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(Descriptions of fictional crimes investigated by the story's main Character Max.)
Detective's Fate
It's august of 2008.....
Max is a detective living in Chicago He checks his pistol and puts on his police badge as he walks out his front door.
He has been searching for a serial killer known as the Caller for years and always been one step behind due to the red tape.....
More importantly the chief's lazy attitude towards getting search warrants and actions approved by the courts for raids. Twice Max had good intel on the suspect's locations and photo evidence showing him at the sites.
The department needs more vigilant, caring officers and leaders but no one steps up to do it, instead they just complain about the slow progress and officers. And hinder investigations.
Now Max has decided that it might be time to stop playing by the rules and catch this scumbag.... .... ....
Starting his car Max sets his GPS to the address that "The Caller" was last seen and pulls out of his driveway as the 50 miles of directions pop up.
The killer's nickname being for his signature of calling in as he is committing the crime.
As he drives he remembers his first case, five years ago now..... ..... .....
A woman, Joane Taylor, was found dead in an alleyway after going out for the night. She showed no signs of struggle leading the police to believe she had drank to much and expired from alcohol poisoning.... ...
The death was written off as a "party gone wrong".... That is until several more were found and the coroner decided on a whim to test for other substances.
Once it came out that the deaths were possible murders...
The calls started coming in, almost like the suspect wanted credit before revealing himself....
Then ways of the deaths began changing as the Serial Killer explored his twisted desires searching for his preferred method.
The last case being a young woman found stuffed in a dumpster after the killer apparently got scared off.... Max will never forget it.... .... ....
The GPS finishes and the car beeps its final direction, taking an exit off the highway. Ramps out here are always confusing... Which is funny since he has driven this one for five years now...
The chief says he should sit this one out but he can't... The latest victim 3 months ago.
Marie Spelner, a waitress out on her smoke break talking to her spouse on the phone.
Survived by her husband, no children or living relatives. ....
Max Spelner turns into the driveway of the house he was directed to... Stepping out of the car he walks up and knocks on the door. Looking at the house he knows the family must be doing well if they live here.... Raising his hand to knock again he hears a scream from inside....
A second later the door is answered by a middle aged butler holding a tray with wine glasses on it... "Hello Sir, I'm sorry but this house does not wish to partake in any offers at this time..."
Max calmly says. "I'm not selling anything."
The butler looks confused for a moment before his eyes dart over Max's shoulder seeing his unmarked cruiser and he nods.
Looking past the butler Max sees that a woman is cleaning up after their dog.
"Have you seen this man?" Says Max holds up a picture of the one suspected of being the killer.
The butler gives it a once over before replying. "I'm sorry sir, no I have not." His tone sounds like he is lying... ....
"Are you sure?" The detective asks.
"I would not lie about something like that, sir." He states, his eyes not meeting Max's.
The woman calls from inside "Fletcher, who are you talking too?"
"Some man asking about a killer" he calls back.
"The killer is an inside job!" The woman quickly states.
"What?!" Max says.
"The Killer, it's an inside job." She says again, louder this time. In the same Max also hears a child begin to cry in another room.
"We should start from the beginning, it will be easier to explain trust me." The woman says.
'She seems to know what is going on....
"How do I know your story holds water?" He asks out loud.
"Oh I wouldn't lie. I have been following the case myself and it seems like an inside job to me." She states, somehow sounding hurt.
"Is there anyone else in the house besides you two and the baby?" He asks noticing the baby isn't crying anymore.
"Just Fletcher and I live here, the baby is my cousins but he just stays the night sometimes." She replies.
Max draws his gun and enters the house upon reasonable suspicion of an emergency in progress or suspect on the premisses as the man seems to be deceiving.
While the woman still seems unconcerned that the child is now silent.
He pushes past the butler and rushes towards the area he heard the crying. passes the entryway, the dinning room, and a kitchen before finally finding a child in a playpen.
"There there..." He says in a sing song voice picking up the child. "I'm officer Max, do you know where your mommy is?"
The child just cries louder.
Then he sees the man from the photo walk out of the bathroom, upon seeing him he bolts for the door and Max sets the child down gently then gives chase.
He runs through the house, following the man as he can hear the woman screaming at him to stop but he doesn't."
"Stop or I'll shoot." The man doesn't even break stride.
Instead he runs out of the front door and jumps into his car.
Furious that the man might escape he fires at the car as it drives away.
The back window shatters and he hopes he got his tire, but he doesn't wait to find out as he runs to his car and initiates a pursuit....
He flips on his concealed lights in his cruiser as he reverses down the drive and into the street.
The suspects car is fast but he manages to keep up with it weaving in and out of traffic as people move over for the siren.
As they approach a red light there is heavy traffic in the intersection..... ....
The suspect slams on his brakes and Max's cruiser only just stops short of hitting it. Jumping out the Detective points his firearm at the vehicle running up beside seeing heavily tinted windows.
"Get out of the car and on the ground now!!" He shouts as he moves to the driver's side door.
After seeing no response....
Max throws open the door and the driver is gone with the passenger side open.
He quickly runs to the other side catching the man trying to sneak off tackling him to the ground and then takes his arms putting them behind his back.
Max grabs his radio and calls it in as the man cries.
As he is waiting he hears a noise that sounds like static.....
"Wrong guy moron.. Did you ever stop to think I wanted you close for this one. That I planned everything...Even framing the pothead..... I almost lost interest until you pulled in the driveway... The attic is kinda cramped tho... I think I'll go carve some meat. Maybe graduate to other things to. I'm not sure yet. Lets see if you can catch me before......" A familiar voice says over the radio then cuts off... ...
Max looks at the man on the ground. "Why did you run from me?" He asks.
"Cause I have like 19 grams of marijuana in my pocket." He replies...
"Do you know how stupid that is?! I don't care about that I'm looking for a killer."
Before he can answer Max hears the woman from the house screaming for her life and a child's cries on his radio.
Then from below Max. "He's in the house, he's in the house! My mom and the baby!" The man on the ground says crying.
Max uncuffs him and runs to his car heading back to the house as he lays down rubber on the road... ... ...
As he approaches and pulls into the driveway he notices the front door is open.
"Hold on I'm coming!" Max screams jumping out of his cruiser...
He runs into the house finding the woman's body arriving too late. Moving over to her he checks for a pulse but she is gone, a large gash in her neck.
As he stands up he slips in a fluid but gains his balance and tries not to think about what it is....
He rushes to the room the baby was in finding the play pen empty. He leaves the room searching the rest of the house and still doesn't find the child.
"Where are you!!!" He calls out....
"This is the Callers first kidnapping and the media would eat up the fact I failed to stop the man." He thinks as he blames himself.
Sirens begin to blare in the distance as backup is about to arrive... ... ...
"There's a woman dead and a baby missing! The woman is in the dinning room straight ahead of the front door, Hurry!" He yells into his radio...
Looking over at the mother seeing a piece of paper on the floor.
He walks over to it seeing writing.
"So close... Looks like I'm a kidnapper now.... Good luck finding me.... And... I so enjoyed killing that sweet wife of yours. Might do it that way again. Not to the kid tho....later Max. Ps. This game is so fun.." It says.
"He was here..." Is all he can muster as the team enters.
"He was right in this house and I missed it because her son freaked over weed and ran..." He says as another officer speaks to him gently.
"Don't beat yourself up Detective, it's not your fault. He must have hid before you got her and left after you arrived." The words do little to comfort him "First day back on the job and the killer escaped taking a child..." He says as he walks away.
The chief arrives in his new lexus with a screeching of rubber as he lurches to a halt.
He quickly exits and leaves his door hanging open as he rushes into Max's face....
"I told you to stay away from this case MAX!!!!....(takes a breath)...
"If I catch any flak from my superiors, I won't suspend you.... That'd be to easy. Desk duty and an entry level demotion. The new guy will have a higher rank than you if things go my way.... Now get outta my sight...". "(Sighs)...
"This job is gonna be the death of me..." He says walking away from Max and towards the Coroner's van..... ..... .....
On the way home the detective stops by the store close to his house which is unlike him because he usually follows the same routine.
He nears the front door and he hears a kitchen timer ding loudly from behind him as his car explodes throwing him through the storefront windows as they are blown out..... .....
Alarms around the lot and others nearby create a cacophony of noise. His head pounding as his body aches, Max pushes himself up and collapses as the store manager runs over to him telling him not to move as he dials 911.... .... ....
Waking in the hospital Max recalls the feeling of the Shockwave as he flinches in phantom pain.
"Who woulda thought its like holding a ringing metal bat that hurts your hands but all over and way more intense." He thinks.
He suddenly feels tired and falls asleep.... .... .... ....
The next time he wakes, he sees a breaking news story that Jane Saltani is reporting on....
"Young toddler Accidently Shoots Serial killekidnapper ending his life and Alerting residents in the Area." The news anchor says.
Sighing to himself Max thinks about how crazy that is and laughs.
Tho he really wanted to bring the guy in. He closes his eyes to get some much needed sleep as his door opens.
Max looks up to see a man with a silenced pistol pointed at him.
"Hm. Now they think I'm dead. Funny how they just assume they got the right guy. Just like.... You did Detect... ....." Max hears but then hears no more as his end comes at just over the speed of sound....
The Caller leaves the hair of another intelligent convicted murderer that he obtained in a spot that's believable and quickly leaves.....
He disables the surveillance system and sends a virus out to any device that has received video data from the hospital.
Erasing and corrupting the systems. Leaving a master hackers finger prints on a glass from his home....
"Sorry, no witnesses." He says to the security guard as he fires... ..... ..... .... ....

I 25 Female was dating my X 23 Male, lets call him "Bill" for almost a year. and to get this out of the way but Bill isn't smart at all, like he only has one brain cell and its always occupied with Weed and Shrooms. at the beginning our relationship was good, Going out on dates almost everyday and seeing each other everyday. him and I only had two things in common when we started dating and now we only have one. We were both introverts and we both have a thing for cats. He "Likes" them, I "Love" them. and after my Narcissist little sister kicked me out of our apartment I didnt have anywhere to live. so I asked m BF at the time if I could move in with him and he said "Sure" So a few days later I moved in with him and I got the entire upstairs to myself sleeping in a Full bed. While his room was downstairs sleeping in a Twin bed. and ever since we moved in with each other we seen less and less of each other and we only went on two dates that I paid for. Oh and to also add we both still have our V card and only slept in that same bed twice. I have had the baby talk with him and he said that he wants to wait till after he turns 30!? I have told him multiple times that im not going to wait till im 35 to have kids and going to still be razing them when im in my 60s. And I can actually feel my child baring clock ticking away. and even though we live in the same house I can only see him twice a week. Ive always tried to make plans with him a go out on more dates but Bill always says that he's "To Broke" and that if I wanted to go on dates then "I Would Have To Pay For It", also note that im unemployed and any type of money that I come to inquire I spend it all on groceries and he spends all of his money on weed and fastfood with his friends. He never bought groceries other then the food that he likes, His mom owns the house that we are living in,. Ive asked him multiple time in the past to pick up seurton grocery items that I like and the answer has always been "Im Out With The Boys And Won't Be Home Till Midnight So No." and he hangs out with his "Boys" everyday, he gets home from work and then goes hangs out with his "Boys" and smokes weed the whole time. A few months ago, I signed up for food stamps and bought $500 worth of groceries and I don't even get a thank you from him. I have started calling my mom almost daily complaining and venting to her about Bill and how we never hang out or see eachother, and how everything that comes out of my mouth twords him is just static and flat lining in his ears. He's confused constantly and he doesnt understand the basic sentensis that come out of my mouth. and even threw text. Like I wanted to start a daycare in the dasement and he was even confused about that saying that he doesnt feel confortable letting straingers stay in my house for weeks untill there parents come and pick them up. as in I was running a hotel for kids in the basement. He just said no because thats where he hangs out with his friends and smokes weed. So if he agreed then he would be giving up his hangout/weed spot. I would even ask him to go to a fast food place and get me some food if Ill pay for it? Like yesterday I asked him to go to McDs and get me $8 worth of McChicken's. and he brought back a 10 piece chicken nugget and a sprite, He knows that I don't like sprite and I didn't even ask for a drink!!!!? and just the other day I asked him to pick me up a box of Saltine crackers, frozen Chimichangas, and some baking soda and baking powder. and he said that that Im just "Bumming" off of him and that his MOM also thinks so. so I just broke up with him then and there and im packing all of my stuff and moving out. So AITAH
Ps. I still have more to say about him and what ive been threw with him so look out for the Part 2/Update

