Weed leaf text

I got a promotion to QA from being a package handler and I took a drug test this past Monday and I failed. I am being completely honest right now, I don't do drugs (weed,coke,etc) I barely even drink but I know why I failed my drug test. I am Peruvian and my family came back from Peru the weekend before my test and managed to get some coca (cocaine leaf) tea from our home town. I drank a teacups worth on Saturday and completely forgot about it for my test. Now it says I failed my test for cocaine. Am I going to lose my promotion? AND my job? Has anyone else had an experience similar to mine?? Let me know please anything helps.
Also I am in the miami distribution center if that helps

I’ve known a woman for a month, and I’m beginning to think we might have something special happening. We’ve been swapping stories and secrets the past few weeks, and she been getting increasingly more flirty and touchy, deeper conversations, and sorta getting a clearer look into each others world? (An example of this is that she’s been describing her rooms and personal habits more, like what her dad is like, how her dogs are doing, her fav weed to smoke, u get the picture ) She recently gave me her insta, and idk how to still pursue her without coming off as desperate, and I suck at texting (for me, everything is easier to gauge how she’s really feeling in person, cause over the phone, they could be not caring.) I have the option of just trying to play it cool and not text too much, but I don’t want to turn her off. I’ve also made up my mind to just tell her how I feel the next few days, but idk how to go about it. Open to suggestions

So the other day I’m leaving class at my college. I take night classes so it’s pretty much dark outside as I’m walking to my car. Mind you I park pretty far out in the parking lot because my first class is closer than the one I’m leaving. Typically every car is gone at this point besides the ones my classmates are going to. When I get to my car I notice a Samsung galaxy smartwatch sitting right next to my cars tire. I most certainly would have either ran this thing over pulling in or seen it walking up the curb to my first class? I go through the watch being nosey and it seems to have been owned by a drug dealer as all the texts are back and forths for weed and coke etc. I guess the account or something is still linked. Never had a smart watch before. Am I being paranoid? Scam? Free watch? I’d give it to lost and found but I’d also like to keep the watch and figure out how to reset it. Any advice appreciated
I’ve googled free smartwatches scams and it’s just companies sending them or like email scams for one. Not suspicious watches on the ground. Idk anyone leaving a smartwatch on the ground or tossing one. Watch is prestine and trying to order a charger for it. I’d understand a regular watch on the ground but idk a smart watch just seems off

My best friend is one of those people who makes constant sex jokes, he has a really dirty mind. A little while ago, maybe a month or so, he got a crush on this boy we met at the school's LGBT club. My friend, a freshman, was surprised to find out he was actually a senior. Originally he said he would date him because it would be weird, but recently he told me they are boyfriends. I'm the type of guy who is a people pleaser and I always try to be supportive, so I was. Noone else in our close friend group was, though. I have been sick for the past few days, and my friend just texted me "HELP I JUST ACCIDENTALLY FLASHED [senior]" I was caught completely off gaurd and asked him how the hell you flash someone accidentally. No matter how I asked the question, he kept reply "accident." I said it was okay for him to have secrets and he said "NO" and I asked if he was in the same PE class and got changed together (both my friend and the senior are transgender boys), he replied "NO" again. I decided to ask "so, what situation were you in that caused you to flash him?" and he replied with "uh... drugs." He usually makes weed jokes so it was kinda of obvious that he was lying. He kept spamming me with "weed, crack, cocaine, drugs" and I reassured him it's okay to have secrets, and he just kept going. I told him that drugs would be more concerning than any situation I was thinking of. I said "Okay" and he hasn't responded. I would rather him just tell me he wants to have a secret than keep lying to me. I'm starting to get kind of worried about him, is there anything I should do?

I wish I could go on an entire rant about this man. I'm 23f and hes 25m. I'll keep it short and simple, but basically of all the things he;'s done to hurt me
told me my family doesnt love me (I was previously kicked out, but have since reconciled)
told me my brother was a pussy for committing suicide
cheated on me (he has been cheated on in the past. I caught him texting an old coworker of ours)
has a very short temper and has no comm skills
"cant stand" when I cry and ignores me
calls me names for the smallest things. I once misplaced a broom and he called me a dumb bitch
we got into a massive and out of control fight one day, so I went to our room and grabbed a knife to SH. He thought it was to harm him, so he pointed his gun at my head and threatened to use it on me if I ever hurt him. He denies this ever happened.
steals money from me once in a while (he has my credit card saved) he always says he'll pay me back but I know he never will. He owes me money tracing back years. But what does he spend his money on? oh yeah, the newest technology and his weed addiction and upgrades for his car
Main reason why we broke up is bc he wants kids and i dont. we currently live together, so we split have the rent on a 2 bdr, so we sleep separately now. However, I pay most of the bills and groceries. we had recently resigned the lease, so moving out isnt an option, especially in this economy and our current wages. I'm hoping when I get a new job after school, I can get a better place on my own. Him, he'll most likely have to move back with his family in their small apartment.
Basically what I'm saying is, I recognize all the horrible things he's done and said to me, but I'm still so attached to him. I understand part of it is bc we still live together, but that can't exactly be helped. we also still act like a couple. I occasionally cook, we still kiss and hug and cuddle and have sleepy time together and whatnot, but we're telling people were single.

So, I have this close friend, and fwb. They are diagnosed bipolar, and very much struggle with their mental health, and are very easily influenced. Lately they've been playing the game needy streamer overload, and it had made them REALLY want to experience being high. So today, they took their meds, idk what it's for but it's prescription, and they chewed it when it was supposed to be a slow release. It fully got them high, with similar effects to a weed high. I went to take care of them, and we were chatting a bunch, and they ended up talking about how they haven't been taking their meds and have instead been planning on saving them up and taking like 12 at a time. Their parents keep their medication locked because they have OD'd before, but they allow them to take their meds at school, which has allowed this to happen. And then we were talking later over text, planning a day to hook up, and they suggested a day and said "but that's the day I was planning to od..." and, I'm really not good with serious topics, especially when it comes to drugs because I struggle with them as well, so I just kinda laughed it off saying I would be a much better experience than oding. So they said instead they'd do it the day after, and that afterwords they would stop with the pills. Which means they aren't planning to od to a reeeeally bad point, but like, I'm still worried??? I have no clue what to do in this situation.

So, I have this close friend, and fwb. They are diagnosed bipolar, and very much struggle with their mental health, and are very easily influenced. Lately they've been playing the game needy streamer overload, and it had made them REALLY want to experience being high. So today, they took their meds, idk what it's for but it's prescription, and they chewed it when it was supposed to be a slow release. It fully got them high, with similar effects to a weed high. I went to take care of them, and we were chatting a bunch, and they ended up talking about how they haven't been taking their meds and have instead been planning on saving them up and taking like 12 at a time. Their parents keep their medication locked because they have OD'd before, but they allow them to take their meds at school, which has allowed this to happen. And then we were talking later over text, planning a day to hook up, and they suggested a day and said "but that's the day I was planning to od..." and, I'm really not good with serious topics, especially when it comes to drugs because I struggle with them as well, so I just kinda laughed it off saying I would be a much better experience than oding. So they said instead they'd do it the day after, and that afterwords they would stop with the pills. Which means they aren't planning to od to a reeeeally bad point, but like, I'm still worried??? I have no clue what to do in this situation.

