Amanitas good for you | | GoodForYouPod

Hello!
Been trying a few different psychedelics over the last year to battle depression, brain fog and fatigue, and while the depression is significantly better, sleep is still troublesome (waking up multiple times and hard to get back to sleep, headaches, waking up tired etc.). Brain fog id also still very significant. After reading (part of) the book from Baba Masha I am keen to try microdosing with amanita muscaria. I'm about to order dried ones from Ukraine but found this sub and thought it was a good idea to check some things:

some say its best to make tea every night with lemon juice but here I've seen the recipe to make a big batch and create a tincture out of it. I can imagine that is much more reliable in terms of dosage and also much more convenient to use? Which method do you prefer?
what is the dose you would recommend? Start with 0.5g equivalent of dried amanita and build up from there? And then first trying it during the day to set the dose and after that half an hour before sleep?
anyone has experience combining with lions mane? Im wondering if I could make a tincture out of that too? But I read its important to get both mycelium and fruiting body for max potency. Mycelium only comes in powder form though I believe so might be a bit messy with cooking compared to dried.

Lots of questions I hope someone can help me out with :)

Hi all
I am going to document my first experience with Amanita pantherina tea! Here are the details:
I weighed out 4 g dried Amanita pantherina caps from MN Nice, and chopped them up into square cm pieces. Added 100 mL boiling water, and citric acid crystals until the pH was between 2.5-3 by eye using pH strips. I brought it to a boil, then simmered it for an hour, checking the pH and adding citric acid when needed (pH didn't really significantly change). After an hour, I strained it, and drank half of it (and my partner drank the other half, so each of us 2 g). It tasted terrible, very acidic and tasted like vomit.
Some of you may ask "why not the 3 hour simmer"? Well, half the people on here eat dried, non-decarbed caps, and are perfectly fine (no nausea, and get great effects). The other half do the full three hour simmer, and honestly have even read some people say that the potency goes down after 3 hours of simmering and they feel not many effects. Surely somewhere in the middle can't be worse. Personally, I took someone's advice to boil for "no more than 40 min" to achieve about 60:40 - 70:30 MUS:IBO, and I went ahead and added 20 min to that time, just for good measure. Hoping to feel extreme relaxation, some euphoria too, and maybe some beginnings of visuals, but will see. Hopefully I don't vomit.
Well, let me know if I royally fucked up and might as well send myself to the hospital ASAP, or if people feel like this is going to be a good time. I'll continue to update my experience in the comments!

Hello all. I'm trying to get a better understanding of amanita muscaria's potential interaction with schizophrenia in a microdosing context. A friend of mine recently asked whether it would be a good fit for them, and while I obvs can't give medical advice, I also just really don't have a good understanding about this. My instinct is to err on the side of caution, especially given the nature of such a diagnosis. I've already told them I can't recommend it, but I just want to have a better understanding myself of any potential interactions.
I've seen some mixed information online, but it largely just seems to be unknown territory (to me, at least). I'm wondering if any of you have any literature, info, perspectives or even experience that might help me better understand the potential interactions between amanita (in non psychedelic doses) and schizophrenia.
Thanks in advance!

Hello! I have an order arriving today from Awakening Roots of decarbed amanita muscaria. I have been using Xanax as prescribed for sleep and wanting to get off of it, and have heard good things about using this to transition off benzos for sleep. Appreciate any advice or previous experience. Thank you to this community. 🫶

I'm very new to terrariums. I wanted to ask if anyone's tried growing amanita mushrooms in a terrarium before, and if so, did you guys have any luck with it? I think growing amanita would add a really nice splash of color, but it is a pretty big mushroom, and it's poisonous to bugs, as far as I've read.
I couldn't find a lot of information on growing amanita in terrariums, and probably for good reason, but I figure it couldn't hurt to ask if anyone's tried it.

Xavier and I backed away from the lengthening, bone-white arms. The long, sharp fingers snatched at the air blindly. I saw smears of ancient dried blood beneath the claw-like fingernails. Dozens of these unearthly limbs moved across the room, the flesh stretching like taffy. Black and purplish splotches appeared on the bleached skin. I heard bones cracking and fluids dripping.
One grabbed me by the hair from behind. I shrieked, trying to turn to fight it off, but it felt like fighting a statue. I tried grabbing the fingers intertwined in my hair and bending them back, but the sharp fingernails stabbed at me. The hand writhed like an enraged snake, its loose, cold skin tightening around my skull. I felt a rising sense of painful pressure. With a curse, I let go and tried to twist and turn out of its grip instead. Warm trickles of blood ran down my palms.
Xavier wasn’t doing much better. I saw hands grabbing at his uniform, ripping at his shirt and pants. I felt more of the eldritch hands reaching around my arms. They were freezing, as if the limbs had been kept in cryogenic storage for the last decade. Another one tickled the back of my neck before latching on like a tick. I screamed, falling to the concrete floor, kicking and punching, a sense of mindless animal panic overtaking my mind.
They continued to pull at me. I felt the fingers around my throat tightening. I started gagging as my airway closed. The eyes above us began to blink faster, the pupils flitting back and forth as if excited by the prospect of imminent death. They gleamed with an insane, demonic ecstasy. The dark mist rippled and danced across the ceiling.
Xavier’s pistol went off, echoing crazily through the confined space. I heard another three shots in rapid succession, and then saw the pistol clattering across the floor in front of me.
Sheer panic ripped through my chest as I suffocated. My vision started turning black. My heart thudded loudly against my ribs like a caged beast frantic to escape. I heard Xavier whimpering and pleading with the disembodied limbs.
And then, like the voice of an angel descending through the clouds, I heard Big George’s voice at the top of the stairs. He called down, asking if we were in the basement. The grip of the ghostly arms loosened for a brief moment, and I took in a deep gulp of sweet air. I made a shrieking sound like a fox, pleading for Big George to save us. His massive bulk began descending the wooden stairs, the boards popping and groaning under his weight. I saw a shotgun in his hands. Without hesitation, he raised the gun and fired at the wall where dozens of arms slinked out of solid matter.
It gave a muted boom. I saw holes rip into the hands and eyes as the projectile spread. The arms receded into the walls, leaving fat drops of fresh, dark blood on the ground from their wounds as they went. The eyes began blinking faster, the ebony mist covering them like a funeral shroud as it thickened. Then they disappeared behind the veil.
Xavier and I found ourselves hyperventilating on the floor, looking up at Big George in wonder. He pulled out an odd-looking bullet from his pocket. I saw it had a clear covering with small white and silver pellets inside.
“It’s salt and iron, boy,” Big George said, noticing me staring at the ammunition as he reloaded the shotgun. “You’ve got a lot to learn about keeping yourselves alive. Good thing I decided to come down and check on you two. I knew this house would be a handful.” He shook his head ruefully, walking away without waiting for a response. I lay on the ground, amazed to have avoided death.
***
I was fairly sure Xavier had wet himself during the attack, but I really didn’t want to bring it up. I pretended not to notice. Instead, I stumbled blindly after Big George. Xavier ran out to the van and came back in with a different pair of pants a few minutes later.
Big George had brought us all sandwiches and sodas. I hadn’t realized how much almost dying made me hungry. I tore into it ravenously as Big George sat there, lighting up a cigarette before glancing between me and Xavier like a disappointed father.
“Have I taught you boys nothing?” he asked us. I nodded.
“Yeah, I mean, I just started, so…” I said. He cut me off with a steely gaze.
“There are three things that will keep the supernatural at bay; three ingredients the spirits hate, even at a place with such power as this- salt, iron and silver. Although, since silver is expensive, you probably won’t be using it much,” Big George said, fingering his massive silver cross. I noticed he also had on multiple gleaming silver rings. He certainly had no problem affording as much silver as he wanted. He pulled out one of his special bullets and held it in front of our faces. “You will both need guns. I have a friend who makes these for cheap in all calibers: 12-gauge, .22, .38, whatever you need. It’s just large salt granules mixed with tiny pellets of cold iron. But the spirits hate it.” Xavier swore in Spanish.
“Why didn’t you give that to us before we came here?” he asked, his eyes gleaming with anger. Big George shrugged.
“I didn’t hear Caroline’s story until today. When I did, I rushed over here. If I had known beforehand, I would never have sent you two alone. From now on, when we clean anything associated with Dr. Satan’s crimes, I’m going to personally supervise you two, or at least find you some extra help. These mutilations are clearly drawing something evil in, something even I don’t fully understand,” Big George said, and for the first time since I had known him, I saw he looked flustered.
***
Cleaning up the mess in Dr. Satan’s torture chamber was no easy task. The blood had hardened to a coagulated crusty mess. Small pieces of skin and gore still attracted flies and vermin. The place stunk of decomposition and blood. I could only imagine how his victims must have felt down here, waiting in the darkness and knowing that at any moment, Dr. Satan would come and saw off another one of their limbs. I shuddered.
We ended up cutting the steel tables from the cement floor to scrap them. The scrapyard didn’t look thrilled when they saw the scrap was covered in serpentine crimson stains, but they still took it for a slightly reduced rate after we assured them it was deer blood.
“What do you think of this Dr. Satan guy?” Xavier asked Big George as we drove the truck back from the scrapyard. It was already late into the evening. We had worked hard on cleaning up all the blood and gore from the crime scene.
“How do you know it’s a guy?” Big George asked in his heavy Greek accent, raising one furry eyebrow in an owlish expression of faux wisdom.
“Well, most serial killers are,” I said. “Especially in cases with this level of torture and violence. Even though Dr. Satan isn’t technically a serial killer, as far as we know, the difference is mostly academic and not practical. There were some female serial killers who engaged in extreme torture and violence, like Rosemary West, but it was usually under the direction of a sadistic male partner. Most female serial killers target those reliant on them for help, such as nurses murdering patients or caregivers smothering infants.” They both looked at me for a moment too long. “What? I like to study true crime.”
“Mostly what you say is true, but what about Elizabeth Bathory, Darya Saltykova and Madame LaLaurie?” Big George responded, giving me a confident smile. I shrugged noncommittally.
“I know who the first one is, but who are the other two?” I asked. He waved off my question with a shooing gesture.
“Not important, not important. Just bad people, women who liked to torture and murder in extreme and prolonged ways. They say Madame LaLaurie broke most of the bones in one of her slave’s bodies and reset them so that the mutilated victim looked like a crab. And she left the slave alive after,” Big George recounted, a gleam of interest coming over his eyes.
I had never known that Big George liked to study serial killers, like myself, but now that I thought about it, it made sense. He did own a business that cleaned up crime scenes and haunted residences, after all.
“So while it is unlikely a female psychopath is responsible for the extreme torture, it isn’t impossible. We could have another Elizabeth Bathory on our hands.
“And speaking of female psychopaths, tomorrow morning, I have a woman I want you to see. Her name is Katrina, and she’s a local witch. She may be able to help us understand some of the more bizarre occurrences lately.”
“Yeah, half-spider babies aren’t too out of line,” Xavier said sarcastically, “but once undead arms start reaching out of the walls, I think we’re out of our league.”
***
Xavier picked me up early the next morning. I felt like I had barely slept, but at least I was making good money. Of course, if I died before my first paycheck, it wouldn’t matter too much. George gave us the address. He told us the witch lived far out off the beaten path in a thatched cabin with a round roof. It looked like something a medieval Russian serf might have built, he said.
We had traveled down a dirt road through thick clusters of pine trees for twenty minutes without seeing a single house before we eventually saw the smoke curling out of the witch’s chimney. For a while, I thought we were lost and just driving down random nature trails. The road had deep flooded grooves that the old van barely got past. With the engine whining and the tires squealing in the mud, Xavier eventually powered through the worst of it.
The woman’s lawn was covered in countless mushrooms. The branches of the pine trees had practically grown into the windows and walls. Red and white Amanita muscaria mushrooms shone in the dim early morning sunlight, next to far deadlier morsels of the pale white Death Caps and Dying Angels.
We walked through the overgrown trail to the front of the hut, trampling mushrooms and tall ferns as we went. I was about to knock on the ancient hardwood when the door swung violently open.
“Who are you and what do you want?” the young woman asked, raising an eyebrow at us.
When Big George had said she was a witch, I had assumed she would be an old hag with a hooked nose and a house full of black cats. But this woman looked young and beautiful. Her almond-shaped green eyes had a kind of sparkling intelligence. Her straight dirty blonde hair ran most of the way down her back. Her skin reminded me of the pale, translucent light of a full moon. She wasn’t wearing a robe or anything bizarre, either. I saw she had a shirt from some band called 13th Floor Elevators with eyes and spiraling fractals above a tie-dye background. The smell of cannabis and incense drifted out of the open threshold.
“You’re Katrina, right?” I asked.
“Who are you?” she repeated, not answering the question.
“We’re… cleaners,” Xavier admitted sheepishly.
“Cleaners?” the woman asked, wrinkling her face as if she smelled something bad.
“Yes,” I said, giving her a warm smile. She turned her strange, dreamy eyes towards me. They looked like chips of shining, green emeralds and had a faraway look. The look of a seer, I guess. I felt like she was staring through me rather than at me. “We’re from Big George’s Cleaners.” The woman scoffed, then sneered, her expression morphing into one of contempt.
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” she asked condescendingly.
“Look, we had a long-term contract with another occultist,” Xavier explained, “but apparently, he’s… well… he’s disappeared. Missing person. Hasn’t been seen in over six weeks.” He shrugged apathetically. “And word around the area is that you’re one of the best occultists in the state. We’re not normal cleaners, you see. Most of our contracts are crime scenes, and many of them are haunted or cursed. We take cleaning jobs other companies can’t handle, jobs other cleaners wouldn’t touch with a twenty-foot pole. You are Katrina, right?” She looked at Xavier for a long time, frowning, seeming to look into his soul. He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, glancing over at me.
“Yes, some people call me that name,” she said vaguely.
“When I was young, people used to call me Fat City,” I offered. “I mean, I was really, really fat as a kid. Like two hundred pounds by the time I was eleven.’” Katrina looked like she was about to slam the door shut on us for a few long moments. She sighed.
“Are you done?” she asked in exasperation. “First, I want to see the contract your boss sent. If the pay is acceptable, we can go right now. I want to get this over and done with, so I don’t have to hear any more of your horrible stories.” She nodded towards me as she spat the last sentence. Then she turned and walked into the house without another word, leaving the front door open. Xavier looked over at me and shrugged.
“I guess we’re following her,” he said. We found her sitting at a table decorated with taxidermied crows, jars of herbs, wooden bowls filled with drying mushrooms and, on the shelves, many yellowed, ancient-looking tomes.
“Are you really a witch?” I asked Katrina. She looked at me with a smoldering fire in her eyes.
“Do I look like a witch?” she asked coldly. I broke eye contact and looked around awkwardly, trying to find a way out of the conversation. I didn’t see anything, so I looked down at my feet and answered.
“Yeah, kinda,” I said. She was silent for a long moment, then I heard a high-pitched, cackling laugh, like that of a hyena. I jumped then looked at Katrina in surprise. She convulsed with good humor, lightly hitting the thick wooden table with her open palm.
***
After that, we received a call from Big George that we had another assignment. An earlier torture sight of Dr. Satan, a massive mansion on the top of a hill outside of town, had been discovered by police recently. The property had been foreclosed on by the bank years earlier, and though it had an alarm system, Dr. Satan had somehow disabled it.
No one knew how long he had used the sight for the torture and mutilation of his victims, but they had received a tip-off in the last few weeks from the psychopath himself. He had used voice-altering software and called from an untraceable line. Apparently, Dr. Satan was also a narcissist who liked to showcase his work to the world. He had apparently been frustrated that no one had gone to check on the house and find his grisly living art projects there.
Though it had apparently been used as an earlier sight for torture, he had kept the victims here longer, perhaps for up to six months according to the doctors looking at the incomprehensible extent of their injuries. The police had kicked the door down and found six people, all still alive. Like all the others, they had their arms, legs, eyes, ears, nose and tongue removed. Heavy burn marks showed where Dr. Satan had cauterized their wounds.
Katrina came in with us, and Big George said he would come to the site later on to make sure we weren’t dead. He said it with a wink, but I didn’t think he was fully joking.
Xavier pulled into the long private driveway of the mansion. It snaked up a small mountain. The trees had all been cut down in front of the house long ago to give a view of rolling hills and tiny houses stretching off into the horizon. The mansion looked run-down but not dilapidated. Grime covered all of its white walls, and the lawn had grown into a jungle of weeds and thorns. Yet the windows were intact and none of the walls had giant holes smashed into them.
I had bought a handgun from a friend of Xavier, some likely hot .38 pistol. Big George, true to his word, had given us each some of the bullets with the salt and iron scrapings. It didn’t do much to assuage my confidence. If I saw anything supernatural, I had a plan to run as fast as I could out of the house immediately.
Katrina looked up at the looming mansion, pushing locks of long, wavy hair off her forehead.
“There’s a lot of energy in this place,” she said, looking pale and nervous. “It’s like black auras are shimmering all around the mansion. I get a creeping feeling from this place, as if it were crawling inside with deadly snakes.
“I think that whatever Dr. Satan is doing, it is far more insidious than just a normal psychopath. There are ways to summon demons using the agony of torture victims, after all. It’s been done since ancient times. He may be keeping them alive so that infernal spirits can feed on their trapped minds, almost like food offerings. Except the demons’ sustenance comes from agony, hopelessness and death.”
“How do you know that?” Xavier asked mistrustfully, giving her a sideways glance. She smirked.
“I’ve never done anything like that myself, if that’s what you’re asking. But I do read a lot of books about the black arts. You have to know your enemy like you know yourself, after all,” Katrina said, her eyes turning cold and distant. “Alright, let’s do this. I’m not getting paid by the hour like you two.” A nervous sense of rising energy swept through my body. Though I couldn’t see auras and energy like Katrina claimed, I still felt something squirming deep in my stomach, perhaps an instinctual anxiety and revulsion to this place.
Katrina got out of the car, carrying a small black leather satchel slung around her shoulder. Xavier got out next. I followed in the back. I saw him nervously rubbing his calloused right hand over the pistol’s holster.
As we traversed the cracked walkway towards the front entrance, I looked up and realized that the giant mansion doors already stood wide open. It was as if someone was inviting us inside. The threshold seemed to stare out at the world like a dilated pupil.
“Why are the doors open?” I asked. Xavier and Katrina both looked up, seemingly interrupted in their deep thoughtful trances. Katrina’s eyes narrowed.
“Do you think someone is already here?” Xavier said in a quivering tone, immediately stopping short in his tracks. We all listened, but no sounds came from the dark entryway.
We walked forwards through the antechamber into a sprawling, open floor plan. The second floor loomed over us with its interior balconies and tarnished metal railings. I saw ancient furniture piled off to the side and covered in dusty white sheets. I had the crazy urge to fling the sheets aside and make sure no one was hiding behind them.
A massive staircase topped with an elegant chandelier made of thousands of interconnected pieces of sparkling glass met us as we crept forwards. Here, we began to see the first evidence of Dr. Satan’s crimes. He had apparently kept all six victims in different areas of the house, very specifically located and surrounded by arcane symbols drawn in their blood.
A blood-stained steel table stood in front of the wide mahogany steps, mounted to the polished floor by bolts. Nothing supernatural or eerie seemed to happen. I heard a shout from behind us, and I jumped, pulling out the pistol.
Big George stood there in the open doorway. The wind blew wisps of white hair all around his head.
“I see you three are still alive,” he said, lips twisted into an artificial rictus smile. “These scenes are quite something, aren’t they? The work of a true master. A very patient man.” Big George looked up at Katrina and gave a sly, subtle wink. “Or woman.”
A chill went down my spine as I watched him. I wondered whether the Big George I knew was just a façade.
“I wouldn’t exactly say that,” Katrina responded icily. “We just got here. I was about to do a walkthrough of the place. Would you like to join us?” Big George nodded eagerly, his eyes twinkling. It looked like he was repressing a laugh.
“I think the basement might be a good place to start,” he said. We started moving through the living room with its enormous bay windows looking out the side of the house. I peered through them at the thick, black forest that lay there. My breath caught in my throat.
I noticed something unearthly, a red pyramid looming above the forest behind the mansion. It hovered in the air, as if it were iron reacting to a magnetized ground. As the wind blew past, it descended and rose a few inches. Like a puzzle box, pieces of it spiraled, jumped, twisted and depressed. I watched all the thousands of interconnected parts with total amazement.
The entire structure had an alien feeling to it, as if the angles and geometry of its construction had come from another universe with a different number of dimensions. Arcane symbols from a language unlike anything I had ever seen flashed in all the colors of the rainbow, some emitting a glowing black light while others pulsed a bloody red. On the bottom, many shone with a sickly, cancerous green. Next to that, they lit up with a cold cyanotic blue. And though this happened months ago, I remember the sensation of drifting away, as if in a capsule through the emptiness of infinite space.
I felt like something spoke to me through the pyramid, as if its twisting and writhing pieces communicated some ineffable, divine language beyond the capacity of the human mind to understand. Someone grabbed me hard by the shoulder, and I felt myself shaken violently. I heard someone screaming my name from a thousand miles away. It came through as faint as the buzzing of some tiny bug.
A hand slapped me hard across the face. I started like a man waking up from a nightmare. I saw Katrina standing there in front of me. I looked around and saw Xavier standing next to me, wavering on his feet with glazed eyes. He looked stunned and confused. Big George was gone. How much time had passed? I couldn’t tell.
“It’s a trap!” she shouted. “Big George is…” But she didn’t get to finish. From the odd, otherworldly pyramid, hidden doors slid open. Harsh, dissonant grinding noises echoed through the trees, a sound that reminded me of the shrieking of tearing metal. A black, cloying mist reached out through the openings like a dark hand. It moved slowly over the sigils and spinning pieces of the pyramid, obscuring it with an impenetrable, oily sheen.
For a few seconds, nothing happened. I watched the open passageways with bated breath, my instincts screaming at me to run. Creatures from a nightmare flew and skittered out. They all had skin that shone the same dark red hue as the pyramid itself. Centipedes the color of dull rubies and the size of a minivan writhed, their many legs propelling them forwards in undulating waves as they skittered down the sides of the pyramid towards the ground far below.
Some of the abominations looked like a cross between a spider and a dragonfly. They flew out in packs, each creature a few feet long with a stinger like a medieval mace. Their tails constantly flexed and relaxed as they flew, twitching up and down. Dark, jointed legs like those of a brown recluse hung under their alien bodies. Wings composed of fine, ethereal strands worked furiously, blurring as the creatures gained altitude. The first of the pack emerged fully out of the mist towards us. Compound eyes glistening in opalescent whorls looked out upon Earth, filled with a cold reptilian hunger.
Many unearthly cries came from the nightmarish abominations. I heard cries like those of a dying woman that went on for an inhuman length of time. Others roared like dragons from Hell. Thundering shrieks and cries of many kinds reached us.
“We need to get the hell out of here,” I whispered, knowing it was already too late. The three of us ran towards the door. I kept wondering where Big George had gone. Through the front window, I saw his Mercedes still outside. I heard a wailing cry from the basement. Freezing in my tracks, I looked at Katrina and Xavier in terror.
“There’s someone still alive in the basement!” I cried. Katrina shook her head.
“It doesn’t matter. We need to get out of here,” she said, grabbing at my arm. I pulled away from her.
“I’m not leaving anyone here,” I said. Without a backwards glance, I sprinted towards the basement, intending to just grab whoever was here and force them to come with us before all hell broke loose. The cries of Xavier and Katrina followed me towards the steps. I didn’t understand how they could potentially leave an innocent person to die when the basement steps were so close.
The door stood open, framing a threshold of shadows. I looked down but saw no light. I tried to flick the lightswitch, but nothing happened. Sighing, I turned on my flashlight and began descending.
Big George stood there with a knife in his hands, holding a trembling little boy in a raincoat before him. A tall, demonic woman stood before them, her head nearly scraping the ceiling. Chains wrapped around her naked, decomposing body, biting deeply into her flesh. Pieces of gray flesh hung off in tatters. A human skull hung around her neck like some sort of Satanic pendant. With pure black eyes and a writhing mass of twitching black appendages rising from her head like spiders’ legs, she looked down upon Big George and the child. At her feet, I saw a skull pierced through its crown with a black dagger.
“You have done a great deed, my son,” the demonic figure said to Big George. He grinned, his wrinkled face lighting up with delight and amusement. “The ritual is almost complete. Give me the final offering, and I will reward you with the immortality promised.”
“Obizuth, as always, your will is my command,” he said, putting the knife to the child’s throat and pulling. I heard a suffocating scream welling up in my throat as a cascade of fresh, innocent blood ran over Big George’s hands and soaked the floor.
Part 3
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/194z3xl/im_a_cleaner_for_haunted_houses_skulls_pierced/

