Pupil size 6mm

Just noticed my cats pupils are different sizes when she came in from outside, and it's got me worried. However, I was just checking them again outside and they're about the same.
Trying not to overreact but she regularly has goopy eyes so wanted to her a second opinion, will plan to monitor it tomorrow before I make a decision about the vet or not.

My family has always been of great minds. I hated it. Growing up and having to study day and night to try and live up to them was extremely exhausting when I couldn't care how things worked as long as I was happy. I gave up but somehow everything kept turning out to be true.
Over my lifetime I have become the Gorden Ramsey of the science world. Known for my temper and also for huge things like curing world hunger using play-doe and cancer with baby powder I got in a back street ally while drunk.
To get my family off my back I started making random ideas so they could see me as a failure and leave me alone but...they keep working. And soon people started to praise me. Fame has left me with nothing but more and more attention. So today I plan to make sure that everyone can just think I'm insane and leave me alone and not some king.
I chuckled like a kid who was opening a Christmas present as I heard the crowd of people chatting and talking loudly as I hid behind my stage in a grey tight suit that my sister had picked out. I sighed and was ready to walk out and make a fool out of myself but my brother stopped me.
" Jack... I just want you to know how proud I am of you. Dad would have loved to see you right now. "
I thought it was ironic because last night while chilling on the couch watching TV and eating chips I made this theory up. He dusted off my shoulders held them tight and looked me in the eyes taking in the moment.
" go give them hell man. "
He had a goofy smile just like Dad but spoke with confidence.
" you got it, man. "
I heard my name being called onto the stage and the uproar startled me for a second but I collected myself and headed out after giving him a nod just to entertain him.
The lights were blinding as I grabbed the mic and looked at the table in front of me with a small box with the ingredients I needed and a chalkboard behind me.
After I stood still for a minute the crowd died down. I had not told anyone what I was presenting so the whole world was watching without a clue of what I was doing this time.
"Hello everyone. Today I believe I have my most important presentation yet..."
The crowd grew silent and hung on every word. And I heard my voice around the room through the speakers.
" Today I have with me a box...and inside is spaghetti I had for breakfast. "
The crowd laughed thinking it was a joke
" shut up "
The crowd grew silent once more
"Behind me is a chalkboard and I will now present my new findings to all of you...I have found out how to make portals to other worlds. "
A man in the far back of the audience yelled bullshit in a heavy Indian accent but he was so far it was a faint sound for me. I smiled at that thinking I had finally found something that would make me lose my title and I could go ahead and live a life without people making me feel like an evil man for not helping others.
I opened the box got a handful of the noodles and threw them at the chalkboard. I then grabbed a paper towel on standby to clean myself.
The noodles hit the board and slowly moved and rested on a spot on the board. I made eye contact with my brother backstage and he had a look on his face showing he believed in me.
I spun the board dropping the noodles to the ground I then grabbed the chalk and drew around the sauce and noodles that stuck to the board then drew my attention to the others that had fallen on the floor and drew an outline of that.
After it finished I threw the chalk in the crowd violently hitting an old lady in the face.
" Quickly I want a show of hands who thinks I'm a crazy guy "
Everyone raised their hands and I laughed to myself
I then went behind the board and laid it horizontally. I grabbed a small knife in my pocket and poked my finger with it. The crimson blood fell and hit the chalk and then as more and more blood hit the chalk it started glowing.
" you have got to be joking. "
I said out loud as it started to spark an orange glow and it slowly grew color to the rest of the chalk in orange sparks.
Once the symbol was fully sparking with orange the sauce began to swell and move around in a counterclockwise manner. I stepped away from it in shock as small parts of the blood in my finger began to float to the parts where it fell on the floor I drew my outlines on and started sparking those as well.
It started to smoke and hiss as if lightning could whisper and the orange began to take shape and the sauce made a doorway. The parts that were not on the board began to grow ice around them and started to make designs on the floor circling me and the board. Suddenly it grew in size and a large booming voice was heard through the portal as I felt panic of people start to set in.
A huge claw came out and scrapped the sides of my table trying to crawl out from the world it had been trapped in. Cold winds hit me as they cut my skin and threw around my clothes. As I saw the table was now melting from its touch.
A slimy green claw with mucus like a face-hugger egg from the movie Alien carved through the floor and pulled the rest of its body out slowly. A beast stood at 12 feet tall adjusting to our world as goop grew and shaped its body as people screamed, ran, and stood frozen in fear.
As it looked around it locked its spider-like eyes and swerled around coming out from the portal and twisting and turning around the body as it made its way to its head finding a place to rest. It then locked its eyes with me and its jaw twisted slowly from an ant-like maw to mine and slowly shrunk and it soon took the shape of me and knelt on the floor and spoke to me.
" master. "
I stood in shock as everyone seemed to calm down and watched to see what I would do.
"...umm "My family has always been of great minds. I hated it. Growing up and having to study day and night to try and live up to them was extremely exhausting when I couldn't care how things worked as long as I was happy. I gave up but somehow everything kept turning out to be true.
Over my lifetime I have become the Gorden Ramsey of the science world. Known for my temper and also for huge things like curing world hunger using play-doe and cancer with baby powder I got in a back street ally while drunk.
To get my family off my back I started making random ideas so they could see me as a failure and leave me alone but...they keep working. And soon people started to praise me. Fame has left me with nothing but more and more attention. So today I plan to make sure that everyone can just think I'm insane and leave me alone and not some king.
I chuckled like a kid who was opening a Christmas present as I heard the crowd of people chatting and talking loudly as I hid behind my stage in a grey tight suit that my sister had picked out. I sighed and was ready to walk out and make a fool out of myself but my brother stopped me.
" Jack... I just want you to know how proud I am of you. Dad would have loved to see you right now. "
I thought it was ironic because last night while chilling on the couch watching TV and eating chips I made this theory up. He dusted off my shoulders held them tight and looked me in the eyes taking in the moment.
" go give them hell man. "
He had a goofy smile just like Dad but spoke with confidence.
" you got it, man. "
I heard my name being called onto the stage and the uproar startled me for a second but I collected myself and headed out after giving him a nod just to entertain him.
The lights were blinding as I grabbed the mic and looked at the table in front of me with a small box with the ingredients I needed and a chalkboard behind me.
After I stood still for a minute the crowd died down. I had not told anyone what I was presenting so the whole world was watching without a clue of what I was doing this time.
"Hello everyone. Today I believe I have my most important presentation yet..."
The crowd grew silent and hung on every word. And I heard my voice around the room through the speakers.
" Today I have with me a box...and inside is spaghetti I had breakfast. "
The crowd laughed thinking it was a joke
" shut up "
The crowd grew silent once more
"Behind me is a chalkboard and I will now present my new findings to all of you...I have found out how to make portals to other worlds. "
A man in the far back of the audience yelled bullshit in a heavy Indian accent but he was so far it was a faint sound for me. I smiled at that thinking I had finally found something that would make me lose my title and I could go ahead and live a life without people making me feel like an evil man for not helping others.
I opened the box got a handful of the noodles and threw them at the chalkboard. I then grabbed a paper towel on standby to clean myself.
The noodles hit the board and slowly moved and rested on a spot on the board. I made eye contact with my brother backstage and he had a look on his face showing he believed in me.
I spun the board dropping the noodles to the ground I then grabbed the chalk and drew around the sauce and noodles that stuck to the board then drew my attention to the others that had fallen on the floor and drew an outline of that.
After it finished I threw the chalk in the crowd violently hitting an old lady in the face.
" Quickly I want a show of hands who thinks I'm a crazy guy "
Everyone raised their hands and I laughed to myself
I then went behind the board and laid it horizontally. I grabbed a small knife in my pocket and poked my finger with it. The crimson blood fell and hit the chalk and then as more and more blood hit the chalk it started glowing.
" you have got to be joking. "
I said out loud as it started to spark an orange glow and it slowly grew color to the rest of the chalk in orange sparks.
Once the symbol was fully sparking with orange the sauce began to swell and move around in a counterclockwise manner. I stepped away from it in shock as small parts of the blood in my finger began to float to the parts where it fell on the floor I drew my outlines on and started sparking those as well.
It started to smoke and hiss as if lightning could whisper and the orange began to take shape and the sauce made a doorway. The parts that were not on the board began to grow ice around them and started to make designs on the floor circling me and the board. Suddenly it grew in size and a large booming voice was heard through the portal as I felt panic of people start to set in.
A huge claw came out and scrapped the sides of my table trying to crawl out from the world it had been trapped in. Cold winds hit me as they cut my skin and threw around my clothes. As I saw the table was now melting from its touch.
A slimy green claw with mucus like a face-hugger egg from the movie Alien carved through the floor and pulled the rest of its body out slowly. A beast stood at 12 feet tall adjusting to our world as goop grew and shaped its body as people screamed, ran, and stood frozen in fear.
As it looked around it locked its spider-like eyes and swerled around coming out from the portal and twisting and turning around the body as it made its way to its head finding a place to rest. It then locked its eyes with me and its jaw twisted slowly from an ant-like maw to mine and slowly shrunk and it soon took the shape of me and knelt on the floor and spoke to me.
" master. "
I stood in shock as everyone seemed to calm down and watched to see what I would do.

