Notes:

• I am EXTREMELY busy. I try to check my messages at least once per day, but sometimes it could take up to 3-4 days. Please be patient if I don't get back to you immediately. Thank you!
  
• I buy only in Unrevealed Key Link Format or Plain Steam Keys. No gift links.
  
• For PayPal, I am in the US region and I only send via G&S. Please note there will be PayPal fees (including international/conversion and purchasing fees) to consider.
  
• All games that you sell to me should ideally be REGION-FREE. Please ensure the games are not region-locked/bound to a specific country.
  
• You must be willing to fill a spreadsheet with steam keys.
  

 
I pay with the following:
TF2 & PayPal
 

I BUY HB Games	with TF2	with PayPal	Currently Active Humble Bundle?
7 Days to Die	0.8 TF2	$1.56 PP	-
A Little To The Left	2.1 TF2	$3.98 PP	-
Alien: Isolation	1.5 TF2	$2.93 PP	-
Aliens: Fireteam Elite	1.4 TF2	$2.69 PP	-
Arma 3	4.2 TF2	$7.95 PP	-
Assetto Corsa Ultimate Edition	1.9 TF2	$3.56 PP	-
Automobilista 2	1.6 TF2	$3.03 PP	-
BIOMUTANT	1.4 TF2	$2.75 PP	-
BROFORCE	0.8 TF2	$1.46 PP	-
Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition	0.8 TF2	$1.43 PP	-
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition	0.8 TF2	$1.44 PP	-
Barony	2.6 TF2	$4.9 PP	-
Barotrauma	3.8 TF2	$7.26 PP	-
Batman - The Telltale Series	1.3 TF2	$2.43 PP	-
Batman Arkham Collection	1.1 TF2	$2.08 PP	-
Batman: Arkham Origins	0.6 TF2	$1.21 PP	-
Batman™: Arkham Knight Premium Edition	1.0 TF2	$1.83 PP	-
Bayonetta	0.7 TF2	$1.34 PP	-
Beyond Two Souls	1.7 TF2	$3.31 PP	-
Blasphemous	1.4 TF2	$2.69 PP	-
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night	0.5 TF2	$0.91 PP	-
Borderlands 3 Super Deluxe Edition	4.9 TF2	$9.36 PP	-
Borderlands 3	3.1 TF2	$5.88 PP	-
Borderlands: The Handsome Collection	3.0 TF2	$5.73 PP	-
Builder Simulator	0.4 TF2	$0.78 PP	-
Celeste	0.8 TF2	$1.57 PP	-
Chernobylite Enhanced Edition	0.9 TF2	$1.78 PP	-
Cities: Skylines	2.2 TF2	$4.18 PP	-
Code Vein	1.2 TF2	$2.26 PP	-
Conan Exiles	2.5 TF2	$4.79 PP	-
Contractors	2.9 TF2	$5.56 PP	-
Control Ultimate Edition	2.6 TF2	$4.85 PP	-
Crusader Kings III	4.4 TF2	$8.38 PP	-
DARK SOULS™ II: Scholar of the First Sin	4.8 TF2	$9.15 PP	-
DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR'S CUT	4.4 TF2	$8.34 PP	-
DRAGON BALL XENOVERSE 2	2.3 TF2	$4.44 PP	-
Dark Souls III	7.2 TF2	$13.74 PP	-
Dark Souls III: Deluxe Edition	9.9 TF2	$18.86 PP	-
DayZ	10.6 TF2	$20.07 PP	-
Dead Island - Definitive Edition	0.8 TF2	$1.52 PP	-
Dead Island Definitive Collection	0.9 TF2	$1.72 PP	-
Dead Island Riptide Definitive Edition	0.7 TF2	$1.24 PP	-
Dead by Daylight	3.1 TF2	$5.97 PP	-
Deep Rock Galactic	3.0 TF2	$5.62 PP	-
Destiny 2: Beyond Light	1.0 TF2	$1.85 PP	-
Destiny 2: Bungie 30th Anniversary Pack	1.3 TF2	$2.47 PP	-
Destiny 2: Forsaken Pack	1.0 TF2	$1.9 PP	-
Destiny 2: Lightfall	4.0 TF2	$7.55 PP	-
Destiny 2: Shadowkeep	1.0 TF2	$1.93 PP	-
Destiny 2: The Witch Queen	2.0 TF2	$3.85 PP	-
Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed	0.7 TF2	$1.4 PP	-
Devil May Cry HD Collection	1.8 TF2	$3.45 PP	-
Devil May Cry® 4 Special Edition	1.4 TF2	$2.74 PP	-
DiRT Rally	0.8 TF2	$1.51 PP	-
Disco Elysium - The Final Cut	1.6 TF2	$2.95 PP	-
Doom Eternal	2.2 TF2	$4.17 PP	-
Dragon Ball FighterZ	2.0 TF2	$3.79 PP	-
Dragons Dogma - Dark Arisen	0.9 TF2	$1.77 PP	-
Dungeon Defenders	3.0 TF2	$5.78 PP	-
EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 5	4.3 TF2	$8.2 PP	-
ELEX II	0.8 TF2	$1.57 PP	-
Europa Universalis IV	3.2 TF2	$6.16 PP	-
Expeditions: Rome	0.5 TF2	$0.89 PP	-
FTL: Faster Than Light	0.7 TF2	$1.41 PP	-
Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game	0.4 TF2	$0.81 PP	-
Farming Simulator 19	2.2 TF2	$4.23 PP	-
For The King	0.5 TF2	$0.92 PP	-
Forager	0.8 TF2	$1.58 PP	-
Frostpunk	0.8 TF2	$1.51 PP	-
GRID 2	1.9 TF2	$3.66 PP	-
Gang Beasts	2.6 TF2	$4.97 PP	-
Gas Station Simulator	3.1 TF2	$5.8 PP	-
Generation Zero®	0.7 TF2	$1.36 PP	-
Ghostwire Tokyo	1.4 TF2	$2.69 PP	-
Goat Simulator	0.4 TF2	$0.8 PP	-
Golf It!	1.8 TF2	$3.42 PP	-
Gotham Knights	1.5 TF2	$2.83 PP	-
Graveyard Keeper	0.5 TF2	$0.9 PP	-
Grim Dawn	2.5 TF2	$4.66 PP	-
Hell Let Loose	7.1 TF2	$13.47 PP	-
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice	1.4 TF2	$2.69 PP	-
Hitman Absolution	0.4 TF2	$0.79 PP	-
Hollow Knight	3.4 TF2	$6.43 PP	-
Homeworld Remastered Collection	0.4 TF2	$0.78 PP	-
Hotline Miami	0.5 TF2	$0.87 PP	-
House Flipper	2.0 TF2	$3.89 PP	-
Injustice 2 Legendary Edition	0.6 TF2	$1.2 PP	-
Into the Radius VR	2.9 TF2	$5.5 PP	-
Jurassic World Evolution 2	2.7 TF2	$5.19 PP	-
Just Cause 3 XXL Edition	1.4 TF2	$2.63 PP	-
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes	1.7 TF2	$3.16 PP	-
Kerbal Space Program	1.1 TF2	$2.07 PP	-
Killing Floor 2	0.6 TF2	$1.14 PP	-
Kingdom: Two Crowns	1.5 TF2	$2.94 PP	-
LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 - Deluxe Edition	0.9 TF2	$1.77 PP	-
LEGO Star Wars : The Complete Saga	0.6 TF2	$1.17 PP	-
LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars	0.6 TF2	$1.22 PP	-
LEGO® City Undercover	0.7 TF2	$1.3 PP	-
LEGO® Jurassic World™	0.8 TF2	$1.57 PP	-
Lethal League Blaze	1.8 TF2	$3.44 PP	-
Life is Strange 2 Complete Season	1.4 TF2	$2.72 PP	-
Life is Strange: True Colors	1.5 TF2	$2.82 PP	-
Little Nightmares	1.1 TF2	$2.06 PP	-
Loop Hero	0.8 TF2	$1.44 PP	-
METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN	3.3 TF2	$6.31 PP	-
METAL GEAR SOLID V: The Definitive Experience	3.5 TF2	$6.61 PP	-
Mad Max	0.7 TF2	$1.3 PP	-
Mafia: Definitive Edition	2.4 TF2	$4.56 PP	-
Mass Effect™ Legendary Edition	4.7 TF2	$8.87 PP	-
MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries	2.6 TF2	$4.89 PP	-
Men of War: Assault Squad 2 Deluxe Edition	1.3 TF2	$2.4 PP	-
Metro 2033 Redux	0.5 TF2	$0.92 PP	-
Metro Exodus	1.3 TF2	$2.47 PP	-
Metro Redux Bundle	0.7 TF2	$1.25 PP	-
Middle-earth™: Shadow of War™ Definitive Edition	0.9 TF2	$1.65 PP	-
Midnight Ghost Hunt	0.8 TF2	$1.45 PP	-
Monster Hunter World: Iceborne	3.5 TF2 Refer To My Other Thread	$6.73 PP Refer To My Other Thread	Monster Hunter: World & Rise Saga Bundle
Monster Hunter: World	2.0 TF2 Refer To My Other Thread	$3.87 PP Refer To My Other Thread	Monster Hunter: World & Rise Saga Bundle
Mordhau	1.9 TF2	$3.6 PP	-
Mortal Kombat XL	0.6 TF2	$1.13 PP	-
Mortal Shell	0.5 TF2	$0.97 PP	-
NASCAR Heat 5 - Ultimate Edition	0.4 TF2	$0.75 PP	-
NBA 2K23	5.3 TF2	$10.16 PP	-
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4	2.2 TF2	$4.18 PP	-
Naruto to Boruto Shinobi Striker	0.9 TF2	$1.76 PP	-
Nioh 2 - The Complete Edition	2.7 TF2	$5.18 PP	-
Nobody Saves the World	0.5 TF2	$0.95 PP	-
Northgard	2.4 TF2	$4.5 PP	-
Orcs Must Die! 3	1.6 TF2	$3.01 PP	-
Outlast 2	0.9 TF2	$1.68 PP	-
Overcooked! 2	1.2 TF2	$2.3 PP	-
PC Building Simulator	0.6 TF2	$1.14 PP	-
PGA TOUR 2K21	0.9 TF2	$1.8 PP	-
Plague Inc: Evolved	1.9 TF2	$3.56 PP	-
Planet Coaster	2.4 TF2	$4.59 PP	-
Planet Zoo	2.5 TF2	$4.75 PP	-
PlateUp!	1.0 TF2	$1.85 PP	-
Prison Architect	2.7 TF2	$5.14 PP	-
Project Wingman	1.5 TF2	$2.94 PP	-
RESIDENT EVIL 3	2.0 TF2	$3.76 PP	-
Rain World	0.9 TF2	$1.78 PP	-
Remnant: From the Ashes - Complete Edition	2.5 TF2	$4.69 PP	-
Resident Evil 4 Ultimate HD Edition	1.0 TF2	$1.83 PP	-
Resident Evil 5 GOLD Edition	1.1 TF2	$2.04 PP	-
Resident Evil 6	1.3 TF2	$2.46 PP	-
Resident Evil® 5	1.7 TF2	$3.18 PP	-
Rising Storm 2: Vietnam	0.5 TF2	$0.9 PP	-
Road 96	0.5 TF2	$1.02 PP	-
SCUM	4.7 TF2	$8.86 PP	-
STAR WARS® THE FORCE UNLEASHED II	0.6 TF2	$1.11 PP	-
STAR WARS™ Knights of the Old Republic™ II - The Sith Lords™	0.5 TF2	$0.91 PP	-
Satisfactory	5.0 TF2	$9.55 PP	-
Scorn	0.8 TF2	$1.49 PP	-
Sid Meier's Civilization VI	1.2 TF2	$2.33 PP	-
Slay the Spire	2.5 TF2	$4.79 PP	-
Sleeping Dogs™ Definitive Edition	1.0 TF2	$1.95 PP	-
Slime Rancher	1.1 TF2	$2.11 PP	-
Sniper Elite 4	1.0 TF2	$1.96 PP	-
Space Engineers	2.6 TF2	$4.91 PP	-
Spec Ops: The Line	4.3 TF2	$8.21 PP	-
SpeedRunners	0.4 TF2	$0.82 PP	-
Spintires: MudRunner	1.0 TF2	$1.85 PP	-
Squad	6.7 TF2	$12.77 PP	-
Star Wars Republic Commando™	0.4 TF2	$0.82 PP	-
Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy	0.4 TF2	$0.71 PP	-
Star Wars® Empire at War™: Gold Pack	0.6 TF2	$1.09 PP	-
State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition	4.9 TF2	$9.37 PP	-
Stellaris	3.3 TF2	$6.25 PP	-
Stellaris: Federations	2.7 TF2	$5.11 PP	-
Streets of Rogue	0.5 TF2	$0.91 PP	-
Subnautica	5.3 TF2	$10.08 PP	-
Sunset Overdrive	0.8 TF2	$1.52 PP	-
TEKKEN 7	1.9 TF2	$3.56 PP	-
The Ascent	0.6 TF2	$1.18 PP	-
The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes	1.3 TF2	$2.42 PP	-
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan	2.2 TF2	$4.21 PP	-
The Escapists 2	1.0 TF2 Refer To My Other Thread	$1.89 PP Refer To My Other Thread	Team17: From Gold Greens to Battle Scenes Bundle
The Jackbox Party Pack 3	2.3 TF2	$4.45 PP	-
The Jackbox Party Pack 5	2.3 TF2	$4.33 PP	-
The Jackbox Party Pack 7	3.6 TF2	$6.81 PP	-
The LEGO® Movie Videogame	0.4 TF2	$0.73 PP	-
The Mortuary Assistant	3.9 TF2	$7.41 PP	-
The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition	2.7 TF2	$5.1 PP	-
The Quarry Deluxe Edition	2.7 TF2	$5.21 PP	-
The Universim	3.0 TF2	$5.78 PP	-
The Walking Dead: A New Frontier	0.7 TF2	$1.42 PP	-
The Walking Dead: Season Two	0.4 TF2	$0.79 PP	-
The Walking Dead: The Final Season	1.2 TF2	$2.25 PP	-
The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series	3.4 TF2	$6.41 PP	-
The Witness	0.8 TF2	$1.58 PP	-
The Wolf Among Us	1.3 TF2	$2.53 PP	-
Total War SHOGUN 2 Collection	1.8 TF2	$3.48 PP	-
Total War: Attila	1.6 TF2	$3.12 PP	-
Total War: Napoleon - Definitive Edition	1.6 TF2	$3.05 PP	-
Total War: ROME II - Emperor Edition	2.5 TF2	$4.68 PP	-
Total War™: WARHAMMER®	3.1 TF2	$5.96 PP	-
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator	1.7 TF2	$3.23 PP	-
Trailmakers	0.7 TF2	$1.37 PP	-
Tropico 6	1.6 TF2	$3.03 PP	-
Two Point Campus	1.0 TF2	$1.83 PP	-
Ultimate Chicken Horse	1.6 TF2	$2.96 PP	-
Unpacking	0.9 TF2	$1.8 PP	-
Unrailed!	0.9 TF2	$1.74 PP	-
VTOL VR	4.6 TF2	$8.76 PP	-
Victoria 3	1.4 TF2	$2.72 PP	-
Viscera Cleanup Detail	1.4 TF2	$2.74 PP	-
WRATH: Aeon of Ruin	0.7 TF2	$1.33 PP	-
WWE 2K23	6.7 TF2	$12.75 PP	-
Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War III	2.2 TF2	$4.17 PP	-
Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters	1.9 TF2	$3.6 PP	-
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Master Collection	1.7 TF2	$3.28 PP	-
Warhammer: Vermintide 2	0.7 TF2	$1.41 PP	-
Wasteland 3	1.8 TF2	$3.46 PP	-
Witch It	1.4 TF2	$2.65 PP	-
Worms Armageddon	0.4 TF2	$0.84 PP	-
Yakuza 0	3.1 TF2	$5.82 PP	-
Yakuza 4 Remastered	0.5 TF2	$0.86 PP	-
Zombie Army 4: Dead War	1.1 TF2	$2.02 PP	-
rFactor 2	0.6 TF2	$1.11 PP	-

