I think there’s something off about my campus
Hey everyone, I’m typing this on my phone so I apologize if there is weird formatting. Anyways, to get to the point, there’s something really off with some people on my campus. I have come seeking answers.I noticed it first walking home from my 7pm class last Wednesday.
To set the scene, most of the campus is tucked back into the woods a little, and my 7pm class is in the farthest building from the parking lot (further into the woods). I get out from that 7pm class around 9pm, so on cloudy nights like last Wednesday, the only lights on that long sidewalk are the lights radiating from the other buildings. Usually, there’s roughly 30 feet where it’s pitch black because the foliage is pretty dense. I usually walk back to my apartment with some classmates that live in the same complex as me, but I told them to go ahead of me while I finished the rest of the project.
After packing my laptop away, I started heading back home. It was roughly 9:30 at this point, and my brain was slowly shutting down preparing for the deep sleep that has yet to come.Walking down the sidewalk, I heard somebody not too far into the woods laughing like they’ve just heard the funniest joke ever. I immediately thought, “probably some Freshman walking the trails with their friends smoking weed”. Chuckling to myself, I put in my AirPods and picked a playlist for my journey back home.
When I looked up from my phone, there was the silhouette of somebody walking towards me. I have no idea how I missed them before, but honestly, it’s very possible they were just in a spot where the light wasn’t quite reaching them. A little unnerved, I shifted over to the left side of the sidewalk.
(Now I’m usually fine walking alone at night; I’m a 6’2 man who’s dabbled in the world of MMA. But something about this person gave me a primal feeling of unrest.)
When they shifted over to the left mirroring me, I felt my blood run cold. But alas, I had to keep walking because this was my only way back home. As I neared closer to the figure, I almost laughed at myself when I realized it was just some harmless girl walking towards the Murphy building. If anything, I’m the intimidating one to her.
This is where it really gets weird. She stopped as I was passing her and turned to me. Thinking she needed to ask me something, I took an AirPod out and asked “what’s up?”. After staring at me for an uncomfortable amount of time, she opened her mouth, and I kid you not, mimicked the laugh I heard moments before perfectly. Before I could chalk it up to it just being her in the trails earlier, I noticed something. Her mouth wasn’t moving at all. If I had left my AirPods in, it would just look like she was just opening her mouth and staring at me. She then shifted into a deep raspy laugh. She did all of this without moving her mouth at all; I couldn’t even see her throat moving as you would expect if someone was laughing. It was almost like she was some fucked up human-shaped gramophone. The feeling of absolute horror that came over me is something I’ve only experienced in my imagination. Before I could think to do anything next, My body began to run off some sort of primal instinct. With my legs burning, it took me about 10 minutes to get all the way back to my apartment and lock myself in relative safety.
I’m coming on here now to ask if anybody knows what I experienced? I have been hearing that same laughter outside my window every night since that night, I am too terrified to sleep well and have refused to go to any of my classes. Please I just want answers, I don’t want to keep living in fear.
Part 2:
Hey everyone, I’ve gotten some DMs telling me what it may be. I’ve heard everything from banshee to skinwalker. After further research I pray to god it was neither of them. I’m praying it was just some girl with a speaker playing some sort of cruel joke. I mean yes there are people who don’t like me on campus, I’ve made some enemies over the past 4 years. But, I just don’t understand what could’ve brought it to this point. I had to stop hiding in fear and go to my classes before my grades plummet, I’m almost done with my degree and only have a few more weeks. If I let some sort of stupid prank ruin my career, It would be everything I swore against to my parents.
A lot of you guys in the DMs were also asking what college I go to and what my name is. First I want to say sorry for not providing that information in the first post, I’m sure you can understand where my head was at typing that. So let me introduce myself, my name is Nick and In order to keep my privacy, I will only provide that I go to a midwest university.
I’m sure you may be wondering, “so did it just stop?”. I would love to say yes, but really things have just gotten weirder. Though, I am pleased to say that there is no longer laughing out my window every night.
Ever since that night, I’ve been noticing more things off with the people on campus. Now you may just think it’s paranoia, but just be patient and listen.
Yesterday, I decided to muster up all of my courage and go to class. Luckily my first class is at 10AM, when the sun is well in the sky, so walking across campus seemed much less threatening. When I sat down in my first class, I noticed something off with the girl that sits in front of me. Usually she’s chatty and excited to be in class, but today she just stared blankly ahead. I tried to say good morning and ask about her weekend, as we do every Monday, but she continued to have that blank stare. She did turn her head towards be, but her eyes read “lights on, but nobody is home”.
Thinking to myself, she may just be hungover, or going through the bout of college student depression. I decided to shrug it off and turn to the front of the class and get my notes ready. But the moment I turned around, I could feel it. Her eyes burrowing deep into the back of my head. When I flipped around to see if I was just being irrational, I quickly learned I wasn’t. Her eyes went from the blank glare, to the most enthusiastic face I’ve seen on her. It was horrible, it almost seemed like she was trying so hard to pretend she was thrilled to be in class and to speak to me. It was inhuman.
I’ve been on the internet long enough to catch on to the term “Uncanny valley”, and what I witnessed In my first hour gives me that same gut feeling I got when I saw that girl last Wednesday.
I was right to be uncomfortable though, I texted her after class to make sure she was doing alright. But her response only reignited the flames of deep fear burning in my soul.
I’ll copy and paste the messages here:
Me: Hey Is everything good? You seemed off in class today.
Steph SCI 101: Uh yeah, I’m fine. but I was not in class today, I’m severely hungover from Tanner’s party last night.
Me: Haha, good one.
Steph SCI 101: No I’m so Fr, are you okay?
Steph SCI 101: Are you trying to fuck with me or something?
Me: Nevermind, I’m sorry to bother you.
(End Of Texts)
Okay so I’m sure that this gives you all the same feeling of dread that it gave me but I’m sure scaled down a bit. This is where I have started to doubt that it’s a prank, because me and Stephanie are cool. There’s no level of hate for either of us, and even if it was some joke, we don’t know each other on that type of level.
Not only did this seem to happen in my first class, but in between classes while I was walking across campus as well. I walk past hundreds of faces in my many treks across campus, and I swear to you, at least 1/4th of the people I walked past had that same dead stare look. And the way they walked, god I hate even thinking of it. It was like they were an alien trying out their new body suits for the first time. The steps and the bends of their legs just seem so meticulous, dramaticized, and puppeteered.
I’m going to try to investigate further, because at this point my fear for my life is more of a reason to try and figure out what it is so I can try to stop it.
I’m no hero, and I’m sure as hell nothing special, but If I can know what to expect for another encounter, maybe I can avoid meeting the demise I have imagined.
Part 3

First off I would like to apologize for my 20-day hiatus. For those who were worried that curiosity killed the cat so to speak, I appreciate your concern. On top of my investigation, I have also had to go through finals and work for a boss who didn't believe in life outside of work. So let's start where we left off. I had a feeling that this task was left for me to solve. it may sound stupid, but let me explain why. That night, after my last post, I had a dream that further solidified my need to solve the mystery. I tried to write all that I remembered down the morning after so here is what I wrote. 

April 4th, 2024
I had a strange dream last night, stranger than usual at least. I awoke in the woods, laying face down in the grass with someone looming over me. I heard their footsteps flee rapidly before I flipped over. I found myself just off the trail where the “incident” happened, on the trail laid a girl, bloodied and motionless. When I got up to approach her, she was quickly dragged into the parallel section of the woods. Seeing this I turned and ran into the section of woods I was in. When my legs gave out I found myself near an old supply shed, worn and long abandoned. Searching for cover, I tried the door, which luckily gave after a quick pull. There I found a trapdoor which emanated a blue hue through the cracks. The only thought on my mind, survival brought me to throw it open and climb down. I clattered down the ladder and right before my feet touched the ground, I was pulled backwards by my shirt. That’s where I woke up.
I have always trusted my gut and having a dream that vivid gave me a sense of courage I did not previously have. I know where to start my search now. I have decided my best course of action will be to record my findings on a tape recorder app. After I finish each entry it will be uploaded to a cloud that will ensure if anything happens to me, the story will get out. I am packing my backpack now with a flashlight, glow sticks to mark my trail, and a machete I was gifted by a local in Mexico. All of my recordings will be uploaded below and auto posted after 10 days. Wish me luck everyone, I’m going to need it.
Entry 1: I have started at the only place that makes sense, the trail. It is currently 1:45 PM and I have plenty of sun left in the sky. I just needed to find exactly where to start my journey into the woods. Strangely it was very easy to find. I recall one of the trees having a funky twist near the middle of the trunk. Probably just some two lovebirds trying to carve their name into the tree and realizing there were softer trees to carve into. Anyways hiking further into the woods I believe I can see the shape of the shed through the branches. I wish you guys could see how dense these trees are so you can understand my struggle.
Entry 2: I made it to the shed, but unfortunately the floor in here is concrete. This really sucks for me because I have absolutely no idea where to go from here. It’s identical on the outside but I just don’t understand. Maybe I’m just delusional, which in that case what a waste of time and energy. I’m going to head back home and just start packing for summer. Maybe it’ll be best if I just forget about all of this and leave it behind me. I am graduating after all. Wait hold on what is this?? there’s a button behind one of these shelves. I am going to press it, but idk how it would work because this floor is seamless. I’m just going to leave this recording so if anything does happen I don’t have to worry about holding the phone the whole time. Holy shit, the entire floor is lowering. It’s a fucking elevator.
Entry 3: Okay so I’ve been going down this elevator for like 30 seconds, how far down am I going?.. Oh wait hold on, Im stopped… There’s a metal door with a padlock. Ig since I have the machete there’s only one thing to do, break it. Im going to use the blunt side so I don’t ruin this thing, I like it too much. the lock clatters to the ground after 3 solid hits. Well ig there’s only one way to go now, there’s no button to get back up so I pray there’s another way up. The metal door creaks loudly. Fuck I regret this, It’s dark and I can tell it’s a big area because it’s so echoey in here. I’m currently praising my past self for thinking about the flashlight and glow sticks. I need to find out what in the hell this place is and most importantly, if there’s a damn light switch.
Entry 4: God this place is terrifying I’ve been walking around the sterile white halls of this place for like 10 minutes and have found nothing, no doors, no light switch. I feel like a rat in a maze. Also scratch what I said about being glad I packed glow sticks, because my stupid ass only brought like 20 of these things and I’m already down to 5. Also I feel like I’m not alone, every now and then I’ll turn a corner and the glow from the previous glow stick quickly vanishes. I feel like it might just be because the darkness seems to envelop everything like a blanket. But I have that feeling that I’m being followed. You know the one, where you know somethings wrong you just can’t pin point what it is. Oh shit no way, there’s light, I think there’s a door or something up ahead.
Entry 5: Holy shit… It’s a lab, and worse, there’s people strapped too tables, completely naked and unconscious. I know they are alive because each of them are hooked up with a million different cords, and one of those are plugged into a heart monitor. This place is huge, there has to be at least 50 people on these tables.
“Hey you, you’re not supposed to be in here” yelled a man adorned in a lab coat.
“What are you doing to these kids you sick fucks.” I yelled back at the man across the lab.
In a haste the scientist rushes towards a red button, setting off a loud alarm, turning the lights to a flashing red. With no exit behind me, I could only do one thing... Rush towards him. My training kicked in as I launched into a flurry of calculated strikes. My first hit connected, a right overhand clean under his eye. The doctor stumbled back, but I didn't give him a chance to recover. I pressed the attack, keeping him off balance with a relentless barrage of punches and kicks. He fought back ferociously, but I was one step ahead, anticipating his moves and countering with swift, efficient strikes. We wrestled, the room around us becoming a blur of pain and adrenaline. I used the environment to my advantage, improvising weapons from the scattered medical equipment and turning the empty tables on my opponent. Pinning him to the ground, I laid down a harsh barrage of final blows. His face was a bloody pulp, unrecognizable. But I didn’t walk away unscathed, somewhere in the tussle, the scientist buried a scalpel deep into my stomach. With my adrenaline wearing off, the pain overtook me, sending me into darkness as I fainted from the blood loss and adrenaline dump. I awoke with my arms and legs strapped to the cold metal operating table. Before I could try to struggle, a face overtook my field of vision.
“Quite a fight you put up, you turned poor Dr.Samson into a soup” the looming face said with a chuckle. “You are the first person to put the pieces together and for that I am thoroughly impressed Mr. Hayes”
“Who are you?!” I said fighting at my binds. “Let me go!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that Mr.Hayes. You have seen far too much, and I definitely can’t have you running around telling the world what you saw here. Although nobody would believe you.” “And to answer your other question, I’m surprised you don’t recognize me… really take a moment and look at me” He said pulling down his face mask.
“Dr.Blackwood?” I said as I looked back on my freshman year biology class.
“Ding ding ding ding. We have a winner!” He said in a maniac joy.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked.
“Well Mr.Hayes, first I’m going to sew you up from your little tussle you had with my late assistant and then I will put you under and cut into that skull of yours and take out a small piece of what we call in the science world your hippocampus. Then I will draw from that all of the necessary memories to create the perfect clone of you.” He responded.
“Why? Why would you need a clone of any of us. Why can’t you just clone someone willing to be apart of this?” I asked
“Because that’s no fun Mr.Hayes, the hunt excites me. Actually you’re lucky I didn’t get you the first night. Unfortunately my creation had a little bit of a malfunction and formed a wee bit of an attachment to you. I’m sure you remember the ruckus outside your window? Anyways I digress, I do this because everyone of you lowly students will go onto do mediocre jobs where you waste away at a desk. I must also add that with having a clone of you under my control, I can do anything and get away with clean hands. My plan with you originally was to have you go into the admissions office and steal every last cent all for me. On top of that I like the power, because one day I will have a clone of every student on this campus and eventually I will cause a revolt against our comedy of a government. Who will stop me, when I won’t even be on the front lines?” Dr.Blackwood explained.
“I will” I said freeing my last hand from the binds.
What he didn’t realize is that with all of this monologue and the questions I had been feeding him, I was slowly loosening my binds with each wiggle and movement in retaliation.
Lurching forward I grab onto his collar, pulling him into a vicious headbutt. The impact sent Dr. Blackwood reeling backward, his grip on consciousness loosening as he staggered. Seizing the moment, I lunged off the table, adrenaline coursing through my veins despite the searing pain in my abdomen. With a swift motion, I grabbed a nearby surgical instrument, holding it in a defensive stance as I faced my adversary. Dr. Blackwood, recovering from the blow, snarled with rage, his once calm demeanor now replaced by a feral intensity. The room seemed to shrink around us, the tension thickening with each passing second. This was my chance to stop Blackwood's twisted plans. As he lunged forward, I met his attack head-on, the clang of metal reverberating through the room. Blow after blow, we fought with an intensity born of desperation and determination. Despite my injuries, I refused to yield, driven by a fire burnt under me to protect myself and others from Blackwood's actions . In a final, swift move, I delivered a powerful front kick, sending Blackwood crashing to the ground. The room fell silent, the echoes of our struggle fading into the darkness. Coughing he sat in the corner laughing with blood spilling down his face. “You know that it’s too late to save any of these one lying on the tables. I would’ve released you, you know that right? I would’ve simply taken your memory from today out of your brain and leaving you in your bed to wake up thinking you had a fun night” he said with final resolve as he watched me grab the scalpel from the ground taking slow steps near him.
Looking down over him, It was my turn to laugh. Kneeling down to eye level with him I grabbed him by his hair and delivered a final message to him “Fuck you and your little science experiment” as I sliced deep into his throat watching the life fade from his eyes.
I eventually found an exit door, which lead me to a storm drain deep in the woods far from my campus. It took me 2 hours to limp my way onto a main road and flag down a passing car. Pulling over I was rushed to the hospital and later interrogated by some men in suits, my guess is CIA. Here I am now, writing my final entrance. I think I heard them say something about trying a new medical process on me to help me heal quicker

I think there’s something off about my campus
Hey everyone, I’m typing this on my phone so I apologize if there is weird formatting. Anyways, to get to the point, there’s something really off with some people on my campus. I have come seeking answers.I noticed it first walking home from my 7pm class last Wednesday.
To set the scene, most of the campus is tucked back into the woods a little, and my 7pm class is in the farthest building from the parking lot (further into the woods). I get out from that 7pm class around 9pm, so on cloudy nights like last Wednesday, the only lights on that long sidewalk are the lights radiating from the other buildings. Usually, there’s roughly 30 feet where it’s pitch black because the foliage is pretty dense. I usually walk back to my apartment with some classmates that live in the same complex as me, but I told them to go ahead of me while I finished the rest of the project.
After packing my laptop away, I started heading back home. It was roughly 9:30 at this point, and my brain was slowly shutting down preparing for the deep sleep that has yet to come.Walking down the sidewalk, I heard somebody not too far into the woods laughing like they’ve just heard the funniest joke ever. I immediately thought, “probably some Freshman walking the trails with their friends smoking weed”. Chuckling to myself, I put in my AirPods and picked a playlist for my journey back home.
When I looked up from my phone, there was the silhouette of somebody walking towards me. I have no idea how I missed them before, but honestly, it’s very possible they were just in a spot where the light wasn’t quite reaching them. A little unnerved, I shifted over to the left side of the sidewalk.
(Now I’m usually fine walking alone at night; I’m a 6’2 man who’s dabbled in the world of MMA. But something about this person gave me a primal feeling of unrest.)
When they shifted over to the left mirroring me, I felt my blood run cold. But alas, I had to keep walking because this was my only way back home. As I neared closer to the figure, I almost laughed at myself when I realized it was just some harmless girl walking towards the Murphy building. If anything, I’m the intimidating one to her.
This is where it really gets weird. She stopped as I was passing her and turned to me. Thinking she needed to ask me something, I took an AirPod out and asked “what’s up?”. After staring at me for an uncomfortable amount of time, she opened her mouth, and I kid you not, mimicked the laugh I heard moments before perfectly. Before I could chalk it up to it just being her in the trails earlier, I noticed something. Her mouth wasn’t moving at all. If I had left my AirPods in, it would just look like she was just opening her mouth and staring at me. She then shifted into a deep raspy laugh. She did all of this without moving her mouth at all; I couldn’t even see her throat moving as you would expect if someone was laughing. It was almost like she was some fucked up human-shaped gramophone. The feeling of absolute horror that came over me is something I’ve only experienced in my imagination. Before I could think to do anything next, My body began to run off some sort of primal instinct. With my legs burning, it took me about 10 minutes to get all the way back to my apartment and lock myself in relative safety.
I’m coming on here now to ask if anybody knows what I experienced? I have been hearing that same laughter outside my window every night since that night, I am too terrified to sleep well and have refused to go to any of my classes. Please I just want answers, I don’t want to keep living in fear.
Part 2:
Hey everyone, I’ve gotten some DMs telling me what it may be. I’ve heard everything from banshee to skinwalker. After further research I pray to god it was neither of them. I’m praying it was just some girl with a speaker playing some sort of cruel joke. I mean yes there are people who don’t like me on campus, I’ve made some enemies over the past 4 years. But, I just don’t understand what could’ve brought it to this point. I had to stop hiding in fear and go to my classes before my grades plummet, I’m almost done with my degree and only have a few more weeks. If I let some sort of stupid prank ruin my career, It would be everything I swore against to my parents.
A lot of you guys in the DMs were also asking what college I go to and what my name is. First I want to say sorry for not providing that information in the first post, I’m sure you can understand where my head was at typing that. So let me introduce myself, my name is Nick and In order to keep my privacy, I will only provide that I go to a midwest university.
I’m sure you may be wondering, “so did it just stop?”. I would love to say yes, but really things have just gotten weirder. Though, I am pleased to say that there is no longer laughing out my window every night.
Ever since that night, I’ve been noticing more things off with the people on campus. Now you may just think it’s paranoia, but just be patient and listen.
Yesterday, I decided to muster up all of my courage and go to class. Luckily my first class is at 10AM, when the sun is well in the sky, so walking across campus seemed much less threatening. When I sat down in my first class, I noticed something off with the girl that sits in front of me. Usually she’s chatty and excited to be in class, but today she just stared blankly ahead. I tried to say good morning and ask about her weekend, as we do every Monday, but she continued to have that blank stare. She did turn her head towards be, but her eyes read “lights on, but nobody is home”.
Thinking to myself, she may just be hungover, or going through the bout of college student depression. I decided to shrug it off and turn to the front of the class and get my notes ready. But the moment I turned around, I could feel it. Her eyes burrowing deep into the back of my head. When I flipped around to see if I was just being irrational, I quickly learned I wasn’t. Her eyes went from the blank glare, to the most enthusiastic face I’ve seen on her. It was horrible, it almost seemed like she was trying so hard to pretend she was thrilled to be in class and to speak to me. It was inhuman.
I’ve been on the internet long enough to catch on to the term “Uncanny valley”, and what I witnessed In my first hour gives me that same gut feeling I got when I saw that girl last Wednesday.
I was right to be uncomfortable though, I texted her after class to make sure she was doing alright. But her response only reignited the flames of deep fear burning in my soul.
I’ll copy and paste the messages here:
Me: Hey Is everything good? You seemed off in class today.
Steph SCI 101: Uh yeah, I’m fine. but I was not in class today, I’m severely hungover from Tanner’s party last night.
Me: Haha, good one.
Steph SCI 101: No I’m so Fr, are you okay?
Steph SCI 101: Are you trying to fuck with me or something?
Me: Nevermind, I’m sorry to bother you.
(End Of Texts)
Okay so I’m sure that this gives you all the same feeling of dread that it gave me but I’m sure scaled down a bit. This is where I have started to doubt that it’s a prank, because me and Stephanie are cool. There’s no level of hate for either of us, and even if it was some joke, we don’t know each other on that type of level.
Not only did this seem to happen in my first class, but in between classes while I was walking across campus as well. I walk past hundreds of faces in my many treks across campus, and I swear to you, at least 1/4th of the people I walked past had that same dead stare look. And the way they walked, god I hate even thinking of it. It was like they were an alien trying out their new body suits for the first time. The steps and the bends of their legs just seem so meticulous, dramaticized, and puppeteered.
I’m going to try to investigate further, because at this point my fear for my life is more of a reason to try and figure out what it is so I can try to stop it.
I’m no hero, and I’m sure as hell nothing special, but If I can know what to expect for another encounter, maybe I can avoid meeting the demise I have imagined.
Part 3

First off I would like to apologize for my 20-day hiatus. For those who were worried that curiosity killed the cat so to speak, I appreciate your concern. On top of my investigation, I have also had to go through finals and work for a boss who didn't believe in life outside of work. So let's start where we left off. I had a feeling that this task was left for me to solve. it may sound stupid, but let me explain why. That night, after my last post, I had a dream that further solidified my need to solve the mystery. I tried to write all that I remembered down the morning after so here is what I wrote. 

April 4th, 2024
I had a strange dream last night, stranger than usual at least. I awoke in the woods, laying face down in the grass with someone looming over me. I heard their footsteps flee rapidly before I flipped over. I found myself just off the trail where the “incident” happened, on the trail laid a girl, bloodied and motionless. When I got up to approach her, she was quickly dragged into the parallel section of the woods. Seeing this I turned and ran into the section of woods I was in. When my legs gave out I found myself near an old supply shed, worn and long abandoned. Searching for cover, I tried the door, which luckily gave after a quick pull. There I found a trapdoor which emanated a blue hue through the cracks. The only thought on my mind, survival brought me to throw it open and climb down. I clattered down the ladder and right before my feet touched the ground, I was pulled backwards by my shirt. That’s where I woke up.
I have always trusted my gut and having a dream that vivid gave me a sense of courage I did not previously have. I know where to start my search now. I have decided my best course of action will be to record my findings on a tape recorder app. After I finish each entry it will be uploaded to a cloud that will ensure if anything happens to me, the story will get out. I am packing my backpack now with a flashlight, glow sticks to mark my trail, and a machete I was gifted by a local in Mexico. All of my recordings will be uploaded below and auto posted after 10 days. Wish me luck everyone, I’m going to need it.
Entry 1: I have started at the only place that makes sense, the trail. It is currently 1:45 PM and I have plenty of sun left in the sky. I just needed to find exactly where to start my journey into the woods. Strangely it was very easy to find. I recall one of the trees having a funky twist near the middle of the trunk. Probably just some two lovebirds trying to carve their name into the tree and realizing there were softer trees to carve into. Anyways hiking further into the woods I believe I can see the shape of the shed through the branches. I wish you guys could see how dense these trees are so you can understand my struggle.
Entry 2: I made it to the shed, but unfortunately the floor in here is concrete. This really sucks for me because I have absolutely no idea where to go from here. It’s identical on the outside but I just don’t understand. Maybe I’m just delusional, which in that case what a waste of time and energy. I’m going to head back home and just start packing for summer. Maybe it’ll be best if I just forget about all of this and leave it behind me. I am graduating after all. Wait hold on what is this?? there’s a button behind one of these shelves. I am going to press it, but idk how it would work because this floor is seamless. I’m just going to leave this recording so if anything does happen I don’t have to worry about holding the phone the whole time. Holy shit, the entire floor is lowering. It’s a fucking elevator.
Entry 3: Okay so I’ve been going down this elevator for like 30 seconds, how far down am I going?.. Oh wait hold on, Im stopped… There’s a metal door with a padlock. Ig since I have the machete there’s only one thing to do, break it. Im going to use the blunt side so I don’t ruin this thing, I like it too much. the lock clatters to the ground after 3 solid hits. Well ig there’s only one way to go now, there’s no button to get back up so I pray there’s another way up. The metal door creaks loudly. Fuck I regret this, It’s dark and I can tell it’s a big area because it’s so echoey in here. I’m currently praising my past self for thinking about the flashlight and glow sticks. I need to find out what in the hell this place is and most importantly, if there’s a damn light switch.
Entry 4: God this place is terrifying I’ve been walking around the sterile white halls of this place for like 10 minutes and have found nothing, no doors, no light switch. I feel like a rat in a maze. Also scratch what I said about being glad I packed glow sticks, because my stupid ass only brought like 20 of these things and I’m already down to 5. Also I feel like I’m not alone, every now and then I’ll turn a corner and the glow from the previous glow stick quickly vanishes. I feel like it might just be because the darkness seems to envelop everything like a blanket. But I have that feeling that I’m being followed. You know the one, where you know somethings wrong you just can’t pin point what it is. Oh shit no way, there’s light, I think there’s a door or something up ahead.
Entry 5: Holy shit… It’s a lab, and worse, there’s people strapped too tables, completely naked and unconscious. I know they are alive because each of them are hooked up with a million different cords, and one of those are plugged into a heart monitor. This place is huge, there has to be at least 50 people on these tables.
“Hey you, you’re not supposed to be in here” yelled a man adorned in a lab coat.
“What are you doing to these kids you sick fucks.” I yelled back at the man across the lab.
In a haste the scientist rushes towards a red button, setting off a loud alarm, turning the lights to a flashing red. With no exit behind me, I could only do one thing... Rush towards him. My training kicked in as I launched into a flurry of calculated strikes. My first hit connected, a right overhand clean under his eye. The doctor stumbled back, but I didn't give him a chance to recover. I pressed the attack, keeping him off balance with a relentless barrage of punches and kicks. He fought back ferociously, but I was one step ahead, anticipating his moves and countering with swift, efficient strikes. We wrestled, the room around us becoming a blur of pain and adrenaline. I used the environment to my advantage, improvising weapons from the scattered medical equipment and turning the empty tables on my opponent. Pinning him to the ground, I laid down a harsh barrage of final blows. His face was a bloody pulp, unrecognizable. But I didn’t walk away unscathed, somewhere in the tussle, the scientist buried a scalpel deep into my stomach. With my adrenaline wearing off, the pain overtook me, sending me into darkness as I fainted from the blood loss and adrenaline dump. I awoke with my arms and legs strapped to the cold metal operating table. Before I could try to struggle, a face overtook my field of vision.
“Quite a fight you put up, you turned poor Dr.Samson into a soup” the looming face said with a chuckle. “You are the first person to put the pieces together and for that I am thoroughly impressed Mr. Hayes”
“Who are you?!” I said fighting at my binds. “Let me go!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that Mr.Hayes. You have seen far too much, and I definitely can’t have you running around telling the world what you saw here. Although nobody would believe you.” “And to answer your other question, I’m surprised you don’t recognize me… really take a moment and look at me” He said pulling down his face mask.
“Dr.Blackwood?” I said as I looked back on my freshman year biology class.
“Ding ding ding ding. We have a winner!” He said in a maniac joy.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked.
“Well Mr.Hayes, first I’m going to sew you up from your little tussle you had with my late assistant and then I will put you under and cut into that skull of yours and take out a small piece of what we call in the science world your hippocampus. Then I will draw from that all of the necessary memories to create the perfect clone of you.” He responded.
“Why? Why would you need a clone of any of us. Why can’t you just clone someone willing to be apart of this?” I asked
“Because that’s no fun Mr.Hayes, the hunt excites me. Actually you’re lucky I didn’t get you the first night. Unfortunately my creation had a little bit of a malfunction and formed a wee bit of an attachment to you. I’m sure you remember the ruckus outside your window? Anyways I digress, I do this because everyone of you lowly students will go onto do mediocre jobs where you waste away at a desk. I must also add that with having a clone of you under my control, I can do anything and get away with clean hands. My plan with you originally was to have you go into the admissions office and steal every last cent all for me. On top of that I like the power, because one day I will have a clone of every student on this campus and eventually I will cause a revolt against our comedy of a government. Who will stop me, when I won’t even be on the front lines?” Dr.Blackwood explained.
“I will” I said freeing my last hand from the binds.
What he didn’t realize is that with all of this monologue and the questions I had been feeding him, I was slowly loosening my binds with each wiggle and movement in retaliation.
Lurching forward I grab onto his collar, pulling him into a vicious headbutt. The impact sent Dr. Blackwood reeling backward, his grip on consciousness loosening as he staggered. Seizing the moment, I lunged off the table, adrenaline coursing through my veins despite the searing pain in my abdomen. With a swift motion, I grabbed a nearby surgical instrument, holding it in a defensive stance as I faced my adversary. Dr. Blackwood, recovering from the blow, snarled with rage, his once calm demeanor now replaced by a feral intensity. The room seemed to shrink around us, the tension thickening with each passing second. This was my chance to stop Blackwood's twisted plans. As he lunged forward, I met his attack head-on, the clang of metal reverberating through the room. Blow after blow, we fought with an intensity born of desperation and determination. Despite my injuries, I refused to yield, driven by a fire burnt under me to protect myself and others from Blackwood's actions . In a final, swift move, I delivered a powerful front kick, sending Blackwood crashing to the ground. The room fell silent, the echoes of our struggle fading into the darkness. Coughing he sat in the corner laughing with blood spilling down his face. “You know that it’s too late to save any of these one lying on the tables. I would’ve released you, you know that right? I would’ve simply taken your memory from today out of your brain and leaving you in your bed to wake up thinking you had a fun night” he said with final resolve as he watched me grab the scalpel from the ground taking slow steps near him.
Looking down over him, It was my turn to laugh. Kneeling down to eye level with him I grabbed him by his hair and delivered a final message to him “Fuck you and your little science experiment” as I sliced deep into his throat watching the life fade from his eyes.
I eventually found an exit door, which lead me to a storm drain deep in the woods far from my campus. It took me 2 hours to limp my way onto a main road and flag down a passing car. Pulling over I was rushed to the hospital and later interrogated by some men in suits, my guess is CIA. Here I am now, writing my final entrance. I think I heard them say something about trying a new medical process on me to help me heal quicker

I think there’s something off about my campus
Hey everyone, I’m typing this on my phone so I apologize if there is weird formatting. Anyways, to get to the point, there’s something really off with some people on my campus. I have come seeking answers.I noticed it first walking home from my 7pm class last Wednesday.
To set the scene, most of the campus is tucked back into the woods a little, and my 7pm class is in the farthest building from the parking lot (further into the woods). I get out from that 7pm class around 9pm, so on cloudy nights like last Wednesday, the only lights on that long sidewalk are the lights radiating from the other buildings. Usually, there’s roughly 30 feet where it’s pitch black because the foliage is pretty dense. I usually walk back to my apartment with some classmates that live in the same complex as me, but I told them to go ahead of me while I finished the rest of the project.
After packing my laptop away, I started heading back home. It was roughly 9:30 at this point, and my brain was slowly shutting down preparing for the deep sleep that has yet to come.Walking down the sidewalk, I heard somebody not too far into the woods laughing like they’ve just heard the funniest joke ever. I immediately thought, “probably some Freshman walking the trails with their friends smoking weed”. Chuckling to myself, I put in my AirPods and picked a playlist for my journey back home.
When I looked up from my phone, there was the silhouette of somebody walking towards me. I have no idea how I missed them before, but honestly, it’s very possible they were just in a spot where the light wasn’t quite reaching them. A little unnerved, I shifted over to the left side of the sidewalk.
(Now I’m usually fine walking alone at night; I’m a 6’2 man who’s dabbled in the world of MMA. But something about this person gave me a primal feeling of unrest.)
When they shifted over to the left mirroring me, I felt my blood run cold. But alas, I had to keep walking because this was my only way back home. As I neared closer to the figure, I almost laughed at myself when I realized it was just some harmless girl walking towards the Murphy building. If anything, I’m the intimidating one to her.
This is where it really gets weird. She stopped as I was passing her and turned to me. Thinking she needed to ask me something, I took an AirPod out and asked “what’s up?”. After staring at me for an uncomfortable amount of time, she opened her mouth, and I kid you not, mimicked the laugh I heard moments before perfectly. Before I could chalk it up to it just being her in the trails earlier, I noticed something. Her mouth wasn’t moving at all. If I had left my AirPods in, it would just look like she was just opening her mouth and staring at me. She then shifted into a deep raspy laugh. She did all of this without moving her mouth at all; I couldn’t even see her throat moving as you would expect if someone was laughing. It was almost like she was some fucked up human-shaped gramophone. The feeling of absolute horror that came over me is something I’ve only experienced in my imagination. Before I could think to do anything next, My body began to run off some sort of primal instinct. With my legs burning, it took me about 10 minutes to get all the way back to my apartment and lock myself in relative safety.
I’m coming on here now to ask if anybody knows what I experienced? I have been hearing that same laughter outside my window every night since that night, I am too terrified to sleep well and have refused to go to any of my classes. Please I just want answers, I don’t want to keep living in fear.
Part 2:
Hey everyone, I’ve gotten some DMs telling me what it may be. I’ve heard everything from banshee to skinwalker. After further research I pray to god it was neither of them. I’m praying it was just some girl with a speaker playing some sort of cruel joke. I mean yes there are people who don’t like me on campus, I’ve made some enemies over the past 4 years. But, I just don’t understand what could’ve brought it to this point. I had to stop hiding in fear and go to my classes before my grades plummet, I’m almost done with my degree and only have a few more weeks. If I let some sort of stupid prank ruin my career, It would be everything I swore against to my parents.
A lot of you guys in the DMs were also asking what college I go to and what my name is. First I want to say sorry for not providing that information in the first post, I’m sure you can understand where my head was at typing that. So let me introduce myself, my name is Nick and In order to keep my privacy, I will only provide that I go to a midwest university.
I’m sure you may be wondering, “so did it just stop?”. I would love to say yes, but really things have just gotten weirder. Though, I am pleased to say that there is no longer laughing out my window every night.
Ever since that night, I’ve been noticing more things off with the people on campus. Now you may just think it’s paranoia, but just be patient and listen.
Yesterday, I decided to muster up all of my courage and go to class. Luckily my first class is at 10AM, when the sun is well in the sky, so walking across campus seemed much less threatening. When I sat down in my first class, I noticed something off with the girl that sits in front of me. Usually she’s chatty and excited to be in class, but today she just stared blankly ahead. I tried to say good morning and ask about her weekend, as we do every Monday, but she continued to have that blank stare. She did turn her head towards be, but her eyes read “lights on, but nobody is home”.
Thinking to myself, she may just be hungover, or going through the bout of college student depression. I decided to shrug it off and turn to the front of the class and get my notes ready. But the moment I turned around, I could feel it. Her eyes burrowing deep into the back of my head. When I flipped around to see if I was just being irrational, I quickly learned I wasn’t. Her eyes went from the blank glare, to the most enthusiastic face I’ve seen on her. It was horrible, it almost seemed like she was trying so hard to pretend she was thrilled to be in class and to speak to me. It was inhuman.
I’ve been on the internet long enough to catch on to the term “Uncanny valley”, and what I witnessed In my first hour gives me that same gut feeling I got when I saw that girl last Wednesday.
I was right to be uncomfortable though, I texted her after class to make sure she was doing alright. But her response only reignited the flames of deep fear burning in my soul.
I’ll copy and paste the messages here:
Me: Hey Is everything good? You seemed off in class today.
Steph SCI 101: Uh yeah, I’m fine. but I was not in class today, I’m severely hungover from Tanner’s party last night.
Me: Haha, good one.
Steph SCI 101: No I’m so Fr, are you okay?
Steph SCI 101: Are you trying to fuck with me or something?
Me: Nevermind, I’m sorry to bother you.
(End Of Texts)
Okay so I’m sure that this gives you all the same feeling of dread that it gave me but I’m sure scaled down a bit. This is where I have started to doubt that it’s a prank, because me and Stephanie are cool. There’s no level of hate for either of us, and even if it was some joke, we don’t know each other on that type of level.
Not only did this seem to happen in my first class, but in between classes while I was walking across campus as well. I walk past hundreds of faces in my many treks across campus, and I swear to you, at least 1/4th of the people I walked past had that same dead stare look. And the way they walked, god I hate even thinking of it. It was like they were an alien trying out their new body suits for the first time. The steps and the bends of their legs just seem so meticulous, dramaticized, and puppeteered.
I’m going to try to investigate further, because at this point my fear for my life is more of a reason to try and figure out what it is so I can try to stop it.
I’m no hero, and I’m sure as hell nothing special, but If I can know what to expect for another encounter, maybe I can avoid meeting the demise I have imagined.
Part 3

First off I would like to apologize for my 20-day hiatus. For those who were worried that curiosity killed the cat so to speak, I appreciate your concern. On top of my investigation, I have also had to go through finals and work for a boss who didn't believe in life outside of work. So let's start where we left off. I had a feeling that this task was left for me to solve. it may sound stupid, but let me explain why. That night, after my last post, I had a dream that further solidified my need to solve the mystery. I tried to write all that I remembered down the morning after so here is what I wrote. 

