Hello, first time posting here, so here is a brief picture of the relationship. We have been together for 9y, married the last 4. We both work, he works half from the week from home and the other days at the office, I work fully from home, we are childless but we have a bunch of rescued cats and dogs at home. A couple of years ago I lost my job and started to take care of the house, but since I got employed, I have been asking him to carry his own weight around. He claims that he helps me but in reality I would like him to have some initiative on doing the stuff that is pending around instead of him tailing after me while I'm doing chores, I even bought a blackboard to keep tabs on the pending chores but if I don't keep it updated he just forgets about it. Since he has the car with him all week, he decided to take care of the groceries, but expects me to write down what is needed from the store and if I'm not specific, he will buy the cheapest brand of whatever was requested. On the romantic side, well, there isn't none besides of what I do for him. I support him through his hobbies, buy him the videogames he wants and even help him found collection items, but he doesn't do the same for me. I begged him to gift me a tarot card deck that I wanted for months, and when he did, he bought me a knock off from an online store since it was cheaper. He is into trading cards, so I know he values original stuff over cheap knock offs, I know he does research on his hobbies and games before buying anything, so I just don't understand why he doesn't take the same care of the stuff that is for me. On most of my birthdays I'm the one buying my own gifts and cake and he excuses himself saying that birthdays aren't a big deal for him, but if he doesn't have what he wants for his birthday (weekend with his friends, playing videogames all day long, fancy food, etc) he complains about it.
When I met him he was pretty independent and capable of keeping a house but now days, he doesn't even use the washing machine. There isn't no romantic details, no surprises, nothing, and the worst part is that my feelings for him have diminished so much. I don't know what to do, or even if I can do anything. Any advice?

I don’t understand how I was living for the past year or so. I feel like I wasn’t in control of my own body, I like to think I’m a very smart and logical person yet the stuff I’ve done this past year says very different things about me
for starters it’s like I wasn’t all the way here, it felt like I wasn’t awake but in a dream, but that dream was reality. I started online schooling since I was quite depressed from public school, yet I’ve never actually done online schooling. I never thought twice about what I was doing in the past yet it’s like I just became conscious to what I was doing
I’m in a very important year of school and logically I know I’m going to fail. But that’s not what I’m upset about, I’m upset with myself for not even thinking about what I was doing
this isn’t even the only thing I’ve done in the past year that also seemed to fuck up my life even more, I ghosted all my friends but they were good friends
I feel like I just woke up from an amazing dream and reality is a dumpster fire, I can’t remember half of anything I’ve done and I’ve been in my own little world inside my head for almost a year and now I’m out of that world and I’m horrified at what I did when I was in my own head
I feel like shit for lying to my mom since she is trying her best to be there for me even though she’s failing
I can’t seem to get happy no matter how much I try
I tend to get lost in my own mind because my family isn’t the best, I can admit that. My father seems to have quit loving me in favor of his new girlfriend, and she hates my guts, she seems to enjoy tormenting me when I’m there, but the worst part is that she turned my dad ageist me. I understand that my dad isn’t gonna have as many shared interests with me since I’m a female and he’s a male but I still hate it. I’ve tried many times to just spend time with my dad yet he seems to get annoyed anytime I do, he loves Stephen king books so I read his books in hopes of being able to talk to my dad about them, yet when I tried my dad got all disinterested and acted like I was annoying him, or my 12th birthday when my dad was supposed to pick me up from school and take me to the park, instead he slept in and forgot my birthday and ate all of the cake my grandma made for me before I even got home
I love my dad yet at the same time I wished I had a better family
my dad doesn’t have a job and lives off of my grandparents yet he acts like he’s better then everyone else. He refuses to make it so where his home is livable, his washer and dryer hasn’t worked in over 6 months, it’s a miracle if he goes grocery shopping once every two months, and it’s even rarer for him to pay the water bill without me complaining for a week straight. not to mention he practically lives at the neighbors house, I can’t stand my dad yet I just want him to love me. He shows more love and care to his nephew then his only child, and I get that my cousin isn’t at fault here yet I can’t help but be jealous of him, my dad spends time with him, plays catch with him and has even taken him out to go fishing. All things my own father has never done for me. I can’t stand it. I just wished things would go back to how they were before my dad got his new girlfriend.
and my mom is bad in her own right, while she may be much more loving and like an actual parent she still is failing, I love my mom to bits but it’s concerning how I was able to get away with not doing my schooling since October, not to mention she seems to be much more concerned with her own shitty boyfriend, he isn’t the worst but he clearly doesn’t like me and treats my mom like shit, I hate him quite a bit. Not to mention he got my mom addicted again, she was clean for almost 3 years yet he came along and ruined that, this is probably why I hate him so much. My mom keeps on saying I’m her priority yet it’s clear I’m not, I’ve been begging her to get me some mental health help yet every time she just ignores it and then acts surprised when she finds my edgy (to put it very lightly) and self loathing entries in my diary. I hate how she couldn’t seem to notice that I wasn’t even all the way here for the last year, I hate how she seems to put her boyfriend and their problem of the week above me even though she swears up and down that I’m her first priority.
I don’t know what to do with my life, I barley have any hobbies other then daydreaming and even then it’s just hobbies I can’t base my life around, it feels like I cat break the cycle in my family and I hate it. Since I was 8 I’ve been swearing up and down that I will never be like my parents yet it seems like I’m going down the same path, and I don’t know how to ask for help since I’m too scared or embarrassed to do so.
I apologise if this didn’t make too much sense, my mind is kinda everywhere while I’m typing this

First / Previous
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I think it’s obvious that, while I’ve never lied to my dad and my brother about something big before, I haven’t told either of them about the animals at the zoo and I’m not planning on it. Even if they believed me, that would actually be worse than thinking I was being foolish by working here. If my dad knew what kind of animals the zoo had, he’d freak out, whether or not there were invisible walls to protect me. In and of itself, my father would demand I quit on the spot if he found out about my hourly rate because it was obvious that there was something about this job that warranted it.
So, I opened a savings account at the bank, and when I deposited the check, I put half in that account. That lowered the chances of my dad finding out how much money I was pulling in.
It wasn’t as if I had anything huge to spend the money on anyway, though. Dad had been thrilled with $25/hr. when I got the job, and we’d already started spending some of that first paycheck on new clothes and little house repairs and such. Money has always been tight, and we live in a three-bedroom house, with my dad graciously having taken the smallest room (which was kind of a catchall storage room up until then) once my brother and I wanted separate rooms when we hit our teenage years.
My mom isn’t in the picture, if you’re curious. She worked as a wildlife photographer, and was so good at it that she’d get paid to go off to remote places in Africa. For months at a time. As if we don’t have animals in America, right? But even when she was here, it always felt like she was distracted, wanting to go back to work. Like she cared more about the animals than about us. Say what you want about me, but I like animals more than people, I don’t love them more. I don’t even think of her as mom anymore; in my brain, she’s Patricia.
When I was nine and my brother Stanley was two, she basically left and never came back. Doesn’t even send postcards. For all I know, she’s dead, and the most meaningful thing I ever got from her was my passion for caring about other animals. I got into it early because of Patricia, and then practically every birthday or Christmas present was some book or movie or toy about wildlife. But that’s all she did for us besides financial support. My dad is a real rock in my life, and I count myself lucky I got at least one good parent.
When Patricia ditched us, I started to help out financially when I was younger by working odd jobs, and then real jobs when I hit sixteen. Stanley is sixteen now, and he’s been working at Hanks Hardware for a few months, which meant now it was all three of us pulling in money. But Stanley only makes $10/hr., working four hours after school and then eight hours on Saturday, so my $25/hr. literally doubled our household income. When I’d gotten the job, I told Dad and Stanley that I wanted Stanley to quit his job, and that I’d give him an allowance, $80 a week, which was what he'd be using for pocket money if he’d still been working.
Getting that time back would be huge for Stanley, because it would let him spend more time on his schoolwork. Not just to bring up his grades; he would literally be learning more. And he’s a junior now, doing things like taking a computer class to learn Microsoft Office. Living in a small town limits your options, and knowledge broadens them. I know that much for sure.
Not to mention, he could actually be a teenager, do the stuff kids did. Go see a movie, hang out with his friends at the bleachers and smoke pot, and head out to the lake to swim when the weather warmed up and have a genuinely fun summer instead of having a forty hour work week. And most important, playing video games. I know that sounds strange, but Stanley loves video games and plays online on the TV in the living room. But he hardly ever has time to play, which means sometimes he’ll stay up too late enjoying himself and fall asleep the next day during his first period class. Dad and I never have the heart to tell him to go to bed, though.
My father was uneasy about Stanley quitting, mostly because of the hypothetical of my job falling through. And Dad didn’t even know about the possibility of there being some terrifying incident with an animal, which might cause me such anxiety that I wouldn’t be able to push past it and would end up needing to quit. I really didn’t think that was likely after I’d managed to mostly get over my paralyzing fear of Yui, but I yielded to his logic and we negotiated. Stanley decided to switch to three hours three days a week and four hours on Saturdays.
Little did they know that not only was I was saving up for my own impending student loan payments, but my savings account would cover a most or maybe all of the cost of any college or trade school Stanley wanted to attend when he graduated. I was so happy about that, I don’t have the words. Half of my income is $25/hr. and for eight hours a day will be $52k a year, all of it put in my savings account. Before taxes, but still, that is fantastic money. I’ll have to come clean eventually, when Stanley started filling out FAFSA forms next year, and I’ll probably tell my dad that I was pretty sure they’re running drugs out of the back of the zoo or something. He’ll be so pissed, but that’s over a year away and I’ll burn that bridge when I came to it.
So, in general, I’ve been enjoying working at the zoo and depositing those paychecks. Call me a cynic, but inevitably, that meant something had to go wrong.
After settling in for my shift a few minutes before 9 p.m., Andrew bid me farewell and headed home. He’d just done one last walk of the zoo, so I took out a book and resumed where I’d left off, planning to do a sweep in an hour. I do have some enrichment planned for one of the animals, but I’d had to order something online and it won’t arrive for a few days.
Shortly after my second ramble around on my route to check every enclosure at the zoo, however, I got a text from my brother.

Gary and Shaun are going to the zoo. They want to try to see the animals.

I closed my eyes in annoyance. Gary and Shaun were two sort-of friends of Stanley’s, the middling kind of friend that you sit with at lunch and hang out with at parties but you’ve never actually been to their home. I knew Stanley had been bragging to his friends about my new job. Well, I guessed. He’d told me and Dad at the dinner table that his friends were impressed with my job, and I figured the fact that his sister had a college degree and had started work at $25/hr. was bragging material, especially when it meant Stanley could work fewer hours.
The idea that some of his friends would want to come check out the zoo hadn’t occurred to me, because I’d come at it logically: The zoo was closed to outsiders. Appointment only. And none of them would ever get an appointment, because they were human. But if anything, the rules that restricted them had probably made it a more enticing idea. Also, Stanley said it the zoo on Google Maps at this point, but that it was blurred out. Andrew told me that had been by request (anyone can do it actually), but I’m sure that made the temptation even worse.
Obviously I wasn’t going to let them in, but I didn’t want them to cause trouble, and they were teenagers. Teenagers tend to cause trouble as a general rule. The last thing I wanted was to have to tell Andrew that they’d shown up at the gate intent on visiting the zoo because my brother had talked it up so much. Not that Stanley knew what this place really housed, but still, Andrew had been so stern on no photography of Leila that I would’ve been embarrassed if I had to call the cops because of something like this.
My reply was curt.

Tell those dipshits the place is closed to walk-ins. I’m not letting them in.
I did. They want to go anyway.

I facepalmed and sighed before replying.

If you can’t talk them out of it, just don’t go with them. I’ll deal with it.

There was a long silence, then some ellipses as he typed, then another long silence. I got antsy and sent a follow-up.

Stanley, I mean it. I do not want you here if I have to call the cops to get them to leave. Stay home. If you show up here with them, I’m cutting off the money I give you.

I wasn’t the type to play fast and loose with threats about money, so that probably surprised him. There was the briefest of pauses.

Geez, no need to be a bitch about it. Fine. I’ll stay here. Good luck dealing with those assholes without me.

That was indeed exactly what I wanted, and he must have known that. Hell, I had pepper spray and a taser, so it’s not like I couldn’t keep them out if I really wanted to. But when it came down to it, I figured, what were they going to do? I wasn’t going to open the door or the front gate. The fence was ten feet high, the kind with spaced bars that had decorative spikes at the top, and it was brand new. It wasn’t as if they were going to take bolt-cutters to a barbed wire fence like in a movie.
In the end, I sat back in my chair and just fell back on my regular routine. I wonder now, if I’d called Andrew and told him, maybe asked him to come hang out for a while, whether things would’ve turned out different. But I wasn’t very well going to wake him up for something that essentially sounded like a minor irritation.
At 10:41 p.m., a beep, beep, beep, alert sounded, and I know the exact time because I picked my phone up off the desk out of habit, assuming it was what was making the noise. But it wasn’t. Looking up to the screen of cameras, one was outlined in red, pulling my focus to it. It was an exterior camera with a wide view that panned back and forth, but was now stopped on movement that it had detected and had deemed sufficient to audibly alert me. I later learned that it was in conjunction with a motion detector on the fence. On the screen, I saw two boys, one on the outside of the fence to the left of the entrance gate and one on the inside.
“What the fuck?” I breathed, standing up and putting my book aside. My fingers went to the mouse and keyboard, and I expanded the view from the camera and zoomed in. It seemed I’d underestimated the boredom and curiosity of two small-town teenage boys.
I saw how the first boy had gotten in when the second boy used the same technique, which was to climb a rope that had knots tied in it about a foot apart, a rope that had been hooked onto one of the spikes at the top, presumably with a loop that had been lassoed and tightened. He made it to the top, shifted and dropped to hang from the top by his hands, then let himself fall to the ground, his knees bending and absorbing the shock of the impact before falling on his butt.
One of the boys had hit a growth spurt, topping out at 5’11” now, all gangly limbs. He had short brown hair and I could see him wearing a sweatshirt with the logo of his school on it. That’s the best outfit to wear when breaking in, apparently: something that shows what high school you go to. The other one was a little more built and half a foot shorter, with long blonde hair that he probably thought made him look like Chris Hemsworth. It didn’t.
“I cannot believe this,” I growled, my anger flaring. Heading quickly out of the office, slamming the door behind me, I was out the door and walking toward the entrance, driven by my anger.
Already walking into the park at a speed driven by their interest in the forbidden areas, they started on the path that went toward enclosure one and rounded the zoo. “Hey!” I barked.
“Ripley!” Gary exclaimed. “Your brother said you wouldn’t open the gate, so we let ourselves in.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I asked, keeping pace beside them, rage bubbling up inside me. They slowed but didn’t stop. “Do you think this is a joke? There’s a reason I told my brother not to come with you. That alarm you set off goes to the owner of the park, and they’ll definitely be pressing charges. You really want ‘breaking and entering’ on your rap sheet?”
They gave me long-suffering looks, the kind only someone under twenty is capable of. The kind that imply you’re neurotic, or pushy, or self-centered. The kind that say you don’t know what you’re talking about, that they know so much more than you, and that all you are is an annoyance.
“Come on. What is with this place? It sounds awesome, some private zoo, but Stanley didn’t know anything about it,” Shaun told me. Glancing at my belt, where my pepper spray and taser were, he asked, “Is it that top secret? Everything here could sell on the black market for a million bucks or something?”
“They’re expensive animals if poachers get their hands on them, yes,” I said tightly.
“Why would they hire someone fresh out of college for that?” Gary asked, his eyes continuing to take in his surroundings, the path and everything in sight bathed in their standard eerie red glow. “And what’s with the lights?”
“It’s for night vision,” I told him, skipping over the part implying I wasn’t qualified for this job. “Hey, stop.” Moving in front of them, I forced the issue, moving to stand in front of them and forcing them to either stumble to a stop or run into me. “If you climb back over the fence and leave now, before anyone gets here, I’ll lie and say I didn’t know your faces.”
“Jesus Christ, you’re uptight,” Shaun chuckled. “What’s the big deal? I mean, we might not even see anything, since it’s nighttime and the animals are sleeping. It’s not like we’re stealing a tour.”
Honestly, I have no idea how our species has survived this long when our formative years make us so confidently stupid. “So, why are you even here then?” I asked, folding my arms.
“Why not?” Gary asked.
With that, they were quickly walking around me, toward enclosure one. I hadn’t yet seen the animal in enclosure one, but what I did know was I didn’t want to see it for the first time tonight. Roger’s short and snappy description described it as Bear - Steve. According to procedure in the small manual Andrew had given me, I was supposed to deter any intruders with fact that they were on camera and threaten to call the police. It didn’t say what to do if that didn’t work, but I assume I was supposed to…call the police. And also call Andrew, of course. That didn’t solve my urgent problem though, which was two teenagers who wanted to see something cool.
“That’s it,” I growled, taking my taser in one hand and my pepper spray in the other, hoping the sight of me being armed would deter them. Heading after them, I snapped, “If you guys do not leave, I will make you leave.”
Shaun turned and walked backwards so he could speak to me. “Just because you’ve got a complex since they hired you to look after a place like this, doesn’t mean you have any real authority,” he told me. “Look, call the cops if you want. Tell them some teenagers broke in. Response time around here is probably fifteen minutes, so we’ve got ten minutes, minimum. We just want to see something cool, and then we’ll leave.”
I hate that he called my bluff on the weapons, especially in hindsight. I’m not a confrontational person, and my instincts are always to avoid a fight if possible. So, in this case, my instincts were telling me to call in someone else to help get these clowns out of the zoo, not to use the weapons I had for just such a purpose. It makes me feel helpless and angry knowing that I back down from fights, but I balked at the idea of getting physical with them. Only the fact that that wasn’t supposed to be part of my job kept me from feeling like a complete failure as security.
“The animals here are not puppies,” I finally exclaimed. “Some of them are territorial. They could seriously hurt you.”
They finally slowed their pace as they closed in on the gate to the wooden fence. “What are you talking about, territorial? They’re zoo animals,” Gary said.
“This is a huge zoo, and it’s more like a preserve,” I sighed. “It backs up into the forest. These animals build their homes here, scent mark the boundaries, and regularly eat small animals that come in through the bars of the fence to explore. So, like I said. These. Are not. Puppies.”
The two of them finally came to a stop at the gate, looking at me warily. “With this fence, how dangerous could they be?” Gary asked. I didn’t answer. Shaun scanned the expanse behind the gate and Gary looked around, making it clear what he was looking for when he said, “Where are all the signs and shit?”
“There’s a tour guide,” I said. “They don’t need signs.”
“Okay, so, what’s in here?”
Shaking my head, I let out a sigh. “It’s time to leave. I’m serious.”
Gary glared at me for a beat and then said the worst word possible. “Whatever.” Then he turned and unlatched the gate, walking through.
“Gary!” I shouted, stopping short at the threshold. Shaun walked past me, and I made a grab for him, but was too slow. I’ll regret that until the day I die.
Halted at the gate like there was an invisible force field keeping me out in just as it kept the animals in, I officially started panicking. I’d messed up, and now I couldn’t even hit them with either the pepper spray or the taser unless I wanted them to be easy prey.
My eyes scanned the smaller plants along the fence, which slowly grew in average height the closer you got to the tree line. The trees were surprisingly close to the fence, only a few yards in. Also, there were no footprints, no path that only grew small weeds from an animal that often paced back and forth, so I wasn’t sure how often it came out of the trees. Maybe it didn’t.
I wondered if there was another lake, maybe a small pond, that I didn’t know about further in, if the animal lived there. Or maybe this one was relatively reclusive, so I might have time to get the boys out. It could be that it had heard the ruckus of voices and decided to investigate, as it did during tours, but it would take a while to get here. Or I could get lucky and whatever it was could have just had a great meal, deciding to pass up the humans within its grasp.
But I was not lucky.
Putting my pepper spray and taser back in their holsters, I took a couple steps back as I pulled out my cell phone and called 911.
There was a brief pause before I heard someone pick up, and a calm female voice spoke, “911, what is your emergency?”
“Yes, I work at a private zoo, address 11842 Lincoln Road,” I spoke, drawing the shocked gazes of both boys. “Two teenage boys broke in, and they’re refusing to leave the property.”
“For real, Ripley?” Gary exclaimed, as if genuinely offended at my actions.
That’s when all hell broke loose.
Gary was standing near enough to the tall trees that he was under the branches, and something dropped on him, its weight crushing him to the ground. He didn’t even have time to scream. Shaun did, though, crying, “What the fuck?” as he stumbled backwards.
“Get out of there!” I screamed, grabbing my taser from its holster and pointing it at the animal.
On top of Gary’s body was something that looked like a koala. The only thing was, it must have been almost twice as big and had an orange, spotted pattern on its fur. The kicker was the teeth. Koalas eat eucalyptus leaves, most people know, so they don’t have much use for many teeth or even sharp teeth. They’re equipped with a pretty pathetic set of chompers.
Whatever this was, I knew it had a full set of teeth made for a meat-eater, because it had bitten down on Gary’s neck and ripped out a chunk of flesh, arterial blood spraying from the wound.
Shaun, unfortunately, did not take the opportunity to run. He stared at his downed friend, just as I did, in horrified fear. And then ran to him. “Gary!” he screamed. “Hey, get the fuck off him!”
“Shaun, don’t!” I shouted.
Whatever Shaun was thinking, it was less about the potential of him being attacked versus the fact of his friend being attacked right at that moment. I’ll say that about him at least: he didn’t just leave his friend to die. Unfortunately, if he had, it might’ve saved him. Throwing himself at the animal, Shaun shoved it off, an impressive show of strength, before grabbing Gary by the arm and trying to pull him to his feet. “Come on!”
I could see that Gary was barely conscious, though. A gash in an artery that was profusely bleeding will do that to a person. I attempted to aim my taser at the animal, but only a split-second passed before it turned and leapt once more, slamming into Shaun and biting his neck. I stumbled back in fear, adrenaline now pumping through me in earnest, as Shaun cried out in terror and fell to the ground before the animal ripped out his throat.
My vision swam at the sight of a copious amount of blood and the sound of Shaun choking on it. Thick chewing sounds came from the animal before it swallowed and then turned to me.
I only realized I’d dropped my cell phone when I heard a faint, panicked voice ask, “Ma’am? Ma’am, are you there?”
Lowering the taser, I slowly took a couple steps forward, picked up the phone, and I quietly said, “Yeah. I’m here.”
It felt like she was speaking from the other end of a long tunnel when I heard, “I’m sending police and EMT right now. What happened? Was someone injured?”
Swallowing hard, I grimaced as tears came to my eyes. Staring at the animal, which was still meeting my gaze unwaveringly, I simply answered, “Yeah. They’re dead.” At that point, the animal grabbed one of the boys by the throat, then the other, and started dragging them into the trees.
She hesitated before asking some more questions, and I replied to them all absently. Eventually, the animal was gone from my sight, but I still walked backwards as I retraced my steps to the security office, exactly like the first time I’d seen Yui. Eventually I arrived at the security room, and my shaky hand swiped the key card to get in. Shutting the door, I told the 911 operator, “I’m safe.”
“Good. The police should be there in ten minutes.”
My brain thought it was funny that it turned out the boys had been right about the timing, but filed it under ‘things to think about later’. “Okay. I have to call my boss.”
“Just stay on the line with me until the police arrive, okay?”
“It’s okay. I’m fine,” I said quietly. “I just really need to call my boss.”
In spite of her protests, I hung up. The silence of the room rang in my ears and I slowly sat down in my chair, pulling up Andrew’s number.
After four rings, he picked up, his voice drowsy but tense, knowing I’d only call if something had happened. “Ripley? What’s wrong?”
It took me a moment to find my voice. “Two teenagers broke in. They’re dead. Steve killed them.”
“Oh, fuck,” he breathed. After a few beats, he said, “Okay, all right, I’ll, ah, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Did you call the police already?”
“I was on the phone before it even happened, saying they broke in.” I grimaced at that. I was supposed to call my boss first, not the police. That let him determine what actions to take.
Andrew let out a breath. “Okay. I’m assuming Steve took the bodies?”
“Yeah.”
“All right, I’ll call Suzanne and have her put Steve down for a nap, and then get the bodies back to where the EMTs can get them.”
That confused me, and I didn’t really know what to say, so I went with, “I’m sorry, Andrew. I should’ve tried harder to get them to leave. Even tasing and pepper spraying them would’ve-”
“Ripley, this is not your fault,” he said firmly. “I’ll be there soon as I can, all right?”
We ended the conversation and I glanced at the screen of cameras, which was how I’d left it, focused on that section of the fence where the boys had climbed in, with the view enlarged to take up most of the screen. I stared at it until the police arrived.
When the motorcade of flashing lights were visible at the end of the road through one of the cameras, I pressed the button to open the front gate. Fielding the police officers and the EMTs and their questions, I brought them to the enclosure, and right at the edge of the tree line were the two bodies, looking exactly as I’d last seen them. So, I guess Suzanne knows how to run her zoo and handle things when the worst happens.
Both boys were put into body bags and lifted onto gurneys, and then each one was put into one of the two waiting ambulances. Andrew arrived before too long and answered all the questions the police had for him, the ones I didn’t know how to answer. Also the questions that I didn’t really feel comfortable answering, like, “What species of bear is it exactly? And why is there just this flimsy fence here?” I watched from a distance as they took his statement and, I determined by watching their facial expressions, Andrew seemed to answer their questions to their satisfaction.
The long, exhausting experience ended when the last of them left, and Andrew and I went back to the main building, going to his office. Instead of sitting in his desk chair, my boss vied for the couch that sat against one wall, used occasionally by visitors. I sat at the other end, leaning back heavily into the cushions.
Andrew spoke first, echoing his earlier sentiments and immediately making it clear that what occurred wasn’t my fault. I felt some anger at myself, mostly because I knew that if I’d used one of my weapons on one of them, they’d still be alive. But I hadn’t wanted to go to such extremes just because they’d climbed over a fence. They were dumb teenagers, right? I’ve never been tased or pepper sprayed, but I’d seen videos on YouTube and it didn’t look like a fun time.
“Look, you said it that first day in your interview, that people are stupid,” he told me. “Teenagers especially. You know that’s a fact. You did the best you could in that moment, so don’t look back and think of what you could’ve done to fix things, because solutions always seem obvious in hindsight. All right?”
“Yeah,” I muttered.
Andrew sent me home at that point, saying he’d take the rest of the shift. I was too weary to object, so I left.
Stanley was still sleeping safely in his bed, and that’s one thing I’m so grateful for. If this job took my brother from me, I’d be done with it. Still, I don’t relish waking up tomorrow and having to face him. I don’t know exactly how he’s going to react to the news, but it’s going to be the worst thing in the world that’s happened to him, mostly because of the guilt of not being able to talk them out of going. The same way I couldn’t talk them out of staying out of an enclosure.
My schedule is still nocturnal, so I’m not tired enough to sleep right now. Hopefully I’ll get sleepy soon. For now, I’ll play one of Stanley’s mindless old school video games with the sound muted. My main goal is to get the image of all that blood out of my head.
​
First / Previous

