I'm curious to talk to some fellow depraved weirdos out there who might enjoy the thoughts that keep rattling around in my head, but I couldn't quite come up with a punchy title or a fun setting so I figured I might try something more conversational in style. Like a kind of stream of consciousness style exploration into my own fantasies to see if anyone else out there is picking up what I'm putting down. So, hope you enjoy whatever it is that I've written below this sentence and shoot me a message if you're interested in chatting or writing something together to get us off as hard as possible.
I've been fantasizing all day about having a girl out there, a counterpart to myself that understands the most twisted and confused parts of my own identity. Who can understand the way that emotional and intellectual intimacy and honesty is so hardwired into what I find sexually attractive that it's inextricable - my kinks are not fleeting desires. They are parts of myself that scream out to be seen, embraced, loved that have gone unaddressed or otherwise unnoticed. I don't know if I'm a Dom, a sub, a switch, a vers, I don't have that name for myself - I only know what it is that I want, which is this.
I want to have someone who feels like they could just melt into me, to become a singular entity where we share each and every thought and feeling, synapses and muscles and rhythms of our body echoing each other in a way where there are no needs that exist outside of our connection. Obviously we'll need food and water and a break from the kind of intensity that I'm talking about, but I want the entire world to fall away while I'm jackhammering my cock into your pussy or asshole. I want your entire being to focus down to a pinpoint where you can feel my hot breath on your neck, words pouring out from my mouth like so much unfocused poetry while I'm fixated on the way that your muscles clench and massage my shaft. The way I can feel your soaked wetness coat our thighs, run in small rivulets down your asscrack while I pin your legs back by your head and fuck you until the bedframe beneath us breaks. I want the sound of our hips slamming wetly together to be so loud that neighbors next door think someone is being beaten, to bruise your cervix or plunge my cock so deep into your ass that I push into your colon. If we were to switch positions and have you climb on top of me, straddle me and look down at me with hungry eyes - fucking impale your hole onto me. Throw yourself down as if your life depended upon it, that my aching length filling you is the ultimate purpose that you'll fulfill in this lifetime and any others.
I don't care if you just got back from a long run or haven't shaved this week, all I know is when you walk in that front door of our house and I feel my eyes devour your body, I am filled with an uncontrollable, animalistic lust. I don't want to just fuck you - I want to worship, own, desecrate, build you up and break you down in your own perfectly flawed self image. I don't intend to change you into anything that you weren't meant to be, you've just finally found the person that sees what you are deep down inside and will help you to achieve that end. In that way, I fully expect to spend my days immersed in experiencing you - burying my face in your pheromone filled creamy pussy, letting my tongue and lips explore your curves and folds and memorize every single mole, freckle, unique mark that denotes this body your beautiful soul pilots as yours. I want to explore every inch of you with all five senses, to know how you smell as I bury my face in your ass first thing in the morning and dip my tongue inside your pussy, my nose pressed up against your puckered hole.

I recently joined whatnot app and I’ve purchased a ton of luxury and high end beauty items from anywhere between 40% to 70% off retail. I’m looking for some seller recommendations. I generally look for sellers with $1 starts or very low starts and sudden death only. Currently my favs to shop are Britt0091, makeupnmore and xofashionbar…in that order.
Britt0091 is very transparent and her show has a good vibe. She also has lot of just released products. I remember getting some Dior and hourglass products within two weeks of them launching at almost 50% off retail. She’s shade inclusive so as a woman with deep complexion I really appreciate that.
Makeupnmore’s shows moves very fast and I love that. She takes requests and runs the products requested. Sellers usually take requests but don’t run them. Her show is very organized. She runs the products in categories and runs categories more than once. I like it that way because it allows me to leave and pop back in when the catergory I’m interested in rolls around. There’s not a lot of cross talking so she’ll run a bunch of products in the short time she’s on. She doesn’t do raids after which I find a bit weird.
Xofashionbar has a great variety of products. Maybe not as much as the previous sellers but I also enjoy shopping her shows. She ships next day so I typically receive my products in two-three days. I love shopping her shows for lip products. She also carries items I don’t see the previous sellers with. Only drawback is she’ll start complexion products like concealers and foundations at 50% off retail which I don’t like. I prefer the low starts.

Republic 7^th Fleet, Centaurus Sector, 407 light years from Earth
RSS Vercingetorix, Independence-Class Carrier, 2174 A.D.
Vice-Admiral Mei Zhou had just finished making the final changes to the fleet’s reconnaissance patrol routes with her senior staff when the comm panel on her desk chirped, displaying an incoming comm request from Admiral Thompson. She quickly thumbed the pad being offered by her aide so that he could issue the orders they were just working on and turned to the rest of her staff. “Nice job, people. Let’s get to work. Dismissed.” As the staff filed out the door, she started entering the codes needed to decrypt the incoming comm channel and looked up to make sure the room was empty. She pressed the open channel icon, and Admiral Thompson’s holo image appeared in front of her desk, ending just below his waist and making it seem as if he was actually there, sitting.
“Mei, how’s your new ship treating you?” he asked, smiling. “She is an absolute beauty, Karl. I still can’t believe that she is mine.” She responded, returning his smile. “What can I do for you, Karl?” Thompson chuckled, and his holo image leaned back as he reclined in his chair. “Straight to business; I always liked that about you, Mei. Alright, here we go. We have received intelligence reports that the Commonwealth has begun evacuating one of their last remaining coreward periphery worlds that is now dangerously close to the expanded Insectoid border. We have also received an update from our spy drones in that same region that six Hive ships and almost four hundred cruisers that were patrolling their side of that border area have disappeared. This is too much of a coincidence, and I want you to detach a combat patrol and send them there.” Thompson finished speaking, and a flashing icon popped up on her comm panel, indicating that she had just received new orders. She tapped it and quickly scanned the new orders as the admiral waited. She looked up at his holo image. “Karl, I acknowledge receipt of the new orders and will implement them. Between me and you, why are we getting involved with this? The Commonwealth has a navy, and they should be fighting to protect their space. We can’t keep coming to the rescue and defending their members; we are already spread too thin as it is.”
Thompson nodded his head in agreement. “Mei, I agree with you in principle, but there are social and political considerations involved here. The near extinction of the V’rni has caused considerable turmoil among the citizens of the Republic. They know logically that we could not have stopped such an attack like that one, but the perceived failure to protect them or prevent the attack still weighs heavily on their souls. The Commonwealth is currently attempting to evacuate the Jaleen system, and they are one of the last surviving members that voted yes before our petition to join the Commonwealth was denied. It also doesn’t help that the Jaleeni are avowed pacifists and look like bipedal Newfoundland dogs. They are technically a bear-like species, but to humans, they look like humanoid dogs, and the government is unwilling to lose the popular support it currently enjoys by allowing the Jaleeni to be exterminated. I mean, look at these guys.”
Another flashing icon popped up on her screen a moment later, and she pressed it. It turned into a hologram depicting a typical Jaleeni family of a mother and father with a litter of six pups, and she couldn’t help but smile as she looked at the photo. They were wearing their traditional rough-spun linen clothes that made them look like dogs cosplaying as monks. They looked adorable, and she felt her heart melt while staring into their deep brown eyes, which looked sad. She understood the reasoning behind it, especially after the mass extinctions that occurred in Earth’s biosphere because of World War 3.
After the war, humanity had an awakening when they surveyed their destroyed world and came to terms with the disappearance of thousands of species and the near extinction of thousands of others. What followed were three generations of desperate measures to salvage what remained and a worldwide effort at habitat restoration and de-extinction efforts utilizing a wide array of methods such as back-breeding, cloning, and genome editing. Dogs were almost driven to extinction by the war as they were uniquely susceptible to the BioChem weapons that were developed and refined by the Eastern Coalition animal testing on poor innocent canine subjects. Between the Biochem weapons, owner deaths, abandonment, and starvation, almost 90% of the domesticated canine population and entire breeds were lost by the war’s end. Cats fared much better, but they still suffered a loss of almost half of their pre-war population, and a large percentage of the survivors reverted to a feral state. The result of all of this was an almost religious reverence for the preservation of sentient animal life on human worlds and a somewhat fanatical tendency of humans to take on the mantle of guardians for sapient alien species that resembled animals to them.
“Karl, I understand; I do. I just don’t like the fact that we are operating on so many fronts. Some of our fleets and task forces are patrolling areas far enough away that I worry about them getting reinforcements on time if they are attacked, and now my fleet is being partitioned to send a combat patrol almost three hundred light-years away from our current position. After the assault on the V’rn system, half of our combat power was recalled to Republic space to prevent the same thing from happening to us, and yet we are still being tasked with properly defending Eleani and Xenxin territory with half the ships we had before. Have they lost their damn minds at HQ?” She realized she was almost yelling at the admiral, and Mei took a deep breath, recognizing that her outburst was unbecoming of a Republic naval officer. She attempted to quickly apologize to Admiral Thompson. “Karl, I’m sorry that was uncalled for-“
The admiral raised a hand to stop her, an amused expression in his eyes. “Mei, I said the exact same thing to my boss as you did almost verbatim, and not as diplomatically as you, I might add. My concerns were addressed to my satisfaction, and I think yours will be when you get to your destination. There will be a task force joining you there, and I think you will be pleased. That is all I can say for now over the comms. You will lead the combat patrol to the coordinates listed in the orders you received, and the task force joining you there will fall under your command. I have a personal favor to ask of you. Please keep an open mind when you link up with the task force. You will rendezvous with Commodore Therax, and he is instrumental in our efforts to undermine the increasingly despotic Commonwealth government. More information about him and the Nekuli were added to your orders, make sure you review it. I took a big gamble on this, and I would be grateful if you did your best to make this collaboration work. That is all for now, and I wish you and your crews good fortune and godspeed, Mei. Take care of yourself.” The admiral finished speaking, and Mei noted the personal nature of his last few words, nodding an affirmative to his request.
“Admiral, I thank you for your words, and we won’t let you down. I need to issue the orders now to get there and link up with the task force on time. I’ll send a null space comm drone to the nearest relay to confirm our arrival and integration. Vice-admiral Zhou out.” As she leaned towards the comm panel to close the channel, she saw Admiral Thompson doing the same, and he gave her a wink and a mischievous smile before she pressed the icon, terminating the connection. She leaned back in her chair and blew out a deep breath. “Now what the hell was that all about?” She asked out loud to herself, as the confusing and secretive nature of her orders and the personal request of the admiral added to the uncertainty of what she was expected to do. She keyed her wrist pad and texted her aide to come back to her office for new orders. He was going to be livid that they just wasted half a day revising the patrol routes to maximize efficiency and increase their patrol range. A small smile crossed her lips as she waited. He had an obvious tell of his lower left eyelid spasming when he was mad despite displaying no emotions on his face, and she knew it drove him nuts that he couldn’t control it. Witnessing it was one of the small joys she had in her difficult job as vice-admiral, and she was looking forward to it.
Fifty-six hours later, her task force flashed out of null space at the designated coordinates and right on time. She felt a measure of pride as she watched her bridge crew go about confirming their location and verifying it with the navigational array and astrometric sensors. Once the navigator gave her confirmation that he verified their position, she turned towards the comms officer and ordered her to send a burst transmission with the pre-arranged code and waited for the response. A few seconds later, the comms officer raised her left hand and signaled receipt and confirmation of the code by the task force waiting in null space. An agonizingly long minute crawled along as she anxiously waited for her navigator to confirm the telemetry from his counterpart in the other task force as they verified their positions. The navigator activated the main viewscreen on the forward bulkhead as they waited. Suddenly, there were a multitude of exit flashes 200,000 kilometers from the bow of her carrier, and hundreds of warships appeared at a dead stop relative to her position.
Her jaw dropped as she took in the unexpected fleet in front of her. There were dozens of Commonwealth dreadnaughts, battleships, and heavy cruisers arrayed before her, as well as an additional one hundred and twenty light cruisers, destroyers, and missile frigates. On the flanks of the main formation, there were more exit flashes, and the bridge AI started categorizing them on the screen, and she saw that they were the new Eleani and Xenxin warships that she had been hearing about. They shared a design lineage with the Commonwealth ships, but there were definite differences that became obvious as they assumed their positions next to the Commonwealth navy ships. She was particularly intrigued by the Xenxin ships, as they seemed to be bristling with weapons, almost excessively so relative to their ship sizes. The Eleani ships seemed to have taken a different design philosophy, and they gave the impression of deadly speed and grace, and she was hard-pressed to spot any obvious weapons on their hulls despite the AI confirming that the ships were indeed well-armed.
There was another coded signal from null space that appeared on the comm station panel, and her comm officer turned to her. “Vice-admiral, we have received a coded message on the sigma frequency for your eyes only that requires biometric and voice verification to decrypt.” Zhou nodded and pressed a button on her arm panel, activating the privacy screen around her chair and feeling the pressure change as the bridge around her became opaque and silent. She pressed the biometric toggle on the panel, and a retinal scanner popped out of its alcove on the side. She leaned in and scanned her right eye first, then her left. An icon appeared on the screen, and she thumbed it as it flashed and confirmed the print. Finally, she spoke and addressed the bridge AI: “Suzy, please confirm the voice command for verification.” The AI answered immediately. -Of course, Vice-Admiral Zhou, please proceed.- “Zhou, one-red-seven-green-four-tango-alpha-zero. Execute.” -Voice command verified. Thank you, Vice-Admiral Zhou.-
A small holographic display popped up in front of her; the admiral appeared on the screen, and his pre-recorded message started playing. “Mei, I know all this cloak and dagger stuff seems excessive, but we couldn’t take any chances. The receipt of this message will activate a program in your bridge AI and allow it to take control of the new drone ships waiting for you in null space. They are a new class of upgraded null ships and are top secret. Your AI will anchor them to your task force, and they will follow you, remaining hidden in null space unless you absolutely need them.”
“There are also two troopships with them that are carrying a complement of two thousand Mark XII ATS Bio-Synths and an expeditionary brigade each of rangers and pathfinders in stasis. They are also to remain in null space unless circumstances require that you need them; they are an insurance policy for an ongoing mission in Insectoid space. The details of that are top secret as well and can be accessed with your AI. If the troopships are required for that mission, they are to be escorted by a detachment of null ships and sent there immediately. After you have met your task force counterpart, there are orders in this packet that are to be accessed by you both and executed. I have the utmost faith in you, Mei, and I can’t wait to take you out to dinner again when we can both coordinate our next leave together. Thompson out.”
The hologram message disappeared, and she waited a little longer to allow the blush from his last sentence to fade from her cheeks and suppress the smile that was trying to form on her face before she put on her command mask and lowered the privacy screen. The bridge crew was going about their usual tasks, trying hard not to seem interested in her top-secret message. “Comms, open a channel to the task force flagship, please.” The comm officer acknowledged the order, and a few seconds later, the Bridge of the Commonwealth flagship appeared on the viewscreen.
A Nekuli male was sitting in the command chair, resplendent in the uniform favored by Nekuli officers. He took a moment to look around her bridge before settling his eyes on her. He bowed his head slowly in a gesture of respect, which she returned in proper fashion. The proper courtesies having been observed, he raised his eyes to meet with hers and started speaking. “Vice-Admiral Zhou. May the ancestors grant you and your clan honor and good fortune. I am deeply honored to meet you, and I hope our integration is a successful endeavor. I now entrust the honor of myself and my crew to your safekeeping.” He remained stone still as he awaited her reply, and she tried to remember the proper return greeting that she had been studying during their trip here.
“Commodore Therax, the honor is mine, and I promise you that I shall never ask you or your crew to undertake any action that will bring dishonor to your clans and your ancestors. We are now joined as one; may our cause be just and pure.” She finished the response, and the gravity of what she just promised to someone she had never met before hit her hard; it felt almost sacred to her. Commodore Therax heard her proper reply, and he stood up, followed by the rest of his bridge crew. He addressed her again. “Our honor has been given, and we have received a promise to safeguard it in return. Our joining is now consecrated in the eyes of the ancestors, and you are now our clan leader. What are your orders?
She recovered from the ordeal of the emotionally charged exchange of vows and stood up to give her first order as clan leader to the Nekuli. “I request the presence of you and your senior staff aboard my ship tonight. I will prepare a feast to honor our new friendship and alliance. I have studied your cuisine, and I have found a selection of Earth cuisine that should suit your taste. It is called tartare and sashimi; I think you will like it.” Commodore Therax looked at her dubiously, and she had to stifle a laugh at his expression as she knew that he was imagining being forced to eat vegetables and overcooked meat out of politeness. She spoke quickly to assuage his fears. “Commodore, tartare, and sashimi are raw red meat and fish; I would never inflict vegetables and burnt meat on you or your crew; are we not friends?”
As his translator finished converting her words into his language, he smiled at her, baring all of his fangs in true happiness.

