy with 668 grams of sterling silver - offered $20 below melt plus free shipping $535
Items 48-50, 90%, spot generic
Item 48 - 90% Roosevelt dimes - $210 for $10fv, $515 for $25fv shipped priority, $2010 for $100fv.
Item 49 - 3oz mixed generic silver - $85 (one per person please)
Item 50 - 3oz mixed generic silver - $85 (one per person please)
Ground advantage shipping in a new, high quality padded envelope $5. For 10oz and larger, Priority shipping $10. Free ship at $1000.
Payment via Zelle, Venmo. PPFF available for established users. Postal or MoneyGram money orders are also an option. Personal checks accepted from established users.
Once handed off to USPS, I am no longer responsible for delivery. With almost 1,000 shipments shipped with care I spend a lot of time packing and tape heavily. Everything ships Tuesday.
Chat or PM, feel free to reach out with questions. US sales only.
Be excellent to each other.

My brother hung himself on this past Monday. He was an amazing man and my best friend. He had struggled with what appeared to be undiagnosed schizophrenia or psychotic disorder, but his paranoia of psychiatric medications and being on medication his whole life prevented him from finding himself adequate treatment. He had been on SSRIs and Mirtazapine for anxiety, depression, etc
It sucks.
He wrote a fairly lengthy suicide note, very well-written, illustrating his feelings, saying goodbyes, etc. It is fairly lengthy. It was placed in an envelope called "note-public", included names of his family and friends over the years, but included the verbiage "to those I've missed.." Because of the above, his partner and I believe he wanted his note to be made available to people. I want to give him the dignity of respecting his own decision, even as mentally ill, to have it available for people to read, or even to send it to people proactively.
He wants to be remembered for how he was before he got really mentally ill. Before, he had a great sense of humor, intelligent, active in his hobbies and social life, etc. as he declined he became withdrawn, paranoid, anhedonic. However, he illustrates how caring, generous, intelligent he is in the letter. He was clearly under psychosis when he wrote it. Here is a snippet:
"My body/mind refuses to connect to itself, to soak in the experience. Joy and pleasure in myself, in other people, and the world have evaporated, replaced with deep anhedonia, blank mind, disconnection, brain-fog, body-fog, muted body sensations, memory and attention issues, social awkwardness, and intense, never-ending, unprecedentedly powerful anxiety. Depression? No, this isn’t depression, like all the so-called experts claim. I know myself, I know my depression, I know my anxiety, and the things I’ve recently felt are alien, unfamiliar, and deranged. They’re not me- this isn’t me, because I’ve lost myself. Is pacing around my kitchen, muttering to myself- me? Is being so agitated and overwhelmed with my thoughts and high-energy body sensations that I need to flap my arms and tap my skull- me? No. It is my firm belief that the drugs did this. The drugs exacerbated an already shitty situation. I was myself before I consumed these drugs, I was functional before these drugs, even if I did struggle with anxiety and depression. Everything I held dear about myself, everything I loved about myself and the world around me is gone. This is the direct result of adverse effects to psychiatric and serotonergic drugs. They’ve modified my brain, and they’ve destroyed me. I cannot live like a natural man, as psychiatrists and doctors urge more dependency-causing medication, ignoring the iatrogenic causes of my current state."
Sending the note to people would be counterproductive to remembering how he was.
However, his wish was he wanted to illustrate what he was going through. There is no gore, description of his plans, etc
I'm not sure how to go about this. Adults can choose what they want to read, so do I actively send it to people and say this is traumatic, read if you want? Do not send it but if requested send it? Or do I not send it at all?
Sorry if wrong sub but I am in major grief and this added complexity doesn't help and I'm not in a right frame of mind to ponder this debate.

It was exactly two weeks ago when my slight concerns evolved into genuine fear. I remember restlessly lying in bed, whimpering and crying, contemplating whom to blame for my senseless suffering. Despite the fact that it was my fourth consecutive night spent completely awake, I refused to fall asleep. Despite the fact that my body was literally breaking apart, I refused to fall asleep. Despite my itching eyes, despite my pulsing headache, despite my burning muscles, I refused to fall asleep.
The world seemed so incredibly cruel. I begged and pleaded, but nobody answered my calls. I felt like one of those spoiled kids in the supermarket, rolling around on the dirty floor. Only for me, there was no exhausted mother who would sooner or later cave in. My mother was destiny or God or whoever else chose to ignore my prayers.
I crashed back into my mattress, slowly descending into this trancelike state of consciousness, not quite awake but light-years away from actually drifting off. Until the sun let out its heinous laugh and reminded me that there was more pain to bear.
The next day was even worse. My vision was hazy. Points of light constantly lit up and disappeared again. The continuous sound of rustling leaves accompanied the noise of blabbering coworkers and concerned friends. Time flew by but remained still. Memories escaped my grasp like salmon in a roaming river. I was starving, dying, unable to reach for the food that sat right in front of my gaping maw.
Just let me sleep.
Day turned into night. And just like before, my soul refused to rest. I was at my wit's end. I felt death looming in the shadows and would have given everything to make the world come to an infinite halt. In a last desperate attempt, I decided to take drastic measures. If my body was unwilling to listen to me, I would force it to.
I took about eighty milligrams of doxepin and passed out shortly after.
The first things I noticed upon waking up were a raging headache and the cold air brushing against my skin. Still feeling drowsy and disoriented, I aimlessly walked through the unknown street I somehow woke up on. The millions of unanswered questions in my head slowly freed me from the pill's remaining chains. I distinctly remembered falling asleep on my couch. Yet, I ended up stumbling around a part of town that was more than ten miles away from my apartment.
During these moments of pure shame and confusion, the picturesque scenery in front of my eyes felt like utter hell. The fact that I apparently had no control over my body's actions struck me to my core. In a time where I believed to have peacefully slumbered off, I instead chose... chose to... chose to do... what exactly?
While waiting for the subway, a thought, as sharp as the blade of a guillotine, hovered over my head.
I could have killed someone today. I wouldn't even know.
When I came back, the sight that revealed itself upon opening the door seemed to confirm all of my darkest premonitions. Multiple vases and bowls lay shattered on the ground. My shelves and drawers were left opened and unorganized, cutlery and plates carelessly thrown onto the floor. Nothing stood where it once was placed. It looked like a tornado stormed through my home while I was gone. But a tiny part of me, carefully hidden away from logic and rationality, knew the real cause of the havoc.
It was me. I did that.
I frantically paced around my apartment, frightened of phenomena I couldn't comprehend. And again, this tiny but persistent whisper sounded:
I could have killed someone today. I wouldn't even know.
The second time I knocked myself out, I only really did it to soothe my paranoia-infested mind. I needed safety and control. I needed to know the extent of my damage. I needed to understand the being that mysteriously managed to hide from my memories.
I set up various video recordings and took my pills. In my last waking moments, I remember the sweat dripping down my hands and this deep sense of unease creeping up my spine. It was already too late.
As the view of my dirty gray carpet greeted me in the morning, a huge wave of relief washed over me. It was as if the sun learned to shine again, instantly covering my past incident in a different light. I didn't hurt people. I didn't kill people. I simply walked out of the house and somehow forgot about it.
I took a deep breath, believing at least one of my worries to have disappeared. When a stinging pain in my knuckles fired through my body and decimated my newfound hope. I let out a small wince of pain. Still feeling the high of my easement, I at first just stared at my bruised-up fingers as if they were mere hallucinations. Rows of sausages, maybe. Sausages, covered in blood.
This has to be a dream.
It was only after five or so motionless seconds had passed that the horror dared to truly sneak up on me. The weight of my realization hit me like a sledgehammer. I rushed towards my phone, my shaking fingers desperately searching for the recorded video, unable to look away from the mess that unfolded in front of me.
The recording started as soon as the tablets rolled down my throat. A worrisome expression remained on my face as I lay on the couch and drifted into sleep. Soon after that, a satisfied snore escaped my speakers. My initial angst transformed into a feeling of slight discomfort while I watched my own peaceful slumber. Almost bored, I half-heartedly followed the next uneventful twenty minutes.
Then, everything started changing all at once. Suddenly, the man... no, the thing in the video shot to its feet, stretching and wandering across the room. Trying to adjust to a life of thirty-three vertebrae and four extremities, the muscles in its suit of meat seemed tense and stuck in place. As it turned my home upside down, every single grunt, shake, and blink appeared unnatural and tiresome. Its gait eerily similar to a marionette's. My clone rummaged through the cupboard without any sort of fluency. If it moved, it moved rapidly. And if it didn't, it stopped for long periods of time, completely frozen and paralyzed. Its arms, tight like the branches of a tree, smashed up my fine china. A horrifying scream that sounded like a mix between the buzzing of bees and the bang of a nuclear explosion filled the narrow halls of my home.
"It looks like a spider trapped in a human body," I thought.
I was scared. Maybe more so than I ever had been before.
At 2:30 am, the individual that was supposedly me decided to slowly stride towards the door. To the quiet observer, it would appear as if I was trying to find my way across an active minefield. I chose to lift my legs high up into the air and put the entirety of my weight on my descending foot, flailing my arms around to keep my balance. The simple act of walking required meticulous concentration. Multiple times I fell flat on my face while attempting to take a step forward. It would have almost been funny if it weren't so tragically horrifying.
After a concerning amount of time, the humanoid printer on my screen reached its destination. When its hands grasped the key rack, it appeared unable to find what it was looking for.
Thank God, I remembered to hide my valuables.
The entity appeared confused, violently shaking the handle and pressing its body against the wooden barrier that separated it from the rest of the world. It needed to get out. No matter the cost. After thirty minutes of unsuccessful grunting and pushing, it decided to ball its hands up into fists and continuously punched at the door. There was no grace or technique in its strikes. Only raw unfiltered anger.
Fear turned into panic, while I quickly skipped through the rest of the video. It was just hour-long footage of myself banging at the gate. Never stopping. No matter the cost. At around 4 am, blood started splattering onto the walls. But I didn't stop. At around 6 am, splinters stuck to my fingers like porcupine quills, every strike further sinking them into my flesh. But I didn't stop. The constant rhythmic thump of my fists became an inevitable part of my life. But I didn't stop.
I could have killed someone. I wouldn't even know.
I couldn't bear to watch anymore. My hands still shaking, I closed the recording and looked up at the ceiling. The sound of joints crashing into timber echoed through my mind like vicious thunderbolts.
I don't know how long I remained in this trance, staring blankly into the air while anxiously trying to find fragments of the night inside my memories, when I finally stood up and went to the bathroom.
I have to see my face.
Upon inspecting my reflection, I felt the unexplainable need to vomit. The man in the mirror looked... strange, uncanny, almost AI-generated. I felt repulsed and sick. But what exactly was the problem? What about my eyes, nose, or ears was hideous enough to cause my legs to give out? I couldn't put it into words. Everything about me was wrong, and yet nothing was.
I immediately threw any and all of my pills away and vowed to never touch them again. I tried to distract myself from the inevitable fact that a deep and raw kind of terror persistently lingered in the air. Instead of facing the monster housed deep inside my pupils, I chose to bear the familiar agony of sleeplessness.
