Brinks safe 5118d

So.. last night, the new office lady put everybit of the deposit from Mother’s Day into the brinks part of the safe. WTF am I supposed to do now? Good lord. I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle with these people. All of their names should be can’t get right.

My father is very toxic, egotistical, selfish who only cared about himself.my mother is big time enabler that will do everything to keep the "peace" at home even if me and my future is crushed in the process.
When I was in lycée, my father only cared about moving to where his parents were from despite being some remote place in the country side were no basic infrastructure but he kept fighting us for years for this because of some childhood fantasy in his head, he even moved several times to that place but he couldn't handle. Imagine going home tired from school to only walk into a fight at home, or my father just randomly starts destroying stuff because he is angry, or one time you go home to find out that he wrote "للبيع" on our house. Or my mother telling me not to smile when entering the house.
I considered running away somewhere far away in my childhood several times and never coming back, walked 15 kilometers to my aunt several times just to get away from his mess.
Despite my rough childhood, I understood early on that no body will come to save me and that I need to fight for my self, I was beyond excellent in high school but I understood that I cannot rely on my father for so long I needed to finish my studies faster, so I avoided studying médecine and did engineering.
He kept bugging my mum to make me join the army or the police for a safe job so I can help out the family but I kept refusing and stood my ground because that was not something I want to do although I cave in several times and went to show my testicles to the police twice. But luckily I was not accepted despite reaching the final stage twice.
My father really never cared what I study or what I do or what are my goals, he only sees me as some worthless loser or probably a liability, actually he enjoys humiliating me in front of his friends to depict the picture of him being in control. In reality I kept despising him more with every insult.
Miserable years pass and I got the opportunity to leave the country directly to do my PFE in Germany and then I got a job there in a very cool company, I was being paid nicely compared to engineers in Tunisia. a money that would trigger some other problems with my father.
My father never really cared about me he always thought that I will study for few years and come back to stay at home to join the sea of unemployed people in Tunisia. Now I'm working, not only that as an engineer and not only that in Germany.
His language has changed, and also I needed to help my siblings, I needed my family to finally have some good life, I thought the problem with my father was money, I started rationalizing his behavior in the past ,I said he was like that because life was hard, I started sending money like crazy, kept few savings but sent them most of it, I was working like a dog and saving like there's no tomorrow.
Everything was stable and fine at home, I go on vacation and no major problems at home.
And then COVID-19 hit, companies started closing around me, crisis and unemployment. I needed to save some money for myself, I needed to have some peace of mind And then the language has changed again
My father expected me to work only for him way into my fourties, he doesn't want me to have my separate money, every time I fly to Tunisia, the same topic give us your savings. He even pin me against my brother who works in the government saying to him, he is getting rich while we stay where we are, although I bought land to my father and renovated the house and still send to this day monthly amount of money when he was at the brink of bankruptcy but he wanted more for himself and less for me.
He stopped taking care of my 2 other younger siblings, he stopped spending on the house and I stepped up.
Imagine going to visit your family abroad, no one waits for you in the airport each time, no one takes you to the airport, entering the house him and my brother no one from them both welcome me even if I stay for a whole year away, no calls in the Eid, Ramadan, when I'm sick, when I'm dead, pure silence from him and my brother.
My mother and my other 2 siblings either siding with me or caught in the middle, I don't really want them to engage in any of this, I want them to study and succeed
At this stage, I'm just indifferent and expect so little from people, I'm working on myself to become a better father, and I rarely remember my father, I don't hate him, I don't love him complete numbness, going to vacations in other countries and living my life.
As for him, his entitlement will get in the way for any self assessment, I never saw my father apologize for anything, and probably will never be, for him I'm the son that refused to be a slave and that's enough reason for him to hate me for life.
For my brother every time I see him I feel like he is about to explode because I did not fulfill his unreasonable demands .. because he thinks he is entitled to my life savings .. whatever..
The moral of the story, you can't fix your broken parents, you leave them alone.

For TLDR: skip to end where I list what abilities theyd have.
Someone here had made a post where everyone on the sub works to create a strong jjk character based on abilities already in the show, but there was a restriction that only one quality from each character could be used. I think it is possible for there to be more. So first, let's set up the situation.
Note: 4 CTs on the brain is the limit for any sorcerer according to Yuki otherwise their brain explodes
We need a character like Kenny with the Brain ability who will traverse time pulling strings to create the perfect sorcerer. Let's call him Mr. Kaisen.
Mr. Kaisen will create cursed fetuses, and use them to create our perfect sorcerer. A half human/half curse hybrid like Itadori who is capable of storing Sukuna as a vessel.
Then, he will find his way into the Gojo clan, keep on taking backshots making sure that no one else but him gets pregnant throughout many many generations.
Then, our six eyes user with vessel capabilities is born and infinity, and from sheer luck, the child has a similar restriction like Mechamaru making them very frail, but powerful.
At this point, Mr Kaisen will have a few CTs of his own. Curse Manipulation (killing the previous user) and Copy from having been a relative of Yuta Okkotsu at some point since Gojo and Yuta are related.
Mr. Kaisen grooms this child to become as powerful as a six eyes user can be despite the restriction, then feeds him just one Sukuna finger.
Then, Mr. Kaisen, with the trust of the six eyes user, promises to save them from Sukuna because they have no idea wtf happened and can barely take it but only once Shrine has been implanted into the six eye user's brain.
Mr. Kaisen kills him, takes his body, and because Mr. Kaisen, like Kenny, believes the soul and body are the same, still suppresses Sukuna.
Then, he eats 19 more fingers and Sukuna's body.
Years later, using the trust of the Zenin clan, he meets with Megumi Fushiguro to "train" him, but in reality, he just wants to copy 10S.
He does this, slaughters Megumi who never achieved his potential and slaughters all the 10S except totality. He made sure Megumi could be a cursed spirit by using non sorcerers to kill him while on the brink of death. Then absorbs him.
Mahito is born and swiftly copied and absorbed into his Cursed Manipulation as well as the other disaster curses.
He uses idle transfiguration to fix his body, unlocking his true potential as a sorcerer with boundless cursed energy akin to Yuta Okkotsu with the power efficiency of Satoru Gojo.
He brings the entirety of the Zenin clan close to death, and uses a cult of non sorcerers he founded to kill and turn them into vengeful cursed spirits like Naoya.
He beats Tengen, absorbs her. He beats Yuki and copies her.
And, for safe measure, ISoH and Soul Split Katana are stolen.
Mahito in CM form is used to start the culling games, and every reincarnated sorcerer is killed and turned into a cursed spirit using his cult, then absorbed.
This part is more speculative: Then he uses Unlimited Void on himself everyday for years to annihilate Sukuna's soul, and if it is true that Sukuna is like Tengen, half curse half human, either he gets lucky and black flashes himself so much that Sukuna's soul is finally brought out or used ISoH or SSK. Because Sukuna is immobilized mentally, Mr Kaisen absorbs him like tengen.
Possibly even starts the merger since technicallyMr Kaisen is dead too, and absorbs that monstrosity which contains all of japan. Then the entire world.
Now what we have is the ultimate sorcerer and summoner class in JJK:
A half curse/half human with Kenny's technique controlling a vessel sorcerer containing Sukuna (created from merging gojo and itadori/sukuna lines) like Yuji with:
Trait: Six Eyes/Vessel/Brain
CT: Shrine, Infinity, Curse Manipulation, Copy (4 max otherwise brain explodes apparently)
Cursed Spirits under control: Possibly Sukuna, CS Megumi, Mahito, Jogoat, Hanami, CS Naoya, all of the Zenins, Tengen,CS Kashimo, Ryu, etc.
Domain: Unlimited Void, but all of his cursed spirits as well.
Shikigami: Just Totality. All were slaughtered to achieve something incredibly powerful.
CE amount: Yuta/Rika
CE Output: Sukuna
Speed: Gojo/Sukuna
Physical Strength: Yuji
IQ: Todo
RCT: Gojo/Sukuna
Potential: All of the new generation combined with old.
Weapon: ISoH, SSK

My dear,
I wish I could blame you for that. But I can't. I know fully well that I can't just burden someone else with my own heavy feelings. I've always wanted to live truthfully, shamelessly, without having to hide who I am and how I am. But the price is too high. The price is vulnerability, and vulnerability implies openness and risk. I thought I knew better, I thought I was OK with the risk I took, but I don't think I can handle it.
It's 4pm and it's scorching hot. I feel like I am drowning in my own unsaid words. Drowning in unshed tears. Everything around me is so beautiful it hurts. And I wish it were not so. I wish the world would bend over and the skies would turn gray and gloomy, it seems unfair that this day gets to be so beautiful when I'm suffocating.
When we met, I could never expect I'd catch myself daydreaming about your smile. Not really your smile, but how the entire world lights up when you beam, how your eyes shimmer with warmth and tenderness. And sometimes I hate you for that, I hate you for being so full of light I can't look away. You shouldn't do that around me.
And then there were moments of shared understanding, when I felt I could see it in your eyes, too. In your arms. At the very core of your bones. I can't bear the intimacy of knowing your darkest fears and of giving away mine, too. I never meant for that to happen. It just did.
I couldn't sleep last night because I knew I'd see you today. And we met. I guess I broke my own heart when I expected us to spend the rest of the day together. I couldn't muster the courage to say it.
I can't say no to you. When you said you wanted to meet up before I leave for my long trip, I said yes, knowing fully well I can't. I can't be your friend anymore. I can't be your friend because I caught feelings for you. And the rejection would be just too much for me to handle.
The truth is, I am terrified of the depth of these feelings. I am terrified of how easy it is to be with you. I am not fourteen anymore, I feel so pathetic when I think I'm in love with a man I haven't even kissed or made love to. I thought I wouldn't be at risk of falling for you if I kept my distance. But I fell for you. I fell for your smile, for the warmth of your hug, for the moments our eyes secretly meet in the group, for the way your eyes light up when you talk about something you deeply care about. And in that moment I want nothing but to bask in the light of your eyes and your smile. And I am so, so scared of the depth of these feelings. I am scared of who I will be if I dare to look at the other side, in the mirror - I am scared of this new person, this stranger, this person I never thought I could be.
You see, my dear, I've been in therapy for over half of my life. I am a lost cause. It took me decades to get in touch with my feelings. But once I started feeling them, it poured. And I feel I can't keep them in anymore. I am sorry for saying good-bye in such a rushed manner. I am apologizing in advance for my absence. But I can't do this anymore. It was all light and fun until I realized with a heavy heart I am already missing you even before we part ways.
But we must. I have no indication you feel the same for me. I can't be orbiting around you anymore hoping for something I can't have. I'm at the brink of despair. I'm tired of looking at the tarot cards with a child-like hope that the cards can shed light and show me a path to be with you. I don't know what to do anymore. All I want is for this feelings to wither and die, except for when I am with you. When I am with you, I want nothing.
I am almost thirty. I thought I would know better by now. I thought I would find my own path by not engaging in make-believe games, by not pretending to be someone I am not, by not hiding myself, by not burying my feelings deeper and deeper until it was safe to process them, away from prying eyes. I thought I would have the bandwidth to show up in an authentic way, to be open and vulnerable, but now I am left with this mess, and I don't know how to fix it. I never wanted to fall for you.
And yet I did.
Funny to think we never even made out, and yet your face is carved out in my brain, my body is so aware of your body, of your presence, I can almost sense it if I close my eyes for a second. In a room full of people, with a blindfold, I can find my way to you.
I know I can find you in the deepest corners of my dreams. But I can't keep dreaming any longer. I am scared of dreaming alone.
And when I look out of the window, and everything around me is so warm and beautiful and bright, it hurts to think you are so engraved in me I'll keep you in me, in my body, in my heart, in my mind, for all eternity. Eternity fits in a split second, a split second in which our eyes met and I instantly knew you knew it, too.
Please don't forget me. I love you.

Nate is a next generation Synth, first of his kind. In a secret project called “Project Vault Boy” the goal is to create a highly intelligent super soldier that would lead them into the future and reclaim order on the surface with the ability to learn and adapt intense situations hence the crazy abilities you possess from SPECIAL. The Institute is also aware of the situation with Vault 88 and plan on eventually assigning Nate to take control of 88 and turn it into the first institute outpost, the first step in controlling the commonwealth. Nates pipboy possesses the ability of teleportation but wont be activated until he reaches the institute. Nate is also given Dogmeat a synth Dog to accompany him although Nate is unaware that it was planned. The trial test is to track and kill Kellogg and reach the institute on his own. If he is capable of this he is capable of leading The Institute.
After the Battle Of Bunker Hill. Nate is assigned with the task of investigating Rumors of a runaway Synth colony up North. After the events of Far Harbor Nate learns of his true nature and what he really is driving him to the brink of insanity. He kills everyone on the island as an attempt to keep his secret.
Months later Nate returns to The Commonwealth and reports straight to the brotherhood using the destruction of the synth colony as his patsy for why he has been missing also scribe Haylen covered for him claiming he was searching for a piece of pre war tech.
Nates first assignment back is to take care of some new players on the block that have been causing trouble. The Rust Devils. The events of The Automatron DLC then take place
During the mass fusion building events Nate suffers terrible radiation damage and is horribly disfigured as a result he now has to inhabit a custom power armor suit to stay alive.
After being forced to kill Danse. Nate now knows the Institute is just manipulating him and that if the Brotherhood ever found out he was a synth they would kill him. So he uses the brotherhood to destroy the institute to cover his secret. Around this time he uncovers the plans for Vault 88. Afterwards he uses the Railroad to destroy the Brotherhood for he will never truly feel safe with their existence. While the Railroad is celebrating their victory Nate teleports right infront of all of them at HQ and proceeds to kill them all as the final step in covering his true secret.
With Nate now having full power over the commonwealth. He turns towards vault 88. Making it his new HQ with supply lines reaching all the way as Far Harbor (the few people he left alive there)
While keeping order to the commonwealth. Reports came in of a potentially huge raider army in the old nuka world amusement park. Nate goes to investigate and goes missing. He is presumed dead. The events of Nuka World DLC take place.
About a year later a powerful warlord masked in power armor comes to the commonwealth from nuka world and takes control killing settlements to make outposts for his army and enslaving others. The only settlements left standing are Vault 88, The Castle, Bunker Hill and Covenant as well as the Far Harbor settlements. These settlements are left alone because of the ammount of caps they bring in for The Overboss. Preston Garvey is the only one who knows who the overboss truly is and for this he is imprisoned in a dungeon in the castle which has been turned into a giant colliseum for the overbosses enjoyment for the rest of his life.
Under his control the commonwealth is essentially turned into a militarized drug fueled raider state. Its all supposed to be a reference to the institutes “Gabriel” mission where you see what a synth is capable of if not controlled.
Long Live The Nuka Empire!!!!!

NOTE FROM AUTHOR: Hello Hello! I am a first-time writer embarking on my first dumpster fire; input is most welcome. I'm not the best self-editor, so get your hiking boots on. It's rough out there. Whenever I read it, I find or create more errors (:
OPTIONAL READS: For the Retro Computer or Programming Enthusiast OR if you are open to other formats of story telling. I tried to combine my love for programming as an UNDERSTANDABLE way to tell a story through a Visual Experience in the Command Line Interface;
A Stand-Alone VISUAL ASCII 'Programming Terminal' Story Prologue. Follow through(Screen Shots of my Command Line Interface) the UNE-EYE Observational Satellite Terminal as Kable extracts Classified Data about his Beloved Military Unit, THE HUMMINGBIRDS, a flying exoskeleton unit. This includes the origin story of a Technology Tree in Book 1.

