Lil itchy red bumps on legs sometimes with pus

I wrote this today as a prayer cause writing is easier than talking or thinking for me. Maybe it’ll give words to others feeling similar ways. I don’t know if I’m saved anymore after writing this. I’m on my way to Target to run errands and try to get out of my own heads. Here goes nothing.
From: J To: God
I don’t know how to start this. I know what I want to say, maybe how to end it (not sure about that either) but starting it is weird. I am going to confess some things and vent some things because I don’t know where else to turn.
I know what other people or Christians might say - turn to the word. Honestly, that is exhausting. It’s exhausting seeing Bible verse after Bible verse, sometimes multiple times a day, and it doesn’t do anything. It just sits there and stares at me. Just helvetica font on a screen or whatever. I’m tired of turning to the Bible in hopes of a cure for my condition and it doesn’t do anything. I’m tired of watching preacher after preacher give sermons and still all I hear is silence. Silence from God. Silence from His book.
God, you do things in a weird way, man. Not in a good way either. I can see clearly how you orchestrate things in my life. Getting me a better living situation three days before college started. Using a Miami storm to shut down my college campus so I could avoid embarrassing myself at two different jobs I had for accidentally double-booking myself. Making the smell of weed nauseating to me so I don’t delve into drugs. Opening the right opportunities for me so I could make the movies I wanted to make before I graduate.
Then in other ways, you just ignore me. You’ve ignored my pleas to get rid of my sex drive, to clean my brain from my pornography addiction, so I don’t spend every freaking day feeling unworthy and filthy. You’ve turned a blind eye to my prayers to meet a Christian woman for a future spouse. You’ve ignored my pleas for you to cure my depression because I can’t afford therapy or meds. You’ve ignored how much I’ve begged you to fill the void in my chest. To take away the pain of loneliness that can render me physically ill day to day.
You’ve ignored my pleas to hear Your voice. For you to just be with me when I’m alone in my apartment left with nothing but tears and stupid action figures I buy to try and feel less alone. Everytime I open the Bible now I look for something, anything, that can fix my brain and heart.
I’m running out of hope. Maybe I’ve already ran out of it and I’m stuck in denial. I’m weary and I feel like my brain is being split in two. Part of me has taken my skills and original ambitions of helping people through filmmaking into ambitions all based on greed or even violence. The part of me that genuinely wants to help people has dwindled and dwindled and seems like a pipe dream now. Now I dream of a world on fire, hitting the big red button and calling it all quits.
I follow most of your tenets these days because I know they’re right. I know You exist, reality doesn’t make sense at all if you were just a myth. I just follow them because they’re orders. Clear cut orders. I still don’t understand nor like some of them. But I do them. Yet I’m not happy or fulfilled at all.
I think I want to be done. Being a Christian doesn’t bring me joy at all. It doesn’t make me happy anymore that I’m (might be) going to heaven and a lot of my friends won’t be. It doesn’t make me excited that I supposedly have some special connection to God since I’m “saved”, since that connection seems to only go one freaking way. I don’t get strength from worshiping you or “surrendering” - what the heck is surrendering anyway?
I’ve gotten my strength from movies. From comics. From black metal - made by satanists, or at least people who hate You with every fiber of their being.
All Your Word tells me is that I suffer because You don’t give a crap.
How does someone surrender anything to You? I’ve prayed and surrendered countless times and its like you stare at me and don’t do anything about it. You just leave me here, alone on this stupid floating rock trying to make sense of things on my own.
I am angry. Heartbroken. Tired. I’m on my last leg here.
And as much as I can’t stand looking at it these days, I know that book of yours has to be the one true genuine article in a world full of counterfeits and lies. It just really fricking hurts that You don’t seem to care about this pain I’ve lived with for four years or more now.
I’ve been thinking about cutting myself again. I’ve been regretting everyday that I didn’t go through with suicide back in 2020.
If you care. If You really care. Do something. Lift the cloud from over my head. Wash my spirit clean, fix my brain in all it’s flaws. The depression, the memory issues, the intrusive thoughts, the addiction to porn and sexting strangers. Soften my heart; I know you can cause you do the same to others all throughout the Bible. Maybe you’re the one who hardened my heart in the first place. If that’s the case, go screw yourself. Just fix it. Please. I have nowhere else to turn. Help my anger, because right now I hate you. I hate going to church. I hate seeing your verses or hearing people preach about You. And I have for a long long time. Help me to love You again. Clean me. I am so filthy and broken and tired that I’m only seeing one permanent way out. One way to finally get a break and find peace and rest. I don’t need to say it aloud or write it.
I died a long time ago. Bring me back, if You want to. If you don’t, give me the constitution I need to go through with it, and just let me go away. I’m tired of living like this.
END

I feel the need to share this somewhere as I have spent the last 5 months going through an emotional rollercoaster. I spent a lot of time on this subreddit trying to get answers and am so appreciative that there are communities on the internet like this that exist.
Short form: I spent 5 months being told I had vulvodynia. Saw 5 health care proffesionals. Wen't through a mental rollercoaster. All to find out it was a UTI.
In December of 2023 I started to feel pain in my vagnia. I am no stranger to pain as I get frequent UTIs and in the last year I was having a lot of BV that I was convinved was being triggered by my ex.
A few things happened leading up to this pain.

1. Me and my ex broke up in quiet a sad fashion. He was Spanish and after spend 6 months in Canada he had to go home. I was to follow him two months later after the holidays were over. But after he left on the plane he ghosted me for a while and then finally broke up.
   
2. I got my period really early. Like two weeks early. I had never had that happen before but I can only assume it was due to the stress of significant change. I took myself to the hospital/walk in clinic that exists in my tiny little town, and they proceeded to tell me I either am having a misscarage or having an major STI infection. They tested me for pregnancy that came back negative and then told me to take 6 anitbiotics all at once that would get rid of the STI. I am not a good advocate for myself, I think back to that moment and wished I would have told them I get tested almost monthly as I am a sex worker. So even if I had an STI it probably would not of gotten to the point of making me bleed without any other symptoms...
   

So back to the pain. I was convinved it was BV. I was itchy and there was discharge and this stabbing nerve pain. I waited outside the walk in clinic in my home town as it was the holidays and I was back home. I was given antiobiotics without being tested.
Some of the symptoms went away but the burning and stabbing pain did not.
So now I am getting worried. I go to a nurse that specificaly tests for STI's, BV, Yeast, Trich, Mico plasma. The first test shows inconlcusive for BV so I do a round of boric acid for 14 days to make sure its gone. And the second time I test its clear. I beg him to help me further and he gets me an appointment with the doctor he works under. This doctor sees me, looks at my vagina and says it looks inflammed so he recommends Hydrocortisone.
At this point the pain has me out of work. I stopped going out because it was coming and going at somewhat random and when it came I needed to lie down immediatly.
I was getting so depressed and isolated. I was also getting afraid. I couldnt do my regular work and I don't know how I was going to get a different job when I kept being struck with extreme pain at random with seemingly no pain killers to help.
I realized I hadnt checked for a UTI. It felt nothing like a UTI as someone who gets them all the time. But my none midecally educated brain thought "maybe we can change the way we expereince pain?" I went to the hospital again. It comes back clear. The female doctor on duty does an internal exam. But lucky me at this moment the pain is minimal. She says Hydrocortisones should not be used and instead to go get a PAP done. I feel defeated but take her advice.
I call the sexual health center in the city near by and beg for an early appointment. I get in fairly early and get checked out by the first doctor that doesnt want to push me out the door. He gets me a req for a gyno and perscribes me lydocaine for the pain (which does nothing). No PAP is done as its deemed unecesarry.
I will get a call back once they get a hold of the gyno. In the mean time I am recommended Pelvic Floor Physio and Acupuncture to start managine the pain.
I get the call from the sexual health clinic that they want to do a test to see where the pain actually is. I go in but of course in that moment the pain is not there. However, I am starting to beleive that even though the pain at its worst times is in my vulva. Its more in my urethra and bladder.
I try to tell the doctor that during the exam but he dismisses me because he poked my bladder with a q tip and I didint react. They stopped the exam early because my reaction to the akwardness/anxiety brought on by having two people watch me get poked on the inside was missread as pain.
They tell me I must have vulvodynia. I am devastated. Now all I can do is wait for a gyno ( up to 6 months) to confirm it.
I continue to spend money in desperation going to physio and acupuncture all while not working.
I get one week almost pain free and I decide to cheer myself up I will go to Mexico for a week. While in Mexico I experience some of the worst pain of my life. Crying all night in the shower. No sleep. Twice. The pain continued the whole trip and I started to realize that any dream of travel is over for me. Life was starting to look over for me.
I fixate on that time I took 6 antibiotics and am angry I didn't advocate for myself. I wonder if it was caused by my ex and his dick that kept giving me BV and mulled over if it was worth a lifetime of this. I wondered if it was my job. Most people blamed that immedietly, thats fair but it seemed the least likely as I really didn't have much penetration vs in my personal life. I spiralled a lot. Thinking back months prior when I was so naive and had no pain.
Once back home I get a physio appointment right away. On our second appointment I mention I was convinced it was a bladdeurethra thing even though I tested negative for a UTI. She mentioned that sometimes its quicker to see a Urologist and I might as well get on that waitlist too. After the appointment I check Telus health (online doctor app) And they had a section for urinary tract health. WITH APPOINTMENTS THAT DAY (rare). I take the first one available and once again repeat the increasingly long story. Surprisingly he was knowlegable about everything and recommended I get a more comprehensive UTI test done. I agree and just like that find out I do in fact have a UTI (and I suspect from the pain I had been experiecing in my side, a kidney infection). I had all the signs, blood, pus, white bloodcelss. 3 days into the antiobiotics the pain is gone.
Almost 5 months of pain. So many doctors. a total mental head trip. I am left not the same person. I am in full beleif that if there is something more life threatening that happens with my health that I will die from it before a doctor beleives me. Maybe this is an overall Canada thing or maybe this is just the reality of healthcare that I was naive to. All I can take from this and you should too is don't stop pushing. Take breaks but don't give up and beleive the first doctor that tell you its untreatable.
After my course of antibiotics I went back to my hospital/walk in to be sure that my pee was clear. When being assesed by the nurse I told her what happened. She said that even if they would have gotten those results. It wouldnt have been severe enough to be worth treating. I am at a loss. You can look someone in the eye and tell them your pain is at a 10 and they won't care.