I thought that I could handle it. I thought the pains of insomnia would disappear over time. But they never truly did. These scattered days of slumber were enough to make me forget the horrors of fatigue. The raw reality of its effects hit me like a wrecking ball. I realized how puny pain becomes in mere memory and how humongous it appears when towering over you.
After three or four days, I thought I was gradually withering away. I longed for nothing more than the momentary liberation of sleep. Parts of my feeble soul constantly screamed and hammered at the walls of my abdomen.
All of this pain. All of this suffering. It could end. You just need to take your pills.
You just need to take your pills.
Every continuous day without rest made my problems appear smaller and smaller. Last night, while unbelievably sleep-deprived, they shrunk to the size of brittle snowflakes.
It was nothing but a bruised hand after all.
The third time felt decidedly different. I was slipping through different levels of consciousness, small shards and sequences of my dream appearing in front of my eyes like an infinite slideshow. In one of them, I was a vase, falling from the surface of the moon, gradually accelerating until becoming a glowing meteor of light. Inches before crashing into the surface, I was suddenly pulled back into reality.
Just for a second, the world seemed so painfully close to me. I sensed the blood dripping down my arm, the police sirens blaring in the distance, the sharp sting of urine shooting into my nostrils. And then there was this incoherent blend of colors around me. That's when I realized that I woke up while my head was in the middle of crashing towards the glass window, unable to stop the already created momentum. I would only be alert for the duration of a heartbeat, before my mind had to turn blank again. Knowing that the being inside of me would soon regain control, I tried to absorb everything in my immediate vicinity. The sign of the shop, only a blur in the corner of my eyes, forever burned itself into my memories.
"Ela's bakery."
The next time I regained authority over my body, just for the briefest of seconds, I thought I had landed in heaven. The street was bathed in a beautiful orange hue. The trees surrounding me shook their shiny green leaves around, and the subtle sound of chirping songbirds could be heard in the distance.
Then I dared to look up, and my blissful peace transformed into the soul-shattering realization that death was near. A boulder, about the size of a basketball, was inches away from crashing into my skull. My body moved on its own, leaping to the side and landing on the grassy field next to me. Moments after I jumped, the sharp hissing sound of the wind grazed my ears as the enormous rock crashed onto the ground. Unable to move, a scream escaped the deepest parts of my soul. I had enough. I couldn't continue any longer. Tears of frustration and relief simultaneously streamed down my face. After some time, they fused with the raw sensation of anger.
This thing tried to kill me.
When my eyes felt too tired to cry any longer and my vocal cords were hot and rigid, I stood up and examined my environment. My mind had only a few moments to adjust to the overwhelming nature of reality. As if the world had been anxiously waiting for my return, the waves of stimuli around me were immediately fighting for my attention.
I am outside again. I am alone. I almost died. My head feels like someone stuck a stake through it. There is an unbearable sour smell in the air. I almost died. My hands are streaked in dried-up blood. I almost died. My clothes are covered in dirt and grime. There is a corpse next to me.
There is a corpse next to me.
Anxiously trying to get my breath under control, I inspected the one thing my mind could focus on.
John Smith
01.01.1920 - 01.01.2020
I woke up in a local cemetery. Piles of dirt gathered besides an inconspicuous headstone. A casket, probably never thought to be opened again, lay before me like one half of a cracked eggshell. It presumably belonged to John Smith.
Even for a dead man, he looked incredibly thin and sick. A stature so small that he almost appeared childlike. Arms crossed. Face stuck in a constant frown. Hair and nails unnaturally long and discolored.
Inspecting his wrinkled face sent shivers down my spine. It felt like I was looking at something that merely pretended to be human.
I knew that this was my wrongdoing. This wasn't the anxiety speaking out of me anymore. It was obvious that whatever controlled my body chose to come here and used his bare hands to find this man. And before I could take over the reins, it heaved a boulder above its head and let go.
Not daring to stay there for even a single additional second, I dashed out of the cemetery and rushed back home. I had to find it, my one moment of clarity.
"Ela's bakery."
Faces, colors, worlds were passing by me like shadowy figures and shapes. The masses of people around me probably thought I was insane. Dirty and confused, the kind of man I would have scoffed at not too long ago.
When I recognized the shop's pink doors and gleaming welcome sign, I almost crashed into the teenage cashier standing in front of the fractured window.
"Hey," I shouted. "Please let me look at your security footage." I pointed at the tiny camera watching over the shop's entrance.
Not saying a word, he nervously looked me up and down.
"Uhh...are you...okay? You don't look too well." He answered with a touch of genuine concern.
My attention shifted towards the dark reflection on the window. Yes, I truly didn't look too well. A huge purple bruise stuck out of my forehead. My skin was covered in a million tiny cuts and scrapes. The delicate lines running like spiderwebs across the glass surface fractured my face into a million tiny pieces. The word "damage" was practically written all over me. The marker was permanent.
"Please... I'm begging you. I need to see this video."
As he led me to the computer, I once again waited for the world to show me sides of myself that never reached my consciousness. I couldn't sit still, my heart's thumping too fast for me to count. As my body finally appeared on the grainy footage, I was suddenly reminded of a thought that once sprung into my head when my mother died.
Everything changed, and life will never feel the same again.
The man in the recording had the same robotic walk and way of moving around. His long strides carried him in front of the bakery, where he waved his head in contemplation before violently smashing his face against the glass. A high-pitched explosion reverbated through the night. The faint sound of drunken screams soon followed.
I paused the video and rewound, frantically looking for the one frame that truly mattered.
Gotcha.
Just before a million transparent shards flew by my face, I saw the light fleeing back into my eyes. I recognized my panicked self for the fraction of a second until the explosive sound of the shattering window pulled me back into the ether. For a moment, it was me in that video. For a moment, the monster had to give up its power.
As if reminded of my pain, the wound on my forehead started throbbing again. It became impossible to think. I watched in horror as the man in the footage immediately got up to his feet and left the sight of the camera. The being returned to its old ways, slithering along the pavement, unfazed by the humongous swelling on its scalp.
The endless number of puzzle pieces in my head gradually assembled into a coherent image. I had found my truth.Whenever I passed out, this presence inside of me took over my body. But sooner or later, I would wake up. I would disrupt whatever it wanted to do in that grave. So hoping to remain in control forever, it tried to knock me out as soon as I awakened. It succeeded the first time. But the second time it sensed my return, it was too late, perhaps too preoccupied or simply too slow.
The desk in front of me was covered in a deep and oppressive fog. Nothing felt real because nothing was real. I was a humongous storm of questions, forced to accept the supernatural in its purest form.
"So that was you, huh?" a voice near my ear sounded.
I instantly bolted to my feet. The cashier looked at my trembling body and took a few steps back.
"Hey bro, I get it. Fuck the world. I'm not going to snitch, don't worry."
Knowing my airways have long abandoned me, I didn't say a word. I rushed out of the door and ran back home. His words spun around my head like a swarm of fireflies.
Fuck the world.
Upon reviewing the video on my phone, it confirmed what I basically already knew. As soon as I dozed off, something else awoke.When it failed to open the door, it instead decided to smash the window in my kitchen into pieces and crawled out.
I feel like all hope is lost. It is my fifth consecutive day spent awake. But sooner or later, I will be unable to resist the sweet lullabies of slumber. And what then? What will happen the next time I pass out? Will it try to make me stay unconscious forever? Will I ever wake up when I inevitably fall asleep again?

I had been hiking down the Appalachian Trail for over two weeks without issue on the day when the nightmare began. My friend, X, was by my side the entire time. It was, quite honestly, comforting to have someone who stood nearly six-and-a-half feet tall with me, especially during the long, dark nights when the howling of coyotes drew near. Black bears, too, were a constant presence in these dark mountains. As we got farther from towns and civilization, more ancient predators than human beings took over the land, stalking the night like creeping shadows.
For this trip, we both had bought as few supplies as possible. Included in our packs were MREs, two sleeping bags, some tarps and hammocks, some light clothing, and two pistols with a few boxes of ammo. We didn’t want to be too weighed down that we wouldn’t be able to move fast, after all. We would source water from the streams, waterfalls and lakes along the way and filter it using Lifestraws.
As the spring breeze blew past us, cooling the sweat on my face, I noticed the trail ahead of us weaving its way through thick swampland. The buzzing of flies and mosquitoes increased with every step. The green, fetid waters of the swamp bubbled constantly, as if it were whispering secrets to us.
“Ah, shit,” X said, glancing down the hill with his dark, serious eyes. His tanned skin was covered in a thin sheen of sweat as he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Another swamp. I hate swamps. You know there’s going to be a million mosquitoes and flies down there.” I pulled out the map, squinting down at it. I ran my finger down the trail, seeing the mountains and valleys we had already passed.
“The trail shouldn’t be going through any swamps,” I said. “They’re supposed to be marked. There’s no ponds or anything around here.” And yet there very clearly was. Either we were in a different spot than I thought we were, or the map was outdated. The trail also grew thinner as we descended. The sharp branches of the bushes stuck out like greedy hands, grabbing at our backpacks and clothes as we pressed forward.
“Well, whatever,” X said gruffly, plowing ahead. Twigs cracked under his massive bulk. The thin branches hanging across the path snapped as he plowed forward. I let him go first, since he was significantly bigger than myself. It was like following in the path of a bull.
“The faster we move, the faster we’ll be through it. We don’t want to camp anywhere around here when it gets dark,” X continued, looking grim. “We’ll be eaten alive by bugs by sunrise. We need to make it to the other side of these boglands before we can stop for the night.”
“Yeah, and I could use some more water,” I said, shaking my mostly empty canteen. “I wouldn’t drink this shit no matter what we did to it. It probably has brain-eating parasites crawling in it.” I checked my watch, realizing that dusk was only a half hour away. We would have to move fast indeed, especially as we didn’t know the size of the swamp. I was not enthusiastic about hiking in the dark with the many steep trails and sharp rocks that covered the surrounding land. A single misstep could lead to a very long, bone-shattering fall.
To my increasing dismay, I realized that the trail we were on no longer had the characteristic white markings of the Appalachian Trail. I kept checking the trees for the past fifteen minutes, and I definitely hadn’t seen a single one. I couldn’t remember the last time we had passed one, but I had a creeping suspicion it had been at least a couple hours ago.
“I think we have a problem, man,” I whispered. “I don’t know how it possibly could have happened, but I think we’re on the wrong trail.”
“There’s not supposed to be any other trails around here,” X argued. “Check the map.”
“Then where’s the white blazes? There’s not supposed to be any boglands around here, either, yet we’re walking through the middle of one,” I said. He shook his head.
“Listen, Ben, there’s not going to be markers on the entire Appalachian Trail,” he said. “Just trust me. We’re on the right path. Sometimes forests change. Swamps take over spots where forests used to lay. Hell, the Sahara Desert has been expanding for thousands of years, just eating the forests and plains all around it. There used to be lions and savannah in Morocco, and now it’s all dead and dry.”
I felt doubtful, but I continued forwards, following closely behind X. Neither one of us had ever done the full Appalachian Trail, after all. I hoped he was right. I was not enthusiastic about backtracking two or three hours if he wasn’t.
