Stuck neopets in the pound

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Wait, is this Purgatory then?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thanks, God, you really are great.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Can I take your coat?”

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

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

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

“Who are you?”

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

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

“This is hell.”

“Call it what you will.”

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

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

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

“We came to see you!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I appreciate that engaging in conspiracy theories can be fun, feel like a moral obligation and all consuming but I think its important to use critical thinking to avoid falling down rabbit holes which are harmful to yourself or others.
There is a severe lack of evidence for a lot of these theory's that people have come up with. If you are not even willing to accept that there is a possibility that drake is not engaged in child prostitution rings, having sex with dogs etc. you are no longer engaging in critical thinking and you are mentally in a state where your confirmation bias is clouding your judgement. Once your mind is in this state, it is very easy for bad actors to use your warped perspective to control your thoughts and actions. I recommend reading up on the biases which lead to conspiratory thought and cult like behavior.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ie/blog/your-emotional-mete202401/the-psychology-of-conspiracy-theories
If you find yourself thinking "Its just too many coincidences" about any theory, you more than likely wrong. The human brain is very good at finding patterns, its literally its primary function aside from keeping you alive. There are many conflicting conspiracy theories which all use this line as "proof" but its not. If you find yourself being sucked into theories with this, please reconsider
Looking at actual verifiable facts:

• Drake has a history of some shaky actions with young women and paying large settlement fees in sexual harassment cases. He also is around people who are involved in sex trafficking.
• EbonyPrince ended up with the items on the MTG cover through his security job and is angry at drake for saying the items were stolen as they cannot resell them.

Everything else EbonyPrince is alluding to is unconfirmed, they have not posted any evidence of anything and they have been upfront in having ulterior motives.
Alternative theory:
Drake is actually fighting a paedophile ring from the inside out, he's an undercover agent for Canada as the police are compromised, hence why he changed his persona to get a deeper inside track on diddy. All the dogs are the people he's locking up in "the pound"
Obviously not real but the point being anyone can make shit up and I am sure their is plenty of coincidences in drakes lyrics surrounding my totally bullshit theory
Also consider the following theory which is based on facts.
Ebony prince is making a scene because they cant get their money and see the internet frenzy around the beef, decide to post a load of random cryptic seemingly implicating stuff to drive up the price. Case and point https://www.reddit.com/DarkKenny/comments/1ctjhtis_anyone_going_to_talk_about_how_he_didnt_even/
Might be wrong and I would be willing to accept that given evidence but if you choose to believe him without any evidence you need to stop and think.
I get that people have valid concerns about predators, but please take my advice and do not ruin your brain with this stuff, watch out for clout chasers who see you as an easy lick and take advantage of genuine concern. Wait for hard evidence of things before believing them and don't get stuck draining dopamine on this stuff. Do not harass people not matter how sure you are they are involved in something.

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.

hi everyone. i’m currently at my wits end. i’m someone who loves to sleep, has a great sleep schedule. however it happens to me a couple times during the year to have a period of insomnia. it only needs one bad night to start that period. and then im going into a frenzy of sleep anxiety. i’m currently at my 5th day of barely sleeping or not sleeping at all. it’s like my heart is pounding too hard when i’m trying to sleep, and then adrenaline is keeping me awake. i’ve tried melantonin but didn’t work. i’m currently on vacation from school, i don’t have a stressful job or any other stress in my life. i’m very active and weightlift several times a week along with walking and jogging. i have a fairly good diet. i try not to go on my phone an hour before bed and i usually read a couple pages of a book before going to sleep. i sleep in a dark room with a fan on. like i said, i usually have no problem at all sleeping in my usual environment. but i’m stuck in a sleepless cycle that i know i’ve got to break, but the anxiety of not being able to sleep prevents me from sleeping. it’s horrible. i feel like i’m so anxious when i go to bed. i went to the pharmacist yesterday who gave me a box of Personelle’s 25mg capsules of Diphenhydramine hydrochlorides (says on the pack that it’s for the relief of occasional insomnia). i tried it, however last night i had a friend over and i think that affected my comfort as i was only able to sleep like 2-3 hours. I will try it again tonight.
if any of you guys have tips, i would gladly take them. i’m thinking otherwise to go see a doctor soon. thanks everyone. ps. also, is a macbook considered blue light?

Super long story short, I (25 F) think I might finally be losing weight, husband and I have been trying for a baby for two years with no luck. Finally got a referral to see an endocrinologist and after blood work, she wants to put me on Wegovy to lower my A1c and insulin that will help regulate my cycle and result in pregnancy. My cycles have been like 1-5 periods a year, after trying to get it for several weeks insurance has denied any and all request for any anything similar to Wegovy unless I have type 2 diabetes and need to get on ozempic. Finally having enough and being stressed, I started running again, I used to run in high school and it was such a good stress reliever. And the last 6 weeks I’m down over 10 pounds, started at 199 and down to 187 as of this morning. Trying to enjoy this really small win after yearrrrs of being stuck between 197-205lbs.