 
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The Empire's early expansion was largely tranquil, a surprising fact given the impressive size of the fleets being deployed. Despite the initial apprehensions of most systems at the sight of such formidable forces, peaceful engagements and diplomacy prevailed, leading to feast-hosted meetings and eventual treaty signings. However, there were several instances where systems viewed the Empire's arrival as an incursion and retaliated.
Regnum Medusa
In the fourth year of expansion, Regnum Medusa mounted a formidable defence, instigating a siege that extended for nearly five months. The Imperial forces suffered casualties in the tens of thousands. Although relatively small compared to the total strength of Aurelian's forces, the losses weighed heavily on the Emperor. The planet Koforne Beta was particularly challenging due to both local resistance and hostile sentinel presence. Commanded by the ninth Hetaera to join Aurelian, the Vy'keen Archidamos, the siege finally resulted in the planet's capitulation after its leaders and staunchest supporters were eliminated.
Regnum Fenrir
In the subsequent three months post-Regnum Medusa, more systems, albeit warily, accepted the Empire and pledged their alliance. Regnum Artemis was one such system that, following a tense standoff, agreed to a truce and eventually embraced Aurelian's terms, fostering a durable friendship with the Empire. However, this peace streak was short-lived. Upon the Empire's arrival in the Elumsl system, an abrupt engagement occurred before diplomacy could take place. The local fleet initiated an aggressive attack, leading to a brief but intense space battle. Thanks to the intensive training of Aurelian's pilots, their losses were minimal, whereas the enemy fleet was decimated. Even the local space station required reconstruction post-conflict. Following the battle, Aurelian ordered a complete overhaul and renaming of the Elumsl system, ensuring its full compliance.
Regnum Carthago
The assault on Regnum Carthago marked the most devastating battle of Aurelian's celestial campaigns, inflicting substantial casualties on both Aurelian's forces and his adversaries. The campaign stretched over approximately eight months, with Aurelian personally directing the operation, whilst his Hetaeroi took charge of ancillary fleets, ensuring the continuous expansion into adjacent systems.
Upon entering the system, they were confronted by the anticipatory local fleet of Regnum Carthago, their weapons trained and ready as Aurelian's fleet exited hyperspace. Despite suffering initial losses, Aurelian's fleet retaliated with a barrage of firepower that wreaked havoc on the enemy fleet, notably from his flagship, the Invictus Imperator. The system was inundated with swarming fighters and an unprecedented magnitude of firepower. The aftermath was a graveyard of starship debris, twisted metal, and the lifeless bodies of unfortunate souls suspended in the void of space, frozen in the writhing positions they had died in. Aurelian's fleet, led by the Invictus Imperator, was a relentless force. Accompanying him to the right was Sonnha Ventrix, a humanoid female, his most senior Hetaera and the first to ally with him. With her ship, the Invincible Wrath, she efficiently dealt with the remnants of the enemy in the wake of Aurelian's onslaught. What remained post-battle was a scene of utter destruction, with wrecked starships and freighters scattered across the void, their shattered frames catching occasional glimmers of light.
With the enemy's naval strength effectively decimated, the Imperial forces proceeded to lay siege to the planets. Sequentially, the planets fell to the relentless advance of Aurelian's tireless armies. First was Eimoscut Shog, then Uadania, Hidadovl, and Maxin T14. The sheer brutality of the conflict was nearly beyond comprehension, a stark reminder of the grim reality of war. Sonnha led a diversionary fleet to impose a blockade on the planet Fold XIX, as Aurelian led the primary force to conquer Irskolel VI. With Irskolel secured within weeks, Aurelian joined Sonnha over Fold XIX. As they prepared for a full-scale invasion, the planet unexpectedly capitulated, pledging eternal loyalty to the Empire. In honour of this surrender, a grand celebration and feast were held, heralding a seemingly strong alliance with the Empire.
This marked the culmination of the Empire's initial phase of expansion.

Let me share my 3000h of modded wisdom with you, my fellow vanilla comrades. My attempt here is to provide you with as many as possible improvements to the base game while keeping the style, balance, and content as vanilla as possible. As they say, when it works the best is when you don't realize it is there. I guarantee you that after playing for a while with these, you will no longer be able to tell what's from the base game and what's not.
You don't know how to mod? Maybe this very basic guide will help. Please, note that many mods come with options to tune up your experience. It is recommended you give them a look.
You can find the steam collection here. Be aware that some of these mods require the DLCs. You don't have the DLCs? Just don't use the mod.
Dependencies:

• Harmony + Huglibs. Required by so many mods, you may as well be done with it and always have them.
• Vanilla Expanded Framework. While not as radically necessary as the previous ones, it's still a dependency fairly common. And this one actually does cool things on its own, like loading new modded factions without having to start a new game.
• XML Extensions. You won't be able to access the options of some mods without this.