"...umm "

Part two of the noodle demon.
Now that this creature knelt before me I realized that the room I was in was so terrible quietly you could hear everyone's ass get tight in anticipation of what would happen next.
" ...what...are you. "
I spoke carefully to the being that had taken the shape of myself. It still took my breath away and my throat was dry.
The beast was a deep green. The color mixed with shades of grey streaming from it. The longer I looked at it I could see it getting closer to what I looked like shaping itself.
From small flowing green tendrils to an arm they grew as they twisted and made bone then muscle and finally skin.
It locked eyes with me and it smiled deeply at me. As it formed the face finally.
" Your vassle. "
My eyes had not moved to the crowd at all but even though the lights hit the stage so hard it was enveloped in smoke.
The creature's eyes glowed as it answered brightly, not figuratively. This thing's eyes were glowing.
"To serve you, We are bound by blood magic. I am a reflection of your desires, Master, " it said, its voice now a whisper in my mind.
It began to stand up as my grey suit began to form on it and by the time it stood fully up it had copied what I looked like.
" let me explain everything. "
My body frozen in fear woke up with adrenaline as I blinked and a flash of green smoke covered my vision as he teleported right to me face to face.
Its body turned to smoke and went into the slits of my eyes. I felt visions follow me in my peripheral vision but surprisingly no pain followed power filled me and it felt like one hell of a drug.
My body and mind altered.
I was now in a very dark place with no walls or light except my reflection on the floor which waved like water.
I took a step back looking around and back to the reflection of me on the ground.
Soon the water rippled and my reflection fell through the floor like gravity was inverted. he flew upright and water fell off of him as he looked at me as he now stood straight ahead of me. He was just reflecting in the water but now eyed me down.
Collecting my nerves.
I begin to speak.
" what do you want..."
He was still in my form and stood perfectly straight. Now with water dripping from his...my hair.
Slight stubble with hair that hung down and my hazel eyes were not present within him but I was greeted with a swelling acidic green that doubled the size of my pupil.
" to serve you. "
He made no other movement than putting his hands behind his back like a soldier at ease.
I could not tell if it was lying or not.
" ...is that it? "
" I am the embodiment of your fear desires and brilliance. You have shaped me. Your desire for solitude birthed me. I will aid you in shaping the world how you see fit. Your reality becomes mine. "
There was a slight echo in the room as he spoke.
" wait...where are we "
I questioned haphazardly
" your mind. "
An awkward silence was in the air until I spoke
" so...am I just standing on the stage not making a sound? "
He gave me a concerned look.
" no...time has frozen outside for you. You may sleep here without having to in the real world so to others you look as if you never rest and you may think and plan what to do in battle here. For them, it will be about two seconds...Do...do you not have any knowledge of what I am? "
Suddenly I felt bad like I had encountered someone famous and I had no idea who they were. A slap in the face like a popular kid meeting someone who had never heard of them. Ego shattered.
" ok sorry no. I...don't go around reading about...monsters?"
I felt like was I saying the n-word of the demon realm not knowing if that word was offensive.
He folded his arms a little upset.
"Are you not a warrior? "
" well...no I...just watch TV and cook here and there- "
The demon cut me off
" weak. "
" excuse me? "
" look. I am an immortal being and after a while you get bored. So I'm sorry if I may be a little upset after being bonded with some nobody. "
I got quiet and I was a little annoyed that I was being roasted by some demon that I just met.
Its form wavers and eyes begin to open on its skin. Cheeks forhead etc.
"After being a god for so long it's fun to play with limitations. Makes things extremely exciting. "
" what do you mean by that? "
" look. You can only be so entertained by the same things. Life gets boring and now...you are going to help me with this. I get to have pure entertainment while you get every wish you could ever want. A mutual bond no? "
He then closed his eyes annoyed and the other eyes meshed back to his skin.
" though... the TV is not that interesting...life is what gets the blood pumping"
I felt the need to quickly change the topic
"Are there others like you? "
The room began to take shape very slowly as the water floor turned to wood and walls went around us.
" of course. You may meet them one day "
Confused and curious I pressed.
"Meet them? "
" yes. Summoning one of us is considered a threat to them. "
He spoke while opening and closing his newly found hand except backward.
" hm...no that don't look right "
I quickly responded
" Wait! How is doing that a threat! "
"Well, one doesn't just accidentally Summon one of us to suddenly get powers beyond human control. "
I thought back to how I summoned him by accident with some food I made.
" well...funny story but I summoned you using my breakfast..."
I had never regretted speaking so much as in that moment.
" What... "
Acid dripped from his words. Literally. His pupils split in half and his bottom jaw ripped open like an ant and curved giving sharpness to the bone.
"Please don't kill me. "
The room began to look like a cozy cabin with a fireplace and he slowly went back to normal.
" I would if I could. I've never felt so disrespected. We are bonded by your blood. If you die...I die. "
Suddenly I felt at ease by this new information.
Then a thought came to my mind
" ...God's can die? "
" you did hear me, right? "
The SAS from this guy was unneeded and I was starting to miss him being on his knees as weird as that sounds.
" so...all that power gone.... in an instant... "
" well...no actually God's powers don't just disappear they transfer to whoever killed them...wait...hold up."
He suddenly had an epiphany.
A smile grew on his face and he grabbed my shoulders
" you! You are going to help me kill the other gods! "
He sounded proud but I let him down.
" ha! No. "
" oh come on! Don't be like that. "
He did a pout.
"Look, man. I'm not killing gods for you. Just because you are bored. "
" hey...they might send people to kill you because you bonded with me. "
"What did I ever do to them? "
"They have a system to this stuff. They like to build and watch things play out. You're a problem. That can mess it up. So...they kill ya...to be honest, I don't know any other way to explain it, man. You know people normally just use my power to kill people and become a king and know this already. "
"This is outrageous. "
" bro. Look if you do this I will be able to get their powers and you will be able to do so much more than what I offer "
I tilted my head
" what can you do? Know what never mind. I will just talk to them and figure things out. "
He groaned and his form melted down sagging and it shot back up reforming
"Is there not anything that you want? Anything in the world? Gods don't put themselves in physical forms. They give people power and can make beings to hunt you. And if they care enough to come down themself. Ha, good luck."
I stopped and thought about it trying to weigh the options of pissing off higher beings.
Suddenly. I found something.
"Can you bring back the dead..."
He stopped confused.
" well...no "
" then I don't want anything "
" wait! "
He threw his arms out pleading
"I don't...but another God does..."
He crosses his arms smiling. He had left the question hanging letting me reconsider his offer.
I stopped and thought for a while before looking back up to him.
I let out a sigh and looked him in the eyes
" ok...you are going to help me get my father back. "
The demon smirked.

Somebody please help me. I’ve had debilitating fucking pain in my neck and shoulders since the age of 20. It’s so unbearable some days I wish I would just fucking drop dead.
I don’t think it came on gradually, because I don’t remember having any pain in that area before that age. I remember experiencing the pain after a certain car accident my mother says it never happened.
I remember in detail what happened. We were driving home from the pharmacy. she ran a red light. She says she could’ve sworn it was green. The car got T-bone from another car on my side and it spun around and around. I recall my head being thrown back-and-forth and from side to side pretty violently. When it finally stopped spinning, I noticed the door was completely dented in on my side.
I recall paramedics, helping us out of the car. They shined a light in my eyes, but said that since my pupils were the same size, there was no need to have evaluated further. The car, which was a gray Camry, was completely totaled But it still ran.
I recall going home and being kind of in shock. Everything was kind of a blur afterwards. But when I woke up in the morning, I couldn’t turn my head to either side and there was a serious pain in the base of my neck that radiated down my shoulders, and into both arms.
I lived a fairly sedentary life for many years, because the pain was so bad I couldn’t do much at all. I experienced, aching, heaviness, tingling and numbness in my arms after that. The symptoms eased up around the time I was 23, which made it possible for me to resume a more active lifestyle, but I still experience a lot of pain in that area.
I recall when it was at its worst guy went to the doctor and they Completely dismissed me. They said it must just be from my scoliosis, but I never had that kind of pain until then. Finally, very year later they agreed to give me a CT scan and said some thing about a slipped disc in my neck but that they couldn’t do anything about it? The pain continued to get worse up until I was 23.
Now it’s getting bad again. I brought this up with my mother the last time I spoke to her and she claims the incident never happened. I hate talking to that woman at all because she makes me feel crazy. Anytime I bring something like this up she tells me that I must’ve got it confused or dreamed it the fuck up and now I don’t even know what’s real and what isn’t anymore and it makes me so frustrated I wish that I died in that fucking car crash.
This whole car crash that I remember changing my life pretty drastically, apparently didn’t happen!

