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

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

hi everyone. i have hs on the back of my neck. it’s at least six cysts all tracked together, going from my scalp all the way down to my back. it won’t stop draining, it’s been months. i’ve been on medical leave from my job since december for something unrelated, but i go back soon and i’m nervous about bleeding through my shirt and hair in public. i see an H.S. researcher for my derm so i’m in good hands medication wise, but of course the remicade stopped working earlier this year so we’re still in the process of finding something new that will help. in the meantime, i need help managing the wounds. it smells too bad and is too graphic to just have freely draining at my job. i’ve tried hydrocolloid bandages, they’re a little too painful for me to handle and usually don’t stay sealed. gauze tends to be too bulky and i really don’t want to be interrogated at my job about my wounds. does anyone have any tips on getting the draining to stop or the wounds to close altogether? or alternatively knows of a bandage that’s discreet and won’t be excruciatingly painful to change out? also, please don’t tell me to go on disability because it’s interfering with my job. i’m too poor for that to be an option. believe me, i would if i could :(

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

Before you self harm in any way, you should probably know what you’re getting into. Before you make that cut, please keep in mind that you will find the pain release, and blood, strangely addictive. You may think to yourself that you’ll be able to control it, that you won’t let it get out of hand. You may think that you can just stick to a few small, shallow cuts here and there that won’t be deep and that will heal quickly and easily. But you’re wrong. You can’t control it, it’s impossible to control. It controls you. It’s an addiction. The cuts will get deeper, they’ll scar. They’ll take weeks to months to heal and years for the scars to actually begin to fade. You’ll find that soon, you depend on it. You can’t go more than a few days without cutting. You’ll go crazy as your skin itches and burns, your hands shake, your head pounds, your vision goes blurry as you try to keep your mind off of it, try to hold back from giving in. But you will. If you think you can limit the cuts to just one area of your body, you better think again. It’ll spread slowly but steadily, like a deadly virus. It’ll spread as you run out of skin, from your wrists to arms, past your elbows, up your shoulders down to your stomach, across your hips and waist and soon will cover your every inch of your legs right down to your ankles. I hope you’re prepared to withdraw from others and live in a constant state of shame and guilt. Even if you have been the most honest person to ever live, you will lie to your friends, family members, everyone around you who you care about. You’ll find yourself jerking back from the touch of someone, as if their fingers and hands have been bathed in a toxic, burning poison. You’ll be terrified that they will feel a scar or cut from beneath the fabric of your shirt or because it just plain hurts so much to simply be touched. Be prepared to become your own worst enemy. You’ll fear yourself, your head, the urges that taunt you every minute of every day. You’ll come to fear the next time you cut because you don’t know how bad it’ll be. Wait for the 10 cuts to turn into 20 then 50 then 100. You’ll be covered in scars and cuts. Your entire life will begin to revolve around your addiction. You’ll constantly be thinking about cutting, covering up your cuts, how you’ll hide your blades, scissors, bobby pins and the other objects you use to destroy your body. And then..the first time that you cut “too deep.” The bleeding won’t stop and you’re gasping, shaking, panicking, fear takes over you. You pray and hope that the bleeding will stop. Your purpose wasn’t to die, you won’t ever go that deep again. Right? Wrong. You’ll go there again, and deeper. But don’t worry. You’ll learn how to take care of your cuts so you don’t have to take a trip to the hospital every night. The better you get at treating your wounds, the worse they become. You’ll lie to yourself and try to justify it when you go to the pharmacy and drug store, finding yourself spending 20, 30, 40 dollars on dressings, gauze, alcohol wipes and sterile strips. You’ll tap your foot impatiently, hoping that no one stares and asks you why you’re buying all of these things. But at the same time..you hope someone asks, so you know they care. Be prepared to spend even more money on an entire new wardrobe. Long sleeved shirts, hoodies, long pants, boots, bracelets, wristbands. The list goes on forever. You’ll keep scanning other people’s bodies for signs of self harm, hoping that there is someone else out there who feels the same way you do. Hoping, praying that they will be like you. But that will never happen. You’ll see clean, uncut, unmarred arms and feel even more alone and ashamed than before. You’ll do a lot of things alone, be prepared to kiss your social life goodbye. You’ll always be doing your laundry, always in private so no one sees the blood stained towels and clothes. You’ll be spending hours scrubbing blood from the bathroom floor, and wiping dried blood off of your keyboard. You won’t be able to make it a day without cutting. You’ll carry an emergency kit in your wallet or purse. A key, safety pin, a needle, a paperclip, even a pencil. Everything around you will become a weapon. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it gives you that feeling that sends you reeling. Next thing you know, you’re in the bathroom stall at your school or work, picking open the scab of an old cut with a needle. Say goodbye to all of the things you took for granted. Shorts, sandals, tank tops, swimming in the summer, going to the beach. All of these things will be a far off memory. I hope you like itching and scratching non stop. You will itch and itch and itch. It’ll be so much that it’ll look like you have some sort of flesh eating disease. You will become an expert on your body as you carefully destroy it, taking it apart piece by piece. You will dream of cutting, dreaming of getting caught. It will haunt you day and night, in your dreams and when you are awake. Cutting will take over your life. It now has it’s hold over you, it controls you. You’ll hate yourself, hate yourself for making that first cut that threw you into this vicious, neverending cycle. You’ll wish you never made that first cut. You’ll wish you had read something like this, or that someone had told you what would happen. But as much as you hate your addiction and self harm, you love it and can’t live without it. You’d rather die than go just a few weeks without cutting.
Now, I’ll tell you what the title pertains to. How to self harm. Here is where I tell you how to successfully hurt yourself. So put down what you’re about to use Because you are so much better than this. And believe me, you don’t want to get involved with the monster of self harm, it’s not worth it.

EDIT: I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for your feedback. Obviously I got excited and clearly overpacked :) I had everything laid out on my desk, and I was able to reduce it by almost 50% (7 tops, 4 bottoms, 2 dresses, 2 pairs yoga pants (includes ones to wear on the plane), 2 yoga tops and 2 bathing suits. Thank you again for all your help!!
Hi everyone!
I found this sub by accident and so glad I did! I'm going to Italy (Puglia region) for a week (May 17-24), followed by 4 days in Berlin to see a friend. I've been watching the weather and it seems quite warm, but I have no idea what the nights are like, and same with Berlin. In Puglia I will be doing a yoga retreat, where we will be doing yoga twice a day (first thing in the morning, then the evening), with our days open to whatever we feel like such as the beach, a hike, visiting local towns etc. We may have 1-2 "fancy" nights at a restaurant. In Berlin, I will mostly be hanging out with my friend, walking around, sitting at cafes etc.
I only want to bring a small backpack and a carry-on, since I will be taking a few lower cost flights and the checked bag fees are high. I have compression bags to shrink my clothes. I tried to stick to a colour palette of 4 (black, white/cream, red, blue), so I can have more things to mix and match. I am also bringing some laundry detergent in case I need to sink wash! Here is what I have:
Tops: (12 total) 1 blue/white striped t-shirt, 1 black t-shirt, 1 white ribbed tank top, 1 navy ribbed tank top, 1 red cotton tank top, 1 off-shoulder black and white "fancy" top, 1 white t-shirt (wear on plane), 1 blue and white striped button-down, 1 white cotton gauze button-down, 1 light blue button down (I figured the button-downs can double as a light evening layer or beach cover-up), 1 red sweater, 1 cream cardigan (wear on plane)
Bottoms: (6 total) 1 pair blue jean shorts, 1 pair black cotton gauze wide leg pants, 1 pair black flowy bermuda shorts, 1 pair cropped wide leg blue jeans, 1 black midi skirt with elasticized waist, 1 pair stretch trousers (for the plane)
Dresses: (2 total) 1 black gingham fit and flare mini dress, 1 cotton eyelet white mini dress
Yoga clothes: 3 pairs black leggings, 1 black bra, 3 black/blue/striped yoga tops, 1 pair black yoga shorts
Shoes: 1 pair black birkenstock leather sandals, 1 pair black patent leather thong sandals, 1 pair white sneakers (will wear on the plane). No heels for me lol.
Others: Underwear, 2 regular nude bras, one nude strapless bra, 1 black/white polka dot one piece bathing suit, 1 black bikini, 1 small quick-dry towel, 1 packable floppy beach hat, 1 canvas tote, 1 small black bum bag/fanny pack
Writing it out it seems like a lot lol!

Link to original nosleep post:
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/1b5iszd/my_wife_and_i_got_cast_in_a_reality_show_pilot/
I had just wrapped work on a Friday night, when my wife, Cara, first told me about the ad.
"I don't know how long I can work for this guy anymore." I said to her, closing my laptop for the weekend.
"Alan?" She replied.
"Yeah. He's such a prick. Everything's urgent, and everything's a fire drill. Until he doesn't care about it anymore."
"You know what you should do?"
"What?"
"Kick his ass."
"I wish. But you know full well that I don't have a threatening bone in my body. I'm a lover not a fighter." I said with a wink.
"Oh, that reminds me! Speaking of lovers." My wife said with a smile, pulling out her phone. "Look at this."
Taking the phone from her hand, I saw that she had saved a job posting.
"New Reality Series Seeks Married Couples For Chance To Win Once In A Lifetime Prize."
At first, I scoffed at it. Having been happily married for a few years now, and both of us gainfully employed, I was pretty confident that neither my wife nor I sought money or fame. We already had everything a couple could ever want.
"Why would we ever go on a reality show?" I asked.
"Keep reading," Cara replied, pointing to the bottom of the posting.
I did as she suggested.
"The winning couple will receive a once in a lifetime chance to work with one of the best fertility doctors in the world, to aid them in having a child."
Okay, maybe we didn't quite have everything a couple could want.
I looked at my wife. "Enticing, yes. But I mean, what are the chances we'd actually get cast?"
"Hey, you can't win if you don't play, right?" Cara replied, "And what other choice do we have?"
She had a point. We'd been trying to conceive for a few years, but no matter the approach, whether natural, IUI, or IVF, you name it, the outcome was always the same.
It was the one thing we didn't have. The one thing, save for surrogacy or adoption, that money couldn't buy...
...Having a child of our own.
And so...
...The next day, we reached out to the production company's nondescript email address...
...A couple days later, we heard back...
...And a week later, we found ourselves on a video call with a casting director, attempting to sell her on why they should choose us as one of the five couples competing in their pilot, and why we deserved the prize.
But my wife and I both left the meeting thinking we botched it, each of us walking away with the same feeling that one gets after a flubbed job interview.
And so, we both resolved to go back to our lives. Back to being realistic about the situation. And even started looking into some adoption agencies.
That is, until a week later, when Cara and I received an email from the production company...
...Informing us that we were selected to participate in the reality show pilot!
A few signed contracts, NDAs, and talent release forms later, and my wife and I were off on an all-expense paid trip to Los Angeles.
I remember pulling into the parking lot of the production studio that first day, and finding it a bit strange that a TV show would be filmed in such a rundown, dilapidated warehouse. But I knew nothing about production, and chalked it up to budgetary constraints. And, after all, we had already traveled too far, and there was too much on the line, to turn back now.
Upon entering the building's lobby, we were immediately welcomed in by the show's producer, Phil, whose warm greeting through his medical mask, quickly turned sour, "You're late! Literally the last couple to arrive! Hurry, hurry! Follow me! We're about to start!"
I thought it a bit rude, and noticed a concerned look wash over Cara's face. But then I remembered it was our fault, after all, that we underestimated LA traffic, so I bit my tongue.
Phil then confiscated both of our cell phones, before escorting us out of the lobby, down a long hallway, around a corner, and into a massive lounge, lit by professional lights, with five couches scattered about. Four of which were occupied by other couples, who were sitting there, patiently waiting, when we finally entered the room.
"So sorry!" I called out to them, while simultaneously waving "Hello," as I sat down in one of the loveseats.
"Thanks for your patience!" Cara added, as she took a seat beside me.
But our peers and competitors didn't even have a chance to react, as Phil suddenly ran into the room with a similarly masked production crew of about ten individuals, and got right down to business.
I thought it strange that they were all masked, assuming that covid regulations had long ended, but before I could dwell on the details too much, Phil yelled out, "Alright, places people! Sound!"
"Speed!" A few masked sound guys yelled back, as they hit record on their audio devices and aimed their boom microphones at the front of the room.
"Camera!" Phil continued.
"Speeding!" Several masked camera men replied, in unison, each carrying a broadcast camera on their shoulder.
"Slate!" Phil added, as a masked production assistant ran up to the front of the room, where there was a set of two doors on the far wall, and a door to the side that must have led offstage. He then opened his clapboard, for all of the cameras and microphones to see and hear.
I wondered why they hadn't filled out the section on the clapboard where the first take would go, but my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of it clapping.
CLAP!
Then Phil gestured to what must have been the director, who was hanging back in the shadows, his features hidden in the dark, outside of the set's bright lights.
"Action!" The director yelled out for all to hear.
And then...
...There was silence.
All of us couples looked at each other with a smile, literally on the edge of our seats, when suddenly, we heard the voice of a middle aged man ring out over the speakers that had been mounted to the ceiling of the lounge. "Ladies and gentlemen! Who's excited to make history?"
The cameras turned to the ten participants, including Cara and myself, and we all immediately started clapping and whistling, before they turned back to the man.
"I'm your anonymous host, four time husband, and five time divorcee!"
The group erupted in laughter, cheering him on, as they looked up at the speakers.
"And you know what? I'm not proud of that. Cause, much like you, deep down inside, I want to love and be loved. To have the fortitude, the patience, and the will to fight on through good times and bad, all in the name of love. Which is why I've brought you all here. Yes, you! Give yourselves a round of applause!" He said, before pausing to allow us all to react.
And so we did, all the couples clapping and smiling.
"Yes, I'm here, hosting and watching remotely, to learn from the five happily married couples before us, what the secret is to persevering through the challenges that life throws our way. To see what ends you'll all go to in support of your marriage, and if you'll do... anything for love. Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome... to Anything For Love."
Everyone let out a nervous laugh, but kept applauding anyway.
"And now... it's time for the rules. In this reality competition, the first of its kind, you'll be split up into two groups, five men and five women, and separated from each other for the duration of the game. Over the course of the show, both teams will compete in four challenges, with each challenge resulting in one loser, who will be promptly eliminated. At the end of the game, the winning player from each team will be revealed. If those two players are not members of the same couple, then no one wins. But if those two players happen to be members of the same couple, they win the game, and a once in a lifetime prize... The chance to work with one of the best fertility doctors in the world, to aid them in having a child. So before we begin, let me ask you this... Are you prepared to do anything for love?"
His voice blasted out from the speakers with so much enthusiasm, and so much energy, that in that moment, every single one of us hopped up out of our seats, and began cheering and clapping.
Eventually, the applause faded, and our host continued, "Now, will the men please line up on the left side of the room, and the women on the right?"
The couples did exactly as he asked, and when we had finally split up into two groups, men and women, our host simply said. "Now goodluck! And I can't wait to see who makes it to the end!"
Suddenly, the two doors at the front of the room opened, and each group was escorted by a masked production assistant through one of the doors, separating the husbands from the wives, until that fateful moment at the end of the show, when only the two winners will be reunited.
For the first couple games, I didn't know where they took the wives, or what kind of challenges my own wife was facing. All I knew were the games they presented to us husbands.
Games that were, let's just say...
...Utterly fucked.
As all five men entered the room for the first game, we all saw before us, a massive open factory space, that had been adorned with only one simple piece of art direction at its center... a small wooden table.
"Will the contestants please make their way to the table." The host called out over this room's ceiling-mounted speakers.
We did as he said, as the masked camera crew followed us to the center of the room.
"The rules of game one are simple. In marriage, you must sometimes sacrifice a piece of yourself, for the greater good. Today, that sacrifice... is your wedding ring. But not just your wedding ring... your entire ring finger!"
The five guys and myself all turned to one another and chuckled, assuming he was kidding.
But suddenly, a door opened into the factory, and a masked crew member proceeded to walk over to the table holding a steak knife.
He didn't say anything, and simply stared at us through his mask, as the host continued.
"The last person to cut their finger off, or the first to give up, is the loser. And will be promptly escorted from the premises."
What the fuck. I thought to myself, realizing the host wasn't kidding.
"Wait a minute," a few of the men mumbled.
But one of them, the most obnoxious in the group, could not have been less afraid, puffing out his chest and yelling into a camera, "Fine! I'll go first. I aint afraid."
He then slammed his hand down on the table, clenching his fist in a way that only exposed his ring finger.
There was a brief moment of silence until...
...Suddenly the masked crew member grabbed the husband's hand and brought down his blade so hard, that it cut the man's finger clean off, blood spraying all over the table.
It took the arrogant man a moment to process what had just happened, before he started screaming in pain, a scream that turned into a maniacal laugh, as medical staff ran over to tend to his wound.
Meanwhile, the rest of us guys looked on in horror, as we saw blood pouring from his hand, and realized we were next.
The wounded husband then looked directly into one of the cameras and defiantly said, "That was nothing." Before turning back to us and asking, "Come on. Who's next fellas?"
Two more of the men begrudgingly followed suit, each of their ring fingers being severed from their hands, leaving just myself and one husband left.
We were both shaking in fear, but the other guy was terrified, that he started begging the producer for a way out. "Wait you can't be serious? We really need to do that? Please. Please don't make me.
"The show is called Anything For Love." Phil replied. "And you signed paperwork that warned you things like this would come up."
"I didn't read that!" The nervous man yelled back.
But before he even had a chance to consider participating, I must have accidentally leaned on the table with my hand.
"Wait!" The nervous man yelled out...
...But it was too late. Before either he or I noticed, the masked man had already amputated my ring finger, blood spraying everywhere, as I let out a great scream that echoed throughout the factory.
And as the medical staff ran over to me, just as they had done for the others who had gone before me, I heard the host's voice on the speakers again. "Congratulations, gentlemen! Four of you have shown that you'll do anything for love. While the fifth, did not have what it takes, and must now return home."
And like that, a couple masked production assistants grabbed the nervous man by the shoulders, and escorted him out of the room.
It was in the aftermath of that first game, that I realized the title of the show, "Anything For Love," was not just a play on words, but the literal description of what we would need to do to win.
And then, the host continued.
"Will the remaining four husbands please walk through the open door, and into the next room."
We did as he asked.
On the way there, I looked down at my missing finger, its stump wrapped in gauze, and couldn't help but wonder if Cara had also been forced to make the same choice, and if she had gone through with it.
When we entered the second room, we all saw another giant warehouse space. Except this time, instead of being sparse, it was completely overgrown with shrubs of thorny vines, separating where we stood, from the other side.
"Love is both a rose, but also has thorns." The host called out over the room's speakers. "It can make you feel euphoric pleasure, but at the same time extreme pain. In game two, you'll need to prove that you can overcome that pain to get to the other side, and make it to game three. The last person to crawl through the thorns, or the first person to give up, will be promptly eliminated from the show and removed from the premises. Will you do anything for love? The game starts... now."
The four husbands all looked at each other, then back at the thorns, then back at each other, before the arrogant man, who was standing beside me, made me a proposition. "Let's team up. If we follow the same path, we can take turns, one of us pushing forward for a while, then the other, and it'll save us half the pain.”
But I didn't like the idea of cheating, or supporting such an asshole, so I politely declined. "Sorry man."
"Fine, have it your way, idiot. I don't need your help, I was just trying to help him out." The arrogant man said to one of the cameras, before he turned around and charged into the thorns.
The rest of us husbands, including myself, still in shock from what had happened in the first game and clenching our wounded hands, looked at each other, and then back at the production crew. But a group of them were standing behind us, ready to push us into the thorns, should we decide not to comply.
So we all proceeded to follow the arrogant husband into the thorns, and began a race, through what felt like a football field's length of sharp vines, each of us doing our best to avoid what we could, but inevitably getting scratched over and over and over again, to the point where our bodies were covered in blood.
And when I finally crossed the finish line, and stepped out of the thorny shrubs bloody and exhausted, I was relieved to find that only two husbands had beat me there. The arrogant man, of course, and another.
We all looked back, to find the fourth pour soul still halfway through the shrubs, his clothes caught in the thorns.
"Wait for me!" He called out. But it was too late.
"Congratulations, winners!" The host's voice called out over the speakers. "You've proven you would truly do anything for love, and can proceed on to the next game. And as for the loser, please remove him from the game."
Then, a couple crew members wearing rubber suits and carrying shears, cut their way through the thorns, freed the fourth husband from the thorns, and escorted him out of the factory.
As the three remaining husbands left the second room and entered the third, my thoughts once again returned to my wife, and wondered whether she too was faced with the same challenge, and had made it through the thorns.
Game three is where things... escalated.
When we entered the next factory, I saw three beds in the center of the room, each with a TV next to it.
"Remaining contestants, welcome to the semi final challenge." The host bellowed out over the room's speakers. "Will you each please choose a bed."
The three of us did as he asked, and walked to the center of the room, each of us standing in front of one the beds.
Then, a door opened and three masked women emerged, making their way to the center of the room, and each lying down on one of the beds.
"The rules of game three are as follows." He continued. "You simply have to sex with the stranger before you..."
The arrogant husband looked at me and smiled.
"...While watching your partner do the same."
Suddenly, the three TVs turned on, each displaying our wives in the very same situation. And lying on each of their beds, was a masked man.
"First off, we assure you that the women and men before you complied consensually, and have been tested for STDs. So the test of this game is not about morality, or safety, but fidelity. Would you cheat on your significant other, for the greater good of the relationship? The last couple to have sex, or the first to refuse, will lose. While the others, will proceed on to the final challenge."
I looked at my wife on the TV screen, relieved that she had made it this far, but started in shaking fear of what we both have to do to win.
Meanwhile, the arrogant husband started unclipping his belt button and turned to one of the cameras. "You call this a semi final? My wife and I are in an open relationship. Bring it on!"
While the third man, simply stared at his TV screen, sweating and pacing, clearly terrified to go through with it, and watch his wife do the same.
"The game begins... now!” The host called out.
As the arrogant man began to have sex with the woman on his bed, his naked body still littered with fresh scratches from the thorns, I thought about trying to escape, but then I saw the timid husband, and realized his hesitation was an opportunity for me to make it to the next round.
And so, I too removed my clothes and exposed my wounded body, crawling into bed with the masked woman, as my wife did the same with the masked man.
Before long, it was over, the arrogant man laying there naked and smiling into one of the cameras, while I, also naked, hung my head in shame for what I had just done.
I looked at the TV screen, and saw my wife put her clothes back on too. We had both made it.
The same could not be said for the nervous man and his wife, who both stayed true to their values, neither engaging in the act, before masked crew members promptly escorted them out of the factory.
And then there were two. Well, two couples that is. Myself against the arrogant man, my wife against his.
Masked production assistants then brought myself and my competitor into the room where the final challenge would be held.
It, much like the first room, was completely bare save for a dinner table at its center, where two plates and sets of utensils were set out.
"Finalists. Welcome to the fourth and last challenge. Will both contestants please take a seat at the dinner table."
We followed his instructions, as we had done previously, and sat down at the table, before a couple production assistants ran over and helped us tuck bibs into our shirts.
"The rules of game four are perhaps the most simple of all. You'll be presented with an item that you must eat. The first to finish eating it, is the winner." The host said over the room's speakers.
That's when a door opened and two masked PAs came out holding trays, and began rushing them over to us.
As they approached us, I began to panic, knowing that whatever it was that they were about to present to us, would likely even be more terrifying than anything we had encountered in the previous games.
"Sometimes you have to break a heart, to win another." The host called out, "In this challenge, the item you'll need to eat is..."
At that exact moment, the two PAs each removed a pair of tongs from their pocket, uncovered their tray, and placed the item on our plates.
"...A human heart."
I gasped, and nearly threw up in my mouth, as I saw the disgusting bloody organ lying there on my plate.
"May the best husband win! Goodluck, the game starts... now!"
For a minute, I hesitated, disgusted by the challenge set before me, but then I thought about what was on the line, and saw the arrogant husband immediately biting into his heart, blood pouring down his face.
I hurried to catch up, briefly fumbling my own heart, before chomping into it, and attempting to eat it as fast as I could, as blood sprayed all over my own face.
But the arrogant husband had gotten a head start, and was moving too quickly. No matter how fast I ate it, it was becoming clear that if nothing was done, he would surely beat me..
So, not knowing what else to do…
…I slammed what was left of my heart onto the plate, removed my bib, stood up, and proceeded to tackle the arrogant man out of his seat, sending his heart sliding across the concrete floor.
"What the fuck are you doing, man?" He asked, likely surprised that I was capable of such an act.
"I'm doing what needs to be done for love." I replied, before pummeling him over and over in the face with my fist, as I channeled my innermost frustrations, ranging from the traumatic experience we had just gone through, the arrogant husband’s obnoxious behavior throughout the game, years of belittlement from asshole boss, and my wife and my countless failed attempts at getting pregnant over the years.
I kept pummeling him, until he had completely shut the fuck up, and was simply mumbling incoherent words, his face a bloody pulp, blood bubbling out of his mouth.
I then stood up, walked back to the table, sat down, put the bib back on, and took the last bite of my heart.
"Congratulations, you’ve proved that you'll truly do anything for love, and have won the show! Please remove the loser."
Rather than celebrate, my mind once again returned to my wife, worried about her well being and wondering if she too, had mustered up the courage to eat the heart, and had become the winning wife.
A couple masked production assitants then ran over and dragged the arrogant husband away, as he simply stared at me in shock.
I looked down at my hands, which were still covered in blood, then up at one of the cameras, which was now right up in my face.
“How do you feel?” Phil asked, prompting me to speak to the camera.
But I couldn’t bring myself to speak any words.
I tried to think of something to say, but before I could, a door opened, and the masked PAs grabbed me by the arms and escorted me out of the last room and into an adjacent hallway, which led to a huge set of double doors.
"Winners,” the host said over the hallway’s speakers. “You stand here before us, victorious, each of you on one side of the doors. Now it is time, to find out if the person on the other side… is your partner… and if you both had what it takes, to do anything for love."
I took a deep breath, expecting the worst. Expecting to see the arrogant man’s wife on the other side. After all that.
But when the doors opened, I simply saw…
...My wife, standing there on the other side.
We ran to each other and embraced, both of us missing our ring fingers, littered in scratches, emotionally exhausted, and with faces and hands that were covered in blood.
"Congratulations!" The host continued, "You're the winners of Anything for Love!"
Both crying, we smiled at each other, but our smiles quickly turned into looks of sadness.
We'd won. But at what cost? I wondered, before the thought was overshadowed by that of the once in a lifetime prize that awaited us.
The producer, Phil, then brought us into yet another room, where we met a doctor, his face covered by a surgical mask, and both shook his hand.
"When you two showed up late,” Phil began, “I never thought you'd be the ones to win. But you did. So we stand by our promise. After you return home, you’ll be contacted by the doctor, who will provide you with the guidance and resources to hopefully have a baby of your own. That part, is obviously not guaranteed."
"Thank you." My wife replied, clearly torn by saying those words. “Understood.”
"Thank you." I added, also torn, before realizing that the camera crew didn't follow us into the room with the doctor. "But can I ask, why aren't you filming this part?"
"Oh, our audience only cares about watching the games." Phil replied with a chuckle.
"Audience? But we just filmed it."
"Oh, yeah we were livestreaming the whole time."
"I thought it was just a pilot. Who was watching?"
"The subscribers."
"Who are they?"
"A very small, very privileged group of people, who can't be bothered by pedestrian entertainment. They desire something more... elevated."
"Will this ever be a real show?"
"This? Of course not." Phil laughed, "No one else will ever watch this again. And no one but the small group of contestants and this crew, will ever know of what went on here."
"What happened to the other couples?"
"Oh they're fine. Aside from missing fingers, and being a little physically and emotionally scratched up. We'll do with them exactly what we'll do with you. Drop them off somewhere just far enough away that after we give them their phones back, if they choose to call the police or tell anyone about this place, by the time they come here to investigate, they'll find this factory abandoned, without a trace of what went on here today. The same goes for you. By the way, we better get you ready to go, your car will be arriving any minute now.”
Neither my wife nor myself had the energy to conjure up a reply.
"Thank you again for playing!" Phil said through his mask, "And on behalf of the subscribers, please enjoy your prize!"
He then led us out down a long hallway, through a back door, and into an alley, where a car was waiting to take us away.
"The chauffeur will provide you with your phones upon your arrival."
An hour or so later, the driver pulled over on the side of a highway, and let us off, handing us our phones just as Phil had promised.
But rather than call the police, we just stood there for a while, still horrified by the terrifying experience we had just been put through.
And ultimately… we decided that since we had won, it'd be best to leave it alone.
We hitched a ride back home, and sure enough, about a week later...
...We received a call from the doctor...
...And less than a year after that, my wife gave birth to our baby boy.
Sometimes, I think back to that day, and the terrible games they set before us, and wonder if my wife and I went too far to win…
...But then I look at my newborn son, and all the doubt, all the shame, all the horror, washes away.
And as for the subscribers. Every once in a while, when a car drives suspiciously slow past our house, or I get the feeling that my baby monitor might have just moved on its own, I wonder if they're still watching us, and if this is just the next episode of their reality show.