Performance

• Dub performance analyzer. Enable the optimizations and override options, you can ignore everything else. If you want to disable alerts, use rocketman.
• Rocketman. By default, it should be good enough. This mod also allows to disable alerts you may don't care about, like, dunno, tattered apparel or unhappy nudity. It is recommended to run adaptive move occasionally (in stat cache settings).
• Performance Optimizer. More hacker magic. If you don't like the UI changes, you can disable them in the options. This mod does more performance stuff aside from that, so use it anyway!
• Performance Fish. You will have to install this mod manually, since it's not available in the workshop. You will also need to install its dependencies, Fishery and Prepatcher. Please, be aware that at the present there's an issue in which linking storages crashes the game. However, this can be prevented by disabling "TryFindBestBetterStoreCellFor" in the options.

Minor changes

• Optimization Meats. Unless you really want dozens of different meat types for some weird role-play reason, this mod will reduce the bloat on your kitchens.
• Better Animal Tab
• Better Info Card
• Conduit Deconstruct. A button to exclusively dismantle power conduits.
• Disable Automatically Select Travel Supplies
• Improved Need Indicator
• Map Preview. You can reroll as well!
• Prepare Landing. You can search world tiles matching your conditions. Goes great with Map Preview.
• Medical Tab. An easy way to overview your colony health.
• More Harvest Designators! e.g. harvest only fully growth plants.
• ModDiff. Great improvement of the mod mismatch screen.
• Pharmacist Temporary Update. Instead of always using the best medicine, now your pawns can use the appropriate medicine for the situation. No longer will they spent glitterworld meds on scratches!
• Smart Turret Covering. Fixes an issue with turret covers.
• PawnTargetFix. So that the autotarget prioritizes the closest enemy.
• Poisoned Food Stack Fix (Fix). Fixes an issue with meal stacks.
• Priority Treatment Ressurected. Doctors will finally prioritize keeping your pawns alive over taking a nap. Disable the option that prevents injured pawns from performing surgery, it has issues.
• QualityBuilder. You can set up a target level for furniture, and your pawns will reconstruct it until it's achieved. If I remember correctly, it's enabled by default for all new furniture? You can turn that off in options.
• RPG Style Inventory Revamped. Much better looking inventory.
• Replace Stuff. Allows to directly replace buildings, without having to deconstruct first.
• Research Tree. A better research tree.
• RimHUD. The best mod of the whole list, it will save you A TON of clicks.
• RimSaves. Overhaul of the save menu.
• Show Known Techprints on the trade screen.
• Show mechanoid weapons on the info screen.
• Smarter Construction. No more babysitting pawns when building walls.
• Stack gap. By default, pawns constantly refill storages. With this mod, you can configure it so that storages are refiled only when they're empty.
• Sun Lamp Honesty. Fixes an issue with sun lamps
• Just Put It Over There. Traders will deliver the merchandise, instead of dropping it on the ground.
• Trade Ships Drop Spot. Mark the spot in which orbital traders will deliver the merchandise, instead on whenever they feel like it. Doesn't work inside animal pens.
• Trading Options. Configure how frequent you want the traders to be.
• WVC. More work modes for the mechanitor.
• Save Settings. Allows you to save and load storage, production, and clothes settings. Works cross-save!
• No Max Bills. Removes the bill cap on workbenches.
• Better ground-penetrating scanner
• Colored deep resources
• Common Sense. Feel free to configure however you like it. I prefer it like this.
• Dubs Mint Menus. Improvements to a bunch of menus.
• Better Pawn Control. Improved management policies.
• Animals Logic. A lot of useful animal-related improvements. Disable the meat option if you're using Optimization Meats.
• Non uno Pinata. Pawns don't drop items when downed. Configurable.
• Bulk Smelting will save you precious time.
• Stonecutting Extended. The same as the previous mod, but for stones.
• Electric Stonecutting Table. To speed up the stonecutting even more.
• Faster Smoothing, a must for all mountain/underground out there.
• Do Your F****** Research. You can order pawns to research.
• Go the Fork to Sleep. You can order pawns to sleep.
• Meal Radius. Configure how far pawns will search for a table to eat.
• Home radius. Configure the size of the automatic home area.
• Smarter Visitors. Visitors will leave if things get dangerous.
• Custom Guilt Duration. Executions in vanilla are a pain because the guilty status goes away too fast. Now you can configure it.
• Dress Patients. Allows dressing of downed pawns.
• Way Better Romance
• Hunters Use Melee
• Injured Carry. Allows to rescue not downed pawns, no longer you have to wait for the bleeding to down them.
• Not My Fault. The player is no longer responsible for unrelated deaths on the map.
• Deep Storage + Simple Storage. Improves stockpile management.
• Pick Up And Haul. Improved hauling.
• While You're Up. Complement for the previous mod. Keep in mind that these two mods will trivialize part of the challenge by freeing a lot of time from your colonists. Just, dunno, turn up the difficulty a notch or something.
• Trading Spot. Marks where you want traders to stop on your map. It's a must if you use a desired path mod (I don't know if they have been updated to 1.5 yet).
• Vanilla Base Generation Expanded. Improved NPC base generation.
• Cut plants before building
• Psychic Harmonizer Lag Fix
• Fellow Ideology players, you're welcome.
  • Style Change Anytime
  • Persistent Precepts

Major changes

• Dubs Bad Hygiene. Plumbing!
• Vanilla Temperature Expanded. Lot of useful temperature-related buildings, as well as proxy heat, a very cool mechanic. Some buildings are redundant with the previous mod, just don't research the ones that you don't want.
• Death Rattle + Biosculpter Patch + Life Support. Changes the behavior of mortal wounds so they're not instakills.
• Dynamic Flooding. Inundations!
• Some Things Float. I recommend disabling the chance of pawns loosing their footing.
• Layered Wall Destruction. Walls aren't just destroyed, they become debris. Note that there's an issue in which the debris will spawn home areas.
• Yayo's Combat. Combat overhaul. You can disable the ammunition system if it's not your thing.
• Character Editor. Allows you to edit and save/load pawns.
• RunAndGun. Allows to use guns while moving, with penalties to accuracy. Don't enable the dual wield or search and destroy modules, they won't work.
• EPOE Forked. Fills in the gaps of surgery content in the base game. I recommend disabling the additional workstations and enabling direct crafting only. Less micromanagement, more fun.

Balance

• Beautiful Jade
• Almostthere1.5. Caravans no longer go to sleep two hours away from their destination.
• Stepping Stones. A more reasonable research path.
• Dubs Break Mod makes it so that severe mental breaks require severe negative thoughts.
• Fists Aren't Made of Steel. Reduces the unarmed melee damage, making prison breaks and tantrums much less frustrating.
• No Burn Metal. Sets the flammability of metal buildings, and others, to zero.
• Prisoners Fear Turrets
• Realistic Rooms Rewritten. Allows to tweak how pawns perceive room sizes.
• Ugh You Got Me. Social fights stop when pawns are sufficiently hurt or in pain. Doesn't affect masochists or psychopaths.
• Better Pyromania. Way less frustrating.
• Mortar Accuracy. Improves mortar mechanics.
• Graze up. Grazing rebalanced.
• Better Camp Loot
• Snap Out! Wardens can try to calm down pawns on mental breaks. "Try" is the keyword here.
• Peer Pressure. Opinions matter when converting someone.
• Better Gene Inheritance
• Vanilla Genes Rebalanced
• Gene Trader. Getting xenogenes it's hard, this should easy the burden a bit.

Content

• Sparkling Worlds. A bit of everything.
• Vanilla Traits Expanded. More traits.
• Vanilla Backstories Expanded. More backstories.
• Vanilla Chemfuel Expanded. Rimefeller but with less bloat.
• Vegetable Garden. More farmable plants.
• Vanilla Persona Weapons Expanded + More Persona Traits. More persona weapon variety.
• More Ideological Words + More Religious Origins. More ideology variety
• Events
  • Factional War
  • Raid Extension
  • Go Explore!
  • Vanilla Events Expanded
• Buildings
  • Blooming hedges
  • Panels & Frames
  • Simply More Bridges
  • Thrones plus
  • Tribal Crib
  • Utility Columns
  • Medieval deathrest coffin
  • Metallic Batteries. You can ignore the error, it'll work anyway.
  • Reinforced Walls
  • ReSplice: Core
• Gear
  • Crowns and Regalia
  • Fallout New Vegas - Elite Riot Gear
  • Maid Outfits :3
  • Wheelchairs

Atmospheric changes

• Interaction Bubbles + SpeakUp. Better social interactions.
• Enemy Self Preservation. Enemies severely hurt may try to flee.
• No One Left Behind. Fleeing enemies try to rescue their downed allies.
• Memorable Auroras. They now have a meaningful -if still small- impact.
• Sand Castles. The snowmen of the beaches. Or the deserts.
• Sandstorms
• Graying Hair. So that hair goes gray gradually with age.
• Childrens Drawings
• ReGrowth. Overhaul of biomes and much more!
• My Little Planet. If you're tired of supercontinents, but still want a smaller board, set planet coverage to 100%, and use the new planet size slider instead.
• Geological Landforms. New map shapes.
• Biome Transitions. More organic border biomes.
• Death Acidifiest. Vanilla death acidifier is lame, this is much cooler.
• Graphics
  • Yayo's Animation
  • Trait and Backstory Icons
  • Vanilla Ideology Expanded - Icons and Symbols
  • Vanilla Ideology Expanded - Relics and Artifacts
  • Vanilla Races Expanded - Custom Icons
  • Bionic icons
  • Spectacular Skullspike. They're rotable now!
  • Muzzle Flash
  • More Mini-Horns
  • Better Explosions
  • Better Vanilla Masking
  • Graphic Chair Overhaul 2
  • Not Overhead Meal
  • Graphics Settings+
  • Show Hair With Hats or Hide All Hats. This one takes a while to set up to your preferences, but oh it's so worth it.
  • Cuter Biotech Cat/Dog Ear Replacer. If you don't like the meat-colored animal ears from Biotech, this is for you!
  • Blood Animations
  • Gunplay. Trails can break some mods. If that happens, disable trails in options.
• Retextures
  • Parka Retexture
  • Retextured Apparel
  • Retextured Sculptures
  • Vanilla Beards Retextured
  • Vanilla Hair Retextured
  • Vanilla Pawns Retextured
  • Marbled Marble
  • Essentials: Stone (the stat changes won't work)
  • Vanilla Textures Expanded - Variations
  • Vanilla Textures Expanded
  • I Hate Daylilies
  • Biotech Mechanoid Retexture
  • Tastier Vanilla Clothes
  • Van's Steel
  • Glowing Healroot
  • More Vanilla Textures
• Audio
  • Ambient Rim
  • Realistic Human Sounds. Not very vanilla, but certainly very funny.
  • Actually Vanilla Music Expansion
  • P-Music
• Hairs
  • Erin's Hairstyles
  • Hard Times
  • Rimsenal Hair + Retextured
  • Roo's Hairstyles
  • Roo's Royalty Hairstyles
  • The Vanity Project
  • Won hair_men + Retextured
  • Won hair_women + Retextured