50 Biblical scriptures that address Overcoming Temptation and Addiction, along with their texts:

1. 1 Corinthians 10:13 – “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”
2. James 1:12-15 – “Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him. When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.”
3. Matthew 26:41 – “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
4. Galatians 5:16-17 – “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.”
5. Ephesians 6:11-12 – “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
6. Psalm 50:15 – “Call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me.”
7. 1 Peter 5:8-10 – “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.”
8. 2 Peter 2:19 – “They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for ‘people are slaves to whatever has mastered them.'”
9. Romans 13:14 – “Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.”
10. 1 Corinthians 6:12 – “‘I have the right to do anything,’ you say—but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything’—but I will not be mastered by anything.”
11. 1 Corinthians 15:33 – “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’”
12. James 4:7 – “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”
13. Romans 6:12-14 – “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.”
14. Proverbs 4:14-15 – “Do not set foot on the path of the wicked or walk in the way of evildoers. Avoid it, do not travel on it; turn from it and go on your way.”
15. Hebrews 2:18 – “Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”
16. 2 Timothy 2:22 – “Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”
17. Titus 2:11-12 – “For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.”
18. Hebrews 4:15-16 – “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
19. Psalm 119:11 – “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”
20. Proverbs 20:1 – “Wine is a mocker and beer a brawler; whoever is led astray by them is not wise.”
21. Romans 8:5-6 – “Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.”
22. Ephesians 4:27 – “and do not give the devil a foothold.”
23. Philippians 4:13 – “I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”
24. Colossians 3:5 – “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.”
25. Psalm 141:3-4 – “Set a guard over my mouth, Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips. Do not let my heart be drawn to what is evil so that I take part in wicked deeds along with those who are evildoers; do not let me eat their delicacies.”
26. Job 31:1 – “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman.”
27. Proverbs 6:27-28 – “Can a man scoop fire into his lap without his clothes being burned? Can a man walk on hot coals without his feet being scorched?”
28. Psalm 101:3 – “I will not look with approval on anything that is vile. I hate what faithless people do; I will have no part in it.”
29. 1 John 2:16 – “For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.”
30. Luke 22:40 – “On reaching the place, he said to them, ‘Pray that you will not fall into temptation.'”
31. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 – “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
32. Psalm 23:4 – “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
33. Proverbs 23:20-21 – “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags.”
34. Isaiah 40:29-31 – “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
35. 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 – “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
36. Luke 4:1-13 – “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. The devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.’ Jesus answered, ‘It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’’ The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, ‘I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.’ Jesus answered, ‘It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’’ The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. ‘If you are the Son of God,’ he said, ‘throw yourself down from here. For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’’ Jesus answered, ‘It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’’ When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.”
37. Romans 12:1-2 – “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
38. Ephesians 5:18 – “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.”
39. Proverbs 27:12 – “The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.”
40. Psalm 37:23-24 – “The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.”
41. Philippians 2:13 – “for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”
42. Proverbs 25:28 – “Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control.”
43. 1 Thessalonians 5:6-8 – “So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.”
44. Proverbs 16:32 – “Better a patient person than a warrior, one with self-control than one who takes a city.”
45. Isaiah 41:10 – “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
46. Psalm 119:37 – “Turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to your word.”
47. 2 Corinthians 7:1 – “Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.”
48. Psalm 1:1-3 – “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers.”
49. Proverbs 13:20 – “Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm.”
50. 1 John 5:4-5 – “for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”

These verses offer wisdom and guidance for dealing with temptation and addiction, emphasizing reliance on God’s strength and the importance of spiritual vigilance and moral integrity.