Pro tip: fly radio control airplanes for 30 years or so prior to doing this install, and everything will be comically simple to understand. If you don’t have 30 years to learn push-rods and bell-cranks, read below for something kinda helpful. Also, some exceptionally irrelevant thoughts are italicized...
Right up front, this is specific fitment notes for the 2wd/Reverse shift kit from Raceway Ural, on my 2017 Gear Up (and maybe most 2014 to 2018 gen 1 EFI models?) I did this with the sidecar installed and while it’s fiddly, at no point did I curse more than usual, ymmv.
Start w/ gearbox in neutral (if you have a working neutral light... tell us what's it like being God's favorite?)
Take a picture of reverse pedal location, indexing, and position in case you ever want to put the old pedal back on when you upgrade to a newer (or older) rig (at which point the old pedal will have vanished and you'll need a replacement anyway)
Take a picture of the levers, mount, bushing, spring, and washer locations on the mount (no, actually, just take pictures of everything)
https://preview.redd.it/asr0d3njj1yc1.jpg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e314ec3e70cd95daf02c2f3f8af880c98658533f
Pull shift handles and the pivot rod out of the mount, noting washer and bushing locations. Open the cotter pin slightly to hang onto the loose bits since it's not under spring tension anymore.
Loosen front tank mount cap-head bolts (5mm on my 2017 gear up, all dimensions are for my rig) n prop tank up w/ the official $290 Ural uranium glass wedge (or the superior random $4 hex key set) between tank and frame
https://preview.redd.it/mq1j1rsnj1yc1.jpg?width=3072&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=08097493b2bdc4ee9f666f333a0ad61833e6c8f5
Protect bottom of you immaculately pristine tank w/ painters tape to prevent scratches (or just lol at the dirt)
The instructions imply for 2014 to 2018 models you have to remove the ignition coils. You can be a wuss and remove them now, or be a true American and fight your way around them for a couple hours and then eventually have to remove them anyway (bonus points if you break something in the process and have to order a new coil). My coils were mounted to the coil mounts (shocker) with a 5 mm hex bolt and 10 mm nut (just thread them back onto the coils for now, and if you wanna disconnect the wire harness’, just know they’re short and might be a bear to reconnect). The left side has the crankcase breather hose in the way, but it's just a hose so will yield with enough cursing. The right side has the fuel line n filter in the way so if you’re not the smoothest over there, be ready to stink for a while.
Pull top engine mount nuts (13 mm) and the top bolt and nut (13mm nut on a 5 mm hex head bolt with the remnants of two disintegrating rubber bushings). Instructions mention reinstalling the ground wire but my ground lead was actually under the alternator adapter bolts so if you find the ground lead loose at this point, I'm just a better person than you.
Pull the now loose upper engine mount and toss it over your shoulder to ensure it's immediately lost. Mine put up a hell of a fight, but then calmly and easily slipped off when I rolled the top towards the front of the bike.
https://preview.redd.it/j62s14g0k1yc1.jpg?width=3072&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4988d4598a31ba90a8e07969408731e05f2822a9
Install shifter kit tube where the upper engine mount used to live (this is where you'll learn the coils really do need to move). Install the nuts on top of the engine finger tight, capturing the ground wire if you happen to be cursed in that way (these are lock-nuts so don’t require thread-lock, but this is the part where you would start dabbing some blue Loctite if you’re over 55, or red if you’re under 25). Then install the upper bolt with the tattered dry-rotted remnants of the rubber bushings, and torque everything to gud enuf.
Go ahead and put those coils back now by attaching them to the tangs hanging off the new tube. Mine were only happy with the plug wires facing down. My breather hose clamp needed to rotate a little for clearance so apparently I’m now a master mechanic for coming up with the solution on the fly. If you disconnected the coil plugs, find a small child to reconnect them (there’s no way you’re getting your hands in there).
https://preview.redd.it/q6ovlva9k1yc1.jpg?width=3072&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7fc331be8a20e49ee4c21da53d3aa492563f742c
Slide the pivot rod and handles back in, noting the correct order of bushings, spring, and washers (per that picture you forgot to take), and swing it back and forth a bit to check tank clearance. Some have needed a nylon bushing to push the handles out for clearance, but I don't wear nylons so like a real man I just got a running start and blamo, no balls slapping my tank, ymmv (although some product pics out there look like the handle is right against the tank so watch out). You can fold the cotter pin now because there’s no way you’ll remember at the end of this mess, or you can wait until everything is adjusted so you can slide the handles off for clearance. Hmm, nah go ahead and pretend you will remember to fold it later.
Lower the tank and reinstall front mount bolts torquing to gud enuf to compress the rubber mounts and split them wide open.
Shift kit uses 1/2 and 7/16th wrenches for pivots and locking hardware to increase likelihood of grabbing the wrong size wrench beyond the limitations of metric hardware.
Now that the easy part is all done…
Neutral/Rev: Remove 13mm cap nut and use a 2-jaw gear puller (a small 2-3 jaw puller is like $10 at NAPA) to get the reverse pedal off the somehow incredibly rusty spline shaft, and chuck that pedal roughly in the direction you threw the upper engine mount (if you threw the nut with it, go find it because it holds on the rev/neutral lever). DO NOT pry or pull on the pedals or you will loose that fancy neutral light you were just clowning me about until the next time you split the gear box (never or 15K miles? whichever comes first I hear).
https://preview.redd.it/4w02o6ndk1yc1.jpg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a480075e23eb7b739589789cce7a41ee82351e8c
Quick note on the push-rod ends/adjusters, mine got about 14 turns from fully screwed-on to falling off, so that gives you about 10 rotations from shortest to longest (with 4-5 threads still engaged). Fully shorten them, then mark them with a sharpie or something so you can count rotations. Start everything with everything screwed all the way in.
I quickly realized no adjusting or placement is possible unless the push-rod ends (they are ball joints under a little rubber skirt) are tightened onto the levers and handles, so go ahead and tighten down the one on the spline shift lever (tighten the 1/2in lock-nut while holding the adjuster pivot with that 7/16th wrench). I put the reinforced (thicker) side of the lever away from the rod for an extra mm of clearance (but don't attach to the transmission yet).
https://preview.redd.it/5phgoh2il1yc1.jpg?width=3072&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=661a4e515b2153e89fa9499679fb611f4516bbda
The ball joints allow rotation but they’re tight, so I backed the lock-nuts off about 1/16th turn to allow free movement. Thread the rev/neutral push-rod (spline lever end) from front to back, under the throttle body and fuel lines and everything but the wiring loom, towards the rev/neutral shaft (pics or it didn’t happen). Attach the front end of the push-rod to the inside of the handle (left hand side of the right lever), and then you can see where the rear shifter lever ends up.
https://preview.redd.it/mh24ks86n1yc1.jpg?width=3072&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=945c044d00b463974739078913a179d78cf5cca8
Start with rev/neutral handle/knob located just ahead of the throttle cable housing w/steering at full right lock, this keeps it from being trapped or bumped, and keeps it from traveling too far forward when in Rev.
Pushing lever forward pushes the rod back which = heel on the pedal for Rev (reverse, not reverend, there's nothing holy here), and pulling the lever is toeing the pedal back to neutral (normal state).
(The ideal state for pushrods and levers is equal angles on both ends. If the control lever is vertical, the lever at the other end should also be vertical for equal travel. The angle of the push rod actually doesn’t matter (so long as they are the same and not too extreme like over 45 degrees away from 90).
Rotate push-rod (like a turnbuckle) up to 10 turns (you did mark it, right?) to lengthen it so the lever hangs vertically over the spline shaft for equal fwd/aft motion. Realize this isn't' possible and settle for it being tilted a few degrees. It's fine, I guess, I mean who cares or whatever.
Press the lever onto the spline shaft and loosely install the nut.
With everything in place pull the knob back and make sure the throttle cable doesn't hit it. Then actuate knob in both directions (while rolling the rig a bit if needed to find reverse), ensuring smooth operation, free of binding or interference or obfuscation or unnecessary suffering of cables/wires/small animals/people overly sensitive about their gender-affirming lifted pickup and it's leased tires (can you believe people lease tires? like what the heck, sell that thing and get a civic)
Tighten down that lever mount nut while holding the lever to avoid straining the gearbox internals.
Dag a little Loctite and tighten the push rod jam nuts to secure the ends.
Find out it won't start and remember you forgot to put the ground wire back on the engine mount and lift up the tank again.
AND/OR
Now that the easier of the two is installed… 2WD:
After studying the layout, I figured this one is easier to hit from behind (lol). Sidebar: you might want to install this 2wd linkage before doing the Rev/Neutral one since it’s under the Rev/Neutral lever, but you’d be wrong. It’s not your fault, just socioeconomic factors and possibly (likely) Y chromosomes clouding your judgment. Like most things you care about plowing into, you want to have a little practice before hitting this one so everything comes out right in the end.
You can try to use the included rear linkage but I found (at least for my gen 1 EFI rig) that it was too short and pulled the bell crank (the round metal direction-changer mounted where the old lever went) too far (it’s best to have it close to vertical when 2wd is engaged/lever at the rear wheel is forward, this way the bell-crank has clearance and good leverage to actuate both ways). My original rear linkage is longer and just what I needed to clear everything. I found it's best attached to the top of the bell crank for clearance.
So yea, I connected the og ball-end to top of the bell-crank. In my case I needed a washer (used a split washer for added girth) on the bolt to pull it up and clear of the mount (again, pics for attention). NOTE: this is the wrong pic, the lower ball joint will go on the bike side in a bit... dur)
https://preview.redd.it/5be4rum9q1yc1.jpg?width=3072&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b1fa4f952b7db414aa75ec6d61d35c65339bfdfa
I used the original spring and shoulder bolt, with the washer between the bell crank and the mount. This set the geometry for the forward link which needs to be as far aft as possible so that the bend (technically a jog) in the front push rod can clear the air pipe. If all those words didn’t translate to engrish, just know the jog in the forward rod needs to be as far back and close to the bike as possible to clear the air pipe, the way to do that is keep the bell-crank vertical when 2wd is engaged (handle pulled up and rear wheel lever pulled forward).
Now for the tricky one… what worked for me was screwing in the ball joint adjuster at the rear of the front rod (ugh, what does this even mean?) all the way, threading it under everything alongside the Rev/Neutral rod, and tightening that adjuster on to the BOTTOM/BIKE SIDE of the bell-crank (NOT LIKE THE PIC, do not tighten the jam nut just yet). Now you'll see how the jog tries to get at that air pipe.
Take a deep breath.
Get the sidecar axle positioned so you can engage and disengage the rear end and see where it put’s the 2wd knob. The front adjustment can be set to your preference but keep the handle clear of the tank so spirited travels don't cause any contact. Yes, adjustments require pulling the lock-nut (and sometimes also the bell-crank) but if you hold it against the lever, you can get an idea for where it should go. This is why you started this one from the back, adjusting the front is brutal.
Do not be tempted to fiddle with the back adjustments, you want the bell crank vertical or nearly so when in 2wd for your best chance of avoiding the air pipe. This might not even be a problem beyond the 2014 to 2018 models… but this is what worked for me.
Again, once the pivots are tightened down, cycle the whole mess back and forth and make any final tweaks needed to ensure (what passes for) democracy wins. Check to see if the levers interact much as mine needed some grease to stop draggin' on each other through their bushings (nothing very strong but also nothing I wanted to see happening).
And now with the tweaking dun... pull the bolts that should get some Loctite (like the 2wd bell-crank bolt, the rod jam nuts, and any non-lock-nut nuts) and give em a dab of blue (unless you're selling the rig soon then red is fine).
And that’s it. Putt back and forth out front, take her for a spin in the neighborhood, and don’t forget to notice you missed folding that cotter pin at the next oil change.
Operation video: https://youtu.be/FdTI-aiiZnE?si=x7Vk53qccowQEd-K
Yes, I try too hard but comments on anything else are totally welcome so I can unfuk whatever mistakes I made up there.
Cheers
EDIT: the bell crank pic is the wrong one (but it was the prettier one). The lower ball joint goes on the inside/bike side.

My crazy symptoms - any advice?
Since crazy infection in september my symptoms consits:

• constsntly Red flushed face along with flushing ears
• deep itch in face, ears, burning eyes
• spine pain, neck and right shoulder pain, tailbone pain - its strange pain, like neuropathic itching deep pain
• when I breathe I feel pain in lot of places in back
• constant post nasal drip
• nerve pains in face, deep in ears, scalp, very random
• random places on face and head twitching, eyelid twitching along with shock electric pains and feelings
• heatwaves in legs and sometimes fingere
• feeling of crawling under skin
• shortness of breathe
• hives
• stinging pain in armpits (when I had infection one armpit lymphnode was swollen)
• burning mouth syndrome
• pins and needles in random places (for example when I put on clothes)

Nothing helps. Antihistamines, anticonvulsants. Only Tramadol slightly stopped pains. I feek like living dead. When Im walking I feel like my back is messed up, like asymetrical pain.
Bloodwork is ok according to doctors. Anyone can relate? Im so messed up. I also have chronic infection of genital area, but I doubt its the cause.
Do you think rhemuatology checkout would be useful? My flushing of face and ears is crazy. I know its possibly neuropathy...

Hello! I am female, 26 years old, living in Southern Europe.
I have never had serious health issues before, but I do suffer from PCOS, Migraines (with occular aura), seborrheic dermatitis, depression, anxiety and C-PTSD. I take birth control, amirol and fluoxetine to manage symptoms of these conditions.
Here's the short story about my 'medical mystery': Almost 4 months ago, I suddenly developed a very painful and swollen bump on the back of the right side of my head, almost going down towards my neck. I have had CT scan, MRI, biopsy, ultrasounds and various blood tests done which confirm acute inflammation in the subcutaneous layer. No abscess or fluids. There was also thickening of the soft tissues and enlarged lymph nodes. CRP levels very elevated at times. I have seen various specialists and no one can pinpoint why this is happening.
Now here's the full story, buckle in and enjoy!
My story starts around the middle of January. I was on a very short business trip in Spain when I realised that the area on the back of the right side of my head was feeling very sore. At the same time, I also had a pretty intense seborrheic dermatitis flare up, so I thought that perhaps my scalp was just sore from that. Fast forward to the day after I arrive back home. The sore area was getting increasingly more swollen and painful throughout the day. By the late afternoon, I had limited movement of my neck due to the amount of swelling and pain. That day, I had my first visit to the clinic where they suspected a muscle spasm and prescribe ibuprofen and muscle relaxers. Over the next few days, it continues to get worse. The bump is increasing in size and pain. At the point the swelling is about 5cm wide. Nothing can be seen from the outside besides very light redness (although it's difficult to see much as I have thick hair). At this point I have almost no movement of my neck, and sleep/rest was very difficult due to the pain and location of the bump. I go to the immediate care unit at a private clinic and am told it's muscle inflammation. I received valium (lol), solpadol and a gel to treat muscle inflammation. I get an appointment to see an orthopedic specialist two days later. The next two days were awful, I was in very intense pain which was only slightly alleviated by the valium and solpadol. Besides this, I started having other symptoms such as extreme fatigue, and I started developing open sores on my nose, fingers, thigh and ear lobe. These sores just came out on their own, one day the skin just opened up and was leaking pus and blood. I looked and felt extremely unwell.
I see the orthopedic. He didn't look at me much, injected something into the trapezius trigger point and set me up with an appointment for an MRI in two weeks time.
I am feeling increasingly worse over the next few days. I decide to go to the closest GP because I'm just so desperate to stop this pain.
GP is like, yeah you need to go to the emergency right now and get a CT or MRI ASAP.
I go to the emergency department. I have blood taken and my CRP is at 110, and my White Blood Cell count is at 14.5. The doctors there are suspecting mastoiditis and I am admitted to hospital in the ENT ward. I have a CT scheduled the next day and in the meantime, I am started on intravenous Augmentin.
I have blood taken again the next morning and my CRP is at 147 and white blood cells is at 14.
I have a CT of the neck and head with contrast done. This is the report: There is diffuses irregular subcutaneous fat stranding and thickening of the soft tissues in the occipital region on the right which extent at the right posterior aspect of the neck, in keeping with inflammatory process. No convince signs of the abscess formation are seen. There are multiple reactive enlarged regional lymph nodes. Otherwise, soft tissues of the neck are intact. No intra or extra axial fluid collections or space-occupying lesions seen.The lateral ventricles are symmetrical. The midline structures are not shifted and the ventricle are not effaced. No haemorrhages are seen. The visualized paranasal sinuses are clear. The mastoid cells are intact. No focal lytic or traumatic bone lesions demonstrated.
The doctors at the ENT ward decide that it's a skin infection, and treat me with regular intravenous antibiotics for the 3 nights that I was admitted. On my third day there my CRP went up to 166 and my white blood count went down to 12. During my stay there, I felt like I improved greatly, the pain and swelling went down substantially. I am sent home with a prescription for 1- Augemtnin 1g, BD x 7 days 2- Prednisolone 40mg, x 2 days then 20mg, x 2 days then 10mg x 2 days then 5mg x 2 days then stop. 3- Omeprazole 20mg, daily. And I was told to make an appointment with a dermatologist.
At first I was doing much better, but as the days passed by I was feeling worse again. Less than a week after being released, I am back the clinic. I have blood taken and I also have an ultrasound done. My CRP was at 16, ESR is at 70, White blood cells is at 11. Normochromic normocytic red blood cells seen. Leucocytes and platelets appear normal. At this point, I am low-key panicking that this might be cancer, due to an extensive history of cancer on both sides of my family. I am prescribed Ciproflaxacin and Clindamaycin for 14 days and told to hold tight and keep monitoring.
I also had an appointment with a dermatologist almost 2 weeks after my release from hospital. She had a look at everything and said it's in no way related to dermatology and sent me back to square one.
I take the course of antibiotics, and wait it out patiently. I'm not feeling super sick, and the pain is minimal, but the swelling is still there. At this point, I get an ultrasound done which didn't tell us anything we didn't already know, except that I have a few small cysts on my thyroid.
I'm still freaked out by everything, and my GP refers me for an ultrasound guided biopsy. These are the biopsy results: Sections show granulation tissue, acute and chronic inflammation and fibroadipose tissue. A few foreign body giant cells are noted. There are multiple keratin squamous, the latter suggests that there may be an infected branchial cyst. No malignancy.
So after this, I am referred to an ENT (not one that has seen me before). He takes a look and says that it's most definitely not an infected branchial cyst due to the location, but refers me for an MRI just to be sure.
I get the MRI done. I don't have the report available to me, but pretty much the MRI told us nothing we didn't already know, except for one thing. 3 months prior to everything happening, I had an MRI due to my migraines. The radiologist looked back at that MRI and noted that my lymph nodes were already inflamed.
I have been back to my GP this week and I had another blood test done. My CRP is at 50.5, ESR 45 and White Blood count is at 9. My GP has suggested to see a neurologist next.
So that's my whole story so far. After my own Google deepdive, I'm leaning towards a theory that this is autoimmune related. But I would love to hear feedback and thoughts from this community.

