Words made of symbols

By David North
On April 25, 2024, Bogdan Syrotiuk, the 25-year-old leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists (the YGBL), a socialist-Trotskyist organization active in Ukraine, Russia and throughout the former USSR, was arrested by the notorious state security service of the fascistic Zelensky regime, the SBU. Bogdan is being held in atrocious conditions in a high security prison in the city of Nikolaev (Mykolaiv), which is located in southern Ukraine.
The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), the world Trotskyist movement with which the YGBL is politically affiliated, has finally obtained the actual documents in which the SBU presents its charges against Bogdan Syrotiuk. These documents, which form the basis of his detention, make absolutely clear that Bogdan is the victim of a monstrous state frame-up. The allegations concocted by the SBU are a crude combination of lies, obvious fabrications, and political absurdities.
Moreover, the documents submitted by the SBU are directed not only against Bogdan. They are nothing less than a declaration of war against all left-wing and socialist opposition to the Zelensky regime and, specifically, the International Committee of the Fourth International and its public organ, the World Socialist Web Site.
The central allegation leveled against Bogdan Syrotiuk is that he is guilty of high treason. The basis of this charge is that Bogdan has been for the past two years “engaged in the preparation of publications commissioned by representatives of a Russian propaganda and information agency, the World Socialist Web Site” [emphasis added.]
The World Socialist Web Site is denounced as an instrument of “an active information war against Ukraine” being waged by Russia, which

uses the so-called “left-wing” propagandists and their information platforms (websites, media and social platforms) to discredit the support of Ukraine by international partners, justify Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine, accusing Western countries of creating conditions under which Russia was forced to launch the so-called special military operation, fomenting wars in Ukraine by providing it with weapons, etc. As a result, they are used by Russia to systematically convey pro-Kremlin narratives to the population of Ukraine and Ukraine’s allied countries…
Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the World Socialist Web Site “WSWS” has regularly published articles in various languages aimed at discrediting Ukraine and representatives of governments around the world for assisting Ukraine in its fight against the aggressor state.

The ICFI’s opposition to the US-NATO war in Ukraine is an essential element of its political program, deeply rooted in the socialist and internationalist principles of the Trotskyist movement. The attempt of the Ukrainian regime to portray this opposition as an instrument of Putin’s propaganda network is as viciously mendacious as it is politically absurd. The intransigent opposition of the International Committee of the Fourth International to the Putin regime—which emerged as a consequence of the Stalinist bureaucracy’s final betrayal of socialism and the restoration of capitalism in the former USSR—is a fundamental political fact that is substantiated not only in written texts numbering in the hundreds, but also in the exhaustively documented activity of the Trotskyist movement spanning decades.
True to its fascist character, the Ukrainian regime is operating on the basis of the well-known precept of Hitler and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels: “The bigger the lie, the more readily it will be believed.”
In this particular case, the Zelensky regime seems to believe that the scale of the SBU lies are of such a magnitude that they will simply overwhelm the thinking public. It thus expects that public opinion will accept that the Putin regime is directing the work of the WSWS, which the SBU indictment describes as

an online publication of the world Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International and its affiliated sections in the Socialist Equality Parties around the world, which covers the main socio-political problems around the world from the position of revolutionary opposition to the capitalist market system, with the aim of establishing world socialism through socialist revolution.

At no point does the SBU attempt to explain the contradiction that wrecks its case against Bogdan, i.e., that the political principles that he upholds as a socialist and internationalist opponent of wars waged by the capitalist ruling class are irreconcilably hostile to the policies of the Putin regime, including its invasion of Ukraine.
It attempts to evade the contradiction by simply lying. The indictment claims that Bogdan’s activities, “acting on the instructions of a representative of the World Socialist Web Site,” consisted of “supporting and justifying the conduct of the Russian aggressive war on the territory of Ukraine…”
Every word is a lie. The opposition of the ICFI, its affiliated organizations, and the WSWS to the Russian invasion, in line with its hostility to the Putin regime, is a political fact that is documented in hundreds of articles that have been posted since the first day of the invasion.
On February 24, 2022, the day of the Russian invasion, the ICFI posted a statement on the WSWS titled: “Oppose the Putin government’s invasion of Ukraine and US-NATO warmongering! For the unity of Russian and Ukrainian workers!” It began:

The International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site denounce the Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Despite the provocations and threats by the US and NATO powers, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine must be opposed by socialists and class-conscious workers. The catastrophe that was set in motion by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 cannot be averted on the basis of Russian nationalism, a thoroughly reactionary ideology that serves the interests of the capitalist ruling class represented by Vladimir Putin.
What is required is not a return to the pre-1917 foreign policy of tsarism, but, rather, a revival, in Russia and throughout the world, of the socialist internationalism that inspired the October Revolution of 1917 and led to the creation of the Soviet Union as a workers state. The invasion of Ukraine, whatever the justifications given by the Putin regime, will serve only to divide the Russian and Ukrainian working class and, moreover, serve the interests of US and European imperialism.
In the two major statements that he has made during the past week, Putin has justified his actions by enumerating the provocations and crimes of the United States. There is, no question, much that is factually true in his denunciation of Washington’s hypocrisy. But the viciously anti-communist and xenophobic ideology that he invokes and the interests that he claims to be defending are thoroughly reactionary and incapable of appealing to the broad mass of the working class in Russia, let alone in Ukraine and throughout the world. A substantial section of the working class in Russia and Ukraine will be repelled by the cynicism of Putin’s glorification of the heroic struggle waged by the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany in World War II while denouncing the October Revolution and the existence of the USSR as a multi-national state.

The ICFI insisted that the socialist opposition to imperialism was incompatible with any form of national chauvinism, and, therefore, rejected all the justifications given by the Putin regime and its apologists for the invasion. Their invocation of “national defense” could not be accepted by socialists. The defeat of imperialism and its overthrow was possible only through the revolutionary struggle of the international working class. The ICFI statement cited the words of Trotsky: “Not to bind itself to the national state in time of war, to follow not the war map but the map of the class struggle, is possible only for that party that has already declared irreconcilable war on the national state in time of peace.”
The ICFI called “for an immediate end to the war,” and explained: “In opposing the invasion of Ukraine, we denounce the policies of US/NATO imperialism, whose claims to be defending democracy and human rights are blood-drenched with hypocrisy.”
This political declaration elaborated the principles and policy that have guided the work of the ICFI and WSWS since the war began.
On February 26, 2022 the International Committee held an international webinar, in which its opposition to the war was emphatically advanced. Among the speakers, in addition to myself, were Nick Beams, a longtime leader of the International Committee’s Australian section, Johannes Stern, a leader of the ICFI in Germany, Thomas Scripps, a leading member of the ICFI’s section in Britain, Joseph Kishore, the national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States, and Evan Blake, another leading member of the SEP (US).
The ICFI has never wavered from the principled opposition to the policies of NATO and Russia that it advanced in the first days of the war.
The relationship between the ICFI and the comrades of the YGBL coincided almost exactly with the outbreak of the war. They were attracted to the ICFI precisely because of its opposition to both the war and the national chauvinism of the Russian and Ukrainian regimes.
The SBU indictment charges that the World Socialist Web Site assigned to Bogdan “the task of preparing, writing, editing and publishing … both on the WSWS website and other communist-oriented media, articles, publications, comments, etc. aimed at spreading pro-Russian narratives related to the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, to which [Bogdan Syrotiuk] gave his voluntary consent.”
In support of this claim, the SBU references a YGBL statement titled, “For the organization of an international movement of workers and young people against war!” It claims that this document, posted on the World Socialist Web Site on October 12, 2022, includes “fragments, statements, sentences and phrases… which contain justification of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation, which began in 2014…”
The actual document clearly exposes this claim to be a lie. There is not a single sentence in the YGBL declaration that indicates support for the invasion of Ukraine. The SBU cites selectively from the document, including passages only from numbered paragraphs 4, 7, 8, 10 and 13. Paragraphs 4 through 8—the SBU interrupts the continuity of the YGBL’s analysis by leaving out paragraphs 5 and 6—provide a concise Marxist explanation of the objective capitalist crisis and political aims that underlay the instigation of the war by the United States and its NATO allies. They state:

1. The new world order that the United States wants to establish looks like this very possible picture: Russia and China are to be subordinated to imperialism and divided, if that is necessary to maintain direct control over their natural, industrial-technological and human resources.
   
2. The European imperialist powers support the United States for their own place in the new redivision of the world. At the same time, European imperialism, while placed on rations by the United States, sees a way out of its economic and geopolitical predicament only in a redivision of the world in which it can regain its former greatness.
   
3. Japan, South Korea and Australia support the US only as much as it suits their interests in the struggle against China in the Pacific region. These countries will support the US as long as it allows them to compete with China. The process of dividing spheres of influence will revive the contradictions between the Pacific capitalist powers, which are as much in limbo as Europe.
   
4. The crisis of 2008 revived class struggles around the world. The Arab Spring of the early 2010s is vivid evidence of this revival. It forced US and European imperialism to take more decisive measures. In 2014, they supported a coup d'état in Ukraine. Through this coup, the US was able to create all the conditions to build a bridgehead in a future war against Russia.
   
5. The Covid-19 pandemic that erupted in 2020 exacerbated the contradictions of capitalism and was the trigger for a more rapid expansion of US imperialism in preparation for war against Russia and China. The US embarked on a more provocative path of abandoning the “one-China” policy, and increasing its support for Ukraine, as expressed in the NATO summit in August 2021, which supported Zelensky’s “Crimean platform.”
   

Significantly, the SBU leaves out paragraph 9 of the YGBL declaration, which presents a scathing indictment of the Putin regime. That paragraph reads:

The reactionary regime of Vladimir Putin emerged from the treacherous dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy and the restoration of capitalism. The policies of Putin, in the final analysis, are aimed at safeguarding the wealth of the post-Soviet oligarchy against the pressure of Western imperialism from above and, even more critically, against the movement of the Russian working class from below.

The SBU does cite paragraph 10, which continues the critique of the Putin regime, stating:

Within this geopolitical and social context, Putin’s adventurist invasion of Ukraine on February 24 was the Russian oligarchy’s response to NATO’s relentless expansion to the east. The Putin regime’s main objective was to achieve through the pressure of its “Special Operation” a new round of talks with the US-NATO, since the last round ended up crossing “red lines” on the part of the US-NATO, which caused Putin’s invasion [emphasis added].

The characterization of Putin’s invasion as “adventurist” is in no way compatible with what the SBU claims to be a “pro-Russian narrative.” Obviously recognizing the fragility of its attempt to portray the YGBL statement as pro-Putin propaganda, the SBU decided against further citations from the document, leaving out the YGBL’s development of its denunciation of Putin’s policies in paragraphs 11 and 12, which assert:

1. The Russian bourgeoisie’s desire for an “equal partnership” with the West was one of the most utopian delusions. This delusion, historically derived from Stalin’s policy of “Popular Fronts” and then “peaceful coexistence,” developed among the fledgling class of Russian capitalists in the 1990s.
   
2. The Putin regime has not gotten rid of this utopian delusion. Its whole policy has been to maneuver and seek compromise with the West, with whom the Russian oligarchy wanted to be “on equal footing.” Except that Western imperialism, with its conquering ambitions for Russia, did not care about these conciliatory tones of Putin’s regime.
   

The SBU also chose not to cite paragraph 17 of the YGBL statement, which declares:

The course of the war after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine increasingly emphasizes the reactionary nature of this invasion. While claiming to be fighting for the independence of the Russian people from the threat of Western imperialism, Putin is in fact only defending the independence of the Russian oligarchy to exploit the Russian working class and the country’s raw material wealth.

Paragraph 18, which is also left uncited, further demolishes the SBU’s indictment of Bogdan, the YGBL and the WSWS as instruments of Russian propaganda. The paragraph asserts that

the Putin regime has no way out of the current crisis for Russian society. It will not have such a way out in the future. All of the military and political activities of the Putin regime will only contribute to the escalation of Western imperialism and the deterioration of conditions for the Russian, Ukrainian and international working class.

The SBU also failed to cite paragraphs 19 and 20, which presciently warned of the catastrophe to which the war could lead.

1. The prospects for the present war, when thought within the framework of the capitalist system, are very bleak. First, this war will take on a long-term character and will not only be fought between Ukraine and Russia. It is the first step in inflaming the world situation to the point that the threat of a third world war is simply inevitable. All countries of the world will take part in the future war.
   
2. Secondly, the nature of the war will be determined by the policies of the ruling classes, which now stand on a blatantly anti-human position. The ruling classes are recklessly moving toward the use of nuclear weapons in the conflict, thereby creating the real possibility of a nuclear Armageddon. The specter of planetary destruction arises from the insane policies of imperialist and capitalist governments. The recklessness of the ruling capitalist elite compels young people to ask whether they will be allowed any future at all.
   