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

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

Here we are again in the shit stew that is the Fallowveil trailer park. We’ve got soul eating strippers, jobs that kill us, and plenty of weirdos, both the trailer trash and the potentially paranormal variety. It’s the place where even your own computer sometimes threatens to kill you. I can’t tell if I should be worried, or annoyed that all my neighbors have such irresponsible web habits. I know it’s not me that brings in all these machine wiping viruses.
So even though I got a system error that literally said “you’re useless and you should die” I’m less interested in that. Stupid thing. Like I don’t already know I’m useless. That’s not what I’m depressed about.
Well… I suppose it's tangentially related.
I hope anyone reading will forgive me. I’m feeling the sting of rejection right now. It was really stupid of me to ask. Especially now. Nobody here really likes me. They’ve only been nice to me as a courtesy because I was almost involved in a god damn shootout. And my idiot self decided that was the perfect time to push one of my few friends all the way away. Never ask your friends out on dates. It ruins everything.
So there’s this woman. I’ve talked about her in the past. Trista Ramone. She lives in the far back corner of the trailer park. You can instantly tell which unit is hers because she’s covered every square inch of the property with gardens and a rabbit hutch. The place usually has beads and colorful flags hanging on its walls as well. She’s kind of a right winger’s nightmare. I know some of those flags represent various lgbtq plus communities.
She and I have been friendly in the past. We’re both night shift workers. We crossed paths quite a bit going to and from work so we struck up a friendship over the years.
Let’s just ripped the band aid off. Recently I’ve started thinking I had… stronger feelings for Trista. I got stupid and decided to tell her about them. She wasn’t interested. I get why. We have very different lifestyles. I like meat, and she thinks the meat industry is murder. I’m not willing to give up meat, and she’s not willing to give up her beliefs. It's as simple as that. Now things are incredibly awkward with one of my closer friends and I’m still spiraling into self loathing, where I belong.
She swore up and down that she absolutely still wants to be friends with me, but I’m not sure I believe her. The look she gave me when I told her I’d like to ask her out. It looked like sadness, but a small part of me is convinced it was pity, or worse, disgust and loathing, and that small part gave me ever shuts the fuck up. But anyway, she gave me permission to write about her.
She is one of the creepy fixtures of our little neighborhood after all. She told me to make her seem as insane and scary as I possibly could and that she should get to kill me at the end. She also handed me a few of her high school yearbooks, advised me to chat with another neighbor of ours who she went to school with, and to only use creepy rumors for the rest.
Part of me is really willing to describe her as awful, but that’s just my anger. I don’t like that part of me. Trista’s not a bad person at all. She’s just weird and she doesn’t want to date me. God damn it, Petunia’s right. I need therapy.
So, I’ve told the story of the sexy, scary lady living in a polycule here in the trailer park. I think she’s got a bigger heart than she lets on. I’ve talked about the stories surrounding the Schroeder Slaughterhouse. Now let’s talk about the hippy everyone thinks is a vampire.
She’s a taller woman, maybe five-seven or eight, and she’s skinny. Her typical wardrobe is… interesting. Try to imagine your typical new-age hippy/stoner girl, wearing colorful sarongs, crop-tops, beanies, baggy sweaters, T-shirts with colorful sayings on them, sandals, boots woven from some sort of exotic plant, beaded necklaces, bracelets, a few too many piercings and some intricate tattoos. Can you picture that kind of person? Well, take that and dip them in “goth” dye. Everything is black, and contrasts to her pale white complexion, her eyes are this unusual violet color, and then make the woman wearing all that seem kind of depressed about something. That’s the look Trista has going on. Like if Wednesday Addams was forced to dress up for Hippy Day.
I’ve heard people call her an emo vampire, but as a former emo myself, she doesn’t fill out all the criteria. She doesn’t typically wear any super tight pants or cake on the eyeshadow. I guess she’s just Trista. It might sound weird (and it is) but the whole thing suits her. Her style, tattoos, and complexion all create this image of skinny vampiric waif with a mysterious past and a freaky sarcastic attitude and I found the whole thing… kinda hot.
Trista keeps to herself. She’s made the most out of her little corner of the trailer park. Like I said, she decked out her unit with garden squares, and a Rabbit pen. No idea why she’s allowed to do that. A lot of these places don’t allow pets. I heard she was also trying to put in a beehive too, but her neighbors are fighting her on that one. Our park is a bit too condensed for bees. She has a permit to grow hemp, but of course it’s not for recreational use. She treats it and uses it to weave things like handbags, clothes, and other stuff. There’s a consignment store in town that sells all kinds of things Trista has crafted herself. So she’s handy and self sufficient too. She paints, she carves wood, she weaves, she crochets, she sews, and who knows what else. She’s so good at her little crafts that apparently she’s able to support herself just selling them and working part time at the Moonlight Inn outside of town.
She’s also relatively friendly. I almost feel bad calling her weird, but here’s the thing, I’ve seen some REALLY weird shit. People jokingly call her a vampire, and she seems to embrace that, but part of me seriously wonders. The big clue is, like I mentioned, she’s completely nocturnal. She’s always asleep during the day, and every blind and curtain is drawn tight. The one time she came out during the day, she had on this full body suit with a helmet with UV glass and everything. Even then, she only showed up to give Petunia a hug, before leaving again.
That was the first time I saw Trista, come to think of it. I was kind of intrigued. It was kind of hard not to be when someone shows up to a community cookout in a freaking astronaut suit. I approached Petunia after she left.
“Who the heck was that?” I wondered.
“MASON! I’m so glad you could make it! You’ve been here about three months now! How’d that job interview go?”
“Oh. It went well. I might be doing janitorial work soon.”
“Night shift?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure.”
“If it’s the night shift, you’ll definitely meet the person who just left. That’s Trista. She’s the girl with the rabbits in the far corner. Poor girl. She’s got a really bad skin condition. Can’t let sunlight touch her.”
“Oh. Is she like… albino or something?”
“No, she’s got pigment. I don’t remember what the condition is called. I guess it started in high school or something. You’d have to ask her. And hey! If you work the night shift, you’ll probably get to chat with her!”
Petunia wasn’t wrong. I started working as a nighttime janitor for a number of local businesses. That was when I first started noticing the pale goth hippy. She rides around on a moped, with her dark hair and her sarong barely billowing behind her. I couldn’t see her face through the helmet, but she waved to me as she passed by.
The next time I saw her, she was jogging, but here’s where it gets weird. When I first stepped outside, all I saw was a blur. It actually startled me as I whipped toward it, but then there was this skinny tattooed pixie, somehow still looking like a stonehippy/vampire in jogging gear. I swear she was moving inhumanly fast when I first noticed her. That was when we introduced ourselves. She actually jogged over to say hello.
“Hey! You’re the new guy right?”
“Oh, uh, yeah. My name’s Mason!” I reached out to shake the pretty girl’s hand, like an awkward loser. She smirked and shook my hand. Her grip was weirdly strong, and a bit cold.
“I’m Trista. I’m the weirdo in the back with the rabbits.”
“Trista… oh, are you the one who has a thing with sunlight? I think Petunia mentioned you.”
“Yup! That’s me. Xerodoma pigmentosum. Sunlight hurts. I hate that it hurts.” She lamented.
“That’s gotta be rough,” I said sympathetically.
“You get used to it. You work at night?”
“Yeah. Works better for me.”
“I get that.”
And so on and so on. She’s pretty cool, with a bit of hilarious snark in there. And she secretly procured recreational weed she was willing to share. I kept working the night shift just hoping for another chance to talk to her and possibly buy a joint. Eventually she invited me over to share a joint. The inside of her place was actually pretty sparse and spartan compared to the outside. Though she was a fan of hanging beads. Most of the main room was taken up by her various crafting projects and supplies. Hemp weaves, some paintings, and even a wood carving of what I think was a rabbit, but it wasn’t anywhere near complete.
I followed her to her kitchen where she reached into the very back of her pantry and pulled out a shoebox. Inside was her stash, but there was something else which I found very strange. It was a pack of syringes and a thing I assume is to sterilize syringes. I know what you’re thinking, and that was my first thought too. It’s a poor neighborhood, the woman already smokes weed illegally, it’s not that big a shock that maybe she was involved in other drugs too. I decided not to ask at the time. We shared our joint, and we laughed, a lot. She made fun of me for being a lightweight, while I got completely hypnotized staring at the patterns of a shawl she had woven.
Months went by and we got closer, but I couldn’t forget those syringes. After a while I got worried. I’ve seen what heroine does to people. So the next time I went over to smoke and eat (vegan) pizza with her, I asked.
“Trista? Are you using anything other than weed?”
“Drugs?”
“Yeah.”
“No. Why?”
“You can tell me if you are.”
“Mason, sweetheart, I’m a stoner. I don’t fuck around with anything else and I never have.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Okay. Can I ask what that set of syringes are for?”
“Oh. In my stash box? Those are… part of my condition. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Oh. Is it like… embarrassing?”
“Yeah. So don’t ask. Can we just watch a movie?”
So I don't ask anymore. But I still have no idea what she does with those syringes. Based on what I read about that Xerodoma Pigmentosum thing she says she has, I have no clue what she would need to inject herself with.
Another time she asked me to check on her rabbits for her during the day, as her usual “sitter” had something come up. All I had to do was chop up the lettuce and carrots she left out. As I was enjoying the adorable fluffy faces, one of Trista’s neighbors, a woman named Bridget, poked her head outside her door.
“Hey. Do you know what Trista injects those rabbits with?”
“I… what?”
“I’ve seen her use syringes on those rabbits. She said she was just giving them medicine, but I swear I see her inject them every week.”
“I… I wouldn't know. She just asked me to feed them.”
“I love Trista, but that always seemed so weird. She has to know vaccines are a hoax!” I tuned the woman out after that one. My mind was on that set of syringes. Why would she be using them on rabbits? These things were her pets.
I was starting to crush on her by then. But I couldn’t help feeling weirded out by that. I was actually going to confront her, but the next time I came to visit, she was literally inside the Rabbit hutch, on her back, squealing with delight as her rabbit friends nuzzled and played with her.
“Bonnibelle! That tickles! Marcy! No chewing. Finn? Watch where you’re sticking that foot! Jake? Where are you? EEEEE Lumpy! Not the neck!”
It was as silly and adorable as it sounds. She was forced to whip herself upright when two of her little friends tried to burrow under her dress. She finally stood up with a laugh, cradling a rabbit in her arms and cooing at it.
There was just no way in hell this woman was doing anything that would hurt these animals. Bridget is a paranoid antivax weirdo anyway. If Trista was using syringes on the rabbits, I was convinced it was only for their benefit.
So life went on. I got more and more reclusive over the years. Petunia, Trista, and my next door neighbor Fred were the only things keeping me remotely connected to the outside. And so we get to now. So let’s see. What are the stories about the weird vampire woman?
Well, there’s the fact that she jogs at night, solo, in a poor neighborhood. Petunia keeps the shitty people contained and behaving for the most part, but I still wouldn’t exactly call it safe, especially for a young skinny woman. But she does it without a care in the world.
There’s one strange event that some people like to connect to this. I never knew this guy, but from what I hear he was a total weirdo who leered at anyone even remotely female. And this is despite the fact he was married. His name was Josh.
I remember him a bit. He’s the guy that Petunia chased away from one of her barbecues. Supposedly he was heard saying inappropriate things to the groups of ten year old girls that were playing in the bounce house Petunia rented. Telling them how pretty they were. Trying to coax them to take off their jackets. Police reports were filed but ultimately nothing could be proven. The guy's wife, Carole, always defends him for some reason.
But anyway, I remember hanging out with Trista one night a little over a year ago. She hadn’t gone jogging like she normally did. I asked her what was up with that.
“That weirdo, Josh has started catcalling when I pass his place. It weirds me out.”
“There aren’t other people who do that at night? I’m still shocked you jog alone.”
“Not like this. I can flip off a wolf whistler. But this guy… he keeps trying to get me to stop and talk to him, and when I don’t? He shouts about my ass. I’m gonna have to talk to Petunia about that shithead, if anybody can reign him in, it’s her.”
I’m gonna guess she never got a chance. Two days later, the whole town was awoken by sirens. I was getting ready for my shift when I heard them. I walked down the road a bit to see if I could figure out what was going on. The cops were heading toward the other side of the park, so I couldn’t see much. But I did notice Trista, in her jogging gear, skulking in the shadows. I wondered if she was in trouble. But before I could call out to her, she sprinted straight to Petunia's house and banged on the door. Petunia welcomed her inside, and that was all I saw. I still wasn’t sure what was going on, so I just shrugged and headed to work, figuring I’d text Trista later.
I didn’t learn till later that Josh was found dead. He was lying prone, face down, partly hidden by bushes at the edge of the park. His neck was cut open. He’d bled out rapidly. He had a knife in his hand, and officially it’s believed he fell on it and accidentally killed himself. There was a cocktail of drugs in his system so most people accept that explanation. But others swear they saw Trista out for her jog around the same time Josh would have been bleeding to death. She got questioned, and she swore she didn’t see anything. Without evidence, there was nothing else that could be proven.
Trista’s a friend. I know that guy was being creepy to her. So I’m happy to take her word for what happened, even if my seeing her going to Petunia’s pokes a bit of a hole in that. I can’t be sure it was Trista though. So I’m not saying a word. But if a certain creep attacked a certain lady who is rumored to be a vampire, it’s not that surprising to me that he ended up dead after bleeding to death. I’m not all that broken up about it.
I’m not the one spreading that story. Josh’s wife was the one who started the rumor. So now some people are even more convinced that the weird nocturnal hippy chick is secretly a vampire.
She’s no killer. No matter what they say. She would only have defended herself.
So that’s all the stories I’ve heard that have any credibility to them. There’s more people who swear she and Petunia perform weird rituals, and people who saw her moving “inhumanly fast” and such.
But now I have to share what I found in the yearbooks Trista gave me. I wasn’t really expecting much. I checked her senior yearbook out first. She looks about the same. Pale, goth, hippy, and sort of sad. She kind of looks even sadder in these photos if I’m being honest, but that’s high school for you. She graduated in the top half of her class, no sports or extracurriculars. I’m left wondering how she managed to go to school at the time of sun was so bad for her. I’ll have to ask her about that. So nothing really new there.
It was the yearbook from her junior year where things got really interesting. I was in shock when I found her. Trista is somehow impossible to miss, but unrecognizable all at once. She’s full of color! She wore more typical tie dye hippy attire. Bright vibrant pinks, reds, blues, greens, and yellows, in every photo, and holy shit was she busy. Captain of the soccer team, first chair flutist, president of the “green living” club and the “vegan alliance,” top ten in her class, it was all incredible. I think the main reason I didn’t recognize her was her skin. It was tan, as though she were out in the sun a lot. Furthermore there were photos of her playing sports and standing outside in bright sunlight.
It was like her disease wasn’t there, which confused me. She told me it was something called Xeroderma Pigmentosa. But that’s a genetic condition. She would have had that from birth.
I sent her a text, wondering about this.
- Hey! Just went through your yearbooks. What happened? You had color? Did you discover Linkin Park?
- My disease happened. Right at the end of Jr. year. That’s why I wasn’t there for the final class photo.
- But your disease is genetic… isn’t it?
- I guess it was dormant in me.
- So it just… happened?
- Pretty much.
- I’m sorry.
- I got over it. Mostly. It was hard. My parents were both hardcore vegan naturalists and we lived in a place that was all natural light and such, so I had to live in a shed for a bit while they built a space for me. But in my family? We kinda lean into whatever life throws at us. It took months of depression to come to terms with it. All of a sudden I couldn’t be out in the sun, and I had new dietary needs that absolutely required non-vegan sources. So I leaned into it. I was a vampire now. I can dig dark colors and “vampire style.” I could make it my own by avoiding leather. And I’d be as vegan as I possibly could.
- You’re kind of awesome.
- Damn straight. So I learned to love the night too and now, here I am.
I gained new respect for her after that. Frankly I feel kinda shitty about making fun of her for being a vampire. There might not be anything paranormally weird about her after all.
She sent me one more text telling me I should talk to a guy named Frankie. She’d gone to school with him. He’s a decent enough guy. Works in the Bicounty mall in town.
I had to wait a day or two for another of Petunia’s get togethers to talk to him.
“Hey!” I said awkwardly as I tried to figure out how to strike up conversation with someone I haven’t really spoken to in a long time. “Frankie, right?”
“Oh. Yeah. Been a while. How are you Mason? You okay after that whole thing at Red Nights?”
“I’m trying to be. Look, I’ll cut to the chase. You went to school with Trista Ramone, right?”
“Ol’ Boho Ramone? Yeah. We were sort of friendly. But I was a jerk to vegans back then. Why do you ask?”
“I’ve been hanging out with her. She’s being all mysterious.” He chuckled at that. “She said I should talk to you to learn more about her… weirdness? Everyone thinks she’s a vampire now.”
“She’s totally a vampire. I have no idea what else to call her?”
“Why do you say that?”
“What did she tell you about school?”
“Nothing. She just showed me two yearbooks. Between Junior and Senior year she went from colorful club president, to lonely vampire, because of her disease.”
“Nah man. I don’t want to talk bad about her. But she was kind of a bitch, junior year. She wasn’t just a colorful vegan. She was one of those “holier than thou” types who scoffed and talked down to anyone who dared to eat meat. Her “hippy” thing meant she never hung out with the popular girls but still, she acted like she owned the place at times. I was friends with this weird guy named Steven Jones. He was just kind of a weirdo. Skulking around in the background, you know? He HATED Trista. For a while I totally understood. I thought she was kinda stuck up. But this guy was like… irrationally enraged by that girl’s existence. I guess he tried to ask her out when he was a freshman and she politely declined. But he took that shit personally.”
“Huh. So like… why’s that matter?”
“Because Steven kept saying to anyone who gave him a second look, that he was gonna ‘ruin’ her. Never elaborated. But then the last month of school rolls around, Trista gets assaulted by an unknown assailant and a week later she’s got this new disease. Meanwhile, Steven spent a week strutting around the school looking smug, and saying ‘she got what she deserved.’ Then he disappears too. Teachers said he moved away.”
“She was assaulted?”
“Yeah. Someone in a face wrap tackled her while she was at one of her protests at the meat factory. The dude freaking BIT her.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. I was there. I came to the protest. I’ll admit I was trying to hit on Trista or one of the other girls there. But yeah. Dude dressed in all gray with a face wrap just charged in and went right for Trista. Knocked her down, bit her like a freaking zombie, then ran away before anyone could stop him. Didn’t even take his face wrap off. It was freaky, man.”
“What the actual fuck.”
“That’s what we all said. Trista needed a stitch. But while she was at the hospital, I guess she started getting more symptoms. She was out for the rest of the year. From then on, she was like she is now. Total vampire.”
“Was Steven a vampire?”
“I dunno. Probably. Little dickhead is what he is. Must have been him that attacked Trista, but nobody could prove it. Bite mark didn’t match or something. So why are you asking? You hang out with her at night right? You asking her out or something?”
“Oh. No. Just a friend.”
That was all I really learned from Frankie. It’s quite a story, and it’s full of unknowns that Trista refuses to explain. So I guess I’ll let readers be the judge. Is she a “real” vampire? Or just a weirdo? All I know is, she’s totally standing behind me right now and now I’m dead. Bleh.
I did come back to life to talk to Trista once I finished writing this. She enjoyed it. I may as well include that interaction.
I went to her place on my night off. She read my take on her and what the neighbors thought and she grinned. “Ha! I’m a total monster!” She chuckled. “So. What do YOU think, Mason? Am I a vampire?” She cocked an eye and playfully gnashes her teeth at me, making a pleasant little click.
I sighed. “No idea. You’re Trista. And… you’re my friend. I’m sorry if I made things awkward.”
She looked surprised by that. “Aw. Thanks Mason. You’re my friend too. It’s okay. I’m flattered.”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“So we’re cool?”
“Absolutely not. We’re both weird shut ins.” She laughed. It was good to hear her laugh. It made me happy.
“Yeah but I got the ‘mysterious vampire’ thing going.”
“You have dirt in your hair from rolling around with bunnies. And you’re a vegan.”
“Bite me.”
“Says the vampire.”
“You know, if I were a vampire, I could have bitten you when we both went to the slaughterhouses a few weeks ago.”
“That just makes me stupid.”
“You’re not stupid, Mason. You’re not a loser either.”
“So. You know of any other good spooky town stories that I can do next?
“Oh, sure. You ever heard the tale of Salome? She was a witch who would mash up the seeds of a Sinapis Alba plant to make a diabolical potion she’d dump on herself. They called her the ‘Witch of the Sands.’”
I’m embarrassed to admit it took me four days to realize Trista was just fucking with me. I only figured it out when I looked up Sinapis Alba and learned that mashing the seeds just makes mustard. “Salomi the sand-witch.” Well played, vampire hippy…
Sexy Neighbor
Haunted Slaughterhouse