April 4th, 2024
I had a strange dream last night, stranger than usual at least. I awoke in the woods, laying face down in the grass with someone looming over me. I heard their footsteps flee rapidly before I flipped over. I found myself just off the trail where the “incident” happened, on the trail laid a girl, bloodied and motionless. When I got up to approach her, she was quickly dragged into the parallel section of the woods. Seeing this I turned and ran into the section of woods I was in. When my legs gave out I found myself near an old supply shed, worn and long abandoned. Searching for cover, I tried the door, which luckily gave after a quick pull. There I found a trapdoor which emanated a blue hue through the cracks. The only thought on my mind, survival brought me to throw it open and climb down. I clattered down the ladder and right before my feet touched the ground, I was pulled backwards by my shirt. That’s where I woke up.
I have always trusted my gut and having a dream that vivid gave me a sense of courage I did not previously have. I know where to start my search now. I have decided my best course of action will be to record my findings on a tape recorder app. After I finish each entry it will be uploaded to a cloud that will ensure if anything happens to me, the story will get out. I am packing my backpack now with a flashlight, glow sticks to mark my trail, and a machete I was gifted by a local in Mexico. All of my recordings will be uploaded below and auto posted after 10 days. Wish me luck everyone, I’m going to need it.
Entry 1: I have started at the only place that makes sense, the trail. It is currently 1:45 PM and I have plenty of sun left in the sky. I just needed to find exactly where to start my journey into the woods. Strangely it was very easy to find. I recall one of the trees having a funky twist near the middle of the trunk. Probably just some two lovebirds trying to carve their name into the tree and realizing there were softer trees to carve into. Anyways hiking further into the woods I believe I can see the shape of the shed through the branches. I wish you guys could see how dense these trees are so you can understand my struggle.
Entry 2: I made it to the shed, but unfortunately the floor in here is concrete. This really sucks for me because I have absolutely no idea where to go from here. It’s identical on the outside but I just don’t understand. Maybe I’m just delusional, which in that case what a waste of time and energy. I’m going to head back home and just start packing for summer. Maybe it’ll be best if I just forget about all of this and leave it behind me. I am graduating after all. Wait hold on what is this?? there’s a button behind one of these shelves. I am going to press it, but idk how it would work because this floor is seamless. I’m just going to leave this recording so if anything does happen I don’t have to worry about holding the phone the whole time. Holy shit, the entire floor is lowering. It’s a fucking elevator.
Entry 3: Okay so I’ve been going down this elevator for like 30 seconds, how far down am I going?.. Oh wait hold on, Im stopped… There’s a metal door with a padlock. Ig since I have the machete there’s only one thing to do, break it. Im going to use the blunt side so I don’t ruin this thing, I like it too much. the lock clatters to the ground after 3 solid hits. Well ig there’s only one way to go now, there’s no button to get back up so I pray there’s another way up. The metal door creaks loudly. Fuck I regret this, It’s dark and I can tell it’s a big area because it’s so echoey in here. I’m currently praising my past self for thinking about the flashlight and glow sticks. I need to find out what in the hell this place is and most importantly, if there’s a damn light switch.
Entry 4: God this place is terrifying I’ve been walking around the sterile white halls of this place for like 10 minutes and have found nothing, no doors, no light switch. I feel like a rat in a maze. Also scratch what I said about being glad I packed glow sticks, because my stupid ass only brought like 20 of these things and I’m already down to 5. Also I feel like I’m not alone, every now and then I’ll turn a corner and the glow from the previous glow stick quickly vanishes. I feel like it might just be because the darkness seems to envelop everything like a blanket. But I have that feeling that I’m being followed. You know the one, where you know somethings wrong you just can’t pin point what it is. Oh shit no way, there’s light, I think there’s a door or something up ahead.
Entry 5: Holy shit… It’s a lab, and worse, there’s people strapped too tables, completely naked and unconscious. I know they are alive because each of them are hooked up with a million different cords, and one of those are plugged into a heart monitor. This place is huge, there has to be at least 50 people on these tables.
“Hey you, you’re not supposed to be in here” yelled a man adorned in a lab coat.
“What are you doing to these kids you sick fucks.” I yelled back at the man across the lab.
In a haste the scientist rushes towards a red button, setting off a loud alarm, turning the lights to a flashing red. With no exit behind me, I could only do one thing... Rush towards him. My training kicked in as I launched into a flurry of calculated strikes. My first hit connected, a right overhand clean under his eye. The doctor stumbled back, but I didn't give him a chance to recover. I pressed the attack, keeping him off balance with a relentless barrage of punches and kicks. He fought back ferociously, but I was one step ahead, anticipating his moves and countering with swift, efficient strikes. We wrestled, the room around us becoming a blur of pain and adrenaline. I used the environment to my advantage, improvising weapons from the scattered medical equipment and turning the empty tables on my opponent. Pinning him to the ground, I laid down a harsh barrage of final blows. His face was a bloody pulp, unrecognizable. But I didn’t walk away unscathed, somewhere in the tussle, the scientist buried a scalpel deep into my stomach. With my adrenaline wearing off, the pain overtook me, sending me into darkness as I fainted from the blood loss and adrenaline dump. I awoke with my arms and legs strapped to the cold metal operating table. Before I could try to struggle, a face overtook my field of vision.
“Quite a fight you put up, you turned poor Dr.Samson into a soup” the looming face said with a chuckle. “You are the first person to put the pieces together and for that I am thoroughly impressed Mr. Hayes”
“Who are you?!” I said fighting at my binds. “Let me go!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that Mr.Hayes. You have seen far too much, and I definitely can’t have you running around telling the world what you saw here. Although nobody would believe you.” “And to answer your other question, I’m surprised you don’t recognize me… really take a moment and look at me” He said pulling down his face mask.
“Dr.Blackwood?” I said as I looked back on my freshman year biology class.
“Ding ding ding ding. We have a winner!” He said in a maniac joy.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked.
“Well Mr.Hayes, first I’m going to sew you up from your little tussle you had with my late assistant and then I will put you under and cut into that skull of yours and take out a small piece of what we call in the science world your hippocampus. Then I will draw from that all of the necessary memories to create the perfect clone of you.” He responded.
“Why? Why would you need a clone of any of us. Why can’t you just clone someone willing to be apart of this?” I asked
“Because that’s no fun Mr.Hayes, the hunt excites me. Actually you’re lucky I didn’t get you the first night. Unfortunately my creation had a little bit of a malfunction and formed a wee bit of an attachment to you. I’m sure you remember the ruckus outside your window? Anyways I digress, I do this because everyone of you lowly students will go onto do mediocre jobs where you waste away at a desk. I must also add that with having a clone of you under my control, I can do anything and get away with clean hands. My plan with you originally was to have you go into the admissions office and steal every last cent all for me. On top of that I like the power, because one day I will have a clone of every student on this campus and eventually I will cause a revolt against our comedy of a government. Who will stop me, when I won’t even be on the front lines?” Dr.Blackwood explained.
“I will” I said freeing my last hand from the binds.
What he didn’t realize is that with all of this monologue and the questions I had been feeding him, I was slowly loosening my binds with each wiggle and movement in retaliation.
Lurching forward I grab onto his collar, pulling him into a vicious headbutt. The impact sent Dr. Blackwood reeling backward, his grip on consciousness loosening as he staggered. Seizing the moment, I lunged off the table, adrenaline coursing through my veins despite the searing pain in my abdomen. With a swift motion, I grabbed a nearby surgical instrument, holding it in a defensive stance as I faced my adversary. Dr. Blackwood, recovering from the blow, snarled with rage, his once calm demeanor now replaced by a feral intensity. The room seemed to shrink around us, the tension thickening with each passing second. This was my chance to stop Blackwood's twisted plans. As he lunged forward, I met his attack head-on, the clang of metal reverberating through the room. Blow after blow, we fought with an intensity born of desperation and determination. Despite my injuries, I refused to yield, driven by a fire burnt under me to protect myself and others from Blackwood's actions . In a final, swift move, I delivered a powerful front kick, sending Blackwood crashing to the ground. The room fell silent, the echoes of our struggle fading into the darkness. Coughing he sat in the corner laughing with blood spilling down his face. “You know that it’s too late to save any of these one lying on the tables. I would’ve released you, you know that right? I would’ve simply taken your memory from today out of your brain and leaving you in your bed to wake up thinking you had a fun night” he said with final resolve as he watched me grab the scalpel from the ground taking slow steps near him.
Looking down over him, It was my turn to laugh. Kneeling down to eye level with him I grabbed him by his hair and delivered a final message to him “Fuck you and your little science experiment” as I sliced deep into his throat watching the life fade from his eyes.
I eventually found an exit door, which lead me to a storm drain deep in the woods far from my campus. It took me 2 hours to limp my way onto a main road and flag down a passing car. Pulling over I was rushed to the hospital and later interrogated by some men in suits, my guess is CIA. Here I am now, writing my final entrance. I think I heard them say something about trying a new medical process on me to help me heal quicker

Hey everyone, I’m typing this on my phone so I apologize if there is weird formatting. Anyways, to get to the point, there’s something really off with some people on my campus. I have come seeking answers.I noticed it first walking home from my 7pm class last Wednesday.
To set the scene, most of the campus is tucked back into the woods a little, and my 7pm class is in the farthest building from the parking lot (further into the woods). I get out from that 7pm class around 9pm, so on cloudy nights like last Wednesday, the only lights on that long sidewalk are the lights radiating from the other buildings. Usually, there’s roughly 30 feet where it’s pitch black because the foliage is pretty dense. I usually walk back to my apartment with some classmates that live in the same complex as me, but I told them to go ahead of me while I finished the rest of the project.
After packing my laptop away, I started heading back home. It was roughly 9:30 at this point, and my brain was slowly shutting down preparing for the deep sleep that has yet to come.Walking down the sidewalk, I heard somebody not too far into the woods laughing like they’ve just heard the funniest joke ever. I immediately thought, “probably some Freshman walking the trails with their friends smoking weed”. Chuckling to myself, I put in my AirPods and picked a playlist for my journey back home.
When I looked up from my phone, there was the silhouette of somebody walking towards me. I have no idea how I missed them before, but honestly, it’s very possible they were just in a spot where the light wasn’t quite reaching them. A little unnerved, I shifted over to the left side of the sidewalk.
(Now I’m usually fine walking alone at night; I’m a 6’2 man who’s dabbled in the world of MMA. But something about this person gave me a primal feeling of unrest.)
When they shifted over to the left mirroring me, I felt my blood run cold. But alas, I had to keep walking because this was my only way back home. As I neared closer to the figure, I almost laughed at myself when I realized it was just some harmless girl walking towards the Murphy building. If anything, I’m the intimidating one to her.
This is where it really gets weird. She stopped as I was passing her and turned to me. Thinking she needed to ask me something, I took an AirPod out and asked “what’s up?”. After staring at me for an uncomfortable amount of time, she opened her mouth, and I kid you not, mimicked the laugh I heard moments before perfectly. Before I could chalk it up to it just being her in the trails earlier, I noticed something. Her mouth wasn’t moving at all. If I had left my AirPods in, it would just look like she was just opening her mouth and staring at me. She then shifted into a deep raspy laugh. She did all of this without moving her mouth at all; I couldn’t even see her throat moving as you would expect if someone was laughing. It was almost like she was some fucked up human-shaped gramophone. The feeling of absolute horror that came over me is something I’ve only experienced in my imagination. Before I could think to do anything next, My body began to run off some sort of primal instinct. With my legs burning, it took me about 10 minutes to get all the way back to my apartment and lock myself in relative safety.
I’m coming on here now to ask if anybody knows what I experienced? I have been hearing that same laughter outside my window every night since that night, I am too terrified to sleep well and have refused to go to any of my classes. Please I just want answers, I don’t want to keep living in fear.
Part 2:
Hey everyone, I’ve gotten some DMs telling me what it may be. I’ve heard everything from banshee to skinwalker. After further research I pray to god it was neither of them. I’m praying it was just some girl with a speaker playing some sort of cruel joke. I mean yes there are people who don’t like me on campus, I’ve made some enemies over the past 4 years. But, I just don’t understand what could’ve brought it to this point. I had to stop hiding in fear and go to my classes before my grades plummet, I’m almost done with my degree and only have a few more weeks. If I let some sort of stupid prank ruin my career, It would be everything I swore against to my parents.
A lot of you guys in the DMs were also asking what college I go to and what my name is. First I want to say sorry for not providing that information in the first post, I’m sure you can understand where my head was at typing that. So let me introduce myself, my name is Nick and In order to keep my privacy, I will only provide that I go to a midwest university.
I’m sure you may be wondering, “so did it just stop?”. I would love to say yes, but really things have just gotten weirder. Though, I am pleased to say that there is no longer laughing out my window every night.
Ever since that night, I’ve been noticing more things off with the people on campus. Now you may just think it’s paranoia, but just be patient and listen.
Yesterday, I decided to muster up all of my courage and go to class. Luckily my first class is at 10AM, when the sun is well in the sky, so walking across campus seemed much less threatening. When I sat down in my first class, I noticed something off with the girl that sits in front of me. Usually she’s chatty and excited to be in class, but today she just stared blankly ahead. I tried to say good morning and ask about her weekend, as we do every Monday, but she continued to have that blank stare. She did turn her head towards be, but her eyes read “lights on, but nobody is home”.
Thinking to myself, she may just be hungover, or going through the bout of college student depression. I decided to shrug it off and turn to the front of the class and get my notes ready. But the moment I turned around, I could feel it. Her eyes burrowing deep into the back of my head. When I flipped around to see if I was just being irrational, I quickly learned I wasn’t. Her eyes went from the blank glare, to the most enthusiastic face I’ve seen on her. It was horrible, it almost seemed like she was trying so hard to pretend she was thrilled to be in class and to speak to me. It was inhuman.
I’ve been on the internet long enough to catch on to the term “Uncanny valley”, and what I witnessed In my first hour gives me that same gut feeling I got when I saw that girl last Wednesday.
I was right to be uncomfortable though, I texted her after class to make sure she was doing alright. But her response only reignited the flames of deep fear burning in my soul.
I’ll copy and paste the messages here:
Me: Hey Is everything good? You seemed off in class today.
Steph SCI 101: Uh yeah, I’m fine. but I was not in class today, I’m severely hungover from Tanner’s party last night.
Me: Haha, good one.
Steph SCI 101: No I’m so Fr, are you okay?
Steph SCI 101: Are you trying to fuck with me or something?
Me: Nevermind, I’m sorry to bother you.
(End Of Texts)
Okay so I’m sure that this gives you all the same feeling of dread that it gave me but I’m sure scaled down a bit. This is where I have started to doubt that it’s a prank, because me and Stephanie are cool. There’s no level of hate for either of us, and even if it was some joke, we don’t know each other on that type of level.
Not only did this seem to happen in my first class, but in between classes while I was walking across campus as well. I walk past hundreds of faces in my many treks across campus, and I swear to you, at least 1/4th of the people I walked past had that same dead stare look. And the way they walked, god I hate even thinking of it. It was like they were an alien trying out their new body suits for the first time. The steps and the bends of their legs just seem so meticulous, dramaticized, and puppeteered.
I’m going to try to investigate further, because at this point my fear for my life is more of a reason to try and figure out what it is so I can try to stop it.
I’m no hero, and I’m sure as hell nothing special, but If I can know what to expect for another encounter, maybe I can avoid meeting the demise I have imagined.
Part 3

First off I would like to apologize for my 20-day hiatus. For those who were worried that curiosity killed the cat so to speak, I appreciate your concern. On top of my investigation, I have also had to go through finals and work for a boss who didn't believe in life outside of work. So let's start where we left off. I had a feeling that this task was left for me to solve. it may sound stupid, but let me explain why. That night, after my last post, I had a dream that further solidified my need to solve the mystery. I tried to write all that I remembered down the morning after so here is what I wrote. 

April 4th, 2024
I had a strange dream last night, stranger than usual at least. I awoke in the woods, laying face down in the grass with someone looming over me. I heard their footsteps flee rapidly before I flipped over. I found myself just off the trail where the “incident” happened, on the trail laid a girl, bloodied and motionless. When I got up to approach her, she was quickly dragged into the parallel section of the woods. Seeing this I turned and ran into the section of woods I was in. When my legs gave out I found myself near an old supply shed, worn and long abandoned. Searching for cover, I tried the door, which luckily gave after a quick pull. There I found a trapdoor which emanated a blue hue through the cracks. The only thought on my mind, survival brought me to throw it open and climb down. I clattered down the ladder and right before my feet touched the ground, I was pulled backwards by my shirt. That’s where I woke up.
I have always trusted my gut and having a dream that vivid gave me a sense of courage I did not previously have. I know where to start my search now. I have decided my best course of action will be to record my findings on a tape recorder app. After I finish each entry it will be uploaded to a cloud that will ensure if anything happens to me, the story will get out. I am packing my backpack now with a flashlight, glow sticks to mark my trail, and a machete I was gifted by a local in Mexico. All of my recordings will be uploaded below and auto posted after 10 days. Wish me luck everyone, I’m going to need it.
Entry 1: I have started at the only place that makes sense, the trail. It is currently 1:45 PM and I have plenty of sun left in the sky. I just needed to find exactly where to start my journey into the woods. Strangely it was very easy to find. I recall one of the trees having a funky twist near the middle of the trunk. Probably just some two lovebirds trying to carve their name into the tree and realizing there were softer trees to carve into. Anyways hiking further into the woods I believe I can see the shape of the shed through the branches. I wish you guys could see how dense these trees are so you can understand my struggle.
Entry 2: I made it to the shed, but unfortunately the floor in here is concrete. This really sucks for me because I have absolutely no idea where to go from here. It’s identical on the outside but I just don’t understand. Maybe I’m just delusional, which in that case what a waste of time and energy. I’m going to head back home and just start packing for summer. Maybe it’ll be best if I just forget about all of this and leave it behind me. I am graduating after all. Wait hold on what is this?? there’s a button behind one of these shelves. I am going to press it, but idk how it would work because this floor is seamless. I’m just going to leave this recording so if anything does happen I don’t have to worry about holding the phone the whole time. Holy shit, the entire floor is lowering. It’s a fucking elevator.
Entry 3: Okay so I’ve been going down this elevator for like 30 seconds, how far down am I going?.. Oh wait hold on, Im stopped… There’s a metal door with a padlock. Ig since I have the machete there’s only one thing to do, break it. Im going to use the blunt side so I don’t ruin this thing, I like it too much. the lock clatters to the ground after 3 solid hits. Well ig there’s only one way to go now, there’s no button to get back up so I pray there’s another way up. The metal door creaks loudly. Fuck I regret this, It’s dark and I can tell it’s a big area because it’s so echoey in here. I’m currently praising my past self for thinking about the flashlight and glow sticks. I need to find out what in the hell this place is and most importantly, if there’s a damn light switch.
Entry 4: God this place is terrifying I’ve been walking around the sterile white halls of this place for like 10 minutes and have found nothing, no doors, no light switch. I feel like a rat in a maze. Also scratch what I said about being glad I packed glow sticks, because my stupid ass only brought like 20 of these things and I’m already down to 5. Also I feel like I’m not alone, every now and then I’ll turn a corner and the glow from the previous glow stick quickly vanishes. I feel like it might just be because the darkness seems to envelop everything like a blanket. But I have that feeling that I’m being followed. You know the one, where you know somethings wrong you just can’t pin point what it is. Oh shit no way, there’s light, I think there’s a door or something up ahead.
Entry 5: Holy shit… It’s a lab, and worse, there’s people strapped too tables, completely naked and unconscious. I know they are alive because each of them are hooked up with a million different cords, and one of those are plugged into a heart monitor. This place is huge, there has to be at least 50 people on these tables.
“Hey you, you’re not supposed to be in here” yelled a man adorned in a lab coat.
“What are you doing to these kids you sick fucks.” I yelled back at the man across the lab.
In a haste the scientist rushes towards a red button, setting off a loud alarm, turning the lights to a flashing red. With no exit behind me, I could only do one thing... Rush towards him. My training kicked in as I launched into a flurry of calculated strikes. My first hit connected, a right overhand clean under his eye. The doctor stumbled back, but I didn't give him a chance to recover. I pressed the attack, keeping him off balance with a relentless barrage of punches and kicks. He fought back ferociously, but I was one step ahead, anticipating his moves and countering with swift, efficient strikes. We wrestled, the room around us becoming a blur of pain and adrenaline. I used the environment to my advantage, improvising weapons from the scattered medical equipment and turning the empty tables on my opponent. Pinning him to the ground, I laid down a harsh barrage of final blows. His face was a bloody pulp, unrecognizable. But I didn’t walk away unscathed, somewhere in the tussle, the scientist buried a scalpel deep into my stomach. With my adrenaline wearing off, the pain overtook me, sending me into darkness as I fainted from the blood loss and adrenaline dump. I awoke with my arms and legs strapped to the cold metal operating table. Before I could try to struggle, a face overtook my field of vision.
“Quite a fight you put up, you turned poor Dr.Samson into a soup” the looming face said with a chuckle. “You are the first person to put the pieces together and for that I am thoroughly impressed Mr. Hayes”
“Who are you?!” I said fighting at my binds. “Let me go!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that Mr.Hayes. You have seen far too much, and I definitely can’t have you running around telling the world what you saw here. Although nobody would believe you.” “And to answer your other question, I’m surprised you don’t recognize me… really take a moment and look at me” He said pulling down his face mask.
“Dr.Blackwood?” I said as I looked back on my freshman year biology class.
“Ding ding ding ding. We have a winner!” He said in a maniac joy.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked.
“Well Mr.Hayes, first I’m going to sew you up from your little tussle you had with my late assistant and then I will put you under and cut into that skull of yours and take out a small piece of what we call in the science world your hippocampus. Then I will draw from that all of the necessary memories to create the perfect clone of you.” He responded.
“Why? Why would you need a clone of any of us. Why can’t you just clone someone willing to be apart of this?” I asked
“Because that’s no fun Mr.Hayes, the hunt excites me. Actually you’re lucky I didn’t get you the first night. Unfortunately my creation had a little bit of a malfunction and formed a wee bit of an attachment to you. I’m sure you remember the ruckus outside your window? Anyways I digress, I do this because everyone of you lowly students will go onto do mediocre jobs where you waste away at a desk. I must also add that with having a clone of you under my control, I can do anything and get away with clean hands. My plan with you originally was to have you go into the admissions office and steal every last cent all for me. On top of that I like the power, because one day I will have a clone of every student on this campus and eventually I will cause a revolt against our comedy of a government. Who will stop me, when I won’t even be on the front lines?” Dr.Blackwood explained.
“I will” I said freeing my last hand from the binds.
What he didn’t realize is that with all of this monologue and the questions I had been feeding him, I was slowly loosening my binds with each wiggle and movement in retaliation.
Lurching forward I grab onto his collar, pulling him into a vicious headbutt. The impact sent Dr. Blackwood reeling backward, his grip on consciousness loosening as he staggered. Seizing the moment, I lunged off the table, adrenaline coursing through my veins despite the searing pain in my abdomen. With a swift motion, I grabbed a nearby surgical instrument, holding it in a defensive stance as I faced my adversary. Dr. Blackwood, recovering from the blow, snarled with rage, his once calm demeanor now replaced by a feral intensity. The room seemed to shrink around us, the tension thickening with each passing second. This was my chance to stop Blackwood's twisted plans. As he lunged forward, I met his attack head-on, the clang of metal reverberating through the room. Blow after blow, we fought with an intensity born of desperation and determination. Despite my injuries, I refused to yield, driven by a fire burnt under me to protect myself and others from Blackwood's actions . In a final, swift move, I delivered a powerful front kick, sending Blackwood crashing to the ground. The room fell silent, the echoes of our struggle fading into the darkness. Coughing he sat in the corner laughing with blood spilling down his face. “You know that it’s too late to save any of these one lying on the tables. I would’ve released you, you know that right? I would’ve simply taken your memory from today out of your brain and leaving you in your bed to wake up thinking you had a fun night” he said with final resolve as he watched me grab the scalpel from the ground taking slow steps near him.
Looking down over him, It was my turn to laugh. Kneeling down to eye level with him I grabbed him by his hair and delivered a final message to him “Fuck you and your little science experiment” as I sliced deep into his throat watching the life fade from his eyes.
I eventually found an exit door, which lead me to a storm drain deep in the woods far from my campus. It took me 2 hours to limp my way onto a main road and flag down a passing car. Pulling over I was rushed to the hospital and later interrogated by some men in suits, my guess is CIA. Here I am now, writing my final entrance. I think I heard them say something about trying a new medical process on me to help me heal quicker.

Hey everyone, I’m typing this on my phone so I apologize if there is weird formatting. Anyways, to get to the point, there’s something really off with some people on my campus. I have come seeking answers.I noticed it first walking home from my 7pm class last Wednesday.
To set the scene, most of the campus is tucked back into the woods a little, and my 7pm class is in the farthest building from the parking lot (further into the woods). I get out from that 7pm class around 9pm, so on cloudy nights like last Wednesday, the only lights on that long sidewalk are the lights radiating from the other buildings. Usually, there’s roughly 30 feet where it’s pitch black because the foliage is pretty dense. I usually walk back to my apartment with some classmates that live in the same complex as me, but I told them to go ahead of me while I finished the rest of the project.
After packing my laptop away, I started heading back home. It was roughly 9:30 at this point, and my brain was slowly shutting down preparing for the deep sleep that has yet to come.Walking down the sidewalk, I heard somebody not too far into the woods laughing like they’ve just heard the funniest joke ever. I immediately thought, “probably some Freshman walking the trails with their friends smoking weed”. Chuckling to myself, I put in my AirPods and picked a playlist for my journey back home.
When I looked up from my phone, there was the silhouette of somebody walking towards me. I have no idea how I missed them before, but honestly, it’s very possible they were just in a spot where the light wasn’t quite reaching them. A little unnerved, I shifted over to the left side of the sidewalk.
(Now I’m usually fine walking alone at night; I’m a 6’2 man who’s dabbled in the world of MMA. But something about this person gave me a primal feeling of unrest.)
When they shifted over to the left mirroring me, I felt my blood run cold. But alas, I had to keep walking because this was my only way back home. As I neared closer to the figure, I almost laughed at myself when I realized it was just some harmless girl walking towards the Murphy building. If anything, I’m the intimidating one to her.
This is where it really gets weird. She stopped as I was passing her and turned to me. Thinking she needed to ask me something, I took an AirPod out and asked “what’s up?”. After staring at me for an uncomfortable amount of time, she opened her mouth, and I kid you not, mimicked the laugh I heard moments before perfectly. Before I could chalk it up to it just being her in the trails earlier, I noticed something. Her mouth wasn’t moving at all. If I had left my AirPods in, it would just look like she was just opening her mouth and staring at me. She then shifted into a deep raspy laugh. She did all of this without moving her mouth at all; I couldn’t even see her throat moving as you would expect if someone was laughing. It was almost like she was some fucked up human-shaped gramophone. The feeling of absolute horror that came over me is something I’ve only experienced in my imagination. Before I could think to do anything next, My body began to run off some sort of primal instinct. With my legs burning, it took me about 10 minutes to get all the way back to my apartment and lock myself in relative safety.
I’m coming on here now to ask if anybody knows what I experienced? I have been hearing that same laughter outside my window every night since that night, I am too terrified to sleep well and have refused to go to any of my classes. Please I just want answers, I don’t want to keep living in fear.
Part 2:
Hey everyone, I’ve gotten some DMs telling me what it may be. I’ve heard everything from banshee to skinwalker. After further research I pray to god it was neither of them. I’m praying it was just some girl with a speaker playing some sort of cruel joke. I mean yes there are people who don’t like me on campus, I’ve made some enemies over the past 4 years. But, I just don’t understand what could’ve brought it to this point. I had to stop hiding in fear and go to my classes before my grades plummet, I’m almost done with my degree and only have a few more weeks. If I let some sort of stupid prank ruin my career, It would be everything I swore against to my parents.
A lot of you guys in the DMs were also asking what college I go to and what my name is. First I want to say sorry for not providing that information in the first post, I’m sure you can understand where my head was at typing that. So let me introduce myself, my name is Nick and In order to keep my privacy, I will only provide that I go to a midwest university.
I’m sure you may be wondering, “so did it just stop?”. I would love to say yes, but really things have just gotten weirder. Though, I am pleased to say that there is no longer laughing out my window every night.
Ever since that night, I’ve been noticing more things off with the people on campus. Now you may just think it’s paranoia, but just be patient and listen.
Yesterday, I decided to muster up all of my courage and go to class. Luckily my first class is at 10AM, when the sun is well in the sky, so walking across campus seemed much less threatening. When I sat down in my first class, I noticed something off with the girl that sits in front of me. Usually she’s chatty and excited to be in class, but today she just stared blankly ahead. I tried to say good morning and ask about her weekend, as we do every Monday, but she continued to have that blank stare. She did turn her head towards be, but her eyes read “lights on, but nobody is home”.
Thinking to myself, she may just be hungover, or going through the bout of college student depression. I decided to shrug it off and turn to the front of the class and get my notes ready. But the moment I turned around, I could feel it. Her eyes burrowing deep into the back of my head. When I flipped around to see if I was just being irrational, I quickly learned I wasn’t. Her eyes went from the blank glare, to the most enthusiastic face I’ve seen on her. It was horrible, it almost seemed like she was trying so hard to pretend she was thrilled to be in class and to speak to me. It was inhuman.
I’ve been on the internet long enough to catch on to the term “Uncanny valley”, and what I witnessed In my first hour gives me that same gut feeling I got when I saw that girl last Wednesday.
I was right to be uncomfortable though, I texted her after class to make sure she was doing alright. But her response only reignited the flames of deep fear burning in my soul.
I’ll copy and paste the messages here:
Me: Hey Is everything good? You seemed off in class today.
Steph SCI 101: Uh yeah, I’m fine. but I was not in class today, I’m severely hungover from Tanner’s party last night.
Me: Haha, good one.
Steph SCI 101: No I’m so Fr, are you okay?
Steph SCI 101: Are you trying to fuck with me or something?
Me: Nevermind, I’m sorry to bother you.
(End Of Texts)
Okay so I’m sure that this gives you all the same feeling of dread that it gave me but I’m sure scaled down a bit. This is where I have started to doubt that it’s a prank, because me and Stephanie are cool. There’s no level of hate for either of us, and even if it was some joke, we don’t know each other on that type of level.
Not only did this seem to happen in my first class, but in between classes while I was walking across campus as well. I walk past hundreds of faces in my many treks across campus, and I swear to you, at least 1/4th of the people I walked past had that same dead stare look. And the way they walked, god I hate even thinking of it. It was like they were an alien trying out their new body suits for the first time. The steps and the bends of their legs just seem so meticulous, dramaticized, and puppeteered.
I’m going to try to investigate further, because at this point my fear for my life is more of a reason to try and figure out what it is so I can try to stop it.
I’m no hero, and I’m sure as hell nothing special, but If I can know what to expect for another encounter, maybe I can avoid meeting the demise I have imagined.
Part 3

First off I would like to apologize for my 20-day hiatus. For those who were worried that curiosity killed the cat so to speak, I appreciate your concern. On top of my investigation, I have also had to go through finals and work for a boss who didn't believe in life outside of work. So let's start where we left off. I had a feeling that this task was left for me to solve. it may sound stupid, but let me explain why. That night, after my last post, I had a dream that further solidified my need to solve the mystery. I tried to write all that I remembered down the morning after so here is what I wrote. 

April 4th, 2024
I had a strange dream last night, stranger than usual at least. I awoke in the woods, laying face down in the grass with someone looming over me. I heard their footsteps flee rapidly before I flipped over. I found myself just off the trail where the “incident” happened, on the trail laid a girl, bloodied and motionless. When I got up to approach her, she was quickly dragged into the parallel section of the woods. Seeing this I turned and ran into the section of woods I was in. When my legs gave out I found myself near an old supply shed, worn and long abandoned. Searching for cover, I tried the door, which luckily gave after a quick pull. There I found a trapdoor which emanated a blue hue through the cracks. The only thought on my mind, survival brought me to throw it open and climb down. I clattered down the ladder and right before my feet touched the ground, I was pulled backwards by my shirt. That’s where I woke up.
I have always trusted my gut and having a dream that vivid gave me a sense of courage I did not previously have. I know where to start my search now. I have decided my best course of action will be to record my findings on a tape recorder app. After I finish each entry it will be uploaded to a cloud that will ensure if anything happens to me, the story will get out. I am packing my backpack now with a flashlight, glow sticks to mark my trail, and a machete I was gifted by a local in Mexico. All of my recordings will be uploaded below and auto posted after 10 days. Wish me luck everyone, I’m going to need it.
Entry 1: I have started at the only place that makes sense, the trail. It is currently 1:45 PM and I have plenty of sun left in the sky. I just needed to find exactly where to start my journey into the woods. Strangely it was very easy to find. I recall one of the trees having a funky twist near the middle of the trunk. Probably just some two lovebirds trying to carve their name into the tree and realizing there were softer trees to carve into. Anyways hiking further into the woods I believe I can see the shape of the shed through the branches. I wish you guys could see how dense these trees are so you can understand my struggle.
Entry 2: I made it to the shed, but unfortunately the floor in here is concrete. This really sucks for me because I have absolutely no idea where to go from here. It’s identical on the outside but I just don’t understand. Maybe I’m just delusional, which in that case what a waste of time and energy. I’m going to head back home and just start packing for summer. Maybe it’ll be best if I just forget about all of this and leave it behind me. I am graduating after all. Wait hold on what is this?? there’s a button behind one of these shelves. I am going to press it, but idk how it would work because this floor is seamless. I’m just going to leave this recording so if anything does happen I don’t have to worry about holding the phone the whole time. Holy shit, the entire floor is lowering. It’s a fucking elevator.
Entry 3: Okay so I’ve been going down this elevator for like 30 seconds, how far down am I going?.. Oh wait hold on, Im stopped… There’s a metal door with a padlock. Ig since I have the machete there’s only one thing to do, break it. Im going to use the blunt side so I don’t ruin this thing, I like it too much. the lock clatters to the ground after 3 solid hits. Well ig there’s only one way to go now, there’s no button to get back up so I pray there’s another way up. The metal door creaks loudly. Fuck I regret this, It’s dark and I can tell it’s a big area because it’s so echoey in here. I’m currently praising my past self for thinking about the flashlight and glow sticks. I need to find out what in the hell this place is and most importantly, if there’s a damn light switch.
Entry 4: God this place is terrifying I’ve been walking around the sterile white halls of this place for like 10 minutes and have found nothing, no doors, no light switch. I feel like a rat in a maze. Also scratch what I said about being glad I packed glow sticks, because my stupid ass only brought like 20 of these things and I’m already down to 5. Also I feel like I’m not alone, every now and then I’ll turn a corner and the glow from the previous glow stick quickly vanishes. I feel like it might just be because the darkness seems to envelop everything like a blanket. But I have that feeling that I’m being followed. You know the one, where you know somethings wrong you just can’t pin point what it is. Oh shit no way, there’s light, I think there’s a door or something up ahead.
Entry 5: Holy shit… It’s a lab, and worse, there’s people strapped too tables, completely naked and unconscious. I know they are alive because each of them are hooked up with a million different cords, and one of those are plugged into a heart monitor. This place is huge, there has to be at least 50 people on these tables.
“Hey you, you’re not supposed to be in here” yelled a man adorned in a lab coat.
“What are you doing to these kids you sick fucks.” I yelled back at the man across the lab.
In a haste the scientist rushes towards a red button, setting off a loud alarm, turning the lights to a flashing red. With no exit behind me, I could only do one thing... Rush towards him. My training kicked in as I launched into a flurry of calculated strikes. My first hit connected, a right overhand clean under his eye. The doctor stumbled back, but I didn't give him a chance to recover. I pressed the attack, keeping him off balance with a relentless barrage of punches and kicks. He fought back ferociously, but I was one step ahead, anticipating his moves and countering with swift, efficient strikes. We wrestled, the room around us becoming a blur of pain and adrenaline. I used the environment to my advantage, improvising weapons from the scattered medical equipment and turning the empty tables on my opponent. Pinning him to the ground, I laid down a harsh barrage of final blows. His face was a bloody pulp, unrecognizable. But I didn’t walk away unscathed, somewhere in the tussle, the scientist buried a scalpel deep into my stomach. With my adrenaline wearing off, the pain overtook me, sending me into darkness as I fainted from the blood loss and adrenaline dump. I awoke with my arms and legs strapped to the cold metal operating table. Before I could try to struggle, a face overtook my field of vision.
“Quite a fight you put up, you turned poor Dr.Samson into a soup” the looming face said with a chuckle. “You are the first person to put the pieces together and for that I am thoroughly impressed Mr. Hayes”
“Who are you?!” I said fighting at my binds. “Let me go!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that Mr.Hayes. You have seen far too much, and I definitely can’t have you running around telling the world what you saw here. Although nobody would believe you.” “And to answer your other question, I’m surprised you don’t recognize me… really take a moment and look at me” He said pulling down his face mask.
“Dr.Blackwood?” I said as I looked back on my freshman year biology class.
“Ding ding ding ding. We have a winner!” He said in a maniac joy.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked.
“Well Mr.Hayes, first I’m going to sew you up from your little tussle you had with my late assistant and then I will put you under and cut into that skull of yours and take out a small piece of what we call in the science world your hippocampus. Then I will draw from that all of the necessary memories to create the perfect clone of you.” He responded.
“Why? Why would you need a clone of any of us. Why can’t you just clone someone willing to be apart of this?” I asked
“Because that’s no fun Mr.Hayes, the hunt excites me. Actually you’re lucky I didn’t get you the first night. Unfortunately my creation had a little bit of a malfunction and formed a wee bit of an attachment to you. I’m sure you remember the ruckus outside your window? Anyways I digress, I do this because everyone of you lowly students will go onto do mediocre jobs where you waste away at a desk. I must also add that with having a clone of you under my control, I can do anything and get away with clean hands. My plan with you originally was to have you go into the admissions office and steal every last cent all for me. On top of that I like the power, because one day I will have a clone of every student on this campus and eventually I will cause a revolt against our comedy of a government. Who will stop me, when I won’t even be on the front lines?” Dr.Blackwood explained.
“I will” I said freeing my last hand from the binds.
What he didn’t realize is that with all of this monologue and the questions I had been feeding him, I was slowly loosening my binds with each wiggle and movement in retaliation.
Lurching forward I grab onto his collar, pulling him into a vicious headbutt. The impact sent Dr. Blackwood reeling backward, his grip on consciousness loosening as he staggered. Seizing the moment, I lunged off the table, adrenaline coursing through my veins despite the searing pain in my abdomen. With a swift motion, I grabbed a nearby surgical instrument, holding it in a defensive stance as I faced my adversary. Dr. Blackwood, recovering from the blow, snarled with rage, his once calm demeanor now replaced by a feral intensity. The room seemed to shrink around us, the tension thickening with each passing second. This was my chance to stop Blackwood's twisted plans. As he lunged forward, I met his attack head-on, the clang of metal reverberating through the room. Blow after blow, we fought with an intensity born of desperation and determination. Despite my injuries, I refused to yield, driven by a fire burnt under me to protect myself and others from Blackwood's actions . In a final, swift move, I delivered a powerful front kick, sending Blackwood crashing to the ground. The room fell silent, the echoes of our struggle fading into the darkness. Coughing he sat in the corner laughing with blood spilling down his face. “You know that it’s too late to save any of these one lying on the tables. I would’ve released you, you know that right? I would’ve simply taken your memory from today out of your brain and leaving you in your bed to wake up thinking you had a fun night” he said with final resolve as he watched me grab the scalpel from the ground taking slow steps near him.
Looking down over him, It was my turn to laugh. Kneeling down to eye level with him I grabbed him by his hair and delivered a final message to him “Fuck you and your little science experiment” as I sliced deep into his throat watching the life fade from his eyes.
I eventually found an exit door, which lead me to a storm drain deep in the woods far from my campus. It took me 2 hours to limp my way onto a main road and flag down a passing car. Pulling over I was rushed to the hospital and later interrogated by some men in suits, my guess is CIA. Here I am now, writing my final entrance. I think I heard them say something about trying a new medical process on me to help me heal quicker.

Hey everyone, I’m typing this on my phone so I apologize if there is weird formatting. Anyways, to get to the point, there’s something really off with some people on my campus. I have come seeking answers.I noticed it first walking home from my 7pm class last Wednesday.
To set the scene, most of the campus is tucked back into the woods a little, and my 7pm class is in the farthest building from the parking lot (further into the woods). I get out from that 7pm class around 9pm, so on cloudy nights like last Wednesday, the only lights on that long sidewalk are the lights radiating from the other buildings. Usually, there’s roughly 30 feet where it’s pitch black because the foliage is pretty dense. I usually walk back to my apartment with some classmates that live in the same complex as me, but I told them to go ahead of me while I finished the rest of the project.
After packing my laptop away, I started heading back home. It was roughly 9:30 at this point, and my brain was slowly shutting down preparing for the deep sleep that has yet to come.Walking down the sidewalk, I heard somebody not too far into the woods laughing like they’ve just heard the funniest joke ever. I immediately thought, “probably some Freshman walking the trails with their friends smoking weed”. Chuckling to myself, I put in my AirPods and picked a playlist for my journey back home.
When I looked up from my phone, there was the silhouette of somebody walking towards me. I have no idea how I missed them before, but honestly, it’s very possible they were just in a spot where the light wasn’t quite reaching them. A little unnerved, I shifted over to the left side of the sidewalk.
(Now I’m usually fine walking alone at night; I’m a 6’2 man who’s dabbled in the world of MMA. But something about this person gave me a primal feeling of unrest.)
When they shifted over to the left mirroring me, I felt my blood run cold. But alas, I had to keep walking because this was my only way back home. As I neared closer to the figure, I almost laughed at myself when I realized it was just some harmless girl walking towards the Murphy building. If anything, I’m the intimidating one to her.
This is where it really gets weird. She stopped as I was passing her and turned to me. Thinking she needed to ask me something, I took an AirPod out and asked “what’s up?”. After staring at me for an uncomfortable amount of time, she opened her mouth, and I kid you not, mimicked the laugh I heard moments before perfectly. Before I could chalk it up to it just being her in the trails earlier, I noticed something. Her mouth wasn’t moving at all. If I had left my AirPods in, it would just look like she was just opening her mouth and staring at me. She then shifted into a deep raspy laugh. She did all of this without moving her mouth at all; I couldn’t even see her throat moving as you would expect if someone was laughing. It was almost like she was some fucked up human-shaped gramophone. The feeling of absolute horror that came over me is something I’ve only experienced in my imagination. Before I could think to do anything next, My body began to run off some sort of primal instinct. With my legs burning, it took me about 10 minutes to get all the way back to my apartment and lock myself in relative safety.
I’m coming on here now to ask if anybody knows what I experienced? I have been hearing that same laughter outside my window every night since that night, I am too terrified to sleep well and have refused to go to any of my classes. Please I just want answers, I don’t want to keep living in fear.
Part 2:
Hey everyone, I’ve gotten some DMs telling me what it may be. I’ve heard everything from banshee to skinwalker. After further research I pray to god it was neither of them. I’m praying it was just some girl with a speaker playing some sort of cruel joke. I mean yes there are people who don’t like me on campus, I’ve made some enemies over the past 4 years. But, I just don’t understand what could’ve brought it to this point. I had to stop hiding in fear and go to my classes before my grades plummet, I’m almost done with my degree and only have a few more weeks. If I let some sort of stupid prank ruin my career, It would be everything I swore against to my parents.
A lot of you guys in the DMs were also asking what college I go to and what my name is. First I want to say sorry for not providing that information in the first post, I’m sure you can understand where my head was at typing that. So let me introduce myself, my name is Nick and In order to keep my privacy, I will only provide that I go to a midwest university.
I’m sure you may be wondering, “so did it just stop?”. I would love to say yes, but really things have just gotten weirder. Though, I am pleased to say that there is no longer laughing out my window every night.
Ever since that night, I’ve been noticing more things off with the people on campus. Now you may just think it’s paranoia, but just be patient and listen.
Yesterday, I decided to muster up all of my courage and go to class. Luckily my first class is at 10AM, when the sun is well in the sky, so walking across campus seemed much less threatening. When I sat down in my first class, I noticed something off with the girl that sits in front of me. Usually she’s chatty and excited to be in class, but today she just stared blankly ahead. I tried to say good morning and ask about her weekend, as we do every Monday, but she continued to have that blank stare. She did turn her head towards be, but her eyes read “lights on, but nobody is home”.
Thinking to myself, she may just be hungover, or going through the bout of college student depression. I decided to shrug it off and turn to the front of the class and get my notes ready. But the moment I turned around, I could feel it. Her eyes burrowing deep into the back of my head. When I flipped around to see if I was just being irrational, I quickly learned I wasn’t. Her eyes went from the blank glare, to the most enthusiastic face I’ve seen on her. It was horrible, it almost seemed like she was trying so hard to pretend she was thrilled to be in class and to speak to me. It was inhuman.
I’ve been on the internet long enough to catch on to the term “Uncanny valley”, and what I witnessed In my first hour gives me that same gut feeling I got when I saw that girl last Wednesday.
I was right to be uncomfortable though, I texted her after class to make sure she was doing alright. But her response only reignited the flames of deep fear burning in my soul.
I’ll copy and paste the messages here:
Me: Hey Is everything good? You seemed off in class today.
Steph SCI 101: Uh yeah, I’m fine. but I was not in class today, I’m severely hungover from Tanner’s party last night.
Me: Haha, good one.
Steph SCI 101: No I’m so Fr, are you okay?
Steph SCI 101: Are you trying to fuck with me or something?
Me: Nevermind, I’m sorry to bother you.
(End Of Texts)
Okay so I’m sure that this gives you all the same feeling of dread that it gave me but I’m sure scaled down a bit. This is where I have started to doubt that it’s a prank, because me and Stephanie are cool. There’s no level of hate for either of us, and even if it was some joke, we don’t know each other on that type of level.
Not only did this seem to happen in my first class, but in between classes while I was walking across campus as well. I walk past hundreds of faces in my many treks across campus, and I swear to you, at least 1/4th of the people I walked past had that same dead stare look. And the way they walked, god I hate even thinking of it. It was like they were an alien trying out their new body suits for the first time. The steps and the bends of their legs just seem so meticulous, dramaticized, and puppeteered.
I’m going to try to investigate further, because at this point my fear for my life is more of a reason to try and figure out what it is so I can try to stop it.
I’m no hero, and I’m sure as hell nothing special, but If I can know what to expect for another encounter, maybe I can avoid meeting the demise I have imagined.
Part 3

First off I would like to apologize for my 20-day hiatus. For those who were worried that curiosity killed the cat so to speak, I appreciate your concern. On top of my investigation, I have also had to go through finals and work for a boss who didn't believe in life outside of work. So let's start where we left off. I had a feeling that this task was left for me to solve. it may sound stupid, but let me explain why. That night, after my last post, I had a dream that further solidified my need to solve the mystery. I tried to write all that I remembered down the morning after so here is what I wrote. 