I thought back closely on our travels during the last few hours, wondering where we could have gone wrong. The trail had been rather overgrown and rocky on the peak of the last mountain. There had been a beautiful view spanning hundreds of miles, looking far off into state forests and winding roads. I remembered seeing the white marker near the top, but after we had started descending, it disappeared. That must have been where we went wrong, if we did, indeed, go off-course. But I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t tell X about my suspicions.
We finished descending a steep, rocky trail into a valley where the boglands really started. The trees ended in a massive semi-circle around the open swamp. Thick peat covered the entire surface of it like rotted, grayish-brown skin. I saw water snakes quietly disappearing into the stagnant water, leaving behind slowly expanding ripples.
“This is pretty cool,” I said, stopping for a moment at the bottom of the trail to admire the boglands. Our trail continued directly through the center of it, no more than a raised patch of black earth surrounded by green swampy water. I could hear the many insects chirping and flying before we even took a step forward. Though the spring air felt warm and I was covered in sweat, I still reached into my bag, taking out a windbreaker that would cover up my arms and neck to help with the bugs. X did the same.
“Let’s move fast,” he said, giving me a knowing look. He was a much faster hiker than myself. He seemed like a machine sometimes, tireless and single-minded. I had seen him hike over twenty miles in a single day without looking too bent out of shape. I gave him a faint half-smile, picking up my pace.
“You know what they used to say about the boglands?” I asked X. He shook his head.
“I don’t read books,” he said. “If I have time to sit down and read, then it means I have time to go out and do something actually fun. But I’m sure you know all about it.” I gave a short bark of laughter at his off-handed insult. It sounded far too loud echoing back to us through the creepy swamp. The last rays of sunlight were disappearing behind the mountains now. Soon, we would be plunged into darkness.
“Well, in ancient times, people thought the boglands a place where the walls of reality were thin, where the gods would come through. They used to bring their victims out to swamps during rituals, then they would slice their throats or strangle them and dump their bodies into the bogs as an offering to the gods. They also said that strange, shape-shifting creatures would appear, sometimes to deceive travelers, other times to help them,” I said. “But as for human sacrifices, the bogs preserve bodies like nothing else, except maybe tar pits. Archaeologists keep finding victims with slashed throats or shattered skulls buried underneath the peat.”
X was silent for a long moment as we continued walking along the raised patch of earth that formed the trail. We got farther and farther from the forests, until the swamp seemed like a fetid ocean, spanning out to the horizon in every direction.
“Do you think they used to do that kind of stuff around here?” X asked.
“Used to?” I exclaimed, laughing. “I’m sure some psychopaths still do. This is a good place to dump a body, after all. Who the hell wants to trek through the muck and the snakes and mosquitoes out here looking for corpses?”
“The FBI and the cops will do it,” he said, “if they think there’s something to find.” I was about to respond when an ear-splitting shriek echoed out all around us. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from at first. X’s tan skin seemed to go pale as he spun, glancing in every direction.
“What the fuck is that?!” he screamed over the deafening wailing. I didn’t believe in cryptids, but my anxious mind immediately offered up an image of a banshee, a woman with chalk-white skin and black eyes whose shrieking jaw unhinged like a snake’s.
“I’m turning around!” I yelled, pointing back for emphasis. “Dude, fuck this! We need to get out of this swamp!” But X was no longer listening. He was looking past me, his mouth open and his eyes wild. He started backpedaling and nearly fell into the swamp. Windmilling his arms crazily, he turned and sprinted away without a word.
I was afraid to look back. The screaming was getting louder by the second, shaking the air all around me in deafening, crashing waves of sound. I felt like my head would explode if it got any worse. Instinctively, I took off after X, but I glanced back for a single moment before I did. Something loomed there from a nightmare, standing as tall as the trees. It moved through the swamp like a snake, its body slithering through the stagnant green waters towards us. When it met my eyes, the screaming stopped. The abrupt silence seemed deafening. I could hear the fervent pounding of my heart in my ears.
The creature’s skin looked honeycombed and rough, almost like a wasp’s nest. The thousands of tiny holes covering its body constantly opened and closed like hungry mouths. Its arms were long tentacles ending in sharp points of bone in the shape of scythes. The tentacles undulated like serpents. Its legs, too, were no more than four tentacles that alternatively slithered and stepped forward.
Its flesh was the color of peat, a sickly grayish-brown, and the smell that emanated from it was rancid and stagnant, the essence of all boglands and swamps. I nearly gagged as I ran. The putrefying stench seemed to follow me like a shadow.
Ahead of me, X was fumbling in his backpack as he ran, trying to grab his pistol. I knew he had a Glock 21 in that bag, and I had my Sig Sauer in mine. I cursed myself for not keeping it holstered on my body, but I had never had to use it before and hadn’t seriously thought I would need it for this trip. He glanced back at me, his eyes widening in horror.
“It’s right behind you!” he yelled. “Get down!” He dropped his backpack, revealing the sleek, black pistol clenched tightly in his hand. I barely had time to comprehend his words when an immense pressure and numbness radiated through my back. My head snapped backwards as a meaty thud resonated all around me. I went flying forward, feeling as if I had been struck by a car. As I flew through the air, the pain in my back exploded in burning pulses. I felt the deep slice open up from the sharp blade of bone that had slashed me like a knife. I felt trickles of blood pour from the open wound, making my stained shirt cling to my body.
I landed hard on the raised black earth of the trail, a bone-jarring impact that knocked the air out of me. At that same moment, X opened fire, pressing the trigger over and over, emptying the magazine as fast as he could. Something splashed over me, going in my eyes and mouth and nose. I crawled forward, moaning, my head spinning. I wiped my forehead, seeing spatters of green blood squirming with dark, maggot-like creatures covering my arms and face. It clung to my fingers, thick and rancid. I felt stinging sensations as the tiny worms bit me over and over. My ears rang with a high-pitched whine from the gunshots.
X was running towards me now. I continued to crawl towards him, shell-shocked and whimpering, trying to wipe the eldritch blood off my skin. With a muscular arm, he reached down and pulled me up.
“Where’d it go?” I mumbled, stumbling forward on unsteady feet. X put an arm around my shoulders and helped support me.
“It slunk back into the swamp,” he said. “Jesus, you’re bleeding really bad, buddy. We’re going to need to take care of that as soon as we get away from this hellhole.” I felt the deep slices from the creature’s blade-like hands across my back. The fabric of my shirt clung tightly to the skin as fresh blood soaked it.
“This isn’t the trail, X,” I gasped. “We went the wrong way. We need to go back.” He nodded grimly.
“We’re heading back right now. I know it’s the wrong trail now, it definitely is, but it’s dark. The trails back up the mountains are steep and dangerous, and we’ve already been hiking all day. How much longer can we really go?” he asked. In reality, I had a feeling X could go for quite a bit longer. I was the weak link in the chain, and we both knew it.
X took out a small, LED flashlight from his backpack, shining it ahead of us on the dark path. Across the center of the black earth, there was an obstruction, something that hadn’t been there when we passed this way originally.
“Shit! Is that a person?” X said, slowing down. He focused the light on it. As my eyes adjusted, I gave a gasp of horror as I saw a rough sacrificial table looming there, waiting with a ready victim.
Laying on the bare wooden planks in the center of the trail was an elderly man wearing the garb of a hunter. He was gagged, a bloody rag shoved deep into his mouth. I felt a sense of revulsion and terror as I realized his hands and feet were nailed to the planks, as if he were being crucified laying down. His eyes rolled wildly, white and insane, like a horse with a broken leg. When he saw us approaching, he tried to say something through the gag, pulling hard against the nails that bit so viciously into his flesh. Fresh rivers of blood spurted from his wounds.
I had my pistol in my hands. X had taken a fresh magazine out by now, throwing the empty one back in his backpack. Trembling, he went first, his shaking hand moving the flashlight around wildly. Its bright rays bounced off the dead, half-rotted trees that grew out of the boglands, the clouds of mosquitoes and moths that circled us constantly.
“Oh my God... he's like the victim of a serial killer or something,” he whispered, running a trembling hand over his face. “It looks like someone has set that poor guy up to have his heart cut out, like some sort of Aztec ritual.” He glanced worriedly over at me. We had both stopped cold in our tracks, looking around for any sign of danger, but we only saw the old man writhing on his rough table of torture.
“We have to keep going forward,” I whispered. “That thing is behind us. I don’t think it’s dead. I’m not sure it can even die.”
“But what’s ahead of us?” he asked grimly. “That’s the real question, isn’t it?” Far off down the trail, I saw small pinpoints of flickering light. They drew closer. We raised our pistols, waiting for the new arrivals to show themselves.
Dozens of people dressed in black, silky robes holding lamps slowly ambled their way towards us. They had their heads bowed, like monks on a holy pilgrimage. They drew close to the sacrifice. The one in the lead held a long, curving dagger whose blade looked like it was made of some kind of red volcanic rock. Its strange silver handle glittered in his pale, thin hand. At the end, I saw it was sculpted into the shape of a human heart.
“Stop right there!” X screamed, stepping forward. “Don’t come any closer! We are armed, I’m warning you.” The people in the black robes didn’t appear to hear or care in the slightest. They continued slowly following their leader with the strange dagger, almost floating forward in a nonchalant manner. Their leader began chanting in some strange, ancient language. It reminded me of Tibetan or Sanskrit in a way, like the chanting of some Vajrayana monk high up in the Himalayas. But it had a sinister, hissing quality to the words. Something ancient and powerful resonated in every syllable.
I raised the pistol, firing blankly into the dark, cloudless sky above. The smell of gunsmoke and fetid rot hung thick in the air. The leader of the group looked at me with his large, glassy eyes. His face looked sunken and pale, almost like a starving child. He had shaved all of the hair on his head, even his eyebrows. His lips were extremely thin and bloodless in his chalk-white face.
For a long moment, we stood staring at each other, my pistol aimed at his chest. X also had his pistol raised, aimed at one of those standing behind him. But the robed man didn’t speak. He gave me a faint grin.
“Let the old man go,” I commanded, my voice sounding hoarse and weak. The swamp quickly swallowed up my words, until only the buzzing of mosquitoes remained.
“I am sorry, my son, but I cannot do that,” the leader said in a voice as cold as endless space. “If we do not feed Mowdoroth, it will never sleep. The swamps will continue to expand, eating more and more of the surrounding forests and towns, and Mowdoroth, driven insane by hunger, will take far more victims in the process.
“This job has been passed down to us from generation to generation, from big hand to small, for over four centuries. Only twice has Mowdoroth not been fed on the New Moon, and each time, entire settlements full of people were wiped off the face of the Earth as if they had never existed. On one, they just had time to carve the word ‘CROATAN’ before they were taken.
“Mowdoroth looks for the place where the nightmares grow. It breaks open the chest and finds the place where the silent screams start, deep down at the base of the heart. All of the nightmares are planted there, like tiny seeds scattered during childhood. Those that fell on good soil in that abyss produced a great crop, yielding a hundredfold, sixtyfold, or thirtyfold. If you do not allow us to complete our holy mission, then you do it: cut open the man's chest and remove his beating heart. As it beats, squeeze it as hard as you can, and let all the blood drain onto the top of your head. Hold the heart above your head and close your eyes until the god appears and takes it.” The cult leader finished, looking at us with sparkling eyes, as if he had said something profound.