The hottest. I was like, 17, and Taet and I were walking about. Trying to find a dime bag and some shag, and a bit of bevit bubbly. POP POP. an she shows up in a tiny dress, sitting in a stay it way twipping it up, and getting giddy as hetcha about her new poly way in love. And I'm like, HOTSSY MAUIT. She sold me the gram on a golden nuggy. And Taet, man, he hit that!!! And I never realized it, but Taet has syphilitic cancer, and I got Maui Waui out of it. She ended up dating 7 of my gaefeet friendship close nit bevit. POP POP.
And well, I wanted to say thank you to the twerker Janet Maete Evalyne. And was thinking about her, in this dang guy kind of way. The 7 she got syphilitic with, well, 2 of them were a bomber on airsquadron, but turncoated or some shit in Rusalitpat. And the 6, well, Taet turned out to be the terrorist that shot up Russia recently. I was sitting there, being, like, wtf!!!?
I know I had a great job for the summer once. But knowing so many international celebrities is like, HUGE. One ain't alive, 3 on row to lip it again with her. And something like septic cooler is her job. I finally got ahold of her. She's out in LA, kicking it with any gaeffete friend, getting lobit on native weed out that way. and I'm like, dang, I coulda bumpit with her, and got into the circle terker with her boosht, but it's like, shit mang. Where do I go to find classy tatra like her?!!? I saw her out and about in a dream but it was just a random whatever to me. She texted me thanks to geettefed, and I'm like, woa. She still got smock all on her, and a bit of corlitpat [latin for ganarea], and I'm like, shit man, thanks for that business conference back in 18. I was like, stranded on a date, with Taet as wingman, and he tried to make up to me for kicking it wif you. And now, I don't got no stastds, and I can't believe how hot you were once upon ago. Anywho, I wonder if any ex that way recall who it were too.
And well, Jon P. he got the clap already. It's a smorgishbourgede to they right about now.
And that's why I dedicated my life to earning a degree in linguistics to author medicinal research. And have one on field-science and tree-theory. But as of that, I think I'll get to a MD styled paper soon. Take it ez, and always bring a wing man. It'll save you so much grief when you finally get a wife. MUAH she and I don't dig into much on that shit, she got it too, bit of random men here there when her wingman saved her shit about. It be like that.