April 4th, 2024
I had a strange dream last night, stranger than usual at least. I awoke in the woods, laying face down in the grass with someone looming over me. I heard their footsteps flee rapidly before I flipped over. I found myself just off the trail where the “incident” happened, on the trail laid a girl, bloodied and motionless. When I got up to approach her, she was quickly dragged into the parallel section of the woods. Seeing this I turned and ran into the section of woods I was in. When my legs gave out I found myself near an old supply shed, worn and long abandoned. Searching for cover, I tried the door, which luckily gave after a quick pull. There I found a trapdoor which emanated a blue hue through the cracks. The only thought on my mind, survival brought me to throw it open and climb down. I clattered down the ladder and right before my feet touched the ground, I was pulled backwards by my shirt. That’s where I woke up.
I have always trusted my gut and having a dream that vivid gave me a sense of courage I did not previously have. I know where to start my search now. I have decided my best course of action will be to record my findings on a tape recorder app. After I finish each entry it will be uploaded to a cloud that will ensure if anything happens to me, the story will get out. I am packing my backpack now with a flashlight, glow sticks to mark my trail, and a machete I was gifted by a local in Mexico. All of my recordings will be uploaded below and auto posted after 10 days. Wish me luck everyone, I’m going to need it.
Entry 1: I have started at the only place that makes sense, the trail. It is currently 1:45 PM and I have plenty of sun left in the sky. I just needed to find exactly where to start my journey into the woods. Strangely it was very easy to find. I recall one of the trees having a funky twist near the middle of the trunk. Probably just some two lovebirds trying to carve their name into the tree and realizing there were softer trees to carve into. Anyways hiking further into the woods I believe I can see the shape of the shed through the branches. I wish you guys could see how dense these trees are so you can understand my struggle.
Entry 2: I made it to the shed, but unfortunately the floor in here is concrete. This really sucks for me because I have absolutely no idea where to go from here. It’s identical on the outside but I just don’t understand. Maybe I’m just delusional, which in that case what a waste of time and energy. I’m going to head back home and just start packing for summer. Maybe it’ll be best if I just forget about all of this and leave it behind me. I am graduating after all. Wait hold on what is this?? there’s a button behind one of these shelves. I am going to press it, but idk how it would work because this floor is seamless. I’m just going to leave this recording so if anything does happen I don’t have to worry about holding the phone the whole time. Holy shit, the entire floor is lowering. It’s a fucking elevator.
Entry 3: Okay so I’ve been going down this elevator for like 30 seconds, how far down am I going?.. Oh wait hold on, Im stopped… There’s a metal door with a padlock. Ig since I have the machete there’s only one thing to do, break it. Im going to use the blunt side so I don’t ruin this thing, I like it too much. the lock clatters to the ground after 3 solid hits. Well ig there’s only one way to go now, there’s no button to get back up so I pray there’s another way up. The metal door creaks loudly. Fuck I regret this, It’s dark and I can tell it’s a big area because it’s so echoey in here. I’m currently praising my past self for thinking about the flashlight and glow sticks. I need to find out what in the hell this place is and most importantly, if there’s a damn light switch.
Entry 4: God this place is terrifying I’ve been walking around the sterile white halls of this place for like 10 minutes and have found nothing, no doors, no light switch. I feel like a rat in a maze. Also scratch what I said about being glad I packed glow sticks, because my stupid ass only brought like 20 of these things and I’m already down to 5. Also I feel like I’m not alone, every now and then I’ll turn a corner and the glow from the previous glow stick quickly vanishes. I feel like it might just be because the darkness seems to envelop everything like a blanket. But I have that feeling that I’m being followed. You know the one, where you know somethings wrong you just can’t pin point what it is. Oh shit no way, there’s light, I think there’s a door or something up ahead.
Entry 5: Holy shit… It’s a lab, and worse, there’s people strapped too tables, completely naked and unconscious. I know they are alive because each of them are hooked up with a million different cords, and one of those are plugged into a heart monitor. This place is huge, there has to be at least 50 people on these tables.
“Hey you, you’re not supposed to be in here” yelled a man adorned in a lab coat.
“What are you doing to these kids you sick fucks.” I yelled back at the man across the lab.
In a haste the scientist rushes towards a red button, setting off a loud alarm, turning the lights to a flashing red. With no exit behind me, I could only do one thing... Rush towards him. My training kicked in as I launched into a flurry of calculated strikes. My first hit connected, a right overhand clean under his eye. The doctor stumbled back, but I didn't give him a chance to recover. I pressed the attack, keeping him off balance with a relentless barrage of punches and kicks. He fought back ferociously, but I was one step ahead, anticipating his moves and countering with swift, efficient strikes. We wrestled, the room around us becoming a blur of pain and adrenaline. I used the environment to my advantage, improvising weapons from the scattered medical equipment and turning the empty tables on my opponent. Pinning him to the ground, I laid down a harsh barrage of final blows. His face was a bloody pulp, unrecognizable. But I didn’t walk away unscathed, somewhere in the tussle, the scientist buried a scalpel deep into my stomach. With my adrenaline wearing off, the pain overtook me, sending me into darkness as I fainted from the blood loss and adrenaline dump. I awoke with my arms and legs strapped to the cold metal operating table. Before I could try to struggle, a face overtook my field of vision.
“Quite a fight you put up, you turned poor Dr.Samson into a soup” the looming face said with a chuckle. “You are the first person to put the pieces together and for that I am thoroughly impressed Mr. Hayes”
“Who are you?!” I said fighting at my binds. “Let me go!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that Mr.Hayes. You have seen far too much, and I definitely can’t have you running around telling the world what you saw here. Although nobody would believe you.” “And to answer your other question, I’m surprised you don’t recognize me… really take a moment and look at me” He said pulling down his face mask.
“Dr.Blackwood?” I said as I looked back on my freshman year biology class.
“Ding ding ding ding. We have a winner!” He said in a maniac joy.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked.
“Well Mr.Hayes, first I’m going to sew you up from your little tussle you had with my late assistant and then I will put you under and cut into that skull of yours and take out a small piece of what we call in the science world your hippocampus. Then I will draw from that all of the necessary memories to create the perfect clone of you.” He responded.
“Why? Why would you need a clone of any of us. Why can’t you just clone someone willing to be apart of this?” I asked
“Because that’s no fun Mr.Hayes, the hunt excites me. Actually you’re lucky I didn’t get you the first night. Unfortunately my creation had a little bit of a malfunction and formed a wee bit of an attachment to you. I’m sure you remember the ruckus outside your window? Anyways I digress, I do this because everyone of you lowly students will go onto do mediocre jobs where you waste away at a desk. I must also add that with having a clone of you under my control, I can do anything and get away with clean hands. My plan with you originally was to have you go into the admissions office and steal every last cent all for me. On top of that I like the power, because one day I will have a clone of every student on this campus and eventually I will cause a revolt against our comedy of a government. Who will stop me, when I won’t even be on the front lines?” Dr.Blackwood explained.
“I will” I said freeing my last hand from the binds.
What he didn’t realize is that with all of this monologue and the questions I had been feeding him, I was slowly loosening my binds with each wiggle and movement in retaliation.
Lurching forward I grab onto his collar, pulling him into a vicious headbutt. The impact sent Dr. Blackwood reeling backward, his grip on consciousness loosening as he staggered. Seizing the moment, I lunged off the table, adrenaline coursing through my veins despite the searing pain in my abdomen. With a swift motion, I grabbed a nearby surgical instrument, holding it in a defensive stance as I faced my adversary. Dr. Blackwood, recovering from the blow, snarled with rage, his once calm demeanor now replaced by a feral intensity. The room seemed to shrink around us, the tension thickening with each passing second. This was my chance to stop Blackwood's twisted plans. As he lunged forward, I met his attack head-on, the clang of metal reverberating through the room. Blow after blow, we fought with an intensity born of desperation and determination. Despite my injuries, I refused to yield, driven by a fire burnt under me to protect myself and others from Blackwood's actions . In a final, swift move, I delivered a powerful front kick, sending Blackwood crashing to the ground. The room fell silent, the echoes of our struggle fading into the darkness. Coughing he sat in the corner laughing with blood spilling down his face. “You know that it’s too late to save any of these one lying on the tables. I would’ve released you, you know that right? I would’ve simply taken your memory from today out of your brain and leaving you in your bed to wake up thinking you had a fun night” he said with final resolve as he watched me grab the scalpel from the ground taking slow steps near him.
Looking down over him, It was my turn to laugh. Kneeling down to eye level with him I grabbed him by his hair and delivered a final message to him “Fuck you and your little science experiment” as I sliced deep into his throat watching the life fade from his eyes.
I eventually found an exit door, which lead me to a storm drain deep in the woods far from my campus. It took me 2 hours to limp my way onto a main road and flag down a passing car. Pulling over I was rushed to the hospital and later interrogated by some men in suits, my guess is CIA. Here I am now, writing my final entrance. I think I heard them say something about trying a new medical process on me to help me heal quicker.

Hey everyone, I’m typing this on my phone so I apologize if there is weird formatting. Anyways, to get to the point, there’s something really off with some people on my campus. I have come seeking answers.I noticed it first walking home from my 7pm class last Wednesday.
To set the scene, most of the campus is tucked back into the woods a little, and my 7pm class is in the farthest building from the parking lot (further into the woods). I get out from that 7pm class around 9pm, so on cloudy nights like last Wednesday, the only lights on that long sidewalk are the lights radiating from the other buildings. Usually, there’s roughly 30 feet where it’s pitch black because the foliage is pretty dense. I usually walk back to my apartment with some classmates that live in the same complex as me, but I told them to go ahead of me while I finished the rest of the project.
After packing my laptop away, I started heading back home. It was roughly 9:30 at this point, and my brain was slowly shutting down preparing for the deep sleep that has yet to come.Walking down the sidewalk, I heard somebody not too far into the woods laughing like they’ve just heard the funniest joke ever. I immediately thought, “probably some Freshman walking the trails with their friends smoking weed”. Chuckling to myself, I put in my AirPods and picked a playlist for my journey back home.
When I looked up from my phone, there was the silhouette of somebody walking towards me. I have no idea how I missed them before, but honestly, it’s very possible they were just in a spot where the light wasn’t quite reaching them. A little unnerved, I shifted over to the left side of the sidewalk.
(Now I’m usually fine walking alone at night; I’m a 6’2 man who’s dabbled in the world of MMA. But something about this person gave me a primal feeling of unrest.)
When they shifted over to the left mirroring me, I felt my blood run cold. But alas, I had to keep walking because this was my only way back home. As I neared closer to the figure, I almost laughed at myself when I realized it was just some harmless girl walking towards the Murphy building. If anything, I’m the intimidating one to her.
This is where it really gets weird. She stopped as I was passing her and turned to me. Thinking she needed to ask me something, I took an AirPod out and asked “what’s up?”. After staring at me for an uncomfortable amount of time, she opened her mouth, and I kid you not, mimicked the laugh I heard moments before perfectly. Before I could chalk it up to it just being her in the trails earlier, I noticed something. Her mouth wasn’t moving at all. If I had left my AirPods in, it would just look like she was just opening her mouth and staring at me. She then shifted into a deep raspy laugh. She did all of this without moving her mouth at all; I couldn’t even see her throat moving as you would expect if someone was laughing. It was almost like she was some fucked up human-shaped gramophone. The feeling of absolute horror that came over me is something I’ve only experienced in my imagination. Before I could think to do anything next, My body began to run off some sort of primal instinct. With my legs burning, it took me about 10 minutes to get all the way back to my apartment and lock myself in relative safety.
I’m coming on here now to ask if anybody knows what I experienced? I have been hearing that same laughter outside my window every night since that night, I am too terrified to sleep well and have refused to go to any of my classes. Please I just want answers, I don’t want to keep living in fear.
Part 2:
Hey everyone, I’ve gotten some DMs telling me what it may be. I’ve heard everything from banshee to skinwalker. After further research I pray to god it was neither of them. I’m praying it was just some girl with a speaker playing some sort of cruel joke. I mean yes there are people who don’t like me on campus, I’ve made some enemies over the past 4 years. But, I just don’t understand what could’ve brought it to this point. I had to stop hiding in fear and go to my classes before my grades plummet, I’m almost done with my degree and only have a few more weeks. If I let some sort of stupid prank ruin my career, It would be everything I swore against to my parents.
A lot of you guys in the DMs were also asking what college I go to and what my name is. First I want to say sorry for not providing that information in the first post, I’m sure you can understand where my head was at typing that. So let me introduce myself, my name is Nick and In order to keep my privacy, I will only provide that I go to a midwest university.
I’m sure you may be wondering, “so did it just stop?”. I would love to say yes, but really things have just gotten weirder. Though, I am pleased to say that there is no longer laughing out my window every night.
Ever since that night, I’ve been noticing more things off with the people on campus. Now you may just think it’s paranoia, but just be patient and listen.
Yesterday, I decided to muster up all of my courage and go to class. Luckily my first class is at 10AM, when the sun is well in the sky, so walking across campus seemed much less threatening. When I sat down in my first class, I noticed something off with the girl that sits in front of me. Usually she’s chatty and excited to be in class, but today she just stared blankly ahead. I tried to say good morning and ask about her weekend, as we do every Monday, but she continued to have that blank stare. She did turn her head towards be, but her eyes read “lights on, but nobody is home”.
Thinking to myself, she may just be hungover, or going through the bout of college student depression. I decided to shrug it off and turn to the front of the class and get my notes ready. But the moment I turned around, I could feel it. Her eyes burrowing deep into the back of my head. When I flipped around to see if I was just being irrational, I quickly learned I wasn’t. Her eyes went from the blank glare, to the most enthusiastic face I’ve seen on her. It was horrible, it almost seemed like she was trying so hard to pretend she was thrilled to be in class and to speak to me. It was inhuman.
I’ve been on the internet long enough to catch on to the term “Uncanny valley”, and what I witnessed In my first hour gives me that same gut feeling I got when I saw that girl last Wednesday.
I was right to be uncomfortable though, I texted her after class to make sure she was doing alright. But her response only reignited the flames of deep fear burning in my soul.
I’ll copy and paste the messages here:
Me: Hey Is everything good? You seemed off in class today.
Steph SCI 101: Uh yeah, I’m fine. but I was not in class today, I’m severely hungover from Tanner’s party last night.
Me: Haha, good one.
Steph SCI 101: No I’m so Fr, are you okay?
Steph SCI 101: Are you trying to fuck with me or something?
Me: Nevermind, I’m sorry to bother you.
(End Of Texts)
Okay so I’m sure that this gives you all the same feeling of dread that it gave me but I’m sure scaled down a bit. This is where I have started to doubt that it’s a prank, because me and Stephanie are cool. There’s no level of hate for either of us, and even if it was some joke, we don’t know each other on that type of level.
Not only did this seem to happen in my first class, but in between classes while I was walking across campus as well. I walk past hundreds of faces in my many treks across campus, and I swear to you, at least 1/4th of the people I walked past had that same dead stare look. And the way they walked, god I hate even thinking of it. It was like they were an alien trying out their new body suits for the first time. The steps and the bends of their legs just seem so meticulous, dramaticized, and puppeteered.
I’m going to try to investigate further, because at this point my fear for my life is more of a reason to try and figure out what it is so I can try to stop it.
I’m no hero, and I’m sure as hell nothing special, but If I can know what to expect for another encounter, maybe I can avoid meeting the demise I have imagined.
Part 3

First off I would like to apologize for my 20-day hiatus. For those who were worried that curiosity killed the cat so to speak, I appreciate your concern. On top of my investigation, I have also had to go through finals and work for a boss who didn't believe in life outside of work. So let's start where we left off. I had a feeling that this task was left for me to solve. it may sound stupid, but let me explain why. That night, after my last post, I had a dream that further solidified my need to solve the mystery. I tried to write all that I remembered down the morning after so here is what I wrote. 

April 4th, 2024
I had a strange dream last night, stranger than usual at least. I awoke in the woods, laying face down in the grass with someone looming over me. I heard their footsteps flee rapidly before I flipped over. I found myself just off the trail where the “incident” happened, on the trail laid a girl, bloodied and motionless. When I got up to approach her, she was quickly dragged into the parallel section of the woods. Seeing this I turned and ran into the section of woods I was in. When my legs gave out I found myself near an old supply shed, worn and long abandoned. Searching for cover, I tried the door, which luckily gave after a quick pull. There I found a trapdoor which emanated a blue hue through the cracks. The only thought on my mind, survival brought me to throw it open and climb down. I clattered down the ladder and right before my feet touched the ground, I was pulled backwards by my shirt. That’s where I woke up.
I have always trusted my gut and having a dream that vivid gave me a sense of courage I did not previously have. I know where to start my search now. I have decided my best course of action will be to record my findings on a tape recorder app. After I finish each entry it will be uploaded to a cloud that will ensure if anything happens to me, the story will get out. I am packing my backpack now with a flashlight, glow sticks to mark my trail, and a machete I was gifted by a local in Mexico. All of my recordings will be uploaded below and auto posted after 10 days. Wish me luck everyone, I’m going to need it.
Entry 1: I have started at the only place that makes sense, the trail. It is currently 1:45 PM and I have plenty of sun left in the sky. I just needed to find exactly where to start my journey into the woods. Strangely it was very easy to find. I recall one of the trees having a funky twist near the middle of the trunk. Probably just some two lovebirds trying to carve their name into the tree and realizing there were softer trees to carve into. Anyways hiking further into the woods I believe I can see the shape of the shed through the branches. I wish you guys could see how dense these trees are so you can understand my struggle.
Entry 2: I made it to the shed, but unfortunately the floor in here is concrete. This really sucks for me because I have absolutely no idea where to go from here. It’s identical on the outside but I just don’t understand. Maybe I’m just delusional, which in that case what a waste of time and energy. I’m going to head back home and just start packing for summer. Maybe it’ll be best if I just forget about all of this and leave it behind me. I am graduating after all. Wait hold on what is this?? there’s a button behind one of these shelves. I am going to press it, but idk how it would work because this floor is seamless. I’m just going to leave this recording so if anything does happen I don’t have to worry about holding the phone the whole time. Holy shit, the entire floor is lowering. It’s a fucking elevator.
Entry 3: Okay so I’ve been going down this elevator for like 30 seconds, how far down am I going?.. Oh wait hold on, Im stopped… There’s a metal door with a padlock. Ig since I have the machete there’s only one thing to do, break it. Im going to use the blunt side so I don’t ruin this thing, I like it too much. the lock clatters to the ground after 3 solid hits. Well ig there’s only one way to go now, there’s no button to get back up so I pray there’s another way up. The metal door creaks loudly. Fuck I regret this, It’s dark and I can tell it’s a big area because it’s so echoey in here. I’m currently praising my past self for thinking about the flashlight and glow sticks. I need to find out what in the hell this place is and most importantly, if there’s a damn light switch.
Entry 4: God this place is terrifying I’ve been walking around the sterile white halls of this place for like 10 minutes and have found nothing, no doors, no light switch. I feel like a rat in a maze. Also scratch what I said about being glad I packed glow sticks, because my stupid ass only brought like 20 of these things and I’m already down to 5. Also I feel like I’m not alone, every now and then I’ll turn a corner and the glow from the previous glow stick quickly vanishes. I feel like it might just be because the darkness seems to envelop everything like a blanket. But I have that feeling that I’m being followed. You know the one, where you know somethings wrong you just can’t pin point what it is. Oh shit no way, there’s light, I think there’s a door or something up ahead.
Entry 5: Holy shit… It’s a lab, and worse, there’s people strapped too tables, completely naked and unconscious. I know they are alive because each of them are hooked up with a million different cords, and one of those are plugged into a heart monitor. This place is huge, there has to be at least 50 people on these tables.
“Hey you, you’re not supposed to be in here” yelled a man adorned in a lab coat.
“What are you doing to these kids you sick fucks.” I yelled back at the man across the lab.
In a haste the scientist rushes towards a red button, setting off a loud alarm, turning the lights to a flashing red. With no exit behind me, I could only do one thing... Rush towards him. My training kicked in as I launched into a flurry of calculated strikes. My first hit connected, a right overhand clean under his eye. The doctor stumbled back, but I didn't give him a chance to recover. I pressed the attack, keeping him off balance with a relentless barrage of punches and kicks. He fought back ferociously, but I was one step ahead, anticipating his moves and countering with swift, efficient strikes. We wrestled, the room around us becoming a blur of pain and adrenaline. I used the environment to my advantage, improvising weapons from the scattered medical equipment and turning the empty tables on my opponent. Pinning him to the ground, I laid down a harsh barrage of final blows. His face was a bloody pulp, unrecognizable. But I didn’t walk away unscathed, somewhere in the tussle, the scientist buried a scalpel deep into my stomach. With my adrenaline wearing off, the pain overtook me, sending me into darkness as I fainted from the blood loss and adrenaline dump. I awoke with my arms and legs strapped to the cold metal operating table. Before I could try to struggle, a face overtook my field of vision.
“Quite a fight you put up, you turned poor Dr.Samson into a soup” the looming face said with a chuckle. “You are the first person to put the pieces together and for that I am thoroughly impressed Mr. Hayes”
“Who are you?!” I said fighting at my binds. “Let me go!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that Mr.Hayes. You have seen far too much, and I definitely can’t have you running around telling the world what you saw here. Although nobody would believe you.” “And to answer your other question, I’m surprised you don’t recognize me… really take a moment and look at me” He said pulling down his face mask.
“Dr.Blackwood?” I said as I looked back on my freshman year biology class.
“Ding ding ding ding. We have a winner!” He said in a maniac joy.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked.
“Well Mr.Hayes, first I’m going to sew you up from your little tussle you had with my late assistant and then I will put you under and cut into that skull of yours and take out a small piece of what we call in the science world your hippocampus. Then I will draw from that all of the necessary memories to create the perfect clone of you.” He responded.
“Why? Why would you need a clone of any of us. Why can’t you just clone someone willing to be apart of this?” I asked
“Because that’s no fun Mr.Hayes, the hunt excites me. Actually you’re lucky I didn’t get you the first night. Unfortunately my creation had a little bit of a malfunction and formed a wee bit of an attachment to you. I’m sure you remember the ruckus outside your window? Anyways I digress, I do this because everyone of you lowly students will go onto do mediocre jobs where you waste away at a desk. I must also add that with having a clone of you under my control, I can do anything and get away with clean hands. My plan with you originally was to have you go into the admissions office and steal every last cent all for me. On top of that I like the power, because one day I will have a clone of every student on this campus and eventually I will cause a revolt against our comedy of a government. Who will stop me, when I won’t even be on the front lines?” Dr.Blackwood explained.
“I will” I said freeing my last hand from the binds.
What he didn’t realize is that with all of this monologue and the questions I had been feeding him, I was slowly loosening my binds with each wiggle and movement in retaliation.
Lurching forward I grab onto his collar, pulling him into a vicious headbutt. The impact sent Dr. Blackwood reeling backward, his grip on consciousness loosening as he staggered. Seizing the moment, I lunged off the table, adrenaline coursing through my veins despite the searing pain in my abdomen. With a swift motion, I grabbed a nearby surgical instrument, holding it in a defensive stance as I faced my adversary. Dr. Blackwood, recovering from the blow, snarled with rage, his once calm demeanor now replaced by a feral intensity. The room seemed to shrink around us, the tension thickening with each passing second. This was my chance to stop Blackwood's twisted plans. As he lunged forward, I met his attack head-on, the clang of metal reverberating through the room. Blow after blow, we fought with an intensity born of desperation and determination. Despite my injuries, I refused to yield, driven by a fire burnt under me to protect myself and others from Blackwood's actions . In a final, swift move, I delivered a powerful front kick, sending Blackwood crashing to the ground. The room fell silent, the echoes of our struggle fading into the darkness. Coughing he sat in the corner laughing with blood spilling down his face. “You know that it’s too late to save any of these one lying on the tables. I would’ve released you, you know that right? I would’ve simply taken your memory from today out of your brain and leaving you in your bed to wake up thinking you had a fun night” he said with final resolve as he watched me grab the scalpel from the ground taking slow steps near him.
Looking down over him, It was my turn to laugh. Kneeling down to eye level with him I grabbed him by his hair and delivered a final message to him “Fuck you and your little science experiment” as I sliced deep into his throat watching the life fade from his eyes.
I eventually found an exit door, which lead me to a storm drain deep in the woods far from my campus. It took me 2 hours to limp my way onto a main road and flag down a passing car. Pulling over I was rushed to the hospital and later interrogated by some men in suits, my guess is CIA. Here I am now, writing my final entrance. I think I heard them say something about trying a new medical process on me to help me heal quicker.

Special thanks to u/SpacePaladin15 for creating the NoP universe.
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I'd also like to thank u/xskipy10 for their awesome fanart of the main cast as well as their recent Tohba meme and their fanart of Michael baysitting. You're work is a treasure!
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Thank you as well to u/Accomplished-Golf-59 for his take on Michael, Teylim, and Tohba in his submission for the Banner Art Contest, and u/Spacer_Catgirl4969 for their awesome music video featuring a pixel-art Dohkar in his bar. Be sure to give ALL of these awesome creators your love and support.
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And let's not forget u/Guywhoexists2812 who has been an awesome source of memes as well as sick pixel art, such as THIS and THIS!!!! And even THIS!!!!!! And how could I forget THIS!!!!!!!!!! Thank you so much!
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Today, we join Dohkar and Davids as they continue the hunt for Albiel, and we have the final confrontation between father and son. And Bennic finally decides what side he's on. LETTUCE...continue...
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First
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Previous
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Songs Mentioned/Used: Fire by Barns Courtney
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Memory Transcript Subject: Patient T-143, Yotul Refugee Sponsor Date:[Standardized Human Time] January 16, 2137
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That was Michael! It HAD to be!
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There was no mistaking it. That was my joey’s voice. And it tore a swath through this building. I couldn’t hear the guards outside my cell anymore. Either they ran off, or the sheer sound alone was enough to knock them unconscious. Either way, it gave me hope. And as I began hearing gunfire in the distance, slowly getting closer, my heart surged.
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This was it. This was my chance. Whoever these attackers were, there was no way Michael, Khornel, and Tohba coming over the loudspeakers at the same time as the attack was a coincidence. This was a raid! They were here to clear the place out and save the patients here! They were here to save me…
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I hopped up and grabbed onto the barred window of my holding cell. I wasn’t even close to strong enough to get this door open, but perhaps one of the raiders were.
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“HEEEEEYYYYY!!! HEEEEEELLLPPP!!! OVER HEEERRRREEE!!!!”
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I listened as my voice echoed down the halls and corridors, waiting for a response. When none came, I waited for the sound to completely dissipate, and tried again.
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“HELLOOOOOOOO!!!!! PLEASE!!! ANYONE!!!!! HEEEEEELLLPPP!!!!”
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Once again, I listened to my voice bounce from wall to wall, echoing through the building, waiting for any kind of response…
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^{“TEYLIM?!” TEYLIM, IS THAT YOU?!”}
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My heart soared as tears of relief built in my eyes. It was faint from just how far away it was, I knew that voice anywhere!
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Dohkar…
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“YES!!!! DOHKAR, IT’S ME!!! I’M HERE!!!”
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I began hearing footsteps echoing through the halls, getting closer to my cell. He was so close. Dohkar found me. He’d get me out, and then we could leave this place and find my joeys. It was almost over.
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The footsteps were so close now. I could barely contain my excitement as I let go of the bars and landed back on the ground. I waited with baited breath as the steps arrived just outside. But…something was wrong… Those footsteps sounded a lot…heavier than a Venlil’s should…
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The door opened, and the first thing I noticed…was the tall, menacing figure’s singular, sharpened, horn…
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“Y-you’re not Dohkar…”
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Memory Transcript Subject: Dohkar, Venlil Bartender Date:[Standardized Human Time] January 16, 2137
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“Yeesh, the kid’s got some pipes, I’ll give him that.”
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Davids and I were the only ones remaining from Squad 1. Chavez and our medic were the only others, and they were on their way back to the APC. We were on our own now, but seeing the complete and utter devastation of the Guild’s forces didn’t make that much of an issue. Occasionally we’d find one that was still conscious, but they were completely deaf from not getting their headset off quick enough.
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“Yeah. Let’s keep moving. We still have a job to finish. Is there still interference keeping us from contacting Squad 2?”
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Davids held a finger to his earpiece.
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“Squad 2, this is 1-1 Sargent Davids, over.”
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I listened in on my own ear piece. We were getting nothing but static.
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Come on, Tevis.
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“Squad 2, respond! This is 1-1 Sargent Davids. We are two men down and require assistance, over.”
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For a moment, there was still nothing but static, until a haggered, pained, voice crackled through.
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“This is Tevis. I read you Squad 1…”
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“What the hell happened?! We lost contact with you as soon as we began the attack!”
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“We were hit right away. Lost half my squad in the initial confrontation.”
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“What’s your status?”
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“Alive, but I’m the only one left. I found my original team…or…what’s left of them… But I’ve got the data we needed. Objective Complete.”
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The grim tone in his voice said it all. They must’ve found something they REALLY weren’t supposed to.
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“I’m aborting the mission. Even if we do manage to capture Albiel, there’s no way we’d be able to clear the facility with just the three of us. Meet back at the staging area where I’ll get back in contact with Magistrate Intellegence and request reinforcements.”
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“We can’t just leave! Not when we’re so close!”
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“We’re retreating. That’s an order, Dohkar.”
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My free paw clenched itself into a fist. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Everywhere around us, the defenses were crumbling. Anyone who could possibly have gotten in our way was either dead, unconscious, or deaf. We had this! There was no reason NOT to continue.
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Davids gave me a sympathetic look. He was a soldier, and he knew orders were orders. Still, I made a promise! I promised those pups, those pups who managed to wipe out an entire Guild Office’s worth of exterminators from half a town away, that I’d return and bring back Clem and-
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^{“HEEEEEYYYYY!!! HEEEEEELLLPPP!!! OVER HEEERRRREEE!!!!”}
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“Teylim?”
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Protect the herd!
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My ears perked up, and my senses were brought up to full alert.
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“Dohkar, what did you say?”
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“I…I thought I heard-“
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^{“HELLOOOOOOOO!!!!! PLEASE!!! ANYONE!!!!! HEEEEEELLLPPP!!!!”}
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“TEYLIM!”
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PROTECT THE HERD!!!
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My ears were on swivels, desperately trying to pinpoint the direction the voice was coming from. Once I’d narrowed it down, I took a few steps and cupped my paws around my snout as I shouted back.
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“TEYLIM?!” TEYLIM, IS THAT YOU?!”
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“Dohkar, what are you doin-“
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“Quiet!”
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I focused on my hearing as much as I could. Odds are, I’d probably get a decent chewing out for talking back to a superior officer, but if I found Teylim, it would be worth it. I listened as hard as I could.
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^{“YES!!!! DOHKAR, IT’S ME!!! I’M HERE!!!”}
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Protect the herd!!!
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My mind immediately raced, trying to remember what was in that direction. My mind slowly formed a layout of the building until-
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THE TEMPORARY HOLDING CELLS!!
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“Davids! Hostage located! It’s Teylim!”
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“You’re sure?!”
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“Positive! She’s that way!”
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“Dohkar! Davids! What are you-?”
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“We’ve got a location on one of the hostages. We’re going after her!”
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“Negative! I gave you direct orders to-“
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Before I could respond, Davids did it for me.
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“All due respect sir, the UN doesn’t follow YOUR orders.”
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“Why you filthy pre-“
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The signal cut off and Davids shouldered his rifle.
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“Come on. We’ve still got hostages to save.”
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I gave a thankful nod and we sprinted towards the holding cells. Tevis could run all he wanted, but WE still have a job to do.
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Hang tight, Teylim…
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Passing several other squads of downed exterminators on the way, we eventually made it to the holding cells. These were where we’d temporarily hold suspects until they were ready to be screened. I immediately spotted a pair of officers outside one of the cells, it’s door was wide open.
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“Teylim?”
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I jogged over to the open cell.
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“Teylim?!”
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Nothing. It was completely empty. The only thing that showed that anyone had been here…was a streak of green on the floor…
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[Warning!: Anger Response Spiking Rapidly: Attempting To Compensate…]
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I knelt down and ran a finger across the streak. It was fresh. She was here…and someone had hurt her…enough to draw blood. The only other clue I found were a few white hairs speckled with blue blood. Fissan fur…
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Albiel…
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I didn’t need to look anymore. I knew exactly who did this, and exactly where he would go.
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“It’s your call, Sarge…”
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“We finish the mission…and save the hostages.”
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I led the way. The Chief’s office wasn’t far. A right turn here. A left turn there. And then a long hallway with the office at the very end.
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Once the door to his office was inside, Davids and I both picked up the pace. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he was waiting for us. I knew my father. This was a test. He knew I’d go after Teylim. He wanted me to chase him.
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“This is probably a trap!”
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“Definitely!”
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Once we made it to the door, we stacked up, both taking a side. Davids raised his hand and began silently counting down.
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Five…
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Four…
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Three-
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BANG!!!
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The door flew open and an arm holding a sidearm shot out fired at Davids. Before I could even see what became of him, that same arm ripped me inside the room before I could react.
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SLAM!!!
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Before I could catch my bearings, I was yanked into the air and flung across the room, slamming over the desktop and landing roughly on the floor behind it.
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Getting ragdolled like that brought back all sorts of unpleasant memories, but I did my best to shake myself loose from them. Disarmed, I went for the human pistol holstered to my hip and stood to aim at my attacker.
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“Oh, I wouldn’t if I were you.”
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“Dohkar!”
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Albiel…
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My grip on my weapon tightened and I could feel my teeth chipping as they ground against each other in rage.
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There he was, the symbol of everything wrong with The Guild. The Chief. My father. Albiel. In one paw, he held Teylim, beaten, green dripping from the side of her mouth, and a patient shock collar around her neck. In the other paw, he held the remote for it.
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“Let. Her. Go.”
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“You never fail to disappoint me, Dohkar. You AND those failures of a squad you called your brothers.”
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Bennic?
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Did he hurt them too?
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“Every time I think the bar couldn’t be any lower, you still somehow manage.”
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His fur was matted and disheveled, and there was an outright manic look in his eyes. The only thing about him that was still prim and orderly was that damned horn, still and shiny and sharp as ever. Bennic was right. He really had lost it.
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“ALL of this could’ve been yours one paw, Dohkar! Everything I’ve done! EVERYTHING I’ve built! I did so in the name of finding someone worthy enough to pass it all on to. I found you, along with the rest of your incompetent squad in a damned GUTTER! I gave you a home, a purpose, and THIS is how you all repay me?! Failure! Betrayal! Disappointment! And for WHAT?! ‘People’ like THIS?!”
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His grip around Teylim’s neck tightened. I felt myself breaking apart as she shrieked in his grip.
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“Dohkar, plea-“
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“SILENCE, SAVAGE!!”
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I tried aiming my weapon once he was distracted, but he quickly noticed and held up the remote. With a chuff, he regained a facsimile of his usual self, the mask he kept on to hide the madness I always knew was there.
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“Even after you left, you continue to disappoint me at every turn: Cavorting about with primitives and predators far below your station, opening up that filthy excuse of a watering hole, so you could spend even MORE time with the mindless gutter trash that INFESTS this town?! Even when my expectations for you could not have been any lower, ALL you had to do…was STAY. AWAY Just look good for the ‘people’, continue on being the former ‘legend’ that everyone moron in this town believed you to be, and keep your noseless shout OUT of our business. But you couldn’t even do THAT, could you?! How I saw ANY potential in you in the first place continues to elude me.”
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I didn’t respond, continuing to let him talk himself to death. Any moment now, David’s would break through that door, and I’d have my chance. I continued to just stare, only taking the occasional glance towards Teylim.
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“Buuuut no matter. I’ll just have to start again. I’ll find a new backwater town, with just as neglectful management. I’ll find other downtrodden youths more than willing to stay loyal if it means a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. I’ll build it all up again. And you…well…maybe you’ll surprise me and survive long enough to see it.”
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“No. It stops here. I won’t let you take advantage of anyone else.”
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“Oh? What are you going to do? Shoot me with your primitive space ape gun? We BOTH know you won’t risk hitting HER.”
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He lifted Teylim closer to him, using her as a shield. My paws began to shake.
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“Now here’s what’s going to happen. You are going to stand by and watch as I take my leave. And if you try to stop me, I’ll not only reunite this wretch with her mate, but I’ll be sure to find their tainted SPAWN as well, and take extra time in coming up with a creative end for him. Who knows? He might make for a decent recruit after all.”
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“Dohkar!”
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“Teylim…”
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My mind went from plan to plan, idea to idea, finding no solution that wouldn’t end with Teylim getting killed. Even if I adjusted my aim, he’d just activate the collar before I could pull the trigger. I was also out of time for stalling.
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“Dohkar! I need…you…to promise me…”
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My eyes focused back on Teylim. Trails of tears flowed down her cheeks as her teeth clenched. At that moment, I knew exactly what she’d say. This was it. These were Lohrek’s last moments, before Albiel killed him… He made me make a promise, too.
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No. Not again.
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“Promise me… Whatever happens…watch over my joeys… Michael… Tohba… Protect them…”
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No. No. No. Not again. Please not again.
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“I…I…”
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“PLEASE, DOHKAR! They’re all I have… Please… Promise me…that you’ll protect them…”
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Every last part of me shook and shivered. I couldn’t find words to express the horror I was feeling, watching the death of my best friend play in front of me again, almost verbatim. So instead, I said what I wish I could’ve said to Loh.
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“Like they were my very own pups.”
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She forced a pained smile as Albiel’s grip loosened for just a moment.
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“Well isn’t that precious? A mother’s love truly does run eternal. …Perhaps THAT was the missing piece. How might YOU all have turned out if you’d had a mother as well. Food for thought-“
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“GYYYYAAAARRRGH!!!!!”
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Albiel’s speech was interrupted as the Yotul he was holding shrieked out, twisting her head to the side and clamping her jaws onto his arm, causing blue to spurt out from around her teeth.
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“GAAAAAHHH!!! VICIOUS BEAST!!!”
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I watched in shock as with one massive swing of his arm, he shook Teylim off and sent her slamming into the wall with a sickening slap.
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“TEYLIM!!!!!”
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PROTECT THE HERD!!!
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I raised my weapon. While I could’ve ended him right then and there, my only concern was the remote in his paw that he was pointing in her direction.
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BANG!!!
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Another splatter of blue, another shriek of pain from Albiel, and the remote was sent, sparking and nonfunctional, to the ground.
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Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him make a break for it through the door, but my focus was entirely on Teylim. I slid down to the ground beside her and cradled her in my arms.
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“Teylim! TEYLIM!!”
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She was unresponsive. One of her legs had definitely been broken from the hit and while I could feel a pulse, it was weak
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I turned on my ear piece and hoped it still worked.
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“Medic!!! I need a medic in the Chief’s office! One soldier and one hostage critically injured!!! Medic!!!”
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While I waited for a response, I went back to trying to rouse Teylim.
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“Teylim! Wake up! Please!”
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Still…nothing… She was getting weaker. I could feel it.
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“Please, Teylim… You can’t leave us yet. We still need you. Your pups NEED you, you hear me? BOTH of them! Michael… Tohba… They need their mother. And…”
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For the first time in a long time…I felt the old sting of tears build up in my eyes. They flowed down my face is thin streaks as I held one of the only friends I had left in my arms, pressing my head against hers.
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“I need you, too… So please… Wake up…”
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There was a moment of nothing but silence, before she took in a faint, raspy, gasp of air.
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I reeled back in shock as her limbs finally moved, clinging onto me. Her chest convulsed as she coughed and sputtered, before finally, her eyes winced open, meeting mine.
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“Doh..kar…?”
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I couldn’t speak. My mind refused to create the right words for the relief I felt as I pulled her in, holding her close.
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“Wow… Hehe… Never thought…I’d see the day YOU cried… HeheOH stars, it hurts to laugh…”
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I pulled back and wiped at my face.
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“I’m getting you out of here.”
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Finally, right on queue, I heard multiple people enter the room. I turned and saw a pair of UN medics come in with a stretcher.
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“We heard your request for a medic!”
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“Here! Help her!”
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“On it!”
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As we got to work getting Teylim on the stretcher, I noticed there were only two.
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“What about Davids?”
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One of the medics gave me a sympathetic look before shaking his head.
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Damnit…
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Suddenly, I realized something. These medics… They weren’t ones that we’d left at the staging area…
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“Wait. Aren’t you two supposed to still be at the bar?”
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“We were needed to help care for the rescued patients. The staging area’s already being turned into a field hospital for all of them.”
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I was…confused… We didn’t get to clearing out the facility yet. And as far as I knew, Tevis had already retreated back outside.
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“What? But we didn’t-“
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“That would be my handiwork, Dohkar.”
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A voice crackled through the radio. It wasn’t Tevis, Mike, or anyone else I’d have expected to hear. It was…
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“Ben?”
Memory Transcript Subject: Officer Bennic, Senior Extermination Officer Date:[Standardized Human Time] January 16, 2137
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Madness…
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Pointless, directionless madness…
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I slowly made my way down the hall to just one of the many treatment rooms in the facility, my squad mates at my side, doing my best to not let what I saw in Chief’s office get to me.
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Though, now that I thought about it, it made perfect sense. How willing he was to stand by in his code little room in the back of the building while the rest of us fought and died.
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The perfect shields and distractions…
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Don’t think… Just do… Follow orders…
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We believed in The Guild. We believed in HIM. That’s how we were raised, after all. It’s how we all were. Albiel always DID prefer to recruit young. All the easier to mold into what he wanted.
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Obedient little soldiers…just like me…
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Don’t think… Just do… Follow orders…
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I walked through the door. I remembered when we were shown these rooms the first time. “A necessary evil”, it was called. We didn’t like it, especially Dohkar. He was always stronger than us. Sometimes I wonder…
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Don’t think… Just do… Follow orders…
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There are two chairs in the room. The door to the rest of the facility, particularly the holding cells, had a line out the door of prisoners and patients. All waiting for the inevitable.
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Don’t think… Just do… Follow orders…
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The door was guarded. Two of the younger officers who’d been assigned this post for a while now. One remained focused, while the other constantly kept glancing at the rears of any female patient he could see. Even now, after we found out what he would do in his spare time, he never received punishment.
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Don’t think… Just do… Follow orders…
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I looked to the two patients already strapped to their chairs. In the left one, an elderly Venlil, a soldier if I remember right. He served this planet, and served it proudly, and paid the price with his eyesight. Is THIS what all those years of service has earned him?
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Don’t think… Just do… Follow orders…
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In the right, a Gojid female. She was only a pup when she was first brought here. She was adorned with two large burn scars. One that covered her entire forearm from a flamer burning her. The other wrapped around her neck, a permanent reminder of the collar that had been placed around it. What does a child do to deserve a life like this, I wonder.
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Don’t think… Just do… Follow orders…
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“Mr. Clem…?”
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“It will be alright, child. I promise.”
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“I don’t wanna! I don’t wanna get hurt again!”
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The elder faces in my direction, his glassy eyes filled with nothing but hatred. I have a clue about who he is, but just to be sure…
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“You’re Clem? You’re the one that helped Dohkar when he left The Guild, right?”
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“Why are you doing this?’ What did we do?! You can’t just punish us without giving us a reason!”
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If only he knew…
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“This…isn’t a punishment… The Guild is under attack. Under direct orders by Extermination Chief Albiel, I am to oversee the scuttling of the facility, including the evacuation of staff, deletion of data…and termination of prisoners…”
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The glassy eyes of the blind old man, glared white-hot daggers into my very being.
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“You monsters! Dohkar really was right about you lot! You’re not protectors! You’re just murderers!”
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He’s right…
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Don’t think… Just do… Follow orders…
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Those are my orders. While my fellow officers fight and die just to buy time, while my Chief, my father hides away in his office, making deals and planning HIS escape, I cover up what we should never have been doing in the first place.
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Don’t think… Just do… Follow orders…
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One of the doctors begins charging the machine. It whirs to life, sending the Gojid into hysterics. She knows what these chairs do, as do I…
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Don’t think…
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It’ll kill them…
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Just do…
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Just like it killed so many others before…
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Follow orders…
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…
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Unfortunately…I don’t feel like following orders.
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Without even NEEDING to think. I pull a sidearm from my holster, followed by my squad: Abra, Canuck, and Ento. My brothers. Among all the other officers in our branch, We were all recruited together, with Dohkar as our leader. When he left, we all stayed, but I did my best to fill his place.
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So when I draw my weapon, the others do as well.
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BANG!! BABANG!!! BANG!! BANG!!!
​
The doctor falls. The two guards fall. And the generator fueling the chairs sparks and dies. We unstrap the two from the chair and do our best to calm the patients.
​
“Wha-? What are you-?”
​
“For the first time in my life, doing my job. Now then, would an old soldier be willing to help me get these people organized and out of here?”
​
With more than a little hesitation, especially from the young Gojid girl, the two walked over to the other patients and began talking them down.
​
So, with me leading the way, letting the soldier and his cellmate ride in my back, we began to lead the line of patients toward the emergency exit, opening every cell along the way.
​
Don’t think… Just do…
​
It wasn’t easy. Many didn’t trust me, others were simply too out of it or just plain damaged to come out on their own, but with the coaxing of more of true or own, we’d add them to our long caravan.
​
There was only one we didn’t find…
​
Jerrik…
​
Memory Transcript Subject: Dohkar, Venlil Bartender Date:[Standardized Human Time] January 16, 2137
​
“Ben?”
​
“You’re clear, Dohkar. The patients are already at the staging area getting triaged and sorted by Canuck. The other UN soldiers here have already called for the medics and volunteers to come and help.”
​
I felt my heart warm as I heard Ben’s speaking. This wasn’t the old, beaten, Surulian still subservient to Albiel. This was my brother, my brother who is not truly seen for a long, long time. And he wasn’t alone.
​
“Canuck? Does that mean that Ento and Abra are there, too?”
​
“Copy that, commander!”
​
“Yeah…we’re here…I guess…”
​
Guys…
​
My brothers. My whole damn squad from training. My brothers who were taken with me. They were all there, helping how they could.
​
“How does it feel being on the right side again?”
​
“Like we’ve still got a LOT of work to do. And so do YOU. Go, Dohkar. We’ll handle things out here… Take. Him. Down…for all of us…”
​
…For all of us…
​
Protect the herd!
​
The signal cut out. I gave one last look to my friend on the stretcher. I didn’t need to look at the two medics.
​
“Tell me you have her.”
​
“We have her.”
​
Teylim gave me a weak smile and a nod.
​
“Go. Finish this.”
​
I turned, and ran. I ran as fast as my legs could carry me. And then, a familiar tune came to my mind. A promise I’d made the last time I left this wretched building.
​
A promise to burn everything my father built.
​
LORD, GIMME THAT FIRE!!!!
​
I ran.
​
LORD, GIMME THAT FIRE!!!!
​
I chased.
​
LORD, GIMME THAT FIRE!!!!
​
I raced to finally put his madness to an end.
​
BURN!!!! BURN!!!! BURN!!!!
​
Memory Transcript Subject: Patient J-902, Nevok Predator Disease Patient Date:[Standardized Human Time] January 16, 2137
​
I hid. I saw the others get let out and huddled together in a line. I knew the room they were being led to, so I hid.
​
I heard the roar of the predator through the speaker in my cell. I heard the screams of the guards. I heard the shots being fired.
​
My door opens. Many of the other ones opened, too. I peek around the doorway to make sure it’s safe. And it is.
​
**Nowhere is safe.**It’s so much brighter now. Now that I’m finally out of the cell. I can think clearly again. And with clarity, came pretty much everything I wished had stayed forgotten.
​
I failed. I couldn’t go through with it. And as punishment, I was locked away.
​
Father…
​
I fell to my knees and cried. Cried like a damn pup, just like I did when I begged him not to lock me in here.
​
Father…
​
I did EVERYTHING else right! I followed the training. I followed the beliefs. I did everything he told me to do! But still, he…
​
Father…
​
[Warning!: Anger Response Rising Steadily…]
​
I looked up. Above the cells, above the walkways, above all of this damned facility, was one window. HIS office…
​
Father…
​
“This way everyone! Stay together!”
​
I snap my attention towards a large group approaching my direction. I COULD go with them. I COULD go back outside…but…there’s something I have to do first.
​
As I make my way to the electroshock chamber, I spot the dead guards and doctor. I spot one of their weapons on the ground, and pick it up.
​
Just like my training, just as HE instructed me. The predator has been smoked out, fleeing from his hole out into the open. All that was left…
​
Was for someone to take the shot…
​
Next