Hello,
I was just curious if anyone has had topography-guided PRK in order to correct higher order aberrations (spherical) induced by wavefront-guided LASIK? I had LASIK back in September 2022, but am no longer able to drive at night due to starbursts/halos/glare. I’ve tried brimonidine eye drops in order to reduce my pupil size and they didn’t help. My surgeon recommended topography-guided PRK. I ended up having topography-guided PRK in my non-dominant eye on March 27th, but haven’t noticed any night vision improvement yet (although it might be too soon). Any feedback (or studies/clinical trials) would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Throwaway account.
I've been dealing with a situation for the last 18 months. Here's the backstory:
The COO of our mid sized company ($100m annual revenue) forced me to hire his son onto my team in 2022. He is a recent graduate from college. If you take out the nepotism, this kid is very bright, tall, in good shape, is good with our clients, and he comes from an elite university that ranks in USNWR top 10. I tried to quash the hire at the time because we are a very by the book company and our chain of command is sacred. I don't want someone under me who has a direct line to the C-suite, that line needs to go through me.
Since he's come on board, he is using his dad, who is two levels above me in our org chart, as a career mentor. He gets information about the direction of the company and senior management's plan for our team before I do. In our culture, this would normally be a huge no-no, violating the chain of command like this.
The problem is that this has completely demoralized the rest of my team. I have worked hard to build up a team of loyal, dedicated employees who have played the game the way I want to see it played: They are sitting at their desks when I arrive in the office every morning between 7 and 8, and they don't leave before I leave. They make sacrifices in their personal lives to attend all of our teambuilding events. They accept their place in our hierarchy and accept that the way for them to move up, is if their leader moves up to the next rung and brings them along. They live the mantra: "You have to prove yourself as an excellent follower before you can be a leader" every day.
Historically I have doled out the career and resume boosting work to these team-first players, and I've tried to bury the others in grunt work and administrative tasks. The problem here is, the COO is pulling his son onto some of the company's most visible projects with our highest profile clients. I have been trying my usual strategy of loading him up with all of our team's grunt work but he handles it all, the work coming from the COO and the work coming from me, all at a high level of performance. Objectively, he is outperforming all of the other employees on my team, but he is trying to skip past paying his dues. Some of my other dedicated team members are starting to complain about the COO's son now being "anointed" and being on the fast track, and their performance is starting to slide. My right hand employee, that I've been grooming to take over for me and bring up into management when I progress to the next level, is who I most fear losing. She thinks these top-tier career boosting assignments should be hers, and honestly so do I. She has put in ten years of dedicated service to the organization. Jokes are being made about the problem employee's "birthright". Yesterday I overheard one of my star pupils utter the phrase "the only way to move up around here is to come from the C-suite's left ball".
So this kid is hogging the spotlight without ever having to pay his dues.
My question is, how do I solve this problem? I want to manage him out, and warn some of my other colleagues about the threat he poses to their harmonious teams. At my level we all have similar management styles. But I have no idea how to do so without facing wrath from above. I also can't afford the optics of having an objectively talented employee leave for the competition.
Any advice?

I recently bought the animal jump off stem--love it, great stem--but I stripped out one of the bolts. It doesn't look like animal sells replacements and I can't find the bolt size anywhere online. Every website claims it uses a 1/4" allen wrench, but that doesn't fit (it's too big). 7/32 is way too small, so I don't think it's actually ASE. My 6mm works, but seems a tad too small (this was how I stripped it). Maybe its 7mm? I don't have one to test, but should be able to pick one up tomorrow. I reached out to animal but haven't heard back and doubt I will anytime soon.
I need to buy a replacement but I also just don't want to strip out the others. Does anybody know what bolt and thread size this stem actually uses?

Hey all,
Just starting into to designing for 3D printing using my AD5M and trying to figure out if there are certain wall-thicknesses or hole size limits I should be keeping in mind with my different nozzles.
I usually print with the stock .6mm nozzle is PETG as I tend to create parts that act as various tools, both indoor and outdoor and need a little more flex and heat-resistance, but I also print in PLA, and sometimes use my .4mm when I need a bit more detail.
I know I’ll need to be doing a bunch of test prints, but thought I’d throw out the question and see if I could try not to trash more filament than needed. Should I be thinking of designing walls in terms of multiples of .6 mm (with that nozzle) for wall/detail thickness? I have found the PETG to print more true to size.
Also, anyone know of any good calibration models for determining this information?
I always try to print with +/-0.02mm dimensionally accurate filament, for what it’s worth.
Thanks!

Alright so my friend has a low labret in his bottom lip that he usually wears a large spike in. He only has one left, and since he inevitably will probably lose it, we've both been searching high and low, trying to find more for him. But apparently the size he wears now is just not something that's sold any longer???
The spike he has in now is 6mm at the base, and 8mm long, and fits a 14g externally threaded labret. That's apparently like trying to find a unicorn for some reason. I've been searching everywhere! Now granted, I live in Denmark, so my options might not be the same, but I've tried all Danish/Scandinavian piercing sites I've so far come across, Etsy, Ebay and Amazon. But it's also hard to search for really, since you can't just put the measurements in the search.
I just feel like it's not that crazy or specific size but apparently it is, cause everything is either 6x6 or 4x8. I know he's used the front of a fake stretch piercing as well once, when he used 16g, and sometimes large gauges in horseshoes/circular barbells can have pretty large spikes as well that maybe fits 14g?? Or maybe industrials?
(TLDR:) My cry for help is; if you have/know of any type of place that either sells 6x8mm spikes, or has that incorporated in another jewelry, that can fit an 14g labret (internal or external doesn't matter) and can be bought from Denmark/internationally, please link me. Both gold and silver colored interests me, since he changes between that. Thank you!

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

It's a long discontinued SWF 402.934, used in a film developing machine. Does anyone know of a similarly sized rotary motor? It should be ca 12V eith a 6mm shaft diameter. Thanks in advance!

Soo.. I’m publishing a book soon, and I really need ideas for the title. I’m giving you a short snippet of the first chapter (don’t mind the abrupt ending because to view the rest is a subscription fee 😊) so could anyone help out? General writing advice and suggestions would also be helpful.
A tan girl of average stature, Prieta Domínguez, with dark brown, short curly hair and deep brown eyes woke up to the annoyingly loud sound of her hissing cat.
Bemused, she followed it out of the room. Down the shoddy, creaky stairs, she roused suspicion to her mother, anxious that she might be hallucinating again.
“Hija, what are you doing downstairs?”, she asked, only mildly concerned.
“Solo estoy recibiendo un poco de leche, mamá.”, Prieta replied calmly.
As Prieta began to make her leave through the front door, she questioned to what her cat would be so adamant to let her see about.
Pushing that thought aside, she left the house, being led off to a nearby creek by her psychotic feline frenemy.
But as soon as she made it, it disappeared, and she had the slightest idea to where it could have roamed off to.
“Bandido, where are you?!”, Prieta cried out.
She knew what would happen if she brought it back dead. That torn rubber shoe would always await her presence.
To her surprise, a small hiss drew from the darkness.
Without any other considerations, she headed towards it, thinking she had finally found it.
Much to her fear, a large snake shot out, encapsulating her head, and then her entire body. She had been swallowed alive.
But only moments later, she had been excreted, no longer at the same area she was in before.
She was in someone’s house.
The large intricate stain glass windows did nothing to rid the darkness of it. One of them in particular, beared the illustration of a snake. The furniture was almost ancient in appearance. Surely this home had been abandoned? No one could live in such a terrible looking one as that? Right?
A silky deformed crow lunged at Prieta, narrowly missing the tip of her scalp, yet still managing to catch a strand of her unruly curly hair.
A six foot tall, widowed man entered with an abnormal gait from another one of the houses corridors. He had greasy black hair, but long in length. Jaundiced skin and dark bed robes covered his frail frame. His name, was Semiazas Seth. He had sharp, dark eyes, a crooked nose and elongated face. His voice caught the attention of Prieta the most, but his entire form is what really made her pupils grow twice in size.
“What… are you doing in my house?”, he asked calmly, in a low drawled British accent.
“H-Heh-Lo! I’m Prieta Domínguez… I um…”, Prieta spoke, with a light Dominican accent, but she was sharply interrupted by the man.
“Answer the original question, Domínguez”, Seth demanded.
“I-I don’t know how I got here… Actually, I think I’m dead.”, she responded.
Seth’s eyes narrowed, taking in the girl’s disheveled appearance. She was clearly not from here as evident from her mannerisms and perceptible uncertainty.
“You aren’t dead, you’re sitting in my house. Clearly you couldn’t have broken in as evident from my untampered door.”, he pointed to the dilapidated passageway, its hinges hanging on for dear life as if they wouldn’t fail by the slightest contact of them.
“I… guess I’m kind of a weirdo, b-but I can assure you I didn’t do that. I’m just looking for my cat. You haven’t seen it here, have you?”, Prieta asked, disregarding the initial query.
This was his chance. He finally had found a good sacrifice, dead in his doorstep, and all he has to do is coerce them into following him where they could be consumed. His wife, who he himself had abducted would be incarnate, alive, once again.
“Yes, I’ve seen it, I can show you the way to find it. Quite the sneaky little fellow, isn’t it?”, he bluffed.
“Can you help me find him?!”, she asked, ecstatically.
“Of course, I do have a favor though, could you accompany me in, finding some ingredients? I have a room full of them, but I just can’t find the… parsley, yes.”, he asked.
Prieta spent a moment digesting his request. Was this really all she had to do? Help an old man find leaves, in his ramshackle home? Surely there’s much more to it, but he couldn’t pose that much of a threat could he?
She had already entered his home unprompted and she’s the one with all of the requests so the least she could do is tend to his.
“Yes! Let’s get right to that.”, she replied.
Once they made their way to the basement, Prieta paused, pivoting to inspect some of the ingredients in it.
While she was distracted, Seth drew out his wand with malicious intent.
“Etrificuspay Otalustay”, he chanted.
Prieta’s body hit the cool stone floor with a sickening thud. Grabbing her, he placed her body onto a long board, strapping her legs, hands, arms and torso to it...