The SBU specifically cites this document as proof of Bogdan Syrotiuk’s treasonable activity. But the text of this document conclusively refutes the charge that Bogdan and the YGBL are advancing a pro-Putin narrative.
Moreover, and most decisive, the Ukrainian regime does not present a scintilla of evidence to substantiate its absurd and lying claim that the World Socialist Web Site is a “Russian propaganda and information agency.” With this filthy slander, the Zelensky regime betrays—notwithstanding the ongoing war with Russia—the lingering influence of Stalinism’s rabid hatred of Trotskyism. As in Russia, the transfer of power in Ukraine from Stalinist bureaucrats to capitalist oligarchs has not required any change in the methodology of the political police. The same techniques of fabrication and slander, utilized by the Stalinist regime against Trotskyists in the era of the Moscow Trials and the terror of 1936-39, remain operative in Kiev.
Bogdan Syrotiuk stands accused of treason and faces the threat of a life-long prison term that is the equivalent of a death sentence. But the allegations against Bogdan are based entirely on articles and speeches he has posted on the World Socialist Web Site, in which he has declared his opposition, as a socialist internationalist, to the capitalist regimes of Zelensky and Putin and the ongoing war that has cost hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives.
The SBU indicts Bogdan for advancing in his speeches and writings posted on the World Socialist Web Site “which are accessible to everyone in the world, including citizens of Ukraine” information that exposes the reactionary character of the Ukrainian regime and the war.
The SBU declares that Bogdan’s “criminal actions were stopped only with the intervention of a law enforcement agency.” What a devastating self-exposure of the claims that the US-NATO proxy war is being waged to defend democracy in Ukraine.
The reality is that Ukraine is a fascistic dictatorship, which applies police methods to stop the expression of popular opposition to the policies that have brought untold suffering and death to the people.
The arrest of Bogdan Syrotiuk comes precisely at a point of mounting popular opposition to the Zelensky regime. On May 18, a new and vastly unpopular mobilization law that will vastly expand the recruitment dragnet of Ukrainian military goes into effect. Even the New York Times has expressed doubts about Zelensky’s ability “to find new troops to relieve a weary, often demoralized force.”
In an article posted on the World Socialist Web Site on April 30, Maxim Goldarb, a Ukrainian socialist who has been persecuted by the Zelensky regime, reported: “More and more Ukrainian men are desperately trying to flee the country, unwilling to die for someone else’s selfish purposes.”
He added:

It is not the rich minority, but the poor majority—the unemployed, workers, peasants, teachers, doctors, office workers—that will be sent into the bloody meat grinder. Now, with the adoption of the new law, the number of men deprived of basic human rights, who will be captured and hunted down like animals and sent to the front, will increase many times over.
The profits of those who benefit from this war will also increase many times over … These huge profits will be divided up between the military-industrial complex, its lobbyists in the American and European establishment, and the Ukrainian oligarchic top brass.

Bogdan Syrotiuk’s life is in danger. In the environment of terror that exists within Ukraine, he is deprived of all means to defend himself. Efforts to obtain competent legal representation have been undermined by government threats against defense lawyers. No less than five attorneys have declined to represent Bogdan because to do so would expose them to significant physical danger.
The significance of the fight to defend Bogdan and secure his freedom extends beyond Ukraine. His incarceration is yet another example of the growing international assault on democratic rights as imperialism escalates its military operations throughout the world. The political conspiracy to destroy Julian Assange set into motion a process that is replicated throughout the world.
Those who oppose and expose the crimes of the imperialist regimes are targeted for persecution by the state. The assault on basic democratic rights—first and foremost, freedom of thought and speech—is always justified on the basis of lies.
The opponents of Israel’s genocidal war against Gazans are denounced as anti-Semites, even when the protesters are Jewish. In the denunciation of Bogdan Syrotiuk as an agent of Russia for opposing the proxy war in Ukraine, the same lying method is at work.
The real reason for the arrest and persecution of Bogdan Syrotiuk is that he is fighting for the unity of the Ukrainian, Russian and international working class against the ruling capitalist elites of all countries. As Comrade Andrei Ritsky of the Russian branch of the Young Guard of Bolshevik Leninists explained so eloquently in a speech delivered at the May Day 2024 celebration held by the International Committee:

The only “crime” that Bogdan committed was his conviction that Ukraine can become truly free only through the independent struggle of the Ukrainian working class, acting together with the international working class against imperialism and war. He advanced a principled political position based on a Marxist understanding of the war, opposed to the fanatical worship of Ukrainian nationalism as well as the reactionary Russian nationalism of the Putin regime. Like our entire movement, he has fought for the unification of workers in Russia and Ukraine with the workers in the imperialist countries, to put an end to a fratricidal war that has claimed the lives of at least half a million Ukrainians and tens of thousands of Russians.

He concluded his remarks with a declaration of the fundamental perspective that underlies the work of the Fourth International:

No bourgeois regime is capable of resolving the crisis other than through war and destruction, because any other way would be contrary to its fundamental capitalist interests. The contradictions of capitalism cannot be resolved within national borders and on the basis of a defense of private property. Only the international working class armed with the program of world socialist revolution will be able to put an end to the wars and resolve the fundamental crisis. To do so, however, it must fight for its unity with its brothers and sisters around the world.

The International Committee of the Fourth International calls for a global campaign to demand the immediate release of Bogdan Syrotiuk from prison. The fight for Bogdan’s freedom must be taken up by workers, students and all those who are committed to the defense of democratic rights and opposed to the escalation of imperialist wars that, unless stopped, threaten humanity with a nuclear catastrophe.
Join the fight to Free Bogdan. Circulate this statement as widely as possible on social media. Bring this case to the attention of co-workers, fellow students, and friends. To sign a petition demanding Bogdan’s release, contribute funds toward the defense campaign, and become personally active in the fight for his freedom, go to wsws.org/freebogdan.

A magus cannot rest, even in the rain.
The barrage hammering his umbrella only distracted him for a moment from the bitter cold that misted his breath. Around him, the decent people of the world took shelter, seeking the warmth of cafes and restaurants until the worst of the deluge passed. Those unlucky enough to be stuck outside huddled beneath umbrellas, newspapers, or a hood. But even in the heated stores and restaurants, fear reigned. People stole nervous glances up from their phones, scanning the streets for a quick moment before looking back down. They hugged their coats tight; parents gripped their children’s hands to keep them from running into some alley they would never return from. There was no question: something besides rain weighed on the city. This wave of “incidents'' had claimed multiple lives and left the police at a loss. But who could blame them? The duty of resolving these incidents lay on the master's clan. The Ritual required the blood of heroes, not of innocents, and he would not allow such to be spilled on his watch.
“This way, Master,” his Servant murmured. She walked a little ahead of him, hidden beneath a heavy yellow raincoat. It had taken some convincing to get her to conceal herself; she refused to shed her armor even in public… which meant that people would be taking pictures wherever they went. The coat, at least, would hide this stranger from the eyes of ordinary people. What it could not hide – even from the back – was the aura of raw determination that radiated from her. He could imagine her face on the other side: a strict, cold stare that withered injustice at a glance.
He gave a soft murmur of approval before following her away from the main thoroughfares, toward the docks and warehouses that dominated the coast. The dock district was the epicenter of the “incidents” – and no surprise. Dark, oppressive, and cramped, this urban snarl promised a well-hidden warren for vermin to hide in, as well as an excellent hunting ground. Drunk sailors and longshoremen made easy prey, to say nothing of the odd out of towner who got lost around here. They all had been devoured for mana. To involve sleepwalkers in the matters of magi violated all principles of honor and decency, and to him fell the duty of executing the culprit.
Thus, they walked onto the predator’s turf. Their logic was simple: the fastest way to deal with an ambush is to spring it. A stalking predator only emerges from the underbrush when it thinks it has the upper hand. The question then, is whether they had prepared enough to compensate for this home-field advantage. Crossing into the maze, though, the young Master wondered whether any plan would be enough. It was almost pitch black beneath the thick rainclouds; shining signs and windows cast thin lines of light along the alleyways and roads, glinting on the water choking storm drains. There could be anything hiding in these blind alleys and derelict buildings; each one could hide a coiled serpent. The damp air felt thick enough to chew.
A moment later he walked right into his servant’s back. She’d drawn up short, dropping into a martial posture.
“Close?” he murmured.
“Very.”
The scent of the enemy led them to a dark back alley. A pile of garbage in a rusted dumpster decomposed beneath a rat king's tangle of wires above, a snarled mess that – in theory – powered this building as well as several others by stealing power and internet. The Master stole a glimpse over his shoulder at the road beyond the alley's mouth. Still save the rain. When he glanced back, a pulse of mana turned his servant's blade red hot; it melted through the padlock with one clean slice. As the chain splashed to the ground, hissing in a puddle, she edged the warehouse's door open with raised sword. As they entered the offices in the back of the warehouse, the smell hit him: sickly sweet, nauseating. Mana. The predator lurked nearby. They had reached its den.
As they walked through the rear offices, the miasma only grew thicker. Lights were off, and while his Servant could see with her reinforced senses, he could only make out shapes in the murk, broken up by the occasional beam of neon light cutting through a window. The long linoleum floor stretched out forever between rows of mold-gnawed cubicles. Sweat beaded on his brow. Every footstep sounded like a thunderclap in the cavernous silence. As the offices ended, they faced another door – this one leading out onto the floor. Here, the fog of disease grew thickest. His servant shared a momentary glance with him before she eased it open.
The creak of the unoiled hinge was like a scream. His blood ran cold.
He had heard that a certain magus had arrived in the city to participate in the Rite of the Holy Grail. They called him the Mycoidist: his research had given him mastery of a parasitic fungus that would seize control of its victim, leaving them an empty husk he alone controlled. Now he saw that grizzly work firsthand: cordyceps-infested victims glistening with sporelike structures. Nothing human remained of them: they ambled around the room, obeying their master like machines. It was, perversely, the ideal magic for the Ritual: they had no need of their souls, so the Servant could feed on them with impunity, leaving empty husks for the master to use. The young magus murmured a few words to increase the weight of the invisible spores around him, dragging them to the ground; they would not reach his lungs. His servant had her own defenses –
Not that she would tolerate such injustice for long.
She sprung forward, blade flashing through the air. The cordyceps rushed forward to meet her, giving a gutteral, abhuman howls that echoed in the rafters. The master raised his hand, crest on the back of his hand shining a brilliant blue-green in the low light. In answer to his incantation, several metal pipes ripped themselves out of the wall. It felt like a crude use for ten centuries of his family's research into magecraft, but undeniably gravity had many applications. For example: turning rebar into javelins flying at eighty miles an hour. True enough that the fungal horrors did not die easily, but each spear would stake one to the nearest surface, leaving them trapped. They had almost cleared the room when –
“MASTER!” she snapped . He barely had time to react before she shoved him aside, throwing him to the ground with a soft grunt. A split second later, the enemy Servant's blade split the air where he’d stood. A clash of steel, a burst of sparks: his partner deflected the strike sending her opponent flying away. “Stay close, master. I cannot guarantee your–”
He couldn’t sense an Assassin’s aura – no mortal could. But he didn’t need to, not one he had spotted a softer target. For a split second, his crest pulsed as he reduced the hold of gravity on his body. For all those around them, it looked like an impossible burst of speed as he headed for the front exit. “Keep him off my back! I’ll hunt his master.”
His servant had no time to answer before Assassin erupted from the shadow, poisoned dagger whistling through the air. As the servants fought a hypersonic duel behind him, he followed the faint presence of the heretic through the open cargo bay doors, bursting back out into the rain. Dozens of infected longshoremen wandered there, the spores even growing on a stacked labyrinth of crates. The Mycoidist leapt up onto a nearby crane, one foot planted high on the metal beams.
“Well, well. You seek the hunter in his den!” His raspy voice betrayed decades of self-serving evil. “I can’t begrudge you your courage, but… how does the old saying go… discretion is the better part of valor?”
The cordyceps froze, only to turn on the young master in unison. Must be two dozen, at least. This horror explained the disappearances at least – each one was a human being, a living person that the master had failed to protect.
His teeth ground. “You’re a madman who’s betrayed every principle of a Mage's honor, to say nothing of your humanity. Spare me your advice."
“Such righteousness…! Your family’s legacy is famous but… I’m afraid… it ends here, with you. You and your crest will be put to work in my service, oh magus of gravity, but… my, my, what is this?”
All around the young master, that spectral blue-green light shined like a vicious halo. He seized any projectile he could: the metal of a torn-out downspout from a nearby building, pipes ripped from the ground and walls, the metal prods from a forklift. At its full potential, his sorcery could control dozens of objects.
“This land is the grave of countless mages,” the young master hissed. “Time for you to join them.”
The steel hail fell.
I hope you enjoyed this (rather long) introduction – and to be clear, it’s more a tone piece than a starter. (Though, if you wish to build on those characters/that situation, I don’t mind!)
The classic Fate/stay night games and shows have always been favorites of mine. It’s simply one of the greatest weeb high concepts ever: seven modern mages summon seven heroes of history and myth to fight to the death for the wish-granting power of the Holy Grail. Only one pair can survive and claim the prize – but often at a terrible cost to themselves, their values, and those they love. To secure the loyalty of their servants, each master possesses three command seals: spells they can use to issue absolute commands – even impossible ones – to their partners. What ensues is a brutal war to the death, as they stalk each other through a vicious urban jungle. Alliances shift, ideals clash, characters are tested – It’s the kind of high concept that makes you jealous you didn’t come up with it! It also practically begs to be expanded: the system invites making up new Servants, Masters, and settings.
So, now with some more Fate coming out (still early in Samurai Remnant!, I thought I’d return to RPing for it. In particular, I want to go back to basics: I want to come up with a pair of characters, Master and Servant, and put them through hell as they try to win the war and fulfill their wishes. This would harken back to the tone of the original, so I’ll say up front to expect this RP to have some fairly dark content, like horror, NSFW, violence, gore, civilian death, all that good stuff. I’m a proud authorial sadist: I like to put my characters through hell to find out who they really are. However, I want to juxtapose that heaviness with moments of fun and joy. A romance would be great – Shirou and Saber's starcrossed love has lived rent-free in my head for over a decade.
Beyond that, I am open to both canon characters and OCs, but I do not double. If you're playing a canon, it should be because you want to, not as a transaction. I'm also open to both canon settings and experimental ones, making our own little alternative universe, tweaking the rules, and so on. Really, my main requirement is that I'm looking for something that hews close to the tone of early Fate, especially Fate/Zero. I want grimy streets, ruthless mages, heroes out of time whose blades flash brilliantly against the concrete backdrop. I want melodramatic debates about the nature of heroism, the price of kingship, and the possibility of justice. I want One Last Night whiled away together before the dawn separates the lovers. I want horrors both eldritch and manmade, and I want to really see what makes these characters tick.
A few words about writing style. Lately, I have drifted toward a "lazy lit" style where I do write long posts when necessary like opening the RP or a scene, but keep it snappy and short for most posts. I find this keeps the plot moving along at a good clip; responses come faster when they don't have to be five paragraphs long.
One last note: I have nothing against it, but I’m not familiar with Grand Order or its offshoots. If a character or concept from Grand Order inspires you, by all means pitch me on 'em, but be ready to adapt them to the tone and setting I’ve described.
To summarize:

• I want a classic Grail War scenario: Seven masters each summon a Servant from the past to battle for the Holy Grail.
• I don’t need our RP to take place in any official setting. We can use some alternate world, an original world, some ridiculous fandom crossover, or any mix thereof.
• I'm fine with OCs, canon characters, and any combination thereof, but I don't care for doubling.
• I expect a fairly dark, serious tone broken up by lighter moments.
• Be prepared for NSFW and horror content.
• A strong masteservant relationship. If it’s a romance, I prefer to write the M in M/F relationships.