Another enjoyable albeit strange episode. This was the one where Stephanie was about to come home after spending weeks island-surfing with her boyfriend (Riley?), who looks like a slightly more toned version of Rupert from Survivor. Stephanie gets kidnapped and tied up by a crazy environmentalist named Coral, who has activated a time bomb to go off and additionally has rigged their boat to crash into an oil rig.
Weird things:
-The environmentalist planned to cause a massive explosion that would have polluted the air with smoke -- doesn't this sort of defeat the purpose of her mission of saving the environment? What exactly is she hoping to accomplish here?
-The fight was amusing to watch, but I have to believe Stephanie would have mopped the floor with her IRL.
-Mitch sure does take his precious time throwing the bomb overboard with mere seconds to spare. Stephanie is literally YELLING at him to get rid of it and it does seem like Mitch is stalling for whatever reason. Even I wanted to shout out "GET RID OF IT" and as such, Mitch *barely* gets it out of his hands when it explodes in mid-air.
There's also an enjoyable B-story with Garner falling in love with a lifeguard that came to his rescue. Is it just me, or does Garner look a little like Luther Vandross?

Read from April 29 – May 04, 2024
1/5 stars I HATED THIS
NOTE: I started out with an open mind read the first chapter, and then this turned into a hate-read.
That being said, no hate to anyone who enjoyed this book, I would love to hear what your opinions are, both on the book and this review :)
Let’s start with my ‘favourite’ quote:

“but it is impossible for someone who was not abused to become an abuser.”
Theo Faber, Psychotherapist

I genuinely do not understand what the hype around this book is.
To be fair, the second I read the words ‘TikTok sensation’ in the advertising, I should have known better.
The thing that struck me is that Michaelides is a SCREENWRITER, and this very much reads like a script, it felt like it was written solely for the purpose of selling the movie rights.
TLDR: This book wants to be Gone Girl so bad.
So, save yourself, if this is on your TBR, forget about it, read something else, ANYTHING else, read a newspaper, just don’t read this.
Longer rant Review, including the writing, characters, setting, and my main issues with this novel.

The Writing:

Is mediocre, at best. It’s very much in the style of ‘he said, she said’.
The best way I can describe it is that it reminds me of a middle-grade novel, where everything is stated clear cut and there isn’t much effort needed on the reader’s part.
There’s nothing wrong with that, for a KID’S book, but this is NOT written for a 10-year-old.
There’s long swaths of exposition, the chapters are between 2-5 pages long, we are constantly told who’s speaking, points are stated and then re-stated kind of like:

“Alicia Berenson has not spoken in 6 years” Diomedes said.
That’s right, from what I remember, she has not spoken since her husband was killed, 6 years ago.

So much needless repetition.
The reason I said that it reads like a script is because there is a lot of useless dialogue + endless descriptions.
Each character and setting is described in such needless detail, going on for entire paragraphs, for example:

Barbie was a Californian blonde in her mid-sixties, possibly older. She was drenched in Chanel No 5, and she’d had a considerable amount of plastic surgery. Her name suited her – she looked like a startled Barbie doll. She was obviously the kind of woman who was used to getting what she wanted – hence her loud protestations at the reception desk when she discovered she needed to make an appointment to visit a patient.

This character has been mentioned once or twice previously but she is relevant for MAYBE 15 pages out of 336.
Majority of the side characters are introduced like this, however, Theo isn’t really described in much detail beyond the ‘tall, dark and brooding’ trope and neither is Alicia, so the 2 protagonists are essentially blank slates.
The dialogue is so cringey, almost every chapter mentions the weather [this is set in the UK], like the weather is used as filler relentlessly.
There’s a bunch of continuity errors, the main one that comes to mind is that at the start of the book when Theo first enters The Grove [don’t even get me started on the name of the hospital, it sounds like the name of a cartoon villain’s layer, not a psych hospital] he is asked to give up his lighter and any other objects that could be used as weapons, yet he and majority of the side characters smoke CONSTANTLY INSIDE THE HOSPITAL.
The writing also reminded me A LOT of Colleen Hoover’s writing, and if that women has no haters, then I’m dead.

The Diary Entries:

Like I said, this book wants to be Gone Girl so bad.
The diary entries are written very weirdly, they don’t read like a journal, where you might get more of a stream of consciousness sort of style, they read like POV switches from 6 years in the past.
They don’t flow and amble like you would expect.
Examples:

Tears collected in my eyes as I walked up the hill. I wasn’t crying for my mother – or myself – or even that poor homeless man. I was crying for all of us. There’s so much pain everywhere, and we just close our eyes to it.
But I ruined the mood, stupidly, clumsily – by asking if he would sit for me. ‘I want to paint you,’ I said. ‘Again? You already did.’ ‘That was four years ago. I want to paint you again.’ ‘Uh-huh.’ He didn’t look enthusiastic. ‘What kind of thing do you have in mind?’ I hesitated – and then said it was for the Jesus picture. Gabriel sat up and gave a kind of strangled laugh. ‘Oh, come on, Alicia.’

The diary entries are not diary entries, they are memories.
People don’t write down entire conversations word for word like this when they journal, like “’
I had lunch with Martha’ he said”, you write it like “Gabriel had lunch with Martha today.”
I know why the diary entries feel so weird, they read like movie scenes, like a flashback.
Like the memory/subject of the diary entry should be playing in the background while someone narrates.
Again, this was a script, not a novel, I stand by this point.

The Characters:

Character development is frankly non-existent, the characters don’t exists as themselves, they exist to serve the plot.
They have no depth, and their motivations are lacking.
Theo faber: he was abused as a kid and is therefore damaged.
Chapter 3 was literally just an exposition dump of his entire childhood, just straight out of the blue.
It was like Chapter one: a report of the murder, chapter 2 further recollection, chapter 3: so my father beat throughout my childhood, I don’t know why.
Theo’s father was verbally and physically abuse, Theo attempted suicide when he was at uni, because the things his dad said made him feel like a failure.
But we are never told WHAT has been said, and therefore, we don’t see why exactly Theo would have doubts about himself.
Abuse shapes you as a person, if we got to hear his inner thoughts about what his father said, it would give greater insight into Theo’s identity as a character.
Besides that, Theo has a RAGING saviour complex,

“Unable to come to terms with what she had done, Alicia stuttered and came to a halt, like a broken car. I wanted to help start her up again – help Alicia tell her story, to heal and get well. I wanted to fix her.”

The book is filled with passages like that.
And besides that, it’s just filled with loads of nonsense psychobabble.
Theo is also OBSESSED with Alicia, the book tells us it’s out of guilt, but I contest and say that he’s just a creep who very much treats Alicia like a failed version of a manic pixie dream girl.
Alicia Berenson: Alicia is a walking contradiction.
We are told that she is beautiful, charming, sophisticated, but she instead comes across as an anti-social, paranoid shut in with serious co-dependency issues.
She has no friends, no relationships outside of her husband Gabriel, no hobbies, or interests outside of painting and having sex with her husband.
All she does in her chapters is paint, have arguments with people, have sex, and walk around.
Side characters: only exist to serve the plot.
Professor Lazarus Diomedes: the name alone makes me cringe.
He’s Greek, he has a lot of instruments in his office including a piano and a harp [which are never brought up after the initial chapters he’s introduced and he never plays any of them], he’s “unorthodox” and shunned, and he basically exists to be Theo Faber’s ‘yes man’.
Christian: stereotypical work rival who has a habit of calling all the patients bitches.
Yuri: He’s a psych nurse who takes Theo to bar and tell him that he and his wife divorced, and he fell in love with someone else. Fine fair enough, but does he approach this woman like a normal person?
No, he pulls a Joe from YOU and stalks and harasses her.
Yet later on THEO SAYS THAT HE IS A GOOD MAN AND THAT HE IS SORRY DOUBTING YURI. DESPITE INITIALLY BEING UNCOMFORTABLE WITH HIS BEHAVIOUR.
Then again Theo himself is a stalker so go figure.

The Setting:

The Grove is supposed to be a mental hospital used to detain mentally ill criminals.
Firstly, all the patients are female. It is never stated that the hospital is an all-female facility.
Second, we never get an idea of the scope of this place, there’s only one therapy room for EVERYONE to use, only 2 psychiatrists on payroll, Diomedes and Christian, 2 therapists, Theo and a side character named Indira, one psychiatric nurse, Yuri and an admin assistant, Stephanie.
The layout and descriptions are confusing, one area is referred to as the ‘Fishbowl’ throughout the novel.
Racism:
I don’t know if Michaelides has some internalized racism going on but every single foreign character has a habit of erasing their cultural identity.
Examples:
Yuri, the psych nurse who is Latvian –

Yuri was good-looking, well built, and in his late thirties. He had dark hair and a tribal tattoo creeping up his neck, above his collar. He smelled of tobacco and too much sweet aftershave. And although he spoke with an accent, his English was perfect.

This sort of backhanded compliment is considered racist, as someone who is POC myself, I’ve gotten this plenty of times and it always gives me the ick.
Jean-Felix, the gallerist –
He spoke with an accent. I asked if he was French. ‘Originally – from Paris. But I’ve been here since I was a student – oh, twenty years at least. I think of myself more as British these days.’
There were more examples, but these are the main ones I found in my notes.

Misogyny:

Firstly, the patients are all female, like I said earlier, it is never stated that it is an all-female facility.
This book is dripping with it, every single female character is either described as a manic pixie dream girl, a maternal figure, or a psychotic bitch.
The DOCTORS refer to their patients as bitches multiple times.
Example:

“She was entirely consumed with herself and her art. All the empathy you have for her, all the kindness – she isn’t capable of giving it back. She’s a lost cause. A total bitch.’ Christian said this with a scornful expression-“
Rowena gave a derisive snort. ‘Because Alicia’s the least responsive, most uncommunicative bitch I’ve ever worked with.’

Besides that, they are often compared to birds:

“I remember Mum and those colourful tops she’d wear, with the yellow stringy straps, so flimsy and delicate – just like her. She was so thin, like a little bird.”
“Alicia was sitting alone, I noticed, at the back of the room. She was picking at a meagre bit of fish like an anorexic bird;”

Alicia is also very much painted as a manic pixie dream girl in her diary entries, almost every page of her POV mentions sex, and it has no effect on the plot.
It was mentioned so often that I ended up keeping track out of boredom [I should have also tracked how often the weather was mentioned].
I think I have 15 tabs in 300 pages by the end of it for just sex scenes.
I don't have an issue with sex, but just like in movies when it gets thrown in for no reason, that's when it irritates me.
And of course the mentally ill woman with possible psychosis and BPD has to be shown as hot and a nymphomaniac.
Every one of her POVs reads like:
“Gabriel and I had an argument and then we had sex.”
“I went for a walk and fantasized about Gabriel.”
“I was trying to paint Gabriel but then we had sex.”
“I had an argument with someone and came home to wake up Gabriel and we had sex.”
I can see why this atrocity is a BookTok favourite.
Oh, and this line: [Warning NSFW]

“It’s still populated by sixteen-year-olds, embracing the sunshine, sprawled on either side of the canal, a jumble of bodies – boys in rolled-up shorts with bare chests, girls in bikinis or bras – skin everywhere, burning, reddening flesh. The sexual energy was palpable – their hungry, impatient thirst for life. I felt a sudden desire for Gabriel – for his body and his strong legs, his thick thighs lain over mine. When we have sex, I always feel an insatiable hunger for him – for a kind of union between us – something that’s bigger than me, bigger than us, beyond words – something holy.”

She’s out on a walk and salivating over 16-year-olds. Enough said.

Medical Malpractice:

Not only is a lot of the psychology in this book outdated, but in general, there is so much misinformation.
The psychology is so outdated, and it's mostly centered around Freud.
The biggest example I can think of is Alicia’s initial treatment, she has been put on Risperidone, which is an anti-psychotic prescribed to schizophrenic patients [Also prescribed for autism, BPD, etc. but that's on a case by case basis]
In the book, Alicia is shown to be completely out if it, she’s drooling on the floor, and practically comatose.
Risperidone is NOT a sedative [it can have sedative EFFECTS, but sedation is not the function] it acts on dopamine and serotine receptors and is used to reduce symptoms of schizophrenia, i.e. prevent hallucinations and help stabilize mood.
It should not be causing Alicia to be unresponsive.
[Disclaimer, this is just coming from my basic knowledge as a med student and a few quick google searches, if I'm wrong, please correct me.]
Moving on, Theo wants to treat Alicia but she’s on 16 mg of Risperidone, which is the highest safe dose possible.
He asks Christian to lower the dose, what does Christian do?
He stops giving Alicia 16 mg and switches her to 5 mg.
An 11 mg decrease. IN ONE DAY.
There is no gradual decrease, no safety precautions, NOTHING.
For context, Risperidone is prescribed in 0.5 – 1 mg increments.
This means that an 11 mg decrease is incredibly dramatic and DANGEROUS, it can send a patient into a psychotic episode, cause them to relapse and lead to withdrawal.
Christian being a psychiatrist should know this.
Patients are allowed access to a pool table without supervision, all the doctors smoke and offer their patients cigarettes,
Yuri deals drugs, Theo seemingly does no ither work besides talk to Alicia and play detective.

Depiction of mentally ill patients:

Throughout the book the patients are often referred to as animals, monstrous or zombies.
Examples:

“Her [Elif, a patient] face was pressed up against it, squashing her nose, distorting her features, making her almost monstrous.”
“It took four nurses to hold Alicia down. She writhed and kicked and fought like a creature possessed. She didn’t seem human, more like a wild animal; something monstrous.”
[Alicia is painting, Theo is watching]
“I felt like I was present at an intimate moment, watching a wild animal give birth. And although Alicia was aware of my presence, she didn’t seem to mind.”

On top of that, the word borderline gets thrown out A LOT, but it is never explained and is often derogatory.
Example:

[This is Christian the psychiatrist speaking, warning Theo about Alicia]
‘I’m just saying. Borderlines are seductive. That’s what’s going on here. I don’t think you fully get that.’

I am not against problematic writing, as long as it serves a purpose, but Michaelides is not talented enough to do something like this intentionally, and showing patients in this light serves no purpose.
Theo makes it very clear that he thinks that Elif, a Turkish woman, is ugly and rude, it is mentioned every time she is on the page.
This sort of depiction is harmful, mental health gets a bad enough rep as it is, again, I take no issue with problematic writing, but this is not problematic or controversial, this is ignorance.
The depiction of mental illness, coupled with the use of Risperidone, indicates, to me, that Michaelides did not do his research whatsoever.
He just thought of a cool idea and ran with it.
Oh, and lastly, let’s not forget:

“but it is impossible for someone who was not abused to become an abuser.”

No, just no. ANYONE can be abusive.
Correlation does not equal causation.
This is blatant misinformation and a very harmful message to send and I was actually so angry when I read that.

The Twist [spoilers]

The twist is the most ridiculous thing, and it hangs on by a thread.
I had already guessed that Gabriel was the one who Kathy’s affair partner was, and the entire thing falls apart when you realize that if any of Theo’s chapters were dated, you would figure it out immediately.
That’s a very loose basis for a dramatic reveal.
Yes, Theo is an unreliable narrator and I usually enjoy such stories, but this was just lazy.
I’m sorry, Theo followed Gabriel all over London and never ONCE saw his face, never heard Kathy moan his name when he was spying on them, not ONCE.
It’s poor when your twist relies on my suspension of disbelief.
Conclusion
- Poorly written, reads like a middle-grade novel. Michaelides is a screenwriter, and this very much reads like a script, designed to be easy to follow and direct.
- Horrible depiction mental health, both as a patient and in practice.
- Hollow, 2D characters.
- Misogynistic.
- Overall waste of time, save yourself.

I got back into reading historicals after the trailer for Bridgerton's first season dropped. Since then, I've read TONS. I read all of Julia Quinn's work, loved it for its fluffiness, then moved on to Lisa Kleypas. And boy, did I fall in love with her books. I read everything of hers I could find, even her first couple novels no longer in print and her contemporary series. I love her attention to detail, the funny little historical tangents she hares off on where you can tell her research inspired some lovely little addition, like mustache teacups, or early understanding of antiseptic medicine, etc. I don't necessarily always love a Kleypas' hero-- I'm actually not big on the alpha/capitalist type she often writes. But it rarely matters, somehow the chemistry she writes between her leads, the beautiful storytelling sells it regardless. I've read many other authors and enjoyed them, but I keep coming back to Lisa Kleypas and how much her writing just satisfies something for me that no others can. I'm starting to realize that being swept away by the setting and the time period is at least half my enjoyment of the genre, and Kleypas' just does it so well.
Authors I've read and enjoyed: Julia Quinn, Lorraine Heath, Loretta Chase, Beverly Jenkins, Suzanne Enoch, Sherry Thomas, Joanna Shupe
I've read a very small amount from, but like: Courtney Milan, Tessa Dare, Elizabeth Hoyt, Eloisa James, Julie Anne Long, Sarah MacLean, Kerrigan Byrne
Tried Once and Never Went Back: Mary Balogh, Amanda Quick, Joanna Lindsey, Lyndsay Sands, Stephanie Laurens, Julie Garwood
Feel free to recommend even authors I DNF'd, I'm willing to try again!

General Content Warning for this entire write-up, so everyone can have a good time: - Extensive discussion of topics related to mental illness, including self-harm, suicidal ideation, mania / bipolar disorder, distortion of truth, medication, involuntary hospitalization, medical abuse in a hospital setting, and romanticization of mental illness. - Non-detailed mentions of domestic violence (implied abuse by intimate partner and parents) and sexual / gender-based violence (including rape, child sexual assault, grooming, sex trafficking and torture). These last few items feature prominently in one installment, pertaining to a work of fiction; descriptions may be a bit more specific/detailed in that segment, but not graphic. - Mentions and quotes of unchill bigoted behavior, including ableism (mental and physical), white nonsense / white fragility / racism, fatphobia, prejudice against drug users.
Additional CWs may be added at the beginning of specific segments when relevant. While these are heavy topics, the tone of this write-up is generally light-hearted and aims to entertain. If this approach sounds uncomfortable or trivializing, this may not be a good read for you; please trust your gut!
*
Picture this: it's the early 2010s, somewhere in the western world. Instagram is a novelty, Harvey Weinstein runs Hollywood, almost no one on Earth leans one way or the other about RNA vaccines, and Donald Trump is that one real estate guy you vaguely remember from Home Alone 2. New player Lady Gaga is the most interesting thing to have happened to pop since Madonna, and the whole industry is attempting to catch up; Miley Cyrus is the chick who used to be on Hannah Montana; Melanie Martinez hasn't hatched yet. The time of Oddball Concept Divas is dawning just below the horizon.
You're a Bowie-loving student who skipped goth night at the club to tag along with your art school friends for a very special evening. You're a giddy sixteen-year old rocking cat ears, purple Wet 'n Wild eyeliner, a polyester petticoat, and a coffin-shaped backpack. You're an effete theater kid who sewed his own waistcoat for the occasion, but won't dare wear it to school the next day. You're a buff, bearded dude in a Venom shirt who's trying not to look too excited, since your girlfriend supposedly had to drag you here. You're a slightly bemused parent leaning against the back wall of the venue, sipping a warm half-pint, wondering if this isn't all a bit dark for a tween. (“It's called 'Victoriandustrial', mom,” you've been told in the car, “and it's not dark, it's art.”)
On stage is a pink-haired woman, with red porcelain-doll lips and a heart painted on her cheek. Among a set of antique consoles, twee tchotchkes, teacups and plastic rats, she pounces and twirls in glittery platform boots, tattered striped stockings, and a tightly laced crystal-studded corset that looks like it's splattered in blood. This is ostensibly a concert, but there is no live band. Where one would expect a drum kit or a bass, three bedazzled burlesque vixens act as back-up singers and dancers, with the occasional vaudeville act – a fire-twirling number, a fan dance, throwing pastries and spitting tea into the audience. Lots of wholesome girl-on-girl kissing, too. The music on the backing track is a genre-bender of clanging beats and beeps, lofty orchestral strings, and the frantic hammering of a MIDI harpsichord, as the pink-haired frontlady sings of heartache and betrayal and drowning. Think if the Brontë sisters had invented industrial rock.
The audience gasps in excitement when the lady whips out a vamped-out wireless electric violin. With rockstar cool and virtuoso poise, she leans into the instrument, touches the bow to the strings, and tears out a single plaintive, impeccably distorted high note. Then her fingers go wild, and for a few seconds, everything is perfect suspended animation. Uncannily perfect, almost. Just behind you, you hear someone whisper: “Wait, is she miming it?”
*
Forgive the theatrical intro, but I had to set the stage for... the drama. And I do mean drama in the thespian sense of the term! This, ladies and gentlemen, is a Shakespeare play: wordy and confusing, but it's neat how the main character's opening lines foreshadow the tragic climax. It's a Greek tragedy for the digital age – if, instead of killing his dad and banging his mom, after becoming king, Oedipus was doomed to becoming uniquely obnoxious. It's The Rocky Horror Show under the grim direction of Samuel Beckett. Like all good theatre, this story is about how fiction bleeds into reality – through the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and how all the world's a stage and all that.

WHO IS EMILIE AUTUMN, AND WHAT'S THE DRAMA?

Here's the Broadway Weekly blurb, so you can decide whether the show is worth your time: Emilie Autumn, also known as EA, is a US-American alternative singer-songwriter, author, and actor. She became known in alt circles in the mid-2010s for her violin skills, unique fashion, outspoken stances on feminism and mental health advocacy, and the way she dramatized and sublimated her own life story in her art. In 2009, she self-published a semi-autobiographical book that became a sort of bible to her creative universe and fandom. She toured extensively and enjoyed niche, but considerable success until the mid-2010s – with hordes of devoted fans adopting her fashion sense and lingo, and crediting her music for getting them through dark times.
For the past twelve years or so, EA has mostly been focused on adapting her book into a stage musical, releasing two more albums of songs intended for the libretto. At the time of this write-up, it has been six years since the last album and a decade since the last live show. Although she still talks about the musical as an ongoing, Broadway-bound project, in recent years, she's often gone dark for months at a time on social media. There is no forum, no large Discord, no active community to speak of; comments are restricted on her currently-inactive Instagram and blog.
Who is she hiding from, you ask? Why, you've probably guessed it: the hordes of devoted fans whom she infuriates every time she does anything.
And what are they furious about? (Or frustrated, flummoxed, or plain ol' flabbergasted?) Well, it depends who you ask. For some, it's disappointment in her artistic and marketing choices (what are fans for?). Others cite unkept promises or absurd release delays. For others yet, it's the AliBaba merch sold at jaw-dropping markups with three paragraphs of purple prose in the product description.. Or maybe it was the angry rants on Twitter? Okay, it's the casual bigotry that she staunchly denies or dismisses. It's the criticism she can't take. It's the fact that she won't stop lying about her own life! Either way, I don't personally know of any fanbase that has been so consistently exasperated, for so many years, and for such a diverse array of reasons, by their favorite artist.
In truth, each individual mini-scandal isn't all that juicy or scandalous. Nobody died, no one got sued; nothing of significant value, other than time and sanity, was taken away from anyone. What I find interesting here is the years and years of bizarre parasocial codependency (and antagonism) between a fragile woman who became addicted to her own poppycock, and an obsessive fanbase who cared way too much not to take it personally.
Before we even get to EA's relationship with her fans, you're going to need some lore about EA herself. A “Hobby History” of sorts. Strap in! There's romance, tragedy, laughter, character development, variety numbers, numerous costume changes, (actual) celebrity cameos – and based on how long this OpenOffice doc already is at the time of my writing this, we're probably going to need several intermissions too. This write-up is link-heavy, both with receipts and with additional watching and listening material. Not all of them need to be clicked in order to understand the story; I'm merely providing the rabbit holes. I've tried to make things more easily navigable by including a little glossary about the nature of links; one emoji-indicator carries over the next link until I use a different one.
🪞 = picture / visual 🎵 = music 📺 = video 📝 = primary source / receipt 🔍 = press article / write-up / further reading 🎤 = song lyrics / spoken word audio 🐀 = anonymous fan confession 🦠 = reaction / meme

BAROQUE BEGINNINGS: THE VIOLIN YEARS

VampireFreaks: Do you ever smile to yourself knowing your old music teachers might be seeing your success? EA: I smile to myself knowing they might be dead. (Long-lost interview, late 2000s)

Born in Malibu in the late 70s, Emilie Autumn, often known as EA, was originally trained as a classical violinist.
By her account, she started playing the violin at age 4, and was homeschooled at age 9 so that she could focus on her instrument. After stints at various performing arts colleges, some rather prestigious, she dropped out of formal schooling in her mid-to-late teens to embark on a solo violin career.
In 2001, after disappointing experiences with major record companies, she created her own label, Traitor Records, and released a EP of chamber music, with minor success. The stuffy industry of classical music didn't “get” the twenty-something manic-pixie-fiddler, who played Bach just a bit too fast, but with electric stage presence – wearing period corsets, combat boots, and the occasional fairy wings. But EA evidently knew that there was an audience for that somewhere.
And that somewhere – drumroll – was Illinois.

VW: What do you most hope to accomplish? EA: Everything. (‘Virtual World Radio’ Interview, 2002 📝)

ENCHANT ERA: BRUSHES WITH FAME ON FAERIE WINGS

What if I'm an ocean, far too shallow, much too deep? (...) What if I'm a siren singing gentlemen to sleep? (“What If”, 2003 🎵)

Soon, EA relocated from her native California to Chicago. There, in between odd jobs, she veered away from baroque and began performing her own “fantasy rock” stylings at piano bars, holiday fairs and local venues – and building a decent following through her LiveJournal, website, and IRL friends. People loved the whole renegade genius thing, loved the violin, loved the nightingale voice, loved the fairy wings and costumes🪞, loved the handmade merch and general disdain for The Business, loved her deadpan humor and bookish nerdiness. In 2003, she released her first LP, Enchant 🎵 – an ethereal, introspective indie-pop joint, born under the sign of Imogen Heap, with a moon in Fiona Apple and Tori Amos rising.
Everything about EA's act was exquisitely DIY, personal, and intricate. For instance, the Enchant booklet folded out into a Masquerade-style puzzle of her own design.🪞 The first person to solve the puzzle would win “the Wings, Ruff, Fan and Scepter of the Faerie Queene herself” – all lovingly handmade by EA, and depicted in peak 2003 graphic design on the booklet. For months, YEARS after Enchant came out, people poured over the cryptic metaphors and literary references, the historical symbolism and visual puns of the artwork, looking for hints and patterns. They read every fan chat, every interview, every relevant Shakespeare play, hoping to decipher the inner workings of EA's mind and find new keys to the puzzle. Sure, it's been two decades now and no one's ever managed to crack the damn thing 🔍, which is by now widely assumed to be flawed and unsolvable; still, it's the kind of zany, brainy, immersive experience that tends to cultivate a niche but hyper-invested fanbase.
So it makes perfect sense that underground aficionada and internet frontierswoman Courtney Love (she haunted public AOL chatrooms as early as 1995! 🔍) would take an interest. Just a few months after releasing Enchant, EA was off to southern France to record violin and vocals for Courtney's new solo album; a few months after that, in early 2004, she joined Courtney's band on a brief tour to promote the record.
Alas, no cigar: America's Sweetheart flopped. Maybe because most of those summer recording sessions were ultimately lost to an engineering oopsie; maybe because Courtney was having an especially rough year – and going through all the “rock-bottom moments” that she would discuss in group therapy, later that fall, when she began her sobriety journey at court-ordered rehab. EA, a former homeschool kid who had never done drugs, seems to remember the tour as a generally terrifying experience; she later stated, with some bitterness, that the experience was not worth the time it had taken away from her own solo career.
But it was a good year for TV appearances! Here she is on the David Letterman Show in March 2004, rocking out on a perfectly inaudible violin as C-Love fades in and out of her own body. 📺 She also landed a cute tutorial segment on HGTV's Crafters: Coast to Coast, making sushi-shaped soap and fairy wings. In December, she accompanied Billy Corgan for a Christmas song on a Chicago station.
All of this was chronicled in quirky, wordy posts on her blog – interspersed with late-night musings about casual misogyny in the media 📝, including against Courtney, handmade crafts and clothing auctions, candid pictures of outings with friends in Chicago... as well as periodic updates on the progress of her next opus: Opheliac.

God, too much to even begin to tell right now, and I’m recording anyway, but I can give you this update: I just finished yesterday recording violin parts and backing vocals for B. Corgan’s first single (...) More later, recording piano for my new track “GOD HELP ME”…why do I torture myself with my own self-inflicted drama…or is it a way of exorcizing…yes, I’ll go with that one for now…☠ (“Whirlwind...”, December 2004)

By that point, EA was starting to be more open about her conflicted relationship with what would later be diagnosed as bipolar disorder. The galaxy-brain moments, the trance of creative frenzies, the liminal high of going three days without sleep, the magic... the crippling sensitivity, the restless anxiety, the Zoloft that one both needs and hates, the ever-lurking suicidal thoughts. As EA gradually revealed over the course of 2004, Opheliac would be an exploration of the “mad woman” archetype. The title was a medical neologism for “the syndrome of Ophelia”, as in the tragic character from Hamlet 🔍, driven to insanity and ultimate self-destruction by the fuckboys who rule her life. Here's EA explaining it in her own words. 🎤 The album would dive into how psychiatry and romantic relationships are governed by old misogynistic tropes, and how the “mentally ill” label is used to silence and downplay the justified anger and hurt of abused women.
In a striking case of life imitating art (are you picking up on the theme yet?), this concept was about to become more painfully relevant than ever to EA's personal existence.
CW: implied partner abuse, suicidal ideation.

DISENCHANTMENT: A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS

In the lake, you will find me Behind your house, behind your house (...) My ocean is bluer than the heart you had to break My sea is deeper than your lake (“In the Lake”, 2005 🎵)

Where were we? Ah yes, the Christmas song with Billy Corgan at the end of 2004. Around that time, EA was also recording violin parts and backing vocals for his upcoming solo album. 🎵 They had presumably connected through Courtney, they both lived in Chicago, I guess something clicked.
In January of 2005, EA abruptly went off of her meds, broke up with her live-in boyfriend-slash-bassist, packed up her violin and corsets, and moved into Corgan's mansion. In March of 2005, she posted very melancholy lyrics about drowning in a lake to haunt a deceitful lover. The post was entitled“In The Lake (The Zoloft is calling my name...)” 🎤📝. Later, after the song was released as a B-side, EA disclosed that it had been intended as a public suicide note 📝.
Blog entries from that time touched on a “whirlwind of action and emotion”, “changing residences” and feeling like “you're falling through the air, but you don't know if you'll hit the water or the rocks” 📝. But, EA being an expert vague-poster, her posts remained very elusive about what was going on, who was involved, and how it impacted her. (The specifics were pieced together years later, by fan-led forensic efforts – which, obviously, involved ascertaining the existence of an actual body of water in Billy Corgan's backyard 📝).
Whatever happened over the course of those months was never disclosed explicitly by EA, but is widely assumed to have inspired songs such as “Liar” 🎤, “Misery Loves Company”, “Let the Record Show”, and “I Know Where You Sleep”, , recorded that same spring. A solid quarter of the Opheliac tracklist – which was shaping out to be decidedly darker and grittier than Enchant.

You can lie to the papers, you can hide from the press (...) I know your tainted flesh, I know your filthy soul I know each trick you played, whore you laid, dream you stole I know the bed in the room in the wall in the house Where you got what you wanted and ruined it all I know the secrets that you keep I know where you sleep

Even as her personal blog posts grew more somber, nihilistic, and generally fed-up in the face of what she called “the worst breakdown of her young life”, even as the songwriting process had her rummage through traumatic memories [CW: CSA] 🎤, and even as the Corgan-adjacent trauma was compounded by various rushed moves and broken friendships over that summer and fall, EA remained remarkably (some might say frantically) prolific.
Other than progress on Opheliac, 2005 saw multiple violin collaborations with alternative bands, numerous auctions of, mh, visually strident “punktorian” fashion pieces 📝🪞 (“STRESS COUTURE!” 🦠📺), and an updated re-issue of her 2001 poetry collection, complete with audiobook. ("...The book has been selling like crack in a limo with Courtney Love (and believe me, I know)." - Ooooof, EA. Low-hanging fruit. 📝)
In October, she started recruiting:

WANTED: Hot goth bitch to join touring band of other hot goth bitches. (...) Must be able to: sing backing vocals in a wide range with excellent pitch, growl à la Kittie, handle minimal keyboard parts, push buttons/turn knobs with killer attitude, be extremely comfortable on stage in bloomers and a corset, reside in the Chicago area, know the difference between a crumpet and a scone, have at least one hidden talent. 📝

By winter, most of her blog post titles were written in THIS FORMAT!!!!!!!! In December, she announced that “Emilie Autumn and the Bloody Crumpets” would preview Opheliac live at the Double Door in Chicago, on Friday the 13th (ooh!) of the following month. “We are coming to destroy your world,” the post threatened enticingly. "Miss it and suffer. We really don't want to hurt you.” The flyer advertised a dress code:

Masquerade, Ophelias, green girls, Victorian insane asylum escapees, princes of Denmark, bloomered harlots and rogues – general burlesque ribaldry!

Exit diaphanous butterfly wings and elven tiaras 📺, enter the haunted murder-doll with the blood-red heart on her cheek; out with Elizabethan chamber-pop, in with Victoriandustrial. The fairy had to die to make way for the iconic, the sublime, the tragic, the ridiculous, the positively bananas...

OPHELIAC ERA: LET THE RECORD SHOW

EA: What's more interesting, and what's more fun to watch, than a crazy girl's self-destruction? Nothing. Nothing in the world. (The Opheliac Companion, 2008 🎤)
If I'm going down Then I'm going down good I'm going down Then I'm going down clean (...) The prettiest broken girl you've ever seen (“Let the Record Show”, 2006 🎵)

CW: mania, self-harm, abortion, suicidal ideation, hospitalization.
If you haven't gathered as much by now, what fans were witnessing in real time on EA's blog, without necessarily seeing it, was the ebb and flow of a months-long manic episode. That's not me armchair-diagnosing: EA herself has discussed penning and recording a lot of her best material in a trance-like rush, “when you're writing on the ceiling because there's not enough paper to contain your thoughts”.

