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The ministry of secrets was indeed a busy place these days. Only the most loyal and trust worthy women and dare she say a few men worked beneath the halls of the Imperial palace, although who they were loyal to was sometimes a mystery. Mon’Kelron had visited a few times over her career, once at the behest of now Admiral Nar’Vala, and once at the behest of the Empress.
Once more, she followed one pace behind the Empress into the dark halls the ministry of secrets utilized. It was a strange mixture of the ancient dungeons of the past combined with almost magical Human technology. Spy-Mistress Kel’Taraan awaited the Empress as they passed the thick metal doors that although old, were without blemish.
Two of the ministry of secrets guards stood to each side, each in strange charcoal colored uniforms of some kind of thick cloth material and brandishing rifles that glowed blue from within their barrels. “More new Human technology.” She thought as they passed the check point and entered the sanctum of secrecy. Once inside, the two guards closed the impressive door and pressed a button on the wall, an intricate mechanism spun, forcing metal bars into place on all four sides of the door.
Empress Shi’Lana addressed the once ancient, but now middle aged Spy-Mistress. “How is our prisoner doing this morning?” She asked in a cold tone.
The Spy-Mistress waved for the group to follow her, “She is doing better now, we found a false tooth laced with poison and extracted it. We also used some of the medical nannites the Humans gave us to repair her face, Mon’Kelron did a staggering amount of damage, breaking her nose, maxilla and zygoma. She could not talk with all the swelling of her injuries.”
The Empress looked over to her Captain, “I heard you dispatched her, I did not know it was quite that brutal.”
Mon’Kelron sighed, “It wasn’t intended to be, it was instinctive, muscle memory. During that moment of terror I felt as if something unlocked inside me and I found I has incredible strength that was not there before the Humans repaired me.”
The Spy-Mistress cackled as they entered a room with a single chair in it’s center. In that chair was a woman, who appeared to be quite worse for wear. She was strapped to the chair by her ankles, shins, thighs, chest and neck. She did not look happy. “How are we doing this afternoon young Vir’Athen?”
The woman struggled against her bonds as she spat, “Better than all of you will be when our masters arrive with their fleet!”
The Empress raised an eyebrow to Kel’Taraan, “She speaks of the Howrons? Is she part of the lunatic fringe group New Beginnings or something else?”
“Oh, she is part of something else entirely. A group we had heard only whispers about in the past centuries, but we knew must exist.” Kel’Taraan sighed. “She is part of a group that calls themselves the Redeemers, who worship the Howrons, and have existed since they first came to our world.”
The woman settled down but spoke with vehemence, “We don’t worship them, they aren’t gods, but they are the rightful rulers of our race. For over ten generations we have been their presence on Alandra, and we don’t follow the orders of a false Empress!”
Mon’Kelron looked over to the Spy-Mistress, “I’m surprised she is speaking at all, if this group is as secretive as you say and even resorted to poisoning themselves rather than being captured.”
Kel’Taraan pointed to the tablet on the wall, one identical to the one in her quarters. “The Human’s gave us such wonderful toys. That medical tablet is monitoring a device that we implanted in the base of her spine, it completely inhibits the parts of the brain that control duplicity. Simply put, she can not lie to us, nor does she want to.”
“Humans!” The prisoner spat, “They are a blight on our universe, and the mortal enemy of the Howrons and the Ulraar!”
The Empress looked over to the Spy-Mistress, then back to the two other guards behind them, “I think I have seen enough for now, let us go to somewhere more private.”
As they turned to leave the prisoner shouted from her chair, tears running down her bruised and swollen cheeks, “The fleet is coming, and once they destroy the Humans they will lay waste to our world for siding with them! You will be the death of us all if you don’t repent!”
Mon’Kelron smirked at her, and slammed the door as she followed the group to Kel’Taraan’s private office. Leaving the two guardswomen outside the door she closed it and ensured it was locked before sitting in the only other chair in the office. The Spy-Mistess walked around her huge desk and sat in a strange chair that was obviously of Human manufacture.
“The prisoner, Vir’Athen has been grilled by myself and Spy-Mistress Isa’Bella for most of the morning. Her name is on no census, and other than her clothing and the pistol and reload cartridges she carried nothing else. Thankfully the devices the Human’s provided us with worked on our physiology. We have learned quite a good deal about this group from her, and will require Imperial permission to take out this group.” She stated, pressing her finger tips together.
The Empress sat back in the overly stuffed leather chair, “And you will have it of course, what will you need?”
Sighing the Spy-Mistress turned her computer monitor around, showing a map of the world with an island circled. “The group operates off an island compound near the equator, forty kilometers off shore. Evidently the Howrons set this group up with the means to operate and communicate with them.”
The Empress looked horrified, “They can communicate with the fleet even now? Have you informed the Humans?”
Kel’Taraan sat back and smiled, “Of course, they have been receiving everything we enter into our computers about this Redeemer group. Luckily this fleet believes they are only up against a single human warship. This other race of aliens are the ones that have Alex a bit nervous.”
Mon’Kelron spoke up, “The Ulraar? Yes, I wondered what the prisoner meant by that myself.”
Turning the computer monitor back around the Spy-Mistress grumbled, “As if things weren’t complicated enough, it seems the Howron have an alliance with this more advanced race against the Humans and have been in a state of on again, off again war for three centuries.”
“Hold on, I’m confused, why didn’t Alex and the others know their people were at war with the Howrons and this other race? They’re human after all!” Mon’Kelron asked.
Looking first at the Empress, then to Mon’Kelron, “You didn’t tell her?” She asked.
The Empress shook her head, “Nar’Vala was read in, but she is Admiral of our space based fleet, the Captain of my Guard didn’t need to know. She might as well now, tell her.”
“Very well your majesty.” She stated to the Empress before turning to Mon’Kelron, “The Humans are not from our Universe, thus far all who have arrived have come here by accident, including the first ship to grace our skies as well as the Missive of Dissent.”
Mon’Kelron nodded, “Yes, that is part of the fairy tale, that they were from another realm, that doesn’t explain why they don’t know about this ongoing war.”
“Ah, but it does. Alex and his crew have been piecing together a series of events over the last three and a half centuries. A huge Human warship known as the IFS Conquest of Mars was the first to arrive in our universe, and was met by hostility from a Howron colony a little over four light years from our own solar system. They destroyed the colony world, sending it into an ice age and starting this war with the Howrons.” Kel’Taraan stated.
Mon’Kelron nodded, “Ok, go on.”
The Spy-Mistress swiveled in her chair, “The Humans aboard the Conquest left for a system near a pulsar to a group of systems inside a nebula. It is a place the Howrons cannot reach, the pulsar bathes the entire region of space in harsh radiation, but the Ulraar can attack them. The reason Alex, and even the first crew of the Prosperity didn’t know about the other Human’s was simply a matter of timing, by the time they had arrived, the previous humans had started a war and left.”
Mon’Kelron looked over to the Empress, then back to the Spy-Mistress, “So when the Howron found a Human ship in orbit above our planet they decided then that we needed to be conquered to keep the Humans from having allies?”
The Empress spoke up, “Perhaps at first, but once they found our planet to have vast reserves of Adamantine it became far more lucrative to them to take it from us as tribute. Though why they want it we still don’t know.”
The Spy-Mistress sighed, “Thanks to our esteemed guest, we now know why. Although she stated they were equals in their alliance, we believe the Howrons are buying technology from the Ulraar with Adamantine mined here. Alex noted the Ulraar ships, which he had been calling Trinar since they were all triangular in shape, used a vast amount of the substance in their hulls.”
The Empress balled up her fists, “So we have been slaves to these, these, beings simply because we had a resource they could use to bribe another group for technology?”
The Spy-Mistress shrugged, “It was always a mystery why they wanted the adamantine they forced us to extract, now we know. The Ulraar are more technologically advanced than the Howron, but neither seem to be able to get the upper hand on the group of Human’s in the nebula.”
Mon’Kelron tapped the overstuffed arm of the chair as she thought, “If the Humans here know where the Conquest went, what is stopping them from leaving us to the Howron to find more of their kind?”
The Spy-Mistress stopped swiveling her chair, “I spent the best seventy five years of my life with the Humans on the Prosperity, my Emmet…” She broke off her words and put her knuckles to her mouth, tears welling up in her eyes. “The Humans will not abide slavery of any kind, Alex has made this abundantly clear. He will not leave until our system is safe and we can defend ourselves properly.”
Neither the Empress or the Captain had ever seen Kel’Taraan this emotional before, they both waited, giving her time to compose herself. “They will not leave us to our fate, they have committed Humans to crew the last two vessels. This new information changes nothing in the short term, in the long term they may reach out to the other group of Humans.”
______________________________
Monty looked over to Kelly as she sat down on the couch beside her. She had a plate full of cake and a huge glass of milk. “Are you alright? You kind of lost it there for a moment in your office.”
Kelly sighed as she put her glass on the side table. “Being a replicant is taking some getting used to. I can remember things as clearly as if it happened only moments ago, even if it were centuries past.”
“I guess Emmet was someone special to you?” Monty asked.
Nodding, Kelly answered, “He was the most important person in my life. He was my husband, and although we could never have offspring, I always wanted a family. I had health issues when I was young and he was the ships doctor. I was the advisor to the Empress and he took a liking to me, bringing me up to their ship to fix what ailed me.”
Monty nodded, “So that explains your exceptionally long lifespan. You spent seventy five years together?”
Kelly picked up her fork and took a bite from the piece of cake, nodding to Monty, “I did, seventy five wonderful years.” She started tearing up again. “I’m sorry, now I can recall everything with perfect clarity, it’s painful remembering those times, and my mind wondered to a time when I feared Emmet would leave me.” She wiped the tear away with her napkin.
Monty reached over and hugged her, letting her get it out of her system. “How about a comedy, something raunchy and stupid?”
Kelly nodded, “That sounds good, want some cake?”
Monty shook her head and got up to go over to the buffet table, grabbing some chocolate brownies and bringing back a plate full of them. “I’ve got everything I need right here.”
______________________________
“Thank you all for coming, have you all seen the information Kelly has collected from the Redeemer prisoner?” Kara asked as she stood in front of the now enlarged buffet table surrounded by Alex, Monty, Riven, Izzy, Valarie, John, Erin and Kelly. Nods from all around the table let her know that they had indeed read the latest bombshell from the planet.
Kara swiped her holo-tank to show the first time a Bells Inequality was detected from the surface of Alandra. “At the time we assumed this was sent from the Palace, however, after some talks with Kelly we have found this was not the case. That particular communication was sent from this Redeemer group. Kara looked to Kelly to continue.
The new replicant easily picked up the presentation, “We often wondered how the Howron knew where our research facilities were located. They have attempted to keep us technologically backwards to ensure we can never threaten them or leave our planet. It appears they setup this group centuries ago, and they have used their extensive spy network to pass on that information to the enemy. The city they destroyed housed a research lab working on nuclear fission.”
Kara picked up after Kelly, “Luckily Kelly is extremely paranoid, and the exact information as to our alliance has never been disclosed outside the Empresses inner circle. The prisoner, who was very highly placed in the Redeemer group is completely unaware of the mine field, the planetary defenses, or the new frigates. As of one hour ago the entirety of the Alandran navy, which isn’t as impressive as it sounds have been secretly launched to attack their island base.”
“We could just nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.” Monty stated.
Kelly shook her head, “Sadly that is not a possibility, we need to capture those in charge of the organization and capture any equipment they may be using to contact the Howron. The news has stated the Empress was gravely injured in the attack and the assassin is still at large, with any luck this story will hold until the assault on the island.”
Alex spoke up, “So will it only be the navy that will launch this assault on the island?”
Kelly grinned across the table to Alex, “No, Spy-Mistress Isa’Bella and our best agents in the ministry of secrets will also be going. Not only will they know what to look for, they are also equipped with modern body armor and light rail guns, they should turn the tide of any technology the Howrons equipped the Redeemers with.”
John spoke up as he picked up a small sandwich cut at an angle from the table, “I take it you have a plan?”
Kelly walked over to the holo-tank and Kara moved over to allow her to use the device, “We believe the device they are using to communicate with the Howrons is in fact Ulraar technology, and will look quite different than the examples we have seen before. Kara had her doubts about the Howrons having the knowledge to create particle entanglement, it seems this is a pass me down from the Ulraar who have discovered string radio, though not its full range yet.”
Continuing, she swiped the holo-tank to show the last information about the alien fleet in the Lynx system. “If we can capture that device intact we can send false information to the Howron fleet. We could maneuver them directly into the minefield!”
Valarie shook her head, “How would that work, if they are as fanatical as we believe them to be, even with an implanted neural inhibitor they still couldn’t be controlled enough to send them a video message.”
Kara nodded to Kelly, who moved away from the holo-tank. “I’ve researched both Bells Inequalities that we have encountered since arriving in this universe. There isn’t enough bandwidth to send a video file, or even an audio file. I believe there are only three entangled atoms in the device, allowing for transmission of only one bit at a time with error correction. They are limited to text transmissions.”
Monty bounced as she understood, “So the Howrons would have no idea who was on the other side of the transmission, they would simply have to trust it was still their group sending the message.”
Izzy spoke up next, “But this could all be ruined if they manage to send a message to the Howron fleet?”
“Yes, which is why my agents will infiltrate the base and capture the device before the navy begins bombarding the island.” Kelly stated.
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like the title says, I've not had a flare up for a few months now, and I thought I was progressively getting better at knowing my limits, my fatigue was generally better and my pain usually below 5/10. seems like I've been managing okay with a good dose of CBD daily, extra vitamins and supplements and some gentle weekly exercise (it's taken me around 6 months to see improvement this way)
a week or two ago I started getting electric shooting pains through my hands and fingers, it would last a few minutes and then go away, a few times a day at first and then increasing until it just stopped as soon as it started.
then my knees started to get sharp pains, then my hips. then my neck pain got increasingly bad. I always have neck pain to some degree but I couldn't turn my head without awful pain, and I was using topical relief (I try not to use pain killers because of GI issues)
my fatigue level was still okay so I didn't think too much of the increase in pain levels and the new types of electric shooting pains. I put it down to an increase in being able to do things so I was drawing more, and just tried to keep moving about as normal.
today I woke up with a bit of a sniff. I thought it was hay fever and took my normal antihistamine. that didn't do anything. my eyes seemed sensitive to light and dry, blinking a lot, but I just thought it was allergies and the antihistamine wasn't working (I've had this before and have to change to a different type). I got up and had breakfast, and it just got worse. my nose started running constantly, it would drip if I tilted my head forward, like someone turned on a water tap in my head. I started getting shivers and feeling cold, even though it's quite warm here at the minute and I was wearing multiple layers. I started sneezing frequently. still thinking it's allergies, I used an allergy wet wipe to remove anything on my skin and hair that could be trigging this. I tried to relax on the sofa and just watch videos on my phone, but wrapped up in a blanket, waves of tingling full body shivers, sneezing fits and blocked feeling sinuses...it slowly crept up on me- this is not allergies, this is the start of a flare up. and the weighed blanket of fatigue was laid on me like lead by midday.
couldn't get out of work, so I've been dealing with a constantly running nose, fatigue, brain fog, shivers running through my body, feeling cold all day, sneezing fits of up to 8 consecutive sneezes, twitches and increased clumsiness all day whilst trying to do my job where I cant sit down and have to interact with customers frequently.
and now I have to change all my plans for tomorrow, luckily a day off work, to "rest in bed and hope that staves off a full flare up" when I actually should have been going through all my stuff and sorting things out because we have to move house in just over a month. it's so frustrating that there's nothing I can do, no medicine I can take helps with these symptoms, not antihistamines, not cold medicines, not pain killers, nothing. I've tried it all before and I know these feelings. I'm not getting a cold or the flu. it's just my chronic illness reminding me that it can take me out whenever it likes and there's nothing I can do to stop it.
I just needed to vent about this. I'm not even sure if anyone else gets anything like this with fibro, but that's what the Dr has labelled this as, and from tracking my symptoms for over a year now, I know this is how it starts for me. and I don't want it to start going down hill again.

around 3/4 months ago I had an onset of lower back and pelvic pain, saw my doctor who did routine bloodwork (showed nothing) and suggested I see a chiropractor, which I did. My doctor essentially told me because i’m only 21 he “wasn’t worried” of making a big deal out of it. lol.
TLDR
For some more context on the pain/medical history I think maybe be applicable
-pain worsens when coughing -severe pain with any kind of bending or movement that puts the spine out of neutral position -pain/popping like sounds when walking -essentially unable to lift my legs off the ground when laying or seated due to pain -pain in the buttock radiating down the legs when seated
other symptoms that i’ve noticed since the onset of this- not sure if it’s due to the fact i’m in constant pain or related 😅
-extreme fatigue -loss of appetite -difficulty swallowing/eating in general -difficulty urinating -random episodes of fever over 100° (with no sickness) -nausea -rash on face/thighs
other things
I had several Lumbar Punctures and a blood patch around the area where the pain is the most severe around 8 years ago due to a condition that caused excess pressure in my skull
I have done several rounds of corticosteroids over the last 1.5 years due to unexplained anaphylactic like reactions (severe facial swelling and bodily rashes yet no airway symptoms)
as for family history, my biggest concerns are that things that MS, arthritis, lupus, and degenerative cartilage disorders run in my (very near) family
For the current dilemma - I had been seeing the chiropractor consistently with little to no improvement 2-3x weekly for over 2 months. Well, last Monday I woke up essentially unable to move. I went to the ER where they did a full lumbar MRI with and without contrast- which showed nothing. The doctor admitted some of my symptoms aside from the pain were concerning, but since the MRI showed nothing it was probably a muscle strain. Over the course of my stay there they tried tramadol, diludad, and muscle relaxers which all did absolutely nothing for the pain. The muscle relaxers they sent me home with (different kind) have been wholly ineffective too. My pain has hardly improved since and it is making doing even the most basic things that taking a shower so difficult. I’m trying not to feel discouraged or overtly paranoid here, but I really do think there’s a bigger problem here. I just don’t know how to move forward. And I suck at advocating for myself.
If anyone here has any advice about next steps for me to take, or has experienced similar issue and can offer advice I will be eternally grateful 😭🙏🏻

INFO: 28M 5"10 155 pounds United States
So, yeah, at this point I'm kind of just trying to survive. I've tried going to doctors and I realize that...this might be it for me. Was already a lethargic, slightly fat child growing up and got "fit" in my early 20s--to my shock, it had 0 influence on my condition. But hey, at least I have muscle now, eat better food, and I'm a healthy weight?
The one good sleep took place under weird circumstances; stayed up all night - I usually sleep at a good time and get 8 hours - was talking to a friend, etc. I woke up late in the afternoon and...everything felt different instantly. I flew out of bed, noticed my dark circles I've had since I was young were gone, could actually THINK for once, etc. Even walking outside just felt...different. I wasn't getting far more tired just walking around like I usually get. I have had a few other decent days, of course, though they were pretty rare and weren't quite the same feel. I also went to the hospital for a GI illness and was given some sort of IV or injection that made me feel more alive than I had in a few years--but it only lasted, what, an hour? Maybe it was just drugs. Note that I have been treated before with meds and given pain killers before. None ever made me feel that great. Some foods do make me feel weird, but a basic allergy panel just indicated I am severely allergic to shrimp, mold (like everyone), and dust. Antihistamines don't make me feel better.
Misc. symptoms or odd things:
Eyes and eye area feel and look fucked up; sunken, red, dark, etc. They sometimes get worse, they pretty much directly reflect how horrible I feel. My eyelids constantly twitch. Oh, I was told, "wow, your eyes don't look fucked up for once!" by someone after I had that one good sleep...predictably. I also have extremely severe dry eye.
I nearly constantly yawn. It is usual for me to wake up and yawn several times--and it sucks because it sets off my TMJ (jaw pain).
My body is constantly tense and uncomfy. When I briefly have felt better, my body felt much better in general.
Headaches have gotten far more common in recent years; I probably have one a few hours every day. Head also feels very pressured and uncomfortable 24/7.
Caffeine or aspirin makes me feel like hell; in fact, a few weeks ago I got deathly ill and I realized it was from aspirin, when I stopped taking it I felt much better in the next hours. I didn't even overdose!
I have one of the worst cases of cystic acne in the entire world and it has been getting worse and worse with age. I have dozens of cysts and even more pimples. Accutane and derm-recommended skincare failed. I'm sure it's completely unrelated to the fatigue issues though.
Other issues: on/off zinc deficiency (I do take zinc consistently), asthma (it's mostly very bad lung capacity inhalers don't help), bite/jaw issues (ortho recommended surgery; I can't afford it), past nose deformity breathing issues (insurance paid for surgery and, hey, it at least improved my life a little).
I did try to get some things, like a sleep study, but it fell through. I spent almost a year to finally get one referred by my insurance and...I wasn't able to fall asleep. I spent 9 hours just lying there, my body extremely uncomfortable and tense, exhausted out of my mind. I realize I will never be able to get a sleep study done.
Anyway, I'm sorry for the poor formatting, just really wanted to cover everything and I'm not even sure what's relevant anymore.