So I've posted a lot of times on this subreddit, and a part of that is because I haven't fully fleshed out the details of my world; I had a basic idea of what I wanted my world to look like, the types of magic I wanted to be there, and the world in which I wanted that magic to occur. I'm someone who likes grinding down on my magic system until it makes sense, so I haven't really been able to focus on writing my actual story, although in fairness I've tied up a few plot threads. Now, I think I have a genuine final product and can actually start writing my story. So here it goes.
FUNDAMENTALS
The three fundamental forces in my universe are Dream, Spark, and Sacrifice. Dream is the product of the underworld, Sacrifice resides in the domain of the living, and Spark is the energy that binds and separates the two worlds. I'm very fascinated by the idea of making a sacrifice, or the spilling of blood in many cases, being necessary for dreams to come true.
Dream, in this context, is imagination, memory, past, future, desire, fear, all that does not yet exist but existed or has the potential to exist. The fuel of Dream is memory, because a dream that is not remembered, even subconsciously, is one that ceases to exist, and Dream tends to absorb memory.
Sacrifice, in this context, has a more neutral meaning than we're used to; it only means a change in the mortal realm, mental or physical, that initiates the coming to life of a dream. Think of a mother, who sacrifices or is made to sacrifice her body for 9 months to give birth to the dream of a child, the possibility made real by the change in the mother's physical circumstance. Or an empire; someone dreamed of it, but they needed to spill blood to bring it into fruition. The blood and death, not the action, is the sacrifice, and that sacrifice brings life to a dream.
Spark, broadly, is energy. From a metaphysical perspective, it is the energy that carries out a sacrifice and, using that sacrifice, brings Dream into existence. Two people needed to perform the action of intercourse for the mother who gives birth to a child to have made a sacrifice; the act of intercourse induces the sacrifice, which is the state of pregnancy. To go back to the empire example, you need to perform the act of stabbing or shooting a bunch of people, or if you're not into all out war, the act of slitting the throat of the king, for instance. The act induces the sacrifice, which is death, which enables the dream to come true. But more broadly, spark is literally energy, the force that makes the planet move, the sword to swing, the fire to burn.
The child of Dream and Spark is Will. Will is consciousness, the ability to make something happen, to manipulate energy to accomplish a purpose, to make the dream come true.
The combination of all three, Dream, Spark, and Sacrifice, is what creates life, a physical manifestation of the Will; this is what makes life special above all other things. When in your physical body, the Will is bound by that body because the body created by Dream, Spark, and Sacrifice creates a barrier that the Will cannot cross, which is why almost no one can manipulate energy on their own. Once you die, you either cross into the Underworld, the land of dreams, or a Sacrifice in the form of emotional connection interacts with the Will to block it from returning to the Underworld, binding you to the Mortal Realm, making you a ghost, a will that exists in the Mortal Realm but without a physical body usually cannot perceive the world except for other Wills, trapping spirits stuck in the Mortal Realm in their own memories unless they can use the body of another as a host.
The exception to the binding of the Will to the body is through Dream; when you dream, your Spark transfers your will to the Underworld, where all dreams live. Spark has a natural magnetism towards the Underworld, and the Will has a natural attraction to Spark, meaning when you're asleep, Spark is no longer bound by consciousness and is able to take the Will to its natural home before waking. As I said before, dreams are fueled by memory, so when you dream, the Underworld is slowly taking memories from you until you wake up, meaning that most people forget most of what they dream about.
The Mortal and Immortal Realms are separated by a substance in the air known as Valin Steel, which has the effect of cancelling out any binding effect of a sacrifice, detaching Spark energy from the physical form it is bound to, causing it to by default return to the Immortal realm. When Spirits are summoned from the Immortal Realm to the Mortal Realm, that creates a disturbance which causes Valin Steel particles to form into visible chunks of a metallic substance stronger than normal steel. Valin Steel is particularly dangerous because of its combustibility, with only a small amount of exposure to fire being sufficient to cause explosions that can level neighborhoods if not cities with just a few pounds of material.
One other reaction is that of the Will interacting with the physical world. The Will generates Spark, and when it is not bound to a physical body but is still bound to the Mortal Realm, that Spark, when a spirit uses it to manipulate the Mortal world, sinks into and irradiates any material under it, which creates a substance called Emanation, which contains certain levels of Spark, which means it can be combined with other ingredients to induce specific magical effects when the solution makes contact with something; Emanation is thus the basis for all magical potions.
MAGIC
As I said, the Will of a living being cannot cross past or alter that body, but when a living thing dies, while most go to the Underworld, some are trapped here, without a body to bind the Will. Unbound, a spirit's Will allows them manipulate the Spark, and this forms the source of all magic in this world; the key to using magic, therefore, is developing some type of relationship or having a pre-existing relationship with a spirit. Without any sacrifice, spirits can use telekinesis, lightning generation and manipulation, and thermokinesis. Because Spark forms the basis of cognition, spirits can enter your brain and steal your thoughts and memories, share thoughts and memories by imparting them to the being they're passing through, essentially able to impart "suggestions" that, in their strongest form, can act as a form of hypnosis.
Spirits can also briefly possess creatures, but bodies are generally not equipped to handle two sparks in a single host. A spirit possessing a body would cause every part of that body to want to move, and having two sparks in one body can end up killing the host because without constant movement the extra spark ends up just absorbing oxygen from the air for stimulation. This is why when possession occurs it is usually only for brief periods, like a minute or so. The exception is if people learn certain war dances which allow them to use their whole bodies, they can be possessed, therefore possessing the power of spirits, for a much longer time; they have to keep dancing to maintain the stability, and this form of magic use has given birth to multiple martial arts styles based on encircling and constantly barraging your opponent; some of the arts are called Sand-Dancing, Water-Dancing, and Mud-Dancing, all based on using bouts of telekinesis to quickly harness easy to manipulate materials to overwhelm opponents (the inspiration for these martial arts styles would be Capoeira; Capoeira is extremely effective and allows for constant movement).
So the biggest fuel for my magic system is the issue of perception. Most people can't remember visiting the Underworld, most people can't see beyond their bodies, most people cannot see ghosts in the Mortal Realm, and most ghosts cannot see the Mortal Realm because they don't have a physical body with which they can perceive. This creates a situation where, while anyone can use magic because most people can develop some type of connection with spirits, it is difficult in practice for most to do so.
But some people are born with, or in rare cases develop, a unique bond with dream, giving them some or all of these abilities. Really creatives, people with certain mental disorders, or people born from uniquely difficult circumstances that required sacrifice, usually on the part of the mother, that is greater emotionally or physically than what would otherwise be expected, are more connected to Dream, and are therefore more able to perceive it beyond just their physical senses. This represents around 10% of the population; a strong sign of one of these abilities is lucid dreaming, because it means you are able to navigate the Underworld while not having your memories stolen, meaning you can essentially access the dream world whenever you sleep, or if you're trained whenever you want. Seeing spirits in the mortal realm is rare; around 2% of people have the ability, and it's really useful because spirits have the ability to manipulate energy but can't perceive the world around them, meaning that you can make a deal with a spirit for them to lend you their services in exchange for lending your body to them. Another rare ability is astral projection, which comes hand in hand with the ability to perceive the Mortal Realm as a spirit because both involve the ability to perceive the world beyond your physical body. So these ghosts, unlike others, are under normal circumstances essentially autonomous because they can perceive the world around them, meaning they can interact with the world without the constraints of a physical body. These are usually the deadliest types of spirits.
In order to change the nature of something, you need a sacrifice and a spirit must provide the spark necessary to activate that sacrifice. There are three different types of sacrifices:

1. White Sacrifices, which are made by causing mental anguish or connection. This sacrifice is necessary for two purposes; to create and bind someone to a magical oath which makes it so such an oath cannot be broken as long as the person bound to the oath remains bound, or to create a magical bond between two or more beings, allowing those bonded with each other to communicate telepathically, to perceive events through each other’s eyes, to share memories, and when one dies, to share a living body.
2. Red Sacrifices, which are made simply by spilling blood. This sacrifice is necessary to transform the physical form of one thing into another form. For instance, to transform an inanimate object into another inanimate object, one must coat that object with their own blood, and have a spirit activate that blood sacrifice by using their spark. Typically, Red Sacrifices involve shedding one’s own blood to change their physical form; when Red Sacrifices are activated, their form changes. When transforming into a form larger than themselves, the spell will cause a person to absorb the soft matter (water, sand, dust, mud, etc.) around them to gain mass, and when transforming into a form smaller than themselves, they shed mass in the form of “Formsand”, which they can then use to transform into their original form. This sacrifice can be permanently imbued as an ability to change into a specific form and back using tattoos made from emanation; the process of tattooing spills the blood necessary for a blood sacrifice, and the specific ingredients, the placement of the ink, and the Will of the tattooer and the tattooed determine the specific form they turn into. Descendants of those who shape shift inherit some of the characteristics of the altered forms of their parents.
   1. Some animals have also evolved ways of using Red Sacrifices to give themselves enhancements, such as the ability to breathe fire.
3. Black sacrifices, which are made by taking a life. This sacrifice is necessary to bind spirits of the dead to a physical form. The target spirit can perform or activate the sacrifice, but if the target spirit is one that the magic user wishes to control, another spirit has to make and activate the sacrifice. This can be used for a variety of purposes, including permanently binding spirits to a physical object and forcing it to do the bidding of the user, and permanently binding a spirit to a dead corpse, giving them new life in a new body.

Spellcasting is the act of giving spirits you are bound to instructions to perform an action. Basically, spirits recognize certain words as commandments to perform an action based on what they've learned; the more people that recognize a specific word as a specific command, the more potent that spell becomes. Spellcasting in the context of telepathic acts is often performed with songs or poetry, with certain phrases being used as a form of hypnotism as the melodic effect coincides with the spirits placing ideas in your head; this also happens to act as a sort of work-around to the requirement of possession for mind control because the spirit doesn't need to channel their energy through the whole body, just the mind, and they don't need to completely enter the person's body to influence them; this allows some magic users to cross the line from hypnotism into genuine mind control.

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.

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?

I am a 26 years old female and I have Hashimoto’s and PCOS . My thyroid function is at a normal level due to my medication, but it still presents challenges. I have not had a full period in well over 6 months , and I was almost diabetic ( Which is why I started my Wegovy journey to begin with). In the first two months I have lost 4 kg (8.8 pounds) which is lower than some other people, but I get it, it comes with the health issues I previously had.
Is there anyone else who has the same struggles, that has some tips to share? I know I am just at the beginning but the thyroid issues have made weight loss so frustrating over the years. Especially in the past years my system has felt so slow and like I could not lose weight like I did at 19-23. I feel stuck many times because my energy has been so low until recently,and I do not want to give up this time. I am super motivated to keep going but I want to do everything in my power to facilitate weight loss this time.
For guidelines I started at 117 kg( 258 lbs) and I do currently work out 2-3 times a week. I mainly do Zumba classes mixed with some strength training. And I burn around 540 - 600 active calories per session . I also try to get my 10k steps in daily. I try to eat under 1600 calories per day but most days I am in between 1200-1400.
I am open to any kind of tips from exercise/diet advice to any teas/supplements that might help.
Thanks in advance guys, and please be kind , this is my first time posting here on Reddit :D

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

Hey everyone,
I just had to share my incredible journey with Tirzepatide and how it's transformed my life. As a single mom of three kids, all under 14 years old, here in Sweden, finding time for myself has always been a challenge. Balancing work, raising my children solo, and trying to manage my weight left me feeling overwhelmed and frustrated.
For the longest time, I struggled to shed the pounds despite my efforts to watch my diet. With barely a moment to spare for exercise, I felt stuck in a cycle of weight gain and disappointment. That is until my doctor introduced me to Tirzepatide.
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I can't even begin to describe the relief and joy I feel seeing these results. Tirzepatide has given me back control over my weight and my life, and I couldn't be more grateful.
My dosage schedule has been quite manageable as well. I started with 2.5mg for the first week, followed by another week at 2.5mg, then increased to 5mg for the third and fourth weeks.
I'm curious to hear from others who are using Tirzepatide—how's it going for you? Is it as expensive for you to obtain as it is for me?
I just had to share my success story here in hopes that it might inspire others who may be facing similar struggles. Trust me, if Tirzepatide can work wonders for me, it can do the same for you!
Best regards,
Jasmine

Hello everyone! Ever since neopets had that real unstable day pre-classic pet colors re-release, some of my pets have glitched and I can't customize them anymore. The items they're equipped with are stuck, can't be removed and don't even show up in my closet storage so I can't remove them from there either. Of course i've e-mailed the neopets team and when they finally got back to me (after 3 months waiting for a reply) all they said was "we alerted our team, sorry for the wait, keep checking the news for updates" I'm very upset cause customization is one of my favorite things to play with and i can't even paint my pets cause I fear they'll just get even more glitched! Just hoping anyone here would have any advice for me, either on how to solve the actual problem or how to convince the neopets team to actually do something or give me a better response other than "sit tight indefinitely!"