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INDEX

1. DEADCOAST - THE HUMMINGBIRDS PROLOGUE -> HERE <-
   
2. DEADCOAST - COMPLETE ILLUSTRATED INTRO -> HERE <-
   
3. HEAT & GRIZZLY REDS - CHAPTER 1 ILLUSTRATED -> HERE <-
   

"Deadcoast Book 1: Heat and the Grizzly Reds" transports readers to a 2063 Earth, a world on the brink, where the scarcity of fresh water has led to previously unseen geopolitical tensions. Amidst this backdrop, the nation-backed militant group DAGGR has emerged as a formidable force, leveraging advanced technology to assert control over Canada’s abundant water resources. At the heart of their arsenal is 'slugTech,' a technology pioneered by James Broadshaw, intended for ecological restoration but repurposed for militaristic dominance.
The story unfolds with the chilling invasion of Vancouver, marking a turning point as DAGGR makes its ambitions clear, culminating in the assassination of the Canadian Prime Minister. This act of aggression leaves the country reeling, exposing vulnerabilities and igniting a global reaction.
The UNE-EYE satellite is central to the international response, a significant narrative element representing the world's most advanced orbital tracking system. Once decommissioned in favour of privacy, the Dutch reactivated the satellite as a strategic move to monitor DAGGR's movements and coordinate a unified international effort against the aggressors. This revival of UNE-EYE symbolizes a crucial turning point, highlighting the global stakes and the interconnectedness of nations in the face of a common enemy.
As Canada grapples with its plight, the DAMU (Deserted American Military Units) rise in solidarity, breaching borders to fight alongside their Canadian counterparts. This act of defiance is mirrored by international forces, including the Netherlands and Ukraine, each bringing their unique strengths to the coalition, underscored by the strategic oversight provided by the UNE-EYE satellite.
Amidst the geopolitical chaos, a man who had all but given up, a boxer on the ropes, emerges from Vancouver's Gastown. Known as HEAT, this leader of the Grizzly Reds becomes a symbol of resistance and hope. HEAT's story, and that of the Grizzly Reds, is one of resilience, rallying not only Canadians but also global citizens to stand against DAGGR's tyranny.
" Deadcoast Book 1: Heat and the Grizzly Reds" is a compelling narrative of survival, alliance, and resistance. It deftly weaves together elements of advanced technology, international politics, and the indomitable human spirit. The inclusion of the UNE-EYE satellite serves as a testament to the complexities of modern warfare and the critical role of global surveillance and coordination in maintaining security and freedom. But something else stirs amongst it. The UNE still shrouds its use, albeit assuring it is for record-keeping purposes- there is no way to be sure. Join HEAT and the Grizzly Reds as they navigate the challenges of Time, War, Science and liberating their fellow man in Vancouver. THE GRIZZLIES NEED YOU, in this action-packed, emotional saga, speaks to the resilience and camaraderie inherent in the human condition.
CHAPTER 1 - The Blood Spattered Maples
ILLUSTRATED VERSION -> HERE <-
The early morning sun cast a serene glow over Vancouver, its golden rays gently coaxing the city from its slumber. The harbour lay still, bathed in a tranquil blend of crimson and amber, defiantly calm as if aware of the day's latent potential for tumult. The awakening streets, pulsating with the vibrant beat of daily enterprise, transformed into bustling arteries of life.
Amidst this urban renaissance, Ryan stood by his apartment window, one eye still tinged a fading shade of deep lavender from last night's ordeals. He absorbed the duality of the world outside – a peaceful façade masking an undercurrent of chaos, much like his own existence. The apartment, a silent guardian of his life's chapters, was awash with tangible memories; some stood proudly like trophies, and others lingered like indelible scars.
"Eugh, need to sort out this money mess," Ryan muttered, his voice a gravelly mix of resolve and weariness. He gingerly touched the bruise beneath his eye, a stark reminder of the previous night's fight. He wasn't just a boxer but a living, breathing paradox. His undefeated record of 12-0 was more than a tally of victories; it was a map of a life spent dancing in and out of shadows. At 17, he was a beacon of hope for Canadian Olympic Futures. Now, at 33, he was a spotlight in his subconscious, illuminating the relentless passage of time and a road riddled with 'what ifs.' Eleven of those wins were echoes from a past steeped in the sweat and blood of the ring before life's currents swept him into the city's gritty underbelly. There, he became an enforcer, not out of choice but a necessity, bound by ties, not of blood but of unbreakable bonds forged in adversity. Stepping back into the ring at 33, Ryan wasn't chasing glory; he was hunting redemption, a chance to rewrite a narrative that had veered off course.
Today's boxing was far from what he once knew; it had transformed into a digital spectacle, a charade he refused to partake in. The sport now paraded fighters adorned with loud chains and face tattoos, pretending to live a life of crime they don't. Vile symbols of fame he doesn't wish for. Ryan had always skirted the fringes of the spotlight, respecting the sport but despising what it had become - a glorified masquerade that he believed led the youth astray. He stared out at the awakening city, contemplating his place in this ever-changing world, just as the first notes of a familiar yet unwelcome voice crackled from the vintage radio on his shelf.
"Ah, jimmy2piece," he scoffed, the name leaving a bitter taste. The vintage radio crackled on, announcing the dazzling exploits of the heavyweight boxing champion, an embodiment of everything Ryan detested about the sport's current state. Ryan's hand lingered over the old radio, a relic amidst the bountiful thrift and trinket that abundantly filled his apartment. The announcer's voice, overly flamboyant in its praise of 'jimmy2piece,' clashed with the morning's tranquillity, grating against Ryan's every nerve. With a flick brimming with contempt, he silenced the intrusive chatter. The ensuing silence was a stark reminder of his path's divergence from the once-noble art of boxing to a life mired in moral ambiguity.
"Enough of this nonsense," he muttered, the disdain in his voice mirroring the snarl on his lips as he spun the dial back to silence.
*Click*
Ryan was a man of contemplation; opening his balcony door, he let the morning breeze mingle with the memories that haunted him daily. These reflections were a tormenting ritual, no matter the joys and love surrounding him. His only respite was constant movement – hobbies, work, art – anything to fend off the sharp claws of the past that threatened to shred the remnants of his self-respect. He had lost ten years to choices and actions that replayed in his mind relentlessly every single day.
"This 'jimmy2shoes' or whatever...pal throws pillows, a poser pretending he's about that gang life; I can see it in his eyes, he's not a killer," he grumbled, gazing out at the awakening city. This day promised a respite from his underground fights – at least for a while. His recent backstreet brawls, a far cry from the glory of the boxing ring, were what paid the bills now. "At least I've bought myself three more months..."
Leaning on the railing of his miniature balcony, Ryan cradled a cup of steaming coffee, his gaze drifting over the streets below. At this moment, the chaos of his life seemed distant, replaced by a transient calm. Despite his bruised, rough presentation, a certain peace enveloped him, a rare stillness that belied the storm of his existence. His thoughts meandered through the serene hum of the city and the gentle brush of the ocean breeze. The skyscape, with clouds dancing to the ocean's rhythm, offered a brief escape from his turbulent past.
Memories of Robin, his mentor and friend, floated into his consciousness. Robin's untimely death in Dubai was a wound that never healed. The sacrifices he had made to keep Robin safe, only to be absent on the fateful trip that claimed his friend's life, weighed heavily on him. "Why did it have to be you, Robin?" he whispered to the horizon, the question, a haunting torment upon his daily routines.
Ryan was a thinker; as he slid over his ashtray from the stool, he sparked up A morning 'dart' (cigarette), as he called them. His past began to creep into his head, as it did every morning. With each inhalation of addiction-soothing nicotine, his blazing thoughts followed as his brain began to become fully active from his sleep. It was a raven on his shoulder tormenting him, pecking at him ever haunting his consciousness. No matter the love he may have found or the happiness, friends, or family surrounding him. The time to reflect was always grim and consistently unbearable. If he stood still, the Ravel's claws sunk more profoundly; the only reprieve was constant distractions. It's why he kept so busy, creative, and active. Ryan constantly kept moving with hobbies, work, or art. Pushing off the switchblade thoughts ready to cut into his subconscious and bleed out whatever self-respect he had left that day. He threw away ten years of his life, and he relives them every. Single. Day.
"Damn man, what's the point of it all?" Ryan's voice was barely a whisper, lost in the morning breeze. His gaze lingered on the horizon, eyes clouded with confusion and pain. "Robin's gone, and here I am, a ship adrift; up shits creek without a paddle. What good can I do? What purpose do I serve? My skillset? My knowledge? Ive wasted my life, nothing is applicable." The questions hung in the air, unanswered. Ryan's life had indeed been a storm of violence and turmoil, from the gritty days working alongside Robin, watching his back to his hard-fought victories in the boxing ring. He had dreamt of leaving the world of fights behind, yet fate seemed to have woven a different path for him, one that he couldn't escape...
The distant sound of boat horns broke his train of thought. These weren't the usual rhythmic calls that echoed along Vancouver's shores; they carried a sense of urgency, growing louder and more frantic by the second. Ryan leaned forward, squinting into the morning light. The sight that greeted him was anything but ordinary. Dark, ominous and foreboding shapes were cutting through the waters toward the Seawall – military-grade ships that seemed like phantoms against the sun's bright backdrop.
"What the...?" Ryan murmured, a wry smile touching his lips as he recalled a line from a 1930s radio show. "Ah yes, the 'Anti-Frackers' upping their game, bravo!" He often found solace in humour, a shield against the world's harsh realities. Ryan was an unbreakable anvil to the world, always struck to sharpen others' steel. But what about his iron resolve? He bore the burdens so others didn't have to, a silent guardian shouldering the world's weight in stoic silence. Yet beneath that armour of stoicism beat the heart of a man grappling with his vulnerabilities, a man with a core as soft as it was intense.
Just like that- The world as we knew it, changed forever.
The morning's peace shattered abruptly as sirens wailed into life, slicing through the air with a sense of impending doom. The tranquil dawn was now a backdrop to a nightmare unfolding in real time. Ryan's eyes, mirroring the turbulent hues of a stormy sea, narrowed in primal alertness. These were not friendly vessels coming to grace the city's harbour; they were harbingers of chaos, their arrival a silent scream in the gardens of Vancouver's tranquility. As the city around him carried on, blissfully unaware of the looming threat, Ryan's mind shifted into high gear, honed by years of confrontation, conflict and reading other peoples intentions. He understood the unspoken language of death, the subtle shift in the air that preluded catastrophe. The serene calm that had greeted the day now seemed like the deceptive stillness before a devastating storm.
PFFFFT~~
Ryan's coffee ejected out his mouth, a clean mist dispersed, dancing in the ocean winds.
His eyes widened in shock. "That... No, that's not right. That honeycomb structure on the bow – that's rumoured military tech, not something you'd find on a civilian vessel. That's definitely not one of our decommissioned ships; Canada has always had a modest military budget- It's not the U.S. either; they've moved on to those massive city carriers," he muttered, recalling the recent unveiling of the U.S.'s latest naval behemoth designed to be a self-sustaining war ecosystem.
"These are destroyers...carriers...and what in the world are those landing crafts?" His voice trailed off as a wave of realization washed over him. A heavy breath escaped his lips, his heartbeat thundering in unison with a growing sense of dread. This kind of military might, sleek and menacing, was straight out of the pages of a dystopian novel. Ryan's pulse quickened, adrenaline coursing through his veins, mingling with an unsettling fear. Vancouver, with its serene beauty and peaceful reputation, was the last place one would expect a military invasion. Yet, as he stood there, the city around him persevered in blissful ignorance. Laughter and the sounds of daily life echoed up to his balcony, starkly juxtaposed against the darkening horizon of his thoughts.
Something sinister was unfolding, and he felt an urgent need to act. "Ah, damn it!" he exclaimed, frustration boiling over as he hurled his mug to the ground, where it shattered into razer sharp ceramic shards—a glimpse of futures past.
The walls of Ryan's apartment, once a gallery of memories from a life half-lived, now felt like they were closing in on him. The space that had been his refuge, adorned with mementos of a tumultuous past, suddenly felt like a prison. He felt trapped, not by physical barriers, but by the weight of the unfolding crisis. Who could he call? Who would believe him about an impending military assault? Was there even time?
Each option seemed as hopeless as the next, leaving him feeling powerless. His fists, which had once brought him victory in the ring, now seemed futile in the face of this immense and unknown threat.
BOOM
A thunderous crash tore through the city's fabric, piercing the veil of laughter and routine. Giggles changed to Shrieks, the buzzing of cars in the city turned screeching of panicked tires. It was a boom resonating with such force that it seemed to shake the very resolve of the most robust steel, a sound that demands attention and captivates a person, a sound of death; it rattles you to the bone. This explosion marked a pivotal moment that would forever alter the course of Vancouver's history and, indeed, the world's.
The resounding echo of the first explosion heralded a declaration of war on all that was ordinary. In Ryan, the shockwave ignited a transformation. Despair morphed into an unyielding determination, a fire kindled deep within. His skin prickled, each hair standing on end as if his nerves were braille, spelling out the moment's urgency.
"Are they firing at us?" Ryan's voice was a mix of disbelief and rising panic. The thought seemed almost too surreal to entertain. He hesitated momentarily, grappling with the reality of the situation. The explosion's roar, so fierce it shook the foundations of his apartment, jolted him back to the present. Racing back to his balcony, what he saw confirmed his darkest fears.
The ships in the harbour were no longer silent, ominous spectators; they had unleashed their fury, sending plumes of smoke and debris skyward. Vancouver's skyline, once a proud testament to peace and progress, now served as a harrowing backdrop to an unfolding apocalypse. Below, the streets descended into chaos. People scattered in a frantic attempt to escape, their screams piercing the air, a chorus of dawning terror.
Ryan's heart pounded against his chest, each beat a call to action. He was no hero, never the 'good guy' in his story, but he did value life above all. Standing there, witnessing his city being torn apart, he knew he couldn't remain a passive observer. Indecision and shock gave way to resolve.
"MOTHA FU-" he cursed, his words lost in the burst of an explosion, spotted at the last second.
The world around him had erupted into a maelstrom of fire and fury.
An air burst shell detonated with ferocious intensity a mere 50 meters from Ryan's sanctuary. The explosion ripped through the building, an unforgiving hatred that jolted reality itself. The blast wave, a monstrous force of destruction, assaulted his apartment, shattering the windows with an ease that mocked Vancouver's fragility. Glass shards, transformed into lethal projectiles, hurtled through the air with a hunter's precision, each piece seeking its target. Instinctively, Ryan lunged for cover, his only protection a vintage oak promotional board, a relic of a bygone era. This wooden guardian, decorated with the iconic image of Stan Lee, stood as a stoic defender, a symbol of comic heroism now repurposed to shield flesh and blood from the brutal onslaught.
A low hum erupts from the depths of his being as the fireball swirled around him. "Breathe... I can't... don't fall asleep... don't...sleep..." he whispered, fighting the encroaching darkness. His cobalt eyes, glazing over open, fighting to the last light, flickered between consciousness and oblivion. The distant, muffled voices of mentors past echoed in his mind, a fading chorus in the theatre of his memories. Ryan looked to his left, cast one last lingering look at the Vancouver sky, a canvas of blue that seemed so distant now. As his vision began to narrow, a tunnel drawing him away from the light, Ryan felt the grip of darkness pulling him under heavy, yet weightless. Once so vivid and alive, the world around him was fading into shadows.
Amid shrapnel-induced unconsciousness, Ryan's mind catapulted him back to a pivotal moment from his youth – the Ontario Canadian Olympic Trials.
The stadium's noise swirled around him, but it was an entirely different world within the ring. There, it was just Ryan and his opponent, every move a testament to the sacrifices he and Robin(Ryan's longtime mentor both inside, and outside the ring) had made together.
Ryan's style in the ring was unique, a blend of calculated ferocity in speed and agility. He adopted the elusive, angular movements that Robin had honed while serving alongside the hardened Ukrainians on the frontlines of Kyiv. This style was compelling and unpredictable, frustrating his opponents with swift and efficient strikes. Ryan's ability to slip away from counters, almost serpentine in its execution, left them grasping at straws.
Point fighting for the Olympics was a system that worked well with Ryan's style but not necessarily with his mindset. Ryan was a fighter at heart, and sometimes, when pushed, the disciplined techniques would give way to a rawer form of combat. Robin, who always believed in Ryan's potential, saw this as his greatest fault and biggest asset to "push past." In his gruff but encouraging voice, Robin would often spew "The stink in that mind, You've got a head on you that'd make an onion cry," highlighting Ryan's occasionally impulsive nature, and inability to control his emotions when it mattered. This characteristic made Ryan fearless in the ring but also sloppy, open, and vulnerable. It often led him into trouble outside of the solace in prizefighting.
In these trials, Ryan's physical attributes – his slender frame, broad shoulders, wide back and a peculiarly long wingspan that gave him an imposing presence in his weight class – it made him stand out. His frame synchronized with his style, creating a truly unique spectacle of genetic gifts, hard work, and skill.
These memories blended nostalgia and pain as they flickered through Ryan's mind. They were reminders of a path once trodden, a journey shaped by the influence of a mentor and the determination of a fighter's spirit.
As the Olympic Trials set to begin, Robin looked to Ryan to instill confidence for his upcoming bouts, but Ryan was in his element. It was fight day, the fun day, the day to show off all of the hard work. Ryan had confidence, and his style in the ring displayed it in full. He moved with an angular rhythm that was both art and battle – slipping, landing a quick stiff counter cross, then gracefully stepping out of reach inches from returning fire. He made it look fun and easy, as if playing with his prey before fangs clench throat, delivering the killing bite. Looking closer, you can only see fire and determination in his bright eyes. He found purpose in the beautiful science of boxing. His strategy was that of a technical boxer, The Counterpuncher; 1. To bait his opponent into committing, then counter, fight long, fight smart. 2. Beat em' up, Frustrate em', then start slinging the heat in the uppercuts and lead hooks.
The bell rang and the fight was officially underway. Ryan controlled the ring with his long frame. Each exchange was rapid yet controlled, a dance of precise strikes and evasive maneuvers. The world's complexities faded in these moments, leaving only Ryan and the pure essence of the sport he loved. He felt invincible, a force of nature within the confines of the ring. To Ryan, the fight was more than a competition; it was a performance, an exhilarating escape from the mundane. It was true Purpose.
The intensity of the round reached a frustrating outburst by his opponent, who grabbed Ryan by the back of his head– 'SPLIT' called by the referee, his hand placed between them. A judge calls for a correction, catching the referee's attention only for a split second. In this second, Ryan's Opponent saw an opportunity. Lifting his head to move away, Ryan locks eyes with his Opponent, sporting a grin and delivering a sly headbutt as a parting gift. It's against the rules, but part of the game's harsh reality if gone unnoticed. Expelling energy and detesting it was a waste of fuel. It was a jolting reminder of "at all times"(protect yourself), a stark contrast to the discipline and respect Ryan upheld, starting his boxing journey in Thailand under "Muay Thai" rules, ideology of the worrior spirit and discipline. There was a sense of Honor in Lumpinee Stadium.
The outcome of these unsavoury tactics here is an advantage for the opponent. Ryan's inner pools erupt, his mind swirled with raging white waters, crashing and colliding against each other, two oceans with opposite currents meeting in his consciousness. His once technical thoughts, muscle memory mixed with fight iq burst with flames, erupting and incinerating all strategy in his path. His eyes widened, open like he'd found his primal genetic ancestry hidden deep within. The slaughter and the war of history. The bloodshed of 1000 lifetimes. He felt it all. Manic in thought. Ryan wanted to take his glove off and rip his cheeks open from the inside out--
BREAK - Ryan snaps back into it, erupting in stoic, silent, primal rage.

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The fight escalated, Ryan's disciplined technique unravelled under the seething tide of his rage. The finesse and agility that once defined his footwork gave way to a heavier, more aggressive stance. His feet, usually light and swift under his commanding frame, now felt anchored to the floor, each step driven more by fury than finesse. This transformation in style played perilously into his opponent's advantage. Ryan, usually a master of stick-and-move tactics, found himself engaging in close-quarter brawls, trading his advantage for a risky gamble. His in-and-out maneuvers, once a blur of grace, turned into brutish, in-the-pocket exchanges. This was a terrain where his more muscular and compact opponent had the upper hand. A raw, primal contest of power replaced the tactical dance that Ryan excelled at. Ryan's precise strikes became wild swings, his movements predictable to his seasoned adversary. Seizing the moment, the opponent unleashed a devastating barrage of inside hooks with their compact frame. A vicious right hook, lands clean in the exchange, thrown with the grace of a milkbag, the power hooks brute force, cut through Ryan's defences. The blow landed with a bone-jarring impact, sending a shockwave through Ryan's frame. His world spun as he stumbled, his once dominant presence in the ring now faltering under the weight of his unchecked emotions.
The ground rushed up to meet him as he crashed onto the canvas, the taste of iron and the sting of defeat mingling in his mouth. The crowd's roar faded into a distant echo, a stark reminder of how quickly the tides of battle could turn. Robin's voice sliced through the ringing from the corner, resonating with a force that commanded attention.
"Get your shit together, JUMPIN JESUS RYAN! HEART OF GOLD AND HEAD OF STONE – GET UP, YOU LITTLE COWARD! YOU'RE LETTING IT WIN, AGAIN! STOP THIS ONION HEAD NONSENSE AND DANCE, BOX THIS FELLA – YOU'RE BETTER THAN THIS, ACT LIKE IT, BELIEVE IN IT!"
His words were more than just a call to action; they were a lifeline thrown into the stormy seas of Ryan's mind. Each syllable was drenched in the raw, unfiltered wisdom that only a life spent in the cauldron of combat could forge. Robin's tone was a volatile cocktail of fury and concern, the urgency palpable in his voice. His palms crashed against the ring mat; each hit thunderous punctuation to his fiery sermon.
"You've got the talent, kid, but it's as good as ash if you keep burning it to the ground. I'M HERE FOR YOU, IM RIGHT HERE. SNAP OUT OF IT AND BOX THIS PLASTIC PATTY! MOVE GOD DAMNIT, GET UP!"
On the canvas, Ryan lay dazed, the echo of Robin's voice ringing in his ears. It was more than a mere pep talk; it was a wake-up call that struck a chord deep within him. Amidst the haze of the crowd murmurs and the pulsating pain that coursed through his body, clarity began to emerge. Lying there, Ryan grasped the essence of Robin's message –
"coward? letting it win? Playing my ego are ya Robin...hes right though. Im throwing this shit away."
This moment, sprawled on the canvas under the glaring lights and the crowd's gaze, became a crucible of transformation. The raw emotion and the hard-hitting truth in Robin's words ignited a spark in Ryan. It was time to rise, shake off the shadows of rage, and embrace a fighter's true spirit like he had learned in Thailand – not just with fists but with heart and mind in unison.
Staggered yet stirred by the dual impact of the physical hit and Robin's piercing words, A padded fist crushed into the rings canvas, followed by a kneee and the eruption of the crowd. Ryan was back, and he began to pull himself up from the canvas. His resolve, momentarily dimmed, now reignited with a fierce, clear, calculated intensity. Memories of the gruelling hours spent in the gym flooded back to him – the relentless sparring sessions, the time spent in Thailand, the sweat and toil, and the invaluable lessons etched into his being under Robin's stern tutelage.
With a renewed spirit, Ryan stepped back into the battle, his movements now embodying controlled power and a fluidity to his step. He recalled his time fighting beside the backdrop of the "Sarama" a traditional Thai music played when in combat. The times of learning to move, fight with the music, to flow, to be fluid, to be concise. Ryan finally put it all together in the heat of battle. He had merged his inherent ferocity with the disciplined technique that Robin relentlessly drilled into him, and the mindfull practises of the years he spent under Burklerk Pinsinchai in the jungles of Chiang Mai. His style was now fully displayed, raw and visceral yet refined by countless hours of practice in mind, body and spirit.
The final rounds bell clang to a start in a clinic of skill and sheer willpower. Ryan, driven by a blend of desperation and unwavering determination, unleashed a barrage of calculated and explosive strikes. Each punch and maneuver was a nod to the efficient, no-nonsense Ukrainian style that Robin had imparted to him. Ryan moved rhythmically across the mat, steps measured and precise, executing short, angular movements and deft outside counterpunches. He had returned to his element – the dance of combat, where he felt most alive, a symphony of movement where every step and punch was a testament to his life's journey and experiences as a human being first, and as a fighter second.
In this wake-up call, Ryan reinvigorated and reminded himself of his love for the sport, the exhilarating blend of art and athleticism. He was not just fighting to win; he was celebrating boxing, combat, honouring the path he had walked with Robin, and reclaiming what it meant to be a true fighter through Burklurk Pinsinchai's Teachings.
The round pressed on, and Ryan executed his maneuvers with a surgeon's precision. First;
-- The counterpuncher; a display in timing and accuracy, delivered with the full force of training and innate skill. --

1. He deftly slipped his opponent's cross, a move as fluid as it was swift.
   
2. He angled off, creating a space wide enough for his next move.
   
3. With an almost predatory precision, Ryan unleashed a powerful right cross, targeting his opponent's cheek from the angle he had just created. But Ryan wasn't done yet.
   
4. He slipped out again, evading any potential counter from his disoriented opponent. The rhythm, he danced in and out with his precise timing, perfected down to inches and angles.
   
5. In a final, decisive movement of the exchange, Ryan slipped in. He timed his step with a long cross that came off-beat, catching his opponent utterly off-guard. The punch landed with a satisfying impact, culminating in a perfectly executed combination. As he watched his opponent stagger, Ryan couldn't help but think, 'cya sleepy boi,' a silent acknowledgment of his dominance in this singular exchange.
   