“It's me, Brianna. Not you.”
That's what my latest boyfriend told me before walking directly into the path of a truck. There was barely anything of him, just enough to peel off of the sidewalk. I thought our relationship was going well. It's not like I'm desensitised to my boyfriend's dying (or ceasing to exist), but it's almost become the norm.
Ben was my first boyfriend in high school, and my longest relationship to date. Fluffy haired Ben with his dimpled grin and freckles. He was the type of guy who should have been popular, but chose to keep to himself.
I met him in the principal’s office. Ben was being lectured for ‘sneaking around’ and I was handing in a late assignment. All he did was wink at me, and I fell.
Hard.
We dated for two years, and I really thought he was the one. Ben told me he loved me, and every Friday he introduced me to a new restaurant. I was in love. I loved *everything about him.
On the night before our senior prom, a drunk driver t-boned my boyfriend's car, killing him instantly. After his funeral, it's like he stopped existing. His parents left town, and every time I mentioned him, my parents would slowly tilt their heads and act confused when I brought him up.
My brother was the worst for it, considering he and Ben were best friends.
But he just looked at me with this weird fucking look in his eye, like his soul had been ripped out. Eyes are the windows to the soul, apparently, and my brother's soul was MIA. “Ben?” His expression crumpled. “Wait, who?”
Alex was my emotional support, who later became someone closer.
Funny Alex.
Blonde-but-not-quite-blonde, Alex.
I met him in group therapy. My boyfriend was dead, and he had just lost his mother. We didn't label it, because he had a girlfriend, and I didn't want to move on so quickly. I think we just found comfort in each other.
Eventually, though, Alex became something I wanted to label.
His sense of humor was a breath of fresh air. I didn't go to college because of Ben’s death, settling for a mediocre barista stop in town. Alex came in every day with fresh coffee and a sugar cookie. I think I loved him. I told him that. Half asleep, I told him I wanted to try and be something more with him. Alex looked taken-aback, but happy.
We spent the night together.
The morning after, I woke to my mother screaming.
Alex was dead in the bathroom, his blood splattering, staining pristine white. According to the first responders, he died of a self inflicted head injury. The exact same thing followed. I attended his funeral, and Alex’s family disappeared.
This time, I went back to his house. But according to a neighbour, his house had been abandoned for ten years. I had eaten pancakes in his kitchen just days earlier.
I broke in to see myself, but my neighbor was right. The hallway was piled with ancient mail and threats of eviction. Alex’s room didn't exist, instead, a storage room filled with boxes.
When I got home, my family had already forgotten Alex’s existence.
The town had forgotten him, and yet his blood still stained my bathroom.
Following Alex’s death, I was terrified of getting too close to people.
But Esme made it hard.
She was my third relationship. We met at a bar. I was extremely drunk and convinced I was cursed to kill all of my romantic partners. Esme. Cute Esme. Crooked teeth and smudged lipstick and warm Esme.
Do you know that person you meet and you instantly connect with them? The person you're sure is your soulmate?
That was Esme.
I told myself I wouldn't get close to her. But I was already talking to this girl, already pouring my life out to her. Esme sat and listened, her chin resting on her fist. She was a first year creative writing student, and she had a cat called Peanut.
I didn't remember much after that. We hit it off, and next thing I know we’re curled up in the back of her car watching Buffy on her iPad. I told her about my exes, and she nodded and smiled, but I don't think she was listening.
I told her all of my exes have died, and then been erased from existence.
Esme called me cute. She wanted to base a story around the concept, sitting up and grabbing her phone.
I have this memory of the girl I fell in love with at first sight.
She's nodding along to a Smith’s song spluttering from my car radio, typing on her phone. I can hear the tapping of her nails, her lips curving into a smile. I can see the exact moment she gets inspiration, pulling her knees to her chest. She's wearing fishnet tights that are torn, and a jacket that doesn't fit her.
She is fucking beautiful, and I don't want to lose her.
Alex was beautiful.
He had pretty eyes and brown curls that I liked running my hands through. Ben was beautiful. He made my heart swim, my stomach swarm with butterflies, when I first met him. Ben was my first love.
The realization woke me up one night, three months into dating Esme.
Both of them were dead, wiped away like they never existed.
And Esme would follow.
At first, I tried to break it off with her without sounding crazy. I told her it was me not her, and I wasn't in the mindset for a relationship.
Esme understood, but her eyes didn't. I didn't want to lose her. Esme lit up every room she entered. Her obsession with thrifted clothes and badly written poems, and her irrational fear of pandas, made her someone I wanted to be with.
So, I stayed with her. I told myself Ben and Alex were just coincidences that were nothing to do with me, and I wasn't indirectly fucking killing the people I fell in love with.
I avoided the ‘L’ word for as long as I could.
It slipped out on my way to work. Esme was driving.
I just said it, and her eyes lit up. She reached out and squeezed my hand.
At work, one of my colleagues, Jasper, caught my eye. When I twisted around to ask him to grab something, I glimpsed his phone screen. It looked like Tinder, though I didn't recognise the layout. It reminded me of Twitter, in dark mode. Jasper was leaning against the counter, his thumb hovering over a photo of Esme, chewing his bottom lip.
I watched his thumb prance across the screen, before he gave up and swiped left.
Finishing up the woman's coffee, I handed it over.
“Uhh, I asked for cream.”
Ignoring her, I sidled in front of my colleague, hyper focused on whatever app he was playing around with. “What's that?”
Jasper looked up, his eyes widening, lips parting, like a fucking goldfish.
“Clearly nothing.” Jasper side-stepped me, opening the refrigerator and pulling out milk. But he already had milk. The bastard was stalling. We had zero customers waiting, so it was the two of us, and a long, dragged out pause.
Jumping up and down on the heels of his feet, he shot me his usual grin, slipping his phone in his apron.
Jasper may have been smiling, though there was something twisted in his expression.
I couldn't stop myself. “Was that a dating app?”
“Dating app?”
“Excuse me, can I get what I ordered?” The woman demanded, waving her coffee in the air. “I asked for whipped cream.”
Jasper saw that as an excuse, an escape, and nodded, fashioning a grin. He saw an opportunity, and took it. “Of course, Ma’am! I'll get that for you!” He said, with a little too much sarcasm. The boy took her coffee with a spring in his step, ducking in the refrigerator for the whipping cream. Jasper added too much whipping cream, dumping the drink on the counter with a little too much force.
It was a good thing my colleague was marginally attractive guy with cropped blonde hair, and a deadpan voice that somehow attracted the ladies.
Jasper could insult someone directly to their face, and they would just blush and get all tongue tied. I had seen it happen in real time. A girl was flirting with him, and used a bad pick-up line, which was something along the lines of, “Did it hurt when you fell from Heaven?”
He laughed, and her eyes brightened. She giggled along with him, nudging her friends.
But he wasn't laughing with her. I saw the gleam in his eye.
He was laughing at her.
Still laughing, Jasper plonked her milk latte down so hard half of it spewed out.
And, with that exact same charming smile, he deadpanned, “Did it hurt when you dropped out of a drainpipe?”
Yeah, my colleague was blessed with good looks.
Otherwise, he would have been punched in the face by now.
Presently, he was being his usual asshole self. “Is there anything else I can get you?”
The woman shook her head, pulling a face.
Jasper had, essentially, ruined her drink. It was more cream than coffee.
When she left the store, I situated myself in front of him when he was counting cash. “What were you just looking at?” I nodded to the guy’s phone sticking out of his pocket. “Was it like… a dating thing you were on?”
Jasper didn't even look at me, his lip curling.
“That's kinda rude,” he hummed, “I don't peek at your phone.”
“Esme Hope.” Was all I could hiss out. “Was she on that dating app?”
My colleague proceeded to stare at me like I'd grown a second head, before his half lidded gaze flicked behind me. Jasper’s expression brightened.
“Oh, Hanna is calling me!” He said, choking out a laugh. Hanna was not calling him. She was in the break room getting high. Jasper slowly backed away, maintaining his smile. “I'll be back in a sec, all right?” He grabbed that same carton of milk with a grin. “Don't you just love when your milk stays fresh?”
“What?”
“Fresh milk!” He grinned. “Mulberry Farm’s finest.”
Jasper was darting away before I could coerce a sentence.
After work, I texted Esme as usual. She was my ride on Fridays.
Esme didn't reply.
I texted her again, a little more panicked.
Hey, are you okay?”
When I called her, an automated voice told me she wasn't available.
Already feeling sick to my stomach, I drove to her place myself. I could see the flashing lights before anything else, blurred red and blue sending my thoughts into a whirlwind. It took me ten minutes to muster the courage to jump out of my car, and ask a pale looking deputy what was going on.
I tried to jump over the yellow tape, only to be politely pulled back.
“Carbon monoxide poisoning,” the deputy told me. “The whole family is dead.” he sighed. “Mom, Dad, and their daughter in college.” I think he was trying to be sympathetic, awkwardly patting me. But I was already on my knees, all of the breath dragged from my lungs. “Luckily, it's just like going to sleep. Monoxide is a silent killer.”
Monoxide is a silent killer.
Was that the same as, “I'm sorry. Ben was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
And, “Alex was silently suffering. He did what he thought was best.”
I didn't go to Esme’s funeral. Mom and Dad and Will had already forgotten her, just like the others. What I did do, several days later, when her name wasn't even a memory anymore– I bought flowers from the store. Roses were Esme’s favourite.
The seller was around my Mom’s age, a plump looking woman wearing a floral dress, long red hair tied into a ponytail. She was on her phone, humming to a tune on the radio.
The Smiths.
“I hope she likes them.” The woman said, wrapping the flowers in red ribbons. She had a strong southern accent that immediately annoyed me.
I took the roses, stuffing them in my bag. “What did you say?”
The seller cocked her head. “Hmm?”
“How did you know they were for my girlfriend?”
The woman sighed, placing her phone on the counter. I glanced at whatever she'd been so interested in, but the screen was faced down. “Esme came in here a lot,” Her lips broke out into a sad, sympathetic smile. I was quickly growing sick of them.
“Esme. She, uh, she told me you guys were dating,” She smiled, “Esme was always buying roses for her room. Sometimes she would stand in here for hours, and just stare at flowers. I think she found comfort in them.” The woman sighed, fixing me with what I could only describe as a pitiful pout.
Urgh.
“I hope you can find the same comfort,” she murmured. The seller handed me an extra rose, and I found myself reaching out for it, my eyes stinging. Fuck.
I hadn't cracked in at least fifteen hours, and that was a record. But now I could feel myself splintering, tears trickling down my cheeks. The Flower lady squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. If it makes you feel better, it's just like going to sleep. Monoxide is a silent killer.” Her words were familiar.
Exactly what the deputy said. Before I could speak, she dumped weed killer on the counter. “Did you know our plant killer is ten dollars ninety nine?”
Her sudden bout of energy took me off guard.
I tried to smile. “I don't want any plant killer.”
The seller nodded, handing me another rose. “Oh, of course, Darling! But it is five ninety nine! Just for today!”
Something pricked me, and I hissed out, wafting my hand.
Damn thorns. I could already see a single spot of blood.
I nodded, sucking my teeth against a cry. “Thanks. But I'll skip it this time.”
I took the roses to what used to be Esme’s grave. Now, it was an empty headstone with no name, no memories, no flowers, nothing. Just like Alex and Ben, Esme had been reduced to dirt under my feet. I stayed at her ‘grave’ for a long time, long enough for the sky to grow dark, and my thoughts darker. I tried to find a logical explanation for the sudden deaths of the people I got close to, but all I could think of was a curse.
So, I started googling curses, leaning against Esme’s headstone, my knees to my chest. Had I been cursed?
Was my family cursed?
According to Google, a cursed object connected with the curse itself.
Which could be anything. Though I didn't remember visiting any ancient ruins, or an old church. With zero answers, I headed home. I passed a guy playing The Smiths in his car. Then a group of older women wearing ripped fishnets.
Esme was following me. Just like Alex’s smell. Fresh coffee and rich chocolate.
Ben’s cologne filled my car last summer. His favourite band was playing all day on our local music station. I drove around with no destination, listening to each one on repeat, until I was losing him all over again.
The sweet aroma of flowers followed me all the way home, and I was tipsy on the smell, when I found myself face to face with a boy. Under the overexposed streetlight, this guy was almost ethereal, thick brown hair and freckles.
He reminded me of Ben. Which wasn't fair. I thought I was hallucinating him, before he came closer, bleeding from the shadow. I saw more of him, white strips of something wrapped around his head.
Wrong.
The word slammed into me when I glimpsed his clothes. Filthy. The guy was wearing a white button down, a single streak of bright red ingrained into the material. His white pants were torn, glued to his legs.
He was barefoot, the soles of his feet slapping on wet concrete.
I didn't realize he was in front of me, nose to nose, until he shoved me. Hard.
“Josie.” His voice was a whimper, despite his narrowed eyes, his lips twisted into a scowl. He was crying, and had been crying, every heaving son sputtering from his mouth. The boy shoved me again, and I staggered. His ice cold breath grazed my cheeks. “What the fuck did you do to my sister?”
“Sister?” I whispered.
Something wet landed on my cheek, suddenly.
Rain.
I wasn't expecting a downpour. The weather was forecasted to be clear.
To my surprise, the guy let out a harsh sounding laugh. The two of us were slowly getting drenched, but neither of us were making a move to get out of the rain. My hair was glued to the back of my neck, my clothes sticking to me.
But somehow, I wanted to stay in the rain. It was refreshing.
When a thought hit me, telling me to get out of the rain, it was shoved to the back of my mind. The guy spat water out of his mouth, shaking his head like a dog.
“Of course,” he muttered, “Drown me out with the rain.”
I found my voice, my gaze glued to intense red seeping through the bandage stapled to his head. He looked like he’d escaped an emergency room. “I don't know anyone called Josie,” I said, “I think you've got the wrong person.”
The guy’s eyes narrowed. He stepped closer, grabbing my shoulders, and I noticed how hollow his eyes were, empty caverns carved into his skull. Eyes are the windows to the soul, and this guy was completely soulless. “I'm only going to say this once,” he whispered, “What did you do to my sister?”
Before I could respond, the guy was being violently grabbed, and dragged back.
Figures who appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
“Let me go!” He cried out, struggling. “You fucking assholes! Let me go!”
His screaming became muffling, when his cries were gagged.
“You promised!” He yelled, his cries collapsing into a sob. “You said if you took me, she wouldn't get hurt! So, where is she?” he met my gaze, his expression crumpling, something inside him coming apart, splintering by the seams. “You can't take both of us, this wasn't in the agreement!” When he was dragged further back, I noticed a car parked at the side of the road.
The boy was pulled inside. At first, he refused, before an extra pair of hands shoved him. “You fucking– mmmphmmhphmmm!”
I heard his fists slamming into the windows.
“Don't take me back there! Please! Just let Josie–” His cries once again collapsed into angry muffle screaming, and I felt my hands moving towards my pocket for my phone. This was a kidnapping, right? I was witnessing a kidnapping in broad fucking daylight.
A shadow was suddenly in front of me, and I jumped, tearing my eyes from the car. Jasper, my colleague. He was still wearing his apron, and to my confusion, was swinging a carton of whole milk.
“Sorry, Bree,” He winked, speaking in a single breath. “As you can see, our friend here had a little too much to drink.”
I nodded, craning my neck. Jasper stepped in front of me, maintaining a grin.
“Who is he?” This time, I side-stepped away from him, only for him to copy.
“Just a guy.” He said. “As you can see, he's a little…” Jasper prodded his right temple. “Let's just say he's got a few too many screws loose.” Jasper laughed, staying stock still, blocking my way.
When I made a move to counter him, he stepped in front of me, his eyes hardening. “I heard he lost his family a while ago in a…” He pretended to think. “Oh, yeah, a car crash. Maybe a gas explosion, I’m not really sure.”
I could hear the car behind him, and once again I tried to dart past him. But he was quick to block my way. He was getting closer to me, very subtly backing me in the opposite direction.
“Anyway, this guy is kiiiiind of nuts. Dude still thinks he's got a sister.”
When I lost patience and shoved him out of the way, the car, and the guy, was gone.
“See?” Jasper rolled his eyes. He was still holding milk from work. My head spun. It was 8pm, we were in a suburban neighbourhood, and Jasper was holding half a pint of milk. His apron was stained with coffee, and when I really looked at him, I realized he was out of breath.
He was doing a good job of hiding it, exhaling in intervals, swiping at his forehead to clear sweat. When I noticed, he pretended to run his hands through his hair. “I, uh, I feel for him! Like, I'm sorry his family died, or whatever, but attacking random girls isn't cool, y’know?”
Instead of replying, I stumbled home. It was sunny.
At 8pm.
And when I took notice, I wasn't even wet.
Esme was my last straw. I made a promise to myself to not get close to anyone. The guys and girls I met were friends, and nothing more. Weirdly enough, the only guy I was getting close to was my colleague. I don't know if it was brain damage, or I was finally losing the plot.
But Jasper’s shameless cruelty towards customers, and that quirk in his lips when he made them cry, was kind of hot.
However, he was playing hard to get.
And I mean REALLY playing.
I was in storage trying to find vegan milk, and he was suddenly a fucking expert, spewing milk facts.
When I slammed the refrigerator door shut, he was inches from my face.
In the dim light from a single spluttering bulb, his eyes reminded me of coffee grounds. I thought maybe he was going to kiss me, judging from his softening expression. I felt his hands go around my waist, and I felt myself immediately melt.
I don't know what came over me. It's like, one minute I hated him, and the next… I was suddenly hot. Really hot. And I really wanted to take my clothes off. I thought that's what he wanted to do too.
I mean, his gaze followed mine, piercing, fingers playing with the buttons on his shirt. Before he leaned forward, his breath in my face.
“Did you know that Mulberry Farms is an award winning brand of milk?”
And suddenly, I was no longer hot and bothered.
“I didn't.” I said, ducking into a crouch to search the shelves. “Have you seen our vegan milk? We did have some.”
“Three time winner,” Jasper continued. When I jumped up, he stepped closer, and I felt my cheeks spark. His smile was rare. In fact, Jasper was only smiling when he was talking about milk.
“Mulberry Farms have the best pasteration. It's suitable for everything! Coffee, cereal, or maybe you just want a glass of fresh milk to yourself! Perfect for kids, too! Breakfast time is Mulberry Farms.”
“Are you having a stroke?” I whisper-shrieked.
“Nope!”
Jasper twisted around, shooting me a grin.
I left the storage, however, with butterflies in my gut.
There was no way I was falling for my asshole colleague.
Somehow, though, I was.
Just standing next to him filled me with electricity.
The way he talked down to customers, insulting me to my face… I was thoroughly, and disgustingly, in love.
I tried to stop myself.
I showered in ice cold water.
I ate (choked on) a ghost pepper.
I even asked my BROTHER for advice, who told me to go for it.
I told him Jasper had one (of several) flaws, but this particular one was off-putting.
“He’s obsessed with milk.” I told my brother.
Harry lifted a brow. “Is that a euphemism, or…”
He paused, for way longer than necessary. “So, your would-be-boyfriend has a milk fetish?”
I left his room before he could take that conversation further.
I wanted to say Jasper was the only one who acted weird.
But over the next few weeks, I noticed it in quite a few people.
I was having breakfast with Mom, and she lifted up the box.
“Choco Flakes.” She blurted, “Aren't they just the best?”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, Mom. They're great.”
I prodded the box with a smile. “Only a dollar ninety nine.”
There were so many townspeople on their phones. They walked around with groceries or briefcases, their eyes glued to whatever they were swiping through.
I was serving an old woman, when I caught her phone screen.
I could have sworn there was an image of Jasper.
She swiped right, and I had a hard time looking her in the eye.
The woman was at least in her 80’s. And I'm talking, can barely walk, and needs assistance.
Was she seriously hitting up 25 year old guys?
Walking home, everyone was on their phones.
I stopped at a crossing, stabbing the red light.
It started to snow the second I stepped out onto the road, white flakes dancing in front of me. It didn't even cross my mind that it was almost June. The snow was pretty, accumulating on the ground.
“Oh shit, sorry!”
Lifting my head, a guy was standing in front of me holding an umbrella.
I knew him.
But not from whatever was trying to pollute my mind.
I knew him from a while ago. I knew him from the rain. I knew the bloody bandages wrapped around his head, and soulless, seething eyes I couldn't understand. It was the boy who was dragged away three months prior.
He looked different, his hair was shorter, his face carved into a thing of beauty.
The white strips of gauze bleeding scarlet were gone, his filthy clothes replaced with a white shirt and pants, a trench coat flung over the top. I didn't remember him being this handsome. His dark brown hair had been tamed and curled.
It was his expression that sent shivers sliding down my spine.
His too wide smile and unblinking eyes made me suddenly conscious of two bright lights on the two of us.
So bright.
Something shattered in my mind, and I was aware of a lot of things.
The snow under my feet was too soft.
I glimpsed a single streak of red seeping from his nose, his hands trembling around a takeout coffee cup.
Behind me, people were staring. I could see a group of teenage girls giggling.
“It's him,” one of them squeaked. “It's the new love interest!”
“Bree?” His grin widened, snowflakes prancing around us. His teeth gritted together. I could tell he hated every word. “Holy shit, long time no see!”
He held out his hand, and I could see visible pain contorting in his eyes.
Help me. He was screaming through a twinkling smile.
“Don't you remember me? It's… it's uh, it's Sam!” he laughed. “From eighth grade!”
The lights blinked out, and the thought crashed into my mind. Static images filling my head. I shook them away.
Oh, yeah, it was Sam.
My childhood friend.
But I didn't reply. Instead of saying, “Sam? It's been so long!” I found myself walking, stumbling over to the girls.
Who were rapidly swiping left on their phones.
“What's that?” I demanded in a sharp breath.
I grabbed for the phone, only for Sam to step in front of me. He settled me with a smile.
Behind me, one of the girls fainted.
Sam’s smile didn't waver. Though he did side-eye the girl being carried away. “Why don't I take you out for coffee?”
Apparently, coffee was the code word for hooking up.
Sam dragged me into the nearest coffee store, straight to the bathroom.
When he shoved me into a stall, I didn't know what to say.
“Take off your shoes,” he said in a hiss, and after hesitating, I did.
Sam pulled off his jacket, shook snow out of his hair, and got real close.
“Look up.” He murmured.
I did, my gaze finding the ceiling.
“To your right, a camera is very well hidden, but can be seen with the naked eye if you catch what looks like a red laser,” Sam said. “To your left, another camera, as well as a vent that is currently pumping the stalls with aphrodisiacs. And right now, we are in the red zone. Meaning, you should be conscious.”
He prodded me, and I flinched.
“Mostly conscious.”
His words went right over my head, my mind was foggy.
I couldn't think straight.
I think I asked him what he was saying, but my mouth was filled with cotton.
“Snap out of it,” he said, “Like I said, they're making you feel like this.”
He shoved me against the door, which broke me out of my trance. Slightly.
“I hate what I'm going to say right now,” Sam groaned, tipping his head back. He was sweating, I noticed. Bad. I glimpsed beads of red pooling down his neck. He noticed me staring. “I'm okay, for now. I’m faulty, so the connection is severed. He squeezed his eyes shut. “I…think.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sex.” He said, blinking rapidly. I wasn't going to comment on his slurring voice.
Sam stumbled, fresh blood dripping from his nose.
“We need to do the sex. Like…” His eyes rolled into the back of his head, but he managed to stabilise himself. “Nooooow.”
“What?!”
“Is everything okay in there?”
The voice was a woman. She knocked on the stall.
Sam’s eyes widened, coming back to life a little. “They're paranoid,” he whispered. When I could only stare at him, he pounded his fists into the door. “They think we’re fucking,” he hissed, “So, we need to make it believable.”
“They?” I mouthed.
He didn't reply, swiping at his haemorrhaging nose. “Just… move around against the door. That'll fool ‘em.”
I did, doing my best to shuffle around, slamming my back against the lock.
When the metal clanged, he shot me a look. “Sex!” He hissed, “Not murder!”
Sam jumped onto the toilet bowl. There was an open window above him.
“That's enough.” He mouthed, hoisting his way through.
He helped me through, and I expected to land on concrete.
What I did land on, however, was something… squishy.
Something wet sliding between my bare toes.
Looking closer, I recognised the beaded anklet.
Fishnet tights.
Something animalistic clawed from my throat. I was standing on Esme. Or what was left of Esme. She was just a torso and legs, the rest of her ripped away like doll pieces. I couldn't see her face. I looked for it, digging through what could only be old flesh and pieces of limbs.
I felt suffocated. I grabbed half of Ben’s face that had been ripped off, and then Alex’s tattooed arm. There was so much of them, piles and piles of the same heads, the same filthy and rotting clothes. I was screaming by the time I shuffled back on my hands and knees, trying to wipe them off of my skin.
They were all over me, staining me, painting me.
Sam’s hand slick with blood gently covered my mouth.
“Stay calm, all right?” He whispered. “I would tell you everything is going to be okay, but the truth is, it's really not, there's like, a 99.9% chance you're going to… understandably freak out.”
He pulled me to my feet, letting out a heavy breath.
Blinking rapidly, I could only see… pieces.
Pieces of people.
Legs and heads and torsos all piled into one mass of gore.
“We’ve got maybe five minutes before they realize we’re not doing the devil's dance,” Sam sniffled, “Maybe ten, before my brain short circuits and I bleed out.”
I didn't know I was hyperventilating, until I couldn't fucking breathe.
Closer towards the door, and I could hear… machinery.
I couldn't stop myself. Even when I was aware I was standing in congealing blood.
Rotten bodies.
The dim light led me into what could only be described as a factory. There were three levels, and we were on the highest. Sam stepped forward, gripping the metal bar in front of us. I felt my legs buckling, a thick, pukey slime filling my mouth.
“Soo, I guess it all started when Brianna Timberman was seventeen years old, and rejected by her childhood best friend, Sam Thwaites.”
Sam’s words collapsed into a low buzzing in my ear.
All I could see was a conveyer belt, filled with… people.
Boys.
Girls.
But most noticeably, Ben’s, Alex’s, Esme’s, and Sam’s.
But they start as Ben’s, Alex's, and Esme’s.
I could see regular people, their hair stripped away.
Their skin sliced into, cruelly moulding them into the exact same four faces.
When a large looming needle plunged into the back of an Alex’s head, I couldn't not watch. I waited for the guy to wake up, but I don't even think he was alive.
He stood, unblinking, letting this thing twist and contort his face. And it was then, when I realized these things weren't even human. I could see the mechanics built under their flesh, both living tissue and metal melded together. “Brianna’s father, who is a liiiitle on the crazy side, with too much cash and not not enough logic, took his daughter’s rejection a little too personally,” Sam continued.
“So, he promised his daughter he would find her the perfect match.”
I started to speak, the words coming out before I could stop them.
“My father would never–”
“I didn't say it was your father,” Sam said. His eyes darkened. “Anyway, as I was saying, the townspeople became unhealthily obsessed with who Brianna would choose. So obsessed, in fact, that the girl’s day to day life was broadcasted across town, while her potential love interests were ranked, week after week. First, there was Ben.”
Sam’s smile thinned. “Her high school boyfriend.”
Sam shrugged. “She grew bored of him. Also, he kinda did something unforgivable.”
He continued. “Then… Alex. She liked him, but sometimes, he was a little too unserious. The guy was a clown.”
I backed away, but he was quick to grab my shoulders.
“Finally? Esme. Who she truly fell for.”
I swallowed. “Esme is–”
He cut me off. “But I didn't mention that they hurt her, did I?”
Sam leaned against the bar. Behind him, I could see a figure in white pushing a gurney with a Ben strapped to it. “Ben tried to rape her, insisting she wanted it. Alex dumped her on her birthday. Esme ended their relationship with a one word text. Goodbye.” Sam mimed an explosion. “That was the nail in the coffin.”
I caught blood sliding down his nose. “You're still bleeding.”
Sam gingerly prodded his nose.
“Urgh. Yeah, it's an effect of the severing. I've been in the red zone too long. I should probably speed this up.”
He talked faster, his voice collapsing into a mumbled slur.
“Brianna couldn't take it. Her best friend was ignoring her. Everyone she had fallen in love with hurt her. Esme wasn't returning her calls. Ben was sleeping around right in front of her, and Alex was still being a clown. Brianna’s poor parents found her hanging from her bedroom ceiling fan.”
I shook my head, my thoughts screaming.
“No–”
He held a finger up to shush me. “Let me talk. Jeez.”
Sam folded his arms. “A grieving father would do anything to avenge his dead child, buuut… Mr Timberman took ‘finding a perfect match’ and ‘the show must go on’ a little bit too literally.”
His sickly smile found me. “Which also means going stark fucking crazy. The town wanted more of Brianna, and her life, so he turned his daughter’s failed love life into a town wide TV show, sending the entire teen and young adult populace into here,” he gestured around him. “To make the perfect suitors. Who wouldn't hurt his new Brianna.”
Something ice cold crept down my spine.
He cleared his throat. “Mr Timberman grew, let's say, obsessed, with getting revenge on these specific four people. So, he started killing them–” He coughed.
“Sorry. Us. Killing us for the funny ha-ha, ‘Look at how many times I can fuck with them!’ bit. And then recycling us into someone completely different. Our names are gone. Then our personalities. Finally, our bodies ripped to pieces and sculpted into Brianna’s exes.” Sam poked me in the cheek.
“The cycle continues. They reset your ticker and the town eats it up. They can bring back Esme, Ben, and Alex whenever they want and add curveballs. Like the bad-boy colleague who becomes the fan favorite.” Sam’s lips curved. “For… some fucking reason.”
His eyes flickered open. “However, Brianna will never find a suitor because her father is a fucking sociopath. To him and the town, his dead daughter’s pathetic love life is entertainment.”
He held out his arm.
“See?”
I tried really hard not to look through the makeup.
At noticeable skin grafts.
“I was a Ben.” He said. “Then I was an Alex, and then I was an extra.” His eyes found mine, sad, suddenly. “But who I was originally is kinda gone. All I remember is a deal to protect Josie. I gave myself up so they wouldn't take her.”
“Your sister.” I said.
Sam nodded.
His earlier words hit me. He was talking like Brianna Timberman was dead.
But I was Brianna Timberman.
I was rejected by Sam, yes, but I found Ben.
As if he could read my mind, Sam shook his head.
“Look at yourself.” He said, his voice shaking.
“And I mean really look at yourself.”
Sam stepped closer.
“Because, underneath all of that make-up and the prosthetics and surgery, and fucked up memories, you're just another recycled lump of flesh.” He prodded my temple. “Who thinks she is Brianna Timberman.”
His voice was slurring again, a fresh stream of scarlet seeping down his chin.
“Don't you want to know?” His eyes rolled to pearly whites.
Before he could finish his sentence, Sam dropped to the ground.
I remember warm arms grasping hold of me.
Shadows with no faces.
They pricked me twice in the back of my neck.
A familiar voice in my ear, almost a hiss.
Jasper.
“You are the worst fucking Brianna.”
When I came to, I was standing up, somehow.
At work.
I am Brianna Timberman.
The thought floated around in my head, my memory hazy.
“Hello?!”
A man was waving his hands in front of me.
“I asked for iced coffee, lady!”
Jasper was serving another customer. “Bree, wake the fuck up.”
They were trying to make me think I was hallucinating.
Which was crazy, because my fingernails were still tinted with Sam’s blood.
The marks he'd left on my wrist when he was yanking me, were still there.
Bruised on my arm.
“Bree!” Jasper snapped. “Snap out of it and make the dude his drink.”
“Right.”
The word slipped out of my mouth.
He caught my eye, winking, and Brianna Timberman internally squeaked.
I half wondered what he was. Was he recycled, or an unwilling performer?
Throughout the day, I was fully aware my words were not mine.
Like I was on autopilot.
But not just that.
My thoughts weren't mine, either.
I spent half of my shift staring at my colleague’s biceps.
During my break, I went into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror.
I am Brianna Timberman.
But even when I told myself that, my eyes were too blue.
My smile was too perfect.
My teeth.
Too white.
My shaking hands prodded at my face, at someone else's face.
So many faces, so many skin grafts.
The thought was violent, sending tremors through me.
How many people was I wearing?
I started to claw at my arms and legs, my face.
How many fucking people had I been?
I grabbed a knife and tried to slice at my face.
But there was no blood.
How could there be no blood?!
When I got home, I found my family waiting for me.
Mom, Dad and Harry, all of them beaming.
“Bree!” Mom stood up, her lips stretching into a grin.
My mouth was already moving, but they were not my words.
“Mom!”
I didn't know why she was smiling so much, until I saw Sam sitting at our dining room table. His smile was too big. His over-expensive shirt and pants did not suit him, and looked fucking gross, but somehow my brain thought it was hot. The worst part is, I couldn't and still can't tell which Sam he was.
Was he the guy who told me the horrific reality of my existence?
Or was he another recycled, mindless suitor?
“This is Samuel.” Mom said, and Sam slowly stood.
He took slow steps towards me, and kissed my hand.
I saw the slightest smudge of scarlet, but his eyes were blank.
In the corner of my eye, my ‘father’s’ eyes were glittering.
“Hello, Brianna.” Sam said, and I swore Now that I was awake, the walls were wolf-whistling. Laughing.
Ooohhhhhhhhh!”
My town is a blip on the map.
We’re so small, so insignificant, not even a Google search will find us.
I keep thinking if I tear at my skin, I will find who I am underneath. But I'm so fucking scared. I don't bleed. I don't think who I was still exists under so many layers. But even if this is just a cry into the void, please help us.
I don't want to be Brianna Timberman.

