White house liaison office mr. grant

Psych - You know that's right.

2009.04.26 17:04 hax0r Psych - You know that's right.

[link]

2012.07.15 19:58 Political Animals

A subreddit all about the newest hit TV show on the USA Network, *Political Animals*. Premiered July 15 at 10/9c! In the wake of a recent divorce from her philandering ex-husband — who is still as much in love with her as with the office he once held — and the loss of the presidential nomination, Elaine Barrish (Sigourney Weaver) attempts to keep her family together while simultaneously dealing with crises of the State Department and a hungry DC journalist (Carla Gugino).
[link]

2014.05.15 02:10 TheOvarianBarbarian Madam Secretary

A Sub for Madam Secretary on CBS. Téa Leoni stars as the Secretary of State, one of the most powerful people in the nation. After years away from the CIA, she is pulled back into the political arena where she gets things done, even if it means not always playing by the rules. She's tough, fair and smart driving international diplomacy and wrangling office politics. But when she goes home for dinner with her husband and teenage children, politics takes on a whole new meaning.
[link]

2024.05.16 00:15 oldbublysoul29 Weekend Roundup May 17-19

“Your art was the prettiest art of all the art.” -Roy Anderson, The Office
“When one door closes, fortune will usually open another.” -Fernando de Rojas
🎵 “HEE HEE!” 🎵-Michael Jackson
Have a great weekend!
AROUND TOWN
FRIDAY, MAY 17
SATURDAY, MAY 18
SUNDAY, MAY 19
SPORTS
*hopefully.
MOVIES (released nationwide in theaters)
LINKS
Reddit Twin Cities Social Meet-Ups: https://www.reddit.com/twincitiessocial
Trivia Mafia Schedule: https://www.triviamafia.com/schedule
Music Mayhem Schedule: http://www.musicmayhem.net/live-show-locations.html
Get a Clu Trivia Schedule: https://www.getaclutrivia.com/home/#weekly-trivia-schedule
Racket MN Event Calendar: https://www.racketmn.com/category/events/
Meet Minneapolis Event Calendar: https://www.minneapolis.org
MPLS Art Events: https://www.mplsart.com/calendaupcoming
Minnesota Monthly Event Calendar: http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/Calenda
MSP Magazine Event Calendar: http://mspmag.com/search/event/events-calenda#page=1
Minneapolis Northwest Event Calendar: https://www.minneapolisnorthwest.com/events/
Minnesota Parent Event List: https://www.minnesotaparent.com/calenda
Family Fun Twin Cities: https://www.familyfuntwincities.com/family-fun-events-calenda
Minneapolis Park Events: https://www.minneapolisparks.org/event-calenda
St. Paul Parks & Rec Events: https://www.stpaul.gov/calendaparks-and-recreation-events
Three Rivers Park District Event Calendar: https://web2.myvscloud.com/wbwsc/mnthreeriverswt.wsc/search.html?display=Calendar&module=event&_csrf_token=cU716Z6D0C1B2B2C3C2L454I5R604U581V665Z566H046Q3U595K0B5U4U6L4N1F0E3S6K4U055R5P4J576D734L5C576Q73535P6D015S4R504J09664Q5G5708564N5S
If you have any events to add, drop them in the comments!
submitted by oldbublysoul29 to Minneapolis [link] [comments]

2024.05.16 00:13 oldbublysoul29 Weekend Rundown May 17-19

“Your art was the prettiest art of all the art.” -Roy Anderson, The Office
“When one door closes, fortune will usually open another.” -Fernando de Rojas
🎵 “HEE HEE!” 🎵-Michael Jackson
Have a great weekend!
AROUND TOWN
FRIDAY, MAY 17
SATURDAY, MAY 18
SUNDAY, MAY 19
SPORTS
*hopefully.
MOVIES (released nationwide in theaters)
LINKS
Reddit Twin Cities Social Meet-Ups: https://www.reddit.com/twincitiessocial
Trivia Mafia Schedule: https://www.triviamafia.com/schedule
Music Mayhem Schedule: http://www.musicmayhem.net/live-show-locations.html
Get a Clu Trivia Schedule: https://www.getaclutrivia.com/home/#weekly-trivia-schedule
Racket MN Event Calendar: https://www.racketmn.com/category/events/
Meet Minneapolis Event Calendar: https://www.minneapolis.org
MPLS Art Events: https://www.mplsart.com/calendaupcoming
Minnesota Monthly Event Calendar: http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/Calenda
MSP Magazine Event Calendar: http://mspmag.com/search/event/events-calenda#page=1
Minneapolis Northwest Event Calendar: https://www.minneapolisnorthwest.com/events/
Minnesota Parent Event List: https://www.minnesotaparent.com/calenda
Family Fun Twin Cities: https://www.familyfuntwincities.com/family-fun-events-calenda
Minneapolis Park Events: https://www.minneapolisparks.org/event-calenda
St. Paul Parks & Rec Events: https://www.stpaul.gov/calendaparks-and-recreation-events
Three Rivers Park District Event Calendar: https://web2.myvscloud.com/wbwsc/mnthreeriverswt.wsc/search.html?display=Calendar&module=event&_csrf_token=cU716Z6D0C1B2B2C3C2L454I5R604U581V665Z566H046Q3U595K0B5U4U6L4N1F0E3S6K4U055R5P4J576D734L5C576Q73535P6D015S4R504J09664Q5G5708564N5S
If you have any events to add, drop them in the comments!
submitted by oldbublysoul29 to TwinCities [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 23:51 lightscamerasnaction Delta in-flight movies [March 2024]

I tried to write down every single movie available on my flights in March 2024. I handwrote some of my notes to pass the 13 hours which is why there are ??? when I couldn't read my own writing/abbreviations. Note that not all titles were available on all flights, and my list is missing a chunk of them (especially titles beginning with "S" for some reason). Hope someone finds it useful! Maybe someone will get to creating a Letterboxd list of them all before me! [Posted this in movies and thought delta users might find it useful too]
10 Things I Hate About You
101 Dalmatians
12 Angry Men
13 Going on 30
17 Again
2001: A Space Odyssey
27 Dresses
500 Days of Summer
80 for Brady
A Beautiful Mind
A Bug's Life
A Cinderella Story
A Compassionate Spy
A Fantastic Woman
A Few Good Men
A Good Year
A Haunting in Venice
A League of Their Own
A Room with a View
A Separation
A Simple Plan
A Simple Wish
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Abominable
Adam's Rib
Airheads
Akeelah and the Bee
Aladdin
Alice Through the Looking Glass
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
American Graffiti
American Street Kid
Amores Perros
An Inconvenient Truth
Anatomy of a Fall
Angels in the Outfield
Aquaman
Assassin Club
Asteroid City
Avatar: Way of Water
Avengers: Infinity War
Back to the Future
Bad Company
Barb and Star: Vista del Mar
Barbie
Batman
Batman Begins
Batman Returns
Batman vs. Superman Dawn
Battle of the Sexes
Beauty and the Beast
Beetlejuice
Being Mary Tyler Moore
Bend it Like Beckham
Better Luck Tomorrow
Big
Big George Foreman
Billy Elliott
Birds of Prey: Harley Quinn
Birthright Outlaw
Blackberry
Blade
Blade II
Blade Runner 2049
Blade Trinity
Blended
Blinded by the Light
Blue Beetle
Bolt
Bottoms
Brave
Brazil
Bridesmaids
Bridget Jones' Diary
Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason
Bring It On
Brown Sugar
Buoyancy
But I'm a Cheerleader
Call Me by Your Name
Carmen Jones
Central Intelligence
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Cheaper by the Dozen
Chevalier
Chicken Run
Child's Play
Children of a Lesser God
Chinatown
Cinderella
Clifford the Big Red Dog
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Clueless
Colossal
Condor's Nest
Cool Hand Luke
Coraline
Couples Retreat
Crazy Rich Asians
Crazy Stupid Love
Creed
Creed II
Crooklyn
Cruella
Chr. G
Dark Waters
Darkest Hour
Dawnland
Dazed and Confused
DC: League of Super Pets
Dear White People
Dee. Boys
Delivery Man
Desperately Seeking Susan
Despicable Me
Despicable Me 2
Despicable Me 3
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Dret ard
Dr. Doolittle
Down with Love
Dr. Seuss Horton Hears a Who
Dr. Seuss The Grinch
Dr. Grinch The Lorax
Dreamgirls
Drop Dead Gorgeous
Drumline
Due Date
Dumb and Dumber
Dumb Money
Dune
Dunkirk
E.T.
Edge of Tomorrow
Eggs Over Easy
Elemental
Enter the Dragon
E????
Erin Brockovich
Eternals
Evan Almighty
Everest
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Evil Dead Rises
Expendables 4
F9: Fast Saga
Fallen
Fantastic Beasts
Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindewald
Fantastic Beasts: Secrets of Dumbledore
Fargo
F&F: Hobbes and Shaw
Fast X
Father of the Bride
Feramana???
Ferner????
Field of Dreams
Finding Dory
Finding Nemo
First Man
Focus
Following
Fools Rush In
Forrest Gump
Freaky
Freaky Friday
Freelance
Frida
Friday
Frozen 2
Frozen River
Game Night
Gangster Squad
Garfield
Garfield: Tail of 2 Kitties
Get Smart
Ghostbusters
Glass
Glory
Godzilla vs Kong
Going in Style
Good Morning Vietnam
Gosford Park
Grand Torino
Gran Turismo
Gravity
Grease
Grease 2
Gremlins
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3
Guy Richie's The Covenant
Hacksaw Ridge
Half Nelson
Hanna
Happy Death Day
Happy Feet 2
Harlan County USA
Harold and Kumar: White Castle
Harry Potter 1-8
Haunted Mansion
He's Just Not That Into You
Her
Hereafter
Hocus Pocus
Honor Society
Horrible Bosses
Hotel Transylvania
House Party
How to Be Single
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
How to Train your Dragon
Hypnotic
I Am Legend
I Didn't See You There
I, Tonya
Ice Age: Collision Course
Ice Age: Continental Drift
Ice Age: Dawn of Dinosaurs
Ice Age: Meltdown
Ice on Fire
If Beale Street Could Talk
In the Heart of the Sea
In the Heights
In the Name of the Father
Inception
Incredibles 2
Indiana Jones: Dial of Destiny
Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom
Insidious: The Red Door
Insomnia
Instructions not INcluded
It
Jerry & Marge Go Large
Jersey Boys
John Wick
John Wick 2
John Wick 3
Joker
Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Judas and the Black Messiah
Jules
Jumanji
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
Jurassic Park
Jurassic World
Just Married
Just my Luck
Kazaam
Kit Kittredge
Kramer vs Kramer
Kubo and the Two Strings
Kung Fu Panda
Kung Fu Panda 2
Kung Fu??????
La La Land
Labyrinth
Lady in the Water
Lakota Nation vs United States
Legally Blonde
Liar Liar
Life of the Party
Lightyear
Lilo and Stitch
Lion
Little Women
Living
Lo------
Lone Survivor
Love and Basketball
Love Again
Love Jones
Ma-d_____ ?
Madagascar
Madagascar Escape
Made of Honor
Mafia Mamma
Magic Mike's Last Dance
Malt------
Momma's Boy
Mamma Mia
Mamma Mia Here We Go Again
March of the Penguins
Mat------
Mean Girls
Meet the Parents?
Memento
Michael Clayton
Milk
Minions
Minions: Rise of Gru
Misery
Miss Congeniality
Missing Link
Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning
Mississippi Masala
Moana
Monster In Law
Monsters Inc
Monsters University
Moonlight
Mortal Enemies
Mr. Malcolm's List
Mulan
Mummies
Murder by Numbers
Murder on the Orient Express
Muriel's Wedding
My Animal
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
My Family
My Girl
National Lampoon's Vacation
Neighbors 2
Neruda
New Year's Eve
News of the World
Nights in Rodanthe
Nine Queens
No
No Country for Old Men
No Murches Frida??
Nomadland
Notting Hill
Ocean's 8
Ocean's 13
October Sky
Of tn age??
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Onward
Oppenheimer
Origin
Over the Hedge
Pacific Rim
Pandas
Pan's Labyrinth
ParaNorman
Paris is Burning
Past Lives
Paw Patrol: Mighty
Paw Patrol: More
Pee Wee's Big Adventure
Perfect Strangers
Persepolis
Phantom Thread
Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game
Pitch Perfect
Pitch Perfect 3
Planes
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
Practical Magic
Pride and Prejudice
Primal Fear
Priscilla
Psycho
Pulp Fiction
Puppy Love
Puss in Boots
Queen and Slim
Radical
RRadi--- Wwi?/
Raging Bull
Ra the Breata?
Rat Race?
Ratatouille
Ready Player One
Real Women Have Curves
Red Tails
Reforge
Renfield
Repo Man
Rocky
Ruby Gillman
Rumor Has It
Rush Hour 2
RV
Róise & Frank
Sacfint??
Saving Face
Saving Private Ryan
School Daze
Scoob!
Scooby Doo
Scrapper
Scream VI
Searching
Selena
Selma
Semi Pro
Seven
Shaft
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
Significant Other
?
?
Skyfall
Smallfoot
Smoke?
Snowpiercer
?
Something's Gotta Give
?
?
Soul Surfer
Space Jam
Space Oddity
Sp Ra ????
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse
Split
Spy Game?
Spy Kids
Stone and D????
Ste W s5t?
Stomp the Yard
Storks
Sweet Home Alabama
Tag
Talk to Me
Tangled
Tee as Go!??
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Tenet
The Adia Prse?
The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster
The Baby-Sitters Club
The Best Man
The Big Lebowski
The Big Short
The Biggest Little Farm
The Bird Cage
The Blind Side
The Blues Brothers
The Bodyguard
The Boogeyman
The Book of Life
The Boss Baby: Family Business
The Bourne Identity
The Boxer
The Breakfast Club
The Bucket List
The Caine Mutiny
The Campaign
The Castle
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Chronicles of Narnia 2
The Chronicles of Narnia 3
The Creator
The Croods New Age
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight Rises
The Dark Side
The Dead Don't Die
The Dry?
The Equalizer
The Exorcist: Believer
The Fabulous Filipino Brothers
The Fast and Furious (#1)
The S Heartbeats?
The Has???
The Gentlemen
The Good Nurse
The Goonies
The Great Wall
The Guard
The Harvest (La Cosecha)
The H????
The Hobbit
The Hobbit 2
The Hobbit 3
The Holdovers
The Hunger Games: Ballad of Snakes and Songbirds
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games 2
The Hunger Games 3
The Hunger Games 4
The Hunt for Red October
The Huntsman: Winter’s War
The Incredibles
The Intern
The Invention of Lying
The Iron Giant
The Island
The Jungle Book
The Karate Kid
The Kids are Alright
The Lake House
The Land Before Time
The Last Out
The Last Samurai
The Lego Batman Movie
The Lego Movie
The Lesson
The Lion King
The Lion King
The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid
The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship
The Losers
The Man from UNCLE
The Marsh King’s Doughter
The Marvels
The Matrix: Resurrections
The Mitchells vs The Machines
The Mummy
The Neverending Story
The Nice Guys
The Nun II
The Odd Life of Timothy Green
The Other Zoey
The Outsiders
The Peanuts Movie
The Persian Version
The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything
The Place Beyond the Pines
The Popes Exorcist
The Pre--?
The Purge: Election Year
The Replacements
The Ring
The Secret Garden
The Secret Life of Pets
The Silence of the Lambs
The S --------
The ?
The ?
The ?
The ?
The ?
The Take
The Time Traveler's Wife
The True Cost
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
The Un---- Country
The Usual Suspects
The ???
The ????
The ?????
The Wedding Singer
The Wizard of Oz
The Wood
The Zookeeper's Wife
Theater Camp
Them---?
There Will Be Blood
Thurs?
Titanic
To Kill a Mockingbird
Tooooo?
Tom ??
Tommy Boy
Top Gun
Top Gun: Maverick
Toy Story 2
Toy Story 3
Toy Story 4
Train to Busan
Training Day
Transformers Rise
Trolls
Trolls World Tour
Troy
Tully
Turning Red
Umami
Us
??
V for Vendetta
V????
VeggieTales: Abe and the Amazing Promise
VeggieTales: Merry Larry and the True Light of Christmas
Vindicta
Vivo
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
War Dogs
We Were Soldiers
We're the Millers
Wedding Crashers
West Side Story
Wet Hot American Summer
Where the Wild Things Are
Wildhood
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Winters Bone
Wonder
Wonder Woman 1984
Wonka
Wreck It Ralph
Yes, Man
Yesterday
Young Punx: A Punk Parable
Zombieland

submitted by lightscamerasnaction to delta [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 23:48 lightscamerasnaction Delta in-flight movies list

I tried to write down every single movie available on my Delta flights in March 2024. I handwrote some of my notes to pass the 13 hours which is why there are ??? when I couldn't read my own writing/abbreviations. Note that not all titles were available on all flights, and my list is missing a chunk of them (especially titles beginning with "S" for some reason). Hope someone finds it useful! Maybe someone will get to creating a Letterboxd list of them all before me!
10 Things I Hate About You
101 Dalmatians
12 Angry Men
13 Going on 30
17 Again
2001: A Space Odyssey
27 Dresses
500 Days of Summer
80 for Brady
A Beautiful Mind
A Bug's Life
A Cinderella Story
A Compassionate Spy
A Fantastic Woman
A Few Good Men
A Good Year
A Haunting in Venice
A League of Their Own
A Room with a View
A Separation
A Simple Plan
A Simple Wish
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Abominable
Adam's Rib
Airheads
Akeelah and the Bee
Aladdin
Alice Through the Looking Glass
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
American Graffiti
American Street Kid
Amores Perros
An Inconvenient Truth
Anatomy of a Fall
Angels in the Outfield
Aquaman
Assassin Club
Asteroid City
Avatar: Way of Water
Avengers: Infinity War
Back to the Future
Bad Company
Barb and Star: Vista del Mar
Barbie
Batman
Batman Begins
Batman Returns
Batman vs. Superman Dawn
Battle of the Sexes
Beauty and the Beast
Beetlejuice
Being Mary Tyler Moore
Bend it Like Beckham
Better Luck Tomorrow
Big
Big George Foreman
Billy Elliott
Birds of Prey: Harley Quinn
Birthright Outlaw
Blackberry
Blade
Blade II
Blade Runner 2049
Blade Trinity
Blended
Blinded by the Light
Blue Beetle
Bolt
Bottoms
Brave
Brazil
Bridesmaids
Bridget Jones' Diary
Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason
Bring It On
Brown Sugar
Buoyancy
But I'm a Cheerleader
Call Me by Your Name
Carmen Jones
Central Intelligence
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Cheaper by the Dozen
Chevalier
Chicken Run
Child's Play
Children of a Lesser God
Chinatown
Cinderella
Clifford the Big Red Dog
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Clueless
Colossal
Condor's Nest
Cool Hand Luke
Coraline
Couples Retreat
Crazy Rich Asians
Crazy Stupid Love
Creed
Creed II
Crooklyn
Cruella
Chr. G
Dark Waters
Darkest Hour
Dawnland
Dazed and Confused
DC: League of Super Pets
Dear White People
Dee. Boys
Delivery Man
Desperately Seeking Susan
Despicable Me
Despicable Me 2
Despicable Me 3
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Dret ard
Dr. Doolittle
Down with Love
Dr. Seuss Horton Hears a Who
Dr. Seuss The Grinch
Dr. Grinch The Lorax
Dreamgirls
Drop Dead Gorgeous
Drumline
Due Date
Dumb and Dumber
Dumb Money
Dune
Dunkirk
E.T.
Edge of Tomorrow
Eggs Over Easy
Elemental
Enter the Dragon
E????
Erin Brockovich
Eternals
Evan Almighty
Everest
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Evil Dead Rises
Expendables 4
F9: Fast Saga
Fallen
Fantastic Beasts
Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindewald
Fantastic Beasts: Secrets of Dumbledore
Fargo
F&F: Hobbes and Shaw
Fast X
Father of the Bride
Feramana???
Ferner????
Field of Dreams
Finding Dory
Finding Nemo
First Man
Focus
Following
Fools Rush In
Forrest Gump
Freaky
Freaky Friday
Freelance
Frida
Friday
Frozen 2
Frozen River
Game Night
Gangster Squad
Garfield
Garfield: Tail of 2 Kitties
Get Smart
Ghostbusters
Glass
Glory
Godzilla vs Kong
Going in Style
Good Morning Vietnam
Gosford Park
Grand Torino
Gran Turismo
Gravity
Grease
Grease 2
Gremlins
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3
Guy Richie's The Covenant
Hacksaw Ridge
Half Nelson
Hanna
Happy Death Day
Happy Feet 2
Harlan County USA
Harold and Kumar: White Castle
Harry Potter 1-8
Haunted Mansion
He's Just Not That Into You
Her
Hereafter
Hocus Pocus
Honor Society
Horrible Bosses
Hotel Transylvania
House Party
How to Be Single
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
How to Train your Dragon
Hypnotic
I Am Legend
I Didn't See You There
I, Tonya
Ice Age: Collision Course
Ice Age: Continental Drift
Ice Age: Dawn of Dinosaurs
Ice Age: Meltdown
Ice on Fire
If Beale Street Could Talk
In the Heart of the Sea
In the Heights
In the Name of the Father
Inception
Incredibles 2
Indiana Jones: Dial of Destiny
Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom
Insidious: The Red Door
Insomnia
Instructions not INcluded
It
Jerry & Marge Go Large
Jersey Boys
John Wick
John Wick 2
John Wick 3
Joker
Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Judas and the Black Messiah
Jules
Jumanji
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
Jurassic Park
Jurassic World
Just Married
Just my Luck
Kazaam
Kit Kittredge
Kramer vs Kramer
Kubo and the Two Strings
Kung Fu Panda
Kung Fu Panda 2
Kung Fu??????
La La Land
Labyrinth
Lady in the Water
Lakota Nation vs United States
Legally Blonde
Liar Liar
Life of the Party
Lightyear
Lilo and Stitch
Lion
Little Women
Living
Lo------
Lone Survivor
Love and Basketball
Love Again
Love Jones
Ma-d_____ ?
Madagascar
Madagascar Escape
Made of Honor
Mafia Mamma
Magic Mike's Last Dance
Malt------
Momma's Boy
Mamma Mia
Mamma Mia Here We Go Again
March of the Penguins
Mat------
Mean Girls
Meet the Parents?
Memento
Michael Clayton
Milk
Minions
Minions: Rise of Gru
Misery
Miss Congeniality
Missing Link
Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning
Mississippi Masala
Moana
Monster In Law
Monsters Inc
Monsters University
Moonlight
Mortal Enemies
Mr. Malcolm's List
Mulan
Mummies
Murder by Numbers
Murder on the Orient Express
Muriel's Wedding
My Animal
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
My Family
My Girl
National Lampoon's Vacation
Neighbors 2
Neruda
New Year's Eve
News of the World
Nights in Rodanthe
Nine Queens
No
No Country for Old Men
No Murches Frida??
Nomadland
Notting Hill
Ocean's 8
Ocean's 13
October Sky
Of tn age??
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Onward
Oppenheimer
Origin
Over the Hedge
Pacific Rim
Pandas
Pan's Labyrinth
ParaNorman
Paris is Burning
Past Lives
Paw Patrol: Mighty
Paw Patrol: More
Pee Wee's Big Adventure
Perfect Strangers
Persepolis
Phantom Thread
Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game
Pitch Perfect
Pitch Perfect 3
Planes
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
Practical Magic
Pride and Prejudice
Primal Fear
Priscilla
Psycho
Pulp Fiction
Puppy Love
Puss in Boots
Queen and Slim
Radical
RRadi--- Wwi?/
Raging Bull
Ra the Breata?
Rat Race?
Ratatouille
Ready Player One
Real Women Have Curves
Red Tails
Reforge
Renfield
Repo Man
Rocky
Ruby Gillman
Rumor Has It
Rush Hour 2
RV
Róise & Frank
Sacfint??
Saving Face
Saving Private Ryan
School Daze
Scoob!
Scooby Doo
Scrapper
Scream VI
Searching
Selena
Selma
Semi Pro
Seven
Shaft
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
Significant Other
?
?
Skyfall
Smallfoot
Smoke?
Snowpiercer
?
Something's Gotta Give
?
?
Soul Surfer
Space Jam
Space Oddity
Sp Ra ????
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse
Split
Spy Game?
Spy Kids
Stone and D????
Ste W s5t?
Stomp the Yard
Storks
Sweet Home Alabama
Tag
Talk to Me
Tangled
Tee as Go!??
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Tenet
The Adia Prse?
The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster
The Baby-Sitters Club
The Best Man
The Big Lebowski
The Big Short
The Biggest Little Farm
The Bird Cage
The Blind Side
The Blues Brothers
The Bodyguard
The Boogeyman
The Book of Life
The Boss Baby: Family Business
The Bourne Identity
The Boxer
The Breakfast Club
The Bucket List
The Caine Mutiny
The Campaign
The Castle
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Chronicles of Narnia 2
The Chronicles of Narnia 3
The Creator
The Croods New Age
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight Rises
The Dark Side
The Dead Don't Die
The Dry?
The Equalizer
The Exorcist: Believer
The Fabulous Filipino Brothers
The Fast and Furious (#1)
The S Heartbeats?
The Has???
The Gentlemen
The Good Nurse
The Goonies
The Great Wall
The Guard
The Harvest (La Cosecha)
The H????
The Hobbit
The Hobbit 2
The Hobbit 3
The Holdovers
The Hunger Games: Ballad of Snakes and Songbirds
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games 2
The Hunger Games 3
The Hunger Games 4
The Hunt for Red October
The Huntsman: Winter’s War
The Incredibles
The Intern
The Invention of Lying
The Iron Giant
The Island
The Jungle Book
The Karate Kid
The Kids are Alright
The Lake House
The Land Before Time
The Last Out
The Last Samurai
The Lego Batman Movie
The Lego Movie
The Lesson
The Lion King
The Lion King
The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid
The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship
The Losers
The Man from UNCLE
The Marsh King’s Doughter
The Marvels
The Matrix: Resurrections
The Mitchells vs The Machines
The Mummy
The Neverending Story
The Nice Guys
The Nun II
The Odd Life of Timothy Green
The Other Zoey
The Outsiders
The Peanuts Movie
The Persian Version
The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything
The Place Beyond the Pines
The Popes Exorcist
The Pre--?
The Purge: Election Year
The Replacements
The Ring
The Secret Garden
The Secret Life of Pets
The Silence of the Lambs
The S --------
The ?
The ?
The ?
The ?
The ?
The Take
The Time Traveler's Wife
The True Cost
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
The Un---- Country
The Usual Suspects
The ???
The ????
The ?????
The Wedding Singer
The Wizard of Oz
The Wood
The Zookeeper's Wife
Theater Camp
Them---?
There Will Be Blood
Thurs?
Titanic
To Kill a Mockingbird
Tooooo?
Tom ??
Tommy Boy
Top Gun
Top Gun: Maverick
Toy Story 2
Toy Story 3
Toy Story 4
Train to Busan
Training Day
Transformers Rise
Trolls
Trolls World Tour
Troy
Tully
Turning Red
Umami
Us
??
V for Vendetta
V????
VeggieTales: Abe and the Amazing Promise
VeggieTales: Merry Larry and the True Light of Christmas
Vindicta
Vivo
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
War Dogs
We Were Soldiers
We're the Millers
Wedding Crashers
West Side Story
Wet Hot American Summer
Where the Wild Things Are
Wildhood
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Winters Bone
Wonder
Wonder Woman 1984
Wonka
Wreck It Ralph
Yes, Man
Yesterday
Young Punx: A Punk Parable
Zombieland
submitted by lightscamerasnaction to movies [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 23:41 Sweet-Count2557 Maldives Island Honeymoon Package