Xavier and I backed away from the lengthening, bone-white arms. The long, sharp fingers snatched at the air blindly. I saw smears of ancient dried blood beneath the claw-like fingernails. Dozens of these unearthly limbs moved across the room, the flesh stretching like taffy. Black and purplish splotches appeared on the bleached skin. I heard bones cracking and fluids dripping.
One grabbed me by the hair from behind. I shrieked, trying to turn to fight it off, but it felt like fighting a statue. I tried grabbing the fingers intertwined in my hair and bending them back, but the sharp fingernails stabbed at me. The hand writhed like an enraged snake, its loose, cold skin tightening around my skull. I felt a rising sense of painful pressure. With a curse, I let go and tried to twist and turn out of its grip instead. Warm trickles of blood ran down my palms.
Xavier wasn’t doing much better. I saw hands grabbing at his uniform, ripping at his shirt and pants. I felt more of the eldritch hands reaching around my arms. They were freezing, as if the limbs had been kept in cryogenic storage for the last decade. Another one tickled the back of my neck before latching on like a tick. I screamed, falling to the concrete floor, kicking and punching, a sense of mindless animal panic overtaking my mind.
They continued to pull at me. I felt the fingers around my throat tightening. I started gagging as my airway closed. The eyes above us began to blink faster, the pupils flitting back and forth as if excited by the prospect of imminent death. They gleamed with an insane, demonic ecstasy. The dark mist rippled and danced across the ceiling.
Xavier’s pistol went off, echoing crazily through the confined space. I heard another three shots in rapid succession, and then saw the pistol clattering across the floor in front of me.
Sheer panic ripped through my chest as I suffocated. My vision started turning black. My heart thudded loudly against my ribs like a caged beast frantic to escape. I heard Xavier whimpering and pleading with the disembodied limbs.
And then, like the voice of an angel descending through the clouds, I heard Big George’s voice at the top of the stairs. He called down, asking if we were in the basement. The grip of the ghostly arms loosened for a brief moment, and I took in a deep gulp of sweet air. I made a shrieking sound like a fox, pleading for Big George to save us. His massive bulk began descending the wooden stairs, the boards popping and groaning under his weight. I saw a shotgun in his hands. Without hesitation, he raised the gun and fired at the wall where dozens of arms slinked out of solid matter.
It gave a muted boom. I saw holes rip into the hands and eyes as the projectile spread. The arms receded into the walls, leaving fat drops of fresh, dark blood on the ground from their wounds as they went. The eyes began blinking faster, the ebony mist covering them like a funeral shroud as it thickened. Then they disappeared behind the veil.
Xavier and I found ourselves hyperventilating on the floor, looking up at Big George in wonder. He pulled out an odd-looking bullet from his pocket. I saw it had a clear covering with small white and silver pellets inside.
“It’s salt and iron, boy,” Big George said, noticing me staring at the ammunition as he reloaded the shotgun. “You’ve got a lot to learn about keeping yourselves alive. Good thing I decided to come down and check on you two. I knew this house would be a handful.” He shook his head ruefully, walking away without waiting for a response. I lay on the ground, amazed to have avoided death.
***
I was fairly sure Xavier had wet himself during the attack, but I really didn’t want to bring it up. I pretended not to notice. Instead, I stumbled blindly after Big George. Xavier ran out to the van and came back in with a different pair of pants a few minutes later.
Big George had brought us all sandwiches and sodas. I hadn’t realized how much almost dying made me hungry. I tore into it ravenously as Big George sat there, lighting up a cigarette before glancing between me and Xavier like a disappointed father.
“Have I taught you boys nothing?” he asked us. I nodded.
“Yeah, I mean, I just started, so…” I said. He cut me off with a steely gaze.
“There are three things that will keep the supernatural at bay; three ingredients the spirits hate, even at a place with such power as this- salt, iron and silver. Although, since silver is expensive, you probably won’t be using it much,” Big George said, fingering his massive silver cross. I noticed he also had on multiple gleaming silver rings. He certainly had no problem affording as much silver as he wanted. He pulled out one of his special bullets and held it in front of our faces. “You will both need guns. I have a friend who makes these for cheap in all calibers: 12-gauge, .22, .38, whatever you need. It’s just large salt granules mixed with tiny pellets of cold iron. But the spirits hate it.” Xavier swore in Spanish.
“Why didn’t you give that to us before we came here?” he asked, his eyes gleaming with anger. Big George shrugged.
“I didn’t hear Caroline’s story until today. When I did, I rushed over here. If I had known beforehand, I would never have sent you two alone. From now on, when we clean anything associated with Dr. Satan’s crimes, I’m going to personally supervise you two, or at least find you some extra help. These mutilations are clearly drawing something evil in, something even I don’t fully understand,” Big George said, and for the first time since I had known him, I saw he looked flustered.
***
Cleaning up the mess in Dr. Satan’s torture chamber was no easy task. The blood had hardened to a coagulated crusty mess. Small pieces of skin and gore still attracted flies and vermin. The place stunk of decomposition and blood. I could only imagine how his victims must have felt down here, waiting in the darkness and knowing that at any moment, Dr. Satan would come and saw off another one of their limbs. I shuddered.
We ended up cutting the steel tables from the cement floor to scrap them. The scrapyard didn’t look thrilled when they saw the scrap was covered in serpentine crimson stains, but they still took it for a slightly reduced rate after we assured them it was deer blood.
“What do you think of this Dr. Satan guy?” Xavier asked Big George as we drove the truck back from the scrapyard. It was already late into the evening. We had worked hard on cleaning up all the blood and gore from the crime scene.
“How do you know it’s a guy?” Big George asked in his heavy Greek accent, raising one furry eyebrow in an owlish expression of faux wisdom.
“Well, most serial killers are,” I said. “Especially in cases with this level of torture and violence. Even though Dr. Satan isn’t technically a serial killer, as far as we know, the difference is mostly academic and not practical. There were some female serial killers who engaged in extreme torture and violence, like Rosemary West, but it was usually under the direction of a sadistic male partner. Most female serial killers target those reliant on them for help, such as nurses murdering patients or caregivers smothering infants.” They both looked at me for a moment too long. “What? I like to study true crime.”
“Mostly what you say is true, but what about Elizabeth Bathory, Darya Saltykova and Madame LaLaurie?” Big George responded, giving me a confident smile. I shrugged noncommittally.
“I know who the first one is, but who are the other two?” I asked. He waved off my question with a shooing gesture.
“Not important, not important. Just bad people, women who liked to torture and murder in extreme and prolonged ways. They say Madame LaLaurie broke most of the bones in one of her slave’s bodies and reset them so that the mutilated victim looked like a crab. And she left the slave alive after,” Big George recounted, a gleam of interest coming over his eyes.
I had never known that Big George liked to study serial killers, like myself, but now that I thought about it, it made sense. He did own a business that cleaned up crime scenes and haunted residences, after all.
“So while it is unlikely a female psychopath is responsible for the extreme torture, it isn’t impossible. We could have another Elizabeth Bathory on our hands.
“And speaking of female psychopaths, tomorrow morning, I have a woman I want you to see. Her name is Katrina, and she’s a local witch. She may be able to help us understand some of the more bizarre occurrences lately.”
“Yeah, half-spider babies aren’t too out of line,” Xavier said sarcastically, “but once undead arms start reaching out of the walls, I think we’re out of our league.”
***
Xavier picked me up early the next morning. I felt like I had barely slept, but at least I was making good money. Of course, if I died before my first paycheck, it wouldn’t matter too much. George gave us the address. He told us the witch lived far out off the beaten path in a thatched cabin with a round roof. It looked like something a medieval Russian serf might have built, he said.
We had traveled down a dirt road through thick clusters of pine trees for twenty minutes without seeing a single house before we eventually saw the smoke curling out of the witch’s chimney. For a while, I thought we were lost and just driving down random nature trails. The road had deep flooded grooves that the old van barely got past. With the engine whining and the tires squealing in the mud, Xavier eventually powered through the worst of it.
The woman’s lawn was covered in countless mushrooms. The branches of the pine trees had practically grown into the windows and walls. Red and white Amanita muscaria mushrooms shone in the dim early morning sunlight, next to far deadlier morsels of the pale white Death Caps and Dying Angels.
We walked through the overgrown trail to the front of the hut, trampling mushrooms and tall ferns as we went. I was about to knock on the ancient hardwood when the door swung violently open.
“Who are you and what do you want?” the young woman asked, raising an eyebrow at us.
When Big George had said she was a witch, I had assumed she would be an old hag with a hooked nose and a house full of black cats. But this woman looked young and beautiful. Her almond-shaped green eyes had a kind of sparkling intelligence. Her straight dirty blonde hair ran most of the way down her back. Her skin reminded me of the pale, translucent light of a full moon. She wasn’t wearing a robe or anything bizarre, either. I saw she had a shirt from some band called 13th Floor Elevators with eyes and spiraling fractals above a tie-dye background. The smell of cannabis and incense drifted out of the open threshold.
“You’re Katrina, right?” I asked.
“Who are you?” she repeated, not answering the question.
“We’re… cleaners,” Xavier admitted sheepishly.
“Cleaners?” the woman asked, wrinkling her face as if she smelled something bad.
“Yes,” I said, giving her a warm smile. She turned her strange, dreamy eyes towards me. They looked like chips of shining, green emeralds and had a faraway look. The look of a seer, I guess. I felt like she was staring through me rather than at me. “We’re from Big George’s Cleaners.” The woman scoffed, then sneered, her expression morphing into one of contempt.
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” she asked condescendingly.
“Look, we had a long-term contract with another occultist,” Xavier explained, “but apparently, he’s… well… he’s disappeared. Missing person. Hasn’t been seen in over six weeks.” He shrugged apathetically. “And word around the area is that you’re one of the best occultists in the state. We’re not normal cleaners, you see. Most of our contracts are crime scenes, and many of them are haunted or cursed. We take cleaning jobs other companies can’t handle, jobs other cleaners wouldn’t touch with a twenty-foot pole. You are Katrina, right?” She looked at Xavier for a long time, frowning, seeming to look into his soul. He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, glancing over at me.
“Yes, some people call me that name,” she said vaguely.
“When I was young, people used to call me Fat City,” I offered. “I mean, I was really, really fat as a kid. Like two hundred pounds by the time I was eleven.’” Katrina looked like she was about to slam the door shut on us for a few long moments. She sighed.
“Are you done?” she asked in exasperation. “First, I want to see the contract your boss sent. If the pay is acceptable, we can go right now. I want to get this over and done with, so I don’t have to hear any more of your horrible stories.” She nodded towards me as she spat the last sentence. Then she turned and walked into the house without another word, leaving the front door open. Xavier looked over at me and shrugged.
“I guess we’re following her,” he said. We found her sitting at a table decorated with taxidermied crows, jars of herbs, wooden bowls filled with drying mushrooms and, on the shelves, many yellowed, ancient-looking tomes.
“Are you really a witch?” I asked Katrina. She looked at me with a smoldering fire in her eyes.
“Do I look like a witch?” she asked coldly. I broke eye contact and looked around awkwardly, trying to find a way out of the conversation. I didn’t see anything, so I looked down at my feet and answered.
“Yeah, kinda,” I said. She was silent for a long moment, then I heard a high-pitched, cackling laugh, like that of a hyena. I jumped then looked at Katrina in surprise. She convulsed with good humor, lightly hitting the thick wooden table with her open palm.
***
After that, we received a call from Big George that we had another assignment. An earlier torture sight of Dr. Satan, a massive mansion on the top of a hill outside of town, had been discovered by police recently. The property had been foreclosed on by the bank years earlier, and though it had an alarm system, Dr. Satan had somehow disabled it.
No one knew how long he had used the sight for the torture and mutilation of his victims, but they had received a tip-off in the last few weeks from the psychopath himself. He had used voice-altering software and called from an untraceable line. Apparently, Dr. Satan was also a narcissist who liked to showcase his work to the world. He had apparently been frustrated that no one had gone to check on the house and find his grisly living art projects there.
Though it had apparently been used as an earlier sight for torture, he had kept the victims here longer, perhaps for up to six months according to the doctors looking at the incomprehensible extent of their injuries. The police had kicked the door down and found six people, all still alive. Like all the others, they had their arms, legs, eyes, ears, nose and tongue removed. Heavy burn marks showed where Dr. Satan had cauterized their wounds.
Katrina came in with us, and Big George said he would come to the site later on to make sure we weren’t dead. He said it with a wink, but I didn’t think he was fully joking.
Xavier pulled into the long private driveway of the mansion. It snaked up a small mountain. The trees had all been cut down in front of the house long ago to give a view of rolling hills and tiny houses stretching off into the horizon. The mansion looked run-down but not dilapidated. Grime covered all of its white walls, and the lawn had grown into a jungle of weeds and thorns. Yet the windows were intact and none of the walls had giant holes smashed into them.
I had bought a handgun from a friend of Xavier, some likely hot .38 pistol. Big George, true to his word, had given us each some of the bullets with the salt and iron scrapings. It didn’t do much to assuage my confidence. If I saw anything supernatural, I had a plan to run as fast as I could out of the house immediately.
Katrina looked up at the looming mansion, pushing locks of long, wavy hair off her forehead.
“There’s a lot of energy in this place,” she said, looking pale and nervous. “It’s like black auras are shimmering all around the mansion. I get a creeping feeling from this place, as if it were crawling inside with deadly snakes.
“I think that whatever Dr. Satan is doing, it is far more insidious than just a normal psychopath. There are ways to summon demons using the agony of torture victims, after all. It’s been done since ancient times. He may be keeping them alive so that infernal spirits can feed on their trapped minds, almost like food offerings. Except the demons’ sustenance comes from agony, hopelessness and death.”
“How do you know that?” Xavier asked mistrustfully, giving her a sideways glance. She smirked.
“I’ve never done anything like that myself, if that’s what you’re asking. But I do read a lot of books about the black arts. You have to know your enemy like you know yourself, after all,” Katrina said, her eyes turning cold and distant. “Alright, let’s do this. I’m not getting paid by the hour like you two.” A nervous sense of rising energy swept through my body. Though I couldn’t see auras and energy like Katrina claimed, I still felt something squirming deep in my stomach, perhaps an instinctual anxiety and revulsion to this place.
Katrina got out of the car, carrying a small black leather satchel slung around her shoulder. Xavier got out next. I followed in the back. I saw him nervously rubbing his calloused right hand over the pistol’s holster.
As we traversed the cracked walkway towards the front entrance, I looked up and realized that the giant mansion doors already stood wide open. It was as if someone was inviting us inside. The threshold seemed to stare out at the world like a dilated pupil.
“Why are the doors open?” I asked. Xavier and Katrina both looked up, seemingly interrupted in their deep thoughtful trances. Katrina’s eyes narrowed.
“Do you think someone is already here?” Xavier said in a quivering tone, immediately stopping short in his tracks. We all listened, but no sounds came from the dark entryway.
We walked forwards through the antechamber into a sprawling, open floor plan. The second floor loomed over us with its interior balconies and tarnished metal railings. I saw ancient furniture piled off to the side and covered in dusty white sheets. I had the crazy urge to fling the sheets aside and make sure no one was hiding behind them.
A massive staircase topped with an elegant chandelier made of thousands of interconnected pieces of sparkling glass met us as we crept forwards. Here, we began to see the first evidence of Dr. Satan’s crimes. He had apparently kept all six victims in different areas of the house, very specifically located and surrounded by arcane symbols drawn in their blood.
A blood-stained steel table stood in front of the wide mahogany steps, mounted to the polished floor by bolts. Nothing supernatural or eerie seemed to happen. I heard a shout from behind us, and I jumped, pulling out the pistol.
Big George stood there in the open doorway. The wind blew wisps of white hair all around his head.
“I see you three are still alive,” he said, lips twisted into an artificial rictus smile. “These scenes are quite something, aren’t they? The work of a true master. A very patient man.” Big George looked up at Katrina and gave a sly, subtle wink. “Or woman.”
A chill went down my spine as I watched him. I wondered whether the Big George I knew was just a façade.
“I wouldn’t exactly say that,” Katrina responded icily. “We just got here. I was about to do a walkthrough of the place. Would you like to join us?” Big George nodded eagerly, his eyes twinkling. It looked like he was repressing a laugh.
“I think the basement might be a good place to start,” he said. We started moving through the living room with its enormous bay windows looking out the side of the house. I peered through them at the thick, black forest that lay there. My breath caught in my throat.
I noticed something unearthly, a red pyramid looming above the forest behind the mansion. It hovered in the air, as if it were iron reacting to a magnetized ground. As the wind blew past, it descended and rose a few inches. Like a puzzle box, pieces of it spiraled, jumped, twisted and depressed. I watched all the thousands of interconnected parts with total amazement.
The entire structure had an alien feeling to it, as if the angles and geometry of its construction had come from another universe with a different number of dimensions. Arcane symbols from a language unlike anything I had ever seen flashed in all the colors of the rainbow, some emitting a glowing black light while others pulsed a bloody red. On the bottom, many shone with a sickly, cancerous green. Next to that, they lit up with a cold cyanotic blue. And though this happened months ago, I remember the sensation of drifting away, as if in a capsule through the emptiness of infinite space.
I felt like something spoke to me through the pyramid, as if its twisting and writhing pieces communicated some ineffable, divine language beyond the capacity of the human mind to understand. Someone grabbed me hard by the shoulder, and I felt myself shaken violently. I heard someone screaming my name from a thousand miles away. It came through as faint as the buzzing of some tiny bug.
A hand slapped me hard across the face. I started like a man waking up from a nightmare. I saw Katrina standing there in front of me. I looked around and saw Xavier standing next to me, wavering on his feet with glazed eyes. He looked stunned and confused. Big George was gone. How much time had passed? I couldn’t tell.
“It’s a trap!” she shouted. “Big George is…” But she didn’t get to finish. From the odd, otherworldly pyramid, hidden doors slid open. Harsh, dissonant grinding noises echoed through the trees, a sound that reminded me of the shrieking of tearing metal. A black, cloying mist reached out through the openings like a dark hand. It moved slowly over the sigils and spinning pieces of the pyramid, obscuring it with an impenetrable, oily sheen.
For a few seconds, nothing happened. I watched the open passageways with bated breath, my instincts screaming at me to run. Creatures from a nightmare flew and skittered out. They all had skin that shone the same dark red hue as the pyramid itself. Centipedes the color of dull rubies and the size of a minivan writhed, their many legs propelling them forwards in undulating waves as they skittered down the sides of the pyramid towards the ground far below.
Some of the abominations looked like a cross between a spider and a dragonfly. They flew out in packs, each creature a few feet long with a stinger like a medieval mace. Their tails constantly flexed and relaxed as they flew, twitching up and down. Dark, jointed legs like those of a brown recluse hung under their alien bodies. Wings composed of fine, ethereal strands worked furiously, blurring as the creatures gained altitude. The first of the pack emerged fully out of the mist towards us. Compound eyes glistening in opalescent whorls looked out upon Earth, filled with a cold reptilian hunger.
Many unearthly cries came from the nightmarish abominations. I heard cries like those of a dying woman that went on for an inhuman length of time. Others roared like dragons from Hell. Thundering shrieks and cries of many kinds reached us.
“We need to get the hell out of here,” I whispered, knowing it was already too late. The three of us ran towards the door. I kept wondering where Big George had gone. Through the front window, I saw his Mercedes still outside. I heard a wailing cry from the basement. Freezing in my tracks, I looked at Katrina and Xavier in terror.
“There’s someone still alive in the basement!” I cried. Katrina shook her head.
“It doesn’t matter. We need to get out of here,” she said, grabbing at my arm. I pulled away from her.
“I’m not leaving anyone here,” I said. Without a backwards glance, I sprinted towards the basement, intending to just grab whoever was here and force them to come with us before all hell broke loose. The cries of Xavier and Katrina followed me towards the steps. I didn’t understand how they could potentially leave an innocent person to die when the basement steps were so close.
The door stood open, framing a threshold of shadows. I looked down but saw no light. I tried to flick the lightswitch, but nothing happened. Sighing, I turned on my flashlight and began descending.
Big George stood there with a knife in his hands, holding a trembling little boy in a raincoat before him. A tall, demonic woman stood before them, her head nearly scraping the ceiling. Chains wrapped around her naked, decomposing body, biting deeply into her flesh. Pieces of gray flesh hung off in tatters. A human skull hung around her neck like some sort of Satanic pendant. With pure black eyes and a writhing mass of twitching black appendages rising from her head like spiders’ legs, she looked down upon Big George and the child. At her feet, I saw a skull pierced through its crown with a black dagger.
“You have done a great deed, my son,” the demonic figure said to Big George. He grinned, his wrinkled face lighting up with delight and amusement. “The ritual is almost complete. Give me the final offering, and I will reward you with the immortality promised.”
“Obizuth, as always, your will is my command,” he said, putting the knife to the child’s throat and pulling. I heard a suffocating scream welling up in my throat as a cascade of fresh, innocent blood ran over Big George’s hands and soaked the floor.