I (19F) have been getting kind of worried about the possibility of having lymphoma for a few months. I’ve been experiencing some symptoms that have overlap with lymphoma, but at this point I have no way to tell. I’m on no medication, and have been generally healthy all my life, except for infrequent fainting spells in my younger years. My grandmas both died from cancer, however one was a heavy smoker. I noticed a few months ago that I’ve begun to wake up drenched in sweat, to the point that I’ve had to start washing my sheets much more frequently due to how much I’ve been sweating. I don’t have a fever, and don’t feel hot. I’ve been feeling really fatigued as well, however I’ve also been working full time so I’m hesitant to call that a symptom. The thing that has really gotten me worried is the burning feeling in my lymphnodes around my jaw. It isn’t constant, but every once in a while I’ll experience this sudden painful burn in the nodes on both sides of my jaw. It hurts so bad that I once had to stop speaking to a customer because of the pain. I am also getting these feelings in my armpits, but to a much less frequent degree. Is there a point in which I should take a blood test? I can’t really tell if my lymphnodes are swollen, I can feel them in my neck however I think that because the skin is so thin there, you can feel them without them being swollen. Any help or guidance is much appreciated! Thank you!

If you've seen this story before it's because I've posted it on a couple of deleted accounts. Any feedback would be appreciated and am looking for people to read the entirety of the 9000 word short story. Thanks.
Knelt beside the river, pebbles bit deep into the bone of Prey’s knee. He didn’t care. For water was pooled in the cragged seams of his outstretched palms, sparkling in the sun like nectar. With a jerk, he jammed the water down his lips, making his shoulder scream. But the gentle flow soothed the bloody bristles of his tongue and wet the chunks of his teeth with welcome coolness. His dark, congealing headache drifted away, leaving a novel freshness of thought behind. Prey closed his eyes and took a deep, raspy breath. The birds twittered. Insects chirped. And the river trickled onwards. For a moment, all was forgotten and Prey felt peace.
A branch snapped. Prey twitched. His eyes snapped open and checked off the trees, the birds, the insects… They were all there, the world was as it should be. And yet, they could be watching. They could be licking their fattened lips, their warm breath steaming up from behind. He could hear the edging rhythm of their inhale, their exhale whispering rough against his ears, chipping away at his soul till he had nothing more, hollow and purposeless.
They were the Predators.
Prey filled his bucket with water and hoisted it upon the lap of his swollen shoulder. They weren’t here. They never would be. He tried to stop thinking but that only caused more thoughts to crash and break, battering away notions of hope, leaving only the very darkest temptation behind. To end it all. Let the web of suspense melt away and feel his soul float into the empty unknown.
Prey struck his thigh. His Son was every reason he needed to live. Letting that thought sear, Prey soldiered through the tangled depths of the forest, denying the crunch in his knee that sabotaged his every step. Any time he ached for rest, Prey thought about his purpose and moved on, his pace never falling.
He let his mind wander to when his Son was born. Those were times of love, times of family but now, there were no memories and only a wistful fog remained. The one thing he knew was that things were harsh back then, just like now. Back then, there was a lightness to life that made it all tolerable, something Prey now yearned for. But he had to look forward. His Son had a future and it was Prey’s duty to carve it into one worth living, through blood, through sacrifice, anything for the single light of his life. This alone warded away the conniving spirits of doubt.
Crawling over a sprawling trunk, Prey rolled against a horde of bugs that filed along the wood, their sticky bodies mashing against his naked skin. His mind wandered to the task at hand: his Son had a fever. Nothing severe and yet Prey’s heart pounded with fear. The poor thing had shivered throughout the night, despite the blanket of leaves and snapped branches Prey stitched together for him. The water had to cure him.
A glinting strip drifted on the sweep of the flowing breeze, flirting in and out of Prey’s gaze. Setting down the bucket, he charged. He stumbled over roots and rocks, collecting ever more purple badges, but the prize eluded him, swaying this way and that way through the towering branches.
Prey swung wild but found mostly fistfuls of nothing. Eventually, he made contact but it was the crunch of his knuckles against a tree, bones rattling with tiny breaks. Prey grunted but didn’t care. He kept chasing with undying desperation but soon his body gave way, slowing his attacks till the hunt became a lost cause. Signing off with a flourish, the wrapper rose into a swerving slalom through the leaves but failed, impaling itself upon a branch. It was a convenient end.
Scarcely believing his luck, Prey plucked the thing before bringing it close to his eyes. It was like a fallen star, giving off a sharp twinkle that sparked spots of silver in Prey’s eyes, a giddy break from drab mortality. And it felt so silky to his chafed fingers, soothing him like Mother’s whispering rhymes, making him feel a fleeting imitation of something long lost, something like comfort. He knew the value of this little thing.
Back in sweeter times, Prey and Mother would collect these gifts. Mother had called them “wrappers'' but he never knew why. Mother never liked questions. His childhood felt like one long search for wrappers, finally amassing a collection that boasted all the colours, even a peculiar shade of purple. One day, he’d lost them all because Mother had told him something but now, he couldn’t remember what. Whatever it was, Mother was always right.
Anyways, he’d once spent many an afternoon snuggled on Mother’s lap and there, having picked a wrapper for the day, he simply stared and watched its twinkle grow muted as the sun fell down the skyline, tracing that solemn but elegant course. Back then he never questioned why the wrappers thrilled him so, only slipping further into boyhood addiction. Now wizened to the world he still had no answer. Perhaps they were a gate to somewhere beyond reality, somewhere heartbreakingly beautiful yet such an answer was too simple. No words could ever capture what the wrappers meant.
His Son loved wrappers even more than Prey. One night he had caught his Son nibbling on one so the collection was confiscated for a short time and it never happened again. The wrapper caught today was silver, a color his Son had never found. Surely the joy of such a rare wrapper would speed up his recovery and then they could move on through the forest, never staying so long again in the same place, always running from them. It had to work.
After retrieving his bucket, Prey set off towards the shelter, expecting to hear his Son sleeping soundly and breathing loudly, enjoying a long needed rest. Prey smiled. At times he thought that amongst a forever crowding ring of a world that squeezed humanity out of all, his Son was the only innocent thing left. It was scary and yet oddly comforting: his Son was his. Nothing could change that.
A shrill scream ruptured the night. Prey hurtled towards it, his toe stubbing against some stump, a thorny branch scraping threads of skin from his elbow. Eyes kept blinking, pressing down the bead of a blooming tear while the world whirred in a trivial blur. He knew the source and nothing else mattered.
After an eternity of sprinting, Prey stopped before the shelter and saw the worst of his fears. His Son’s knobby limbs splayed over the blanket’s edge, twitching as his spindly ribcage rose up and down, each time leaking a chesty wheezing. His face was slick with the sheen of sweat, drops dripping down his chin and onto his gaunt, thin chest. But he lived. That was good.
At Prey’s sight, his Son screamed again. Prey scrambled to place a hand upon his head, looking deep with comfort into his bulging eyes, red with rheumy streaks. The fever was still not gone but it was calmer. In this life, little things, little improvements meant a lot. As wind whistled through strings of flimsy leaves, he watched his Son mellow under his care, the noises of illness quieting and then ceasing.
A grin began to split at the dry seams of Prey’s lips. An urge to whoop at the top of his lungs threatened to take hold of him because for another day, his Son was alive in this forsaken world that damned all that breathed. Surely, that was worth rejoicing.
Living wasn’t enough. His Son was changing. Yes, it wasn't drastic but slants of melancholy began to elongate his already long face and lines, almost wrinkles, clustered finely around his eyes. And his eyes themselves. Day by day, the sparkle for life was sucked dry from them till one day they’d be hollow, just like twisted, old Prey. The thought made his chest tighten but he dared not dwell. Life goes on, whether it scalds you or not. That’s what Mother used to say and Mother was always wise.
The bucket. Prey had forgotten about it. He hauled it with shaking hands before trickling the water onto his Son’s lips, some flowing down his throat but most dribbling onto his chin, dissolving into the murk of skin. His Son’s eyes still gazed up into branches, looking vacant into nowhere.
“Good?” asked Prey, not expecting a reply. He didn’t get one.
Chewing his nail, Prey scoured his Son for further improvements but there was nothing. It was clear that all options but one were expended. With a sigh, Prey brought out the wrapper. He lodged it between his Son’s clenched fist and, lo and behold, he rose from his stupor with a pure smile. For a time, he fumbled with the wrapper being unable to tame its slippery hide but once those eyes squinted with focus, his Son showed his skill by easing the strip into the cradle of his cupped palms. He rocked it with tender care, soon losing himself in those fumes of sparkling beauty, drool dripping from his lolling mouth. The fever was forgotten, the world was forgotten.
“Good,” said his Son. Nothing else needed to be said.
Settling upon the blanket, Prey let his Son lay on his lap. Till even light had retreated, he defended his tower of joy; playing, seeing and feeling with the wrapper as though time itself was endless. Prey watched on. Only when the moon rose to her zenith did his Son nod off, the easy puffs of sleep tingling against Prey’s leg. He didn’t sleep. Skybound he gazed, watching the pearls of light perform their celestial procession as they pranced and danced across the blind stage of night. Eventually, sleep did find him.

