[WTS] Selling off some more gear that I am not using and it needs a new home. I have a few sales here on ULgeartrade and geartrade, and I had many before the new rating system kicked in. Prices include shipping from 98501 USA to CONUS only, I accept PayPal G&S only, add that 3% pretty please.

• Two Thermarest Neoair XLites, one regular LxW, one short 48". They are both the old style valve, and they are both in excellent condition, nor leaks or repairs. I used the big pad on 10 hikes? 20? I don't really recall, and the short pad was used on ONE HIKE on the WA coast, and I always used a pump sack or the Thermarest electric pump to inflate them. The regular size pad has some stick-on attachments for a Thermarest quilt I used to have but sold. Buyer can use them or remove them, but I will leave them on. The regular pad comes with a stuff sack, the short does not. The regular 20x72 weighs 13.4oz in the sack. The regular size pad has been I am selling these because I have another regular Xlite (plus an XTherm and an Uberlite) and I definitely don't need two Xlites, and my niece outgrew the short pad in the space of 3 years. What a jerk. $100 each. Photos and verification HERE.
• Custom Zimmerbuilt Quickstep, 12.9oz. I had this pack made 3-4 years for an ex-GF, she's gone but the pack remains. She was fairly petite, around 5'4" I think, so the measurement from the top seam where the padded shoulder straps are sewn in to the bottom of the pack is 13", so best for a smaller person, or someone that likes their pad to sit high. I don't remember what kind of DCF this is, and I no longer have the order email, but it feels like the thicker kind, but I don't have a lot of DCF experience outside of some stuff sacks, so... This pack was used 3 times, with the longest hike being32 miles/3 days, and it has zero signs of wear, every part of it is pristine. You can check out the photos of the pack, all the fancy bells and whistles, and the verification HERE. So here are the custom bits-

-It has the adjustable back panel bungie, and there's an included 13"x9.5" folding sit pad that tucks in there for support and breathability, and you can even use it for sitting on! And it weighs just a scant 0.8oz.
-it has the sternum strap with a built-in whistle, and a haul loop. But wait, there's more!
-it also comes with padded shoulder straps, with daisy chains! Fancy!
-it has hipbelt loops, but alas, there is no hipbelt included. Bummer. But---
-above the shoulder straps, built-in to the rolltop is a waterproof zip pocket that is 4.5"x9". This is a good pocket for stakes, your spork, eyeglasses case, whatever. The rolltop still functions perfectly when you got your stuffs in here. And if you like pockets, check this next feature out...
-above the mesh pocket on the front of the pack is another waterproof zip pocket that's 6.5"x9". The ex-girl stuck her FAK, poop kit and I think a power bank in here. Be creative, you can stick anything you want in this pocket, I won't judge. And now...
-the bottom pocket! I went crazy on this one...it has openings on BOTH ends. That's right! Left-handed, right-handed, ambidextrous? This pack will work for you. Totes bonkers.
this pack also has loops up top for a Y-strap or Y-bungie, I honestly don't remember what used to be there, but whatever it was, it isn't there anymore. So the buyer gets to pick their own adventure up top. You get to make a custom pack even more custom! Crazy. So there you have it, a weird little superlight 28L pack (+8L in the pockets). I remember paying around $240 for this before shipping, I'm asking for $160 shipped. Thanks for looking, and happy trails.
Edit because I forgot to include the sleeping pad condition and usage.

Just sitting here thinking of Fallout during my lunch break and I came up with my own entry form into a community type questionnaire for Fallout… here’s mine. How would you respond and what would your questions look like… of course the first question has to keep the trend going…

1. You are approached by a frenzied scientist, who yells, "I'm going to put my quantum harmonizer in your photonic resonation chamber!" What's your response?

I'd say "Up yours, too, buddy."
Wouldn’t that cause a parabolic destabilization of the fission singularity.
Find a pipe and knock him out
Slip away before he has time to finish

1. You can only have one of the following to eat for the rest of your life what do you pick?

Bloodbug steak
Dog meat steak
Mole rat chunks
Strange Meat Pie

1. Raiders are attacking how do you deal with it!

I punch every last one of them in the face till they drop
I plant a frag grenade in their back pockets
Spray and pray
Stand back and snipe away giving them a fresh fade in the process

1. While out scavenging for resources a Deathclaw invites you to his tea party. What do you do?

Say “No Governah, I don’t drink tea”
Why yes of course, does this tea party require a fancy dress and flower hat?
Go with the Deathclaw immediately skipping down the road hand and hand
Kick him in the balls and pickpocket him

1. You’re the star of the football (American) team…! What’s your position!

Quarterback
Center
Defensive Back
How can I play football when I got no feet?

1. While volunteering at the clinic a ghoul walks in and starts talking gibberish what do you do..?

Awww shit it’s time to put him down *grab pistol
Give him some Psycho he’s clearly having withdrawals
Pet his head and tell him everything is going to be okay,
Fart in his face and say that’s two atomic blast you had to deal with

1. You find out your best friend in the community has been a run away Synth … what do you do?

Ask to see his synth component
Turn him into management he has a stupid face anyway
Ask him to recite pi as long as he can
Give him a Wet Willy and pretend you don’t know

1. You’re next in line at the store and there’s only one box of BlamCo Mac & Cheese left you heard Old Lady Snider talking about Mac and cheese all week and how she saved up the caps to buy it today but you really want it too… what do you do?

Buy it and immediately turn around opening the box and pouring the uncooked contents down your throat chasing it with water going yeaaa that’s good!
Buy it for Old Lady Snider after all you pickpocketed her caps last week.
Buy it and share it with the old hag she’s gonna go feral anyway
Cause a panic by saying you see a Deathclaw in camp and steal the box when no one is looking

1. You’ve been hoarding Radaway and a scavenger team has come back with radiation exposure. The clinic is all out. What do you do?

Sell it to them for triple the caps
Not my problem should have planned ahead
You’re feeling nice give them 5 for free
Open it in front of them and use it on yourself even though you don’t need it

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.

