Sore throat, earache and pink eye
Staphylococcus aureus bacteria colonizing the body: the unifying agent of acute and chronic disease
2014.09.19 01:24 healthyalmonds Staphylococcus aureus bacteria colonizing the body: the unifying agent of acute and chronic disease
Staphylococcus aureus is a bacteria that can live in the nostrils, ears, mouth, tonsils, and skin. It may cause or be associated with your congestion, swollen lymph nodes, sinus problems, sore throat, eczema, rosacea, acne, cystic pimples, folliculitis, bowel disease, chronic fatigue, diabetes, lupus, weight gain, hair loss, and other diseases. Chlorhexidine, iodine, or Triple Antibiotic Ointment (Neosporin) may stop the Staph infection. See inside for more information.
2024.05.15 22:47 emmyinrecovery When does it stop hurting
I’m on day 13 of being symptomatic, and on day like 5 of the worst, most painful sore throat situation I’ve ever experienced. I’m not sure I’ve ever been in this much pain in my whole life. My throat is so swollen with like huge white patches on it. I can’t talk, I can’t eat, it takes painful, cartoonish effort to even swallow a sip of water. I can’t even sleep at night the pain is so bad. I haven’t slept at ALL in two days and a couple days ago i was prescribed prednisone for my throat, but it isn’t helping yet, it’s still just getting worse and more painful. Not even trying to be dramatic but I don’t even want to watch tv anymore. All I do is sit in silence and on again off again cry while i sip on water. Is it supposed to be this bad, has anyone else has prednisone for this? When does it start helping? I’m losing my mind. I can handle the fevers and body aches and inability to do anything. I cant handle this sore throat thing. Please please give advice and recommendations because i’m exhausted and so hungry and can’t handle this pain!!! It’s bad enough that as a serious nicotine addict of many years, I haven’t touched a vape or a cigarette in over a week. Idek if I can emphasize how big of a deal for me that is. This really hurts. Advice pls
submitted by emmyinrecovery to Mononucleosis [link] [comments]
2024.05.15 22:47 Blueoriontiger [TOMT][Book][Sci-fi][70s-90s] Paperback YA Novel With Zip-a-Zing Aliens
I read this in a US public library in the early 2000s, and have not been able to find details on the book. Any help is appreciated.
submitted by Blueoriontiger to tipofmytongue [link] [comments]
- It was for the juvenile/young adult audience, and cataloged int the juvenile section of the library
- It was paperback, and old. I said 90s to be safe, but I fully believe this book was out in the 70s to 80s; likely 70s.
- The story basically follows either a soldier or mercenary given to do some job on a prison planet. Some aliens have rebelled and him and two cohorts are recruited into quelling the rebellion. It turns out that the rebellion is a eradication, and that the union/space government is actually taking over the planet and the aliens are the native inhabitants (I use the term space union loosely, I don't think that's what the organization was called that in the book). The protagonist sides with the aliens and helps them rebel.
- The aliens were weak, but were able to direct sound to fight back and empower themselves. The effect was greater in more numbers. Their song was just "Zip-a-zing" over and over again. They were humanoid and frail, and didn't have technology like the space union (blasters, armor, etc). A plot point was that the protagonist found one of these aliens after getting ambushed, and it was too injured to fight back. It then did the lore dump to him of what was going on.
- The protagonist joined the aliens on an attack of the space union's "fort", where they rounded up whoever they could while singing the "Zipazing" song.
- I believe the protagonist was a convict, and put on a prison planet to serve out a sentence of killing someone. I recall in the first chapter that he was starving and trying to get food (or stepped someplace wrong), and got into a fight with three dogs over food. I think the arrangement was quell the problem on the planet, and you'll get your freedom.
- There was a distinct lack of guns with the characters. i think this was done on purpose by the author, and I remember being disappointed as a reader because I usually picked up sci-fi for cool alien action scenes. I believe the explanation was they were convicts so they couldn't get any, or were just given low-end sidearms that did little to nothing. It was more of "This is a sci-fi setting and the protagonist has his wits to go through", rather than "Have Gun Will Travel."
- One of his buddies was a humanoid alien with green hair and pink eyes. I specifically remember this because Mom did not like there were aliens in the book, and actually didn't want me to read it because of that. There was also a lady who's name I don't remember. The alien backstabbed the protagonist and sided with the eradication of the native aliens, wanting his freedom. I believe the woman did get injured/shot but survived.
- The end of the book did have this space union send prison ships, to round up the CO and all the soldiers that were involved in this takeover, and the alien sidekick got put in jail too. I don't recall what was the ultimate fate of the main character was.
- I don't recall what the cover art was, but I think it showed some planetscape with a black starry sky. This may not be reliable memory.
2024.05.15 22:45 Aggravating_Fall5329 Seeking info on what could be going on for my Best friend who is in the hospital. 5wks postpartum, went in due to fever, diarrhea, tachycardia. Neg for covid, sepsis, flu, strep, gallbladder & kidneys normal. She's exposed to natural well water &drinks raw milk thinking possible parasite or bacteria
More information from her:
"looking for someone familiar with a specific strain of bacteria or parasite.
Ok started with sore throat Thursday then headache body ache 101.4-102.4 fever Saturday night. SUnday began diarrhea and same range of fever all day.
Monday same symptoms but range of fever was 101.4-102.8. Cramps in upper stomach and vomiting began. Fever came down to 99.9 at midnight on Tuesday but then at 6 am temperature dropped to 95.5 and vomiting and diarrhea became more frequent. 20 minutes later at hospital temp increased rapidly to 103.3 and heart rate to 130. Diarrhea became bright green and VERY frequent. Fluids administered, doctors determined it's not sepsis, Covid, flu, or strep. So far have no concrete answers. She is 5 weeks postpartum and breastfeeding.
submitted by Aggravating_Fall5329 to DiagnoseMe [link] [comments]
"looking for someone familiar with a specific strain of bacteria or parasite.
Ok started with sore throat Thursday then headache body ache 101.4-102.4 fever Saturday night. SUnday began diarrhea and same range of fever all day.
Monday same symptoms but range of fever was 101.4-102.8. Cramps in upper stomach and vomiting began. Fever came down to 99.9 at midnight on Tuesday but then at 6 am temperature dropped to 95.5 and vomiting and diarrhea became more frequent. 20 minutes later at hospital temp increased rapidly to 103.3 and heart rate to 130. Diarrhea became bright green and VERY frequent. Fluids administered, doctors determined it's not sepsis, Covid, flu, or strep. So far have no concrete answers. She is 5 weeks postpartum and breastfeeding.
2024.05.15 22:41 ravenvibe A sliver of molar came out through my inside gum
I am a non-smoker, wisdom teeth extracted. No history of cavities.
For 3-4 weeks I have had localized pain by my bottom right back molar, on the inside. The inside gum is swollen. I could feel something sharp for many days when pressing my tongue in the area and then a few days ago, a small sliver of what only could be a tooth came out.
This temporarily relieved the pain. The pain is specific to just that one spot. A few days later, I once again felt a sharp piece of what I assume is tooth in the same spot. I also started experiencing a mild sore throat on the same side.
Today, my tongue cannot feel the sharp tooth at all. I can still feel a pinpoint hole, but maybe it's closing? The pain when pressing on the spot is also less today.
Any ideas? I'll go to a dentist but I do not have dental insurance so trying to prepare myself for a potentially large bill.
submitted by ravenvibe to askdentists [link] [comments]
For 3-4 weeks I have had localized pain by my bottom right back molar, on the inside. The inside gum is swollen. I could feel something sharp for many days when pressing my tongue in the area and then a few days ago, a small sliver of what only could be a tooth came out.
This temporarily relieved the pain. The pain is specific to just that one spot. A few days later, I once again felt a sharp piece of what I assume is tooth in the same spot. I also started experiencing a mild sore throat on the same side.
Today, my tongue cannot feel the sharp tooth at all. I can still feel a pinpoint hole, but maybe it's closing? The pain when pressing on the spot is also less today.
Any ideas? I'll go to a dentist but I do not have dental insurance so trying to prepare myself for a potentially large bill.
2024.05.15 22:40 DarthRagon House of the Dragon: Wroth of the Abyss - Excerpt 1
An idea I have been toiling with, it finally scratched my mind strong enough to escape. This is a little excerpt of the idea of a man being reincarnated into Westeros during the prelude of the Dance of the Dragons. Being born to Laena and Daemon, the blood of the dragon and the blood of the sea form a strong force in him.
"Dracarys Vhagar!" The piercing cry jolted me from sleep, sending my heart racing as I bolted upright in bed. Time seemed to stretch, the world slowing to a crawl as a familiar clicking sound echoed ominously in the air. My mind raced with a single thought: 'No, it can't be...'
Disregarding my dishevelled state and clad only in underwear, I dashed to the window, gauging the distance to the ground below. The lone palm trees swayed in the wind outside as if offering silent reassurance that the fall wouldn't be too dire.
"A body fit for the lord of the seas I was promised, let's see how that goes..." With resolve hardening my nerves, I leapt over the balcony, the rush of air accompanying my descent.
Fwoosh!
Time seemed to freeze once more as I hurtled toward the staircase leading to the beach. As I landed with a jarring impact, the scene before me unfolded in chaotic clarity. My mother lay collapsed on the sand, a trail of blood staining the shore—a broken figure in the moonlight.
"Keligon zȳhon (Stop Her), Tiamat!" I bellowed, even as flames erupted from Vhagar's jaws. With a primal roar, the sea responded, and the serpentine jaws of Tiamat, the 'dragon' that hatched with me, emerged from the waves. Her various knobs, spines and horns contrasted with her large, sinuous, white body. She surged forward from the depths, her red eyes focused and the hood around her neck flared as her powerful jaws snapped shut with a resounding crack. The clash of titanic forces reverberated through the water as Vhagar roared in defiance, its flames sputtering against the onslaught. Arcs of electricity crackled between each sharp fang, the resonance of the elements contrasting the deep of the night.
With gritted teeth, I ignored the pain from my fall and raced toward my mother's side. Vhagar's Dragonfire faltered, replaced by a pained cry as she struggled against Tiamat's grip. "Jikagon arlī (Go Back), Tiamat," I commanded, and the sea creature obediently released its hold, slipping back beneath the waves. In my mind, I could feel how concerned she was for me and my mother as well.
As Vhagar turned, disoriented and enraged, I approached cautiously, soothing words falling from my lips. "gīda, gīda, (calm, calm) Vhagar," I murmured, hoping to quell the storm raging within her.
Holding my mother in my arms, I noted that only half of her body was burnt, yet they seemed to only penetrate to the last layer of the skin. Her body was a charred remnant, I asked her to be quiet as I asked for the water's help in healing her.
In my mind, however, I felt Tiamat indicate that dragonfire was the exception. Gritting my teeth, I asked my mother,
"would... would you like me to at least save the baby painlessly?"
She nodded. I proceeded to ask the water within my mother to release the child, and it slowly began to push the baby out.
Amidst the cries of a newborn, echoing across the desolate beach, a figure descended the weathered stone stairs, casting a long, solemn shadow over the scene. The gentle lapping of the waves provided a haunting backdrop to the momentous occasion unfolding in the fading light of day.
"It's a boy, mother..." I murmured, my voice barely above a whisper, choked with emotion. "I'll call him Laenor... in your and... and ah, uncle's honour..."
Tears welled in my eyes as I swallowed the rising bile, threatening to spill over as I gazed down at the fragile bundle in my arms. His cries, though piercing, seemed to fade into the background as I focused on the woman who had given me life.
Summoning the last reserves of her strength, my mother nodded slightly as she extended a trembling hand to touch my tear-streaked face. Her touch was both searing and tender, a bittersweet reminder of the love that bound us together. A faint smile tugged at the corners of her lips, a silent reassurance in the face of impending separation.
"My... special boy..." she whispered, her voice barely more than a breath, yet filled with a depth of love that transcended words. "I... will... al...ways... lo...ve y-"
But her words trailed off into silence, the light fading from her once bright eyes as her spirit slipped quietly from this world. At that moment, as I cradled my newborn son in my arms, I felt the weight of her absence settle over me like a heavy shroud. My mother is now forever lost to me...
Moving away from her body, I understood what she wished for, a true valyrian death. I moved towards the cause of the rapid footsteps and knew who it was from their build,
The tension between father and son crackled in the air like the static before a storm as I confronted Daemon, my words dripping with bitterness and accusation.
"Father," I seethed, my voice heavy with venom, "I wonder... did you grant me that final moment with her out of respect, or was it merely your own disinterest in her that allowed it?"
Emerging from the shadows, Daemon regarded me with a cool detachment that only fueled my anger. His silence spoke volumes, a tacit acknowledgement of the rift that had grown between us.
"You are upset, I understand--" he began, attempting to placate me.
"Upset? UPSET?!" I erupted, the floodgates of my grief and frustration bursting forth. "My fucking mother just died! Your WIFE! At the age of 26! How could you have let this happen?!"
Daemon remained stoic, unmoved by my outburst. I continued to rail against him, pouring out my anguish and resentment until I was left gasping for breath.
"I tried... Everything," He whispered out, the weight of his failure resting silently on his shoulders. "Everything that the masters recommended, I did without question."
"You KNEW I was special," I accused, my voice trembling with betrayal. "Why did you not come to me?"
"Special, yes," Daemon conceded with a sigh. "But able to ensure a safe delivery? That was not something I expected to be within your abilities."
His words cut deep, slicing through the haze of my grief with a sharp clarity. I silenced him with a look, determination hardening my resolve.
"We will discuss this later," I declared, my voice firm. "After I have cremated my mother."
Daemon's gaze lingered on me, a silent acknowledgement of my authority at this moment. But his next words grated against me,
"And how will you do that without a dragon that breathes... fire?"
With a silent exchange, I passed my younger brother into his care, my jaw clenched with determination. Turning away, I strode toward Vhagar, my mother's final resting place.
"Dracarys, Vhagar," I commanded, but she remained stubbornly unmoved, defying my order. Frustration surged within me, but I refused to be stopped.
Raising my arms toward the open ocean, I summoned a thick tendril of water to wrap around Vhagar's throat. With a clenched fist, I repeated my command, forcing her head towards my mother's body.
"Vhagar. DRACARYS."
This time, she obeyed, her flames engulfing my mother's body in the ancient funeral rite of Valyria. As her body blazed, consuming my mother's earthly remains, I honoured her final request, granting her the dignity of a true Valyrian death.
"Keligon, Vhagar," I murmured, the flames extinguishing at my command. She seemed to listen now, subdued by the solemnity of the moment. I let Vhagar free of the water tendril before stepping back towards my father,
"IF. And I truly mean IF," I emphasized, locking eyes with Daemon, "I find out that you had anything to do with her death or that you tell anyone of my abilities... I swear on the memory of my dead mother that I will pierce your heart and lungs with that targaryen blood that you are oh so proud of."
My words hung heavy in the air, a solemn oath borne of grief and determination.
There was a moment of tense silence as my words reverberated between us, each syllable weighted with the weight of my resolve. Daemon's expression remained inscrutable, but I detected a flicker of unease beneath the mask of indifference.
With a final, piercing stare, I turned away, leaving him to contemplate the gravity of my vow. As I left the yard, I noted the small smile that replaced his expression.
Ascending the steps, exhaustion weighed heavily on my shoulders, mingling with the simmering emotions that churned within me. It was then that I realized the reason for Daemon's smile, the underlying pride that lay beneath his stoic facade.
Halting midway up the stairs, I turned back to face him, my gaze meeting his across the distance.
"You're proud, aren't you?" I questioned, my voice tinged with a mix of frustration and resignation.
Daemon met my gaze, his expression unreadable yet tinged with a hint of something akin to pride.
"Of course," he replied, his voice carrying a weight of its own. "After all, that part of you is finally out... The fire and fury of a dragon."
His words resonated within me, stirring a complex mixture of emotions. With a nod of acknowledgement, I turned away once more, leaving him to his thoughts on the desolate beach below.
Though my anger still simmered beneath the surface, tempered by the realization that some of my accusations had been fueled by raw emotion, I resolved to address them with a clearer mind in the days to come. For now, I needed time to process, to mourn, and to prepare for the challenges that lay ahead.
So yeah, hope you enjoyed that. I'm thinking of writing the entire thing but idk yet.
submitted by DarthRagon to TheCitadel [link] [comments]
Disregarding my dishevelled state and clad only in underwear, I dashed to the window, gauging the distance to the ground below. The lone palm trees swayed in the wind outside as if offering silent reassurance that the fall wouldn't be too dire.
"A body fit for the lord of the seas I was promised, let's see how that goes..." With resolve hardening my nerves, I leapt over the balcony, the rush of air accompanying my descent.
Fwoosh!
Time seemed to freeze once more as I hurtled toward the staircase leading to the beach. As I landed with a jarring impact, the scene before me unfolded in chaotic clarity. My mother lay collapsed on the sand, a trail of blood staining the shore—a broken figure in the moonlight.
"Keligon zȳhon (Stop Her), Tiamat!" I bellowed, even as flames erupted from Vhagar's jaws. With a primal roar, the sea responded, and the serpentine jaws of Tiamat, the 'dragon' that hatched with me, emerged from the waves. Her various knobs, spines and horns contrasted with her large, sinuous, white body. She surged forward from the depths, her red eyes focused and the hood around her neck flared as her powerful jaws snapped shut with a resounding crack. The clash of titanic forces reverberated through the water as Vhagar roared in defiance, its flames sputtering against the onslaught. Arcs of electricity crackled between each sharp fang, the resonance of the elements contrasting the deep of the night.
With gritted teeth, I ignored the pain from my fall and raced toward my mother's side. Vhagar's Dragonfire faltered, replaced by a pained cry as she struggled against Tiamat's grip. "Jikagon arlī (Go Back), Tiamat," I commanded, and the sea creature obediently released its hold, slipping back beneath the waves. In my mind, I could feel how concerned she was for me and my mother as well.
As Vhagar turned, disoriented and enraged, I approached cautiously, soothing words falling from my lips. "gīda, gīda, (calm, calm) Vhagar," I murmured, hoping to quell the storm raging within her.
Holding my mother in my arms, I noted that only half of her body was burnt, yet they seemed to only penetrate to the last layer of the skin. Her body was a charred remnant, I asked her to be quiet as I asked for the water's help in healing her.
In my mind, however, I felt Tiamat indicate that dragonfire was the exception. Gritting my teeth, I asked my mother,
"would... would you like me to at least save the baby painlessly?"
She nodded. I proceeded to ask the water within my mother to release the child, and it slowly began to push the baby out.
Amidst the cries of a newborn, echoing across the desolate beach, a figure descended the weathered stone stairs, casting a long, solemn shadow over the scene. The gentle lapping of the waves provided a haunting backdrop to the momentous occasion unfolding in the fading light of day.
"It's a boy, mother..." I murmured, my voice barely above a whisper, choked with emotion. "I'll call him Laenor... in your and... and ah, uncle's honour..."
Tears welled in my eyes as I swallowed the rising bile, threatening to spill over as I gazed down at the fragile bundle in my arms. His cries, though piercing, seemed to fade into the background as I focused on the woman who had given me life.
Summoning the last reserves of her strength, my mother nodded slightly as she extended a trembling hand to touch my tear-streaked face. Her touch was both searing and tender, a bittersweet reminder of the love that bound us together. A faint smile tugged at the corners of her lips, a silent reassurance in the face of impending separation.
"My... special boy..." she whispered, her voice barely more than a breath, yet filled with a depth of love that transcended words. "I... will... al...ways... lo...ve y-"
But her words trailed off into silence, the light fading from her once bright eyes as her spirit slipped quietly from this world. At that moment, as I cradled my newborn son in my arms, I felt the weight of her absence settle over me like a heavy shroud. My mother is now forever lost to me...
Moving away from her body, I understood what she wished for, a true valyrian death. I moved towards the cause of the rapid footsteps and knew who it was from their build,
The tension between father and son crackled in the air like the static before a storm as I confronted Daemon, my words dripping with bitterness and accusation.
"Father," I seethed, my voice heavy with venom, "I wonder... did you grant me that final moment with her out of respect, or was it merely your own disinterest in her that allowed it?"
Emerging from the shadows, Daemon regarded me with a cool detachment that only fueled my anger. His silence spoke volumes, a tacit acknowledgement of the rift that had grown between us.
"You are upset, I understand--" he began, attempting to placate me.
"Upset? UPSET?!" I erupted, the floodgates of my grief and frustration bursting forth. "My fucking mother just died! Your WIFE! At the age of 26! How could you have let this happen?!"
Daemon remained stoic, unmoved by my outburst. I continued to rail against him, pouring out my anguish and resentment until I was left gasping for breath.
"I tried... Everything," He whispered out, the weight of his failure resting silently on his shoulders. "Everything that the masters recommended, I did without question."
"You KNEW I was special," I accused, my voice trembling with betrayal. "Why did you not come to me?"
"Special, yes," Daemon conceded with a sigh. "But able to ensure a safe delivery? That was not something I expected to be within your abilities."
His words cut deep, slicing through the haze of my grief with a sharp clarity. I silenced him with a look, determination hardening my resolve.
"We will discuss this later," I declared, my voice firm. "After I have cremated my mother."
Daemon's gaze lingered on me, a silent acknowledgement of my authority at this moment. But his next words grated against me,
"And how will you do that without a dragon that breathes... fire?"
With a silent exchange, I passed my younger brother into his care, my jaw clenched with determination. Turning away, I strode toward Vhagar, my mother's final resting place.
"Dracarys, Vhagar," I commanded, but she remained stubbornly unmoved, defying my order. Frustration surged within me, but I refused to be stopped.
Raising my arms toward the open ocean, I summoned a thick tendril of water to wrap around Vhagar's throat. With a clenched fist, I repeated my command, forcing her head towards my mother's body.
"Vhagar. DRACARYS."
This time, she obeyed, her flames engulfing my mother's body in the ancient funeral rite of Valyria. As her body blazed, consuming my mother's earthly remains, I honoured her final request, granting her the dignity of a true Valyrian death.
"Keligon, Vhagar," I murmured, the flames extinguishing at my command. She seemed to listen now, subdued by the solemnity of the moment. I let Vhagar free of the water tendril before stepping back towards my father,
"IF. And I truly mean IF," I emphasized, locking eyes with Daemon, "I find out that you had anything to do with her death or that you tell anyone of my abilities... I swear on the memory of my dead mother that I will pierce your heart and lungs with that targaryen blood that you are oh so proud of."
My words hung heavy in the air, a solemn oath borne of grief and determination.
There was a moment of tense silence as my words reverberated between us, each syllable weighted with the weight of my resolve. Daemon's expression remained inscrutable, but I detected a flicker of unease beneath the mask of indifference.
With a final, piercing stare, I turned away, leaving him to contemplate the gravity of my vow. As I left the yard, I noted the small smile that replaced his expression.
Ascending the steps, exhaustion weighed heavily on my shoulders, mingling with the simmering emotions that churned within me. It was then that I realized the reason for Daemon's smile, the underlying pride that lay beneath his stoic facade.
Halting midway up the stairs, I turned back to face him, my gaze meeting his across the distance.
"You're proud, aren't you?" I questioned, my voice tinged with a mix of frustration and resignation.
Daemon met my gaze, his expression unreadable yet tinged with a hint of something akin to pride.
"Of course," he replied, his voice carrying a weight of its own. "After all, that part of you is finally out... The fire and fury of a dragon."
His words resonated within me, stirring a complex mixture of emotions. With a nod of acknowledgement, I turned away once more, leaving him to his thoughts on the desolate beach below.
Though my anger still simmered beneath the surface, tempered by the realization that some of my accusations had been fueled by raw emotion, I resolved to address them with a clearer mind in the days to come. For now, I needed time to process, to mourn, and to prepare for the challenges that lay ahead.
2024.05.15 22:38 littlemoonbeem No one can figure out the rashes on my body
 | I’ve had a recurring rash on my lips since 2020. July 2020- one small bump that is barely noticeable starts out itchy July 2021- same as before submitted by littlemoonbeem to DermatologyQuestions [link] [comments] June 2023- starts as the same small bump in the same exact spot (why I think it’s connected) then spreads across my entire top lip and turns into tiny pin pricked oozing sores. I called my doctor and they gave me valacyclivor 2 grams every 12 hours for a day. The blisters lasted two weeks. October 2023- i feel itching and tingling on my lips so i take the 2 grams of valacyclivor and go to bed and wake up to small bumps covering my lips like on the 8th slide of the photos. I take 2 grams again and the bumps quickly turn into those tiny sores again. After 5 days I ask for more of the valacyclivor so I take 500mg a day for 5 days. The rash is still there but about two weeks after it first showed up it starts to clear up finally but never goes fully away. I then get the tiny blisters above my eyelids that are seen in slide 14. I do not feel tingling beforehand I start to apply rubbing alcohol and hydrocortisone on both my eyelids and lips and then it goes away fast. December 2023- I get the same blisters only above my eyelids I do not feel any tingling beforehand and my eyes get really irritated. It went away in 2 days after applying alcohol and hydrocortisone. Every month since then I feel tingling and zapping on my lips for a few days so I take the valacyclivor 1 gram pills twice a day for 5 days and it usually stops. March 25 2024- I come back from a trip and go to the mall with a friend who is buying perfume so I spray some on my wrists. March 31 2024- I wake up to the red spot under my bottom lip seen in slide 11 and my top lip has the small bumps in one area and is very itchy. I did not feel tingling prior to this. It never blisters I take the valacyclivor three 1 gram pills a day just in case and apply alcohol and hydrocortisone and it goes away in 2 days but the following day of seeing those I wake up extremely sick. And begin to see a rash forming on my arms. I continue to take valacyclivor because I’m worried it’s herpetic. The rash on my wrist lasts weeks despite me taking 3 grams a day. I get a swab test on my wrist and it’s negative for everything but I was taking valacyclvor and I’m not sure if that affects it. I stop the pills on April 8th. April 29 2024- the rash on my wrist finally clears up after using clobetasol but I still get blister like bumps in the same area on and off April 30 2024- my lip is itchy again but no tingling. I take 2 grams of valacyclivor immediately and have been taking it since this day until present time. 3 grams a day every 8 hours. I wake up to leaking blisters covering my lips. My lips get better in a week this time but not fully. Since April 30th my lips have been covered in clusters of bumps on and off like the photo in slide 12. They usually spread across but I made sure to take a photo of that one because it appeared the most herpetic. I have constant tingling sensations and have not had any relief for more than a couple hours. I am taking 3 grams of valacyclivor a day still and have tried abreva, acyclivor cream mixed together but I get the most results from using alcohol and hydrocortisone cream. I also now have the small bumps on my arms and hands but they are not blistering probably because I immediately apply clobetasol onto them. I am getting the blisters around my eyes as well. My eyes are extremely irritated and have discharge. I have seen many doctors, dermatologists, allergists. My allergy tests with the allergist were not reactive to anything so I do not have allergies. My patch test at the dermatologist came back reactive for propolis (I already knew that and avoid it), epoxy resin, and fragrance. I do not use any products with beeswax, fragrance, I do not wear makeup, perfume, or nail polish. I used to use many natural products containing essential oil with no symptoms but since this has been going on I am only using cetaphil and Vaseline and I still have no relief. I am most concerned it’s herpes since the igg tests have a 38% false negative. However, my mother, father, and sisters have never had a cold sore. My closest friends have never had a cold sore. I was raised to not share drinks/saliva with other people and only do so with my boyfriend. He has never had a cold sore and I made him get tested twice and they both came back negative. All my IGG blood tests have come back negative. (Not taking any antivirals) and did it 4 times. All of my swab tests have come back negative. I got swabbed on my lips once and my arms once but I was taking valacyclivor during both. The appearance is not typical and is spread across my lips. It is also on other places of my body so it is very unlikely. No doctors believe it is herpes and will not prescribe me more antivirals but they do not have any other explanation. I even spoke to Terri Warren who is known as a herpes expert and she said she thinks it’s not herpes but I just get so many of the same symptoms. |
2024.05.15 22:30 JustARandomDemigod Chapter 15
The next few hours were the happiest of Annabeth‘s life.
She and Percy sat next to each other, close. “I’m never going to make this easy for you, Seaweed Brain. Get used to it.” Percy leaned in so close Annabeth felt like the ocean wind was caressing her cheek. As he kissed her with those salty, beautiful lips, a voice from the bush screamed. “FINALLY!!!” Lily yelled, bursting out from the bush along with the rest of the campers. She, Grover, and Clarisse led the mob. “Lily-what?” Percy said confusedly. Lily squealed. “Dude, this has been my OTP for, like, 5 years! Ever since I saw you two in the underworld, I knew you’d be perfect for each other! All of us have been waiting so long for you two finally kiss, and here we are!“ Lily said triumphantly. Two and a half minutes later, Percy and Annabeth were being carried towards the canoe lake. “Seriously?” He said, looking down at Lily. “You know I can breathe underwater, right?” He whispered. “Yeah. Why do you think I gave Clarisse the idea, bozo?” She muttered under her breath. Percy grinned gratefully. He didn’t even mind when the two of them were chucked in the warm water. However, he also noticed a ten dollar bill float down to one of the nereids, and he could’ve sworn he‘d seen Grover slip it into the lake.
