Before you read anything in this letter, if you decide to, I want to make it perfectly clear that my only intention is to take responsibility for my actions and apologize. I’ve considered writing this letter for years and have been stopped at every turn; I was fearful of driving a wedge into your efforts to heal, reopening old wounds, disrupting your peace. If an apology came, I wanted it to come after both of us were able to heal and to grow - perhaps even to the point where it would no longer be necessary, though if anything at this point would be too little too late, then I am sorry for that too. I was doubtful of my intentions, and I had to know that in doing this I wasn’t simply trying to relieve my own guilt at the expense of your peace. I am not writing in expectation of a response, or forgiveness, or a single thing at all from you; I simply know that you are owed apologies for having suffered my stupidity, immaturity, and cruelty, and that if that is something you harbor even the smallest desire to hear, then you deserve to.
During our relationship, I was cold, unkind, unfair, unavailable, hateful, jealous, dishonest, and manipulative, and worst of all I was too immature to see all of the ways I was mistreating you until after everything was said and done. When we met, I had low self-esteem, and I realize now that I allowed every negative emotion that I harbored for myself to be projected onto you and our relationship. You showed me compassion, kindness, and warmth, and, not knowing how to handle it, took it, and you, for granted. There is no excuse for the way that I composed myself during our time together, and I realize now just how much that must have hurt you, how deeply unfair and unexcusable and stupid my actions were.
I did not understand your needs, nor did I try to - not nearly as much as I should have. I did not respect your boundaries, emotional or physical, nor did I respect your needs - needs that should have been fulfilled without a second thought by any halfway decent partner. I realize now how disrespectful I was towards you during our time together, and how insignificant this all had to have made you feel.
I had the emotional regulation of a child during our relationship. I let my own negativity and the battles I was trying to ignore rather than confront and grow from with my own mental health manifest in a way that was taken out on you. I withdrew from your trust, I took advantage of your kindness and compassion, I spoke harshly and said horribly unfair things - things that I’ll wish forever I could take back. I was also too selfish and immature to provide you with the comfort and compassion that you needed for your own battles, and that was far worse than you ever deserved. I remember once that you told me, confiding in me after your mental health had declined and you started talking to someone, that you felt like our relationship and the problems that we were facing and not doing anything to fix long-term were a direct cause for the decline you were going through. Rather than doing what any halfway decent partner should do in that situation and coming to understand what you were going through and what I had to do to make things right, I grew defensive and sullen. I could rattle off how I was just a stupid immature boy who couldn’t experience or regulate emotions healthily to save his life, but I’m not here to excuse or justify my actions. If anything, I think that I knew that what you were saying was not only true, but a preventable situation that I had brought onto both of us. What I did was wrong at all turns.
As I have said before, my intention of writing is not to relieve any shame that I felt or because of some misplaced idea of absolving my guilt. But nonetheless, I want you to know that I am ashamed. If you’ve ever blamed yourself, even in passing, for anything that happened or how things ended up (which I doubt, as I’m sure you recognized my wrongdoing well before I did), then I’m here to take responsibility. For all of it. Our greatest problems were my doing, and the way that both our relationship and any last shred of decency between us ended was also my fault. I was a pathetic bigot who didn’t see the ways that my words or actions were harmful and asinine, and I’ll spend a lifetime working to atone for such absurd and monstrous behavior, if something like that is even possible. I refused to do any of the work on myself or the relationship that I needed to back then to call myself an even halfway decent person, let alone partner. I’ve spent a long time doing that work now, too late after the fact, realizing all of the ways that I acted as an unacceptable human being and acknowledging all of the ways in which I needed to be better. Going from a stupid teenage boy who didn’t think twice about his hateful and and selfish behavior to a man in therapy working to heal and do right by the people around him, I only wish that I had the wherewithal to do this work and have these revelation far, far earlier than I did and save you the pain and trouble that I caused you. Worst of all, I will forever hate myself for the last words we spoke to each other and the way things ended, both in person and over text. My greatest regret will always be my anger and lack of compassion that led us to that moment, and what my anger and lack of compassion spurred me towards in that moment. I will be selfish in this moment and say that I would rather by far have these words be the last ones we exchange than what passed between us before.
I am sincerely, eternally, cataclysmically sorry for all of it. All the pain, negativity, and doubt that I brought into your life in the time that I was in it, or in the time following my departure. And in a way that is heartfelt and honest, with only hopes for the best for you in mind, I hope that you do find someone that you deserve.
You were my first serious partner, and the first person in my life that I felt like truly saw and understood me. You made me feel safe and seen, and I did not know how to handle that. Rather than trying to emotionally mature to reciprocate that care for you, I took it for granted, and for that I am so, so sorry.
If you’ve read this far, I sincerely hope that this letter found you well. An old friend of Anna’s that I worked with for a while said that you’re getting your master’s degree, and I think that that’s absolutely incredible. I know that the work that you’ll go on to do will be huge and I hope that your passion for it has only grown since last we talked.
I want to reiterate that I am sending this without expectations of anything. I am not writing this thinking that I am owed forgiveness or even a response from you. But, I’ve come to a point in my own career where I could be relocating out of the country in a matter of months, possibly for good, after I finish my own schooling. If there is a chance that I can offer something in the way of closure that neither of us got back then by writing this, then I’d very much like to. If not, then I pray you find your peace and become everything that you’re meant to be.
I will always be grateful for the time we had together, even if it was short - and I’m grateful that you got away from someone undeserving of that time.

From nothingness to sanctity
One day, in the folds of time, a person was born in the city of Marrakesh. They all had many brothers, and they were poor and their condition was miserable and extremely poor. This person, whose name was Ibrahim, worked the entire summer to buy school supplies for the next year, and if his shoes were torn, Or he sewed his clothes, but he had no shoes, so his clothes were worn out and old. Ibrahim’s father was in the service, so he was absent from the house, not being with his family much. Days passed and Ibrahim grew up, so his father gave him two choices: either to go to the Education Academy to study and graduate as a professor, or to enter the service. The military, and this choice was not recommended by the father, Ibrahim, because he did not want his son to go through a difficult experience like him, but Ibrahim had an opinion and was very stubborn, so he chose military service, so he went, and after a few years he graduated with the rank of colonel, and at that time his mother proposed to him, a girl from the neighborhood in which he They lived in it, and at that time he married a son, and after that she became pregnant and they had a son, a male, and they named him Muhammad, and from here our story will begin. Muhammad was an ordinary child, and he studied well and excelled in his studies. He always went to the mosque in order to memorize the Qur’an, and he was not an honest, trustworthy child with good morals. He respected people and never insulted anyone. He was a pure and pure child. As the years passed, Muhammad grew up and took the baccalaureate degree. And all these years, Muhammad was influenced by the Islamic conquests and the personality of the Prophet Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace, and the Companions, may God be pleased with them, especially Omar ibn Al-Khattab and Ali bin Abi Talib, so he devoted himself to reading the biography of the Prophet and watching videos whose topics were Islam. The important thing is that we go back and said that Muhammad reached the age of 18 and did not find in Morocco job opportunities or even a good position, so he decided to immigrate to America like other young people, so he was registered in the American lottery and after a few months had passed. Acceptance came to him, and he was very happy because he would find a decent living and a decent life. But in reality, there is something else. The important thing is that Muhammad collected all the documents he would need and applied for the visa. Before and after that, he collected his beliefs and booked the plane ticket. On the night of the flight, he was so excited that he did not sleep a lot, and in the morning. He went to the airport, his parents said goodbye to him, and he went to the plane, and after hours he found himself in America, and the reality was something else. There were many racists, and they always insulted him with the name Muhammad because he idolized the Prophet Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace, and they even called the Messenger lustful, and he married Aisha for 6 years. And God forbid, as they curse the honorable companions, may God be pleased with them. The important thing is that Muhammad completed his studies in America and obtained several certificates, so he submitted his application to enter the police because he had just obtained American citizenship. The important thing is that he submitted his application and they approved it, so he took the written and physical test and passed it, so he passed them, and now Muhammad has become An official policeman for the state of Chicago, Muhammad was sincere in his work and dedicated to it. He always did not accept bribery and punished criminals severely. Years passed and Muhammad rose in his position and became in the anti-gang department. He became the one carrying out executions and began killing and exterminating everyone. Killer gangs because the state gives him the decision to kill them because they incite fear in people, kill them, and rape their daughters. Muhammad killed, or rather executed, thousands of people, and he exterminated hundreds of gangs from existence, and all the criminals feared him and were afraid to even mention his important name. Hours passed, and one day of the daysOne day, Muhammad found a volume containing the story of the revolution and the Soviet Union. He read it all and was influenced by revolutionary thought. He began to imagine himself as the king of the world, and he was one of the most supportive of the Palestinian cause. They always sent thousands of dollars to Palestinian associations, and Muhammad was stable even though he was stable. In America, but he hates its corrupt regime and the racism towards foreigners that is abundant in it, so Muhammad decided to go to Russia in order to settle there and submitted his application to Russian intelligence and gave up his service in America, but he still possessed American citizenship. The important thing is that Muhammad worked in Russian intelligence and began every day. It is getting more and more popular and everyone loves it until one day there was a parade for President Vladimir Putin And then Muhammad met President Putin, and Putin liked Muhammad’s personality and the way he treated and respected him, so he decided to hire him as his bodyguard, and Muhammad was very happy with this news. The next day, he started working with the president, and he accompanied him wherever he went. The president was subjected to a series of assassination attempts, and Muhammad was always He was his savior. Meanwhile, Muhammad became a loyal friend of Putin and became Vice President. One day, Putin became seriously ill, and when he was on his deathbed, he said goodbye to Muhammad. Muhammad was very affected by his death, but he moved forward and now he has become the President of the Republic of Russia, so it began. His ambitions to reshape the Soviet Union, so he began to forcefully occupy the countries that were on his side. He did not kill innocent people or women. He implemented the commandments of the Prophet Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace, to the letter. At this time, America began to threaten Muhammad that it would occupy Russia and destroy it. Muhammad was aware of this matter and was He planned in advance, as he intended to obey America and eliminate it, and the opportunity came to him. He restored the Soviet Union a hundred times stronger and stronger than it was during the era of Stalin and the other leaders. He only developed the nuclear arsenal and developed advanced weapons, and at this time Muhammad brought his father because He had experience in the army and gave him the position of first commander of the army staff, so his father trained the armyHis father was very strict, and he trained the soldiers very hard, and this would benefit them later. Muhammad also gave his grandfather the position of the chief president of all the central banks in the Soviet Union. He was the state’s accountant. All of the revenues of the Soviet Union passed through Muhammad’s grandfather. He also gave his great uncle the position of governor. He was in charge of all the car factories in the country, so he was in charge of all the car factories and all the companies. He was the president of them and the first factory because he had experience. He also entrusted him with the tasks of building power plants and manufacturing high-precision surveillance cameras. Muhammad gave his middle uncle the position of president of the iron and aluminum mining companies. All types of metal. He also gave his younger uncle the head of the taxi unions, as he is responsible for companies and all taxis and driving licenses for taxis, as well as their taxes. Muhammad also gave his younger uncle the position of head of the Ministry of Education and responsible for all schools in the country, as well as the head of the professors’ body. As he is responsible for the education and study sector, Muhammad also gave his great uncle the position of head of the body of lawyers, judges and courts in the state because his great uncle had more than 20 years of experience in the field. Muhammad also gave his other grandfather the position of head of arms manufacturing and export companies because his grandfather also had In military service, he had a lot of experience in questions, because this is all his specialty in politics Thanks to these positions that he gave to some members of his family, each of whom had great experience in the field in which he specialized, which helped the Soviet Union develop greatly and become stronger and stronger. At that time, Muhammad consulted his Soviet advisors and his father in his capacity as Supreme Commander. And the highest ranks of the army, intelligence, and security in the country. Ibrahim, Muhammad’s father, was the second most important authority in the country after his son Muhammad. The important thing is that after the long Shura period, Muhammad took the appropriate decision, so he bombed Washington, D.C., with a large nuclear bomb, which led to the erasure of Washington from the map and the destruction of the White House, so America rose. He responded with a nuclear missile, but Ibrahim, Muhammad's father, was able to dismantle it, repel it, and turn it towards America. From here, a fierce battle began between the Soviet Union and the United States of America. In the end, the Soviet Union was able to overthrow and eliminate America. It also occupied Canada and South America and brought it back. Alaska to Soviet ruleThe Soviet Union seized all the wealth of North and South America, and even Canada, and annexed them to the Soviet Union. Muhammad rebuilt America on the Soviet system, and even Canada and Brazil. The power of the Soviet Union increased 1,000 times, and the Soviet Union became the most powerful country in the world. Muhammad’s ambitions increased, so he occupied North Korea. He eliminated President Kim Jong-un and also occupied South Korea, Japan, and China. The thing that distinguished Muhammad was not killing innocent people. He only killed those participating in the war, and when he occupied the country, he rebuilt it and employed its citizens with a better salary than they had been, so everyone saluted him. There were also those who hated him, but they were very few. The important thing is that the Soviet Union became from the Republic of Russia to the most powerful country in history. Muhammad also liberated Palestine and gathered all the lions of the world and burned them, slaughtered them, and exterminated them from the globe. Only Muhammad eliminated all the Jews and it was Palestine. It was filled with ululations and joy at her liberation, and all the people were chanting the name Muhammad Muhammad and calling him Muhammad the Savior. Meanwhile, the grandfather of the first and second Muhammad died of old age, so Muhammad became very sad for them. At the funeral, someone poisoned Muhammad’s food with the most severe type of poison, and when he ate it, he choked and died. He almost died, but when he came out of the coma, the doctor told him while he was crying, “The poison has spread through your body, my lord Muhammad. You have only a few days left of your life.” Muhammad began to cry, but he was patient. Then Muhammad made his farewell conference in which he gave a speech and advised the people. When he dies, the rule will pass to his father, and when his father dies, it will pass to his great uncle, and this sequence will remainAfter a few days, Muhammad died and was buried in a grave of gold and diamonds. He became the most important figure in the world, so people began to visit him from all parts of the Soviet Union and even from the Arab countries. Millions of people visited him daily. As for him, when he died, power passed to him and he ruled with justice. Here the story of Muhammad has ended and has been folded between the pages of the past I forgot to mention that Muhammad was fighting with the soldiers, but he was covering his face with a mask so that the opponents would not recognize him and focus on him to kill him. If the president was killed, the Soviet Union would collapse. Muhammad was fighting with the soldiers and killing a lot of the enemy. He and his father were fighting, even though his father He was old, but he was stronger than Muhammad himself. Muhammad’s father was fighting 10 soldiers at the same time and killing them. Muhammad also occupied France, demolished the Eiffel Tower, and occupied almost all of Europe. Muhammad donated billions of dollars to Palestine until Palestine became very advanced and became a more ornate city. Muhammad also occupied Iran and exterminated the extremist Shiites. The one who poisoned Muhammad was a black man from Ethiopia, and the soldiers shot him dead when Muhammad died.Also, Muhammad could also have eliminated Morocco and wiped it from the map, but Muhammad did not want to do that out of respect for the Almoravids, Almohads, and Idrisids. When Muhammad died, power passed to his father and he began to rule the world. Muhammad’s tomb, built of pure gold and all precious stones, became a place of pilgrimage for millions of people every day, to the point that airports were filled with people and thousands of people were lining up in queues to obtain a visa. There were also thousands of people in the street chanting the name of Muhammad the Leader. The great and even they are queuing up to go to the Soviet capital, as there are people from far away places in the world such as Australia who go to the Soviet capital to visit the grave of Muhammad, and he was the most important and holiest person in the world after the Prophet Muhammad. And his companions, I am talking about his military clothes and weapons, all of them were sold for millions of dollars to Arab museums. As for the Soviet museums, they contain Muhammad’s necklace and his favorite weapon, and even the Soviet museum is crowded with people every day just to see its antiquities. Mohammed. Everyone loved him, so Muhammad became the second legend that history will not repeat. The first legend is the Prophet MuhammadWhen Muhammad died, they wrapped him in very advanced materials to prevent his body from decomposing. Muhammad's body did not decompose, but remained as it was. One of the materials used to preserve Muhammad's body was formalin, so Muhammad's body remained intact throughout the years.There are also some very wealthy Arabs who wanted to move Muhammad’s grave from the Soviet Union to Mecca in order to increase the state’s economy, but the entire world, billions of people, categorically refused, whether from within the Soviet Union or from outside it, and they wanted to buy his body for billions of dollars, but the entire world categorically refused. A wave of anger has erupted against Saudi Arabia because of this, because a person like Muhammad cannot be violated and his grave opened When Muhammad's father, Ibrahim, assumed power, and due to his old age, he was 61 years old. He found many difficulties because he found himself facing a great challenge in front of him, ruling millions of people. The Soviet Union, during Muhammad's era, was at the height of its power. He had sat on the throne of the most powerful country in history. Only the area of the Soviet Union was estimated at 400 million kilometers, so Ibrahim had to make a lot of effort, and in some of the Union’s colonies, some civil wars broke out between supporters of Muhammad and his supporters and among those who hated him, as most of those who hated Muhammad were from Central Europe, from the Greek islands and elsewhere. Next to it was the leader of the movement named Johann Gospiel. The latter sought revenge on Muhammad’s followers, and they all wanted to kill Ibrahim and destroy the Soviet Union. He was very hateful, and events will show you why the latter was so hateful of Muhammad and the main family. We will go back in time a little to when Muhammad committed mischief. America and occupied North and South Korea. His ambitions began in Europe, and he started with Italy, so he overthrew it, even though he respected Mussolini, the Italian fascist leader, but Muhammad’s ambitions were to occupy all of Europe, so he occupied Italy, eliminated its leader, and demolished all the ancient Roman idols and gods, and when he headed to occupy the Vatican. Muhammad remembered the words of the Prophet Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace, at the sign of the Hour, that in the Vatican there is the staff of Moses and the Thapoth of the Covenant, according to what the commentators and hadith scholars say, so Muhammad retreated.With his army, he went to occupy Greece and wanted to destroy Athens. He met the other army, headed by Johann Gaspiel's brother, called Nicholas Gaspiel. The two armies faced each other. Nicholas' army consisted of 45,000 tanks, a fleet of planes, and 980,000 soldiers, while Muhammad had 60,000 tanks. 2 million soldiers, and the two armies faced each other at the famous Evros River in Greece. The war began, and it was so bloody that the Evros River was filled to the brim with corpses and its color became red with blood. Muhammad was killing the enemies, and his father Ibrahim was also fighting, as he was 51 years old and he was very strong. Stronger than Muhammad himself. The important thing was that Muhammad was fighting. He tore off his mask. Nicholas the commander saw him and said: Here you are, Muhammad. I swear to Zeus, Poseidon, and Athena that you will not survive today. Medusa's curse will fall on you. Today I will hang your head before the gods. Muhammad did not answer him verbally, so his response was to arrest him, cut off his head, and hang his body on a treeThey continued fighting for several hours, and Muhammad was able to eliminate the entire army and occupied Greece at five in the morning. He prayed dawn in the city and began his entry with the soldiers. 200,000 soldiers had died in the war. Muhammad made a broadcast on television and consoled all the families and gave them a salary. For life and huge sums of money. The important thing is that Muhammad passed by the fields and saw some peasants. When they saw him, one of them called out and said, “Where is Muhammad?” Muhammad said to him, “Here is Muhammad.” The man came to him and hugged him and said, “O Muhammad, we have been saved from a tyrant who was torturing us and making our lives miserable.” Nicholas Gaspiel) and gave Muhammad some apples and lemons, so Muhammad bought 300 cows from him and the soldiers slaughtered them, so they ate until their stomachs were full and they slept that night while Muhammad was standing praying. This is just going back in time to explain to you why Johann Gaspial hates Muhammad.Johann Gaspel was telling his experience when he saw Muhammad and saying when Muhammad conquered all of Greece, and the people were chanting his name. I said that Muhammad was not killing ordinary citizens and women because he was carrying out the orders of the Prophet Muhammad and his law of war. Johan Gaspel was 12 years old. He said: “I saw large crowds chanting the name of Muhammad, then I was looking out the window, and suddenly I saw Muhammad passing in front of me and hundreds of thousands of people.” Behind him were hundreds of thousands of soldiers armed with the most modern weapons in the world. He said that Muhammad was strong, broad-chested, not more than 180 centimeters tall, and had a black beard, black hair, and brown eyes. Dark brown, and when Johann saw him, he felt an unusual tremor and said that Muhammad was a person that everyone feared
guys This is a fictional story written by me. Give me your opinion in the comments

TL;DR : (M18) turning 19 in August and (F20) This is our 3rd time breaking up along with our 2nd cancelled engagement with plenty of separations and rekindling throughout our entire 4+ years knowing eachother. We’ve done a lot of growing up together as well as apart and over the years we’ve both done eachother wrong but we’ve also done so so so much for eachother as well. However, it was always me who was less mature and messing up more. I recently messed up once again and in a state of high emotion on both sides, she was fed up and said We were never getting back together. Will I ever get one last chance with her?
Please, I miss her so much and I’m willing to do anything just for one final chance. I love her and I’m IN love with her with all my heart and soul bro. I am extremely attached, connected, and emotionally invested in this girl and we have been through so much together. I desire(more than anything else in the world) a future with her.
For more context:
Our first time breaking up, I had just turned 15 and she was 16. Her and I barely even dated for a couple months before I had indirectly and immaturely broken up with her by leaving it “upto her” because of me wanting to talk to other girls, but her and I still ended up talking and being flirtatious anyway. But then we had separated because of me getting my phone taken away for months. She had started talking to someone else who was MUCH MUCH older than her and was grooming hevery toxic to her but out of strange obligation, she stayed with him anyway although she really just wanted to be with me. Her and I still remained as close as ever although she had to turn me down twice when I wanted to rekindle things. Later on, I had got my phone back and as we entered into the next school year( she turned 17 and I turned 16) we grew closer and closer and feelings developed stronger and stronger meanwhile her relationship with him was getting worse and worse and they were having multiple breakups as well. She even at one point expressed to me that she was on the verge of breaking up with him and very bluntly hinted at as well as indirectly told me she wanted to leave him for me. But ultimately after she knew that my hopes were all up and everything she ended up just choosing him over me anyway and leaving me hanging. a couple months afterwards she posting vulgar things on social media with the caption “I’ll suck my man d#%k fr” or something along those lines. That’s when I fully moved on and went on to get in multiple relationships/“situationships” over the course of that year. Until fast forward to November 2023, she comes back and we very very quickly rekindle/get back together. over the course of that year, because of my porn and masturbation addiction we’ve separated as well as had many issues interfering with my attraction of her because of my skewed image of women and interfering with us having proper sex or intimacy without my fetishes being involved. Fast forward to August, I ended up falling into watching porn for almost my entire birthday week behind her back while she was working so hard to eventually bring me gifts on that day which I later confessed to the following month. We separated for 3 days and this is when I finally started taking my walk with the lord seriously.(she began months ahead of me and she was the one that even introduced me to Christianity in the first place)(her entirely family is Christian) 2 months pass and a couple days after I propose to her for the first time and posting about it? a girl I used to talk to had replied to my iG story congratulating me and as we talked and catched up, I fell to temptation once again and ended up saying more than I should have/inappropriate things but by the time I realized what I was doing and ended it. It was too late and I confessed to her immediately. after a couple of days, she took me home from work and broke up with me. We talked about it over text an hour or so later and agreed we would be going no contact for a month, but over that period we constantly broke it(I even indirectly tried killing myself with alcohol and drunk texted her to which she was very sympathetic to and when I ended up blacking out she was terrified and prayed all night over me and even reached out to friends of mine to make sure I was okay.) fast forward, she ends it early and we rekindle. Fast forward to either late March or April 2024, I fall into looking at iG couples art and ecchi aesthetic art aka softcore porn and I confess to her afterwards. She’s initially upset but she stays with me.
Later on down the line I begin to question my faith entirely and my foundation crumbles after following the teachings of fallible men/cult leaders and mainly doing it for her and because I loved hewanted to bond with her and not actually seeking the truth for myself(although I had my moments of genuinely being curious and wanting to discover it for myself.) However, she was still just as firmly rooted in her faith as ever and maturing even more. On the contrary, I grow weak and undisciplined in my flesh, I fall back into bad habits, I stop reading the word, praying, fasting, I isolate myself from fellowship. And as it gets harder and harder to resist my sexual urges and with her unwavering on her boundaries of no sex before marriage and etc. I fell back into masturbation but eventually back into porn as well(softcore stuff again mainly but I slipped into some fetish stuff too) and it was over the course of a couple days again with me feeling very guilty and being afraid to tell heI just wanted to repent of it and be done but she ended up getting dream a about it and asked me about it the very next day to which I was honest with her and confessed. Then after however many minutes go by and her breaking up with me a third time with her saying “We are done.” and “We will see” “Love you, Bye” instead of taking the advice everyone was giving me and giving her time and space from jump. I pressed her, begged/pleaded, and blew up her messages making it worse and aggravating her until she followed up with the next day with telling me “Sure I’ll let you know where we stand”We are never getting back together.”
I panicked and went into a high emotional state myself and went to her house late at night(1 or 2 am), and pressed her even more begging and pleading. But this made it worse as well and she had said “what us? there is no us” “go home” “you did what you did”and etc while pushing me out and slamming the door in my face. She originally only talked to her mother about it but because of my stupid decisions while being emotional I unintentionally involved everyone else in it. Her older sister’s husband went through a very similar situation with the older sister and had offered to talk to me about it along with everyone else. But when I followed up later on that day it created a misunderstanding and I ended up getting blocked by him and her older sister after she texts me on her older sister’s phone saying the same exact hurtful and cold/seemingly detached things and after begging and pleading to call, we did but it only made it that much worse. I tried to explain my side of things the best I could while being highly emotional but she didn’t want to hear any of it and proceeded to say even more hurtful, cold, seemingly, detached things, cussed me out, then hung up in my face and blocked me. This whole breakup was very messy and happened over the course of barely 3 days.
I’m still in contact with her mom and I recently contacted her dad as well(parents are divorced) and he had told me she never even mentioned anything to him about it which goes to show I made things worse/unnecessarily involved other people in it that otherwise might not have been involved.
Now I’m giving her proper time and space but I’m still extremely anxious/uncertain about where things will go from here.
(I ask that you be honest but also open minded/considerate in responses please, this all happened over the span of a couple of days and I’m still very fresh in the grieving process)
What do you all think about this situation? (I especially want to hear from a female perspective)