sorry if this is long/maybe tmi. really i’m just trying to vent bc this whole experience is really taking a toll on me.
as far as i know, i’ve never struggled with digestion issues. i’d go to the bathroom 2-3 times a day. no abnormalities like weird colors or consistencies. no mucus, stomach pain, nothing.
this all started 2 months ago. end of february. i noticed one afternoon i hadn’t gone #2. think maybe i’ll just go the next day. then, a whole week goes by (i know probably should have noticed something was wrong sooner), still hadn’t gone. by the end of the week i felt terrible. i had taken laxatives but they made my stomach hurt and gave me diarrhea. then one night i noticed my hands would get really cold and just felt bad. next i got a fever, not sure how high. i decided to go to the doctor 1st thing next week. doc tells me they want to do a ct scan (found out it was a ct not mri, for any confusion on my previous posts). nothing weird, no inflammation, no thickening, no fluid anywhere. ct only showed “slow transit through the terminal ileum”. so my small intestine must be sluggish. doc tells me to eat more fiber & prescribes laxatives. they tried to get some proper motility meds for me but insurance was being dumb & didn’t approve. so got metoclopramide 5mg instead. at this point, i’m still constipated, but doing slightly better. stool is soft not hard or dry.
now early-mid march. i’m trying to add more fiber into my diet. at this point, i’m having no issues eating, just nervous to eat what i normally do bc of the constipation. prune juice is my bff. feel like i wouldn’t go without it, and i couldn’t. along with the motility meds. stool is dark sometimes, thinner sometimes, but not a whole lot. has mucus, like white/clear lines. got a hemorrhoid during this time stung, but managed through it with cream. bleeding slightly but again was told not to be concerned. stool isn’t hard. in fact during this time i had mushy diarrhea, but took prune juice into account. once hemorrhoid cleared (prob not related but happened around the same time) stool gained normal shape, still soft and not as much as i used to see. noticed it had white lines of mucus. taking benefiber at this time, seems to help bulk up my stool. things still aren’t back to normal but i’m hopeful.
early-mid april. i start to feel nauseous. losing my appetite, can no longer eat normally, trying to stick to easier foods to digest. experiencing acid reflux along with slow swallowing sensation, abdominal discomfort, gas pains. weird aches/twinges on my sides and upper abdominal area and upper and lower back. only going once in the morning, notice more mucus, start to wipe clear mucus too, some clear mucus even starts coming out by itself. string like, clear and white. some came out with a bit of blood one time and yellow stool water?? but could’ve been at this point, where i started to notice yellow color when i wiped. start getting worried. go to the doc. they keep telling me the same, eat fiber, take laxatives. but they do refer me to a gastroenterologist. at the appointment i describe my symptoms. have an endoscopy scheduled. they made sure to rule out bacterial infection. results come back, nothing abnormal via the camera, and all 3 biopsies came back negative. tried asking for what but reception didn’t know. & my docs hard to get a hold of. next appointment with gastro is may 29th.
mid-april, losing weight, maybe 15lbs at this point, could be because i’m not eating like i used to. tell doc i feel a burning pain on the sides of my belly, get small circular bumps. feel like they outline muscles on my abdomen and some are mainly on fatty areas pf my body. feel them under my arms & chest even. biggest is this long lump near my belly button. get ultrasound, full abdominal & pelvic exam for suspected umbilical hernia. things look normal according to doc. doc even touched them to make sure they weren’t swollen lymph nodes. told bumps were probably fatty lumps. bumps
my doc has done an h pylori stool test, came back negative. did a blood smear test (told them i had black stools), negative. got tested for celiac disease, negative. 3 blood tests done to detect infection in blood, nothing. getting stool tested again currently for fat malabsorption, awaiting results.
now currently, lack of appetite persists, haven’t felt hungry in a month. havent noticed any darker stools but they are lighter, when i wipe it’s yellow and smells acidy notice undigested chicken, meat stuff like that along with black specs. getting a stool test done currently for fat malabsorption, waiting on results. blood has increased when i wipe, sometimes it’s in my stool but only streaks of bright red. not leaking out or dripping blood so far. but do feel itching/slight burning pain around anus. clear fluid leaking out to but not enough to stain my underwear. thought it was hemorrhoids again but can’t feel any bumps like last time, though upper part of anus is tender, but not sure what they is tbh. think the clear fluid leaking stopped a day or two ago, from what i can feel but maybe it’s still coming out in small amounts.
got nauseous this morning and had diarrhea after not having gone #2 yeaterday, green-brown color, smells like egg. worried bc monday i ate some egg cooked in olive oil and got diarrhea that came out with yellow water, parts that were mushy were greenish-brown too and also smelled the same. thought it was just bc of what i ate but now i’m not so sure. i am taking anxiety meds right now but again, not sure if it’s the meds giving me diarrhea or what. but did have diarrhea a day before i took the pill so i’m just so confused.
sorry again, if this is tmi & it might be irrelevant, but urine has also been weird smelling and dark yellow sometimes lately. did wipe blood a couple of times and some blood did come out while i peed twice. only been drinking water since all of this so don’t know what that’s about. do have 3 kidney stones that are in my left kidney info from ct scan and ultra sound. and according to the ultrasound they still are. told my doc about this, went couple of times as well bc of left side kidney pain & symptoms mentioned above. been tested 3 times for a uti, all came back negative also had more than the usual amount of clear discharge with some white discharge. got swabbed for yeast. awaiting results.
hope i got everything but if more comes to mind i’ll type it out. just really scared now bc constipation still persists, might even be getting worse. guess i’m also just looking to see if anyone else has experienced something similar.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way.
Being a PI sucks. It’s not what you think. It’s pretty much harassing women. Men hire PIs to go harass their wives and girlfriends and once in a blue moon you get asked to find a missing dog, or to harass a man instead. But that’s it, really. Sometimes I’m looking for hard evidence of infidelity, but a lot of the time my clients just want to rattle the soon-to-be-ex. To make them paranoid and jittery and less reliable in a courtroom, or less likely to pay attention to small print agreements that stiff them out of the holiday home. So that’s my job. I’m a pawn and it is almost always on behalf of the kind of men who think women reading a book in public are secretly looking for male attention.
I don’t have an office. I did for a short while. But things are tough, as I’m sure many of you know, and PI work isn’t exactly lucrative. I don’t know why I’m still doing this job, except to say I’m my own boss, and it’s not easy out there. I went into this with vastly different expectations. If anyone wants to hire someone who was convicted of insurance fraud while training to be a police officer, let me know. Otherwise I’m on my own, following people in cars and sleeping in dingy motels. So when this new job came along, a craigslist ad looking for a guy to stalk them, I just figured it was a fetish thing. I got a nephew who went to art school and makes big bucks painting cartoon characters doing fucked up stuff. He ain’t painting the Sistine Chapel, but he pays the bills and looks after his family. I figure if that work is good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.
So I met the woman who posted the ad and was surprised at how normal she looked. It was in a public place, a park with a nice bench. And even though it was starting to rain a little we didn’t let it bother either of us. We sat there, two tape recorders running, and hashed it out. She said she liked me. If she hadn’t she wouldn’t have gotten out of her car. That was flattering coming from her. Good looking woman. Professional. I didn’t know at the time but I’d quickly figure out she was a forensic accountant.
Anyway, we got talking. She never gave me her motivation, but I would later come to understand her as an amateur narcissist. She was new at loving herself. She was smart, accomplished, and actually rather beautiful provided you didn’t spend a great deal of time agonising over things like symmetry or eyebrows, and instead paid attention to how a smile reaches the eyes, or how laughter sounds when it catches someone by surprise. But she grew up dirt poor and spent her teen years unable to visit the dentist, or access a gym, or even just eat home cooked food that wasn’t microwaved. Plump frame, blotchy skin, hair she kept short with a pair of scissors because her and her mother relied on the shampoo and soap they stole from the motel where they shared cleaning shifts. When she fumbled awkward questions at some of the better looking boys in her class, she rarely met with success. That’s not to say she was an outcast, either. She had a social life. It’s just poor kids have to grow up early. Prom’s a luxury. Eating isn’t. If you know, you know. Otherwise you might be surprised by just how fucking tough it can be for some kids in this country. Anyway, she got out of that hole, fought tooth and nail, got an education, a good job, and by the time she finished her victory lap and took stock of her life she was thirty-five years old and a thousand miles from the trailer she was raised in.
And she looked good. The woman in the mirror was a stranger that she wanted to get to know. I think hiring me was an act of self-love. I think if she could have, she would have sat in a car and watched herself get a cup of coffee, spying closely at the professional looking woman doing a little half-run half-skip to get out of the rain. The way she stood in line rocking back and forth on her heels to the music in her airpods thinking no one’d notice. She wanted to admire herself, but unable to time travel or clone herself, she instead resorted to hiring me as a kind of proxy.
I had my own boundaries, of course. They covered anything that was gonna get me in trouble. The gist of the contract, after a nice week spent meeting after work and talking, was that I was to follow her as often as I could and just… observe her. Photos. Videos. Secret recordings. Occasionally a little bit more. Nothing physical. For example, one time I inventoried her handbag after she left it in a taxi by accident. I’m not a photographer, but something about all those knick knacks laid out on a motel bed snapped with a black and white polaroid, it looked good. Like something you’d see in a fancy gallery. Avant garde my nephew would say. She loved it. Paid me a bonus for it and everything.
Anyway, this carried on like this for about six months. They were… interesting times. Tailing her across train stations, racing across open parking lots to install a tracker on her car, standing on a bridge and dropping an air tag in her bag as she walked past. It was a little bit like being a spy. She even paid for me to buy high end equipment. Crazy stuff. One camera, I could sit on my balcony and read the texts on her phone from a block away. Occasionally there were days where I couldn’t or wouldn’t keep up the required intensity. Stalking requires a lot of cardio. When that happened, when I didn’t feel like following her into a crowded place, or sprinting half-way around town following her car, I’d do research. I’d investigate who this woman had once been. I created fake Facebook profiles and tracked down old school friends, spoke to former teachers, lovers, all of that. The whole job was a matter of mapping her out, like she was a country, you know? And a country isn’t just hills and rivers and borders. Countries have history.
She was happy with my initiative. The text she sent me when I showed her the research folder was a glowing commendation. First one I’d had in a long time. It was nice, someone telling me good job. She had a real way of making me feel like a kid getting a gold star. I didn’t realise at the time, but I was putty in her hands. Head over heels, bless my stupid heart. Of course I didn’t know what I was getting into, but I’d had just enough time to grow over confident. I made the mistake of thinking that I wasn’t gonna find anything in her past that’d give me trouble sleeping.
Boy did I get that one fucking wrong.
Her mother. That’s where things took an odd turn. Now I knew from news reports the mother died in their trailer while her daughter was off staying at some boyfriend’s place for a few days. Natural causes, it read. I wanted to know a little more about what natural causes they were. Figured if there was a congenital thing, it seemed like maybe I ought to know. You’d think the way the trailer park owner reacted to me asking about it, I’d tried asking the Russian government for proof of a democratic election. Thin reedy little woman who gave me hell the moment I mentioned a name. What do you wanna know that for? Who’s asking? Who’s paying you? Why you wanna dig this shit up?
Oh she ripped me to pieces. I put it down to the natural sprinkling of crazies in the standard population and took a different tact. Started calling up the older folks in the park. Residents. Every single one of them put the phone down on me the second I mentioned her name.
Well, all of them except one.
Some people wanna talk and this old bastard was one of them. He had a lot to say about everything from the president to social media and I let him ramble on before starting to press my point. Told him at the start I was a historian looking into the local area, that made it so it wasn’t too suspicious when I began asking about this and that. Slowly making my way to the death of a fifty-three year old woman a couple trailers down from him some years ago.
Again, soon as I mentioned her name, there was a change in the air, even over the phone. For a second I thought this old guy was gonna hang up just like the others. Could hear him smacking his dry lips as he mulled it over.
“Francine didn’t deserve what happened to her,” he said after a while. “She wasn’t a good woman. Didn’t treat her daughter too good neither. But didn’t deserve what happened. Maybe if they’d found her earlier, some of those fellas in white coats could’ve got more evidence, put that little wretch of hers away. But from what I understand, weren’t much left of her at all.”
Then he hung up, leaving me with a whole lot of questions.
This frustrated me. I had, until now, had a fair bit of luck at this new profession of mine. They say be careful what you get good at. Sad truth was, I was getting good at stalking and this was my first real roadblock. I remembered the way I felt when she told me good job and it bothered me I couldn’t really say much about this critical part of her life. That and, well, maybe I still got a chip on my shoulder about being a failed policeman. If you give me a problem, I can sometimes drive myself crazy looking for a fix.
So I hopped in my car and drove to the trailer park, damn near on the other side of the country. Don’t know I was hoping to find. No way the trailer was still there, and it wasn’t. But what I found odd was the lot hadn’t been replaced. There was a hole in the ground, about the right size, and nothing else. Just an empty spot where the trailer had once stood. And the trailers on either side weren’t occupied either. I could tell by politely and legally looking through the windows. Most of them were cleared out, but a few weren’t. They still had plates and other knick knacks left hanging around, like the owners had left without bothering to pack.
“You shouldn’t hang around there, mister.”
The girl who appeared stood a good twenty feet away, shouting over the wind so as to be heard.
“Smell can make you awful sick.”
I wrinkled my nose, aware of the odour she was talking about. Had been since I approached the empty lot. A faint musty smell that made me think of an exotic pet shop.
“What do you mean?”
“Smell makes you sick,” she said like it was self-explanatory. “Woman who died there left behind an awful stench. Made the neighbours sick. And the neighbour’s neighbours, and so on for a couple trailers in a row. No one likes to live there now. Still can’t. Had a couple move in a year or two back and they got sick too. Daddy says it’s a bad one. Not even rats go near that hole.”
The smell wasn’t pretty, but this trailer park looked like the kinda place where hubcaps went missing regularly. Figured they would’ve been used to bad smells. What made this one so special?
I looked over at the girl.
“Where is your dad?”
Few minutes later and I was stood outside a trailer waiting pensively. The little girl had disappeared inside to fetch her father and since then I’d been sat listening to the quietest trailer park in the whole world. Crickets and silence. Traffic on a distant highway. Place was dying, that much was clear.
When the father finally did make an appearance, he said nothing for the first few minutes. Lit a cigarette, offered me one. I refused on account of having quit some time back.
After a while he spoke up.
“I’d invite you in but if you been hanging around that old lot, not sure I want you inside my home. No offence.”
“None taken,” I replied.
“Sally says you’re a historian.”
The man wasn’t terribly old. Mid-thirties, at a guess, but he looked me up and down like I was a teenager caught throwing eggs at his house.
“What’re you really?”
“PI,” I replied.
“Ha now that makes sense. Some relative looking for answers? Heard the Hendersons had a sister with money.”
“That’s exactly it,” I lied. “She didn’t buy the official story.”
“Nor should she,” he replied. “Henderson was fit as a fiddle day he moved in. Weren’t no justice in what happened to those who got sick. And poor Francine… They say she died of natural causes. Man even back then I knew it was shit and I was just a lil kid. The smell alone. Think it’s bad now but at the time, before they came in with a crane to lift the trailer up whole and move it to the dump. Shit it was something awful. There was talk of moving the whole park. Course no one gave enough of a shit about us to go ahead and actually do it.”
“What did she die of?”
“Don’t know. Only thing I am sure of is that that girl of Francine’s lied. Said her mother was live and well when she left before the weekend and they was all on good terms, but that was bullshit. We heard ‘em fighting for weeks before, for one. And of course the body, state that was in, ain’t no way it’d been rotting for just a few days.”