Weeks later, Lily had left camp to “get help” to build all the new cabins. She wasn’t expected back for the next few weeks, a month at least. One day, during the construction, a dark hooded stranger strolled up to camp. The apollo campers noticed, and shouted for Percy. The stranger was followed by an army of ancient skeletons. “Soldiers of Kronos. They’re back for revenge.” Percy murmured to Will Solace as he prepped his siblings, the archers, to launch their arrows. Will looked at Percy worriedly. “You don’t think it could be Lily, back with her help?” Will asked. Percy frowned. “No. Not even Lily could summon that many. It would kill her.Just as the arrows launched the stranger raised their hands. The arrows rose higher and higher into the air, before exploding into daisies. All oldest campers dropped their weapons and ran down the valley. Will Solace dropped his medkit, Annabeth left her dagger, and even Clarisse La Rue dropped her spear and walked away. “What…?” Percy murmured. He ran down the hill, sword drawn, and brought it to meet the cloaked figured’s drawn blade. They whirled and partied with ease. They knocked Percy’s sword to the floor, landed a boot flat in his chest which sent him flying to the ground, and pressed their sword to his throat. They slowly lowered their hood to reveal wavy hair tied back in a ponytail, and shocking bright green eyes. Percy took his twin‘s extended hand and she pulled him to his feet. “Not bad, Percy.” She grinned. Percy gaped at the giant army behind her. “Lily-how..” Lily glanced behind her and laughed softly. She sheathed her blade, back in dagger form, and said “Well, my father suddenly seemed very interested in helping the camp when I told him he’d be getting his own cabin. To be honest, we should’ve had more cabins before this. So good on you, Percy.” Percy felt his face flush bright pink. He shrugged awkwardly. “We’ll, y’know, just doing whats right.” He said. Lily grinned, and together with Annabeth and Will, they climbed the peak of Half Blood Hill. “Race you to the bottom!“ Lily yelled, lied down, and rolled down the hill. The others followed until they all lay panting at the bottom of the hill. “I love you, Wise Girl.” Percy whispered in Annabeth’s ear. “I love you too, Seaweed Brain.” She said quietly, and kissed him.
submitted by JustARandomDemigod to PercyJacksonfanfic [link] [comments]
She and Percy sat next to each other, close. “I’m never going to make this easy for you, Seaweed Brain. Get used to it.” Percy leaned in so close Annabeth felt like the ocean wind was caressing her cheek. As he kissed her with those salty, beautiful lips, a voice from the bush screamed. “FINALLY!!!” Lily yelled, bursting out from the bush along with the rest of the campers. She, Grover, and Clarisse led the mob. “Lily-what?” Percy said confusedly. Lily squealed. “Dude, this has been my OTP for, like, 5 years! Ever since I saw you two in the underworld, I knew you’d be perfect for each other! All of us have been waiting so long for you two finally kiss, and here we are!“ Lily said triumphantly. Two and a half minutes later, Percy and Annabeth were being carried towards the canoe lake. “Seriously?” He said, looking down at Lily. “You know I can breathe underwater, right?” He whispered. “Yeah. Why do you think I gave Clarisse the idea, bozo?” She muttered under her breath. Percy grinned gratefully. He didn’t even mind when the two of them were chucked in the warm water. However, he also noticed a ten dollar bill float down to one of the nereids, and he could’ve sworn he‘d seen Grover slip it into the lake.
Weeks later, Lily had left camp to “get help” to build all the new cabins. She wasn’t expected back for the next few weeks, a month at least. One day, during the construction, a dark hooded stranger strolled up to camp. The apollo campers noticed, and shouted for Percy. The stranger was followed by an army of ancient skeletons. “Soldiers of Kronos. They’re back for revenge.” Percy murmured to Will Solace as he prepped his siblings, the archers, to launch their arrows. Will looked at Percy worriedly. “You don’t think it could be Lily, back with her help?” Will asked. Percy frowned. “No. Not even Lily could summon that many. It would kill her.Just as the arrows launched the stranger raised their hands. The arrows rose higher and higher into the air, before exploding into daisies. All oldest campers dropped their weapons and ran down the valley. Will Solace dropped his medkit, Annabeth left her dagger, and even Clarisse La Rue dropped her spear and walked away. “What…?” Percy murmured. He ran down the hill, sword drawn, and brought it to meet the cloaked figured’s drawn blade. They whirled and partied with ease. They knocked Percy’s sword to the floor, landed a boot flat in his chest which sent him flying to the ground, and pressed their sword to his throat. They slowly lowered their hood to reveal wavy hair tied back in a ponytail, and shocking bright green eyes. Percy took his twin‘s extended hand and she pulled him to his feet. “Not bad, Percy.” She grinned. Percy gaped at the giant army behind her. “Lily-how..” Lily glanced behind her and laughed softly. She sheathed her blade, back in dagger form, and said “Well, my father suddenly seemed very interested in helping the camp when I told him he’d be getting his own cabin. To be honest, we should’ve had more cabins before this. So good on you, Percy.” Percy felt his face flush bright pink. He shrugged awkwardly. “We’ll, y’know, just doing whats right.” He said. Lily grinned, and together with Annabeth and Will, they climbed the peak of Half Blood Hill. “Race you to the bottom!“ Lily yelled, lied down, and rolled down the hill. The others followed until they all lay panting at the bottom of the hill. “I love you, Wise Girl.” Percy whispered in Annabeth’s ear. “I love you too, Seaweed Brain.” She said quietly, and kissed him.
2024.05.15 22:30 Pixie_75690 Update on my last post: Guess what? Things get worse
So the last time I posted I had said I wasn't going to be able to go through school without someone bringing up what had happened at the formal that my school had done on Friday the 10th. Guess what, I was right. Monday, I go into school feeling like I shouldn't be there, and everywhere I go I could hear people talking about the event, and even bringing up how I ended up running off crying. I didn't want to make a scene so the entire morning I tried not to cry, and get through the day. Thankfully nothing worse happened that day, but come Wednesday, things got worse.
Today, Wednesday, I was in Government class. I had accidentally farted and my class being my class, over reacted and all moved far away. I will be honest that part was too funny that I couldn't breathe with how hard I was laughing, I was apologizing over and over to the teacher for disturbing the class and thankfully he was understanding because it happens and there are things he knows are hard and sometimes impossible to control. It was then, that my class started yelling at me saying I needed to control myself and that I farted on purpose, and also saying I will be the cause for everyone getting pink eye. Someone in my class even said I was being unnatural.
Just then, one of my classmates said something that completely went too far. He said "It's no wonder they said all those things about you at Jr./Sr." That was way too far. I was already going through a lot because they were making fun of me for wearing a scarf with a wolf pattern.
If this is what the next generation is going to be, I do not want to be a part of it.
submitted by Pixie_75690 to AmITheJerk [link] [comments]
Today, Wednesday, I was in Government class. I had accidentally farted and my class being my class, over reacted and all moved far away. I will be honest that part was too funny that I couldn't breathe with how hard I was laughing, I was apologizing over and over to the teacher for disturbing the class and thankfully he was understanding because it happens and there are things he knows are hard and sometimes impossible to control. It was then, that my class started yelling at me saying I needed to control myself and that I farted on purpose, and also saying I will be the cause for everyone getting pink eye. Someone in my class even said I was being unnatural.
Just then, one of my classmates said something that completely went too far. He said "It's no wonder they said all those things about you at Jr./Sr." That was way too far. I was already going through a lot because they were making fun of me for wearing a scarf with a wolf pattern.
If this is what the next generation is going to be, I do not want to be a part of it.
2024.05.15 22:27 SSGOldschool A three day review of the M7 Spear
TLDR:
Over the course of three days, a friend of mine and I lived with the M7 Spear. We spent time at various ranges, doing "tactical stuff", getting in and out of HMMWV's and GSA's, while trying to figure out the ins-and-outs of the rifle.
My sample, #087, had between 8K and 10K round rounds through it. The number of combat vs training rounds was not tracked, but given the expected barrel life is 10K combat rounds we ran a borescope through the barrel and the chamber to see what we could see.
His sample, #529, had between 6K and 8K of an unknown mix combat and training rounds through it. We ran the borescope through it as well.
There was no real difference in the wear between the two rifles.
We spent the morning of the first day playing around with the ammunition and doing comparisons against 308 168gr SMK, while the ultrasonic cleaner did Gods work on the various bits and bobs of our sample rifles.
I've got mixed feelings about the MCX system. It ticks a lot of boxes, short stroke gas piston, no need for a buffer tube or spring, superior handling of gas when suppressed and so on.
However, when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of the maintenance? I absolutely despise it. Despite owning a MCX in 300 blackout myself, every cleaning session feels overly complex and time consuming.
We kicked off the afternoon with both rifles, setting up for grouping and zeroing—my rig was outfitted with the Tango 6T sporting the "Hellfire" reticle in MOA, resembling your standard rifle scope setup. His, on the other hand, featured the same Tango 6T but with Hellfire in MILS, decked out with the Christmas tree reticle.
Some time back, I made a comment after my initial rounds with the Spear, labeling it a "tack driver." In hindsight, I probably should have clarified that bit. Typically, when shooting a new rifle, if I land three out of five shots within a 1 to 1.5 MOA spread, I chalk up any outliers to user error rather than blaming the rifle or the ammunition.
However, it appears that assumption was a bit off.
Our zeroing and grouping efforts at 100 yards turned into quite the saga. We found ourselves mostly hitting 3 rounds within the 1 to 1.5 MOA range, but occasionally, one or two shots would balloon the group size to between 2.5 and 3 MOA.
Instead of descending into frustration and stubborn attempts to tighten these groups, we opted to settle for anything under three MOA as acceptable for our purposes and proceeded to finalize our zero.
Following our grouping and zeroing session, we spent the remainder of the afternoon plinking with training rounds at 100 yards.
During this, I learned a hard lesson about the non-reciprocating charging handle—it needs to be firmly locked forward before hitting the bolt release on the left side. After a couple of painful mishaps and a few close calls, I finally caught on and made it a routine to ensure the handle was properly set before engaging the bolt release.
I really wanted to get on board with the side charging handle, but after three days, I'm just not a fan. It tended to snag on my gear (Eagle MARCRIS plate carrier) when maneuvering or positioning the rifle to fire, making it less convenient than I had hoped.
Interestingly, I found myself using it more during offhand shooting. I'd instinctively remove my left hand from the pistol grip to work the side charging handle, rather than using my right hand on the traditional top charging handle. Yes, I'm aware this breaks the cardinal rule of keeping your firing hand on the grip, but this method felt more intuitive, similar to operating a bolt-action rifle.
When shooting offhand, the rifle scores highly. I don't often shoot this way, but I encountered none of the usual drawbacks associated with traditional AM platforms. Aside from the tricky side charging handle, the rifle seemed inherently designed for ambidextrous use, which I particularly appreciated when firing left-handed.
I was tempted to launch into a tirade about the ridiculously designed folding stock, but you deserve a more structured critique. Here are the three major gripes:
The next day, we arrived ready to group, zero, and qualify with a local unit. We had informed them of our visit and assumed everything was squared away with range control.
However, that assumption fell flat. Turns out, the range’s surface danger zones weren’t set up for the 277 Fury. Just as we finished dialing in our zero (.75 inches low at 25m), range control showed up, questioning our activities.
Following an awkward exchange and the diplomatic offering of a case of beer, they agreed to let us continue and even served as OIC and RSO for the KD range. We proceeded with the old KD qualification, alternating between marking and raising targets, and both of us qualified without any issues.
With some extra time on our hands, and much to the amusement of range control, the session evolved into a lively mix of burpees and sprinting between shooting positions. We experimented with various firing positions and sequences, such as starting from standing unsupported at 100 yards and moving down to kneeling unsupported. This exercise underscored the rifle’s heft yet manageability, while also highlighting how the forward-heavy balance made extended unsupported shooting particularly taxing on the arms and upper back.
The afternoon unfolded with battledrills and land navigation alongside the unit we were scheduled to qualify with. Given the theoretical roles and limited numbers, the platoon leader assigned us to the designated marksman/squad designated marksman roles, which was logical considering we were the only ones equipped with the new rifles while the rest of the squad used M4s.
This setup sparked an intense discussion among the officers about how tactical deployment might shift once the rifle was fully integrated into service. There was plenty of speculation on how military tactics and doctrines would need to adapt to leverage the new capabilities offered by this rifle.
However, I'm somewhat skeptical. I don't see this rifle as the revolutionary game-changer it’s touted to be. While it's undoubtedly suited for the designated marksman role, I doubt the Army will invest the necessary time, money, and resources to train every soldier to this level of proficiency. Consider that there are reserve units that only qualify every four years, often just to help "point-needy" soldiers piggyback for qualification. This rifle won’t alter that reality.
As for the night qualification, we were slated to test that as well, but circumstances didn’t allow for it, so I can’t comment on how the rifle performs at night with night vision devices.
On the third morning, we headed to the LMG range, ready to go full-auto from a bipod, gearing up to tackle the 249 qualification.
Honestly, this was the most amazing shooting experience I've had in ages. The only snag was the 20-round magazine capacity, which felt limiting amid the thrill—it was the only moment of frustration in an otherwise splendid session.
We ran a practice session with the training rounds, followed by a qualification shoot with both the training and combat rounds. By lunchtime, our shoulders were thoroughly sore, but I can't remember the last time I'd grinned that much in a long while.
Post-lunch, we dropped in on some local law enforcement officers who were operating a shoot house. Initially, we navigated the course with M4s to familiarize ourselves with the layout and safety protocols. After getting a handle on things, we switched to the M7s, running through the course using the last of our training rounds, having depleted our combat rounds earlier on the machine gun range.
Both of us found ourselves moving significantly slower with the M7s. Reviewing the footage, it was clear that I was painfully slow to get on target with the M7. It wasn't just about slower movements, but also a delayed response in engagement. Initially, I chalked it up to age, I'm over 50 and a bit heavier than ideal, but the reality struck when I saw I wasn’t this slow with the M4. In fact, I was quicker than some of the officers.
Similarly, my buddy was slower than usual, not lagging behind me, but certainly off his usual pace with the M4.
Interesting side note: We're no longer welcome at that shoot house. The staff was fully aware of our arrival and what we brought along, and everything seemed fine until the exercise wrapped up and we faced some "constructively harsh feedback" about 277 and damage done to the tire and sandbag walls as well as the plywood target backers.
That's rant for another time.
Regarding the suppressor:
It's really more of an enhanced flash hider than a true suppressor. I'm probably a bit biased—shooting a 300 Blackout through a Sig TI suppressor spoils you with its movie hitman silence.
By comparison, the M7 setup was louder than my suppressed .308 shooting 175gr SMK.
On the topic of the optic:
The Tango6 was decent.
The clarity was impressive, and its brightness and MOA configuration were points in its favor.
However, achieving a consistent cheek weld and finding the right optic position for proper eye relief across magnifications 1 through 6, especially from unsupported positions, proved challenging.
The issue could be me, the stock, or the optic itself. While it was somewhat bothersome, it wasn't enough to cause significant frustration.
submitted by SSGOldschool to army [link] [comments]
At the small post we were on, the 25m zero range and qual range SDZ's did not allow for firing these rifles. Something we only learned after confirming our zeros on the 25m range.A review of the 277 Fury rounds is here and you may need to read it for some context, but I have endeavored to make this review stand alone as much as possible.
It's still heavy, but after a day or so you stop noticing it until you have to shoot from a standing position or doing are doing CQB. then you are painfully reminded how off balance the rifle is.
The two sample rifles we had were consistently 3 MOA guns.
The non-reciprocating charging handle on the left side is not as cool as I initially thought, and it ruins the whole "truly ambidextrous" feel that the Sig MCX line has.
The folding buttstock can go fuck itself.
Over the course of three days, a friend of mine and I lived with the M7 Spear. We spent time at various ranges, doing "tactical stuff", getting in and out of HMMWV's and GSA's, while trying to figure out the ins-and-outs of the rifle.
My sample, #087, had between 8K and 10K round rounds through it. The number of combat vs training rounds was not tracked, but given the expected barrel life is 10K combat rounds we ran a borescope through the barrel and the chamber to see what we could see.
His sample, #529, had between 6K and 8K of an unknown mix combat and training rounds through it. We ran the borescope through it as well.
There was no real difference in the wear between the two rifles.
We spent the morning of the first day playing around with the ammunition and doing comparisons against 308 168gr SMK, while the ultrasonic cleaner did Gods work on the various bits and bobs of our sample rifles.
Note when we did the ammo comparison we used a Remington 700PSS with 24" barrel. It quickly became apparent when we were testing the rifles, that was a poor benchmark, as the Remington outperformed both rifles in everything but rate of fire. Its a sniper rifle, granted its your Grandfather's sniper rifle, but its still a fucking sniper rifle. The Spear is not, its a battlerifle, and so I won't be including the comparisons here.We tried cleaning them without the ultrasonic cleaner...but I'm not sure these rifles had ever been properly cleaned before.
I've got mixed feelings about the MCX system. It ticks a lot of boxes, short stroke gas piston, no need for a buffer tube or spring, superior handling of gas when suppressed and so on.
However, when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of the maintenance? I absolutely despise it. Despite owning a MCX in 300 blackout myself, every cleaning session feels overly complex and time consuming.
We kicked off the afternoon with both rifles, setting up for grouping and zeroing—my rig was outfitted with the Tango 6T sporting the "Hellfire" reticle in MOA, resembling your standard rifle scope setup. His, on the other hand, featured the same Tango 6T but with Hellfire in MILS, decked out with the Christmas tree reticle.
Some time back, I made a comment after my initial rounds with the Spear, labeling it a "tack driver." In hindsight, I probably should have clarified that bit. Typically, when shooting a new rifle, if I land three out of five shots within a 1 to 1.5 MOA spread, I chalk up any outliers to user error rather than blaming the rifle or the ammunition.
However, it appears that assumption was a bit off.
Our zeroing and grouping efforts at 100 yards turned into quite the saga. We found ourselves mostly hitting 3 rounds within the 1 to 1.5 MOA range, but occasionally, one or two shots would balloon the group size to between 2.5 and 3 MOA.
Instead of descending into frustration and stubborn attempts to tighten these groups, we opted to settle for anything under three MOA as acceptable for our purposes and proceeded to finalize our zero.
Side note, my last zero group was my best of the day coming it at just over 2 MOA. My friends best group came in at 1.8, and quite honestly he's a better shot than I am.Research shows that the original specs for the NGSW called for a 4 MOA battle rifle. Despite some noticeable barrel wear on our two test models, both rifles still performed beyond this requirement.
Following our grouping and zeroing session, we spent the remainder of the afternoon plinking with training rounds at 100 yards.
During this, I learned a hard lesson about the non-reciprocating charging handle—it needs to be firmly locked forward before hitting the bolt release on the left side. After a couple of painful mishaps and a few close calls, I finally caught on and made it a routine to ensure the handle was properly set before engaging the bolt release.
I really wanted to get on board with the side charging handle, but after three days, I'm just not a fan. It tended to snag on my gear (Eagle MARCRIS plate carrier) when maneuvering or positioning the rifle to fire, making it less convenient than I had hoped.
Interestingly, I found myself using it more during offhand shooting. I'd instinctively remove my left hand from the pistol grip to work the side charging handle, rather than using my right hand on the traditional top charging handle. Yes, I'm aware this breaks the cardinal rule of keeping your firing hand on the grip, but this method felt more intuitive, similar to operating a bolt-action rifle.
When shooting offhand, the rifle scores highly. I don't often shoot this way, but I encountered none of the usual drawbacks associated with traditional AM platforms. Aside from the tricky side charging handle, the rifle seemed inherently designed for ambidextrous use, which I particularly appreciated when firing left-handed.
I was tempted to launch into a tirade about the ridiculously designed folding stock, but you deserve a more structured critique. Here are the three major gripes:
The stock's release mechanism is a convoluted affair involving an awkward dance of pushing down on the rifle while yanking up on the buttstock just to get it to close.After wrestling with these issues, we wrapped up with a quick cleaning session for the rifles before heading out to the range we’d "camping" at.
Once "closed," the stock doesn't truly secure—it juts out at a precarious 20-degree angle, seemingly relying on mere friction to stay in place, which neither of our samples managed successfully.
The overall build felt flimsy and loose, perhaps a consequence of the extensive wear from firing 8,000 to 10,000 rounds.
The next day, we arrived ready to group, zero, and qualify with a local unit. We had informed them of our visit and assumed everything was squared away with range control.
However, that assumption fell flat. Turns out, the range’s surface danger zones weren’t set up for the 277 Fury. Just as we finished dialing in our zero (.75 inches low at 25m), range control showed up, questioning our activities.
Following an awkward exchange and the diplomatic offering of a case of beer, they agreed to let us continue and even served as OIC and RSO for the KD range. We proceeded with the old KD qualification, alternating between marking and raising targets, and both of us qualified without any issues.
With some extra time on our hands, and much to the amusement of range control, the session evolved into a lively mix of burpees and sprinting between shooting positions. We experimented with various firing positions and sequences, such as starting from standing unsupported at 100 yards and moving down to kneeling unsupported. This exercise underscored the rifle’s heft yet manageability, while also highlighting how the forward-heavy balance made extended unsupported shooting particularly taxing on the arms and upper back.
The afternoon unfolded with battledrills and land navigation alongside the unit we were scheduled to qualify with. Given the theoretical roles and limited numbers, the platoon leader assigned us to the designated marksman/squad designated marksman roles, which was logical considering we were the only ones equipped with the new rifles while the rest of the squad used M4s.
This setup sparked an intense discussion among the officers about how tactical deployment might shift once the rifle was fully integrated into service. There was plenty of speculation on how military tactics and doctrines would need to adapt to leverage the new capabilities offered by this rifle.
However, I'm somewhat skeptical. I don't see this rifle as the revolutionary game-changer it’s touted to be. While it's undoubtedly suited for the designated marksman role, I doubt the Army will invest the necessary time, money, and resources to train every soldier to this level of proficiency. Consider that there are reserve units that only qualify every four years, often just to help "point-needy" soldiers piggyback for qualification. This rifle won’t alter that reality.
As for the night qualification, we were slated to test that as well, but circumstances didn’t allow for it, so I can’t comment on how the rifle performs at night with night vision devices.
On the third morning, we headed to the LMG range, ready to go full-auto from a bipod, gearing up to tackle the 249 qualification.
Honestly, this was the most amazing shooting experience I've had in ages. The only snag was the 20-round magazine capacity, which felt limiting amid the thrill—it was the only moment of frustration in an otherwise splendid session.
We ran a practice session with the training rounds, followed by a qualification shoot with both the training and combat rounds. By lunchtime, our shoulders were thoroughly sore, but I can't remember the last time I'd grinned that much in a long while.
Post-lunch, we dropped in on some local law enforcement officers who were operating a shoot house. Initially, we navigated the course with M4s to familiarize ourselves with the layout and safety protocols. After getting a handle on things, we switched to the M7s, running through the course using the last of our training rounds, having depleted our combat rounds earlier on the machine gun range.
Both of us found ourselves moving significantly slower with the M7s. Reviewing the footage, it was clear that I was painfully slow to get on target with the M7. It wasn't just about slower movements, but also a delayed response in engagement. Initially, I chalked it up to age, I'm over 50 and a bit heavier than ideal, but the reality struck when I saw I wasn’t this slow with the M4. In fact, I was quicker than some of the officers.
Similarly, my buddy was slower than usual, not lagging behind me, but certainly off his usual pace with the M4.
Interesting side note: We're no longer welcome at that shoot house. The staff was fully aware of our arrival and what we brought along, and everything seemed fine until the exercise wrapped up and we faced some "constructively harsh feedback" about 277 and damage done to the tire and sandbag walls as well as the plywood target backers.
That's rant for another time.
Regarding the suppressor:
It's really more of an enhanced flash hider than a true suppressor. I'm probably a bit biased—shooting a 300 Blackout through a Sig TI suppressor spoils you with its movie hitman silence.
By comparison, the M7 setup was louder than my suppressed .308 shooting 175gr SMK.
On the topic of the optic:
The Tango6 was decent.
The clarity was impressive, and its brightness and MOA configuration were points in its favor.
However, achieving a consistent cheek weld and finding the right optic position for proper eye relief across magnifications 1 through 6, especially from unsupported positions, proved challenging.
The issue could be me, the stock, or the optic itself. While it was somewhat bothersome, it wasn't enough to cause significant frustration.
2024.05.15 22:18 sxdgixl Growth in mouth
Background information - I'm a 22 y/o female, 5'7, approx 200 lbs, im not on any medications, I do smoke cannabis and nicotine, no medical issues besides asthma and my mental health diagnosis
About an hour ago I got what I believed was a sore throat. Figured it was from allergies. Over the hour, it progressively got worse so I checked my mouth and there is some sort of growth beside / wedged under my tongue, near the back of my mouth, kind of by my molars. It's pretty painful when I talk, swallow, eat etc. Is this a canker sore? Leaving a photo in the comments below
submitted by sxdgixl to AskDocs [link] [comments]
About an hour ago I got what I believed was a sore throat. Figured it was from allergies. Over the hour, it progressively got worse so I checked my mouth and there is some sort of growth beside / wedged under my tongue, near the back of my mouth, kind of by my molars. It's pretty painful when I talk, swallow, eat etc. Is this a canker sore? Leaving a photo in the comments below
2024.05.15 22:17 JCWalrus [PC][2000-2010] Pastel Cutesy Q*Bert-like game
Platform(s): Windows PC - I believe I played it on XP - specifically accessible through Windows Media Center. At least, that's where I always played it.
Genre: Isometric Action Puzzle Game
Estimated year of release: I believe 2000-2010 Almost certainly wasn't after 2010
Graphics/art style: The whole art direction was very pastel, "cutesy", and cartoony. Every level was made up of a grid of tiles, typically pastel yellow or pink. The camera always centered on your character hopping up and down around the level, with the tiles changing color as your little character hopped on it. I think the score and title was written with big bubble letters. Everything was clearly drawn with pixels but it wasn't 8 or 16-bit. The SFX were also very light cartoony - getting hit by an enemy would make a high pitched "oh" noise
Notable characters: There were many different enemies, but the only character I remember is the main character. You would play a purple little blob with purple ball feet, big black cartoon eyes and a sort of head stalk that ended in a bright yellow star that would swing back and forth.
Notable gameplay mechanics: The game was kind of like Q*bert but flat. Your main character would hop/bounce around on a grid of square tiles that make a sort of level floor - not a pyramid like in Q*bert - and as they hopped on each one it would change color. The goal of each level was to change all the tiles of one color to the other, like from yellow to pink, and avoid whatever enemies there were moving around the stage at the same time. You could play the game with the arrow keys, just pick a direction and your character would hop that way on each tile until you hit an enemy, changed direction, or fell off the stage.
Other details: I always played it through the Windows Media Center application - I would click on that and be able to navigate to a game section to play it. I don't believe it was bundled with it, I can find no information about any WMC bundled games online.
submitted by JCWalrus to tipofmyjoystick [link] [comments]
Genre: Isometric Action Puzzle Game
Estimated year of release: I believe 2000-2010 Almost certainly wasn't after 2010
Graphics/art style: The whole art direction was very pastel, "cutesy", and cartoony. Every level was made up of a grid of tiles, typically pastel yellow or pink. The camera always centered on your character hopping up and down around the level, with the tiles changing color as your little character hopped on it. I think the score and title was written with big bubble letters. Everything was clearly drawn with pixels but it wasn't 8 or 16-bit. The SFX were also very light cartoony - getting hit by an enemy would make a high pitched "oh" noise
Notable characters: There were many different enemies, but the only character I remember is the main character. You would play a purple little blob with purple ball feet, big black cartoon eyes and a sort of head stalk that ended in a bright yellow star that would swing back and forth.
Notable gameplay mechanics: The game was kind of like Q*bert but flat. Your main character would hop/bounce around on a grid of square tiles that make a sort of level floor - not a pyramid like in Q*bert - and as they hopped on each one it would change color. The goal of each level was to change all the tiles of one color to the other, like from yellow to pink, and avoid whatever enemies there were moving around the stage at the same time. You could play the game with the arrow keys, just pick a direction and your character would hop that way on each tile until you hit an enemy, changed direction, or fell off the stage.
Other details: I always played it through the Windows Media Center application - I would click on that and be able to navigate to a game section to play it. I don't believe it was bundled with it, I can find no information about any WMC bundled games online.