Bright illuminescant flashes bolted through the dark-lit sky, rushing and raging through clouds seemingly made of gossamer and finely woven felt. You could almost reach out and touch them if not for the raging storm ripping and hollering. It shone and splintered along the sky, splitting into a thousand arcs, each converging and convexing along the stars. Electrical currents spun like lavender spider webs along a farmhouse wall. The arcs traveled, painting a vibrant tapestry along its wake before reaching their climax and releasing a wicked KRAK as the lights slowly faded.
The gossamer clouds wept tears of dull acidic rain that fell, cascading downwards. Down to the swampy fetid fields below. Their droplets splashed and sizzled against the sand, slowly fizzing before hardening into a thin velvet glass before beginning all over again. A sad display of god’s fury laid bare and plain for all to see. The rain had begun just a week prior, but its assault had persisted in a constant pattern ever since. The swamp ached and squirmed in an agonizing way as the rain melted away any sign of basic life.
Puddles of the acidic deluge collected along a road leading to the once fertile silver mine, just three miles from the town of Crestfall. Near the edge of the road, a fork splits off into multiple directions. South of the fork leads to the entrance of Deep Rock Mine. The mine’s entrance stands agape, resting at the base of a mountain. The mine’s layout, a cavern of crisscrossing and haphazardly formed tunnels, awaited past the thick darkness entrapping the entrance. They curve and wind up the spine of the mountain, as well as descend deep into the now dead earth.
The face of the mountain was bare but rough. Rocks jutted and sloped along its curvature, forming a near mesmeric pattern of spiked granite. Towards the peak, a malicious and not all entirely natural pattern emerged. As the acidic rain fell, framing the mountainous backdrop, the pattern watched and waited. An almost human-like visage stretched along the face of the mountain like canvas pulled over a wooden frame. It’s design scorn into the rock itself as if meticulously laid out to warn any who dared breach the confines of the swamp.
Silence lingered amongst the misty atmospheric dredge, save for the muffled and subtle ambietic sounds of the rain. Through the dead foliage and gnarled remains of creatures recently passed, a sound rang forth. Distant exclamation and reverberated clanging rhythmically sounded from deep within the mine. Up and down the mine laid stalactites and stalagmites haphazardly stationed around every corner. Their abrupt positioning cast shadows wherever light felt unable to reach. The mine walls were smooth from years of work and toilage, along with the long uninterrupted tunnels, created an almost echo chamber for sound.
Abrupt crashes and distant thrashes echoed through the winding chamber. Its sounds detailed a fierce battle between clashing swords and fervent blows.
Or so it would seem.
A sword, emblazoned with the sigil of a raven, flew across the dimly lit room. Its body crashes and clings as it skips along the floor, its blade slashing and carving thin lines into the granite flooring as it makes contact with the ground. A fierce shadow sprawls along the cave walls, depicting a struggle between foes.
The wanderer-and recent owner of the raven crested blade-crashes to the floor. Leather straps firmly tied around his shoulder blades catch most of the weight of the fall, but pain still echoed through his nerves.
“Hells! You slimy bastard!” The wanderer winces and yells in a blinded fury. “You don’t play fair, and here I thought we were having a nice sport of it.”
No reply immediately came from his opponent, still standing off near a downed torch. Flame wisped and flicked along the ground, casting shadows and dreaded omens as if they were ripped directly from a child’s nightmare.
At once, the foe stepped forward. The shadows sprawled across the walls painted a disturbing picture of horror and grotesque form. Imaginative figures born from shadows were always so much more terrible than the beings that cast them, but in this case it was clearly the other way around. The foe opposite The Wanderer lurched forward, it's body a gnarled vestige of exoskeleton and mandibles. It almost resembled a large insect, like a praying mantis that decided its evolutionary cycle had not quite finished yet.
On multi-socketed legs, it snapped and convulsed along. Every movement of its body felt agonizing, as if the creature was hastily thrown together by a quite absent god. Various olive and violet fluids oozed and dripped from its husk like body as it vocalized terrible sounds. The creature-seemingly unable to speak-produced noises from its mouth that resembled a mix of gargles and marbles being tossed along a wooden floor. All the while, its grotesque pincer like appendage snapped and clicked almost involuntarily.
The wanderer-still recovering from his fall-slowly pushed his body along the cold rocky ground, his arm still pulsing with pain.
“Oh my, what big mouths you have.” The wanderer teased sounding much more worried than he intended. ‘Always good to keep in control of the situation. Confidence is key.’ As he was always want to say, but this wasn’t an ordinary situation.
His arm traced along the ground, reaching and prodding for his recently lost weapon. Daring not look away from the oncoming threat, he felt nothing. His sword was currently resting near the opposite side of the cave room, resting flat along the ground. Away from The Wanderer’s grasp, far away from being of any further use here it seemed.
Doubt surged through his mind, but only for a short time. ‘Doubt breeds more doubt, and further doubt breeds ruin’, another favorite.
Clenched palms moved along the granite flooring. Leather gloves scraped and bruised as The Wanderer lifted back to his feet, regaining balance and fervor. The arm that had broken his fall felt numb and altogether absent.
‘Dislocated most likely, not a big enough fall to break.’
The insect-like foe-still closing the distance between them-snapped and gurgled in an almost territorial display of aggression.
The Wanderer grinned, placing his uninjured arm against its opposite’s elbow, before violently, yet methodically, pushing it upwards. A clear snap, followed by a dull pop echoed through the room. Feeling began pouring back into his arm as the vibrating itch of numbness faded. Both arms began to raise, fists clenched, the leather gloves creased and squelched from the sheer pressure as his hands formed tightly wounded fists. Fists pointed squarely towards the all not entirely normal creature still gurgling and jerking along the shadow filled room.
“Oh...” The Wanderer began. “I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t enjoy every second of this.” His fists raised up, reaching level with the bridge of his nose. “Come one now, give us yer best.”
As if understanding -and altogether disliking- the series of vulgar remarks thrusted toward it, the creature squealed through its deformed face. The jerking motion its movement seemed to have before was replaced with a fluid dash as it quickly closed the distance between the two adversaries. Arms outstretched as its gnarled and jagged hands opened and closed with violent snaps and twinges. Reaching out, grasping the air between them. The gap closed quickly, much quicker than he anticipated, but not enough to catch him entirely off guard as he shifts weight from right the left. The slender frame of his body flanking to the side of the creature.
Shadows arched and flailed with each movement, creating a strange optical illusion across the cave walls. The subtle shifting wind and osculation of the two fighters created an almost mural of events through the flames. Clashing swords, trumpeting horns and creatures that rivaled the tallest spires in Etheral began to converge into an unrecognizable painting of events. The fire loomed, gazing at the creature, at The Wanderer. Its gaze almost purposeful and full of intent. Neither the two beings made any note of the grand display unfolding around them. Fire is known to be a harsh mentor, and an even harsher ally. If one was to wander too deeply into its wounding gaze, one might find themselves trapped, forever living in the tapestry it painted.
The creature was fast, but nowhere as fast as him. Once useless, now repaired, the dislocated arm wrapped between the creatures glistening forearm, interlocking before weight shifted again. The creature stalled as if to reorient itself to face the man, but its movements were not its own. Quickly and deftly, The Wanderer placed immense weight on his forward foot, counterbalancing against the creature as their locked arms rotated and shifted sideways. Arching forward, the shift in balance quickly broke as the creature began to lift in the air as The Wanderer’s rear leg lifted to relegate pressure onward. Flailing and spewing its noxious fluid, the creature flipped entirely, finally crashing to the floor in a savage crunch. The Wanderer stands above, looking downward as it convulses in a fit of pain (could it even quantify pain) and anger.
A greyish foul-smelling slime coated The Wanderer’s chest and forearm. Small indentions formed along the hard leather surface of his jacket, most likely from the not entirely cosmetic spikes embedded into the creature.
“Alright, now I’d say we’re fairly close to a draw here.” The Wanderer began. “How’s say we handle the rest with a bit more diplomacy and grace? No point and making a bigger stink than we already got, but telling by the state of yourself, I’d say you know all about stink.”
The maddening gurgle of the creature slowed as its body began to calm. Its arms moving outward, sprawling along the hard granite rock as its legs raise along with the rest of it. Wet dew drips along the ground, rippling and casting weird reflections from all directions as the creature steps slowly along their puddles. Slow anxious steps it takes. Its demeanor changes from a wild and disturbed animal to a more methodic and wary being. Eyes of bluish gray sink into its head, pupils moving slowly, analyzing and taking in information. It stands straight, back locked into an opposing stance. God it was big. The man couldn’t much get a good measurement before with its body slouched over in a hermit like stance. It must be at least seven feet tall, equally proportioned from its legs to its torso. The head was rounded, almost human, with its bug-like mandibles protruding in a horrific fashion.