Hello all. Repost, updated title.
I'm looking for this book and the story goes: A girl is being sexually abused by one of the people she is staying with. She meets twins who might be her neighbors and they're her peers. The broody one, also the hero, kills the abuser (with a gun) but it's the more charismatic twin that takes the credit. They are still high schoolers. Broody one likes the girl but she ends being his brother's girlfriend. Also, she is in denial about liking broody brother. She is also definitely with the other one because she feels indebted to him for saving her from the abuser uncle/fatheguardian. Unfortunately, the boyfriend is also a closeted bisexual and sort of has her agreeing to partake in threesomes with guys from school. She thinks she has to agree because that's what you do for someone you love, apparently. Broody brother and her don't really have much of a friendship going but they end up being around each other for some volunteering thing or something else, and he calls her on how she is letting his brother treat her. Broody brother definitely likes her. At the close of this read, boyfriend has an accident or something and he doesn't want gf to leave him and threatens that he'll reveal it to the police that broody brother in fact killed the abuser. There's a part, or more, that follows, I didn't read it though.
Please help. Thank you in advance.

Hi all, just joined this group as I thought maybe someone here can help! So we moved into a rented bungalow 5 months ago. My partner and I are in our 20s and our neighbours are all 60+ years old.
Ever since we moved in it’s been complaint after complaint.
The first complaint was about our modified cars. We don’t drive these cars often (maybe 2 times a month) but when we did the neighbour decided to record it and send it to the landlord stating we drive them at unsociable hours every night, rev them and “drift them around the village” which is of course not true in the slightest. Obviously us not wanting to cause any arguments spoke to this neighbour and said we would no longer drive the cars and they’ve been sat ever since. (Just an fyi, this man drives a very noise 1960s car)
The second complaint, I parked my car in the village parking and was harassed by a lady who followed me back to my house SHOUTING at me that I wasn’t allowed to park there because I’m not a true villager because I rent!! wtf.
The third complaint , the postman (who lives in the village) complained to not only his manager who contacted us but also our landlords. To say our dog was “ biting his hands and almost smashing the glass” when he delivers the mail. Which again - is not true as we have all evidence on video of this. So the complaint that came from the post man’s manager only said the dog was barking at him and that was it however his complaint to the landlords stated completely different.
In all honesty, we want to just leave. It’s obvious why the previous tenants moved out so quickly. The main question is how without massive fees to come with it? From what I can see , if we leave early we still need to pay rent for another 6 months even without living at the property. Is there any way around this if we have neighbours that are harassing us and we feel unsafe? What’s the best cause of action here. We just feel so upset over it all. We’ve tried our best to fit in but it just doesn’t seem to work out for us no matter what we do to resolve issues. I feel we’re on the edge of loosing our deposit because of all these complaints. Obviously we have nothing against the landlords because they’re not our issue. It’s our neighbours. !

My best friend and I, up until this point, have had a beautiful relationship. Let’s call her Rose. We understand each other as women in a way no one else ever could, and truly I love her to death. We lived in the same city for a year before both moving to slower lifestyles, eventually moving back to the city we love, but together this time! We moved into a shitty apartment with my boyfriend, made do with that for six months, and on May 1 of this year we all moved in to a beautiful home.
Now, I feel like it’s important to mention that my best friend and I both grew up with fathers who are extremely confrontational, even abusive at times. Neither of us respond well to confrontational triggers, but every time we’ve had a disagreement in the past, she’s just left and then we talk about whenever she decides she’s ready.
If you can’t tell already, she’s anxious avoidant, and I’m anxious attachment.
Well, I got invited to a graduation party for one of my friends that my best friend just met for the first time. The graduate friend, we’ll call her Eva, and I have been friends for yeeeeaaars. Longer than me and my best friend have been friends, we just aren’t as close. So this party meant a huge deal to me, since she wasn’t inviting a lot of people and she had things planned for the moment we got there until the moment we left. I asked Eva if I could bring my best friend and my partner, and she said yes! We were all very excited, and I was grateful she was letting me bring extra friends!
Come the day of the party, which we’ve known about for a week now, I ask my best friend if she’s wearing a bathing suit. She says she doesn’t know, so I offer her a couple of my own. Even now, she doesn’t seem very engaged or excited, which is fine, she just got off of work, but I was trying to lift her spirits. She went back and forth with herself on whether she would shower, whether she would wear a bathing suit, whether she would even change. So I let her be in the living room for a while to decide for herself while I went to take a shower.
I got out of the shower probably 15 minutes later and said “Rose, the showers open!” She said “okay!” Got up, went to her room to do what I assumed to be grab a change of clothes or get ready in whatever manner she decided, and then she went back to sit down on the couch. While I’m getting ready, I had to leave my room a couple times to go to the bathroom for things, and each time I left she was just sitting on the couch. Keep in mind, the party starts at 4. It is 3:30 at this point. With an hour drive.
I’m starting to get a little anxious about time, so I asked from the bathroom “Hey are you ready Rose?” And the thing is /I genuinely did not know if she was ready or not/. She had just told me she didn’t know what she would wear, so I didn’t feel uncomfortable asking if she was going to wear what she had on.
She snapped back at me “No?” And something else along the lines of “obviously not” and I started getting more anxious because I wasn’t trying to be rude, I just hate being late. Really bad. And she knows this. I started feeling distressed and I was like “Rose I wasn’t asking to be rude, I just didn’t know.” I then left the bathroom and went to my own room.
She knocks on my door and asks if she can come in. I thought she’d just be getting her purse, but she opened the door and said “Sorry for snapping, but you had an attitude when you asked if I was ready.” I feel confused, because I genuinely didn’t. I was asking because /I didn’t know if she was ready./ I tell her this, and she just starts saying “Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.” WHILE IM TALKING. This drives me insane. My parents used to do it, so I just shut down. The last thing she pointedly says is, “Try considering me.” I have been!!!! I didn’t say this, and not to be harsh, but try considering that you are a guest of a guest, and we’re already late! And you are making no effort to change that.
I sent her a text about how I appreciate the apology but it hurt my feelings that I wasn’t allowed to share my own thoughts in my own room without getting spoken over, and she responded back with:
“Oh girl. No.. I went in there to speak to you. You never grant me an ear when I want to come to you about a boundary and didn’t even let me get to my point before cutting me off. So I wouldn’t let you get the stage after you didn’t want to hear me? But either way I’m not discussing this through text.” This hurt my feelings for one, because the opening line felt demeaning. The part about “getting the stage” was distilling my frustration into something much more performative than what it was, and when I asked her about what boundary she was setting, she said “I’ve just said I won’t discuss this through text and I’m heated and I don’t wanna talk either.”
This is where things start getting explosive. At this point, Rose, who is meant to be coming with us in one car, is not only not ready, but is refusing to engage with either of us. We don’t know if she’s ready, or at this point if she’s coming, and we are already late.
I’ll admit, this next part was on me. She was in her room with her door closed, and through my frustration I started loudly saying “We’re already late!! I hate being late. It’s disrespectful!!”
And then she was like “Then just fucking leave without me!” Fine. I went to her door and said “Are you coming at all?” She says something I can’t understand behind the door, so I said “Rose?!” And she said, with the most anger I’ve ever heard from her, “BITCH. WHAT?”
Absolutely not. I will not be spoken to like that, especially not as an adult. I say this, and she just starts literally targeting me saying “YOU NEVER FUCKING LOOK IN A MIRROR. YOUVE NEVER EVER ACTUALLY FUCKING LOOK AT YOURSELF.” This is so hurtful, because up until this exact point in time, she has never, EVER, made constructive criticism about the things she was saying. If she truly thought that, I wouldn’t have minded her bringing it up to me. But screaming things like that at me in a moment of anger? Absolutely not okay. And then she kept saying things like “I THOUGHT YOU WERE FUCKING LEAVING? WHY DONT YOU JUST FUCKING LEAVE?” Got at least one “FUCK YOU” in there, and other things I can’t even remember because they were so hurtful. However, I don’t think I will ever forget the majority of what she said. It was more than triggering, it hurt.
At 21 years old I haven’t had someone speak to me like that since I lived with my parents.
Yall, it wrecked me bad. I‘ve been so anxious I’ve been hospitalized three times. I’ve thrown up probably over 30 times, and last night I even threw up blood. I doubt she even knows because even though she lives with us, she either goes to her brothers house or she goes in her room and stays there all night. I don’t know how she eats, drinks water, or lets her dog out that she keeps caged up all day just so even HER DOG can’t interact with us. She doesn’t look at my social media, OR our friends social media. She has effectively excommunicated our whole friend group over her own personal issues, that she refuses to communicate.
I debated making this post for so long. I even debated telling our mutuals for days because I didn’t want her not to have her own opportunity to reach out to them. But after four days, she never did. And our closest friend said “no Reddit post will tell you who’s in the wrong. There is no excuse for stonewalling someone for seven entire days.” Which is true. I’m not even religious, and creation according to biblical genesis had already been done by now. This timeline is reaching finality.
I guess my question is, what should I do? I can’t reach out to her saying I want to talk because she’s made it explicitly clear I am not to contact her until SHE is ready, but she has made absolutely no effort to do that. I also don’t know if even want to talk again, because at this point I’m so resentful and I’m not sure what edge could possibly do to rectify that.
Dictionary definition of stonewalling: delay or block (a request, process, or person) by refusing to answer questions or by giving evasive replies. Complete disengagement.
It’s one of the four horsemen of the relationship apocalypse, another being broadly targeted criticisms like “you always,” and “you never,” which she also did.
I’m mostly sad. She is, slowly becoming was, my best friend. Every day she pretends that me or my friends don’t exist I grow more resentment. I haven’t lived a life without her in three years, and now we live together and she’s hurt me beyond repair. Please help with some advice.
TLDR: My best friend irrevocably dented our relationship because of an emotional outburst, followed by cutting me and all my friends off for seven days. We live together. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I want to be friends, every time I see her I want to throw up from anxiety.

Welcome (Back?) to Fallout 76

I have seen tons of new players coming in to the game lately, and even more returning to the game much like myself. I won't say I'm the smartest and best informed Fallout 76 player, but I have had tons of help from some people I can say probably are some of the smartest and best informed in the game. So I've decided to compile this handy yet vauge-ish leveling guide to some things you might be curious about, or might find helpful, or whatever! First off, however, let's go over some things the new players might not know: Etiquette in Fallout 76!

Etiquette of Appalachia

While this is a game about lawless chaos in a hell-like wasteland, there are some rules you really should follow!

1. If you don't want to engage in PVP, turn on pacifist mode in the settings and read the popups on your screen about contesting workshops!
   
2. Don't start events until the very last ~30 seconds! Give other players a chance to make it to the event so it's easier to complete and everyone gets loot/xp from enemies!
   
3. Don't go overkill and destroy everything in public events! Killing everything before anyone gets a chance to do any damage to the enemies makes it so nobody else gets any XP or loot.
   

AFAIK those are the big three rules of this game, some people have their preferences and morals and such but IMO, to each their own beyond these big three.

Leveling Up

This is probably your main way of getting poweutility; through leveling up and collecting those sweet, sweet perk cards. I'm just gonna tell you how it is and say hey, don't shoot the messenger. Unless I told ya wrong, then shoot me a message so I can correct it.

How to Increase Your XP Gain

First off, lets go over how XP Bonuses are calculated. First, there is the base XP of an enemy. Then your INT stat will add to that base at 2.072% per point of INT you have. Then the resulting number is multiplied by the percentage base XP buffs you might have active such as the Leadership Bobblehead, Lunchboxes, or Well Rested. Here's the formula:
(Base XP + (Base XP * (INT * 2.072))) + ((Base XP + (Base XP * (INT * 2.072))) * %Buffs)
CALM DOWN!!! To make it easier on you folk out there who aren't running Egghead IRL, your INT stat essentially makes your base XP reward higher so your lunchboxes can give you way more XP.
So how does a fella max their INT? Well I'll tell ya! Other than the obvious idea of maxing it out by respeccing your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stat allocation, you have armor slots that can all roll legendary star stats such as boosting your INT by +1 per piece, and if you don't mind running a low health build while power leveling, the Unyielding affix that can roll on any non-power armor can give players a whopping +15 INT at +3 INT per piece equipped (body, arms, legs.) Also, you can wear the Casual Shielded Underarmor OR the Flannel Shirt for another +3 INT. Also, there's chems and foods that can temporarily boost your INT, though you can have only one of each type active at the same time. Some of the best ones to run for boosting INT are Brain Bombs for food and Berry Mentats for chems. All of these things can be purchased from other players too! Also, if you run mutations like Egghead and Herd Mentality, the Charisma Perk Card Strange In Numbers can boost your INT by another +4 so long as you're in a party. Which you should be, because forming a bond with 3 players in a Casual team will net +4 INT as well! And last but not least is the Mechanical Derby Game some players have in their C.A.M.P. which boosts your INT by +2 for 30 minutes!
Now how about boosting XP via percentages to multiply that huge INT boosted base XP you worked so hard for? I've got you covered! Same as before, some things stack but some don't. In this usage case, the Live & Love 8 (+5% XP) magazine doesn't stack with Live & Love 3 (Boost Effects of Food), for example. Same with the Intelligence Bobblehead (+2 INT) and the Leadership Bobblehead (+5% XP). Lunchboxes can stack only up to 4 times and if you pop a lunchbox around other players, the other players all get a boost too! Same if someone pops one near you, free XP boost! Lunchboxes grant +25% XP per box popped, so with four popped, that's double XP! You can also get a whopping +15% XP boost from the Charisma Perk Card Inspirational, and the event going on now, the Mothman Equinox, gives you another +15% XP for an hour if you interact with the purple eyed moth at the end. Also, the easiest bonus to get is your Well Rested/Kindred Spirit/Lover's Embrace buff that gives you +5% XP and is obtained by simply resting in a bed for a bit.
In conclusion and to wrap up this part I want to clarify that you will typically get MUCH more XP in a Casual Team over an Events Team because for a majority of the events, you will be killing tons of enemies and missing out on a +8% boost to the BASE XP of all enemies, ya know, before the multiplier boosts which adds up to be much more XP than you get from the completion reward, even when its doubled. Daily Ops is a different case because you are typically trying to run it fast and skip over fights if possible, but otherwise don't sleep on Casual Teams.

How to Farm XP

So now that we've written a small book on how to boost our XP, how are we going to actually GET the XP? Well the best ways is to kill enemies with a high base XP reward, and lots of them. For example, the super mutants at the famous WesTek Research Center provide a high base xp reward and so do glowing enemies, like ghouls, which can be more or less "made" by dropping a nuke on Whitesprings. Events are great for this as well, especially Radiation Rumble and Eviction Notice, but typically all of the events have a good amount of enemies to kill and reward you with exclusive rewards, so its typically savvy to hit the events as they come up unless you know what it has to offer and just don't need it.
Now hold on there, pardner! You don't actually have to do all the work when it comes to killing the enemies to get their XP. And to squash any rumors going around, doing more damage does not, in any way, net you a higher amount of XP!!! You simply have to do 1% of the damage to an enemy to get its FULL XP reward, and yes this applies to every single enemy, even bosses. Really all you have to do is shoot each enemy maybe once or twice and you'll be drowning in XP during those big events. A great weapon for this is the Tesla Rifle because it chains to nearby enemies when you hit something, allowing you to tag multiple enemies while only having to aim at one! Also, Nuka-grenades have a massive AOE, just make sure you aren't boosting explosive damage or anything so you aren't one shotting everything (and yourself.) And try to make sure your party is there doing the event with you because if they happen to get a kill you missed, you still get a little bit of XP which is better than nothing.
That's all for now though, and do let me know if I missed anything or messed up any info!