Bonus: comics! And the occasional animation. I noticed newbies aren't aware of these, so I linked the profiles of all the artists I could remember. Sorry if I missed someone. u/daleksdeservevictory, u/AzulCrescent, u/AetherealVanguard, u/ATTF , u/Aelanna , srgrafo, u/Fonzawa, u/Ivancmedia, u/zyll3, u/meto30, u/AeolysScribbles, u/cavalier753, u/GABESTFY, u/VectorData, u/arxian, u/Nguyenanh2132, u/sorrowful_dance, u/meto30, u/-desdinova-, u/truffli

I don't have the skills to weld 4 pieces of metal together to create a metal frame for a gate. Has anyone tried using angle iron to accomplish the same thing?
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-1-1-4-in-x-96-in-Zinc-Plated-Slotted-Angle-800127/204325589

[EU] My book series Trackers; several years before the books take place
You do not need to be familiar with the Trackers universe to enjoy this short story. While it is set within the same universe, it stands alone as its own narrative.
***
Katherine walked down the hallway of the seventh floor in the building housing Sacramento’s FBI branch, following the directions she’d been given by the secretary downstairs. Finding the office she was looking for, she knocked on the door, though it was propped open, and walked over to the man sitting at the desk.
“Hi, Katherine Colebrook,” she introduced herself, holding out her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“SAC Ted Hemmingway,” the FBI agent replied, standing up and shaking her hand firmly. He looked more like an FBI agent than most agents Katherine knew, which was saying something. He had a tall, solid frame, but thinning blonde hair covered his head, on its way to being a comb-over, hinting at his actual age. “How was your flight?”
“Uneventful. The perfect kind,” she replied.
“Good. So, I know you come highly recommended as someone who gets cases moving, but to be frank, I’ve never worked with a psychic. Don’t have much faith in them. I prefer old-fashioned detective work.”
“I get paid either way,” Katherine responded without skipping a beat.
Katherine had dealt with many like him before. It annoyed her, but she didn’t spend too much time dwelling on it. She assumed it had something to do with the fact that they’d been able to explain lycanthropy and vampirism and fae with recent scientific studies, but psychics were still being researched and therefore still a debated topic. Plus, they weren’t very plentiful in law enforcement, so it was rare to have the opportunity to work with one.
Hemmingway blinked at her curt response once as she took a seat before he nodded. “All right. Well this is the case file,” he said, handing a file folder over to her and sitting down behind his desk. “It was recommended by a colleague of mine that we call you in when the tally hit three victims. But as of last night, it’s four. And the two trackers that went after it were killed. It was one murder per night, so we’re thinking a newly turned wolf. The bodies are found mutilated, and the clothes were torn off.” Katherine looked over the paperwork as the agent continued to speak. “Any suspects we had were tested with silver and all have been cleared. This isn’t just a series of attacks, though; this is a serial killer.”
“You’re thinking a personal vendetta against these men, from the humiliating display of the bodies?” Katherine asked, glancing up to the agent briefly.
“Yeah. There doesn’t seem to be a connection between the victims though, so the theory is the killer’s targeting men that fit a profile.”
“What profile would that be?” Katherine asked, flipping through the file.
“White, middle-aged, wealthy.”
Katherine cocked an eyebrow at him. “Wealthy?” she echoed.
“It’s all in the bios,” he replied. “One was a lawyer, one was an accountant, two were well-off businessmen.”
Katherine nodded slowly. “All right. Who’s the lead on the case?”
Hemmingway brought his eyebrows together. “That’d be me.”
“So where’s the rest of the information?” Katherine asked.
“The rest?”
“Research. I’m sure you’ve had agents pouring over the victims’ lives to find a link between them,” she said.
Hemmingway pursed his lips for a moment before he nodded. “I’ve got a few guys still digging. They’re working out of an office two floors up.”
“I’d like to see what they’ve come up with so far,” Katherine told him.
The FBI agent sighed, standing up. “I thought you were supposed to be psychic,” he muttered, half to himself walking around his desk.
“Being psychic tells me things about the people I’m around,” she responded, slightly miffed at the comment. She followed him out of the room, the folder tucked under her arm. “Tells me you’ve been cheating on your wife for the past year.” Hemmingway stumbled to a stop, darting his eyes back toward Katherine as she continued speaking as if he hadn’t locked a heavy glare on her. “Not much about this killer. At least not yet. I’m psychic; I’m not god. And I have no interest in your marital extracurriculars. Can you please take me to your agents?”
Hemmingway hesitated, probably considering a threat of reporting her for invasion of privacy, before brushing it off and continuing down the hall to the elevators. The doors opened immediately and he selected the fifth floor.
Once they arrived, he knocked on the door before opening it, drawing the gazes of several agents spread around the room. “This is Ms. Colebrook. She’s here to consult on the case,” Hemmingway spoke, shutting the door and walking over to one of the men sitting at the table covered in boxes of files and papers. “This is Agent Lester Marconi,” he told Katherine, prompting a small wave from the agent. “He’s in charge of the research we’ve been putting together on the victims. That’s Agent Kirk Vaughn,” he continued, pointing, “and that’s Agent Stacy Genovese.”
“I was hoping to get a better look at some of the crime scene photos,” Katherine spoke, looking over the papers on the table. She walked over to a corkboard on the wall where she saw photos of the victims with their information underneath, as well as a smattering of newspaper articles.
“Those are right here,” Marconi spoke up, picking up four folders and handing them over to Katherine.
The tracker opened the first folder on an empty area of a table, spreading out the grisly photographs, looking over them with a cool detachment. She pursed her lips, staring at one of them, before opening the second folder and leafing through it. She pulled up a chair and sat down, shaking her head slowly. “This isn’t a wolf,” she said quietly.
“What?” Marconi asked, his expression becoming wary but curious.
“Just look at this,” Katherine told him, pointing at a close-up photograph of one of the wounds. “It’s all shreds, sure, but…. This isn’t a werewolf.”
“How can you tell?” Hemmingway asked.
“Experience,” she answered. “It’s understandable your other trackers mistook it for a wolf attack, but I’ve seen plenty of werewolf attacks and I’ve seen plenty of vampire attacks, and this is a vampire. I’m sure you’ve got experts to show these photos to. They’ll confirm it.”
“Why the hell would a vampire do something like this?” Marconi asked. He walked over and took a seat next to Katherine, examining the photos. “There was an immense amount of blood at the scene. No indication that any was missing.”
“Because the characteristic of primary importance here is serial killer, not vampire,” Katherine told him. “The vampire was just the weapon. The serial killer was who murdered them. And presumably that’s what the killer was counting on. It seemed obvious that the killer was a werewolf from the damage, so you didn’t consider a vampire angle.”
“So our serial killer happened to be a vampire, is what you’re saying,” Hemmingway said skeptically.
Katherine hesitated thoughtfully. “Considering the anger and recklessness involved here, there’s a good chance that this vampire’s sire matches the profile of your victims.”
“They were turned against their will, and now they’re going after humans that remind them of the one that turned them,” Marconi stated.
“It’s a good theory.” Katherine stood up. “I’ll be happy to investigate this further, but I think you’d be better off with trackers that are local, that know the area. Now that they know they’re going after a vampire, they’ll be prepared, and they should be fine.”
“That sounds good. Sorry to drag you all the way out here for no reason,” Hemmingway said, making his way toward the door. “I could’ve just emailed you the photos, I suppose.”
“I get paid either way,” Katherine said with a shrug, walking out of the room behind him, glancing at her watch.
Marconi headed out into the hallway after her. “Hey.” Katherine turned around. “Could I get your card? I’d like to have a way to get in touch with you if I ever run into a case where I need help with wound identification again.”
“Sure,” she replied, taking out the small metal case from her pocket that housed her business cards, handing one over to him. “Call for a consult on any case, day or night.”
“I will, thanks so much. If I can ask, how is it that you’re so much more experienced with tracking?” Marconi asked. “I mean, you look pretty young, and most trackers go for their certification after five years of apprenticing, and three is the minimum. How long have you been doing this?”
Katherine gave him a morose smile. “Too long,” she muttered. At that, she turned and walked away, leaving Marconi to stare after her, taking out her cell phone to call her daughter and let her know the job had ended early.

Hey everyone,
I’ve been diving deep into sewing machine research lately and wanted to share some recommendations based on what I’ve found from Reddit threads and Amazon reviews. Here are some of the top sewing machines across different categories:

1. Brother CS6000 (over all best)
2. Singer Start MX23(Best For Beginners)
3. Singer Heavy Duty 4423 (Best Heavy Duty)
4. Janome Memory Craft 6650 (Best for Quilting)
5. Janome 3160QDC (Alternative)
6. Brother HC1850 (Best for Computerized)
7. Brother XM2701 (Best For Protable)
8. Brother SE600 (Best For Embroidary)
9. Brother SE1900 (Advance Embroidary)

Best Overall: Brother CS6000i

If you’re looking for a versatile and user-friendly machine, the Brother CS6000i is a fantastic option. It comes with 60 built-in stitches, 7 styles of one-step buttonholes, and an automatic needle threader. Plus, it has an LCD display and adjustable sewing speed. It’s perfect for a variety of sewing projects and includes a bunch of accessories, which makes it a great deal.

Best for Beginners: Singer Start MX231

For those just starting out, the Singer Start MX231 is a solid choice. It’s got 97 stitch applications and is super lightweight and portable. This machine is known for being easy to use and quiet, making it ideal for beginners who need something reliable without all the extra bells and whistles.

Best Heavy-Duty: Singer Heavy Duty 4423

If you’re working with thick fabrics, the Singer Heavy Duty 4423 is your go-to. It features 23 built-in stitches, a sturdy metal frame, and a powerful motor. This machine is a workhorse and can handle heavy-duty projects with ease. It’s fast and durable, though it can be a bit loud and has fewer stitch options.

Best for Quilting: Janome Memory Craft 6650

For the quilting enthusiasts, the Janome Memory Craft 6650 is a dream. It has 170 built-in stitches, an automatic thread cutter, and a large workspace. It’s reliable and perfect for complex quilting projects. It’s a bit on the pricey side and heavier, but the features make it worth it for serious quilters.

Best for Quilting (Alternative): Janome 3160QDC

Another great option for quilting is the Janome 3160QDC. It offers 60 built-in stitches, 6 one-step buttonholes, an automatic thread cutter, an extension table, and a drop feed for free-motion quilting. It’s lightweight and packed with features, but there might be a bit of a learning curve for beginners.