I'm pretty sure I'm going to be dead in the next 24 hours.
Whether that's the Costella family, or whatever this is, I'm not sure.
The police are taking forever, and part of me knows they're either refusing to believe me, or RC got them too.
I'm holed up on our school bus, so I've got nothing better to do.
I want to tell you about my team.
We met in our sophomore year.
Strangers standing outside the club room.
Levi was the freckled brunette who wouldn't stop talking about Game of Thrones.
Sunny, a pretty redhead, told him to shut up.
Tom, a sandy blonde, nodding his head to music corked in his ears.
I just wanted to be part of a club, and get away from my overbearing mother.
I won't say it was a perfect start. Our school was lacking in funding, so anyone could join, which made us more of a Quiz Club. I had some serious anxiety, so I stayed on the sidelines for a while, watching, rather than taking part.
It's not like we actually talked to each other initially. The first few weeks, we played Jeopardy, and attempted to find more members to cement us as an official Academic Decathlon club.
Unfortunately, though, it was just the four of us.
Which made it extremely hard for us to be taken seriously.
According to Google, Academic Decathlon teams were made up of nine members, placed by their GPA.
Our principal laughed at us, but he did let us become official.
Which was out of pity, I assumed.
The club was assembled, and we started meeting up after school.
Sort of.
Sunny barely showed up, and Levi didn't take anything seriously, preferring to spend the time telling us about his weird family turf-war.
Our principal dumped us in a tiny classroom with a resident rat living under the floorboards.
There was barely enough room to move, and the four of us crammed together for three hours was less than appealing.
Still, though, I wanted to be part of a club.
I had grown up with parents who were obsessed with board games, so I was pretty good at general knowledge questions. Our club room was too small for anything else but three desks (Sunny and I shared one) and a whiteboard we had to shove through the door.
But, again, we didn't start as an Academic club.
It was more akin to Story Time Club.
Arriving late on my third day, armed with quiz cards from home, I found Tom and Sunny completely mesmerised by Levi’s storytelling skills, drowned in shadow.
They didn't even turn the lights on.
I strictly remember squeezing next to Sunny, and hearing the words, “But there was so much blood all over the floor, and my Mom told me to go upstairs and hide under the bed…”
Sitting in front of them was Levi, perched on a desk, his legs swinging, a whiteboard marker between his teeth.
Sometimes he'd get up, and illustrate parts of his story.
It sucked that his drawings were all stick people.
I won't go into full details of his life, but Levi grew up as part of a family who had… interesting methods of making a living. I had seen the guy’s father multiple times when we hung out at his place, and, yeah, my friend’s family definitely had Soprano vibes.
Levi’s Draw My Life was nothing to do with the club, but it did bring us closer.
Even if, at that point, I was considering leaving.
But it's not like it was easy to walk away from these guys. It's like finding your soulmates. Levi wasn't the only one with an interesting life. Sunny Lang was an ex kpop trainee, who was kicked out for being too fat, which led her to develop a severe eating disorder, and a hatred for her own body.
Sunny explained her family were originally from Boston, her mother growing up in Korea.
She signed up for an idol agency focusing on creating a new girl group, and had gotten all the way to the final stages, before being kicked for her weight. Sunny told us her story with a smile, though there was a hollowness in her eyes I couldn't ignore. The other girls were judgemental bullies, and the idol diet and brutal regime almost killed her.
Sunny lived in a tiny apartment with 9 girls, who would tear each other apart for a chance to debut. Sunny said all the other girls debuted, and when we (not so patiently) asked for names, she shrugged, admitting she signed an NDA that prevented her spilling the beans.
What she did say, was the K-pop idol is a product, not a person– and are made and moulded into a product.
She had zero interest in throwing her humanity away to become a manufactured doll.
So, one of us was the son of an underground family, and the other was an ex idol.
Tom was an aspiring horror writer with a famous older step-brother.
His story times were usually, That one time I went to the Met Gala.
When it was my turn to reveal my story, I told them the only interesting thing about me.
I could smell when something bad was going to happen.
They laughed, but I was being serious.
When I was a kid, I smelled my mother’s brain tumor.
I remember it smelled like curdled milk.
I asked Mom why her head smelled of mouldy milk, and Mom laughed and said it was her shampoo.
It was actually a grade two tumor growing inside her brain.
Thankfully, the tumour was found quickly and removed.
Growing older, I became sensitive to smell. The little girl choking on the bus smelled of singed wood, and the old man crossing the road stunk of gasoline.
In the fourth grade, my classmate Alex Castor smelled of lemons all morning.
I sat behind him, choking on the stink all the way through class.
Ever since I met him, Alex had always smelled… off.
It was a distinct smell I could never understand, and as the days and months and years went by, that smell morphed into a subtle orangey musk that was so strong I had to cover my mouth and nose. Then, he smelled like lemons.
During Recess, I watched Alex fall off of the jungle gym, straight onto his head.
Alex Castor was dead before the paramedics arrived, my panicked teacher attempting CPR when his brains were leaking out of his ears.
The school claimed it was an accident, but Alex would have been fine if the jungle gym wasn't built on solid concrete.
I told my team members this, and Levi was sceptical.
“You can smell bad things?” He said, his lips curved around his milkshake straw. In the early days, we hung out in the local bar. It's not like we were allowed inside, but Levi could get us in anywhere.
I was squeezed between Tom and Sunny, while Levi took the seat opposite us. I couldn't help noticing our waitress was insisting on free milkshake refills, her frantic eyes glued to Levi.
I had zero idea why. Levi Costella was about as intimidating as a fruit fly.
Wearing a white shirt with a popped collar, a leather jacket thrown over the top, Levi was giving rebellious Harvard student, rather than son of a crime family.
Leaning forward, he raised a brow, clearly not believing me.
“So, you're like a stink psychic?”
I shrugged, sipping my own shake.
“Sure.”
I wasn't planning on telling him the club room smelled off on our first day.
Once we actually started the club, Levi surprised us as the smartest member, and getting to know him further, I came to the realization his family were infamous in our town.
However, his parents hid it well. Lucy and Michael Costella were the owners of a popular ramen store in our town, hiding under the facade of two successful business owners. The Costella’s were an attractive family.
Lucy was a sophisticated brunette with a lipstick smile, Michael, a handsome fluffy haired man who looked like he modelled glasses.
The two were fiercely protective over their youngest son, not so casually reminding us behind grinning smiles, that if anything happened to Levi, we would automatically be involved in the family.
I mean, they did laugh and say, “We’re joking! Look at your little faces!” when Sunny went deathly pale. But there was definitely truth behind their words.
Being Levi’s friend was… challenging at first.
Tom and I were in his room studying for finals, and an alarm went off, flooding Levi’s room in red light.
I had zero idea where it was coming from, but it locked all the doors and windows, forcing the Costella residence into temporary lockdown. Levi didn't seem fazed, casually mentioning his parents were taking care of it.
He had a whiteboard set up in his room, and was standing in front of it, cramming all of our textbook notes into one easily digestible drawing.
Levi wasn't just smart.
He was Ivy League smart, so we had struck gold with him.
His family were questionable, and yes, sometimes I did fear for my life, but as the more time we spent at his house, the Costella household became a second home. We got used to the alarms.
I just brought along ear plugs.
I wish I was writing this post about Levi’s family, and sure, they are a factor in what is going on right now, but I want to preface this by saying the events below involve the 2024 scholastic decathlon final in our town with the school’s listed:
Starbrook High School.
Ratcliffe High School.
Please note, the incident that took place last night was immediately covered up, and all phone footage was destroyed. Our town is mostly out of the way, and does not show up on Google searches.
We also have our own version of the academic decathlon, which is a more town-level competition, due to lacking funds. The four of us were desperate to start competing with our schools.
So, we started taking things a little more seriously.
We got a coach.
Mr Hanes, who was hesitant at first.
In his words, “You will hate me as your coach.”
He started by recruiting more members, announcing, “If you want to be taken seriously as an actual club, then I'll be taking the reins from now on.”
He did, and with our teachers guidance (and sometimes brutal honesty), we reached a level where we could start competing with other school’s in town. Now, none of us knew this, but Mr Hanes was obsessed with winning.
So, club meetings were twisted into two hour study sessions with no talking, followed by Mr Hanes Jeaprody, which was Jeaprody, without the actual fun.
We were quizzed multiple times, answer cards and practise questions quite literally thrown directly in our faces.
I hate to admit this (I really hate to admit this) but Mr Hanes’s tactics worked. Sure, we had been mildly brainwashed by our slightly unhinged coach, but with Levi Costella, we destroyed our competitors. Like I said, our town held their own version of the academic scholastic decathlon, but it was pretty much the same, with some changes.
Ten subjects. Language and Literature, Math, Social Science, Economics, Art, Music, Interview, Speech, and Essay.
Unlike the official Decathlon, ours was more like a game show, with the ability to be knocked out if a team member answers a question wrong. Whoever answers the most questions correctly wins. Team meet ups were either tests, study sessions, or quizzing each other.
Which leads me to last night.
The finals were held in the reigning champions, Ratcliffe High School’s, auditorium.
And we were about to win our town’s Scholastic Decathlon 2024 Championships.
Well…I was knocked out in the music section. Standing next to my coach who I was sure was going to asphyxiate from excitement, I could smell the sudden potent stink of lemon. I tried to ignore it at first, but the more questions my team were answering correctly, the smell got worse, suffocating my senses.
This wasn't just lemon. The stink was like a burning, singing smell trickling into my nose and the back of my throat.
It was stronger than what Alex smelled like.
This was suffocating, drowning my thoughts.
“Are you okay, Cassandra?”
Mr Hanes nudged me when a Ratcliffe girl was struggling to answer a question, only for Sunny to jump in with the answer. “You look quite pale.”
I nodded, forcing a smile.
My gaze was on the Ratcliffe coach, a scary looking blonde woman, whispering in one of her student’s ears.
The Ratcliffe kid freaked me out. He was way too tall, dark blonde hair, and bulging eyes I swear were not blinking.
His gaze was glued to Levi, who wore a smug grin.
There was a smaller girl next to the Ratcliffe kid, a Macbook balanced on her knee. Every so often, he leaned into her, the two of them in deep conversation.
“I'm just nervous.”
I jumped when Ratcliffe scored a point, their side erupting into cheers.
During the break, we had a mini team meeting.
Sunny rushed to the bathroom to freshen up, and I noticed a Ratcliffe girl with a bouncing ponytail following her.
Ignoring our coach’s speech, I joined the two girls in the corridor, that lemony scent hanging thick in the air.
I caught them in an awkward position.
The Ratcliffe girl had her fingers pinched between the material of Sunny’s dark blue shirt bearing our school’s name.
Sunny looked confused, her lips parted like she was going to yell.
Ponytail dropped her hand, suddenly, with a nervous laugh. “Oh! I'm so, so, sorry,” she gushed. “You had, like, the biggest spider crawling on your back.”
Sunny caught my eye, shooting me a reassuring smile.
“Thanks.” She made sure to keep her distance. “Uh, where's your bathroom?”
The Ratcliffe girl nodded down the hallway. “It's just down there. I'm going there too if you want me to show you?”
Sunny motioned for me to go back to the auditorium. “Uh, sure! That'd be great!”
I did try to follow them, only for Sunny to cough loudly.
I took the hint, reluctantly heading back into the auditorium.
My team was hyping each other up, Levi in the centre, sweating through his team shirt. He ran a trembling hand through his hair. “I can't do this,” He groaned. “Ratcliffe High is known to play dirty, man. They're unbeatable.”
“In what way do they play dirty?” I asked, joining them.
Levi gulped down water, shrugging.
“I dunno! They're already trying to distract me with the stink eye.” The boy narrowed his eyes at a grinning Ratcliffe kid who, after noticing our stares, jumped to his feet, waving at us.
“Hey guys!”
“That's Harry Cartwright, the son of the Cartwright family who tried to kill my parents in the third grade.” Levi mockingly waved back. “As you can see, their kid is a fucking sociopath.”
Huh. I wasn't expecting the smiley kid to be the mobster’s son.
Harry Cartwright was not what I expected.
Unlike his team members, he was the only one in casual clothing, a short sleeved white shirt and jeans, a pair of sunglasses perched on top of his head.
Tom went pale.
“Fuck.” He hissed. “He’s one of you? Then those bastards will have a reason to play dirty, right?”
Levi shrugged, averting his gaze. It was the first time I saw his eyes darken, like he was subtly telling the boy to back off.
“The Cartwright’s have been trying to buy our land for a while,” he muttered. “I wouldn't put it past them to use the Decathlon as a way to attack.”
“Attack?!” April, another member of our team, hissed. “Like, attack attack?”
Mr Hanes grabbed the boy, resting his hands on Levi’s shoulders. “Ignore them,” he said. “Hey. Look at me.”
Levi did, raising a brow.
“You're losing that spark in your eye, young man.”
“Spark?”
Our coach nodded. “Look at me, kid.”
Levi rolled his eyes. “I am looking at you, Mr Hanes.”
The man was shaking. I was guessing his whole career (or coaching career) was on the line.
“They know they're losing, Mr Costella.”
Hanes shook the boy, squeezing his shoulders. “You are being positive and Ratcliffe doesn't like that. They want you to be nervous. They want to make you second guess yourself and lose confidence. Don't let them get into your head.” he smiled, giving the boy a playful shove. “Kick their asses.”
“Exactly!”
I didn't realize Sunny was back from the bathroom.
The faint smell of lemons had followed her. I noticed a wet patch on her shirt collar, though she was quick to smile at me, admitting she'd spilled water down herself. Sunny wrapped her arms around Levi, squeezing him into a hug.
She hung on for a little too long, Tom dragging her away with a laugh. “Good luck, all right?” she backed away, ruffling his hair. “We’ve got this!”
When I hugged Levi good luck too, I had to resist covering my nose.
The smell of lemon was unbearable, just like fourth grade Alex.
But it wasn't as potent as earlier.
I vaguely remembered the smell starting to fade once Alex’s body was being carted away on a stretcher.
Following my captain through the crowd, I was right. The smell was less suffocating. Before he went back to the stage, I grabbed the back of his shirt.
The material was soaking wet.
“How are you so wet?” I said, swiping my hands on my shirt.
“Huh?”
I shook my head. “Never mind. Do you remember what I told you in sophomore year?”
Levi settled me with a confident, but nervous smile. “Thaaaat you're scared of clowns?”
“No. I mean the boy who smelled of lemons.” I gritted out.
Levi surprised me with a laugh. “What are you talking about?”
Something ice cold trickled down my spine.
Levi did know what I was talking about. He brought up my stink sense a day earlier in front of his parents, and I had to cover his mouth to shut him up.
Leaning close, I whispered in his ear. “You stink of rotten lemons.”
He nodded slowly, pulling away. “Uh… thanks?”
I bit back a hiss of frustration. “No, you don't understand what I'm saying–”
“Starbrooke High School,” The host announced. “Can all members please return to the stage.”
Levi held up his hand for a high five.
“Can we do this later?” He winked. “I'm kinda busy carrying this spelling-bee on my back right now.”
I nodded shakily, high fiving him, and letting him jump back onto the stage.
Before his words hit like a tidal wave, ice cold water slammed into me.
Spelling Bee?
Slowly making my way back to the stands, Levi’s mistake was circling around my head. He did win a spelling bee, but that was in middle school.
Thankfully, the smell of lemons was gone when I returned to my seat.
Mr Hanes handed me a soda. “Chill out, Cassandera, it's just a game.”
He could talk. The guy was on his fifth coffee.
Mr Hanes was not chilled out in the slightest.
Surprisingly, the event went well. I was half expecting my team to be crushed by the rafters, or caught in a blaze started in the crowd. But we were doing well. No, we were winning.
Reaching the climaxing round, Sunny choked against a smug Ratcliffe boy, joining me on the sidelines.
Levi answered the next question with a confident smile.
We were winning, but Ratcliffe could still catch up with a miracle.
The second to last question was to Ratcliffe, and it was general knowledge.
”Where on the human body would one find the *orbit?*
I knew the answer, and so did Levi, his lips breaking out into a smile when the Ratcliffe boy was hesitating, eyes wide.
Our school’s buzzer went off, Levi slamming his hand down.
Bzzz!
The host turned to our team. “Starbrooke, can I have your answer?”
Levi nodded, shooting our team a victory grin.
“It's…!“ He opened his mouth to answer, his jaw slackening suddenly.
The boy’s shoulders slumped.
“Uh… “
“Um…”
“Huhhhhh…”
Levi inclined his head, blinking, his eyes glazing over. There was a sudden, hollow vacancy that sent chills down my spine. It was like someone had reached into his skull, and yanked out his brain, leaving a shell in his place.
To my confusion, our team captain frowned at his buzzer like he'd never seen one before. He pressed it, exploding into child-like giggles.
Bzzz!
The audience laughed along nervously.
Tom nudged me. “What the fuck is he doing?”
Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz!
Levi’s entire body was slumped, his hand slamming down on the buzzer.
I caught something pooling down his chin.
“Is he… drooling?” I whispered.
Mr Hanes looked mildly horrified. “Has he been drinking?
“Levi?” Tom spluttered. “Drinking?!"
Whatever we were watching, however, was definitely influenced by… something.
Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. Bzz!
“Young man, that is not a toy!”
The host wasn't amused. “Starbrooke High School, I need an answer from you,” He nodded to Levi, who was pressing the buzzer, his smile growing.
“Once again,” The host backed away, like Levi was contagious. “Where on the human body would one find the Orbit?”
Levi cocked his head, lips parted.
His gaze found the overhead lights, and he winced, his lips curling into a frown.
“Starbrooke High School!”
Levi jumped, tipping his head back and blowing a raspberry. “Palm tree?”
The audience laughed, and I started feeling nauseous.
Across from us, I could see the twist of a smirk on the Ratcliffe coach’s lips.
Bzzz! Levi slammed the buzzer again giggling.
“Starbrooke High School, if your team member continues to act like this, I will be forced to disqualify all members.”
Our captain stopped, gaze glued to the host, his hand creeping towards the buzzer, like it was a big red button.
The audience loved it, laughing like they were watching a sitcom.
“He wouldn't.” Tom whisper-shrieked.
The auditorium was silent for a moment, awaiting Starbrooke’s response.
Levi stuck out his tongue, slamming his hand down.
Bzzz! Bzzz! Bzzz! Bzzz! Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz–
When Tom dragged Levi away from his podium, a Ratcliffe girl hit her buzzer.
“Starbrooke High School, you are disqualified,” the host announced. “Ratcliffe High School, do you have an answer?”
It was Ponytail who nodded with a grin.
“The answer is the eye socket! The Orbit is part of the eye socket!”
“That is the correct answer.” The host was distracted, his eyes glued to Levi.
“Ratcliffe High School wins.”
Levi jumped when the Ratcliffe wide erupted into cheers.
His eyes were wide, clinging onto the buzzer for comfort.
Next to me, our coach looked like he was going to faint.
I barely noticed Ratcliffe’s victory, too busy watching our team captain, who was Harvard bound, tipping his head back and smiling at the ceiling like a new-born baby. Tom dragged the stumbling boy over to me, his mouth twisted.
“This was Ratcliffe, right?” He hissed, shaking our captain, who was struggling, squirming in his grip.
“Did they put something in his drink?!” He prodded Levi. “Hey! What did they do to you?!”
Still, though, drugging his drink didn't make sense.
Levi never left the auditorium, and kept his water bottle with him the whole time.
How did they even manage to slip something into his drink in the first place?
Did I smell our competitors drugging him?
Sure, intentionally inebriating my teammate was morally wrong and illegal, but why could I smell lemon?
“I doubt it was Ratcliffe.” Sunny squeezed next to me. “I've been watching them. They're harmless.”
“Then how the fuck do we explain this to his parents?!” Tom whispered, grappling with Levi, who was fighting to get back to the buzzer.
When Tom let go of him, he dropped onto the floor, crawling over to his podium. It was like watching a child.
Who was determined to piss off the adults.
Levi jumped back to instead feet, his gaze was glued to the host, a smile curved on his lips, when he slammed the buzzer again.
Bzzz!
“Someone, please remove the Starbrooke boy from the stage!”
I was embarrassed, our whole team ducking our heads as our captain was forcibly removed from the podium.
Mr Hanes grabbed Levi, pulling him off of the stage.
I expected our coach to be mad at him, but I think the teacher was more worried, a phone pressed to his ear while he forced the boy into a sitting position.
No, I don't think it's influence from alcohol, I could hear his conversation.
Levi kept trying to get up, mesmerised by the buzzer. The teacher was firm but gentle. “Hey. Sit down, all right? Keep still.” He went back to his phone call, gently prying Levi’s eyes open.
From what I can see, there's nothing wrong. He's just kind of…
Mr Hanes swiped his own hands on his jeans. ... wet?
Team Ratcliffe came over to rub it in our faces, though I was still tuned into our coach’s hissed whispering.
Water? No, I don't think it's water. It smells… no, I haven't told his parents…
“You guys did awesome!” Ponytail's voice was sugary sweet. Too sugary.
She held the 2024 trophy, bearing a satisfied smile. I noticed the Ratcliffe members were surrounding Harry, like guards.
“Better luck next time, okay?” She held out her hand, her eyes twinkling.
“No hard feelings?”
“Control your dog.” Harry said, amused eyes flicking to Levi, who was once again sprinting back to the fucking buzzer. His eyes had visibly darkened, lips curled into a triumphant smile.
Harry Cartwright was watching Mr Hanes chase our team captain like it was his own personal entertainment.
I had to look away before I died of second hand embarrassment.
“What did you put in his drink?” Tom demanded. “Weed? Edibles?” the boy attempted to shove Harry, only to be pushed back. “What the fuck did you do to him?”
Harry’s smile didn't waver. “Like I said. Control your mut.”
When the Ratcliffe team walked away, our red faced coach struggling with Levi, who was behaving progressively more erratically, informed us we were longer welcome inside the school.
Tom suggested calling an ambulance, but our coach was hesitant.
We all knew who Levi’s family were.
On the way out, Tom matched my stride. He was frowning at our team captain struggling to walk.
The way he was acting was already eyebrow raising.
But walking at an angle and being unable to stand up straight was worrying.
“I don't think they drugged his drink.” Tom muttered.
We pushed through the doors out of the school, and I revelled in the cool night air grazing my cheek. “If they did, he would be acting out of it, right? So, what's the deal with him acting like–”
“A child.” I finished for him.
“Yeah.” Tom leaned closer. “Do you think this has something to do with their turf war?”
I slapped at a bug creeping across my cheek.
Levi fell over again, this time bursting into giggles.
“Almost definitely.”
Levi was right about Ratcliffe playing dirty. I didn't realize how dirty until we were on the losers bus home. Levi was in the seat next to me, and the kid hadn't moved since we left Ratcliffe, his eyes wide, lips pulled into a dazed grin.
Bzzz!
The noise startled me from slumber. I was drooling, my head pressed against the window. Outside, the sky was pitch dark, and squinting through the glass, I couldn't get a bearing on where we were. I thought I was hearing things, but when I sat up, I heard it again.
Bzzz!
It was close.
Leaning over the boy, I glimpsed a smear of scarlet on his headrest.
I choked on my next words.
“Tom.”
Tom was in front of me, listening to music.
He didn't reply, his head of dark blonde curls nodding to the beat.
“Levi.” I managed to get out. I prodded him, and his head lolled into his shoulder. “Hey. Can you… sit up?”
Bzzz! Bzzz!
When the boy didn't move, I gently grabbed his shoulders and pulled him forward myself, something contracting in my stomach.
I don't know how long it takes for your mind to fully register something, but my body was already reacting.
Levi’s seat was infested with bugs, eating their way through the upholstery. I was aware of my body moving back. I threw up, instantly, screaming into my hand.
The back of my best friend's skull resembled a deflated soccer ball, what was left of his brain leaking from his skull where a swarm of skittering bugs chewed their way through brain tissue, metallic legs scratching the curved, pearly white of the base if his skull.
Levi’s head hung, his body flopping into mine.
But his eyes were still open, lips still stretched into a smile.
Blood ran in thick rivulets from his nose and ears.
Bzzz!
I could see them, black writhing dots alive in his eyes, wriggling movement under his skin.
“Tom!”
I jumped up, stumbling into the aisle, my stomach heaving.
And it was only when I was on my knees, swiping bile from my lips, when I realized the others weren't reacting.
Tom wasn't moving.
I pulled an Airpod out of his ear, a long, slithering string of pink attached to the end.
There was a stray bug skittering across his hand, his face starting to twitch and writhe.
Moving back, I checked myself over, my hands shaking.
Head.
Shoulders.
Hair.
Clawing through it, my breath was stuck in my throat.
Arms.
Legs.
Feet.
Mr Hanes was slumped against the window, a reddish froth bubbling from his mouth.
Sunny.
I started towards the back of the bus, but all I had to see was her bowed head, half of her skull chewed through.
Sunny was in a far more deteriorated state, her face had been ripped through, a skeletal smile glinting in the dim.
The thick black smear on the window next to her was moving.
When I screamed for the driver to stop the bus, he ignored me.
If anything, he stamped on the gas.
I moved forward to shake him, before glimpsing a bug creeping down his face.
Calling 911, the operator laughed at me.
“Bugs are eating your friends.” He said. “Do you know the penalty for calling with bullshit pranks?”
The bus didn't stop, so I stayed at the front, while the bugs took over the back, eating through my teammates.
After four hours, I risked leaning over the seat next to Tom to check on Levi.
They were eating him.
Chewing all the way through skin, muscle and bone.
I tried to stop the bus, but the driver’s hands were tightly wrapped around the wheel.
Another hour, and blood was seeping down the aisle, crawling with bugs.
Levi was gone, and in his place, a buzzing skittering pile of bugs, that I thought were going to move to a second victim, maybe burrowing into the seats.
But, no.
These things began to tremble, replicating.
Building.
Slowly, nothing became static, and static became muscle.
Then bone.
Then flesh.
When a body began to slowly form, moulded from the dead boy, I stumbled back.
These things weren't eating Levi Costella.
They were rewriting him.
…
Edit: I'm still on the bus. I'm 99.9% sure that I'm infected with whatever this thing is. I can't stop fucking itching.
I keep picking them off me but they won't stop. This bus isn't going to stop until I'm like the others.
…
Edit 2:
I can feel them chewing into my skull. They're in my ears. I keep spitting them out. Please, someone get them off of me. Help me. I don't want to die at 17.
Edit 3:
Still alive. Still breathing. Maybe they're leaving me alone????? I think I'm okay. There is a pile of bugs at my feet, but they're crawling off of me.
Edit 4:
Levi really wants to go home. Like, he just told me he REALLY wants to go home. He's got a gift for his parents.
~~Edit 5 :) ~~
Levi is next to me right now, an odd smile on his face.
The bugs are not finished building him yet, but he'll be ready soon.
We will be ready soon.
Your son says hello! He is a wonderful boy, is he not?
Mr and Mrs Costella, I cannot wait for you to meet him.
He is our greatest achievement, and rest assured, you will give us what we want.
Warm regards.
The Cartwright's.

Hey all, I'm a chiropractor and treat tennis elbow all the time. I'm also passionate about pickleball. just wanted to summarize some tips that I'll be releasing somewhat soon in a new youtube channel. Not going too deep into the weeds in this write up... I'm basically just going to cover paddle characteristics. However, my video will also include technique changes and selfcare stretches, exercises, and more.
Tennis elbow occurs when the load on the muscle and tendon is greater than its capacity to withstand, along with an element of repetition. So in fixing it, we need to either reduce the LOAD or increase our CAPACITY.
Paddle characteristics: Static weight is not the best metric because two paddles can weight the same on a scale but feel very different when swung through the air. The better metric when considering how to lessen the load on the forearm is swing weight. Many elongated paddles have swing weights of 120+, while hybrid shaped paddles have SW of 114-117. The Legacy pro for example weighs 8.1 oz with a swing weight of 121. The six zero double black diamond weighs the exact same, but has a swing weight of 114. I'm not saying elongated paddles WILL cause tennis elbow, but if you DO have it and use one, consider moving lighter.
Other relevant (but less critical) metrics would be twist weight for more stability and vibration dampening technology. In my experience, 16mm paddles are better at reducing vibration compared to 14mm. Also, more modern paddles (gen 1.5 or more recent) use some element of perimeter foam or foam in their cores which will also reduce vibration. So if you have an old paddle that is just honeycomb, or a 14mm paddle, or regularly feel vibration AND you have TE, then consider switching. I think most modern paddles do a good job in this category now.
Grip circumference also plays a role. A grip that is either too small OR too big will strain the wrist extensors more. Some people with small hands that are playing with overgrips should not be. Other people with large hands should try two overgrips. Most paddle grips are around 4.125", but some can be 4.25" or more (variance from factory). A good rule of thumb is if you are holding you paddle, there should be some space (like a pinky fingers width) between your finger tips and the base of your thumb.
Hesacore grips have been reported to reduce tennis elbow. I believe this is through a few mechanisms. First, it reduces vibration. Second, it increases grip circumference and some people just needed that increase and didn't know it. Third, it increases surface area contact with your hand, letting you use less grip pressure. Grip pressure will get dedicated time in my video, but most people just hold their paddles too tightly.
I'm a six zero ambassador and they have some great paddles to look at. In particular, the Black Diamond Infinity has an extremely low swing weight of 106. The twist weight is also lower at around 5.7, BUT you can add a little lead to the sides to get a more average twist weight and stay at a very low 110 swing weight. The double black diamond has excellent stability and has a swing weight of 114. Ruby is 117 and I dont think it would be a good switch for someone who already has TE. The difference in LOAD on your forearm between an elongated 120+ paddle and a BDi would HUGE. Lots more info to come in my video regarding technique and self care!

Use this thread to promote yourself and/or your work!
(Descriptions of fictional crimes investigated by the story's main Character Max.)
Detective's Fate
It's august of 2008.....
Max is a detective living in Chicago He checks his pistol and puts on his police badge as he walks out his front door.
He has been searching for a serial killer known as the Caller for years and always been one step behind due to the red tape.....
More importantly the chief's lazy attitude towards getting search warrants and actions approved by the courts for raids. Twice Max had good intel on the suspect's locations and photo evidence showing him at the sites.
The department needs more vigilant, caring officers and leaders but no one steps up to do it, instead they just complain about the slow progress and officers. And hinder investigations.
Now Max has decided that it might be time to stop playing by the rules and catch this scumbag.... .... ....
Starting his car Max sets his GPS to the address that "The Caller" was last seen and pulls out of his driveway as the 50 miles of directions pop up.
The killer's nickname being for his signature of calling in as he is committing the crime.
As he drives he remembers his first case, five years ago now..... ..... .....
A woman, Joane Taylor, was found dead in an alleyway after going out for the night. She showed no signs of struggle leading the police to believe she had drank to much and expired from alcohol poisoning.... ...
The death was written off as a "party gone wrong".... That is until several more were found and the coroner decided on a whim to test for other substances.
Once it came out that the deaths were possible murders...
The calls started coming in, almost like the suspect wanted credit before revealing himself....
Then ways of the deaths began changing as the Serial Killer explored his twisted desires searching for his preferred method.
The last case being a young woman found stuffed in a dumpster after the killer apparently got scared off.... Max will never forget it.... .... ....
The GPS finishes and the car beeps its final direction, taking an exit off the highway. Ramps out here are always confusing... Which is funny since he has driven this one for five years now...
The chief says he should sit this one out but he can't... The latest victim 3 months ago.
Marie Spelner, a waitress out on her smoke break talking to her spouse on the phone.
Survived by her husband, no children or living relatives. ....
Max Spelner turns into the driveway of the house he was directed to... Stepping out of the car he walks up and knocks on the door. Looking at the house he knows the family must be doing well if they live here.... Raising his hand to knock again he hears a scream from inside....
A second later the door is answered by a middle aged butler holding a tray with wine glasses on it... "Hello Sir, I'm sorry but this house does not wish to partake in any offers at this time..."
Max calmly says. "I'm not selling anything."
The butler looks confused for a moment before his eyes dart over Max's shoulder seeing his unmarked cruiser and he nods.
Looking past the butler Max sees that a woman is cleaning up after their dog.
"Have you seen this man?" Says Max holds up a picture of the one suspected of being the killer.
The butler gives it a once over before replying. "I'm sorry sir, no I have not." His tone sounds like he is lying... ....
"Are you sure?" The detective asks.
"I would not lie about something like that, sir." He states, his eyes not meeting Max's.
The woman calls from inside "Fletcher, who are you talking too?"
"Some man asking about a killer" he calls back.
"The killer is an inside job!" The woman quickly states.
"What?!" Max says.
"The Killer, it's an inside job." She says again, louder this time. In the same Max also hears a child begin to cry in another room.
"We should start from the beginning, it will be easier to explain trust me." The woman says.
'She seems to know what is going on....
"How do I know your story holds water?" He asks out loud.
"Oh I wouldn't lie. I have been following the case myself and it seems like an inside job to me." She states, somehow sounding hurt.
"Is there anyone else in the house besides you two and the baby?" He asks noticing the baby isn't crying anymore.
"Just Fletcher and I live here, the baby is my cousins but he just stays the night sometimes." She replies.
Max draws his gun and enters the house upon reasonable suspicion of an emergency in progress or suspect on the premisses as the man seems to be deceiving.
While the woman still seems unconcerned that the child is now silent.
He pushes past the butler and rushes towards the area he heard the crying. passes the entryway, the dinning room, and a kitchen before finally finding a child in a playpen.
"There there..." He says in a sing song voice picking up the child. "I'm officer Max, do you know where your mommy is?"
The child just cries louder.
Then he sees the man from the photo walk out of the bathroom, upon seeing him he bolts for the door and Max sets the child down gently then gives chase.
He runs through the house, following the man as he can hear the woman screaming at him to stop but he doesn't."
"Stop or I'll shoot." The man doesn't even break stride.
Instead he runs out of the front door and jumps into his car.
Furious that the man might escape he fires at the car as it drives away.
The back window shatters and he hopes he got his tire, but he doesn't wait to find out as he runs to his car and initiates a pursuit....
He flips on his concealed lights in his cruiser as he reverses down the drive and into the street.
The suspects car is fast but he manages to keep up with it weaving in and out of traffic as people move over for the siren.
As they approach a red light there is heavy traffic in the intersection..... ....
The suspect slams on his brakes and Max's cruiser only just stops short of hitting it. Jumping out the Detective points his firearm at the vehicle running up beside seeing heavily tinted windows.
"Get out of the car and on the ground now!!" He shouts as he moves to the driver's side door.
After seeing no response....
Max throws open the door and the driver is gone with the passenger side open.
He quickly runs to the other side catching the man trying to sneak off tackling him to the ground and then takes his arms putting them behind his back.
Max grabs his radio and calls it in as the man cries.
As he is waiting he hears a noise that sounds like static.....
"Wrong guy moron.. Did you ever stop to think I wanted you close for this one. That I planned everything...Even framing the pothead..... I almost lost interest until you pulled in the driveway... The attic is kinda cramped tho... I think I'll go carve some meat. Maybe graduate to other things to. I'm not sure yet. Lets see if you can catch me before......" A familiar voice says over the radio then cuts off... ...
Max looks at the man on the ground. "Why did you run from me?" He asks.
"Cause I have like 19 grams of marijuana in my pocket." He replies...
"Do you know how stupid that is?! I don't care about that I'm looking for a killer."
Before he can answer Max hears the woman from the house screaming for her life and a child's cries on his radio.
Then from below Max. "He's in the house, he's in the house! My mom and the baby!" The man on the ground says crying.
Max uncuffs him and runs to his car heading back to the house as he lays down rubber on the road... ... ...
As he approaches and pulls into the driveway he notices the front door is open.
"Hold on I'm coming!" Max screams jumping out of his cruiser...
He runs into the house finding the woman's body arriving too late. Moving over to her he checks for a pulse but she is gone, a large gash in her neck.
As he stands up he slips in a fluid but gains his balance and tries not to think about what it is....
He rushes to the room the baby was in finding the play pen empty. He leaves the room searching the rest of the house and still doesn't find the child.
"Where are you!!!" He calls out....
"This is the Callers first kidnapping and the media would eat up the fact I failed to stop the man." He thinks as he blames himself.
Sirens begin to blare in the distance as backup is about to arrive... ... ...
"There's a woman dead and a baby missing! The woman is in the dinning room straight ahead of the front door, Hurry!" He yells into his radio...
Looking over at the mother seeing a piece of paper on the floor.
He walks over to it seeing writing.
"So close... Looks like I'm a kidnapper now.... Good luck finding me.... And... I so enjoyed killing that sweet wife of yours. Might do it that way again. Not to the kid tho....later Max. Ps. This game is so fun.." It says.
"He was here..." Is all he can muster as the team enters.
"He was right in this house and I missed it because her son freaked over weed and ran..." He says as another officer speaks to him gently.
"Don't beat yourself up Detective, it's not your fault. He must have hid before you got her and left after you arrived." The words do little to comfort him "First day back on the job and the killer escaped taking a child..." He says as he walks away.
The chief arrives in his new lexus with a screeching of rubber as he lurches to a halt.
He quickly exits and leaves his door hanging open as he rushes into Max's face....
"I told you to stay away from this case MAX!!!!....(takes a breath)...
"If I catch any flak from my superiors, I won't suspend you.... That'd be to easy. Desk duty and an entry level demotion. The new guy will have a higher rank than you if things go my way.... Now get outta my sight...". "(Sighs)...
"This job is gonna be the death of me..." He says walking away from Max and towards the Coroner's van..... ..... .....
On the way home the detective stops by the store close to his house which is unlike him because he usually follows the same routine.
He nears the front door and he hears a kitchen timer ding loudly from behind him as his car explodes throwing him through the storefront windows as they are blown out..... .....
Alarms around the lot and others nearby create a cacophony of noise. His head pounding as his body aches, Max pushes himself up and collapses as the store manager runs over to him telling him not to move as he dials 911.... .... ....
Waking in the hospital Max recalls the feeling of the Shockwave as he flinches in phantom pain.
"Who woulda thought its like holding a ringing metal bat that hurts your hands but all over and way more intense." He thinks.
He suddenly feels tired and falls asleep.... .... .... ....
The next time he wakes, he sees a breaking news story that Jane Saltani is reporting on....
"Young toddler Accidently Shoots Serial killekidnapper ending his life and Alerting residents in the Area." The news anchor says.
Sighing to himself Max thinks about how crazy that is and laughs.
Tho he really wanted to bring the guy in. He closes his eyes to get some much needed sleep as his door opens.
Max looks up to see a man with a silenced pistol pointed at him.
"Hm. Now they think I'm dead. Funny how they just assume they got the right guy. Just like.... You did Detect... ....." Max hears but then hears no more as his end comes at just over the speed of sound....
The Caller leaves the hair of another intelligent convicted murderer that he obtained in a spot that's believable and quickly leaves.....
He disables the surveillance system and sends a virus out to any device that has received video data from the hospital.
Erasing and corrupting the systems. Leaving a master hackers finger prints on a glass from his home....
"Sorry, no witnesses." He says to the security guard as he fires... ..... ..... .... ....