Tw: sa, mental illness and stalking.
Hi. I am currently grieving a relationship of mine and can’t really talk about it without sounding crazy to anyone in person so I decided to come here.
Relationships can mold people in many ways whether that be platonically or romantically. Unfortunately I grew up in sort of a colder house hold, always craving some kind of touch from my family, but my father was always deployed or working and my mother was always working as well. I guess you could say I developed an anxious attachment style with my friends because of this. Even as a kid, when people hurt my feelings I still wanted to be their friend so badly because I had so much forgiveness in my heart. Sure I was independent, I was the oldest sibling, but I really just wanted to be heard by someone. Even if that meant they’d hurt me, as long as they listened I didn’t care. I had a lot of terrible friendship experiences, especially in high school, but more so terrible dating experiences.
Past relationships.
My first serious relationship was with an older man, I was 16 and he was 20. I won’t go into the details about this relationship because this story isn’t about him, but he wasn’t good to me. He cheated, blackmailed me and abused me both mentally and physically. But for some reason. I stayed for 9 months. And he continued to block me, unblock me, block me, repeat until my face turned purple and my eyes couldn’t cry anymore. It hurt me so bad. I knew I didn’t do anything wrong, but he would hurt me so bad. And before you say, “why didn’t you leave?” He would record us during intercourse and threaten to send it to my high school so I was too scared to leave. I also had a lot of health issues in this time, cancer to be specific, and at school everyone kind of already thought I was weird because I was the girl who came back from summer vacation and was skinny and had a cut across her throat. The assumed I attempted, but it was just from surgery of a tumor removal. I was alone for the most part outside of him. I finally did leave though once I ended up in the hospital because of this man. I didn’t feel anything for him anymore, he would ruin me then and for the rest of my life. Because of this entire relationship, I think I developed ptsd or bpd. Apparently some form of mental illness runs in my family so this just triggered it. To make a long story short though, it ruined me. I struggle a lot still because of it, maybe I’ll talk about the whole story another time. But i didn’t get any help afterwards. i did get offered by my mother to go to therapy. I just considered it not that big of a deal, i didn’t want to be affected by this. I just wanted to try and move on. Even after everything he had done to me. I just wanted to let it all go. I was a kid after all. A few months after, I had built myself up a little and was now 17, I met another guy, 19. I was a Senior now, had some friends and actually started enjoying life. Sure that’s all great but guess what? He also cheated on me and mentally abused me. I had only stayed with him so long because my mom had cheated on my dad so I didn’t want to be home a lot because of the fighting. So I clung to him. And again I was in another relationship where I obviously wasn’t wanted. But this time he actually tried to leave instead of stringing me along. This was very early in, around the 3 month mark. I don’t know why… I just broke down and instead of letting him go because I’d caught him cheating, I drove to his house and begged him to stay. I drove. to his house. And begged him. to stay. Constant texts, calls on every app possible, knocking at the door. I was passionate, but why? I just didn’t want to have to go home? I don’t even know why I was so stupid. But we stayed together, for another 9 whole months. Patterns right? Well we finally broke up because I’d caught him cheating one last time and he just didn’t want to deal with me anymore because he knew he really just didn’t want me. Which is ok. There’s alot of things that told me I wasn’t the one for him but again, this story isn’t about him, we can talk about this another time. So what did I do? Well the second I got blocked by him one by one on every platform, I again felt intense rage and sadness and started spamming and calling and this time even making fake numbers. I feel ashamed I was so alone I felt the need to try and cling to these men. It is disgusting. I wish I was better. But after about a month and a few hookups I was back to normal and didn’t care. Well this time I stayed single for two years. I understood I needed to work on myself and actually become an adult now that I was 18. I did go to college for a about two months but ended up dropping out because I’d realized with all the health issues, abusive relationships and lost times I had in high school, i wanted to find myself. So I saved up to move out my parents house, started playing more video games and making more friends, moved out and partied a lot. Lots of live shows and concerts, I was thriving. I finally wasn’t depressed and actually felt like I had meaning. I was getting a lot of attention online, getting recognized at every party or show. I felt really good. For the first time in my entire life, I felt good. I wasn’t just the sick girl anymore.
The confession.
Well that brings me to September of last year. After two years I was finally ready to love, have a real nice good relationship to be in. You know, meet my husband or whatever. The only problem was that I’d gone on dates a little and I was on dating apps, but everyone in my city goes to this really fancy art school and they’re all really stuck up and ugly so I wasn’t really into anyone locally. But tiktok, tiktok had some beautiful men. And I am quite the escapist so the idea of a long distance relationship didn’t seem so bad. So that’s where I met him . I woke up one day to a new follower and I was instantly impressed. He posted niche things that I was into like current hardcore music recommendations or books that he found interesting. Most importantly though he was so pretty. Actually the most gorgeous man I’ve ever laid eyes on. So we texted. We texted everyday and I found out he’d actually visited my city before and loved it. The only problem was that he was 7 hours away. But it didn’t matter to me. Usually with new guys I was extremely skittish, hard to open up, usually ghosting men or friend zoning them. I am a hard nut to crack, but I think we can agree opening up can be hard when your trust gets broken. With him though, we texted all the time and FaceTimed and I just wanted to meet him so badly. Well we were all great until I’d looked through his following casually and found out he kissed another girl behind my back after we’d talked about being exclusive. When I found out I immediately confronted him and he just blocked me. And it happened again. I started begging him on another app he didn’t have me blocked on to stay and give me a chance. And he eventually answered and stayed with me all night talking about how he was sorry and he wanted to meet me and he was just using her in that moment to forget about me incase i wasn’t real. It was still so upsetting for me, but I do have to admit I didn’t want to let him go because there was something so charming about him. I also had told him about my past relationships and health issues etc and it felt like he really understood me. He was always gentle with me, very considerate and always at my call if I ever needed him. He hadn’t messed up until this moment and I don’t know, something told me he was different and I just needed to relax and realize that long distance is hard for some people. So at this point I was determined to meet him in person. The cycle never breaks I guess. I then planned a trip on Halloween to go see him and I did and it was probably one of the best decisions of my entire life. His financial situation was a lot worse than mine, still living with his relatives. So I paid for everything except for the food on this trip and every trip going forward. The second id seen him in person I could feel shock waves of warm throughout my entire body, like I was meant to meet him. It was really awesome because I’d never had this kind of experience with anyone in my entire life. After four days of being together, I remember leaving and for the first time in my life, someone cried over me. I watched him cry as I was leaving the hotel parking lot, crying with him because I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to be there forever. Something in me changed that day, I felt so healed. I don’t know. We ended that trip as boyfriend and girlfriend and for the next three months we would call every day, text a lot and just have a good time. I visited him again on his birthday in December and ended up also meeting his friends. It was good, everything was so good. I felt so extremely connected to this man. He used to be silly and say things to me like “I’m not a spiritual person, but I really think we were meant to meet. I swear we walked down the same street somewhere in (my city) or touched the same sign. It’s like I’ve known you my whole life” and that was extremely reassuring. Until the first week of January. On New Year’s Day he told me he was excited to spend this new year with me, but now, a week in I’d called him about visiting on my birthday and he told me not to come. I was so upset. I went to see him for his birthday, so what was the problem with mine? Well he said for money reasons. Which was true, we both weren’t financially well at all and we were both working 35-45 hours a week just to see each other, but I had enough, I was coming. It was my 20th birthday and I wasn’t about to leave my teens without some kind of memory and I loved every memory we had. I didn’t see anything wrong with that. Throughout the next few days after that he got more and more distant and it was tearing me apart. Which I should’ve expected this, but he eventually did send that awful break up text. He claimed it was because of depression, but it didn’t feel right. I’ve dealt with depression the majority of my life and I can say anytime I’m feeling alone he’d make it all better. It was easy to ignore things with that kind of support, it was the first time I had anything like that. So I told him I’d be here for him, we didn’t have to break up, I would be here for him and we could work through this without giving up. But he didn’t want to and blocked me on everything except for discord and Snapchat. So what did I do at 1 am when I received this text, I drove to see him. I thought maybe if he saw me, maybe the distance is the problem, maybe I could go see him and calm him down. I’m stupid. I’m crazy. Once I got there I immediately called him and well… I didn’t get to see him. He was extremely upset I’d just drove 7 hours after he tried to break up with me and did not want to see me. After an hour of talking and trying, eventually I drove back home. He did make sure to call me during my trip and felt extremely bad for not seeing me, but I was so mentally defeated by now. Once I got home for the next week we talked about things and decided for my birthday I would still come and afterwards we would go on a break and take some space to deal with our mental problems so we could come back as better people. I don’t like breaks. I understand they are usually just the slow end, but I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt because I really truly did love this man. During this week before I came he did still have me blocked, but of course I had another tiktok account and noticed he’d been following tons of new girls and posting thirst traps and such that many of the same girls would comment on. This made me extremely upset. But I bottled it up because the one time I tried to ask him if he was cheating, he simply got defensive and said no. So I didn’t want to make things worse, I just wanted to see him . When I went to visit for my birthday it was a normal trip, had a good time and it’s like nothing was wrong with us. Until the last day. I casually mentioned visiting again in March so that way we could save all February and not be stressed about another trip. Well. He said “I kind of thought it would go without saying that we won’t be planning things together anymore.” I immediately began crying and went into the other room. It was really over. It was like the guy that I first met, the one who promised me the world, told me I was special and I was his forever, he was gone. But that thought couldn’t even boil properly because he was there in the room a second later, holding me and telling me to breathe. After I calmed down I of course gave a long speech about how I was always there for him, I loved him no matter what, I wanted to be with him forever and he was the person I couldn’t see myself without. And he didn’t say a word. He just looked at me with the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen and stood over me. I don’t quite remember how this all ended because it was an episode but we ended up having intercourse and he left with an I love you. Before I drove home that next day, I’d visited him at his college for a bit because I didn’t know when the next time I’d see him was. I felt like things would be okay. We took some final pictures with my digital camera and kissed a lot. It was normal. Yea until he gave me his “lucky 2 dollar bill.” He gave it to me and told me to hold onto it for him for good luck. For forever he said. Something about it was so .. sad. I kind of knew this was the last time I’d see him. Even though we kept saying “don’t worry it’s only until March!” I kind of knew. His expressions were still sad, just so empty. I just knew. So we said goodbyes and I pretended it wasn’t the last time I’d see him and I went home. Well for the next month it was horrid. The same girls showing up in his comments, no more calls unless I begged for them and a constant reminder of the break. He ruined every day. I don’t understand why things were going the way they were, but they did. And I understood he was doing this on purpose now. So in a final attempt to save this relationship I did confront him one last time about the potential cheating and I was hit with the “the truth is I don’t want to be with you anymore.” And then a paragraph about how sorry he was, a picture of us and then I was blocked. No explanation, no closure. Nothing. It went from the purest love I’d ever felt to a ghost in the snap of a finger. I was so lost. So the cycle continued. I called over and over, but this time. It was worse. I feel bad for doing this. I wish I was better, but I just really didn’t want to lose him. I didn’t know if he cheated for real, but he was a good person. He treated me so well, was so loving and considerate of me. He always made sure I felt beautiful. He introduced me to this whole new world of music and movie culture. I don’t know. I loved the way his warmth felt on mine. I didn’t want to let this go. So I got my friends to text him, and when he blocked them, I made new fake numbers. Dumping hundreds of dollars into stupid phone apps to try and contact him. He just got more and more mad but I just wanted to talk to him, I just wanted to fix this. I didn’t understand it. Eventually he did talk to me, calm me down, promise to talk to me again. But days went by, and he didn’t. So again, I called and texted and called and texted. I stalked his socials every day, waiting for a repost to know he was on his phone. I tried to “move on”. I’d went on dates, slept with another man, gone to concerts, parties… connected with nature? I tried it. But I just wanted him and I was far to depressed to even do anything other than cry at this poin. And unfortunately this continued for 4 months. I just couldn’t stop. Everytime I was better, I just got sad and started texting him again. Why did he did this? Why did I have to go? Answers that I had never received. And wouldn’t because he continued to ignore me of tell me to fuck off and leave his life. At this point I only said kind things, begging him to just talk to me and just to remember me and how much I missed him. But he was so cruel. I just wanted to talk to him. So that’s when I threatened him. Early on in our relationship I’d done some of his homework for college for him and I had all the screenshots and told him if he didn’t answer and explain why he just randomly let go is id send the screenshots to his school. He replied. He called. Of course he was mad I threatened him, but I just wanted answers and i couldn’t deal with the silence anymore. But I still didn’t get answers because he himself said he didn’t know why he randomly lost love for me. He told me he’d done this to the girl before me as well and this time with me he tried to be nice about it, but he just didn’t love me anymore just like the last girl. And with that, i grew even more depressed. I stopped calling for about a week but on a drunk night i tried my final Resort, watsapp. The only thing he didn’t block me on. And he replied. Sorta. He talked to me. Promised not to block me and that we could stay cool. He would text me when he could because apparently he was very busy. Just… letting me in again I thought. But I was stupid and of course this was just a way to get me to shut up. And again I got mad when he didn’t reply for days and eventually I figured out how to turn off my no caller Id to stop wasting money on the fake number apps and called again and again. I just felt like time was running out for us and we could still save it. I just wanted to save it. I had let go of everything before, let people hurt me, let everything just disappear like it didn’t matter. But I didn’t want to now, I wanted to fix it. I wanted to work on us to be better people. I’m so stupid. This turned into more rage obviously and I ended up threatening him again and saying if he didn’t answer I’d text his mother. I feel bad. I wouldn’t actually do these things, but the problem is that he wouldn’t answer if I was nice so at this point I was so desperate. And he called, instantly. We had a long talk, he was upset but calmed down and so did I. Eventually he agreed to try to take a week to fix our relationship and try and see if any feelings can come back to life. God I was so excited. I knew it could work and he’d promised he’d try.. right? He promised. Well. Three weeks went by and we called 4 times for twenty minutes each. Had meaningless conversation because he was so “busy”. I’d reply instantly to him, to which he’d reply after every hour to three hours. I tried everything to be cool about things. I respected when he said he didn’t want to call, i didn’t spam him. I sent him pictures of things i did that day, sent him new music I’d found. Waited patiently to talk about our relationship and not stupid things. Waited for him to not be so busy. Eventually though, I just got mad. On the last day, I asked him to call after he’d been out at a party the night before. He didn’t answer. I asked again. No answer. So I spammed. And I called. And all he said was “busy”. I didn’t care. I told him to call me now. He did after about thirty minutes. And we sat on the phone for an hour. Him saying how much he hated me, hated who I was, wanted me out his life, didn’t care about us and he stopped trying after the first week because he realized he didn’t like me at all. Everything I said gave him the ick. To which I combated with how much I tried and how he promised he’d tried and we would’ve had better conversations if he just actually talked to me. But he didn’t care. I tried to talk about our relationship, how much I loved him. How much I knew about him and how I was just wanting to see him again. But again, he didn’t care. It was then that he stopped me in my words about an hour and twenty minutes into this call and said “if you contact me again I’m getting a restraining order on you.” I was silent. I knew I overstepped, but was it really this bad? He then talked about how he was tired of dealing with this and just wanted to live his life without me. He didn’t need me threatening him, he wasn’t going to have his mom figuring out about all this. He wasn’t going to talk to me ever again, there was never going to be an us ever again and he’d known that since we got together that he never really wanted us. He apparently still didn’t know why, but he just knew the entire relationship that he didn’t want me. I didn’t fight this. I simply told him I was sorry and that if he ever wanted back into my life, I’d always love him. And we said good bye. I am still processing this, it’s only been a few days. But I feel so empty. I know I need help, I’m trying to get an therapist and get a true diagnosis. I feel immense pain. Cheating is bad, it’s terrible. But I didn’t mean to scar him for life. I just wanted things to go back to normal. I suppose I don’t know what else to say. I will think about this for the rest of my life and I feel extremely bad for hurting the only person I really ever loved.
I’m sorry.