This sequence was a statement. Ryan was not only back in the fight but also commanding it.
ONE!…TWO!…THREE!…FOUR!…FIVE!…SIX!...SEVEN!..EIGHT!
Ryan's opponent stands, admirable, but futile, driven by sheer will but hampered by sluggish movements, the man rose to his feet, it was clear the fight was reaching its zenith.
The opponent, gathering his remaining strength for a final stand, launched a jab, a last-ditch effort relying more on brute force than finesse. But this was a fatal mistake in Ryan's world – playing right into what Ryan was best at. Counters.
Ryan read the move with the clarity of a seasoned fighter. As the jab came, he effortlessly slipped to the right, evading the punch with a short angular step that spoke of his ring intelligence. Instantly, he countered with the same sharp cross from his right hand, followed by a devastating hook that cut through the air with lethal intent in his left. Grasping at straws, reeling from the counter, Ryans opponent threw a desperate, looping last stand punch, Ryan dipped down and left, rolling the punch with an elegance that made it seem almost effortless. He was Hunting for the Kill Shot. Seizing the moment, Ryan unleashed a ferocious left uppercut, the force of the blow lifting his opponent's chin skyward. He followed up with a right overhand, but just before impact, he halted the punch. There was no need for it; his opponent was already collapsing, the "Lights were on, but no one was Home". The fight was effectively over, Ryan's last combination is the final note, a crescendo that echoed through the ring.
As his opponent hit the canvas, the crowd erupted. Ryan stood in the center of the ring, his chest heaving, every fibre of his being alight with the thrill of victory. This wasn't just a win; it was a performance, a display of skill, heart, and the indomitable spirit of a fighter who had walked through fire and flames to the otherside and emerge victorious.
The final bell Rings with not a single chair in the arena warm; a thunderous clap erupts from the crowd. It was more than just applause; it was an acknowledgment of a battle fiercely fought by both men. In that moment ringside, in a triumphant victory, Ryan and Robin shared a look that spoke volumes, a connection far beyond the usual bounds of mentor and protégé. Their bond, tempered in the crucible of hardship and struggle, was now sealed in the glory of this defining triumph.
Standing amidst the cheers and the adrenaline-fueled euphoria, Ryan found himself momentarily lost in the tide of memories. It was a poignant reminder of the journey that had brought him here, a path marked by triumphs and losses. Robin's teachings transcended the confines of boxing; they were life lessons imprinted deep onto him. Ryan began to slowly step out of the ring; the weight of these reflections settled upon him. The victory was sweet, but it carried the weight of all sacrificed to achieve it. Robin's presence was felt strongly, a guiding force that continued to shape his path, illuminating the way forward even in the most challenging times.

I just watched the press conference ahead of the wolfsburg game and Thomas Tuchel literally said that both Jamal and Leroy were not fit and had to play with pain against Real Madrid (hats of for them to still try their best though) so both will likely be out for the rest of the season (Leroy 100%, Jamal most likely). Also Gnabry who got injured against Real is out too, Harry who also got injured will at least miss the game this weekend. He also said that its not guaranteed that any of these german starplayers will be fit for the european tournament. At least for Serge and Leroy it will be a close call. So that last game against Real sadly really took a toll on this team. Even more admirable that they managed to bring Real to the brink of defeat with such a hollow squad offensivly (remember they miss Rapha and King too).
With Stuttgart having won the game yesterday Bayern will have to struggle without all their offensive powerhorses to safe Spot 2 in the League for a chance at next seasons supercup title. It will be tough guys.

I am a 28 year old disabled woman who is literally on the brink of living on the streets, the streets are not safe for women in America. Please help because my disability application will not be approved for at least a few months. My ex withheld my stuff so all I have is food stamps.

First Chapter Previous Chapter
Mrs. Vilonte stood alone in the bathroom. In her hands, she cradled the urn containing her husband's ashes. The weight of it was surprisingly light, almost inconsequential, like the flutter of a moth's wing against her palm.
There was a tinge of sadness that grazed her heart. She had spent years by his side, experiencing the highs and lows of marriage. And now he was dead. The memorial service had been sparsely attended, with only a handful offering their condolences.
One photographer seemed overly eager to capture a shot of the grieving widow shedding a tear. But Mrs. Vilonte despised tears—seeing them, feeling them trickle down her face. The moment she felt her eyes sting and tears threatening to spill, she brushed them away before they had a chance to fall.
Now, the house was quiet. But mixed with that lingering sadness was a sense of relief, a subtle liberation that whispered to her from the shadows. He had betrayed her. His infidelity had cut deep.
She unscrewed the lid of the urn. The ashes inside seemed to shimmer in the faint light. Without hesitation, she emptied the contents into the toilet bowl and pulled the lever, watching as they spiraled downwards, swallowed by the rushing water.
XXXXXX
She once cherished two joys during her drives to Gabrielle's violin lessons. One was soaking in the serene landscape while indulging in her beloved soft jazz on the radio. The other was the comforting presence of her daughter beside her in the front passenger seat.
Now, she glanced at the vacant seat, and a wave of melancholy washed over her. Shaking off the emotion, she turned her attention back to the road, gripping the wheel tighter as she accelerated. After a stretch of driving, she eventually arrived at the mansion.
She had often wondered how the maestro accumulated such immense wealth. However, after meeting his benefactor and experiencing the allure of that wealth herself, she began to understand the price he had paid–the soul.
Was striking a deal with such a malevolent entity truly worth it? This question haunted her thoughts daily, and still, she had no definitive answer. The allure of luxury was intoxicating like the addictive sweetness of sugar. The more she indulged in it, the stronger her craving became, leaving her caught in a cycle of desire and uncertainty.
The mansion was as elegant and grand as she remembered. In the front yard, a splendid water fountain glistened under the sunlight. Surrounding the mansion was a manicured garden bloomed with vibrant colors and lush foliage.
Before stepping out of the car, she pulled a handgun from the glove compartment and carefully concealed it in her purse. Today was the day she planned to confront him, intent on demanding him to undo the unfortunate turn her life had taken.
The front door was unlocked and it swung open effortlessly as she entered. It slammed shut behind her without her even touching it, and there was no wind to explain it.
“Ah, Mrs. Vilonte,” a familiar male voice greeted warmly, “It's been far too long since our last meeting. You look lovely as ever!”
She looked up to see the young Salerno, leaning casually against the railing at the top of the split staircase. His smirking face drew a scowl from her. She resented his mocking compliment about her looking “lovely as ever.” She wore the same black dress she'd worn since her husband's memorial, now creased from sleep and carrying a faint scent of dried scotch.
“You've had your fun, Salerno,” she retorted, her voice tinged with restrained anger. "I shouldn't have broken our agreement, and I've learned my lesson.”
“Have you?”
“Yes, and I assure you, it won't happen again.”
“So, what can I do for you?”
“I want my life back.”
Salerno's face was solemn, shrouded in silence. Unexpectedly, he erupted into mocking laughter.
“That's not the nature of consequences, my dear,” he remarked. “You must live with what you've done. Forgiveness is not in my nature.
“You've stripped me of my wealth–”
“It wasn't yours to begin with.”
“I have nothing left!”
“Oh, that isn't completely true. You still have your family.”
“You've torn my family apart! My husband is gone, my son imprisoned and now my daughter, too! You've taken her from me.”
“But soon you'll be reunited.”
“What do you mean?”
He motioned for her to ascend the stairs. “You've arrived just in time to witness something miraculous. Something beautiful!”
Confusion clouded Mrs. Vilonte's face until she heard an agonized moan coming from an upstairs room, followed by a cry she knew all too well.
“Gabrielle,” she gasped.
Salerno nodded. “You're about to be a grandmother to another child.”
The haunting images from the field of mirrors flooded back. The abomination—a monstrous entity—was on the brink of entering their world, and who knew what kind of hell it would bring. Suddenly, a powerful force propelled her towards the stairs, her movements no longer under her control. Before she knew it, she stood face to face with Salerno on the top landing. His grin exposed jagged, menacing teeth, and his eyes were pools of darkness. With talon-like fingers, he grasped her shoulders, their sharp points piercing her skin.
He led her into the master bedroom, where Gabrielle lay in a fitful sleep on a queen-size bed, her movements restless. Her eyes were closed, and sweat had matted her hair to her head. Beside her sat Victoria, whose skin showed signs of decay, and she moved with a robotic, disjointed motion as she wiped the sweat from Gabrielle's face with a cloth. When Victoria moved aside, Mrs. Vilonte shivered, finding herself staring into Victoria's empty, hollow eye sockets.
Salerno leaned in close to her ear, his voice a low whisper as he said, “My children are everywhere, and this newborn will join them, serving me in this world. You should feel honored to be part of something extraordinary, something greater than yourself.”
Slipping free from his hold, she quickly made her way to her daughter's bedside, sweeping aside stray locks from her face. The moment her fingers made contact with her skin, Gabrielle began to calm down.
“Gabby, it's Mom,” she whispered gently, a wave of relief washing over her as her daughter's eyes fluttered open in response.
“Did you enjoy the concert, Mom?” Gabrielle asked, faintly.
“Well, it was an unforgettable performance, that's for sure.”
“Didn’t I do a phenomenal job?”
“Let's talk about it when we get home.”
“Home?”
“Yes, you're coming home with me now.”
“I can't... the baby is going to arrive soon,” Gabrielle gasped, her voice strained with pain. "It hurts too much to move.”
“You’ll have to endure it! We need to get out of here!”
Mrs. Vilonte tossed aside the blanket and firmly grasped her arm, pulling her out of the bed. Gabrielle staggered and lost her footing, sliding down onto the floor. She reached for the edge of the bed, trying to soften her sudden fall.
“Run, run, but wherever you hide,” Salerno sang, “you'll never escape this hell.”
Mrs. Vilonte quickly drew the handgun from her purse, aiming it at him as he approached. Her eyes darted between Salerno and Victoria, the gun wavering between the two.
“Stay back! Just let us go.”
Salerno chuckled. “Mrs. Vilonte, really now? Violence won't solve your problems.”
A deafening bang echoed through the room. He staggered back, pressing a hand to his belly as blood began to seep through his white shirt. His mouth opened, releasing a plume of black smoke that coalesced into the silhouette of a large goat standing upright on its hind legs.
The creature glared at her with red eyes before the smoke dissipated. Then, as if the inevitable march of age had finally caught up to him within seconds, his vitality began to wane. His once smooth skin transformed into a web of wrinkles. His dark eyes dimmed, replaced by a cloudy haze. His jet-black hair turned a shocking shade of white, contrasting starkly with the pallor of his skin. His cheeks began to sink.
Salerno, aged and frail, sank to the floor, his hand stubbornly pressed against his wound as if hoping to halt the flow of blood. “Run, run, but wherever you hide, you'll never escape this hell.”
Mrs. Vilonte seized her daughter's arm, hauling her upright, all the while keeping the gun trained between Salerno and Victoria. Victoria lay collapsed on the floor, reduced to a heap of decomposed skin devoid of bones and muscle.
A deep rumble echoed through the room, causing it to tremble and sway. Cracks snaked across the walls, paint peeling away in tattered sheets. Twisting, blood-red vines crept from the fractures, weaving their way across walls and ceiling. Acting quickly, Mrs. Vilonte seized Gabrielle, who had collapsed to the floor, teeth clenched in pain from another surge of agony. She pulled her up by the arm, forcing her to her feet and pushing her towards the door.
The mansion, once a symbol of pride when she'd taken her daughter for the maestro’s lessons, was transforming into a nightmarish scene. Blood oozed from the decaying walls, while a noxious sulfuric odor filled the air, nearly suffocating Mrs. Vilonte and making each breath a struggle.
She didn't pause for rest or allow Gabrielle a moment to catch her breath until they were safely out of the house and speeding away in the car, putting as much distance as possible between them and the area.
“Mom, stop the car,” Gabrielle groaned in pain from the back seat.
“Hold on tight, honey. We'll go to the nearest hospital.”
“I can't wait anymore!”
“It won't be long. Twenty minutes.”
“I can feel the baby wanting to come out.”
Mrs. Vilonte looked up at the rearview mirror, where she saw Gabrielle's sweaty face scrunched up in pain, gripping her rounded belly with both hands.
“I know this isn’t easy,” she said, “but you need to hold out a little longer. We'll be at the hospital very soon.”
“STOP THE CAR!”
The car came to a sudden stop, jolting Mrs. Vilonte forward and almost throwing Gabrielle off from her seat.
“The baby is coming! Mom, help me!” Gabrielle cried.
“The baby…”
Mrs. Vilonte couldn't shake the thought that this creature couldn't possibly be human. The horrifying acts that it could be capable of frightened her, and the idea that it shared a bloodline with her sickened her even more. Her hand moved to the handgun resting on the passenger seat beside her, considering the one extreme solution she could think of for such an unusual situation.
It wasn't ideal, but she saw no other option.
She took hold of the gun and stepped out of the car, approaching the rear passenger side. Opening the door, she found her daughter propped on her elbows, lifting her dress to reveal the widening canal. Gabrielle let out a menacing growl as she pushed.
Mrs. Vilonte crouched to inspect closer, and instantly felt the unsettling, malevolent presence. The entity seemed to be trying to claw its way out from the depths of the abyss. It inched towards the light, its growls growing louder like a ravenous animal. As Gabrielle pushed further, its red, snouted face broke through, its eyes snapping open to lock onto hers with an intense, black-eyed glare.
Startled, she stumbled back, her hands grasping for the handgun that had slipped from her trembling fingers. As she aimed at the creature before her, an unseen force encircled her hands. She fought to maintain control, but the force twisted the weapon, redirecting it towards her. Suddenly, she found herself staring down the barrel of her gun.
The trees came alive with a flurry of motion as a group of birds took flight, their wings beating frantically against the sky. The once-quiet canopy echoed with the sound of panicked chirps and the movement of feathers, as the startled birds scattered in all directions, seeking refuge from the sudden disturbance caused by a blast.
XXXXX
In the forest of another realm, beyond the physical world, her skin melded seamlessly with the tree's bark, as vines snaked their way around her, ensnaring her limbs. Fungi blossomed from her mouth, rendering her voiceless as her tongue was entwined.
The goat-like creature approached her, brandishing a small mirror, coercing her to confront her distorted reflection. Little remained of her once recognizable features. Worms and roaches had taken residence in the hollow cavity where her nose and right eye had been. With her one remaining eye, she gazed into the mirror, waves of anguish coursing through her being as she beheld the grim reflection of what she had transformed into.
Then, as her ghastly reflection faded, a young man with dark hair and eyes as deep as coal materialized, wearing a black suit, standing with poise on a stage, holding up a violin. Upon closer look, she realized it to be the very violin Gabrielle had once owned.
“Behold what my child has become,” the entity proclaimed. “Are you not as proud of him as I am?”
XXXXX
A bright light beamed down on the young man standing center stage, his violin poised in his hands. His fingers glided over the strings, and with each passing note, the audience, their eyes fixed on him, was drawn deeper into his spell. It wrapped around the listeners' hearts and pulled them into a trance-like state. And as the last notes hung in the air, the audience were suspended in silence and left breathless. Then, they leaped to their feet in thunderous applause.
With a twisted smile, he relished the adulation. He knew he had sway over them, puppet master of their actions. He could simply issue a command, and they would eagerly comply, ready to enact his darkest fantasies. He imagined directing his willing servants to get up on the roof of a towering building and leap into the abyss below, willingly offering themselves as sacrifices.
He envisioned chaos unleashed upon the streets, cars overturned, windows shattered, and buildings engulfed in flames. All at his behest. The world lay at his fingertips, ripe for manipulation and destruction, as he thought about the countless ways he could bring about humanity’s demise.
After his final bow, the young man turned to face the audience, expressing heartfelt thanks for their attendance, eliciting both laughter and warm affection from the crowd. But, amidst the resounding applause, one figure remained still in the front row, confined to a wheelchair. He stared straight at her face which was hidden behind a thin black veil.
Though her body remained motionless in the chair, incapable of even the slightest movement, her one good eye was very much alive, fully engaged with her surroundings. And there was something else in her gaze. He could sense it from the stage, and it made him chuckle. It was an aroma he found intoxicating – the unmistakable stench of fear, seeping from every pore like primal pheromones.
The audience clamored for an encore, yearning to satisfy their insatiable thirst for more music. Their fervent cries echoed through tears. Lifting his violin once more, he hushed the audience with a single motion. The moment the red bow touched the strings, pandemonium broke loose. The spectators lost all self-control, leaping from their seats, clutching their heads, and tearing at their hair in a wild frenzy. They were completely entranced, surrendered to the power of the music.
As his crescendo intensified, a raging fire surged within them, mirrored by the frantic speed of his fingers on the strings. With each chord, they tore at their garments, sinking nails and teeth into one another's flesh. Chaos exploded, mingling with the scent of blood and the sound of rending flesh.
Mrs. Vilonte remained seated in her wheelchair, an impassive observer amidst the chaos, her voice silenced, her limbs still. She bore witness to the madness, her mind ensnared within its chaos, forever lost to its depths.