The "Weather Ball" Challenge results are in!
DURING THE EPISODE...

• After returning from the elimination, the girls all take a deep breath as they read Lala's message, with Elektra getting choked up because she didn't want her sister to go home. She confers that she's now the only US contestant left and feels like she has a target on her back because this is her third time in the competition. Adore says that she chose Lala because she felt like, with this being her third go-round, she was going to pick a queen that she thought had the most to show, and she's demonstrated a lot compared to Angeria, so she felt it to be only fair.
• As the queens look over the lipsticks, Shannel says that it's very telling that Adore is trying to play a very congenial game with how she's deciding, and Shannel says that she's not up for that behavior whatsoever. However, she continues to let Eva do her thing as she reveals that she picked Angeria's lipstick. Shannel claps, saying that someone is willing to play the game. Eva says that she picked Angeria's lipstick because she already won and had so much time to improve her snatch game skills, and she just faltered, and she doesn't think that's necessarily the bill of a winner, which the girls gag at. She responds to Eva by saying that she'll expect her to do the same, with the tension in the room being very thick. Monét laughs and says she's thankful it wasn't her this time in the drama.

Monét X Change has won the "Read Off A Weather Teleprompter While Indoor Skydiving" Mini Challenge!

• After the mini-challenge results are announced, Monét cheers over the fact that she won, and Plastique jokes that she can only win mini-challenges. She responds by saying that this is a challenge she can win, especially considering how Plastique is the only other UK girl with no wins. The girls gag, but then Brooke announces that it's a ball, to which Monét slaps her hands over her face in the confessional.
• The girls prepare for the challenge as Brooke walks around the room. She walks up to Plastique, who already has a concept laid out on her mannequin, and Brooke congratulates her on the fast work. Plastyique says she's trying to show what she's learned since her time on UK3 since she could only create one silhouette. Brooke then goes over to Elektra, who has a design laid out, but Brooke says that she's worried about it just being a dress and that's it since the one thing that's been holding Elektra's looks back is accessorization, which she nods along to.
• Adore is struggling with sewing, her outfit falling apart right in front of Brooke and causing her to break down in front of the other girls, which all comfort her, and she regains the strength to continue fighting for the main challenge. Angeria, however, is doing very well in creating this beautifully structured garment. Brooke is astonished that she can't even clock that it's made from unconventional materials.

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ON THE MAINSTAGE...
Monét X Change is declared safe and exits the stage, leaving the tops and bottoms of the week to hear their critiques...
Adore Delano receives negative critiques from the judges. Brooke says her package this week was underwhelmingly pedestrian, a reversion back to her season 2 fashion antics. She was incredibly sexy in her lingerie look, loving the all-black ensemble, yet every other queen that went after she stepped it up, so she looked weak in comparison. Her silver fox look was undeniably an older version of a Chola. While they loved incorporating her upbringing's fashion onto the mainstage, they wish she elevated the look to be much more. On top of all this, her design look could be more impressive, feeling like the tulle is a coverup for messy hot glue and a lack of shape. She got into her head this week, and they need her to pull herself out because she's been doing fantastic.
Angeria Paris VanMichaels receives positive critiques from the judges. The entire panel is shocked by how her package turned out, saying she used that winner's budget. First of all, her lingerie look was so incredibly sexy that they couldn't even clock that it wasn't her body; something about it was so Beyonce-esque; with this silver lingerie with this honey blonde wig and robotic parts, she looked so well put together. Her second runway was even more impressive, turning out this elevated church lady look dressed for the snow in her gorgeous white furs. When she let down that pageant bun to show her flowing gray hair, they knew she was locked in for the win. Her design look leaves the largest stamp on her; with her creation, this pantsuit meets pageant gown, fully complete for someone of her caliber with such stunning detail.
Elektra Shock receives negative critiques from the judges. Brad says that regarding her package, they felt her runways were the least cohesive, and when looking at them side to side, they clashed against one another. Her first look was right, but she was supposed to show her body, and they felt her look was too conservative. They know she has excellent padding, so she needs to push herself to the max because this fell short of what they know she's capable of. Her second look was much better, loving the way that she exited out of her igloo coat and came out as this sexy wolf MILF, but they do think she could've pushed that artic wolf concept a bit further since they felt she didn't fully commit to it. Her design runway, though, is their biggest problem. It's a pretty gown, but that's it. Besides some accessorizing, this is a step down from their knowledge of her skills.
Eva Le Queen receives negative critiques from the judges. Traci says they know she has some fantastic looks in here and that her package this week was more of a mixed bag, but her design look truly brought her down. Looking at her lingerie, she had a gorgeous body, and she stepped out looking like a fairy, especially with her long tuft of fabric and fairy wings flowing in the wind. She fully committed to the concept, even having fairy dust flow from her hair. Her second look was another fantastic entry into the package, coming out with this skinned polar bear look only to wear the bear fur as her outfit in this Cruella-inspired garment was a creative take on the category. The only problem was her design look, which seemed like a rush and afterthought, though it was the most critical part of the challenge.
Plastique Tiara receives positive critiques from the judges. Brooke says that she knows that Plastique wasn't playing around when she said she would give fashion, but this is on an entirely new level. First, they couldn't even clock that she was a drag queen on her first runway. No padding, just her sexy lingerie and Victoria's Secret angel wings. They were gagged by how she looked like she came right off the runway and served them cisgender realness. Her second look was even better, seeing as how she showed up in this icicle-inspired garment and melted herself on the mainstage into this sexy Elsa look; she had them gagged the most on the runway with that look. Then, her design runway was the most impressive one they've seen tonight. She turned out a cultural garment from unconventional materials. She's by far one of the best designers here.
Shannel receives positive critiques from the judges. The judges give her the moment she's finally been waiting for, telling her she's gorgeous as she begins to tear up on the runway, taking a shallow breath. They say that her first look was breathtaking because she embraced her body as an older queen, having the wind make her dress fly off in a reveal was so Marilyn Monroe-esque, turning out this gorgeous Old Hollywood to New Hollywood slut look. Overall, they were impressed by her thoughts during the presentation. Her second look was incredible in this Snow Queen-inspired garment, ripping the fairytale straight to this real-life drag. Her design look is her best, churning out this structural business garment that's just so well made.
Angeria Paris VanMichaels, Plastique Tiara, Condragulations! You are the Top Two All Stars of the week!
Adore Delano, Elektra Shock...I'm sorry, My Dears, but you are both up for elimination...

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DURING UNTUCKED...

• All the girls walk back in, and Monét is the first to complain about being safe, but Shannel notes that she's surprised that she wasn't in the low position over Eva, who had two great looks and was somewhat in the same boat as Monét. They begin to fight one another, with Monét claiming that she's had a problem with her all season and Elektra breaking up by yelling and saying they're not even the ones at the bottom. The tension is extremely thick in the room, and Plastique breaks it up by congratulating herself on a win, which makes the girls laugh.
• Angeria and Plastique talk to one another side by side and apologize for their jokes against one another, promising to have each other's back no matter how the lipsync goes. Adore talks with both of them and starts breaking down and crying, saying she doesn't deserve to be here. She nearly quits, but Angeria gives her an inspirational talk about quitting. Plastique says that she doesn't know if Adore can handle the pressure. Elektra talks to them next and promises them both an alliance, but Angeria says that this is her third time around, and it's pretty clear that she isn't doing the greatest and that she's now the only one, other than Shannel, without a win. The girls are unsure of who to pick.

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AFTER DELIBERATION...
Angeria Paris VanMichaels and Plastique Tiara make their lipstick choices and walk back to the stage, where the other Queens are waiting for them...
TOP2: Angeria Paris VanMichaels / Plastique Tiara
HIGH: Shannel
SAFE: Monét X Change
LOW: Eva Le Queen
BTM2: Adore Delano / Elektra Shock
The Top Two Queens will Lip-Sync for their Legacy to "Nobody's Supposed To Be Here (Hex Hector Dance Mix)" by Deborah Cox. This is your chance to impress me, win the challenge prize, and gain the power to give one of the Bottom Queens the chop. Good Luck, and Don't Fuck It Up!
POLL / Track Record

I'm pale, neutral-to-slightly-cool, naturally blonde, blue-eyed. I'm mostly low contrast but with slightly darker eyebrows than you would expect for my hair and skin color. I think I'm a "light summer" in color season land and my best match right now is mixing the NARS tinted moisturized in 0/Finland (too dark and too yellow) with the Ilia skin tint in 0.5/Skye (a bit too light in summer, good in winter). I haven't used anything from MAC in a long time but I recall being NW10-13. Back when Sephora had the Pantone Color IQ thing I was matched as a 1Y01.
After being a fan of Lisa Eldridge's videos for a long time, I've decided to finally purchase a few things to wear to work in a casual office. I usually don't use lip color so am looking for something a little brightening but still natural-ish and easy so have decided to purchase one Luxuriously Lucent formula and one Gloss Embrace. I'm now debating colors and am hoping for advice!
For Luxuriously Lucent colors that are in stock right now, I think I've narrowed it down to Rose Official and Love of my Life. For Gloss Embrace, I think I've narrowed it down to Pompadour, Blush Lightly, Beauty, and Songbird. I would appreciate any thoughts!

I’m typing this on my phone because I’m too scared to use my laptop. I threw it into the back of my closet and covered it with clothes to try to dampen the high-pitched ringing sound it keeps emitting, but I can still faintly hear it from where I’m sitting in the living room. I tried shutting it down – it wouldn’t turn off. Doesn’t restart either. I closed the screen but that didn’t do anything. Tried to let the battery die and once it hit 0%, it stayed on as if it were fully charged. This thing can’t be turned off. I’m sure this all sounds silly and nobody is going to believe me, but there is something wrong with my laptop.
The easiest option would be to just get rid of it but I’m tight on cash and my job requires a laptop. I’m a marketing assistant at a small creative agency. It’s not the most glamorous job, I mostly fill out grids and review decks but it took me nearly a year to find this position. It’s completely remote which is a plus, the benefits are decent, and the pay is low but it’s something.
I was hired about a month ago. I hadn’t bought a laptop since 2017 and I wore out my last one so badly it basically refused to hold a charge and had to be plugged in all the time. I thought it made sense to get a new one – a new job, a fresh laptop, the beginning of a new career era. All the new Apple models are insanely overpriced, well above my price range. I could buy a new one in a few months after I save up a bit, but I needed something asap.
I browsed the internet and found a used electronics site. They refurbish phones and laptops and resell them at an affordable price – perfect. I found a 2022 Mac, placed the order, and it was delivered less than a day later. I actually think there were only three hours between purchasing the laptop and it showing up on my doorstep.
Excited to get it set up, I ripped open the box and sitting atop the neatly packaged laptop was a jet black business card with small white lettering in an odd font choice.
HANTER’s REFURBISHMENTS
Thank you for supporting small businesses. Enjoy your product.
609-3006
Ignoring the card, I threw it away and dug into the laptop. Beautifully dark brushed metal, no trace of fingerprints anywhere. It looked almost new save for a couple of scratches on the underside. I plugged it in, turned it on, made a new user profile, and clicked through the setup guide. The setup screen faded away and the preloaded wallpaper appeared. It didn’t really look like the typical Apple wallpapers that we’re all familiar with. Not Big Sur or the Sierra Nevada’s. It was a landscape photo of a farmhouse sitting in a field of tall yellowing grass, a single oak tree bending its awkward limbs over the decaying porch. There was some dark beauty to it. The sunset behind the farmhouse cast bands of golden light on the grass making it appear as if it were shimmering. Maybe it was taken on the East Coast? Some farm in New England? Didn’t really matter to me. I had a new laptop and it was working perfectly. I gave my ancient 2017 one a quick eulogy and tossed it.
– – –
- Good morning! Marie needs the TOOTHPASTE deck to go out by EOD for client review.
-- Morning! Got it, should be ready by afternoon. I’ll upload it to Monday and ping you when it’s up.
- Thanks!! :)
The first time I noticed something was the next day. I was sitting at my desk going over my bosses notes on a deck for some toothpaste commercial when I minimized my Chrome window and saw something I hadn’t noticed before. On the front porch of the farmhouse was a figure sitting in a rocking chair. I brought my face closer to the screen to try to make out any details but the farmhouse was so far in the distance, the scale of the figure was smaller than the cursor. It was so tiny I guess I just hadn’t noticed the day before. It’s not like anyone really stares at their computer wallpaper. The figure had a pale white face and was draped in some sort of black cloak but again it was so tiny I was basically making guesses. I shrugged it off and went back to Outlook to keep working – I had a deadline to meet.
My bedroom darkened as evening fell, the only source of light being the blue glow of my laptop. I uploaded the deck and sent a note back to Marie to let her know I was finished. I’d gotten so caught up in the day that I had forgotten about the figure in the rocking chair. I went back to the wallpaper and studied the landscape again before deciding to just change it to another preloaded one. Something less spooky. I chose a sunrise off a blue coastline.
I love watching Netflix in bed as I fall asleep, so that night I got comfortable and logged in on my laptop to put some Arrested Development on. I must’ve been exhausted because I fell asleep almost immediately. I always just end up sleeping with my laptop either next to me on my comforter or on my nightstand and let the episodes keep going until Netflix realizes I’m no longer watching. I guess that must've happened, but at around 3:00a I bolted awake to a screeching ringing tone coming from my laptop. It was ear piercingly loud, almost at an unbelievable volume for a laptop. Gone was Arrested Development, the laptop screen was static white like an old VHS tv, illuminating my otherwise pitch black bedroom in a cloudy light. I scrambled to turn the volume down, afraid my neighbors would come banging on my front door, but the sound stopped as quickly as it had begun. The screen went dark, the room went dark, the night got quiet.
I sat and stared bewildered in a drowsy daze at my laptop, the quiet hum of cicadas in the night outside, when suddenly it felt as if I were being watched…. I could barely see my own hand in front of me. The night seemed darker than usual…I slowly turned over my shoulder to the open door of my bedroom and in the darkness I could just make out the faint silhouette of a hunched figure standing right outside the doorway. Staring right at me. My blood chilled, I froze. I fumbled for the lamp on my nightstand and turned it on. Warm light extinguished the blackness. Nothing in the doorway…just the long stretch of hallway to the living room. It felt kind of similar to that movie that came out last year, Skinamarink. You sit in the darkness of your bedroom long enough that suddenly you start seeing things in the inky black. I thought it was nothing, but I swear I could make out the faintest trace of a pale white face grinning at me.
The next day I’m back to work as usual, tired from the night before. I clicked out of Chrome to my desktop to open up Adobe when I noticed the farmhouse wallpaper was back… It had changed by itself. It wasn’t exactly the one from yesterday though, no, the figure wasn’t in the rocking chair anymore. Instead, the figure had moved off the porch and was now standing in the field, closer to where the photographer would be. I could really make it out now. A pale white grinning face with distended lips, rotting teeth. That wasn’t the worst part though. Where its eyes should be were instead empty pockets of nothing. Just completely grotesque, definitely not a fucking preloaded wallpaper for a laptop. I changed it back to the beach and dug around in my trash can for the refurbishment card that came with the package. I wasn’t going to wait around to see what happened. Maybe one of the tech guys there was playing a trick and had programmed some jump scares into the computer or something? Maybe that’s something they do. Similar to jailbreaking an iPhone or pretending to control someone's computer remotely. I don’t know.
I found the card and dialed the number. It rang once before a young woman with a pleasant voice picked up.
- “Hi, Hanter’s Refurbishments! How may I help you?”
-- “Um hey I recently ordered a laptop. It came the other day and setup was normal but there’s something going on with the wallpaper. I changed it but then it changed back by itself and the photo –.”
- “One moment let me place you on a brief hold. Thank you!”
I hadn’t even finished speaking when she cut me off and put me on hold. Hold music began playing, some upbeat jingle shrill enough to drive anyone insane. I sat on hold for twenty minutes, then an hour. I ended the call and tried again, went through the same motions with the same woman only to continuously be placed on hold. Maybe they were really backed up with calls and other people experiencing issues with their orders. I called again and instead of the woman answering, an automated voice greeted me and sent me to hold immediately. Fuck it. I decided to wait it out. The fucking jingle was boring a hole into my head – the most annoyingly enthusiastic hold music. I could’ve strangled someone.
Suddenly the music stopped. Finally, someone was becoming available to help me. But instead of the call being redirected to a person, the automated voice returned with a simple
“Goodbye!”
And the call dropped.
I screamed, I literally screamed out of agony, out of pure fucking frustration.
I turned back to my laptop. The wallpaper changed itself again, back to the farmhouse and the pale faced thing. It moved in the field again. It was getting closer. Gaping holes for eyes, distended lips wet with saliva. It looked like it was laughing at my misery.
I left my laptop closed on my desk that night. No Netflix tonight, I needed to sleep and didn’t want the computer near me. I scrolled on TikTok for a bit before I dozed off…
The jingle woke me.
The fucking hold music. I picked up my phone in my fatigue thinking maybe Hanter’s was calling me back. It wasn’t coming from my phone. It was coming from my closed laptop.
I looked to the doorway, thinking the figure from the night before would be back, before getting out of bed and crossing to my laptop to shut it off. I opened the laptop and a wave of nausea crashed over me. The pale faced thing was even closer. The farmhouse was barely visible now, its face nearly filling the entire screen. Still grinning, still laughing. Bits of red stuff wedged in its teeth.
No matter how many times I held the power button, nothing was happening. It wasn’t shutting down, the jingle wasn’t stopping.
I fucking cracked. At that point I didn’t give a fuck if I needed the laptop for work. I picked it up and smashed it on the floor. Threw it again and again till the screen was shattered and keys were flying off. I just needed the jingle to stop and the pale face to be gone. I threw it down one last time with a final blow, satisfied with the damage I’d caused.
I picked the laptop up thinking it would be dead, but the screen was still glowing with light. Through the splintered glass of the screen I could see the farmhouse, the field of yellowing grass, the rocking chair, the oak tree – everything was there except for the pale faced thing. As if my havoc had caused it to flee the wallpaper.
The screen flickered off. The room went black. The cicadas outside filled the silence.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
It felt as if I were being watched.