Hello folks,
I did an online transaction of Rs 599 (paid to a merchant Ing*FX Mart) on 15th May 2024. I got an order confirmation email immediately, promising to deliver in 3 to 5 days (I stay in a metro for reference).
However, even a week after the order was placed, there was no update from their end. I replied on the order confirmation mail (since there is no customer care phone number on their website) on 20th May, but did not receive a response yet.
Today on 23rd May, I dropped them a mail and asked to share order status or process my refund. Simultaneously, I reached out to Axis bank (credit card issuer) and asked them to reverse the transaction. They have created a Service Request, but say that it may take up to 120 days to process.
Is there anything else I could have done/can do about this situation? Please guide.

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Hi, I 26M was in a relationship for almost 8 good years with my 26F partner. Everything was going good and the day prior to our breakup it felt like we put aside all our differences.
Context: My GF basically claimed to have a very tough schedule to keep up at work. She would be the solo stakeholder for any tasks at her firm. Also she would pursue freelancing after work hours as a consultant. In between all of these, she also intends to study for law. I totally understand her perspective that her schedule is packed and obviously she wouldn’t be able to make time for us.
And yes, in the past I’ve been needy and borderline didn’t respect her boundaries. Also I’ve been working on myself too. This being my first real relationship, I definitely sensed a connection which somehow restricts me from moving on. I mean I could move on by myself by working on myself and being the best damn self to show up. However, I have select few questions that constantly haunt me. If it’s too late for me to make changes and be my best self in order for her to witness that I’ve not taken her for granted.
Also, how long do I wait for her to come back? Considering this is the second time we ended up breaking up cuz she was feeling too overwhelmed with her work line and also unable to deal with the toxicity of her own family.
This current breakup seems exactly just like the previous one and in both, I ended up screwing things. It’s all so new to me and I really want to be the best for this girl. I’ve been in therapy for a while and it helped me realise where did I go wrong and also helped me find myself too. But end of the day it’s not like I’m chasing something that doesn’t exist. I’m holding on to the hope that yes somewhere she’s also waiting for me.
From her end, she at the time of breakup told me that she definitely loves me and that’s something that won’t go away and she’s not gonna get into relationships right away( including with me ). Considering she needs to figure things out in her life as well just like I’m making changes in my life. Also she says she’s too overwhelmed with work, so till she figures that out, the idea that she’s not in a relationship is kinda liberating and not like she’s burdened.
From many online blogs and videos I’ve watched, this seemed to me like signs of a dismissive avoidant. And there I’ve also heard, DA does come back and is capable of change provided they themselves feel the need to change.
So here you have it, please guide me as to what my plan should be for reconciliation. Currently I’m in No contact and her birthday is coming up too so pretty clueless there as well.
Please I could definitely use some advice or some help here.
Thanks :)

tldr; casual situationship developed, caught feelings and broke things off but coincidentally ran into eachother and we hooked up, had a talk and then it was truly over… BUT… a year and a half later I want to message him again.
Hey all,
Been grappling heavy with the optics of hitting up an old fling to hang and I guess see what happens. There’s a lot of reasons why I shouldn’t which I’m cognizant of but I want to hear people’s thoughts.
For context, I met this guy (we’ll call him Carlos) in early 2019 in our college dorm. I hooked up with him and his now ex (lol) and for the past few years we would have inconsequential “boredom” hookups every 7-8 months.
That’s how it was until 2022, when we somehow went from hanging out every few months at the start to once a week in late summer and early fall. We got along really well and had similar interests and worldviews, which has been rare for me to find in other gay men in our small-ish city. There were multiple times where he’d tell me how much he likes me and enjoys my company and somehow my lover ass did not catch any feelings this entire time period… until I did!
Some other important factors here as I get to my larger point:

• at the time he was working 80 hours a week. A large chunk of that was him spending the night at the youth shelter he worked at, but nonetheless he was extremely busy, so it was hard at times to plan stuff.
• From something he told me once about his relationship with my ex (as well as how this ex freakishly tries to hit me up every so often and doesn’t understand “no”) it’s clear it was extremely toxic, and was on and off until 2021. Carlos himself is truly one of the kindest and most compassionate people I’ve ever met, and it’s actually horrible that he went through that (tldr of course).

I started crushing in November, when due to him being busy and having a mental health crisis he wouldn’t reply for days or weeks at a time. He was already chronically bad at replying with me and his friends but suddenly not being able to see him made me realize… hold on… I actually care about this guy and miss him!! So much!! I asked him about it and he revealed this info and that he didn’t think I cared about him to which I said duh!! of course I do!! He said he felt bad and apologized that he thought that about me & that he cared too, he said he missed me. It was really sweet and we made plans to hang.
Shocker: we only saw eachother once in December. By new years my crush had spiraled and I decided to end things with him. I respect that he wasn’t ready for a relationship (if he were to ever want one) not only due to emotionally unavailability (which he mentioned once, due to his toxic ex) and that he had more important life priorities. If he wanted to reply or hang or date he would. That’s just how it is. He was really saddened hearing this but he understood.
Flash forward to my birthday in late January. I’m at a bar with my friends that Carlos had showed me, and as his name is literally in my mouth… he walks up next to me. He had come in during a run to just get some water. I NEVER thought I’d see him again. We both did a triple take and awkwardly said hi and he left.
He texted me saying he was surprised but that it was nice to see me and he complimented my outfit. And despite me setting a boundary for myself, this frazzled me so bad I invited him out with me and my friends. We hung out all night. It was magical! I later found out when I was in the bathroom he told my friend how much he admires me (sharing this as another piece of why I think about hitting him up, but let’s continue).
Here’s the worst mistake I made: I foolishly invited him to spend the night, and he checked in multiple times that it was really okay for me, to which I said yes, not realizing the optics of breaking a personal boundary I had set. It’s not even that I wanted to hook up with him, it’s that crush aside, I genuinely like him for who he is. He is kind and down to earth and driven and cute as shit. I’ve been in my town for 6 years and have had a number of flings and dates and nobody came close to the chemistry we had. There’s a lot of fish in the sea but for queer people it’s like finding the only two spots of oxygenated water in a dead, super-sized ocean.
In the morning he was happy as hell and again told me how much he liked me (trust me when I say it was in an appropriate way and not a weird manipulative thing). I politely cut him off and said let’s talk about things later.
A week later we get lunch, I open up about how I feel, albeit sloppily, and he basically says he had no feelings and was never looking to date, in the nicest way possible. It was like an electrical current sliced between us in that moment, we both knew it was over. After we talked I felt extremely embarrassed about my impulsivity with inviting him over. I feel it reflects immaturity, disrespect, and maybe a little desperation… in the context of if I were to message him again. But he did tell me that he understood and knew I would never do anything malicious.
This was late January 2023. Since then, we’ve talked very briefly, like him or me sending memes every few months, and we even almost linked up at a venue in town because he saw me on snap maps and he wanted to say hi, but for reasons we didn’t end up getting to see eachother.
AND NOW TO MY REAL POINT! At the time of us hanging I was woefully insecure, immature, inexperienced, downright stupid and socially anxious. I crushed hard because he gave me hits of dopamine, as in for me he was completing me due to my insecurities instead of complimenting me like a healthy crush should.
Flash forward to today and I’ve done a 180. I’m extroverted now, have a fantastic friend group, have ambitions and goals and through traumatic events in 2023 wisened up and learned about life. I briefly talked to a guy online after him but ended things and there was a 6 month period where I had no desire for hookups or a relationship, a rarity for me.
I find myself confident and ready to pursue a relationship for the right reasons, and I mean that. But even a year and a half later he is the only person I think about. When I tell you we got along fantastically I mean it. Hell, during our final talk he even told me I was different from other guys for him because we actually hung out and didn’t just get drunk and hook up. It’s hard to truly move on knowing he’s still in my city; I see him when I’m driving sometimes and I’m constantly getting bombarbed with tiktok “You may know this person: Carlos” notifications.
At the time he explicitly expressed no desire for a relationship. And given that, and the embarrassment I have over me breaking a boundary, I feel that hitting him up even just to hang casually could be disrespectful; I am no fool about the optics here. But on the other hand… it’s been 16 months, and when we caught up briefly last year he told me he found a much better job and works normal hours now.
Because of how well we got along and that there is no bad blood I want to hit him up, catch up, and ask if he wants to hang, in the most respectful and casual way I can. I would really really love the timeline where we’re able to just be friends, if we hung out it’s something I would prioritize. But obviously I would date the SHIT out of this man!!! I cannot help but think that there is a possibility as a result of the time since we last talked and my growth. And I would never want to come across like I just wanted to be friends in order to date. I would feel things out and be honest with him quickly and end things if I couldn’t handle being friends or began crushing knowing he wasn’t interested.
Huge rant, but let me know what you guys think if there is space for me to talk with him again or if I should let it be.

I have two stories from when I worked at WalMart. (There are more, but these stuck out, because I was willing to fight these people). Oddly, both of these happened in the produce section.
So, for background, I started in receiving, but had to change departments. Ended up in order fulfillment for online pickups. So I run through the store picking items that people later come to pick up.
The first one was when I was getting some apples for an order and set my scanner down while I bagged the apples. This boomer comes up and picks up my scanner. I say, "sorry about that, its mine." Then, I take it back. He starts yelling, "Don't ever grab anything out of my hand! I will kick your ass!" I repeated that it was my scanner, and I had set it down to pick up the produce. He starts going off about how disrespectful I am, and how he would "teach me a lesson." At this point, I laughed a little, and told him he was going to get booted out if he kept going. (Now, I'm 6'3 and 200 lbs... he was MAYBE 5'8 and way less weight or athletic build.) As soon as i started taking a stand, he literally ran away yelling "Don't threaten me!"
The second is shorter. I was picking again, and a boomer couple (well really, the husband) had a question. He asked if the single ear corn on the wall was the same price as the same corn on the island. I said, "Yep, same price." I have no idea what set him off about that, but he starts going off about how service workers don't listen, or pay attention. I explained that I had answered his question, and even his wife was telling him the question had been answered. Then he starts going off about how I was a "minimum wage" employee and should show some respect. This was after the earlier one, and I was sick of it. I told this guy we could step outside, AND he would be banned after I beat the shit out of him.
No consequences for either of these confrontations for me... I don't know about them. Never saw either of them again.

As is well known, China is the world's largest manufacturing factory, so there are many frisbee manufacturers in China. Due to the large number of factory, many people do not know which product to choose when purchasing. Here I will introduce the top 10 Chinese frisbee manufacturing company. The top 10 manufacturers have strong strength and technology, so they can guarantee the quality of the frisbee produced.

1. Ningbo Yikun Sports Culture Communication Co., Ltd

Yikun Sports founded in 2008 by a group of disc sports enthusiasts and experts, Yikun stands as a specialized supplier based in Ningbo, China, dedicated to the development and provision of professional products and services in the realm of disc sports. Notably, Yikun holds the distinction of being the first and only Asian company with products approved at the Championship level by both the World Flying Disc Federation and the Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA). With a mission centered on promoting disc sports and fostering a healthier lifestyle, Yikun has been a key player in the flying disc industry for over 15 years.
As the inaugural Asian brand to secure approvals from major official organizations such as the World Flying Disc Federation, USA Ultimate Association, and Professional Disc Golf Association, Yikun boasts a team comprising professional disc players who intimately understand players' needs beyond manufacturing. Collaborating with esteemed universities in China, Yikun has established a robust research and development team dedicated to enhancing materials, generating innovative ideas, and introducing new technologies to the flying disc industry. With a global reach, Yikun currently exports discs to over 50 countries, with ACEFUN serving as the sales window for the brand.

2. Dongguan Volun Sports Technology Co., LTD

Dongguan Wolun Sports Technology Co., Ltd. stands as a specialized manufacturer, focusing on the production of Disc Golf, Ultimate Disc, and electric toothbrushes.
The company's facility is equipped with a professional design team, a dedicated molding room, an injection workshop, and a production and assembly workshop. All products undergo independent development and design, holding certifications from international bodies like WFDF, PDGA, CE, FDA, ROHS, etc.
Wolun Sports Technology provides comprehensive ONE-STOP services, covering product development, high-precision mold design and manufacturing, power system research and development, embedded software development, as well as injection molding and product assembly.
With a robust infrastructure featuring 16 injection molding machines and two production lines, the company has the capacity to produce 250,000 high-quality discs and 300,000 electric toothbrushes monthly.

3. Yiwu Mecca Sports Equipment Co., Ltd.

Yiwu Mecca Sports Equipment Co., Ltd. was established in 2011. The company specializes in the research and development, production, and sales of sports training equipment. Currently, it has 5 senior engineers, 8 design and development personnel, and an injection molding machine with a weight of 2000g. One machine with a weight of 1200g, three machines with a weight of 600g, two machines with a weight of 300g, and five machines with a weight of 200g can fully meet the production needs of various products.
The main products include competitive frisbee, frisbee golf, football training logo discs, speed ladders, football corner flags, football training hurdles, various training equipment such as roadblocks, tactical boards, red and yellow cards, patrol flags, etc., which can be customized according to customer requirements.

4. Hangzhou Hongda Sports & Entertainment Co., Ltd.

Founded in 1993, Hangzhou Hongda Sports & Entertainment Co., Ltd. is situated in Fuyang, Hangzhou, China. Specializing in the manufacturing of various rackets, including Badminton, Tennis, Squash, Beach paddles, and Table tennis bats, the company adheres to the tenet, "Quality is the soul of an enterprise," placing a strong emphasis on product quality.
With over 10 years of dedicated efforts, Hangzhou Hongda has garnered a stellar reputation for delivering quality products, competitive pricing, punctual shipments, and excellent service, resulting in rapid business growth. The company's clientele spans across Europe, America, Germany, South Korea, South and North Asia, the Middle East, and other regions, with 100% of its products exported to foreign countries.
Hangzhou Hongda Sports & Entertainment Co., Ltd. is recognized for its excellent customer relations and has gained high regard from clients. The company welcomes visits to its facilities, and OEM orders are highly encouraged. Hangzhou Hongda looks forward to establishing prosperous business relationships in the near future.

5. Ningbo Horizon Rubber And Plastic Co., Ltd.

Established in 2015, Horizon Rubber & Plastic Co., Ltd. emerged in Ningbo City, China, dedicated to delivering top-notch products and efficient services. With robust supply chains and strategic access to Port Resources, the company swiftly ascended as a leading exporter. In a strategic move to expand operations, a factory investment was made in the north of Jiangsu province in 2021.
Specializing in Sports & Outdoors accessories and Health & Household accessories, Horizon Rubber is committed to providing a one-stop-shop for a comprehensive range of accessories and equipment. The company's growth trajectory is set to continue over the next few years, with plans to consistently upgrade designs to meet evolving customer requirements and market demands.
Horizon Rubber & Plastic Co., Ltd. welcomes inquiries, questions, and suggestions. The company values customer feedback and strives to maintain open lines of communication for continuous improvement.

6. Ningbo Junye Sports Products Co., Ltd

Ningbo Junye Cultural and Sports Supplies Co., Ltd. is a company that has been integrating production, sales, design, and production for nearly 20 years. It mainly produces sports promotional gifts and fitness equipment, including Rubik's Cube, Frisbee, Whistle, Jumprope, Inflator, racket, and so on. The company has more than 20 injection molding machines, 4 assembly lines, nearly 100 automation equipment, more than 100 production employees, and a strong design and quality inspection team. The company has been committed to the development of the international market, and 80% of its production is exported to various countries in Europe and America.
At the same time, in order to better improve the company's management level and quality awareness, Ningbo Junye has passed WCA, Wal Mart, H&M, ETL, TUV, Asia Inspection and other right inspection plants, as well as ISO9001 quality inspection plants. And it is planned to complete Disney and BSCI factory inspections in 2015. Ningbo Junye provided product support for World Expo activities in 2008 and was also selected as a private enterprise for the Expo in 2010. LEO, the owner of the enterprise, was exhibited for 180 days at the Private Enterprise Pavilion and was active in various local chamber of commerce activities, providing the company with various shared resources and business opportunities.

7. Chengdu Haochuan Rubber Co., Ltd.

Chengdu Haochuan Rubber Co., Ltd. is a professional enterprise that produces various silicone, rubber products, and rubber materials. Annual production of over 10 million, with a daily production capacity of 100000 pieces. Fully meet the physical requirements of customers for heat resistance, oil resistance, pressure resistance, acid and alkali resistance, wear resistance, weather resistance, tensile strength, tear resistance, flame retardancy, shock absorption, cold resistance, electrical insulation, radiation resistance, low breathability, etc. The product is widely used in industries such as electronics, appliances, communication equipment, computers, toys, audiovisual equipment, sports equipment, health, medical equipment, and mechanical manufacturing.
Since its establishment, the company has continuously introduced imported equipment and production technology, striving to improve the level of processing technology; Continuously absorb and adopt advanced management concepts to improve management quality. Chengdu Haochuan company starts from mold design, mold making, sampling, sales, after-sales service, and integrated operations; For several years, the company has been market-oriented, quality assured, reputation winning customers, innovation seeking development, and constantly exploring new markets. Excellent quality and reasonable prices are the powerful guarantees for Haochuan Rubber to maintain invincibility in today's fierce market competition. Business philosophy: Putting people first, developing factories through technology, striving for excellence, and pursuing quality. Quality policy: Excellent quality, systematic management, continuous improvement, and customer satisfaction.

8. Yongkang Jiarui Plastic Industry Co., Ltd.

Yongkang Jiarui Plastic Industry Co., Ltd. stands as a technology-driven production enterprise specialized in PVC plastic granulation. Situated in Wuyi, Zhejiang, amidst the renowned hot spring city of southern China, it strategically neighbors Yongkang, a Chinese science and technology hardware hub, and Yiwu, a prominent commercial city. Leveraging these geographical advantages, Jiarui Plastic Industry remains responsive to market dynamics, updated product information, and raw material procurement advantages. Over years of exploration, the company has built a comprehensive quality management system for processing PVC particles and products, earning a stellar reputation in the industry.
Jiarui Plastics produces a diverse range of soft and hard new materials from recycled particles, offering various varieties, colors, and competitive prices. Widely utilized in industries such as frisbees, cables, power cords, plugs, tool handles, leisure car footpads, household product footpads, sealing strips, shoe materials, automotive parts, and toys, these materials are adaptable to various molding methods, including extrusion, injection molding, and blow molding.
With the burgeoning development of e-commerce and Huizhou merchants in recent years, Jiarui Plastics has established a robust research team catering to product development for these sectors. The company prioritizes swift product shipment with optimal quality and provides exceptional after-sales management services, fostering a commendable reputation within the industry. Adhering to the business philosophy of "only gold products can Ruida," Jiarui Plastics invites both new and existing customers to experience their exquisite technology, solid reputation, enthusiastic service, and prompt supply for a mutually prosperous future.