“This shit is just insane drivel,” X whispered in a voice as low as possible. “I say we open fire and save the old man now. Fuck these cultists.” I nodded grimly in agreement.
“You need to all turn around and leave immediately,” X yelled, stepping forward. “I will give you three seconds to turn around and get the hell out of my sight. Three…” At first, the cultists stood as still as statues, simply staring. Finally, the leader sighed and turned away. He shook his head, reminding me of a disappointed parent.
“I tried to warn you,” he said in his thin, quavering voice. “The time has come to give the offering. You must cut out this man’s heart and raise it to Mowdoroth, so he can get the seeds of nightmares freshly sown. The choice is yours now, as you have demanded this power with violence. You can leave this man here to be eaten by Mowdoroth, or free him and, in exchange, guarantee the deaths of hundreds of other people.”
With those last words, the black-robed figures continued down the curve of the trail. Within seconds, they had disappeared behind dead, half-rotted trees that still dotted the edges of the boglands. X and I ran forward toward the struggling old man. X reached into his pocket and pulled out a folding knife. He cut off the old man’s gag, pulling the spit-soaked chunk of filthy cloth out of his mouth. The old man spat and licked his dry lips.
“Get me out of here, please,” he whispered, his eyes rolling wildly. “Those cult members are all batshit insane. And there’s something not right in these swamps. I caught glimpses of something while I was waiting. There’s something in the water…”
“What’s your name, bud?” X said calmingly, looking at the old man’s hands and feet to try to decide how to best get the nails out without causing more damage.
“Winchester,” he said in a coarse voice. It sounded like he hadn’t had a drink of water in days. While X looked at his hands with the LED flashlight, I reached into my pack for the small canteen of filtered water I still had. I started pouring it into Winchester’s mouth. He gulped greedily, his throat working hard to drink down the rest of it.
“I got it!” X said, taking a flat stone he had found on the ground. “I’m going to try to pound these nails out from the bottom.”
“Oh, please, no,” Winchester said, his wrinkled face turning pale. X shook his head.
“We need to get you out of here,” he said. “It’s going to hurt, bud. But we don’t have any tools here. The nails are large, almost like railroad spikes, and once we get the top part, the bottom should slide out easily since it’s a lot narrower.” As he grabbed the rock to begin his work, a bone-chilling wailing started up again from the swamps. It was the scream of Mowdoroth, that abomination with the skin of a wasp’s nest.
“Cover us!” X yelled panickedly as he continued his grisly work. Winchester screamed in pain when X first struck the nail on his right hand. It shot up a fraction of an inch, fresh blood pooling all around it and dripping through the bare planks.
I turned, but the banshee wail seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The swamp bubbled faster and faster all around us, as if thousands of corpses were coming back to life. I heard Winchester scream again, then the dull thud of another nail hitting the earth.
A face peeked out of the swamp, only twenty feet away. Its eyes were green, the color of a putrefying wound. Its lipless mouth opened wide, showing a spongy black mass of skin with concentric circles of tiny, razor-sharp teeth. It reminded me of the mouth of a lamprey.
I opened fire, shooting wildly at the face, aiming at the body hidden under the dark surface of the swamp. Luminescent drops of green blood exploded from a bullet hole in its upper right shoulder, floating across the surface of the water like radioactive waste.
Its screaming cut off instantly. All I could hear was the pounding of the rock behind me and Winchester’s pained, horrified pleas for mercy.
“Please, you’re hurting me!” he pleaded.
“Shut the fuck up, Winchester!” I whispered. “It’s here with us now.” With considerable effort, he did, only moaning and violently jerking his head now as the waves of pain ripped through him.
“I got it!” X said suddenly. A feeling of elation filled my heart.
“Let’s go then!” I yelled, turning to help the old man up. I heard something massive rise up behind us. It mixed with the sound of dripping water and babbling waves that arose from the disturbance.
Winchester was weak, stumbling up to his feet and nearly falling over immediately. Staggering, he took off down the trail with no shoes, but he immediately gave a curse of pain and tripped. X and I started running, and at that moment, I realized the flaw in our plan. We wouldn’t be able to get Winchester out of the swamp without carrying him, due to the extensive injuries to his feet. And I knew we didn’t have time.
Mowdoroth’s body stood as tall as the trees as it looked down at the three of us with its strange, infected eyes. Its tentacles undulated faster and faster, seeming to whip around its body until they flew out towards us.
“Run!” I screamed. X and I sprinted behind a cluster of dead trees hugging the path. The blade-like hand of Mowdoroth chopped them in a half, raining wood splinters down on our heads.
Winchester continued trying to crawl forward. Mowdoroth slithered behind him. Winchester looked up as a tentacle started coming down in his direction. He gave a short, panicked scream as the blade smashed through his back legs, chopping both of them off at the knees. The ground shook with the force of it. The stumps began spurting seemingly endless amounts of blood. Winchester pleaded and made incomprehensible gurgling sounds as he bled out. Mowdoroth ended Winchester’s cries when it wrapped its tentacle around Winchester’s torso. It slithered up into Winchester’s open mouth.
X and I shot as fast as we could while running forward in the dark, trying to hold a flashlight and a pistol. Most of my shots missed Mowdoroth, but with a sense of satisfaction and pride, I saw a few burst through its enormous body. Streams of radioactive green blood ran down its torso now. As its serpentine legs pumped furiously, it gained speed, coming behind us like a runaway train. I could feel the ground shaking with every thud of its tentacled feet.
A few hundred feet ahead of us, I caught a glimpse of the cultists. They were hurrying away from the area, not running but moving much faster than they had come in. Nearly out of breath already and exhausted from hiking all day, I pointed forward.
“Look!” I screamed. X saw them, his eyes widening. We sprinted in a blind panic, as fast as we could towards the stragglers in the black robes. Without warning, X raised his pistol and fired, aiming at the nearest of them.
The figure in the back of the pack fell forward without making a sound. He continued trying to crawl forward weakly for a few moments before he lost energy and lay still, no more than a bleeding black hump on the dark earth.
X gave a sudden cry of pain next to me as a tentacle came down like a guillotine blade. I heard it whip through the air with a high-pitched whine. A single breath later, I watched in horror as it sliced off his right arm. X looked down at the spurting stump for a long moment, his tanned face turning as pale as bones. He stumbled forward, then, with a hoarse cry, he fell.
Following X’s lead, I raised my gun and started shooting the cultists. They sprinted away in a random panic as bodies fell ahead of us. I jumped over the black lumps on the ground, hearing Mowdoroth shake the world as it gave chase. A long, snake-like tentacle reached down, picking up X’s spurting body and raising it towards Mowdoroth’s leech-like mouth. The massive abomination slowed, picking up the bodies of the dead cultists and crushing them. I heard the bones shatter as the wet gore exploded around Mowdoroth’s many sharp teeth.
I saw the woods again, living trees just a few hundred feet away. The trail of black earth ended abruptly, leading out of the boglands. Cultists sprinted blindly through the forest in every direction, scattering like cockroaches. I had nearly reached the border of the forest when I heard something whizzing past my head. I ducked, but the blur of a grayish tentacle coming down sent a jolt of fear like electricity sizzling through my body.
A moment later, a cold agony covered my left hand. In shock, I looked down, realizing that the blade-like appendage of Mowdoroth had neatly amputated all four of my fingers. If I hadn’t ducked, it would’ve probably gotten my head instead.
Stumbling and screaming, my mind in a blind panic, I staggered through the intersection of the boglands and the forest, falling forward. I knew I was dead. I closed my eyes, waiting. Yet nothing happened.
When I looked back, I saw something strange. Mowdoroth had stopped at the end of the boglands. It tried to push its body forward towards me, but it couldn’t enter the forest. It was as if an invisible barrier stood there.
I lay there for a long time. After a while, I heard Mowdoroth slink back into the fetid waters of the boglands. And then I was alone.
***
I wrapped my hand in bandages as much as I could, trying to stem the bleeding. I felt weak and sick from blood loss, so I lay there until the sun came up. The next day, I was able to slowly make my way out of the forest and back towards the nearest town.
Now I hear stories of people mysteriously going missing in the area. An entire family in a nearby farmhouse only a couple dozen miles away disappeared in the middle of the night without a trace, leaving only smeared trails of blood leading into the forest. No one saw anything, but these six victims were only the first in a long line of strange deaths. Oddly enough, all of the victims lived next to swamps.
And I have the feeling that I was the one responsible.

I had been hiking down the Appalachian Trail for over two weeks without issue on the day when the nightmare began. My friend, X, was by my side the entire time. It was, quite honestly, comforting to have someone who stood nearly six-and-a-half feet tall with me, especially during the long, dark nights when the howling of coyotes drew near. Black bears, too, were a constant presence in these dark mountains. As we got farther from towns and civilization, more ancient predators than human beings took over the land, stalking the night like creeping shadows.
For this trip, we both had bought as few supplies as possible. Included in our packs were MREs, two sleeping bags, some tarps and hammocks, some light clothing, and two pistols with a few boxes of ammo. We didn’t want to be too weighed down that we wouldn’t be able to move fast, after all. We would source water from the streams, waterfalls and lakes along the way and filter it using Lifestraws.
As the spring breeze blew past us, cooling the sweat on my face, I noticed the trail ahead of us weaving its way through thick swampland. The buzzing of flies and mosquitoes increased with every step. The green, fetid waters of the swamp bubbled constantly, as if it were whispering secrets to us.
“Ah, shit,” X said, glancing down the hill with his dark, serious eyes. His tanned skin was covered in a thin sheen of sweat as he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Another swamp. I hate swamps. You know there’s going to be a million mosquitoes and flies down there.” I pulled out the map, squinting down at it. I ran my finger down the trail, seeing the mountains and valleys we had already passed.
“The trail shouldn’t be going through any swamps,” I said. “They’re supposed to be marked. There’s no ponds or anything around here.” And yet there very clearly was. Either we were in a different spot than I thought we were, or the map was outdated. The trail also grew thinner as we descended. The sharp branches of the bushes stuck out like greedy hands, grabbing at our backpacks and clothes as we pressed forward.
“Well, whatever,” X said gruffly, plowing ahead. Twigs cracked under his massive bulk. The thin branches hanging across the path snapped as he plowed forward. I let him go first, since he was significantly bigger than myself. It was like following in the path of a bull.
“The faster we move, the faster we’ll be through it. We don’t want to camp anywhere around here when it gets dark,” X continued, looking grim. “We’ll be eaten alive by bugs by sunrise. We need to make it to the other side of these boglands before we can stop for the night.”
“Yeah, and I could use some more water,” I said, shaking my mostly empty canteen. “I wouldn’t drink this shit no matter what we did to it. It probably has brain-eating parasites crawling in it.” I checked my watch, realizing that dusk was only a half hour away. We would have to move fast indeed, especially as we didn’t know the size of the swamp. I was not enthusiastic about hiking in the dark with the many steep trails and sharp rocks that covered the surrounding land. A single misstep could lead to a very long, bone-shattering fall.