First/Previous
"Watch out!" Jack yelled out to the crowd as the now-glowing overhead turrets, long dormant and forgotten, suddenly whirred to life with a mechanical hum, tracking his movements as he ran, shoving past a group of unsuspecting Xarak to the side as he moved to dodge the torrent of rapid fire aimed right at him, kicking up smoke as the superheated plasma churned the ground underneath him, before the sound of gunfire abruptly stopped.
"Fucking overheating shittubes!" the voice on the speakers cursed. "The Outsider is by the two broken pillars!"
"I see him!" a voice replied from out of the crowd as Jack got his bearings, spotting a group of three uniformed soldiers rushing towards him. As the leader moved to stab him with a nasty-looking barbed shortspear, Jack quickly juked the direction he intended to dodge, dipping to the right as he smashed the avian in the stomach with a vicious kick, shuffling back as he caught the blade of the second soldier with his bracer before throwing them off balance, lashing back at the first with his elbow as he did.
He moved to check the third that was moving to take a swing at him with a bat, but before Jack could do so the soldier was suddenly yanked back as a long, coiled leather whip snapped around them. Following along, Jack spotted an older grey-skinned ganger in black leathers with a coarse, black beard to match his scraggly hair sat down with his back to a wall, casually drinking a beer as he observed the chaos with a mischievous smirk.
As the soldier pulled back his bat to strike the interloper, the ganger grinned and looked down where his legs were already spread wide, revealing a strange metal crotch plate. Suddenly making a jerking motion with one of his legs, the plate flipped up to reveal the barrel of a huge codpiece gun that flipped up to point directly at the soldier, before it fired once, catching the solder completely by surprise as the top of their body was utterly obliterated by a bolt of powerful plasma energy. Smirking, the ganger gave Jack a wink, chugging down the rest of his drink, before charging into the brawl.
Hearing an almighty roar, Jack turned around only to be knocked back yet again as a broken, avian body was roughly lobbed at him, staggering him backwards as the Redeemer turned to the last of the bird-like gangsters, picking him up with immense strength and smashing them to the ground before advancing towards the human more cautiously this time, shoving drunken brawlers out of the way.
“I have long waited for this moment, Outsider. With your death, my King shall grant you redemption!” The Redeemer snarled. Now having a good look at him, Jack couldn’t see any visible weapons on him, which was strange. Last time, he’d brought a gunship and was taking potshots at him with some kind of high-powered rifle. Then again, considering what happened last time, maybe The Redeemer wanted the satisfaction of using his bare hands to beat him to death.
It wouldn’t be a terrible plan considering everything the Ogar had pulled off so far…
While sports on Earth were often separated by gender, despite some resistance from the more liberal-minded, due to biological differences between men and women, combat sports were a whole different game, with mixed martial arts organisations having very specific weight classes for fair competition between athletes, with two fighters of similar size and weight less likely to cause serious injury to each other.
But if you placed an experienced lightweight against even a novice heavyweight? That would introduce major problems for the smaller fighter, who would need to contend with the extra size, reach and power of their larger opponent. Not an impossible fight, but a tough one.
And Jack very much felt like a lightweight here.
Though of course, he had faced larger opponents before. Even an Ogar, though they had defeated the Laird with a cunning trap. However, he didn’t know how well matched he and The Redeemer were in a fair close-range fight outside of the opening moments of the ambush.
Still, he had little choice but to find out. He didn’t have an easy way to escape, and he didn’t know what the status of the others was. If he ran while they were still here then The Redeemer and the Regulators would simply go after them instead to get to him…
No. He couldn’t allow those thoughts to shake him. His friends knew what the hell they were doing, and they could handle themselves just fine. He had to worry about himself right now.
He couldn’t run, so he had to fight.
With a speed he didn’t expect from The Redeemer, they grabbed a nearby chair and lobbed it right at Jack in one smooth motion before following through with another charge.
‘Aegis!’ Jack yelled as he brought his forearm up, as his new and improved shield eagerly sprung up to take the hit from the chair, before a fist smacked into the side of his head as The Redeemer used the chair as a distraction to change his angle of attack.
Spinning with the blow, Jack fought in his mind to stay in the fight as his vision blurred, with the powerful strike threatening to knock him out then and there, before another fist caught him in the stomach, with his battleskin dispersing a hit that would have otherwise easily taken the air out of his lungs.
Retracting his shield, Jack ducked another punch that threatened to decapitate him as he skidded under the blow, parrying a backfist with his forearm that tingled painfully as he ate the blow, before clocking the Redeemer with a punch to the jaw, his gauntlet extending to cover his knuckles with a well-forged plate of metal to add their power to the strike, before the Redeemer threw out a punch that caught him on the shoulder, sending the deathworlder reeling back.
Jack grit his teeth as he fought through the pain, adrenaline rushing through him. He wasn’t out of the fight yet, but he knew he’d gotten the worst of that engagement.
The Redeemer clearly understood this as well, as the zealot strode towards the human with a confident, wicked grin.
But this time, Jack was ready.
‘Caltrops’ Jack whispered the command word, as his gauntlets gave him a good handful of them, subtly tossing them in front of him with an underhand throw, which had gone unnoticed by the Redeemer as they stared at the human with hatred.
Suddenly dashing forward to quickly close the remaining distance between them, the Redeemer roared as he charged Jack again, suddenly grunting in pain and stumbling as his full, heavy mass sent a sharp, painful spike straight through his armoured boot, causing him to lose focus as he looked down at his foot for just a moment to see what had happened.
A moment of distraction that Jack used to its fullest, as he quickly swung his axe down right at The Redeemer’s head.
However, the Ogar reacted with surprising dexterity as he used his forward momentum to avoid the full force of the axeblade, his metal helmet taking a glancing blow as he shoved Jack off balance, causing him to stumble. Quickly predicting what would come next, Jack dropped his axe on purpose as he prepared for a takedown attempt, dropping low and widening his stance as the Redeemer tackled him around the waist to try and bring him to the ground for a quick finish.
“There will be no salvation for you, human!” The Ogar growled through his pain as Jack was forced back by the Redeemer’s superior strength.
“Aww, did you miss me?” Jack taunted, holding on and walking back with the ever increasing momentum The Redeemer was building as he was pushed back along the dancefloor. “I saw your tantrum on the TV afterwards, didn’t know you were a bitch too!”
‘That’s it, asshole.’ Jack thought to himself as he felt his axe clip back onto his back. ‘Get mad. You showed me last time that you like to talk too much. I need to time this right…'
“Your blasphemy ends here Outsider! I shall smite you in the name of my King!” The insane zealot roared out in an enraged challenge.
With a roar the Redeemer pushed with much greater strength, forcing Jack to change his slow backpedalling into a full on sprint as he scrambled to stay on his feet, fighting to keep his grip above that of the Redeemer’s to maintain his control of the grapple for as long as he could as he was gradually being put off-balance, almost being lifted upwards.
‘I’ve got to hold on until the last possible moment…’ Jack thought to himself, as tables, chairs and people alike were battered to the side.
‘Now!’
As the wooden pillar supporting the balcony passed them in a blur, Jack shifted his weight to the left and relinquished the grapple, using the Redeemer’s momentum against him as he shoved the Redeemer off balance, as they smashed into the crumbling brick wall head first with an almighty crash.
As they stumbled back, yanking their head back out through the newly formed hole, Jack growled as grabbed the Redeemer around the top of one of his legs, yelling with effort as he was only just able to lift the Redeemer up and over him, slamming the Ogar down on the top of his head as hard as he could in a vicious suplex that gave a satisfying crack.
Growling with effort, the Redeemer pushed himself back into a crouch and looked up just in time as Jack’s foot smacked into the side of his head in a savage kick that cracked his metal helmet and dislodged one of his fangs. Roaring in rage and pain, the Redeemer got to his feet only to meet a flying knee that shattered his nose as his helmet cracked and dented with the heavy impacts.
“Redeem that you ugly cunt!” Jack growled, moving in for another strike as the Redeemer shoved him away, showing no signs of faltering as he slowly got to his feet, even after the devastating blows he just took. The Redeemer simply gave Jack a wicked grin of satisfaction, before it fell slightly upon seeing something to Jack’s side.
As Jack’s Ring of the Berserker vibrated again, he spun around to spot a large, lanky Vivren with several piercings in overt heavy armour grinning at him with malicious intent as she pointed a wand at him and cast a word of power.
Before he had any time to react, Jack’s entire body erupted in a wave of agony unlike anything he had ever felt before…
*****
“Fuck! Alora! Sephy? Chiyo? Dante?” Nika coughed as she got up from where the balcony had collapsed from under them.
Looking around, she could see even more patrons fighting around them, revelling in the chaos of the brawl, but she couldn’t spot any of her friends in the immediate aftermath, as thick dust plumed out from the wreckage below her.
‘At least the crew of the ship we’re meant to be travelling on are probably out by now.’ The Kizun thought to herself. ‘Can’t go back, the CorvMart crew will have moved on by now, so sticking to the original plan is probably the best move, unless we can steal a vehicle one of us knows how to pilot.’
Assessing the situation before her, Nika went for her bo staff, though made sure that her shotgun was well within easy reach. Though many of the people fighting around her looked rough, they weren’t attacking her or her friends, and until that changed they could make good allies of convenience, or for a smokescreen to give their enemies the slip if they had to run.
Though slaying as many of their attackers as they could would be preferable.
‘Best way to do that is link up with the others, we’re better as a unit.’ She reasoned, hearing an almighty crash. ‘Well, that’s probably Jack.’
Dodging a thrown bottle as a Squarri ganger missed their intended target - a pissed-off looking quadrupedal furry species that Nika didn’t recognise - before dodging a swing of a bat from a Xarak that saw her as an easy target. Quickly raising her staff she parried the backswing before cracking the other end of the staff across the reptilian’s face, knocking the rough-looking thug out as he collapsed to the ground.
Yet before Nika could think to move on from the conflict, she had to dodge out of the way using her tail as a large Balnath with some kind of cleaver-like sword took a swing at her. Recognising the sigil of the Regulator group Chiyo had told them to watch out for - a stern-looking demonic rune surrounded by a neon-red triangle - Nika parried the next sword swipe from the figure.
“Let me guesth, you want to get to the Outthider?” The Balnath sneered at the Kizun with a lisp so thick that in any other situation she’d have to stop herself from laughing. “I’m stho thorry, but we can’t let you have sthilly ideas like that!”
“Are you for fucking real?” Nika asked as she dodged to the side and put some space between them before quickly switching to her shotgun, letting loose a powerful blast that the Balnath was able to raise his shield up to block.
‘Skill like that? Probably the leader or an officer of some kind.’ The Kizun noted to herself. ‘No choice. I’ve got to kill him.’
“Yeah, I know that you’re finking! You fink my teef make me sound sthupid?” The Balnath growled, with a few experimental chomps. “Well these teef like to gnaw and gnasth on Kizun flesth!”
“Come and try it!” Nika snarled as she twirled her staff around her in a well-practised flourish, eagerly accepting the challenge.
The Balnath charged forward with lightning speed as it came at Nika with a series of feints, before swiping at her with a brutal overhand chop, using both hands. The Kizun was able to deftly parry with her staff, the kinetic modules battering her opponent’s grip to the side, though she felt the strength behind the blow and knew that the Balnath was stronger.
Still, she knew she could take him.
Ever since she was little she had roughhoused with her brothers and the local boys in fights around their ranch, and had learned the hard way from an early age that her gender and short build worked against her when facing her peers, so she had trained to be the strongest she could be, and learned to be quick and tactical to make the best use of that.
She had eventually kept up with the neighbourhood boys, using holds and precise strikes until her elders found out what she was doing when she was meant to be working on the ranch to help the family scrape by, and quickly put a stop to the shenanigans.
When she moved to the city, she only got better from there.
The tip of her staff thundered against the Balnath’s shield like the striking of a gong, forcing the larger being back as Nika could tell he was already tiring. Though she wanted to finish this fight quickly and get to her friends, she knew she couldn’t allow herself to give her opponent an opening, even as she sought to exploit an opening of her own. She had to be patient.
Her staff rattled against the shield again and again, as she felt her opponent’s defence get weaker and weaker, with the powerful force of her kinetic module focusing the strength of her strikes into a single point. Eventually something would break, his shield of his arm. Once his defences were finally down, she would go in swiftly for the kill.
Her opponent’s frustration won out as his shield shattered and fell to the floor, forcing him to attack Nika with a vicious two handed swipe. She blocked the strike handily, before the Balnath grabbed her staff, locking them in a clinch.
“Giff me sthome help over ‘ere!” The Balnath called out, as Nika reached for a knife, forcing the Balnath to adjust his stance as she stabbed blindly, glancing off armoured plates before finding purchase somewhere, causing her attacker to grunt with pain as he shoved her back, holding her up against a wall.
‘Shit.’ She cursed in her mind. ‘He’s stronger than me, but all I need is a moment to take him by surprise and I can break away and kill him!’
She held strong with her arms, holding the Balnath back as his jaws snapped shut barely an inch away from her neck. He tried again, and she pushed back harder, the jaws snapping shut around nothing, but much closer this time.
He tried again, bringing his vicious maw even closer still…
‘Gotcha!’ Nika thought to herself, as she jerked her head forward in a headbutt, catching the Balnath by surprise and giving the Kizun the space she needed to bring her knees up to her chin, before kicking out as hard as she could into the face of the Balnath, knocking him back with a roar of pain, before he leapt forward with a side swipe that Nika used her tail to quickly dodge, before in the same motion she brought the tip of her staff round and smacked the Balnath as hard as she could, right in the face, the powerful strike shattering its lower jaw completely.
“My fathce!” the attacker got out, clutching what little remained of his lower jaw, before looking up in the next moment as they stared down the barrel of Nika’s shotgun.
“Plea-” They got out, before their head was obliterated in an explosion of dark, blackish blood as their body clattered uselessly to the ground.
“Fuck you.” The Kizun retorted. Using her tail to quickly clip the sword to the magnets of her armour, Nika could see more Regulators in the crowd heading towards the DJ booth. Quickly checking her weapons, she headed right into the brawl!
*****
“You don’t belong here, girlie!” the thug cackled as their cybernetic arm crackled with electric discharge.
“Replacto!” Alora snarled as she swiped her wand out, blasting her attacker with a sudden flash of light that sent him stumbling back, clutching at his eyes.
“Anyone else?” Alora asked, trying her best to channel Nika’s cool, calm demeanour, crossed with Jack’s intimidating presence as the cluster of gangers and mercenaries all looked around at each other for just a moment, before deciding that the Eladrie wasn’t actually that intimidating, as one tried to rush her with a broken chair.
‘Oh by the Mother Tree! How do those two do it?’ Alora cursed in her mind as she summoned her spiritual weapon - a spear of light - that she quickly stabbed at the fish-like Osi, gutting them in the stomach which quickly made them drop the chair, while Alora wisely moved to the side to get out of the vicious melee happening all around her. Where were the others?
‘I have to make sure they’re all right.’ the Eladrie determinedly told herself as she began casting another, more complicated spell…
“Attention all idiots!” The voice over the speakers sneered out over the ever-changing music that the DJ didn’t seem to have any control over. “We discussed this. Though the Outsider is a priority, you target the spellcasters first if you can! Must I do everything myself?”
Thrumming with sudden power, the turrets above them finally opened fire, shooting almost indiscriminately at the crowd below, cutting several of the brawling patrons down before they even knew what hit them.
Chanting and waving her hands around as quickly as she dared, Alora maintained her concentration of her spell, completing it just in time as the turrets finally tracked her as she summoned a great holy aura of light to cover herself that would give her the protection she needed, the Armour of Faith deflecting the lights of the laser turrets harmlessly aside.
A loud bark sounded out, and knowing Dante’s warning for what it was, Alora spun around to see two Regulators, who were both Vulstas fighting through the brawl to get to her. Unlike Rena, these two were males, both carrying plasma shotguns but unable to get effective shots off through the crowd. Not that something like that stopped them from trying…
“Stevarin!” she yelled out, pointing her wand at one of the two who was about to open fire on a downed ganger, as with a flash of yellow light their movements slowed, quickly freezing stiff as a board as they failed to resist the Holding spell, their eyes widening in sheer terror as the gang-mates of their would-be-victim set upon them in a fury with fists and clubs, before a spell cast from the rafters sent all of them clattering to the ground clutching at their minds.
‘One of the enemy mages providing overwatch.’ Alora noted as she quickly looked up for any sign of them, but not seeing them. ‘Under a veil of invisibility no doubt.’
Feeling the dull impact of a shotgun blast dissipate harmlessly against her magical armour, Alora spun round to the other Regulator, cursing her moment of hesitation as the Vulsta drew a long knife with which to get in close with.
Remembering her fight with Izadora all those weeks ago, Alora waved her arms around quickly to summon a bubble of light to engulf her, before quickly following it up with an explosive flash that thundered all around her like a flashbang grenade, while leaving her unharmed.
As the light dissipated, she deftly avoided the blind lunge from the temporarily blinded Regulator, before jamming her spear into his stomach, using her reach advantage to dodge the desperate swipes he sent her way.
“Garrash!” Alora spoke a quick cantrip, using her affinity with life magic to channel poison through the top of her spear. Her already-weakened attacker quickly slumped to the ground as the debilitating effects took hold, but before Alora could pull her spear back, she was hit by a spell that came from above, disrupting her magic and causing her magical spear and armour to disappear.
‘Damn! It’s that mage above me!’ Alora cursed to herself as she quickly ran underneath one of the balconies, as the turrets chased after her with gunfire. ‘You want to hide in the shadows like a coward? I’ve got something to fix that!’
Quickly making sure there weren’t any immediate threats around, Alora quickly rummaged through her pockets for a wand of white crystal she had prepared about a year ago that still had a few charges. Casting quickly, she levelled it towards the ceiling and prayed to all the gods that she was aiming it at where the enemy mage was hiding,
“Glitasha!”
A spray of shining, sparkling particles of light shot out of her wand, puffing out to cover a good half of the ceiling, and as they began to fall to the floor and latch on to the people below, Alora spotted a huddled form by one of the rafters.
‘Got you!’ She thought with satisfaction.
“Ilthax! Get out of there!” The voice over the speakers warned, presumably the name of her target, but it was too late…
“Solaris!” Alora yelled, throwing her palms out in a thrust as a great javelin of light shot out of her palms. The enemy mage had barely moved before it impaled their centre of mass, sending what must have been a fireball spell way off target which blasted apart a huge, gaping hole in the back wall.
The invisible form of the glitterdust-covered mage slowly began to materialise as the blue-furred, ape-like Regulator clutched at their chest in pain, with wide eyes of disbelief at the spear of hard light that had gone right through their torso. As their flight spell dissipated, their lifeless body fell three stories from the rafters to slam down on the ground floor below.
“Nice one Alora!” the Eladrie heard the voice call from behind her as Nika came up next to her, the Kizun bleeding from a cut on her face. “Where are the others?”
“I don’t know. But we need to find them now!” Alora frantically told them as she took in the sheer state of chaos around them. Many broken bodies lay amongst the carnage, and though the Eladrie knew some would likely be still alive at the end of the night, she knew that many would not.
“You don’t need to tell me twice!” Nika agreed with a grim expression.
*****
First/Previous
Looks like Jack, Nika and Alora are holding on for now! But how long can they keep it up?
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As the last orange light of day drained from the sky, the living dead in Club Vlad rose. Max the skeleton and Jessie the…not skeleton…sewed up the gaping Y-shaped incision on Dom’s chest under Merrick’s direct supervision. Dom sat there, feeling nothing, thinking nothing. He’d woken with a headache and a feeling of cold, and even now, he could feel the dull throb above his left eye. It felt like someone was tearing his brain apart with a fork. He had told Merrick, and Merrick had nodded sadly. “Is my brain rotting?”
“Most likely,” Merrick had said.
There was a certain peace in the idea of losing his cursed humanity. As Merrick had said, he would feel no pain, know no quandaries. He would live only for the night and for his master. On the other hand, watching someone like Matt sit and stare into the distance, drool coursing down his chin and nothing happening behind his dead eyes, scared Dom. He didn’t want to be a braindead idiot. He didn’t care about keeping his emotions, he just wanted to function.
Like Merrick.
There wasn’t much he could do, however. He was dead and that was the end of it.
Once Dom was patched up and dressed in a pair of jeans and a hoodie, Merrick called his children before him. “I have done my best to love and protect all of you,” he began. “Jessie, you were miserable with your grandmother, were you not?”
“Yes,” Jessie said tonelessly.
“You were depressed, bipolar, and cut yourself. Now you’re happy.”
“Yes,” she replied again.
“Joe, you were a two bit nobody staring down a ten year stretch in jail.”
“Yes.” Thin yellow liquid dripped from his nose.
“But now you are free.”
“Yes.”
“You appreciate what I’ve done for you.”
“Yes.”
Merrick flashed then, slamming his fist onto the arm of his wheelchair. “Then why do you keep fucking up? The police were here earlier. They have messages between you and Jessie. I told both of you to delete those. Then I find out that you bit someone and turned them despite my orders. We have an endless supply of blood here but you still went off on your own. How many are there?”
“Just one,” Joe said.
“Are you being honest with me?”
“Yes.”
Merrick sagged back in his chair, looking somehow older. “Joe, take Matt and go to her. Bring her back here before she causes any more problems. God alone knows how many people she’s changed. Too many vampires without a father will bring heat on us, and you know what happens in that case? We get pieces of wood shoved in our chests.”
Turning to Dom, Merrick said, “I have a job for you and Jessie. We’re nearly out of embalming fluid. You haven’t had your first dose and the rest of us are starting to get ripe as well. I have a contact at a funeral home. He texted earlier that the order he placed on my behalf has come in. I want you to pick it up and to pay him.”
Dom had never been picked for anything in his whole life. No one had ever wanted him on their team and no one had ever placed their trust in him the way Merrick was now. He was honored, proud, and would do anything to not let Merrick down.
“That cop who came here might be a problem,” Merrick went on. “We may have to deal with him, but we’ll leave that for another night. In any case, I want this place cleaned from top to bottom. If the police come, I want them to see nothing out of the ordinary.”
Now that everyone had their marching orders, they dispersed. Merrick handed Dom an evelope stuffed with cash, and Dom slipped it into the pocket of his hoodie. The other team - Joe and Matt - left, while the remaining vampires began tidying up.
A fleet of vehicles waited in the parking lot behind Club Vlad. Dom and Jessie took a black pedo van with no back windows. They drove in silence, the radio off. Dom did not want to hear music, nor did he wish to speak to Jessie. Their kinship was one of blood and circumstance, not one of words and emotions. He had no questions for her and wished to answer none of his own. The only thoughts he had were of the mission ahead and of the growing pain in his skull. He thought of the staring stupid Matt, of the decayed Max, and a shiver went down his spine.
What was left of his humanity recoiled at the idea of becoming like them.
The pain grew hotter, more intense. He forced it away and focused on driving.
The funeral home was on North Allen Street, next to a restaurant called Pepperjack’s. A tall, white house with dark shutters and a sign out front, it looked like a quiet, peaceful place. “Pull around back,” Jessie said.
Dom pulled the van around back and parked under a balcony, killing the headlights. They got out and went to the back door, Jessie in the lead. He assumed that she had done this before and that the seller would recognize her. She knocked, and a few moments later, the door opened. A youngish man with a shaved head appeared, wearing an apron and gloves. He saw them and tensed a little. Dom could smell, rather than sense, his fear, and his throat panged with thirst. “Come on,” the man said quickly. He stepped aside and allowed them to enter. Dom noticed that he walked behind them, wary of putting his back to them. “Do you have the money?”
“Do you have our order?” Jessie countered.
“Yes,” the man said, “I’m really risking my neck for this. They don’t just give embalming fluid away, you know. They keep track of it and if they realize I’m over ordering, someone from the state’s going to come down here and check.”
He led them into an embalming room. Three boxes sat on a table. Dom gave the man his money, and he and Jessie carried the boxes outside, loading them into the van. The whole time they were there, the man was edgy, like he was afraid they were going to attack him. Dom would be a liar if he said that the hot smell of the man’s blood didn’t excite him. Perhaps once his brain rotted away, he wouldn’t be able to control himself, but for now, he could.
A lightning bolt of pain shot through his head and he nearly dropped the last box onto the ground.
Once the man was paid, Dom and Jessie drove back to Club Vlad. In fifteen minutes, they were drinking side by side from two passed out partygoers, their reward for a job well done.
Meanwhile, across the city, Joe and Matt weren’t doing as well. They were standing outside of Heather’s apartment. Joe, slightly annoyed (anger being another emotion vampires could feel, along with fear) pounded on the door. He knew she was in there; he could smell the putrid odor of decay. “Let us in,” he said. “We won’t hurt you.”
Joe could barely remember changing her. He didn’t mean to, it just…happened. Like an unwanted pregnancy. You can bite someone as much as you want and drink as much as you want, but if you take too much at once and they die, you get the vampire equivalent of a baby. Joe liked the hunt. It was exciting. Having his meals brought to him Club Vlad didn’t arouse the same level of excitement. It was like shooting an animal tied to a tree. Or hiring a prostitute instead of wooing someone. No real satisfaction to it.
That was probably his greatest downfall. He had lured Jessie the same way, though Merrick was indeed interested in rescuing her from her grandmother. People you have saved obey just as well as people with no brains.
He felt fluid on his upper lip and sniffed. “Come on, let us in,” he said.
No response.
He looked at Matt and nodded to the door. Together, they rammed their shoulders against it. It shook in its frame. They were both dead and weak, but modern American architecture is even weaker, and the door eventually slammed open. The apartment beyond was dark, messy, and reeked of death. They searched high and low, and eventually found Heather huddled in a corner, trying to hide. She was naked save for a pair of panties, her body bloated and beginning to turn black. Her skin hung from her frame and her eyes were filled with blood and fear. It was a wonder no one had called the police yet. The smell was overpowering. “We’re here to help,” he said. “You have to come with us.”
She shook her head and trembled. Maybe she remembered that he was the one who did this to her. Maybe her memories had rotted away. Those were usually the first to go. Then your emotions, then your personality. Finally, your capacity for higher reasoning. “I’m sorry I did this to you,” he said. That was a lie. He was not remorseful. Nor was he proud, for that matter. It just happened. Like rain. “But I want to help you. We can fix you.”
No amount of coaxing or conjoling could induce her to move. Joe weighed his options. He doubted anyone would call the cops even if they heard the door coming down - people who lived in places like this rarely called the cops, which helped Joe and his cause immensely. Even so, there was the possibility. Every minute they spent here was a minute that something could go wrong, and Joe had a lot to lose.
So, too, did Merrick.
Giving up, Joe took out his cellphone and called Merrick. “She refuses to come,” he said simply.
The line was quiet for a moment, then Merrick’s voice came back. Cold. Calculating. “Then do what you must.”
That was the go ahead.
Hanging up, Joe looked around the apartment and found a wooden chair in the kitchen. He lifted it over his head and slammed it on the counter, shattering it into a million pieces. He selected the longest, sharpest, and sturdiest looking one. He went back into the room and directed Matt to hold her down. She fought, kicked, and spat, but she was weaker than even they were. They had been embalmed. She hadn’t.
Matt pinned her hands above her head and Joe straddled her. Animal terror filled her eyes and she whipped her head from side to side. Joe lifted the makeshift stake with both hands, and brought it down as hard as he could, driving it deep into her heart. Her eyes bulged from their sockets and a high, otherworldly scream ripped from her throat. She bucked, thrashed, and kicked her feet. Her resistance began to ebb away until she was twitching…until she was still.
Heather from OKCupid was dead.
Truly dead.
Joe couldn’t help wondering what it was like.
Pulling the stake out, he tossed it aside and got to his feet, Matt doing likewise. A soul petrifying scream might be cause for even the tightest of lips to start talking. “Let’s go,” he said. And together, he and Matt fled, leaving the poor, dead body of Heather behind.
***
As it turned out, one of Heather’s neighbors did call the cops. At 10;13pm, Vanessa Rodregiez arrived with two patrolmen and found the front door of Apartment 237 knocked down. Guns drawn, they entered, Vanessa at the head. The first thing she noticed was the smell. It jammed itself into her nostrils, shoved its tongue down her throat, and violated her - all without even buying her dinner first.
Vanessa hadn’t been at this as long as her buddy Bruce had, but she knew a dead, rotting body when she smelled one. They searched the premises, and sure enough, they found a vic in the bedroom, lying in the gap between the bed and the wall; it looked like the former had been moved, perhaps in a struggle. Vanessa knelt down to check the vic’s pulse, but stopped.
There was no need.
The vic - who looked like a female but could have been an overweight male - hadn’t had a pulse in a very long time.
Examining the body, Vanessa found a wound in the chest, just above the heart. Black, stinking goo leaked from it, and Vanessa gagged. She fisted her hand to her mouth, retched, and then ran for the kitchen sink. Her partner for the night, Jim Walsh, stared down at the stiff before him, and his face turned a sickly shade of green. He avoided puking because he didn’t nose fuck the wound like Vanessa had, but he wasted no time in getting out there, dry heaving in the hallway where the air was somewhat fresh.
After leaving her lunch in the sink, Vanessa radioed back to headquarters, and before long, the place was crawling with cops. The assistant medical examiner - who had taken over after Ed Harris quit the previous night - knelt over the body and studied it. A solidly built black man with a mustache, his name was Leon and he knew death just as well as his old boss, so when he said the vic had been dead nearly two weeks, Vanessa accepted it.
That begged the question: Who broke in and screamed just now? A relative? The caller clearly heard screaming and peeked out her door to see two males fleeing on foot. Maybe they found the vic and freaked out? Or maybe they were the killers returning to the scene of the crime. After all, the vic had clearly been murdered.
In fact, they found a likely murder weapon. A long sliver of wood soaked in black goo. Blood turns black after a while, but there was something different about this stuff. “What is it?” Vanessa asked Leon.
“I’m not sure,” Leon said and pulled off a pair of Latex gloves he’d donned to examine the vic, “could be blood or…”
“Or what?” Vanessa asked.
“Or something,” Leon said. “Give me a few hours.”
And a few hours it was. Just before 1am, Leon called Vanessa at her desk. “I think you should come down here,” he said.
Fifteen minutes later, Vanessa stood over Leon as he pulled the vic’s chest open with a pair of tweezers. “That’s the heart,” he said, “whoever stabbed her scored a direct hit, but this…this is what concerns me.”
He prodded a furry lump with the tip of his scalpel.
“What is it?” Vanessa asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, “it looks like mold.”
That word - mold - triggered a memory in her brain. “Ed said something about mold last night. He found it in -”
“The Mason boy,” Leon finished.
“Yeah. The one who got up and ran off.”
Leon turned away from Vanessa and looked at the dead woman - for it was a woman. Vanessa got the impression that he didn’t want her to see his expression. “I’ve known Ed ten years. I know something happened last night, but a stiff getting up and walking off? I thought he was confused. Now…I don’t know. That makes two bodies in 24 hours. And get this. The chest wound? It was done post-mortem. I can’t find a cause of death anywhere. Except maybe blood loss but it’s hard to tell at this point. And speaking of blood…”
“What?” Vanessa asked quickly.
“When I opened her stomach up, a whole shit load of blood spilled out. And a lot of it was a lot fresher than she is.”
Vanessa furrowed her brow in confusion. “You mean…?”
“It’s not hers,” Leon said. “I can’t be 100 percent sure until I run tests, but I’d put money on it.”
Vanessa’s head spun with information both new and old. You know that full, heavy feeling you get when a poo is brewing in your guts? That’s kind of what Vanessa was feeling, only in her head instead of her stomach.
Leon was just as mystified by the whole thing as she was and stayed up late to run a few preliminary tests. By sunrise, he had confirmed that the blood inside of Heather’s stomach was not hers. In fact, it had come from at least three different sources. “Is it human?” Vanessa asked over the phone.
“Yes,” Leon said, sounding troubled, “it’s human.”
In the cobalt hour before sunrise, Vanessa sat at her desk and tried to piece this whole thing together. They had:

1. A corpse that (allegedly) woke up and dipped out
2. A dead girl who’d been stabbed in the heart with a piece of wood after somehow ingesting the blood of three different people.
3. Some missing kids
4. Oh, and both bodies - the girl’s and the runaway corpses’ - had the same weird fungus in their heart cavities.