First Chapter Previous Chapter
Mrs. Vilonte stood alone in the bathroom. In her hands, she cradled the urn containing her husband's ashes. The weight of it was surprisingly light, almost inconsequential, like the flutter of a moth's wing against her palm.
There was a tinge of sadness that grazed her heart. She had spent years by his side, experiencing the highs and lows of marriage. And now he was dead. The memorial service had been sparsely attended, with only a handful offering their condolences.
One photographer seemed overly eager to capture a shot of the grieving widow shedding a tear. But Mrs. Vilonte despised tears—seeing them, feeling them trickle down her face. The moment she felt her eyes sting and tears threatening to spill, she brushed them away before they had a chance to fall.
Now, the house was quiet. But mixed with that lingering sadness was a sense of relief, a subtle liberation that whispered to her from the shadows. He had betrayed her. His infidelity had cut deep.
She unscrewed the lid of the urn. The ashes inside seemed to shimmer in the faint light. Without hesitation, she emptied the contents into the toilet bowl and pulled the lever, watching as they spiraled downwards, swallowed by the rushing water.
XXXXXX
She once cherished two joys during her drives to Gabrielle's violin lessons. One was soaking in the serene landscape while indulging in her beloved soft jazz on the radio. The other was the comforting presence of her daughter beside her in the front passenger seat.
Now, she glanced at the vacant seat, and a wave of melancholy washed over her. Shaking off the emotion, she turned her attention back to the road, gripping the wheel tighter as she accelerated. After a stretch of driving, she eventually arrived at the mansion.
She had often wondered how the maestro accumulated such immense wealth. However, after meeting his benefactor and experiencing the allure of that wealth herself, she began to understand the price he had paid–the soul.
Was striking a deal with such a malevolent entity truly worth it? This question haunted her thoughts daily, and still, she had no definitive answer. The allure of luxury was intoxicating like the addictive sweetness of sugar. The more she indulged in it, the stronger her craving became, leaving her caught in a cycle of desire and uncertainty.
The mansion was as elegant and grand as she remembered. In the front yard, a splendid water fountain glistened under the sunlight. Surrounding the mansion was a manicured garden bloomed with vibrant colors and lush foliage.
Before stepping out of the car, she pulled a handgun from the glove compartment and carefully concealed it in her purse. Today was the day she planned to confront him, intent on demanding him to undo the unfortunate turn her life had taken.
The front door was unlocked and it swung open effortlessly as she entered. It slammed shut behind her without her even touching it, and there was no wind to explain it.
“Ah, Mrs. Vilonte,” a familiar male voice greeted warmly, “It's been far too long since our last meeting. You look lovely as ever!”
She looked up to see the young Salerno, leaning casually against the railing at the top of the split staircase. His smirking face drew a scowl from her. She resented his mocking compliment about her looking “lovely as ever.” She wore the same black dress she'd worn since her husband's memorial, now creased from sleep and carrying a faint scent of dried scotch.
“You've had your fun, Salerno,” she retorted, her voice tinged with restrained anger. "I shouldn't have broken our agreement, and I've learned my lesson.”
“Have you?”
“Yes, and I assure you, it won't happen again.”
“So, what can I do for you?”
“I want my life back.”
Salerno's face was solemn, shrouded in silence. Unexpectedly, he erupted into mocking laughter.
“That's not the nature of consequences, my dear,” he remarked. “You must live with what you've done. Forgiveness is not in my nature.
“You've stripped me of my wealth–”
“It wasn't yours to begin with.”
“I have nothing left!”
“Oh, that isn't completely true. You still have your family.”
“You've torn my family apart! My husband is gone, my son imprisoned and now my daughter, too! You've taken her from me.”
“But soon you'll be reunited.”
“What do you mean?”
He motioned for her to ascend the stairs. “You've arrived just in time to witness something miraculous. Something beautiful!”
Confusion clouded Mrs. Vilonte's face until she heard an agonized moan coming from an upstairs room, followed by a cry she knew all too well.
“Gabrielle,” she gasped.
Salerno nodded. “You're about to be a grandmother to another child.”
The haunting images from the field of mirrors flooded back. The abomination—a monstrous entity—was on the brink of entering their world, and who knew what kind of hell it would bring. Suddenly, a powerful force propelled her towards the stairs, her movements no longer under her control. Before she knew it, she stood face to face with Salerno on the top landing. His grin exposed jagged, menacing teeth, and his eyes were pools of darkness. With talon-like fingers, he grasped her shoulders, their sharp points piercing her skin.
He led her into the master bedroom, where Gabrielle lay in a fitful sleep on a queen-size bed, her movements restless. Her eyes were closed, and sweat had matted her hair to her head. Beside her sat Victoria, whose skin showed signs of decay, and she moved with a robotic, disjointed motion as she wiped the sweat from Gabrielle's face with a cloth. When Victoria moved aside, Mrs. Vilonte shivered, finding herself staring into Victoria's empty, hollow eye sockets.
Salerno leaned in close to her ear, his voice a low whisper as he said, “My children are everywhere, and this newborn will join them, serving me in this world. You should feel honored to be part of something extraordinary, something greater than yourself.”
Slipping free from his hold, she quickly made her way to her daughter's bedside, sweeping aside stray locks from her face. The moment her fingers made contact with her skin, Gabrielle began to calm down.
“Gabby, it's Mom,” she whispered gently, a wave of relief washing over her as her daughter's eyes fluttered open in response.
“Did you enjoy the concert, Mom?” Gabrielle asked, faintly.
“Well, it was an unforgettable performance, that's for sure.”
“Didn’t I do a phenomenal job?”
“Let's talk about it when we get home.”
“Home?”
“Yes, you're coming home with me now.”
“I can't... the baby is going to arrive soon,” Gabrielle gasped, her voice strained with pain. "It hurts too much to move.”
“You’ll have to endure it! We need to get out of here!”
Mrs. Vilonte tossed aside the blanket and firmly grasped her arm, pulling her out of the bed. Gabrielle staggered and lost her footing, sliding down onto the floor. She reached for the edge of the bed, trying to soften her sudden fall.
“Run, run, but wherever you hide,” Salerno sang, “you'll never escape this hell.”
Mrs. Vilonte quickly drew the handgun from her purse, aiming it at him as he approached. Her eyes darted between Salerno and Victoria, the gun wavering between the two.
“Stay back! Just let us go.”
Salerno chuckled. “Mrs. Vilonte, really now? Violence won't solve your problems.”
A deafening bang echoed through the room. He staggered back, pressing a hand to his belly as blood began to seep through his white shirt. His mouth opened, releasing a plume of black smoke that coalesced into the silhouette of a large goat standing upright on its hind legs.
The creature glared at her with red eyes before the smoke dissipated. Then, as if the inevitable march of age had finally caught up to him within seconds, his vitality began to wane. His once smooth skin transformed into a web of wrinkles. His dark eyes dimmed, replaced by a cloudy haze. His jet-black hair turned a shocking shade of white, contrasting starkly with the pallor of his skin. His cheeks began to sink.
Salerno, aged and frail, sank to the floor, his hand stubbornly pressed against his wound as if hoping to halt the flow of blood. “Run, run, but wherever you hide, you'll never escape this hell.”
Mrs. Vilonte seized her daughter's arm, hauling her upright, all the while keeping the gun trained between Salerno and Victoria. Victoria lay collapsed on the floor, reduced to a heap of decomposed skin devoid of bones and muscle.
A deep rumble echoed through the room, causing it to tremble and sway. Cracks snaked across the walls, paint peeling away in tattered sheets. Twisting, blood-red vines crept from the fractures, weaving their way across walls and ceiling. Acting quickly, Mrs. Vilonte seized Gabrielle, who had collapsed to the floor, teeth clenched in pain from another surge of agony. She pulled her up by the arm, forcing her to her feet and pushing her towards the door.
The mansion, once a symbol of pride when she'd taken her daughter for the maestro’s lessons, was transforming into a nightmarish scene. Blood oozed from the decaying walls, while a noxious sulfuric odor filled the air, nearly suffocating Mrs. Vilonte and making each breath a struggle.
She didn't pause for rest or allow Gabrielle a moment to catch her breath until they were safely out of the house and speeding away in the car, putting as much distance as possible between them and the area.
“Mom, stop the car,” Gabrielle groaned in pain from the back seat.
“Hold on tight, honey. We'll go to the nearest hospital.”
“I can't wait anymore!”
“It won't be long. Twenty minutes.”
“I can feel the baby wanting to come out.”
Mrs. Vilonte looked up at the rearview mirror, where she saw Gabrielle's sweaty face scrunched up in pain, gripping her rounded belly with both hands.
“I know this isn’t easy,” she said, “but you need to hold out a little longer. We'll be at the hospital very soon.”
“STOP THE CAR!”
The car came to a sudden stop, jolting Mrs. Vilonte forward and almost throwing Gabrielle off from her seat.
“The baby is coming! Mom, help me!” Gabrielle cried.
“The baby…”
Mrs. Vilonte couldn't shake the thought that this creature couldn't possibly be human. The horrifying acts that it could be capable of frightened her, and the idea that it shared a bloodline with her sickened her even more. Her hand moved to the handgun resting on the passenger seat beside her, considering the one extreme solution she could think of for such an unusual situation.
It wasn't ideal, but she saw no other option.
She took hold of the gun and stepped out of the car, approaching the rear passenger side. Opening the door, she found her daughter propped on her elbows, lifting her dress to reveal the widening canal. Gabrielle let out a menacing growl as she pushed.
Mrs. Vilonte crouched to inspect closer, and instantly felt the unsettling, malevolent presence. The entity seemed to be trying to claw its way out from the depths of the abyss. It inched towards the light, its growls growing louder like a ravenous animal. As Gabrielle pushed further, its red, snouted face broke through, its eyes snapping open to lock onto hers with an intense, black-eyed glare.
Startled, she stumbled back, her hands grasping for the handgun that had slipped from her trembling fingers. As she aimed at the creature before her, an unseen force encircled her hands. She fought to maintain control, but the force twisted the weapon, redirecting it towards her. Suddenly, she found herself staring down the barrel of her gun.
The trees came alive with a flurry of motion as a group of birds took flight, their wings beating frantically against the sky. The once-quiet canopy echoed with the sound of panicked chirps and the movement of feathers, as the startled birds scattered in all directions, seeking refuge from the sudden disturbance caused by a blast.
XXXXX
In the forest of another realm, beyond the physical world, her skin melded seamlessly with the tree's bark, as vines snaked their way around her, ensnaring her limbs. Fungi blossomed from her mouth, rendering her voiceless as her tongue was entwined.
The goat-like creature approached her, brandishing a small mirror, coercing her to confront her distorted reflection. Little remained of her once recognizable features. Worms and roaches had taken residence in the hollow cavity where her nose and right eye had been. With her one remaining eye, she gazed into the mirror, waves of anguish coursing through her being as she beheld the grim reflection of what she had transformed into.
Then, as her ghastly reflection faded, a young man with dark hair and eyes as deep as coal materialized, wearing a black suit, standing with poise on a stage, holding up a violin. Upon closer look, she realized it to be the very violin Gabrielle had once owned.
“Behold what my child has become,” the entity proclaimed. “Are you not as proud of him as I am?”
XXXXX
A bright light beamed down on the young man standing center stage, his violin poised in his hands. His fingers glided over the strings, and with each passing note, the audience, their eyes fixed on him, was drawn deeper into his spell. It wrapped around the listeners' hearts and pulled them into a trance-like state. And as the last notes hung in the air, the audience were suspended in silence and left breathless. Then, they leaped to their feet in thunderous applause.
With a twisted smile, he relished the adulation. He knew he had sway over them, puppet master of their actions. He could simply issue a command, and they would eagerly comply, ready to enact his darkest fantasies. He imagined directing his willing servants to get up on the roof of a towering building and leap into the abyss below, willingly offering themselves as sacrifices.
He envisioned chaos unleashed upon the streets, cars overturned, windows shattered, and buildings engulfed in flames. All at his behest. The world lay at his fingertips, ripe for manipulation and destruction, as he thought about the countless ways he could bring about humanity’s demise.
After his final bow, the young man turned to face the audience, expressing heartfelt thanks for their attendance, eliciting both laughter and warm affection from the crowd. But, amidst the resounding applause, one figure remained still in the front row, confined to a wheelchair. He stared straight at her face which was hidden behind a thin black veil.
Though her body remained motionless in the chair, incapable of even the slightest movement, her one good eye was very much alive, fully engaged with her surroundings. And there was something else in her gaze. He could sense it from the stage, and it made him chuckle. It was an aroma he found intoxicating – the unmistakable stench of fear, seeping from every pore like primal pheromones.
The audience clamored for an encore, yearning to satisfy their insatiable thirst for more music. Their fervent cries echoed through tears. Lifting his violin once more, he hushed the audience with a single motion. The moment the red bow touched the strings, pandemonium broke loose. The spectators lost all self-control, leaping from their seats, clutching their heads, and tearing at their hair in a wild frenzy. They were completely entranced, surrendered to the power of the music.
As his crescendo intensified, a raging fire surged within them, mirrored by the frantic speed of his fingers on the strings. With each chord, they tore at their garments, sinking nails and teeth into one another's flesh. Chaos exploded, mingling with the scent of blood and the sound of rending flesh.
Mrs. Vilonte remained seated in her wheelchair, an impassive observer amidst the chaos, her voice silenced, her limbs still. She bore witness to the madness, her mind ensnared within its chaos, forever lost to its depths.

The Pulowski Preservation Shelters make no sense. It's a simple idea; a poor-man's vault. But the more you think about it the less sense it makes. How did this get started? Why did it ever seem like a good idea? It's not practical or profitable. What was the real reason? Because how could this be a business?
The Expenses:
These blue cylinders are still powered after more than 200 years, suggesting that they are atomically powered. They would need to be built to seal out the radioactive fallout and so would need to provide clean air, either stored or through some massive filtration process. They would not be as cheap as they might seem.
Also there's the need to buy/rent the land. They'd need to put them in high traffic areas to attract customers, meaning the land would be more costly.
They would require a team of traveling service people to clean and maintain them. They would be a prime target for vandalism, and undoubtedly smell like piss, so would need regular cleaning to convince the public to use them.
The only way these could be profitable is if the government is financing them to help create the illusion that they are prepared for nuclear war. It's not actually necessary for them to be useful for the military contractor to make money.
The Customer base:
Let's give the company the benefit of the doubt. The first ideal kind of pre-war customer would be someone who panics a lot. Someone who needs a moment's peace in the big, noisy world. These tubes give you instant access whenever you're feeling a panic attack coming on. And a world that's constantly on the brink of nuclear war would cause a lot of stress. Lots of repeat business. Or you could just cry in your car on the way home from work like the rest of us.
The second kind of customer would be chronic masturbators.
And... that's about it.
See, the prime customer they're advertising to can't ever pay up. People looking for these at the end of all things are bad customers. Civilization ended. There's no-one to collect the cash, and the computers don't work to transmit digital currency. Also everyone is dead... and on fire. It's a business that can never turn a profit.
Supposedly these cost as little as ¢25, in a world where a coffee and a donut costs $30. How could these ever be profitable?
User Downsides:
So the bombs dropped far enough away that you weren't incinerated, but close enough that you need to get out of the radioactive fallout. You get in a tube, and are now protected. Now what? You can't possibly wait long enough for it to be safe to leave. There's no food or water, which is just as well since there's no bathroom either. Apparently though there is a suction tube, which is either nasty or really nasty, depending on what you think it's used for. But in the end all this does is delay the inevitable.
Also do they not lock? Because they are all open, despite being occupied. I suppose the door unlocks automatically when your time runs out, allowing anyone from the outside to interrupt whatever you're doing.
The Real Reason?:
Pulowski Preservation Shelters don't save your life; they help you end it peacefully. What they 'preserve' is your dignity, offering you the quick death of your choosing rather than dying slowly and painfully. The dead bodies often found inside would seem to confirm this theory. They are suicide booths.
Imagine if this is also actually a known feature of this world pre-war. The jingoistic government considers depressed individuals a black eye to their perfect capitalistic utopia. Easy access to suicide booths is a way to keep that squeaky-clean esthetic, by providing a simple way for people who don't fit in or conform to this bizarre world to simply disappear.

this will be more of a rant and not like a story about incest or something. since 2020 i feel really depressed. i remember begging my mom to get me to therapy because i was doing so shitty, i didn’t shower i didn’t brush my and teeth and only had one “friend”. That person was a substitute that’s 7 years older than me and was really really mentally unstable. she was the only person i knew that had the same interest as me so we grew really close so close that teachers had to separate us and she wasn’t allowed to come to the class trip. i totally obsessed over her and cried each evening because she wasn’t there because she was obviously only at school. she was really fucked up i mean i was to but i was just a kid for example: she graphically told me about how her best friend killed herself and she was the first to find the corpse. but she worked at my school as a gap year so she was gone in 2021 and i was even more depressed, now with no friends and social life. around that time i also had an aggressive panic attack and almost got into a fist fight in front of my whole class. but somehow i slightly recovered from this and became friends with two girls and became weebs with them and one of those girls was popular so i was socially safe. The thing is the depression never left me and i was doing better in 2022 but i was constantly sad. so what did i do to get dopamine? i (in late 2021) got addicted to masturbating to get dopamine. i did it like 2 times a day minimum and also had so little respect and power over myself to not even do it in the bathroom or lock the door. my life was going uphill and i became friends with the popular kids even though i kinda still felt like less than them. so that’s 2023, i had friends at school but i didn’t truly like them and they saw me as lesser than them. wich is dangerous because in the last 2 years our friend group of 9 got down to 5 people. there is still one girl in our friend group that is less popular but she doesn’t push it i’m a huge gossip to get attention just like the other girls but that also makes me one bad statement away from losing my social life in this fucking horrible school. i didn’t mention that until now but i actually hate my school and tried really hard last year to switch schools but it’s to late for that. i had multiple panic attacks in this school, it’s 45 minutes from where i live and lasts until 16:00 3 days a week. that’s not all but i wont get into that now. well theres no saving that so let’s get back to the topic of addiction, yay, so i’m 7 months and 24 days clean. the only reason why i’m lasting that kong is probably because i started the streak when my granddad got in the hospital and a week later he died. but the soberness dose make me happier, maybe healthier but not happier. i just still lack dopamine and i think that if somehow get access to drugs without trying i’ll just get addicted to that. so that’s that next topic, i daydream so fucking much that don’t even think you can still call it that. i use every free second to live in a different reality in my mind and i now that sounds normal but i have fallen in love with a completely made up person in my head and now i can’t handle that they don’t exist. i’d do anything to not life this life. surprisingly though i’m not suicidal i mean i almost was in 2021 but i was to obsessed with my looks to actually do it but now i’m thinking about it again. i don’t think it could ruin any beauty because their is none i am the only person i know that never had a romantic connection to someone and i am bisexual and it is also not that i reject everyone i gave never done that because noone likes me like that. well next topic, i am at the brink of being underweight and i wasn’t i wouldn’t have anything attractive about me. that was that next topic, my mom will not let me wear normal clothes and i still have to dress like a kid to some extent because she will complain otherwise. i’m the youngest of 4 kids and my parents are quite old now and don’t know even care for me like you would as a parent of a kid in my age. they just act like they don’t have a child anymore and at the same time don’t allow me to grow up. always acting childish is btw also are reason for my “low standing” in my friend group but that has gotten better by now. i think that’s about it i just wanted to get rid of this and if anyone has read all of this thanks i am looking forward to advice.

Hi all, I shared bits and pieces of this on the CO discord and someone in a comment here asked me to share some new homebrew Circle abilities. I broke down some of my thoughts and analyzed ALL of the playbooks but advice on how to revise those is still a work in progress.
Custom Moves
Over the course of the game, you may find yourself developing “homebrew” abilities or GM moves. Or you may have picked the EONS ability to experiment with existing moves, or the Pyre ability to corrupt those moves. Here is some general guidance on how to do so.
Tinkering with Roles and Specialties
Generate an archetype and describe it in a paragraph. Rename the new Specialty. Change which Roles and Specialties match up with it. Based on the description, you likely will need to select different themes for the base Action rolls, Drive and/or Resistances.
Create new Illumination Keys. Review the themes of the archetype and convert them into what you desire in roleplay scenes.
Here are some example “Shadow Keys” for rival factions:

• Face+Criminal = Unabridged: Cultist ** Weave a Conspiracy ** Deceive Someone ** Threaten Indirectly
• Muscle+Occultist = Pyre: The Flint and the Flame ** Confess a Sin ** Punish the Wicked ** Exult in Comeuppance
• Scholar+Medium = EONS: Occult Scientist ** Experiment with Abandon ** Dodge Mayhem ** Secure a Patron
• Slink+Professor = Red Hand: Curator ** Acquire an Asset ** Barter with Someone ** Collect Dues
• Weird+Detective = OUP: Agent ** Deny the Truth ** Exert Influence ** React Disproportionately

Give the player a selection of 9 Action dots and 9 Drive to distribute at the start of play.
Critical Role Homebrews
You can allow a player to “multiclass” by giving them a Mark when they change to a new role/specialty, or modify their action dot spread. Grant them a superpower ability in exchange for a Scar with a token system. Tokens represent a d6 dice pool that the GM can use against them at any time (e.g. for each 1 that is rolled, something very bad will happen.)
Circle Ability Breakdowns * Add three gilded dice to the assignment * Add +1 die on a special circumstance * On a failure, recover spent drives * Gain circle resources (Stitch, Refresh, Train) on a milestone * Multiclass ability * Advancement boost
Examples of Alternate Crew Playbooks
EONS * Themes: Unethical Experiments, Opportunist * Lab Abilities ** Biological Tinkering: Your lab can spend a Stitch to create an experiment that can soak a Body, Brain, or Bleed mark, 3 uses. Your lab can only make a new experiment when the old one is depleted. ** Plans Upon Plans: During downtime, your lab can spend Cunning drives to tick down Countdowns on a new or an existing Long Term Project. ** Research and Development: Your lab can spend a Train to give a gilded die on an action. If a gilded result is taken for that roll, then recover any two drives of your choice. ** Multidisciplinary: When choosing a new ability during character advancement, once per campaign, each character may select any ability, rename it, and modify it by changing the Action Roll or Drives. ** Restructuring: When a member of your lab gains a Scar, they can exchange 1 resource for another (1 Stitch:1 Refresh:1 Train) ** Out of Funds: When you select this ability, the next operation is your last. If you permanently remove a piece of Gear, you can make an invention quickly. It can do something technological and choose one quality: it is potent, durable, or safe.
INGENUITY QUESTIONS AND KEYS * Ask these at the end of every operation. For every “yes,” fill in a point on the Ingenuity track. * Did you scrutinize a source of Bleed? * Did you extract knowledge from or experiment on those affected by a phenomena? * Did you contribute to a Special Project for EONS to build upon or invest in? * Earn 2 Inspiration if some, but not all, players fulfilled an Ingenuity Key during the session. * Earn 4 if every player fulfilled at least one Ingenuity Key during the session. If nobody in the lab fulfilled any of their Keys, take no additional Inspiration. * New character advancement option: Invent a new type of Lab Gear (GM starts an Invention Activation Countdown). When you achieve a milestone, roll Focus as a group action. On 4-5 tick it by 1, on a 6 tick it by 2 and on a crit also add a Train
Pyre * Themes: Sacrifice, Shame, Rituals Cabal Abilities * Divine Intervention: If a cabal member fails an Action or Resistance roll, they can spend one Train for an additional re-roll. * Communal Blessings: Once per assignment, your Cabal can spend a Train to help an ally. They add a number of dice equal to their current Resistance level for that action. * The Undisciplined: When choosing a new ability during character advancement, once per campaign, each character may select an ability from any playbook and swap one resistance type for another. * Flagellation: Your cabal can inflict three Marks among its members to gain 1 cabal resource. (1 Stitch, 1 Refresh, or 1 Train) * No Rest for the Wicked: When a member of your cabal gains a Scar, they can spend Resistance in the same theme to avoid incapacitation. For any follow up action rolls, they are limited to dice equal to their current resistance level. * Blaze of Glory: When you select this ability, the next calling is your last. If you use and permanently cross off an ability, you can do one of the following: take an automatic mixed success, lower the stakes , or ask the GM a question and they must answer honestly.
NUMINOSITY QUESTIONS AND KEYS * Ask these after responding to a calling. For every “yes,” fill in a point on the Numinosity track. * Did you justify or cover up a source of bleed on behalf of the Divine Light? * Did you purify or shame those affected by a phenomena? * Did you sacrifice something of importance or seek absolution for your cabal? * Earn 2 Numinosity if some, but not all, players fulfilled a Numinosity Key during the session. * Earn 4 if every player fulfilled at least one Numinosity Key during the session. If nobody in the cabal fulfilled any of their Keys, take no additional Numinosity. * New character advancement option: Inflict a Hex, Curse, or Jinx (GM starts a Hex Activation Countdown). When you achieve a milestone, roll Sense as a group action. On 4-5 tick it by 1, on a 6 tick it by 2 and on a crit also add a Train
OUP * Themes: Denial, Bureaucracy Squad Abilities * Special Requisitions: Your squad can collectively expend three resistances to get a Stitch or any mundane gear that can be used immediately. * Working Overtime: On a result of 3 or less on a gilded die, you can gain 1 drive point beyond its maximum. * REDACTED: Your Squad has three denial tokens at the start of every directive. Each denial token can negate a single tick on a consequence countdown at any time. * Office of Internal Discipline: When choosing a new ability during character advancement, once per campaign, each character may select any ability that asks multiple questions, rename it, and modify it by changing any of the questions. * Alls Faire: When a member of your squad gains a Scar, they also get a silver Token of Fairness collected from someone in the Triumvirate they have aided and abetted. Tokens can be used to legally bypass bureaucracy and receive special benefits. * On the Brink of Going Grey: When you select this ability, the next directive is your last. Your Squad can take Scars beyond the max of 4. If the Squad succeeds, your character will be locked up in Grayslate Sanatorium, permanently. If it fails, your character will go to the Brinkley Penitentiary.
MARCHING ORDERS: QUESTIONS AND KEYS * Ask these at the end of every directive. For every “yes,” advance a step in the Marching Orders. * Did you suppress a source of bleed before it hurt the rich and powerful? * Did you conceal knowledge from or silence those affected by a phenomena? * Did you contribute to propaganda for OUP to disseminate through the Triumvirate? * If any player hesitated to obey their order keys during the session, do not advance further. * Advance 4 Marching Orders if every player obeyed at least 1 order key during the session. * Advance 6 Marching Orders if every player obeyed ALL of their order keys during the session. * New character advancement option: Dogged Hunter (GM starts a Threat Capture Countdown.) When you achieve a milestone, roll Survey as a group action. On 4-5 tick it by 1, on a 6 tick it by 2 and on a crit also add a Train
Red Hand * Themes: Trafficking, Luxury Goods, Deal-making Gloved Abilities * Asset Acquisition: Each milestone, you gain a temporary asset of the following type (pick one): a service from a faction, a favor from a contact, a loan of Gloved artifact gear (one use) * On Loan: Once per assignment, spend a Drive to acquire a mundane item that can provide a +1 to all rolls to the theme that the drive falls under. * Pawnbroker: When choosing a new ability during character advancement, once per campaign, each character may also exchange character gear with the associated specialty. * Provenance: When you acquire new gear, declare something unique about its past owners, mythical lore, or prior locations. * Spending Spree: When you select this ability, the next acquisition is your last. You have 9 gear slots. * New character advancement option: Contract Hireling (GM starts a “Bodyguard/Servant/Tech/etc.” Countdown Duration). When you achieve a milestone, roll Sway group action. On 1-3 tick it by 2, on a 4-5 tick it by 1, on success no tick & on a crit add a Train