9. Taishan Changhui Toy Products Co., Ltd.

Changhui Toy established in 2004, Taishan Changhui Toy Products Co., Ltd. is situated in Taishan City, Guangdong Province. Boasting over 100 employees and a sprawling 25,000 square meter factory, Changhui Toys specializes in crafting diverse foam toy products like EVA, sponge, EPE, PU toys, pet toys, and sports frisbee toys.
Changhui Toys products have garnered popularity in the United States, Europe, Australia, and other regions. The company houses a professional development and design team ensuring products align with market demands. With 40+ patent certificates, including 3 invention patents, all items comply with American ASTM-963-17, ICPSC&CPSA, 10P, formamide-free, European EN71, REACH, PAHS, and CE standards.
Operating under the principles of quality, service, customer satisfaction, and maintaining a stellar reputation, Changhui Toys introduces its own brand, SOFTOYS, while also providing OEM product services. The commitment to delivering health and happiness is evident in SOFTOYS, ensuring soft and safe products, a cherished tradition at Changhui Toys, transforming any moment into playtime.

10. Ningbo Kingman Outdoor Products Co., Ltd.

Kingman established in 1993, the Kingman factory stands proudly in YuYao City, renowned as the "Kingdom of Plastics" and "Home of Molds." Spanning an impressive 30,000 sqm and strategically located just 300m from the Huhangyong Expressway exit, it is equipped with a trading department, research unit, production division, and quality control unit.
As a proficient manufacturer specializing in outdoor sports and camping products, Kingman independently develops a diverse range of items, including disc golf baskets, survival chain saws, camping tables, and chairs. The factory prides itself on offering comprehensive one-stop services, seamlessly guiding clients from initial quotes to shipping arrangements. The overarching goal is to prioritize stability and deliver high-quality products.
Boasting a dedicated sales team, skilled technical and management personnel, and advanced detection devices, Kingman excels in personalized customization, providing 24/7 online support. Globally appreciated, Kingman lives by the motto 'Technology as the Impetus, Innovation as the Power,' while adhering to principles of "Efficient and Pragmatic, Integrity Management." With a keen eye on collaborations, Kingman invites partners from various industries to join hands in creating optimal performance. The ultimate aim is to be recognized for delivering products that expertly balance price and value. Welcome to Ningbo Kingman!
Top 8 disc golf chain basket manufacturers in china 2024
Top 10 Disc Golf manufacturers in china 2024

I (23F) have been struggling with this issue for several months now and have been receiving somewhat mixed reviews, so advice is also welcome. I am also a first time poster and this is going to be long, so hello!
To start, let me give some context to my family dynamic. My parents divorced when I was very little and have since remarried (spouses will be referred to as bonus mom or bonus dad). My dad has always had 100% custody of my brother (20M) and I and we have also moved around a lot, so I have no friends dating before college friends.
With the exception of two seasons of a several month program, I have always lived with my father. He married my bonus mom when I was 18 and they have since had my two sisters (4 and 1 years old) and have a baby on the way. My bonus mom and I have had a good relationship, and while we have had some major rough patches, her and I have both put a lot of effort into our relationship and as a result our relationship grew much better and our respect for each other grew as well. I also very much adore my baby sisters.
My mother married my bonus dad while I was in middle school and have always adored him as well. He has been nothing but kind to myself and my brother and is a massive teddy bear. For a long time my mother and I have been somewhat distant from each other. I think we both just hurt from the decisions she had made in the past, but since then we've grown closer and this situation has made even more so.
All sets of parents are religious. My father and bonus mom are a niche kind of Christian. My mother and bonus dad are more of a typical kind of Christian. This piece is a very dynamic part of the story.
After my dad got a job in another state my bonus mom, brother, two sisters, and myself moved there. I quickly found a college to finish my associates degree that I fell in love with. I finished up my associates with little issue and had planned to stop there. However, when approached by the registrar with a degree audit letting me know I could finish my bachelor's within a year, all of my parents strongly encouraged me to pursue it. I was unsure at first because the amount of debt I had accumulated on this schooling venture made me nervous (the state where I had originally started my degree allowed me to pursue it for free, this one did not), but I chose to pursue it anyway.
That fall semester I started to pursue my bachelor's degree I got to know someone who I had previously noticed and admired from afar. He would become my boyfriend (21M). Let's call him Babe because he is one. Him and I have a lot of the same passions and our shy friendship developed into feelings over the course of the semester. To make the long story short, we ended up sleeping together and going on dates, and throughout this whole ordeal I never once felt used as I had in previous relationships with less intimacy. I felt 100% loved and cared for and I still do to this day.
At the end of the semester during finals week my bonus mom noticed him at the choir and jazz concert that my bonus mom and I both performed in. She had singled him out in the crowd when she noticed him observing me and later that evening asked who that "boy sitting alone" was. I tried to play dumb at first, but said he was a fellow classmate and friend. She asked if we had feelings for one another, to which I said yes. She asked me, "OP, why do you keep getting into these relationships that won't work?" Before this moment she had never seen him before and had never spoken to him before that. She informed me that we would have to talk to my father about this, and then I went to bed.
Side Note
In referring to "these relationships" she is making reference to a coworker I had liked that they also had not met. My dad and bonus mom instructed me to quit my job, which I did. There was also someone else who I had met online in a group of friends I had gotten close with, but they discouraged me from the group chat and from the guy, so I left the chat and him alone.
They had also not wanted me to go to a local Bible study because of how late it was at night and with how early I had to go to a different job in the morning. However, I think their real main concern "there are other young men there that are watching you and one of them could try and follow you home." Those parents live in the country just on the outskirts of town. The poor guy that would have supposedly followed me would have been lured into darkness and to a neighborhood that was very protective of its land.
When I have expressed that I wanted to go because I wanted friends, they told me, "Maybe God just wants you to be alone right now and just focus on Him." I at first thought this was legitimate, but later began to question that line of thinking.
Side Note Finished
Anyways, after that night I had texted Babe informing him what was happening. He told me if he needed to step back so I could work on my relationship with my parents he was more than willing to do so. He was also more than happy to be in my life. Just whatever was best for me. This was not the first time he had suggested this, and it honestly made me not want to let go of him more.
The next morning my father told me I needed to cut ties with Babe. I told Babe about this and we spent most of the day crying. Him and I performed our final concert that evening and I went to the grocery store to pick up some things for my bonus mom. She found out that I was at my concert and not at work and asked why she and my dad hadn't been invited. I told them that in the past I had tried to invite them to other concerts and things and had reminded them multiple times and put them on both calendars (monthly and weekly) for the family to see, but had been blamed for not informing them of my events the night of. I had grown tired of this and eventually stopped inviting them to things. They felt this wasn't fair since I tend to get my dates mixed up for different events, and said that they felt that trust had been broken.
Over the next few days (which was finals week, by the way) many conversations were had. I mostly listened and answered questions. Things seemed to be going well until they found out that we had slept together through a series of questions, and my father had blown up. He became so angry at Babe for "defiling [his] daughter" and described in detail how he wanted to hurt him. When they found out Babe was not a believer like ourselves, my father asked why I had stooped so low. It were these moments that sealed my decision to move out. My dad had assured me he was not angry with me, but I could not shake his anger towards Babe.
They also informed my brother what was going on, and him and I had a long conversation. He wanted me to stay with them at home, but was open to my boyfriend since " he must be really special if you slept with him." By the end of the conversation my brother had a positive impression of Babe and was decidedly Switzerland in this situation.
He had also asked me what I had done in return of my parents' kindness of letting me live rent-free in their home. I reminded him that any second that they needed something I would drop everything and do it for them. As long as I wasn't in class or at my in person job I would go wherever they wanted me to go and do whatever they wanted me to do. I would also help take care of my sisters on nights that I came home before they went to bed. I would give them baths and read them bedtime stories and get them dressed for bed and sometimes even put them to bed. I would watch them whenever I was asked to. If I had to do online work I either had to start late or it was cut short because my bonus mom would ask for help. Most anything that they would ask I would do. During days that I would be home all day I would help get the girls up and even watch them so that my bonus mom could nap and catch up on some much needed sleep. If my time and efforts were going unnoticed I was sadly displeased. I loved taking care of my sisters and helping around the house, but that doesn't mean that those things shouldn't be recognized. I also pointed out that I never asked for anything in return or ask for help with money. Sometimes I would get paid for watching them on date nights and whatnot (which were not often) but I never expected it.
This set of parents had also attempted to convince me to visit my mother and bonus dad and other family who live in another state. The irony of this is that they had thoroughly convinced me not to visit her on two occasions that I had planned to. The next evening my dad and bonus mom both told me the conditions of me living with them:

1. The truck would be taken away for two months. I would be taken to and from wherever I needed to go. This truck was my grandfather's truck who passed away last summer. My grandmother had been very insistent in wanting to put it in my name, but my dad and I insisted it be put in his name. At this point, the keys had been taken away and I was being transported to and from school. I was regretting not getting this truck in my name.
   
2. I would no longer be allowed to finish my bachelor's degree. Neither set of parents had ever contributed any money to my education or programs once high school finished up, with the exception of when I was asked to quit my job. Then my bonus mom and father paid maybe $400-$600 towards my tuition plus the other expenses and rent taken off for about two months before I got my online job with our friend.
   
3. I may also be asked to quit my in person job as well.
   

I told them I wanted to move out.
I had a college friend who was getting married that weekend offer her apartment to me while her and her husband went on their honeymoon for three weeks. That would give me enough time to cram my things into her place and search for a new one. That is where I was planning to stay temporarily. I had a feeling that this may fall through, and asked Babe if I could store some of my things like my furniture at his place and potentially stay there temporarily if my friend's place fell through. He had spoken with his landlord who also lives in the house, and his landlord said it would be okay.
Between all of this, Babe and I called my mother twice and explained the situation. She asked various questions about our relationship, including how to navigate and respect one another's beliefs as well as his family's (his family is Catholic), and we both had confidence that we could have compassion and respect for one another. She encouraged me to listen to my voice and covered the rest of what I needed in order to attend school the next semester. She thought my father putting me at this ultimatum with school was highly unfair and not very cash money (my words not hers).
I told Babe that if I was going to do this, he couldn't leave me and had to stick with me through it. He promised he would and has stuck to that promise to this day.
I removed my wall decor among other decor and hardware and wrapped them in clothes and garbage bags. Babe texted me throughout the night as I did this. I finished up at around 2:00 in the morning.
The next day as my father was taking me to school he asked if I was still with Babe. I said yes. He told me as long as I was still with him and sleeping with him I would have to move out, preferably by that night. The next 10 minutes or so of the drive consisted my father speaking curses over my life. Some of the more memorable include:
"You should take off your head covering. God is not covering you."
"You are rushing to sin and to shed man's blood."
"You will be a curse of destruction to anyone's home you come under."
Etc, etc.
I left the vehicle silently and went to my main building of work to weep. I called Babe crying and he assured me he would be there soon. He was, and him and his friend agreed to help me move some things out of the house before they left to see their families for the three week winter break. Their families lived in a different state. Them putting their break on hold meant a lot to me since his friend and I had hardly spoken before, and we were off. My parents were also on their way to an appointment for my sister about an hour away, so I knew the house would be empty and safe. I had also texted a coworker who knew what was happening and asked her if she could help move things and she agreed to come.
I let Babe and his friend only in the necessary parts of the house to collect my things. His friend mostly stayed by his truck in my driveway. I did my best to separate anything that may be of my parents since I was doing my best to move quickly. At one point I was informed that my bonus mom wanted to speak with me via our neighbor, so I went to go talk to my bonus mom on the phone. I was confused why she hadn't called me directly. I believe my neighbor had noticed unknown people carrying things out of the house and had informed my parents.
Apparently this was a conference call and my bonus mom and dad began to yell at me about how it was inappropriate to bring unknown men to the house and at the police and my father were both on their way. I apologize profusely and told them that I would leave immediately and ask them to call the police off since I was going to leave. I apologize saying that I didn't intend to disrespect them further or cause tensions to heighten, but they said that they would not call the police off and that my dad would not turn around. He also threatened to get in a fist fight with any unknown man on his property.
I told Babe that my father and police were on their way. He hurriedly gathered what he could while I grabbed important documents and things and rushed out of the house.
Lo and behold the cops had arrived and Babe and his friend were being searched. I set my purse down by Babe's friend's truck since it had a pocket knife and pepper spray in it and approached them with my hands up. I was also searched and the three of us were separated for questioning. Soon there were a total of 5 police cars and several police officers circulating between the 3 of us, hungry for the gossip. Unfortunately, Babe's friend was not terribly interesting since he was just trying to help and had no idea what was happening, so he got the least amount of attention. The cops mostly passed between Babe and I since we had the juicy details. All of the cops were confused why this whole situation was happening to begin with. Even those who were religious were confused how my parents could reject my boyfriend without ever speaking to him, and why that would cause me to need to move out in less than 24 hours.
They let us go and we got out of there as fast as we could. It was through this interaction that Babe and I became officially a couple since they had to ask "Who's that in relationship to you?" and boyfriend/girlfriend seemed to be the best response.
We dropped off what we could at my boyfriend's house and we all returned to school so I could ask for a place and they could get whatever Babe's friend needed for their trip. Babe and I said heartfelt goodbyes and I gathered what I could after some crying and a snack, and walked the 45 minutes or so it takes to get to his house. I collapsed into his bed, called out of work, and cried until I passed out.
My friend had still offered her place to me, but I refused saying that I wasn't going to intrude my sorrow on her during a time that was supposed to be joyous for her. I also realized that without a car it would be an hour or more to walk to and from work, and I close so that was not a good option. She did allow me to use her truck, so when my coworker picked me up from work that evening, we grabbed my friend's truck and went to my parents' house to grab everything I could think of that was mine. I informed them that I was coming, and they did not respond. My brother was also instructed not to help me with my move.
My father had locked up the place like Fort Knox so I could not get in through the way that would give me the easiest access to my room. I got in through the front door and went downstairs to open the garage (I lived on the garage level in the basement lol; which was actually quite a nice area; it resembled a little apartment) and found he had disconnected the power to it. When I went upstairs to wait I ran into my dad locking the front door. He turned towards me and looked at me and surprise and said, "You really came in here while we were praying?" I didn't know what to think of that. He reconnected the power to the garage and opened it, and watched coldly as my coworker and I moved things out. At the end, I returned my keys and told my dad that I loved him. He said he loved me too, and my coworker and I went to my boyfriend's house to unload my things.
Babe kept in constant contact with me and his landlord did his best to make sure I felt welcome and took great care of me when I needed it, between making sure I was fed and interacting with someone in my emotional fragility and even taking me to the ER when I was experiencing a lot of pain. His landlord even suggested I could move in, and that is when I began the excruciating process of sifting through all of my things and decorating the room. My mother and bonus dad also made sure to keep in closer contact with me as well, insisting I did nothing wrong but fall in love.
2 close family friends had also reached out to me during the week that followed my leaving. One was gently trying to guide me in the direction that she thought that I should go, but never shamed me. The second one sent me an angry text saying that I left God at my parents house and that I should return back to them, and that what I am doing is 100% wrong, and that I could block her if I want. She later texted me and apologized for her harsh words. I never have responded to either of them.
My father had also tried to withhold my paycheck from me, but eventually put it in the mail and it came to me via an address reroute. My bonus mom texted me saying the way I was speaking/not speaking to my father was dishonoring to him and I need to do better. She texted me that she missed me once. This was all within a week after moving out, and I never responded. I haven't heard from either of them since.
So now a little over 5 months have passed. I have army crawled through the semester and have successfully passed with honors and have graduated. My parents have missed all of the important events that have taken place during the semester, including the graduation ceremony. While I never invited them they also didn't exactly ask. My small group of friends have done their best to show support to me. Even small friends in unlikely places.
My father and bonus mom have not been in contact with me, but have insisted to others that they have tried to reach out to me and that this no contact situation has been 100% my doing. They had apparently been willing to talk until my friend from another state had come to see my graduation and pick up something of hers from my parents house that she had accidentally left with us, as well as my things. She had gone there twice asking for my things that day, and it had turned into a whole situation that ended up with them refusing to give her my items that I had left by accident and asking her to leave multiple times. There has also been a lot of other things that have happened but those are all stories of their own.
I am very happy with Babe as we journey through our relationship together. Well there have been so many emotional breakdowns, a few disagreements, and many, many tears, he has been so compassionate and gentle through it all. He has been so kind to me and has been gently guiding me to more healthy conflict-resolution tactics, lines of thoughts, and more. I had thought I was happy with my parents, but as time as gone on and as I reflected on my relationship with them I realized how shut down, isolated, and bottled up I was. I feel safe to cry in the arms of my beloved, to express my thoughts, make my own decisions, and to laugh with him too. When he is wrong he is quick to realize it and apologize. When I am feeling insecure his desire is to reassure me. I hope that I do the same for him. If I asked, I'm sure he would say so.
However, even despite all of this, I do miss my parents, my brother, and my sisters greatly. Especially my brother and my sisters. I am sad that I have missed my father's birthday and Mother's Day. I am sad that I will miss my new sibling's birth, and that they will miss my birthday. I want to reconcile with them, but I also want them to respect my decisions and especially respect Babe.
The few times that we have seen each other my father has not looked me in the eye or has barely acknowledged me. I know that it was my decision to move out, but with how quickly things went I feel like I was also kicked out. At first I only felt displaced, but now I also feel disowned. I'm not sure what they're telling people or even entirely what their side of the story is. My brother is still kind to me but our contact over the phone is very minimal. I'm sure that he has been discouraged to speak with me. When we run into each other we get to talk, but that's about it. I know that he is hurt and that he loves me, and I wish that there was more that I could do for him.
I am also scared of what my sisters' reactions will be if I do come back. I'm sure that they feel some level of abandoned, and I know that they have been crying about me because they miss me (via my aunt when she went and visited and ran into me). I don't wish for them to hate me, and I want to be involved, but I also don't want the Babe's vehicle that we share to be identified. If they called the cops on me once, what would stop them from doing it again? My trust for them completely dissipated after that incident, but the worst part of it all is that I didn't get to say goodbye to the girls or to my bonus mom. They had all gone to bed by the time I had come home from work and was finished moving out.
So... what should I do? AITA for trading my family for Babe and a bachelor's degree?