A little about me:

• 33(ohgod)m, enthusiastic if aging weeb on the West Coast.
• Veteran of both freeform and system-based RP, starting in the heady days of livejournal nearly, oh, fifteen years ago?
• You can gauge my literacy level from the sample above.
• Posting Style: Lazy lit, pretty frequent.
• Friendly OOC. For me, half the fun of RP is meeting people from all different walks of life.

What I need from you:

• To be 21 or older
• To be enthusiastic and communicative
• To add your own ideas to the plot

If you’re interested, shoot me a PM, not a chat. Include:

• Your age, pronouns, time zone, and anything else you’d like me to know about you.
• What you want out of this RP
• An idea for a setting concept or character
• An example of your writing

A magus cannot rest, even in the rain.
The barrage hammering his umbrella only distracted him for a moment from the bitter cold that misted his breath. Around him, the decent people of the world took shelter, seeking the warmth of cafes and restaurants until the worst of the deluge passed. Those unlucky enough to be stuck outside huddled beneath umbrellas, newspapers, or a hood. But even in the heated stores and restaurants, fear reigned. People stole nervous glances up from their phones, scanning the streets for a quick moment before looking back down. They hugged their coats tight; parents gripped their children’s hands to keep them from running into some alley they would never return from. There was no question: something besides rain weighed on the city. This wave of “incidents'' had claimed multiple lives and left the police at a loss. But who could blame them? The duty of resolving these incidents lay on the master's clan. The Ritual required the blood of heroes, not of innocents, and he would not allow such to be spilled on his watch.
“This way, Master,” his Servant murmured. She walked a little ahead of him, hidden beneath a heavy yellow raincoat. It had taken some convincing to get her to conceal herself; she refused to shed her armor even in public… which meant that people would be taking pictures wherever they went. The coat, at least, would hide this stranger from the eyes of ordinary people. What it could not hide – even from the back – was the aura of raw determination that radiated from her. He could imagine her face on the other side: a strict, cold stare that withered injustice at a glance.
He gave a soft murmur of approval before following her away from the main thoroughfares, toward the docks and warehouses that dominated the coast. The dock district was the epicenter of the “incidents” – and no surprise. Dark, oppressive, and cramped, this urban snarl promised a well-hidden warren for vermin to hide in, as well as an excellent hunting ground. Drunk sailors and longshoremen made easy prey, to say nothing of the odd out of towner who got lost around here. They all had been devoured for mana. To involve sleepwalkers in the matters of magi violated all principles of honor and decency, and to him fell the duty of executing the culprit.
Thus, they walked onto the predator’s turf. Their logic was simple: the fastest way to deal with an ambush is to spring it. A stalking predator only emerges from the underbrush when it thinks it has the upper hand. The question then, is whether they had prepared enough to compensate for this home-field advantage. Crossing into the maze, though, the young Master wondered whether any plan would be enough. It was almost pitch black beneath the thick rainclouds; shining signs and windows cast thin lines of light along the alleyways and roads, glinting on the water choking storm drains. There could be anything hiding in these blind alleys and derelict buildings; each one could hide a coiled serpent. The damp air felt thick enough to chew.
A moment later he walked right into his servant’s back. She’d drawn up short, dropping into a martial posture.
“Close?” he murmured.
“Very.”
The scent of the enemy led them to a dark back alley. A pile of garbage in a rusted dumpster decomposed beneath a rat king's tangle of wires above, a snarled mess that – in theory – powered this building as well as several others by stealing power and internet. The Master stole a glimpse over his shoulder at the road beyond the alley's mouth. Still save the rain. When he glanced back, a pulse of mana turned his servant's blade red hot; it melted through the padlock with one clean slice. As the chain splashed to the ground, hissing in a puddle, she edged the warehouse's door open with raised sword. As they entered the offices in the back of the warehouse, the smell hit him: sickly sweet, nauseating. Mana. The predator lurked nearby. They had reached its den.
As they walked through the rear offices, the miasma only grew thicker. Lights were off, and while his Servant could see with her reinforced senses, he could only make out shapes in the murk, broken up by the occasional beam of neon light cutting through a window. The long linoleum floor stretched out forever between rows of mold-gnawed cubicles. Sweat beaded on his brow. Every footstep sounded like a thunderclap in the cavernous silence. As the offices ended, they faced another door – this one leading out onto the floor. Here, the fog of disease grew thickest. His servant shared a momentary glance with him before she eased it open.
The creak of the unoiled hinge was like a scream. His blood ran cold.
He had heard that a certain magus had arrived in the city to participate in the Rite of the Holy Grail. They called him the Mycoidist: his research had given him mastery of a parasitic fungus that would seize control of its victim, leaving them an empty husk he alone controlled. Now he saw that grizzly work firsthand: cordyceps-infested victims glistening with sporelike structures. Nothing human remained of them: they ambled around the room, obeying their master like machines. It was, perversely, the ideal magic for the Ritual: they had no need of their souls, so the Servant could feed on them with impunity, leaving empty husks for the master to use. The young magus murmured a few words to increase the weight of the invisible spores around him, dragging them to the ground; they would not reach his lungs. His servant had her own defenses –
Not that she would tolerate such injustice for long.
She sprung forward, blade flashing through the air. The cordyceps rushed forward to meet her, giving a gutteral, abhuman howls that echoed in the rafters. The master raised his hand, crest on the back of his hand shining a brilliant blue-green in the low light. In answer to his incantation, several metal pipes ripped themselves out of the wall. It felt like a crude use for ten centuries of his family's research into magecraft, but undeniably gravity had many applications. For example: turning rebar into javelins flying at eighty miles an hour. True enough that the fungal horrors did not die easily, but each spear would stake one to the nearest surface, leaving them trapped. They had almost cleared the room when –
“MASTER!” she snapped . He barely had time to react before she shoved him aside, throwing him to the ground with a soft grunt. A split second later, the enemy Servant's blade split the air where he’d stood. A clash of steel, a burst of sparks: his partner deflected the strike sending her opponent flying away. “Stay close, master. I cannot guarantee your–”
He couldn’t sense an Assassin’s aura – no mortal could. But he didn’t need to, not one he had spotted a softer target. For a split second, his crest pulsed as he reduced the hold of gravity on his body. For all those around them, it looked like an impossible burst of speed as he headed for the front exit. “Keep him off my back! I’ll hunt his master.”
His servant had no time to answer before Assassin erupted from the shadow, poisoned dagger whistling through the air. As the servants fought a hypersonic duel behind him, he followed the faint presence of the heretic through the open cargo bay doors, bursting back out into the rain. Dozens of infected longshoremen wandered there, the spores even growing on a stacked labyrinth of crates. The Mycoidist leapt up onto a nearby crane, one foot planted high on the metal beams.
“Well, well. You seek the hunter in his den!” His raspy voice betrayed decades of self-serving evil. “I can’t begrudge you your courage, but… how does the old saying go… discretion is the better part of valor?”
The cordyceps froze, only to turn on the young master in unison. Must be two dozen, at least. This horror explained the disappearances at least – each one was a human being, a living person that the master had failed to protect.
His teeth ground. “You’re a madman who’s betrayed every principle of a Mage's honor, to say nothing of your humanity. Spare me your advice."
“Such righteousness…! Your family’s legacy is famous but… I’m afraid… it ends here, with you. You and your crest will be put to work in my service, oh magus of gravity, but… my, my, what is this?”
All around the young master, that spectral blue-green light shined like a vicious halo. He seized any projectile he could: the metal of a torn-out downspout from a nearby building, pipes ripped from the ground and walls, the metal prods from a forklift. At its full potential, his sorcery could control dozens of objects.
“This land is the grave of countless mages,” the young master hissed. “Time for you to join them.”
The steel hail fell.
I hope you enjoyed this (rather long) introduction – and to be clear, it’s more a tone piece than a starter. (Though, if you wish to build on those characters/that situation, I don’t mind!)
The classic Fate/stay night games and shows have always been favorites of mine. It’s simply one of the greatest weeb high concepts ever: seven modern mages summon seven heroes of history and myth to fight to the death for the wish-granting power of the Holy Grail. Only one pair can survive and claim the prize – but often at a terrible cost to themselves, their values, and those they love. To secure the loyalty of their servants, each master possesses three command seals: spells they can use to issue absolute commands – even impossible ones – to their partners. What ensues is a brutal war to the death, as they stalk each other through a vicious urban jungle. Alliances shift, ideals clash, characters are tested – It’s the kind of high concept that makes you jealous you didn’t come up with it! It also practically begs to be expanded: the system invites making up new Servants, Masters, and settings.
So, now with some more Fate coming out (still early in Samurai Remnant!, I thought I’d return to RPing for it. In particular, I want to go back to basics: I want to come up with a pair of characters, Master and Servant, and put them through hell as they try to win the war and fulfill their wishes. This would harken back to the tone of the original, so I’ll say up front to expect this RP to have some fairly dark content, like horror, sex, violence, gore, civilian death, all that good stuff. I’m a proud authorial sadist: I like to put my characters through hell to find out who they really are. However, I want to juxtapose that heaviness with moments of fun and joy. A romance would be great – Shirou and Saber's starcrossed love has lived rent-free in my head for over a decade.
Beyond that, I am open to both canon characters and OCs, but I do not double. If you're playing a canon, it should be because you want to, not as a transaction. I'm also open to both canon settings and experimental ones, making our own little alternative universe, tweaking the rules, and so on. Really, my main requirement is that I'm looking for something that hews close to the tone of early Fate, especially Fate/Zero. I want grimy streets, ruthless mages, heroes out of time whose blades flash brilliantly against the concrete backdrop. I want melodramatic debates about the nature of heroism, the price of kingship, and the possibility of justice. I want One Last Night whiled away together before the dawn separates the lovers. I want horrors both eldritch and manmade, and I want to really see what makes these characters tick.
A few words about writing style. Lately, I have drifted toward a "lazy lit" style where I do write long posts when necessary like opening the RP or a scene, but keep it snappy and short for most posts. I find this keeps the plot moving along at a good clip; responses come faster when they don't have to be five paragraphs long.
One last note: I have nothing against it, but I’m not familiar with Grand Order or its offshoots. If a character or concept from Grand Order inspires you, by all means pitch me on 'em, but be ready to adapt them to the tone and setting I’ve described.
To summarize:

• I want a classic Grail War scenario: Seven masters each summon a Servant from the past to battle for the Holy Grail.
• I don’t need our RP to take place in any official setting. We can use some alternate world, an original world, some ridiculous fandom crossover, or any mix thereof.
• I'm fine with OCs, canon characters, and any combination thereof, but I don't care for doubling.
• I expect a fairly dark, serious tone broken up by lighter moments.
• Be prepared for NSFW and horror content.
• A strong masteservant relationship. If it’s a romance, I prefer to write the M in M/F relationships.

A little about me:

• 33(ohgod)m, enthusiastic if aging weeb on the West Coast.
• Veteran of both freeform and system-based RP, starting in the heady days of livejournal nearly, oh, fifteen years ago?
• You can gauge my literacy level from the sample above.
• Posting Style: Lazy lit, pretty frequent.
• Friendly OOC. For me, half the fun of RP is meeting people from all different walks of life.

What I need from you:

• To be 21 or older
• To be enthusiastic and communicative
• To add your own ideas to the plot

If you’re interested, shoot me a PM, not a chat. Include:

• Your age, pronouns, time zone, and anything else you’d like me to know about you.
• What you want out of this RP
• An idea for a setting concept or character
• An example of your writing

I’m not sure how much attention this will get or if I’ll do this right, because I don’t think I’ve ever really made a public apology like this, but still, here goes.
Exactly 121 days ago(according to my post, which has now been deleted), I made a post on CringePurgatory, titled “If ‘punchable’ was a person”, and it showed a YT short from the channel “The McFive Circus”. The post managed to attain over 2.1K upvotes before being taken down, but I did receive plenty of comments by people who, putting it lightly, were really rubbed the wrong way with my usage of the word “punchable” to describe a child. These comments made me realize how crappy of a thing that was, not only because I advocated for violence against children, but some users also pointed out that Isabel was most likely innocent, and that she was being coerced into making the video by her parents. Looking back, I wholeheartedly agree. And honestly, seeing these comments made me feel a lot worse, because not only did I call a kid “punchable”, but I was also getting mad at a most likely innocent person, which made me feel like even more of an asshole.
So, overall, I wanted to apologize for my poor choice of words, as well as my misdirection of my hatred
Here’s the short if you guys wanted to see it for yourselves. Also, the comments used to be turned on before I made my post, but they seem to have been disabled now. Hopefully it’s not because of my post, though I doubt they saw it.