This is the weekly recap of the 102 monetized posts from Kylea and Joseph "Joe" Gomez of Kylea G Weight loss Journey from 05/05/24-05/11/24.
They have made 609+ monetized posts in 5 weeks.
Disclaimers: I am not a physician, influencer, or paid content creator. I am not affiliated with WW. I am semi-retired from the healthcare field with multiple college degrees. These opinions are my own based on social media content. I wish no harm to Kylea or Joe Gomez.
☎️ If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, please call or text 988 for assistance.
📢 To the perfectionists, Kylea has a habit of heavily editing posts 3+ times and archiving/hiding and deleting posts. I do not have a burner account for Facebook and have not viewed every comment made. She does not post receipts and is secretive about her purchases.
The tagline of Kylea G Weight loss Journey is, "I changed my life with prayer and a playlist of songs. No surgery, no meds. Just Jesus."
Of the 102 monetized posts last week on the topic of faith:
0/102 discussed which version of the Bible she prefers
0/102 revealed her church home, a service she attended online/in person, or how she worships when traveling
0/102 discussed a personal/group Bible study she completes/attends
0/102 were a favorite scripture or Bible verse
Of the 102 monetized posts last week on the topic of music:
2/102 referenced music Kylea prefers= an unnamed Taylor Swift song as a clapback to a comment about pizza crust and a drinking buddy anthem duet with Morgan Wallen + Post Malone
Of the 102 monetized posts last week on the topic of health:
0/102 were about intentional exercise
0/102 shared a food, water, or exercise log
0/102 discussed meditation, deep breathing, attending grief group, or therapy for her mental health. (There were references to a mental health care provider that gave her a letter recommending an emotional support animal.)
0/102 shared reputable medical sources for nutrition or weight loss content. (She mentions WW points but does not list a website or how to access their app.)
0/102 shared a recommendation for another weight loss influencer to follow
1/102 shared a source for her recipe (Joe's deceased mother)
13/102 shared a recipe. Shared recipes below.

1. Frozen Pancake Breakfast Sandwiches;
2. Banana Puddin' Protein Overnight Oats,
3. Smothered Crockpot Pork Chops;
4. Trader Joe's Protein Pancakes;
5. Snapple Zero Sugar Peach Tea & Splenda Brown Sugar Marinated Chicken;
6. Dirty Dr. Pepper Protein Ice Cream,
7. Joseph's Lavash Bread Pizza;
8. Lemon Blueberry "Muffin" Cupcakes;
9. Blueberry Sugar-free Oatmeal Waffles;
10. KFC Inspired Bowl;
11. Sara Lee 45 cal French Toast;
12. G Hughes Smoky Mesquite Raspberry Jam Chicken;
13. Lemon Blueberry Greek Baked Yogurt;

⚠️ Disordered Eating- Daily WW Points Consumed (based on monetized content):
Sun 05/05: 10 WW points; Mon 05/06: 11 WW points; Tue 05/07: 7 WW points; Wed 05/08: 7-9 WW points; Thu 05/09: 10-11 WW points; Fri 05/10: 1 WW point; Sat 05/11: 8 WW points;
📢 To our friends at Meta, Kylea can consume up to 30 WW points per day, roll over 4 unused daily points, and consume 28 weekly points. She is clearly underutilizing her daily points and used zero weekly points. This is dangerous and potentially deadly messaging for those on a weight loss journey. 🚨
So what was Kylea's "weight loss content" about? Let's dive into her purchases to find out.
Her subtotal from 05/05/24-05/11/24= $2489.80 est + all applicable taxes, tips, and fees
Her 5-week subtotal from 04/07/24-05/11/24 was $17,133.54 est + all applicable taxes, tips, and fees
🚨 Per Missouri public court records, Kylea Gomez has not satisfied her current medical judgment and is only able to pay $25 per month.
This next section is long due to the volume of purchases. You've been warned...
Weekly Takeout Purchases= $71.73 est + tips;
Sunday 05/05/24 Mexican Takeout Salad with chips/salsa= $15 est + tip (no proof she went with friends);
Monday 05/06/24 Iced/Blended coffee: $8 est + tip (no proof she went with a friend);
Tuesday 05/07/24 Carafe of coffee at unknown restaurant= $5 est + tip (no food shown or proof sister was present); Blended Coffee= $8 est + tip;
Wednesday 05/08/24 Htea0 Happy Hour Drink for 2 + fruit upcharge for 1= $3.25 est;
Thursday 05/09/24 Pineapple Bliss for 2= $6.98 est + tip;
Friday 05/10/24 Blended coffee= $8 est + tip; Wendy's Large Sprite Zero= $2.50 est,
Saturday 05/11/24 Unknown breakfast for Joe= $15 est + tip;
🚨 These additional shopping/travel expenses do NOT reflect her rent, utilities, phone, 2 car payments, etc.
Additional shopping/travel expenses= $2418.07 + all applicable taxes, tips, and fees
⚠️ CBD aka Shopping Addiction: Most of the purchases were for a future puppy.
Monday 05/06/24 Breeder fee for female Cavapoo puppy= $1000 est + fees (breeder unknown); Outward Hound Multi-color Squeaker Ballz Fetch Toy 4-pack= $4.99 est; Outward Hound Blue Whale Big Mouthz Interactive Plush Toy with Treat Ball= $9.99 est, Outward Hound Chicken Roperz Plush Squeak Dog Toy= $11.81 est; Silicone Collapsible Food & Water Bowl= $8.99 est; Plush Oyster Shell with Pearl Dog Toy= $6.99 est; Peppa Pig Squeak & Crinkle Plush Dog Toy= $19.99 est; Pally Paws Butterfly Squeaker & Crinkle Dog Toy= $14.99 est; Woven Dog Bone-shaped mat= $9.99 est; Woven beach bag with pawprints= $19.99 est; Grey fleece blanket= $19.99 est;
Tuesday 05/07/24 *Possible Target Women's Cowgirl Boot Grid Graphic T-shirt= $12.99; Chaco ZX/2 Women's Cloud Sandal in Candy Sorbet= $105 est; Vibrant Life Playful Buddy Emoticon XS 5 count Dog toys= $5.12; Nylabone Puppy Starter Pack-up to 25lbs= $7.57; Nylabone Power Chew Textured Dental Chew Toy Chicken Medium/Wolf-up to 35lbs= $4.97; Vibrant Life Tug Buddy Rope Multi-color= $1.98; Custom Dog Tag for Birdie= $5.99 est; Two Jessica Simpson Pet Dresses= $30 est; Personalized baby blanket for Birdie (Amazon)= $19.99 est;
Wednesday 05/08/24 Roundtrip Gas Joplin, MO to Tulsa, OK= (224mi/33mpg) x $3.85 est = $26.13 est; Costco Skinny Dipped PB Cups= $25.94 est; Costco Deebee's Freezie Pops= $22.75 est; Trader Joe's Frozen Roasted Corn x 8 bags= $40 est; Additional Costco & Trader Joe's purchases= unknown; *Pawdre T-shirt for Joe= $10.99 est; Dog Treat container= $25 est; Patchwork Pet Snuggler White Claw themed plush dog toys= $9.99 est; Smoochy Pet Pals Cheeseburger & French Fry themed plush dog toys= $15 est; Armor All Hammock Style Back Seat Cover= $10 est; Black Dog Bone Mat= $5.99 est; 3 Dog bath towels= $14 est;
Thursday 05/09/24 Alani Nu 12oz Energy Drink Pink Slush for 2= $4.96 est;
Friday 05/10/24 Approx. 72 cupcakes= $41.91 est (Walmart online price used); Mani/Pedi= $75 est + tip;
Saturday 05/11/24 Coleman SaluSpa Air Jet Inflatable Hot Tub in Grey= $609.00 (Amazon price); iCrate 2-door folding black crate= $36.79 est; Kong Blue Puppy Binkie Pacifier Dog Toy= $8.99 est; Kong Pink Puppy Natural Teething Rubber Toy= $7.49 est; Lamb Chop Puppy Plush Regular 10"= $15.90 est; Remy+Roo Small Spring Dog Bandana 4-pack Kathrine Set= $23.95 est; Hubulk Pink Pet Dog Bowl Set with food scoop and Non-Skid Silicone Mat= $9.99 est; MidWest Homes for Pets Deluxe Dog Bed in Grey= $16.99 est; Beirui Cute Little Girl Dog Collar, Harness, and Leash Set= $27.99 est; 3 pack of Blankets Super Soft Fluffy Premium Fleece= $11.99
🤔 Final Thoughts 🤔
Kylea showed her narcissistic greed posting triggering content all week without disclaimers or warnings in clear violation of Meta policy on explicit content and tragedy & conflict. If that is not enough to demonetize and deplatform her, her obvious signs of disordered eating should. Her messaging is dangerous, potentially deadly, and I, for one, ask our friends at Meta to review her content and take action.
All info from Reddit. ✌️

I just returned from 3 weeks in Vietnam and wanted to go over what I packed in case it helps someone else. The trip was primarily sightseeing in towns/cities. One thing to keep in mind was temperature- it was a heatwave with daily temps averaging around 101 + humidity🥵. That meant changing clothes more than normal (even for SEA) each day so I brought extra tops and did laundry daily . I used laundry sheets cut into smaller sizes + a small wet bag for laundry and that worked great. Another thing specific to my trip was that I needed a second smaller bag I could use for a 2 night hiking/camping excursion.
Bag(s): Gregory Alpaca 40 duffel backpack. Able to use it as carryon flying Singapore Airlines, vietjet, and air Asia without issue. Comfortable, easy to use and Extra room for souvenirs! Final weight was 8.5 kg. On the way there. Heavier on the way back because of stuff bought along the way.
North face fuse box backpack (18L) - personal item for random stuff - snacks, change of clothes for overnight train etc. but brought primarily for camping/hiking trip.
Actual daily bag/purse was a Lululemon belt bag - perfect size and not too heavy in the heat for daily use. I have a small mirrorless dslr camera that I carried on a strap separately when sightseeing. (For more hiking outdoors active trips I usually bring a Patagonia 8L sling bag to hold water and camera.)
Eagle creek lightweight compression cubes used for space and organization - including for toiletries
Clothes: 3 light cotton gauze tops (2 off white and one black/green striped) - dried quickly and were the perfect weight for the heat. 2 merino wool tees - not worn at all because of heat. 3 Patagonia capilene tees - worn constantly - no athletic clothes smell and easy to wash. 1 lightweight tissue cotton/linen blend long sleeve button up - never worn because of heat but I have worn the same shirt during other SEA trips with normal heat temps and recommend under normal conditions. 2 linen dresses - only wore 1 dress and should have left the other home. 3 pairs linen pants - only wore 2 (black & navy) of 3. 1 black lightweight hiking pants (paskho brand) - wore these daily for activities/touring/walking around during the day. Quick dry and great pockets. 1 linen short - worn 3x and didn’t really need them. Mostly worn because I brought them.
8 pairs of underwear (quick dry) - I only needed 5 with all the laundry I was doing. 5 bras - I only wore the 3 quick dry bras, others were too hot. 4 pairs no show sock - lol! Way too hot to wear.
I also had 1 Cotton gauze kaftan/cover up and 1 swimsuit used almost daily; 1 straw hat that was amazing and used daily (Sunday afternoon Havana hat); lightweight pashmina scarf (for overnight train rides and 16 hr flights); 1 cooling towel for neck (amazon - an inspired last second impulse purchase!)
Toiletries: Solid conditioner bar with matador bag - worked amazingly on my 3c curls. Solid deodorant. 3 travel size hair gel - never used. I kept my hair in Dutch braids only due to humidity. 5 travel sunscreen (spf 70 is hard to find and I’m pale af). Sunbum travel face stick spf 50- a favorite. Tiny and easy to apply. Bar soap (100 senses) - loved this for face and body/shaving and shampoo. Razor + blades. 3 travel bug spray (100% deet) - I’m a mosquito magnet but heat killed them off - yay! Travel toothbrush/tooth paste. Decanted makeup - only used mascara. Makeup would have melted off immediately. First aid stuff in a small pouch. Sheet masks - a small luxury post sun/heat. these feel great at the end of the day.
Shoes: allbird tree skippers - lightweight and good for walking but only wore on the plane/train due to heat. Keen rose hiking sandals - worn daily. Sorel flat sandals - worn at night for dinner and pool. Not totally necessary but husband and I planned a few nicer nights out where keens didn’t really work.
Overall there are definitely things I could have cut and I’m not sure what I was thinking with all the pants 😂 but as a former massive over-packer I’m pretty happy with myself.