To my increasing dismay, I realized that the trail we were on no longer had the characteristic white markings of the Appalachian Trail. I kept checking the trees for the past fifteen minutes, and I definitely hadn’t seen a single one. I couldn’t remember the last time we had passed one, but I had a creeping suspicion it had been at least a couple hours ago.
“I think we have a problem, man,” I whispered. “I don’t know how it possibly could have happened, but I think we’re on the wrong trail.”
“There’s not supposed to be any other trails around here,” X argued. “Check the map.”
“Then where’s the white blazes? There’s not supposed to be any boglands around here, either, yet we’re walking through the middle of one,” I said. He shook his head.
“Listen, Ben, there’s not going to be markers on the entire Appalachian Trail,” he said. “Just trust me. We’re on the right path. Sometimes forests change. Swamps take over spots where forests used to lay. Hell, the Sahara Desert has been expanding for thousands of years, just eating the forests and plains all around it. There used to be lions and savannah in Morocco, and now it’s all dead and dry.”
I felt doubtful, but I continued forwards, following closely behind X. Neither one of us had ever done the full Appalachian Trail, after all. I hoped he was right. I was not enthusiastic about backtracking two or three hours if he wasn’t.
I thought back closely on our travels during the last few hours, wondering where we could have gone wrong. The trail had been rather overgrown and rocky on the peak of the last mountain. There had been a beautiful view spanning hundreds of miles, looking far off into state forests and winding roads. I remembered seeing the white marker near the top, but after we had started descending, it disappeared. That must have been where we went wrong, if we did, indeed, go off-course. But I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t tell X about my suspicions.
We finished descending a steep, rocky trail into a valley where the boglands really started. The trees ended in a massive semi-circle around the open swamp. Thick peat covered the entire surface of it like rotted, grayish-brown skin. I saw water snakes quietly disappearing into the stagnant water, leaving behind slowly expanding ripples.
“This is pretty cool,” I said, stopping for a moment at the bottom of the trail to admire the boglands. Our trail continued directly through the center of it, no more than a raised patch of black earth surrounded by green swampy water. I could hear the many insects chirping and flying before we even took a step forward. Though the spring air felt warm and I was covered in sweat, I still reached into my bag, taking out a windbreaker that would cover up my arms and neck to help with the bugs. X did the same.
“Let’s move fast,” he said, giving me a knowing look. He was a much faster hiker than myself. He seemed like a machine sometimes, tireless and single-minded. I had seen him hike over twenty miles in a single day without looking too bent out of shape. I gave him a faint half-smile, picking up my pace.
“You know what they used to say about the boglands?” I asked X. He shook his head.
“I don’t read books,” he said. “If I have time to sit down and read, then it means I have time to go out and do something actually fun. But I’m sure you know all about it.” I gave a short bark of laughter at his off-handed insult. It sounded far too loud echoing back to us through the creepy swamp. The last rays of sunlight were disappearing behind the mountains now. Soon, we would be plunged into darkness.
“Well, in ancient times, people thought the boglands a place where the walls of reality were thin, where the gods would come through. They used to bring their victims out to swamps during rituals, then they would slice their throats or strangle them and dump their bodies into the bogs as an offering to the gods. They also said that strange, shape-shifting creatures would appear, sometimes to deceive travelers, other times to help them,” I said. “But as for human sacrifices, the bogs preserve bodies like nothing else, except maybe tar pits. Archaeologists keep finding victims with slashed throats or shattered skulls buried underneath the peat.”
X was silent for a long moment as we continued walking along the raised patch of earth that formed the trail. We got farther and farther from the forests, until the swamp seemed like a fetid ocean, spanning out to the horizon in every direction.
“Do you think they used to do that kind of stuff around here?” X asked.
“Used to?” I exclaimed, laughing. “I’m sure some psychopaths still do. This is a good place to dump a body, after all. Who the hell wants to trek through the muck and the snakes and mosquitoes out here looking for corpses?”
“The FBI and the cops will do it,” he said, “if they think there’s something to find.” I was about to respond when an ear-splitting shriek echoed out all around us. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from at first. X’s tan skin seemed to go pale as he spun, glancing in every direction.
“What the fuck is that?!” he screamed over the deafening wailing. I didn’t believe in cryptids, but my anxious mind immediately offered up an image of a banshee, a woman with chalk-white skin and black eyes whose shrieking jaw unhinged like a snake’s.
“I’m turning around!” I yelled, pointing back for emphasis. “Dude, fuck this! We need to get out of this swamp!” But X was no longer listening. He was looking past me, his mouth open and his eyes wild. He started backpedaling and nearly fell into the swamp. Windmilling his arms crazily, he turned and sprinted away without a word.
I was afraid to look back. The screaming was getting louder by the second, shaking the air all around me in deafening, crashing waves of sound. I felt like my head would explode if it got any worse. Instinctively, I took off after X, but I glanced back for a single moment before I did. Something loomed there from a nightmare, standing as tall as the trees. It moved through the swamp like a snake, its body slithering through the stagnant green waters towards us. When it met my eyes, the screaming stopped. The abrupt silence seemed deafening. I could hear the fervent pounding of my heart in my ears.
The creature’s skin looked honeycombed and rough, almost like a wasp’s nest. The thousands of tiny holes covering its body constantly opened and closed like hungry mouths. Its arms were long tentacles ending in sharp points of bone in the shape of scythes. The tentacles undulated like serpents. Its legs, too, were no more than four tentacles that alternatively slithered and stepped forward.
Its flesh was the color of peat, a sickly grayish-brown, and the smell that emanated from it was rancid and stagnant, the essence of all boglands and swamps. I nearly gagged as I ran. The putrefying stench seemed to follow me like a shadow.
Ahead of me, X was fumbling in his backpack as he ran, trying to grab his pistol. I knew he had a Glock 21 in that bag, and I had my Sig Sauer in mine. I cursed myself for not keeping it holstered on my body, but I had never had to use it before and hadn’t seriously thought I would need it for this trip. He glanced back at me, his eyes widening in horror.
“It’s right behind you!” he yelled. “Get down!” He dropped his backpack, revealing the sleek, black pistol clenched tightly in his hand. I barely had time to comprehend his words when an immense pressure and numbness radiated through my back. My head snapped backwards as a meaty thud resonated all around me. I went flying forward, feeling as if I had been struck by a car. As I flew through the air, the pain in my back exploded in burning pulses. I felt the deep slice open up from the sharp blade of bone that had slashed me like a knife. I felt trickles of blood pour from the open wound, making my stained shirt cling to my body.
I landed hard on the raised black earth of the trail, a bone-jarring impact that knocked the air out of me. At that same moment, X opened fire, pressing the trigger over and over, emptying the magazine as fast as he could. Something splashed over me, going in my eyes and mouth and nose. I crawled forward, moaning, my head spinning. I wiped my forehead, seeing spatters of green blood squirming with dark, maggot-like creatures covering my arms and face. It clung to my fingers, thick and rancid. I felt stinging sensations as the tiny worms bit me over and over. My ears rang with a high-pitched whine from the gunshots.
X was running towards me now. I continued to crawl towards him, shell-shocked and whimpering, trying to wipe the eldritch blood off my skin. With a muscular arm, he reached down and pulled me up.
“Where’d it go?” I mumbled, stumbling forward on unsteady feet. X put an arm around my shoulders and helped support me.
“It slunk back into the swamp,” he said. “Jesus, you’re bleeding really bad, buddy. We’re going to need to take care of that as soon as we get away from this hellhole.” I felt the deep slices from the creature’s blade-like hands across my back. The fabric of my shirt clung tightly to the skin as fresh blood soaked it.
“This isn’t the trail, X,” I gasped. “We went the wrong way. We need to go back.” He nodded grimly.
“We’re heading back right now. I know it’s the wrong trail now, it definitely is, but it’s dark. The trails back up the mountains are steep and dangerous, and we’ve already been hiking all day. How much longer can we really go?” he asked. In reality, I had a feeling X could go for quite a bit longer. I was the weak link in the chain, and we both knew it.
X took out a small, LED flashlight from his backpack, shining it ahead of us on the dark path. Across the center of the black earth, there was an obstruction, something that hadn’t been there when we passed this way originally.
“Shit! Is that a person?” X said, slowing down. He focused the light on it. As my eyes adjusted, I gave a gasp of horror as I saw a rough sacrificial table looming there, waiting with a ready victim.
Laying on the bare wooden planks in the center of the trail was an elderly man wearing the garb of a hunter. He was gagged, a bloody rag shoved deep into his mouth. I felt a sense of revulsion and terror as I realized his hands and feet were nailed to the planks, as if he were being crucified laying down. His eyes rolled wildly, white and insane, like a horse with a broken leg. When he saw us approaching, he tried to say something through the gag, pulling hard against the nails that bit so viciously into his flesh. Fresh rivers of blood spurted from his wounds.
I had my pistol in my hands. X had taken a fresh magazine out by now, throwing the empty one back in his backpack. Trembling, he went first, his shaking hand moving the flashlight around wildly. Its bright rays bounced off the dead, half-rotted trees that grew out of the boglands, the clouds of mosquitoes and moths that circled us constantly.
“Oh my God... he's like the victim of a serial killer or something,” he whispered, running a trembling hand over his face. “It looks like someone has set that poor guy up to have his heart cut out, like some sort of Aztec ritual.” He glanced worriedly over at me. We had both stopped cold in our tracks, looking around for any sign of danger, but we only saw the old man writhing on his rough table of torture.
“We have to keep going forward,” I whispered. “That thing is behind us. I don’t think it’s dead. I’m not sure it can even die.”
“But what’s ahead of us?” he asked grimly. “That’s the real question, isn’t it?” Far off down the trail, I saw small pinpoints of flickering light. They drew closer. We raised our pistols, waiting for the new arrivals to show themselves.
Dozens of people dressed in black, silky robes holding lamps slowly ambled their way towards us. They had their heads bowed, like monks on a holy pilgrimage. They drew close to the sacrifice. The one in the lead held a long, curving dagger whose blade looked like it was made of some kind of red volcanic rock. Its strange silver handle glittered in his pale, thin hand. At the end, I saw it was sculpted into the shape of a human heart.
“Stop right there!” X screamed, stepping forward. “Don’t come any closer! We are armed, I’m warning you.” The people in the black robes didn’t appear to hear or care in the slightest. They continued slowly following their leader with the strange dagger, almost floating forward in a nonchalant manner. Their leader began chanting in some strange, ancient language. It reminded me of Tibetan or Sanskrit in a way, like the chanting of some Vajrayana monk high up in the Himalayas. But it had a sinister, hissing quality to the words. Something ancient and powerful resonated in every syllable.
I raised the pistol, firing blankly into the dark, cloudless sky above. The smell of gunsmoke and fetid rot hung thick in the air. The leader of the group looked at me with his large, glassy eyes. His face looked sunken and pale, almost like a starving child. He had shaved all of the hair on his head, even his eyebrows. His lips were extremely thin and bloodless in his chalk-white face.