The screaming from my basement kept me up at night. The women I had kidnapped and chained down there often wept or yelled until dawn, and I knew things couldn’t continue like this. They were disturbing my sleep, making my life intolerable, and that made me furious to the point where my vision turned white with rage every time they woke me up. I would go beat them any time that happened, but they still kept screaming, and I knew I would have to find a better way to immobilize them.
I had originally bought barbiturates, benzos and fentanyl off the dark web. I also bought medical supplies like plastic tubing as well as machinery to titrate IV drugs. After a few experiments gone wrong where I accidentally overdosed a couple of them and had to administer Narcan, I found I could keep them incapacitated with a very low dose of fentanyl combined with high doses of IV benzodiazepines. But then my dark web connection disappeared, likely busted by the DEA or FBI, and I knew I had to find another way.
I read about legal drugs, and one of them caught my eye. It was a red-and-white mushroom by the name of Amanita muscaria, commonly called “fly agaric”, a mushroom that appeared in pop culture references from the Smurfs to Alice in Wonderland to Super Mario Brothers, but one that almost no one realized was psychoactive and totally legal. It had incapacitating effects, often causing out-of-body experiences and catatonic states.
“This is peeeeerfect,” I said to myself, smiling and feeling elated. I immediately ordered some Siberian fly agaric, and as soon as it came in the next day, I started extracting the active ingredients and diluting them in distilled water for placement in the IV bag.
As I went out to check the mail, I saw a male about my height far away in the forest, running away in a panic from something behind him, something that appeared to drag itself forward at an amazingly fast speed on its arms, yet had no legs. But when I turned to look at it directly, they had disappeared into the thick brush. I had no neighbors, the nearest one being over a mile away in the other direction, so I wondered who would be out here.
I lit a cigarette and stayed on my porch, watching and waiting, but after no more sightings or noises came, I gave up and went back inside.
Whistling to myself, I brought the IV bags down to the basement. The three women I kept there were currently all quiet, likely either asleep or just staring blankly up at the ceiling. They were all naked, chained to the gurneys. I only unchained them when they needed to use the bathroom or eat, but then I would immediately chain them back up again. They were all beautiful with blue eyes and blonde hair parted in the middle, lithe bodies and very light, Irish skin.
I walked down the creaking cellar stairs, moving next to my nearest victim. I didn’t usually bother to learn their names, but this one was a hitchhiker and had told me when I picked her up. She said her name was Ally and that she was a college student. She was beautiful and young. She was sleeping when I started hanging the new IV solution of fly agaric up to the medical pole next to her bed.
As the fluid began to drip through the clear plastic tubing, she woke up. Her deep blue eyes regarded me with hatred for a moment, then she turned away, not saying anything. Her face had a look of hopelessness and despair on it that I had seen dozens of times before. Whenever any of my victims neared the end of their lives, that kind of vacant hopeless stare was all that was left on their faces, sometimes accompanied by tremendous pain and fear, sometimes accompanied by acceptance and peace.
Whistling to myself, I began to walk around the room, checking the other two women for infections, making sure their chains were tight and that they were still alive. I was about to grab the padlock key to unchain them one at a time, letting them use the bathroom and get some food and water quickly so I could keep them alive longer, but then something started to happen from underneath Ally’s bed.
I heard a deep growling sound. Spinning around, I saw Ally’s pupils had expanded to cover her entire iris. Her eyes were staring blankly past me with a thousand-yard stare, and the room seemed to shimmer and glow around her. Underneath her bed, I saw a face with dozens of glowing white eyes staring out at me from the shadows. I backed up slowly, reaching into my pocket for the switchblade I always carried on me. It used its front limbs to crawl out, leaving a trail of reeking blood behind it and filling the room with the smell of iron and rot.
The monstrosity looked like it was rotting from the inside. Its skin fell off in fetid bluish-purple layers, its mouth was full of blackened teeth embedded in sickly brown gums, but its dozens of eyes were what truly caught my attention. They were all blue, just like the eyes of my victims. Some were icy blue, like an Alaskan lake, while others were the deep blue of a tropical ocean. To my horror, I could even recognize some of the eyes and which of my previous victims they had belonged to.
It dragged itself forward at a tremendous speed using its arms, with exposed muscle and bone showing through the worn, decaying layers of maggot-infested skin that covered them. It had no legs, but only bleeding stumps that left two thick trails of blood behind it on the floor. It had no clothes on, but the decay and constant squirming of maggots and insects in its body gave it a unique covering all its own.
“You can flee,” it said to me with dozens of overlapping, harsh voices, “but I know you better than you know yourself. You think you are evil, but the true evil is coming that will tear you to pieces. Run!” The last word was so loud that the entire cellar shook, sending clouds of dirt falling down from the ceiling, and I turned and ran up the stairs. I heard a rapid scuttling, dragging sound as the monster behind me gave chase.
“Ah oh no oh shit oh no,” I said to myself quickly as I ran right through the cellar door, not even stopping. It slammed against the wall, shutting itself again from the impact as I passed by. I ran out into the kitchen and towards the front door, which I always kept locked with two deadbolts as well as a knob that locked. I was serious about my security, but right now it was working against me. My shaking fingers quickly undid the two deadbolts as I heard the monster break through the cellar door.
“Jaaacckk…” it said to me, dragging my name out as it slid on its belly behind me. I had just gotten to the last lock, the turnkey on the doorknob, when I felt it grab my leg. I kicked back as hard as I could, smashing the bottom of my steel-toe boot directly into its face through pure luck, and felt the knob turn suddenly. I flung the door open, but just as I was running through it, I felt myself pulled back by the grasping arms of the eldritch monstrosity behind me. It spun me around to stare into its rotting face. I felt like I could do nothing for a moment but look into those countless eyes. Then, with a superhuman speed beyond my vision, it rapidly bit my right thumb off with its blackened teeth.
For a moment, there was no pain, just shock. I stared down at my spurting hand, the blood soaking into my white shirt, then a fiery burning sensation shot up my arm. Screaming and thrashing, I fell back through the door, kicking with all my might at the thing’s eyes and face. But though I made contact over and over, it just started laughing, a demonic and deep sound that rattled the windows and doors of the house.
Laying flat out on my back on the porch, I began to scoot backwards as fast as I could while it came towards me. Fumbling in my pocket, I found the key for the deadbolt I kept on the basement door, pulled it out, and unthinkingly shoved the piece of metal into the center of its eyes. It made a direct hit into one of them, sending warm vitreous fluid covered with squirming maggots shooting out onto my left hand. The smell was so pungent and the sensation of the insects so horrifying that I started to gag. But it bought me enough time to push myself up and begin sprinting into the woods. I held my mutilated hand with my good one, wrapping the cloth of my shirt around it to try to slow the bleeding. I knew if it kept spurting like it was, I would begin to lose consciousness from the blood loss, then that thing would have me.
The daylight was growing soft and weak as the sun set, but it was enough to see the brushes and brambles as I ran blindly ahead. After a couple minutes, I came into a clearing, where I saw myself standing in the center of the field. I stopped suddenly, looking behind me for the creature, but there was no sign of it. Then I turned back to me and started moving forwards. I saw he only had one shoe on.
“What the fuck is this?” I asked loudly. My doppelganger only smiled at me.
“We’ve made a huge mistake, Jack,” he said.
“Who are you?” I said.
“I’m you, obviously. Look!” He raised his bandaged right hand, the strips of a white shirt wrapped tightly around the dismembered thumb.
“How is this happening?” I felt like I was about to wake up at any moment, as if I were trapped in a nightmare.
“You didn’t do enough research into that drug you gave the young woman,” he said to me. “Not only did you accidentally kidnap and torture a psychic who has supernatural powers, but then you gave her a drug that causes time-loops and out-of-body experiences. Her mind is so powerful that it is disrupting the flow of space and time all around us. You are caught in the same loop now that she is subjected to inside of her nightmare state.” I shook my head.
“That sounds totally impossible,” I said. “There’s no such thing as psychics.”
“Before today,” he said, “we also thought there was no such thing as monsters. Yet didn’t you see the one who bit off our thumb? It had the eyes of every girl we’ve killed. She has recruited their spirits and pieces of their decomposing bodies to reform into a vessel for justice. You’re being hunted, and you don’t have much time. You have to listen to me and stop asking questions.” I nodded at him, and he went on.
“Your only chance now is to run out the clock. That drug, the fly agaric mushroom, only has enough active chemicals in that one bag to keep Ally in a time-loop for twenty or twenty-five hours, depending on how fast the drug begins to wear off when the IV bag is depleted. If you can survive the entire time, you might be able to make it out of this alive. Her powers should start to fade back to normal once the drug has dissipated…” He turned, looking. “Did you hear that?”
I was about to respond, saying that I didn’t hear anything, but then I realized I did hear something. It sounded almost subaudible, like the tremors of an earthquake deep underground just out of the reach of human hearing, but as I listened, it grew louder and the ground started to shake. Thousands of black, decomposing hands began to reach out of the ground, sprouting from the forest clearing like rows and rows of corn stalks, and I screamed in terror.
I was much closer to the forest than my doppelganger, so I began to back away rapidly. Some of the hands grabbed at my jeans and shoes, and I lost one shoe in the process of escaping, but within a few seconds I was back under the cover of the trees. My doppelganger wasn’t so lucky.
He tried fighting, kicking at the nearest hands and pulling a switchblade from his pocket, which he used to begin stabbing and slicing at the dozens of hands that now grabbed his legs, feet and torso. I saw black liquid dripping from the slices he made, but the hands were totally unaffected. They began to return to the earth, dragging him down with them. He shot me one final, terrified glance before he disappeared beneath the ground.
“Found you!” a monstrous gurgling said from behind me. I turned around and saw the monster there, one of its eyes deflated and still dripping, its mouth opened in a grin that stretched across its face like a Glasgow smile, its cheeks ripping open from one corner of its face to the other as its grin kept widening.
“Please, leave me alone!” I said, using my good hand to pull my switchblade out of my pocket. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to. I have no fight with you.” The thing laughed, a deep and disturbing sound that echoed through the rapidly darkening forest.
“You killed me, over and over,” it said, “and now I come to repay the favor. A life for a life, the ancients said, but your debt is overdue. You have only one life to trade, so I’m going to make this fun for us. You can have a sixty-second head start.”
I turned around and sprinted blindly across the forest, until I eventually found an abandoned shack. I took out my phone and tried calling for help. I called 911, but the only voice that came through was the voice of the monster, gurgling and laughing.
The internet worked, so I began to write up my story. I know I can’t survive for twenty hours. I’ve seen myself die already. These things are just toying with me before they finish me off for good.
I just wanted the world to know what happened to me, though. Maybe I do deserve to die, but at least I can give others a warning.
Stay away from the fly agaric mushroom.