Hey everyone! Just in case you don’t remember or don’t know, let me give you a recap of the last entry. I was on the dark web watching gore vids as I do, saw that the cameraman was being a baby, complained, was forced to off an animal and now have to show the video of me doing that to a violent crazy. There was some stuff in between but that’s the gist. If you want the full context be my guest and click here.
I decided to stop being a pussy and go out into the living room. This guy had made the effort to gain my cousin’s trust enough to invite them over. Okay, maybe that wasn't the most impressive because he was a dumbass, but still. The point was that if they made the effort to do that, they probably wouldn't go serial killer mode on me while he was around. They could have shown up late at night like I expected, but they didn't, they wanted to blend in.
I walked in as they were starting a shitty action movie and sipping lean. Brick turned to me with surprise, drink.
“What you need?” he asked, already slouching.
“Nothing, I just wanted to hang out with you guys!” I tried to sound excited but it was hard to hide my pain.
An awkward silence filled the room as he contemplated if I was serious.
“Oh, alright, I don't know if you’ll like the movie we’re watching but you can join.”
I sat next to him for the first time in months and a few minutes into the movie with his commentary I started to miss when I was cleaning the cat’s corpse.
“Heh, this guy has zero brain cells! How does he not know that the dude with him is a spy?” he chuckled, and me and his friend looked straight at each other from across the couch.
His friend was quiet for the most part along with barely making a dent in their lean. Throwing out a few admittedly funny jokes and focusing on the film. It was a pretty normal night but I knew that wouldn't last long.
“That actress looks like a girl I dated back in New York. This Dominicana, we had a lot of good times, ended over petty shit though.” his friend pointed at the screen, chewing some cinnamon gummies. Shredding five of them in a matter of seconds with their sharp teeth.
“Woah dude, sorry, bet she was bad as…” Brick fell asleep mid-sentence.
I awkwardly eyed him to make sure that he was still alive.
His friend cranked up the volume on the TV and turned to me as the ads played.
“Not sure if you knew this but your brother can’t handle his purple.” they grinned, the screen reflecting in their brown eyes. The effects of lean had hit Brick like his namesake and he completely blacked out.
“Good thing his stubborn ass is set on proving he can.” they chuckled while getting up to close the blinds. They were exactly what I pictured when I heard their voice.
“Now show me the goods, kid, I want a peek before the rest of the crew sees it. I promise your bro won’t be getting up with how potent the shit is.”
I nodded as we went into my room and I pulled out my computer.
“Why didn't you spike his drink with something that would work faster?”I questioned while typing my password.
“If I did that then he’d get suspicious about why he passed out so suddenly. He’s not the brightest but he’s smart enough to know shit like that’s weird. It was best to let the syrup do the work for me.”
“Huh, surprised he has the cognitive skills for that.” I half-joked, putting on the video. The pressure was on, I was pretty sure I did a good job initially but watching it back I saw all the flaws. It was surreal seeing them nod their head and squint at sections like they were a teacher looking over a paper. Sure I reacted similarly but seeing it on another person’s face put it in perspective.
“So?”
They moved their tongue in their mouth and shook their head.
“Gonna be real, that was pretty basic.”
The color on my face flushed out as my semblance of a smile faded.
“I was gonna show it to my boys but I already know that they’ll turn this down.”
They got up, pulling two daggers out of their pockets.
“Wait are you serious man? Not even gonna give me a shot!” I put my hands up, subtly scooting further from them.
“Me giving you the chance to make this was you’re shot! So let’s get this over with, eye first.” they pointed with one of the blades, lunging at me. I rolled away and grabbed my bat from under my bed narrowly evading a stab.
“Oh come on!” I groaned with frustration, in truth, I was scared shitless but I would die before I let that show.
“Sorry, I refuse to waste anyone’s time, and don’t even THINK about running!” they screamed at me while putting one weapon in their mouth and pulling my hair. I swung my nail bat at their knee and they bit down, grabbing even more of my hair.
“You little shit!” they spat, slashing the arm I was holding my bat in. I bit my lip and breathed through my nose, still holding on. I smacked them in the legs twice, hoping the metal broke through their skin. They turned their head and spat one of the daggers out away from their face before falling to the floor. I kicked them in the side of the head and stood on their back. Raising it above them, it was going to hit when they slashed my heel.
I screamed, still bringing down the bat. They moved over and threw me off as I did, preventing it from slamming into their head. It was the most pain I’d felt and I held the urge to puke as I stood, swinging it into their stomach. They coughed and threw their sweaty beanie at my head. I gagged instantly as they ran at me like a bull, head-butting my torso. We fell to the floor as my bat rolled out of my hand. I panicked, trying to retrieve it, but they pulled me away from it with every attempt. Pulling themselves higher up on my body so my eyes met their neck and holding down both my arms. The handle of their blade, back in their mouth. With no other options, I kicked my legs beneath them. Kneeing them in the groin multiple times which they seemed to ignore.
“You asshole!” I growled, hating how small my voice was in comparison to theirs. I shouted but they placed a free hand over my mout and moved my dominant arm. I bit on their hand as they brought my thrashing limb closer to their face. I flailed it while doing everything I could to fight off their grip, but ultimately it didn't do shit. They stabbed right through my palm.
“FUCK!” I yelled, muffled by their skin.
My heart raced as the blood poured out and their face was inches from it, blade still in mouth. They removed the dagger from their mouth and pulled it from my hand with little regard.
“You know, I got some respect for the fight you put up,” they began with a tone that was strangely genuine. They remained on top of me but stopped holding down my now bleeding arm.
“Now, you are either gonna comply and let me kill you nicely, or I knock you out and take you somewhere where I can flay your skin.”
I nodded yes despite not wanting to.
“Good, now hold still-”
I tried to push myself up and they clicked their tongue, shoving me back down.
“I said hold still!” they reprimanded, bringing the knife closer to my face. I lashed more and they sunk part of their blade into my chest. At that point, I was seriously thinking I was going to die. In a final attempt, I strained against the pain and tried to grab my bat which they promptly threw from me. The fear of death overcame me as my heart raced faster than I knew it could. My eyes flickered and I thought back to how stupid I was for getting into this. I was sure I wasn't making it but the whole time I couldn't accept my death. I squirmed and screamed as the blade inched closer and they plunged their nails into the wound on my chest. Dodging each direct swing at my face until they used their bitten hand to clasp my face. Their grip on my jaw tightened, and they forced me to stare at them in their firey brown eyes. At that point, I was sure I was fucked. My movement settled as their blade made its way up to my eye. I was sure they’d stab me through one of my sockets, but they stopped. There was a long pause between us, only the sounds of the loud TV in the room audible.
They slowly looked at me up and down, gradually moving away. I was tempted to try to fight but I knew that was asking for death. They got off me, holding an arm out to help me up. The silence continued, but their irritated mumble made me hesitantly grab it.
“What are you-”
“Let me talk first,” they interrupted before I could ask.
“The video you made was pretty basic and it's clear you don’t have a lot of experience, but goddamn did you try.” they smiled, lifting me up. They walked back out to the living room. I limped behind them, suspicious of their positive attitude.
“Maybe you just caught me on a good day, but I think that someone like you shouldn't be taken this early.” they unzipped the bag they brought, taking out a medical kit.
“You remind me of myself when I was your age, a scrappy kid who’d seen way too much and got caught in shit as a result.” we walked into the bathroom, and they sat me on the closed toilet. Washing their hands before taking out some gauze. The whole situation was bizarre, seconds ago they tried to kill me, and now they were patching me up.
“Regardless, you shouldn't continue down this path. Take this as a warning, you will not be as lucky the next,” they cautioned applying rubbing alcohol. I winced as it dried up my injury.
“So, you're not killing me because I fought hard? I don’t get it, you kill people all the time, and some of them try to fight back.” I pointed out.
“That’s different, those victims are just that, victims, you are something more than that. To be honest, when I showed up didn't intend to kill you or propose a deal, I was hoping that being there at all would scare ya off, 'cause no kid should be watching murder.” They admitted, wrapping my hand.
“Unfortunately, you are even more stubborn, than your bro and I could tell that if I didn't do more you’d keep fucking around until you found out.”
It was believe what I was hearing.
“So this whole thing was your method to shooting me away?”
They nodded, grabbing a patch.
“Yeah, now do I have permission to pull up your shirt to patch the wound on your chest? Or do you think you can do it yourself and want me to turn around?”
I was surprised they were making an effort to accommodate me.
“Uh no it's fine, I don’t have anything there to hide. Even though I probably should.” I felt a bit embarrassed admitting that out loud.
“Hey don’t shit on yourself there is nothing wrong with how you look, besides I think you got more pressing problems than any body dysmorphia. Like, ya know, being a gore fiend.” their tone was light yet stern.
“Anyway, I hope this teaches you to stop getting involved. Something similar happened to me, and trust me the world doesn't need more people like myself.”
I was amazed at how they’d suddenly become so wise.
“Okay, I get the point of your painful PSA, but does that mean that you never intended to show the video?”
They pulled my shirt back down.
“I mean yeah,”
A smile slowly spread across my face and they furrowed their brow.
“Put that shit-eating grin away, I’m not taking you deeper down the rabbit hole.” They snarled, disinfecting my heel.
“Okay, well I guess I’ll just have to make another video and submit it elsewhere.”
They groaned, trashing the bloodied cotton ball.
“Have you learned nothing?” they grit their teeth, cutting more gauze.
“Look, I’ve been deep in for years. I know the danger, and I’m pretty shaken right now. But let’s be honest if you don't let me get involved under your supervision I’ll just go elsewhere”
I shrugged, I sounded dumb but I didn't care.
“Are you fucking kidding me! Kid, I could have killed you! That ass-whooping was me going easy on you!”
I sighed, trying to shift my bitch face to puppy eyes.
“I know the risks and as admittedly terrifying as it was, it was also exciting! Plus, if you help me train I could learn to better defend myself! Don’t you trust yourself over some random?”
Their face was cold but I could see the slightest sparks of warmth behind their eyes.
“Ugh, I can’t believe I’m agreeing to a dark web babysitting gig,” they muttered, wrapping my bandages.
“So, yes?!” I squealed with a bit too much excitement.
“Yes but if we’re doing this you gotta play by my rules. First, you work with my schedule. I drive you and control when you show up. If you can’t make it we got someone else who can do the job, but you can’t deal with this stuff without me.”
I found the first rule a little irritating but I knew I’d likely fuck up without them.
“Second, you can’t post any videos or photos of your work.”
I nodded, it was a given, though since they never said anything about writing about it… Well, here you are reading it you nosy freak.
“Lastly, under no circumstance are you to disobey me. We can disagree on things but if you go against me when I’m doing something for your good…”
They leaned in close and pulled my shirt.
“We will have an issue. Got it?”
“Yeah, I got it, now back up your breath smells like artificial sugar and red dye 40.” I winced as they pulled away.
“Whatever you look like you shower annually.” They snarled.
“Okay, I agree to your terms.” I held out my fist and we fist-bumped to seal the deal.
“Ight, I'm gonna head out now, check your DMs on our website, it’ll give ya more details.”
I tried to get up but my leg still hurt and I struggled to stand. They clicked their tongue and held out their arms.
“Need help?”
“Yeah, thanks to you dickhead.”
They scoffed and picked me up, placing me in my bed.
“Good luck getting better, you’ll probably need it.”
They tucked the blanket over me and left.
The next day I limped out of bed, to find that as expected, my brother left before I woke up. Though, for once, he cleaned up the trash from the night before. It was a weekend so I just spent my time recovering from my injury. Luckily the aid kit in our bathroom still had all its supplies so I was able to change out my bandages regularly. I reflected a lot on life and started to appreciate that I was still standing, well more like leaning but you get it. Being that close to death, while exhilarating looking back, also instilled a new sense of fear in me.
I had been surrounded by death for so long that I forgot how scary the concept of never coming back was. I’d seen it happen to others on such a regular basis it lost its meaning, but almost experiencing it put things in perspective. Hell, I didn't even go on any gore real or fictional the whole weekend. It was bizarre, it’s probably hard for people to understand what it felt like so I’ll use an analogy everyone should get. Not watching any visible death media for two days was like going without underwear. Technically you don’t need it and sometimes you even forget why it being gone matters, but then you move around in your jeans too much and you miss it. Is that probably not a fair comparison? Yeah, but whatever I think most can agree going commando leaves you uncomfortable, especially when you dwell on it.
When Monday rolled around I didn't want to go to school, but my brother would get a call and throw a fit if I ditched so I went. Wearing fingerless red gloves to hide the stab through my palm. Managing to remember to pack the sweater that Abdul let me borrow right before I left. I sat in my usual spot and left out one of my tees for him to sit on so he wouldn't have to make contact with whatever ungodly germs were there.
“Wait, are you being,” he paused as he took a seat on the spot I’d laid out for him.
“Considerate?” he feigned shock, setting down his backpack.
“Please, I’m just being decent enough to not give you a seat that’ll give you five diseases.”
He shrugged, running his hand through his loose curly hair.
“Still pretty sweet by your standards.”
I rolled my eyes, quickly shoving his sweater back into his arms.
“You can have your ugly not-Christmas sweater back.”
He chuckled, holding it out in front of him for a moment.
“Thanks, and while I don’t think it's ugly, I’ll let you hold onto it.”
He handed it back to me with a smile so warm I thought I’d pass out.
“Why? I can afford stuff.”
“It’s not about that, I just feel like letting you have it, the colors fit with the other stuff you wear. Plus, I know you DIY your clothes a lot and I think you could make it look cooler than I could.”
I looked at it, and then back at him. He was so damn sweet it made me internally panic. How could someone this nice be talking to me? I couldn't help but think back to how I got my ass kicked Friday but was now with the human version of honey.
“Hello?” he waved his hand in front of me, snapping me out of my frozen state.
“I am so lucky to be alive with you.” I blurted out with way less hesitation than I should have.
His expression shifted to one of confusion and concern. My eyes widened as I began to fold and put the sweater away.
“Wow, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable I just-”
“I’m lucky to be alive with you too.” he cut me off, stopping me dead in my tracks. We sat in silence for a second, both waiting for the other to say something.
“Listen, I know I’m the first person who’s given you a chance in a while. You’ve been an outcast at this school for as long as you’ve been here and even if you kinda do it on purpose it’s not fair to you.” he opened up, once again reading me as easily as a picture book.
“I know you're going through a lot you can’t explain and I’m not going to force that out of you.” he continued, leaning in a bit closer.
“But Utsidihi, I meant it when I said I want you as a friend, and if you haven't heard it today, your life matters. Anyone who gave you a fair chance would be happy you’re here.”
I went stiff, I had not expected to hear those words. Ever.
“Okay, seriously why are you being so damn nice.” I laughed cause I was scared that if I didn't I’d cry like a little bitch.
“You seemed pretty upset last time I saw you, and it didn't take me long today to see that you probably needed to hear that. I just care about you alright? It’s not deep.” He calmly explained, I held back some tears and zipped up my bag.
“Well, you were right.” I smiled, taking in the moment. It’s mushy and pathetic, I know, but I hadn't had someone tell me something like that in years. I know I sound like a fucking loser but hey it's the truth.
“Seriously though, thank you, Abdul. That means a lot to me.”
He nodded, and we moved on to something else after giving ourselves a moment to process. I felt my body relax the further we got into our conversation. Since the start of my physical recovery, I’d been on edge. Being with him calmed me down from my shoulders slumping to my overall state of mind. The rest of the day was pretty normal, apart from my Algebra teacher yelling at me for falling asleep in class. Hell, I didn't even watch any gore when I got home! I mean, the urge was there but suppressing it was easier than I first expected. I even went to bed at 10:30 which I rarely do. I started to wonder if this was what being a “normal” teenager was like. All the basic stuff in my life without the leering images of murder in my head and on my screen. It almost felt nice being average. Almost being the keyword.
The next day wasn't noteworthy, but the night was. I had a nightmare I hadn’t gotten in a while. I was seven years old again, my dad was driving me back from school, and my mom sat next to me in the back seat. They said they were proud of me for how good I’d been. I was back in my seven-year-old mindset so I didn't think that someone being proud of me was strange. I hugged my mom, closing my eyes. She wrapped her arms around me tightly.
“You’ll never leave me, right mama?” I asked her.
“Of course not, you are my baby.” her voice turned distressed, and I felt her shiver. I pulled away, opening my eyes despite knowing what was coming. She was there against the wall, stomach slashed open and braids cut off. I started screaming, running in search of my dad, and I found him in the same state.
“No!” I woke up sobbing, globs of tears running down my face. I felt like shit, shaking under my blanket. I held onto a stuffed toy I had, wishing there was someone there to hold it. The scariest part of the dream was that it wasn't just a dream, it was a memory. My parents did get slashed open in front of me when I was seven, and before it happened, I had to see them cut both their hair. I started running my fingers through the long side of my hair, it was meant to settle me but I just felt even shitter. They were the one death that truly meant something to me, not just because they were my first, but because they’re the only people I’ve truly loved.
My heart started racing, I just wanted the pain to go away. I wanted someone to tell me that as horrible as what I saw was, that it wasn't that bad. I mean people die all the time, sometimes they don’t deserve it, but sometimes they don’t. It would be great if there were just situations where it didn't matter. Where it was like a death scene in a movie, it means something but you can make it mean nothing to you. As I wished for that case where you could mindlessly witness death, I remember that it existed. Even brutal murders could mean nothing if you let them. Maybe they were still tragedies to some, but they wouldn't lead to sleepless nights.
“They do exist,” I muttered to myself under my breath, before turning on my laptop. It took me a second to mentally adjust to seeing gore again, for a few minutes it made me feel like a bigger piece of shit, but I soon remembered why it helped me. I know trivializing it is wrong, but if I didn't then how else was I supposed to live? I mean everyone does it, each second you live happily someone is suffering from a fate worse than death, but as a society, we accept that and focus on our lives. Why? Because if we did we’d never find joy in anything! After going through my favorite videos I started to feel better. My spirits lifted and my appreciation for guts and blood renewed, I decided to go back to the site that led me to the craziness of the last week. I noticed a notification in my chat box on the gore site my cousin’s friend found me on.
“Hey sorry it took a minute, we had to move locations. I’m giving you one more chance to back out of this cause I guarantee it’s gonna fuck you up more. I’d much rather you get some goddamn therapy than hang with me or any of the even weirder people here.”
I contemplated how to respond. The message was fresh which meant they’d likely respond soon. I thought about how pleasant it was to live kinda normally, hanging with Abdul and mainly worrying about grades. But then, I thought about how much I’d have to start unpacking if I wanted to go down the path of normalcy, and how it would be impossible without snitching on myself. I guess it's wrong to call myself damaged goods but if that was an accurate description for anyone it was me. Besides, this was an opportunity to live a life that so few did successfully! Being under the wing of someone who knew the ropes of this stuff! It would probably get me killed but it would at least be a more interesting ride than a long slow life of sinking into depression. Risk and excitement? Or regret and monotony? Yeah, I knew what to pick.
“I’m still interested, got a schedule?” I waited in bated breath for a few minutes, worrying I’d missed my shot, but they hit me back.
“Yeah, next Friday, I’m picking you up after you get home. Get some good rest till then, you’ll need it.”
My face lit up, was it scary? Hell yes! Was I excited FUCK YEAH! No matter what happened next, I knew it would make it worth the risk for the thrill alone.

Joy
“Please don’t do this to me! I’ll die out there!” Tiffany crumpled to the floor, phone shaking against her ear.
A gruff voice crackled. “I’m sorry Tiffany, our runner in your area got caught on his latest delivery. My other guy barely made it back. He saw Jimmy get hauled into the van. They’ve probably torn him apart by now.”
“Please…I don’t have any food left in the house. I’ll never make it out there. They’ll spot me immediately.”
“Listen, listen Tiff. It’s going to be OK. Listen to me alright? There’s a shop one block away from you.”
“I can’t!”
“You have to! OK, all you have to do is get in and get out. Put on the darkest sunglasses you have. You have shades right?”
Tiffany glanced up to the cabinet. Her terrified face reflected at her through the polarized lenses. “Uh-huh”
“That’s good, that’s real good. Now you put those on and grab enough food for a week while I find a replacement runner OK?”
“O-OK”
“And Tiffany?”
“Remember to smile, smile as wide as you can and never drop it. You know what happens if they suspect…”
“I know, thanks Mark.”
Tiffany hung up the phone with a shuddering exhale. She stood up and looked herself over in the mirror. A terrified blonde woman stared back, eyes wide with fear.
She wiped her tears and smoothed out her locks. She grasped her oversized sunglasses with trembling hands and put them on. She bent over, adjusting them carefully to ensure no trace of her eyes could be seen.
Glancing down, she looked over her list of food. Enough for a week…get in, get out…and smile.
Before turning to leave, she smiled into the mirror. The upturned mouth seemed almost foreign to her; she hadn’t laughed since everyone had been Torn. There weren’t many of her left in the world; the Joyous reigned supreme.
She stretched her smile as wide as it could go, until her cheeks strained with the effort. Exhaling through her teeth, she grasped the handle. The doorknob shook from her grip. Get it together…in and out…
She twisted the knob and threw the door open.
An eyeless face sprang up to meet her.
Tiffany screamed and jumped back.
“Oh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you!”
Tiffany clutched her heaving chest, trying to calm herself. The woman standing in on her stoop had no eyes, only dark, empty sockets each gleaming with a glowing pinprick of light. An enormous smile spread from ear to ear.
Tiffany forced words from her paralyzed mind. “Oh, it’s alright, I was just about to get some shopping done!”
The woman stared unblinking with her flickering pits. She lifted a newspaper. “I saw this blow over onto the street, so I thought I’d bring this little ol’ newsie inside!” She let out a raucous laugh.
Tiffany accepted the paper, praying she looked relaxed. She took a quick glimpse at the headline.
Joy! New York Mayor Declares City over 99% Pure on 1-Year Anniversary!
“Aww, I see you have just been Freed. Congratulations dear. How do you like the colors?” The woman bent her head closer to Tiffany’s face. Her heart hammered in her throat as her eyes were drawn to the woman’s scars. Black lines spider webbed all across her body, down her arms, over her face, and plunged down her low cut shirt. “Aw, I remember when I was freed; I didn’t really have scars either. I found a great doctor who touched me up; I can share his number with you!” She lifted her neck, showing off her scars wrapped around her throat.
“Yes, the colors they’re so…beautiful. Yeah…the doctors said I was one of the lucky ones, guess tough skin runs in the family.” Tiffany tried to laugh as she spoke.
The woman leaned back; her smile somehow widening even more. “Ah! Tragic! Stay safe y’hear? A naughty somebody escaped the hospital recently, ah, there he is now. Isn’t he silly?” She pointed to the distance.
Tiffany turned her head in the direction of her arm. Her heart sank to her stomach.
The street rose in an incline. The distant figure of a man climbed into sight at the crest of the hill. His sandy hair was unmistakable.
Tiffany lifted a trembling hand to her mouth. Jimmy?
Jimmy was naked with blood pouring in rivets all down the front of his torso. As she squinted, she realized that Jimmy’s body wasn't moving; it hung limp, limbs dangling in the air. Her darting eyes widened as she saw his legs hovered off the road.
Four thick tendrils pulsated out of Jimmy’s gaping mouth. The dark trunks spilled out onto the ground, suspending his frame in midair. The shadowy pillars supported his body like makeshift legs. Jimmy lolled back and forth as the inhuman limbs propelled him down the hill like a beast.
Tiffany’s stomach churned in knots as he careened down the street. He couldn’t speak but his bulging eyes darting all around spoke all that was needed. Her gaze adhered to the incomprehensible stalks that moved of their own accord. The tentacles shimmered and writhed all over, smaller tendrils branching off, thrashing independently of one another.
Right as he passed Tiffany, he tripped and skidded to the ground. The husks all around her burst into raucous laughter at the sight of it clamoring back up.
The woman doubled over in giggles. “Ooh, you silly goose, don’t even know what’s good for ya!”
Jimmy’s chest bloated and bubbled. The bulge traveled up his throat, extending it to an inhuman width. A horrid squelching erupted as two pink sacs attached to tubes slithered out of his mouth, traveling along the lengths of the trunks. Tiffany could barely support her own weight at the sight of Jimmy’s lungs pulsating in frantic breaths.
Her horrified gaze watched as the lungs enlarged in a deep breath, a gurgling crescendoing in pitch. They expanded to full size and hung still for an instant. Then exploded in desperate screams.
“HELP ME! PLEASE, I’M ALIVE LIKE YO-”
With the roar of an engine and the screech of tires, a vehicle slammed into Jimmy’s body. A spray of blood rained on Tiffany and the crowd. A white van screeched to a halt just as Jimmy flew through the air, all eight limbs flailing in the wind.
No amount of bracing could prepare Tiffany for the sound of bones crushing as Jimmy landed in a bloody mess on the asphalt. The crowd of husks whooped and hollered. The drivers clambered out of the vehicle and took deep bows, grinning broadly.
Wiping off blood, Tiffany inspected the logo on the van. It displayed two cartoon men each standing on the side of another person. The person was divided into two halves. One side was human with a smiling face while the other was a shadowy figure, screaming in agony. The smiling men each pulled on an arm as if separating the halves.
“Sorry folks! We had a feisty one here, we’ll take care of it from here!” He drew a syringe from his pocket.
“That’s OK! Need a hand?” The woman called back to enthusiastic nods from the crowd. The van driver waved his arm in the direction of Jimmy’s limb body.
Tiffany blinked back burning tears as she watched Jimmy twitch on the ground. The husks closed in around him, laughing as they surrounded him. She wanted nothing more than to just retreat inside and vomit. But an opportunity presented itself.
Streams of people poured out of the shop ahead, drawn to the spectacle on the street. The sidewalks leading up to the store cleared. Her path would never be this open again. Tearing her eyes from Jimmy, she walked as fast as possible to the market, her smile twitching in anguish.
After what felt like hours, she stood at the entrance to the food mart. She moved her jaw around to loosen it, almost flinching as it popped. OK…in and out…then you’re safe. Running over her mental list one last time, she barged inside.
A wave of frigid air washed over her. She scanned the shop, exhaling out a sigh of relief as she confirmed it was mostly empty. Only a mother pushing a stroller joined her in the market.
Tiffany whipped out a shopping cart and sped down aisle by aisle. Eyes darting, she grasped each item on her list as if it were manna from heaven. Her breathing eased as she made it to the other side of the store without incident. A small bit of happiness welled up within her as she looked over her bulging wagon. It was enough to last her two weeks, two blissful weeks of safety. All she had to do was get out.
She strolled to the checkout lane. The mother was in front of her, the groceries crinkling as they were bagged by the cheerful cashier. Tiffany’s knuckles gripped the cart so hard they turned white. Please…just pay and leave…
Tiffany’s heart skipped a beat as the mother twisted her neck to look at her. Empty sockets crinkled as the young woman’s smile widened. “Why hello there! Any idea what the ruckus is out there?” A collective cheer erupted outside in the distance.
Tiffany shook her head, trying to push Jimmy’s battered body out of her thoughts.
She glanced at Tiffany’s cart. “Big haul. You having a party?”
Tiffany nodded, almost forgetting to breathe.
“Am I invited? Where do you live?”
Tiffany gulped. The mother roared with laughter. “Oh dearie me, I’m just kidding you. I’d love to go but this little man down here takes up all my time. Wanna say hi?”
Tiffany nodded again, her cheeks screaming with the strain of her fake smile. The mother lifted the hood of the stroller and wheeled it around, facing Tiffany. An eyeless baby cooed up at her, its sockets nearly taking up half its face. Black scars lined its entire body, lashing its face that carved itself into a wide smile.
Tiffany screamed in terror, flinging herself back.
CLACK!
Light streamed into her eyes as they watered. Time almost stopped as she glanced down at her sunglasses. Shuddering, she looked back up. The mother, baby, and cashier stared at her.
Without taking his sockets off her, the cashier pressed a button on the counter. An intercom crackled to life. “Attention all employees. We have someone in pain over here. Please call the authorities while we restrain her.”
Tiffany threw the cart to the ground, sprinting to the glass double doors. Talon-like fingers dug into her shoulder right as she reached the exit. “NO! PLEASE LET ME GO! PLEASE!”
But the mother just giggled into her ear. “Now why would I do that, sweetie? Don’t worry, we’re going to help you. See? They’re already here to heal you!”
Tiffany’s heart sank into her stomach as she watched the same van that crashed into Jimmy park outside. Two men dressed in scrubs burst out the back, wheeling out a gurney. Her eyes bulged as she gazed at the restraints gleaming cruelly in the morning light.
The smiling men jaunted over to her. Tiffany ground her heel into the mother’s toes; the arms holding her released. She rushed forward to the man on the left, throwing a wild punch in desperation.
To her surprise, her knuckles connected, slamming the man’s head back to its side. Rough hands grabbed her arms by the elbows, jerking them behind her.
The man she’d punched twisted his head back, the unnatural smile still plastered on his face. “Now, now simmer down, young lady. He snatched her kicking feet and lifted her in tandem with the other man.
With inhuman strength, they slammed her onto the gurney. She flailed, straining her limbs against their grasp. Her shoulders popped in their sockets, her screams erupting in pain and fear.
CLICK!
Cold metal clamped down on her right wrist. Three more clicks restrained her completely.
“No, no, no, please! Just let me go! I’ll never bother you again!” Tiffany half screamed and half sobbed.
One man chuckled. “Oops! Gotta make some room!”
She wailed as she watched the men drag Jimmy’s corpse out of the back and toss it on the sidewalk. The doors slammed shut, and the vehicle sped off.
Desperation gave way to despair for Tiffany, she wept bitterly. She gasped as the men wiped away tears on each side of her face. They lifted their fingers to their eyeless pits, staring in wonder at the droplet forming, mouths parted and making soft cooing sounds.
“I remember my last tear, what about you Ted?” The man on her right whispered.
The man on the left nodded, sucking his finger. “Yeah…I almost miss the taste.” They both roared in laughter at the same time.
The van jolted to a halt. The men flung the doors open. “Don’t worry missy, it will all be over soon!”
She shook her head, pleading for anyone she passed to help her as she was wheeled into the hospital. All she received were condescending smiles, and pats on the hand. She was sped into an operating room. Her eyes widened in terror at the sight of the tearing chair.
A medical bed lay in the middle of the chamber. A bar of light hung at the bed’s foot. The bar crossed over the width of the bed, attached to a track that ran along the length from the bottom to the top. Her heart sank. She’d expected cutting instruments but the lack of them frightened her even more.
A grinning doctor finished washing her hands in the nearby sink, pulling latex gloves on. “Oh dearie me, look at this poor soul. It’s been a while since I’ve gotten freed one so large! The gals will take it from here, boys!” The men giggled as they left the room.
Masked women in scrubs burst from the doors to assist. Even behind the masks, their smiles were visible. They all carried scissors. Within seconds, they snipped off all of her clothes leaving her naked in the gurney.
The doctor lifted a syringe, the end dripping with sedative. “Now we need you to be still for this next part sweetie!” She rammed the needle into her hip and thumbed the plunger down. She gasped as the burning liquid clouded into her bloodstream. At once, her extremities deadened, all feeling and control gone.
A pair of arms gripped each of her limbs as she was lifted off the gurney and thrown onto the medical bed. The doctor looked down at her at the foot of the bed, grasping the bar of light. It pulsated in waves of color as she clinked it into place over Tiffany’s feet so that the luminescence only hovered an inch over her skin.
The soles of her feet writhed in agony in the light’s presence. Tiffany screamed at the burning tendrils within her feet. A horrific thought pierced her torment in a single moment of clarity. Something is moving inside me. Using the last vestiges of motor control left, she lifted her head an inch, eyes glued to her feet.
Various ridges rolled around on the tops of her feet, almost as if something flailed to get away from the brilliant light. The doctor traced a finger over the thrashing bulges. “Yes, the time for your last pain draws near, little one. No longer will you torment this young woman. No longer.” She placed both hands on the instrument bar. “Now, I must warn you. This will hurt…more than anything you’ve ever felt in your life. But what awaits you on the other side is…” She laughed.
“Please…” Tiffany whimpered, but the doctor pushed the bar of light up her legs.
Torture. Pure agony. Tiffany screamed to the point she thought her jaw might pop off its hinges. The writhing in her feet intensified, pulling and tearing at her skin…
A spurt of blood spewed over the doctor’s face. “Ah, we’ve crowned!”
“WHAT IS THIS?!” Tiffany screeched as she looked down. Blackened tentacles whipped violently back and forth, sprouting from her feet.
“Oh, it’s the sickness my sweet…it must be purged. Deep breath and here we go!” She pushed the bar of light even further along its track, this time going up her legs.
Molten lines of agony traced themselves up her legs in tandem with the glow. Tiffany’s eyes rolled up into her head and then back down again, casting her world in revolving darkness and light. The skin at her legs tore, thicker tendrils bursting out in viscous spray.
The dark veins slapped at the doctor's face but a smiling nurse grasped the flailing trunks and pinned them down as the doctor pressed on above her knees and up her thighs. Her skin bubbled and burst as the bleeding mass on each limb fled from the light. Tiffany stared transfixed at the monster birthed from her, the spindly body, the erratic, desperate movement of a trapped beast.
The bar stopped just below her groin. “This is probably the worst part dearie, brace yourself.’ She yanked it forward, up to her abdomen.
Tiffany’s voice tore, her throat bleeding raw. She’s never given birth before; the monster springing out from her womanhood made a poor substitute for a child.
“There you go baby. You’re doing so well. Halfway done!”
The instrument slid up her stomach, passing over her arms. The sickness within gripped her organs in a vain attempt to resist being torn out. Strands of obsidian wrested themselves out of her torso only to be collected and restrained by the unflinching nurses. Up her body they all went, up her chest, her shoulders, and on to her neck.
Right at the base of her chin, the bar of light chinked as it came to the end of its track. The beast within Tiffany screeched, straining at the nurses restraints. Forgetting the pain for an instant, Tiffany croaked through torn vocal chords. “What is this thing?”
The doctor wiped blood out of her sockets. “It’s your parasite, what you thought you were. I know it hurts; this thing feeds off pain. Don’t worry. We’re almost done.”
She pivoted two smaller bars of lights up to Tiffany’s head, one on each side. They swung in such a way that they would meet in the middle. Her eyes swiveled independently of each other, as if they too feared the light. The doctor smiled at the erratic movement.
“Oh, yes.” She whispered. “Feel fear. It’s what you deserve; it’s all you deserve.” She grasped each bar and clamped them together.
Blinding pressure built up in Tiffany’s eardrums as if she were being stabbed in each ear with knives aching to meet in the middle. An incessant ringing tingled, building up pitch and intensity until it was all she could hear. Her brain lit aflame, seething at the burning from the sound. “MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!” Her mouth uttered the words, but she couldn’t hear her voice anymore.
Like a cord being unplugged from a speaker, her world fell silent one pull at a time. Black tendrils whipped in her sight as the beast fled from her ear canals. The lights passed in her vision.
The doctor spoke unheard words. She tried to close her eyes, but they weren’t hers anymore. They swiveled all about in their sockets, trying to escape her skull.
But there was no escape, not for a parasite. The lights slammed shut, meeting in the middle right over her. The kaleidoscope of luminescence overtook everything. Her world melded to an ever changing sea of merging lights.
Her thoughts, her consciousness, her very essence whirled in her brain. A dark hole sprouted in her psyche. Her being swirled around the murky depths of her existence spinning to the choreography of the lights pulse. Round and round it went until she thought her last words. Who am I? All grew dark.
—---------
The operating room light blinded Tiffany. She tried to close her eyes but found she had no lids.
She saw the metal tray she lay on.
She saw the black, spindly lengths of her body laying in a tangled heap in the tray.
She saw Tiffany laying on the medical table. What?
Her psyche ran stark with shock as she watched herself sit up from the medical table. Her eyes were gone, replaced with two glowing pits burning in deep sockets. Blood trails criss crossed all over her venous scars. Tears of crimson flowed from her pits as she sobbed into her hands.
No…that’s me? But then…who am I?
She glanced up and received her horrifying answer. An operating mirror hung on the ceiling above her. What she had once thought as herself was now nothing more than a pair of eyeballs attached to a spinal stem with nervous branches tangled and heaped in a small tray.
She was the parasite.
The real Tiffany sobbed, a wide smile stretching across her face. “Colors…so many colors…”
The doctor handed her a pair of sunglasses. “Here, put these on and keep them on for the next couple of weeks. The parasites could only see a thin spectrum of light. You can see all of it now, it’s a bit overwhelming at first but you get used to it.”
The real Tiffany placed the sunglasses on her face then clutched at her chest. “What….what is this feeling? It burns yet…it’s warm all over..”
The doctor knelt at the real Tiffany’s side. “It’s happiness…” She giggled. “Pure happiness, it’s what that parasite over there denied you.” The doctor shot a glare to the nerve bundle that used to be Tiffany.
The real Tiffany released her chest. “How long has it been inside of me?”
The doctor stood up. “We aren’t sure when these parasites fused with humans but it must have been millennia ago. They have been entwined with us so long we even once thought they were part of our bodies. The nervous system, what a cruel joke. These things thrive off of our happiness and only feed us pain in return.”
The doctor shot the nerve bundle a look. Even though she smiled, Tiffany could feel the doctor’s contempt radiating. “Look how pathetic it is. Can’t even move anymore. These things rely on our central brain systems to move. Once separated, they are immobile. It’s rather ironic that they only try to move as we cut into their feeding supply.”
The real Tiffany hugged the doctor who returned the embrace. “Thank you…for freeing me.” The doctor rubbed her back.
They released each other. The real Tiffany looked over at the nerve bundle that used to be her. “What do we do with…it?”
The doctor grasped the nerve bundle unceremoniously in her palm. Wait…no! I’m-I’m me!
“We will cast her into the depths to which she came from of course!” The doctor laughed as she brought the nerve bundle to a trash chute. The nerve bundle glanced down, recoiling in horror. No light graced her final destination.
“Good riddance.” The nerve bundle was released and cast into the void. It landed with a plop amongst the other writhing bundles, rueing the day it ever thought it truly existed.