Maldives Island Honeymoon Package
Maldives Island Honeymoon Package Have you ever wondered if the Maldives Island Honeymoon Package truly lives up to its reputation as the ultimate romantic getaway? Well, let me assure you, it does not disappoint.From the moment you step off the plane and are whisked away to your luxurious resort, you'll be captivated by the beauty and tranquility of this paradise destination.But there is so much more to discover and experience beyond the pristine beaches and crystal-clear waters.So, join me as we embark on a journey to uncover the hidden gems and unique experiences that await you in the Maldives.Key TakeawaysThe Maldives offers luxury amenities, romantic experiences, and natural beauty for honeymooners.Four Seasons Resort Kuda Huraa is one of the resorts that offers a honeymoon package with round-trip airport transfers and a warm welcome with champagne.The best time to visit the Maldives for a honeymoon is during the dry season from December to March, with pleasant weather and minimal rainfall.Must-do activities on a Maldives honeymoon include diving expeditions, luxurious spa treatments, romantic sunset strolls, private candlelight dinners, and relaxing in overwater villas or beachfront villas.Overview of Maldives Island Honeymoon PackageThe Maldives Island Honeymoon Package offers couples a dreamy escape filled with luxury amenities, romantic experiences, and breathtaking natural beauty. This package, available at Four Seasons Resort Kuda Huraa, is the perfect choice for newlyweds looking to celebrate their love in a paradise setting.The package includes round-trip airport transfers, ensuring a smooth and hassle-free journey from the moment you arrive. Upon arrival at the resort, you'll be greeted with a warm welcome and a bottle of champagne, setting the tone for a truly memorable honeymoon.Each morning, wake up to a delicious breakfast spread that caters to all tastes and preferences. Indulge in a variety of cuisines, from local Maldivian dishes to international favorites, while enjoying stunning views of the crystal-clear turquoise waters.As part of the package, you and your partner will also be treated to a romantic candlelight dinner for two. Set against the backdrop of the Maldivian sunset, this intimate dining experience is sure to create lasting memories.The Maldives Island Honeymoon Package is based on a four-night stay, but additional nights can be added with breakfast included. This allows you to extend your honeymoon and fully immerse yourselves in the beauty and tranquility of the Maldives.Please note that availability of the package is subject to reservation and may vary depending on your arrival date and length of stay. Additional charges may apply for extra guests and may include mandatory property fees, service charges, or early departure fees.Choose the Maldives Island Honeymoon Package and embark on a romantic journey filled with luxury, love, and breathtaking natural surroundings.Top Honeymoon Resorts in the MaldivesNestled amidst the crystal-clear turquoise waters of the Maldives, you'll find a collection of top honeymoon resorts that offer couples an unforgettable romantic getaway. The Maldives is renowned for its breathtaking beauty, and these resorts are no exception. From the moment you step onto their shores, you'll be transported to a world of luxury and tranquility.One of the top honeymoon resorts in the Maldives is Meeru Maldives Resort Island. This resort offers overwater villas with stunning views of the ocean, ensuring that you and your loved one can immerse yourselves in the beauty of the surroundings. The staff at Meeru Maldives Resort Island are known for their exceptional service, ensuring that every aspect of your stay is taken care of.Another popular choice is Velassaru Maldives, which boasts beautiful and relaxing settings that are perfect for a honeymoon. The resort offers a range of dining options, allowing you to indulge in delicious cuisine while enjoying the stunning views. In addition, Velassaru Maldives offers excellent facilities, including a spa where you can pamper yourselves and a diving center for those seeking adventure.If you're looking for a quiet and intimate atmosphere, Hurawalhi Island Resort is an ideal choice. This resort is known for its peaceful ambiance, making it perfect for couples who want to escape the hustle and bustle of everyday life. With its exceptional ratings, Hurawalhi Island Resort promises a truly memorable honeymoon experience.Coco Palm Dhuni Kolhu and Ellaidhoo Maldives by Cinnamon are also highly recommended honeymoon resorts in the Maldives. Both offer stunning natural beauty, excellent staff, and a range of activities to keep you entertained.When it comes to planning your dream honeymoon in the Maldives, these top resorts offer everything you could possibly desire. So, why wait? Start creating memories that will last a lifetime at these incredible Maldives honeymoon resorts.All-Inclusive Honeymoon Package SpecialsImmerse yourselves in the ultimate romantic experience with the all-inclusive honeymoon package specials, offering a perfect blend of luxury, relaxation, and indulgence. When it comes to planning your dream honeymoon in the Maldives, there's no better option than these exclusive packages.Picture this: you and your loved one arriving at the Four Seasons Resort Kuda Huraa, where you'll be greeted with warm smiles and a refreshing drink. As part of the package, you'll enjoy round-trip airport transfers, ensuring a hassle-free journey from the moment you step foot in the Maldives.Your accommodation will be nothing short of extraordinary. The all-inclusive honeymoon package grants you access to the resort's overwater villas, boasting stunning views of the azure waters and direct access to the ocean. Imagine waking up to the gentle lapping of waves and falling asleep to the soothing sound of the sea.Indulge in daily breakfast as you start your days in paradise. Savor a delectable spread of international and local cuisines, ensuring you have the energy to explore the island or simply relax by the beach. And to make your honeymoon even more memorable, a bottle of champagne will be waiting for you in your villa upon arrival.As the sun sets, embark on a romantic journey with a candlelight dinner for two. Enjoy a sumptuous meal under the starlit sky, surrounded by the sounds of nature and the gentle sea breeze. It's the perfect opportunity to toast to your love and create memories that will last a lifetime.Please note that additional nights beyond the four-night stay are inclusive of breakfast only. Inclusions for additional guests are available for an additional charge. The package is subject to availability at the time of reservation and may or may not include applicable mandatory property fees, gratuities, or taxes. Rates are per room, per night, and early departure fees may apply.Make your honeymoon in the Maldives an unforgettable experience with the all-inclusive honeymoon package specials. It's time to celebrate your love in the most extraordinary way possible.Best Time to Visit the Maldives for HoneymoonTo ensure a truly unforgettable honeymoon in the Maldives, it's important to consider the best time to visit this tropical paradise. The ideal time for a luxury honeymoon in the Maldives is during the dry season, which runs from December to March. During this time, the weather is pleasant with minimal rainfall, making it perfect for outdoor activities and beach relaxation. You can bask in the warm sunshine and enjoy the crystal-clear turquoise waters without worrying about sudden downpours.On the other hand, the wet season, from May to September, isn't recommended for a honeymoon trip. This period experiences more rain, which can dampen your plans and limit your outdoor activities. If you dream of a picture-perfect honeymoon with clear skies and gentle breezes, it's best to avoid the wet season.When planning your honeymoon in the Maldives, consider booking a package that includes transfers to your chosen hotel. The North and South Ari atolls are easily accessible from the capital, Male, and are home to luxurious resorts that cater specifically to honeymooners. These resorts offer a secluded and romantic luxury experience, allowing you to embrace newly wedded bliss and indulge in intimate moments with your loved one.Nature enthusiasts will also find the Maldives to be a paradise for exploration. The Ari Atoll, in particular, is home to 80 islands and offers opportunities to witness magnificent wildlife, such as whale sharks. You can embark on thrilling excursions to observe these gentle giants in their natural habitat or simply immerse yourself in the stunning flora that the Maldives has to offer.Romantic Islands to Explore in the MaldivesAs we continue our journey through the Maldives, let's now set our sights on the romantic islands that await exploration in this tropical paradise. These islands are the perfect destinations for couples looking to spend their honeymoon in a picturesque and romantic setting.Here are some of the most romantic islands in the Maldives that you should explore during your honeymoon package:Meeru Island: This secluded oasis offers a truly romantic experience with its overwater villas and stunning views. Imagine waking up to the sound of waves gently crashing against the shore, while enjoying a breathtaking sunrise from the comfort of your private villa. Meeru Island is also known for its pristine beaches and crystal-clear waters, perfect for a romantic stroll or a swim with your loved one.Maafushi Island: This tropical paradise is a haven for snorkeling enthusiasts and nature lovers. With its vibrant coral reefs and diverse marine life, Maafushi Island offers a unique opportunity to explore the underwater world hand in hand with your partner. The island is also home to romantic villas, where you can unwind after a day of adventure and immerse yourself in the tranquility of the surroundings.Embarking on an island hopping tour is another great way to discover the hidden tropical gems of the Maldives. From serene beaches to luxury accommodations, each island has its own unique charm that will make your honeymoon an unforgettable experience.Must-Do Activities on Your Maldives HoneymoonLet's dive into the unforgettable experiences that await you on your Maldives honeymoon, with a variety of must-do activities that will create cherished memories for you and your partner. From exploring vibrant reefs to indulging in luxurious spa treatments, the Maldives offers a range of experiences that are perfect for a romantic getaway.To start off your honeymoon, why not embark on a diving expedition to explore the ring-shaped reefs? Witness the vibrant marine life and colorful coral formations as you dive into the crystal-clear waters. This is a truly mesmerizing experience that will leave you in awe of the natural beauty of the Maldives.After a day of adventure, it's time to relax and unwind in your overwater villa. Indulge in back-to-back spa treatments, pampering yourselves with massages and other rejuvenating therapies. As you lounge in your villa, you can enjoy the stunning views of the turquoise waters, creating a sense of tranquility and bliss.For a romantic evening, take a stroll along the pristine beaches and watch the sunset hand in hand. To make the moment even more special, treat yourselves to a private candlelight dinner for two. Enjoy a delectable meal under the starry sky, creating unforgettable memories that will last a lifetime.If you prefer a quieter day, you can simply relax in your overwater villa, reading a book and sipping on a glass of champagne. The peaceful atmosphere and breathtaking views will make for a truly serene experience.Lastly, don't forget to explore the local culture by embarking on an island hopping tour. Discover hidden tropical gems, rejuvenate with a couple spa therapy, and explore local markets to get a taste of the Maldivian way of life.Exotic Water and Beach Villa StaysImmerse yourself in the ultimate luxury of an exotic water or beach villa stay in the Maldives, where stunning views, world-class amenities, and unparalleled relaxation await you and your partner.Indulge in the romantic ambiance of overwater villas, perched above crystal-clear turquoise waters, or unwind in the serenity of beachfront villas, just steps away from pristine sandy beaches.Here are some reasons why these villa stays are the perfect choice for your Maldives honeymoon:Breathtaking Overwater Villas:Experience the epitome of luxury as you stay in an overwater villa, with direct access to the ocean. Watch colorful marine life swim beneath your villa's glass floor or take a dip in your private infinity pool overlooking the azure waters.Wake up to panoramic views of the Maldivian sunrise from your spacious outdoor deck, equipped with sun loungers and a daybed. Enjoy the privacy and seclusion offered by these exclusive villas, ensuring a truly intimate experience for you and your loved one.Tranquil Beachfront Villas:Immerse yourself in the beauty of nature as you stay in a beachfront villa, surrounded by lush tropical gardens and the soothing sound of the ocean waves. Take a leisurely stroll along the sandy beaches hand in hand, and feel the soft sand between your toes.Relax in your own private plunge pool, nestled within the confines of your villa. Unwind on the spacious outdoor terrace, where you can soak up the sun or enjoy a romantic candlelit dinner under the starry night sky.Whether you choose an overwater villa or a beachfront villa, your stay in the Maldives promises to be an unforgettable experience. From the luxurious amenities to the breathtaking surroundings, these villas offer the perfect setting for a romantic and rejuvenating honeymoon.How to Reach the Maldives for Your HoneymoonTo start your Maldives honeymoon, you'll need to plan your journey to this breathtaking destination. Luckily, the Maldives is well-connected to several countries, making it easily accessible for travelers. Flights from countries like India, Sri Lanka, China, and Thailand provide regular access to the Maldives, ensuring a smooth and convenient travel experience.Upon arrival in the Maldives, resorts often arrange seaplane or boat transfers to transport guests to their island accommodations. This adds an extra touch of luxury and excitement to your journey as you glide over the crystal-clear waters or sail through the turquoise lagoons, immersing yourself in the beauty of the Maldives.For those traveling to the Four Seasons Resort Kuda Huraa, the package includes round-trip airport transfers by shared speedboat between Velana International Airport and the resort. This ensures a hassle-free journey, allowing you to sit back, relax, and soak in the stunning views of the Maldivian archipelago.It's essential to consider the location and accessibility of the chosen resort. The North and South Ari atolls, for example, are easily reachable from the capital and house luxurious accommodations. By selecting a resort that's conveniently located, you can minimize travel time and maximize your time in paradise.The Maldives is a perfect honeymoon destination with its tropical climate and secluded luxury. In addition to the beautiful beaches and vibrant marine life, the Maldives offers romantic experiences such as private island dinners and indulgent spa treatments. So, get ready to embark on a journey of a lifetime and create unforgettable memories on your Maldives honeymoon.Planning Tips for a Perfect Maldives HoneymoonWhen it comes to planning a perfect Maldives honeymoon, there are a few key points to consider.First, researching and selecting the best resorts for honeymoon is essential to ensure a luxurious and romantic experience.Additionally, looking into the range of romantic activities and experiences available, such as private island dinners or spa treatments, can add that extra touch of romance to your getaway.Lastly, don't forget to pack the essentials for the Maldives, like sunscreen and swimwear, to fully enjoy the stunning beaches and crystal-clear waters.Best Resorts for HoneymoonFor the perfect Maldives honeymoon, look no further than the top-rated resorts that offer luxury overwater bungalows, stunning views, and unforgettable experiences.Here are two of the best resorts for honeymoon in the Maldives:Four Seasons: This world-renowned resort is known for its unparalleled luxury and impeccable service. With overwater bungalows that feature private pools and direct access to the crystal-clear waters, you and your partner can enjoy ultimate privacy and relaxation. Indulge in a couples' massage at the spa or dine under the stars at one of the resort's exquisite restaurants.Hurawalhi Island: Nestled in the Lhaviyani Atoll, Hurawalhi Island Resort is a haven for honeymooners. With its breathtaking coral reefs and vibrant marine life, this resort is perfect for couples who love diving or snorkeling. Enjoy candlelit dinners on the beach, take a sunset cruise, or simply relax in your luxurious villa with panoramic views of the Indian Ocean.These resorts offer the perfect blend of luxury, romance, and breathtaking natural beauty, making them the ideal choice for a honeymoon in the Maldives.Romantic Activities and ExperiencesAs honeymooners, we are eager to continue our exploration of the Maldives by immersing ourselves in the romantic activities and experiences that will make our perfect honeymoon even more unforgettable. The Maldives offers a plethora of romantic activities that cater to every couple's desires. To make our evenings truly special, we can indulge in a candlelight dinner for two guests, complete with a bottle of champagne upon arrival. The ambience and delicious cuisine will create a truly magical experience. Additionally, we can take advantage of the stunning overwater villas with breathtaking views and serene beaches at top-rated honeymoon resorts like Velassaru Maldives and Hurawalhi Island Resort. These luxurious accommodations provide the perfect backdrop for a romantic getaway. For adventure-seeking couples, we can engage in activities such as scuba diving, snorkeling, and whale or dolphin watching, all within the crystal-clear waters of the Maldives. Exploring the diverse wildlife and nature of the Maldives is a thrilling experience that we won't want to miss. To complete our honeymoon experience, we can embark on epic island hopping tours, indulge in luxurious spa treatments, and take romantic walks on the pristine beaches. These activities offer an unforgettable experience for honeymooners, leaving us with cherished memories of our time in the Maldives.Romantic ActivitiesDescriptionCandlelight DinnerEnjoy a romantic dinner for two guests, complete with a bottle of champagne upon arrival.Overwater VillasStay in stunning overwater villas with breathtaking views and serene beaches.Wildlife and Nature ExplorationWitness whale sharks in their natural habitat and explore the UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve in Baa Atoll.Adventure ActivitiesEngage in scuba diving, snorkeling, and whale or dolphin watching in the crystal-clear waters.With these romantic activities and experiences, our honeymoon in the Maldives will be nothing short of extraordinary.Packing Essentials for MaldivesTo ensure a perfect Maldives honeymoon, it's crucial to pack the essential items that will keep us comfortable and prepared for the tropical paradise. Here are some packing essentials for our Maldives getaway at the luxurious Maldives Resort:Clothing:Lightweight and breathable clothing suitable for the tropical climate.Swimwear for enjoying the crystal-clear waters and stunning beaches.Sun Protection:Sunscreen to protect our skin from the strong sun rays.Sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat to shield our eyes and face.Beach Accessories:A good pair of water shoes for walking on the beach and exploring the shallow waters.Snorkeling gear and an underwater camera to capture the vibrant marine life.Convenience:A compact and portable beach bag to carry our essentials while exploring the beautiful beaches.With these packing essentials, we'll be fully prepared to make the most of our Maldives honeymoon package.Unique Dining Experiences for Couples in the MaldivesGet ready to indulge in unforgettable culinary experiences during your honeymoon in the Maldives.Picture yourselves enjoying a romantic beachfront dinner, with the sand beneath your toes and the sound of the waves in the background.Or, take it to the next level and embark on an underwater dining adventure, surrounded by vibrant marine life.And for a truly unique experience, why not have a private island picnic, where you can savor delicious food while basking in the beauty of your own secluded paradise.These dining experiences will create cherished memories that you and your partner will treasure forever.Romantic Beachfront DinnersIndulge in the ultimate romantic experience with a private candlelight dinner for two on the pristine beaches of the Maldives, where the gentle waves and breathtaking sunset create an enchanting ambiance. As part of the Maldives Island Honeymoon Package, this unique dining experience is designed to provide couples with an unforgettable and intimate evening.Here's what you can expect:Immerse yourselves in the beauty of the island as you dine under the stars, with the sound of the ocean as your background music.Savor a delectable gourmet meal prepared by talented chefs, using the freshest local ingredients to create a feast for the senses.Enjoy a bottle of champagne, thoughtfully provided in your villa upon arrival, to set the tone for a luxurious and romantic experience.With round-trip airport transfers and daily breakfast also included, this package ensures a seamless and stress-free honeymoon. Escape to the Maldives and create memories that will last a lifetime.Underwater Dining ExperiencesImmerse yourselves in the extraordinary and enchanting world beneath the waves with a unique underwater dining experience for couples in the Maldives.Picture this: an overwater dinner for two in the Indian Ocean, surrounded by the mesmerizing beauty of the marine life and the stunning underwater scenery.As you descend into the depths of the ocean, you'll be greeted by a candlelit table, creating a romantic and intimate atmosphere.Savor the delectable cuisine specially prepared for you, while being mesmerized by the vibrant colors and graceful movements of the aquatic creatures.To add a touch of luxury, a bottle of champagne will be waiting for you in your villa upon arrival, making your underwater dining experience even more unforgettable.This one-of-a-kind adventure promises to create lasting memories as you indulge in a truly unique and breathtaking setting.Private Island PicnicsEscape to a secluded paradise in the Maldives and embark on a culinary adventure unlike any other with private island picnics. Offering couples a unique and unforgettable dining experience, private island picnics are a must-try for couples.Exclusivity: Private Island Picnics provide couples with the opportunity to enjoy a custom-prepared picnic on their very own private island, away from the hustle and bustle of the world. It's a truly intimate setting, perfect for creating unforgettable memories.Romantic Setting: Surrounded by breathtaking natural beauty and the tranquil ambiance of the Maldives, couples can savor a delectable meal against the stunning backdrop of the Maldivian islands. The serene atmosphere adds an extra touch of romance to the experience.With personalized service and attention to detail, Private Island Picnics are the perfect way for couples to celebrate special occasions or simply enjoy a romantic escape. Enhancing the honeymoon package, this private and luxurious culinary adventure promises to create cherished moments that will last a lifetime.Why the Maldives Is the Ultimate Honeymoon DestinationThe Maldives beckons newlyweds with its secluded luxury, providing the ultimate destination for couples to embrace their post-wedding bliss. As one of the best honeymoon destinations in the world, the Maldives offers an unparalleled experience for couples seeking a romantic getaway. From the moment you arrive, you'll be greeted with a bottle of champagne in your villa, setting the tone for an unforgettable stay.The Maldives is renowned for its overwater villas, which offer breathtaking views of the crystal-clear turquoise waters. Imagine waking up to the sound of gentle waves and stepping out onto your private deck to enjoy a cup of coffee while taking in the panoramic views. In the evening, indulge in a private candlelight dinner for two under the stars, creating memories that will last a lifetime.For adventurous couples, the Maldives has plenty to offer. Dive into an underwater paradise with scuba diving and snorkeling adventures, where you can explore vibrant coral reefs teeming with marine life. If you're lucky, you might even spot majestic whales or playful dolphins during a whale or dolphin watching excursion.If relaxation is what you seek, the Maldives has you covered. Pamper yourselves with luxurious spa treatments that will leave you feeling rejuvenated and refreshed. Take romantic walks on pristine white sandy beaches, hand in hand with your loved one. Explore the exotic islands through island hopping tours, where you can discover hidden gems and immerse yourselves in the local culture.When it comes to the ultimate honeymoon destination, the Maldives truly stands out. With its secluded luxury, adventurous activities, and serene beauty, it offers the perfect setting for couples to celebrate their love and create memories that will last a lifetime.Frequently Asked QuestionsHow Much Does a Honeymoon in Maldives Cost?When it comes to planning a honeymoon, the budget is always a factor. Luckily, there are affordable honeymoon destinations out there that offer unforgettable experiences.The cost of a honeymoon in the Maldives can vary depending on factors like the resort, package inclusions, and additional charges. However, there are options available that cater to different budgets.Whether you're looking for luxury or a more budget-friendly option, the Maldives offers a range of resorts to suit your needs.How Much Does a 7 Days Package Cost for a Couple in Maldives?When it comes to the cost of a 7-day package for a couple in Maldives, we've got you covered.Let's dive into the cost comparison and find the best time to visit this breathtaking destination.Whether you're dreaming of pristine beaches or vibrant marine life, the Maldives offers a honeymoon experience like no other.Is Maldives Good for Honeymoon?Yes, Maldives is absolutely perfect for honeymooners! With its secluded luxury and romantic experiences, it offers an ideal setting to embrace newly wedded bliss.The best time to visit Maldives for a honeymoon is from December to April, when the weather is perfect for island hopping and water sports.From romantic candlelit dinners on the beach to snorkeling in crystal-clear waters, Maldives offers a range of romantic activities that will make your honeymoon unforgettable.Is 3 Nights in Maldives Enough?Is 3 nights in the Maldives enough for a honeymoon? Well, it depends on what you're looking for. While some may say that a longer stay allows for a more relaxed and indulgent experience, 3 nights can still be a wonderful time to enjoy the beauty of the Maldives.During this short duration, you can make the most of activities like snorkeling, scuba diving, and kayaking. Plus, you can indulge in romantic experiences like a private dinner for two on a secluded island.ConclusionIn conclusion, the Maldives Island Honeymoon Package offers a dreamy escape for couples seeking a romantic getaway. With its luxurious resorts, breathtaking views, and exclusive amenities, it's no wonder that the Maldives is considered the ultimate honeymoon destination.Did you know that the Maldives is home to over 1,000 coral islands? This unique statistic showcases the abundance of natural beauty and opportunities for exploration that await honeymooners in this tropical paradise.
submitted by Sweet-Count2557 to worldkidstravel [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 23:08 AutumnFanatic [22/M4F] Hi! Cute nerdy guy who gets zero social interaction looking for a female interested in forming an intimate connection

Why did the farmer visit the pharmacy? To speak with the farm-assist.
Hi and welcome to my post! Wanted to start off with a funny to me dad joke.
Nice to meet you, I'm Dylan! To put it simple, I am a single 22 year old man who has been pretty lonely in life and lacking in female connection and interaction. And part of what comes with that is the desire to be intimate with a person. I am very mature for my age and will always be respectful of your boundaries and feelings, especially with anything sexual. Lately all I have is myself when it comes to sexual desires, so I would like to have someone to keep company with in that regard too.
I'm just relaxing at work since there's nothing really going on and thinking about going home tonight and burning a woodwick candle. Perfect for when there's a storm outside. I love candles! 🕯️ Sometimes a campfire outside on a fall night or a crackling WoodWick candle is a relaxing constant among our busy and hectic world. It's nice to just disconnect, feel grounded and happy in your own little cozy space. Feeling calm and collected and at peace. Something that fewer people take the time to do these days.
I am seeking a woman around my age or older to build a close connection with that could possibly lead to a relationship and something intimate which includes the possibility of teasing/sharing pics etc. but only when we were comfortable. Figured I would be open in my Intentions as that's the best way to be.
You:
Kind, respectful, and easy going.
Comfortable with the idea of eventually sharing intimate things together.
Willing to eventually move off of Reddit.
Want something genuine and fun!
Are honest in your intentions and a good person to be around!
That's about it, we will get along great I know it.
I've been feeling a little bummed out lately. I always try and stay happy and see the best in things. But.. I've just been so alone. Most of my whole childhood and adult years have been spent feeling lonely. I grew up surrounded by cornfields which was peaceful but also has a lonely aspect to it. My family never really were close and never did anything as a family really. And part of it too is the fact that I never had any neighbors my age to interact with. But aside from that, my adult life has been very lonely. I'm just always by myself. I barely have any meaningful adult relationships or experiences, or even any friends.
I work a 3-11 job in building maintenance at my company world headquarters building which I love, but again it's very lonely. I work the off shift so the building is always empty. I don't get normal social interaction with people my age or a chance to build relationships. I only have 3 older men as co-workers and we are mostly in the basement away from any people on the floors from knowing our existence. I always walk the floors and see office people laughing and chatting with their coworkers and I just don't have that kind of experience. And just.. no one knows I exist really. Everyone probably assumes I have a lot of friends, but I'm struggling inside with being so alone and trying to meet people and get past the "hi how are you?" "I'm good thanks" stage. Most people don't seem to want to talk beyond that. And most women are already in relationships and thus it would seem weird to approach them in an office setting trying to get to know them deeper. But man those "hi how are yous" are the only real interactions I get during my day.. so thus I decided to come here lol. Rant over, sorry! I promise I'm not a downer. 😅
Now for some things about me!
As you can tell, I am very mature for my age and am polite and have good grammar which unfortunately not everyone my age does anymore lol. I am not active at all on social media/internet culture really and don't know much about all the slang the younger people these days use. I feel like I'm 50. 🤣
I am left handed which is pretty cool. I'm not much of a party person or a drinker, I much prefer a quiet night at home and maybe a beer or two on a weekend but that's about it. I am simple and stay out of drama and trouble and don't get much into politics or other things that cause drama with people. I much prefer a relaxing campfire and a night at home and to just let the world keep on turning haha. I consider myself pretty intelligent and mature, especially for my age which is why I'm open to older ladies.
Physically I'm 180 pounds, have brown hair, green eyes, and a typical build. There's a few pictures on my profile.
Some of my hobbies are:
• Photography
I have a Nikon D200 and D5500 that I love to shoot with. I love nature scenes, abstract, black and white/goth kinda photography, sunsets, etc. it's so fun to just let your mind explore. It's not about what camera you have, but those who are behind the camera! I'm gonna try and photograph the northern lights tonight!
• Cooking and baking
I loveeee to cook and bake! I enjoy making various meals but also love to just have a frozen pizza once in awhile or something like that. I recently made homemade chili which turned out great. I love to bake, especially in the fall! I love pies, cakes, pastries, cookies, etc. I restored a vintage KitchenAid mixer that needed tbe gearbox rebuilt. Eventually I would love to practice home canning my own food.
• Music
Oh my gosh, I like so much!! Alternative rock, punk, post punk, electronic, synth pop, psychedelic rock, hard rock, etc. I am very non judgemental and open when it comes to music. My three current favorite bands are Type O Negative, Joy Division, and the Cure.
• Nature walks and camping
I really enjoy camping, making fires, and relaxing by a campfire. I love to take walks outside and just enjoy the beauty and simplicity of nature. It's wonderful, especially in a world so focused on everything digital.
• Repairing things
I'm a maintenance guy and one of my hobbies is electronics repair so I am good with my hands and just all around good at troubleshooting and fixing all sorts of things around the house. Last week I helped my elderly neighbor get his tractor started, it needed a new component in the starting circuit. So I'm pretty handy which... Comes in handy! 😂
• Autumn 🍁
This isn't a hobby per say, but man do I love the fall!!! It's my absolute favorite time of the year. Oh my gosh. The beautiful colors, crisp cool air, misty and foggy days, rain, lack of bugs, being cuddled up with a candle or by the fire drinking a tea, etc. I love it! There's only two seasons for me. Fall, and waiting for fall! Haha.
• Scented Candles and incense
Going along with my love for fall, I absolutely love candles! I have like 30 something lol. 😂 Currently my favorite are WoodWick, which are owned by Yankee candle. They have such a soothing crackle and the scents are great! I also love to burn incense from time to time as well. I have cottagecore hippie vibes.
• Old houses and architecture
I love old houses! Especially 1900s and Victorian era homes. Old homes have so much character to them and are just so beautiful from a time when people took pride in their craft. I strongly dislike the modern cookie cutter cheap construction of homes today. I would love to live in an old home one day. I also love their architecture and uniqueness, as well as architecture of old cathedrals and other buildings.
• Relaxing
Basic I know, but sometimes on the weekend I just love to get cozy in bed and relax and put on a YouTube video or an album! 😊
That's about it for me, I'm a pretty laid back and simple person. My ideal person is someone who is respectful and honest! I am very straightforward and open minded and would hope that you are as well.
If I seem interesting to you at all I would love to hear from you!
Thank you so much for reading.
submitted by AutumnFanatic to MeetNewPeopleHere [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 22:31 Toysrsux Looking to go Remote

I've been working in warehousing for the last 10 years and have gotten some bad news about my back. Long story short, I won't be able to do much more physical labor without extensive physical therapy and surgery, and I was wondering if there were any remote jobs that you could recommend me? I'm good with computers, I'd like to think I'm charismatic enough to do big boy white collar work, and I already have a room set up in my house that can double as an office. I know an old friend of mine used to do data entry, and it's always interested me, but I'm afraid that I won't have the background to get selected. Do you guys have any recommendations for remote jobs that pay more than or around $42,000 a year that also aren't scams?
submitted by Toysrsux to RemoteJobs [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 22:30 Ben_Elohim_2020 The Nature of Family [Chapter 17]

Credit to Blue for the wonderful cover art of Trilvri
Thank you to:
u/SpacePaladin15 for creating the Nature of Predators universe.
u/EdibleGojid, author of Dark Cuts, for proofreading.
EmClear, aspiring author, for proofreading
You, the reader, for your support. I love reading your comments.
Please consider reading the works of my proofreaders as they’re all authors of excellent stories and be sure to check the links below for more of my work and beautiful art from members of the community.
[First] [Previous] [Next] [Master List of Stories, Art, and More!]
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Memory transcription subject: Sawvek, Junior Extermination Officer
Date [standardised human time]: October 5th, 2136
Hard foam presses uncomfortably up against delicate pressure points situated across the length of my entire body, building up to an unbearable ache that makes me shift and turn against the thin mattress pad. I yank at the rough old blanket I’d taken out of storage and clutch it even tighter around my body, trying to keep out the chill. The best racks, the ones near the heating vents, had already been claimed long before I’d decided to move into the Guild House’s Barracks and it doesn’t seem likely that the current occupants will be giving up their spots any time soon.
My mind is still racing from the events of last paw, replaying the scene over and over again in my dreams and in my head. The way my brother had looked at me… That look on his face when he’d seen the real me…
My paw gives a sympathetic throb in memory, still aching from where it had met the wall, but at least I had been able to wrap it up a bit and stop the bleeding. I feel like I should take it as a small miracle that it isn't broken. More medical bills are the last thing I need right now.
I turn about in the bunk once more, rolling around in vain to try and find a comfortable position that doesn’t seem to exist. Through a conscious act of will I try to empty my mind and sleep, but the very act of trying not to think about things only brings them bubbling back up to the surface of my thoughts. My heartbeat echoes in my ears, a damnable drumming sound brought about by the exertion of my own restless tossing and turning. Out in the hallway I can hear the muffled shuffling of feet and murmurs of conversation. The Guild Hall never sleeps, and it seems that neither would I this paw.
Electing to abandon the attempt as hopeless, I cut my rest claw short and get up, venturing out into the hallway. If I can’t sleep anyway then I might as well start my waking claw early, maybe get in a little exercise. It’s not so bad when it’s self-directed, almost fun in a way. If our family had the money to support it then maybe I could have been an athlete of some variety growing up. I had always possessed something of a natural physicality.
“Stop wasting time with worthless questions about what could have been, Killer.” The voice interjects, early and active today by the sound of it. “You’ll never amount to anything more than a wild predator kept on a leash.”
There’s nothing to do but sigh and carry on. It was right after all. This is it. This is my life now.
Making my way down the hallway towards the gym I find myself walking past a row of private offices assigned to some of the more veteran officers on staff. Most are empty at this claw, their occupants either asleep or off doing other work. One room in particular catches my attention though, the one belonging to our newest PRED Team Commander.
The door leading inside is open and ajar, seemingly forgotten in the midst of more pressing business and granting me a look inside. The entire room is a mess, papers and binders strewn about everywhere with official looking documents littering the floor. A map of the city decorates the otherwise unadorned and impersonal space. On its face it hosts a variety of multicoloured pins, all connecting seemingly arbitrary locations as well as photographs of people and places from the records department. The face of the former PRED Team Commander, Vrienna, looks out at me once again with the same cruel eyes that decorate the memorial wall. Beside her photo are another pair of eyes, a pair I recognise, but not one I would have expected to see here.
Trilvri, my brother’s creepy coworker, the one who’d brought him home the night he’d drunk himself into a stupor, stares out at me from the wall. He was younger in this photo, barely of age, if even that, and dressed in a regulation space corps flight suit, but I could still recognise him. Trilvri’s eyes appear somehow more lively than when I had met him in person, though it does nothing to improve his overall disposition, looking, as they are, as if behind them resides only hatred and a feral desire to kill and rend. Come to think of it, he had mentioned he used to be in the corps hadn’t he? ‘Used to’ being the operative word. When I’d asked he hadn’t seemed particularly fond of his time in the service…
Situated as he is next to Vrienna like that, their pitch-black wool and evil-looking eyes bear a striking resemblance. It was the exact same sort of predatory expression that bore into your soul, the kind that made me feel weak and exposed, the same kind that was worn by-
“What do you think you’re doing in my office?” A voice asks from behind, nonplussed, but with a casual depth of power and authority behind it that makes me freeze on the spot.
“Commander Glagrig, Sir!” I turn about on the spot, fixed at attention in the doorway as I stare up at the man himself. “I’m sorry to intrude. I noticed someone had forgotten to close the door so I was just going to secure it.”
“I see.” Glagrig doesn’t seem to believe a word of it, but neither does he seem inclined to press the issue. “At ease. Tell me, do you recognise the man in the photo there? Have you ever seen him before?”
“No, Commander.” I lie reflexively as I shift to a parade rest, not fully knowing why, but knowing that whatever is going on I want no part of it, for me or my brother. It’s only after the fact that it occurs to me that lying might be worse than telling the truth.
“How… regrettable.” The prestige officer says plainly and I can’t tell whether he believes me or not. “If you do ever catch sight of this individual, then be sure to let me know immediately.”
“Y-Yes, Commander.” I subconsciously swallow with apprehension, hoping that he doesn’t notice. I want nothing more than to run away as quickly as I can, but I haven’t been dismissed yet.
“Junior Officer Sawvek, was it?” Glagrig carries on, looking me up and down, dissecting me with his eyes. “You have quite the interesting record on file and Officer Intalran is quite adamant about your potential. Your simulator results speak for themselves, even if they are just simulations.”
“Thank you, Commander.” I can feel myself growing dizzy as I answer with uncertainty.
“Don’t thank me,” the all-consuming void in front of me replies with no hint of warmth, “just remember that your performance is under evaluation. It’s in my interests to keep note of promising young aspirants who might someday join my team, and I would hate to see you squander your talents.”
“I-I understand, Commander.” I flick my tail in agreement, straining not to look away towards the floor.
“Dismissed.” Glagrig brushes past me as he enters his office, moving to shut the door behind himself.
“Um, Commander?” I ask just before the door shuts, feeling a beckoning call of curiosity that even the predatory prestige exterminator couldn’t crush. “If you don’t mind me asking… Why do you have all that stuff up on the wall there?”
The door opens again, just a crack, and I can feel my superiors' weighty presence bearing down on me, almost suffocating in its intensity. “It’s simply a personal matter. I have reason to believe that the prior investigation regarding the kelach incident was conducted according to… insufficient standards. The predator responsible was never found and I intend to remedy that deficiency.”
“How hard could it be to find a kelach?” I tilt my ears in confusion. “They're huge!”
“Despite initial reports,” he answers with an ominous, cold tone that sends a chill up my spine, “it may be possible that we're dealing with something far more dangerous than just a kelach.”
“T-Thank you, Commander.” I flick my tail in appreciation and the door closes.
I breathe a sigh of relief as the malevolent aura recedes. That was too close.
“And you’re a complete moron going back to ask him more questions afterwards, Killer.” The voice rises with amusement. “What? Do you want him to figure you out and turn you to cinders? Only a matter of time, Killer.”
“Ugh, shut up.” I mutter under my breath, quickly turning back around to make sure Commander Glagrig didn’t hear me, but when no reprisal comes I quickly depart. If I’m gonna be stupid I should at least try not to do so right in front of his office.
As the imminent threat of our in-house prestige exterminator dwindles so too does the energy driven by the adrenaline of the encounter. It figures that the moment I roll out of bed I want to take a nap again, but I know the moment I lie back down I’ll be back to full wakefulness in an instant. That’s just how that sort of thing works. With that in mind there’s really only one solution, a big, steaming hot cup of tea.
Making my way towards the tea machine I spot Jonsco, the feisty little primitive that mans our dispatch centre, smacking the top of the dispenser with a clenched paw while holding a mug underneath it.
“Is the tea machine fixed?” I ask as I pull out a mug from the cabinet myself.
Jonsco sighs heavily and shoots me a combative glare. “For the last time it’s not my brahking job to fix this damn tea machine! You got a problem with that then you can go pester someone else about it!”
I shrink back under the harsh rebuke. Jonsco may be small, but there was as much rage and fury condensed into that little package as anyone else in this department. Maybe more.
“I… I didn’t mean to imply…I just wanted to know if it was working again or not… Sorry.” I sputter out, feeling properly admonished as I look away towards the ground.
Jonsco looks at me quizzically, his hard glare softening somewhat as he seems to truly see me for the first time before returning to his usual scowl.
“Right…Whatever you say…” With one final smack the machine coughs and chokes, sputtering to life with a struggle, and a small trickle of freshly brewed tea begins to fill Jonsco’s cup. “The machine is on the fritz again as usual, but if you hit it just right, do a little percussive maintenance, then you can get it started again.”
“Thanks, Jonsco.” I lean back against the wall and watch as the mug slowly fills, impressed by the primitives know-how. “That's actually pretty smart of you.”
“For a ‘primitive’ right?” The words are barbed and spiteful, but lack his typical enthusiasm, more of a simple statement of fact than a real question. I couldn't exactly deny it, those had been my thoughts, and so the silence drags on awkwardly, marked only by the splash of tea falling into the steadily rising pool.
“What are you doing here at this claw anyway?” I eventually ask, dodging the question entirely. “We’ve still got at least another half-claw until our crew's shift is supposed to start.”
“I could ask you the same thing, you know?” The angry little dispatch operator retorts. “I'm here early working an overtime shift so I can afford to put food on my family's table. It's expensive feeding that many mouths. What's your excuse?”
“I had a fight with my brother…” I rub the back of my neck as I turn away abashedly, “moved out of the apartment and into the barracks full time… couldn't sleep…”
“Well then you should hurry up and work on patching things up with him.” Jonsco looks at me with an uncharacteristic hint of sympathy in his eyes. “Your family are the only ones who might actually care. This Gods-damned place is a slyther’s nest and no one here gives a speh about you or your problems. If you want my advice, you should do your best to spend as little time in this cesspool as possible.”
With his cup now full, Jobsco steps back from the machine and begins walking out towards the main hall.
“Thanks, Jonsco.” My words stop him in his tracks as he walks away from me. “I appreciate it.”
“... You're welcome.” He says after a short pause, glancing back to look at me one more time before leaving. “See you around, Sawvek.”
Taking advantage of the tea machine while it’s still mostly working, I fill up my own cup and drink deeply of the warm, fragrant beverage. The taste is bitter and unpleasant, just about the quality I would expect of this Guild Hall, but even at the first taste it’s evident that it’s been loaded with an extra strength dose of caffeine. I down the drink quickly and rinse out the cup before continuing on my journey towards the training hall. Fatigue begins to fall away as I walk, bit by bit as the drug makes its way into my bloodstream, blocking off sleep receptors and energising me. I know I’ll probably pay for it later, no amount of caffeine can actually replace sleep, but for now it feels good and I can see how some people can get addicted to the stuff.
A loud, metallic clanging emanates from the gym as I approach, something unexpected for this time of paw. No one's reserved space in the gym for this claw and not many people are industrious enough to sweat on their own initiative. Peeking my head inside the door I spy Bikim, the perfect, privileged, ‘holier than thou’ brahkass occupying the otherwise empty weight room. His irritatingly handsome face is taut with strain as he performs a series of weighted squats, his back and leg muscles straining underneath his short-cropped wool, and he pants heavily under the exertion.
I’m half tempted just to leave and go back to bed despite the fact that there’s no way I’d be getting any sleep with the tea running through my system. It’s too early in the paw to deal with Bikim’s speh. Before I can slip away unnoticed though, he spots me. I give a heavy sigh and continue my way inside. There's nothing to be done for it now. Trying to back out now would only make things worse later, a sign of weakness.
“What… Do you want… Predator?” Bikim asks between gulps of air as he reracks his weights, practically hanging off the bar to support himself on shaky legs.
“Good paw to you too, Bikim.” I say, forcing civility into my tone. “I’m here to use the equipment. Same as you. I'm allowed.”
“Whatever…” He eyes me with suspicion. “Just keep your distance… I don't want to catch any of your taint.”
“Believe me,” I flick my tail out in irritation, “I intend to.”
Looking around the room for available spots, I march my way over towards a cable machine on the opposite side of the room. Not nearly as far from Bikim as I would like, but the farthest I can get without leaving the weight area entirely. Bikim watches me all the while as I seat myself down and begin adjusting the machine. Eventually he grows tired of watching me fumble around with the machine and returns to his own exercises with a displeased flick of the tail, quite obviously judging me for my lack of experience with the equipment.
A tense sort of quiet settles over the room as we each go about our business, trying our best to ignore one another. Bikim slowly winds his way around the room, cycling from station to station to exercise all the different parts of his body in sequence before repeating it all again. He seems to bypass my corner of the room, glancing over at me with each repetition of his pattern. For myself, I stay put where I am, taking advantage of the varied exercises offered by the versatile machine to experiment with different muscle groups. Occasionally I slip up, dropping the weights with a loud clang that always draws Bikim’s ire. Every time he seems just a bit more disgruntled, a bit less patient. Eventually, the constant disruption reaches a tipping point and the pompous, self-entitled jerk walks over to confront me.
“Do you always do this?” He asks rhetorically. “If you keep slamming the weights like that you're gonna break it. Your form is speh so either fix it or lower the weight so you don't have to keep compensating. Better yet, just leave. You’ve been monopolising the cable machine for almost half a claw now. I don't know why you're even here in the first place.”
“Oh, look at Mr. Know-it-all thinking he can just go around telling us what to do, eh Killer?” The voice rises to the challenge. “Where does a guy like that who's been handed everything his whole life think he can get off with telling us how we should be doing anything?”
“Brahk off Bikim!” I don't even try to reign in the predator inside, feeling justified in letting it roam free for once. “I didn't ask for your advice and you don't get to kick me out of the weight room just because you can't wait your turn! I'm here because I don't have anywhere else to go! Ever since Intalran dragged me into this stupid Guild this brahking job has taken over my entire life! I don't even have a home to go back to anymore!”
Bikim's body tenses at my tirade and his tail flicks out aggressively like a whip.
“That's your own damn fault, predator!” He shouts back, eager for the excuse to vent his own frustrations. “Maybe if you weren't just some blood-starved beast out roaming the streets then you wouldn't be here right now! I’ve read your file! You got a history of herdless behaviour and physical altercations! Someone should have institutionalised you a long time ago, but someone took pity on you and let you slip through the cracks because of your poor dying mommy! They should have known it would come back to bite them! A normal, functional member of the herd wouldn't even think to pick a flamer up off the ground and burn another person to death with it! But you? You did it instinctively! You revelled in it!”
“You think that was easy for me!” I get up and walk towards him as I yell incredulously. “You think I asked for that to happen! You think it was fun for me to get choked out and almost eaten! That thing I burned wasn't even a person anymore! It was a predator in the middle of a feeding frenzy! So yeah, I did what I did, and you know what? It's a good thing I did! If I wasn't a freak of nature then that thing would have kept on going and kept on killing! Last I checked, preventing that sorta thing was supposed to be your job, but I had to be the one to step up! Now I have to live with the consequences of my actions every paw, knowing that I’m a Protector-damned killer that doesn't belong anywhere! Maybe you, in your infinite wisdom, would've known the perfect thing to do in that situation, but I’m not you! I’ve had to work and struggle for every little thing I have! Not just had it handed to me on a silver platter!”
“Oh, so you got me all figured out do you?” Sarcasm drips from Bikim's mouth as he looks down on me. “You don't know me. You don't know my life or what I’ve been through, how hard I’ve worked to get where I am. You just see the end product from cycles of effort and assume that it's always been that way, that it's always been that easy. It hasn't.”
“Yes, I’m sure you had it so hard growing up Bikim.” Saying it aloud almost makes me laugh. “You’re such a child of privilege that it drips off of you with every move you make and every word you say. I hate people like you, thinking that you're better than everyone else just because you were lucky enough to be born into wealth and status. Try living like the other side for a change, scrounging for every credit just so you can afford to eat, and then try to tell me how hard you had it with a full belly and a warm home!”
“You’re right, predator,” Bikim says contemptuously, “I am a child of privilege. My family has a long and decorated military tradition, my father is a captain for the space corps, a brahking hero, and I’ve reaped the benefits of that. That privilege came at a cost though, and that’s called expectations. Second best is not good enough and I've had to put in ten times the effort as anyone else my whole life just to meet standards! At least you grew up with a father who was there for you and loved you without the condition that everything you do is perfect!”
“All that talk about reading my file and you didn't even get past the first page did you?” I snap at him with a snarl. “ I didn't grow up with a father at all! He's been dead since I was in elementary school! Killed in action! I barely even remember him anymore!”
That one seems to give Bikim pause, but I’m not done yet.
“If you and your whole family are such a bunch of brahking heroes then how come you're here, working as a common garrison exterminator in a run-down backwater city like this?” I taunt. “Shouldn't you be out gallantly fighting the Arxur with one of the fleets or on a colony pacification force rather than making my life here harder than it already is?”
“That's the price for failing to meet expectations,” Bikim quiets down, drawing away from the world and into himself, “the price for knocking up a beautiful, wonderful girl right after graduation and refusing to get rid of it afterwards. You get cut off. You lose that privilege, and you do whatever you have to in order to provide and try to be a good role model for your son.”
Now that one threw me for a loop. In the short time I’ve known Bikim I’ve had a lot of thoughts about him, few of them good, but never would I have expected him to be the type to take responsibility… For anything. Still, there is one thing about his story that doesn't line up…
“Oh really?” I take a step back as I watch for his reaction closely. “I seem to recall Jonsco mentioned just the other day that your wife had left you for a Human.”
“Don't you bring that brahking primitive into this!” Bikim's anger flares in an instant before returning to a subtle simmer of regret. “We’ve just been having a… a rough patch in our relationship. I’m not giving up on us. I’ll win her back. She's just… confused and being taken advantage of! It's all that damn predators fault!” Bikim sighs and sits down on a nearby bench. “You're not the only one whose had something taken from them because of this job. You're not the only one without a home to go back to.”
Looking at Bikim now, a sad, pathetic man moping on the bench with nothing better to do on his rest claw than to try to externalise his inner pain… I find it hard to stay angry at him. He's still a narcissistic brahk ass and a complete jerk, but it's hard to truly hate someone when you actually know them. I had made quite a few assumptions about him when we first met, and he certainly hadn't helped my impression of him since, but… perhaps I was wrong to judge him so harshly?
“Nah,” the voice chortles, “he’s a piece of speh that got what he brahking deserves for being an insufferable prick.”
Overhead the intercom crackles to life and I can hear Jonsco's voice reverberating over the airwaves.
“Officers Vaesh and Sawvek please report to the briefing area for assignment. Repeat. Officers Vaesh and Sawvek please report to the briefing area for assignment.”
“Sounds like it's time for your first field assignment, Kid.” Bikim says, staring up at the intercom. “At least it gets you out of my wool. Try not to brahk it up and make the rest of us look bad.”
“Hmph.” I turn to leave, muttering to myself. “Stupid brahkass.”
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/N - Hello! Sorry this one took a while. Like I mentioned before I got delayed working on my Ficnapping chapter as well as a crossover One-shot that's still in progress (but hopefully will be done soon). In other news we have new art of Sawvek's life-changing encounter in the Builder's Lane Bloodbath as drawn by Miglove and you can still find that and everything else Nature of Family in the new Master Post linked up above.
If you like the story then please remember to upvote, comment, and use the “!Subscribeme” function to be alerted to all new posts. I post as often as I can but real life has a tendency of getting in the way and my job makes it almost impossible to keep to any kind of schedule. Your engagement and support go a long way towards helping to keep me on track and motivated, so thank you very much for reading and I hope you'll stay tuned for next chapter!
submitted by Ben_Elohim_2020 to NatureofPredators [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 22:28 EccentricSage81 nanotech hydrophobic cleaning!