My mom says I had a fever before age 1 and started to get tanned. I remember being very skinny and averse to food when I was young but the real issue started around age 13. One fine morning I woke up with brain fog/dpdr or whatever it is I am still having. I amexperienceing severe cognitive difficulty and my studies went downhill. When I reach halfway across paragraph or second step of a math I loose track of what I am began with. This issue became severe with every year and progressed to me being zoned out and struggling to focus really hard. I grew up in a rural area and I had no clue what was happening and my parents treated me like I am delusional. I had to do painstaking work to get throughschool and couldn't get job initially due to this slowed behaviour. Me having no one to support, to eat and nowhere to sleep had to try hard to keep jobs. I had started visiting doctors, mostly neurologist, psychiatrists since last 10 years. They gave me random diagnosis from OCD to dissociation, DPDR, depression etc. By 2019,my fatigu, body pain and every discomfort became so severe. I went to a renowned researxh institute and I ate psychiatry pills till 2023. Having no one to talk to or seek help financially and unable to even think properly I went on reading papers in pubmed and other online sources, where I came to understand about addrenal insufficiency. I am at rock bottom but I have only collapses once like heart attack but by the time I was taken to hospital from street, I had recovered so I was doubtful about whether my body is able to resist insufficiency for so long period. I went to nearby endocrinoligst and found I have low cortisol and high ECTH as well as few other things such as vit d and some immune stuff that were high as well. I am now having hysone 10-0-5. I am not feeling much of a difference after taking it for 15+ days. I work from home now, so I fall on bed inbetween as body aches too. Can any expert give me an idea about how my recovery will be?.. Will the cognitive difficulties heal along with physical issues?

23F, 160cm, 54Kg, no substances. No known allergies. I am lactose intolerant and have eliminated lactose from my diet. I have been feeling generally 'off' for around a year now, and have been having semi-regular blood tests. I have always had iron levels on the lower side of healthy. I have always eaten a diet high in red meat and other iron-rich foods, and yet I still have low iron.
It began about a year and a half ago, when I suddenly had an episode of feeling very off. I was fatigued, had pain in my arms, a strange rash that didn't go away when pressing (the best way to describe it is unconnected small red and purple blotches, confined to a small area usually appearing on my torso or legs), and experienced an overwhelming feeling of doom. I do have anxiety, however I have never before (or since) experienced that feeling, and there was nothing in my life happening at the time to trigger it.
I had my blood taken and it showed extremely high iron levels all of a sudden (more than 2.5x my previous levels). The only other results of note were low Urea and cholesterol, and high bilirubin. I have never had anything wrong with my liver before. My white blood cell count was normal at this time. The doctor recommended to monitor and have a follow-up test in three month's time.
Three months passes and I remain fatigued, and the joint pain is on and off. The rash mostly just appears after showering. I'm not sure if it's related, but I started coughing up a large volume of tonsil stones. My follow-up blood test showed that my iron had returned to its normal borderline low levels! everything else had returned to normal, except my white blood cell count. The total count had decreased but was still within healthy levels. My neutrophil levels had decreased by 50%. Everything looked pretty normal, so despite still feeling bad I didn't test again for another 8 months. I felt embarassed to talk to doctors as I felt like I was wasting their time.
Over those 8 months my energy levels took a nosedive. I could only last until around 3pm before feeling incredibly tired. I am not a big caffeine drinker, and drinking tea didn't help my energy levels. I get around 8 hours of sleep per night. I started taking iron supplements with vitamin c, but there was no improvement. The strange rash continued after showering, however the joint pain decreased (but still occured). I saw a doctor who confirmed the rash wasn't due to scarlet fever. He told me not to be concerned as it may be due to a skin allergy. I was feeling nauseous every morning, and my abdomen was constantly bloated. I often experienced severe pain just under the ribs. I also got recurring pain in my lower left abdomen and my doctor suggested a possible hernia. At nights I would again feel nauseous. I was still eating like normal. I always felt like there was something caught in the back of my throat, and I had a lot of excess mucus. I was constantly clearing my throat.
I mainly noticed that wounds were bleeding for longer and I had a lot of mouth ulcers. My gums would bleed overnight and are always an inflamed red colour despite regular burshing, flossing, and dental checkups. Also strangely I have had new brown moles appearing even in places not exposed to the sun. Around 5-6 new moles appear per month. I had a skin check by a dermatologist, and he confirmed no skin cancer. He biopsied two moles which came back healthy. I have been getting itchy red sores on my hands and feet which come and go. This is different to the other rash, and happens mainly when exposed to moisture for too long.
Still feeling very off, I went back for the next blood test. My cholestorol had reverted to the previous low levels, and my glucose was very low (borderline hypoglycemic). I have no family history of diabetes. My total white blood cell levels had once again dropped and were now bordeline low. My Neutrophils in particular were clinically low and the report noted mild neutropenia. I had not recenty been sick or had an infection. My iron levels were still borderline low despite taking supplements. The doctor once again said to just do follow-up testing when possible. That was a month ago, and I have since moved somewhere remote with very limited access to healthcare facilities to volunteer.
Since then, my appetite has been steadily decreasing. I have been eating around 1.5 meals a day as I feel very full very quickly. I don't weigh myself regularly, however it looks like I have been losing some weight. My throat is now constantly mildly irritated. A doctor noted that the lymph nodes on the right side of my neck were enlarged, however we chalked this off to me moving to the tropics. Two lymph nodes have remained swollen most of the time, one feels firm and doesn't hurt. The other feels soft and moveable, and is a little sore when pressed. The doctor checked for both ear and throat infections but nothing was found. The doctor recommended an ultrasound of my neck, however there are no ultrasound facilities in the place i'm living.
I had to go to a hospital in a neighbouring location for unrelated reasons after an injury, and they did x-rays of my entire spine. Nothing was noted in the neck area, and no blood tests were taken. I brought up the other symptoms I had been experiencing, but after treating the injury I was discharged.
I am just not entirely sure what to do. I am tired of feeling sick all the time. No changes in diet or supplements have worked, and doctors seem to have no answer for me. I keep being dismissed for a variety of circumstantial reasons like moving to the tropics, being stressed, indigestion, period symptoms. Everyone keeps saying it's because of the tropical climate, but these symptoms have been ongoing since months before, and the blood tests were all taken prior to moving.
At one doctor's appointment he asked if there was a possibility of blood born diseases. I noted that I used to work as a medical sterilisation technician, however I had never had a needlestick injury or other contamination that I knew of. It has been three years since I worked that job.
At this stage I am scared to go back to the doctor as I feel like I am wasting everyone's time. It would take a lot of effort for me to access medical facilities due to my location, and I don't see the point in going in for a follow-up test when I will probably be brushed off again. I would appreciate any advice at all, noting that it is very difficult for me to access medical facilities at the moment.

Hey everyone,
Totally new territory for me! So I got sick april 29th and was dead to the world for a week felt slightly better for two days then felt way worse and the doctor at that point gave antibiotics amox/clav and a nose spray. Nose was completely swollen shut, basically had no nose holes, crazy mucus etc etc.
Antibiotics worked pretty fast and after the 5 days may 13th my fever was finally gone, no more constant mucus from nose and I could breathe out of at least one nostril. I kept taking the nose spray for 4 more days as directed but it started to give me a really bad frontal sinus area headache 10 minutes after each dose so discontinued as I didn't feel it was improving anything.
As of right now I can breathe out of my nose which I am eternally grateful for lol but I deffinitley don't have full air intake from either nostril maybe 75% sometimes less sometimes more and the sides are constantly changing how much air can get past. When I look up my nose It still looks inflamed but it's hard to see as the inflamation is way farther up then before but I can see the sides of my nose narrowing towards eachother. I am trying to be patient but getting worried that this won't resolve itself! Is it common for inflamation to take a long time to resolve after a big infection? I do still have very consistent snot going down my throat but no need to blow my nose, if anything I'm worried about getting another bacterial infection :( I don't think antibiotics would help further because I do feel like the bacterial infection is gone, anyone with this experience?

I see this spider shaped "fog" out of the corner of my eye, but I can feel like a sticky web is stuck to my foot mainly but also my legs and this entity has some sort of consciousness - crawling over me and attaching to my back. I get back pain from it around my lumbar region. When it materialises, I can see many of these entities that are about the size of a small dog (chihuahua). I know they are real because my dog starts to suddenly jump up and look around confused whenever they are around.
They first materialised around me after I was attempting Astral Projection back in 2016. I thought life was all about sensations and astral projection had no risks. However several people have told me that if you AP when you are high (especially stimulants like marching powder - especially in large amounts like 10g /day) can cause us to appear like a beacon to other spirits,and some astral creatures exist by feeding on the damaged astral body that often occurs when substance misuse is present.
I remember closing my eyes for about the 20th time and up til this point I had never had these spider entities around me. My vision was like a dark gray but I could see the outline of things in this sort of colourless substance that is iridescent at the same time as lacking any specific colour.
Anyway as I am flying, suddenly something comes right up in front of my face. All I can see is hateful eyes, and I am scared. I snap back to my body but every time I shut my eyes, this horrible inhuman yet humanoid face is there. I can only describe it as two eyes a nose and a mouth with a facial skin resembling either bark or incredibly ancient skin. The eyes are yellow and it emanates hatred.
Shit starts happening around the basement flat we live in. It was haunted anyway (we used to always see these swirling masses hovering over the bed myself and my GF slept in - with the occasional hand being visible). One night it begins to SA my GF. Every single night she has to endure the incredible delicate sensation of a hand caressing her bits. She found it pleasant and actually let it do its thing. However one time I hear her moaning and I turn over and for a split second there is this disgusting blob like thing with a male face at the top, is sitting astride her in the bed. I shout at it and in a second it vanishes.
I know people won't believe this but it is 100% true. next thing that happens is the strangest. I buy a cheap Dell laptop form a bargain laptop site. I upgrade the RAM and pay £800 for an i7 with 32GB. My girlfriend has a Dell XPS 17 that at this time in 2017 is like almost 10 years old. She has never had any issues with it, and my laptop is brand new.
2 days after it was delivered and I have been using it, I notice a black spot on the screen. I identify it as dead pixels. I have NEVER had a dead pixel in my 30 years of owning computers and many, many laptops. So the 1 dead pixel becomes 2 which becomes 4 and it keeps doubling. After 3 days, another separate dead pixel appears beside the original. Strangely its neighbours are also dying. Great I need to buy a new screen. It arrives a day later. I kid you not, 2 days later, exactly the same location, a dead pixel appears on this completely new laptop monitor. 3 days after it has spread, another location starts to fail. Over the next 2 weeks, I see the strangest thing, Some of the dead pixels seem to be back on and yet others have died. The shapes look like two little wings, but they are still changing.
A week later, I open my laptop after not using for a week, and I am shocked. I see what feels like two eyes on the screen. They look very similar to the eyes I can see still when I close my eyes. The face has stepped back a bit but it still scares me. In the end I have to close my eyes and start to try and turn my focus away from this nasty creature. As soon as I manage to do this, I hear a ping from the laptop. The screen is moving, and suddenly drops on one side. It won't close now so I have to open the laptop to see what the issue is. Turns out the left hand hinge which is like a tall letter L shape has a clean break right across it in a location that doesn't suffer from stress and shouldn't fatigue.
I order a new hinge and it arrives. As I am installing it, my girlfriend sounds angry and sighs loudly. She says her main but old Dell XPS 17 seems to be stuck in the open position. I tell her I will look when I have fixed mine. It doesn't take long, and I open up her laptop. I cannot believe my eyes - the hinge is broken in the same exact position. I show my GF who doesn't believe me asking if they are meant to be in pieces at that point. I tell her no and I order a replacement hinge for her. No sooner does the hinge arrive then the other side hinge breaks. Not in the same location but this is beyond coincidence.
There is always this feeling throughout the flat that something is walking around, and one night I am absolutely terrified because something wakes me up with footsteps approaching the bed. It is a very low down position and the room is pitch black but I can see the outline of something 8ft tall and 5 ft wide stood there, I look at where its face should be and I cannot believe what I am looking at.
I was raised by my Aunt Mary and Uncle Sid after my father committed suicide in front of 7 year old me and my 5 year old sister because I finally told someone he was doing harm to my sister. I told a teacher and in those days they didn;t call the police but the parent. They literally tell him everything I said and tell him that he needs to come in and explain the hypersexualised behaviour we are displaying. He beat the life out of me that night and the next day he keeps saying "this is your fault" and I am sobbing and my sister too. He goes upstairs and hangs himself. My sister never screamed like that ever before or since.
Anyway this is how I end up with my Aunt Mary and Uncle Sid. They had never been able to have children after my Uncle was caught in a bomb blast working during WW2 at Rolls Royce factory thanks to a lucky guess from a Nazi bomber. He retires aged 50 when the pain is too much. The doctors didn't even tell him they were going to have to remove most of his intestines and his manhood due to internal bleeding from secondary blast site damage. They are 66 and 68 when I go to live with them aged 8 It's hard because I am living a lifestyle unlike anyone else, and my aunt is so afraid for my safety that she forbids me playing out - no football or anything. I get into computers luckily and this is how I end up with a job I love in a well paying field.
Anyway I can see their faces on this thing. They are clear as day but faint. They look young - around 20 - but they have blank faces that just stare at me. I get a feeling that these are NOT my loved ones. I turn over and am so scared. I hear it moving and I can somehow tell that it is furious I have turned my back on it but it cannot directly hurt me, but I feel the mattress dip as though it is climbing on the bed. I feel a strong shove in the back and a scratch on my shoulder that stings really badly. I jump up and wouldn't you know - 3 scratch marks. The sort that they blame demons for. That;s what this feels like but when I turned, nothing is there.
It was here that I start experiencing such a strange feeling like my body is moving due to something heavy climbing up my back. I get a tickling on the top of my head. I get harassed and assailed by these spiders climbing on me. The weird thing is that after an attack, if I look around where it seemed to com, there is a spider or at least the Web.
I can pull them off me and they will freak out if I put them over a candle flame. They also flee from anything sharp like a pin.
Ultimately the issue is that whenever I try to sleep, these things appear out of thin air. There is sometimes a "web" visible again with these beings. It is iridescent yet corporeal and etheric. The web looks like no web any spider ever made. It is two dimensional - appearing like a sort of "wall" in front of you. There are multiple points on the web - like little hexagons - that appear to radiate outwards strands of web in this lattice layout.
Why can I not meditate even? Because this seems to excite them and they come out to attack you. Where they are they will always burrow.

We finally went on vacation first time in 5 YEARS! I did all the things. Wiped down everything on and around my seat and table on the plane with de-germy cloths, de-germied my hands, wore a mask…Then I heard it..Miserable child coughing and crying the whole time. Poor thing…but I thought oh great…sick kid = sick people. I have kids so I get it…they are little “germ farms”. Then promptly forgot and BAM! We have Covid. 2nd time and its hitting us hard. High fever first couple of days, bad cough, hurt everywhere, completely stuffed up nose, zero energy, feel like utter s#%t. Been in bed for 4 days and looks like tomorrow will be the same. The weird thing is I full on lost my voice for three days before any symptoms started. No other symptoms until the second we landed weirdly. Thought it was from partying too hard. Has anyone had this happen? I feel terrible as now I know this was the beginnings of the Ronas.