Introduction
In 1909, Sigmund Freud was invited to give a series of lectures at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. On the way there from Vienna his cabin steward was reading The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, an event Freud claimed was the first indication he ever had that he was going to be famous. In the United States, the philosopher and psychologist William James and many other leading American intellectuals turned out to hear Freud talk, giving psychoanalysis official recognition, as Freud saw it, for the first time. He later wrote about what the Clark lectures meant to him: “In Europe I felt as though I was despised; but over there I found myself received by the foremost men as an equal. As I stepped onto the platform at Worcester to deliver my Five Lectures upon Psychoanalysis it seemed like the realization of some incredible daydream: psychoanalysis was no longer a production of delusion, it had become a valuable part of reality.”
Little did Freud know how his intellectual discoveries would transform America, which he dismissed as an “anti-paradise” or a “gigantic mistake.” Though he feared that Americans would enthusiastically “embrace and ruin psychoanalysis” by popularizing it and watering it down, he already suspected that his theories would in some way shake the country to the core. While watching the waving crowds from the deck of his ship as it docked in New York, turned to his fellow analyst Carl Gustav Jung and said, “Don’t they know we’re bringing them the plague?”
Well before the hedonism of the 1920s, a Freud-inspired revolution in sexual morals had begun. Greenwich Village bohemians, such as the writers Max Eastman and Floyd Dell, the anarchist Emma Goldman, who had been “deeply impressed by the lucidity” of Freud’s 1909 lectures, and Mabel Dodge, who ran an avant-garde salon in her apartment on Fifth Avenue, adapted psychoanalysis to create their own free-love philosophy. In the radical journal The Masses, Floyd Dell warned that “sexual emotions would not be repressed without morbid consequences.” Eastman, one of America’s first analysands, wrote a book comparing Freud and Marx: “Weren’t all forms of repression evil?” he asked rhetorically. Dell’s left-leaning analyst, a Shakespeare scholar called Dr. Samuel A. Tannenbaum who treated many of Greenwich Village artists, argued that it was healthier for young men to frequent prostitutes than to practice abstinence or masturbation.
Together they fashioned a cult of the orgasm - Mabel Dodge even went so far as to call her dog Climax. However, as Dell later admitted, their experiment was an isolated one, like that of the Oneida Community in the nineteenth century and a handful of other “obscure but pervasive sexual cults.” It was only after the Second World War that the idea of sexual liberation would permeate the culture at large.
When Wilhelm Reich, the most brilliant of the second generation of psychoanalysts who had been Freud’s pupils, arrived in New York in late August 1939, exactly thirty years after his mentor and only a few days before the outbreak of war, he was optimistic that his ideas about fusing sex and politics would be better received there than they had been in fascist Europe. Despite its veneer of Puritanism, America was a country already much preoccupied with sex - as Alfred Kinsey’s renowned investigations, which he began that same year, were to show. Reich could be said to have instigated “the sexual revolution”; a Marxist analyst, he coined the phrase in the 1930s in order to illustrate his belief that a true political revolution would only be possible once sexual repression was overthrown, the one obstacle Reich felt had scuppered the efforts of the Bolsheviks. “A sexual revolution is already in progress,” he declared, “and no power on earth will stop it.”
Reich was a sexual evangelist who held that the satisfactory orgasm made the difference between sickness and health. “There is only one thing wrong with neurotic patients,” he concluded in The Function of the Orgasm (1927): “the lack of full and repeated sexual satisfaction” (the italics are his). The orgasm was the panacea to cure all ills, he thought, including the fascism that had forced him to leave Europe. Reich sought to reconcile psychoanalysis and Marxism, thereby giving Freudianism an optimistic gloss, arguing that repression, which Freud came to believe was an inherent part of the human condition, could be shed. This would lead to what his critics dismissed as a “genital utopia” (they mocked him as “the prophet of bigger and better orgasms”). His ideas became influential in Europe, which Henry Miller, finding a new sense of purpose through sex, characterized as “the Land of Fuck.” Reich was a figurehead of the vocal sex reform movement in Vienna and Berlin before the Anschluss, after which the Nazis, who deemed it part of a Jewish conspiracy to undermine the continent, crushed it. His books were burned in Germany along with those of the German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld and Freud.
Soon after he arrived in the United States, Reich invented the orgone energy accumulator, a wooden cupboard about the size of a telephone booth, lined with metal and insulated with steel wool - a box in which, it might be said, his ideas came almost prepackaged. Reich considered his orgone energy accumulator an almost magical device that could improve its users’ “orgastic potency” and by extension their general, and above all mental, health. He claimed that it could charge up the body with the life force that circulated in the atmosphere (a force which he christened “orgone energy”) - mysterious currents that in concentrated form could not only help dissolve repressions but also treat cancer, radiation sickness, and a host of minor ailments. As he saw it, the box’s organic material absorbed orgone energy, and the metal lining stopped it from escaping, so the box acted as a greenhouse; and, supposedly, there was a noticeable rise in temperature in the box.
Reich persuaded Albert Einstein to investigate the machine, whose workings seemed to contradict all known principles of physics, but after two weeks of tests Einstein refuted Reich’s claims. Nevertheless, the orgone box became fashionable in America in the 1940s and 1950s, when Reich rose to fame as the leader of the new sexual movement that seemed to be sweeping the country. Orgone boxes were used by such countercultural figures as Norman Mailer, J. D. Salinger, Paul Goodman, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs - who claimed to have had a spontaneous orgasm in his. At the height of his James Bond fame, Sean Connery swore by the device, and Woody Allen parodied it in the movie Sleeper, giving it the immortal nickname “Orgasmatron.” Bohemians celebrated the orgone box as a liberation machine, the wardrobe that would lead to utopia, while to conservatives it was Pandora’s Box, out of which escaped the Freudian plague - the corrupting influence of anarchism and promiscuous sex.
Because of his radical past, Reich was placed under surveillance almost as soon as he arrived in the United States (his FBI file is 789 pages long). In 1947, after Harper’s Magazine introduced Reich to Americans as the leader of “a new cult of sex and anarchy,” the Food and Drug Administration began investigating him for making fraudulent claims about the orgone accumulator, and in 1954 a court ruled that he must stop leasing and selling his machine. When he broke the injunction he was sentenced to two years in prison. The remaining accumulators, along with thousands of copies of the journals and eleven books Rich self-published in America (including copies of The Sexual Revolution), which were thought to constitute “false advertising” for them, were incinerated.
In the ideological confusion of the postwar period, when the world was trying to get its head around what came to be called the Holocaust and intellectuals disillusioned with communism were abandoning the security of their earlier political positions, Reich’s ideas landed on fertile ground. With his tantalizing suggestion that sexual emancipation would lead to positive social change, Reich seemed to capture the mood of this convulsive moment. People sat in the orgone box hoping to dissolve the toxic dangers of conformity, which, as Reich had eloquently suggested as early as 1933, bred fascism. The literary critic Alfred Kazin wrote in his journal, “Everybody of my generation had his orgone box…his search for fulfillment. There was, God knows, no break with convention, there was just a freeing of oneself from all those parental attachments and thou shalt nots.”
In his essay “The New Lost Generation,” James Baldwin described how that generation crystallized around Reich’s thinking in the later 1940s and early 1950s:
It was a time of the most terrifying personal anarchy. If one gave a party, it was virtually certain that someone, quite possibly oneself, would have a crying jag or have to be restrained from murder or suicide. It was a time of experimentation, with sex, with marijuana, with minor infringements of the law. It seems to me that life was beginning to tell us who we were, and what life was - news no one has ever wanted to hear: and we fought back by clinging to our vision of ourselves as innocent, of love perhaps imperfect but reciprocal and enduring. And we did not know that the price of this was experience. We had been raised to believe in formulas.
In retrospect, the discovery of the orgasm - or, rather, of the orgone box - seems the least mad of the formulas that came to hand. It seemed to me….that people turned from the idea of the world being made better through politics to the idea of the world being made better through psychic and sexual health like sinners coming down the aisle at a revival meeting. And I doubted that their conversion was any more to be trusted than that. The converts, indeed, moved in a certain euphoric aura of well-being. Which would not last…There are no formulas for the improvement of the private, or any other, life - certainly not the formula of more and better orgasms. (Who decides?) The people I had been raised among had orgasms all the time, and still chopped each other with razors on Saturday nights.
“There was, God knows, no break with convention”; “the least mad of the formulas that came to hand” - both Kazin and Baldwin saw their bewildered peers breaking out of one ideological prison only to find themselves in another. Theirs was a generation teetering on a new kind of brink - full of optimism about the possibility of change, they were unsuspecting accomplices in the authorship of more insidious forms of control.
I first learned about Reich’s orgone energy accumulator in 1993 when I visited Summerhill, the “free” school in Suffolk, England, founded in 1921 by A. S. Neill. I was an anthropology student at Cambridge University and, when I asked whether I could stay for a while as a participant-observer, I was offered a large tepee as a place to sleep. I like the idea of living in it: a wigwam seemed a suitable home for a backyard anthropologist. However, everything at Summerhill - where lessons are voluntary and the pupils invent their own laws - is put to a vote, and the children decided they wanted to keep the tepee for themselves. So for that summer I lived in a bed-and-breakfast in Leiston. All the other guests worked for the nuclear power station Sizewell B: every piece of crockery and all the towels and cutlery were stamped with the nuclear power station’s logo. The owner of the B&B had been given a free pullover after a random Geiger counter inspection had determined that his own, hung out on the clothesline, harbored dangerously elevated levels of radiation.
A.S. Neill met Reich in Oslo in 1936 and soon afterward became his analysand, fitting in a dozen sessions with him one a return trip. Reich had by that time been expelled from the International Psychoanalytic Association (he had once been considered Freud’s heir apparent, but his attempts to reconcile psychoanalysis and Marxism ended up alienating practitioners of both), and pioneered a new form of analysis called “vegetotherapy,” a repudiation of the talking cure. Reich’s third wife, Ilse, described it as “doing away with the psychoanalytic taboo of never touching a patient,” and replacing it with “a physical attack by the therapist.” Reich would relax the patient’s taut muscles with deep breathing exercises and painful massage, until he or she broke down in involuntary convulsions, which Reich called the “orgasm reflex.”
Though his school had already been running for fifteen years, Neill found in Reich’s work its ideological justification, and he once referred to himself as Reich’s “John the Baptist.” His many books are littered with references to Reich’s concepts of “character-armor” and “self-regulation.” For his part Reich saw Neill’s project as a practical test of his ideas, and he sent his own son, Peter, to Summerhill for a while. He once threatened to give up his research and come and teach at the school, but Neill laughed and declined his offer, saying that Reich would frighten the children. Neill did, however, ask him to be the legal guardian of his daughter, Zoe. Reich invited Neill to start an orgonomic infant research center at his research institute in Maine and encouraged him to replace his Summerhill staff with people schooled in Reichian practice. Neill rejected both suggestions, but continued to read aloud from Reich’s books at staff meetings.
Reich and Neill shared a belief in the redemptive power of unconstricted development in children. For Reich this had an urgent political significance: he thought that only when children were raised free would it be possible to lay the foundations of a utopia. Neill thought that a radical reform of the education system was an essential preliminary to the creation of a better world. Both men believed that children were inherently good: it was an authoritarian, sexually repressive upbringing that corrupted them. Summerhill was designed to offer children a sanctuary from the moral contamination of the world, where they could live out their desires without the fear of punishment and play without the pressure of indoctrination: “We set out to make a school in which we would allow children freedom to be themselves,” Neill wrote. “In order to do this we had to renounce all discipline, all direction, all suggestion, all moral training, all religious instruction.” The school’s motto continues to be “Giving children back their childhood.”
By the summer of 1944, Neill had begun to practice Reich’s analytic technique on his pupils at Summerhill. “I have given up teaching and am doing only veg.-ther. analysis,” he wrote to Reich. “The more I see the results with adolescents the more I consider that bloody man Reich a great man…Marvelous how patients weep so easily when lying on their backs. Some do so in the first hour. Why?” One former student remembers being instructed to lie down and “breathe deeply, as though you’re having sexual intercourse,” while Neill prodded her stomach (she was too young to know what sex was, so she just panted). “The repressed ones have stomachs like wooden boards,” Neill wrote to Reich of his pupils’ resistance, “but children begin to loosen up very quickly, and at once begin to be hateful and savage.”
The philosopher Bertrand Russell, like Neill, preached the benefits of an unconstrained childhood and campaign for new sexual mores. Neill said that Russell’s On Education (1926) was the only book on the topic he’d read without uttering an expletive. Russell spent a week at Summerhill in 1927 before opening a school of his own, Beacon Hill, based on similar principles. He was soon disillusioned, however, and left the school after five years. The children in his care, Russell wrote, were “sinister,” “cruel,” “destructive.” The effect of giving them their freedom “was to establish a reign of terror, in which the strong kept the weak trembling and miserable.” Russell’s own children, for whom Beacon Hill was partly created (it had only twelve pupils), were, like their father, traumatized by their time at the school. “I learned to get along inside a shell,” Kate Russell said, “fending off physical and emotional assaults from others and trusting nobody.” But for Neill, the monstrous behavior of children was a stage long the path to liberation: if they were “hateful and savage” it was only because they were sloughing off the final carapace of their repressions.
The accumulator that Reich gave Neill arrived in England on the Queen Elizabeth in April 1947, along with a smaller “shooter” box with a protruding funnel for directing orgone energy rays at infections and wounds. “I sit in the Accumulator every night reading,” Neill wrote appreciatively, “re-reading the Function of the O. while I sit in the box.” Neill soon became convinced of the machine’s effectiveness: “We used the small Accu on a girl of 15 with a boil on her leg,” he said. “It cleared up in three days, and we are to have her in the big box next term.” The effects apparently defied scientific explanation: “When Lucy had a new lump on her face under the operation scar, she applied the small Accu and it went in a fortnight,” Neill marveled. He bombarded Reich with questions: Was it safe to keep an accumulator in one’s bedroom? Did you have to be naked inside it? Would it be effective in the damp English climate? How long could his daughter safely sit in the box?
Neill’s daughter, Zoe Readhead, has run Summerhill since 1985. Neill was sixty-four when his only child was born; when she was two, Picture Post ran a story saying that of all the children in Britain, she had the best chance of being free. “I remember the orgone accumulator vividly,” she told me. “It was quite chilly in there because of the zinc.” As a child Readhead was prescribed half an hour a day in the device; she recalls the red plastic cushion she sat on and the funnel or “shooter” she was encouraged to position over her ear to try to cure a recurrent earache. She also remembers that as she grew up Neill lost interest in the machine (he thought he’d been mistaken in putting an extra layer of asbestos around it), and moved it to a corner of the garage.
By the time Reich died, in 1957, he and Neill were no longer communicating. In December 1954 Neill wrote, “It gave me a great shock to find you believing in visits from other planets. No, I said, it can’t be true; Reich is a scientist and unless he sees a flying saucer he won’t accept it as reality. I can’t understand it.” Reich, whose sanity had long been an open question (Sandor Rado, who analyzed Reich for a few months in 1931, said that he was “schizophrenic in the most serious way”), had started to suffer from paranoid delusions about the world being under attack by UFOs. The armor-clad orgone box was always something of a protective shield, illustrative of Reich’s sense of being besieged, but he now built a “cloudbuster,” an orgone gun that was designed not only to influence the weather - diverting hurricanes and making it rain in the desert - but to be the first line of defense against an alien invasion. It was a kind of orgone box turned inside out, so that it could work its therapeutic magic on the cosmos.
Reich initiated the break with Neill; his young son, Peter, who was spending the summer at Summerhill, told Neill that the American planes passing over the school had been sent to protect him, or so his father said. Neill replied that this was nonsense (there was a large U.S. air base nearby), and when Reich heard of Neill’s response he wrote to his remaining supporters that Neill was no longer to be trusted. In the American edition of Neill’s Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Childhood, published in 1960, all references to Reich were deleted because the publisher considered him too controversial. (The book sold two million copies in the United States.) But Neill never turned his back entirely on his friend’s philosophy, and long after Rich’s death he persuaded Zoe to go to Norway to have vegetotherapy with another of Reich’s disciples, Ola Raknes.
Reich died of a heart attack in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in 1957, eight months after being sentenced. If Reich’s claims were no more than ridiculous quackery, as the FDA doctors who refuted them suggested, and if he was just a paranoid schizophrenic, as one court psychiatrist concluded, then why did the U.S. government consider him such a danger? What was happening in America that led Reich to become an emblem of such a deep fear?
The critic Louis Menand described Arthur Koestler, with whom Reich shared a Communist cell in Berlin, as “a slightly mad dreidel that spun out of Central Europe and across the history of a bloody century.” Reich’s story traces a similarly erratic path, and looking back at his era can help to shed new light on it. Through the history of Reich’s box it’s possible to unpack the story of how sex became political in the twentieth century, and how it encountered Hitler, Stalin, and McCarthy along the way . Reich created the modern cult of the orgasm and, influentially, held that ecstasy was a point of resistance, immune to political control. Of course, the birth control pill - licensed by the FDA in 1957 (the year Reich died) for treating women with menstrual disorders - ultimately provided the technological breakthrough that facilitated the sexual liberation of the following decade. But Reich, perhaps more than any other sexual philosopher, had already given the erotic enthusiasm of the 1960s an intellectual justification, and laid the theoretical foundations for that era.
His ideas rallied a new generation of dissenters, and his orgone box, however unlikely an idea it may now seem, became a symbol of the sexual revolution. In January 1964, Time magazine declared that “Dr. Wilhelm Reich may have been a prophet. For now it sometimes seems that all America is one big Orgone Box”:

• With today’s model, it is no longer necessary to sit in cramped quarters for a specific time. Improved and enlarged to encompass the continent, the big machine works on its subjects continuously, day and night. From innumerable screens and stages, posters and pages, it flashes the larger-than-life-sized images of sex. From countless racks and shelves, it pushes the books which a few years ago were considered pornography. From myriad loudspeakers, it broadcasts the words and rhythms of pop-music erotic. And constantly, over the intellectual Muzak, comes the message that sex will save you and libido make you free.