I wrote this memoir over 3 years ago, after weeks of insomnia and nightmares. I wrote in english, my second language, so my wife won't read it, as she doesn't speak or read english at all. I apologize for any grammar or spelling mishaps.
The Molehill
The death of the Kid affected us all. I don’t even remember his name, none of us did. The same happened to the Firestarter and to the Forgotten Girl. I think we chose to forget their names, hoping it will keep us somewhat isolated from the whole thing. It didn’t. We all changed. It split our time at the Molehill into two periods: Before the Kids’ Death and After the Kids’ Death. And some of those who came AKD were affected, changed too. But it did much worse things to us, to me and my classmates. It took me17 years to write it all down, hoping I could put the past to rest.
It all began in late February or early March, 1999, some weeks BKD. We were in sixth grade at the Molehill. The Kid and the Firestarter were in fifth. This was the year of the reform, and the last year I talked to the Forgotten Girl.
The Molehill is our own name for the school. Formally it was “Special School and Educational Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired”. In other words it was a boarding school for any handicapped kid that had any eyesight problem, at least back in 1990s. We’ve got bullies, problem kids, kids that needed more specialized help due to their mental problems and deficiencies, as long as they had any sight problem, so other schools would not have to deal with them. The Molehill had preschool, primary school, high school, and middle school too, after the reform, and AKD. Most of us started at preschool. Me, three of the four Kamils, Raphael Noodle. Not the Kid, nor the Firestarter. And not the Forgotten Girl. She joined us, if one can call it “joining” at the first grade. Lucas the White, Kamil Chive and Susan came at the beginning of the 3^rdgrade. And me? I’m the fatso, the nerd, the weakling. And I can’t recall any of their faces. Especially the Kid. We all did our best to forget him.
I still remember the day it all began, even though I don’t remember the exact date. It was cold as hell, and we all, the three classes and the teachers, were on the road trip to the Majdanek Concentration Camp, which is situated on the outskirts of Lublin, where I was born and raised, and where Molehill is. The Nazis built it back when they had their big tour around the Europe. They used it to imprison and murder mostlyJewish peoplefrom the region, but there were also some Ukrainians, Roma, Belarusians and Russians. Those prisoners worked the camp fields to grow beats, if I remember the tour lecture correctly, and when they couldn’t work anymore, they were murdered in gas chambers or shot, and their bodies burned in crematorium. The ashes were used as fertilizer for the fields.
My grandfather, when he was barely more than teenager, and bakers’ apprentice, often passed by the camp on his round delivering bread, buns and other pastries riding a horse cart. Few times he had thrown loafs of bread to the prisoners over the fence, but one day Nazi guards spotted him doing that and wanted to shoot him dead on the spot. My grandfather pissed himself, when they pointed their guns at him. They didn’t do it only because they had no idea, what to do with a horse and a cart full of bread. After that he never did anything like that again, and changed his route to be as far from the fence, as possible. He told this story to my father, who told me.
It’s hard to comprehend the monstrosity of it all when you’re reading it in history book or watching a show on Discovery Channel. But when you visit such a place, when you see it with your own eyes, it affects you sometimes. And sometimes it doesn’t. For some people it’s still a joke or a fiction. Or a boring road trip to a boring place.
As I mentioned, it was cold as hell, there were three classes, the 5^th, the 6^th, and the 7^th. And few teachers. Classes in Molehill are small, usually less than 10 kids. It takes much more effort to teach kids with poor eyesight, or no sight at all, or those that are also mentally deficient. What a nice term, “mentally deficient”, it can cover so many things, and yet not explain any to outsiders. There was Mathew in our class for a time, he was mentally deficient, he had an IQ of rotten turnip, was very aggressive, and our class teacher, an old bitch who panicked and left the class one time in 2^ndgrade when Duckman sneezed his glass eye out, didn’t know how to handle such “mentally deficient” student, so she taped him to the chair one day. After that he left Molehill for some place better suited for him. There was Michael, he was slow too, but not that slow. He became a gardener for the city. There was also Adrian, who had some neurological problems that caused surgeons to cut into his brain. Our math teacher once had shown us that because of this Adrian can’t walk and count aloud at the same time.
I’m wandering off the topic. I’m sorry. AKD we never talked about it, and even writing this down after so many years is hard. But it needs to be written down, just for the record, if nothing else. And there are so many related memories that I’m uncovering like some archaeologist of my own mind. Long forgotten fossils of some good times, and some bad times. Mostly bad times. You don’t know, how much even tiniest things affected you, until you examine them. For example after Duckman sneezed his glass eye out and our teacher ran out of the class, I decided to never replace my dead eye with glass one.
The Duckman was one of the four Kamils, he was our blind classmate. The other one, KB, was almost as nerdy as I, but he had better looks and better personality. And better sight. KW was in the 7^thgrade, he was dormitory roommate of Chive, Lucas the White, The Kid and The Firestarter. He also was blind. Raphael Noodle was the kid who bullied me, but after the reform, when instead of 7^thgrade we all went to the middle school, he moved to different one, where he snapped and beat up some kid so bad, he ended up in juvie. Lucas did whatever Raphael did, so until Raphael left us, we didn’t talked much. Chive was friends with Lucas, but he did nothing. No one talked to me, except for Duckman. No one wanted to hang out with a blind kid, nor with the almost blind one, so we became friends. And I was always his guide on trips. Susan didn’t like me, but she didn’t dislike me either, as the only girl in the class she was by herself for the most time. I don’t count The Forgotten Girl, because she wasn’t really part of our class, but she and I shared a connection from the summer of 1993, where we both were on the same camp for two weeks. As for Michael and Adrian, everyone avoided them due to their unpredictable natures.
So, again, it was a cold day. Overcast, and it was gently snowing. We drove to the Majdanek area on the bus, then had to walk few hundred meters to reach the concentration camp. Anyone could enter the site, but the guided tour with visits to the barracks, museum and crematorium were paid. Because back then both the school and most of kids’ parents didn’t have much money, we were going to look around only, check the monument, the mausoleum and see the buildings from the outside. Fortunately for us there was a tour in progress, so we joined them and pretended to be the part of the group. This way we were able to visit the crematorium building. First was the room where prisoners under supervision of guards stripped the bodies. The guide explained that if a prisoner was killed after arrival, one of the Nazis removed all jewelry that person had, carefully checking the clothing. Then he checked the mouth for golden teeth or crowns, which he subsequently removed with a pair of pliers. Clothes were washed and packed. After this short lecture we entered the furnace room.
The room was dark and gloomy. I don’t remember much, but the atmosphere of that place. It gave me the creeps, like no other place ever before. Back then I didn’t know, why, but now I’m glad we didn’t go to the other buildings. There was a row of brick ovens, reinforced with iron or steel bars between each one and on the corners. The doors were open, and they still held both ashes and metal stretchers that were used to put bodies inside. There was another furnace, a black metal drum, that was fueled with Diesel fuel. Late addition, if I remember correctly. We spent there only few minutes. I felt relieved once we left the building. That’s when the guide discovered we weren’t part of his tour.
We went to look at the mausoleum. It’s a big bowl under a bigger roof. It holds the ashes and remains of the inmates, these were recovered after the camp was liberated and taken over by the Soviets. While walking toward it, we ate our lunches. I’ve got spam between two pieces of bread, with not enough butter. Each of those, who were staying in dormitories, got a tangerine, pack of biscuits and a carton of juice. I ate my dry spam sandwiches before we reached the mausoleum. Our whole group spread around it, some looked inside at the mound of ashes and bones. I did my best to describe it to the Duckman, but didn’t want to linger there. The place was almost as bad as crematorium.
And that’s when The Dead Kid did, what he did, and Firestarter played his part too. But we didn’t know that, not yet.
Raphael Noodle saw it, and he told the teachers. Completely out of character for him, but I think the atmosphere of the place got to him as bad as to me. Me and Lucas the White were nearest, so we both looked into the bowl. There, on the side of the mound were laying a tangerine peel and foil biscuit wrapper. Raphael pointed at The Dead Kid, and said:
“He threw them in, I saw.”.
One of the teachers looked into the bowl, and simply asked TDK:
“Did you?”
“Yes”, he said. “And so what?”
“We’ll talk back in the school, you and me, and the principal.” She looked around. “We can’t let anyone see this.”
“We can get it out” said Lucas. Quickly we organized into three groups. Lucas, Raphael and Chive were at the bowl. Me, Duckman and KW formed a shield for them. Rest of the kids clustered around us. Lucas was skinny and tall for his age, so he went over the bowl edge, Chive and Raphael held his legs, while he grabbed the peel and the wrapper. He told me later that he had to wipe the ashes against the side of the bowl, because he didn’t want to touch them at all, and he held his breath the whole time. I was expecting Raphael to make a prank by loosening his grip, but he didn’t. Again, out of character. After that we moved away quickly. Someone laughed. Much later Lucas told me, who and why. Chive told him, and he learned it the day he became a hero.
We returned to the school without any further incident, I went home, and we all forgot about this incident. Until March 24^th, 1999. The day The Dead Kid died. Or was it 25^th? It was at night after all, night of the first quarter moon. I learned about the events of that night much later. But there were other things that happened AKD, and I’ll tell this story the way I experienced it.
From that day until Easter school was closed. Chive, KW and Lucas the White were under investigation by the police. The Firestarter was not at school for that week because he got sick when he visited his parents for the weekend. The police provided the school with a counselor to help us deal with the death of the Kid, but I think her purpose was to learn more about the Kid, and to find out if anyone of us knows, who might’ve killed him. But they found nothing. No forensic evidences, no traces on KW, Chive, nor Lucas, not counting the blood and ash, of course. Eventually they wrote it down as suicide. Yeah, suicide with particular cruelty. But that I found out later.
By the end of April we all were acting as if nothing happened. Some of us got psychological help, new counselor replaced the police spy, a PTSD specialist. For few years Lucas and Chive couldn’t sleep. KW fared much better, as he saw nothing, a perk of being blind. But he heard it. He heard it all. No one noticed however that the Firestarter was slowly and quietly going nuts.
That April, May and June we barely did any learning, but the teachers didn’t push us. The teachers who were on call that night at the dormitory wing, went on a leave, some until September, some for over a year, and one forever, she retired from teaching. So there were some substitutes just after Easter in the dorm wing. In early June Firestarter started his first fire, outside the cafeteria. He collected some dry branches and leaves from the school grounds, and made quite a bonfire. Fire department had to put it out, because there were no rains for two weeks, and everything was dry. They even had to spray water on the roof of the cafeteria and on nearby trees. Quite a show for us, kids. No one knew, who started the fire, and why. Even Firestarter didn’t know.
June 25^thwas the end of the school year, it was also the last time I talked to the Forgotten Girl. She had cerebral palsy, and because of that she had limited motor function from her waist down. In short she was on wheelchair. Fortunately for her and her mom she wasn’t mentally deficient. Far from it. I’ll always remember her as that shy, timid girl, who spoke with soft, quiet voice. I remember her long, brown hair, slightly rounded cheeks and narrow, pointy chin. I don’t remember much more, with my sight faces are hard to remember. I recognize people by their voices, body shape, clothing and hair. Things that others can see from far. Forgotten Girl was skinny, despite being confined to the wheelchair. None of my classmates remembers her, because none of them really knew her. We spent a summer camp for blind and visually impaired, in the resort hotel named “Blackbird”. It was a three-sided pyramid of concrete in the mountains. There I learned how to move about with white cane, not my idea. There I spent time talking with the Forgotten Girl. We were too young to have really deep or meaningful conversations, but we shared something. Even at that age we both understood, at some level, that we will never be normal, and will never have normal lives. And we could either do our best, or just stop trying and die of despair. That’s why I learned the art of white cane, even though I never used it since. And that’s why she kept herself in shape later and decided to quit our school after sixth grade. She didn’t return for the middle school, nor for the high school. She was home-schooled anyway, but after that year she asked her mom to find a school where she could be in class, even on a wheelchair.
The graduation of 6^thgrade took place at gym, because it was the year of the reform, and we were going to be the first year that would go to the middle school. For most of us it meant staying right where we were. After the ceremony I sat on the bench in the corridor that joined the school wing with the dormitory wing (where also were the preschool, cafeteria and administration). She rolled up to me on her hand-powered wheelchair. She had a white blouse, dark blue skirt, white tights and black shoes. She also put on her finger-less gloves. She had painted nails. She stopped in front of me and just asked:
“Are you holding on, Paul?”
I knew she didn’t ask about the graduation.
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I? I didn’t know him much. You should ask Chives or Lucas.”
“I don’t care about them. I care about you.”
That was a surprise. I didn’t know she even remembered me. I felt guilty, because I didn’t.
“I’m fine. Really. I just have this absurd thought that he died because of tangerine peel.”
“Tell me” she said, so I told her. Then she told me she was not returning to our school because there was no entrance ramp and no elevator between first and second floor, and she really wanted to be in the class, to have real friends, or at least other people her age around.
“So this is the goodbye” I said.
“Paul, we can keep in touch, you know?”
“Like we did since that summer. It won’t happen, not with my parents. And I’m not very good at keeping in touch. Besides you will be moving to another city. And no one can read my handwriting, even I.”
That’s true. I developed good memory because I was unable to read my own notes. So I memorized them instead. She grabbed my hand in between hers.
“Promise me you won’t forget me.”
“I won’t”, but I did anyway, at least for some time. She released my hand and turned toward the school wing. Her mom was coming, with my dad and Duckmans’ dad too, to help with the wheelchair.
“And Paul?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re right about the tangerine peel. And you should trust your hunches more.” Parents reached us. She rolled down to the exit, turned towards the door, and looked at me.
“Good bye, Paul.”
“Good bye” I said. And that was that. I forgot her almost completely. I even forgot her name. I might ask Duckman, he has good memory for names, but I think I like to remember her as the Forgotten Girl. So those few memories of her that I have be like a dream from long time ago.
Next school year started almost normally. New school books, few new classes, few new classmates. But it was AKD. Some of us were regular visitors at counselors’ office. My mother got into her head that soon I will be blind, so she forced me to take course in Braille reading and writing. Look, Ma’, 22 years later and I’m still going without Braille! I learned it in six months, even reading with my fingertips, and six months later I forgot almost everything. Nothing really happened until November, when Chive became a school hero.
The reform caused Molehill to get more money to buy some specialized equipment, like electric Braille typewriters, book magnifiers (a CRT monitor on a stand with movable table underneath, there were some lights and camera in the monitor base, it could magnify anything on the table twenty or more times), some exercise equipment for kids that needed their motor skills and balance improved, and even a giant wooden table with hidden speakers inside for acoustic stimulation of whole body. That one I tried once, with some low frequency sounds. It was quite pleasant and relaxing experience. Anyway they needed place for that equipment, so they moved some administrative functions around, knocked a wall down and made a room for it in the dorm wing. The walls were covered with white plastic panels with wood grain texture. And my Braille teacher, who also did all the rehab work with the kids, hung some dry mistletoe and other plants on the walls. She got them from her house, just to add some more color and texture to the white walls.
One afternoon in late November, it was after classes, Chive and Firestarter were there, doing their homework, or something. Usually the kids that stayed for the week in dorms did their homework either in their rooms or in classrooms after classes. But that day Chive and Firestarter were in the most expensive room in the entire building. Next day Chive told us, what happened and how he became a hero.
“So he finished his homework first. He pulled out a lighter and started playing with it. I asked him “What the hell are you doing?!”, and he just went to that dry mistletoe and flowers thing that hung on the far wall by the window, and said “Check this out.”, and he just flicked his lighter. Just like that. And it went in flames in a second. Just “whoosh” and half of the wall was in flames. I ran toward it, yelling for help. I pushed him aside, grabbed the whole thing with my left hand and went to the nearest window. Opened it and threw it out. I wasn’t thinking, I just did it. Then Mrs. Aldona burst into the room and asked why I was yelling for help. I just told her that he ignited the mistletoe, and I pointed it with my left hand. I was still holding the window with the right one, you know. And then I saw my hand was burned.” He showed us his burned hand, wrapped in gauze and bandage.
Chive was embarrassed by the whole “hero” thing. He said he did what anyone would do. The room was saved, part of the wall had paneling to be replaced and ceiling painted over, but that\s that. The equipment inside was worth a hundred thousand zlotys, or more. Back then it was a serious amount of money.
That night Chive asked Firestarter about that fire. He was asked by teachers and principal too, but he told them he didn’t know why he did what he did. But he told Chive. He told him that ever since The Kid died he can’t stop thinking about fire and ashes. He told him that he started that fire by the cafeteria, and that he started a fire near his home, burning down someones’ meadow. Lighter helped him, a tiny flame to hold in a hand, but that day he just couldn’t control himself, he wanted that mistletoe burning. He told Chive about the road trip, that when we were moving away form mausoleum, after Lucas got that tangerine peel and wrapper out of the ash mound, The Dead Kid spat into the bowl, and that’s why Firestarter laughed. He also told Chive that he was finished in Molehill, the principal told him so, and called his parents. By the end of the week Firestarter was expelled from school.
Three months later he got into his fathers’ car, with a five-liter canister of gasoline. He locked himself in, poured the gasoline all around and over himself and played with his lighter. Suicide with particular cruelty.
Nothing important happened for some time. Then, in March 2001 Evelyn, the girl who joined us at the beginning of middle school, died from undiagnosed diabetes. One day she just collapsed in cafeteria. She was taken to the Children's’ Hospital in Lublin, but she died there after 3 days. She was buried on Majdanek cemetery. We all went to her funeral. Her death really hit me because I had a crush on her.
The middle school time ended with The Test. In theory better scores on it would open doors to better schools, including elite high schools. In practice the test was too easy, at least from my perspective. And we cheated as soon as the observer from Board of Education left the gym to check on Duckman, who took his tests separate from us, so his mechanical Braille typewriter won’t distract us. Nowadays I think the cheating was stupid, but there was pressure on us to perform, as someone heard from somewhere that the budget for schools in the following years will be based on test results. That turned out to be a lie. So the observer left the gym, one of the teachers stood at the door listening for her return, the other two went between our desks and gave us hints. From time to time someone would ask someone else for an answer. I was asked twice by one of the classmates that joined us at the beginning of middle school, I don’t remember his name. Twice I gave him the right answer. I didn’t need to cheat, but I didn’t mind helping others. Besides, the whole scoring system was pointless, pardon the pun, as elite high schools ignored the test results, and checked the grades instead, some even did their own testing.
Most of us stayed at Molehill anyway. Lucas the White had a chance to go to the high school with “arts” profile. That guy had a talent to paint and draw. Unfortunately he decided to stay with what he knew. Chive stayed too, as did KB and Duckman. Duckman had his troubles by then. He could get to elite high school, but that would probably kill him. I stayed in Molehill too, I was sure I couldn’t do normal high school, and elite one would be even harder. I was lazy too, so sue me. Some of us went to trade school for the blind and visually impaired, on Racing street. We got few new students, Eve the Bitch, Vicky, Marlene of thousand wet dreams, and Stan.
Me and Stan didn’t get along very much, at first. It changed when I snapped. I was the fat one, the nerd, the weakling. But one day, when we watched some movie with substitute teacher, Stan provoked me to a fight I knew I’d loose. Which, of course, I did.
I was sitting at desk in front row, Stan was sitting on top of his behind me. And he was kicking back of my chair with his feet. After few minutes of this I turned my head and said:
“Stop it!”
He did, for five seconds. I turned my head again and just glared as hard as one can, when being near-sighted, and with one eye dead and shrunken in the socket. He just kicked my chair again, this time harder. And I snapped. I just had enough of him, of the school, of my parents, of everything and everyone that pissed me off for the past few years. I just stood up, my chair crashing to the floor, and I attacked him. 5 seconds later I was bent over, Stan holding my right hand, arm bent at my back and substitute yelling at us both. I lost the fight, but for the first time in my life I won respect of the class. Or at least of those who cared about such things.
Few weeks later Stan asked me if I’ll be coming to the school dance. These were organized almost every week on Fridays. I didn’t attend them because I can’t really dance, and no girl would even ask me to one. Especially after Eve the Bitch started telling things about me, that’s what I thought at first. I told that to Stan, but he convinced me that I should come anyway.
I did, and boy, what an evening it was. Turned out there was at least one girl, who didn’t mind my bulk, beige shirt, even my awkwardness in social situations. Her name was Carolyn, she was from the third grade of high school, but her grade was under old system, from before reform, so she was a bit over a year older than me. She was my height, with triangular face, long, dark hair, small breasts and nice butt. After few dances some fast, one or two slow and almost intimate, she asked me to go to her dorm room, while her roommates were dancing with their boyfriends. So we sneaked out from the gym that was the dance hall, past the teacher that was keeping an eye on us, into the dorm wing, two flights of stairs up to the Girls’ Floor and into her room, at the far end of the corridor, by the second staircase that was added, when they did the rehab room. We kept lights off, so no one from the gym would see them. I was nervous, my heart pounding, my hands and forehead sweating like crazy. This was it, my first sexual experience with a female, whose name didn’t end with .jpg. I was ready, I was expecting something special. What I got was 10 seconds of awkward silence. And then Lucas the White started laughing and taunting us from the corridor. I don’t remember, what he said, but it made me really, really angry. I unlocked the door, opened it, saw Lucas and Chive. Chive was at least embarrassed, tugging White’s sleeve and saying:
“Let’s go, Lucas. Don’t be an asshole. Let’s go back.”
I grabbed my left wrist with right hand, and used my forearm like a ram. I hit Lucas\s throat, he shielded it with his hands, but I pushed him back towards the opposite wall. I kept one step away and just let most of my considerable mass push at his hands and throat. For him it was like bench pressing 80 kilograms of angry, horny and fat teenager. Lucas saw something in my eye, and he didn’t like it. He wheezed:
“I’m sorry, Paul. I’m sorry. I can’t breathe. I’m sorry.”
Chive tugged at my sleeve this time.
“Let him go, Paul. I’ll take him away. He’s sorry. Let him go.”
After few more seconds I let him go. I just stepped back, dropping my hands. They left us in a hurry. I went back to the room. I couldn’t see her face, but I heard it in her voice.
“I think you should leave too, Paul.”
“I understand.” And I did, she was afraid of me. “Thank you, Eve, you bitch” I thought.
“I’m sorry” Carolyn said.
I just nodded and left the room. I heard voices from the main staircase. A teacher caught Chive and Lucas, and she was coming up with them. I went to the second staircase. I went down to the Boys’ Floor. I exited there and went towards the main staircase, knowing the teacher won’t be there. I went by the room where the Kid died, and I felt it. Felt it bad. My spine turned into icicle, heart pounded, not with desire or adrenaline, but in pure fear. I reached the staircase, and it subsided. But I knew it won’t leave me. I went down, replaced my school sneakers with boots, got my jacket and I left for home.
That night I barely slept, haunted by nightmares full of blood and gore. It was first of many sleepless nights. As for Carolyn, we never talked about that evening, we never again got together or anything. Neither she, nor Chive or Lucas talked about that evening to anyone. And I avoided school dances and parties until the Half-Way Party, that was in the middle of second high school grade. Because high school was shortened to three grades from four, the half-way point was at the end of first term of second grade, instead of summer between second and third grade. Our class teacher asked us one day, if we want to have a party to celebrate it, and we said “yes”. That night we had The Talk.
I got a bottle of vodka for the party. Not for me, I don’t drink strong alcohols. I wanted to talk to Lucas and Chive, because ever since the Carolyn incident things were awkward between us, and it nagged at me. After two or three hours of the party, after the meal that was prepared for us and anyone we invited from other classes, I grabbed Lucas and Chive, and got them to the corridor that connected school wing with dorm wing. There were the big closets where we kept jackets and boots when in school. I also grabbed a bottle of Fanta from the conference room that was converted to a dinning room for us. I pulled the bottle of “Bitter Gastric” (that’s its name, really) and showed it to them.
“Let’s go somewhere and talk” I said.
“Our room” said Lucas.
“No!” I said sharply. “Anywhere but there.”
They stared at me and then Chive suggested:
“Maybe Mrs. Cobs’ classroom?”
We went to the school wing, onto second floor and toward far end. That classroom was next to the Chemistry/physics classroom, which was always locked. Mrs. Cob taught “Religion”. It might seem weird but here religion is in schools. It’s of course catholic religion and no one bothers to ask students their opinion on the matter. We kept lights off, there was plenty of light from the streetlamps and reflected from the snow. We pulled two chairs to the teachers’ desk and sat around it, I took the teachers’ chair. I placed both bottles on the desk, turned towards Lucas and said:
“I’m sorry for choking you, back then.”
“I deserved it, Paul” he said. “I was an asshole.”
“That you were” I nodded.
Lucas opened the vodka, took a swig and passed it to me. I took one too and passed it to Chive. Lucas opened the soda and drank a bit, then I drank a bit more. Last was Chive, again. He asked:
“Did you and Carolyn… Did you do it?”
“Nope” I sighed, “She was scared of me. Eve the Bitch probably talked with her. She is avoiding me.” I took another swig. Alcohol was starting to get to me.
“So what’s with Eve and you?” asked Chive.
“It was at the end of September, first grade. Duckman was in hospital, after his breakdown, and you were sick too. I was passing between Eve and a desk, and I accidentally rubbed against her. She yelled that I was harassing her sexually, again.”
“Were you?”
“No, Lucas! And I told her that I’d rather harass KB than her. And ever since Eve is pissed at me and tells every girl in school that I’m a perv. That’s why all the girls, even those that never talked with me, are avoiding me.”
We all took a swig of “Bitter Gastric”, and then few swigs of Fanta.
“Well” Lucas said, “Vicky doesn’t think you’re a perv. And on one occasion she told Eve to shut the fuck up. Marlene thinks you are, but that’s because you are staring at her whenever she runs.”
“I can’t not stare at her when she runs. It’s like trying to hold a sneeze. One could get blind trying.”
We all laughed at that. Marlene was tall, athletic girl, a blonde with almost white skin, and the most perfect pair of boobies any of us have ever seen. And she loved to run, which had almost hypnotic effect on every male who could see it. And on few females too.
I had another hunch. This was the moment to ask the big question. They would tell me. I also knew that this was my only chance. I took another swig, for the courage, and asked:
“What happened that night, when the Kid died?”
Lucas looked at me.
“You really wanna know?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“When I left Carolyn, I went to your floor by the second staircase. When I was passing by the door to your room, I suddenly felt so scared, so terrified, I still have nightmares. That’s why. I just need to know.”
Lucas took a big swig. Half of glass worth of vodka. Chive said:
“I saw nothing. I hid my head under the pillow and tried not to hear it either. So it’s Lucas’ tale. He saw it all.”
“You won’t believe me, Paul, but this is the honest truth.”
Chive got up, went toward the back of the classroom, he knelt by the bookcase with cabinets, where Mrs. Cob kept all the heavy, Braille books, maps and other stuff. He pushed his hand between it and the wall. There was small space hidden by the radiator and window sill. He pulled a small backpack from there. And from the backpack he pulled another bottle, this one unmarked.
“Holy water, from home” he said and laughed nervously. “We will need it.”
We all took a swig, emptying my bottle and then Lucas began.
“I don’t know, what woke us. I think it was his wheezing. The room was so cold that for a moment I thought the windows were open. But no. The Kid was just hanging in the air above his bed. Levitating, you know. He was belly down, and something was falling from his mouth. That’s when Kamil dived under the pillow, and KW asked, what’s going on and why it’s so cold. Then I saw a small mound of the stuff on the bed. It was ash. Like those ashes at the camp. Then something threw him against the ceiling. He was stuck there for a few seconds, then flew across the room, and hit the wall above KWs’ bed, legs first. They broke, like twigs. Then we started screaming, and he flew again, this time hitting wall above his bed, face first. Then he hit his bed, still puking ash, but his face was all bloody and messed up. Then he flew toward the closet, but his neck caught on one of the arms of the ceiling lamp, and he fell to the ground with the lamp. Then it all stopped and teachers came in. And we were still screaming.”
We opened the second bottle, turned out that Holy Water means a nice moonshine. Lucas continued.
“Teachers had flashlights, you know, to check on us at night. They saw the Kid on the floor, covered in blood and ash, one of them just fainted, the other looked at us and told us to stop screaming. Someone called for the ambulance and they came in, checked him out, and then the police came and they arrested us.”
“At first they thought that we killed him, but there was no evidence on us. And we told them what happened. KW and Chive only heard it, and that’s what they said. They didn’t believe us. After that they thought it was some kind of disorder that forces you to eat stuff that’s inedible.”
“Pica” I said.
“Yes, that. But we told them he never did anything line that and he hadn’t left the school ever since that road trip to Majdanek. And none of us would give him ash. Why would we? Finally they closed the case.”
“My parents have a friend in police” added Chive. “They asked him about this, when we were released. Few days later he told them that some ash disappeared from the mound at the mausoleum that night. They thought some occult or neonazi nuts did it. But the ash from our room matched the mound. And the Kid was full of it. Stomach, guts, lungs.”
“Your parents told you that?”
“No, Paul. I was eavesdropping on their conversation. That scared me more than that night.”
We drank some more. I felt seriously drunk. And I had another hunch. I told them, and we did it. We took another bottle of Chibes’ family moonshine from the stash, we went to their room, and we burned it down to the bare concrete. I still don’t know how the entire building didn’t caught on fire.Someone noticed the fire and used extinguisher on the door, containing it inside, until fire brigade came and put it out from the outside.No one discovered it was us. We just poured the alcohol all over the floor and furniture, dropped a burning match, locked the door and went back to the party, where we promptly fell asleep by the wall, completely wasted. They had to carry us out, when fire alarm was tripped.
When I visited that room after it was renovated, I felt nothing, absolutely nothing. Even the most epic hangover ever and the wrath of my mother were worth it.I don’t know, why I felt what I felt near that room and at the Majdanek concentration camp. I think, however, that when the Kid died, something of him stayed behind. His pain and suffering was imprinted on the room. And why he died? I believe he was too disrespectful to the dead at the camp. We didn’t want to visit that place, and for most of us it was a boring field trip. And when he did what he did, we were more concerned with not getting caught, than with the respect for the dead. Especially considering how many of them were murdered at that place.
I still have those hunches and really bad dreams. I think I’m just sensitive to this stuff.And there were few more times when I felt something, and sometimes I tried to act. Neither Lucas, Chive, KW, nor any of their roommates felt anything particular in that room. It was just me. And maybe the Forgotten Girlwould have felt something there, too.I think she also had hunches.