The screaming from my basement kept me up at night. The women I had kidnapped and chained down there often wept or yelled until dawn, and I knew things couldn’t continue like this. They were disturbing my sleep, making my life intolerable, and that made me furious to the point where my vision turned white with rage every time they woke me up. I would go beat them any time that happened, but they still kept screaming, and I knew I would have to find a better way to immobilize them.
I had originally bought barbiturates, benzos and fentanyl off the dark web. I also bought medical supplies like plastic tubing as well as machinery to titrate IV drugs. After a few experiments gone wrong where I accidentally overdosed a couple of them and had to administer Narcan, I found I could keep them incapacitated with a very low dose of fentanyl combined with high doses of IV benzodiazepines. But then my dark web connection disappeared, likely busted by the DEA or FBI, and I knew I had to find another way.
I read about legal drugs, and one of them caught my eye. It was a red-and-white mushroom by the name of Amanita muscaria, commonly called “fly agaric”, a mushroom that appeared in pop culture references from the Smurfs to Alice in Wonderland to Super Mario Brothers, but one that almost no one realized was psychoactive and totally legal. It had incapacitating effects, often causing out-of-body experiences and catatonic states.
“This is peeeeerfect,” I said to myself, smiling and feeling elated. I immediately ordered some Siberian fly agaric, and as soon as it came in the next day, I started extracting the active ingredients and diluting them in distilled water for placement in the IV bag.
As I went out to check the mail, I saw a male about my height far away in the forest, running away in a panic from something behind him, something that appeared to drag itself forward at an amazingly fast speed on its arms, yet had no legs. But when I turned to look at it directly, they had disappeared into the thick brush. I had no neighbors, the nearest one being over a mile away in the other direction, so I wondered who would be out here.
I lit a cigarette and stayed on my porch, watching and waiting, but after no more sightings or noises came, I gave up and went back inside.
Whistling to myself, I brought the IV bags down to the basement. The three women I kept there were currently all quiet, likely either asleep or just staring blankly up at the ceiling. They were all naked, chained to the gurneys. I only unchained them when they needed to use the bathroom or eat, but then I would immediately chain them back up again. They were all beautiful with blue eyes and blonde hair parted in the middle, lithe bodies and very light, Irish skin.
I walked down the creaking cellar stairs, moving next to my nearest victim. I didn’t usually bother to learn their names, but this one was a hitchhiker and had told me when I picked her up. She said her name was Ally and that she was a college student. She was beautiful and young. She was sleeping when I started hanging the new IV solution of fly agaric up to the medical pole next to her bed.
As the fluid began to drip through the clear plastic tubing, she woke up. Her deep blue eyes regarded me with hatred for a moment, then she turned away, not saying anything. Her face had a look of hopelessness and despair on it that I had seen dozens of times before. Whenever any of my victims neared the end of their lives, that kind of vacant hopeless stare was all that was left on their faces, sometimes accompanied by tremendous pain and fear, sometimes accompanied by acceptance and peace.
Whistling to myself, I began to walk around the room, checking the other two women for infections, making sure their chains were tight and that they were still alive. I was about to grab the padlock key to unchain them one at a time, letting them use the bathroom and get some food and water quickly so I could keep them alive longer, but then something started to happen from underneath Ally’s bed.
I heard a deep growling sound. Spinning around, I saw Ally’s pupils had expanded to cover her entire iris. Her eyes were staring blankly past me with a thousand-yard stare, and the room seemed to shimmer and glow around her. Underneath her bed, I saw a face with dozens of glowing white eyes staring out at me from the shadows. I backed up slowly, reaching into my pocket for the switchblade I always carried on me. It used its front limbs to crawl out, leaving a trail of reeking blood behind it and filling the room with the smell of iron and rot.
The monstrosity looked like it was rotting from the inside. Its skin fell off in fetid bluish-purple layers, its mouth was full of blackened teeth embedded in sickly brown gums, but its dozens of eyes were what truly caught my attention. They were all blue, just like the eyes of my victims. Some were icy blue, like an Alaskan lake, while others were the deep blue of a tropical ocean. To my horror, I could even recognize some of the eyes and which of my previous victims they had belonged to.
It dragged itself forward at a tremendous speed using its arms, with exposed muscle and bone showing through the worn, decaying layers of maggot-infested skin that covered them. It had no legs, but only bleeding stumps that left two thick trails of blood behind it on the floor. It had no clothes on, but the decay and constant squirming of maggots and insects in its body gave it a unique covering all its own.
“You can flee,” it said to me with dozens of overlapping, harsh voices, “but I know you better than you know yourself. You think you are evil, but the true evil is coming that will tear you to pieces. Run!” The last word was so loud that the entire cellar shook, sending clouds of dirt falling down from the ceiling, and I turned and ran up the stairs. I heard a rapid scuttling, dragging sound as the monster behind me gave chase.
“Ah oh no oh shit oh no,” I said to myself quickly as I ran right through the cellar door, not even stopping. It slammed against the wall, shutting itself again from the impact as I passed by. I ran out into the kitchen and towards the front door, which I always kept locked with two deadbolts as well as a knob that locked. I was serious about my security, but right now it was working against me. My shaking fingers quickly undid the two deadbolts as I heard the monster break through the cellar door.
“Jaaacckk…” it said to me, dragging my name out as it slid on its belly behind me. I had just gotten to the last lock, the turnkey on the doorknob, when I felt it grab my leg. I kicked back as hard as I could, smashing the bottom of my steel-toe boot directly into its face through pure luck, and felt the knob turn suddenly. I flung the door open, but just as I was running through it, I felt myself pulled back by the grasping arms of the eldritch monstrosity behind me. It spun me around to stare into its rotting face. I felt like I could do nothing for a moment but look into those countless eyes. Then, with a superhuman speed beyond my vision, it rapidly bit my right thumb off with its blackened teeth.
For a moment, there was no pain, just shock. I stared down at my spurting hand, the blood soaking into my white shirt, then a fiery burning sensation shot up my arm. Screaming and thrashing, I fell back through the door, kicking with all my might at the thing’s eyes and face. But though I made contact over and over, it just started laughing, a demonic and deep sound that rattled the windows and doors of the house.
Laying flat out on my back on the porch, I began to scoot backwards as fast as I could while it came towards me. Fumbling in my pocket, I found the key for the deadbolt I kept on the basement door, pulled it out, and unthinkingly shoved the piece of metal into the center of its eyes. It made a direct hit into one of them, sending warm vitreous fluid covered with squirming maggots shooting out onto my left hand. The smell was so pungent and the sensation of the insects so horrifying that I started to gag. But it bought me enough time to push myself up and begin sprinting into the woods. I held my mutilated hand with my good one, wrapping the cloth of my shirt around it to try to slow the bleeding. I knew if it kept spurting like it was, I would begin to lose consciousness from the blood loss, then that thing would have me.
The daylight was growing soft and weak as the sun set, but it was enough to see the brushes and brambles as I ran blindly ahead. After a couple minutes, I came into a clearing, where I saw myself standing in the center of the field. I stopped suddenly, looking behind me for the creature, but there was no sign of it. Then I turned back to me and started moving forwards. I saw he only had one shoe on.
“What the fuck is this?” I asked loudly. My doppelganger only smiled at me.
“We’ve made a huge mistake, Jack,” he said.
“Who are you?” I said.
“I’m you, obviously. Look!” He raised his bandaged right hand, the strips of a white shirt wrapped tightly around the dismembered thumb.
“How is this happening?” I felt like I was about to wake up at any moment, as if I were trapped in a nightmare.
“You didn’t do enough research into that drug you gave the young woman,” he said to me. “Not only did you accidentally kidnap and torture a psychic who has supernatural powers, but then you gave her a drug that causes time-loops and out-of-body experiences. Her mind is so powerful that it is disrupting the flow of space and time all around us. You are caught in the same loop now that she is subjected to inside of her nightmare state.” I shook my head.
“That sounds totally impossible,” I said. “There’s no such thing as psychics.”
“Before today,” he said, “we also thought there was no such thing as monsters. Yet didn’t you see the one who bit off our thumb? It had the eyes of every girl we’ve killed. She has recruited their spirits and pieces of their decomposing bodies to reform into a vessel for justice. You’re being hunted, and you don’t have much time. You have to listen to me and stop asking questions.” I nodded at him, and he went on.
“Your only chance now is to run out the clock. That drug, the fly agaric mushroom, only has enough active chemicals in that one bag to keep Ally in a time-loop for twenty or twenty-five hours, depending on how fast the drug begins to wear off when the IV bag is depleted. If you can survive the entire time, you might be able to make it out of this alive. Her powers should start to fade back to normal once the drug has dissipated…” He turned, looking. “Did you hear that?”
I was about to respond, saying that I didn’t hear anything, but then I realized I did hear something. It sounded almost subaudible, like the tremors of an earthquake deep underground just out of the reach of human hearing, but as I listened, it grew louder and the ground started to shake. Thousands of black, decomposing hands began to reach out of the ground, sprouting from the forest clearing like rows and rows of corn stalks, and I screamed in terror.
I was much closer to the forest than my doppelganger, so I began to back away rapidly. Some of the hands grabbed at my jeans and shoes, and I lost one shoe in the process of escaping, but within a few seconds I was back under the cover of the trees. My doppelganger wasn’t so lucky.
He tried fighting, kicking at the nearest hands and pulling a switchblade from his pocket, which he used to begin stabbing and slicing at the dozens of hands that now grabbed his legs, feet and torso. I saw black liquid dripping from the slices he made, but the hands were totally unaffected. They began to return to the earth, dragging him down with them. He shot me one final, terrified glance before he disappeared beneath the ground.
“Found you!” a monstrous gurgling said from behind me. I turned around and saw the monster there, one of its eyes deflated and still dripping, its mouth opened in a grin that stretched across its face like a Glasgow smile, its cheeks ripping open from one corner of its face to the other as its grin kept widening.
“Please, leave me alone!” I said, using my good hand to pull my switchblade out of my pocket. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to. I have no fight with you.” The thing laughed, a deep and disturbing sound that echoed through the rapidly darkening forest.
“You killed me, over and over,” it said, “and now I come to repay the favor. A life for a life, the ancients said, but your debt is overdue. You have only one life to trade, so I’m going to make this fun for us. You can have a sixty-second head start.”
I turned around and sprinted blindly across the forest, until I eventually found an abandoned shack. I took out my phone and tried calling for help. I called 911, but the only voice that came through was the voice of the monster, gurgling and laughing.
The internet worked, so I began to write up my story. I know I can’t survive for twenty hours. I’ve seen myself die already. These things are just toying with me before they finish me off for good.
I just wanted the world to know what happened to me, though. Maybe I do deserve to die, but at least I can give others a warning.
Stay away from the fly agaric mushroom.

As the title says, tonight is my Saturday night and I’m partying/chilling here with a good dose of panthers in my system! I’m in a chatty mood so ask me whatever. I’ll answer things from my own experiences, or if you have a question for the drugs, I’ll just ask them for you lol. I’m a pretty seasoned user of both Amanita and traditional psychs too. Currently in a medium dose, still on the come up. Planning to re-dose in maybe an hour or so. I will eventually reach a point where I’m beyond response capabilities, but for now come chill and ask away!