The lotus leaf is listed as the greatest cleaning agent known to mankind in wikis and was the religious symbol of countless religions. when dirt is wet and becomes sticky mud it dries caked on and stuck and traps or allows for other air or splashes or spills to sort of stick. nanotech is so much smaller its like a big warehouse of crates having dust settle between them and by wiping and buffing and polishing around you remove some of the dirt hopefully most of it and get it underneath it will go right through and under about anything, got a tarpaulin or umm curtains over the window spray the curtains and unseen fine nanotech SHINES the window beautiful perfect coatings. the thin film is like nonstick frypan stuff but not the teflon stuff its safe diamonds arent teflon so the moisture and dirt wont stick as much and easily clean off or sorta slide down? nanotech like INKS and alcohol dyes (food coloring) or other paint pigment powders and !SOME! clearcoat polishes over a certain hardness rating which are safe for homes as under sapphire 9H or 10H it might be some sort of waste product cheap being sold as something like SCOTCH GUARD which may or may not have those long lasting microplastics which could be tiny serrated or jagged. If something is 9H or 10H diamond or sapphire hardness the few enamels or epoxys that bond that strong are small enough and dense that their structure is so tiny it slips through and under inside things and can reinforce them but doesnt damage round cells in organisms. the same way glass cleaner must be diluted and used everywhere as glass is porous and prehistoric volcanic obsidian glass walking spiders can walk up glass with special microhooks in their feet for the holes in glass look a bit like a golf ball dimples everywhere with tiny hole looks like hair lines through it like imagine those office ceiling panels with the holes in white particle board. So glass cleaner cleans out the gunk or else your windows will have a brownness you struggle to clean out of the glass without a deep penetrating cleaning agent that comes out looking a bit like brown river water thats discolored from the porous rocks in the water having umm tiny microorganisms yep rivers of brown. So a tiny drop of glass cleaner or a couple drops in a spray bottle or a bucket of water and maybe some one or two drops hydrophobic glass coating or quickpaint coat and a tiny drop or two or a single spray of PLASTIC AND LEATHER RESTORER
with these drops of stuff in water in a spray bottle or bucket you maybe wanna find something with a high % percentage of surfactants on the back of the detergent/soap bottle to wipe out germs and uhh its the cleaning component in all bubbling detergents the sort of science and cleaning and germ killing powers of it. Some floor cleaners made for timber floors that might be a little streaky and say like a polish or cure or something that maybe gives timber a little bit of a darker look when used regularly and appears subtly more expensive looking like hardwood but isnt carbonizing its a type of cellular structure bonding that reinforces not prehistoric torture the wood into looking blowtorched carbon stuff chemicals its a cleaning product disenfectant that protects and polishes but it needs some sprays of water then a spray or a few drops then buff it in and then dust mop it dry as its got some mild ANTISTATIC which helps lift up dust.. i found one that cleans like magic at my asian supermarkets but im not recommending specific brands over the other its the science of cleaning. then maybe put in a couple drops or up to a teaspoon of 10H hardness and like spray your laundry on the line or your carpet or whatever.. i do everything.. some products not 9H or greater will use some unsafe superglues which ignite cotton fabrics into flames or other things.. now house construction products like liquid nails brown glue for holding timber together might have a clear version called liquid glass that might be for window glazing or whatever i hadnt checked if its safe to use on fabrics and other surfaces the POINT of it is the NAME might say liquid glass but its maybe not silicon dioxide that the florist uses to keep their plants fresh for 2 weeks longer liquid glass as in THAT liquid glass like on your phones nanotech liquid screen protector you apply several coats of one each day then reapply every 8 months the cheap stuff.. some of the auto ones for cars can last 9 or 10 years. i found lots of bargain store looking products of sites like aliexpress or maybe amazon with brands like glassxkare or fantastic XML and adams polishes for tiny vials of 50ml or less of 10H hardness affordable or fantastic XML for like a big 500ML 9H hardness spray bottle that when sprayed into a spray bottle of water and glass cleaner and a drop of hydrophobic coating and plastic and leather restorer and a tiny drop of timber floor polish cleaner that may or may not make it a tiny bit streaky or splotchy the hydrophobic coatings may also be too hydrophobic you can tell if your spray bottle wont suck up water because the water cant enter the tube but if you spray a couple spray bottles of such tiny drops the nozzle will clog and not spray anymore.. nanocoatings can be tricky i dunno what to do. if its scratch protect films make it streaky and require buffing power tools and youre not loud big tools like me maybe aim it at carpets and couches rather than windows and do those without the floor polish. I've found no sort of uhh possible forseeable reasons for any health issues and my stuff looks and FEELS amazingly better, i think bathroom toilets or tiles or shower and tap fixtures or.. walls and floors and furniture and clothes.. i think id only not try spraying my drinking cups and cutlery but i honestly think i might need to drink the stuff its THAT GOOD. my cats LOVE IT! its kinda scary awesome.. i tried brands of plastic and leather restorer and quick paint coat and hydrophobic glass coating from HGKJ black and green labels. I couldnt tell you how safe it is, i just struggled as im a disability pensioner and saw our really old house falling apart and this damn near reversed a few decades off it and brand new snow clothing and jackets and throw rugs i bought felt BETTER THAN NEW i mean ridiculously better than new. ancient poisons used to clean HALF as good and were feared for being too good and too cheap. But diamonds and liquid diamond are naturally occuring hot springs reactions and the reason monkeys stay in there. its literally pretty much good for all life.
(plastic and leather restorer see leather deep conditioner but better and sorta similar to glass cleaner but a sort of UV protect oil and reinforce that adds the rich deep black color back to PU leathers and those vinyl anime girl figures yellowing from the sunlight and UV will becomes their original selves again or old yellowy car headlight covers get fixed up but so do most paints and timbers and other things. but you wanna seal it in with a nano coating when cleaning it out plastic and leather restorer is used in plastic manufacture and when you peel those clear plastic film stickers off shiny new products they help prevent its slow gradual evapouration and why they look so nice and black and arent just to prevent scratches. several days later plastic and leather restorers super shiny rich deep 'wet hair look for your black pleather chair' will seem to have worn off but its UV protect and other things will still be there and some polishes waxes or coatings can help keep it and its colors and UV protect there a bit longer well the look the restorer itself keeps it like how it was quite a while years? till it goes yellowy or faded again.)
So when we look at the water beading on lotus/lily pad leaves and things, ancient people used saps and old polishes and obsidian blades arrowheads since dinosaurs era. which with 200 times sharper than steel knives carbon nanotech its super dangerous deadly and was mostly all used up and we swapped it all out for modern glasses and glazing and safety glass so we dont slice our selves into piles of body parts on invisible pieces. Since the days of ink and whetstone nanotech advanced impossibly high particularly in volcanic hot springs countrys with samurai swords and caligraphy brush ink. Trying to find the scientifically safest and best possible cleaning products super affordably that might be useful for washing clothes, cars, metals plastics and other things.. are strangely not at the home hardware stores.. you see synthetic diamonds been on the gem market for centuries but too expensive to produce till modern different approaches with lasers and different gas precipitation with super high electricity concentrated over weeks or months or special electrolosys solutions will slowly layer and create diamonds but the diamond solution precipitated that grouped to each other or doesnt perfectly slot into the sort of tetris like bonds of the outer layers of the diamond a bit like diamond growth needs spaghetti O's and we're raining alphabet soup at it till with a bout 30% of the letters having a good chance of sticking. every few hours the solution of sublimation precipitate is swapped out creating a couple oven trays of 'liquid diamond solution' 10H hardness brightness and shines up glass with a thin film of diamond giving it moisture modest water resist we can use graphene to increase water resist and 10H+ hardness and apply hydrophobic coatings.. So who makes lots of these liquid finishes and what are they used for? Most are produced by a car race track owner who insists they protect their cars before taking them out onto the track or a speck of dirt or sand might scratch up the paint. But if i wanted to like power pressure washer spray it up onto my roof tiles and thin out some of that lichen and make them more uhh watertight leaks arent a concern but it might prevent a terrible future. anybody know why its not already a thing and there isnt countless guides on the ideal ratios and stuff? i mean its about as expensive as laundry detergent concentrate and used to be in most of those still is in some developed countries.. its what makes american movie sets look so umm bright and shiny and polished and awesome and makes mansions look like mansions or wealthy look and feel and its where LUXURY COMES FROM. is my cheap poor persons attempt at cleaning my own home not good? even if its mildly bad i think i'd use it forever. ESPECIALLY on things like 100% bamboo bed sheets i bought cheap ones from an australian online retailer and a few coatings of sprays and they felt and looked so dang shiny and awesome. Some bottles of the stuff claim 6 drops coats the car but remember many are diluted or not full strength or dont last long as advertised or a big bottle 500ML might be 3months to a year.. rather than tiny medicine bottle 50ml or 30ml sized 3-5 years most i guess, you need to keep applying a coat very often but having it not be streaky or buffing it in is tough so i maybe shaved years off its coating and thinned it out and just apply a bunch of coats as often product claims 9H its only a tiny % the whole spray bottle and needs many many applications to approach that but it is POSSIBLE theoretically. remember all glass cleaner is blue colored so when you dilute it with water you shouldnt have it fully color the water too much or its TOO STRONG. 80s people cleaned 80s glazing which maybe radium or lead tincture as radiation blocking films were often lead or radiation lined literally as a radiation shield was a.. film of radiation so it lasted years and needed double or triple glazing for expensive high rise buildings and cleaning heaps of smoky 80s glass dredged out horror mud floods of brown sludge that got them accused of dirtying things, though 80s squeegee thingys are really bad unless you reverse them and press down on a microfibre cloth with them for good even pressuer and a nice streak free clean using the back black rubber blade part to make a thin line of glass cleaning cloth good contact i previously saw reverse squeegee you mount cleaning cloths into specifically but searching i cant find to buy it when i tested it out at home with a squeegee that doesnt clip in like that. are there special tools you guys use? whats the secret? also the purple ceramic graphene ones seem awesome but maybe arent quite close to 9H either.. the bright shine of 10H or 10H+ on tiles and glass.. when apply hydrophobic it looks like zero application of anything somehow its gone for days. does anyone have a more ideal ratios specific or specific active ingredient amounts by weight or dilute with stuff that isnt water to help it keep its years of coating? does using a power washer make it not last? or last longer? or apply streaky splotchy? if its splotchy would more coats over weeks get it all consistent?
the liquid diamond stuff is in many countrys water or whatever.. but uhh concerns about silicosis maybe arent a thing at all if you cough it feels like its cleaning your lungs not harming them. Silicosis happens when criminal retards enter a sandblasting sealed room containment to steal the literally raw materials from factories or whatever or they use water cutting and sand blasting and CNC machines and sharpening blades constantly without sealed enclosure vacuum air scrubber filters. thats what wrecks those benchtop workers also they maybe mixing or breathing wrong epoxys and resins or dont seal them with the correct sealants and polishes and finishes.
submitted by EccentricSage81 to housekeeping [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 22:27 SSGOldschool A three day review of the M7 Spear

TLDR:
At the small post we were on, the 25m zero range and qual range SDZ's did not allow for firing these rifles. Something we only learned after confirming our zeros on the 25m range.
It's still heavy, but after a day or so you stop noticing it until you have to shoot from a standing position or doing are doing CQB. then you are painfully reminded how off balance the rifle is.
The two sample rifles we had were consistently 3 MOA guns.
The non-reciprocating charging handle on the left side is not as cool as I initially thought, and it ruins the whole "truly ambidextrous" feel that the Sig MCX line has.
The folding buttstock can go fuck itself.
A review of the 277 Fury rounds is here and you may need to read it for some context, but I have endeavored to make this review stand alone as much as possible.
Over the course of three days, a friend of mine and I lived with the M7 Spear. We spent time at various ranges, doing "tactical stuff", getting in and out of HMMWV's and GSA's, while trying to figure out the ins-and-outs of the rifle.
My sample, #087, had between 8K and 10K round rounds through it. The number of combat vs training rounds was not tracked, but given the expected barrel life is 10K combat rounds we ran a borescope through the barrel and the chamber to see what we could see.
His sample, #529, had between 6K and 8K of an unknown mix combat and training rounds through it. We ran the borescope through it as well.
There was no real difference in the wear between the two rifles.
We spent the morning of the first day playing around with the ammunition and doing comparisons against 308 168gr SMK, while the ultrasonic cleaner did Gods work on the various bits and bobs of our sample rifles.
Note when we did the ammo comparison we used a Remington 700PSS with 24" barrel. It quickly became apparent when we were testing the rifles, that was a poor benchmark, as the Remington outperformed both rifles in everything but rate of fire. Its a sniper rifle, granted its your Grandfather's sniper rifle, but its still a fucking sniper rifle. The Spear is not, its a battlerifle, and so I won't be including the comparisons here.
We tried cleaning them without the ultrasonic cleaner...but I'm not sure these rifles had ever been properly cleaned before.
I've got mixed feelings about the MCX system. It ticks a lot of boxes, short stroke gas piston, no need for a buffer tube or spring, superior handling of gas when suppressed and so on.
However, when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of the maintenance? I absolutely despise it. Despite owning a MCX in 300 blackout myself, every cleaning session feels overly complex and time consuming.
We kicked off the afternoon with both rifles, setting up for grouping and zeroing—my rig was outfitted with the Tango 6T sporting the "Hellfire" reticle in MOA, resembling your standard rifle scope setup. His, on the other hand, featured the same Tango 6T but with Hellfire in MILS, decked out with the Christmas tree reticle.
Some time back, I made a comment after my initial rounds with the Spear, labeling it a "tack driver." In hindsight, I probably should have clarified that bit. Typically, when shooting a new rifle, if I land three out of five shots within a 1 to 1.5 MOA spread, I chalk up any outliers to user error rather than blaming the rifle or the ammunition.
However, it appears that assumption was a bit off.
Our zeroing and grouping efforts at 100 yards turned into quite the saga. We found ourselves mostly hitting 3 rounds within the 1 to 1.5 MOA range, but occasionally, one or two shots would balloon the group size to between 2.5 and 3 MOA.
Instead of descending into frustration and stubborn attempts to tighten these groups, we opted to settle for anything under three MOA as acceptable for our purposes and proceeded to finalize our zero.
Side note, my last zero group was my best of the day coming it at just over 2 MOA. My friends best group came in at 1.8, and quite honestly he's a better shot than I am.
Research shows that the original specs for the NGSW called for a 4 MOA battle rifle. Despite some noticeable barrel wear on our two test models, both rifles still performed beyond this requirement.
Following our grouping and zeroing session, we spent the remainder of the afternoon plinking with training rounds at 100 yards.
During this, I learned a hard lesson about the non-reciprocating charging handle—it needs to be firmly locked forward before hitting the bolt release on the left side. After a couple of painful mishaps and a few close calls, I finally caught on and made it a routine to ensure the handle was properly set before engaging the bolt release.
I really wanted to get on board with the side charging handle, but after three days, I'm just not a fan. It tended to snag on my gear (Eagle MARCRIS plate carrier) when maneuvering or positioning the rifle to fire, making it less convenient than I had hoped.
Interestingly, I found myself using it more during offhand shooting. I'd instinctively remove my left hand from the pistol grip to work the side charging handle, rather than using my right hand on the traditional top charging handle. Yes, I'm aware this breaks the cardinal rule of keeping your firing hand on the grip, but this method felt more intuitive, similar to operating a bolt-action rifle.
When shooting offhand, the rifle scores highly. I don't often shoot this way, but I encountered none of the usual drawbacks associated with traditional AM platforms. Aside from the tricky side charging handle, the rifle seemed inherently designed for ambidextrous use, which I particularly appreciated when firing left-handed.
I was tempted to launch into a tirade about the ridiculously designed folding stock, but you deserve a more structured critique. Here are the three major gripes:
The stock's release mechanism is a convoluted affair involving an awkward dance of pushing down on the rifle while yanking up on the buttstock just to get it to close.
Once "closed," the stock doesn't truly secure—it juts out at a precarious 20-degree angle, seemingly relying on mere friction to stay in place, which neither of our samples managed successfully.
The overall build felt flimsy and loose, perhaps a consequence of the extensive wear from firing 8,000 to 10,000 rounds.
After wrestling with these issues, we wrapped up with a quick cleaning session for the rifles before heading out to the range we’d "camping" at.
The next day, we arrived ready to group, zero, and qualify with a local unit. We had informed them of our visit and assumed everything was squared away with range control.
However, that assumption fell flat. Turns out, the range’s surface danger zones weren’t set up for the 277 Fury. Just as we finished dialing in our zero (.75 inches low at 25m), range control showed up, questioning our activities.
Following an awkward exchange and the diplomatic offering of a case of beer, they agreed to let us continue and even served as OIC and RSO for the KD range. We proceeded with the old KD qualification, alternating between marking and raising targets, and both of us qualified without any issues.
With some extra time on our hands, and much to the amusement of range control, the session evolved into a lively mix of burpees and sprinting between shooting positions. We experimented with various firing positions and sequences, such as starting from standing unsupported at 100 yards and moving down to kneeling unsupported. This exercise underscored the rifle’s heft yet manageability, while also highlighting how the forward-heavy balance made extended unsupported shooting particularly taxing on the arms and upper back.
The afternoon unfolded with battledrills and land navigation alongside the unit we were scheduled to qualify with. Given the theoretical roles and limited numbers, the platoon leader assigned us to the designated marksman/squad designated marksman roles, which was logical considering we were the only ones equipped with the new rifles while the rest of the squad used M4s.
This setup sparked an intense discussion among the officers about how tactical deployment might shift once the rifle was fully integrated into service. There was plenty of speculation on how military tactics and doctrines would need to adapt to leverage the new capabilities offered by this rifle.
However, I'm somewhat skeptical. I don't see this rifle as the revolutionary game-changer it’s touted to be. While it's undoubtedly suited for the designated marksman role, I doubt the Army will invest the necessary time, money, and resources to train every soldier to this level of proficiency. Consider that there are reserve units that only qualify every four years, often just to help "point-needy" soldiers piggyback for qualification. This rifle won’t alter that reality.
As for the night qualification, we were slated to test that as well, but circumstances didn’t allow for it, so I can’t comment on how the rifle performs at night with night vision devices.
On the third morning, we headed to the LMG range, ready to go full-auto from a bipod, gearing up to tackle the 249 qualification.
Honestly, this was the most amazing shooting experience I've had in ages. The only snag was the 20-round magazine capacity, which felt limiting amid the thrill—it was the only moment of frustration in an otherwise splendid session.
We ran a practice session with the training rounds, followed by a qualification shoot with both the training and combat rounds. By lunchtime, our shoulders were thoroughly sore, but I can't remember the last time I'd grinned that much in a long while.
Post-lunch, we dropped in on some local law enforcement officers who were operating a shoot house. Initially, we navigated the course with M4s to familiarize ourselves with the layout and safety protocols. After getting a handle on things, we switched to the M7s, running through the course using the last of our training rounds, having depleted our combat rounds earlier on the machine gun range.
Both of us found ourselves moving significantly slower with the M7s. Reviewing the footage, it was clear that I was painfully slow to get on target with the M7. It wasn't just about slower movements, but also a delayed response in engagement. Initially, I chalked it up to age, I'm over 50 and a bit heavier than ideal, but the reality struck when I saw I wasn’t this slow with the M4. In fact, I was quicker than some of the officers.
Similarly, my buddy was slower than usual, not lagging behind me, but certainly off his usual pace with the M4.
Interesting side note: We're no longer welcome at that shoot house. The staff was fully aware of our arrival and what we brought along, and everything seemed fine until the exercise wrapped up and we faced some "constructively harsh feedback" about 277 and damage done to the tire and sandbag walls as well as the plywood target backers.
That's rant for another time.
Regarding the suppressor:
It's really more of an enhanced flash hider than a true suppressor. I'm probably a bit biased—shooting a 300 Blackout through a Sig TI suppressor spoils you with its movie hitman silence.
By comparison, the M7 setup was louder than my suppressed .308 shooting 175gr SMK.
On the topic of the optic:
The Tango6 was decent.
The clarity was impressive, and its brightness and MOA configuration were points in its favor.
However, achieving a consistent cheek weld and finding the right optic position for proper eye relief across magnifications 1 through 6, especially from unsupported positions, proved challenging.
The issue could be me, the stock, or the optic itself. While it was somewhat bothersome, it wasn't enough to cause significant frustration.
submitted by SSGOldschool to army [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 22:25 HaykakanTxa Daily News Report: 05/15/2024

Date: 05/15/2024

Reading time: 11 minutes, 2384 words

🪖 Military

The ceremony of withdrawal of peacekeepers from Nagorno-Karabakh took place

Russian peacekeepers were in Nagorno Karabakh based on a statement of November 9, 2020. The military group was supposed to stay in the region until 2025, which could be extended for another five years. The population of Artsakh was subjected to forced displacement, more than 100 thousand people moved from Artsakh to Armenia.
CivilNet

Armenia and Slovakia discuss issues of military-technical cooperation

Armenia participated in the IDEB-2024 defense exhibition in Bratislava, Slovakia, at the invitation of the Slovak Ministry of Defense. A number of agreements have been reached between Armenia and Slovakia.
Armenpress, Armenia, Slovakia discuss expanding defence cooperation

Armenia and India plan to create a working group on defense issues

The first defense consultations between the Ministries of Defense of Armenia and India took place under the chairmanship of Levon Ayvazyan. The progress and development prospects of Armenia-India cooperation in the field of defense were discussed, including military-technical, personnel military education and tactical training, exchange of experience and other fields.
CivilNet, Armenian and Indian Defense Ministries hold first defense consultations in Yerevan, Armenia, India hold first defense consultations

🏛️ Politics & Government

Over 52% of respondents in Armenia support Tavush for Homeland movement to certain extent, Gallup phone poll shows

A total of 35.1% of respondents in Armenia said they “fully support” the Tavush for Homeland movement, Aram Navasardyan, head of the Armenian office of GALLUP International Association, said at a press conference on Wednesday. 17.8% said they feel “more than positively” about the movement, 10% - ‘more than negatively’, 10.5% “absolutely negatively”; 13.6% found it difficult to answer the question.
ArkaAm

Civil disobedience campaigns continue in Yerevan

People demanding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s resignation again blocked streets in Yerevan on May 15.
PanArmenian

The Baku court has extended the terms of detention of Artsakh officials for five months

Former presidents Bako Sahakyan, Arayik Harutyunyan, Davit Babayan and Davit Ishkhanyan are speaking. The detention period of the former President of Artsakh Arkady Ghukasyan was also extended by five months. 23 Armenian servicemen and civilians were arrested in September 2023, after a one-day war against Artsakh.
CivilNet

Political consultations held between foreign ministries of Armenia, Georgia

The Republic of Armenia and Georgia held a round of political consultations in Tbilisi on May 13-14. It is noted that the participants of the meeting reviewed the existing relations between the two countries.
Armenpress, Political consultations held between Foreign Ministries of Armenia and Georgia

Education reforms, institutional development, peace agenda implementation: PM delivers speech at EBRD annual meeting

Nikol Pashinyan attended the opening ceremony of the annual meeting of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in the Republic of Armenia. Armenia's economy has grown by almost 30 percent since the People's Nonviolent Velvet Revolution of 2018.
Armenpress, Prime Minister highly values the partnership with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Armenian PM and EBRD President discuss joint projects and perspectives, EBRD plans to invest up to 500 million Euros in Armenia in 2024, EBRD and InecoBank bolster science innovation hub in Yerevan

Border delimitation between Armenia, Azerbaijan should become a key tool for learning peaceful coexistence - PM

Armenia and Azerbaijan lack experience and knowledge of peaceful co-existence, says Prime Minister. Pashinyan: "What you don't know brings uncertainties, concerns, tensions, which you understandably formulate and perceive based on your experience"
Armenpress, Moscow welcomes Armenia-Azerbaijan foreign ministers' negotiations in Almaty, Demarcation should become one of the tools that will teach Armenia and Azerbaijan to live peacefully – PM Pashinyan

PM Pashinyan sends congratulatory message to the Prime Minister of Serbia

Nikol Pashinyan congratulates Miloš Vučević on occasion of his election to the post of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia. The message reads as follows: "Armenia values friendly relations with Serbia based on mutual respect and trust"
Armenpress

Armenia and EBRD sign €236 million agreement for Sisian-Kajaran road construction

The EBRD signed a loan agreement worth €236 million for the construction of the 24.2 km southern section of the Sisian-Kajaran North-South Road. The project is a strategic priority for Armenia, ensuring its connectivity and access to Europe and beyond.
Armenpress, EBRD plans to invest up to 500 million Euros in Armenia in 2024, EBRD grants Armenia 12 million euros for the construction of a logistics center in Syunik, EBRD funds largest road project in Armenia

Armenia and France expand cooperation in civil aviation sector

Meeting was held between the Director General, Mihran Khachatryan, and the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of France to the Republic of Armenia, Olivier Decottignies. Issues of strengthening and expanding cooperation between Armenia and France in the field of civil aviation were discussed.
Armenpress, French Development Agency to extend cooperation with Armenia’s government, Armenia, France extend partnership in civil aviation, Armenia and France are expanding cooperation in the field of civil aviation, Armenia, French Development Agency to expand cooperation

The delegation led by Tigran Avinyan leaves for Paris

The Yerevan delegation will visit Paris from May 15 to 19. They will meet with the president of the regional council of Île-de-France.
Armenpress, Yerevan Mayor to travel to Paris on May 15-19

Moscow sees the need to resume the work of the tripartite group on the issue of de-blockade

Moscow considers it necessary to resume work of tripartite working group co-chaired by deputy prime ministers of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan on blockade issue. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin said about it in an interview with the News.ru website: "We do not use the term Zangezur Corridor, but in favor of the complete unblocking of economic and transport communications in the South Caucasus. He also spoke about the role of Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh.
CivilNet

Armenia is waiting for the decision to join the European Peace Foundation. Pashinyan

Pashinyan: We are waiting for the decision to include Armenia in the European Peace Fund. The fund was established in 2021 to promote world peace, prevent conflicts and supply non-lethal weapons to countries in need. In mid-April, the media wrote that a preliminary agreement was reached in Brussels to provide 10 million euros to Armenia from this fund, but Hungary blocked the decision.
CivilNet

Mirzoyan to take part in Council of Europe ministers’ Committee session in Strasbourg

Ararat Mirzoyan will travel to French city of Strasbourg for a working visit on 16-17 May. He will take part in the 133rd session of the Committee of Ministers, devoted to the celebration of 75 years since the foundation of the Council of Europe.
ArkaAm, Armenian FM to participate in the session of CoE Committee of Ministers

High-Tech Minister: Armenia considers creating investment fund

Armenia’s Minister of High-Tech Industry Mkhitar Hayrapetyan discussed a potential creation of an investment fund in the country with Noubar Afeyan, the founder of venture capital firm Flagship Pioneering. Fund is expected to improve cooperation between Armenian authorities and the private sector.
ArkaAm

Armenia's policy is to diversify its foreign relations - Pashinyan

Armenia's policy is to diversify its foreign relations in all areas, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at Copenhagen Democracy Summit. "We are happy about the deployment of the EU Civilian Monitoring Mission on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan," he said. The prime minister said that the EU decision on Armenia's inclusion in the European Peace Facility is now awaited.
ArkaAm

Moscow slams EU mission in Armenia for “provocative activity”

The EU mission is doing more and more against Armenia’s neighbors Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran, Mikhail Galuzin said.
PanArmenian

Uruguay Chamber of Representatives votes to submit draft law on the Armenian Genocide Memorial Day to executive branch

Chamber of Representatives of Uruguay on May 14 unanimously passed the draft law declaring April 24 as Armenian Genocide Memorial Day in Uruguay, 74 votes in favor by the 74 MPs present. After the executive's approval within 10 days, the law will come into force immediately, the Armenian Embassy in Uruguay said in a post on Facebook.
Armenpress, Uruguay House of Representatives approves billdeclaring April 24 as Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day

Slovak PM in ‘life-threatening condition’ after being shot

Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico is fighting for his life after he was shot multiple times following a government meeting. Fico's condition is life-threatening and he’s being flown by helicopter to hospital for emergency treatment.
Armenpress, Slovak PM Fico in hospital after being shot, Violence has no place in politics: Armenian PM wishes speedy recovery to Slovakia’s Robert Fico, Slovak PM in life-threatening condition after assassination attempt, Slovak PM Fico in hospital after being shot

Zelenskiy cancels visit to Spain and Portugal

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has cancelled a visit to Spain and Portugal, authorities said on Wednesday. CNN Portugal and other media reported it was because of renewed fighting in his country. Spain's King Felipe of Spain had been due to hold a reception and host a meal in his honour. He had also been expected to sign a bilateral security cooperation agreement.
Armenpress

The Power of One Dram Sums up the Two-Year Program with Teach for Armenia

During November and December 2021, AMD 9,328,753 was transferred to the “Teach for Armenia” educational foundation. The amount gathered within the framework of “The Power of One Dram” initiative of IDBank and Idram. As a result, two schools of Aragatsotn Region have been conducting an education program based on change for two years.
Armenpress, Power of One Dram sums up two-year program with Teach for Armenia

Blinken, guitar in hand, sings ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ in Kyiv bar

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken plays guitar and sings Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World" with a local band. Blinken assured Ukrainians they are not alone and that billions of dollars in American military aid on its way will make a "real difference" on the battlefield.
Armenpress

Armenia’s ruling party frames anti-government protesters as ‘Russia-backed’ on social media: DEMOCRACY WATCH #4

A CivilNet investigation has found that the campaigns, mostly on Facebook, are generated by the country’s ruling party. Among the main targets is the leader of the protest movement Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, the Primate of the Tavush Diocese. They circulate videos and photos suggesting his involvement in a “Russian plan to destabilize Armenia”
CivilNet, Echoes of Déjà Vu: Reviving Resistance in Armenia, Archbishop Bagrat: This is our first victory

India and Iran have announced the launch of the Chabahar port development project

India and Iran signed a ten-year agreement on the development and operation of Iran's Chabahar port. The agreement aims to expand regional communication and facilitate trade, particularly between India, Iran and Afghanistan. India has invested in the infrastructure and modernization of the port, making it a viable transit route for Indian goods to Afghanistan and Central Asia.
CivilNet

U.S. warns Georgia not to side with Moscow against the west

Georgia has been warned by the U.S. not to become an adversary of the west by falling back in line with Moscow.
PanArmenian

💵 Economy

EBRD predicts Armenia’s economy to grow by 6.2% in 2024

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development expects Armenia’s economy to grow by 6.2% in 2024 and 4,8% in 2025. The EBRD forecasted a 4.5% economic growth in 2024 for Armenia in its previous report, published in September 2023. The World Bank expects the Armenian economy to. grow by 5.5%, the IMF predicts 5% growth for the country's economy in 2024.
ArkaAm

VTB (Armenia) expands opportunities for cross-border money transfers by phone number

Retail customers of VTB Bank (Armenia) can receive money transfers from Russia by phone number. Funds are credited instantly to the recipient's account or card in national currency. In 2023, the bank's retail customers received more than 94 thousand money transfers.
ArkaAm, VTB-Armenia Bank has expanded the possibilities of international transfers by telephone

EBRD has significantly improved the forecast of the growth of the Armenian economy in 2024 to 6.2%

The EBRD predicts 6.2 percent economic growth in Armenia in 2024, and 4.8 percent in 2025. The World Bank expects that Armenia's economy will grow by 5.5 percent in 2024. The IMF predicts a 5 percent growth for the country's economy in 2024 and 2025.
ArkaAm

Donations to Armenia:

Himnadram
ServicemenFund
Armenian Wounded Heroes
ArmeniaFund
submitted by HaykakanTxa to armenia [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 22:18 GrimmInDarkness Torn Veil: A Priest's Descent

Detective Pierce and his colleague Morrison walked down the dark hall to the interrogation room where Seminarian Crawford Rossi awaited them.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Crawford Rossi." Pierce greeted as he walked inside taking a seat.

Rossi cradled a foam coffee cup in his hands looking up at them with dark circles under his eyes "Good evening." he mumbled.

"I want to talk to you about what happened to Father Pesci." Pierce began opening a case file he brought with him.

"Father Pesci..." Rossi spoke softly keeping his head down before looking at both detectives "He wasn't a bad man."

Morrison nods in understanding “We just need to hear your side of the story.”

Rossi’s shoulders went lax, and he leaned back looking up at the dim light hanging above them.

“It was the day before Easter Sunday. We were setting things up and there was this weird box among the decorations.” he began rubbing his hands together and looked back at the detectives.

“A weird box?” Pierce questioned.

Rossi nods “I know it seems strange but…” he paused biting his bottom lip “This box didn’t belong to the church. When I took it to Father Pesci, he said it was probably donated by someone.”

Morrison nodded and jotted down notes in his notepad “What did this box look like?”

The Seminarian began describing to them the box he had found. It was a medium ornate box the baby blue and white polka dot wrapping paper was weathered as if it had been left in the sun all day. The white ribbon was frayed and splotched with tiny specks of red. The box felt so heavy in his hands.

“Did you ever open this box?” Pierce asked.

Rossi shook his head “N-no it felt wrong.”

“So, an old gift felt wrong to you?” Morrison scoffed shaking his head.

“Since it was unopened” Rossi wrung his hands together “I put it in Father Pesci’s office that morning and by the evening it was open” the Seminarian paused looking up at the detectives.

“What of Father Pesci?” Pierce questioned “What did he find inside that box?”

Rossi sat back in his chair rubbing his hands onto his pants “He was in the corner of his office mumbling to himself and the box…” he took a deep breath and exhaled “Oozed a brownish red onto his desk.”

During the service that evening Father Pesci will have murdered an entire congregation. Their heads placed onto their laps and hands wired together in prayer. Pesci himself disappeared after leaving symbols written in blood all over the walls behind the podium. The gift box was missing and nowhere to be found along with one of the hearses.

“I’m sure the entire event has been quite traumatic for you. Since you were the one to find the service in such a grim state” said Pierce giving Rossi a knowing smile trying to give the man some comfort.

“Detectives” the Seminarian began licking his lips “Will you be able to find the father before he hurts more people?” he leaned forward looking them both in the eyes.

“Of course we’ll find him.” Morrison was confident.

Pierce wanted to relay the same energy but according to the reports they had gotten back the hearse that Father Pesci had taken was found abandoned in the next town. Which means from there the possessed Pesci walked the rest of the way to his destination.

He did however have an idea where the Father was heading. There was an older case where a clown was attending a child’s birthday party. Or what was supposed to be. When the professional entertainer got to the house he was greeted by a cult. This cult did unspeakable things to this man using him in a ritual for whatever god they worshipped. Then placed his head into the very box that he had brought the birthday cake in.

A medium box with baby blue wrapping paper with white polka dots and a white ribbon on top.

A possessed Father Pesci was heading to the place where it all started. The place where that thing that now wore him like a suit was brought into this world. Pierce looked over at Morrison who furrowed his brow.

“Thank you, Mr. Crawford Rossi we will contact, you when we find Father Pesci.” Pierce assured him who nodded anxiously looking around before getting up to leave the room.

Rossi solemnly nodded getting up from his chair. As he walked to the door to exit the interrogation room he looked back at Morrison and Pierce. “There was something else I need to mention” he spoke low making the detectives to strain their ears to listen “Before I found Father Pesci he was talking to someone. A voice I never heard before, but it filled me full of dread.”

“Why are you telling us this now?” inquired Morrison
Rossi held his hands in front of him in a silent prayer “Because I don’t think I should have heard what they were talking about.”

Pierce scratched his chin “Can you tell us what was said?”

Rossi shook his head “No…no if I do. IT will come for me next.”

The ‘it’ he was referring to must have been whatever had possessed Father Pesci. He left the room leaving both detectives to go over the information they had gathered. Morrison flipped through his notes and clicked his tongue.

“What are we even supposed to do with any of this?” he scoffed motioning to the notepad in his hand.

“Don’t worry we have plenty of information to go off. Besides I know where we will find Father Pesci and hopefully, we will arrive in time.” answered Pierce who stood up first and headed to the door.

Morrison scratched his head following behind his coworker “I sure hope you’re right.”