The Wanderer had dealt with creatures before. Along his travels he had come across a litany of monstrous beings; Wargs, Secrolants, Jittering Fiends, Goblins, Spiderlings. None of them quite matched the state of this one. Although he had heard of such beings, none had crossed paths before. The way it moved, the way it thought, it all was abnormal. It's quite simple to take a beast down, some you anger and gain the advantage, some you outsmart, others you can simply scare away. But this one.... oh, he was a different breed entirely. The way its mood could change mid-fight, or how it seemingly understood what was being said. And the way it stared. Thoughts were jutting along in the bug brain of its, and when monsters start thinking, all strategy and preparation goes out the window. Unpredictable is what they become, and prediction was The Wanderer’s bread and butter.
Wary now he waits, staring back at the creature. Locked eyes, they waited. Eyes filled with thought, filled with understanding and reasoning -but most egregiously- they were filled with malice. The fight was not over, they had just reached half-time.
“Let it not be stated that I did not strive for peace and harmony at every turn.” The Wanderer quipped, his hand raised once more, ready for another assault.
A flame flickers, casting shadows once again. Shadows of a man holding wolves at bay, hands outstretched to create a distance between them. The wolves circled and plotted, looking for weakness at every tune, but finding none. Leaves fell, becoming ash as they reached the ground. A fire spreads amongst the ash laden floor, consuming the visage, the man, the wolves. All in consumed in an immense concentrated heat, until the shadows fade to nothingness once more.
The creature meanders onward, just a few steps at a time; looking on as The Wanderer holds his footing, fists raised and ready. Each step of its hard glistening exoskeleton crunches against small rocks and debris sprawled along the cave floor, knocking them aside, producing echoed wails that seemingly bounced from surface to surface. After the third step it abruptly launches at the man, arms outstretched once more in a fit of animalistic fury. Thought seemingly left its eyes as they glazed over into a dull grey, the feeling and reasoning sinking further and further to the back of its mind. The Wanderer grinned, his stance loosening as the soles of his feet began to trace an outline of movement, preparing and readying for a counteroffensive. As its dripping breached the outline, The Wanderer shifted his weight once more, quickly flanking the creature to the side once again, but something was off. His eyes traced the movements of its body, of its arms, of its legs. The animosity in them seemed to almost shift mid attack, becoming lucid and methodical. As if the creature was dancing along with him. Even tracing down to the ground, the footing was wrong. Not his footing. He was always perfect. The dance was memorized, trained, honed to a sharp edge. No, it was the creature’s.
Abruptly the creature’s body shifted, its legs tracing backwards, its torso shifting to the side. A corrective action, a counterattack to his counterattack. Shadows of the pair danced along the cave wall, depicting a wickedly abstract waltz. The creature’s arm whipped outward, its claws barreling towards the thin leather separation between his elbow and forearm. God, it was fast. Faster than The Wanderer. Rip, flash, a bright light, then the crashing of feet as the two returned to their original standing.
It all happened so fast. Faster than he could articulate. He was used to speed, used to tracking and understanding battle situations, creating countermeasures, analyzing the most likely move and executing it within a fraction of a second. All of that was done, but it was all wrong. The creature moved in peculiar fashion, acted as if it were moving on instinct while simultaneously acting with thought and strategy. How could it possibly go both ways?
As he thought, mouth slightly open, breath pouring between his lips in a hot and heavy fashion, he hardly thought of anything else. They had made contact, but there was no feeling. Checking for wounds mid-encounter was generally out of the question with beasts. Often, they gave little time for thought or first aid, but the creature stood and waited. The dull grey look in its eyes were gone again, replaced with the methodical gaze of a strategist analyzing a battlefield. The Wanderer lowered his right arm and traced it along the path of his elbow, reaching his shoulder before he felt it. A definite gash traced about two inches wide, the depth of it couldn’t be guessed, but it had breached the leather. As his hand returned to a fist, warm fresh blood dripped between the fingers, falling and coagulating against the dust and pebbles along the ground. He had indeed been injured, but there was no feeling to it. All felt well, and that’s precisely why all was, in fact, not well.
“You’re a strange one. Not quite like anything I’ve seen before, but I’ll get to know you real well soon enough.”
His eyes moved from the creature, scanning along the ground. Before when this was a simple clean-up, a weapon would be handy, but hardly required of someone with his skills, but this was anything but simple. Parameters had changed, he’d very much like his sword back now.
It was nowhere to be seen initially. The room was dark, with little else than a soft glow from the fallen torch illuminating a small area and casting shadows that obscured others. Then it appeared. Near the feet of the creature, the raven crested blade sat where it had since the beginning of this strange dual. Thoughts echoed along in his head, casting suspicions and doubt in every facet of the encounter. Things were not as they appeared.
A slight grin crept along his face again, before quickly subsiding. “Think I have enough time for one more go of it. Care to lead?”
The creature stood, watching and plotting before the dull grey of its eyes appeared once again, launching it into another fury. It lunged, arms outstretched again, running full speed to the man. He simply stood, his hands loosening from tightly wound fists of rock to loosely packed fists of snow. His palms opened slightly; his footing loosened as the heels of his feet digging into the hard rocky floor. They began to move slightly, tracing a straight horizontal line where he stood as he slowly began to back away. The creature, still in a frenzy, closes the distance fast. Seemingly faster than any previous assault as The Wanderer ceased his slow backing retreat, his feet returning to a strong stance, soles digging deep into the earth. He takes in a breath, his heartrate slowing. The light sounds of the cave begin to grow, becoming more apparent and concentrated. Small droplets of dew falling from the ceiling, wind softly blowing along, echoing through the harrowed halls and the flickering of a flame slowly speaking its ancient language. They all converged, mirroring themselves as The Wanderer’s eyes closed. Time seemed to slow as the creature came closer, its steps further apart, its maddening gurgling seemingly floating away. It stepped, stepped and stepped along the ground, pushing pebbles and dust without thought.
Finally, it reached the line carved into the rock. Its foot crunched, making contact with the earth, and in an instant its eyes reverted again. The grey dullness seeping away to its methodically stategistic norm. In that instant, The Wanderers eyes erupted open. The chittering thing’s arms stretch out for his neck, hoping to seize his artery with its horrific claws. Quickly, quicker than anything that day, The Wanderer moved in a fast range of motions that all seemingly happened at once. His weight once again shifted, flanking the creature. His arms locked into a position of counterattack. The creature quickly issued its own countermeasure, once again whipping its body and throwing its claw outward, aiming higher than before, aiming for his neck.
A flame moved. Shadows formed along the walls once more, although they showed a different scene. A scene depicting two swordsman locked in deathly combat. Their swords swinging violently but with grace and purpose. They clashed a thousand times. Each time sending a spray of bright sparks that swelled through the air creating intricate patterns that lingered before slowly fading.
The creature was stuck, unable to move, unable to continue its assault and unable to return to its desired location. The Wanderer's palm grasped the creature's wrist tightly, locking it into a hold. The grey of the creature’s eyes were completely gone now as its pupils darted around in panic. His hand arched forward, his foot kicking –what would assumedly be- the creature’s calf, buckling its knees and forcing it to the ground. Cracking and popping erupted from the joints of its arm as his grip tightened. It’s gurgling became sporadic, as if pleading to be set free. He simply watched it, once against studying its behavior, its patterns, its mannerisms.
“You really are special. Not like anything in the world I imagine, but what makes you so special.” The Wanderer clenched his hold tighter, the creature falls lower, its face pushing into the cold rock. “You were playing a game, weren’t you? You understand what I’m saying too, and that I can assure you is indeed something special. Predicting my movements, using the techniques against me. You weren’t just fighting for a meal. You were learning, weren’t you?”
The creature clicked and gurgled, chittering against the ground as the hard surface of its arm began to crack.
“Now, I’m not opposed to teaching if I aim to gain something from it, but what I won’t abide is being played with. Now...” He plants his foot against the back of the creature's neck, both arms holding its locked appendage in a pulling motion. “I think I deserve to know a little more about you my foul-smelling friend, and if I’m right up until this point, you outta know exactly what I’m saying. I also assume you know a threat when you hear one. So...” His grip tightens, his leather boot slowly crunched against the creature’s skull. “Tell me what you are, and where you learned to be so damn special.”