"Ahem...Cinnaswirl cookies! Get your Cinnaswirl cookies!" Kokichi practiced in his announcer voice. It was Saturday afternoon. Every Saturday and Sunday up until the week before the surprise field trip, Hope's Peak was opened for two hours for the students volunteering to sell cookies. The students who volunteered placed their stands throughout various parts of the academy. Sayaka and Hina set theirs up in the cafeteria, Shuichi and Kaede in the auditorium, Rantaro and Kirumi in the lobby, Himiko outside the front entrance of the building, and Kokichi in the gym.
Himiko unfolded a table and placed the two tin bowls of cookies on it. Above her, she hung a dull sign announcing her chocolate chip cookies were for sale. She wasn't proud of it, but it was the best she could do in thirty minutes before rushing off to sell her cookies.
"Himiko, you decided to sell cookies, too?" Kaede asked as she and Shuichi passed by her.
"Nyeh...yeah," Himiko mumbled.
"You're not selling them with Kokichi?" Kaede asked. "Are you two fighting?"
"No. It was Kokichi's idea to compete against each other," Himiko explained. "Boyfriend against girlfriend. He thought it would be something fun and different."
"Hm, that actually does sound like fun!" Kaede admitted. "Don't you think, Shuichi? I bet I could sell more cookies than you!"
"I guess it would be kind of fun," Shuichi agreed. "But, I prefer working together. I think I get things done better that way, rather than doing things on my own."
"Maybe we should try competing against each other at least once," Kaede said.
"Ah, well, I guess that would be okay," Shuichi said.
"Well, we should get going," Kaede said. "I hope you sell a lot of cookies, Himiko!" Shuichi looked doubtfully at Himiko's sign.
"Good luck, Himiko," he said with a polite smile.
"Nyeh...thanks. I'm gonna need it," Himiko muttered. With that, Kaede and Shuichi were gone, leaving Himiko to utter a discouraged sigh to herself. She looked up to see students approaching the school. Many saw but ignored her as they entered the building. Meanwhile, Kokichi had his first customer inside.
"Hey, Hiro!" Kokichi exclaimed with a devious grin. "You wanna buy some Cinnaswirl cookies?" Hiro looked at the cookies. Beautiful swirls of cinnamon designs were etched onto the cookies.
"Whoa! These look pretty sick!" Hiro exclaimed, picking a cookie up and examining it. "What are they exactly?"
"They're just regular, ol' cinnamon cookies," Kokichi replied, holding out a cookie to Hiro. "Go ahead! Try one for ¥500!" Hiro paid and bit into the cookie and chewed cautiously.
"Hey! These are actually...pretty..." Suddenly, he began panting. He fanned his mouth. "H-Hot! Why are...these cookies so...hot?!" He threw the cookie to the ground and fanned his face with both his hands. "WATER!! I, like...need water!!" He started running around in circles, hyperventilating.

"Hm? Water won't help," Kokichi said, then pulled out a giant jug of milk and poured some into a cup. "Try milk instead! That'll be another ¥500!" Hiro reached into his pockets to grab whatever amount of money he had.
"Here!! Just take it, or whatever!" he yelled and immediately reached for the milk, gulping it down. "I need more!"
"Soooorry..." Kokichi said, hiding the milk back under the table. "That was all the milk I had. Maybe you should go get some more at the convenience store! Make sure to exit out that way!" He pointed to the exit door of the gym that led right outside.
"Whatever woooorks!" Hiro cried, running out of the gym. Kokichi figured if Hiro left the school grounds through that door, he wouldn't be able to warn the other students who were already inside about his devil cookies. Grinning deviously, he counted the money. In his haste, Hiro had thrown him ¥3000, making a total of ¥3500.
"Nee-heehee...looks like I'm the Cookie Monster now!" Kokichi murmured with satisfaction.
***
Back at the front of the school, Himiko sat in silence, waiting for one customer to show up. She was half-relieved, half-disappointed to see Tenko, Angie, and Tsumugi walk up to her stand. They were basically her "pity friends."
"Oh, wow, Himiko! I didn't know you were selling cookies!" Tenko cried. "I bet they taste amazing!"
"What cookies do you have for us, Himiko?" Angie chirped. Himiko opened the tin bowls.
"Oh, my...they're just plain chocolate chip cookies," Tsumugi mumbled, feeling slightly disappointed.
"So? What's wrong with that?!" Tenko asked, frowning at Tsumugi.
"I'll bet they are delicious, Himiko!" Angie said.
"Nyeh...are you gonna buy any?" Himiko asked.
"Ooo, I will take this kind," Angie said, pointing to the soft chocolate chip cookies. Tenko glared at her.

"Well, I'll take the other cookies!" she said, pointing to the crunchy ones.
"That'll be ¥500," Himiko said. Angie paid and took a cookie.

"I'll give you ¥1000!" Tenko offered. "I am your best friend after all!"
"No, that's okay, Tenko," Himiko said, and Tenko reluctantly paid her the ¥500. The last thing Himiko wanted was pity money. It would only make her feel worse. She turned to Tsumugi. "Nyeh...are you gonna buy any, Tsumugi?"

"No..." Tsumugi answered quietly. "Sorry, Himiko. I may be plain, but I like for my cookies to not be so plain. No offense."
"WOOOOW!!! THESE COOKIES ARE AMAZING!!!" Tenko yelled. Then, she turned to Tsumugi. "How dare you not try Himiko's cookies, Tsumugi! They're the best cookies I've ever eaten! And I bet Himiko baked these all by herself like the talented mage she is!"

"No...I didn't," Himiko said.

"Well, you probably did most of the work, so that's why they taste so good!" Tenko exclaimed.
"Yeah, sure...whatever," Himiko muttered.
"These cookies are absolutely divine, Himiko!" Angie said. "Perhaps you had Atua's help in making them?"
"Of course she didn't, Angie!" Tenko said. "She doesn't need help from your god...if he even exists, anyways!"
"Nyeh...I didn't have help from Atua, Angie," Himiko answered. "I had help from other friends of mine."
"You have friends besides me, Himiko?!" Tenko cried in horror. "Wh-Who are they?!"
"Just friends," Himiko said. "Anyways, is that all?"
"Aaah! I don't have anymore money!" Tenko cried, checking her purse. "I-I need to go get a job! That way, I'll buy all of your cookies, Himiko!" Himiko sighed.
"I want other people to try my cookies, too, Tenko," she said.
"Have you had any other customers at all, Himiko?" Tsumugi asked. Himiko gulped and shook her head.

"Oh..." Tsumugi mumbled sympathetically.
"Well, I'm sure more customers will approach you, Himiko! Just give it time!" Angie said with an optimistic smile.
"Yeah! And if they don't, I'll be sure to get that job so I can buy all of your cookies!" Tenko said. The three girls wished Himiko good luck and waved goodbye. Himiko sighed forlornly. Having her friends buy all of her cookies only made her feel incompetent. As the afternoon wore on, she waited and waited for more customers, but none came. She hung her head dejectedly as a couple of tears forced their way down her cheek. Why had she even bothered?
Part Six
After two hours passed, Kokichi counted up the money he had made. Sifting through the last of his con money, he had made a total of ¥75000. He stuffed the money into his pocket and headed out to the front of the school, where Himiko was.
"Hey, Himiko! Look at all the money I made!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Nee-heehee...I got the most money from Byakuya! You should have seen the moment he bit into one of my cookies! He-...Wait, what are you doing?" Himiko was ripping up her sign in anger and sadness.
"I quit," she muttered. Kokichi stared at her.
"Why?" he asked. "How much did you make?"
"Not as much as you...just like I said would happen," Himiko answered bitterly. She clenched her fists as she tried to hold back tears. Kokichi went to the jar on her table and saw the total of ¥1000 from Tenko and Angie.
"I'm guessing that's from Tenko and Angie?" he said.
"Yeah," Himiko curtly replied.
"Himiko, you can just try again tomorrow," Kokichi pointed out.

"I'm not going to," Himiko said, throwing her sign into a nearby trashcan.
"So that's just it? You're going to give up...just like that?" Kokichi asked, frowning. Himiko couldn't contain her tears.
"Yes, Kokichi! Okay?!" she cried in frustration as she angrily wiped her tears. "I've humiliated myself enough, so I'm giving up!!" Kokichi firmly grabbed her hand and looked her in the eye.
"No, you're not, Himiko," he said. Himiko yanked her hand away.
"I don't care about this stupid competition anymore!" she yelled. "Just leave me alone!"
"This isn't about the competition anymore, Himiko," Kokichi said. "This is about you now!"
"Yeah, like, how I keep telling you that I can't do this stupid cookie sale, and I didn't wanna do this stupid cookie sale in the first place!" Himiko said.
"Then why did you do it, Himiko?!" Kokichi cried.
"Because...because...I'm an idiot, okay?!" Himiko sobbed. "I thought I'd be able to do this, but all I found out is that I'm a big, huge loser!"
"See, that's your problem right there!" Kokichi said in frustration. "That piss-poor attitude of yours is the reason for your failures, Himiko!" Himiko stared at him with a hurt expression. "I wanted to do this competition for fun, Himiko," Kokichi continued. "It's one thing if you didn't wanna do it because you didn't like the idea, or that it would have been better if we simply worked together, or something. I would have understood that. But the reason why you didn't want to do it is because you think so poorly of yourself that you don't think you're capable of doing anything! You seriously need to cut that out!" Himiko hung her head in shame.
"I don't know how," she wailed, balling her fists against her eyes in frustration and sadness. "Sometimes...I feel so...worthless! So...useless!" She looked at Kokichi with a tear-stained face. "I'm not smart or confident, or able to do things like you are." Kokichi sighed.
"Himiko, you have got to stop comparing yourself to me," he said firmly. "You're not me, and I don't expect you to be like me." He gripped her shoulders and looked her in the eye. "You're you. You're your own person. And you should be smart, confident, and capable of doing things your way." Himiko gasped as she sniffed and wiped her tears away. Kokichi sighed deeply. "Listen to me, Himiko, there might come a day when you and I might not be together anymore, whether it's because we broke up, or I died, or whatever. I want you to be able to stand on your own two feet without feeling helpless, or stuck, or too scared to do anything. I want it so that, if I'm not around, you'd be able to make it in this world on your own. And if you needed assistance, you could go to Tenko and Angie as friends, not as your caretakers who'll coddle you and hide you from the world. You can't hide from this world. Besides, what if something were to happen to them, too? Who would you turn to then?" Himiko shivered at the thought. "That's why I want you to stop thinking of yourself as some incompetent, dumb little girl, Himiko. That's not what you are. You are smart and you are capable. You just need to see it for yourself." Himiko nodded in response, tears still streaking down her cheeks. Kokichi wrapped his arms around her. Himiko laid her head against his chest as she continued to sob.
"I'm sorry, Kokichi," she said in a shaky whisper.
"Don't be," Kokichi said, giving her back a comforting rub. Then, he chuckled. "After all...a GiRl ShOuLdN't ApOlOgIzE sO EaSiLy," he said, mocking Kaito. Through her tears, Himiko laughed. Kokichi laughed along with her. Himiko looked up at him, smiling gratefully. Kokichi smiled back and softly kissed her forehead. "I love you, Himiko."
"I love you, too, Kokichi," Himiko sniffed. They gave each other a soft kiss on the lips. Now calm, Himiko laid her head against Kokichi's chest once again and squeezed him tighter, never wanting to let him go.