“Wake the fuck up, man.”
Haruki Fujita slipped out of a hallucination. The hallucination was mindless. It featured a name moments before something killed him, extraterrestrial and horrible from head to toe. Slimy and predatory. The most of it cybernetic. He was dying, with blood gushing out of his neck, but that wasn’t what killed him, at least not immediately, because his intestines were pulled out of his stomach, and that was what killed him.
He watched the blue solar panel wing curve outward from the steel hull of the International Space Station, and he frowned bitterly. From the sensation of death, Haruki Fujita had a sickening gut feeling.
“Stefan Bossi!” he cried out, alarmed.
The name lingered in his mind. He remembered it from his hallucination. He idly watched one of his gloves floating across the room and stopped in front of his computer screen. No reason was known to him why he remembered that name; he remembered nothing more. There was a brief rush—he had time to think about programming languages and decoding radio frequencies, though none of the government organizations he hacked into proved extraterrestrial in origin, but Haruki was convinced by the bizarre nature of the sounds. He didn’t really care about the scientists at SETI, many doctors, and the best professors in the world who regarded them as a hoax. And those who didn’t view the evolution of Earth from an intergalactic perspective that was terraformed over billions of years by otherworldly entities.
“Stefan Bossi!” he said again, grabbing the floating glove with his cold hand and looked at it, trying to decide the significance of the name from his hallucination. Instantly he felt his fingers were freezing from the cold. As Haruki watched the storage bay where he was hiding, his fingers slipped into the glove and strapped the Velcro. “Stefan Bossi! Stefan Bossi!” It seemed to be all he could remember.
Even trapped in the confusing vise of the illusion, Haruki felt an intense fear—this was what an extraterrestrial predator looked like while it slaughtered him. It was a look that filled him with horror.
Another radio frequency echoed from his computer, this one echoing like the mating call of a dolphin, and that excited him. With another “Stefan Bossi!” he stared out of the window and watched the sun disappear behind the Earth, he lost focus; and although it was only an hour after bedtime—another exciting six hours while everyone was deep asleep—the red glow of the computer screen had so hindered his thoughts that he was distracted while staring. And he slipped back into that mindless hallucination.
When Haruki managed to wake up, he realized it was hours later, in the bosom of the night. He glimpsed over the UPS batteries and saw a loose terminal that looked like a collection of fireflies floating in the antigravity of space.
After a while, he hovered upright and spoke.
“Stefan Bossi!”
Incredibly, he did not know why.
Haruki swallowed and looked at the wall, thinking: I’m going to die.
For a moment his mind seemed to separate from his physical body—it was not fear, or angst; it was terror. He was reminded by the physical sense of nausea as he swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth, and it occurred to him that he had just experienced a completely new level of fear.

The first argument about faith in the Fujita household—the first one Haruki got a hiding for, at least—happened on an Easter weekend in April. It was a big argument; even the greatest spanking couldn’t change his mind. Only his stepbrother shared his sentiment; Nic Chagall was in the bathroom brushing his teeth and listening to his sulking. This was fortunate because, in those days, there was no way to get ungrounded by a Japanese father.
The circumstances that, slipping out of a deep trance at night onboard the ISS, Haruki had spoken aloud a name that he had no memory of. And it hardly aroused enough curiosity to investigate the phenomenon.
Weird he thought, and got a little shiver; as if to confirm the opinion that the vision was indeed supernatural, he slipped into a trancelike daze. He realized with blank, distant eyes that for the first time the hallucination was no longer mindless.
Now he was walking onboard an abandoned spaceship pondering why the microgravity did not affect his arms and legs; he became aware that he was being watched from the shadows of the spaceship.
Haruki looked around quickly and saw a strange light with a red glow. He would have closed his eyes, but it fascinated him, and now it felt as if he had no idea where to go or why he was there; he did not know. Everything seemed so natural and real, as is the case with hallucinations. The revelation of being onboard an alien ship stopped bothering him, and the questions faded.
He screamed very loudly—the light must have done something to him because he could not remember being able to hear himself, and his lips didn’t twitch.
Soon, he came to a parting of ways; he saw a staircase leading to the lower deck, which had the appearance, in fact, of having long been abandoned. He sensed it led to something evil, yet he went down without hesitation, urged by some unstoppable force. He swallowed and descended the staircase, now convinced that the spaceship was haunted by invisible existences that he could not picture in his mind.
“What?” From behind the giant steel columns on his lefthand side, he heard broken and incoherent echoes of a radio frequency that he somewhat recognized. It sounded to him like fragmentary utterances of an evil conspiracy against his body and mind.
He swallowed again, holding onto the handrailing to steady himself. Haruki pointed at something lurking in the darkness, now believing it was watching him—an apparition so utterly intergalactic that he felt a pause in his breathing and a chill in his bones.
But for a long time, nothing came. He wanted to know why the haunted spaceship through which he journeyed was lit with a red glimmer having no point of origin. It appeared as if the mysterious light didn’t cast a shadow, and he thought about its neon color. Everything seemed a little brighter now, and he stood rooted with that cold feeling squeezing his lungs that reminded him of the alien presence.
A shallow pool in a bent depression met his eyes with a sloppy mess. He tumbled forward and plunged with his gloves into it and then looked at the thick slime of juices and placenta on his fingers with a different kind of horror.
Slime, he then observed, was around him everywhere. The walls towering grimly on either side revealed it in blots and splashes on the big, rusted panels. Bundles of sloppy racks that stretched over the walkways were hoarded with conductor cables and splattered as with placenta—glowing red. Robbing the place of its significance covered in heaps of crimson, slime dangling like slurry with its coagulations.
Sweat ran down his forehead and burned his eyes. He tasted a mixture of salt and minerals in his mouth. The shivering would not stop. Fear was like the ultimate curse. He thought: There is a point where the physical symptom of fear becomes unbearable: I have passed that point already.
It felt as if everything was in compensation for some crime that he could not remember. He believed he was a person of integrity; if he had murdered someone he would have remembered it, and a little introspection would have revealed the person he had supposedly harmed. The discovery of the menaces and mysteries of his surroundings was an added horror, tracing his steps backward in his mind.
And just how vainly could he reproduce the moment of his wrongdoing, here standing knee-deep in the slime? But suddenly the memories flashed tumultuously into his brain, picture after picture, only causing confusion and obscurity, and in no picture could he catch a glimpse of what he had done wrong.
But just because it hadn’t been remembered didn’t mean it didn’t happen. This failure to conceive only heightened his terror; he felt like a failure who had lost something in the dark without knowing what.
He grabbed his knees, shuddering,
(think of a way to kill yourself, think of a way to make it stop)
and sank his gloves into his spacesuit as hard as he could. He looked down, weak and flimsy knees rattling like a dog, tongue stuck into his cheek, and his posture heavily slanted with baleful character. It felt as if everything in sight conspired against his peace; from overhead and all around came the audible and startling echoes: the growl of a creature so obviously from outer space—that he could take it no more, and with a great effort to break the curse that bound his arms and legs to procrastination, he shouted from the depths of his lungs.
“Reveal yourself!”
His voice echoed with a hollow clang, it went stuttering and stammering, but of course he could not know what evils might lurk on the ship. He would only assume that, because his voice broke and echoed into an infinite multitude of unfamiliar sounds, the ship must have been large enough to have traveled from another galaxy or dimension.
I will not go down without a fight. There may be frequencies that are malignant and haunting this accursed ship. I shall decipher them and blot them down. The monster shall forget about my wrongs, the suffering that I endure—I, a worthless astronaut, a medic, and a computer programmer!
Haruki removed a flashbeam from his spacesuit; it felt warm when he switched it on. He pointed the beam at the wall and heard intimidating radio frequencies echoing against the steel.
Why, yes, I shall take off my glove—dip it into a heap of slime and write against the wall.
He had hardly touched the surface of the steel with his finger when a wild, evil reverberation of growling broke out at a considerable distance behind him, and growing ever louder, seemed approaching ever nearer. It was a soulless, heartless, and unpleasant growl, like that of a predator terrorizing its prey. It was a growl which culminated in an unearthly roar close at hand, then died away by slow gradations. Maybe the accursed being that uttered it had retreated over the shimmer back to the dimension where it had come from. But maybe this was not the case—it might still be nearby and ready to attack at any moment. Fuck knows he spent a long time waiting for something to happen.
You should be moving, Fujita.
Maybe walking, maybe running. Either way it was better than just standing there and doing nothing.
A strange sensation began to take possession of his body and his mind. He could not have said which, if any, of his senses were affected; he experienced it as a hunch—an unconscious mental awareness of some extraterrestrial presence—some alien malevolence different in kind from the visible existences that glitched around him, and superior to humans in power. He knew that it had uttered that hideous growl. And now it felt as if it was approaching him; from what direction he had no idea—dared not speculate.
Haruki closed his eyes and stared at the back of his eyelids. All his former fears had combined or amalgamated into a gigantic terror that now held him in thrall. Apart from that, he had but one mission: to convert the frequency stuck in his head into code, echoing the haunted spaceship, before the extraterrestrial monster blessed him with eternal silence. And now he lifted his slimy finger, idly thinking of computer codes such as Java, C++, and R . . .
Should I write it down?
Should I write at all?
A soft, freaky sound escaped his throat. The face of the astronaut was sickly terrified, the pale face now augmented with a plan of action.
His body started to move rapidly, finger oozing slime without renewal, arm waving in the thin air like a graffiti artist. Two minutes later, at the last part of the script, his arm fell to his side, glove to the air. He was powerless and could not move or cry out; he found himself staring at a wall of illegibly written script, the code representative of the ultimate frequency haunting this spaceship. At that moment Haruki almost believed it: that he was earmarked for death.
He had never been so scared in his life.
The symbols were glowing against the reddened wall written at an angle, the slime, and the acrid smell of the place. He clamped his teeth against each other and tried to focus his mind on what he had written; the code was all he could think of.

Haruki Fujita heard footsteps in the hall. He grabbed a blanket from the bottom of his bed and used it to cover his stepbrother, who was bundled up and lying naked with his knees pulled up to his chest, shivering.
Their father came out of the dark to switch off their light. His wife followed, passed the room with a bottle of wine, and headed down the hall. Haruki lay silent for a moment, not moving, he was aware that something important and significant was being celebrated of which they were not informed. The door of their room closed softly against the clip as his father pulled it. Then came the sound of shouting.
“You’ve bought another Porsche,” his mother said.
“The hospital pays for it, you know,” Chin Fujita replied.
Haruki heard her footsteps march up and down the room before she went to the bathroom and opened the water to wash her hands.
“You are wasting our time on Haruki.”
“No, honey, he will become a doctor someday.”
“What about my boy?”
“He’s not interested, but I think he will pass his exam next week and become a medic like Haruki. I can tell from his aptitude tests, and his EQI is off the charts.”
“Another Porsche, I can’t believe it?”
“I know. You weren’t supposed to find out. It was a surprise. I got the GT3-RS for you; that explains the black.”
Haruki could have cared less about his father wasting his money on that bitch of stepmother. Not giving a fuck was good, but—
“What did I do to deserve another black beauty? No really—is it mine?”
The sound of broken glass woke Nicklaus up. Now looking at the swimming pool in his room, he said, “They’re fighting again . . . Haruki. It’s going to be a long night if they cannot sort out their shit.”
“Are you awake?”
Nic raised his head, which was tucked under the blanket, and kissed Haruki on the forehead.
“You should tell him about your talent.”
“I have absolutely no talent.”
“But you are good at computer programming. I can see the character of Mister Anderon from the movie in you.”
That was when Haruki grew excited. “I would like to make my hero proud.”
“You have lived in the Matrix for your entire life—by which you have become a prodigy and a part-time hacker.”
Maybe even a carbon copy.
“That is nice of you, Nicky. I’m glad you are proud of me since he is on the point of giving up, calling me the family disgrace, and long since dubbed me a worthless gamer. That bitch thinks I am a black sheep and says that I have a psychological imbalance, whatever that means. She said that I have missed my vocation to become a doctor.”
“But you are smart, like your dad. I like it that you are a devoted cybernetic criminal.”
“A hacker sounds better—”
And another glass broke in the room next to them. Their father opened the balcony door, probably to smoke a cigarette. When Haruki looked up this time, he saw joy and excitement on his stepbrother’s face. He was only two years younger, after all. Nic gave him a playful smile, then went back under the blanket where he could finish what he had started.
“Nicky, for God’s sake—stop it and try to focus—”
Yet it had always bothered Haruki that they were stepbrothers. Although Nic was a devoted fan of the great Keanu Reeves so generally and justly admired for his hair. Nic had always taken care to conceal his weakness from all eyes but those who shared his passion. And their common profession as medics was an added bond between them.
Maybe Nic will understand if I tell him the truth. He cannot come with me to New York.
He toyed for a moment with a lock of Nic’s hair which had escaped from its pins, and said, with an effort of calmness in his voice:
“Would you be okay with me leaving for a few months to look for a job, Nicky?”
It was clearly needful for Nic to put his arm across his eyes without making an instant reply. Evidently he would mind; and the tears sprang into his large brown eyes as corroborative testimony.
“Ah, my brother,” he replied, looking up at his face with tenderness, “I knew this was coming. Did I not lie awake half of the afternoon weeping because, during the other half, Keanu Reeves had come to me in a dream.”
It was the great actor, Haruki Fujita would know if his stepbrother was lying, which he wasn’t.
“Neo?” he whispered. His lips were beginning to shiver again, but in the dim light of the swimming pool Nic barely noticed.
“Yes, and standing next to the computer screen—young, too, and handsome as in the first movie—pointed to your picture on the wall? I could not see your face when I looked since you were uploaded into the Matrix, such as at the end of the flick. You can smile at this, but you and I, dear, know that such things are no joke.”
Haruki’s life would be in trouble not because he was uploaded into the program but because his face was missing (and so he believed it to be an actual dream); why the hero would point to his picture on the wall baffled his mind.
“And I saw within the glowing code the wound of a blade on your throat, Haruki—forgive me, but we do not hide things from each other. Perhaps you have another interpretation. Perhaps it does not mean that you will go away. Or maybe you will take me with you?”
“I think it foreshadowed a simpler, surely less tragic, meaning like a visit to the great robot city in Zion. But please don’t try to stop me from leaving.”
“Are there not enough medics in New York?” Nic Chagall continued before his stepbrother could stop him— “Trinity discovered the truth with a broken heart? Look—my chest is ripped open; and I am almost sure that I will die in your absence.”
No—not like this.
Too sad.
Might break them apart.
The throbbing in his chest was more persistent; the next moment Haruki held out his hands but he was afraid that Nic would reject his request for affection. His hands lingered. There was a brief interval of silence. It sounded like their parents were making out again. It was warming up according to their breathing, but if his suspicions were correct, they would go on for the rest of the night. Nic refused to take his hands.
How long before his cold hands revealed the pain in his heart and his emotional scars manifesting in the form of tears, the hacker was unable to cry. How long before they would see each other again?
Three months? A year?
That would be the length of his pain, Haruki thought, and his lips began to shudder. By the time his lips stopped shaking, and it was not until a considerable time later that he realized he would have to leave his brother behind.
“I suppose I’ll have to go.”
Watching Nic, he felt the warmth of his affection for him that his blank expression denied. The weight pressed heavily on his shoulders as he watched his stepbrother cope with it in his own kind of way.

While job hunting in downtown Brooklyn after three months, Haruki was taking cover under a bridge one thunderstorm night, waiting for his weed to be delivered. The storm was well underway now, and no longer raining but pouring. He believed he understood the economic difficulties brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic—since he hadn’t found a job yet—but as the homeless people kept multiplying (he could see more and more people each week), he began to gain a different perspective in terms of earning an honest paycheck.
To his right, through the maze of squatters and bonfires toward the parking lot, he saw a black Lincoln Continental. Haruki noticed a driver with white hair holding the steering wheel like a woman (shit, he thought, she looked exactly like the driver from The Matrix) with her long nails and black leather jacket.
“What the hell?” he asked, sounding smoked as usual.
The car first drove around and then pulled right up to him. He thought of asking the driver if she had also ordered some weed—her eyes were looking mighty red—and decided he didn’t want to have that conversation now. He turned his attention toward the backseat where another woman with a crying baby had been watching him. At first he thought she looked familiar. Then he looked again and saw she was actually a transvestite, rocking the baby in his arms.
“You need to come with us,” the transvestite said. “We heard you are looking for a job?”
“We don’t have much time, Elon,” the driver added.
He thought of Nic back home and imagined he would make his stepbrother proud when breaking the news. He resisted the urge to question the man about the job . . . or even ask them who they were. His clever plan to look for a job in the big city was pretty screwed up and turned out to be a great mistake.
The crying increased, louder.
“We are subcontracting for NASA,” Elon said. He showed his badge to prove it.
“Really?”
“Come.”
“Now?”
“You know we are the real deal, right?”
“Shit, no. I didn’t expect it to happen like this.” Failing to hide the doubt on his face. Or the glimmering sweat on his forehead. Maybe from the weed or the rain. Maybe both.
“Your father said you’re the best medic in the field, but legislation makes it impossible with your qualifications. Your father has pulled some strings for you to work through us. The danger pay is good. Since you’ll be working in space.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“No, really.”
“Space?”
“You will be working on the International Space Station for three months on and three months off, both of you.”
Haruki didn’t hear it. Till it registered. “Both?”
“Both of the Fujita boys will be going to space!”
Haruki brightened. NASA also recruited his stepbrother to join the crew, and two weeks later, the two brothers were reunited in the microgravity of space.
Though happy to be together, Haruki was no less proud in spirit that he had been onboard the ISS for weeks that felt like an eternity. He gladly enjoyed the company of his stepbrother, and it was while living onboard the ISS, awaiting news and orders from ground control, that he had slipped into a trance.

The hallucination came back to Haruki Fujita, haunting enough, as he stood on board the spaceship with his back against the reddened wall, hands at his side. He had to lift his head upward slightly to confront his enemy. Well . . . actually, he had to lift his head more than slightly. The thing was large. So large that he couldn’t even see the extraterrestrial beast. In case you didn’t notice the predator reminds me of Nicky, but ten times more horrible! A monster that stirred no love nor longing in my heart, but strangely its presence evoked pleasant memories of my happy childhood—with all kinds of sentiment. The tender emotions were swallowed up in fear.
Haruki tried to run away, but his boots were saturated with slime. He was unable to pull his legs out of the mess. His arms drifted uselessly in the air; of his eyes only he remained in control, and these he dared not remove from the glowing ember of his enemy.
He stared at it.
Was it cybernetic?
Shit, it looked like it was.
Anyway, it seemed biological and that most dreadful of all existences—a robot with predatory limbs! In its blank stare, he noticed neither love, pity, nor artificial intelligence—nothing to which he could address an appeal for mercy.
An appeal won’t be a lie, he thought.
The sight of it evoked no happy memories. If he could have reached it he would have grabbed it. If he could have reached it he would have tried to stick his finger into its glowing eye. But his inaction only made the situation more terrifying with the red glow on his forehead.
For a time, which seemed so long that the Earth grew bleak with crime and murder, and the haunted ship, having miscalculated its destination in this monstrous height of its terrors, faded out of his consciousness with all its sights and sounds, the predator invaded his space, regarding him with the brutal malevolence of a cybernetic monster.
Quivering with panic, Haruki lifted his head so he could peer into its mouth, double-edged razor blades, rows and rows of them like a predator with a mouthful of fangs chipped but otherwise deadly.
“I see.”
It sat down. The ship rocked a little. Haruki guessed that the beast might weigh as much as thirty tons. It had come from a universe where there were different alloys, shapeshifting metal . . . also advanced composites were used in its construction, some organic materials like flesh and exoskeleton, the biological part of the organism was infected with a wicked cancer.
The monster roared at him, promising annihilation.
He moved back. The monster came forward. That made Haruki very uncomfortable.
“Shit!” Haruki didn’t take any pleasure in the way this was going if not for the brutal nature of his enemy; as solid as a piece of machinery and ferocious, it transformed itself grinning with its one eye missing, about to deliver him to the universe and convert him into stardust.
The thing’s mouth grew sly, confronting him to admit a dirty, dirty secret. Its grin became a smile. Strangely, the venom oozed out of its tongue. This is what it looks like, he thought, if a species faces its ultimate extinction even worse than those robots from the movie. This is what it looks like just before the end of humanity.
“No . . .”
The beast thrust its limbs forward and sprang upon him with outrageous ferocity! The act released Haruki’s physical energy without affecting his willpower to fight back. And his pain was blocked out by an overdose of hydrofluoric acid at the same time something leeched onto his brainstem, his flimsy body and dangling arms powered with a blind, inanimate mind of their own, became weak and puny.
“Not like this . . . I can’t die like this . . . and what about . . . wait!”
For an instant he seemed to see this supernatural contest between an infected robot and a dying human only as a spectator—such fantasies of hallucinations.
He looked at the wall crying like a girl, leaving the predator and its claws to finish him off. Then he regained his willpower almost as if by a leap forward into his body, and the visionary now had an accurate will as alert and fierce as that of the predator.
“Leame dafuckalone!”
He tried to fight back. The hacker’s return. But how can a human compete with a creature of extraterrestrial origins? He supposed a boy who was being killed by an alien monster might feel something like pain as he lay regarding his gushing main artery with a cold surprise. The programmer’s skill is the programmer’s weakness.
“No!” His neck bled like a slaughtered animal. His worthless hands were clasped at his sides.
Despite his struggles—despite his strength and willpower, which seemed wasted in the void of space, he felt the sharp claws thrust into his throat and brain, many times. Falling backward to the sheet metal, he saw through his cracked visor the grey and dusty surface of the Moon within an arm’s reach of his own, and then everything was black. The sounds of the unearthly radio frequencies in the distance—the dolphin’s cry, a sharp, far growl declaring the end, and Hariki Fujita imagined he was dead.