2024.05.15 22:08 Johnwestrick The House on Jackson Street
I used to walk with her, now I walk alone. We used to marvel at the beautiful houses together, now I look down at my feet. Each home we pass, a grain of salt in the wound, each house a reminder of what I lost. Even though it hurts, I still find myself continuing our walks. Sometimes pain is good. It reminds us that we are still living. I’d rather feel the pain of her passing, than not feel her at all.
She’s alive when I walk. She’s the shadow that strolls behind. Though I can’t see her, I can feel her. Her presence is like a windbreaker draped across my shoulders in an especially violent storm. The pain isn’t gone but it’s bearable when I’m moving. I can’t speak to her, but she’s there. When I trip over a root, a hand steadies me. When I veer off course, I feel a gentle nudge.
And every day I end up in front of the same abandoned house on Jackson Street.
A grand home, at least at one point it must’ve been. The windows are boarded closed. The door is locked. Beware trespasser signs are strewn haphazardly across the tangled mess of the once impressive lawn.
I feel her presence strongest here. It is almost tangible, as if she’s hiding behind a thin curtain. I call her, yet she never answers. I reach for her, yet I can never lay hands on her. It is here on my journey where my emotions get the best of me. Every day I come, every day I cry.
The neighbors look at me with trepidation, but long gone are my days of caring what others think. I stand there an old man, face in my hands and weep for the woman I lost. Let them think what they want, but my Lenore was worth every tear.
I feel a tap on my shoulder and look up to see the front door of the house swing wide. Light pours out of it, and there she is, my Lenore. I rush towards her and the gaping maw, towards the woman I’ve lost. The woman who heard my cries. The one who has returned for me.
As I barrel forward through the brambles and overgrown weeds, I hardly am aware of the scrapes and cuts. Nor does it bother me that I trip over a hidden bottle and go tumbling face first in the dirt. I sling myself forward with the stamina of a much younger man.
And then, I am there, standing in touching distance from her. She’s got the same strawberry blonde hair that always left me breathless. It’s wrapped in a French braid with a daisy tucked behind her left ear. She looks younger by nearly twenty years since the last time I've seen her. Her nose and cheeks are dusted with a fine layer of freckles.
I begin to giggle like a schoolboy as I remember I once tried to count them. Twenty-three was the highest I got before I found my mouth on hers. And suddenly I have an inappropriate urge to pull her close and continue the kiss in front of God and all the neighbors.
Shortly before I do just that, she vanishes, leaving me standing in the front door alone once more. I look around the hallway and notice it’s fully furnished. There is no dust or decay. The parlor is in perfect condition. Even more surprising, I hear someone playing the piano. It’s Fur Elise and I could recognize that sound anywhere. Lenore was playing it the day she died.
A writhing anger fills me at this thought. I don't want to think of that day. The day the sun stopped shining. The day my life was uprooted and tossed carelessly in the trash. I try my best to tune that cursed melody out of my mind, but it fights me tooth and nail at every turn. It refuses to depart like a troublesome guest unwilling to take a hint. Even still, I find my feet moving towards the sound.
The Turkish rug leading down the hall looks familiar, the pattern of the wolf howling at the moon, the picture of the ship sailing in rough seas. I know it. I walk forward, no longer in control over my own body. Instead, everything begins to flash in front of me like a movie. I know on the other side of the door is a set of stairs that leads to the great room.
Still, I don’t remember, I can’t remember. They threaten to come back, but I don’t let them. I don’t want to remember. A feeling of unease bubbles to the surface, bringing with it a queasy gurgling in the pit of my stomach. I feel my lunch begin to squirm its way back up, burning my throat and causing a tingling sensation deep in my nasal cavity.
I know all my efforts are fruitless. The memories will come back. The dam I built to hold them at bay has already begun to crack. It will crumble soon. I know enough to know that I don't want to know, yet the details of that day are fuzzy. With each step closer to the door they come into focus. And as my hand reaches for the gilded doorknob, all goes black.
I’m back.
Oh God have mercy on me, I’m back to the day my wife died.
I come to this conclusion even as my own traitorous hand throws wide the hallway door. I fight for control. I do everything in my power to not see. My eyes fling wide, and I look to see the back of my sweet Lenore’s head, the damned daisy still perched behind her ear. She’s playing and she doesn’t know I’ve arrived.
I know what is coming but I don’t want to. Yet those damned feet, those mutinous mother fuckers keep pushing me forward. First up one step then two, before I even know it, I’ve scaled half of them. Now I can see her back, she’s in a flowery dress with what looks to be hummingbirds sucking at the honey. Fur Elise is ramping up, and the song is nearing its climax.
And then I see it. Him to be precise. He’s lounging in my chair, drinking my whiskey, with his shirt partially unbuttoned. I take it all in. My brain makes the connections. Rage, white-hot fills me once more. I look to the left and then the right, and that’s when I see my cavalry saber hanging on the wall for decoration.
I remember the outcome, yet I can’t force myself to let go of its hilt. My hand turns white from grasping it so hard. There’s nothing I can do to lessen my grip. I see myself marching up behind her sword held high in one hand.
Fur Elise climaxes as my arm swings. I strike her left shoulder blade and with a discordant whine the music stops altogether. Inwardly I scream. I curse my God’s damned temper. I watch as she slumps out of her chair.
Without a second glance, I am charging the man just beginning to look up from his comfortable spot in my seat. My blade penetrates his right abdomen, he lets out one shriek before my second swing catches him directly in the throat.
I am appalled at the blood spurting from his nearly decapitated neck. My hands are scarlet, I feel wet stickiness oozing down my face. Yet I can’t control my own limbs as they swing and swing and swing, chopping the man into kindling. I try to close my eyes, but they won’t, so I see his hand go flying. I watch as his innards come bubbling out of his abdomen. I split his head like a grape and watch as his brain matter leaks out to the floor.
To my dismay, I hear a gurgling sound coming from behind me. I turn knowing what I’ll see but powerless to stop it. I look to see Lenore’s face towards me trying to speak. Blood bubbles drizzling out of the side of her mouth. I don’t need to hear the words to know what she is trying to say. “Please, no more.”
Pity fills my heart, and my own eyes refuse to cry. “Please don’t do this,” I scream at myself in vain. I watch as I slowly move towards my former wife letting the blade carve a wicked groove into the marble floor. With no mercy my arm swings the blade up once then twice then three times, and all goes black.
Finally, I regain control of my limbs and body. I look up to see a vandalized great hall with a nasty groove in the marble floor, and there my chopped wife lying on the floor looking up at me with dead yet still very much alive eyes.
I see the monstrosity of my late wife clamber to her feet. Her left eye slides out of its socket running like egg yolk down her face. Black pustule blood leaks from her wounds. Her right eye locks with mine and in a slobbering wet noise she says, “I will never let you forget what you did here. Jail wasn’t enough for you. You didn’t stay your hand, so even in your Alzheimer’s I won't let you forget. Same time tomorrow, honey?
johnwestrick.com
submitted by Johnwestrick to AllureStories [link] [comments]
She’s alive when I walk. She’s the shadow that strolls behind. Though I can’t see her, I can feel her. Her presence is like a windbreaker draped across my shoulders in an especially violent storm. The pain isn’t gone but it’s bearable when I’m moving. I can’t speak to her, but she’s there. When I trip over a root, a hand steadies me. When I veer off course, I feel a gentle nudge.
And every day I end up in front of the same abandoned house on Jackson Street.
A grand home, at least at one point it must’ve been. The windows are boarded closed. The door is locked. Beware trespasser signs are strewn haphazardly across the tangled mess of the once impressive lawn.
I feel her presence strongest here. It is almost tangible, as if she’s hiding behind a thin curtain. I call her, yet she never answers. I reach for her, yet I can never lay hands on her. It is here on my journey where my emotions get the best of me. Every day I come, every day I cry.
The neighbors look at me with trepidation, but long gone are my days of caring what others think. I stand there an old man, face in my hands and weep for the woman I lost. Let them think what they want, but my Lenore was worth every tear.
I feel a tap on my shoulder and look up to see the front door of the house swing wide. Light pours out of it, and there she is, my Lenore. I rush towards her and the gaping maw, towards the woman I’ve lost. The woman who heard my cries. The one who has returned for me.
As I barrel forward through the brambles and overgrown weeds, I hardly am aware of the scrapes and cuts. Nor does it bother me that I trip over a hidden bottle and go tumbling face first in the dirt. I sling myself forward with the stamina of a much younger man.
And then, I am there, standing in touching distance from her. She’s got the same strawberry blonde hair that always left me breathless. It’s wrapped in a French braid with a daisy tucked behind her left ear. She looks younger by nearly twenty years since the last time I've seen her. Her nose and cheeks are dusted with a fine layer of freckles.
I begin to giggle like a schoolboy as I remember I once tried to count them. Twenty-three was the highest I got before I found my mouth on hers. And suddenly I have an inappropriate urge to pull her close and continue the kiss in front of God and all the neighbors.
Shortly before I do just that, she vanishes, leaving me standing in the front door alone once more. I look around the hallway and notice it’s fully furnished. There is no dust or decay. The parlor is in perfect condition. Even more surprising, I hear someone playing the piano. It’s Fur Elise and I could recognize that sound anywhere. Lenore was playing it the day she died.
A writhing anger fills me at this thought. I don't want to think of that day. The day the sun stopped shining. The day my life was uprooted and tossed carelessly in the trash. I try my best to tune that cursed melody out of my mind, but it fights me tooth and nail at every turn. It refuses to depart like a troublesome guest unwilling to take a hint. Even still, I find my feet moving towards the sound.
The Turkish rug leading down the hall looks familiar, the pattern of the wolf howling at the moon, the picture of the ship sailing in rough seas. I know it. I walk forward, no longer in control over my own body. Instead, everything begins to flash in front of me like a movie. I know on the other side of the door is a set of stairs that leads to the great room.
Still, I don’t remember, I can’t remember. They threaten to come back, but I don’t let them. I don’t want to remember. A feeling of unease bubbles to the surface, bringing with it a queasy gurgling in the pit of my stomach. I feel my lunch begin to squirm its way back up, burning my throat and causing a tingling sensation deep in my nasal cavity.
I know all my efforts are fruitless. The memories will come back. The dam I built to hold them at bay has already begun to crack. It will crumble soon. I know enough to know that I don't want to know, yet the details of that day are fuzzy. With each step closer to the door they come into focus. And as my hand reaches for the gilded doorknob, all goes black.
I’m back.
Oh God have mercy on me, I’m back to the day my wife died.
I come to this conclusion even as my own traitorous hand throws wide the hallway door. I fight for control. I do everything in my power to not see. My eyes fling wide, and I look to see the back of my sweet Lenore’s head, the damned daisy still perched behind her ear. She’s playing and she doesn’t know I’ve arrived.
I know what is coming but I don’t want to. Yet those damned feet, those mutinous mother fuckers keep pushing me forward. First up one step then two, before I even know it, I’ve scaled half of them. Now I can see her back, she’s in a flowery dress with what looks to be hummingbirds sucking at the honey. Fur Elise is ramping up, and the song is nearing its climax.
And then I see it. Him to be precise. He’s lounging in my chair, drinking my whiskey, with his shirt partially unbuttoned. I take it all in. My brain makes the connections. Rage, white-hot fills me once more. I look to the left and then the right, and that’s when I see my cavalry saber hanging on the wall for decoration.
I remember the outcome, yet I can’t force myself to let go of its hilt. My hand turns white from grasping it so hard. There’s nothing I can do to lessen my grip. I see myself marching up behind her sword held high in one hand.
Fur Elise climaxes as my arm swings. I strike her left shoulder blade and with a discordant whine the music stops altogether. Inwardly I scream. I curse my God’s damned temper. I watch as she slumps out of her chair.
Without a second glance, I am charging the man just beginning to look up from his comfortable spot in my seat. My blade penetrates his right abdomen, he lets out one shriek before my second swing catches him directly in the throat.
I am appalled at the blood spurting from his nearly decapitated neck. My hands are scarlet, I feel wet stickiness oozing down my face. Yet I can’t control my own limbs as they swing and swing and swing, chopping the man into kindling. I try to close my eyes, but they won’t, so I see his hand go flying. I watch as his innards come bubbling out of his abdomen. I split his head like a grape and watch as his brain matter leaks out to the floor.
To my dismay, I hear a gurgling sound coming from behind me. I turn knowing what I’ll see but powerless to stop it. I look to see Lenore’s face towards me trying to speak. Blood bubbles drizzling out of the side of her mouth. I don’t need to hear the words to know what she is trying to say. “Please, no more.”
Pity fills my heart, and my own eyes refuse to cry. “Please don’t do this,” I scream at myself in vain. I watch as I slowly move towards my former wife letting the blade carve a wicked groove into the marble floor. With no mercy my arm swings the blade up once then twice then three times, and all goes black.
Finally, I regain control of my limbs and body. I look up to see a vandalized great hall with a nasty groove in the marble floor, and there my chopped wife lying on the floor looking up at me with dead yet still very much alive eyes.
I see the monstrosity of my late wife clamber to her feet. Her left eye slides out of its socket running like egg yolk down her face. Black pustule blood leaks from her wounds. Her right eye locks with mine and in a slobbering wet noise she says, “I will never let you forget what you did here. Jail wasn’t enough for you. You didn’t stay your hand, so even in your Alzheimer’s I won't let you forget. Same time tomorrow, honey?
johnwestrick.com
2024.05.15 22:08 Old_Construction_216 Preparing for colonoscopy
TLDR: should I eat triggering foods before colonoscopy or stay low fodmap?
So I’ve never had gut issues my whole life. Except last year I developed a sensitivity to chillies and jalapeños and everything in that family. Which was a huge disappointment as my ethnicity eats chilli like its candy. But anyway, what can you do. That was fine until in November I got sick with flu, fever, sore throat and diarrhea (maybe Covid? Idk). The issue is, the diarrhea never went away. Saw a doctor in January. He first thought my gut is sensitive from an infection. Ordered blood tests and stool test. Everything was fine. Calprotectin was 274. Which he thought isn’t high enough to rush for a colonoscopy. He said wait to see if symptoms get better. They sort of kind of did. Very gradually though. Still had persistent diarrhea but i knew what time it would happen in the day. I was scared of the colonoscopy so kept praying it just goes away on its own.
Then idk what happened. I woke up one day in April with no diarrhea. No symptoms. Nothing. I was so surprised. I was fine for about 5-6 weeks from then on. Idk how. I thought it was a miracle because I was eating spicy food full almost every day when I got better. I was SO happy. Then end of last month one day I had the most horrible painful watery diarrhea. Even though I hadn’t eaten spicy food or anything different for at least 5 days before this episode. The diarrhea didn’t go away till about two days ago. Saw the doctor again. He prescribed an anti spasm which I’ve been taking for the last two weeks. So pain is down 70%. I’ve also been on a strict fodmap for the last two weeks. It didn’t seem to help in the beginning but since the last two days I’ve been feeling good. No diarrhea after so long. No painful cramps, no bloating or gas. My life feels pretty boring on low fodmap but my bowel movements since the last two days have been good.
But anyway, i have a colonoscopy scheduled after two weeks. My question is, should I continue eating low fodmap or should I eat everything so that during the colonoscopy my insides are at their worst to show a fuller picture? Idk what would be better diagnosis wise
submitted by Old_Construction_216 to IBSHelp [link] [comments]
So I’ve never had gut issues my whole life. Except last year I developed a sensitivity to chillies and jalapeños and everything in that family. Which was a huge disappointment as my ethnicity eats chilli like its candy. But anyway, what can you do. That was fine until in November I got sick with flu, fever, sore throat and diarrhea (maybe Covid? Idk). The issue is, the diarrhea never went away. Saw a doctor in January. He first thought my gut is sensitive from an infection. Ordered blood tests and stool test. Everything was fine. Calprotectin was 274. Which he thought isn’t high enough to rush for a colonoscopy. He said wait to see if symptoms get better. They sort of kind of did. Very gradually though. Still had persistent diarrhea but i knew what time it would happen in the day. I was scared of the colonoscopy so kept praying it just goes away on its own.
Then idk what happened. I woke up one day in April with no diarrhea. No symptoms. Nothing. I was so surprised. I was fine for about 5-6 weeks from then on. Idk how. I thought it was a miracle because I was eating spicy food full almost every day when I got better. I was SO happy. Then end of last month one day I had the most horrible painful watery diarrhea. Even though I hadn’t eaten spicy food or anything different for at least 5 days before this episode. The diarrhea didn’t go away till about two days ago. Saw the doctor again. He prescribed an anti spasm which I’ve been taking for the last two weeks. So pain is down 70%. I’ve also been on a strict fodmap for the last two weeks. It didn’t seem to help in the beginning but since the last two days I’ve been feeling good. No diarrhea after so long. No painful cramps, no bloating or gas. My life feels pretty boring on low fodmap but my bowel movements since the last two days have been good.
But anyway, i have a colonoscopy scheduled after two weeks. My question is, should I continue eating low fodmap or should I eat everything so that during the colonoscopy my insides are at their worst to show a fuller picture? Idk what would be better diagnosis wise
2024.05.15 22:00 _Triple_ [STORE] 900+ KNIVES/GLOVES/SKINS, 100.000$+ INVENTORY. BFK Lore, Gloves Amphibious, Skeleton Fade, Bowie Emerald, BFK Auto, Gloves MF, Talon Doppler, Gloves POW, Bayo Tiger, Gut Sapphire, Stiletto MF, M9 Ultra, Ursus Doppler, Flip Doppler, M9 Stained, Nomad CW, Paracord CW, AK-47 X-Ray & A Lot More
Everything in my inventory is up for trade. The most valuable items are listed here, the rest you can find in My Inventory
Feel free to Add Me or even better send a Trade Offer. Open for any suggestions: upgrades, downgrades / knives, gloves, skins / stickers, patterns, floats.
All Buyouts are listed in cash value.
KNIVES
★ Butterfly Knife Lore (Factory New), B/O: $7194.77
★ Butterfly Knife Autotronic (Minimal Wear), B/O: $2025.74
⎯★ M9 Bayonet Ultraviolet (Field-Tested), B/O: $557.87
★ M9 Bayonet Stained (Well-Worn), B/O: $529.41
★ M9 Bayonet Boreal Forest (Field-Tested), B/O: $465.39
⎯★ Talon Knife Doppler (Factory New), B/O: $1295.27
★ Bayonet Tiger Tooth (Minimal Wear), B/O: $746.28
★ Karambit Bright Water (Field-Tested), B/O: $688.15
⎯★ Flip Knife Doppler (Factory New), B/O: $547.93
★ Flip Knife Autotronic (Minimal Wear), B/O: $476.69
★ Flip Knife Case Hardened (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $278.18
★ Flip Knife Black Laminate (Well-Worn), B/O: $258.83
★ Flip Knife Urban Masked (Field-Tested), B/O: $181.64
⎯★ Stiletto Knife Marble Fade (Factory New), B/O: $686.04
★ Stiletto Knife Doppler (Factory New), B/O: $665.41
★ Stiletto Knife, B/O: $601.39
★ Stiletto Knife Crimson Web (Field-Tested), B/O: $418.25
★ Stiletto Knife Night Stripe (Field-Tested), B/O: $227.80
★ Stiletto Knife Boreal Forest (Field-Tested), B/O: $194.96
★ Stiletto Knife Safari Mesh (Field-Tested), B/O: $192.79
⎯★ Nomad Knife Crimson Web (Field-Tested), B/O: $518.11
★ Nomad Knife Scorched (Field-Tested), B/O: $169.78
★ Nomad Knife Forest DDPAT (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $166.88
★ StatTrak™ Nomad Knife Blue Steel (Field-Tested), B/O: $335.79
⎯★ Skeleton Knife Stained (Well-Worn), B/O: $442.05
★ Skeleton Knife Urban Masked (Minimal Wear), B/O: $426.24
★ Skeleton Knife Boreal Forest (Field-Tested), B/O: $314.03
★ StatTrak™ Skeleton Knife Fade (Minimal Wear), B/O: $2361.28
★ StatTrak™ Skeleton Knife Urban Masked (Field-Tested), B/O: $376.53
⎯★ Ursus Knife Doppler (Factory New), B/O: $557.12
★ Ursus Knife, B/O: $471.42
★ Ursus Knife Blue Steel (Minimal Wear), B/O: $212.37
★ Ursus Knife Case Hardened (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $187.66
★ Ursus Knife Damascus Steel (Field-Tested), B/O: $178.18
★ Ursus Knife Ultraviolet (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $155.13
★ Ursus Knife Boreal Forest (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $124.26
⎯★ Huntsman Knife Black Laminate (Minimal Wear), B/O: $204.83
★ Huntsman Knife Black Laminate (Field-Tested), B/O: $184.50
★ StatTrak™ Huntsman Knife Lore (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $224.11
⎯★ Bowie Knife Gamma Doppler (Factory New), B/O: $2142.02
★ Bowie Knife, B/O: $230.44
★ Bowie Knife Damascus Steel (Factory New), B/O: $209.20
★ Bowie Knife Ultraviolet (Minimal Wear), B/O: $180.51
★ Bowie Knife Ultraviolet (Field-Tested), B/O: $131.03
⎯★ Falchion Knife Night (Field-Tested), B/O: $132.54
★ Falchion Knife Urban Masked (Well-Worn), B/O: $112.81
★ Falchion Knife Scorched (Field-Tested), B/O: $108.81
★ Falchion Knife Forest DDPAT (Field-Tested), B/O: $107.82
★ Falchion Knife Safari Mesh (Field-Tested), B/O: $107.46
★ StatTrak™ Falchion Knife Ultraviolet (Field-Tested), B/O: $143.08
⎯★ Paracord Knife Crimson Web (Minimal Wear), B/O: $486.48
★ Paracord Knife Blue Steel (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $163.12
⎯★ Survival Knife Blue Steel (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $138.26
★ Survival Knife Night Stripe (Field-Tested), B/O: $131.03
⎯★ Gut Knife Sapphire (Minimal Wear), B/O: $1127.79
★ Gut Knife Gamma Doppler (Factory New), B/O: $286.17
★ Gut Knife Doppler (Factory New), B/O: $246.55
★ Gut Knife Marble Fade (Factory New), B/O: $240.77
★ Gut Knife, B/O: $210.49
★ Gut Knife Lore (Field-Tested), B/O: $194.22
★ Gut Knife Case Hardened (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $151.51
★ Gut Knife Blue Steel (Minimal Wear), B/O: $124.94
★ Gut Knife Rust Coat (Well-Worn), B/O: $118.99
★ Gut Knife Boreal Forest (Minimal Wear), B/O: $109.80
★ StatTrak™ Gut Knife Doppler (Factory New), B/O: $237.96
⎯★ Shadow Daggers Gamma Doppler (Factory New), B/O: $264.92
★ Shadow Daggers Marble Fade (Factory New), B/O: $253.03
★ Shadow Daggers Tiger Tooth (Factory New), B/O: $237.22
★ Shadow Daggers Crimson Web (Field-Tested), B/O: $153.40
★ Shadow Daggers Autotronic (Minimal Wear), B/O: $144.42
★ Shadow Daggers Blue Steel (Field-Tested), B/O: $105.20
★ StatTrak™ Shadow Daggers Damascus Steel (Minimal Wear), B/O: $150.46
⎯★ Navaja Knife Fade (Factory New), B/O: $365.99
★ Navaja Knife Doppler (Factory New), B/O: $228.93
★ Navaja Knife Marble Fade (Factory New), B/O: $227.43
★ Navaja Knife Slaughter (Factory New), B/O: $209.06
★ Navaja Knife, B/O: $203.16
★ Navaja Knife Case Hardened (Well-Worn), B/O: $132.57
★ Navaja Knife Damascus Steel (Factory New), B/O: $121.69
★ Navaja Knife Damascus Steel (Minimal Wear), B/O: $109.95
★ Navaja Knife Damascus Steel (Field-Tested), B/O: $100.41
★ StatTrak™ Navaja Knife Fade (Factory New), B/O: $369.01
★ StatTrak™ Navaja Knife Damascus Steel (Field-Tested), B/O: $109.95
GLOVES
★ Sport Gloves Amphibious (Minimal Wear), B/O: $2394.67
★ Sport Gloves Omega (Well-Worn), B/O: $572.33
★ Sport Gloves Bronze Morph (Minimal Wear), B/O: $338.88
★ Sport Gloves Big Game (Field-Tested), B/O: $323.66
⎯★ Specialist Gloves Marble Fade (Minimal Wear), B/O: $1652.07
★ Specialist Gloves Tiger Strike (Field-Tested), B/O: $599.14
★ Specialist Gloves Crimson Web (Well-Worn), B/O: $231.57
★ Specialist Gloves Buckshot (Minimal Wear), B/O: $126.21
⎯★ Moto Gloves POW! (Minimal Wear), B/O: $996.99
★ Moto Gloves POW! (Field-Tested), B/O: $383.31
★ Moto Gloves POW! (Well-Worn), B/O: $276.00
★ Moto Gloves Turtle (Field-Tested), B/O: $180.28
⎯★ Hand Wraps CAUTION! (Minimal Wear), B/O: $502.29
★ Hand Wraps Giraffe (Minimal Wear), B/O: $180.73
★ Hand Wraps CAUTION! (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $178.32
⎯★ Driver Gloves Queen Jaguar (Minimal Wear), B/O: $181.01
★ Driver Gloves Rezan the Red (Field-Tested), B/O: $101.66
⎯★ Broken Fang Gloves Jade (Field-Tested), B/O: $127.88
★ Broken Fang Gloves Needle Point (Minimal Wear), B/O: $124.55
⎯★ Bloodhound Gloves Guerrilla (Minimal Wear), B/O: $127.94
★ Hydra Gloves Case Hardened (Field-Tested), B/O: $102.55
WEAPONS
AK-47 X-Ray (Well-Worn), B/O: $478.95
AUG Hot Rod (Factory New), B/O: $425.83
StatTrak™ M4A1-S Hyper Beast (Factory New), B/O: $413.95
M4A4 Daybreak (Factory New), B/O: $309.51
StatTrak™ AK-47 Aquamarine Revenge (Factory New), B/O: $305.43
AK-47 Case Hardened (Well-Worn), B/O: $196.38
StatTrak™ M4A4 Temukau (Minimal Wear), B/O: $174.64
P90 Run and Hide (Field-Tested), B/O: $167.03
AWP Asiimov (Field-Tested), B/O: $153.33
Souvenir SSG 08 Death Strike (Minimal Wear), B/O: $140.00
M4A1-S Printstream (Battle-Scarred), B/O: $124.70
StatTrak™ M4A1-S Golden Coil (Field-Tested), B/O: $117.48
AWP Asiimov (Well-Worn), B/O: $115.97
StatTrak™ Desert Eagle Printstream (Minimal Wear), B/O: $112.96
StatTrak™ AK-47 Asiimov (Minimal Wear), B/O: $110.85
Souvenir M4A1-S Master Piece (Well-Worn), B/O: $102.42
AK-47 Bloodsport (Minimal Wear), B/O: $100.53
Trade Offer Link - Steam Profile Link - My Inventory
Some items on the list may no longer be available or are still locked, visit My Inventory for more details.
Send a Trade Offer for fastest response. I consider all offers.
Add me for discuss if there is a serious offer that needs to be discussed.
2024.05.15 21:57 Mentalmoss MY BEST FRIEND SAW MY DOPPELGANGER AND IT REACTED AS ME
So my best friend texted me a couple hours ago saying he saw me outside this hospital and that my outfit was "so slay" but I've been inside all day and haven't left the house, he thought I was joking with him because it looked exactly like me and was wearing clothes I'd worn before which exact same hair (which is weird bc I used multiple dyes to get this colour of purple) and it saw and it smiled and waved at him, according to him it was wearing these red tinted glasses and I showed him a pic of these ones I ordered a few days ago and he said it was the exact same ones and also it was with someone and ive been manifesting a bf and he described it as the type of guy ive been manifesting, he didn't know any of that stiff prior, but it's too wierd to coincidence bc i don't have common features i have grey eyes and hollow cheeks and im goth so I usually stick out like a sore thumb esp bc i always go all out...
But I want to know what someone else thinks, if means anything or it's just weird and ik he'd never lie to me esp bc he texted genuinely thinking it was me and I was just busy..
submitted by Mentalmoss to ParanormalEncounters [link] [comments]
But I want to know what someone else thinks, if means anything or it's just weird and ik he'd never lie to me esp bc he texted genuinely thinking it was me and I was just busy..