What am I doing? Dominick Mason asked himself for the hundredth time that night. It was late on a rainy Sunday evening and Dom, a tall, lanky man-boy of twenty-five with a prominent Adam’s apple and too big eyes, stared out the rain-slicked window of the 905. The big bus swayed and jostled as it lumbered down Central Avenue, the movements strangely comforting, conducive to reflection…and self-doubt.
As if on cue, his phone buzzed, and a pit opened up in his stomach. He fumbled it out with long fingers and read the text. Are u almost here
His thumb hovered over the screen, but he did not reply. Part of him wanted to block the number, slink back home with his tail between his legs, and forget the whole thing. He could boot up his PS4 and play Red Dead Redemption or GTA V like always. Safe. Familiar. The thought, however, stirred a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach.
It was dread.
Every night, he did the same thing. He came home from work to his tiny prison cell apartment. He had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He played video games until it was time to go to bed. The worst part of the whole night was when he turned off the TV and saw his murky reflection in the screen. Plaid. Scrawny. Disgusting. He hated being locked in that apartment, with its old smells and white walls, but he hated going out even more. At least in his hole, he was safe, like a mouse. No one hurt or lied to him there. No one gave him funny looks. No one rejected him. He was completely safe in his solitude, a wounded animal hiding in its den and licking its wounds.
He was wounded and he knew it.
And he hated himself for it. Hated that he wasn’t stronger or better. Hated that even though he tried so hard, everything he did fell apart…if it even came together in the first place, which it rarely did.
The phone buzzed again.
Just a question mark this time.
His heart began to race and a steely fist slowly closed around his lungs. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and took a deep breath. He pictured himself alone in his little apartment. He loved the image, but he hated it too. Most nights, he didn’t mind being alone. He had to not mind it, because he didn’t have a choice. Some nights…some nights he didn’t want to be alone. Some nights he wanted warmth, he wanted tenderness…some nights, he wanted to be human.
Every so often, Dom would get the urge to find those things. They came less frequently than they did before, but unfortunately, they still came. He would create an account on Plenty of Fish and OKCupid, maybe some of the other sites as well. He would agonize over his stupid intro and his stupid list of hobbies. He would spend hours - literally hours - writing and rewriting them, trying at first to be serious, then light and funny, then cool, then aloof, then vulnerable. He would take the best possible pictures from the best possible angles, then upload them, never lingering over them because he hated the way he looked. He didn’t think he was ugly - mid was more like it - but apparently, he was ugly. Too ugly for love, too ugly even to talk to.
The ugly barnacle. So ugly that everyone died. The end.
All of Dom’s pictures were all selfies, of course. Guys he listened to on YouTube said he needed action shots, shots with friends, shots that showed women he had a life, was valued by those around him, and knew how to have fun. Too bad for him, he had no friends and no one valued him, not even his own mother. On the surface, maybe, but she had hurt him so many times over the years in so many ways that even the most devout son would stop and think.
It had to be selfies.
When his profile was in order - or as much in order as he could get it - he would start to browse. Dom knew his place and never messaged women who were too beautiful. He used to, but they never responded. He eventually began to skip their profiles with a pang of loss and a quiet what if? Now, he barely noticed them. Blonde. Petite. Blue eyes. Maybe she was a cheerleader at one time, maybe she was the type of girl who looked down her nose at guys like him. Maybe she was a sweetheart. In any case, he would never find out, so who cares?
He went for women he could realistically obtain…the type of women he’d dated and hooked up with in the past. Some were attractive in their own way, others were hard to look at, he wasn’t picky; he couldn’t afford to be picky. One woman he saw was a good three hundred pounds. She was nice and he liked her enough, but he lapsed into depression while they were dating and he never messaged her back…not that she made a huge effort to message him. Another was a pre-K teacher in her mid-thirties. Overweight with a big nose, glasses, and a plain face when she wasn’t wearing make-up. He liked her a lot and wanted to be with her, but after a month of weekend hookups, she said she didn’t love him. She told him she wanted a family - three kids, to be exact - but “changed her mind.” No, she didn’t. She just didn’t want those things with him.
Now she was in her late thirties, single, and having regrets.
She still wouldn’t settle for him, though.
Another woman he’d seen recently (six months ago) was fifty, but not unattractive. They texted for weeks, hot and heavy. She outright told him that she wanted to have sex with him. Said all sorts of nasty and sexual things. Their first (and only date) was her coming to his apartment. Instead of tender kisses, loving caresses, and intense emotions, they shared an awkward two hours on his couch. When he tried to hold her hand and put his arm around her, she stiffened. Not much, just a little. She said she “wasn’t ready.” He sat there and watched the flowers he’d gotten her wilt as she talked about her ex for an hour and a half, his arms pointedly crossed. He even leaned as far away from her as humanly possible, trying to communicate with his body language what he didn’t have the guts to communicate with his words: I’m uncomfortable, please leave. He planned to take her to a nice restaurant after they made love. Instead, he ordered something after she finally got the hint and left, eating alone like always.
After her, he deleted his profile (again) and resolved to never bother with dating again. Obviously there was something wrong with him. He saw guys who were uglier and more awkward than him with girlfriends, some actually stunning, but there was something about him in particular, something that repelled women…and men too.
Everyone.
It repelled everyone.
Maybe it was his self-loathing. After all, no one likes a sad sack. But that’s the thing: He was like this because of those experiences. It was a what came first, the chicken or the egg situation. Looking back, he had almost normal confidence at one point. Then all of this happened. The hundreds of messages he sent on the dating apps staying on read, unanswered, like he never sent them at all, like he was garbage unworthy of even a hello. The awkward dates. The occasional “success” that eventually fell apart…sometimes because of him, and sometimes because of them. The one girl who ran away from him when he tried to walk her to her car after a date. They didn’t click, he knew that, but he didn’t say or do anything creepy. Why did she do that? The girls who lead him on, talking about sex and sometimes even love but always had a reason they couldn’t meet.
There were other examples - many others - but it was all the same. Who cared?
Dom wanted to crawl back into his hole and stay there, to stop poking his head out and getting hurt. He wanted it so bad…but he was only human. Deep down, buried beneath layer after layer of scar tissue, there was still hope. Hope for love, for companionship, for acceptance, for intimacy and human touch. It was only an ember now, but even an ember is enough to spark a fire.
Some nights, he wanted to be safe. Other nights, he wanted to take a risk.
And this night was one of the latter.
Be there soon, he texted. He swallowed hard and wetted his lips. His heart was pounding faster and his bowels were loose. He really hoped this worked out. He didn’t think he could handle another rejection. If she turned him down, he’d probably go home and kill himself. Why go on like this?
He’d had that thought before…but he never followed through.
Maybe one day he’d actually shut the fuck up and do it already.
Maybe.
Ok :)
Her name was Heather and she was fat. She was not unattractive in the face and she wore her weight well, not that that mattered - he would take what he could get. They started talking on OKCupid last week and very soon, the conversation became sexual. He didn’t start it, though, she did. She was ahem very excited, she said. He liked to think that she was lonely, desperate, and wanted intimacy - any intimacy - just like him.
That really turned him on.
They agreed to meet, and now here he was, on the bus to her apartment on the other side of the city, hoping against hope that she didn’t hurt him too.
He put the phone away and stared straight ahead. The bus was nearly deserted, save for an old bag lady up front and a few Mexican guys in the back. Lights lined the bus’s roof, providing a cold, impersonal light. Dom took a deep breath and forced his dark emotions away. It was all on him to make this work. He would accept her fat, ugly, poor, and crippled, but he had to work to earn her love. He could do it.
When the bus finally reached his stop, he yanked the cord and got off. There was a plexiglass shelter lit by a single, lonely bulb. Trash littered the ground. Beyond the shelter, a park lay in darkness. Behind him, on the other side of the road, a housing project not unlike his own towered into the sky, lit up like a ship at sail. Dom swallowed his nerves and crossed the street. He found the door that she had directed him to use, and climbed the stairs. He expected trash, graffiti, and winos passed out on every landing. Instead, the stairwell was clean and deserted. His nerves welled as he climbed but he forced them down again. On the ninth floor, he went down the hall, battered on all sides by the stale smells of cooking and the murmur of TVs and voices coming from every apartment.
Dom paused at Apartment 237.
Heather’s.
You got this, he told himself.
And really, he did. Their plan - well, Heather’s, really - was simple and straightforward. She told him that she would leave the door unlocked. He was to come in, go to the bedroom, and she would be waiting for him. She said it was a fantasy of hers.
On some level, he knew all along that the whole setup sounded fishy. Was he being set up to get robbed? Would he walk in and get jumped by a bunch of Crips? He hesitated, but his need for love - and, yes, release - pushed him on.
He opened the door.
Inside, the apartment was small and messy, a living room to the right and a tiny kitchen to the left. The only light on was the one above the stove.
Everything else was in shadows.
Dom’s heart skipped a beat.
This didn’t feel right.
That thought was overpowered by the smell, a sickly sweet odor that suddenly seemed to be everywhere. His stomach twisted and he turned his head slightly to one side, as if to spare his nose. It smelled like something spoiled.
A voice spoke from the darkness, startling him. “I’m in here.”
It was light, airy, and cute.
For the last time, Dom hesitated. Some primal sense told him to turn around and leave…
…but he wanted to be loved.
Dom entered and shut the door behind him.
The smell was stronger. The atmosphere darker.
Ahead, he could barely make out an open doorway in the shadows.
He crossed to it.
The smell was overpowering here and Dom felt like he was going to puke. Any desire he had felt was gone, replaced only by revulsion and claustrophobia. It was cold, he realized, so cold that his teeth chattered.
Okay, fuck this.
He started to turn around, intent on leaving, but a small, white hand reached from the darkness. Icy fingertips brushed his cheek and his heart blasted into his throat.
Then she was there, her body pressing against his and her lips fused with his. The smell, the freezer chill, both stronger than ever.
They were both coming from her.
Her tongue hungrily lashed his own, and she pushed him against the wall. Her hands slipped under his shirt and pressed flat against his chest. They were so cold that he almost cried out.
Dom wanted to push her away, to run, but he didn’t. Instead, he froze up and allowed her to push him onto the bed. Was he too gutless to tell her no, the way he’d been too gutless to tell the woman who went on and on about her ex to shut up and leave? Did he secretly want to go through with this? He didn’t know, and he didn’t have time to figure it out. She was on top of him now, straddling him, his legs caged between her ample thighs. She grabbed his hands and pressed them to her bare breasts.
They were as cold as the rest of her.
She leaned down and kissed him again. He hadn’t noticed it before, but her tongue was…dry. Her mouth itself tasted strange. Off.
Heather broke from his lips and peppered kisses on his cheek and forehead, assaulting him with an intimacy that Dom no longer wanted.
Through it all, she was as silent as a tomb. She wasn’t panting or rasping with excitement. In fact, he didn’t think she was even breathing.
She brushed her lips along the exposed curve of his throat, and tingles of revulsion shot down his spine. She found his pulse and kissed it. Trembles of excitement raced through her body and she started to lap his neck like a dog.
Without warning, a fiery pinprick of pain exploded over him and Heather began to shake and pant. Dom cried out and tried to fight her off, but she was too heavy, too much.
With a tiny, mouse-like squeak - a sound of pitiable fear and resignation - Dom blacked out.

What am I doing? Dominick Mason asked himself for the hundredth time that night. It was late on a rainy Sunday evening and Dom, a tall, lanky man-boy of twenty-five with a prominent Adam’s apple and too big eyes, stared out the rain-slicked window of the 905. The big bus swayed and jostled as it lumbered down Central Avenue, the movements strangely comforting, conducive to reflection…and self-doubt.
As if on cue, his phone buzzed, and a pit opened up in his stomach. He fumbled it out with long fingers and read the text. Are u almost here
His thumb hovered over the screen, but he did not reply. Part of him wanted to block the number, slink back home with his tail between his legs, and forget the whole thing. He could boot up his PS4 and play Red Dead Redemption or GTA V like always. Safe. Familiar. The thought, however, stirred a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach.
It was dread.
Every night, he did the same thing. He came home from work to his tiny prison cell apartment. He had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He played video games until it was time to go to bed. The worst part of the whole night was when he turned off the TV and saw his murky reflection in the screen. Plaid. Scrawny. Disgusting. He hated being locked in that apartment, with its old smells and white walls, but he hated going out even more. At least in his hole, he was safe, like a mouse. No one hurt or lied to him there. No one gave him funny looks. No one rejected him. He was completely safe in his solitude, a wounded animal hiding in its den and licking its wounds.
He was wounded and he knew it.
And he hated himself for it. Hated that he wasn’t stronger or better. Hated that even though he tried so hard, everything he did fell apart…if it even came together in the first place, which it rarely did.
The phone buzzed again.
Just a question mark this time.
His heart began to race and a steely fist slowly closed around his lungs. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and took a deep breath. He pictured himself alone in his little apartment. He loved the image, but he hated it too. Most nights, he didn’t mind being alone. He had to not mind it, because he didn’t have a choice. Some nights…some nights he didn’t want to be alone. Some nights he wanted warmth, he wanted tenderness…some nights, he wanted to be human.
Every so often, Dom would get the urge to find those things. They came less frequently than they did before, but unfortunately, they still came. He would create an account on Plenty of Fish and OKCupid, maybe some of the other sites as well. He would agonize over his stupid intro and his stupid list of hobbies. He would spend hours - literally hours - writing and rewriting them, trying at first to be serious, then light and funny, then cool, then aloof, then vulnerable. He would take the best possible pictures from the best possible angles, then upload them, never lingering over them because he hated the way he looked. He didn’t think he was ugly - mid was more like it - but apparently, he was ugly. Too ugly for love, too ugly even to talk to.
The ugly barnacle. So ugly that everyone died. The end.
All of Dom’s pictures were all selfies, of course. Guys he listened to on YouTube said he needed action shots, shots with friends, shots that showed women he had a life, was valued by those around him, and knew how to have fun. Too bad for him, he had no friends and no one valued him, not even his own mother. On the surface, maybe, but she had hurt him so many times over the years in so many ways that even the most devout son would stop and think.
It had to be selfies.
When his profile was in order - or as much in order as he could get it - he would start to browse. Dom knew his place and never messaged women who were too beautiful. He used to, but they never responded. He eventually began to skip their profiles with a pang of loss and a quiet what if? Now, he barely noticed them. Blonde. Petite. Blue eyes. Maybe she was a cheerleader at one time, maybe she was the type of girl who looked down her nose at guys like him. Maybe she was a sweetheart. In any case, he would never find out, so who cares?
He went for women he could realistically obtain…the type of women he’d dated and hooked up with in the past. Some were attractive in their own way, others were hard to look at, he wasn’t picky; he couldn’t afford to be picky. One woman he saw was a good three hundred pounds. She was nice and he liked her enough, but he lapsed into depression while they were dating and he never messaged her back…not that she made a huge effort to message him. Another was a pre-K teacher in her mid-thirties. Overweight with a big nose, glasses, and a plain face when she wasn’t wearing make-up. He liked her a lot and wanted to be with her, but after a month of weekend hookups, she said she didn’t love him. She told him she wanted a family - three kids, to be exact - but “changed her mind.” No, she didn’t. She just didn’t want those things with him.
Now she was in her late thirties, single, and having regrets.
She still wouldn’t settle for him, though.
Another woman he’d seen recently (six months ago) was fifty, but not unattractive. They texted for weeks, hot and heavy. She outright told him that she wanted to have sex with him. Said all sorts of nasty and sexual things. Their first (and only date) was her coming to his apartment. Instead of tender kisses, loving caresses, and intense emotions, they shared an awkward two hours on his couch. When he tried to hold her hand and put his arm around her, she stiffened. Not much, just a little. She said she “wasn’t ready.” He sat there and watched the flowers he’d gotten her wilt as she talked about her ex for an hour and a half, his arms pointedly crossed. He even leaned as far away from her as humanly possible, trying to communicate with his body language what he didn’t have the guts to communicate with his words: I’m uncomfortable, please leave. He planned to take her to a nice restaurant after they made love. Instead, he ordered something after she finally got the hint and left, eating alone like always.
After her, he deleted his profile (again) and resolved to never bother with dating again. Obviously there was something wrong with him. He saw guys who were uglier and more awkward than him with girlfriends, some actually stunning, but there was something about him in particular, something that repelled women…and men too.
Everyone.
It repelled everyone.
Maybe it was his self-loathing. After all, no one likes a sad sack. But that’s the thing: He was like this because of those experiences. It was a what came first, the chicken or the egg situation. Looking back, he had almost normal confidence at one point. Then all of this happened. The hundreds of messages he sent on the dating apps staying on read, unanswered, like he never sent them at all, like he was garbage unworthy of even a hello. The awkward dates. The occasional “success” that eventually fell apart…sometimes because of him, and sometimes because of them. The one girl who ran away from him when he tried to walk her to her car after a date. They didn’t click, he knew that, but he didn’t say or do anything creepy. Why did she do that? The girls who lead him on, talking about sex and sometimes even love but always had a reason they couldn’t meet.
There were other examples - many others - but it was all the same. Who cared?
Dom wanted to crawl back into his hole and stay there, to stop poking his head out and getting hurt. He wanted it so bad…but he was only human. Deep down, buried beneath layer after layer of scar tissue, there was still hope. Hope for love, for companionship, for acceptance, for intimacy and human touch. It was only an ember now, but even an ember is enough to spark a fire.
Some nights, he wanted to be safe. Other nights, he wanted to take a risk.
And this night was one of the latter.
Be there soon, he texted. He swallowed hard and wetted his lips. His heart was pounding faster and his bowels were loose. He really hoped this worked out. He didn’t think he could handle another rejection. If she turned him down, he’d probably go home and kill himself. Why go on like this?
He’d had that thought before…but he never followed through.
Maybe one day he’d actually shut the fuck up and do it already.
Maybe.
Ok :)
Her name was Heather and she was fat. She was not unattractive in the face and she wore her weight well, not that that mattered - he would take what he could get. They started talking on OKCupid last week and very soon, the conversation became sexual. He didn’t start it, though, she did. She was ahem very excited, she said. He liked to think that she was lonely, desperate, and wanted intimacy - any intimacy - just like him.
That really turned him on.
They agreed to meet, and now here he was, on the bus to her apartment on the other side of the city, hoping against hope that she didn’t hurt him too.
He put the phone away and stared straight ahead. The bus was nearly deserted, save for an old bag lady up front and a few Mexican guys in the back. Lights lined the bus’s roof, providing a cold, impersonal light. Dom took a deep breath and forced his dark emotions away. It was all on him to make this work. He would accept her fat, ugly, poor, and crippled, but he had to work to earn her love. He could do it.
When the bus finally reached his stop, he yanked the cord and got off. There was a plexiglass shelter lit by a single, lonely bulb. Trash littered the ground. Beyond the shelter, a park lay in darkness. Behind him, on the other side of the road, a housing project not unlike his own towered into the sky, lit up like a ship at sail. Dom swallowed his nerves and crossed the street. He found the door that she had directed him to use, and climbed the stairs. He expected trash, graffiti, and winos passed out on every landing. Instead, the stairwell was clean and deserted. His nerves welled as he climbed but he forced them down again. On the ninth floor, he went down the hall, battered on all sides by the stale smells of cooking and the murmur of TVs and voices coming from every apartment.
Dom paused at Apartment 237.
Heather’s.
You got this, he told himself.
And really, he did. Their plan - well, Heather’s, really - was simple and straightforward. She told him that she would leave the door unlocked. He was to come in, go to the bedroom, and she would be waiting for him. She said it was a fantasy of hers.
On some level, he knew all along that the whole setup sounded fishy. Was he being set up to get robbed? Would he walk in and get jumped by a bunch of Crips? He hesitated, but his need for love - and, yes, release - pushed him on.
He opened the door.
Inside, the apartment was small and messy, a living room to the right and a tiny kitchen to the left. The only light on was the one above the stove.
Everything else was in shadows.
Dom’s heart skipped a beat.
This didn’t feel right.
That thought was overpowered by the smell, a sickly sweet odor that suddenly seemed to be everywhere. His stomach twisted and he turned his head slightly to one side, as if to spare his nose. It smelled like something spoiled.
A voice spoke from the darkness, startling him. “I’m in here.”
It was light, airy, and cute.
For the last time, Dom hesitated. Some primal sense told him to turn around and leave…
…but he wanted to be loved.
Dom entered and shut the door behind him.
The smell was stronger. The atmosphere darker.
Ahead, he could barely make out an open doorway in the shadows.
He crossed to it.
The smell was overpowering here and Dom felt like he was going to puke. Any desire he had felt was gone, replaced only by revulsion and claustrophobia. It was cold, he realized, so cold that his teeth chattered.
Okay, fuck this.
He started to turn around, intent on leaving, but a small, white hand reached from the darkness. Icy fingertips brushed his cheek and his heart blasted into his throat.
Then she was there, her body pressing against his and her lips fused with his. The smell, the freezer chill, both stronger than ever.
They were both coming from her.
Her tongue hungrily lashed his own, and she pushed him against the wall. Her hands slipped under his shirt and pressed flat against his chest. They were so cold that he almost cried out.
Dom wanted to push her away, to run, but he didn’t. Instead, he froze up and allowed her to push him onto the bed. Was he too gutless to tell her no, the way he’d been too gutless to tell the woman who went on and on about her ex to shut up and leave? Did he secretly want to go through with this? He didn’t know, and he didn’t have time to figure it out. She was on top of him now, straddling him, his legs caged between her ample thighs. She grabbed his hands and pressed them to her bare breasts.
They were as cold as the rest of her.
She leaned down and kissed him again. He hadn’t noticed it before, but her tongue was…dry. Her mouth itself tasted strange. Off.
Heather broke from his lips and peppered kisses on his cheek and forehead, assaulting him with an intimacy that Dom no longer wanted.
Through it all, she was as silent as a tomb. She wasn’t panting or rasping with excitement. In fact, he didn’t think she was even breathing.
She brushed her lips along the exposed curve of his throat, and tingles of revulsion shot down his spine. She found his pulse and kissed it. Trembles of excitement raced through her body and she started to lap his neck like a dog.
Without warning, a fiery pinprick of pain exploded over him and Heather began to shake and pant. Dom cried out and tried to fight her off, but she was too heavy, too much.
With a tiny, mouse-like squeak - a sound of pitiable fear and resignation - Dom blacked out.