I have gardened before but never had to fill my own beds or take care of the soil because it was in a community garden. I built my own beds this spring and am about to fill them.
My plan is to dig up the ground underneath and get the weeds out, then put a layer of leaf and pine litter down. I’m going to put about 4 inches of topsoil down after that. I’m only doing 4 inches on top because I fully expect everything to just grow into the ground underneath. I’m not putting down any netting or tarp. I don’t know much about fertilizer. From reading I think I’m going to add banana peels and eggshells to the topsoil and dump in some earth worms. I want everything to be all natural, and I don’t really want to use any manure products.
Is this a good plan? Any tips or advice?
WHAT IM GROWING FOR CONTEXT In the vegetable bed I am planting cucumbers, tomatoes, peas, beans, bell, chili, and banana peppers, summer squash, and pumpkins. In the flower bed I am planting zinnias, cosmos, marigolds, straw flowers, bachelor buttons, sweet peas, and snap dragons. Yes, these are both large beds and I’ve accurately spaced everything. In the smaller herb bed I’m planting lavender, dill, thyme, basil, oregano, and cilantro. In the butterfly/wildflower bed I have lupine, delphinium, daisies, canterbury bells, milkweed, and blue bonnets. The soil here is dry and dense, it soaks up water. I’m in the northeast US so it’s a bit rocky/piney from the forests but I am in farming country so I assume it’s decent for growing.
Looking for soil advice but honestly any tips on any of the garden is helpful.