...Once I became stable and healthy, I realized that I had no memory of how a great deal of my music had been created. I had written and even programmed most of my best work in a similar manic state, and, when stark raving sane, I didn’t know how to do it anymore, because the part of me that really composes never needed to know how to do it, it just did. (2019 Instagram post 📝)

It's not an uncommon experience for artists with bipolar disorder. Before you burn so hot that you wind up in the back of an ambulance, and/or before the pendulum swings back towards debilitating depression, the boundless energy, heightened sensitivity, and unexpected thought patterns associated with mania can lead to periods of prolific and effortless creation.
Mania also has the potential to lower your inhibitions, making you more bodacious, more quick-witted – more dazzling, more fun at parties, more dramatic. All traits that are valued in the entertainment industry, especially one that, with the rise of social media, was coming to rely increasingly on parasocial engagement and “personal branding”. Why would you refrain from oversharing, overreacting, overworking, overpromising, overcurating a fantasy image of yourself... when new industry models reward exactly that?
My point is that, in retrospect, “the end was built into the beginning”: all the things that would make fans go “What the hell, Emilie!” in subsequent years were brewing below the surface before the album even dropped.
In the summer of 2006, EA said goodbye to her Chicago friends and returned to California, where she moved in with her new beau, another Illinois-born guitarist with an impressive forehead: Brendon Small, of Dethklok/Metalocalypse quasi-fame. (If you're into that sort of thing: the orchestral strings on “Detharmonic”? Yep, that's EA! 🎵📺)
In September, Opheliac was released into the world. Expectations were high... And many sources agree it was a goddamn banger. It was ultrafemme, ultradark, unhinged, hilarious and deadly and brilliant. It had gnarly kitchen-sink drums layered under angelic string harmonies, fauxperatic swells, and guttural screaming. It had sarcastically self-aware double-entendres that were also literary references that were also musical notation jokes. You get the idea: it was the album that a small, but sizable demographic of tormented millennial teens had been waiting to obsess over. Some time in late 2005 or so, EA had signed with German label Trisol Records, which gave her access to better promotion, press coverage and touring opportunities in Europe when the album came out in the fall. By winter, she was on the cover of alternative mags, and the talk of the town on underground music webzines. Within a year, she was embarking on the first of three almost-back-to-back European tours.
It was around that time that EA started giving her fanbase a more defined, aesthetically on-brand identity. EA, funnily enough, disliked the term “fan” due to its proximity to “fanatic”, and started calling individual supporters “muffins” or the "Bloomer Brigade". (After The Book came out in 2009, they would become “Plague Rats”. You know how pets get weird if you re-name them too many times? I wonder if the same is true of fans.) Meanwhile, EA's fanbase as a collective – as well as her home, her recording studio, her online forum and her inner brainspace... – became canonically known as “The Asylum”. Cue infinite jokes about her fans being “committed.”
And they really were, in a slightly more intense way than your average indie-alternative fanbase. Many fans enthusiastically adopted facets of EA's mannerisms and lingo, which gave the fandom a definite LARP-ing bend; and the official forum did, in fact, offer a subforum for Asylum-themed role-play. (In a number of ways, the Asylum was basically Juggalos for socially anxious theater goths. Substitute the clown facepaint, Faygo, and hatchets for cheek-hearts, Earl Grey tea, and obsolete medical tools.) While there was always some side-eye at the embarrassingly candid, often very young Plague Rats who took the Asylum thing too seriously (always speaking in character and worshipping the ground Mistress Emilie walked on), a lot of people were quite thrilled to play romantic Victorian madhouse with their new favorite artist. Live shows were like costume balls. The forum thrived.
It was like Opheliac had opened a portal to this vibrant and inclusive alternate dimension, which the community was now bringing to life in the real world. And each tour brought more inmates (muffins, Plague Rats, you get it) to the Asylum. “Spread the Plague!” was the name of the game.
So, on paper, in the three years that followed Opheliac, EA kind of won the high-concept-indie-artist equivalent of the lottery. After going through her own personal hell of abuse, major upheavals and serious mental health crises, she had decided to gamble on a radically different tone and musical direction. She came out the other side with critical acclaim for her soul-baring record, tons of live shows with a badass girl squad, photoshoots so iconic they pop up on random Pinterest boards to this day, snazzy corporate sponsorships (including Manic Panic and RockLove Jewelry), and an exponentially growing fanbase who couldn't get enough of whatever she had to give. And she gave quite a lot!
Within those three years, in between tours, EA released A Bit O' This & That 🎵 (a compilation of demos and back-catalogue curiosities), Laced / Unlaced (a full-instrumental double album - one side was the baroque recordings from her late teens, the other was demented, distortion-heavy classical-prog), and three EPs packed with new songs, covers, remixes and bonus content. There was also a deluxe reissue of Enchant, without the puzzle, but with a brand new booklet of handwritten lyrics and marginalia. All came in lovely inter-matching digipaks that really made you want to collect them all – much like the handmade merch 📝🪞 that EA still sold on some legs of her tours. She spent time with the fans at most shows, eventually holding meet-and-greets and private showcases for VIP ticket-holders. She also released “The Opheliac Companion”, a kind of “director's commentary” of the album – roughly 10 hours worth of lyrical deep dives, microphone specs, tangents within tangents within tangents, and whacky (tipsy, sometimes unintelligible) banter between EA and her sound engineer🎤. On top of all that, she wrote, designed and self-published a fully illustrated 200-page coffee-table book, the first print of which sold out within a year. Not bad!
Of course, things that seem to good to be true usually are: at this stage in the story, EA is never as enthusiastically prolific as when her personal life is falling apart behind the scenes.
In the three years that followed Opheliac, along with soaring success, EA got to experience: more rapid-cycling between manic phases and the pits of depression, multiple harrowing medication adjustments, an very-much-unwanted pregnancy followed by a traumatic abortion, a suicide attempt, at least one inpatient stay, and a break-up in the aftermath of it all. There were also a few physical health scares that required hospitalization. On one occasion, she had to go off all her meds cold-turkey when they were confiscated at the EU border right before the start of a tour. In some pictures from her summer 2007 festival appearances, you can make out faint self-harm scars on her thigh through the layered stockings. (Obvious CW, for the morbidly curious.🪞(But if you weren't, would you still be reading?))
So yeah. EA was not doing great.
She didn't share any of these struggles with her fans in real time; her posts were all droll banter and updates on tours and releases. Most of what I just listed was disclosed in late 2009, in the autobiographical part of The Book. (The Book gets at least one instalment of its own. Bear with me, there's a LOT to unpack.) And The Book, while never specifying a timeline, kind of really made it sound like the Bad Stuff (the abortion, the suicide attempt, the hospital stay) had taken place a while back, before the release of Opheliac. In fact, EA plainly stated as much, citing “getting locked up and being put in the asylum" 📝 as the reason for the shift in sound between Enchant and Opheliac.
She repeatedly referred to herself as “stabilized” and “now properly medicated” in interviews. As far as the fanbase was concerned, she had triumphed over her abusers, turned trauma into beauty, and lived to pass on her story of survival. And now she had found balance and community and true acceptance of herself, all that good stuff – and all was fine and dandy within the Asylum. On stage, she sang about blind rage and all-consuming despair and general hopelessness, but she didn't actually feel like that – not anymore, right?
This narrative was both inspirational and quite convenient for the fans. We love our Mad Hatters 🎵📺, our Rainmen, our manic pixies. We love and celebrate “crazy” when it manifests as outside-the-box brilliance and/or bubbly eccentricity. But in my experience, even in spaces that ostensibly focus on "destigmatizing mental illness", positivity and support can quickly turn to rejection and awkwardness when your “quirks” manifest in more challenging ways – like through erratic decisions, aggressive or dishonest behavior, or increasingly untethered beliefs about yourself and the world. No matter how much people claim to “embrace the madness”, it just isn't that fun or in good taste for a large group to play-act ~ whimsical insanity ~ with someone who is for realsies mentally falling apart.
Before time has had time to do its thing, "revisiting your trauma" is just called ruminating. And it's rarely good for you, even when you commit some of greatest art in the process.
I think fans had to assume that there was some critical distance in EA's act, that these extreme negative emotions were all theater – because if they weren't, then the Asylum wasn't an empowering performance about healing from past hurt. It was more like a years-long reality show in which a woman picked at her wounds publicly, again and again, in real time, to the cheers of oblivious strangers who thought they were watching a play.
All I'm saying is that EA was essentially still in the thick of raw trauma when she became a poster-child for overcoming it; that the last thing a person needs, at such a vulnerable stage in their life, is an intense parasocial relationship with sad goth teenagers, let alone one centered around romanticized retellings of their own darkest moments; and that if more people had declined to actively engage in pretend-play that toed the line of self-harm... there is a chance that things might have turned out differently. Maybe EA would still be a successful musician whose career isn't plagued by conflict and mutual disappointment, and maybe some fans wouldn't have wasted years getting red in the face at an over-exposed mentally ill woman for not getting her shit together.
OKAY, THAT GOT HEAVY (and preachy), apologies and thank you for your patience. I will now quit my soapboxing, resume telling the story, and let you draw your own conclusion as our dark plot unravels.

EPILOGUE: DEAD IS THE NEW ALIVE

A quick taste of the poison A quick twist of the knife When the obsession with death, the obsession with death Becomes a way of life ("Dead is the New Alive", 2006 🎵)
I am still over-glorified My reasons to live Were my reasons to die But at least they were mine (“306”, 2006)

In summation: becoming an overnight success thanks to your darkest trauma will do things to person's mind.
As EA kept hyping up how much her fans meant to her, and what an amazing and inclusive and free-thinking motley crew the Asylum was, she was also growing more and more controlling of her increasingly large (and opinionated, and overall rather young) fanbase – and more generally, of the way people ought to talk to and about her.
It was during the Opheliac era that she started reveling in made-up stories about her own life. Then came the habit of losing her shit on fans that she perceived as ungrateful or disrespectful. It was also then that massive kerfuffles became routine on the merch and planning front, and EA's creative output started to routinely fall short of her promises. The more fans started raising legitimate complaints, the more defensive and uncompromising EA became in her public interactions. The more people expressed weariness of the Asylum theme, or started questioning EA's hot takes on mental health and feminism, the harder she doubled down on the Asylum lore and fictional universe. Which is where the drama really starts.
Alright, the time has come. Let's talk about The Book.
...Actually, let's not. I'm nearing my character limit, and you could probably use a break and a stretch after making it this far. This is our intermission, and we'll get to The Book in our next instalment.
Thank you for reading! Stay tuned if you're interested in how it all comes tumbling down.

Back in 2012, I believe I stopped the Apocalypse.
I remember staring down at the endless hole in the desert with wonder and awe. It seemed to go on forever. A life-long friend of mine named Bear stood by my side. He scanned the ground and found a large, smooth rock. It must’ve weighed at least sixty pounds. He rolled it over to the edge of the seemingly infinite void and let it drop.
I heard the stone clatter against the walls, smashing against one side and releasing a rush of small pebbles and clods of dirt. They soared downwards with the rock, reminding me of the sands in an eternal hourglass.
“Look, there’s stairs,” Bear’s girlfriend Stephanie said, pointing a freshly-painted red nail at the steps. They looked hewn from solid rock and spiraled down into the darkness far below. Stephanie tilted her head slightly to the side, moving locks of dirty blonde hair away from her eyes. Her appearance reminded me of Emma Stone, and though nearly twenty-five, she still looked like a teenager.
We stood in the middle of Death Valley. The sun sizzled overhead, sending out blinding light that reflected off the sands. Rippling mirages rose off the burning hot ground. Dunes surrounded us, looking as dead and lifeless as an alien planet.
I looked up at the light blue sky and didn’t see a single cloud. It must’ve been 100 degrees out. Rivulets of sweat trickled down from my hair and forehead, stinging my eyes. I wiped it away, looking back down the hole. I kept expecting this aberration of a pit to evaporate like some sort of bizarre optical illusion, yet there it still stood, a large circle about thirty feet across with ancient granite steps. And, of course, the steps had no railings. They looked fairly narrow, maybe a couple feet across.
Well, I considered that narrow, considering the thousands of feet of empty space I would fall through if I slipped. I thought about how the drop would feel, screaming for minutes and knowing I was about to die, the ground coming up to meet me, the air roaring like a tornado in my ears. I shuddered. The mental image seemed far too vivid.
I glanced at my two friends. Bear was casually smoking a cigarette, raising his tattooed hand. I looked at the tattoo- a reptilian, slitted eye surrounded by the golden spiral.
He stood much taller than me and, having done physical labor his entire life, he also had a thick covering of muscle. He was a metal-head and urban explorer, and about 90% of his body was covered in tattoos. Stephanie and he made an unusual pair, she with her straight-edge, valley girl looks, and Bear looking like he just climbed out of a mosh pit at a Deicide show.
He flicked the half-smoked butt into the pit, smoothing his long black hair with his hands. I watched the red light of the ember streak across the darkness and disappear into the endless shadows waiting below.
“Do you think anyone else knows about this?” I asked. Bear had a sly grin across his scruffy face. His blue eyes flashed with amusement. He put his arm around Stephanie.
“Well, if no one has, maybe we can make money off of it,” he said. Stephanie smiled faintly at that. “I’ve heard of people who discovered caves making money off giving tours. Maybe we can buy this crappy little plot of land out here!”
“This might be state land,” I said. “Actually, it might even be federal. I’m not sure where the borders of the national park end. Not like anyone would be going around labeling borders out here.” I waved my hand lethargically at the dead, sunburnt desert all around us. Absolutely no one lived out here, except maybe the secret mutant descendants of the Manson Family.
“Regardless, we should go explore it,” Stephanie said. “If we’re going to claim we discovered some new wonder of the world, we should be able to tell people what’s in it.”
“Yeah, and what if we get lost and starve to death down there?” I asked. “There’s no cell service out here. No one would ever find our bodies. We would just disappear into thin air. We can’t even call anyone to let them know where we are.”
“That’s part of the adventure!” Stephanie said, laughing. “You weren’t complaining when you dragged us all to that abandoned mental asylum and took us to the underground tunnels.”
“I’m with Stephanie,” Bear said, gesticulating crazily with his hands. “I want to go explore. I think it would be awesome to have a cave system named after us. We still have flashlights and plenty of food and water in the car. I have lighters and knives, cigarettes and booze, hell, even my pistol. Not like I think we’ll need it, unless there’s rattlesnakes down there that we need to shoot.” In hindsight, it was amazing just how wrong he was.
***
We each had a backpack filled with goods. Since we had been traveling across California and camping, seeing every national park possible, we had plenty of extra supplies. In fact, the issue became the amount of weight each of us could carry. I had them fill the backpacks with as much food and water as possible, leaving only room for ammunition, jackets and some extra clothes.
“You act like we’re going to be down there for the next year,” Stephanie complained, rolling her eyes as she hefted the heavy backpack around her shoulder with a soft grunt. “Alright, let’s do this! I am so excited right now. I feel like Bilbo Baggins must’ve when he walked out his front door with Gandalf.” Bear grinned like a madman, lighting up another cigarette. Without a word or a moment of hesitation, he put his backpack on and jumped down to the first step, a drop of about five feet. My stomach did flips just watching him. He apparently had no fear of heights at all.
As I looked down on Bear, it struck me how perfect the circular formation of the pit was. It almost looked man-made or somehow unnatural. Nature rarely works in straight lines and perfect circles, after all.
Stephanie went next, lowering herself carefully from the edge and hanging down by her arms until her feet were securely on the step. Unlike Bear, who at times I thought might be slightly insane, she did not simply jump onto the stone.
I edged closer to the pit, looking down. A sense of vertigo overtook me. The eternal blackness of the void seemed like a dilated pupil, a staring eye. I felt watched from below.
But I was not going to look like a chickenshit in front of my friends. They were both clearly excited, especially Bear, who started hopping from one foot to another, anxiously looking up at me and waving me on. He reminded me of a puppy excited about going on a walk. They had already started descending and stood a few dozen feet below the first step.
With a thudding heart, I followed Stephanie’s example, slowly lowering myself down from the ledge onto the first step. Once secure, I looked down.
The circling stairs almost seemed like a slit-open conch shell, the swirling golden spiral extending into forever. My friends looked so small standing on those unceasing steps, and for a moment, my intuition screamed at me, “Get out! Get out!”
But instead, I took a deep breath and started the descent into the bottomless pit.
***
We traveled for hours. I lost track of time. All of our phones stopped working, and even though I had just charged mine, the screen simply went black. Stephanie’s watch stopped ticking after a few minutes descending. I didn’t know if there was some kind of magnetism in the pit that disabled electronic devices, but regardless, we no longer had any way to tell time.
“God, how long has it been?” Stephanie asked after our fifth break. We sat on the steps, our headlamps sending eerie bouncing shadows all around us. A few of the steps nearby had thin, jagged cracks running through the stone, branching like lightning bolts. I wondered if they would crumble under our feet as we passed.
“It feels like at least six or seven hours,” Bear said, no longer as excited as he was at the start. Part of it was undoubtedly fatigue, which we all felt. I had a creeping suspicion we had made a colossal mistake by coming down here. Bear still had a sense of determination, however, and he wanted to keep going. “How far down do you think we are?” No one answered. The air felt oppressive and extremely heavy.
“What do you want to do if we don’t find anything in the next hour or so?” I asked. “I mean, are we just going to keep going down forever? We should make a plan to turn around at a certain point.”
“Oh man, give me a break,” Bear said, rolling his eyes. “What in the hell do you have to do today? You act like this isn’t the coolest thing we’ve found on this trip. We should keep going down until we find something, or until we need to turn around because we’re running low on water and food. This is probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, man.” I sighed. My legs ached and my feet screamed at me. I could feel the blisters rising on my toes. We rose and started descending again.
It was then that we heard a sound like a lion roaring echoing up from far below. It sounded predatory and animalistic but magnified to a deafening cacophony like an exploding hydrogen bomb. The stairs began to shake. Falling streams of dust and pebbles streamed down all around us. I tried to scream but I didn’t know if I actually was, because all I could hear was that demonic roar.
I clung to the wall of the pit as the sound started to fade and then rapidly died down to nothing. Within a few seconds, it had passed. I looked at Bear and Stephanie. They looked pale and shaken in the bright LED lights of the headlamp.
“Jesus Christ,” Bear said, his hands trembling as he reached into his pocket for his pack of cigarettes. “I thought I was going to die for a few seconds there.” He had succinctly expressed all of our thoughts, I felt.
“We can’t keep going down,” I said. “This is insane. What if that was an earthquake? What if there’s more aftershocks coming? We should start heading back up now. I’m not dying here.” Stephanie and Bear nodded, agreeing without any argument. Even Bear, who was normally fearless, seemed to have lost all of his enthusiasm for this adventure.
But when we turned and shone our headlamps up, I saw the stairs a few hundred feet above us had collapsed during the bone-rattling explosion of sound. About thirty feet of steps had simply vanished, crumbling into the void. I suddenly felt very much less secure standing there. I wondered how structurally sound the step I stood on really was. My heart felt like it would beat right out of my chest.
“Well, I guess the only way out is forwards,” Stephanie whispered in a frightened voice. “Maybe this cave or whatever it is has branching tunnels that lead back up. Something this massive has to have more than one way in and out.” I didn’t really agree with her, however. This pit was not a natural cave system as far as I could tell. We had no idea if other paths led out.
We kept descending. I clung close to the wall in case that ear-splitting cacophony started again. I wondered what had made it. Perhaps the echoes of shifting tectonic plates amplified as they rose up the pit and just sounded like a predator’s thundering cry.
Far below, my headlamp ran over an aberration in the smooth golden spiral of the endless steps. I saw a massive archway, at least ten feet tall. Its sides met in a point at the top, forming an upside-down curving V.
Bear and Stephanie saw it at the same time as I did. Their eyes widened in surprise and delight. But a sense of fear gripped me when I saw the archway. Its architecture looked alien. As we got closer, I saw it glistened like obsidian. Gleaming black rainbows ran over its length when our lights touched it.
“Oh, thank God!” Stephanie cried. Bear ran ahead, sprinting down the steps, like a man dying of dehydration running towards water.
“Hey, wait up!” I called, feeling suddenly very vulnerable. I looked down the stairs. Far below me, I saw a thin crack that ran down the wall of the pit for hundreds of feet. I caught a glimpse of a face peeking out of it.
The creature had bone-white skin and pure black eyes. Its features seemed a combination of human and demon. Its insane rictus grin showed many sharp, long teeth. Within a fraction of a second, though, it disappeared into the crack, and I wondered whether I had really seen it. Perhaps all the darkness had caused me to start hallucinating. I knew that prolonged sensory deprivation could cause hallucinations and potentially bizarre experiences, having tried sensory deprivation tanks both sober and after eating magic mushrooms.
Stephanie and Bear stood in front of the obsidian arch, peering down a massive stone tunnel. The ceiling towered thirty feet overhead. Sharp stalactites hung over our heads like waiting guillotines. Natural formations of glimmering marble and jewels jutted out of the walls of the light brown rock.
Bear ran forwards, laughing. He stopped at the first cluster of gems he saw. They looked like the petals of a multi-colored flower, green, white, red, blue and black.
“These are diamonds,” Bear said, awed. “This is opal, this looks like jet-stone… that’s definitely a sapphire and the one next to it is an emerald.” He stood up straight, looking back at me, his mouth hanging open. “Holy shit, Juan, we’re rich. None of us will ever have to work again.”
“We still don’t even know how to get out of here,” I reminded him. I kept checking our backs, and I thought I had glimpsed that white, staring face with the black eyes again. But it moved like a ghost. Every time I tried to shine the light where I thought I glimpsed something, there was nothing there. I felt like I was losing my mind.
We kept walking for a few minutes. Smaller tunnels branched off the large ones periodically. We would hear soft moaning sounds and whispers coming from them. I could never pick out any words, as it came across as more of a low susurration, but it had the cadence and rhythm of speech.
“That is so creepy,” Stephanie whispered after we had passed our fourth branching tunnel. “It sounds just like voices and people whimpering, as if there were some medieval torture chamber over there.”
“It’s gotta be some natural echo from the earth,” I said. “There are sometimes subterranean rivers and waterfalls. If one was nearby, its babbling could get distorted in the tunnels and come across as whispering.” But I didn’t really believe the argument myself, even though I badly wanted to.
“Oh my God!” Bear said. He was out in front, walking ahead of us by at least ten feet. So he ended up seeing the two bodies first. He started running, kneeling down over the girls. Stephanie and I followed a few seconds later.
They looked like two high school students, still wearing their backpacks covered in pins about love and peace. The nearer of the two girls was clearly dead. Her entire body had swollen up like a tick after feeding, the skin turning green as rancid gasses bubbled under the surface. I couldn’t even tell if she once had eyes or a mouth because the flesh had expanded so much. Her bloated body pulled against the fabric of her short-sleeved T-shirt, skirt and straps of her backpack.
The other girl was a somewhat different story. At first, I thought she was dead too. I couldn’t see any breathing and she looked extremely pale with a blue tint to her lips. Bear knelt down and tried shaking her. He got no response. Then he licked the back of his hand and held it in front of her mouth and nose. After a few seconds, he looked up excitedly.
“She’s breathing, though it is very slow and shallow,” he said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her.” Her eyes started to flutter open, and she gasped. Her fingers clenched and she licked her dry lips.
“Water,” she moaned. “Please. Water.” Bear immediately grabbed a bottle from his pack and held it up to her lips. She took small sips, pulling away and breathing hard after each one. But soon she had finished the entire bottle, then two more. The color started to return to her cheeks slightly, though that bluish cast stayed over her fingernails and lips. She motioned for us to get close, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of paper.
“I’m… not going to make it out of here alive,” she said. “This was given to me by someone else. It’s the only reason we’ve made it this far.” She coughed, rolling on her side and vomiting some of the water. I saw streaks of blood mixed in, dark red like a garnet.
Bear looked at the piece of paper, frowning. He stood back up and turned to face us. Then he started reading out loud.
“The first rule to survival is this: When you see the Angel of Death, the woman with the backwards-facing head, you must cut your flesh and give an offering of blood immediately.
“The second rule is that if you hear the first trumpet blow, you must hide. Anyone who does not leave the main tunnel by the time the second trumpet blows will know undying agony.
“The third rule is that if you see dark silhouettes coming down the corridors, shadows in the shapes of men and beasts, you must close your eyes and count to thirty. They are eaters of souls, and will suck your soul out of your eyes if you give them the chance, yet they will pass if not fed.
“The fourth rule is that, if you encounter anyone with the Mark of Cain, you must kill them immediately. You will know the Mark of Cain when you see it- it is a most hideous thing.
“The fifth rule is that if you see the ruler of the bottomless pit, whose name is Abaddon, you must not look at his face.”
We all stood in silence for a long moment. I felt the strong urge to laugh. Then I looked down at the swollen body of the dead girl and immediately changed my mind.
The blonde girl yanked her backpack off, gasping and spitting blood constantly. She reached around in the bag, frantically looking for something. With a triumphant smile across her pretty face, she yanked it out and handed it to me.
I took the ancient leather-bound Bible. It looked like it had some traces of a white, shining crystal smeared across its cover. I opened the cover and saw someone had written in spiky, copperplate handwriting, “Property of Smiley.”
A bookmark hung out of the back of the text. I opened it up and gasped. The “bookmark” was actually a tiny, mummified pinkie finger. It looked like someone had cut it off a small child’s hand. It smelled woodsy with a hint of pistachio, cinnamon and sulfur. I have never smelled anything quite like a mummified body part.
“Oh… my… God!” Stephanie cried, putting her hands above her mouth. “Is that a child’s finger?!” The girl didn’t answer. She had collapsed on her stomach now, and she looked like she was rapidly worsening.
“Who are you? How did you two get here? Why do you have someone’s finger?” I asked. The girl shook her head.
“No time for all that,” she said. “I got a glancing blow of the poison. A very small dose, but it’s doing its work nonetheless. I can feel it writhing like snakes through my blood…” She closed her eyes for a long moment, breathing slow. Then she fixed her unsteady, watery eyes on us again.
“My name is Isabella, though. I’ll tell you that we came here by accident, exploring underground tunnels with my Rainbow Family. We got lost, and the tunnels started changing…” A shriek echoed from further down the main tunnel, cutting her off.
Isabella’s eyes flew wide open, bright spots of red showing on her pale face. She began hyperventilating.
“They’re coming! They’re coming back!” she cried. “Oh God, help me!” I saw a shape far away, like a galloping horse. My mind couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing for a moment. It looked totally alien, something not from this world. There was a sound like helicopter blades slicing through the air, jarring and rhythmic.
As it got closer, I saw a bizarre and monstrous creature. It looked almost like a giant flying scorpion. It was about the size of a Great Dane. Its legs writhed and skittered, like massive alien eyelashes.
I saw its stinger dripping clear, lethal venom, as if it were salivating through its tail. Its spiky wings looked like those of a dragonfly’s, blurring in a sea of motion as they propelled it forward. It was, in reality, the face that affected me most, however.
It had a human face, complete with changing expressions. It had no hair on its body, but even without eyebrows, I could see the scowl of bloodlust and fury. The eyes had a filmy look, as if covered in cataracts. The pupils looked faded behind the veil, the irises a muddy gray. Bristling spikes stood out the top of its head, black, pushed-back quills with barbs on the end. Overall, the creature was one of the most instinctually repugnant and frightening creatures I had ever seen.
Bear and Stephanie stood there, their mouths opened, just staring. Isabella tried to crawl away. She had thrown her backpack to the side.
“Nooo,” she moaned, “noooo.”
“Bear!” I cried. “Shoot it! Shoot the goddamned thing! What are you waiting for?!” He looked like a man waking up from a nightmare for a moment, his eyes moving quickly around before focusing on me. Then a smile broke out on his face.
With the creature only a few steps away, I thought we were all dead. But in a blur, Bear yanked the giant black pistol from its holster. With a booming echo like a shout from God, he fired at the abomination’s eerily human face.
The head exploded in a fountain of bone splinters and bright-blue blood. Its wings continued to pound the air crazily, and the body continued coming at us for a few more feet. Then it crashed to the ground, sliding, its stinger and tail still striking out at the air. I jumped back and saw Bear and Stephanie do the same.
It landed on top of Isabella, soaking her in its blood. She screamed. The stinger continued to drip clear poison from its wicked-looking barb. I saw drops of it sliding off the creature’s body and onto Isabella’s skin.
“It burns, it burns!” she cried, trying to wipe away the poison. But she was on her stomach, and with the creature pinning her down, she couldn’t reach. Like some ancient Chinese water torture, the drops continued to fall, searing and lethal.
“I need help guys!” Bear said as he tried to lift the heavy creature off Isabella. Stephanie and I went around, giving the stinger and poison a wide berth. I reached under its body. It felt slimy, cold and just revolting. It was like the texture of drowned earthworms after a summer rain. As I pushed, I felt a sogginess in its skin, and blue blood the color of antifreeze soaked my hands. I wanted to pull away. I felt soiled. I wanted to take a long shower and wipe the filth of this creature off me.
The body started to lift. With a grunt, the three of us pushed it off Isabella. I looked down at her and realized it was too late.
Her eyes rolled back in her head, showing only the whites. Her legs began to kick violently, her fingers spasming as her arms jumped and danced. She began to make a choked, gasping sound.
Then her skin started to turn a sickly, cancerous green. Her whole body began to swell before our eyes. She gave a death gasp and stopped kicking, finally falling limp.
***
As we left the corpses behind, still shaken, Bear looked at the Bible Isabella had given us.
“Juan, why do you think there’s a human finger in here?” Stephanie asked, still repulsed by it. “Is that some sort of occult thing? Maybe witchcraft?” I shrugged. I knew a lot more about history and books than either Bear or Stephanie. They almost never read, while I read constantly.
“Fingers have been used in occult rituals for thousands of years. In the ancient Buddhist scriptures, a madman and extremely talented warrior used to go around killing random people and taking their fingers for a necklace. They called him ‘Angulimala’, or ‘Finger-necklace’. There may be some relation to worship of Kali, the goddess of destruction. He ended up converting to Buddhism, renouncing violence and becoming enlightened, though.
“In modern rituals, witchcraft still uses severed fingers. Fingers represent dexterity, touch and manipulation of far-away objects. Cutting off a finger also symbolically represents a cutting of ties in an occult ritual.” I shrugged.
“Well, thank you for that enlightening information, Chatbot,” Stephanie said jokingly. “You remind me of those AI robots where you can ask them any random question and they come up with an answer.”
“Hey, don’t shit on me just because I actually do research,” I said, smiling. “Speaking of research, what page of the Bible is the finger marking? It may be important. Those girls had two things, after all: the list of rules and the Bible. Isabella obviously considered them important, because those were the only two things she singled out to give to us while she was dying.” Bear opened the Bible to the page with the finger. He looked down, frowning.
“It’s Revelation 9,” he said, then he began reading aloud as we all took a break, passing around water and peanut butter crackers.
“And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.
“And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.
“And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.
“And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.
“And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.
“And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.” He stopped reading, his voice reverberating eerily down the stone corridor, bouncing off of priceless gems and hard sandstone.
“So that thing we killed was a locust?” Stephanie asked. “It looked a lot more like a scorpion to me.”
“It doesn’t really matter; it’s neither a scorpion nor a locust,” I said. “It’s clearly a different species from either. Perhaps it’s lived down here for millions of years, hunting in the dark. But it just makes it all the more important to find a way out of here as soon as possible. There could be thousands of those things down here. Millions, maybe. I mean, really, who knows how big this place is?” Sighing, we got up and continued looking for a way out.
Ahead, I saw a faded sign. It looked made out of pure silver, without a sign of rust anywhere. But the letters had nearly disappeared over the many years it had clearly stood here.
When we got close, I brought my light right up to it and tried to make it out. After a few seconds, I realized it was a sign for a town.
“Bloodstone. Population: 144,000,” it read.
Part 2
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/192nglq/i_found_the_bottomless_pit_from_the_book_of/

Back in 2012, I believe I stopped the Apocalypse.
I remember staring down at the endless hole in the desert with wonder and awe. It seemed to go on forever. A life-long friend of mine named Bear stood by my side. He scanned the ground and found a large, smooth rock. It must’ve weighed at least sixty pounds. He rolled it over to the edge of the seemingly infinite void and let it drop.
I heard the stone clatter against the walls, smashing against one side and releasing a rush of small pebbles and clods of dirt. They soared downwards with the rock, reminding me of the sands in an eternal hourglass.
“Look, there’s stairs,” Bear’s girlfriend Stephanie said, pointing a freshly-painted red nail at the steps. They looked hewn from solid rock and spiraled down into the darkness far below. Stephanie tilted her head slightly to the side, moving locks of dirty blonde hair away from her eyes. Her appearance reminded me of Emma Stone, and though nearly twenty-five, she still looked like a teenager.
We stood in the middle of Death Valley. The sun sizzled overhead, sending out blinding light that reflected off the sands. Rippling mirages rose off the burning hot ground. Dunes surrounded us, looking as dead and lifeless as an alien planet.
I looked up at the light blue sky and didn’t see a single cloud. It must’ve been 100 degrees out. Rivulets of sweat trickled down from my hair and forehead, stinging my eyes. I wiped it away, looking back down the hole. I kept expecting this aberration of a pit to evaporate like some sort of bizarre optical illusion, yet there it still stood, a large circle about thirty feet across with ancient granite steps. And, of course, the steps had no railings. They looked fairly narrow, maybe a couple feet across.
Well, I considered that narrow, considering the thousands of feet of empty space I would fall through if I slipped. I thought about how the drop would feel, screaming for minutes and knowing I was about to die, the ground coming up to meet me, the air roaring like a tornado in my ears. I shuddered. The mental image seemed far too vivid.
I glanced at my two friends. Bear was casually smoking a cigarette, raising his tattooed hand. I looked at the tattoo- a reptilian, slitted eye surrounded by the golden spiral.
He stood much taller than me and, having done physical labor his entire life, he also had a thick covering of muscle. He was a metal-head and urban explorer, and about 90% of his body was covered in tattoos. Stephanie and he made an unusual pair, she with her straight-edge, valley girl looks, and Bear looking like he just climbed out of a mosh pit at a Deicide show.
He flicked the half-smoked butt into the pit, smoothing his long black hair with his hands. I watched the red light of the ember streak across the darkness and disappear into the endless shadows waiting below.
“Do you think anyone else knows about this?” I asked. Bear had a sly grin across his scruffy face. His blue eyes flashed with amusement. He put his arm around Stephanie.
“Well, if no one has, maybe we can make money off of it,” he said. Stephanie smiled faintly at that. “I’ve heard of people who discovered caves making money off giving tours. Maybe we can buy this crappy little plot of land out here!”
“This might be state land,” I said. “Actually, it might even be federal. I’m not sure where the borders of the national park end. Not like anyone would be going around labeling borders out here.” I waved my hand lethargically at the dead, sunburnt desert all around us. Absolutely no one lived out here, except maybe the secret mutant descendants of the Manson Family.
“Regardless, we should go explore it,” Stephanie said. “If we’re going to claim we discovered some new wonder of the world, we should be able to tell people what’s in it.”
“Yeah, and what if we get lost and starve to death down there?” I asked. “There’s no cell service out here. No one would ever find our bodies. We would just disappear into thin air. We can’t even call anyone to let them know where we are.”
“That’s part of the adventure!” Stephanie said, laughing. “You weren’t complaining when you dragged us all to that abandoned mental asylum and took us to the underground tunnels.”
“I’m with Stephanie,” Bear said, gesticulating crazily with his hands. “I want to go explore. I think it would be awesome to have a cave system named after us. We still have flashlights and plenty of food and water in the car. I have lighters and knives, cigarettes and booze, hell, even my pistol. Not like I think we’ll need it, unless there’s rattlesnakes down there that we need to shoot.” In hindsight, it was amazing just how wrong he was.
***
We each had a backpack filled with goods. Since we had been traveling across California and camping, seeing every national park possible, we had plenty of extra supplies. In fact, the issue became the amount of weight each of us could carry. I had them fill the backpacks with as much food and water as possible, leaving only room for ammunition, jackets and some extra clothes.
“You act like we’re going to be down there for the next year,” Stephanie complained, rolling her eyes as she hefted the heavy backpack around her shoulder with a soft grunt. “Alright, let’s do this! I am so excited right now. I feel like Bilbo Baggins must’ve when he walked out his front door with Gandalf.” Bear grinned like a madman, lighting up another cigarette. Without a word or a moment of hesitation, he put his backpack on and jumped down to the first step, a drop of about five feet. My stomach did flips just watching him. He apparently had no fear of heights at all.
As I looked down on Bear, it struck me how perfect the circular formation of the pit was. It almost looked man-made or somehow unnatural. Nature rarely works in straight lines and perfect circles, after all.
Stephanie went next, lowering herself carefully from the edge and hanging down by her arms until her feet were securely on the step. Unlike Bear, who at times I thought might be slightly insane, she did not simply jump onto the stone.
I edged closer to the pit, looking down. A sense of vertigo overtook me. The eternal blackness of the void seemed like a dilated pupil, a staring eye. I felt watched from below.
But I was not going to look like a chickenshit in front of my friends. They were both clearly excited, especially Bear, who started hopping from one foot to another, anxiously looking up at me and waving me on. He reminded me of a puppy excited about going on a walk. They had already started descending and stood a few dozen feet below the first step.
With a thudding heart, I followed Stephanie’s example, slowly lowering myself down from the ledge onto the first step. Once secure, I looked down.
The circling stairs almost seemed like a slit-open conch shell, the swirling golden spiral extending into forever. My friends looked so small standing on those unceasing steps, and for a moment, my intuition screamed at me, “Get out! Get out!”
But instead, I took a deep breath and started the descent into the bottomless pit.
***
We traveled for hours. I lost track of time. All of our phones stopped working, and even though I had just charged mine, the screen simply went black. Stephanie’s watch stopped ticking after a few minutes descending. I didn’t know if there was some kind of magnetism in the pit that disabled electronic devices, but regardless, we no longer had any way to tell time.
“God, how long has it been?” Stephanie asked after our fifth break. We sat on the steps, our headlamps sending eerie bouncing shadows all around us. A few of the steps nearby had thin, jagged cracks running through the stone, branching like lightning bolts. I wondered if they would crumble under our feet as we passed.
“It feels like at least six or seven hours,” Bear said, no longer as excited as he was at the start. Part of it was undoubtedly fatigue, which we all felt. I had a creeping suspicion we had made a colossal mistake by coming down here. Bear still had a sense of determination, however, and he wanted to keep going. “How far down do you think we are?” No one answered. The air felt oppressive and extremely heavy.
“What do you want to do if we don’t find anything in the next hour or so?” I asked. “I mean, are we just going to keep going down forever? We should make a plan to turn around at a certain point.”
“Oh man, give me a break,” Bear said, rolling his eyes. “What in the hell do you have to do today? You act like this isn’t the coolest thing we’ve found on this trip. We should keep going down until we find something, or until we need to turn around because we’re running low on water and food. This is probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, man.” I sighed. My legs ached and my feet screamed at me. I could feel the blisters rising on my toes. We rose and started descending again.
It was then that we heard a sound like a lion roaring echoing up from far below. It sounded predatory and animalistic but magnified to a deafening cacophony like an exploding hydrogen bomb. The stairs began to shake. Falling streams of dust and pebbles streamed down all around us. I tried to scream but I didn’t know if I actually was, because all I could hear was that demonic roar.
I clung to the wall of the pit as the sound started to fade and then rapidly died down to nothing. Within a few seconds, it had passed. I looked at Bear and Stephanie. They looked pale and shaken in the bright LED lights of the headlamp.
“Jesus Christ,” Bear said, his hands trembling as he reached into his pocket for his pack of cigarettes. “I thought I was going to die for a few seconds there.” He had succinctly expressed all of our thoughts, I felt.
“We can’t keep going down,” I said. “This is insane. What if that was an earthquake? What if there’s more aftershocks coming? We should start heading back up now. I’m not dying here.” Stephanie and Bear nodded, agreeing without any argument. Even Bear, who was normally fearless, seemed to have lost all of his enthusiasm for this adventure.
But when we turned and shone our headlamps up, I saw the stairs a few hundred feet above us had collapsed during the bone-rattling explosion of sound. About thirty feet of steps had simply vanished, crumbling into the void. I suddenly felt very much less secure standing there. I wondered how structurally sound the step I stood on really was. My heart felt like it would beat right out of my chest.
“Well, I guess the only way out is forwards,” Stephanie whispered in a frightened voice. “Maybe this cave or whatever it is has branching tunnels that lead back up. Something this massive has to have more than one way in and out.” I didn’t really agree with her, however. This pit was not a natural cave system as far as I could tell. We had no idea if other paths led out.
We kept descending. I clung close to the wall in case that ear-splitting cacophony started again. I wondered what had made it. Perhaps the echoes of shifting tectonic plates amplified as they rose up the pit and just sounded like a predator’s thundering cry.
Far below, my headlamp ran over an aberration in the smooth golden spiral of the endless steps. I saw a massive archway, at least ten feet tall. Its sides met in a point at the top, forming an upside-down curving V.
Bear and Stephanie saw it at the same time as I did. Their eyes widened in surprise and delight. But a sense of fear gripped me when I saw the archway. Its architecture looked alien. As we got closer, I saw it glistened like obsidian. Gleaming black rainbows ran over its length when our lights touched it.
“Oh, thank God!” Stephanie cried. Bear ran ahead, sprinting down the steps, like a man dying of dehydration running towards water.
“Hey, wait up!” I called, feeling suddenly very vulnerable. I looked down the stairs. Far below me, I saw a thin crack that ran down the wall of the pit for hundreds of feet. I caught a glimpse of a face peeking out of it.
The creature had bone-white skin and pure black eyes. Its features seemed a combination of human and demon. Its insane rictus grin showed many sharp, long teeth. Within a fraction of a second, though, it disappeared into the crack, and I wondered whether I had really seen it. Perhaps all the darkness had caused me to start hallucinating. I knew that prolonged sensory deprivation could cause hallucinations and potentially bizarre experiences, having tried sensory deprivation tanks both sober and after eating magic mushrooms.
Stephanie and Bear stood in front of the obsidian arch, peering down a massive stone tunnel. The ceiling towered thirty feet overhead. Sharp stalactites hung over our heads like waiting guillotines. Natural formations of glimmering marble and jewels jutted out of the walls of the light brown rock.
Bear ran forwards, laughing. He stopped at the first cluster of gems he saw. They looked like the petals of a multi-colored flower, green, white, red, blue and black.
“These are diamonds,” Bear said, awed. “This is opal, this looks like jet-stone… that’s definitely a sapphire and the one next to it is an emerald.” He stood up straight, looking back at me, his mouth hanging open. “Holy shit, Juan, we’re rich. None of us will ever have to work again.”
“We still don’t even know how to get out of here,” I reminded him. I kept checking our backs, and I thought I had glimpsed that white, staring face with the black eyes again. But it moved like a ghost. Every time I tried to shine the light where I thought I glimpsed something, there was nothing there. I felt like I was losing my mind.
We kept walking for a few minutes. Smaller tunnels branched off the large ones periodically. We would hear soft moaning sounds and whispers coming from them. I could never pick out any words, as it came across as more of a low susurration, but it had the cadence and rhythm of speech.
“That is so creepy,” Stephanie whispered after we had passed our fourth branching tunnel. “It sounds just like voices and people whimpering, as if there were some medieval torture chamber over there.”
“It’s gotta be some natural echo from the earth,” I said. “There are sometimes subterranean rivers and waterfalls. If one was nearby, its babbling could get distorted in the tunnels and come across as whispering.” But I didn’t really believe the argument myself, even though I badly wanted to.
“Oh my God!” Bear said. He was out in front, walking ahead of us by at least ten feet. So he ended up seeing the two bodies first. He started running, kneeling down over the girls. Stephanie and I followed a few seconds later.
They looked like two high school students, still wearing their backpacks covered in pins about love and peace. The nearer of the two girls was clearly dead. Her entire body had swollen up like a tick after feeding, the skin turning green as rancid gasses bubbled under the surface. I couldn’t even tell if she once had eyes or a mouth because the flesh had expanded so much. Her bloated body pulled against the fabric of her short-sleeved T-shirt, skirt and straps of her backpack.
The other girl was a somewhat different story. At first, I thought she was dead too. I couldn’t see any breathing and she looked extremely pale with a blue tint to her lips. Bear knelt down and tried shaking her. He got no response. Then he licked the back of his hand and held it in front of her mouth and nose. After a few seconds, he looked up excitedly.
“She’s breathing, though it is very slow and shallow,” he said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her.” Her eyes started to flutter open, and she gasped. Her fingers clenched and she licked her dry lips.
“Water,” she moaned. “Please. Water.” Bear immediately grabbed a bottle from his pack and held it up to her lips. She took small sips, pulling away and breathing hard after each one. But soon she had finished the entire bottle, then two more. The color started to return to her cheeks slightly, though that bluish cast stayed over her fingernails and lips. She motioned for us to get close, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of paper.
“I’m… not going to make it out of here alive,” she said. “This was given to me by someone else. It’s the only reason we’ve made it this far.” She coughed, rolling on her side and vomiting some of the water. I saw streaks of blood mixed in, dark red like a garnet.
Bear looked at the piece of paper, frowning. He stood back up and turned to face us. Then he started reading out loud.
“The first rule to survival is this: When you see the Angel of Death, the woman with the backwards-facing head, you must cut your flesh and give an offering of blood immediately.
“The second rule is that if you hear the first trumpet blow, you must hide. Anyone who does not leave the main tunnel by the time the second trumpet blows will know undying agony.
“The third rule is that if you see dark silhouettes coming down the corridors, shadows in the shapes of men and beasts, you must close your eyes and count to thirty. They are eaters of souls, and will suck your soul out of your eyes if you give them the chance, yet they will pass if not fed.
“The fourth rule is that, if you encounter anyone with the Mark of Cain, you must kill them immediately. You will know the Mark of Cain when you see it- it is a most hideous thing.
“The fifth rule is that if you see the ruler of the bottomless pit, whose name is Abaddon, you must not look at his face.”
We all stood in silence for a long moment. I felt the strong urge to laugh. Then I looked down at the swollen body of the dead girl and immediately changed my mind.
The blonde girl yanked her backpack off, gasping and spitting blood constantly. She reached around in the bag, frantically looking for something. With a triumphant smile across her pretty face, she yanked it out and handed it to me.
I took the ancient leather-bound Bible. It looked like it had some traces of a white, shining crystal smeared across its cover. I opened the cover and saw someone had written in spiky, copperplate handwriting, “Property of Smiley.”
A bookmark hung out of the back of the text. I opened it up and gasped. The “bookmark” was actually a tiny, mummified pinkie finger. It looked like someone had cut it off a small child’s hand. It smelled woodsy with a hint of pistachio, cinnamon and sulfur. I have never smelled anything quite like a mummified body part.
“Oh… my… God!” Stephanie cried, putting her hands above her mouth. “Is that a child’s finger?!” The girl didn’t answer. She had collapsed on her stomach now, and she looked like she was rapidly worsening.
“Who are you? How did you two get here? Why do you have someone’s finger?” I asked. The girl shook her head.
“No time for all that,” she said. “I got a glancing blow of the poison. A very small dose, but it’s doing its work nonetheless. I can feel it writhing like snakes through my blood…” She closed her eyes for a long moment, breathing slow. Then she fixed her unsteady, watery eyes on us again.
“My name is Isabella, though. I’ll tell you that we came here by accident, exploring underground tunnels with my Rainbow Family. We got lost, and the tunnels started changing…” A shriek echoed from further down the main tunnel, cutting her off.
Isabella’s eyes flew wide open, bright spots of red showing on her pale face. She began hyperventilating.
“They’re coming! They’re coming back!” she cried. “Oh God, help me!” I saw a shape far away, like a galloping horse. My mind couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing for a moment. It looked totally alien, something not from this world. There was a sound like helicopter blades slicing through the air, jarring and rhythmic.
As it got closer, I saw a bizarre and monstrous creature. It looked almost like a giant flying scorpion. It was about the size of a Great Dane. Its legs writhed and skittered, like massive alien eyelashes.
I saw its stinger dripping clear, lethal venom, as if it were salivating through its tail. Its spiky wings looked like those of a dragonfly’s, blurring in a sea of motion as they propelled it forward. It was, in reality, the face that affected me most, however.
It had a human face, complete with changing expressions. It had no hair on its body, but even without eyebrows, I could see the scowl of bloodlust and fury. The eyes had a filmy look, as if covered in cataracts. The pupils looked faded behind the veil, the irises a muddy gray. Bristling spikes stood out the top of its head, black, pushed-back quills with barbs on the end. Overall, the creature was one of the most instinctually repugnant and frightening creatures I had ever seen.
Bear and Stephanie stood there, their mouths opened, just staring. Isabella tried to crawl away. She had thrown her backpack to the side.
“Nooo,” she moaned, “noooo.”
“Bear!” I cried. “Shoot it! Shoot the goddamned thing! What are you waiting for?!” He looked like a man waking up from a nightmare for a moment, his eyes moving quickly around before focusing on me. Then a smile broke out on his face.
With the creature only a few steps away, I thought we were all dead. But in a blur, Bear yanked the giant black pistol from its holster. With a booming echo like a shout from God, he fired at the abomination’s eerily human face.
The head exploded in a fountain of bone splinters and bright-blue blood. Its wings continued to pound the air crazily, and the body continued coming at us for a few more feet. Then it crashed to the ground, sliding, its stinger and tail still striking out at the air. I jumped back and saw Bear and Stephanie do the same.
It landed on top of Isabella, soaking her in its blood. She screamed. The stinger continued to drip clear poison from its wicked-looking barb. I saw drops of it sliding off the creature’s body and onto Isabella’s skin.
“It burns, it burns!” she cried, trying to wipe away the poison. But she was on her stomach, and with the creature pinning her down, she couldn’t reach. Like some ancient Chinese water torture, the drops continued to fall, searing and lethal.
“I need help guys!” Bear said as he tried to lift the heavy creature off Isabella. Stephanie and I went around, giving the stinger and poison a wide berth. I reached under its body. It felt slimy, cold and just revolting. It was like the texture of drowned earthworms after a summer rain. As I pushed, I felt a sogginess in its skin, and blue blood the color of antifreeze soaked my hands. I wanted to pull away. I felt soiled. I wanted to take a long shower and wipe the filth of this creature off me.
The body started to lift. With a grunt, the three of us pushed it off Isabella. I looked down at her and realized it was too late.
Her eyes rolled back in her head, showing only the whites. Her legs began to kick violently, her fingers spasming as her arms jumped and danced. She began to make a choked, gasping sound.
Then her skin started to turn a sickly, cancerous green. Her whole body began to swell before our eyes. She gave a death gasp and stopped kicking, finally falling limp.
***
As we left the corpses behind, still shaken, Bear looked at the Bible Isabella had given us.
“Juan, why do you think there’s a human finger in here?” Stephanie asked, still repulsed by it. “Is that some sort of occult thing? Maybe witchcraft?” I shrugged. I knew a lot more about history and books than either Bear or Stephanie. They almost never read, while I read constantly.
“Fingers have been used in occult rituals for thousands of years. In the ancient Buddhist scriptures, a madman and extremely talented warrior used to go around killing random people and taking their fingers for a necklace. They called him ‘Angulimala’, or ‘Finger-necklace’. There may be some relation to worship of Kali, the goddess of destruction. He ended up converting to Buddhism, renouncing violence and becoming enlightened, though.
“In modern rituals, witchcraft still uses severed fingers. Fingers represent dexterity, touch and manipulation of far-away objects. Cutting off a finger also symbolically represents a cutting of ties in an occult ritual.” I shrugged.
“Well, thank you for that enlightening information, Chatbot,” Stephanie said jokingly. “You remind me of those AI robots where you can ask them any random question and they come up with an answer.”
“Hey, don’t shit on me just because I actually do research,” I said, smiling. “Speaking of research, what page of the Bible is the finger marking? It may be important. Those girls had two things, after all: the list of rules and the Bible. Isabella obviously considered them important, because those were the only two things she singled out to give to us while she was dying.” Bear opened the Bible to the page with the finger. He looked down, frowning.
“It’s Revelation 9,” he said, then he began reading aloud as we all took a break, passing around water and peanut butter crackers.
“And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.
“And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.
“And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.
“And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.
“And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.
“And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.” He stopped reading, his voice reverberating eerily down the stone corridor, bouncing off of priceless gems and hard sandstone.
“So that thing we killed was a locust?” Stephanie asked. “It looked a lot more like a scorpion to me.”
“It doesn’t really matter; it’s neither a scorpion nor a locust,” I said. “It’s clearly a different species from either. Perhaps it’s lived down here for millions of years, hunting in the dark. But it just makes it all the more important to find a way out of here as soon as possible. There could be thousands of those things down here. Millions, maybe. I mean, really, who knows how big this place is?” Sighing, we got up and continued looking for a way out.
Ahead, I saw a faded sign. It looked made out of pure silver, without a sign of rust anywhere. But the letters had nearly disappeared over the many years it had clearly stood here.
When we got close, I brought my light right up to it and tried to make it out. After a few seconds, I realized it was a sign for a town.
“Bloodstone. Population: 144,000,” it read.
Part 2
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/192nglq/i_found_the_bottomless_pit_from_the_book_of/