He offered me another cigarette. I refused. He lit it up instead. Second one in what felt like just a few minutes. Made me itchy just to see. I wanted to say something, anything to get a little bit more. But I’d told a big lie pretending to be there on someone else’s behalf, and didn’t want to catch myself out, so I just sat and listened to the quiet buzz of his little patio light.
After the second cigarette was done he reached into his back pocket and took out an old photo.
“I hope you find justice for Henderson and the rest of them,” he said. “Only real bit of proof I ever had something fishy went on.”
He handed me the picture. Wasn’t easy to see what I was looking at. Pile of old leaves, maybe. Mulch. I squinted at it for a few good seconds but couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“What…?”
“Took that the day they arrived to get rid of the trailer. Had to stand on my friend’s shoulders just to reach.”
“What is it?” I asked, my skin starting to crawl as I picked out details. Whatever I was looking at, it was slumped on a sofa with floral wallpaper in the background. It was about the size of a man, but riddled with holes and cavities the size of golf balls. In my whole life, I’d never seen something that looked like that.
“Why that’s Francine,” he said. “Or at least what was left of her.”
He let me keep the photo. At a guess, that was the only interesting thing that’d ever happened to that man and he’d been waiting to share it with someone. All I had to do was give him an excuse. He seemed to take some pleasure in passing it on. Certainly found my reaction to it amusing. I must’ve gone pale as I grappled with thoughts of what had happened to make a body go bad like that. Back in the hotel, under a good light, I checked that picture again and again. Something about it made me deeply uncomfortable. Knowing a woman was under all that… all those holes and crevices must’ve been made in her flesh. And what’d happened to her skin that’d turned it such a funny texture? Looked furry, like the kinda thing that grows on top of a long-forgotten cup of coffee.
A part of me considered asking my client about this, but I knew that wasn’t the way to go. First, she probably wouldn’t tell me good job if I had to ask. She hired me to do a certain thing and that didn’t involve politely requesting information right from the source. Second, well… I’d read the police reports, what was publicly available, anyway. And she’d made it clear she’d left on the friday and came home on the Monday and…
Well what if that guy was right? Did she really leave her mother alive and well? I mean, people kill. Not just psychos. People like you and me. We do it every day and sometimes we even pull it off. Only half of US murders get solved. That’s a fact. If anyone could be in the right half of that equation, it’d be her. She was smart as hell, my client. Even at seventeen she would’ve been a clever one. Clever enough that she might easily have been able to cover her tracks. Gone over to some boyfriend, twisted his arm into giving her an alibi. Sure, I could see that.
I just needed to figure out what the fuck was going on with that crime scene in the trailer. Thankfully I got some friends still on the force, one of which I even have a bit of leverage on. At first he couldn’t find much on the actual mother, but then I asked him to see if he could take the photo I had, show it around, and see if anyone had seen something like it before. That proved a lot more fruitful. Few days later he came back with a strange one, but straight away I saw the connection.
I’ll spare the details. Old man was found in a tub, all sorts of fucked up, in some old apartment building. It had since been condemned on account of the body which is fairly weird since bodies don’t usually cause that much fuss, but less weird when you realise that said body was in such a bad state it made three people sick and caused long-lasting structural damage. Whatever happened to this guy, it ate through the tub he’d been lying in and seeped into the floors and walls below. Turned plasterboard to shit and apparently even caused some trouble for the sturdier elements like steel and concrete. I don’t know how that works exactly, but that’s what the file said and going by the photos, I didn’t feel like anyone was lying.
As for the pictures? What can I say? Made my fucking skin crawl. No blurry little polaroid snapped by a kid. These were professional crime scene pictures that showed something in a bathtub that didn’t register as human until my eyes went looking for details. He looked like a hairy paper-wasp’s nest, only there were fingers and nipples and other little things that made it clear it had been built using a person as the framework. No face though. Just a head like a pile of used paper plates. Looking at those photos made me learn a new word just to describe how I felt. Trypophobia.
Wasn’t just the one guy either. Building was linked to the disappearance of the ground floor tenant. Some computer geek. I didn’t worry about him too much. But what did catch my eye was there was only one woman living in the whole place. Second floor apartment. The registered name was… somewhat familiar. Close enough to a certain someone’s that it raised the hairs on my neck. Police at the scene managed to get a photo of her and sure enough, there she was. My client going by a different name. Clearly something fishy was going on or else why the pseudonym? I figured it possible she’d maybe offed her own mother. Parents and spouses make the most common victims. But what connection was there to that second corpse, and what about the missing guy?
It was like a horror movie was following her around and she was just blissfully unaware. Condemned buildings and festering trailers made for a far cry from the professional accountant who enjoyed oat milk lattes and used sweetener instead of sugar to spare her teeth. But there was no denying she was the connection. There was photographic proof she’d lived in that building. If I wanted to get ahead of this, to really understand what was going on, I had to figure out what had happened to those bodies. I’d pretty much exhausted my favours with the police and truth was they didn’t know any more than I did. But it turned out the building was still standing. Condemned, but they hadn’t demolished it, partly because no one wanted to take responsibility, but I reckon it might have had something to do with the biohazard warnings slapped on every single window and door.
Good thing I’d brought a gas mask. I waited for sunset, geared up, and entered through the unlocked door. First thing that hit me as the door swung open was the smell. Similar to the trailer park but full pelt and hot as hell. Made me think of lizards and poorly kept terrariums. Strong enough to make my eyes water even through the mask. One thing was clear as I took a look around the hallway - the building was diseased. Not just rundown or decrepit like the usual urban decay. This was something else. Looked like the inside of a clogged pipe. You know how limescale fills it up? It was a bit like that. This oily rust coloured fluid had seeped down the walls and left them glistening and soft. Ropey stalactites of the stuff hung down from the ceiling like old party banners, and I edged around them afraid of what might happen if one touched me.
Best guess was that stuff was digesting the place. Anything soft or organic was going or gone. Old umbrella frames were left standing in one corner, the fabric burnt or dissolved away. The carpet was reduced to just a few patches no bigger than my hand. And a bunch of old cardboard boxes piled up under the stairs had turned squat and half-liquid, almost flowing down and around each other. The worst came when I took a look in the back room. More of a broom closet, I guess. Wouldn't have gone in but something caught my eye. A well-worn shoe that wasn’t covered in that oily shit. Sign of recent activity. That and the way the door was ajar just raised my suspicions, so I took a look.
Even now the timeline eludes me, but someone, a vagrant most likely given the way they were dressed, died a nasty death in there. Chemical burns come to mind. They were balled up in one corner, eyeless, looking up at me as I pushed the door open to take a closer look. Pink flesh threaded with red blood vessels, yellow bones poking through here and there. From the looks of things they’d been trying to work the door open. You could see a history of their escape attempts left by bleeding hands. Rust coloured finger streaks ran all along the door’s edges, special attention paid to the hinges. And he’d broken the only window and tried hauling himself up there only to realise it was barred from the other side. The jagged glass that still clung to the frame was covered in old blood. His palms must have looked like grated cheese. Eventually he’d given up and lain down in that shit and the thought of it made my chest feel heavy and tight. I’d only been in the building a few minutes and that shit was already eating through my shoes. I could hear the thick rubber soles sizzle and pop with each step. But that guy had been forced to sit down in an inch deep puddle of the stuff, likely because exhaustion had left him no choice but to tough it out. So how long had he tried staying up right?
Hours? Days? Weeks?
Him getting stuck in there had to be deliberate. I was sure of it. A feeling in my gut. Someone had locked the door behind him and left him to die slowly. God only knows why, but did that mean they were still hanging around and waiting for a chance to get to me? Looking around, I sure didn’t feel safe or alone. The shadows seemed too deep and the steady drip drip drip of that rancid oil oozing out of every surface was too monotonous. Someone or something lived in that filth and chances were they’d been responsible for that poor vagrant’s agonising death.
That meant getting out of that shithole was a priority, so I made for the stairs and started the climb. If there were any answers in that place, it’d be in the apartment where that old man died. The crime scene tape was still hanging off the door frame when I found it, and the TV and sofa, or what remained of them, stood in the same place as in the photos. Back in the day the old man had been a hoarder and I was surprised crime scene hadn’t cleared all his shit out. It was all still there, only what had once been a chest high maze of papers and magazines was now just a kind of hardened pulp, almost like magma dried mid-flow. Whole fucking place was covered in the stuff like a coral reef, growing up the walls and even patches of the ceiling. Looked a hell of a lot like a wasp’s nest, and it looked to be the source of that oily looking fluid. You could see it sweating out of every crease and fold in that strange hive. It was almost hypnotic to look at. Glistening amber beads oozing out of papery sheets that flowed like rock striata. There was a gentle, barely perceptible rhythm. Hypnotic.
I don’t know why but I reached out and ran the tip of my finger as gently as I could along the surface. It felt like the underside of a mushroom. All those papery gills. Gossamer thin. Soft and inviting. I wore no gloves and the brief moment of contact had deposited a single bead of that strange syrup on my fingertip. It caused a tingling sensation that was not entirely unpleasant. Even the blood that trickled down my knuckle felt warm and wet, like testing a hot bath with your hand. I liked it. I liked it and I wanted more.
I went to reach out and push my arm into the nest when a hand burst out of the nest and gripped my wrist. I was so surprised I didn’t even make a noise, but instead wordlessly fell back as the hand pushed me away from the nest. A very nearly skinless forearm followed and soon after a face emerged from the papery nest like a grime covered nightmare. Black eyes and a lipless mouth. It was a man that could have passed for a corpse, like a half-digested piece of meat. Terrified, I struggled to my feet and realised that this person had broken damn near every bone in my wrist with that single grip.
“Your meat smells raw,” he growled before heaving himself out of the nest in a disgusting parody of childbirth.
My sanity flickered and the next thing I knew I was on the ground floor with bleeding eyes and both hands frantically pulling at the door handle. My mind returned in pieces. I blinked red tears away but didn’t stop trying to open the door. I felt it, that urgent need to leave, like a suffocating man feels the need to breathe. But I’d fucked up bad. I’d sniffed out the closet and saw the trap laid there, but hadn’t seen the larger one set for me. There was only one way in and out of that building and I hadn’t jammed the door open! Now it was shut and nothing I did could get it open. With more time maybe I could’ve pried the jamb or even kicked it down, but my heart was racing and my vision blurring. I wanted out of that place. A hot primal need to get the hell out. The air was too hot. My mask too stifling. Sweat condensed on the inner plastic and made it damn near impossible to see. And the pain in my wrist was a throbbing explosion that made sensible thought impossible. I’d realised early on into my little foray that I was underprepared, but the scale of what that meant eluded me until I was there wrestling with thoughts of exposure and contagion and disease, fumbling at a greasy doorknob with a broken hand while suppressing thoughts of what might be crawling up my leg or back or neck. Panic threatened to consume me. The world and all the normality it represented was right fucking there. I could hear it. The distant hum of traffic. The amber glow of streetlights that lit up the biohazard posters. Not thirty minutes ago I’d been there. Safe and far away from this waking nightmare.
I was being reduced to a prey animal. Even in the moment I could sense it happening to me. Being made into something lesser, but it was like my actions were no longer my own. When I finally gave up on the front door, I turned around and saw the shadows way back at the hallway begin to shift as something descended the stairwell. There was no other way out. No door. No window. Just me, a long corridor, and a nightmare coming right at me.
Something inside me gave up. I don’t know how to describe it. I’m still not sure if it was that building and that strange fluid that seemed to warp my own thoughts, or maybe there’s just too much one person can go through. But I could practically hear the thin membrane of my sanity tear as I fell backwards into the door and slid down onto my ass, breathlessly awaiting my terrible fate. I almost contemplated turning off my light but by then it was too late. I could see him coming towards me. He was legless. Nothing from the waist down except blackened viscera trailing up the stairs behind him. He pulled himself towards hand over hand with hungry eyes. Before I knew it he was on top of me, one hand gripping my mouth with a salty palm, the other stroking my hair.
And then in an instant his demeanour changed. He pulled back with a terrified cry and scrambled away like I’d just stuck him with a blade.
“No no no no no,” he muttered. “No no you should have said you should have said I didn’t know I thought you were another one I didn’t know I thought you were here for me I didn’t know you were hers.”
He cowered away, pedalling on both hands backwards while keeping his eyes fixed on me.
“Tell her I did not know you were hers I could not smell until I was close very close if I hurt you I am sorry tell her I am sorry I did not mean to hurt you it is just I do not get to eat often and am always hungry.”
With a rapid gesture he threw the key for the door at me. It skittered across the floor and fell just short of my feet.
“Tell her I did not know.”
“W-w-w-what are you?” I stammered.
He looked at me curiously, stopping his retreat only briefly to gauge my expression.
“She likes to be seen but I looked without asking and I got what I deserve.”
“Who are you talking about?” I asked.
He very nearly laughed, but with such deformities it was mostly a drooling guffaw.
“You know!” he gasped. “Don’t be stupid. You’re in love with her. Just like me. But different. You got permission. I didn’t. But she was good. She left me an old nest to live in. And I have permission to eat anything I kill or trap myself. Hard now that people know to stay away but sometimes I get lucky.”
“What has this got to do with her?” I asked.
“What colour are her eyes?” he replied, almost manic with excitement. “Answer. Answer. Tell me. Tell me. What colour are her eyes?”
“G–”
I stopped. The word felt wrong in my mouth.
“Bl–
“Bro–”
“No no,” he chittered. “None of those.”
Seemingly excited but afraid at the same time, he raced forward and gripped my lapels with twisted glee.
“Compound,” he hissed with such forbidden pleasure. “Her eyes are compound. A parasite, some might say. A symbiote, maybe. A god? Well I imagine someone somewhere has thought so. We see a person but she is not a person. She does something to our heads to make us see what isn't real. Only she doesn’t see what we see. She sees herself as she really is. But the… the glamour. The illusion. The image she puts on for us. She can’t see it. She is immune to her own beauty and it is a tragedy. She’s jealous of us, you know? She’s jealous we get to love her. She had a mother’s love once, but they aren’t maternal in the way we understand the term. A complicated relationship, I am sure. Ask her yourself while you still have her favour. She is her own favourite topic of conversation. But make sure to tell her I did not know you belonged to her when I attacked! I thought… Well I thought you were just meat, like the rest of us.”
With that he finally disappeared into the darkness and I finally summoned the willpower to grab the key and get the hell out of there.
-
“Do you think he’s up for it?”
Together we sat on a park bench. The same one we'd met at over a year ago. She looked as beautiful as ever.
“Uh, I don’t know.” I shrugged while sitting back. “His stuff is pretty avant-garde, but he could manage a straight forward bust I think.”
“It won’t be easy on him,” she said as she reached over to flick through the dossier. “I’ll have to sit for him and he’ll have to get a good look at me. Longer he stares… well I can’t guarantee when but the glamour will eventually fade.”
“No family. History of drug abuse,” I replied. “Some petty crime too. He works out of his friend’s garage. I think it’s your best shot. If he goes funny in the head, I’ll just have to take care of it. But if we’re lucky and he succeeds, what he makes will be a close approximation of how you look to us. I know I can’t… I know everything I’ve done comes close to giving a sense of how you appear to us humans but for an actual visual representation. I can’t draw for shit. And obviously photos. I mean to me they show, well, you. But my brain sees a very different you.”
“It’s okay,” she said with a smile. “You’ve done a good job.
"Besides, I prefer the version you get to see.”