2024.05.15 21:53 dancergirlktl [Sell and Swap/US Only] MAC, Too Faced, Tarte, Bobbi Brown, Benefit, Smashbox, Clarins, Colourpop, Clinique, Innisfree, Burberry Her, Maison Margiela Replica
Hi all! Help me clear out my life of backups and samples I'll never use. Hopefully you'll find a new HG or something you've always wanted to try in my stash. I've priced everything to sell and do feel the prices are fair and low but of course I'm willing to bundle. The prices are based off what I actually paid for the products, not the retail price. I buy most things on sale and you'll get a discount on top of what I paid.
submitted by dancergirlktl to makeupexchange [link] [comments]
- Shipping is $5 for 4oz, $10 flat for anything over 1lb
- My home is smoke free home in CA. I have a dog that has no access to my room where my makeup and skincare is stored
- Payment via paypal goods and services. I cover fees
- I will only ship to the address on file with paypal, so please make sure your shipping address is correct when paying.
- First come, first serve. I'll hold request for 2hrs and then move on to the next in line
- $6 minimum per order
Makeup
Eyeshadow Verification: https://imgur.com/a/EEtDTYL- Colourpop You Had Me At Hello (Used 1-2x) $10
- Bobbi Brown Long Wear Cream Eyeshadow Stick Dusty Mauve & Golden Pink (BNIB) (FS $16, MS $8)
- MAC Paints Bamboom (BNIB) $7
- MAC Eyeshadow All that Glitters (BNIB) $8
- Bare Minerals Gen Nude Eyeshadow Palette Rose (Used x2) $10
- Too Faced Better Than Chocolate (BNIB) $15
- Smashbox Covershot Ablaze Eyeshadow Palette (BN) $10
- Colourpop Sorbet Eyeshadow (Used x2) $4
- Clarins Palette 4 Couleurs 2 Rosewood (Used x2) $13
- Makeup by Mario Glam Quads Party Glam, Bronzey Glam & Rosey Glam (swatched) $8 each or $20 for 3
- Colourpop Colourstix Warm Up (Swatched x2) $3
- Eyeko Double Stack Eyeshadow Stick Dusk/Dawn (BINB plus sharpener) $4
- Bobbi Brown Rich Color Eye Shadow Royale 8 (Light Useage) $5
- MAC Single Eyeshadows Twink x2 (BNIP) $4 each
- Catrice Liquid Metal Eyeshadow Mauves like Jagger, We are the Champagnes & Under Treasure (light use) $6 for all 3
- Bobbi Brown Vitamin Enriched Face Base mini .24oz $8
- Becca Light Catcher Finishing Veil 01 Scattering (BNIB) $8
- Covergirl Clean Fresh Skin Milk 340 Light (BN) $5
- Georgette Klinger Marula Primer (BN) $5
- Too Faced Born This Way Powder Translucent (BNIB) $11
- Makeup Forever Mist & Fix Hydrating Setting Spray mini 1oz (BNIB) $6
- Natasha Denona All Over Glow 1 Light (Swatched x1) $10
- Tarte Amazonian Clay Waterproof Bronzer Park Avenue Princess (Lightly Used) $8
- Benefit Dandelion Twinkle Highlighter mini (BN) $9
- Milani Baked Blush Belle Amore (Swatched x1) $6
- Wet n Wild Pac Man Power Pellets Blushlighter (Swatched x1) $4
- NYX Matte Bronzer Medium (Swatched x1) $5
- Sleek Blushes Pixie Pink (Swatched x1) $4
- Grande Glow Plumping Liquid Highlighter (BN) $5
- Laritzy Cosmetics Cream Highlighter Virtue (BNIB) $4
- The Beauty Crop Blush Duo Mauve-lous (BNIB) $3
- Topshop Cream Blushes Flush (Light usage) $2 or free with purchase of 2 or more items
- Ciate Bamboo Bronzer Palm Island (Swatched x1) $5
- Sephora Retractable Brow Pencil 05 Neutral Grey Brown (BNIP) $9
- Makeup Forever Brow Gel (BNIB) $5
- Tynt Smokey Eye Pencil Pinot Noir (BNIB) $3
- Mally Beauty Gel Waterproof Eyeliner Onyx (BNIB) $3
- Ciate Fierce Flicks Precise Pro Tip Liquid Liner Black (BNIB) $5
- Clinique Quickliner deluxe size (BN) $3
- Clinique High Impact Mascara full size (BN) $8
- Tarte Maneater Mascara Black (BNIB) $9
- Wander Beauty Upgraded Lashes Treatment Mascara (BN) $8
- Too Face Damn Girl Mascara Travel Size (BNIB) $5
- Tynt Brow Definer Brunette (BNIP) $2
- Tori Belle Cosmetics Magnetic Eyeliner and lashes (BNIB) $5
- Lancome Juicy Tubes 02 Spring Fling & 07 Magic Spell (BNIB) $10 each
- Patrick Starrr Lip Snatcher Lip Liner Outta Line (BN) sold
- MAC Love Me Lipstick Under the Covers (BNIB) $9
- MAC Lip Pencil Subculture (BNIB) $10
- Clinique Chubby Stick melon (BNIB) $7
- Bobbi Brown Crushed Lip Color Angel, Cranberry, Sunset & Grenadine (BNIB) $14 each
- Bobbi Brown Luxe Lip Color Mini Neutral Rose (BNIB) $7
- Bobbi Brown Crushed Lip Gloss Free Spirit (BN) $14
- Laura Mercier Creme Smooth Lip Color Palm Beach (Swatched x1) $6
- Anastasia Matte Lipstick deluxe size Dead Roses (BNIB) $3
- Visee Lip Oil 002 Hold Me (BNIB) $9
- Nars Lip Gloss mini Priscilla (BN) $2
- Saint Luxe Lip Liner Duo (BNIB) Free with Purchase
- True Lucsious Super Moisture Lipstick Vintage Rose (BNIB) Free with Purchase
- Laura Geller Color Lustre Lip Gloss (BN) $5
Skincare Verification: https://imgur.com/a/TfQlafY
- Estee Lauder Revitalizing Supreme+ Moisturizer and Youth Power Soft Creme 2.5oz (BNIB) $45
- Origins Charcoal Face Mask (BN) $10
- I'm From Rice Mask (BNIB Exp 12/25) FS $15, minis $4 each
- Klairs Freshly Juiced Vitamin E Mask (BNIB Exp 6/25) $4
- Charlotte Tilbury Magic Cream .5oz (BNIB) $15
- Paula's Choice Hyaluronic Acid + Peptide Lip Booster (BNIB) $14
- Innisfree Pore Clearing Clay Mask (BNIB) $8
- Saturday Skin Yuzu Vitamin C Bright Eye Cream (BNIB) $15
- Kate Somerville Goat Milk Moisturizing Cream (BNIB) $15
- Klairs Midnight Blue Calming Cream (BNIB Exp 2/25) $20
- 111Skin Rose Gold Radiance Booster (BNIB) $18
- Estee Lauder Advanced Night Repair Eye Concentrate Matrix (BNIB) $25
- I'm From Pear Serum (BNIB Exp 9/24) $18
- Rovectin Skin Essentials Activating Treatment Lotion (BNIB Exp 10/23) $10
- Wishtrend Quad Active Boosting Essence (BNIB Exp 12/23) $12
- Mudmask Eye Cream (BN) $11
- MudMask Blue Clay Mask (BN) $5
- Alpha H Liquid Gold 100ml (BNIB) $17
- Clinique Moisture Surge 2.5 oz (BNIB) $25
- Shani Darden Retinol Reform 10ml (BNIB) $6
- Biossance Squalane Marine Algae Eye Cream (BNIB) $15
- Tower 28 SOS Daily Rescue Spray 1oz (BN) $5
- Fenty Beauty Total Cleansr Makeup Removing Cleanser Mini 1.5oz (BN) $4
- Dermelect Self Esteem Beauty Sleep Serum (BNIB) $9
- AHC Essential Real Eye Cream for Face (BNIB) $8
- 111 Skin Nocturnal Eclipse Recovery Cream Mini .5oz (BNIB) $5
- Akar Restore Eye Serum (BNIB) $16
- Barbor Hydra Plus Hydration Ampoule Concentrates (BNIB) $10
- Derma E Advanced Peptides & Collagen Serum .5oz (BNIB) $8
- Symbiosis London Tightening and Replenishing Eye Mask (BN) $10
- The Body Shop Drops of Youth Liquid Peel (BNIB) $8
- French Girl La FLore Botanical Serum (BNIB) $6
- Good Molecules Niacinamide Serum (BNIB) $3
- Ulta Skincare Watermelon Refresh Sleeping Mask (BNIB) $4
- Exuviance Sample Bundle: $8
- Deep Clean AHA Cleanser
- Glycolic Expert Moisturizer
- A.G.E. Less Everyday Moisturizer
- Overnight Transforming Complex
- Peach and Lily Sample Bundle: $15
- Glass skin face polisher
- Glass skin refining serum
- KP Bump Boss Microderm Body Serum
- KP Bump Boss Smooth Body Lotion
- Power Calm Hydrating Gel Cleanser 1oz
- Match Pudding Antioxidant Cream .84oz
- Acne Sample Bundle: $10
- Cerave Foaming Facial Cleanser
- Origins Checks and Balances
- Proactive Green Tea Moisturizer
- Sephora Clean SKin Gel
- Vichy Acne Control Daily Moisturizer
- Purity Pore Extractor Clay Mask
- Ulta Pore Strips (8pack)
- Thayers Witch Hazel Facial Toner
- Anti-Aging Sample Bundle: $10
- L'Oreal Age Perfect Midnight Serum
- Keys Let Me Glow Illuminating Serum
- Lancome Genifique
- Shiseido Benefiance Eye Cream
- Tony Moly Plump-kin Retinol Eye Cream
- Bare Minerals Skinlongevity Serum
- Pat Mcgrath Divine Skin The Essencw
- Love Wellness Call Me Collagen x2
- Lux Sample Bundle $10
- Estee Lauder Nutritious Melting Soft Mask
- Peter Thomas Roth Ultimate Solution 5 Multitasking Moisturizer
- Fresh Black Tea Age Renewal Cream
- Sunday Riley Afterglow
- Perricone MD Growth Factor Firming & Lifting Serum
- Dermalogica Biolumin-C Serum
- Dior Dream Skin Skin Perfector
- Moisturizer Sample Bundle $10
- Ulta Beauty Honey Miel Peel Off Mask
- It Cosmetics Confidence in a Cream x3
- Vichy Normaderm BHA Exfoliating Serum
- Proactiv Renewing Cleanser
- Philosophy Purity Clay Mask
- Vichy Liftactiv B3 Serum
- Mario Badescue Facial Spray with Aloe Herbs and Rosewater
- Belif The true Cream Moisturizing Bomb
- Kylie Skin Face Moisturizer
- Clinique Dramatically Different Hydrating Jelly
- N07 Future Renew Damage Reversal Serum
Other Verification: https://imgur.com/a/jgUpId
- Eyeko Eyelash Curler (BNIB) $5
- Bobbi Brown Eye Blender Brush (BNIP) $9
- L'Occitane Hand Cream 1oz (BN) $5
- Body Care Sampler $12
- Mario Badescu Coconut Body Butter
- Mario Badescu Coconut Body Scrub
- Dionis Goat Milk Body Lotion
- Dionis Hand & Body Goat Milk Cream
- Crepe Erase Body Firm
- Hempz Body Moisturizer Ocean Breeze
- Mega Babe Space Bar Detoxifying Underarm Bar x2
- Osea Undaria Cleansing Body Polish
- Crepe Erase Body Smooth Pre Treatment
- Ulta Beauty Coconut Cream Scented Body Lotion
- Perfume Deluxe Size Bundle 5 for $25
- Victor and Rolf Good Fortune
- Commodity Paper
- Ralph Lauren Ralph's Club
- Armani Aqua di Gioia
- Lancome Idole
- Burberry Her Eau de Parfum 1.0oz + Deluxe size dabber (BNIB) $50
- Moschino Fresh Couture Eau De Toilette 1.7oz (Sprayed x2) $30
- Clinique Happy Perfume 1.0oz (BNIB) $20
- Maison Margiela Replica Springtime in a Park 3.4oz (BNIB) $60
- Maison Margiela Replica On a Date .34oz (BNIB) $15
- Mugler Alien Goddess Supra Floral .34oz (BNIB) $11
ISO List:- Try me on Suqqu Eyeshadows and Blushes- Charlotte Tilbury Eyeshadows
2024.05.15 21:47 AwayProfessional9434 Special boost 2 vs Crit eye 2
I was thinking about switching the kulu pants to Pink Rathian for spacial boost in my fire and ice build because I don't need pants to reach elemental 5. Now is it worth switching or should I stay with Crit eye? Are there any other good pants for more damage in general?
submitted by AwayProfessional9434 to MHNowGame [link] [comments]
2024.05.15 21:47 MUI-Tojo Re:Cord of Ragnarok [Chapter 21] Part 2
![Re:Cord of Ragnarok [Chapter 21] Part 2](https://external-preview.redd.it/VzIW2vWT_TPZAPh8xiCg32Jk1eEZ72FI3wu0vYP2FQg.jpg?width=320&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=19a275f8583e87f463aa7b3e7b6bf70e1ff27364 "Re:Cord of Ragnarok [Chapter 21] Part 2") | Chapter 21.2:【Tales of Fire and Ice】 submitted by MUI-Tojo to ShuumatsuNoValkyrie [link] [comments] The Arena Tsukuyomi gripped his sword firmly in hand. He looked forward at his foe, allowing the audience he knew was watching, the words he knew they were saying, the arena itself, to all simply fade away into the darkness. Right now, to him, the only things shining in the night were he and his foe. Nothing else mattered, not even the past and future. He gave himself a quiet, bitter, yet lighthearted laugh, and shook his head with a slight smile. The scabbard had cracked. And yet, once the shock had worn off, it now seemed so incredibly trivial. “...What have I been doing? I can’t believe I paralyzed myself for so long. Even after I met Mother, even after that day, I was just making excuses to be a coward. To never truly fight. But they all…wanted me to just do my best, didn’t they? They wanted me to fight just like that woman does. If so…” He had fallen countless times. Won many victories. But before today, how many of those battles had he really given his everything to? He regretted every single one of them in hindsight. But now, the god of the moon brandished his sword with a determined light in his eyes. “...Then that’s the only expectation I need to fulfill!” He looked Zetian right in the eyes as he replied to her. His voice was as unwavering as his blade. “Indeed. My father taught me so much. So did my mother. They are truly incredible. I’ve been…such a fool for not listening to them until now.” Wu stood before him in silence. A blank look distorted her face for a second, as a sense of regretful jealousy almost took over, before the strength of her glare and stance returned twice as strong. Her presence was now like that of a ferocious dragon. “Hah…how very lucky you are. To have someone at your side to raise you up like that. You’ll never understand what it means to fight truly alone.” “W-W-W-WAIT A SECOND!” The distressed voice of Mammon pierced the ears of the fighters. “You should not be able to return to sanity! It's not possi-” “SHUT UP! No one has the right to decide what I can and can’t do, you hear me!?” The Empress barked out a command for all to hear, a symphony of the rage and frustration she obtained throughout her life. Luoyang, Henan Province It was nothing new, really. Spears and swords surrounded her on all ends. Eyes that threatened to burn right through her soul- hollower than usual, but intending to kill nonetheless. The roaring and desperate sounds of battle raging around her. Once again, a blade was pointed at her rise to the throne, and once again, Zetian would fight with all she had to defend it. Even against her own men. The devilish talismans around the soldiers’ necks glowed with an eerie purple light, illuminating the bloody Luoyang streets below them. Zetian had ordered them locked away upon their discovery, but clearly, at least one of her ministers was less than trustworthy. A shame. Pushing all thoughts of future executions to the side, she looked upon her gathered allies turned foes, already braced for lethal combat. Her eyes narrowed as their leader stepped forward: a nobleman clad not in his usual fine robes, but regal battle armor, clearly prepared for this very day. A more ornate talisman that surged with dark power hung from his neck. Li Zhen, the Prefect of Yu, regarded Zetian with the same sneering smirk he had always worn around her. The brother of the late Gaozong, and a young prodigy of the Li Clan, Zhen had opposed her from the beginning, almost obsessively so. As if being in her presence and seeing her rise was a reality he could simply reject. Even as the other clans and officials of China fell before her, acknowledging what she had become, Zhen and the Li Clan remained stalwart in their defiance. To Zetian, their eyes burned more than anyone else’s- Zhen’s insults, beatings, and even the cold silence he regarded her with were seared into her mind. It was almost preordained in the heavens that he would be her final obstacle. “My greetings, Empress Dowager! I must offer my humblest apologies! After all, it’s a shame you’d be struck down like this, when you’re so close to the finish line.” Zhen laughed coldly. He drew his sword from his waist and stepped forth, before gesturing to the soldiers with pride as they all followed at his command. “You’ve slain so many of us Li without even batting an eye…but can you do the same to your own royal guard? That one’s been with you for thirty years, I believe, and that one twenty-five. Such loyal soldiers they are!” He laughed mockingly and patted the soldier next to him on the shoulder. “...Of course I can.” Zetian’s reply was clear and sharp, lacking the honeyed arrogance she had grown into over the years. Li Zhen raised an eyebrow. The burning in her eyes hadn’t even flickered a bit. He had wanted to snuff it out, but now, even making it waver seemed like a heavenly task. “Then come try it, Wu Zetian! Show me what made a subhuman like you into an empress!” He laughed and stepped away, behind a wall of Zetian’s most loyal and powerful soldiers. Without warning, they all attacked at once. She didn’t even hesitate. In but a single minute, without a hint of mercy or pause, Wu Zetian slaughtered the elite guard she had cultivated with her own two hands. The deaths were swift and brutal. These loyal warriors, perhaps even companions, were now merely the same as the fallen Li soldiers that littered the streets. But perhaps that kind of death was a mercy in itself. The talismans leeched at the very soul to empower their victims, and agonizingly drove both mind and body to death- so Zetian killed them quickly. It was most efficient to end them before they could grow more powerful. Yes, that was why. “...Well done!” Zhen remarked. The blood shed by Zetian had begun to pool at his feet. Awe was visible on his face, a horrified form of delight, as he slowly began to smile. It was an expression fit for the descent of a god. Zetian paused with an almost incredulous expression. “It’s a bit too late for that, isn’t it, Li Zhen?” “On the contrary…this is the moment I’ve been waiting for. Finally, you’ve bloomed into a flower that Gaozong would be proud of!” Zhen’s smile was now jolly, the sneer he had worn for decades all but gone. He spread his arms wide in a grand gesture and laughed. Zetian remained silent, almost daring him to speak further. The Prefect of Yu happily obliged. “I knew from the very beginning that you had the drive to claw your way to the top. Those pitiful princes, ministers, prefects, and dukes…they languish in their role, blinded by the comfort of their titles. They lack the fire that a ruler needs, the cold blood of those born in hell. Only someone like you, who knows what it means to truly rise, could be worthy of the throne!” “...And that’s why the Li Clan never gave me my due respect, eh?” Zetian cocked her head back. The ever-present flame in her eyes was almost cold. Zhen nodded in glee. “But of course! If a woman were to rule at Gaozong’s side, or any of ours, we would accept only the finest. And you, dear Zetian, have become something beyond my wildest dreams.” He approached her as his grin turned manic. “A mind, body, and soul of finest steel…yes! That carnage just now proves it! You are the only one who can be my empress!” “You expect me to join you?” “The Li Clan remains mighty, despite your actions against us. We are your only true opposition. If we join hands, my empress, heaven and earth shall be ours to rule! So thank you, truly…for meeting my expectations.” Li Zhen’s eyes softened further now, his smile almost fatherly. Zetian had almost forgotten what such a smile looked like, even if Zhen’s was one with venom behind it. It was a warm venom. One she was nearly tempted to crave. It was a pity she would have to destroy it too. Zetian clenched her fists, steeling herself. And then she spoke. “My rise, my rule, what I’ve done then and today…not a single moment of it was for you, or anyone else. This power is mine and mine alone. For all your talk about the throne, Li Zhen…you’ve forgotten the most important thing of all.” “Oh?” “That there can only be one ruler.” She lunged directly at Zhen, just as coldly as she had done her own soldiers. As if his words had truly meant nothing to her. Li Zhen had always been a prodigy. A genius of politics and war, of swordplay, and even of martial arts, which he had turned to out of sheer boredom. For his entire life, he had wanted nothing more than an equal. He prayed fervently that some twist of fate would place Zetian by his side. Not Gaozong’s or anyone else’s. A one-on-one fight with her was, truly, the culmination of that dream. But as Zetian parried, dodged, and blocked every single one of his blows, as if he were but a child with a stick, striking back over and over with force that shattered his armor and bones, the prodigy of the Li Clan realized that he had made a fatal mistake. Wu Zetian was not his equal, and hadn’t been for a long time now. Perhaps she never even was. She had not simply met expectations- she had unquestionably surpassed them all. BLACK TORTOISE’S SHELL His strongest all-or-nothing strike didn’t move her an inch. VERMILLION BIRD’S FLIGHT Before he could even begin to follow up with a swing to her throat, she disappeared from sight. He turned around far too late. She was lunging for him. DRAGON’S MIGHT Zhen opened his mouth to choke out what he knew would be his final words. But faced with the wildfire burning in Zetian’s visage, with the bestial, almost hungering way she was now moving, what could he even say? It was only now that Li Zhen began to fathom what he had created. WHITE TIGER’S CLAW “Have we given rise to an empress, or a demon-” Zetian’s whole body moved in a brutal downwards arc. The claw of a monster swept right through Zhen’s body, devastating it, tearing muscle and shattering bone, the armored, empowered prodigy little more than the weakest of peasants before its might. His life ended before he could even process his last, horrified thoughts. Zhen’s corpse dropped to the floor in two. And next to it, with no one to see them in this secluded corner of Luoyang, as the battle began to die down, Wu Zetian simply looked upon her nemesis’ corpse, overcome by a hollow catharsis, the flame in her eyes now burning coldly. That last warm smile was something she had fought for decades to see, even if she herself had forgotten why. Yet it was unable to move her. Could she even move her own heart, at this point? She had now slain Li Zhen with her own two hands. Her armies had already crushed many of the Li, and would end the rest of them soon. Zetian had conquered all possible opposition. But even as she stood atop a mountain of corpses and destroyed expectations, all those scornful eyes now looking towards her with reverence…she still felt that same empty, terrified hunger once the fearless rush of victory had passed. The hunger of a pitiful peasant girl destined for an unnamed and shallow grave. Even the throne wasn’t enough, nowhere near enough. She still wasn’t enough. She still had to prove herself more. Li Zhen and countless more had died, but their ghosts would gaze upon her forever. The peak of the mountain was still a lonely place. But even if it was lonely, it was safe for now. Neither blades or words, pointed towards her at all times, could even begin to reach her from where she stood. That was why Zetian had to keep climbing higher. All doubt and fear had to be banished. If she showed her constant hesitation, if any part of her was weak, then she’d fall in an instant, all the way back to the hell that lay below the earth. Back to the girl she used to be, and refused to admit she still was. To stay on the throne of heaven…Wu Zetian had to live as a devil. Thus, Zetian remained standing. Not a single tear fell, and not a single tremor ran through her body. Whether it led to heaven or hell, she would continue walking the lonely path of an empress, paved with the corpses of friends and foes. She had no choice but to. Without hesitation, she ran to the raging battle ahead, not sparing a single moment of goodbye or prayer for her closest comrades. They had sacrificed themselves for a cold and ruthless empress, a ruler who would make China as strong as herself, and she intended to honor that. Her country, her world, would never even begin to crumble. She would make sure of it. An empress never faltered, and an empress never relied on others. Even if the warmth- no, the absolute power she sought was impossibly distant, and fleeting in her grasp…she would chase it forever. Even if she had to chase it all the way to the heavens. The Arena Zetian glared back at Tsukuyomi, her composure unshaken, but a burning, primal desire to conquer in her eyes. The moon god’s resolve remained unshaken. If anything, his face only softened with pity. But it seemed as if it was a battle to remain resolute, as if Zetian’s eyes were imposing her dominant will on the heavens themselves- it was as if Tsukuyomi was looking towards the peak of some unfathomable, treacherous mountain, and the dragon that reigned there as its ruler. “The desperation of having nothing at all is what breeds the greatest hunger for power.” Solomon mused, a cool smile on his face. “And when one with such a craving actually reaches the heights that they seek, nothing in heaven and earth can stop them.” “Wait, that makes no sense!” Legion interjected. “So she can control Demon Mind because…” “Indeed. Wu Zetian has always been a human with the ‘greed’ of a demon. Perhaps even beyond one. That is her path as an iron empress, unchallenged by any in China. Only someone like her, one with an ‘ego’ that burns like an infernal flame, could ever harness Mammon to this extent…” His confident smile unwavering, Solomon turned his attention back to the arena. “...You must have suffered greatl-” Tsukuyomi began. “You shut up too, you patronizing asshole! As if I would care about the validation of those stuck up bastards, or even oh-so-almighty gods like you.” Tsukuyomi’s attempt at consolation was shut down by the ravings of Wu Zetian. Her words resonated with the moon god, the fiery glare she met him with shaking him to his core. She took a step forward and spread her arms, a grin and snarl simultaneously on her face as she continues. “From the beginning, my throne has been mine and mine alone. I’ve fought, bled, and killed for no one except me, I clawed my way to the peak with my own two hands! And I’ll crush anything that wants to take that from me- I don’t care if it’s the heavens themselves! For I am…the Empress of China!” A familiar figure in the audience smirked gleefully. “Wonderful! Show them the dragon’s fire that consumed all of China! Show them everything you are, my Empress!” Li Zhen roared out pridefully, the rest of the Li Clan with him. Their stands were surrounded by many of Zetian’s other fallen foes, watching intently. Li Jingye, Empress Wang, Sun Wanrong- regardless of their feelings, they all stood firm in their support, placing their faith in the one who had unquestionably crushed them all. It didn’t matter what she had done to them, at least, not here and now. Zetian’s might was the single, immutable truth uniting them, a grand temple that had been built upon all their corpses. And they would uphold that embodiment of their China until the very end. As the Empress returned to her fearsome martial stance, firm as iron yet ready to rage like a flame, Tsukuyomi steeled himself and took a breath. ‘She does not have her demonic form activated…This is my chance! It’s now or never!’ He grasped his damaged haori in his hand and slung it towards Wu. The Empress was surprised with the newfound courage of Tsukuyomi, yet prepared herself all the same. It took only a single swipe of ‘Tiger Claw’ to shred the haori into pieces, but the brief distraction was enough for Tsukuyomi to reach her. His sword flashed through the air towards her leg, forcing the Empress to jump up with a feral glint in her eyes. He looked up, knowing just what to do next- but the brief moment of pause he gave before doing it was more than enough. Zetian lunged forth and swung, landing a palm strike to his ribs, and very nearly taking his head off with a turning kick, still grazing his cheek even as he ducked away. Tsukuyomi stepped back, grimacing but resolute as Zetian rushed at him once more. “Don’t you dare hesitate like that again, boy!~” “...You’re right! No more regrets!” As he swung to intercept her, Zetian batted his blade down to the god’s side and closed in on the opening before Tsukuyomi. However, the young god steeled himself. It was just as he had planned- the creation of a second chance to execute that maneuver. Without hesitation, Tsukuyomi spat the blood pooling in his mouth into the eyes of his monstrous opponent. “I can… NO! I WILL WIN!” He declared to the heavens, to the tune of a demented snigger from his opponent, before bringing the blade to her neck. A beheading fit for royalty. Yet, the Empress’ demonic eyes flashed open through the blood, and his blade was stopped firmly by her palm. Zetian diverted it to the side with a manic expression. “What the..? Wait. Her pupils changed?!” Shock and horror palpated in Tsukuyomi’s brain as he realized that the demon mind had once again brought Zetian into her demonic state. In the stands, Solomon laughed to himself as he observed the battle below. “It would appear that greed is truly the quality of a dragon, and you have achieved the pinnacle of it….well done Wu Zetian~” “Oh my. So this is the ‘hunger’ that made her such a mighty empress…” Amaterasu mused to herself. Izanagi was now sweating slightly, his arm trembling in rage. Mammon, meanwhile, was quivering, too shocked to even speak. Just what kind of relentless beast had Solomon bound him to? The demon, who walked through hell itself without a hint of fear, now felt as if he was in the presence of a monster. Wu positioned herself in the same stance she had performed her White Tiger Assault in, before firing herself precariously towards the panicked God. Tsukuyomi’s eyes widened. He was too slow to dodge. He didn’t have enough momentum to parry. He couldn’t guard, or he’d be crushed under the blow’s pure power. Every option began to fade away in his mind, the Tsukuyomis of every possibility crushed by their foe… Except the one he had finally found confidence in. The only way to advance was to move forward. Even if it was just this once, for a single strike and the rest of the battle afterwards, he was done hesitating. Here and now, he could go all out. He rushed forward, his blade surging with light. This was the final stage of the self-mastery he had cultivated. At the end of the path of moonlight, the thousands of victories and twice as many failures forming it…simply stopped existing. The only truth remaining was this moment. To master one’s self meant to put one’s present self, all that they knew they were, into every single swing. And after so many years, Tsukuyomi’s blade and heart had finally become one shining light. WHITE TIGER’S ASSAULT PERPETUAL MOON CYCLE: HALF MOON https://preview.redd.it/cjl9gbqb8n0d1.png?width=1011&format=png&auto=webp&s=d130842aaee35ab3a46277b2ca1988f56e157ee5 Tsukuyomi raised his blade up high, and sent it cascading down like a waterfall of pure surging moonlight, almost meteoric in its descent as radiant power wildly trailed behind it. At the same time, Zetian’s raging, hungering claw of a hand shot upwards in that same bloodthirsty arc of destruction. “Oh my.” Thoth gasped. “Their power is beginning to approach that of Lucifer himself!” “This is gonna be bloody.” Crowley cackled, gently rubbing his hands together. “Yes! Crush that boy, Empress!” Li Zhen yelled. Both his fists were clenched in anticipation. “...G…GO FOR IT, TSUKUYOMI!” cried out Izanami, raising one fist and nearly standing up from her chair. It was a clash of pure unwavering will. Hell’s raw tenacity and heaven’s steeled resolve met in the form of a fist and blade, the flesh and light that burned in their hearts trying to consume the other entirely, the blast of their collision a passionate roar towards the sky. “I won’t lose!” Tsukuyomi declared, tightening his grip and clenching his teeth. “Eat shit!” Wu snarled, the grin on her face almost hungering. With one last shout from both sides, as they poured all that blazed in their souls into the clash, it ended in a single, explosive instant. Tsukuyomi was blown away along with his sword, and tumbled across the arena floor, as Zetian was forced backwards in a burst of blinding moonlight, hissing in pain and nearly falling over- but standing her ground nonetheless as she dug one foot into the ground behind her. Gaozong breathed a sigh of relief from his seat. Qin and the Li clan nearby, meanwhile, let out an invigorated cheer. “What a clash!” said the First Emperor with a grin. “Just a little more, and victory will be hers to seize!” On the other side of the arena, Izanami yelped a bit, clutching Lucifer’s hand briefly. Tsukuyomi’s siblings looked on with concern, but not fear. Everyone in the room knew Tsukuyomi still wasn’t done. But just how much more did he have left to give? “Tsukuyomi…damnit…” Metatron muttered, adjusting his glasses anxiously. Michael remained watching, his smile unusually firm as he spoke. “Worry not, brother. His soul is still far from exhausted. And as his family, it’s our duty to watch until the very end…and to believe in him more than anyone else can!” “...son of a bitch…” Wu mumbled to herself, observing the deep, frostbitten cut that had torn at her fingers. Small drops of blood seeped down and pooled below her, yet she stood tall and defiant. The blade had shattered upon impact and the claws had crippled Tsukuyomi to his knees… “At least you died like a warrior, I will give you that mu-” “I’m…not...done…yet…” The croaky voice of Tsukuyomi beckoned in her ears. Alarm and confusion arose, as Zetian watched the feeble god lift himself up with an empty, half-dead look on his face, yet determination in his eyes. ‘When did he become so persistent? I have crushed him time and time again, destroyed his blade and stolen his pride…From where does he draw strength?!” https://preview.redd.it/cv35garf8n0d1.png?width=757&format=png&auto=webp&s=2dd9f788709d270b1587802483a30970fadc507e Tsukuyomi looked down and noticed the blood that swam below him. ‘Am I dying? No…I can’t die yet…I don’t want to die…I suppose father, mother, and Michael would want me to live… Right…? I must try that, right father? This forbidden technique…’ The broken blade glowed before him as he exhaled a frigid air. Blood was coughed onto the ground, yet froze upon meeting his mist-like breath. His arm, covered in blood, cracked and began to tremble as it was now coated in shards of ice. Wu looked towards him carefully, “I don’t like this at all.” Her instincts were raging at her. Primal instincts of the first of mankind suffering an age of ice, the opposite to their glorious fire, that killed all indiscriminately. “I am sorry that you must experience this, Lady Zetian…It is a horrid power…Forgive me” As Zeitan assumed a defensive stance, Tsukuyomi brought his blade before him, a fragile look in his posture. “Tsuku…Yomi…!” Lucifer’s eyes widened, in a way they hadn’t since his earlier match. “Son… You truly… Have grown up…” His quiet voice held a mixture of realization, pride…but also a hint of anxiety, one of the emotions he discarded long ago. Metatron remained silent, sweat pouring down his brow, as Hanuel’s eyes widened next to him. “He can’t be…!” Hanuel muttered. “Just what is he doing!?” “Ahhh, Tsu-chan is about to do something splendid~ I wonder~ How will Wu-chan manage?” Dionysus' relaxed voice didn’t exactly match his eyes burning with passion and excitement. “HA! What the fuck is he gonna do now?” Moros chanted, his eyes enchanted with excitement, his fingers burying into his hands as he awaited Tsukuyomi’s move. “Hooh boy. I’m beginning to feel what I felt back in the center of the Hurikan again.” Da Vinci thought to himself in the infirmary, still in too much pain to speak. Izanagi watched with a snarl, taking a deep breath of frustration at what he believed was Tsukuyomi’s incompetence. Amaterasu simply continued to watch unperturbed, an interested twinkle in her eyes. She turned to the sword-wielding god nearby and spoke with her head tilted curiously. “Oh, Mikazuchi. Isn’t he doing the same thing as you? Or is it another one of his father’s techniques…” Amaterasu’s words were light, almost teasing. The masked god shook her head and crossed her arms as she replied with a sigh. “Of course not. Every ‘sword’ in the world is different. Whatever he’s about to do…is something that only he can pull off.” “This is your final test Zetian, will you manage to overcome your final obstacle, prove to everyone who ever doubted you, how wrong they were…Or fall trying” Even the ever-so collected Solomon had his full attention on the fight. “Oh? No matter…whatever that brat god tries, our empress can overcome it! Isn’t that right?!” Li Zhen shouted. A confident smile was on his face as the cheers of his clan erupted around him, Gaozong watching intently nearby. “Well gods, angels and men!” Thoth announced triumphantly. “Prepare yourselves, because the climax of the battle starts here!” “Please, Tsukuyomi…win and come home.” Izanami’s voice was strangely calm, her hands clasped together as if praying. All her anxiety and confidence towards her son seemed to have vanished together, leaving only the nothingness of what was to come. He twisted his grip on the handle, pointing the tip of the glimmering moonlight at himself. He took a deep breath before plunging it deep inside him, twisting the blade in his guts. “The fu-!!!” Wu was startled by his suicidal display, before realising the temperature had dropped far below its former warmth. She looked to the ground and only barely avoided the expanding permafrost that encased the castle. Had she not jumped, she would have surely been trapped. The blood that dropped from his back shot out with the thrust of the sword, yet seemed to freeze instantly. Their chilled form intensified, and became reminiscent of the wings of an angel. The frozen wings of glimmering ice, the coming of Fimbulvetr… |
2024.05.15 21:41 dwright5252 The Linear Men #20 - Family Reunion
DC Next Proudly Presents:
Written by Dwright5252
Edited by Predaplant
< Prev. Next Issue > Coming Next Month
The Waverider
When she was growing up, Deirdre Harkness often thought about how things might’ve been different in her household if she had an older brother to take the brunt of her father’s attention. How her path through life could have been vastly different, her rap sheet a little more… non-existent.