I really want a purple mattress because i sleep hot and i love the way it feels. does it hold up and last long? im 205 pounds and worried im gonna be stuck with a mattress with a dip in the middle.
another thing is that i found a bunch of "like new" mattresses on facebook market. i believe they are the mattresses that were returned to the mattress company after the trial period. has anyone done this? do you think its a big risk?

Stats-5’2 196 I’ve been eating under 1500 calories and walking three miles a day for about a week and a half now and noticed absolutely no difference. I started drinking water and less soda. I started drinking probably 60oz of water a day and I’m peeing constantly it’s annoying but I saw online for my weight I should aim for 90oz! I’d probably be in the bathroom all day that seems like a lot? I know that I’m counting correctly I do it for work. I’m counting everything. I’ve take college level nutrition where calorie counting was covered and done it two years this isn’t new to me. I’m walking at a pre measured track so I know I’m walking the right amount of miles. I’m stuck. Last year I lost about 40 pounds with a 1500 calorie deficit it came off so easy but now? Nothing bc is coming off😭 I do have Nexplanon in and I’m debating having it taken out to see if I can loose weight better. Any advice would be appreciated

Hello! Has anyone used any Fitness apps to help you reach your goals? I consistently used Future fitness app for 2 years, improved my cardio stamina and strength and lost 26 pounds, nearly all of that occurring the first year. However, due to financial reasons, I paused the app this year and I’ve been doing other workouts, but feel pretty stuck on the last 10 pounds. Does anyone like any apps that provide custom workout plans based on goals and interests? Seems like there are SO MANY out there and now they all use AI in some way so trying to see what the community enjoys!