Time called this new “sex-affirming culture” the “second sexual revolution” - the first having occurred in the 1920s, “when flaming youth buried the Victorian era and anointed itself as the Jazz Age.” In contrast, the children of the 1960s had little to rebel against and found themselves, Time commented, “adrift in a sea of permissiveness,” which they attributed to Reich’s philosophy: “Gradually, the belief spread that repression, not license, was the great evil, and that sexual matters belonged in the realm of science, not morals.”
In 1968 student revolutionaries graffitied Reichian slogans on the walls of the Sorbonne, and in Berlin they hurled copies of Reich’s book The Mass Psychology of Fascism at police. At the University of Frankfurt 68er (as they were called in German) were advised, “Read Reich and act accordingly!” According to the historian Dagmar Herzog, “No other intellectual so inspired the student movement in its early days, and to a degree unmatched either in the United States or other Western European nation.” In the 1970s, feminists such as Shulamith Firestone, Germaine Greer, and Juliet Mitchell continued to promote Reich’s work with enthusiasm.
However, even in his lifetime, Reich came to believe that the sexual revolution had gone awry. Indeed, his ideals seemed to run aground in the decade of free love, which saw erotic liberation co-opted and absorbed into what the historian of psychoanalysis Eli Zaretsky calls a “sexualised dreamworld of mass consumption.” Herbert Marcuse, another emigre who became the hero of a younger generation, provided the most rigorous critique of the darker side of liberation. After his initial enthusiasm for a world characterized by “polymorphous perversity,” Marcuse became cynical about it, and he ended his career with a series of brilliant analyses of ways in which the establishment adapted all these liberated ideas (the “intellectual Muzak” of the time) into an existing system of production and consumption. Reich had propagated an expressive vision of the self, but his sexualized politics of the body soon dissolved into mere narcissism as consumers sought to express themselves through their possessions. In the process, as Marcuse was early in detecting, sex and radical politics became unstuck.
It is a testament to the popularity Reich once had that his name is still remembered at all - so many of his colleagues have been forgotten. But he is now known more for his mad invention rather than for the sexual radicalism that box contained. Reich’s eccentric device might be seen as a prism through which to look at the conflicts and controversies of that era. Why did a generation seek to shed its sexual repressions by climbing into a closet? And why were others so threatened by it? What does it tell us about the ironies of the sexual revolution that the symbol of liberation was a box?

First Chapter Previous Chapter
Mrs. Vilonte stood alone in the bathroom. In her hands, she cradled the urn containing her husband's ashes. The weight of it was surprisingly light, almost inconsequential, like the flutter of a moth's wing against her palm.
There was a tinge of sadness that grazed her heart. She had spent years by his side, experiencing the highs and lows of marriage. And now he was dead. The memorial service had been sparsely attended, with only a handful offering their condolences.
One photographer seemed overly eager to capture a shot of the grieving widow shedding a tear. But Mrs. Vilonte despised tears—seeing them, feeling them trickle down her face. The moment she felt her eyes sting and tears threatening to spill, she brushed them away before they had a chance to fall.
Now, the house was quiet. But mixed with that lingering sadness was a sense of relief, a subtle liberation that whispered to her from the shadows. He had betrayed her. His infidelity had cut deep.
She unscrewed the lid of the urn. The ashes inside seemed to shimmer in the faint light. Without hesitation, she emptied the contents into the toilet bowl and pulled the lever, watching as they spiraled downwards, swallowed by the rushing water.
XXXXXX
She once cherished two joys during her drives to Gabrielle's violin lessons. One was soaking in the serene landscape while indulging in her beloved soft jazz on the radio. The other was the comforting presence of her daughter beside her in the front passenger seat.
Now, she glanced at the vacant seat, and a wave of melancholy washed over her. Shaking off the emotion, she turned her attention back to the road, gripping the wheel tighter as she accelerated. After a stretch of driving, she eventually arrived at the mansion.
She had often wondered how the maestro accumulated such immense wealth. However, after meeting his benefactor and experiencing the allure of that wealth herself, she began to understand the price he had paid–the soul.
Was striking a deal with such a malevolent entity truly worth it? This question haunted her thoughts daily, and still, she had no definitive answer. The allure of luxury was intoxicating like the addictive sweetness of sugar. The more she indulged in it, the stronger her craving became, leaving her caught in a cycle of desire and uncertainty.
The mansion was as elegant and grand as she remembered. In the front yard, a splendid water fountain glistened under the sunlight. Surrounding the mansion was a manicured garden bloomed with vibrant colors and lush foliage.
Before stepping out of the car, she pulled a handgun from the glove compartment and carefully concealed it in her purse. Today was the day she planned to confront him, intent on demanding him to undo the unfortunate turn her life had taken.
The front door was unlocked and it swung open effortlessly as she entered. It slammed shut behind her without her even touching it, and there was no wind to explain it.
“Ah, Mrs. Vilonte,” a familiar male voice greeted warmly, “It's been far too long since our last meeting. You look lovely as ever!”
She looked up to see the young Salerno, leaning casually against the railing at the top of the split staircase. His smirking face drew a scowl from her. She resented his mocking compliment about her looking “lovely as ever.” She wore the same black dress she'd worn since her husband's memorial, now creased from sleep and carrying a faint scent of dried scotch.
“You've had your fun, Salerno,” she retorted, her voice tinged with restrained anger. "I shouldn't have broken our agreement, and I've learned my lesson.”
“Have you?”
“Yes, and I assure you, it won't happen again.”
“So, what can I do for you?”
“I want my life back.”
Salerno's face was solemn, shrouded in silence. Unexpectedly, he erupted into mocking laughter.
“That's not the nature of consequences, my dear,” he remarked. “You must live with what you've done. Forgiveness is not in my nature.
“You've stripped me of my wealth–”
“It wasn't yours to begin with.”
“I have nothing left!”
“Oh, that isn't completely true. You still have your family.”
“You've torn my family apart! My husband is gone, my son imprisoned and now my daughter, too! You've taken her from me.”
“But soon you'll be reunited.”
“What do you mean?”
He motioned for her to ascend the stairs. “You've arrived just in time to witness something miraculous. Something beautiful!”
Confusion clouded Mrs. Vilonte's face until she heard an agonized moan coming from an upstairs room, followed by a cry she knew all too well.
“Gabrielle,” she gasped.
Salerno nodded. “You're about to be a grandmother to another child.”
The haunting images from the field of mirrors flooded back. The abomination—a monstrous entity—was on the brink of entering their world, and who knew what kind of hell it would bring. Suddenly, a powerful force propelled her towards the stairs, her movements no longer under her control. Before she knew it, she stood face to face with Salerno on the top landing. His grin exposed jagged, menacing teeth, and his eyes were pools of darkness. With talon-like fingers, he grasped her shoulders, their sharp points piercing her skin.
He led her into the master bedroom, where Gabrielle lay in a fitful sleep on a queen-size bed, her movements restless. Her eyes were closed, and sweat had matted her hair to her head. Beside her sat Victoria, whose skin showed signs of decay, and she moved with a robotic, disjointed motion as she wiped the sweat from Gabrielle's face with a cloth. When Victoria moved aside, Mrs. Vilonte shivered, finding herself staring into Victoria's empty, hollow eye sockets.
Salerno leaned in close to her ear, his voice a low whisper as he said, “My children are everywhere, and this newborn will join them, serving me in this world. You should feel honored to be part of something extraordinary, something greater than yourself.”
Slipping free from his hold, she quickly made her way to her daughter's bedside, sweeping aside stray locks from her face. The moment her fingers made contact with her skin, Gabrielle began to calm down.
“Gabby, it's Mom,” she whispered gently, a wave of relief washing over her as her daughter's eyes fluttered open in response.
“Did you enjoy the concert, Mom?” Gabrielle asked, faintly.
“Well, it was an unforgettable performance, that's for sure.”
“Didn’t I do a phenomenal job?”
“Let's talk about it when we get home.”
“Home?”
“Yes, you're coming home with me now.”
“I can't... the baby is going to arrive soon,” Gabrielle gasped, her voice strained with pain. "It hurts too much to move.”
“You’ll have to endure it! We need to get out of here!”
Mrs. Vilonte tossed aside the blanket and firmly grasped her arm, pulling her out of the bed. Gabrielle staggered and lost her footing, sliding down onto the floor. She reached for the edge of the bed, trying to soften her sudden fall.
“Run, run, but wherever you hide,” Salerno sang, “you'll never escape this hell.”
Mrs. Vilonte quickly drew the handgun from her purse, aiming it at him as he approached. Her eyes darted between Salerno and Victoria, the gun wavering between the two.
“Stay back! Just let us go.”
Salerno chuckled. “Mrs. Vilonte, really now? Violence won't solve your problems.”
A deafening bang echoed through the room. He staggered back, pressing a hand to his belly as blood began to seep through his white shirt. His mouth opened, releasing a plume of black smoke that coalesced into the silhouette of a large goat standing upright on its hind legs.
The creature glared at her with red eyes before the smoke dissipated. Then, as if the inevitable march of age had finally caught up to him within seconds, his vitality began to wane. His once smooth skin transformed into a web of wrinkles. His dark eyes dimmed, replaced by a cloudy haze. His jet-black hair turned a shocking shade of white, contrasting starkly with the pallor of his skin. His cheeks began to sink.
Salerno, aged and frail, sank to the floor, his hand stubbornly pressed against his wound as if hoping to halt the flow of blood. “Run, run, but wherever you hide, you'll never escape this hell.”
Mrs. Vilonte seized her daughter's arm, hauling her upright, all the while keeping the gun trained between Salerno and Victoria. Victoria lay collapsed on the floor, reduced to a heap of decomposed skin devoid of bones and muscle.
A deep rumble echoed through the room, causing it to tremble and sway. Cracks snaked across the walls, paint peeling away in tattered sheets. Twisting, blood-red vines crept from the fractures, weaving their way across walls and ceiling. Acting quickly, Mrs. Vilonte seized Gabrielle, who had collapsed to the floor, teeth clenched in pain from another surge of agony. She pulled her up by the arm, forcing her to her feet and pushing her towards the door.
The mansion, once a symbol of pride when she'd taken her daughter for the maestro’s lessons, was transforming into a nightmarish scene. Blood oozed from the decaying walls, while a noxious sulfuric odor filled the air, nearly suffocating Mrs. Vilonte and making each breath a struggle.
She didn't pause for rest or allow Gabrielle a moment to catch her breath until they were safely out of the house and speeding away in the car, putting as much distance as possible between them and the area.
“Mom, stop the car,” Gabrielle groaned in pain from the back seat.
“Hold on tight, honey. We'll go to the nearest hospital.”
“I can't wait anymore!”
“It won't be long. Twenty minutes.”
“I can feel the baby wanting to come out.”
Mrs. Vilonte looked up at the rearview mirror, where she saw Gabrielle's sweaty face scrunched up in pain, gripping her rounded belly with both hands.
“I know this isn’t easy,” she said, “but you need to hold out a little longer. We'll be at the hospital very soon.”
“STOP THE CAR!”
The car came to a sudden stop, jolting Mrs. Vilonte forward and almost throwing Gabrielle off from her seat.
“The baby is coming! Mom, help me!” Gabrielle cried.
“The baby…”
Mrs. Vilonte couldn't shake the thought that this creature couldn't possibly be human. The horrifying acts that it could be capable of frightened her, and the idea that it shared a bloodline with her sickened her even more. Her hand moved to the handgun resting on the passenger seat beside her, considering the one extreme solution she could think of for such an unusual situation.
It wasn't ideal, but she saw no other option.
She took hold of the gun and stepped out of the car, approaching the rear passenger side. Opening the door, she found her daughter propped on her elbows, lifting her dress to reveal the widening canal. Gabrielle let out a menacing growl as she pushed.
Mrs. Vilonte crouched to inspect closer, and instantly felt the unsettling, malevolent presence. The entity seemed to be trying to claw its way out from the depths of the abyss. It inched towards the light, its growls growing louder like a ravenous animal. As Gabrielle pushed further, its red, snouted face broke through, its eyes snapping open to lock onto hers with an intense, black-eyed glare.
Startled, she stumbled back, her hands grasping for the handgun that had slipped from her trembling fingers. As she aimed at the creature before her, an unseen force encircled her hands. She fought to maintain control, but the force twisted the weapon, redirecting it towards her. Suddenly, she found herself staring down the barrel of her gun.
The trees came alive with a flurry of motion as a group of birds took flight, their wings beating frantically against the sky. The once-quiet canopy echoed with the sound of panicked chirps and the movement of feathers, as the startled birds scattered in all directions, seeking refuge from the sudden disturbance caused by a blast.
XXXXX
In the forest of another realm, beyond the physical world, her skin melded seamlessly with the tree's bark, as vines snaked their way around her, ensnaring her limbs. Fungi blossomed from her mouth, rendering her voiceless as her tongue was entwined.
The goat-like creature approached her, brandishing a small mirror, coercing her to confront her distorted reflection. Little remained of her once recognizable features. Worms and roaches had taken residence in the hollow cavity where her nose and right eye had been. With her one remaining eye, she gazed into the mirror, waves of anguish coursing through her being as she beheld the grim reflection of what she had transformed into.
Then, as her ghastly reflection faded, a young man with dark hair and eyes as deep as coal materialized, wearing a black suit, standing with poise on a stage, holding up a violin. Upon closer look, she realized it to be the very violin Gabrielle had once owned.
“Behold what my child has become,” the entity proclaimed. “Are you not as proud of him as I am?”
XXXXX
A bright light beamed down on the young man standing center stage, his violin poised in his hands. His fingers glided over the strings, and with each passing note, the audience, their eyes fixed on him, was drawn deeper into his spell. It wrapped around the listeners' hearts and pulled them into a trance-like state. And as the last notes hung in the air, the audience were suspended in silence and left breathless. Then, they leaped to their feet in thunderous applause.
With a twisted smile, he relished the adulation. He knew he had sway over them, puppet master of their actions. He could simply issue a command, and they would eagerly comply, ready to enact his darkest fantasies. He imagined directing his willing servants to get up on the roof of a towering building and leap into the abyss below, willingly offering themselves as sacrifices.
He envisioned chaos unleashed upon the streets, cars overturned, windows shattered, and buildings engulfed in flames. All at his behest. The world lay at his fingertips, ripe for manipulation and destruction, as he thought about the countless ways he could bring about humanity’s demise.
After his final bow, the young man turned to face the audience, expressing heartfelt thanks for their attendance, eliciting both laughter and warm affection from the crowd. But, amidst the resounding applause, one figure remained still in the front row, confined to a wheelchair. He stared straight at her face which was hidden behind a thin black veil.
Though her body remained motionless in the chair, incapable of even the slightest movement, her one good eye was very much alive, fully engaged with her surroundings. And there was something else in her gaze. He could sense it from the stage, and it made him chuckle. It was an aroma he found intoxicating – the unmistakable stench of fear, seeping from every pore like primal pheromones.
The audience clamored for an encore, yearning to satisfy their insatiable thirst for more music. Their fervent cries echoed through tears. Lifting his violin once more, he hushed the audience with a single motion. The moment the red bow touched the strings, pandemonium broke loose. The spectators lost all self-control, leaping from their seats, clutching their heads, and tearing at their hair in a wild frenzy. They were completely entranced, surrendered to the power of the music.
As his crescendo intensified, a raging fire surged within them, mirrored by the frantic speed of his fingers on the strings. With each chord, they tore at their garments, sinking nails and teeth into one another's flesh. Chaos exploded, mingling with the scent of blood and the sound of rending flesh.
Mrs. Vilonte remained seated in her wheelchair, an impassive observer amidst the chaos, her voice silenced, her limbs still. She bore witness to the madness, her mind ensnared within its chaos, forever lost to its depths.

Hey all, wanted to share some reflections as I’ve hit Day 24 of sobriety (aiming for 100… though 100+ is looking better everyday).
I always wondered what it would be like to be sober this long! What would I go through? The fear of not knowing kept me away. I’ve quit a few times before, a long stint (hahahaha 20 days) about a year ago right after losing a job from an alcohol related incident. When I quit that time, I HAD to quit. It felt like a punishment. I went back to drinking and somehow my antics got worse (and they were baaaad before!). I’ve stared at so many rock bottoms until one day I realized that maybe the final rock bottom was death. So this time I WANTED to quit. That change in mindset was everything, it’s like I turned off a light switch. So far the journey’s been like this:
First few days: absolutely terrible insomnia, sweat through the sheets constantly, lasted about four days. That’s when I realized my body has been trying to do that for years, and I finally got it out. Most important thing here was to remind myself that I would absolutely not feel great on day 2 or 5 after however many years of my own bs.
Into the second week (day 7ish): appetite returned (was hardly eating), started eating much better food and lots of it. Lost my wine weight. Mental clarity started coming through, good mood, productive at work.
End of second week into the third (days 13-20): emoooootionsssss, so many emotions! Feeling all the things, fully. At the brink of crying most days. Reminded myself that I’d been drinking to not feel these things, so maybe now was the time.
Into week four (days 21-now): a little more peaceful, suddenly very tired, but sleeping like a baby for the first time ever (good sleep started about a week in and only got better). A reflective question popped up: how do I want to show up in life? That’s the same question I had when I was drinking, and the answer then was “not like this,” and now I’m still not quite sure, but there’s space to decide.
So it took me almost a full month to even get to that question. There’s a big empty space after drinking, but it’s one to fill with good things, eventually. I know I had one awful identity, and I’ve chucked it (or I at least don’t pick up a drink and let that monster out, it’s like a whole second person lived inside me) - and still not quite sure who I am now. Not quite my old self pre-drinking, and definitely not my drunk self… it’s a nice opportunity, but a weird liminal space.
Along the way I’ve also chosen to say yes to everything I would’ve while drinking, and I’ve managed to survive bar hopping, in-laws, concerts, sports events, and soon, a wedding and loooong vacation. I just didn’t drink, and it was fine. Sometimes it’s a little lonely, sometimes it’s a little frustrating, especially when everyone around me goes past tipsy and into druuuunk, but I’m present, and I wake up everyday with a clear head and energy. And a lot of people’s posts are right: I hit the gym every single day, and it works, except now I’m not three beers deep before I start (makes things so much easier!). Also, hello hydrated skin and bright eyes!
So, if you’re just starting out, just wanna say I was terrified, but continuing to live drunk was even more terrifying. Getting a LOT of days under my belt helped, and those first few days were GROSS and SAD, and that’s okay. I also chose not to listen to some of my most negative thoughts - my mind wasn’t quite telling the truth, and it definitely wanted to wallow in shame and low self worth. An emotional hangover. But it got better.
I keep reminding myself that I’m going to feel so proud to say I’m at day 42, or 87, or 98. I’m also not really advertising what I’m up to to people, aside from close friends. No one knows I’m actually ordering the mocktail (half the price!) or hydrating on club soda and lime. No one actually cares - they’re into themselves, and I can magically drive anyone safely home!
Anywayyy, I’m always curious how other people have gone through this initial period. I look to those stories as guidance and for courage. Wanted to share my path so far since it’s been good and actually sticking this time. Hope it helps.