Best Computerized: Brother HC1850

The Brother HC1850 is a versatile computerized machine with 185 built-in stitches, 8 styles of one-step buttonholes, and monogramming capabilities. It has an LCD screen and adjustable sewing speed, making it great for both sewing and quilting. However, it might be a bit overwhelming for beginners and isn’t ideal for heavy fabrics.

Best Portable: Brother XM2701

If you need something portable, the Brother XM2701 is a great pick. It’s lightweight and has 27 built-in stitches, 6 included sewing feet, and an automatic needle threader. It’s perfect for basic projects and is easy to carry around, making it a reliable choice for those who need a portable machine.

Best for Embroidery: Brother SE600

For those into embroidery, the Brother SE600 is a fantastic choice. It comes with 80 built-in embroidery designs, 103 built-in stitches, and a 4” x 4” embroidery field. It also features a color touchscreen, making it easy to preview designs and adjust settings. It’s great for both sewing and embroidery, and it’s user-friendly and affordable for its features. The only downside is that the embroidery field is a bit small, so it’s not ideal for larger projects..

Best for Embroidery (Advanced): Brother SE1900

If you want to take your embroidery to the next level, the Brother SE1900 offers even more advanced features. It has 138 built-in embroidery designs, 240 built-in stitches, and a larger embroidery field. The LCD touchscreen is easy to use, but it’s more expensive and might be a bit much for beginners.

Ivaxa has been well known for his high BPM stream plays along with his obscene singletapping skills over the course of a few weeks at the time of writing. His most notable achievement is his S rank on Deceit [pishi’s Extra] +DT (Score) (Replay). However there is some unusual behavior that Ivaxa has that should be looked into. This thread will look into quite a few cases of these weird findings.
As of the current date, May 16th, 2024, we have collected enough information to submit our public review of Ivaxa’s activity. We are asking the osu! staff and other independent researchers to validate our information and proof-check every single aspect of it. If our findings would be proven to be incorrect and/or not substantial - that's completely fine. Our goal is not to just blindly accuse but to establish the truth.
This document contains currently collected information about Ivaxa, his scores, profiles, and potential connections to other “alt” accounts in the game. We, as an independent team, are trying to establish the legitimacy or lack thereof of said player.
As always, harassment of any of the people mentioned/involved in the report is inappropriate. Please be civil when partaking in the discussion.
Replays, and VODs can be found in a google drive at the end of the thread so you can investigate and see moments listed in the thread yourself.
But first, here's a few things to consider:

1. Ivaxa’s mouse is a HyperX Pulsefire Haste 2, he allegedly plays on 800 DPI with a 0.62x sens multiplier on osu!. The only reason as to why it’s alleged is because of his recent streams, his sensitivity seems higher than it actually is.
2. He plays with a Sayu O3C keypad that runs at 8000hz (Peripheral information can be found from Ivaxa’s Twitch channel.)
3. He is able to singletap 191 BPM streams consistently.
4. Ivaxa used to be a DT aim player, not much of a stream player until recently.
5. The player does have skill, however he may be using some sort of outside assistance software-wise like aim assist or relax hacks.
6. All replays in this thread were inspected using Circleguard.
7. Most of the information down below was conducted in the empirical (perceived) sense, so take all of it with a grain of salt.

Section one: Replays

There are a few moments within Ivaxa’s recent replays that felt unusual or very strange; mostly unusual edge hits, but also weird UR bar behavior.
The Deceit +DT
There are a few things to mention about this score. The first is an unusual UR bar behavior from 91076 ms (~1 minute 31 seconds) to 93123 ms (~1 minute 33 seconds). The UR bar looks like this in the end. This type of UR bar behavior is often found in 125 hz keyboards with a map that has a BPM that is a multiple of 125 (125 BPM, 250 BPM, 375 BPM, etc.). However, Ivaxa doesn’t use a 125hz keyboard or keypad, he uses one that is rated at 8000hz. This is rather unusual since this type of UR is only found in this section of the map only. Also, if he were to play on a 125hz keyboard/keypad, the type of UR that was shown above would be all over the map since the Deceit with DT is mostly 375 BPM.
The second would be his aim, particularly at around 1885 combo, his cursor shakes at an abnormal magnitude from the rest of the map. This shake can be caused by nerves, tapping strain of the left hand, or a mix of both. But, Ivaxa’s alleged sensitivity is so low that the shake that has been shown in the replay is either really hard to do or impossible.
Gotta go Fast +DTSO
This score has one thing that is quite suspicious. at 47582 ms (~48 seconds) into the map, an awkward edge hit is found where he over-aimed and seemingly snapped back to the circle. This kind of edge hit is something that a normal osu! player wouldn’t be able to hit entirely, especially at the speed at which the map is being played at. Another edge hit can be found in the same map at 28852 ms (~29 seconds), where the cursor doesn’t naturally curve at the end, instead snapping to the edge of the circle. Both cases may allude to the usage of some sort of aim assist.
Metal Crusher +DT
There are two things to note about this score, the first is some unusual cursor movement at the ending section of the map. Ivaxa’s cursor slightly follows the slider at 59128 ms (~59 seconds), and another right after at 60400 ms (~one minute). Movement like this paired with the speed at which the map is being played at just seems unusual/suspicious.
There are also five edge hits within the map, four out of the five edge hits are at the very edge of a circle. The probability of hitting these types of edge hits is rather low, especially when there are four of them in one map.
Edge Hit #1: https://i.imgur.com/g3VlDoz.png
Edge Hit #2: https://i.imgur.com/vpTKuw7.png
Edge Hit #3: https://i.imgur.com/oQiEwVR.png
Edge Hit #4: https://i.imgur.com/nJyVbiq.png
Edge Hit #5: https://i.imgur.com/MN9MfwN.png
Sendan Life +DTHD
There is something to be said about some of the 100’s that Ivaxa is hitting. More specifically some 100’s within a few of the maps that have been observed so far are very near the barrier of being a 300 hit regardless of whether the note is early or late (https://i.imgur.com/cxFSdjf.png, https://i.imgur.com/bHLurZn.png). The sayu is precise enough to actually hit these types of 100’s, however it feels like these have occurred too often, so much so that this play has half of the 100’s in the map has these “edge 100’s,” for a lack of a better term. There are also two 100’s (100 #1 and 100 #2) that have been hit at exactly the same lateness/timing.
100 #1: https://i.imgur.com/KR4BhWe.png
100 #2: https://i.imgur.com/pzg7zMn.png
100 #3: https://i.imgur.com/z5qIocV.png
100 #4: https://i.imgur.com/pgEBsKK.png
100 #5: https://i.imgur.com/rQ50Uhs.png
100 #6: https://i.imgur.com/oMkQ3O5.png

Section Two: Twitch Streams

The two pieces of information down below are more focused on his single tapping skills, along with some weird/suspicious moments during his stream.
Stream title: #18 #2PL we back boys PL/ENG
At 15:37, Ivaxa is seen to be double tapping 270 bpm streams even though he S ranked the Deceit with DT around three days after said stream (390 BPM). At 49:15 mins of the same stream: he is seen to singletap 191 BPM streams, probably because he was warm when playing at his point.
Stream title: #17 #2PL Yomi yori 3 mod pass happening right now wtf,
On March 31st, 2024, on the VOD where he S ranked The Deceit +DT, at the end of the VOD at 2:58:42 Ivaxa is seen singletapping a 390 BPM burst. After which he paused the game and blamed Steam notifications. Despite the bottom half of his monitor being visible on stream through the webcam, where no steam notifications or pop-ups are visible, he then opened Steam to "change notifications settings.'' After allegedly changing the settings, his cursor trajectory on the visible parts of the monitor on stream tells us that he moved the mouse from the top most left corner, while usually Steam settings are located in a pop-up window at the center of the screen. Afterwards His stream allegedly "crashed."
To see the moment, play the following .mp4 file: 20240331 #17 #2PL Yomi yori 3 mod pass happening right now wtf Part 3 and go to the near end.
Stream title: #9 #2PL if i want to i'll farm req closed
On April 7th, 2024 Ivaxa showed on the osu! Game discord server that he is able to singletap 191 BPM (better picture of the graph), however six days later after the message, on his stream on April 13th, 2024 Ivaxa showed that he was able to singletap PoNo’s Yomi Yori 220 BPM streams at the end. This type of BPM jump in such a short amount of time can only be reasoned with by hardware abuse via rapid trigger. Either that, or some sort of relax hack that assists the player in tapping.

Section Three: Multiaccounting

There are many pieces of information that suspect that Ivaxa is multiaccounting, however there is currently no concrete evidence on whether or not he is indeed multiaccounting. Please keep this in mind when reading this section of the thread.
The Mulitiaccount & Play Count Graphs
Pipecat is the suspected multiaccount. First of all, both Pipecat and Ivaxa are placed 1st and 2nd on the osu!mania leaderboard in Lower Silesian Voivodeship, Poland (This is done by using osu! subdivide nations). Both play count graphs also seem to compensate for each other as of 2024, April 4th (the graph for Ivaxa has been warped in order to have a better visualization).
Time-pp Scatter Chart & Best Performances
The same thing happens with their Best Performance Time-pp Scatter Chart from ameobea/osu!track (Pipecat's Mania Chart and Ivaxa's Mania Chart non warped). Both graphs seem to compensate for each other, especially at around the month of March, as of 2024, April 5th (again, Ivaxa's chart has been warped for better visualization of score submissions).
Speaking of pp, both accounts have similar maps in their best performances list (Ivaxa is on the left, Pipecat on the right). If you want to see more, just check their mania profiles.
This may ask the reason as to why Ivaxa hasn’t played any vsrg (Vertical Scrolling Rhythm Game), and yet his performance in mania is abnormal for his time played. As seen from the play count graph from above, Ivaxa would’ve most likely played mania first on the Pipecat account, and then proceeded to play mania again on the other.
Names/Naming Scheme & Last Seen
Their naming scheme can also be taken into account as, Ivaxa’s name was inspired by Vaxei, and Pipecat was inspired by Whitecat.
It is also worth noting that Ivaxa and Pipecat’s Last Seen times are near each other, being more or less one hour apart from each other.
https://i.imgur.com/uVucqXr.png
https://i.imgur.com/lYh4Gbb.png