For a long moment, we stood staring at each other, my pistol aimed at his chest. X also had his pistol raised, aimed at one of those standing behind him. But the robed man didn’t speak. He gave me a faint grin.
“Let the old man go,” I commanded, my voice sounding hoarse and weak. The swamp quickly swallowed up my words, until only the buzzing of mosquitoes remained.
“I am sorry, my son, but I cannot do that,” the leader said in a voice as cold as endless space. “If we do not feed Mowdoroth, it will never sleep. The swamps will continue to expand, eating more and more of the surrounding forests and towns, and Mowdoroth, driven insane by hunger, will take far more victims in the process.
“This job has been passed down to us from generation to generation, from big hand to small, for over four centuries. Only twice has Mowdoroth not been fed on the New Moon, and each time, entire settlements full of people were wiped off the face of the Earth as if they had never existed. On one, they just had time to carve the word ‘CROATAN’ before they were taken.
“Mowdoroth looks for the place where the nightmares grow. It breaks open the chest and finds the place where the silent screams start, deep down at the base of the heart. All of the nightmares are planted there, like tiny seeds scattered during childhood. Those that fell on good soil in that abyss produced a great crop, yielding a hundredfold, sixtyfold, or thirtyfold. If you do not allow us to complete our holy mission, then you do it: cut open the man's chest and remove his beating heart. As it beats, squeeze it as hard as you can, and let all the blood drain onto the top of your head. Hold the heart above your head and close your eyes until the god appears and takes it.” The cult leader finished, looking at us with sparkling eyes, as if he had said something profound.
“This shit is just insane drivel,” X whispered in a voice as low as possible. “I say we open fire and save the old man now. Fuck these cultists.” I nodded grimly in agreement.
“You need to all turn around and leave immediately,” X yelled, stepping forward. “I will give you three seconds to turn around and get the hell out of my sight. Three…” At first, the cultists stood as still as statues, simply staring. Finally, the leader sighed and turned away. He shook his head, reminding me of a disappointed parent.
“I tried to warn you,” he said in his thin, quavering voice. “The time has come to give the offering. You must cut out this man’s heart and raise it to Mowdoroth, so he can get the seeds of nightmares freshly sown. The choice is yours now, as you have demanded this power with violence. You can leave this man here to be eaten by Mowdoroth, or free him and, in exchange, guarantee the deaths of hundreds of other people.”
With those last words, the black-robed figures continued down the curve of the trail. Within seconds, they had disappeared behind dead, half-rotted trees that still dotted the edges of the boglands. X and I ran forward toward the struggling old man. X reached into his pocket and pulled out a folding knife. He cut off the old man’s gag, pulling the spit-soaked chunk of filthy cloth out of his mouth. The old man spat and licked his dry lips.
“Get me out of here, please,” he whispered, his eyes rolling wildly. “Those cult members are all batshit insane. And there’s something not right in these swamps. I caught glimpses of something while I was waiting. There’s something in the water…”
“What’s your name, bud?” X said calmingly, looking at the old man’s hands and feet to try to decide how to best get the nails out without causing more damage.
“Winchester,” he said in a coarse voice. It sounded like he hadn’t had a drink of water in days. While X looked at his hands with the LED flashlight, I reached into my pack for the small canteen of filtered water I still had. I started pouring it into Winchester’s mouth. He gulped greedily, his throat working hard to drink down the rest of it.
“I got it!” X said, taking a flat stone he had found on the ground. “I’m going to try to pound these nails out from the bottom.”
“Oh, please, no,” Winchester said, his wrinkled face turning pale. X shook his head.
“We need to get you out of here,” he said. “It’s going to hurt, bud. But we don’t have any tools here. The nails are large, almost like railroad spikes, and once we get the top part, the bottom should slide out easily since it’s a lot narrower.” As he grabbed the rock to begin his work, a bone-chilling wailing started up again from the swamps. It was the scream of Mowdoroth, that abomination with the skin of a wasp’s nest.
“Cover us!” X yelled panickedly as he continued his grisly work. Winchester screamed in pain when X first struck the nail on his right hand. It shot up a fraction of an inch, fresh blood pooling all around it and dripping through the bare planks.
I turned, but the banshee wail seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The swamp bubbled faster and faster all around us, as if thousands of corpses were coming back to life. I heard Winchester scream again, then the dull thud of another nail hitting the earth.
A face peeked out of the swamp, only twenty feet away. Its eyes were green, the color of a putrefying wound. Its lipless mouth opened wide, showing a spongy black mass of skin with concentric circles of tiny, razor-sharp teeth. It reminded me of the mouth of a lamprey.
I opened fire, shooting wildly at the face, aiming at the body hidden under the dark surface of the swamp. Luminescent drops of green blood exploded from a bullet hole in its upper right shoulder, floating across the surface of the water like radioactive waste.
Its screaming cut off instantly. All I could hear was the pounding of the rock behind me and Winchester’s pained, horrified pleas for mercy.
“Please, you’re hurting me!” he pleaded.
“Shut the fuck up, Winchester!” I whispered. “It’s here with us now.” With considerable effort, he did, only moaning and violently jerking his head now as the waves of pain ripped through him.
“I got it!” X said suddenly. A feeling of elation filled my heart.
“Let’s go then!” I yelled, turning to help the old man up. I heard something massive rise up behind us. It mixed with the sound of dripping water and babbling waves that arose from the disturbance.
Winchester was weak, stumbling up to his feet and nearly falling over immediately. Staggering, he took off down the trail with no shoes, but he immediately gave a curse of pain and tripped. X and I started running, and at that moment, I realized the flaw in our plan. We wouldn’t be able to get Winchester out of the swamp without carrying him, due to the extensive injuries to his feet. And I knew we didn’t have time.
Mowdoroth’s body stood as tall as the trees as it looked down at the three of us with its strange, infected eyes. Its tentacles undulated faster and faster, seeming to whip around its body until they flew out towards us.
“Run!” I screamed. X and I sprinted behind a cluster of dead trees hugging the path. The blade-like hand of Mowdoroth chopped them in a half, raining wood splinters down on our heads.
Winchester continued trying to crawl forward. Mowdoroth slithered behind him. Winchester looked up as a tentacle started coming down in his direction. He gave a short, panicked scream as the blade smashed through his back legs, chopping both of them off at the knees. The ground shook with the force of it. The stumps began spurting seemingly endless amounts of blood. Winchester pleaded and made incomprehensible gurgling sounds as he bled out. Mowdoroth ended Winchester’s cries when it wrapped its tentacle around Winchester’s torso. It slithered up into Winchester’s open mouth.
X and I shot as fast as we could while running forward in the dark, trying to hold a flashlight and a pistol. Most of my shots missed Mowdoroth, but with a sense of satisfaction and pride, I saw a few burst through its enormous body. Streams of radioactive green blood ran down its torso now. As its serpentine legs pumped furiously, it gained speed, coming behind us like a runaway train. I could feel the ground shaking with every thud of its tentacled feet.
A few hundred feet ahead of us, I caught a glimpse of the cultists. They were hurrying away from the area, not running but moving much faster than they had come in. Nearly out of breath already and exhausted from hiking all day, I pointed forward.
“Look!” I screamed. X saw them, his eyes widening. We sprinted in a blind panic, as fast as we could towards the stragglers in the black robes. Without warning, X raised his pistol and fired, aiming at the nearest of them.
The figure in the back of the pack fell forward without making a sound. He continued trying to crawl forward weakly for a few moments before he lost energy and lay still, no more than a bleeding black hump on the dark earth.
X gave a sudden cry of pain next to me as a tentacle came down like a guillotine blade. I heard it whip through the air with a high-pitched whine. A single breath later, I watched in horror as it sliced off his right arm. X looked down at the spurting stump for a long moment, his tanned face turning as pale as bones. He stumbled forward, then, with a hoarse cry, he fell.
Following X’s lead, I raised my gun and started shooting the cultists. They sprinted away in a random panic as bodies fell ahead of us. I jumped over the black lumps on the ground, hearing Mowdoroth shake the world as it gave chase. A long, snake-like tentacle reached down, picking up X’s spurting body and raising it towards Mowdoroth’s leech-like mouth. The massive abomination slowed, picking up the bodies of the dead cultists and crushing them. I heard the bones shatter as the wet gore exploded around Mowdoroth’s many sharp teeth.
I saw the woods again, living trees just a few hundred feet away. The trail of black earth ended abruptly, leading out of the boglands. Cultists sprinted blindly through the forest in every direction, scattering like cockroaches. I had nearly reached the border of the forest when I heard something whizzing past my head. I ducked, but the blur of a grayish tentacle coming down sent a jolt of fear like electricity sizzling through my body.
A moment later, a cold agony covered my left hand. In shock, I looked down, realizing that the blade-like appendage of Mowdoroth had neatly amputated all four of my fingers. If I hadn’t ducked, it would’ve probably gotten my head instead.
Stumbling and screaming, my mind in a blind panic, I staggered through the intersection of the boglands and the forest, falling forward. I knew I was dead. I closed my eyes, waiting. Yet nothing happened.
When I looked back, I saw something strange. Mowdoroth had stopped at the end of the boglands. It tried to push its body forward towards me, but it couldn’t enter the forest. It was as if an invisible barrier stood there.
I lay there for a long time. After a while, I heard Mowdoroth slink back into the fetid waters of the boglands. And then I was alone.
***
I wrapped my hand in bandages as much as I could, trying to stem the bleeding. I felt weak and sick from blood loss, so I lay there until the sun came up. The next day, I was able to slowly make my way out of the forest and back towards the nearest town.
Now I hear stories of people mysteriously going missing in the area. An entire family in a nearby farmhouse only a couple dozen miles away disappeared in the middle of the night without a trace, leaving only smeared trails of blood leading into the forest. No one saw anything, but these six victims were only the first in a long line of strange deaths. Oddly enough, all of the victims lived next to swamps.
And I have the feeling that I was the one responsible.

I had been hiking down the Appalachian Trail for over two weeks without issue on the day when the nightmare began. My friend, X, was by my side the entire time. It was, quite honestly, comforting to have someone who stood nearly six-and-a-half feet tall with me, especially during the long, dark nights when the howling of coyotes drew near. Black bears, too, were a constant presence in these dark mountains. As we got farther from towns and civilization, more ancient predators than human beings took over the land, stalking the night like creeping shadows.
For this trip, we both had bought as few supplies as possible. Included in our packs were MREs, two sleeping bags, some tarps and hammocks, some light clothing, and two pistols with a few boxes of ammo. We didn’t want to be too weighed down that we wouldn’t be able to move fast, after all. We would source water from the streams, waterfalls and lakes along the way and filter it using Lifestraws.
As the spring breeze blew past us, cooling the sweat on my face, I noticed the trail ahead of us weaving its way through thick swampland. The buzzing of flies and mosquitoes increased with every step. The green, fetid waters of the swamp bubbled constantly, as if it were whispering secrets to us.
“Ah, shit,” X said, glancing down the hill with his dark, serious eyes. His tanned skin was covered in a thin sheen of sweat as he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Another swamp. I hate swamps. You know there’s going to be a million mosquitoes and flies down there.” I pulled out the map, squinting down at it. I ran my finger down the trail, seeing the mountains and valleys we had already passed.