The screaming from my basement kept me up at night. The women I had kidnapped and chained down there often wept or yelled until dawn, and I knew things couldn’t continue like this. They were disturbing my sleep, making my life intolerable, and that made me furious to the point where my vision turned white with rage every time they woke me up. I would go beat them any time that happened, but they still kept screaming, and I knew I would have to find a better way to immobilize them.
I had originally bought barbiturates, benzos and fentanyl off the dark web. I also bought medical supplies like plastic tubing as well as machinery to titrate IV drugs. After a few experiments gone wrong where I accidentally overdosed a couple of them and had to administer Narcan, I found I could keep them incapacitated with a very low dose of fentanyl combined with high doses of IV benzodiazepines. But then my dark web connection disappeared, likely busted by the DEA or FBI, and I knew I had to find another way.
I read about legal drugs, and one of them caught my eye. It was a red-and-white mushroom by the name of Amanita muscaria, commonly called “fly agaric”, a mushroom that appeared in pop culture references from the Smurfs to Alice in Wonderland to Super Mario Brothers, but one that almost no one realized was psychoactive and totally legal. It had incapacitating effects, often causing out-of-body experiences and catatonic states.
“This is peeeeerfect,” I said to myself, smiling and feeling elated. I immediately ordered some Siberian fly agaric, and as soon as it came in the next day, I started extracting the active ingredients and diluting them in distilled water for placement in the IV bag.
As I went out to check the mail, I saw a male about my height far away in the forest, running away in a panic from something behind him, something that appeared to drag itself forward at an amazingly fast speed on its arms, yet had no legs. But when I turned to look at it directly, they had disappeared into the thick brush. I had no neighbors, the nearest one being over a mile away in the other direction, so I wondered who would be out here.
I lit a cigarette and stayed on my porch, watching and waiting, but after no more sightings or noises came, I gave up and went back inside.
Whistling to myself, I brought the IV bags down to the basement. The three women I kept there were currently all quiet, likely either asleep or just staring blankly up at the ceiling. They were all naked, chained to the gurneys. I only unchained them when they needed to use the bathroom or eat, but then I would immediately chain them back up again. They were all beautiful with blue eyes and blonde hair parted in the middle, lithe bodies and very light, Irish skin.
I walked down the creaking cellar stairs, moving next to my nearest victim. I didn’t usually bother to learn their names, but this one was a hitchhiker and had told me when I picked her up. She said her name was Ally and that she was a college student. She was beautiful and young. She was sleeping when I started hanging the new IV solution of fly agaric up to the medical pole next to her bed.
As the fluid began to drip through the clear plastic tubing, she woke up. Her deep blue eyes regarded me with hatred for a moment, then she turned away, not saying anything. Her face had a look of hopelessness and despair on it that I had seen dozens of times before. Whenever any of my victims neared the end of their lives, that kind of vacant hopeless stare was all that was left on their faces, sometimes accompanied by tremendous pain and fear, sometimes accompanied by acceptance and peace.
Whistling to myself, I began to walk around the room, checking the other two women for infections, making sure their chains were tight and that they were still alive. I was about to grab the padlock key to unchain them one at a time, letting them use the bathroom and get some food and water quickly so I could keep them alive longer, but then something started to happen from underneath Ally’s bed.
I heard a deep growling sound. Spinning around, I saw Ally’s pupils had expanded to cover her entire iris. Her eyes were staring blankly past me with a thousand-yard stare, and the room seemed to shimmer and glow around her. Underneath her bed, I saw a face with dozens of glowing white eyes staring out at me from the shadows. I backed up slowly, reaching into my pocket for the switchblade I always carried on me. It used its front limbs to crawl out, leaving a trail of reeking blood behind it and filling the room with the smell of iron and rot.
The monstrosity looked like it was rotting from the inside. Its skin fell off in fetid bluish-purple layers, its mouth was full of blackened teeth embedded in sickly brown gums, but its dozens of eyes were what truly caught my attention. They were all blue, just like the eyes of my victims. Some were icy blue, like an Alaskan lake, while others were the deep blue of a tropical ocean. To my horror, I could even recognize some of the eyes and which of my previous victims they had belonged to.
It dragged itself forward at a tremendous speed using its arms, with exposed muscle and bone showing through the worn, decaying layers of maggot-infested skin that covered them. It had no legs, but only bleeding stumps that left two thick trails of blood behind it on the floor. It had no clothes on, but the decay and constant squirming of maggots and insects in its body gave it a unique covering all its own.
“You can flee,” it said to me with dozens of overlapping, harsh voices, “but I know you better than you know yourself. You think you are evil, but the true evil is coming that will tear you to pieces. Run!” The last word was so loud that the entire cellar shook, sending clouds of dirt falling down from the ceiling, and I turned and ran up the stairs. I heard a rapid scuttling, dragging sound as the monster behind me gave chase.
“Ah oh no oh shit oh no,” I said to myself quickly as I ran right through the cellar door, not even stopping. It slammed against the wall, shutting itself again from the impact as I passed by. I ran out into the kitchen and towards the front door, which I always kept locked with two deadbolts as well as a knob that locked. I was serious about my security, but right now it was working against me. My shaking fingers quickly undid the two deadbolts as I heard the monster break through the cellar door.
“Jaaacckk…” it said to me, dragging my name out as it slid on its belly behind me. I had just gotten to the last lock, the turnkey on the doorknob, when I felt it grab my leg. I kicked back as hard as I could, smashing the bottom of my steel-toe boot directly into its face through pure luck, and felt the knob turn suddenly. I flung the door open, but just as I was running through it, I felt myself pulled back by the grasping arms of the eldritch monstrosity behind me. It spun me around to stare into its rotting face. I felt like I could do nothing for a moment but look into those countless eyes. Then, with a superhuman speed beyond my vision, it rapidly bit my right thumb off with its blackened teeth.
For a moment, there was no pain, just shock. I stared down at my spurting hand, the blood soaking into my white shirt, then a fiery burning sensation shot up my arm. Screaming and thrashing, I fell back through the door, kicking with all my might at the thing’s eyes and face. But though I made contact over and over, it just started laughing, a demonic and deep sound that rattled the windows and doors of the house.
Laying flat out on my back on the porch, I began to scoot backwards as fast as I could while it came towards me. Fumbling in my pocket, I found the key for the deadbolt I kept on the basement door, pulled it out, and unthinkingly shoved the piece of metal into the center of its eyes. It made a direct hit into one of them, sending warm vitreous fluid covered with squirming maggots shooting out onto my left hand. The smell was so pungent and the sensation of the insects so horrifying that I started to gag. But it bought me enough time to push myself up and begin sprinting into the woods. I held my mutilated hand with my good one, wrapping the cloth of my shirt around it to try to slow the bleeding. I knew if it kept spurting like it was, I would begin to lose consciousness from the blood loss, then that thing would have me.
The daylight was growing soft and weak as the sun set, but it was enough to see the brushes and brambles as I ran blindly ahead. After a couple minutes, I came into a clearing, where I saw myself standing in the center of the field. I stopped suddenly, looking behind me for the creature, but there was no sign of it. Then I turned back to me and started moving forwards. I saw he only had one shoe on.
“What the fuck is this?” I asked loudly. My doppelganger only smiled at me.
“We’ve made a huge mistake, Jack,” he said.
“Who are you?” I said.
“I’m you, obviously. Look!” He raised his bandaged right hand, the strips of a white shirt wrapped tightly around the dismembered thumb.
“How is this happening?” I felt like I was about to wake up at any moment, as if I were trapped in a nightmare.
“You didn’t do enough research into that drug you gave the young woman,” he said to me. “Not only did you accidentally kidnap and torture a psychic who has supernatural powers, but then you gave her a drug that causes time-loops and out-of-body experiences. Her mind is so powerful that it is disrupting the flow of space and time all around us. You are caught in the same loop now that she is subjected to inside of her nightmare state.” I shook my head.
“That sounds totally impossible,” I said. “There’s no such thing as psychics.”
“Before today,” he said, “we also thought there was no such thing as monsters. Yet didn’t you see the one who bit off our thumb? It had the eyes of every girl we’ve killed. She has recruited their spirits and pieces of their decomposing bodies to reform into a vessel for justice. You’re being hunted, and you don’t have much time. You have to listen to me and stop asking questions.” I nodded at him, and he went on.
“Your only chance now is to run out the clock. That drug, the fly agaric mushroom, only has enough active chemicals in that one bag to keep Ally in a time-loop for twenty or twenty-five hours, depending on how fast the drug begins to wear off when the IV bag is depleted. If you can survive the entire time, you might be able to make it out of this alive. Her powers should start to fade back to normal once the drug has dissipated…” He turned, looking. “Did you hear that?”
I was about to respond, saying that I didn’t hear anything, but then I realized I did hear something. It sounded almost subaudible, like the tremors of an earthquake deep underground just out of the reach of human hearing, but as I listened, it grew louder and the ground started to shake. Thousands of black, decomposing hands began to reach out of the ground, sprouting from the forest clearing like rows and rows of corn stalks, and I screamed in terror.
I was much closer to the forest than my doppelganger, so I began to back away rapidly. Some of the hands grabbed at my jeans and shoes, and I lost one shoe in the process of escaping, but within a few seconds I was back under the cover of the trees. My doppelganger wasn’t so lucky.
He tried fighting, kicking at the nearest hands and pulling a switchblade from his pocket, which he used to begin stabbing and slicing at the dozens of hands that now grabbed his legs, feet and torso. I saw black liquid dripping from the slices he made, but the hands were totally unaffected. They began to return to the earth, dragging him down with them. He shot me one final, terrified glance before he disappeared beneath the ground.
“Found you!” a monstrous gurgling said from behind me. I turned around and saw the monster there, one of its eyes deflated and still dripping, its mouth opened in a grin that stretched across its face like a Glasgow smile, its cheeks ripping open from one corner of its face to the other as its grin kept widening.
“Please, leave me alone!” I said, using my good hand to pull my switchblade out of my pocket. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to. I have no fight with you.” The thing laughed, a deep and disturbing sound that echoed through the rapidly darkening forest.
“You killed me, over and over,” it said, “and now I come to repay the favor. A life for a life, the ancients said, but your debt is overdue. You have only one life to trade, so I’m going to make this fun for us. You can have a sixty-second head start.”
I turned around and sprinted blindly across the forest, until I eventually found an abandoned shack. I took out my phone and tried calling for help. I called 911, but the only voice that came through was the voice of the monster, gurgling and laughing.
The internet worked, so I began to write up my story. I know I can’t survive for twenty hours. I’ve seen myself die already. These things are just toying with me before they finish me off for good.
I just wanted the world to know what happened to me, though. Maybe I do deserve to die, but at least I can give others a warning.
Stay away from the fly agaric mushroom.

The screaming from my basement kept me up at night. The women I had kidnapped and chained down there often wept or yelled until dawn, and I knew things couldn’t continue like this. They were disturbing my sleep, making my life intolerable, and that made me furious to the point where my vision turned white with rage every time they woke me up. I would go beat them any time that happened, but they still kept screaming, and I knew I would have to find a better way to immobilize them.
I had originally bought barbiturates, benzos and fentanyl off the dark web. I also bought medical supplies like plastic tubing as well as machinery to titrate IV drugs. After a few experiments gone wrong where I accidentally overdosed a couple of them and had to administer Narcan, I found I could keep them incapacitated with a very low dose of fentanyl combined with high doses of IV benzodiazepines. But then my dark web connection disappeared, likely busted by the DEA or FBI, and I knew I had to find another way.
I read about legal drugs, and one of them caught my eye. It was a red-and-white mushroom by the name of Amanita muscaria, commonly called “fly agaric”, a mushroom that appeared in pop culture references from the Smurfs to Alice in Wonderland to Super Mario Brothers, but one that almost no one realized was psychoactive and totally legal. It had incapacitating effects, often causing out-of-body experiences and catatonic states.
“This is peeeeerfect,” I said to myself, smiling and feeling elated. I immediately ordered some Siberian fly agaric, and as soon as it came in the next day, I started extracting the active ingredients and diluting them in distilled water for placement in the IV bag.
As I went out to check the mail, I saw a male about my height far away in the forest, running away in a panic from something behind him, something that appeared to drag itself forward at an amazingly fast speed on its arms, yet had no legs. But when I turned to look at it directly, they had disappeared into the thick brush. I had no neighbors, the nearest one being over a mile away in the other direction, so I wondered who would be out here.
I lit a cigarette and stayed on my porch, watching and waiting, but after no more sightings or noises came, I gave up and went back inside.
Whistling to myself, I brought the IV bags down to the basement. The three women I kept there were currently all quiet, likely either asleep or just staring blankly up at the ceiling. They were all naked, chained to the gurneys. I only unchained them when they needed to use the bathroom or eat, but then I would immediately chain them back up again. They were all beautiful with blue eyes and blonde hair parted in the middle, lithe bodies and very light, Irish skin.
I walked down the creaking cellar stairs, moving next to my nearest victim. I didn’t usually bother to learn their names, but this one was a hitchhiker and had told me when I picked her up. She said her name was Ally and that she was a college student. She was beautiful and young. She was sleeping when I started hanging the new IV solution of fly agaric up to the medical pole next to her bed.
As the fluid began to drip through the clear plastic tubing, she woke up. Her deep blue eyes regarded me with hatred for a moment, then she turned away, not saying anything. Her face had a look of hopelessness and despair on it that I had seen dozens of times before. Whenever any of my victims neared the end of their lives, that kind of vacant hopeless stare was all that was left on their faces, sometimes accompanied by tremendous pain and fear, sometimes accompanied by acceptance and peace.
Whistling to myself, I began to walk around the room, checking the other two women for infections, making sure their chains were tight and that they were still alive. I was about to grab the padlock key to unchain them one at a time, letting them use the bathroom and get some food and water quickly so I could keep them alive longer, but then something started to happen from underneath Ally’s bed.
I heard a deep growling sound. Spinning around, I saw Ally’s pupils had expanded to cover her entire iris. Her eyes were staring blankly past me with a thousand-yard stare, and the room seemed to shimmer and glow around her. Underneath her bed, I saw a face with dozens of glowing white eyes staring out at me from the shadows. I backed up slowly, reaching into my pocket for the switchblade I always carried on me. It used its front limbs to crawl out, leaving a trail of reeking blood behind it and filling the room with the smell of iron and rot.
The monstrosity looked like it was rotting from the inside. Its skin fell off in fetid bluish-purple layers, its mouth was full of blackened teeth embedded in sickly brown gums, but its dozens of eyes were what truly caught my attention. They were all blue, just like the eyes of my victims. Some were icy blue, like an Alaskan lake, while others were the deep blue of a tropical ocean. To my horror, I could even recognize some of the eyes and which of my previous victims they had belonged to.
It dragged itself forward at a tremendous speed using its arms, with exposed muscle and bone showing through the worn, decaying layers of maggot-infested skin that covered them. It had no legs, but only bleeding stumps that left two thick trails of blood behind it on the floor. It had no clothes on, but the decay and constant squirming of maggots and insects in its body gave it a unique covering all its own.
“You can flee,” it said to me with dozens of overlapping, harsh voices, “but I know you better than you know yourself. You think you are evil, but the true evil is coming that will tear you to pieces. Run!” The last word was so loud that the entire cellar shook, sending clouds of dirt falling down from the ceiling, and I turned and ran up the stairs. I heard a rapid scuttling, dragging sound as the monster behind me gave chase.
“Ah oh no oh shit oh no,” I said to myself quickly as I ran right through the cellar door, not even stopping. It slammed against the wall, shutting itself again from the impact as I passed by. I ran out into the kitchen and towards the front door, which I always kept locked with two deadbolts as well as a knob that locked. I was serious about my security, but right now it was working against me. My shaking fingers quickly undid the two deadbolts as I heard the monster break through the cellar door.
“Jaaacckk…” it said to me, dragging my name out as it slid on its belly behind me. I had just gotten to the last lock, the turnkey on the doorknob, when I felt it grab my leg. I kicked back as hard as I could, smashing the bottom of my steel-toe boot directly into its face through pure luck, and felt the knob turn suddenly. I flung the door open, but just as I was running through it, I felt myself pulled back by the grasping arms of the eldritch monstrosity behind me. It spun me around to stare into its rotting face. I felt like I could do nothing for a moment but look into those countless eyes. Then, with a superhuman speed beyond my vision, it rapidly bit my right thumb off with its blackened teeth.
For a moment, there was no pain, just shock. I stared down at my spurting hand, the blood soaking into my white shirt, then a fiery burning sensation shot up my arm. Screaming and thrashing, I fell back through the door, kicking with all my might at the thing’s eyes and face. But though I made contact over and over, it just started laughing, a demonic and deep sound that rattled the windows and doors of the house.
Laying flat out on my back on the porch, I began to scoot backwards as fast as I could while it came towards me. Fumbling in my pocket, I found the key for the deadbolt I kept on the basement door, pulled it out, and unthinkingly shoved the piece of metal into the center of its eyes. It made a direct hit into one of them, sending warm vitreous fluid covered with squirming maggots shooting out onto my left hand. The smell was so pungent and the sensation of the insects so horrifying that I started to gag. But it bought me enough time to push myself up and begin sprinting into the woods. I held my mutilated hand with my good one, wrapping the cloth of my shirt around it to try to slow the bleeding. I knew if it kept spurting like it was, I would begin to lose consciousness from the blood loss, then that thing would have me.
The daylight was growing soft and weak as the sun set, but it was enough to see the brushes and brambles as I ran blindly ahead. After a couple minutes, I came into a clearing, where I saw myself standing in the center of the field. I stopped suddenly, looking behind me for the creature, but there was no sign of it. Then I turned back to me and started moving forwards. I saw he only had one shoe on.
“What the fuck is this?” I asked loudly. My doppelganger only smiled at me.
“We’ve made a huge mistake, Jack,” he said.
“Who are you?” I said.
“I’m you, obviously. Look!” He raised his bandaged right hand, the strips of a white shirt wrapped tightly around the dismembered thumb.
“How is this happening?” I felt like I was about to wake up at any moment, as if I were trapped in a nightmare.
“You didn’t do enough research into that drug you gave the young woman,” he said to me. “Not only did you accidentally kidnap and torture a psychic who has supernatural powers, but then you gave her a drug that causes time-loops and out-of-body experiences. Her mind is so powerful that it is disrupting the flow of space and time all around us. You are caught in the same loop now that she is subjected to inside of her nightmare state.” I shook my head.
“That sounds totally impossible,” I said. “There’s no such thing as psychics.”
“Before today,” he said, “we also thought there was no such thing as monsters. Yet didn’t you see the one who bit off our thumb? It had the eyes of every girl we’ve killed. She has recruited their spirits and pieces of their decomposing bodies to reform into a vessel for justice. You’re being hunted, and you don’t have much time. You have to listen to me and stop asking questions.” I nodded at him, and he went on.
“Your only chance now is to run out the clock. That drug, the fly agaric mushroom, only has enough active chemicals in that one bag to keep Ally in a time-loop for twenty or twenty-five hours, depending on how fast the drug begins to wear off when the IV bag is depleted. If you can survive the entire time, you might be able to make it out of this alive. Her powers should start to fade back to normal once the drug has dissipated…” He turned, looking. “Did you hear that?”
I was about to respond, saying that I didn’t hear anything, but then I realized I did hear something. It sounded almost subaudible, like the tremors of an earthquake deep underground just out of the reach of human hearing, but as I listened, it grew louder and the ground started to shake. Thousands of black, decomposing hands began to reach out of the ground, sprouting from the forest clearing like rows and rows of corn stalks, and I screamed in terror.
I was much closer to the forest than my doppelganger, so I began to back away rapidly. Some of the hands grabbed at my jeans and shoes, and I lost one shoe in the process of escaping, but within a few seconds I was back under the cover of the trees. My doppelganger wasn’t so lucky.
He tried fighting, kicking at the nearest hands and pulling a switchblade from his pocket, which he used to begin stabbing and slicing at the dozens of hands that now grabbed his legs, feet and torso. I saw black liquid dripping from the slices he made, but the hands were totally unaffected. They began to return to the earth, dragging him down with them. He shot me one final, terrified glance before he disappeared beneath the ground.
“Found you!” a monstrous gurgling said from behind me. I turned around and saw the monster there, one of its eyes deflated and still dripping, its mouth opened in a grin that stretched across its face like a Glasgow smile, its cheeks ripping open from one corner of its face to the other as its grin kept widening.
“Please, leave me alone!” I said, using my good hand to pull my switchblade out of my pocket. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to. I have no fight with you.” The thing laughed, a deep and disturbing sound that echoed through the rapidly darkening forest.
“You killed me, over and over,” it said, “and now I come to repay the favor. A life for a life, the ancients said, but your debt is overdue. You have only one life to trade, so I’m going to make this fun for us. You can have a sixty-second head start.”
I turned around and sprinted blindly across the forest, until I eventually found an abandoned shack. I took out my phone and tried calling for help. I called 911, but the only voice that came through was the voice of the monster, gurgling and laughing.
The internet worked, so I began to write up my story. I know I can’t survive for twenty hours. I’ve seen myself die already. These things are just toying with me before they finish me off for good.
I just wanted the world to know what happened to me, though. Maybe I do deserve to die, but at least I can give others a warning.
Stay away from the fly agaric mushroom.