The creature’s eyes widen, the dull grey returning, filling its retinas as it begins to violently convulse. A shrill screech fills the room, echoing along the walls, traveling through the twisting and winding tunnels of the long-forgotten mine. Shadows creep along the cave walls once more, scattering and convulsing, twisting into horrid and unimaginable shapes. Creatures that belong to fables and horror tales begin flooding along the shapes as the flame whips and crackles. The torch quickly combusts, the flames turning a sharp blackish violet. Heat bellows from the waves of ember emitting from the now monumental display of hellfire as the shadows multiply, taking over every inch of coverage. The Wanderer’s ears tremble at the immense noise, his vision begins to weaken as the shrill echo reaches a climactic crescendo. Any more of this and it’s all over, lights out.
He looks downward to the creature, its mind warped with whatever dark arts influenced it. His grip tightens as his foot presses firmly against the back of its head. Slow crunching and cracking sounds begin to intermingle with the terrible sounds of its cry. As the boot came down, harder and harder, the creature’s terrible screech began to thin and grow in pitch, like the air being slowly released from a balloon. Then, a horrendous snap before the head was no more. Violet and green brain matter covered the area around its neck as small fragments of skull of tissue caked along the sides of his boots. All at once the cry stopped, and along with it the room slowly began to darken. The flame began to slowly dwindle back to its original size, its color returning to a soft orange glow.
The Wanderer stepped back; his eyes firmly planted on the now deceased creature lying before him. A pool of its blood slowly trickled along the floor, reaching for his sword. Slowly, his body lumbered to the lost blade. Its handle was wrapped in scaled pitch blade leather, its blade a vibrant silver, still glistening with oil. The visage of a raven prominently scorn into the finish of the blade itself. Before the foul-smelling blood reaches the blade, the man slowly leans down to collect it. His body ached, his arms felt heavy and as the world around him began to dim, he retrieved the blade. Weighing it in his hand he felt secure, like a lost piece of him was restored with its retrieval. It felt so much heavier than before, or maybe he had just been weakened from the encounter. He gazed down upon it, his hand clenched hard around the dark leather handle. A dark fluid began to pool around his hand, streaming softly down from his arm.
The Wanderer turned his arm over, now looking at the wound he had taken from the creature’s first counterattack. It didn’t seem very bad, or at least not as bad as previous wounds he’d sustained, but the bleeding was alarming. It streamed softly, almost without notice. The blood itself was dark as well, as if it had already begun coagulation. A strange wound. A worrying wound. Suddenly his head became light, the room began to dim, and the walls started to blur. No, everything about this was wrong.
In the strange lucid state he was left in, he almost didn’t notice the changes around him. A quite fell over the room, the flickering flame seemed to even quite down to a faint whisper. A soft noise crept along the ground. Soft tapping, the sound of pebbles and rock being pushed aside, dust parting between single soft strides. The pain in his head grew louder, his heartbeat thumping from his chest to his forearm, ending finally against his forehead.
What is happening to me?
As if to answer, a rapid movement jostled him back to reality as he quickly turned, sword still gripped tightly in hand. A quick flash of movement rushed towards him, its motioned and sounds all too familiar to him. As nimbly as he can muster, he raises his blade outward in an attempt to impale the newfound enemy now barreling towards him, but a twinge of searing pain in his shoulder halts the attack. All he manages is a defensive stance, sword raised, arm placed behind the blade to prepare for impact as the creature crashes into him.
They both fall, splashing into the violet puddle of dank smelling blood that has pooled along the cave floor. A creature –almost identical to the one lying dead beside him- lies atop the blade protecting his body. Its arms crash against the leather bracers protecting his soft flesh. Claws come crashing down, scrapping against leather, making large slashes in them but not enough to break fully through the thick coating. Slime and mucus drip down from its maw, coating The Wanderer’s arms and neck. His arms are placed defensively against the side end of the blade, separating the two, but he can feel himself weakening further and further. Rough outlines of the creature emerge through blurred vision. Heat travels along his arm and forehead, casting confusion and sweat to pour over his body.
What the hell is happening!?
Suddenly, the creature lunges its head down, breaching the space between the blade and The Wanderer’s neck. Its snapping pincer like mandible opening and shutting in rapid and rabid bites. Before it has a chance to make contact, The Wanderer frees one of his trapped hands and grapples the creature’s head. With strength slowly fading from his body, he fruitlessly pushed back the creature's disgusting face. With every inch he pushes, the creature seemingly gains two. A battle of attrition begins. Snapping, clawing, drooling the creature continues its unending assault. Reach for the soft part of his neck in hopes of ending the encounter in a single bite. Just one slip, and its lights out. Forgotten and left to be fed on to a host of disgusting bugs. The thought rips through his mind, his veins fill with hot fire, his muscles contract creating energy that wasn’t there before. He pushes hard against the creature’s head, pushing it past the breach in the sword until his arm reaches full length.
The energy’s fading, the small window of opportunity’s closing, and for once in his miserable life, he can’t think of a thing to do. The hand not grappling with the creatures head pulls free from the back of the sword. His fingers slowly begin moving, drawing a pattern in the air. Faint lines form, like strokes from a dry paintbrush. Lines sparkle and faintly crackle with weak power, power being sapped away. The pattern is rough and unfinished, its edges not straight, its lines fumbling. The feeling in his fingers is weak. Strength fading, the pattern breaks as his hand twitches before returning to the blade. Fire begins erupting from the torch again, the strange violet flame re-emerges and casts strange shadows once again along the cave walls. Shadows depicting men falling in the thousands, figures standing above them. A strange light emits from the wrecked battlefield as the dominant figures rise, floating above, breaching unending clouds and sending a cleansing fire downward. Fire spreads along the walls, engulfing the shadows, casting them far away as it shrieks and flickers violently. The Wanderer’s vision begins to fade. The world around begins to dull. Rocky walls, granite floors, the creature all fade, losing color and becoming shadows themselves. Heat wells in his head, as tears stream down his cheek.
I can’t.
Shadows slowly engulf him as the energy drains from his arms.
I won’t
The creature’s face inches closer and closer to its target.
This is where it ends.
The fire erupts, banishing the shadows away once more, filling the room with soft orange light as the creature lunges uninterrupted at its prize.
Then nothing. The pain of stabbing pincers ripping along his throat never occurs. Instead, a loud CLAP echoes along the walls. It’s deafening and almost endless, but it's over in an instant. A river of fluid splashes along The Wanderer’s face and body. It’s warm and thick like syrup but smells like rotten apple cores. For a moment, he contemplates if this is death. A strange death, and a strange place to end up, but who’s to know. Before long his eyes opened. The creature that stood hunched over him was still there, but its head was entirely missing. Fragments of skull and viscera lined the walls and floor around him as the creature stood cold, dead. Seemingly out of nowhere, its head just seemed to explode.
“Did...” The Wanderer began quizzically. “Did I do that?”
Before an answer could be given, a shuffle could be heard across the room, hidden against the far wall deep within the dark. Slowly The Wanderer rose, knocking the deceased creature away from him, the feeling and strength slowly returning to his body. He stared off to the dark corner, waiting in vain for his eyes to adjust to the dark. They didn’t. Bending down, he grasped his sword in one hand, and what remained of the faint torch in the other as he cautiously meandered to the muffled sound coming from the dark corner.
“Gods, if it’s one more of these disgusting fucking things, I’m straight gone.”
Slowly, the image of a man appears. He almost seemed affixed to the wall due to some form of slightly translucent webbing sprawled across his body. His feet were a few inches raised from the floor as he hung limply against the wall. A thin layer of the same substance covered his mouth as he muffled violently to The Wanderer, his eyes red and spread as wide as they could go. Near the middle of the webbing his right hand was tightly bound, unable to move. On the other side, it seemed he was able to shake loose enough to free it. A silver revolver with gold carved inlays held tightly between his fingers. Faint trails of smoke emanated from the pistol’s barrel. The smell of spent gunpowder lingered In the air, a smell The Wanderer had memorized.
The Wanderer looked puzzlingly at the man stuck to the wall, before a spark of remembrance and realization came to life in his eyes. Sweat beaded down the side of his head, slowing before soaking into his shirt collar. That chance encounter had taken its toll, and had gone on for longer than he thought, longer than he had hoped.
“Hells man, I had forgotten entirely of you. Why not speak up next time?”
The stuck man convulsed in a fit of annoyance and fury as The Wanderer laughed heartily.