“The trail shouldn’t be going through any swamps,” I said. “They’re supposed to be marked. There’s no ponds or anything around here.” And yet there very clearly was. Either we were in a different spot than I thought we were, or the map was outdated. The trail also grew thinner as we descended. The sharp branches of the bushes stuck out like greedy hands, grabbing at our backpacks and clothes as we pressed forward.
“Well, whatever,” X said gruffly, plowing ahead. Twigs cracked under his massive bulk. The thin branches hanging across the path snapped as he plowed forward. I let him go first, since he was significantly bigger than myself. It was like following in the path of a bull.
“The faster we move, the faster we’ll be through it. We don’t want to camp anywhere around here when it gets dark,” X continued, looking grim. “We’ll be eaten alive by bugs by sunrise. We need to make it to the other side of these boglands before we can stop for the night.”
“Yeah, and I could use some more water,” I said, shaking my mostly empty canteen. “I wouldn’t drink this shit no matter what we did to it. It probably has brain-eating parasites crawling in it.” I checked my watch, realizing that dusk was only a half hour away. We would have to move fast indeed, especially as we didn’t know the size of the swamp. I was not enthusiastic about hiking in the dark with the many steep trails and sharp rocks that covered the surrounding land. A single misstep could lead to a very long, bone-shattering fall.
To my increasing dismay, I realized that the trail we were on no longer had the characteristic white markings of the Appalachian Trail. I kept checking the trees for the past fifteen minutes, and I definitely hadn’t seen a single one. I couldn’t remember the last time we had passed one, but I had a creeping suspicion it had been at least a couple hours ago.
“I think we have a problem, man,” I whispered. “I don’t know how it possibly could have happened, but I think we’re on the wrong trail.”
“There’s not supposed to be any other trails around here,” X argued. “Check the map.”
“Then where’s the white blazes? There’s not supposed to be any boglands around here, either, yet we’re walking through the middle of one,” I said. He shook his head.
“Listen, Ben, there’s not going to be markers on the entire Appalachian Trail,” he said. “Just trust me. We’re on the right path. Sometimes forests change. Swamps take over spots where forests used to lay. Hell, the Sahara Desert has been expanding for thousands of years, just eating the forests and plains all around it. There used to be lions and savannah in Morocco, and now it’s all dead and dry.”
I felt doubtful, but I continued forwards, following closely behind X. Neither one of us had ever done the full Appalachian Trail, after all. I hoped he was right. I was not enthusiastic about backtracking two or three hours if he wasn’t.
I thought back closely on our travels during the last few hours, wondering where we could have gone wrong. The trail had been rather overgrown and rocky on the peak of the last mountain. There had been a beautiful view spanning hundreds of miles, looking far off into state forests and winding roads. I remembered seeing the white marker near the top, but after we had started descending, it disappeared. That must have been where we went wrong, if we did, indeed, go off-course. But I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t tell X about my suspicions.
We finished descending a steep, rocky trail into a valley where the boglands really started. The trees ended in a massive semi-circle around the open swamp. Thick peat covered the entire surface of it like rotted, grayish-brown skin. I saw water snakes quietly disappearing into the stagnant water, leaving behind slowly expanding ripples.
“This is pretty cool,” I said, stopping for a moment at the bottom of the trail to admire the boglands. Our trail continued directly through the center of it, no more than a raised patch of black earth surrounded by green swampy water. I could hear the many insects chirping and flying before we even took a step forward. Though the spring air felt warm and I was covered in sweat, I still reached into my bag, taking out a windbreaker that would cover up my arms and neck to help with the bugs. X did the same.
“Let’s move fast,” he said, giving me a knowing look. He was a much faster hiker than myself. He seemed like a machine sometimes, tireless and single-minded. I had seen him hike over twenty miles in a single day without looking too bent out of shape. I gave him a faint half-smile, picking up my pace.
“You know what they used to say about the boglands?” I asked X. He shook his head.
“I don’t read books,” he said. “If I have time to sit down and read, then it means I have time to go out and do something actually fun. But I’m sure you know all about it.” I gave a short bark of laughter at his off-handed insult. It sounded far too loud echoing back to us through the creepy swamp. The last rays of sunlight were disappearing behind the mountains now. Soon, we would be plunged into darkness.
“Well, in ancient times, people thought the boglands a place where the walls of reality were thin, where the gods would come through. They used to bring their victims out to swamps during rituals, then they would slice their throats or strangle them and dump their bodies into the bogs as an offering to the gods. They also said that strange, shape-shifting creatures would appear, sometimes to deceive travelers, other times to help them,” I said. “But as for human sacrifices, the bogs preserve bodies like nothing else, except maybe tar pits. Archaeologists keep finding victims with slashed throats or shattered skulls buried underneath the peat.”
X was silent for a long moment as we continued walking along the raised patch of earth that formed the trail. We got farther and farther from the forests, until the swamp seemed like a fetid ocean, spanning out to the horizon in every direction.
“Do you think they used to do that kind of stuff around here?” X asked.
“Used to?” I exclaimed, laughing. “I’m sure some psychopaths still do. This is a good place to dump a body, after all. Who the hell wants to trek through the muck and the snakes and mosquitoes out here looking for corpses?”
“The FBI and the cops will do it,” he said, “if they think there’s something to find.” I was about to respond when an ear-splitting shriek echoed out all around us. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from at first. X’s tan skin seemed to go pale as he spun, glancing in every direction.
“What the fuck is that?!” he screamed over the deafening wailing. I didn’t believe in cryptids, but my anxious mind immediately offered up an image of a banshee, a woman with chalk-white skin and black eyes whose shrieking jaw unhinged like a snake’s.
“I’m turning around!” I yelled, pointing back for emphasis. “Dude, fuck this! We need to get out of this swamp!” But X was no longer listening. He was looking past me, his mouth open and his eyes wild. He started backpedaling and nearly fell into the swamp. Windmilling his arms crazily, he turned and sprinted away without a word.
I was afraid to look back. The screaming was getting louder by the second, shaking the air all around me in deafening, crashing waves of sound. I felt like my head would explode if it got any worse. Instinctively, I took off after X, but I glanced back for a single moment before I did. Something loomed there from a nightmare, standing as tall as the trees. It moved through the swamp like a snake, its body slithering through the stagnant green waters towards us. When it met my eyes, the screaming stopped. The abrupt silence seemed deafening. I could hear the fervent pounding of my heart in my ears.
The creature’s skin looked honeycombed and rough, almost like a wasp’s nest. The thousands of tiny holes covering its body constantly opened and closed like hungry mouths. Its arms were long tentacles ending in sharp points of bone in the shape of scythes. The tentacles undulated like serpents. Its legs, too, were no more than four tentacles that alternatively slithered and stepped forward.
Its flesh was the color of peat, a sickly grayish-brown, and the smell that emanated from it was rancid and stagnant, the essence of all boglands and swamps. I nearly gagged as I ran. The putrefying stench seemed to follow me like a shadow.
Ahead of me, X was fumbling in his backpack as he ran, trying to grab his pistol. I knew he had a Glock 21 in that bag, and I had my Sig Sauer in mine. I cursed myself for not keeping it holstered on my body, but I had never had to use it before and hadn’t seriously thought I would need it for this trip. He glanced back at me, his eyes widening in horror.
“It’s right behind you!” he yelled. “Get down!” He dropped his backpack, revealing the sleek, black pistol clenched tightly in his hand. I barely had time to comprehend his words when an immense pressure and numbness radiated through my back. My head snapped backwards as a meaty thud resonated all around me. I went flying forward, feeling as if I had been struck by a car. As I flew through the air, the pain in my back exploded in burning pulses. I felt the deep slice open up from the sharp blade of bone that had slashed me like a knife. I felt trickles of blood pour from the open wound, making my stained shirt cling to my body.
I landed hard on the raised black earth of the trail, a bone-jarring impact that knocked the air out of me. At that same moment, X opened fire, pressing the trigger over and over, emptying the magazine as fast as he could. Something splashed over me, going in my eyes and mouth and nose. I crawled forward, moaning, my head spinning. I wiped my forehead, seeing spatters of green blood squirming with dark, maggot-like creatures covering my arms and face. It clung to my fingers, thick and rancid. I felt stinging sensations as the tiny worms bit me over and over. My ears rang with a high-pitched whine from the gunshots.
X was running towards me now. I continued to crawl towards him, shell-shocked and whimpering, trying to wipe the eldritch blood off my skin. With a muscular arm, he reached down and pulled me up.
“Where’d it go?” I mumbled, stumbling forward on unsteady feet. X put an arm around my shoulders and helped support me.
“It slunk back into the swamp,” he said. “Jesus, you’re bleeding really bad, buddy. We’re going to need to take care of that as soon as we get away from this hellhole.” I felt the deep slices from the creature’s blade-like hands across my back. The fabric of my shirt clung tightly to the skin as fresh blood soaked it.
“This isn’t the trail, X,” I gasped. “We went the wrong way. We need to go back.” He nodded grimly.
“We’re heading back right now. I know it’s the wrong trail now, it definitely is, but it’s dark. The trails back up the mountains are steep and dangerous, and we’ve already been hiking all day. How much longer can we really go?” he asked. In reality, I had a feeling X could go for quite a bit longer. I was the weak link in the chain, and we both knew it.
X took out a small, LED flashlight from his backpack, shining it ahead of us on the dark path. Across the center of the black earth, there was an obstruction, something that hadn’t been there when we passed this way originally.
“Shit! Is that a person?” X said, slowing down. He focused the light on it. As my eyes adjusted, I gave a gasp of horror as I saw a rough sacrificial table looming there, waiting with a ready victim.
Laying on the bare wooden planks in the center of the trail was an elderly man wearing the garb of a hunter. He was gagged, a bloody rag shoved deep into his mouth. I felt a sense of revulsion and terror as I realized his hands and feet were nailed to the planks, as if he were being crucified laying down. His eyes rolled wildly, white and insane, like a horse with a broken leg. When he saw us approaching, he tried to say something through the gag, pulling hard against the nails that bit so viciously into his flesh. Fresh rivers of blood spurted from his wounds.
I had my pistol in my hands. X had taken a fresh magazine out by now, throwing the empty one back in his backpack. Trembling, he went first, his shaking hand moving the flashlight around wildly. Its bright rays bounced off the dead, half-rotted trees that grew out of the boglands, the clouds of mosquitoes and moths that circled us constantly.
“Oh my God... he's like the victim of a serial killer or something,” he whispered, running a trembling hand over his face. “It looks like someone has set that poor guy up to have his heart cut out, like some sort of Aztec ritual.” He glanced worriedly over at me. We had both stopped cold in our tracks, looking around for any sign of danger, but we only saw the old man writhing on his rough table of torture.
“We have to keep going forward,” I whispered. “That thing is behind us. I don’t think it’s dead. I’m not sure it can even die.”
“But what’s ahead of us?” he asked grimly. “That’s the real question, isn’t it?” Far off down the trail, I saw small pinpoints of flickering light. They drew closer. We raised our pistols, waiting for the new arrivals to show themselves.