Honestly even Pierce himself hoped he was right too because they had a long car ride ahead of them and had to make sure they brought the proper equipment with them. They had a Priest to exercise after all.
submitted by GrimmInDarkness to scarystories [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 22:15 ironmandavinci Help

My name is Anthony Michael Dimarcello and I am in need of an injustice relief immediately. Below are the details. My number is 714-860-8062.
I am in Orange county California and my family and I need emergency relief. We were victims of a retaliatory eviction in Aug of 2021 after I complained to the authorities and housing is key about being harassed by my landlord for being enrolled in the covid rental relief program and paying only 25% of the rent until my lease was up. In the same month as the retaliatory eviction, Aug 2021, I was also the victim of identity theft from the 2021 TMobile data breach. The following month of Sept 2021, the data breach gave criminals the ability to abuse my digital accounts which caused the closure of my bank accounts, and led to my vehicles, remaining assets and my business to be unmanageable and taken from me in various ways. My disabled mom and my son lived with me. My son has been with his mom fulltime since Aug 2021 and my disabled mom and I have been homeless since Aug 2021. I have not been able to recover since my family and I were attacked. Now I am stuck in a mercy house shelter that does not allow me to leave which prohibits me from being able to recover. The security at mercy house also stole a vehicle that was donated to me. My disabled mom and I have been homeless for three years. I have been in the mercy house shelter and not able to leave for two years. My disabled mother has suffered multiple life threatening injuries since we were attacked, including being vulnerable to attack from having an asthma attack and beat almost to death by a predator And being on life support and hospitalized for over a month. I have also suffered multiple life threatening injuries including four fractured ribs and skin infections from sleeping outside in the rain. My sons mother, Sylvia, At a moments notice when I was attacked, disenfranchised and no longer able to share custody of our son due to the threat of him being in danger by unknown assailants and no home for him to reside with me, Sylvia was able to immediately care for our son fulltime with no help from me, while managing her career and a new fiance since the attacks began in Aug 2021. My son is suffering psychologically considering I have worked from home since he was born and was never separated from him until the attacks when he was 9 years old. He is the only witness to the full extent of the attacks and I do not want him anymore involved or to be interrogated. He witnessed the harassment of the landlord, and having his father and everything we built together taken. The acts of everyone involved went against everything I have ever taught him was possible and he had to witness me get shut down trying to get us help over and over and over. I clearly had no idea this was possible either or I would have been prepared for it and would have known to get my son away from myself and the entire event much sooner. I have also been arrested several times due to my id theft and never had a record or any legal issues until this attack happened.
Based on the legal information provided, if you are a victim in Orange County, California, in need of emergency relief, you may be eligible to seek an ex parte order, which is a temporary restraining order that can be issued without notice, if an affidavit shows reasonable proof of past acts of abuse. Additionally, the court may issue orders enjoining a party from various behaviors, such as molesting, attacking, striking, stalking, threatening, or harassing the victim or other named family or household members.
It is important to act promptly and seek the necessary legal assistance to ensure your safety and protection under the law.
Reasoning:.
People v. Clayburg (Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 6, California., 2012): Discusses the issuance of restraining orders under Family Code sections for the protection of victims and family members.
Grega v. Vroman (United States District Court, W.D. Pennsylvania, Erie Division, 2024): Provides insights into the legal sufficiency of a complaint and the standards applied in evaluating claims.
  1. United States v. Edwards (United States District Court, W.D. Pennsylvania, 2024): Discusses the government's obligations in a criminal case and the limitations on a defendant's right to discover the government's evidence.
These Opinions collectively provide a comprehensive understanding of the legal framework surrounding restraining orders and the issuance of protective orders for victims and their immediate family in need of emergency relief.
Based on the legal information provided in Casemine knowledge base, you may have potential legal recourse in your situation. Here are some relevant Judgments from the document that can assist in formulating an answer to your current legal question:
Nativi v. Deutsche Bank Nat'l Trust Co. (Court of Appeal, Sixth District, California., 2014):
TOBE v. CITY OF SANTA ANA (Supreme Court of California., 1995):
Sylvia Landfield Trust v. City of L.A. (United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit., 2013):
SABI V. STERLING (Court of Appeal of California, Second District. Eight., 2010):
JOYCE NELSON et al. v. BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY et al. (Cal. Ct. App., 1987):
Based on the legal principles outlined in these Judgments, you may have potential legal options to explore, such as wrongful eviction claims, constructive eviction, seeking assistance through housing programs like Section 8, and challenging the lack of suitable housing options for homeless individuals.
For your specific circumstances, it is advisable to consult with a local attorney specializing in landlord-tenant law or housing rights in Orange County, California. They can provide personalized legal advice and guidance tailored to your situation, including potential remedies and assistance available to you.
If you require further assistance or clarification, please feel free to ask.
Emergency injunctive relief for victims of civil rights violations and identity theft
Based on the legal information provided in the Casemine knowledge base, the Opinions that are relevant to formulating an answer to your current legal question are as follows:
SOSTRE v. ROCKEFELLER, (S.D.N.Y. 1970): This Opinion discusses the issuance of injunctive relief against state officials for violating Fourteenth Amendment rights and emphasizes that injunctive relief must be granted when a violation of constitutional rights has been proved.
CALIFORNIA CORRECTIONAL PEACE OFFICERS v. STATE (Court of Appeal of California, First District, Division Two., 2000): This Opinion discusses the criteria for granting injunctive relief against criminal investigations, highlighting the need for extraordinary circumstances and irreparable harm.
ADRIAN v. WESTAR ENERGY (United States District Court, D. Kansas, 2011): This Opinion outlines the factors required to grant injunctive relief, including showing irreparable injury, balancing of harms, public interest, and likelihood of success on the merits.
Seth v. McDonough (UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MARYLAND, 2020): This Opinion emphasizes that emergency injunctive relief is an extraordinary remedy, requiring a clear showing that the plaintiff is entitled to relief.
ADAIR v. ENGLAND, (D.D.C. 2002): This Opinion discusses the legal standards and jurisdiction required to entertain a motion for injunctive relief, emphasizing the need for a filed complaint and related issues.
Based on the legal principles discussed in these Opinions, it is important to establish the following to seek emergency injunctive relief for victims of civil rights violations and identity theft:
Likelihood of Success on the Merits: You need to demonstrate a clear showing that your civil rights have been violated and that you are entitled to relief under the law.
Irreparable Harm: Show that you will suffer irreparable harm if injunctive relief is not granted, such as ongoing violations of your rights or continued harm to you or your family.
Balance of Harms: Illustrate that the harm you are facing outweighs any potential harm that granting the injunction may cause to the opposing party.
Public Interest: Argue that granting the injunction is in the public interest, considering the nature of the violations and the impact on society.
Jurisdiction: Ensure that the court has jurisdiction over the parties and the subject matter of the lawsuit before seeking injunctive relief.
It is advisable to consult with an attorney specializing in civil rights and injunction matters to assess your specific situation and determine the best course of action to seek emergency injunctive relief.
Emergency injunctive relief for my family because we are victims of civil rights violations, identity theft, retaliatory eviction and being robbed and unable to leave the mercy house shelter in orange county California.
Based on the legal excerpts provided in the Casemine knowledge base, it seems that you may have a valid basis for seeking emergency injunctive relief in your situation. Here are some relevant Opinions from the document that can be applied in formulating an answer to your legal question:
Community House, Inc. v. City of Boise (UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT, 2006):
Sinisgallo v. Town of Islip Hous. Auth. (United States District Court, E.D. New York., 2012):
JONES v. CITY OF LOS ANGELES (United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit., 2006):
BOBBY WARREN, et al., Plaintiffs, v. CITY OF CHICO, et al., Defendants. (E.D. Cal., 2021):
Considering your situation involving civil rights violations, identity theft, retaliatory eviction, and being unable to leave the shelter, you may argue that these circumstances constitute irreparable harm and a real and immediate threat of future injury. You could seek emergency injunctive relief to address these issues and protect your rights.
Reasoning:
Given the legal principles discussed in the Opinions mentioned above, you may have a valid basis for seeking emergency injunctive relief to address the civil rights violations, identity theft, retaliatory eviction, and restrictions on leaving the shelter that you and your family are facing. By demonstrating the irreparable harm and real threat of future injury in your situation, you can potentially meet the requirements for obtaining emergency relief through a preliminary injunction. It is advisable to consult with a legal professional to assess the specifics of your case and determine the best course of action.
submitted by ironmandavinci to legal [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 22:13 mthw704 (SELLING) HUGE LIST OF 4K/HD/SD CODES. Lots of titles added this week with a great $2 list. Over 5,000 transactions.

The Big List

Prices are firm. Please only redeem the portion of a code you are paying for. All codes are for immediate redemption. All Disney & Sony codes include points unless otherwise noted. As of 4/01/2024 all Google Play options have been removed from Disney codes.
I accept Cashapp, Venmo, Zelle & PayPal F&F without any notes. Comment & pm if interested. Thanks!

🦝

MISC

Aquaman & The Lost Kingdom 4K [2023] $6 (MA)
Barbie 4K [2023] $6 (MA)
Batwoman season 1 HD [2019] $6 (Vudu)
Beekeeper, The HD [2024] $7 (Vudu)
Leprechaun 7 Film Collection HD $7 (Vudu)
Mean Girls 4K [2023] $6 (iTunes)
Supergirl season 5 HD $6 (Vudu)
X-Men Trilogy HD [X-Men, X2 & The Last Stand] $8 (MA)

🦝

$5 4K UHD
Blackkklansman (MA)
John Wick 1-3 (iTunes)
Mean Girls [2024] (iTunes)

🦝

$4 4K UHD

Big Lebowski, The (iTunes/ports)
Black Panther (MA + 200 points)
Captain Marvel (MA + 200 points)
Despicable Me [2010] (iTunes/ports)
Dredd (Vudu)
Frozen 2 [2019] (MA + 200 points)
Gone Girl [2014] (iTunes/ports)
Guardians Of The Galaxy [2014] (MA + 200 points)
Halloween [2018] (MA)
Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes, The (Vudu or iTunes) PENDING
Jungleland [2020] (iTunes)
Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil (MA + 200 points)
Scream [2022] (Vudu or iTunes)
Silent Night [2023] (Vudu or iTunes)
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Vudu or iTunes)
Tangled [2010] (iTunes/ports + 150 points)
Titanic [1997] (iTunes)

🦝

$5 HD

Adventures Of Ichabod & Mr. Toad, The [1949] (MA + 150 points)
Fear The Walking Dead season 2 (Vudu)
Fear The Walking Dead season 4 (Vudu)
Fear The Walking Dead season 5 (Vudu)
Fear The Walking Dead season 6 (Vudu)
Fear The Walking Dead season 7 (Vudu)
Groundhog Day [1993] + Stripes [1981] double feature (MA)
Hannibal season 2 (Vudu)
Hunchback Of Notre Dame, The [1996] (MA + 150 points)
Hunchback Of Notre Dame 2, The [2002] (MA + 150 points)
Iron Claw, The [A24] (Vudu)
Lady & The Tramp II: Scamps Adventure [2001] (MA + 150 points)
Marvels, The [2023] (MA + 150 points)
Migration [2023] (MA)
Night Swim [2024] (MA)
Oppenheimer (MA)
Rob Zombie Trilogy [House Of 1,000 Corpses, The Devil's Rejects [Unrated] & 3 From Hell [Unrated] (MA)
Silent Night, Deadly Night 3,4 & 5 (Vudu)
Undoing, The season 1 [2020] (Vudu)
Wonka [2023] (MA)

🦝

$4 HD

300 Spartans, The (MA)
BFG, The [2016] (MA + 150 points)
Blue Beetle, The [2023] (MA)
Bridge Of Spies [2015] (MA + 150 points)
Color Purple, The [2023] (MA)
Drop, The [2014] (MA or Google Play/ports)
Fox & The Hound 2, The [2006] (MA + 150 points)
Indiana Jones & The Dial Of Destiny [2023] (MA + 150 points)
Justified season 4 (Vudu)
Lady & The Tramp [1955] (MA + 150 points)
Nun II, The [2023] (MA)
Priscilla [A24] [2023] (Vudu)
Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken [2023] (MA)
Sound Of Freedom [2023] (Vudu)
Wish [2023] (MA + 150 points)

🦝

$3️⃣ Movies

$3 4K UHD

Aladdin [2019] (iTunes/ports + 150 points)
Baywatch (Vudu)
Birth Of A Nation, The (iTunes/ports)
Bourne Identity, The [2002] (iTunes/ports)
Bourne Ultimatum, The (iTunes/ports)
Cabin In The Woods, The (Vudu)
Doctor Strange (iTunes/ports + 150 points)
Frozen 2 [2019] (iTunes/ports + 150 points)
Guardians Of The Galaxy [2014] (iTunes/ports + 150 points)
Interstellar (iTunes)
Knives Out (Vudu or iTunes)
Logan Lucky [2017] (iTunes/ports)
Moana (iTunes/ports + 150 points)
mother! [2017] (iTunes)
Robin Hood [2018] (Vudu)
Serenity [2005] (iTunes/ports)
Sicario (Vudu)
Spy Who Dumped Me, The (Vudu or iTunes)
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (MA + 200 points)
Thor: The Dark World (iTunes/ports + 150 points)
Top Gun (iTunes)

🦝

$3 HD

Adjustment Bureau, The (iTunes/ports)
Avatar: The Way Of Water (MA + 150 points)
Baby Driver [2017] (MA + Sony points)
Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The (MA or Google Play/ports)
Bloodshot [2020] (MA + Sony points)
Call Me By Your Name (MA + Sony points)
Candyman: Day Of The Dead (Vudu or Google Play)
Cats & Dogs 3: Paws Unite (MA)
Devotion [2022] (Vudu HD or iTunes 4K)
Dirty Dancing (Vudu/GP HD or iTunes 4K)
Emma [2020] (MA) PENDING
Exorcist: Believer, The [2023] (MA)
Fruitvale Station (Vudu)
Glass [2019] (MA)
Goosebumps [2018] (MA + Sony points)
Grand Budapest Hotel, The (MA or Google Play/ports)
Grown Ups 2 (MA + Sony points)
Halloween Kills [2021] (MA)
Hocus Pocus (MA + 150 points/no iTunes option)
Holmes & Watson [2018] (MA + Sony points)
Hundred Foot Journey, The [2014] (MA + 150 points)
Insidious: Chapter 3 (MA + Sony points)
Into The Woods [2014] (MA + 150 points)
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (Vudu)
Killing Gunther (Vudu)
Lion King, The [1994] (MA + 150 points)
Little House On The Prairie season 5 (Vudu)
MIB International [2019] (MA + Sony points)
Midsommar [A24] (Vudu or Google Play)
Mindcage (Vudu or iTunes)
Money Monster [2016] (MA + Sony points)
Nurse Jackie season 7 (Vudu)
Orange Is The New Black season 1 (Vudu)
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (iTunes/ports)
Pete's Dragon [2016] (MA + 150 points)
Phantom Thread [2017] (MA)
Planes: Fire & Rescue [2014] (MA + 150 points)
Predator [1987] (MA or Google Play/ports)
Pride + Prejudice + Zombies [2016] (MA + Sony points)
Public Enemies [2009] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Punisher, The [2004] (Vudu or Google Play)
Queen Of Katwe [2016] (MA + 150 points)
Robin Hood [1973] (MA + 150 points)
Scoob! [2020] (MA)
Secret Life Of Pets 2, The [2019] (MA)
Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs [1937] (MA + 150 points)
Spider-Man: Across The Spiderverse [2023] (MA + Sony points)
Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse (MA + Sony points)
The Secret: Dare To Dream (Vudu, iTunes or Google Play)
Tyler Perry's Diary Of A Mad Black Woman [2005] (Vudu)
Tyler Perry's Madea Goes To Jail (Vudu or Google Play)
Uncharted [2022] (MA + Sony points)
Us [2019] (MA)
Vanishing, The [2019] (Vudu or Google Play)
Venture Bros: Radiant Is The Blood Of The Baboon Heart [2023] (MA)
Violent Night [2022] (MA)
Walking Dead season 9, The (Vudu or Google Play)
Walking Dead season 10, The (Vudu or Google Play)
Way Way Back, The [2013] (MA or Google Play/ports)
Whiplash [2014] (MA + Sony points)
Zombieland: Double Tap (MA + Sony points)

🦝

💲2️⃣ HD

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers Of Benghazi (iTunes 4K)
2 Guns [2013] (iTunes/ports 4K)
31 [2016] (Vudu)
3 From Hell [Unrated] (Vudu 4K or iTunes 4K)
About Last Night [2014] (MA + Sony points)
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (MA)
Action Point [2018] (iTunes 4K)
Admission [2013] (iTunes/ports)
Adventures Of Tintin, The (Vudu or iTunes)
After Earth [2013] (MA + Sony points)
Age Of Adaline, The (Vudu, iTunes or Google Play)
Alien Covenant (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA/GP)
Allied [2016] (iTunes 4K or Vudu HD)
Aloha [2015] (MA + Sony points)
Alpha [2018] (MA + Sony points)
Alpha & Omega 2: A Howl-lday Adventure (Vudu)
Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Road Chip (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Amazing Spider-Man, The [2012] (MA)
Amazing Spider-Man 2, The [2014] (MA + Sony points)
American Girl: Isabelle Dances Into The Spotlight (MA)
American Hustle [2013] (MA + Sony points)
American Reunion [Unrated] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (Vudu or iTunes)
Annie [2014] (MA + Sony points)
Ant Man & The Wasp [2018] (MA + 150 points/no iTunes option)
Arrival [2016] (Vudu)
Art Of Self-Defense, The [2019] (MA)
Assassin's Creed (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Atomic Blonde (MA)
Avengers: Endgame (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA + 150 points)
Avengers: Infinity War (MA + 150 points/no iTunes option)
Baywatch (iTunes 4K)
Beauty & The Beast [2017] (MA + 150 points/iTunes option is expired)
Beguiled, The [2017] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Beirut [2018] (MA)
Ben-Hur [2016] (Vudu)
Best Man Holiday, The [2013] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Blackhat [2015] (iTunes/ports)
Black Panther [2018] (MA + 150 points/no iTunes option)
Bohemian Rhapsody (MA or Google Play/ports)
Book Club [2018] (iTunes 4K)
Boss Baby, The [2017] (MA)
Bourne Legacy, The (iTunes/ports 4K)
Boy, The [2016] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Boyhood [2014] (iTunes)
Boy Next Door, The [2015] (iTunes/ports)
Breakthrough [2019] (MA or Google Play/ports)
Bridesmaids [Theatrical] (iTunes/ports)
Broken City [2013] (MA)
Bumblebee (iTunes 4K or Vudu HD)
Cabin In The Woods, The (Vudu/GP HD or iTunes 4K)
Captain America: Civil War (MA only/no points or iTunes option)
Captain Marvel [2019] (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA + 150 points)
Captain Phillips [2013] (MA + Sony points)
Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (MA)
Case For Christ, The [2017] (MA)
Celebrating Mickey (MA/ no points)
Choice, The [2016] (Vudu or iTunes)
Company Of Heroes [2013] (MA)
Concussion [2015] (MA + Sony points)
Contraband (iTunes/ports)
Cowboys & Aliens [Theatrical] (iTunes/ports)
Curse Of Chucky [2013] [Unrated] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Daddy's Home (iTunes 4K)
Dark Tower, The [2017] (MA + Sony points)
Dead Again In Tombstone [2017] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Dead In Tombstone [Unrated] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Dead Man Down [2013] (MA)
Deadpool 2 [2018] (MA or Google Play/ports)
Deepwater Horizon (iTunes 4K or Vudu/GP HD)
Despicable Me 2 (iTunes/ports 4K)
Despicable Me 3 (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Devil's Due [2014] (MA or Google Play/ports)
Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (MA, iTunes or Google Play/ports)
Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul (MA, iTunes or Google Play/ports)
Divergent Series: Allegiant, The (iTunes 4K)
Django Unchained (Vudu)
Downsizing (iTunes 4K)
Downton Abbey [2019] (MA)
Dracula Untold (iTunes/ports 4K)
Dragonheart 3: The Sorcerer's Curse (iTunes/ports)
Dredd [2012] (Vudu)
Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas [2000] (MA)
Duff, The (iTunes or Google Play)
Edward Scissorhands (MA or Google Play/ports)
Emoji Movie, The [2017] (MA + Sony points)
Empire State [2013] (Vudu or Google Play)
Ender's Game (iTunes 4K or Vudu/GP HD)
Epic [2013] (MA)
Equalizer, The [2014] (MA + Sony points)
Equalizer 2, The (MA + Sony points)
Escape From Planet Earth (Vudu)
Everest [2015] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Ex Machina (Vudu)
Exodus: Gods & Kings (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Exposed [2016] (Vudu)
F9: The Fast Saga [2021] [Theatrical & Extended] (MA + Universal Rewards points)
Fast & Furious [2009] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Fast & The Furious, The [2001] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift, The (iTunes/ports 4K)
Fate Of The Furious [F8] [Theatrical] (MA 4K)
Fences [2016] (iTunes 4K or Vudu HD)
Fifty Shades Darker [2017] [Unrated] (MA 4K)
Fifty Shades Of Grey (iTunes/ports 4K)
Finding Dory (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA + 150 points)
First Purge, The [2018] (MA)
Flight [2012] (Vudu or iTunes)
Footloose [2011] (Vudu)
Fortress [2021] (Vudu or Google Play)
Frozen [2013] (iTunes/ports 4K+ 150 points)
Fury [2014] (MA + Sony points)
Game Of Thrones season 3 (iTunes)
Game Of Thrones season 4 (iTunes)
Get Out [2017] (MA)
Ghostbusters [2016] [Theatrical & Extended] (MA + Sony points)
Ghost Team One [2013] (Vudu or iTunes)
Gifted [2017] (MA or Google Play/ports, iTunes option is expired)
G.I. Joe: Retaliation (iTunes 4K)
God Bless The Broken Road (Vudu or Google Play)
Gods Not Dead 2 [2016] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Gods Of Egypt (Vudu/GP HD or iTunes 4K)
Greatest Showman, The [2017] (MA or Google Play/ports)
Great Wall, The [2017] (MA)
Grey, The [2012] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 (MA + 150 points/no iTunes option)
Guilt Trip, The [2012] (Vudu)
Hacksaw Ridge (Vudu or Google Play/iTunes option expired)
Hail, Caesar [2016] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters [Unrated] (Vudu or iTunes)
Hateful Eight, The (Vudu or Google Play)
Heat, The [2013] [Theatrical] (MA or Google Play/ports)
Hell Or High Water (Vudu or Google Play)
Hercules [2014] (iTunes 4K or Vudu HD)
Hitman's Bodyguard, The (Vudu or Google Play/iTunes option is expired)
Hobbs & Shaw [2019] (MA)
Home [2015] [DreamWorks] (MA)
Home Alone [1990] (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Homefront [2013] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Honey 2 [2011] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Hotel Transylvania 2 [2015] (MA + Sony points)
How To Train Your Dragon 2 (MA)
Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, The (iTunes 4K or Google Play HD)
Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, The (Vudu)
Huntsman: Winter's War, The [2016] [Extended] (iTunes/ports 4K)
I Am Wrath (Vudu)
Inside Out [2015] (iTunes/ports 4K + 150 points)
Instant Family (iTunes 4K or Vudu HD)
Internship, The [2013] (MA or Google Play/ports)
Interview, The [2014] (MA + Sony points)
Invisible Man, The [1933] (MA)
I Still Believe [2020] (iTunes 4K or Vudu/GP HD)
It Follows [2015] (Vudu)
Jackass 3 [Theatrical] (Vudu or iTunes)
Jack Reacher (Vudu)
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (Vudu)
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (iTunes 4K)
Jason Bourne [2016] (iTunes/ports 4K)
John Henry [2020] (Vudu)
John Wick (iTunes 4K)
John Wick 1 & 2 (Vudu or Google Play)
John Wick: Chapter 2 (iTunes 4K)
John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum (iTunes 4K) or all 3 for $5
Joy [2015] (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle (MA + Sony points)
Jurassic World (iTunes/ports 4K)
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (MA)
Justice [2017] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Kevin Hart: What Now? (ITunes/ports)
Kick-Ass 2 [2013] (MA)
Kidnap [2017] (iTunes/ports)
Killer Elite (iTunes/ports)
Kingsman: The Golden Circle (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Kingsman: The Secret Service (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Last Knights [2015] (Vudu)
Last Vegas [2013] (MA + Sony points)
Last Witch Hunter, The [2015] (iTunes 4K or Google Play)
Leprechaun: Origins (Vudu)
Leprechaun Returns (Vudu or Google Play) or both for $3
Let's Be Cops [2014] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Life [2017] (MA + Sony points)
Life Of Pi (iTunes/ports 4K)
Lockout [2012] [Unrated] (MA + Sony points)
Logan [2017] (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Lone Survivor [2013] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Longest Ride, The (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Lorax, The [2012] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Love Actually [2003] (MA)
Love & Mercy [2015] (Vudu)
Love, Simon [2018] (MA)
Lucy [2014] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Maleficent (iTunes/ports 4K + 150 points)
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again [2018] (MA)
Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom (Vudu)
Marauders (Vudu)
Martian, The [2015] [Theatrical] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Mary Poppins [1964] (MA + 150 points)
Mechanic: Resurrection (Vudu/GP HD or iTunes 4K)
Men In Black 3 (MA + Sony points)
MI-5 [2015] (Vudu)
Mile 22 (iTunes 4K)
Mindgamers [2017] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Minions [2015] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Miracles From Heaven (MA + Sony points)
Mission Impossible: Fallout (iTunes 4K)
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (iTunes 4K)
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (iTunes 4K) or all 3 for $5
Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Moms’ Night Out [2014] (MA)
Monuments Men, The [2014] (MA + Sony points)
Mortal Engines [2018] (MA)
Mortal Instruments: The City Of Bones, The [2014] (MA + Sony points)
Mother's Day [2016] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Mountain Between Us, The [2017] (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Mummy, The [2017] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Murder On The Orient Express [2017] (MA or Google Play/ports)
My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (iTunes/ports)
Neighbors [2014] (iTunes/ports)
Night At The Museum: Secret Of The Tomb (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Noah [2014] (Vudu or iTunes)
Non-Stop [2014] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Norm Of The North (Vudu or iTunes)
Now You See Me 2 (iTunes 4K or Vudu/GP HD)
Nut Job, The [2014] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Oblivion [2013] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Ouija [2014] (MA)
Overlord [2018] (Vudu)
Oz: The Great & Powerful (MA + 100 points)
Pain & Gain [2013] (Vudu or iTunes)
Paranormal Activity [2009] [Theatrical] (Vudu or iTunes)
Paranormal Activity 2 [Unrated Director's Cut] (Vudu or iTunes)
Paranormal Activity 3 [Extended] (Vudu or iTunes)
Paranormal Activity 4 [Unrated] (Vudu or iTunes)
Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones [Theatrical] (iTunes)
Passengers [2016] (MA + Sony points)
Penguins Of Madagascar (MA)
Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters (MA or Google Play/ports)
Pet Sematary [2019] (iTunes 4K or Vudu HD)
Philomena (Vudu)
Pitch Perfect (iTunes/ports 4K)
Pitch Perfect 3 [2017] (MA)
Planes: Fire & Rescue (MA without points)
Playing With Fire (iTunes 4K or Vudu HD)
Predator, The [2018] (MA or Google Play/ports)
Project Almanac (iTunes)
Prometheus (MA or Google Play/ports, no iTunes option)
Proud Mary [2018] (MA)
Purge: Anarchy, The (iTunes/ports 4K)
Quiet Place, A [2018] (iTunes 4K)
Ralph Breaks The Internet (MA + 150 points/no iTunes option)
Red Dawn [2012] (Vudu or Google Play)
Redemption [2013] (Vudu)
Replicas [2019] (iTunes 4K or Vudu/GP HD)
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter [2016] (MA + Sony points)
Riddick [Unrated] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Rings [2017] (Vudu)
R.I.P.D. Rest In Peace Department (iTunes/ports 4K)
Rise Of The Guardians [2011] (MA)
Risen [2016] (MA + Sony points)
Robin Hood [2018] (iTunes 4K or Vudu/GP HD)
Rock Dog (iTunes)
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (iTunes/ports 4K + 150 points)
Roman J. Israel, Esq [2017] (MA + Sony points)
Rush [2013] (MA)
Saban's Power Rangers (iTunes 4K or Vudu/GP HD)
Safe House [2012] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Savages [2012] [Theatrical] (iTunes/ports)
Scorpion King 3: Battle For Redemption (iTunes/ports)
Secret Life Of Pets, The (MA 4K or iTunes/ports 4K)
Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, The (MA or Google Play/ports, iTunes option is expired)
Seventh Son [2015] (iTunes/ports)
Sex Tape [2014] (MA + Sony points)
Shack, The [2017] (Vudu, iTunes or Google Play)
Show Dogs [2018] (MA)
Silver Linings Playbook (Vudu or Google Play)
Sing [2016] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Sinister (Vudu, iTunes or Google Play)
Sisters [2015] [Unrated] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Skyscraper [2018] (MA)
Sleepless [2017] (iTunes/ports)
Snow White & The Huntsman [Extended] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Sparkle [2012] (MA)
Spectre [2015] (iTunes 4K or Vudu/GP HD)
Spider-Man 2 [2004] [Theatrical & Extended] (MA + Sony points)
Spider-Man: Homecoming [2017] (MA + Sony points)
Spider-Man: No Way Home [2021] (MA + Sony points)
Split [2017] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Spy [2015] [Unrated] (MA, iTunes or Google Play/ports)
Star Trek [2009] (iTunes 4K)
Star Trek: Beyond (iTunes 4K)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA + 150 points)
Step Up All In [2014] (Vudu)
Step Up Revolution (Vudu or Google Play)
Straight Outta Compton [Unrated] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Super 8 (Vudu)
Super Buddies (MA without points)
Taken 3 [Unrated] (MA, iTunes or Google Play/ports)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [2014] (iTunes 4K or Vudu HD)
Terminator: Genisys (iTunes 4K)
The Night Before [2015] (MA + Sony points)
This Is The End [2013] (MA + Sony points)
Top Five [2014] (iTunes)
Top Gun (Vudu)
Total Recall [2012] [Theatrical & Director's Cut] (MA + Sony points)
Tower Heist [Theatrical] (iTunes/ports)
Tremors: A Cold Day In Hell (MA)
True Grit [2010] (Vudu or iTunes)
Tyler Perry's Acrimony (Vudu, iTunes or Google Play)
Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral (Vudu, iTunes or Google Play)
Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (iTunes 4K)
Uncle Drew [2018] (iTunes 4K or Vudu/GP HD)
Underworld: Blood Wars (MA + Sony points)
Vendetta [2016] (Vudu)
Venom [2018] (MA + Sony points)
Walk Among The Tombstones, A (iTunes/ports)
Walking With Dinosaurs: The Movie (MA, iTunes or Google Play/ports)
War Room [2015] (MA + Sony points)
Why Him? [2016] (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Wolf Of Wall Street, The (iTunes 4K or Vudu HD)
Woman In Black, The [2012] (MA)
Wonder [2017] (Vudu/GP HD or iTunes 4K)
Wonder Park [2019] (iTunes 4K or Vudu HD)
Woodlawn [2015] (MA or iTunes/ports)
X-Men: Apocalypse (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
X-Men: Days Of Future Past (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Your Highness [2011] [Unrated] (iTunes/ports)
Zootopia (MA without points)

🦝

💲2️⃣ SD

12 Rounds [2009] [Extreme Cut] (iTunes/ports)
Aliens In The Attic (iTunes/ports)
Amelia (iTunes/ports)
Beasts Of The Southern Wild (iTunes/ports)
Black Swan (iTunes/ports)
Date Night [Unrated Extended Edition] (iTunes/ports)
Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears A Who! (ITunes/ports)
In Time [2011] (iTunes/ports)
Percy Jackson double feature [Lightning Thief & Sea of Monsters] (MA)
Ramona & Beezus (iTunes/ports)
Street Kings (iTunes/ports)
Three Stooges: The Movie, The [2012] (iTunes/ports)

🦝

$1 Codes

💲1️⃣ HD

2 Guns (MA)
Alex Cross (Vudu)
Bad Grandpa [Theatrical] (Vudu or iTunes)
Bad Moms (iTunes/ports)
Battleship [2012] (MA)
Big Hero 6 (Google Play/ports)
Book Club (Vudu)
Bourne Legacy, The (MA)
Bring It On: Worldwide Cheersmack [2017] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Deadpool (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA/GP)
Divergent (iTunes 4K or Vudu/GP HD)
Divergent Series: Insurgent, The (iTunes 4K or Vudu/GP HD)
Duff, The [2015] (Vudu)
Dying Of The Light (Vudu)
Everest [2015] (MA)
Expendables 2, The (iTunes 4K or Vudu/GP HD)
Expendables 3, The [Theatrical] (iTunes 4K or Google Play HD)
Fast & Furious [2009] (MA)
Fast & Furious 6, The [Extended] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Fast & The Furious, The [2001] (MA)
Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift, The (MA)
Fast Five [Extended] (MA)
Fate Of The Furious, The [8] [Theatrical or Extended] (MA)
Fault In Our Stars, The [2014] (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA/GP)
Frozen: Sing Along Edition (MA without points)
Furious 7 [Extended] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Ghost In The Shell [2017] (Vudu)
G.I. Joe: Retaliation (Vudu)
Girls Trip [2017] (MA)
Good Day To Die Hard, A [2012] [Extended] (MA or Google Play/ports)
Hidden Figures [2017] (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Hillsong: Let Hope Rise [2016] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Hugo (Vudu)
Hunger Games, The [2012] (iTunes 4K or Google Play HD)
Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The (iTunes 4K or Google Play HD)
Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, The (Vudu)
Huntsman: Winter's War, The [2016] [Extended] (MA)
Identity Thief [2013] [Theatrical] (iTunes/ports)
I, Frankenstein (Vudu, iTunes or Google Play)
Inside Out [2015] (Google Play/ports)
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (Vudu)
Jason Bourne (MA)
Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain (Vudu)
Les Misérables [2012] (MA)
Let's Be Cops [2014] (MA only/no iTunes option)
Lucy (MA)
Mission Impossible: Fallout (Vudu)
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (Vudu)
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (Vudu) or both for $2.50
Now You See Me [Extended] (Vudu or iTunes)
Parental Guidance [2012] (MA)
Perks Of Being A Wallflower, The (Vudu or Google Play)
Pitch Perfect (MA)
Purge, The [2013] (MA)
Quiet Place, A [2018] (Vudu)
Red 2 (Vudu)
Ride Along [2014] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Ride Along 2 (MA or iTunes/ports)
RIPD Rest In Peace Department (MA)
Safe [2012] (Vudu or Google Play)
Secret Life Of Pets, The (MA)
Selma (iTunes)
Skyfall (Vudu or Google Play)
Snitch (iTunes 4K or Vudu/Google Play HD)
Star Trek: Beyond (Vudu)
Star Trek: Into Darkness (iTunes 4K)
Taken 2 (MA or Google Play/ports)
Ted [Unrated] (MA) or [Theatrical] (iTunes/ports)
Terminator: Genisys (Vudu)
Transformers: Age Of Extinction (iTunes 4K)
Transformers: Dark Of The Moon (Vudu)
Trolls [2017] (MA)
Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (iTunes 4K)
Tyler Perry's Madea's Witness Protection (iTunes)
Tyler Perry's Temptation: Confessions Of A Marriage Counselor (Vudu or Google Play)
Unbroken [2014] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Warm Bodies (Vudu)
What To Expect When You're Expecting (iTunes)
World War Z (Vudu)
Zootopia (Google Play/ports)

🦝

💲1️⃣ SD

21 Jump Street (MA + Sony points)
22 Jump Street (MA + Sony points)
Act Of Valor (iTunes)
After Earth [2013] (MA + Sony points)
Alpha [2018] (MA + Sony points)
Amazing Spider-Man 2, The [2014] (MA + Sony points)
American Hustle [2013] (MA + Sony points)
Bad Boys For Life [2020] (MA + Sony points)
Big Mommas Like Father, Like Son (iTunes/ports)
Captain Phillips (MA + Sony points)
Charlie's Angels [2019] (MA + Sony points)
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 [2013] (MA + Sony points)
Concussion [2015] (MA + Sony points)
Diary Of A Wimpy Kid [2010] (iTunes/ports)
Dirty 30 (Vudu)
Dog's Way Home, A [2019] (MA + Sony points)
Equalizer, The [2014] (MA + Sony points)
Equalizer 2, The (MA + Sony points)
Evil Dead [2013] (MA + Sony points)
Family, The [2013] (iTunes)
Family Guy: Blue Harvest (iTunes)
Family Guy: It's A Trap (iTunes)
Forbidden Kingdom, The (iTunes)
Glee: The Concert (iTunes/ports)
Goosebumps 2 [2018] (MA + Sony points)
Grown Ups 2 (MA + Sony points)
Hangover, The [2009] [Theatrical] (iTunes/ports)
Haywire (iTunes)
Heat, The [2013] (iTunes/ports SD)
Hereafter [2010] (iTunes/ports)
Here Comes The Boom [2012] (MA + Sony points)
Hitchcock [2012] (iTunes/ports)
Hotel Transylvania 3 (MA + Sony points)
Hours [2013] (Vudu)
Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs (iTunes/ports)
Immortals [2011] (iTunes)
Insidious: Chapter 3 (MA + Sony points)
Insidious: The Last Key (MA + Sony points)
Interview, The [2014] (MA + Sony points)
Journey To Bethlehem [2023] (MA + Sony points)
Jumanji: The Next Level (MA + Sony points)
Knight & Day (iTunes/ports)
Life As We Know It (iTunes/ports)
Looper (MA + Sony points)
Men In Black [1997] (MA)
Men In Black II [2002] (MA + Sony points)
Men In Black III [2012] (MA + Sony points)
MIB International [2019] (MA + Sony points)
Mirror Mirror [2012] (iTunes)
Mortal Instruments: The City Of Bones (MA + Sony points)
Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian (iTunes/ports)
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood [2019] (MA + Sony points)
Olympus Has Fallen (MA + Sony points)
Orange Is The New Black season 1 (Vudu)
Overcomer [2019] (MA + Sony points)
Parker [2013] (MA + Sony points)
Passengers [2016] (MA + Sony points)
Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief (iTunes/ports)
Perfect Guy, The [2015] (MA + Sony points)
Perks Of Being A Wallflower, The (iTunes SD only)
Peter Rabbit [2018] (MA + Sony points)
Pixels [2015] (MA + Sony points)
Pope's Exorcist, The [2023] (MA)
Predators [2010] (iTunes/ports)
Proud Mary [2018] (MA)
Public Enemies [2009] (iTunes/ports)
Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (iTunes/ports)
Robin Hood [2010] [Unrated] (iTunes/ports)
Safe Haven (iTunes)
Scoob [2020] (MA)
Shallows, The [2016] (MA + 150 points)
Sicario: Day Of The Soldado (MA + Sony points)
Sparkle [2012] (MA)
Spider-Man: Far From Home [2019] (MA + Sony points)
Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse (MA + Sony points)
Spider-Man: No Way Home [2021] (MA + Sony points)
Star, The [2017] (MA + Sony points)
Still Alice [2015] (MA + Sony points)
Taken [2009] [Extended Cut] (iTunes/ports)
Thanksgiving [2023] (MA + Sony points)
Thousand Words, A [2012] (Vudu)
Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (Vudu SD only or iTunes SD only)
Tyler Perry's Madea's Tough Love (Vudu)
Underworld: Awakening (MA + Sony points)
Venom (MA + Sony points)
Venom: Let There Be Carnage (MA + Sony points)
Vow, The [2012] (MA + Sony points)
Water For Elephants (iTunes/ports)
When The Bough Breaks (MA + Sony points)
Zombieland: Double Tap (MA + Sony points)