Hi everyone, I decided to join this community as a way to vent and cope because I'm sure my friends are tired and honestly, even my therapist sometimes gives me misguided advice on how to deal with my dad sometimes. She's been slowly getting the picture but it's hard.
Long story short - I am 34(f) my dad is 87. He has three kids from a first marriage, who are all in their 50's with kids my age. He had two kids from a second marriage - my sister and I. I recently made the decision to move back home with him because he agreed to help me through grad school (just graduated, hurray! now...job hunting) and has even agreed to make me co-owner of the house.
He's a stubborn new england father, the house is up in the middle of the woods and everyone in the family is thankful that I'm here keeping an eye on him. As "luck" would have it, not even two years back and he did have a major minor accident. I say major because he fell from the stairs at like 2 in the morning (he does not have a good sleep schedule) and discovered after 3 days of refusing to go to the hospital, that he got a hairline fracture in his neck. I also said minor because he thankfully got away with the least possible damage, and the fracture is stable and he is mobile. It's been two months and of course, the fracture isn't healing, so they are giving him another month before deciding on surgery....
Of course this means he can't drive and just basically stays at home all the time. This is where my patience is wearing out thin. He continues to do the things that got him in trouble and overall just argues with me when I say he needs to take it easy and not, say, go for hours long walks in the woods where the trails are not defined during dawn! I legit almost called the police one day because 4 hours later, 9 pm, he was no where to be found. Until he popped up finally and scoffed at me being worried.
He's become hard of hearing which he blames me for not speaking clearly and not looking directly at him (he's lipreading) and gets angry when I do raise my voice.
There's obviously a lot going on, I feel for him, it's not easy loosing your autonomy but jesus he can be such a dick sometimes. He was rude to waitstaff because he didn't hear what the lady said. He's constantly talking down to me and is very patronizing and doubts and questions my every fucking word.
This summer is going to be rough because when I was studying, at least I was out of the house all day. Now I'm trying to help clear the house out (SO MANY BOXES! He's horded boxes of things - like newspapers - from the frickin' 60s) Thankfully he's been cooperating but very slowly. The house needs a lot of work and he also refuses to hire people and believes that once he's healed, he'll be back to doing things like finish building the porch he started 10 years ago?!
I can't wait to get a job so I can hire professionals to, say, put in a new water heater because ours has been leaking for over a year but he hasn't bothered calling anyone and refuses to give me the number to call. Ah, power struggles.
Anyways, if anyone read this, thanks. I was just on the verge of crying today because of a random-ass trivial thing that he got very obstinate about and basically insulted my intelligence =[

My first visitor arrived wearing a vacuum suit. I’d have assumed it was for quarantine protocols, except that a second distinctly inhuman model lay in his arms. The second suit had longer limbs, more fingers, a visor that was just a little too wide for a human. The shape itself was an invitation. It was for me, and I did not need to be told to put it on.
“Are we in danger -” I began to ask, and was immediately cut off.
“Yes,” the human replied.
“-of a hull breach.”
I continued most out of verbal momentum, but the human mulled those four words over for a moment before replying again.
“No,” he decided. “Not that.”
His voice was familiar, even if the faces all tended to blur together for me. I was speaking with the human that had brought me from the station to wherever this was.
“You don’t talk much, do you?” I asked, and he smiled sadly back. There was a sympathy in his gaze, even if his eyes reminded me too much of his teeth - sharp and slick and white as bone.
“Old habit,” he said. “But worth keeping. You’ll know after you meet Agi. ”
Humans always felt like they were trying to bait you into asking more questions. Instead, I activated the final seals on the suit, and followed behind. If he was baiting for questions, I was not fool enough to think he would actually give answers.
​
​
I wasn’t sure what aesthetic design I expected from the human station, but the consistent and extreme maximinimalism took me by surprise. The hallway outside my room had a floor coated in fine sand (I winced on behalf of their particulate filters) along with row after row of large, leafy plants growing from pots. The plants had grown so wide that one simply had to push through them to make it down the hall.
“Like home,” the human leading me forward said. I wasn’t sure if he was genuinely defensive about the design choice, or just naturally standoffish.
We went through three discrete sections after that, each slightly more absurd than the one prior. First there was a hall devoted entirely to industrial hazard signs. Every wall, every door, ever window, had helpful labels describing entirely unrelated forms of death.
Drowning Risk hung over a fountain, complete with a single hand reaching up from a sinking body. Crush risk hung over every door, each with a crumpled icon of what was unmistakably a human form. It wasn’t until I passed a cabin with a biohazard risk sign overheard that the dots clicked.
“Pride?” I guessed.
‘Pride,” the human said back. It wasn’t quite an agreement, but I didn’t think he gave straight answers. Something had beaten it out of him.
After that, there was a vast expanse of clocks. There was no consistent pattern to their construction - a few were simple, legible digital devices. Others became clockwork mechanisms of brass and steel. At the end there were a few made of carved wood, far more intricate and finicky than made any practical sense. I stopped to look at one, and a sculpture of a winged thing burst out of it, whistling and tweeting, before smacking me straight in the forehead.
I took that as an omen to keep pushing forward.
The final space was clearly intentionally claustrophobic. The hall narrowed so thin that we could only pass forward by by turning sideways. It looked like devices normally tucked into the walls had been moved out, sometimes putting passerby at genuine risk. A transformer hummed in one part, copper wires exposed, and I have to take great care to not even brush against it. If the man leading me forward was perturbed by this, he did not show it.
And then we entered a commons.
Pride, I recognized. The two others, I did not. All of five of us were wearing vac suits.
“Ersatz!” Pride said, genuinely delighted to see my escort. It was a new name to keep track of, but it was still a relief to know he had one. Helped him feel less like a force of nature.
“Pride,” Erstaz said. He gestured for me to take a seat. It seemed like Pride had intended for me to sit next to him.
“How are you feeling?” he asked me. “Cold sweats? Itching? Sneezing? The awakening of primal urges you would have preferred to remain buried deep in your subconscious?"
“Has anyone ever drowned in your fountain?” I replied, and instead of laughing he looked quite thoughtful.
“Not by accident,” he said, and I laughed because I wanted it to be a joke. “But that aside, I am glad you’re feeling well. I’d assumed we’d have a few days of quiet after getting here. Fortunately, an opportunity that’s too good to miss just came our way. Would you like to know why we’re all wearing vac suits?”
I did. I truly desperately did. I knew he was being dramatic, and I knew the other three humans had little patience for it, but I couldn’t help playing along.
“Yes. I would like to know that very, very much.”
“The first step to getting back to Earth has fallen into our laps,” he said. “We have an opportunity to steal an IFF token that’ll get us past orbital defense. And that’s not even the best part! Order, would you like the honors?”
One of the two unmet humans turned to me. His name seemed like it was sarcastic - his hair was wild, his eyes were darting, and his hands scittered over the table like massive five legged insects.
“We’re gonna take it from the fuckin’ burger clown,” he said, and the table erupted into cheers. I cheered too. I think that was the exact point where I simply accepted that nothing was ever going to make sense ever again.
(It was an enormous relief.)
First/Previous/Next

Hey Reddit, coming to you since I don’t really have many people I can talk to about this and get their opinion. I’ve been dating this guy for about 7 months now and like him a lot. He’s the first guy I’ve dated since my long term relationship ended a couple of years ago. We have a lot in common and I really enjoy hanging out with him but one thing that has continuously caused me doubt is the fact that his ex is still in his life. They broke up about two years ago and were together for about 8 years total. He was working out of town last year for the majority of the year and so he told me that during that time she would go over to his place every week to take care of the pet they got together, even though after they broke up it became his. They grab beer together about once a month or so and he says he’s told her about me. He has told me numerous times that the breakup was amicable, even though she is the one that initiated it. He says they ended up being more of roommates the last year or so before things ended and tells me that there’s zero feelings there and neither of them would want to get back with the other one and they only view each other as friends but I can’t help that it still bothers me and is hard for me to not feel insecure about. At the beginning of their relationship they both moved to a smaller town together so I try to understand from that viewpoint that since they originally moved there together that maybe they don’t have a big community to rely on and since the breakup was amicable that maybe it’s good to stay friends with someone if you realize the romantic relationship isn’t working...? I want to believe so badly that they are only friends and there is nothing more but part of me keeps feeling really insecure about it and that I feel like I will always be competing with a past lover that is still in his life that knows more about him than anyone. I feel like he does try to make me feel like I am first in his life and such but it’s difficult for me personally to believe my place when his ex is still present. I would absolutely never tell him to stop talking to her, I would exit the situation before I ever felt the need to do that but I just want to feel and believe what he says is true. He has said that I am being insecure and has gotten defensive whenever I have brought up this topic because it has been brought up several times and to be honest I am tired of thinking about it as I am sure he is as well.
This last argument a week ago was me trying to understand this entire situation a little more and we both kept repeating ourselves to where he became very triggered and said “F*ck you man” under his breath enough to where I heard it. I was extremely hurt and felt disrespected because about 2 months ago there was another argument where he got pissed and hung up on me and I didn’t hear from him until I reached out the following morning. I almost ended things then and this last ordeal of him cursing at me and disrespecting me has it to where I feel like I should end things but also hesitant because we do have really good times together. He has been super apologetic this past week saying he should have never said that and stuff but I am questioning if this will be a continuous pattern of disrespect. I just need to know if the majority of this community would immediately walk away due to the disrespect and ex situation or give this guy another benefit of the doubt. I hope this was not complete word vomit but if you made it this far thank you so much and I would love to hear your opinion or answer any questions to help clarify things more. Thank you!
TL;DR- My partners is friends with his ex and it makes me have doubts. Some discussions on this topic have led to arguments which have then led to him being disrespectful towards me. Questioning if I should walk away.

The man took me to one empty space that was in everybody's view and then presented me with my full name and surname even tho I haven't told it to no one, not even to a person that informed me about all this cult, he told me to sit, observe and listen what they tell to me, then I saw how everyone was getting up and then I've done it with them, everyone that formed circle held hand, and that man was sipping some oil into that fire, which has resulted in it getting extremely tall, and then they begun reciting some shit in Latin, well some of the words they've said were incorrectly spoken but that's unimportant, even tho my skepticism faded away because I was starting to strongly believe in that with my own eyes.
Especially afterwards when I've heard "Bring the victim!" and then every single one of them pulled out their silver knifes out of some silky cloths and they used those knifes to make a cut in their arms so a little bit of blood would come out that they've poured into a small bowl, they also, of course, expected me to do the same, a worried me picked up a knife and placed it close to my arm, everyone else was watching me but I've managed to cut a little bit, blood began to mildly come out and I've placed the bowl under my arm. And then at that moment everyone just spontaneously went to the fire and began spilling those bowls of their blood on that big bowl of fire, when they finished that, they went to one side of the room in a queue, next to one big table, and then that man said, "Bring another victim!"
I heard the sound of the doors opening, at that moment I saw a young woman that was blindfolded and also had cloth covering her mouth while two burly men were taking her out. They placed her on a table and tied her with ropes, the rest of them took out their books that I've also received and began reading one page on Latin, while they were reading it and I was just pretending to, the man took out his knife and approached the tied girl, she was a blondie, also definitely younger than 20, the girl I've never seen in this city, the man pitilessly simply just dug in his giant knife in the spot in which heart is supposed to be in while tons of blood just started spilling out of her through the table on the satanic symbol that was drawn under it. I just couldn't believe that shit I was seeing with my own two eyes.
Their ritual was closely coming to an end, but, I didn't know one little minutiae about this cult, when they are attempting to summon a devil, the first victims blood is from the summoners themselves that love and extols him, the second victims blood must come from someone who's a virgin, and the third victims blood, well rather just say the third victim, must be, everyone, that was a suicidal cult.
When I realizes that, the participants were gathering around that table that had that dead girl laying on it, and they were all gifted with a glass of coffee that had poison in it, at the end that man also gave one to me, I grabbed it and just waited for what will be the next. I thought to myself that there's no way I am gonna try poison, but again, something was just convincing me to try it, just so I can see, if all of this is real, if someone like devil can really be summoned. Everyone took a glance at that giant cross on the wall that was backwards, crossed themselves also backwards while reciting the part of that Latin page they were reading, and then drank the poison, I also just moved the glass to my mouth and... drank it.
Shortly after I felt dizzy and collapsed on the floor like everyone else did, my sight was weaker and weaker, all until an ultimate darkness started to perform, and then, waking up. I woke up in a dark room, the room was dark, wet and utterly devoid of any sounds, and then in one moment, I heard thousands an thousand screams that were happening simultaneously, I started walking straight, until I spontaneously saw all those people that were with me in that factory, they all together stood there confused and full of questions when I approached them they turned to me and asked where the hell are we, I've replied "I obviously don't fucking know, this place is so weird and so creep-", then I mildly chuckled and revealed to them my face, my real face, humans, stupid little homunculuses, curious little humans, in fact so little that they are keep creating wars, hungers, problems, conflicts just so they could make themselves feel little important, humans with so much merit for intelligence and capacity but simultaneously so unbelievably stupid and limited, humans who act like they know so much about god and devil, me, but they didn't know, that I have an amazing and a little dark humour, that I love to have fun in this way, I love, my game.

If it's something erotic or a little more SFW you are looking for, I could be your writer! I have years of experience in writing trad prose, scripts, and articles, if either is what you are looking for!

• Vanilla
• BDSM
• Non-con
• LGBTQ+
• Cross-dressing
• Historical
• Fantasy
• And more!

What I will not write: Scat, vomit, and NSFW scenarios involving underaged characters.
My rate is $50 per 1k words. My RPing rate is $35 per hour and $45 per hour after 5 hours
For my portfolio, I have made things a little more convenient and put together folders for some of the more popular kinks! If you like what you see, I would be very happy to make your acquaintance!
Femdom (When girls are in charge.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cal525i95tnuj5q/AABoTTNpZ0SRucfr830W8TSVa?dl=0
LGBT (The queer side of things.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cal525i95tnuj5q/AABoTTNpZ0SRucfr830W8TSVa?dl=0
Misc (Some nichey stuff.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mgse0cnpsoug0zj/AABWmLJ145BGFLCrKUw9YvUXa?dl=0
Non-Con (When no isn't taken for an answer.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sj3s354e2le1i50/AAAu2UQOB6BxVEXOAt6C86HQa?dl=0
Vanilla (Not too far from hand holding.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/18tqxvlbxr2d17n/AACcOoRr6n4e8nfYngE-OiwCa?dl=0
Ways of contacting me: ProxyZee on Reddit, [proxyzeez@Gmail.com](mailto:proxyzeez@Gmail.com), proxyzee on Discord.
Payment methods: PayPal, Wise, Revolut.
I also take BTC through this address: 32LsdbrGofH4akyATBFqLZ37TV66N3ux4j

If it's something erotic or a little more SFW you are looking for, I could be your writer! I have years of experience in writing trad prose, scripts, and articles, if either is what you are looking for!