An hour after getting back from the Mason apartment, Bruce Kenner had the distinct misfortune of meeting Bertha Henderson.
A plump, gaudy woman with wrinkles and sun beaten skin only an alligator could love, Bertha Henderson wore bright red lipstick, bright red rouge, and way too much mascara. Her tangled hair was a dull red color and her clothes - pink pants and a white floral top - stretched tight across her bulbous frame. She looked like the kind of woman who lived in a trailer with velvet pictures of Elvis on the wall and pink flamingos in the front yard.
She acted like one too.
From the moment she stormed into his office, she hadn’t shut up once. She scolded, chided, accused, and badgered, sometimes even wagging one fat finger in his face like he was a naughty little boy. Ten minutes into the dressing down and Bruce was beginning to fantasize about police brutality.
It took him another ten minutes to find out what the hell she even wanted.
“It’s my granddaughter,” she shot back, “she’s missing in your town.”
My town? Lady, this is barely my office. I share it with three other people.
“Well, if you’ll calm down, maybe I can help.”
Jesus Christ was that the wrong thing to say. She hit the roof and didn’t come down again until Bruce was this close to arresting her for assault on a police officer. “Young man, I do not appreciate the way you’re talking to me. My tax dollars are the only reason you have a job. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be working at a car wash.”
At least I wouldn’t have to deal with you.
Bruce took a deep breath and held his tongue in check. “How can I help you?” he asked.
“I told you, my granddaughter is missing. If you listened to me, you’d know this already.”
Bertha produced a picture and slid it across the desk. Bruce studied it. A girl, roughly sixteen with black hair, blue eyes, and dimples smiled back at him. “She;’s with that Rossi man, I just know it,” she said bitterly.
“Who?” Bruce asked.
Rolling her eyes like he was stupid, the old woman told him the story. Jessie - the dimple faced girl - had the rotten luck of having to live with Grandma Bertha after her parents went to jail on drug charges. They lived in Sand Lake, a little town in the mountains outside Albany, where Bertha was no doubt loved and admired by all. One day, Jessie, who her grandmother lovingly described as “A little troublemaker”, ran off. Bruce didn’t blame her. He’d known Bertha for half an hour and he wanted to run off. Bertha did some snooping on Jessie’s laptop and found that the “little whore” had been chatting with an older man, Joe Rossi. Rossi, or so Facebook said, lived in Albany and worked at Club Vlad.
“I want him arrested for pedophilia,” Bertha said and crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. “He’s a dog just like all men. She’s probably pregnant already. Another mouth I have to feed.”
Behind the old battle ax, Vanessa appeared in the doorway and lifted her brows as if to say What a piece of work. Knowing her, she’d probably been standing just out of sight this whole time with McKenny, the elderly evidence clerk, and snickering into her hand like a little girl. LOL she called him young man.
Bertha noticed him looking over her shoulder and started to turn. Vanessa’s face went white and she ducked out of the way, narrowly avoiding detection. “I’m glad you think this is funny,” Bertha said to Bruce. “Meanwhile, if I don’t get Jessie back, the state’s going to stop sending me my checks. I need that income. I can’t work, you know. I have gout.”
Too bad being an asshole isn’t a job, you’d be world-famous
“I’ll go talk to him,” Bruce said.
“I want more than talk, young man, I want action.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When Bertha finally decided to waddle off and ruin someone else’s day, Vanessa came in and sat in the chair the old woman had so recently occupied. “Oh, my God,” she said, “that was intense. I was this close to radioing in a 1015.”
1015 was code for officer down.
“Funny,” Bruce said without a trace of humor. He had kids going missing, a dead guy someone moved around like a goddamn Barbie doll, and now this. What next, hemorrhoids?
“What do you think? Code 1 or code 2?”
Code 1 meant top priority. Code 2 meant not a top priority. Bruce thought for a moment. It didn’t sound like Jessie Henderson was in danger. It sounded like she met a guy - granted, one too old for her - and decided to hide out with him from her psycho grandma. Maybe it could be something more, but he had a gut feeling that it wasn’t…and his gut feelings were usually right. “2,” he finally said. “I got shit to do.”
By shit, he meant “Talk to the families of those missing boys again.” He’d been interviewing them for two days looking for clues, but there was nothing. It’s like they just vanished. Bruce didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Vanessa said and slapped the desk.
When she was gone, Bruce sighed.
Never a dull moment, he thought.
***
Ed Harris - no relation to the Hollywood actor - had been the medical examiner for the City of Albany since 2002, and in all that time, he had never seen anything quite like this.
It was Wednesday evening and Ed was locked away in the cold, sterile space beneath the city offices that comprised his domain. With its puke green tiles, harsh lights, and cloying smells of disinfectant, the .coroner's office creeped most people out, but not Ed. He was at home here, as comfortable surrounded by toe-tagged bodies as a cactus was surrounded by desert. A thin man in his fifties with curly, steel gray hair thinning in the middle, he wore a white smock, blood stained over his clothes that made him look like a butcher instead of a low level government functionary. He had a dark and dry sense of humor, but then again, so do all people who play with dead bodies for fun and profit.
The coroner’s office was a vast, utilitarian vault segmented into multiple different rooms. Here, where the magic happened, three stainless steel tables stood in a row; a bank of refrigerated drawers kept watch, making sure nothing funny happened. One of the cold fluorescent lights overhead flickered with a hum of electricity, and water dripped rhythmically from a faucet. It was a cold, eerie place, but to Ed, it was home.
On most nights, only one of the tables was occupied, but tonight, two were. On one lay an old lady who died of what appeared to be cyanide poisoning. On the other was Dominick Mason.
Naked save for a white cloth draped over his groin to protect his dignity, Dom was the most corpsy corpse you’d ever hope to see. In fact, if you looked up dead guy in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of him. His body was pale and sunken, one side covered in purple splotches where his blood had pooled, and his eyes were closed. His abdomen was slightly distended with the expected build up of gas, and his flesh stuck fast to the bones beneath. In other words, he was text book. A normal corpse.
Mostly normal.
As men of his trade are wont to do when strange bodies mysteriously appear, Ed had opened Dom up, making a Y shaped incision from his neck to his groin. He hummed to himself as he did so, his hands wielding his sharp and shiny tools with the deft assuredness of a seasoned surgeon. Done cutting, he dipped his gloved hands into the cavity and started removing organs. A spleen here, a liver there, nothing Dom would miss. When he got to the heart, however, he stopped.
There was something…off…about it. At first glance, it was black and withered like an oversized raisin. An odd and putrid odor emanated from it and though he was familiar with the various smells and stenches the human body produced after death, this wasn’t one of them. Try as he might, he couldn’t place it, couldn’t even compare it to anything. Plucking a magnifying glass from the metal cart next to the table, he peeled back part of Dom’s chest and examined the heart closer.
That’s when things got really weird.
Dominick Mason’s heart was, indeed, shriveled, but it was not black. Instead, it was almost entirely covered by an interlacing crisscross of what appeared to be black mold. Here and there, Ed could glimpse flashes of the heart beneath: It was wrinkled and a sickly gray color. “What is this?” Ed asked himself at length. He grabbed a pair of tweezers from the tray and carefully, very carefully, attempted to remove a piece of the mold for analysis. The moment the cold metal tips touched the heart, it gave a violent spasm that sent Ed falling back with a shocked gasp, the tweezers falling from his hand and clinking to the tiled floor.
The heart began to pulse like an alien egg sac, slowly at first, then more rapidly. For a moment, Ed was frozen in place, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Once you die, your heart ceases beating. That’s that. Only living hearts beat, and Dominick Mason was certainly dead. He was dead from the moment Ed first laid eyes on him earlier that day and he was dead now. Yet there was his heart, beating anyway.
It could be a muscle spasm. They usually aren’t that violent and consistent, but dead bodies sometimes do strange things. As he watched the blackened muscle expanding and contracting, however, Ed had the most eerie feeling. He went to rub the back of his neck, realized he was still wearing blood soaked gloves, and stripped them off. He was spooking himself out; he needed a break and a hot cup of coffee. He’d come back fresh and start over again.
With that mold.
Could you really blame him for being creeped out? That stuff wasn’t normal. He’d never seen anything like that before, not even in textbooks. Dom was scrawny and didn’t get enough vitamins in life, but overall, he was healthy; that mold…or whatever it was…had no business being there.
Going over to the coffee pot, which stood in the same room to save travel time, Ed grabbed a styrofoam cup. When he was done here, he planned to go home and -
A terrible, metallic clatter rang out, and Ed jumped. He turned around, and when he saw Dominick Mason standing next to the table, hunched slightly over and staring at him, an electric burst of fright shot up his spine and exploded in his brain, so strong it made the edges turn gray. Pale, hands hooked into talons, and the flaps of his chest hanging open to reveal the cavity beneath, Dominick Mason looked for all the world like a boy who’d been caught sneaking out to meet his girlfriend. A weak, involuntary, “Oh, God,” slipped from Ed’s trembling lips, and the spell was broken. Dom came alive and ran toward the door leading out to the parking lot. He slammed through it, and the sound of it crashing open and then falling closed again echoed through the empty chamber.
Shaking, panting for air, and soaked in piss, Ed sank to the floor in a sitting position, his eyes wide and staring like those of a soldier returning damaged from the front.
It was a long time before he composed himself enough to call the police.
***
Dazed and caught in a nightmarish twilight realm where nothing made sense, Dominick Mason limped painfully down the sidewalk, a stranger lost in a strange land filled with danger and hostile creatures. Barefoot and shrouded in a white sheet, he trembled with cold and struggled to ignore the dark, threatening shapes looming from the fog in his brain, shapes that would turn into unspeakable truths if he let them.
Passersby openly stared at him, their expressions either morbidly curious, disgusted, or alarmed. A man put his arm protectively around his girlfriend; a woman pulled her little boy to her breast, and another man sneered at him, his nose crinkling. Dom, his glazed eyes narrowed against the harsh glare of the many street lamps, headlights, and storefronts, lumbered headlong toward nowhere, his fear growing until he was shambling. He imagined he could hear every cough, every whisper; smell the odor of every unwashed body. Each car horn was deafening, every whiff of ass or armpits sent his stomach churning. The rustle of a passing pedestrian’s jacket jammed into his ears like icepicks, and the approaching globes of LED headlamps burned his eyes. He gritted his teeth and groaned against the pain.
The dense mist wrapping his brain made it hard to think. Like a frightened animal, he made his way on instinct alone. Home. He needed to get home. Out here, on the street, he was exposed. At home, locked away in his small apartment, he would be safe.
A car passed in the street, bass heavy rap music blaring from its open windows, and Dom’s brain exploded with agony. He threw himself against a street sign and held on for dear life, his legs weak. Dizziness overwhelmed him, and he almost went down. He was also cold.
So, so cold.
People around him quickened their step; they never took their eyes off him, as though he were a venomous snake that would strike at any moment. He needed to get away from them. They were going to hurt him; people always hurt him.
Pushing away from the sign, he began to hobble once more toward home, wherever home was. He looked over his shoulder several times as he made his way down Central Avenue, and each time, he saw that no one was following him as he had feared.
No one, that is, except for the man in sunglasses.
Tall and lank with curly hair, he wore dark Aviators and a leather motorcycle jacket over a button up shirt. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets and his face showed no expression. He was always there, always a few steps closer. Outside Capital Fried Chicken, a group of people openly stared at him, He heard their whispers as he passed. What’s wrong with him? Dude’s straight tweakin. And the one that struck him the most. That guy looks dead.
Dom hobbled faster, as if to outrun the realization that he was, in fact, dead. The man in sunglasses was closer now, his footsteps so loud that Dom winced. He turned around, and the man was impossibly in front of him. Dom ran into him and bounced backward, going ass over tea kettle and landing on the former. They were in front of a church on a darkened corner, the lights here either burned out or shot out - you could never tell in Albany. Even though it was dark, Dom could see everything with crystal clarity. Dom tried to scurry away, but he was too weak to escape. Right there and then, he decided to give up. Come what may, he just wanted this nightmare to be over.
The man stared down at him, emotionless, unspeaking.
Dom squirmed.
“You’re real lucky I came along,” the man said. His tone was flat, even.
Dead.
“Get up,” he said, “I’ll take you home.”
Home?
Yes.
Dom wanted to go home.
The man helped him up, and Dom followed him into the night.
***
Bruce Kenner stood in the middle of the medical examiner’s office at half past nine that evening with his hands on his hips and stared doubtfully down at Ed Harris. The lonely cavern was alive with activity as cops went over everything, all of them looking either bemused or a mused. Bruce was neither. He’d been at home, sitting in his chair and having a beer in front of AEW Dynamite when Vanessa called. “You might wanna get down here,” she said, sounding confused, “something really strange is going on.”
Ed Harris - no relation to that one guy - sat in a straight back chair beside his cluttered desk and gripped a styrofoam cup of coffee in both hands, putting Bruce - for some reason - in mind of a monkey. When Bruce came in, the old man was white as a sheet and shook like a leaf. In the last half hour, little had changed.
“Tell me again,” Bruce said.
He and Ed were pretty good friends. He knew that Ed knew standard police procedure. Cops don’t ask you to repeat your story a thousand times over because they’re forgetful fucks, they do it because telling it again and again helps to jog loose details that you might have forgotten. Ed, therefore, did not protest. “I turned my back,” he said and chopped the chair like Jackie Chan, “and I heard the noise.”
His voice was thick, unsteady, and halting. He sounded as squirrely as he looked…and he looked pretty damn squirrelly right now.
“I turned around…and he was looking at me. He was standing there and he was looking at me.”
This was the fourth time he’d had Ed go through the story, and nothing had changed. Bruce felt something stirring deep inside his gut. It was either disquiet…or he had to fart. He opened his mouth to speak, but sighed.
“You don’t believe me,” Ed said.
“I dunno, Ed. Dead bodies don’t just get up and walk away.”
Ed flashed. “I know that, goddamn it, but this one did.”
Bruce glanced at Vanessa. She looked uncomfortable.
“Are you sure he was dead?” Bruce asked.
Ed opened his mouth, closed it again, and said, “I did the autopsy.” His voice broke on the last word, and he sounded almost like he was pleading. “His fucking liver’s on the floor. He stepped on it. The man has nothing in him. I-I’m telling you, there’s no way he’s alive.”
During the autopsy, Ed had sat Dominick Mason’s organs on the little tray table where he kept his pointy things. Mason knocked it over while getting up. Indeed, there were human organs on the floor, and one of them did look kind of squished. Bare, bloody footprints led to the exit door, up a set of concrete steps, and then disappeared in the alley behind the office.
“You said you left his heart,” Bruce said.
“And his brain,” Vanessa helpfully added.
Ed pinched the bridge of his nose like a put upon professor dealing with two particularly stupid students. “Even with his heart and his brain, he’s dead. You saw the livor mortis. He was cold, he was stiff. His heart wasn’t beating, he wasn’t breathing. He was in one of those drawers for nine hours, not breathing, no blood flow - it’s impossible. It’s just…it’s impossible. I don’t care what you think, he was dead. And even if somehow he wasn’t, I cut out almost everything. I opened his stomach, I took his spleen - you don’t just get up from that. You don’t walk away from that, much less run.”
Bruce chewed the inside of his bottom lip because he didn’t have a Twix. He didn’t look like the smartest man in the world…and he wasn’t…but he knew a dead body when he saw one, and the body they took out of Dominick Mason’s apartment was D.E.A.D. And like Ed said, even if by some freak fluke of nature he wasn’t, he couldn’t just get up and go about his day with no liver, spleen, or kidneys. Hell, Bruce had his gallbladder out and he couldn’t even walk away from that.
“You said there was something funny about his heart,” Vanessa said.
Ed finished off his coffee. “Yeah. It was…moldy. I-I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Is it possible that…has something to do with it?”
“Unless the rules of biology have changed overnight, no,” Ed stated.
While Ed poured himself another cup of Joe, spilling some because he was still shaking, Vanessa took Bruce aside. “So what do you think?” she asked. “Is he telling the truth?”
For that, Bruce did not have an immediate answer. All else aside, he was a cop. He followed the evidence - and his gut instinct - wherever it led him. Ed was a sober man - he was not a drunk, insane, or stupid - and no man on earth could fake the look of trauma in his eyes. Bruce’s eyes went to the bloody footprints leading away from the exam table and his stomach roiled. It might be cliched, but there had to be a rational explanation. “Yeah,” he finally said. “The kid got up like he said, but there’s no way he was dead. Maybe…I dunno, he had a surge of adrenaline or something. I’m not a doctor.”
“That’ll only get him so far,” Vanessa said. “We’ll probably find him on the street somewhere.”
He went back to the purple splotches on Dom’s face, to his cold stiffness. There’s no way he was dead?
Bruce was confused, and he hated being confused.
“I dunno,” he said, “maybe.”
But he had the gnawing feeling that they wouldn’t. They would never find him…and Bruce would be confused forever.
Goddamn it, Mason, he thought, where are you?

An hour after getting back from the Mason apartment, Bruce Kenner had the distinct misfortune of meeting Bertha Henderson.
A plump, gaudy woman with wrinkles and sun beaten skin only an alligator could love, Bertha Henderson wore bright red lipstick, bright red rouge, and way too much mascara. Her tangled hair was a dull red color and her clothes - pink pants and a white floral top - stretched tight across her bulbous frame. She looked like the kind of woman who lived in a trailer with velvet pictures of Elvis on the wall and pink flamingos in the front yard.
She acted like one too.
From the moment she stormed into his office, she hadn’t shut up once. She scolded, chided, accused, and badgered, sometimes even wagging one fat finger in his face like he was a naughty little boy. Ten minutes into the dressing down and Bruce was beginning to fantasize about police brutality.
It took him another ten minutes to find out what the hell she even wanted.
“It’s my granddaughter,” she shot back, “she’s missing in your town.”
My town? Lady, this is barely my office. I share it with three other people.
“Well, if you’ll calm down, maybe I can help.”
Jesus Christ was that the wrong thing to say. She hit the roof and didn’t come down again until Bruce was this close to arresting her for assault on a police officer. “Young man, I do not appreciate the way you’re talking to me. My tax dollars are the only reason you have a job. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be working at a car wash.”
At least I wouldn’t have to deal with you.
Bruce took a deep breath and held his tongue in check. “How can I help you?” he asked.
“I told you, my granddaughter is missing. If you listened to me, you’d know this already.”
Bertha produced a picture and slid it across the desk. Bruce studied it. A girl, roughly sixteen with black hair, blue eyes, and dimples smiled back at him. “She;’s with that Rossi man, I just know it,” she said bitterly.
“Who?” Bruce asked.
Rolling her eyes like he was stupid, the old woman told him the story. Jessie - the dimple faced girl - had the rotten luck of having to live with Grandma Bertha after her parents went to jail on drug charges. They lived in Sand Lake, a little town in the mountains outside Albany, where Bertha was no doubt loved and admired by all. One day, Jessie, who her grandmother lovingly described as “A little troublemaker”, ran off. Bruce didn’t blame her. He’d known Bertha for half an hour and he wanted to run off. Bertha did some snooping on Jessie’s laptop and found that the “little whore” had been chatting with an older man, Joe Rossi. Rossi, or so Facebook said, lived in Albany and worked at Club Vlad.
“I want him arrested for pedophilia,” Bertha said and crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. “He’s a dog just like all men. She’s probably pregnant already. Another mouth I have to feed.”
Behind the old battle ax, Vanessa appeared in the doorway and lifted her brows as if to say What a piece of work. Knowing her, she’d probably been standing just out of sight this whole time with McKenny, the elderly evidence clerk, and snickering into her hand like a little girl. LOL she called him young man.
Bertha noticed him looking over her shoulder and started to turn. Vanessa’s face went white and she ducked out of the way, narrowly avoiding detection. “I’m glad you think this is funny,” Bertha said to Bruce. “Meanwhile, if I don’t get Jessie back, the state’s going to stop sending me my checks. I need that income. I can’t work, you know. I have gout.”
Too bad being an asshole isn’t a job, you’d be world-famous
“I’ll go talk to him,” Bruce said.
“I want more than talk, young man, I want action.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When Bertha finally decided to waddle off and ruin someone else’s day, Vanessa came in and sat in the chair the old woman had so recently occupied. “Oh, my God,” she said, “that was intense. I was this close to radioing in a 1015.”
1015 was code for officer down.
“Funny,” Bruce said without a trace of humor. He had kids going missing, a dead guy someone moved around like a goddamn Barbie doll, and now this. What next, hemorrhoids?
“What do you think? Code 1 or code 2?”
Code 1 meant top priority. Code 2 meant not a top priority. Bruce thought for a moment. It didn’t sound like Jessie Henderson was in danger. It sounded like she met a guy - granted, one too old for her - and decided to hide out with him from her psycho grandma. Maybe it could be something more, but he had a gut feeling that it wasn’t…and his gut feelings were usually right. “2,” he finally said. “I got shit to do.”
By shit, he meant “Talk to the families of those missing boys again.” He’d been interviewing them for two days looking for clues, but there was nothing. It’s like they just vanished. Bruce didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Vanessa said and slapped the desk.
When she was gone, Bruce sighed.
Never a dull moment, he thought.
***
Ed Harris - no relation to the Hollywood actor - had been the medical examiner for the City of Albany since 2002, and in all that time, he had never seen anything quite like this.
It was Wednesday evening and Ed was locked away in the cold, sterile space beneath the city offices that comprised his domain. With its puke green tiles, harsh lights, and cloying smells of disinfectant, the .coroner's office creeped most people out, but not Ed. He was at home here, as comfortable surrounded by toe-tagged bodies as a cactus was surrounded by desert. A thin man in his fifties with curly, steel gray hair thinning in the middle, he wore a white smock, blood stained over his clothes that made him look like a butcher instead of a low level government functionary. He had a dark and dry sense of humor, but then again, so do all people who play with dead bodies for fun and profit.
The coroner’s office was a vast, utilitarian vault segmented into multiple different rooms. Here, where the magic happened, three stainless steel tables stood in a row; a bank of refrigerated drawers kept watch, making sure nothing funny happened. One of the cold fluorescent lights overhead flickered with a hum of electricity, and water dripped rhythmically from a faucet. It was a cold, eerie place, but to Ed, it was home.
On most nights, only one of the tables was occupied, but tonight, two were. On one lay an old lady who died of what appeared to be cyanide poisoning. On the other was Dominick Mason.
Naked save for a white cloth draped over his groin to protect his dignity, Dom was the most corpsy corpse you’d ever hope to see. In fact, if you looked up dead guy in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of him. His body was pale and sunken, one side covered in purple splotches where his blood had pooled, and his eyes were closed. His abdomen was slightly distended with the expected build up of gas, and his flesh stuck fast to the bones beneath. In other words, he was text book. A normal corpse.
Mostly normal.
As men of his trade are wont to do when strange bodies mysteriously appear, Ed had opened Dom up, making a Y shaped incision from his neck to his groin. He hummed to himself as he did so, his hands wielding his sharp and shiny tools with the deft assuredness of a seasoned surgeon. Done cutting, he dipped his gloved hands into the cavity and started removing organs. A spleen here, a liver there, nothing Dom would miss. When he got to the heart, however, he stopped.
There was something…off…about it. At first glance, it was black and withered like an oversized raisin. An odd and putrid odor emanated from it and though he was familiar with the various smells and stenches the human body produced after death, this wasn’t one of them. Try as he might, he couldn’t place it, couldn’t even compare it to anything. Plucking a magnifying glass from the metal cart next to the table, he peeled back part of Dom’s chest and examined the heart closer.
That’s when things got really weird.
Dominick Mason’s heart was, indeed, shriveled, but it was not black. Instead, it was almost entirely covered by an interlacing crisscross of what appeared to be black mold. Here and there, Ed could glimpse flashes of the heart beneath: It was wrinkled and a sickly gray color. “What is this?” Ed asked himself at length. He grabbed a pair of tweezers from the tray and carefully, very carefully, attempted to remove a piece of the mold for analysis. The moment the cold metal tips touched the heart, it gave a violent spasm that sent Ed falling back with a shocked gasp, the tweezers falling from his hand and clinking to the tiled floor.
The heart began to pulse like an alien egg sac, slowly at first, then more rapidly. For a moment, Ed was frozen in place, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Once you die, your heart ceases beating. That’s that. Only living hearts beat, and Dominick Mason was certainly dead. He was dead from the moment Ed first laid eyes on him earlier that day and he was dead now. Yet there was his heart, beating anyway.
It could be a muscle spasm. They usually aren’t that violent and consistent, but dead bodies sometimes do strange things. As he watched the blackened muscle expanding and contracting, however, Ed had the most eerie feeling. He went to rub the back of his neck, realized he was still wearing blood soaked gloves, and stripped them off. He was spooking himself out; he needed a break and a hot cup of coffee. He’d come back fresh and start over again.
With that mold.
Could you really blame him for being creeped out? That stuff wasn’t normal. He’d never seen anything like that before, not even in textbooks. Dom was scrawny and didn’t get enough vitamins in life, but overall, he was healthy; that mold…or whatever it was…had no business being there.
Going over to the coffee pot, which stood in the same room to save travel time, Ed grabbed a styrofoam cup. When he was done here, he planned to go home and -
A terrible, metallic clatter rang out, and Ed jumped. He turned around, and when he saw Dominick Mason standing next to the table, hunched slightly over and staring at him, an electric burst of fright shot up his spine and exploded in his brain, so strong it made the edges turn gray. Pale, hands hooked into talons, and the flaps of his chest hanging open to reveal the cavity beneath, Dominick Mason looked for all the world like a boy who’d been caught sneaking out to meet his girlfriend. A weak, involuntary, “Oh, God,” slipped from Ed’s trembling lips, and the spell was broken. Dom came alive and ran toward the door leading out to the parking lot. He slammed through it, and the sound of it crashing open and then falling closed again echoed through the empty chamber.
Shaking, panting for air, and soaked in piss, Ed sank to the floor in a sitting position, his eyes wide and staring like those of a soldier returning damaged from the front.
It was a long time before he composed himself enough to call the police.
***
Dazed and caught in a nightmarish twilight realm where nothing made sense, Dominick Mason limped painfully down the sidewalk, a stranger lost in a strange land filled with danger and hostile creatures. Barefoot and shrouded in a white sheet, he trembled with cold and struggled to ignore the dark, threatening shapes looming from the fog in his brain, shapes that would turn into unspeakable truths if he let them.
Passersby openly stared at him, their expressions either morbidly curious, disgusted, or alarmed. A man put his arm protectively around his girlfriend; a woman pulled her little boy to her breast, and another man sneered at him, his nose crinkling. Dom, his glazed eyes narrowed against the harsh glare of the many street lamps, headlights, and storefronts, lumbered headlong toward nowhere, his fear growing until he was shambling. He imagined he could hear every cough, every whisper; smell the odor of every unwashed body. Each car horn was deafening, every whiff of ass or armpits sent his stomach churning. The rustle of a passing pedestrian’s jacket jammed into his ears like icepicks, and the approaching globes of LED headlamps burned his eyes. He gritted his teeth and groaned against the pain.
The dense mist wrapping his brain made it hard to think. Like a frightened animal, he made his way on instinct alone. Home. He needed to get home. Out here, on the street, he was exposed. At home, locked away in his small apartment, he would be safe.
A car passed in the street, bass heavy rap music blaring from its open windows, and Dom’s brain exploded with agony. He threw himself against a street sign and held on for dear life, his legs weak. Dizziness overwhelmed him, and he almost went down. He was also cold.
So, so cold.
People around him quickened their step; they never took their eyes off him, as though he were a venomous snake that would strike at any moment. He needed to get away from them. They were going to hurt him; people always hurt him.
Pushing away from the sign, he began to hobble once more toward home, wherever home was. He looked over his shoulder several times as he made his way down Central Avenue, and each time, he saw that no one was following him as he had feared.
No one, that is, except for the man in sunglasses.
Tall and lank with curly hair, he wore dark Aviators and a leather motorcycle jacket over a button up shirt. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets and his face showed no expression. He was always there, always a few steps closer. Outside Capital Fried Chicken, a group of people openly stared at him, He heard their whispers as he passed. What’s wrong with him? Dude’s straight tweakin. And the one that struck him the most. That guy looks dead.
Dom hobbled faster, as if to outrun the realization that he was, in fact, dead. The man in sunglasses was closer now, his footsteps so loud that Dom winced. He turned around, and the man was impossibly in front of him. Dom ran into him and bounced backward, going ass over tea kettle and landing on the former. They were in front of a church on a darkened corner, the lights here either burned out or shot out - you could never tell in Albany. Even though it was dark, Dom could see everything with crystal clarity. Dom tried to scurry away, but he was too weak to escape. Right there and then, he decided to give up. Come what may, he just wanted this nightmare to be over.
The man stared down at him, emotionless, unspeaking.
Dom squirmed.
“You’re real lucky I came along,” the man said. His tone was flat, even.
Dead.
“Get up,” he said, “I’ll take you home.”
Home?
Yes.
Dom wanted to go home.
The man helped him up, and Dom followed him into the night.
***
Bruce Kenner stood in the middle of the medical examiner’s office at half past nine that evening with his hands on his hips and stared doubtfully down at Ed Harris. The lonely cavern was alive with activity as cops went over everything, all of them looking either bemused or a mused. Bruce was neither. He’d been at home, sitting in his chair and having a beer in front of AEW Dynamite when Vanessa called. “You might wanna get down here,” she said, sounding confused, “something really strange is going on.”
Ed Harris - no relation to that one guy - sat in a straight back chair beside his cluttered desk and gripped a styrofoam cup of coffee in both hands, putting Bruce - for some reason - in mind of a monkey. When Bruce came in, the old man was white as a sheet and shook like a leaf. In the last half hour, little had changed.
“Tell me again,” Bruce said.
He and Ed were pretty good friends. He knew that Ed knew standard police procedure. Cops don’t ask you to repeat your story a thousand times over because they’re forgetful fucks, they do it because telling it again and again helps to jog loose details that you might have forgotten. Ed, therefore, did not protest. “I turned my back,” he said and chopped the chair like Jackie Chan, “and I heard the noise.”
His voice was thick, unsteady, and halting. He sounded as squirrely as he looked…and he looked pretty damn squirrelly right now.
“I turned around…and he was looking at me. He was standing there and he was looking at me.”
This was the fourth time he’d had Ed go through the story, and nothing had changed. Bruce felt something stirring deep inside his gut. It was either disquiet…or he had to fart. He opened his mouth to speak, but sighed.
“You don’t believe me,” Ed said.
“I dunno, Ed. Dead bodies don’t just get up and walk away.”
Ed flashed. “I know that, goddamn it, but this one did.”
Bruce glanced at Vanessa. She looked uncomfortable.
“Are you sure he was dead?” Bruce asked.
Ed opened his mouth, closed it again, and said, “I did the autopsy.” His voice broke on the last word, and he sounded almost like he was pleading. “His fucking liver’s on the floor. He stepped on it. The man has nothing in him. I-I’m telling you, there’s no way he’s alive.”
During the autopsy, Ed had sat Dominick Mason’s organs on the little tray table where he kept his pointy things. Mason knocked it over while getting up. Indeed, there were human organs on the floor, and one of them did look kind of squished. Bare, bloody footprints led to the exit door, up a set of concrete steps, and then disappeared in the alley behind the office.
“You said you left his heart,” Bruce said.
“And his brain,” Vanessa helpfully added.
Ed pinched the bridge of his nose like a put upon professor dealing with two particularly stupid students. “Even with his heart and his brain, he’s dead. You saw the livor mortis. He was cold, he was stiff. His heart wasn’t beating, he wasn’t breathing. He was in one of those drawers for nine hours, not breathing, no blood flow - it’s impossible. It’s just…it’s impossible. I don’t care what you think, he was dead. And even if somehow he wasn’t, I cut out almost everything. I opened his stomach, I took his spleen - you don’t just get up from that. You don’t walk away from that, much less run.”
Bruce chewed the inside of his bottom lip because he didn’t have a Twix. He didn’t look like the smartest man in the world…and he wasn’t…but he knew a dead body when he saw one, and the body they took out of Dominick Mason’s apartment was D.E.A.D. And like Ed said, even if by some freak fluke of nature he wasn’t, he couldn’t just get up and go about his day with no liver, spleen, or kidneys. Hell, Bruce had his gallbladder out and he couldn’t even walk away from that.
“You said there was something funny about his heart,” Vanessa said.
Ed finished off his coffee. “Yeah. It was…moldy. I-I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Is it possible that…has something to do with it?”
“Unless the rules of biology have changed overnight, no,” Ed stated.
While Ed poured himself another cup of Joe, spilling some because he was still shaking, Vanessa took Bruce aside. “So what do you think?” she asked. “Is he telling the truth?”
For that, Bruce did not have an immediate answer. All else aside, he was a cop. He followed the evidence - and his gut instinct - wherever it led him. Ed was a sober man - he was not a drunk, insane, or stupid - and no man on earth could fake the look of trauma in his eyes. Bruce’s eyes went to the bloody footprints leading away from the exam table and his stomach roiled. It might be cliched, but there had to be a rational explanation. “Yeah,” he finally said. “The kid got up like he said, but there’s no way he was dead. Maybe…I dunno, he had a surge of adrenaline or something. I’m not a doctor.”
“That’ll only get him so far,” Vanessa said. “We’ll probably find him on the street somewhere.”
He went back to the purple splotches on Dom’s face, to his cold stiffness. There’s no way he was dead?
Bruce was confused, and he hated being confused.
“I dunno,” he said, “maybe.”
But he had the gnawing feeling that they wouldn’t. They would never find him…and Bruce would be confused forever.
Goddamn it, Mason, he thought, where are you?