🦝

Super Cheap SD & HD Codes

All movies are 3 for $1 each/must spend at least $1 on total order.
Cabin In The Woods, The (Vudu SD only)
Croods, The (iTunes/ports SD)
Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (iTunes/ports SD)
Expendables 2, The (Vudu SD only or iTunes SD only)
Expendables 3, The [Unrated] (iTunes HD only)
Fast & Furious 6 [Extended] (MA ports HD)
Fast Five [Extended] (iTunes/ports HD)
Furious 7 [Extended] (MA ports HD)
Heat, The [2013] (iTunes/ports SD)
Hunger Games, The (Vudu SD or iTunes SD only)
Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The (Vudu HD only)
Internship, The [2013] (iTunes/ports SD)
John Wick 3 (Google Play HD only)
Jurassic World (MA ports HD)
Last Witch Hunter, The (Vudu SD only)
Life Of Pi (iTunes/ports SD)
Mechanic: Resurrection (Vudu SD only)
Now You See Me 2 (Vudu SD only)
Star Trek: Into Darkness (Vudu HD only)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Google Play/ports HD)
Transformers: Age Of Extinction (Vudu HD only)
Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (Vudu SD only or iTunes SD only)
Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (Vudu SD only)
Warm Bodies (iTunes SD only)
submitted by mthw704 to DigitalCodeSELL [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 21:48 Nora_Clybourn [RF] Will for Adventure

Part 1
Chicago, 2016. Flinn Gerald is doing his best to make it in the city. Born in Selma, Alabama, he has spent his entire life trying to escape the ever tightening grasp of his small town. But alas, he made it out and is adapting to life in the big city. With a big fancy corporate job, an endless supply of friends, an apartment with a stunning view of the lake, and great distance from his family, what more could he need? Well, there is a lot more (or less) that he needs, but of course that is a story for later.
On a typical Tuesday night at a bar, the regulars crowd in. Flinn is late, as usual, as he stayed late at work (again), but on his arrival, the cheers and hugs from all the friends make everyone forget of the regular inconvenience. Conversation ensued, starting with all the boring finance jargon, but as the drinks flowed, so did the conversation, moving away from work and more into life. This is what everyone preferred.
“Another round, anyone?” asked Raheem, enthusiastically. After a murmur of concurrence, he stood up to make his way up to the bar. “Flinn, care to lend a hand?”
Raheem Bartlett was Flinn’s college roommate and the first person he met outside of his hometown. The pair hit it off instantly despite having wildly different backgrounds. Even in their freshman year, the engineer and the finance major would get into all sorts of trouble together, but eventually they leveled out. Six years later, they still have each other’s backs just like day one.
The pair made their way up to the bar and waited to get the bartender's attention. “What's up with you, bro?” asked Raheem. “You’ve been seeming a bit off.”
“Oh, ya know. Work, life, everything kinda happens so fast. Work has been busy as of late, and the hours long.”
Seeming displeased by this answer, Raheem stared back in concern.
“Really, I’m fine… just long hours.”
“Back in school you’d pull back to back all-nighters and then still make it to a morning class. I find it hard to believe that the mighty Flinn would be so setback by ‘long hours’.”
Flinn took a moment to ponder, staring down at the bar covered in various stamps and postcards beneath the epoxy surface. “I guess, ya know, it's not all it was cracked up to be. I guess I had expected more.” Flinn had mostly dropped his accent, but occasionally it would still slip out.
Despite coming from a long line of mill workers (mostly paper) and farm hands who never ventured further than the Dallas county line, Flinn yearned to leave his small town and conquer the world from a young age. Coming from the poorest county in Alabama, his family always squashed his dreams, labeling them as impossible. But Flinn knew better. Or, at least he knew he could do better. Graduating top of his class a year early and winning a full-ride scholarship to Northwestern University, he had proved everyone wrong and set his own path. The path he was told was impossible became his reality.
“More what?”
“Nothing, really. I mean, what more is there? This is what I always wanted, right? The stable job in the city, never having to worry about money. It’s great, and I couldn’t be more grateful, but… something is missing. Doing the same thing day after day staring at a screen, moving clients money around. I… just hoped it would be more fulfilling, especially after all it took to get here.”
Before he could finish his thought, the bartender came up to take their order: another round for the table, plus a round of shots, plus two more shots.
“What am I saying, really?” added Flinn. “I shouldn’t be complaining. Look at where I am now compared to six years ago. So much has changed. My home, friends, even my diet. I just feel a bit off. Like I need something more to do..
“I get it, bro. Adjusting to your new life can be rough. Enjoy it for a minute or two.” Raheem slides a shot in front of Flinn. “Here, take this.”
Tuesday had become fairly consistent to this point for this group of misfits: Raheem and his girlfriend Amy; Jack; Jasper, from Flinn’s firm, and his wife Max; and of course, Flinn. For nearly two years, these six have been meeting at O’Malley’s every Tuesday night for drinks and trivia. Some nights are more wild than others, but Tuesday has become the staple of the week among them.
Drinks flowed pretty regularly and heavy over the next few hours as the clock approached the end of day. Still going round for round on alternating tabs, the useless debates began to heat up.
“You can’t seriously think Wicker Park is the best neighborhood outside the Loop. Y’all need to get out more,” said Flinn.
“Bro it’s obviously Wicker Park,” argued Raheem.” Right on the blue line, getting to O’Hare is insanely easy, plus you can’t find better music in the city. Besides, Wicker Park has Davenport’s.”
“No one ever says Wicker Park,” adds Jack. “Have you ever heard someone say Wicker Park before?”
“Dude, but you can obviously get to O’Hare from anywhere in the city,” said Flinn
“Sure, but beats walking through that dumb Block 37 Center transfer like you and your red line. No transfer is the way to go, plus the blue line gets you right to the center of the loop.”
“So does every other L line as long as ya don’t mind walking a few blocks!”
“You’re both wrong,” adds Max. “Neither matters because Midway is better anyways.”
“Woah!” the whole table murmurs, sharing shocked looks as if she just confessed to a crime. Flinn rolled his eyes at this notion.
“Who flies out of Midway?” asks Raheem.
“What? Less people, cheaper flights, and more space. Why wouldn’t I fly out of Midway?” said Max.
“Wait, wait, that aside,” interrupts Raheem, “can we go back to the fact that Jasper thinks Sheffield is the best neighborhood? I feel like we moved past that too quickly.”
The debate rages on for many more minutes, until Flinn, seemingly out of nowhere, had enough.
“Can y’all just shut the fuck up! Why does it even matter?” Everyone’s glance quickly shot over to Flinn as a deafening silence overtook the table. Everyone pondered how to respond, and couldn’t seem to find an answer. This behavior from Flinn was unexpected, nay, unheard of. Flinn was the most level headed amongst them by far. Not even Raheem, his best friend of six years, had ever seen him get angry, let alone over an inconsequential friendly argument. “I…” Not even Flinn knew what to say next. “I’m going to go home. Long day tomorrow.” Already on his feet, he quickly walked away from the table and out the door.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The walk home was fairly brisk, but Flinn had grown fond of the cold. He tucked his hands into his coat pocket and hunched his shoulders forward, only looking down at the pavement ignoring the mostly asleep but still wide awake city surrounding him. His thoughts ran wild and near out of control. Of course, his intoxication did not help with clarity, but the inner dialogue was deafening. Not even he knew what was bothering him, but he was obviously bothered, deeply. He made a fool of himself in a way he never had before, and right now he felt he did not recognize himself. Surely some sleep will help, right?
He slowly made his way down the steps to the platform, carefully watching each step as to not fall, to wait for his train. He posted up against a pillar and stared off onto the dark, empty tracks. What has gotten into me? He did his best to calm his racing, wasted mind searching for some legibility amongst his thoughts.
Once he finally got home, he slumped down on the couch and scarfed down some week-old sushi he found in the fridge. He turned on some old documentary and was asleep before he knew it.
Suddenly, he was woken up by his phone ringing. It usually does not ring this time of night and was less than thrilled to be woken, so he let it keep ringing. It stopped after a couple of seconds, and he glanced down at the screen:
Mama
(2) missed calls
Dad
(1) missed call
Now concerned, he calls his mom back in a hurry. “Hello?”
“Flinn? Your grandfather, he’s dead.”
Part 2
The wet air engulfed Flinn’s face as he stepped out the airport doors into a warm February day. Six years had passed since he smelled the Alabama air. Even after all this time, it still smells just as he had remembered as if not even a day had passed. The drive to Selma was another ninety minutes, and despite having five days to mentally prepare himself for his arrival, it was not nearly enough time. He had not seen or spoken to anyone from his town, not even family, since he left early that August morning all those years ago. He left everything behind to start his new life. The life so many told him to not start, that he needed to stay. He left anyway and never looked back.
That was, until now. He had little choice in this regard. He knew he would have to make his return someday, but he knew not when nor for what. But today was that day. Flinn and his grandfather (Pops) had always been close. If anyone had been supportive of him, it’d have been Pops, but he was a man of little words. Even when he could talk, he hardly chose to. He was a great listener, and not just because he could not speak. He showed he was engaged and listening no matter what Flinn had to say. At times, he felt Pops was the only one who understood him as if he had been just like him before, but no one would ever talk about his past. All Flinn knew is Pops lost his tongue after a failed lynching.
The familiarity of the scenery zipping past was bittersweet. He had not realized how much he missed the rolling hills and thick forests beneath the unforgiving southern sky. He kept his head pressed against the cool glass of the car window even through the constant bumps in the road. He couldn’t look away. So many memories happened here, and the closer he got, the more plentiful the memories became, and the more potent they were, and the more painful they’d become.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As the dust settled behind him, he stood on the driveway staring at his childhood home still unsure how to process his emotions. It was all so overwhelming. He was thinking everything at once. He took a deep breath, rolled back his shoulders, and swallowed. He reached for the door handle, hesitating slightly, and took a step in. One foot, and then the next.
“Martin!” Flinn smiled as his old friend and childhood dog rushed towards him without hesitation. He knelt down and embraced him as Martin excitedly rustled through his arms seemingly showing more energy than he had in years.
He walked down the hall and around the corner into the living room. There, both drawn to the large television like moths to a flame, he saw his parents sitting beside one another on the couch watching some daytime program with their backs to him. They seemed to pay no notice to the commotion at the front door nor the loud creaking footsteps he took along the old wooden floors. They knew he was there; they just chose to ignore him. He walked into view to greet them. "Mama, dad." His father smiled slightly but caught himself and refrained.
Mama kept a straight face, but seemed to be fighting tears."Howard, help Flinn with his bags, dear."
“No, it's alright, I know where to take them,” said Flinn. “How are y’all?”
“Service is tomorrow at eleven down at the ole First Baptist Church. Make sure to wear something nice.”
“Alright, mama. I’ll... I’ll see you at dinner.”
“Whole family is coming tonight. Dinner is served at...”
“At seven, I got it, just as always.”
“It’s good to see you, kid.” said his dad. “Let me know if you need anything”
He did not expect things to go like that, not that he knew what to expect. He had hoped time would have been more forgiving. Perhaps leaving unannounced in the middle of the night was not the best plan, but at the time he felt as if he had no other choice. Everyone knew he was leaving. That was no secret and had not been for years before any plan had actually been set into motion. No one knew the date or time, except for Pops, of course, but he’d never tell. Of course he wanted everyone to know. He wanted everyone to be proud of him, but it was too big of a risk and commendations were too much to expect. Besides, Mama always had her schemes, and had she known, she would have found a way to stop him.
Not much had changed since he’d been here last. The old wood paneling still lined nearly all the walls, crack in some spots, replaced in others, but all coated by decades of cigarette soot. On the walls were a combination of family portraits from over the years and cheap artwork found at the flea market. Old green furniture, too many house plants to count, and a tacky themed kitchen, it was all still the same.
His childhood bedroom, however, was much different. Hardly even recognizable, what was once his bedroom was now a storage room filled with endless shelves and boxes. He set his things on the lonely cot in the corner, sat down, and took it all in.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Not realizing he had drifted off, Flinn awoke and looked at the clock. 6:55. Convenient. He sat up and brushed his hair down with his hand as he suspected it was sticking up in the usual way. He rubbed his eyes and made his way to the dining room. The whole family was there, probably about twenty people or so, all scattered about throughout the kitchen, dining room, and living room engaged in various conversations. His nana, aunt, and Mama were cooking away putting the final touches on the large meal.
“Well if it isn’t this fucker…” said a familiar voice to his left, laughing. Flinn looked over to see his cousin who’s just a year younger than him.
“DeAndre, how are you?”
“Never thought I’d see you again, even since you left. Thought maybe you ‘ood be dead.”
“Nah,” Flinn laughed. “Still very much alive.”
“I can see dat. Wearin’ your fancy suit and all.”
“Yeah I’ve been doing pretty well. Work has been… good. I have a great job at a finance firm in Chicago. Everything has been… Good. Yeah, good. How about you?”
“Now you ain’t goin’ city on us, are you?”
Flinn laughed. “I think I might already be.”
Just as dinner was finishing up, a line started to form and people found a seat wherever they could, be it at the table, on the couch, near the counter, or outside.
“Flinn!” his dad called out. “I saved ya a seat here at the table, kid.”
Flinn took his seat right next to his dad which positioned him right across from Mama. The table could sit eight, and the seats filled in pretty quickly so he was lucky to get one. Besides his sister, all of the oldest family members took the other four chairs.
The dinner itself was mostly uneventful, except for the food of course which was extraordinary. Flinn had not eaten Mama’s cooking, or anything like it in six years. The southern food in Chicago was alright, but nothing like what you can get down here, and no restaurant is going to have the same quality and taste as a home-cooked meal. By God, he had not realized how much he needed this. It was almost healing, like a part of his soul had been lost and he found it once again. The last week had been incredibly overwhelming, and last Saturday he never foresaw being here now, but he was glad he was, regardless of the looming tension. All the stress from work and life back home in Chicago was now all gone. All he had to worry about was… oh yeah, the family drama. The dreaded interactions, what he had suppressed for so long, that had kept him up at night for years. All those long nights doing homework or anything else beside sleeping. They had not been by choice but rather necessity. He would have slept more if he could, and some of those nights he really needed to, but instead was kept motivated by the pain. The pain of knowing no matter what he did, no matter how successful in life he became, he would never be good enough for his family, good enough for Mama, because he left them.
If there ever was a time to clear his conscience and get everything out of the way, it would be today, or at least over the next couple of days. When else would he have the chance? Not that any of this had been planned, and his therapist would probably advise against it. She did not even know he was here. What would she have to say? Avoiding conflict has always been his choice. He has always been quiet, never been at the center of drama, but some things need to be said. Just, maybe not by him. If he waited long enough, perhaps they would come up on their own. So he decided to wait, but he knew time was limited and he could not wait forever.
“Mama, could you pass the butter?”
Mama just stared back at him. “Get ya own damn buttah, since ya can do everything else on ya own.”
Flinn stands up and reaches for the butter. “I can do everything myself, and I have. I hope you’re proud, Mama.”
“Proud? What do I have to be proud of?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe my job, my degree, everything I have been able to do to build a good life for myself.”
“I don hear anything worthy of praise.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Mama.”
“Oh, so now you’re sorry? You could’ve fooled me. Is that how you felt when you left? Unbelievable.”
“I left because I had no other choice.”
“Oh don go lyin’ to me now. You did have a choice. You had a choice and you chose to leave us. You didn’t say goodbye, and you were just gone in the mornin’.”
“If I had not just left, you would’ve stopped me.”
“Cause you ain’t got no reason to go nowhere.”
“I had plenty of reasons to want to leave, and not because of you. I’ve always had dreams, Mama, ya know that. I’ve always been bigger than just this town.”
“Oh, so now you’re too good for us, city boy? Huh? I don wanna hear no more of it.”
“It wasn’t about that, Mama. Look at all I’ve been able to do.”
“I ain’t see nothin’. You never call and you never visit. How am I supposed to know what you been doin’?”
“I thought you didn’t want me coming around any more?”
“Well, you’ve got that right. Glad to see you still have some brains left.”
“Well excuse me. Maybe it's best if I leave again. Sorry I ain’t make you proud, Mama.” Flinn got up and left the table.
Part 3
Just as the early light began to peak through the blinds, Flinn was woken up by a firm knock at his door. “Flinn, may I come in? It's Uncle Terrence.”
Flinn sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Yep, come in.”
“How are you this morning, kid? Ya know, she’ll never admit it, but ya Mama missed ya.”
“I find it hard to believe.” Deep down Flinn knew it was true, but she was hard as a rock, and arrogant. She would always find a way to be right, even when she knew she was wrong, and she would never let you know she knew she was wrong.
“Well, we’re all proud of you, kid.” Flinn hated when Terrence and everyone called him kid. “Just wish yoo’d come around and see us every once in a while. I know ya busy with all the big city stuff and all.”
“I thought no one wanted anything to do with me any more?”
“At first, maybe, but I miss ya, kid. Ya know who missed ya most of all?”
“Pops?”
“Yes, of course. He always wanted to know about ya, every time I’d come round. He couldn’t call, but always wanted me to.”
“I should have called.”
“I think everyone wanted to call, but as time went on, it became harder and harder to push that button. It was already so hard at first, and only got harder.”
“I thought about everyone a lot, especially at first. Leaving was really hard, and I almost didn’t, but I always wanted more. I didn’t want to spend my whole life in this town, and if I had not left when I did I probably never would have. But it was still hard. I wanted to go home so many times, but I convinced myself no one wanted me here no more or that y’all would’ve said ‘I told ya so’ or sum bullshit. No one wanted me around any more and I had left, so I was stuck on the path I chose. And I’m happy, and I’ve done so much, but it’s never been easy.”
“Pops was a lot like you when he was your age. Set on leaving as quickly as he could. Things were different back then, not that they are any better now, but Hank... my brother… Pops, was just like you.”
“What changed?”
“Well, he never did. Just no one talks about it anymore. After what happened on that day, they blamed his behavior. Said he should’ve played it safe and he’d still have his tongue.”
“No one has ever told me the story.”
“And they won’t. It changed the whole family.”
“But you’ll tell me?”
“Only if you promise not to tell. I don need an earful from ya Mama.”
“I promise.”
“Hank couldn’t be confined to Selma, just like you. He joined the army right out of high school, and after he was done in Lebanon, he didn’t go straight home.”
“Where did he go?”
“Everywhere but here. He used the small amount of money he got from the army and went anywhere that would let him in. Across Europe, parts of Asia, Northern Africa, even parts of South America. Of course, a young black man traveling by himself at the time was challenging, but Hank could hold his own pretty well. He still ran into all sorts of trouble. He spent more nights in jail than he would have liked, but he would have done it all again if he could.”
“What happened when he got back?”
“He was much different, but for the better. He couldn’t wait to get back out there again. He had confidence like I had never seen before. That’s what got him in trouble not too long after.”
“How’d he lose his tongue? I’m guessing that is what changed everything.”
“When he got back, he got involved with a girl, I think her name was Susan. She was the mayor’s daughter. They snuck around for a while. Their relationship was not acceptable, especially to her father. If he found out, Hank would be in a lot of trouble, and of course eventually he did find out. He spent about a month in jail in just awful conditions even for the time. They didn’t have anything to hold him on so eventually they had to let him go. About a week after he got out, he was walking downtown and some guys grabbed him. He took him out to a field and tried to lynch him. Luckily, they failed and he survived, but they took his tongue as a warning. He was never the same after that. All of his confidence was gone, and of course he couldn’t speak no more.”
Flinn did not know how to respond. It all made sense now: why the family so desperately wanted him to stay, why they were so hurt by him leaving, and why they’d feared who he was becoming. They were all traumatized and wanted to protect him. They did not want him to suffer the same fate as Pops.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The funeral itself was fairly uneventful and went nearly as perfectly as expected. The church filled in with hardly any empty seats, tears were shed, and speeches were given. Pops touched the lives of almost everyone he met, and they came to show it. After the service was the reception, and yet again, the food was spectacular. Everyone got along just fine today and there was no more residual drama, at least for now. Today was Pops’ day.
After the reception, the family gathered back at Mama’s house for the reading of the will. Pops did not have many possessions, at least not of monetary value, but what he did have was meaningful in other ways. He was very clear on who he wanted to give off, and handpicked what would be most substantial to each person.
Everyone gathered around much as they did at dinner, and the lawyer began his reading:
I, Hank Gerald, a resident in the City of Selma, County of Dallas, State of Alabama, being of sound mind, not acting under duress or undue influence, and fully understanding the nature and extent of all my property and of this disposition thereof, hereby make, publish, and declare this document to be my Last Will and Testament, and hereby absolutely revoke any and all other wills and amendments previously made by me.
The reading went on for some time as there were many beneficiaries. Flinn began to daydream about what could be left for him. Flinn was not a very sentimental person, so trinkets and heirlooms paid him little interest. Perhaps his car, or maybe money. Something that will be useful to him.
To my dear brother, Terrence, I leave my 1964 Pontiac GTO and all tools and parts associated and necessary with/for the running and upkeep of the vehicle.
The further down the list he went, less was given, but this is to be expected. As the end of the list neared, Flinn began to wonder what would be left for him if anything at all. The will had been in order of age, to this point, so he should be up soon.
To my Granddaughter, Nia,...
Nia? She's younger than me… Flinn thought.
I leave her my grandmother’s locket containing a picture of my Grandfather before he left for the Great War. She looked at it everyday to keep the memory of him alive until he eventually returned to her alive.
How could he skip me? Perhaps I should have called, or never left. Flinn got lost in his own thoughts and barely paid attention to the rest of the will. He and Pops were so close, and he never imagined he would be taken out of the will. But that is my own fault, afterall. I left, and I never even care to call. He died, and I never even said goodbye.
Just as Flinn began to accept the consequences of his actions, they got to the last beneficiary listed in the will:
Finally, to my oldest Grandson, Flinn, who is more and more like me than I ever could have wished to have been, I leave my journal. I hope whenever you need the motivation, you read it to find the meaning you are looking for in life.
Part 4
Flinn sat at his desk unable to focus. It was fairly slow for a Friday, but he still had work to do. After a chaotic weekend back home in Alabama, he was ready to settle back into his monotonous routine. The experience had been healing in some regards, but still left a lot unanswered. What did he mean by finding the meaning in life? Flinn wondered as he flipped through the endless pages of Pops’ journal, all filled with endless recounts, drawings, symbols, and pictures from his travels, just as he had since Monday. The journal consumed his whole attention, and nothing else seemed important enough to focus on. He had even ditched his friends all week which he never does.
He is supposed to meet Raheem for drinks tonight, but now he is wondering if he even wants to go. There is just too much in his head right now. He just wants to be alone. 12:37. The clock is moving too slowly. Flinn clears his calendar for the rest of the day and decides to go home.
At home, he still finds himself flipping through the pages of the journal, not even reading them but just looking at them. Again and again, he flips through until he has enough. He drops the journal on his lap and stares off into the distance at the gorgeous view of Lake Michigan. The endless city and skyline take up most of the horizon until it just stops, cut off by the endless ocean-like lake. He stares at it for quite a while until something catches his eye. He has seen this before. Well, of course he has. He lives here and this is his view everyday. But he knows he has seen it somewhere else.
He picks the journal back up and flips through in a hurry. There it is. He holds the journal up to the window to show a matching two-page drawing of this exact view. Well, not exact. It is a slightly different angle, but it was close enough. Pops was here. He would have loved visiting. I should have invited him. This made Flinn sad, and he threw the journal down on the table in frustration.
Just then, that is when he noticed it. There was a page sticking out from the journal, but it was not like the rest. The page was white and pristine, aside from a few wrinkles, as if it was new, whereas the rest of the journal showed its age. He rushed over to grab it. He opened it to find a letter, addressed to him:
Grandson, When you left, I knew that you would accomplish everything you set out to do. I also knew, however, you would find yourself lost someday, returning home for answers. I was hoping I’d be able to give you those answers myself, but as time goes on that seems less likely. I too found myself lost, and I knew not why. I had gone and seen the world, and it changed me, but I was still not fulfilled. I came home still looking for the answers, and it took a while, but eventually I did find them.
Through this journal, I hope to share my findings so that you too, when you are lost, find the answers you seek. Whenever you are ready, follow my journey and the clues I have left for you. Go out and see the world, just as I did. You will find that what you want from life is less than what you expect.
I hope the experiences you have are less harsh than my own, but still be careful. The world has changed a lot, but still not enough. But don’t skip ahead for the meaning may be lost. Take only one step at a time, and when it comes time to take the next step, it will reveal itself.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Seven o’clock rolls around and Flinn walks into the bar to meet Raheem. He hasn’t seen Raheem, or anyone else from the group, since last Tuesday when he had his outburst. He begins by telling the story of the events of this last weekend, but leaves out the parts about Pops’ past.
"Pops left me a hidden letter.”
“What do you mean?” asked Raheem.
“Like in his journal, I found a hidden letter. It was addressed to me.”
“What did it say, bro?”
“He says he was a lot like me when he was my age. He wants me to go where he went and learn what he did.”
“In Alabama?”
“No, everywhere but there. He wants me to start in Western Europe and follow his clues around the world.”
“He traveled?”
“A lot, apparently. I never knew. He was in the army, and after he got out, he traveled… everywhere, basically.”
“Why did no one tell you?”
“They wanted to keep me safe, I guess.
"They wanted to keep the whole family safe after what happened to him.”
“What do you mean, bro. What happened?”
“I can’t talk about it, but it doesn’t matter now anyways. I’m living a different life now.” Flinn never shared much about his past or his family with anyone, not even Raheem. It has always been a mystery. This was the most he had ever shared with him.
“Well, are you going to go?”
“No, I can’t. I have work. It took too much to get here. I can’t just give it away.”
“It’ll still be here when you get back, bro.”
“If only it was that simple.”
“It can be. You have money saved up. Chicago isn’t going anywhere. We’re not going anywhere. Plus, you’ve always talked about traveling more. Why don’t you take some time to do it.”
“I suppose, but I like my life here.”
“If you don’t do it now, when will you? You’ve taken a leap before, why not take another one. You’re smart, you’ll land on your feet, bro. Besides, your grandfather thought it was important enough to not only give you his journal, but hide you a letter for you to find when you needed it most. Maybe now is when you needed it most. You’re way too stressed at work anyways, and I can tell you’ve been off for a while now. Perhaps some change could give you what you need.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On Monday morning, when Flinn gets to work, he walked straight to his boss's office. He turned in his letter of resignation.
Two weeks later, he took the red line to the blue line to O’Hare. Journal in hand, he boarded a flight to Dublin.
submitted by Nora_Clybourn to shortstories [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 21:47 Nicksnews20 My wislist for future Funko Fusion content

My personal wishlist (including a lot of properties from outside of NBCUniversal) has to look something like this:
  1. One Piece
  2. SpongeBob SquarePants
  3. Serenity/Firefly
  4. Community
  5. Stranger Things
  6. Avatar The Last Airbender
  7. Star Trek
  8. How To Train Your Dragon
  9. The Addams Family/Wednesday
  10. The Boys
  11. Good Omens
  12. The Office
  13. Breaking Bad
  14. Fairly Odd Parents
  15. Attack on Titan
  16. The Good Place
  17. Kung Fu Panda
  18. The Last of Us
  19. Barbie
  20. The Grinch Who Stole Christmas
  21. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
  22. Brooklyn Nine-Nine
  23. The Witcher
  24. Knives Out
  25. Casa de Papel
  26. Ted Lasso
  27. Despicable Me
  28. Hunger Games
  29. Squid Game
  30. The Truman Show
  31. Aliens
  32. Mamma Mia
  33. Wall-E
  34. Game of Thrones
  35. Home Alone
  36. Parks and Recreation
  37. Mr Bean
  38. Shrek
  39. Monsters Inc
  40. Arcane
  41. Dune
  42. Coraline
  43. Adventure Time
  44. Fallout
  45. Up
  46. The Lord of the Rings
  47. Groundhog Day
  48. The Matrix
  49. Doctor Who
  50. Forrest Gump
  51. Ocean's Eleven
  52. Fight Club
  53. Madagascar
  54. The White Lotus
  55. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
  56. Hazbin Hotel
  57. Orange is the New Black
  58. God of War
  59. Elf
  60. Ready Player One
  61. Cast Away
AKA The next three games worth of IP 😄
Thoughts about these?
submitted by Nicksnews20 to funkofusion [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 21:38 emorybored I work at the Night Library (installment 11). The pool was on the roof this time.