The screaming from my basement kept me up at night. The women I had kidnapped and chained down there often wept or yelled until dawn, and I knew things couldn’t continue like this. They were disturbing my sleep, making my life intolerable, and that made me furious to the point where my vision turned white with rage every time they woke me up. I would go beat them any time that happened, but they still kept screaming, and I knew I would have to find a better way to immobilize them.
I had originally bought barbiturates, benzos and fentanyl off the dark web. I also bought medical supplies like plastic tubing as well as machinery to titrate IV drugs. After a few experiments gone wrong where I accidentally overdosed a couple of them and had to administer Narcan, I found I could keep them incapacitated with a very low dose of fentanyl combined with high doses of IV benzodiazepines. But then my dark web connection disappeared, likely busted by the DEA or FBI, and I knew I had to find another way.
I read about legal drugs, and one of them caught my eye. It was a red-and-white mushroom by the name of Amanita muscaria, commonly called “fly agaric”, a mushroom that appeared in pop culture references from the Smurfs to Alice in Wonderland to Super Mario Brothers, but one that almost no one realized was psychoactive and totally legal. It had incapacitating effects, often causing out-of-body experiences and catatonic states.
“This is peeeeerfect,” I said to myself, smiling and feeling elated. I immediately ordered some Siberian fly agaric, and as soon as it came in the next day, I started extracting the active ingredients and diluting them in distilled water for placement in the IV bag.
As I went out to check the mail, I saw a male about my height far away in the forest, running away in a panic from something behind him, something that appeared to drag itself forward at an amazingly fast speed on its arms, yet had no legs. But when I turned to look at it directly, they had disappeared into the thick brush. I had no neighbors, the nearest one being over a mile away in the other direction, so I wondered who would be out here.
I lit a cigarette and stayed on my porch, watching and waiting, but after no more sightings or noises came, I gave up and went back inside.
Whistling to myself, I brought the IV bags down to the basement. The three women I kept there were currently all quiet, likely either asleep or just staring blankly up at the ceiling. They were all naked, chained to the gurneys. I only unchained them when they needed to use the bathroom or eat, but then I would immediately chain them back up again. They were all beautiful with blue eyes and blonde hair parted in the middle, lithe bodies and very light, Irish skin.
I walked down the creaking cellar stairs, moving next to my nearest victim. I didn’t usually bother to learn their names, but this one was a hitchhiker and had told me when I picked her up. She said her name was Ally and that she was a college student. She was beautiful and young. She was sleeping when I started hanging the new IV solution of fly agaric up to the medical pole next to her bed.
As the fluid began to drip through the clear plastic tubing, she woke up. Her deep blue eyes regarded me with hatred for a moment, then she turned away, not saying anything. Her face had a look of hopelessness and despair on it that I had seen dozens of times before. Whenever any of my victims neared the end of their lives, that kind of vacant hopeless stare was all that was left on their faces, sometimes accompanied by tremendous pain and fear, sometimes accompanied by acceptance and peace.
Whistling to myself, I began to walk around the room, checking the other two women for infections, making sure their chains were tight and that they were still alive. I was about to grab the padlock key to unchain them one at a time, letting them use the bathroom and get some food and water quickly so I could keep them alive longer, but then something started to happen from underneath Ally’s bed.
I heard a deep growling sound. Spinning around, I saw Ally’s pupils had expanded to cover her entire iris. Her eyes were staring blankly past me with a thousand-yard stare, and the room seemed to shimmer and glow around her. Underneath her bed, I saw a face with dozens of glowing white eyes staring out at me from the shadows. I backed up slowly, reaching into my pocket for the switchblade I always carried on me. It used its front limbs to crawl out, leaving a trail of reeking blood behind it and filling the room with the smell of iron and rot.
The monstrosity looked like it was rotting from the inside. Its skin fell off in fetid bluish-purple layers, its mouth was full of blackened teeth embedded in sickly brown gums, but its dozens of eyes were what truly caught my attention. They were all blue, just like the eyes of my victims. Some were icy blue, like an Alaskan lake, while others were the deep blue of a tropical ocean. To my horror, I could even recognize some of the eyes and which of my previous victims they had belonged to.
It dragged itself forward at a tremendous speed using its arms, with exposed muscle and bone showing through the worn, decaying layers of maggot-infested skin that covered them. It had no legs, but only bleeding stumps that left two thick trails of blood behind it on the floor. It had no clothes on, but the decay and constant squirming of maggots and insects in its body gave it a unique covering all its own.
“You can flee,” it said to me with dozens of overlapping, harsh voices, “but I know you better than you know yourself. You think you are evil, but the true evil is coming that will tear you to pieces. Run!” The last word was so loud that the entire cellar shook, sending clouds of dirt falling down from the ceiling, and I turned and ran up the stairs. I heard a rapid scuttling, dragging sound as the monster behind me gave chase.
“Ah oh no oh shit oh no,” I said to myself quickly as I ran right through the cellar door, not even stopping. It slammed against the wall, shutting itself again from the impact as I passed by. I ran out into the kitchen and towards the front door, which I always kept locked with two deadbolts as well as a knob that locked. I was serious about my security, but right now it was working against me. My shaking fingers quickly undid the two deadbolts as I heard the monster break through the cellar door.
“Jaaacckk…” it said to me, dragging my name out as it slid on its belly behind me. I had just gotten to the last lock, the turnkey on the doorknob, when I felt it grab my leg. I kicked back as hard as I could, smashing the bottom of my steel-toe boot directly into its face through pure luck, and felt the knob turn suddenly. I flung the door open, but just as I was running through it, I felt myself pulled back by the grasping arms of the eldritch monstrosity behind me. It spun me around to stare into its rotting face. I felt like I could do nothing for a moment but look into those countless eyes. Then, with a superhuman speed beyond my vision, it rapidly bit my right thumb off with its blackened teeth.
For a moment, there was no pain, just shock. I stared down at my spurting hand, the blood soaking into my white shirt, then a fiery burning sensation shot up my arm. Screaming and thrashing, I fell back through the door, kicking with all my might at the thing’s eyes and face. But though I made contact over and over, it just started laughing, a demonic and deep sound that rattled the windows and doors of the house.
Laying flat out on my back on the porch, I began to scoot backwards as fast as I could while it came towards me. Fumbling in my pocket, I found the key for the deadbolt I kept on the basement door, pulled it out, and unthinkingly shoved the piece of metal into the center of its eyes. It made a direct hit into one of them, sending warm vitreous fluid covered with squirming maggots shooting out onto my left hand. The smell was so pungent and the sensation of the insects so horrifying that I started to gag. But it bought me enough time to push myself up and begin sprinting into the woods. I held my mutilated hand with my good one, wrapping the cloth of my shirt around it to try to slow the bleeding. I knew if it kept spurting like it was, I would begin to lose consciousness from the blood loss, then that thing would have me.
The daylight was growing soft and weak as the sun set, but it was enough to see the brushes and brambles as I ran blindly ahead. After a couple minutes, I came into a clearing, where I saw myself standing in the center of the field. I stopped suddenly, looking behind me for the creature, but there was no sign of it. Then I turned back to me and started moving forwards. I saw he only had one shoe on.
“What the fuck is this?” I asked loudly. My doppelganger only smiled at me.
“We’ve made a huge mistake, Jack,” he said.
“Who are you?” I said.
“I’m you, obviously. Look!” He raised his bandaged right hand, the strips of a white shirt wrapped tightly around the dismembered thumb.
“How is this happening?” I felt like I was about to wake up at any moment, as if I were trapped in a nightmare.
“You didn’t do enough research into that drug you gave the young woman,” he said to me. “Not only did you accidentally kidnap and torture a psychic who has supernatural powers, but then you gave her a drug that causes time-loops and out-of-body experiences. Her mind is so powerful that it is disrupting the flow of space and time all around us. You are caught in the same loop now that she is subjected to inside of her nightmare state.” I shook my head.
“That sounds totally impossible,” I said. “There’s no such thing as psychics.”
“Before today,” he said, “we also thought there was no such thing as monsters. Yet didn’t you see the one who bit off our thumb? It had the eyes of every girl we’ve killed. She has recruited their spirits and pieces of their decomposing bodies to reform into a vessel for justice. You’re being hunted, and you don’t have much time. You have to listen to me and stop asking questions.” I nodded at him, and he went on.
“Your only chance now is to run out the clock. That drug, the fly agaric mushroom, only has enough active chemicals in that one bag to keep Ally in a time-loop for twenty or twenty-five hours, depending on how fast the drug begins to wear off when the IV bag is depleted. If you can survive the entire time, you might be able to make it out of this alive. Her powers should start to fade back to normal once the drug has dissipated…” He turned, looking. “Did you hear that?”
I was about to respond, saying that I didn’t hear anything, but then I realized I did hear something. It sounded almost subaudible, like the tremors of an earthquake deep underground just out of the reach of human hearing, but as I listened, it grew louder and the ground started to shake. Thousands of black, decomposing hands began to reach out of the ground, sprouting from the forest clearing like rows and rows of corn stalks, and I screamed in terror.
I was much closer to the forest than my doppelganger, so I began to back away rapidly. Some of the hands grabbed at my jeans and shoes, and I lost one shoe in the process of escaping, but within a few seconds I was back under the cover of the trees. My doppelganger wasn’t so lucky.
He tried fighting, kicking at the nearest hands and pulling a switchblade from his pocket, which he used to begin stabbing and slicing at the dozens of hands that now grabbed his legs, feet and torso. I saw black liquid dripping from the slices he made, but the hands were totally unaffected. They began to return to the earth, dragging him down with them. He shot me one final, terrified glance before he disappeared beneath the ground.
“Found you!” a monstrous gurgling said from behind me. I turned around and saw the monster there, one of its eyes deflated and still dripping, its mouth opened in a grin that stretched across its face like a Glasgow smile, its cheeks ripping open from one corner of its face to the other as its grin kept widening.
“Please, leave me alone!” I said, using my good hand to pull my switchblade out of my pocket. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to. I have no fight with you.” The thing laughed, a deep and disturbing sound that echoed through the rapidly darkening forest.
“You killed me, over and over,” it said, “and now I come to repay the favor. A life for a life, the ancients said, but your debt is overdue. You have only one life to trade, so I’m going to make this fun for us. You can have a sixty-second head start.”
I turned around and sprinted blindly across the forest, until I eventually found an abandoned shack. I took out my phone and tried calling for help. I called 911, but the only voice that came through was the voice of the monster, gurgling and laughing.
The internet worked, so I began to write up my story. I know I can’t survive for twenty hours. I’ve seen myself die already. These things are just toying with me before they finish me off for good.
I just wanted the world to know what happened to me, though. Maybe I do deserve to die, but at least I can give others a warning.
Stay away from the fly agaric mushroom.

Recently I saw Shane Mauss live and bought his 50mg Amanita gummies. They were perfect for my neck pain. I was amazed. But the prices are too high everywhere I look and everyone seems to be selling 250mg - 2000mg gummies or more. I'm going to need these very often, im not trying to trip I just need pain relief. Is there anywhere that sells 50mg gummies for cheap? Or is there a good tutorial on how to make my own?
Thank you

tea, 2.7grams(dried), Nordic caps from MN nice
Made tea with about 500ml of water a subsequently 50 ml of lemon juice. From my early years as a premed I figured this would get me close to a ph of 2.5-3. Brewed softly for 35 minutes and strained. Added some honey and cinnamon to better the taste.
Overall felt good and very light. Took about 1 hour for relaxing effects to kick in. I had some food in me from earlier too.
I noticed these weird sensations in my stomach like I was falling (like that feeling you get right at the top of a rollercoaster). It wasn’t unpleasant at all, kind of fun actually.
Not too much for visuals, maybe seeing objects in my periphery at some points, but very mild. There was a point in the evening, where I stepped outside on my deck, and just looked up at the stars, and honestly did feel a sense of presentness and peacefulness that I haven’t felt in a long time. I want to explore this more and why I have lost this feeling of connectedness I used to have with the world.
honestly sleep was subpar. I woke up much more than I usually do, which surprised me with Amanita. no crazy dreams either.
Overall it was a good experience but very light, which was the goal! :) Didn’t want to scare myself on the first try.
Plan to make another tea with 5.5 grams tonight. I want to pursue the connectedness aspect more. Will try to meditate on this.

(Note: I would like to apologize for the previous post that i made, since it was unreadable, and present you with this "literal" wall of text. I would also apologize for the absurd long amount of it, and i will understand it if you want to drop it.)

First thing first, I wanted to make this post to show my personal ideas on how this game could be improved. Mind you, I’m not saying that it’s a bad game (another one comes to mind, but I’m digressing) but I think that with some adjustments on it’s “weak” aspects, these changes would probably end up to be beneficial for our terms. And for this time, I would like to focus on a very important one (I have others in my mind too, but I will eventually discuss them another time).
So… why don’t we start talking about…

PART 1. THE GENERAL POOL
/Key notes for the navigation -> Example will be shortened as Ex:___ Editor Note will be shortened as E.N:___ General Pool will be shortened as G.P.___ Poke Fair will be shortened as P.F.___ Not in the General Pool will be shortened as N.G.P.___ Event Sync Pair will be shortened as E.S.P.\
In these past years a lot of sync pairs have received the state of Poke Fairs a tad randomly in my opinion, making the state of the General Pool, (Alola excluded), rather empty due to the over abundance of limited banners that leave you biting the dust if you miss one specific pair (glares at Ash and rat). So, as a long running day 1 F2P player, i began making a small research about the units that they have released thus far and after taking a look at the Sync Pairs that where passed as Poke Fairs or Variety, i decided to put some of them the General Pool and the Ticket Scout banners (since, lets be real, most of them are locked away “just because” and nobody has that many gems to pull them all, so pulling randomly a unit that you may have not wanted but still ends up being useful, is a net positive compared to the classic “I just received the same unit for the 100th time in a row”).
In order to insert said Sync Pairs, however, I had to establish some criteria’s that would be acceptable to DeNa in an hypothetycal case where these changes could have been proposed to them, since:

I obviously can’t put anyone in the General Pool because...
DeNA wouldn’t accept it, since they still have to make revenue out of it.

Thus, I needed to think in a more of a “DeNA way” with everything that i wrote down.
Here’s what i came up with:
Criteria N°1___ What -Trainer Group- Sync Pairs can be obtained in the General Pool?
Main -Trainer Group- filtering system given by the game for the General Pool:

Protagonists (Ex: Selene and Decidueye).
Elite Four (Ex: Drasna and Dragalge).
Gym Leaders (Ex: Burgh and Leavanny)
Rivals (Ex: Gladion and Silvally)
Villain (Ex: Courtney and Camerupt) [E.N: For Villains, in this case specifically, we are talking about the Admins]
Trial Giver (Ex: Lana and Araquanid)
Battle Facility Foe (Ex: Darach and Staraptor) [E.N: For this category I am of course referring to the Frontier Brains and i picked him because he’s the only 5 star frontier brain in the general pool]

“Unofficial” Trainer Group filtering for the General Pool:

Professors (Ex: Kukui and Lycanroc Midday) [E.N: Oddly enough, the iconic “Professor” doesn’t exist as a theme skill but it is instead named, rather generically, as “Researcher”]
Alternative costume (Ex: Grimsley (Kimono) and Bisharp)
Legends Important Characters (Ex: Adaman and Leafeon) [E.N: With the Legends formula finally being established as a running series in the franchise with both Arceus and Z-A, by of course dividing the different characters as if they where Gym Leaders/Wardens, Villain/Volo ecc.., I would appreciate to hear you’re opinion whether or not to make some characters available in the General Pool]
Famous and important/unimportant NPC’s (Ex: Lisia and Altaria) [E.N: Thus NPC’s that have a unique design that isn’t repeated thought the game like the general NPC’s that we fight in the games (like the Lass, Swimmer, Camper class, ecc…) and that are either key (like Looker, a character that was very relevant from Gen. 4 to Gen. 7) or borderline marginal to the story (with all due respect for Lisia, since she is one of my fav units in the game too, but the Pokemon Contest Events are rather marginal in the main games)]

The “Doubt of the Author” Trainer Group that exists / it doesn’t exist:

Original Creations (Ex: Paulo and Lycanroc Dusk) [E.N: I have zero ideas whether to make the O.C.’s for this game available or not in the General Pool. You can help me decide here too whether or not it’s a good idea including them].
Mothers (Ex: Melony and Lapras) [E.N: When I said that I would have considered anyone, I really meant anyone. This is the Super Smash Bros Ultimate of Pokemon, if it exits it can be played. Some protagonists mothers I could see them be playable but, again, if they ever make one of them, they will make all of them].

Main Trainer Group’s that will never be present in the General Pool

Champion (Ex: Cynthia and Garchomp)
Villain (Ex: Lysandre and Yveltal) [E.N: Thus the Leaders of the evil team, or in the case of Volo, he will be considered as a one and only thing].

For this and the last criteria that i settled, i decided to insert 2 rules that i thought to be a “must follow” in order for the subsequent pairs to be equally divided from P.F. to G.P.
Criteria N°2 - What restrictions given by DeNA to make a Sync pair a Poke Fair i WON’T consider?:

A Sync Pair will not be given the status of a Poke Fair just because it’s a popular character (Ex: Marnie and Morpeko). [E.N: I don’t care if they are popular, if the list says that that Sync Pair should be available in the General Pool, it WILL enter in it no matter what].
It’s a Sync Pair that has a 2/4/5 Sync Grid (Ex: Dahlia and Ludicolo). [E.N: I don’t care if they are broken, one of these days every Sync Pair will receive a Grid boost, so better make them available sooner rather than later]
It’s a Default character, but has a Legendary / Mythical Pokemon attached to it (Ex: Lucas and Dialga). [E.N: Hey, its not my fault if you decided to give them a Pokemon like that, you should have already made them available from the start instead of making them, unfairly, a Poke Fair]
It posesses Buddy Move: (E.X: Iono and Bellibolt)
It reduces the Type Rebuff of the opponent (Ex: Oleana and Garbodor)
It has a Region Circle: (Ex: Chase and Pikachu)

———
Criteria N°3 - What self-made/DeNA created restrictions I WILL consider to make the Sync Pairs available also in the General Pool?:
- ASIDE FROM THE SECOND RULE OF THE CRITERIA N°3, THE LIST OF THE CRITERIA N°2 WILL HAVE THE UPMOST PRIORITY OVER ANYTHING ELSE THAT WILL BE WRITTEN DOWN HERE. [E.N: The first of the two important rules, and the second most important since without this rule this post wouldn’t have even be conceived].