Now that such a brother seemingly existed, albeit from another Earth altogether, she was starting to realize that maybe she was fine being an only child.
“Listen, this’ll go a lot faster if you stop being so obtuse, Deirdre,” Owen Mercer scowled, twirling one of his razor-sharp boomerangs deftly between his fingers as he paced the deck of the Waverider. Deirdre sat in the hot seat, the Linear Men staring at her on one side while her current and former romantic partners stood on the other. The multiversal children of Digger Harkness faced off in the middle, neither seeming to want to give any inch in their argument.
“Look, I’m just sayin’ I’d be able to find my friends better without some drongo stealing my schtick,” she responded casually, moving to take a boomerang of her own from her bandolier before remembering the new time cops had confiscated all her weapons. “Surely Jenny Sparks has someone better to send along.”
Was she being difficult? Absolutely. Was this petty argument preventing her from saving her missing teammates? Undoubtedly.
Did she want to take this pretender down a peg? You know it.
“Perhaps we can arrive at some kind of accord, beloved,” Ystin interjected, placing a hand on Deirdre’s shoulder. “I understand how jarring seeing this knave must be, but our comrades in arms are lost to time. Other priorities must take precedence.”
Sighing deeply, Deirdre fell back into the chair behind her, irked that this modified timeline removed all the progress she’d made in molding the chair to fit her form. She could see Liri wince at the force she had used to enter the chair, and felt a little bad about that.
God, she could be selfish sometimes.
“Fine. Fine, I’ll be a good sheila now. What is your plan, oh fearless brother o’ mine?” She felt the tension in the room let up slightly, and Ystin gave her a grateful smile.
Owen pulled out another boomerang of his and started pressing the buttons on it. A projection appeared, seemingly the timeline they were currently in. Biting back her instincts to make fun of her brother’s projecto-rang, she sat back and listened as he began to point at the timeline. “As you can see, this is the current stream that we’re in. You can see these discolorations,” he explained, pointing at the shades of red appearing in the mostly blue timeline, “that indicate the anomalies you’re normally after. Sure, they aren’t the best thing to have appear, but it’s within the Time Masters’ range of acceptable aberrations. From what Deirdre is saying, the kind of anomaly we’re looking for with this situation, with one team seemingly erased from time and another fully resurrected, should be lighting this up like a Christmas tree. That massive of a ripple effect from those changes would unmoor us into the Bleed, never to return.”
“But we’re clearly still here,” Rip Hunter said, scowling. “So you’re saying she’s full of it.”
“Not necessarily,” Owen replied, and Deirdre felt a slight pang in her chest as her brother came to her defense. He dialed in another setting and another hologram appeared, this time showing various circles floating around the timestream. “What do you know about time bubbles?”
Michael raised his hand, ever the teacher’s pet, apparently. “They’re basically pocket dimensions separated out from the timestream. The Time Masters use them sometimes to isolate threats to the stream or conduct experiments.”
“Gold star to you,” Owen said, and Deirdre rolled her eyes as Michael beamed. She missed Booster so much. “Yes, exactly that. So let’s say that these bubbles,” he circled a majority of them, “were made and accounted for. We’re left with a good dozen unsanctioned by the Time Masters.”
Deirdre’s hopes started to pick up before Rip dashed them. “But that’s also within parameters for a timestream. Nature abhors a vacuum and makes time bubbles naturally to fill in any blank spaces that appear. You’re grasping at straws.”
Owen turned toward the captain of the Waverider. “I’m sorry, did you want to run this presentation? I can go back to the Authority and leave y’all to your issues if you want.”
Before Rip could respond, Liri stepped in. “Rip, let the poor boy explain. You’re being an asshole.”
Deirdre blinked, surprised at Liri’s interjection. The AI she knew would never put the captain in his place like that. And even more shocking, she saw Rip pull back and motion for Owen to continue, clearly chastened by his crewmate.
Miracles did happen.
“You’re correct, the other bubbles not highlighted are indeed naturally occurring.” Owen pointed at them and expanded them. “But someone with enough access and know-how can commandeer these time bubbles and manipulate them for their own uses.”
Matthew Rider raised his hand. “So you’re saying our missing people could be inside these bubbles? But what about the damage to the timeline from removing them in the first place?”
“Good question. Like I said, this level of fuckery to the order of things should’ve made things completely unravel. That being said, it is possible for someone with a high degree of chronal knowledge and access to do it. It’d be damn risky, as one mistake could spell disaster. But… it's becoming more and more evident that whatever’s responsible for this isn’t an amateur.” Owen pulled up a blank file now, a glaring DATA NOT FOUND flashing in front of them. “You say you all saw Walker Gabriel vanish, and still have memories of him. He’s not in our databases anymore, and there’s not even a void left behind where he should be. This thing took him out and plastered over the timestream to remove any trace.”
Silence fell on the group as the idea of what they were up against sunk in. Deirdre pondered who or what could hate them enough to do something like this.
“So what’re our next steps?” Liri asked, typing away furiously at her datapad. “Should we search these time bubbles for our missing teammates?”
Deirdre smiled sadly as she heard Liri refer to her friends as teammates. This version didn’t even know these people, didn’t have any definitive proof that they even existed, and yet she took them in her heart as part of the team.
Owen shook his head. “That would take too long, and might tip off whatever’s doing this to our plan. We need more manpower for the search and a way to narrow down the field.” Roxy Rocket, who’d spent the entire conversation vlogging the control room with her camera, piped in. “Sciency stuff isn’t really my bag, but could you maybe look for people that interacted with these folks and trace them that way? Use their memories to bridge the gap or whatever?”
To Deirdre, it sounded like the kind of stupid thing that just might work. “I know someone that might be able to help us with that, and I can get some people together we could use.”
Hub City, Illinois
Something was wrong, of that Violet was certain.
Their journey had led them across the globe when they’d felt it happen, felt the universe attempting to steal another memory from them. Violet fought against the overwhelming vibrations that tried to steal the memory of their friend from them, using their powers to shield their mind and their heart. It took everything they had, rendering Violet unconscious for a day. But when they awoke, they still remembered Michael Jon Carter, Booster Gold. The first person in Violet’s memory that tried to help them.
It felt fitting, going from trying to discover their past to helping bring their friend back from oblivion.
The problem was, nothing was working.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Daniel Carter asserted, shifting on his crutches as he tried to close the door on Violet. They held their hand out to stop it, and felt fear trickle through Daniel’s aura.
“I do not mean to startle you, I am just trying to find some answers,” Violet explained, backing away from the door to give Daniel some space. “I know it sounds strange, but I am telling you only the truth.”
“Look, I wish you luck in… this whole thing you’ve got going,” Daniel said, “but I don’t have a clue about any future relatives of mine, whatever the hell that means. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get ready for a job interview.”
This time, Violet allowed him to slam the door in their face. It was no use. It seemed anyone they’d attempted to contact didn’t have any memories of their friend. Violet knew that if they could only use their aura to show Daniel the true way of things…
But no. That would be a trespass they were hesitant to employ. There had to be a way to bring Michael back without hurting anyone. They would find it, they were sure of it. “Well, if it isn’t the most colorful person I know,” a familiar voice said from behind them. Violet turned around to see Deirdre Harkness approaching them from across the street. Unconsciously adjusting their hijab, Violet ran towards their former teammate and enveloped her in a tight hug.
“You are truly a sight for sore eyes, Deirdre,” Violet said, tears running down their face as they took in their old friend’s presence. “I could really use a friendly ear at the moment. I feel as if I have gone insane.”
Deirdre pulled back from the hug to look Violet in the eye. After a moment of searching, she smiled. “You remember, don’t you?”
Violet’s eyes widened in shock and joy. “Tell me you are not humoring me. You truly remember our friend?”
A wave of relief washed over Violet, and it was all they could do to keep their aura in check as Deirdre spoke. “Not only do I remember Booster and Rip and the others, but I think I have a way to get them back.”
Radiance, Pennsylvania
Living in a mansion wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. For instance, the amount of upkeep required to keep it from becoming a dusty mountain of sadness was just completely unrealistic for one person to do. That meant hiring people to help maintain the grounds, sweep the floors, clean the bathrooms and bedrooms.
Mitch Shelley was not a fan of people.
“No, I said not to make the topiary look like a Soder Cola can,” Mitch insisted to his groundskeeper, an older man whose proximity to loud saws all his life made him hard of hearing. “It looks corny as fuck.”
The old man shook his head. “I think it looks fine, sir. Plus I know your corporate sponsors will appreciate it for that gala you’re holding next week.”
Goddammit. Mitch had been dreading that stupid party ever since he’d been asked to host it in honor of his latest sponsorship campaign for the Soder Cola company. Sure, he wasn’t too involved with the planning (at least, when he could dodge the phone calls and house visits of the party planner he’d hired) but it still took up way too much of his time. That wasn’t to mention the fact that he had to attend the thing.
In a suit.
Ugh.
“Maybe you’re right. Thanks, Joe,” Mitch said, handing the groundskeeper a generous tip. Joe was probably the most down-to-earth of his employees, and he wanted to make sure he was taken care of. Joe shook his hand appreciatively and walked out the door, brushing past a red haired woman dressed garishly in some sort of costume.
“You’re a week early for the gala, darlin’,” Mitch said, waving her away as he tried to escape to his theater room. “I’m sure whatever skill you have will be enough to entertain the suits coming to this shindig.”
“Har de har, asshole,” the woman said, her Australian accent giving him pause. What was an Aussie doing in Pennsylvania? “I’m actually here for Resurrection Man. Need his help.”
Mitch sighed, “Look, I’m sure whatever cat’s stuck in a tree will get itself out. If this is about Lazarus, tell that fucker he can come and face me himself rather than sending his new sidekick.”
The woman rolled her eyes. “Look, I know you. You’re a wild horse that can’t be reined in. You need adventure in your life, and I’m here to offer it. Ever time traveled before?”
Mitch stopped on the steps. “In a manner of speaking. What did you have in mind?” Maybe he’d hear this woman out. If anything it might last long enough to get him out of this fucking party.
Opal City
“Stargazer tipline, how can we help?” Jack Knight was surprised when the old phone line started to ring. Courtney had been right; most people used the app to ask for help. He’d almost forgotten the tipline was a thing, and it had startled him into dropping his tools as he worked on another upgrade to the Star Staff. His father’s laboratory made the ringing sound like it was coming from all over, so he’d almost missed the call when he couldn’t find the phone buried under all the schematics.
“Hello Starman, long time fan, first time caller,” a voice said from the receiver, the accent telling him this wasn’t an Opal citizen. “Need your assistance in a caper.” He was tempted to hang up the phone; no doubt this was some kind of crank call. “What’re the details of this… caper, ma’am?” He’d humor her for a little bit. Jennifer and Courtney had been on his case about crunch culture and making sure to take breaks, so maybe this could count as his allotted rest period.
“First off, I think I’m younger than you, so shove off with your ma’am,” the woman huffed. “Second, this isn’t a joke. Why don’t you come out of your little work shed and see what I mean.”
The line clicked, and Jack looked at the phone in confusion. What a weird call. There was no way anyone knew where he was at the moment, so he chalked it up to someone having a laugh at his expense. As he picked up his blowtorch to continue his welding, the intercom buzzed.
“Jack, can you please come up here and tell these yahoos to get their spaceship out of my backyard before they wreck my azaleas?” Jack heard his father’s voice resonate through the speaker. He jumped up to look at the outside cameras, and sure enough, there floated a spaceship of some sort.
He pulled out his phone and texted into the All Star Group Chat. “Hey, gang. Might need to be out of the city for a bit on a mission. I’ll keep you posted.”
submitted by dwright5252 to DCNext [link] [comments]
The Linear Men
Issue Twenty:Family ReunionWritten by Dwright5252
Edited by Predaplant
< Prev. Next Issue > Coming Next Month
The Waverider
When she was growing up, Deirdre Harkness often thought about how things might’ve been different in her household if she had an older brother to take the brunt of her father’s attention. How her path through life could have been vastly different, her rap sheet a little more… non-existent.
Now that such a brother seemingly existed, albeit from another Earth altogether, she was starting to realize that maybe she was fine being an only child.
“Listen, this’ll go a lot faster if you stop being so obtuse, Deirdre,” Owen Mercer scowled, twirling one of his razor-sharp boomerangs deftly between his fingers as he paced the deck of the Waverider. Deirdre sat in the hot seat, the Linear Men staring at her on one side while her current and former romantic partners stood on the other. The multiversal children of Digger Harkness faced off in the middle, neither seeming to want to give any inch in their argument.
“Look, I’m just sayin’ I’d be able to find my friends better without some drongo stealing my schtick,” she responded casually, moving to take a boomerang of her own from her bandolier before remembering the new time cops had confiscated all her weapons. “Surely Jenny Sparks has someone better to send along.”
Was she being difficult? Absolutely. Was this petty argument preventing her from saving her missing teammates? Undoubtedly.
Did she want to take this pretender down a peg? You know it.
“Perhaps we can arrive at some kind of accord, beloved,” Ystin interjected, placing a hand on Deirdre’s shoulder. “I understand how jarring seeing this knave must be, but our comrades in arms are lost to time. Other priorities must take precedence.”
Sighing deeply, Deirdre fell back into the chair behind her, irked that this modified timeline removed all the progress she’d made in molding the chair to fit her form. She could see Liri wince at the force she had used to enter the chair, and felt a little bad about that.
God, she could be selfish sometimes.
“Fine. Fine, I’ll be a good sheila now. What is your plan, oh fearless brother o’ mine?” She felt the tension in the room let up slightly, and Ystin gave her a grateful smile.
Owen pulled out another boomerang of his and started pressing the buttons on it. A projection appeared, seemingly the timeline they were currently in. Biting back her instincts to make fun of her brother’s projecto-rang, she sat back and listened as he began to point at the timeline. “As you can see, this is the current stream that we’re in. You can see these discolorations,” he explained, pointing at the shades of red appearing in the mostly blue timeline, “that indicate the anomalies you’re normally after. Sure, they aren’t the best thing to have appear, but it’s within the Time Masters’ range of acceptable aberrations. From what Deirdre is saying, the kind of anomaly we’re looking for with this situation, with one team seemingly erased from time and another fully resurrected, should be lighting this up like a Christmas tree. That massive of a ripple effect from those changes would unmoor us into the Bleed, never to return.”
“But we’re clearly still here,” Rip Hunter said, scowling. “So you’re saying she’s full of it.”
“Not necessarily,” Owen replied, and Deirdre felt a slight pang in her chest as her brother came to her defense. He dialed in another setting and another hologram appeared, this time showing various circles floating around the timestream. “What do you know about time bubbles?”
Michael raised his hand, ever the teacher’s pet, apparently. “They’re basically pocket dimensions separated out from the timestream. The Time Masters use them sometimes to isolate threats to the stream or conduct experiments.”
“Gold star to you,” Owen said, and Deirdre rolled her eyes as Michael beamed. She missed Booster so much. “Yes, exactly that. So let’s say that these bubbles,” he circled a majority of them, “were made and accounted for. We’re left with a good dozen unsanctioned by the Time Masters.”
Deirdre’s hopes started to pick up before Rip dashed them. “But that’s also within parameters for a timestream. Nature abhors a vacuum and makes time bubbles naturally to fill in any blank spaces that appear. You’re grasping at straws.”
Owen turned toward the captain of the Waverider. “I’m sorry, did you want to run this presentation? I can go back to the Authority and leave y’all to your issues if you want.”
Before Rip could respond, Liri stepped in. “Rip, let the poor boy explain. You’re being an asshole.”
Deirdre blinked, surprised at Liri’s interjection. The AI she knew would never put the captain in his place like that. And even more shocking, she saw Rip pull back and motion for Owen to continue, clearly chastened by his crewmate.
Miracles did happen.
“You’re correct, the other bubbles not highlighted are indeed naturally occurring.” Owen pointed at them and expanded them. “But someone with enough access and know-how can commandeer these time bubbles and manipulate them for their own uses.”
Matthew Rider raised his hand. “So you’re saying our missing people could be inside these bubbles? But what about the damage to the timeline from removing them in the first place?”
“Good question. Like I said, this level of fuckery to the order of things should’ve made things completely unravel. That being said, it is possible for someone with a high degree of chronal knowledge and access to do it. It’d be damn risky, as one mistake could spell disaster. But… it's becoming more and more evident that whatever’s responsible for this isn’t an amateur.” Owen pulled up a blank file now, a glaring DATA NOT FOUND flashing in front of them. “You say you all saw Walker Gabriel vanish, and still have memories of him. He’s not in our databases anymore, and there’s not even a void left behind where he should be. This thing took him out and plastered over the timestream to remove any trace.”
Silence fell on the group as the idea of what they were up against sunk in. Deirdre pondered who or what could hate them enough to do something like this.
“So what’re our next steps?” Liri asked, typing away furiously at her datapad. “Should we search these time bubbles for our missing teammates?”
Deirdre smiled sadly as she heard Liri refer to her friends as teammates. This version didn’t even know these people, didn’t have any definitive proof that they even existed, and yet she took them in her heart as part of the team.
Owen shook his head. “That would take too long, and might tip off whatever’s doing this to our plan. We need more manpower for the search and a way to narrow down the field.” Roxy Rocket, who’d spent the entire conversation vlogging the control room with her camera, piped in. “Sciency stuff isn’t really my bag, but could you maybe look for people that interacted with these folks and trace them that way? Use their memories to bridge the gap or whatever?”
To Deirdre, it sounded like the kind of stupid thing that just might work. “I know someone that might be able to help us with that, and I can get some people together we could use.”
Something was wrong, of that Violet was certain.
Their journey had led them across the globe when they’d felt it happen, felt the universe attempting to steal another memory from them. Violet fought against the overwhelming vibrations that tried to steal the memory of their friend from them, using their powers to shield their mind and their heart. It took everything they had, rendering Violet unconscious for a day. But when they awoke, they still remembered Michael Jon Carter, Booster Gold. The first person in Violet’s memory that tried to help them.
It felt fitting, going from trying to discover their past to helping bring their friend back from oblivion.
The problem was, nothing was working.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Daniel Carter asserted, shifting on his crutches as he tried to close the door on Violet. They held their hand out to stop it, and felt fear trickle through Daniel’s aura.
“I do not mean to startle you, I am just trying to find some answers,” Violet explained, backing away from the door to give Daniel some space. “I know it sounds strange, but I am telling you only the truth.”
“Look, I wish you luck in… this whole thing you’ve got going,” Daniel said, “but I don’t have a clue about any future relatives of mine, whatever the hell that means. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get ready for a job interview.”
This time, Violet allowed him to slam the door in their face. It was no use. It seemed anyone they’d attempted to contact didn’t have any memories of their friend. Violet knew that if they could only use their aura to show Daniel the true way of things…
But no. That would be a trespass they were hesitant to employ. There had to be a way to bring Michael back without hurting anyone. They would find it, they were sure of it. “Well, if it isn’t the most colorful person I know,” a familiar voice said from behind them. Violet turned around to see Deirdre Harkness approaching them from across the street. Unconsciously adjusting their hijab, Violet ran towards their former teammate and enveloped her in a tight hug.
“You are truly a sight for sore eyes, Deirdre,” Violet said, tears running down their face as they took in their old friend’s presence. “I could really use a friendly ear at the moment. I feel as if I have gone insane.”
Deirdre pulled back from the hug to look Violet in the eye. After a moment of searching, she smiled. “You remember, don’t you?”
Violet’s eyes widened in shock and joy. “Tell me you are not humoring me. You truly remember our friend?”
A wave of relief washed over Violet, and it was all they could do to keep their aura in check as Deirdre spoke. “Not only do I remember Booster and Rip and the others, but I think I have a way to get them back.”
Living in a mansion wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. For instance, the amount of upkeep required to keep it from becoming a dusty mountain of sadness was just completely unrealistic for one person to do. That meant hiring people to help maintain the grounds, sweep the floors, clean the bathrooms and bedrooms.
Mitch Shelley was not a fan of people.
“No, I said not to make the topiary look like a Soder Cola can,” Mitch insisted to his groundskeeper, an older man whose proximity to loud saws all his life made him hard of hearing. “It looks corny as fuck.”
The old man shook his head. “I think it looks fine, sir. Plus I know your corporate sponsors will appreciate it for that gala you’re holding next week.”
Goddammit. Mitch had been dreading that stupid party ever since he’d been asked to host it in honor of his latest sponsorship campaign for the Soder Cola company. Sure, he wasn’t too involved with the planning (at least, when he could dodge the phone calls and house visits of the party planner he’d hired) but it still took up way too much of his time. That wasn’t to mention the fact that he had to attend the thing.
In a suit.
Ugh.
“Maybe you’re right. Thanks, Joe,” Mitch said, handing the groundskeeper a generous tip. Joe was probably the most down-to-earth of his employees, and he wanted to make sure he was taken care of. Joe shook his hand appreciatively and walked out the door, brushing past a red haired woman dressed garishly in some sort of costume.
“You’re a week early for the gala, darlin’,” Mitch said, waving her away as he tried to escape to his theater room. “I’m sure whatever skill you have will be enough to entertain the suits coming to this shindig.”
“Har de har, asshole,” the woman said, her Australian accent giving him pause. What was an Aussie doing in Pennsylvania? “I’m actually here for Resurrection Man. Need his help.”
Mitch sighed, “Look, I’m sure whatever cat’s stuck in a tree will get itself out. If this is about Lazarus, tell that fucker he can come and face me himself rather than sending his new sidekick.”