Section Four: Misc, additional “facts,” and Speculations

This section is dedicated to the additional miscellaneous information and our speculation formed from the data we discovered during the process of the investigation. These entries are not verbosely written due to us not finding enough evidence/information to make them included in the previous sections.
For ease of understanding the entry's level of absurdity, we marked them with color tags. The marking process for each entry was completely subjective so even the most absurd ones could be a potential aid for independent investigators/osu! staff as an additional lead where we “hit the wall.”
Fact: Could be used as a potential lead
Fact + Assumption: Not substantial enough to be included in previous sections/Assumption
Pure Speculation: Completely speculative fact/information
Fact: BayOfEvil (Ivaxa’s old username), does have an osu!report on it, although the report isn’t very helpful. One of the thread's replies includes a Discord recording with Ivaxa playing as “proof” of him being legit. This should be investigated further (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVQDdw1SSLs).
Fact: Ivaxa’s Mania score on Ne uchi +DT was set 22 days after his no-mod score.
Fact: In Pipecat's osu profile a discord server can be found (https://discord.gg/jkMydV3PTB), upon searching "Ivaxa" the only two mentions of the name is from the user Pipecat (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/577365869949354025/1225631393820708914/image0.jpg?ex=6621d52f&is=660f602f&hm=e3589cb93e9ffb2b7c0ef7ffbdedcc3b09df919a7082d11468035ff4f4f6e65e&).
Fact: Guitar to Kodou to Aoi Hoshi: Edge hit at the very edge at 202358 ms (~3 minutes 22 seconds) (https://i.imgur.com/PAWsyh7.png) Similar to the edge hit on FUCK YOU.
Fact + Assumption: FUCK YOU: Very erratic cursor movement at 4485 ms (~4.5 seconds) (https://i.imgur.com/mkRw4Ki.png) combined with his sensitivity and the map’s speed, this is basically impossible. Also he's been under-aiming a lot in this map but that might just be me. There is also an edge hit at the very edge at 60301 ms (~1 min) (https://i.imgur.com/GFxZctS.png), which can be questioned.
Fact + Assumption: Gotta go Fast HDDTHR: The UR bar is acting the same way that was observed with the deceit score from above (Gotta go Fast: https://i.imgur.com/ywA8XAu.png, Deceit: https://imgur.com/cbUtzya). With both maps being 375 BPM with DT, Ivaxa may or may not have used the same method of cheating if he is.
Fact + Assumption: Stream title: #18 #2PL we back boys PL/ENG, at 15:37 mins, Ivaxa is seen to be double tapping 270 bpm streams even though he S ranked the Deceit with DT around three days after said stream (390 BPM).
Fact + Assumption: A Thread created by sampierat on twitter: https://vxtwitter.com/sampierat/status/1775216723743875457?s=20

• https://imgur.com/pC3DBMq

Pure Speculation: During a congregation, several people have noted/proposed that Ivaxa may or may not be using three keys in order to stream higher bpm’s, using a software that alternates the middle key (since he plays ring-index) between key 1 and key 2 to insure that nothing is suspicious with his tapping count.
Pure Speculation: We condone an anonymous survey inside the mania community, including some of the top players, regular 4k, 7k, and 8k players, and some tournament organizers. Most of the participants agree that Ivaxa’s progression and improvement curve is abnormal.
Pure Speculation: Stream title: #18 #2PL we back boys PL/ENG, within the first hour of the stream, Ivaxa is seen to have completely lost his aim (44:46 min), even though he nearly fc'd Brazil on Fiery's Extreme with HDHRDT ten days prior to the stream. Although this evidence may not be as substantial as the others because of retry spamming Brazil.
Pure Speculation: The earliest known screenshots of Ivaxa grinding The Deceit Pishi's Extra, was on 2023, December 22nd (https://twitter.com/Ivaxaosu/status/1738245663631024453, https://twitter.com/Ivaxaosu/status/1738268599129632811, He later achieved an S rank on 2024, March 31st. He would've grinded the map for the past 3 months, however his play count seems to not reflect the grind, only having 237 plays as of 2024, April 5th (https://i.imgur.com/dg4HdSl.png).
Pure Speculation: https://youtu.be/Isp233epRAA the hands, and tapping technique may be similar to Ivaxa.
Pure Speculation: Potential lead/connection between Ivaxa and Pipecat could be found via steam accounts.
Ivaxa’s has two steam accounts (Both Steam profiles were sent to aknzx at one point):

• Main account https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199027517248
• Alt (thanks for Ivaxa posting it on one of the discord servers) https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199081700184
  • Has a VAC ban on it
• Pipecat’s steam account:
  • “Main account” https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199389486073

Pure Speculation: Additional platforms related to Pipecat:

• Their youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/@pipe_cat (We tried to use it compare Ivaxa’s voice and Pipecat’s voices already, not enough information)
• Their GD (GeometryDash) profile: https://gdbrowser.comNotPipeCat

Pure Speculation: Pipecat’s Windows username https://imgur.com/a/DCgtC82 (from this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNTTpSl1hHo ) If it could be proven that Ivaxa’s real name is Krzys, it could be a potential lead (despite it being a very popular name in Poland).
Pure Speculation: Pipecat is recording videos on his Youtube channel using both a PC and a Laptop. The PC is running Windows 11, and the Laptop is running Windows 10. This Could be a potential lead.

Verdict

Ivaxa’s single tapping speed is very abnormal, especially considering that he was able to stream 220 BPM in just six days, starting from 191 BPM, all singletapped. His aim on some maps feels weird, and some edge hits are questionable in terms of legitimacy. The incident on his stream on March 31st of this year also felt suspicious and weirdly timed, as if he was covering something up. And Pipecat’s graphs line up in such a way that it seemingly compensated for Ivaxa’s play count, and pp-scatter chart. From the information that was gathered about Ivaxa, there is a likelihood that the player is cheating, via aim assist, partial relax, or a mix of both.
It is suggested/encouraged that you look into this yourself.

Files and Documents

For Ivaxa stream mp4’s, each “part” is in one hour segments (because untwitch). So part 1 would be the first hour of a stream, part 2 would be the second hour of a stream, etc. There are some parts where it didn’t download the full hour, so be aware of that.
We’ve also included one of the “VOD analyzer” test result files, which includes cursor positions from an analyzed stream segment (#11 #2PL 1.3k pp achieved). It was a completely custom-coded solution that analyzed the video frame by frame but it wasn’t used during the investigation, so we are unsure about the accuracy of the cursor detection.
Input data:
Approximate osu! playfield area on a 1920x1080 monitor:

-Top left of playfield area: (384, 126) -Bottom right of playfield area: (1536, 990) 

Ivaxa's Approximate playfield area on stream:

-Top left of playfield area: (329, 120) -Bottom right of playfield area: (1283, 835) 

Analyzed segment: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UOceGo6udbGH0p7jbZKvst4wqsIVWIWF/view?usp=drive_link
Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1LTDABXcFHSJnk5KNfHWdH1XPJwcdf4S1?usp=sharing
Streams Timeline

Date	Stream Title	VOD Links
March 20th 2024	we back boys	https://drive.google.com/drive5/folders/1xFtwoU82d_qAKPyp7qEm2v4JVd8m-PDF
March 31st 2024	Yomi Yori 3 mod pass	https://drive.google.com/drive5/folders/1PJQOhrao4CFsaeLg4wcwFPtBybdocAnB
March 31st 2024	1.3k pp achieved	https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UOceGo6udbGH0p7jbZKvst4wqsIVWIWF/view
April 1st 2024	play game and then deceit farming	https://drive.google.com/drive5/folders/1TsTmiNzDRIMpFn4lmUzwzS6n3AjyE3rY
April 9th 2024	Yomi Yori DT Farming Right now	N/A
April 13th 2024	singletap practice	N/A

Hi everyone,
since I moved to a new house I keep getting really frequently (up to several times a day) shocked by static electricity whenever I touch something metal. The shocks are painful, but there are no visible burn marks. I think they only happen after I get up from sitting on my new office chair with headphones on (headphones never caused this and walking around with them also doesn't cause any issues). The floor of the office is PVC I think, but I am not sure, and I wear shoes with rubber soles around the house (when sitting on the chair, my feet usually don't touch the ground). Weird thing is, when I get up from the chair whilst touching anything metal (i.e. metal parts of my computer, the headphones or the chair), I don't get electrocuted afterwards when I touch something else. My questions are: 1. How dangerous can a static shock be, especially if they are frequent? 2. Is there any way of preventing the shocks that ideally wouldn't require me not wearing headphones or changing the chair? 3. Why does touching something metal when getting up not cause the shock and does it mean the static electricity is 100 % gone from my body?
Thank you.

Bill Rogers locked the garage door, slid the hose into the driver’s side window, climbed into the back seat, laid down and shut his eyes. When he woke up, he was surrounded by clouds and a blue sky. A man, neither young nor old stood next to him. He wore a coat like an Afghan goat herder, Bill thought, maybe made of sheepskin, or cowhide—tough to say, as Bill was no expert in husbandry. The man was small where Bill was large. Bill was six-three and two hundred and fifty pounds. He had played tight-end in college and lorded his physical stature over small men all his life. He felt it gave him an advantage at contract negotiations. He always made sure to be sitting when the opposing lawyers walked in because his size was hidden. Then he would stand up from behind table—a great reveal, a physical imposition—in an effortless attempt to intimidate the other team. It was mostly an effective strategy. The man, nearly a foot shorter, and a petite lady’s-weight less was standing almost eye-level with Bill. He sheepishly looked at Bill and asked if he was happy now.

“I suppose so,” Bill answered, rather dazed and unaware of all that was happening. “Are you God?” asked Bill. The old man smiled knowingly and set his delicate hand on Bill’s shoulder. “What can I do to make you comfortable?” Bill attempted to stand up but the man’s hand held him in place without applying any extra force. “A scotch would be nice! Do they serve scotch in heaven?” he laughed. The man laughed and gave Bill a scotch.

“Let me tell you, God, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it! When do we go through the pearly gates?”

“I’m afraid you’ve seen too many Hollywood movies. That’s not how it works. Tell me, how was life on Earth?”

“Well, I guess you can tell by how I checked out it wasn’t great. But I am feeling better now. Sometimes you just need a good night’s sleep, I guess, right?”

“I guess so. You weren’t very happy down there. But that’s what I’m here for. You can fix it all now. Tell me, what went wrong in your life?”

“Wait, is this Purgatory then?”

He chuckled, “No. Don’t be silly. What went wrong down there?”