I have to share this. It’s not just a story; it’s a warning. If you value your sanity, stop reading now.
I spent my junior year of college studying art history in Rome. It was everything I’d hoped for: the architecture, the paintings, the endless history. But what happened during my last week there still haunts me. The Vatican City tour was supposed to be the highlight of my trip, but it became a nightmare I can’t escape.
Our guide, an older man named Marco, led us through the usual tourist spots, but he seemed distracted. His eyes kept darting to a small, unmarked door at the end of a corridor in the Vatican Museums. After the tour, I lingered, watching as Marco slipped away from the group and towards the door. Curiosity got the better of me. I followed.
I approached the door, and to my surprise, it was ajar. I peeked inside and saw a dimly lit staircase leading down. I hesitated, but then I heard voices – chanting, whispering. I descended, my heart pounding. The air grew colder with each step, the walls narrowing, until I emerged into a cavernous underground chamber.
At first, I thought it was some kind of ancient chapel, but the sight before me was far from holy. There were robed figures gathered around a long, stone table, chanting in Latin. On the table lay a human body. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I tried to convince myself it was some kind of bizarre reenactment or performance art, but the smell of decay and the horror etched on the lifeless face told me otherwise.
I hid behind a pillar, my heart racing, praying they wouldn’t see me. The chanting grew louder, more frenzied, and then they began…eating. The realization hit me like a freight train. These were no actors. This was a ritual, a feast – cannibalism. I could barely keep from vomiting as I watched them consume the flesh with a grotesque reverence.
They started with the organs, tearing into the liver and heart with their bare hands, the sound of ripping flesh and the sight of blood running down their chins making me dizzy with horror. They passed around pieces of flesh, some searing it over candles, others eating it raw. The air was thick with the metallic scent of blood and the stench of death.
One of the robed figures held up a severed arm, chanting in a low, guttural voice before biting into it, tendons snapping under the pressure of his jaws. The others followed suit, tearing at the body with a hunger that was both primal and ritualistic. Their eyes rolled back in ecstasy, mouths stained red, as if they were partaking in some unholy communion.
Suddenly, a hand clamped down on my shoulder. I turned, expecting the worst, but it was Marco. His face was pale, eyes wide with fear. “You weren’t supposed to see this,” he whispered. “They’ll come for you now.”
He dragged me back up the stairs, but it was too late. The chanting had stopped. I could hear footsteps, quick and purposeful, coming up from behind. We ran through the labyrinthine corridors of the Vatican, the ancient stone walls seeming to close in on us. I could hear them – the robed figures, their whispers echoing in the halls.
We burst out into the daylight, but the Vatican guards were waiting. Marco was seized and I was dragged away, screaming, trying to explain what I’d seen. They locked me in a small, windowless room, and for hours I sat there in darkness, waiting for whatever fate awaited me.
Eventually, a cardinal entered. He was calm, composed, and utterly terrifying in his placidity. He sat across from me, his piercing eyes examining my soul. After what felt like an eternity of silence, he began to speak.
“What you witnessed,” he said, his voice smooth and unsettling, “is a sacred rite, a tradition older than Christianity itself. Long before the establishment of the Church, our ancestors discovered a way to commune with the divine, to gain knowledge and power beyond human comprehension.”
He leaned in closer, his breath cold against my face. “This rite, this consumption of the flesh, is a way to absorb the essence, the life force, of the departed. It grants us visions, strength, and longevity. It binds us to the ancient ones, those who walked the earth when it was young and untamed.”
I could feel the bile rising in my throat, but I couldn’t look away. “But why?” I stammered. “Why would you do something so… monstrous?”
His smile was chilling. “Have you ever wondered why the Eucharist, the Communion, is such a central sacrament in Christianity? When Jesus said, ‘This is my body… this is my blood,’ it was not merely symbolic. It was a continuation of an older, more powerful tradition. By consuming the flesh and blood, we become one with the divine.”
The cardinal stood, his robes rustling like whispers of the damned. “But the bread and wine are just a shadow of the true rite. Here, in the depths of the Vatican, we keep the original covenant. The flesh we consume is sanctified, chosen. It is our way of maintaining the connection to the divine, of ensuring the Church’s power endures.”
I was horrified, but he continued, his voice a soothing monotone that belied the horrors he described. “The world is filled with darkness, with forces that seek to corrupt and destroy. We are the guardians, the keepers of balance. To fight such evil, we must embrace the forbidden, the unthinkable. Sacrifices must be made for the greater good.”
He paused, letting the weight of his words sink in. “You have seen too much. But fear not, for your silence will be assured. You will return to your life, but you will never speak of this. Not to anyone. For if you do, the consequences will be dire.”
I was released the next day, warned never to speak of what I’d seen. Marco was gone. I returned to the States, trying to forget, but the nightmares won’t let me. Every night, I see their faces, hear their chanting. I feel their hunger.
I don’t expect you to believe me. I’m sharing this because someone needs to know. If you ever visit the Vatican, stay with the group. Don’t stray. And if you see a small, unmarked door, turn around and run. Some secrets are worth dying for.

Hi Everyone! I've been getting some DM's after the score release thread yesterday, and it seems like it might be helpful for some to hear my experience with the test, so here we go.
BACKGROUND: I'm a US MD student at a T20 who is not top of the class in anything.
THIRD YEAR: Throughout clerkships, I used a pretty standard way for studying for every shelf exam. I would do all of the anki found within the most up-to-date version of the AnKing step 2 deck, did all the Uworld for the clerkship once, re-did all of my wrongs on uworld, then took as many CMS's for that subject as I could. I'd throw in a couple review videos from Emma Holliday and Divine here and there, but overall this was the setup. Generally scored about 85th percentile or so on those, and ended up scoring 74% on this first pass of uworld.
DEDICATED: Gave myself 5 weeks to study for it just to have a little more flexibility in how hard I went each day. On average I bet I spent around 8 hours studying each day, except for practice test days where it was more like 12ish.
Anki: I reset the step 2 AnKing deck at the very beginning of dedicated and set the due date for two days before my test. This came out to ~800-1200 review cards/day, which I mainly did at the gym while on the treadmill or in between sets. I also made anki cards for my wrong answers on Uworld and NBME's, which came out to about 800 cards total.
Practice Questions: Uworld is still king. I did around 80-120 questions/day on timed testing mode nearly every day that I was not taking a practice test. I would do all of these questions in a row in the morning and review them later in the afternoon at lunch. For reviews, I would honestly skim through the ones I got correct unless there was a knowledge gap, and read through everything on those I got wrong + make an anki card. Ended up getting through 45% and scoring 85% on this. Only other practice questions I relied on were the AMBOSS high yield risk factors, ethics, 200 concepts, and vaccine/screening blocks, which I did during my first week of dedicated.
Practice Tests: Do as many of these as you can. Both UWSA's and NBME's are great, but if you're in a bind and can't do both, I would focus on the NBME's since questions seem more alike to those seen on the test. I also tried my best to take and review the tests on the same day so I had a better recolleciton of my thinking during questions, but idk if this helped that much and it was brutal getting through on some days. Here's the order I did them and my scores:
NBME 9: 244 (35 days out), NBME10: 253 (28 days out), NBME11: 260 (21 days out), UWSA 1: 260 (18 days out), UWSA 3: 255 (13 days out), Old New Free 120: 91% (11 days out), NMBE13: 264 (10 days out), NBME14: 261 (7 days out), UWSA 2: 268 (5 days out).
I did these in this order based off the recommendation of some friends who had taken the exam previously, but I don't think there's a right answer. I also didn't take NBME 12 because I heard horror stories (I'm just a scared little guy) or the old old Free 120 since I heard it wasn't super representative at this point. SUPER IMPORTANT BOLDED POINT - I would normally take 1-2 days following my practice tests doing uworld specifically on the areas that were weaker based on my test result. I think doing this really helped keep things efficient.
Podcasts: Divine Intervention and Emma Holliday are the truth. For DI I listened to the rapid review series (there's a good spotify playlist if you type in "divine intervention rapid review") and the QI episodes. I also listened to all the Emma Holliday episodes by the end of dedicated. I mostly did this passively while exercising or cooking.
Day before test: This video right here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJgjMZk8\_To) is sweet. I followed a lot of the tips and found them helpful. Waking up early at 5 am and exercising helped a lot in terms of sleeping and calming my nerves. I also did NOTHING to study that day and recommend you do too. If you have to do something, try to keep it relatively light.
Day of Test: Got to the testing center half an hour early. I also had plenty of water with me and tons of different protein bars (shoutout kirkland brand protein bars) which I ate from during each break. The video I linked recommends having just a small cup of coffee before the exam to keep nerves stable, but if you're like me and a straight up caffeine junky you can do what I did and take caffeine pills before and during the test. I ended up taking one (200 mg) right before, another (200 mg) after three blocks, and a final (200 mg) after six blocks. Yeah I know that's a lot stop looking at me like that. For breaks I took my first after two blocks, one after the third, a longer one after the fourth, one after the sixth, and a final short one after the seventh. I will bold the following because I think this is what gives people an edge on test day, try to poop before the test begins. Nothing worse than thinking about that while trying to perform. Other than that, just be nice to the testing center folks.
OTHER STUFF: Try your best not to burn yourself out studying. Only you know what your capacity is, so strive towards maxing that out and no more than that no matter what those around you say. Also, try your best to eat healthy and exercise at least 3 days a week. Doesn't matter how you exercise, but just getting some movement is super helpful. I found going to the gym and mixing in anki was effective and efficient, but you do what's best for you. Last thing, try to find a hobby you can do at night after you're done studying. Mine was video games and seeing friends, but you do whatever makes you happy.
FINAL THOUGHTS: This test sucks man. It's long, the questions can be vague, and its stressful. That said it's also doable (especially compared to Step 1). The most important part is just doing your studying consistently and keeping yourself sane. That's easier said than done, but its definitely possible to do it. In the end, a lot of what happened in my case was just the form I got falling into my strengths, but being consistent with your studying and working on your weak areas through Uworld sets you up to be lucky.
tl;dr: 80-120 uworld questions/day, reset step 2 anking and set due date to near test date, take NBME's and UWSA's, hit weak areas, find a stress reliever, be cool to yourself, poop before test.
Put the word out that we all back up. Hope this helps someone.