The woman rolled her eyes. “Look, I know you. You’re a wild horse that can’t be reined in. You need adventure in your life, and I’m here to offer it. Ever time traveled before?”
Mitch stopped on the steps. “In a manner of speaking. What did you have in mind?” Maybe he’d hear this woman out. If anything it might last long enough to get him out of this fucking party.
“Stargazer tipline, how can we help?” Jack Knight was surprised when the old phone line started to ring. Courtney had been right; most people used the app to ask for help. He’d almost forgotten the tipline was a thing, and it had startled him into dropping his tools as he worked on another upgrade to the Star Staff. His father’s laboratory made the ringing sound like it was coming from all over, so he’d almost missed the call when he couldn’t find the phone buried under all the schematics.
“Hello Starman, long time fan, first time caller,” a voice said from the receiver, the accent telling him this wasn’t an Opal citizen. “Need your assistance in a caper.” He was tempted to hang up the phone; no doubt this was some kind of crank call. “What’re the details of this… caper, ma’am?” He’d humor her for a little bit. Jennifer and Courtney had been on his case about crunch culture and making sure to take breaks, so maybe this could count as his allotted rest period.
“First off, I think I’m younger than you, so shove off with your ma’am,” the woman huffed. “Second, this isn’t a joke. Why don’t you come out of your little work shed and see what I mean.”
The line clicked, and Jack looked at the phone in confusion. What a weird call. There was no way anyone knew where he was at the moment, so he chalked it up to someone having a laugh at his expense. As he picked up his blowtorch to continue his welding, the intercom buzzed.
“Jack, can you please come up here and tell these yahoos to get their spaceship out of my backyard before they wreck my azaleas?” Jack heard his father’s voice resonate through the speaker. He jumped up to look at the outside cameras, and sure enough, there floated a spaceship of some sort.
He pulled out his phone and texted into the All Star Group Chat. “Hey, gang. Might need to be out of the city for a bit on a mission. I’ll keep you posted.”
2024.05.15 21:40 jimmyuptheroad Sickness from fiberglass?
I have been doing insulation work for about two years, primarily insulating ductwork with fiberglass duct wrap. During this time, I have consistently fallen very sick every 6-8 weeks, experiencing symptoms such as a sore throat, stuffy nose, occasional fever, body aches, and chills. No medication seems to help.
I was concerned that I might have a serious health issue, possibly a disease, However, my doctor recently asked if I wear a mask at work, suggesting that the insulation might be making me sick. Do other people in this line of work wear masks or have similar experiences of getting very sick if they don't wear a mask? None of my coworkers wear masks, and they don't seem to have any issues.
submitted by jimmyuptheroad to Insulation [link] [comments]
I was concerned that I might have a serious health issue, possibly a disease, However, my doctor recently asked if I wear a mask at work, suggesting that the insulation might be making me sick. Do other people in this line of work wear masks or have similar experiences of getting very sick if they don't wear a mask? None of my coworkers wear masks, and they don't seem to have any issues.
2024.05.15 21:38 emorybored I work at the Night Library (installment 11). The pool was on the roof this time.
Okay, I’m gonna level with you. Focusing on current events is just getting a little too fucking heavy. I’m no closer to answers than I was a month ago, none of us can sleep through a full night without waking up shaking and drenched in sweat, and there are some new downright bizarre phenomena cropping up that I just don’t have it in me to allot my energy to at the moment.
So, for today’s installment (and then also for the next one) I’m gonna tell you another good ol’ fun-for-the-whole-family pool story. Yep, you heard that right—welcome to our first bonafide two-parter.
This was quite a while ago. My measure of time is all off by a year now, but I feel fairly confident in chalking it up to post-first pool story, pre-ouija board fiasco—so however long ago that’s been now.
It was a weird, rare night, in that Matt was out. Not an unheard of occurrence, but it’s fairly anomalous, and it certainly puts the rest of us on slightly higher alert.
Obviously, he always tells us to call him at the first sign of some shit going down and to use our best judgment to determine whether it’s serious enough to lock up and head out. Better safe than sorry and all that. The night in question was no exception to the rule.
Overall, though, things were mostly quiet. Alice was in, as was I, as was Wiley. We do a lot of congregating, but we do a lot of work, too, and this night, we were all in our respective areas, doing our respective jobs.
I was in my not-office mending a finicky Shakespeare anthology, Alice was watching the desk while working on cataloging a truckload of new donations, and Wiley was replacing several lightbulbs that had all decided to call it quits after our most recent power outage (this one due to a flash-flood).
It was calm to an almost uncharacteristic degree. There was a relatively steady flow of patrons in and out of the building—I could hear Alice greeting them and wishing them a good evening—but as far as anomalous activity, there was none.
It does happen, on rare occasion, that we make it through a full night without any goings on, but there’s almost always at least the odd disembodied voice or two.
We should’ve known better than to trust a meteor shower.
See, there’s just something about natural anomalies. Not just the ones that knock our power out, either, although those are clearly included. Blizzards, thunderstorms, hail and tornados and earthquakes and all your run-of-the-mill destructive shit, sure. But the things of beauty, too. Rainbows. Eclipses, lunar or solar. And you think full moons hit emergency rooms hard? Try this fucking place.
It was just that a meteor shower wasn’t one we’d dealt with before. Does that mean we shouldn’t have known better? Fuck no. Obviously not. But perhaps our collective greatest fault is that we still have some semblance of hope.
Wiley wanted to look at it from the roof. Kid never fucking wants to do anything, and they were set to climb up and camp out alone. I couldn’t not entertain such an innocent, youthful whim.
Our roof access doesn’t have stairs—just a ladder—so Alice couldn’t accompany us, which I felt shitty about, but she assured me it was perfectly fine with her.
“The world decided I didn’t need functional legs so I could never be peer pressured into leaving the ground,” she quipped. “I’m not into heights. But y’all have fun up there. Somebody needs to be here for the patrons anyway.”
Fair and fair. So Wiley and I gathered up an armful of blankets and one of Matt’s trusty camping lanterns and headed out to scale the building.
Wiley went up ahead of me. That was my first mistake.
Really, they aren’t that much younger than I am. Maybe four or five years, and I’m too close to thirty for comfort now. But there’s something about them, even as far as they’ve come, that makes it impossible for me not to do everything in my power to protect them. I think Matt feels the same way. Maybe most of us do.
Anyway, that’s why I immediately started cursing myself when they reached the top of the ladder, pulled their way up and over the ledge of the roof, and said, “...Whoa.”
My second mistake was not immediately telling them to turn around and start climbing right the fuck back down.
I knew exactly what that tone of voice meant. But something in me just kicked into hyperdrive and I…had to see it. Whatever it was, I had to see it for myself.
“Don’t move,” I said, and then, “What is it?”
But by that point, I was at the top, too. I hoisted myself over the ledge and was met with…
…Water.
It was everywhere. Extending in every direction. There was no edge in sight—not even a horizon line. Just vast, dark water as far as the eye could see.
“Okay. This is not—let’s go.”
“Yeah,” Wiley agreed, a little breathless.
I’m sure you’ll be downright shocked to learn that, when we turned around, the ladder was gone.
The edge of the rooftop was, too.
The thing that surprised me, really, was that it wasn’t as though we were standing on some sort of island. We were somehow in the water all of a sudden, up to our waists, neither of us having taken a single step.
“Fucking…shit. Jesus. Adam?”
“We’re fine,” was my default response, because my anxiety override kicks in like a motherfucker as soon as someone else is more openly afraid than I am. “It’s okay, let’s just—let’s think for a second. Maybe it’s just, like, an illusion or something.”
“Okay,” Wiley said. “Maybe we should…try moving?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we’ll bump the ledge and then we can just feel for the ladder. Good idea.”
Wiley and I shared a look, wordlessly nodding to one another, and stepped forward in unison.
Maybe I misspoke before, when I said we weren’t on a platform. It was just that our platform wasn’t above the water. Now, though, there was nothing.
It felt, almost, like the stomach-turning sensation of missing a step walking up a staircase. The only difference was that there was no moment-too-late connection.
We plummeted.
There wasn’t any difference in temperature beneath the surface, which was, in a way, more disorienting than the water itself. The mental recalibration that typically comes with plunging into a cool lake or, adversely, a heated pool wasn’t allotted an opportunity to take place. It felt, for most intents and purposes, the same as being in the air, just that I couldn’t breathe.
It was heavy, too. The weightlessness water tends to embody was null; I immediately abandoned everything I’d been carrying, clawing my way upward frantically enough that it would’ve been mortifying, I’m sure, had anyone witnessed it.
Wiley resurfaced at the same moment I did—empty handed as well, I noted—coughing a little but not to the extent that I was worried they were choking. “Next idea?” they asked, pushing their wet hair back from their face, dark, damp lashes obscuring their eyes.
“Let’s get back on the…” I started, but trailed off when I raised my head.
A couple hundred yards out from us, there was a ship. It was a dark, hulking thing, with tattered sails and something indistinguishable affixed to the bow, glittering and glinting in the moonlight.
Wiley spun around to face it, drifting back slightly when their gaze landed parallel to mine. “What the fuck is that?” they demanded, legs kicking haphazardly beneath the water to keep them in place.
“Maybe it’s…good,” I said. I knew better than that and I knew Wiley did, too, but I said it anyway. “Maybe someone will help.”
They didn’t even humor me with a response to that bullshit.
Now, at this point in the story, maybe you’re thinking being suddenly surrounded by water and watching as an ominous ship approached us with absolutely nowhere to go and no way to escape doesn’t feel quite enough like imminent condemnation. To which I say to you: not to worry. Because the next realization we came to was that the platform we’d been standing on previously had suddenly ceased to exist.
“Shit,” Wiley said. “Shit, shit, shit. Adam.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s fine. We’re fine. We just—we’re gonna—follow me.”
I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck possessed me to swim toward the Obvious Death Ship. I guess just that there wasn’t anything else save for open water anywhere so it essentially felt like our options were paddle around until we were exhausted and drown or face a quicker, simpler demise.
“You better have a fucking plan, bro,” Wiley intoned from behind me, which I chivalrously pretended not to hear, because I did not, in fact, have a fucking plan.
The closer we drew to the vessel, the more unbelievably monstrous it appeared to become. It loomed above us, casting a shadow over everything in its direct path, and the sinking in my stomach almost convinced me to turn around. Almost.
But then something curled around my ankle. It was slick and strong, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that whatever it was could’ve pulled me under and eaten me alive in a fraction of a second.
Luckily for me, it wasn’t interested. It let go as quickly as it had latched on, almost as though it was simply using me as a handrail to move itself along. Still, though, the knowledge that it was there was all the motivation I needed to push forward ever faster. I didn’t say anything—didn’t want to add more fuel to Wiley’s panicked fire—just picked up my pace and swam up to their side.
“There’s a ladder,” they informed me, raising a hand and pointing toward the back half of the ship.
Indeed, there was a ladder. It was a tattered, worn thing, comprised of old, fraying rope and rotting, untreated wooden boards, but it looked composed enough that I figured we could likely make it up if we were swift.
“Bet,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We went.
Up close, the ladder appeared even shoddier than it had when we’d first seen it. I reached out of the water and wrapped my fingers around the rope at the bottom, giving it a hearty tug. To my slight surprise, it held fast.
“I think we’re good,” I told Wiley. “I’ll go up first and tell you what I see.”
“Be careful,” they said, but didn’t protest, just backed up enough for me to get the leverage I needed to hoist myself onto the bottom board.
I climbed warily, overly conscious of every creak of the wood bowing beneath my weight, every groan of the fibers of rope under my hands, but made it without incident to the top.
Once there, I grabbed onto the ship’s edge, lifting my gaze to take in whatever lie before me.
It was…nothing. I mean, it was a ship, obviously. But there wasn’t anything on board. No apparent crew nor cargo nor even a captain manning the helm. Granted, I couldn’t see perfectly, but the moon shone brightly enough that I was fairly confident in my observation that the deck was devoid of anything but its own shiplap floor.
“Hello?” I called, because I wasn’t about to beckon Wiley up if some fucked shit was going to pop out of nowhere the second we made a sound.
Nothing responded. Nothing moved. The ship rocked gently on the impossible water, as silent and vacant as it had been a moment before.
“Good?” Wiley questioned nervously from below me.
“Yeah,” I told them, easing myself off the ladder and down into the confines of the vessel. “Come on.”
They did so tenuously but still more swiftly than I had, climbing aboard and landing next to me with a dampened thunk.
We allowed ourselves the briefest of moments to catch our breath, silently rejoicing in the small win that was having found solace from the pool itself. Not that we had any idea what to do or where to go from here, but at the very least, we weren’t drowning.
“Okay,” I said, clearing the unease from my throat. “I don’t know what good trying to steer this thing would do us—there’s nothing but water no matter where we go. But maybe there’s something here somewhere that’ll help us figure out how to get back. So I think we just…start looking around?”
Wiley nodded. “Cool. Split halves, front and back?”
Nooo, Adam, don’t split up! Never split up! I know. I can literally hear you screaming it at me. And actually, for once in my life, I considered that something might be a horrible fucking idea before acting on it.
But then I saw something.
As I turned back to respond, Wiley’s eyes shimmered, dancing in the moonlight.
They were silver and mercurial, with no pupils or whites in sight.
Whatever had come back up from underwater, it was not my coworker.
I swallowed, forcing my expression to remain as neutral as I was able and praying whatever was standing in front of me didn’t notice I’d caught on. My entire body was instantaneously covered in chills, in a way that I understood to have the same purpose as a dog’s hackles rising. “Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll take the front.”
I headed in the opposite direction of the thing wearing Wiley’s face (at a pace that I hoped didn’t appear hurried but one that would remove me in a timely manner from the vicinity) and didn’t stop until I’d reached the front of the ship, breathing heavily and attempting to slow my reeling mind.
I didn’t know what to tackle first. I didn’t know where Wiley was, or if they were anywhere—if they were even still alive. I didn’t know what my next move should be. I didn’t know what I was looking for or where I might find it.
It’s rare that I feel utterly hopeless, to the degree that I genuinely contemplate just sitting down and giving up, but in this instance, I thought long and hard about how easy it would be to succumb. I’d let the unthinkable happen. Wiley was gone. No one else had been here with them—there was no one else to blame. Just me. Only me.
…You’ll be glad to know that the self-pity didn’t last long. Embarrassing, honestly.
If I was the only one here, it meant I was the only shot they had at making it out alive. Our version of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ had always been ‘alive until proven dead’ and I wasn’t about to turn my back on the insane streak of luck we’d had up until this point. Not a single one of our lives had been lost, and we’d been in the midst of some absolute shitstorms. There was no reason to believe that right now, tonight, was an outlier. I couldn’t lie down like a sick dog and wonder if Wiley was still out there somewhere, suffering until the bitter, bloody end. I had to find them. By whatever means necessary, as long as it took, I had to find them.
I pushed off the railing before me and spun on my heel, eyes flitting back and forth to assess my options as efficiently as possible, and after a moment, I registered that fitted flush against the large front mast, there was a door.
It was only a sliver, thin and not particularly extraordinary in height, but there was a handle carved roughly into its right side and a set of rust-riddled hinges on its left.
I took about half a second to weigh my options and then reached for it, curling my fingers around the handle and giving it a generous tug.
The hinges, unsurprisingly, complained, but not loudly and not for long. The door gave way with little resistance, and opened up to my worst fucking nightmare.
A set of stairs, descending into blackness.
I mean, I guess if I’m being fair, my first pool encounter had featured a staircase leading to the pool rather than away from it, but I didn’t feel like there could possibly be good news awaiting me below deck of a ship where I’d just encountered a fucking mimic.
Still, though, there was a niggling insistence in my brain (not that kind, come on) that it was my only lead on finding Wiley if they were, in fact, somewhere on board. So I cast one last glance over my shoulder and stepped into the dark, letting the door fall closed behind me.
It smelled different, instantly, from the open air above. Mustier, which was to be expected, but also almost sweet somehow. I tried, unsuccessfully, to shove my true-crime-podcast-addled brain’s helpful reminder that the scent of human death is said to be sweet into a mental lockbox and put my hand to the wall, easing tentatively down to the second step.
The visibility wasn’t just low—it was practically zero. If you’ve ever been on a cave tour and had a guide cut the lights and instruct you to lift your hand to your face to demonstrate the complete absence of light, it was nearly that intense. The placing of both feet on each concurrent stair was an arduous, calculated process, but finally, after approximately one (1) century, I reached flat ground. I still couldn’t see, and there was no definitive way to tell whether I was standing on the floor or just a landing without thoroughly feeling out the space around me, so I reluctantly departed from the wall, scooting my feet in small, tentative motions and keeping both arms partially outstretched before me.
After a (l o n g) moment, I determined that either this was the world’s largest landing or I’d made it all the way down. I had no idea whether I was in a singular, enormous room, or if there were individual cabins, or if I was about to run face-first into the grim fucking reaper.
And then I turned to my left.
There was a light.
It was so, so faint. Flickering. Barely discernible, its warm, gentle glow ever so shyly illuminating the cracks around what appeared to be another closed door.
Being the only visible thing in my line of sight, in any direction, it emitted the aura of both a beacon and an omen.
I headed towards it.
I was about half afraid I was stuck in a horror movie situation where no matter how long I walked it would never grow any closer, but fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case. I actually gained on it more quickly than I felt I should have for the speed I was moving, but I wasn’t going to complain about reaching the end of the nothingness in commendable time.
I ran my fingertips along the edge of the door and, sure enough, there was a carved-in handle, just like the last.
It opened just as effortlessly, and yellow candlelight rolled dimly out to greet me, lapping at my waterlogged clothes.
“Please,” came a quiet, terrified voice from inside the room. “Please don’t. I don’t know what you want, or–or what you are, but please don’t—”
“...Wiley?”
Rather than calming, the voice’s state of alarm rose to a level bordering on full-blown panic as I took a step into the space. “Please,” the voice begged. There wasn’t anyone visible from my current vantage point, but I could hear it clearly enough to feel fairly confident that the person attached to it—the person who either had to be Wiley or yet another duplicate of them—was close. “Why are you doing this?”
This was a cabin, I thought, or perhaps a study of some sort, with a rotting wooden desk and a decaying leather chair both covered in a flurry of loose, browned book pages and a thick layer of dust. There were candles littering several surfaces, placed in what appeared not to be any intentional manner. Directly to my right, there was a shelf; its back faced me and the odd placement led me to imagine that it may have been employed to block the door at some time.
It was also, I would have just about bet, the source of the voice.
I nudged a couple of planks and a broken amber bottle out of the way with the toe of my shoe, rounding the shelf to find a crumpled, bloodied Wiley, restrained to the floor by a thick, coarse rope fixed expertly to a bolted tie and holding their bound hands up to shield their face.
“Jesus fuck,” I said. “What happened to you?”
Slowly, they lifted their head. “...Adam?”
Realization dawned on me, and I felt my stomach sink. “Look at me,” I told them. “Look at my eyes.”
They did, their own bloodshot and watery and inherently human, and I watched their shoulders deflate, the defense and terror draining from their form. “There’s someone…something…down here. Or, I guess it still is, anyway. I don’t know where it went, but I don’t wanna be here when it comes back.”
I nodded. “It look like me?”
Wiley nodded back.
“Yeah, there’s one of you upstairs. Not real sure what we’re supposed to do about them, but one thing at a time. Let’s get you up from there.”
It was a struggle, disentangling Wiley from the heavy, abrasive leads coccooning their body, but we got there eventually, and throughout the entirety of the arduous process they gave me the rundown on how, when we’d parted from the solace of the platform, something had instantaneously latched onto them, dragging them down deeper and deeper until their ears popped and their head felt like it was going to explode. They said they’d been knocked out by the pressure, and that when they’d come to, already tied in place and coughing up lungfuls of water, “I” had been standing over them, wielding a large net hook and no mercy.
“I knew it wasn’t you, obviously,” they said, “but I didn’t know where you actually were or if something had, like. Hijacked your body? I don’t know. Anyway, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
We grabbed a couple of candles (the majority had simply been melted into place atop whatever surface they’d adorned, but there was a small collection fitted into slightly-too-small brass holders) and got the fuck out.
Being able to see so little in the space around us was almost more disorienting than the pitch darkness I’d been feeling my way through before. It felt as though we were in a fragile, wavering bubble of reality and nothing existed outside of it.
“Wish I’d been awake coming down here,” Wiley remarked. “Guess I still wouldn’t have seen shit, though.”
“I could…maybe get us back upstairs?” I considered, with little to no confidence. “But I don’t really know what good it would do us. Nowhere to go. Maybe we just…look around down here for a bit? See if we can find anything useful?”
“Yeah, okay,” Wiley assented. “But we’ve gotta be quiet. I don’t want that thing to hear us.”
I certainly couldn’t argue with that.
We wandered hesitantly through the dark, shielding the flames of our candles with cupped palms and praying we wouldn’t misstep. We made it some unsubstantiated quantity of time without incident, but softly, after seconds or minutes or hours, we heard a light rustling from the shadow veiled corridor to our right, and Wiley pulled me into the nearest open room in the opposite direction.
Flattening our backs to the wall, we listened intently as footsteps echoed faintly behind us, cyclically growing closer and then further away again for several moments before disappearing altogether.
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding and uncovered my candle, easing the door of the room to a gentle, silent close. The contents of this one were different from that of the last in that there practically weren’t any. It wasn’t just that it was tidier; there was a chest shoved against the wall nearest us and a leatherbound book of some sort lying in the center of the floor, but otherwise the space was vacant.
Wiley moved first, crouching next to the journal and lifting it from the ground, a cloud of dust rising in the wake of their breath. I knelt down beside them, offering my candlelight so they could discard theirs and open the cover.
Beneath which there was a box.
It was a plain, unadorned wooden rectangle, nestled into the carved-out central pages of the book, and we learned upon extracting it that there was no lock or latch, just a seam indicating the lid’s separation from the body.
I don’t need to spell the whole situation out for you. There was a key in the box. The key opened, you guessed it: the chest. Inside the chest, there were piles of gold and jewels beyond your wildest imagination. We’re rich now. The end.
Nah, JK. But the key in the box did open the chest, in which there was, A) a pair of peeling, pleather driving gloves, and B)...
I felt my heart skip.
A bicycle chain.
I’m not going to get into the nuances of that right now, or maybe ever. But for the purposes of dramatic flair, just know that it was incredibly, pointedly relevant to me, on a level so personal it sucker punched the air straight out of my lungs.
“No,” Wiley said, staggering back a step. “Uh-uh. Nope.”
I put together, then, that the gloves must have been their ticket item. “It’s okay,” I said, on autopilot, because it was not. “There’s something—something’s carved into the bottom of this thing.” Pushing past the reaction every fiber of my being had to the sensation of the frigid metal against my skin, I shoved both the chain and the gloves to the side and could scarcely make out a host of crudely scrawled letters in the wavering light of my half-gone candle.
“What is it?” Wiley asked, making no move to come nearer again.
“Though your…hand…? Heart. Though your heart does pound and knees grow…weak,” I deciphered slowly, “Rid yourself by your… That doesn’t make any sense. Shouldn’t it be of? It says ‘rid yourself by your fear’ and…something. Drain the…clin… No. Drink. Drain the drink.”
“Rid yourself by your fear and drain the drink,” Wiley repeated analytically. “The hell does that mean? Is this shit telling us to kill ourselves with the—oh. Oh. Fuck.”
I was not following. “...I’m not following,” I said.
“It is.” Wiley returned to my side, squatting down and nudging me out of the way with their shoulder to peer warily into the trunk. “It’s telling us to kill ourselves, but not these selves. We’re supposed to use…those…to kill our fuckin’ doppelgangers, or whatever they are. That’s how we get rid of the water.”
“Oh,” I echoed. “Fuck.”
We marinated for a moment in silence before Wiley sighed, resigned, and lifted the gloves from the chest, closing their eyes and pulling the fabric snugly over their hands. “Let’s get to work.”
submitted by emorybored to scarystories [link] [comments]
So, for today’s installment (and then also for the next one) I’m gonna tell you another good ol’ fun-for-the-whole-family pool story. Yep, you heard that right—welcome to our first bonafide two-parter.
This was quite a while ago. My measure of time is all off by a year now, but I feel fairly confident in chalking it up to post-first pool story, pre-ouija board fiasco—so however long ago that’s been now.
It was a weird, rare night, in that Matt was out. Not an unheard of occurrence, but it’s fairly anomalous, and it certainly puts the rest of us on slightly higher alert.
Obviously, he always tells us to call him at the first sign of some shit going down and to use our best judgment to determine whether it’s serious enough to lock up and head out. Better safe than sorry and all that. The night in question was no exception to the rule.
Overall, though, things were mostly quiet. Alice was in, as was I, as was Wiley. We do a lot of congregating, but we do a lot of work, too, and this night, we were all in our respective areas, doing our respective jobs.
I was in my not-office mending a finicky Shakespeare anthology, Alice was watching the desk while working on cataloging a truckload of new donations, and Wiley was replacing several lightbulbs that had all decided to call it quits after our most recent power outage (this one due to a flash-flood).
It was calm to an almost uncharacteristic degree. There was a relatively steady flow of patrons in and out of the building—I could hear Alice greeting them and wishing them a good evening—but as far as anomalous activity, there was none.
It does happen, on rare occasion, that we make it through a full night without any goings on, but there’s almost always at least the odd disembodied voice or two.
We should’ve known better than to trust a meteor shower.
See, there’s just something about natural anomalies. Not just the ones that knock our power out, either, although those are clearly included. Blizzards, thunderstorms, hail and tornados and earthquakes and all your run-of-the-mill destructive shit, sure. But the things of beauty, too. Rainbows. Eclipses, lunar or solar. And you think full moons hit emergency rooms hard? Try this fucking place.
It was just that a meteor shower wasn’t one we’d dealt with before. Does that mean we shouldn’t have known better? Fuck no. Obviously not. But perhaps our collective greatest fault is that we still have some semblance of hope.
Wiley wanted to look at it from the roof. Kid never fucking wants to do anything, and they were set to climb up and camp out alone. I couldn’t not entertain such an innocent, youthful whim.
Our roof access doesn’t have stairs—just a ladder—so Alice couldn’t accompany us, which I felt shitty about, but she assured me it was perfectly fine with her.
“The world decided I didn’t need functional legs so I could never be peer pressured into leaving the ground,” she quipped. “I’m not into heights. But y’all have fun up there. Somebody needs to be here for the patrons anyway.”
Fair and fair. So Wiley and I gathered up an armful of blankets and one of Matt’s trusty camping lanterns and headed out to scale the building.
Wiley went up ahead of me. That was my first mistake.
Really, they aren’t that much younger than I am. Maybe four or five years, and I’m too close to thirty for comfort now. But there’s something about them, even as far as they’ve come, that makes it impossible for me not to do everything in my power to protect them. I think Matt feels the same way. Maybe most of us do.
Anyway, that’s why I immediately started cursing myself when they reached the top of the ladder, pulled their way up and over the ledge of the roof, and said, “...Whoa.”
My second mistake was not immediately telling them to turn around and start climbing right the fuck back down.
I knew exactly what that tone of voice meant. But something in me just kicked into hyperdrive and I…had to see it. Whatever it was, I had to see it for myself.
“Don’t move,” I said, and then, “What is it?”
But by that point, I was at the top, too. I hoisted myself over the ledge and was met with…
…Water.
It was everywhere. Extending in every direction. There was no edge in sight—not even a horizon line. Just vast, dark water as far as the eye could see.
“Okay. This is not—let’s go.”
“Yeah,” Wiley agreed, a little breathless.
I’m sure you’ll be downright shocked to learn that, when we turned around, the ladder was gone.
The edge of the rooftop was, too.
The thing that surprised me, really, was that it wasn’t as though we were standing on some sort of island. We were somehow in the water all of a sudden, up to our waists, neither of us having taken a single step.
“Fucking…shit. Jesus. Adam?”
“We’re fine,” was my default response, because my anxiety override kicks in like a motherfucker as soon as someone else is more openly afraid than I am. “It’s okay, let’s just—let’s think for a second. Maybe it’s just, like, an illusion or something.”
“Okay,” Wiley said. “Maybe we should…try moving?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we’ll bump the ledge and then we can just feel for the ladder. Good idea.”
Wiley and I shared a look, wordlessly nodding to one another, and stepped forward in unison.
Maybe I misspoke before, when I said we weren’t on a platform. It was just that our platform wasn’t above the water. Now, though, there was nothing.
It felt, almost, like the stomach-turning sensation of missing a step walking up a staircase. The only difference was that there was no moment-too-late connection.
We plummeted.