THE LIST OF THE CRITERIA N°2 WILL HAVE THE UPMOST PRIORITY OVER ANYTHING ELSE THAT WILL BE WRITTEN DOWN HERE. [E.N: Arguably, the most important rule of the bunch, as without this rule this post wouldn’t have even be conceived].
There has to be at least one default copy in the General Pool. (Ex: Gloria and Zacian) [E.N: The second most important rule. For example, let’s make a demonstration with the Galar protagonists. Gloria, even though its paired up with a Legendary, will enter the General Pool due to her nature of being a Protagonist, being a default Protagonist at that, and also ending up in the first rule of the Criteria N°3. This gets further incentivized if we also pick Victor and Rillaboom, since the dude is LITERALLY a case of Dawn and Torterra and Lucas and Dialga situation, whether one is available (Dawn) and the other isn’t (Lucas) because he has a Legendary pokemon, but this is even worse because Victor is neither of them (as in Rillaboom is not a damn Legendary) but it still is treated as a Pokefair].
Protagonists + Sygna Suit pairs won’t enter the General Pool. (Ex: Sygna Suit May and Blaziken) [E.N: Making the protagonist with special Sygna Suits restricted its an understandable idea, so I won’t include them].
Sygna Suits + Legendary / Mythical pairs won’t enter in the General Pool. (Ex: Sygna Suit Steven and Deoxys)[E.N: Like the Sygna Suits with the protagonists, the same thing will be applied for the rest of the Sygna Suits].
Alt versions of the same characters, unless they are “important”, will be inserted in the General Pool (Ex: Elesa (Alt) and Emolga) [E.N: for “Important” I mean that Variety Scouts Pairs like Kris and Jolteon won’t be included, as well as versions like Gloria (Dojo) and Urshifu Rapid Strike that can be considered a “Base” form due to the context on what they are presented in the games (Gloria “Dojo” being the default outfit of the Isle of Armor DLC) but due to they’re nature of being ~~PTW~~ paid DLC, as well as having Urshifu as her companion makes me doubtful in putting them into the game, but it can easily be debatable. Feel free to say your opinion about it whether or not we should include them, but for the moment being I won’t include them].
If they have a specific theming around them, they won’t be inserted (Ex: Sygna Suit Blue and Blastoise) [E.N: even though he’s technically alright to enter the General Pool, it’s what’s around it that makes it unable to enter said Pool, since, you know, they are the first ever Sygna Suits, and they are a bit important in the overall lore of the game. If you think that examples like these should be ignored, and thus, it is ok to introduce them in the General Pool, feel free to share your opinion about it].
Important / unimportant NPC’s will be inserted in the General Pool, unless they have a Legendary (Ex: Emma and Adobe A-Crobat) [E.N: Same thing for the case of Looker and Croagunk and Lisia and Altaira, these type of characters will be insterted in the Pool. Unfortunately I can’t say the exact thing for Eusine and Shiny Suicune, but if you think I can ignore the rule of the Legendary, again, feel free to comment it].

_ END OF THE CRITERIA’S. NOW LET’S SELECT THE PAIRS BY FOLLOWING THE PREDETERMINED RULE’S THAT WE’VE ESTABLISHED SO FAR_

GENERAL POOL’S AND REGIONAL TICKET SCOUTS POOL’S FOR 5 STARS
_____________________

KANTO (BEFORE adding new Sync Pairs)
Leaf and Eevee
Blue and Pidgeot
Sabrina and Alakazam
Sygna Suit Misty and Vaporeon
Sygna Suit Erika and Leafeon

KANTO (AFTER Adding new Sync Pairs)
Red and Snorlax
Chase and Pikachu
Elaine and Eevee
Blue (Classic and Aereodactyl)
Giovanni and Rhydon

(E.N: I decided to add Giovanni and Rhydon in the Kanto General Pool for many reasons:
1] I despised that Team Rocket banner, because every single one of those admins should have been available in the General Pool, just like Courtney is.
2] So that we have all versions of Giovanni avaliable in the game (Persian/Team Rocket - Mewtwo/Team Rainbow Rocket - Rhydon/Gym Leader).
3] Come on, the most jaw dropping and iconic moment in the Kanto games IS discovering that Giovanni is also the last Gym Leader. Thus, with this hypothetical change, his “Villain” Theme Skill would get replaced by the “Gym Leader” Theme Skill).

KANTO (FINAL LIST)
Red and Snorlax
Leaf and Eevee
Chase and Pikachu
Elaine and Eevee
Blue and Pidgeot
Blue (Classic) and Aereodactyl
Giovanni and Rhydon
Sabrina and Alakazam
Sygna Suit Misty and Vaporeon
Sygna Suit Erika and Leafeon

KANTO (MISSING Sync Pairs that would enter the Pool after they’re inclusion in the game / They are in the game but aren’t in the Pool yet)
Trace [E.N: G.P.]
Green (?) [E.N: G.P.]
Daisy Oak (why not? Anything is possible with this game) [E.N: E.S.P.]
Bill [E.N: G.P.]
Celio [E.N: G.P.]
Mr Fuji (Doubt, but hey, you never know) [E.N: G.P.]
Copycat [E.N: G.P.]
Brock (Classic) [E.N: G.P.]
Misty (Alternative) [E.N: G.P.]
Lt. Surge (Classic) [E.N: G.P.]
Erika (Alternative) [E.N: G.P.]
Sabrina (Alternative) [E.N: G.P.]
Blaine (Alternative) [E.N: G.P.]
Mina (Alternative) [E.N: G.P.] [E.N: In the Let’s Go Titles you can see her as a younger version of herself, who knows if they’ll ever make it]

________________________

JOHTO (BEFORE)
Ethan and Typhlosion
Lyra and Meganium
Kris and Feraligatr
Karen and Houndoom
Jasmine and Steelix
Falkner ans Swellow
Morty and Drifblim

JOHTO (AFTER)
Sygna Suit Silver and Sneasel
Ariana and Arbok
Proton and Golbat
Petrel and Weezing
Archer and Houndoom

JOHTO (FINAL LIST)
Ethan and Typhlosion
Lyra and Meganium
Kris and Feraligatr
Sygna Suit Silver and Sneasel
Karen and Houndoom
Jasmine and Steelix
Falkner ans Swellow
Morty and Drifblim
Ariana and Arbok
Proton and Golbat
Petrel and Weezing
Archer and Houndoom

JOHTO (MISSING)
Chuck and Poliwrath [E.N: G.P.]
Professor Elm [E.N: G.P.]
Kurt [E.N: G.P.] / [E.N: E.S.P.]
Kimono Girls [E.N: Zero ideas whether making them avaliable in the General Pool]

____________________________

HOENN (BEFORE)
Brendan and Sceptile
May and Swampert
Sydney and Absol
Glacia and Glalie
Phoebe and Dusknoir
Lisia and Altaria
Wallace and Milotic
Wally and Gallade
Courtney and Camerupt

HOENN (AFTER)
Sygna Suit Wally and Gardevoir (Shiny) [E.N: I don’t know if it’s ok to include shines since, you know, they are rare and stuff. You say if its ok or not]

HOENN (FINAL LIST)
Brendan and Sceptile
May and Swampert
Sydney and Absol
Glacia and Glalie
Phoebe and Dusknoir
Lisia and Altaria
Wallace and Milotic
Wally and Gallade
Courtney and Camerupt
Sygna Suit Wally and Gardevoir (Shiny) [TBD]

HOENN (MISSING)
Professor Birch [E.N: G.P.]
Scott (The dude who owns the battle frontier. Never knew he existed, thus he could be a pick XD) [E.N: E.S.P.]
Mr Briney (THE Sync pair that everyone needs) [E.N: E.S.P.]
Mr Stone (More of a troll pick than Scott, ngl.)
Lanette [E.N: G.P.]
Brigette [E.N: G.P.]
Aarune and Flygon [E.N: Would be a god send having it Ground type this time. G.P.]
Matt and Sharpedo [E.N: Water Tech? G.P.]
Shelly and Sharpedo [E.N: Dark Support? G.P.]
Tabitha and Camerupt [E.N: Ideally Fire Support G.P.]
Wattson and Manectric [E.N: Mega G.P.]
Juan and Whiscash [E.N: G.P.]
Greta and Medicham [E.N: G.P.]
Tucker and Salamence [E.N: Ideally Strike Mega, so we have a full Salamence team G.P.]
Spenser [E.N: G.P.]
Brandon [E.N: G.P.]
Anabel (Classic / Original) [E.N: G.P.]

[IF Scott, Mr. Briney and Mr. Stone do get picked, they have to be an Event Sync Pair]

________________________

SINNOH (BEFORE)
Dawn and Torterra
Lucian and Girafarig
Aron and Vespiquen
Bertha and Hippowdon
Volkner and Luxray
Fantina and Mismagius
Darach and Staraptor
Looker and Croagunk

SINNOH (AFTER)
Lucas and Dialga
Akari and Hisuian Samurott
Rei and Hisuian Decidueye
Argenta and Skarmory
Dahlia and Ludicolo
Palmer and Regigigas
Adaman and Leafeon [TBD]
Irida and Glaceon [TBD]
[E.N: Dunno if Adaman and Irida can be included. If you think they should, please let me know]

SINNOH (FINAL LIST)
Dawn and Torterra
Lucas and Dialga
Akari and Hisuian Samurott
Rei and Hisuian Decidueye
Lucian and Girafarig
Aron and Vespiquen
Bertha and Hippowdon
Volkner and Luxray
Fantina and Mismagius
Darach and Staraptor
Looker and Croagunk
Argenta and Skarmory
Dahlia and Ludicolo
Palmer and Regigigas
Adaman and Leafeon [TBD]
Irida and Glaceon [TBD]

SINNOH (MISSING)
Professor Rowan [E.N: G.P.]
Johanna (DPP Mom) [E.N: E.S.P.]
Mira (Stat Trainer) [E.N: G.P.]
Buck (Stat Trainer) and Claydol [E.N: Possible Ground Support? It would be wise to make it such. G.P.]
Bebe [E.N: G.P.]
Hayley and Phione [E.N: G.P.] / [E.N: E.S.P.]
Felicity (Pokemon Lotto) [E.N: E.S.P.]
Mars and Purugly [E.N: Support? G.P.]
Jupiter and Skuntank [E.N: Support? G.P.]
Saturn and Toxicroak [E.N: ...support?? G.P.]
Charon and Rotom [E.N: G.P.]
Byron and Bastiodon [E.N: Support for sure, come on. G.P.]

[Down here we will start now with the Hisui NPC’s. This is gonna get messy, since some can be obviously put in the General Pool, while others… well, I would need you’re help for some of them]

Anthe
Arezu and H. Lilligant [E.N: G.P.]
Beni and Gallade [E.N: Possible Phys Psychic? G.P.]
Calaba and Ursaluna [E.N: G.P.]
Charm [E.N: G.P.]
Choy
Clover and Obamasnow [E.N: G.P.]
Cogita and Enamorus [Master Fair or Poke Fair easily, wouldn’t complain giving her the exclusivity (will pull)] - Colza
Cyllene and Abra [E.N: G.P.]
Gaeric and H.Avalugg [E.N: G.P.]
Ginter
Ingo (Hisuian) and Sneasler [Like Kimono Grimsley] [E.N: G.P.]
Iscan and Basculegion [E.N: G.P.]
Kamado and Golem? [E.N: G.P.]
Lian and Kleavor [E.N: G.P.]
Mai and Wyrdeer [E.N: G.P.]
Melli and H.Electrode [E.N: G.P.]
Palina and H.Arcanine [E.N: G.P.]
Pesselle and Croagunk [E.N: G.P.]
Professor Laventon and H.Typhlosion (copium) [E.N: G.P.]
Rye and Lucario [E.N: Steel this time around please? G.P.]
Sabi and H.Braviary [E.N: Psychic Support/Sprint with speed focus, it’s written in the stars. G.P.]
Sanqua and Umbreon [E.N: (Again? Please stop, even my grandpa now has Umbreon) G.P.]
Tao Hua
Tuli
(Vessa and Spiritomb would be kinda funny, ngl)
Volo (Mad Lad Alt) (Master Fair, Poke Fair 100%... duh!)
Zisu and Lopunny? Infernape? Steelix? [E.N: G.P.]

[E.N: Since Volo has been released with Togepi, do you think it could enter in the G.P. or do we make that every iteration of him remains a Poke Fair? Let me know you’re thoughts].

_______________________

UNOVA (BEFORE)
Hilda and Emboar
Hilbert and Samurott
Nate and Braviary
Grimsley and Liepard
Caitlin and Reuniclus
Elesa and Zebstrika
Burgh and Leavanny
Bianca and Musharna
Hugh and Bouffalant
Colress and Klinklang
Lenora and Watchog
Sygna Suit Elesa and Rotom
Sygna Suit Grimsley and Sharpedo

UNOVA (AFTER)
Elesa (Classic) and Emolga
Sygna Suit Roxie and Toxtricity Amped Form
N and Zekrom [E.N: Contrary to Eusine, this guy can enter since he’s a Rival and, like Colress, he’s an ex “Villain”.]
Ingo and Excadrill
Emmet and Archeops

UNOVA (FINAL LIST)
Hilda and Emboar
Hilbert and Samurott
Nate and Braviary
Grimsley and Liepard
Caitlin and Reuniclus
Elesa and Zebstrika
Elesa (Classic) and Emolga
Burgh and Leavanny
N and Zekrom
Bianca and Musharna
Hugh and Bouffalant
Colress and Klinklang
Lenora and Watchog
Sygna Suit Elesa and Rotom
Sygna Suit Grimsley and Sharpedo
Sygna Suit Roxie and Toxtricity Amped Form
Ingo and Excadrill
Emmet and Archeops

UNOVA (MISSING)
Professor Burnet [E.N: Dream Radar Outfit I mean] [E.N: G.P.]
Amanita [E.N: G.P.] / [E.N: E.S.P.]
Nate (PokeStar)
Rosa (PokeStar) [E.N: These two would be Poke Fairs 100%]
Professor Juniper [E.N: G.P.]
Mom (BW) [E.N: E.S.P.]
Mom (BW2) [E.N: E.S.P.]
Cedric Juniper [E.N: E.S.P.]
Fennel [E.N: E.S.P.] / [E.N: G.P.]
Cilian and Simisage [E.N: G.P.]
Chili and Simisear [E.N: G.P.]
Cress and Simipour [E.N: G.P.]
Drayden [E.N: G.P.]
Benga [E.N: G.P.]
Curtis [E.N: E.S.P.]
Yancy [E.N: Unironically Curtis and Yance might have a chance too. Maybe as Events unit, but they could] [E.N: E.S.P.]
Brycen (PokeStar) [E.N: E.S.P.]
Sabrina (PokeStar) [E.N: These 2 are different from Nate and Rosa] [E.N: E.S.P.]
Cyrano [E.N: G.P.]
Briar
Kieran (Alternative) [E.N: He’s a similar case with Blue, as in he’s a Champion that lasted less than a week and a Rival, so he would too be available in the General Pool] [E.N: G.P.]
Zinzolin and Ice Cream [E.N: G.P.]
Shadow Triad [E.N: G.P.]
Anthea and Concordia [E.N: I have no idea which Pokemon’s they would get, but I would like to have them]
Crispin and Magmortar [E.N: Don’t care about Blaziken (not that i hate it though), i wanna see a Magmortar, man... G.P.]
Amarys and Metagross? [E.N: G.P.]
Lacey and Excadrill [E.N: G.P.]
Drayton and Archaludon [E.N: G.P.]

________________________

KALOS (BEFORE)
Serena and Delphox
Drasna and Dragalge
Olympia and Sigilyph
Clemont and Heliolisk
Tierno and Crawdaunt
Shauna and Chesnaught

KALOS (AFTER)
Emma and Crobat
[Cries in no SS Korinna being in the General Pool]

KALOS (FINAL LIST)
Serena and Delphox
Drasna and Dragalge
Olympia and Sigilyph
Clemont and Heliolisk
Tierno and Crawdaunt
Shauna and Chesnaught
Emma and Crobat

KALOS (MISSING)
Grace (Kalos mom) [E.N: E.S.P.]
Trevor [E.N: G.P.]
Alexa (play Despacito) [E.N: G.P.]
Cassius (PC dude) [E.N: E.S.P.]
Inver (Dude with inverted ruleset. Event Sync Pair 100%) [E.N: E.S.P.]
Sina and Ice Mega Pokemon [E.N: G.P.]
Dexio and Psychic Mega Pokemon [E.N: I have no idea whether or not making the masked versions alts too, so i think it will only be avaliable those versions] [E.N: G.P.]
Gurkin and Lucario [E.N: This time a Steel Type Mega Lucario? Possible, since Riley should have been that already?? Dammit] [E.N: G.P.]
Bonnie [E.N: G.P.]
AZ [E.N: G.P.]
Mr. Bonding [E.N: E.S.P.] [E.N. Pun not intended this time]
Xerosic [E.N: G.P.]
Aliana and Druddigon [E.N: G.P.]
Bryony and Liepard [E.N: G.P.]
Celosia and Manectric [E.N: G.P.]
Mable and Houndoom [E.N: G.P.]
Amelia (Pokemon Shuffle) [E.N: E.S.P.]
[E.N: Of course some NPC’s from the new game will be there, but I can’t insert anything Legends Z-A related in here due to the lack of material]

__________________________

ALOLA (BEFORE)
Selene and Decidueye
Elio and Primaria
Olivia and Lycanroc Midnight
Hala and Crabominable
Gladion and Silvally
Plumeria and Salazzle
Guzma and Golisopod
Lusamine and Pheromosa
Kiawe and Alolan Marowak
Lana and Araquanid
Mallow and Tsareena
The Masked Royal and Incineroar
Lillie and Clefairy
Grimsley (Kimono) and Bisharp
Kukui and Lycanroc Midday
Ryuki and Turtonator

ALOLA (AFTER)
Anabel and Snorlax

ALOLA (FINAL LIST)
Selene and Decidueye
Elio and Primaria
Olivia and Lycanroc Midnight
Hala and Crabominable
Gladion and Silvally
Plumeria and Salazzle
Guzma and Golisopod
Lusamine and Pheromosa
Kiawe and Alolan Marowak
Lana and Araquanid
Mallow and Tsareena
The Masked Royal and Incineroar
Lillie and Clefairy
Grimsley (Kimono) and Bisharp
Kukui and Lycanroc Midday
Ryuki and Turtonator
Anabel and Snorlax

ALOLA (MISSING)
Mom [E.N: E.S.P.]
Professor Burnet (Alternative) [E.N: G.P.]
Samson Oak [E.N: G.P.]
Mohn [E.N: E.S.P.]
Red
Blue [E.N: I have no idea how they are gonna age them, but they defo would be Poke Fair’s]
Colress (Achromatic Wearable Console) [E.N: G.P.]
Dexio (Alternative) [E.N: G.P.]
Sina (Alternative) [E.N: G.P.]
Faba and Bruxish [E.N: Ideally with Psychic Fang gimmicks, but of course he will be paired with Hypno, sadge] [E.N: G.P.]
Wicke [E.N: G.P.]
Phyco [E.N: G.P.]
Dulse [E.N: G.P.] Soliera[E.N: G.P.]
Zossie [E.N: G.P.]
Maxie (Classic)
Archie (Classic) [E.N: I don’t know how they would make them available, but they would be Poke Fairs 100%]
Ilima [E.N: G.P.]
Plumeria (Alternative) [E.N: G.P.]
Guzma (Alternative) [E.N: They will not have the Team Skull logos. Dunno if they will make them, but they are a possibility] [E.N: G.P.]