Okay, I’m gonna level with you. Focusing on current events is just getting a little too fucking heavy. I’m no closer to answers than I was a month ago, none of us can sleep through a full night without waking up shaking and drenched in sweat, and there are some new downright bizarre phenomena cropping up that I just don’t have it in me to allot my energy to at the moment.
So, for today’s installment (and then also for the next one) I’m gonna tell you another good ol’ fun-for-the-whole-family pool story. Yep, you heard that right—welcome to our first bonafide two-parter.
This was quite a while ago. My measure of time is all off by a year now, but I feel fairly confident in chalking it up to post-first pool story, pre-ouija board fiasco—so however long ago that’s been now.
It was a weird, rare night, in that Matt was out. Not an unheard of occurrence, but it’s fairly anomalous, and it certainly puts the rest of us on slightly higher alert.
Obviously, he always tells us to call him at the first sign of some shit going down and to use our best judgment to determine whether it’s serious enough to lock up and head out. Better safe than sorry and all that. The night in question was no exception to the rule.
Overall, though, things were mostly quiet. Alice was in, as was I, as was Wiley. We do a lot of congregating, but we do a lot of work, too, and this night, we were all in our respective areas, doing our respective jobs.
I was in my not-office mending a finicky Shakespeare anthology, Alice was watching the desk while working on cataloging a truckload of new donations, and Wiley was replacing several lightbulbs that had all decided to call it quits after our most recent power outage (this one due to a flash-flood).
It was calm to an almost uncharacteristic degree. There was a relatively steady flow of patrons in and out of the building—I could hear Alice greeting them and wishing them a good evening—but as far as anomalous activity, there was none.
It does happen, on rare occasion, that we make it through a full night without any goings on, but there’s almost always at least the odd disembodied voice or two.
We should’ve known better than to trust a meteor shower.
See, there’s just something about natural anomalies. Not just the ones that knock our power out, either, although those are clearly included. Blizzards, thunderstorms, hail and tornados and earthquakes and all your run-of-the-mill destructive shit, sure. But the things of beauty, too. Rainbows. Eclipses, lunar or solar. And you think full moons hit emergency rooms hard? Try this fucking place.
It was just that a meteor shower wasn’t one we’d dealt with before. Does that mean we shouldn’t have known better? Fuck no. Obviously not. But perhaps our collective greatest fault is that we still have some semblance of hope.
Wiley wanted to look at it from the roof. Kid never fucking wants to do anything, and they were set to climb up and camp out alone. I couldn’t not entertain such an innocent, youthful whim.
Our roof access doesn’t have stairs—just a ladder—so Alice couldn’t accompany us, which I felt shitty about, but she assured me it was perfectly fine with her.
“The world decided I didn’t need functional legs so I could never be peer pressured into leaving the ground,” she quipped. “I’m not into heights. But y’all have fun up there. Somebody needs to be here for the patrons anyway.”
Fair and fair. So Wiley and I gathered up an armful of blankets and one of Matt’s trusty camping lanterns and headed out to scale the building.
Wiley went up ahead of me. That was my first mistake.
Really, they aren’t that much younger than I am. Maybe four or five years, and I’m too close to thirty for comfort now. But there’s something about them, even as far as they’ve come, that makes it impossible for me not to do everything in my power to protect them. I think Matt feels the same way. Maybe most of us do.
Anyway, that’s why I immediately started cursing myself when they reached the top of the ladder, pulled their way up and over the ledge of the roof, and said, “...Whoa.”
My second mistake was not immediately telling them to turn around and start climbing right the fuck back down.
I knew exactly what that tone of voice meant. But something in me just kicked into hyperdrive and I…had to see it. Whatever it was, I had to see it for myself.
“Don’t move,” I said, and then, “What is it?”
But by that point, I was at the top, too. I hoisted myself over the ledge and was met with…
…Water.
It was everywhere. Extending in every direction. There was no edge in sight—not even a horizon line. Just vast, dark water as far as the eye could see.
“Okay. This is not—let’s go.”
“Yeah,” Wiley agreed, a little breathless.
I’m sure you’ll be downright shocked to learn that, when we turned around, the ladder was gone.
The edge of the rooftop was, too.
The thing that surprised me, really, was that it wasn’t as though we were standing on some sort of island. We were somehow in the water all of a sudden, up to our waists, neither of us having taken a single step.
“Fucking…shit. Jesus. Adam?”
“We’re fine,” was my default response, because my anxiety override kicks in like a motherfucker as soon as someone else is more openly afraid than I am. “It’s okay, let’s just—let’s think for a second. Maybe it’s just, like, an illusion or something.”
“Okay,” Wiley said. “Maybe we should…try moving?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we’ll bump the ledge and then we can just feel for the ladder. Good idea.”
Wiley and I shared a look, wordlessly nodding to one another, and stepped forward in unison.
Maybe I misspoke before, when I said we weren’t on a platform. It was just that our platform wasn’t above the water. Now, though, there was nothing.
It felt, almost, like the stomach-turning sensation of missing a step walking up a staircase. The only difference was that there was no moment-too-late connection.
We plummeted.
There wasn’t any difference in temperature beneath the surface, which was, in a way, more disorienting than the water itself. The mental recalibration that typically comes with plunging into a cool lake or, adversely, a heated pool wasn’t allotted an opportunity to take place. It felt, for most intents and purposes, the same as being in the air, just that I couldn’t breathe.
It was heavy, too. The weightlessness water tends to embody was null; I immediately abandoned everything I’d been carrying, clawing my way upward frantically enough that it would’ve been mortifying, I’m sure, had anyone witnessed it.
Wiley resurfaced at the same moment I did—empty handed as well, I noted—coughing a little but not to the extent that I was worried they were choking. “Next idea?” they asked, pushing their wet hair back from their face, dark, damp lashes obscuring their eyes.
“Let’s get back on the…” I started, but trailed off when I raised my head.
A couple hundred yards out from us, there was a ship. It was a dark, hulking thing, with tattered sails and something indistinguishable affixed to the bow, glittering and glinting in the moonlight.
Wiley spun around to face it, drifting back slightly when their gaze landed parallel to mine. “What the fuck is that?” they demanded, legs kicking haphazardly beneath the water to keep them in place.
“Maybe it’s…good,” I said. I knew better than that and I knew Wiley did, too, but I said it anyway. “Maybe someone will help.”
They didn’t even humor me with a response to that bullshit.
Now, at this point in the story, maybe you’re thinking being suddenly surrounded by water and watching as an ominous ship approached us with absolutely nowhere to go and no way to escape doesn’t feel quite enough like imminent condemnation. To which I say to you: not to worry. Because the next realization we came to was that the platform we’d been standing on previously had suddenly ceased to exist.
“Shit,” Wiley said. “Shit, shit, shit. Adam.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s fine. We’re fine. We just—we’re gonna—follow me.”
I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck possessed me to swim toward the Obvious Death Ship. I guess just that there wasn’t anything else save for open water anywhere so it essentially felt like our options were paddle around until we were exhausted and drown or face a quicker, simpler demise.
“You better have a fucking plan, bro,” Wiley intoned from behind me, which I chivalrously pretended not to hear, because I did not, in fact, have a fucking plan.
The closer we drew to the vessel, the more unbelievably monstrous it appeared to become. It loomed above us, casting a shadow over everything in its direct path, and the sinking in my stomach almost convinced me to turn around. Almost.
But then something curled around my ankle. It was slick and strong, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that whatever it was could’ve pulled me under and eaten me alive in a fraction of a second.
Luckily for me, it wasn’t interested. It let go as quickly as it had latched on, almost as though it was simply using me as a handrail to move itself along. Still, though, the knowledge that it was there was all the motivation I needed to push forward ever faster. I didn’t say anything—didn’t want to add more fuel to Wiley’s panicked fire—just picked up my pace and swam up to their side.
“There’s a ladder,” they informed me, raising a hand and pointing toward the back half of the ship.
Indeed, there was a ladder. It was a tattered, worn thing, comprised of old, fraying rope and rotting, untreated wooden boards, but it looked composed enough that I figured we could likely make it up if we were swift.
“Bet,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We went.
Up close, the ladder appeared even shoddier than it had when we’d first seen it. I reached out of the water and wrapped my fingers around the rope at the bottom, giving it a hearty tug. To my slight surprise, it held fast.
“I think we’re good,” I told Wiley. “I’ll go up first and tell you what I see.”
“Be careful,” they said, but didn’t protest, just backed up enough for me to get the leverage I needed to hoist myself onto the bottom board.
I climbed warily, overly conscious of every creak of the wood bowing beneath my weight, every groan of the fibers of rope under my hands, but made it without incident to the top.
Once there, I grabbed onto the ship’s edge, lifting my gaze to take in whatever lie before me.
It was…nothing. I mean, it was a ship, obviously. But there wasn’t anything on board. No apparent crew nor cargo nor even a captain manning the helm. Granted, I couldn’t see perfectly, but the moon shone brightly enough that I was fairly confident in my observation that the deck was devoid of anything but its own shiplap floor.
“Hello?” I called, because I wasn’t about to beckon Wiley up if some fucked shit was going to pop out of nowhere the second we made a sound.
Nothing responded. Nothing moved. The ship rocked gently on the impossible water, as silent and vacant as it had been a moment before.
“Good?” Wiley questioned nervously from below me.
“Yeah,” I told them, easing myself off the ladder and down into the confines of the vessel. “Come on.”
They did so tenuously but still more swiftly than I had, climbing aboard and landing next to me with a dampened thunk.
We allowed ourselves the briefest of moments to catch our breath, silently rejoicing in the small win that was having found solace from the pool itself. Not that we had any idea what to do or where to go from here, but at the very least, we weren’t drowning.
“Okay,” I said, clearing the unease from my throat. “I don’t know what good trying to steer this thing would do us—there’s nothing but water no matter where we go. But maybe there’s something here somewhere that’ll help us figure out how to get back. So I think we just…start looking around?”
Wiley nodded. “Cool. Split halves, front and back?”
Nooo, Adam, don’t split up! Never split up! I know. I can literally hear you screaming it at me. And actually, for once in my life, I considered that something might be a horrible fucking idea before acting on it.
But then I saw something.
As I turned back to respond, Wiley’s eyes shimmered, dancing in the moonlight.
They were silver and mercurial, with no pupils or whites in sight.
Whatever had come back up from underwater, it was not my coworker.
I swallowed, forcing my expression to remain as neutral as I was able and praying whatever was standing in front of me didn’t notice I’d caught on. My entire body was instantaneously covered in chills, in a way that I understood to have the same purpose as a dog’s hackles rising. “Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll take the front.”
I headed in the opposite direction of the thing wearing Wiley’s face (at a pace that I hoped didn’t appear hurried but one that would remove me in a timely manner from the vicinity) and didn’t stop until I’d reached the front of the ship, breathing heavily and attempting to slow my reeling mind.
I didn’t know what to tackle first. I didn’t know where Wiley was, or if they were anywhere—if they were even still alive. I didn’t know what my next move should be. I didn’t know what I was looking for or where I might find it.
It’s rare that I feel utterly hopeless, to the degree that I genuinely contemplate just sitting down and giving up, but in this instance, I thought long and hard about how easy it would be to succumb. I’d let the unthinkable happen. Wiley was gone. No one else had been here with them—there was no one else to blame. Just me. Only me.
…You’ll be glad to know that the self-pity didn’t last long. Embarrassing, honestly.
If I was the only one here, it meant I was the only shot they had at making it out alive. Our version of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ had always been ‘alive until proven dead’ and I wasn’t about to turn my back on the insane streak of luck we’d had up until this point. Not a single one of our lives had been lost, and we’d been in the midst of some absolute shitstorms. There was no reason to believe that right now, tonight, was an outlier. I couldn’t lie down like a sick dog and wonder if Wiley was still out there somewhere, suffering until the bitter, bloody end. I had to find them. By whatever means necessary, as long as it took, I had to find them.
I pushed off the railing before me and spun on my heel, eyes flitting back and forth to assess my options as efficiently as possible, and after a moment, I registered that fitted flush against the large front mast, there was a door.
It was only a sliver, thin and not particularly extraordinary in height, but there was a handle carved roughly into its right side and a set of rust-riddled hinges on its left.
I took about half a second to weigh my options and then reached for it, curling my fingers around the handle and giving it a generous tug.
The hinges, unsurprisingly, complained, but not loudly and not for long. The door gave way with little resistance, and opened up to my worst fucking nightmare.
A set of stairs, descending into blackness.
I mean, I guess if I’m being fair, my first pool encounter had featured a staircase leading to the pool rather than away from it, but I didn’t feel like there could possibly be good news awaiting me below deck of a ship where I’d just encountered a fucking mimic.
Still, though, there was a niggling insistence in my brain (not that kind, come on) that it was my only lead on finding Wiley if they were, in fact, somewhere on board. So I cast one last glance over my shoulder and stepped into the dark, letting the door fall closed behind me.
It smelled different, instantly, from the open air above. Mustier, which was to be expected, but also almost sweet somehow. I tried, unsuccessfully, to shove my true-crime-podcast-addled brain’s helpful reminder that the scent of human death is said to be sweet into a mental lockbox and put my hand to the wall, easing tentatively down to the second step.
The visibility wasn’t just low—it was practically zero. If you’ve ever been on a cave tour and had a guide cut the lights and instruct you to lift your hand to your face to demonstrate the complete absence of light, it was nearly that intense. The placing of both feet on each concurrent stair was an arduous, calculated process, but finally, after approximately one (1) century, I reached flat ground. I still couldn’t see, and there was no definitive way to tell whether I was standing on the floor or just a landing without thoroughly feeling out the space around me, so I reluctantly departed from the wall, scooting my feet in small, tentative motions and keeping both arms partially outstretched before me.
After a (l o n g) moment, I determined that either this was the world’s largest landing or I’d made it all the way down. I had no idea whether I was in a singular, enormous room, or if there were individual cabins, or if I was about to run face-first into the grim fucking reaper.
And then I turned to my left.
There was a light.
It was so, so faint. Flickering. Barely discernible, its warm, gentle glow ever so shyly illuminating the cracks around what appeared to be another closed door.
Being the only visible thing in my line of sight, in any direction, it emitted the aura of both a beacon and an omen.
I headed towards it.
I was about half afraid I was stuck in a horror movie situation where no matter how long I walked it would never grow any closer, but fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case. I actually gained on it more quickly than I felt I should have for the speed I was moving, but I wasn’t going to complain about reaching the end of the nothingness in commendable time.
I ran my fingertips along the edge of the door and, sure enough, there was a carved-in handle, just like the last.
It opened just as effortlessly, and yellow candlelight rolled dimly out to greet me, lapping at my waterlogged clothes.
“Please,” came a quiet, terrified voice from inside the room. “Please don’t. I don’t know what you want, or–or what you are, but please don’t—”
“...Wiley?”
Rather than calming, the voice’s state of alarm rose to a level bordering on full-blown panic as I took a step into the space. “Please,” the voice begged. There wasn’t anyone visible from my current vantage point, but I could hear it clearly enough to feel fairly confident that the person attached to it—the person who either had to be Wiley or yet another duplicate of them—was close. “Why are you doing this?”
This was a cabin, I thought, or perhaps a study of some sort, with a rotting wooden desk and a decaying leather chair both covered in a flurry of loose, browned book pages and a thick layer of dust. There were candles littering several surfaces, placed in what appeared not to be any intentional manner. Directly to my right, there was a shelf; its back faced me and the odd placement led me to imagine that it may have been employed to block the door at some time.
It was also, I would have just about bet, the source of the voice.
I nudged a couple of planks and a broken amber bottle out of the way with the toe of my shoe, rounding the shelf to find a crumpled, bloodied Wiley, restrained to the floor by a thick, coarse rope fixed expertly to a bolted tie and holding their bound hands up to shield their face.
“Jesus fuck,” I said. “What happened to you?”
Slowly, they lifted their head. “...Adam?”
Realization dawned on me, and I felt my stomach sink. “Look at me,” I told them. “Look at my eyes.”
They did, their own bloodshot and watery and inherently human, and I watched their shoulders deflate, the defense and terror draining from their form. “There’s someone…something…down here. Or, I guess it still is, anyway. I don’t know where it went, but I don’t wanna be here when it comes back.”
I nodded. “It look like me?”
Wiley nodded back.
“Yeah, there’s one of you upstairs. Not real sure what we’re supposed to do about them, but one thing at a time. Let’s get you up from there.”
It was a struggle, disentangling Wiley from the heavy, abrasive leads coccooning their body, but we got there eventually, and throughout the entirety of the arduous process they gave me the rundown on how, when we’d parted from the solace of the platform, something had instantaneously latched onto them, dragging them down deeper and deeper until their ears popped and their head felt like it was going to explode. They said they’d been knocked out by the pressure, and that when they’d come to, already tied in place and coughing up lungfuls of water, “I” had been standing over them, wielding a large net hook and no mercy.
“I knew it wasn’t you, obviously,” they said, “but I didn’t know where you actually were or if something had, like. Hijacked your body? I don’t know. Anyway, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
We grabbed a couple of candles (the majority had simply been melted into place atop whatever surface they’d adorned, but there was a small collection fitted into slightly-too-small brass holders) and got the fuck out.
Being able to see so little in the space around us was almost more disorienting than the pitch darkness I’d been feeling my way through before. It felt as though we were in a fragile, wavering bubble of reality and nothing existed outside of it.
“Wish I’d been awake coming down here,” Wiley remarked. “Guess I still wouldn’t have seen shit, though.”
“I could…maybe get us back upstairs?” I considered, with little to no confidence. “But I don’t really know what good it would do us. Nowhere to go. Maybe we just…look around down here for a bit? See if we can find anything useful?”
“Yeah, okay,” Wiley assented. “But we’ve gotta be quiet. I don’t want that thing to hear us.”
I certainly couldn’t argue with that.
We wandered hesitantly through the dark, shielding the flames of our candles with cupped palms and praying we wouldn’t misstep. We made it some unsubstantiated quantity of time without incident, but softly, after seconds or minutes or hours, we heard a light rustling from the shadow veiled corridor to our right, and Wiley pulled me into the nearest open room in the opposite direction.
Flattening our backs to the wall, we listened intently as footsteps echoed faintly behind us, cyclically growing closer and then further away again for several moments before disappearing altogether.
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding and uncovered my candle, easing the door of the room to a gentle, silent close. The contents of this one were different from that of the last in that there practically weren’t any. It wasn’t just that it was tidier; there was a chest shoved against the wall nearest us and a leatherbound book of some sort lying in the center of the floor, but otherwise the space was vacant.
Wiley moved first, crouching next to the journal and lifting it from the ground, a cloud of dust rising in the wake of their breath. I knelt down beside them, offering my candlelight so they could discard theirs and open the cover.
Beneath which there was a box.
It was a plain, unadorned wooden rectangle, nestled into the carved-out central pages of the book, and we learned upon extracting it that there was no lock or latch, just a seam indicating the lid’s separation from the body.
I don’t need to spell the whole situation out for you. There was a key in the box. The key opened, you guessed it: the chest. Inside the chest, there were piles of gold and jewels beyond your wildest imagination. We’re rich now. The end.
Nah, JK. But the key in the box did open the chest, in which there was, A) a pair of peeling, pleather driving gloves, and B)...
I felt my heart skip.
A bicycle chain.
I’m not going to get into the nuances of that right now, or maybe ever. But for the purposes of dramatic flair, just know that it was incredibly, pointedly relevant to me, on a level so personal it sucker punched the air straight out of my lungs.
“No,” Wiley said, staggering back a step. “Uh-uh. Nope.”
I put together, then, that the gloves must have been their ticket item. “It’s okay,” I said, on autopilot, because it was not. “There’s something—something’s carved into the bottom of this thing.” Pushing past the reaction every fiber of my being had to the sensation of the frigid metal against my skin, I shoved both the chain and the gloves to the side and could scarcely make out a host of crudely scrawled letters in the wavering light of my half-gone candle.
“What is it?” Wiley asked, making no move to come nearer again.
“Though your…hand…? Heart. Though your heart does pound and knees grow…weak,” I deciphered slowly, “Rid yourself by your… That doesn’t make any sense. Shouldn’t it be of? It says ‘rid yourself by your fear’ and…something. Drain the…clin… No. Drink. Drain the drink.”
“Rid yourself by your fear and drain the drink,” Wiley repeated analytically. “The hell does that mean? Is this shit telling us to kill ourselves with the—oh. Oh. Fuck.”
I was not following. “...I’m not following,” I said.
“It is.” Wiley returned to my side, squatting down and nudging me out of the way with their shoulder to peer warily into the trunk. “It’s telling us to kill ourselves, but not these selves. We’re supposed to use…those…to kill our fuckin’ doppelgangers, or whatever they are. That’s how we get rid of the water.”
“Oh,” I echoed. “Fuck.”
We marinated for a moment in silence before Wiley sighed, resigned, and lifted the gloves from the chest, closing their eyes and pulling the fabric snugly over their hands. “Let’s get to work.”
submitted by emorybored to scarystories [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 21:35 emorybored I work at the Night Library (installment 11). The pool was on the roof this time.

Okay, I’m gonna level with you. Focusing on current events is just getting a little too fucking heavy. I’m no closer to answers than I was a month ago, none of us can sleep through a full night without waking up shaking and drenched in sweat, and there are some new downright bizarre phenomena cropping up that I just don’t have it in me to allot my energy to at the moment.
So, for today’s installment (and then also for the next one) I’m gonna tell you another good ol’ fun-for-the-whole-family pool story. Yep, you heard that right—welcome to our first bonafide two-parter.
This was quite a while ago. My measure of time is all off by a year now, but I feel fairly confident in chalking it up to post-first pool story, pre-ouija board fiasco—so however long ago that’s been now.
It was a weird, rare night, in that Matt was out. Not an unheard of occurrence, but it’s fairly anomalous, and it certainly puts the rest of us on slightly higher alert.
Obviously, he always tells us to call him at the first sign of some shit going down and to use our best judgment to determine whether it’s serious enough to lock up and head out. Better safe than sorry and all that. The night in question was no exception to the rule.
Overall, though, things were mostly quiet. Alice was in, as was I, as was Wiley. We do a lot of congregating, but we do a lot of work, too, and this night, we were all in our respective areas, doing our respective jobs.
I was in my not-office mending a finicky Shakespeare anthology, Alice was watching the desk while working on cataloging a truckload of new donations, and Wiley was replacing several lightbulbs that had all decided to call it quits after our most recent power outage (this one due to a flash-flood).
It was calm to an almost uncharacteristic degree. There was a relatively steady flow of patrons in and out of the building—I could hear Alice greeting them and wishing them a good evening—but as far as anomalous activity, there was none.
It does happen, on rare occasion, that we make it through a full night without any goings on, but there’s almost always at least the odd disembodied voice or two.
We should’ve known better than to trust a meteor shower.
See, there’s just something about natural anomalies. Not just the ones that knock our power out, either, although those are clearly included. Blizzards, thunderstorms, hail and tornados and earthquakes and all your run-of-the-mill destructive shit, sure. But the things of beauty, too. Rainbows. Eclipses, lunar or solar. And you think full moons hit emergency rooms hard? Try this fucking place.
It was just that a meteor shower wasn’t one we’d dealt with before. Does that mean we shouldn’t have known better? Fuck no. Obviously not. But perhaps our collective greatest fault is that we still have some semblance of hope.
Wiley wanted to look at it from the roof. Kid never fucking wants to do anything, and they were set to climb up and camp out alone. I couldn’t not entertain such an innocent, youthful whim.
Our roof access doesn’t have stairs—just a ladder—so Alice couldn’t accompany us, which I felt shitty about, but she assured me it was perfectly fine with her.
“The world decided I didn’t need functional legs so I could never be peer pressured into leaving the ground,” she quipped. “I’m not into heights. But y’all have fun up there. Somebody needs to be here for the patrons anyway.”
Fair and fair. So Wiley and I gathered up an armful of blankets and one of Matt’s trusty camping lanterns and headed out to scale the building.
Wiley went up ahead of me. That was my first mistake.
Really, they aren’t that much younger than I am. Maybe four or five years, and I’m too close to thirty for comfort now. But there’s something about them, even as far as they’ve come, that makes it impossible for me not to do everything in my power to protect them. I think Matt feels the same way. Maybe most of us do.
Anyway, that’s why I immediately started cursing myself when they reached the top of the ladder, pulled their way up and over the ledge of the roof, and said, “...Whoa.”
My second mistake was not immediately telling them to turn around and start climbing right the fuck back down.
I knew exactly what that tone of voice meant. But something in me just kicked into hyperdrive and I…had to see it. Whatever it was, I had to see it for myself.
“Don’t move,” I said, and then, “What is it?”
But by that point, I was at the top, too. I hoisted myself over the ledge and was met with…
…Water.
It was everywhere. Extending in every direction. There was no edge in sight—not even a horizon line. Just vast, dark water as far as the eye could see.
“Okay. This is not—let’s go.”
“Yeah,” Wiley agreed, a little breathless.
I’m sure you’ll be downright shocked to learn that, when we turned around, the ladder was gone.
The edge of the rooftop was, too.
The thing that surprised me, really, was that it wasn’t as though we were standing on some sort of island. We were somehow in the water all of a sudden, up to our waists, neither of us having taken a single step.
“Fucking…shit. Jesus. Adam?”
“We’re fine,” was my default response, because my anxiety override kicks in like a motherfucker as soon as someone else is more openly afraid than I am. “It’s okay, let’s just—let’s think for a second. Maybe it’s just, like, an illusion or something.”
“Okay,” Wiley said. “Maybe we should…try moving?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we’ll bump the ledge and then we can just feel for the ladder. Good idea.”
Wiley and I shared a look, wordlessly nodding to one another, and stepped forward in unison.
Maybe I misspoke before, when I said we weren’t on a platform. It was just that our platform wasn’t above the water. Now, though, there was nothing.
It felt, almost, like the stomach-turning sensation of missing a step walking up a staircase. The only difference was that there was no moment-too-late connection.
We plummeted.
There wasn’t any difference in temperature beneath the surface, which was, in a way, more disorienting than the water itself. The mental recalibration that typically comes with plunging into a cool lake or, adversely, a heated pool wasn’t allotted an opportunity to take place. It felt, for most intents and purposes, the same as being in the air, just that I couldn’t breathe.
It was heavy, too. The weightlessness water tends to embody was null; I immediately abandoned everything I’d been carrying, clawing my way upward frantically enough that it would’ve been mortifying, I’m sure, had anyone witnessed it.
Wiley resurfaced at the same moment I did—empty handed as well, I noted—coughing a little but not to the extent that I was worried they were choking. “Next idea?” they asked, pushing their wet hair back from their face, dark, damp lashes obscuring their eyes.
“Let’s get back on the…” I started, but trailed off when I raised my head.
A couple hundred yards out from us, there was a ship. It was a dark, hulking thing, with tattered sails and something indistinguishable affixed to the bow, glittering and glinting in the moonlight.
Wiley spun around to face it, drifting back slightly when their gaze landed parallel to mine. “What the fuck is that?” they demanded, legs kicking haphazardly beneath the water to keep them in place.
“Maybe it’s…good,” I said. I knew better than that and I knew Wiley did, too, but I said it anyway. “Maybe someone will help.”
They didn’t even humor me with a response to that bullshit.
Now, at this point in the story, maybe you’re thinking being suddenly surrounded by water and watching as an ominous ship approached us with absolutely nowhere to go and no way to escape doesn’t feel quite enough like imminent condemnation. To which I say to you: not to worry. Because the next realization we came to was that the platform we’d been standing on previously had suddenly ceased to exist.
“Shit,” Wiley said. “Shit, shit, shit. Adam.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s fine. We’re fine. We just—we’re gonna—follow me.”
I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck possessed me to swim toward the Obvious Death Ship. I guess just that there wasn’t anything else save for open water anywhere so it essentially felt like our options were paddle around until we were exhausted and drown or face a quicker, simpler demise.
“You better have a fucking plan, bro,” Wiley intoned from behind me, which I chivalrously pretended not to hear, because I did not, in fact, have a fucking plan.
The closer we drew to the vessel, the more unbelievably monstrous it appeared to become. It loomed above us, casting a shadow over everything in its direct path, and the sinking in my stomach almost convinced me to turn around. Almost.
But then something curled around my ankle. It was slick and strong, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that whatever it was could’ve pulled me under and eaten me alive in a fraction of a second.
Luckily for me, it wasn’t interested. It let go as quickly as it had latched on, almost as though it was simply using me as a handrail to move itself along. Still, though, the knowledge that it was there was all the motivation I needed to push forward ever faster. I didn’t say anything—didn’t want to add more fuel to Wiley’s panicked fire—just picked up my pace and swam up to their side.
“There’s a ladder,” they informed me, raising a hand and pointing toward the back half of the ship.
Indeed, there was a ladder. It was a tattered, worn thing, comprised of old, fraying rope and rotting, untreated wooden boards, but it looked composed enough that I figured we could likely make it up if we were swift.
“Bet,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We went.
Up close, the ladder appeared even shoddier than it had when we’d first seen it. I reached out of the water and wrapped my fingers around the rope at the bottom, giving it a hearty tug. To my slight surprise, it held fast.
“I think we’re good,” I told Wiley. “I’ll go up first and tell you what I see.”
“Be careful,” they said, but didn’t protest, just backed up enough for me to get the leverage I needed to hoist myself onto the bottom board.
I climbed warily, overly conscious of every creak of the wood bowing beneath my weight, every groan of the fibers of rope under my hands, but made it without incident to the top.
Once there, I grabbed onto the ship’s edge, lifting my gaze to take in whatever lie before me.
It was…nothing. I mean, it was a ship, obviously. But there wasn’t anything on board. No apparent crew nor cargo nor even a captain manning the helm. Granted, I couldn’t see perfectly, but the moon shone brightly enough that I was fairly confident in my observation that the deck was devoid of anything but its own shiplap floor.
“Hello?” I called, because I wasn’t about to beckon Wiley up if some fucked shit was going to pop out of nowhere the second we made a sound.
Nothing responded. Nothing moved. The ship rocked gently on the impossible water, as silent and vacant as it had been a moment before.
“Good?” Wiley questioned nervously from below me.
“Yeah,” I told them, easing myself off the ladder and down into the confines of the vessel. “Come on.”
They did so tenuously but still more swiftly than I had, climbing aboard and landing next to me with a dampened thunk.
We allowed ourselves the briefest of moments to catch our breath, silently rejoicing in the small win that was having found solace from the pool itself. Not that we had any idea what to do or where to go from here, but at the very least, we weren’t drowning.
“Okay,” I said, clearing the unease from my throat. “I don’t know what good trying to steer this thing would do us—there’s nothing but water no matter where we go. But maybe there’s something here somewhere that’ll help us figure out how to get back. So I think we just…start looking around?”
Wiley nodded. “Cool. Split halves, front and back?”
Nooo, Adam, don’t split up! Never split up! I know. I can literally hear you screaming it at me. And actually, for once in my life, I considered that something might be a horrible fucking idea before acting on it.
But then I saw something.
As I turned back to respond, Wiley’s eyes shimmered, dancing in the moonlight.
They were silver and mercurial, with no pupils or whites in sight.
Whatever had come back up from underwater, it was not my coworker.
I swallowed, forcing my expression to remain as neutral as I was able and praying whatever was standing in front of me didn’t notice I’d caught on. My entire body was instantaneously covered in chills, in a way that I understood to have the same purpose as a dog’s hackles rising. “Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll take the front.”
I headed in the opposite direction of the thing wearing Wiley’s face (at a pace that I hoped didn’t appear hurried but one that would remove me in a timely manner from the vicinity) and didn’t stop until I’d reached the front of the ship, breathing heavily and attempting to slow my reeling mind.
I didn’t know what to tackle first. I didn’t know where Wiley was, or if they were anywhere—if they were even still alive. I didn’t know what my next move should be. I didn’t know what I was looking for or where I might find it.
It’s rare that I feel utterly hopeless, to the degree that I genuinely contemplate just sitting down and giving up, but in this instance, I thought long and hard about how easy it would be to succumb. I’d let the unthinkable happen. Wiley was gone. No one else had been here with them—there was no one else to blame. Just me. Only me.
…You’ll be glad to know that the self-pity didn’t last long. Embarrassing, honestly.
If I was the only one here, it meant I was the only shot they had at making it out alive. Our version of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ had always been ‘alive until proven dead’ and I wasn’t about to turn my back on the insane streak of luck we’d had up until this point. Not a single one of our lives had been lost, and we’d been in the midst of some absolute shitstorms. There was no reason to believe that right now, tonight, was an outlier. I couldn’t lie down like a sick dog and wonder if Wiley was still out there somewhere, suffering until the bitter, bloody end. I had to find them. By whatever means necessary, as long as it took, I had to find them.
I pushed off the railing before me and spun on my heel, eyes flitting back and forth to assess my options as efficiently as possible, and after a moment, I registered that fitted flush against the large front mast, there was a door.
It was only a sliver, thin and not particularly extraordinary in height, but there was a handle carved roughly into its right side and a set of rust-riddled hinges on its left.
I took about half a second to weigh my options and then reached for it, curling my fingers around the handle and giving it a generous tug.
The hinges, unsurprisingly, complained, but not loudly and not for long. The door gave way with little resistance, and opened up to my worst fucking nightmare.
A set of stairs, descending into blackness.
I mean, I guess if I’m being fair, my first pool encounter had featured a staircase leading to the pool rather than away from it, but I didn’t feel like there could possibly be good news awaiting me below deck of a ship where I’d just encountered a fucking mimic.
Still, though, there was a niggling insistence in my brain (not that kind, come on) that it was my only lead on finding Wiley if they were, in fact, somewhere on board. So I cast one last glance over my shoulder and stepped into the dark, letting the door fall closed behind me.
It smelled different, instantly, from the open air above. Mustier, which was to be expected, but also almost sweet somehow. I tried, unsuccessfully, to shove my true-crime-podcast-addled brain’s helpful reminder that the scent of human death is said to be sweet into a mental lockbox and put my hand to the wall, easing tentatively down to the second step.
The visibility wasn’t just low—it was practically zero. If you’ve ever been on a cave tour and had a guide cut the lights and instruct you to lift your hand to your face to demonstrate the complete absence of light, it was nearly that intense. The placing of both feet on each concurrent stair was an arduous, calculated process, but finally, after approximately one (1) century, I reached flat ground. I still couldn’t see, and there was no definitive way to tell whether I was standing on the floor or just a landing without thoroughly feeling out the space around me, so I reluctantly departed from the wall, scooting my feet in small, tentative motions and keeping both arms partially outstretched before me.
After a (l o n g) moment, I determined that either this was the world’s largest landing or I’d made it all the way down. I had no idea whether I was in a singular, enormous room, or if there were individual cabins, or if I was about to run face-first into the grim fucking reaper.
And then I turned to my left.
There was a light.
It was so, so faint. Flickering. Barely discernible, its warm, gentle glow ever so shyly illuminating the cracks around what appeared to be another closed door.
Being the only visible thing in my line of sight, in any direction, it emitted the aura of both a beacon and an omen.
I headed towards it.
I was about half afraid I was stuck in a horror movie situation where no matter how long I walked it would never grow any closer, but fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case. I actually gained on it more quickly than I felt I should have for the speed I was moving, but I wasn’t going to complain about reaching the end of the nothingness in commendable time.
I ran my fingertips along the edge of the door and, sure enough, there was a carved-in handle, just like the last.
It opened just as effortlessly, and yellow candlelight rolled dimly out to greet me, lapping at my waterlogged clothes.
“Please,” came a quiet, terrified voice from inside the room. “Please don’t. I don’t know what you want, or–or what you are, but please don’t—”
“...Wiley?”
Rather than calming, the voice’s state of alarm rose to a level bordering on full-blown panic as I took a step into the space. “Please,” the voice begged. There wasn’t anyone visible from my current vantage point, but I could hear it clearly enough to feel fairly confident that the person attached to it—the person who either had to be Wiley or yet another duplicate of them—was close. “Why are you doing this?”
This was a cabin, I thought, or perhaps a study of some sort, with a rotting wooden desk and a decaying leather chair both covered in a flurry of loose, browned book pages and a thick layer of dust. There were candles littering several surfaces, placed in what appeared not to be any intentional manner. Directly to my right, there was a shelf; its back faced me and the odd placement led me to imagine that it may have been employed to block the door at some time.
It was also, I would have just about bet, the source of the voice.
I nudged a couple of planks and a broken amber bottle out of the way with the toe of my shoe, rounding the shelf to find a crumpled, bloodied Wiley, restrained to the floor by a thick, coarse rope fixed expertly to a bolted tie and holding their bound hands up to shield their face.
“Jesus fuck,” I said. “What happened to you?”
Slowly, they lifted their head. “...Adam?”
Realization dawned on me, and I felt my stomach sink. “Look at me,” I told them. “Look at my eyes.”
They did, their own bloodshot and watery and inherently human, and I watched their shoulders deflate, the defense and terror draining from their form. “There’s someone…something…down here. Or, I guess it still is, anyway. I don’t know where it went, but I don’t wanna be here when it comes back.”
I nodded. “It look like me?”
Wiley nodded back.
“Yeah, there’s one of you upstairs. Not real sure what we’re supposed to do about them, but one thing at a time. Let’s get you up from there.”
It was a struggle, disentangling Wiley from the heavy, abrasive leads coccooning their body, but we got there eventually, and throughout the entirety of the arduous process they gave me the rundown on how, when we’d parted from the solace of the platform, something had instantaneously latched onto them, dragging them down deeper and deeper until their ears popped and their head felt like it was going to explode. They said they’d been knocked out by the pressure, and that when they’d come to, already tied in place and coughing up lungfuls of water, “I” had been standing over them, wielding a large net hook and no mercy.
“I knew it wasn’t you, obviously,” they said, “but I didn’t know where you actually were or if something had, like. Hijacked your body? I don’t know. Anyway, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
We grabbed a couple of candles (the majority had simply been melted into place atop whatever surface they’d adorned, but there was a small collection fitted into slightly-too-small brass holders) and got the fuck out.
Being able to see so little in the space around us was almost more disorienting than the pitch darkness I’d been feeling my way through before. It felt as though we were in a fragile, wavering bubble of reality and nothing existed outside of it.
“Wish I’d been awake coming down here,” Wiley remarked. “Guess I still wouldn’t have seen shit, though.”
“I could…maybe get us back upstairs?” I considered, with little to no confidence. “But I don’t really know what good it would do us. Nowhere to go. Maybe we just…look around down here for a bit? See if we can find anything useful?”
“Yeah, okay,” Wiley assented. “But we’ve gotta be quiet. I don’t want that thing to hear us.”
I certainly couldn’t argue with that.
We wandered hesitantly through the dark, shielding the flames of our candles with cupped palms and praying we wouldn’t misstep. We made it some unsubstantiated quantity of time without incident, but softly, after seconds or minutes or hours, we heard a light rustling from the shadow veiled corridor to our right, and Wiley pulled me into the nearest open room in the opposite direction.
Flattening our backs to the wall, we listened intently as footsteps echoed faintly behind us, cyclically growing closer and then further away again for several moments before disappearing altogether.
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding and uncovered my candle, easing the door of the room to a gentle, silent close. The contents of this one were different from that of the last in that there practically weren’t any. It wasn’t just that it was tidier; there was a chest shoved against the wall nearest us and a leatherbound book of some sort lying in the center of the floor, but otherwise the space was vacant.
Wiley moved first, crouching next to the journal and lifting it from the ground, a cloud of dust rising in the wake of their breath. I knelt down beside them, offering my candlelight so they could discard theirs and open the cover.
Beneath which there was a box.
It was a plain, unadorned wooden rectangle, nestled into the carved-out central pages of the book, and we learned upon extracting it that there was no lock or latch, just a seam indicating the lid’s separation from the body.
I don’t need to spell the whole situation out for you. There was a key in the box. The key opened, you guessed it: the chest. Inside the chest, there were piles of gold and jewels beyond your wildest imagination. We’re rich now. The end.
Nah, JK. But the key in the box did open the chest, in which there was, A) a pair of peeling, pleather driving gloves, and B)...
I felt my heart skip.
A bicycle chain.
I’m not going to get into the nuances of that right now, or maybe ever. But for the purposes of dramatic flair, just know that it was incredibly, pointedly relevant to me, on a level so personal it sucker punched the air straight out of my lungs.
“No,” Wiley said, staggering back a step. “Uh-uh. Nope.”
I put together, then, that the gloves must have been their ticket item. “It’s okay,” I said, on autopilot, because it was not. “There’s something—something’s carved into the bottom of this thing.” Pushing past the reaction every fiber of my being had to the sensation of the frigid metal against my skin, I shoved both the chain and the gloves to the side and could scarcely make out a host of crudely scrawled letters in the wavering light of my half-gone candle.
“What is it?” Wiley asked, making no move to come nearer again.
“Though your…hand…? Heart. Though your heart does pound and knees grow…weak,” I deciphered slowly, “Rid yourself by your… That doesn’t make any sense. Shouldn’t it be of? It says ‘rid yourself by your fear’ and…something. Drain the…clin… No. Drink. Drain the drink.”
“Rid yourself by your fear and drain the drink,” Wiley repeated analytically. “The hell does that mean? Is this shit telling us to kill ourselves with the—oh. Oh. Fuck.”
I was not following. “...I’m not following,” I said.
“It is.” Wiley returned to my side, squatting down and nudging me out of the way with their shoulder to peer warily into the trunk. “It’s telling us to kill ourselves, but not these selves. We’re supposed to use…those…to kill our fuckin’ doppelgangers, or whatever they are. That’s how we get rid of the water.”
“Oh,” I echoed. “Fuck.”
We marinated for a moment in silence before Wiley sighed, resigned, and lifted the gloves from the chest, closing their eyes and pulling the fabric snugly over their hands. “Let’s get to work.”
submitted by emorybored to Ruleshorror [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 21:31 emorybored I work at the Night Library. The pool was on the roof this time.