All of this - even the missing kids, Vanessa felt - was related. She just didn’t know how. The only answer that half way fit was that both of those bodies were vampires. Like…what’s a vampire but a dead body that gets up and walks around at night? And how do you kill a vampire? Why, you drive a piece of wood through its heart.
The idea that vampires were real was dumb, but the more she turned it over in her mind, the more she became convinced that it was at least an option. A lot of things people thought were fantastic and made up turned out to be real, so why not vampires too?
Shortly after 8, Bruce came in. He was just sitting down when Vanessa came in and slapped her report on the desk. “Buckle up, bitch,” she said, “things just got weirder.”
He stared up at her with one of those grumpy - but cute -expressions he was so good at putting on. As he read, however, his brow knitted. “Jesus,” he muttered to himself. He pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a weary sigh.
“I have a theory - kind of,” Vanessa said, “but I don’t want to say it.”
“You might as well,” Bruce said. “It can’t be more kooky than reality these days.”
“Okay,” Vanessa started, “what if - and I’m just thinking out loud here - what if there are vampires in Albany?”
She expected Bruce to give her a dirty look, but he chewed it over, actually taking it seriously. “And those missing boys are victims?” he asked finally.
“Yeah,” Vanessa said. “That girl’s been dead two weeks. Maybe she bit Dominick Mason and he came back for revenge after realizing he was cursed to be a goddamn shit sucking vampire forever.”
Bruce nodded. “Yeah, but who turned her?”
“I don’t know,” Vanessa said, “I don’t know.”
***
Before dawn painted the eastern sky, Merrick Garvis sat in his chamber like a withered king, a mess of IVs hooked into his arms and neck. The vault was silent save for the soft noise of the machines as they filtered out the old embalming fluid and replaced it with new embalming fluid. Embalming fluid always made him spacy, like a drug. The others had gone first, and even now lay near comatose around him like addicts in an opium den.
As far as he knew, Merrick was the oldest vampire in the world, perhaps, even, the oldest vampire to ever live. Though he was not fully honest with Dom, he was not lying when he said that vampires rotted like any other dead thing. Conditions considered, you had a few weeks tops if left untreated. There may be living vampires in remote corners of Egypt or the northern most reaches of Russia, where the climate preserved dead things, but unless you made it to one of those places, you were pretty well fucked.
Merrick was not a proud man, nor was he concerned with saving face - the dead have no need for that. He was being truthful when he said that he feared death. What’s more, he feared being helpless. Deep down, vampires are people, and people don’t exactly have the greatest track record with caring for their infirm. He read once that the first sign of a civilization was a broken leg that had healed, as it showed that someone stayed with and cared for a fellow human long enough for them to get well again. In Merrick’s opinion, that was true…and thus there was no civilization. Merrick was fifty-one when he died in the year 1982. In his lifetime, he had seen The Great Depression, World War II, and a million small acts of cruelty and selfishness in between. He’d seen beggars starving in the streets, abused children shuffled out of sight and out of mind, and disdain for the poor and the weak.
The living were awful, and the living dead were no different. Once their humanity rotted away, they cared only about filling their stomachs. They were like ticks - they would drink until their bellies literally ruptured…and then keep on drinking.
That left him in a precarious position. He was old, his body was weak. He couldn’t stand unassisted and if left to fend for himself, he would decay into a pile of bones within days. He would be cursed to lay in one spot for all eternity, aware and hungry, little more than a ghost tethered to a black and still beating heart.
He refused to let that happen to him. Thus, he had created a family, a clan of vampires loyal to him and to him alone. He did this through acts of simple kindness and understanding…but also through deception. He knew, for instance, how to preserve the brain. He’d figured out how to do it early on - you pickle it. Like a fetus preserved in a jar. He sawed off the top of his own head and filled it with a special solution that kept his brain - and his intelligence - intact. It slowly drained out through the nose and ears in a thin, yellow liquid, but it worked well enough. He couldn’t save everything, however, and had lost vital things in the process, such as most of his human memories, his sense of humor, and some motor functions. He shared this secret with only Joe, and a few others before, because he needed a strong captain. He kept the others in the dark because vampires - like people - are easier to control when they don’t think for themselves.
Right about now, however, Merrick was beginning to regret sharing the formula with even Joe. Joe had brought him nothing but grief. Joe, you see, could think for himself. He could make decisions. He could go behind Merrick’s back. Joe had something called free will, and free will is a worse affliction than vampirism. Free will is messy, free will is dangerous.
Free will could very well turn Merrick into a pile of bones.
That was, of course, if they weren’t discovered first. Joe had made several mistakes lately, not least of which was the turning of Heather. Sitting there in the predawn hour, attended by Tony, his gay bartender and human familiar, Merrick decided to have Joe killed. There are only two ways to kill a vampire: The stake and the flame. The latter seemed somehow appropriate in this case. After Joe, there would be no more captains, only him, one father with absolute power. That was how it had to be. One man, one vision. Democracies didn’t work. That was especially clear today. Everyone was so divided and nothing ever got done. If the humans had one strong leader, they might go in the wrong direction, but at least they would go somewhere. Instead, they stagnated.
Merrick didn’t particularly look forward to killing Joe, but it had to be done. To protect the family. To protect him.
And Merrick would do anything…anything at all…to protect himself.
***
Vampires.
Bruce kept coming back to that single wor, hoping each time that he would chuckle at the absurdity of it.
But he never did.
Did that mean he believed it? Not necessarily, but damn it, he considered it a possibility, and that alone was enough to make him feel like a fucking clown. All the evidence he had pointed to vampires, but then again, it might point to other things as well. Like aliens.
But let’s say the whole vampire thing was real. Who, like Vanessa asked, was patient zero? Who started this whole mess?
A name came to mind.
Merrick Garvis.
He had not had time to check into Garvis the previous day, but by God, he was going to do it now. He ran his name and social through the system and everything seemed to check out. Merrick Garvis was born on June 31, 1963 in -
Wait a minute. Weren’t there only 30 days in June?
Bruce checked, and there were, indeed, only 30 days in the month of June. Hm. Bruce did a little digging and found something out. Before 1987, social security numbers weren’t issued at birth. You had to sign up, using other forms of ID. Merrick Garvis applied for his in April 1984 and the date of birth on his state issued driver’s license was June 31. Bruce spent an hour on the phone with the DMV and learned that they had never issued a license to a Merrick Garvis. He then spoke to the Social Security Administration, and after much wrangling and frustration, he managed to get a photocopy of the license Garvis used to get his social security number. It was dated 1983.
The face staring back at him was almost exactly the same face he’d seen at Club Vlad, except maybe a touch less stiff and waxy. Though not as rough looking, there was no way in hell Garvis was 20 in that picture. It had to be a fake,
Bruce thought back to the events of the previous two days. Missing bodies, staked corpses, hearts that still beat after death.
Vampires didn’t seem like such a crazy explanation.
And if anyone was a fucking vampire around here, it was Merrick Garvis.

I'm not sure if this is the right subreddit to post this in but please feel free to direct me to the correct place. I'll try to keep this as brief as possible. My son broke his wrist in February 2023 while away in college (in Michigan). He went to the ER and they determined that he needed surgery. So far, so good. I researched hand surgeons in his area (in Michigan) that performed the surgery and, more importantly, ones that took my insurance. We found one that did in fact take our insurance and the surgery was performed successfully.
Over the course of the following weeks, I was receiving various invoices for the ER visit, surgery, follow-up, etc. Many of the invoices were either co-pays or based on meeting my deductibles. No issues so far and I paid each invoice as soon as I received it.
Here's where it gets interesting. In April 2023, I received an invoice for about $37,000! I called the surgeon's office to try to understand what this was all about. It turns out that while the surgeon takes my insurance, the hospital where he performed the surgery does not. This was all news to me and of course had I known that this expense would have been out of pocket, I would have selected a different surgeon/hospital.
For the following couple of months, I was in touch with the surgeon's practice manager (who was really bad about returning phone calls). Her initial suggestion was to file an appeal with my insurance company which was subsequently denied. When that happened, the practice manager said she would do additional research to try to figure out who dropped the ball in her office. Then in July 2023, I received another note in the mail stating that this bill was now going to collections. I called the practice manager again and she told me "the collections/account is now on hold as they investigate and it could take up to 90 days".
I didn't hear anything back after that so I assumed that this was resolved. About two weeks ago in early May 2024 (9 months after the last communication), I received two more invoices for $75 each dating back to February 2023 and April 2023. When I called the number on the invoice, they explained that these were valid charges from the initial surgery and follow-up. When I asked why I hadn't received them prior, I was told that I was on electronic billing (which I never opted for). But then she told me that it looked that that $37,000 bill was not only still pending but it had been sent to collections in August 2023! I have not received anything from any collections agency about this.
Immediately I called the practice manager again (on May 10, 2024) and left her a voicemail. In the voicemail, I mentioned that I'm very upset and I would appreciate a phone call back. She didn't call me back and on May 15, 2024, I spoke with the person answering calls and explained my situation, my frustration, and the lack of a return call. She said she would pass the message along to the practice manager and, as of this writing, still no call back from anybody.
This surgeon is now part of a big healthcare company in Michigan (I'm not sure if I'm allowed to name the company here so I'll leave it out). So my question is who else can I now contact in order to escalate this? I know there's a No Surprises Act/Good Faith Estimate in Michigan which would have been nice to invoke prior to surgery. Clearly I'm not getting anywhere with the surgeon's office and the lack of any returned phone calls is beyond frustrating and really unprofessional. So do I start contacting higher-ups at the healthcare company? Is there perhaps a government agency that is responsible for the No Surprises Act? I'll of course be leaving a review for the practice but I'm not sure that's going solve my issue.
I know this was a little long so thank you in advance for reading and thank you in advance for any advice. Much appreciated!

I’m aware that this is unconventional. Believe me, I’ve tried conventional – it didn’t end well for anyone. I require a certain open mindedness that I’m hoping I might find here, but more importantly, I need my future husband to know the rules. Meet-cutes are well and good on the screen, but they don’t guarantee a partner’s ability to follow basic instructions. That was my mistake the first time.
So, begging your pardon for my bluntness, I’m going to be clear about my requirements. Please read carefully – if you can’t meet them, there’s no point in going any further.

• Must want children. At least one child, anyway. I’m open to the idea of more, but one is an absolute must.
• Must be in it for the long haul. Until our child turns eighteen, to be precise. I understand that level of commitment is a daunting prospect, particularly when we have not yet met. After our child is born, you are welcome to ignore me, if you please, or take your pleasure elsewhere – though I will warn you that it might be difficult to come by. But you will live under my roof until our child is an adult.
• Homebody preferred. It will make the next two decades easier on you.
• Must have impeccable manners. I will provide a manual outlining the required etiquette, but you must at least have a grasp of basic courtesy to begin with. If you let your tongue run away with you, or don’t bother to wish your neighbours a good morning when you pass them in the street, stop reading – this is not the opportunity for you. Seriously.

This is the part where I should talk about myself, but let’s face it, this is hardly a romantic proposal. I require commitment up-front and there’s no guarantee that, once we do meet, we’ll really even like each other. If we do? Fantastic! It’ll help the years fly by. If we don’t, you’ll still have the main prize – years of rent-free, expenses-free living at The Old Oak Hotel.
A sanctuary has stood in this spot in one form or another since before the ley lines. During its tenure, it has been flooded, put to the flame, and pounded into dust. Time and again, it has been reimagined and rebuilt. Most of the current building dates back to Victoria’s reign, though the oldest parts were constructed in the 13^th century. At the very bottom of the garden, cut into the surrounding hills, there is a cave bearing handprints of red ochre.
There has always been an Edwards at the hotel, though of course we haven’t always gone by that name. You would think a family so tied to one place would do a better job of keeping records, but no one is certain of our origins. Perhaps it was a cosmic bargain, or perhaps mere luck – whether good or bad, I have never been able to decide. Either way, our presence is required. Throughout our spotty past, there’s a story here and there of an Edwards deserting their post, and it always coincides with a particularly brutal period of history.
I inherited the position five years ago. At midnight on my eighteenth birthday, my parents took their already-packed suitcases and left. I don’t blame them for their abandonment; I intend to one day do the same thing to my – or, hopefully, our – child.
They send me postcards and photos from time-to-time, always smiling on sunny beaches. Money isn’t a concern for them. That’s part of whatever mysterious deal our ancestors made – when a caretaker leaves in good-standing, they will never want for anything again. They could travel the world for the rest of their lives, always sleeping in the softest sheets and dining in the finest restaurants, and never find their pockets empty.
Keep this point in mind, for if you can meet my requirements, you will share my good fortune.
And what must we do in return? I can all but hear you scream the question. Why, very little. The presence of an Edwards ensures that the guests can’t stray from the hotel grounds. Most of our guests are live-in residents, though we do get the occasional walk-in. Where they come from, I don’t know, for we are not visible to most people who stumble upon our lonely corner of the world. I’ve come to believe the hotel chooses to reveal itself when its lacking entertainment, or to fill a need.
Jimmy, my first husband, was one such guest.
For the most part, the guests are harmless. They’ll give you a little fright from time-to-time, popping out from a wall or turning your bathwater into blood, but I find it hard to hold it against them. I’ve found twenty-three years here dreary; I can’t imagine how bored I would be after five hundred.
There are a few exceptions you should be aware of:

• Eric. Our resident serial murderer. He claims to have been Jack the Ripper while he still drew breath, but I think he’s just a blowhard. He knows better than to harm an Edwards, but I’m afraid spouses are fair game. Years ago, my grandmother managed to confine him to the fourth floor, so you will be perfectly safe from him as long as you never set foot there. Occasionally, the lift will stop on that floor even though you haven’t pressed the button for it. Do not get out. Even if the lift appears to be on fire or starts filling with murky water. Wait for the doors to close again, then go to another floor. It should only take a few hours.
• The Thing in the Cellar. I don’t know what It is; no one ever has. We only know It eats rats and must be fed once a day. If I’m ever ill or incapacitated, this task will fall to you. Harvest the rats from the traps in the garden, then stand at the cellar door and throw them down the stairs. Do not walk down the stairs and do not forget to feed It. You don’t want to be the first person to see Its’ face.
• Mrs Jones. Old fashioned and a stickler for manners, she’s the reason I’m advertising for a husband rather than a boyfriend. She won’t abide a couple living in sin under the same roof as her. Really, though, she’s a sweet old thing. Full of stories about the war and always ready to help if I get stuck on a recipe. I don’t blame her for what happened with Jimmy at all. I’d warned him enough times.

Guests aside, there are other rules you will need to follow to ensure a safe, satisfactory stay at The Old Oak Hotel. They are listed in a book that has been re-penned many times over the centuries. If you choose to accept this opportunity, I will insist that you read it until you can recite the pages word-for-word.
However, there are some rules so critical for your survival that I feel compelled to list them here:

• With the exception of the fourth floor, you are welcome to roam the hotel and its grounds as you please. But you must never set foot outside of our land – not until our child is old enough to fulfil their duties. If I were to do so, it would unleash pandemonium – plague, peril, perhaps another world war. I’m afraid you would be less crucial to the fate of the world, but it would certainly be a personal disaster.
• Never look in the mirrors in room 33.
• I’ve touched this point already, but it bears repeating: never be rude to Mrs Jones.

Failure to observe that last rule is what got Jimmy.
She doted on him. I think he reminded her of her long-dead son, for she pampered him as if he were one of her own. Each morning, she had breakfast ready for him before I had so much as opened my eyes, and she developed a habit of trailing along after him, complimenting his skill as he oiled rusted hinges or set a crooked picture straight.
At first, Jimmy basked in the attention. But by the end of his second month, he was growing bored of Mrs Jones, me, and the hotel itself. We pride ourselves on our facilities. If you need more activity than a turn around the garden, we have a lovely indoor pool – it freezes over every now and then, but most of the time it’s perfectly usable. Our library is unmatched. Although the room is cramped, it has every book imaginable; you only need to think of a particular title, and it will appear on one of the shelves. And now that I’ve dragged us kicking and screaming into the 21^st century, we have a wide array of streaming services.
It wasn’t enough for Jimmy. He wanted to go out – eat in a restaurant, watch a film in the cinema, see any faces other than the ones he was surrounded by every day. He began having a drink each evening. One drink turned into several, and after a few weeks, the bar became his permanent residence between dusk and midnight.
He wasn’t the only one getting bored. I had been thrilled when he first arrived; ecstatic when he agreed to stay. How marvellous to feel real flesh beneath my fingers after five years of only the dead for company. What a relief to have some assistance in the many tasks required to keep the hotel running as it should.
The more he drank, the less inclined he was to help – or even spend time in my company. He no longer visited my bed, choosing a room for himself on the opposite end of the floor. When our paths did cross, at best he would ignore me. At worst, he would nitpick or outright rail against me, blaming me for his captivity.
Still, I made an effort to be present whenever he frequented the bar. As lovely as Mrs Jones can be, she does have a tendency to nag. Before and after her death, she was close to teetotal, only consenting to take a single sherry at Christmas, and drinking outside of special occasions is something of a bugbear of hers.
“Think of your health, dear,” she would tell Jimmy brusquely. “You’ll miss it when it’s gone.”
Or, “How about we switch to a nice apple juice now? You’ve had quite enough to drink for one night.”
Most of the time, Jimmy managed to pull himself together enough to flash a charming smile and distract her with a compliment about her latest meal. But after one drink too many, I’d noticed him gritting his teeth and just barely managing to hold his tongue.
It was better if I was present. Playing the doting wife, I insisted on pouring his drinks, watering them down out of his sight. When Mrs Jones’s nagging bordered on relentless, I could always distract her with a game of gin rummy.
On his final day, I was running behind. The ghoul on the second floor – usually the least demanding of our guests – had come down with some dreadful illness, or else decided he wanted to inconvenience me. Either way, I had woken that morning to the foulest stench I had ever experienced. I followed it to his room and found every surface covered in putrid green-blank gunge, its consistency somewhere between mucus and vomit.
All day I scrubbed, taking only brief breaks to step outside before I fainted. By the time the room was restored to a passable state, and I had filled several bin bags to bursting with filthy rags, it was already deep into the night. Mindful of the time, I paused only long enough to wash the streaks of muck from my arms and face before racing to the bar.
I arrived just in time to hear Jimmy’s last words. After he spat them at Mrs Jones, she only stared for a small eternity, her mouth frozen in the motherly smile she wore whenever she scolded him.
Then, like melted wax, her face began to shift.
I shouted at Jimmy to run, but he didn’t need to be told. Before the words left my mouth, he leapt from his barstool and streaked through the door. Mrs Jones followed him seconds later. Her lips were already peeling back to reveal rows upon rows of long, wickedly sharp fangs, while claws sprouted from beneath her lace-edged cuffs.
I sprinted after them, but Jimmy was fuelled by fear and Mrs Jones by whatever force propels the Mrs Joneses of the world. I followed the screeching to the lobby. Breathless, I arrived to see he had arrived within mere feet of the entrance before Mrs Jones grabbed him.
Claws wrapped around his throat, she lifted him into the air. As I watched, her jaw unhinged, the lower part dropping so that it was nearly level with her chest.
That sight drove all the sense out of my head. Forgetting every rule my parents had ever drilled into me, I lunged at her.
She batted me away as though I weighed no more than a fly.
I crashed into the reception desk, the breath bursting from my lungs in a great woosh. I was certain that I would die, for no amount of effort seemed to force air back into my aching chest. At last, as my vision began to dim, I managed to take a small gulp – then another, and another, until I was able to draw myself together enough to regain my feet.
By that time, Mrs Jones had nearly finished her dinner. Jimmy’s chest was splayed open, muscle and shattered ribs protruding every which way from his flesh, and she was devouring the last few bites of his heart.
His head was angled towards me. The light had winked out from his eyes, but they still held his final terror – and an accusation which, I was quite certain, was directed at me. I would like to say I felt only horror, but I couldn’t help my sudden jolt of irritation. How may times had I told him to mind his manners?
Mrs Jones gulped, the sound thick and wet in her gullet, and dropped what remained of Jimmy to the floor.
Then she turned to me.
Here’s another rule for you, one which I hope you never have cause to use: never interfere with a kill.
The Mrs Jones who used to kiss my grazed knees, who argued with my mother for the right to read me bedtime stories, was no longer at the wheel. No amount of pleading or reasoning would move her.
I could only run.
Spinning around, I vaulted over the reception desk and raced for the office behind it. If Jimmy had not been out of his mind with fear and booze, he might have remembered the rules and survived; it was one of several staff-only rooms throughout the hotel warded to keep out unwanted guests.
Just ten steps from desk to door, yet it was the longest journey of my life. My hard-won breath burned my throat; my heart pounded in my ears, deafening me to all other sounds than Mrs Jones’s heavy, pounding footsteps.
Grasping the handle, her hot, copper-tanged breath was on my neck. Fire exploded in my flesh as she raked her claws down my back. A step further away, and I wouldn’t have made it; the pain would have been too great. But I managed to throw myself into the office and slam the door before crumpling to the ground.
Before I passed out, I heard her grunting and shrieking outside, furious that she couldn’t get in.
Three days I spent in the office, emerging only to feed The Thing in the Cellar before scurrying back to my hiding place. Whenever I left, I tried not to look at the mangled heap that used to be Jimmy. There was no avoiding the smell, though.
With no small difficulty, and the help of a first aid kit, I managed to treat and bandage the wounds on my back. They bled sluggishly all throughout the first day, but thankfully didn’t fester.
On the morning of the fourth day, there was a tentative knock on the door followed by the sound of rapidly retreating footsteps. I waited until they had disappeared down the corridor before cracking the door open. On the floor was a freshly baked Victoria sponge and a beautifully written note of apology.
It took every ounce of courage I possessed, but that evening I forced myself to go to the dining room. Mrs Jones was waiting for me, her eyes red-rimmed, a steaming cottage pie on the table. I tried not to flinch as she took my hand, re-iterating the apology she had already delivered in writing.
The next morning, she helped me clean Jimmy up.
We treated each other cautiously for a while, but eventually we got back to playing gin rummy again. When the scars on my back twinge, as they sometimes do, she helps me rub a soothing ointment into them. Even though I’ve told her it’s not necessary, she apologises every time.
So, you’ve heard my story and you have my proposal. If you think you could be the man for me, I invite you to visit. You will need to drink a cup of ram’s blood (a pinch of nutmeg makes it a little more tolerable) and light a black candle before bedtime. When you next wake, you will find yourself at our gates. As travel arrangements go, it’s hardly the Orient Express, but it beats the airfare.
If you have read this without flinching, if you can stomach the journey to get here, if you walk up to our door and find the nerve to open it, I have one more instruction for you.
Just as you enter, look to your right. You will see a deep brown stain on the lobby carpet. I’ve scrubbed and scrubbed but it just won’t come out. Perhaps that’s for the best. It’s a good reminder of what will happen to you should you call Mrs Jones a “nosy old bat”.
And when you run into Jimmy – as you will, for he still likes hanging around the bar in the evening, his silvery wounds glistening as though they had just been inflicted – don’t let him convince you he was some sort of victim.
He knew the rules.