“I knew it—those nuns were all off. Well, for one, I worked too much. I spent 80, 90, 100 hours a week every week for years—hell, probably decades when you add it all up—in the office, chasing the ring, getting the promotion.” His thought broke and he looked at the man and said, “you know I cleared 950-k last year?” Sinking back into his thoughts, “but it wasn’t enough for her. She could give Cleopatra a run for her money. Man she could spend. I worked all the time, always on the road to a different client’s office, eating airport food, never exercising. Traded my health and youth for wealth, then she got to enjoy it. I ended up all alone in my big house, all by myself and my LonelyFans Platinum subscription. Look at me, I got so fat no pretty woman could stand to look at me. If I could do it again, I’d go back and just make 60k a year, keep my health, my good looks, and go to clubs every night and dance with beautiful women. I wasted so much.”

“Wow, thanks for being so honest, Bill. I’m glad you were honest, because now I can give you the chance to fix it. I am going to give you the opportunity to craft the life you always wanted, the life you dreamed of! This is your chance Bill, to do it right this time. You had a full life, you tried out things: some worked, some didn’t—that trip to Tokyo probably didn’t help your marriage, did it; but now that’s all behind, now you get to create the perfect one based on everything you learned. Now you get to play God to yourself. You will have the power to create any life you want: money, women, food, servants, power, glory, the revenge on everybody who did you wrong—anything.”

“Oh, Good Lord, heaven is even better than Mother Superior led on! I get to do that? Now?”

“Yes, I’m granting you this power. Total freedom to do what you want. You deserve it! You’ve earned it, Bill.”

“Ok, so what do I do? Just point and make something happen?”

“Sure,” he said with a chuckle, “everybody always wants to point at things like some Vegas magician. The entire creation was spoken into existence, but ever since Adam people want to point things into existence—whatever makes them happy, I guess. Anyway, you’ve got the power of the Lord, do it however you want!”

Bill pointed to a cloud in front of him and a new truck appeared before his eyes. “Holy moly, I can’t believe it’s real.” The sun reflecting off the chrome was just a big blur to Bill Rogers water-filled eyes. He had to squint to see that it had the turbodiesel engine he had imagined. “I’m not going to get carried away on the wealth. I learned my lesson there. It doesn’t buy happiness. I had eight digits in my savings account,” he looked to see if the man was listening, “and look at where that got me. No, just a simple life for me,” he pointed to a cloud and four-bed, three-bath house with in-law suite and three car garage next to a lush green lawn appeared. It fronted a cul-de-sac. “You can’t take it with you, right?” he laughed.

“Is that it, Bill? What else do you want?”

“Well, like I said, I want to be young and healthy.” His stomach disappeared into his abdominal muscles and the brown spots and wrinkles on his hands vanished into a smooth clear skin.

“And what are you going to do with your time? Go back to your old job?”

“Ohh, you got a good sense of humor, God!” The old man laughed along with Bill. “Like I said, I just want to live a normal life and go to the bars at night, talk to beautiful women. Dance with them, smile, laugh. Have fun, that’s all.”

“Your wish, is my command,” he said, and Bill asked if that is how it really worked, and the old man laughed: “no, but people really started to ask for it after Aladdin got big, so I started doing it.”

“You’re a real people-pleaser, aren’t you, God?”

The small man’s sheepish smile resurfaced and a faint pink tint rose up to his pale cheeks.

“That is it for now, enjoy your new life, Bill. I’ll be back to check on you after a while.”

“Thanks, God, you really are great.”

“Oh, wait, one more thing—I almost forgot. In your newly made, perfect, heavenly life— do you want your children here?”

Bill let out a huge laugh, “of course! How could I forget! Yes, of course, I want to see my children! Not every day—and don’t have the Queen of Sheba bring ‘em by either, if you know what I mean,” he nudged the old man with his elbow, almost knocking his small frame over, “but yes I always regretted not having more time with the kids.”

“Great, I’ll make that happen. I’ll be ba-a-a-a-a-ck,” he said as he turned around.

A door appeared out of nowhere and the old man glided over to it, with his sheepskin coat dragging behind him. The door opened and he walked through it. It began to close, but his coat got caught in the door, and he had to reach back and yank it through. As the coat flew up, Bill thought he saw the tip of a German Sheppard’s tail and wondered if the dog had been there all along, but soon didn’t care as he saw his new neighbor, a young blonde woman in yoga pants and high heels getting into her Mercedes coupe. He tried to get her attention, but she was focused on fixing her lipstick and hair in the mirror as she drove away.

Bill settled down into his new life, got comfortable in his small house and extended cab truck, and began going out to bars and clubs, just as he had imagined. Every night there was a bar to go to filled with beautiful women, and they all were happy to let him buy drinks and chat for a while. Sometimes he would invite one or two to dance and they’d agree, and then disappear with their friends. Other times he would meet a young woman in pub and talk to her; they’d laugh and joke and maybe she would give him her number and maybe not. But he never saw the same woman twice. If he called or texted a woman, she never responded. If he asked a woman if she’d like to go somewhere for coffee she always declined and said she had to get back home.

On the rare chance that a woman did sit down and talk with him, the conversation was always the same: polite introductions, niceties, some flirtatious exchanges. He tried to talk to the beautiful women about life, what they wanted, what mattered to them, but they all just said they liked to have fun to some degree or another.

After three weeks of going to the bars and trying to talk to women, Bill got tired of going out. He stayed at home for a week, then he tried to find his neighbor again. He saw her car in the drive and rang the doorbell, but nobody answered. He only ever saw her driving away.

After a couple slow weeks, he tried going out again, but it was the same routine: a few drinks, a few laughs, nothing to talk about and goodbye, never to be seen again. Bill sat in his truck in the garage and contemplated his after-life. He wiped a tear from his cheek and heard someone knocking on his front door. He let the old man in, and Bill sat down at the barstool.

“Can I take your coat?”

“No, I like to keep it on. I came by to see how you are doing?”

“This isn’t what I thought heaven would be like,” said Bill, hunched forward, hands between his legs, staring at the floor.”

“Heaven?” said the old man, looking up at Bill. “Where did you get that idea?”

“Who are you?”

The old man took off the sheepskin coat and Bill saw the gray and white fur all over his body. The gray tail dragged on the floor, and the old man’s face looked like the snout of a grey wolf.

“This is your own doing, Bill. You made the life you wanted. You’ve had two chances now. This one you are stuck with, forever. No escaping. No crying, no laying down in the back of your truck for eternal sleep. This is the eternal sleep.”

“This is hell.”

“Call it what you will.”

The wolf got down on all fours and walked to the door. “Can you let me out?”

Bill opened the door and the wolf ran outside, almost knocking over the two people walking up Bill’s sidewalk.

“What are you doing here,” he shouted at them.

“We came to see you!”

“No! Get away! Get out of here, go! Go!”

The woman was getting in her Mercedes and looked over to see what the ruckus was about, but then looked away before making eye contact.

“Dad, we missed you! So, we followed you here. The old man told us how to find you! He asked us what our perfect life would be, and we told him ‘we just want to be with our Dad.’”