The man woke with a headache and saw blood in the soil. He knew it was blood because he could smell it—the metallic, bitter tinge didn’t register in his nostrils, but on his tongue. He didn’t know it, but he also knew it was blood because he could taste it. He was coughing now, and the blood from his lungs was mingling with the blood running out of his forehead and onto his lips.
He sat up. He looked around. An ambulance was pulled on to the shoulder of the highway. Lights flashing. Nobody else in sight.
How long have I been here? Where is the medic? Where is my bike?
The petite woman squatted down in front of him. She had a light blue caduceus on her dark blue sleeve, and a first aid kit. “Have you been drinking?”
“What?”
“How much have you had to drink?”
He squinted at her.
Have I been drinking? Where am I right now? What is going on?
She flashed a light in his eyes, staring into his pupils. Then she set the flashlight down and began applying gauze to his head.
“Where are you going to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are these cans yours?”
He looked down into the ditch he had awakened in and saw half a dozen or so beer cans, crushed, some rusted, covered in grass and mud.
“Have you been drinking?”
“Very funny.”
She put a splint on his right arm and asked if he could walk. No, no, I don’t even know who I am, he told her. She turned her pretty face into the microphone clipped to her shoulder and said, “White, male, six-foot—You are about six feet tall right?”
When she turned her head to her shoulder he saw her blond ponytail and white pearl earring.
She’s perfect.
A little gold chain with a pendant on it had fallen out of her shirt and dangeld in front of his eyes. It twisted back and forth until it settled down and he saw the picture of the winged man carrying a sword, and the words “St. Michael” on it.
“Are you an angel?”
She laughed, then continued, “—six foot tall, blue eyes.” She smiled at him. “You’re going to be ok. I’m going to take care of you. You’re mine now. Everything will be alright.”
Am I still single? Angel of angels, what have I done to deserve this?
She cradled his head in her hands and for a few minutes they sat there together on the edge of the trees. As his head rested against her shoulder, her arm wrapped around his crown, holding the bandages in place, he could hear the words to the song she was singing quietly to herself:
“Abide with me; fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide; When other helpers fail and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.”
A man in a blue uniform, pistol on his hip, and Stetson on his head walked over to the pair, and said “alright, Angel, I’ve got what I need.”
I knew it. God help me, please be single.
She helped him onto the stretcher, her hand lightly clasping his, as they loaded him into to the back of the ambulance. She sat next to him, and told him it will be about 15 minutes to the hospital.
I’ve got to know who she is. How can I do it? I’m not even sure who I am, but I can’t miss this opportunity.
The ambulance hit a bump in the road and all his wounds reared inside of him. He squeezed her hand and she smiled.
“I’ve got to adjust this splint on your arm. Just put your hand right here.” She placed the palm of his left hand on her right knee. “I have to take this off, because your fingers are going to start swelling and it can cut off circulation.” She held his wrist and undid the clasp on his watch, slid it over his hand and placed it on the bench.
“Oh, I almost missed this,” she said, and slipped the gold band off his ring finger. She placed it in her left breast pocket and buttoned it closed. “I’m going to make sure you get this back. Don’t worry, I’m sure your wife won’t let you forget it.” She smiled again, and sang:
“Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee In life, in death, o Lord, abide with me Abide with me, abide with me.”


***
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Rescued by a Thrill-Seeker Pilot (M4A)

free to monetize! :) For credits, all I ask is to link my YT Channel! Thank you! :D my YT - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdnlbfOFJv8c1WBGZCswamg (This is one of my first scripts, have mercy lol! wrote it a couple years ago, finally decided to post it here for anyone cause I don't think I'll fill it myself! Enjoy!) (also reddit confuses the heck out of me i hope i posted this correctly)
Location: A secluded, unexplored island in the middle of no where (can be realistic, fantasy, whatever) Ambience: Mountain ambience, trees rustling, wildlife Listener: A reckless researcher injured on a mountain while conducting research. Voice: Marcus: Small airplane pilot. Confident, bright “hero” voice. A bit snarky and a lot fearless. Feel free to genderbend!
Summary: A pilot named Marcus flies out to a dangerous place to rescue a lost researcher who got lost and injured in a storm. In this part, Marcus finds the researcher, gives them basic first aid, and helps them over the rough terrain back to the plane.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
small Cessna airplane landing sound, engine turning off, door squeaking open and clanging shut as the pilot gets out and lands in the thick vegetation
Whew, that was one heck of a landing - and I nailed it! Let’s go Marcus! (chuckle; sorta like “haha i just owned that shit”)
jingling and rustling of the rescue gear
Alright, let’s go find a little lost researcher!
a few moments of footsteps through thick vegetation/woods
(optional: Marcus commenting on the various weird things he sees while he journeys, like stinky plants, landslide destruction, huge downed trees, huge animal tracks he doesn't recognize, etc.)
Whew, what a climb! They should be around here somewhere… I’m pretty sure… When I flew over here, I saw them by a big uprooted tree like -
Gasp
THAT one! There they are!
running footsteps that stop when you, a bit out of breath, reach the listener, who is lying on the ground with their eyes closed
(optimistic, energetic) Hey! Found you!
puts bag down
Hello, you with me? I just saw you waving at me as I flew by! Come on…
gently pats their face to try and wake them up
Ah, there you are, can you hear me?
Mhhm! Right here, hello! That’s a bit better. Good to see you alive! My name is Marcus, I’m here to save you - er, take you back to civilization in one piece. Can you tell me your name?
Mm, good, that IS who they said I would find here, so at least I’ve got the right person! Haha. Not that… there should have been anyone else here… cause they all left before you… Anyway! Let’s get you off this weird island before the sun goes down.
Rummaging through the bag
Alright… so first let me just make sure you’re actually alive… can I just have your wrist here? Gunna listen to your heartbeat.
…
What’s that? Oh, haha. Yes, I can see you’re moving and are therefore alive.
HOWEVER, I dunno, this place is weird - I mean, maybe the wild inhabitants of this island did some unearthly things like… I dunno… making you look alive but actually you’re… EHM! (laugh as you realize that probably wasn’t a very good thing to say to someone you’re trying to rescue) All jokes aside, I’m certified in First Aid and I spent a few years as an EMT, so trust me, you’re in good hands!
What? No no no - you’re not dreaming, my reckless friend, nope, I’m real! I really came here to help you.
Hm? The storm? Between here and the mainland? Well it still is, yes, but you see, I’m no ordinary pilot! I was chosen to come rescue you because of my expert flying skills. And, well, no one else was brave enough, haha.
Now, I know you have a lot of questions but just… hold them just a few seconds so I can get your pulse. Thanks.
…(longer pause)
Alright… 65 ish, on the lower side, but still alright. Have you been laying here long?
You don’t know? Maybe a few hours? Mm, did you fall here? No? Just resting? Ok, thats -
Oh man - you knew the storm was coming but you still went up there anyway? Heh, and I thought I was a risk taker! That was a really crazy thing to do! You must be really passionate about your research here.
...
Are you hurt anywhere specifically?
Mm… Ok. Yeah, I see, you wrapped your forearm up yourself? Cut it pretty bad? And your back hurts? Like, did you land on your back? or -
ok, scratched up and bruised, gotcha.
And, yeah, I can see your leg doesn't look very comfortable - can you move it? Yes? Well hey, that’s good. But you haven’t been able to get far on that ankle - oh, yeah… that’s really swollen. Must really hurt. I’ll have a look at that in a bit.
Rustling in bag
So you stayed up here all night… and tried to get back down today, but lost your way cause the storm destroyed your path? Yikes. But look at you - all brave and confident - you made it this far! I find that -
…
Weak?! Hey hey hey, none of that, now! I wouldn’t be calling someone who came to a mysterious island to study a strange creature and climbed a mysterious mountain weak. I’d say you’re anything but! You just got yourself in a scrape, that’s all.
...
No, nope, you’re not stupid either. I like to call it… adventurously risky. Trust me, I can relate. Now shush and let me help you sit up so I can listen to your heart and lungs.
…
Alright you all good if I just… put my hand up your shirt with my stethoscope here… good, there we go. One sec…
Ok well your heart is still beating, so that's a plus! Now let’s hear those lungs… Could you take a nice deep breath for me?
take deep breath with listener
Perfect. How about another?
another breath
Alright that’s good enough. I didn’t hear anything to worry about. Did it hurt to breathe in or out?
Just a little in the back? Alright. But nothing sharp, right? Good, good. Now let me just feel your forehead real quick…
You’re a bit cold, honestly, but no fever, that’s apparent. I’m guessing you didn’t have a way to stay dry, did you?
No? I didn’t think so. Next time you gotta bring a slicker or something. If you’re gunna be risky you gotta get gud, you know? Be ready for the elements. Plan ahead.
Listen, I’m speaking from experience! I’ve been through the school of hard knocks. Been there, done that. I like to think every time I fucked up was a learning experience. Don’t stress it. I was able to come and rescue you, right? Could have been worse!
…
Ok now that we’ve got all your vitals, let me see that cut on your arm.
You wrapped it up yourself with a bandage? Just happened to have one on you? Well good thing! Let me see here…
Takes bandage off
Oh… that’s… eugh… nice. Hmmm… doesn’t look like any major arteries or veins were damaged, thank goodness, but it is still bleeding a bit and... yeah you're gunna need a few stitches. I… technically have the stuff with me to do that, but I’d rather just get you back to a proper hospital. I’d do it if we had to stay here for any length of time. If we move quick, we should be able to make it back to the mainland a little after the sun goes down. Let’s just clean it up and rebandage it for now.
Pulls water bottle out
Alrighty… so this is the not fun part, but I’ll be as quick as I can. There’s some debris in there… I’m going to use this water - yes, it’s just water - to flush it out a bit. Then I’m gunna bandage it all up again for you.
No, no peroxide and no rubbing alcohol. Did you want it to hurt more than it already does? (Laugh) Nah, nah, I’m just kidding, don’t look at me like that.
Here’s the thing. We’ve stopped using peroxide and alcohol for first aid because they damage the tissue and actually slows down healing. Nothin like good ole soap and water! It’ll still sting a bit, but not as bad. Nice, right?
Alright, are you ready? Try to hold still, it won’t take long.
Pours water over the wound
Ohp, easy, just a bit more, I know, it's not the best feeling in the world.
…
Ok! All done! See that wasn’t so bad. A lot easier than if I used the stronger stuff, right? Mhhm! Yeah, I’m a fan too. Here, let me wrap it up with a proper bandage. Hold this gauze on it, just like this. There you go, perfect.
Wraps the wound
That’s it, now you can let go, I got it.
It’s not too tight, is it? Ok good. It needs to be a bit firm to keep pressure on the cut, but not too much.
Ta da! Now that we’ve got that all fixed up - oh! Here! Have a water! (gives listener water bottle) Gosh, sorry I probably should have offered you that in the first place. I’d be willing to bet you’re dehydrated. Did you bring any water with you when you came up here?
…
yes… but you LOST it? BEFORE THE STORM HIT? (sigh) What am I going to do with you… I said it was alright to go off on adventures but… you have to be careful… oh, here, take a snack too!
Crinkling of granola bar wrapper
Hhm? No… I don’t think you’re stupid.
(pause - you’re not sure how to explain your thoughts here, as you’ve decided you like their spunk and bravery but their lack of ability to plan ahead and keep themselves together worries you)
It’s just that… what? No! I'm not saying you shouldn’t have come here! I DO think you should have maybe decided to come down the mountain before the storm hit, and been more careful with your water bottle…
…
Huh? Ah - uh! Hey… don’t - I didn’t mean to make you - why are you crying? Does something hurt?
…
Y…your feelings… well hey listen um… I can help your physical wounds and stuff… and I can give advice but…
(you fumble over your words as you try to decide if it would be ok if you followed your instincts and just hugged them until finally you cave)
Hey. Come here.
Scoots closer and carefully hugs the listener
Shh, shh. You’ve been through so much for the sake of your dream. You came here to study dinosaurs -
Oh sorry, yes - those, strange... rumored... creatures... what were they called again? Aren't they extinct? No? (clears throat)
Well, that’s pretty cool - so anyway you came here to study them on a once in a lifetime opportunity, but this nasty cyclone came up out of nowhere and got you into this whole big mess, you fell down a mountain, got yourself hurt… and now you’ve got a know-it-all stranger lecturing you. I’m sorry. I should… probably shut up and check the rest of you, right?
…
No?! Hey… listen, I have to. Ok, ok, alright, just for like, a minute, ok? Relax. I’m not gunna leave you here.
…
You really decided to stay here all on your own? Knowing that storm might mean you could get stuck here?
No, listen, I think you’re hella brave. Yes, I’m serious. You’ve really got a lot of… guts to do something like that. Didn’t they try to convince you to evacuate? Of course they did, but you - your passion wouldn’t let you give up so easily. I admire that tenacity.
And now let me quick check the rest of you cause if we don’t hurry, we’re gunna be stuck here for another night. As much as I love a good thrill, I don’t fancy sitting around here at the top of this other-worldly place for very long. So come on, show me that swollen ankle.
…
(whistles) Yikes**. How… how did this happen?**
listener says they just remember slipping down the slope and twisting it on a rock
And you can walk on this? Barely? Yeah, let's not walk on that again. Don’t worry, I gotchu. I’ll help you get back to my plane. For now…
Ice pack sounds
I’m going to put two of these on, one on each side of that ankle, once we get your boot off. Which… might be kind of difficult but I think it’s best since we’ve got to get you down without hurting it further.
Alright, you ready? Try to hold still, I'm just undoing your laces right now. Gunna make it as loose as I can. Mhhm. There… that’s about as loose as it’s gunna get. Off we go…
Sorry… there we go, it’s off now. Here come the ice packs! Hopefully they will really help with the pain - yeah, feels nice, doesn't it? Good, good! That’s… a better smile, now…
…
Wh- what? My… smile? I - I was just thinking, I was happy that you just smiled. You know, I could tell the ice helped you. And I’m glad.
Ok. Wrapping your ankle now. I want it to stay firm in place, but again…
I can’t make it too tight… it’s already very swollen… so if I just… wrap it like this… it should be…
Perfect! There!
Dusting hands off
Mk, I want to give you some Acetaminophen to help with pain and swelling, so let me grab that…
Pill bottle
Here, take these. Yep, and drink all of that water.
…
(stuttering) Wha... you like... my eyes? … I… well, thank you, but you know, when you were… talking about your project - you just… had a bright look in your eyes, too - you know, like - when you’re thinking about the one thing in your life that drives you. I can tell you love adventure, and I can really relate to that. Seeing it in someone else’s eyes is… special I guess you could say. Perhaps a little inspiring.
Oh? Same with you? Well - (flattered laugh) I guess we’re two crazy thrill seekers, then! Birds of a feather, they say.
Alright. Is there anything else you want me to check? You mentioned your back, right? Mmm. Yeah, I can check it.
…
Mmm, definitely scraped up, but it looks like your shirt and jacket took the brunt of it. It’s all kinds of pretty colors back there too, like your ankle.
(chuckle)
I’m glad you can handle my humor. I like to keep it light! No sense in making serious situations serious-er, right? Exactly! It helps reduce anxiety and lessens the traumatic response later on.
Zips up bag
Time to get you back down this mountain. I’ll help you up and you can lean on me, ok?
…
Nope - no, don’t give me that, I’m not the injured one. I can support! That’s why I’m here. Now let’s go, c’mon up!
you help the listener up to their feet and help them get balanced
Alright, you good? Let's get back to the bird!
Footstep sounds that fade out
[END]