Managed to make it through two more last night. Determined to power through. Ate through most of a bag of potato chips as a coping mechanism.
Also, I’ve formatted all of these on mobile, so kindly forgive whatever that might have caused. Planning on editing on an actual computer if I can remember my password to this account.
Episode 8 – Happy Thanksgiving Marble
0:01 - I didn’t even recognize this opening scene as part of the same series because the color palette is so off. Lemon-tea Carbs-low is sitting at a table in a diner, looking dejectedly down to the right. She is no longer at a colorful, oversaturated diner; she is at a washed-out gloomy beige-and-earth-toned diner. Out the window, the world looks extremely pale blue, with a traffic light’s green light looking almost turquoise; whoever did the color grading on this shot was in a hurry. Marble’s Plaid Shirt of Suffering is basically camouflaged in with the print on the booth seat. Her jeans are ripped. She is currently, I guess, homeless, but with perfect makeup. This shot’s composition technically obeys the Rule of Thirds, but the leftmost third is dominated by a decidedly un-pretty chunk of an out-of-focus booth seat. On the wall behind Marble, there is either an un-patched hole or else a big bug.
0:13 – Her server drops off a plate of food that is all different shades of tan. “All right, here we go, hon,” says the server. Clearly giving not even the most infinitesimal hint of a fuck about getting a good tip, the server then asks, “No family?” Crohn’s-disease Haribo stares daggers into the booth across the table, then she stares down at her plate for approx. 10 entire seconds.
0:27 – We are given a close-up of the saddest plate of turkey, mashed potatoes, and gravy I have ever seen; suddenly, Marble’sreaction makes a lot of sense. She stares out the window and the camera follows her gaze upwards, the universally understood nauseating prelude to a flashback.
0:42 – Cut to: Stephanie’s youngest daughter, playing Past-Marble, asleep. She is clutching a build-a-bear bear while wearing a shiny metal bracelet, which we expect will have some significance; if it doesn’t, then that’s just a seriously bizarre choice of pajama accessory. There is Webkinz frog on the table behind her; we are pretty sure these did not exist in whatever past year this past is supposed to be in. Also on the table behind her: a lit candle. While a child is asleep. What the fuck.
0:50 – There is the sound of thunder as we see an unknown woman open up a creaky, squeaky door. The combined sounds are so over-the-top and corny that they would have been right at home as a stock audio effect for a Power Point slide transition. The scariest thing about this shot is its inclusion of two additional candles, i.e. Past Marble is sleeping in a room with at least three lit candles. The woman who opened the door is wearing sweatpants and an orange sweater. She is holding something behind her back with her right hand. She looks maybe dangerous, but not as dangerous as three unsupervised open flames mere inches away from fuzzy polyester dolls.
Past Marble wakes up, calls the woman “Mommy,” and asks her if she is OK. Marble Mommy sits down next to Past Marble, whispers incoherently, and then covers Past Marble’s mouth with her hand. I am choosing to believe that this was solely an attempt to make Past Marble be quiet, because not even the Coleman auteurs would seriously believe that covering someone’s mouth with your hand is how you smother somebody. Past Marble screams loudly through the hand, and Marble Mommy reveals that the surprise item behind her back is a big huge knife. She raises it above her head to stab Past Marble.
1:42 – Papa Marble races through the bedroom door. There is smoke visible in the hallway behind him, illustrating my earlier point about the candles. He pauses in the doorway, bugs his eyes out for like two entire seconds, and then yells, “Maryohmygodwhatthehellareyoudoing?!” Marble Mommy, having seemingly held the knife aloft for this entire five or six seconds, finally turns around and explains to Papa Marble that she “has to save her” and that “this is the only way.” Papa Marble says that it’s not real and that she is just sick, which all psychologists agree is exactly the type of thing that is guaranteed to break a person free of their homicidal delusions. Marble Mommy then sees Papa Marble turn into a shadowy black figure with horns while a jarring sound effect plays, which is very funny.
2:05 – Marble Mommy jumps up and stabs Papa Marble straight in the chest, like probably right in the heart. He stands there, clutching his chest, and making a face like he just found out there is a greater-than-50% chance of rain. There is no blood visible on the knife.
Prediction: Papa Marble is going to die, and Past Marble is going to snuggle up next to him and squeeze his booby.
Thought: Oh man, is this why there’s never anyone on the other line when Marble calls Daddy? Because he’s dead, and she’s actually craAaAaAaAaAazy?
2:20 – Mommy Marble stabs Papa Marble, like, a ton of times. She does so very quickly, which shows that they did not skimp on cutlery, because any normal knife would at least get stuck occasionally—I mean, remember how much trouble Eagle Man had with that festive gourd? After about 12 seconds of this, she falls away, but not before giving us a nice clear look at a (still)completely spotless knife.
2:33 – Stephanie’s daughter looks visibly distressed on the bed, looking down at a very graphic and bloody stabbed corpse. We hope that this child is getting therapy to process any emotions and stress that would come up as a result of this, but we’re also not exactly optimistic about those odds.
2:45 – As predicted, Past Marble hops off her bed, pushes on Papa Marble’s belly, and then cuddles up beside him. Dramatic strings music plays. Marble Mommy is still off to the side—like, right there beside them on the floor. Is Past Marble not, like, terrified of this knife-wielding woman? Here, we also noticed that her bed is a trundle bed, so she can’t even hide under it like a normal scared child—that’s so sad!
Past Marble clutches her dead dad just below his booby, gritting her teeth and exhaling rapidly, which sort of sounds like crying. Marble Mommy sits against the wall, fingering her rosary like it’s a bowling ball. Her knife has mysteriously become bloody.
3:16 – We cut back to present day. Stolen-bling Large-hoe stares straight into the camera and somehow manages to extrude an entire tear.
Roll credits.
“Are you serious? Is that it? Were we supposed to assume that it was Thanksgiving in the memory, or was this just because she got asked about her family?”
The woman who played Marble Mommy wasn’t bad. She can actually emote pretty strongly, which is really apparent when compared to Kissin’ Kate Barlow’s deeply unsettling clenched-jaw poker-face a few seconds later.
Episode 9 – Eagle Man’s House of Horrors
We open on a snowy landscape and river. A low, ominous rumble plays, and the camera slowly turns to reveal Eagle Man sitting on a bench and smoking. (“Smoking—his second-worst habit.”) He is wearing a navy blue jacket parka thingy, and a navy blue hat to match. This is actually a pretty nice opening sequence.
0:18 – We see a woman carrying a holiday Starbucks cup across her front porch. There is snow on the porch. The snow already has footprints in it, which suggests that they had to do multiple takes of this shot of a woman walking while carrying coffee. The woman is wearing a very colorful rainbow headband, and we suspect that this is Becky or Betsy or whoever—the nosy neighbor mentioned a few episodes ago.
We are given a collage of shots showing The Eagle Residence now decorated for Christmas. The festive gourd is still on the front porch, looking rotten-ish but not nearly as rotten as we think it really would’ve been. That aside, this shot collage is also really pretty competent.
The phone rings, and Eagle Man answers it. It’s a staffing agency, and they have a job offer for him. Headband Neighbor knocks on the doowindow; Eagle Man turns to look at her, and she waves and makes an obnoxious face. He returns to his phone call and discovers that the job is to be Santa Claus. Headband Neighbor knocks again, even though he’s obviously on the phone, literally right in front of her. Eagle Man accepts the job; Headband Neighbor knocks again again.
Eagle Man opens the door to Betsy, who refers to herself as Eagle Mom’s “bestest friend” and asks to come in and see how she’s doing. She invites herself into the house. (“Trespassing. If she gets murdered, that’s fair game, in my opinion.”) Eagle Man says that Eagle Mom is sleeping, but Betsy grabs him by the beard and calls him a twerp and says she knows he’s up to something. She continues upstairs, calling out for Eagle Mom. (“Did she not think to call the police, to get, like, a wellness check?”)
3:45 – Eagle Man grabs Betsy from behind, covering her mouth and muffling her voice in a way that’s actually effective—Marble Mommy should take notes. He drags her down the hall, but she bites his hand, so he pushes her down the spiral staircase. She lands on the floor with eyes wide open, mirroring the Santa Claus on a rug beside her. Her face is absolutely ridiculous, but the rug is a nice touch.
4:06 – We get a neat shot looking up the stairs at Eagle Man; it would be a seriously awesome shot if there wasn’t a ceiling light in the bottom left corner of it. Eagle Man is taking panicked breaths—apparently he didn’t mean to kill Becky.
4:17 – Becksy moves her eyes comically, so we know she’s still alive. Eagle Man pats himself on the hat several times in distress. He drags Betty across the floor, taking the rugs with her. It’s like when you don’t pick up all your cords before running a Roomba.
4:42 – We are shown a close-up of a deeply unsettling painting of a baby, or maybe a woman?, with detached arms.
5:09 – Down in the basement, Becky moves her eyes all around. I think we’re to assume she’s been paralyzed, except for her eyes. Eagle Man descends the basement stairs with an already-running chainsaw, which is idiotically dangerous. He is wearing a black garbage bag and has his light-up rabbit mask on the top of his head so that the chin part of the mask is covering his eyes. Wouldn’t a chainsaw fill up the whole basement with smoke? And that aside, I can’t quite put my finger on why, but using a chainsaw on someone in the basement breaks some unspoken rule of the horror genre. Chainsaws are for chasing; basements are bonesaws. It’s just not right, man.
5:38 – Eagle Man chainsaws Bessie. It takes 12 seconds, reinforcing our suspicion that Eagle Man does not pay much care to using quality blades. Blood sprays everywhere, but you can see the stream from where they were spraying it from a spray bottle.
5:52 – Oh my god, do we finally get to see him disposing of a body?! We are back at the bench by the river, where Eagle Man is dropping several black garbage bags into the water. He looks around cautiously, but it is also broad daylight, so how cautious is he really being? Reaching the last garbage bag—something small and round, presumably the head—he holds it up high above him, like Rafiki presenting Simba to all the animals in The Lion King, which is even less cautious than before. (It looks like when Dog Lady held up her ball before rolling a strike-- “He’s bowling!!”) It strikes us that Bobby’s last meal was Starbucks.
Eagle Man turns around and stumbles into the bench and trips a little; we’re not sure if this was an accident. The music comes to a jarring stop as we
Roll credits.
We see Eagle Man answer the phone to discuss the in-home nurse position for his mother. Presumably, Marble is on the other line. Eagle Man arranges to meet her at the library, speaking his most coherent sequence of lines in the entire series. He then turns to stare into the camera and twitch his mouth. Is the mouth twitch thing supposed to be like Bill Skarsgård doing the thing with his eyes as Pennywise in It? Because the mouth thing just looks silly and is, at best, insensitive to people with facial tics.

Disclaimers:
We watched purely for the purpose of snarking because we heard it was really bad, so yes, we (my partner and I) are biased. Some of these criticisms are incredibly nitpicky, and probably could be given a pass if the show was not solely constructed from incongruous thought fragments and had any redeeming qualities.
It has been unbelievably bad. We suggest watching it with someone you trust, if at all, for secondhand embarrassment support.
The long-winded nature of this review is a nod to Stephanie’s 19-part opinion pieces. Also, it was really that bad.
Prologue/first impressions:
Logo is weirdly neon and colorful. It seems to emphasize the spectacle of serial killing. The triangle looks like a nacho chip.
Calling it “Serial” makes me wonder if they’re trying to cash in on the success of the podcast “Serial.”
Harold (first impressions, based on video thumbnail): They have gone out of their way to construct this character in a way that is weird/spooky/killer-y. His beard, trucker hat, and rapist glasses™ collectively create an ensemble that is just way too over the top. The thumbnail makes it look like it’s a comedy sketch; if I didn’t know what this was about, I would think it was an SNL or CollegeHumor video from maybe 2012.
Looking at @StephanieHarlowe’s YouTube profile, first impressions: Profile picture looks overly-filtered (like it’s from Instagram v1.0); she’s making a weird pouty face and maybe looks like she’s in a car? Having a picture with that much editing contrasts with her statement about “honesty”. Also re the “About” statement: This is not “a community;” it is a YouTube channel. Although referring to herself as synonymous with the community (i.e. “I am this community!”) does sort of imply an ego so massive that it probably effects the ocean tides. I think that “Drawn to the darker side of things” is extremely revealing when it comes to the root of her interest in true crime—it’s not some quest for truth, giving voices to victims, revealing abuses of police power, etc.; it’s about how edgy and dark and cool it is that people have killed other people. It’s in the same spectrum as the Saw franchise or an Evanescence music video. The phrase “honest opinions about difficult matters” makes me expect that the matters themselves probably aren’t all difficult—the opinions are. I expect this because unless a person is lying, their opinion is inherently honest, so anytime a person says the phrase “honest opinion,” it’s really just a euphemism for “controversial opinion.”
Instagram first impressions: Profile picture - Still filtered, with contrast and warmth both turned up so high the knobs break; she did find her way out of the car, though. Pumpkin emoji doubles down on the ~uWu DaRk SpOoOoKy~ vibe. Most of her posts are clips from “Crime Weekly,” but their thumbnails are all photos of the victims, which, when coupled with her own selfies and “Crime Weekly Bloopers,” strikes me as disrespectful, if not outright fucked up. Also, re her IG profile: Her skull lights as background set dressing are, once again, another dark spooky disrespectful thing. Also also re Crime Weekly’s co-host: Stephanie strikes me as exactly the type of armchair detective who would get off on hiring an actual police detective to argue with, because I think the ultimate fantasy for any narcissistic documentarian with honest opinions is to be so good at knowing things that you know more things than the pros.
Episode 1:
And so we begin Episode 1 in torturous 60fps 4K.
HAROLD, in pastel green, the scariest font color.
I, too, have tripped on grass, Harold.
Drinking game: Take a shot every time there’s something Halloween related.
Harold does not pick up his cup when he drinks through a straw, which is how you can tell he is the most deranged person in the whole bowling alley, even moreso than the woman in a puppy-print sweater who kissed her bowling ball and cheered so loud you could hear the microphone clip after she bowled a strike. Nah, let’s be real—that is a sick-ass dog jacket.
Production question: How many takes did it take to get the strike?
The sequence of events here, with Harold staring at the lady while squeezing his furry stim toy, then the lady seeing him staring at her and getting uncomfortable, is sort of confusing. Specifically, it’s confusing because it breaks one of the rules of filming an interaction between two people. Both of these characters are shown looking towards the left of the screen, filmed with the camera closer to their left shoulders, which is a problem. If you pay attention to anything filmed in the last century, you’ll notice that any kind of interaction like this is filmed so that the characters are clearly facing each other; you can imagine an invisible line stretched between the two people, and the camera isn’t ever supposed to cross it. Basically, Harold should have been shown looking towards the right. But instead, even the eagle on his hat is facing left. They keep framing the characters like this for the whole scene, and it’s excruciating.
There have not been enough establishing shots to really know where these characters are, in relation to each other. I do find it really bizarre that she’s eating the Satisfies bar right in front of the vending machine, though. But Harold’s voice is way, way, way too quiet. And it’s not a volume issue—everything else was really loud.
She turns around and sees him and then silently just… takes another chomp, staring straight at him? This is a fucking SNL skit.
Also: How long was she bowling? Have they been here all alone this whole time, just this guy and his brandless soft drink and this bowling lady?
Executive decision: These characters are now Eagle Man and Dog Lady.
Eagle Man using multiple fingers to finger the bowling ball makes the already-over-the-top act even more unbelievably over-the-top. His weird facial twitch was very funny.
Cut to Eagle Man killing Dog Lady, or something? It’s daytime.
Oh my god, and he’s using a bowling pin? Is this There Will Be Blood? Was he drinking her milkshake? Daniel Day Lewis could have probably pulled this role off, let’s be real.
We have our first glimpse below Eagle Man’s waist: Asics with cuffed pants and ankle socks-- the sure signs of a-sic fuck.
Dog Lady is still wearing her bowling shoes? Where did Eagle Man have the bowling pin in the earlier scene when he twitched his mouth? He was clearly fingering the balls with one hand while holding his tasty beverage with the other. So where was the pin? Was this bowling alley in the middle of the woods this whole time? Is that why it was so empty in the middle of the day? What happened to the rest of Dog Lady’s Snickers bar? And if you’re killing a person with a bowling pin, does it really take this many… strikes? What the hell is going on?
They censored Eagle Man’s Buick’s license plate but not the name of the auto dealership <3
Interlude:
JUST CHILLING IN THE CAR
IN MY BLOOD-SOAKED CLOTHES
I DON’T GIVE A FUCK
I JUST KILLED THAT HOE
Yikes, Eagle Man really struggled to open that Snickers.
God, I am so sick of the use of a reverb-soaked music box any time “creepy” music is needed.
Episode 2:
Opening shot – Stephan Harlot is wearing scrubs, supine in a pumpkin patch. She has spilled cranberry juice all over herself and is dozing among the gourds. Whatever has transpired does not appear to have disturbed her meticulously sculpted brows or nearly-vertical eyeliner wings.
MABEL, in all-caps Impact font like a meme from 2007.
Her supervisor’s angry speech sounds like it was dubbed in late at night by someone who was trying very very hard to not wake up their parents.
He said “get the hell out of my office” but she remained seated, breathing dramatically.
Next shot: She no longer has her stethoscope, which shows that this is sort of the nurse version of “Turn in your badge and gun.”
Why is she using a payphone? Is this the lobby of a Waffle House? Where are we?
We didn’t hear any of the other end of the phone call, but then when Daddy was supposed to have hung up, they added a dial tone that we could hear? But then Marble kept saying “hello” into the dial tone over and over again like someone who has never communicated telephonically?
Oh, wait, there’s another guy in scrubs? Is this supposed to be the hospital cafeteria? Where are we?
A young man with hair 1.5x the size of his head comes through the door with a jelly donut and does the most insanely exaggerated double take I’ve ever seen.
Cue Stranger Things music as Stuffy Harlan rests her head on the second inappropriate object (a public pay phone) in under two minutes.
Does knifes really make that loud of sound when stabing into bodey?
Interlude:
Gourds and corn Crows in sky Snuggle into corpse Contented sigh Eat a donut Sweet jelly roll Watching more of this Will take its toll
The TV in the background just showing the “Spectrum” logo is fun.
Oh my god they matched on knockoff Tinder and are going to become a cute serial killer couple, this is the series arc, I’m calling it.
Episode 3: Harold’s Halloween Party
I am loving this dreamy romantic slow-mo high-saturation shot in the corn field where we can see straight up Eagle Man’s nostrils (still in torturous 60fps 4K).
Interestingly, Eagle Man’s Buick’s New York license plate KRT-9438 is no longer censored.
What in the Spirit Halloween is this shit? Inflatable Baby Yoda did not consent to being featured in this.
Three halfhearted taps on glass. Who knocks like that?
Wish.com Harley Quinn just said “You kind of remind me of my dad”? Also, isn’t this Stephanie’s older daughter? What are the odds that Stephanie suggested that line to connect her divorce partner to a man who does fucked up shit like finger bowling balls and smoke? Not subtle, lol
And Eagle Man doesn’t have a costume? Honestly, what kind of bizarro Tinder date would show up to take somebody to a Halloween party without a costume? But he does have a Hobby Lobby glittery pinecone and dead grass bouquet.
PREDICTION: Eagle Man is going to kill her rabbits.
A cute detail is that the smallest bully in The Bullying Flashback looks up at the older bully to make sure his bullying technique is proper. You can tell it’s a flashback because of the white vignetting around the edges of the screen and the fact that all the sounds are echoey.
Holy fucking shit, now Eagle Man is choking his Tinder date (eldest daughter of Stepnanny Hollow) in a corn field. The biggest mystery of these episodes so far is how they, like, got here?
The credits footage of Eagle Man jumping down the corn row in a bunny mask with his Rapist Glasses™ on top of the mask and his beard poking out from underneath is very fun.
Episode 4: Marble’s Car Troubles
Steve Harvey stands in front of her car. The hood is open, and she is staring into the smoking engine compartment. The engine is running, which is mysterious because Marble is also twirling car keys as she stands.
She frustratedly sighs and jumps in place, on a road that isn’t even a dirt road—it’s like, a vague path of discolored yellow grass through some other, healthier green grass. This car looks like it’s maybe a hearse and is also a Buick with New York plates. This level of detail and consistency firmly establishes the Coleman Brothers as auteurs not unlike Joel and Ethan Coen. Also the wheels have some bangin’ rims.
Dear Marble, getting into the car to have some privacy while you scream doesn’t really work when you’ve got the window open; it’s also not necessary when you’ve been off-roading in your Buick way out in the New York backcountry. When it comes to scenes of people throwing a tantrum while dressed as Wednesday Addams, Esther in Orphan did it way better.
Just to make sure we understand the extent of her displeasure, she makes a growl-y frustration sound and jumps in place with balled-up fists. She looks like a goth toddler, with her oversize cuffs and collar and a huge pink satin bow in her hair that I keep thinking is elf ears.
She walks in high heels over muddy, gravelly ground. Mad respect for that Oscar-worthy stunt.
1:34 – As of now, the word “Daddy” is a double-digit percentage of Hephanie Starlowe’s total lines across these episodes.
Once again, the phone is silent until Marble gets hung up on; once again, she says “Hello” to a dial tone.
Also, the super golden color grading is just not the right vibe for this auto shop. With the scene paused for me to write this, it looks like it’s from an insurance commercial or something.
“Well, if you wanna come by after hours, I’m sure we can work something out” says the mechanic, suggestively stroking his beard with a hand adorned with a wedding ring. Also, Marble seems shocked, but was she not arguably trying to suggest the same thing? Sexual favors for auto repair? Or does she think she can just ask nicely and then pay less money?
Also, there is so much missing time here. Like, did she get her car towed? I thought she was just using this place’s phone, but apparently the guy’s already been looking at her car the whole time? How did we get from the grass road to this auto shop? Why did she call her dad before she even knew how much it would cost?
Throbbing techno music kicks in at 3:05, just as Marble the Homewrecker suggestively locks eyes with the wedded elder mechanic. So far this could literally have been a porno.
Regarding the mechanic: “Well, he’s gonna die, I guess.”
I’m speechless. The offscreen yell at 4:10 was a spot-on copy of the Wilhelm Scream. Incredible.
Now murder is occurring, but it’s all so cringe-inducing that it’s making my face start to hurt. This hasn’t happened since Riverdale. But even Riverdale did it better. Rhetorical Q: if you scrape the bottom of the barrel hard enough, can you break through it to whatever unspeakable atrocity lies beneath? Such a question can only be answered by the Coleman auteurs.
OK, but really: the way Stephano Harley emerges from a smoky room while a sick guitar riff plays, and then she drills out the elder mechanic’s eye while blood shoots all over her face for several seconds? You can tell that this entire sequence is just a glorification of her killing people. The point of this whole series is “watch these people kill other people;” the only suspense is about how we’re going to get to that payoff. Is this the “darker side of things” Stephanie was referring to in her channel’s “About” section? Are these the “difficult matters”? Doesn’t she claim expertise in criminal psychology? How does someone who proselytizes about the incomprehensible evil of actual murderers reconcile those beliefs with having a recurring role in a series like this?
Final thought: It was not OK for her to squeeze that married man’s booby like that.
Brief interlude:
Here is the series in a nutshell, so far: Character – Male or Female Murderer. Location – One-off nonspecific location (not to be revisited). Scenario – A benign encounter with another person who becomes the murder victim. Murderer stares for several long seconds into the camera. So far, we’ve learned that 1) Marble has a father and a car that [still?] doesn’t work. 2) Eagle Man was bullied as a child at least one time.
Episode 5: Happy Halloween Harold
I believe there’s a non-zero chance that all the Halloween shit on the fucking walls is Stephanie’s. Also, Eagle Man’s boombox totally makes me think that this series is set in the past, so Episode 3’s inflatable Baby Yoda is anachronistic in a way that goes against everything the Coleman auteurs have come to represent.
A curfew for anyone under age 18? But haven’t all of the victims have been adults?
Watching Eagle Man try to carve a pumpkin that’s wobbling around on top of a slippery tablecloth is excruciating. I don’t believe this man has actually killed people; he can’t even stick a knife through a pumpkin without struggling.
Eagle Man has upgraded from his Asics to some very nice shiny black leather shoes.
What kind of kid walks up to a guy cleaning egg off his face to say “Trick or Treat”? And what kind of dad lets that kind of kid do that kind of thing?
Holy smokes, Mustache Dad can actually act! He’s, this guy’s great!
Dear God, it’s hours later, why is Eagle Man still egg-faced? Sipping milk on the porch with—
WAIT A FUCKING SECOND. Mustache Dad has pulled out a smartphone. We are in the present day. Holy shit. What a plot twist. I knew the Coleman auteurs wouldn’t let me down.
Ew, gross, man, you’re gonna get egg all over the inside of the mask.
Who keeps a Mallet on top of their Plates? “Ah, yes, I’ll just get the giant wooden mallet out of the plate cabinet.” My reaction to him getting that mallet off the top shelf was maybe the loudest scream that I scrumpt this entire time.
Episode 6 – Marble Strikes Again
“One day, you will wake up, and everything will be perfect.” Holy shit, that is the worst advice any parent has ever given a child. Oh, wait a second-- “Young Marble” was Stephanie’s daughter? And this video was only posted 5 months ago? So that means that Stephanie’s youngest daughter had to act in a scene depicting a heart-to-heart with her dad while asking whether she’d ever see her mommy again, while in real life there was actual family drama occurring? Yeah, that seems like a fine thing to subject a child to. And that’s not even an honest opinion, it’s just a fact!
Back in the present day, Marble has broken the series formula by revisiting a previous location. We join her in the bowling alley bathroom. Is this the glow-up scene where she cuts and dyes her hair? It’s a “getting cute” montage, but she’s already dressed and wearing makeup. But wait, what even is her living situation? Why is she grooming herself in a bowling alley? Where was she living before she got fired from the hospital? She asked if she could stay with Daddy four episodes ago, but where was she living before that? Maybe I should cut her some slack; you know she’s had a hard life because she’s wearing plaid.
Oh no, Marble got caught by the bowling alley security guard wearing a bulletproof vest. You know, those? Gotta watch out for those!! Honestly though, I love Security Professional. I would watch a whole series with just Mustache Dad and Security Professional.
The Missing Person poster for Dog Lady says if you have any information, call 911? Seriously?
The Security Professional SNIFFED THE SNICKERS WRAPPER AND IS NOW ON THE TRAIL?! But also, why is this bowling alley closed if it’s only—according to the clock on the microwave—7:47? But more importantly, where was the Security Professional when Eagle Man killed Dog Lady? And also, didn’t Security Professional have to walk past the counter that Marble was sleeping behind while walking to the vending machine? Plus also, she locked up the bowling alley from the inside, so she was presumably in there for a while. How did Marble get back in, open up the vending machine, and fall asleep? Does this series exist outside the bounds of linear time? Is there a gas leak?
Now Marble is somehow choking a person twice her size, and we’re watching it from “CAM6”? Does that mean this bowling alley has at least six security cameras? Did none of them see Eagle Man?
Concluding thought: The credits say, “This film is based on fictional characters and events.” It’s based on… fictional characters? Are you trying to meet a word count requirement, or something? That’s not based on anything, that’s just fiction, guys…

(NOTE: Only feature film categories are listed. Certain nominations omit teams of nominees and only list the film and/or certain individuals. Winners highlighted)

Producers Guild of America

Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures

• American Fiction (MGM)
• Anatomy of a Fall (Neon)
• Barbie (Warner Bros.)
• The Holdovers (Focus Features)
• Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple Original Films/Paramount Pictures)
• Maestro (Netflix)
• Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures)
• Past Lives (A24)
• Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures)
• The Zone of Interest (A24)

Award for Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures

• The Boy and the Heron (GKids)
• Elemental (Pixar)
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Sony Pictures)
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie (Illumination/Universal Pictures)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Paramount Pictures)**

Outstanding Producer of Documentary Theatrical Motion Pictures

• 20 Days in Mariupol
• American Symphony
• Beyond Utopia
• The Disappearance of Shere Hite
• The Mother of All Lies
• Smoke Sauna Sisterhood Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis)

Directors Guild of America

Feature Film

• Greta Gerwig – Barbie
• Yorgos Lanthimos – Poor Things
• Christopher Nolan – Oppenheimer
• Alexander Payne – The Holdovers
• Martin Scorsese – Killers of the Flower Moon

Documentaries

• Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp – Bobi Wine: The People's President
• Mstyslav Chernov – 20 Days in Mariupol
• Madeleine Gavin – Beyond Utopia
• Davis Guggenheim – Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
• D. Smith – Kokomo City

First-Time Feature Film

• Cord Jefferson – American Fiction
• Manuela Martelli – Chile '76
• Noora Niasari – Shayda
• A. V. Rockwell – A Thousand and One
• Celine Song – Past Lives

Screen Actors Guild

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role

• Bradley Cooper – Maestro as Leonard Bernstein
• Colman Domingo – Rustin as Bayard Rustin
• Paul Giamatti – The Holdovers as Paul Hunham
• Cillian Murphy – Oppenheimer as J. Robert Oppenheimer
• Jeffrey Wright – American Fiction as Thelonious "Monk" Ellison

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role

• Annette Bening – Nyad as Diana Nyad
• Lily Gladstone – Killers of the Flower Moon as Mollie Burkhart
• Carey Mulligan – Maestro as Felicia Montealegre
• Margot Robbie – Barbie as Barbie
• Emma Stone – Poor Things as Bella Baxter

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role

• Sterling K. Brown – American Fiction as Clifford "Cliff" Ellison
• Willem Dafoe – Poor Things as Dr. Godwin Baxter
• Robert De Niro – Killers of the Flower Moon as William King Hale
• Robert Downey Jr. – Oppenheimer as Lewis Strauss
• Ryan Gosling – Barbie as Ken

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role

• Emily Blunt – Oppenheimer as Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer
• Danielle Brooks – The Color Purple as Sofia
• Penélope Cruz – Ferrari as Laura Ferrari
• Jodie Foster – Nyad as Bonnie Stoll
• Da'Vine Joy Randolph – The Holdovers as Mary Lamb

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture

• American Fiction – Erika Alexander, Adam Brody, Sterling K. Brown, Keith David, John Ortiz, Issa Rae, Tracee Ellis Ross, Leslie Uggams, and Jeffrey Wright
• Barbie – Michael Cera, Will Ferrell, America Ferrera, Ryan Gosling, Ariana Greenblatt, Kate McKinnon, Helen Mirren, Rhea Perlman, Issa Rae, and Margot Robbie
• The Color Purple – Halle Bailey, Fantasia Barrino, Jon Batiste, Danielle Brooks, Ciara, Colman Domingo, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Louis Gossett Jr., Corey Hawkins, Taraji P. Henson, Phylicia Pearl Mpasi, and Gabriella Wilson "H.E.R."
• Killers of the Flower Moon – Tantoo Cardinal, Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brendan Fraser, Lily Gladstone, John Lithgow, and Jesse Plemons
• Oppenheimer – Casey Affleck, Emily Blunt, Kenneth Branagh, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, Cillian Murphy, and Florence Pugh

Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture

• Barbie
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
• John Wick: Chapter 4
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

Writers Guild of America

Best Original Screenplay

• Air – Alex Convery
• Barbie – Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach
• The Holdovers - David Hemingson
• May December – Samy Burch; story by Samy Burch & Alex Mechanik
• Past Lives – Celine Song

Best Adapted Screenplay

• American Fiction – Cord Jefferson; based on the novel Erasure by Percival Everett
• Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. – Kelly Fremon Craig; based on the book by Judy Blume
• Killers of the Flower Moon – Eric Roth and Martin Scorsese; based on the book by David Grann
• Nyad – Julia Cox; based on the book Find a Way by Diana Nyad
• Oppenheimer – Christopher Nolan; based on the book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

Best Documentary Screenplay

• Bella! – Jeff L. Lieberman
• It Ain't Over – Sean Mullin
• The Pigeon Tunnel – Errol Morris
• Stamped from the Beginning – David Teague; based on the book Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi
• What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears? – John Scheinfeld

American Society of Cinematographers

Winners Announced March 5

Theatrical Feature Film Nominees

• Edward Lachman, ASC for El Conde
• Matthew Libatique, ASC, LPS for Maestro
• Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC for Killers of the Flower Moon
• Robbie Ryan, ISC for Poor Things
• Hoyte van Hoytema, ASC, FSF, NSC for Oppenheimer

Spotlight Award

• Eric Branco for Story Ave.
• Krum Rodriguez for Citizen Saint
• Warwick Thornton for The New Boy

Documentary Award

• Jeff Hutchens for Murder in Big Horn "Episode 1"
• Curren Sheldon for King Coal
• D. Smith for Kokomo City