The pain was the worst thing`Dominick Mason had ever known…and he knew what it felt like to die. It felt like his brain was in a blender, being chopped to liquid for a Jeffery Dahmer smoothie and though it seemed melodramatic, he imagined he could feel himself losing brain cells by the minute. The sun, Merrick told him, would not burn him, but it would decay him faster, so sleep or rest during the day. With the sick, throbbing agony in the center of his brain, however, that was impossible. He spent most of the day curled up on his side, hugging his knees, and moaning. He had flashbacks to dying in his apartment, and that made things even worse. The room became too small, too close, the air too stale. His heart, filled with the blood of last night’s meal, pounded in his chest, and he went from slightly chilly to hot and feverish as blood was forced through his circulatory system. It mixed with the embalming fluid and left him feeling full and constipated. He didn’t want to get up, but he also didn’t want to go on lying there. He was the definition of miserable.
Before long, the pain became too great and he got up to pace, pressing his hands to the sides of his head and gritting his teeth. Merrick, who slept very little if at all, sat in his chair and watched, trying his best to talk him through it. “It’ll be over soon,” Merrick said. “The pain receptors in your brain are the first to go. When they burn out, you won’t feel anything.”
“When?” Dom asked, his voice raising with the tide of pain.
“A couple days?”
“A couple days???”
“The pain will lessen gradually,” Merrick said, “this is the worst of it.”
Dom believed that this was, indeed, the worst of it, but he doubted it would lessen gradually. For the rest of the day, the pain got worse and worse until every light blinded him, every sound turned his stomach, and the smell of anything made his gorge rise. The cloying smell of the embalming fluid, the light but unmistakable odor of dead flesh, and the scent of stale blood sitting in decomposing stomachs made him want to vomit, but he was afraid to. He didn’t think he could handle the sight of blood rushing from his mouth and splattering the floor. He still possessed enough of his facilities, he believed, to go insane.
Pain has a way of darkening one’s mood, and by the time the sun began to set, Dom was in the most sour mood possible. Even Merrick’s calm, fatherly voice was beginning to get on his nerves. When he took the oath to him the day before (or was it the day before that?), he turned his faith and trust over to Merrick entirely. He was finally accepted, included, finally had the love and fellowship that, in the pit of his soul, he had always wanted. Merrick understood him, Merrick was kind to him.
But deep down, Dom realized that he didn’t fully trust him. He said that his brain didn’t rot because he was “lucky.” That sounded like some bullshit to Dom. Why wasn’t Joe a blithering idiot too? Was he lucky as well? Did lightning strike in the same place twice? In life, people had done nothing but hurt and lie to Dom. Why would death be any different? He thought back to the strange liquid that always seemed to leak from Merrick’s nose, and Joe’s. He thought it was embalming fluid, but it never leaked from his own nose, or from anyone else’s. He tried to tell himself that it was far too soon to judge, but once he began to doubt something, his mind raced away. He felt a twinge of guilt, as Merrick had done absolutely nothing to deserve his doubt, but goddamn it, his head was on fire and he wanted it to stop. Anything to make it stop.
Just after sundown, the music began as Club Vlad opened for the night. It throbbed in the center of Dom’s head and made him want to claw his eyes out. When it became too much for him, he slipped away and stumbled into the sultry summer night. He came out in the alley running behind the club, clutching his head and breathing through bared teeth. He staggered, bumped into a metal trash can, and roared at the top of his lungs, as if he could purge himself of the pain by screaming.. His voice echoed and came back to him, making the pain worse.
Merrick was lying. He knew it. People always lied to him. His brain was rotting and PEOPLE WERE LYING! Flashing with anger, he slammed his fist into the brick wall of a Chinese restaurant. He barely felt anything so he did it again and again until his hand was lumpy and shaking. He sat heavily on the ground and pressed his hands to his head. It felt like maggots were burrowing into his brain, and he was suddenly terrified that they really were. He needed to stop this awful pain, but how?
An idea came to him.
The funeral home.
Maybe there was something there.
He was on his feet and lumbering there before the thought had even finished reverberating through his mind. It was a long shot, but he was desperate. On the way there, he stuck to the shadows, staying out of the light cast by the streetlamps and avoiding people. When he passed them, he kept his head down. When he reached the funeral home, he went to the back door where he and Jessie had gone the other day. He tried it, and it opened.
Inside, he bounced off the walls like a pinball, knocking over an end table and tearing at the flesh of his head, pulling it away in long, gray strips. He panted like a wild animal, his body a raging tempest of emotions. It was reaching a crescendo, he thought, his brain was about to go supernova. The world dimmed, things got really echoy. The young man he’d picked the embalming fluid up from was there, looking scared.
Flashing, Dom grabbed him by his shirt and slammed him against the wall, knocking a painting of a flowery field to the carpet. Everything seemed to go in slow mo. “How does Merrick keep his brain from rotting?” Dom heard himself demanding from far away. “How does he keep the pain away?”
The man trembled. “I-I-”
Dom slammed him again. “Tell me or I’ll make you like me.”
“No!” the man wailed. He shook his head from side to side, his eyes wet with fear.
“How?”
“He-He uses a solution,” the man stammered. “Some kind of special thing. It preserves his brain. That’s all I know.”
An idea occurred to Dom.
Holding the man by the back of his neck, Dom dragged him into the embalming room and pushed him against the table. His head felt like it was swelling. Hot, screaming, getting ready to explode. He looked around, found the embalming machine, and grabbed the hose. There was a sharp tip on it so that you could jam it into a body. He held it in his hand, hesitating for just a moment before pressing it to his temple. The man watched in horror as Dom slowly shoved the tip into his head. It tore his flesh, broke through his skull, and sank into his brain. He felt no pain, only pressure, but cried out anyway. His eyes rolled up into his head and a shudder went through his body.
“Turn it on!” he yelled.
“That’s not what he -”
“TURN IT ON!”
Starting, the man turned the machine on. Cold embalming fluid squirted directly into Dom’s brain. Almost at once, the pain began to ebb away, replaced only by a fuzzy sense of numbness. His knees buckled and he sank to the floor, looking for all the world like an addict taking a hit of his favorite substance after a long and trying day. Fluid leaked from his nose, ears, and eyes and dripped down the back of his throat.
The man waited for a long time, then turned the machine off.
The pain was gone.
At least for now.
“Tell me again,” Dom said.
The man did. Merrick used a special preserving agent to keep his brain intact. Joe, the man suspected, got it as well. So Merrick had lied to him.
Dom felt betrayed.
And angry.
Leaving the man (Dom realized that he didn’t even know his name), he walked back to Club Vlad, his hands fisted in his pockets. All his life, he had been hurt, lied to, and ignored. All his life, people had done wrong to him. And all those years, he just took it.
He resolved not to be so accepting in death.
At last, he was going to stop being a sniveling little bitch and stand up for himself.
When he reached Club Vlad, he slammed through the back door and took the stairs two at a time. At the top, he called out Merrick’s name. The old man was sitting in his chair, being attended to by Jessie and Matt. He looked startled when Dom came in. “You lied to me,” Dom said, stalking over to his benefactor.
“What are you talking about?” Merrick asked, doing his best to sound innocent.
“You lied to me!” Dom screamed. He bent over and got so close to Merrick’s face that he could have kissed him. “You told me there was no way to save my brain, but that’s not true. You’re pumping your head full of shit and letting the rest of us rot.”
A dark shadow flickered across Merrick’s face. “Watch your tone when you talk to me,” he said. His voice was low, menacing.
“Fuck you,” Dom said. “I should k -”
Suddenly, Dom was being grabbed from behind and yanked back, an arm around his neck. He cried out in alarm as Joe swung him around and slammed him face first into the wall. He heard his nose crunch, felt his teeth shatter. Next, Joe wrestled him to the glitter-sprinkled floor and wedged his knee between his shoulder blades.
Merrick watched with a sneer of disgust, his hands gripping the arms of his chair. He wheeled himself over, Jessie holding his IV stand steady and following behind. “Listen, you son of a bitch,” Merrick said, “you’re lucky to be a part of this family.”
Cold fear filled the pit of Dom’s stomach, yet he wouldn’t back down, couldn’t back down. He had lived his entire life like a mouse in a burrow, he wasn’t about to live his entire death the same way.
“Fuck your family,” he said defiantly. “And fuck you.”
Merrick’s face darkened and he sat back in his chair. He looked at Jessie and nodded. She went away and came back a moment later holding something in her hand. Dom’s eyes widened when he saw what it was.
A wooden stake, one end honed to a razor point.
Why they had one of those lying around, Dom didn’t know; it’d be like Superman keeping a piece of kryptonite on the mantle over the fireplace. Merrick directed Max and Matt to hold Dom’s arms down/ Joe pivoted, kneeling on his head now so that Dom’s back was exposed. Dom’s heart slammed with terror and tremors raced through his body.
“Is this what you want, Dominick?” Merrick asked. “To die? To truly die?”
Dom swallowed hard. No, it wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to live, to love, to have a family one day. He wanted a happy, normal life, the life TV and social media had been promising him since he was a little boy.
But all of that went out the window the night he died in his little apartment. There was no life anymore, just a grotesque parody of life. What was there for him other than death? Clinging desperately onto life for decades like Merrick? Stuffing himself full of embalming fluid and moth balls? Grinding for one more minute just so he could sit hooked up to a machine?
Dom spoke.
“What?” Merrick asked, not having heard.
Dom licked his lips. “Just fucking do it.”
For a moment, nothing happened. Expectation hung in the air. Finally, breaking the tension, Merrick nodded to Jessie. Kneeling down, she brought the stake up, and Dom closed his eyes.
This was it.
He braced himself for death.
Jessie brought the stake down just as a shot rang out, deafening in the small space. Her head whipped back, embalming fluid, skull fragments, and gray, sickly pieces of brain showering from the back of her head. She flopped back and landed on the floor with a sickening thud.
A woman cop, her black uniform in stark contrast to the burning white light, stood in the doorway to the hall, her gun drawn. Everyone did, indeed, freeze, more out of surprise than respect for authority. They all looked at her, their dead mouths agape, resembling children who’d been caught doing something wrong.
“Everyone on the ground!” she barked.
No one knew what to do. They hadn’t expected to be raided by the police so had not prepared. She jerked her gun and everyone instinctively flinched. “On the ground!” she repeated. To Max: “You too, bone boy.”
The first one to react was Joe. He sprang at her like a big, undead frog. She brought the gun around and fired, but he was already crashing into her. The shot went wild and struck the IV bag next to Merrick; he ducked and let out a sound of fear. The others rushed her, and Dom got quickly to his feet. Jessie lay on the floor, her mouth open in a silent scream and her bony fingers frantically examining the ragged hole in the center of her forehead. For a moment, he was frozen; everything was happening too fast. Then, when Merrick saw him and cried, “Stop him!, he came alive. Jessie tried to grab at his leg, but he kicked her hand away and stomped on it like it was a giant spider. On the other side of the room, Matt, Joe, and Max had forced the cop to the ground. Perhaps excited by all the action, perhaps just hungry, they began to tear her apart. She howled in pain, and the last thing Dom saw before he fled was her open, blood-filled mouth. Her eyes were filled with pain…with terror.
After that, Dom ran.
***
When the interloper was dead, Merrick directed Joe and Matt to dispose of the body. “Get rid of it,” he said wearily and rubbed his temples, “make sure it isn’t found.”
They rolled her into a carpet from the office, and the way her feet stuck out may have been comical under other circumstances.
Goddamn it, this was bad. Merrick’s entire philosophy rested on avoiding detection. He had done well in that regard. Whereas other vampires had attacked their villages and gotten themselves dug from the ground and staked, he had made it four decades. He never shat where he ate, and there is no bigger turd than killing a cop. They might dawdle on all the boys who’d gone missing - taken because their blood was stronger and more robust than the blood of girls - but they would not take a cop dying lightly at all.
Merrick owned various businesses around the country. He and the others would simply move on. Tomorrow night, they would disappear into the night. They had done it before and they would likely do it again. Once things were settled at their new base of operations, he would have Joe killed for all the trouble he’d caused.
And Dom?
Let him go.
The little rat wouldn’t last a month on his own.
“Jessie?”
Jessie sat against the wall, gazing into space.
“Jessi…start packing. We’re leaving tomorrow.”
She didn’t move, didn’t seem to hear. The shot had all but lobotomized her.
Damn it.
Joe backed the van up to the back door of Club Vlad, and then helped Matt carry the carpet-rolled body down the stairs. They loaded it in and closed the back doors. Together, they drove around looking for a place to dump it. Merrick wanted it to go unfound, but Joe doubted there was anywhere isolated enough in the city. On a whim, he drove to Washington Park, a vast expanse of green trees and shadows. There was a large pond there. It seemed the best option. They were leaving tomorrow anyway, so did it really matter?
Joe backed the van to a railing overlooking the dark water and put it in park. He and Matt got out, fetched the body, and carried it to the railing. They lifted and heaved it over. It splashed. Thus, they rid themselves of Vanessa Rodregiez.
***
Bruce sat anxiously up in his easy chair and waited for his cell to ring.
Parked in front of the TV by warm lamplight, a beer wedged between his legs, he’d been watching the 11’o’clock news when the phone rang. He picked it up and it was Vanessa. “Hey,” she said, “I think I found our body?”
“Which one?” Bruce asked and took a drink. “We have a lot of those these days.”
“Dominick Mason.”
Bruce sat forward in his chair. “Dead Dom? Where?”
“He just came out of a funeral home, ironically enough.”
“That sounds about right,” Bruce said. “Where are you now?”
“I’m following him east on Central.”
“Are you sure it’s him?” Bruce asked.
“I think so, but I’m not sure. I’ll call you back when I’m done.”
Bruce sat the phone aside and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
At some point, he fell asleep sitting up, his head lulled to one side and his mouth open. He snorted himself awake, rubbed his eyes, and sat up. He checked his phone and was perturbed to see that it was past 2am.
Vanessa hadn’t called.
He dialed her number and let the phone ring until it went to voicemail. Sighing, he ended the call, then waited a few minutes and called again.
Still no answer.
It was possible she had forgotten. Maybe the guy turned out to not be Dead Dom after all. She followed some random guy around, realized it, and that was that. Hell, she was probably too embarrassed to call and tell him about it.
Something told him that wasn’t right, however.
There was something else going on here.
Something…darker.
Just before 3am, his phone rang. He snatched it off the end table next to the chair and answered it. It was Burt, the night sargent. “Rodriguez is missing,” he said simply.
Bruce’s heart sank. “Missing?”
“Yeah, she hasn’t checked in for hours and she isn’t answering calls.”
“I’m on my way,”
Bruce tore through the house, pulling on his uniform, socks, and shoes in less time than it took a Daytona 500 pit crew to service a car. In ten minutes he was speeding down 787, the Albany skyline rising in the distance. As he hurried to the station, he thought back to his last conversation with Vanessa. She’d found Dom the Dead Man, the “corpse” who’d scared Ed Harris out of a 20 year career. Despite all their talk about vampires and the living dead, Bruce didn’t believe it, not really. Even so, he was sure that Dominick Mason had done something to Vanessa.
He checked in at the station before doing anything else. They had triangulated Vanessa’s last known location via cell towers. Cops were already out searching the streets for her. Bruce went out as well, intending to start from her last known position and work his way east on Central. The closest funeral home was Tebbutt and Frederick on Central. There was also Lasak & Gigliotti on North Allen Street. Bruce didn’t know which one Vanessa had seen Dom come out of, so he checked both.
Both were deserted at this hour.
Undeterred, Bruce drove up and down Central Ave. At one point, he noticed a shape in an alleyway that looked human. He hit the brakes, jumped out, and pointed his gun at it. “Freeze!”
An old wino stepped out of the darkness. “Alright, you got me,” he said, hands up. “I started COVID. It was an accident, I swear.”
Bruce sighed and put his gun away.
For two more hours, Bruce searched the streets of Albany for Vanessa. At 4am, he spotted a squad car abandoned in the rear parking lot of an abandoned gas station on lower Lark Street. He called it in and the desk sergeant confirmed that it was the one Vanessa had signed out that night.
Still there was no sign of Vanessa herself.
Just after dawn, as the city came alive and CDTA buses began lumbering up and down the streets, Bruce got a call on his cell. “A jogger found a body in Washington Park.”
Bruce was in his personal car. He had no bubble light, no siren. Even so, he sped through the streets like he did, blowing through red lights and stop signs with little care to himself or anyone else. When he got to Washington Park, he found an army cops by the pond, the scene cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape. He slammed on the brakes, threw open the door, and jumped out without even turning off the engine.
The body was rolled up in a carpet and lying on the bank. Two beat cops unrolled it at Bruce’s direction. “We should wait for -” one of them started, but Bruce cut him off.
“Do it.”
They compiled, and at the carpet’s center, like a rotten cream filling, was the body of Vanessa Rodregiuez. Her head was tilted to one side, her eyes wide and staring. Her throat had been mangled and ripped away, her head nearly severed. Even in the black and red mess, Bruce could make out the teeth marks and puncture wounds. They may have looked like something else to anyone else who saw them, but he knew, in that moment, what they were dealing with.
A sharp pang of horror sliced through him, and his knees went weak.
“Jesus Christ,” one of the beat cops drew.
Bruce fell to, rather than knelt on, one knee. He bent over the body, a mixture of horror and grief welling his throat. He wanted to reach out, to comfort her in death, but he stayed his hand. Instead, he visually examined the body. She had bruises on her face, defensive wounds on her hands, and her gun was gone. Whoever had attacked her, she put up a fight.
Something glinted on her pants.
“What’s that?” one of the cops asked.
“I dunno,” the other replied, “but it’s all over the carpet.”
Indeed, there were glinty little specks all over it, winking like mocking eyes. Nice work, eh? We really fucked her up, didn’t we? Wink wink.
“It looks like…”
The other cop cut him off. “Glitter.”
Bruce flashed back to his visit to Club Vlad the other day.
There had been glitter everywhere.
Bruce stood up.
He had work to do.
***
Instead of going back to the station to start his shift, Bruce went to Lowes. There, he bought a mallet, a gas can, and a dozen sticks of wood. An employee in a blue vest used a machine to sharpen them to a wicked point and he took his purchases to the car. Next, he drove over to the Mobil station and filled the gas can. He was so hellbent on revenge that he sprang for premium, the good stuff. No expense shall be spared.
His final stop was at a Catholic church. He filled a canteen with holy water from the marble font by the door, then swiped a crucifix from the wall. He stopped by the station, went inside, and grabbed a black duffle bag with POLICE written across the front in yellow. He opened the gun cabinet in his office, took out a shotgun, and loaded it with shells. He grabbed a handful from the box and stuffed them into his pocket.
He was just finishing up when Bertha came in. “There you are,” she spat, “I’ve waited long enough for you to do something. I demand -”
Bruce shoved the duffle bag into her arms. “Make yourself useful.”
“What?” she demanded.
“We’re going to get your granddaughter,” Bruice lied. Kind of.
Bertha’s demeanor changed. “Good. It’s about time. I was starting to think you were a complete incompetent.”
Bruce didn’t answer. Outside, he plucked the bag out of Bertha’s hands and tossed it into the backseat. He slipped behind the wheel and Bertha sat in the passenger seat. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“Club Vlad,” Bruce said and started the engine.
“I want all of them arrested.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bruce said.
She barked orders the entire way there. Bruce was so deep in his thoughts that he barely heard her. The image of Vanessa’s ruined throat and terror-twisted face haunted him, and he felt a lump forming in his throat. Hot tears filled his eyes but he blinked them back and forced himself to calm down.
I’ll cry when I’m done killing, he thought.
A few minutes later, he pulled to the curb in front of Club Vlad. It was a hot and sunny day and the place seemed even more ominous because of it. The windows were black, the front cast in perpetual shadows by the old marquee from when it used to be a theater. The place was surely closed, but Bruce could hear music still playing from inside, some techno dance bullshit. “Alright,” he said, “let’s go.”
Getting out, he slung the dufflebag over his shoulder and carried the shotgun, the canteen full of holy water clasped to his belt. Bertha carried the gas can, looking confused. “Why do we need this?” she asked.
“We’re burning the place down.”
Bertha blinked in surprise…then an evil grin carved across her face. “That’ll show the bastards.”
Unlike last time, the door was locked. Bruce used the butt of the shotgun to break the glass, then reached inside and unlocked the door, being careful not to cut himself. This was the point of no return. What he had in mind would probably get him kicked off the force or even thrown in jail - and we all know how tough jail can be for a former barnaclehead. The memory of Vanessa’s contorted face pushed him on, however.
He’d suffer any consequences he needed to just so long as he got the sons of bitches who did this to her.
Inside, the club was cool and cave-like. Strobe lights flashed, on and off, black and white, dazzling Bruce’s eyes. The bartender was at his station, cleaning up from the night before. When he saw Bruce and Bertha come in, he started. Bruce pointed the shotgun at him. “Don’t fucking move,” he commanded.
The bartender hesitated, then reached for something under the bar.
The shotgun kicked in Bruce’s hands, and the bartender flew back, turning as he crashed into the barback. Bottles, glasses, and mugs crashed to the floor along with the bartender. Bruce racked the gun, and the shell flew out. He moved low and fast now, expecting to be swarmed by vampires, living thugs who worked for vampires, or vampire thugs who worked for themselves.
Though the shot had been like thunder, no one came.
Bruce had no idea where to go, but he imagined that vampires were naturally gravitate to the lowest part of the building. Was there a basement? Shit, he should have looked up the building plans at city hall. Damn, this is what happens when you go off half-cocked. He searched around a bit, opening doors and sweeping the rooms beyond with the shotgun. He found no basement, only stairs leading up. “Stay close,” he said to Bertha.
In the lead, Bruce crept up the stairs, the flashlight on the shotgun providing a cone of clean, white light. At the top of the stairs, he went right, and came to an office and a store room. Backtracking, and bumping into a bungling Bertha, he went into the next room. It was large and open with a vaulted ceiling, almost like a ballroom. Here the same strobe lights throbbed on and off, making him dizzy. Was this to dazzle prospective vampire hunters?
Either way, this was the place. Bodies lay strewn across the floor, some curled up on their sides and others in the classic vampire pose: Flat on their backs with their hands laced over their chests. In the center, like the sun to the planets, Merrick Garvis lay slumped back in his wheelchair, his neck exposed for any potential assassin to come and cut. Not that it would kill him. At least Bruce didn’t think it would.
“They’re all dead,” Bertha whispered. She looked around and gasped. “There’s Jessie.”
Jessie lay on her back, her hands folded on her chest. She had a ragged bullet hole in the center of her forehead. “Oh, God,” Bertha wavered, “someone shot her.”
He hoped it was Vanessa. And he hoped it fucking hurt.
Looking around, Bruce couldn’t find Dominick Mason. Was he the one who killed Vanessa? Was it a group effort? He wanted the little son of a bitch bad, but it looked like he’d have to go on without him. They didn’t have much time.
Unshouldering the duffle bag, he knelt down and rummaged around. “Start splashing that gas on the bodies,” he said.
“But -”
“Just do it,” he snapped.
There must have been a harder edge in his voice than normal, because Bertha jumped and did as she was told. She upended the can and began to splash gasoline onto the sleeping forms, the smell of it acrid and strong.
Taking out a stake and the mallet, Bruce went over to Merrick and knelt down. He gripped the stake in one hand and placed it firmly against Merrick’s chest. He brought the mallet up and hesitated, the gravity of what he was doing finally reaching him. What if he was wrong? What if -
Merrick’s head whipped up and their eyes locked.
Too late.
Bruce brought the mallet down as hard as he could. The stake drove deep into Merrick’s heart, and the vampire let out a howling screech that rang through the chamber like the cry of a banshee. His bony fingers clawed at the stake and his head whipped from side to side, his back arching and his robe coming open. In the quick strobe pattern, Bruce was shocked to see that his body was little more than a wood frame, chicken wire, and cotton balls. His blacked heart was hidden behind a screen of mesh that the stake had easily torn through. It throbbed, seemingly in time with the strobe lights, and Merrick let out another wail.
Bertha screamed, and Bruce jumped to his feet.
The vampires, drawn by their master’s cries of distress, were rising to their feet. Two, four, six of them, pale and ethereal like ghosts in a gothic mansion. They came toward Merrick, and Bruice fell back a step. The old man had gone still and lay slumped to one side, his eyes open and his mouth slack, embalming fluid leaking from the corner of his lips. Jessie bent over him and touched his face. Though she moved like a zombie, with no human emotion, Bruce was crazily sure that it was a touch of tenderness and love. Merrick didn’t stir.
He was dead.
Jessie looked at him. Yellow liquid leaked from her eyes like tears. Instead of attacking him, she turned on her grandmother and slammed her against the wall. Bertha screamed and dropped the can. It landed on its side, its contents sloshing out onto the floor. A man that resembled the pictures Bruce had seen of Joe Rossi only deader rushed him, slamming into him and knocking the shotgun aside. It hit the floor and skidded away. Joe grabbed Bruce around the throat and squeezed. Still the lights flashed, off and on, off and on. The walls thrummed with the mechanized beat of dance music, pierced only by Bertha’s screams as Jessie ripped out her throat.
Joe leaned in, his fangs wicked and glowing in the light. Bruce clawed at the monster’s face, tearing away strips of dead flesh. Joe turned his head to the side, and Bruce kneed him in the groin. Even dead, getting kicked in the balls hurt like hell, apparently. Joe’s grip loosened and Bruce was able to shove him off. Bruce unclasped the canteen and frantically screwed the cap off as Joe recovered. Joe sprang at him again, and Bruce splashed him in the face.
A sound like sizzling meat filled the air, and Joe screamed at the top of his lungs. He pressed his hands to his face and danced around the room, his skin liquifying and oozing between his fingers. The others were coming now, led by a terrible skeletal thing. Bruce scooped the shotgun off the floor, brought it around, and fired. The blast hit the thing dead center, tearing it literally in half. The top half flew back, an all too human look of surprise on its face, and the bottom half fell over with a wet thud. Another vampire came at, and Bruce slammed it across the face with the butt of the gun. He heard its jaw crack, saw teeth flying.
Bertha lay dead on the floor, Jessie bent over her. The smell of Bertha’s blood attracted the others, who seemed to forget about Bruce, Merrick, and everything else. Joe was on his knees, wailing in pain, and the skeletal thing was pulling itself toward Bertha. A feeding frenzy broke out as vampires fought to get a piece of her the way piglets might fight over their mother’s teat. Bruce watched in a mixture of horror and fascination, but recovered himself. He grabbed the gas can from the floor and dumped the rest of its contents on Merrick’s body, the feeding vampires’ backs, and the floor, using the last of it to make a little trail to the door. He tossed the can aside, bent down, and stuck a match.
A huge, fiery whump filled the room, and fire streaked along the trail. The vampires all went up in a huge ball of flames, and fire shot up Merrick’s body, catching his robe, his hair, and the wooden frame that had kept him semi upright for God knows how long. Letting out inhuman screams, the vampires broke from Bertha’s corpse. One stumbled around, bounced off the wall, and fell; another toddled toward Bruce before falling to its knees. The half skeleton kept drinking from Bertha’s neck even as it burned.
The heat was enormous, baking. Bruce backed away, and the last thing he saw before smoke obscured his vision was Merrick Garvis.
He was literally melting.
***
Dominick Mason tried to go home, but he no longer had a home. All of his worldly possessions sat on the sidewalk in front of his building, discarded coldly as easily. His key didn’t work in his door and there was a FOR RENT sign on it. Why would it be any other way? He was dead. Sooner or later, everyone forgets you when you’re dead, and all the things you held so dear wind up in the trash. It was a hard pill to swallow, but most people aren’t around to see it after they die.
He was.
From his building, he walked east toward Washington Park. In the distance, thick, black smoke billowed into the air, and sirens rose. He barely noticed and wouldn’t have cared even if he did. No more rubbernecking for him. That was for the living.
The pain that had plagued him so the previous day came back, only less this time. Maybe he was imagining it, but it was getting harder to think. Not that he cared, really. What was there to think about anyway? How he had no one to mourn or miss him? How he died and not one single person, except for maybe his mother, cared, or even noticed? How he had done nothing with his life? Even to the women he’d slept with, what was he? Just another dating app hookup. They probably didn’t even remember his name.
Merrick had been right about one thing. Death was easy. It was life that was hard…life that hurt.
With that in mind, Dominick made his way to Washington Park. It was a vast and deep place with many small caves and thickets. Kids played on the playground, their cries of laughter scenting the still air. It had grown cloudy and began to rain. Still, smoke poured into the sky in the direction of Club Vlad. Dom didn’t wish ill on Merrick and the others, didn’t hope it was them burning. He didn’t care anymore. Not about them, not about anyone. For better or worse (and he would argue it was worse), his life was over. His time came days ago, he just missed the boat.
Picking out an isolated little area, Dom sat against a tree with his legs splayed out in front of him. He titled his head back and closed his eyes. Yes, thinking was hard now. His mind felt sluggish, cold. He was thirsty…so, so thirsty, but he ignored it.
Slowly, the bugs found him. Flies buzzed around him and laid their eggs in his skin. Beetles scuttled over him, followed by worms.
Next, it was the birds. They ate out his eyes and nibbled at his blue, bloated skin.
The animals came last.
Their appetites were bigger.
And they left little remaining of poor, outcast Dominick Mason.
***
That night, Bruce sat alone in his little trailer, a bottle of whiskey wedged between his legs and unshed tears in his eyes. He stared at his reflection in the darkened TV set and took long swallows from the bottle. He planned to drink until he forgot or passed out, whichever came first. He tried to not think about Vanessa, but in his addled state, he couldn’t control himself, and began to cry. When that storm passed, like the others before it, he chugged from the bottle.
As distant church bells clanged the hour - midnight - a feeble knock came at the door. Bruce took another drink and it came again. Getting up, he stumbled, nearly fell, and gripped the bottle tightly. He didn’t want to lose one precious drop.
Again, the knock.
“I’m coming,” Bruce slurred. He staggered to the door and fought with the lock. He was dizzy and seeing double.
When he got it, he opened the door.
The bottle dropped from his hand and clanked onto the floor.
Vanessa, clad in a puke green hospital gown, stood on the step, her hands pressed to her chest and a look of anguish on her milk white face. Her head tilted to one side, the wounds on her neck cleaned but open, gaping. Her dark eyes shone with tears. “I’m dead,” she said.
Breaking down in tears, she collapsed against him and they sank to the floor. She was cold and smelled. Bruce wrapped his arms around her and held her to his chest anyway. “Shhh, it’s alright,” he said drunkenly. “Hey, it’s alright.
“I’m dead,” she repeated, and her voice broke. “I don’t want to die.”
Bruce held her close, trying to warm her icy skin. He didn’t know what to say, so he cried with her.
“You’re safe now,” he said, “it’s going to be okay.”
“I want blood,” she said and sobbed harder, “I want to hurt people.”
“Shhh,” Bruce said again. “It’s okay.”
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a utility knife. He flicked the blade across his wrist and searing pain shot up his arm. “Here,” he said and offered her his blood, “drink this.”
He did this without care and without thought. She needed him, and one barnaclehead always backs up another.
Vanessa hesitated, looking from his face to the oozing blood, unsure.
“Go ahead,” he told her.
Vanessa brought his wrist to her mouth.
And began to drink.

Source: https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/Article/twid-05-16-2024
This week in Destiny, we are a little over two weeks away from the launch of The Final Shape. From The Witness to the Dread to Prismatic to Exotic class items, and more, there are so many things to be excited about. And today, we have even more to share with you, including some system updates and reworks that will also happen at launch. So, without further ado, let’s get into it!
Topics for this week:

• Weapons tuning recap.
  
• Build your arsenal shorts.
  
• Enhanced perk updates.
  
• Memento changes.
  
• Reduced Fragment costs at Ikora in The Final Shape
  
• New boss profile for The Pantheon.
  
• Zero Hour Exotic mission is live.
  
• METORO webcomic feature.
  
• Destiny 2 Content Vault updates.
  

Weapons Tuning Recap

Image Link^imgur
Yesterday, we shared details about our plans for weapons tuning in The Final Shape. This includes a change to some weapon mod specs, weapon balancing, and perk updates. For more details, check out our Dev Insight: Weapons Tuning Preview blog.

Build Your Arsenal

As the excitement for The Final Shape is ramping up, we’re sharing a first look at some of the Exotic weapons and armor you can expect to see. Check them out and start cooking up those builds!

Microcosm Heavy Ammo Trace Rifle
Video Link
Khostov Auto Rifle
Video Link
Mataidoxia Warlock Exotic Chest Armor
Video Link
Gifted Conviction Hunter Exotic Chest Armor
Video Link
Hazardous Propulsion Titan Exotic Chest Armor
Video Link

Enhancement in The Final Shape

During the Lightfall year, players have gotten a taste of weapon enhancement with the raid Adept weapons from Root of Nightmares and Crota's End. In The Final Shape, you'll see that this system has undergone some upgrades, making enhancing your weapons easier and allowing us to comfortably expand this system to include more weapons. Here’s a quick recap on how weapon enhancement will work alongside some of the changes:

• Weapon enhancement allows the weapon to be upgraded to receive enhanced traits, a weapon level, and a memento socket. To upgrade your weapon, players can navigate to the inspection screen and insert the enhancement tier mod for standard currencies (raid Adept weapons will continue to use Spoils of Conquest).