Since crazy infection in september my symptoms consits:

• constsntly Red flushed face along with flushing ears
• deep itch in face, ears, burning eyes
• spine pain, neck and right shoulder pain, tailbone pain - its strange pain, like neuropathic itching deep pain
• when I breathe I feel pain in lot of places in back
• constant post nasal drip
• nerve pains in face, deep in ears, scalp, very random
• random places on face and head twitching, eyelid twitching along with shock electric pains and feelings
• heatwaves in legs and sometimes fingere
• feeling of crawling under skin
• shortness of breathe
• hives
• stinging pain in armpits (when I had infection one armpit lymphnode was swollen)
• burning mouth syndrome
• pins and needles in random places (for example when I put on clothes)

Nothing helps. Antihistamines, anticonvulsants. Only Tramadol slightly stopped pains. I feek like living dead. When Im walking I feel like my back is messed up, like asymetrical pain.
Bloodwork is ok according to doctors. Anyone can relate? Im so messed up. I also have chronic infection of genital area, but I doubt its the cause.
Do you think rhemuatology checkout would be useful? My flushing of face and ears is crazy. I know its possibly neuropathy...

10.5 y/o neutered male Briard, BCS 5. History of oral mast cell cancer, removed November 2022. Had chemo & radiation Jan-April 2023 and I believe is currently considered immunocompromised as he has been taking 5mg pred daily since surgery, and Palladia 2x/wk since June 2023 (although due to what is described here he has no had either in approximately 5 weeks).
Photos of leg that has developed alopecia and hyperpigmentation following clipping for hospitalization, suspected staph may be involved? Background below. https://imgur.com/a/Mfr9QXa
About 6.5 weeks ago he developed two areas of what looked like freckles/moles flush with the skin, which eventually flaked off. No pustules, no itchiness, no redness, no scaliness, no scabbiness/weeping, no open areas... just the freckle looking spots that seemed to just get extra dry and flake away. No other skin irritation. We saw the vet, who dx'd staph based on appearance. We didn't do a skin scraping or anything so no test results. He was prescribed a 14 day course of Simplicef.
We discussed medicated chlorhexidine baths and decided to take that route first to try and avoid oral antibiotics.
I started the medicated baths but 5 weeks ago, after 2 baths, he developed aspiration pneumonia out of nowhere and spent 2.5 days clinging to life in the ICU. He received Clavamox and Amikacin while in the hospital and for a stretch after - 7 days of Amikacin and I believe 10 days of Clavamox. He took 20mg of pred for a few days and was tapered off.
He has not restarted the mast cell cancer related 5mg pred or Palladia yet as we wanted to let his system try and recover a bit.
A little less than 2 weeks ago I noticed the spots coming back in a few areas. Same as before - flat, no open sores/pustules/scabs, no obvious irritation, no itchiness. The only difference is a few of the spots are/were a little more diffuse and looked like smudges of dirt on his skin than freckles.
I started him on the Simplicef, so he has four days left of that. He's has a total of three chlorhexidine 4% medicated baths in the last 12 days and has been dried extremely thoroughly each time.
I think in general the spots on his body are resolving, but his RF leg has something peculiar happening.
His RF and LH were shaved while he was in the hospital. The LH is regrowing hair normally, but the clipped area on his RF was badly bruised and as that has faded he has developed gradually worsening hyperpigmentation and has lost most of its hair. There is also one small spot that looks like the other areas of staph that has either faded slightly or maybe appears lighter because the surrounding skin is darker?
The hyperpigmentated area is very smooth and there are no signs of irritation in that he not itching and nothing is thickened/red/scaly/open (which has remain consistent throughout this entire process). The skin is just darkened and bald. No other areas of his body are affected, just the area on the LF leg in the area that was clipped.
I called our vet two days ago and left a message with the front desk, as well as emailed pictures. I followed up yesterday but still have not heard back.
In my googling it looks like hyperpigmentation can be a sign of healing, but I'm not finding anything about alopecia in hyperpigmented areas. Google isn't a vet and I'm concerned this is a large area of staph not responding to treatment, or maybe something else entirely.
Ideas? Is this potentially a normal progression of healing and I just need to wait for the layers of skin cells to finish turning over? Maybe weird post-clip alopecia?
Or should I potentially be concerned/trying to get him back into the vet soon for a skin scraping or biopsy, or maybe different meds or testing for Cushings/hyperadrenocorticism/thyroid problems?