Thank you to Space paladin for the canvas and u/Acceptable_Egg5560 for proofreading and critique
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Memory transcript: Maarchal , MESEA Astronomers. Date: [Standard Farsul calendar ] september 8th, 3675
The light from the window had roused me from sleep. The early morning sun painted the clouds in a red to pink light. The cold air outside made its way into our room, I'd of been cold if it wasn't for what, our rather who I was sleeping with under my covers. Ponthyt had his arms wrapped around me, his left arm was over the top of my torso and his paw on my stomach and his right arm under my head, giving me a pillow. His legs were wrapped around mine and I had my head nuzzled under his.
I liked this, I was so comfy and I greatly enjoyed his warmth. I closed my eyes and tried to get back to sleep, to enjoy this bliss a little longer.
I heard a scuttle at the foot of our bed accompanied by a chorus of hushed giggles. I tried to pretend I hadn't heard that. As the scuttles came closer and around my side of the bed I barely opened one eye, just enough to see two sets of eyes and ears peeking over the edge and staring directly at me, one much bigger than the other.
“I told you they were still asleep, c’mon lets get some creams!!!”
They then slowly lowered down and as quietly as they could manage, they scuttled out of our room and downstairs towards the kitchen. I sat up and shook Ponthyt awake.
“Hmm?” He moans in a questioning manner as his eyes barely parted to look at me.
“The trouble makers are up early and raiding the kitchen, go stop their mischief.” I say as I lay back down.
He stretches out his limbs and yawns. “And why can't you?” He says deep in fatigue.
I chuckle and pat him on the shoulder. “Cause it's YOUR appetite they inherited, you'll have to force them and the jars apart!”
He looks at me with half open eyes. “Damn, well I guess I better go get 'em. I’ll start breakfast while I'm at it. Anything you want today?”
I pull up the covers and snuggle in the residual heat. “Hmm, how about mashed fleat cakes?”
He nodes and licks me goodbye. He then exits our room and I hear a commotion downstairs. Muffled giggle screams emanate from the kitchen. I close my eyes and absorb the last of Ponthyts warmth before I force myself up and downstairs.
I turn towards the kitchen and I see two grumpy faces sitting at the table with fatty creams strewn about their faces. Ponthyt is on his hands and knees wiping up the spilled cream off the ground. He was splattered in it and looked amused with the pup's antics. I chuckled at the chaotic display. “Don’t worry, I'll start breakfast while you tend to… that.” I turn towards the cupboards and bring out a bottle of fat and some fleat fruit. I pour some fat into a pan and turn on the heat. While I wait for it to heat up I skin and mash fleat fruit in a bowl. Before adding some eggs and milk to make it more liquidy.
“Mom, why can't we have cream for breakfast?” asked Quarmur.
“Because it's not healthy, I want you to grow up big and strong. You need to eat more than fatty creams to do that.” I pour the fleat batter into the pan and it sizzles as it covers the surface.
“Why?” I turn around and walk towards the table.
“Because you're made of more than fat.” I poked her belly as I said that and she giggled. I then turned back towards the stove and wedged a spatula under the fleat batter and flipped it over.
“Hey Ponthyt, when your done with that can you get some grubs from the pit outside?” As Ponthyt wipes the last of the cream off the ground he looks up at me.
“Yeah, I’ll toss this in the washing machine first.” He says as he gets up and makes his way out of the kitchen.
I then pick up the Fleat cake out of the pan and divide it into fourths and make two glasses of greenberry juice and place the pieces on plates. Ponthyt comes back in with a couple grubs that I place on the plates with a hearty helping of greenberries. I take over the pups plates and glasses as Ponthyt takes over ours.
I barley placed the food down before the pups made quick work of the food. By the time me and Ponthyt begin eating the pups are finished and running around the house. Ponthyt was eating rather slowly, I finished before him and I looked jealousy at his food before he pushed it towards me. I ate ravenously with the pups not seeing me.
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**\*
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We rounded a corner towards the school. “Alright, get your bags, let's get a move on,” I said as I exited the auto. I opened the back door to let the pups out. Quarmur stops and looks up at me with an annoyed look.
“Mom, why were we in timeout for eating creams?” I kneel down and wipe crumbs off her fur and throw some crayons that fell out back in the auto before I look her in the eyes.
“Because you were being naughty, and naughty things get you a time out.”
“But why?”
“Because if we just did what we wanted most people would be sad.”
She took on a confused look “Why?”
I grabbed my muzzle and contemplated how to explain it to her. “Well, me and dad are saving those creams for your birthday next week. We're going to make all kinds of treats for you, but even if none of it was for you it would have been for someone. If you just ate all the creams you'd get sick and someone else wouldn't get any.”
She looked down at the ground. “Like when a boy took my crayons?” I nodded
“Yes, naughty things make people sad.”
“What about spankings?” I sighed.
“That's only for really naughty things. Like if that boy that took your crayons smashed them.”
“I’ve never been spanked, am I a good pup?”
I rubbed her head and flopped around her ears , causing her to giggle. “Your a great pup, you just get in harmless trouble like anyone your age should.”
“But I thought you said I was naughty?"
“You did something naughty, you're still a good pup. Just promise me you’ll learn from being naughty ok?” She smiled and nodded, her tail wagging fast. I licked her on the muzzle before standing up and grabbing her paw, leading her towards the school.
Ponthyt was lifting up Kurvuss up onto his shoulders before he sat him on top and began making machine-like noises, walking up to the preschool door and shaking his shoulders rapidly. Kurvuss seemed to control which way he was walking by pulling on his dads ears.
“Ruburburburburburburburburburbur” Kurvuss was giggling , interpreted by the vibrations, making a sound similar to when the pups howl into a running fan.
Quarmur, tugs on my arm and looks up at me. “Mom can you do that with me?” She was pointing at her father and younger brother.
“I’m sorry, no I think that would be too much for me.” She looked upset.
“Why? It wasn't last year, is it because you're fatter?” I chuckled at the indigent bluntness of the child.
“Well, you got a bit bigger, and yes. I am a little bit bigger but I’m not fat. You're getting another sibling.
She looked up suddenly with a confused look. “But I want a ride, not another brother.”
I lowered myself down to look at her directly. “Well, you might be getting a sister, and you’ll be able to give them rides.”
“Like that?”
I nodded and she began beaming and hugged me. Before running to the doors. Ponthyt passed her as she ran. He rounded behind me and put his arm on my shoulder. “What was that about?”
“Oh I just told her the good news.”
He snapped back to look at me. “I thought we were going to wait till her party to announce it?”
I waved my paw in the air dismissively, “ah let her have it. She's way more excited about giving more rides then some silly surprise.”
I nuzzled up against Ponthyt as we watched the pups get into their respective cliques. Getting ready for their day of learning and playing with their friends.
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**\*
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“And done!!!” I put the brush back on the shelf after rinsing it in water. I took a step back to admire my work. The painting would need to dry but me and Ponthyt were finally done.
I admired our artistic rendition of the planet Curbosa and its many massive moons. The writhing mass of dark and light blue that made up the planet was an ever changing mosaic of shapes of the monochrome color palette. Its surrounding moons were variations of gray or white. Except for a dark brown orb that we believed to be the biggest moon in the solar system. Big enough to keep its own thick atmosphere.
Ponthyt came up beside me and wiped his brow. “Wow, I think this is the best one we’ve made.”
I rested my head against his side and sighed.
“You seem offly proud as well, considering how intensely you are staring at it.”
I chuckled and taped him on the arm. “Yeah I'm proud of this. Not only have we made a beautiful rendition of Curbosa, but we also made it accurate to how they would look relative to each other. So many years have I studied how they moved. Now we can predict where they will be weeks in advance… I just wish we knew why they moved like that or what exactly caused gravity.”
He rubbed my side “We’ll figure it out, we just need to hammer out our theory to fit all the puzzle pieces together.”
I breathed deeply. Saying what we had to do was easy, but actually applying math and data to make sense of our world was anything but trivial.
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KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
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Before we had time to properly respond the door was opened. A stout elderly Farsul came through the gateway. He had graying fur all along his body and was draped in a dark green uniforme made from what appeared to be a thick and heavy material. He looked down at the floor, taking note of the paint staining the carpet before he followed the walls staring up at the paintings of the celestial body's me and Ponthyt made.
“... I didn't realize I walked into an art studio, rather than an observatory.” He spoke with a low, heavy voice. There was a tinge of some accent I couldn't place. His steps were slow and deliberate, and his paws were held behind his back as he glanced at us.
“What are you doing here? Tours are only on select days and scheduled weeks in advance!” Ponthyt spoke with an indigent, confused tone that I frankly shared at this rude man. Before I noticed his firearm and rows and rows of medals on his shirt.
“Ponthyt… I think he’s military.” I pointed to his metals and Ponthyt took note of them, and took on a look of mild fear and even greater confusion. The military man chuckled in his throat.
“You two don't keep a finger to the pulse of your nation's news much? Well, I’m Admiral Gurq. I’ve come here to enlist you two for a… personal project of mine.”
He walked out of our studio and came back shortly with a briefcase and set it down on an empty table. “I heard about your project using pulses of light to detect where and how an object is moving. I believe a national security threat has made that tech application prudent to explore.”
He undoes the latches and opens the case. He takes out a photograph and flings it towards us on the table, it stopped just before it falls off the edge. Me and ponthyt cautiously take chairs and sit down, before the admiral does also.
Ponthyt takes the photo, studies it and hands it to me. It was a black and white photo of a Farsul wearing some kind of PPE made of rubber that seemed to have pockets in it to store some kind of filling. It covered him head to toe and a mask topped it off. I recognized that mask. It was the iconic symbol of atomic researchers. He was holding a colossal pair of tongs and was manipulating a small cylinder that I assumed was fuel for some kind of reactor.
“This is a fission reactor worker, one of the first. He's taking spent fuel to be disposed of, a routine procedure. But do you know what happened to him?” Me and Ponthyt shake our heads as I slide the photo back to the admiral. “When he dumped the spent fuel in the waste something happened. The whole waste bin began to heat up rapidly and melted through the floor. Before it cooled enough to stop its trip to the mantle.”
He then slides another photo that had a picture of a melted floor with debris filling the bottom. “We had no Idea what caused it. This was at a reactor testing facility at the south pole and it had our scientists stumped for years. Spent fuel shouldnt have enough energy or be unstable enough to spontaneously react like that. We only recently confirmed the cause ”
I shot up to look at the admiral. “Wait, this was during the testing phase forty some years ago? And you only found out what caused it now?” He nodded
“Nuclear science was a blossoming field. We had only just got a reactor to be self-sufficient. Let alone producing excess power. We were sailing in a cyclone of uncertainties.” He spoke with a grave inflection that sent shivers down my spine. Ponthyt put his paw on mine and rubbed it to comfort me. But I could see he was just as disturbed by the admiral's tone as I was.
Dread threatened to swallow my heart as he slid another photograph to us. It seemed to be a crater of uncertain size, it was in a desert and the near perfectly circular ring confused me. Had there been a meteor strike that I didn't hear about?
“We figured out what caused that waste meltdown, it was something we call the devils spit. But officially it's an element called plutonium. It is an even more unstable element than U-235. It is produced by nuclear reactors that use U-235. It was produced in much higher concentration in that early reactor than in later models. We only discovered it recently.”
I felt myself be muddled in confusion. “Why in all these decades of research have you only discovered it now?”
He sighs as he slides us another photograph. “People who worked on that reactor all died from radiation poisoning soon after the meltdown. We lost many great minds and we didn't want to lose more. So we banned research on that site until remote operated machines were developed.”
We take the photograph and stare at it. It was a rather crude vehicle, with two massive robotic appendages connected to the chassis. One had a massive crude looking four digit claw with the digits arranged in pairs and set to opposing the other pair. The other was a massive circular saw. The back of the vehicle had what appeared to be other attachments the arms could switch between including a drill and a bucket. It was a tall massive creation that had three snow tires that were taller than the Farsul standing near it. He seemed to be holding a large boxy apparatus that had sticks protruding out from the flat surface, the box also seemed to be connected to massive cables that lead up to a massive spool of the cable on the back of the vehicle.
“This kinda looks like explorer two.” The famous probe that was sent to study our rocky planet neighbor Ruea was an icon among those who loved space. So the resemblance was obvious.
“Yes, the Department of energy commissioned MASEA's robotic department to build it so they could study the decades old mysterious meltdown. I was also there as using spent fuel potentially concerned the military.” He scoffed. “Not for the reasons I imagined it for but it did vary much so concerned the military. “ He rubbed his muzzle and closed his eyes and chuckled to himself.
“Wait, you said the cause was the element plutonium. But there is no such element?” He opened his eyes and gave me a waverting smile.
“Yes, we only discovered it after taking samples of the devils spit. An element produced by the reactor. We tested its capabilities in the deserts up north… But one of the first reactors that incorporated the substance had a failure. These reactors were operated remotely so no personnel were at risk but that reactor ran away from us far far faster than the first.” He stood up and walked over to us.
“So fast that I… approved testing if it could be made into a bomb… and it can… a terrible, terrible bomb.” He paced around us, I didn't know how to process this. Sure, new weapons of war were never a good thing but how bad could this new bomb be?
He circled back down to his seat and rummaged through his briefcase. “While the DOE continued to develop the plutonium reactors to explore their potential and did end up rolling out a few stable designs that could enrich spent fuel… I oversaw the development of the bombs.” He took out yet another photo and slid it to us. This time it was what appeared to be a large black ovoid with a Farsul standing near it. Just barely a head taller than the object.
“That was the first prototype. It was dropped in the desert and punched that mile wide crater. I showed you the picture of it.”
Horror filled my chest at the implications of such a powerful weapon. He breathed in deeply and let out a long sigh. “But that's not the worst of it, we developed even more powerful versions. The biggest being a fusion bomb that uses the initial explosion to compress a tritium core, causing an even larger fusion bomb.” He then slides another photo to us. This time it was a rocket flying through the atmosphere. “Now imagine these bombs are stuck into rockets, they can travel and strike anywhere on the planet. They are just a single relatively small object but can annihilate a city of any size.”
What the admiral had explained was a terrifying prospect of total destruction on a scale unseen before in our entire history. Anger was boiling within me, directed at the admiral for developing such an evil creation “Why, under heaven's blue sky… Would you continue to make them worse? Why would you strap them to a rocket and make this kind of devastation even possible!” He stood up and paced in front of us.
“I had to explore what the limits of this tech were, if it's any consolation the information to build them is under tight lock and key and I intend to never use them.”
“It isn't.”
He looks down and rubs the end of his muzzle and sighs.
“But what do you want us for? This tech is under your control, why not just burn the documents and dismantle any bombs you made?”
He puts his paw on the back of his head and laughs. “I wish I could, but… The Crafur archipelago “liberated” a high ranking scientist involved with the project that is a ethnic descendant of them. They aren't happy we developed a power source that replaced their oil palms and crippled their economy as a result. They were suspicious of us and kidnaped him to know exactly what we were doing. Now they have all they need to make those bombs themselves.” He sits back down as he pulls at his head fur. “We are manufacturing a stockpile in hopes that they wouldn't be stupid enough to attack us if we can deliver an equally powerful blow.”
Ponthyt stood up and spoke up in a voice dripping in fear. “What does… any of this have to do with us?”
The Admiral then points to the paintings on the wall. “Your lidar tech could be instrumental in developing a counter weapon if any of the Crafur regional dictators threw a few of their bombs at us. I want you and a few other scientists I’m recruiting to work on an anti missile lidar defense mechanism. Using your in time calculations of its trajectory you we could drastically improve our capabilities at shooting them down before they can blow up our cities”
Ponthyt sits back down. “What would this entail?”
The admiral pats down his uniform before staring at us. “You two would be shipped off to a remote site to begin developing and testing the system. In order to maintain secrecy. You will… disappear, at least for a number of years. We will make sure you're as anonymous as possible and that when the system is made public… along with the bombs, no one will know you worked on it.”
Dread and anger began to drive my motions, before I calmed them down and responded. “What of our children?”
A sadness overtook the admiral's features. And Ponthyt seemed to share the same emotion only ten times as intensely. “They will be moved with you to the site..”
Anger began to fill me with abject terror and uncontested fury. “ How DARE YOU!!! They have a life here! Friends , family and events! I will not willingly uproot their lives!.”
Ponthyt stands up with a calm disgust at the farsul “We will never subject that to our pups, our very world, to that just to help clean up the mess YOU made!!!”
The waste of space in front of us took on a look of quiet rage. “You don't have a choice, I am enlisting you whether or not you come willingly.”
I grabbed a cup and was about to throw it at the demon before Ponthyt grabbed my arm and gave me a look that told me he had a plan. “Are you really going to make a pregnant woman work on your side hustle?” He guides my hand back down and places the cup back on the table. “You can take me, but Maarchal stays here with our pups.” I snap back at him. He uttered not a lie but I was hesitant to make that kind of threat.
The admiral smoothes out his head fur and clears his throat. “It doesn't matter, I gave you classified military information which now makes you a threat to national security. Which means I have the right and authority to do with you as is necessary. Besides I don't see how pregnancy will prevent you from the work you’ll do. Your thinkers, will be working in a lab with a team, not grunts.” He stood up and he left the room. “You shall be given a few hours to gather your necessities and sentimentals. My soldiers will observe you to ensure no contraband shall be brought along, then you shall be escorted to gather your children. I look forward to seeing you at the site.”
Me and Ponthyt stared at each other. A cold dread washed over us, so powerful I felt I was going limp. Ponthtyt stared at me, with a shell shocked look. As we contemplated our situation the pair of soldiers arrived as the admiral had stated.
Only a few hours left in our home
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Last week I was involved in some kind of credit card scam that makes no sense to me. Let me explain...
The next morning I received order confirmations on my Wal-Mart account for Apple gift cards (5 orders, 1000$ total). Obviously I did not make these orders so, assuming it was some phishing attempt, I logged in my account to have a look. To my surprise, the 5 orders are there. So I was getting ready to notify my bank that I got my credit card scammed but no, they didn't use my card. They added a new card (shows my name, but I have no card with that #), and made the purchases with it.
So now I'm thinking, the scam is that they used a stolen card, but did not want the order to be traceable to them, so they used my compromised account. But another twist, the gift cards were later emailed to me. So it just looks like I scammed the card! And no, they are not fake emails, they match the order info from Walmart and came from their domain address.
So here's what I'm thinking... A) They tried to get the gift card (address was not mine) but did not realize it was email delivery. B) They don't care about the gift cards and were just testing the stolen credit card (but 1000$ is a lot for that!) C) The card was opened to my name, and just did not show up on my credit reports yet. Its expiry date is in only a year, so I would be surprised.
What do you guys think?
Needless to say, I did not use the gift cards. I called Walmart to let them know. I also called my local police dept and will meet them.
+1 week update
1) I met with the local police yesterday. They told me they couldn't do anything since it was not my card, so I was not technically affected by the fraud. But they assured me there would be something on a file so that if it ever comes back to me, they have a trace I flagged the fraud. This plus the Walmart call to the fraud department should cover me.
2) I received a shipping notification (real, not fake) today from Walmart. For whatever reason, they are shipping an email delivery gift card over Canpar?! I looked at the product page of the gift card and it's specifically mentioned that nothing physical is sent to the shipping address. I have no clue what is going on with that.
3) Curiosity got the better of me and I had a look at one of the gift card balance and I can confirm it was not used yet. But with point 2 above, I guess it will be used once the scammer receives the physical card.