NICANDER, 'ALEXIPHARMACA' The Greek text of the 'Alexipharmaca' can be found on the Poesia Latina website.
Even though the peoples from whom you and I, Protagoras, have derived our births did not set up the walls of their strong towers side by side in Asia, and a great space separates us, yet I can easily instruct you in the remedies for those draughts of poison which attack men and bring them low. You indeed have made your home by the tempestuous sea beneath bossy Arctus, where are the caverns of Lobrinian Rhea and the place of the secret rites of Attes; while I dwell where the sons of the far-famed 10 Creusa divided among themselves the richest portion of the mainland, settling by the tripods of Apollo in Clarus.
You must, to be sure, learn of the aconite, bitter as gall, deadly in the mouth, which the banks of Acheron put forth. There is the abyss of the Wise Counsellor {Hades} whence few escape, and there the towns of Priolas fell crashing in ruins.
All the drinker's jaws and the roof of his mouth and his gums are constricted by the bitter draught, as it wraps itself about the top of the chest, crushing with evil choking the man in the throes of heartburn. The top of the belly is gripped with pain - 20 the swelling, open mouth of the lower stomach, which some call the 'heart' of the digestive vessel, others the 'receiver' of the stomach - and the gate is closed immediately upon the beginning of the intestines where a man's food in all its abundance is carried in. And all the while from his streaming eyes drips the moisture; and his belly sore shaken vainly throws up wind, and much of it settles below about his mid-navel; and in his head is a grievous weight, and there ensues a rapid throbbing beneath his temples, and with his eyes he sees things double, like a man at night overcome with unmixed wine. 30 And as when the Silens, the nurses of the horned Dionysus, crushed the wild grapes, and having for the first time fortified their spirits with the foaming drink, were confused in their sight and on reeling feet rushed madly about the hill of Nysa, even so is the sight of these men darkened beneath the weight of evil doom. This plant men call also Mouse-bane, for it utterly destroys troublesome, nibbling mice ; but some call it Leopard's-choke, since cowherds and goatherds with it contrive the death of those great beasts 40 amid the glades of Ida in the vale of Phalacra. Again they name it Woman-killer and Crayfish. And the deadly aconite flourishes amid the Aconaean mountains.
For one so poisoned gypsum to the weight of a handful will perhaps be a protection, if you draw thereto tawny wine in due measure with the gypsum reduced to fine powder - let it be a full cotyle of wine - and add stalks of wormwood, cutting them from the shrub, or of bright green horehound which they call Honeyleaf; administer also a shoot of the herbaceous, evergreen spurge-olive and rue, quenching in vinegar and honey 50 a red-hot lump of metal between the jaws of the fire-tongs, or dross of iron which the flame of the fire has separated within the melting-pot in the furnace; or sometimes just after warming in the fire a lump of gold or silver you should plunge it in the turbid draught. Or again you should take leaves, half a handful's weight, of the ground pine; or a dry sprig of pot marjoram from the hills, or cut a fresh spray of field basil, and cover them in four cyathi of honey-sweet wine. Or you may take some broth, still meaty and undiluted, made from a domestic fowl 60 when the forcible glow of the fire beneath the pot reduces the body to pieces. Also you should render down the fresh meat of an ox abounding in fat and satisfy the stomach to its full capacity with the soup. Again, sometimes you should pour the juice of balsam into some drops of milk from a young girl, or else into water, until the patient discharges from his throat the undigested food. Sometimes too you should cut out the curd from the stomach of the nimble beast that sleeps open-eyed {hare}, or of a fawn, and give it mixed in wine; at other times cast the roots of the purple mulberry into the hollow of a mortar, 70 bray them mingled with wine, and give them boiled in the labours of the bee. Thus may you ward off loathsome sickness though it threaten to master a man, and he may once again walk on unfaltering feet.
In the second place consider the hateful brew compounded with gleaming, deadly white lead whose fresh colour is like milk which foams all over when you milk it rich in the springtime into the deep pails. Over the victim's jaws and in the grooves of the gums is plastered an astringent froth, and the furrow of the tongue turns rough on either side, 80 and the depth of the throat grows somewhat dry, and from the pernicious venom follows a dry retching and hawking, for this is severe; meanwhile his spirit sickens and he is worn out with mortal suffering. His body too grows chill, while sometimes his eyes behold strange illusions or else he drowses; nor can he bestir his limbs as heretofore, and he succumbs to the overmastering fatigue.
Give the patient at once a cupful of oil of the Premadia- or Orchis- or Myrtle- olive, so that the stomach being lubricated may void the evil drug; 90 or else you may readily milk the udder's swelling teat and give it him; but skim the oily surface from the draught. And you may infuse sprigs or leaves of the mallow in fresh sap and dose the sufferer with as much as he can take. Or again pound sesame seeds and administer them also in wine; or else heat and cleanse in water the ashes of vine twigs, and strain the lye through the interstices of a newly woven basket, for this will retain the sediment. Moreover if you rub down the hard stones of the persea in gleaming olive oil, they will ward off injury - 100 the persea which once on a time Perseus, when his feet bore him from the land of Cepheus and he had cut off the teeming head of Medusa with his falchion, readily made to grow in the fields of Mycenae (it was a recent gift of Cepheus) on the spot where the scabbard-chape of his falchion fell, beneath the topmost summit of Melanthis, where a Nymph revealed to the son of Zeus the famed spring of Langeia. Or else you should break up in roasted barley the sap which congeals upon the frankincense bushes of Gerrha; also as helpful you should dissolve in warm water the tears from the walnut-tree or from the plum or those which ever drip in plenty on the elm-twigs, 110 and drops of gum, so that he may vomit up part of the poison, and part render wholesome as he yields to the hot water when the sweat moistens his body. And again he might sate himself with a meal which he has taken or with strong wine and so escape an inglorious death.
When a liquid smells of the corn-eating blister-beetle, that is to say, like liquid pitch, refuse it, for on the nostrils it weighs like pitch and in the mouth like freshly eaten berries of the juniper. Sometimes in a weak infusion these creatures produce a biting sensation upon the lips, 120 or again deep down about the mouth of the stomach; at other times the middle of the belly or the bladder is gnawed and seized with griping pains, while discomfort attacks men where the cartilage of the chest rests over the hollow of the stomach. And the victims are distressed in themselves: swooning delusions hold in bondage what is human in them, and the victim is brought down unexpectedly by pain, like the freshly scattered thistledown which roams the air and is fluttered by every breeze.
At times administer to the patient doses of pennyroyal mixed with river water, making a posset of them in a mug. 130 This was the rich draught of the fasting Deo; once with this did Deo moisten her throat in the city of Hippothoōn by reason of the unchecked speech of Thracian Iambe. At other times take from your pot and mix with the round seeds of flax a rich draught brewed from the head of a hog or of a lamb or from the horned head of a goat which you have but lately cut off, or even, maybe, from a goose, and give it until the man is sick; and let him by tickling his throat stir up in the gullet below the entire mass of polluted food still undigested. At times you should draw the fresh milk of a sheep in a clyster-pipe, 140 administer a clyster and so empty the useless faeces from the bowel. At another time a draught of creamy milk will help the sufferer; or you should lop the green tendrils of the vine when they are fresh-burdened with leaves and chop them up in grape-syrup; or take from crumbling soil the ever sting-shaped roots of scorpius and steep in the bees' produce. The plant grows high like asphodel but sheds its stalks when withered. Also you should take four drachmas' weight of Parthenian earth which Phyllis brings forth under her mountain-spurs, 150 the snow-white earth of the Imbrasus which a horned lamb first revealed to the Chesiad Nymphs beneath the rush-grown river-banks of snowcapped Cercetes. Or brew a drink of boiled-down must of twice that quantity, and into it shred some sprigs of rue, kneading the herbs with rose-oil, or sometimes soak it in iris-oil, which has often cured an illness.
If however a man thoughtlessly taste from loathsome cups a draught, deadly and hard to remedy, of coriander, the victims are struck with madness 160 and utter wild and vulgar words like lunatics, and like crazy Bacchanals bawl shrill songs in frenzy of the mind unabashed. To such a case you should administer a cupful of hedanian wine, 'Pramnian', unmixed, just as it gushed from the vat. Or cast a cupful of salt into water and let it dissolve. Or else you should empty the fragile egg of a chicken and mix with it the sea-foam upon which the swift petrel feeds. It is with this that it sustains life, and also meets its doom, when the fishermen's destructive children assail with their tricks the swimming fowl; and it falls into the boys' hands as it chases the fresh and whitening surge of foam. 170 Do you also draw from the bitter, violet-hued sea - the sea, which, with fire too, the Earth-Shaker has enslaved to the winds. For fire is vanquished by hostile blasts: the undying fire and the expanse of waters tremble before the north-west winds; though the unruly sea, swift to anger, lords it over ships and over the men who perish in it, while to the rule of the abhorred fire the forest is obedient. Again, common oil mingled with wine or a drink of grape-syrup mixed with snow will stay the pain, 180 what time the reapers with their pruning-hooks lop the heavy, wrinkled vintage of the hedanian and the psithian vine and crush it, while with a humming sound bees and the tree-wasp, wasps and buzzers from the hills fall upon the grapes and feast their fill of sweetness, and the mischievous fox ravages the richer clusters.
Take note too of the noxious draught which is hemlock, for this drink assuredly looses disaster upon the head bringing the darkness of night: the eyes roll, and men roam the streets with tottering steps and crawling upon their hands; 190 a terrible choking blocks the lower throat and the narrow passage of the windpipe; the extremities grow cold; and in the limbs the stout arteries are contracted; for a short while the victim draws breath like one swooning, and his spirit beholds Hades.
Give the patient his fill of oil or of unmixed wine until he vomit up the evil, painful poison ; or prepare and insert a clyster ; or else give him draughts of unmixed wine, or cut and bring him twigs of sweet bay or bay of Tempe 200 (this was the first plant to crown the Delphian locks of Phoebus) ; or else pound some pepper with nettle seeds and administer them, or again infuse wine with the bitter juice of silphium. Sometimes you may offer him a measure of scented iris-oil and silphium shredded in with gleaming oil. Also give him a draught of honey-sweet grape-syrup, and a foaming vessel of milk which you have slightly warmed over the fire.
There are even means of promptly averting the oppression caused by deadly arrow-poison, when a man is overcome with anguish from drinking it. First, his tongue begins to thicken from the root 210 and weighs upon the lips which are heavy and swollen about the mouth; he suffers from a dry expectoration, and his gums break open from the base. Often too his heart is smitten with palpitations, and it is his fate that all his wits are stunned and overthrown by the evil poison; and he makes bleating noises, babbling endlessly in his frenzy; often too in his distress he cries aloud even as one whose head, the body's master, has just been cut off with the sword; or as the acolyte with her tray of offerings, Rhea's priestess, appearing in the public highways on the ninth day of the month, raises a great shout with her voice, while the people tremble 220 as they hearken to the horrible yelling of the votary of Ida. Even so the man in his frenzy of mind bellows and howls incoherently, and as he glances sidelong like a bull, he whets his white teeth and foams at the jaws.
You must even bind him fast with twisted ropes and make him drunk with wine, with gentle force filling him to satiety even against his will; then force his gnashing teeth apart in order that under your mastering hand he may vomit up the deadly stuff. Or divide up and boil till soft over a bright fire the young gosling of a free-feeding goose; 230 you should also give him the wild fruit of the rough-barked apple-tree grown upon the hills after cutting off the inedible parts; or even those kinds that pertain to the fields, such as the spring seasons bring forth for girls to sport with; or again pear-quinces, or else the famed fruit of the grim Cydon, which Cretan torrents have fostered. Or sometimes, after sufficiently pounding all these with a mallet, you should soak them in water and then throw in some fresh and fragrant pennyroyal and stir in together with apple-pips. Also you may soak up some fragrant rose-oil or iris-oil into wool 240 and let it drip into his parted lips. Yet hardly may a man after countless sufferings at the end of many days launch with safety his unsteady steps, while his startled gaze roams this way and that. This is the poison with which the nomads of Gerrha and they who plough their fields by the river Euphrates smear their brazen arrow-heads. And the wounds, quite past healing, blacken the flesh, for the stinging poison of the Hydra eats its way in, while the skin, turning putrid with the infection, breaks into open sores.
But if a man taste the loathsome fire of Colchian Medea, 250 the notorious meadow-saffron, an incurable itching assails : his lips all over as he moistens them, such as comes upon those whose skin is defiled with the snow-white juice of the fig-tree or by the stinging nettle or by the many-coated head of the squill, which fearfully inflames the flesh of children. But if he retain the poison, there settles in his gullet a pain which at first eats into it and presently lacerates it from below with desperate retching as he disgorges the poison from his throat; and at the same time the belly also voids the polluted scourings, even as a carver pours off the turbid water in which the meat was washed.
260 Now sometimes you should cut and administer the crinkled leaves of the oak, or else those of the Valonia oak together with the acorns; or you should draw fresh milk in a pail and then let the man swallow his fill of the milk after retaining it in his mouth. At times to be sure shoots of knot-grass will help, or else the roots boiled in milk. You should also infuse vine-tendrils in water, or equally well shoots of bramble which you have chopped. Further, you should strip the green hulls of a well-grown chestnut-tree that cover the thin-skinned nut 270 where the dry husk encloses the inner flesh of the nut so hard to peel which the land of Castanea brings forth. You may suitably extract the inmost pith of the giant fennel which received the spoils of Prometheus's thieving, and at the same time throw in a quantity of leaves of the evergreen tufted thyme and of the berries of the styptic myrtle; or you might perhaps soak the rind of the chamaeleon-thistle, 280 which has a smell like that of basil . The furrow of the victim's tongue grows rough at the base and inflamed from below, and his heart wanders within him. In his frenzy he gnaws his tongue with his dog-teeth, for at times his madness overmasters his wits, while the stomach blinds with wanton obstruction the two channels of liquid and solid food, and rumbles with the wind it has penned within, which circulating in a confined track often seems like the thunder of stormy Olympus, or again like the wicked roaring of the sea 290 as it booms beneath rocky cliffs. Distressed though he is, despite his efforts scarce can the wind escape upward; yet medicinal draughts can at once make him void egg-shaped stools, like the shell-less lumps which the free-feeding fowl, when brooding her warlike chicks, sometimes under stress of recent blows drops from her belly in their membranes ; sometimes under stress of sickness she will cast out her ill-fated offspring upon the earth.
The familiar astringent draught of wormwood steeped in freshly pressed grape-syrup will check his pain; 300 sometimes too you may cut up the resin of the terebinth-tree, or else the tears of the Corsican pine, or again of the Aleppo pine which makes moan on the spot where Phoebus stripped the skin from the limbs of Marsyas; and the tree, lamenting in the glens his far-famed fate, alone utters her passionate plaint unceasingly. Give him also plenty of the flowers of the bright hulwort, fatal to mice, or strip the low-growing shoots of rue, and spikenard, and take also the testicle of the beaver that dwells in the lake; or rub down an obol of silphium with a toothed scraper, or else cut off the same quantity of its gum. 310 Sometimes too he may be given his fill of the wild goat's marjoram, or of milk just curdling in the pail after milking.
But if a man in his folly taste the fresh blood of a bull he falls heavily to the ground in distress, overmastered by pain, when, as it reaches the chest, the blood congeals easily, and, in the hollow of his stomach, clots; the passages are stopped, the breath is straitened within his clogged throat, while, often struggling in convulsions on the ground, he gasps bespattered with foam.
You should cut off for him some juicy wild figs, 320 soak in vinegar, and then mingle the whole with water, stirring together the water and the astringent draught of vinegar; or drain away the burden of his surcharged belly. Also you should strain through a porous bag of fine linen some stirred curd either from a fawn of roe or red deer or from a kid; or again if you take some from the nimble hare you will bring healing and help to the sufferer. Or give him three obols' weight of well-powdered soda, and mix it in a sweet draught of wine; mix too a pound weight with equal parts of silphium and of its gum, 330 and seed of cabbage soaked thoroughly in vinegar. And give him a sprig of flea-bane with its ill-coloured leaves. Or you should bruise some pepper and buds of the bramble-bush; then you will easily dissipate a mass of congealing blood, or break it up if it has lodged in the vessels.
Do not let the agonising drink of the hateful buprestis escape your knowledge; and you should recognise a man overcome by it. In truth, when bitten, its contact with the jaws seems that of soda; it has an evil smell; and all about the mouths of the stomach arise shifting pains; 340 the urine is stopped and the lowest : part of the bladder throbs, while the whole belly is inflated, as when a tympanitic dropsy settles in abundance about the mid navel, and all over the man's limbs the skin is visibly taut. This creature too, I fancy, causes swelling in plump-bellied heifers or calves, whenever they bite it as they graze. For this reason herdsmen name...

The Whole Thing

4/14/94

I stepped back from the guy in disbelief. He held his bandaged hand up to his chest, hugging it and turning away from me like he was ashamed of it.
"Oh my god! You're bitten, aren't you?" I gasped.
He nodded sheepishly. "It burns," he whimpered.
"Wha... When did it happen?" I asked.
"I dunno. A week ago, I think. I… I just wanna be like them already," he said as tears filled his eyes.
"But you're not sick, right?" I said.
He shook his head and started to sob, "I... I just want this to be over," he cried. “I hate how they all look at me.”
I stepped forward to comfort him as he balled.
"Hey, hey, hey. What's your name, dude?" I asked sincerely, gently putting the back of my hand on his forehead.

He wasn’t lying. He was cool to the touch, and I couldn’t feel any fever. 

"Daniel," he sniffled.
"Daniel, huh? I'm Mel. Can I... Can I see the bite?" I asked.
"Are you a doctor?" Daniel asked.
"No, but I'm the closest thing to one you have right now," I pointed out.
Daniel tentatively gave me his wounded hand. I took it and gently unwrapped the bandages. The wound looked well-dressed, but he hadn't changed the dressing in a while, or ever. The bandages had yellowed, and it stank as I peeled them off.
"Who wrapped this up for you?" I asked, trying to take his mind away from any pain.
"My friend, Elise," he sobbed.
"Did she turn? Is she one of them now?"
Daniel nodded.
I unwrapped the last few turns and saw the wound. It had started to heal and scab, just like mine had all those months ago. My eyes grew wide, and I gasped in shock.
"What? What is it? What's wrong?" Daniel asked frantically.
"Err... Nothing. You said it burns, right?" I inquired.
Daniel nodded.
"But you're not sick, right?" I continued.
"Yeah, everyone got sick but me," he pointed out.
"Daniel, I think you're gonna be ok. I think you're immune," I said with a hopeful smile.
"What do you mean? How do you know?" He asked.
"Look," I said, turning my head to the left and pulling back the collar of my Dad's bomber, revealing the ugly bite scar on my neck. "One of them got me right around the time this whole thing started, and I'm still here. Still breathing."
"You... You think I'll be ok?" He sniffed.
"Well, why don't we find out, huh?" I said, giving him a pat on the arm. "Here. Let me dress that up for you."
I dropped my Go Bag and pulled out my first aid kit. I grabbed a bottle of disinfectant and a bandage. I opened the bottle, offered my hand, and he gave me his. I took it and pulled it towards me to inspect the wound. I poured the bottle on it without warning, and Daniel screamed, leaping back and pulling his hand away from me. He cried and yelped loudly, clutching at his wrist and contorting his hand in agony.
"Dude! I'm sorry, but you gotta keep the fuck down!" I growled through gritted teeth, apologising for the pain I'd just inflicted.
I checked left and right for any dead ones who might have heard this six-foot, farm-boy-looking guy screaming his lungs out over a little splash of disinfectant. I knew it hurt; I'd done it to myself on the bites I'd received, but Daniel couldn't take it.
"Calm down! You'll attract them!" I yelled over his cries.
The fear of the dead ones showing up made him gulp it in and stand up, whimpering and holding his wounded paw. I reached out, and he pulled his hand back.
"Please! No more of that stuff," he pleaded.
"Don't worry. I'm not trying that again," I said, rolling my eyes as I started to bind the wound with a bandage. "You can get gangrene for all I care if that's how you're gonna take it. You gotta keep it down, dude. How else did you guys survive this long?"
"We had Father Jim," Daniel sniffled.
"Yeah? I heard about him. He sounds like a real stand-up guy," I said, trying to make conversation while I finished dressing his hand.
"Did you know him?" Daniel asked.
"Only through what I found. I ran into your little expedition about a month ago. They were looking for medication, right? Did Father Jim get better?" I asked.
"No. He died. They all died," Daniel said, tears returning to his eyes.

I gave him a second. He wasn’t even looking at me, just looking through me, lost in shock and wherever his mind was taking him to protect him from confronting all he’d lost. “Hey,” I spoke softly, “You’re gonna be ok. It’s gonna be ok. You’re not alone,” I guided him back to the RV. He lumbered slowly behind me and struggled to keep pace, but I gave him time. For the next few days, we cruised around rural Kentucky. We didn’t even see a single dead one. Daniel took the back bed my Dad used to sleep in, and I slept above the cab, my Beretta under my pillow, just in case. 