What am I doing? Dominick Mason asked himself for the hundredth time that night. It was late on a rainy Sunday evening and Dom, a tall, lanky man-boy of twenty-five with a prominent Adam’s apple and too big eyes, stared out the rain-slicked window of the 905. The big bus swayed and jostled as it lumbered down Central Avenue, the movements strangely comforting, conducive to reflection…and self-doubt.
As if on cue, his phone buzzed, and a pit opened up in his stomach. He fumbled it out with long fingers and read the text. Are u almost here
His thumb hovered over the screen, but he did not reply. Part of him wanted to block the number, slink back home with his tail between his legs, and forget the whole thing. He could boot up his PS4 and play Red Dead Redemption or GTA V like always. Safe. Familiar. The thought, however, stirred a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach.
It was dread.
Every night, he did the same thing. He came home from work to his tiny prison cell apartment. He had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He played video games until it was time to go to bed. The worst part of the whole night was when he turned off the TV and saw his murky reflection in the screen. Plaid. Scrawny. Disgusting. He hated being locked in that apartment, with its old smells and white walls, but he hated going out even more. At least in his hole, he was safe, like a mouse. No one hurt or lied to him there. No one gave him funny looks. No one rejected him. He was completely safe in his solitude, a wounded animal hiding in its den and licking its wounds.
He was wounded and he knew it.
And he hated himself for it. Hated that he wasn’t stronger or better. Hated that even though he tried so hard, everything he did fell apart…if it even came together in the first place, which it rarely did.
The phone buzzed again.
Just a question mark this time.
His heart began to race and a steely fist slowly closed around his lungs. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and took a deep breath. He pictured himself alone in his little apartment. He loved the image, but he hated it too. Most nights, he didn’t mind being alone. He had to not mind it, because he didn’t have a choice. Some nights…some nights he didn’t want to be alone. Some nights he wanted warmth, he wanted tenderness…some nights, he wanted to be human.
Every so often, Dom would get the urge to find those things. They came less frequently than they did before, but unfortunately, they still came. He would create an account on Plenty of Fish and OKCupid, maybe some of the other sites as well. He would agonize over his stupid intro and his stupid list of hobbies. He would spend hours - literally hours - writing and rewriting them, trying at first to be serious, then light and funny, then cool, then aloof, then vulnerable. He would take the best possible pictures from the best possible angles, then upload them, never lingering over them because he hated the way he looked. He didn’t think he was ugly - mid was more like it - but apparently, he was ugly. Too ugly for love, too ugly even to talk to.
The ugly barnacle. So ugly that everyone died. The end.
All of Dom’s pictures were all selfies, of course. Guys he listened to on YouTube said he needed action shots, shots with friends, shots that showed women he had a life, was valued by those around him, and knew how to have fun. Too bad for him, he had no friends and no one valued him, not even his own mother. On the surface, maybe, but she had hurt him so many times over the years in so many ways that even the most devout son would stop and think.
It had to be selfies.
When his profile was in order - or as much in order as he could get it - he would start to browse. Dom knew his place and never messaged women who were too beautiful. He used to, but they never responded. He eventually began to skip their profiles with a pang of loss and a quiet what if? Now, he barely noticed them. Blonde. Petite. Blue eyes. Maybe she was a cheerleader at one time, maybe she was the type of girl who looked down her nose at guys like him. Maybe she was a sweetheart. In any case, he would never find out, so who cares?
He went for women he could realistically obtain…the type of women he’d dated and hooked up with in the past. Some were attractive in their own way, others were hard to look at, he wasn’t picky; he couldn’t afford to be picky. One woman he saw was a good three hundred pounds. She was nice and he liked her enough, but he lapsed into depression while they were dating and he never messaged her back…not that she made a huge effort to message him. Another was a pre-K teacher in her mid-thirties. Overweight with a big nose, glasses, and a plain face when she wasn’t wearing make-up. He liked her a lot and wanted to be with her, but after a month of weekend hookups, she said she didn’t love him. She told him she wanted a family - three kids, to be exact - but “changed her mind.” No, she didn’t. She just didn’t want those things with him.
Now she was in her late thirties, single, and having regrets.
She still wouldn’t settle for him, though.
Another woman he’d seen recently (six months ago) was fifty, but not unattractive. They texted for weeks, hot and heavy. She outright told him that she wanted to have sex with him. Said all sorts of nasty and sexual things. Their first (and only date) was her coming to his apartment. Instead of tender kisses, loving caresses, and intense emotions, they shared an awkward two hours on his couch. When he tried to hold her hand and put his arm around her, she stiffened. Not much, just a little. She said she “wasn’t ready.” He sat there and watched the flowers he’d gotten her wilt as she talked about her ex for an hour and a half, his arms pointedly crossed. He even leaned as far away from her as humanly possible, trying to communicate with his body language what he didn’t have the guts to communicate with his words: I’m uncomfortable, please leave. He planned to take her to a nice restaurant after they made love. Instead, he ordered something after she finally got the hint and left, eating alone like always.
After her, he deleted his profile (again) and resolved to never bother with dating again. Obviously there was something wrong with him. He saw guys who were uglier and more awkward than him with girlfriends, some actually stunning, but there was something about him in particular, something that repelled women…and men too.
Everyone.
It repelled everyone.
Maybe it was his self-loathing. After all, no one likes a sad sack. But that’s the thing: He was like this because of those experiences. It was a what came first, the chicken or the egg situation. Looking back, he had almost normal confidence at one point. Then all of this happened. The hundreds of messages he sent on the dating apps staying on read, unanswered, like he never sent them at all, like he was garbage unworthy of even a hello. The awkward dates. The occasional “success” that eventually fell apart…sometimes because of him, and sometimes because of them. The one girl who ran away from him when he tried to walk her to her car after a date. They didn’t click, he knew that, but he didn’t say or do anything creepy. Why did she do that? The girls who lead him on, talking about sex and sometimes even love but always had a reason they couldn’t meet.
There were other examples - many others - but it was all the same. Who cared?
Dom wanted to crawl back into his hole and stay there, to stop poking his head out and getting hurt. He wanted it so bad…but he was only human. Deep down, buried beneath layer after layer of scar tissue, there was still hope. Hope for love, for companionship, for acceptance, for intimacy and human touch. It was only an ember now, but even an ember is enough to spark a fire.
Some nights, he wanted to be safe. Other nights, he wanted to take a risk.
And this night was one of the latter.
Be there soon, he texted. He swallowed hard and wetted his lips. His heart was pounding faster and his bowels were loose. He really hoped this worked out. He didn’t think he could handle another rejection. If she turned him down, he’d probably go home and kill himself. Why go on like this?
He’d had that thought before…but he never followed through.
Maybe one day he’d actually shut the fuck up and do it already.
Maybe.
Ok :)
Her name was Heather and she was fat. She was not unattractive in the face and she wore her weight well, not that that mattered - he would take what he could get. They started talking on OKCupid last week and very soon, the conversation became sexual. He didn’t start it, though, she did. She was ahem very excited, she said. He liked to think that she was lonely, desperate, and wanted intimacy - any intimacy - just like him.
That really turned him on.
They agreed to meet, and now here he was, on the bus to her apartment on the other side of the city, hoping against hope that she didn’t hurt him too.
He put the phone away and stared straight ahead. The bus was nearly deserted, save for an old bag lady up front and a few Mexican guys in the back. Lights lined the bus’s roof, providing a cold, impersonal light. Dom took a deep breath and forced his dark emotions away. It was all on him to make this work. He would accept her fat, ugly, poor, and crippled, but he had to work to earn her love. He could do it.
When the bus finally reached his stop, he yanked the cord and got off. There was a plexiglass shelter lit by a single, lonely bulb. Trash littered the ground. Beyond the shelter, a park lay in darkness. Behind him, on the other side of the road, a housing project not unlike his own towered into the sky, lit up like a ship at sail. Dom swallowed his nerves and crossed the street. He found the door that she had directed him to use, and climbed the stairs. He expected trash, graffiti, and winos passed out on every landing. Instead, the stairwell was clean and deserted. His nerves welled as he climbed but he forced them down again. On the ninth floor, he went down the hall, battered on all sides by the stale smells of cooking and the murmur of TVs and voices coming from every apartment.
Dom paused at Apartment 237.
Heather’s.
You got this, he told himself.
And really, he did. Their plan - well, Heather’s, really - was simple and straightforward. She told him that she would leave the door unlocked. He was to come in, go to the bedroom, and she would be waiting for him. She said it was a fantasy of hers.
On some level, he knew all along that the whole setup sounded fishy. Was he being set up to get robbed? Would he walk in and get jumped by a bunch of Crips? He hesitated, but his need for love - and, yes, release - pushed him on.
He opened the door.
Inside, the apartment was small and messy, a living room to the right and a tiny kitchen to the left. The only light on was the one above the stove.
Everything else was in shadows.
Dom’s heart skipped a beat.
This didn’t feel right.
That thought was overpowered by the smell, a sickly sweet odor that suddenly seemed to be everywhere. His stomach twisted and he turned his head slightly to one side, as if to spare his nose. It smelled like something spoiled.
A voice spoke from the darkness, startling him. “I’m in here.”
It was light, airy, and cute.
For the last time, Dom hesitated. Some primal sense told him to turn around and leave…
…but he wanted to be loved.
Dom entered and shut the door behind him.
The smell was stronger. The atmosphere darker.
Ahead, he could barely make out an open doorway in the shadows.
He crossed to it.
The smell was overpowering here and Dom felt like he was going to puke. Any desire he had felt was gone, replaced only by revulsion and claustrophobia. It was cold, he realized, so cold that his teeth chattered.
Okay, fuck this.
He started to turn around, intent on leaving, but a small, white hand reached from the darkness. Icy fingertips brushed his cheek and his heart blasted into his throat.
Then she was there, her body pressing against his and her lips fused with his. The smell, the freezer chill, both stronger than ever.
They were both coming from her.
Her tongue hungrily lashed his own, and she pushed him against the wall. Her hands slipped under his shirt and pressed flat against his chest. They were so cold that he almost cried out.
Dom wanted to push her away, to run, but he didn’t. Instead, he froze up and allowed her to push him onto the bed. Was he too gutless to tell her no, the way he’d been too gutless to tell the woman who went on and on about her ex to shut up and leave? Did he secretly want to go through with this? He didn’t know, and he didn’t have time to figure it out. She was on top of him now, straddling him, his legs caged between her ample thighs. She grabbed his hands and pressed them to her bare breasts.
They were as cold as the rest of her.
She leaned down and kissed him again. He hadn’t noticed it before, but her tongue was…dry. Her mouth itself tasted strange. Off.
Heather broke from his lips and peppered kisses on his cheek and forehead, assaulting him with an intimacy that Dom no longer wanted.
Through it all, she was as silent as a tomb. She wasn’t panting or rasping with excitement. In fact, he didn’t think she was even breathing.
She brushed her lips along the exposed curve of his throat, and tingles of revulsion shot down his spine. She found his pulse and kissed it. Trembles of excitement raced through her body and she started to lap his neck like a dog.
Without warning, a fiery pinprick of pain exploded over him and Heather began to shake and pant. Dom cried out and tried to fight her off, but she was too heavy, too much.
With a tiny, mouse-like squeak - a sound of pitiable fear and resignation - Dom blacked out.

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

I see so many women with good lips, i feel like i wanna experiment with my lips too. But im scared of fillers!! I think they are more common than talked about because a ton of women (not even influencers, just chicks on the street) have beautiful symmetrical lips but my top lip is truly very thin. My bottom lip is okay. Im just too scared of fillers and possible long term effects.
A lot of techniques i see do not look right when i attempt them on my lips. I can do banger eyebrows and eyeliner but my lips throw off the whole thing. What can i do to help my lips with external stuff and not fillers?