American Cinema Editors

Best Edited Feature Film (Drama, Theatrical)

• Anatomy of a Fall – Laurent Sénéchal
• Killers of the Flower Moon – Thelma Schoonmaker
• Maestro – Michelle Tesoro
• Oppenheimer – Jennifer Lame
• Past Lives – Keith Fraase

Best Edited Feature Film (Comedy, Theatrical)

• Air – William Goldenberg
• American Fiction – Hilda Rasula
• Barbie – Nick Houy
• The Holdovers – Kevin Tent
• Poor Things – Yorgos Mavropsaridis

Best Edited Documentary (Theatrical)

• 20 Days in Mariupol – Michelle Mizner
• American Symphony – Sammy Dane, Matthew Heineman, Jim Hession, and Fernando Villegas
• Joan Baez: I Am a Noise – Maeve O'Boyle
• Little Richard: I Am Everything – Nyneve Minnear and Jake Hostetter
• Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie – Michael Harte

Best Edited Animated Feature Film (Theatrical or Non-Theatrical)

• Elemental – Stephen Schaffer
• Nimona – Randy Trager and Erin Crackel
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse – Michael Andrews
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie – Eric Osmond
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem – Greg Levitan

Visual Effects Society

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature

• Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: Ben Snow, Diana Giorgiutti, Khalid Almeerani, Scott Benza, and Sam Conway
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: Stephane Ceretti, Susan Pickett, Alexis Wajsbrot, Guy Williams, and Dan Sudick
• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: Andrew Whitehurst, Kathy Siegel, Robert Weaver, Julian Hutchens, and Alistair Williams
• Oppenheimer: Andrew Jackson, Mike Chambers (VES), Giacomo Mineo, Dave Drzewiecki, and Scot Fisher
• The Creator: Jay Cooper, Julian Levi, Ian Comley, Charmaine Chan, Neil Corbould (VES)

Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature

• John Wick: Chapter 4: Janelle Croshaw Ralla, Reina Sparks, Jonathan Rothbart, Javier Roca, and Gerd Nefzer
• Killers of the Flower Moon: Pablo Helman, Brian Barlettani, Sam Bassett , and Brandon Keys McLaughlin
• Napoleon: Charley Henley, Sarah Tulloch, Luc-Ewen Martin-Fenouillet, Simone Coco, and Neil Corbould (VES)
• Nyad: Jake Braver, Fiona Campbell Westgate, R. Christopher White, and Mohsen Mousavi
• Society of the Snow: Félix Bergés, Micaela Gagliano, Laura Pedro, Ezequiel Larrú, and Pau Costa

Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Feature

• Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget: Jon Biggins, Jim Lewis, Charles Copping, and Matthew Perry
• Elemental: Peter Sohn, Denise Ream, Sanjay Bakshi, and Stephen Marshall
• Nimona: Archie Donato, Yancy Lindquist, Theodore Ty, and Anthony Kemp
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: Alan Hawkins, Christian Hejnal, Michael Lasker, and Matt Hausman
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem: Matthieu Rouxel, Marie Balland, Jacques Daigle, and Vincent Leroy

Outstanding Animated Character in a Photoreal Feature

• Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (Topo the Octopus): Thomas Ward, Andrew Butler, Felix Slinger-Thompson, and Jacob Burstein
• Godzilla Minus One (Godzilla): Kosuke Taguchi and Takashi Yamazaki
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (Rocket): Nathan McConnel, Andrea De Martis, Antony Magdalinidis,and Rachel Williams
• Wonka (Oompa Loompa), Dale Newton, Kunal Ayer, Valentina Ercolani, and Gabor Foner

Outstanding Character Animation in an Animated Feature

• Elemental (Ember): Gwendelyn Enderoglu, Jared Fong, Jonathan Hoffman, and Patrick Witting
• Elemental (Wade): Max Gilbert, Jacob Kuenzel, Dave Strick, and Benjamin Su
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Spot): Christopher Mangnall, Craig Feifarek, Humberto Rosa, and Nideep Varghese
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Superfly): Gregory Coelho, Anne-Claire Leroux, Simon Cuisinier, and Olivier Pierre

Outstanding Created Environment in a Photoreal Feature

• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (Knowhere): Omar Alejandro Lavrador Ibanez, Fabien Julvecourt, Klaudio Ladavac, and Benjamin Patterson
• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Underwater Wreck Environment): Johan Gabrielsson, Adrian Tsang, Stefan Andersson, and Martin Eneroth
• John Wick: Chapter 4 (Place de L’Étoile): Manuel Gaudreau, Fabrice Vienne, Vignesh Ravi, and Laurent Makowski
• The Creator (Floating Village): John Seru, Guy Williams, Vincent Techer, and Timothée Maron

Outstanding Created Environment in an Animated Feature

• Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (Chicken Island): Charles Copping, Matthew Perry, Jim Lewis, and Jon Biggins
• Elemental (Element City): Chris Bernardi, Brandon Montell, David Shavers, and Ting Zhang
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Mumbattan City): Taehyun Park, YJ Lee, Pepe Orozco, and Kelly Han
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Midtown Manhattan): Olivier Mitonneau, Eddy Frechou, Guillaume Chevet, and Arnaud Philippe-Giraux

Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in a CG Project

• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: Joanna Davison, Cheyana Wilkinson, Michael Cozens, and Jason Desjarlais
• Migration: Guylo Homsy, Damien Bapst, Antoine Collet, and David Dangin
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: Rich Turner, Randolph Lizarda, Daniela Campos Little, and Thomas Campos
• The Creator: Roel Coucke, Christopher Potter, Amanda Johnstone-Batt, and Jeremy Bloch

Outstanding Model in a Photoreal or Animated Project

• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (The Arête): Kenneth Johansson, Jason Galeon, Tim Civil, and Artur Vil
• Peter Pan & Wendy (Jolly Roger): Patrick Comtois, Thomas Gallardo, Harrison Stark, and David Thibodeau
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Spider HQ): Dongick David Sheen, Mark JeongWoong Lee, Mikaela Bantog, and René Völker
• The Creator (Nomad): Oliver Kane, Mat Monro, Florence Green, and Serban Ungureanu

Outstanding Effects Simulations in a Photoreal Feature

• Napoleon: Koen Hofmeester, Gianmichele Mariani, Clair Bellens, and Hernan Llano Duque
• Nyad (Stormy Waters) Korbinian Meier, Sindy Saalfeld, David Michielsen, and Andreas Vrhovsek
• The Creator: Ludovic Ramisandraina, Raul Essig, Mathieu Chardonnet, and Lewis Taylor
• The Nun 2: Laurent Creusot, Sebastien Podsiadlo, Michael Moercant, and Benjamin Saurine

Outstanding Effects Simulations in an Animated Feature

• Elemental: Kristopher Campbell, Greg Gladstone, Jon Reisch, and Kylie Wijsmuller
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: Pav Grochola, Filippo Maccari, Naoki Kato, and Nicola Finizio
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem: Louis Marsaud, Paul-Etienne Bourde, Serge Martin, and Marine Pommereul
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Simon Pate, Christophe Vazquez, and Milo Riccarand

Outstanding Composition and Lighting in a Feature

• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: Indah Maretha, Beck Veitch, Nathan Abbot, and Steve McGillen
• John Wick: Chapter 4 (Apartment Massacre Videogame Style): Javier Roca, Julien Forest, Thomas Bourdis, and Dominik Kirouac
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: Bret St.Clair, Kieron Cheuk-Chi Lo, Kelly Christophers, and Rowan Young
• The Creator (Bar): Phil Prates, Min Kim, Nisarg Suthar, and Toshiko Miura
• The Creator (Spaceships): Ben O-Brien, Juan Espigares Enriquez, Wesley Roberts, and Hayes Brien

Outstanding Special (Practical) Effects in a Photoreal Project

• I’m a Virgo: John McLeod, Scott Kirvan, Alec Gillis, and Carl Miller
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One: Neil Corbould (VES), Ray Ferguson, Keith Dawson, and Chris Motjuoadi
• Oppenheimer: Scott Fisher, James Rollins, and Mario Vanillo
• Society of the Snow: Pau Costa, Carlos Laguna, Guillermo F. Aldunate, and Eloy Cervera

Emerging Technology Award

• Blue Beetle (Machine Learning Cloth): JohnMark Gibbons, Allen Ruilova, Momme Carl, and David Minor
• Elemental (Volumetric Neural Style Transfer): Vinicius C. Azevedo, Byungsoo Kim, Raphael Ortiz, and Paul Kanyuk
• The Flash (Volumetric Capture): Stephan Trojansky, Thomas Ganshorn, Oliver Pilarski, and Lukas Lepicovsky
• Wish (Dynamic Screen Space Textures for Coherent Stylization): Brent Burley, Daniel Teece, and Brian J. Green

Motion Pictures Sound Editors

Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing - Feature Animation

• Elemental
• Migration
• Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie

Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing - Feature Documentary

• 32 Sounds
• American Symphony
• Mourning in Lod
• Still: A Michael J Fox Movie
• Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour

Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing - Foreign Language Feature

• Anatomy of a Fall
• The Zone of Interest
• Godzilla Minus One
• Society of the Snow

Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing - Feature Dialogue ADR

• Barbie
• Killers of the Flower Moon
• Maestro
• Napoleon
• Oppenheimer
• Poor Things

Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing - Feature Effects/Foley

• Gran Turismo
• Ferarri
• John Wick Chapter Four
• Napoleon
• Oppenheimer
• The Killer

Outstanding Achievement in Music Editing - Documentary

• American Symphony
• Pianoforte
• Still: A Michael J Fox Story
• WHAM!

Outstanding Achievement in Music Editing - Feature Motion Picture

• Barbie
• Creed III
• Maestro
• Oppenheimer
• Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse
• Wonka

Cinema Audio Society

Motion Picture: Live Action

• Barbie - Nina Rice (Production Mixer), Kevin O’Connell (Re-Recording Mixer), Ai-Ling Lee (Re-Recording Mixer), Peter Cobbin (Scoring Mixer), Kirsty Whalley (Scoring Mixer), Bobby Johanson (ADR Mixer), Kevin Schultz (Foley Mixer)
  
• Ferrari - Lee Orloff (Production Mixer), Andy Nelson (Production Mixer), Tony Lamberti (Re-Recording Mixer), Luke Schwarzweller (Re-Recording Mixer), Andrew Dudman (Scoring Mixer), Matthew Wood (ADR Mixer), Giorgi Lekishvili (Foley Mixer)
  
• Killers of the Flower Moon - Mark Ulano (Production Mixer), Tom Fleischman (Re-Recording Mixer), Eugene Gearty (Re-Recording Mixer), George A. Lara (Foley Mixer)
  
• Maestro - Steven A. Morrow (Production Mixer), Tom Ozanich (Re-Recording Mixer), Dean A. Zupancic (Re-Recording Mixer), Nick Baxter (Scoring Mixer), Bobby Johanson (ADR Mixer), Walter Spencer (Foley Mixer)
  
• Oppenheimer Willie D. Burton (Production Mixer), Gary A. Rizzo (Re-Recording Mixer), Kevin O’Connell (Re-Recording Mixer), Chris Fogel (Scoring Mixer), Tavish Grade (Foley Mixer), Jack Cucci (Foley Mixer), Mikel Parraga-Wills (Foley Mixer)
  

Motion Picture: Animated

• Elemental - Vince Caro (Original Dialogue Mixer), Paul McGrath (Original Dialogue Mixer), Stephen Urata (Re-Recording Mixer), Ren Klyce (Re-Recording Mixer), Thomas Vicari (Scoring Mixer), Scott Curtis (Foley Mixer)
  
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - Brian Smith (Original Dialogue Mixer), Aaron Hasson (Original Dialogue Mixer), Howard London (Original Dialogue Mixer), Michael Semanick (Re-Recording Mixer), Juan Peralta (Re-Recording Mixer), Sam Okell (Scoring Mixer), Randy K. Singer (Foley Mixer)
  
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem - Doc Kane (Original Dialogue Mixer), Michael Semanick (Re-Recording Mixer), Mark Mangini (Re-Recording Mixer), Trent Reznor (Scoring Mixer), Atticus Ross (Scoring Mixer), Chris Cirino (ADR Mixer), Chelsea Body(Foley Mixer)
  
• The Boy and the Heron – Kôji Kasamatsu (Original Dialogue & Re-Recording Mixer)
  
• The Super Mario Brothers Movie - Carlos Sotolongo (Original Dialogue Mixer), Pete Horner (Re-Recording Mixer), Juan Peralta (Re-Recording Mixer), Casey Stone (Scoring Mixer), Doc Kane (ADR Mixer), Richard Durante (Foley Mixer)
  

Motion Picture: Documentary

• 32 Sounds - Laura Cunningham (Production Mixer), Mark Mangini (Re-Recording Mixer), Ben Greenberg (Scoring Mixer), Bobby Johanson (ADR Mixer), Blake Collins (Foley Mixer)
  
• American Symphony - Tom Paul (Re-Recording Mixer), Tristan Baylis (Re-Recording Mixer), Ryan Collison (Foley Mixer),
  
• Little Richard: I Am Everything - Tom Paul (Re-Recording Mixer)
  
• Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie - Skip Lievsay (Re-Recording Mixer), Paul Urmson (Re-Recording Mixer), Joel Dougherty (Re-Recording Mixer), John Michael Caldwell (Scoring Mixer), Micah Blaichman (Foley Mixer
  
• Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour - Jacob Farron Smith (Production Mixer), John Ross (Re-Recording Mixer), David Payne (Re-Recording Mixer), Christopher Rowe (Re-Recording Mixer)
  

Casting Society of America

Feature Animation

• Elemental (Disney): Natalie Lyon, Kevin Reher, Kate Hansen-Birnbaum (Associate Casting Director)
• Leo (Netflix): Danielle Aufiero, Amber Horn
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Sony): Mary Hidalgo
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Paramount): Rich Delia, Adam Richards (Associate Casting Director)
• Wish (Disney): Grace C. Kim

Feature Big Budget - Comedy

• Air (Amazon Studios): Mary Vernieu, Lindsay Graham Ahanonu, Sydney Shircliff (Associate Casting Director)
• Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (Searchlight): Francine Maisler, Melissa Kostenbauder, Betsy Fippinger (Location Casting), Tara Feldstein (Location Casting), Chase Paris (Location Casting), Molly Rose (Associate Casting Director)
• Asteroid City (Focus Features): Douglas Aibel, Jina Jay (Location Casting), Matthew Glasner (Associate Casting Director)
• Cocaine Bear (Paramount): Debra Zane, Dylan Jury, Alli Coffey (Location Casting)
• Wonka (Warner Bros.): Nina Gold

Feature Big Budget - Drama

• The Color Purple (Warner Bros.): Bernard Telsey, Tiffany Little Canfield, Destiny Lilly
• Maestro (Netflix): Shayna Markowitz, Dayna Katz (Associate Casting Director)
• Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple): Ellen Lewis, Rene Haynes, Kate Sprance (Associate Casting Director)
• Oppenheimer (Universal): John Papsidera
• Saltburn (Amazon Studios): Kharmel Cochrane

Feature Studio or Independent - Comedy

• American Fiction (Amazon Studios): Jennifer Euston, Lisa Lobel (Location Casting), Angela Peri (Location Casting), Melissa Morris (Associate Casting Director)
• Bottoms (Amazon Studios): Laura Rosenthal, Maribeth Fox, Meagan Lewis (Location Casting), Kimberly Ostroy (Associate Casting Director)
• The Holdovers (Focus Features): Susan Shopmaker, Lisa Lobel (Location Casting), Angela Peri (Location Casting), Melissa Morris (Associate Casting Director)
• Joy Ride (Lionsgate): Rich Delia, Kara Eide (Location Casting), Kris Woznesensky (Location Casting), Adam Richards (Associate Casting Director)
• Theater Camp (Searchlight): Kristian Charbonier, Bernard Telsey

Feature Studio or Independent - Drama

• The Iron Claw (A24): Susan Shopmaker, Brent Caballero (Location Casting)
• May December (Netflix): Laura Rosenthal, Meagan Lewis (Location Casting), Rebecca Carfagna (Location Casting), Kimberly Ostroy (Associate Casting Director)
• Past Lives (A24): Ellen Chenoweth, Susanne Scheel
• Priscilla (A24): Nicole Daniels, Courtney Bright, John Buchan, Jason Knight
• Rustin (Netflix): Avy Kaufman, Donna Belajac (Location Casting), Missy Finnell (Location Casting), Scotty Anderson (Associate Casting Director)

Feature Low Budget - Comedy or Drama

• Birth/Rebirth (IFC Films): Allison Twardziak, Danielle Pretsfelder Demchick
• Emily (Warner Bros.): Fiona Weir
• Jules (Bleecker Street): Avy Kaufman
• Memory (Ketchup Entertainment): Susan Shopmaker
• Monica (IFC Films): Emily Schweber, D. Lynn Meyers (Location Casting)

Feature Micro Budget - Comedy or Drama

• The Donor Party (Vertical): Anthony J. Kraus
• How I Learned to Fly (Film Movement): Jessica Sherman
• Summoning Sylvia (The Horror Collective): Steven Tylor O’Connor
• What Comes Around (IFC Films): Eyde Belasco, Jeff Johnson (Location Casting)
• Your Lucky Day (Well Go USA Entertainment): Jessica Sherman

The Zeitgeist Award

• Barbie (Warner Bros.): Lucy Bevan, Olivia Grant (Associate Casting Director)
• The Flash (Warner Bros.): Rich Delia, Kate Ringsell, Adam Richards (Associate Casting Director)
• The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (Lionsgate): Debra Zane, Dylan Jury, Simone Bär (Location Casting)
• Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire (Netflix): Kristy Carlson, Jeanette Benzie (Associate Casting Director)
• Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (Paramount Pictures): Wittney Horton, additional voice casting by Ruth Lambert and Robert McGee, Eve Streger (Associate Casting Director)

Art Directors Guild

Excellence in Production Design for a Contemporary Film

• Beau Is Afraid – Fiona Crombie
• John Wick: Chapter 4 – Kevin Kavanaugh
• The Killer – Donald Graham Burt
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One – Gary Freeman
• Saltburn – Suzie Davies

Excellence in Production Design for a Period Film

• Asteroid City – Adam Stockhausen
• Killers of the Flower Moon – Jack Fisk
• Maestro – Kevin Thompson
• Napoleon – Arthur Max
• Oppenheimer – Ruth De Jong

Excellence in Production Design for a Fantasy Film

• Barbie – Sarah Greenwood
• The Creator – James Clyne
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 – Beth Mickle
• Poor Things – James Price and Shona Heath
• Wonka – Nathan Crowley

Excellence in Production Design for an Animated Film

• The Boy and the Heron – Yôji Takeshige
• Elemental – Don Shank
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse – Patrick O'Keefe
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie – Guillaume Aretos
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem – Yashar Kassai

Guild of Music Supervisors

Best Music Supervision for Film Budgeted Over $25 Million

• The Holdovers
• My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3
• They Cloned Tyrone
• Barbie
• Maestro
• Saltburn
• Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse
• Are You There God? Its Me, Margaret
• Wonka
• Air

Best Music Supervision for Film Budgeted $25 Million And Under

• The Iron Claw
• Jesus Revolution
• All of Us Strangers
• Polite Society
• Flamin' Hot
• Joy Ride

Best Music Supervision for Film Budgeted $10 Million And Under

• Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
• Brother
• Past Lives
• Somewhere in Queens
• Eileen
• War Pony
• Paint
• Theater Camp

Best Music Supervision for a Non-Theatrically Released Film

• Change Can Dunk (TIE)
• Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain
• Rye Lane
• Sitting in Bars With Cake
• Family Switch
• Totally Killer (TIE)
• A Million Miles Away
• Heist 88
• Praise This

Best Song Written and/or Recorded for a Film

• Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse (Am I Dreaming) - Mike Dean, Peter Lee Johnson, Rakim Mayers, Roisee, Leland Wayne, and Landon Wayne
• Theater Camp (Camp Isn't Home) - Noah Galvin, Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman, Ben Platt, and Mark Sonnenblick
• The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (Can't Catch Me Now) - Dan Nigro and Olivia Rodrigo
• Barbie (I'm Just Ken) - Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt
• American Symphony (It Never Went Away) - Jon Batiste and Dan Wilson
• Joy Ride (Juicy) - Isak Alvedahl, Kirubel Swedin, and Sandra Wikstrom
• Totally Killer (Little Bit 'O Soul) - John Carter and Kenneth Hawker
• Past Lives (Quiet Eyes) - Zachary Dawes and Sharon Van Etten
• Rustin (Road to Freedom) - Lenny Kravitz
• Barbie (What I Was Made For) - Billie Eilish O’Connell, Finneas O’Connell*

Costume Designers Guild

Excellence in Contemporary Film

• American Fiction – Rudy Mance
• May December – April Napier
• Nyad – Kelli Jones
• Renfield – Lisa Lovaas
• Saltburn – Sophie Canale

Excellence in Period Film

• Killers of the Flower Moon – Jacqueline West
• Maestro – Mark Bridges
• Napoleon – Janty Yates & Dave Crossman
• Oppenheimer – Ellen Mirojnick
• Poor Things – Holly Waddington

Excellence in Sci-Fi/Fantasy Film

• Barbie – Jacqueline Durran
• Haunted Mansion – Jeffrey Kurland
• The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes – Trish Summerville
• The Little Mermaid – Colleen Atwood & Christine Cantella
• Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire – Stephanie Porter

Excellence in Costume Illustration

• 1923: War and the Turquoise Tide – Maggie S. Chan
• Haunted Mansion – Barbra Araujo
• The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Song Songbirds & Snakes – Oksana Nedavniaya
• Loki: 1893 – Felipe Sanchez
• Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire – Jason Pastrana

Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild

Best Contemporary Make-up

• Candy Cane Lane - Tym Shutchai Buacharern, Michele Lewis, Jennifer Zide-Essex, Yvettra Grantham
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - Jane Galli, Personal
• The Haunted Mansion - Kimberly Jones, Dionne Wynn, Bridgit Crider, Carla VanNessa Wallace
• NYAD - Felicity Bowring, Ann Maree Hurley, Julie Hewett, Mahar Lessner
• Saltburn - Siân Miller, Laura Allen

Best Period and/or Character Makeup

• Barbie - Ivana Primorac, Victoria Down, Maha Mimo
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 - Alexei Dmitriew, Nicole Sortillon, Amos Samantha Ward, LuAndra Whitehurs
• Maestro - Siann Grigg, Jackie Risotto, Elisa Tallerico, Nicky Pattison-Illum
• Oppenheimer - Luisa Abel, Jason Hamer, Kerrin Jackson, Jamie Loree Hess
• Poor Things - Nadia Stacey

Best Special Makeup Effects

• Golda - Karen Thomas, Eva Susanna Johnson Theodosiou
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - Alexei Dmitriew, Lindsay MacGowen, Shane Mahan, Scott Stoddard
• Maestro - Kazu Hiro, Sian Grigg, Duncan Jarman, Mike Mekash
• Poor Things - Nadia Stacey, Mark Coulier
• Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire - Ozzy Alvarez, Justin Raleigh, Kelsey Berk, Jonathan Shroyer

Best Contemporary Hair Styling

• Candy Cane Lane - Yvette Shelton, Shian Banks, Stacey Morris, Maisha Oliver
• Joyride - Jeannie Chow, Kim Lee
• NYAD - Daniel Curet, Vanessa Columbo, Enzo Angileri, Darlene Brumfeld
• Pain Hustlers - Michelle Johnson, Dennis Bailey
• Saltburn - Siân Miller, Laura Allen

Best Period Hair Styling and/or Character Hair Styling

• Barbie - Ivana Primorac, Marie Larkin, Clare Corsick
• Chevalier - Roo Maurice, Francesco Pegoretti
• The Color Purple - Lawrence Davis, Andrea Mona Bowman, Tym Wallace
• Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 3 - Cassandra Lyn Russek, Stephanie Fenner, Peter Tothpal, Connie Criswell
• Maestro - Kay Georgiou, Lori McCoy-Bell, Jameson Eaton, Amanda Duffy-Evans

Society of Composers and Lyricists

Outstanding Original Score For a Studio Film

• Anthony Willis - Saltburn
• Joe Hisaishi - The Boy and the Heron
• Ludwig Göransson - Oppenheimer
• Laura Karpman - American Fiction
• Robbie Robertson - Killers of the Flower Moon

Outstanding Original Score For an Independent Film

• Jon Batiste - American Symphony
• John Powell - Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
• Daniel Pemberton - Ferrari
• Mica Levi - The Zone of Interest
• Fabrizio Mancinelli and Richard M. Sherman - Mushka

Outstanding Original Song For a Drama or Documentary

• Olivia Rodrigo and Dan Nigro - Can’t Catch Me Now (Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes)
• Jon Batiste and Dan Wilson - It Never Went Away(American Symphony)
• Lenny Kravitz - Road to Freedom (Rustin)
• Nicholas Britell and Taura Stinson - Slip Away (Carmen)
• Sharon Farber and Noah Benshea - Better Times (Jacob the Baker)

Outstanding Original Song For a Comedy or Musical

• Billie Eilish O’Connell and Finneas O’Connell - What Was I Made For? (Barbie)
• Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt - I’m Just Ken (Barbie)
• Diane Warren - The Fire Inside (Flamin' Hot)
• Heather McIntosh, Allyson Newman and Taura Stinson - All About Me (The L-Word)
• Jack Black, John Spiker, Eric Osmond, Michael Jelenic, and Aaron Horvath - Peaches (Super Mario Bros. Movie)

David Raksin Award for Emerging Talent

• Kenny Wood - The Naughty Nine
• Hannah Parrott - After Death
• Fabrizio Mancinelli - The Land of Dreams
• Catherine Joy - Home Is A Hotel
• Allyson Newman - Commitment to Life

Set Decorators Society of America

Best Achievement in DécoDesign of a Contemporary Feature Film

• The Killer – Brandi Kalish (Set Decoration); Donald Graham Burt (Production Design)
• Leave the World Behind – David Schlesinger (Set Decoration); Anastasia White (Production Design)
• May December – Jess Royal (Set Decoration); Sam Lisenco (Production Design)
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One – Raffaella Giovannetti (Set Decoration); Gary Freeman (Production Design)
• Saltburn – Charlotte Dirickx (Set Decoration); Suzie Davies (Production Design)

Best Achievement in DécoDesign of a Period Feature Film

• Killers of the Flower Moon – Adam Willis (Set Decoration); Jack Fisk (Production Design)
• Maestro – Rena DeAngelo (Set Decoration); Kevin Thompson (Production Design)
• Napoleon – Elli Griff (Set Decoration); Arthur Max (Production Design)
• Oppenheimer – Claire Kaufman (Set Decoration); Ruth De Jong (Production Design)
• Poor Things – Zsuzsa Mihalek (Set Decoration); Shona Heath & James Price (Production Design)

Best Achievement in DécoDesign of a Science Fiction or Fantasy Feature Film

• Barbie – Katie Spencer (Set Decoration); Sarah Greenwood (Production Design)
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 – Rosemary Brandenburg (Set Decoration); Beth Mickle (Production Design)
• The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes – Sabine Schaaf (Set Decoration); Uli Hanisch (Production Design)
• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny – Anna Pinnock (Set Decoration); Adam Stockhausen (Production Design)
• Wonka – Lee Sandales (Set Decoration); Nathan Crowley (Production Design)

Best Achievement in DécoDesign of a Comedy or Musical Feature Film

• American Fiction – Kyra Friedman Curcio (Set Decoration); Jonathan Guggenheim (Production Design)
• Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. – Selina M. Van den Brink (Set Decoration); Steve Saklad (Production Design)
• Asteroid City – Kris Moran (Set Decoration); Adam Stockhausen (Production Design)
• Candy Cane Lane – Jan Pascale (Set Decoration); Aaron Osborne (Production Design)
• The Little Mermaid – Gordon Sim (Set Decoration); John Myhre (Production Design)

I'm looking for feedback on the unedited novella prequel to my published novel, Love on the D-List, which reviewers describe as, "Emotional and laugh-out-loud funny." I haven't written the official blurb yet, but here's a mockup of one:
Sixteen-year-old Theo Young plans to spend his summer in the city playing guitar and convincing his secret crush—another boy—to kiss him. But Theo’s father, who is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, drags Theo to a redneck campground in Vermont to hangout with an old buddy and his teenage son, Brady. Though Theo and Brady were inseparable for the first four years of their lives, like twins, after Theo’s family moved away, Brady became the gold standard Theo couldn’t measure up to, the perfect son who was not only athletic and popular with girls, but smart, too. Will these two boys find the close bond they shared as young children or will they continue to resent each other?
Here is an excerpt of the first three chapters:
Chapter 1
I cuffed the bottom of my jeans and slid on Uncle James’s old Adidas jacket. It was spectacularly hideous, a prototype that had never made it to production. The body was made of light brown corduroy, and the sleeves were cobalt blue with red stripes down the sides.
I didn’t wear it very often, not wanting to overexpose its garish brilliance. But tonight was a special occasion. Tonight, I was going to Austin Cavanaugh’s party. He’d invited me himself.
There were only a handful of openly gay kids in my school, and none as hot as Austin, who was not only hot, but also class president and captain of the soccer team. We weren’t friends, exactly. But we weren’t strangers, either. We just ran in different circles.
Austin was a jock and a nerd, and all his friends were rich and connected, like Raj Reddy, who spent his summers at his grandparents’ villa in the south of France. I, meanwhile, slummed it with the other lowlifes whose parents couldn’t afford to buy them BMW’s and designer handbags. The only reason I got to attend Worldview Academy was because my uncle dog-sat for a woman on the board of directors.
But things were looking up for me. Austin had recently broken up with Chad Hollister, the second hottest guy in school, and I’d recently gotten my braces off. My star was on the rise, and tonight was going to be epic. I’m talking, like, first kiss and first boyfriend epic.
“Theo, come here,” Dad called from the living room, his voice uncharacteristically animated. “I’ve got something to tell you.”
I rinsed out my mouth and pulled my gaze from the mirror. I’d been too skinny before my recent growth spurt, and now I just looked like a well-dressed hat stand. But my new smile was on point, my new glasses were trendy as fuck, and I was in a band, so all was not lost.
“What?” I said, entering the living room. “I already told you there’s not gonna be any alcohol at the party.”
There was definitely going to be alcohol at the party. Stephanie Wallace’s older brother was bringing two kegs, not that I was planning to drink. I didn’t need alcohol to lower my inhibitions.
Dad smiled and ruffled my hair. “Guess where we’re gonna spend the summer.”
“Uh, right here.” Dad knew my band, Puddle of Heart, had two gigs lined up, not to mention practice every day. He also knew not to touch my hair.
“Guess again. Dave’s mom broke her hip, and she’s lettin’ us use her camper for the whole month of July. It’s already paid for and everythin’.”
“What?”
“You’re gonna love this campground. It’s right on Lake Burnham, and there’s a swimmin’ pool and a miniature golf course. Plus, Dave just bought a motor boat, so we won’t have to fight over who gets to be captain. We can both just sit back and relax. And Brady will be there, so you’ll already have a friend.”
Brady was not my friend. Brady was the opposite of my friend. He was my enemy. Well, maybe not my enemy. He was more like the gold standard I could never measure up to.
Our dads were best friends. And since Brady and I were only two weeks apart in age, we’d spent our whole lives being compared to each other. Apparently, before we’d moved to the city, Brady and I had been inseparable, almost like twins. We’d even napped together in the same crib. But that had been twelve years ago. We were sixteen now and polar opposites.
Brady was athletic, smart, and classically handsome. I was uncoordinated, easily distracted, and goofy-looking. In third grade, while I’d been in remedial reading, Brady had been cruising through chapter books. In middle school, while Brady had been dating girls and going to dances, I’d been playing video games in my best friend’s basement. Now, in high school, I got to hear all about Brady’s game-winning goals and stare at his well-defined muscles in the newspaper clippings Dad stuck to the fridge.
“We can’t go camping,” I said. “I already have plans for the summer.”
“Well, change ‘em.”
“I can’t change them. I’m the guitar player. Without me, there’s no band.”
“It’s only for the month of July. You’ll still have all of August to screw around in Baxter’s basement.”
“We don’t screw around.” Dad never took Puddle of Heart seriously.
“Come on, I thought you’d be excited. Don’t you wanna get to know your roots? We can even take a trip to see the old house.”
“I can’t go, Dad. I can’t do that to my bandmates. I made a commitment.”
Dad’s smile vanished, and my stomach twisted. Dad rarely smiled these days.
“But you should still go,” I said, hating the sullen look on his face. “I’ll just stay here with Uncle James.”
“You can’t. Jimmy’s goin’, too. Come on, it’s gonna be fun. We gotta make these memories while we still can. And you were born in Vermont. It’s in your blood.”
Dad’s words brought the sting of tears to my eyes, but I was too mad to cry. How could he do this to me? How could he ruin my summer and then use his illness to guilt-trip me into not being upset about it?
“I know it’s not what you had planned. But sometimes, the best things in life come from ruined plans, from takin’ a chance on somethin’ new.”
I was too angry to respond, so I pulled out my phone and checked Instagram, which was already full of pictures from the party. “Is Uncle James around? He said he’d give me a ride.”
“I’m right here,” Uncle James said, strolling into the room. He stopped when he saw the looks on our faces and sighed. “You ready?”
“Yeah, let’s go.”
Chapter 2
After ten minutes of awkward silence, Uncle James cleared his throat and said, “Can’t you just pretend to be excited?”
“No, the band needs me.”
“So does your dad.”
I gritted my teeth and stared out the window. Neither of us spoke for the rest of the drive.
Dad had early-onset Alzheimer’s, and his symptoms were starting to get worse. Not send-him-to-the-nursing-home worse, but this-is-really-happening worse. Like, he’d forget what you just said to him, or he’d put all the dishes away in the wrong places.
“Call me when you need a ride home,” Uncle James said as he pulled up to Austin’s white-bricked mansion.
“Okay.” I climbed out of Uncle James’s 4Runner, a hand-me-down from one of his celebrity clients, and smiled. My first high school party!
Unfortunately, the first person I encountered was Raj Reddy, my freshman year lab partner.
“What are you doing here?” Raj asked from Austin’s gigantic foyer. Seriously, Austin’s entryway was bigger than our entire apartment.
Like Austin, Raj was a super-hot soccer boy. But unlike Austin, Raj was a dick. The guy hated me. We’d been lab partners freshman year, and he blamed me for the erlenmeyer flask exploding. And, yes, maybe I should’ve removed the stopper when he’d asked me to. But, to be fair, the scar on Raj’s neck was barely visible anymore.
“Austin invited me,” I said, smiling at Raj like we were best friends.
“You know he only invited you to make Chad jealous, right? He invited Mario Alvarez, too.”
Hmm, interesting. Competition. But that was okay. I could handle this. I was just as hot as Mario Alvarez. And way taller.
“I’m not trying to get with Austin,” I said.
“Good, because it’s never going to happen.”
I really hoped Raj was wrong. Austin Cavanaugh was the perfect guy to lose my kissing virginity to. He was hot, nice, and always chewing gum.
Granted, I could’ve lost my kissing virginity ages ago. Loads of girls wanted to make out with me. Cecee Reynolds once said I had amazing eyes. But I didn’t want my first kiss to be with a girl. My ancestors weathered centuries of violence, marched in pride parades, and watched eight seasons of Will and Grace so I wouldn’t have to pretend to like girls. Sure, Baxter said he’d kiss me, but I didn’t want my first kiss to be with a straight boy, either. I wanted my first kiss to be passionate and steamy.
Raj left me, muttering something under his breath—probably tender endearments—and I spotted Chelsea Matthews in the living room with her clique of popular girls. Chelsea and I weren’t exactly friends, either, but she played trumpet in the jazz band, and I played guitar, so close enough.
“Theo, what are you doing here? I didn’t know you went to parties.” Chelsea raised her red plastic cup in greeting. “You want a beer?”
“I’m good, thanks.” If I was kissing Austin tonight, I needed to keep my wits about me.
As if reading my mind, Austin strode into the room and asked, “Who wants to play seven minutes in heaven?”
Fuck yeah! Chelsea and the girls were just as excited as I was, and Austin went about setting the ground rules, explaining his twist on the classic game.
“Okay, so here’s how we’re going to do it. I’ll pick a name at random from this bowl, and whoever I pick will go into the closet and wait. Once inside, I’ll pick a second name, and that person, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, will join the first person in the closet for exactly seven minutes. But here’s the twist. Instead of both people leaving at the end of seven minutes, the second person will stay behind and wait for a new name to be drawn. And then the process will start over from there. Get it?”
“Wait, so fourteen minutes in heaven, then?” Chelsea asked.
“Yeah, exactly. This way, each person will get one make out partner who’s a total surprise.”
Kylie Rodrigo’s name was pulled first, and she stepped into the closet with a nervous giggle. I liked Kylie. She played baritone sax, the sexiest sax. But that didn’t mean I wanted to be trapped in a closet with her. Kylie was a huge gossip, and I didn’t want to have to explain to her that I was saving myself for Austin.
Luckily, the next name drawn was Raj’s, which couldn’t have been a coincidence. Everyone knew Raj had a thing for Kylie. Austin must have rigged the game, which boded well for me, especially since Mario wasn’t even playing.
Seven minutes later, Kylie emerged, her hair a disheveled mess, and everyone laughed.
“Next up is”—Austin made a show of slowly unfolding the paper—“Theo.”
Okay, interesting. But there was no need to panic. Probably, in seven minutes, Raj would leave and Austin would draw his own name.
“Is this some kind of sick joke?” Raj asked the moment I stepped into the surprisingly roomy closet.
“If it is, I forgot to knock. But feel free to ask who’s there anyway.” The door closed and we were plunged into inky darkness.
“I’m not making out with you,” Raj said. “And it’s not because I’m a homophobe. I just don’t like you.”
“Really? Because I’m in love with you. I think we might be soulmates. Please, let me prove it to you with sweet, tender kisses.”
“Fuck off.”
I slumped against the wall opposite Raj and let several minutes of awkward silence pass. But since silence and I weren’t exactly simpatico, I couldn’t help asking, “So, any big plans for the summer? I assume you’re going to your grandparents' villa in the south of France, where you’ll eat foie gras and drink Champagne with a capital C.” Raj was always bragging about his summers in France.
“That’s right. And I assume you’re going to stick around here and help your dad clean out porta potties, maybe refill the hand sanitizer?”
“He doesn’t clean them out. He’s the manager.” If Raj was trying to make me ashamed of my dad, he was shit out of luck. Sure, my dad wasn’t an investment banker or the CEO of some huge multinational corporation, but he was a good dad and a published author.
The timer went off a couple minutes later, and Raj bolted from the closet.
“Thanks for rocking my world, Raj. You’ve got a magic mouth.” I made sure to project my voice so everyone could hear.
The door closed behind him, and I licked my lips, readying myself for Austin. But when the door opened again, it wasn’t Austin who stepped into the closet, but Chelsea Matthews. What the fuck?
“Hey Theo, it’s me, Chelsea.”
“Hey,” I managed to say as all my fantasies came crashing down around me.
Chelsea used the glow of her cell phone screen to light her way over to the wall I was leaning against. “If it turns out Raj is a better kisser, I’m going to need you to lie and tell everyone he’s not, okay?”
“We actually just sat here in silence for seven minutes. But I’ll happily lie for you.”
“Really? I figured you’d be all over that. You’re gay, right?”
“Yeah, super gay.”
Everyone at school knew I was gay. It was only my family who didn’t. It wasn’t that I thought my dad would disown me or send me to conversion therapy. Dad wasn’t like that. Uncle James was gay, and he and Dad were best friends.
I just didn’t want Dad to feel left out or to think I loved Uncle James more. Ever since Dad had started getting sick, Uncle James had started taking over his parental responsibilities, going to my parent teacher conferences, taking me to doctor's appointments, stuff like that. He’d even become my legal guardian.
It wasn’t that I didn’t love Uncle James like a dad. I did. But Dad was my dad, and I didn’t want to give him another excuse to pull away.
“We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to,” Chelsea said. “We can just sit here and talk.”
“Really? That would be awesome!” I sighed heavily and let my head thud against the wall.
Chelsea laughed. “Jeez, you don’t have to sound so happy about it.”
“No, it’s not like that. I’m sure kissing you would be awesome. You’re a really good trumpet player, so you must have amazing lips. Like, seriously, was that a high D you hit the other day?”
“E, but close enough.”
“Exactly, and you probably have fruity lip gloss and good breath. I’ve just never kissed anyone before, and I was kinda hoping my first time would be with another dude.”
“You’ve never kissed anyone before? Oh my god, that’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever heard.”
“No, it’s pathetic.”
“Of course it’s not pathetic. It’s romantic. But why did you want to play seven minutes in heaven if you didn’t want to kiss anyone?”
“I don’t know,” I lied.
“Wait, were you hoping it would be Austin and not me?”
“No, of course not.” Man, I was such a liar. It was a wonder my pants didn’t spontaneously ignite.
“Well, I think you two would make a cute couple, way cuter than Austin and Chad.”
I pictured Austin and I sitting shoulder to shoulder at the same lunch table, glad it was pitch black in the closet so Chelsea couldn’t see me blushing.
“Can you not mention the whole kissing virgin thing to anyone?” I asked. “It’s kinda embarrassing.”
“Of course not. Your secret is safe with me. And there is no reason to be embarrassed. You only get one first kiss, right?”
“Right!” Finally, someone who got it. Most of my friends were in a race to collect as many sexual experiences as they could, like they were in some kind of x-rated Easter egg hunt.
A few minutes later, the timer went off, and I wished Chelsea better luck with her next partner and headed for the door. The moment I opened it, I came face to face with Oscar Montague III, Chelsea’s ex-boyfriend.
“Hey Oscar—“
Oscar’s fist made contact with my face, and I staggered back against the doorframe. I’d never been punched before, and it took me a minute to figure out what had happened. My whole face throbbed. My eyes watered. And my nose ran. Was that blood?
“What the fuck, Oscar? We’re not together anymore,” Chelsea screamed. “And Theo and I didn’t do anything. He’s saving himself for Austin.”
“Are you okay?” someone asked, and my vision cleared just enough to watch Austin drop Mario’s hand and rush towards the closet. And here I thought this moment couldn’t get any worse.
I didn’t know how to answer Austin’s question, so I reached up and removed my glasses. Yup, they were definitely broken. Fuck. Dad was going to kill me.
***
I wasn’t blind without my glasses, but pretty damn close. I made a dash for the bathroom and tripped over something, a foot perhaps. I stumbled, trying to catch myself, but I was all arms and legs, like a newborn horse, and I collided with the wall. Glass shattered and rained down on the floor. At first, I thought I’d crashed into a picture on the wall. But, no, it was a fucking mirror. Wasn’t the seven years of bad luck supposed to start after you broke the mirror?
“Oh, shit,” Austin said. He’d been trailing after me, trying to wipe up the trail of blood I was leaving behind. But at the sight of the broken mirror, he froze and started hyperventilating.
“You’re such a fucking menace, Theo.” Raj took my arm and guided me towards the bathroom.
“It’s okay,” I said, swallowing thick globs of blood. “I’ll buy him a new mirror. I just gotta clean up first.” I hurried into the bathroom, and Raj closed the door behind me. Fat crimson drops fell from my nose and plopped onto the white porcelain counter.
Thirty minutes later, after Oscar had been kicked out and Chelsea had promised to hook me up with her mom’s plastic surgeon, I sat on the wall outside next to the stone buttress of a lion and waited for Uncle James to pick me up.
Austin came out and kicked nervously at the bark chips surrounding the rose bushes. “How are you feeling?”
“I wasn’t really saving myself for you, you know. I just didn’t want my first kiss to be with a girl or a straight guy. And I’m really happy for you and Mario. Mario is the coolest. And I’ll get you a new mirror, so don’t worry about that. Just tell me where your mom got it.”
“That’s okay. Raj looked it up, and it’s, like, fifteen hundred dollars.”
If my eyes weren’t swollen shut, they probably would’ve bugged out like some cartoon character’s. What the fuck? I only had five hundred in savings, and that wouldn’t even cover half of it.
“Okay, well, I can give you five hundred now and the rest later.” Raj was right. I was going to have to spend my summer cleaning porta potties.
“Don’t worry about it. I know money’s tight for you, and that your dad is—”
“It’s fine. I’ll figure it out.” I refused to be Austin’s charity case. He may not have wanted to kiss me, but he had invited me to his party, and that wasn’t nothing.
Austin looked like he wanted to argue the point, but he held back. “I hear Puddle of Heart is playing at the summer carnival this year.”
I was surprised Austin remembered my band’s name. Other than last year’s variety show, we’d never played out before. “Not anymore. My dad is dragging me up to Vermont for the entire month of July.”
“Really? That sucks.”
“Tell me about it.”
Uncle James’s 4Runner tore up the drive, and he jumped out, ready for a fight. “Where is the little shit?”
“Relax, he’s not here anymore.” I stood and tried to give Austin back the ice pack.
“Keep it,” he said, giving me a weak smile. At least, I assumed it was a weak smile. Without my glasses, I couldn’t really tell.
Chapter 3
I liked to get up early on Sundays and make brunch, and today was no exception. I couldn’t see very well. Blood from my broken nose had drained into dark sacks under my eyes, and my glasses were busted. But I still managed to whip up a quiche with the meager offerings from our fridge—spinach, mushrooms, garlic, and copious amounts of feta. I also made monkey bread and fruit smoothies.
I was just finishing up when Esther, Uncle James’s best friend, arrived.
“I brought the—” Esther’s jaw went slack, and the champagne in her hand fell to her side. “What happened?”
“Nothing, I just—“
“He got caught hookin’ up with some other dude’s girl.” Dad squeezed my shoulder as he walked past. He sounded proud.
“Do I need to bail James out of jail?” Esther asked.
“No, he’s in his room,” I said. “Oscar was long gone by the time Uncle James got there.”
“Oscar, eh? What’s his last name?”
“I’m not telling you.”
Esther shrugged, and the sly uptick of her mouth said she didn’t need Oscar’s last name to track him down. She was a reporter, after all. Well, really more of a tabloid journalist, but same difference.
Uncle James came out a few minutes later, and his face contorted in anger the moment he saw my matching pair of black eyes, which looked badass as fuck. They were all dark and colorful like an oil slick.
We managed to make it all the way through brunch without talking about the party or camping in Vermont. But the moment Uncle James and Esther went to get some fresh air on the roof—read, smoke weed—Dad pounced.
“Brady's girlfriend might be hangin’ with us some, too, so now you’ll have two friends up in Vermont.”
“Great! I’ve always wanted to be Brady’s third wheel. Maybe he’ll let me hold his girlfriend’s purse and take pictures of them making out.”
Dad sighed, and guilt stabbed into my gut.
“I guess we don’t have to—“
“No, we’re going,” I said. “You haven’t seen Dave in almost a year, and I’m sure I can teach Priyanka a watered-down version of the guitar parts.”
“You sure?”
I wasn’t sure, but I nodded.
“Who knows, you might meet someone up there,” Dad said. “Did I ever tell you about the summer I went to basketball camp and—“
“Yes, like a thousand times.”
Dad held up his hands and took a step back. “Okay, sorry.”
***
They didn’t call Vermont the Green Mountain State for nothing. The whole place was just one big mountain range. Everywhere you looked, there were trees. Though, not just trees. There were also stone walls, dandelions, cemeteries, old white churches with old white steeples, dead deer on the side of the road, horses, cows, and corn that was supposed to be knee high by the fourth of July. But you know what there wasn’t? Reliable cell phone service.
It was late afternoon when we pulled into the campground, and I had to piss like a racehorse.
“You checkin’ us in?” Dad asked as I bolted from the car.
“No, I gotta pee.” I made a beeline for the bathroom. When I came out, Uncle James was standing at the counter, talking to someone.
No longer about to piss myself, I took in the breezy lobby, which sold concessions—popcorn, pizza, and ice cream sandwiches. A door led out to the pool, where families screamed and splashed about.
“There’s no alcohol or glass bottles allowed in the pool area,” the guy behind the counter was saying, and I froze, recognizing his voice.
I stepped around a loud box fan and peered over Uncle James’s shoulder. No fucking way! I had to be hallucinating. “Raj? What are you doing here?”
Raj Reddy met my gaze, and a symphony of emotions played across his face—surprise, fear, anger, annoyance, embarrassment—before settling on one that could best be described as you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.
“You two know each other?” Uncle James asked.
“Yeah, Raj goes to my school,” I said. “We used to be lab partners.”
At the mention of lab partners, Raj touched the faint scar on his neck.
“Wait, is this the kid you sent to the emergency room because you’re a dumbass?”
There was no use denying it, so I said, “Yup, and he’s never forgiven me for it.”
This was too weird. Raj was supposed to be in the south of France, not working concessions at a white-trash campground in northern Vermont.
“You’re in D12,” Raj said through gritted teeth, marking the spot on a black and white map of the campground. “The road is one way, though, so you’ll have to drive around the long way to get there.”
I stopped listening and escaped back to the car. This had to be the mirror’s doing. Luck didn’t get this bad without help. But, on the bright side, I only had six years and eleven months left to go.
Uncle James slid back in the driver’s seat a few minutes later and smirked at me in the rearview mirror. “Did Theo tell you he already has a friend here?” he asked Dad.
“He’s not my friend.”
“What?” Dad turned to look at me.
“He’s just someone I go to school with. We barely know each other.” This was terrible. What if Raj told Dad and Uncle James I was gay?
“It’s the kid Theo sent to the emergency room two years ago. Apparently, his grandparents own the place,” Uncle James said. “They bought it five years ago.”
“What are the chances of that?” Dad asked.
“Can we please just go,” I said. “I gotta get dinner started.”