The International Space Station is that kind of place that when you are there, you must take it all in, but after Peggy grabbed Jameson by the arm and ordered him to come with her, there was no time to take it all in. The airlock closed behind them, and Peggy knew they were getting close.
“How far is it?” Jamason asked, as they hovered along, their feet stirring particles of dust in the microgravity beneath their soles.
Peggy looked at him, suspiciously, recalling that he had agreed to go with her without informing ground control of their whereabouts.
“Only a few feet further,” Peggy answered. She led the way toward the old storage bay with its battery banks and electrical inverters, accumulating backup electricity in case of an emergency.
“What is going on,” he said as they hovered through the west hanger where corrosion and dilapidation gradually increased and passed through the narrow arch into the dark, freezing aerospace shadows.
“You know Haruki Fujita?” she said, feeding her companion’s curiosity with as little information as possible. The name was disturbing, and Peggy felt her neck spasm a little.
“The Jap who plays with his stepbrother’s hair? I know him; he ruined a month of my work after the botanicals died from his intrusion. There is an HR complaint lodged against him for interfering with my plants, but ground control refuses to believe it. You will believe me when—”
“I believe you, okay. Because he has been hacking into the servers for a long time. He works at night in the dilapidated capsule.”
“The asshole! So that’s where the acidic atmosphere that killed my plants came from.”
“You might have imagined that NASA’s security checks would have picked up a cybernetic criminal who could hack their instrumentation.”
“The very last person I would have suspected.”
“Yesterday afternoon I was issued a job card to check the battery terminals. To my surprise I found something else in there, I found ‘a computer of him’ in there.”
“So you caught him red-handed?”
“Damn it! He frightened me. Something growled from behind me—it literally gave me goosebumps. I’m lucky that I wasn’t there ten minutes earlier. Oh shit, he was dying, and I thought the blood floating in space was proof enough that I wouldn’t be able to save him.”
Hovering in the cramped hanger shoulder to shoulder, Peggy glanced at him. The boy’s eyes were so dark they seemed black, only by her flashbeam did they turn indigo blue. She noticed her death-grip on the torch, her gloves couldn’t release their hold even consciously.
“I need to show you the body so that we can devise a plan of action,” the engineer explained. “I thought it was safe for us to check out the corpse during the day.”
“Are you sure the Jap is dead?” said the biologist. “The light in there may have obscured your visibility and conclusion. If he was unconscious he might still be alive.”
“Well, he seemed very dead to me.” She glanced sideways at the boy, and felt a flare of disappointment. She knew deep down in her being that Haruki was gone, one of the first dead bodies she ever encountered. She had to admit that such a bloody, gruesome, and unsettling scene she had never seen in all her years as a first aider or electrical engineer.
“Alright,” Jameson said; “we will go and look at him,” and he added, in the words of a caring person, “we should keep this between us—I mean, if young Nic Chagall ever finds out about his stepbrother it would kill him. By the way, I heard the other day that ‘Nic’ was not his real name.”
“What is?”
“I cannot remember. I had lost interest in the introvert, and it did not grab hold in my memory—something like Nicklaus. The medic who enrolled in the space program joined his stepbrother after he was abandoned. But Haruki, on the other hand, had joined in search of extraterrestrial technology. Can you believe that there are people who still believe in aliens nowadays? Clearly you are not a believer.”
“Obviously.”
“But wandering about your faith, what do you believe in then? Your boyfriend mentioned what the name was called and said it was scientific in nature.”
“We don’t have a name yet.” Peggy was reluctant to argue without facts about something so important as that. Bossi bases his beliefs on the Principia Mathematica. Isaac Newton was the founder of a philosophy that was only recently made public. A few fragments of his work provide scientific evidence based on experimentation. But anyhow, here is the storage bay.”
She looked at him sharply to see if he was prepared. His face, however, was wearing an expression of frozen panic. His lips and nostrils were rimmed with deep purple, and there were shadows in his dark eyes, like the shapes of a reptile streaking into two hard lines.
“Lemme show you where I found the body,” she said, “this is the place.”
As the two astronauts made their way through the blood of hovering crimson, they suddenly stopped and lifted their flashbeams to the height of the wall, uttered a low note of surprise, and stood motionless, their eyes fixed upon something weird. As far as Peggy could see the wall was covered with inscriptions, though she did not yet understand what she was looking at. A moment later she moved cautiously forward, aiming for the inverters.
Behind the inverter of an enormous height hovered the spacesuit of another astronaut. Standing silent beside it, Peggy noted such particulars that immediately took her attention—the suit was empty, the body missing, the clothing still inside; whatever most probably and strangely happened to this astronaut must have been unearthly.
The suit floated upon its back, the nametag—Nic Chagall. One arm was twisted in circles, the other stretched, but the latter was ripped off brutally, with the missing piece stuck to the helmet. The other arm was severely bent. The whole attitude of the suit was that of desperate but weak resistance to something.
Nearby drifted the disemboweled stepbrother with his naked finger stretched out, stained and blotched, and the floor had been scribbled with blood into symbols all over the corroded floorplate; next to his suit was unmistakable the footprint of an alien entity.
A glance at the empty spacesuit’s missing glove and boots made the nature of the struggle even more mysterious. While the suit and helmet were clean, the arms and legs were red—almost black. The oxygen hose stuck against an inverter, and the suit was twisted and turned backward, opposite any natural posture.
From behind Haruki’s cracked helmet his eyes had popped, bloody and gruesome. The throat showed horrible penetrations; not mere fingermarks, but lacerations and stab wounds inflicted by animal claws that must have buried themselves in his bleeding flesh, maintaining their terrible grip long after death. His throat, chin, and face were soggy; the material saturated; drops of blood had gathered like condensate inside his visor, bloodstained hair and cheeks.
All this the two astronauts observed without speaking—almost frozen. Then Jameson said:
“Poor Haruki! He got what he deserved.”
Peggy was vigilantly inspecting the storage bay. Her flashbeam was held in both hands and at full brightness, and her gloves were clenched around the handle.
“The work of a murderer,” she said, without removing her eyes from the surrounding inverters. “It was done by Nic—Chagall.”
Something half-hidden by the cable racks behind the inverters caught Peggy’s attention. It was the wall. She looked at it while lifting her flashbeam. It contained the code of computer and upon the entire wall the name “Stefan Bossi.” Written in blood over and over again—scribbled as if in haste barely legible—were the following lines, which Peggy read silently while her companion started scanning the dark confines of the enclosure and hearing a commotion from inside the bloody spiderwebs dangling from the wall.

public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String originalName = “Stefan Bossi”;
System.out.println(“Original name: “ + originalName);

// Reversing the name
String reversedName = new StringBuilder(originalName).reverse().toString();
System.out.println(“Reversed name: “ + reversedName);

// Converting to uppercase
String upperCaseName = originalName.toUpperCase();
System.out.println(“Uppercase name: “ + upperCaseName);

// Swapping first name with last name
int spaceIndex = originalName.indexOf(‘ ‘);
String firstName

“Bossi Stefan—”
Peggy stopped reading; there was no more to read. The code broke off in the middle of a line.
“What a flawless Java script,” she said, since she was somewhat of a programmer herself. With extraordinary patience she stood looking at the wall.
“Who’s Java?” Jameson asked rather confused.
“Computer code, a script that was written to play around with two words—a very jolly script indeed. Coded in first generation; I know the language. The script repeated my boyfriend’s name, but it must have been by mistake.”
“Your boyfriend?” Jameson said. “Let us go back; we must share this information with ground control.”
Peggy said nothing but nodded in compliance. Staring at the inverter behind the empty spacesuit of the missing astronaut with the oxygen hose entangled, she saw that the absent glove was stuck (or rather glued) to the vertical surface by some slimy substance drooling from the melted plastic. She took her torch to illuminate it into view. It was an oozing mess, and painted on the panel were the hardly decipherable words, “Peggy Lance.”
“Peggy Lance!” exclaimed Jameson, with sudden animation. “Why, that is your name—not Stefan Bossi. And—curse your soul! How it all comes together—the murderer’s name is Peggy Lance!”
“There is something weird going on here,” Peggy said. “I deny anything of the kind.”
There came to them from inside the wall—seemingly from a great distance—the sound of a growl, a high-pitched, frequency, cybernetic echo, which had no more joy than that of a predator prowling at its prey; a growl that originated from far away, closer and closer, distinct, more explicit but brutal, until it faded away outside the audible distance of their hearing; a growl so unnatural, so extraterrestrial, so morbid, that it filled those freaked out astronauts with a sense of dread unspeakable! They did not move their torches nor think of them; the menace of that horrible sound was the kind not to be disturbed by light. As it had originated out of solid metal, to die away grimly; from a culminating frequency that had seemed almost in their head, it retreated into the distance until its soft echoes, cybernetic and mechanical to the last frequency, faded into silence at an immeasurable distance.

“Wake the fuck up, man.”
Haruki Fujita slipped out of a hallucination. The hallucination was mindless. It featured a name moments before something killed him, extraterrestrial and horrible from head to toe. Slimy and predatory. The most of it cybernetic. He was dying, with blood gushing out of his neck, but that wasn’t what killed him, at least not immediately, because his intestines were pulled out of his stomach, and that was what killed him.
He watched the blue solar panel wing curve outward from the steel hull of the International Space Station, and he frowned bitterly. From the sensation of death, Haruki Fujita had a sickening gut feeling.
“Stefan Bossi!” he cried out, alarmed.
The name lingered in his mind. He remembered it from his hallucination. He idly watched one of his gloves floating across the room and stopped in front of his computer screen. No reason was known to him why he remembered that name; he remembered nothing more. There was a brief rush—he had time to think about programming languages and decoding radio frequencies, though none of the government organizations he hacked into proved extraterrestrial in origin, but Haruki was convinced by the bizarre nature of the sounds. He didn’t really care about the scientists at SETI, many doctors, and the best professors in the world who regarded them as a hoax. And those who didn’t view the evolution of Earth from an intergalactic perspective that was terraformed over billions of years by otherworldly entities.
“Stefan Bossi!” he said again, grabbing the floating glove with his cold hand and looked at it, trying to decide the significance of the name from his hallucination. Instantly he felt his fingers were freezing from the cold. As Haruki watched the storage bay where he was hiding, his fingers slipped into the glove and strapped the Velcro. “Stefan Bossi! Stefan Bossi!” It seemed to be all he could remember.
Even trapped in the confusing vise of the illusion, Haruki felt an intense fear—this was what an extraterrestrial predator looked like while it slaughtered him. It was a look that filled him with horror.
Another radio frequency echoed from his computer, this one echoing like the mating call of a dolphin, and that excited him. With another “Stefan Bossi!” he stared out of the window and watched the sun disappear behind the Earth, he lost focus; and although it was only an hour after bedtime—another exciting six hours while everyone was deep asleep—the red glow of the computer screen had so hindered his thoughts that he was distracted while staring. And he slipped back into that mindless hallucination.
When Haruki managed to wake up, he realized it was hours later, in the bosom of the night. He glimpsed over the UPS batteries and saw a loose terminal that looked like a collection of fireflies floating in the antigravity of space.
After a while, he hovered upright and spoke.
“Stefan Bossi!”
Incredibly, he did not know why.
Haruki swallowed and looked at the wall, thinking: I’m going to die.
For a moment his mind seemed to separate from his physical body—it was not fear, or angst; it was terror. He was reminded by the physical sense of nausea as he swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth, and it occurred to him that he had just experienced a completely new level of fear.

The first argument about faith in the Fujita household—the first one Haruki got a hiding for, at least—happened on an Easter weekend in April. It was a big argument; even the greatest spanking couldn’t change his mind. Only his stepbrother shared his sentiment; Nic Chagall was in the bathroom brushing his teeth and listening to his sulking. This was fortunate because, in those days, there was no way to get ungrounded by a Japanese father.
The circumstances that, slipping out of a deep trance at night onboard the ISS, Haruki had spoken aloud a name that he had no memory of. And it hardly aroused enough curiosity to investigate the phenomenon.
Weird he thought, and got a little shiver; as if to confirm the opinion that the vision was indeed supernatural, he slipped into a trancelike daze. He realized with blank, distant eyes that for the first time the hallucination was no longer mindless.
Now he was walking onboard an abandoned spaceship pondering why the microgravity did not affect his arms and legs; he became aware that he was being watched from the shadows of the spaceship.
Haruki looked around quickly and saw a strange light with a red glow. He would have closed his eyes, but it fascinated him, and now it felt as if he had no idea where to go or why he was there; he did not know. Everything seemed so natural and real, as is the case with hallucinations. The revelation of being onboard an alien ship stopped bothering him, and the questions faded.
He screamed very loudly—the light must have done something to him because he could not remember being able to hear himself, and his lips didn’t twitch.
Soon, he came to a parting of ways; he saw a staircase leading to the lower deck, which had the appearance, in fact, of having long been abandoned. He sensed it led to something evil, yet he went down without hesitation, urged by some unstoppable force. He swallowed and descended the staircase, now convinced that the spaceship was haunted by invisible existences that he could not picture in his mind.
“What?” From behind the giant steel columns on his lefthand side, he heard broken and incoherent echoes of a radio frequency that he somewhat recognized. It sounded to him like fragmentary utterances of an evil conspiracy against his body and mind.
He swallowed again, holding onto the handrailing to steady himself. Haruki pointed at something lurking in the darkness, now believing it was watching him—an apparition so utterly intergalactic that he felt a pause in his breathing and a chill in his bones.
But for a long time, nothing came. He wanted to know why the haunted spaceship through which he journeyed was lit with a red glimmer having no point of origin. It appeared as if the mysterious light didn’t cast a shadow, and he thought about its neon color. Everything seemed a little brighter now, and he stood rooted with that cold feeling squeezing his lungs that reminded him of the alien presence.
A shallow pool in a bent depression met his eyes with a sloppy mess. He tumbled forward and plunged with his gloves into it and then looked at the thick slime of juices and placenta on his fingers with a different kind of horror.
Slime, he then observed, was around him everywhere. The walls towering grimly on either side revealed it in blots and splashes on the big, rusted panels. Bundles of sloppy racks that stretched over the walkways were hoarded with conductor cables and splattered as with placenta—glowing red. Robbing the place of its significance covered in heaps of crimson, slime dangling like slurry with its coagulations.
Sweat ran down his forehead and burned his eyes. He tasted a mixture of salt and minerals in his mouth. The shivering would not stop. Fear was like the ultimate curse. He thought: There is a point where the physical symptom of fear becomes unbearable: I have passed that point already.
It felt as if everything was in compensation for some crime that he could not remember. He believed he was a person of integrity; if he had murdered someone he would have remembered it, and a little introspection would have revealed the person he had supposedly harmed. The discovery of the menaces and mysteries of his surroundings was an added horror, tracing his steps backward in his mind.
And just how vainly could he reproduce the moment of his wrongdoing, here standing knee-deep in the slime? But suddenly the memories flashed tumultuously into his brain, picture after picture, only causing confusion and obscurity, and in no picture could he catch a glimpse of what he had done wrong.
But just because it hadn’t been remembered didn’t mean it didn’t happen. This failure to conceive only heightened his terror; he felt like a failure who had lost something in the dark without knowing what.
He grabbed his knees, shuddering,
(think of a way to kill yourself, think of a way to make it stop)
and sank his gloves into his spacesuit as hard as he could. He looked down, weak and flimsy knees rattling like a dog, tongue stuck into his cheek, and his posture heavily slanted with baleful character. It felt as if everything in sight conspired against his peace; from overhead and all around came the audible and startling echoes: the growl of a creature so obviously from outer space—that he could take it no more, and with a great effort to break the curse that bound his arms and legs to procrastination, he shouted from the depths of his lungs.
“Reveal yourself!”
His voice echoed with a hollow clang, it went stuttering and stammering, but of course he could not know what evils might lurk on the ship. He would only assume that, because his voice broke and echoed into an infinite multitude of unfamiliar sounds, the ship must have been large enough to have traveled from another galaxy or dimension.
I will not go down without a fight. There may be frequencies that are malignant and haunting this accursed ship. I shall decipher them and blot them down. The monster shall forget about my wrongs, the suffering that I endure—I, a worthless astronaut, a medic, and a computer programmer!
Haruki removed a flashbeam from his spacesuit; it felt warm when he switched it on. He pointed the beam at the wall and heard intimidating radio frequencies echoing against the steel.
Why, yes, I shall take off my glove—dip it into a heap of slime and write against the wall.
He had hardly touched the surface of the steel with his finger when a wild, evil reverberation of growling broke out at a considerable distance behind him, and growing ever louder, seemed approaching ever nearer. It was a soulless, heartless, and unpleasant growl, like that of a predator terrorizing its prey. It was a growl which culminated in an unearthly roar close at hand, then died away by slow gradations. Maybe the accursed being that uttered it had retreated over the shimmer back to the dimension where it had come from. But maybe this was not the case—it might still be nearby and ready to attack at any moment. Fuck knows he spent a long time waiting for something to happen.
You should be moving, Fujita.
Maybe walking, maybe running. Either way it was better than just standing there and doing nothing.
A strange sensation began to take possession of his body and his mind. He could not have said which, if any, of his senses were affected; he experienced it as a hunch—an unconscious mental awareness of some extraterrestrial presence—some alien malevolence different in kind from the visible existences that glitched around him, and superior to humans in power. He knew that it had uttered that hideous growl. And now it felt as if it was approaching him; from what direction he had no idea—dared not speculate.
Haruki closed his eyes and stared at the back of his eyelids. All his former fears had combined or amalgamated into a gigantic terror that now held him in thrall. Apart from that, he had but one mission: to convert the frequency stuck in his head into code, echoing the haunted spaceship, before the extraterrestrial monster blessed him with eternal silence. And now he lifted his slimy finger, idly thinking of computer codes such as Java, C++, and R . . .
Should I write it down?
Should I write at all?
A soft, freaky sound escaped his throat. The face of the astronaut was sickly terrified, the pale face now augmented with a plan of action.
His body started to move rapidly, finger oozing slime without renewal, arm waving in the thin air like a graffiti artist. Two minutes later, at the last part of the script, his arm fell to his side, glove to the air. He was powerless and could not move or cry out; he found himself staring at a wall of illegibly written script, the code representative of the ultimate frequency haunting this spaceship. At that moment Haruki almost believed it: that he was earmarked for death.
He had never been so scared in his life.
The symbols were glowing against the reddened wall written at an angle, the slime, and the acrid smell of the place. He clamped his teeth against each other and tried to focus his mind on what he had written; the code was all he could think of.

Haruki Fujita heard footsteps in the hall. He grabbed a blanket from the bottom of his bed and used it to cover his stepbrother, who was bundled up and lying naked with his knees pulled up to his chest, shivering.
Their father came out of the dark to switch off their light. His wife followed, passed the room with a bottle of wine, and headed down the hall. Haruki lay silent for a moment, not moving, he was aware that something important and significant was being celebrated of which they were not informed. The door of their room closed softly against the clip as his father pulled it. Then came the sound of shouting.
“You’ve bought another Porsche,” his mother said.
“The hospital pays for it, you know,” Chin Fujita replied.
Haruki heard her footsteps march up and down the room before she went to the bathroom and opened the water to wash her hands.
“You are wasting our time on Haruki.”
“No, honey, he will become a doctor someday.”
“What about my boy?”
“He’s not interested, but I think he will pass his exam next week and become a medic like Haruki. I can tell from his aptitude tests, and his EQI is off the charts.”
“Another Porsche, I can’t believe it?”
“I know. You weren’t supposed to find out. It was a surprise. I got the GT3-RS for you; that explains the black.”
Haruki could have cared less about his father wasting his money on that bitch of stepmother. Not giving a fuck was good, but—
“What did I do to deserve another black beauty? No really—is it mine?”
The sound of broken glass woke Nicklaus up. Now looking at the swimming pool in his room, he said, “They’re fighting again . . . Haruki. It’s going to be a long night if they cannot sort out their shit.”
“Are you awake?”
Nic raised his head, which was tucked under the blanket, and kissed Haruki on the forehead.
“You should tell him about your talent.”
“I have absolutely no talent.”
“But you are good at computer programming. I can see the character of Mister Anderon from the movie in you.”
That was when Haruki grew excited. “I would like to make my hero proud.”
“You have lived in the Matrix for your entire life—by which you have become a prodigy and a part-time hacker.”
Maybe even a carbon copy.
“That is nice of you, Nicky. I’m glad you are proud of me since he is on the point of giving up, calling me the family disgrace, and long since dubbed me a worthless gamer. That bitch thinks I am a black sheep and says that I have a psychological imbalance, whatever that means. She said that I have missed my vocation to become a doctor.”
“But you are smart, like your dad. I like it that you are a devoted cybernetic criminal.”
“A hacker sounds better—”
And another glass broke in the room next to them. Their father opened the balcony door, probably to smoke a cigarette. When Haruki looked up this time, he saw joy and excitement on his stepbrother’s face. He was only two years younger, after all. Nic gave him a playful smile, then went back under the blanket where he could finish what he had started.
“Nicky, for God’s sake—stop it and try to focus—”
Yet it had always bothered Haruki that they were stepbrothers. Although Nic was a devoted fan of the great Keanu Reeves so generally and justly admired for his hair. Nic had always taken care to conceal his weakness from all eyes but those who shared his passion. And their common profession as medics was an added bond between them.
Maybe Nic will understand if I tell him the truth. He cannot come with me to New York.
He toyed for a moment with a lock of Nic’s hair which had escaped from its pins, and said, with an effort of calmness in his voice:
“Would you be okay with me leaving for a few months to look for a job, Nicky?”
It was clearly needful for Nic to put his arm across his eyes without making an instant reply. Evidently he would mind; and the tears sprang into his large brown eyes as corroborative testimony.
“Ah, my brother,” he replied, looking up at his face with tenderness, “I knew this was coming. Did I not lie awake half of the afternoon weeping because, during the other half, Keanu Reeves had come to me in a dream.”
It was the great actor, Haruki Fujita would know if his stepbrother was lying, which he wasn’t.
“Neo?” he whispered. His lips were beginning to shiver again, but in the dim light of the swimming pool Nic barely noticed.
“Yes, and standing next to the computer screen—young, too, and handsome as in the first movie—pointed to your picture on the wall? I could not see your face when I looked since you were uploaded into the Matrix, such as at the end of the flick. You can smile at this, but you and I, dear, know that such things are no joke.”
Haruki’s life would be in trouble not because he was uploaded into the program but because his face was missing (and so he believed it to be an actual dream); why the hero would point to his picture on the wall baffled his mind.
“And I saw within the glowing code the wound of a blade on your throat, Haruki—forgive me, but we do not hide things from each other. Perhaps you have another interpretation. Perhaps it does not mean that you will go away. Or maybe you will take me with you?”
“I think it foreshadowed a simpler, surely less tragic, meaning like a visit to the great robot city in Zion. But please don’t try to stop me from leaving.”
“Are there not enough medics in New York?” Nic Chagall continued before his stepbrother could stop him— “Trinity discovered the truth with a broken heart? Look—my chest is ripped open; and I am almost sure that I will die in your absence.”
No—not like this.
Too sad.
Might break them apart.
The throbbing in his chest was more persistent; the next moment Haruki held out his hands but he was afraid that Nic would reject his request for affection. His hands lingered. There was a brief interval of silence. It sounded like their parents were making out again. It was warming up according to their breathing, but if his suspicions were correct, they would go on for the rest of the night. Nic refused to take his hands.
How long before his cold hands revealed the pain in his heart and his emotional scars manifesting in the form of tears, the hacker was unable to cry. How long before they would see each other again?
Three months? A year?
That would be the length of his pain, Haruki thought, and his lips began to shudder. By the time his lips stopped shaking, and it was not until a considerable time later that he realized he would have to leave his brother behind.
“I suppose I’ll have to go.”
Watching Nic, he felt the warmth of his affection for him that his blank expression denied. The weight pressed heavily on his shoulders as he watched his stepbrother cope with it in his own kind of way.