Thank you to u/SpacePaladin15 for writing NoP and for allowing fanfiction!
This was co-written with u/ImaginationSea3679!
FirstPrevious
Memory Transcription Subject: Firban, Yotul Civilian
Date [standardized human time]: February 4, 2137
After the touching scene between Aragorn and Arwen, the screen transitioned to show various people seated in a circle. Elrond stood to speak. As he spoke, the camera moved to show the faces of various people who had come, including Strider and the other human from the prior scene.
“Strangers from distant lands, friends of old. You have been summoned here to answer the threat of Mordor. Middle Earth stands upon the brink of destruction. None can escape it. You will unite or you will fall. Each race is bound to this fate, this one doom. Bring forth the Ring, Frodo.”
Frodo, who was apparently in this meeting, stood up and slowly walked towards the short pillar in the center of the circle of gathered folks. Music built up slightly as he reached a hand to the pillar, placing the Ring down.
The ring immediately attracted the interest of the other human, who leaned forward. “So it is true…”
“Why else would you be there if it weren't true?” Wissic asked, as though he could hear her. “Just for rumors?”
“People would travel great distances even for just rumors, back in the day,” I told her. “Information moves slowly without the internet, motorized vehicles or even trains. Best they have are wagons and boats.”
“It's just odd to me that he wouldn't expect a serious seeming man like Elrond to be certain, I suppose,” she replied.
I simply shrugged as we went back to watching.
Frodo made his way back to his seat. As he sat down, he let out a sigh as he closed his eyes, as though in relief.
“He really doesn't like that accursed thing, does he?” Hiled commented, to which we all murmured thoughts of agreement.
As the other people in attendance exchanged suspicious glances at the ring, the unknown human stood up. “In a dream I saw the Eastern sky grow dark In the West a pale light lingered. A voice was crying, ‘Your doom is near at hand. Isildur's bane is found.’” With each word he spoke, the music built up as he seemed to step closer and closer to the ring. Elrond and Gandalf exchanged looks of worry.
“Isildur's Bane…” The human muttered as his hand began to reach forth.
All of us were tense as the music continued to build, complete with Wissic’s almost inaudible whimpering as we all stared at the screen.
Elrond jumpt to his feet. “BOROMIR-!”
Suddenly Gandalf spoke and the whole screen began to shake, the sky darkening as his words reverberated and echoed. Wissic yelped as she shivered in fear, and even Bivi seemed taken aback. The screen focused a bit on Frodo as he looked at the Ring. When the Ring was in focus, the screen did not shake, and for a moment, there was almost the sound of a second voice joining in for a brief moment.
Then, the darkness cleared, and the now-named Boromir sat down in shock.
“He fell to the ring quick, dinnae?” Bivi chuckled. “‘Umans…”
Ignoring her, we continued to watch the movie.
“Never before has anyone uttered words of that tongue here in Imladris.” Elrond spoke with a strong tone and a look on his face that seemed both frightened and angered.
Gandalf spoke loud and clearly. “I do not ask your pardon Master Elrond, for the Black Speech of Mordor may yet be heard in every corner of the West!” Gandalf turned to return to his seat. “The Ring is altogether evil.”
“Aye, it is a gift!” Boromir suddenly spoke up.
I was suddenly very concerned. “...What?”
“A gift to the foes of Mordor. Why not use this Ring?” An almost solemn sounding horn played a melody as he continued to speak. “Long has my father, the Steward of Gondor, kept the forces of Mordor at bay! By the blood of our people are your lands kept safe! Give Gondor the weapon of the enemy, let us use it against him!”
Bivi of all people hummed in thought. “Well, I suppose that perspective does make a bit more sense. This ‘Gondor’ tribe seems to be the main fighting force against Mordo’, and they’re fighting a losing battle. In a desperate time like that, using the enemy’s strength against ‘em might sound appealing.”
“Sounds an awful lot like Nikonus in that interview with the Harchen reporter…” Wissic mumbled, to which Hiled and I grunted in agreement. Bivi huffed, choosing not to respond.
Aragorn spoke up. “You cannot wield it. None of us can. The One Ring answers to Sauron alone. It has no other master.”
Boromir turned to him, a scathing tone in his voice as he responded. “And what would a ranger know of this matter?”
One of the Elves in the council suddenly stood up, speaking with a strong tone. “This is no mere Ranger. He is Aragorn son of Arathorn. You owe him your allegiance.”
“Son of ‘o?” the Yulpa questioned.
The music deepens as Boromir and Frodo turn to the aforementioned ranger, full of disbelief. “Aragorn…” He pauses for a slight moment. “This… is Isildur’s heir?”
“Heir to the throne of Gondor.” The Elf added as Frodo continued to struggle in processing the information.
Aragorn blinked and raised his hand. He spoke in elvish, and Wissic quietly translated.
“Sit down, Legolas.”
“Well it should be rather obvious,” Hiled thought aloud. “He knows so much about the Nazgûl, more than most probably do. Given what Sauron did to his ancestor, he probably holds a lot of resentment towards him for that.”
That sounds a lot like his opinion of the Federation.
“He seems to not like ‘aving the fact that he’s Isildur’s heir bein’ brought up.” Bivi noted. “Understandable, I suppose.”
Boromir turned back to Legolas. “Gondor has no King.” As he walks back to his seat, he eyes Aragorn with what looked like disdain. “Gondor needs no King.”
“I do generally prefer democracy,” my Venlil coworker said. “Choosing your leader is nice.”
“Ah ah, but remember, this is a fantasy story,” I reminded him. “Here, kings can be the objectively good rulers because they’re as the writer chooses them to be.”
“Eh,” Bivi shrugged. “Considerin’ that he and his line decided to dick off and do their own fing when their kingdom is strugglin’ to ‘old off the orcs, I feel like he wouldn’t be a good king.”
“That also makes Boromir’s scathing attitude a bit more understandable,” Wissic added. “Aragorn and his ancestors, the rightful rulers of Gondor, left their own people to rot seemingly right by Mordor’s doorstep simply because they felt that their people were hopeless.”
…
Okay, maybe I take back what I said.
Gandalf spoke up. “Aragorn is right. We cannot use it.”
“Then there is only one choice,” Elrond said as he stood up yet again. “The Ring must be destroyed.”
“Then what are we waiting for!” The bearded humanoid, who I assumed was a dwarf stood up suddenly, lifting an axe. The music intensified as the axe was raised and brought down-
GROWL
In an instant the axe shattered and the eye flashed on the screen. Frodo seemed to see it, as he held his head in pain. The dwarf was sent to the ground in shock. The camera slowly panned up the pillar to look at the Ring, which stood completely undamaged as its voice whispered unintelligently.
“Am I going crazy or did that ring hiss or something at them?” Wissic asked, looking at all of us. When we swished our tails positively, she shuddered. “Spooky.”
“The Ring cannot be destroyed, Gimli, son of Gloin, by any craft that we here possess.” Elrond spoke up. “The Ring was made in the fires of Mount Doom. Only there can it be unmade. It must be taken deep into Mordor and cast back into the firey chasm from whence it came.”
The ring finally stopped whispering as Elrond continued. “One of you…” He glanced around at everyone else. “...must do this.”
For a long moment, there was silence.
“I don’t envy he who does,” I commented, hearing everyone else mutter agreements with me.
The camera focused on Boromir, who had his hand up to his face in frustration. “One does not simply walk into Mordor. Its black gates are guarded by more than just orcs. There is evil there that does not sleep and the great eye is ever watchful. Tis a barren wasteland, riddled with fire and ash and dust. The very air you breathe is a poisonous fume. Not with ten thousand men could you do this. It is folly!” He spoke, shaking his head at the notion of going straight into Mordor.
“Definitely ominous,” our Sivkit compatriot said. “I’m not sure they can do it.”
“Have you heard nothing Lord Elrond has said?” Legolas exclaimed, jumping to his feet as music began to build up the suspension. “The Ring must be destroyed!”
“And I suppose you think you’re the one to do it!” The Dwarf named Gimli exclaimed in an accusatory manner at the elf.
“And if we fail, what then?” Boromir interjected as the music kept building up. “What happens when Sauron takes back what is his?!”
Gimli jumped to his feet. “I will be dead before I see the Ring in the hands of an elf!”
With that line, the entire council broke into chaos, insults and arguments being thrown all over the place.
“Oh, the wheels of bureaucracy spinning. Lovely,” I chuckled sarcastically.
“Oh no…” Wissic whimpered.
“Gotta love people mucking about and arguing while the enemy gets stronger as they continue to delay.” Hiled added to my comment.
As the argument continued, the music took on the recognizable motifs of evil that had been presented as the voices began to grow muffled. Gandalf tried to stop the argument, but the camera focused on Frodo, who had his attention somewhere else.
The Ring.
Whispering was heard, the vile voice of the ring chanting in that wretched Black Speech as all other sounds were drowned out. The argument of the council was reflected as clearly as a mirror on the surface of the Ring. As Frodo continued to stare, the Ring conjured the vision of fire enveloping the council as the evil music intensified.
“The Ring is doing this,” Wissic whimpered.
I felt her fear. To thing that the Ring had this level of influence over a whole group of people that were simply seated around it was indeed frightening.
“He’s strong. I think he can resist,” Hiled assured her.
Frodo suddenly stood up and shouted something, though his voice was drowned out in the arguing. After he repeats himself, though, the camera focuses on Gandalf as the sounds of arguing come to a stop. Calm, almost hobbit-like music played as the camera moved to Frodo.
“I will take the Ring to Mordor.”
Everyone stared at him in disbelief.
“You wot?” Bivi blurted out in surprise.
Frodo became a little nervous. “Though, I do not know the way.”
Gandalf offered a comforting look as he walked over to the halfling. “I will help you bear this burden Frodo Baggins, as long as it is yours to bear.”
“Hopefully he can bear it,” I said. “He’s strong, but it seems like he can’t stay that way forever against that ring.”
The heroic melody that played during the drop of the title in Bilbo’s home returned as Aragorn approached. “If by my life or death I can protect you, I will,” He said with a kneel. “You have my sword.”
Legolas the Elf stepped forth. “And you have my bow.”
“And my axe!” Gimli the Dwarf said as he stepped forth as well.
“They have courage, and honor,” Hiled stated. “Good men.”
The rest of us nodded at that.
Boromir then walked to the growing group of adventurers, stopping before Frodo for a moment. “You carry the fate of us all little one. If this is indeed the will of the Council, then Gondor will see it done.”
I resisted the urge to snort a laugh. “Why am I not surprised that he's the last to join?”
“Well, the fact that he joined them anyway despite initially being in opposition to the whole idea does say something about who he is as a person,” Hiled noted with an ear flick. “I feel he might prove to be a great ally.”
Wissic seemed to flick an ear with agreement as we continued watching.
“Hey!” Samwise shouted, accompanied by hobbity music as he ran past some bushes to join his friend. “Mr. Frodo’s not going anywhere without me!”
“No indeed it is hardly possible to separate you, even when he is summoned to a secret council and you are not.” Elrond said, looking mildly surprised.
“A loyal friend,” Wissic said, glancing at Hiled. “He’s lucky to have him.”
The Venlil looked touched by her words, snuggling up closer to her.
The camera then showed Merry and Pippin peeking out from between a couple of pillars. “Wait! We’re coming too!” Merry shouted as he and Pippin ran out of their hiding spots. Elrond turned in surprise, looking astounded.
“You'd have to send us home tied up in a sack to stop us!” Merry exclaimed as he and his friend joined the group.
“Anyway, you need people of intelligence on this sort of mission… quest… thing.” Pippin added awkwardly.
“Well that rules you out, Pip,” Merry quipped.
“And you, too!” Wissic giggled. “Both of them are a bit clueless.”
“Yeah,” Bivi agreed. “I can already smell trouble brewing just with their presence.”
Elrond took a moment to look over the team that had been assembled as the heroic music returned with more power and gravitas. “Nine companions…” The camera showed the group in full.
“So be it! You shall be The Fellowship of the Ring!” Elrond declared.
“Woo! It’s the title!” cheered Hiled.
“An’ ‘ey’re finally movin’ their arses!” Bivi exclaimed. “Lazy gits.”
“Great!” Pippin said in an almost giddy manner. “Where are we going?”
…
I was unable to resist the urge to facepalm.

My name isn't really Derek, but I'll say it is for the purpose of this story. I work at a psychiatric hospital called Serene Hills. Lately I feel more like a patient than a worker, but after what happened I'm sure you'd understand. My heart is pounding right now just thinking about it, but I have to get this off my chest.
First off, don't let the word “serene” in the name fool you. We take in many patients who are unwanted in other hospitals or too troublesome to manage. It may sound awful, but it's a grim reality in a grim world. Your strangest day is simply a Tuesday for me, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I enjoy the excitement, the challenge, and getting to know the patients.
My job is to assist with patient’s day-to-day activities, as well as keeping the patients calm and cooperative. Being persuasive really helps and you may think that’s counter-intuitive for my line of work. But if you know your patients, it’s not hard. I’m not a big guy, so I tend to employ more brain than brawn. I can't say the same for some of my coworkers, especially Brolin. He’s the best example of how to wrestle any problem into submission, but it was ultimately his ruin.
On the day of the incident, we had this new patient admitted. It wasn’t very hard to guess that he was nervous. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. His eyes were wild and he had frayed brown hair stuck out in all directions. One weird trait I noticed was how bushy his eyebrows were and I even referred to him as such.
I’m not exactly sure what it was about him, but I felt there was something more going on. Despite my wariness, I thought of him as a delicate deer that shouldn’t be spooked. He was admittedly quiet for a while, but I continued to keep a close eye on him.
“Think he's nervous enough?” Brolin scoffed as the new patient passed us in the hall.
“Oh, you mean Eyebrows there? Yeah, no kidding. Looks like he's on the brink of an episode.”
“Eyebrows…haha! I like that. For a while I didn’t think you had a sense of humor!”
“I’ve always had one. It’s just a matter of whether people pick up on it. If I had to guess though, I’d say Mr. Eyebrows doesn’t have much of one.”
“It’d be hard to find much amusing about this place.”
“Fair point.”
“Day shift said everyone's been acting up more than usual today.”
“Oh, it’s a full moon.”
“What?”
“It’s ‘cuz of the full moon.”
“What's that got to do with anything?”
“You haven't noticed yet? Patients always get more restless during a full moon cycle.”
“You're jerking my leg.”
“No jerking necessary. Ask anyone on staff who's worked more than six months. They'll tell you...there's always something weird going on during full moons. You know the word 'lunar' for moon and 'lunatic' are related?”
“No way.”
“Way. Go look it up. Some say it's due to a gravitational pull that brings on strange anomalies or something.”
“Anoma-what?”
“You're so typical, Brolin.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“Doesn't matter. Hey, it looks like the supe's headed this way. Let's look 'orderly' so he doesn't bust our chops.”
So the start of our shift continued toward the evening and it didn't take long to notice the truth of the full moon phenomenon. Patients were less cooperative than usual and more resistant to taking their medication, among other things.
As I promised myself, I consistently kept an eye on our newbie. He was just nervous at first, but he seemed to slowly descend into madness the further into the day it got.
My inquisitiveness about our new patient got to me, so I swung by the records office and asked to take a look at his file. Turns out they had good reason for Eyebrows being here.
His name was Dimitri Burroughs, and there was a police report attached. Apparently, he was still in the process of being convicted for multiple murders. They found the dismembered bodies of his family strewn about his home. A neighbor showed up after hearing noises and found Dimitri crying and holding the remains of his family. The neighbor immediately called the police.
They locked Dimitri up on the assumption that he was the killer. It was understandable with Dimitri’s DNA all over the bodies, but then again…they were his family. He managed to escape jail, killing some people that got in his way by the same method of dismemberment. No one witnessed exactly how he got out.
After his escape, he was eventually apprehended. While back in custody, he was diagnosed after speaking to multiple psychologists. This diagnosis got him admitted to a psychiatric hospital until his trial was over. He escaped the other hospital multiple times without any casualties, and thus led him here.
Dimitri always maintained that he blacked out and could never remember killing anyone. He was remorseful, which was unusual for someone who completely lost touch with reality.
Perhaps there was more to this guy…
After further psychiatric interviews, it was determined that Dimitri had a delusion about something possessing him any time he killed. He even said that there may be more victims because he had these blackouts many times before. No one could prove that he willfully killed anyone and there were never any witnesses…that survived anyway.
What a strange case…
Something about it didn’t add up, but what made sense in a world that was just as mad? I went about my routine with a tingling sensation in my bones, as if my body knew something my mind didn’t.
Later in the evening, Dimitri was mumbling to himself pretty loud and constantly looking out the windows.
“Scared of the dark, Eyebrows?” Brolin questioned the patient.
“You wouldn't understand...” Dimitri started, ending in unintelligible gibberish.
“Hey, what’s he saying?”
My muscled cohort directed this at me.
“I dunno, Brolin. He’s probably not saying much of anything, so leave him alone. His name’s Dimitri, by the way.”
“He’s bothering me. I don’t like it when I can't understand what someone’s saying. Hey, what are you mumbling about?!”
Brolin enunciated his words to Dimitri as if talking to someone who was slow.
Usually Brolin just makes snide comments at everything and doesn't zero any patients out. Why he had such an interest in Dimitri was beyond me. I got up and walked over to supervise Brolin.
“Time...time...what's the time?” The patient mumbled out.
Dimitri turned to me with wide, feral eyes. Despite how it sounded on the surface, it didn't seem like odd ramblings to me. There was an earnest understanding in his eyes.
“It's a quarter past eight. You'll be going to bed soon.”
“Ahh, no! I need to stay out here. I want to...look out the windows! I like to see the night sky! It's so pretty out, can I please just....”
“No can do, Eyebrows. Lights out is at 8:30,” Brolin interjected.
“Please, please…can I? Will you let me?”
Dimitri turned back to me with pleading eyes and I honestly felt bad for him.
“I'm sorry, bud. I don't make the rules. And Brolin's right, we have to get everyone in by 8:30.”
“I can't....I....erhhh!”
He stormed off and began rambling incoherently again. I followed lightly behind him, still maintaining a strong urge to stay diligent in watching him.
Fifteen minutes later, we had all the patients rounded up and in their beds, to the chagrin of some. The worst of which was Dimitri, who was still rambling loudly in his room with no sign of letting up.
“I can't, I need to be out there!” He pleaded, but we insisted he stay in his room.
Ten minutes later, his filibuster was getting even worse.
“I can't take it, he's going to solitary!” Brolin yelled.
He threw down his magazine in annoyance, nostrils flaring in excellent fashion. I didn't find it necessary yet, but he was keeping his roommate and other patients up.
Now when we first took him out of his room, he was somewhat compliant at first, until Brolin started going into him.
“You need to shut up! You're going to solitary and there are no windows there! That’s what you get for not listening!”
“Dude, cut it out,” I whispered to my co-worker. “That’s not helping anything.”
“I can't! I need to look out the window!”
“Oh, Brolin, you forgot to tell him!” I said, putting on my most convincing cadence.
“Tell him what?”
“That they put a window in the solitary cell.”
Brolin looked at me blankly and I leaned in with a slight nod. As clueless as Brolin was, he could at least understand some subtleties.
“Oh, you’re right. I can’t believe I forgot! They just put that window in this week! Must have slipped my mind.”
“Really?!”
“It’s actually a great view. You'll love it!”
We only hoped that he didn't catch on, at least not until it was too late. It seemed a ridiculous ploy, but staying on the patients’ good side means that they’ll want to believe you. I never enjoyed lying to patients, but when it comes to keeping everyone safe and copacetic, you have to do what’s necessary.
Minutes later, we were at the padded cell where our new patient would spend his night. While not as manic as before, he was still very much on edge.
Just as he got his foot into the door, he could tell that we’d lied to him about the window.
“No!” He screamed.
He fought against us to get out, and while Dimitri was a lanky fellow, he definitely had some scrap in him. If he was always this strong, it could explain how he managed to escape before. Even as beefy as Brolin was, it took the two of us to wedge our patient through the door.
Even then, it wasn't without incident. I had some minor scratches and scrapes, but Brolin had a bright red mark on his cheek where Dimitri landed a decent blow. Brolin touched his hand to the spot and grimaced a bit.
“Ouch,” I said.
“It's nothing.”
The coldness in Brolin's voice startled me. He was thoroughly pissed.
“We'll let the nurse take a look at that, come on.”
Brolin replied with silence as I walked on and soon felt the absence of my fellow orderly. He didn’t just fall behind, Brolin hadn't moved an inch.
“Brolin? You coming or what?”
“Nah, I'm good. I'm gonna hang out here for a sec.”
“Why?”
Brolin picked up on the suspicion tone in my voice and shot me a dark look that bothered me. Something in his eyes was beginning to raise some major red flags. Brolin left the keys inserted in the cell door and I knew it was no coincidence.
“GET ME OUT OF HERE!!”
I started walking back to the cell to hopefully deescalate the situation.
“PLEASE, LET ME OUT! IT’S FOR THE BEEEST!”
“I think our new patient needs to learn some manners,” Brolin added. He banged on the solitary door with his fist. “Maybe I can shut you up for a good while.”
“Man, come on. Don't make this...”
“Stay out of this! It's between me and Eyebrows here. He needs to understand how things work around here. Stand by so you can open the door for me when I'm done!”
“Hey, don't...”
Before I could get another word in, Brolin cracked open the door and threw the keys at me. As I caught the keys, Brolin had wriggled through the opening before yanking the door shut behind him. I approached the barred opening to the cell just as the room turned a shade of blue. Brolin had engaged his stun gun on Dimitri, who fell to the floor.
“That’ll teach you to mess with me,” Brolin spat the words at the patient.
Dimitri attempted to stand up, but not before Brolin tackled him to the floor. My blood began to boil. Not only was Brolin getting way out of line, he’d forced me to witness his atrocity.
“What the hell are you doing?! Get out of there!!” I screamed.
The door locked behind him automatically, so I had no choice but to stay so I could open it for his safety. There was no way I could leave him locked in there with a patient, but I wasn’t entirely sure I could stop him without getting hurt myself.
“BROLIN, STOP!” I shouted again through the windowed bars, but the assault had already begun.
Knowing Brolin for the last two years, I'd only seen him snap one other time and it was nothing close to this. He was basically holding the guy down and whaling on him.
“Get off him! Hey, HEY!” I shouted.
Brolin didn’t respond, so I had no choice but to radio for help.
Never in my life did I ever think I’d have to call for help because of a co-worker instead of an inmate.
Right after I got a confirmation for backup, it dawned on me that we were the furthest from the station, which meant our backup wouldn’t get here before Brolin took this any further. I wasn’t a snitch, but this was a huge breach of safety protocol and morality. I needed help to stop Brolin, or at the very least, another witness to cover my ass.
“Hey, what the...” Brolin called out.
“What's wrong!?”
“I dunno, he's convulsing!”
“Probably because you tased him and beat the shit out of him, you muscle-headed asshole! Get out of there before this gets any worse!”
Through the bars, I could only tell that Brolin released the patient and there was some thrashing around.
And that was when I heard a deep growl from the room...
“Is he…growling?” I asked.
“Yeah. Do people normally do that if they're seizing?”
“I don’t know, but you need to get your ass out of there, now!”
“I wanna see what happens.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?! Get out!!”
Through the barred slot in the door, I couldn't see the patient clear enough to discern what was happening, but I got that weird tingling sensation that something otherworldly was afoot. I wanted to check on Dimtri, but I also knew he was dangerous and this situation could easily set him off.
Brolin began to back step towards the door when Dimitri sprung up and lunged forward so fast that it was all one blurry motion. I recoiled at the loud bang against the metal door. Something hit it so hard, the door actually bent outwards.
“Brolin?” I said, my voice shaking.
I heard labored coughing and wheezing from the other side. It would take another minute for help to arrive, so I apprehensively inched the door open to check on Brolin.
Lighting was not on my side and I could only faintly make out the slumped form of my co-worker on the other side of the door.
“Oh my God,” I said faintly.
The idea of Brolin hitting the door that hard made me wince. I was partially surprised he was still breathing. He was going to need some serious help. I clicked on my flashlight to get a better look, but the survival part of my brain told me to locate the patient first.
Dimitri was now in a fetal position in the corner, completely nude from having ripped off his own clothes. His matted hair was wilder now, until he stood up and I realized his hair wasn't just wild, it was coming out of parts of his face that weren’t natural.
With each lumbering step he took towards me, more hair sprouted from his body and he was way more muscular than I originally thought. As I watched him, I realized that his body and muscle mass had actually tripled. A word came to mind to describe what he looked like now, but my mind wouldn’t accept it.
No…they aren’t real.
“I t-tried…to w-war-n-n y-you,” the beastly form of Dimitri spoke in a snarl.
“I kil-il-ed those p-peo-ple, b-but I-I-I c-couldn't help it!”
My mind seized up despite every inclination to run away. All I could think was to not look him in the eyes.
I cast my gaze to the floor, where I watched a crawling shadow of a furry figure. His speech was nothing but guttural noises and his shadow thrashed for a moment as it grew larger to a monstrous proportion. I wanted to look up, but my mind stayed fixed on that impossible silhouette because it was less real.
Still looking down, I saw Brolin being dragged into the darkness. He pleaded for mercy in wheezing breaths. From there, I only heard tearing, snapping, and Brolin's agonized screams of pain. He would not be afforded any mercy this night.
My hand shook uncontrollably, causing the light to dance about the room. I looked up in time to see a bloodied, wolfish face approach me.
It no longer resembled a man save for the bipedal stature. The beast’s face was so close to mine that I could smell the hot breath and freshly chewed meat of my co-worker. The yellow, canine eyes were horrifying and vexing all at once. I dared not to move out of pure fear.
Moving at an agonizingly slow pace, it sniffed me for a moment and grunted as if it savored my scent. I had to squeeze my eyes shut to stifle a scream. Then, it suddenly brushed me aside and cantered into the hallway.
In shock, I watched the unnatural beast make its way through the hall and sniff about. It could have hurt me without even trying, but chose not to. One of the security guards came running in and put his brakes on when he caught sight of the creature.
“Holy hell....” His words of amazement drifted away in an echo.
The guard stayed put, his hand slowly reaching for his gun. The beast locked eyes with the security guard and side-stepped around him with little effort. Never taking his eyes away, the guard witnessed the wolf scamper away out of sight. Seconds later, we heard the squeal of metal followed by the shattering sound of glass in the distance.
I ushered the guard over to check on Brolin. After seeing him, we knew right away he was a lost cause. In hopes to find the beast, we both ran down the hall to find a broken window with the metal bars bent completely out of shape. Something bounded away in the moonlight outside, but we couldn’t say for sure. What we could confirm was hearing a long, wailing howl before it was all over.
After that night, we never saw Dimitri again.
Brolin was soon pronounced dead by a nurse…or what was left of him, anyway. Now we had the task of explaining what happened without getting committed ourselves.
I didn’t bother telling anyone else what really happened, but Dimitri certainly had reason for wanting to be in the hallway near the windows. He knew that if he was close to them, he could escape while he still had control and avoid killing anyone. He was actually trying to protect us.
Damn…
That aspect made me wonder why Dimitri didn’t tell us what was going on, but the answer was quite simple. No one would believe a sane person to be a beast of this kind, so why in the world would anyone give credence to a person labeled mentally ill?
After that, I only work day shift and always take time off during full moon cycles. I even barricade myself in my home those nights in fear that my beastly patient will come back to finish what he started.
Thinking back on the events, I can only surmise that he spared me for being kind to him. Or maybe it was just because he had a fresh meal. Truth is, I don't rightly know and somehow that is much worse.
Even now, I'm jumping at the sound of a dog barking outside. It sounds ludicrous, but I just can't help it. Here he goes again, and again…and again.
I'm not entirely sure, but I swear that sometimes I hear a familiar howling. My denial convinces me that I don’t recognize it. The howling is very different from the dog. It’s something more…feral. Primordial, even.
And maybe it's just me...but every time I hear that howl, I swear it gets closer each time.
But I’m sure it’s just my imagination...isn't it?