Okay, I’m gonna level with you. Focusing on current events is just getting a little too fucking heavy. I’m no closer to answers than I was a month ago, none of us can sleep through a full night without waking up shaking and drenched in sweat, and there are some new downright bizarre phenomena cropping up that I just don’t have it in me to allot my energy to at the moment.
So, for today’s installment (and then also for the next one) I’m gonna tell you another good ol’ fun-for-the-whole-family pool story. Yep, you heard that right—welcome to our first bonafide two-parter.
This was quite a while ago. My measure of time is all off by a year now, but I feel fairly confident in chalking it up to post-first pool story, pre-ouija board fiasco—so however long ago that’s been now.
It was a weird, rare night, in that Matt was out. Not an unheard of occurrence, but it’s fairly anomalous, and it certainly puts the rest of us on slightly higher alert.
Obviously, he always tells us to call him at the first sign of some shit going down and to use our best judgment to determine whether it’s serious enough to lock up and head out. Better safe than sorry and all that. The night in question was no exception to the rule.
Overall, though, things were mostly quiet. Alice was in, as was I, as was Wiley. We do a lot of congregating, but we do a lot of work, too, and this night, we were all in our respective areas, doing our respective jobs.
I was in my not-office mending a finicky Shakespeare anthology, Alice was watching the desk while working on cataloging a truckload of new donations, and Wiley was replacing several lightbulbs that had all decided to call it quits after our most recent power outage (this one due to a flash-flood).
It was calm to an almost uncharacteristic degree. There was a relatively steady flow of patrons in and out of the building—I could hear Alice greeting them and wishing them a good evening—but as far as anomalous activity, there was none.
It does happen, on rare occasion, that we make it through a full night without any goings on, but there’s almost always at least the odd disembodied voice or two.
We should’ve known better than to trust a meteor shower.
See, there’s just something about natural anomalies. Not just the ones that knock our power out, either, although those are clearly included. Blizzards, thunderstorms, hail and tornados and earthquakes and all your run-of-the-mill destructive shit, sure. But the things of beauty, too. Rainbows. Eclipses, lunar or solar. And you think full moons hit emergency rooms hard? Try this fucking place.
It was just that a meteor shower wasn’t one we’d dealt with before. Does that mean we shouldn’t have known better? Fuck no. Obviously not. But perhaps our collective greatest fault is that we still have some semblance of hope.
Wiley wanted to look at it from the roof. Kid never fucking wants to do anything, and they were set to climb up and camp out alone. I couldn’t not entertain such an innocent, youthful whim.
Our roof access doesn’t have stairs—just a ladder—so Alice couldn’t accompany us, which I felt shitty about, but she assured me it was perfectly fine with her.
“The world decided I didn’t need functional legs so I could never be peer pressured into leaving the ground,” she quipped. “I’m not into heights. But y’all have fun up there. Somebody needs to be here for the patrons anyway.”
Fair and fair. So Wiley and I gathered up an armful of blankets and one of Matt’s trusty camping lanterns and headed out to scale the building.
Wiley went up ahead of me. That was my first mistake.
Really, they aren’t that much younger than I am. Maybe four or five years, and I’m too close to thirty for comfort now. But there’s something about them, even as far as they’ve come, that makes it impossible for me not to do everything in my power to protect them. I think Matt feels the same way. Maybe most of us do.
Anyway, that’s why I immediately started cursing myself when they reached the top of the ladder, pulled their way up and over the ledge of the roof, and said, “...Whoa.”
My second mistake was not immediately telling them to turn around and start climbing right the fuck back down.
I knew exactly what that tone of voice meant. But something in me just kicked into hyperdrive and I…had to see it. Whatever it was, I had to see it for myself.
“Don’t move,” I said, and then, “What is it?”
But by that point, I was at the top, too. I hoisted myself over the ledge and was met with…
…Water.
It was everywhere. Extending in every direction. There was no edge in sight—not even a horizon line. Just vast, dark water as far as the eye could see.
“Okay. This is not—let’s go.”
“Yeah,” Wiley agreed, a little breathless.
I’m sure you’ll be downright shocked to learn that, when we turned around, the ladder was gone.
The edge of the rooftop was, too.
The thing that surprised me, really, was that it wasn’t as though we were standing on some sort of island. We were somehow in the water all of a sudden, up to our waists, neither of us having taken a single step.
“Fucking…shit. Jesus. Adam?”
“We’re fine,” was my default response, because my anxiety override kicks in like a motherfucker as soon as someone else is more openly afraid than I am. “It’s okay, let’s just—let’s think for a second. Maybe it’s just, like, an illusion or something.”
“Okay,” Wiley said. “Maybe we should…try moving?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we’ll bump the ledge and then we can just feel for the ladder. Good idea.”
Wiley and I shared a look, wordlessly nodding to one another, and stepped forward in unison.
Maybe I misspoke before, when I said we weren’t on a platform. It was just that our platform wasn’t above the water. Now, though, there was nothing.
It felt, almost, like the stomach-turning sensation of missing a step walking up a staircase. The only difference was that there was no moment-too-late connection.
We plummeted.
There wasn’t any difference in temperature beneath the surface, which was, in a way, more disorienting than the water itself. The mental recalibration that typically comes with plunging into a cool lake or, adversely, a heated pool wasn’t allotted an opportunity to take place. It felt, for most intents and purposes, the same as being in the air, just that I couldn’t breathe.
It was heavy, too. The weightlessness water tends to embody was null; I immediately abandoned everything I’d been carrying, clawing my way upward frantically enough that it would’ve been mortifying, I’m sure, had anyone witnessed it.
Wiley resurfaced at the same moment I did—empty handed as well, I noted—coughing a little but not to the extent that I was worried they were choking. “Next idea?” they asked, pushing their wet hair back from their face, dark, damp lashes obscuring their eyes.
“Let’s get back on the…” I started, but trailed off when I raised my head.
A couple hundred yards out from us, there was a ship. It was a dark, hulking thing, with tattered sails and something indistinguishable affixed to the bow, glittering and glinting in the moonlight.
Wiley spun around to face it, drifting back slightly when their gaze landed parallel to mine. “What the fuck is that?” they demanded, legs kicking haphazardly beneath the water to keep them in place.
“Maybe it’s…good,” I said. I knew better than that and I knew Wiley did, too, but I said it anyway. “Maybe someone will help.”
They didn’t even humor me with a response to that bullshit.
Now, at this point in the story, maybe you’re thinking being suddenly surrounded by water and watching as an ominous ship approached us with absolutely nowhere to go and no way to escape doesn’t feel quite enough like imminent condemnation. To which I say to you: not to worry. Because the next realization we came to was that the platform we’d been standing on previously had suddenly ceased to exist.
“Shit,” Wiley said. “Shit, shit, shit. Adam.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s fine. We’re fine. We just—we’re gonna—follow me.”
I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck possessed me to swim toward the Obvious Death Ship. I guess just that there wasn’t anything else save for open water anywhere so it essentially felt like our options were paddle around until we were exhausted and drown or face a quicker, simpler demise.
“You better have a fucking plan, bro,” Wiley intoned from behind me, which I chivalrously pretended not to hear, because I did not, in fact, have a fucking plan.
The closer we drew to the vessel, the more unbelievably monstrous it appeared to become. It loomed above us, casting a shadow over everything in its direct path, and the sinking in my stomach almost convinced me to turn around. Almost.
But then something curled around my ankle. It was slick and strong, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that whatever it was could’ve pulled me under and eaten me alive in a fraction of a second.
Luckily for me, it wasn’t interested. It let go as quickly as it had latched on, almost as though it was simply using me as a handrail to move itself along. Still, though, the knowledge that it was there was all the motivation I needed to push forward ever faster. I didn’t say anything—didn’t want to add more fuel to Wiley’s panicked fire—just picked up my pace and swam up to their side.
“There’s a ladder,” they informed me, raising a hand and pointing toward the back half of the ship.
Indeed, there was a ladder. It was a tattered, worn thing, comprised of old, fraying rope and rotting, untreated wooden boards, but it looked composed enough that I figured we could likely make it up if we were swift.
“Bet,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We went.
Up close, the ladder appeared even shoddier than it had when we’d first seen it. I reached out of the water and wrapped my fingers around the rope at the bottom, giving it a hearty tug. To my slight surprise, it held fast.
“I think we’re good,” I told Wiley. “I’ll go up first and tell you what I see.”
“Be careful,” they said, but didn’t protest, just backed up enough for me to get the leverage I needed to hoist myself onto the bottom board.
I climbed warily, overly conscious of every creak of the wood bowing beneath my weight, every groan of the fibers of rope under my hands, but made it without incident to the top.
Once there, I grabbed onto the ship’s edge, lifting my gaze to take in whatever lie before me.
It was…nothing. I mean, it was a ship, obviously. But there wasn’t anything on board. No apparent crew nor cargo nor even a captain manning the helm. Granted, I couldn’t see perfectly, but the moon shone brightly enough that I was fairly confident in my observation that the deck was devoid of anything but its own shiplap floor.
“Hello?” I called, because I wasn’t about to beckon Wiley up if some fucked shit was going to pop out of nowhere the second we made a sound.
Nothing responded. Nothing moved. The ship rocked gently on the impossible water, as silent and vacant as it had been a moment before.
“Good?” Wiley questioned nervously from below me.
“Yeah,” I told them, easing myself off the ladder and down into the confines of the vessel. “Come on.”
They did so tenuously but still more swiftly than I had, climbing aboard and landing next to me with a dampened thunk.
We allowed ourselves the briefest of moments to catch our breath, silently rejoicing in the small win that was having found solace from the pool itself. Not that we had any idea what to do or where to go from here, but at the very least, we weren’t drowning.
“Okay,” I said, clearing the unease from my throat. “I don’t know what good trying to steer this thing would do us—there’s nothing but water no matter where we go. But maybe there’s something here somewhere that’ll help us figure out how to get back. So I think we just…start looking around?”
Wiley nodded. “Cool. Split halves, front and back?”
Nooo, Adam, don’t split up! Never split up! I know. I can literally hear you screaming it at me. And actually, for once in my life, I considered that something might be a horrible fucking idea before acting on it.
But then I saw something.
As I turned back to respond, Wiley’s eyes shimmered, dancing in the moonlight.
They were silver and mercurial, with no pupils or whites in sight.
Whatever had come back up from underwater, it was not my coworker.
I swallowed, forcing my expression to remain as neutral as I was able and praying whatever was standing in front of me didn’t notice I’d caught on. My entire body was instantaneously covered in chills, in a way that I understood to have the same purpose as a dog’s hackles rising. “Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll take the front.”
I headed in the opposite direction of the thing wearing Wiley’s face (at a pace that I hoped didn’t appear hurried but one that would remove me in a timely manner from the vicinity) and didn’t stop until I’d reached the front of the ship, breathing heavily and attempting to slow my reeling mind.
I didn’t know what to tackle first. I didn’t know where Wiley was, or if they were anywhere—if they were even still alive. I didn’t know what my next move should be. I didn’t know what I was looking for or where I might find it.
It’s rare that I feel utterly hopeless, to the degree that I genuinely contemplate just sitting down and giving up, but in this instance, I thought long and hard about how easy it would be to succumb. I’d let the unthinkable happen. Wiley was gone. No one else had been here with them—there was no one else to blame. Just me. Only me.
…You’ll be glad to know that the self-pity didn’t last long. Embarrassing, honestly.
If I was the only one here, it meant I was the only shot they had at making it out alive. Our version of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ had always been ‘alive until proven dead’ and I wasn’t about to turn my back on the insane streak of luck we’d had up until this point. Not a single one of our lives had been lost, and we’d been in the midst of some absolute shitstorms. There was no reason to believe that right now, tonight, was an outlier. I couldn’t lie down like a sick dog and wonder if Wiley was still out there somewhere, suffering until the bitter, bloody end. I had to find them. By whatever means necessary, as long as it took, I had to find them.
I pushed off the railing before me and spun on my heel, eyes flitting back and forth to assess my options as efficiently as possible, and after a moment, I registered that fitted flush against the large front mast, there was a door.
It was only a sliver, thin and not particularly extraordinary in height, but there was a handle carved roughly into its right side and a set of rust-riddled hinges on its left.
I took about half a second to weigh my options and then reached for it, curling my fingers around the handle and giving it a generous tug.
The hinges, unsurprisingly, complained, but not loudly and not for long. The door gave way with little resistance, and opened up to my worst fucking nightmare.
A set of stairs, descending into blackness.
I mean, I guess if I’m being fair, my first pool encounter had featured a staircase leading to the pool rather than away from it, but I didn’t feel like there could possibly be good news awaiting me below deck of a ship where I’d just encountered a fucking mimic.
Still, though, there was a niggling insistence in my brain (not that kind, come on) that it was my only lead on finding Wiley if they were, in fact, somewhere on board. So I cast one last glance over my shoulder and stepped into the dark, letting the door fall closed behind me.
It smelled different, instantly, from the open air above. Mustier, which was to be expected, but also almost sweet somehow. I tried, unsuccessfully, to shove my true-crime-podcast-addled brain’s helpful reminder that the scent of human death is said to be sweet into a mental lockbox and put my hand to the wall, easing tentatively down to the second step.
The visibility wasn’t just low—it was practically zero. If you’ve ever been on a cave tour and had a guide cut the lights and instruct you to lift your hand to your face to demonstrate the complete absence of light, it was nearly that intense. The placing of both feet on each concurrent stair was an arduous, calculated process, but finally, after approximately one (1) century, I reached flat ground. I still couldn’t see, and there was no definitive way to tell whether I was standing on the floor or just a landing without thoroughly feeling out the space around me, so I reluctantly departed from the wall, scooting my feet in small, tentative motions and keeping both arms partially outstretched before me.
After a (l o n g) moment, I determined that either this was the world’s largest landing or I’d made it all the way down. I had no idea whether I was in a singular, enormous room, or if there were individual cabins, or if I was about to run face-first into the grim fucking reaper.
And then I turned to my left.
There was a light.
It was so, so faint. Flickering. Barely discernible, its warm, gentle glow ever so shyly illuminating the cracks around what appeared to be another closed door.
Being the only visible thing in my line of sight, in any direction, it emitted the aura of both a beacon and an omen.
I headed towards it.
I was about half afraid I was stuck in a horror movie situation where no matter how long I walked it would never grow any closer, but fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case. I actually gained on it more quickly than I felt I should have for the speed I was moving, but I wasn’t going to complain about reaching the end of the nothingness in commendable time.
I ran my fingertips along the edge of the door and, sure enough, there was a carved-in handle, just like the last.
It opened just as effortlessly, and yellow candlelight rolled dimly out to greet me, lapping at my waterlogged clothes.
“Please,” came a quiet, terrified voice from inside the room. “Please don’t. I don’t know what you want, or–or what you are, but please don’t—”
“...Wiley?”
Rather than calming, the voice’s state of alarm rose to a level bordering on full-blown panic as I took a step into the space. “Please,” the voice begged. There wasn’t anyone visible from my current vantage point, but I could hear it clearly enough to feel fairly confident that the person attached to it—the person who either had to be Wiley or yet another duplicate of them—was close. “Why are you doing this?”
This was a cabin, I thought, or perhaps a study of some sort, with a rotting wooden desk and a decaying leather chair both covered in a flurry of loose, browned book pages and a thick layer of dust. There were candles littering several surfaces, placed in what appeared not to be any intentional manner. Directly to my right, there was a shelf; its back faced me and the odd placement led me to imagine that it may have been employed to block the door at some time.
It was also, I would have just about bet, the source of the voice.
I nudged a couple of planks and a broken amber bottle out of the way with the toe of my shoe, rounding the shelf to find a crumpled, bloodied Wiley, restrained to the floor by a thick, coarse rope fixed expertly to a bolted tie and holding their bound hands up to shield their face.
“Jesus fuck,” I said. “What happened to you?”
Slowly, they lifted their head. “...Adam?”
Realization dawned on me, and I felt my stomach sink. “Look at me,” I told them. “Look at my eyes.”
They did, their own bloodshot and watery and inherently human, and I watched their shoulders deflate, the defense and terror draining from their form. “There’s someone…something…down here. Or, I guess it still is, anyway. I don’t know where it went, but I don’t wanna be here when it comes back.”
I nodded. “It look like me?”
Wiley nodded back.
“Yeah, there’s one of you upstairs. Not real sure what we’re supposed to do about them, but one thing at a time. Let’s get you up from there.”
It was a struggle, disentangling Wiley from the heavy, abrasive leads coccooning their body, but we got there eventually, and throughout the entirety of the arduous process they gave me the rundown on how, when we’d parted from the solace of the platform, something had instantaneously latched onto them, dragging them down deeper and deeper until their ears popped and their head felt like it was going to explode. They said they’d been knocked out by the pressure, and that when they’d come to, already tied in place and coughing up lungfuls of water, “I” had been standing over them, wielding a large net hook and no mercy.
“I knew it wasn’t you, obviously,” they said, “but I didn’t know where you actually were or if something had, like. Hijacked your body? I don’t know. Anyway, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
We grabbed a couple of candles (the majority had simply been melted into place atop whatever surface they’d adorned, but there was a small collection fitted into slightly-too-small brass holders) and got the fuck out.
Being able to see so little in the space around us was almost more disorienting than the pitch darkness I’d been feeling my way through before. It felt as though we were in a fragile, wavering bubble of reality and nothing existed outside of it.
“Wish I’d been awake coming down here,” Wiley remarked. “Guess I still wouldn’t have seen shit, though.”
“I could…maybe get us back upstairs?” I considered, with little to no confidence. “But I don’t really know what good it would do us. Nowhere to go. Maybe we just…look around down here for a bit? See if we can find anything useful?”
“Yeah, okay,” Wiley assented. “But we’ve gotta be quiet. I don’t want that thing to hear us.”
I certainly couldn’t argue with that.
We wandered hesitantly through the dark, shielding the flames of our candles with cupped palms and praying we wouldn’t misstep. We made it some unsubstantiated quantity of time without incident, but softly, after seconds or minutes or hours, we heard a light rustling from the shadow veiled corridor to our right, and Wiley pulled me into the nearest open room in the opposite direction.
Flattening our backs to the wall, we listened intently as footsteps echoed faintly behind us, cyclically growing closer and then further away again for several moments before disappearing altogether.
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding and uncovered my candle, easing the door of the room to a gentle, silent close. The contents of this one were different from that of the last in that there practically weren’t any. It wasn’t just that it was tidier; there was a chest shoved against the wall nearest us and a leatherbound book of some sort lying in the center of the floor, but otherwise the space was vacant.
Wiley moved first, crouching next to the journal and lifting it from the ground, a cloud of dust rising in the wake of their breath. I knelt down beside them, offering my candlelight so they could discard theirs and open the cover.
Beneath which there was a box.
It was a plain, unadorned wooden rectangle, nestled into the carved-out central pages of the book, and we learned upon extracting it that there was no lock or latch, just a seam indicating the lid’s separation from the body.
I don’t need to spell the whole situation out for you. There was a key in the box. The key opened, you guessed it: the chest. Inside the chest, there were piles of gold and jewels beyond your wildest imagination. We’re rich now. The end.
Nah, JK. But the key in the box did open the chest, in which there was, A) a pair of peeling, pleather driving gloves, and B)...
I felt my heart skip.
A bicycle chain.
I’m not going to get into the nuances of that right now, or maybe ever. But for the purposes of dramatic flair, just know that it was incredibly, pointedly relevant to me, on a level so personal it sucker punched the air straight out of my lungs.
“No,” Wiley said, staggering back a step. “Uh-uh. Nope.”
I put together, then, that the gloves must have been their ticket item. “It’s okay,” I said, on autopilot, because it was not. “There’s something—something’s carved into the bottom of this thing.” Pushing past the reaction every fiber of my being had to the sensation of the frigid metal against my skin, I shoved both the chain and the gloves to the side and could scarcely make out a host of crudely scrawled letters in the wavering light of my half-gone candle.
“What is it?” Wiley asked, making no move to come nearer again.
“Though your…hand…? Heart. Though your heart does pound and knees grow…weak,” I deciphered slowly, “Rid yourself by your… That doesn’t make any sense. Shouldn’t it be of? It says ‘rid yourself by *your fear’ and…*something. Drain the…clin… No. Drink. Drain the drink.”
“Rid yourself by your fear and drain the drink,” Wiley repeated analytically. “The hell does that mean? Is this shit telling us to kill ourselves with the—oh. Oh. Fuck.”
I was not following. “...I’m not following,” I said.
“It is.” Wiley returned to my side, squatting down and nudging me out of the way with their shoulder to peer warily into the trunk. “It’s telling us to kill ourselves, but not these selves. We’re supposed to use…*those…*to kill our fuckin’ doppelgangers, or whatever they are. That’s how we get rid of the water.”
“Oh,” I echoed. “Fuck.”
We marinated for a moment in silence before Wiley sighed, resigned, and lifted the gloves from the chest, closing their eyes and pulling the fabric snugly over their hands. “Let’s get to work.”
submitted by emorybored to nosleep [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 20:53 sookfong A Week In Vancouver Island on a $92,000 Salary (Original Submission)

Please note this is the original submission I sent Refinery29. In the current post,they have given me a second credit card with a 100$ balance, as well as generational trauma from World War II and cut context for other things. I am trying to get that fixed.
Per previous discussion in comments here: The espresso machine is a Bezzera, which ranges from 2-5K. We got ours on sale for 1.7K, it’s a work house and we use it everyday, still hurts that we spent that money on a coffee maker.
I do understand mortgage is debt but when you compare it to rent to a lesser value condo in Vancouver it feels like not debt at all, which is how I tend to think of it. Yes I owe my mortgage but also I get my house instead of renting-which may not have become clear.
Please see in full the diary, below (edit for formatting via mobile)
Occupation: Sr Business Analyst
Industry: Tech
Age: 30
Location: Vancouver Island, BC
Salary: 92,000$ (Spouse makes 60,000$ for a combined income of 152,000$ before tax)
Net Worth: ~ 1.2 Million ( house is valued at 989,000$ currently, we have a combined 150,000 in pension, and ~60,000 in various company stocks, and GICs)
Debt: 3,000$ in a zero interest credit card for a 10 month period. We balanced transferred and pay 400$/month. Debt was acquired in Q4 2023 when we had to buy Snow Tires, and do a full break replacement as well as Christmas. 480,000$ in a mortgage, we refinanced in September 2023 for five years fixed rate at accelerated biweekly, however I don’t consider our mortgage debt due to the equity we are gaining, and that our mortgage for a five bedroom, 3 bath single family home is less than rent for a two bedroom condo in Vancouver
Paycheck Amount (Every 2 Weeks): 2,555$ after taxes. (Just mine). Spouse makes 2,308$ after taxes. Our pay periods are alternating.
Pronouns: She/her
Monthly Expenses Mortgage: 1450$ biweekly (100$ extra to the principal).
Utilities: ~200$ (includes water [paid quarterly], hydro [paid bimonthly], gas, sewetrash [paid quarterly] phone [highly discounted due to work plans for spouse and myself] and car gas) Loan Payments: 400$/Credit Card
Car Insurance: 84$
Life Insurance: 167$ combined (67$ me, 100$ spouse)
Health & Dental Insurance: 60$ deducted from pay (coverage for myself and spouse from my employer. Spouse also has coverage for both of us deducted from pay)
Retirement Contribution: 400$ (Employee matches me), (Spouse has a defined pension through work and contributes ~200$ month)
Union fees: 70$ Spouse
Subscriptions: Crave 22$/month (Recent splurge for Binge watching the Rookie), Playstation Plus 100$ (annual bought on Black Friday Deal), Amazon Prime 80$ (Annual), BCAA 120$ (annual) Gym 30$/month (we both have one so 15$/pp)
Note: My spouse and I have completely commingled finances. I will be tracking both as it’s essentially I spent whatever they spent
Was there an expectation for you to attend higher education? Did you participate in any form of higher education? If yes, how did you pay for it?
There was always the expectation. My father was very clear, we were very smart. There was no way we’d be wasting our potential. He wanted me to be a lawyer, but unlike other immigrant parents, I got to choose my major and went into social sciences and got my masters in history. I deferred my PhD too much so I got dropped by the program.
I chose my university by where I got a full first year scholarship and then after that took about 15k in student loans for my undergraduate. My parents paid my rent and I got a part time job for food.
For my masters, I had a student line of credit and 5 k student loans otherwise it was all my savings and scholarships. With the line of credit, I had a total of 30K in student loans and paid it off in about four years.
Growing up, what kind of conversations did you have about money? Did your parent(s)/guardian(s) educate you about finances?
Save. We talked about how you get a dollar allowance and half of it goes into long term saving with 25% in short term and 25% in spend.
Investing came after I was eighteen. Family would like us to invest in property, however I don’t really want to be a landlord, but also we wouldn’t get to really enjoy profit of owning a rental property due to other family circumstances.
What was your first job and why did you get it?
Ice cream parlour I was twelve and my parents made me get it for responsibility. I lasted three weeks because I hated it.
Did you worry about money growing up?
I grew up thinking we were not rich, because we didn’t get big plane vacations (I didn’t count flying from Toronto to Vancouver every summer as a vacation since we were just seeing family but staying in a house my parents owned) and I had only been to Disney twice.
But we had a big new build house in the rich end of town, my mom stayed home to raise all of us. We had to work for things (like going to see a movie opening night or a new CD) but we always had money and got what we wanted. In retrospect, my family was/is fairly well off.
Both my parents grew up poor, with parents working multiple jobs and different shifts to make ends meet, the strive/drive to not have that childhood, and for my father to be able to retire his parents really impacted mine and my siblings and cousins lives. My father showed me the apartment he grew up in Chinatown a few years back. It’s light years away from the house my grandparents owned when I was a kid and how I grew up.
Do you worry about money now?
Of course. Inflation is real and we are actively planning a wedding for the next year, as well as a baby in the next few years. We also need to buy a second car, so we’re saving for that.
At what age did you become financially responsible for yourself and do you have a financial safety net?
Fully financially responsible? Twenty five. I lived in a family property where I didn’t pay rent in one of the most expensive cities in Canada, so even though I paid all my bills (food and phone), I didn’t have to pay rent. I in fact made money, as I rented rooms out and used the income for house utilities, and paying my student loans down faster. When I moved in with my spouse, I just paid condo fees until we bought our house two years ago which gave me plenty of time to save.
Our financial safety net is family, and our savings. I know my family would bail us out. My spouse’s father would as well. Conversely, we are my spouse’s mother's safety net and we have to keep all our plans in mind that we will be subsidising her.
Do you or have you ever received passive or inherited income? If yes, please explain. Yes, I received 50K from my parents once they sold my childhood home, as did both of my siblings. I have also received 10K from one set of grandparents which paid off my car and part of my student loans when I was 21. I will be receiving another inheritance when probate is done for around ~100K. My spouse also has received inheritance which allowed them to buy their first condo in their early twenties when the market was much better. That condo, 50k, and the subsequent upgrading helped us afford our house.
Day 1
10 AM: I drive to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription. Not how I want to start my Sunday morning but y’know. Normally I’d walk since it’s about 20 minutes but I have a UTI. I’m “lucky” that despite not having a dr because of the health care shortage, my work pays for the Maple app so I could get a dr to write the prescription and order the lab work at 1 am. I’ll do the lab work later this week when I can get an appointment but will take the relief now. Insurance makes the antibiotics free, but I also buy hydrogen peroxide because we’re out and we have a dog that thinks everything is meant to be in her mouth. We’ll buy a bigger one at Costco later. I also bought some oral wound mouthwash because we were out. I come home and my spouse made us breakfast.
Total: 15.90$ paid with debit.
1-2:30 PM: We do our taxes. I have a mini meltdown when I realize the part time bakery job I had for a few months didn’t take off income tax last year, so I owe 800$. Luckily, my partner is getting a refund so we net out positive 400$. The bakery took off income tax in 2022, so unsure why they didn’t in 2023. I made us lunch.
3-6:30 PM: We walk the dog, and watch the Rookie. Some time during that time period, a venue emails us back and is surprisingly affordable at 3k. I also get told that the tattoo artist I want to book with, has not chosen me.
6:30-7:30 PM: I explain what lazy girl dinner is to my spouse and make a lazy girl dinner. After not really grocery shopping since Feb for things besides fresh veg, we need to do a big pantry shop and neither of us want that. We debate about buying a food saver and if we should wait for a sale. My spouse is more frugal than me and has determined we should.
8-9:30 PM: We start season 3 of The Rookie, and then after two episodes we go to bed
Day One Total: 15.90$
Day Two
5:45-8 AM: Wake up and start work. I get up to date with what’s happened on the weekend and check that my automated reports. Sometime before 6:30, I get the kettle on for my spouse’s pour over before I go back to my meetings. There’s a twenty minute gap where I get changed and do my skin care and brush my teeth. I’d love to be a skin care person but honestly I’ve spent too much money on product that I don’t use and that just goes bad. Washing my face and using sun screen is a win.
I also make sure that Spouse’s lunch is in his bag and I get our travel mugs ready. Before, we used to go to Starbucks every day. Starbucks used to do free refills on coffee and tea if you were a rewards member if you bought a coffee or tea so it would cost us $5/day (2.5/pp), and we could get refills all day. While that’s 20$/week, 80$/a month and yes, we could have saved it but back then, that 80$ wasn’t turning the dial anywhere significantly for us—a privileged view.
But now, after COVID where I stopped drinking tea after one day working from home having like 10 cups and thinking I was dying, and Spouse has bought a good grinder and we recently splurged on a stupidly expensive espresso machine we call his Engagement Espresso since it costs the same price as my stupidly expensive ring, we bring our coffees.
8-8:30 AM: We drive to work. Prior to buying our house, we were both work from home and lived in a city with amazing transit. We only needed the one car. Since buying the house and moving to a city where public transit is a joke (the one bus goes past our house every 1.5h), Spouse changed jobs and is in office every day and I have to go in 3 days a week. We need a second car or the e-bike rebate to come through. We debate this in the car, since I’m done at 1 pm, and Spouse works normal hours, I either have to take the bus home, or go to the gym for three hours. Today though, I drop Spouse off. I will pick him up later as he has a half day because of the dentist
8:30-12:30 AM/PM: Work. I find a tech manager and ask them to get me more triple a batteries. Work won’t provide or let me expense batteries for my mouse, despite them replacing my usb mouse with a battery one. The poor admin had to tell me the decision is that we’ll all supply our own batteries. Luckily the tech managers have to have batteries on hand and give them out freely.
I ask my boss how the work from home tax forms work, and he is going to find out.
I run more meetings and work on a request for a dashboard and a business case for a new feature that I have to convince leadership to spend money on.
12:30-1 PM: I drive back to my Spouse because he has a dentist appointment.
While I wait for a spouse, I am incredibly hungry. I’m usually not hungry/don’t eat a proper meal until around 1 in the afternoon and my two granola bars I already ate at the office. I go to the bakery by Spouse’s work and buy a cheese bun for me (3.65$), and an apple pie scone (2.55$) for Spouse as a snack. Spouse points out he won’t be able to eat until after his appointment.
Total: 6.20$ debit
1-1:30 PM: I drop Spouse off, and the car stops working. The engine won’t catch. I try multiple times and then run into the dentist to dramatically announce to Spouse and the receptionists that the car won’t start. Spouse asks me what he wants me to do about this, since he’s about to go into an appointment. A very kind receptionist tells me it might be the alternator. I don’t know what that is.
I go back to the car to Facetime my father. He also asks what I think he can do to help since he lives 3000 km away. Weirdly, and sexistly, I thought a man who grew up at race tracks, in a racing family, or the man who has collected and worked on sports cars for forty years might be able to help.
Spouse texts me to remind me we have BCAA while my father also tells me that. I finally get the engine to catch and drive the very long way home, going the speed limit and getting stuck in traffic, construction and a bus. It takes me 20 minutes to get home instead of 10.
1:30-2:30 PM: I walk the dog, mail a (late) birthday card and then start researching what an alternator is. The car is over a decade old and until the house, the most expensive thing I ever bought at 12K back in 2015. We have the funds for the cost, but it’s my first car and the fact it might be the end of its life is scary.
Alternators can cost between 400-800$ repair with labour, so that’s fun.
My dad calls me back and apologises for asking me what he could do away. He advises me that there’s probably a bald spot on the alternator and advises me to go to the mechanic to check or replace it, if the car doesn’t start again.
I call the mechanic to book an appointment, and to also get the snow tires off and to buy new rims for the snow tires. The mechanic lets me know that the alternator part is 500$, and an hour of labour so with taxes we’re looking at around 700$
That future appointment next week (we’re going down a highway this weekend which requires snow tires) will cost ~1.5K, assuming we replace the alternator.
I make lunch and sigh.
2:30 PM: The car starts thankfully. I drive incredibly slow. I pick up Spouse by idling the car. We get an email back from a venue saying they cost 75,000$ minimum. The timing is hysterical.
Due to the nature of the dentist, Spouse owes 618$, as they haven’t flipped it under my insurance. They split it in half, as he has a follow up in two weeks. After the next appointment they will flip the whole amount under me and we’ll get reimbursed for the whole amount.
Total 309$/credit card.
3-10 PM: We walk the dog, make dinner (Spouse makes white sauce pasta, with chicken and peas) and watch The Rookie. There are thirteen episodes in season three, and we will be busy every night this week besides Friday and Sunday, and I would like to finish season three so we can start season 4 next Monday. I don’t want to pay for more than one month of Crave. We have five episodes left
Day Two Total: 315.2$
Day Three
1 AM: 100$ is automatically transferred from our account to the credit card debit. We have an auto transfer of 100$/every Tuesday to a Visa where we balance transferred both our cards. We have an offer for 0 interest for 10 months, so we did that for some of the bigger expenses (snow tires, break replacement and general Christmas) and are on track to pay it back within the next 6 months. That visa is our emergency card that we just have in the back end and utilise for promos like this. It allows us to keep our two cards balances manageable and lets us pay in an easier way than taking big chunks out of our various savings.
Total: 100$/direct deposit
5:45-9 AM: Work. Meetings, reports, trying to convince a colleague that the process does include them and refusal to follow it means that their requests won’t be done. Spouse has another half day so I can go into the office at my leisure—if the car starts
9-9:20 AM: The car starts, I get into the office and refresh a data flow before a meeting with a new stake holder. It takes longer to drive into work today because the tourists are starting to come and their van builds or campers are not exactly highway speed and with a two lane highway, if you don’t merge over fast enough you’re stuck.
10:05-10:20 AM: Meeting done, car starts again and I drive home for more meetings. The least amount of time in the office is preferable for me.
10:30-11AM : Meeting with my manager where we discuss future salary and promotion. I am due for a promotion in the start of Q2, which would push me to six figures. I’ll believe it when I see it but, I’m really excited at that possibility for my family.
11:15 AM: Spouse leaves for work, we discuss what groceries are needed, as well if he’ll go to Home Depot tonight to buy more clover seeds for the yard, as we need to reseed before it starts raining. I eat a muffin and my dog and cat decide to try and eat each other.
11:15-1:30 PM: Work runs late. There’s some issues with the data and we can’t figure it out. We call it a night, and I’ll record the video presentations tomorrow, once we fix the data.
1:30-4 PM: Nap time! It’s bad for me, but honestly I don’t sleep well during the night so naps are what keep me alive.
4-6 PM I prep dinner (smash burgers and fries), and get chores done and walk the dog.
6-7:30 PM: Spouse comes home, we eat dinner. Groceries come to 96.83 for two 7 pound pork loins, two packs of bacon, chicken nuggets, coffee, pop, 8 pack of peppers, milk, tomato, pickles, rice, avocado, mushrooms, sour cream and lettuce.
Not too bad, we average about 300$/month in groceries because we can buy bulk and have a second freezer.
For the month of March we are currently at 123.61$ for groceries and there is twelve days left. We went on a small weekend away, so we ate out a fair bit but even then our current food budget is 272.27$ today.
Total: 96.83/ debit
7:30-10 PM: Spouse makes a coffee and plays video games with his friends. They do it every week. I have a shower, fold and put away laundry and read in bed.
Day Three Total: 196.83
Day Four
1AM: Our biweekly accelerated mortgage payment comes out of 1450$. I’m tracking it here to be honest on our spending but I tend not to think of it as money spent because in my head it’s already money gone. To pay for a house equivalent in Vancouver, the mortgage would be over 6k. Renting a two bedroom condo would be 3K. It feels like the mortgage is just cheaper rent, even though each time I own more of my house.
5:45-9 AM: Work. I find out the limits of how many people I can invite to a Teams Meeting as well as that the Thursday before Good Friday is a catholic holiday when a few people ask me to reschedule a training forum for over a thousand people. Sometime in there I make us coffee, make sure Spouse has lunch packed (leftovers). Spouse has walked the dog and has the recycling and compost out for pick up. I drop Spouse off at work.
10-11:45 AM: I leave the office for home and more meetings. I walk the dog and go record training videos. I get an email that Amazon is doing their big spring sale. I send a link to a robot mop and vaccum that’s on a big discount to Spouse. We want one, but I’m not in charge of the research on it. I send links to play grounds to my friends with toddlers
11:45-12:30 PM : I shove lunch in my mouth, last night’s left overs. I’m running late, and decide to get myself later by collecting all the random dishes and mugs that just show up places and start the dishwasher. I get to the lab ten minutes early but need to buy gas on the way home.
I tell my team I’ll be MIA for a bit and leave the work phone in the car.
I buy 15.6L of gas for 30$ at 1.879/l it sucks. I don’t fill up because we’re going to my in laws this weekend and there’s a Costco Gas Bar there.
Total: 30$/credit card
12:30-1:30 PM: Work goes long again.
1:30-2:30 PM: Nap!
2:30-4:30 PM: Walk the dog and drive to the gym. I usually go three times a week but with last week’s weekend away and this week’s weird half days from Spouse, today’s the only day. I make it up by doing both upper and lower body and a 30 minute circuit.
4:30-7:30 PM: I pick up Spouse and we go to Costco. We pick up nachos, ham, cheese buns and some other items. We debate buying our friend’s kid a toddler set of clothes and decide no. We end up buying work pants for Spouse, and a garden hose. It comes out to 116.90
I order our Costco dinner of hot dogs and fries for a grand total date night of 6.41$
Total: 123.31/ credit card
8-9 PM: Dance class! We bought a series of six lessons of introduction to ballroom back in December for a new date night idea. We paid 60$/pp and this is the fifth lesson tonight.
9 pm: We’re home, we let the dog out. Spouse spends an undetermined amount of time watching ballroom videos while I sleep.
Day Four Total: 1603.31$ or 153.31 excluding the mortgage payment.
Day Five
5:45-9 AM: Work. All the meetings. Thursday is the meeting day. I debate with a friend what’s the earliest call we’ve had. 4:30 am still wins. I pack lunch for Spouse and his coffee and he leaves. I end up cleaning up cat puke as the cat decides to drink milk from Spouse’s cereal and vomit it up on camera in a meeting.
9-9:30 AM: I make myself a matcha and walk the dog.
9:30-1 PM: Work and I treat myself to a lunch of a cheese bun and ham sandwhich. We used to eat it every Sunday while growing up but the cost of ham has been outrageous. The deal at Costco yesterday was 1.5$/100 g which is really good.
1-1:30 PM: I seal the wooden deer Christmas decoration we bought last year. It sits outside our front door and needs to be weather proofed, and I’ve been putting it off for five months. But the weather is good and we have newspapers. We have left over wood sealer after the sign we bought a year ago so I use that. The dog and the cat both don’t like my wooden deer.
1:30-4 PM: Nap!
4-5 PM: I basically just watch youtube and drink a root beer. I have no energy.
5-6:30 PM: Spouse comes home, we walk the dog and I make dinner (Kraft Dinner and nuggets–I swear we eat veggies but today is not that day). We discuss the possibility of our dog at our wedding as a flower girl, and if she’ll be in a tutu or a cheongsam like me. I am now researching if they make dog cheongsams and if she can match us. The cat, despite all my heart wanting it, won’t physically be there because he will have an anxiety attack and probably die.
6:30-10:30 PM: Board game night! We go to a friend’s to repeat the same scenario we’ve lost two weeks in a row.
10:30-11 PM: I pack Spouse’s breakfast (oatmeal and frozen berries), lunch (spicy tuna and mayo) since he’s trying to go to the gym before work, and feed the animals before we go to bed.
Day Five Total: 0$
Day Six Friday
5:45-9 AM: Work. I have a deep focus block which means I can get the script for the training I have to run. Public speaking is not my strong suit and it’s a group of a thousand people so I’m not looking forward to it. Spouse almost makes it to the gym. I get an email that my new work phone has shipped. I’m surprised because they wouldn’t order us any for the past four years, but I guess my new iPhone will show up next week. I might give my old work phone to my mother in law, since she smashed the camera on the phone we bought her last year.
9-9:30 AM: I walk the dog, make a matcha and make a todo list for what we have to get done before we leave to my in laws tomorrow. I text my mother in law happy birthday, and hope that she got the card in time. She did.
9:30-11:30 AM: My last meeting for the week ends and I’m debating calling it a day so I can nap. Instead I make lunch (cheese bun and ham), text my other mother in law our plan for Saturday, and unload and reload the dishwasher and go back to work for at least another hour.
12:30-1 PM: I shower and do skin care
1-3 PM: Nap! Somewhere in this time FedEx comes and since I’m sleeping, we have to pick up on Monday. I’m not too sure what it is, I assume it’s our custom address stamp from Etsy because that’s the only thing I’ve bought recently but not too sure. I just realized in retrospect, this might be my new work phone.
3-5 PM: I prep dinner (nachos), unload the dishwasher, pack my overnight bag and confirm all our venue tours by email. I start a load of laundry and do a quick clean. I feel like this is not the best image of our diet. I swear we generally eat healthy but we both have been feeling really blah over the past two weeks so have been going for quick and easy over healthy and balanced. I do have three whole peppers and two whole avocados in the nachos though.
5-7 PM: Spouse comes home, we walk the dog, have dinner, and plan out next week. We have a big Wednesday next week (mechanic, I have a nails appointment, dance class), and we are having our friends over for Easter so we need to prep for that. We pack the car so tomorrow is a very easy start.
Spouse also gets paid today. We’re lucky that we’re on alternating pay periods, we used to be on the same and it always felt stressful. Spouse also lets me know his union has secured a 3% cost of living raise to start in Q3. I really like his union for negotiating a base 2% year of cost of living raise, with potential addition raises depending on inflation. It’s a bit away but that’s still good news.
7:30-10:30 PM: We finish The Rookie Season 3 and head to bed. Crave reminds me that I have 10 days until I’m charged again. Sadly, I think we’ll have to pay for 2 months.
Day Six Total: 0
Day Seven Saturday
8:30-9:30 AM: Wake up. No one (except the dog) slept well so we’re not in a morning mood. Spouse makes coffee and walks the dog, while I finish packing the car and give the cat a lot of attention. Our first venue tour is at 11 and the one that is the most expensive (8-10K), but also the one we probably want the most. We live about an hour away but the highway is two lanes and one accident can back everything up for hours.
10:40-1 PM: We visit our dream venue. We stay way longer than expected. Basically if the quote is under 10K, we’ll get it. Just waiting now.
1-2 PM: We get to our in-laws and have a lunch of egg salad sandwhichs. We need to buy gas. My in laws drive us to a pottery painting store.
2-4 PM: We paint pottery. My mother in law only wanted to do this for her birthday. They’ll pick it up in a week after it’s been thrown. I paint a vase (28$), Spouse paints an Easter egg (18$), father in law paints a mug (30$), and mother in law paints a plate (50$)
Total:143.36/credit card
4-5 Pm: We see another venue. It’s an instant no. My in laws decide they want to try Korean fried chicken. We call ahead for take out to get two fries and 16 pieces of half and half. It comes to 50.83$ that my in laws pay for.
5-10 PM: We come back and see that our dog has pooped in their house and also has gotten into their pantry and eaten an entire bag of dog food. It is not a fun night.
We spend the night drinking wine and discussing the wedding and watching TV.
10PM: We go to bed. That’s the end of this week, but tomorrow we will be buying gas and probably lunch for my other mother in law as we will be touring another venue.
Day Seven Total: 143.36$
submitted by sookfong to MoneyDiariesACTIVE [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 20:32 Flagg1991 Children of the Night (Part 4)