Breston Boobilay
Breston Boobilay meandered his way along the sprawling New York sidewalk, stifling a stagger as he lurched forward. He was on a drunken mission like so many others he’d set out on before, and this mission, like all others, entailed the timely acquisition of cheap, night-time cooze. Air to the vast Boobilay Meat Pie fortune, Breston rarely had trouble sniffing out hole. But, out there, gripped in the chill of the brisk winter wind, he found himself with his balls as blue as his icy fingertips.
Breston rubbed his palms together and shuddered, watching the breath escape him in thick, swirling plumes. That’s when he noticed the flickering red neon through the gloom ahead, and he couldn’t help but smile as he felt himself instantly become warmer. He lit a cigarette in an effort to restore his sobriety, however briefly, as he thought about what potentially awaited him beyond the door he now found himself in front of. Pussy, and more booze, and maybe even a plug that wouldn’t turn out to be just another irritating, time wasting dipshit. Breston took one last satisfying drag from his smoke before tossing it in the slush on the curb as it sizzled and died. Then, he opened the door and went inside.
Breston Boobilay 2: Electric Boobilay
Breston came inside and a thick fog of lingering smoke whipped by his head out into the icy chill of the New York City winter he’d just left behind. The door slammed through the force of an incoming gust and Breston shivered as a conglomerate of weary eyes turned to meet his reddened, eager face. The patrons of the bar were hardly the fresh meat he’d been hoping to encounter in a shithole like that. The collective weathered faces, likely habitual fixtures of the place, turned back to their drinks and their dull, mumbled conversations as Breston made himself at home on a stool at the far end of the bar, ordering a J&B on the rocks. Breston reached into his coat pocket and retrieved a new cigarette, lighting it and inhaling deeply. The smoke escaped him, and as it dispersed across the room he noticed the only remotely fuckable woman there as she eyed him with intrigue from the other side of the bar. Breston clutched up his drink, drained it, and moved in for the kill.
“Got a light?” She asked, seductively, after he had closed the distance having brushed his way through the decaying bodies of the scant Tuesday night crowd.
“No,” Breston replied smoothly, “But I have an eight-point-five inch long penis.”
Her bleach-blond bangs ruffled in excitement, the way a cat’s fuzzy face might if you were to hold a fishy treat up to it. There was only one kind of pussy that Breston was interested in, and only one type of fishy treat.
“Is that right?” The pussy purred, her blue green-flecked eyes brightening. “You wouldn’t lie to a lady now, would you?”
Breston felt his four-point-eight inch long member stiffen in his jeans and he readjusted his posture to conceal it.
“How about that light?” Breston murmured sensually, offering up his burning tip for the lady’s smoke.
“My, my,” She said, the words passing her lips in slow rolls of erotic delight. Pouting them around the slender filter, she moved in closer to Breston, taking her sweet time before finally allowing the cigarette to burn. “what a gentleman…”
“How old are you, by the way?” Breston interjected flirtily, “Like thirty, or something?”
“I’m twenty-eight…”
“Good enough,” Breston didn’t usually bang out grandmas, but in a drought like the one plaguing him, he knew it best to seek out any port possible to wait out the storm of pussilessness until the opportunity for a half-decent fuck with a youthful lay presented itself like that sword in the stone, or whatever the fuck it was. The thought occurred to Breston as if a crotch lightbulb had lit up around his midsection: ‘Perhaps she has a younger, hotter roommate…’ “Your place or mine? I have to warn you, though, my shitter is all backed up.”
“I… guess… we could go back to my-” The pussy stammered.
“Great, Let’s go.” Breston interrupted, sexily.
“Aren’t you at least going to buy me a drink first?” The pussy pleaded, motioning towards the disinterested bartender presumably getting ready to close up.
“Sure, we can stop at a liquor store on the way and grab some forties. If we move fast, we can make it before they stop selling booze. Come on, hurry!” Said Breston, throwing up an arm in the direction of the door like some mad conductor in the throes of a beautiful symphonic din.
And so Breston and the cheap night-time cooze bounded out into the darkness from whence they’d came, moving swiftly, lest the hour evade them and Breston be forced to grunt atop the relatively sub-5 geriatric female in the midst of returning accursed sobriety. An outcome which, he knew, simply wasn’t an option.
Breston Boobilay 3: Curse of the Cooze
“We have you now, Mr. Boobilay!” Malphus Mephistopheles cackled menacingly, relishing in his imminent, long-awaited triumph over renegade superspy Breston Boobilay, who lay helpless, strapped to the long metallic table as the laser beam drew ever closer to his bulging crotch. “Tell me, how does it feel to know that you will never get pussy again? Bwahahahaha!”
Breston could feel the billion-degree heat running along his exposed thighs, threatening his tighty-whitey clad dick and balls with extinction. That’s when he remembered; the tabs of flunitrazepam contained in the secret toe compartments of his shiny black loafers, of which Malphus’s underlings had neglected to remove along with his tuxedo pants. Breston began to chuckle a cackled laugh of his own, drawing the ire of his bedraggled captor.
“You know what your problem is, Malphus?” Malphus moved in closer, slamming a pale, thin palm down on the table by Breston’s head. Breston didn’t even blink. “You never got pussy. That’s why you hate me so much.”
“That isn’t true!” Malphus shrieked, the remainders of his long scraggly hair standing on end. “I’ve got pussy, lots of times!”
“Oh, yeah?” Breston replied coolly, “Who from?”
“You wouldn’t know her. She goes to a different school…”
The laser beam was just a few inches away from destroying Breston entirely, the distinctive burning stench of singed pubes beginning to fill the small subterranean chamber. He knew that he had to act fast.
“You wanna know a secret, Malphus?” Breston half-whispered.
“What?” Malphus replied, leaning in.
“SURPRISE ROOFIE!” With a flick of his loafer, Breston discharged a fleet of small pills into Malphus’s’s shocked, wide open mouth. He began to gag as they became lodged in his throat. ‘Bullseye’, Breston thought to himself smugly as he smirked, reaching out his hand and snatching the insane scientist's keys from his belt beneath his stained lab coat. In a flash, Breston was free and on his feet. By the time he was straightening his tie, Malphus Mephistopheles was passed out on the cold, metal floor; drooling.
Breston laughed, dropping his underwear and proceeding to teabag the unconscious man. Breston’s laugh erupted into a cackle surpassing that of any villain he had previously encountered, loud enough to alert Malphus’es’s throng of penguin-like minions. They gasped in horror as they witnessed the violation of their master.
“Who’s next!” Breston roared, the weird little penguin freaks fucking off in abject defeat, screaming as they went.
“I’m unstoppable! Do you understand that! I’m a god! I’m Breston Boobilay! Look at my work, and tremble!”
All of a sudden, Breston felt that familiar dreaded feeling begin to rear up from inside him. It stabbed at him with doubts and the incessant pain and the anxiety that made his body tremor. In an instant, he felt the power drain from him, replaced by something else. Something terrible. He looked down at his quaking hands, and saw that they were dripping with blood.
Breston awoke with a scream, as did the cooze he’d shacked up with. She hissed at him, still very cat-like in her manner.
“What the fuck, dude! Are you okay?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Breston sighed, rubbing at the beading rows of sweat dangling from his manly brow. “Just another night terror…”
“Why is my bed all wet?..” The girl questioned hesitantly, “Is that… is that piss!”
“No!” Breston felt himself beneath the sheets, soaked to the bone. “No, it’s just sweat! See?”
Breston removed his hand from his soiled groin, lifting it up to her face so that she might smell that it was in fact only sweat. She screamed, penguinishly, as she fled from the room in hysterics. Breston stood and began to put his clothes back on, eyes never moving from the large dark stain covering the pink bedspread. It was a stain as dark as his soul, and Breston knew that he couldn’t hide from it deep in a pussy hole for very much longer…
Breston Boobilay 4: The Quest For Peace
Breston glared into the steam rising from his coffee cup, the sinuous curves of its alluring dance making his dick twitch minutely in subtle arousal. The hangover was debilitating, but he told himself that it would pass with the caffeine and the shower he longed for back at home. However, to his despair, Breston knew better. How many times had he been there before, like that? Not in that exact diner, in that exact situation, mouth dry as an old nun’s cooze and smelling faintly like urine, but simply infirm, haggard, and desperate for some kind of meaningful relief? Breston knew, in that uniquely lonely moment, that he’d never find it.
The waitress breasted boobily across the diner floor, carrying Breston’s pie aloft in the air towards him. He couldn’t help but take notice of the way that her uniform hugged her body as her bosom heaved heftily as she walked, and, yet, Breston’s manhood remained as limp and placid as a premature baby’s pinkie. She reminded him of her, when they first met. She set the plate down, wrinkling her nose in disgust as she smelled Breston’s undying shame.
“Will that be all, sir?” She said, already preparing to turn and leave him there, all alone. Just like she did.
Breston wanted to scream ‘No!’. He wanted to yell at her and spew out all the things that he should have said, before it was too late. Breston wanted to spring up from the booth and grab the woman by the knockers and say ‘Were they worth it! Does he love them better than I did!’, but, he didn’t. Instead, he said nothing. The waitress was already gone, along with Breston’s will to live. The coffee’s steam had diminished down to small, dwindling whisps. He scooped up the mug and finished its contents, focusing on the lukewarm liquid as it spilled down his throat as if it might quell the shaking in his hands. Breston knew that only one thing could do that. He glanced at the clock behind the counter. It was eleven-thirty AM. Time to hit the sauce, he thought, grimacing.
Breston Boobilay 5: A Long Way Down
The chilly afternoon stung at Breston as he brought the bottle back up to his lips for another sickening hit of brandy. The shakes had left him, but his despair had only grown. It had calcified, made clear in his mind in a way that was truly unignorable and utterly undeniable. Everything good that Breston had ever had; his wife, his upper management job at the Brooklyn meat plant, his youth. It had all gone away so quickly. Breston thought of his parents, and the beginnings of a tear began to form before being swept away across his temple by the incoming wind. He thought about the last thing his father had said to him before he had stormed out to go drinking the previous weekend: ‘Breston, you're forty-two-years old. It’s time you moved out of the house.’, and he remembered how angry he’d been; yelling and cussing him out as a ‘frigid dinosaur’ who refused to take the time to understand Breston’s ‘alternative lifestyle’, and he couldn’t help but laugh. Father could never understand.
Breston tipped the bottle over his mouth and gulped down the remains of the liquor as he savored every last, overpriced trickle before shambling over to the guardrail at the rooftop’s edge. He eyed the distance between the two buildings, then he took the drop into account. After a moment, he took a step back, raised the bottle over his head, and launched it. It arched high over the street below before clattering against a tall windowpane of the office block opposite the building he was on.
“Bullseye…” Breston said aloud, to no one.
Suddenly, he got a flash of the dream he’d had the night before when he blacked out in that cooze kitten’s piss pad, and the urge to run and jump doubled in intensity. Breston didn’t like to remember. He didn’t want to. But, even in his nightmares, Matty was still there. Matty was always there. He was their favorite. Always was. It was always, ‘Breston, why can’t you be more like your younger brother?’, ‘Why can’t you be more like Matty?’. Always so perfect, with his good grades and mommy’s constant approval. Breston hated him. Oh, how he hated Matty with every fiber of his being, and he made that clear when Matty reached highschool. Breston was supposed to look out for Matty, protect him. But Breston did anything but. Matty was shy, and insecure about himself, but, most of all, Matty was ashamed of the fact that he’d never had a girlfriend before. Breston would make a big show of bringing whatever hoe-bag he’d seduced with daddy’s money back home so that he could flaunt her around like some prize that Matty could never earn, which crushed him, but not nearly as much as when Breston began spreading the rumors around school about how his dick didn’t work. By the end of the week, Matty was little more than a laughing stock and an emotional, broken wreck, and by the end of the month, Matty was dead.
“It wasn’t my fault, you stupid fuck!” Breston screamed into the dispassionate, gray New York sky within which no God could ever dwell, flashes of his mother screeching, ‘You did this! You!’ tearing at him like sharpened, savage claws ripping their way ravenously through a model’s skimpy lingerie. “I could have helped you! I could have made it all okay again!”
Breston fell to his knees and began to sob like the sad little boy he’d always known he was, feeling more alone than he ever had been before in his entire life. He had made so many mistakes. So many people hurt, and for what? His passing, childish amusement? His bottomless desire for gratification? A cover to hide from the hurt of it all? Breston didn’t know anymore, and he didn’t want to. He couldn’t think about it anymore. He couldn’t take it.
Standing on trembling legs, Breston tentatively put both hands on the railing before gripping it firmly, whimpering as if it produced some sort of electric shock with his touch. He tried to remember when the last time he had felt scared like that was, but he realized that there was nothing even remotely comparable to hold onto. Before another thought could pass through Breston’s head, he took a quick, deep breath, closed his eyes, thrust one foot over the waist-high metal railing and allowed himself to fall. The wind whipped him with the force of a jet engine as he soared towards the ground, half-screaming, half-choking as it knocked the air out of him. Despite the unimaginable terror, and all the regret and the shame and the misery and the abject disappointment that was his nothing of a life, Breston couldn’t help but feel at peace now that it was finally all over. For a fraction of a second, Breston opened his eyes, and he never closed them again…

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

PART 1 :
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/1c1fu8d/i_filmed_something_that_i_cant_explain/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
PART 2 :
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/1c2yziu/i_filmed_something_that_i_cant_explain_part_2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
PART 3 :
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/1cnwpo2/i_filmed_something_that_i_cant_explain_part_3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
PART 4 :
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/1copwms/i_filmed_something_that_i_cant_explain_part_4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Last night, after posting the last update, I couldn’t find any sleep. Not only because that back seat was probably the less comfortable one on the car market, nor because Mark and Claire were talking loudly outside, or not even because, as heartwarming and comforting as Lucy’s presence besides me was, I hadn’t slept so close to someone in forever. No, I could have gotten over all this easily. But one thing was keeping me awake, running through my head endlessly. When Claire took me to the Doors Realm (that’s its name now), and that we encountered what was, just a few hours before, still an unknown man that helped me to get so far, I learned so many things.

At first, Claire recognized him as the man that captured Mark’s childhood classmate, Martin, 11 years ago, and that had locked him in his house for all this time, until a few days ago, Mark and she saved him. That man then explained to her that, since their last encounter, he had been stuck in this place and couldn’t find his door anymore. Upon further talking, they came to the conclusion that the beast that was hunting me in the Doors Realm was what was left of the entity that they thought they had destroyed: Vessel. But that he had got rid of his “human” part that was nowhere to be seen there, and without it, he was less smart, but he was also free of what allowed them to hurt him the first time. We then stumbled upon a door that had been forced and was slightly open. Claire succeeded to take a shot of the inside of the door thanks to my camera, that later revealed a young boy who Lucy recognized when she saw it as a patient in a youth psychiatric center in which she lately had an internship for her studies: Nicolas. Claire and Mark thought strongly that Vessel’s human part had took refuge in that boy. Our plan was now the following: Lucy and I would get in the center to talk to Nicolas, since she was authorized to enter it for school purposes, and try to figure things out.

But the thing that was really keeping me awake and thinking was this: while on the Doors Realm, the man had revealed to me that he was my biological father, and that it was the reason I was connected to that place as much: I was half like him. I couldn’t ask him more as we had to move fast. We didn’t mention that to Mark and Lucy when we got back, Claire understood that I probably didn’t want to say that right after learning about it.

That revelation had me wondering so many things. I never knew anything about my biological parents, I was left at the door of the orphanage where I spent most of my life when I was 1 year old. So many questions were popping in my head each seconds: who was my mom, where was she, why did they abandon me, what were the consequences of me being half like them… I didn’t even know where to begin… and this also meant that my real father had kidnapped a 9-year-old and kept him alive as his blood stock for years, and that was absolutely chilling to consider, and at the same time, I couldn’t get all the things he did to help me so far out of my head. All of it was so confusing.

“So, do you want to talk about it?”

I was brought out of my agitated mind by Lucy’s tired voice. She was lying behind me, and I turned to face her. I didn’t think our faces would be that close, our lips were probably 4/5 centimeters away from each other. I immediately told my mind to shut up and stop thinking about that.
Our eyes locked, I never noticed how deep the iris of her eyes were.

“I’m sorry, did I wake you up?” I asked her.

“No, I just can’t sleep.” She answered.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I returned her question.

She sighed.

“I hate it, but I gotta admit, this is a pretty creepy situation to be thrown in out of nowhere.”

“I’m so sorry I dragged you into this Lucy…” I felt bad.

“Don’t be, I kinda asked for it, I don’t regret it.”

“He’s my father.” I felt a sudden need to tell her about it. “At least that’s what he said, the man in the Doors Realm, Martin’s captor.”

She looked confused. I elaborated, making sure that she had the full picture. At the end, she stayed silent.

“What do you think about it?” I asked.

“That it’s just getting creepier.” She said.

That wasn’t a crazy answer, but surely not what I expected.

“How so?” I asked.

“Isn’t something really starts to bug you in all this?” She answered.

“I mean, yes, thousands, but…” I said, ironically.

“Yes of course, but, I mean, don’t you think everything is a bit too tied together? I mean, really, look at it: Mark ends up babysitting Claire, who’s affected by some vampire-curse, and haunted by an entity that seems at the center of the whole thing. She gives him the curse. They leave together to investigate about Mark’s dark secret and ends up saving his old classmate from a man that has the same condition as them and used him for years. They then fight the entity and hurt it so bad that it breaks itself apart from its human part, which somehow finds shelter in a boy that I, the neighbor of Mark’s “sexfriend”, already knew. And now, the man that held Martin captive happens to be the biological father of the hook-up of the ancient classmate of that same Martin he kidnapped. That classmate comes back to save him, and they end up locking the man in the Doors Realm, which will eventually lead him to encounter his daughter, you... I mean, the way all of us seem to be linked together, it rubs me the wrong way.”

I never thought of it until now. She was right, those constant connections tying everything together, it was creepy.

“I’m sorry you have to be involved, really.” I knew I was repeating myself, but I really felt guilty.

“Hey, I already told you it was okay, I chose this, you’re not responsible of my actions Sarah.” I felt her hand slowly touching mine under the thin plaid we shared. “Plus, it’s not all bad…”

“You can leave anytime you want Lucy. I won’t be mad you know…” I said.

“No, even with all that, I don’t want to, because, … God, that’s so hard to explain with words.”

I smiled. Despite all the confidence she had shown in the little thing that was slowly blooming between the two of us, she still had some difficulties at times, and I thought that was cute.

“It’s okay, I’m good at interpretation…” I said, encouraging her to share what she was feeling.

“The point is that I see it’s not just me. I feel your company, and I can’t fail to believe it’s not just me. I know you’re feeling the same way…” She whispered.

I had a little laugh.

“Are these song lyrics? Because it sounded like it.” I asked with a smile.

She had a embarrassed expression.

“I arranged them a little bit…” She said.

“And what song was it?”

“Ho I’ll never tell you!” She said laughing quietly.

I grabbed her hand, and she placed her other one on my cheek. It was soft. My eyes looked instinctively to the window. I saw Claire watching me with a small smile. Mark was still speaking, and she articulated silently a phrase that I could read on her lips: “We’re going to take a walk.” On that, she took Mark away from the car, and their voices faded away. I looked back to Lucy and our faces were now even closer than before. I won’t elaborate here, that’s not the place, I’ll just say that her lips and all of her skin were soft and that, with all my experiences so far, I still never felt that way before with anyone.