Hello! I am preparing to go back to school in the Fall for my Economics MA. I have already started re-learning LaTeX and have picked up a book on introductory mathematical economics as well as Varian's textbook on microeconomics, and an introductory econometrics text. I am using OverLeaf to process LaTeX, and I'm trying to explore other cloud-based, collaborative research tools that I can learn for Graduate School. I'm wondering what combination of tools would best empower and prepare me for this journey?
I have a bachelor's degree in mathematics, so from that background I am inclined to pick up an iPad or Surface computer to allow me to digitally work out problems, but I don't know how much PROOFS enter into graduate coursework? If it would even be necessary? I plan on taking notes in TeX and writing papers or research projects there as well. Can anyone speak to that?
I asked ChatGPT this question and I have its response in the comments below... Any thoughts or feedback on that would be greatly appreciated as well!
Thank you so much!

Okay so to preface, I know I am young and I still have my whole life ahead of me, but this truly feels like something I don't know how to come back from. The beginning is a vent but the last paragraph is the actual question.
TL;DR I was in a completely healthy happy relationship that now after it ended, I don't know how to move on or love again. i feel completely stuck on him and would do anything to get him back.
I (18F) met my ex-boyfriend Nick (20M) after I graduated high school through a mutual friend. He was on a road trip at the time to visit his family back home, he lived across the country from his family for work, I had gotten his Snapchat through one of my close girlfriends who was dating one of his friends. One of the first things I was told was he had never been in a relationship, and never kissed a girl. I thought this was INSANE because if you saw this man (tall, muscular, dark hair and iconic jawline) you wouldn't believe for a second that he doesn't have girls fawning all over him.
Ironically, I had gotten his snap right as he left for this week-long road trip, so the first week we communicated was solely through pictures. I thought he was dry at first, but he was really (and I mean really) cute. I ended up getting the courage to call him so we could properly chat. He was super funny, sweet, and nerdy. I remember I couldn't wait for our first date. Fast forward a month and Nick and I are dating, things are going better than ever. I truly have never felt more loved, supported, and protected than when I was with him. He bought me flowers "just because", and would keep his fridge stocked with my favorite drinks. He taught me how to play chess and video games, would always have a hand on the small of my back, and for the entire length of our relationship, I never so much as touched a door handle.
I have a history of problems with mental health, specifically eating disorders and depression. Even though I was his first relationship, he handled it in stride. I occasionally had panic attacks, and somehow he just knew innately how to deal with them. One thing I had never experienced before was someone lightly blowing on me while having a panic attack, which I have since learned is one of the only things that can calm me down. I had asked him once how he knew what to do and he just said it just "felt right" . That was how things worked with him. He saw a problem and solved it. I barely ever had to ask him to do anything more than once if at all. My family loved him, and he helped my dad out around the house, joked around with my sister, and had a great relationship with my mom. We were the couple my single friends wanted to be like. I had been through so many awful relationships and situationships that I truly thought this was the universe apologizing.
The issue, however, comes down to how we grew up. Nick grew up in a very religious and right-wing state, whereas I grew up more west coast in a relatively liberal area. Before I met Nick, when I started recovery from my ED, I discovered marijuana. Weed was something that genuinely helped me eat, deal with my anxiety, and helped me sleep. I can admit during my senior year of high school I took it a bit far, and definitely smoked more than my fair share. He knew about this early into the relationship, and he never really liked it, but he knew it was part of my life. Being someone who grew up religious, Nick was adamantly anti-weed, and I knew this so while we both knew about my usage, it was kind of an unspoken issue. I never smoked around him, avoided calling or messaging him when I was high to avoid him being uncomfortable, and I did my best to not talk to my friends about weed when around him either.
Fast forward a few more months, and we had plans to go to the zoo after I had gone on a hike with my friends. He picked me up and drove me to a parking lot off the highway and explained that he wanted to talk. I have pretty bad abandonment issues so I immediately went into fight or flight mode and asked if he was breaking up with me. With tears in his eyes, and not looking at me, Nick mumbled yes. Cue the instant and debilitating panic attack from me (arguably the worst one I've ever had). He somehow managed to calm me down enough to talk, and he explained that the weed was a huge issue for him even though he said he was fine with it in the past. I was shocked and blindsided because as far as I knew, we were just going to the zoo. I tried to explain how it helps me and I could quit if he wanted me to, and he said that was not what he wanted. he just couldn't think of me the same way knowing I smoke. While we were talking, I had texted my mom to come get me. We were trying to work things out, at this point we are both crying, he said he loves me and wanted to be with me, but he doesn't think he could get over this. My mom gets to the parking lot, I sort of stumbled to the car, basically holding myself together by a thread. As soon as I closed the door I screamed. A blood curdling scream that held so much anguish and pain that my mom started crying. I truly felt like I had lost a limb.
Those three days without contact were brutal, and on the fourth day, I caved and called him. We met up that day (I called him at 5am and we met up around 6am) and we both apologized. He said he felt like he made a huge mistake, and that he hadn't been able to stop thinking about me. I promised I would stop smoking weed, and we both swore to each other that there would be no more secrets or issues between us, that we would talk about how we feel as soon as we feel like something is wrong.
For a while this worked, the no-smoking wasn't too bad, even though it was still a point of contention between us. But then I started to remember why I smoked in the first place. I became more depressed, food stopped looking good, and I was withdrawing into myself. He noticed this and we talk about it, but ultimately there was nothing we could do, because I knew I would lose him if I went back to smoking.
Things were good for a while, we talked about everything, and every issue got resolved within the week if not the day. I had my person back, and life felt good again. Everything was going smoothly up unitl a few weeks before our 6 months (I know this was a lot to happen in 6 months). I started to feel Nick going distant, not cold or anything, and he said nothing was wrong, but I could tell something was nagging at him. One Monday, he called me and said he wanted to talk. This immediantly raised red flags because last time he said that we broke up. we facetimed and he confessed he was feeling like he wasn't being true to himself in the relationship. He felt like he wasn't going to the gym as often as he wants, and he doesn't have any time to himself. This one conversation ended in him driving to my house, a hours-long confession of everything he had been bottling up, and when he left that evening, I was single again.
My actual question paragraph is below:
I hope now everyone has context for why this relationship was so influencial in my life, and now getting to the part i need advice on. It has currently been about a month and a half since we broke up, and though I was half-hearted trying on dating apps, and I am somewhat talking to a guy right now, I can't stop thinking about Nick. I know if it didn't work out not once but twice, its probably going to happen, but I haven't had such a deep connection so fast before, and I don't want to give up on us just yet. its not that I don't want a relationship right now, but if its not with Nick I don't know if I want one ever, he taught me to never accept less than I deserve, and that I am worth loving and being treated like a princess. I have never felt more appreciated, safe, or cherished than when I was with Nick. Is it worth moving on? Or am I leaving my soulmate? Is it possible to feel love like this again? Is it worth messaging him or will I just get my heart broken instead?
Sorry for the long post, I guess I needed to get stuff off my chest. Any advice or similar experiences are welcomed, thank you!!