• Vanilla
• BDSM
• Non-con
• LGBTQ+
• Cross-dressing
• Historical
• Fantasy
• And more!

What I will not write: Scat, vomit, and NSFW scenarios involving underaged characters.
My rate is $50 per 1k words. My RPing rate is $35 per hour and $45 per hour after 5 hours
For my portfolio, I have made things a little more convenient and put together folders for some of the more popular kinks! If you like what you see, I would be very happy to make your acquaintance!
Femdom (When girls are in charge.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cal525i95tnuj5q/AABoTTNpZ0SRucfr830W8TSVa?dl=0
LGBT (The queer side of things.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cal525i95tnuj5q/AABoTTNpZ0SRucfr830W8TSVa?dl=0
Misc (Some nichey stuff.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mgse0cnpsoug0zj/AABWmLJ145BGFLCrKUw9YvUXa?dl=0
Non-Con (When no isn't taken for an answer.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sj3s354e2le1i50/AAAu2UQOB6BxVEXOAt6C86HQa?dl=0
Vanilla (Not too far from hand holding.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/18tqxvlbxr2d17n/AACcOoRr6n4e8nfYngE-OiwCa?dl=0
Ways of contacting me: ProxyZee on Reddit, proxyzeezGmail.com, proxyzee on Discord.
Payment methods: PayPal, Wise, Revolut.
I also take BTC through this address: 32LsdbrGofH4akyATBFqLZ37TV66N3ux4j

In advance: I'm sorry if this makes no sense context wise and it gets long, but I'm pretty emotional writing this. I feel like I'm standing infront of the shambles of my life right now, at a point where I'm supposed to be happier than ever.
And truth be told, I am outwardly "ok" most of the time, which I'm not faking per se. But I am terrified of what's going on in my head.
I'm a young woman roughly in my early twenties, pregnant, together with my childhood boyfriend and love of my life, financially secure, working my dream job etc.. But on the other hand I'm also a survivor of childhood religious abuse and a veteran. I've been diagnosed with Autism in early childhood and with PTSD after those ordeals.
I asked to be pulled from my last deployment in a war zone (and later service at large) after I made an unsuccessful attempt on my life. When I got home my boyfriend, with whom I've been with since we were 12-13, was right there by my side the entire time. He's the reason I'm still here. He was the one who physically attacked my parents when they threw me to the ground and kicked me upon finding out that we were having sex at age 18. He, as an adult, took a slap across the face from my lunatic of a mother, because he, someone who isn't religious, took their precious daughter. That's the same mother who'd say that symptoms of my Autism were my Yetzer Hara (innate inclination to evil in Judaism) and so on. My mother was always the worst, but curiously enough, both my parents were actually rarely physical. They were just incredibly evil with words. My first bullies, basically. Despite all this, my boyfriend supports that I still hold contact to them for the sake of my little siblings, who I love dearly. But despite that love, I've found myself unable to interact with them recently. It is just so incredibly painful to see how different my parents are with them and how my little siblings, who are to young to know what was done to me, adore them without a single condition. The only truly good person in my family is my paternal grandfather. He basically adopted me and my partner as his own, taught us what Judaism is really supposed to be like and gifted my partner, who is incredibly respectful of my faith, an old Kippah of his. He's truly always been my partner in crime, united by the dislike for the rest of our family. He's also the only one who knows and will know about the baby. I am so ready for the family drama that will unfold when they find out that that me, my partner and our child will inherit everything and that I'm his sole medical and financial proxy should he ever be unable to do stuff himself anymore.
My pregnancy was unplanned, but it was a happy "surprise" (can you be surprised about the pill failing after two days of a stomach virus?). Unfortunately my second thought after the initial excitement of seeing the positive test was how this would burn every last bridge to my family. Again, my partner is nothing short of amazing and will be an awesome dad, but he's and his family are the only ones I have. I don't have my mom or any other female relatives. I love my defacto mother-in-law, who has always been more of a mother to me than my real mom, but having to talk to her about pregnancy stuff not always because I want to, but because she's the only one I got is incredibly sad. My family, except for my grandfather and possibly my siblings when they are adults, will never find out about this baby, ever. I am genuinely afraid of what lengths they would go to.
My partner, who has always been there for me, is in a very tough situation right now, so it obviously my turn to step up. He's a professional athlete, who's had two mayor injuries this season, one involving surgery on his shoulder. Issue being, he's also allergic to pretty much every single conventional painkiller out there and he's had to take painkillers continuously since October. Result being, stomach ulcers. Severe pain 24/7, nights spent awake with him vomiting blood. I, with a medical background, was a loss for what to do at times and thought I'd lose him more than once. Objectively speaking, I've seen much worse in the military, but it hits so different when it's a person you love more than anything. And he continues to play whenever even remotely possible with a stupid sense of grit and determination that I recognize from myself. He's slowly on the mend, but I've given him everything in me over the last few months. I feel empty.
Another factor in that is my work. I work for the club my boyfriend plays for. My primary jobs are in medical and coaching, but I also see it as sort of my duty that these guys turn not only as great athletes, but also as great humas. An aspect that often times gets lost in professional sports. I love my work, I love how much I can give and how I can be a positive factor in people's lives. But with everything else going to shits, I feel that what's happening at work is also affecting me more than it should. Particularly a guy that's been out with myocarditis for months now. It's always been a sad case, but as of recently I hold back tears every time I work with him. His mama found him unconcious in bed one morning, as a simple flu had turned significantly worse over night. She panicked, didn't remember where the hospital was, didn't think to call an ambulance and as such drove him to our medical centre. When I opened that car door - I've never seen a person that looked so sick ever before. He ended up having a heart attack, getting a pace maker and being in a coma for a week. Again, he's on the mend now, but seeing a 19 year old young athlete, who sees his entire career in jeopardy, struggle to get up from the breakfast table and walk the 5 steps over to the buffet is still beyond heartbreaking. He's been on my mind a lot lately, but what completely ended me were the last 2 days. Day before yesterday, in training. We hear a horrific sound, followed by a gutteral scream of shear pain and terror (have heard a few of these, never anything quite like that) and frantic shouts from other players. I grab my equipment and haul ass over to the other pitch and what I see there is easily the most horrific leg break possible. I am talking, the leg was nearly amputated. Tourniquet on, finding the next best thing to inject the player that would just knock him out, debating with my colleagues about if this is a case for a helicopter (it was), figuring out with the air ambulance crew how to stabilize the leg (anatomical physics project) etc.. The player who accidentally did this to him in a bad challenge was and still is inconsolable. There were multiple people who threw up at the sight. Today in training, another sound every pitch side worker dreads. A head clash, a proper one. One of them fine, just slightly dazed, the other one fully unconscious. I turn him on his side and see that there's blood running out of his mouth and one of his ears. Not ideal. When I got him awake he started vomiting, stated hearing/vision loss on one eadye, his face was drooping etc.. Perfect case of a basilar skull fracture. Another case for the air ambulance. While we were waiting on them, his mama came over and he didn't recognize her. I don't know what it was, but him not recognising his mother, his mother, fearing for her son's life, sobbing when he asked who she was...
Even though they're both doing well considering the circumstances, I've never had two incidents like this in two days. I'm rattled. And I hate myself for saying that, because it feels weak coming from someone who has seen war zones. I feel like I'm giving everything I have, I'm everyones shoulder to cry on and I'm just empty. I don't have anything left to give. Silly coming someone from someone who voluntarily signed up for all of this and still somehow loves it in a twisted way. Does this make me a masochist? I don't know. Fact is, I feel myself going down a very dark path (again) and I don't know what to do (again).

the part in the opening where star and stripes gazes showing her Eye and transitions to her and her mates in the starry night sky while her cape is flapping , when you listen to the instrumental in the background its reminiscent of you say Run but toned down and fleeting , it made me all sad inside , it speaks volumes to me that with that little chord progression with the single drum beats and strings in the background tells a story or vibe where star in her own way still keeping that all might symbol alive in her because she was so moved by all might , almost as if the soundtrack is being influenced by new order quirk to mimic the you say run theme as much as possible but can never really BE THE REAL THEME or her the REAL all might , and then finally it transitions to deku reaching out to one for all .

Her post: https://www.reddit.com/relationship_advice/s/ooTwyFNwWk She only showed me this a few days ago, but for the past couple of weeks my now ex gf has been curating the truth to extract as much validation as she can from this situation, and has prevented me from commenting or sharing my side.
She admits that I actually said - that I bought a house with us in mind. I did say that. When i first met her, I was moving away to LA. I had already lived in a home that was paid off for 12 years, but when i met her; i decided that maybe it's best and continue to build a life here, and should things work out, we could figure out a future together.
I had been looking at the market and one day, an amazing house came on the block, for 300k less than it was a months ago. I pounced and went to see it. That night i told her i saw a place, i even sent her the photos and said, i'm going to place an offer, which i did.
She seemed to love the place and see how much of an upgrade it would be from my current place - this is a 2M house, with 4 bathrooms, 3 bedrooms, 2 living rooms and most importantly, a garage as my cars kept getting stolen since i didn't have one at my current place.
There was never mention of us moving in together right away, at the time we were together for 6 months, wayyyy too soon. We weren't even saying "i love you yet" - and i did say that once actually, and she just didn't return it anyways.
That being said, since we spend 95%% of our time sleeping at my place when we see each other once a week, figure this would be good for us, and when it is time, we could move in together there and go from there.
She loved the place, from what she said, this was supposed to be a positive.
Now let's rewind though.
3 months into the relationship, she asked to borrow 4000$. I was not comfortable with it, but as usual, she made herself seem so much in need, that I couldn't say no and just break up with her there, but now I realize i should have. She guilted me sayinf that couples have to work together and be there for each other and all that jazz.
The fact is, within those first 3 months, i had brought her to LA while i had to be there on business and the total cost of the week that she was there was around 3K. Then, over xmas, we went to another city, another 2-3K, as well as a punta cana vacation for 7K. So after all that is when she decided to ask me, and you don't need to be a genius to realize thst she chose me because clearly, she pinned me as having the money to.
Had this been my wife or long term gf, this wouldn't of been an issue, but 3 months in - this was a big flag and i talked to her about it. As usual, and as a pattern throughout this relationship, she would get extremely angry, lose her cool and make me feel bad for "questioning her character".
So, fast forward to me actually moving into this house over a 3 week period. She helped none whatsoever, never offered and my own family, friends, and people who were working at the house asked me about it apl the time. Oh she has school, oh she texts me though and so on. Completely MIA until of course friday or saturday night where she wanted to go for dinners or go to shows - that we did, of course.
One day, once her exams had tailed down and she told me she was waking up early to write a photo, i saw that she posted a sunshine kissed selfie saying: yoga! Meal prep! Coffee! Sunshine!
And i wrote her privately: " you know, i feel you could have at least offered to help in some way today". Again, she loses it, tells me : " you know you don't have to tell me something just because it bothers you" and then eventually she says, and i will never forget this ever : " don't you think you're expecting a little much of me for 7/8 months of dating"?
I was shocked. For some reason, pressuring your bf for a 4000$ loan 3 months in, but offering help in any way over a 3 week period is too much.
I called it off, decided i don't need her and this relationship wouldn't work with this set of values we don't share.
A couple of days later, after trying whatever she could to flip this whole fight on me, constantly chaging the goal post as a pattern i had identified and made her aware of repeatedly over those 7/8 months, she eventually showed up unannounced, apologizing profusely, and apparently seeming to genuinely recognize that it wasn't right, and she could have offered.
I took some of the responsibility once she did, and said that maybe, i could have been more direct as to when and how.
We resolved, we started to laugh again, this was a fight that we would "learn from" we both said.
Well, last week we disagreed for another simple issue, and she blew up as she does, yelling, calling my life chaotic, calling me eveything she can think of, and then says she resents me for wanting her to help with the house when she had exams!
Basically she took back the apology fully and stormed out of the house, i did not chase her. I did not text her, and i did not want to negotiate at all anymore.
The next morning she said she acted like that because i told her she was fucked. Tbh, i don't remember saying that, but i probably did as she was having a massive blow up.
I apologized for saying that she is fucked because afterall, whatever i do is in my control and tried my very best to get her to see that blowing up like that, is her behavior to be accountable for.
That's when she shared the original thread... again - no words, shocked that for a couple of weeks in the background she had been farming all these comments about me, sharing our personal stuff and curating it in a way to make herself look like, you guessed it, a "victim" whose boyfriend "bought her a house"?
We met off hinge. She asked to borrow 3K from me 3 months in, and I told her since then that it just didn't look good at all, and I'd hate to have something like that i couldn't even share with my friends / family.
The facts are that she only shared as the relationship went on:

• she is over 40k in debt
• Got fired from her nursing job because the educator had it in for her
• Missed out on receiving funding from the school because of their online portal
• Wasn't able to apply to graduate because the school didn't let her know properly
• Hates her parents even though they gabe her a car, paid for her exams and other failed attempts at schooling in the past
• Told me that her last relationship was "toxic" and she didn't see a future with him but stayed with him for 3 years and when they broke up, he threatened to jump off their building, same building she currently lives in - where 1 bedroom costs more than my previous mortage did for the 12 years that i paid it.