“Beasts all over the shop…You’ll be one of them, sooner or later…”
The strange Hunter turned around and exhaled. His breath was visible against the night’s air.
He’s bloodlusted. Aegis, I hope you have a plan.
Shimmer saw Elpis step back slightly, with a shocked expression on her face. She shakily raised a claw and pointed at something on the ground.
No. It… it can’t be.
That’s… horrible.
A shattered red jeweled necklace lay strewn across the ground, beside the mangled corpse of the Silkwing.
The Hivewing in front of the three swung his axe to the side. As it was a trick weapon, he was able to change its form on command. The axe had two forms: a shortened form that acted sort of like a sword, and an extended form specialized in crowd control and reach.
He extended his axe and Shimmer heard a low snarl from his throat.
“Do we kill him?” Elpis asked, a hint of fear in her voice.
“We don't have a choice. Steel yourself.” Aegis muttered and brandished his silksabers. The blades gleamed in the soft light of the three moons.
The hunter was taller than all of them, one head taller than Aegis and two taller than Shimmer and Elpis. Black tattered robes clung to him, marking him a Shadowhunter. Blood from tonight’s hunt stained the black fabric, showcasing his expertise and experience in the hunt. He wore a rounded dark-gray hat, and bloodied bandages covered his eyes. Shimmer wondered if he could even see.
Corpses of both beasts and dragons were scattered about the square-shaped courtyard, an equal amount of gravestones breaking up the open space. His teeth were uneven as if he had been eating and chewing rough bones. Blood dripped from his mouth down his neck, and his Hivewing stingers flexed in anticipation.
“Be careful,” Aegis started, “He’s going to use magic. Elpis, don’t use any of yours.” He told the hybrid dragon beside him, and she nodded.
The hunter walked slowly around them, searching for a weakness in their structure, and then spat out a lump of coagulated blood.
“That stench of squalid blood. No beast will be spared.” He half-muttered and half-growled. He tipped his hat respectfully, before lunging at Elpis. She dove to the side, and tried to retaliate with her scythe, but just slightly missed.
This hunter was agile, surprisingly so considering how old he looked. Shimmer gripped the handle of her silkhammer, knowing it wasn’t the time to strike. She stepped backward, seeking cover behind a grave, while Aegis leaped forward with the intent to pierce the frenzied hunter’s heart. Once again, the hunter rolled to the side and sent his axe hurtling towards the smaller Silkwing. Shimmer felt fear grip her heart, but Aegis avoided the blade. He fell back and motioned for Elpis to stay back.
“A sporting hunt. But alas, I’ve forgotten to ask your name.” Aegis growled, and the hunter laughed a sick, disturbing laugh.
“The name’s Gascoigne.” He shot back, and jumped into the air, slamming his axe down where Aegis was a split second ago. Shimmer’s ears rung from the sound of the impact. Her antennae subconsciously curled in defensively.
“Gascoigne. That’s a nice name. I’ll tell Ludwig you were a proud hunter till the end.” Aegis replied and sent his twin blades slicing into the hunter’s thigh. He recoiled, and a gleeful laugh escaped his bloodied mouth.
“Hehe… the sweet stench of blood. Just… just marvelous!” He exclaimed and raised his off-talon towards Aegis.
“Aegis! Get down!” Shimmer called, and a burst of flame erupted from the hunter’s claws across the courtyard. The limited magic the Hivewing had that he was willing to use in this hunt.
Aegis fell back, hissing in pain as a few stray flames singed his tail. The hunter chuckled under his breath, and Elpis took advantage of the opening he had presented her. She thrust the blade of her scythe toward him, opting for its sword form as of now, and the hunter knocked the blow aside. He countered with a kick to the Ice-Hivewing’s ribs, and she was sent to the ground. She coughed up a spurt of blue Icewing blood, and the hunter lifted his axe for a finishing blow.
Shimmer roared out and swung her hammer toward the hunter. The silk connected it to her wrists as it flew through the air, and it hit the hunter square in his side just as his axe was falling. He was sent into the opposite side of the courtyard, coughing and sputtering, but with a faint smirk on his face. Shimmer was in disbelief; how was he not dead?
“Ooh, what’s that smell… the sweet blood, ooh, it sings to me! It's enough to make a dragon sick.” Gascoigne laughed hollowly. He raised his talon, and Shimmer quickly rolled to the side as a ball of flame soared past her horns.
He’s going to turn at this rate.
Shimmer hid under a gravestone as a tree behind her erupted in flames, and Aegis jumped into the air. He beat his four wings ferociously before diving into the hunter. He caught both of Aegis’ horns, and he twisted his head. Aegis fell to the ground, and Gascoigne slashed his axe down across the Silkwing’s leg. Aegis cried out, and Shimmer’s heart ached. She pushed herself up, ignoring the raging fire around her, and she threw her hammer up in the air and aimed it towards the hunter. He narrowly evaded the heavy impact of the stone before Shimmer heard a metal clang behind her.
Elpis, scythe in one talon, approached Gascoigne. She had the little music box in her other.
Elpis played the music box and a song of eerie notes filled the courtyard.
The hunter stumbled back, clawing at his face, and Elpis shot Shimmer a look, her face telling her to make sure Aegis was okay.
Elpis advanced on the struggling hunter, and Shimmer leaped over to her Silkwing partner, who was injured on the ground. She felt tears welling in her eyes, but she knew this wasn’t the time to cry.
“Aegis. Look at me. Look at me.” She repeated, and he lifted his head weakly. His leg had a massive gash in it, but he could probably still walk, just with a limp.
“Ah, Shimmer. I’m alright. I’ll be back in the fight. Go, help Elpis. I’ll join back soon enough.” He groaned, and the pair heard a roar behind them.
Elpis was locked in a duel with Gascoigne, and the hunter’s stray fireballs met with blasts of frostbreath. For the first time in the battle, the hunter had a slight look of fear on his face. Elpis was relentless, her burial blade swiftly countering and stopping any attempt Gascoigne made at advancing. Aegis crawled back and attempted to stand, using a grave for support.
“Shimmer! I can’t hold him for long!” Elpis called, and Shimmer nodded. She took the hammer in her claws and swung it around her side, and in a clockwise circle in the air. It was the perfect counterweight to her body weight. She hoisted it up further into the air and then brought it crashing down onto the hunter.
It struck Gascoigne directly on the spine, and he fell to the ground.
He screamed in pain.
And then, a bright light flashed from his body.
His screams deepened in tone, morphing to be more animalistic. His posture fell forward, and his muscles rippled through his body. He grew in size, and more of his bloodied garb ripped from the size change.
Fur sprouted from seemingly random places on the Hivewing’s body, and his claws extended. His face shifted, his features becoming more and more distorted. His black hat fell to the ground.
The bandages around his eyes stayed, as well as the black-tattered garb that marked him as once a Hunter.
He was no longer a Hunter. Moons above, he wasn’t even a dragon anymore.
He was now a beast.
Shimmer’s heart pounded in her chest. She stared at the transformation for a split second, before reeling in her hammer. She took it in her right talon and dove behind a gravestone, wary of the spreading flames.
Elpis, on the other claw, held her blade in front of her. Shimmer heard a rasping cough escape the Ice-HiveWing’s throat, but she didn’t break her stance.
The beast that was once Gascoigne whipped around toward Elpis, and launched himself at her, with a ferocity Shimmer had never seen even in beasts.
Elpis sidestepped quickly. The beast slammed into the wall with a loud roar, and Shimmer spied Aegis in her peripheral vision struggling to stand. He winced as he stood on his injured leg, but didn’t cry out. He brandished his two blades as the beast charged at him.
“Aegis!” Shimmer cried.
He’s going to get hit. That beast will kill him.
Aegis ignored her, and as soon as the beast was within a wingspan from him he twisted his body in such a way that he narrowly avoided the savage charge. He elegantly sliced his twin blades across the beast’s hide, and the creature howled before rapidly turning to face him.
Shimmer flew into the air. “Get away from him!” She yelled before bringing the weight of her hammer down on the beast. It flattened part of his ribcage, but it seemed impervious to the pain. It did knock him to the ground, though, giving Aegis a moment to cut through what was once two of the hunter’s wings.
The beast quickly got back on its claws before sending a flurry of swipes towards Shimmer. She dodged to the side and readied her hammer for another strike.
That was before the beast kicked her square in her chest, its sharp, ravenous claws digging in and tearing her scales. Shimmer fell back, a slight gasp escaping her mouth, and she stumbled back into the wall. She lost her footing and fell to the ground, and gazed up at the beast locked on her.
“Aegis! Help!” She yelled, and not even a second later her Silkwing partner crashed into the beast. They fell to the ground, grappling with each other before Shimmer heard a familiar song fill the courtyard.
Elpis was cranking the music box, its ominous lullaby breaking up the noise of the fight. The beast stopped attacking Aegis and instead clawed at its face. It growled and screamed in pain, drawing blood from its very own fur and scales.
“Now! Kill it!” She yelled through the song, and Aegis nodded before driving his two blades through the beast’s skull.
They stuck, and the beast roared before throwing him off. It crawled and thrashed about on the ground, clearly not dead, and the two new blades stuck to his head pointed out like new horns.
Now’s my chance.
Shimmer stumbled to her claws and wound her hammer up into the air. With every last bit of her strength, she brought it down on the flailing beast.
It crushed what was left of the hunter.
Silence filled the courtyard, only broken by a few stray notes from the music box, the pained breathing of the three hunters in the area, and the howls and screams from other places in the Hive.
Shimmer breathed a sigh of relief, before collapsing.
I did it. We did it.
Gascoigne was free.
…
“I brought you water.”
Shimmer opened her eyes and found herself in her familiar hospital room.
The morning sun’s rays lit the room, and Shimmer felt very little pain from her chest.
It had been three days since that night.
Shimmer fixed her gaze on the purple-orange Silkwing sitting beside her and smiled.
“Thanks. I’m feeling much better, we should get going to Bloodworm soon. It’s today, remember?” Shimmer asked, and he nodded. Of course, he remembered.
The summons for every hunter to come to Bloodworm Hive. Ludwig, The Holy Blade had requested them all. He no doubt planned an attack. A shame really, the hive was only newly rebuilt. And now it was going to be the site of a horrid, savage warzone.
“I remember. Are you sure you’re feeling okay? Ludwig would understand if you couldn’t come,” Aegis asked, and she spied a hint of worry on his face.
“I’m fine. I need to make sure you don’t do anything stupid. I’ll come.” She sighed and took a sip from the canteen that Aegis had brought. It tasted wonderful, he had put something in to flavor it.
“Honeydew?” She guessed, and Aegis smiled.
“Yep. It’s your favorite, right?” He asked, and she nodded. She opened her arms, and he hugged her tight.
“I love you,” Shimmer whispered in his ear.
“I love you too. I pray to Clearsight that we’ll both be safe today. I can’t bear to lose you.” Aegis replied. He pulled away and gazed out the window.
Shimmer quickly drank the rest of the honeydew-flavored water before getting out of bed. She joined him at the window and was slightly surprised by what she saw.
Almost all of the hunters of Jewel Hive were preparing, some of them already flying in the direction of Bloodworm. They were all sharpening their trick weapons, mixing poisons, or saying goodbye to loved ones.
“We should get going. It’ll be midmorning when we get there, I don’t want to be late.” Shimmer suggested, and Aegis put a wing around her.
“Now? I need to get my stuff, and you do too. Join me at the workshop.” He asked, and she slid her head in the curve of his neck as he led her out of her sick room.
…
Shimmer beat her wings strong and fast against the morning savanna winds.
She saw what looked to be several hundred, maybe even a thousand dragons gathered around a hill. All of them had a colored garb fluttering proudly from their neck. Around ninety percent of the garbs were white, and the rest were black.
They were all different tribes and a fair amount of hybrids were scattered about as well. The gathered hunters were mostly Pantalan, but a good few were from Pyrrhia as well.
Shimmer and Aegis landed a short distance away from the hill, and all around them the sounds of dragons conversing and laughing with each other.
The sun was high in the sky, but it wasn’t quite noon yet.
“You see anyone you recognize?” Aegis asked, and Shimmer shook her head.
“There’s too many dragons here. It’s too much.” She whimpered, and Aegis pulled her close. He knew she didn’t do well in crowds. That was partly why she became a Shadowhunter. To work alone or with no more than a few other dragons.
“You’re safe with me.” He comforted her, and she leaned against him.
She had always hated being with a lot of other dragons. Aegis said it sounded like she had anxiety, which made sense. It didn’t do much to alleviate that fear, though.
None of them are thinking about you. They’re all busy with their own stuff.
Just take deep breaths.
“Do you want to move away? There’s fewer dragons over there,” He asked and pointed a claw across from them.
“…No, no I’m fine.” She whispered, and Aegis sighed.
“Alright. If you want to move, don’t be afraid to ask. I don’t mind it.”
Shimmer shook her head quickly, before the pair heard a loud voice from the top of the hill. They both looked up and saw the legendary hunter himself: Ludwig.
The menacing Nightwing stood proudly, his holy silver sword slung across his shoulder. His partner Memoria stood beside him, her tail twined around his. She had a bored look on her face as she stared at the crowd. The voices of the dragons fell silent, and Shimmer felt like she could breathe again.
The Nightwing’s loud voice echoed through the plain. “Dear Hunters.” He paused, his heroic voice inspiring pride and triumph in Shimmer, even though he had barely started.
“I’m sure all of you know why we’re here. Behind me, Bloodworm Hive stands proud against the horizon. Yet I am more than certain you all know what lies inside.” He paused and pointed his sword toward the dark shape of the Hive.
“Beasts. A few thousand. I think it’s time we put them out of their misery. That is why we are here. A battle of the ages, one that will go down in history. We, the brave heroes, fighting against evil. We will be reveled, we will be honored. We will protect the dragons we hold dear to our hearts, and save those we can yet save.” His speech roused the crowd, and Shimmer felt herself stand a little taller.
“The plan is simple. The Hunters of the Sun will lead the charge from the front. I have already talked to the leaders of the charge. The Shadowhunters will pick the stray beasts off from behind. We will attack at dusk when half the sun is hidden from the eye.” He gestured with his sword at the rising sun, and he extended his wings. His massive wingspan seemed to fill the sky, and Shimmer's heart swelled with pride.
He held his sword up to the heavens, and it transformed. It grew larger, into the shape of a claymore, and it turned a shade of sacred jade. It glowed with an otherworldly light, and the crowd was enamored by the display.
“Now, hunters. Spend the rest of today preparing. The hunt is on tonight. Ludwig, The Holy Blade will be with all of you in spirit.” He bellowed, and the crowd erupted in applause and cheers.
Shimmer saw a proud, triumphant look in Aegis’ eyes, and she felt the same. Ludwig’s blade captivated her. The blade of legend, inspiring all who lay eyes on it.
Ludwig would be with them tonight. The best, the greatest, the strongest hunter ever.
Tonight, the hunters would not know defeat.
Nor would they ever, with Ludwig alive and at their side.
May the good blood guide your way,
Ultima_8