i (23f) have a younger sister, “Susan” (21f) that i believe might be experiencing a psychiatric crisis or something? mental health issues is very genetic in my family, i myself was in and out of the hospital about 13 times from ages 12-17 and struggled with a myriad of issues; my concern is coming from a place of love and not judgement. a little background on Susan: our parents separated when she was 6 months old and she never had a relationship with our dad. our stepdad met our mom when she was 4, and he has been in our life since. he wasn’t the calmest guy. he were taken from our parents custody when she was 11 and she was in kinship with our aunt for a year. fast forward to high school, she had some issues with attendance and completing things, she said this was all anxiety based. in high school she was able to keep a job as a hostess in a nice restaurant for 2 years until she was fired for thinking her managers were talking about her behind her back and discussing her concerns with coworkers. after several attempts to try to clear the aistraighten out the issue with no success, she was let go. interestingly, my mom had the same thing happen to her right before we were removed and she was let go from a bank. my mom ended up needing inpatient for paranoia because she thought people were recording her and hiding listening devices in her car. since Susan lost her hostess job, she hasn’t been able to keep a job for longer than a few weeks to a month. she has issues with hygiene as well as feeding herself, she’s lost a lot of weight in the last year and a half. she’s had issues with stealing from family as well as stores. she’s faced legal action because of this. she also smokes weed often (it’s legal, no judgement). in the last year and a half, Susan has been violent towards our family. we have two younger sisters 15 and 13, and she has tried to fight them both over thinking they were talking badly about her. she has threatened to kill our stepdad and then herself. she waves a knife around and screams at us to get us to do what she wants us to, which is usually sit quietly in the living room without talking. if she hears talking, she comes back in and screams asking what we’re saying about her. it’s terrifying. i’ve had to go pick my sisters up and bring them to my apartment because they’re so scared of her at this point. i keep telling my parents that when this happens, they should call the police. not because i want her in trouble, but because it’s scary and children live in the house. most recently, she texted me and said she had a religious experience and she believes prayer works and god is the answer. we aren’t a religious family, and she in the past was never, and i mean never, someone who was interested in religion. she used to be into crystals and spirituality but she now says that is evil. this morning, i got a text from her saying she knows for a fact the neighbor is keeping a woman hostage in his house. she says she can hear screaming but nobody else has ever heard this. i just want to help her, and the behavior is getting worse. i don’t know what to do because i don’t live with her anymore and our parents don’t call 911 when something happens. does this all sound like a psychiatric break or am i overreacting? i know schizophrenia can set in around this time but i don’t know if she is exhibiting the symptoms. what can i do?

It’s been about 2 weeks and I wake up every morning with this insane feeling of depression. I open my phone and go on to check all her social to see if she’s online and I can’t stop myself from crying, she keeps telling me there’s a chance we can get back together and says she wants to see me soon, for a little more on the lying thing, I lied to her for about 5 months that I quit smoking weed but never did and she finally found out and broke up with me after 6 years, now that where broken up I see all the wrongs I did not just in the past but everyday leading up to it. I don’t know what to do anymore if I’m gonna be honest, I never was one to reach out for help and always though I could do it on my own but this hit me so deep that I talked to my dad about everything and got a therapist, I’m trying to get a new job too while I’m at it and have gotten so much done in these last two weeks but it all feels like it’s for nothing Bec if I’m not with her then it’s not even worth it anymore. Yes I’ve texted the hotline, yes I’ve been admitted to a hospital, and yes I’m only a 19 and basically still a kid but this has been the hardest two weeks of my life, I lost my brother two years ago and it didn’t hurt like this.

TLDR: 12 step meetings are crazy religious and I don't know how to cope. Advice appreciated.
Backstory: I used to be a heavy stoner, marijuana maintenance kept me clean from everything else; however I got some bad bud. It ended up being synthetic laced with bath salts. To make a long story short, becoming inebriated/high/drunk will make me psychotic now (no need for meds when I'm sober) and I'm now volun-told to do 5 meetings a week that have to be a 'pathway to recovery', as per my sober living.
The issue I have with 12 step recovery is that it is religious. They call it a spiritual program, however: spiritual practice + higher power = Religion (its just a fact, making your higher power a person or group just deifies them).
To make matters worse my area is highly christian and I'm a very gay, very devout atheist. I've been called a fa66ot at one of these meetings. I don't have a car (at least for two and half more months), and even when I do its like a 30min drive to the closest gay club house.
I've been told, "You are nothing without God", "You can't stay sober without God", "You must give your life and will over to God" etc. Literally every meeting feels like a church service. I've been sober from weed for 1.5 years, and all other drugs 4.5 years.
Monday at our in-house meeting I was told to read out of one of the literatures for the third step (giving yourself to God), I was not happy about it but complied, and the counselor (who has less sobriety than me) said in front of the whole community that I was not serious about my recovery. I blew up and said, "I am serious about my recovery, I just don't fuck with AA". He felt some kind of way and it was not a vibe.
I've tried going to smart recovery, pagans in recovery, literally anything to escape the Christian-ness, but they are further away and nobody wants to carpool with me thereso im paying out my ass in ubers. They are also way less frequent and normally don't meet the 5 a week quota. I've also tried going to body issue meetings, and self harm meetings because they count for my pathway, but still ubers/quota.
If anybody has some advice on how to deal/cope with this I'm all ears. If I'm just being sensitive please give me a reality check.

Here’s mine:

• Wouldn’t respond to me for 8+ hours, often no Goodmorning or goodnight texts
• refused to work on better communication because “that’s just how he was”
• Starting fights over little things and finding problems where there shouldn’t be
• Ruining moments that should’ve been nice by finding something wrong and causing a scene
• Calling me a “cunt” and a “bitch”
• Calling me the most disrespectful person he’s ever met
• Calling me the most negative person he’s ever met
• Hypocritically being negative when I’d try to brighten the mood and keeping me in a sad mood
• Telling me he doesn’t care how I feel and that nobody in the world will
• Telling me he was just an asshole but I was a bitch
• Trying to blame me for the reasons he cheated
• Trying to blame anyone but himself for his cheating
• Every time I would try to bring something up he would flip it and bring something up to make me feel bad so I’d drop it
• Never understanding me to the point of me going in circles explaining just trying to get some understanding
• Ignored whenever I’d cry
• He’d compare all my struggles to his own as if it was a competition
• He’d compare his successes to things I should be doing
• Didn’t accept the boundaries I’d try to make
• Was selfish and controlling in the bedroom
• Used manipulation to get me to do what he wanted without having to say anything
• The yelling and rage he knew intimidated me
• He acted like he hated me but said he loved me
• He saw the worst in me, assumed I had bad intentions
• Always criticized me for things he wanted me to change
• Was ableist and didn’t care I was disabled
• Invalidated my feelings I was not allowed to be sad
• My emotions made him extremely uncomfortable
• Stonewalling me and walking away far ahead of me on trips
• Telling me that I was the one lacking accountability which only confused me
• Keeping me in a state of confusion trying to always explain
• Blame shifting
• Using my empathy against me
• Telling me he wanted to breakup with me every time he cheated
• Praise and then devalue cycle
• Pressuring me to make more money
• Never helping with any chores
• Spending all his money on stupid things he didn’t need
• Taking advantage of me and my money, expecting me to buy him weed
• Blaming me for not caring about him enough when I tried to say no
• Not understanding my needs or accommodating me in any way
• Throwing me under the bus to make me look bad to others
• Resenting me for having a savings and family support
• Moving me across the country where I had nothing