Dozens of people dressed in black, silky robes holding lamps slowly ambled their way towards us. They had their heads bowed, like monks on a holy pilgrimage. They drew close to the sacrifice. The one in the lead held a long, curving dagger whose blade looked like it was made of some kind of red volcanic rock. Its strange silver handle glittered in his pale, thin hand. At the end, I saw it was sculpted into the shape of a human heart.
“Stop right there!” X screamed, stepping forward. “Don’t come any closer! We are armed, I’m warning you.” The people in the black robes didn’t appear to hear or care in the slightest. They continued slowly following their leader with the strange dagger, almost floating forward in a nonchalant manner. Their leader began chanting in some strange, ancient language. It reminded me of Tibetan or Sanskrit in a way, like the chanting of some Vajrayana monk high up in the Himalayas. But it had a sinister, hissing quality to the words. Something ancient and powerful resonated in every syllable.
I raised the pistol, firing blankly into the dark, cloudless sky above. The smell of gunsmoke and fetid rot hung thick in the air. The leader of the group looked at me with his large, glassy eyes. His face looked sunken and pale, almost like a starving child. He had shaved all of the hair on his head, even his eyebrows. His lips were extremely thin and bloodless in his chalk-white face.
For a long moment, we stood staring at each other, my pistol aimed at his chest. X also had his pistol raised, aimed at one of those standing behind him. But the robed man didn’t speak. He gave me a faint grin.
“Let the old man go,” I commanded, my voice sounding hoarse and weak. The swamp quickly swallowed up my words, until only the buzzing of mosquitoes remained.
“I am sorry, my son, but I cannot do that,” the leader said in a voice as cold as endless space. “If we do not feed Mowdoroth, it will never sleep. The swamps will continue to expand, eating more and more of the surrounding forests and towns, and Mowdoroth, driven insane by hunger, will take far more victims in the process.
“This job has been passed down to us from generation to generation, from big hand to small, for over four centuries. Only twice has Mowdoroth not been fed on the New Moon, and each time, entire settlements full of people were wiped off the face of the Earth as if they had never existed. On one, they just had time to carve the word ‘CROATAN’ before they were taken.
“Mowdoroth looks for the place where the nightmares grow. It breaks open the chest and finds the place where the silent screams start, deep down at the base of the heart. All of the nightmares are planted there, like tiny seeds scattered during childhood. Those that fell on good soil in that abyss produced a great crop, yielding a hundredfold, sixtyfold, or thirtyfold. If you do not allow us to complete our holy mission, then you do it: cut open the man's chest and remove his beating heart. As it beats, squeeze it as hard as you can, and let all the blood drain onto the top of your head. Hold the heart above your head and close your eyes until the god appears and takes it.” The cult leader finished, looking at us with sparkling eyes, as if he had said something profound.
“This shit is just insane drivel,” X whispered in a voice as low as possible. “I say we open fire and save the old man now. Fuck these cultists.” I nodded grimly in agreement.
“You need to all turn around and leave immediately,” X yelled, stepping forward. “I will give you three seconds to turn around and get the hell out of my sight. Three…” At first, the cultists stood as still as statues, simply staring. Finally, the leader sighed and turned away. He shook his head, reminding me of a disappointed parent.
“I tried to warn you,” he said in his thin, quavering voice. “The time has come to give the offering. You must cut out this man’s heart and raise it to Mowdoroth, so he can get the seeds of nightmares freshly sown. The choice is yours now, as you have demanded this power with violence. You can leave this man here to be eaten by Mowdoroth, or free him and, in exchange, guarantee the deaths of hundreds of other people.”
With those last words, the black-robed figures continued down the curve of the trail. Within seconds, they had disappeared behind dead, half-rotted trees that still dotted the edges of the boglands. X and I ran forward toward the struggling old man. X reached into his pocket and pulled out a folding knife. He cut off the old man’s gag, pulling the spit-soaked chunk of filthy cloth out of his mouth. The old man spat and licked his dry lips.
“Get me out of here, please,” he whispered, his eyes rolling wildly. “Those cult members are all batshit insane. And there’s something not right in these swamps. I caught glimpses of something while I was waiting. There’s something in the water…”
“What’s your name, bud?” X said calmingly, looking at the old man’s hands and feet to try to decide how to best get the nails out without causing more damage.
“Winchester,” he said in a coarse voice. It sounded like he hadn’t had a drink of water in days. While X looked at his hands with the LED flashlight, I reached into my pack for the small canteen of filtered water I still had. I started pouring it into Winchester’s mouth. He gulped greedily, his throat working hard to drink down the rest of it.
“I got it!” X said, taking a flat stone he had found on the ground. “I’m going to try to pound these nails out from the bottom.”
“Oh, please, no,” Winchester said, his wrinkled face turning pale. X shook his head.
“We need to get you out of here,” he said. “It’s going to hurt, bud. But we don’t have any tools here. The nails are large, almost like railroad spikes, and once we get the top part, the bottom should slide out easily since it’s a lot narrower.” As he grabbed the rock to begin his work, a bone-chilling wailing started up again from the swamps. It was the scream of Mowdoroth, that abomination with the skin of a wasp’s nest.
“Cover us!” X yelled panickedly as he continued his grisly work. Winchester screamed in pain when X first struck the nail on his right hand. It shot up a fraction of an inch, fresh blood pooling all around it and dripping through the bare planks.
I turned, but the banshee wail seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The swamp bubbled faster and faster all around us, as if thousands of corpses were coming back to life. I heard Winchester scream again, then the dull thud of another nail hitting the earth.
A face peeked out of the swamp, only twenty feet away. Its eyes were green, the color of a putrefying wound. Its lipless mouth opened wide, showing a spongy black mass of skin with concentric circles of tiny, razor-sharp teeth. It reminded me of the mouth of a lamprey.
I opened fire, shooting wildly at the face, aiming at the body hidden under the dark surface of the swamp. Luminescent drops of green blood exploded from a bullet hole in its upper right shoulder, floating across the surface of the water like radioactive waste.
Its screaming cut off instantly. All I could hear was the pounding of the rock behind me and Winchester’s pained, horrified pleas for mercy.
“Please, you’re hurting me!” he pleaded.
“Shut the fuck up, Winchester!” I whispered. “It’s here with us now.” With considerable effort, he did, only moaning and violently jerking his head now as the waves of pain ripped through him.
“I got it!” X said suddenly. A feeling of elation filled my heart.
“Let’s go then!” I yelled, turning to help the old man up. I heard something massive rise up behind us. It mixed with the sound of dripping water and babbling waves that arose from the disturbance.
Winchester was weak, stumbling up to his feet and nearly falling over immediately. Staggering, he took off down the trail with no shoes, but he immediately gave a curse of pain and tripped. X and I started running, and at that moment, I realized the flaw in our plan. We wouldn’t be able to get Winchester out of the swamp without carrying him, due to the extensive injuries to his feet. And I knew we didn’t have time.
Mowdoroth’s body stood as tall as the trees as it looked down at the three of us with its strange, infected eyes. Its tentacles undulated faster and faster, seeming to whip around its body until they flew out towards us.
“Run!” I screamed. X and I sprinted behind a cluster of dead trees hugging the path. The blade-like hand of Mowdoroth chopped them in a half, raining wood splinters down on our heads.
Winchester continued trying to crawl forward. Mowdoroth slithered behind him. Winchester looked up as a tentacle started coming down in his direction. He gave a short, panicked scream as the blade smashed through his back legs, chopping both of them off at the knees. The ground shook with the force of it. The stumps began spurting seemingly endless amounts of blood. Winchester pleaded and made incomprehensible gurgling sounds as he bled out. Mowdoroth ended Winchester’s cries when it wrapped its tentacle around Winchester’s torso. It slithered up into Winchester’s open mouth.
X and I shot as fast as we could while running forward in the dark, trying to hold a flashlight and a pistol. Most of my shots missed Mowdoroth, but with a sense of satisfaction and pride, I saw a few burst through its enormous body. Streams of radioactive green blood ran down its torso now. As its serpentine legs pumped furiously, it gained speed, coming behind us like a runaway train. I could feel the ground shaking with every thud of its tentacled feet.
A few hundred feet ahead of us, I caught a glimpse of the cultists. They were hurrying away from the area, not running but moving much faster than they had come in. Nearly out of breath already and exhausted from hiking all day, I pointed forward.
“Look!” I screamed. X saw them, his eyes widening. We sprinted in a blind panic, as fast as we could towards the stragglers in the black robes. Without warning, X raised his pistol and fired, aiming at the nearest of them.
The figure in the back of the pack fell forward without making a sound. He continued trying to crawl forward weakly for a few moments before he lost energy and lay still, no more than a bleeding black hump on the dark earth.
X gave a sudden cry of pain next to me as a tentacle came down like a guillotine blade. I heard it whip through the air with a high-pitched whine. A single breath later, I watched in horror as it sliced off his right arm. X looked down at the spurting stump for a long moment, his tanned face turning as pale as bones. He stumbled forward, then, with a hoarse cry, he fell.
Following X’s lead, I raised my gun and started shooting the cultists. They sprinted away in a random panic as bodies fell ahead of us. I jumped over the black lumps on the ground, hearing Mowdoroth shake the world as it gave chase. A long, snake-like tentacle reached down, picking up X’s spurting body and raising it towards Mowdoroth’s leech-like mouth. The massive abomination slowed, picking up the bodies of the dead cultists and crushing them. I heard the bones shatter as the wet gore exploded around Mowdoroth’s many sharp teeth.
I saw the woods again, living trees just a few hundred feet away. The trail of black earth ended abruptly, leading out of the boglands. Cultists sprinted blindly through the forest in every direction, scattering like cockroaches. I had nearly reached the border of the forest when I heard something whizzing past my head. I ducked, but the blur of a grayish tentacle coming down sent a jolt of fear like electricity sizzling through my body.
A moment later, a cold agony covered my left hand. In shock, I looked down, realizing that the blade-like appendage of Mowdoroth had neatly amputated all four of my fingers. If I hadn’t ducked, it would’ve probably gotten my head instead.
Stumbling and screaming, my mind in a blind panic, I staggered through the intersection of the boglands and the forest, falling forward. I knew I was dead. I closed my eyes, waiting. Yet nothing happened.
When I looked back, I saw something strange. Mowdoroth had stopped at the end of the boglands. It tried to push its body forward towards me, but it couldn’t enter the forest. It was as if an invisible barrier stood there.
I lay there for a long time. After a while, I heard Mowdoroth slink back into the fetid waters of the boglands. And then I was alone.
***
I wrapped my hand in bandages as much as I could, trying to stem the bleeding. I felt weak and sick from blood loss, so I lay there until the sun came up. The next day, I was able to slowly make my way out of the forest and back towards the nearest town.
Now I hear stories of people mysteriously going missing in the area. An entire family in a nearby farmhouse only a couple dozen miles away disappeared in the middle of the night without a trace, leaving only smeared trails of blood leading into the forest. No one saw anything, but these six victims were only the first in a long line of strange deaths. Oddly enough, all of the victims lived next to swamps.
And I have the feeling that I was the one responsible.