Image Link^imgur

• Enhancement Tier 1:
  
  • Replaces your Masterwork and provides the weapon with an enhanced intrinsic that matches the stat of your old Masterwork.
  • Provides a weapon level, a date when you first enhanced the weapon, and a memento socket.
  • Raid Adepts only: Since these weapons have a base-crafted version, we want the Adept versions to feel like a meaningful upgrade. Therefore, these weapons can visit the Relic on Mars to adjust their first two columns (typically barrels/magazines) in a similar fashion to how crafted weapons can augment these perk columns.
• Enhancement Tier 2 (weapon level 11 requirement):
  
  • Once the player inserts this mod, the left column trait(s) will automatically be upgraded to their enhanced perks. If you have multiple perks, this will update all traits in the column. Players will not need to visit the Relic on Mars to update these traits anymore.
• Enhancement Tier 3 (weapon level 17 requirement):
  
  • Once the player applies this mod, the right column weapon trait perks will automatically be updated to be enhanced. Like the left column, this will upgrade all of the traits present and does not require visiting the Relic.

Image Link^imgur
We've heard the feedback that weapons should have more avenues to acquire enhanced traits. In The Final Shape, all new weapons will either be craftable or have access to weapon enhancement. In addition, weapons that remain active drops in the following activities will be eligible for enhancement:

• Vow of the Disciple raid Adepts
  
• Guardian Games
  
• King's Fall raid Adepts
  
• Gambit
  
• Competitive Crucible (all of them)
  
• Trials of Osiris
  
• Crucible
  
• Iron Banner
  
• Vanguard Ops
  
• Nightfalls
  
• Prophecy Dungeon
  

This will include older instances of these weapons, as long as they have an origin trait. Unfortunately, due to some technical constraints, there are a handful of weapons instances from before Season 17 that have origin traits and are active drops, but they will not be eligible for weapon enhancement. If a weapon is not actively dropping in these activities and playlists or it’s under the legacy focusing options, it will not be enhance-able when The Final Shape releases. If weapons are reissued and become a part of a playlist's active drops once again, we'll update older versions that have origin traits to enter weapon enhancement.

Mementos in The Final Shape

We've received a lot of feedback on weapon mementos, especially as new mementos have released in our seasonal events. In The Final Shape, we have a few changes coming that impact how you store mementos and apply them to your weapons.

• Crafted and enhanced weapons will no longer need to visit the Relic on Mars to apply mementos. Players can apply the memento of their choosing directly in the weapon inspection screen.
  
• Memento stack cap limits will be raised from 1 to 3.
  
• Mementos will no longer be stored alongside the player's consumables. When The Final Shape launches, your mementos under consumables will show as faded. Then, once the faded memento is dismantled, you'll see +1 memento added in the weapon inspection screen as a virtual currency. For players who figured out how to get around the original memento stack size limits, this will allow you to dismantle all those mementos safely, even if you temporarily go over the intended stack limit of three. If you are holding three (or more) of a particular memento, it will not drop again until you spend your mementos to be under the stack size limit of three.
  

Reduced Fragment Costs at Ikora In The Final Shape

Subclass Fragments purchasable from Ikora are expensive, particularly considering how many there are, especially for New Lights. In The Final Shape, we have reduced the cost of Fragments from 25000 Glimmer to 10000 Glimmer. Our goal here is to make these vital build-crafting elements more accessible for new and returning players.

The Pantheon Grows Stronger

Another week, and your task has become more difficult, Guardians. Rhulk, Disciple of the Witness, has joined The Pantheon, and we’ve gathered intel for your mission.
VANGUARD – GUARDIAN DISPATCH – ALL POINTS BULLETIN
DEFENDERS OF THE CITY,
You are tasked with the elimination of the following target:

-RHULK, DISCIPLE OF THE WITNESS-
Image Link^imgur
CLASSIFICATION

• The last-known Lubraean
  
• First Disciple of the Witness
  
• Other names: The Upender, Worm Father
  
• Dread
  
• Resonant
  

HAZARDS

• Darkness mastery
  
• Immeasurable strength and durability
  
• Powerful Lubrae’s Ruin Glaive
  
• Suns of Lubrae attack and debuff
  
• Savage Strike kick
  
• Umbral Suffocation attack
  
• Teleportation
  
• Resonant Spikes area effect
  
• Guardians rated Sigma-3 or lower are advised not to engage
  

INTEL

• Rhulk was born on the planet Lubrae, a world originally blessed by the Traveler that spiraled into an authoritarian regime when the Traveler left. Fueled by rage, Rhulk sought to destroy the regime, but his bloodlust led to being ostracized from his clan. Eventually, afraid of what he’d become, his clan attempted to kill him.
  
• Decrypted records from the Pyramid indicate that the Witness made contact with Rhulk during this time, restored him, and empowered him as the first Disciple. Rhulk took his vengeance on Lubrae, annihilating its parent star and destroying the planet.
  
• Vanguard power assessments place Rhulk far above any previous enemy faced by any Guardian. Battle scholars theorize the bold fireteam that stormed the sunken Pyramid only prevailed due to Rhulk’s humoring a fight to begin with. But prevail they did.
  

OF NOTE

• Hidden cipher-sequences buried in the symbols throughout have been decrypted by a pioneering Cryptarch, thanks to countless fireteams keeping the way clear. The solved sequence is believed to be astronomical coordinates to Lubrae. (Probe dispatched… awaiting arrival.)
  
• The creation of the Hive was majorly influenced by Rhulk. The first Disciple of the Witness subjugated the Worm mother, Xita, and forced her spawn into union with the Krill, which led to the Hive species and the Hive Gods themselves.
  
• Cryptarchs have uncovered communications between Rhulk and Savathûn in which Savathûn derides Rhulk’s simplicity as a tactician. According to the Witch Queen, the first Disciple only values strength, and his downfall will be his brute force approach to every situation.
  

Zero Hour Exotic Mission Is Live

Image Link^imgur
The Zero Hour Exotic mission is now live. If you haven’t jumped in yet, you can find it in the Into the Light node in the Director. Completing the mission in the required timeframe will earn you the Outbreak Perfected Exotic Pulse Rifle.
As we mentioned last week, we’re celebrating the release by asking you to share your favorite moments with TR3-VR. Post your favorite art, screenshots, videos, or memes — anything that shows your love for our favorite overly attached robot. Just use the hashtag #MyFriendTR3VR. We’ll be giving our favorites an Art or Movie of the Week emblem and sharing your creations in a future TWID.

METORO Webcomic Feature

Do you like cute webcomics? Of course you do! Check out these weekly panels from Japanese webcomic artist METORO that detail her first journey into Destiny 2! Remember what it was like the first time you got your hands on the Gjallarhorn? How about your first raid? Piecing together the story behind the Light and Darkness saga? Well, METORO has put her Destiny 2 adventures into art form. You can catch her original work over on TwitteX in Japanese or read it translated into English below:

METORO Discovers Destiny 2

Image Link^imgur
Image Link^imgur

METORO Challenges Onslaught

Image Link^imgur
Image Link^imgur

METORO Teaches a History Lesson

Image Link^imgur
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METORO Runs Vault of Glass

Image Link^imgur
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METORO Takes on The Pantheon

Image Link^imgur
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Player Support Report

"I would die for Archie” did not mean I wanted him to actively be the death of me.
Image Link^imgur
Known Issues List Help Forums Bungie Help Twitter

DESTINY CONTENT VAULT UPDATES

With the start of Year 7 of Destiny 2, on June 4 certain items will be deprecated from player inventories that correspond with vaulted activities and seasonal campaigns. They will then be moved into the Destiny Content Vault.
We have updated the Destiny Content Vault article to reflect these changes and created a new article fully outlining Items Being Deprecated at the Start of Year 7 for players to reference.

PARENTAL CONTROLS

Parents, guardians, and other responsible adults are now able to adjust their child’s Destiny 2 settings.
To set up parental controls, both the child and their adult need a Bungie.net account, and we will need to verify that the person providing consent and setting controls is an adult. We have created a Parental Controls Help article with details explaining how to create an account and instructions on linking it to your child's.
We have also updated our privacy policy. Please visit Bungie.net to create or manage your account and set your preferences today.

KNOWN ISSUES

While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our #Help Forum:

• Capturing a zone in the Collision PvP game mode while having full super energy will slightly reduce Super energy.
  
• Tormentors can push turrets away in Onslaught with their slam or grab attacks.
  
• The Zero Deaths Triumph only unlocks when completing Zero Hour on the Legend difficulty, which should unlock on both Normal and Legend difficulties.
  

For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article.
If you observe other issues, please report them to our #Help forum.

Who’s The Fairest Of Them All?

Image Link^imgur
This is what happens when someone asks you to draw your favorite Ghost Shell. The classic 77-way first-place tie.
Cheeese Lord on TwitteX
Image Link^imgur

A Titan’s Sacrifice

Image Link^imgur
Why does it always seem to be Titans dying in spectacular fashion? Is it because they are the bravest class, charging into battle to protect others without worrying about their own well-being? Uh... yeah, we can just go with that.
Movie of the Week:
[
Image Link^{imgur](https://twitter.com/famtom98/status/1788074319693992317)}
That’s everything we have for this week. Hopefully you’ve been having fun on the new PvP maps. We know there is a lot to do in these final weeks before The Final Shape, but if you haven’t checked the PvP maps out yet, jump into the New Territory playlist to give them a try. Not only are they beautiful and fun, you can also earn the Slaycation emblem by checking them out.
We’ll be back next week with another TWID and more details to share on The Final Shape. In the meantime, be good to each other, and thanks for hanging out with us.
Destiny 2 Community Team

Source: https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/Article/twid-05-16-2024
This week in Destiny, we are a little over two weeks away from the launch of The Final Shape. From The Witness to the Dread to Prismatic to Exotic class items, and more, there are so many things to be excited about. And today, we have even more to share with you, including some system updates and reworks that will also happen at launch. So, without further ado, let’s get into it!
Topics for this week:

• Weapons tuning recap.
  
• Build your arsenal shorts.
  
• Enhanced perk updates.
  
• Memento changes.
  
• Reduced Fragment costs at Ikora in The Final Shape
  
• New boss profile for The Pantheon.
  
• Zero Hour Exotic mission is live.
  
• METORO webcomic feature.
  
• Destiny 2 Content Vault updates.
  

Weapons Tuning Recap

Image Link^imgur
Yesterday, we shared details about our plans for weapons tuning in The Final Shape. This includes a change to some weapon mod specs, weapon balancing, and perk updates. For more details, check out our Dev Insight: Weapons Tuning Preview blog.

Build Your Arsenal

As the excitement for The Final Shape is ramping up, we’re sharing a first look at some of the Exotic weapons and armor you can expect to see. Check them out and start cooking up those builds!

Microcosm Heavy Ammo Trace Rifle
Video Link
Khostov Auto Rifle
Video Link
Mataidoxia Warlock Exotic Chest Armor
Video Link
Gifted Conviction Hunter Exotic Chest Armor
Video Link
Hazardous Propulsion Titan Exotic Chest Armor
Video Link

Enhancement in The Final Shape

During the Lightfall year, players have gotten a taste of weapon enhancement with the raid Adept weapons from Root of Nightmares and Crota's End. In The Final Shape, you'll see that this system has undergone some upgrades, making enhancing your weapons easier and allowing us to comfortably expand this system to include more weapons. Here’s a quick recap on how weapon enhancement will work alongside some of the changes:

• Weapon enhancement allows the weapon to be upgraded to receive enhanced traits, a weapon level, and a memento socket. To upgrade your weapon, players can navigate to the inspection screen and insert the enhancement tier mod for standard currencies (raid Adept weapons will continue to use Spoils of Conquest).

Image Link^imgur

• Enhancement Tier 1:
  
  • Replaces your Masterwork and provides the weapon with an enhanced intrinsic that matches the stat of your old Masterwork.
  • Provides a weapon level, a date when you first enhanced the weapon, and a memento socket.
  • Raid Adepts only: Since these weapons have a base-crafted version, we want the Adept versions to feel like a meaningful upgrade. Therefore, these weapons can visit the Relic on Mars to adjust their first two columns (typically barrels/magazines) in a similar fashion to how crafted weapons can augment these perk columns.
• Enhancement Tier 2 (weapon level 11 requirement):
  
  • Once the player inserts this mod, the left column trait(s) will automatically be upgraded to their enhanced perks. If you have multiple perks, this will update all traits in the column. Players will not need to visit the Relic on Mars to update these traits anymore.
• Enhancement Tier 3 (weapon level 17 requirement):
  
  • Once the player applies this mod, the right column weapon trait perks will automatically be updated to be enhanced. Like the left column, this will upgrade all of the traits present and does not require visiting the Relic.

Image Link^imgur
We've heard the feedback that weapons should have more avenues to acquire enhanced traits. In The Final Shape, all new weapons will either be craftable or have access to weapon enhancement. In addition, weapons that remain active drops in the following activities will be eligible for enhancement:

• Vow of the Disciple raid Adepts
  
• Guardian Games
  
• King's Fall raid Adepts
  
• Gambit
  
• Competitive Crucible (all of them)
  
• Trials of Osiris
  
• Crucible
  
• Iron Banner
  
• Vanguard Ops
  
• Nightfalls
  
• Prophecy Dungeon
  

This will include older instances of these weapons, as long as they have an origin trait. Unfortunately, due to some technical constraints, there are a handful of weapons instances from before Season 17 that have origin traits and are active drops, but they will not be eligible for weapon enhancement. If a weapon is not actively dropping in these activities and playlists or it’s under the legacy focusing options, it will not be enhance-able when The Final Shape releases. If weapons are reissued and become a part of a playlist's active drops once again, we'll update older versions that have origin traits to enter weapon enhancement.

Mementos in The Final Shape

We've received a lot of feedback on weapon mementos, especially as new mementos have released in our seasonal events. In The Final Shape, we have a few changes coming that impact how you store mementos and apply them to your weapons.

• Crafted and enhanced weapons will no longer need to visit the Relic on Mars to apply mementos. Players can apply the memento of their choosing directly in the weapon inspection screen.
  
• Memento stack cap limits will be raised from 1 to 3.
  
• Mementos will no longer be stored alongside the player's consumables. When The Final Shape launches, your mementos under consumables will show as faded. Then, once the faded memento is dismantled, you'll see +1 memento added in the weapon inspection screen as a virtual currency. For players who figured out how to get around the original memento stack size limits, this will allow you to dismantle all those mementos safely, even if you temporarily go over the intended stack limit of three. If you are holding three (or more) of a particular memento, it will not drop again until you spend your mementos to be under the stack size limit of three.
  

Reduced Fragment Costs at Ikora In The Final Shape

Subclass Fragments purchasable from Ikora are expensive, particularly considering how many there are, especially for New Lights. In The Final Shape, we have reduced the cost of Fragments from 25000 Glimmer to 10000 Glimmer. Our goal here is to make these vital build-crafting elements more accessible for new and returning players.

The Pantheon Grows Stronger

Another week, and your task has become more difficult, Guardians. Rhulk, Disciple of the Witness, has joined The Pantheon, and we’ve gathered intel for your mission.
VANGUARD – GUARDIAN DISPATCH – ALL POINTS BULLETIN
DEFENDERS OF THE CITY,
You are tasked with the elimination of the following target:

-RHULK, DISCIPLE OF THE WITNESS-
Image Link^imgur
CLASSIFICATION

• The last-known Lubraean
  
• First Disciple of the Witness
  
• Other names: The Upender, Worm Father
  
• Dread
  
• Resonant
  

HAZARDS

• Darkness mastery
  
• Immeasurable strength and durability
  
• Powerful Lubrae’s Ruin Glaive
  
• Suns of Lubrae attack and debuff
  
• Savage Strike kick
  
• Umbral Suffocation attack
  
• Teleportation
  
• Resonant Spikes area effect
  
• Guardians rated Sigma-3 or lower are advised not to engage
  

INTEL

• Rhulk was born on the planet Lubrae, a world originally blessed by the Traveler that spiraled into an authoritarian regime when the Traveler left. Fueled by rage, Rhulk sought to destroy the regime, but his bloodlust led to being ostracized from his clan. Eventually, afraid of what he’d become, his clan attempted to kill him.
  
• Decrypted records from the Pyramid indicate that the Witness made contact with Rhulk during this time, restored him, and empowered him as the first Disciple. Rhulk took his vengeance on Lubrae, annihilating its parent star and destroying the planet.
  
• Vanguard power assessments place Rhulk far above any previous enemy faced by any Guardian. Battle scholars theorize the bold fireteam that stormed the sunken Pyramid only prevailed due to Rhulk’s humoring a fight to begin with. But prevail they did.
  

OF NOTE

• Hidden cipher-sequences buried in the symbols throughout have been decrypted by a pioneering Cryptarch, thanks to countless fireteams keeping the way clear. The solved sequence is believed to be astronomical coordinates to Lubrae. (Probe dispatched… awaiting arrival.)
  
• The creation of the Hive was majorly influenced by Rhulk. The first Disciple of the Witness subjugated the Worm mother, Xita, and forced her spawn into union with the Krill, which led to the Hive species and the Hive Gods themselves.
  
• Cryptarchs have uncovered communications between Rhulk and Savathûn in which Savathûn derides Rhulk’s simplicity as a tactician. According to the Witch Queen, the first Disciple only values strength, and his downfall will be his brute force approach to every situation.
  

Zero Hour Exotic Mission Is Live

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The Zero Hour Exotic mission is now live. If you haven’t jumped in yet, you can find it in the Into the Light node in the Director. Completing the mission in the required timeframe will earn you the Outbreak Perfected Exotic Pulse Rifle.
As we mentioned last week, we’re celebrating the release by asking you to share your favorite moments with TR3-VR. Post your favorite art, screenshots, videos, or memes — anything that shows your love for our favorite overly attached robot. Just use the hashtag #MyFriendTR3VR. We’ll be giving our favorites an Art or Movie of the Week emblem and sharing your creations in a future TWID.

METORO Webcomic Feature

Do you like cute webcomics? Of course you do! Check out these weekly panels from Japanese webcomic artist METORO that detail her first journey into Destiny 2! Remember what it was like the first time you got your hands on the Gjallarhorn? How about your first raid? Piecing together the story behind the Light and Darkness saga? Well, METORO has put her Destiny 2 adventures into art form. You can catch her original work over on TwitteX in Japanese or read it translated into English below:

METORO Discovers Destiny 2

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METORO Challenges Onslaught

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METORO Teaches a History Lesson

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METORO Runs Vault of Glass

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METORO Takes on The Pantheon

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Player Support Report

"I would die for Archie” did not mean I wanted him to actively be the death of me.
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Known Issues List Help Forums Bungie Help Twitter

DESTINY CONTENT VAULT UPDATES

With the start of Year 7 of Destiny 2, on June 4 certain items will be deprecated from player inventories that correspond with vaulted activities and seasonal campaigns. They will then be moved into the Destiny Content Vault.
We have updated the Destiny Content Vault article to reflect these changes and created a new article fully outlining Items Being Deprecated at the Start of Year 7 for players to reference.

PARENTAL CONTROLS

Parents, guardians, and other responsible adults are now able to adjust their child’s Destiny 2 settings.
To set up parental controls, both the child and their adult need a Bungie.net account, and we will need to verify that the person providing consent and setting controls is an adult. We have created a Parental Controls Help article with details explaining how to create an account and instructions on linking it to your child's.
We have also updated our privacy policy. Please visit Bungie.net to create or manage your account and set your preferences today.

KNOWN ISSUES

While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our #Help Forum:

• Capturing a zone in the Collision PvP game mode while having full super energy will slightly reduce Super energy.
  
• Tormentors can push turrets away in Onslaught with their slam or grab attacks.
  
• The Zero Deaths Triumph only unlocks when completing Zero Hour on the Legend difficulty, which should unlock on both Normal and Legend difficulties.
  

For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article.
If you observe other issues, please report them to our #Help forum.

Who’s The Fairest Of Them All?

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This is what happens when someone asks you to draw your favorite Ghost Shell. The classic 77-way first-place tie.
Cheeese Lord on TwitteX
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A Titan’s Sacrifice

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Why does it always seem to be Titans dying in spectacular fashion? Is it because they are the bravest class, charging into battle to protect others without worrying about their own well-being? Uh... yeah, we can just go with that.
Movie of the Week:
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That’s everything we have for this week. Hopefully you’ve been having fun on the new PvP maps. We know there is a lot to do in these final weeks before The Final Shape, but if you haven’t checked the PvP maps out yet, jump into the New Territory playlist to give them a try. Not only are they beautiful and fun, you can also earn the Slaycation emblem by checking them out.
We’ll be back next week with another TWID and more details to share on The Final Shape. In the meantime, be good to each other, and thanks for hanging out with us.
Destiny 2 Community Team