I’ve been with my husband for a couple of years now, married a few months. I caught him out in a pretty big lie last weekend and it’s unravelled so many things. So many times that I thought that what he was saying was strange, or seemed far-fetched all make sense now. The lies aren’t even big or to hide something that would hurt someone’s feelings, it’s just small stuff but the lie is what makes it huge for me. I’ll give a couple of examples to provide a bit of context:
EXAMPLE 1
When we met, he told me he had tried to kill himself in a car crash when he was 19, that it was a split second decision and to never tell his parents because it would crush them. I dutifully kept his secret.
A few days ago, I found out that there was someone else in the car from an offhand comment made by one of his parents. When I asked him later why he had lied about it, he said that he didn’t remember the crash, has no memories before or for a while after. I asked why he would try to kill himself with someone else in the car. He maintained that “it was a bit about killing myself”, before restating that he had no memory and “I don’t know what to tell you”. Very defensive, yelling and crying.
I asked him again a couple of days later (in one of our attempts to resolve the situation) saying that either he has lied to me since we met, or he tried to take someone else out with him. He said he didn’t remember but that he thought it was suicide because he was so deeply unhappy at that time in his life. I said “so you tried to take your girlfriend out with you? Because that’s murder”. He then said he didnt know the real reason. I then asked why he would definitively tell me it was a suicide attempt if he didn’t know the real reason. He couldn’t tell me. I then asked why he seemed to remember specifics when I asked him at the start of the relationship (“I was driving home from dads after dinner, it was a split second decision”) but now couldn’t even tell me if it was an accident or suicide. Admitted that it was silly to claim suicide attempt, but still didnt admit to lying.
EXAMPLE 2
I received a sapphire bracelet from my mum for Christmas last year. Boxing Day, he told me that “oh sapphire! it’s just like the ring my mum got you”. I asked him what he was talking about, and he said he didn't know. I said “no, your mum got me emerald earrings”. He said “ah yes that’s what I must have been thinking about”. I knew something was up but I left it at that because we were at family's house.
Later I asked him directly if his mum had given a sapphire ring to his ex. He said no, he was just confused about the earrings. I said I wouldn’t care, but that I don't want to be lied to. He said no, he was just confused.
Two weeks later his mum was on the phone on speaker (she didn't realise she was on speaker) and she said “I’ve asked for that sapphire ring back from [ex] and given it to [sister in law]”. I told him “I fucking knew it, why did you lie to me?” He said he didn't remember and that he genuinely got confused, and that he was “an idiot” for not remembering. I told him I’d be far more upset about being lied to than I would about a gift your mum gave to someone before we met. He said “I know, and that’s why I’m not lying to you!”
In all the other current issues going on, I brought this issue up again in the context of the other lies. The conversation went like this:
Me: Why did you lie to me about that, even when your mum mentioned it? Him: I already told you, I got confused, I totally forgot Me: How did you forget when I asked you directly, with specifics? I asked you “Did your mum give a sapphire ring to [ex’s name]” and you told me no. Him: I got my wires crossed, I was talking about the earrings Me: but you specifically mentioned a sapphire ring, which was exactly what it was. Him: I don’t remember who she gave it to. Me: So you do remember there was a ring… then why didn’t it jog your memory when I asked you directly? Him: I already apologised for this, we’ve been through this Me: What? No, after your mum got off the phone, you told me again that you’d forgot about it and you couldn’t remember anything about it. Him: Yeah, after the phone call with mum - we had a conversation the next day which I vividly remember where I told you I lied so as not to hurt your feelings.
I have no recollection of this conversation, but it would directly contradict claims he made seconds prior about ‘getting his wires crossed’, thinking it was about my earrings, and having no memory of it. When I asked why he had contradicted himself, he said he didn’t understand. It’s making me feel crazy.
There are actually many more examples like this, but over and over again, I’ve told him that I can handle the truth, but begged him not to lie to me. I caught him out in a lie in the first couple of months of us dating. When he said it was to protect my feelings, I told him that I would rather the truth than a lie from him. He promised never to lie to me again.
Over the last couple of years, he has sent me texts like:
“I felt absolutely stupid and embarrassed when I lied to you ages ago. And I told you it will not happen again. And it hasn’t.”
“I don’t lie to you”
“I’m so glad I have you. I can be my true self with you. I love the complete openness and honesty in our relationship. All we want is the best for one another”
”I asked myself something last night about us. Just in quiet reflection. Would I tell you everything and anything even if it would upset you? Like would I even make up little white lies to avoid anything crappy and I was like nah. I am cellophane with you. But frosted glass with everyone else”
“I love you so much. I promise to tell you everything and always devote myself to you”
He has repeatedly told me that he would never lie to me as “you know everything anyway, do you think I could lie to you?”
When faced with all of the above, he admits that he's got a problem with lying and says he’s turned a new leaf, that he knows what he needs to do, and that from now on it will be complete honesty.
In light of everything, how do I know that this is the truth, and not another lie?? All of my trust in him has gone, along with any respect I had for him. Everything he's saying to me just feels like lip service.
I know the above seems like a lot, but I’m only asking so many questions about these issues and others in the last couple of days because suddenly everything is making sense. A number of events that I went “huh, that’s weird” over the last two years but took him at face value and brushed off are all coming back into focus. I’m trying to get him to admit to lying for things that I know for a fact he has lied about. I’m trying to get him to understand that he can’t just give me something that doesn’t make sense and expect me to believe it.
HE is the one who asks me daily to talk about the issues we're facing, to tell how I'm feeling or what I'm thinking etc. He brings it up, so I explain to him what doesn't make sense to me or what I'm trying to process.
I ask him questions so that I can understand what his story is, and how that interacts with the facts that I know. When he’s defensive and contradicting himself instead of being honest and saying “yeah I made that up”. The fact that I’ve told him that I just want the truth and he still can’t admit to it indicates that there’s a problem - I even held a “safe space lie amnesty” a couple of days ago where I said I just wanted to know what he’s lied about so we can move forward. A lie you’ve gotten yourself tangled in is one thing. Repeated and continuous lying even in the face of contradictory facts is concerning. Despite my repeatedly telling him I can handle the truth, he maintains lies that have no value. Most of the lies he's told me couldn't even be considered to be for a reason - if it was to protect my feelings I'd get it, but some of them are just for attention.
These are not two isolated incidents, these are two of maybe ten events that I can recall from the last 2 years that have always been weird to me, but I kinda brushed them under the rug until recently when I realised there was something else going on.
I don’t think it’s too much to ask from a man who has repeatedly told me how much he values the honesty and openness in our relationship to show me those same values. He is not a man who has ever even indicated that he wanted to have his own space or privacy, in fact, he jumped into the relationship with "we should have each other's phone passcodes and be able to look at it whenever we want because we have absolutely nooooooo secrets". That was a bit of a shock to my system, but I thought 'hey, if this man wants full transparency and openness then let's go for it'.
Sometimes I’m furious and can’t stand the sight of him and other times I think it’s not such a big deal. I don’t know if I even really know how I feel about it. Sometimes merely annoyed, other times completely betrayed.
So…. AITAH for considering ending the marriage?