This week’s vintage batch of Italian and French pens from my own collection might be the largest bunch of Wet Noodles I’ve ever offered! Nibs range from Superflex to Wet Noodle with more than half of the pens being the latter. As you can see, my collecting focus was pens with white metal trim, which all 9 pens have. Some uncommon models here, especially if you’re in the US. As always, all are fully restored and ready to write.
 
ALBUM & TIMESTAMP
 
Pastable link: https://imgur.com/a/qzjdJeU
 
Condition (n.b.): All pens listed below have been disassembled, cleaned and restored with new sacs/seals installed in the last couple months. Each of these pens is guaranteed to fill and write as designed without leaks or other problems. Nibs have been adjusted when necessary to ensure that all lay down a smooth and consistent line.
THESE PENS HAVE NO CRACKS, CHIPS, PERSONALIZATIONS, LOOSE OR MISSING PARTS, BENT NIBS, MISALIGNED TINES, BROKEN/WORN OFF TIPPING, OR THREADING ISSUES.
 
Line Widths and Writing Samples: To provide buyers with as much information as possible, I have started to adopt the following line width standards: XXF (.1-.2mm); XF (approx .3mm); F (approx .4mm); M (approx .6mm); B (approx .8mm). Nib flexibility is determined by variation (max line width under pressure) and softness (amount of pressure). Flexibility designations based on variation generally run as follows for an XF/F nib: Semi-Flex (approx. 1mm); Flex (1.2-1.9mm); Superflex (>2mm). All line width measurements are taken with a digital caliper but should be considered approximations providing a general guide. Width may vary slightly depending on type of ink and paper used as well as amount of pressure applied. All writing samples are on Rhodia dot paper using Waterman Serenity Blue.
 
 
1. 1930s-40s Montegrappa Extra (green marble w/ lizard skin window, celluloid, NPT, piston filler, SS F/M Flex/Superflex nib). This full-sized model measures 5 1/16” capped. Founded c.1912 in Bassano del Grappa, Italy by Edwige Hoffman and Heinrich Helm, Montegrappa (née Elmo) was one of the Big Four Italian makers whose products have had a profound impact on FP design to this day. The Extra was the premier model of the late-1930s and 1940s. This pen has the white metal trim and factory stainless steel nib that distinguish wartime pens in Italy during the restriction on precious metals to aid the war effort. Not a common pen to see Stateside. It’s a piston filler made of green marble celluloid with an eye-catching, transparent, lizard-skin-patterned window in the barrel for viewing ink-level. To fill simply rotate the filler-knob on the end of the barrel counter-clockwise to extend the piston, submerse the nib, then rotate the filler-knob clockwise to draw ink. To quote an Italian collector over at FPN: “Rule No. 1 about vintage Italian pens: Don't let steel nibs scare you off. Unless you're writing with hydrochloric acid, they're every bit as good as the gold nibs from the years before the gold ban.” The stainless steel Montegrappa Extra #4 nib in this pen is no exception, yielding Super-Flexible variation with Flexible softness. It lays down a smooth and consistent F/M line that widens to a 4B+ (approx 2.0mm) under moderate pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). A nib with particularly juicy flow that’s reliable over its full range of flex, making it a great choice for boldly shaded writing and calligraphic writing styles. Condition: excellent [B]. Nickel-plated trim is clean with no notable flaws aside from a bit of plating wear to the cap bands on one side of the cap (see timestamp photo). Celluloid is smooth and lustrous with no deep scratches or other noteworthy blemishes aside from some fine scratches on the plastic between and below the cap bands. Barrel transparency is superb (DETAIL PHOTO). Manufacturer imprint on the barrel is deep and fully legible. Feed is missing a couple fins from one side, which has no discernible effect on writing performance (see DETAIL PHOTO LEFT). This pen's filling mechanism was restored in the last couple years but does have a little quirk in filling I haven’t been able to diagnose. It fills near to factory capacity smoothly with no leaks, but one must be careful to avoid extending the piston all the way down to the bottom of the ink-view window. If extended all the way down, the bottom part of the piston loses connection with the top part, requiring the section to be unscrewed to help the piston back up with a pencil eraser while turning the knob. This is a straightforward process but annoying, so I’ve always chosen to fill to just 90% of factory capacity to avoid it. A scarce pen in a striking color pattern. Price: $320 $290
 
2. 1930s-40s Montegrappa Extra (green swirl w/ lined window, celluloid, NPT, piston filler, SS XF Wet Noodle nib). This full-sized model measures 5 1/16” capped. For more on Montegrappa and the Extra, see description of pen #1 above. This pen has white metal, wartime trim and nib, but it retains the elegant roller-clip distinctive of Italian pens of the 1930s – so likely late-1930s production. It’s another piston filler made of celluloid in an interesting, green swirl pattern with a transparent, lined window in the barrel for viewing ink level. To quote an Italian collector over at FPN: “Rule No. 1 about vintage Italian pens: Don't let steel nibs scare you off. Unless you're writing with hydrochloric acid, they're every bit as good as the gold nibs from the years before the gold ban.” The stainless steel Montegrappa Extra #4 nib in this pen epitomizes this statement, being a Wet Noodle with variation and softness comparable to that of a dip pen nib. It lays down a smooth and consistent XF line that widens to a 4B+ (approx 2.3mm) under minimal pressure. Thin hairlines, astonishingly responsive snap-back that rivals the 14k dip pen nib in pen #5 below, and reliable flow over its full range of flex makes it an ideal choice for calligraphic writing styles such as Copperplate and Spencerian (see WRITING SAMPLE). Condition: excellent [B]. Nickel-plated trim is clean with no notable flaws aside from a bit of plating wear to the cap bands on the same side of the cap as pen #1 above (see timestamp photo). Celluloid is smooth and lustrous with no deep scratches or other noteworthy blemishes – scarcely even any micro-scratches. Barrel transparency is excellent apart from a ring of staining (DETAIL PHOTO). Filling system restored with new cork in the last couple years - operation can be a tad stiff if it hasn't been used in a while so I recommend storage filled with water. Manufacturer imprint on the barrel is deep and fully legible. Price: $370 SOLD
 
3. c.1940 Aurora Selene (brown web, celluloid, NPT, button filler, Platiridio XF Wet Noodle nib). This is an oversized pen by vintage standards, having a thick girth and measuring 5 3/16” capped. Counded in 1919 by Isaia Levi and located in Turin, Italy, Aurora remains one of the most celebrated Italian makers. Introduced in 1940 amid Axis restrictions on precious metals, the Selene was their wartime button-filler and was marketed as “the pen for everyone.” In 1943 the Aurora factory was bombed by the Allies, perhaps contributing to this model’s short span of production. This example is made of celluloid in a fetching brown shell color pattern evocative of the 2nd-gen Eversharp Doric. Nickel plated clip and early-style cap bands with wider center band. One historically interesting detail of this pen is that its barrel bears the subtle heatstamped personalization of Lancia, the famous Italian auto manufacturer (see timestamp photo). To fill the pen, simply unscrew the blind cap, submerse the nib, and depress the metal button once (DETAIL PHOTO). This big pen has a strong fill and holds a lot of ink. As if the 2 pens above weren’t evidence enough of the quality of Italian steel nibs, the Aurora Platiridio #5 in this pen takes the cake. Not only is it a Wet Noodle with softness and flow rivaling that of a dip pen nib, but it’s capable of one of the widest max line widths I’ve ever measured. It lays down a smooth and consistent XF line that widens to an incredible 5B? (approx 2.8mm!) under minimal pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). Even so, it retains a superbly responsive snap-back that gives one precise control over the line under any amount of pressure. That and reliable flow over its full range of flex make it another ideal choice for calligraphic writing styles such as Copperplate and Spencerian. Note that due to the considerable space between the tines of this nib at full flex, Waterman Serenity Blue had trouble keeping the surface tension but my trusty Omas Grey solved the problem entirely, producing flawlessly reliable lines under full flex. So some experimentation with wetter inks might be in order. Condition: excellent+ [B+] assuming you take the “Lancia” marking as an interesting mark of historical provenance as opposed to a flaw. Nickel-plated trim is clean with no brassing or other notable flaws. ). Celluloid is smooth and lustrous with no deep scratches or other noteworthy blemishes – scarcely even any micro-scratches. Manufacturer imprint on the section is deep and fully legible. Price: $420 SOLD
 
4. 1930s-40s Astura Nova (grey pearl snakeskin, celluloid, NPT, lever filler, 14k XF Superflex/Wet Noodle nib). This full-sized model measures 5 1/16” capped. Astura pens were made by S.A.F.I.S., a company in Turin (fd. 1926) that would come to be one of the most influential Italian pen makers of the early half of the twentieth century (MORE INFO). They’re best known for producing pens of considerably high quality such as Radius and The King. And this Astura follows suit. It’s made of celluloid in a particularly bold and pearlescent snakeskin pattern, complemented by nickel plated trim. 14k Warranted #3 nib yields Super-flexible variation with softness verging on that of a Wet Noodle. It lays down a smooth and consistent XF line that widens to a 4B+ (approx 2.2mm) under very light pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). Thin hairlines, superbly responsive snap-back, and reliable flow over its full range of flex make it another excellent choice for calligraphic writing styles such as Copperplate and Spencerian. Condition: fine [C]. Nickel-plated trim shows some brassing to the clip and some of the lower cap band, which has been factored into the price. Nib has a mark on one tine that's merely cosmetic, having no effect on durability or performance. Celluloid is smooth and lustrous with no deep scratches or other noteworthy blemishes – scarcely even any micro-scratches. Manufacturer imprint on the barrel is deep and fully legible. Another beautiful Italian pen and another lovely writer. Price: $280 SOLD
 