⚠️ i’m angry so be prepared ⚠️
(19f) ok, i know that i’m over reacting a lot, but i can’t go through a single day without someone making a comment about my height, and even weight. i’m about 4’11 1/2. my proportions are awful, i have a long torso and super short legs, and no boobs which makes me even more unattractive than i already am. it’s like that’s all everyone thinks about when they see me. anytime someone brings up height i try so hard to steer the conversation away from it because i know it’s gonna get turned around on me, and it always does. people act as if i’m not the one walking around in this body every single day. like i know god damn well what i look like. when i see family or friends i haven’t seen in a long time, their always praising my younger brother because of how tall and athletic he is. then when they see me, they’re just disappointed in how i turned out. i feel like people perceive me as trashy and pathetic. some people make comments just as a light hearted joke, other people do it because they know i’m so insecure, and this other girl i used to be friends with genuinely thought i was a freak (whole other story) either way, it still hurts my feelings. i just don’t understand how people thinks it’s okay to bring down someone’s body like that. i’ve had friends and family make fun of the way i walk as well. i literally can’t help it, because of my shitty proportions. and of course if i were to complain about it, everyone always says that i’m making it a big deal (when it always other people making it a big deal), and i should be grateful that i don’t have worse problems.
i know this is a really stupid thing to do, but i couldn’t help it, but a lot of the time i’ll look up tik toks about short girls, and everyone has the most horrible things to say about them. like how anyone who is interested in us likes children or is a pedo, how we just wish we were tall girls because our bodies suck, how we’re re all automatically pick me’s, etc. everyone thinks it’s okay and that it’s hilarious. if anyone DARE insulted a tall girl (which is still awful), they would be hated on.
every single date with a guy or girl i’ve gone on, the other person makes a comment about how they didn’t realize how short i was gonna be and how disappointed they are. even when i told them my height in advance just to avoid comments like that. one girl was so disgusted and repulsed by the way i look and how short i was, when i was literally TALLER than her. it still hurt my feelings a lot.
i’m so jealous of people who can just go out in public or with people they know and not have to worry about random body comments thrown into their faces. EVERY SINGLE PERSON i know has commented about my height. or about my weight or proportions or whatever else is wrong with me. i see kids stare at me when i’m out at the store or something and parents have to pull them away discreetly implying to them not to stare. i also see a lot of adults, specifically older men for some reason starring at me for unusually long periods of time probably wondering “wtf is that?”
my friends think it’s totally okay to just randomly throw my weight out in a conversation in front of everyone. “bro you are 93 POUNDS!!!” i know my weight is fine for my height, but my friends and family tell me that i need to eat more and gain weight. i genuinely do not think i’m underweight nor do i look like it. but i bet they wouldn’t randomly scream out someone’s weight to literally anyone else. i’m always compared to children, i’m always told that i look like a child and that i’m basically a child. all of my friends and family treat me like a child and are so condescending, despite me being 19. i literally just wanna be treated like a normal person. i also NEVER find clothes that fit me right, and while that may just sound like a stupid inconvenience, it feels like someone’s screaming in my face, “why would any of these clothes fit on you? your body’s not normal.” i hate shopping. especially with friends. i especially hate when one of my friends and i try on the same thing together, and when we look in the mirror, it looks so good on her and so horrible on me. i try not to cry any time i go shopping. i somehow make the cutest outfits look awful because my height and proportions ruin everything i wear.
(super long one coming up but i had to get it out)
i think about how much i hate my body 24/7. i’ve avoided going out with friends more times than i can count because i hate having to be seen. i’m constantly worried of how other people see me, i genuinely cannot be happy sometimes when i’m out because of how short i am, i feel relieved when people refer to me as she or my name rather than an it, i’ve been loosing hours of sleep dreading my height and thinking about how i’m gonna be stuck in this body for the rest of my life, i can’t go out into any public place, especially with my family or myself, without feeling sick to my stomach that people around me are looking at how short i am or assuming i’m a child, if someone brings up my height once, i start to panic and it drags me down for the next few days, i avoid standing up in some situations and cover myself up with a blanket if i can so nobody can look at my height, i constantly trying to reassure myself that being this short is not such a horrible thing but find everything about it horrible, i’ve avoided getting a real job especially working with customers because i’m terrified of people making comments about how small i am, asking if i’m able to do the job right, or customers asking if i’m old enough to work here, i cannot consider myself an adult, i only see myself as a child no matter how old i’m getting because i have a child body, i just assume it’s ok when i’m treated differently and ignored because i’m short, i feel like i’m just not allowed to be happy when i’m this short, if i see a kid that’s like my height, i think “am i seriously that short?” and that’s all i think about, i feel like i don’t have a normal human body and that there’s something seriously wrong with me, i feel bad for my friends because they have to deal with being around or being seen with me because i look so short and annoying, i get anxiety and start to panic when i look at myself from different angles in a mirror.
sorry about all that crap. i just had to get it out.