Overall, yes i had reason to play it slow with her. I didn't want her moving in on a technicality, or making me responsible for all her bills or getting trapped if things didn't work out.
I didn't buy her a house, i bought my house, in cash, paid in full and she was well aware that.
I bought a house because I had settling down in my current city in mind after meeting and had hoped it would work out.
But here she is complaining about if she would have an office in it, for...nursing?
A shoe room? I have 25 pairs of shoes in a closet. The spare bedroom would be for a baby's room, possibily if my future half is comfortable with that. Discussions would be had but i realized that discussions would never be had with her.
She has rage in her mind, a wild sense of entitlement and at present time is currently getting evicted from her apartment, and has no full time job but all the time in the world to make reddit posts for validation.
This problem is solved, she is not going to move in, and i am accountable for my house and hope she becomes accountable for "her house".
I welcome any comments / questions but i know I was dealing with a highly problematic person who will never truly realize her ways.

just a quick rant lol. it makes me so sad that it’s been like 2,000 years since organized religion first infected humanity and it’s STILL not a completely extinct thing from the world yet. oh what i wouldn’t do to get all 8 billion of us to know & understand that it’s all a man-made way of spreading political propaganda through fear-mongering, mainly the lie that all the rules AREN’T man-made and only exist because “god said so🤷‍♀️”. it all does so much more harm than “good”. i put that word in quotes because all the “good” it DOES do are all just unhealthy coping mechanisms with the hardships of life. it also sucks that the only thing stopping so many people in the world from being criminals and murderers is the belief that they’ll be a painful punishment for it after death, and a reward if they aren’t horrible people. incentivizing morality/goodness corrupts the morality/goodness, because having a reason of personal gain makes it selfish, therefore no longer a “good” act.
is it too extreme for me to ask the world to believe in science? claims that have definitive evidence and proof, so that no faith is required? and as for what science hasn’t answered yet, is it too extreme for us to learn to live with “i don’t know, i may never, and that’s ok! i’ll keep searching so that someday i might because not having an answer is better than having an incorrect one”?

If it's something erotic or a little more SFW you are looking for, I could be your writer! I have years of experience in writing trad prose, scripts, and articles, if either is what you are looking for!

• Vanilla
• BDSM
• Non-con
• LGBTQ+
• Cross-dressing
• Historical
• Fantasy
• And more!

What I will not write: Scat, vomit, and NSFW scenarios involving underaged characters.
My rate is $50 per 1k words. My RPing rate is $35 per hour and $45 per hour after 5 hours
For my portfolio, I have made things a little more convenient and put together folders for some of the more popular kinks! If you like what you see, I would be very happy to make your acquaintance!
Femdom (When girls are in charge.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cal525i95tnuj5q/AABoTTNpZ0SRucfr830W8TSVa?dl=0
LGBT (The queer side of things.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cal525i95tnuj5q/AABoTTNpZ0SRucfr830W8TSVa?dl=0
Misc (Some nichey stuff.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mgse0cnpsoug0zj/AABWmLJ145BGFLCrKUw9YvUXa?dl=0
Non-Con (When no isn't taken for an answer.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sj3s354e2le1i50/AAAu2UQOB6BxVEXOAt6C86HQa?dl=0
Vanilla (Not too far from hand holding.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/18tqxvlbxr2d17n/AACcOoRr6n4e8nfYngE-OiwCa?dl=0
Ways of contacting me: ProxyZee on Reddit, [proxyzeez@Gmail.com](mailto:proxyzeez@Gmail.com), proxyzee on Discord.
Payment methods: PayPal, Wise, Revolut.
I also take BTC through this address: 32LsdbrGofH4akyATBFqLZ37TV66N3ux4j

If it's something erotic or a little more SFW you are looking for, I could be your writer! I have years of experience in writing trad prose, scripts, and articles, if either is what you are looking for!

• Vanilla
• BDSM
• Non-con
• LGBTQ+
• Cross-dressing
• Historical
• Fantasy
• And more!

What I will not write: Scat, vomit, and NSFW scenarios involving underaged characters.
My rate is $50 per 1k words. My RPing rate is $35 per hour and $45 per hour after 5 hours
For my portfolio, I have made things a little more convenient and put together folders for some of the more popular kinks! If you like what you see, I would be very happy to make your acquaintance!
Femdom (When girls are in charge.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cal525i95tnuj5q/AABoTTNpZ0SRucfr830W8TSVa?dl=0
LGBT (The queer side of things.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cal525i95tnuj5q/AABoTTNpZ0SRucfr830W8TSVa?dl=0
Misc (Some nichey stuff.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mgse0cnpsoug0zj/AABWmLJ145BGFLCrKUw9YvUXa?dl=0
Non-Con (When no isn't taken for an answer.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sj3s354e2le1i50/AAAu2UQOB6BxVEXOAt6C86HQa?dl=0
Vanilla (Not too far from hand holding.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/18tqxvlbxr2d17n/AACcOoRr6n4e8nfYngE-OiwCa?dl=0
Ways of contacting me: ProxyZee on Reddit, [proxyzeez@Gmail.com](mailto:proxyzeez@Gmail.com), proxyzee on Discord.
Payment methods: PayPal, Wise, Revolut.
I also take BTC through this address: 32LsdbrGofH4akyATBFqLZ37TV66N3ux4j

If it's something erotic or a little more SFW you are looking for, I could be your writer! I have years of experience in writing trad prose, scripts, and articles, if either is what you are looking for!

• Vanilla
• BDSM
• Non-con
• LGBTQ+
• Cross-dressing
• Historical
• Fantasy
• And more!

What I will not write: Scat, vomit, and NSFW scenarios involving underaged characters.
My rate is $50 per 1k words. My RPing rate is $35 per hour and $45 per hour after 5 hours
For my portfolio, I have made things a little more convenient and put together folders for some of the more popular kinks! If you like what you see, I would be very happy to make your acquaintance!
Femdom (When girls are in charge.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cal525i95tnuj5q/AABoTTNpZ0SRucfr830W8TSVa?dl=0
LGBT (The queer side of things.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cal525i95tnuj5q/AABoTTNpZ0SRucfr830W8TSVa?dl=0
Misc (Some nichey stuff.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mgse0cnpsoug0zj/AABWmLJ145BGFLCrKUw9YvUXa?dl=0
Non-Con (When no isn't taken for an answer.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sj3s354e2le1i50/AAAu2UQOB6BxVEXOAt6C86HQa?dl=0
Vanilla (Not too far from hand holding.)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/18tqxvlbxr2d17n/AACcOoRr6n4e8nfYngE-OiwCa?dl=0
Ways of contacting me: ProxyZee on Reddit, [proxyzeez@Gmail.com](mailto:proxyzeez@Gmail.com), proxyzee on Discord.
Payment methods: PayPal, Wise, Revolut.
I also take BTC through this address: 32LsdbrGofH4akyATBFqLZ37TV66N3ux4j

😵😵😵😵So yesterday after ✍️ down My dreams, washed up, prayed with mantras b4 stepping outside. Initially didn't know where my feet was taking me but walked so far from home and into a parade/festival of some sort. The energy felt intense as 👁 felt everyone down to the police stopping their ⚾️ convo to glance(longer than expected) at me. Fine women were staring who had dudes, and people were just staring more than usual so put on this mantra that 👁 play every Saturday https://youtu.be/LunWD81L6OM?si=rfNOlY-yecn6PhqW
Found a spot by a big river sat and and reflected on everything Leading up to this point in my life. Started playing music, sm🍃ked, and felt the intense vibes from b4 settle down. There was some concert too, as everyone, dates, families and kids were eating, dancing, 🍃🍀🥂🥪⚽️etc as 👁 was walking back towards home down a big hill/bridgeway, saw it in the sky....That Symbol Got from a game 🎮 play on my phone, but the all seeing 👁ON everything 👁 love saw it and even tho was in the z🍃ne I'm very much observant! Looked around at the people behind and beside me if they saw what 👁was seeing, but everybody was just in they own 🌎The sky was baby blue but the part where saw the eye was gold! Honestly gasped, turned my music down and felt overwhelmed af seeing the gold surrounding the eye open up a bit more. This Honestly freaked me tf out but made me feel "seen" IF u would because my guides cry when 👁😢😥my guides dance when 👁dance and my angels know how empathetic my 💚is and hate when auras try getting over on me, and when my l💚ve isn't reciprocated.. Just wanted to share. Anybody have any encounters like this or in the dream realm?...Because the dream realm is a whoooole other ball game

I've Been Doing a Lot of Whatever the Fuck I Want Lately and I Like It
It's the day of Ayonna's Zoom court hearing so she's thinking about survivalist jailhouse makeup hacks. They've improved since women used to use scraped paint chips off their cell walls as face powder, dampened red paper as rouge, permanent markers for eyebrow pencils, Kool-Aid doubling as hair dye and blush, and M&Ms as lipstick because deprivation causes innovation for self-preservation. That and Jamahl's excruciatingly murky explanation of his 2-year wedding day gap even though he's as open a book as a text at a class final that provides no specific answers to a general essay question. It's not that he wants to delay a ceremony displaying his love for Shellfish publicly; it's about financing a befittingly royal wedding for the ghetto version of Prince Charles and the late Diana Spencer to whom the masses must bow down, and that includes the judge who simply doesn't understand the trials and tribulations of a multi-tasking single mother with behavioral problems negotiating her child's breakfast.
Court: . . . will continue matter until she can show up in court next week since we are clearly inconveniencing her. 🙄
Ayonna: I'm just a single mother with no help. You're not going to tell me I can't feed my daughter; that's never going to happen. Is it ok if I give my daughter breakfast?
Court: We are in court here. This is a court proceeding. ⚖️
Ayonna: Ok. Just be hungry. 😏
Four years probation because the judge's gnarly attitude is taking it out on me? Girl, what are you talking about? Bitch, you're gonna' tell me I can't feed my daughter? She can kiss my ass! I'm livid. Livid! 🤬
Jamahl: At the end of the day filled with dickheads, we still gotta' bite our tongues.
I'm not selfish; I've just decided that taking your feelings into consideration is too much damn work.
Keep Your Head High and Your Middle Finger Higher
For someone more accustomed to being abused than amused, Candice has said "I love you" to Andrew more times than the repetitive phrase, turn down for what, in the party anthem by DJ Snake and Lil Jon of the same name. While Andrew, true to his word, kneels and immediately proposes, Candice hesitates, and in that moment, resembles a raw double-chinned Pillsbury dough girl with an unnatural sheen, a face too sunken in its gravity to show happiness, and sad raisin eyes reflecting physical distress. But Andrew doesn't clock any of this; he's carrying out his promise to Candice's mom in a dream he made up though she has more eyes on her truck as she doubtless recalls her fond days of street racing, driving without a license, attempted stolen vehicle, felony burglary and constantly running from the police. If she were wearing cargo pants, she could stuff them with the faux Louis Vuitton handbag contents to savor as she completes her halfway house program so she can change addresses. If he could see past his own needs, he'd notice she was trying to figure where the hell he got the idea she cared. If I've cut you, it's because you handed me the scissors.
Patience: What You Have When There Are Too Many Witnesses
Joey is taking advice from Minerva, a sex columnist who looks like Chris Farley in drag who was super stoned and wandered into the backrooms of "Saturday Night Live" for a costume change and makeup refresh before rehearsing his Fellatio 101 sketch outlined on a chalkboard: Watch amateur porn for tips. Practice dirty talk. Get excited about being excited. Use both hands simultaneously and don't bogart that spit. Don't forget, steady wins the race. Freshen up before getting online and spending money for a rented motel room far away from your parents so you can have 15 minutes of precious sexy time before your monogamous lover warns you to deactivate your online profile that his friend saw. Hey, I found your nose; it was in my business.
The King Eats First
Once again, the kids are savvier than their parents. A striking Cheyenne and Nehemiah adjust their schedules to Rob's extended sentence that Tennie tries to embroider in her naïveté while every family member is worried about their displacement when Rob physically enters the picture even though he's already there in camera spirit. It's a which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg question - is it a good thing the alpha male has streams-of-revenue for Tennie's shopping jones or is she shopping because she's worried about getting with an alpha male? He's a poker king like Marcelino making 6-7K a month in jail even though online playing for real money is prohibited, and I doubt his pod mates have that kind of extra cash regularly available. Any man in this day and age who can tell a woman to "sit down and be cute" must have it figured out as a lion doesn't care about a sheep's opinion. I bring too much to the table to be treated like a napkin.
Does One of Your Balls Hang Lower Than the Other?
Rick looks like a twig the wind blew off a tree or a stranded lost lamb in a field surrounded by hungry landlocked predators looking for a banquet. Sandy is sending him pictures of the reunion to remind him of her existence while 4x-married Samantha is positioning herself to long-distance bullrope and hog tie her bachelor into a ball-and-chain before he has time to think about how he's going to stretch a rigorously set pension into providing her commissary and visitation requests. His pickleball buddy, Dan, doesn't really give a damn; it's only his nieces who are rightfully tut-tutting her dictatorial attitude and snarking, "Fifth time is a charm." "Maybe I do have options," Rick muses, but then turns around and crows, "She builds me up." Sure, right after she shakes him up - like a snow globe. It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble; It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.

https://www.desmos.com/calculatovvvnagdzlx
I made a graph that simulate a simple spring movement but it has an error and this error gets bigger as time passes. In other words, the spring amplitude gets larger and larger, which is not I intend. Though by slowing the time speed this issue has partially been solved, I want it to work at normal speed. Does anyone have sollutions for this problem? I appriciate any kind of help.