While job hunting in downtown Brooklyn after three months, Haruki was taking cover under a bridge one thunderstorm night, waiting for his weed to be delivered. The storm was well underway now, and no longer raining but pouring. He believed he understood the economic difficulties brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic—since he hadn’t found a job yet—but as the homeless people kept multiplying (he could see more and more people each week), he began to gain a different perspective in terms of earning an honest paycheck.
To his right, through the maze of squatters and bonfires toward the parking lot, he saw a black Lincoln Continental. Haruki noticed a driver with white hair holding the steering wheel like a woman (shit, he thought, she looked exactly like the driver from The Matrix) with her long nails and black leather jacket.
“What the hell?” he asked, sounding smoked as usual.
The car first drove around and then pulled right up to him. He thought of asking the driver if she had also ordered some weed—her eyes were looking mighty red—and decided he didn’t want to have that conversation now. He turned his attention toward the backseat where another woman with a crying baby had been watching him. At first he thought she looked familiar. Then he looked again and saw she was actually a transvestite, rocking the baby in his arms.
“You need to come with us,” the transvestite said. “We heard you are looking for a job?”
“We don’t have much time, Elon,” the driver added.
He thought of Nic back home and imagined he would make his stepbrother proud when breaking the news. He resisted the urge to question the man about the job . . . or even ask them who they were. His clever plan to look for a job in the big city was pretty screwed up and turned out to be a great mistake.
The crying increased, louder.
“We are subcontracting for NASA,” Elon said. He showed his badge to prove it.
“Really?”
“Come.”
“Now?”
“You know we are the real deal, right?”
“Shit, no. I didn’t expect it to happen like this.” Failing to hide the doubt on his face. Or the glimmering sweat on his forehead. Maybe from the weed or the rain. Maybe both.
“Your father said you’re the best medic in the field, but legislation makes it impossible with your qualifications. Your father has pulled some strings for you to work through us. The danger pay is good. Since you’ll be working in space.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“No, really.”
“Space?”
“You will be working on the International Space Station for three months on and three months off, both of you.”
Haruki didn’t hear it. Till it registered. “Both?”
“Both of the Fujita boys will be going to space!”
Haruki brightened. NASA also recruited his stepbrother to join the crew, and two weeks later, the two brothers were reunited in the microgravity of space.
Though happy to be together, Haruki was no less proud in spirit that he had been onboard the ISS for weeks that felt like an eternity. He gladly enjoyed the company of his stepbrother, and it was while living onboard the ISS, awaiting news and orders from ground control, that he had slipped into a trance.

The hallucination came back to Haruki Fujita, haunting enough, as he stood on board the spaceship with his back against the reddened wall, hands at his side. He had to lift his head upward slightly to confront his enemy. Well . . . actually, he had to lift his head more than slightly. The thing was large. So large that he couldn’t even see the extraterrestrial beast. In case you didn’t notice the predator reminds me of Nicky, but ten times more horrible! A monster that stirred no love nor longing in my heart, but strangely its presence evoked pleasant memories of my happy childhood—with all kinds of sentiment. The tender emotions were swallowed up in fear.
Haruki tried to run away, but his boots were saturated with slime. He was unable to pull his legs out of the mess. His arms drifted uselessly in the air; of his eyes only he remained in control, and these he dared not remove from the glowing ember of his enemy.
He stared at it.
Was it cybernetic?
Shit, it looked like it was.
Anyway, it seemed biological and that most dreadful of all existences—a robot with predatory limbs! In its blank stare, he noticed neither love, pity, nor artificial intelligence—nothing to which he could address an appeal for mercy.
An appeal won’t be a lie, he thought.
The sight of it evoked no happy memories. If he could have reached it he would have grabbed it. If he could have reached it he would have tried to stick his finger into its glowing eye. But his inaction only made the situation more terrifying with the red glow on his forehead.
For a time, which seemed so long that the Earth grew bleak with crime and murder, and the haunted ship, having miscalculated its destination in this monstrous height of its terrors, faded out of his consciousness with all its sights and sounds, the predator invaded his space, regarding him with the brutal malevolence of a cybernetic monster.
Quivering with panic, Haruki lifted his head so he could peer into its mouth, double-edged razor blades, rows and rows of them like a predator with a mouthful of fangs chipped but otherwise deadly.
“I see.”
It sat down. The ship rocked a little. Haruki guessed that the beast might weigh as much as thirty tons. It had come from a universe where there were different alloys, shapeshifting metal . . . also advanced composites were used in its construction, some organic materials like flesh and exoskeleton, the biological part of the organism was infected with a wicked cancer.
The monster roared at him, promising annihilation.
He moved back. The monster came forward. That made Haruki very uncomfortable.
“Shit!” Haruki didn’t take any pleasure in the way this was going if not for the brutal nature of his enemy; as solid as a piece of machinery and ferocious, it transformed itself grinning with its one eye missing, about to deliver him to the universe and convert him into stardust.
The thing’s mouth grew sly, confronting him to admit a dirty, dirty secret. Its grin became a smile. Strangely, the venom oozed out of its tongue. This is what it looks like, he thought, if a species faces its ultimate extinction even worse than those robots from the movie. This is what it looks like just before the end of humanity.
“No . . .”
The beast thrust its limbs forward and sprang upon him with outrageous ferocity! The act released Haruki’s physical energy without affecting his willpower to fight back. And his pain was blocked out by an overdose of hydrofluoric acid at the same time something leeched onto his brainstem, his flimsy body and dangling arms powered with a blind, inanimate mind of their own, became weak and puny.
“Not like this . . . I can’t die like this . . . and what about . . . wait!”
For an instant he seemed to see this supernatural contest between an infected robot and a dying human only as a spectator—such fantasies of hallucinations.
He looked at the wall crying like a girl, leaving the predator and its claws to finish him off. Then he regained his willpower almost as if by a leap forward into his body, and the visionary now had an accurate will as alert and fierce as that of the predator.
“Leame dafuckalone!”
He tried to fight back. The hacker’s return. But how can a human compete with a creature of extraterrestrial origins? He supposed a boy who was being killed by an alien monster might feel something like pain as he lay regarding his gushing main artery with a cold surprise. The programmer’s skill is the programmer’s weakness.
“No!” His neck bled like a slaughtered animal. His worthless hands were clasped at his sides.
Despite his struggles—despite his strength and willpower, which seemed wasted in the void of space, he felt the sharp claws thrust into his throat and brain, many times. Falling backward to the sheet metal, he saw through his cracked visor the grey and dusty surface of the Moon within an arm’s reach of his own, and then everything was black. The sounds of the unearthly radio frequencies in the distance—the dolphin’s cry, a sharp, far growl declaring the end, and Hariki Fujita imagined he was dead.

The International Space Station is that kind of place that when you are there, you must take it all in, but after Peggy grabbed Jameson by the arm and ordered him to come with her, there was no time to take it all in. The airlock closed behind them, and Peggy knew they were getting close.
“How far is it?” Jamason asked, as they hovered along, their feet stirring particles of dust in the microgravity beneath their soles.
Peggy looked at him, suspiciously, recalling that he had agreed to go with her without informing ground control of their whereabouts.
“Only a few feet further,” Peggy answered. She led the way toward the old storage bay with its battery banks and electrical inverters, accumulating backup electricity in case of an emergency.
“What is going on,” he said as they hovered through the west hanger where corrosion and dilapidation gradually increased and passed through the narrow arch into the dark, freezing aerospace shadows.
“You know Haruki Fujita?” she said, feeding her companion’s curiosity with as little information as possible. The name was disturbing, and Peggy felt her neck spasm a little.
“The Jap who plays with his stepbrother’s hair? I know him; he ruined a month of my work after the botanicals died from his intrusion. There is an HR complaint lodged against him for interfering with my plants, but ground control refuses to believe it. You will believe me when—”
“I believe you, okay. Because he has been hacking into the servers for a long time. He works at night in the dilapidated capsule.”
“The asshole! So that’s where the acidic atmosphere that killed my plants came from.”
“You might have imagined that NASA’s security checks would have picked up a cybernetic criminal who could hack their instrumentation.”
“The very last person I would have suspected.”
“Yesterday afternoon I was issued a job card to check the battery terminals. To my surprise I found something else in there, I found ‘a computer of him’ in there.”
“So you caught him red-handed?”
“Damn it! He frightened me. Something growled from behind me—it literally gave me goosebumps. I’m lucky that I wasn’t there ten minutes earlier. Oh shit, he was dying, and I thought the blood floating in space was proof enough that I wouldn’t be able to save him.”
Hovering in the cramped hanger shoulder to shoulder, Peggy glanced at him. The boy’s eyes were so dark they seemed black, only by her flashbeam did they turn indigo blue. She noticed her death-grip on the torch, her gloves couldn’t release their hold even consciously.
“I need to show you the body so that we can devise a plan of action,” the engineer explained. “I thought it was safe for us to check out the corpse during the day.”
“Are you sure the Jap is dead?” said the biologist. “The light in there may have obscured your visibility and conclusion. If he was unconscious he might still be alive.”
“Well, he seemed very dead to me.” She glanced sideways at the boy, and felt a flare of disappointment. She knew deep down in her being that Haruki was gone, one of the first dead bodies she ever encountered. She had to admit that such a bloody, gruesome, and unsettling scene she had never seen in all her years as a first aider or electrical engineer.
“Alright,” Jameson said; “we will go and look at him,” and he added, in the words of a caring person, “we should keep this between us—I mean, if young Nic Chagall ever finds out about his stepbrother it would kill him. By the way, I heard the other day that ‘Nic’ was not his real name.”
“What is?”
“I cannot remember. I had lost interest in the introvert, and it did not grab hold in my memory—something like Nicklaus. The medic who enrolled in the space program joined his stepbrother after he was abandoned. But Haruki, on the other hand, had joined in search of extraterrestrial technology. Can you believe that there are people who still believe in aliens nowadays? Clearly you are not a believer.”
“Obviously.”
“But wandering about your faith, what do you believe in then? Your boyfriend mentioned what the name was called and said it was scientific in nature.”
“We don’t have a name yet.” Peggy was reluctant to argue without facts about something so important as that. Bossi bases his beliefs on the Principia Mathematica. Isaac Newton was the founder of a philosophy that was only recently made public. A few fragments of his work provide scientific evidence based on experimentation. But anyhow, here is the storage bay.”
She looked at him sharply to see if he was prepared. His face, however, was wearing an expression of frozen panic. His lips and nostrils were rimmed with deep purple, and there were shadows in his dark eyes, like the shapes of a reptile streaking into two hard lines.
“Lemme show you where I found the body,” she said, “this is the place.”
As the two astronauts made their way through the blood of hovering crimson, they suddenly stopped and lifted their flashbeams to the height of the wall, uttered a low note of surprise, and stood motionless, their eyes fixed upon something weird. As far as Peggy could see the wall was covered with inscriptions, though she did not yet understand what she was looking at. A moment later she moved cautiously forward, aiming for the inverters.
Behind the inverter of an enormous height hovered the spacesuit of another astronaut. Standing silent beside it, Peggy noted such particulars that immediately took her attention—the suit was empty, the body missing, the clothing still inside; whatever most probably and strangely happened to this astronaut must have been unearthly.
The suit floated upon its back, the nametag—Nic Chagall. One arm was twisted in circles, the other stretched, but the latter was ripped off brutally, with the missing piece stuck to the helmet. The other arm was severely bent. The whole attitude of the suit was that of desperate but weak resistance to something.
Nearby drifted the disemboweled stepbrother with his naked finger stretched out, stained and blotched, and the floor had been scribbled with blood into symbols all over the corroded floorplate; next to his suit was unmistakable the footprint of an alien entity.
A glance at the empty spacesuit’s missing glove and boots made the nature of the struggle even more mysterious. While the suit and helmet were clean, the arms and legs were red—almost black. The oxygen hose stuck against an inverter, and the suit was twisted and turned backward, opposite any natural posture.
From behind Haruki’s cracked helmet his eyes had popped, bloody and gruesome. The throat showed horrible penetrations; not mere fingermarks, but lacerations and stab wounds inflicted by animal claws that must have buried themselves in his bleeding flesh, maintaining their terrible grip long after death. His throat, chin, and face were soggy; the material saturated; drops of blood had gathered like condensate inside his visor, bloodstained hair and cheeks.
All this the two astronauts observed without speaking—almost frozen. Then Jameson said:
“Poor Haruki! He got what he deserved.”
Peggy was vigilantly inspecting the storage bay. Her flashbeam was held in both hands and at full brightness, and her gloves were clenched around the handle.
“The work of a murderer,” she said, without removing her eyes from the surrounding inverters. “It was done by Nic—Chagall.”
Something half-hidden by the cable racks behind the inverters caught Peggy’s attention. It was the wall. She looked at it while lifting her flashbeam. It contained the code of computer and upon the entire wall the name “Stefan Bossi.” Written in blood over and over again—scribbled as if in haste barely legible—were the following lines, which Peggy read silently while her companion started scanning the dark confines of the enclosure and hearing a commotion from inside the bloody spiderwebs dangling from the wall.

public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String originalName = “Stefan Bossi”;
System.out.println(“Original name: “ + originalName);

// Reversing the name
String reversedName = new StringBuilder(originalName).reverse().toString();
System.out.println(“Reversed name: “ + reversedName);

// Converting to uppercase
String upperCaseName = originalName.toUpperCase();
System.out.println(“Uppercase name: “ + upperCaseName);

// Swapping first name with last name
int spaceIndex = originalName.indexOf(‘ ‘);
String firstName

“Bossi Stefan—”
Peggy stopped reading; there was no more to read. The code broke off in the middle of a line.
“What a flawless Java script,” she said, since she was somewhat of a programmer herself. With extraordinary patience she stood looking at the wall.
“Who’s Java?” Jameson asked rather confused.
“Computer code, a script that was written to play around with two words—a very jolly script indeed. Coded in first generation; I know the language. The script repeated my boyfriend’s name, but it must have been by mistake.”
“Your boyfriend?” Jameson said. “Let us go back; we must share this information with ground control.”
Peggy said nothing but nodded in compliance. Staring at the inverter behind the empty spacesuit of the missing astronaut with the oxygen hose entangled, she saw that the absent glove was stuck (or rather glued) to the vertical surface by some slimy substance drooling from the melted plastic. She took her torch to illuminate it into view. It was an oozing mess, and painted on the panel were the hardly decipherable words, “Peggy Lance.”
“Peggy Lance!” exclaimed Jameson, with sudden animation. “Why, that is your name—not Stefan Bossi. And—curse your soul! How it all comes together—the murderer’s name is Peggy Lance!”
“There is something weird going on here,” Peggy said. “I deny anything of the kind.”
There came to them from inside the wall—seemingly from a great distance—the sound of a growl, a high-pitched, frequency, cybernetic echo, which had no more joy than that of a predator prowling at its prey; a growl that originated from far away, closer and closer, distinct, more explicit but brutal, until it faded away outside the audible distance of their hearing; a growl so unnatural, so extraterrestrial, so morbid, that it filled those freaked out astronauts with a sense of dread unspeakable! They did not move their torches nor think of them; the menace of that horrible sound was the kind not to be disturbed by light. As it had originated out of solid metal, to die away grimly; from a culminating frequency that had seemed almost in their head, it retreated into the distance until its soft echoes, cybernetic and mechanical to the last frequency, faded into silence at an immeasurable distance.

As a man turning 40 I feel that I can offer some advice to younger men in their 20s and 30s that might feel lost or abandoned by society. I didn’t begin to really put my life together until I was about 25…
I’ll tell you a bit of background so you can see if this relates to you and then give you a 5 year life changing plan that I wish a mentor could have given me. (I have nothing to sell you). I’m sharing this because I see young men struggling and society and the government don’t care…
The following is not to brag but to give you some hope and show you what is possible.
In a community college dropout, lived in small military towns. Have ADHD. Child of divorce and the oldest for 4 kids, grew up in a single parent home and before that my parents would fight and argue a lot (it was pretty bad). I had severe depression (you know what that means). When I left the workforce I was making about $35K 12 years ago in NC. Rent for a 3 bedroom house back then was $960 a month for context.
I’ve now been a business owner for over 10 years, I earn over $150K after taxes and business expenses (I live frugally and put a lot away for retirement when I can, and paying off debt and mortgage early) I have been a homeowner for 3 years now with a 5 bedroom home in Georgia (US).
I won’t tell you my net worth but I’m not a millionaire but I will be when I pay off my house in 5 years just based on home equity and property values in my area.
Buying my house and doing renovations dropped my credit score to 720 but at peak I did figure out getting to an 800+ when I bought my home.
Here are the areas every young man needs to work on and I will give you the 5 year outline for this.
The sooner you start the better this works.

• Physical Fitness and Health
• Personal Finance and Financial Literacy
• Dress, Grooming and Etiquette
• Being Well Read, and an Articulate Speaker
• Social Savvy, Networking and Persuasion
• Skilled Labor and Specialization
• Well Traveled with Stories to Tell
• Social Proof and Accomplishments
• Income Generating and Earning Potential

Let’s start with where you want to be in 5 years and set some milestones and goals for you:

• Read 50 Books in 5 Years
• Travel to 5 Interesting Places (adventures)
• Be Under 12-14% Body Fat
• Be able to pass Military PT for age
• $5000+ in Emergency Savings
• Good Credit of 680-720
• Get a Passport and Global Entry
• Build a Capsule Wardrobe
• Gain a High Income Skill Set
• Have $500-$1000 a month side hustle

These 10 self improvement goals are more or less completely in your control if you are able bodied.
You will also need to eliminate vices and distractions which will be the hard thing.
It was hard for me too so don’t feel discouraged, just keep at it:
Eliminate

• Drinking, Smoking, Weed
• Pron, and Instagram Models, OF, etc
• No staying up late (7 hours of sleep)
• Subscriptions
• Fast Food, Door Dash Uber Eats
• Video Games until you’re in shape and spent the money on your passport and global entry and at least one international trip

These things take up too much time, energy and money that hurt your self improvement and development
START WITH IMPROVING YOUR APPEANCE
The most important and immediate thing you can work on is your appearance.
Find a celebrity or high achiever with your height and complexion , if you’re not severely overweight, try to match body type or weight if possible.
Start capturing images of how they dress. Pay attention to colors that would go with your skin tones and the fit for your height and weight.
Look at jackets, hats and pants as well as sneakers and accessories, until you can afford a nice watch just get an affordable fitness tracker and layer an Oura ring.
If you’re a Christian just wear a simple cross under your shirt, nothing fancy.
Your goal is to build a capsule wardrobe that makes it easy to dress to impress.
Don’t worry about name brand, just try to get the look on a budget.
Simpler advice is to get some plain black and white shirts both short and long sleeve, crew neck, v neck and turtlenecks, and then get them fitted to your body measurements.
Get non colors of black, white and grey.
Get dark blue and black jeans, khaki slacks.
White sneakers, black Chelsea cut boots, tan or wheat timberland boots, and a pair of brown loafers.
Also get a black leather jacket and a brown leather jacket.
With this simple wardrobe if you can’t figure out dressing, no man can go wrong as long as he’s in decent shape. Keep it simple.
For grooming and hair care, if you’re black and want to grow your hair get cornrows and keep your beard trimmed don’t bother with growing it too long. If you want to appear younger stay clean shaven. This also is the easiest choice.
Any man look good with a military haircut so for most of you get one of these.
Most important, never dye your hair an unnatural color and avoid dying all together as the chemicals damage your hair and lead to balding later and can also affect testosterone levels.
If you wear glasses don’t be insecure about them, just dress well and have good posture and a good haircut.
If where glasses try to look professional and serious but also smile and try to be charming and use few words, but speak with confidence and don’t be afraid to lean in more when you talk to people.
If you have teeth issues you actually don’t need health insurance, get private dental insurance on a $25/month plan with United or Delta Dental, you don’t need health insurance or an employer to get dental.
To help with additional out of pocket cost get Care Credit.
Get a checkup and cleaning twice a year.
By focusing on working out and health and nutrition and using the military standard to train yourself you can avoid a lot of health problems.
Work your way to doing 50-100 pushups a day. It doesn’t have to be in one session but that should be the goal one day. Get a $30 pull up bar from Amazon and a $15 ab ball.
Every morning do 50 flutter kicks , 50 leg lifts and 50 crunches and 50 bicycle kicks.
So this again in the late afternoon.
You also want to start lifting weights, focus on chest press, leg press, bench press, arm raises and arm curls.
5 miles on a treadmill every other day with the goal of getting from a 12 minute pace to a 6-7 minute pace within 1-2 years.
This will give you tremendous stamina and endurance.
The goal here is lean muscle.
For diets and nutrition, everyone is different but pritoize protein and caloric deficit and maintenance.
Carnivore and Keto are extremes, most people do best with something moderate.
Learning to cook will save you money and make you more attractive.
It also is a good stress relief activity and can be fun.
IMPOVE INTELLIGENCE AND ARTICULATION
There are some key areas of focus here:

• use books and podcast to become more well rounded
• gain an intellectual hobby
• learn to speak well and clearly
• become an active listener
• learn to write to communicate well
• potentially learn another language