My name isn't really Derek, but I'll say it is for the purpose of this story. I work at a psychiatric hospital called Serene Hills. Lately I feel more like a patient than a worker, but after what happened I'm sure you'd understand. My heart is pounding right now just thinking about it, but I have to get this off my chest.
First off, don't let the word “serene” in the name fool you. We take in many patients who are unwanted in other hospitals or too troublesome to manage. It may sound awful, but it's a grim reality in a grim world. Your strangest day is simply a Tuesday for me, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I enjoy the excitement, the challenge, and getting to know the patients.
My job is to assist with patient’s day-to-day activities, as well as keeping the patients calm and cooperative. Being persuasive really helps and you may think that’s counter-intuitive for my line of work. But if you know your patients, it’s not hard. I’m not a big guy, so I tend to employ more brain than brawn. I can't say the same for some of my coworkers, especially Brolin. He’s the best example of how to wrestle any problem into submission, but it was ultimately his ruin.
On the day of the incident, we had this new patient admitted. It wasn’t very hard to guess that he was nervous. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. His eyes were wild and he had frayed brown hair stuck out in all directions. One weird trait I noticed was how bushy his eyebrows were and I even referred to him as such.
I’m not exactly sure what it was about him, but I felt there was something more going on. Despite my wariness, I thought of him as a delicate deer that shouldn’t be spooked. He was admittedly quiet for a while, but I continued to keep a close eye on him.
“Think he's nervous enough?” Brolin scoffed as the new patient passed us in the hall.
“Oh, you mean Eyebrows there? Yeah, no kidding. Looks like he's on the brink of an episode.”
“Eyebrows…haha! I like that. For a while I didn’t think you had a sense of humor!”
“I’ve always had one. It’s just a matter of whether people pick up on it. If I had to guess though, I’d say Mr. Eyebrows doesn’t have much of one.”
“It’d be hard to find much amusing about this place.”
“Fair point.”
“Day shift said everyone's been acting up more than usual today.”
“Oh, it’s a full moon.”
“What?”
“It’s ‘cuz of the full moon.”
“What's that got to do with anything?”
“You haven't noticed yet? Patients always get more restless during a full moon cycle.”
“You're jerking my leg.”
“No jerking necessary. Ask anyone on staff who's worked more than six months. They'll tell you...there's always something weird going on during full moons. You know the word 'lunar' for moon and 'lunatic' are related?”
“No way.”
“Way. Go look it up. Some say it's due to a gravitational pull that brings on strange anomalies or something.”
“Anoma-what?”
“You're so typical, Brolin.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“Doesn't matter. Hey, it looks like the supe's headed this way. Let's look 'orderly' so he doesn't bust our chops.”
So the start of our shift continued toward the evening and it didn't take long to notice the truth of the full moon phenomenon. Patients were less cooperative than usual and more resistant to taking their medication, among other things.
As I promised myself, I consistently kept an eye on our newbie. He was just nervous at first, but he seemed to slowly descend into madness the further into the day it got.
My inquisitiveness about our new patient got to me, so I swung by the records office and asked to take a look at his file. Turns out they had good reason for Eyebrows being here.
His name was Dimitri Burroughs, and there was a police report attached. Apparently, he was still in the process of being convicted for multiple murders. They found the dismembered bodies of his family strewn about his home. A neighbor showed up after hearing noises and found Dimitri crying and holding the remains of his family. The neighbor immediately called the police.
They locked Dimitri up on the assumption that he was the killer. It was understandable with Dimitri’s DNA all over the bodies, but then again…they were his family. He managed to escape jail, killing some people that got in his way by the same method of dismemberment. No one witnessed exactly how he got out.
After his escape, he was eventually apprehended. While back in custody, he was diagnosed after speaking to multiple psychologists. This diagnosis got him admitted to a psychiatric hospital until his trial was over. He escaped the other hospital multiple times without any casualties, and thus led him here.
Dimitri always maintained that he blacked out and could never remember killing anyone. He was remorseful, which was unusual for someone who completely lost touch with reality.
Perhaps there was more to this guy…
After further psychiatric interviews, it was determined that Dimitri had a delusion about something possessing him any time he killed. He even said that there may be more victims because he had these blackouts many times before. No one could prove that he willfully killed anyone and there were never any witnesses…that survived anyway.
What a strange case…
Something about it didn’t add up, but what made sense in a world that was just as mad? I went about my routine with a tingling sensation in my bones, as if my body knew something my mind didn’t.
Later in the evening, Dimitri was mumbling to himself pretty loud and constantly looking out the windows.
“Scared of the dark, Eyebrows?” Brolin questioned the patient.
“You wouldn't understand...” Dimitri started, ending in unintelligible gibberish.
“Hey, what’s he saying?”
My muscled cohort directed this at me.
“I dunno, Brolin. He’s probably not saying much of anything, so leave him alone. His name’s Dimitri, by the way.”
“He’s bothering me. I don’t like it when I can't understand what someone’s saying. Hey, what are you mumbling about?!”
Brolin enunciated his words to Dimitri as if talking to someone who was slow.
Usually Brolin just makes snide comments at everything and doesn't zero any patients out. Why he had such an interest in Dimitri was beyond me. I got up and walked over to supervise Brolin.
“Time...time...what's the time?” The patient mumbled out.
Dimitri turned to me with wide, feral eyes. Despite how it sounded on the surface, it didn't seem like odd ramblings to me. There was an earnest understanding in his eyes.
“It's a quarter past eight. You'll be going to bed soon.”
“Ahh, no! I need to stay out here. I want to...look out the windows! I like to see the night sky! It's so pretty out, can I please just....”
“No can do, Eyebrows. Lights out is at 8:30,” Brolin interjected.
“Please, please…can I? Will you let me?”
Dimitri turned back to me with pleading eyes and I honestly felt bad for him.
“I'm sorry, bud. I don't make the rules. And Brolin's right, we have to get everyone in by 8:30.”
“I can't....I....erhhh!”
He stormed off and began rambling incoherently again. I followed lightly behind him, still maintaining a strong urge to stay diligent in watching him.
Fifteen minutes later, we had all the patients rounded up and in their beds, to the chagrin of some. The worst of which was Dimitri, who was still rambling loudly in his room with no sign of letting up.
“I can't, I need to be out there!” He pleaded, but we insisted he stay in his room.
Ten minutes later, his filibuster was getting even worse.
“I can't take it, he's going to solitary!” Brolin yelled.
He threw down his magazine in annoyance, nostrils flaring in excellent fashion. I didn't find it necessary yet, but he was keeping his roommate and other patients up.
Now when we first took him out of his room, he was somewhat compliant at first, until Brolin started going into him.
“You need to shut up! You're going to solitary and there are no windows there! That’s what you get for not listening!”
“Dude, cut it out,” I whispered to my co-worker. “That’s not helping anything.”
“I can't! I need to look out the window!”
“Oh, Brolin, you forgot to tell him!” I said, putting on my most convincing cadence.
“Tell him what?”
“That they put a window in the solitary cell.”
Brolin looked at me blankly and I leaned in with a slight nod. As clueless as Brolin was, he could at least understand some subtleties.
“Oh, you’re right. I can’t believe I forgot! They just put that window in this week! Must have slipped my mind.”
“Really?!”
“It’s actually a great view. You'll love it!”
We only hoped that he didn't catch on, at least not until it was too late. It seemed a ridiculous ploy, but staying on the patients’ good side means that they’ll want to believe you. I never enjoyed lying to patients, but when it comes to keeping everyone safe and copacetic, you have to do what’s necessary.
Minutes later, we were at the padded cell where our new patient would spend his night. While not as manic as before, he was still very much on edge.
Just as he got his foot into the door, he could tell that we’d lied to him about the window.
“No!” He screamed.
He fought against us to get out, and while Dimitri was a lanky fellow, he definitely had some scrap in him. If he was always this strong, it could explain how he managed to escape before. Even as beefy as Brolin was, it took the two of us to wedge our patient through the door.
Even then, it wasn't without incident. I had some minor scratches and scrapes, but Brolin had a bright red mark on his cheek where Dimitri landed a decent blow. Brolin touched his hand to the spot and grimaced a bit.
“Ouch,” I said.
“It's nothing.”
The coldness in Brolin's voice startled me. He was thoroughly pissed.
“We'll let the nurse take a look at that, come on.”
Brolin replied with silence as I walked on and soon felt the absence of my fellow orderly. He didn’t just fall behind, Brolin hadn't moved an inch.
“Brolin? You coming or what?”
“Nah, I'm good. I'm gonna hang out here for a sec.”
“Why?”
Brolin picked up on the suspicion tone in my voice and shot me a dark look that bothered me. Something in his eyes was beginning to raise some major red flags. Brolin left the keys inserted in the cell door and I knew it was no coincidence.
“GET ME OUT OF HERE!!”
I started walking back to the cell to hopefully deescalate the situation.
“PLEASE, LET ME OUT! IT’S FOR THE BEEEST!”
“I think our new patient needs to learn some manners,” Brolin added. He banged on the solitary door with his fist. “Maybe I can shut you up for a good while.”
“Man, come on. Don't make this...”
“Stay out of this! It's between me and Eyebrows here. He needs to understand how things work around here. Stand by so you can open the door for me when I'm done!”
“Hey, don't...”
Before I could get another word in, Brolin cracked open the door and threw the keys at me. As I caught the keys, Brolin had wriggled through the opening before yanking the door shut behind him. I approached the barred opening to the cell just as the room turned a shade of blue. Brolin had engaged his stun gun on Dimitri, who fell to the floor.
“That’ll teach you to mess with me,” Brolin spat the words at the patient.
Dimitri attempted to stand up, but not before Brolin tackled him to the floor. My blood began to boil. Not only was Brolin getting way out of line, he’d forced me to witness his atrocity.
“What the hell are you doing?! Get out of there!!” I screamed.
The door locked behind him automatically, so I had no choice but to stay so I could open it for his safety. There was no way I could leave him locked in there with a patient, but I wasn’t entirely sure I could stop him without getting hurt myself.
“BROLIN, STOP!” I shouted again through the windowed bars, but the assault had already begun.
Knowing Brolin for the last two years, I'd only seen him snap one other time and it was nothing close to this. He was basically holding the guy down and whaling on him.
“Get off him! Hey, HEY!” I shouted.
Brolin didn’t respond, so I had no choice but to radio for help.
Never in my life did I ever think I’d have to call for help because of a co-worker instead of an inmate.
Right after I got a confirmation for backup, it dawned on me that we were the furthest from the station, which meant our backup wouldn’t get here before Brolin took this any further. I wasn’t a snitch, but this was a huge breach of safety protocol and morality. I needed help to stop Brolin, or at the very least, another witness to cover my ass.
“Hey, what the...” Brolin called out.
“What's wrong!?”
“I dunno, he's convulsing!”
“Probably because you tased him and beat the shit out of him, you muscle-headed asshole! Get out of there before this gets any worse!”
Through the bars, I could only tell that Brolin released the patient and there was some thrashing around.
And that was when I heard a deep growl from the room...
“Is he…growling?” I asked.
“Yeah. Do people normally do that if they're seizing?”
“I don’t know, but you need to get your ass out of there, now!”
“I wanna see what happens.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?! Get out!!”
Through the barred slot in the door, I couldn't see the patient clear enough to discern what was happening, but I got that weird tingling sensation that something otherworldly was afoot. I wanted to check on Dimtri, but I also knew he was dangerous and this situation could easily set him off.
Brolin began to back step towards the door when Dimitri sprung up and lunged forward so fast that it was all one blurry motion. I recoiled at the loud bang against the metal door. Something hit it so hard, the door actually bent outwards.
“Brolin?” I said, my voice shaking.
I heard labored coughing and wheezing from the other side. It would take another minute for help to arrive, so I apprehensively inched the door open to check on Brolin.
Lighting was not on my side and I could only faintly make out the slumped form of my co-worker on the other side of the door.
“Oh my God,” I said faintly.
The idea of Brolin hitting the door that hard made me wince. I was partially surprised he was still breathing. He was going to need some serious help. I clicked on my flashlight to get a better look, but the survival part of my brain told me to locate the patient first.
Dimitri was now in a fetal position in the corner, completely nude from having ripped off his own clothes. His matted hair was wilder now, until he stood up and I realized his hair wasn't just wild, it was coming out of parts of his face that weren’t natural.
With each lumbering step he took towards me, more hair sprouted from his body and he was way more muscular than I originally thought. As I watched him, I realized that his body and muscle mass had actually tripled. A word came to mind to describe what he looked like now, but my mind wouldn’t accept it.
No…they aren’t real.
“I t-tried…to w-war-n-n y-you,” the beastly form of Dimitri spoke in a snarl.
“I kil-il-ed those p-peo-ple, b-but I-I-I c-couldn't help it!”
My mind seized up despite every inclination to run away. All I could think was to not look him in the eyes.
I cast my gaze to the floor, where I watched a crawling shadow of a furry figure. His speech was nothing but guttural noises and his shadow thrashed for a moment as it grew larger to a monstrous proportion. I wanted to look up, but my mind stayed fixed on that impossible silhouette because it was less real.
Still looking down, I saw Brolin being dragged into the darkness. He pleaded for mercy in wheezing breaths. From there, I only heard tearing, snapping, and Brolin's agonized screams of pain. He would not be afforded any mercy this night.
My hand shook uncontrollably, causing the light to dance about the room. I looked up in time to see a bloodied, wolfish face approach me.
It no longer resembled a man save for the bipedal stature. The beast’s face was so close to mine that I could smell the hot breath and freshly chewed meat of my co-worker. The yellow, canine eyes were horrifying and vexing all at once. I dared not to move out of pure fear.
Moving at an agonizingly slow pace, it sniffed me for a moment and grunted as if it savored my scent. I had to squeeze my eyes shut to stifle a scream. Then, it suddenly brushed me aside and cantered into the hallway.
In shock, I watched the unnatural beast make its way through the hall and sniff about. It could have hurt me without even trying, but chose not to. One of the security guards came running in and put his brakes on when he caught sight of the creature.
“Holy hell....” His words of amazement drifted away in an echo.
The guard stayed put, his hand slowly reaching for his gun. The beast locked eyes with the security guard and side-stepped around him with little effort. Never taking his eyes away, the guard witnessed the wolf scamper away out of sight. Seconds later, we heard the squeal of metal followed by the shattering sound of glass in the distance.
I ushered the guard over to check on Brolin. After seeing him, we knew right away he was a lost cause. In hopes to find the beast, we both ran down the hall to find a broken window with the metal bars bent completely out of shape. Something bounded away in the moonlight outside, but we couldn’t say for sure. What we could confirm was hearing a long, wailing howl before it was all over.
After that night, we never saw Dimitri again.
Brolin was soon pronounced dead by a nurse…or what was left of him, anyway. Now we had the task of explaining what happened without getting committed ourselves.
I didn’t bother telling anyone else what really happened, but Dimitri certainly had reason for wanting to be in the hallway near the windows. He knew that if he was close to them, he could escape while he still had control and avoid killing anyone. He was actually trying to protect us.
Damn…
That aspect made me wonder why Dimitri didn’t tell us what was going on, but the answer was quite simple. No one would believe a sane person to be a beast of this kind, so why in the world would anyone give credence to a person labeled mentally ill?
After that, I only work day shift and always take time off during full moon cycles. I even barricade myself in my home those nights in fear that my beastly patient will come back to finish what he started.
Thinking back on the events, I can only surmise that he spared me for being kind to him. Or maybe it was just because he had a fresh meal. Truth is, I don't rightly know and somehow that is much worse.
Even now, I'm jumping at the sound of a dog barking outside. It sounds ludicrous, but I just can't help it. Here he goes again, and again…and again.
I'm not entirely sure, but I swear that sometimes I hear a familiar howling. My denial convinces me that I don’t recognize it. The howling is very different from the dog. It’s something more…feral. Primordial, even.
And maybe it's just me...but every time I hear that howl, I swear it gets closer each time.
But I’m sure it’s just my imagination...isn't it?