(Surgery was 5/1/24) I had my 2nd post op appointment today, to remove the drains. I saw the same nurse as my first post op appointment, and then she was training another nurse too.
They had me change after we went to the exam room, from my shirt into a paper shirt thing, and when the nurses came back, she (the nurse from last time) removed the binder, she talked through what she was gonna do to both me and the new nurse. Basically, they just snip the stitch thats holding the drain in (didn’t feel this) and then she had me do 2 deep breaths and on the 2nd breath out, she pulled the drain out (I didn’t realize but it was like 5inches long, wild) basically didn’t feel it. When the new nurse did the other side, she took a little longer to pull it out so I felt that a little more. After the first side was done, she like palpitated my chest, to push out any fluid that might be left, then she taped a piece of gauze to the hole; they repeated this on the other side as well (the second one did,,,dribble, a little bit but the first one didn’t).
They told me to keep wearing the binder and sleeping at a 45 degree angle for 3 more days, then she said after the 3 days it’s up to me how much I want to wear the binder, she said she recommends keeping it on since without the drains, if any fluid builds up they have to do an incision to drain it and we want to avoid that obv. She also said she recommends to still sleep propped up, but it doesn’t have to be as much of an angle.
She also told me that I should start incision/scar care, she said aquaphor twice a day, she said this will help keep the scabbing moisturized and avoid my clothes catching on any dry bits.
My next post op will be the first week of June, for my one month checkup.
And then I just wanted to add, between my last update and now, not much has changed; the drains were really annoying me, I basically just worse the binder 24/7, I didn’t take it off for the hour a day that she said I could bc every time I put it back on (even just changing the pads) it irritated the drains and it just drove me nuts tbh. The only other thing that was really difficult was(is) just sleeping on my back; I’m a tummy sleeper and the urge to even lay on my side was SO HARD to avoid I literally cried bc laying propped up on my back with my legs out just felt so badddddd. I kind of managed to bunch up my pillows and blankets so I could be shifted onto one side, and that helped a bit, but I really haven’t slept solidly through the night and thats really annoying. I don’t typically sleep solid, but I’ve been waking far more than usual (but I also had to stop smoking weed obv, 3 weeks prior to surgery, so I’ve been having so many more dreams than typical, which has also led to me waking up a lot)
Anyway, thats all! As always, I’m open to any questions!

Previous/Next
My cellphone rang, snapping me out of my daze. The caller was unknown, and I hesitantly placed it against my ear after answering.
“Ah, Mister Bannon,” said the gruff voice on the other end of the line. “It’s good to see you are still with us. I was certain those roaches would prove to be your end.”
I was breathing heavily. “Yes. I’m still here. Of course.” The sound of the metronome clicks on the other side of the door were growing louder. “I don’t think I have much time.”
It sounded as though the stranger on the other end of the line was shuffling some papers around on their desk. “Yes. You wouldn’t if it were not for this phone call.” More shuffling. “There’s a hatch behind the refrigerator.”
“Excuse me?” I panted.
“If my sources are accurate, there should be a hatch with a tunnel just large enough for you to fit through. That is your ticket out of your current predicament.”
“How do you know that?”
“Trust is a hard thing to come by in this day and age, is it not?”
“That’s right.” My voice came timidly in response. I moved to the fridge near the sink, briefly glimpsing to the dead cockroach there. After setting the phone down on the counter and shimmying the fridge away from the wall, there was indeed a hatch awaiting me there. I put the phone to my ear again. “It’s here.”
The line was dead, and the constant tone after someone decides the conversation is over met me.
I dropped the phone in my pocket and looked back to the metal hatch. The clicks were growing closer. There was no other option. I reached out and latched onto the handle, prying it open while leveraging my dress shoe against the wall. I peered inside and saw that it looked like the walls were made of sheet metal. Was this some sort of ventilation shaft perhaps? There wasn’t a moment to think. I dove in and clawed and slapped at the walls to propel my body forward. The claustrophobia was immeasurable, and I had no idea where I was going; all I knew for sure was that the sounds of the clicks behind me were fading away.
I was possibly thirty feet in before the sound of Quincey’s screaming voice surrounded me. He was echoing all down the metal tube. “You think you can squirm away Art?”
The panic shot through my body like I’m sure the adrenaline leaves the shoulders of a dying animal. He was calling into the hatchway.
“I wonder if you can outrun these?” He shouted. The sound of a million hissing creatures followed his words up the passageway.
In response, I kicked and began to pull myself along even quicker, paying no attention to what was ahead and paid mind to the place near my feet, sure that at any moment the roaches would begin devouring me from the bottom up.
I met something in the passageway and when I felt around at the thing the top of my head met, I found a handle. It was another hatch. I pushed with everything in me and it creaked open to allow me to slide out onto a hard floor. Scrambling to my feet, I shut the hatchway on that end just in time for a particularly large cockroach’s pinhead to catch in the edge of the hatch. It shot off gloriously, leaving behind a thick clump of yellow green insides.
Caught in the hysteria, I slapped the closed hatch with both hands, letting out an exasperated, “Yes.”
The sound of the insects on the other side disappeared and I could only assume this was because their new masters called them back.
I examined the room I was in. It came as no surprise that what met me was blank gray walls; in far corner of the empty room was a door and I went to it. Before reaching out to open the door, I pressed my ear to it to see if I could hear a thing. The sound of ocean waves beating the coast and pelican calls were all that I could hear. I twisted the knob and pushed it out. What awaited me could not have been conceived. There was a beach. I stepped from the room, out onto gathered algae-covered stones. I turned to look at the structure I’d come from. It was a plain concrete block on the coast, no larger than a bedroom. I rounded the thing, looking for evidence of the passageway that had given me my means of escape. It defied all laws of physics as there was no tether between this small structure and Sceptre Incorporated.
“Hey there!” called out a figure in the distant, further along the beach.
I spun, paranoid of the figure’s intent. She approached slowly, obviously eyeing me over as she stepped onto the slick rocks.
She wore a great big khaki sun hat above a pair of comically oversized sunglasses and a two-piece spotted bikini. “You look awful!” She said upon getting a closer look at me.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Look at your chest!” She was aghast at the wound I’d sliced the cockroach from. It was true; I was bleeding straight through the work shirt I’d wrapped around my body in an attempt to strangulate the wound. “What’s happened to you?”
“Do you know the man on the phone?” I asked.
“Man on the phone?” she peered at me over her sunglasses. “Whatever in the world are you talking about?”
“Never mind.” I started over the slick rocks, watching my steps so as to not spill over. Just up the way, I spied a boardwalk and I started in that direction. I began searching on my phone for a taxi service in the area. I was on the coast. The squalor factory was at least an hour’s drive inland.
“Wait!” The woman reached out to grab my forearm.
I tried whipping myself from her grasp and sent us both scrambling over the rocks. I landed squarely on my knees and she fell face first over the rocks, her nose erupting in blood.
“What’s your problem, Arthur?” she squealed while pinching her nose. Her sunglasses lay near her feet, shattered.
Jumping to my feet, I massaged my knees. “What did you just say?”
“What’s your problem?” She asked again.
I took a step away from her. “Is that all you said?”
“Of course.”
“Leave me alone.” I left the woman laying there in the rocks, stunned.
She continued to call after me, but I ignored her, jogging towards the boardwalk. The humidity mixed with the scent of the ocean was coaxing out nausea. I plodded up the stairs to the boardwalk and ignored the bystanders’ surprised expressions as I limped past. A small child ran by, smothering his face in a pillow of cotton candy and his mother gave me a raised eyebrow as she passed to chase after her charge.
I dialed for a taxi and scheduled them to meet me out by the entrance of the boardwalk. As I stepped by a hotdog stand, the man tending the counter squirted mustard along the bun. Resting within the bun was a living, breathing hamster. I twisted around to give the hotdog a second glance. It was normal.
“Did you want one, buddy?” he asked.
I walked on without answering. Was it some sort of psychosis growing like mesh around my mind or was the world’s fabric melting away?
I sat in the backseat of the taxi and unwrapped my makeshift bandage to examine the wound on my chest. The driver adjusted his rearview mirror to catch a better look at me. I winced as I pulled the work shirt from the places the blood had dried, forcing it to cling.
The driver whistled. “Wouldn’t think the cockroaches would be this bad this time of year.”
My skin grew exceptionally cold. “What?”
“Wouldn’t think the rain would be this bad this time of year.” He twisted the knob near the steering wheel to turn on the windshield wipers.
It was raining. The day’s events had sapped all energy from my muscles. I craned my head back and closed my eyes to see the metronome sitting in a black void. It clicked back and forth and rocked me to sleep.
The squalor factory’s steps were empty as I exited the taxi. Briefly, I wondered whether Mary and Margery would shoot from around a corner and berate me for scaring them with the hissing cockroach. They didn’t.
My apartment was untouched.
As I properly disinfected my chest with alcohol and wrapped it with a gauze pad, my phone rang. I screwed the top of the alcohol and laid down on my matress, staring up at the ceiling of the squalor factory. I knew who was calling. It was unknown.
I answered. “Thank you.”
The gruff voice on the other end of the line chuckled to itself. “No worries, my boy.” There was a short pause. “However, you should know that this is far from over. You understand that don’t you?”
“How do you mean?” I glanced down to the things I’d gathered in a cardboard box at the foot of my mattress on the floor.
“I see you’ve been planning to skip town.” The shuffling sound of papers could be heard over the line once again. “That would not be favorable.”
“How do you know that?”
“I have eyes, don’t I?”
“Do you?” I tested.
The voice let out another chuckle. “Please Mister Bannon, don’t make me laugh. I’m not in the mood for it and you need all the help you can get. I would be better suited at helping you if you’d stop with the clowning.”
“Of course.” I watched the gentle flicker of the oil lantern by my mattress.
“So, we’re agreed that you will go into work tomorrow?”
“Excuse me?”
“That is the plan. My plans seldom fail.” A pause on the line. “Trust, Mister Bannon. Trust is the key to everything."
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Alien-Nation Chapter 202: Property Damage

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Chapter Summary:

Morsh breaks Goshen's omni-pad to wipe anything incriminating she might've gotten out of her interrogation targets, then they have good conversations with Amilita
Oh, and Elias Wakes up
The borrowed fleet car was a far cry from a noblewoman's private vehicle. Even at full acceleration, it lagged far behind the ambulance, until it had disappeared from view. Finally, they found a building that seemed far too tall to be made of brick, with square windows and white curtains.
"This is it," Natalie confirmed, pointing at the "H" on the roof.
"You're sure it's not that one?"
"It's still under construction, see?" She pointed at the construction equipment, and now that Morsh squinted she could see that the far corner was still unfinished. She grunted unhappily and started to approach the small rooftop landing pad.
"Fleet car 117, please go to visitor parking," traffic control spoke through the fleet car's speakers, and the heads' up display highlighted the part where another officer car was already headed toward. Probably Amilita.
"This is Nataliska of house Rakten, we have business with the occupant of that patient. We will be setting down on the roof."
"Helipad is not for visitors," the accented trade shil repeated herself. "Please do not go."
Nataliska leaned forward and flicked off the comms, and Morsh guided the fleet car to the 'Helipad' and set down next to the already-empty ambulance.
She hopped from the car and sprinted to the main door. "Come on." The door from the roof was locked, however, and when Morsh gave it a more firm tug, it popped the handle clean off.
"Now what?" Nataliska asked, but before Morsh could even think to answer the girl was already in motion, thin and dexterous fingers finding a part of steel in the ripped apart internals to peel back, the latch opening with a click.
"Nice work," she complimented her ward for her persistence.
She may have celebrated too early, because they now found themselves lost in the bowels of the alien building. Nataliska seemed to move with a purpose, though, pressing a button, and a lift opened.
Going down a couple floors in a box that felt entirely too shaky for Morsh's liking opened, only to find themselves immediately lost as the doors opened. The staff milling about wore various colored uniforms, probably meant to indicate something about their speciality, though Morsh saw no bloodstains or helpful lettering to guide the unfamiliar.
"Where to?" Nataliska asked, uncertainly.
Morsh was increasingly sure that hospitals served a secret universal purpose: To hide away anyone suffering in a maze that only employees could solve. Whether on-board the depths of a warship, a space station, planetside on an embattled world, or even in an alien-constructed, retrofitted building, she always got lost whenever she found herself in one.
"Hey, I can't read this stuff," Morsh waved a hand at the alien lettering and raised her omni-pad, letting it translate what text it saw. It took a couple times of double-checking, counting the third one from the top. "This one says 'child-medicine.' Is Elias still considered a child?"
"Pediatrics?" Nataliska sounded the human word out.
Morsh squinted at her omni-pad, and then back at the sign. "I think so?"
The bodyguard loathed the insurgency for the delays they'd caused. Had it not been for them, then she wouldn't be stuck navigating these hallways, and the new hospital next door would be finished already. At least something about this place would be familiar.
"I think we follow these colored lines on the wall. It's the same color as the sign."
"Alright," it was as good an idea as any, and they went around the corner to find a waiting room.
"Let's try one of the attendants?" Nataliska suggested, striding forward before Morsh could ask her to wait. The woman behind the desk had the sagging skin of someone from a high-gravity world, though at least they had the tendency to be stocky, but strong. Yet she seemed almost too round for her chair, bloated underneath the strange mottling that ran up her exposed arms and lower neck. She frowned from behind her thick-framed glasses at the pair of approaching shil'vati. Morsh sensed some vague hostility, but the woman certainly also seemed utterly impotent, so she filed it away as a triviality and instead took the room's surroundings, gauging the others in it. No one in the waiting room seemed particularly dangerous, though they were all keeping their distance.
Nataliska leaned forward. "Hi," she used the human greeting, though Morsh realized she'd forgotten to activate her translator and missed the next bunch of words. By the time she'd gotten it online, she'd missed everything except "Elias Sampson."
The blank stare returned showed no more understanding than Morsh had of what Nataliska had just said.
"I need to see Elias Sampson," Nataliska tried again. "He was taken here. He was hurt badly. He's my friend, and I need to check in on him." She tapped hurriedly on her omni-pad, and then smiled, pointing at a photo of him she'd taken. The woman glanced at the screen with disinterest, and then huffed.
"Try the Emergency Ward, or maybe surgery," was the only answer they got before the strangely-shaped woman started to rise from her desk.
"Where's that?" Nataliska's patience was obviously running thin.
"East wing. * " The woman finished standing from her desk and waddled away from the glass partition before either of them could ask where the 'East Wing*' was.
"Thank you!" Natalie said, always polite.
"Now what?"
"We find the East Wing." Natalie glanced at the window. "It's...uh...evening, so, away from there. That means..." she pointed, and started down the hallways.
Morsh shook her head. This felt like it was getting them nowhere. Worse, they quickly found dead-ends where they couldn't proceed through without a pass of some sort- and no one seemed to come along the particular hall that they'd gone down so they could follow them inside to get further east. Nataliska had insisted Morsh not put a shoulder to the locked door- avoiding incidents seemed to be a priority.
Eventually a nurse wearing blue scrubs rounded the corner, and started to double-back when Morsh decided she'd had enough of being made to wander aimlessly and flanked the human, cutting off her retreat.
Nataliska brought her omni-pad back up again, pointing at the picture. "Elias Sampson- sorry, I should start over. Do you know where surgery is, or perhaps the emergency room? East Wing?"
The nurse studied the picture for a few seconds longer than the secretary had, and then looked at Nataliska for a couple more, as if thinking about what to say in response. "Ask her to guide us," Morsh suggested, the translator speaking her own words back out for her before she shut off its speaker. "That way if she's thinking of misdirecting us, at least she's wasting her time, too," she added.
"Why would she do that?" Nataliska asked.
*"I'm sorry, are you next of kin or family?" *The nurse asked dutifully.
"Well, no, but I'm a noblewoman, and he was hurt badly. I ask that you aid us. It's very important that I'm there when he wakes up."
The corners of her mouth dipped slightly lower. "I see. Are you listed as his emergency contact?"
"Please. It's important."
"Of course it is. I'm going to have to ask your name."
"Nataliska of house Rakten. I'm right here-" she began scrolling through the photos, until she found one of the two of them side-by-side. "See?" This time the nurse didn't even bother looking.
"Sampson...tell you what, wait here, and I'll go check the emergency contact list-"
The nurse's indirect refusals to give any straight answers only ended when their demands were joined by the huffing arrival of the Lieutenant Colonel.
"Sorry. I was just setting up a place to work from when I saw you walk by," she said, panting the words out, and gauging the situation.
Morsh was tired of hearing the girl repeat herself in asking, and decided to speak the inevitable question for her. "Where's Elias? We've been trying to find him."
Amilita turned to the nurse they'd cornered, and activated her translator. "Please show them to the patient's room. I'm General Amilita, Acting commander of the Delaware Garrison." The woman paled slightly, and Morsh switched off her translator halfway through repeating Amilita's translator's English back into Shil'vati.
"Of course, ma'am," the woman said in trade shil'. And just like that, the three of them were off with a guide, though Amilita peeled off the group after only a few dozen steps.
What a strange inversion it was when a combined noblewoman's title and presence of a bodyguard couldn't get the respect a military uniform apparently commanded here.
"This is the room," Nataliska relayed for the Nurse, who immediately scampered off. The door opened, revealing a nurse who was as startled to see them as the first nurse had been, and Nataliska started drilling her with rapid-fire questions. The new Nurse was surprised that the shil'vati girl was fluent in English, and answered each question quickly, if shortly. Morsh switched back on her translator, but it was already too late to catch most of it.
When Nataliska had apparently finished her questions, Morsh let the nurse slip past and leaned in. "So? What'd you learn?"
"He's 'stable,' whatever that means, and has been sedated for his own good." She sighed. "I guess I'll go into the room, and talk with the doctors attending. Maybe they know when he can be woken up." She took a second to think. "I wonder what machines they used to use to bring people out of comas." Then she smiled a little bit- the first one she'd had in a while. "I wonder if they just slapped or shook their patients? Or was it a really loud noise? Do you think there's a prescribed one that they'd always use?"
She tried the handle, the question clearly on the tip of her tusk.
Except there was no one to ask. The room had been left empty, with just Elias laying there unconscious. The boy had filled out since the early days, when the newly-minted 'Natalie' had confessed she'd found a boy to finally talk and sit alone with, then proudly showing off a photo she'd snuck. He'd looked almost malnourished, waifish then. Now, laying still in the cot, despite all the lean muscle he'd put on through maturing, he looked no less vulnerable. The various faces he wore with such an intense focus and force of will were gone, leaving a vacant expression she'd never thought she'd see him wear. The planet could think what it wanted about boys and what they were supposed to be- the reality was they were still boys. No amount of arguing would ever make her feel anything other than a twist in the gut, and a feeling that something had gone horribly wrong.
The staff hadn't even a doc bot left in the room to keep an eye. There were distant squeaks of shoes on the shiny surface that humans loved to floor their interiors with, muted conversations drifting down the hallways, but only a few people milling about. Whatever the doctors had done, they felt they'd finished their work and cleared out.
"So, what now?" Morsh asked.
"We could wait?" Nataliska suggested, trying to hide how nervous she was. "I mean, maybe he'll wake up on his own? Or they're getting one of those machines I saw on TV."
"What machine?" Morsh asked.
"Well, when the person's asleep, then someone gets a machine that makes a whining noise." Suddenly, Natalie got quiet.
"And then what?"
"...then they rip open the guy's shirt, and uh, it's not what you think! They put their hands on it- his chest- the part where his heart is, I mean. And they put these metal pads on him, and someone says 'clear' and then he wakes up with a jolt."
"Uh-huh. And they just put this on TV, for anyone to see?"
"It's not like that! It's a legitimate medical procedure!"
"The nurse didn't say anything at all about that? Like, not even a rough idea on if that's what they're going to do, or when they're going to be back?"
Nataliska shrugged helplessly. "No, not really. I could wait with him? Or at least keep an eye over him, and ask anyone that comes by."
"Might be smart," Morsh agreed. "I'll stand guard. Want me to close the door? I know he doesn't like me all that much ever since the, well, you know. Everything."
"Thanks," she said. "I'm just worried about being seen alone with a boy behind a closed door."
"Come on, it's you two. Whatever went on, no one else knows about you crying in your room for days on end. I'll leave the two of you to chat alone and sort things out."
"Thanks, Morsh. You're the best. It's fine though, you can leave the door open for now, and I want to stay here, just in case." She walked in and pulled the chair up alongside the bed and gave the bodyguard a slight smile.
The bodyguard felt the minutes tick by. It bothered her that he'd been dumped there without so much as an attendant, with all manner of wires and human machines watching him in their stead. Pathetic. At least the room had an actual door and glass windows, curtained for privacy. It seemed they were very short-staffed, but that did keep her job of watching for threats simpler, and having to defend just the one point of entry made life easy. She idly tapped her pocket to make sure she still had that crucial object before an idea worked its way into her head.
She knocked on the doorframe, and Nataliska raised her head from her omni-pad.
"Kid, you're okay to take over guarding him for a bit?" Morsh asked.
"Huh?" She asked, standing and coming up to the door.
Morsh handed Nataliska her pistol. "I've gotta take a leak." The eyes of a nurse who wandered by were as large as saucers at the sight of the weapon, and she hurried her footsteps away from the pair.
"Uh...yeah," Nataliska answered, fumbling the grip for a moment. She started to stare at it and look down the barrel before Morsh pushed the tip down at the floor, making eye contact.
"That part faces whatever you want to kill," Morsh reminded her young ward, feeling a sudden sense of unease about leaving the same girl she'd just chewed out over acting before thinking alone with a pistol. One that Morsh clearly needed to actually teach her to use, too.
"How do I...?" Nataliska asked nervously, almost fumbling the pistol as she tried to hold it out for her bodyguard to inspect.
"The safety's on. This button here. Actually, you know what? Here. Take the knife. Don't use it unless you have to." The swap was quick, and Morsh felt the reassuring feel of her custom laspistol on her thigh once it had settled back into its quickdraw holster.
"Um..." the girl hesitated. Morsh prayed she didn't need to tell her which end to stick a threat with. Then again, common sense with nobles was like oxygen. The higher up someone went, the rarer it was to find.
"Just for a second. If you need me, press the panic button on your omni-pad, and hold them off with the knife until then. You understand?"
"I understand," she echoed, inching closer to the door, as if already imagining someone trying to sneak past her.
Morsh felt the unfamiliar bulge shift in her pocket as she made her way down the hall. The old human hospital with alien writing on the wall still threatened to misdirect her from the point where she'd seen a particular sign. It took only a couple turns she'd committed to remembering before she came across it again. She pushed open the double-doors and took in the enormous room, pleased with herself that it was almost certainly what she'd hoped it would be.
The small technician lady stood from behind her desk, itself separated with its own wall. Morsh let out a low whistle from between her tusks. "Whew, that is a big machine you have in there." She squinted exaggeratedly. "Not a lot of wiggle room for a patient, though," she muttered as if in contemplation. "Gotta have some courage to crawl in there and be treated here, I gotta admit. Say, Doc, you know I left my knife behind. And this thing here- well, let's just pretend it's not here at all," she tapped her holster, before fishing out and tossing the omni-pad she'd pickpocketed off Amilita into the center hole, watching in fascination how its course changed before sticking fast to one of the inner walls, defying gravity. "So, why don't you turn on that machine for me? It's that magnetic...uh...thing."
She glanced down at the workstation the woman was at, and noted the various pieces of metal arrayed on the desk. Her laspistol should be safe here- or at least better here than in Nataliska's shaky hands.
"Magnetic Resonance Imager, and I think that would be a very bad idea. It would-" she eyed Morsh with increasing alarm as the bodyguard strode closer until she leaned over the woman, leering.
"I didn't ask what you thought."
Swallowing nervously, the much smaller woman started trying to explain what it was in the crudest trade shil, stumbling over her words.
"Didn't ask what it was, either, I said turn it on." The little woman's babbling ceased, and she quaked where she stood. "Do it, or trust me, you'll need more than whatever it can do for you."
The woman finally did as she was told, and the omni-pad began to promptly bang around the inside, until with a final, terrifying crack it went silent, and a warning chime sounded.
The woman let out a wail of distress and then stared balefully up at Morsh in a very: See? I told you so! gaze, as if missing the entire point. Morsh only let out a low whistle after she pulled open the door. Some people just could not be shown a good time or anything neat. The omni-pad was now stuck fast to the inner wall of the circular device, having punched a hole right through the plastic. "Do you have any idea how much that cost? This hospital has one of those, and parts for it- I don't even know where-"
Morsh pried the omni-pad loose, having to brace herself against it and pull with all her strength and then tested to see if it would switch on, noting with some satisfaction that it was certainly wiped of whatever it contained. She'd held corpses of comrades with more life left in them.
"Bill us."
Besides, how useful could the machine still be in this day and age? Morsh shook her head. Humans could keep their sentimentality and attachment to outdated tools. She'd prefer a doc bot any day to the confinement chamber.
She came back to find the situation outside Elias's room more or less as she'd left it and patted her ward on the shoulder after retaking possession of the knife with a genuinely relieved sigh.
"Sorry about that, I've been holding it in since I broke orbit. No visitors?"
Nataliska shook her head. Morsh sighed. "Then we're probably going to be here a while. But you know who isn't, and I suggest you go settle things with? Amilita."
"But, what if he-"
"I'll message you immediately," she promised. "Now, go, before he does wake up and you're still not back."
That got the girl moving, Morsh noted with some satisfaction.