TLDR: Roommate has 2 dogs with low quality of life. One sits in a kennel and gets no mental stimulation and the other is old and pees in the house on pee pads that my roommate lets sit for days.
My roommate and I have been living together for over a year now and between us we have 3 dogs: she has 2 and I have 1. She had been living with her parents before we moved in together and had always complained how her parents had set back her youngest dog's, M, training and how her oldest dog, D, was often yelled at by her family which caused D a lot of stress because of past abuse. We moved in together and she claimed she was going to start training with her dogs right away, but she didn't. She blamed her adhd and that after work she was really tired and didn't feel like training but she was said she was still committed to making an effort. She lets her dog D pee in the house on a pee pad which my roommate lets sit for 3 days at a time. Any time I throw the pee pad away she gets upset and tells me they cost a lot, but they start to smell really bad and anytime they're on the ground I feel like my house is unclean and I don't want to spend time in it. D is fairly old (we believe she's around 8 but she's from the pound so we don't officially know) and anytime I try to bring up training for D my roommate just says she's old and that it's probably to late to train her. We've also received many noise complaints from neighbors because D constantly barks and I'm worried that they might evict us because of her.
Her other dog, M, is a 2 year old Cairn Terrier. I feel terrible for this dog because she isn't getting the life she deserves with my roommate. My roommate has been dating this guy for about 2 months now and she spends almost all her time over at his house. Early in the year I told my roommate her dogs aren't my responsibility and that I don't want to take care of them because they are untrained and she said ok. When she goes to stay with her boyfriend she takes them to her parents house (same parents mentioned before). The parents let the dogs run around the entire time they're there which would be fine but they have have big boxer (no hate on the breed) that doesn't leave M alone. It has gotten to the point where the boxer will grab M by the neck and drag her around and M plays dead while she is dragged around. No one sees a problem with this, not even my roommate. Then, on the off days my roommate is home, she puts M in a kennel or puts her outside on a long line and walks away to do something else. My roommate is constantly complaining about how M is annoying and that she's so difficult to train, but anytime I work with M she's great and listens. The issue with that is that I have my own high energy dog that I have to take care of and I'm out of the house for a lot of the day. I've made a deal with a neighbor and she'll let out my dog throughout the day but my neighbor has said that she won't touch my roommates dogs because they're untrained and because D has attacked both of her dogs (which my roommate just laughed about). I barely have time for my own dog and although it hurts me, I have no time for M so she just sits in her kennel.
I know my roommate will most likely move out in a year because we are no longer friends (another story for another time) but we're still stuck with each other for the time being and I can't keep living in a house with these dogs. I think she should rehome M to someone that can give her the mental stimulation and love that she needs but I also know that if they're not at my home, my roommate is just going to have them at her parents where they're life is still going to be shitty. Anytime I try to bring it up to my roommate she just gets defensive and says "she'll never be a perfect dog mom" and that she's "trying her best" but if this is her best she shouldn't have animals. As a dog owner myself it would be devastating to rehome my dog and I've tried to work with my roommate on trying to be better with her dogs but she puts very little effort into them and I think it's unfair to them.