Description: The painting “Trust The Science ?” is an anonymous interpretation of the events, powers, and figures that make up the current reality humanity is facing. The following is a detailed description of the painting and all its symbolism. This is a one of its kind piece of art giving the owner an opportunity to own a piece of history. Checkered Floor The Masonic Checkerboard is one of the most important symbols for it is used in ritualistic ceremonies. This is used because black and white is a symbol for duality, or the base of consciousness. Base consciousness is important, because it is where all other states of mind arise. Lament Configuration From the original story the Lament Configuration, symbolizes the gate to hell. To whomever opens it, is promised unearthly pleasures which may differ from person to person. In the original story Pinhead says “Angels to some. Demons to others.” Epstein Island Temple The famed blue and white striped temple located on Epstein Island has become all too popular with the emergence of the criminal cases of Jeffery Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. The temple is said to be modeled after Hammam Yalbugha which was a public bath house built in 1491 where people could get massages. Jeffery Epstein used massages to invite underage girls into his mansion. The Epstein / Maxwell tandem also used their influence to gain control of prominent, powerful people in science and politics. Trump Hotel Including the Trump Hotel in this painting was meant to symbolize the duality that is presented to society in politics. Red vs. Blue. Good vs. Evil. Divide and conquer. Donald Trump’s presidency from 2016-2020 was sold to the American people as the opportunity to drain the swamp of a corrupt leadership and political class and bring about prosperity for the USA. Instead the world is heading in the direction of a continued push for a world without borders, globalism and top down commufascism. Trump was likely working for the same shadow government he was pretending to eliminate which was a form of Kayfabe. Either that or the people he was up against were too powerful. Egyptian Pyramids The Egyptian pyramids are one of the greatest mysteries of mankind and symbolize hidden knowledge that is either intentionally kept classified from the public or still unknown. The structures do however certainly contain the principles of complex geometry which can be worked out when you analyze the dimensions. Whoever built them clearly wanted to be sure that humans discovered these concepts and when you understand that then they become extremely logical structures. In order for a species to be intelligent it is fundamental that the species is aware and able to demonstrate mathematical principles across a wide range of complicated concepts. Pizzagate Comet Pizza is a pizza place owned by James Alefantis, who is the former gay boyfriend of David Brock, the CEO of Correct The Record. It has been the venue for dozens of events for the Hillary campaign staff. John Podesta has had fundraisers there for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. John's brother and business partner Tony Podesta has his birthday party there every year. Pizzagate was the claim that the DNC connected elites and trafficked children using code language in WikiLeaks emails. 2 CNN producers directly linked in the emails years ago have recently been charged demonstrating the conspiracy theories were never wrong. SARS-COV-2 The virus is symbolic of the lengths that the ruling elites will go to control and manipulate society while keeping power for themselves at the expense of the general population. The irony of Dr. Fauci announcing that there will be a ‘surprise’ outbreak in the area of infectious diseases for the upcoming administration when speaking prior to Trump’s presidency is a great place to start for any investigator of truth. The Covid-19 ‘pandemic’ has radically transformed society and continues to shape the future of the human experience and its evolution into a transhuman species with the rise of AI and robotics. Saturn Saturn = Chronus = Jehovah = Satan On the north side of Saturn is a storm in the shape of a hexagon. The star of Rempham is two interlocking triangles with a hexagon in the middle. One triangle points up. The other points down. These represent divine feminism and divine masculine as well as "as above, so below". The hexagon in 3 dimensional form makes a cube. The cube is the object of worship and also ties back into the aforementioned cube in the center of the painting. They make it a black cube. It's called a tetragrammaton. It's on a phallactory Jews wear on their head. It's in the United Nations meditation room. It's walked around Mecca. Before there was light, there was darkness. It’s possible that there’s some sort of esoteric knowledge relating to Saturn that’s passed down through secret societies, and that it could represent a brand of Satanism that is really just an understanding of the science behind religion, our higher self, inter-dimensional exploration and other knowledge that would give a group of people the upper hand on everyone else. That’s why the knowledge is safeguarded in secret societies and the like. Mask The classic light blue mask made famous by the ongoing Covid-19 ‘pandemic’. A symbol of obedience and a tool to continue the illusion of the narrative. Formally, the forced mask was used by slavers and slave masters across the continents to prevent enslaved people from eating readily available agricultural products (sugar cane, beans, fruits, or vegetables) while working on the plantations. However the primary function of forced masking was to implement strong senses of speechlessness and fear, inasmuch as the mouth was at the same time a place of muteness and a place of torture. Slave masters’ forced masking was effective at cutting communication between enslaved people. Masking proved to make slaves feel less like humans and more like cattle because covering faces will prevent sharing emotions and thus stagnate or prevent the development of relationships. It has been documented that many slaves in the ancient Arab world were forcibly masked for their entire lives (aside from meal times) starting during their early childhood. Apply that information to modern times as you see fit. PfizeAmerican Flags Big Pharma is the #1 Lobby in the USA and outspends Big Oil by more than 2:1. We do not live in a capitalist nation anymore, we live in a corporate-government cartel where the government uses a carrot & stick model to both subsidize companies and threaten them with fines/legal action, in return - those companies act as a quasi-government cartel that act in lockstep in order to take away your rights under the guise of private companies taking action, when in reality they are married to the government. The current ‘pandemic’ highlights this strategic criminal conspiracy and thus was symbolized by the American flag flying next to a flag with the logo of Pfizer; a company that was fined $2.3 billion for illegal marketing. The largest fine in corporate history right before the ‘pandemic’. TRUST THE SCIENCE “Trust the science” is just one of the examples of modern propaganda being used to carry out the ‘pandemic’ agenda. The ruling class uses short phrases like this to convey a very simple message that is easy for the unquestioning public to understand. It is code for “don’t question authority” and has nothing to do with actual science. It's entirely faith based as this "science" is the new religion. Which is ironic since the entire point of science is to debunk faith based stuff and give answers to reality. They've just replaced the pope/whatever with Fauci. To quote Dr. Robert Malone: “This is the most intrinsically anti-science global organization ever implemented in the history of modern man. The closest historical approximation to this monstrosity is the Catholic Church during the Spanish inquisition. When this history of this ‘pandemic’ is written, the combined effect of the Trusted News Initiative and autocratic national and international public health leaders will be documented as being responsible for massive excess human suffering and loss of life due to suppression of the discussion and dissent which is critical for the modern scientific process to accurately discern evolving truth and inform effective public policy decisions. This must stop, before yet more avoidable, unnecessary suffering and loss of life accrues.” QR Code Blood Under the guise of health the ruling class is using propaganda to gain the consent of the public for top down surveillance capitalism where human data is the new oil. The end goal is a cashless society so every purchase is tracked and recorded. All in the name of safety and security through the use of vaccines and digital vaccine passports utilizing QR code technology to further gain complete control of humanity. Full Spectrum Dominance as they say.They have used the current 'free' market of crypto to allow the young people to buy in, to get a little bit of money and once most have profited on this new paradigm of currency they will slowly roll it all into the Central Bank Digital Currency Systems. What was offered as the ticket to freedom and the end of central banks will quite literally be the exact opposite. Much like all the original claims made by crypto they are patently false. Then you will have new smart cities where everything you do will be traced, your ID passport will not only work as your bank account ledger but your ability to access stores and other amenities. Vaccines It is clear in the messaging that the vaccine was never to be denied. The sales pitch to vaccinate the entire global population so that society could get back to normal was nothing more than a bait and switch. Dangling freedom in front of people for compliance only to be met with the same conditions as prior. Humanity is now undergoing a large-scale experiment where MRNA technology is being tested giving the ruling class the opportunity to play god and open the doors for future DNA altering experiments. UFOs From Area 51 to project bluebeam aliens and UFOs have always been an object of fascination. Including them over the pyramids also represents a popular theory that aliens might have played a part in the building of the Egyptian pyramids. Project BlueBeam is the theory that a one world government will be assembled around a false flag alien invasion which will actually be carried out by the government, who have fleets of reverse engineered craft at their disposal. It's actually pretty plausible and it's been predictive programmed in quite a few blockbuster movies. This could be the next stage after the ‘pandemic’ agenda has run its course. Ace of Hearts The Ace of Hearts represents the House of true heart. It means the happiness and prosperity of people living in this house. This card often stands for a breakthrough in feelings, declaration of love or a wedding. For a married person, Ace of hearts is an omen of abundance in the house and happy family life. This artist chose to include this card to represent the destruction of what this card represents, the home, the family unit, love and prosperity for humanity as humans are being objectified for their data rather than growing as free-spirited people. Facebook/Twitter Facebook and Twitter were online platforms that were initially created as a place for discourse and to bring humanity together. As these platforms grew in size, they also grew in power and influence. They have the ability to propagate narratives that fit their objectives and goals. They can now remove people from their platforms that go against their narrative and promote those that share similar views. They have been captured. These corporations are no longer working as businesses looking to turn a profit. They are actively working with each other, and other nefarious actors to disrupt and destroy western civilization. This is WW3. It isn’t being fought between nations, but rather between we the people and these quasi-national entities. Nuclear weaponry was used to fuel fear in the past. Now information is being used in the same manner. Sickle Fuaci = Sickle. Fauci is an Italian surname and is derived from the Sicilian word for "sickle. What tools are used in a Harvest? A sickle.Who uses a sickle? A Reaper of harvest. Being aware allows us to realize there are zero coincidences here. What group does he harvest? Those that were blinded by their fears. Those that hide behind their masks and project their fear upon others rather than looking inside themselves. Some call them NPCs, drones or AI consciousness. Much like dark ego shadow selves. This is very much a spiritual realm and it’s purging itself of it’s shadows. Covid is much like a program. Shadows Evaporate! Dr. Fauci The artist of this painting recommends reading the book titled “The Real Anthony Fauci” for a complete overview. However, Fauci is the highlight of this painting as he is the literal face of the ‘pandemic’ serving up the agenda of those above him while pretending to follow science. Fauci re-legalized the gain of function research for viruses (which should be a crime against humanity, it opens the door for biological warfare) after funding the Wuhan laboratory. They even ran the evidence on the corporate news stations and as far as is known there was no major push for him to resign. The modern Dr. Mengele is still sitting pretty in his ivory tower, ferret-face and all, while humanity has to deal with the hell he helped create. Octopus Tentacle The tentacle coming out of Fauci’s ear is representative of the Octopus Syndicate. The tentacles that touch every industry in the world. Just from Klaus we have a fabricated global warming agenda led by Al Gore, a child trafficking operation protected by a honey pot scheme conducted by the Epstein/Maxwell daughters, and the agenda 201/2030 plans being pushed by his business with Bill Gates and IMF/Bilderberg leaders that they own. “With George Sorros playing the boogie man defense by funding all sides of race, gender and sexism - MeToo, Antifa, BLM, gay trans push -- all funded by one source. And the Waltons/Koch playing offense by enslaving hundreds of millions, destroying the job market, keeping everyone as wage slaves, fighting each other over scrapes -- keeping them uneducated and malnourished.. And the Sackler family getting everyone addicted and sick from drugs. Killing more people from their cartel of pills and SRRIs. Ladies and Gentlemen, The Octopus Syndicate. Everything wrong that's going on.” All Seeing Eye The Eye Providence or the “all seeing eye of providence” is a symbol that depicts an eye surrounded by a triangle representing the eye that looks over humanity. It's completely a Masonic symbol. Benjamin Franklin was a Mason and worked with the artist who designed the Great Seal. The "Eye of Providence" is an iteration of the "Blazing Star".The original concept was an eye within a 5 pointed star, but was adapted to the Radiant Triangle.The oldest version of the Radiant Eye dates back to the seal of Scottish Mason Sir Robert Moray.The Eye itself has its origins in Egyptian symbolism. Right eye was a symbol of Sun god Osiris, which is why the three in one capstone is radiant. Matrix " You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. Many of them are so hopelessly dependent on the system they will fight to protect it" -Morpheus The matrix background of the painting is in reference to the Matrix movies. There's stages to the awakening out of the matrix. Step one: learn everything is a lie, feel a compulsion to tell the world and the people closest to you. Realize they want to hear none of it. Watch most turn into agent smiths when confronted with such information. Step two: Think that you can change the system if you go to enough rallies or meet enough people, post enough information, and present the evidence. Step three: After going down enough rabbit holes you realize this is a metaphysical game. That the game masters know this and have grafted the system to make sure you stay in it. Step four: Study yourself, study the ancient texts, try to understand the matrix, focus on yourself, stop caring about literally anyone else on your path up the mountain and out of the Matrix. World Economic Forum The Great Reset is the World Economic Forum’s proposal for post-Covid economic recovery. The initiative calls for an equitable and sustainable rebuild. Capitalism as we know is hitting a wall. In 2019 prior to the Covid-19 ‘pandemic’ the repo-markets collapsed in the USA. All asset classes are in massive bubbles, interest rates are at 0, unemployment is very high everywhere. The ruling class is trying to save themselves. They want to remain at the top of this predatory capitalism system where the mass is exploited and those at the top live off interests on their investments, and covid and the great reset is the idea they came up with. 

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I think it’s obvious that, while I’ve never lied to my dad and my brother about something big before, I haven’t told either of them about the animals at the zoo and I’m not planning on it. Even if they believed me, that would actually be worse than thinking I was being foolish by working here. If my dad knew what kind of animals the zoo had, he’d freak out, whether or not there were invisible walls to protect me. In and of itself, my father would demand I quit on the spot if he found out about my hourly rate because it was obvious that there was something about this job that warranted it.
So, I opened a savings account at the bank, and when I deposited the check, I put half in that account. That lowered the chances of my dad finding out how much money I was pulling in.
It wasn’t as if I had anything huge to spend the money on anyway, though. Dad had been thrilled with $25/hr. when I got the job, and we’d already started spending some of that first paycheck on new clothes and little house repairs and such. Money has always been tight, and we live in a three-bedroom house, with my dad graciously having taken the smallest room (which was kind of a catchall storage room up until then) once my brother and I wanted separate rooms when we hit our teenage years.
My mom isn’t in the picture, if you’re curious. She worked as a wildlife photographer, and was so good at it that she’d get paid to go off to remote places in Africa. For months at a time. As if we don’t have animals in America, right? But even when she was here, it always felt like she was distracted, wanting to go back to work. Like she cared more about the animals than about us. Say what you want about me, but I like animals more than people, I don’t love them more. I don’t even think of her as mom anymore; in my brain, she’s Patricia.
When I was nine and my brother Stanley was two, she basically left and never came back. Doesn’t even send postcards. For all I know, she’s dead, and the most meaningful thing I ever got from her was my passion for caring about other animals. I got into it early because of Patricia, and then practically every birthday or Christmas present was some book or movie or toy about wildlife. But that’s all she did for us besides financial support. My dad is a real rock in my life, and I count myself lucky I got at least one good parent.
When Patricia ditched us, I started to help out financially when I was younger by working odd jobs, and then real jobs when I hit sixteen. Stanley is sixteen now, and he’s been working at Hanks Hardware for a few months, which meant now it was all three of us pulling in money. But Stanley only makes $10/hr., working four hours after school and then eight hours on Saturday, so my $25/hr. literally doubled our household income. When I’d gotten the job, I told Dad and Stanley that I wanted Stanley to quit his job, and that I’d give him an allowance, $80 a week, which was what he'd be using for pocket money if he’d still been working.
Getting that time back would be huge for Stanley, because it would let him spend more time on his schoolwork. Not just to bring up his grades; he would literally be learning more. And he’s a junior now, doing things like taking a computer class to learn Microsoft Office. Living in a small town limits your options, and knowledge broadens them. I know that much for sure.
Not to mention, he could actually be a teenager, do the stuff kids did. Go see a movie, hang out with his friends at the bleachers and smoke pot, and head out to the lake to swim when the weather warmed up and have a genuinely fun summer instead of having a forty hour work week. And most important, playing video games. I know that sounds strange, but Stanley loves video games and plays online on the TV in the living room. But he hardly ever has time to play, which means sometimes he’ll stay up too late enjoying himself and fall asleep the next day during his first period class. Dad and I never have the heart to tell him to go to bed, though.
My father was uneasy about Stanley quitting, mostly because of the hypothetical of my job falling through. And Dad didn’t even know about the possibility of there being some terrifying incident with an animal, which might cause me such anxiety that I wouldn’t be able to push past it and would end up needing to quit. I really didn’t think that was likely after I’d managed to mostly get over my paralyzing fear of Yui, but I yielded to his logic and we negotiated. Stanley decided to switch to three hours three days a week and four hours on Saturdays.
Little did they know that not only was I was saving up for my own impending student loan payments, but my savings account would cover a most or maybe all of the cost of any college or trade school Stanley wanted to attend when he graduated. I was so happy about that, I don’t have the words. Half of my income is $25/hr. and for eight hours a day will be $52k a year, all of it put in my savings account. Before taxes, but still, that is fantastic money. I’ll have to come clean eventually, when Stanley started filling out FAFSA forms next year, and I’ll probably tell my dad that I was pretty sure they’re running drugs out of the back of the zoo or something. He’ll be so pissed, but that’s over a year away and I’ll burn that bridge when I came to it.
So, in general, I’ve been enjoying working at the zoo and depositing those paychecks. Call me a cynic, but inevitably, that meant something had to go wrong.
After settling in for my shift a few minutes before 9 p.m., Andrew bid me farewell and headed home. He’d just done one last walk of the zoo, so I took out a book and resumed where I’d left off, planning to do a sweep in an hour. I do have some enrichment planned for one of the animals, but I’d had to order something online and it won’t arrive for a few days.
Shortly after my second ramble around on my route to check every enclosure at the zoo, however, I got a text from my brother.

Gary and Shaun are going to the zoo. They want to try to see the animals.

I closed my eyes in annoyance. Gary and Shaun were two sort-of friends of Stanley’s, the middling kind of friend that you sit with at lunch and hang out with at parties but you’ve never actually been to their home. I knew Stanley had been bragging to his friends about my new job. Well, I guessed. He’d told me and Dad at the dinner table that his friends were impressed with my job, and I figured the fact that his sister had a college degree and had started work at $25/hr. was bragging material, especially when it meant Stanley could work fewer hours.
The idea that some of his friends would want to come check out the zoo hadn’t occurred to me, because I’d come at it logically: The zoo was closed to outsiders. Appointment only. And none of them would ever get an appointment, because they were human. But if anything, the rules that restricted them had probably made it a more enticing idea. Also, Stanley said it the zoo on Google Maps at this point, but that it was blurred out. Andrew told me that had been by request (anyone can do it actually), but I’m sure that made the temptation even worse.
Obviously I wasn’t going to let them in, but I didn’t want them to cause trouble, and they were teenagers. Teenagers tend to cause trouble as a general rule. The last thing I wanted was to have to tell Andrew that they’d shown up at the gate intent on visiting the zoo because my brother had talked it up so much. Not that Stanley knew what this place really housed, but still, Andrew had been so stern on no photography of Leila that I would’ve been embarrassed if I had to call the cops because of something like this.
My reply was curt.

Tell those dipshits the place is closed to walk-ins. I’m not letting them in.
I did. They want to go anyway.

I facepalmed and sighed before replying.

If you can’t talk them out of it, just don’t go with them. I’ll deal with it.

There was a long silence, then some ellipses as he typed, then another long silence. I got antsy and sent a follow-up.

Stanley, I mean it. I do not want you here if I have to call the cops to get them to leave. Stay home. If you show up here with them, I’m cutting off the money I give you.

I wasn’t the type to play fast and loose with threats about money, so that probably surprised him. There was the briefest of pauses.

Geez, no need to be a bitch about it. Fine. I’ll stay here. Good luck dealing with those assholes without me.