PC
Reddit Account: FromTheInkpot
Discord Tag: jayonline
Name and House: Tessario of Lys
Age: 28
Cultural Group: Valyrian
Appearance: Taller than the average man, with slender and effeminate features. His skin is pale, his hair consists of curled white locks and his eyes are a vivid lilac. He favours black leathers with silver accents, and often adds coloured silks as sashes, belts, or capes. On the middle finger of his left hand he wears a signet ring of black steel and gold, used to seal letters from the Pearl Bank.
Trait: Marketer
Skill(s): Avaricious (e), Merchantman (e), Broker
Talent(s): Linguistics, Arithmetic, Reading People
Negative Trait(s): Sociopath (non-mechanical)
Starting Title(s): Keyholder of the Pearl Bank, Heir to the blood of Altaerys (secret)
Starting Location: Opening Event
Alternate Characters: N/A
Bio:
Born in the year 4BC, Tessario was the son of a Lyseni courtesan and a nobleman of the Old Blood who had left for the Black Walls of Volantis before he even knew of the child.
Growing up in Lys, Tessario was raised by his mother in a small manse where she would teach him lessons learnt from the courts of the free city.
Since his mother first spoke to him tales of Valyria and dragon riders, Tessario was enthralled.
His bloodline was of the forty families, from one of the few dragonlords on Lys during the 'Night of Tears', when the dragonlords had been poisoned and their dragons slain by their very hosts - the magisters. That the dragon rider had been his ancestor was his family's deepest secret and one that could have seen them killed in generations past.
The knowledge that the dragon riders of old were his very ancestors was almost too much for the young boy to keep secret. Especially now, when dragons had waged conquest on Westeros' shores so recently. But while the Targaryen's were said to wed brother to sister to keep their bond with the dragons strong, his family had not had a dragon rider in five generations. Since then his family's bloodline - the house of Altaerys, thought lost in the Doom of Valyria and the Century of Blood since, had become clouded with the Old Blood of Volantis during their occupation of Lys. And before that, diluted among the courts of Lys the Lovely, where none truly knew or at least none spoke of how much dragon blood they had. It was clear most of Lys had some. The features of silver-blond or white hair and the eyes of pale blue or shades of purple were all too common. The city was truly Valyrian. Who knew how many dragonlords' legacies his blood carried now?
Tessario, with his pure Valyrian blood and features to match, had the fiery will of his ancestors but an uncommonly pragmatic mind. As he grew, so did his keen mind, picking up his numbers and letters faster than other boys his age.
Raised in the turbulence of a city still reeling from the uprising against Volantis, Tessario learnt how violent people could be at a young age. Surrounded by the cruelties of slavery, he grew up numbed to the hardships of others.
By nine name-days he would begin visiting the Temple of Trade where he and other boys would talk with the magisters and tradesmen who congregated there. From among these wealthy and noble men of the city, he and a lucky few others, would gain apprenticeships; a position that was highly coveted in the city of Lys, where trade was considered a profession more honorable than arms.
Tessario shadowed his sponsor for three years, learning the inner workings of trade negotiations, currency exchange, and contract creation. He met several other apprentices who like him hungered for more, as well as making friends among the less prominent families of Lys all too keen to climb the social ladder. So, when his apprenticeship was over they formed a merchantile group of ambitious youths. Tessario and the others began with insurance cons and profitable arbitrage that filled their pockets and funded bigger schemes.
The war in the Stepstones came as a wondrous opportunity for the newly founded group. The members invested heavily, with some overseeing the battles themselves. Luckily the Lysene forces met up with not only those of Tyrosh, but also ships from Dorne and the Stormlands. Tessario wore armour for the first time as he sailed sellswords to the fighting, though did no more than watch in actuality. War made them rich and for the first time in his life Tessario knew what it was to wield true power. The power to make others die for your ends.
The pirate threat crumbled easily, but the true prizes were had after the fighting. Contracts for trade opened up and new ports to invest in saw the merchantile group grow faster than ever before. They hired lingering hedge knights and sellswords to protect their assets and even convinced some of the former pirate vessels to become corsairs under them.
As the Stepstones begin to flourish, the group started to look further afield for other trade routes. In 18AC, just as Dorne began to invest heavily in Sunstone, Tessario sailed to Driftmark as one of three emissaries of their group tasked with finding new avenues for profit. It was while on this mission that Tessario first met Valarr Velaryon, Lord of the Tides. Seeking a base of operations outside of Lys, Tessario negotiated plans for a bank to be built in Spicetown, profiting from the flow of trade.
Tessario broached the concept to the group telling them of the pearls found by fishermen in the pools of the island's coves and a contract for the Pearl Bank was drawn up. Tessario, as one of the two-and-twenty key holders, was now responsible for much.
Construction began in late 19AC with a main building that was reinforced with strong stone and deep vaults. Pearl farms under the control of the bank were also created, with construction of the entire project finishing before the end of 24AC. During this time the bank engaged in numerous amounts of trade, amassing a full vault, as well as funding loans to the many growing businesses of Spicetown, merchants of the free cities, and other Houses of Westeros. This includes House Massey of Stonedance, House Celtigar of Claw Isle, and many other minor houses.
Timeline:

• 4BC - Tessario is born in a Lysene manse.
• 6AC - Begins a trade apprenticeship for three years.
• 9AC - Forms a merchantile group in Lys.
• 12AC - Funds the war in the Stepstones.
• 13AC - War in the Stepstones ends.
• 18AC - Visits Driftmark as an emissary, meeting Valarr Velaryon.
• 19AC - The Pearl Bank begins construction.
• 24AC - Construction is completed.
• 25AC - Current day.

Family tree:
https://familyecho.com/?p=START&c=izpgpsokcmwmhxa6&f=478495015333730745
AC
Name and House: Somovo Saan
Age: 21
Cultural Group: Valyrian
Appearance: Piercing blue eyes shine out from dark features. Somovo has a lean build and freckled face from years of sailing the Narrow and Summer Seas. Her skin is dark and her hair falls in long brown curls down past her shoulders, the occasional braid holding beads of copper. She often wears loose shirts and wide breeches that allow her skin to breathe the salty air of the sea, while sticking to practical leather boots for moving about the deck.
She has a slender black cat named Sȳndor 'shadow' that lives on deck and prowls the bank offices while on shore.
Trait: Reaver
Skill(s): Raider, Fence, Tactician
Talent(s): Winning at Tiles, Tying knots, Swimming
Negative Trait(s): N/A
Starting Title(s): Captain of the Spice Runner
Starting Location: Opening Event
Alternate Characters: N/A
Timeline:

• 4AC - Somovo Saan is born in Lys.
• 9AC - Somovo's father, Sarthos Saan, takes her on her first voyage to Tyrosh.
• 12AC - Her father leaves to fight for the pirates in the Stepstones war.
• 13AC - After the pirates defeat in the Steptones, her father is hired by a group of merchants from Lys. Somovo meets Tessario, one of the groups founders.
• 18AC - Meets the sellsail Captain Laurei of Myr who becomes an inspiration for her to become a Captain of her own ship.
• 19AC - When the Pearl Bank begins construction on Driftmark, Somovo is on deck with her father and they patrol the Narrow Sea together, guarding trading vessels and seeking opportunities for their new employer.
• 21AC - Somovo is given command of her own ship and crew, becoming Captain of The Spice Runner, named after Spicetown.
• 22AC - Her father's ship is lost at sea during a storm near Volantis. The corsairs previously under Sarthos turn to her for leadership by virtue of her blood.
• 24AC - Construction of The Pearl Bank is completed on Driftmark.
• 25AC - Current day.

NPCs
Morio (30) - Cutthroat
Every man of ambition needs a ruthless and silent right hand.
Ser Thomas Storm (27) - Warrior
Knighted by Ser Edwell Celtigar in the Stepstones and knowing he would gain no further gold or glory, he joined the merchantile group from Lys to train their retainers and act as Captain of the Guard to Tessario.
Since then he notably won the joust at the Tourney at Aegon's Rest in 21AC.

I'm a 26 yo guy and have a similar aged friend. We met 8 years ago in uni and have been good friends. Sometimes we lose contact when either of us are in a relationship, traveling, or busy with life.
We've been in more regular contact the past 2 years and she's gotten mildly intimate with me in that time. When we're out she'll hold my hand or sleeve, this past winter she kept asking me to warm her hands and put them in my coat pockets. When we're sitting on a couch she'll put her legs on mine, and when we visited a beach with a hammock she climbed in on me.
The thing is, she used to be super touchy in uni even with guys. We're talking full cuddling on sofas with guy friends and taking sweaters. But after a lot of guys got the wrong message she toned it down a ton which I've noticed when I've met other guy friends of hers, she's a lot more reserved.
And part of me does think she's just comfortable around me and thinks of me as a real platonic guy friend she has. But there's really not much in our relationship that's different from dating. We buy gifts for each other for dates, when we're sick we visit to take care of each other. She sometimes calls me to say she just wanted to hear my voice or misses me. We're both busy with work but she goes out of her way to clear her schedule for a full day to meet with me and plan our date (she calls it a date but she calls meeting anyone a date). She's been convincing me to join her in traveling even though I don't like it much.
It's just at a certain point I'm wondering what I'm doing or where we're at. It just doesn't feel normal to be planning so much around one person and be this intimate with them. A few times I've brought up the topic of borders around friendship and relationships come up and she's always said it makes her sad that guys try to be her friend with the ulterior future goal of trying to hit. I tried asking her why she's been around me for so long and why she bothers me so much, and she always laughs and said she doesn't know but that she just naturally gravitated to me.
Outside of those questions, i dont know how I'd ask unless its outright. But i dont want to do that because I really don't want to lose a friend I've known for that long.
And honestly I like her a lot but I can't really see us being in a real relationship, we've been friends for too long and I've seen her in relationships before. It would feel like dating a sister which is why im a little uncomfortable with the lack of distance.
Tl;dr Girl friend is super touchy with me (a guy), wondering if that is normal or crossing a few boundaries that I should better establish

I'm a 26 yo guy and have a similar aged friend. We met 8 years ago in uni and have been good friends. Sometimes we lose contact when either of us are in a relationship, traveling, or busy with life.
Weve been in more regular contact the past 2 years and she's gotten mildly intimate with me in that time. When we're out she'll hold my hand or sleeve, this past winter she kept asking me to warm her hands and put them in my coat pockets. When we're sitting on a couch she'll put her legs on mine, and when we visited a beach with a hammock she climbed in on me.
The thing is, she used to be super touchy in uni even with guys. We're talking full cuddling on sofas with guy friends and taking sweaters. But after a lot of guys got the wrong message she toned it down a ton which I've noticed when I've met other guy friends of hers, she's a lot more reserved.
And part of me does think she's just comfortable around me and thinks of me as a real platonic guy friend she has. But there's really not much in our relationship that's different from dating. We buy gifts for each other for dates, when we're sick we visit to take care of each other. She sometimes calls me to say she just wanted to hear my voice or misses me. We're both busy with work but she goes out of her way to clear her schedule for a full day to meet with me and plan our date (she calls it a date but she calls meeting anyone a date). She's been convincing me to join her in traveling even though I don't like it much.
It's just at a certain point I'm wondering what I'm doing or where we're at. It just doesn't feel normal to be planning so much around one person and be this intimate with them. A few times I've brought up the topic of borders around friendship and relationships come up and she's always said it makes her sad that guys try to be her friend with the ulterior future goal of trying to hit. I tried asking her why she's been around me for so long and why she bothers me so much, and she always laughs and said she doesn't know but that she just naturally gravitated to me.
Outside of those questions, i dont know how I'd ask unless its outright. But i dont want to do that because I really don't want to lose a friend I've known for that long.
And honestly I like her a lot but I can't really see us being in a real relationship, we've been friends for too long and I've seen her in relationships before. It would feel like dating a sister which is why im a little uncomfortable with the lack of distance. This might just be something I let sit for a year or 2 and see what happens.

Have you ever experienced something that shook you to your very core? Something that makes you remember every single little detail of your surroundings from that moment in time? Even years after? I can remember so vividly the moment I realized something was wrong with me. I was in my junior year of high school sitting in class, just like any other day. I remember the smell of erasers and cheap cologne that permeated off my classmate who sat next to me. I remember the scratchy tag on my t-shirt and how I was resisting taking it off in the middle of class just to cut it off. I remember what my teacher, Mrs. Brown, was talking about; 'the fall of Constantinople'. My mouth felt dry and I kept looking at the clock, counting down the minutes until I had lunch so I could get a soda. The sound of a pen clicking behind me was synchronized with the song that was stuck in my head.
All those things were going through my brain at once. My ADHD mind went a million miles per minute when it all came down to a cashing holt when I felt it at 11:23
I felt what I can only describe as a hand grabbing at the inner lining of my stomach. It didn't necessarily hurt, not at this point. That's not why I got so scared. You see, not only do I have ADHD. I also have OCD that manifests itself in the fear of anything growing or moving inside me. Even if I think about the concept of blood moving in my body or a heart that is beating in my chest, I have to think of something else. I've had full-blown panic attacks because of it. The closest term for this is 'Tokophobia'. That's technically the fear of pregnancy. I'm a guy, so it's not completely accurate but it's really the closest term. I mean, I also do have a huge fear of pregnancy. Not necessarily of me being pregnant, but even though I knew I could never get pregnant, the thought of it still made me feel sick
I bet you can imagine the terror that overcame me as I felt something moving in me. I made an audible groan and grabbed my stomach. My whole class turned to look at me. even my teacher stopped talking to ask if I was okay. I stood up and started to run to the nurses' office without even acknowledging my teacher. My first thought wasn't thinking that something was actually in my body. Even stomach aches and the feeling of gurgling in my stomach made me feel this way before. I didn't have anything on hand to help with a stomach ache, unfortunately. However, the nurse always did.
I sprinted across the school hoping and praying that my stomach wouldn't make that awful feeling again before I got there.
I turned the corner into the nurses' office with my tennis shoes squeaking in the process. I saw the school nurse, Mrs. Kennedy sitting on the couch in her office reading a magazine. She looked up at me with a sweet smile that quickly turned into worry.
"Sam, what is it? How can I help?" She said as she stood up and hurried over to me. Putting her hand over mine which was grabbing my stomach tightly.
"It's…It's my stomach. Something is wrong with it." I mumbled with a red face.
She shuffled her way over to her large medicine cabinet and she motioned for me to sit down.
She asked me questions about my stomach. Asking if it was pain, grumbling, cramps, nausea, etc. As she was asking me what my symptoms were and digging through bottles, The feeling happened again. However, this time was different. It felt like fingers grassing against the inside of my body. I screamed and wrapped my arms around my torso. Mrs. Kenneddy ran over to me to comfort me.
"This seems a lot worse than normal, maybe we should call your parents." She said as she put her hand on my back.
It felt like some days I saw Mrs. Kennedy more than my teachers. Any small ailment would distract me so badly from class that I had to go see her. Sometimes multiple times a day. She knew at this point when something was really wrong.
Within about 30 minutes both my parents were there with us. That may seem fast, but I'm an only child and my parents are very aware of my tendencies. They know I can spiral and like to be around if it happens.
They kept asking me where the pain was. I think they assumed by the way I wasn't responding to their questions the pain must've been really bad. The reality was that I just didn't know how to tell them what was going on.
I got so frustrated after they asked me over and over again that I just yelled at them.
"Something is inside me! Get it out, get it out, get it out!" I lifted my shirt and was ripping at my stomach. Leaving red nail scratches and cuts. My mom and dad ran to either side of me to grab my arms. Mrs. Kennedy had seen me go pretty crazy, but this was the worst I've ever gotten in front of her. My parents however had seen a similar situation before. Not exactly like this, but they didn't skip a beat on trying to help me.
"Sam. Breath, sweety. Just remember everything is in you for a reason. It's keeping you alive. Nothing is going to hurt you." My mom said softly to me. Trying to calm me down with the words my therapist gave her. "Ice cubes, get him ice cubes!" She said to Mrs. Kennedy as I started to hyperventilate.
Mrs. Kennedy grabbed a ziplock bag and started to fill it with ice cubes. My mom went over to her and grabbed an ice cube right out of the bag, opened up my hand, and put the ice cube in it. This worked in the past to distract me, I knew that's what she was doing, and trust me. I wanted it to work too, but this was different. I kept trying to tell myself that it was just a different feeling I hadn't felt before. That it wasn't possible something was physically inside my body. But I couldn't help it.
Everyone in the room could see that this was getting intense. I think they assumed it was just a mental breakdown and that nothing was physically wrong with my body but I didn't care. I just wanted help.
My parents got me into the car with my mom even sitting in the backseat with me. She kept trying to distract me with conversation but my mind was only on that awful feeling in my stomach.
We pulled up to the ER and my mom guided me in while holding both my wrists. It felt like she was walking me on a leash but I didn't fight it. I knew she was just trying to stop me from scratching my stomach.
We walked in and I spoke to the receptionist. All I said was that I had terrible pain in my stomach. I didn't want to sound too crazy. I just needed a doctor to look at whatever was going on.
After giving the receptionist my name and insurance information we went to sit down. I was sitting in between my parents and I could see my mom lean back to try and mouth something to my dad without me seeing. I didn't think much of it. I was way more worried about other things.
My dad then went up to the receptionist. He pointed over to me and she looked a little concerned. I saw her pick up the clipboard that had my information on it and she started writing something else on it. I asked my dad what he did and he just said to not worry and that he wanted to let her know it was urgent.
No more than 10 minutes went by and I felt a terrible moving sensation. I cringed and grabbed my stomach. Immediately followed by not just the feeling of a hand grabbing my insides but also scratching and pinching. I yelled out in pain as the other people in the waiting room looked at me mortified.
A doctor and a couple of nurses came running over to me and helped me up. But I couldn't stand up. I was in too much pain. They put me in a wheelchair and started to head for a room. However, they didn't take me through the normal big ER doors that went to the standard examination rooms, they took me and my parents through a smaller door to the side that had a padlock on it.
We walked through a white hallway that was very quiet. The doctor and nurses showed us to my room and helped me into my bed as I was wiggling and wincing. I had one parent on either side of me. Patiently waited to stop my arms from scratching.
The doctor was trying to ask further questions but he could tell it wasn't going anywhere. I knew that my dad probably told that receptionist about my OCD tendencies and that I needed to go to the psych ward. Not just to the stranded side of the ER.
I couldn't take it anymore and blurted out that something was inside my stomach and it was trying to get out.
The doctor just looked at my parents for a reaction and they gave him a sad nod. It was like they warned him that this could happen. The doctor didn't just think I was crazy, my parents did too. The doctor took a deep breath and came up to me. I knew I was about to hear some kind of dumb speech about how this was just my OCD and everything was going to be okay.
As he came closer to me, I pulled up my shirt and he gasped. Not only was my stomach scratched up like crazy, but we saw movement. It looked like when a pregnant woman can see her baby kicking. But this was so much stronger. It was stretching my skin.
My parents stood up and gasped while the doctor looked frantic and unprepared.
"Shit, shit, shit, shit!" The doctor said as he backed out of the room. "Hang on! We are getting this taken care of, just hang tight."
Just seconds later a nurse came in to give me some painkillers. I started to feel the pain slip away, but something so much worse started to creep in. I heard a voice. Not my own. Not some creepy-sounding creature, but the voice of a normal-sounding man that I'd never heard before. But that wasn't the scary part. The scary part was what he was saying to me.
"Get me out. Get me out. Get me out!"
It started in a normal tone, but slowly became more urgent and rushed. Then demanding.
The voice would coincide with the moment inside me.
It was getting so loud that I was having a hard time hearing the people around me. The doctor came in just a few minutes after I last saw him. He was red and sweaty. Like he'd just run a marathon. He told me they needed to do just a few tests on what was inside me before taking action.
I was trying so hard to pay attention to the words coming out of his mouth but all I could hear was the voice. The voice stopped for just a second and changed what he was saying. Now he started repeating,
"Cut me out, cut me out, cut me out, now!" I now knew this thing didn't just want out but it wanted out now. I begged the doctor to just get it out now but he wouldn't listen. The voice spoke up again.
"This is taking too long. Don't be afraid. Get me out yourself."
I think it could feel me resisting. Without realizing it, I was looking around the room for something. It was like I didn't even have control over my head or eyes anymore. I knew the voice was looking for a knife but I was trying to ignore the feeling. I knew there weren't any knives around. I was in a very safe place.
Just as I had the feeling I was safe, it was immediately taken away. The thought passed through my head that my dad probably had a pocket knife on him. My heart sank. I knew this thing could hear my thoughts. I knew what it would try to do.
The next thing I knew, I was on my feet, leaping for my dad. My body hit his. luckily, he's in pretty good shape for his age and had no problems putting me in my place.
He got on top of me and pinned me to the ground. All while I could barely hear my mom in the background. Yelling at my dad to be careful. My dad knew something was going on and that I just needed to be on the ground until I calmed down.
My body tried to flail but it wasn't successful. The whole time the voice in my head, now yelling and screaming. Not saying any distinguishable words, but just having what felt like a tantrum. What made my dad the most uncomfortable was the kicking feeling coming from my stomach.
After a couple of minutes, the voice calmed down and I felt in charge of my body again. My dad slowly got up and attempted to help me up. At this point with an audience of hospital staff that looked like they were getting ready to take me somewhere for more tests.
Just as I stood up straight, I felt the voice take over and I lost all sense of my own body. I felt like a shell of myself. My dad gave me a soft yet worried smile, and in that instance, I grabbed him and reached into his pocket. My heart sank as I felt his pocket knife. The room started to panic and about 5 people tried to grab it from me. The last thing I remember is plunging the knife into my stomach. I felt a blinding pain and everything went black.
Several hours later I started to wake up. Everything was extremely blurry and fuzzy. I could hear a very faint voice telling me to relax. As the minutes passed by, things started to become a little bit clearer. I looked around and saw I was in a large room with a few other patients. A nurse was going up to all the beds and checking in on them. I tried to sit up a bit to get more comfortable and noticed an incredible sourness in my stomach. I moved my hospital gown out of the way and saw a huge scare. About 6" across. Most of the scare looked very surgical. Like what I'd imagine a c-section surgery would look like. Except where I remembered the knife going in. It looked like a bunch of extra stitches had to be added where it went in. It also looked pretty bruised. I can imagine that a dull 10-year-old knife that was harshly shoved into a body really wouldn't cleanly cut through and leave some damage.
The feeling of shock from looking at my stomach was quickly gone when I realized that meant whatever was in me was now gone. I didn't hear the voice, I didn't feel a hand in my gut anymore, I didn't see that vile kicking anymore. I felt like I could breathe.
I asked the nurse what they found and she looked flush.
"Uh, that's something that you, uh. Your doctor will talk with you once you eat something and can speak clearly." She said as she scurried off looking upset.
Shortly after that, I was wheeled into a recovery room and my parents came to see me.
As they walked in they had a very similar look on their faces as the nurse did. They looked pale and didn't want to look me in the eye. I kept asking them questions about what was going on but they said the doctor needed to discuss it with me and he wanted to make sure I wasn't feeling high from the anesthesia while we had a conversation.
The doctor didn't come and see me for another 10 hours. Which felt strange. And to add to the strangeness, my parents were taking shifts hanging out with me. There was only overlap when they switched and the other parent took over while the other one left the room. I would understand if they weren't both with me for the whole time. I'm not that needy, but they were only both in my room together for about an hour. That was the hour before the doctor came to my room.
Finally, the doctor came in to talk to me. When he walked in, the room was cold and quiet. It was evident he didn't feel the same relief I was feeling.
He seemed awkward. Like he was talking way too long to get over to me. He grabbed a chair and scooted it close to me.
"Listen Sam. I know this last 24 hours has been very challenging. I apologize for not explaining what happened during your surgery sooner, but we all needed time to figure it out, and quite frankly, process what happened. We feel we have enough information to let you in on what is going on." A silence filled the room. It felt like no one was brave enough to break it.
"And?" I said with confusion.
"I think it'll be easier if we just show you."
The doctor along with my parents helped me into a wheelchair and we started to make our way across the hospital to an entirely different section. I couldn't believe all the things running through my head at what we were about to see. It felt like cruel and unusual punishment to leave me in anticipation and not just tell me what I was about to see.
When I went around the corner I couldn't process what I was looking at. I thought they were showing me a large tumor or growth of some kind, but why would a tumor be in a big incubation chamber with tubes connected to IVs and machines coming out of it?
As I got closer, I started to see human fetchers on it. It was mostly just a 6-pound lump of flesh, but I could see a hand sticking out of it. It was small, but what made it creepy was it looked like a fully developed man's hand. Just small. I could see a patch of hair coming out of what I assumed was its head. It had no discernible facial features. Just a few teeth scattered in one section.
As I looked at it with disgust, coming to terms with this thing that was just in my body, I had a realization. I wasn't feeling sick at the thought of something being in my body. Sure, I was grossed out that this particular thing was just in me, but the thought of the bacteria in my body didn't make me want to throw up. I thought about all the blood pumping through my veins and I felt… normal. Not only was the voice and kicking gone. But my OCD was gone too. I didn't have a mental illness. It was just this thing. Trying to find its way out for years.
As I was staring at the creature, the doctor came and put his hand on my shoulder.
"We believe this is your twin brother." I immediately looked up at my parents who looked very disturbed and upset. I let the doctor finish talking. "We believe that you absorbed him in the womb and that he has been living inside you your whole life. This is an extremely rare condition called fetus-in-fetu. It seems he didn't quite have the best opportunity to develop normally. That's why he looks the way he does. Despite his appearance, he has all the organs he needs to survive. Looks like he's missing a lung and his gallbladder. Also a piece of his liver but other than that, it looks like he will live for at least a few years. He won't be able to leave this room due to him needing a feeding tube and a few other things that his body can not do on its own. He needs lots of support just to live. What makes this situation extremely unique is that your twin is still alive despite your body not sustaining him anymore. Even though we have him hooked up to a few IVs and machines, It is unexplainable how he is living while outside of your body."
I was in complete shock. I didn't want to believe it. I asked my mom why she never told me I absorbed my twin in the womb, she said she had no clue. There was never a sign when she was pregnant with me.
He also mentioned that sometimes even in pregnancies women will go their whole pregnancy without even getting a belly. It's called a 'Cryptic pregnancy'. I've always had a bit of a gut but never anything big enough to cause suspicion. I guess in my case I had a fetus-fetu and an experience similar to a cryptic pregnancy. Even though it was in my stomach. At least that was the doctor's best guess. Although, it all sounded like BS to me.
The doctor and my parents kept trying to explain more and more details to me. I don't know why they didn't slow down a little bit for my sake. How could they not tell I wasn't processing any of this?
I noticed something while they were trying to explain things to me. They kept calling it a 'He'.
Now listen. I'm not some kind of asshole that won't respect someone who wants to be called a specific pronoun. I've never been that kind of person. But this is where I draw the line.
Not just that. But this thing had a name. My parents named it and said today was its birthday. While they told me all this information, they didn't look happy about it. It seemed like they were forced to do all this nonsense. And now it was my turn to be convinced. I could tell they were trying to force it.
The doctor told me despite it not having a high probability for a long life that we should still try and give it the love it deserves. Of course, the doctor referred to it as a 'He' but I refused to.
This disgusted me. This thing tried to kill me and ruined my quality of life for so long, and now we are going to treat it like it's some kind of prince? No, absolutely not.
Luckily, it seemed like it would never leave the hospital, but my parents planned on going to visit it daily. Visiting it? Are you kidding me? it has no eyes, no ears, it's probably miserable and has no concept of people even being around it.
I'm refusing to ever see this thing again or acknowledge its existence again.
I could get in trouble for even talking about this. The hospital or anyone involved has signed NDAs to not share any information about this until it officially dies. This is because it's a medical anomaly and the first of its kind. They want to do the proper research on how this all occurred before coming out with a statement. I just have to get this all off my chest. I feel like I'm the crazy one here when I know I'm not. I don't care if I get in trouble.
I am scared that the doctors are trying to force my parents into giving this thing a proper life. I think that's why it took them so long to tell me. I think they scared my parents into keeping it alive and guilting them or even forcing them into being its parent.
I'm all for every life being important and all that stuff, but I have a feeling my parents are terrified of this thing just like I am.
I am convinced they gaslit my parents into believing this thing is my brother. If there wasn't any sign of him while my mom was pregnant with me, could this thing be something else?
This all happened about two years ago. It's still alive and they are still researching it. My parents continue to visit it despite everything. My therapist told me that I'm probably just struggling with jealousy now that I'm not an only child anymore and so much of my parents' attention is on him now, but it's so much bigger than just jealousy.
Since this thing showed up and my OCD is pretty much gone, I've hardly seen my parents. I know I'm not just jealous. There is something more to this. I know it.
Something just feels so off about this whole thing. What is this thing? Where did it come from? And what does it want?