This is both a post looking for advice and to vent. Using my second account for anonymity. Sorry for my word vomit. I’m just going to write what’s on my mind. TL;DR at the bottom if you want to skip my ranting.
I (28 F) finally got a ‘cozy’ office job in 2022 which I had dreamed of after working in management in a grueling, extremely laborious, customer service job that genuinely screwed my back to the point where I couldn’t walk (which is now mostly better after quitting almost 2 years ago). After working really hard at this new job, I became management pretty fast (8 months) and it’s genuinely the most I have ever been paid in my life (around $51k before taxes). It’s not a ton in the current financial state of the world (I live in the US), but it’s enough to get myself and my partner by with his job as well, and I have some left over every month. This is truly a blessing and not something I take lightly. I feel very privileged to be in this position when my partner and I, in the past, have been in poverty where we had $30 to feed us both for a month.
However, my depression has sky rocketed. This job has afforded me to go to a wonderful (but expensive) therapist, and I feel like I talk about how my job is wrecking me emotionally and mentally majority of the time. My anxiety is through the roof. I am being forced to micromanage our team, and I have to make tough decisions I don’t agree with. Some days, I feel like I am my team’s therapist. I try to establish boundaries but I truly feel like a parent - I am never left alone by the team or upper management as I am always needed to answer questions, report, and investigate cases. The work load is insane and they just keep piling more and more on me and my colleagues. I am salaried but I’m constantly working off the clock to catch up. In multiple required leadership trainings, it’s always been pushed that “you’ll never feel like you have enough time to get everything done” which seems to be what they consider ‘normal’, and the company constantly gives more responsibilities to everyone instead of hiring a new role or realizing we need help/more people. It’s not healthy and everyone is being run ragged. My hours suck so I’m the only manager in the evening so I am constantly being dogpiled with questions, messages, emails, complaint tickets, assignment, meetings, trainings, etc. the list goes on and on and on. We have 40+ people under us which feels impossible to manage among everything else.
I feel stuck. I do not have the capacity at the end of the day to do anything productive like courses, certifications, or to look for a new job. I don’t even have a college degree under my belt. I was about 6 credits away from an Associates back in 2020 but when the pandemic hit, I had to go full time at my last job to help which made me put a pause on my education and I have yet to go back. Lesson learned: don’t sacrifice your education for a job. Good lord. I feel like I can’t do anything but management to make a decent living (which I don’t want to do anymore) since I don’t have a degree or set of skills except for management and customer service for 12+ years. It’s soul crushing. It hurts my heart to have hard conversations with staff, especially those who are trying and who care but who still come up short. I also hate having to be the bearer of bad news, especially when it’s to uphold a company policy that I think is bs. I feel stuck between the executives above me and the team I manage. It’s suffocating. All that I do is never enough despite getting things done while being pulled in hundreds of different directions at once.
I feel so ungrateful. I remember dreaming of an office job when I was doing back breaking work before. I also do have wonderful colleagues and some of the benefits are things I never thought I’d have in any job. Now I’ve gained 30+ pounds and my mental health is at an all time low. There are so many people out there struggling worse and I just feel so entitled and shitty asking for something better and whining about where I am. I also have a lot of financial anxiety since I don’t want to be where I’ve been in the past where we could barely afford food. My wonderful partner has begged me to quit if it’s too much and has offered to support us while I looked for something else, but living on his income, which is significantly less than mine, is terrifying. I also don’t like the idea of putting that pressure on him. He’s done so much for us, and the guilt I would feel for giving up on our stability because I can’t ‘tough it out’ makes me feel so much shame. Although I’m good at it, I also don’t want to do customer service as it’s something I’ve done my entire life, and it has never paid what I need to support us. And let’s be frank, everyone knows it sucks.
Without this job, I couldn’t put food on the table like I do now. I would lose the ability to go to the doctor without worrying about it putting me in the hole. I couldn’t afford to go to therapy or pay for medication. We’ve been looking to buy a house for years and that would become a pipe dream. Although we are child-free, I still have pets to feed and take care of. What would I even do if I did try to find something else? I don’t have a degree, or certificates. I barely have the energy or time to pursue those things. I don’t even have the bandwidth to do the things I love like hobbies or see friends. I don’t even know what I want.
I’m good at art and computer stuff. I love data and have looked at data analysis, but I just don’t have the time. I love plants and animals, but don’t want to work in animal medicine. I have looked into medical billing/coding. I guess I’m mostly looking for something project based and not people/management based. Something that’s independent that offers autonomy over my own time and work quality/production. That’s probably most people though, right?
If you’ve made it this far, I’m sorry for my rambling. I feel better after putting this here, but I feel the crash of anxiety that lies in wait. I should b working but I’m frozen and overwhelmed. What do I do? What options are out there?
TL;DR: I work in management at a corporate job that has destroyed my mental health. I do not have a degree or any certifications. I stopped going to college in 2020 because of the pandemic and was <10 credits away from an Associate’s degree. I am looking for something that is not management or customer service that would allow for independent work, autonomy over my own time and work quality/production. I am very literate with computers and love data. I am a very creative person, and I am good at art (traditional paintings, digital, etc.), and have hobbies that include houseplants and exotic animals. I have over 12+ years in customer service which has a lot of transferable soft skills. I have looked (minimally) into data analysis as well as medical billing/coding. Any advice on careers, certifications, degrees, courses, etc would be greatly appreciated!