TL;DR : (M18) turning 19 in August and (F20) This is our 3rd time breaking up along with our 2nd cancelled engagement with plenty of separations and rekindling throughout our entire 4+ years knowing eachother. We’ve done a lot of growing up together as well as apart and over the years we’ve both done eachother wrong but we’ve also done so so so much for eachother as well. However, it was always me who was less mature and messing up more. I recently messed up once again and in a state of high emotion on both sides, she was fed up and said We were never getting back together. Will I ever get one last chance with her?
Please, I miss her so much and I’m willing to do anything just for one final chance. I love her and I’m IN love with her with all my heart and soul bro. I am extremely attached, connected, and emotionally invested in this girl and we have been through so much together. I desire(more than anything else in the world) a future with her.
For more context:
Our first time breaking up, I had just turned 15 and she was 16. Her and I barely even dated for a couple months before I had indirectly and immaturely broken up with her by leaving it “upto her” because of me wanting to talk to other girls, but her and I still ended up talking and being flirtatious anyway. But then we had separated because of me getting my phone taken away for months. She had started talking to someone else who was MUCH MUCH older than her and was grooming hevery toxic to her but out of strange obligation, she stayed with him anyway although she really just wanted to be with me. Her and I still remained as close as ever although she had to turn me down twice when I wanted to rekindle things. Later on, I had got my phone back and as we entered into the next school year( she turned 17 and I turned 16) we grew closer and closer and feelings developed stronger and stronger meanwhile her relationship with him was getting worse and worse and they were having multiple breakups as well. She even at one point expressed to me that she was on the verge of breaking up with him and very bluntly hinted at as well as indirectly told me she wanted to leave him for me. But ultimately after she knew that my hopes were all up and everything she ended up just choosing him over me anyway and leaving me hanging. a couple months afterwards she posting vulgar things on social media with the caption “I’ll suck my man d#%k fr” or something along those lines. That’s when I fully moved on and went on to get in multiple relationships/“situationships” over the course of that year. Until fast forward to November 2023, she comes back and we very very quickly rekindle/get back together. over the course of that year, because of my porn and masturbation addiction we’ve separated as well as had many issues interfering with my attraction of her because of my skewed image of women and interfering with us having proper sex or intimacy without my fetishes being involved. Fast forward to August, I ended up falling into watching porn for almost my entire birthday week behind her back while she was working so hard to eventually bring me gifts on that day which I later confessed to the following month. We separated for 3 days and this is when I finally started taking my walk with the lord seriously.(she began months ahead of me and she was the one that even introduced me to Christianity in the first place)(her entirely family is Christian) 2 months pass and a couple days after I propose to her for the first time and posting about it? a girl I used to talk to had replied to my iG story congratulating me and as we talked and catched up, I fell to temptation once again and ended up saying more than I should have/inappropriate things but by the time I realized what I was doing and ended it. It was too late and I confessed to her immediately. after a couple of days, she took me home from work and broke up with me. We talked about it over text an hour or so later and agreed we would be going no contact for a month, but over that period we constantly broke it(I even indirectly tried killing myself with alcohol and drunk texted her to which she was very sympathetic to and when I ended up blacking out she was terrified and prayed all night over me and even reached out to friends of mine to make sure I was okay.) fast forward, she ends it early and we rekindle. Fast forward to either late March or April 2024, I fall into looking at iG couples art and ecchi aesthetic art aka softcore porn and I confess to her afterwards. She’s initially upset but she stays with me.
Later on down the line I begin to question my faith entirely and my foundation crumbles after following the teachings of fallible men/cult leaders and mainly doing it for her and because I loved hewanted to bond with her and not actually seeking the truth for myself(although I had my moments of genuinely being curious and wanting to discover it for myself.) However, she was still just as firmly rooted in her faith as ever and maturing even more. On the contrary, I grow weak and undisciplined in my flesh, I fall back into bad habits, I stop reading the word, praying, fasting, I isolate myself from fellowship. And as it gets harder and harder to resist my sexual urges and with her unwavering on her boundaries of no sex before marriage and etc. I fell back into masturbation but eventually back into porn as well(softcore stuff again mainly but I slipped into some fetish stuff too) and it was over the course of a couple days again with me feeling very guilty and being afraid to tell heI just wanted to repent of it and be done but she ended up getting dream a about it and asked me about it the very next day to which I was honest with her and confessed. Then after however many minutes go by and her breaking up with me a third time with her saying “We are done.” and “We will see” “Love you, Bye” instead of taking the advice everyone was giving me and giving her time and space from jump. I pressed her, begged/pleaded, and blew up her messages making it worse and aggravating her until she followed up with the next day with telling me “Sure I’ll let you know where we stand”We are never getting back together.”
I panicked and went into a high emotional state myself and went to her house late at night(1 or 2 am), and pressed her even more begging and pleading. But this made it worse as well and she had said “what us? there is no us” “go home” “you did what you did”and etc while pushing me out and slamming the door in my face. She originally only talked to her mother about it but because of my stupid decisions while being emotional I unintentionally involved everyone else in it. Her older sister’s husband went through a very similar situation with the older sister and had offered to talk to me about it along with everyone else. But when I followed up later on that day it created a misunderstanding and I ended up getting blocked by him and her older sister after she texts me on her older sister’s phone saying the same exact hurtful and cold/seemingly detached things and after begging and pleading to call, we did but it only made it that much worse. I tried to explain my side of things the best I could while being highly emotional but she didn’t want to hear any of it and proceeded to say even more hurtful, cold, seemingly, detached things, cussed me out, then hung up in my face and blocked me. This whole breakup was very messy and happened over the course of barely 3 days.
I’m still in contact with her mom and I recently contacted her dad as well(parents are divorced) and he had told me she never even mentioned anything to him about it which goes to show I made things worse/unnecessarily involved other people in it that otherwise might not have been involved.
Now I’m giving her proper time and space but I’m still extremely anxious/uncertain about where things will go from here.
(I ask that you be honest but also open minded/considerate in responses please, this all happened over the span of a couple of days and I’m still very fresh in the grieving process)
What do you all think about this situation? (I especially want to hear from a female perspective)

The people involved (names are changed):
Jake – me
Tom – my flatmate
Kath – Tom’s girlfriend
Emily – Kath’s flatmate
TLDR (but context is very important for how the situation develops):
· Me and Emily get with each other at a party.
· It turns out Kath had forbidden Emily from getting with me. Since Emily went and did it anyway, Kath falls out with her.
· Kath ends her friendship with Emily. Me and Emily continue seeing each other.
· When I plan to go to see Emily at their apartment, Tom tells me that Kath is in a really dark place mentally, and the thought of me and Emily being there together while Kath’s there is triggering her anxiety, so he asks me not to go over.
· Me and Emily follow these instructions for months, all whilst Tom and Kath continue coming and going to either of our apartments as they please.
· Emily eventually gets in touch with Kath to try and understand exactly why me coming over is an issue, since Kath has no problem coming to my place. Kath has a meltdown due to this and it makes her suicidal.
· Tom falls out with me because I knew about the messages that caused his girlfriend to feel suicidal.
(Skip to 'Late April' if you want to go straight to the crux of this post, but I do think it's quite an entertaining read).
Background Context
Me and Tom (both mid-twenties) have lived together in our apartment since I moved to the city last year. I’ve known him for several years and would put him in my inner circle of closest friends, so living with him was all just good chill vibes as expected - or at least it was for the first six months.
I met Tom’s girlfriend of several months, Kath, for the first time pretty soon after moving in. Although she was kind of shy, I thought she seemed nice enough. I noticed that Kath would seem to lean on Tom a fair amount when it came to support for her mental health (she had been diagnosed with anxiety), which of course is normal as her boyfriend. On one occasion, she had a particularly bad anxious episode during a group hangout, with Tom consoling her about it afterwards. Following this, Tom seemed exhausted, saying to me “I’m not a professional, I’m not equipped to deal with all this mental health stuff. She needs help from someone who can adequately help her deal with these thoughts. When she blows things out of proportion and she stresses out to me about her anxiety, it just ends up making my own anxiety worse”. He also said that he had even offered to pay for therapy for Kath, but she didn’t want to accept it.
I just felt bad for Tom, especially since I had some understanding of what he was going through. I had previously had a girlfriend who had anxiety/depression/BPD and put all her mental health issues on me. That girlfriend was also very manipulative and would mention suicidal thoughts any time she started feeling like she was losing control over me (just to be clear, there was no indication that Kath was acting in a manipulative way towards Tom at that point). In my experience, when you end up in a situation where you’re essentially acting as someone’s full-time personal mental health counsellor, it hardly ever ends well.
At some point in January, I met Kath’s “bestie” flatmate, Emily. I remember thinking she was cute, seemed nice and easy to talk to. We all hung out as a group a few times that month and I thought there may have been a little bit of a vibe between me and Emily.
So as you do, I slid into Emily’s DMs and basically let her know I was interested. I messaged her a week or two before our party that her and Kath were coming to, but her response was lukewarm so I just thought she probably wasn’t interested.
For context, I had recently broken up with my girlfriend in January, who had just got back from travelling for the last 6 months. Things in that relationship weren’t great before she even went travelling, and during the months she was away I had come to terms with the fact that it was best to end it. I waited until she was back to say it in person, as I didn’t want to drop that on her while she was travelling and ruin that once in a lifetime experience. However, deep down I knew I had wanted talk to other girls and explore new connections for the last few months, but obviously I didn’t want talk to anyone until it was cleanly over. Me messaging Emily was only a few days after breaking up with her, which I guess isn’t great, but in my head I had been ready to move on for a while, I saw no point in putting an arbitrary time limit on myself. I made sure to explain this context when I messaged Emily so that she was aware of my recent circumstances.
The Party (End of January)
So me and Emily end up getting with each other at the party. Initially, when I brought up me messaging her, she said “I think you’re cute, but I think it’s best we just be friends for the next couple months, since you just recently got out of a relationship, and we can see what happens afterwards”. But as the night went on, I guess Emily changed her mind, because as we kept talking it got increasingly flirty and we ended up getting together. Perfect end to the night, right? Not exactly.
At one point when Emily goes to the bathroom, she comes back into my bedroom saying “Kath is furious at me”. I ask why, and she says that Kath had basically forbidden her from getting with me.
Back when I first messaged Emily, she had of course shown Kath the messages straight away. It turns out Kath for some reason had a really intense reaction to this and was like “I can’t believe he has the audacity to hit on my best friend right after breaking up with his girlfriend! It’s so disrespectful using you as a rebound, it’s disrespectful to his ex and it’s disrespectful to me for hitting on my best friend like this! He was the only one of Tom’s friends that I actually liked but he’s ruined that too now!”.
Apparently, Kath had been used as a rebound before and this was triggering for her, so she didn’t want her best friend to be used as a rebound. She said “you can’t get with him, Emily, that’s my boundary.” Emily was a bit taken aback by the intensity of this reaction and was just a bit like “umm okay…?”. She tried a few times before the party to understand a bit more about why Kath had such a problem with it but didn’t get much further explanation than that.
Now, I agree that Emily was in the wrong for saying to Kath that she wouldn’t get with me and then went and did it anyway, and Emily also acknowledges this. Emily should have said from the start she wasn’t okay with this weird “boundary” Kath had set. It was a bit cowardly. Although given how intensely Kath overreacts to things, I can understand why Emily initially just agreed to whatever she was saying to calm her down. I can also understand how when you’re at a party having fun, drinking and realise that you do actually have a good vibe with the person, in the moment you might change your mind and be like “actually fuck that, who the fuck is she to tell me who I can and can’t get with?”.
Kath saw this as Emily having no respect for their friendship, by choosing some guy she’d just met over her. From Emily’s perspective she was choosing herself, choosing not to follow these nonsensical rules that had been imposed on her, and she was just tired of Kath overreacting to everything and trying to control her.
In my opinion, being this controlling for no good reason is pretty disrespectful in itself. Given that Kath’s reason for telling Emily not to get with me was because she didn’t want her to be used as a rebound…well that’s Emily’s risk to take, isn’t it? I can see how from Emily’s perspective, she knew Kath might not be happy about it, but it’s also not some deep betrayal, since based on the reason Kath gave, the consequence would only be on Emily herself. Emily had the exact same knowledge about my recent relationship status as Kath did, so why did Kath think she can tell her what to do?
As we get to further into this post and the real reason why Kath set this “boundary” is revealed, you will see why I actually think any argument Kath has against Emily for getting with me at the party is automatically void, but we will learn these details as they come.
Start of February
After the events of the party, Kath didn’t want to talk to Emily the next day when she tried to initiate communication via message (Kath tends to avoid in-person confrontation). Fair enough, Emily gave her space. Me and Emily spend the next day together just talking and getting to know each other more, and it’s clear that we vibe together and both feel very comfortable with each other, which is pretty rare for both of us.
I don’t see Tom for the first few days after the party, as he had been staying at Kath’s. When I do, I’m a bit surprised that he didn’t think much of Kath’s reaction at the party. He says “yeah I probably should have warned you about this beforehand”. We both agree that Emily was in the wrong for going back on what she said, but also that Kath shouldn’t have tried to control her like that. He did say “sorry I know this put you in an awkward position”.
A few days after the party, Emily again tries to get in touch with Kath via message.
Emily’s message essentially apologised for her actions, saying she was in the wrong for going back on what she said, and that she should have said from the start that she wasn’t happy with this “boundary”. She also said that Kath shouldn’t have tried to dictate her life and tell her what to do, especially when it’s something that’s none of her business, and that she is going to continue seeing me, taking the risk of being a “rebound”.
Kath’s response essentially said the whole incident at the party was only a small part of why she exploded so intensely, this was just the last in a long line of things Emily had done in the past which she had not forgiven her for. This was just the last straw for Kath because “it hit so close to home, so close to the love of my life”. She wanted things to be civil between them until the end of their tenancy, but this was essentially the end of their friendship.
Okay good, Kath flipping out so badly now finally made a bit more sense to me. Obviously, I wanted to know what Emily had done that was so bad to cause this, as any indicators of bad character would inform whether I choose to keep talking to her.
Emily went through these, explaining that these were incidents from their past that they had discussed at the time, dealt with and moved on from. I have cut these out for the word limit as they don’t add much to this post, but it was the most minor, nonsensical things (I can explain in the comments if anyone wants details).
In any case, I wasn’t particularly interested in what mistakes Emily might have made months or years ago, I was more interested in what her character was like now and going forward.
Early/Mid February
So here’s where the main situation we’re in now starts. For context, Kath and Emily’s apartment is in the city center, close to where both mine and Tom’s offices are, so it would make sense to go over in the evening and go into work from theirs the next morning, as Tom has been doing once or twice a week for the last few months.
It's worth noting that ever since the party right up to the present moment, Emily and Kath have not been interacting at all, avoiding each other in their apartment, only messaging for things like bill payments.
The first time I planned to go stay round Emily’s place was early/mid-February. When I mention this to Tom, he tells me that Kath has been having a really bad time mentally since the party, and the thought of me and Emily being there together triggers her anxiety. He asks me not to go over to their apartment for the next couple of weeks or so while she’s in this particularly bad phase. I don’t really understand what me going over and seeing Emily has to do with Kath’s anxiety (and Tom says he doesn't really understand it either himself), but I say okay fine it’s not that big of deal, I won’t go over for the time being.
Now, a valid question for myself is why I decided to keep seeing Emily, despite knowing that Kath had fallen out with her and therefore knowing it could potentially cause fiction between me and Tom. I don’t think I did anything wrong for several reasons:
· I suppose there’s the general visceral reaction against being told what to do. Like mind your own business, it’s not my fault Kath decided to get involved in my business. Why should she get what she wants when she’s the one being unreasonable? Why should we deny ourselves the opportunity of getting to know someone we seem to vibe with just because Tom’s girlfriend doesn’t like it?
· Before I even knew there was any issue at all, it was already too late; I had already gotten with Emily, they had already fallen out, and Kath already thought I was a dickhead. So what good would it do now to not see each other? Kath already didn’t like me (and she had also previously told me that once she doesn’t like someone, there’s no going back, they’re finished in her mind).
· In the initial first few days after the party, both me and Tom were kind of expecting that Kath’s reaction would blow over in a few days after she had cooled down. How could I have predicted that her reaction would instead continue getting increasingly intense as the situation went on?
· Frankly, I was annoyed at Tom at this point. He knew how Kath had reacted to me messaging Emily, so why did he just bend over and enable his girlfriends’ controlling, unreasonable behavior without question? If it was my girlfriend acting like this generally, I’d be like “why are you getting involved in their business, just let them do what they want?”, and especially so if it was directly affecting one of my close friends.
· Fundamentally, there’s no inherent reason why there had to be any issue at all? Okay Kath has ended her friendship with Emily and might not like that we’re seeing each other, but there’s no need for there to be any continued drama. Obviously we won’t all be hanging out as a four having fun like I had initially hoped, but that doesn’t mean we can’t just exist as adults and be civil? The only reason this continues to be an issue in the first place is because Kath is making it an issue for everyone else involved.
· Finally, I actually like Emily – from the first few days it was clear it wasn’t just going to be a FWB situation. If it felt like more of a superficial FWB situation, then yeah I probably would have just thought it’s not worth the drama, even though I thought Kath was the one in the wrong.
Late February
Over the month of February, me and Emily keep hanging out and getting closer. Whilst I was keeping a very close eye on her for any sign of character flaws (it was still possible that Kath could be in the right, even though her side of it didn’t make much sense to me), the more I got to know her, the more it seemed my initial judgment of her was accurate. I saw how she acted with her other friends, they all seemed to really value and appreciate her. I saw her helping out her friend in need of a fairly large amount of money without a second thought, I saw her going to accompany her friend for a medical scan they had, and generally she was really nice and thoughtful with me. Not exactly the behavior of an inconsiderate person.
Sometime in late February, Emily messages me completely baffled. She couldn’t believe that Kath had invited over a girl from their social circle, Dianne. The reason why this is a bit scandalous is because Kath is always talking shit about Dianne behind her back. And it’s not just “she can be a bit annoying sometimes”, it’s an explicit sentiment of how much she dislikes her, how much of a bad person she is and how much she wants her removed from her life. And she does this frequently, I barely speak to Kath and even I’ve heard her rant about how much she doesn’t like Dianne. So, she’s constantly saying this kind of stuff behind her back, and here she is now inviting her round for tea acting all friendly. I just found that so two-faced and this inevitably shaped my perception of Kath being deceptive.
Not long after I heard about this, Kath was round our place over the weekend. Me, Tom and Kath were heading off to our friend’s housewarming party later that day, with me driving us. At one point when the three of us are all in the kitchen, Kath speaks to me properly for the first time since the party, basically to clear the air. She says she doesn’t want there to be any bad blood between us and that her problem wasn’t with me, it was with Emily. I just say that I was cool with her, I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable with me or when coming over to our apartment, and that the situation between her and Emily was between them and not my business.
I wasn’t entirely convinced with her “clearing the air”, given that I had seen she apparently has no issue with being two-faced, but at the time I thought it was best to stay cool with her for the sake of me and Tom’s friendship and also I didn’t particularly fancy spending the rest of the day and a long car ride with awkward vibes.
End of February
At the end of February, Tom asks me how things are going with Emily and basically advises caution with her. He says that from what he’s seen she’s basically not a good person and she’s generally inconsiderate. I tell him I find that surprising from what I’ve seen of Emily, but I know it’s possible she could have just been putting on a front for the last month. I openly accept this, saying “I want to hear what you have to say, obviously you’re my friend and I respect your opinion”.
Essentially, he doesn’t bring up anything that I hadn’t already been told.
When I question Tom on why Kath thought she was a mind reader and assuming what my intentions were with Emily at the very start of this whole thing, Tom reveals he had since found out that the real reason Kath had forbidden Emily from getting with me in the first place actually wasn’t really to do with me recently breaking up with my girlfriend/using Emily as a rebound (Tom said this was a minor part of the reason, more of an excuse to base it on). It was more that Kath already knew beforehand that she wanted to end her friendship with Emily and was essentially trying to prevent her still being part of her life (i.e. by getting close to her boyfriend’s friend/flatmate).
Now it all made sense why Kath tried to “ban” her from getting with me in the first place. I’m not sure if Tom thought telling me this would make me more sympathetic to Kath’s side of it, but if anything, this deceptive behavior was even more of a red flag to me. As far as everyone (except for Kath) was concerned, her and Emily were best friends. Kath had even said to Emily a couple of weeks before the party that “she was like a sister to her”.
Tom didn’t seem to have much issue with this, saying something along the lines of “yeah I know she shouldn’t have kept all this stuff bottled up, but she doesn’t like confrontation, it makes her really anxious”.
After learning this, I think any argument for Emily being in the wrong for disobeying Kath’s instructions at the party is automatically void: Imagine having the audacity to be like “yeah I know I tried to control you by framing it as me being a protective friend looking out for you, but actually it was really because I wanted to end my friendship with you anyway teehee 😊”. In my view that is just so manipulative. No wonder the reason given to Emily for not getting with me made no sense to her.
When I revealed this to Emily, she said that she had been suspecting that was the case anyway, but it still really hurt to hear it confirmed.
Form her perspective it was like: “So was Kath holding all these grudges all the times I was consoling her for whatever mental health issue she was having at any given time?” (I wonder if Tom was thinking what a bad person Emily was when it was him and Emily staying up till stupid o’clock trying to console Kath who was crying about job applications a few weeks before all this kicked off). There are many other examples of things she had done for Kath in both the recent and more distant past.
Kath also knew that Emily’s best friend had killed herself a few years prior, and after going through the loss of her best friend, Emily had always said she was super hesitant to call anyone her “best friend”. Kath knew about this and still let Emily believe they were best friends, whilst she clearly didn’t really mean it, which I think is quite cruel of her.
Despite what I had seen of Emily so far, I still took what Tom said into account, and continued to watch her carefully.
Mid March
Another couple of weeks pass and given that my last interaction with Kath was her clearing the air with me, I thought everything was now cool between us. I mention to Tom at the start of the week that I’m planning to stay at their apartment later that week and he says “okay cool”. However, later that same evening, he once again asks me not to go over to their apartment. Apparently when he told Kath that I was going over, she started having a panic attack at the thought of me going there.
At this point I’m really started to get frustrated at this situation and again I try to understand exactly what the problem is, because this entire time Kath and Tom have been coming and going to either apartment as they please, so Kath clearly doesn’t have a problem coming to my apartment while I’m there. Tom again says that he doesn’t fully understand it himself, and that Kath doesn’t want to feel this way either, but she’s in a really bad place at the moment and me being there with Emily is really triggering her anxiety.
This makes no sense to me or Emily, because we obviously wouldn’t do anything to make Kath uncomfortable, and from our perspective this is just enabling her dysfunctional way of dealing with this situation.
Even though I still don’t understand what the fuck me seeing Emily has got to do with Kath’s mental health, I’m obviously not going to barge my way into someone’s home when I’m not welcome. So once again, I do as I’m told and say I won’t go over. But I do tell Tom that this situation isn’t going to continue going on like this indefinitely, and to me it feels to me like I’m being walked all over, in the sense of “oh yeah no worries, you two carry on going to either apartment as you please, I’ll just sit here like a dickhead and follow my instructions, don’t worry about it 😊”. He does say sorry and that he knows it’s inconvenient for us, but it's an even bigger inconvenience for Kath.
It’s worth bearing in mind that at this point, I could have responded to this situation by saying that if I’m not welcome at her apartment, Kath is not welcome here (or equally Emily could say to Kath “you can’t bring Tom round”). Whilst yes, it’s a bit petty, I think this would be a completely justified response to prevent a situation where we are being walked all over. Because what would be the alternative? They just carry on doing as they please indefinitely whilst Emily is told she isn’t allowed to have equal use of her own apartment? Now obviously telling your friend that his girlfriend isn’t allowed to come over is really a last resort and would definitely put a big dent in our friendship, and generally I have no desire to control what anyone else does, so of course I didn’t respond in this way.
Despite my frustration at this entire situation, I do feel bad for Tom because I can see how uncomfortable he seems during these conversations with me, he obviously doesn’t want to give me these unreasonable instructions. I can only assume he’s just trying to do whatever he can to keep his girlfriend afloat and prevent her next meltdown. I’ve been there myself dealing with a girlfriend with mental health issues, so I don’t want to actively make things worse for my friend either. However, I’m also worried that it’s likely to get worse for him the more he feeds into it and gets sucked into it.
At this point, the cynical side of me couldn’t help but wonder if Kath was being a bit manipulative and leaning into all the mental health stuff to maintain control of the situation.
· She seemingly is unable to give a reason for exactly why me and Emily being in her apartment makes her so uncomfortable. To me, this was completely indistinguishable from her just hating the fact that we’re together.
· All this reminds me of exactly the same kind of manipulative behavior I saw with that ex-girlfriend.
· She’s shown she has no problem with being intentionally deceptive – maybe if the entire basis of this situation hadn’t started off with Kath being manipulative she would have a bit more credibility in my eyes.
I know this kind of behavior is often not even intentional, and that it can be subconscious where the person doesn’t even realise they’re being manipulative.
(Still Mid March)
Now we get to the part that pisses me off the most in this whole situation. Only a few days after that conversation with Tom, for some reason Kath comes to stay in our apartment for the weekend while Tom was away at a house party. As in, it’s just me and Kath in my apartment.
Personally, I couldn’t imagine having the nerve to say to someone they aren’t welcome in my home because their presence triggers me, and then only a mere few days later actively choosing to go stay the weekend at their place while it’s just us two in the apartment. Like either my presence triggers you or it doesn’t?
Now to be fair, Tom had asked me a week or two beforehand if Kath could come to our apartment to hang out with someone from our friend group while he was away, and I said that was cool. Anyway, those plans fell through, but Kath still came over by herself.
But the main thing that pissed me off about this is that Tom, after knowing that I was already feeling like I was being taken for a mug in this situation, apparently didn’t even think it was worth bothering to check with me if it was still cool with me that Kath came round, given our conversation a few days prior.
If he’d at least checked in like, “I know it’s a bit weird that she’s coming to stay round by herself after having just said that your presence triggers her anxiety”, I still would’ve said okay, because I have no desire to control what anyone does. But it was just the fact he didn’t seem to care, saying “btw Kath is gonna stay here tonight” moments before leaving to his party.
To me it felt like he had spent the last month or so basically giving me instructions to make sure everyone caters to his girlfriend’s feelings, and yet didn’t give the slightest consideration to how this would make me feel. Part of me was thinking does he even see me as a friend or just as an inconvenience to his relationship at this point?
I spoke to Tom in the week following this, expressing how I had felt about Kath staying round. He did apologise and acknowledged he could’ve checked in with me, but he didn’t really seem to understand why her coming over like that was such a kick in the teeth for me. He said Kath doesn’t have a problem with me, it’s only a very specific situation that triggers her (i.e. me and Emily being in her apartment together).
Again I try to understand exactly why it’s a problem. Ever since the party, Emily’s presence in their apartment has consisted of her quietly staying in her room, quickly cooking her food and going straight back to her room. She doesn’t spend 2 hours in the kitchen making food like Kath and Tom sometimes do when he’s there.
Tom again says he doesn’t fully understand it himself. From what he understands, it’s triggering because her home is her safe space and if we’re both there it’s like there’s two hostile presences in that safe space. He reiterated that she is in a very dark place at the moment, and that she’s been having frequent panic attacks and suicidal thoughts.
Tom then says that Kath would be prepared to leave the apartment if me and Emily wanted to meet there, and Kath would basically get out of the way and come to me and Tom’s apartment instead. This did give me a bit more confidence that Kath wasn’t just purposefully making things difficult.
If Kath genuinely meant this, then of course that’s really appreciated, but I’m obviously not going to make her leave her own home and come all the way to ours to then have a 2 hour commute to her work. It’s so over the top and needless. I think that this clearly isn’t a functional solution going forward. What if one day when we want to meet up, Kath has had a long day at work and doesn’t feel like leaving her apartment (obviously, fair enough!), what if she’s got plans with friends in her apartment that evening? In any case, it’s still a situation where rules are being imposed on us, I can never just spontaneously decide to go see Emily one day after work or something. We still can’t come and go freely in the same way they have been doing for the past two months. It would be much better to understand why exactly it’s such a problem and see how we’re going to find a long-term solution, instead of Kath just running away from it.
The cynical side of me was wondering if Kath was just saying this knowing that neither me or Emily are realistically going to make her leave her own home, and if we do agree to it, then she can say “oh look how inconsiderate they are, making me leave my own home just so that they can be in the apartment”, ensuring that she keeps Tom firmly on her side.
Logically, I would’ve thought as time goes on, Kath would eventually get used to the situation and just accept it. Conversely, is it not quite understandable that the longer we have rules imposed on us, the more frustrated we become?
Once again say that I won’t go over and tell him that I won’t press this issue for the time being.
Late April
So now we get to the latest development in the situation, which is the crux of this post.
For the next month or so after that conversation with Tom, me and Emily have just been following our instructions and not pressed anything, whilst they continue coming and going as they please. One weekend we’re talking about the whole ‘Kath situation’ and we say “okay we’ve left it for a while now, it’s probably time to see how we’re going to move forward with this”.
In that next week, Emily sends Kath the following message:
“Hey, I appreciate this message might be uncomfortable but we need to discuss the fact that Jake can’t come here while you’re at home because I know that him and Tom have spoken about this but we’ve never addressed it with each other and I think it’s unfair that they’ve been largely absorbing this conflict this whole time. Can you please tell me what the exact problem would be and how we could make it work? At the end of the day we both pay equal rent here and I should be allowed to bring someone over, especially considering that Tom comes here whenever you want. We’re nothing more than just 2 housemates now and if you were living with a stranger from Spareroom such restrictions couldn’t have existed. I think I’ve let it slide and should have addressed it earlier, but it’s time we come up with a fair solution and I’d like to know if there’s anything reasonable we can do. I don’t want to go into other conversations about our fallout cause that’s done and dusted now, I want to strictly address this issue. Would you like some notice before he comes? I can’t always guarantee how far in advance I can let you know but I will do my best to give you enough time.”
Kath’s response:
“hey, I do not really appreciate this conversation being brought up 2 days before my birthday and I wish we can settle it today and not drag it on. And I do not appreciate you using Tom as a weapon to guilt trip me either. Please let me know if he is coming over tonight so that I can go somewhere else. As u probably already know I am in a really bad place at the moment and being in the apartment with both of you makes me feel very uncomfortable and unsafe. I’m already struggling to be there and I have been discussing with the agency about terminating the contract early, the terms have only been made clear to me today so I was going to message you about it. By paying a fee of £660 (£330 each) we can terminate the contract 12^th of June and I wish u will consider this. I will be gone from the apartment for 2 weeks. I would really appreciate it if you do not bring him over in the next few days as I said it will be my birthday and I will be gone for 2 weeks after if you decide to do so after this, please let me know at least 2 days in advance so that I can leave (pack clothes and everything), but do not take advantage of this as it is extremely difficult for me to commute to work – it takes me 2 hours on the bus”
Emily’s response to this:
“I don’t appreciate you using your birthday as a “weapon” to paint me as an inconsiderate person once again as you’re saying you were going to message me anyway about terminating the contract. You always have Tom round without any notice, without ever considering if it was ever uncomfortable for me given what’s happened - but now you expect me to organise our schedule around you? We can’t ever do something spontaneous or simply make plans the day before? Jake won’t be coming tonight or in the next few days until you’re away. I was hoping we could talk about why exactly this makes you uncomfortable and unsafe as it’s quite clear we wouldn’t interact with you or do anything to purposely upset/annoy you. You also had no problem being in his apartment with him without Tom there, so clearly his presence must not be that big of a problem. I am going to get back to you about terminating the contract as I have to figure out where I would go, but I’d love nothing more than to leave this apartment as early as possible too.”
There was no response after Emily’s second message.
Tom comes back to our apartment the next day and ignores me all day until the evening when he asks “Did you know that Emily was going to send those messages?”.
I say “Yes, obviously?”. He responds with “Right, okay” and starts walking back towards his room.
I ask him what was wrong with the messages, and he comes back and says “what the fuck is Emily doing sending messages like that to my suicidal girlfriend?”. He essentially thought the tone of the messages, the proximity to Kath’s birthday and the fact that we’re once again bringing up this issue of me coming round was out of order. He also said that Emily’s 2^nd message was implying that she was just going to bring me round without any notice anyway (looking at the message, no it wasn’t? It was just highlighting the unfairness of Kath expecting us to organise our schedule around her? None of the messages say that I’m going to come over, they are essentially just trying to understand exactly why it makes Kath uncomfortable).
We also did note that it was Kath’s birthday on the Friday (messages were sent on Tuesday). Maybe that wasn’t ideal, but we thought what real difference does it make? This is nothing new, it’s the same situation that’s been ongoing for the last 3 months anyway (and personally, I thought that up until the moment Kath says “okay sorry, I shouldn’t have imposed rules on you” then she shouldn’t expect that this won’t be brought up to her?).
I was a bit shocked at how angry he was and explained that we’re just trying to understand exactly what her issue is, because it still doesn’t make any sense to us. I bring up the general point about Kath imposing rules on people and expects everyone to cater to her feelings, whilst zero consideration has been given to how Emily has felt over the last 3 months, when not only does it make her uncomfortable as well that there are two “hostile presences” in her home, but especially given that those hostile presences have told her she’s not allowed to have equal use of her apartment she also pays rent for.
Tom responds with “but it’s not making Emily feel suicidal is it? Kath was having convulsions on the fucking bed last night after those messages. Why do you keep focusing on this tiny issue of coming to the apartment when my girlfriend is literally suicidal? She’s already said she’d make arrangements to leave the apartment for when you want to come over, and yet you keep pressing the issue and triggering her further”.
In that moment I was a bit taken aback and didn’t have much of a response. I kind of just sat and processed that for a few minutes, thinking “fuck, have I actually been in the wrong this whole time?”. Tom looked exhausted and stressed out, he must have been dealing with Kath’s meltdown the whole of the night before.
I say to Tom “tell Kath not to worry about me coming over while she’s there, I’m not going to, I’ll just leave it for good and won’t press this issue anymore”. Tom doesn’t give much of a response, but I think he says “I appreciate it”. He leaves for his two-week holiday shortly after.
I felt really bad that evening, thinking I had caused Tom to have to deal with whatever horrible meltdown because of me pressing this issue. Maybe I had been overly cynical of Kath, and she genuinely was just trying her best and not meaning to be manipulative.
When Tom got back from his holiday, he basically confirmed our friendship is over because I had known about those messages that caused his girlfriend to feel suicidal.
I’ve thought about the situation a lot since he left for his holiday:
· Looking back at the messages Emily sent, I think the tone is completely fine? Every single person I’ve shown the messages to has said they are actually quite kind and empathetic, and way nicer than they need to be given Kath’s behavior over the last 3 months.
· Tom’s reaction was essentially “how dare Emily have the audacity to ask for a reason why she hasn’t been allowed to have equal use of her own apartment for the last 3 months!”
· It’s true that Tom had mentioned that Kath had been having some suicidal thoughts a month prior, but I didn’t know that this would directly impact that, especially since I thought the message was quite nice and sensitive. Just the weekend before this Tom and Kath were out clubbing, having fun and they were going on holiday later that week. So obviously I didn’t realise she was still feeling so bad. How could anyone expect that simply asking the question of “why does this make you so uncomfortable” would result in this reaction.
· As soon as I did realise how intensely Kath had reacted, and what Tom had had to deal with as a result, I backed off straight away, saying that she doesn’t have to worry, I’m not going to press it anymore.
· Realistically, if this is how Kath reacts to being asked for basic fairness, then I think really she needs to be in a mental health crisis center or hospital, not just carrying on with everyday life as if everything is fine, and certainly not in a situation where she’s imposing rules on people.
· At the end of the day, Kath’s mental health is not my responsibility, nor is it Tom’s responsibility. I think it’s unfair of Kath to have made it his problem to such a large degree.
Logically, I don’t think I’m in the wrong, and yet Tom’s reaction to this makes me feel like I’m going crazy. That’s why I wrote out everything’s that’s happened from start to finish to “audit” myself and evaluate each of my actions throughout the entire situation.
I’ve looked back and don’t think I’m in the wrong for anything I’ve done. The only explanation I can think of is that Tom has been so deep in all of Kath’s mental health stuff 24/7 that he’s just not thinking clearly about this situation.