Learning another language gives you more options in life but also just makes you more interesting and attractive to people.
There are also no downsides to being a better communicator overall. Take up Toastmasters locally to become a better speaker and develop confidence as a public speaker.
Your intelligence is not static and can be improved upon.
To the best of your ability improve your reading comprehension, start with reading at least 12 of the literary classics in 1 year so that you have more in common with higher status individuals.
Do this in year one.
If you prefer listen to them as audio books as most are free with an audible membership, and most might also be free on YouTube and Spotify .
Also read 6–12 books a year around things like money and finance (I will teach you to be rich, millionaire next door, your money or your life, rich b*tch)
Listen to podcast when you work out, but not entertainment , comedy or anything like that, but things that will make you smarter. There is time for entertainment when you feel more comfortable with your lifestyle.
I’m not saying no entertainment ever but I would prefer you indulge in it with friends as a social activity, that way it’s more meaningful and a better use of time.
Fun with friends, productive on your own.
Also making reading and working out and your hobby your fun is ideal.
For intellectual hobbies, taking up an instrument or up close magic, or art is ideal and it is impressive and attractive. It’s a hobby that also can help you gain some social status. Chess is also a good one.
MONEY AND CAREER
I avoided student loans, I’m not going tell you college is scam (it probably is or most men) but predatory student loans are 100% a scam and usury.
Go to college if you can avoid debt with scholarships and grants. Major in something with a guaranteed good outcome that solid carries social proof like computer science, medicine, or law.
If you want to study what interest you go to community college or do school part time and work and pay it out of pocket and with Pell grants.
The most important thing is to gain a valuable skill set and you don’t need college for that.
Examples are 3D Modeling, Graphic Design, Email Marketing, Ad Management, Copywriting and Video Production and Editing.
These skills will still matter even with AI and will continue to pay well.
In the meantime ask the parents of friends about their work and career and who the highest paid person they know without a degree is and what they do for a living , if possible get an intro to them.
Meanwhile gain employment with full time hours. I don’t recommend retail or food services no matter what anyone says.
As a man get a labor job like Amazon or UPs for 2-3 years. A labor job will help with fitness and you might get to listen to books and podcasts while you work.
It will also put you around other men majority of the time , and you might be able to find like minded men who want to improve and get out.
You might even find older men who you can learn from the mistakes of.
Spend your free time developing a side hustle and use this to help build your energy fund or house fund faster.
A house fund is $25,000 not 20% down. Trust me on putting just 5% down and controlling your cost. I got into my house for $16,000 and it’s gone up $120,000 in 3 years.
You will want to live frugal which is why you eliminating a lot of things outside of self improvement.
Learn financial literacy and about building credit or repairing it on your own. I had as low as a 550 at one point in life and currently have a 700+ and used to have an 800+ when I bought my home. (My parent didn’t help me with any of this)
Key areas are credit, savings, budgeting, investing, taxes and retirement.
If you go into a corporate career (I went into advertising and marketing) find a mentor and set yourself in the promotion track and do everything to build industry social proof and accomplishments.
Go to networking events in your industry and I recommend the book Conference Crushing by Tyler Wagner.
TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE
This is the real reason you will want to ditch your vices since it will let you afford travel and adventure.
Plan a yearly trip and save $500-$1000 if you travel with friends a lot this becomes better and more affordable.
If you have to stick to the U.S. then travel to destinations like PEURTO RICO, Alaska, Las Vegas, New York, and Los Angeles.
Places that allow you to take great pictures and have interesting stories.
If you can save up $300 for your passport then get that and travel to Mexico, Laos, Greece, Iceland and Japan.
These have options where a week will cost you less than $1500. With friends you can do more for less.
I also recommend trying to learn another language or at least a few of the words for the languages of the places you travel.
Get Global Entry, Clear and PreCheck, this will cost you around $600 but is better than a game console.
SOCIAL PROOF AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Status does matter in a human society and you need to gain some.
In the path that I have laid out that would translate to being a higher earner and having an interesting lifestyle as well as a few hobbies or talents that would be appealing.
I don’t think you have to go out of your at to impress people don’t buy fancy cars or watches or name brands unless you want to for yourself.
However pursue awards and achievements that are hard to come by and hard to not acknowledge.
You may have noticed an absence of daring or relationship advice here. If you do these things you probably won’t need it as you will be able to attract enough options.
But for the sake of comprehensiveness have friends and family who have your best interest at heart look for someone for you /:’ make sure they know your taste and red flags and the things you want long term.
MENTAL HEALTH
Taking action in your own life is the best thing for your mental health of you would not benefit from talk therapy as men tend to need to SEE change and transformation into with life to be mentally health…rather than feel heard and validated.
Vent to other men you trust and who have similar and shared struggles and background to you.
I also personally recommend turning to faith and embracing stoicism and also many of the tenants of bushido.
(I didn’t lock the post I don’t know why the mods did so I can’t reply to people and help with any questions they had … 😢 if someone can get the mods to I am happy to try reply when I can to help whoever. 🙏🏾

In a few days, I’ll be graduating! Coming from someone who knew nothing about engineering, having no study groups, and learning and doing everything on my own, a part of me is proud to finally obtain this degree.
For the numbers people, some fun stats: - 3.6 cGPA - 3.7 Major GPA - 68% grade of A- or higher - Lowest grade were 2 C’s - ~71% of my time doing schoolwork were done in class/lecture/lab - 2 friends made!! - 8 group projects total (thank God I don’t have to do these again) - Average of 16.12 credits per semester since switching to ME
Worst class? I didn’t have one. I think all of my classes were critical to understand the underlying engineering principles. I see people complaining about Physic, Calc, etc. weed out classes but they were quite enjoyable for me. Switching between the “solve as many practice problems as possible” grind set to “apply critical thinking and analysis” mindsetbis what I noticed trip up students the most. If I had to pick, Statics was the class that frustrated me the most as it was the first engineering class I took and the professor was difficult to follow. Shoutout to everyone who suggested Jeff Hanson, he did help quite a bit :]
My favourite subjects were Controls/Modeling, Diff. Equations, and Heat&Mass. It came down to 3 main things: how interesting the subject was to me, the professors attitude and teaching style, and what the core concepts/contents the subject consisted of. If you manage to find a class with all 3 that fit for you, consider yourself very lucky
For those interested (too lazy to do Sankey diagram) - Applied for 43 full-time jobs - 21 No responses - 12 Declines - 10 interviews - 9* offers (corrected)
I went with what I thought was the best one, total annual comp ranging from $80k - $90k (dependent on variable bonuses, how much overtime, yadada)
It’s scary to think I am now an Engineer and not an Engineering Student. This sub has very knowledgeable people and the information here helped me more than a few times.
Congrats to everyone graduating this semester :]

A little idea that I had, Evolved Godzilla in GxK was just way too fucking cool, and I feel he was kind of underutilized. Especially for the extra little additions he had in his design, and in this story I want to put him up against the main threats that Goji himself had previously fought in the Monsterverse, just with his evolved state instead.
Will this be fair? Absolutely not lol, but will it be fun to write? Hell yeah.
Ao3 link if you want to read it there: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54956917/chapters/139311436
No one could have foreseen such a catastrophic event.

Ishiro Serizawa's heart pounded in his chest, threatening to burst entirely as sweat poured from his weary head. He couldn't sit straight upon the metal seat he had confined himself to, no one at Monarch could say otherwise too. The subtle rocking of the aircraft carrier certainly didn't help the pounding sensation in his head either, further adding to the stress placed upon the old doctor's mind. The sleepless nights ever since... it broke out had taken their toll upon the man, his brows furrowing as he clasped his hands together.

He had seen it for himself after all, to say Janjira was an absolute disaster would be the greatest understatement in the past century of human history. They thought they had everything under control, how could they not at this point? They had studied it for a decade without an end in sight, making sure that they could pull the plug on it. The kill field around the spore was capable of outputting enough electricity to power half a damn city...
And it shrugged it off like it was a jolt of carpet static.
In hindsight,he could do nothing but mentally curse himself over their own hubris. Monarch had become another example of mankind prancing its supposed control over the world, and the world was quick to put their arrogance into the ground. Nature came knocking, and its message was one that was echoed through the annals of human history.
Nature was a beast, a beast like no other. No amount of technology, science, religion or whatever else Mankind could conjure would ever be truly able to conquer and tame it. The creature that sprouted from the ancient spore exemplified such a thought like no other. Those deep crimson slits it had for eyes spoke of total and utter malevolence, like the world itself bored back into their souls... seeing red at them playing god.
"Sensei..."
He was broken out of his crushing thoughts upon the soft voice of one Doctor Graham, who was quick to sit beside the Japanese man when she had seen her mentor so deep and stuck in thought. The brit was always a comforting presence to him and to many other people at Monarch. Even if it did little to alleviate the old doctor's stress at the moment, it was something at the very least.
"Ah, Forgive me for my current state... there has been much on my mind."
A dry scoff emanated from the woman upon hearing his words, looking to the side of the doctor's head.
"There's been a lot on everyone's minds as of late."
Her shoulders sagged as she sighed, a finger of hers going up and rubbing one of her temples. The old doctor leaned back a little, looking up at his apprentice who looked no better than him in this state. The bags under her eyes said it all, she too was at the containment site when the creature emerged. They were lucky to have escaped relatively unscathed, the same could not be said for the Brody's.
"Has it been located?"
The old doctor's thick accented voice asked, rearing his head from his palm to look towards his apprentice. The expression on her face said it all, the shake of her head only cemented such a fact. The thought of that creature, being completely left unattended to and free to wreak havoc upon... anywhere for all god knew in the world was beyond horrifying to Serizawa.
"No... but I saw something in the audio readings..."
She paused, standing up and going towards one of the computer screens of the control room they were in. Tapping on the keyboard and bringing up something on the green tinted screen. The old doctor sat down in front of the computer, seeing that it was the audio patterns recorded through the minutes of hell when the creature broke free. He was unsure on what Graham wanted him to see, but she looked over from behind the screen and briefly gazed at him.
"Keep scrolling, before the EMP." She urged, as he complied to her request. Skimming through the readings, just seeing the spikes in audio through the graph made those chilling noises ring out in his ears again, but he kept going.
"This." She pointed and tapped on the screen, an all too familiar pattern to the both of them at this point. The call of the thing. But what really caught his attention was what sat right next to it.

A second call... a response.
Serizawa looked back to his apprentice at the realization of such a thing. It couldn't have been... could it? That second spore...
"A response." He muttered, his eyes wide as he considered the possibility of another MUTO having been awakened. But how? That second spore from the Philippine dig site that decade ago was wheeled off to storage probably far, far away from any source of radiation, unlike the spore in Janjira...At least to his knowledge. Writing this fact down onto his notes, he pondered such a scenario. As if things couldn't have possible gotten even more grim for not only Monarch but the world.
Vivienne went off to talk about with the other personnel present in the room, but quickly the attention of all those present was drawn to something else.
"We've received reports of a nuclear Akula 50, disappeared about 50 nautical miles from Hawaii." The voice of the officer was both heard by Admiral Stenz and the two Monarch scientists in earshot. Instantly that caught their attention, making Serizawa spring up from his seat and Vivienne to look over to face the Admiral. Stenz's gaze upon the two scientists still exhumed an underlying hint of contempt, one that the both scientists picked up on but disregarded for the time being. There were far better things to worry about at the moment anyways.

"A Russian sub's up and disappeared off the coast of Hawaii... could be the Muto." The admiral reiterated their own assumption that they thought of, and the screens behind the Admiral showed that they were about to get their answers soon enough...

---


The depths of the world were a place that human hands had not touched in many millennia. In times immemorial, when man walked alongside their gods... their titans, both lived in coexistence with each other. It was not one without conflict of course, but it was an existence of stability thanks to the efforts of beings were larger than life, to the eyes of men who were but ants to their splendor.
But as time flowed and the great wars began, when the aureate storm came and ravaged the lands, and when the crimson tyrant obsessed over total dominion upon nature...

One stood.

A king amongst the old gods of the world, the one that cheated death. The last one of a once great race, a guardian to all those who sided with his cause, that being the continued stability of nature. But to those that basked in anarchy, spreading it forth like a malignant cancer...
He was a monster.

And as the great wars raged on across the lands, the monster set forth upon innumerable battlefields. The auric wings of destruction found their match against the wrathful king, forging a rivalry etched into the very fabric of the world. The crimson tyrant learned to feel fear in his blackened soul, weeping in the shadow of the God-King.
In the end of it all, the king emerged victorious. But it was not a victory without bloodshed, not only of his enemies and himself but also of those he held dearest to him. The unwavering martyred in his name, The little ones caught in-between the battles of titans, his beloved queen...
Never again, he promised to himself. For all his might he couldn't save them. The queen would return, he knew that she wouldn't just fade away into nothingness like that. But that never erased the sorrow, the pain, the grief on his soul. He may have won the wars in placing the golden death in an icy prison and locking away the crimson tyrant deep below, but he was nearly destroyed in the process.
Defeat was never an option, and the wars had been the absolute closest the lord of the titans was to being gobbled up by the jaws of defeat. As of late the king of the monsters had decided that his form was not sufficient enough to cement his dominance over his enemies. Evolution was in order, to be a proverbial step ahead over what threats lied in wait, threats that he knew would come one day to jumpstart the cycle once more.
Evolve he did, the primordial minerals of the Hollow was something his kind always had been able to utilize, blessed with the ability to draw power from the crystalline materials. That was how they were blessed with their fire after all, but some sources yielded more interesting results. Said sources however were considered taboo to him and his lot, as there was really no telling what could possibly come out of consuming such things, the ones that did try usually succumbed to madness or explosive demises at the hands of volatile energies.
It was a gamble really, but one that ended up paying off. That fucshia-tinted nest of the serpent was quite the deposit of the volatile energy, one that she would never have let go without a fight. She was to be removed and besides, he already had a distaste for Tiamat anyway. Robbing him of the satisfaction of bringing down the rival that had cast him out from his territory long ago, and having the gall to side with the Golden One in the great war, and her being in the way of power that would make his job easier in the future was another thing to add onto the pile.

It was either her life or the world potentially being in jeopardy in the future.
A very easy decision that was to the leviathan.

Now transmogrified in the depths he remained, the crushing pressure of the entire ocean at this level made sure that very little life persevered here, let alone life that was intelligent enough to do anything to pose a threat to him. He rather enjoyed the relative silence, the only things being audible to him was the low churning of the rock all around him and the water rushing against his gargantuan form as he effortlessly glided through the water. Some peace and quiet was exactly what he sought, taking in those magenta crystals was quite the process he had to endure, but one that was worth the time to evolve.
The new form that he wore now was taking some getting used to, it felt like he had put on a completely new layer of skin to replace what once was. The lack of bulk in some areas was something he would have to rectify at a later occasion, but even then he hadn't felt so spry and filled with energy in a very, very long time. The more armored scales all over himself was something that he very much appreciated, the extra plates on his elbows and tail-tip were welcome additions of weaponry to use. Sustenance was in order if he wanted to regain his bulk and his home deep below would be able to quell the hunger he felt at the moment.

The peace ever since the last freeze proved to be a long one, but peace never was a permanent thing especially to him despite how much he would yearn and plead silently that it was. Despite the little ones unearthing him relatively recently, nothing seemed to come of it except for the strange incident at the remote atolls. Whether the little ones wanted to feed him or kill him was something that still eluded the leviathan but he definitely was displeased at seeing the damages that were incurred by the strange cylinder's detonation.
Continuing to trudge through the abyss and back to his home, the thought of him being overtly paranoid about all this crossed his mind. The innumerable sun cycles ever since the deep freeze started by the mother of ice marked a strange and silent point in his existence. At first it seemed too good to be true, but that first millennia going by without incident after the freeze started lulled him into a sense of security. Perhaps he was being overtly cynical about all this, evolving for threats that may never rear their ugly heads ever again. Had the Moth been around, perhaps the two of them could have finally gotten to "living a little." as the queen said to him.
A low grumble escaped the leviathan's throat, unheard to anyone in the depths as those bitter memories reemerged. How much he had wanted to have the "happy ending" that the goddess wanted not only for her, but for the both of them. A true sense of happiness was something that became a rarity to him long ago, when the wars first broke out at the auric death's arrival, it might as well have died alongside the queen in the last stretch of the conflict. He knew she would return, she would never be content to just fade way like that, even if it took millions upon millions of sun cycles for her to return, he would count down each and every day. In the meantime, he would ensure he did her and his own kind proud, continuing to tend to the lands as they always had done. But for now, home was calling.
When she did return, he would make sure that she would never fall to death's clutches ever again.

Come heaven or hell, he would make sure of it.


---

The air was tense upon the carrier, the two doctors watching the screens displaying the body cams of personnel on the ground. If a Nuclear submarine had gone up and missing near a relatively high-populated area like Hawaii would definitely be a cause for concern.

Especially considering there was a two hundred foot tall winged monster on the loose.

The nuclear submersible disappearing alongside the fact that the titan's main source of nourishment being radiation certainly painted a grim picture in their heads... that thing possibly being around, completely free to trample over the isles was a mortifying thought. The possibility of Monarch's secrecy to the public had now completely gone up in flames, but that was secondary to the potential millions that the existence of but one active titan could do. It was a nightmare born straight out of the darkest conceivable timeline to both Dr Graham and Serizawa, the top priority now in this dire situation would be to get a visual on the MUTO, and assess how to deal with it from there.
The men continued to march through the brush, being watched over by the two doctors from the screens, the night vision of the body cameras still doing little to give the clear picture to both of them. The disturbance that was picked up by the military at the very least was being taken completely seriously, both men on the ground and the air force had been called in for this, for a disturbance near Honolulu, combined with that sudden disappearance of that sub on top of the MUTO's escape probably had everyone on edge at the moment.

"We played god..." The old doctor thought to himself. How much he wished he could turn back time, destroy the damn spore the moment it had come to Janjira and nestled itself atop the irradiated wasteland. Nature was certainly giving him and everyone else at Monarch a hell of a lesson in not playing with flames they should never have even stoked in the first place.
"The consequences were bound to rear their heads at us eventually." Another thought ran through his mind, as he wiped the sweat from his weary head. Were they even able to do anything to the creature had they found it? He hated to be pessimistic, but considering the kill field around it's spore didn't even earn so much as a twitch from the thing as it was electrocuted... he had his doubts.

Though now... the prospect of him emerging again became very, very real.

"Gojira..." The old man whispered under his breath, to which his apprentice picked up on.
"Do you think he will come, sensei?" Graham replied back.

Had the tales been true, the old legends of a wrathful king emerging to weed out anything and everything that threatened the natural balance, Serizawa could only pray that forgiveness was something in Gojira's forte. They certainly did not give the King of the Monsters a welcoming taste of the modern world considering the in retrospect, utterly futile attempt on the King's life back in 1954 with Castle Bravo.
The aged man reared his bespectacled head to Graham, a look of uncertainty shining through his eyes.
"If the tales are to be believed... he will come. Nature's power will rise to alleviate the blight we have wrought upon it."
"We can only pray, that he does not consider us among the blighted."
Such words made chills run down Vivienne's spine, when Serizawa spoke in that way, she knew he was being more than serious. Others may have called his reverence of Godzilla as ludicrous, foolish even for placing his faith to tales of ancient 'uncivilized' humans, venerating what was 'just' a big animal. Serizawa saw it differently though, and while she couldn't exactly know why, she too believed in the old man's faith.
"I suppose we'll see." The English woman replied back, uncertain yet cautiously optimistic about it. Had Godzilla emerged due to the MUTOs, he would likely be at very least, focusing on them first and foremost. Whether he somehow knew that humanity was responsible for their reawakening was a scenario that she silently pleaded not to happen.

The eyes of all in the control room returned to the array of screens showing the men finally laying their vision upon something... it was hard to make out from the fuzzy vision of the cameras projecting the image and the nighttime darkness, but there was some sort of vague shape stuck up in the tree line. Was it the creature again? They got their answers quickly, when the group reared their lights upon the shape...
"Looks like we found your Russian sub." The stunned voice of one of the soldiers came over the comms, his camera completely frozen and transfixed upon the vehicle in very much not the appropriate terrain for it.
To everyone's total horror it was indeed the very submarine that was reported missing, stuck dozens of feet up in the tree line and from the looks of things, covered in some sort of viscous substance. Both the people watching from the carrier as well as the boots on the ground were all in utter shock, there could only be one thing responsible for the submersible's current predicament. The searchlights from the choppers above quickly got to scanning the immediate vicinity and from behind the suspended submarine... there was movement.
The choppers reared their way towards the flanks of the submarine, and everyone both watching and on the ground at that moment gasped from the sheer horror. It was not immediately spotted, but now with the illumination upon the side, the abyssal tinted hides of the MUTO once again showed itself... those crimson slits it had for eyes shining at the cameras like the uncaring gaze of a malevolent demon, the almost insectoid creature's dagger toothed jaws had been clamping down and munching upon the nuclear payload of the submarine. Just like they had suspected, these titans fed upon radiation. The question of if this MUTO was feeding just out of hunger or for something else crossed Serizawa and Graham's minds, but their current shock pushed it into the back of their minds.

"Cat's out of the bag now doctor..." The admiral's glare at Serizawa now returned, still maintaining a sense of calm but subtly the Doctor could tell that the current situation had definitely struck a chord within the man.
"No more keeping things under wraps, the public's safety is our utmost priority now." The admiral added, before going off elsewhere in the room as nearly everyone was sent into a complete panic as all hands on deck were sprung into action quickly, for the situation has now reached levels of potential danger that bode a grim outlook upon the local population on Hawaii.
Amidst all the panic now though, the doctors overheard another announcement from an officer manning the Radar...
"Second signature's coming in from the Pacific!"
Immediately, both doctors present knew immediately just who was coming... and just how utterly out of proportion this horrid situation that they already found themselves in had just gotten.

The king was coming.

For decades the great leviathan had remained docile and under the radar despite the uncalled provocation that was the welcoming he had received from Humanity in 1954, but now that Humanity had truly tipped the scales of the natural balance in a way that had never been shifted for countless millennia. Nature's power was to be called upon once more and Serizawa definitely wanted to be one of the first to witness such an event.
He sprung into action, quickly making his way out of the control room and into the busy halls of the manic carrier.
"Where are you going?!" Graham shouted as she followed the old man, nearly falling over due to the sudden rush.
"I have to see this!" Serizawa yelled back, his stride not breaking in the slightest as he practically sprinted for the main deck of the aircraft carrier.

As if History hadn't already been changed enough with the return of a Titan, now the very King of all the Titans was now coming. From the tales he knew of Gojira, while benevolent to the continued safety of the Planet he was also as capable of destruction like no other. As wrathful as he was merciful, for he himself was a true paragon of the two sides of Mother Nature itself, like the oceans as beautiful as they were yet capable of raging like no other...

He could only pray the his mercy graces humanity.

---

He had heard it.

Those familiar calls... reverberating through the murk, immediately being picked up by his senses.
A parasite.

The time of peace and introspection had now passed... and a king's work had to be done. Disorder had dawned upon the lands once more, and his services had been called upon once again.
Effortlessly, the leviathan shifted his course from headed back towards his undersea home and in the direction of the calls. The water around him raged and surged, heralding the king's incoming movements as he began to rise quickly towards the ocean surface from the crushing depths. This new body of his already proved its usefulness, the increased levels of energy that surged all around every ounce of his being giving him far greater speed than ever before. All that much better to address this tumor upon the balance he had tended and watched over from the shadows for all this time.
Rising and rising ever closer towards the water's surface, the moonlight gleaming through the waves that now swelled to be as large as trees to the beast's gigantic body waded past the waves. The adrenaline running through Gojira's veins were much like the very waves that he had kicked up now, driving him further and further as he felt his dorsal plates protruding above the ocean and knifing through the frigid air.
Focusing his eyes forwards and now seeing the deep abyss of the ocean give way to outline of land beneath the waves, he was close to making landfall now. Rearing the still massive bulk of his evolved form further and further towards the surface as he continued to trudge along... the subtle swishing of the air was audible to him, followed by the beating of what seemed to be... wings?
His momentary confusion was only furthered, as beams of light from all around traced over him and the beating and swishing grew louder and more intense as he travelled closer and closer inland. Averting his eyes up above and even through the rough waves he was kicking up, the lights seemed to have been coming from strange creatures that were tracking and following him as he swam.
They were nothing like he had ever seen before, those 'wings' that he had heard earlier spun around in a circular motion atop their strange looking frames, the lights attached to them were more like lamps that the little ones would use though even these ones were nothing like what he knew. What was stranger still, was that he could sense the little ones riding these metallic looking 'birds'. Truly strange creatures they had tamed, or maybe had even created but that was of little concern to him now.

If they still knew who he was, then they would stay out of his way.

Looking forwards once again now, the king was forced to slow down his current pace as what seemed to be an island came into his trajectory. Only upon another momentary inspection... this was no island at all. It was floating atop the water, the metallic material that made up it's land was a hallmark of being made by the little ones, much like the 'birds' that were illuminating him at the moment. It was less of an island and more like a manmade whale, and here too he could sense countless amounts of the little ones within and atop the 'whale'.
Rearing his body down below the waves once more, his dorsal plates narrowly missed ripping straight through the 'whale'. They were not his concern at the moment, and it would do him nothing to cause needless casualties towards the little ones when a potential disaster was running amok on the lands ahead.