This was the summer of 2019. I was seeing my girlfriend at the time. We would hang out at her home a few times a week. Every day before heading home, i would start up my car and drive across the street where i would park next to a local park, away from the neighborhood (to avoid upsetting the neighbors with my slighlty loud sports car) and would remain there for a few minutes while my car would warm up.
This was usually in the evening time and as it was the warm summer weather, i would crack the window open and sit scroll on my phone.
I stood there for maybe no less than 5 minutes when i noticed a homeless man approach my opened driver side window and stand there with a pocket knife in hand, standing, looking at me a few inches away from the door not saying anything. I always carry my off duty weapon on me. I drew my handgun and pointed it in the mans direction and asked the homeless man to step away from the car door. The man stared at me with a blank stare, then at my handgun that was at my waste side pointed at him and stated oh sorry man, my apoligizes. He closed the pocket knife, stepped away from the door and began running into the park. He quickly vanished and i decided to chack it up as a weird encounter and just drive home.
I drove off towards a near by stop light and thought, maybe ill swing around and check for the man in case he returned. Sure enough as i turned around and pulled up into the neighborhood, i witnessed the same man walking with a middle aged female with him heading in the direction of the park. I pulled over, got out of my vehicle with my off duty weapon in my hand and motioned for the female to come towards me. She walked up and i asked her if she knew the man. She stated that she did not and was just helping the man who had moments before asked her to follow him into the park to help him find his lost dog. I advised the female that this man had brandished a knife just minutes before and that she needs to return home immediately and call 911 to notify dispatch about a strange homeless man in the neighborhood. As i was advising the female to do this, i noticed the man overhear the conversation, and began running into the park until he vanished into the dark.
To this day i do not know what happened to the homeless man but hope nobody else has had to experience such strange and dangerous encounters with him since then.

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NaughtyConfessions
Remember to check our Ai Generator: CandyAI

I was just returning back from another interview. It has been the third one this month.
I failed to make the cut yet again.
Life hasn’t been easy for an ex-soldier with the economic downturn currently underway.
The COVID pandemic had also wiped out all my savings.
So I was open to securing any job that would help me pay my bills.
I hadn’t eaten all day and just passed by a McDonalds. It was crowded and I thought to myself, ‘Let me just order a takeout’.
I could see a few vehicles waiting in front of me.
There was a guy in his motorcycle honking incessantly demanding the customer in front to keep it moving.
He was a tall man with long hair and clearly looked edgy and irritable. Both his arms were heavily tattooed. He stepped down from his bike and started to walk towards the car in front of him.
I couldn’t make out what he way saying but I could see the conversation was getting heated.
I got down from my car and walked towards the biker guy.
As I got closer, the biker banged on the hood of the car and was pointing his finger at the man threateningly.
The guy in the car was looking a little alarmed. He had a young boy seated next to him.
The woman working at the driveway counter appealed to the biker to maintain his cool. He would hear none of it.
She then proceeded to call the police and this made the biker more irate. He snatched the receiver from her and hit her face with it. She fell backwards and started bleeding from the nose.
The biker then proceeded to turn his gaze towards the man in the car. He opened the door and dragged the guy outside.
He drew his hand back to throw a punch at him.
I caught his arm from behind and kicked him hard in the shins. He yelped in pain and let go of the other man.
He then turned back angrily to take a look at me. He was wearing a black jacket with the name Kenny embossed in front.
I said, “Listen Kenny. I have had a really bad day. So you either stop this madness or I am going to break your bones.”
He snarled and threw a punch at me with all his might. I swerved to the right and ducked just in time, causing him to miss completely.
Next, he whipped out a switch blade from his pocket and lunged towards me with it. I side stepped him and counterattacked with a punch to his plexus. He went down on one knee.
I caught hold of his knife arm and ordered him to drop it.
“Drop the knife kenny!! This is your last warning”, I repeated.
He started to fidget with his other arm around his shoe. I realized he had another weapon hidden in his sock.
So before he could attempt anything else, I twisted his forearm and landed a crushing blow to his elbow. It snapped into two and he lay on the floor yelping in pain.
By this point, other people came forward to intervene and help with the situation.
As Kenny was being led away by the police, he kept staring at me with madness in his eyes.
“I am coming back for you. This is going to be the biggest regret of your life”, he yelled.
I didn’t care and started going back to my car.
Then the man who was threatened by Kenny came forward and shook my hand.
“Hi. I am Rupert. That is my son Henry”, he said.
I waved my hand at the boy and he waved back.
“I would like to thank you for what you did for me back there”, he said.
“You not only helped me maintain my dignity but also helped me save face in front of my son”, he continued.
“This means a lot to me as a dad” he said.
I nodded in acknowledgement not sure what I was to add to the conversation.
He then reluctantly asked,” Is there anything I can do to repay the favour? Please feel free to ask . Anything. I would be most grateful.”
I thought for a moment. I could see the man was wealthy.
“If it’s not too much of an ask, I would appreciate a job if available. If you feel that is difficult, no problem. Forget I asked. No worries.” I said.
He smiled back at me warmly. He reached into his pocket and handed me a card.
“Please come to my office tomorrow. We can talk” he signed off.
From that moment on, I became the personal bodyguard and chaperone of his 8 year old son Henry. We immediately hit it off and became pals. I looked after all his son’s travelling arrangements.
We would also go to McDonalds every week for his favourite Burger and fries. I later learnt that his father was a very wealthy man who made most of his money during the dot com bubble.
I also became friends with the female employee at the driveway counter who had earlier been attacked by that biker punk Kenny.
Her name was Stella and it didn’t take very long for the two of us to start dating.
With a fulfilling job and a loving girlfriend by my side, my life was finally back on track. I couldn’t be happier.
And then one day - it all came crashing.
Henry and I as usual visited the McDonalds joint and I was surprised to see Stella missing at the counter.
I asked the staff about her and they said she hadn’t turned up today.
I thought that was weird. She had stayed over at my place and I saw her leave for work in the morning.
I tried calling her number but it was unreachable.
I dropped Henry at home and headed towards Stella’s apartment.
She had given me a spare key and I opened the door with it. Everything was in its place.
I tried her number again. It remained not reachable.
I decided to go back to my apartment to check if she might be there.
When I reached the door, I could see the lock had been smashed. The door was left slightly open.
I took out my side arm and slowly entered the apartment.
I could see a life size figure of Ronald McDonald the clown sitting on my sofa.
The famous mascot was sitting cross legged with one arm resting on the backrest. Just like how he likes to sit on benches outside McDonald outlets all across the world.
I was a little taken aback, but quickly switched on the lights to take a closer look.
As I moved closer, my knees buckled under my own weight.
It was Stella. She was the one who was dressed as the clown.
There were injury marks around her neck. She had been strangled to death.
I managed to call the cops while still reeling from the shock.
I also noticed her right hand which was resting on her thigh, was close fisted. When I pried it open, there was a crumpled piece of paper inside.
It read -
“She was really begging me for mercy.
Where was soldier boy when she needed him huh?
Boo Hoo….I’m Lovin It!!
I’m Lovin it!!
Signed Yours Kenny”
I could feel a surge of anger envelop me. And yet I lay there helpless.
Had it not been for the surveillance cameras at the entrance of my home, I would have been in jail by now.
The police could clearly see Kenny carrying Stella’s body and breaking into my apartment.
They put out a nationwide notice for Kenny and he’s been on the run ever since.
Even after 2 months following Stella’s death, the police were not any closer to catching the culprit.
But I did apprise Henry’s dad of the situation. His life was also at risk after considering what happened to my girlfriend.
But our collective worry was for Henry. We didn’t want to see him suffer for no fault of his.
So I started training Henry to take his own safety seriously. I devised multiple safeguards to keep him protected while being outdoors. Always ensured that I was personally there to drop and pick him up from school.
My boss appreciated all that I was doing for his son. He knew I had taken Stella’s death hard.
He was a generous and compassionate man and I liked working for him.
Although he did notice I wasn’t my usual cheery self anymore.
One day when I was waiting at the office, he tossed the keys of his new car at me.
“This should perk you up. Take her for a spin” he said.
“And also go pick Henry up from school”, he finished as he left for a meeting.
I got down to the parking lot, and there she was … waiting. The new Bugatti Chiron.
I opened the door and took the driver’s seat. The fresh smell of the leather upholstery was already lifting my spirits.
‘Boss was right! I am perking up’, I thought to myself.
I drove around the block and stopped by McDonalds to pick up the usual order for me and Henry.
I felt a tinge of sadness when I could no longer see Stella at the counter.
Anyways, I picked the order and started my way towards school.
As I went past the restaurant, I saw an old jeep parked by the side of the road. I didn’t think much of it at that moment.
When I reached Henry’s school, I parked the car a few feet away from the entrance. A couple of minutes later, I noticed the same jeep I saw at McDonalds go past me and park 20 mts in front.
I would have never given it a second glance had I not spotted it at the restaurant.
The jeep had 3 passengers. They looked like bikers with tattoos, beard and long hair.
And then there was Kenny standing behind a tree to avoid detection. But I spotted him.
He was gesturing towards them to get ready. I could see his Harley parked just a few feet away.
They were planning some kind of ambush.
The school bell rang and the children were already out on the streets.
I could see Henry at a distance in the courtyard. He was slowly making his way towards the gate.
I immediately called him on the phone and told him to go to the Principals office and stay there. I made it clear under no circumstances was he to venture out until I gave him the all clear. He understood.
He was safe as long as he was within the school’s premises.
The next thing to do was move to another location. The children were already pouring onto the streets, and the last thing I wanted was to see a child getting hurt.
I started the car and went past the jeep before taking the next turn. I kept driving.
Few moments later, the jeep caught up with me and the driver violently swerved towards the left causing me to go off course. My car came to halt.
The guys quickly alighted from the jeep and they were all armed to the teeth.
Kenny came in his motorcycle and stopped his bike a few feet ahead of me. He took out his shotgun and had it aimed straight at my chest.
The firing started before I even had the time to react.
I instinctively ducked for cover with my eyes closed.
But in my heart, I knew my time was up!!
As the seconds went by, even with all those bullets being sent my way - my body felt strangely light.
‘Am I in heaven already?’ I thought to myself.
I slowly opened my eyes and tilted my head upwards to take a peak.
And I realized I was sitting in an armoured bullet proof car.
The entire biker gang were mad with rage, doing everything possible to penetrate that thick armour plate.
Kenny was barking orders at his gang to continue the onslaught. He then pointed his finger at me and yelled, “I am coming for you.”
I looked down at the seat next to mine and saw the takeout I had ordered.
Just to piss him off even further, I took out my Big Mac and slowly took a big bite.
I sat there in gastronomic bliss savouring my burger, while being under a continuous hail of bullets.
The firing suddenly stopped. Kenny the psycho was livid as hell - to see me have a good time.
I looked him in the eye while I took a sip of my favourite milkshake.
And then, continued to chomp on my burger.
He looked a little crestfallen at how his plan was misfiring and then frantically gestured his troops to keep at it. The firing started again.
But it didn’t last long. They eventually all ran out of ammo and his buddies began to flee the scene, as we could hear sirens at a distance.
The attack had taken a toll on the car. But it managed to withstand all that damage. All that firing.
A life saver!
I looked at Kenny again. Only one thought was running through my head now.
‘My Turn’.
I switched on the ignition and rammed the car straight into Kenny. He hit the bonnet hard while the car continued to race forward.
He was clinging on to dear life with his outstretched hands desperately clutching at the sides of the car.
Next in the demolition line, was his prized Harley Davidson.
I hit it full steam and watched it smash to smithereens - with parts scattering all across the road.
Then, I hit the brakes and Kenny was sent flying 10 feet forward.
After impact, he slowly staggered to his feet - all bloody and bruised.
His face was swollen like an apple.
He was pleading towards me with folded hands to show him mercy.
‘This is for Stella. And She’s lovin it’, I said out loud.
I hit the accelerator again.

My husband loves me, and he loves Sadie. But mainly, he's tired. And so eventually Sadie got her rat. Honey lived happily in Sadie's room in his 3-tiered Rat Palace, and every day I would take time out from soothing the infant and wrestling with the 3-year-old to play with the rat, something the pet store warned I had to do if I wanted to socialize him. 