Daniel took his time recovering. Physically, the guy was OK. The bite wound recovered well. I told him it would turn into a gnarly scar like mine, smiling and trying to cheer him up, but he didn’t react. The poor guy was like a lost, lonely child. He spent most of his days catatonically staring, and at night, he would cry quietly. I just gave him his time. I had no idea how to handle this. I was barely able to understand it myself. I had been alone, living in my own fiction with Dad and Madeline, hoping that I might find another living person. And here that person was a crying, broken young guy I now had to care for.

Daniel had been too shocked or scared to leave the RV. He hardly ate and barely got up from the back bed, but I'd had enough by the time the fourteenth rolled around. I didn’t care if he wanted to stink up the place; I wanted to get showered and changed. “Look, dude. We’re both getting a little ripe in here, and I’m not getting changed in front of you,” I reasoned, but poor Daniel was timidly sitting on the back bed. “There aren’t any out there, man. Trust me, it’s ok,” I said. 

I tried my best to understand his fear of the dead ones. It was crippling him and trapping him here in my RV. Whatever trauma he'd been through, he was lugging around inside him. No matter what I did or said, I couldn't coax much out of him besides simple answers. I knew his name. I knew he'd been with a group of survivors at that complex in March Ridge. I knew they had their pastor leading them until he died, along with the rest of them, and that had turned poor six-foot Daniel into a lost little boy.
“Hey, Daniel. You can come back in now,” I said when I was all cleaned up, opening the door and letting him back into the RV.
Daniel climbed slowly up the steps with his head down, walked to the back bed and sat back down. I put a jay in my mouth and stood by the door.
“I'm gonna go for a smoke, dude. The bathroom’s all yours,” I said, trying to hint him towards getting washed up, but he wasn't listening.
It was like he wasn't even there. Like a lost, stray dog that didn’t trust humans anymore, he timidly lumbered around, reeking of mange and b.o. I shook my head, stepped, and lit my jay, closing the door behind me.
I'd parked us by large open fields of farmland on the edge of some woods. I could see for miles around in the warm spring of the late Kentucky morning. With nothing better to do, I took a stroll along the woods until I was far enough away from the RV to talk out loud without being heard. Despite being around another living person for the first time in almost a year, I felt so alone. While Daniel struggled to adjust to his new reality, I was adjusting to mine and having no one to talk to. So, hoping to find solace, I slumped against a tree at the edge of the woods, smoked my jay, and closed my eyes.
“Hell of a find, huh, Songbird?” Dad said, leaning in next to me against the tree.
I beamed out a relieved smile, opened my eyes and turned to see him smile back.
“He didn't turn. He's immune, like me,” I said.
“He ain't doing much else, either,” Dad scoffed.
“It must have been traumatic,” I reasoned.
“You got over it, Mel. The end of the world passed you by, and you rolled with it,” Dad pointed out.
“Did I, or did I go just as insane as he did?” I asked rhetorically, looking my dead Dad in the eye with a raised eyebrow. He paused for a moment, curled his lip and shrugged.
“Touche,” he admitted.
I leaned back against the tree, took a drag and held the smoke in my lungs a little longer than I would normally. I let it all out in a sigh through my nose and closed my eyes.
“What the fuck am I gonna do with this guy, Dad?” I asked.
Dad took a few seconds to consider, then said, “Well, you could start by finding him some fresh clothes.”
“Shit,” I muttered. “I didn't think about that.”
“Maybe you have been alone too long,” Dad pointed out.
He wasn't wrong, but I hadn't realised how out of touch I'd been. It was a sudden realisation of how much I'd forgotten what real human contact was supposed to be. I hadn't had to think of anyone but myself up until this point. Dad and Madeline had just been along for the ride.
“I have an idea,” I said aloud, hauling myself to my feet and walking back to the RV.
I climbed into the driver's seat and told Daniel we were hitting the road and that he should buckle up. Daniel didn't even ask where we were going. He had yet to ask since I found him. I had no idea if his head was so full of trauma that his thought process wasn’t functioning or if his mind was completely empty. Neither would have surprised me.
I drove the RV to the intersection south of West Point. We were gonna kill two birds with one stone; I needed fuel, he needed clothes. I didn’t know how long he'd been wearing the rags hanging off him, but I felt guilty that it had taken me this long and a conversation with my Dad to notice. It also worried me slightly that he hadn't even mentioned it himself.
“Hey, Daniel,” I called out to him as we hopped out of the RV after I pulled it up to the gas pump and killed the engine.
He craned his neck and looked at me, waiting for me to respond.
“Can you give me a hand with something?” I asked.
“Uhh… yeah… ok,” he nodded.
He followed me around to the side of the RV, where I opened one of the cargo hatches. Inside was a generator I'd been keeping for power on the move and most of my tools. Being used to doing this alone, I grabbed the generator with both hands and lugged it towards the gas station.
“Can you grab my tools, dude?” I asked, and he obliged.
“Do you… can you handle that?” He asked as I hauled the genny and lowered it down about a foot from the gas station power box
“Nah. I got it. I've been doing this kinda shit for a while now,” I said, gesturing that it was no big deal. “Thanks,” I said as he placed my toolbox beside it.
“Do you need to fix it or something?” Daniel drawled.
“Nope. I need to hook it up to the gas station to power it up so I can fill up the RV and a couple of gas cans. I have something for you, though,” I explained.
I returned to the RV, reached into the storage and pulled out a folded-up duffle bag. Carrying it in one hand, I strolled towards the Barg'n'clothes at the north side of the intersection.
“Come on!” I shouted cheerily as I turned around and gestured at Daniel to follow with a smile.
He followed me across the parking lot and through the double doors of the huge outlet. The place was dark and dusty, but enough of the midday sun beamed through the windows to see the racks of clothing—all shapes, sizes, and styles of cheap, off-brands.
“Here,” I said, thrusting the folded duffle bag against his chest and letting him take it from me. “I'll get the RV gassed up. You do some shopping,” I said with a wink.
“What? I just take stuff?” Daniel gawked.
“Of course, dude. Take whatever you want,” I shrugged.
“But, like, isn't it stealing?” He asked.
That question visibly struck me because how I looked at him made his face drop slightly in shock. My confused frown must have made me look angry.
“Daniel, there's… there's no one left to steal from. The world ended, man. Whatever you don't take is gonna rot here, dude,” I explained.
“You're sure no one will care?” He asked sincerely.
“Where do you think I got my winter clothes from? Trust me, no one's alive to care,” I said, waving my hand and heading for the door. “I’ll be by the gas station if you need me. Take your time. Try stuff on. Get cleaned up.”
I left Daniel on his shopping spree while I hooked up the genny to the gas station. With the afternoon heating up, I peeled off my plaid shirt, tied it around my waist and got to work. I was filling up some gas cans when Daniel finally emerged from the store in fresh clothes and a stuffed duffle bag. He wore a plaid pattern similar to mine, only yellow instead of red, some baggy jeans and a green and white Kentucky ball cap. He looked less like the rag-clad shell of a person I'd pulled out of March Ridge and more like someone who was, at least outwardly, looking better.
“Looking good,” I said with a smile.
“Thanks,” Daniel said, returning it. “I didn't know that covered your whole arm,” he said, gesturing at my snake tattoo.
“Yeah, cool, huh?” I said, giving him a good view of my right arm. “You got any?” I asked.
“Nah. My Mama never liked 'em,” he said.
“She probably wouldn't have liked me then, huh?” I asked.
“Well, you seem like a good person, Mel,” he said, smiling but not looking at me.
Daniel turned to look inside the gas station, now powered up with the lights on inside. His eyes grew wide as he stared down towards the ground inside.
“That's the fucker that gave me this,” I said, pointing at the bite scar on my neck.
He took his eyes off the skeleton with a missing skull that I'd left on the floor that day in late July and turned to see me craning my neck.
“He wasn't the only one either,” I stated.
“You've been bitten more than once?” Daniel exclaimed.
“Sure, the other one was a high school kid. Got me right here,” I said, pointing at the bite scar below my collarbone. “Almost bit my fucking tit off,” I said with a wry smile.
Daniel winced at me. I didn't know if it was due to seeing the scar or if me using the word “tit” made him uncomfortable. In either case, I quickly changed the subject.
“So, it's pretty hot, and I'm pretty hungry. I’m gonna get the grill out and cook us some fish. How about it?” I suggested.
I grilled, we ate, and I brought out some beers and lit a small fire in the middle of the intersection, tossing wood and whatever crap was lying around that would burn. I offered Daniel a beer, but he refused.
“Mama used to tell me that my Dad was a drinker, so I never wanted to,” he explained.
“That's fair,” I said. “Was it just you and your Mom?” I asked.
“She uh… she was the only one who got me, you know?” He said. “She was all I had until, you know, then I had Father Jim, Elise, Beth, Derrick, all the others,” he listed before going silent. “They're all… them now,” he said as he curled in on himself, teled in his eyes.
It took me a while to come up with something to say, but I jumped in before his quiet sobs turned into whole cries.
“I know that feeling, dude. Believe me, I do. You can't let them get to you, though. They're just part of the world now, and we can beat them. I've done it,” I claimed.
“Huh?” Daniel said, looking at me with glossy eyes.
“See that over there,” I said, nodding towards the burned-down dealership and blackened burnt-out cars. “Not long after the whole end of the world, when people outside Kentucky stopped broadcasting, I cleared this place out—learned my lesson, though. They can creep up on you, but they're slow and stupid. Now, the only bunch around for miles are up North in West Point.”
“How many have you killed?” Daniel asked.
“Fuck if I know, dude. I don't exactly keep count when they're all burning in a pile,” I scoffed, sipping my beer.
“Are they still, you know, them?” He asked.
“I… I don't even know if it was just me going crazy or if I really did hear it, but I've heard a few of them talking. Just a word here and there, nothing more than that. If whoever they were is still in there, it isn't coming back. Putting them down for good is, well, it's mercy. Madeline taught me that,” I said quietly over my beer.
“Who's Madeline?” Daniel asked.
“She was my girlfr… my wife,” I corrected myself.
Daniel looked at me confused, gawking with that slack-jawed look under the brim of his cap.
“I know, I know, girls can't get married to other girls, but Maddy was raised Catholic, and she always wanted to be married,” I started. “One day, before all this end-of-the-world crap, she put this ring on my finger,” I said, fiddling with the silver wedding band. “She died a few weeks after,” I went on, as tears started to fill my eyes and reality started to dawn on me. “And for those last few weeks, she didn't call me anything but her wife,” I said, choking on the last word and trying to hold down the sobs, but everything hit me all at once.
The fabricated world I'd built out of frosted glass in my head suddenly shattered in Daniel's presence as I told him about Madeline. I had spent almost a year surviving the apocalypse when any average person would have been grieving. And now I grieved for Madeline, out loud and in the open, in front of the first living person I'd seen in what felt like a lifetime. I balled up my hand and held it against my mouth as my body shook with quiet, subdued sobs. My aching heart punctured the lump in my throat as the real world poured into me like cold, icy water and the fact that Maddy was dead, buried, and gone slapped me in the face once more after almost a year of refusing to see it. I turned away from Daniel as the tears rolled down my cheeks. He said nothing as I kept my eyes tightly shut, trying to compose myself. I sniffed, wiped the tears from my cheeks and took a deep breath.
“Yeah, Maddy was my wife. It might not have been real to anyone else, but it was real to her,” I paused. “It was real to me,” I added, looking back at the ring on my hand. “I haven't talked about it to anyone. I haven’t been able to talk about it to anyone,” I admitted. “She died right before all this went down, and I've been alone ever since.”
The two of us sat silently as the fire cracked at our feet and the sun fell below the treeline.
“Sorry for unloading on you there,” I sighed aloud, trying to chuckle awkwardly to lighten the mood.
“It's ok. You've really been alone this whole time?” He asked.
“Yeah. I guess it wasn't all bad, but yeah, just me,” I answered.
“I… I was trying to get help for my Mama when it happened,” Daniel started. “She was getting sick. She got really hot, and then she stopped breathing. I went to get help, but they… they were everywhere. Derrick from the store where I work grabbed me. A bunch of people were running for the army barracks.”
Daniel paused there. It was his turn to get choked up. I let the tears fill his eyes without judgment.
“I tried to get them to help my Mama, but they said it was too dangerous. I didn't leave until… until there was no one left but them,” he gasped before crying.
I let him ball it out as the memories of the trauma he'd suffered came bubbling back up to the surface.
“I just wanted to be like them. I hate how they look at me. They look so mad, like they hate me,” Daniel sobbed.
“I don't think they hate you. I don't think they can hate anything, Daniel. They're dead,” I stated.
“But they can't be. They're walking around,” he retorted.
“I don't know what kind of disease caused it, but some of the shit I've seen happen to them. Some of the shit I've done to them, you can't survive that. They're dead, dude, and nothing is bringing them back,” I said.
Daniel took a long pause as he composed himself.
“What do you think caused it?” He asked.
“Fuck if I know, man. There was this one guy, though. I saw him with his family right at the beginning of it all. He worked at the military base, and I’ve been trying to find it since. I found his home in Ekron and some dead special forces dudes. They seemed to know more than anyone else did. Not that it even matters anymore,” I sighed.
“Derrick said it was something in the Spiffo burgers. He said they had human meat in them, and it made people go crazy or something,” Daniel said, looking over at the Spiffos on the other side of the intersection.
“For real?” I laughed. “Dude, when I thought I would turn into one of them, I ate everything in that place. I wanted to be the last person alive to enjoy a Spiffo burger.” I said, gesturing at the same Spiffos
“Mama never let me eat fast food. She said it was full of junk. Maybe Derrick was right?” Daniel sighed, staring into the fire.
“Maybe,” I sighed as well.
For a while, we sat there staring in silence. Daniel was lost in his thoughts while my slightly buzzed brain was half baking a plan.
“I have an idea,” I said, smiling.
I got up, walked over to the Barg'n’ Clothes and grabbed the first t-shirt closest to the entrance. Then, I marched back to the RV and pulled out one of the gas cans I'd filled earlier. I took them to Daniel by the fire and carefully filled my empty beer bottles with gasoline.
“What are you doing?” Daniel asked curiously.
I filled the last empty bottle and started ripping the t-shirt into rags.
“We're gonna take our revenge on Spiffo Burger on behalf of all mankind,” I said with a wicked laugh.
As I jammed the t-shirt strips into the tops of the bottles and the gas inside, we were left with four Molotovs ready to go.
“Here,” I said, handing two of them to Daniel. “Let's have some fun,”
With my two in hand, I marched towards the Spiffo Burger and stopped when I was within my throwing distance. I put one down at my feet and turned the other upside down to soak the rag while I lit it with my lighter.
“Fuck you, Spiffo! You killed the human race!” I shouted as I hurled my Molotov right through the window.
The glass smashed, and fire lit up the inside. Flames danced through the window, and an orange glow shone against the waning light of the evening in the large, empty intersection.
“Woo!” I cheered, laughing with delight. “Come on, try it,” I said to Daniel, offering my lit lighter.
He carefully held out one of his Molotovs and pulled away timidly as the rag caught fire. He readied himself, smiled and hurled it.
“Fuck you, Spiffo!” He yelled as he did.
Daniel, as it turned out, didn't have the best throwing arm, and his Molotov landed a few feet in front of the doorway to the old-world fast food chain.
“Dude,” I said, giggling, which made Daniel look away from me, embarrassed.
I picked up my second Molotov, lit it and cocked my arm back.
“This is for discontinuing the Fluffyfoot Ribs!” I yelled as I hurled my second Molotov, laughing hysterically as it landed on the roof.
Daniel held his second Molotov towards me. I lit it, and he walked a few paces closer to the burning building. He said nothing this time and hurled it at the door, which shattered the glass and added to the flaming interior.
“Woo! Fuck yeah!” I cheered, clapping.
I jogged over to the RV, opened the driver door and leaned in. I grabbed the first tape my hand could find and looked at it. “Mel's”, it read simply. I smiled, put it in the tape deck, turned the ignition on and cranked the volume as high as possible. The opening notes to Heroes started to play and put a big beaming smile on my face. I walked back to Daniel and the fire pit. David Bowie began to sing, and I half drunkenly danced as the Spiffo Burger burnt down.
“Can you smell that?” Daniel asked, sitting by the fire and staring at the conflagration we'd caused.
“Yeah, it's fry oil. Smells like french fries, huh?” I explained.
I finished a fifth beer and smashed the bottle on the ground. I spun around, dancing to the music, before I tripped and almost fell over. Daniel and I both laughed. I sat down next to him and lit a cigarette. We let our smiles subside, and the moment passed as the sun set and the building continued to burn.
“Do you think everyone is gone?” Daniel asked shyly.
“No, just most of us,” I sighed. “But I found you, didn't I?” I said cheerily, nudging his shoulder with mine.
When I looked at him, my words didn't seem to comfort him. He looked into the fire and got lost in its licking and crackling. I stood up to get another beer but stopped and looked down at him.
“Hey, Daniel, I'm gonna make you a pact,” I stated.
He turned to look up at me with puppy dog eyes.
“You and I are gonna find some more people, living people. I promise. And we'll do it together,” I said, offering my hand.
Daniel took my hand gently; his soft hands felt like they didn't have a single callous. I grasped it firmly and shook it once with a smile. Daniel smiled hopefully back at me, and we celebrated while Spiffo's burnt down in front of us.

I have mild apnea (shown by a couple of sleep studies AHI 10-15 consisting of pretty much all hypopneas) but severe fatigue that has ruined my teen years and currently my 20s (23F). Suspect that I also just have extreme flow limitation/UARS due to 200+ arousals on my sleep studies that weren’t accounted for by a breathing event or O2 desaturation.
I have been told that I have a very narrow airway in my throat by my orthodontist. My nasal passage/congestion is quite terrible where I can barely breathe during the day and suspect that I mouth breathe at night. Recently discovered have severe allergies to pretty much everything under the sun (weeds, trees, grasses, dust mites and more) even though I do a lot to manage symptoms using breath right strips, Flonase, montelukast, Claritin, and am thinking of starting allergy immunotherapy. I’ve had tonsils and adenoids removed, a septoplasty and two turbinate reductions, but still have a deviated septum and enlarged turbinates that grew right back likely due to the allergies.
In 2020 I tried an oral appliance and it always seemed to make my sleep worse which I found strange. Did a sleep study with it and found that though I no longer had hypopneas with o2 desaturations, my RERAs and arousals went up and were actually higher than my AHI was without the appliance. Because I was already struggling to function, the usage of oral appliance really tanked my health and I had to stop using it.
In 2021 I tried CPAP full face and dreamwear masks and felt like I was suffocating no matter how low or high the pressure was because my nasal congestion forced me to mouth breathe. Was not able to fall asleep ever with full face and let me tell you I tried really really hard to make it work. Tried nasal pillows and was finally able to fall asleep and felt like I could breathe for the first time ever, but air would always leak out of my mouth even when I had it at a low pressure and EPR to the max. Tried mouth taping and chin strap but air would still leak out! This was frustrating me to no end because I felt like I was SO close to good sleep but with being woken up constantly just couldn’t do it.
Flash forward to 2024, got a sleep study with BiPAP titration and nasal pillows and taped my mouth. Started with IPAP of 10 and EPAP of 5. Never entered REM sleep and had a TON of central apnea events and the sleep tech kept jacking up the pressure in response to the events. If you ask me, upping the pressure in response to those events seems totally small brained since I never struggled with central apnea before. Next morning also had bad aerophagia. Doctor called me the next week and recommended BiPAP without addressing obvious problems from my study! Certainly won’t be able to tolerate BiPAP with the settings like that.
Ok so that was the longest post ever. Basically I’m wondering if anyone has recommendations for BiPAP settings I can tweak (thinking of increasing cycle sensitivity to very high), or potential surgeries to address narrow airways especially nasal congestion. And lastly, I know this is out there but I’m seriously considering getting a nasal cannula with just air (not o2) if I can’t get BiPAP/CPAP to work, because I NEED air and having more airflow through my nose seems to really help me.
Any advice at all is so appreciated, thank you!!!