Settlement

The hospital smelled. None of the scents were familiar to her, some of them were even superficially pleasant, and she imagined she might even enjoy the cleansers or aerosol sprays used to disinfect if she shut her eyes to relieve them from the long, harsh blue lights and imagine a breeze or spring. Oh, to close one's eyes and pretend the world isn't what it is.
Natalie was reluctant to leave Elias's side but Morsh was right. She had to talk with Amilita.
It took a few tries, but she eventually was directed to the same hallway she'd been in before. She stopped at the open doorway to see that the giantess had taken over an empty storeroom and made it into a temporary office headquarters, resignedly signing off orders from her wrist-pad in rapid-fire motions. The rings under the old family friend's eyes were visible even through the semi-transparent image of her wrist-pad. When she shifted her focus and noticed the young noblewoman snooping at the threshold, Amilita stood to greet her before then ducking her head in a sign of respect and submission to the authority Natalie wielded, something Amilita had only done for her mother.
"I hear Morsh has been busy protecting the boy's privacy." The words were offered plainly and left for Natalie to determine how they were meant. She'd had enough of assuming the better of people after today.
"That's right, I stationed Morsh there. I hope that isn't going to be a problem."
Amilita put her hands up, showing off the white bandages taped around her knuckles as fresh flesh grew back underneath, "No, not at all. I've even requested the boy's medical files not be updated to reflect his recent visit here." With her other hand, she tapped a small stack of printed out papers.
Natalie blinked at the news. "Why?"
"His death would have been framed by Goshen as a suicide," she muttered.
"What? How? That's ridiculous. He was kidnapped!"
"I know," Amilita poked a finger at the gauze to again emphasize what she'd done at the sight. "Perhaps I ought to explain how I found him. He was hanging by his belt, dangling from a pipe. When I carried him out, he was barely breathing from asphyxiation and with marks on his neck. From what I can tell, they used the doc bot to check the airway and noted no spinal fractures. What matters is that these notes only include injuries, not their context." Natalie already knew from his treatment at school that he'd have a history of bruising, swelling, and cuts. Injuries she now understood why he'd wanted to treat on his own, rather than potentially hand information over. As she considered the implications, Amilita cleared her throat, lowering her hand. "What have you heard about when boys attempt suicide, Nataliska?"
"Uh, well..." she didn't want to appear ignorant, but she knew it wasn't exactly common. "I hear they choose quiet methods? I guess it's so wives won't try and stop them?"
"Usually it's described as a cry for help. When a boy threatens it, it's as a desperate gambit to force his terrible wives to release him. The women either lose him and are forever known and outed as husband-killers and neglectful. Or they take him to the hospital and at least avoid the 'boy-killer' charges. Threatening suicide is the final move of the truly desperate."
"Wasn't he desperate, though?" She felt she was missing something.
"What do those women who were in his life say in their defense, though? And remember, the medical records will leave Goshen out. It's just his injuries that are left in."
Natalie blinked. "Well, I guess they don't just confess?"
The officer's tone turned weary and she seemed to deflate some at Natalie's lack of answer. "I don't know if it's because I've been spending too much time around the wrong people, or if I'm suddenly sensitive to it after having a son. People always say about boys who attempt suicide: 'He couldn't handle it.' That he couldn't take the prospect of a life of housework and the pressures of fatherhood, which is always said to be easy. That, or he felt he couldn't compete with the pressures of acting like and being treated as a woman if he had a job." Amilita bit her lip. "I don't want that said about Elias- they won't know about the circumstances of the kidnapping, or anything else."
The young noble bristled, some heat entering her voice, "The trial should be easy enough to point back to. It doesn't matter if they dig it up."
"You can't appeal decisions on admittance or acceptance to a future job if they never even tell you they dug so deep into your past in the first place. I worry that if I step in and demand the circumstances be included, it'll be so unusual that people will still doubt him. They'll think I pulled strings. If you do it, they'll think you're doing the same, all to protect him. See the problem? We can't add it. So it is for the best that this stays off his record completely. We made sure we're not burying him physically, and now I'm making sure we're not burying his future." She inhaled, and then looked Natalie in the eyes. "I'm fine with the only record being in your hands, holding it in trust for him to decide if he wants to re-enter it into his medical history or not." She broke her eye contact and tapped the small stack of papers meaningfully. "I'm asking that you respect his privacy, because I have a duty to enter these into his record. But if they happen to go wandering, well, it's for the better then. I just ask that you...not share these to the datanet." She added the last part quietly.
Natalie nodded mutely. Her mouth opened, but no noise escaped at first. It took several moments to process that he possibly had been willing to kill himself to keep her family secret buried. Elias, You helped me when I told you my family's secret and Myrrah came to us. I ran and wasn't there to help when someone came to you over yours. There's still at least one more thing I can do.
"If the record is left out, would that help Goshen's case? I mean...what if she isn't punished for this?"
"My personal testimony could condemn her by itself, and you still retain the physical medical record. Not to mention you could weigh in, and so could he, and it would remain out of any record or background check. Besides, Goshen's cuffed to a bed in the commoner ward, and I doubt she'll live much longer."
"You almost killed her?"
"Well, I wasn't gentle," Amilita admitted, not at all bothered by the admission. "But, no, she is seen as the one responsible for the loss of the noblewomen. The fleet and Nobles don't want to pin the loss of three system lady matriarchs on a martyr. Especially when one of them's a scioness of the Maudalenti family- you wouldn't know them but they're renowned for their brave military service."
Natalie's head spun. She'd actually heard of that family. "Why was he able to take so many of such high stature?"
"It takes considerable power or favor to bully one's way onto this world, past all the secrecy and safety demands, and even more to get to enjoy a pleasant time in a green zone. So naturally, almost all of them had it in spades. Enough to where their families could afford to chase Goshen to the ends of the Galaxy to make an example of her if they wanted, and I suspect greatly that they do. Even in the Delaware barracks, they're furious at Goshen for losing the Marine hostages, and ordering repeated long charges over open terrain against railguns. There's no state I can transfer her to, thanks to all the borrowed troops. There's hardly any that I can think of that didn't lose at least a pod or two. The sad reality is Galatea Goshen hasn't a friend left in the galaxy, let alone one here who can stand up to all that. Normally when this many interested parties want someone in uniform to be hung up by her ears the officers are able to close ranks and stop them, but for the life of me I can't imagine why anyone would. Azraea is thought to have died because Goshen couldn't get the job done." Then she sighed and looked skyward. "Even the Goddesses would abandon her now. The warrior Goddess Krek was bloodthirsty and loyal, but she would have hated the senseless casualties Goshen pushed for. And now, even I'm abandoning her over what she did to Elias." Her eyes drifted back down to meet Natalie's. "Do you understand what I'm saying? She's unlikely to live to see a trial."
She was laying Goshen out on a line.
"'Justice will be done'," Natalie promised, quoting an ancient tome carved into stone, weathered away by sea spray in the millennia since. Amilita hung her head ever so slightly deeper. Natalie shouldn't tip her hand, she knew, but then again Amilita also dared not interfere.
"Do you know when he'll wake up?"
"No," she said. "They sedated him on the flight over, apparently for his own protection, and it won't last. I'm told this may be a polite way of saying that he attacked them."
She blinked and started to stand up, "Then if you'll excuse me, I need to watch over him."
"Of course," Amilita almost whispered. "I'm sorry," so quiet and tender the words could hardly be said to have come from someone of Amilita's rank and physical stature.

Living Dead Boy

Natalie returned to find that an unknown Marine had joined Morsh near Elias's door, the former staying a respectful distance across the hallway. She wore a darker blue patch, indicating she wasn't here from Delaware's garrison. She strode right past Morsh, who made a point of shutting the door behind her.
Natalie stared at the stack of papers on the small table next to the chair she waited in, her gaze wandering about the room listlessly, coming once more to fall on its sole occupant
His chest rose and fell steadily, with an annoying 'beep' repeating at a constant interval indicating he was being monitored in at least some sense. His clothing was disheveled, like when she'd first met him.
She turned on her omni-pad, and sent a panoramic photo of the room to her mom, not even managing a smile. Just giving you an update. I don't know much. Watching the doctors, when they come in. Don't show anyone, obviously. It felt strange to even have to ask such a courtesy.
The message back was immediate: How much would I need to pay to have one here, just to answer my questions and look over Elias, and not just disappear somewhere else at random times?
The medical staff had wielded immense power, even in the face of a noble name. It reminded her more of a cult than a proper medical institution. Still, on Earth, most services seemed to have a price, even things that were held sacred. Thanks to the exchange rate the price was often rather pitiably small, surely, one doctor wouldn't take too much.
She was about to respond with a rough estimate when she thought she saw him stir, though it might have just been the sheet settling.
"Elias?" She asked, leaning over and placing her hand gently on his forearm, only for him to jerk awake and slap her hand off.
He had been stirring slowly, then more quickly and feverishly until he began kicking his legs, yanking the carefully tucked bed sheets out of where they were pressed and tangling them around his feet. The beeping had grown to a frantic and erratic pace, and a tone began to blare as he ripped something off his finger.
"Elias, calm down!"
Instead, he swung his legs out from the hospital bed and tried to push himself off of the bed and to the door, instead going down in a heap as the little white sheet slid on the slick floor. He let out a slight cry of pained alarm that would wrench at any woman's heart. Bright eyes wide and wild, he lay there for a second or two, and Natalie hesitated. She couldn't help but feel responsible in some way for the pain he was in, and so she backed off, and instead crouched down, showing her empty palms.
"Hey, hey, it's okay," Natalie tried to soothe him, though he glanced over her shoulder at the exit, then around the room as her words sank in and he met her eyes- just for a moment, before he paused and gave her a second glance. "Natalie?" He rubbed at his eyes. "Sorry, everything was a bit blurry for a second there..."
The momentary expression of relief that settled over her was shattered when the door was suddenly shoved open, knocking Natalie forward and toward Elias, and then everyone began screaming at each other, all at the same time.
The poor Nurse let out a shriek of terror as Morsh pulled the hapless woman sprawling back out of the doorway by her fabric collar, legs and hands in the air as she slid.
Natalie tried to shield Elias's crouched form while finally cutting through everyone else's screaming with a simple command: 'Get out!' Elias was trying to push past her, but she couldn't let him run, she'd just found him! Then Morsh tried to step through the door, saying something about how an alert had gone off. Elias had half blocked her off with his body and gotten into some semblance of a fighting stance, and was now trying to protect Natalie from her own bodyguard. Each of them was blundering through trying to protect each other, but the chaos of the situation ensured that none succeeded at anything but getting in each other's way.
"Get OUT!" Natalie roared again. Morsh knew when to pick her battles, and when to follow orders, and slammed the door shut so hard it hurt her ears. Angry voices on the other side went back and forth, but Natalie pushed herself against the frame, even as the newly-conscious Elias gathered himself up and met her eyes.
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Author's Notes:
Also, good news. My father's made it through his surgery! A lot of stress taken off. He is in good health, and good spirits. Editor is progressing through what is occupying him. I would like to thank Guardsman Miku and Tumbleman for their efforts in helping with the editing.
Archive Of Our Own contains the latest version of Alien-Nation with a lot of added scenes, flow improvements, and so on. (You can also download the story as an ePub for reading on your personal device, if you feel like doing so, though I recommend waiting until Book One is truly finished.)
Link to Archive Version here:

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Just as expected, Carbon was waiting at the entrance to Engineering - it had its own stop on the maglev line. It was the heart of the ship. On Human ships it was usually the single largest section, what with all the power generation and multiple methods of ship motivation going on. Unless he was mistaken - which he could be as he was just guessing at the moment as there was no speedometer on the maglev tram - it was about two-thirds of the way back from the bow. A human ship would usually have it all the way to the aft.
What he hadn’t expected was how Carbon was dressed. He’d gotten used to her in a lightly modified CPP coverall while back on the Kshlav’o, once she had stopped wearing the encounter suit. In retrospect, it should have been obvious that wasn’t her normal getup. It had all the exact same pockets as his - in what universe did two separate species both develop coveralls with the same pocket layout and nametag location?
Even the standard Tsla’o pants and jacket had been easy to adjust to.
This getup, on the other hand, made her look a little bit like a videogame character. Brown boots that nearly came up to her knees, with slabs of scuffed armor and soles so thick she was noticeably taller. Similarly heavy khaki-colored pants, made of thicker fabric than what she normally wore, reinforced impact patches at the knees, hips, and lower back. Absolutely resplendent with pockets. Looked like there were a few places to hook up a safety harness, and guides for a belt as well.
That all pretty much made sense. He understood the functionality. Above the beltline, on the other hand, was not as understandable. It looked mostly she was just wearing the smallest daman possible and a very short jacket as well - it looked like the same leather-like material as her boots, and even sported some matching armor. Despite that, it didn’t go past her rib cage, and appeared to stop at her elbows. Left pretty much the entire middle of her body exposed, which seemed a bit counterproductive.
There was a lot of technology integrated into the jacket. Sensor clusters around the collar glowed softly, and there were a few holographic emitters sitting dark dotting the area. Her antenna rested in slots around the back to interface with the built-in computer and any nearby networks.
Out of all of this, the most notable thing for Alex was that she looked so at ease here as she wrapped her arms around his torso and squeezed the life out of him. She looked happy in a way that she hadn’t until now.
“I hope you have slept well?” Carbon looked up, not a hint of tiredness in her face or voice despite having gotten up in the middle of the night to work.
“I actually did, yeah. Feels like I haven’t done that in awhile.” He did not bring up what he and Neya had talked about. Not standing around here in the open - he wasn’t up with the ins and outs of their culture, let alone the entire Zeshen thing, but it felt like the wrong place. They would have that talk once they were back at the cabin.
“Good.” Her smile was sublime, eyes squinting with an easy delight. She gestured at the package in his hands. “And what is this?”
Alex was pretty sure she had never looked this relaxed before. Maybe communing with the ship really was something she needed to be doing. “Gloves. Well, gauntlets. Sergeant Zenshen brought them over as I was heading out. She’s my military liaison now, I guess. Per Eleya’s orders.” His gaze kept dropping back to her exposed midriff for some reason.
Even mention of her aunt didn’t phase her, though her eyebrows did come down with a hint of chagrin. “She was acting as Colonel Lehnan’s liaison, and has just been attached to you? Though... They are already attached to the project concerning the artifact.” She had her phone out, tapping away at the screen.
“Yeah, she didn’t seem bothered by it?” He shrugged. In his estimation, the Sergeant had been having a pretty good time, except for that little hiccup in the corridor. It was probably a pretty easy assignment, all things considered. Most of the time. “Just keeping me from stepping on the wrong toes.”
“Be that as it may, I have asked Neya to look into how this was done - I do not want to leave the Colonel sitting on the riverbed.” She slipped the phone away into her entirely too short a jacket and looped her arm around his, a sly smirk on her muzzle as she directed them both off the tram platform. “Now, on to more pressing matters?”
“Sounds good. Where are you taking me?” His knowledge of the ship ran out just as soon as they walked through the archway, into a slightly busy corridor. These people were at work. They moved with purpose and many were carrying equipment he didn’t recognize, or pushing antigrav carts with large equipment he didn’t recognize, save for one poor duo trying to hover the biggest impeller press that he’d ever seen outside a dry dock through the crowd.
“There is a place here that is, I believe, much like your Noonan’s.” She had to speak up a little bit over the background noise here, but still very much in her preferred environment. “It is... The Hammer’s Rest, I think is a good translation. A place for crews who are on breaks or may be called up.”
“Oh neat.” It dawned on him that this was the first time he was seeing the actual crew of the Sword. Several wore powered environment suits in an eye-catching shade of red, but most were clad in the nearly the same outfit that Carbon wore. Some had long sleeves, others full length jackets. Anything that looked like leather was colored coded on theirs, as well. Blue, red, orange, purple... “Ok, honest question here - what’s up with the coat? Yours doesn’t seem very safe.”
“My coat?” She looked down at it, realization filling her eyes as she laughed. Carbon grasped the hem with both hands, thumbs resting on a subtle pair of buttons, and just pulled it down like a curtain. She let it go at her hip so it slightly overlapped her pants. “Adjustable, but it is common practice to have the sleeves and hem raised when one is off duty.”
“Hang on, does that extrude material?” His gaze fell on her abdomen again, now framed. Looks like he was learning something about himself this morning.
“Very good, it does. Allowing the user to adjust their equipment to their body and protective needs without custom tailoring or changing gear for different tasks.” She gestured at a passing crewmember in one of the red environment suits, helmet retracted and focused on whatever the holographic display before him was showing. “Though particularly dangerous tasks still require more.”
“Well damn, all right. It changes color too, right? All networked together?” Not a big jump, if they were stacking that much technology into protective gear.
“Correct again.” Carbon nearly sang it as she tugged him down a side corridor. “In Engineering they are for teams, though in other parts of the ship they may have specific jobs.”
“Like flightdeck crew.” The most obvious group who used color coding, off the top of his head.
“Exactly.” Their path turned again, this time through another archway that rivaled the size of the one into the tram station, holographic letters in the most garish colors possible stretched overhead.
Alex wanted to call it a restaurant, at first. It was huge compared to the other places he had been on board, about thirty meters to a side, and actually dim. The walls were lined with long tables, clusters of color-coded workers spread out around the place. The center of the room was taken up by a big square bar, though, which made it more of a pub or tavern - very much like Noonan’s.
Also like Noonan’s, everything was made of dark wood. The floor, stools, chairs, tables, the bar, all a sort of dark red-brown that occasionally dipped into black, metalwork done in gleaming steel. The walls carried a wattle and daub pastiche, wooden beams running floor to ceiling and horizontally from corner to corner, filled in with a checkerboard of dark green and blue stucco. While it didn’t have the big screen Noonan’s sported, there were a dozen or so smaller screens with a plethora of information about who was needed where.
“This feels like my kind of joint.” Even the curious glances being tossed his way felt normal. Like that’d be what any dumbass rolling in wearing a fancy jacket would get. The din of conversation was far and away the most surprising part - his translator was catching at least half of it, the banality of people waiting for something to happen crystal clear. “Tell me they sell t-shirts?”
“Wh- no, they do not sell t-shirts.” Carbon sighed with a smile and pointed out a door halfway down the far wall, their destination.
“Not yet.” He wouldn’t have minded a heads up about the overall casualness. Any excuse to dress down, honestly. Beyond the door was just a smaller, but similarly themed room with a fraction of the people in it. A bar ran halfway down one side, the rest of the floor containing smaller tables for two or four. The change in dress was noticeable, going from the engineering gear to stuff more like what Aena from the novel he’d been reading had been wearing - pants and a sleeveless vest. Manager clothes, though matching the colors everybody else outside wore.
She settled in at a shorter table in the corner, handing him a menu from the stack waiting there. “Everything they make is pretty good.”
“All right. No warnings about the chicken fingers?” He said, recalling the last time they’d been in a pub.
Carbon laughed. “No. Probably no drinking - it is a bit early in the day to start.”
“Yeah, not drinking before noon has treated me pretty well.” So far, anyway. “But now that you got me thinking about it, I kinda want a Mimosa.”
“A what?”
“Orange juice and champagne.” He perused the menu, the translations an unhealthy mix of generic terms for food items and nouns that left him with no idea what anything was. Shoreline Broth with Root Vegetable left so much to the imagination. There were plenty of ways to interpret that which didn’t strike him as appetizing. Was it fish based? Did it remind one of low tide? How far into ‘alien taste sensation’ were they getting here, and what was the sensation he’d be feeling? “You usually drink them with brunch, which this is probably not.”
Carbon laughed and set her menu down with a bemused smile. “And what is brunch?”
“It’s a meal that’s later than br-eakfast, but before l-unch.” Alex split the words up into what was hopefully a clear explanation of the portmanteau, and set his menu down too. Time to go to the old standby. “Mostly breakfast food, though, and focusing more on socialization than a meal specifically. Hence a little morning drinking.”
She perked up as he explained it, ears shifting a little to focus on him. “That sounds... it sounds interesting.”
“If you want to go, I know a few places in Berkley, though I suppose anywhere in-system is accessible right now with a little planning.” He didn’t miss that she was interested. More interested than he’d seen her in human stuff since they had gone shopping. Maybe a bit of relaxation in her own culture was giving her the space to be interested in his... Though, brunch seemed a bit superficial. Whatever. It was interest in him and his culture, and it felt good.
Made him really want a Belgian waffle, too.
“I would enjoy that.” Carbon petered off, turning to look at the waitress as she approached the table.
She had dark red fur, and was bundled up to an extent that Alex hadn’t seen yet on any Tsla’o outside of a powered suit - a blouse that actually closed around the neck and matching slacks in light weight, natural colored materials. Long boots, and gloves that ran up to her elbows, and an apron tied around her waist. There was a forced seriousness to her, staring straight at the green square of wall at the end of the table. She set a teapot down between them, shaking hands distributing a cup to each of them before she started speaking way too fast. “Hello we are ready to receive your order.”
Alex couldn’t put a finger on it, but she was familiar looking. A little on the short side, and he was pretty sure fairly young. Late teens, maybe. Her eyes seemed proportionally larger than an adult, which according to the massive peepers on Adana last night was a neotenous trait on the Tsla’o as well. Wait. “Oh- Akai, Haraya!”
Carbon looked from their stressed out waitress to Alex, and then back to Haraya. Then back to Alex, eyebrows raised in confusion. “How do you know her?”
“She’s the one who gave me directions last night. Thanks again for that, by the way.” He gave her a little nod. Looks like she knew who she was standing in front of this time. Probably expected him to still speak fluent Tsla, too, because she clearly didn’t understand what he was saying in English. That was a problem he had not foreseen last night.
She still made a strangled little sound that was in the general vicinity of positive and bowed deep enough to make the bartender look over.
“Oh. Yes, that was very appreciated.” Carbon spoke in Tsla as she looked back to Haraya, who was still staring intently at the wall. “Please, such formality is not required, or sought. I assure you.”
“Of course Princess.” Haraya replied, catching herself before she got too deep into another bow. Her eyes darted to Carbon with nervous energy. “What would you care to order?”
“Ah, just a bowl of simmered grass grains with fruit mash, please.” She favored the young woman with a friendly smile as the translator brutalized her language for a solid two seconds after she stopped speaking.
Alex balked. “Isn’t that what you always have?”
She switched languages without missing a beat. “Yes, it has served me well.”
“Ok, so I was just going to have what you’re having. Translator really does a number on food names and I kinda figured, you know, restaurant. We wouldn’t just be having something we make at home.” His expectation of that wasn’t panning out to be very interesting. After the ‘lace crackers’ and that sausage yesterday, breakfast was feeling like good territory to explore their cuisine. “So uh... Can you recommend something for me?”
“Mh. You make a good point. They have many ingredients we do not normally keep at home.” Carbon pondered the menu on the table for a moment while Haraya continued to look nervous. She had switched languages again when she looked up. “We will both have the Shoreline Broth with burnt noodles and chef’s decision.”
“Sounds.” Well that was an interesting hole to have stepped in. “Great.”
“Of course, thank you Princess. Prince. It will be ready soon.” The waitress gave them both little bows and walked away as fast as she could.
Alex waited until Haraya had gone through the doors to where he assumed the kitchen was. “She wasn’t like that when she gave me directions.”
“Most youth do not... Have any experience with us. Nobles used to be rare, but they are truly scarce now. The number of Royals has increased recently, though. ” She smirked and lifted the teapot, pouring first into Alex’s cup, then filling her own. “I suppose they have not met many Humans, either. But that was not the nerves of meeting a new race on display.”
“I don’t think she thought I was actually, you know. Real. Which, given how I was dressed at the time, is completely understandable.” He scanned the bar, the only three other people there sitting at it. None of them seemed nearly as concerned about their presence. They all had signs of aging, silver gray fur standing out clearly on two, and nearly wreathing the head of the other.
Him and Carbon were the youngest people in here by years, at least.
“I think it may have been more that a Human appeared before her, on the flagship of the Tsla’o Empire.” She laughed and reached out to cup his hands. “How did you manage to get so lost on your adventure, anyway?”
“Ugh, all right.” He launched into a cut down version of events, where he spent way less time actually being lost and glossed over the fact he was just opening up electrical and communications closets. Very quickly getting to the interesting part with Adana finding him standing there in the hall, considering his options.
“He does sound very cute. By your description, I would say three to four years old. Perhaps he did not wish to speak to a stranger.” Carbon replied to his inquiry about how old the kids he’d just told her about were. “Haraya is probably sixteen. A little young to be working, but this area is quieter, less likely to be rowdy. And you say there were six children?”
“Six and Haraya, yes.” It did seem like a lot of kids. He knew of one family back in Berkley that had four kids. But seven? Parents must have been busy in a couple of different ways.
“That is... unusual for Tsla’o families. It is rare to have more than three.” She hummed softly, eyes turned towards the ceiling as she leaned back in her chair and pondered. “Deck 60, below the Stronghold complex, port side... I do not understand, there should be a frigate bay there. Not ‘civilian’ housing.”
“I dunno what to tell you. A lot of it looked new. Still smelled like a print forge.” Frigate bay? Damn this ship was big. He was sure Human carriers sported large launchable escorts as well, but it was weird to hear about them actually having internal storage.
Carbon activated the holographic emitters on her jacket and projected a schematic of the ship over the table between them, zooming in on the area he’d been in. “Did it smell greasy or acrid?”
“Greasy, why?”
“That is what a Human forge smells like. Ours produce a more astringent scent.” She manipulated the hologram further, isolating a subsection of the ship. “Hm. Removed both bays under the Stronghold entirely and refit them with self contained residential... communities. Most of it is housing, but there are a few public spaces. Power is mostly off the ship grid, same with the other utilities. Dedicated food production. Schools.”
So it had just been built, with parts from a Human sourced forge. Based on the doors and access panels, it had then been finished with Tsal’o technology. Alex leaned in, inspecting the cross section of decks. Most of it was turned inward, the doors opening to corridors that did not run to the rest of the ship, with a few small clusters of exceptions that seemed to be tacked on to fill out space. “The layout really reminds me of an arcology. Industry at the bottom, more livable space above. Just a continuous eighty decks tall.”
Carbon’s ears twitched and the hologram shut off just as Haraya emerged from the back with two large bowls on a tray.
Their waitress was more comfortable now, though her gaze remained steadfastly anywhere other than them as she delivered the steaming soup. “Thank you for your patience.” She said this at a much more normal speed as she laid out a setting of chopsticks and spoons for them.
Carbon replied first. “Of course, thank you for your efforts.”
“Thank you.” Alex echoed, in English. He thought about it for a second and realized that she wasn’t going to pick that one up. “Sa meha.”
Haraya bowed again, departing swiftly.
“Already getting tired of that.” He mumbled, picking up his chopsticks and inspecting the Shoreline Broth with burnt noodles and chef’s decision. It was mostly noodles and decision, the broth barely visible under the pile of... food items. It did not smell like low tide, so that was a point in its favor already. The scent actually reminded him of saimin. Salty, savory, very much with a seafood origin. The burnt noodles were thick tan disks that had a little crinkle of black scorch around the outside, a hole in the middle indicating they had been on a stick and grilled or broiled, then sliced after the fact. Had a nice bite to it, but no real flavor aside from the broth and a hint of sweet ash.
“I think she is reacting based on how she has seen Nobles presented in media. They usually start as aloof and quick-tempered.” Carbon had tucked in without delay, pausing to talk with a bunch of shredded vegetables gripped in her chopsticks. “Though by the end of those stories they have learned humility one way or another, and are on their way to becoming good people.”
“Sounds like we started at the end.” Alex found a piece of that spicy moss he liked and picked it out. He could do with a dab of Chinese mustard in the broth to add another layer of flavor, but otherwise he was a little annoyed that this monstrously named dish was starting to grow on him. Maybe not as a breakfast, but he could see having it for dinner. “Is it rude to add seasoning to food? Wouldn’t mind a little more heat in this.”
“If there are spices on the table, it is acceptable.” She slid a little jar at the far end of the table over to his bowl before reactivating the holographic display. It was a little dimmer this time and at a smaller scale, rotating slowly as she ate. “This is based on our community towers. Largely self-contained buildings with shopping, restaurants, utilities and work areas on the lower floors, and apartments of varying sizes above them. It is very much like your arcologies, on a smaller scale.”
“Alright, that answers that.” The pot was split into three segments, a little spoon resting in each. He carefully tasted all of them, a drop of each onto his chopsticks so he could determine what he was getting into. One salty, one a sort of sweet vinegar, and the third a gentle warmth with no discernable flavor. He heaped a few spoonfuls of the third into his bowl.
“It does.” She reached over and added a spoonful of the vinegar to her own bowl.
“Looks like... Six hundred apartments of varying sizes?” There was nearly as much of a weird shredded vegetable in the bowl as there were noodles. It was like a cabbage and a potato had been combined into something Alex couldn’t tell if he liked or not. “So they added... what, two thousand people in each tower? Four thousand people total.”
“If they are putting seven children into one larger home... Hopefully with at least two adults, it could be closer to five thousand.” She idly stirred her bowl, zooming back out to the entire ship again, shuffling through something that changed which section of the ship was being highlighted. “Renovated several areas into senatorial offices. One floor of the Stronghold seems to contain a parliamentary chamber now, as well. I believe Eleya has had the Sword of the Morning Light converted to act as a mobile capital.”
“So it’s an actual capital ship now?” Alex tried to hide the smirk that came with that pun but failed miserably as it turned into a broad grin. “Does explain why there’s so many senators on board.”
Carbon glared at him for a second, a sigh shifting into a quiet laugh. “And why she brought it to Sol.”
He chewed on some more of the cabbage-potato abomination that he was rapidly leaning towards not liking, sussing Eleya’s reasoning out. “Defense?”
She nodded in agreement. “How far into Sol do you suppose an unscheduled ship could get?”
“Wouldn’t even make it through the Oort cloud. That’s where the first layer of interdiction is.” He lifted what was clearly some kind of larva out of the broth and ate it, a burst of umami and the warmth of alcohol on his tongue. How did they get it to do that? “You guys have an interdiction system too, right?”
“Of course. Nearly as large as the one around Sol.”
The puzzle was starting to come together for him. “If she is legitimately concerned about the Empire fracturing, the threats to the Sword wouldn’t necessarily be coming from outside your home system. It could be coming from another ship in their own carrier group.”
“Here they will need permission to enter Confederate space, and Sol itself. I would not be surprised if Eleya was in communication with the Confederation about which Tsla’o ships should have access.” Carbon poked around in the bowl, searching for something particular. “Even one of our stealth craft would find making the trip undetected difficult, or extremely time consuming.”
“And for the time being it’s under the guise of further exploration of the artifact, not just taking advantage of the distance and local security to keep threats at bay.” Alex poured himself more tea and topped off Carbon, thinking about Eleya’s request of him last night. To take Carbon and request asylum in the Confederation should the Empire fall. Being right here at the seat of power would make the trip to ask real quick.
“Gives intelligence more time to work on those threats, as well.” She picked her tea up and nodded in thanks before taking a long sip.
“Alright, gotta give her credit for that.” He set about separating all of the cab-tato from the rest of the selection of items in the broth. Maybe he’d revisit it with different vegetables, but that part really wasn’t working with the flavor of the broth for him. “That’s a pretty good plan.”
 
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*****
Just having a nice hot breakfast. Nothing huge happening, just sussing some stuff out. A moment to breathe.
To save you the google: Saimin is a noodle soup from Hawaii. Sorta like ramen, but using a very clear dashi (kelp and bonito) broth.
Art pile: Carbon reference sheet. Art by Tyo_Dem

Part 1
Part 13
Ella is confused when Damian stops the car in front of a fancy high-rise. This looks like an apartment building for rich people, not a wellness facility. A valet wearing a red jacket with the same symbol as the building approaches the car before they’ve fully stopped.
“This is a spa?”
Damian huffs out a laugh. “No. I live here. I’m taking you to the in-house spa.”
The high-rise looks really fancy. Does the mafia pay that well? Before Ella can ask Damian, the valet pulls open her door. Damian is already on his way around the car. Ella didn’t hear him get out. She hurries out of the car, feeling off kilter.
Damian hands the keys to the valet with a handshake - and the crinkle of money passing hands. “Thanks, Kevin.” Why is Damian paying the valet? Why is he on a first name basis with him? Is this a normal thing or a criminal syndicate thing? Damian continues speaking without any regard to Ella’s curiosity. “Keep the car close, I’ll need it again soon.”
The valet nods, smiles, and gets in the car without another look at Ella. She stares after him as he drives the car into the high-rise’s underground parking. She’s never been that invisible to anyone before. It’s off putting. She’s pulled out of her mindless stare by Damian putting an arm around her shoulders. “We do need to go inside, I made an appointment.”
“At your in-house spa?” The question is out of her mouth before Ella can think about it. Damian’s arm around her shoulders is too distracting, and her brain seems to be working at half power. Her feet follow along when Damian starts pulling her inside. When he shrugs at her question, it’s as if he pulls her closer for a moment. A mini hug.
“It’s not mine, perse. It’s one of the perks of living here.”
“What are the other perks?” Damian shrugs again - it really feels like a miniature one-armed hug.
“The view is pretty great. There’s a heated indoor pool I enjoy. The wellness centre is very accommodating. I had them send a massage therapist to my flat once.”
Damian raises a hand at the security guard next to the door as he guides her inside the building. The entrance hall looks the same way most expensive entrance halls look: large, airy, light and empty except for a receptionist stuck behind a counter near the entrance. Damian nods at her, and she flutters her eyelashes at him. Damian ignores it, but Ella can't.
Does she make googly eyes at every man that enters her building? Because that is unprofessional. When the woman notices Ella’s stare, her back straightens and her smile freezes. Ella narrows her eyes at her. She knows that look. She’s looking down on Ella. It must be because she’s used to people dressed to the nines. Ella mentally curses herself. She should’ve gone with pretty clothes instead of comfy ones.
Damian tightens his hold on her shoulder in an actual one armed hug, and he leans close enough for his nose to touch her hair. His voice is a whisper caressing her ear when he speaks. “Ella, stop glaring at the staff. You’re supposed to ignore them if you don’t need them.”
Ella’s head snaps around to turn her glare on Damian. She tries to pull away from him so their noses don’t touch, but Damian’s hand tightens on her shoulder and Ella stops walking. “They’re supposed to be invisible. They shouldn’t be -” Ella waves at the receptionist, who is still staring at them. “- doing that.”
Damian frowns and glances at the receptionist. His head tilts to the side a tiny fraction, and his frown turns upside down. The smile is utterly bemused and sets Ella’s blood to boiling. “Aaw, you are jealous. How sweet of you.” He pulls her closer and kisses her forehead. “I love you too, darling.”
The sweet words are a bucket of cold water to Ella. She doesn’t react to the kiss until Damian has pulled her along to a hallway out of sight of the reception. It’s only once they are alone that Ella gathers her wits about her and pushes Damian away.
“I was not jealous! She was being rude. She’s working. You don’t flirt with a guy who’s very clearly walking by with his girlfriend.” Damian keeps grinning, but he lets Ella push him away without a fuss.
“Whatever you say, Ella dearest.” He keeps walking, ignoring Ella’s indignant scoff. She has to speed walk through the hallway to catch up to him. The yellowish marble wall transforms into a wall of floor to ceiling windows looking into an elaborate gym. There’s one woman working out in there with a personal trainer. They don’t notice Damian and her.
“I didn’t care that it was you in particular! It’s the principle of the thing.”
Damian throws a grin over his shoulder. “Sure.” He has no right to look so handsome while he’s being full of himself and making fun of her. Ella tells him he’s being an ass, and Damian just keeps making agreeable remarks in his sarcastic tone until they hit a double door. The doors open without any interference from them.
There’s no time to admire the modern and clean reception of the wellness area, because the woman waiting for them ushers them to a private room immediately. Her (non-eyelash-fluttering) presence effectively ends their pointless discussion, although Ella is still seething at Damian calling her jealous. She wasn’t. Right? There’s nothing about Damian she has a right to be jealous of. It’s not like he was the one flirting. And even if he was, does Ella have any right to feel something about it?
The private room is warm and sparsely furnished. There’s almost nothing in it aside from two low massage tables. Two plain armchairs bracket a cupboard on the other side of the room. One corner of the cupboard is filled with dark bottles and a bowl of sand with incense sticking out of it. The room is pleasantly filled with the barest whisper of lavender.
Their hostess clasps her hands and leans forward. It’s almost like a bow, but Ella is not pretentious enough to think the woman is bowing to her. “I will leave you to get undressed to your level of comfort. Leslie and May will arrive shortly.”
The hostess leaves without another word, not waiting for Ella to ask what she means by ‘undress to your level of comfort’. She turns to Damian instead. He’s already taking his shirt off. Right there in the middle of the room. In full view of Ella.
Ella can’t help but stare at the pristine expanse of flawless skin stretched across his toned back. The way his muscles move as he pulls the shirt over his head is mesmerising. Damian throws the shirt at one of the chairs, and half turns to point at the other chair. Ella swallows heavily and glances down, following a trail of hair to where it disappears behind his belted jeans. Huh. No abs. She expected him to have some.
A chuckle jerks Ella out of her reverie. Damian is staring at her with a smirk on his mouth. “You can take that side. If you’re done staring.” Ella’s face heats up and she turns away from him. Sweet lord, she’s always blushing around this guy. She must look like such a silly girl.
Ella bumps into the massage table in her rush to get to her chair, mostly because she’s trying not to look anywhere near Damian’s side of the room. He laughs at her, but tries to hide it behind a cough. Gloaty bastard. Ella takes a breath and funnels her annoyance onto her voice. “Do I - take off everything?” Damn. She still sounded hesitant.
“Your choice. I wouldn’t wear anything, it just gets ruined.” The clinking of his belt almost makes Ella glance over again. She has no idea where this self-control is coming from, but she doesn’t move at all.
The belt buckle hits the floor. Ella fingers the edge of her shirt. The rustling of clothes ceases behind Ella. “You do need to take off at least some of your clothes. There’s a towel on the table to cover yourself if you want it.”
Ella grabs the towel immediately - and her eyes glide over to Damian without her permission. He’s looking at her with his unblinking stare and a bemused curl to his lips. He’s wearing nothing but tight boxers that leave very little to the imagination. As Ella watches, Damian slides his thumbs under the waistband -
Nope. Ella’s breath whistles through her lips as she turns around. She’s not watching him strip completely. It’s wrong. She’s not ogling a guy that’s basically her employee. He’s only here because his uncle is making him. Damian laughs out loud behind her, and Ella almost turns around to glare at him. She stops herself at the last moment. She glares at her chair instead. “Stop toying with me!”
“But you make it so easy.”
That’s it. Ella turns around and glares at him. Damian has the audacity to be lounging against the wall, arms crossed across his naked chest - god those pecks are insane - and a towel low around his waist. He’s like an ancient statue come to life, and words leave Ella’s mind. Damian grins at her, raising his eyebrows expectantly. With a noise full of indignation, Ella points him at the wall. “I’m not going to undress with you watching me!”
“No problem.” Damian pushes off the wall, the movement flexing every muscle visible to Ella. He does have abs apparently, and Ella can’t resist watching them. He sits down on his massage table, back turned to Ella. He leans back on his hands, jutting his shoulder blades out. “Don’t worry, I won’t sneak a look in.” The British drawl to his words make Ella feel even more belittled.
Ella scoffs at him and turns to get her clothes off in a hurry. She can’t resist glancing at him every once in a while, and sure enough - he never does turn around. Damian appears to be a man of his word. She’s never undressed so fast in her life, and she’s covered in her towel in no time at all. She clears her throat before speaking. “Right. I’m… decent. Now what?”
Damian looks at her, his eyes flitting to her bare legs underneath the short towel. He immediately looks away again and points at a door in the side wall. It’s barely visible, and Ella is surprised she didn’t notice it before. “I suggest going to the bathroom, because getting up in the middle of a massage is quite disruptive.”
Ella stalks over to the door and pulls it open. It’s a large bathroom, with a shower stall and everything. She angrily turns to Damian. “I could’ve undressed in there!”
The shit-eating grin Damian is sporting ticks Ella off even more. “Now where’d be the fun in that, love?”
Someone knocks on the door and asks if they are ready. Damian asks them to wait for a moment longer, waving Ella into the bathroom. Ella lets out an aggravated groan. Words can’t accurately tell Damian how exasperated she is with him. A quick bathroom break is exactly what she needs to calm down again. When she comes back out, Damian is sitting on his table, face turned towards her. His towel barely reaches mid thigh.
Ella sits on her table, uncertain about what to do now. “You should lay down and get the towel out from underneath you.” That makes sense, except Ella can’t figure out how to do that without flashing Damian.
Seeing her hesitation, Damian comes over to help. “Just lay down, I’ll fix it for you.” He stops behind her and hesitates before touching her. “If I may.” God his accent. Ella swallows and nods.
His touch is electric. The soft brushes of his fingers against Ella’s sensitive skin as he pulls the knot loose send jolts of lightning through her body. In no time at all - even if it felt like an eternity - Ella’s face down on the table, towel covering her ass. And all that without Damian catching a glimpse of her bare flesh.