I am a 17 year old male.
After going for a walk today, I noticed irritation on my upper-inner thighs, more towards my genitals. The irritation appears as many red bumps and feels itchy and slightly painful when touched (similar to a stinging nettle sting).
I shaved my legs a couple of days ago and am thinking that doing so helped to cause this, as I have not experienced this before. However, after shaving, I had no apparent razor burn / razor bumps/ ingrowing hairs.
I am not sexually active and have no history with STIs. I have no know allergies. I have not been using any new skincare products or bodywash.
I'm guessing I'll have to let it clear on it's own, but I'd like to confirm what caused this, so I can prevent / reduce this irritation in future.
Any help would be appreciated!

31F - Like the title says, I’m allergic to aloe products. They’re literally everywhere and in almost everything
I do my due diligence of reading ingredient labels and scouring for Aloe through literally everything that I have ever had to use. —You’d be surprised how hard it is to find baby products that don’t contain aloe in them.— Anyway, I decided to google what that little strip on razors is. Turns out, it’s a lubricating strip. My eyes widened in horror, because it clicked in my head that this could potentially contain aloe in it, which would mean the constant razor burn I experience whenever I shave is not in fact razor burn… but an allergic reaction.
For context, my bodies response to aloe whenever I come into contact with it is an insatiably itchy, warm/hot, red rash.
So I paused for a moment and continued to google to find out for certain what that strip contains in it. Yep. Aloe is in fact one of the ingredients in it.
Now I have a problem. Shaving is easier. I can do it by myself. I don’t need anyone’s help. I don’t have to pay anyone. The only pain I endure —aside from the now obvious allergic reaction— is if I cut myself which is rare. I can shave both legs in 30 minutes— if I’m being slow.
Does anyone know of any razors that don’t have that strip? Preferably where I can buy it in-store?
Before anyone comes in here with the “just wax” stuff:
I’m a little bitch, I can’t rip wax off of myself. I got the unlucky end of the gene pool and have my fathers body hair growth. I legitimately have 2-3 hairs coming out of each follicle. Strips don’t work at all on me. The smear-n-rip (warmer beads) works, I’ve tried it, but I have to get my husband to yank it off of me because I’m such a little bitch to pain. It takes 2-3hrs to do both of my legs, so now he refuses to do it because of how long it takes.
Also, I don’t know how an epilator works, or if it would with my leg hair growth.
No, I can’t afford laser hair removal.
Nair and its counterparts all have aloe in them, I’ve used them before finding out I was allergic to aloe and they don’t work at all for my hair removal needs anyways. Not to mention— genuine curiosity here, but like… The smell… how??

My psoriasis hasn't been terrible. It's mainly on my scalp and I have a few stubborn spots that never went away from breakouts. I don't have joint pain. I've had only three significant outbreaks in the last 17 years. My first one was after I got strep twice back-to-back. The Dr had me do light therapy and use topical oils. It eventually went away. My most recent outbreak was March - got strep, traveled with delayed flights, meds were in my check bag (dumb I know), got sunburnt on trip, other stressors... the psoriasis came out in angry force. Large angry red patches with white scales on my shoulders and arms (very painful and thick on my sunburnt area), the spots on my midriff and bikini area, huge spotty patches all over my thighs and shins (very itchy and raw). Went to my dermatologist and the Dr took a biopsy; he gave me some creams. The creams helped tone down and pretty much clear up my shoulders and arms, but my legs weren't having it (they were getting worse and hurt). At my follow up, Dr wanted to get me on Skyrizi. He explained the complications that psoriasis can cause in all kinds of ways and the way the medication works. I didn't think much of it so agreed to the first injection (a free sample I guess) right there in the office. Everything had cleared up completely by week 2. It was amazing! Well, I had no idea the cost of Skyrizi and of course my insurance denied covering it. I was put on the AbbVie two-year plan. Now, my next injection is due, and I'm seeking advice on whether I should even continue the medication. Like I said, my body had pretty much suppressed the psoriasis, and my outbreaks don't come often. The one cream seemed to work on the shoulders but I didn't get a chance to try other things on my legs. I'm feeling unsure that I want to be dependent on costly medication for the rest of my life. But since I took the first injection, will the psoriasis come back in even more super angry force if I don't get this next injection? Should I take the chance?

My psoriasis hasn't been terrible. It's mainly on my scalp and I have a few stubborn spots that never went away from breakouts. I don't have joint pain. I've had three significant outbreaks in the last 17 years. My first one was after I got strep twice back-to-back. The Dr had me do light therapy and use topical oils. It eventually went away. My most recent outbreak was March - got strep, traveled with delayed flights, meds were in my check bag (dumb I know), got sunburnt on trip, other stressors... the psoriasis came out in angry force. Large angry red patches with white scales on my shoulders and arms (very painful and thick on my sunburnt area), the spots on my midriff and bikini area, huge spotty patches all over my thighs and shins (very itchy and raw). Went to my dermatologist and the Dr took a biopsy; he gave me some creams. The creams helped tone down and clear up my shoulders and arms, but my legs weren't having it (they were getting worse and hurt). At my follow up, Dr wanted to get me on Skyrizi. He explained the complications that psoriasis can cause in all kinds of ways and the way the medication works. I didn't think much of it so agreed to the first injection (a free sample I guess) right there in the office. Everything had cleared up completely by week 2. It was amazing! Well, I had no idea the cost of Skyrizi and of course my insurance denied covering it. I was put on the AbbVie two-year plan. Now, my next injection is due, and I'm seeking advice on whether I should even continue the medication. Like I said, my body had pretty much suppressed the psoriasis, and my outbreaks don't come often. The one cream seemed to work on the shoulders but I didn't get a chance to try other things on my legs. I'm feeling unsure that I want to be dependent on costly medication for the rest of my life. But since I took the first injection, will the psoriasis come back in even more super angry force if I don't get this next injection? Should I take the chance?

I have visited a few dermatologists already and have had very little luck with some telling me flat out they just don’t know and have no advice whatsoever for me.
The situation started when I got some itchiness in a given point of my face. The itchiness continued for a few days and then went away on its own. No redness, no jnflammation. However, a tiny “hole” was left after the itchiness subsided. After some time, the same spot became itchy again for a few days and I noticed the “hole” grew in area and/or depth. This started a few years ago. There was one spot initially and now there are a few in my face. When the itchiness comes, it feels that most of these points get “activated”. It makes me worried to not have a clue regarding what in the world is happening and to not know when would it stop, if.
As I mentioned, I have gone to multiple dermatologists and all they seem to believe it is just regular scars. Only one of them seemed to wonder for a bit and then asked me if this also happened in other parts of my body… I don’t normally check my body so I replied no, which led to him saying it was regular scars. Btw, other scars I have do not itch at all. I have since found random small “scars” in my legs and also noticed a small “hole” in the back of the roof of my mouth.
This has been very distressing… if anyone has a pointer regarding what could possibly cause this problem, tests to have done or what to mention next time I visit the dermatologist, I would really really appreciate it. I travel for work internationally and love hiking. I wonder if I could have gotten any sort of infection during one of my trips but I don’t know really.

And this ladies and gents, is the end of the beginning. This concludes the story of the first time I cheated. Things were really heating up.
I put my hair back better, and just exactly what you're probably imagining happening, well, it happened. I was so in love with all of them, I was overwhelmed with stimuli, I was going through some weird new phase of intense horniness, and now I was naked with the boys of my dreams. I was seeing all these new things for the first time. I remember all the commentary on what those bad girls out there do in their lives. I've talked my fair share of shit on promiscuous women. Well, far as some rumors i've heard in my life about certain kinds of girls goes, i get it now. At least with these boys. MY boys. Remember, the moment Bran put himself in me, it was over. The first place he put himself was in my mouth. I walked forward and got down on my knees. I was still in the middle of the euphoric religious experience. I opened my mouth and my hands reached out. I put Joe in my mouth first while I jacked off Josh and Bran. I heard Joe moan now while he swelled in my mouth, I felt Bran completely harden again in my hand. I was awash with enthusiasm and power. "suck that dick!' or "suck cock bitch!" Here, gasps and moans there, all kinds of variations of dirty talk from them while I kept my mouth and hands full and busy. Dave's cock barely fit in my mouth because of how fat it was. I could literally only suck on the tip while I jacked him. He seemed to love it all the same, making a deep growling sound, trying not to cum. I pulled back and switched to Josh and back to Joe. They were way easier to give head to, and their cocks are awesome. Just fat and long enough to be fun without being scary or difficult. Joe's a solid 7 inches or so, Josh was about 8 I'd say, not quite so thick as Joe's. I was switching who I jacked off and sucked, dick after dick. All of them. Or they'd grab my hair and pass me around. I wanted to see how far down I could go on Joe and for a few seconds my face was almost like a vagina with him. He literally had sex with my face. When I leaned back I was happy to breathe but I'm not gonna lie it was kind of amazing. I was only able to get just over half way down him. Were they worshipping me? Was I worshipping them? Was I their Goddess or were they my gods? This was an act of worship somehow. We all felt power, we all felt submission. I leaned back to rest my Jaw and breathe, I saw all of them still wet with my saliva. I know all of this must sound gross to you, but it felt so natural. It all felt so right. Like puzzle pieces interlocking. That was me, on them, and they all pulsed in my vision once more. They had all been "kissed" by me, they had all made a communion with me in a way. Or we all made one together. They had become part of me, I had become part of them. I felt Joe and Brandon stand me up on my feet. I had been kneeling for so long, and I was so excited my knees wobbled. Then I felt Joe turn me and faced him and we locked eyes. We were both vulnerable, I could see him, the real him, through his eyes. I felt like a school girl, frozen with a boy she likes. He leaned in and kisses me so sweetly. Lovingly even. Then Brandon kissed me. Then Josh. I know what you're thinking, I just gave them all head and it's nasty that you just made out. Okay look I get it but this is part of what I'm talking about and why this is rare, everything. This was a private moment with me and my lovers. In those moments, it's almost like we were all of one mind. We weren't just naked in front of each other playing with each other's bodies. Our souls were naked. They nurtured me. They all gently soothed me and kissed me while they surrounded me, and for quite a long while. I made out with John while I gently stroked Jay and Bran sucked my tits. I got a nice handful of Dave's ass before moving that hand over to Josh's London tower to crank his bell. Sometimes I would bend over to suck one of them only to be pulled up and reminded it was their turn now. After a while of sweet pampering from my boys, I felt Joe pick me up and slope me over his shoulder, my ass over his back. He began to walk toward the stairs while I giggled. Brandon walked behind him up the stairs and he spanked my ass all the way to the master bedroom. Joe threw me on me and my Husband's Colorado King and crawled on top of me as the rest poured in behind him and surrounded the bed. I spread my legs open and ran my right hand down his chest. We locked eyes again as I put him in my hand, I could feel others getting onto the bed. He kissed me and I knew him. I gently stroked him. Then I looked over in Time to see Brandon grab one of my legs and Josh grab the other and pull them a little more apart. I threw my hand over my head I got so hot from that. Joe's hand played in my downstairs while I played with his. Then I opened my eyes again, and we saw each other again, and we connected. He suddenly, quickly and powerfully drove himself inside of me, not in a gentle way as you'd maybe expect, but just exactly the way I needed it, and I think he sensed that that's what I needed. He went allll the way in. I could feel my clit grind, he filled me all the way up as he trust into me. It hurt a little bit. To tell you the truth it hurt just enough. Then it was completely awesome. I screamed as he locked there, barely able to move, while he muttered "oh my god. Holy shit oh my god". I personally couldn't even talk. I know I'm tight. All I ever knew for 30 years was a thin 4 inch dick. All the same my vagina was designed for him. Really it was designed for them. It wasn't a problem with pain, trust me. All the same, he was trying not to cum, it ended up all I could do for a minute was cum. He briefly rocked back a few inches you see, then drove back in. When he went back in I came hard, and I screamed again. He still couldn't move and my orgasm lasted a while, with his small shifts in movement, trying to keep his cool, setting me off on him. We kissed while Bran and Josh ran their hands up and down my legs. I cooled down, still ready for more. Suddenly Joe sat up straight and his face had changed. He was my conqueror now. Feeling shock at the change in his face, I backed up a bit, him still inside of me. He grabbed each of my shoulders and pulled me back down fully, "balls deep" and just grinded his dick in me for a few seconds. We had a conversation with our eyes as he pulled me up toward him, helpless. He wanted me to understand I was being conquered now, and he was going to do his job. Without saying a word, he proceeded to throw me back down on the bed and pull my tense legs up over his shoulders. He then proceeded to fuck the ever loving shit out of me. He fucked me in a way I'd never been fucked before. He was a man. He fucked me LIKE A MAN. Dave and John came around to my arms and pinned my arms down. Joe had both my legs, Bran and Josh stood behind the other two having sex with my face. Then they let my arms free and for the next ten minutes Joe fucked me while I stroked and sucked everyone. Now to highlight something that should be obvious. Joe and Brandon are my favorites. In fact, spoilers but not saying too much, they're my serious lovers. My boyfriends. And while all of them are kind of like my boyfriends, Joe and Bran especially are. I love them, just as I love my husband in a way. This isn't the time for that now though. I just say that to make clear with me and Brandon's first time, which was directly next, it was like having two soul mates drill you back to back. Just imagine that ladies. Working together, as a unit, with some weird hive mind shit going on, just for you. Yeah, that's what I got. My chest was red and I screamed again, this time for a longer time, as I had cum again. I could see my own tits bounce when Joe pulled out of me and crawled forward up the bed. I knew I shouldn't have been able to keep going, but my body wouldn't quit. We'd only gotten started. As I thought these things, I accepted Joe into my mouth. As I sucked him Brandon went around and put my legs up. I pulled Joe out of my mouth and looked at him, his Dragon pulsing over me. I remember I gasped just before he sank half of his cock into me, and like Joe he locked for a moment. Unlike Joe, even if we wanted to kiss we couldn't: his dick was too long. He moaned and pulled back and thrust in a little deeper while I moaned and struggled to suck on John's beautful penis. Then he pulled back again and I laid flat on my back for him to thrust again. A little deeper. I could feel the pummeling my organs were gonna take. I screamed again and looked him in the eyes. Now we could kiss. My foxy lover, my 29 years younger student of love, I love him so much. He leaned down and kissed me sweetly, he just knew. He hurt. I loved it but he hurt. Somehow I became even more wet than I was, and he sank almost all the way in. I came again. He pulled back and drove in again powerfully. I shrieked and came again. He was all the way in now. I loved how his balls finally pushed all the way against me. I have two things to say, one is about young lovers and the other is about big dick. The moral of the story ladies, is if you're gonna cheat, if ya can, make sure you have a younger lover WITH a big dick. You see, they can go for forever, and they will hit all your spots, especially if it's a young fella you have a real compatibility with. Like, maybe one you're a little in love with. Anyway, do you know it feels to have two young beatuful men you love try not to nut inside you, afraid to move, several minutes apart from each other? In front of each other? It created real moments of connection. I can't describe it. Bran sat up and I tried to cling to him. John pulled me back down by my shoulders, Brandon dragged me back to the edge of the bed, still inside me while John and Joe helped by pushing my shoulders. He then stood on the ground, stood back an in or two, retracting from me a bit, and for about ten minutes straight just slowly plunged me. I just sat on the edge of my next orgasm the entire time. They each took turns pushing my shoulders and slowly bouncing me off him. It was amazing. Then he sank all the way back in, and we shuffled back on the bed while we made out. We laid sideways and Joe got behind me. He kissed my neck while Brandon continued his slow plunge. I knew what was happening. Not to be unpleasant, but I'd never taken it in the butt at all before. I had only in the last year had done any butt stuff with myself. I'd never had anything the size of a peen in me. Not there....well, up until that evening I'd never felt a real dick in my life. Not in any way. When Joe kissed me though I just relaxed, and kissed them both. Everyone could feel a unique thing was happening with the two of them and me. I made out with them while Bran slowly fucked me, and I felt Joe put his tip in me. Instead of lurching forward, I drove myself back. Again, it hurt, but not as much as I thought. And I wanted him. Joe buried himself the rest of the way in my back. It wasnt uncomfortable for long, it was awesome. I was really happy I was clean and all that too....now that I think about it......anyway. Joe Brandon and I were all connected now in this moment. It started so slow and tender, it was love making, really. I can't describe it, having them both in me at once, but there's basically nothing I wouldn't do to feel that at any given time. I wish they could get me pregnant. Both of them, somehow. I can't have anymore children though, and I'm too old to be a parent all over again. If I could though I would, for them. I wanted them to get me pregnant. Then Brand started to really fuck me, which made Joe react by starting to fuck me faster and harder. I immediately began to feel the most ridiculous series of orgasms I have yet to ever feel since, not nearly with this level of intensity. My voice went hoarse quickly. It went from the sounds of my screams while they absolutely burned me down to ashes, to the sound of my rasps while they made my ass and pussy pop off their hips as they grunted and fucked. From that point it became like pirhana swimming in for a kill. Like a pack of hyenas enjoying their prey before they feast on it. Screeching as they savagely tear me to pieces. Jay got on the bed and just started fucking my mouth, I from that point I had John and Josh in either hand. Then Dave stuck his cock in my mouth and gagged me. The soldiers were on assignment, there was nothing I could do. I spent hours receiving them in my mouth and puss, jacking them all off and sucking them, only Joe and John fucking me in the ass, sanitizing themselves before they changed to any other role. They moved as a unit, with Instinct. They all had their savage way with me. Since that night I've learned a phrase: air tight. I've learned other fun terms since then too.....I went air tight with them that night, all night. With a dick in each hand. I remember John slamming my ass while I throated Jason and Joe Fucked my pussy. I had Josh in one hand and Dave in my other one. Then they threw me down on the floor and I got on all fours to recover. Dave got behind me and just started fucking my brains out doggy style before I could react. Then Josh started throating me as Dave lifted me up and got underneath me and fucked my pussy more. Then Joe came in behind and started popping my ass. Things like that. That's what went down for HOURS. It was so primal. I came so many times. They truly conquered me that night. When they could sense I was finally nearly completely worn out, they threw me on the center of the bed and they surrounded me. Joe started fucking me fast and I felt a powerful drive as he lost breath and came inside of me. He then pulled out, his cock still hard and throbbing, crowned with the beautful white water of his creation, and sprayed me. It rained the best rain. Coming from him, the taste of him, the smell of him, I wanted him to mark me. He did, the heat of his rain sinking into me. Then he stepped back and I sucked him clean while Brandon started fucking me hard and fast. I could feel his cum plunge out of me as he began to bust inside of me, trickling out from the wall of my vagina and the shaft of his cock. I'm not gonna lie I felt like I was dreaming. I couldn't actively physically do much, but my spirit carried me on. I was still happy to just lay back and take it. Brandon pulled out with a shout, and a monstrous and pyroclastic rain erupted from his beautful and enormous volcano dick. So too did this young warrior mark me. He sprayed and sprayed, painting me. To feel him again run down my chest from my face. And so much. Then Josh, fucking me with the leavings of the previous two men both in and on me, he just let it all go in my womb, where Joe and Bran's waters already were. He flooded me, I could feel more of life's river pour from me as he exited. Then Dave. He was so turned on in that moment he could only go for thirty or so seconds, pulled out and soaked me too. Everywhere. Even in my hair. I didn't even care though. I could feel my smile. Jason used me to finish next. I loved being their sponge. I never even imagined anything like this. Only rumors I thought were ridiculous, but really, this was gratifying, being conquered. Fertilized. Shown my natural purpose, and living it for the first time. He just savagely fucked me and when he was done, he pulled out and barely shot my upper body, he brought his aim down in the middle of his orgasm and flooded my belly, making a new lake on my button, most of the rest spilled off the side of me. John, who hadn't finished yet, wiped me down, they all helped him while I just laid back with a smile, loving the touch of their hands, but sad in a way to feel their waters go. Then John turned me on my side and I kissed him and wrapped around him as he entered me. Then Joe came back in behind me and started fucking me in the ass again. They both fucked me hard while we all yelled (I rasped) for 30 seconds. Then they both nutted inside of me at the same time while I felt my last and in truth unexpected orgasm go off. They stood up and left me on the bed, leaking my conqueror's fluid, enjoying this light and glowing feeling. Nothing at all was wrong with the world, except for how sore I was going to be. I looked for a moment at my bracelet, I remember, and it looked brighter than it usually did. It seemed to have more sparkle to it. I crawled back and put my head on a pillow. Joe and Brandon both got next to me on either side and kissed me while I sank in the mattress, and after a few minutes the other young foxes came back, still naked, with some warm dampened rags. They all padded me down and cleaned me. I could feel the care in their touch as I drifted in and out of a semi-sleep. The heat from the damp rags soothing me even more. I felt like a kitten, I could have purred. I opened my eyes and all of them but Joe and Bran had gathered their clothes. Now that I was clean they were all getting dressed. Joe and Bran stayed nude. I kissed them all goodnight and sent them to their rooms after we changed my sheets and bedding. I asked Joe and Brandon "what about you guys?" as John closed the door behind him. "We're gonna sleep in here with you" I heard Brandon say. Then Joe "what's a night of dirty fun without some cuddles?" You might think they sounded presumptuous but I was so happy and excited. So Joe and Brandon and I all slept naked together in the same bed that night. We stayed up for a while and talked. They made out with me a little more. It was fun. We watched some TV, and we all eventually kind of passed out. I nestled between both of them so comfortably, and got the best sleep of my life in that hidden place that night. Shielded by the strong backs of two young men.