So long story short I fuck this same escort like 2 times a year, this time ate her ass for 20 seconds. She always insists on a condom which I wouldn't do it BB anyways. When the condom came off it looked full of cum didn't look broken but she took care of it once I took it off so I didn't think to check if it was or not. She went and washed her pussy out (she uses lube so i assume thats why and we didnt plan on having sex again) She gave me like a 30 minute hand job after and was going crazy. I ended up with a balanitis flare up 3 days - a week later. It ended up getting a itchy rash by the end of the next week so this is 15 days after the exposure. My doctor says it looks like a yeast infection but I said do a full std panel so I went and pissed in a cup first then he gave me the 4 pills of antibiotics just incase it was an sti (I didn't get the jab right away cause that seemed over excessive if I had nothing and it was just a yeast infection I'm uncircumcised also). The rash was gone 4 days later after the cream he prescribed. I got the panel back 6 days later with normal urine and normal blood. The next day after i got results about 21 days after exposure I got flu like symptoms (at this point the rash is gone and I havent had any anywhere else) mild fever that lasted 3 days,dry cough, nasal clogged, headaches and diarrhea i dont think i had swollen lymph nodes but that's all gone and now I just have a cough and semi clogged nose and mucus comes up when I cough. I do live in Calgary and the weather is changing it goes from 10° one day to mid 20s the next and back and forth. Would a blood test be able to detect it at 15 days or did I test too early? Or could it be from the yeast infection that I'm sick? Or something completely else like a bug going around? I think I'm overeacting but who knows. I heard people have crippling fevers I was still going out for cigarettes every few hours and eating 3 meals a day and wasn't fatigued to where I'm out of breath from walking or anything I still went to work doing physical stuff like this just felt like shit obviously. And yes I was smoking cigarettes while sick I was stressed out LOL. I'm more worried of HIV cause I had no discharge or anything this whole time.

Meibography seems to have become more common in the offices of eye doctors who have a more serious interest in treating Dry Eye Disease. It might even now be one of the marks of a doctor who is something more of a specialist in DED if they have Meibography available. It is a very useful tool from a diagnostic perspective and also is something tangible to show patients to motivate them to accept treatment.
Meibography has a long history for DED/MGD things that began in the 1970s with a primitive approach that was not very useful since it was just shining a light through the eyelid to see the glands as shadows. In the 1980s with the advent of infrared light that made things much clearer. It was in the 1990s when improvements in infrared light and the development of devices that interest increased and serious research using these Meibography devices began. In the 2000s the invention of Keratograph and LipiView occurred that spread the technology even further and into some eye doctor offices. In the 2010s to today with improved technology and more sophisticated devices with more capabilities than just imagining glands in the same device they are becoming more common in a doctor’s office that is at least moderately into DED and MGD treatment.
From a research perspective it has been used in research a lot…see this for example:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=meibography = 481 responses to a search of “meibography”
A good comprehensive article you might find interesting on Meibography is here:
Meibography 101: How to capture and interpret images to determine Meibomian gland health = written for optometrists and still very readable for a lay person.
There at least 4 or 5 companies that make a diagnostic device that are capable of doing a Meibography. That said the LipiView and LipiScan are at least among the most common. If you want to look at the manufacturer’s site on Lip iView see here: https://www.jnjvisionpro.com/products/lipiview-ii-ocular-surface-interferometer
Also see LipiScan that does Meibography here:
https://www.jnjvisionpro.com/products/lipiscan-dynamic-meibomian-imager
The following content was created via ChatGPT 4o and edited by me from my knowledge and research. Any comments by me will be in italics. Let’s get to it.
Question: What is Meibography and how is it used in diagnosing Meibomian Gland Dysfunction (MGD)?
ChatGPT 4o Answers:
Meibography is an imaging technique specifically designed to visualize the Meibomian glands, which are located in the eyelids and are responsible for secreting oils that form part of the tear film. This technique is particularly useful in diagnosing Meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD), a common condition that can lead to dry eye disease and other ocular surface disorders.
How Meibography Works
Imaging Devices: Meibography employs specialized imaging devices, such as infrared cameras or devices integrated into slit lamps, to capture detailed images of the Meibomian glands.
Infrared Light: Infrared light is used because it penetrates the eyelid tissue effectively, allowing for clear visualization of the glands without causing discomfort to the patient.
Image Capture: The patient is asked to look in specific directions while the device captures images of the upper and lower eyelids. The procedure is non-invasive and quick.
Here's how Meibography aids in diagnosing MGD:
Gland Morphology: Meibography allows eye doctors to assess the structure and morphology of the Meibomian glands. Healthy glands appear as long, continuous structures, while glands affected by MGD may show atrophy, shortening, or dropout (loss of glands).
Gland Dropout: By examining the images, doctors can identify the extent of gland dropout, which is a critical indicator of MGD severity. A higher degree of gland loss typically correlates with more severe symptoms.
Gland Obstruction: The technique can also help detect blockages within the glands. Obstructed glands may appear swollen or irregular, indicating that the oil produced by the glands is not being properly secreted.
Baseline and Progress Monitoring: Meibography provides a visual baseline for monitoring the progression of MGD over time. Follow-up imaging can help evaluate the effectiveness of treatments such as warm compresses, eyelid hygiene, medications or device treatments.
Benefits of Meibography
Non-Invasive: The procedure is comfortable and non-invasive for patients.
Detailed Visualization: Provides detailed images of gland structure, helping in accurate diagnosis.
Treatment Planning: Assists in tailoring treatment plans based on the severity and specific characteristics of gland dysfunction.
Monitoring Progress: Facilitates ongoing monitoring of gland health and response to treatment.
Meibography is generally considered a safe and non-invasive procedure with minimal risk to patients. However, as with any medical procedure, there are a few considerations to keep in mind:
Potential Risks and Considerations
Discomfort: Some patients might experience slight discomfort during the imaging process, especially if they have to keep their eyes open for an extended period. However, this discomfort is usually minimal and temporary.
Light Sensitivity: The use of bright lights or infrared light might cause temporary light sensitivity in some patients, although this is rare and typically resolves quickly.
Allergic Reactions: If the procedure involves the application of any topical anesthetic or lubricant to the eye, there's a small risk of an allergic reaction. This is uncommon and can be managed promptly by the healthcare provider.
Inaccurate Results: Poor image quality due to patient movement, improper positioning, or technical issues can sometimes lead to inaccurate results. Ensuring that the patient is comfortable and properly positioned can mitigate this risk.
Precautions and Mitigation
Professional Operation: Ensuring that the procedure is performed by trained and experienced professionals can minimize risks and discomfort.
Patient Instructions: Clear instructions to the patient about keeping still and maintaining proper eye position can help achieve accurate imaging results.
Comfort Measures: Using lubricating eye drops before the procedure can help reduce discomfort, especially in patients with dry or sensitive eyes.
Summary
In summary, Meibography is a safe, effective and valuable diagnostic tool for identifying and managing Meibomian gland dysfunction, providing essential insights into the condition of the Meibomian glands and aiding in the development of effective treatment strategies.
Question: How does an eye doctor go about evaluating the results of a Meibography image?
ChatGPT 4o Answer:
When assessing Meibography images, an eye doctor follows a specific process:
Identification: The doctor examines the images to identify the structure of the Meibomian glands. Healthy glands appear as long, straight, and uniform tubular structures.
Assessment of Gland Morphology: The key aspect of evaluation involves looking at the morphology of the glands. The doctor checks for signs of atrophy (shortening or dropout of gland structures), dilation, or any irregularities in shape.
Quantification of Gland Loss: The extent of gland dropout is often quantified as a percentage of the total lid area that has lost functional glands. This is crucial for staging the severity of Meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD).
Comparative Analysis: If previous images are available, the doctor may compare them with the current images to assess any changes over time. This helps in monitoring the progression of the condition and the effectiveness of any treatments being administered.
Clinical Correlation: The findings from Meibography are correlated with clinical symptoms and other diagnostic tests (such as tear film break-up time or ocular surface staining) to confirm the diagnosis and plan the treatment accordingly.
Documentation and Follow-Up: The results are documented, and based on the findings, the doctor may recommend treatments such as warm compresses, eyelid massages, or more specific treatments like medications or device treatments. Follow-up Meibography may be scheduled to monitor the condition.
Question: Have these Meibography devices been evaluated for which one is the best quality?
ChatGPT 4o Answers:
Yes, various studies and reviews have evaluated the performance of meibography devices, focusing on aspects like image quality, ease of use, repeatability of measurements, and clinical utility. However, determining the "best" device can be subjective and often depends on the specific needs of the practice or researcher.
Here are a few considerations often assessed in these evaluations:
Image Quality: High-resolution images that clearly show the Meibomian glands are crucial. Devices vary in their imaging technology and quality.
Ease of Use: How user-friendly the device is, including the ease of acquiring images and the software interface, is important for clinical settings.
Repeatability: Reliable devices should produce consistent results under the same conditions across different sessions and operators.
Integration and Additional Features: Some devices offer additional diagnostic tools like tear film analysis, which can be valuable for a comprehensive eye examination.
Cost and Accessibility: The overall cost and maintenance of the device are also significant factors, especially for smaller practices.
Although there are comparative studies, they may not universally declare one device as the best due to varying criteria and individual preferences. Additionally, new models and updates can affect device performance and user satisfaction. Eye care professionals often rely on peer reviews, clinical demonstrations, and direct feedback from other users when deciding which device to integrate into their practice.
For the most current and detailed comparison, consulting recent peer-reviewed studies or attending ophthalmic conferences where new data and user experiences are shared can be beneficial. These venues often provide insights into the latest advancements and comparative effectiveness of different meibography devices.
Question: What is probably the most common device of this type in an eye doctor's office?
ChatGPT
Among the devices available for Meibography, the LipiView by TearScience (now part of Johnson & Johnson Vision) is probably one of the most common in eye doctors' offices, especially in settings where dry eye disease and Meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD) are frequently addressed.
LipiView has several advantages that contribute to its popularity:
Detailed Imaging: It provides high-definition imaging of the Meibomian glands, which is crucial for accurate diagnosis and management of MGD.
Interferometry: LipiView also measures the lipid layer thickness of the tear film, adding another layer of diagnostic information helpful for treating dry eye.
Ease of Use: The device is user-friendly, which is important for busy clinical environments.
Comprehensive Analysis: It offers detailed analysis capabilities, which are essential for tracking disease progression and treatment response.
These features make LipiView a favored choice among eye care professionals looking to provide comprehensive care for patients with dry eye and Meibomian gland-related conditions.
Question: Do these Meibography devices provide a printout that is an analysis of the image or does the doctor have to do that for themselves?
ChatGPT 4o Answers:
Modern Meibography devices typically come with advanced software that can analyze the captured images and provide detailed reports. However, the extent of automated analysis versus manual interpretation can vary depending on the specific device and software used. Here’s an overview of how this process generally works:
Automated Analysis by Meibography Devices
Image Capture: The device captures high-resolution images of the Meibomian glands using infrared light.
Software Analysis: Advanced software integrated into the device processes the images. This software can perform various analyses, such as:
Gland Morphology: Assessing the shape, length, and structure of the glands.
Gland Dropout: Quantifying the extent of gland loss or dropout.
Gland Density: Measuring the density and distribution of the glands.
Obstruction Detection: Identifying signs of gland blockage or abnormalities.
Report Generation: The software can generate a comprehensive report that includes:
Annotated images of the Meibomian glands.
Quantitative metrics, such as gland dropout percentage or density scores.
Comparative data (if previous images are available for the same patient).
Role of the Doctor
Interpretation of Results: While the software provides detailed analysis, the doctor still plays a crucial role in interpreting the results in the context of the patient’s overall clinical picture. This includes:
Correlating the imaging findings with clinical symptoms and examination results.
Considering other factors, such as patient history and concurrent ocular conditions.
Diagnosis and Treatment Planning: Based on the combined automated analysis and their clinical expertise, the doctor formulates a diagnosis and develops a personalized treatment plan.
Patient Communication: The doctor explains the findings and treatment recommendations to the patient, using the annotated images and reports to enhance understanding.
Summary
Automated Analysis: Modern Meibography devices come with sophisticated software that can automatically analyze images and generate detailed reports.
Doctor’s Expertise: Despite the capabilities of automated analysis, the doctor’s interpretation and clinical judgment remain essential for accurate diagnosis and effective treatment planning.
In essence, these devices significantly enhance the diagnostic process by providing automated, detailed analyses, but the expertise of the doctor is indispensable for comprehensive patient care.
All the above seems to be appropriate from my readings and experience thus no comments needed.

Marhuk, leader of the Sentinels of Arhasak, led Lord Palanu and his entourage through the city. The wagon was taken in by servants from the palace itself, Palanu saw them struggle with eight men and realized how truly strong the men of his party were when faced with such a task.
The young noble’s attention was turned back to the guide as Marhuk pointed with his spear at a statue of a woman holding a shield as if it were an offering to the sun. The plaque at her feet said in a vaguely familiar form of Joti (the Fursaglan tongue), “Burning Father, take thy shield Feast on flesh and bone Lest men seek not to atone Send your flames of righteous fury Make them big and shine as bright To show the world you’re inexorable might And darken shadows that hide behind The power of your ever present light”
The statue was in an open square where men and women strolled about and clumped together in loud conversations. A man and a woman could be seen kissing gently in a corner while an old man watched, looking at the young couple as they reminded him of his own lost youth. A few here and there stayed in the shade offered by the colonnades from the sun’s bright, grasping fingers.
“This is the statue of the Mother’s Faith. Here Sentinels come to kneel before her and make their oaths to the Lords of Fursagla. I took my own oath here twelve years ago”, said Marhuk.
The Aroloth noble stared at the statue’s eyes and saw a faint fracture crisscrossing her thin lips. He pondered how this could’ve happened when a serving girl piped up, “Woman’s got men kneeling before her and couples fucking next to her. I’d be praying too if I had to deal with that shit happening around me”.
Palanu glowered at the servant while another of the serving girls slapped the back of her head. However, Marhuk threw his head back in laughter. Several of the men and women in the group chuckled nervously as they watched their lord’s mood darken.
“I never thought of it that way, having lived here all my life. Let us continue, my lord, to the palace”, said the Sentinel.
When they reached the elevated steps up to the palace, Palanu saw a group of men in cloth of silver surrounding a man in cloth of gold. He correctly guessed that the man standing out could only be Lord Gyholt of Fursagla. The men that surrounded him were advisors and servants. Gyholt had a thick drooping mustache and scar running across his cheek from the now famous Battle of God’s Wrath in which Emperor Zukir defeated the united hosts of Lord Gyholt and Jarl Kulak.
The palace itself was made of white marble, colonnades shined brightly and reflected the sun’s light back at it as if to defy its power.
Marhuk looked at his lord and sighed sadly, “It seems my lord still mourns his young son’s death. Little Gulast was taken by evil spirits and he hasn’t accepted it yet”.
Palanu and Marhuk walked side by side until they reached the group of men. Then the Sentinel joined his lord’s side and cleared his throat, “Lord Gyholt, I introduce to you Lord Palanu of Aroloth. He comes at the behest of Emperor Zukir and brings gifts from His Holiness’ treasury”.
Lord Gyholt’s expression was emotionless, not a hint of what he thought was shown, “What are these gifts that the God would bring to this humble lord”, said the man in cloth of gold.
Palanu made sure to keep his back straight to show a more dignified servant of the God of Aroloth and said, “His Holiness sends gifts of ivory, the traditional gold dust, and gold armor with jewels, with the faces of the twin gods carved in, worked into the shoulders”.
Lord Gyholt spoke through crescent shaped lips, “I thank the God, Zukir, for these gracious gifts. He is a most merciful and compassionate lord of men”, then dropped the smile afterwards and said, “Walk with me, Lord Palanu. I would have words with you”.
Intrigued, Palanu complied though he expected to be dismissed and shown his quarters for the night in the palace by a servant or noble born attendant.
“Is everything alright?”, he ventured.
The Fursaglan lord looked at him with a raised eyebrow and replied, “Yes, I merely wish to converse with a man who fought on the other side when the war raged. It occurs to me that I have never done so until today”, he then looked down at his attire and said, “Please forgive me for meeting you in such a manner. I wear my mourning clothes for the death of my son”.
The Aroloth man nodded, “I understand, there’s no need to apologize. I’m sure he would’ve been a fine man had fate allowed him the opportunity”.
Both of them continued the conversation as Gyholt led Palanu through a series of corridors. They spoke of a myriad of things for a good while until the subject of war came up.
The lord from Aroloth said, “War is a strange subject. Men love it and hate it in equal measure. Well, in truth it depends on which men we speak of. Commoners hate it for the disruption in daily life while young nobles love it for the glory of battle and the chance to prove their mettle”.
Gyholt nodded approvingly, “That is so. Though not even that is the full picture. Strohinites love war for the glory and wealth that they gain from it. Plunder is a major source of wealth for them. In Fursagla, your words ring truer than in Strohin”.
The Fursaglan led the Aroloth to a door with emerald handles and a large dark brown eye painted in the ash wood. Inside, there was a whole wall covered in scrolls and tablets of dried clay. The shelves were of wood and animal bone while several chairs with ivory legs and feather stuffed cushions were placed in a neat row in front of a table with several more tablets and stacks of parchment.
“You are a scholar as well as a warrior. You surprise me, my lord”, said Palanu.
Gyholt pulled a chair and wordlessly offered it to the Aroloth man before taking a seat himself, “It was my father who was both scholar and warrior. I’m not as much of a scholar as he was though I’ve been told I look like one. But anyway, we were speaking of war”.
The younger noble took the seat and said, “Yes we were, though I don’t see why we have to bring such a dreary subject to a place of knowledge”.
“That’s because this place of knowledge is also a place of mystery”, the Fursaglan lord took a piece of parchment from one of the stacks and said, “In this one, my father wrote to a mistress he hid from the public for many years before his death. He had several children with her and supplied them with enough food and water to last them a year. I tried to track this second family of his down but to no avail. It’s a shame, I would’ve liked to have met these half brothers and sisters that my father murmured of with his dying breath. Clearly he loved them more than he did his first family”.
“I’m sorry. I’m sure it must’ve been difficult to learn such a truth”, said Palanu. ‘What is the point of all this? I’m certain he has a motive here’.
Gyholt continued, “War and death are subjects which contain mysteries as yet unsolved by modern man. The next words we utter next should be reported to the Emperor especially as they will concern him”.
This surprised Palanu. Caught off guard, he was at a loss for words.
Gyholt put the parchment back, “Rumors have been circulating of a planned attack on Mofnarak. I would advise against it. Although he may conquer the world if he wants to, Zukir cannot possibly hold it all. His sons nor grandsons will hold it after him. He’s already had to face rebellions here. Can you imagine the logistical nightmare that would await us if the rebellion broke out overseas? Blood will be spilt and for what? Resources he could just as easily trade for rather than take by force”.
Palanu pondered on this for a while before saying, “If the God of Aroloth wishes to conquer the world then that is his prerogative. He’s a god after all. Gods don’t have the same concerns as lesser men”.
“Then perhaps they should. They cast those out at their peril. Well, at everyone’s peril. I don’t want to lead men to their deaths in unnecessary wars”, said the former rebel.
If Arhasak was wealthy in anything, Asgena would say in smoke. The city had metal workers like seeds scattered into an open field by a shit poor farmer. He would spit it out but knew it would only make the taste even worse as more would get in the moment he opened his mouth. That day had been especially bad as craftsmen prepared for trading season and worked vigorously to keep up with the new demand for tools, and all manner of spell bound sorceries. The mephitic smell of the arcane energies mixed with the smoke produced the foulest and most nauseating smell Asgena had ever experienced. He preferred his home region at the border between Fursagla and Tocro where men produced plywood and were sane enough to want a place for decent living.
A young man in a dark brown cloak approached the lord and bowed his head slightly, “Father, the men are ready. The sun sets and people are going to sleep. Shall we attack now?”.
Asgena looked at his son’s eyes and said in an eager voice, “Yes, let’s get out of this little corner of the market and set the plan in motion. You remember your role don’t you? Don’t groan like that, I need to know that you do”.
His son rolled his eyes and replied, “Yes Father, I am to kill a couple of peasants to attract some guards and then open the gates for the rest of the men to enter the city. I don’t know why you would even want Arhasak in the first place. This place smells worse than shit”.
Asgena smiled in understanding and harshly patted his son’s shoulder. He looked at the rest of his sons and nodded. It was time to begin the attack. His men disrobed themselves to reveal panoply armor and some chest plates and greaves. Several of those men gave the lord his greaves and chest plate with stars painted on the shoulder guards to strap on. Another one brought a helmet with intricate multicolored squares etched in and a nose guard in the shape of a boar’s head. Asgena took it and put it on.
Marhuk and two other Sentinels walked back to the gates after patrolling the area. Even though he was the leader of the famed Sentinels of Arhasak, he still took time to do grunt work so as to remain a humble man and not grow in arrogance as he believed he would if he did not. He hailed a fellow Sentinel who stood with three comrades in front of the gates to the palace.
“Lord Marhuk, how’s the perimeter?”, the Sentinel asked.
The man said, “It is quiet. How about your end?”.
“No man has sought Lord Gyholt’s blood yet. I would say things are going well enough”, said the Sentinel.
Marhuk nodded and gestured at the other two Sentinels that he patrolled with to get inside. He would’ve done the same had a man not dashed towards them.
At the blink of an eye, Marhuk and his Sentinels grabbed their weapons and shouted for the man’s name, “Wait, wait, wait! It’s me, Jasiad. I come with news!”. Yet instead of telling them the news, it dripped from his mouth in the form of blood as an arrow pierced a lung.
“Jasiad!”, yelled Marhuk who had known the man for several years, “Men, ready yourselves! Yolguna, go and warn the palace. Now!”.
Jasiad fell to the ground and bled to death as another group of men, these being in panoplies and wielding swords of obsidian and bronze, charged at them.
The archers behind them managed a single volley that killed a Sentinel, Garjag he believed his name was, and wounded two others.
Marhuk and the Sentinel he hailed, Glargen, were the last ones left. They stood side by side to meet the first wave of intruders to the palace grounds. They were overwhelmed and killed. Glargen had a sword shoved into his mouth and explode at the back of his head. Marhuk lost an arm and had his throat slit once he was in the ground.
Asgena looked at the scene with a nasty grin, “Well done, boys. Ready yourselves for the rest of the Sentinels. They won’t be as easy to kill as these two”.