I (30F) moved country in August of last year to finally join my husband (35M) after being separated by COVID travel bans and political happenings.
Since I arrived, some increasingly creepy things have been happening.
It started small (relative to where we are now).
Social media accounts being hacked. Mail going missing from the mailbox. The occasional strange sounds outside at night.
Since then, it's escalated to a level neither of us could ever have fathomed.
Someone who looks strikingly like my abusive ex (but isn't, because we've been no contact for a decade and he lives on the other side of the world, not even in the country I came from) hanging around outside, and someone who looks strikingly like my husband's late father, whose death affects him immensely to this day, following him in a car similar to the one his dad drove.
Social services receiving anonymous calls about our daughter, using my full government name with middle name, which not many people know.
Strange phonecalls, including maniacal laughter and someone playing animal sounds down the phone, only for the phone number to suddenly not exist when we or the service provider try to look into it.
Since December, things have really veered into feeling like an episode of Pretty Little Liars. My husband has showed up to work only to be told that he'd already called to book the day off, my mother-in-law has received bizarre phonecalls saying my husband owes someone money (which isn't true), and even friends who know nothing about the situation have reported strange happenings.
The scariest incident so far involved an old man we'll call Shakir (because he had a very similar name of Arabic origin). To clarify, I live in a European country where this kind of name is very unusual.
I first encountered Shakir when walking to the bus stop after meeting my friend for coffee in the town centre. I noticed him staring at me, checking his phone as if checking that I was the right person, then starting to follow me. He followed me onto the bus, then all the way home, eventually peering through the glass panel on the front door of the building I live in because I managed to get in and lock him out.
My neighbor, who is active military personnel (37M) was outside in the garden, so I told him that someone followed me home and was at the door. He went out and chased the man off, noting that he didn't speak much of the native language, but did appear to know my name and the name of another man living in the building. He told my neighbor that he was here to visit another neighbor, by name. After my neighbor didn't allow him in, he left, but 5 minutes later, my neighbor's phone rang from an unknown number. He answered, and the person on the other end said "it's Shakir... just wanted to say hello." That's how we know his name, but there was no way for him to have mine, and definitely no way for him to have my neighbor's number.
We called the police, but they were unable to trace Shakir.
We know that Shakir himself isn't the stalker, because he was too obvious and haphazard compared to everything else, but believe that he may have been sent either to follow me (and messed it up), or to intimidate me (which honestly kinda worked).
We've nicknamed the person behind this "the puppetmaster," because their personal hands-on involvement seems to be fairly low, they're just around behind the scenes making it happen.
What terrifies me is that I don't know what their motive is, or their next step.
What I do know is that if we solve the mystery and make it out in one piece, I'm selling this shit to Netflix.

There was a thread earlier today about people quitting because of BS deaths and I, like some others, have a Powershell script to backup Saves for such a scenario. I put my script in a comment but thought maybe some people would like a full post on how this is achieved.
PS: Someone mentioned wanting to give me a Reddit award for my comment, but obviously awards are gone. So instead, maybe consider following me on Twitch, JawKneePlays. Thanks
I took this Backup Script from someone else and modified it, but I can't remember who the original author is to credit them.
Pre-Warning: Do this at your own risk. I WILL NOT take responsibility for any issues this causes nor will I fix individual issues. If there are questions on what the script is doing etc, then I'm happy to answer.

1. Create the Powershell script file (We're using Powershell ISE because everyone will have it installed with Windows)
   1. Open Powershell ISE
   2. Copy the SCRIPT BLOCK below and paste this into the ISE (SCROLL DOWN THIS POST)
   3. Modify these variables to suit you
      1. $SourcePath = "C:\Users\$user\Zomboid\Saves"
      2. $BkupVolumeLabel = "Games"
      3. $RetentionDays = 2
   4. Save the file and name it whatever you want and where you want
      1. Mine is: "D:\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Scripts\BACKUP_SCRIPTS\ProjectZomboid_Backup.ps1"
      2. NOT REQUIRED BUT: If you don't have a "*\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\" directory and want one, follow this to create a Powershell profile.
2. Create the Scheduled Task
   1. Open Task Scheduler
   2. Right Click the "Task Scheduler Library" folder and Select "New Task"
      1. In the General tab, give the Task a Name
      2. In the Triggers tab, Select "New" and configure the Schedule how you see fit
      3. In the Actions tab, Select "New"
      4. Select "OK" and you're ready to run the task to test it works
3. Restoring the Files
   1. This is a simple Delete the current folder and replace it with your backup folder
   2. If you're afraid of losing your data, I would recommend renaming the current folder from "saves" to "saves.old" and then copying your backup up folder. That way you can delete the backup if it's not what you want or it fails and you can go back to the previous state by renaming the folder back to "saves". It's just worth doing once or twice before you commit to using the backup files
4. That should be everything covered. If anyone notices an issue with the write up, or has any suggestions for myself or others, chime in!

SCRIPT BLOCK (COPY EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE INTO YOUR ISE AND SAVE IT AS A ".PS1" FILE) <#
This script takes a backup copy of an entire folder and puts it on a dedicated backup drive.
It is recommended to use an external hard drive for this backup.
To correctly use this script, be sure that you format each backup drive with the $BkupVolumeLabel keyword in the Volume Label.
To run the script automatically:
Schedule a task to run program powershell.exe with the argument:
-executionpolicy Bypass -file "[insert path to script file here]"
Schedule to run as often as you would like to make a backup.
Change $user below to your PC user name (look at the directory if you don't know)

>

$SourcePath = "C:\Users\$user\Zomboid\Saves"
$BkupVolumeLabel = "Games"
$RetentionDays = 2

# I WILL TAKE IT FROM HERE!

$Date = Get-Date -Format "yyyy MMM dd hhmm tt"
$BackupDrives = (Get-Volume Where-Object {$_.FileSystemLabel -like "*$BkupVolumeLabel*"}).DriveLetter
ForEach ($Drive in $BackupDrives) {
$Letter = "$Drive" + ":\"
$Destination = "$Letter" + (Get-Item -Path $SourcePath).Parent.Name + "\" + (Get-Item -Path $SourcePath).Name
IF (-not (Test-Path -Path $Destination)) {
New-Item -Path $Destination -ItemType Directory
}
Copy-Item -Path $SourcePath -Destination "$Destination\$date" -Recurse
Get-ChildItem -Path $Destination Where-Object {$_.CreationTime -lt ((Get-Date).AddDays( - $RetentionDays))} Remove-Item -Force -Recurse
}

$Error > C:\users\public\desktop\BackupErrors.txt #Remove leading # if you need error information for failed backups.

Hello all. I'm looking for this book and the story goes: A girl is being sexually abused by one of the people she is staying with. She meets twins who might be her neighbors and they're her peers. The broody one, also the hero, kills the abuser (with a gun) but it's the more charismatic twin that takes the credit. They are still high schoolers. Broody one likes the girl but she ends being his brother's girlfriend. Also, she is in denial about liking broody brother. She is also definitely with the other one because she feels indebted to him for saving her from the abuser uncle/fatheguardian. Unfortunately, the boyfriend is also a closeted bisexual and sort of has her agreeing to partake in threesomes with guys from school. She thinks she has to agree because that's what you do for someone you love, apparently. Broody brother and her don't really have much of a friendship going but they end up being around each other for some volunteering thing or something else, and he calls her on how she is letting his brother treat her. Broody brother definitely likes her. At the close of this read, boyfriend has an accident or something and he doesn't want gf to leave him and threatens that he'll reveal it to the police that broody brother in fact killed the abuser. There's a part, or more, that follows, I didn't read it though.
Please help. Thank you in advance.

Ok, love is not the right word, I just wanted to stick with the spirit of the Sellers inspired title. Here's the timeline, sordid details following:
5/8-5/24/23 - Job offered, finger printed, E-qip done, soft credit pull, no interim 7/?/23 - Interview scheduled with investigator, this was probably mid month, my in-laws were in town 8/14/23 - follow up interview w/ the same investigator, by video 10/20/23 - received LOI for things previously discussed with investigator - immediately retained safetyblitz44 4/24/2024 - finally turned in all documentation required by LOI
I waited 3 weeks to contact the FSO from the hiring company. I received a call back from the program manager pretty fast - they profusely apologized that I should have been notified 11 months ago that they were on a hiring freeze and could no longer offer me the position.
I let them know that this was OK and understandable - BUT, that I had still been in contact with DCSA, had an interview, LOI, etc. and that regardless my case should reflect that. They asked me to send my resume and told me they'd call back.
Not even 2 hours later, they call and let me know that YES I have been adjudicated favorably BUT that's when the company dropped my case. I will remain in this status for about 6 months total, during which time I need to find a job to activate me. This is not the end of the world, the PM referred me to a sub and I'm interviewing next week and I am reaching out to my network - someone is going to pick up a software engineer ready to be cleared, that's probably a non issue. I'm very lucky to find myself in this position at all.
Long version...
I was unemployed from late 2021 to early 2023 when I finally bit the bullet and went back to cleared work. I'm a software engineer and I've been cleared before, I didn't think it would be a huge deal, but I was wrong.
I have filled out the SF-86 a lot, I'm in my 40s and it started in the army in 1999. I have had cleared roles without much issue but I never really had red flags either.
This time I had some IRS issues and I checked "yes" to the having used drugs box. It was weed and I had stopped during the pandemic - it was a social thing and the pandemic sucked all of those aspects right out of it. Sharing seemed to make sense til then and I was never one to sit around getting high alone so it naturally tapered off more than a conscious effort to quit. But, I have no intention of doing it again, so giddyup.
When I met with the investigator for an interview it became clear why I hadn't gotten an interim this time but not why it never came up before. They asked me about "an arrest in March 1997" and all I could say was "HOLY SHIT, THAT'S ON THERE?!"
Now, having re-read the SF-86 a ton, I still can't quite figure out where I would have listed this other than at the end because all of the arrest questions from rev 2016 are "past 7 years" but, some way, somehow I will list this in the future because this was 26 years prior when i was 15.
When I was 15 I was at a bus stop by the school in my city when a friend drove by and stopped - a bunch of us got in. I was sitting shotgun and saw the vehicle we had just entered had no ignition and realized it was stolen and we were all going to get arrested, which we did. No charges, none of us stole a car, including the driver - she was riding in a second hand hot car - we were just in the thing. It was teenage stupidity all the way down. I never thought of it again other than as a hilarious anecdote because we were arrested and released to our parents and that was the end of it til that interview! LOL!
The investigator told me in no uncertain terms that this was why i needed an interview. They said they would have never had to do it otherwise. But, I'm still not sure where I would have listed it or what would have made me think of it. They showed me the FBI report that just said it was an arrest assumed felony. There's an EVER question about being charged with a felony but I was not charged. That was no issue after I explained it and I assume the FBI finally followed up with the rest of their report.
Otherwise we just talked about the stint with MJ use, long over, my IRS issues, and I brought up a bench warrant that I had in another state but explained there was really nowhere on the form to list it and that it was for an unpaid ticket from the year 2000 (misdemeanor) with no statute of limitations. I had only found out about it right before the pandemic, it became a low priority real fast. Same with the IRS stuff. I had stopped filing for a bunch of years just because I couldn't afford the 1099 I had been on one year. When you don't file once it's easy to keep not filing! But, in 2021, before the layoffs, I had hired an accountant to help me get it all straightened out. I just needed to file the missed year but I wasn't sure if that was the right move or not. I owed but I was broke and dealing with layoffs plus the IRS hadn't said anything - it's only human to hope they never do! LOL. I never did find any real sources to corroborate a time limit on failing to file, though, so I didn't really want to push that envelope.
When I got the LOI it was only for the 2 tax years I hadn't filed and the bench warrant. Just the words "bench warrant" told me I should get a lawyer and I did. Getting those tax returns processed and getting the warrant lifted took 7 months. Each time a deadline came up from DCSA I submitted everything I had - screenshots, correspondence w/ the attorney working on my bench warrant and the state the case was in - and each time they extended me further.
I ended up needing 2 lawyers - I initially hired the user mentioned above and they found someone who was bar'd in the state I needed. The bench warrant was for an unpaid parking ticket (that I could swear on a stack of bibles was paid at the time, but I can't prove that, so). It took several months to get proof. Same with the IRS stuff. I sent a large payment on the 2nd of January and it took til April to fully reflect on my account. It was excruciating. If you owe taxes and it's a one off, do yourself a favor and call the people who can waive the penalties. I was able to make reasonable payment arrangements online and THEN get 1/3 of my bill cut.
Mainly the lawyer made sure my "final" packet - the one I turned in for the first due date with all of my statements - was clear and correct and would reflect the steps I was taking. Wording on the LOI response is crucial to success along with proof - they will help make sure you are addressing the issues as requested by the LOI without overthinking it. I'm not a terrible writer but that isn't exactly the point. Once I hit that juncture I really wanted to be as sure as I could be that I was doing the right things. They can also help you put your case in perspective - they have experience with weirder or worse than yours. Plus, if you found them on reddit you can respond to them in gifs and memes and know they'll get it. All told for 7 months of counsel, an entire additional lawyer, and including all fees from that process, this cost $2500 and my retainer remainder was refunded as soon as we closed. No hearings or court time necessary, everything was remote and asynchronous.
One of the best parts of this outcome is how great it feels to know I'm truly "squeaky clean" again. It doesn't take too long, depending, I guess. If you look at my account you'll see one of the last weed plants I grew in 2015. Cultivation is one of those "in the past 7 years" questions and I was in year 8 which I may always get a silly kick out of. I did let the investigator know as it was relevant to some other info - but, I'm a horticulturalist at heart, which is also fully reflected in my hobbies. I have no desire or need to grow weed again but it's a thing I have done and have experience with which is nothing to be ashamed of.
Be honest - with yourself AND investigators. Don't be too squeaky of a wheel when it's taking a long time - sometimes that's a really happy accident. Get another job while you wait or keep your current one. File those late taxes now, not later. Old warrants for misdemeanors are cheaper than you think. Sometimes stuff really does come up that you had no reason to list but it isn't necessarily the end of the world.
Oh, and I've been naked on the internet and no one cared.