Casper's time in the void was shorter than usual.
Even without the evidence of passing time, there had always been a period where the young man settled into the distinctly unsettling feeling of nothingness. He'd said his goodbyes to Spectre the first, a geckin mech that had served him well, but would not follow him wherever he went now. It was geckin's property after all. After that, he powered down and had keyed for his casket to be ejected slowly, rather than be fired like an artillery shell to get him away from the current threat.
The moment he disconnected from the machine, he was plunged back into the dark, however, he didn't get a chance to 'settle' before light and sound returned. Casper was used to this now, it was always harsh to return to the real world, it hurt and was confusing as his mind reconnected with the various senses of his body once more.
There was a roaring din that deafened him immediately, even more so than normal. Before he could open his eyes, something was pressed over them. It covered the front half of his face and looped over his ears and behind his head, an elastic band holding the soft material firmly in place. The hands that manipulated him were careful, supporting his head and placing it back down, rather than letting Casper drop. The young man squinted, preparing for the pain of harsh bright light.
Instead, it was muted.
There were lights overhead and shadows and silhouettes that blocked it briefly as they moved around his casket, but the darkened, translucent material that covered his eyes prevented that stab of pain as his eyes, used to the dark, adjusted to the real world again. As he considered this, the dark figure slipped a set of earmuffs over his head and pulled a mic down, so it comfortably touched his lip. A deafening roar that Casper hadn't even begun processing yet died and he was left in a far more comfortable state.
Wherever Casper lay, rocked from side to side, the whole crew reacting and stumbling to the right, then left. However, the silhouette that was crouched over Casper reached out his hands and prevented the human's head from hitting the edge of the casket.
"We got you buddy, you,okay? You hurt?" Asked an unknown voice, the voice coming over clear and precise through the headset.
"Where's Qik?"
"She's fine buddy, let's get you sorted first, then we can see her, yeah?"
Casper nodded as he felt the casket being peeled away from his bottom half. The shadow over him turned his head and Casper caught sight of a pair of long ears, clipped back and out of the stranger's way as he spoke to someone else.
"Vitals are thready, looks like we need fluids, do we know how much these guys are supposed to weigh?" There was a pause. "Alright, just ensure we get transport when we land. Hey buddy!" The voice spoke to Casper once more. "Can you touch your fingertips for me? Like this?" The stranger made a familiar gesture, touching his thumbs to his fingertips in series. Casper knew this exercise.
Casper raised his hands, wincing as his skin once again felt sore in the open air, and tried to copy the speaker. The young human grit his teeth in frustration as he couldn't see to command his digits correctly, the thumb either not moving or seemingly not obeying.
"It's okay buddy, you looked like you hurt for a second there. Can you tell me where it hurts?"
"It's m-my skin. It's-it's fine, it'll calm down." Casper explained, trying to reassure the speaker. The shadow turned his head again, touching a hand to his own headset.
"Bird Two medical to hanger. Inbound thirty seconds, unknown species, pulse is thready, we got casket burn, subject is disorientated and likely severely malnourished. Get a bath ready." The rocking of whatever transport Casper was on board intensified before a firm judder ceased all further movement for the machines.
There was a flurry of activity as the crews that worked within the confined space of the vehicle seemingly all had jobs to do. A new lopel appeared above Casper and apparently was attempting to wheel him away.
"Can I see Qik?" Casper asked, feeling helpless as his legs merely twitched when he attempted to move them. He was utterly vulnerable in the hands of a whole new set of people and beings. The radio in his headset crackled and a familiar voice spoke to him. It was as if her lips were right next to his ear as she spoke, relieving him of his worries.
"I'm here Casper, I'm here. Just a few feet to your left. Lay back, these guys will do the work. Just relax, okay?" She asked gently. Casper tensed his whole body and sat upright, much to the surprise and mild panic of the lopel that was still half crouched, half sat on the shell of Casper's pilot casket. As the human raised his head and cleared the lip of the sarcophagus, he saw Qik was doing the same, a black headband was over her head too providing her welder's goggles and an oddly shaped headset with mic covering her ears.
She gave him a grin and a small wave that turned into a thumbs up. As always, she seemed untouched by the machine's drained aura.
"O-okay..." Casper replied, relieved to hear her voice and lay back down, much to the approval of the lopel that was being wheeled along with Casper. He was the spitting image of Qik, only instead of brown fur, he was a bright grey, with the exception of his hands, face and the lining of his ears, which had white fur.
"Are you friends with Qik buddy?" He asked with a still light tone, but with a hint of scepticism. Casper nodded his head, feeling tired, he laid his head back into the gel head rest of the casket and closed his eyes, releasing a tension he didn't realise that he'd been holding. The grey lopel touched the top of one his blunt claws to Casper's shoulder, waking him, the grey alien wore an impish grin.
"Took me four years before Qik started talking to me! You cooperate with the docs that we're about to meet and I'll trade you an embarrassing story about her at the bar, deal?" Casper couldn't help but match the creature's mischievous smile, which only broadened as the hot mic and headset was immediately bombarded with Qik's heated voice.
"You asshole! I'll cut your ears off!"
Casper couldn't help but join in with the laughter of the crew who were obviously also listening to the exchange. The grey lopel hopped down off the casket as he introduced a new set of lopels, who would then look after the human.
== 0 ==
It was nearly an hour and a half later before Casper saw Qik again.
The door hissed open, and Casper turned from the window from which he was staring out of, he couldn't stop the smile from spreading across his face seeing her.
She was dressed in a set of clothes that Casper had never seen before. Gone was her signature Nerve Suit which she had worn under her jacket at any point that she wasn't undressed completely. Now she wore grey, for lack of a better term, lounge wear. It looked comfortable and baggy, although the waistband hugged her hips pleasantly. She did, however, still have on her jacket, reassuring him more than he realised. It was a slice of 'normal' while everything was unfamiliar.
"You get your bath?" She asked casually, strutting across the comfortably warm room with the peculiar lopel gait that reminded the young man of runway models. Casper nodded; his hair was still shaved close to his skull so it had long since air dried but was still dressed in nothing but a fluffy black bathrobe. He previously had every intention of donning the perhaps oversized jogging bottoms and shirt that had been laid on 'his' bed by someone unseen while he was freshening up in the bathroom.
"Yeah, I was going to get dressed but I got distracted." He explained, gesturing at the large window that showed the pair of them outer space.
Qik merely 'hummed' in agreement as stepped up next to the shorter human. Beyond the 'glass', was a purple and red nebula, frozen in time as they swirled together creating a beautiful display that had simply awed the man.
"You didn't get bored of all this going to the Geckin worlds?" She asked, still gazing out the glass. She gestured to the amazing display before looking down at him with an easy smile. Casper couldn't help but give her a smile back, his eyes wrinkling in the corner as he turned back to the cosmic event.
"No... I just kept to myself to be honest. Didn't have a window seat. It's... I don't know I don't have words." He explained honestly, he felt breathless, almost nervous, but couldn't put his finger on why.
"Remind me to show you the observation deck tomorrow." Qik offered quietly, slipping her thumbs into her waistline, and seemingly settling into a comfortable silence. Casper joined her a moment, before a frown flashed across his face, turning to her.
"Tomorrow? Why not today?" He asked, genuinely curious.
"You really feel up to talking to a hundred different people? You're the hot topic Casper. New species, new pilot. Even a few rumours of you besting me in a fight." Qik explained, an accusatory eyebrow rose to the ceiling as she side eyed him. Their initial fight was a sore spot for Qik, this Casper knew. He'd promised almost immediately afterwards to take the event to his grave and turned to her to offer his full attention.
"I swear I didn't say anything to anyone. I know about your reputation and-" A palm clamped over his mouth, silencing him quite effectively.
"Shut it." She demanded, releasing him, and touching the tip of his nose with a single finger.
"I know you didn't say anything. But my rig had a new head. A new head is a sign of someone taking your head off. The engineering crew are rather protective of their work and notice when someone's touched a single bolt, let alone replaced the whole thing. Don't worry, Just feign ignorance. But if you're up for crowds, I don't mind taking you to see the stars."
In hindsight, that sounded like more than what Casper felt up to. He still felt drained and tired. He knew himself well enough that interacting with strangers right now was ill advised. Still... he didn't want to miss the views.
"How long is our journey? Am I likely to miss anything?"
Qik snorted and turned from the window, resting her rump against the table that sat underneath it.
"Hardly. We're on our way to the next closest station, that'll be a five- or six-day trip. We'll trade, sniff for jobs, and get some free time. Plenty of time for you to star gaze."
Casper turned back to the window and squinted as he saw something move against the black. It was small, but just big enough to make it out.
"Hey, there's a ship out there!" At Casper's alert, Qik hummed curiously and turned her head, narrowing her eyes before turning back to the human.
"Don't worry, that's one of ours. Looks like a point defence platform. We're on the carrier, holding all the mechs and a slew of hanger space with repair docks for anything and everything. Problem is, we're a sitting duck on our own." She thrust a thumb over her shoulder at the window. "That 'little guy' is a massive frigate. You can tell because of all the little nubs on its edges." Qik explained. Casper leant forwards over the table and studied the ship. It was triangular in shape, but along its smooth edges, it did indeed have bumps, breaking up its profile every few centimetres.
"Those are turrets. It can handle everything from tiny drones to fighter crafts to anything roughly the same size as the frigate. Keeps them off the carrier's back. Keep looking out that window and you'll see its brother floating around somewhere. We have between four and six frigates following the carrier, each designed to keep a different kind of enemy off us. The one's without all those nubs will have a long straight piece, either on top or below it. That's a railgun. Those frigates handle the bigger problems."
Qik paused, before reaching out a large hand to grasp his shoulder gently. Her hand dwarfed him, but she never felt heavy to him, nor did her squeeze do anything but reassure him.
"Casper, you're safer than you've ever been on board this craft." She declared truthfully.
Qik pushed off from the table and walked over to Casper's bed, stretching as she walked until her fingertips brushed the ceiling. She threw herself onto his bed and gathered a pillow beneath her head with a comfortable sigh.
"Honestly, it's adorable how you still enjoy the stars. Everyone who's in space for a living just kind of forgets they're there." She offered from her lounged position on his bed. Casper turned to her and shrugged then tried to suppress a yawn, using a thumb to rub his eye as he spoke.
"It's new to me. I lived in a city; light pollution stopped me from seeing all but the brightest. What's the station like?" He asked, curious as aside from the intake, which he really didn't remember much of, he hadn't seen other stations.
"Geckin run, but it's on a major shipping lane. Expect a whole plethora of species. Although the ssypno and the geckin portions are kept separate, for obvious reasons." Qik explained. "It's got everything a private military company could want. Work, trading, entertainment, sex, whatever scratches your itch. "
Casper blinked at the casual nature of Qik and reminded himself that despite her softness with him, she was a hardened warrior, capable of handling herself and killing people without losing sleep.
"I think I'll steer clear of that last one." Although Casper was sincere, Qik merely snorted again as if doubting Casper's words.
"Again; adorable. You might change your tone after being stuck on this ship with no one but each other to keep you company." The lopeljack explained as she lay on Casper's bed. His eyes roamed on their own, from her wide, fluffy toes, past her almost dainty ankles, up her thick calves and knee-weakeningly thick thighs, to the curve of her hips and toned front of a fighter who kept themselves in their best possible shape.
It was all topped with a head and face that watched him carefully, her ears having fallen casually across her body. Her smile was a knowing one. Casper swallowed.
"There's worse people to spend time with." The young man offered, suddenly nervous. Qik merely grinned. The air had become charged at the first mention of sex. Whilst he wasn't fully inexperienced, Casper did not have a 'body count' he could rely on. Qik however exuded confidence and experience.
"You'd think so, but I'm the big bad Qik. Nobody wants to spend time with a cold bitch like me." She explained, grinning wickedly. Her tone was mocking, welcoming Casper into joining in and to deny her claims. He couldn't help the smirk that pulled one side of his face up.
"I wouldn't mind." Casper replied correctly with a more casual tone than he really felt, shrugging and pointedly ignoring the nervous shake in his hands.
"Well, how about you come here then, and I can welcome you to the crew properly...?" She asked, crooking a finger and reeling the young man in with zero resistance from him. As he clambered into the bed and felt the lopel's hand gently grasp the back of his head, bringing him in for a kiss, the human was struck with a thought.
If this were the spoils of battle, then maybe Casper could get very used to being a mercenary?
WolvensStories
Ko-Fi
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Hello! So I don’t actually now why i am writing this, but i think a part of me thinks will find comfort in what you will say. To explain the whole situation, me and my girlfriend had the best relationship in my life, we were both so happy with her asking me to pinky promise that we’ll get married one day, never breaking up in this whole period of time, never going to sleep without talking and solving our problems. We truly loved each other so much. For half of our relationship, since we started dating, i didn t really liked her, but she was so in love. After 1 month she told me that she loves me, and i couldn t tell her that back, because i wasn t feeling like I do. I didn t want to leaver her because i was sure one day I would start to love her because she was a great person so i didn t broke up with her. 2 days before she told me she loves me, we went to the same club because i was sleeping at my best friend and she was sleeping at hers. We both drunk, had fun and i felt like i was loving her so much. I was praying and hoping that the next day when I would be sober, this feeling wouldn’t be lost. And my prayers we’re listened. We had a fight that night for some reason, and the next day i came to her house once i woke up and fixed everything. It was the best time of my life, everything was perfect, we were loving each other so much. She made me want to drop everybody else off, staying only with her because she said she doesn t need anyone else than me and she wasn’t going out with anybody anymore. She told me she wants me to get mad when she is not answering. The point is that after some time, like one year, she started going out sometimes with one or two of her old friends and it was fine for me. But after some time, it started driving me mad because if she couldn t go out even for 2 weeks, i was staying only home, talking to her, missing her. But if I wasn t able to go out only one day she was saying she will meet x girl or y person. This was annoying and i was telling her “why can t you just stay home for one day”. Now i get it, but then i wasn’t because she just wanted to spend a little bit of time with other people than me. She was always askinf me to reassure her and pinky promise to her that I am still sure we’ll get married one day, telling me that she would forgive me no matter what if she sees me that I am puttin effort in getting her back. Fast forward to one week ago, everything was ok and the next day she literally changed immediately the way she was feeling, she was litterally being a stone, not feeling like wanting to do anything, not feeling like she wants me to hug her, kiss her or give her attention. The next day we went to the mountain at her house with some of our friends, one couple and one more guy. She went in the car with the girl from the other couple and me with the other 2 guy friends. They got there earlier cuz they have left earlier and when i arrived there the 2 guys went sleeping and I, my ex and the other girl stayed in one room playing cards. She was cold, not wanting me to touch her, talk affective to her, kissing her, she was just not feeling like it. After one hour, we stopped playing cards and the other girl left the room for a bit. We talked, she told me she is acting this way because she is stressed of the medicine exam she will have in 3 months. I started crying in front of her, smth inhave never done, I couldn t bear to see her like thay. She hugged me, she told me it s something temporary and she just need some space. I wasn t able to give her that space, I haven t talked to her more than hsving a simple conversation with the others who wake up. We went to a near city in a short trip and at the half of the the road until there, i started crying, i had a panic atack, never felt this way in my life before. She was driving, i was staying on the back seat in the middle, with one guy on the left and the other one at my right. She put her hand on my leg. When we got there, we got out of the car, she came to me, hugged me and told me to look her in the eyes. She told me she loves me so much and it breaks her heart seeing me crying and helped me feel better, telling me to breathe. After i calmed down, we talked and she told me she doesn t want to be in a relstionship where she has to talk all her problems with her lover, and she thinks she is feeling this because she is stressed of the exam probably.I asked her “ Do you want to take a break?” and she told me “Are you sure?” and I said “yes” so we were in a break. Returned all to her house at the mountain and I was so sad, I couldn t mind my taughts. I was staying in the dressing, putting my shoes on because we were ready to go in her house terrace and she came to me, kissed me and i kissed her back. She said, smiling, “is this a break for you?” I was happy, we went on the terrace after that, played cards with our friends, everything was perfect. But i wanted to drink, maybe it could make me feel better. She said she wants to drink as well” She is always honest 100% when she is drunk, but she is kinda annoying cus i feel her iq cuts in half if you understand what I mean. After we were both drunk, like 2-3 hours later, i went to the bathroom and she followed me. She tried to kiss me, i didn t want to do it st first and i told her “No, you will regret it tomorrow” she looked at me and asked me” What do you feel when you sre looking at me?” I answered “That i love you with all my heart” she said , not in general , right now. I answered “That I would make anything to get you back” And after that we kissed for 2 mins and something very weirds happened after. She started out of no where to ask me if I would get mad if she would cheat one me. (The other girl told me after that she is trying to make me understand that being in a break doesn t mean we broke up). After she told me outnof no where about more guys that wanted to have sex with her but she refused. She didn t want to tell me who. I got so annoyed and mad like why would she tell me that. I left that place went up and we all said for some of us to go to a near store to get some things. She asked me to buy her a coffe and a kinder bueno. One more guy came that night that we invited so now we were 2 couples and 2 guys. Me and those single boys went to the store and for some reason even if we were drunk, one of the guys wanted to drive there. When we were coming home, police stopped us and took the driver to a near city in order to take him blood analyses to see his alcohool rate. me and the other guywent in the house and tried explainining what happened to the others. I was the drunkest of all of them and my girlfriend shouted at me why did i let him leave, sayying it is all my fault and etc. I got mad and shouted as well, she told me to leave the room. while leaving she followed me to close the door, pushed me and for some reason i turned around and sit forehead to forehead with her. Time when the other girl started shouting that i am abussive and etc. I left the room.( a little passage, my gf thinks I facepalmed her, which I am absokutely sure I didn t do.) Went to my bed and after some time I returned to the room and my ex asked me to levea again. I asked the other girl if she could comefor alittle bit to ask her smth. She came and i asked her ehat s happening, she told me that for the last 2 months she was suffering because she told me there are things that she wanted me to change, i was changing for one. week and after that, everything went back to normal. And that know she wants me to suffer as well to see how it feels(I think she wants this because if I will understand how she suffered, i would make anything possible to change those things at least now, is this possible? if we ere fighting over something, every tine after we would n never repeat the same mistake again.), told me she hates when i am telling her to not go out with her old guy friends and thinks i don t trust her, but the truth is i don t trut them. I started thinking, what I wasn t changing at myself , gave her a lot of messages which she never answered , telling her i realised i didn t act well and I would make anything to make it work again she seened all of them and received a notification that she deleted our pictures from instagram, changed her profile picture .This meant only one thing, those pictures were so important to her and we said along our relationship that we will delete them only if we are breaking up. I wasn t able to realise then which stuffs she asked me to change but i didn t. I couldn t sleep that night and I was shamed to look her in the eyes the next day. Next day, Even if i was near her, after everybody woke up, I dmed her do you want to break up? She answere, i thing this is the best for both of us. (pSsage: the other girl told me that she stopped trying to commincate me what is erong because anymore in the past 2 months, because she didn t want to change me for her). I gave her more messages told her, we shouldn t break up out of this because I didn t know what was the problem, in order to try and fix things and make them right. She answered :”no, (my name)... we have nothing to develop together... separately maybe... I can't reconcile with you, no matter what you tell me... I don't want to discuss anymore, - I can t stand anymore with all the arguments and excuses and etc. I wanted to end everything nicely... if you understand well, if not, just as well.” I left the mountain house by train, went home(this happened 2 days ago) I didn t eat anything since then. I couldn t sleep. That night she was supposed to sleep at one of my girl friends who i know since I was 2 years old. She told her she will get at her house at 3 am in the morning, She couldn t go home because her mother was thinking she is still at the mountain and she would come home only the next day so she went somewhere, novody knows where. Since 9 pm, till 2 am. She wasn t answering nobody s phone, and didn t told my friend where she is. I panicked and called her 5 times because i taught she is doing smth with someone else because she sounded like she wanna cheat on me when we were drunk. she didn t answer, She said she called me after some time, but i didn t see. Seeing she is not answering, i gave her a lot of mesaages on whatsapp, but didn t answered. Like over 100 messages telling her everything i feel and asked her to at least tell her what i have done wrong exactly if she respects all the relationship and good times we had. I went trying to sleep, couldn t, i fell asleep at 2.30 am and and woke up at 7 am trembleing. When I woke up, i checked my dms and at 3 am she answered one thing. “I will tell you just one thing, I didn’t cheat on you” and i believe her. After some time, she called me, i didn t want to answer to give her. space. She dmed me “I tried to call you last night once and today once again, you didn t answer , i won t speak on messages.” I left her on seen and then she called me again, i still didn t answer. I told her I ll call inn20 mins. I called her, I told her i taught about it and i realises what I was doing wrong. (For you guys to understand on my fyp on tik yok started to appear tik toks with zodiac signs in a relationship, which I started to think they are real and this way I realised what I wasn changing about myself. She is Aquarius, I am Taurus, worst match ever… My turn ons are her turn offs and viceversa. Aquarius are active people who like doing a lot of stuffs and always trying new things. I remembered then. She asked me to do a lot of stuffs like adventure parks, picnics etc. I was saying yes, yes , maybe doing it once, but after that it was over. She was sometimes telling me to surprise her with a place to go, or stuffs like that, but Taurus are comfortable and i was enjoying every place she was choosing no matter what it was, as long as I would be with her. She wanted me to be spontaneus, which Aquarius like very much) I fucked up everything, she was giving me signs, but i never took them into consideration as I should. I think her mistake was not communicating directly what she needs, like telling me exactly that she feels horrible because i am not changing these stuffs). I told her on the call that these mistakes can’t be reversed and I undersand i hurt her so bad, but that s life, we need to move on. And she said something like “oh, ok” , sounding like if I would have gave her another answer it would have been different. I then tokd her that it s better to speak in 1-2-3 weeks, whenerver we are ready because now our emotions are talking, But then our rationality will speak. She told me she doesn’t want to talk to me again. She then told me on more thing while kinda laughing(but i felt like sometimes she was holding not to cry) “and please stop calling my friends asking them where I am , because in the end we have still broken up, and you shouldn’t care” We told each other good buy snd I told her I hope she will find a guy who will be able to fulfill her needs. Since then i haven’t spoken to her, only watched her reposts ok tik tok. They are like “10 ways to lose me” “Being a doctor won’t solve all your problems” with a girl dancing in the background, “you don t always keep quiet to keep quiet, you keep quiet to keep peace. Sometimes being at peace is better than being right” “. God sends you you ex bsck to see if you are still stupid and get caught into the trap” and the first one she reposted was “if you are lucky enough… If you are lucky enough to get a second change at something, don’t waste it” I won’t talk to her anymore, i want to leave her free some time like no contact to see if she will miss me, understand how her life is without us being s couple. If I would get a second chance, i would change anything about me and i wanna show her i’ll change. I want to leavea her alone till next fryday. I’ll call her and tell her “I took two tickets to a the place u wanted to go for a long time( I will give her the name. It s a place with a terrace and some dogs, golden retrievers which you can play with them) I will read informations and fun facts about golden retirevers because Aquarius and her like these kind of conversations. Buy her flowers. The whole call will be “ I bought tickets to the … , do you want to come with me or I should go with someone else?” And if the answer will be no, then That s the end. Any taughts? Should I still have hope according to everything i telled here? After talking to my parents and writing all of these here I feel a lil bit better, but i still can t eat, or sleep normal. I’ll see what will happend. Please give some advices and what you think. Love you all, peace❤️