_______________________

GALAR (BEFORE)
Allister and Gengar
Melony and Lapras
Nessa and Drednaw
Goride and Coalossal
Piers and Obstagoon
Bea and Sirfetch’d
Sonia and Yamper

GALAR (AFTER)
Victor and Rillaboom
Gloria and Zacian
Sygna Suit Piers and Toxtricity Low Key Form
Raihan and Duraludon
Bede and Hatterene
Marnie and Morpeko
Oleana and Garbodor
Ball Guy and Amoonguss

GALAR (FINAL LIST)
Victor and Rillaboom
Gloria and Zacian
Allister and Gengar
Melony and Lapras
Nessa and Drednaw
Gordie and Coalossal
Piers and Obstagoon
Bea and Sirfetch’d
Raihan and Duraludon
Bede and Hatterene
Marnie and Morpeko
Oleana and Garbodor
Sonia and Yamper
Sygna Suit Piers and Toxtricity Low Key Form
Ball Guy and Amoonguss

GALAR (MISSING)
Professor Magnolia and Corvinight? [E.N: G.P.]
Mom [E.N: E.S.P.]
Marnie (Alternative) [E.N: G.P.]
Bede (Alternative) [E.N: G.P.]
Hop (Alternative) [E.N: G.P.]
Sordward [E.N: G.P.]
Shieldbert [E.N: G.P.]
Mustard and Mienshao [E.N: G.P.]
Mustard (Serious Alternative) and Urshifu Dark? [E.N: Poke Fair]
Klara and G.Slowbro [E.N: G.P.]
Savory and G.Slowking [E.N: G.P.]
Honey and Blastoise (Ideally she would need the G.Max, but any other mon would be fine)[E.N: G.P.]/[E.N: E.S.P.]
Hyde [E.N: E.S.P.]
Peony and Copperajah (even though Aggron would be a cooler pairing) [E.N: G.P.]
Peonia and Tyrantrum [E.N: Head Smash with Recoil Removal 9 and we go to town G.P.]
Milo and Eldegoss (Altough any Applin evo would be ok too)[E.N: G.P.]
Kabu and Centiskorch [E.N: G.P.]
Opal and Alcreamie [E.N: G.P.]
Cara Liss [E.N: The Fossil lady] [E.N: E.S.P.]
Jack [E.N: The bar tender in the Poke center with Female Indeedee] [E.N: E.S.P.]

__________________________

PALDEA (BEFORE)
None… which is embarrassing in my opinion. Aside from Geeta, NONE of them deserve the Poke Fair status.

PALDEA (FINAL LIST)
Nemona and Pawmot
Penny and Sylveon
Iono and Bellibolt
Grusha and Cetitan
Zim and Farigiraf

PALDEA (MISSING)
Professor Sada
Professor Turo [One of these two might be the free Legendary since either the Rivals or the Villains get them in the main story “Excluding our Mc, of course”]
Mom [E.N: E.S.P.]
Arven and Mabosstiff [E.N: G.P.]
Clavell [E.N: G.P.]
Jacq [E.N: G.P.]
Dendra [E.N: G.P.]
Miriam and Toxapex [E.N: Ideally Poison Support would be cool] [E.N: G.P.]
Raifort [E.N: Ideally she would be perfect with Ting-Lu, but pairing her with Zoroark would be best (mainly because i’m tired of seeing Gengar’s everywhere. Please, give us more variety!!!)] [E.N: G.P.]
Saguaro [E.N: G.P.]
Salvatore [E.N: G.P.]
Tyme and Garganacl [E.N: G.P.]
Carmine [E.N: G.P.]
Kieran [E.N: G.P.]
Perrin [E.N: G.P.]
Billy [E.N: E.S.P.]
O’Nare [E.N: The two imbeciles will be Event Sync Pairs] [E.N: E.S.P.]
Giacomo and Kingambit [E.N: G.P.]
Mela and Armarouge [E.N: G.P.]
Atticus and Revavroom [E.N: G.P.]
Ortega and Dachsbun [E.N: G.P.]
Eri and Annihilape [E.N: G.P.]
Giacomo (Alternative) [E.N: G.P.]
Mela (Alternative) [E.N: G.P.]
Atticus (Alternative) [E.N: G.P.]
Ortega (Alternative) [E.N: G.P.]
Eri (Alternative) [E.N: Since they, alongside Penny, are equivalent to the Team Skull, as in they are not evil, they will all enter the General Pool. Alts when they are normal students will be included as well in said Pool] [E.N: G.P.]
Katy and Spidops [E.N: G.P.]
Brassius and Arboliva [E.N: Small digression. A never ending Grass setter with Terrain Pulse, ideally Support would be a dream come true] [E.N: G.P.]
Kofu [E.N: G.P.]
Larry and Staraptor [E.N: Digression part 2. Making him avliable in both his Gym Leader and Elite Four Attire will be mandatory for DeNA since all Elite Fours are available from the get go, and thus excluding his Gym Leader form will be nonsense. Hence, we will have both of his forms, in my opinion] [E.N: G.P.]
Ryme and Houndstone [E.N: G.P.]
Tulip and Espathra [E.N: I know that what I do with these pair is all very speculative centric, but a Lumina Crash and Stored Power alongside a re-named Opportunist will probably make her the strongest self reliant Psychic nuker in the game] [E.N: G.P.]
Rika and Clodsire [E.N: FINALLY A NEW FREE GROUND TYPE UNIT] [E.N: G.P.]
Poppy and Tinkaton [E.N: If they ever make them Poke Fair, I will eat my shoes] [E.N: G.P.]
Larry and Tropius [E.N: Mainly cuz I hate Flamigo] [E.N: G.P.]
Hassel and Baxcalibur [E.N: G.P.]

- CONCLUSIONS
With these criteria’s, the 5 star units available in the General Pool (as of now) will go from 71 to 108 (but if we ever decide to count you’re suggestions, they might actually be even more or even less), and even though 37 more Sync Pairs might not sound like a big number, if we consider the specific units that i decided to pick, i think they will be quite game changing in many aspects.
I decided to make this post waay before the Paldea restrictions (since i despised watching them unfairly being released as Poke Fairs) because i started to see this trend getting a bit out of hand recently and i wanted to share to this community this concept, because i thought that we should start complaining over this problematic a lot more (not that we generally complain over a lot of stuff, au contraire, the recent Low Gem Count is a complain that, as a F2P, i will always support) so that DeNA might think out a bit more over what unit could end up being a Poke Fair and whatnot.
Having said that, what do think about what you just read? Did you agreed or disagreed on some of my choices? If you liked what you just saw, bear in mind that i have other types of ideas that would improve a lot the game (Such as Balance Changes or Reworks for older Sync Pairs, gems, orbs increase rework, Theme Skills and Titles), so if you’d ever want to like to read my other power fantasies, please let me know, i would appreciate to share it with y’all.
Thanks for your attention.

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And remember...

FREE PACKING MATERIAL
At work I throw out thousands of clean bubble wrap sleeves (~3"x4", no sticky strip) and sheets of ultra-thin packing foam. They are used to ship stainless steel components and are perfectly clean. Take as much as you want for the cost of shipping.
[US/US][buy/swap]Perfume
ISO (minimum purchase/swap quantity is 3mL)
Strongly prefer swaps. There's a chance I'd buy DCed, partial, or just real cheap items. I will be very picky and stingy when it comes to $ purchases, but would be happy to swap in your favor for some ISO.
If something is marked "FS", I'd probably accept partials/decants with 2mL+. If something is marked "sample", I'd take a FS as part of a swap.

Amorphous: Sanguneta, Strawberry Fawn
Area of Effect: Kokiri's Emerald, Game Over, Riften, The Fade, Camper, Outset Island (3mL preferred for all)
BPAL: Dark Chocolate, Whiskey, and Cardamom-Infused Caramel (any amt)
Cocoa Pink: 2.5mL+ Vampire's Bane
Debaucherous Bath & Body: Coyote Red (any amt, DISO), The Bee Queen (any amt), Red Queen's Rage (FS/partial)
Haus of Gloi: Molokai FS (willing to buy)

FOR SALE
FULL SIZE/PARTIAL BOTTLES (2.5mL+) All full (no visible depletion) unless noted.

Alchemic Muse - Nightshade (Bulgarian lavender over an intoxicating base of Madagascar vanilla with a most decadent touch of dark chocolate.) 3mL in original bottle $8
Arcana Craves - Pumpkins Crave Quietude (Soft vanilla, white amber, white musk, Mysore sandalwood, sweet pumpkin, and a tiny pinch of white pepper) ~4.5mL (to label) Swap for ISO
Arcana Wildcraft - The Cunning Folk (An unread magical grimoire smudged with tobacco and surrounded by offerings of chocolate and golden amber) 5mL $20
Arcana Wildcraft - Witches Trace Sigils in the Dirt (Moss, soft forest floor, blood cedar trees, tangled vines winding over crags, damp patchouli leaves, and rosemary) 5mL $20
Arcana Wildcraft - Mountain Witch (Roasted black coffee beans with a swirl of woody incense, wild-harvested spruce needles, fir balsam absolute, green moss, damp firewood, soft earth, and a hint of Oregon wildflowers) 5mL $20
Black Hearted Tart - Cloud On My Tongue (Cotton candy, pink peony, pink musk.) 4mL full $9
BPAL - Chocolate Babka (braided chocolate rye bread with a sliver of almond paste filling) full to just below label, ~4mLs $20
Cocoa Pink - Spun Sugar (A more realistic cotton candy blend with fresh strawberry, sugar and sweet vanilla) dram oil (Pink list), $6
Darling Clandestine - Pyrotechnik (cantaloupe and raw sandalwood darkened with smoke and earth) 9mL $14
Deep Midnight - Afterfest (Bread, Honey, Tea, Hops) Full 9mL rollerball, used once $22
Firebird - Amanita (damp earth, wet leaves, patchouli, cedarwood, vetiver) 9mL full $11
Nui Cobalt - Bee in Your Bonnet (Raw rhubarb and cardamom with toasted oats, Madagascar vanilla, ginger ale, and caramelized honey) 5mL top of label $14
Possets - The Golden Diadem (sweet hawthorne, honey and molasses, syrup of tamarind, and candied ginger) 5mL $13
Possets - Heka (gourd accord and slides into a fine brew of lavender, oakmoss, and thyme which are twined around a resinous ambery heart) ~3mL in original bottle $10
Possets & Cocoa Pink homemade mashup - Black Hole with Cotton Candy (Vetiver and black pepper, lavender and earth, a "black" patchouli, a slight slight slight bit of tarragon, sweet cotton candy - I like this layering combo, so I just mixed ‘em, smells more mainstream this way, good but don’t reach for it anymore) 9mL $8
Solstice Scents - Halloween Night (Sweet Candy Corn, Chocolate Candy Wrappers, Melty Gooey Marshmallows, Sticky Caramels & Black Jelly Beans) 5mL $15
Solstice Scents - Corvin's Smoked Apple (applewood smoke, apple, caramel, benzoin, guaiacwood) 5mL (open but with box) $16
Solstice Scents - Upstairs Window (Glowing Amber, Dragon's Blood, Beeswax, Spices, Fog) ~4mL (leaked in transit from shop) $14
Solstice Scents - Sirocco (Sandalwood, Saffron Threads, Hot Baked Earth, Myrrh, Spices, Oud & Jasmine) 5mL $17
Sorcellerie - Don't Whistle in the Woods (Cedar, sandalwood, cypriol, fir balsam, black vanilla, sugar, ambrette, and a hint of fur) 5mL oil $20
Wylde Ivy - Midnight Dreary Collection Complete dram (3.7mL) sample set in box. Tested but full. $46 (orig $55)

A Midnight Dreary: coffee grounds, cedar smoke, rum, well aged leather, black vanilla, singed tonka, dripping wax, with a touch of spiced amber and fireplace embers.
An Agony of Desire: bergamot, mandarin, juniper berries, pepper spiked plum, orris, white sandalwood, incense smoke and amber musk.
Lost Lenore: dewy pink roses, faded parchment, ambergris, dried heather flowers, and white amber sugar.
This Kingdom by the Sea: sea salt sprayed stone, sun bleached cedarwood, black amber resin, flowering wood sage, and sweet dune grass.
The Moon Never Beams: vanilla beans, tonka infused cream, vanilla sugar musk, and just a whisper of vanilla orchids.

SAMPLES (2.5mL and under)

Aether Arts - Reflection (Sage and Ozonic notes; Cactus Flower, Watery Notes, Sage and Floral Notes; Cedar and Woody Notes.) .74mL shop slink $6
Alkemia - The Love Thief (Siberian roseroot, oud, myrrh, tonka, vanila, spices, ed zafran, candied angelica, davana, santal, vetiver) .74mL $4
Astrid/Blooddrop - Merci No. 146 (No idea but smells like lemon candies) 1m in original bottle $3
Cocoa Pink - Witches Butter (cotton candy, creamy vanilla gelato, and salted caramel, with a melting heart of butter CO2, beeswax absolute, white musk, and tonka bean.) .74mL shop slink $2
Cocoa Pink - Pink Dragon (CP's Candyfloss softened with sweet, buttery, sugar cookies, vanilla cream and whipped peaks of marshmallow sugar) 2.5mL oil $5
Deep Midnight - Faerie Kitten (Sandalwood, Frangipani, Pear, Patchouli) $3
Deep Midnight - Jersey Devil (Cranberry, Pine, Soil, Moss, Fog, Dead Leaves, Myrrh) $3
Kyse - Macarons () 1mL $2 (2x available)
Kyse - Serenade Aux Fraises (Strawberry, passionfruit, plum, Moroccan rose, cream, Tahitian Vanilla, organic sandalwood, violet leaf, musk, and black agar) 1mL $2
Morari - Gingered Suede (Crystallized Ginger, Geranium, Suede, Benzoin) 1mL $2
Morari - Penelope (Plumeria, melon rind, tomato, guava, jasmine, salt) 1mL $2
Morari - Salted Caraway Vanille (what it says) 1mL $2
Morari - Ren Faire (Spiced Honey Cakes, Strawberry Wine, Smoke) 1mL $2
Morari - The Wood Witches Magic (Cherry, Cardamom, Amber, Agarwood, Patchouli) 1mL $2
Olympic Orchids - Golden Cattleya (narcissus, daffodil, orange fruit, orange blossoms, honey, pollen, cream soda, New Caledonian sandalwood, amber-tinged resins, labdanum, and musks) .74mL $2
NEW Olympic Orchids - Night Flyer (sandalwood, olibanum wood, vetiver, furry musk accord, wet earth, damp air, mineral notes, resins, leather, figs, banana, soft tropical fruits.) .74mL $2
Pineward - Mint Cocoa (notes unknown) 2mL EDP sample $5
Pineward - Glühwein (cranberry, champaca, cherry compote, raspberry, fir balsam, chocolate, davana attar, oakmoss, frankincense) 2mL EDP sample $5
NEW Pineward - Cotswold (cedar, smoke, oakwood, ponderosa pine needles, vanilla.) ~.6mL in old-style slink $2
NEW Possets - Silver Roses (Rose, silver base) $2
NEW Sixteen92 - Panteón Viejo de Xoxocotlán (marigold & cockscomb, dusty cocoa, canela, sugar cube, flickering votives, honey cakes) ~1mL in 2mL vial $2
NEW Solstice Scents - Tenebrous Mists (Skin Musk, White Amber, Sea Spray, Sandalwood, Bay Rum, Tea, Smoke) $2
Solstice Scents - Iced Nectar (Vanilla Waffle Cone, Apricot Jam, Peach Mango Ice Cream, Tahitian Vanilla) $2
Sorcellerie - What Big Eyes You Have (lemon meringue pie, with its crust warm from the oven, tart creamy center, and whipped peaks of meringue kissed with bronze. Pearlescent vanilla musk and slightly herbal, slightly smoky immortelle) 1mL @ 75% $2
Sucreabeille - Blood Drop (Cozy warm blankets, cloves, butter cookies, blood accord) 2mL decant, $3
Wylde Ivy - The Owl (crystalized wildflower honey, smoked vanilla beans, raw amber, and kindled birch wood) 2mL EDP sample $4
Wylde Ivy - The Number 13 (vanilla beans, firewood, caramelized sugar, candied ginger, amber, cinnamon dusted patchouli, black cocoa powder.) 2mL EDP sample $4, or 1mL oil sample $2
Wylde Ivy - Clear Quartz (sweet ozone, fresh cotton, white tea leaves, babies breath, bergamot, sweet crystal water, white amber, and sheer musk) 2mL EDP sample $4
Wylde Ivy - Cairn (Sun warmed stone, salt, windswept cedar, white sage, scorching sand, and dried bergamot) 1mL oil $2

JEWELRY
I made these years ago and have worn each once or twice. Both are brass with stone, glass, and metal beads. I'd be happy to swap for 'em for approximate values (or just sell).