You guys know what an alpine coaster is? They are like a small roller coaster you find in the mountains. They are also called summer toboggans or mountain coasters and I think there’s some long German compound word they are called in parts of Europe. They are like a roller coaster, but with much smaller one or two person sleds you just sit on instead of multi-person cars you ride in, and instead of being built with like a scaffolding or a framework the tracks are just on the ground, using the elevation of the mountain. Basically it’s a coaster track on the side of a mountain where you ride a sled down.
They are pretty fun. Or at least I used to think so. They are more “personal” than roller coasters and although you get nowhere near the speed on them that you do on a good traditional roller coaster and they can’t do corkscrews or loops or anything like that the openness and simplicity of the ride gives an impression of a much greater speed. You’re just sitting there with nothing but a little plastic sled and the track between you and the ground as it goes zooming by. It’s like the difference between how fast a go-cart feels compared to how fast a sports car feels. You know the sports car goes faster but the open, simpleness of a go-cart feels a different kind of fast. There’s plenty of POV Youtube videos if you want to get the basic idea of what they are.
I used to love alpine coasters. Used to.
My family used to go to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge and up and down the Smokey Mountains for vacations when I was a kid and they are common in that area and I’d always rode them every chance I got.
But as with so many things after I grew up and went to college they just became part of my childhood that slipped away. They aren’t exactly common once you get away from the mountains.
Until one cool spring afternoon in 2004. I was in my final year at college and I was driving back to campus in Tennessee after a short visit to my folks in North Carolina. It was only like a 4 or 5 hour drive via the most efficient route and I had no need to be back at campus early so instead of taking the freeway all the way I got off and took part of my trip through the mountains. The scenery was nicer and I admit I liked pushing my Camaro just a little faster than I should through the twisty mountain roads.
Just after lunchtime happened upon one of those little by-the-highway tourist towns deep somewhere in the Smoky Mountains near the Carolina/Tennessee border. Nothing fancy, a gas station/truck stop, a diner, a couple of places selling tourist merch nestled deep in the mountains. I pulled into the gas station. My tank was getting low and I needed to stretch my legs, maybe grab something to eat. It was still early and I only had another couple of hours. I could kill an hour or so and still make it back to campus at a decent hour.
I pulled into the gas station and was filling my tank when I happened to glance across the road and… well I’ll be damned. There it was. “The Blue Ridge Alpine Coaster.” Nestled on the side of the mountain was a building, a mockup of a red barn, where a single railed track that led up into the mountains, where it soon got lost in the greenery. Wooden hand painted standees of cartoon character bears dressed in stereotypical “Hillbilly” getup stood around, some of them holding signs showing the ride hours and ticket costs and other info. I had to admit, as silly as it was, it made me smile.I finished pumping my gas and, well, nostalgia is a helluva thing. I decided then and there I could waste a little time riding an Alpine Coaster again after all these years before getting back on the road.
I parked my car in a corner of the truck stop's parking lot, put my phone in the center console, this being the days before smart phones when people didn’t keep their phones with them 24/7 and I didn’t want my old Nokia brick phone to fall out during the ride, locked my car and walked across the mountain highway to the Alpine Coaster building.
Getting closer, the place was less inviting. The half hearted attempt at a whimsical faux-Americana kitsch was far less effective when it brushed up against the actual decaying, run down wooden building. Hell calling it a building was generous. It was a wood frame holding up a long roof that covered the area where you got on the sleds. The wood boards creaked under my footsteps.
The only real enclosed structure was a shack that held, what I assumed, was a ticket booth. A door on the side had both a single occupancy bathroom with an out of order sign on it. An old Pepsi machine buzzed and glowed next to it.
Still the place looked alive. Ahead of me a bored looking attendant was helping a mother and her young son into one of the sleds while in a bored monotone repeating the safety brief. A few people were waiting in line at the ticket booth. Up in the mountains the playful shouts of people on the ride echoed down. Fond memories of my own childhood rides flooded my mind.10 minutes and 15 dollars later I was settling into the hard plastic seat of a bright red sled sat atop a simple aluminum rail.
I couldn’t help but grin as the sled slowly climbed the track up the mountains, making click-clack ratcheting sounds that hit my nostalgia centers hard. I felt good. The air was cool and crisp and smelled of pine.Higher and higher in the mountains we went. I don’t know if this is my mind trying to make sense of it after the fact but when I remember these moments, the last good moments, I sometimes think I remember a very slight, very subtle pit of fear in my stomach. I honestly don’t know if I felt it at the time or not or it’s just how my mind tries to make sense of it looking back at.
But either way mostly I was enjoying myself. I smiled. I was a kid again. I could hear riders in front of me let out that initial yell of terrified glee you get at the first drop of any good ride.
It peaked. I glanced around. I could see for miles, rolling hills and mountains. I the sled tipped over and zoomed down the mountain and I let out the same happy yell I heard from the other passengers.The ride zoomed down the mountain, catching speed. The mountain forest floor zoomed past, only a few feet under me. Trees zoomed past. I gave out a happy whoop as the ride banked hard around a curve and then looped back under itself.Another dip, another curve. I closed my eyes, enjoying the feel of the G-forces pulling me every which way.
There was no one exact single moment where things started to go “wrong.” The ride kept going. And going. At this point the first creeping thought entered my head.
The ride… was still going.
It just started to hit me… this ride was going on for a really long time. I had taken a dozen rides on various coasters of this type before that day and they topped out at about 5 minutes or so, and that was the long ones. Longer than a traditional roller coaster but not that long. This one had been going on for what felt like 10, maybe even 15 minutes.
I looked back over my shoulder and could only see trees, moving too fast to really get a bearing on where I was at in relation to anything.
I wasn't exactly really worried yet. Okay so I had found a particularly long alpine coaster. At the time I wasn’t 100% wasn't sure they didn’t exist or anything like that. I was a little… unnerved but nothing was happening that was impossible. Yet.
I was trying to talk myself back into just enjoying the ride and stop overthinking it, and halfway succeeded, when out of nowhere I suddenly banked hard, the track jutting out almost over a sheer cliffside. I gripped the sled more tightly as I was whipped around. The ride then dipped hard and picked up speed, barreling down the side of the mountain.
I was pushed back against the seat by the force of the drop. Jesus I didn’t remember them being this rough. I was feeling slightly nauseous. And where had this elevation drop come from I wondered? I was still in the foothills and I didn’t remember seeing anything but gentle rolling hills and light drops from looking at the ride’s route earlier. How the ride had managed such a long, steep drop in this area I didn’t know. . For the first time I hoped that the ride would be over soon. I had no idea then how much I would want that same hope to be true so much more as time went on.
With a whiplash motion I was whipped forward and then back as the ride leveled out on flat ground again, but by this point I was going fast, too fast. My neck hurt from the mild whiplash and I felt sour in my throat and for a moment the contents of my stomach threatened to come back up. For the first, but hardly the last time the ride felt unsafe. Alpine Coasters are tame affairs, much slower and gentler than full on roller coasters but this thing was throwing me around like no thrill ride I had ever been on.
I looked around. I mean I wasn’t that deep into the woods. I should have been able to see a glimpse of something; the highway, the gas station, the tourist shops, the Alpine Coaster office, something, anything. But nothing. Just trees.
I forced back some panic for the first time. I closed my eyes and counted to ten. The ride zoomed along. I counted to 60. I counted to 60 again. And again. Okay this was getting uncomfortably harder and harder to explain.
Suddenly I noticed that up ahead the track seemed to just end, for one brief, terrible moment I thought the track just ended but I was wrong. Almost without warning the track dipped in an almost vertical drop. I almost screamed as I plummeted for 20, maybe 30 seconds before flattening out again.
By this point the voice in my head that was telling me something was wrong was louder and I could no longer tell myself it was wrong. This ride could not have been this long. I tried to make sense of it, wondering if somehow I had gotten diverted onto some kind of maintenance track or, hell for one brief irrational moment even entertaining the idea that I had wound up on an actual train track somehow. But that was absurd. The rail below me was not a train track, it was still just the simple, aluminum rail of an alpine coaster and there had been no diversions or junctions in the track. I was still on the ride, as insane as that was starting to feel. Had the ride somehow looped? Again after having the thought I immediately dismissed it as crazy. There’s no way I could have missed the ride building where I got on. And what kind of ride loops over and over?
The sled zoomed through the forest, oddly never seeming to lose speed despite the relatively flat grade of the track. I cursed myself for leaving my phone in the car and not wearing a watch. I don’t know exactly how long I had been on the ride at that point but it felt like I had been on the ride for a half hour, maybe more. But time is a funny thing when you’re in a situation you’ve never been in. Could have been more, could have been less, at that point.
My pride finally failed me. I started to scream for help. I screamed out that the ride was broken, to stop it, that I needed help. I did that for about ten minutes or so I think. The ride kept going. Mostly flat, level track with occasional mild dips and turns. But the simple length of the ride grew more and more unnerving and unexplainable.
I thought about just bailing out. But the ride, impossibly, was still not slowing down and chunks of mountain rock and thick tree trunks were all around me. Bailing out without risking smashing into a rock or a tree seemed impossible.
The ride kept going.
Up ahead the forest was clearing out some, I could see the forest brightening, more sunlight making it through the canopy.
I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.
The trees stopped and I had just enough time to take in a flat, open area of rock maybe 40, 50 yards at most before another sheer cliff. The tracks twisted and turned and then shot straight down. But that wasn’t the worst of it. For a moment, a very short moment, I had a clear view for miles and the landscape was, to be blunt, totally impossible. Any possibility that I had just stumbled on some incredibly long ride was blasted out of my head. Barren, volcanic looking rock stretched for miles. Jagged, black rocky outcroppings as far as the eye could see. I was in the goddamn Smoky Mountains. They don’t look like that.
I had a few moments for the terror of that view to settle in before the cart plunged into another horrifying drop. I gripped the handles of the cheap plastic sled until my knuckles turned white. The drop felt completely vertical, like I was falling at terminal velocity. I screamed. My stomach dropped and turned. I imagined the sled coming away from the track and me just plummeting screaming to my death on the rocks below. But somehow the ride still functioned. I closed my eyes tightly and just waited for whatever was going to happen. Eventually after several what felt like a full minute of steep plunging the track again leveled out, and I opened my eyes to see myself moving at breakneck speed over that black, rocky landscape.
Now that I was moving on a more or less flat horizontal track again I took a few deep breaths. I looked over the edge of the track. Nothing but that black, jagged rock, almost looking like obsidian, zooming past. I had no idea how fast the sled was moving now. Fast. Faster than a gravity powered sled should be moving. And the track was higher off the ground now. Alpine slides usually stick pretty close to the ground, but I was 20 feet or so in the air, the track suspended in the air, a simple metal tube tower like a power pylon every few yards.
Without any immediate threat and the sled moving fast but steadily and level I was able to think about my situation again, for all the good that did me. Ahead of me the track just continued to the horizon, nothing but the same rocky landscape as far as I could see. I craned my neck to look back over my shoulder and looked back behind me and it looked the same. Even the mountains were but distant specs on the horizon behind me.
This was insane. There’s not a giant seemingly endless field of black jagged rock in the goddamn Smoky Mountains. There’s no cliff faces tall and steep enough for a multi-minute vertical drop. And alpine coasters were small affairs, not major engineering projects that span miles with pylons and vertical tracks. It made no sense.
Sadly it wasn’t going to start making any more sense anytime soon.
The ride kept going.
I was on this rocky landscape for several hours. I feel comfortable saying this because I could actually notice the sun getting lower in the sky. And the sled wasn’t slowing down despite the grade of the track being flat. I was getting cramped from sitting and stretched my legs and twisted my back as best I could. Didn’t do much help. My eyes were starting to get irritated from the constant wind in them. Worst of all it was starting to get chilly. I only had on a light jacket, a windbreaker, just something to keep the breeze off me, no real insulation. I was cold, my joints were stiff, I was hungry and thirsty. My eyes watered and my throat was so dry it was sore.
But none of that was as bad as just how little sense this all made. There’s nothing like this place anywhere near the Smoky Mountains. This was like some volcanic rock landscape. The more I thought about it the less sense it made.
The ride kept going.
My mind didn’t even try to process this. Whatever I was experiencing simply couldn’t be possible. I was crazy. I was dreaming. The CIA had kidnapped me and dosed me with some new version of LSD and I was in a straightjacket in a padded room at Area 51.
The sled kept zooming along as the sky turned to dusk. Soon the bridge disappeared from my view and I continued on along the endless, rocky, featureless landscape.
I sat back against the sled, mentally and physically numb. I was exhausted. I was thirsty. I was cramping up. I was hungry. I had to pee. I held it for as long as I could, then had no choice but just wet myself. I cried until I had no more tears left. Then I just sat there.
The ride kept going.
By the time the sun dipped below the horizon my throat felt like sandpaper. I dug around in my jacket pockets hoping to find a stick of gum or piece of candy. Nothing. I checked again, having nothing else to do. Under a crumpled store receipt in the inner pocket of my jacket was a single old, forgotten cough drop. I unwrapped it from the paper and popped it in my mouth. Saliva flooded back into my mouth and I was overwhelmed by the methanol and medicine taste. It was something at least, although I knew it would be a brief and temporary fix at best.
I felt my eyes get heavy. It was getting colder. That mountain cold. That deep cold the mountains have even into the early spring when the sun goes down. That kind that just pulls the heat right out of you. I shivered. A terrible, horrible certainty came to me. I would ride until I passed out from exhaustion or the hypothermia set in. My body would tumble off the sled to fall and skip across the rocky ground like a stone skipping across a lake, my bones breaking as I tumbled until my body finally came to a stop. If I was lucky I would be killed and not have to lie for days, broken and bruised, on the ground until death took me.
The ride kept going. The ride kept going. The fucking ride kept going.
“Fuck you” I said to the ride, my voice a horse whisper. I pulled my jacket closer around me, for all the good it did. The cold wind was slowly but surely pulling my body heat away. My shivering got worse, crossing the line from a simple normal shiver into those deep, almost violent full body ones.. I wasn’t anything you could call an experienced outdoorsman, but I knew enough to know that wasn’t a good sign.
It was getting dark. There was a full moon at least so I wasn’t totally in the dark.
About then I noticed something. The landscape, what little I could see in the fading light, was changing. It was smoothing out, becoming less rocky and craggy. Up ahead an odd, shimmering light was starting to appear on the ground.
I was over it before I even realized what it was. The tracks were going over a smooth surface.