Updated with autopsy results.
Morphew Case Map - Google My Maps - Barry's iPhone Data - Google My Maps - Barry's Truck Events - Google My Maps
August 5, 1994 – Suzanne Moorman marries Barry Morphew The Alexandria Times-Tribune Alexandria, Indiana 05 Jan 1994, Wed • Page 4
December 1999 – Barry and Suzanne Purchase 26040 Cal Carson Rd, Arcadia, IN This is the house where he dug a hole in the yard and buried everything he didn't want to move to Colorado. (AA ft 55 page 53)
November 2013 – Suzanne Inherits $208,000 upon the Passing of her Mother. MB provided documents that Suzanne inherited approximately $208,000 in 2013 at the passing of her mother.
August 2016 – Suzanne inherits $217,000 upon the death of a grandmother. Suzanne’s grievance list included multiple references to Barry controlling the finances.
April 12, 2018 – The Morphew’s Purchase 19057 Puma Path Barry and Suzanne Morphew purchase 19057 Puma Path for $1,575,000.
June 1, 2018 – The Morphews move to Colorado. (PH – Harris) SA Harris: Yeah, they moved in 2018. I believe they left around June 1st, 2018. to move to Colorado. So roughly a year and a half of the time is what Sheila originally said in that.
September 2018 – Suzanne sends “Howdy stranger” message to JL First contact since high school.
Fall 2018 – Libler’s daughter sees messages from Suzanne on his phone. Libler breaks it off.
Thanksgiving 2018 – Barry obsessive/possessive. While Suzanne was at the Oliver’s house, she had stepped away from her cell phone to use the restroom, and Barry tried calling her several times within a few minutes, then tried calling Sheila, then tried calling Darin.
Holidays 2018 – Suzanne finds Libler’s LinkedIn Page. Relationship Rekindled
January 2019 – The Mexico trip where Barry took Suzanne’s phone Mexico trip mentioned in the grievances list where Barry took Suzanne's phone.
February 11 – 14, 2019 – Suzanne in New Orleans with Libler Barry admitted to questioning Suzanne about the New Orleans trip, further evidence he suspected the affair.
April 2019 – Suzanne meets up with Libler in Indiana She does not see SO on this trip.
July 2019 – Suzanne and Libler meet up in Michigan Barry called SO while Suzanne was in MI visiting her fatheJL, wanting to know why Suzanne wasn't returning his calls.
September 2019 – Barry stalks Suzanne and Shelia Oliver, creeping through woods. Barry stalked Suzanne and Sheila at the Puma Path house in September 2019. This is upon his early return from a trip to Arizona.
October 2019 – Libler and Suzanne in Dallas Suzanne and Libler spend two nights at the Galleria.
September – November 2019 – Barry aggressively pursues KW around Salida. From the first time KW met Barry, she said it felt like "he was putting his tentacles out."
Holidays 2019 – Suzanne and Libler stop talking on the phone because she is afraid Barry will find out. They shift to more covert ways to communicate. Barry's second device makes its first appearance.
January/February 2020 – Suzanne in Florida, gets spy pen, sees Libler Suzanne in Florida, SO gives her the spy pen during this trip. Suzanne records a conversation with Libler on this trip.
Late February 2020 – Suzanne in Florida, sees father and Libler. Suzanne skips out on time with her father to see Libler. Barry goes to Florida.
March 2020 – Spy pen records argument between Suzanne and Barry. “It’s money. It’s about money.” “… I have lived for years being told how I should feel, how I should act, how I should look, what I should drink, what I shouldn’t drink, what I should put in my body, what I shouldn’t put in my body … ”
March 20, 2020 – Jekyll and Hyde text exchange between Suzanne and SO, MM2 suggests restraining order. "It’s Jekyl and Hyde again … Pretty much told him I can’t be healthy and stay in this."
March 22, 2020 – Spy pen records Barry listening to Forensic Files episodes, call with Suzanne on drive to Pueblo Coincidentally one of the episodes involved a woman "disappearing" after a bike ride.
April 21, 2020 – Messages between Suzanne and Libler “I want to be with you,” “I can only be me with you,” I love you,” “I need you.” “You know I was born to love you.”
May 4, 2020 16:05 – Barry makes 3 second outgoing call to Suzanne This was the first logged call in Barry’s phone to or from Suzanne since February 7, 2020.
May 5, 2020 – Suzanne drives MM2 to Gunnison Suzanne drives Macy to Gunnison, CO to meet MM1 for a road/camping trip through Utah and Idaho with MM1's best friend.
May 6, 08:44 – Suzanne sends MM2 a text “Good morning! I miss you already!”
May 6, 10:13 – Suzanne: “I’m done. I could care less what you’re up to and have been for years.” From 14:43 to 17:00 Barry replied, “When I’m dead,” “Going to see my savior,” and “This life on earth is a mear (sic) grain of sand compared to eternity.”
May 6, 2020 – 14:43 – From Barry to Suzanne: “I’m sorry if things went the way they did. I have a problem dealing with the way you accused me of hiding checks. If you think I’m as terrible of a person to hide our accounts and have ones you don’t know about you don’t know me. All I do is for you and the girls. All. When I'm dead, which won't be long, you guys will be taken care of. Please stop being angry. If I can control my hurt heart I think I can overcome your distant unlovingness toward me. Honey, I swear it's the hardest thing I've had to do. I love you I always will.”
May 6, 2020 – 15:51 – Barry to Suzanne: “I promise you were wrong about all the crazy thoughts about me. I have always been faithful. Always. Why would I ever want another when I'm married to the most beautiful, sweet, kind, loving, woman as you? Only a fool would stray from an angel like you.”
May 07, 2020 – Suzanne messages Libler about how magical past days had been. Barry wants a new truck. 16:43 - “Been studying all afternoon. I’m gonna bike now. I’ve got veggie soup on for supper.”
May 7, 2020 – SB puts new tires on Suzanne’s bike Bike mechanic was interviewed by law enforcement.
May 7, 17:13:52 – Barry Works Out at GD’s House Truck log files place Barry at GD's home at 5:13 pm.
May 7, 2020 23:00 – “I finally got the job” text from MM1 goes unanswered. Q (Lindsey): Anything on May 6th that didn’t seem normal? Was there a text from Mallory to Mr. Morphew? A (Grusing): I believe that’s the night of May 7th. Mallory, Macy, and their friend Holly are out on a trip towards Utah and Mallory is sending pictures to both Suzanne and Barry but I was ... Read more
May 08, 07:03 – The Grievance List: Suzanne’s phone backs up a list of 50 reasons why she wanted to leave marriage on “Notes” Not safe alone with you. Can’t be trusted - Oppressive - Slam on brakes when angry - Threaten to jump out of car - Gun ...
May 08, 08:43 – “I will continue to do your invoicing when you need to.” "When FBI Agents showed Barry these texts during interviews in 2021, he said he did not think Suzanne was serious."
May 08, 09:28 – Suzanne texts sister about Barry’s abuse. “It’s hard dealing with the harsh abrasiveness and having to show respect. He’s also been abusive, emotionally and physically. There’s so much … I went thru a period of acceptance and I feel more angry now. Anger at what I’ve allowed.”
May 08, 10:55 Barry: “I Love You, Suzanne.” “But, in the afternoon, it (the text fight) was like it never happened. She texted me back and it was just like, ‘Hey, what time are you coming home? Hey, this or that. Just pick this up or pick that up.'”
May 08, 13:18 – Barry texts Salida Stove and Spa about getting the hot tub fixed. "Asking when he could come out to the home."
May 08, 15:43 – Barry’s iPhone receives an SMS message associated with the unknown device This second device was first used on November 30,2019 and was associated with Barry’s iPhone 91 times since then, compared to 1,701 associations with the primary User ID since November 2019.
May 8, 19:06 – Moonlight Pizza and Phone Calls Barry convinces Suzanne to meet him at the Tailwinds site before going to pick up Moonlight Pizza together.
May 08, 21:04 – 20 Facebook friend requests, 3 men named “Jeff.” Barry’s lurking at the River. Barry was asked about his phone pinging down by the river during the Facebook posts on Friday night and asked if he was outside. Barry said, “I could have been. I don’t remember. I chase critters around the house all the time.”
May 09, 00:02 – Incoming call on Suzanne’s phone (PH CAST) Incoming call on Suzanne’s phone (PH CAST)
May 09, 02:07 – Outgoing call on Suzanne’s phone (PH CAST) 02:07 am outgoing call on SM’s phone (PH CAST)
May 09, 06:00 – Barry’s phone received call (PH CAST) 06:00 am BM’s phone received call (PH CAST)
May 09, 06:46 – Barry’s phone registered “Power On” Comes out of Airplane mode.
May 09, 07:19 – Barry’s cell received signal (PH) Barry’s cell received signal (PH)
May 09, 07:22 – 07:39 – Barry at “Tailwinds” worksite Barry’s phone registered locations at his “Tailwinds” work site near Poncha Springs.
May 09, 07:35 – Suzanne texting SO Discussing Sheila's daughters wedding on Sunday.
May 09, 08:00 – MG was with Barry working on the rock beach site until 10am(?). Gentile: “He said that he had to go make the wife happy – do some hiking or biking.”
May 9 – Morning – Suzanne messaging Jeff “He’s still wanting Arizona.”
May 09, 09:50 – Barry to Suzanne: Want to go on hike? *Text Exchange\* Barry to Suzanne: Want to go on hike?
May 9, 2020 – 11:14 – Suzanne received a second password reset message from Facebook Previous reset was while Barry was down by the river on the evening of the 8th.
May 09, 11:15 est. – Barry tells Morgan Gentile he could “bury a body” and it “would never be found.” Gentile: “He seemed stressed. He definitely seemed weird on Saturday.”
May 09, 11:55 – Dead Turkey Hunt or Barry Takes Down His Trail Cameras Barry said he was looking for a turkey that Mallory had shot previously with a bow, but they had never found.
May 09, 13:35 – Barry leaves home again. Checked on job at Kim Gyms
May 9, 13:40(?) – Suzanne texts Libler Guess who is alone again?
May 09, 13:46 – Barry and the backhoe After texting, Barry drove by TK's house to see the backhoe, but did not get back in touch to buy it. In 2018, Barry used a backhoe to dig a large hole in his front yard, fill it with items to include furniture, and cover it over, planting alfalfa on top.
May 09, 13:51 – 14:13 – Barry at DSI, replacing Bobcat blade He was wearing a blue t-shirt and khaki shorts.
May 09, 14:03 – Suzanne sends sunbathing pic to Libler, last proof of life. “Well, look at her. She’s obviously drunk. Look at her eyes. Do you know what drunk eyes look like?
May 09, 14:11 – Suzanne sends last LinkedIn message to Libler: “I’m on wa.” Libler sent response messages at 2:39PM, 2:46PM and 2:47PM that Suzanne did not answer.
May 09, 14:26 – Barry texts Suzanne, “Done headed back.” He texted Suzanne that he was done and was headed home.
May 09, 14:31 – Barry texted Suzanne, “Did you leave.” At 2:31 PM, Barry texted Suzanne, “Did you leave.”
May 09, 14:39 – Libler messages Suzanne, she does not respond. First unread. Messages from LinkedIn show they were talking about how Suzanne is in love with Jeff before she went missing.
May 09, 14:43 – Barry’s phone and F-350, per telematics, arrive at the Morphew residence. "The photo is shown in the courtroom, Suzanne smiling. Truck GPS coordinates show Barry’s truck goes into park at 2:43:59. Phone coordinates show he walks around the house. You can hear a pin drop in the courtroom as tension is high." - Carol McKinley, PH Tweet
May 09, 14:44 – Shooting Chipmunks? Barry had a .22 in the moments when Suzanne ceased the communicate with everyone she loved in the world. Shooting Chipmunks? Barry had a .22 in the moments when Suzanne ceased the communicate with everyone she loved in the world. (See: https://www.reddit.com/SuzanneMorphew/comments/17lfboz/barry_and_the_chipmunks_aa_excerpts/ )
May 09, 14:46 – Libler messages: “Hey … your weather looks great” Second unread. No response from Suzanne.
May 09, 14:47 – Jeff sends another messages to Suzanne with no response. Third unread. Jeff sends last message if the day to Suzanne with no response.
May 09, 16:00 – 17:30 – Defense says Barry was at Salida Stove and Spa Salida Stove and Spa's posted hours have the store closing at 2pm on Saturday. Telematics show Barry's truck in his garage during the time he was supposedly at Salida Stove and Spa.
May 09, 16:44 – Barry parks his truck in the garage. Barry claims to have been loading his truck and cleaning off his workbench. (See: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?hl=en&mid=1FSqlFRrywR8FkytAYkNM-bdSxvKVK5MP&ll=39.173623131314%2C-105.63244&z=8)
May 09, 17:33 – Barry’s truck system manually rebooted Barry attempted to disable the trucks GPS and SYNC features.
May 09, 18:40, 18:46 – SO sends two Snapchats to Suzanne that were never opened SO sends two Snapchats to Suzanne that were never opened
May 09, 21:25 – Barry’s truck goes into reverse, backs 96.8 feet down driveway Barry backs 96 feet out of the garage.
May 09, 22:17 – Barry’s Phone Exits out of Airplane Mode Barry's phone comes out of airplane mode at the Morphew residence.
May 10, 02:53 – Outgoing call on Suzanne’s phone Possible glitch.
May 10, 03:25 – 03:48 – Barry’s truck door opened and closed "SA Hoyland noted over eighty events involving the F350 during this timeframe."
May 10, 03:58 – Barry’s phone moves from home to near where Suzanne’s bike found 3:58 am BM cell moves from home to near 225/50 where bike found Carol McKinley PH Tweets (read from bottom tweet up): 431 am 5/10 Barry’s phone goes back into airplane mode at the his home. 5:37 am – morphew turns into buena vista & heads towards broomfield. 538 he texts his mom “happy ... Read more
May 10, 04:10 – 04:23 – Last Activity from Suzanne’s iPhone Sergeant Mullenax asked dispatch to ping the number given for Suzanne’s cell phone. Dispatch informed Mullenax that the cell phone appeared to be off and last known activity was at 4:23AM on the present date, with a general location about 11.5 miles west of a cell tower in Poncha Springs, CO.
May 10, 04:32 – Barry’s Phone Goes Back into Airplane Mode Barry's Phone Goes Back into Airplane Mode
May 10, 04:32 – 05:14 – Chasing Elk, or Staging Evidence? Barry's trip to Garfield adds an approximate five miles each way to his morning trip, and places Barry and his vehicle in the direction the helmet was discarded - west from the bicycle.
May 10, 05:00 – Morgan Gentile Hears Barry’s Truck on Hwy 50 Gentile stated she did not see the truck but that his truck has a very distinctive exhaust.
May 10, 05:14 – 06:56 – Barry on the road to Broomfield. Barry phone exits airplane mode while heading towards Buena Vista, CO.
May 10, 08:10 – Trash Dump #1 – RTD Bus Stop Hwy 36 Agent Grusing: "Yes. He would have time -- with the passenger door opening and closing -- like it would say passenger door opened at 8:10:36 am and then passenger door closed at 8:12:13 am. So it took about a minute and a half and that trash can is only 10 to 15 steps away from where the truck was parked."
May 10, 08:14 – 08:20 Holiday Inn Express, Broomfield. Trash Dump #2 Grusing: "He said he parked there because he hoped someone would come out and he could go in the hotel before checking in and get a free breakfast." (Note: It was mid-COVID lockdown, building capacities were down to single digits.)
May 10, 08:41 – 08:46 – “I made it to Broomfield call me when you get a chance” Barry texts Suzanne.
May 10, 08:46 – Barry carries items into the Holiday Inn Express “If there’s clothes in my truck, there was probably old clothes I threw away.”
May 10, 10:06 – Barry exits hotel room. He's carrying a charcoal long-sleeved shirt, two white bags, and a pair of boots.
May 10, 10:20 – 10:41 – McDonald’s – Trash Dump #3 SA Grusing said Barry had a small item in his hand and used one arm to push it down, then both to push it further down as Barry was shown the photos.
May 10, 10:47 – 11:18 – Men’s Wearhouse Trash Dump #4 Barry was told he was there for about 40 minutes and asked if he remembered what he was doing there. Barry said, “I think I was still cleaning my truck, umm, yeah, yeah I mean, like I said, I just uh, I would, I was probably getting crap out of my truck like I said, which I’ve done my whole entire life.”
May 10, 11:18 – Barry calls MG "Barry called he was out of breathe (sic) panting but fatigue, kind a like hungover but he doesn’t drink, honestly when I hung up I thought to myself he sounded like he had the worst night of his life.” - MG
May 10, 11:23 – 11:36 – Barry back at the HIE Barry carries in disorganized papers in a binder. Carries out an organized binder.
May 10, 11:57 – 12:25 – Barry at the worksite Barry spent 28 minutes removing a few blocks from the wall.
May 10, 12:28 – 12:41 – HIE Trash Dump #5 A camera recorded Barry throwing away: a small item, one white trash bag, larger in size than the previous bags in one hand, a black container, along with a piece of clothing, possibly a camouflage coat.
May 10, 12:42 – 18:03 – Barry remains in his HIE room. ”At 3:30PM, Barry sent an outgoing message to Suzanne 'Call me'"
May 10, 2020 (Time Unknown) – Libler wishes Suzanne a Happy Mother’s Day Commented that it would be a hard day because she missed her own mother.
May 10, 2020 – 15:30 – Barry texts Suzanne from his hotel room. At 3:30PM, Barry sent an outgoing message to Suzanne “Call me”
May 10, 15:50 – 17:45 – Suzanne is discovered “missing” “I’m just so sad and REDCATED and I texted mom for Mother’s Day and she still hasn’t answered and I’m scared her and dad probably got in a big fight and I don’t even know it just made me want to be gone even more because I don’t want to be around them it hurts me and I know if REDACTED is working I might have to be home a lot more and it’ll probably be the worst summer of my life.”- MM2 text.
May 10, 17:55 – 19:10 – Barry leaving Broomfield 6:10 pm - Barry entered the lobby carrying two shovels and placed them beside the front desk. He made subsequent trips, placing more tools in the same spot.
May 10, 19:31 – Chaffee County finds the bike “Something is up with the front tire,” Deputy Brown
May 10, 20:42 – Barry arrives at CR 255 & US 50 "Barry is heard asking if deputies saw any “cats” on the road and a deputy says not recently."
May 10, 21:37 – CCSO Commander Avila brings Barry into the house for scent items. Barry does not call out or look for his wife in the home.
May 10, After 21:47 – Barefoot prints in the Bobcat Bucket Deputy Brown was walking in the driveway when Deputy Defurio told him that there were barefoot marks inside of the bucket on the Bobcat. Deputy Brown went with him to examine and found that the cutting blade on the bucket of the Bobcat appeared to be newly replaced, along with the nuts and bolts.
May 10, 22:00 – MG and JP smell chlorine and have the wrong tools in Broomfield. “It looked like Barry had removed top caps that was it. We also did not have the tools we need like a packer or gravel.”
May 11, 2020 – First Interviews, Puma Path Searched "On May 11, 2020, at about 7:00AM, Barry called Morgan and said that Suzanne was missing and he thought a mountain lion may have attacked her. Morgan explained that Barry was initially crying but then abruptly shifted to the specifics about the Broomfield job."
May 11, 2020 – 14:47 – Libler sends last message to Suzanne. Wishing her well for her scheduled final cancer treatment that day.
May 12, 2020 – 20:00 – Barry found digging in the trash at Poncha Market “He went to write down a description of maybe what she was wearing,” Butala said. “I just thought it was weird because he didn’t explain what the color of her eyes were or her hair or anything about her, like how tall she was or anything.”
May 13, 2020 – Deputy Carricato took photos of scratches on Barry’s left arm and hands. These injuries appeared to be healing, several days old scratches.
May 13, 2020 – Fundraiser created $33,552 raised
May 17, 2020 – 11:13 – Barry’s “plea” video is released on Facebook. “Oh Suzanne, if anyone is out there and can hear this, that has you, please, we’ll do whatever it takes to bring you back. We love you, we miss you, your girls need you. No questions asked, however much they want – I will do whatever it takes to get you back. Honey, I love you, I want you back so bad.”
May 19, 2020 – Interviews, Pneu-Darts, Range Rovers "CCSO Deputy Scott Himschoot was present during the search at 19057 Puma Path, in the laundry room, and was asked to collect a “pneu-dart box, empty,” one plastic hypodermic cover, one Pneu-dart book from safe in garage, one dart from box under bench in garage, among other items. The plastic cover was located by evidence search teams in the dryer, inside of the sheets belonging to REDACTED bed." (At some point we had confirmation of a to-do list Suzanne left including MM1s bedding in hopes that the older girls would spend the night. Cannot remember the source.)
May 20, 2020 – Spy Pen found. "The pen was located in a cloth bin amongst women’s bras. The cloth bin and pen were inside the walk-in closet in the master bedroom, located on the ground level of the residence. Detective Hysjulien located, with the pen, the controller and headphones for playback and a USB cable."
June 1, 2020 – Barry files for guardianship. Within a month of Suzanne’s disappearance, Barry began to liquidate assets.
June 1, 2020 – TD interviews Barry on camera. "So, uh -- we uh --. We had two daughters that were coming home from a trip. And I got a job in Denver that I wanted to get started on on Sunday. Set it up for my work because my rookies are coming in Sunday night. (Unintelligible) Monday but I, being the owner, I wanted to get everything lined up so that (Unintelligible).
June 6, 2020 – Barry closes on IN home. Pockets $750,000
June 25, 2020 – Barry purchases the Longhorn Ranch property for $165,000 Property Address 8366 LONGHORN DR
July 13, 2020 – Barry sells Suzanne’s Range Rover. Leaves Suzanne's sunglasses in the car.
Aug 20, 2020 – Lauren Scharf Interviews Barry “People don’t know the truth, so they’re gonna think what they’re gonna think.”
October 05, 2020 – Barry lists Puma Path home for sale. Originally listed for $1,759,000.
November 2020 – Barry Commits Voter Fraud Barry filled out Suzanne's ballot and mailed it in.
February 17, 2021 – Barry Sells Longhorn Ranch property for $150,000 A $15,000 loss. Same property sold on 04/21/2021 for $175,000, indicating Barry needed the money fast.
March 3, 2021 – 19057 Puma Path sells for $1,625,000. Barry and Suzanne Morphew purchased the home on April 12, 2018 for $1,575,000.
May 4, 2021 – Warrant Issued for the Arrest of Barry Lee Morphew CRS/CHARGE: 18-3-102 (1), (a) Murder in the First Degree, a class 1 Felony, 18-8-610. Tampering with Physical Evidence, a class 6 felony, 18-8-306, Attempt to Influence a Public Servant, a class 4 Felony.
May 5, 2021 – 09:15 – Barry Lee Morphew Arrested for the murder of Suzanne Renee Moorman Morphew "Morphew was arrested around 9:15 a.m. on Wednesday, May 5 near his home in Poncha Springs. FOX31 News has obtained video of the arrest, which shows his truck stopped on the side of the road near several police vehicles. He can be seen standing just off the road with an officer." AA: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21065843-21cr78-morphew-redacted-affidavit
August 9-12, 2021 – Preliminary Hearing. Day One: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15wZ86C3zQ6kh9VGOUCJcr0ipCoFeaXkdowmwyaruiIQ/edit?usp=drive_link
Day Two: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QKa1jcH2dAqe9Wezew-KbLCDuicrm1HgfwC4oGwM8Dg/edit?usp=drive_link
Day Three got corrupted so it's gone.
People's exhibit images: https://imgur.com/a/hgvlBUt Defense exhibit images: https://imgur.com/a/VC3ZfUZ
April 19, 2022 - Case against Barry Morphew Dismissed Without Prejudice. Prosecution asked for the case to be dismissed.
May 2, 2023 – Barry files $15,000,000 lawsuit against Chaffee County, et.al. https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/barry-morphew-lawsuit/73-3cea50c2-cdae-4338-8de9-9e113d33db6c
May 8, 2023 – Fraud Lawsuit filed against Barry in Indiana. Property dispute. https://denvergazette.com/news/courts/barry-morphew-sued-fraud-allegations-land-dispute/article_1c7cd90e-f4f5-11ed-9778-47c9c303d16d.html
September 22, 2023 – Suzanne's Remains Found Near Moffat in Saguache County While SCSO was searching for another (unrelated) missing woman. https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/suzanne-morphew-remains-found-colorado-missing-mother-barry-chaffee-county-disappearance/
Sept. 27, 2023 – Autopsy Completed. Awaiting Toxicology. https://cbi.colorado.gov/news-article/suzanne-morphew-autopsy-results-cbi-update-0https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/autopsy-complete-remains-missing-colorado-mom-suzanne-morphew/
April 29, 2024 – Toxicology finds BAM in Suzanne's bone marrow. “Homicide by undetermined means in the setting of butorphanol, azaperone, and medetomidine intoxication.” https://www.scribd.com/document/727780041/Suzanne-Morphew-autopsy-results https://www.cpr.org/2024/04/29/suzanne-morphew-died-by-homicide-with-tranquilizer-chemicals-present-in-body-according-to-autopsy-report/
Complete Case Overview (Official News Reports and Documents)
What Suzanne Left Behind (PH Exhibits)
Suzanne's Texts with SO Sept 2019
Barry's Unstableness: Suzanne's Text Conversion with SO September 1 (PH Exhibits)
Where was Barry on the 9th - Preliminary Hearing Exhibits
Barry and the Chipmunks (AA Excerpts)
Barry's dirty truck and poorly maintained rifle. PH Exhibits
Suzanne's Last Days - Timeline - May 4th - May 9th, 2020
Barry Buries a Body - May 10th, 2020 - Timeline
Barry Busy in Broomfield Part One (Preliminary Hearing Exhibits)
Barry Busy in Broomfield Part Two (PH Exhibits)