First/Previous
“I never should have taken you back there,” I said to Andrew, “Should’ve just left that place to rot.” I shook my head.
It was morning and the saferoom was small, but quiet—I’d taken the precaution of planting a large metal sheet across the only door and relaxing with my weight against it. Gemma slept soundly with Trouble lying alongside her while I sat cross legged on the floor at her feet in the dark and Andrew stood in the corner opposite me, arms crossed, seemingly lost in some deep thought. “No one knew what was happening.” There was a long pause where he shuffled his feet and the growl of Gemma’s snore resounded off the walls of the small closet. Then he added, “Do you think it was overrun?”
“Golgotha?” I asked. Gemma shifted in her sleep but was unaware beyond.
“Sure.”
“It’s doubtful. I think the wall men probably handled the situation the same way they always do—with enthusiastic violence.” I pointed to the hanging shelf by his shoulder and asked, “Hand me one of them books of matches, would you?” Andrew reached out with the hand that was missing and froze, stared at the spot the appendage had once been, and then grimly smiled before reaching with his other. He tossed me the matches and I lit the cigarette I’d only just rolled from a tin I’d stored in the safehouse ages ago and shook the match till it had a smoke tail. “Stale.” But I continued puffing till the fire was constant and the small room smelled completely of it. “I imagine there’s a lot of dead folks this morning, but I doubt the walls are gone. Though,” I thought of Dave, “If that explosion was anything to go off—the underground’s destroyed. Hard to say what’s happened to the place they manufacture munitions.” The young man looked old in the dark room with exaggerated creases in his face. “How’re you feeling?”
“In general?”
“No. How’s the wounds?”
“I still hurt all the time.”
“You might have chronic aches from here on.”
“Chronic?”
“You might have pains that’ll never stop. For the rest of your life. But I couldn’t say for sure. We’ll ask in Babylon. Not my expertise. They know better than me.”
“You said you should’ve left that place to rot. So, why didn’t you? If I could move like you, I’d go anywhere else. I would’ve done it a long time ago too.” Andrew rubbed his cheek while he spoke then planted his chin in his right palm, casually glancing to Gemma, perhaps fantasizing over the life they might’ve lived; the expression he wore was distant and the young man—as I’d learned in caring after him—could seemingly dissociate at will.
The girl’s snoring ceased and was replaced by a heavy breath, and I watched her shift on the makeshift bedding.
“Reasons come and go as they do,” I answered then shrugged.
“I’ve never seen her like that,” he said, eyes still locked on Gemma’s sleeping form, “She used to be so kind, so gentle.” He shook his head. “You think she did it? You really think she killed him?”
“Harold?”
Andrew nodded.
Gemma wasn’t sleeping any longer and answered abruptly, raising herself up to a sit, rubbing her eyes then looking incredulously through them in slits. “Why not just ask me?” She displayed hands still stained dull red from the previous night. “What’s this say then?” Trouble shifted nervously beside her.
“I don’t know,” said Andrew.
“What’s it say?” she repeated.
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll tell you right now—I’d do it again.” She was immediately lucid and nearly frightening; there was a thing in her eyes I couldn’t read. “Think you can just go off and talk about me like I’m not here, huh? That’s total nonsense. I can’t believe it.”
I stared at the space between my crossed legs on the floor.
“That’s not how I meant it at all,” said Andrew, “It just worries me.”
“You said you didn’t love me anymore,” a hitch seemed to catch in her throat (there was the humanity), but she muscled through it, “So worry about yourself and keep me out of it!”
Trouble let go of a small whine and Gemma was there to the dog, rubbing her hand across its brow, and the dog caught my eyes from the corner of its own and I looked away.
“There, there,” said the girl to the dog.
“I’m sorry,” said Andrew.
“Keep it.”
I coughed into my fist and whispered dryly, “If you two keep at it, you’ll wake the whole city to us.”
Andrew nodded and Gemma watched the dog.
“So, you wanted to see the wizards so badly?” I asked them. “You wanted to see where they live? How they live?”
“We’ve seen the wizards,” said Gemma bluntly.
“Sure, but you’ve never seen a library, have you?”
“The Bosses have their books all stacked on shelves too, if that’s what you mean.” Gemma’s tone was far off somewhere and she did not remove her eyes from the dog.
“Sure, but it ain’t just shelves of books—there’s loads. Halls, walkways of them stacked so high you’d need a ladder to reach the tops of them.”
“You were the one that tried talking me out of leaving home,” said Gemma, “Remember?”
I watched her blood-stained hands pet the dog and she finally looked up from the mutt to me. “It doesn’t seem you’d be welcome home anymore.” I offered a crude grin. “Maybe be excited for it then.”
Andrew hunkered and leaned his curved back against the wall opposite and scratched his cheek. “How long’s it take?”
“If I was on my own,” I stared at the dark ceiling overhead where I watched dust collect in swirls over our heads, “It’d be two weeks and a day or more depending. With ya’ll too? I don’t know.”
“I’m thirsty,” said Gemma, moving to stand in the mess of blankets; the closet was not enough room for the four of us and the dampness of our collective breathing created a mugginess.
Andrew, who had the foresight to pack small rations, passed her his water gourd and she gulped some back without a word and Trouble looked up from across her paws where she laid her head. Upon Gemma returning the water, the boy took a bowl from his pack and poured a few drinks for the dog and rubbed its ear.
“I’m going out to scout. No fighting while I’m away.” I said and began rising, “You,” I pointed to the boy, “Put this metal sheet against the door and your weight against the sheet and don’t open for anyone but me.”
Andrew stared at me then nodded and I slipped out from the safehouse, into a mostly destroyed storefront which harbored the closet we hid in, into the street with shadows of cyclopean structures which towered seemingly to heaven and my mind went to Dave again and how I’d been overtop that industrial building, how I possibly might’ve ‘slipped’ and fallen to an early demise. Was Dave still alive? He was cunning and brave in doing what he’d done, but certainly dead. It was again the story of heroes. The primeval consequence for any person with goodness left in them; it could and would wring them dry—whether it be demons or fellows of their kind, it comes for heroes all the same.
I’d not slept the previous night and my senses were dulled by it and every long shadow in the periphery felt as though it might reach out and snatch me; it was not so much paranoia, but merely a standard reflex of sleep deprivation. Still, I hugged the walls where I could and crept through moldering vehicles which stood in the way. There I came to Fif Aven and I recalled Aggie but briefly and crawled into a corroded pickup truck with its passenger door missing; I slid onto the bench seat, disturbing so many years of dust and it choked me, but I lay there on the seat and stared at the cab’s roof and inhaled the stuff of the old world—certainly there was trouble then too, but what could be worse?
I rested shortly and listened to the dead silence and at times I caught my breath for it was overwhelming.
The thought of leaving those children to their demise arose—I could move quickly enough on my own.
After resting a while, I scooted from the truck and carried on, more tired than before, but I moved through the narrow avenues of rubble, going as quietly as ever until I came to the open field which encompassed Golgotha. There the city stood still, and prone bodies were taken before the exterior of the gate where they burned on pyre piles, flames melting the horizon in their spots. I held my breath for a moment, caught in the far-off presence of those fires and I wondered if Dave was there, burning. If not that, then it would be worse. If not that, then they’d make a spectacle of it in the square. The figures which lugged the others from the city gates were small pinpricks across the skyline and I breathed deep and could almost taste ash in the air, then I returned to the closet where I’d left Gemma and Andrew.
Each of them looked on at me with questioning brows without words and I told them to shimmy around in the small room so I could take account of the supplies. Sleep would be no issue as long as no one minded the hot breath of the person next to them.
“We’ll stay here tonight then move on,” I said. I scanned the hanging shelf; there were canned foods and a bit of tobacco lined there and a single lantern. I shook the lantern and a bit of oil swished within it. “No light tonight. No talking either.” I put my hand to my head and rubbed my forehead.
Andrew remained over my shoulder and said, “I’ve got some water—a little food too.”
“Good.”
That night, we ate from cans without words and when Trouble messed in the corner, Gemma scooped it and removed it from our miniscule dwelling; the smell of blood was strong on her and though I expected the two children’s bickering to continue, it was gone entirely and we arranged ourselves haphazardly in the closet, our collective legs like slats parallel and our backs against walls and Trouble took to Gemma.
Before it went full dark, Andrew examined the discoloring around his empty wrist and then I saw him remove the jar which contained his hand from his small knapsack—the thing was full on rotting with a congealing ooze forming along the base of the jar, but no smell escaped the container—he sat there with it, holding it inches from his face and he frowned.
“Why don’t you throw it out?” asked Gemma; she idly patted Trouble’s neck.
“It’s mine, isn’t it?” said the boy.
“So? It’s nasty.”
“If it was yours, would you keep it?” he asked.
Gemma shook her head.
“Well, it’s mine.”
She made a face.
We slept in terrible discomfort and Trouble awoke more than once in the night, letting go of little growls or whines—she was stuck with nightmares. Sometimes, Andrew might offer a comment about how Gemma should keep the dog quiet, but it was otherwise quiet.
At daybreak, we ate then arranged what could be gathered for the march onward; I put the shotgun sling over my shoulder, and we took into the ruins where the sun came through destruction in buildings in splintered rays and the dog kept to Gemma’s side with a bit of improvised twine as a lead.
“What’s it like out here all the time? You come out here all the time—you probably know more freedom than most, huh?” said Gemma.
“If you need to talk, you should whisper it. That said, you shouldn’t talk,” I hushed the words as I took to a nearby wall and the troupe followed, remaining in the relative shade of the buildings which towered over.
“Fine,” said Gemma, taking the center with the dog while Andrew trailed at the rear, “Then what’s all these?”
“What’s what?”
“These big tall buildings everywhere.”
“It’s our history,” I said.
“Of course, but why are they here?”
“It’s hard to imagine there was ever so many people for these.”
“There were billions at a time,” I said.
We came to an intersection of streets where vehicles were piled high, and we cut through a corner structure where all but the supports of the ground floor had long ago been blown away; arrangements of jagged rebar bent from exposed flooring like stalks and Gemma lifted the dog to not tangle the leash. Our footsteps were swift but not silent from all the debris.
“What’s that?” asked Andrew, joining in.
“What’s what? And whisper it for Christ sake.” I hissed the words, taking through a wide threshold into the street once more.
“You said billions. What’s that?”
“It’s a lot—a really big number.” I let go of a sigh and pivoted; the children froze in their walking and bumbled into one another. I put my forefinger to my lips. “No more,” I said.
And there was no more as we went.
The sun beat down on us more and as we angled through wreckages, through those pathways which took us our way, we sweated, and steam rose off our heads and the dog’s panting was the only noise, save our footfalls. There in that place, there in the plains beyond or in the mountains behind and yonder was where the souls of the dying were and we were with them and as I led, I felt aimless because leading was never my game.
A sky of rust domineered, and we took a moment in the shade of a brutal façade; within the emptied holes of a windowless storefront were long dark shadows, and the places where light met, I spied clothes on lines and spirals of racks and the clothes were so insect picked and dried one could assume they’d fall to dust if they were lifted from their stations.
We drained what freshwater we had Gemma hunkered down, first to pat Trouble then to tear strips from the hem of her robes. She created terrible scarves and handed one to both me and Andrew; the boy looked at her curiously while she wrapped a garland of the material around her own head.
“For your heads,” she shrugged as though it didn’t matter, “The sun might blister your skin.”
We pushed on, each of us peering through the slits of our makeshift headgear and when the time came and when plants—as green as dreams and more foreign—began to gather on either side of the place we walked, I motioned for another brief pause and they gathered there, Gemma’s eyes were serious, perhaps furious, and Andrew looked on at the vegetation which sprung through the overwhelming concrete with no less wonder than should be expected.
I first looked to Gemma, “It’s ahead. Not far now.”
She nodded that she knew where I meant.
“You know then?” I asked the girl.
Another nod followed.
Andrew put his hand to his brow and peered through the high light and whispered, “I think there’s fruits ahead. We hardly get fruits back home. They look big too. Trees like I’ve never seen.”
I put my hand to his shoulder. “Don’t eat them. Don’t even touch them. Alright?”
“Alright.” Andrew’s attention went to Gemma there next to him and he asked, “What’s the matter with you? You know this place?”
“It’s a garden ahead,” Her eyes moved from his to mine, “Right?”
“Right.”
“Why?” she asked.
“A garden? That’s incredible!” said Andrew.
“It is not,” said Gemma.
I took them in closer so that we were whispers away and we curled our bodies partially into the black storefront. “Ya’ll need to stay close me,” I said, “Stay close—Gemma, you carry the mutt. Andrew, you stay close too. Don’t speak. Don’t speak with what you see there.”
“What?” asked the boy.
“Shh,” said the girl, reaching out with one of those red stained hands to touch me, “Do we need to?”
Did we? I nodded. “Don’t touch anything. I reckon you two still have that holy spirit of Golgotha in you so if you feel it then pray and Gemma, I know you know some from Lady so say them quick and make it right and let’s go.”
They prayed for Jesus, for Elohim, for safety. I watched and Trouble watched them too.
We went to the garden and there was no flute playing, no sound of hooves—there was no sound at all but the baking of the earth and the small rhythm of fresh leaves caught in whatever dismal wind there was there in that place. Taking through the garden, there were trees which arched overhead—indeed the fruits that hung from those branches were moistened like with rain and bright and multicolored—and the shrubbery too was thick among our ankles and then there was Baphomet’s cobblestone yard with a throne and the well and there on a risen tablet by the throne, Baphomet sat, chest glistening in the sunlight, legs crossed, head arched back so that its head could see the sky.
So, you’ve come again. This time you’ve brought thrice the power to bargain with. Harlan, oh—don’t look at me like that and come closer and tell me what it is you wish. Baphoment shifted to catch me in its eye and then slid to sit with its legs off the edge of the great stone. You look tired. Is it perhaps that you have come to keep me company? Have you given in to those curious desires which compel humankind? I can take you to those places far and gaping. There are limits to your form, but form is changed easily of course—with time and pressure. Curious that you would arrive with tampered merchandise. That should be discounted. Still. The demon took note of Gemma flanking so closely to my left that we were touching; she carried Trouble and the dog shivered—the girl shivered too.
In a puff of smoke, Baphomet disappeared then reappeared directly in front of me; a hot breath escaped its snout visibly and then it took in the smell of us.
Mmm. That sin is on you all. Have I ever told you the euphoric nature of it?
“I’ve come to make a deal,” I said.
Baphomet cocked its head. If you’ve come for a return, I’m afraid the girl you left with me is long transformed. For, after all, is easy. I doubt you’ve have use for the state she’s in. Still, The creature stood tall so it towered over us then arched low to peer into Gemma’s eyes. Did you miss me? Is that it?
“It’ll be the last deal I make.”
It seemed the creature smiled, if it was possible. Promise?
“Yes.”
I get you? That’d certainly make others green with envy.
“Yes.”
What is it you want then?
“I want firepower,” I held the shotgun out in front of me, “And time enough to do what I need to do.”
Give me your hand. Reach out. It’ll hurt like the dickens for only a second. Baphomet extended its claw-like hands, beckoning my own.
I put out my right hand and the creature took it, drove the nail of its forefinger into my forearm nearest the elbow, then traced a shallow cut down the length of my arm till it met the top of my hand. The towering beast let go then looked me over, snorted, tapped a hoof, then crossed its arms. Blood dripped freely from the mark on my arm. “Will you make that deal?” I asked.
The demon shook its head. I won’t touch you. No one will.
“Why?”
The thing which I might want from you is not something you can give freely. It belongs to someone already.
I bit my tongue then shook my head. “Who?”
What fun would there be in me telling? Baphomet traced around our small group and came to a halt at the right shoulder of Andrew; the boy closed his eyes. I could tell you for a trade though.
I shook my head and turned to leave.
Mm. Harlan. You break my heart.
We left the garden, not looking back, not even when Baphomet took to playing its tune—though the sun beat us down there was a coolness which passed through me and I wondered if the same could be said for Gemma or Andrew; I caught the girl’s eyes as she carried the whimpering pup and there was a message there, a telepathy I understood and it was maybe sorrow or her unforgotten pain. I willed us on, and they followed, and we went to the safehouse up the stairs to rest and regroup.
I looked out over the street where the shadows cut darker as the sun began to rest and Andrew played a game of tug with the mutt, and I smoked while Gemma joined me at the tall windows.
“It’s the smell,” she said to me, “I smell that thing all the time. I scarcely remember the creature, but I know that’s where you found me,” there was a brief pause as she crossed her arms over her chest, “Isn’t it?”
I nodded, “Yeah.”
She hiked the arms of her robes up and examined the scars there and then looked at me then let the robes slink down her arms as her fists met her by her sides. Gemma pressed near the glass.
“Do they burn?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I might have something better for you to wear. Something with less catch when you move. Pants. Shirts. You’ve got boots on, haven’t you?”
She twisted the torn hems of her robes to expose her leathered feet.
I traced the walls—stacks crates of goods were there (surely I’d find something suitable for travel).
We found water in the safehouse and food and light too. When dark came, we huddled around her lanterns and Andrew assisted in watching the boiling pot. Gemma changed, cut her hair to her scalp, and washed her hands. With her new garb, her throat stood more exposed, and the healing wounds there were like embedded ropes in her flesh. Andrew kept his eyes flittering, his focus remained on the food, but always his gaze was primarily steals of her.
They were in love, for sure—anyone could see it (I could). It truly was a pain to be in the presence of two young people, the potential, the possibilities of a true life—I should not go on. Hope breeds determination, but anything more is weakness.
No one had an easy time with sleep that night, save Trouble; each of us lined ourselves by the windows and looked out to see glowing mutant eyes wilder than any electric light. We shut off the lanterns and sat with bellies full, a spiderlike skin taker lumbered through the avenue which we overlooked—the center mass of its body, stilted high from the ground on those spear legs, traced before our eyes and it was all black and fuzzy—and the children whispered to ask me what it was, and I told them I didn’t know exactly.
“They’re faster than they seem,” I said.
Gemma touched the window glass with her palm.
“They suck up your skin,” I said, “They take it right off your body.”
Gemma sat up straighter and withdrew her hand from the glass, leaving a hand mark there where the sweat of her fingers was. Their faces were coated in the bluish milk glaze of the moon and stars. “How?” she asked.
I moved from the window, leaving them there to watch. “Don’t make noise tonight. I’m going to sleep dead. I put a bucket in the corner over there if you need it.”
The bedroll smelled of mold, of dust, for it was an old thing I’d tucked away years prior, and I figured I would never have a use for it. It was for emergencies. Most of the supplies I kept were like that. They were things I hoped to never need.
As I stretched on my back, staring at the dead ceiling overhead, I listened to the silence of the ruins periodically broken from the whispers of Andrew and Gemma as they continued their talking, and I closed my eyes and directly before I was ferried on to the place of dreams, the face of Dave took to view in the black backdrop of my eye lids and there was Boss Maron; I imagined they put the poor rebel to his knees and blew his brains across the ground. Or worse. It was probably worse. It always was.
Just as the world was gone, it was back again; Andrew shook me awake and Trouble was growling. I propelled from the bedroll, eyes darting in every direction, and I half imagined we were under attack from Leviathan, but there was no such thing. Gemma stood by the locked door which connected to the stairwell, and someone banged with their fist on the other side. The door rattled in its frame, and I launched into position by the girl—her stance was half crouched, and she seemed frozen solid. I motioned at the door and she shrugged.
A voice came from the other side of the door, bemoaning desperation.
Help! said the voice, high pitched, feminine seeming. Please, help me!
“We should help them,” said Andrew, “God, open the door.”
“Shh,” Gemma put her index finger to her pursed lips, “Shut up. Don’t be stupid!”
They looked at me and Trouble continued growling.
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