Hello all! I hope anyone and everyone reading this is having a good day in our crazy reality. Below you can find a little about me, my writing style, and how I approach writing. Feel free to peruse, and if you think we'd be a good match, let me know!
You can call me T! I go by he/him pronouns. My availability is at least once a week and more. I'm always open to communicating with my partners and letting them reply when possible. I typically aim for 200-300 words in a reply. I usually don't go lower than two hundred. Unless it's more of a back-and-forth dialogue type thing. Details are super important to me from my partner, so I do my best to give them myself.
I run my replies through Grammarly before I post them (including these request posts!), so at the very least, I hope my post is grammatically correct (*chuckle*). I write in the third person/past tense style and ask that my partner does the same; this is a requirement for writing with me. What I look for regarding my partner is someone that gets invested in a story, likes putting details in, and is open to the idea of adult themes and content enhancing a story and romance and not being a detriment to the work. I enjoy writing erotica and feel it enhances the narrative.
I'm looking for someone who feels the same way. In return, I put a lot into my stories and ideas to make them as thrilling and engaging as possible.
I can't stress that enough. I'm looking for partners interested in crafting a long-term story, world-building, and don't shy away from the adult aspects.I put a lot of work into my writing, and this is both a hobby and a passion for me. Even if I primarily do fandom writing, these characters are significant to me. If you're the type to ghost more often then not, please think twice about messaging me and wasting my time.
Please note this story will have adult content and be NSFW. I don't do Fade To black and I do want romance in these stories.
I am 18+ and all participants and characters must be 18+"
-__-
DC
Popular Pairings
Bruce Wayne (Batman)/Selina Kyle (Cat Woman) Dick Grayson (Robin/Nightwing)/Koriand’r (Starfire) Dick Grayson (Robin/Nightwing)/Barbara Gordon (Batgirl/Oracle) Clark Kent (Superman)/Lois Lane Olliver Queen (Green Arrow)/Dinah Lance (Black Canary) Siggy/Diana Prince (Wonder Woman) Steve TrevoDiana Prince (Wonder Woman) Barry Allen (the Flash)/Iris West Arthur Curry (Aquaman)/Mera Of Xebel Hal Jordan (Green Lantern)/Carol Ferris (Star Sapphire) Shiera Hall (Hawkgirl)/Carter (Hawkman) Garfield Logan (Beast Boy)/Rachel Roth (Raven) JokeHarley Quinn Constantine/Zatanna
Lesser Known
Roy HarpeJade Nguyen (Cheshire) Bruce Wayne (Batman)/Talia Al Ghul Roy HarpeDonna Troy (Wonder Girl/Troia) Wally West (Kid Flash/The Flash)/Artemis Crock Scott Free (Mr. Miracle)/Big Barda Tim Drake (Robin/Red Robin)/Stephanie Brown (Batgirl/Spoiler) Jaime Reyes (Blue Beetle)/Traci Thirteen Vin Stone (Cyborg)/ Jinx
Wild Cards
Jon Kent (Superboy/Superman)/Mary Marvel (Shazam) Bruce Wayne (Batman)/Harley Quinn Waylon (Killer Croc)/June (Enchantress) Kate Kane (Bat Woman)/Renee Montoya (The Question) Kyle Rayner (Green Lantern)/Soranik Natu (Green Lantern) Ted Grant (Wildcat)/Hippolyta David Cain/Sandra Wu-San (Lady Shiva) Teth-Adam (Black Atom)/Isis Knockout/Scandal Rex (Metamorpho)/Sapphire Stagg Tatsu Yamashiro(Katana)/Jefferson Question/Helena Wayne Or Bertinelli (Huntress) Adam Strange/Alanna Emiko (Red Arrow)/Damian Wayne-Al Ghul (Robin) Doctor Freeze/Nora Kent Nelson (Doctor Fate)/Inza Kara Kent-Danvers (Supergirl)/Querl Dox (Braniac Five) Billy Bastion (Shazam)/Courtney Whitmore (Stargirl) Nathaniel Adam (Captain Atom)/Bette Souci (Plastique) Leonard Snart (Captain Cold)/ Lisa Snart (Golden Glider) [Incest] Hank Hall (Hawk)/Dawn Granger (Dove) Ronnie Raymond (Firestorm)/ Caitlin Snow (Killer Frost) John Stewart (Green Lantern)/Mari Jiwe McCabe (Vixen) Guy Gardner (Green Lantern)/Tora Olafsdotter (Ice) Clark Kent (Superman)/Maxima Jason Todd (Red Hood)/Artemis (Amazon) Cisco Ramone (Vibe)/Cynthia (Gypsy) Pamela Isley (Poison Ivy)/Alec Holland (Swamp Thing)
Genderbends
Fem Lex LuthoClark Kent (Superman) Fem Clark (Super Woman)/Lex Luthor Fem Bruce Wayne (Batman)/Clark Kent (Superman) Fem Clark Kent (Superwoman)/Bruce Wayne (Batman) Ted Kord (Blue Beetle)/Fem Micheal Carter (Booster Gold) Micheal Carter (Booster Gold)/ Fem Ted Kord (Blue Beetle)
Open Pairings (No Specific Person)
Vic Stone (Cyborg)/Open John Henry Irons (Steel)/Open Nubia (Wonder Woman)/Open Leonard Snart (Captain Cold)/Open Komand’r (Blackfire)/Open Kara Danvers (Power Girl)/Open Pamela Isley (Poison Ivy)/Open M’Gann M’orzz (Miss Martian)/Open Cassandra Cain (Batgirl)/Open Floyd Lawton (Deadshot)/Open Digger Harkness (Captain Boomerang)/Open J’onn J’onzz (Martian Manhunter)/Open Jason Todd (Red Hood)/Open Jim Gordon (Batman)/Open Beatriz da Costa (Fire)/Open Ronnie Raymond (Firestorm)/Open Jessica Cruz (Green Lantern)/Open Eel O'Brian (Plastic Man)/Open Natasha Irons (Steel 2)/Open Ruby Sokov (Red Lantern)/Open Ted Kord (Blue Beetle)/Open Connor Hawke (Green Arrow)/Open
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Marvel
Popular Pairings
Reed Richards (Mr.Fantastic)/Sue Storm (Invisible Woman) Peter Parker (Spider-Man)/Mary Jane Watson (Spinerett) Peter Parker (Spider-Man)/ Felicia Hardy (Black Cat) Logan Howlett (The Wolverine)/Ororo Monroe (Storm) Ben Grimes (The Thing)/Alicia Masters Thor Odinson (Thor)/Brunhilde (Valkyrie) Hank Pym (Ant Man)/Janet Van Dyne (Wasp) Scott Lang (Ant Man 2)/Hope Van Dyne (Wasp 2) Vision/Wanda Maximoff (Scarlet Witch) Remy LeBeau (Gambit)/Anna Marie (Rogue) Wade Wilson (Deadpool)/Elsa Bloodstone Luke Cage (Power Man)/Jessica Jones Scott Summers (Cyclops)/Jean Gray (Marvel Girl) Peter Quill (Star Lord)/Kitty Pryde (Shadow Cat) Doctor Stephen Strange/Clea Matt Murdock (Daredevil)/Elektra Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow)/Bruce Banner (Hulk) Steve Rogers (Captain America)/Sharon Carter (Agent 13) Clint Barton (Hawkeye)/Bobbi Morse (Mockingbird)
Lesser Known
Tyrone Johnson (Cloak) /Tandy Bowen (Dagger) Otto Octavius (Superior Spider-Man)/Anna Maria Medusa/Black Bolt Danny Rand (Iron Fist)/Misty Knight Flash Thompson (Agent Venom)/Felicia Hardy (Black Cat) Hank McCoy (Beast)/Abigail Brand Madelyne Pryor (Goblin Queen)/Alex Summer (Havok) Marc Spector (Moon Knight/ Greer Grant Nelson (Tigra) Nico Robin (Sister Grim)/Megan Gwynn (Pixie) Beta Ray Bill (Thor)/Lady Sif Crystallis Amaquelin (Crystal)/Pietro Maximoff (Quicksilver) Richard Rider (Nova)/Namorita Adam Warlock (Warlock)/Gamora America Chavez/Ramone Watts (Alloy) Cassie Lang (Stature)/Nathanial Richards (Iron Lad) Patsy Walker (Hellcat)/Damion Helstrom (Hellstorm) Kurt Wagner (Nightcrawler)/Amanda Sefton Michael Morbius (Morbius)/Martine Bancroft Kamala Khan (Miss Marvel)/Kareem (Red Dagger) Betsy Braddock (Psylocke)/Warren Worthington III (Angel) Rocket Racoon/Lyla (Furry) Namor (Sub Mariner)/Lady Dorma Jane Foster (Thor)/ Sam Wilson (Captain America) Ultron/Jocasta Eddie Brock (Venom)/Anne Weying
Genderbends
Steve Rogers (Captain America)/Fem Tony (Iron Woman) Fem Steve (Captain America)/Male Tony (Iron Man) Fem Erik (Magneto)/Male Charles Xavier Fem Charles Xavie Fem Erik (Magneto) Fem Victory Creed (Sabertooth)/Logan Howlett (Wolverine)
Wild Cards
Otto Octavius (Superior Spider-Man)/Felicia Hardy (Black Cat) X-23/ Flash Thompson (Agent Venom) Nick Fury/Maria Hill Miles Morales (Spider-Man)/Cindy Moon (Silk) Jennifer Walters (She Hulk) /Matt Murdock (Daredevil) Eric Brooks (Blade)/Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel) Bobby Drake (Iceman)/Darcy Lewis
Open Pairings (No Specific Person)
Maya Lopez (Echo)/Open Bucky Barnes (Winter Soldier)/Open James Rhodes (War Machine)/Open Ava Avala (White Tiger)/Open Tony Masters (Taskmaster)/Open Roberta De Costa (Sunspot)/Open Miguel O’Hara (Spider-Man 2099)/Open Shang-Chi/Open Cindy Moon (Silk/Open (White Males Preferred) Shuri/Open (White Males Preferred) Linda Carter (Night Nurse)/Open Okoye Kurt Wagner (Nightcrawler)/Open Dani Moonstar (Mirage)/Open Loki Odinson/Open Johnny Storm (Human Torch)/Open Drax (The Destroyer)/Open Emma Frost (White Queen)/Open (Black Males Preffered) Forge/Open Armando Muñoz (Darwin)/Open Hela/Open Piotr Rasputin (Colossus)/Open Amadeus Cho (Brawn)/Open Agatha Harkness/Open T’Challa (Black Panter)/Open Jessica Drew (Spider-Woman)/Open Riri Williams (Ironheart)/Open Maddy Cho/Open Sam Wilson (Captain America Or Falcon)/Open Colleen Wing/Open Crystallis Amaquelin (Crystal)/Open Jennifer Walters (She Hulk)/Open Pietro Maximoff (Quicksilver)/Open Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel)/Open Kate Bishop (Hawkeye)/Open Billy Maximoff (Wiccan)/Open (Female Pairings) Tommy Maximoff (Speed)/Open (Female Pairings) Robbie Reyes (Ghost Rider)/Open Raven Darkholme (Mystique)/Open

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If I Can't Have You Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance, and the Murder of Her Children By: Gregg Olsen, Rebecca Morris How to Change Your Mind Audiobook By Michael Pollan cover art 73. How to Change Your Mind What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence By: Michael Pollan For Love of Country Audiobook By Tulsi Gabbard cover art 74. For Love of Country Leave the Democrat Party Behind By: Tulsi Gabbard The Power Broker Audiobook By Robert A. Caro cover art 75. The Power Broker Robert Moses and the Fall of New York By: Robert A. Caro The Glass Castle Audiobook By Jeannette Walls cover art 76. The Glass Castle By: Jeannette Walls Down the Rabbit Hole Audiobook By Holly Madison cover art 77. Down the Rabbit Hole Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny By: Holly Madison Born Twice Audiobook By Dale Hanson cover art 78. Born Twice Memoir of a Special Forces SOG Warrior By: Dale Hanson Sale ends in 22d 14h 16m 16s Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Audiobook By Walter Isaacson cover art 79. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life The Autobiography of Malcolm X Audiobook By Malcolm X, Alex Haley cover art 80. The Autobiography of Malcolm X As Told to Alex Haley By: Malcolm X, Alex Haley Surely You Can't Be Serious Audiobook By David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker cover art 81. Surely You Can't Be Serious The True Story of Airplane! By: David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker Mindhunter Audiobook By John E. Douglas, Mark Olshaker cover art 82. Mindhunter Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit By: John E. Douglas, Mark Olshaker Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World Audiobook By Jack Weatherford cover art 83. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World By: Jack Weatherford Astor Audiobook By Anderson Cooper, Katherine Howe cover art 84. Astor The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune On Writing Audiobook By Stephen King cover art 85. On Writing A Memoir of the Craft By: Stephen King Churchill Audiobook By Andrew Roberts cover art 86. Churchill Walking with Destiny Among the Bros Audiobook By Max Marshall cover art 87. Among the Bros A Fraternity Crime Story By: Max Marshall Being Henry Audiobook By Henry Winkler cover art 88. Being Henry The Fonz . . . and Beyond By: Henry Winkler The Art Thief Audiobook By Michael Finkel cover art 89. The Art Thief A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession By: Michael Finkel The Splendid and the Vile Audiobook By Erik Larson cover art 90. The Splendid and the Vile A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Audiobook By Maya Angelou cover art 91. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings By: Maya Angelou Unspeakable Audiobook By Jessica Willis Fisher cover art 92. Unspeakable Surviving My Childhood and Finding My Voice By: Jessica Willis Fisher Grant Audiobook By Ron Chernow cover art 93. Grant By: Ron Chernow I Did a New Thing Audiobook By Tabitha Brown cover art 94. I Did a New Thing 30 Days to Living Free By: Tabitha Brown The Surrender Experiment Audiobook By Michael A. Singer cover art 95. The Surrender Experiment My Journey into Life's Perfection By: Michael A. Singer Into Thin Air Audiobook By Jon Krakauer cover art 96. Into Thin Air A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster By: Jon Krakauer An Unfinished Love Story Audiobook By Doris Kearns Goodwin, Bryan Cranston cover art 97. An Unfinished Love Story A Personal History of the 1960s By: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Bryan Cranston Starvation Heights Audiobook By Gregg Olsen cover art 98. Starvation Heights Dangerous Women: True Crime Stories Series: Dangerous Women - True Crime Stories The Spy and the Traitor Audiobook By Ben Macintyre cover art 99. The Spy and the Traitor The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War By: Ben Macintyre The Wisdom of the Bullfrog Audiobook By Admiral William H. McRaven cover art 100. The Wisdom of the Bullfrog Leadership Made Simple (But Not Easy) By: Admiral William H. McRaven Product List True Crime All The Time (Ad-free) Podcast By Emash Digital / Wondery cover art 1. True Crime All The Time (Ad-free) Cook County ICU Audiobook By Cory Franklin MD cover art 2. Cook County ICU 30 Years of Unforgettable Patients and Odd Cases By: Cory Franklin MD Included in Plus membership Mother, Neighbor, Russian Spy Podcast with Rosamund Pike cover art 3. Mother, Neighbor, Russian Spy American Dreamer: Who Was Jay Gatsby? Audiobook By Blanchard House cover art 4. American Dreamer: Who Was Jay Gatsby? By: Blanchard House The Hiding Place Audiobook By Corrie ten Boom, Elizabeth Sherrill, John Sherrill cover art 5. The Hiding Place By: Corrie ten Boom, Elizabeth Sherrill, John Sherrill Exposed Audiobook By Sophie Elmhirst, Maria Luisa Tucker cover art 6. Exposed The Ashley Madison Hack By: Sophie Elmhirst, Maria Luisa Tucker A Child Called 'It' Audiobook By David Pelzer cover art 7. A Child Called 'It' One Child's Courage to Survive By: David Pelzer Night Audiobook By Elie Wiesel cover art 8. Night By: Elie Wiesel Series: Night Trilogy, Book 1 Trace of Doubt Audiobook By Samantha Weinberg cover art 9. Trace of Doubt By: Samantha Weinberg Once Removed: An American Family Reunion Podcast with Elvis Mitchell cover art 10. Once Removed: An American Family Reunion Your Mama's Kitchen Podcast with Michele Norris cover art 11. Your Mama's Kitchen Play Follow The Cases That Haunt Us Audiobook By John Douglas, Mark Olshaker cover art 12. The Cases That Haunt Us From Jack the Ripper to JonBenet Ramsey, the FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Sheds Light on the Mysteries That Won't Go Away By: John Douglas, Mark Olshaker The Republic of Pirates Audiobook By Colin Woodard cover art 13. The Republic of Pirates Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down By: Colin Woodard Deputy Mayor Putin Audiobook By Maeve McQuillan cover art 14. Deputy Mayor Putin By: Maeve McQuillan Elvis and Me Audiobook By Priscilla Beaulieu Presley cover art 15. Elvis and Me By: Priscilla Beaulieu Presley Meghan and Harry Audiobook By Lady Colin Campbell cover art 16. Meghan and Harry The Real Story By: Lady Colin Campbell Tears of the Silenced Audiobook By Misty Griffin cover art 17. Tears of the Silenced An Amish True Crime Memoir of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Brutal Betrayal, and Ultimate Survival By: Misty Griffin Five Families Audiobook By Selwyn Raab cover art 18. Five Families The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires By: Selwyn Raab The Radium Girls Audiobook By Kate Moore cover art 19. The Radium Girls The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women By: Kate Moore Arthur Audiobook By Mikael Lindnord cover art 20. Arthur The Dog Who Crossed the Jungle to Find a Home By: Mikael Lindnord Series: Arthur, Book 1 The Polygamist’s Daughter Audiobook By Anna LeBaron, Leslie Wilson - contributor cover art 21. The Polygamist’s Daughter By: Anna LeBaron, Leslie Wilson - contributor Sorry for Your Loss Audiobook By Michael Cruz Kayne cover art 22. Sorry for Your Loss By: Michael Cruz Kayne Dolly Parton, Songteller Audiobook By Dolly Parton cover art 23. Dolly Parton, Songteller My Life in Lyrics By: Dolly Parton The Demon Next Door Audiobook By Bryan Burrough cover art 24. The Demon Next Door By: Bryan Burrough Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast Podcast By Michelle Obama cover art 25. Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast The Amityville Horror Audiobook By Jay Anson cover art 26. The Amityville Horror By: Jay Anson Pimp Audiobook By Iceberg Slim cover art 27. Pimp The Story of My Life By: Iceberg Slim Shattered Audiobook By Kathryn Casey cover art 28. Shattered The True Story of a Mother's Love, a Husband's Betrayal, and a Cold-Blooded Texas Murder By: Kathryn Casey JFK and the Unspeakable Audiobook By James W. Douglass cover art 29. JFK and the Unspeakable Why He Died and Why It Matters By: James W. Douglass Healing Wounds Audiobook By Diane Carlson Evans, Bob Welch - contributor, Joseph Galloway - foreword cover art 30. Healing Wounds A Vietnam War Combat Nurse's 10-Year Fight to Win Women a Place of Honor in Washington, D.C. By: Diane Carlson Evans, Bob Welch - contributor, Joseph Galloway - foreword Smoke Gets in Your Eyes Audiobook By Caitlin Doughty cover art 31. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes And Other Lessons from the Crematory By: Caitlin Doughty Confessions of a Prairie Bitch Audiobook By Alison Arngrim cover art 32. Confessions of a Prairie Bitch How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated By: Alison Arngrim Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Audiobook By Richard P. Feynman cover art 33. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! By: Richard P. Feynman The Debutante Audiobook By Jon Ronson cover art 34. The Debutante By: Jon Ronson The Doors of Perception Audiobook By Aldous Huxley cover art 35. The Doors of Perception By: Aldous Huxley Red Notice Audiobook By Bill Browder cover art 36. Red Notice A True Story of High Finance, Murder and One Man's Fight for Justice By: Bill Browder Surprised by Joy Audiobook By C. S. Lewis cover art 37. Surprised by Joy The Shape of My Early Life By: C. S. Lewis The Lost Boy Audiobook By David Pelzer cover art 38. The Lost Boy Brutally Honest Audiobook By Melanie Brown, Louise Gannon cover art 39. Brutally Honest Mel B’s tell-all memoir By: Melanie Brown, Louise Gannon Doctors from Hell Audiobook By Vivien Spitz cover art 40. Doctors from Hell The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans By: Vivien Spitz A Higher Call Audiobook By Adam Makos cover art 41. A Higher Call An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II By: Adam Makos The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man Audiobook By John Perkins cover art 42. The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man By: John Perkins The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women Audiobook By Elizabeth Norton cover art 43. The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women A Social History By: Elizabeth Norton I Escaped from Auschwitz Audiobook By Rudolf Vrba, Alan Bestic, Sir Martin Gilbert - foreword, Robin Vrba - editor, Nikola Zi 44. I Escaped from Auschwitz The Shocking True Story of the World War II Hero Who Escaped the Nazis and Helped Save Over 200,000 Jews By: Rudolf Vrba, Alan Bestic, Sir Martin Gilbert - foreword, Robin Vrba - editor, Nikola Zimring - editor The Year of Magical Thinking Audiobook By Joan Didion cover art 45. The Year of Magical Thinking By: Joan Didion Nine Years Among the Indians, 1870-1879 Audiobook By Herman Lehmann cover art 46. Nine Years Among the Indians, 1870-1879 The Story of the Captivity and Life of a Texan Among the Indians By: Herman Lehmann Chase Darkness with Me Audiobook By Billy Jensen, Karen Kilgariff - foreword cover art 47. Chase Darkness with Me How One True Crime Writer Started Solving Murders By: Billy Jensen, Karen Kilgariff - foreword 48. The Year of Magical Thinking The Medici Audiobook By Paul Strathern cover art 49. The Medici Power, Money, and Ambition in the Italian Renaissance By: Paul Strathern The Year of Less Audiobook By Cait Flanders cover art 50. The Year of Less How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store By: Cait Flanders Something Ain't Right Audiobook By Roger Stringer, Zachary Stringer cover art 51. Something Ain't Right By: Roger Stringer, Zachary Stringer 90 Minutes in Heaven Audiobook By Don Piper cover art 52. 90 Minutes in Heaven A True Story of Death & Life By: Don Piper The Pale-Faced Lie Audiobook By David Crow cover art 53. The Pale-Faced Lie A True Story By: David Crow We Few Audiobook By Nick Brokhausen cover art 54. We Few US Special Forces in Vietnam By: Nick Brokhausen Beyond Band of Brothers Audiobook By Dick Winters, Cole C. Kingseed cover art 55. Beyond Band of Brothers The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters By: Dick Winters, Cole C. Kingseed The Search for the Green River Killer Audiobook By Carlton Smith, Tomas Guillen cover art 56. The Search for the Green River Killer The True Story of America's Most Prolific Serial Killer By: Carlton Smith, Tomas Guillen Cowboys, Mountain Men, and Grizzly Bears Audiobook By Matthew P. Mayo cover art 57. Cowboys, Mountain Men, and Grizzly Bears Fifty of the Grittiest Moments in the History of the Wild West By: Matthew P. Mayo Never Broken Audiobook By Jewel cover art 58. Never Broken Songs Are Only Half the Story By: Jewel The Mission, the Men, and Me Audiobook By Pete Blaber cover art 59. The Mission, the Men, and Me Lessons from a Former Delta Force Commander By: Pete Blaber Desert Solitaire Audiobook By Edward Abbey cover art 60. Desert Solitaire A Season in the Wilderness By: Edward Abbey Finding Tamika Audiobook By Erika Alexander, Kevin Hart, Charlamagne Tha God, Ben Arnon, Rebkah Howard, David Person, James T 61. Finding Tamika By: Erika Alexander, Kevin Hart, Charlamagne Tha God, Ben Arnon, Rebkah Howard, David Person, James T. Green, SBH Productions, Color Farm Media Midnight Son Audiobook By James Dommek Jr., Josephine Holtzman, Isaac Kestenbaum cover art 62. Midnight Son By: James Dommek Jr., Josephine Holtzman, Isaac Kestenbaum Caesar Audiobook By Adrian Goldsworthy cover art 63. Caesar Life of a Colossus By: Adrian Goldsworthy When the Air Hits Your Brain Audiobook By Frank T Vertosick Jr. MD cover art 64. When the Air Hits Your Brain Tales from Neurosurgery By: Frank T Vertosick Jr. MD Confession of a Serial Killer Audiobook By Katherine Ramsland PhD cover art 65. Confession of a Serial Killer The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer By: Katherine Ramsland PhD Up from Slavery Audiobook By Booker T. Washington cover art 66. Up from Slavery By: Booker T. Washington Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Audiobook By Frederick Douglass cover art 67. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass An American Slave By: Frederick Douglass The Hiding Place Audiobook By Corrie ten Boom cover art 68. The Hiding Place By: Corrie ten Boom To Hell and Back Audiobook By Audie Murphy cover art 69. To Hell and Back By: Audie Murphy Class of '88 Podcast with Will Smith cover art 70. Class of '88 Whispers in the Tall Grass Audiobook By Nick Brokhausen cover art 71. Whispers in the Tall Grass Own It Audiobook By Diane von Furstenberg cover art 72. Own It The Secret to Life By: Diane von Furstenberg Grandma Gatewood's Walk Audiobook By Ben Montgomery cover art 73. Grandma Gatewood's Walk The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail By: Ben Montgomery West Cork Podcast By Audible Original cover art 74. West Cork An Exorcist Tells His Story Audiobook By Fr. Gabriele Amorth cover art 75. An Exorcist Tells His Story By: Fr. Gabriele Amorth A Room of One's Own Audiobook By Virginia Woolf cover art 76. A Room of One's Own By: Virginia Woolf Deviant Audiobook By Harold Schechter cover art 77. Deviant The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original "Psycho" By: Harold Schechter We Thought We Knew You Audiobook By M. William Phelps cover art 78. We Thought We Knew You A Terrifying True Story of Secrets, Betrayal, Deception, and Murder By: M. William Phelps Three Ordinary Girls Audiobook By Tim Brady cover art 79. Three Ordinary Girls The Remarkable Story of Three Dutch Teenagers Who Became Spies, Saboteurs, Nazi Assassins and WWII Heroes By: Tim Brady The Frontiersmen Audiobook By Allan W. Eckert cover art 80. The Frontiersmen A Narrative By: Allan W. Eckert Series: Winning of America, Book 1 The Magic of Marie Laveau Audiobook By Denise Alvarado cover art 81. The Magic of Marie Laveau Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans By: Denise Alvarado The Ice Man Audiobook By Philip Carlo cover art 82. The Ice Man Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer By: Philip Carlo God's Smuggler Audiobook By Brother Andrew cover art 83. God's Smuggler By: Brother Andrew What I Talk about When I Talk about Running Audiobook By Haruki Murakami cover art 84. What I Talk about When I Talk about Running By: Haruki Murakami The Reason I Jump Audiobook By Naoki Higashida cover art 85. The Reason I Jump The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism By: Naoki Higashida The Brothers Audiobook By Stephen Kinzer cover art 86. The Brothers John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War By: Stephen Kinzer The Psychology of Notorious Serial Killers Audiobook By Todd Grande PhD cover art 87. The Psychology of Notorious Serial Killers The Intersection of Personality Theory and the Darkest Minds of Our Time By: Todd Grande PhD In the Dream House Audiobook By Carmen Maria Machado cover art 88. In the Dream House By: Carmen Maria Machado Endurance Audiobook By Alfred Lansing cover art 89. Endurance Shackleton's Incredible Voyage By: Alfred Lansing Wizard Audiobook By Marc J. Seifer cover art 90. Wizard The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius By: Marc J. Seifer The Cuckoo's Egg Audiobook By Cliff Stoll cover art 91. The Cuckoo's Egg Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage By: Cliff Stoll Agatha Christie and the Dandelion Poisoner Podcast with Joe Nocera cover art 92. Agatha Christie and the Dandelion Poisoner The Peyton Place Murder Audiobook By Renee Mallett cover art 93. The Peyton Place Murder The True Crime Story Behind the Novel That Shocked the Nation By: Renee Mallett Everybody's Best Friend Audiobook By Ken Englade cover art 94. Everybody's Best Friend The True Story of a Marriage That Ended in Murder By: Ken Englade Reminiscences of a Stock Operator Audiobook By Edwin Lefevre cover art 95. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator By: Edwin Lefevre This is Actually Happening (Ad-free) Podcast By Wondery cover art 96. This is Actually Happening (Ad-free) The Redhead of Auschwitz Audiobook By Nechama Birnbaum cover art 97. The Redhead of Auschwitz By: Nechama Birnbaum Wounds of the Father Audiobook By Elizabeth Garrison cover art 98. Wounds of the Father A True Story of Child Abuse, Betrayal, and Redemption By: Elizabeth Garrison Bundy:The Deliberate Stranger Audiobook By Richard W. Larsen cover art Virtual Voice Sample 99. Bundy:The Deliberate Stranger By: Richard W. Larsen The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Audiobook By Benjamin Franklin cover art 100. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin By: Benjamin Franklin Biographies & Memoirs Top 100 I'm Glad My Mom Died Audiobook By Jennette McCurdy cover art 3. The Woman in Me 4. Spare 5. Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing 6. Rebel Rising 7. Elon Musk 8. Be Useful 9. Killers of the Flower Moon 11. Burn Book 12. Oath and Honor 13. Cook County ICU 14. Sociopath 15. Born a Crime 17. The House of Hidden Meanings 18. If You Tell 19. Paris Sale ends in 22d 14h 14m 24s 20. American Dreamer: Who Was Jay Gatsby? 21. Becky Lynch: The Man 22. Finding Me 23. Elevate and Dominate 24. Only Say Good Things 25. The Hiding Place 27. Exposed 28. Counting the Cost 29. A Child Called 'It' 30. Never Leave the Dogs Behind 31. Educated 32. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone 33. Kitchen Confidential 34. Mostly What God Does 35. Night 36. The Many Lives of Mama Love (Oprah's Book Club) 38. Trace of Doubt 39. Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter 40. Becoming 41. The Light We Carry 42. Chaos 44. Going Infinite 45. Untamed 46. Reality Check: Making the Best of The Situation 47. The Devil in the White City The Amish Wife Audiobook By Gregg Olsen cover art 48. The Amish Wife 49. Crying in H Mart 50. Scars and Stripes 51. Steve Jobs 52. The In-Between 53. Astor 54. American Prometheus 55. The Cases That Haunt Us 56. The Republic of Pirates 57. In Cold Blood 58. Tuesdays with Morrie 59. Vanderbilt 60. Leslie F*cking Jones 61. Deputy Mayor Putin 62. The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel 63. Down the Rabbit Hole 64. In Pieces 65. Elvis and Me 66. Poor Charlie’s Almanack 67. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil 68. The Storyteller: Expanded 69. Meghan and Harry 70. Shoe Dog 71. Tears of the Silenced 72. Five Families 73. The Wisdom of the Bullfrog 74. My Effin' Life 75. Among the Bros 76. Making It So From the Streets to the Suites Audiobook By Snoop Dogg cover art 77. From the Streets to the Suites Words + Music Vol. 36 By: Snoop Dogg Series: Words + Music Add to Library 78. Mindhunter 79. What My Bones Know Will Audiobook By Will Smith, Mark Manson cover art 80. Will By: Will Smith, Mark Manson If You Would Have Told Me Audiobook By John Stamos cover art 81. If You Would Have Told Me By: John Stamos Thicker than Water Audiobook By Kerry Washington cover art 82. Thicker than Water By: Kerry Washington Worthy Audiobook By Jada Pinkett Smith cover art 83. Worthy By: Jada Pinkett Smith Leonardo da Vinci Audiobook By Walter Isaacson cover art 84. Leonardo da Vinci 85. Napoleon 86. The Splendid and the Vile 87. Einstein 88. When Breath Becomes Air 89. The Surrender Experiment 90. How to Change Your Mind 91. I Did a New Thing 92. Being Henry You Owe You Audiobook By Eric Thomas PhD, Chris Paul - foreword cover art 93. You Owe You Ignite Your Power, Your Purpose, and Your Why By: Eric Thomas PhD, Chris Paul - foreword 94. The Exvangelicals 95. The Power Broker 96. On Writing 97. Grant Enough Audiobook By Cassidy Hutchinson cover art 98. Enough By: Cassidy Hutchinson Down the Drain Audiobook By Julia Fox cover art 99. Down the Drain By: Julia Fox 100. Churchill

Vince completely conned/manipulated/played everyone. Everything is actually going according to his plan.
With Steph coming out and announcing the “Paul Levesque era” in addition to Rock’s recent conservative commentary it looks and feels so obvious. Please follow what I’m saying step by step. I promise you on this day you will see clearly. For Vince is like Mussolini and Kennedy: a true cult of personality.
Back in june/july 2022. Allegations come out and Vince knows business as usual is over. He goes away. “Retires.”
July 2022-December 2022. 6 months in “retirement”. Plotting and scheming. Wheeling and dealing.
December 2022 he chooses to come back to the board and facilitate the sale of WWE.
Wtestlemania 39 weekend. He sells to his longtime buddy UFC owner Ari Emanuel. Ari like Vince is a conservative businessman and he’s married to a woman young enough to be his grand daughter. Deal closes September 2023. Now we have TKO Holdings instead of Titan Sports right as WWE moves into new headquarters.
December 24/January 2024. Kevin Dunn gone. Vince probably paid him handsomely to go away to make it look like their is a purge of Vince’s people and we have a “new regime”. Kevin Dunn is like 65 and had more money than he could possibly spend anyway.
Vince’s Janel Grant thing breaks out and he’s “forced to resign”. But why would he not pay his NDA? Because he wanted it to leak. So everyone would think he’s out for good. It’s a decoy.
Rock in. ESPN producer in. But if it was a true purging of Vince why is Triple H, Heyman, Prichard, Hayes, Michael Cole etc all still there?
Wrestlemania 40. Steph comes out and says “Welcome to Paul Levesque era”. Why is Stephanie here? Why is Vince’s daughter and son in law here? Why did Vince take less from Ari for WWE than he could have got from Disney or the Saudi Arabs?
Why is Rock going on Fox News putting down cancel culture? He sounds like just another wrestling conservative now like Jericho and The Bucks, Vince Russo, Triple H, Vince, entire McMahon family. Rock always voted blue. Obama, Biden now he’s a red? Maybe Vince wants him to front for Trump because if Trump wins then Vince can be pardoned. Biden wouldn’t pardon Vince.
Why has some shady venture capitalists firm taken over Endeavor looking to sell TKO Holdings? Why is Vince selling all his stock? What does he need to raise money for? AEW isn’t for sale and Tony wouldn’t sell it to him even if it was. Also Impact is so cheap that Vince already had the money pre sale.
Vince’s plan was to make you think he was being run out of WWE. It was all smoke and mirrors. IWC fell for it hook, line and skinker.
Because Vince is the real tribal cheif, the real final boss. The real American nightmare. Trump, Bezos and Elon ain’t got nothing on this brilliant evil genius.