I finally found some sleep.

We both woke up today to the voices of Mark and Claire. They were ready to go and, after reviewing one last time the plan together, we started driving. Approximately an hour later, we arrived at the center. Lucy and I got out of the car, Mark and Claire would be waiting for us on the parking lot.

Lucy took the lead, and we passed each door without problem. Arrived at the main room, we didn’t had to look for Nicolas for long. He was sitting alone at a table, drawing. We approached him and sat on each side. Lucy made me a sign to tell me that she should probably speak first for now. She took a soft and calm voice.

“Hello Nicolas.” She said.

“Hi! Who are you?” He immediately said, staring at us.

“We are here to talk to you, we just want to chat a little bit, if that’s okay.” Lucy continued calmly.

“Sure, that’s cool. What you wanna talk about?” He was speaking carefree.

“Well, first, do you think you could tell me about why you’re here?” She asked.

Nicolas leaned towards us and whispered.

“I have a special friend.” He said, with a little proud smile. He then changed to an annoyed face. “My parents, the doctors, they don’t like him…”

“Do you know who he is?” Lucy whispered back, mimicking his behavior. I was a bit impressed by how good and effective she was at talking with him.

“Not really, he never tells me his name. But he’s so funny!”. He said happily.

“And how do you talk with him?”

He pointed his head and winked to us.

“Right there, he’s here! He says he can’t find his door, I don’t really understand that, so, sometimes, I allow him to use mine, just a bit, because, when we’re doing that, I’m in a dark place, and sometimes I hear scary noise, so he never do it long…”

“You know, I think we already know your friend… His name is Vessel. I don’t know how it works between you two, but he needs to know that he’s not safe. And, if we could talk to him for just a little time, we could help him… do you think you could do that?”

He had a scared look.

“I can feel he wants to come right now, he wants to talk to you too.” He stayed silent for a moment. “Not too long, okay?”

Suddenly, his expression changed. He looked terrified. He stared at us.

“Hello misses. I don’t understand, why do you say I’m in danger?” His voice was shaking, but also very formal.

Lucy looked at me a bit lost, clearly expressing that it was now my turn.

“Hello Vessel. Well, you can’t stay in Nicolas, it’s not safe, you should…” I stopped when I saw that Lucy was looking me dead in the eye with that exact expression: (=_=). I understood that I probably wasn’t very smart in my approach. She took the lead again, which I thought was probably a better choice anyway.

“Listen Vessel, we’re here to help you. What we said is true, you’re not completely safe in there. I know you feel better, but, it’s not safe, Nicolas’s door didn’t close, and don’t you think it’s a bit unfair for Nicolas?”

“You’re probably correct…” said Vessel.

“But listen, we’re not going to ask you to just leave, no, we’ll find a solution together, okay? But for that, we’ll need you to join us.” Lucy said.

“How can I do that? I don’t want to go back to the dark place, there’s the beast, and, if she gets back, I’ll be mean and alone again…”

Lucy thought for a moment.

“Well, you’re gonna wait at the door, and when you’ll hear 3 knocks on the other side, you’ll go out, it will be us, so you won’t be alone, and we’ll find a solution, okay?” She asked.

“You will be here?” He asked, pointing his finger to Lucy.

“Well, Sarah here, and another friend will.” She said.

Vessel looked worried, but he accepted. We then instructed him to let Nicolas back in. Lucy explained to Nicolas that he was going to lose his friend, but that everything will be better and that he’ll be safer.

We left the center after that. We got back to the car and explained what happened to Mark and Claire. Claire agreed to take us back to the Doors Realm, as we were convinced that the key to solve all this was there, and that now that we had access to that new part of Vessel, this could be the moment to fix everything. We drove to an isolated place on the side of a lonely road.

Claire and I were getting ready to enter the Doors Realm when Lucy made a request.

“I want to come with you… I have to!” She was a bit hesitating but decided.

“Why is that?” Asked Claire.

“Vessel, or, we could call him young Vessel, well, he’s scared, terrified even. You two, I don’t think you’ll be great at dealing with him, but I think I can help. If I’m there, he’ll be way more trusting I think.” She was speaking with confidence. From what I saw at the center earlier, she had a point.

“Do you think you can make it?” Mark asked Claire.

“I should be able to, I’m more worried about her… Lucy, I can take you there, but you’ll be in more danger than us. You’re entirely human, you’re not supposed to go there in the first place, so I think that you’ll be way more affected if something gets to you in any way.” Claire said.

“It’s okay, just, send me back here if there’s any risk of me getting hurt.”

“Fine, so, are you two readies then?”

Lucy and I nodded yes. Claire gave a look to Mark, and he nodded too. The three of us held hands and closed our eyes.

A few seconds later, we were back in the hallway of my foster home, like each time before. I knew I was going to hear it at any moment, my foster dad calling me downstairs. Claire and Lucy both already saw that memory play out in some way. Lucy immediately held my hand.

“Sarah, …” Claire didn’t know what to say.

We heard it. “Sarah, daddy needs your help, come down here.” It sent chills down my spine.

“Sarah, we can just leave, okay?” Said Claire.

But when she tried to open the front door, it was unmovable. I knew what it was.

“Claire, I think we can’t leave the house until the memory plays out.” I said.

“Well, then, we can just wait here, can’t we? You don’t have to face it.” Said Lucy.

“Stay there, you two, I’m going to fix this.” I said. I felt confident, more than ever before.

“But Sarah…” Claire started.

“Only come if I ask you to, in case something wrong happens.”

With that, I headed towards the stairs to the basement. His voice kept calling me: “ Come on, faster, Daddy needs you.” I slowly walked down the stairs, each steps getting me closer to the moment that followed me for years. I finally walked down the last step. He was standing there, with his awful smile, just like that day.

“Come closer, I have to show you something.” He said.

I looked at him. Now, in front of him, I wasn’t scared anymore, all I felt was sadness, pride and pity. Pity of seeing this fucked up man that had hurt so many children, and that was probably still living with the guilt and the loneliness that came with it, sadness of having been one of the children that he hurt so deeply, but pride of also having been the one to expose him, preventing so many other children that could have followed me.

“No.” I said.

His expression became annoyed.

“Is that what you said to Lucy?” He said.

I closed my eyes, and images of last night flashed in my head. I knew he just gave me the strength to beat him. I opened them and slowly walked towards him. He smiled and opened his arms. I put my hands on his chest and he looked surprised. I looked him in the eyes.

“I’m sorry for you, but from now on, you’ll really be alone… Cause I’m not scared of you, you don’t define me.” I said calmly.

With that, he disappeared, and with him, the whole house faded. Soon we were in the dark space. Lucy and Claire looked at me, concerned.

“I’m good.” I said. I turned my head to Lucy. “I promise.”

We walked around for a few minutes, looking for Nicola’s broken door. We knew it wasn’t appearing as easily as the other ones. Eventually, we encountered the man that captured the Martin, the one who told me he was my biological father. He looked at us.

“You’re there! Did you find a plan?” He asked, out of breath.

“The beginning of one…” Said Claire.

“How much time will it take you?”

“Why?” Asked Claire.

“He’s really not far, I’ve been running away from him, you can’t take too much time or…”

He was cut off by a loud scream. The beast, Vessel’s violent and cruel part, was already close. Immediately, we could see it running towards us. If we didn’t move fast, he’ll get us, but we had to find Nicola’s door. The man looked at us with a panicked face, which slowly morphed into a desperate one. He looked down and whispered a few words to himself. He lifted his head and looked right at me.

“Your mom’s name is Debby, and she’s the sweetest person I ever knew.” He said. He then turned his head to Claire. “Whatever it is that you have to do, do it now.”

He turned to face the beast that was approaching, running on all fours, and started to head towards it. He soon found himself in front of it and it immediately pierced his chest with its long claws. The man screamed of pain, and shouted one last thing to us: “Come on, do your thing!” I realized I didn’t know his name.

The three of us started to run randomly, looking all around for Nicola’s door while the beast was taking care of the man. At some point, Lucy shouted.

“Is that it?”

She was pointing Nicola’s Door. Claire and I came to her. Then, Claire started to walk slowly towards the door. We knew we had to move fast, as the man will eventually stop interesting the beast, but we also knew that if we weren’t careful, the door would disappear. Claire finally reached the door and knocked 3 times. We had to wait a few seconds before the door started to open. A young boy, probably 8 years old, covered in stains, he was very dirty, and dressed with clothes that looked like they were from another time came from it. It was young Vessel. He looked terrified when he saw the beast in the distance. He then saw that Lucy was there and ran to hug her. Claire took care of closing the door behind him, that then disappeared. He was staying close from Lucy and looked at us.

“Hey, we’re going to find a solution, okay.” Said Lucy.

“Who’s the little lady?” He said, pointing to Claire.

Claire had an annoyed look.

“A friend, alright?” She said with a very dry tone.

“And what is this now?”” I asked. Some sort of old cabin made of wood had appear close from us.

All of us looked at it, trying to recognize something from any of our own memories, but it didn’t ring any bell. That’s when young Vessel had a little gasp.

“Ho, no, no no no, we shouldn’t go there.” He said. His voice was shaking as he grasped to Lucy’s leg stronger.

“Why is that? Do you know what this is?” Asked Claire, clearly not wanting to waste too much time.

Young Vessel looked at Lucy, who nodded to him. He looked at Claire again.

“It’s the old woman’s house, it’s dangerous, I don’t want to go back misses…”

Claire approached him slowly.

“What happened there, do you remember?” She asked him.

He hid a bit more behind Lucy.

“It was a long time ago, I think, I don’t remember… I know mother told me not to go in the forest alone, I shouldn’t have, I know, I’m very sorry. But I went, and then, I saw the house. I got inside, I thought it was abandoned. I touched a few things, but not too much, I swear… But the old woman, she was there, I didn’t know she was living there, but she saw me, and then she asked me if I had friends, but I didn’t so I told her I did not, and she asked me a lot of questions, and she started to say weird things. I felt weird, it hurt. And then I got here, in this scary place. I could never open my own door, and I was all alone, and it was horrible. But then, not long ago, my door finally reopened, and I saw 2 people that I didn’t recognize, but they left fast. After that, my door cracked and exploded, and the beast came out of it. It was scary, and I ran until I found Nicola’s door… So, it’s dangerous inside…”

All of us looked at each other wondering what to do. Lucy looked to him.

“Well, if it all started there, maybe we can solve everything there too, don’t you think?” She said. “And we’ll be with you, so, you won’t be alone…”

He looked a bit worried, as Claire seemed clearly eager to move. He eventually accepted and we all started to walk towards the cabin. We walked the few steps. The wood was rotten, covered in moss and lichen in places. Claire opened the door, and we got inside. It was filthy, dark, the only light coming from the dirty windows, which was weird, as it was supposed to be dark outside. Looking at it again, we could see a forest at daytime on the other side of the glass. We waited in silence for a few seconds, wondering when something will happen. It didn’t take long.

All of sudden, a closet located at the back of the room opened slowly. We could see an old hand with thin fingers and dirty nails holding it from the inside. All of us got closer to each other. A deep and heavy breath was suddenly heard coming from the inside of that closet. The door opened more, revealing an old lady. She was short, and excessively thin, it was like she only had skin covering her bones and no internal organs. Her nails were long and pointy, and she was wearing a simple, dirty robe, looked hand-made.

She had a wide smile on her face that was revealing perfectly white teeth that seemed completely out of character, looking at the rest of her body.

She walked out of the closet and stared at each of us. She was reacting to our presence, which meant that was not the memory playing out. She then noticed young Vessel hiding behind Lucy, her smile became wider, her jaw clenched more, making her face lokk way more sinister.

“There you finally are… Long have I waited…” Her voice was the one you’d expect from an old lady, but with a more twisted tone to it. “But you’re not the whole thing… Let’s get him.”

She stood straighter and all her bones made a cracking sound. She lifted an arm and her finger elongated. She shook her hand a little. Suddenly, the beast appeared in the middle of the room, and it looked terrified by the old woman. It was trying to move but was like stuck by invisible ties. The woman was looking straight at it with an even creepier smile than before.

“Now, let’s get to the good part… We’re going to get rid of this.” She made another hand move in its direction.

The beast progressively took the form of a young man, probably in his late twenties. He finally fell on the floor. He was sitting there, dark circles around his eyes, he was dressed simply but pretty elegant. He looked extremely tired, his eyes were looking at the ground. He seemed out of breath. His face had an angry but exhausted expression. We were now in the presence of the other Vessel, that had his entire rage and curse taken away from him

“You…” Claire said.

The man looked up to her and had a face of surprise.

“Claire? What are you doing here?” He asked.

They both looked surprised.

“Well!” Said the old woman. “You took your sweet time, didn’t you Vessel?”

He looked up to her with his angry expression coming back.

“You’ve done more than I could ever hope you to, even refusing to die…” She continued. She was smiling, clearly mocking him. “Now tell me, now that it’s out of you…” She leaned towards him. “… how do you feel about everything you’ve done?”

He looked so devastated. She laughed. Vessel started to look at us and noticed young Vessel standing behind Lucy. He seemed shocked to see him. He somehow found the strength to get up on his feet and slowly walked towards him. Young Vessel came out of behind Lucy a little bit. Vessel got down to his level. He had a slight smile on his face.

“God, how young was I…”

He presented his hand, and young Vessel held it.

“How could I forget you… I’m sorry little one. I think it started because I wanted to protect you… Can’t say I did a great job…”

“Come on, Vessel, you know it’s time now… I can’t wait to enjoy everything you gathered for all this time.” Said the old lady, still giggling. Her face had a creepy look to it.

Vessel looked down to his feet.

“It’s time for us to go my friend.” He said to Young Vessel.

“Are we going to die?” He asked, his eyes filling with tears.

“I think so.” Vessel answered calmly, his face showing a thousand regrets.

“But, I don’t want to die…” He said, crying.

“I know…” Vessel said.

He got up and stayed silent for a moment. He then turned his head towards Claire.

“For what it’s worth,… I’m really sorry little lady… You’re really impressive you know.” He said. He then turned towards the old woman and addressed us one last phrase.

“You can leave now, It will be okay, but be fast.”

Claire and I started to go back to the entrance door. Young Vessel was crying. Lucy looked confused. I called her, telling her to hurry. She had a panicked look. She finally leaned towards young Vessel and whispered something in his ear. She then looked at him as he stopped crying.

“You understand?” She asked him.

He nodded yes.

On this she followed us. The three of us started to run to find our doors. I asked Lucy what she said to young Vessel, but she answered that she just reassured him. Eventually, we found ourselves in front of our doors, and I had the surprise to see that the claw marks and scratches on my door had fade away. We looked at each other, Lucy looked at the cabin one last time, and we all went through our doors.

We came back to the car. Mark was out of breath. We weren’t at the spot we were before. Apparently, a severe storm had started to form around us and he had to drive us away. It suddenly stopped less than a minute before we came back and he could stop. We explained everything that had happened to us.

After talking a bit about everything, we understood that everything was now probably back to “normal”. Mark and Claire accepted to drive us back to our place, understanding that this time, we’ll probably never see each other again. Lucy and I were on the back seat and I couldn’t help but notice that she still looked a bit worried. I asked us what was wrong, but she assured me that it was fine. A few minutes passed and she still had that same anxious expression.

Eventually, she looked at the window and let out a small gasp that I was the only one to hear. I looked at her. A little smile formed on her face and quietly said: “I knew it” and winked to the window.

“Are you sure you’re fine?” I asked, pretending I hadn’t seen that.

She smiled at me, a peaceful warm and beautiful smile, and hold my hand.

“Yeah, it really is now. I’m good.” She answered.

I’m in the car as I’m posting this. I think it’ll be my last update, at least I hope so. It’s crazy how so many insane and fucked up shit I’ve been through these last few days, and yet, I’ve never felt so good. In a way, I think this is the best thing that ever happened to me, at least, when I look at the person sitting beside me, that’s how I feel. Thanks to those who followed me.

[First] [Previous] [Next]
An old desk phone stands on a marble pedestal, lost in the middle of a dark room. A perfectly circular, dark room, dug deeply into the bedrock of a city far, far away from anywhere important to our story. Silence reigns in this room… until the phone starts ringing. It rings for such a long time, uninterrupted, insistent, inconsiderate even! It rings for longer than any person should be willing to wait, longer than anyone would stomach. A sane person would simply give up and call later… But this caller? No. This caller refuses to be ignored.

So it rings, even while a set of long, skeletal fingers stretch from the shadows. Knuckles and joints crack as the hand does a few stretches, taking the time to caress the nasty, annoying phone for a moment without picking it up.