Hello,
I will be asking for formal separation shortly. I want to make sure I’ve got my ducks in a row before pulling the trigger. We are still amicable and have been discussing this for a while (her idea) so the separation won’t be a total surprise. Hoping to get some direction from you guys… (37m, 37f, no kids)
Have already-
• Liquidated stocks/bonds and moved to personal savings
• Closed our joint credit card
• Removed her from my cell phone plan
• unloaded some shit locally to get a lil handful of cash
• dropped my retirement contributions to the minimum amount to get matching
• gathered statements for all accounts and titles for all assets
• have been consulting with lawyers all over town to get an understanding of the process after this and trying to decide which mediator to go with and which lawyer to keep in my back pocket if things get nasty.
Anything else I should do? Will prob drop the bomb on Monday.
Cheers -

The famous baseballer, Jackie Robinson, he once said: “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.” I could not agree more. That is why I try to make as much impact on my faces’ lives as possible. After all, they have done so much for me. It is the least I can do. Unlike them, I need not fear what people think of me. So I can be brave where they are weak. For I will just be someone else tomorrow.

Born in Russia to the Grand Duke Nikolai Kravinoff, Dmitri Nikolaievich Smerdyakov was treated like trash by his noble father and his working class mother. Young Dmitri was approached one day by Gustav Fiers, who was impressed by the boy's impressions and paid for a trip to Karl Fiers academy. There, Dmitri would learn to master the arts of disguise, vocal impression and infiltration, becoming the Chameleon upon his graduation.
He'd move to America and use his talents to pull off high-scale burglary, working for any group that could afford his fee, including the Communist party, Hydra or the Green Goblin. His elicit activity brought him into conflict with the Hulk, Iron Man and most often Spider-Man, all of whom had to act with great caution when the Chameleon was in town. After all, which one of them could tell if that unassuming civilian or their own ally was preparing to stab them in the back?
Dmitri has some mental hangups over his time with the Kravinoffs. He’s managed to repress the memories and considered himself good friends with his half-brother Kraven. In reality, he was more like a whipping boy and slave to the Hunter, and when he has to wrestle with those feelings, he can mentally revert to that scared little boy with no strong sense of identity or independence. But when he’s able to move past these feelings, the Chameleon has proved himself as a powerful, manipulative force, finding his place as temporary Crime Master of New York and member of the Sinister Six.
Scaling

• Spider-Man
• Kraven the Hunter
• Captain America
• Daredevil
• Deadpool

Notes
During one of Dmitri’s mental breaks, he began to believe that he was his deceased half-brother, Kraven the Hunter. So exact was the Chameleon’s performance that he moved and fought with the hunter’s skill and agility. This was an extreme fringe case and there are no other examples of a disguise altering Chameleon's capabilities like this. Physical and skill-related feats from this period will be marked with [KH].
Hover over a feat to see which issue it's from.

Physicals

General

• He’s taken some of Kraven’s potions, which extends his natural lifespan and protects from disease
• Kraven later notes that he only allowed the Chameleon to drink some of his potions, enhancing his strength, although not nearly as much as the Hunter himself

Strength
Unarmed Striking

• Downs a cop with a punch to the back of the head
• Boxes Alexei Kravinoff’s ears, flooring the bigger man
• Tackles and restrains Bruce Banner
• While posing as Tigra, he breaks Mysterio’s helmet with a kick
• Knocks Finesse out with two punches to the back of the head
• [KH] Kicks Alexei in the chin mid-leap
• Hurts Spidey with a kick to the face
• Hospitalized the Shocker

Striking with Weapons

• Floors a man with a suitcase
• Clubs Captain America with a fire extinguisher, flooring him for several seconds
• [KH] Smashes through a ceiling and dives at Alexei
• [KH] Impales a man with a spear, then rams him into a wall hard enough to crack it
• Beats a man unconscious with a pistol

Grip

• Crushes one of Spidey’s tracers in his grip
• Crushes a picture frame
• Crushes a glass in his grip

Other

• While carrying Betty Ross over his shoulder with one hand, the Chameleon uses the other to smack Major Glenn Talbot
• [KH] Holds a wolf away from him
• Carries and fires this absurdly large gun

Durability
Scaling with Spider-Man

• Gets up after a glancing blow from Spider-Man
• Takes a backhand from Spider-Man
• Stays barely conscious after Spider-Man punches him into what looks like a concrete wall hard enough to break it
• Takes two punches from an angry Spider-Man
• While emulating Spider-Man and clinging to a wall with suction cups, he takes a punch from the real Spider-Man but stays clinging and makes an escape
• Spider-Man throws Chameleon head-first into a wall, then smacks him three times, breaking his mask. Despite this, the Chameleon stays conscious and manages to run off.
• Gets kicked in the head by Spider-Man (dressed as Deadpool) but quickly recovers and puts Spidey in a headlock
• Takes a sucker punch from Spider-Man in the Spider-Armor MK III
• [Limit] One casual punch from the Superior Spider-Man knocks Dmitri out

Scaling to Others

• Gets tackled by the Hulk, who was shrunk down to a few inches at the time
• Takes three heavy blows from Daredevil before falling into unconsciousness
• Takes a backhand punch from Kraven
• He gets up after Captain America throws his shield into his back
• Stays conscious after Deadpool punches him out a window
• Takes a punch from Spidey and an elbow from Deadpool
• Gets punched by Whirlwind
• Gets beat on by Teresa Parker

Blunt Force

• Spider-Man punches Vulture, sending the villain flying into Chameleon
• Gets thrown many feet into the air, then falls back-first onto stone
• He jumps off the Brooklyn Bridge and lands in the water below
• [KH, Limit] He’s KO’ed by a woman with a wooden chair
• While disguised as Spider-Man, he gets grabbed and swung around a room by tentacles, at one point getting his head slammed through a concrete wall with no ill effects

Gunfire

• He’s not noticeably harmed after a cop shoots him in the shoulder
• Stays standing after being shot in the thigh
• Twenty minutes after being shot in the shoulder, he’s not noticeably harmed

Vehicle Crashes

• Crashes his car into the Hulk
• Crawls from a crashed HYDRA aircraft
• Unharmed after crashing his truck into a wall
• While piloting a giant Galactus robot, a helicarrier crashes into the robot’s head and the Chameleon’s control room. He survives the crash relatively unharmed.

Other

• He survives after being poisoned and being left in a burning bar by the Punisher
• When Captain America breaks one of Chameleon’s stun guns, the resulting blast melts his rubber face mask, burning him
• He eats a full plate of ambien-laced cookies baked by Aunt May
• Spider-Man webs up a big gun that the Chameleon was using, causing it to blow up in his face. Dmitri gets up right after.

Agility

• Dodges some charges from Hammerhead, first with a sidestep, then by flipping over the mobster
• [KH] Dodges a tackle attempt from Alexei Kravinoff
• He lands hits on Spider-Man pretty easily once the hero loses his spider-sense

Skill

Impersonation
General

• When posing as someone, the Chameleon copies their gait and posture
• When emulating J. Jonah Jameson, not only does the Chameleon copy his personality, mannerisms and body language, but he copies Jonah’s writing style so he can turn in editorials at the Daily Bugle
• [Limit] In 2009, he took the form of Barack Obama and attempted to get sworn in as the POTUS. However, Spider-Man asked the fake and the real Obama a question that only the real Obama would know the answer to, outing the Chameleon as an imposter.
• Mimics Tigra perfectly, replicating her movements, voice and microexpressions
• When posing as a zombie Ezekiel Sims, Chameleon does something to make himself smell like a long-dead corpse

Voices

• Skilled in vocal emulation
• He perfectly emulates voices over the course of minutes after listening to audio recordings or the voices of his hostages
• While posing as the Paris police director, he fools a voice recognition system designed by Henry Pym, allowing him access into an Avengers headquarters
• Can emulate mechanized voices, like Doc Ock’s from when he was a cyborg

Limits

• Betty Ross sees through Dmitri’s Bruce Banner disguise thanks to her female intuition
• Daredevil sees through the Chameleon’s disguises because he can hear Dmitri’s distinct heartbeat
• Spider-Man’s Spider-Armor MK III has a Daredevil-inspired feature built in to the helmet that allows Peter to track Chameleon’s specific heartbeat. This allows him to see through the villain’s disguises.

Combat

• [KH] Fights evenly with Alexei Kravinoff before restraining him with a rope
• Off-panel, he killed a SHIELD agent and a doctor with a pen
• Shanks Superior Spider-Man in the neck with a pen
• While disguised as Spider-Man, he brawls hand-to-hand with Deadpool
• [Limit] Lost a fight to Mary Jane Watson with a baseball bat
• [KH] Slashes two mens’ throats with a single swipe of a spoon

Other

• [KH] Performs a handstand on a tree stump
• Using Klawe’s sound cannon, he blasts MODOK’s psionic blaster, disabling the head’s main weapon
• Leaps from a second story and lands on an awning to break his fall
• Jumps from the back of an aircraft onto the hood of a pursuing flying car
• Nick Fury boots Dmitri off of a flying car, but the villain manages to grab a ladder on a nearby aircraft
• Cracks a locked vault door, possibly using a stethoscope
• Pilots a giant LMD modeled to look like Galactus
• (Poorly) pilots the Iron Man Model 4 before being dropped by an alternate-universe Ghost Rider

Disguises

Realistic Masks

• Originally, the Chameleon employed realistic masks and hairpieces to disguise himself as individuals. He kept these pieces in a multi-pocketed vest, allowing him to alter his appearance on the fly
• After getting one quick glance at Thunderbolt Ross, the Chameleon is able to make a perfect mask of the general’s face in a matter of minutes
• When the Hulk is tearing the Chameleon’s car apart, he quickly changes into the guise of Rick Jones to calm the Hulk, then manipulate him into breaking a friend out of prison
• At one point, he used a gun that squirts fast-drying fluid, which kills victims via suffocation and leaves the Chameleon with a perfect mask of their face
• He once wore four masks layered on top of his plain, white one

Malleable Flesh

• He gets a procedure done to his body that makes his flesh completely malleable, changing in response to electrical stimuli. He also had a specially designed costume that reacted the same way to stimuli. The final piece was a control system built into a belt that could memorize and store any face that the Chameleon encountered. All of these pieces allowed the Chameleon to completely copy someone’s appearance and replicate it through thought alone.
• This exact method of changing his face depends on the comic's art style
  • Most often, the change just occurs instantly between panels
  • It can happens in a flash of light
  • Dmitri's features can melt and morph before reforming into a new face
  • The features can “slide across Chameleon’s head horizontally
• After looking at a photograph of a man, the Chameleon completely embodies him in moments
• When begging for his life, he rapidly switches between a dozen different faces
• When he’s knocked unconscious, his face relaxes and goes back to how it normally looks
• Once made a game out of pretending to be a civilian in need, then attacking Spider-Man when the hero helps him
• [Limit] One time, a very serious Spider-Man shocked and frightened the Chameleon so badly that he let his disguise drop

Other Methods

• Uses convincing costumes when posing as superheroes or supervillains
• Disguises himself as a Statue of Liberty street performer
• Some kind of hidden device emits mist, allowing the Chameleon to change masks and outfits
• Carries a canister of chemical gas that instantly changes the color of his clothing
• Later on, he wears a suit that allows him to instantly change his facial appearance and clothing
  • After confronting Spidey in public and taking a blow from the wall-crawler, the Chameleon assumes the form of a defenseless, old lady to turn the public against the hero
• A high-tech costume can resemble any article of clothing that the Chameleon can think of
• When appearing as someone much bigger than he is, like the Kingpin, the Chameleon uses an inflatable suit
• Poses as a hostage, then uses a hologram projector to make it look like Doc Ock is holding him off a roof
• When working for the Superior Spider-Man’s team of “reformed” villains, the Superior Six, Chameleon used hologram tech to aid in his disguises. This let him appear as Loki, with his massive horns and Asgardian outfit being formed with the tech. It otherwise works more or less like his powers did.
• Most recently, the Chameleon requires the use of a serum to be able to change his features at will
  • As soon as the Chameleon touches someone, he’s able to look exactly like that person. This can also make the other person temporarily swap forms with the Chameleon (or other users of the serum).

Weapons

Non-Lethal
Guns

• Uses a dart gun that instantly knocks a man out with a shot to the shoulder
• Uses a chemical gas gun to instantly knock out Captain America, keeping him out for a few minutes
• A dart gun that leaves victims unconscious and foaming from the mouth
• A stun gun

Injectables

• A syringe full of sedative chemicals that KOs Spider-Man and makes Deadpool woozy for a minute until he heals
• A syringe hidden in a prop torch puts Spider-Man to sleep immediately
• He injects Spider-Man with a poisonous chemical. It brings on extreme nausea and vertigo, then later knocks Spider-Man out for two days straight.

Other

• Snuck into Captain Stacy’s room and administered a few drops of sedatives to Stacy’s decanter. This kept him unconscious all day, allowing the Chameleon to assume his identity and steal priceless pieces of art.
• An aerosol can of sedatives
• One time, he coated his clothing in an odorless sedative chemical. When Spider-Man grabs him by his jacket, the hero falls unconscious in a matter of seconds.
• Gas grenades
• He uses some kind of electric weapon on a shallow body of water, shocking Spider-Man, Husk and Deadpool into unconsciousness

Lethal
Guns

• Normal guns like rifles, a shotgun and a handgun
• A silenced handgun
• A revolver
• A double-barreled shotgun
• He wields a one-handed launcher that carries a variety of capsules, including cyanide gas canisters and concussive explosives
• An absurdly large, Liefeld-esque gun that blows up a computer station
• A energy-based handgun with explosive firepower, used to blast a large hole through Deadpool’s torso and later turn a concrete wall into rubble

Injectables

• A poison ring that would’ve injected JJJ with a lethal dose during a handshake
• [KH] Shoots Spider-Man with a poison dart that would’ve killed him in ten minutes if he didn’t take the antidote

Other

• Usually carries a dagger or other kind of blade
• A grenade
• A small, box-shaped time bomb
• He once used a Man-Thing parasite to protect himself from gunfire and form combat applicable branch-like tentacles

Other Equipment

Field Gear

• Smoke pellets
• When posing as Spider-Man, he used a web-gun to emulate the hero’s web-shooters, although the webbing wasn’t as strong as Spider-Man’s
• While posing as Spider-Man, the Chameleon utilizes suction cup-covered gloves and a web gun to replicate Spidey’s wall-crawling and web-slinging
• A tracking device
• Nose filters protect him from a cloud of cyanide gas
• A jetpack with enough fuel to fly for nearly a full hour
• Typically restrains victims with rope and gags

Base Installations

• Uses a modified radio to send a message across New York that only Spider-Man could hear
• Uses a machine to swap memories with Captain America
• One lair boasts a chair that can be lowered into a pit of acid, used to destroy bodies
• Rigs his lairs to explode if they’re compromised
• He detonates explosives in one of his hideouts that releases napalm-like flames

Other

• He’s helped to design Life Model Decoys that look exactly like Richard and Mary Parker with the goal of investigating Peter Parker and finding out about Spider-Man’s identity. While the false Mary developed a conscience and defied her programming, the false Richard was outfitted with a combat form.
• He holds a gun to the head of a simulacra of Mary Jane. When Spidey determines it’s a fake instead of his real wife, it poofs into smoke.
• Robots that drive his escape vehicles

Miscellaneous

• After coming across a cave full of assorted scrap mechanics, Chameleon builds a missile from the pieces. He later says he “found” the missile, so who knows. At any rate, the missile is strong enough to KO the Hulk when they collide.
• One time, he inexplicably escaped from Spider-Man’s grasp and disappeared from the room
• He kidnaps Spider-Man and imprisons him in Ravencroft Asylum. He then unmasks the hero, puts a realistic mask and straightjacket on him and attempts to gaslight Peter, through the use of psychoactive drugs and fabricated evidence, into believing he’s another man named Herbert Smith. This ruse does convince Peter for a good while until he later remembers his life with Mary Jane.
• He implies that he might be able to disguise his psyche from the telepathic X-Men member, No-Girl, although the claim is not actually proven
• Off-panel, he killed a man, cut off his face and used it for a temporary mask

Monica Rappaccini: I apologize for the delay in initial payment, but we first had to verify your identity. A.I.M.’s intel had been that the Chameleon was dead- or in an insane asylum.
Chameleon: Yes, well. That would be exactly what I wanted you to think. Faded into the background, imperceptible… that’s where a Chameleon is most comfortable… and where I shall now return.