***
Follow u/quillandtrowel for more at Medium & Twitter (links in bio!).

Bill Rogers locked the garage door, slid the hose into the driver’s side window, climbed into the back seat, laid down and shut his eyes. When he woke up, he was surrounded by clouds and a blue sky. A man, neither young nor old stood next to him. He wore a coat like an Afghan goat herder, Bill thought, maybe made of sheepskin, or cowhide—tough to say, as Bill was no expert in husbandry. The man was small where Bill was large. Bill was six-three and two hundred and fifty pounds. He had played tight-end in college and lorded his physical stature over small men all his life. He felt it gave him an advantage at contract negotiations. He always made sure to be sitting when the opposing lawyers walked in because his size was hidden. Then he would stand up from behind table—a great reveal, a physical imposition—in an effortless attempt to intimidate the other team. It was mostly an effective strategy. The man, nearly a foot shorter, and a petite lady’s-weight less was standing almost eye-level with Bill. He sheepishly looked at Bill and asked if he was happy now.
“I suppose so,” Bill answered, rather dazed and unaware of all that was happening. “Are you God?” asked Bill. The old man smiled knowingly and set his delicate hand on Bill’s shoulder. “What can I do to make you comfortable?” Bill attempted to stand up but the man’s hand held him in place without applying any extra force. “A scotch would be nice! Do they serve scotch in heaven?” he laughed. The man laughed and gave Bill a scotch.
“Let me tell you, God, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it! When do we go through the pearly gates?”
“I’m afraid you’ve seen too many Hollywood movies. That’s not how it works. Tell me, how was life on Earth?”
“Well, I guess you can tell by how I checked out it wasn’t great. But I am feeling better now. Sometimes you just need a good night’s sleep, I guess, right?”
“I guess so. You weren’t very happy down there. But that’s what I’m here for. You can fix it all now. Tell me, what went wrong in your life?”
“Wait, is this Purgatory then?”
He chuckled, “No. Don’t be silly. What went wrong down there?”
“I knew it—those nuns were all off. Well, for one, I worked too much. I spent 80, 90, 100 hours a week every week for years—hell, probably decades when you add it all up—in the office, chasing the ring, getting the promotion.” His thought broke and he looked at the man and said, “you know I cleared 950-k last year?” Sinking back into his thoughts, “but it wasn’t enough for her. She could give Cleopatra a run for her money. Man she could spend. I worked all the time, always on the road to a different client’s office, eating airport food, never exercising. Traded my health and youth for wealth, then she got to enjoy it. I ended up all alone in my big house, all by myself and my LonelyFans Platinum subscription. Look at me, I got so fat no pretty woman could stand to look at me. If I could do it again, I’d go back and just make 60k a year, keep my health, my good looks, and go to clubs every night and dance with beautiful women. I wasted so much.”
“Wow, thanks for being so honest, Bill. I’m glad you were honest, because now I can give you the chance to fix it. I am going to give you the opportunity to craft the life you always wanted, the life you dreamed of! This is your chance Bill, to do it right this time. You had a full life, you tried out things: some worked, some didn’t—that trip to Tokyo probably didn’t help your marriage, did it; but now that’s all behind, now you get to create the perfect one based on everything you learned. Now you get to play God to yourself. You will have the power to create any life you want: money, women, food, servants, power, glory, the revenge on everybody who did you wrong—anything.”
“Oh, Good Lord, heaven is even better than Mother Superior led on! I get to do that? Now?”
“Yes, I’m granting you this power. Total freedom to do what you want. You deserve it! You’ve earned it, Bill.”
“Ok, so what do I do? Just point and make something happen?”
“Sure,” he said with a chuckle, “everybody always wants to point at things like some Vegas magician. The entire creation was spoken into existence, but ever since Adam people want to point things into existence—whatever makes them happy, I guess. Anyway, you’ve got the power of the Lord, do it however you want!”
Bill pointed to a cloud in front of him and a new truck appeared before his eyes. “Holy moly, I can’t believe it’s real.” The sun reflecting off the chrome was just a big blur to Bill Rogers water-filled eyes. He had to squint to see that it had the turbodiesel engine he had imagined. “I’m not going to get carried away on the wealth. I learned my lesson there. It doesn’t buy happiness. I had eight digits in my savings account,” he looked to see if the man was listening, “and look at where that got me. No, just a simple life for me,” he pointed to a cloud and four-bed, three-bath house with in-law suite and three car garage next to a lush green lawn appeared. It fronted a cul-de-sac. “You can’t take it with you, right?” he laughed.
“Is that it, Bill? What else do you want?”
“Well, like I said, I want to be young and healthy.” His stomach disappeared into his abdominal muscles and the brown spots and wrinkles on his hands vanished into a smooth clear skin.
“And what are you going to do with your time? Go back to your old job?”
“Ohh, you got a good sense of humor, God!” The old man laughed along with Bill. “Like I said, I just want to live a normal life and go to the bars at night, talk to beautiful women. Dance with them, smile, laugh. Have fun, that’s all.”
“Your wish, is my command,” he said, and Bill asked if that is how it really worked, and the old man laughed: “no, but people really started to ask for it after Aladdin got big, so I started doing it.”
“You’re a real people-pleaser, aren’t you, God?”
The small man’s sheepish smile resurfaced and a faint pink tint rose up to his pale cheeks.
“That is it for now, enjoy your new life, Bill. I’ll be back to check on you after a while.”
“Thanks, God, you really are great.”
“Oh, wait, one more thing—I almost forgot. In your newly made, perfect, heavenly life— do you want your children here?”
Bill let out a huge laugh, “of course! How could I forget! Yes, of course, I want to see my children! Not every day—and don’t have the Queen of Sheba bring ‘em by either, if you know what I mean,” he nudged the old man with his elbow, almost knocking his small frame over, “but yes I always regretted not having more time with the kids.”
“Great, I’ll make that happen. I’ll be ba-a-a-a-a-ck,” he said as he turned around.
A door appeared out of nowhere and the old man glided over to it, with his sheepskin coat dragging behind him. The door opened and he walked through it. It began to close, but his coat got caught in the door, and he had to reach back and yank it through. As the coat flew up, Bill thought he saw the tip of a German Sheppard’s tail and wondered if the dog had been there all along, but soon didn’t care as he saw his new neighbor, a young blonde woman in yoga pants and high heels getting into her Mercedes coupe. He tried to get her attention, but she was focused on fixing her lipstick and hair in the mirror as she drove away.
Bill settled down into his new life, got comfortable in his small house and extended cab truck, and began going out to bars and clubs, just as he had imagined. Every night there was a bar to go to filled with beautiful women, and they all were happy to let him buy drinks and chat for a while. Sometimes he would invite one or two to dance and they’d agree, and then disappear with their friends. Other times he would meet a young woman in pub and talk to her; they’d laugh and joke and maybe she would give him her number and maybe not. But he never saw the same woman twice. If he called or texted a woman, she never responded. If he asked a woman if she’d like to go somewhere for coffee she always declined and said she had to get back home.
On the rare chance that a woman did sit down and talk with him, the conversation was always the same: polite introductions, niceties, some flirtatious exchanges. He tried to talk to the beautiful women about life, what they wanted, what mattered to them, but they all just said they liked to have fun to some degree or another.
After three weeks of going to the bars and trying to talk to women, Bill got tired of going out. He stayed at home for a week, then he tried to find his neighbor again. He saw her car in the drive and rang the doorbell, but nobody answered. He only ever saw her driving away.
After a couple slow weeks, he tried going out again, but it was the same routine: a few drinks, a few laughs, nothing to talk about and goodbye, never to be seen again. Bill sat in his truck in the garage and contemplated his after-life. He wiped a tear from his cheek and heard someone knocking on his front door. He let the old man in, and Bill sat down at the barstool.
“Can I take your coat?”
“No, I like to keep it on. I came by to see how you are doing?”
“This isn’t what I thought heaven would be like,” said Bill, hunched forward, hands between his legs, staring at the floor.”
“Heaven?” said the old man, looking up at Bill. “Where did you get that idea?”
“Who are you?”
The old man took off the sheepskin coat and Bill saw the gray and white fur all over his body. The gray tail dragged on the floor, and the old man’s face looked like the snout of a grey wolf.
“This is your own doing, Bill. You made the life you wanted. You’ve had two chances now. This one you are stuck with, forever. No escaping. No crying, no laying down in the back of your truck for eternal sleep. This is the eternal sleep.”
“This is hell.”
“Call it what you will.”
The wolf got down on all fours and walked to the door. “Can you let me out?”
Bill opened the door and the wolf ran outside, almost knocking over the two people walking up Bill’s sidewalk.
“What are you doing here,” he shouted at them.
“We came to see you!”
“No! Get away! Get out of here, go! Go!”
The neighbor was getting into her Mercedes and looked over to see what the yelling was about, but then looked away before she could make eye contact.
“Dad, we missed you! So, we followed you here. The old man told us how to find you! He asked us what our perfect life would be, and we told him ‘we just want to be with our Dad.’”

***
Follow u/quilandtrowel for more at Medium & Twitter. (links in bio)

Hi all! We need to replace our AC system and we received the following quotes for AC and Heat Pump options. We are interested in the heat pump options, but this would be our first experience with them. I would appreciate any input on the equipment or scope of work provided by these companies. It is worth noting that Quote #3 is eligible for 0% financing for up to $15k through our utility company. The other quotes are eligible for financing but not at 0%. The third vendor did also include an option to remove the fiberboard ducts.
Quote #1 - $12,500

• Replacement Overhead A/C Agreement.
• Remove & Dispose of existing Bryant 3.5 -ton AC equipment.
• Furnish and install new Trane condensers Mod# 4TTR5042N 15 SEER Rating
• Furnish and install new Trane 2 piece air handler Mod# TAMXB0C42V
• New line set, slim duct to cover line set
• new condenser pad.
• New systems will be installed and transitioned to existing air duct system.
• New emergency drain pan with automatic shut off switch,
• New outside disconnect with whip.
• All wiring installed to code.
• One-year warranty on all workmanship
• Ten-year manufactures warranty on A/C compressor and all other a/c components.
• Customer is aware that we need a clear access and all work areas to be clear of articles to ensure a proper safe installation.
• This Installation will be installed by a COMPANY #1 Licensed Contractor.
• Optional Additional cost to install Trane Clean Effects $1,500
• **Note: Cost of permits will be billed separate over & above the agreement.

Quote #2 - $14,500

• Replacement Overhead A/C Agreement with Heat Pump
• Remove & Dispose of existing Bryant 3.5 -ton AC equipment.
• Furnish and install new Trane Heat Pump condensers Mod# 4TWR5042N 15 SEER Rating
• Furnish and install new Trane 2 piece air handler Mod# TAMXB0C42V
• new line set, slim duct to cover line set
• new condenser pad.
• New systems will be installed and transitioned to existing air duct system.
• New emergency drain pan with automatic shut off switch,
• New outside disconnect with whip.
• All wiring installed to code.
• Square D breaker to be changed from 30 to 40 amp.
• New heat pump thermostat and new thermostat wire to be installed.
• One-year warranty on all workmanship,
• Ten-year manufactures warranty on A/C compressor and all other a/c components.
• Customer is aware that we need a clear access and all work areas to be clear of articles to ensure a proper safe installation.
• This Installation will be installed by a COMPANY #1 Energy Approved Licensed Contractor.
• Optional - Additional cost to install Trane Clean Effects $1,500
• **Note: Cost of permits will be billed separate over & above the agreement.

Quote #3 - $18,000 - $1,000 JCPL AC Rebate = $17,000

• Scope of Work: Remove and recycle existing air handler and condensing unit.
• Equipment to be installed:
  • BOSCH heat pump - BOVB-60HDN1-M20 - AHRI #: 207658523, 18.5 SEER2, 12.0 EER2, 9.5 HSPF2 One () BOSCH heat pump, up to 19 SEER, 5 ton, 208/230V, R410A
  • BOSCH air handler - BVA-48WN1-M20 - 4 ton, 208/230V, R410A
  • BOSCH electric heater - EHK-05B
• Install new air handler in the attic set in a new emergency drain pan.
• New drain pan will feature a float switch for worry free condensate drainage and vibration isolators for quiet system operation.
• Field fabricate transitional duct fittings to connect new equipment to existing duct system as needed.
• Alter and reconnect to existing condensate drain with new PVC trap and clean out.
• Alter and reconnect to existing line and low-voltage electric circuits
• Alter and reconnect existing refrigerant piping, low-voltage control wire, and emergency condensate drain as needed at new indoor equipment and new heat pump set in same location on a new vibration isolation/sow elevation pad.
• Install new main condensate drain from new air handler to exterior side of house new new heat pump.
• Install one new dedicated 220 volt, 30 amp circuit from existing electric panel to new electric strip heater in air handler in attic.
• Install one new HONEYWELL 8000 digital/programmable thermostat.
• Leak check, evacuate, and charge refrigerant system. Start up and test system operation.

Quote #3 optional

• Optional Ductwork replacement ($5,500)
• Remove and recycle all fiberboard main supply duct trunks in attic.
• Install new galvanized metal main supply air trunk in same location of attic.
• Galvanized metal main supply trunk will be wrapped in REFLECTIX R.8 non-fiberglass duct insulation.
• Alter and reconnect to existing flexible supply air duct branches with new branch take-offs featuring manually adjustable volume dampers for efficient system balancing.

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?

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.

Could this be one of the reasons why I sometimes have very slight chest pain after a long day with my current bra? (Don't worry, I have had medical examinations and it is not an illness that gives me this pain.) I would like to add that this sensation disappears quickly after the joy of removing the bra. In addition, I noticed that I had a slight mark that had appeared under both breasts, and it is probably linked to the metal frame, which is why as a second question, I would like to know if it is a good idea from me to want to find a new bra without any underwire, and therefore in my "real" size. I don't have much information, experience, knowledge on this area so I rely on you and your good advice I hope

This is my recently purchased 2015 Tacoma double cab v6 4x4 in silver sky metallic. One owner with 13,700 original miles. Regularly maintained at the Toyota dealership it was originally purchased from. I live in Pennsylvania and made a 14 hour round trip to New Hampshire to buy this truck. Paid just over 30k after fees and my state taxes. I traded my 2012 Chevy Colorado RWD with 82,000 miles. Everything is in great condition. Some slight rust in a few spots under the truck but the frame looks great. Already making plans to get it treated yearly. I plan on keeping it mostly stock but wondering if anyone has any suggestions for upgrades you enjoy on your 2nd gen or Tacoma in general.
Thanks.