Cat, aged 13, neutered male, DSH brown tabby, 6.73kg. Located in Ontario, Canada.
Theodore passed away yesterday after several days of struggling following a full tooth extraction dental procedure on Thursday, May 16th. The on-staff anesthesiologist planned to take special precautions due to his age and his asthma (Theo took a daily inhaler of fluticasone and it was well managed). He'd had pre-op blood work done and everything looked good. He'd also had any heart or lung issues (aside from the asthma) ruled out by this same hospital's cardiology department prior to this procedure.
The surgery went well and Theo woke up from anesthetic pretty quickly. The vet said he could come home that evening (Theo suffers from pretty severe separation anxiety so they thought he'd do better in a quiet room in his own home with his people). He was a bit dopey that night, but used the litterbox a few times and eventually crawled into bed with me.
First full day home, he was very quiet. Didn't want to move or eat and didn't use the litterbox. He'd been sent home with buprenorphine and Theo reacts pretty strongly to anything with a sedative effect so myself and the vet assumed this was the reason for the lethargy. They had me reduce his dose from three times a day to two and I began giving him soft food via syringe.
Second day I took Theo back to the hospital because there was a very bad smell coming from his mouth and he still wasn't moving/eating/drinking/using the litterbox. He had a low grade fever at this point but his mouth was checked and there was no sign of infection. He was given subq fluids and sent home to continue to rest. He used the litterbox once that evening, but he needed help getting to it.
The next morning Theo woke up with significant discharge coming from his eyes and nose and was full body breathing and gasping. His breathing rate was quite elevated. We rushed him back in again and he was admitted this time and put on oxygen. X-rays were done that ruled out any lung infection or heart issues (they even said his lungs look pretty decent for an asthmatic cat), but they did show his stomach was massive and filled with fluid. The vet suspected ileus.
For the next two days Theo's blood pressure would occasionally dip, but would respond to treatment. His oxygen saturation would improve, they'd try to take him off oxygen, and then it would plummet again. They put him on antibiotics on the off-chance there was some kind of URI. His BUN and creatinine levels dropped but they were able to get them back up to normal levels. They gave him a nasogastric tube and aspirated the fluid from his stomach. They tried feeding him and would aspirate each following feeding to see if it had moved, but it hadn't. They gave him medication to try and jump-start his stomach again but it never seemed to resolve. His potassium dipped at one point but they were able to get it elevated again, too.
By Monday evening his calcium dropped suddenly and I was called back to potentially euthanize because he was at high risk of cardiac arrest with it so low. The vet administered calcium immediately and by the time we got there, Theo was responding and starting to walk around. At that point we all thought we might have hit upon the cause of all of this--possible underlying parathyroidism. We stayed with Theo for a little while and he used the litterbox and was starting to show some recognition (he had been very dull and listless up to this point). When we headed home that night we thought maybe things would be okay.
Got a call around midnight that he'd taken a turn again. His blood pressure was critically low and his lactate was very elevated (8.5). He was still on oxygen. They gave him a lot of fluids and medications to try and bring his blood pressure up but there was no change in the hour or two I sat with him. They tried to re-test the lactate levels but his blood pressure was so low they couldn't get a large enough sample.
His heart and lungs continued to show no issues throughout so the vets were all at a loss trying to figure out the underlying cause. Multiple critical care vets came and went over the course of Theo's stay and each one told us how frustrated they were with this case.
In the end, Theo wasn't responding to treatment and his prognosis was very poor so we decided to humanely euthanize. He passed within seconds of the injection while resting in my lap.
I know without a necropsy there's no way to know for sure, and in those last moments with him I turned down the option because I couldn't contend with the image of his little battered body being cut open once all was said and done when I was grappling with his imminent passing and he just looked so rough... But maybe someone out there might have some general thoughts. I've included the initial report from his dentist and the invoice from his hospital stay with values (I unfortunately do not have a proper report from the hospital stay yet). I will answer any questions as best I can.
Theo's surgery report and an itemized invoice from his hospital stay: https://imgur.com/a/0NiSVB8

Hi, I had jaw surgery because I actually fell over onto my chin and broke the top part of my jawbone (the bit that goes into the socket, I don’t know what it’s called). So I had 6 hours of surgery to put a titanium plate on my jaw to help fuse the bone and replace it into the socket.
The surgeon put a metal wire/brace on my teeth which I’ve had on for a 5 weeks now. He also cut through my salivary gland to get to the bone fragment that needed fusing.
Since my surgery, I had quite a swollen face from where the salivary gland was leaking. But more annoyingly, I get what appear to be allergic type reactions after I eat food. It’s usually when it’s quite a substantial meal that requires a bit more chewing - the reactions include almost a full body rash, more severe around my neck, including hives and general red rash up my arms and legs. It usually starts with an itch on my feet, palms, back of my head and neck.
I have spoken to the surgeon and he just said it can’t be related to the surgery, and I’ve also been referred to an allergy clinic but I won’t see them until October.
Has anyone ever hear of anything like this before? I have kept a food diary but there are no trends I’ve observed, and I’m at a loss as to what’s causing it. The symptoms aren’t really in line with what I’ve seen detailed as relating to titanium or nickel. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks

The night was bone-chillingly cold. The slightest whisper of a breeze nipped at my exposed ears and drafted unpleasantly within my overly large winter coat. The black, barren trees stood unmoving like sentinels bearing ominously down upon either side of the sleet-slick street, which was lit only by dim street lamps that, other than creating a dull yellow reflection on the otherwise unlit pavement, seemed to do nothing against the oppressing dark of this fateful December night.
I had passed through a wrought iron gate twenty minutes before, the gate that separated a cozy subdivision from this eerie, undeveloped stretch of road that seemed to be dropped in the middle of the forest. I could think only of my warm, lively hearth and a nice, hot cup of tea between my palms, which now, instead of being pressed against warm porcelain, were being stabbed by my untrimmed fingernails as I tightened my fist onto the leash and plunged the other still deeper into my coat.
This night was the culmination of weeks of investigation on a missing person’s case turned sour. A man named Arthur Smith had reported his four daughters missing, then hung himself three days later when we couldn’t find anything. Oddly, Arthur’s body went missing from the morgue shortly after. The only trace left was an incredible amount of flies, and we were displeased to see that every drawer was leaking a mixture of blood and embalming fluid because the refrigerant pipes burst. When we opened them up, the neck of every corpse had been slit.
Eventually, through good detective work, we were able to connect some dots, and that led us to where we were now: We were now on a manhunt for a suspect that was last seen at a gas station about a mile up the road, not two hours earlier. We checked a network of cameras to see that he had headed for the woods, grabbed the hounds, and here we were.
My colleagues and I were spread around in different parts of the forest with the police force’s seven bloodhounds. I got stuck with Old Ben, the force’s droopiest and most seasoned canine. He was partially blind and notorious for not obeying commands. He didn’t even respond to a dog whistle, which was why some of my colleagues thought his hearing was shot. I doubted this theory, though, because sure enough, when somebody whispered the word “biscuit,” Old Benny perked up and started wagging his tail.
Another ten minutes found Old Benny and I at the end of the once seemingly endless street, with the streetlamps and pavement stopping abruptly at the edge of the woods, which had not entirely swallowed up a bulldozer. Old Ben stopped and sniffed the air for a moment, then plunged down a path in the woods to our right. It was a dirt path, not two feet wide, overgrown and partially washed out, making it an unpleasant and muddy journey from here on out.
…
My flashlight was now the only source of light illuminating our way. Its beam slid over roots and rocks that jutted out of the path at odd angles and briefly swept over the nearest trees, bringing them out of the shadow for a moment. I felt claustrophobic as they bore down upon me and upon the path. The only sound was my deep breathing, my sloppy footsteps, and Benny’s blundering in the mud about ten feet in front of me.
The path turned in such a way that I could see faint moonlight up ahead, but a cloud soon covered the moon and removed the slight comfort its light had provided. I continued following the curve of the path, and pointed my flashlight up ahead. Suddenly, everything was pitch black, as my flashlight had just gone out without a flicker. I was especially annoyed because firstly, I had just replaced the batteries earlier that week, and secondly, I caught a glimpse of the dark outline of what seemed to be a small cottage up ahead, which was now invisible in the darkness.
To my surprise, Benny stopped as soon as the light went out, which made it easy for me to replace the batteries with the ones that I always carried around in my service belt. To my dismay, Benny did not continue walking when the light flickered back on, even when I started tugging on his leash. He simply sat in the mud and peered at the cottage in the distance, which I knew for a fact he couldn’t see. The cottage was incredibly run down, but I couldn’t see much more, as it was just at the edge of my flashlight beam.
I began feeling uneasy when Benny started whimpering and backing away, tail between his legs. Our dogs were trained to bark when they found something, not stand still, and certainly not whine and back away. Old Ben had never been a skittish animal; I had never seen him act like this before. I peered back at the cottage, suspecting something more sinister than I was originally prepared for.
I tied Benny loosely around a nearby tree, so he could pull away if need be, pulled out my handgun, and continued on. Not fifteen seconds later, I was hit with the smell of blood and wet dog, and heard whimpering to my left. I told Benny to stay, and turned to find him where I left him, about twenty yards behind me, looking at me like I was insane. I bent down and examined the source of the noise, only to find one of our bloodhounds laying just off the path and covered in a mixture of mud and its own blood. It was missing its hind legs and was shivering badly. I cursed and dispatched it with a quick slit with my utility knife, then unclipped its collar and stuffed it into my pocket before turning away. I did not want to alert the suspect of my position. I grew worried about the location of my colleagues, as our dogs were trained not to run off. I also wondered what kind of predator would have taken only the hind legs of an animal. I tried not to think about it as I continued on.
As the cottage grew nearer, I was able to make out a few broken windows reflecting my light back at me. Through these I was able to see that the inside of the cottage was pitch black, the darkest black I had ever seen. I walked closer still, and I couldn’t stop looking into the darkness of the cottage. The darkness was so potent it seemed to be spilling over the window sill into the crisp night air. I felt consumed. My heart began pounding within my chest, and I felt colder than ever as I stepped toward the gravel path that led around to the left of the cottage. The sudden change in surface and the sound of my feet crunching upon the gravel seemed to break my trance, and I shuddered.
I didn’t know why I had felt so trapped, and I didn’t like it. Something was definitely wrong with this situation, and my feelings of dread intensified as I followed the gravel path around to the front of the cottage.
A dripping noise interrupted my thoughts and temporarily washed the dread from my mind. I paused. I determined it was coming from the direction I was headed, but I couldn’t see the front door yet as the porch was draped with ivy. I was suddenly hit with the putrid smell I knew all too well: the smell of death. It hit my nostrils like a truck and returned my feelings of dread all at once. I shined my beam to the front steps.
There was a dark, red liquid trickling gently down the steps, pooling under the porch: blood. I looked up onto the front porch, now visible, and saw the torso of a man hanging from his neck about three feet away from the front door. His legs were nowhere to be seen, though there was a blood trail leading into the house, and his glistening entrails swayed sickeningly with the light breeze. Blood was pooling below him, trickling down the steps, and down through the cracks in the porch. It had begun coagulating, and dark swirling orbs rotated in the puddle each time a drop splashed down. I looked up again at the carcass and recognized the man as our suspect. There was frost beginning to form at the edges of his mouth and over his glassy eyes, but his exposed entrails were still steaming. Furthermore, the blood dripping from his wound was still deep red in color. The back of my neck prickled and I knew this man had not been hanging for very long. No, not very long at all.
I raised my pistol and nudged the front door open. I was again hit with the smell of death, though now much stronger, so strong I could scarcely draw breath. The inside of the cottage was unbelievably dank, and the darkness seemed to eat the quivering beam of light I pointed out in front of me, so I couldn’t see ten feet forward.
I heard a sharp crack and I bolted my gaze to my feet. I had just stepped on a human rib. Suddenly the cottage came alive with creaking and shuffling. I heard flies buzzing all around me. I heard a raspy rushing noise to my right. I shined my flashlight to where I thought the noise was coming from, but all I saw was a bloodstained floor and darkness out in front of me. I took a step toward the noise, and the beam of light revealed the glistening mangled corpse of a man, missing most of his skin, hunched in the corner of the cottage. His whole torso was heaving, and I saw the rushing noise was coming from the base of his throat, where a large gash was opening and closing with every breath, spraying flecks of fluid. Maggots wriggled out of his wound, and black purge fluid trickled from his soupy eye sockets, his missing nose, and his gaping mouth. He was missing most of his teeth, and one of his cheeks was rotted through.
I was frozen in place with fear, until, to my horror, the man’s mangled arm rose and reached out to me. At this I aimed and put a bullet through his partially exposed skull, splattering a putrid mist on the wall behind him. Instead of slumping over, as I prayed he would, the man slowly levitated into an upright position as though controlled by a puppeteer. Skin began regrowing around his legs, his torso, and eventually his skull, which sprouted two bloody horns out of his forehead. This being had the likeness of Arthur Smith, though I sensed it was no longer him. I placed two rounds into his torso, and the being staggered, but the bullet wounds simply closed with sickening squelching sounds. I backed away slowly, and he simply stood in the corner and leered at me with burning black eyes and a disconcerting grin.
I continued to back away slowly, placing one more round between his eyes. His head jerked back, but still it healed and he seemed unbothered. I bolted around and headed for the door. I jerked the handle but it wouldn't budge. I tried kicking it down, which was something I was very practiced at, but still, the rotten oak planks held fast against my will. I turned around, back against the door, firearm at the ready, and stared into the blackness. Everything was quiet once again. Despite the temperature, cold sweat beaded upon my brow and dribbled down my neck.
Suddenly I felt a rumbling that seemed to come from the very depths of the Earth. A splitting and splintering sound came from what I presumed was the center of the cottage, and I was soon showered with bits of wood and stone that nicked my exposed skin and drew droplets of blood. I noticed my back was no longer pressed against the back of the door, though I was not moving. The floor seemed to be carrying me slowly in the direction of the noise. I was frozen in place, and found that I could not change my trajectory.
My flashlight beam found the edge of a large hole in the floor. I saw dark, root-like tendrils sprout from the hole and rush across the floor with the sound of scraping and splintering. They then returned to the hole, and they had within their grasp six bare human bodies, which I horrifically realized were those of my now former colleagues. I watched in horror as their pale naked bodies were folded, torn, ripped, and broken in the churning earth. The sound of tearing flesh and cracking bone was deafening and filled the darkness of the cottage. The mass of mangled flesh formed into one chunky, glistening mound in the center of the hole. It began pulsing and rising, and horrible screams rang in my ears. I watched in horror as the mass formed a humanoid figure that rose up ten feet out of the hole and bent over against the ceiling. It was facing away from me, but its raspy voice seemed to mix seamlessly with the screams directly in my ears.
“The churning of earth, the tearing of flesh, the cracking of bone”
At this it let out a booming laugh that reverberated in my skull and shook the foundation of the building. The cottage once again came alive, but now more than ever before. Shutters were opening and closing, floorboards were rattling, flies swarmed in a huge mass around and around the room, blocking the beam of my flashlight and obscuring my view of the figure. I felt my legs quiver along with the rest of the cottage. I looked down at a red book with its pages fluttering in the still air. I dove for it and slammed it shut, and the cottage grew still. I paused for a moment, but the giant figure began turning towards me. I bolted around to see that the door was now open, but the hung corpse was clinging to the top of the door frame, now very much alive. Its entrails were still swinging freely from its short leap, and the rope lay severed and frayed upon the ground.
I paced towards the door, dumping the rest of my magazine into the corpse, which to my relief fell to the ground with a squelch. I hopped over the body and sprinted out the front door, away from the cottage, down the dirt path. I could still hear the screams of the damned faintly in the distance, and the earth began rumbling once again underneath my feet. I continued running back along the path, trying not to think about what I had witnessed. I paused for a moment to catch my breath, and shivered in the now relentless sleet.
The pounding of the earth became the distant rumble of thunder in the distance. By the time I had gotten back to the paved road, I was soaked to the bone in cold sweat and freezing rain, and I was covered up to my thighs in mud from the path. My coat was snagged and torn in places from the splinters of wood and from branches along the path.
When I finally got back to my car, I saw a leash leading underneath it, and found Old Ben, crouched below, tail between his legs. I scooped him up and plopped him in the passenger seat, entirely disregarding the former cleanliness of my car, as it was now covered in mud and dog hair. I cranked up the heat and sped off towards the station to report what I had witnessed.
…
We never did find that cottage again. Other guys went back to where I was and failed to find the path, but they did find the dismembered bodies of my colleagues hidden under the bulldozer at the end of the street. I was charged with the deaths of my colleagues and was thrown into a mental institute, but I don’t mind it much. There are people here that are far more insane than I am. The worst part is my occasional perception of a distant rumbling, and during thunderstorms I’m a whimpering mess.
I have been disciplined three times for writing symbols on the walls that I can’t get out of my head. I draw them in my blood so they stand out more and resemble what I see. I have found that once they are on the wall, they stay out of my head. Unfortunately, I haven’t finished writing them all out yet. The first time I started I got really close to finishing, but then I found myself strapped to a hospital bed.
One of the guards seemed to take pity on me recently, though, and he told me that I could write all my symbols down into a notebook so long as I also recounted my side of the story, so here we are. He said he would post the story somewhere, but I don't care what he does with it. I just hope the symbols stay out of my head once and for all.