Hello Apes,
Here's another review of Roaring Kitty tweets, if you wanna check out previous days then links are below:
13th May
14th May
To reiterate, the description of each tweet is to the best of my knowledge the references made to allow you to make your own view in context and the speculation is pure speculation on my part, this is just for fun and shouldn't be taken as any financial advice, make your own decisions, I just like the stock. If you have anything to add feel free to in the comments and I'll do my best to update the post but given the amount of tweets now i don't have lots of time.
8:00am - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790713748866371690
Description: This is taken from the film Easy-A and shows Emma Stone walking through school catching a lot of attention looking fine and what was an A sticker in the original clip has been replaced with the Gamestop play logo. The song is Sexy Silk by Jessie J
Speculation: The stock is sexy, particularly among the younger people. What was Easy-A is now Easy-Gamestop. Looking really great in the black.
8.15am - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790717515523658119
Description: First we have a scene from the movie Prestige, with a Michael Caine voiceover about a magicians magic trick of making something disappear. The quote is "The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back." Meanwhile a person with a gamestop logo is being electrocuted to life a little frankenstein like and then a Gamestop logo bursts through an explosion. We then go to a fight scene with the song "back in the saddle again" by Aerosmith playing.
Speculation: The quote from the Prestige in full talks about the different parts of making something disappear. In full " Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"." The Aerosmith song also has some interesting lyrics, "Ridin' into town alone by the light of the moon" "I'm ridin', I'm loadin' up my pistol, I'm ridin', I really got a fistful, I'm ridin', I'm shinin' up my saddle, I'm ridin', this snake is gonna rattle"
8.30am - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790721293089964126
Description: Not sure what film this is from but essentially we have a group of people looking for someone who is messing with them, they come across the infamous meme of death looking for Gamestop and then they track down Roaring Kitty alongside 893489 CHIMP located in Boston. We then get a message of Prep mode and arm ready for transport, hold pattern until further notice and a message again on a watch saying the same with a Gamestop logo
Speculation: WS looking for DFV and just coming across more memes, not really understanding it. As pointed out by many, 893489 is the hexcode for purple https://www.colorhexa.com/893489 which could be a direct reference to people DRSing. Final message suggests it's a hold until further notice, potentially a gamestop announcement who knows?
8.45am - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790725065585439065
Description: We have a scene from Ozark where the wife of the money laundering family is alone in her bedroom reflecting to the sound of The Daily Mail by Radiohead. Some Gamestop logos on the wall which i think replace a picture of her family in the original clip. More reflection.
Speculation: Not sure about this one other than the family in Ozark were right on the line of legality when it came to what they were doing, essentially they were money laundering and in the end it cost them their family. SHFs messing with Gamestop to the point of legality could be what costs them their family of investors?
9.00am - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790728848226521547
Description: This is a famous scene from Star Wars where Han Solo takes them through the asteroid field despite C3-PO's cry that the odds are so greatly stacked against them, approximately 3720-1 to be exact! "Never tell me the odds" says Hans Solo. The Song Come Along by Cosmo Sheldrake comes on as the ship navigates it's way through.
Speculation: This play is a high risk play as we all know but DFV doesn't care about the odds, so many people have told him how crazy he is but that doesn't stop him absolutely nailing it. The song has some interesting lyrics to pick a few, "Don't let moments pass along, And waste before your eyes", "We'll be here when the world slows down, And the sunbeams fade away, Keeping time by a pendulum, As the fabric starts to fray" Full lyrics here
9.15am - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790732615022195139
Description: This is taken from The Chappelle Show "when keeping it real goes wrong". In this sketch Kitty replaces a lot of the words to relate to him and the scene ends with Wu-Tang being brought up.
Speculation: Really i think this is just DFV having some fun with this sketch, replacing the woofs for meows, it brings up Wu-Tang as well which was a talking point way back in the NFT marketplace chat.
9.30am - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790736391124774975
Description: We have a clip of Moon Knight from Fortnite alongside the song Day and Night by Kid Cudi. This is the official fortnite music video.
Speculation: The Moon Knight in fortnite is considered a rare character. In fact the last time the Moon Knight was in the fortnite shop was Nov29, 2023. With that, it's a very valuable and sort after skin. Also worth noting about the Moon Knight, "For a quick run-down: Moon Knight is actually a former mercenary named Marc Spector. One day, when he's left for dead in the desert, the ancient Egyptian moon god Khonsu revives him. Along with a new lease on life, Khonsu gifts Marc with god-like powers to fight evil". Take from that what you will.
9.45am - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790740164848861227
Description: Not 100% sure on the cartoon being shown but the rap is Mr. Niceguy by Will Smith.
Speculation: I don't think DFV is liking the public dissing he is getting from various media outlets but really he doesn't care that much as he can just nail some memes he has lined up like this. If you want the full lyrics to the song, you can find it here
10am - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790743946764644659
Description: This is the epic reveal in fight club and DFV has replaced a lot of the words. In the original scene, if you haven't watched fight club, the main protagonist has put the pieces together to realise that he himself is actually the same person as the other protagonist in the film and it was him alone that accidentally setup a sort of movement against the financial elite. In this clip DFV plays off the two characters between DFV and Roaring Kitty.
Speculation: Roaring Kitty was the twitter handle and Youtube profile for Keith Gill where he would speculate on the stock because he just loved doing it. DFV was the reddit handle where he is associated to that other sub i can't mention here but you know where i mean. I think that DFV is saying that what started as a fun speculation of the stock became something bigger than himself with his other channel in DFV on reddit. Now the wheels have moved and in the film it ends with the financial institutions being blown up, perhaps something similar metaphorically is already in place right now. It's actually a great analogy from DFV about his situation.
10.15am - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790747714440892825
Description: This is the scene in Breaking Bad where Walter comes clean to his wife Skylar about all the money he has made selling meth. Skylar sees him for who he really is in this scene and really it's the beginning of when Walter begins to really lose himself. There is a funny insert of Methamphetameme and a mention of Caroline who i believe is his wife in real life.
Speculation: I think this is just DFV having some fun and giving an idea of how nuts it probably was for him to talk to his wife about everything that has happened/is happening. I know to us DFV seems like some sort of oracle but to many people he would just seem like some of stock bro who is nuts, even his wife.
10.30am - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790751492451754012
Description: This is from the oceans 11 film again where the gang are discussing about what they are and how they have come to be. DFV inserts "the Cohen crunch" as what everything could be called and also says "One could make the argument that because it was in fact Cohen joining the board that seemed to kick things off maybe it should be...". DFV then has a big reveal of the reddit user u/ avocado-in-my-anus.
Speculation: Is this all about Ryan Cohen? Is it about DFV? Is it about the Squeeze? Or is it about Avocado in my anus!? - If you follow to that reddit user you will see 3 posts, all on October 29th of each of the last 3 years, all saying Happy Cat Day posted to 3 different subreddits, "never tell me the odds", "next fucking level" and "woah dude". Why is october 29th so significant? See for yourself here
10.45am - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790755264733626879
Description: First we have a clip taken from CNBC where they say "is Roaring Kitty the one running this company?". It then cuts to a classic superbad scene of lots of dicks being drawn.
Speculation: I would imagine CNBC's angle here is that in their opinion Roaring Kitty is the one helping the stock so much with his influence that he might as well be running the company. Judging by the fact we go to a load of dicks after that I don't think DFV agrees with that opinion...
11am - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790759048985612468
Description: This is taken from The Avengers Endgame and it's where Peter Quill and Thor are told they should fight one another for the honour of the leadership of the Guardians of the Galaxy. They reply they don't want to go against each other and then there is a little humored ambigurity over who is in charge.
Speculation: This could be about DFV and RC. Not 100% which one is which but DFV is saying they are on the same side and respect each other in their view on what is best for Gamestop. DFV conceding he isn't in charge here and sort of plays into the last meme.
11.15am - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790762813868175516
Description: This is a scene taken from Love Actually and you will most likely recognize Rick from The Walking Dead. In the original clip he is filming his best friend (and it turns out he actually is in love with his best friends wife in this film). It then cuts to some memes of Ryan Cohen and a clip from his stream about updating thesis regularly.
Speculation: I think this is summed up pretty well by u/ starhammer4billion. "In 2021, DFV was mad, that R.C. did not push the button/do the buyback and told us clearly that he did not like R.C. anymore with this meme. Now in 2024, he rewinds that meme and tells us, that he thought that at the time in 2021, but that the investment thesis evolved over time and he now sees R.C. as a supermodel. So basically he saw what R.C. was doing in 2024, which he did not in 2021 and he likes R.C. again now. Probably because R.C. pushed the button and also did some plan with loopholes and stuff that DFV may not have thought about."
11.30am - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790766591526735887
Description: Here we have a clip from the music video Gossip Folks by Missy Elliot. Some of the lyrics have been replaced by Roaring Kitty. It tells the story of DFV and then there is a ton of emojis that read 😳💩😿🥜🐸🍦🤢👍👊💀🥸👀🤩⚡️🎮🚀🍄💥🍏🤨😵‍💫💜🫂👌🤝⛺️😼🎯👀🐶🇺🇸🎤👀🔥💥🍻
Speculation: DFV is saying this is going to go down again 3 years later after it all went down last time. The emojis i think tell the story so far too and maybe what's to come. I'll try my best to elaborate - it's really tinfoil but why not.

• DFV a bit embarrassed by how much it all took off originally, he was the focus of the world in Jan21 (embarrassed)
• All went to poo as GME dumped with the cheating tactics of the elite (poo)
• Sad kitty had to go to court and defend himself just because he was right and liked the stock. (sad kitty)
• Showed he had absolute nuts by doubling down on the stock again. (nuts)
• Papa RC posted frog and ice cream just around the time he was announced as chairman, the turnaround well and truly underway (frog and ice cream)
• Not sure about the sick emoji
• GME looking good again and making gains later into 21 (thumbs up and fist pump)
• DFV gets killed off from communicating and stock tanks, bear thesis in full swing about GME (skull)
• DD research is in full swing over what's happening to the stock and DFV is looking at it like oi oi (invetigating and eyes)
• DD gets everyone focused again and loving the stock, GME, power to the players and convinced it's going to do great again (star eyes, lightning, game, rocket)
• GME grows in the dark without revealing it's plan for transformation (mushroom)
• GME runs big end of 2022, all anticipation about NFT marketplace etc etc (boom)
• RC buying into apple and people wondering about some sort of partnership (apple)
• Turns out nothing like that happening as people wait for announcements (straight face)
• NFT marketplace is a disaster and not what people were hoping for (dizzy face)
• People start DRSing (purple heart)
• Love in the community is in full flow again as post after post about DRSing shares (hug)
• Everything is ok and all agreed on the DD and DRSing, happy to wait it out (ok and handshake)
• Not sure about tent.
• DFV comes back (kitty)
• Sees an opportunity to target the shorts again (target)
• Looks to Ryan Cohen, former owner of chewy to make a move (eye emoji in original looks to the right, dog emoji)
• Big announcement (microphone)
• US market sees this and burns to the ground (US flag and fire)
• Squeeze happens (boom)
• Cheers everybody (beers)

Edit\* As pointed out by u/ mmilad https://www.reddit.com/Superstonk/comments/1ctc9g2/dfvs_tweet_yesterday_with_emojis_are_all_rcs/ - they emojis do run in a sort of chronological order to a lot of RC's tweets, if you go to his twitter page and scroll through from his first tweet you can begin to tick off the emojis one by one.
11.45am - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790770363627921776
Description: We have a pizza being cut in too more and more slices and dubbed onto the pizza are reddit awards along with DFV's last position update post.
Speculation: The amount of awards that were constantly being given to this post got so out of hand i can't even think how many notifications and reddit coins DFV must have got back in the day. Definitely a joke on DFV's part and just a reminder to how funny it was the amount of awards he was getting.
12pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790774146994966570
Description: This clip is taken from Spiderman i think the one where Spiderman goes dark but i can't remember exactly. The music is The Black Swan taken from Swan lake and it cuts to the movie of Swan Lake with Natalie Portman as the Black Swan and Kitty being dubbed on her face as she transforms.
Speculation: Black swan events are defined as "A black swan is an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected from a situation and that has potentially severe consequences". When GME does squeeze, it's going to have severe and brutal consequences for the market.
12:15pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790777913245421806
Description: First we have Snoop Dogg in his music video for Gin and Juice talking about drama in the GME then we cut to Scarlet Envy saying "is it me, am i the drama", "am i the villain?"
Speculation: Just DFV having fun with all the drama that is being caused through GME, through his memes and everything in a fun light hearted DFV meme of way.
12:30pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790781688848450012
Description: The first clip is taken from Oceans 12 where Ryan is bring the gang back together for an even bigger heist of casinos. Then we have part of the heist where he is stuck waiting in the dining cabinet and cannot escape until they let him out, then we cut to 2 people talking, "waiting", "for what?", "for this". Finally we cut to Batman, i think in the Dark Knight where the Joker is in the hospital and plans to blow it up.
Speculation: Bigger squeeze than last time, band back together, GME holders for the last 3 years could be like the guy in the box just let out in time by DFV, we say "where the fck you been?", he has been waiting, waiting for this.
12.45pm - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790785463118348420
Description: This is taken from The Dark Knight rises where Bane states "it doesn't matter who we are, what matters is our plan", "no one cared who i was until I put on the mask", "was getting caught part of your plan?" "of course"
Speculation: This is taken online about Bane in this movie, "Everything that Bane did was never for himself, not really, we find out his real loyalty later and I think that is a big reason why he said who he is wasn’t important. He wasn’t there to impress the masses, he was there to execute a plan, to be the playmaker for a person he cared for. He wasn’t one who liked distractions and the concern over who he was, I took it as he saw as unimportant to what the plan was itself" DFV doesn't matter, the whole thing is bigger than him now, similar to the fight club tweet reference.
1pm - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790789242513433071
Description: This clip is the big reveal in The Usual Suspects. BIG SPOILER HERE TO THE FILM - The police chief realizes in the film that he has just been completely done by the person who actually committed the crime and he was right there all along in the station . In this clip the drawn sketch of the suspect is replaced with the 'ill do it again' meme.
Speculation: The mug has roaring kitty on it so I wonder if this really is DFV noticing a similar pattern to what is happening with the stock as to what happened before and has made that realization that it's time to come back and this is all on again. HF's digging the same hole for themselves.
1.15pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790793012936851665
Description: This is a clip showing Keith Gill and a narrator saying that investors were looking for someone to blame for losing big on Gamestop. Then it cuts to "shut up bitch" from The Rock in WWF.
Speculation: This is a lol meme and basically DFV saying people invest themselves it's not his problem. People did try to sue him if i remember so it's a bit of a fuck you to them.
1:30pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790796790360363016
Description: This is taken from Seinfeld and is about how George goes so far just to zing a guy. DFV replaces some words and makes this about the previous tweet, some more fun on his part.
Speculation: The episode i believe this takes place is called "The Money" and the episode in which George actually flies out is called "The Comeback", jokes aside that's some interesting references...
1:45pm - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790800562654691686
Description: This is taken from the Saturday Night Live sketch 'old friend'. It's about two old friends reconnecting, DFV expertly chooses this and only has to change the last name of the Keith in the sketch.
Speculation: Everyone thinks DFV is nuts, i mean the guy is posting a lot of memes and taking away my work mornings trying to understand them. Maybe he just loves memes, who knows?
2pm - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790804340673789978
Description: This is a video of beat saber to the song freaks by timmy trumpet and savage. "The bass and the tweeters make the speakers go to war", "the mighty trumpet brings the freaks out to the floor", "where the freaks at?". Big tune and then the vibing cat makes an appearance.
Speculation: Hard to say much about this other than it's a fun song and makes you vibe just like the cat. People are coming to twitter to see his memes and we are all vibing out off of it.
2.15pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790808112741630320
Description: Shows a man being followed around by a man in a suit with a red right hand. I'm not sure what this is taken from but the song is definitely Red Right Hand by Nick Cave and the Bad seeds. For me personally this song is most associated with The Peeky Blinders.
Speculation: The man could be anyone short on GME and the man following him making him scared could be DFV or whatever else is going to pound on those shorts. If you want the lyrics to the song then you can find them here
2.31pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790812277530034448
Description: Shows a bear on a pink recliner with a kitty sneaking in the background.
Speculation: This was a direct response to a Jim Cramer tweet who was essentially poking fun at DFV by saying he should make more memes as it's not working on helping GME. Worth noting that this doesn't look like a scheduled tweet and was probably not planned.
2:45pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790815662203617755
Description: Shows Jim Carrey not 100% which movie it is though i recognize it with a red graph overlayed showing the stock price going down. His smile deteriorates but he seems to have some sort of demented plan in a weird way.
Speculation: Stock might be going down and that might initially take the smile off but the creepy smile at the end shows that it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, they are going to get it by the end.
3:00pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790819440617033914
Description: This is taken from the Truman show where Jim Carrey plays a character who's whole life is a television show for everyone else to watch. He is unaware of this but starts to become more aware as the film goes on. This particular clip is where he is trying to get to the edge of the world to see behind the curtain and the director is trying to stop him with lightning strikes and storms and whatever else he can throw.
Speculation: They are doing everything they can to keep a lid on GME. Firing as many shots as they can but it's not working. Is this the best they have?
3.15pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790823211745063394
Description: This is a clip from Dunkey's best games of 2017 and here we see a game where it's just boss fight after boss fight and is really fun.
Speculation: This is a game for us, they can hammer down the stock and do what they want but GME holders just keep buying more and moving to the next level
3.30pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790826988019528035
Description: This is taken from Tenet and is about inverted bullets. It talks about being able to drop bullets and bring bullets back up and move bullets without touching them.
Speculation: I certainly don't understand even a little of what is going on with the stock, but you can still have a feel for what is happening with the stock and it feels good right now even with the dip. Could be something to do with inverse hedging but don't know enough about that to speculate.
3.45pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790830761542664192
Description: Firstly we have the Matrix where Neo is about to fight Morpheus and then we have Alice in Wonderland with Alice going down into the rabbit hole. (The rabbit hole is mentioned in the Matrix too when Neo is given the pill option).
Speculation: The scene where Neo fights Morpheus is really the first time we start to see Neo believe in his ability to be the chosen one but also understand the power being able to beat the matrix. With the Alice in Wonderland it's about seeing how far the rabbit hole goes, things will get more crazy for sure and we are going to find out just how deep this goes.
4:00pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790834536403574936
Description: Here we have the music video for Karma police by Radiohead. A man is running from a car at a hobble speed and then stops turns around and there is a trail of fuel heading towards the car that has stopped. He pulls out a box of matches from his back pocket and is just before to set the car alight by dropping a lit match on the fuel.
Speculation: Another Radiohead song, you can find the full lyrics here but to pick a line out "this is what you get when you mess with us". Whilst being slowly chased down, there is going to be a flip reverse based on the trail left by the shorts only to blow it all up.
8:00pm - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790894938277695671
Description: This is taken from the Shawshank redemption where the main protagonist has escaped from the prison after being wrongly imprisoned for many years. DFV has changed some of the narrators (Red) words in showcase his story of being wrongly accused in 2021 and having the flee out of the spotlight. He talks about pressure and time, he presents a lot of memes he has created over the years and then shows a particular screenshot of one of his streams.
Speculation: This tells DFVs story but also has some juicy parts. I think Red in this is a bit like the reddit crew (us) keeping tabs on his story but DFV is saying to escape like him it takes pressure and time (could be gamma squeeze, could be LEAPS, could be DRS, could be holding and buying, could be ALL of it) but all it takes is time and pressure. The memes he posted i wonder if some of those have found their way into various subs over the last 3 years without any of us knowing it came from DFV. The steam he screenshot has been spoken about a lot this morning but it seems to come from one of his youtube streams when GME last broke $30.
Hope you enjoyed these takes.
Love ya DFV