That was indeed exactly what I wanted, and he must have known that. Hell, I had pepper spray and a taser, so it’s not like I couldn’t keep them out if I really wanted to. But when it came down to it, I figured, what were they going to do? I wasn’t going to open the door or the front gate. The fence was ten feet high, the kind with spaced bars that had decorative spikes at the top, and it was brand new. It wasn’t as if they were going to take bolt-cutters to a barbed wire fence like in a movie.
In the end, I sat back in my chair and just fell back on my regular routine. I wonder now, if I’d called Andrew and told him, maybe asked him to come hang out for a while, whether things would’ve turned out different. But I wasn’t very well going to wake him up for something that essentially sounded like a minor irritation.
At 10:41 p.m., a beep, beep, beep, alert sounded, and I know the exact time because I picked my phone up off the desk out of habit, assuming it was what was making the noise. But it wasn’t. Looking up to the screen of cameras, one was outlined in red, pulling my focus to it. It was an exterior camera with a wide view that panned back and forth, but was now stopped on movement that it had detected and had deemed sufficient to audibly alert me. I later learned that it was in conjunction with a motion detector on the fence. On the screen, I saw two boys, one on the outside of the fence to the left of the entrance gate and one on the inside.
“What the fuck?” I breathed, standing up and putting my book aside. My fingers went to the mouse and keyboard, and I expanded the view from the camera and zoomed in. It seemed I’d underestimated the boredom and curiosity of two small-town teenage boys.
I saw how the first boy had gotten in when the second boy used the same technique, which was to climb a rope that had knots tied in it about a foot apart, a rope that had been hooked onto one of the spikes at the top, presumably with a loop that had been lassoed and tightened. He made it to the top, shifted and dropped to hang from the top by his hands, then let himself fall to the ground, his knees bending and absorbing the shock of the impact before falling on his butt.
One of the boys had hit a growth spurt, topping out at 5’11” now, all gangly limbs. He had short brown hair and I could see him wearing a sweatshirt with the logo of his school on it. That’s the best outfit to wear when breaking in, apparently: something that shows what high school you go to. The other one was a little more built and half a foot shorter, with long blonde hair that he probably thought made him look like Chris Hemsworth. It didn’t.
“I cannot believe this,” I growled, my anger flaring. Heading quickly out of the office, slamming the door behind me, I was out the door and walking toward the entrance, driven by my anger.
Already walking into the park at a speed driven by their interest in the forbidden areas, they started on the path that went toward enclosure one and rounded the zoo. “Hey!” I barked.
“Ripley!” Gary exclaimed. “Your brother said you wouldn’t open the gate, so we let ourselves in.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I asked, keeping pace beside them, rage bubbling up inside me. They slowed but didn’t stop. “Do you think this is a joke? There’s a reason I told my brother not to come with you. That alarm you set off goes to the owner of the park, and they’ll definitely be pressing charges. You really want ‘breaking and entering’ on your rap sheet?”
They gave me long-suffering looks, the kind only someone under twenty is capable of. The kind that imply you’re neurotic, or pushy, or self-centered. The kind that say you don’t know what you’re talking about, that they know so much more than you, and that all you are is an annoyance.
“Come on. What is with this place? It sounds awesome, some private zoo, but Stanley didn’t know anything about it,” Shaun told me. Glancing at my belt, where my pepper spray and taser were, he asked, “Is it that top secret? Everything here could sell on the black market for a million bucks or something?”
“They’re expensive animals if poachers get their hands on them, yes,” I said tightly.
“Why would they hire someone fresh out of college for that?” Gary asked, his eyes continuing to take in his surroundings, the path and everything in sight bathed in their standard eerie red glow. “And what’s with the lights?”
“It’s for night vision,” I told him, skipping over the part implying I wasn’t qualified for this job. “Hey, stop.” Moving in front of them, I forced the issue, moving to stand in front of them and forcing them to either stumble to a stop or run into me. “If you climb back over the fence and leave now, before anyone gets here, I’ll lie and say I didn’t know your faces.”
“Jesus Christ, you’re uptight,” Shaun chuckled. “What’s the big deal? I mean, we might not even see anything, since it’s nighttime and the animals are sleeping. It’s not like we’re stealing a tour.”
Honestly, I have no idea how our species has survived this long when our formative years make us so confidently stupid. “So, why are you even here then?” I asked, folding my arms.
“Why not?” Gary asked.
With that, they were quickly walking around me, toward enclosure one. I hadn’t yet seen the animal in enclosure one, but what I did know was I didn’t want to see it for the first time tonight. Roger’s short and snappy description described it as Bear - Steve. According to procedure in the small manual Andrew had given me, I was supposed to deter any intruders with fact that they were on camera and threaten to call the police. It didn’t say what to do if that didn’t work, but I assume I was supposed to…call the police. And also call Andrew, of course. That didn’t solve my urgent problem though, which was two teenagers who wanted to see something cool.
“That’s it,” I growled, taking my taser in one hand and my pepper spray in the other, hoping the sight of me being armed would deter them. Heading after them, I snapped, “If you guys do not leave, I will make you leave.”
Shaun turned and walked backwards so he could speak to me. “Just because you’ve got a complex since they hired you to look after a place like this, doesn’t mean you have any real authority,” he told me. “Look, call the cops if you want. Tell them some teenagers broke in. Response time around here is probably fifteen minutes, so we’ve got ten minutes, minimum. We just want to see something cool, and then we’ll leave.”
I hate that he called my bluff on the weapons, especially in hindsight. I’m not a confrontational person, and my instincts are always to avoid a fight if possible. So, in this case, my instincts were telling me to call in someone else to help get these clowns out of the zoo, not to use the weapons I had for just such a purpose. It makes me feel helpless and angry knowing that I back down from fights, but I balked at the idea of getting physical with them. Only the fact that that wasn’t supposed to be part of my job kept me from feeling like a complete failure as security.
“The animals here are not puppies,” I finally exclaimed. “Some of them are territorial. They could seriously hurt you.”
They finally slowed their pace as they closed in on the gate to the wooden fence. “What are you talking about, territorial? They’re zoo animals,” Gary said.
“This is a huge zoo, and it’s more like a preserve,” I sighed. “It backs up into the forest. These animals build their homes here, scent mark the boundaries, and regularly eat small animals that come in through the bars of the fence to explore. So, like I said. These. Are not. Puppies.”
The two of them finally came to a stop at the gate, looking at me warily. “With this fence, how dangerous could they be?” Gary asked. I didn’t answer. Shaun scanned the expanse behind the gate and Gary looked around, making it clear what he was looking for when he said, “Where are all the signs and shit?”
“There’s a tour guide,” I said. “They don’t need signs.”
“Okay, so, what’s in here?”
Shaking my head, I let out a sigh. “It’s time to leave. I’m serious.”
Gary glared at me for a beat and then said the worst word possible. “Whatever.” Then he turned and unlatched the gate, walking through.
“Gary!” I shouted, stopping short at the threshold. Shaun walked past me, and I made a grab for him, but was too slow. I’ll regret that until the day I die.
Halted at the gate like there was an invisible force field keeping me out in just as it kept the animals in, I officially started panicking. I’d messed up, and now I couldn’t even hit them with either the pepper spray or the taser unless I wanted them to be easy prey.
My eyes scanned the smaller plants along the fence, which slowly grew in average height the closer you got to the tree line. The trees were surprisingly close to the fence, only a few yards in. Also, there were no footprints, no path that only grew small weeds from an animal that often paced back and forth, so I wasn’t sure how often it came out of the trees. Maybe it didn’t.
I wondered if there was another lake, maybe a small pond, that I didn’t know about further in, if the animal lived there. Or maybe this one was relatively reclusive, so I might have time to get the boys out. It could be that it had heard the ruckus of voices and decided to investigate, as it did during tours, but it would take a while to get here. Or I could get lucky and whatever it was could have just had a great meal, deciding to pass up the humans within its grasp.
But I was not lucky.
Putting my pepper spray and taser back in their holsters, I took a couple steps back as I pulled out my cell phone and called 911.
There was a brief pause before I heard someone pick up, and a calm female voice spoke, “911, what is your emergency?”
“Yes, I work at a private zoo, address 11842 Lincoln Road,” I spoke, drawing the shocked gazes of both boys. “Two teenage boys broke in, and they’re refusing to leave the property.”
“For real, Ripley?” Gary exclaimed, as if genuinely offended at my actions.
That’s when all hell broke loose.
Gary was standing near enough to the tall trees that he was under the branches, and something dropped on him, its weight crushing him to the ground. He didn’t even have time to scream. Shaun did, though, crying, “What the fuck?” as he stumbled backwards.
“Get out of there!” I screamed, grabbing my taser from its holster and pointing it at the animal.
On top of Gary’s body was something that looked like a koala. The only thing was, it must have been almost twice as big and had an orange, spotted pattern on its fur. The kicker was the teeth. Koalas eat eucalyptus leaves, most people know, so they don’t have much use for many teeth or even sharp teeth. They’re equipped with a pretty pathetic set of chompers.
Whatever this was, I knew it had a full set of teeth made for a meat-eater, because it had bitten down on Gary’s neck and ripped out a chunk of flesh, arterial blood spraying from the wound.
Shaun, unfortunately, did not take the opportunity to run. He stared at his downed friend, just as I did, in horrified fear. And then ran to him. “Gary!” he screamed. “Hey, get the fuck off him!”
“Shaun, don’t!” I shouted.
Whatever Shaun was thinking, it was less about the potential of him being attacked versus the fact of his friend being attacked right at that moment. I’ll say that about him at least: he didn’t just leave his friend to die. Unfortunately, if he had, it might’ve saved him. Throwing himself at the animal, Shaun shoved it off, an impressive show of strength, before grabbing Gary by the arm and trying to pull him to his feet. “Come on!”
I could see that Gary was barely conscious, though. A gash in an artery that was profusely bleeding will do that to a person. I attempted to aim my taser at the animal, but only a split-second passed before it turned and leapt once more, slamming into Shaun and biting his neck. I stumbled back in fear, adrenaline now pumping through me in earnest, as Shaun cried out in terror and fell to the ground before the animal ripped out his throat.
My vision swam at the sight of a copious amount of blood and the sound of Shaun choking on it. Thick chewing sounds came from the animal before it swallowed and then turned to me.
I only realized I’d dropped my cell phone when I heard a faint, panicked voice ask, “Ma’am? Ma’am, are you there?”
Lowering the taser, I slowly took a couple steps forward, picked up the phone, and I quietly said, “Yeah. I’m here.”
It felt like she was speaking from the other end of a long tunnel when I heard, “I’m sending police and EMT right now. What happened? Was someone injured?”
Swallowing hard, I grimaced as tears came to my eyes. Staring at the animal, which was still meeting my gaze unwaveringly, I simply answered, “Yeah. They’re dead.” At that point, the animal grabbed one of the boys by the throat, then the other, and started dragging them into the trees.
She hesitated before asking some more questions, and I replied to them all absently. Eventually, the animal was gone from my sight, but I still walked backwards as I retraced my steps to the security office, exactly like the first time I’d seen Yui. Eventually I arrived at the security room, and my shaky hand swiped the key card to get in. Shutting the door, I told the 911 operator, “I’m safe.”
“Good. The police should be there in ten minutes.”
My brain thought it was funny that it turned out the boys had been right about the timing, but filed it under ‘things to think about later’. “Okay. I have to call my boss.”
“Just stay on the line with me until the police arrive, okay?”
“It’s okay. I’m fine,” I said quietly. “I just really need to call my boss.”
In spite of her protests, I hung up. The silence of the room rang in my ears and I slowly sat down in my chair, pulling up Andrew’s number.
After four rings, he picked up, his voice drowsy but tense, knowing I’d only call if something had happened. “Ripley? What’s wrong?”
It took me a moment to find my voice. “Two teenagers broke in. They’re dead. Steve killed them.”
“Oh, fuck,” he breathed. After a few beats, he said, “Okay, all right, I’ll, ah, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Did you call the police already?”
“I was on the phone before it even happened, saying they broke in.” I grimaced at that. I was supposed to call my boss first, not the police. That let him determine what actions to take.
Andrew let out a breath. “Okay. I’m assuming Steve took the bodies?”
“Yeah.”
“All right, I’ll call Suzanne and have her put Steve down for a nap, and then get the bodies back to where the EMTs can get them.”
That confused me, and I didn’t really know what to say, so I went with, “I’m sorry, Andrew. I should’ve tried harder to get them to leave. Even tasing and pepper spraying them would’ve-”
“Ripley, this is not your fault,” he said firmly. “I’ll be there soon as I can, all right?”
We ended the conversation and I glanced at the screen of cameras, which was how I’d left it, focused on that section of the fence where the boys had climbed in, with the view enlarged to take up most of the screen. I stared at it until the police arrived.
When the motorcade of flashing lights were visible at the end of the road through one of the cameras, I pressed the button to open the front gate. Fielding the police officers and the EMTs and their questions, I brought them to the enclosure, and right at the edge of the tree line were the two bodies, looking exactly as I’d last seen them. So, I guess Suzanne knows how to run her zoo and handle things when the worst happens.
Both boys were put into body bags and lifted onto gurneys, and then each one was put into one of the two waiting ambulances. Andrew arrived before too long and answered all the questions the police had for him, the ones I didn’t know how to answer. Also the questions that I didn’t really feel comfortable answering, like, “What species of bear is it exactly? And why is there just this flimsy fence here?” I watched from a distance as they took his statement and, I determined by watching their facial expressions, Andrew seemed to answer their questions to their satisfaction.
The long, exhausting experience ended when the last of them left, and Andrew and I went back to the main building, going to his office. Instead of sitting in his desk chair, my boss vied for the couch that sat against one wall, used occasionally by visitors. I sat at the other end, leaning back heavily into the cushions.
Andrew spoke first, echoing his earlier sentiments and immediately making it clear that what occurred wasn’t my fault. I felt some anger at myself, mostly because I knew that if I’d used one of my weapons on one of them, they’d still be alive. But I hadn’t wanted to go to such extremes just because they’d climbed over a fence. They were dumb teenagers, right? I’ve never been tased or pepper sprayed, but I’d seen videos on YouTube and it didn’t look like a fun time.
“Look, you said it that first day in your interview, that people are stupid,” he told me. “Teenagers especially. You know that’s a fact. You did the best you could in that moment, so don’t look back and think of what you could’ve done to fix things, because solutions always seem obvious in hindsight. All right?”
“Yeah,” I muttered.
Andrew sent me home at that point, saying he’d take the rest of the shift. I was too weary to object, so I left.
Stanley was still sleeping safely in his bed, and that’s one thing I’m so grateful for. If this job took my brother from me, I’d be done with it. Still, I don’t relish waking up tomorrow and having to face him. I don’t know exactly how he’s going to react to the news, but it’s going to be the worst thing in the world that’s happened to him, mostly because of the guilt of not being able to talk them out of going. The same way I couldn’t talk them out of staying out of an enclosure.
My schedule is still nocturnal, so I’m not tired enough to sleep right now. Hopefully I’ll get sleepy soon. For now, I’ll play one of Stanley’s mindless old school video games with the sound muted. My main goal is to get the image of all that blood out of my head.
​
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/storiesbykaren

https://967kissfm.iheart.com/content/2024-05-21-texas-town-crowned-cheapest-place-to-buy-a-home-in-the-entire-state/
Texas Town Crowned 'Cheapest Place To Buy A Home' In The Entire State
By Logan DeLoye
May 21, 2024
While home prices continue to rise in certain regions across Texas, one town in particular remains affordable. Something about this location allows realtors to sell property at a cheaper rate than most, making it an extremely affordable place to live. Population and price were a few of the factors considered in the search for the cheapest place to buy a home across the state, and the results might surprise you.
If you've been looking for the most affordable area to buy a home in Texas, look no further than this cost-effective gem!
According to a list compiled by GOBankingRates, the cheapest place to buy a home in Texas is Rochester. Homes in Rochester cost an average of $48,611.98. For reference, the average cost of a house in America last year was $327,000.
Here's what GOBankingRates had to say about compiling the data to discover the cheapest place to buy a home in each state:

"To find the least expensive places to buy a home, GOBankingRates used data from Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI) and the U.S. Census Bureau regarding population in order to analyze every significant city in all 50 states and chose the one place in each locale where houses are a steal."

 ------======***O***======------

If you don't mind the fact that Rochester, TX:

• is 130 miles NNE of San Angelo; 90 miles SW of Wichita Falls; 115 miles ESE of Lubbock; and 150 miles WNW of Fort Worth, so any town of any size is a minimum of a 90 minute drive;
  
• has one restaurant (a pretty good one, according to TripAdvisor, but that limits one's choices with regards to cuisine);
  
• has one church, which is no problem so long as you're a Southern Baptist;
  
• has one supermarket, the Modern Way Supermarket, which has astronomical food prices (but then, the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Stamford is only 23 miles away);
  
• is earthquake-prone: the incidence of earthquakes, including moderate earthquakes is 478% greater than the overall U.S. average;
  
• has an incidence of tornadoes 42% greater than the U.S. average;
  
• voted for Trump over Biden by a margin of 83 percent to 15 percent; and Republicans outnumber Democrats by almost 6 to 1;
  

it's a pretty darned good town to live in!
(If you want a really cheap place to buy a home, try Cairo, Illinois, at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. An average home in Cairo, Illinois costs $19,759, but outside of a few convenience stores, an H&R Block location, a Days Inn motel and a Christian radio station, there are no businesses in Cairo. One business (H & R Block) still operates in downtown Cairo; the floors in the other businesses around the square have literally collapsed so the rest of downtown Cairo is ruins. Cairo is 35 miles NW of New Madrid, MO, the site of America's largest earthquake in 1811 which formed Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee. Cairo is also 50 miles south of Murphysboro, IL, where 234 people were killed during the EF-5 Tri-State Tornado on March 18, 1925. The population of Cairo has dropped 55 percent since 2000, and 88 percent since its highest population a century ago in 1920; and Cairo is ranked #21 in CityData's Least Safe Cities To Live In. But it's cheap!)

One of my partners birthdays is coming up in a few months so I’m looking for places I can buy dried flowers as well as places I can buy pinned insects/similar oddities. I don’t want to risk ordering online and having them break in the mail or stolen, and while I know the punk rock flea is normally good for this, the next flea will be after their birthday. Willing & able to drive a bit outside of the city if necessary (also open to any local small artists I could pick up from or will be vending someplace in the city before mid-July).

Throwaway for obvious reasons.

Legend:

• MB: My Brother (44).
• BW: Brother's Wife (43).
• TS: Their Son (10).
• TD: Their Daughter (7).
• OP: Me (40M).
• MM: My Mother (68).
• MF: My Father (69).
• MS: My Sister (27).

Around 15 years ago, MB met a woman, BW. Things were great at first: she was nice, friendly, and cheerful. I liked her. Then they married, and in the most cliche way possible, everything changed. She was no longer nice, no longer friendly, no longer smiling, and started being extremely disrespectful towards my mother.
MB is a University-educated engineer with a very good job. Our parents have a relatively large multi-story home (not an apartment), which was much easier to afford 43 years ago, but is almost impossible these days, and really they were only able to afford it because MF--who himself is a very talented engineer--built most of the house with his own hands. BW is uneducated and can't hold a job for long, as she keeps getting fired. You'll soon learn why. BW is obsessed with money and keeps ranting about it, and it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that she believe was marrying into a rich family. Which turns out, she wasn't. Once she figured that out, and that my parents do not have the money to buy them a free apartment, she became very hateful towards us.
Not long after they married they have gotten pregnant TS was born. Things only got worse. My mother would often take two buses to reach their apartment so she could help, but was always met with a yelling, ungrateful BW who only complained and never said "thanks". MM often left their apartment sobbing because of how she was treated by BW.
BW almost never says "hello" or asks how someone is doing. When one of us sees her, whether she visits my parents or one of us visits them, she skips the "hello" (even if you say that to her first) and either ignores you and goes to sulk in the living room, or launches into a rant about the latest injustice she feels someone had done to her, or about money. "How could she say that to me?! Everything is expensive!! We don't have money!"
As time went on, MB became more and more withdrawn, and apparently had started suffering from anxiety. He is no longer a happy person, and his relationship with our mother has worsened through the years, to the point where calling it a relationship would be an overstatement.
We tried talking with him several times about the situation, but it's impossible. Generally we're not good with these talks, to be honest. The last time we talked with him--when it really seemed that their relationship was at a bad place--it didn't do anything, and a few months later BW was pregnant with TD, to our surprise.
BW is very hostile towards us, but mostly towards my mother. Again, it's cliche to hate your mother-in-law, but she hates her with an unreasonable passion. Whatever my mother says, she will say the opposite, even if it's actually what she thinks too. I want to make it clear that there are two sides to every coin, and we are not perfect. MM is a stubborn person, but will break her back for her family. MF is a grumbling man that moans and groans about anything being said, which can be uncomfortable for us and for guests. This is why I tried my best from day one to be extra kind and nice towards BW and her family and to make things as comfortable as possible. BW has a mother, grandmother, half-sister, and biological sister. Her father lives on the other side of the planet. She doesn't get along with her biological sister, so we hardly ever see her, but she does get along with her half-sister, who's the absolute opposite of her, and whom we love.
Until a couple of years ago, we always invited her family to holiday dinners and other events, and I went as far as picking them up and driving them (that is, her mother, grandmother and sometimes half-sister) to and from my parents' home, because they can't drive themselves and BW couldn't be bothered. By the way, she often fights with her mother as well.
On these holiday dinners, BW will do everything in her power to ruin the evening. For example, she will get up in the middle of dinner, walk to the kitchen, open the door below the sink where the trash can sits, and then slam the door as loud as she can, multiple times. Yes, it's that crazy.
During Passover Seder, while we're reading the Haggada, she will start yelling about something completely unrelated to anything and won't stop until we start eating. Last Seder she decided in the middle of reading the Haggada that now was the time to trim TS nails, something he absolutely abhors. She started running after her son with scissors, as he was crying and yelling for her to leave him alone, and she was laughing hysterically. All this in the middle of reading the Haggada, with everybody sitting at the dinner table on a once-in-a-year occasion.
She never helped with anything. Never cleared off her own plates. Never helped cleaning or washing the dishes. Never cooked anything. Never said "thanks". My mother, as a standard Jewish mom, makes a ton of food for her children and grandchildren, so they get a large amount of food for the week every Saturday. She often speaks to my mother in commands, "give me this, do that".
TS and TD have a very good relationship with myself and my sister. TD in particular loves me quite a lot, and I try my best to be a good uncle for them and take them on various activities, both so they have fun, and so MB and BW can have some time for themselves. My parents help out and take the kids at least once a week, pick them up from school and do whatever is possible to make life easier for MB and BW. The two haven't asked me to babysit the kids much, perhaps three times over the years, but I always said "yes".
BW's craziness is affecting their children and their social life. TS used to be so full of life, but now he's often depressed, and his relationship with BW is not good. In fact, I think he hates her, as in the past year or two I have heared him several times cursing at her. He and his sister are very mischievous, and quite frankly not well-behaved. They take after their mother in that. When they don't like something, they will throw it on the floor. If you tell them to pick it up, they laugh in your face. They don't know how to take a "no". I love them, but they are very difficult to handle. I took them to the cinema a year ago and had a panic attack because of how terribly they were behaving. The kids lost friends over their mother frequently having fights with other kids' parents.
BW was out of work for several years after first giving birth, but went back to work eventually, but she can't keep a job, and given that she likes to rant about her boss or someone else at work doing her an injustice, it's clear that she's getting fired.
Our approach over the years was to ignore BW's craziness and insults towards my mother and us and just move on, but it's hard. Several years ago BW again disrespected my mother during dinner, an argument broke out between them, and I lost it and yelled at both of them to shut up. Apparently this was the first time someone has ever spoken up to BW, and she did not take it well. She started yelling at me that I had no right to speak to her like that and that no one ever told her to shut up, and she started hurling insults at me. I yelled at her to get the hell out of our house. She spent the next 15 minutes standing by the door, cursing me and the rest of us, yelling like a freaking maniac. MB did not seem to care.
We sort of made up after that, but a few months (years?) later she once again disrespected my mom, and this time my father lost it and demanded she leave. She absolutely lost it this time and her expletives were insane. She called my father disgusting names, verbally attacked my weight and the fact that I'm unmarried, attacked my sister, attacked my brother, and again yelled in a way I had never witnessed before.
I figured this would be it. We wouldn't see her again at our home and we'll simply maintain a relationship with MB and their children with minimal contact with her. Unfortunately, things returned to "normal", kind of. They stopped coming to visit on every Saturday, and her family no longer comes to family dinners and holidays. Personally, I am very cold towards her, but this did not prevent me from maintaining a good relationship with their kids.
A year or so ago, she started some argument at my parents' home again, don't remember about what. I went to the side and muttered to myself that I couldn't stand it anymore. She heard me, and took it personally, and started yelling that she never should have came back after I threw her out "in disgrace", which is funny because she stayed for 15 minutes yelling at us after I "threw her out". Anyway, she was yelling at my mother, and said something about the kids and I. My mother replied that the kids "absolutely love OP", to which BW retorted with "don't worry, I'll poison them just like I..." She caught herself then, apparently about to admit something she did not actually want to admit, most likely how she poisoned the kids against MM, who hardly receives any love from them. Like their mother, they do not say "hello" to MM when they see her, but of course have no problem demanding things from her. Their attitude towards MM and us is vastly better when BW is not there, by the way, but not necessarily good.
BW has no respect for our time, possessions or personal issues. She doesn't care when her kids break expensive things we worked a lot of time to be able to afford because "who cares". She often belittles MS's issues (MS is a disabled military veteran). She abhors anything that is "used", and will only accept something if it's new; she will not say "thanks", and if she doesn't like what you gave her, she'll just throw it in the trash. MM and MS often buy them clothes and presents, but never get thanked and eventually those things end up in the trash. I all but stopped buying them things because of this. It sucks spending your hard-earned money getting something nice to your nephew and niece, only to find out it was thrown out a few days later because the mother didn't like it.
On birthdays, MM and MS like to do fairly elaborate cakes. Years ago, on BW's birthday, my mother baked a cake, and my sister stayed up until 4am to decorate it. When presented with the cake and hearing the calls of "wow, beautiful" from everyone, she replied with an absolutely disgusting "meh, it's only a cake", which deeply hurt my sister's feelings.
My parents used to invite us all to restaurants here and there, and she would make it a point to always order the most expensive item on the menu. We rarely do that any more.
A couple of years back they bought an apartment, and my parents helped them with a not-insignificant portion of the cost. This was one of the only times BW actually thanked my parents for anything, but she went back to hating them and complaining very quickly.
MB is now a shadow of his former self. He pretty much ignores all this drama and pretends nothing is happening. I've never seen him raise his voice to BW or really do anything. He no longer really speaks with MM, which hurts her to no end. He doesn't answer her phone calls, and only answers her (and our) texts 24 hours later. The apartment they bought was in a building which did not yet exist, and not only did my brother take it upon himself to do renovations, he also took duties of the house committee and handled many issues during the building's construction, which took a huge mental toll on him and exacerbated his anxiety.
BW often disrespects MB too. She will often hurl accusations towards MM that she raised screwed up children, and that her husband (MB) "has problems". Years ago, MB needed to replace their car because she destroyed it. He bought a used car from a leasing company, but on the second day of ownership, the battery was dead. We were supposed to go somewhere, don't remember where, so at the last minute I drove over to their place to pick up my brother. As we were leaving the building's parking lot, BW just arrived with the kids in tow, and upon seeing us in my car, started shouting in the middle of the street with the most hateful look on her face "What kind of husband do I have? What a cheap idiot! He bought a shit car!" I was so embarrassed for my brother, who simply ignored her. I don't know how he could ignore it, I would be presenting her with divorce paper the very next morning. The car was fine of course, but a few years later she destroyed that one too.
Last week was my brother's birthday, and he and BW wanted to go to a hotel for a few days to celebrate, so my parents' gave them some money and took the kids in for three days. The kids had a good time with their grandparents, and on their last day I took them to the cinema to see the new Garfield movie, which they greatly enjoyed.
MB and BW came back to get them in the evening after we came back from the cinema. Now, say you wanted to go on vacation, and someone takes in your kids for three days and also helps you with money for the vacation. You come back after three days to pick up your kids. You knock on the door, and the person who took them in opens the door. If I were to ask you what you would do then, I would expect the following:

1. Say "hello".
2. Ask "how's it going?"
3. Tell how the vacation went and say thanks for helping.
4. Ask if everything went okay with the kids.
5. Ask to see your kids.