Water. It was a lake. The odd lights I had seen were the moon, reflected in ripples on the lake.
Within minutes I was out of the view of the land. After the nearly endless rocky landscape and everything else I had seen, it scared me how little I was shocked. I didn’t like how mentally numb I was getting. I leaned over. There was enough moonlight to see the water, 15 or 20 feet below the track. The pylons holding up the track went into the water, the light wasn’t good enough to even make a guess at how far they went down or how deep the water was.I leaned back in the sled. My eyes were red and bloodshot from the constant wind. I closed them. This was a mistake.I jerked awake. I don’t know if I dozed off for a split second or an hour. My weight had shifted and I caught myself as my center of gravity was in danger of sending me off the sled and into the water.
I screamed in anger. A deep primal scream. I hurt so bad. My joints felt like they were full of glass. My limbs were full of pins and needles. I glanced over at the water. For the first time on the very edges of my brain a tiny voice started to speak up, telling me that I could be all over if I just jumped. I shut the voice up, but it scared me still.
I sat there as the ride went on. It felt like hours. Eventually the lake ended in a rocky shore line. The damned ride. There was no safe place to bail out. If the ride slowed down, it was high in the air, if it moved toward the ground it sped up. Sharp rocks, big trees, nothing you could safely bail out into.
I kept having to force myself awake. I kept dozing off. Once I felt myself falling asleep and drove a vicious uppercut into my own nose to stave it off.
I seriously started to think about how much longer I could hang on. The voice came back again. This time I didn’t shut it up. I wasn’t admitting it to myself yet, but I was starting to think about the best way to land that would end it quickly if I needed to.
Something was ahead. The track seemed to dip into the ground. I was too tired, too beaten to even get scared. I was just resigned to whatever happened at this point.
With little warning the track took my sled into a tunnel in the ground. Everything went completely pitch black. After several moments even the dim moonlight was gone.
This was the worst part. The creepy forest, the immense rocky landscape, the eerie lake… those were bad. But this was just nothing. Nothing to look at, nothing to hear, nothing for reference or sense of where I was going. The walls of the tunnel felt like they were inches from me in every direction. The air felt thick, like there wasn’t enough oxygen.
With every moment I was in that tunnel I lost a little more hope. After a long, long time I made a decision. When I got out of this tunnel, I would jump. I didn’t care anymore. Hopefully there would be a spot where I could be certain the fall would instantly kill me. I was done. The ride had beaten me. I sat there, waiting for a chance to end this on my terms. That was all I had left.
Eventually up ahead, a tiny speck of light appeared. I gathered my strength, ready to end it. I sat up, getting my legs under me so I could jump as soon as we were clear. The sled burst out of the tunnel. The dim light of the full moon was enough to be momentarily blinding after the pitch black of the tunnel.. I gave my eyes a moment to adjust.
I was back in a normal looking Appalachian forest. Rolling hills, green trees. The air smelled of pine again. I heard an owl hoot off somewhere.
Slowly I lowered myself back into a setting position, in shock. At first I refused to believe it but the ride was slowing down. I held still, making sure my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me, but no, the cheap plastic sled that had been my world for what felt like an eternity was slowing down.
Up ahead, a structure was visible, peeking out from among the trees in the dim lighting as the sled moved down the track.
It was the Alpine Slide building. The crappy fake red barn where I had boarded this cursed ride so long ago. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, sure it was either my mind or the cursed ride playing tricks with me. But the building stayed there.
It grew closer and closer. The track leveled completely out. The sled slowed down more. Before I had the time to really come to terms with it I arrived back at the building.
The sled slowed to a stop, gently pumping against another sled parked on the track. I sat there for a few moments, gasping in great big gulping fear breaths, trying to assure myself the ride didn’t have one last trick of its sleeve.
I looked around. The place was empty, deserted. The overhead lights were still on and the old Pepsi machine still glowed and buzzed, but the ticket booth was dark and empty, a metal gate pulled down over the ticket window.
Suddenly it hit me that I was free and I practically leapt out of the sled and onto the platform. I immediately collapsed. My legs were jelly and my head was spinning. I tried to stand up again and doubled over, dry heaving. Have you ever been out on a boat for a day and have that weird reverse motion sickness when you’re back on solid land? It was like that times a hundred. My inner ear was literally pounding, all the motion had really done a number on it.
I laid there for a few moments and eventually forced myself to stand up on my two wobbling legs. I looked around, a horrible certainty creeping into my mind that there would be no exit, no way off the platform but to my relief an exit turnstyle, one of those full height ones, was set into the fence that surrounded the ride property.
I went through it and found myself back on the main road. The truckstop was still there, still open but far less busy. My car sat in the same corner of the parking lot I had left it.
I allowed myself one look back, just one quick one. The metal skeleton of the Alpine Slide track sat there, dark and quiet but otherwise normal.
I stumbled-ran back to my car, dug the keys out of my pocket, and collapsed inside. When the door shut I let out a primal scream, the tons of fear and confusion and anger all fusing into a single, raw emotion. I screamed again and again.
After a few moments I felt like I was emotionally at least back to a place where I could act, although I wasn’t sure yet what to do next. Not really knowing what to do I cranked the car. The A/C had been on low when I shut off the car and it came roaring back to life and cold air blowing on me almost sent me back into a full on panic attack. I fumbled with the climate controls until the air stopped blowing directly on me, then calmed down enough to turn the heat on, helping to get the chill out of my bones. There was a half full bottle of water in the center console cup holder and I grabbed it and chugged it. Nothing ever tasted as good before or sense as that few ounces of water.
That was when I noticed the clock on the radio head unit. It was 4:17 in the morning. It had been about one, one thirty or so in the afternoon when I got on the accursed ride.
Over 15 hours. I had been on the goddamn ride for over 15 hours. Over half a day.
I just sat there. Warming up. Calming down. I was exhausted. I was dehydrated. I can’t even describe how my head felt. I probably had at least a minor case of hypothermia. I thought about going into the gas station and asking for help but what would I even say, and more than anything I just wanted to get away from this place. And I just wanted to get away. I wanted to be nowhere near that damn ride.
I put the Camaro in gear and pulled into the street and in panic I immediately slammed on the brakes. I was lucky there was no traffic on the road at that moment. The feeling of accelerating to just normal surface street speeds made me sick to my stomach. I gathered myself and very slowly accelerated the car I usually treated with a very heavy foot up to 30 miles an hour. Every time I tried to accelerate at a pace faster than “Old Lady Going to Church, Uphill” I would have a panic attack. I was okay once I was up to speed, but accelerating freaked me out after being on that ride.
I drove about 30 minutes, putting some arbitrary amount of distance between myself and the coaster. Eventually I made it back to where the twisty mountain road met back up with a major road that would eventually meet back up with the highway. After a few more minutes of driving I saw the onramp for the highway. There was one of those big truckstop travel plazas and pulled in, parking right up at the door. I smelled like pee and I can only imagine how I looked, but I didn’t care.
I kept a couple of emergency 20s in the back of my wallet and spent it on the biggest bottle of water the store had, an overpriced bottle of eye drops, and a huge travel mug of coffee. The clerk looked at me as if he was expecting me to either drop dead or rob him the entire time.
Back in my car I downed the coffee. I put a few eye drops in each of my eyes and sat there as the caffeine took effect until I felt like I could make it back to my apartment. The sun was just coming up when I finally pulled out of the truck stop and got on the freeway. I slowly, very slowly, accelerated up to highway speed, put the Camaro in cruise control, and let the miles start to drift away. I turned on the radio, I needed to hear human voices. Every time my mind went back to what had just happened I turned the radio up louder, eventually drowning it out with painful levels of rock music. I wasn’t ready to think about it yet. Yes looking back I know I was just in denial. I finally made it back to the crappy little apartment I had off campus, a little two story walk up studio. I let myself in and collapsed on the cheap couch. I was asleep before I even had the time to decide whether or not to do anything else. I woke up later that afternoon. I took a shower and ate a meal and didn’t think about the ride. I washed the pee stained filthy clothes I had been wearing and didn’t think about the ride. I went back to class and didn’t think about the ride. Every time I thought about the ride I forced it out of my head. I’m sure this wasn’t the most mentally healthy thing to do but what can you say?
I didn’t forget about it, don’t be silly. This isn’t the kind of thing you forget. One day while looking up something else in the university’s library my curiosity got the better of me and I looked up the Alpine Slide. No website but a few Google Map and Yelp mentions. None of them mentioned anything weird, certainly nothing even remotely like what I experienced. Near as I can tell it closed sometimes in the winter of 2012.
Life went on. I mean, that’s what it does. The next day was a little better. And the day after that a little better. And the day after that a little better still. I met a nice girl. Graduated. Got married. Got a nice house in the suburbs. Got a dog. Had a daughter. Spent a lot of time happy and not thinking about being trapped on an endless alpine coaster.And that was my life for many, many years after that.
Until a few weeks back when as a very different person I found myself driving a boring and safe mid sized family SUV through those same mountains. My wife Carol, 5 months pregnant, sat in the passenger seat, our 6 year old daughter Emily in a booster seat in the back, and Max our mixed breed mutt next to her. It had been a nice pleasant trip, driving back from visiting her folks.
I hadn’t thought about that fucking ride in so long I barely registered that I was in the same general area until it was too late. Suddenly I realized that little mountain tourist trap town was only a few minutes down the road. I swallowed hard and gripped the steering wheel hard. Carol was looking out the window at the scenery and Emily was deep into some kid’s Youtube video on an iPad. I forced myself to keep my breath steady as we rounded the corner.The town was still there, sorta. Time had not been kind to it. The gas station was still there, at some point it had been bought out by Shell. The tourist trap shops were still there. One of them was now a vape shop. The diner was closed, the building looking like it sat unused for a long time.
But of course that’s not what I cared about. A looked over at the site where the Alpine Coaster once stood. It was gone. The kitschy fake barn was gone. The site was just a bare concrete slab with a chainlink fence around it. Faded “no trespassing” and “for sale” signs hung off the fence. A pile of old, decaying lumber that might have once long ago been part of the structure covered part of the old lot. No sign of the track remained outside of some old concrete support posts dotting the side of the mountain.
I exhaled out a breath I hadn’t even realized I had been holding in. Soon the little town disappeared in my rear view mirror.
About a half hour later we stopped for gas. I pulled up to a gas pump across from a massive motorhome. Max stuck his head out the window and started barking at a little white dog, a toy breed of some kind, in the window of the motorhome. Carol and Emily immediately headed into the store to restock on snacks while I fueled up.
I stood there, a half smile on my lips as Max barked and wagged his tail in an attempt to attract the attention of the other dog while I filled up the tank, said dog doing an admirable job of ignoring him.
Right about the time I finished fueling up and cleaning the bugs off the windshield Carol returned from inside the store, Emily in tow, arms filled with two full sized bags of Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips and what looked to be a half dozen individually wrapped pickles.
I raised an eyebrow at the collection of food but knew better than to question a pregnant woman's snack choices.
“Should we take Max for a quick walk?” Carol asked. The travel plaza had a nice little gated dog walking area off to the side.
“Yeah probably not a bad idea, he’s been cooped up in the car for a few hours.” I said. Max, upon hearing his name and the word “walk” , forgot about the other dog and upgraded from wagging his tail to wagging his entire body while making whining sounds and staring right at me.
About this time I became half aware that the big motor home next to us was pulling away. I didn’t think much of it, outside of doing a quick automatic mental check to make sure Emily was well clear of the moving vehicle, but she was safely between me and our SUV, well out of the way.
But that was when Emily looked behind me and cheerfully yelled “Daddy look a roller coaster! Can I ride the coaster?”
It’s cliche as fuck I know but my blood went cold.
I turned around slowly, certain in my knowledge that terrible old decrepit Alpine Coaster would be there, having just popped into existence to trap me again.
That.. is not what I saw. Sure enough there was a coaster there, one I hadn’t noticed earlier because it had mostly been blocked by the motor home, but there it was. It was even an Alpine Coaster.
But it was not the same coaster I had encountered those years ago. That was immediately obvious. It was a small but modern and newish looking setup with neon lights and a bunch of people. There was an actual building where you bought tickets and a little snack stand.
“Daddy! Can we go on the coaster!” Emily asked again.
My mouth made motions but no words came out. I glanced over at Carol, hoping she’d say we didn’t have time but to my horror she smiled and said “You know what? That does sound like fun. Daddy will take you while I take Max for a walk.”
My mind raced, trying to think of a way to get out of it. But Emily was already dragging me across the parking lot to the entrance.
I patted my pocket, making sure my phone was in it. Every fiber of my being was screaming to run away. I slept walked through the line and the ticket booth while Emily bounced happily.
We got into a two seat plastic sled. This one was actually a lot nicer than the one my mind wouldn’t stop thinking about. It had two nice cushioned seats, big grab handles, even a nice rollbar.
The sled started up the track. I fought back the panic. I swerved my head around, keeping the building in my view. I was terrified of losing sight of it. We made it to the top and Emily did a happy squeal as we started down the side of the mountain.
My heart raced. Any second, any second my mind told me we’d lose sight of the building and then the ride would never end. The ride sped down the mountain. My mind tortured me with thoughts of not only going through it again, but seeing Emily go through it. The ride went around a big, banking turn. Emily kept shouting happily. How long before Carol reported us missing I wondered? Could I keep Emily calm? What if it lasted even longer this time? What if this time it never ended?
And then we were back at the start of the ride. The same attendant who had helped us into the sled was helping Emily out. I stepped out. The attendant gave me a brief look but said nothing. I guess I looked a little wild eyed.
I was fine. Emily was fine. It had been a perfectly normal, fun ride.
“That was fun Daddy! Thank you!” Emily said. I forced a smile back. “It was fun.” I responded, hoping like I sounded like I meant it.
I took Emily’s hand and we walked back to the car. Max saw us coming and barked happily. Carol looked up from the pint of Ben and Jerry’s she had somehow acquired and added to her snack collection while we were gone and smiled at us.
“Did you have fun?” she asked.
“It was so fun Mommy!” Emily said.
Carol smiled down at her, but then looked at me and frowned. “Are you okay?” Carol could read my face a lot better than the attendant could. “You’re pale.”
I smiled and this time the smile felt real. “Ya know what. Yeah, I think I am okay.”
Carol looked a little puzzled, but didn’t press it. We loaded Emily back in her booster seat, stopped Max from trying desperately to eat half a discarded gas station hot dog off the ground and got him back in the car. Carol and her small collection of snack food took her place in the passenger seat and I got in the driver's seat.I smiled. I cranked the car. I put it in gear. I pulled out of the gas station and back on the road, this time accelerating just a little faster than I had in years.