There wasn’t any difference in temperature beneath the surface, which was, in a way, more disorienting than the water itself. The mental recalibration that typically comes with plunging into a cool lake or, adversely, a heated pool wasn’t allotted an opportunity to take place. It felt, for most intents and purposes, the same as being in the air, just that I couldn’t breathe.
It was heavy, too. The weightlessness water tends to embody was null; I immediately abandoned everything I’d been carrying, clawing my way upward frantically enough that it would’ve been mortifying, I’m sure, had anyone witnessed it.
Wiley resurfaced at the same moment I did—empty handed as well, I noted—coughing a little but not to the extent that I was worried they were choking. “Next idea?” they asked, pushing their wet hair back from their face, dark, damp lashes obscuring their eyes.
“Let’s get back on the…” I started, but trailed off when I raised my head.
A couple hundred yards out from us, there was a ship. It was a dark, hulking thing, with tattered sails and something indistinguishable affixed to the bow, glittering and glinting in the moonlight.
Wiley spun around to face it, drifting back slightly when their gaze landed parallel to mine. “What the fuck is that?” they demanded, legs kicking haphazardly beneath the water to keep them in place.
“Maybe it’s…good,” I said. I knew better than that and I knew Wiley did, too, but I said it anyway. “Maybe someone will help.”
They didn’t even humor me with a response to that bullshit.
Now, at this point in the story, maybe you’re thinking being suddenly surrounded by water and watching as an ominous ship approached us with absolutely nowhere to go and no way to escape doesn’t feel quite enough like imminent condemnation. To which I say to you: not to worry. Because the next realization we came to was that the platform we’d been standing on previously had suddenly ceased to exist.
“Shit,” Wiley said. “Shit, shit, shit. Adam.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s fine. We’re fine. We just—we’re gonna—follow me.”
I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck possessed me to swim toward the Obvious Death Ship. I guess just that there wasn’t anything else save for open water anywhere so it essentially felt like our options were paddle around until we were exhausted and drown or face a quicker, simpler demise.
“You better have a fucking plan, bro,” Wiley intoned from behind me, which I chivalrously pretended not to hear, because I did not, in fact, have a fucking plan.
The closer we drew to the vessel, the more unbelievably monstrous it appeared to become. It loomed above us, casting a shadow over everything in its direct path, and the sinking in my stomach almost convinced me to turn around. Almost.
But then something curled around my ankle. It was slick and strong, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that whatever it was could’ve pulled me under and eaten me alive in a fraction of a second.
Luckily for me, it wasn’t interested. It let go as quickly as it had latched on, almost as though it was simply using me as a handrail to move itself along. Still, though, the knowledge that it was there was all the motivation I needed to push forward ever faster. I didn’t say anything—didn’t want to add more fuel to Wiley’s panicked fire—just picked up my pace and swam up to their side.
“There’s a ladder,” they informed me, raising a hand and pointing toward the back half of the ship.
Indeed, there was a ladder. It was a tattered, worn thing, comprised of old, fraying rope and rotting, untreated wooden boards, but it looked composed enough that I figured we could likely make it up if we were swift.
“Bet,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We went.
Up close, the ladder appeared even shoddier than it had when we’d first seen it. I reached out of the water and wrapped my fingers around the rope at the bottom, giving it a hearty tug. To my slight surprise, it held fast.
“I think we’re good,” I told Wiley. “I’ll go up first and tell you what I see.”
“Be careful,” they said, but didn’t protest, just backed up enough for me to get the leverage I needed to hoist myself onto the bottom board.
I climbed warily, overly conscious of every creak of the wood bowing beneath my weight, every groan of the fibers of rope under my hands, but made it without incident to the top.
Once there, I grabbed onto the ship’s edge, lifting my gaze to take in whatever lie before me.
It was…nothing. I mean, it was a ship, obviously. But there wasn’t anything on board. No apparent crew nor cargo nor even a captain manning the helm. Granted, I couldn’t see perfectly, but the moon shone brightly enough that I was fairly confident in my observation that the deck was devoid of anything but its own shiplap floor.
“Hello?” I called, because I wasn’t about to beckon Wiley up if some fucked shit was going to pop out of nowhere the second we made a sound.
Nothing responded. Nothing moved. The ship rocked gently on the impossible water, as silent and vacant as it had been a moment before.
“Good?” Wiley questioned nervously from below me.
“Yeah,” I told them, easing myself off the ladder and down into the confines of the vessel. “Come on.”
They did so tenuously but still more swiftly than I had, climbing aboard and landing next to me with a dampened thunk.
We allowed ourselves the briefest of moments to catch our breath, silently rejoicing in the small win that was having found solace from the pool itself. Not that we had any idea what to do or where to go from here, but at the very least, we weren’t drowning.
“Okay,” I said, clearing the unease from my throat. “I don’t know what good trying to steer this thing would do us—there’s nothing but water no matter where we go. But maybe there’s something here somewhere that’ll help us figure out how to get back. So I think we just…start looking around?”
Wiley nodded. “Cool. Split halves, front and back?”
Nooo, Adam, don’t split up! Never split up! I know. I can literally hear you screaming it at me. And actually, for once in my life, I considered that something might be a horrible fucking idea before acting on it.
But then I saw something.
As I turned back to respond, Wiley’s eyes shimmered, dancing in the moonlight.
They were silver and mercurial, with no pupils or whites in sight.
Whatever had come back up from underwater, it was not my coworker.
I swallowed, forcing my expression to remain as neutral as I was able and praying whatever was standing in front of me didn’t notice I’d caught on. My entire body was instantaneously covered in chills, in a way that I understood to have the same purpose as a dog’s hackles rising. “Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll take the front.”
I headed in the opposite direction of the thing wearing Wiley’s face (at a pace that I hoped didn’t appear hurried but one that would remove me in a timely manner from the vicinity) and didn’t stop until I’d reached the front of the ship, breathing heavily and attempting to slow my reeling mind.
I didn’t know what to tackle first. I didn’t know where Wiley was, or if they were anywhere—if they were even still alive. I didn’t know what my next move should be. I didn’t know what I was looking for or where I might find it.
It’s rare that I feel utterly hopeless, to the degree that I genuinely contemplate just sitting down and giving up, but in this instance, I thought long and hard about how easy it would be to succumb. I’d let the unthinkable happen. Wiley was gone. No one else had been here with them—there was no one else to blame. Just me. Only me.
…You’ll be glad to know that the self-pity didn’t last long. Embarrassing, honestly.
If I was the only one here, it meant I was the only shot they had at making it out alive. Our version of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ had always been ‘alive until proven dead’ and I wasn’t about to turn my back on the insane streak of luck we’d had up until this point. Not a single one of our lives had been lost, and we’d been in the midst of some absolute shitstorms. There was no reason to believe that right now, tonight, was an outlier. I couldn’t lie down like a sick dog and wonder if Wiley was still out there somewhere, suffering until the bitter, bloody end. I had to find them. By whatever means necessary, as long as it took, I had to find them.
I pushed off the railing before me and spun on my heel, eyes flitting back and forth to assess my options as efficiently as possible, and after a moment, I registered that fitted flush against the large front mast, there was a door.
It was only a sliver, thin and not particularly extraordinary in height, but there was a handle carved roughly into its right side and a set of rust-riddled hinges on its left.
I took about half a second to weigh my options and then reached for it, curling my fingers around the handle and giving it a generous tug.
The hinges, unsurprisingly, complained, but not loudly and not for long. The door gave way with little resistance, and opened up to my worst fucking nightmare.
A set of stairs, descending into blackness.
I mean, I guess if I’m being fair, my first pool encounter had featured a staircase leading to the pool rather than away from it, but I didn’t feel like there could possibly be good news awaiting me below deck of a ship where I’d just encountered a fucking mimic.
Still, though, there was a niggling insistence in my brain (not that kind, come on) that it was my only lead on finding Wiley if they were, in fact, somewhere on board. So I cast one last glance over my shoulder and stepped into the dark, letting the door fall closed behind me.
It smelled different, instantly, from the open air above. Mustier, which was to be expected, but also almost sweet somehow. I tried, unsuccessfully, to shove my true-crime-podcast-addled brain’s helpful reminder that the scent of human death is said to be sweet into a mental lockbox and put my hand to the wall, easing tentatively down to the second step.
The visibility wasn’t just low—it was practically zero. If you’ve ever been on a cave tour and had a guide cut the lights and instruct you to lift your hand to your face to demonstrate the complete absence of light, it was nearly that intense. The placing of both feet on each concurrent stair was an arduous, calculated process, but finally, after approximately one (1) century, I reached flat ground. I still couldn’t see, and there was no definitive way to tell whether I was standing on the floor or just a landing without thoroughly feeling out the space around me, so I reluctantly departed from the wall, scooting my feet in small, tentative motions and keeping both arms partially outstretched before me.
After a (l o n g) moment, I determined that either this was the world’s largest landing or I’d made it all the way down. I had no idea whether I was in a singular, enormous room, or if there were individual cabins, or if I was about to run face-first into the grim fucking reaper.
And then I turned to my left.
There was a light.
It was so, so faint. Flickering. Barely discernible, its warm, gentle glow ever so shyly illuminating the cracks around what appeared to be another closed door.
Being the only visible thing in my line of sight, in any direction, it emitted the aura of both a beacon and an omen.
I headed towards it.
I was about half afraid I was stuck in a horror movie situation where no matter how long I walked it would never grow any closer, but fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case. I actually gained on it more quickly than I felt I should have for the speed I was moving, but I wasn’t going to complain about reaching the end of the nothingness in commendable time.
I ran my fingertips along the edge of the door and, sure enough, there was a carved-in handle, just like the last.
It opened just as effortlessly, and yellow candlelight rolled dimly out to greet me, lapping at my waterlogged clothes.
“Please,” came a quiet, terrified voice from inside the room. “Please don’t. I don’t know what you want, or–or what you are, but please don’t—”
“...Wiley?”
Rather than calming, the voice’s state of alarm rose to a level bordering on full-blown panic as I took a step into the space. “Please,” the voice begged. There wasn’t anyone visible from my current vantage point, but I could hear it clearly enough to feel fairly confident that the person attached to it—the person who either had to be Wiley or yet another duplicate of them—was close. “Why are you doing this?”
This was a cabin, I thought, or perhaps a study of some sort, with a rotting wooden desk and a decaying leather chair both covered in a flurry of loose, browned book pages and a thick layer of dust. There were candles littering several surfaces, placed in what appeared not to be any intentional manner. Directly to my right, there was a shelf; its back faced me and the odd placement led me to imagine that it may have been employed to block the door at some time.
It was also, I would have just about bet, the source of the voice.
I nudged a couple of planks and a broken amber bottle out of the way with the toe of my shoe, rounding the shelf to find a crumpled, bloodied Wiley, restrained to the floor by a thick, coarse rope fixed expertly to a bolted tie and holding their bound hands up to shield their face.
“Jesus fuck,” I said. “What happened to you?”
Slowly, they lifted their head. “...Adam?”
Realization dawned on me, and I felt my stomach sink. “Look at me,” I told them. “Look at my eyes.”
They did, their own bloodshot and watery and inherently human, and I watched their shoulders deflate, the defense and terror draining from their form. “There’s someone…something…down here. Or, I guess it still is, anyway. I don’t know where it went, but I don’t wanna be here when it comes back.”
I nodded. “It look like me?”
Wiley nodded back.
“Yeah, there’s one of you upstairs. Not real sure what we’re supposed to do about them, but one thing at a time. Let’s get you up from there.”
It was a struggle, disentangling Wiley from the heavy, abrasive leads coccooning their body, but we got there eventually, and throughout the entirety of the arduous process they gave me the rundown on how, when we’d parted from the solace of the platform, something had instantaneously latched onto them, dragging them down deeper and deeper until their ears popped and their head felt like it was going to explode. They said they’d been knocked out by the pressure, and that when they’d come to, already tied in place and coughing up lungfuls of water, “I” had been standing over them, wielding a large net hook and no mercy.
“I knew it wasn’t you, obviously,” they said, “but I didn’t know where you actually were or if something had, like. Hijacked your body? I don’t know. Anyway, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
We grabbed a couple of candles (the majority had simply been melted into place atop whatever surface they’d adorned, but there was a small collection fitted into slightly-too-small brass holders) and got the fuck out.
Being able to see so little in the space around us was almost more disorienting than the pitch darkness I’d been feeling my way through before. It felt as though we were in a fragile, wavering bubble of reality and nothing existed outside of it.
“Wish I’d been awake coming down here,” Wiley remarked. “Guess I still wouldn’t have seen shit, though.”
“I could…maybe get us back upstairs?” I considered, with little to no confidence. “But I don’t really know what good it would do us. Nowhere to go. Maybe we just…look around down here for a bit? See if we can find anything useful?”
“Yeah, okay,” Wiley assented. “But we’ve gotta be quiet. I don’t want that thing to hear us.”
I certainly couldn’t argue with that.
We wandered hesitantly through the dark, shielding the flames of our candles with cupped palms and praying we wouldn’t misstep. We made it some unsubstantiated quantity of time without incident, but softly, after seconds or minutes or hours, we heard a light rustling from the shadow veiled corridor to our right, and Wiley pulled me into the nearest open room in the opposite direction.
Flattening our backs to the wall, we listened intently as footsteps echoed faintly behind us, cyclically growing closer and then further away again for several moments before disappearing altogether.
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding and uncovered my candle, easing the door of the room to a gentle, silent close. The contents of this one were different from that of the last in that there practically weren’t any. It wasn’t just that it was tidier; there was a chest shoved against the wall nearest us and a leatherbound book of some sort lying in the center of the floor, but otherwise the space was vacant.
Wiley moved first, crouching next to the journal and lifting it from the ground, a cloud of dust rising in the wake of their breath. I knelt down beside them, offering my candlelight so they could discard theirs and open the cover.
Beneath which there was a box.
It was a plain, unadorned wooden rectangle, nestled into the carved-out central pages of the book, and we learned upon extracting it that there was no lock or latch, just a seam indicating the lid’s separation from the body.
I don’t need to spell the whole situation out for you. There was a key in the box. The key opened, you guessed it: the chest. Inside the chest, there were piles of gold and jewels beyond your wildest imagination. We’re rich now. The end.
Nah, JK. But the key in the box did open the chest, in which there was, A) a pair of peeling, pleather driving gloves, and B)...
I felt my heart skip.
A bicycle chain.
I’m not going to get into the nuances of that right now, or maybe ever. But for the purposes of dramatic flair, just know that it was incredibly, pointedly relevant to me, on a level so personal it sucker punched the air straight out of my lungs.
“No,” Wiley said, staggering back a step. “Uh-uh. Nope.”
I put together, then, that the gloves must have been their ticket item. “It’s okay,” I said, on autopilot, because it was not. “There’s something—something’s carved into the bottom of this thing.” Pushing past the reaction every fiber of my being had to the sensation of the frigid metal against my skin, I shoved both the chain and the gloves to the side and could scarcely make out a host of crudely scrawled letters in the wavering light of my half-gone candle.
“What is it?” Wiley asked, making no move to come nearer again.
“Though your…hand…? Heart. Though your heart does pound and knees grow…weak,” I deciphered slowly, “Rid yourself by your… That doesn’t make any sense. Shouldn’t it be of? It says ‘rid yourself by your fear’ and…something. Drain the…clin… No. Drink. Drain the drink.”
“Rid yourself by your fear and drain the drink,” Wiley repeated analytically. “The hell does that mean? Is this shit telling us to kill ourselves with the—oh. Oh. Fuck.”
I was not following. “...I’m not following,” I said.
“It is.” Wiley returned to my side, squatting down and nudging me out of the way with their shoulder to peer warily into the trunk. “It’s telling us to kill ourselves, but not these selves. We’re supposed to use…those…to kill our fuckin’ doppelgangers, or whatever they are. That’s how we get rid of the water.”
“Oh,” I echoed. “Fuck.”
We marinated for a moment in silence before Wiley sighed, resigned, and lifted the gloves from the chest, closing their eyes and pulling the fabric snugly over their hands. “Let’s get to work.”
2024.05.15 21:35 emorybored I work at the Night Library (installment 11). The pool was on the roof this time.
Okay, I’m gonna level with you. Focusing on current events is just getting a little too fucking heavy. I’m no closer to answers than I was a month ago, none of us can sleep through a full night without waking up shaking and drenched in sweat, and there are some new downright bizarre phenomena cropping up that I just don’t have it in me to allot my energy to at the moment.
So, for today’s installment (and then also for the next one) I’m gonna tell you another good ol’ fun-for-the-whole-family pool story. Yep, you heard that right—welcome to our first bonafide two-parter.
This was quite a while ago. My measure of time is all off by a year now, but I feel fairly confident in chalking it up to post-first pool story, pre-ouija board fiasco—so however long ago that’s been now.
It was a weird, rare night, in that Matt was out. Not an unheard of occurrence, but it’s fairly anomalous, and it certainly puts the rest of us on slightly higher alert.
Obviously, he always tells us to call him at the first sign of some shit going down and to use our best judgment to determine whether it’s serious enough to lock up and head out. Better safe than sorry and all that. The night in question was no exception to the rule.
Overall, though, things were mostly quiet. Alice was in, as was I, as was Wiley. We do a lot of congregating, but we do a lot of work, too, and this night, we were all in our respective areas, doing our respective jobs.
I was in my not-office mending a finicky Shakespeare anthology, Alice was watching the desk while working on cataloging a truckload of new donations, and Wiley was replacing several lightbulbs that had all decided to call it quits after our most recent power outage (this one due to a flash-flood).
It was calm to an almost uncharacteristic degree. There was a relatively steady flow of patrons in and out of the building—I could hear Alice greeting them and wishing them a good evening—but as far as anomalous activity, there was none.
It does happen, on rare occasion, that we make it through a full night without any goings on, but there’s almost always at least the odd disembodied voice or two.
We should’ve known better than to trust a meteor shower.
See, there’s just something about natural anomalies. Not just the ones that knock our power out, either, although those are clearly included. Blizzards, thunderstorms, hail and tornados and earthquakes and all your run-of-the-mill destructive shit, sure. But the things of beauty, too. Rainbows. Eclipses, lunar or solar. And you think full moons hit emergency rooms hard? Try this fucking place.
It was just that a meteor shower wasn’t one we’d dealt with before. Does that mean we shouldn’t have known better? Fuck no. Obviously not. But perhaps our collective greatest fault is that we still have some semblance of hope.
Wiley wanted to look at it from the roof. Kid never fucking wants to do anything, and they were set to climb up and camp out alone. I couldn’t not entertain such an innocent, youthful whim.
Our roof access doesn’t have stairs—just a ladder—so Alice couldn’t accompany us, which I felt shitty about, but she assured me it was perfectly fine with her.
“The world decided I didn’t need functional legs so I could never be peer pressured into leaving the ground,” she quipped. “I’m not into heights. But y’all have fun up there. Somebody needs to be here for the patrons anyway.”
Fair and fair. So Wiley and I gathered up an armful of blankets and one of Matt’s trusty camping lanterns and headed out to scale the building.
Wiley went up ahead of me. That was my first mistake.
Really, they aren’t that much younger than I am. Maybe four or five years, and I’m too close to thirty for comfort now. But there’s something about them, even as far as they’ve come, that makes it impossible for me not to do everything in my power to protect them. I think Matt feels the same way. Maybe most of us do.
Anyway, that’s why I immediately started cursing myself when they reached the top of the ladder, pulled their way up and over the ledge of the roof, and said, “...Whoa.”
My second mistake was not immediately telling them to turn around and start climbing right the fuck back down.
I knew exactly what that tone of voice meant. But something in me just kicked into hyperdrive and I…had to see it. Whatever it was, I had to see it for myself.
“Don’t move,” I said, and then, “What is it?”
But by that point, I was at the top, too. I hoisted myself over the ledge and was met with…
…Water.
It was everywhere. Extending in every direction. There was no edge in sight—not even a horizon line. Just vast, dark water as far as the eye could see.
“Okay. This is not—let’s go.”
“Yeah,” Wiley agreed, a little breathless.
I’m sure you’ll be downright shocked to learn that, when we turned around, the ladder was gone.
The edge of the rooftop was, too.
The thing that surprised me, really, was that it wasn’t as though we were standing on some sort of island. We were somehow in the water all of a sudden, up to our waists, neither of us having taken a single step.
“Fucking…shit. Jesus. Adam?”
“We’re fine,” was my default response, because my anxiety override kicks in like a motherfucker as soon as someone else is more openly afraid than I am. “It’s okay, let’s just—let’s think for a second. Maybe it’s just, like, an illusion or something.”
“Okay,” Wiley said. “Maybe we should…try moving?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we’ll bump the ledge and then we can just feel for the ladder. Good idea.”
Wiley and I shared a look, wordlessly nodding to one another, and stepped forward in unison.
Maybe I misspoke before, when I said we weren’t on a platform. It was just that our platform wasn’t above the water. Now, though, there was nothing.
It felt, almost, like the stomach-turning sensation of missing a step walking up a staircase. The only difference was that there was no moment-too-late connection.
We plummeted.
There wasn’t any difference in temperature beneath the surface, which was, in a way, more disorienting than the water itself. The mental recalibration that typically comes with plunging into a cool lake or, adversely, a heated pool wasn’t allotted an opportunity to take place. It felt, for most intents and purposes, the same as being in the air, just that I couldn’t breathe.
It was heavy, too. The weightlessness water tends to embody was null; I immediately abandoned everything I’d been carrying, clawing my way upward frantically enough that it would’ve been mortifying, I’m sure, had anyone witnessed it.
Wiley resurfaced at the same moment I did—empty handed as well, I noted—coughing a little but not to the extent that I was worried they were choking. “Next idea?” they asked, pushing their wet hair back from their face, dark, damp lashes obscuring their eyes.
“Let’s get back on the…” I started, but trailed off when I raised my head.
A couple hundred yards out from us, there was a ship. It was a dark, hulking thing, with tattered sails and something indistinguishable affixed to the bow, glittering and glinting in the moonlight.
Wiley spun around to face it, drifting back slightly when their gaze landed parallel to mine. “What the fuck is that?” they demanded, legs kicking haphazardly beneath the water to keep them in place.
“Maybe it’s…good,” I said. I knew better than that and I knew Wiley did, too, but I said it anyway. “Maybe someone will help.”
They didn’t even humor me with a response to that bullshit.
Now, at this point in the story, maybe you’re thinking being suddenly surrounded by water and watching as an ominous ship approached us with absolutely nowhere to go and no way to escape doesn’t feel quite enough like imminent condemnation. To which I say to you: not to worry. Because the next realization we came to was that the platform we’d been standing on previously had suddenly ceased to exist.
“Shit,” Wiley said. “Shit, shit, shit. Adam.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s fine. We’re fine. We just—we’re gonna—follow me.”
I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck possessed me to swim toward the Obvious Death Ship. I guess just that there wasn’t anything else save for open water anywhere so it essentially felt like our options were paddle around until we were exhausted and drown or face a quicker, simpler demise.
“You better have a fucking plan, bro,” Wiley intoned from behind me, which I chivalrously pretended not to hear, because I did not, in fact, have a fucking plan.
The closer we drew to the vessel, the more unbelievably monstrous it appeared to become. It loomed above us, casting a shadow over everything in its direct path, and the sinking in my stomach almost convinced me to turn around. Almost.
But then something curled around my ankle. It was slick and strong, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that whatever it was could’ve pulled me under and eaten me alive in a fraction of a second.
Luckily for me, it wasn’t interested. It let go as quickly as it had latched on, almost as though it was simply using me as a handrail to move itself along. Still, though, the knowledge that it was there was all the motivation I needed to push forward ever faster. I didn’t say anything—didn’t want to add more fuel to Wiley’s panicked fire—just picked up my pace and swam up to their side.
“There’s a ladder,” they informed me, raising a hand and pointing toward the back half of the ship.
Indeed, there was a ladder. It was a tattered, worn thing, comprised of old, fraying rope and rotting, untreated wooden boards, but it looked composed enough that I figured we could likely make it up if we were swift.
“Bet,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We went.
Up close, the ladder appeared even shoddier than it had when we’d first seen it. I reached out of the water and wrapped my fingers around the rope at the bottom, giving it a hearty tug. To my slight surprise, it held fast.
“I think we’re good,” I told Wiley. “I’ll go up first and tell you what I see.”
“Be careful,” they said, but didn’t protest, just backed up enough for me to get the leverage I needed to hoist myself onto the bottom board.
I climbed warily, overly conscious of every creak of the wood bowing beneath my weight, every groan of the fibers of rope under my hands, but made it without incident to the top.
Once there, I grabbed onto the ship’s edge, lifting my gaze to take in whatever lie before me.
It was…nothing. I mean, it was a ship, obviously. But there wasn’t anything on board. No apparent crew nor cargo nor even a captain manning the helm. Granted, I couldn’t see perfectly, but the moon shone brightly enough that I was fairly confident in my observation that the deck was devoid of anything but its own shiplap floor.
“Hello?” I called, because I wasn’t about to beckon Wiley up if some fucked shit was going to pop out of nowhere the second we made a sound.
Nothing responded. Nothing moved. The ship rocked gently on the impossible water, as silent and vacant as it had been a moment before.
“Good?” Wiley questioned nervously from below me.
“Yeah,” I told them, easing myself off the ladder and down into the confines of the vessel. “Come on.”
They did so tenuously but still more swiftly than I had, climbing aboard and landing next to me with a dampened thunk.
We allowed ourselves the briefest of moments to catch our breath, silently rejoicing in the small win that was having found solace from the pool itself. Not that we had any idea what to do or where to go from here, but at the very least, we weren’t drowning.
“Okay,” I said, clearing the unease from my throat. “I don’t know what good trying to steer this thing would do us—there’s nothing but water no matter where we go. But maybe there’s something here somewhere that’ll help us figure out how to get back. So I think we just…start looking around?”
Wiley nodded. “Cool. Split halves, front and back?”
Nooo, Adam, don’t split up! Never split up! I know. I can literally hear you screaming it at me. And actually, for once in my life, I considered that something might be a horrible fucking idea before acting on it.
But then I saw something.
As I turned back to respond, Wiley’s eyes shimmered, dancing in the moonlight.
They were silver and mercurial, with no pupils or whites in sight.
Whatever had come back up from underwater, it was not my coworker.
I swallowed, forcing my expression to remain as neutral as I was able and praying whatever was standing in front of me didn’t notice I’d caught on. My entire body was instantaneously covered in chills, in a way that I understood to have the same purpose as a dog’s hackles rising. “Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll take the front.”
I headed in the opposite direction of the thing wearing Wiley’s face (at a pace that I hoped didn’t appear hurried but one that would remove me in a timely manner from the vicinity) and didn’t stop until I’d reached the front of the ship, breathing heavily and attempting to slow my reeling mind.
I didn’t know what to tackle first. I didn’t know where Wiley was, or if they were anywhere—if they were even still alive. I didn’t know what my next move should be. I didn’t know what I was looking for or where I might find it.
It’s rare that I feel utterly hopeless, to the degree that I genuinely contemplate just sitting down and giving up, but in this instance, I thought long and hard about how easy it would be to succumb. I’d let the unthinkable happen. Wiley was gone. No one else had been here with them—there was no one else to blame. Just me. Only me.
…You’ll be glad to know that the self-pity didn’t last long. Embarrassing, honestly.
If I was the only one here, it meant I was the only shot they had at making it out alive. Our version of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ had always been ‘alive until proven dead’ and I wasn’t about to turn my back on the insane streak of luck we’d had up until this point. Not a single one of our lives had been lost, and we’d been in the midst of some absolute shitstorms. There was no reason to believe that right now, tonight, was an outlier. I couldn’t lie down like a sick dog and wonder if Wiley was still out there somewhere, suffering until the bitter, bloody end. I had to find them. By whatever means necessary, as long as it took, I had to find them.
I pushed off the railing before me and spun on my heel, eyes flitting back and forth to assess my options as efficiently as possible, and after a moment, I registered that fitted flush against the large front mast, there was a door.
It was only a sliver, thin and not particularly extraordinary in height, but there was a handle carved roughly into its right side and a set of rust-riddled hinges on its left.
I took about half a second to weigh my options and then reached for it, curling my fingers around the handle and giving it a generous tug.
The hinges, unsurprisingly, complained, but not loudly and not for long. The door gave way with little resistance, and opened up to my worst fucking nightmare.
A set of stairs, descending into blackness.
I mean, I guess if I’m being fair, my first pool encounter had featured a staircase leading to the pool rather than away from it, but I didn’t feel like there could possibly be good news awaiting me below deck of a ship where I’d just encountered a fucking mimic.
Still, though, there was a niggling insistence in my brain (not that kind, come on) that it was my only lead on finding Wiley if they were, in fact, somewhere on board. So I cast one last glance over my shoulder and stepped into the dark, letting the door fall closed behind me.