Club Vlad sat near the confluence of Central Avenue and Washington Avenue, Albany’s two main thoroughfares. Two stories with blackout windows and a box office from when it used to be a movie theater, it was swarmed with people when Dom first spotted it ahead. He was somewhat familiar with it: He passed it every day on his way to work, and it was always busy around his time of evening, even on weeknights. Part of him always wanted to go inside and be a part of the scene, but he never did.
The man in sunglasses - his name was Joe - led Dom toward the club, and even before Joe spoke, Dom somehow knew that it was their destination. “There,” Joe said. “We’ll go around back.”
Dom and Joe had been walking for what seemed like an hour but couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes. Dom stuck as close to Joe as possible as if for protection, and had become accustomed to his pungent smell. It was noticeable only at extremely close range, part sickly sweet and part…something else, something Dom could not place but still somehow recognized. They were two blocks from the club, maybe three, and Dom could hear the pulsing techo/house/whatever music as clearly as if he were standing in the middle of the dancefloor. He could hear the chatter of the people inside, or at least he imagined he could. He could smell them too: Beneath the odors of perfume, desperation, and spiritual rot was something richer, something blissful. Dom realized for the first time that he was parched - so parched - and drool filled his mouth.
A crowd of people waited outside Club Vlad, talking and laughing; some vaped, some stared down at their cellphones like Gollum with his precious ring. Dom’s first reaction was to avoid them. Perhaps sensing this…or perhaps feeling it himself…Joe ducked into an alleyway two doors down from the club. “We’ll go in the back,” Joe explained.
The back entrance to Club Vlad was a single door underneath a bare bulb. The music was so loud that Dom’s head began to throb. Inside, a dark hallway terminated in an archway filled with throbbing white light. Dread filled Dom as they approached it - he didn’t want to be around people - but thankfully they went into a room off the hall instead. An office. A cramped desk, a filing cabinet. A set of stairs disappeared into shadows.
“Sit,” Joe said.
Dom obeyed, sitting in the swivel chair.
Joe went up the stairs and Dom was alone. The deep coldness that had long settled into his bones made itself known again, and Dom leaned forward, wrapping his arms around his chest for warmth. The muffled music vibrated in his skull, setting his teeth on edge, and the various smells wafting in from the main room assaulted his senses. He was alternately repulsed and aroused by the crashing din of scents: The good, the bad, and the mouth watering. A sharp pain cut through his stomach like the killing edge of a knife, and Dom hugged himself tighter. Had his throat always been this dry? His throat felt like sandpaper; his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and getting it unstuck hurt so badly that tears sprang to his eyes.
Dom rubbed his arms with his hands and tried to still his chattering teeth. He looked around for a blanket, a discarded jacket, something to cover himself with, but there was nothing. Only drifts of glitter on the floor and walls. He supposed it came from a party or something. He’d never been to a night club but it seemed fitting.
A sound drew his attention to the door leading back into the hall. A woman - no older than a girl - stood there, looking confused and unsteady. She was dressed in black, wore glow sticks around her wrists and neck, and held a red solo cup. “I have to pee,” she said drunkenly and laughed. “I thought this was the bathroom.”
A cold wind washed over Dom, and Joe was standing next to him. “The bathroom’s up here,” he said.
“Oh, good,” the girl laughed, “I thought it was here but I didn’t know. This is my first time here.” She held her cup aloft. “Take me to it.”
Joe glanced at Dom. “Come on.”
They formed a party as they climbed the stairs, Dom in the tear and Joe at the head. The girl stumbled and held onto the railing, talking incessantly. Her voice hurt Dom’s head, but the hot smell wafting from her was intoxicating. Drool coursed down his chin and his breathing came in short, hot bursts. Another sharp pain rent his stomach, and he winced.
At the top of the stairs, where the lights were cold and white, a woman in black stood by a doorway, her back ramrod straight and her eyes vacant. Her face was gaunt, her white flesh pulled tight across her skull. She wore a black dress and her black hair long and straight. Dom only caught a glance at her before looking away again.
She looked like a ghost.
“Show her the bathroom,” Joe said.
The woman’s eyes slowly, ponderles, went from Joe to the drunk girl. Her expression, like Joe’s, was dead. She had no expression. “This way.”
She and the drunk girl disappeared down the hall, and Joe led Dom into a room. Though it was pitch black, Dom could still see; not very well…but he could see. Suddenly, a blinding white light flicked on in front of him, causing him to stop and fall back a step. Ahead, through an archway, sat a vaulted chamber, at the center of which sat a man. To Dom’s light dazzled eyes, he seemed a proud king perched upon a throne, the skulls of his many enemies piled around him. Dom blinked and turned his head slightly to the side. His eyes began to adjust, and the world came into focus.
The man was not, as it had first seemed, sitting on a throne. Instead, he was esconded in a motorized wheelchair. The piles of skulls were actually various pieces of machinery, the kind you’d find in a hospital room. A clear tube extended from one of them to the side of the man’s neck: Yellow liquid flowed from the machine and into the man. Another tube, this one in the other side of his neck, filtered out a mixture of what looked like yellow pus and black sludge. An infected malodor filled the air, and the machines whirred softly as they worked.
As for the man himself, his appearance was normal at first glance, Dressed in a flowing red velvet robe, a blue and green blanket with a plaid pattern draped over his shoulders, he was portly, about fifty, and had shoulder length grayish hair with a bald spot in the middle. If the local theater put on a production of Hamilton, they could cast a worse Ben Franklin than him.
On closer inspection, he was not normal at all. His complexion was yellow and waxy, like a statue, and his body was lumpy, misshapen, resembling an overfilled trash bag stuffed with cotton. His eyes were sick and yellow, and something about his posture seemed…off. It didn’t make sense, but the only thing Dom could think was: He looks impossible.
Joe stopped at the edge of the shadows, where the line between light and darkness lay. He seemed to stand up a little straighter, a general greeting his king. “Here he is,” Joe said.
The man squinted slightly against the glare of the light and motioned with one gnarled hand. “Step into the light,” he said. His voice was soft and kind, that of a senile though loving grandmother. Dom imagined he felt a pull toward the man, and did as he was bidden, wincing as the light stung his eyes.
For a moment, the man stared at him, his waxen features frozen fast as stone. Then, a subtle look of compassion flickered across his face. Dom did not believe in God, but he suddenly felt like a man standing before God, his every thought, feeling, and transgression laid bare. He had never felt so naked in his life, so exposed. He had the sense that the man before him could see everything, knew everything.
“You’ve been through a lot,” the man said. It was not a question, but a statement.
Everything Dom had been through over the past couple of days came back to him in a rush, and hot tears filled his eyes. He nodded.
The man nodded slightly, more to himself than to Dom. “Kneel down,” he said, “I want to look at you.”
Dom knelt without question.
The man lifted one hand and touched Dom’s face, tilting Dom’s head from one side to the other like a farmer appraising a horse. His fingers were long and bony, his nails ragged and unkempt; his touch was like ice. He brushed his knuckles over the purple bruise on Dom’s cheek, and there was such gentleness in that one act that Dom broke down sobbing. He leaned into the man’s touch like a cat and gave voice to his misery.
“Shhh,” the man said, “it’s all over now.”
“W-What’s happening to me?” Dom asked.
In his heart of hearts, however, he already knew.
“You died,” the man said patiently. “And you came back.”
Hearing it stated so plainly, Dom cried even harder.
“Only a handful of people throughout history can claim to have defeated death,” the man said, stroking Dom’s hair, “and you’re one of them. You should be proud.”
“How?” Dom asked between sobs. “What am I?”
The man stroked Dom’s cheek. “You’re the same thing I am.”
At that, Dom looked up at the man. “What are you?” he asked.
A little, knowing smile touched the man’s lips, and when he spoke, his canine teeth were longer and sharper than before. “I’m a vampire.”
“No,” Dom moaned and shook his head, “no, no, no.” He grabbed the man’s hand and held tight, his tears coming faster. He trembled like a frightened animal and squeezed his eyes closed, as if by doing so he could escape the hell his life had become.
But there was no escape.
“You have a lot of questions,” the man said, monologuing now rather than speaking directly to Dom, “I had the same questions when I was your age. I have spent the last forty-two years of my life trying to answer them, but every answer I find leads me to still more questions. There’s one thing I’m certain of, though.”
Dom blinked the tears from his eyes. The last of them had been squeezed from his dead tear ducts and he had no more to give. He simply stared into space, trying to come to grips with his situation.
“There is freedom in death,” the man said. “Death is easy. It’s simple. Once it’s over, you feel no pain, no sadness, no grief. It’s living that’s hard.”
As he spoke, he brushed his long nails across Dom’s scalp. It was a soothing feeling, and served to calm him. “People have so many troubles.” A note of revulsion crept into his voice. “So many needs, so many desires. People are complex but we’re not. We’re easy to please. A vampire wants only two things: A little blood and one more night.”
The combination of his touch and his voice had pacified Dom to the point of almost tranquility. “I’m scared,” Dom heard himself mumble.
Nodding almost reluctantly, the man said, “Fear is one of the only emotions a vampire can’t escape. Everything feels fear. Do you want to know a secret?”
Dom nodded.
“I’m afraid too,” the man confessed. “I’m afraid of death. Well…death as it were. I’m terrified that my body will rot away and leave me a pile of bones somewhere, unable to move but still aware”
A shudder went through Dom.
“As I’m sure you’ve seen yourself, the movies lied. We rot just like any other dead thing. Our flesh decays, our organs turn to sludge, and we go from rational men to monsters whose only thought is feeding.”
Now it was his turn to shiver.
“But…you’re not like that,: Dom said.’
The man smiled. “I’m lucky, I guess” A thin yellow fluid began to drip from his nostrils. He did not seem to notice. “What is your name?”
“Dominick,” Dom said.
“I’m Merrick,” the man said, “and this is my family.”
Dom realized that they were now surrounded by others, ten in all. They stood ramrod straight, their eyes vacant and their faces devoid of humanity. They were mainly men, though one was a woman. Some were pale, others were blue or black, and one was little more than a skeleton clad in withered brown skin, a white button up and jeans hanging from its frame.
A thought occurred to Dom. “You said my brain was going to rot…”
“Not necessarily,” Merrick cautioned, “though it’s possible.”
“Am I going to be…?”
“Like them?” Merrick asked. “Braindead and staring?”
Sheepishly, Dom nodded.
“Maybe,” Merrick allowed. “But these people are free of everything that troubles humanity. You were human just a short time ago. I’m sure you remember all too well what it was like. The constant politics, the moral quandaries, the philosophical pontificating. Human beings - and make no mistake, we are humans - were not meant for all of that. We’re animals. We were made to hunt, fuck, and sleep. Somewhere along the way, we got pretentious and started complicating things.” He looked at Dom, sizing him up, seeming to read him. “Things that animals take for granted, people work their entire lives to achieve. If an animal wants to fornicate, it fornicates. If a man wants to fornicate, he needs to be tall, handsome, rich, funny, progressive when it suits women but traditional when it doesn’t. If a man wants a home, he has to work thirty years for it. An animal has only to dig a hole in the ground.”
Every word struck a chord with Dom.
Because every word was true.
“Unfortunately, the living won’t allow us to live that freely, so we have to hide. These people here - my children - need a guiding hand, a protector, someone who can lead them. And I, an old man, need help.” Here he smiled playfully and patted his bulging stomach. “My body is mostly sawdust and cotton balls at this point, so I can’t do much. I share my wisdom and my knowledge with them, and they take care of me.”
“Why haven’t you…rotted?” Dom asked.
“Embalming fluid,” Merrick said. “Blood doesn’t sustain you. Embalming fluid does.” He smiled at Dom. “It can sustain you as well. If you’ll stay with us. We’re not the most attractive bunch, but we’re a family, and we really wish you’d join us.”
A family.
Dom’s parents had broken up and he lived with his mother. He had never had a family before, and had always wanted one, a real one, like in the movies. Even as a grown man, he sought the love, acceptance, and belonging that a family brings. He sought it in the wrong ways, but that - and not sex, not romantic love - is what he had really wanted all along.
This is what he had wanted all along.
“I want to,” Dom said.
Working quickly, Merrick slashed his wrist open with his thumbnail. An ugly mixture of stale blood, siphoned from someone else, and embalming fluid leaked out. “If you choose to drink, my blood will be in you. You will be my son and I will be your father. You will obey me as your father. You will do whatever is asked of you for this family, as this family will do for you. You will not reveal the secrets of this family to anyone outside of it. You will protect this family from all threats, both inside and out. Do you accept?”
He held his bleeding wrist out to Dom.
Dom did not question, nor did he hesitate. He grabbed the hand of his father, brought it to his mouth, and drank from the seeping wound. The fluid was cold, thick, and vile.
It tasted like belonging.
“Have you fed yet?”
“No,” Dom said.
“Before you do, I have a question for you. Who did this to you? Who made you?”
Dom thought. Everything was hazy. “Was it someone in this room?” Merrick asked.
Dom shook his head. “Her name is…” he wracked his brain. “Heather.”
Merrick nodded. “So there’s another out there.” He looked at Joe. “Did you turn her?”
“Yes,” Joe said.
Merrick looked annoyed. “I’ve told you not to go out and feed on your own. You have no self-control. You drink too much and create others, which creates headaches for the family. Tomorrow night, I want you and Dom to find her and bring her here.” “Okay,” Joe said.
Merrick looked over Dom’s shoulder. “Jess? Can you come here?”
The black haired woman from earlier came out of the shadows, the drunk girl with her, arms tied behind her back. The girl looked dazed. “Max,” Merrick said to the skeletal corpse-thing, “help her.”
Max, Jessie, and another vampire named Matt tied chains around the girl’s ankles and hoisted her aloft via a pulley system. Upside down, she swung back and forth. Merrick instructed the others to leave the room. “Max,” he said.
On his way out, the corpse-thing produced a knife and dragged it across the girl’s throat, slicing her skin; blood spurted out. Max leaned in to taste it, but Merrick shooed him away. When he and Dom were alone, Merrick told Dom, “Go to her.”
But Dom was already on his feet, his eyes transfixed by the crimson life flowing from her pumping throat. The hot, rich smell filled his nostrils and tantalized his senses. Saliva filled his mouth and his stomach panged with hunger. Some small, human part of his decaying brain screamed at him to stop, but he did not listen to it. He had been human for almost thirty years, and he had been miserable. Now, in this chamber of the undead, he gave himself over to his dark thirst. Like a man in a dream, he shuffled to her, inhaled the sweet scent of her blood, and shivered. He was so lost in lust that he hardly noticed the strange, cumbersome feeling of his descended fangs.
“Drink,” Merrick said.
Opening his mouth wide, Dom sank his teeth into the girl’s neck. Her blood filled his mouth and splashed down his throat. Warmth thawed the ice in his marrow and spread through him. His dead heart began to flutter, then to pound. His knees shook, his body trembled, and his mind rolled away on a tide of ecstasy.
As it was his first meal, he couldn’t drink much. Before long, his stomach was hard and distended and his body burned with fire. He collapsed to a heap on the floor and twitched as random nerve endings, stimulated by the blood, began to misfire. He felt full, warm, and drunk. He closed his eyes and let himself drift.
Dominick Mason had died.
And this…
This was heaven.
***
With all that was happening in the city of Albany, the last thing Bruce Kenner needed on Thursday morning was a visit from Bertha the bitch, but that’s exactly what he got. She flew into his office like she owned the place and instantly started in on him. Young man this and have you talked to Joe Rossi that. You’d think she was his boss. And if she were his boss, he’d quit and find another line of work. He heard McDonald’s was hiring.
Bruce almost snapped at her. He’d been up most of last night riding around Albany and looking for Dominick Mason. He and Vanessa expected him to drop dead somewhere close to the medical examiner’s office, but if he had, he’d done so in a super secret location.
“I’ve been busy,” Bruce said, “but I’m going to go by his place of work today.”
Tired and still confused over that bullshit from last night, he had no energy to argue with the old crone. He could spare a few minutes to talk to Joe Rossi, he figured. He assumed that Jessie was safe but he owed it to her to check. If he found the girl, he’d take her back to her grandmother (sorry, kid, really) and try to avoid arresting the guy. Unless he came off as a creep, then he’d bust his ass. See, people assumed that an older guy with a younger girlfriend was some master manipulator hell bent on evil deeds. Sometimes they were, but hell, his grandparents married when his grandpa was twenty-one and his grandma sixteen. They were married for fifty-five years and loved each other to the end. Maybe it was innocent, maybe not. It wasn’t his job to judge either way. Just gimme the girl so I can get her grandma off my back and no one gets hurt.
“It’s about time you started doing your job,” Bertha said, “I heard on the police scanner last night that you people lost a body. What kind of town is this? Your coroner is a drunk who makes up stories about bodies walking away. He probably sold it to black people.”
Bruce couldn’t help it; he snorted laughter.
“Now what would black people want with a dead body?”
“Probably to use it as a prop in one of their rap videos.”
Bruce didn’t know much about music videos, but he was pretty sure that the people who made them didn’t like the smell of corpse any more than the rest of us. “I’ll be sure to round up all the local rappers for questioning. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Luckily for him, there was not, and Bertha left shortly thereafter. Alone and able to hear himself think, Bruce sat back in his chair and went over his mental checklist for the day. First order of business, go to Club Vlad. Second, find Dominick Mason. There were others, but that was the most important. He wanted the body found so someone could get to work explaining this whole weird thing. There had to be an explanation. The thought that there wasn’t, that a dead guy literally rose from the grave and disappeared into the night, deeply disturbed Bruce, and the more this whole thing remained ongoing, the more disturbed he would become.
Needing some fresh air, he decided to hit up Club Vlad.
Outside, the day was hot and sunny. Waves of heat shimmered from the pavement and not a single breath of air stirred in the whole world. Bruce slipped on a pair of sunglasses and drove over to Club Vlad. It occurred to him that the place might be closed during the day; it was the only place Joe Rossi was associated with. His address in the computer system was Glens Falls, far to the north. The messages he sent Jessie indicated that he lived onsite at Club Vlad.
The build, wedged between a corner store and a check cashing place, was as grimy and dumpy looking as it had always been. The front windows were blacked out and covered with posters and fliers for punk concerts, house bands, and far left political organizations: The Albany Social Justice Center, something called Bash the Fash 2025, and Bruce’s favorite. ACAB. He caught some kid spraying that on the side of the police station once, and under extreme police torture (ie, a good tongue lashing), the kid told him it meant All Cops Are Barnacleheads.
Bruce shot the kid on the spot and planted a gun on him.
How's that for barnaclehead?
Calm down, he didn’t really do that. He made him clean the graffiti off with a toothbrush. LOL he was out there for hours.
The sidewalk in front of the former theater was empty save for some little. The box office was abandoned. There was no open sigh, but then again, there was no closed sign either. He parked his cruiser at the curb, killed the engine, and got out, sweat instantly springing to his brow.
To his surprise, the door opened. Inside, a couple steps led down to a dance floor. A bar lined the wall to his right, and a couple more sets led up to a railed platform filled with tables. Above, a huge balcony looked down on him. A giant disco ball hung from the ceiling like a pair of glittery nuts and there were cages here and there. Presumably where girls danced go-go style. Oh yeah, nothing hotter than a woman behind bars. Why do you think Bruce became a cop in the first place?
Speaking of glittery nuts, there was glitter everywhere. On the floor, on the tables, on the bar. It twinkled like flecks of diamond and swirled around your feet when you walked. Bruce imagined big buckets of the stuff raining down on the dance floor at midnight and he shuddered. Imagine having glitter stuck in your hair. That shit would never come out.
Music played from the sound system, not as loud as it would be during operating hours. It sounded like ‘80s metal, not exactly what he expected from a place like this.
Some say life she's a lady
Kinda soft, kinda shady
I can tell you life is rich
She's no lady, she's a bitch
Being morning, the place was deserted except for a man behind the bar, busy at cleaning the countertop in anticipation for the night’s events. He was tall, Hispanic or Italian, and feminine, with a single earring and a tank top.
Bruce moseyed over to the bar and the barkeep looked up, missing a beat when he realized the fuzz was here. He sat down his rag and walked over. “Can I help you?” he asked in a whispy voice.
“Yeah,” Bruce said, “I’m looking for Joe Rossi. Is he here?”
“I don’t know,” the bartender said. He looked nervous. “I can check.”
Before Bruce could answer, he scurried off, leaving him alone.
They suck my body out
But friend there is no doubt
I'm gonna pay the devil his dues
Cause I'm sick of being abused
Bruce looked around, his fingers absently drumming on the countertop. Club Vlad was a clashing mix of grunge and glam that made his head hurt. He imagined what the place must be like at midnight, packed and noisy, and nodded to himself. Yeah, this was the spot, he guessed, the place all the cool kids went, if they went anywhere anymore. Hell, if he was thirty years younger, he might come here.
He had been waiting for almost twenty minutes when a voice spoke behind him. He turned with a start, and beheld the strangest man he had ever seen in his life. Short and plump - lumpy, even - he sat in a wheelchair, a red blanket draped over his shoulders and his hands resting on his knees. He was about fifty with sparse gray hair falling to his shoulders and a plastic-looking face. He looked like a wax statue of Ben Franklin come to life, and a deep sense of disquiet stirred in the pit of Bruce’s stomach.
Just can't fight the temptation
It's become my inspiration
Gonna get myself an axe
Break some heads, break some backs
It was only then that Bruce noticed the sickly sweet smell of death.
It seemed to come from the man in waves.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” the man said, “my name is Merrick Garvis and I own Club Vlad. Maybe I can be of assistance.”
Bruce grew up in the south where manners and saving face were paramount. His mother and his grandmother both taught him that it was impolite to stare. Maybe he'd been in New York so long that he’d forgotten himself, or maybe Merrick Garvis was just the strangest looking man in the world. Either way, Bruce couldn’t help gaping at his strange appearance. Recovering, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, I -”
Merrick smiled and waved one hand. Why was it so goddamn skeletal? “Don’t worry. I was injured in a fire a long time ago and this is the best they could do for me. To be honest, I’d stare too. What can I help you with, officer?”
“I’d like to talk to Joe Rossi,” Bruce said. “I understand he works for you.”
“He did,” Merrick said, “but I had to let him go. Did he do something wrong?”
Bruce sighed. “Well, yeah, he’s shacked up with a sixteen year old runaway.”
A look of concern crossed Merrick’s features, such as they were. “Oh, my, that is concerning. I haven’t seen him in several days. I assume he went home. He lives in Glens Falls.”
Bruce nodded, his mind working. If Rossi really was in Glens Falls, that meant the whole mess was someone else’s problem. He could send Bertha up there to bother some other poor barnacle head and be rid of her. Yet…he didn’t think Rossi was in Glens Falls. Bruce had a knack for knowing when people were lying, and he was certain that Merrick Garvis was doing just that. It couldn’t be a facial tick, as his features were largely unmoving, like clay. Maybe it was something in his cloudy eyes. Maybe it was the tone of his voice. Or maybe Bruce had the shining and knew things just for the hell of it. In any event, the certainty that Merrick Garvis was lying grew stronger with each passing second.
“Why’d you fire him?”
“He got drunk and hit one of the customers.”
“What did he do?” Bruce asked. “What was his position?”
“He was a bouncer.”
“Aren’t bouncers supposed to hit people?”
Merrick fumbled. “Well…not to punch them in the face for bumping into them.”
“How long did he work for you?”
“Six months.”
“Did you ever see him with an underage girl?”
“Of course not,” Merrick said, “you have to be twenty-one to get in. I make sure everyone’s ID is checked at the door.”
“What if she had a fake ID?”
“Then I guess she’d get in, but I’d assume she was of legal age.”
“You said he shoved someone, when did this happen?”
“Last week,” Merrick said.
“I thought you said he hit someone.”
Merrick again fumbled. “I did.” Now his face seemed to darken a little. A strange yellowish liquid, too thin to be snot, began to drip from his nostrils. Bruce barely suppressed a smear of disgust. “I understand you have a job to do but playing mind games with me isn’t going to solve anything. I can give you his address. Other than that, I can’t help you further.”
“Fair enough,” Bruce said. “But I’d like to see your ID please.”
Merrick glared at him. “I suppose you want my name, rank, and serial number as well.”
“Actually, yeah, I’d love that.”
Merrick drew a deep sigh. “Okay.”
In five minutes, Bruce had Merrick’s ID, social, and all other relevant information. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have bothered, even though he was well within his rights to ask for this information from someone he was questioning. But something about Merrick Garvis was off, and not just his weird face or strangely bulbous body. Bruce was just smart enough to realize that something was going on here, but not quite smart enough to even begin to imagine what.
When he had everything he needed and saw no reason to stick around, Bruce bid Merrick farewell and left the club. Before he could do anything else, he got a call from dispatch: Officer needed assistance in Pine Hills. Bruce slipped behind the wheel and went forth to help, momentarily putting Merrick Garvis out of his mind.
But soon or later, he would get back to him.
Oh yes he would.
submitted by Flagg1991 to LetsReadOfficial [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 20:18 Jerry_217 [H] Lots of games NEW: Yakuza LAD, 9 Years of Shadow, Littlewood, DEVOUR, Amnesia:The Bunker, Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles, Wobbledogs [W] Hi-Fi rush, hell let loose, Nioh 2, WWE 2k23, crusader kings 3, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Fable Anniversary, Poker night 1, 2, F1 2012, 2011, Euro/American Truck, tf2

Region is NA.

If you have my wishlist games, Chat with me anytime. Only accept games from your own collection.

My REPs: 200+ successful trades, stopped tracking after 202.

​

My steam games for trade (wishlist in the end of this post):

Added recently:

Blade of Darkness
Amanda the Adventurer
Bravery and Greed
King Of The Castle
Loddlenaut
Mediterranea Inferno
Steelrising
Yakuza: Like a Dragon
Coromon
Fashion Police Squad
HUMANKIND™ Definitive Edition
Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga
Terraformers
The Callisto Protocol
The Excavation of Hob's Barrow
Victoria 3
​
Littlewood
Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles
One Hand Clapping
Tainted Grail: Conquest
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Ultimate Chicken Horse
Mad Max
MORTAL KOMBAT XL
Mortal Kombat 11: Ultimate
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor GOTY
Middle-Earth: Shadow of War Definitive Edition
Injustice 2 Legendary Edition
Gotham Knights
Back 4 Blood
Batman™: Arkham Knight Premium Edition
Batman™: Arkham Asylum GOTY Edition
Batman™: Arkham City GOTY Edition
Batman™: Arkham Origins
.hack//G.U. Last Recode
CODE VEIN
GOD EATER 3
Katamari Damacy REROLL
PAC-MAN MUSEUM+
Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition
TEKKEN 7
Dragon Knight (delisted, 18+, PM for price)
Hell Girls (delisted, 18+, PM for price)
Super Star (delisted, 18+, PM for price)
​

Steam games:

9 Years of Shadows
A Juggler's Tale
A Plague Tale: Innocence
ABZU
Aces and Adventures
Ad Infinitum
Afterimage
Agent in Depth
Alchemist's Castle
Alchemy Garden
Aliens vs. Predator Collection ( includes Aliens vs. Predator + Aliens vs Predator Swarm Map Pack + Aliens vs Predator: Bug Hunt Pack)
Aliens: Fireteam Elite
AMID EVIL
Amnesia: The Bunker
Among Us
Anuchard
Aragami 2
Arcade Paradise
Arise: A Simple Story
Armello
Army Men RTS
Assault Suit Leynos
Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles
Astronarch
Autonauts vs Piratebots
Battlecruisers
Beacon Pines
Big Pharma
BIOMUTANT
Bionic Commando Rearmed
Black Paradox
Black Skylands
Blade Assault
Blade of Darkness
Blood And Zombies
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Borderlands 3: Super Deluxe Edition
Boundless
BPM: Bullets Per Minute
Brawlout
Castle on the Coast
Cats in Time
Caveblazers
Chicka Wars Chicken Meat (delisted)
Children of Silentown
CHIVALRY 2 - EPIC EDITION
Citizen Sleeper
CivCity: Rome
Click and Slay
Colt Canyon
Conan Chop Chop
Concept Destruction
Construction Simulator (2015) Deluxe Edition
Cookie Cutter
Corridor Z
Cosmonautica
Crayon Physics Deluxe
CROSSBOW: Bloodnight
Cultist Simulator
Curse of the Dead Gods
Dagon - The Eldritch Box DLC
Dark Deity
Dead Age
Dear Esther: Landmark Edition
Death Squared
Deceive Inc.
Demonologist
Depraved
Descenders
Desperados III
Destiny 2: Beyond Light DLC
Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed
Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter
Detached: Non-VR Edition
DEVOUR
Dicey Dungeons
Disciples: Liberation
Disco Elysium - The Final Cut
Dishonored Definitive Edition
Distant Worlds Universe
Doctor Strange Defenders Skin
Double Cross
Doughlings: Arcade
Doughlings: Invasion
Dragon Knight (delisted, 18+)
Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen
Draw Slasher
Drawful 2
Due Process
Dungeons 2 - Complete Edition
Dusk
EDGE OF ETERNITY
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising
El Hijo
Emily is Away <3
Encased
Endless Space 2
Epic Chef
ETERNAL THREADS
Exorder
Expeditions: Rome
F1 2018
Farming Simulator 17
Firegirl: Hack 'n Splash Rescue
First Class Trouble
Five Dates
Fling to the Finish
Fobia - St. Dinfna Hotel
Foretales
FOREWARNED
Forged Battalion
Fortissimo FA INTL Ver
Founders' Fortune
Friends vs Friends
From Space
Full Metal Furies
Fun with Ragdolls: The Game
GameGuru Classic
Garfield Kart - Furious Racing
Generation Zero
Geometric Sniper
Ghost 1.0
Gloria Victis
Go Home Dinosaurs!
Going Under
Golf Gang
Good knight
GRID Ultimate Edition
GRIME
Grow: Song of the Evertree
Guilty Gear X2 #Reload
Guns & Fishes
Guts and Glory
Hack 'n' Slash bundle (including Hack 'n' Slash + Hack 'n' Slash Soundtrack + Spacebase GIFT)
Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition
Hardspace: Shipbreaker
Heart Fragment - Book Two: Belief Fragments (Shannon & Lana)
Hedon Bloodrite
Hell Girls (delisted, 18+)
Hell Pie
Hellbound
HERO'S HOUR
Hidden & Dangerous 2: Courage Under Fire
Hidden & Dangerous: Action Pack
Hokko Life
Hollow Knight
Honey, I Joined a Cult
Hot Brass
Hotshot Racing
How to Sing to Open Your Heart
Hyper Gunsport
I’m not a Monster
Internet Cafe Simulator
Interplanetary: Enhanced Edition
Intravenous
Intruders: Hide and Seek
Iron Danger
Iron Harvest
Izmir: An Independence Simulator
Joggernauts
Joggernauts
JURASSIC WORLD EVOLUTION 2
Just Cause 3 XXL Edition
Just Cause 4 Complete Edition
JYDGE
Kerbal Space Program
Killsquad
King's Bounty II
Kraken Academy!!
Labirinto 2
Lacuna – A Sci-Fi Noir Adventure
Last Call BBS
Last Oasis
Late Shift
Lawn Mowing Simulator
Legend of Keepers
Leisure Suit Larry - Wet Dreams Don't Dry
Let Them Come
Life is Strange 2 Complete Season (incl. Mascot Bundle DLC)
Little Misfortune
Little Orpheus
Lords and Villeins
Lost Planet 3 Complete Pack
Lost Ruins
Lust for Darkness
Lust from Beyond: M Edition
MageQuit
Maid of Sker
Mainlining
MEEPLE STATION
Meow Express
Merchant of the Skies
Metal: Hellsinger
Metro Exodus
Midnight Fight Express
Midnight Ghost Hunt
Mini Metro
Mini motor Racing EVO (delisted)
MirrorMoon EP
Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp
Monster Sanctuary
Moon Hunters
Moonlighter
Morbid: The Seven Acolytes
Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021
Moving Out - Movers in Paradise DLC
Mr. Prepper
Murder by Numbers
My Friendly Neighborhood
My Time At Portia
Mythic Ocean
Nadir: A Grimdark Deckbuilder
Necromunda Hired Gun
NecroWorm
NeuroVoider
Neverinth
Neverout
New Super Luckys Tale
Nickelodeon All Star Brawl
Nobody Saves the World
Non-Stop Raiders
Northgard
Oaken
Obduction
Of Orcs And Men
Offworld Trading Company
OLLIOLLI WORLD - RAD EDITION
One Hand Clapping
Orbital Racer
Othercide
Out of Reach: Treasure Royale
Outward Definitive Edition
Outward The Soroboreans DLC + soundtrack (DLC only)
Override
Overture
Ozymandias
Paint the Town Red
Partial Control
Patch Quest
Pathfinder: Kingmaker Enhanced Plus Edition (NA only) + Royal Ascension DLC + The Wildcards DLC
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition
Pathfinders: Memories
Pathway
Peaky Blinders: Mastermind
Per Asperatrar
Pilgrims
Pill Baby
Pixplode
Planet TD
PlataGO!
Port Royale 3 Gold
PowerBeatsVR
Prodeus
Project CARS (delisted)
Project Chemistry
Project Nimbus: Complete Edition
Project Wingman
Propagation VR - Co-op
Propnight
Proteus
Proteus
PULSAR: The Lost Colony
Pumped BMX +
Quadrata
Quantum Break
Radio Commander
Ragnarock
Railroad Corporation
Railroad Tycoon 3
Rain World
Rebel Inc: Escalation
Rebound Dodgeball Evolved
Re-Legion
Remnant: From the Ashes - Complete Edition
Remnants of Naezith
Resident Evil Revelations
Resident Evil Revelations 2
Reventure
Revita
RIOT - Civil Unrest
Road 96
Roarr! Jurassic Edition
ROGUE LORDS
Roguebook
RollerCoaster Tycoon 2: Triple Thrill Pack
RPG Maker VX
Rubber Bandits
RUINER
Rym 9000
Saints Row
Sakura Dungeon, 18+
Sakura Knight, 18+
Sakura MMO, 18+
Sakura Knight 2, 18+
Sakura Knight 3, 18+
Sakura MMO 2, 18+
Sakura MMO 3, 18+
Sakura MMO Extra, 18+
Sakura Succubus, 18+
Sakura Succubus 2, 18+
Sakura Succubus 3, 18+
Sakura Succubus 4, 18+
Sakura Succubus 5, 18+
Sakura Succubus 6, 18+
Sakura Swim Club, 18+
Sam & Max: Devil's Playhouse
Scorn
SCP : Secret Files
Secret Neighbor: Hello Neighbor Multiplayer
SEUM: Speedrunners from Hell
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Shady Part of Me
Shing!
Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate
Sid Meier's Railroads!
Siege Survival: Gloria Victis
Skullgirls 2nd Encore
Slinger VR
Smile For Me
Sniper Elite 3
Sniper Elite 4
Snowtopia
Sorcerer King: Rivals
Soul Searching
Soulblight
Souldiers
Soulstice
Spellcaster University
Spirit Hunter: Death Mark
Spirit of the Island
Stacking
Starbound
Starpoint Gemini Warlords
State of Decay: Year-One Survival Edition (steam inventory gift)
Stirring Abyss
Strider
Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
SuchArt!
Sunlight
Super Chicken Catchers
Super Magbot
Super Star (delisted)
SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE
Surviving the Aftermath
Sword Legacy Omen
SYMMETRYro
Tails Noir
Tainted Grail: Conquest
Telefrag VR
TEMTEM
The Amazing American Circus
The Ascent
The Beast Inside
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan
The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope
The Deed II
The Dungeon Of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet Of Chaos
The Golf Club 2019 Featuring PGA TOUR
The Gunk
The Legend of Tianding
The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante
The Long Dark
The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition
The Pale Beyond
The Quarry
The Red Lantern
The Serpent Rogue
The USB Stick Found in the Grass
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition (steam inventory gift)
The Witness
The Wolf Among Us
There Is No Light
Ticket to Ride
Tin Can
Titan Souls
TOEM
Tools Up!
Townsmen - A Kingdom Rebuilt
Traffic Jams
Train Station Renovation
Treasure Hunter Simulator
Trek to Yomi
Tribes of Midgard
Twilight Struggle
Twin Mirror
Two Point Campus
Ultimate Chicken Horse
Underland: The Climb
Unity of Command: Stalingrad Campaign
UnMetal
Vanishing Realms
War for the Overworld
Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters
Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf
Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf - Drenn Redblade
Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf - Exceptional Card Pack
Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf - Saga of the Great Awakening
Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf - Wrath of the Damned
Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin Ultimate Edition
WARSAW
We Happy Few Season Pass
We Were Here Too
Where the Water Tastes Like Wine
White Noise 2
Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus?
Wizard of Legend
Wobbledogs
Worms Rumble
WRC 7
WWE 2K BATTLEGROUNDS
XCOM 2
X-COM: Complete Pack (including X-COM: UFO Defense + X-COM: Apocalypse + X-COM: Enforcer + X-COM: Interceptor + X-COM: Terror from the Deep)
XCOM: Enemy Unknown Complete Edition
XEL
X-Morph: Defense Complete Pack (including X-Morph: Defense + X-Morph: Defense - European Assault + X-Morph: Defense - Survival Of The Fittest + X-Morph: Defense - Last Bastion)
Yakuza 4 Remastered
Zoeti
ΔV: Rings of Saturn
​
Other platforms:
Command & Conquer Remastered Collection (ORIGINkey)
Liberated (GOG key)
STAR WARS: Squadrons (Origin)
Wanderlust Travel Stories (GOG key)
​
#########################################################

My Wishlist: (prefer gift links)

​
Hi-Fi RUSH
DIABLO 4 PC
Street Fighter 6
Rocket League
Poker night
poker night 2
Game of Thrones - A Telltale Games Series
NBA 2k16, 2k17
WWE 2K16, 2K17, 2K18, 2K19, 2K20, 2k23
The Last Remnant
Doctor Who: The Adventure Games
Hell let loose
Crusader kings 3
Spiderman remaster
F1 2020, 2019, 2017, 2016, 2012, 2011
ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON Enhanced Edition
DARK SOULS
DARK SOULS II
DARK SOULS III
Pistol Whip
CLANNAD
Automobilista 2
Gears 5
monster hunter rise
Tiny tina's wonderlands chaotic great edition
Spyro Reignited Trilogy
DIRT 5
Fable Anniversary
Nioh 2 COMPLETE
Victoria 3
HUMANKIND
A Hat in Time
VTOL VR
rFactor 2
ZERO Sievert
Barotrauma
monster hunter world
fight in tight space
Life Is Strange Complete Season
phoenix wright
LOOT RIVER
satisfactory
Gotham Knights
Rivals of Aether
Vrising
DOOM Eternal
Deep Rock Galactic
LegionTD 2
Dead by Daylight
quantum break
slay the spire
Yakuza kiwami 2
Stardew Valley
resident evil village
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising
stray blade
clash: Artifacts of chaos
Valfaris: Mecha Therion
The Quarry
9 Years of Shadows

other humble choice title games

#########################################################
​

Note: for some games from humble I might ask for gift links. There is a rumor 3 years ago that humble bans users due to making gift links only. I make gift links every week, never have any issues. I have no idea why humble would ever ban its customers for using a feature it provides to its custimers.

Here is a guide how to make gift links from support.Humblebundle.com: https://support.humblebundle.com/hc/en-us/articles/202712460-Purchasing-and-Sending-Gifts

I do not believe humble teaches you how to make gift links, so it can ban you, lol

submitted by Jerry_217 to indiegameswap [link] [comments]

http://swiebodzin.info