Leaving the metal 'whale' behind but still having the 'birds' follow him from above, he picked up speed once more.

Land was ahead now... and a legend would voice his will once again.

i’ve seen mixed opinions on psychedelics with vs, some say it helps some argue it makes it worse. for me presently, it’s so much worse. weed heightens every single sensation for me lately and that includes vs, the density and frequency of my “static” seems to increase, so does my tinnitus loudness. objects and lights also appear blurry or shaky when i’m high.
it’s a shame as i’ve used weed to help with chronic pain problems. i know i should significantly reduce or quit for at least awhile.
has anyone had a similar psychedelics worsening vs experience? how about microdosing vs regulaexcessive use? please and thank you. peace on planet earth

I'm pretty sure I'm going to be dead in the next 24 hours.
Whether that's the Costella family, or whatever this is, I'm not sure.
The police are taking forever, and part of me knows they're either refusing to believe me, or RC got them too.
I'm holed up on our school bus, so I've got nothing better to do.
I want to tell you about my team.
We met in our sophomore year.
Strangers standing outside the club room.
Levi was the freckled brunette who wouldn't stop talking about Game of Thrones.
Sunny, a pretty redhead, told him to shut up.
Tom, a sandy blonde, nodding his head to music corked in his ears.
I just wanted to be part of a club, and get away from my overbearing mother.
I won't say it was a perfect start. Our school was lacking in funding, so anyone could join, which made us more of a Quiz Club. I had some serious anxiety, so I stayed on the sidelines for a while, watching, rather than taking part.
It's not like we actually talked to each other initially. The first few weeks, we played Jeopardy, and attempted to find more members to cement us as an official Academic Decathlon club.
Unfortunately, though, it was just the four of us.
Which made it extremely hard for us to be taken seriously.
According to Google, Academic Decathlon teams were made up of nine members, placed by their GPA.
Our principal laughed at us, but he did let us become official.
Which was out of pity, I assumed.
The club was assembled, and we started meeting up after school.
Sort of.
Sunny barely showed up, and Levi didn't take anything seriously, preferring to spend the time telling us about his weird family turf-war.
Our principal dumped us in a tiny classroom with a resident rat living under the floorboards.
There was barely enough room to move, and the four of us crammed together for three hours was less than appealing.
Still, though, I wanted to be part of a club.
I had grown up with parents who were obsessed with board games, so I was pretty good at general knowledge questions. Our club room was too small for anything else but three desks (Sunny and I shared one) and a whiteboard we had to shove through the door.
But, again, we didn't start as an Academic club.
It was more akin to Story Time Club.
Arriving late on my third day, armed with quiz cards from home, I found Tom and Sunny completely mesmerised by Levi’s storytelling skills, drowned in shadow.
They didn't even turn the lights on.
I strictly remember squeezing next to Sunny, and hearing the words, “But there was so much blood all over the floor, and my Mom told me to go upstairs and hide under the bed…”
Sitting in front of them was Levi, perched on a desk, his legs swinging, a whiteboard marker between his teeth.
Sometimes he'd get up, and illustrate parts of his story.
It sucked that his drawings were all stick people.
I won't go into full details of his life, but Levi grew up as part of a family who had… interesting methods of making a living. I had seen the guy’s father multiple times when we hung out at his place, and, yeah, my friend’s family definitely had Soprano vibes.
Levi’s Draw My Life was nothing to do with the club, but it did bring us closer.
Even if, at that point, I was considering leaving.
But it's not like it was easy to walk away from these guys. It's like finding your soulmates. Levi wasn't the only one with an interesting life. Sunny Lang was an ex kpop trainee, who was kicked out for being too fat, which led her to develop a severe eating disorder, and a hatred for her own body.
Sunny explained her family were originally from Boston, her mother growing up in Korea.
She signed up for an idol agency focusing on creating a new girl group, and had gotten all the way to the final stages, before being kicked for her weight. Sunny told us her story with a smile, though there was a hollowness in her eyes I couldn't ignore. The other girls were judgemental bullies, and the idol diet and brutal regime almost killed her.
Sunny lived in a tiny apartment with 9 girls, who would tear each other apart for a chance to debut. Sunny said all the other girls debuted, and when we (not so patiently) asked for names, she shrugged, admitting she signed an NDA that prevented her spilling the beans.
What she did say, was the K-pop idol is a product, not a person– and are made and moulded into a product.
She had zero interest in throwing her humanity away to become a manufactured doll.
So, one of us was the son of an underground family, and the other was an ex idol.
Tom was an aspiring horror writer with a famous older step-brother.
His story times were usually, That one time I went to the Met Gala.
When it was my turn to reveal my story, I told them the only interesting thing about me.
I could smell when something bad was going to happen.
They laughed, but I was being serious.
When I was a kid, I smelled my mother’s brain tumor.
I remember it smelled like curdled milk.
I asked Mom why her head smelled of mouldy milk, and Mom laughed and said it was her shampoo.
It was actually a grade two tumor growing inside her brain.
Thankfully, the tumour was found quickly and removed.
Growing older, I became sensitive to smell. The little girl choking on the bus smelled of singed wood, and the old man crossing the road stunk of gasoline.
In the fourth grade, my classmate Alex Castor smelled of lemons all morning.
I sat behind him, choking on the stink all the way through class.
Ever since I met him, Alex had always smelled… off.
It was a distinct smell I could never understand, and as the days and months and years went by, that smell morphed into a subtle orangey musk that was so strong I had to cover my mouth and nose. Then, he smelled like lemons.
During Recess, I watched Alex fall off of the jungle gym, straight onto his head.
Alex Castor was dead before the paramedics arrived, my panicked teacher attempting CPR when his brains were leaking out of his ears.
The school claimed it was an accident, but Alex would have been fine if the jungle gym wasn't built on solid concrete.
I told my team members this, and Levi was sceptical.
“You can smell bad things?” He said, his lips curved around his milkshake straw. In the early days, we hung out in the local bar. It's not like we were allowed inside, but Levi could get us in anywhere.
I was squeezed between Tom and Sunny, while Levi took the seat opposite us. I couldn't help noticing our waitress was insisting on free milkshake refills, her frantic eyes glued to Levi.
I had zero idea why. Levi Costella was about as intimidating as a fruit fly.
Wearing a white shirt with a popped collar, a leather jacket thrown over the top, Levi was giving rebellious Harvard student, rather than son of a crime family.
Leaning forward, he raised a brow, clearly not believing me.
“So, you're like a stink psychic?”
I shrugged, sipping my own shake.
“Sure.”
I wasn't planning on telling him the club room smelled off on our first day.
Once we actually started the club, Levi surprised us as the smartest member, and getting to know him further, I came to the realization his family were infamous in our town.
However, his parents hid it well. Lucy and Michael Costella were the owners of a popular ramen store in our town, hiding under the facade of two successful business owners. The Costella’s were an attractive family.
Lucy was a sophisticated brunette with a lipstick smile, Michael, a handsome fluffy haired man who looked like he modelled glasses.
The two were fiercely protective over their youngest son, not so casually reminding us behind grinning smiles, that if anything happened to Levi, we would automatically be involved in the family.
I mean, they did laugh and say, “We’re joking! Look at your little faces!” when Sunny went deathly pale. But there was definitely truth behind their words.
Being Levi’s friend was… challenging at first.
Tom and I were in his room studying for finals, and an alarm went off, flooding Levi’s room in red light.
I had zero idea where it was coming from, but it locked all the doors and windows, forcing the Costella residence into temporary lockdown. Levi didn't seem fazed, casually mentioning his parents were taking care of it.
He had a whiteboard set up in his room, and was standing in front of it, cramming all of our textbook notes into one easily digestible drawing.
Levi wasn't just smart.
He was Ivy League smart, so we had struck gold with him.
His family were questionable, and yes, sometimes I did fear for my life, but as the more time we spent at his house, the Costella household became a second home. We got used to the alarms.
I just brought along ear plugs.
I wish I was writing this post about Levi’s family, and sure, they are a factor in what is going on right now, but I want to preface this by saying the events below involve the 2024 scholastic decathlon final in our town with the school’s listed:
Starbrook High School.
Ratcliffe High School.
Please note, the incident that took place last night was immediately covered up, and all phone footage was destroyed. Our town is mostly out of the way, and does not show up on Google searches.
We also have our own version of the academic decathlon, which is a more town-level competition, due to lacking funds. The four of us were desperate to start competing with our schools.
So, we started taking things a little more seriously.
We got a coach.
Mr Hanes, who was hesitant at first.
In his words, “You will hate me as your coach.”
He started by recruiting more members, announcing, “If you want to be taken seriously as an actual club, then I'll be taking the reins from now on.”
He did, and with our teachers guidance (and sometimes brutal honesty), we reached a level where we could start competing with other school’s in town. Now, none of us knew this, but Mr Hanes was obsessed with winning.
So, club meetings were twisted into two hour study sessions with no talking, followed by Mr Hanes Jeaprody, which was Jeaprody, without the actual fun.
We were quizzed multiple times, answer cards and practise questions quite literally thrown directly in our faces.
I hate to admit this (I really hate to admit this) but Mr Hanes’s tactics worked. Sure, we had been mildly brainwashed by our slightly unhinged coach, but with Levi Costella, we destroyed our competitors. Like I said, our town held their own version of the academic scholastic decathlon, but it was pretty much the same, with some changes.
Ten subjects. Language and Literature, Math, Social Science, Economics, Art, Music, Interview, Speech, and Essay.
Unlike the official Decathlon, ours was more like a game show, with the ability to be knocked out if a team member answers a question wrong. Whoever answers the most questions correctly wins. Team meet ups were either tests, study sessions, or quizzing each other.
Which leads me to last night.
The finals were held in the reigning champions, Ratcliffe High School’s, auditorium.
And we were about to win our town’s Scholastic Decathlon 2024 Championships.
Well…I was knocked out in the music section. Standing next to my coach who I was sure was going to asphyxiate from excitement, I could smell the sudden potent stink of lemon. I tried to ignore it at first, but the more questions my team were answering correctly, the smell got worse, suffocating my senses.
This wasn't just lemon. The stink was like a burning, singing smell trickling into my nose and the back of my throat.
It was stronger than what Alex smelled like.
This was suffocating, drowning my thoughts.
“Are you okay, Cassandra?”
Mr Hanes nudged me when a Ratcliffe girl was struggling to answer a question, only for Sunny to jump in with the answer. “You look quite pale.”
I nodded, forcing a smile.
My gaze was on the Ratcliffe coach, a scary looking blonde woman, whispering in one of her student’s ears.
The Ratcliffe kid freaked me out. He was way too tall, dark blonde hair, and bulging eyes I swear were not blinking.
His gaze was glued to Levi, who wore a smug grin.
There was a smaller girl next to the Ratcliffe kid, a Macbook balanced on her knee. Every so often, he leaned into her, the two of them in deep conversation.
“I'm just nervous.”
I jumped when Ratcliffe scored a point, their side erupting into cheers.
During the break, we had a mini team meeting.
Sunny rushed to the bathroom to freshen up, and I noticed a Ratcliffe girl with a bouncing ponytail following her.
Ignoring our coach’s speech, I joined the two girls in the corridor, that lemony scent hanging thick in the air.
I caught them in an awkward position.
The Ratcliffe girl had her fingers pinched between the material of Sunny’s dark blue shirt bearing our school’s name.
Sunny looked confused, her lips parted like she was going to yell.
Ponytail dropped her hand, suddenly, with a nervous laugh. “Oh! I'm so, so, sorry,” she gushed. “You had, like, the biggest spider crawling on your back.”
Sunny caught my eye, shooting me a reassuring smile.
“Thanks.” She made sure to keep her distance. “Uh, where's your bathroom?”
The Ratcliffe girl nodded down the hallway. “It's just down there. I'm going there too if you want me to show you?”
Sunny motioned for me to go back to the auditorium. “Uh, sure! That'd be great!”
I did try to follow them, only for Sunny to cough loudly.
I took the hint, reluctantly heading back into the auditorium.
My team was hyping each other up, Levi in the centre, sweating through his team shirt. He ran a trembling hand through his hair. “I can't do this,” He groaned. “Ratcliffe High is known to play dirty, man. They're unbeatable.”
“In what way do they play dirty?” I asked, joining them.
Levi gulped down water, shrugging.
“I dunno! They're already trying to distract me with the stink eye.” The boy narrowed his eyes at a grinning Ratcliffe kid who, after noticing our stares, jumped to his feet, waving at us.
“Hey guys!”
“That's Harry Cartwright, the son of the Cartwright family who tried to kill my parents in the third grade.” Levi mockingly waved back. “As you can see, their kid is a fucking sociopath.”
Huh. I wasn't expecting the smiley kid to be the mobster’s son.
Harry Cartwright was not what I expected.
Unlike his team members, he was the only one in casual clothing, a short sleeved white shirt and jeans, a pair of sunglasses perched on top of his head.
Tom went pale.
“Fuck.” He hissed. “He’s one of you? Then those bastards will have a reason to play dirty, right?”
Levi shrugged, averting his gaze. It was the first time I saw his eyes darken, like he was subtly telling the boy to back off.
“The Cartwright’s have been trying to buy our land for a while,” he muttered. “I wouldn't put it past them to use the Decathlon as a way to attack.”
“Attack?!” April, another member of our team, hissed. “Like, attack attack?”
Mr Hanes grabbed the boy, resting his hands on Levi’s shoulders. “Ignore them,” he said. “Hey. Look at me.”
Levi did, raising a brow.
“You're losing that spark in your eye, young man.”
“Spark?”
Our coach nodded. “Look at me, kid.”
Levi rolled his eyes. “I am looking at you, Mr Hanes.”
The man was shaking. I was guessing his whole career (or coaching career) was on the line.
“They know they're losing, Mr Costella.”
Hanes shook the boy, squeezing his shoulders. “You are being positive and Ratcliffe doesn't like that. They want you to be nervous. They want to make you second guess yourself and lose confidence. Don't let them get into your head.” he smiled, giving the boy a playful shove. “Kick their asses.”
“Exactly!”
I didn't realize Sunny was back from the bathroom.
The faint smell of lemons had followed her. I noticed a wet patch on her shirt collar, though she was quick to smile at me, admitting she'd spilled water down herself. Sunny wrapped her arms around Levi, squeezing him into a hug.
She hung on for a little too long, Tom dragging her away with a laugh. “Good luck, all right?” she backed away, ruffling his hair. “We’ve got this!”
When I hugged Levi good luck too, I had to resist covering my nose.
The smell of lemon was unbearable, just like fourth grade Alex.
But it wasn't as potent as earlier.
I vaguely remembered the smell starting to fade once Alex’s body was being carted away on a stretcher.
Following my captain through the crowd, I was right. The smell was less suffocating. Before he went back to the stage, I grabbed the back of his shirt.
The material was soaking wet.
“How are you so wet?” I said, swiping my hands on my shirt.
“Huh?”
I shook my head. “Never mind. Do you remember what I told you in sophomore year?”
Levi settled me with a confident, but nervous smile. “Thaaaat you're scared of clowns?”
“No. I mean the boy who smelled of lemons.” I gritted out.
Levi surprised me with a laugh. “What are you talking about?”
Something ice cold trickled down my spine.
Levi did know what I was talking about. He brought up my stink sense a day earlier in front of his parents, and I had to cover his mouth to shut him up.
Leaning close, I whispered in his ear. “You stink of rotten lemons.”
He nodded slowly, pulling away. “Uh… thanks?”
I bit back a hiss of frustration. “No, you don't understand what I'm saying–”
“Starbrooke High School,” The host announced. “Can all members please return to the stage.”
Levi held up his hand for a high five.
“Can we do this later?” He winked. “I'm kinda busy carrying this spelling-bee on my back right now.”
I nodded shakily, high fiving him, and letting him jump back onto the stage.
Before his words hit like a tidal wave, ice cold water slammed into me.
Spelling Bee?
Slowly making my way back to the stands, Levi’s mistake was circling around my head. He did win a spelling bee, but that was in middle school.
Thankfully, the smell of lemons was gone when I returned to my seat.
Mr Hanes handed me a soda. “Chill out, Cassandera, it's just a game.”
He could talk. The guy was on his fifth coffee.
Mr Hanes was not chilled out in the slightest.
Surprisingly, the event went well. I was half expecting my team to be crushed by the rafters, or caught in a blaze started in the crowd. But we were doing well. No, we were winning.
Reaching the climaxing round, Sunny choked against a smug Ratcliffe boy, joining me on the sidelines.
Levi answered the next question with a confident smile.
We were winning, but Ratcliffe could still catch up with a miracle.
The second to last question was to Ratcliffe, and it was general knowledge.
”Where on the human body would one find the *orbit?*
I knew the answer, and so did Levi, his lips breaking out into a smile when the Ratcliffe boy was hesitating, eyes wide.
Our school’s buzzer went off, Levi slamming his hand down.
Bzzz!
The host turned to our team. “Starbrooke, can I have your answer?”
Levi nodded, shooting our team a victory grin.
“It's…!“ He opened his mouth to answer, his jaw slackening suddenly.
The boy’s shoulders slumped.
“Uh… “
“Um…”
“Huhhhhh…”
Levi inclined his head, blinking, his eyes glazing over. There was a sudden, hollow vacancy that sent chills down my spine. It was like someone had reached into his skull, and yanked out his brain, leaving a shell in his place.
To my confusion, our team captain frowned at his buzzer like he'd never seen one before. He pressed it, exploding into child-like giggles.
Bzzz!
The audience laughed along nervously.
Tom nudged me. “What the fuck is he doing?”
Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz!
Levi’s entire body was slumped, his hand slamming down on the buzzer.
I caught something pooling down his chin.
“Is he… drooling?” I whispered.
Mr Hanes looked mildly horrified. “Has he been drinking?
“Levi?” Tom spluttered. “Drinking?!"
Whatever we were watching, however, was definitely influenced by… something.
Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. Bzz!
“Young man, that is not a toy!”
The host wasn't amused. “Starbrooke High School, I need an answer from you,” He nodded to Levi, who was pressing the buzzer, his smile growing.
“Once again,” The host backed away, like Levi was contagious. “Where on the human body would one find the Orbit?”
Levi cocked his head, lips parted.
His gaze found the overhead lights, and he winced, his lips curling into a frown.
“Starbrooke High School!”
Levi jumped, tipping his head back and blowing a raspberry. “Palm tree?”
The audience laughed, and I started feeling nauseous.
Across from us, I could see the twist of a smirk on the Ratcliffe coach’s lips.
Bzzz! Levi slammed the buzzer again giggling.
“Starbrooke High School, if your team member continues to act like this, I will be forced to disqualify all members.”
Our captain stopped, gaze glued to the host, his hand creeping towards the buzzer, like it was a big red button.
The audience loved it, laughing like they were watching a sitcom.
“He wouldn't.” Tom whisper-shrieked.
The auditorium was silent for a moment, awaiting Starbrooke’s response.
Levi stuck out his tongue, slamming his hand down.
Bzzz! Bzzz! Bzzz! Bzzz! Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz–
When Tom dragged Levi away from his podium, a Ratcliffe girl hit her buzzer.
“Starbrooke High School, you are disqualified,” the host announced. “Ratcliffe High School, do you have an answer?”
It was Ponytail who nodded with a grin.
“The answer is the eye socket! The Orbit is part of the eye socket!”
“That is the correct answer.” The host was distracted, his eyes glued to Levi.
“Ratcliffe High School wins.”
Levi jumped when the Ratcliffe wide erupted into cheers.
His eyes were wide, clinging onto the buzzer for comfort.
Next to me, our coach looked like he was going to faint.
I barely noticed Ratcliffe’s victory, too busy watching our team captain, who was Harvard bound, tipping his head back and smiling at the ceiling like a new-born baby. Tom dragged the stumbling boy over to me, his mouth twisted.
“This was Ratcliffe, right?” He hissed, shaking our captain, who was struggling, squirming in his grip.
“Did they put something in his drink?!” He prodded Levi. “Hey! What did they do to you?!”
Still, though, drugging his drink didn't make sense.
Levi never left the auditorium, and kept his water bottle with him the whole time.
How did they even manage to slip something into his drink in the first place?
Did I smell our competitors drugging him?
Sure, intentionally inebriating my teammate was morally wrong and illegal, but why could I smell lemon?
“I doubt it was Ratcliffe.” Sunny squeezed next to me. “I've been watching them. They're harmless.”
“Then how the fuck do we explain this to his parents?!” Tom whispered, grappling with Levi, who was fighting to get back to the buzzer.
When Tom let go of him, he dropped onto the floor, crawling over to his podium. It was like watching a child.
Who was determined to piss off the adults.
Levi jumped back to instead feet, his gaze was glued to the host, a smile curved on his lips, when he slammed the buzzer again.
Bzzz!
“Someone, please remove the Starbrooke boy from the stage!”
I was embarrassed, our whole team ducking our heads as our captain was forcibly removed from the podium.
Mr Hanes grabbed Levi, pulling him off of the stage.
I expected our coach to be mad at him, but I think the teacher was more worried, a phone pressed to his ear while he forced the boy into a sitting position.
No, I don't think it's influence from alcohol, I could hear his conversation.
Levi kept trying to get up, mesmerised by the buzzer. The teacher was firm but gentle. “Hey. Sit down, all right? Keep still.” He went back to his phone call, gently prying Levi’s eyes open.
From what I can see, there's nothing wrong. He's just kind of…
Mr Hanes swiped his own hands on his jeans. ... wet?
Team Ratcliffe came over to rub it in our faces, though I was still tuned into our coach’s hissed whispering.
Water? No, I don't think it's water. It smells… no, I haven't told his parents…
“You guys did awesome!” Ponytail's voice was sugary sweet. Too sugary.
She held the 2024 trophy, bearing a satisfied smile. I noticed the Ratcliffe members were surrounding Harry, like guards.
“Better luck next time, okay?” She held out her hand, her eyes twinkling.
“No hard feelings?”
“Control your dog.” Harry said, amused eyes flicking to Levi, who was once again sprinting back to the fucking buzzer. His eyes had visibly darkened, lips curled into a triumphant smile.
Harry Cartwright was watching Mr Hanes chase our team captain like it was his own personal entertainment.
I had to look away before I died of second hand embarrassment.
“What did you put in his drink?” Tom demanded. “Weed? Edibles?” the boy attempted to shove Harry, only to be pushed back. “What the fuck did you do to him?”
Harry’s smile didn't waver. “Like I said. Control your mut.”
When the Ratcliffe team walked away, our red faced coach struggling with Levi, who was behaving progressively more erratically, informed us we were longer welcome inside the school.
Tom suggested calling an ambulance, but our coach was hesitant.
We all knew who Levi’s family were.
On the way out, Tom matched my stride. He was frowning at our team captain struggling to walk.
The way he was acting was already eyebrow raising.
But walking at an angle and being unable to stand up straight was worrying.
“I don't think they drugged his drink.” Tom muttered.
We pushed through the doors out of the school, and I revelled in the cool night air grazing my cheek. “If they did, he would be acting out of it, right? So, what's the deal with him acting like–”
“A child.” I finished for him.
“Yeah.” Tom leaned closer. “Do you think this has something to do with their turf war?”
I slapped at a bug creeping across my cheek.
Levi fell over again, this time bursting into giggles.
“Almost definitely.”
Levi was right about Ratcliffe playing dirty. I didn't realize how dirty until we were on the losers bus home. Levi was in the seat next to me, and the kid hadn't moved since we left Ratcliffe, his eyes wide, lips pulled into a dazed grin.
Bzzz!
The noise startled me from slumber. I was drooling, my head pressed against the window. Outside, the sky was pitch dark, and squinting through the glass, I couldn't get a bearing on where we were. I thought I was hearing things, but when I sat up, I heard it again.
Bzzz!
It was close.
Leaning over the boy, I glimpsed a smear of scarlet on his headrest.
I choked on my next words.
“Tom.”
Tom was in front of me, listening to music.
He didn't reply, his head of dark blonde curls nodding to the beat.
“Levi.” I managed to get out. I prodded him, and his head lolled into his shoulder. “Hey. Can you… sit up?”
Bzzz! Bzzz!
When the boy didn't move, I gently grabbed his shoulders and pulled him forward myself, something contracting in my stomach.
I don't know how long it takes for your mind to fully register something, but my body was already reacting.
Levi’s seat was infested with bugs, eating their way through the upholstery. I was aware of my body moving back. I threw up, instantly, screaming into my hand.
The back of my best friend's skull resembled a deflated soccer ball, what was left of his brain leaking from his skull where a swarm of skittering bugs chewed their way through brain tissue, metallic legs scratching the curved, pearly white of the base if his skull.
Levi’s head hung, his body flopping into mine.
But his eyes were still open, lips still stretched into a smile.
Blood ran in thick rivulets from his nose and ears.
Bzzz!
I could see them, black writhing dots alive in his eyes, wriggling movement under his skin.
“Tom!”
I jumped up, stumbling into the aisle, my stomach heaving.
And it was only when I was on my knees, swiping bile from my lips, when I realized the others weren't reacting.
Tom wasn't moving.
I pulled an Airpod out of his ear, a long, slithering string of pink attached to the end.
There was a stray bug skittering across his hand, his face starting to twitch and writhe.
Moving back, I checked myself over, my hands shaking.
Head.
Shoulders.
Hair.
Clawing through it, my breath was stuck in my throat.
Arms.
Legs.
Feet.
Mr Hanes was slumped against the window, a reddish froth bubbling from his mouth.
Sunny.
I started towards the back of the bus, but all I had to see was her bowed head, half of her skull chewed through.
Sunny was in a far more deteriorated state, her face had been ripped through, a skeletal smile glinting in the dim.
The thick black smear on the window next to her was moving.
When I screamed for the driver to stop the bus, he ignored me.
If anything, he stamped on the gas.
I moved forward to shake him, before glimpsing a bug creeping down his face.
Calling 911, the operator laughed at me.
“Bugs are eating your friends.” He said. “Do you know the penalty for calling with bullshit pranks?”
The bus didn't stop, so I stayed at the front, while the bugs took over the back, eating through my teammates.
After four hours, I risked leaning over the seat next to Tom to check on Levi.
They were eating him.
Chewing all the way through skin, muscle and bone.
I tried to stop the bus, but the driver’s hands were tightly wrapped around the wheel.
Another hour, and blood was seeping down the aisle, crawling with bugs.
Levi was gone, and in his place, a buzzing skittering pile of bugs, that I thought were going to move to a second victim, maybe burrowing into the seats.
But, no.
These things began to tremble, replicating.
Building.
Slowly, nothing became static, and static became muscle.
Then bone.
Then flesh.
When a body began to slowly form, moulded from the dead boy, I stumbled back.
These things weren't eating Levi Costella.
They were rewriting him.
…
Edit: I'm still on the bus. I'm 99.9% sure that I'm infected with whatever this thing is. I can't stop fucking itching.
I keep picking them off me but they won't stop. This bus isn't going to stop until I'm like the others.
…
Edit 2:
I can feel them chewing into my skull. They're in my ears. I keep spitting them out. Please, someone get them off of me. Help me. I don't want to die at 17.
Edit 3:
Still alive. Still breathing. Maybe they're leaving me alone????? I think I'm okay. There is a pile of bugs at my feet, but they're crawling off of me.
Edit 4:
Levi really wants to go home. Like, he just told me he REALLY wants to go home. He's got a gift for his parents.
I have a feeling I know what it is.