It smelled different, instantly, from the open air above. Mustier, which was to be expected, but also almost sweet somehow. I tried, unsuccessfully, to shove my true-crime-podcast-addled brain’s helpful reminder that the scent of human death is said to be sweet into a mental lockbox and put my hand to the wall, easing tentatively down to the second step.
The visibility wasn’t just low—it was practically zero. If you’ve ever been on a cave tour and had a guide cut the lights and instruct you to lift your hand to your face to demonstrate the complete absence of light, it was nearly that intense. The placing of both feet on each concurrent stair was an arduous, calculated process, but finally, after approximately one (1) century, I reached flat ground. I still couldn’t see, and there was no definitive way to tell whether I was standing on the floor or just a landing without thoroughly feeling out the space around me, so I reluctantly departed from the wall, scooting my feet in small, tentative motions and keeping both arms partially outstretched before me.
After a (l o n g) moment, I determined that either this was the world’s largest landing or I’d made it all the way down. I had no idea whether I was in a singular, enormous room, or if there were individual cabins, or if I was about to run face-first into the grim fucking reaper.
And then I turned to my left.
There was a light.
It was so, so faint. Flickering. Barely discernible, its warm, gentle glow ever so shyly illuminating the cracks around what appeared to be another closed door.
Being the only visible thing in my line of sight, in any direction, it emitted the aura of both a beacon and an omen.
I headed towards it.
I was about half afraid I was stuck in a horror movie situation where no matter how long I walked it would never grow any closer, but fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case. I actually gained on it more quickly than I felt I should have for the speed I was moving, but I wasn’t going to complain about reaching the end of the nothingness in commendable time.
I ran my fingertips along the edge of the door and, sure enough, there was a carved-in handle, just like the last.
It opened just as effortlessly, and yellow candlelight rolled dimly out to greet me, lapping at my waterlogged clothes.
“Please,” came a quiet, terrified voice from inside the room. “Please don’t. I don’t know what you want, or–or what you are, but please don’t—”
“...Wiley?”
Rather than calming, the voice’s state of alarm rose to a level bordering on full-blown panic as I took a step into the space. “Please,” the voice begged. There wasn’t anyone visible from my current vantage point, but I could hear it clearly enough to feel fairly confident that the person attached to it—the person who either had to be Wiley or yet another duplicate of them—was close. “Why are you doing this?”
This was a cabin, I thought, or perhaps a study of some sort, with a rotting wooden desk and a decaying leather chair both covered in a flurry of loose, browned book pages and a thick layer of dust. There were candles littering several surfaces, placed in what appeared not to be any intentional manner. Directly to my right, there was a shelf; its back faced me and the odd placement led me to imagine that it may have been employed to block the door at some time.
It was also, I would have just about bet, the source of the voice.
I nudged a couple of planks and a broken amber bottle out of the way with the toe of my shoe, rounding the shelf to find a crumpled, bloodied Wiley, restrained to the floor by a thick, coarse rope fixed expertly to a bolted tie and holding their bound hands up to shield their face.
“Jesus fuck,” I said. “What happened to you?”
Slowly, they lifted their head. “...Adam?”
Realization dawned on me, and I felt my stomach sink. “Look at me,” I told them. “Look at my eyes.”
They did, their own bloodshot and watery and inherently human, and I watched their shoulders deflate, the defense and terror draining from their form. “There’s someone…something…down here. Or, I guess it still is, anyway. I don’t know where it went, but I don’t wanna be here when it comes back.”
I nodded. “It look like me?”
Wiley nodded back.
“Yeah, there’s one of you upstairs. Not real sure what we’re supposed to do about them, but one thing at a time. Let’s get you up from there.”
It was a struggle, disentangling Wiley from the heavy, abrasive leads coccooning their body, but we got there eventually, and throughout the entirety of the arduous process they gave me the rundown on how, when we’d parted from the solace of the platform, something had instantaneously latched onto them, dragging them down deeper and deeper until their ears popped and their head felt like it was going to explode. They said they’d been knocked out by the pressure, and that when they’d come to, already tied in place and coughing up lungfuls of water, “I” had been standing over them, wielding a large net hook and no mercy.
“I knew it wasn’t you, obviously,” they said, “but I didn’t know where you actually were or if something had, like. Hijacked your body? I don’t know. Anyway, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
We grabbed a couple of candles (the majority had simply been melted into place atop whatever surface they’d adorned, but there was a small collection fitted into slightly-too-small brass holders) and got the fuck out.
Being able to see so little in the space around us was almost more disorienting than the pitch darkness I’d been feeling my way through before. It felt as though we were in a fragile, wavering bubble of reality and nothing existed outside of it.
“Wish I’d been awake coming down here,” Wiley remarked. “Guess I still wouldn’t have seen shit, though.”
“I could…maybe get us back upstairs?” I considered, with little to no confidence. “But I don’t really know what good it would do us. Nowhere to go. Maybe we just…look around down here for a bit? See if we can find anything useful?”
“Yeah, okay,” Wiley assented. “But we’ve gotta be quiet. I don’t want that thing to hear us.”
I certainly couldn’t argue with that.
We wandered hesitantly through the dark, shielding the flames of our candles with cupped palms and praying we wouldn’t misstep. We made it some unsubstantiated quantity of time without incident, but softly, after seconds or minutes or hours, we heard a light rustling from the shadow veiled corridor to our right, and Wiley pulled me into the nearest open room in the opposite direction.
Flattening our backs to the wall, we listened intently as footsteps echoed faintly behind us, cyclically growing closer and then further away again for several moments before disappearing altogether.
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding and uncovered my candle, easing the door of the room to a gentle, silent close. The contents of this one were different from that of the last in that there practically weren’t any. It wasn’t just that it was tidier; there was a chest shoved against the wall nearest us and a leatherbound book of some sort lying in the center of the floor, but otherwise the space was vacant.
Wiley moved first, crouching next to the journal and lifting it from the ground, a cloud of dust rising in the wake of their breath. I knelt down beside them, offering my candlelight so they could discard theirs and open the cover.
Beneath which there was a box.
It was a plain, unadorned wooden rectangle, nestled into the carved-out central pages of the book, and we learned upon extracting it that there was no lock or latch, just a seam indicating the lid’s separation from the body.
I don’t need to spell the whole situation out for you. There was a key in the box. The key opened, you guessed it: the chest. Inside the chest, there were piles of gold and jewels beyond your wildest imagination. We’re rich now. The end.
Nah, JK. But the key in the box did open the chest, in which there was, A) a pair of peeling, pleather driving gloves, and B)...
I felt my heart skip.
A bicycle chain.
I’m not going to get into the nuances of that right now, or maybe ever. But for the purposes of dramatic flair, just know that it was incredibly, pointedly relevant to me, on a level so personal it sucker punched the air straight out of my lungs.
“No,” Wiley said, staggering back a step. “Uh-uh. Nope.”
I put together, then, that the gloves must have been their ticket item. “It’s okay,” I said, on autopilot, because it was not. “There’s something—something’s carved into the bottom of this thing.” Pushing past the reaction every fiber of my being had to the sensation of the frigid metal against my skin, I shoved both the chain and the gloves to the side and could scarcely make out a host of crudely scrawled letters in the wavering light of my half-gone candle.
“What is it?” Wiley asked, making no move to come nearer again.
“Though your…hand…? Heart. Though your heart does pound and knees grow…weak,” I deciphered slowly, “Rid yourself by your… That doesn’t make any sense. Shouldn’t it be of? It says ‘rid yourself by your fear’ and…something. Drain the…clin… No. Drink. Drain the drink.”
“Rid yourself by your fear and drain the drink,” Wiley repeated analytically. “The hell does that mean? Is this shit telling us to kill ourselves with the—oh. Oh. Fuck.”
I was not following. “...I’m not following,” I said.
“It is.” Wiley returned to my side, squatting down and nudging me out of the way with their shoulder to peer warily into the trunk. “It’s telling us to kill ourselves, but not these selves. We’re supposed to use…those…to kill our fuckin’ doppelgangers, or whatever they are. That’s how we get rid of the water.”
“Oh,” I echoed. “Fuck.”
We marinated for a moment in silence before Wiley sighed, resigned, and lifted the gloves from the chest, closing their eyes and pulling the fabric snugly over their hands. “Let’s get to work.”
submitted by emorybored to Ruleshorror [link] [comments]
So, for today’s installment (and then also for the next one) I’m gonna tell you another good ol’ fun-for-the-whole-family pool story. Yep, you heard that right—welcome to our first bonafide two-parter.
This was quite a while ago. My measure of time is all off by a year now, but I feel fairly confident in chalking it up to post-first pool story, pre-ouija board fiasco—so however long ago that’s been now.
It was a weird, rare night, in that Matt was out. Not an unheard of occurrence, but it’s fairly anomalous, and it certainly puts the rest of us on slightly higher alert.
Obviously, he always tells us to call him at the first sign of some shit going down and to use our best judgment to determine whether it’s serious enough to lock up and head out. Better safe than sorry and all that. The night in question was no exception to the rule.
Overall, though, things were mostly quiet. Alice was in, as was I, as was Wiley. We do a lot of congregating, but we do a lot of work, too, and this night, we were all in our respective areas, doing our respective jobs.
I was in my not-office mending a finicky Shakespeare anthology, Alice was watching the desk while working on cataloging a truckload of new donations, and Wiley was replacing several lightbulbs that had all decided to call it quits after our most recent power outage (this one due to a flash-flood).
It was calm to an almost uncharacteristic degree. There was a relatively steady flow of patrons in and out of the building—I could hear Alice greeting them and wishing them a good evening—but as far as anomalous activity, there was none.
It does happen, on rare occasion, that we make it through a full night without any goings on, but there’s almost always at least the odd disembodied voice or two.
We should’ve known better than to trust a meteor shower.
See, there’s just something about natural anomalies. Not just the ones that knock our power out, either, although those are clearly included. Blizzards, thunderstorms, hail and tornados and earthquakes and all your run-of-the-mill destructive shit, sure. But the things of beauty, too. Rainbows. Eclipses, lunar or solar. And you think full moons hit emergency rooms hard? Try this fucking place.
It was just that a meteor shower wasn’t one we’d dealt with before. Does that mean we shouldn’t have known better? Fuck no. Obviously not. But perhaps our collective greatest fault is that we still have some semblance of hope.
Wiley wanted to look at it from the roof. Kid never fucking wants to do anything, and they were set to climb up and camp out alone. I couldn’t not entertain such an innocent, youthful whim.
Our roof access doesn’t have stairs—just a ladder—so Alice couldn’t accompany us, which I felt shitty about, but she assured me it was perfectly fine with her.
“The world decided I didn’t need functional legs so I could never be peer pressured into leaving the ground,” she quipped. “I’m not into heights. But y’all have fun up there. Somebody needs to be here for the patrons anyway.”
Fair and fair. So Wiley and I gathered up an armful of blankets and one of Matt’s trusty camping lanterns and headed out to scale the building.
Wiley went up ahead of me. That was my first mistake.
Really, they aren’t that much younger than I am. Maybe four or five years, and I’m too close to thirty for comfort now. But there’s something about them, even as far as they’ve come, that makes it impossible for me not to do everything in my power to protect them. I think Matt feels the same way. Maybe most of us do.
Anyway, that’s why I immediately started cursing myself when they reached the top of the ladder, pulled their way up and over the ledge of the roof, and said, “...Whoa.”
My second mistake was not immediately telling them to turn around and start climbing right the fuck back down.
I knew exactly what that tone of voice meant. But something in me just kicked into hyperdrive and I…had to see it. Whatever it was, I had to see it for myself.
“Don’t move,” I said, and then, “What is it?”
But by that point, I was at the top, too. I hoisted myself over the ledge and was met with…
…Water.
It was everywhere. Extending in every direction. There was no edge in sight—not even a horizon line. Just vast, dark water as far as the eye could see.
“Okay. This is not—let’s go.”
“Yeah,” Wiley agreed, a little breathless.
I’m sure you’ll be downright shocked to learn that, when we turned around, the ladder was gone.
The edge of the rooftop was, too.
The thing that surprised me, really, was that it wasn’t as though we were standing on some sort of island. We were somehow in the water all of a sudden, up to our waists, neither of us having taken a single step.
“Fucking…shit. Jesus. Adam?”
“We’re fine,” was my default response, because my anxiety override kicks in like a motherfucker as soon as someone else is more openly afraid than I am. “It’s okay, let’s just—let’s think for a second. Maybe it’s just, like, an illusion or something.”
“Okay,” Wiley said. “Maybe we should…try moving?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we’ll bump the ledge and then we can just feel for the ladder. Good idea.”
Wiley and I shared a look, wordlessly nodding to one another, and stepped forward in unison.
Maybe I misspoke before, when I said we weren’t on a platform. It was just that our platform wasn’t above the water. Now, though, there was nothing.
It felt, almost, like the stomach-turning sensation of missing a step walking up a staircase. The only difference was that there was no moment-too-late connection.
We plummeted.
There wasn’t any difference in temperature beneath the surface, which was, in a way, more disorienting than the water itself. The mental recalibration that typically comes with plunging into a cool lake or, adversely, a heated pool wasn’t allotted an opportunity to take place. It felt, for most intents and purposes, the same as being in the air, just that I couldn’t breathe.
It was heavy, too. The weightlessness water tends to embody was null; I immediately abandoned everything I’d been carrying, clawing my way upward frantically enough that it would’ve been mortifying, I’m sure, had anyone witnessed it.
Wiley resurfaced at the same moment I did—empty handed as well, I noted—coughing a little but not to the extent that I was worried they were choking. “Next idea?” they asked, pushing their wet hair back from their face, dark, damp lashes obscuring their eyes.
“Let’s get back on the…” I started, but trailed off when I raised my head.
A couple hundred yards out from us, there was a ship. It was a dark, hulking thing, with tattered sails and something indistinguishable affixed to the bow, glittering and glinting in the moonlight.
Wiley spun around to face it, drifting back slightly when their gaze landed parallel to mine. “What the fuck is that?” they demanded, legs kicking haphazardly beneath the water to keep them in place.
“Maybe it’s…good,” I said. I knew better than that and I knew Wiley did, too, but I said it anyway. “Maybe someone will help.”
They didn’t even humor me with a response to that bullshit.
Now, at this point in the story, maybe you’re thinking being suddenly surrounded by water and watching as an ominous ship approached us with absolutely nowhere to go and no way to escape doesn’t feel quite enough like imminent condemnation. To which I say to you: not to worry. Because the next realization we came to was that the platform we’d been standing on previously had suddenly ceased to exist.
“Shit,” Wiley said. “Shit, shit, shit. Adam.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s fine. We’re fine. We just—we’re gonna—follow me.”
I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck possessed me to swim toward the Obvious Death Ship. I guess just that there wasn’t anything else save for open water anywhere so it essentially felt like our options were paddle around until we were exhausted and drown or face a quicker, simpler demise.
“You better have a fucking plan, bro,” Wiley intoned from behind me, which I chivalrously pretended not to hear, because I did not, in fact, have a fucking plan.
The closer we drew to the vessel, the more unbelievably monstrous it appeared to become. It loomed above us, casting a shadow over everything in its direct path, and the sinking in my stomach almost convinced me to turn around. Almost.
But then something curled around my ankle. It was slick and strong, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that whatever it was could’ve pulled me under and eaten me alive in a fraction of a second.
Luckily for me, it wasn’t interested. It let go as quickly as it had latched on, almost as though it was simply using me as a handrail to move itself along. Still, though, the knowledge that it was there was all the motivation I needed to push forward ever faster. I didn’t say anything—didn’t want to add more fuel to Wiley’s panicked fire—just picked up my pace and swam up to their side.
“There’s a ladder,” they informed me, raising a hand and pointing toward the back half of the ship.
Indeed, there was a ladder. It was a tattered, worn thing, comprised of old, fraying rope and rotting, untreated wooden boards, but it looked composed enough that I figured we could likely make it up if we were swift.
“Bet,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We went.
Up close, the ladder appeared even shoddier than it had when we’d first seen it. I reached out of the water and wrapped my fingers around the rope at the bottom, giving it a hearty tug. To my slight surprise, it held fast.
“I think we’re good,” I told Wiley. “I’ll go up first and tell you what I see.”
“Be careful,” they said, but didn’t protest, just backed up enough for me to get the leverage I needed to hoist myself onto the bottom board.
I climbed warily, overly conscious of every creak of the wood bowing beneath my weight, every groan of the fibers of rope under my hands, but made it without incident to the top.
Once there, I grabbed onto the ship’s edge, lifting my gaze to take in whatever lie before me.
It was…nothing. I mean, it was a ship, obviously. But there wasn’t anything on board. No apparent crew nor cargo nor even a captain manning the helm. Granted, I couldn’t see perfectly, but the moon shone brightly enough that I was fairly confident in my observation that the deck was devoid of anything but its own shiplap floor.
“Hello?” I called, because I wasn’t about to beckon Wiley up if some fucked shit was going to pop out of nowhere the second we made a sound.
Nothing responded. Nothing moved. The ship rocked gently on the impossible water, as silent and vacant as it had been a moment before.
“Good?” Wiley questioned nervously from below me.
“Yeah,” I told them, easing myself off the ladder and down into the confines of the vessel. “Come on.”
They did so tenuously but still more swiftly than I had, climbing aboard and landing next to me with a dampened thunk.
We allowed ourselves the briefest of moments to catch our breath, silently rejoicing in the small win that was having found solace from the pool itself. Not that we had any idea what to do or where to go from here, but at the very least, we weren’t drowning.
“Okay,” I said, clearing the unease from my throat. “I don’t know what good trying to steer this thing would do us—there’s nothing but water no matter where we go. But maybe there’s something here somewhere that’ll help us figure out how to get back. So I think we just…start looking around?”
Wiley nodded. “Cool. Split halves, front and back?”
Nooo, Adam, don’t split up! Never split up! I know. I can literally hear you screaming it at me. And actually, for once in my life, I considered that something might be a horrible fucking idea before acting on it.
But then I saw something.
As I turned back to respond, Wiley’s eyes shimmered, dancing in the moonlight.
They were silver and mercurial, with no pupils or whites in sight.
Whatever had come back up from underwater, it was not my coworker.
I swallowed, forcing my expression to remain as neutral as I was able and praying whatever was standing in front of me didn’t notice I’d caught on. My entire body was instantaneously covered in chills, in a way that I understood to have the same purpose as a dog’s hackles rising. “Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll take the front.”
I headed in the opposite direction of the thing wearing Wiley’s face (at a pace that I hoped didn’t appear hurried but one that would remove me in a timely manner from the vicinity) and didn’t stop until I’d reached the front of the ship, breathing heavily and attempting to slow my reeling mind.
I didn’t know what to tackle first. I didn’t know where Wiley was, or if they were anywhere—if they were even still alive. I didn’t know what my next move should be. I didn’t know what I was looking for or where I might find it.
It’s rare that I feel utterly hopeless, to the degree that I genuinely contemplate just sitting down and giving up, but in this instance, I thought long and hard about how easy it would be to succumb. I’d let the unthinkable happen. Wiley was gone. No one else had been here with them—there was no one else to blame. Just me. Only me.
…You’ll be glad to know that the self-pity didn’t last long. Embarrassing, honestly.
If I was the only one here, it meant I was the only shot they had at making it out alive. Our version of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ had always been ‘alive until proven dead’ and I wasn’t about to turn my back on the insane streak of luck we’d had up until this point. Not a single one of our lives had been lost, and we’d been in the midst of some absolute shitstorms. There was no reason to believe that right now, tonight, was an outlier. I couldn’t lie down like a sick dog and wonder if Wiley was still out there somewhere, suffering until the bitter, bloody end. I had to find them. By whatever means necessary, as long as it took, I had to find them.
I pushed off the railing before me and spun on my heel, eyes flitting back and forth to assess my options as efficiently as possible, and after a moment, I registered that fitted flush against the large front mast, there was a door.
It was only a sliver, thin and not particularly extraordinary in height, but there was a handle carved roughly into its right side and a set of rust-riddled hinges on its left.
I took about half a second to weigh my options and then reached for it, curling my fingers around the handle and giving it a generous tug.
The hinges, unsurprisingly, complained, but not loudly and not for long. The door gave way with little resistance, and opened up to my worst fucking nightmare.
A set of stairs, descending into blackness.
I mean, I guess if I’m being fair, my first pool encounter had featured a staircase leading to the pool rather than away from it, but I didn’t feel like there could possibly be good news awaiting me below deck of a ship where I’d just encountered a fucking mimic.
Still, though, there was a niggling insistence in my brain (not that kind, come on) that it was my only lead on finding Wiley if they were, in fact, somewhere on board. So I cast one last glance over my shoulder and stepped into the dark, letting the door fall closed behind me.
It smelled different, instantly, from the open air above. Mustier, which was to be expected, but also almost sweet somehow. I tried, unsuccessfully, to shove my true-crime-podcast-addled brain’s helpful reminder that the scent of human death is said to be sweet into a mental lockbox and put my hand to the wall, easing tentatively down to the second step.
The visibility wasn’t just low—it was practically zero. If you’ve ever been on a cave tour and had a guide cut the lights and instruct you to lift your hand to your face to demonstrate the complete absence of light, it was nearly that intense. The placing of both feet on each concurrent stair was an arduous, calculated process, but finally, after approximately one (1) century, I reached flat ground. I still couldn’t see, and there was no definitive way to tell whether I was standing on the floor or just a landing without thoroughly feeling out the space around me, so I reluctantly departed from the wall, scooting my feet in small, tentative motions and keeping both arms partially outstretched before me.
After a (l o n g) moment, I determined that either this was the world’s largest landing or I’d made it all the way down. I had no idea whether I was in a singular, enormous room, or if there were individual cabins, or if I was about to run face-first into the grim fucking reaper.
And then I turned to my left.
There was a light.
It was so, so faint. Flickering. Barely discernible, its warm, gentle glow ever so shyly illuminating the cracks around what appeared to be another closed door.
Being the only visible thing in my line of sight, in any direction, it emitted the aura of both a beacon and an omen.
I headed towards it.
I was about half afraid I was stuck in a horror movie situation where no matter how long I walked it would never grow any closer, but fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case. I actually gained on it more quickly than I felt I should have for the speed I was moving, but I wasn’t going to complain about reaching the end of the nothingness in commendable time.
I ran my fingertips along the edge of the door and, sure enough, there was a carved-in handle, just like the last.
It opened just as effortlessly, and yellow candlelight rolled dimly out to greet me, lapping at my waterlogged clothes.
“Please,” came a quiet, terrified voice from inside the room. “Please don’t. I don’t know what you want, or–or what you are, but please don’t—”
“...Wiley?”
Rather than calming, the voice’s state of alarm rose to a level bordering on full-blown panic as I took a step into the space. “Please,” the voice begged. There wasn’t anyone visible from my current vantage point, but I could hear it clearly enough to feel fairly confident that the person attached to it—the person who either had to be Wiley or yet another duplicate of them—was close. “Why are you doing this?”
This was a cabin, I thought, or perhaps a study of some sort, with a rotting wooden desk and a decaying leather chair both covered in a flurry of loose, browned book pages and a thick layer of dust. There were candles littering several surfaces, placed in what appeared not to be any intentional manner. Directly to my right, there was a shelf; its back faced me and the odd placement led me to imagine that it may have been employed to block the door at some time.
It was also, I would have just about bet, the source of the voice.
I nudged a couple of planks and a broken amber bottle out of the way with the toe of my shoe, rounding the shelf to find a crumpled, bloodied Wiley, restrained to the floor by a thick, coarse rope fixed expertly to a bolted tie and holding their bound hands up to shield their face.
“Jesus fuck,” I said. “What happened to you?”
Slowly, they lifted their head. “...Adam?”
Realization dawned on me, and I felt my stomach sink. “Look at me,” I told them. “Look at my eyes.”
They did, their own bloodshot and watery and inherently human, and I watched their shoulders deflate, the defense and terror draining from their form. “There’s someone…something…down here. Or, I guess it still is, anyway. I don’t know where it went, but I don’t wanna be here when it comes back.”
I nodded. “It look like me?”
Wiley nodded back.
“Yeah, there’s one of you upstairs. Not real sure what we’re supposed to do about them, but one thing at a time. Let’s get you up from there.”
It was a struggle, disentangling Wiley from the heavy, abrasive leads coccooning their body, but we got there eventually, and throughout the entirety of the arduous process they gave me the rundown on how, when we’d parted from the solace of the platform, something had instantaneously latched onto them, dragging them down deeper and deeper until their ears popped and their head felt like it was going to explode. They said they’d been knocked out by the pressure, and that when they’d come to, already tied in place and coughing up lungfuls of water, “I” had been standing over them, wielding a large net hook and no mercy.
“I knew it wasn’t you, obviously,” they said, “but I didn’t know where you actually were or if something had, like. Hijacked your body? I don’t know. Anyway, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
We grabbed a couple of candles (the majority had simply been melted into place atop whatever surface they’d adorned, but there was a small collection fitted into slightly-too-small brass holders) and got the fuck out.
Being able to see so little in the space around us was almost more disorienting than the pitch darkness I’d been feeling my way through before. It felt as though we were in a fragile, wavering bubble of reality and nothing existed outside of it.
“Wish I’d been awake coming down here,” Wiley remarked. “Guess I still wouldn’t have seen shit, though.”
“I could…maybe get us back upstairs?” I considered, with little to no confidence. “But I don’t really know what good it would do us. Nowhere to go. Maybe we just…look around down here for a bit? See if we can find anything useful?”
“Yeah, okay,” Wiley assented. “But we’ve gotta be quiet. I don’t want that thing to hear us.”
I certainly couldn’t argue with that.
We wandered hesitantly through the dark, shielding the flames of our candles with cupped palms and praying we wouldn’t misstep. We made it some unsubstantiated quantity of time without incident, but softly, after seconds or minutes or hours, we heard a light rustling from the shadow veiled corridor to our right, and Wiley pulled me into the nearest open room in the opposite direction.
Flattening our backs to the wall, we listened intently as footsteps echoed faintly behind us, cyclically growing closer and then further away again for several moments before disappearing altogether.
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding and uncovered my candle, easing the door of the room to a gentle, silent close. The contents of this one were different from that of the last in that there practically weren’t any. It wasn’t just that it was tidier; there was a chest shoved against the wall nearest us and a leatherbound book of some sort lying in the center of the floor, but otherwise the space was vacant.
Wiley moved first, crouching next to the journal and lifting it from the ground, a cloud of dust rising in the wake of their breath. I knelt down beside them, offering my candlelight so they could discard theirs and open the cover.
Beneath which there was a box.
It was a plain, unadorned wooden rectangle, nestled into the carved-out central pages of the book, and we learned upon extracting it that there was no lock or latch, just a seam indicating the lid’s separation from the body.
I don’t need to spell the whole situation out for you. There was a key in the box. The key opened, you guessed it: the chest. Inside the chest, there were piles of gold and jewels beyond your wildest imagination. We’re rich now. The end.
Nah, JK. But the key in the box did open the chest, in which there was, A) a pair of peeling, pleather driving gloves, and B)...
I felt my heart skip.
A bicycle chain.
I’m not going to get into the nuances of that right now, or maybe ever. But for the purposes of dramatic flair, just know that it was incredibly, pointedly relevant to me, on a level so personal it sucker punched the air straight out of my lungs.
“No,” Wiley said, staggering back a step. “Uh-uh. Nope.”
I put together, then, that the gloves must have been their ticket item. “It’s okay,” I said, on autopilot, because it was not. “There’s something—something’s carved into the bottom of this thing.” Pushing past the reaction every fiber of my being had to the sensation of the frigid metal against my skin, I shoved both the chain and the gloves to the side and could scarcely make out a host of crudely scrawled letters in the wavering light of my half-gone candle.
“What is it?” Wiley asked, making no move to come nearer again.
“Though your…hand…? Heart. Though your heart does pound and knees grow…weak,” I deciphered slowly, “Rid yourself by your… That doesn’t make any sense. Shouldn’t it be of? It says ‘rid yourself by your fear’ and…something. Drain the…clin… No. Drink. Drain the drink.”
“Rid yourself by your fear and drain the drink,” Wiley repeated analytically. “The hell does that mean? Is this shit telling us to kill ourselves with the—oh. Oh. Fuck.”
I was not following. “...I’m not following,” I said.
“It is.” Wiley returned to my side, squatting down and nudging me out of the way with their shoulder to peer warily into the trunk. “It’s telling us to kill ourselves, but not these selves. We’re supposed to use…those…to kill our fuckin’ doppelgangers, or whatever they are. That’s how we get rid of the water.”
“Oh,” I echoed. “Fuck.”
We marinated for a moment in silence before Wiley sighed, resigned, and lifted the gloves from the chest, closing their eyes and pulling the fabric snugly over their hands. “Let’s get to work.”