5. 1930s-40s Novo Retrofit (green moss, celluloid, NPT, button filler, 14k XXF Needlepoint Wet Noodle nib). This full-sized model measures 4 7/8” capped. The only maker’s mark on this pen is a barrel imprint that reads “Novo.” But I haven’t been able to determine whether that’s a make or a model or anything about it, for that matter. It’s clearly Italian, of a quality similar to the Montegrappas and Aurora above, probably originating from one of those conglomerates that collaborated with some of the major Italian makers. In fact, the clip of this pen is identical to that of pen #2. This pen is made of celluloid in an unusual, moss green color pattern with flashes of a brighter green. Nickel-plated trim with elegant roller-clip. This pen is a button filler. To fill the pen, simply unscrew the blind cap, submerse the nib, and depress the metal button once. This pen came to me nibless but with a very narrow section, so I equipped it with a smaller, 14k, iridium-tipped Aikin Lambert dip pen nib - adjusted and tuned to match factory performance. That nib is a Wet Noodle with killer snap-back. It lays down a smooth and consistent XXF line that widens to a 4B+ (approx 2.1mm) under minimal pressure (probably the softest nib of the batch) (see WRITING SAMPLE). Needlepoint hairlines, effortless variation, surgically precise snap-back, and reliable flow over its full range of flex make it another ideal choice for calligraphic writing styles. Condition: excellent+ [B+]. Nickel-plated trim is clean with no brassing or other notable flaws aside from perhaps a sliver or two of high-point wear on the apex of the faceted clip. Celluloid is smooth and lustrous with no deep scratches or other noteworthy blemishes – scarcely even any micro-scratches. Manufacturer imprint on the barrel is deep and fully legible. Price: $270 SOLD
 
6. 1930s-40s Edacoto 02 Retrofit (coral grey pearl, celluloid, NPT, button filler, 14k XXF Needlepoint Wet Noodle nib). This is a larger Edacoto model, having a thicker girth than standard and measuring 5 1/16” capped. Edacoto (née Edac) was French maker based in Paris from 1922 to the mid-1960s. Edacotos are well-made pens known for their unusual color patterns and distinctive waterfall clip design. This one is a case in point, being made in a grey pearl celluloid with a quasi-psychedelic color pattern resembling chatoyant coral that seems to shift when the pen is turned under light. This model’s size, filling system, and trim configuration situates it near the top of Edacoto’s lineup. It is a button filler. To fill the pen, simply unscrew the blind cap, submerse the nib, and depress the metal button once. It’s equipped with one of my dip pen nib retrofits: a large, 14k, iridium tipped E.S. Johnson that’s been adjusted and tuned to match factory performance. That nib is another Wet Noodle, laying down a smooth and consistent XXF line that widens to an impressive 4B+ (approx 2.5mm) under minimal pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). Needlepoint hairlines, strong snap-back, and reliable flow over its full range of flex make it another ideal choice for calligraphic writing styles such as Copperplate and Spencerian. Condition: excellent+ [B+]. Nickel-plated trim is clean with no brassing or notable flaws apart from the top cap band having lost some of its original luster (I assume). Celluloid is smooth and lustrous with no deep scratches or other noteworthy blemishes – scarcely even any micro-scratches. Feed is missing a a fin from one side, which has no discernible effect on writing performance (see DETAIL PHOTO RIGHT). Manufacturer imprint on the barrel is deep and fully legible. Price: $310 SOLD
 
7. 1930s-40s Edacoto (grey web, celluloid, NPT, lever filler, SS XF/F Wet Noodle nib). This full-sized model measures 4 7/8” capped. For more on Edacoto, see description of pen #6 above. This pen is made of grey web celluloid complemented by nickel plated trim with deluxe, triple cap bands. SS Edacoto 87 nib is yet another Wet Noodle with flow and softness comparable to that of a dip pen nib. It lays down a smooth and consistent XF/F line that widens to an impressive 4B+ (approx 2.5mm) under minimal pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). Effortless variation, strong snap-back, and reliably wet flow over its full range of flex make it another ideal choice for calligraphic writing styles. Condition: excellent [B]. Nickel-plated trim is clean with no brassing or notable flaws apart from a pin sized spot of wear on the lever and a couple on the cap bands on each side of the cap (see timestamp photo). Celluloid is smooth and lustrous with no deep scratches or other noteworthy blemishes – scarcely even any micro-scratches. Manufacturer imprint on the barrel is weakened but fully legible. Price: $220 SOLD
 
8. 1930s Edacoto (grey pearl marble, celluloid, NPT, lever filler, 14k F Flex/Superflex nib). This smaller model measures 4 5/8” capped. For more on Edacoto, see pen #6 above. This one is made of grey pearl marble complemented by nickel-plated trim. 14k Warranted nib yields Super-Flexible variation with Flexible softness. It lays down a smooth and consistent F line that widens to a 4B+ (approx 2.0mm) under moderate pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). Strong snap-back, and reliable flow over its full range of flex make it a great choice for expressive and calligraphic writing styles. Condition: excellent/fine [B/C]. Nickel-plated trim looks clean with the naked eye but shows a peppering of wear under a loupe. Celluloid is smooth and lustrous with no deep scratches or other noteworthy blemishes apart from subtle shrinkage of the cap that can’t be seen so much as felt when running a finger down it – merely cosmetic with no affect on how the cap screws on. Manufacturer imprint on the barrel is weakened but fully legible. Price: $150 $140
 
9. 1940s-50s Mercury w/ Sticker (blue swirl, celluloid, NPT, button filler, 14k XF Superflex nib). This full-sized model measures 5 3/8” capped. This mysterious pen has defied all my research efforts. It’s marked “Mercury” on the barrel in the usual place and “B-tg / SGDG / Made in France” farther up toward the section. It comes with its original price sticker, ehich reads “Mercury” and “225” penned in ink. This pen is made of a curious wrapped celluloid in blue and black complemented by heavy, white metal trim with “Bronze au Glucinium” stamped in the top of the spring-activated clip. Never seen trim made of this! Threads for the blind cap appear to be stainless steel. All this gives the pen a substantial heft in the hand. Super-Flexible 14k Mercury nib lays down a smooth and consistent XF line that widens to a 4B+ (approx 2.0mm) under light pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). Thin hairlines, strong snap-back, and reliable flow over its full range of flex make it another great choice for calligraphic writing styles. Condition: excellent+ [B+]. This pen is in pristine, museum-grade condition. Nickel-plated trim is immaculate with no brassing or other notable flaws. Celluloid is smooth and lustrous with no deep scratches or other noteworthy blemishes – scarcely even any micro-scratches. Manufacturer imprint on the barrel are deep and fully legible. Price: $240 SOLD
 
 
 
Shipping: Pens purchased on the weekend are mailed on Tuesday. Otherwise they are mailed within 2 business days of payment. All pens that do not come with their original boxes are packaged in PVC or thick plastic tubes to protect them in transit. To CONUS locations the following shipping options are available:

• USPS First-Class with tracking for $5 Due to the delivery delays that continue under postmaster general DeJoy, I strongly recommend that the Priority shipping option be chosen. All packages will include full insurance (covered by me). Rest assured that a full refund is guaranteed (issued through Paypal) in the event of a lost parcel and you will not have to wait until I receive a reimbursement from the USPS.
  
• USPS Priority with tracking for $9
  

International Customers: Please contact me for shipping quote if located abroad (delivery confirmation required). (Note: due to the issues stated above, my international shipping options are currently limited. PM for more info). Please do not ask me to commit mail fraud by altering the declared value of a pen for customs. Not only am I registered as a business but shipping insurance is based on declared value.
New York Customers: For tax purposes, I am now required to add an 8% sales tax on any sale made in the state of NY. If your shipping address is in NY state, please let me know before payment to receive an adjusted total. Discounted shipping is included for NY State residents to help defray the extra cost.
Ordering: Pens are placed on hold for the first person to reply to the thread and PM me with firm request to purchase (no chat DMs please). A request with the words “I'd like to purchase [pen number]” would be best to avoid confusion), to which I’ll reply with payment details. Please note that a message inquiring into a price discount does not suffice to place a pen on hold. If I haven't received Paypal payment within 24 hrs after a hold is placed, then pen(s) may become available to the next person.
Payment, & Guarantee: Payment by Paypal only. All pens are guaranteed to be in the condition in which I've described them. If I've missed something objectionable or the filling mechanism is not fully functional, the buyer may contact me up to 7 days after receiving the pen for a full refund (issued once I receive the pen back in the same condition as sold). Buyer must ship the return no later than 2 weeks after it was delivered to receive a refund. I've sold pens online for over a decade. Please check my past listings here as well as on the classifieds and historical sales forums on FPN (username: Estragon) and FPGeeks (popcod) for some of my previous offerings.
 
 
OTHER OPEN LISTINGS

• Flexible Waterman 92 1/2
  
• Waterman Nurse’s Sets
  
• Off-Catalogue Sheaffer Stubby Balance Lifetime
  
• Psychedelic Bayard Excselsior
  
• Waterman Taperite Citation
  
• Conklin Enduras, Nozac
  

Putting together a 6 BR and have seen a ton of people recommend Harrell’s - still the best way to go? I like that they’re semi-custom to your chamber.

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