BW did none of those. Not even number 1. As MB ran upstairs to see the kids again, BW went to the living room and sat on the couch.
As it was MB's birthday two days earlier, of course MM baked a cake, and MS and TD worked together to decorate it for several hours, and did a beautiful job. We all sat down to eat the cake, but BW decided for some reason that TD shouldn't eat the cake she helped make, but instead decided to open the pantry, take out a box of those sugary decorations used to decorate the cake, and let TD eat those like they were a snack. When MM noticed, she told TD "oh, don't eat that, there's an actual cake to eat". BW hates it when we say "no" to her kids, so she came in with "so what?", to which my mother replied "it's unhealthy". BW then said--in a very disrespectful tone--that "this entire cake is unhealthy!"
I was all set to ignore this, it was relatively tame compared to her usual jabs, but my father muttered quietly "maybe we should throw away the cake then". She said something, don't really remember what, my father said "we made a cake for our son, why do you have to say that?" and BW absolutely lost it. It was the worst one yet. Again, she started yelling, cursing, hurling insults, again reminding of the time I "threw her out of the house", and started walking in and out of the house while shouting commands at my brother, who mostly ignored her.
MF went upstairs. TD started crying and ran outside, to which BW yelled at her "what are you crying about?", and then she took the box of cake decorations and smashed it on the floor. MB simply took a broom and started cleaning the decorations off the floor. MM told her "you've ruined another birthday" (apparently, she also ruined the previous birthday, but I was abroad). When my brother was done cleaning and ready to go, he left carrying the cake and food for the week in his hands, and BW yelled "I don't want to see this fucking cake!"
My parents are getting old. They are not in a very good shape physically, but BW doesn't care. She expects them to serve her and her kids and to shut up as she shits all over them. I have been horribly depressed since her last explosion. Usually I can let it go and just move on with my life, but this one really got to me, especially because of how everything went from "great" to "terrible" in three seconds. I can usually tell when shit is about to hit the fan, but this one surprised me. We had a good weekend with the kids, they enjoyed being with their grandparents and uncle and aunt, and instead of going home happy, they had to leave in the worst way possible. I'm also very worried for MB, who has to suffer the embarrassment of an insane partner who cares not about his feelings. I'm extremely sad for my mom, who gets shit on by BW and MB. Turns out while they were on their vacation, my mother tried calling him multiple times to congratulate him on his birthday, but he didn't bother answering or calling back. He seems to have forgotten that his birthday is also important for the person who brought him to life.
I don't know what to do anymore. I try my best to avoid having to interact with BW, but I'm sacrificing things I shouldn't have to sacrifice. For example, I have almost made it a point to no longer even be in the country during holidays so that I don't have to sit at a family dinner with her. This also hurts my parents, but I have to protect my sanity, because it's really doing a number on me. I can't maintain a normal relationship with my brother. I did not marry that person, why do I need to suffer this?
I will appreciate any suggestions, but really I just wanted to vent. Thanks for reading, hope you at least enjoyed our drama.

This is taken from and is copyright protected by globalsoup.net, a website that promotes flash Fiction with annual writing contests.
I am reprinting these Flash Fiction Prompts because they are outstanding ways to freewrite and offer plenty to work with for those who want to learn how to write Flash Fiction.
So check out these prompts and the article and work some of them into your journal! Post the best responses!
100 Awesome Flash Fiction Prompts - Plus Bonus Prompts!
We’ve put together 100 flash fiction prompts, each one designed for a very short story. These prompts will probably be best suited to a story of between 300-1,000 words. If you want to write a longer story using these prompts, you can easily expand these ideas to fit a story of any length.
What is flash fiction?
Flash Fiction is defined as a very short story that can be anywhere from just a couple of words to about a thousand in length. The beauty (and difficulty) of writing flash fiction lies in trying to tell a complete story in so few words. Great flash fiction is succinct, emotive, thought-provoking, and impactful.
What’s the difference between flash fiction and a short story?
The only difference between flash fiction and a typical short story is the word count. However, this scarcity of words means that writing flash fiction can feel like a completely new skill. Just like the short story is a different animal to the novel or novella; flash fiction is kind of unique.
When writing flash, you’ll need to use fewer characters, a simpler plot, and you’ll have to make each word count. This is why editing is so important. You have to be brutal. Cut out everything superfluous and really make sure each and every word is performing an important function in the story. If you’re interested in writing very short fiction, why not check out drabbles? Drabbles are stories of exactly 100 words in length, and they can be a great way to practice keeping your stories very, very short.
How to plot a flash fiction story
When you sit down to write flash fiction, you must begin by choosing an appropriate plot. You cannot simply use a short story plot and tell it using fewer words. A typical flash fiction plot is like looking at one part of a story under a microscope.
For example, let’s look at prompt #21 in our list of 100 Flash Fiction Prompts:

1. Two people on a sinking ship must decide who should take the last seat in the last lifeboat. If you were writing a novel about a sinking ship, you’d probably want the actual sinking to be the climax of the story. Of course, there are infinite ways to write a novel about a sinking ship, but this would structurally be the most obvious. You’d use the first part of the novel to introduce your characters and describe the voyage leading up to the sinking and the sinking of the ship would be the dramatic climax, leaving the last part of the book as the resolution.

The golden rule of writing short stories is to begin as close to end as you can. So, to turn the same story from novel to short story, you’d probably want to begin with the ship sinking. You haven’t got time to introduce the characters before the action begins, so you’d need to feed in exposition and backstory here and there during the events.
All stories need a good climax. So, you would find the most dramatic moment in the story and build up to it. Perhaps your climax would be the two main characters having to decide who will take the remaining seat on the last lifeboat.
Finally, you need a resolution. In a longer short story you do have time to bring in some kind of satisfying resolution at the end.
But, if you’re writing flash fiction and your story is only a few hundred words, you really need to zoom in on one tiny moment in that story.
You don’t have time to tell the entire story of a sinking ship, but you can turn one moment into a story.
We’ve chosen the lifeboat situation as the key moment in this hypothetical story. Two characters must decide which one of them will take the last seat on the last lifeboat. This is an appropriate plot for flash fiction because it’s simple, high-stakes, dramatic, and thought provoking.
Not all flash fiction will have a plot quite this dramatic, but all great flash fiction will have a plot that can be expressed in just one or two sentences.
If you have a plot in mind, but it seems more suitable for a longer story, you can sometimes find several flash fiction plots hidden within it. Just look for little stories within the story, like the lifeboat moment in our hypothetical tale of the sinking ship.
This brings us to our top tip for coming up with ideas for flash fiction stories:
if you’re ever stuck for ideas, you can find little stories within the story in books, movies, and TV shows. A full length feature film might have as many as 20 little incidents in it that could easily be flash fiction.
Don’t directly write a story based on the film, though. Just carefully pick out those little moments, write down what’s happening as a one or two sentence plot, and then use it to inspire your own, completely original flash fiction story.
One of our 100 Flash Fiction Prompts was actually taken from the movie Pulp Fiction!
How to write very short flash fiction
There are several reasons writers might start writing flash fiction. Of course, it could be that they just love and enjoy the form, but sometimes they’ll be a more strategic and practical reason at play.
Perhaps they want to practise the process of writing stories within the confines of a certain word limit. Maybe they are trying to develop a daily writing routine and they don’t have a lot of free time. It could be that they’re trying to break a habit of not finishing writing projects, or perhaps they are entering a flash fiction competition.
Whatever the reason, very often when we sit down to write flash, we must work under an imposed or self-imposed word restraint. We’ve set ourselves (or been set) the task of keeping the story under a particular number of words.
So, how do you plot a flash fiction story when you have to keep your story very, very short.
We’re not going to discuss stories of 100 words or fewer here. Technically, those stories are still flash, however, we prefer to categorise 100 word stories as drabbles and anything under 100 words as micro fiction.
But what if you have to keep your flash fiction story under, let’s say, 300 words? How do you write a flash fiction story that short?
The answer is: get your microscope out again. Remember earlier when we said writing flash fiction is like looking at part of a story under a microscope? If you have to write very short flash fiction, you’ll need to zoom in even further.
Let’s look at a couple of examples from our 100 Flash Fiction Prompts:

1. During a match, a young boxer must decide whether to throw the fight.

If you had 1,000 words to devote to the story, you could have time to tell the story of the entire fight. With only 300 words, it might be better to zoom in on the very moment when the boxer must choose whether or not to go down.
In a longer flash fiction story you might have time to go into detail about why he’s in this situation and why he’s so conflicted. In a 300 word story, you might only devote one or two sentences to his gambling debt and the large sum of money waiting for him if he goes down in the third round, as instructed.

1. A family must decide what to take and what to leave behind as a wildfire approaches their home.

If you had 1,000 words to devote to this story, you might be able to write about the whole process of choosing what to take and what to leave behind. You might be able to mention many different choices and have the whole family participate in the story. You’d be able to go into some details about certain choices and the stories behind individual objects or mementos, as well as the implications of choosing certain things over others.
With only 300 words, it would be advisable to zoom in on one member of the family and to focus on one profound and important choice.
How to write a flash fiction story
Now you have your mini plot, you still need to make sure your flash fiction feels like a complete story. It should still have a beginning, middle, and an end.
Just like a short story, you may need to bring in a little exposition here and there to give texture, context, backstory, and to bring some depth to the characters. But, unlike a short story, you won’t necessarily need to end with a full, detailed resolution. It’s quite common for a flash fiction story to end with a quick twist or plenty of ambiguity.
Flash Fiction is much more about eliciting emotions and provoking thought, than setting up and resolving a complex story.
100 Awesome Flash Fiction Prompts
A young ballet dancer chooses not to tell the other dancers in her troop about a loose paving stone outside their dance studio.
Two sisters realise they’ve both been on a perfect first date … with the same man.
On the car journey home, two parents realise they’ve left their child’s favourite teddy on a park bench several hours away.
A writer suffering from writers’ block looks for inspiration in a strange place.
Set 200 years in the future, a young man realises he’s too emotionally dependent on his robot assistant.
A young woman discovers she’s taken the wrong suitcase home from the airport. The contents of the case make her question her own life choices.
A murderer realises he has only 10 minutes to dispose of a body.
A child decides to walk home by themselves after their parent forgets to pick them up from school … again.
Your protagonist manages to talk the grim reaper out of collecting their soul.
Your protagonist suddenly realises they’ve been living in a simulation.
A young couple has chosen to spend the night in a haunted house to fix their marriage. Your story starts just as things get very weird.
Your protagonist finds a letter they wrote to themselves when they were a teenager.
Your protagonist must decide whether or not to drink from a fountain that erases all painful memories from the mind.
Your protagonist comes across a street called ‘Memory Lane’. They quickly realise the name is eerily apt.
A bride finds out something startling about her future husband an hour before the wedding.
Your protagonist finds an advertisement for a company that promises everlasting youth.
A youngest sibling shows up at a family reunion they weren’t actually invited to.
Your protagonist finds a piece of paper with a spell on it. If they say the words out loud they aren't sure if something terrible or wonderful will happen.
Your protagonist is watching a jazz band play when they realise they know the drummer from somewhere — but where? It takes a whole song for them to figure it out.
Your protagonist must meet their ex for lunch to tell them they’re now engaged. It’s been just a few weeks since they split up.
Two people on a sinking ship must decide who should take the last seat in the last lifeboat.
During a match, a young boxer must decide whether to throw the fight.
Your protagonist must pack their belongings before moving to a new colony on mars.
A pilot realises they have lost control of their aircraft.
Your protagonist doesn’t want to attend their 100th birthday party — and for good reason!
Your protagonist gets stuck in a lift with their ex … 5 minutes after breaking up with them.
A child says goodbye to the fairies in his garden before moving to a new home.
Your protagonist saves someone’s life … and then wishes they hadn’t.
Your protagonist arrives at a blind date. They’ve been set up with someone they actually know a little too well.
Set in a dystopian future in which public displays of affection are banned, your protagonist faces an agonising choice.
An agoraphobic must face their fear in order to save something important.
Your protagonist must make her partner fall out of love with them. Both their lives depend on it.
Your protagonist is hiking with her small children, they come face to face with a grizzly bear and her cubs.
Cinderella and Prince Charming realise they got married too quickly.
A message written in graffiti on a bathroom wall has serious implications for your protagonist.
Your protagonist finds a bag, looks inside, and realises the owner might just be their soulmate.
Your protagonist has been seeing the same stranger everywhere they go for months. They finally decide to confront them.
A couple realise their relationship is over during the trip of a lifetime. They’ve been saving up for the trip for years.
A public debate sees two previously married people letting their private grievances come into their arguments.
Your protagonist plans their escape from a retirement home.
A couple realise their fundamental beliefs are at odds with each other.
An artist develops an obsession with drawing a next-door neighbour.
Your protagonist finds themselves trapped in a cabin with a group of hikers during a heavy snowfall.
An ice skater must face going back on the ice after a dangerous fall.
A couple must decide their plan for New Year’ Eve. They both have secret reasons for their choice.
A family must decide what to take and what to leave behind as a wildfire approaches their home.
Your protagonist is waiting for someone important at the airport. They begin to think that person isn’t going to show up … and then they realise why.
Your protagonist must find their way through a maze. What they find in the middle of the maze is the last thing they were expecting.
An actor waiting in the wings has forgotten his first line.
Your protagonist is wrongly identified as a hero. Do they come clean?
Your protagonist realises their past is catching up with them.
Your protagonist overhears something that has serious implications for them while trying on clothes in a changing room.
Your protagonist is in a costume shop trying to decide what to dress up as for Halloween.
Your protagonist realises they’ve slipped into an alternate dimension.
A surgeon must make an impossible choice on the operating table.
A pregnant journalist interviews the mother of a missing child.
Your protagonist must ask his girlfriend’s father for his blessing, only to discover the father knows his deepest secret.
Your protagonist sees something on social media that will change their life forever.
Two work colleagues realise they’ve been dreaming the same dreams for weeks.
A reluctant daughter comes to terms with having to carry on the family business.
Your protagonist realises she must go on the run.
Two bank robbers disagree on their plan to rob a bank. This leads to a disastrous consequence.
A strange case of deja vous leaves your protagonist convinced of supernatural interference.
A sceptic begins to question their beliefs during a psychic reading.
Your protagonist uncovers a scandal at their workplace.
A hapless cook tries to recreate her late father’s favourite recipes in an effort to feel connected to him.
Your protagonist has a premonition that makes them certain they can’t visit their mother-in-law for Christmas. Now he must convince his husband.
A young backpacker discovers something unexpected in a cave.
An impulsive character and an indecisive character are brought together by chance. They must make an important choice.
Two characters cleaning up after a party discover an object that sheds light on something strange that happened earlier.
Two strangers are trapped together during a blackout.
Your protagonist must take a leap of faith in order to save something important to them.
Your protagonist discovers a huge part of their life has been a lie.
Your protagonist has set up an elaborate way to propose. Inexplicably, everything goes wrong.
Your protagonist must buy a dress for her mother’s funeral.
Your protagonist goes back to her favourite city in the world, only to find it has completely changed.
While stargazing, your protagonist realises the stars are forming secret messages in the sky.
Your protagonist hears a news story on the radio that will mean the world changes forever. However, she seems to be the only person who heard it.
Your protagonist is crossing a frozen lake. They see something under the ice that definitely shouldn’t be there.
A workaholic must come to terms with retirement.
An Olympic athlete must decide whether or not to report their teammate for doping.
A young mother feels isolated from her childless friends.
Your protagonist is about to realise their greatest ambition. Will it be everything they were hoping for?
Onboard a spaceship, a couple prepare to go into stasis for hundreds of years.
Your protagonist has an obsession with thinking about the past.
Set in a post-apocalyptic future, your protagonist meets an unlikely love interest.
Your protagonist visits a place from their childhood and realises their memories of that time might not be accurate at all.
A small child has decided to run away from home. Her parents watch on with amusement as she decides what to put in her backpack.
On a whim, a bus driver decides to radically change his route, much to the chagrin of his passengers.
Dystopian. A couple in love are only allowed to spend time with each other one day a year.
A shapeshifter begins to realise their powers are fading. They must decide what form will be the last one they take before they cannot change again.
The devil visits your protagonist with an offer on her soul.
Your protagonist suddenly has the ability to read minds. There’s only one place they want to go now!
Your very wealthy protagonist has designed a simple test to see who will inherit her estate.
An archaeologist discovers something that will change how we see the history of the world. It could be dangerous. Does he keep it to himself?
Your protagonist must clear out their late mother’s house. She discovers an incredible family secret.
Your protagonist is meeting his brother. They haven’t seen each other for 20 years.
Your protagonist develops the ability to see the world literally through someone else’s eyes.
Your protagonist starts to believe their partner might be a spy.
Your protagonist discovers a hidden camera in their living room.
Looking for a flash fiction competition? Check out our ‘Big List of International Writing Competitions!’ Looking for inspiration? Why not check out our list of the 20 Greatest Short Story Writers of All Time! Just received another short story rejection? Here’s our post about ‘How to Deal With Story Rejections’ Bonus Prompts! Two characters waiting by the side of the road realise they are both meeting the same person.
A woman loses her young niece in a busy shopping mall.
Three strangers must solve a riddle in order to gain entry to a secret club.
A poor woman must borrow ingredients from her neighbours to bake her husband a birthday cake.
A waiter finally finds out why an old man has been coming to the restaurant where he works every day at exactly the same time.
Two work colleagues must decide which of them is to take the blame for a terrible mistake at work.
Your disgruntled protagonist goes to confront the couple next door about the strange noises they’ve been hearing at night.
A family dinner party sees three characters make three very surprising announcements.
Two women argue over who should get to buy the last dress available in a store. How do they decide who should get it?
A young couple find out they knew (and disliked) each other vehemently as children.
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