“Oh bother… I wonder who that could be…?”

The voice was raspy, nasal and grumbly. It loved to complain, and it had done so for so long that even when it wasn’t complaining, it sounded annoyed and legitimately upset. The hand stopped uncomfortably caressing the vibrating phone for a moment to grab the caller ID. Its dim green light was perfectly reflected on the hand’s glossy white skin.

“Ah… G again, huh…?”

Understanding that it couldn’t simply ignore this annoying sound forever, and that the call may actually mean something important (and lucrative), the hand returned to the phone and finally picked it up.

“You interrupted my nap.” The raspy voice said.

“You shouldn’t sleep for so long. It’s bad for you.” The young boy’s voice answered, legitimately concerned.

“Oh yeah? You suggest I should go out instead? Take a shower, get dolled up, and then bask under the full concentrated power of the Sun?”

“Come on now, don’t be like that. You know what I mean.”

“You better mean something important, to interrupt my nap like that, you old bastard.”

The white, skeletal hand made a few sassy snaps, loud enough to be heard over the phone.

“Alright alright, I am done beating around the bush. Sorry.” The calm, youthful voice sighed over the phone, these conversations were enough to exhaust him.

“Yeah that’s right, bitch.”

“It’s just… we have a new visitor in The Forum, and I’d like you to give us a little check on who or what.”

“What, are you afraid of a few gremlins and jinxes finally finding their way over your precious forum? Or is this a troll hunt?” The raspy voice finally got up from the sea of cushions and empty bags, and with another snapping of his fingers, he activated the widescreens that covered every single spot of his walls with the exception of a single metal door. The lights were warm and orangey, designed to avoid straining the eyes.

The room had returned to life! It was an absolute disaster, pillows and empty bloodbags laid scattered around without a care, and the whole place had a disgusting aura of filth to it.

Blanco was fully illuminated now. His figure was enough to cause nightmares to a few children: a tall, lanky and wide-shouldered man, skin white as marble and cracked as an old dry cookie, full of darker spots and nasty scars. His arms were long enough for the knuckles of his free hand to feel the floor.

But what was worst of all was his face: a perfectly round, perfectly smooth face, lacking hair, eyes and ears, only showing a few dark veins underneath the glossy skin. His mouth was another crack in this otherwise flawless surface, showing myriads of sharp, black teeth.

“Now let’s see…”

The screens all showed the same picture of Blanco’s face, a toothy smile covering his visage. With a mere gesture of his hand, a wireless keyboard came floating to the creature, big and wide enough for his disproportionate hands. The keys were shining in beautiful purple, producing a hypnotic wave effect across its length.

After cracking his knuckles, the creature began typing and accessing one of the many screens, the one permanently connected to Dejima 08. Blanco stretched again, sitting in the air and crossing his lanky legs as he checked the analytics.

“Yep. You have a new visitor, and they immediately registered. ‘Tav’, huh? Too generic.”

“Can you give me a bit more info on them?” The young man asked.

“Are you officially commissioning me now? Because this is as far as our friendship will get me without pay.” Blanco smirked, a purple tongue licking his nonexistent lips.

“...I’ll have the payment sent immediately. I want an hour of your time.” There was hesitation on the old voice. He clearly didn’t feel good about this, but one could never be too careful.

“Oh boy!” The creature clapped rapidly, and before he knew it, there was a notification on another screen. Ka-ching! The sound of money going straight into his PayBud. “Ohhh Giovanni, you gotta be my best client, really. Most people whine about my prices.”

“You probably tell that to every client you get.” G chuckled, taking it like a good sport.

“I do!” Blanco admitted with a bright, big smile, and then slid over to face a cluster of 9 screens on a wall. “This will take just a moment…”

The screens would go to black at the same time, before glyphs of many sizes, shapes and forms began flooding them, spiraling to the center of each display. The lines that draw them were a pale, regular blue at first, before suddenly taking a bright octarine hue. Blanco’s fingers tapped wildly on his keyboard, while his mind focused on the seeking runes that took him straight into the second layer of reality.

Mages didn’t usually deal with the technology of the Sleepers. Not because they felt it was below them (even though many of them would certainly take that posture to protect their fragile egos), but for protection: Technology born out of the mundane rules of the natural world did not meddle well with magic, and even in a world that had lost 95% of its magical population, infusing magic on mechanisms and electrical circuits was a great way to attract pesky fairies.

Blanco, however, was not just any mage. After several lifetimes of work and study, he had mastered the art of using magic in conjunction with the power of the Internet itself, turning him into one of the most prolific hackers and trackers in the whole world of Jericho. Perhaps even the single most requested man in the business!

He, of course, didn’t accept just any job. He only took the work that interested him, that made him think outside of the box, or that paid particularly well. But Giovanni here? The old man was an exception. Giovanni had been good to Blanco in a time where no one else would even look at the creature, and as much as he hated showing gratitude for things, Blanco was a man of honor… to a certain extent.

He at least appreciated a friend when he had one.

The screens began changing one by one as the creature found information. A national registry page, a Vapor gaming profile, a VirtualZone profile…

“This one’s not dumb. They keep good opsec, rarely sharing personal information. That’s good.” Blanco smirked. “Sadly, that’s not enough to stop me.”

Soon a picture appeared on one of the screens, the face of a smiling, bright child. An honor student with many dreams and possibilities in the future.

Then, on a fifth screen, a grainy image stolen from an unsecured webcam. A burnout stares at the screen with dead eyes and no spirit in their posture.

“Oof. Growth has been rough on this one.” The creature commented sarcastically, taking a moment to stop and crack their knuckles. “This is your guy, G. Real name: Santino Belnades. A random kid from Wohl.”

“Wohl?” Giovanni was beyond surprised.

“Yeah, you know. The country in the north. The one that looks like a pen–”

“Yes yes, I know Wohl. I just… didn’t expect to hear from the mages of the north. It’s been a while.”

“Ah, no this is not a born mage. This is a sleeper.”

“Impossible. They passed the Le Guin test and made an account in the Forum.”

“Alright then, a Bastard Mage for sure.”

There was a moment of silence as Giovanni meditated on the implications of this… only broken by the camera feed’s catching Tav screaming.

“Spy Medic, Spy Medic! Kill that motherfucker!”

“Ahhh… TS2. I really should get back into it one of these days.” Blanco commented with a bit of nostalgia. “So? What do we do? You still have some minutes of my time, G! I could scare them real good if you want them out of the forum.”

“No, that won’t be necessary. It’s just another mage in the world…they’ll probably benefit from learning a few things.”

“Eighty Two will get really, really mad if she finds out you allowed a Bastard Mage in her precious project.”

“Mustafá will get angry no matter what, but she rarely shows up in the Forum anyways.”

“Hah. Old bastard.”

There was another moment of silence, interrupted by the heavy clicking and intense gaming from the webcam feed.

“... So.” Blanco finally spoke up. “What now?”

“I’ll just say hi to them and let them be.” Giovanni said, probably smiling. “They are probably scared and insecure, after all.”

“Are you serious? I mean, this is a Bastard Mage. They shouldn’t have had the means to find your forum and yet, here they are. Don’t you find that suspicious in the slightest?”

“Hmmmn…”

“And this is happening just as we had that Temporal Displacement alarm, remember? I really doubt that’s a coincidence.”

“Keep an eye on them, please. Just to make sure they don’t get in trouble.”

“That will cost you extra.”

“Fiiiine.”

“Yes, excellent.” Blanco rubbed his hands together, before stretching lazily and tapping a few keys. He would start a file on this ‘Tav’ person now.

“Whatever the case may be… I really hope this doesn’t get them in trouble. I mean, more trouble than they already are in.” With a heavy sigh, Giovanni finally decided that enough was enough. “I’ll leave you to it. I trust that you’ll inform me if anything happens.”

“If I can trust you to keep paying me, of course!”

Giovanni sighed again before finally hanging up. Blanco, now with something to do with his day, stretched in his invisible chair and looked at the webcam feed for another moment before turning it off. If he kept it on for too long, he risked Tav realizing that the webcam was suddenly on, and he really didn’t want to scare them.

For now, at least.

He wanted to pretend he wasn’t interested, and that this would just be another boring, fruitless job with nothing to show for it but a few factoids about a random mage’s life… but he had a strange feeling about this one. There was an odd trinkle in the dead, depressed eyes of that bastard.

“Let’s hope you know what you’re doing, kid…”

Hello!
I am looking for BETA readers for my spicy mafia book! It's the first one in a trilogy.
In Our Right Kind of Wrong, we follow Angie, a 21-year-old girl who has been living on the street for the past seven years after her family was killed. One night she is brought to a man who turns out to be one of the most ruthless mafia bosses of all time.
Angie tries to keep her feelings at bay but it doesn't go very well and suddenly she is brought into a dangerous world she knows can kill her, but she has never felt so free, or more at home. This is where she belongs, she knows it, and she can feel it deep in her soul.
What she doesn't know, is how deeply she will fall for the boss, and how deeply he will fall for her. He is the key to finding out what happened that day several years ago.
When the truth and lies start to float to the surface, Angie understands that this is all so much more complicated than she first thought. Nothing will ever be the same again.
This is a spicy mafia romance, but the first book doesn't focus on the mafia, though it's there. This first book focuses on Angie, her development
Excerpt from my book
I knock on the door and feel butterflies. Why am I so nervous all of a sudden? One of the doors opens and Josh stands there in only boxers. Of course. He’s not making this easy on me. To be fair this is his bedroom and I don’t think he expected me. “Hey,” I say in a shaky voice. “Hey you,” he says. “Can we talk or should I go away?” He steps aside to let me in. I walk inside and the first thing I see is that he has a mini living room inside his bedroom. A couch, coffee table, and TV. He has the biggest king-size bed I have ever seen. The walls are latte brown. A few plants here and there. It’s cozy. Josh walks over to the bed and sits down on the edge. It looks like he just left it to open the door. Maybe I shouldn’t have come here. My pulse is so high right now. It feels like my heart is going to beat straight out of my chest. “Are you going to stand there?” He is looking at me with a small smile. I walk up and sit down beside him. It feels funny. I’m sitting on his bed right now. Why am I even in here? “I just wanted to thank you,” I say looking down at my hands. “For you know, letting my stay here and stuff, I wasn’t lying earlier, I probably would’ve frozen to death.” “Don’t think like that, you didn’t and that’s what is, not what could’ve been,” Josh answers me. I can’t stop myself. I cuss at myself when I feel the tears leave my eyes. I’m so pathetic right now. “No you don’t understand, it would’ve been my tenth night out on a bench, the shelters are hard to get into when it’s cold outside,” I say. “And you can’t tell me that anyone would’ve done the same thing, you know that’s not true so I want to thank you, can you just accept my gratitude?” “You’re welcome.” He dries my tears with his thumb. I look up at him. We are only millimeters apart. “You have the most beautiful eyes, so green.” I look away. He puts his hand under my chin and lifts my head, our eyes meet again. “You are beautiful.” I have heard of instant connections but this is ridiculous. I shake my head. “I’ve been living on the streets for seven years, with scrapes to eat, I’m not beautiful,” I whisper. “You are, you didn’t deserve such a fate,” Josh says and sounds genuinely sad. “I shouldn’t be so attracted to someone I’ve just met,” I say and touch his cheek with my hand, Josh closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “I shouldn’t be feeling the things I’m feeling, I don’t know you, and yet, my feelings right now are overwhelming me.” Better to be honest. “What feelings?” Josh whispers. I swallow hard and put my face closer to his. “I want to know you, know more of your world, your life, who you are, I want to know everything.” I’ve known him for what? Twenty-four hours? Less? “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbles, pushing me back. He takes a step away from me. “Yes, I do.” I step closer to him again. “I also want to know how your lips feel against mine, feel your hair through my fingers while we kiss,” I whisper, now my lips are only millimeters apart from his. I look him straight in the eyes. His golden-brown eyes look so innocent. “Expose me to your world, your life, please.” Why am I making a move on this man? I don’t know him, yet it feels as though I have known him my whole life. I sound almost begging but I don’t care at the moment. I don’t get an answer but Josh puts his lips against mine. I put my arms around his neck. He sneaks his tongue into my mouth and I moan low. My hands travel to Josh’s head, and my fingers rush through his soft hair, tugging lightly. Josh moves me from the bed to his lap, continuing the kiss. I tug at his hair again, this time he moans. I stroke my hands over his back and feel his body shiver against mine. I pull him closer, wanting to feel every muscle of his body. Josh suddenly ends the kiss and I feel disappointed. “Okay,” he says. Okay.

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She really destroyed me out of the blue with it too. She told me a crazy story that would keep me waiting indefinitely and even had me looking for her for a while as if something happened to her. She contacted me and told me she thought about me everyday since and prayed about me and there hasn't been a day she didn't regret what she did.
I told her if she regretted it why did she wait five years to contact me? What changed? Did she just get too old and noticed all the doors that were open to her are now closed? She sent me a short video and she has had so much plastic surgery done I'm not sure if she is messing with me using a filter or not. Because she was beautiful and now she looks like a clown. If that is really how she looks now it makes me mad and sad for her.
I don't want to be vain, but if she really looks like that, I find that repulsive. Considering the fact that she had to ghost me and went around people that made her that insecure and encouraged her to do that to herself. It's like they actually hated her. Her face reflects what her actions did to us both. Am I wrong for rejecting her?
It sucks because I still love her but what she did to me was so heartless and selfish. She even admitted to me that all the blame shifting she did before hand wasn't true. Although I actually don't believe her on that and I have a good reason not to. Which brings me to my second moral dilemma of this situation. The people that talked her out of her life with me, which she had chosen and committed to when she could have had anybody. They exploited her and made a whole bunch of money off her. She made some money, but she has no idea how much money they made. Far more than she did. If it was an "opportunity" that she couldn't miss out on and I was never going to be ok with it. Why did they go so far out of their way to get me out of the picture before they ever mentioned it to her?
They had known her far longer than I had. Maybe because they didn't know if I would have been ok with it, But that I wouldn't have let her get taken advantage of like she did. To put it in perspective, just the take home off her subscription fees multiplied times her subscribers was 60k a month. But I subscribed, and the account was a scam. The pictures were her head photo shopped on another body, the videos were the same thing. Trust me, if anyone would know it would be me. That's clever on her part but also revealing. They were using her followers, managing the account for her entirely, actually they took over all her social media to funnel people to it. But she was in on it, Getting a cut.
This is the thing that really pisses me off. In order to actually find porn stars to do the stuff they would photo shop her face onto, the needed to look like her body. But she wasn't fake. So she got fake so it would match up to the girls that they had to make the videos. She changed herself to look like something she used to make fun of. I know she didn't want to, because she already had the fake breasts removed. But what they did to her face was inexcusable. I don't believe it, unless I see her in person I won't. Is there are filter that makes someone look like they had way way to much surgery and lip filler? Was she just trolling me?
I still don't think she expected me to tell her not so politely that she was ugly and that her face reflected her betrayal every time I looked at her now. I don't know if I should still blame them for promising her to be rich and famous and luring her away and forgiving her now that they've thrown her in the garbage like everyone else they do that to. Or if I should let her accept responsibility for it all, and if I do should I forgive her. I honestly don't even know what she was expecting of me. I did know that eventually she would hit the wall with that path and that when she did she would come back I knew it was a scam, but I think she knew it too and went along with it anyways. Which makes me so frustrated with her. I wish she had never done any of it, but she did.
So I feel like I need to stick to my guns, even though I wished she'd come back and do this for years. I just wished she hadn't messed herself up in the process. But you also need to understand if she had been disfigured in a car wreck I would have taken care of her for the rest of her life without question. She had to block me out of her life to do this to herself becauise I never ever would have let her go through with it. She wouldn't have even been insecure if I was around. She wouldn't have been thinking she needed to improve anything about her looks, Which she didn't, which is what makes this so confusing and tragic. Knowing how beautiful she was and what they did to her makes me so angry and sad for her. also if she looks like that it makes sense why she'd come crawling back now. Which is like a.... damn.... what the fuck... moment.
At the end of the day I know that she was with me and she was ok with the life she picked and built. I know that these guys make their living off getting girls to second guess those things and start dreaming that they are missing out on opportunities. They know just how to subtly implant that idea in their head then just wait. While the girls life implodes because she's thinking she could be rich with a celebrity instead of her average life. The guy that did this is friends with the rapper that said " I like girls that like carrots" if that tells you anything. They make their living off manipulating girls that want money and they are good at it. The fact that she didn't realize this before or during it and change her mind and that she instead waited to be thrown in the trash to contact me kind of changes things a lot. It's like, you'd rather be there, but you can't anymore. I don't want to be you laste choice. I want to be your first.