Use this thread to promote yourself and/or your work!
(Descriptions of fictional crimes investigated by the story's main Character Max.)
Detective's Fate
It's august of 2008.....
Max is a detective living in Chicago He checks his pistol and puts on his police badge as he walks out his front door.
He has been searching for a serial killer known as the Caller for years and always been one step behind due to the red tape.....
More importantly the chief's lazy attitude towards getting search warrants and actions approved by the courts for raids. Twice Max had good intel on the suspect's locations and photo evidence showing him at the sites.
The department needs more vigilant, caring officers and leaders but no one steps up to do it, instead they just complain about the slow progress and officers. And hinder investigations.
Now Max has decided that it might be time to stop playing by the rules and catch this scumbag.... .... ....
Starting his car Max sets his GPS to the address that "The Caller" was last seen and pulls out of his driveway as the 50 miles of directions pop up.
The killer's nickname being for his signature of calling in as he is committing the crime.
As he drives he remembers his first case, five years ago now..... ..... .....
A woman, Joane Taylor, was found dead in an alleyway after going out for the night. She showed no signs of struggle leading the police to believe she had drank to much and expired from alcohol poisoning.... ...
The death was written off as a "party gone wrong".... That is until several more were found and the coroner decided on a whim to test for other substances.
Once it came out that the deaths were possible murders...
The calls started coming in, almost like the suspect wanted credit before revealing himself....
Then ways of the deaths began changing as the Serial Killer explored his twisted desires searching for his preferred method.
The last case being a young woman found stuffed in a dumpster after the killer apparently got scared off.... Max will never forget it.... .... ....
The GPS finishes and the car beeps its final direction, taking an exit off the highway. Ramps out here are always confusing... Which is funny since he has driven this one for five years now...
The chief says he should sit this one out but he can't... The latest victim 3 months ago.
Marie Spelner, a waitress out on her smoke break talking to her spouse on the phone.
Survived by her husband, no children or living relatives. ....
Max Spelner turns into the driveway of the house he was directed to... Stepping out of the car he walks up and knocks on the door. Looking at the house he knows the family must be doing well if they live here.... Raising his hand to knock again he hears a scream from inside....
A second later the door is answered by a middle aged butler holding a tray with wine glasses on it... "Hello Sir, I'm sorry but this house does not wish to partake in any offers at this time..."
Max calmly says. "I'm not selling anything."
The butler looks confused for a moment before his eyes dart over Max's shoulder seeing his unmarked cruiser and he nods.
Looking past the butler Max sees that a woman is cleaning up after their dog.
"Have you seen this man?" Says Max holds up a picture of the one suspected of being the killer.
The butler gives it a once over before replying. "I'm sorry sir, no I have not." His tone sounds like he is lying... ....
"Are you sure?" The detective asks.
"I would not lie about something like that, sir." He states, his eyes not meeting Max's.
The woman calls from inside "Fletcher, who are you talking too?"
"Some man asking about a killer" he calls back.
"The killer is an inside job!" The woman quickly states.
"What?!" Max says.
"The Killer, it's an inside job." She says again, louder this time. In the same Max also hears a child begin to cry in another room.
"We should start from the beginning, it will be easier to explain trust me." The woman says.
'She seems to know what is going on....
"How do I know your story holds water?" He asks out loud.
"Oh I wouldn't lie. I have been following the case myself and it seems like an inside job to me." She states, somehow sounding hurt.
"Is there anyone else in the house besides you two and the baby?" He asks noticing the baby isn't crying anymore.
"Just Fletcher and I live here, the baby is my cousins but he just stays the night sometimes." She replies.
Max draws his gun and enters the house upon reasonable suspicion of an emergency in progress or suspect on the premisses as the man seems to be deceiving.
While the woman still seems unconcerned that the child is now silent.
He pushes past the butler and rushes towards the area he heard the crying. passes the entryway, the dinning room, and a kitchen before finally finding a child in a playpen.
"There there..." He says in a sing song voice picking up the child. "I'm officer Max, do you know where your mommy is?"
The child just cries louder.
Then he sees the man from the photo walk out of the bathroom, upon seeing him he bolts for the door and Max sets the child down gently then gives chase.
He runs through the house, following the man as he can hear the woman screaming at him to stop but he doesn't."
"Stop or I'll shoot." The man doesn't even break stride.
Instead he runs out of the front door and jumps into his car.
Furious that the man might escape he fires at the car as it drives away.
The back window shatters and he hopes he got his tire, but he doesn't wait to find out as he runs to his car and initiates a pursuit....
He flips on his concealed lights in his cruiser as he reverses down the drive and into the street.
The suspects car is fast but he manages to keep up with it weaving in and out of traffic as people move over for the siren.
As they approach a red light there is heavy traffic in the intersection..... ....
The suspect slams on his brakes and Max's cruiser only just stops short of hitting it. Jumping out the Detective points his firearm at the vehicle running up beside seeing heavily tinted windows.
"Get out of the car and on the ground now!!" He shouts as he moves to the driver's side door.
After seeing no response....
Max throws open the door and the driver is gone with the passenger side open.
He quickly runs to the other side catching the man trying to sneak off tackling him to the ground and then takes his arms putting them behind his back.
Max grabs his radio and calls it in as the man cries.
As he is waiting he hears a noise that sounds like static.....
"Wrong guy moron.. Did you ever stop to think I wanted you close for this one. That I planned everything...Even framing the pothead..... I almost lost interest until you pulled in the driveway... The attic is kinda cramped tho... I think I'll go carve some meat. Maybe graduate to other things to. I'm not sure yet. Lets see if you can catch me before......" A familiar voice says over the radio then cuts off... ...
Max looks at the man on the ground. "Why did you run from me?" He asks.
"Cause I have like 19 grams of marijuana in my pocket." He replies...
"Do you know how stupid that is?! I don't care about that I'm looking for a killer."
Before he can answer Max hears the woman from the house screaming for her life and a child's cries on his radio.
Then from below Max. "He's in the house, he's in the house! My mom and the baby!" The man on the ground says crying.
Max uncuffs him and runs to his car heading back to the house as he lays down rubber on the road... ... ...
As he approaches and pulls into the driveway he notices the front door is open.
"Hold on I'm coming!" Max screams jumping out of his cruiser...
He runs into the house finding the woman's body arriving too late. Moving over to her he checks for a pulse but she is gone, a large gash in her neck.
As he stands up he slips in a fluid but gains his balance and tries not to think about what it is....
He rushes to the room the baby was in finding the play pen empty. He leaves the room searching the rest of the house and still doesn't find the child.
"Where are you!!!" He calls out....
"This is the Callers first kidnapping and the media would eat up the fact I failed to stop the man." He thinks as he blames himself.
Sirens begin to blare in the distance as backup is about to arrive... ... ...
"There's a woman dead and a baby missing! The woman is in the dinning room straight ahead of the front door, Hurry!" He yells into his radio...
Looking over at the mother seeing a piece of paper on the floor.
He walks over to it seeing writing.
"So close... Looks like I'm a kidnapper now.... Good luck finding me.... And... I so enjoyed killing that sweet wife of yours. Might do it that way again. Not to the kid tho....later Max. Ps. This game is so fun.." It says.
"He was here..." Is all he can muster as the team enters.
"He was right in this house and I missed it because her son freaked over weed and ran..." He says as another officer speaks to him gently.
"Don't beat yourself up Detective, it's not your fault. He must have hid before you got her and left after you arrived." The words do little to comfort him "First day back on the job and the killer escaped taking a child..." He says as he walks away.
The chief arrives in his new lexus with a screeching of rubber as he lurches to a halt.
He quickly exits and leaves his door hanging open as he rushes into Max's face....
"I told you to stay away from this case MAX!!!!....(takes a breath)...
"If I catch any flak from my superiors, I won't suspend you.... That'd be to easy. Desk duty and an entry level demotion. The new guy will have a higher rank than you if things go my way.... Now get outta my sight...". "(Sighs)...
"This job is gonna be the death of me..." He says walking away from Max and towards the Coroner's van..... ..... .....
On the way home the detective stops by the store close to his house which is unlike him because he usually follows the same routine.
He nears the front door and he hears a kitchen timer ding loudly from behind him as his car explodes throwing him through the storefront windows as they are blown out..... .....
Alarms around the lot and others nearby create a cacophony of noise. His head pounding as his body aches, Max pushes himself up and collapses as the store manager runs over to him telling him not to move as he dials 911.... .... ....
Waking in the hospital Max recalls the feeling of the Shockwave as he flinches in phantom pain.
"Who woulda thought its like holding a ringing metal bat that hurts your hands but all over and way more intense." He thinks.
He suddenly feels tired and falls asleep.... .... .... ....
The next time he wakes, he sees a breaking news story that Jane Saltani is reporting on....
"Young toddler Accidently Shoots Serial killekidnapper ending his life and Alerting residents in the Area." The news anchor says.
Sighing to himself Max thinks about how crazy that is and laughs.
Tho he really wanted to bring the guy in. He closes his eyes to get some much needed sleep as his door opens.
Max looks up to see a man with a silenced pistol pointed at him.
"Hm. Now they think I'm dead. Funny how they just assume they got the right guy. Just like.... You did Detect... ....." Max hears but then hears no more as his end comes at just over the speed of sound....
The Caller leaves the hair of another intelligent convicted murderer that he obtained in a spot that's believable and quickly leaves.....
He disables the surveillance system and sends a virus out to any device that has received video data from the hospital.
Erasing and corrupting the systems. Leaving a master hackers finger prints on a glass from his home....
"Sorry, no witnesses." He says to the security guard as he fires... ..... ..... .... ....

I don't know why I'm telling you this. Maybe as a warning. Maybe I just want to know that there's someone, anyone, who will listen to what I have to say and react appropriately.
I live in a small town at the base of a semi-famous mountain, somewhere in Northern California. I’m not going to disclose exactly which town, however it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to figure it out. Our population is 3,165, a large percentage of which consists of rich old people and weed smoking hippies. Objectively, it’s a beautiful place: there are nice restaurants for the tourists, long hikes concluding in crashing waterfalls, and views from even the downtown windows that could be called breathtaking. To the locals like me, of course, these perks are somewhat watered down by years at the tiny, poorly funded high school and the thirty minute drive to get to the nearest Walmart. But even with that being said, the spirits here are generally high, especially during the summer.
I won’t lie, it’s not like I’ve never noticed strange things. I think something paranormal or otherworldly can be said about any town, especially ones that get boring after living in them your entire life. Rumors spread, stories are born and passed around like souvenirs. My town is no exception to this rule. However, until a couple of weeks ago, these stories only scared me when it was dark outside.
Something started feeling seriously wrong on a perfectly sunny Sunday afternoon. My friends and I went to the city park, as we sometimes did when sitting inside, playing GTA, and shit talking the same people we knew in high school again (did you hear that Jessica got pregnant? No way, I thought she was still in jail...) got boring.
We sat by the rusty, slightly off-putting, 12 foot metal clown by the jungle gym (why did they never get rid of that thing?) eating our supermarket sandwiches and trying to subtly hit a blunt from behind our sweatshirt sleeves, as the park was swarming (compared to usual) with the spring rush of tourists, enjoying the sun and each other's slightly high conversation. Laughing at something my friend had said that I no longer remember but must have been funny at the time, I looked around the park. Everything seemed particularly lighthearted that day - there were children playing tag on the other side of the grass plain, people picnicking, dogs chasing sticks and joyfully returning them to their owners, and a family standing side by side, staring up at the white peaks of the mountain in what seemed like awe.
"Shouldn't the snow be gone by now?" My friend said, following my gaze and motioning for the half smoked blunt balanced between my fingers. "It seems like it stays longer every year."
"Because it snows later and later," I replied, glancing around before passing her the weed I'd been babysitting. "Global warming and whatnot."
"Weird," Marcy called from behind us. She was hanging upside down on the bars, her long hair nearly brushing against the gravel. "It seems wrong for there to be that much snow up there in the middle of April."
"There isn't any snow down here, at least," Naomi said absentmindedly next to me, taking a long drag. I watched her flick her short blonde bangs away from her increasingly reddening eyes.
All three of us went quiet for a moment, listening to the warm breeze dance in the head of the metal clown behind us, creating a hollow sort of chime. I kicked at the rocks at my feet, enjoying my buzz. The sounds of the kids running around seemed far away to me, almost like my friends and I were in a little glass box.
"God," Naomi scoffed, breaking through the comfortable silence. She tried to hold in a snort. "Fuckin' tourists. Haven't they ever seen a mountain before?"
"I know," Marcy laughed.
I looked up from my shoes, looking around for who they were talking about. It was immediately obvious. The same family that I had noticed before were still standing there, facing the mountain. They were turned away from us, but I could still tell that their eyes were locked directly on the peak, their heads synonymously tilted upwards. They hadn't moved an inch. How long had it been?
As if reading my thoughts, Marcy swung down from the bars, landing with a clumsy crunch.
"Maybe I'm just high," she mumbled, frowning at them. "But haven't they been standing there a while?"
Naomi scoffed again. "Why don't they just take a picture?"
I swallowed my absence of saliva, shifting uncomfortably. My mouth was suddenly unbearably dry. Even from here I could see the camera straps around the parents necks, untouched. A small dog, maybe a Jack Russel Terrier, scurried in circles around them. It stopped and pawed at the child's calve, dropping the tennis ball in it's mouth and yapping. The kid didn't react. None of them did.
"That..." I didn't know what to say. I felt like all of the breath was being sucked from my lungs. "That's weird, right?"
"Super weird."
Marcy shifted uncomfortably. She had gone silent. She took the blunt from Naomi's hand and stubbed it out against the metal jungle gym, flicking the roach to the ground and stepping on it. "I think I should get home. I've got laundry to do."
I didn't think she was telling the truth, but I felt a little uneasy too. I nodded, pulling my sweatshirt tight around my chest.
As we made our way across the grass toward the parking lot, I couldn't help but glance back at the family. Something seemed so off about them, like something was deeply wrong and I just couldn't put my finger on it. But when I turned to look, it was like it never happened. The dog was yipping happily as the kid threw his ball, and the parents were sitting on the grass, aiming the cameras around their necks at the mountain and snapping away.
Over the next week, everything seemed normal. I had almost forgotten about what had happened at the park. I spent most of the time that I wasn't at work, like usual, indoors, glued to my couch, watching the same Adam Sandler movies over and over again. Most people seemed to think that the nice weather made them happier, or somehow changed things - for me, it wasn't like that. Something about this town seemed to drag you down, and keep you there. Even people who managed to move away, make something of themselves after high school... they always came back. This town drew you in somehow.
I was snapped out of my work-sleep-eat cycle, finally, the next Friday night. I heard honking outside my bedroom window and threw on my slightly more presentable pair of pajamas, rushing outside to find Naomi's dad's beat up Toyota Corolla parked haphazardly against the curb.
"Fancy a drive?" She called out the window in a terrible British accent.
I faked a laugh and climbed into the passenger seat, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. "Sure. Why not."
Our late night drives were far more common when we were teenagers, but now, we seemed to take them less for granted. She cranked up the staticky stereo, some shitty local pop station nearly deafening me.
"Sorry," she barked over the music. "No bluetooth."
A pile of empty beer bottles and cans clanked at my feet as I hopelessly knocked them around, reaching desperately for the handle on the ceiling.
"Are these yours or your dads?" I asked, trying not to let my voice shake as she careened around a corner.
"Probably a little bit of both," she yelled back with a smile.
She took another rough turn and I slammed against the passenger side door. I had remembered our drives in high school being a bit more relaxing, but then again, maybe I had been the one behind the wheel. I subtly turned the music down a few notches as we took the narrowing road out of town, the lights from windows growing in scarcity and the evergreens swallowing us as we took off into the forest.
"Remember when we used to drive up here and smoke? And watch those weird PSA videos?" Naomi shouted. She was rolling her window down, letting in the icy breeze and making it even more difficult for me to hear her.
Up here? I looked out the window at the inclining and increasingly windy road. She was taking us up the mountain.
It wasn't like that was crazy or abnormal for us, but for some reason, my heart sank into my stomach. I closed my eyes, and all I could see was the back of the heads of that family, perfectly still, staring up at the skyline.
I didn't open my eyes again until the car rolled to a stop. I hadn't noticed it happening, but the music was quiet now, the static sound overtaking most of any of the discernible lyrics.
"Woah," Naomi said. I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the light.
Wait. The light?
We were parked at the bottom of the mountain, where the hikers that often climbed to the top usually set up basecamp. The mountain was biggest from here, stretching across the horizon, towering above us like a monolith. We had come here so many times, and it had always been a little breathtaking, but now...
I let out a wheeze.
The sky was as bright as daylight. The snow covered peaks seemed to almost glow, or even swell. I swore I could even see clouds in the sky, peeking out from behind the trees.
I checked the time on the car's dashboard. 1:13 AM. It had been pitch dark out moments ago, yet I would have sworn it was long past sunrise up here.
The stereo crackled to life with a horrible sound, making me jump. The static seemed to creep up my arms and under my T-shirt, giving me goosebumps.
"D... D... D..."
"Naomi," I whispered, frozen in place. She was already reaching for my hand, digging her fingernails into my sweaty palm.
"D-D... Don't... Stop..."
"What the fuck," she exhaled. Both of us were like deer in headlights, staring dumbly at the radio. In my peripheral vision, the mountain glowed.
The voice didn't sound human, nothing like the optimistic pop artist that had been singing before. Nothing like anything I had ever heard before, or could even have even conjured up in my head. Certainly nothing I can explain in words now.
"D-D-Don't... Stop... Looking..."
Both the terrible screeching and the voice stopped at once, engulfing us in terrifying silence, and I found my gaze snapping back to the mountain. Right then, as crazy as it sounds, I knew it was breathing.
I could almost feel it next to me, like a mouth right next to my ear.
"Look at us," it whispered, in clear and perfect English.
I didn't need to say anything, Naomi was already shifting gears and peeling out of the parking lot. Neither of us said a word the entire drive back to town, and when she finally parked in front of my house, we took each other's hands and walked inside.
She slept in my bed that night, and neither of us said a word until it was bright outside, properly bright, and the birds were reassuringly chirping outside my window.
The next few days were a haze. Luckily I had the whole weekend, so there was no need to leave and go to work. Naomi stayed over until she was confident enough to drive home alone, and although it was nice to have the space, the house felt eerily empty without her. I couldn't even wrap my head around what I had seen, what I had heard. All I knew was I didn't want to leave, didn't want to see that mountain again, even for a second.
I shielded my windows with curtains, and when that didn't feel like enough, I boarded them up. I put my computer, my radio, everything but my phone in a closet at the end of the hall. I didn't want to take any chances. I didn't ever want to feel that way again, the way I had at the base of that mountain.
I couldn't sleep or eat. By the end of Sunday, I felt ready enough to sip at a bowl of chicken noodle soup from a can, and climb into bed. I could feel the dark circles under my eyes getting worse, threatening to swell and swallow them up altogether. With my room completely blacked out by the boarded windows, I could finally close my eyes.
I don't know why I woke up when I did. Maybe I had tripped on something. All I knew was I was back exactly where we had been that night, where we had sat in the car and the radio had spoken to us.
I remember not quite knowing if I was still asleep or fully awake, but I could feel the ground beneath my bare feet, aching and raw as if I had walked for hours. The wind whistled in my ears, my thin pajamas doing little to protect me from the cold.
I tried to keep my balance in my strange dream like state, looking up.
There was a man. Or what looked like a man.
His silhouette was almost completely indistinguishable, it was impossible to make out any details. It was like a child had taken scissors to where the rocky terrain met the backdrop of the mountain and tried to cut out the shape of a person.
He was moving. I couldn't tell if it was towards me or away.
I stumbled forward blindly. I felt scared, so scared I couldn't breathe, but it was like the cold was numbing all of my emotions, or like they were buried deep inside of me somehow. I didn't feel like myself, only like a body. Only like a pair of legs.
"Hey," I called out weakly, my voice swallowed by the screaming wind. It sounded like a thousand voices whispering, drowning out my own.
"Hey!" I tried again, louder.
The man didn't respond. He didn't react at all. As I grew closer, I realized he was walking away from me after all, toward the mountain.
My eyes were drawn up toward the mountain again. Glowing, breathing. I had to narrow my eyes until they were almost closed in order to focus.
There was less snow. It seemed ridiculous, but that was what immediately popped into my head. There was far less snow on the mountain than there had been a few days ago, as if large patches had suddenly melted away, but it hadn't gotten any warmer outside.
In fact, it looked like it was melting before my very eyes. It looked like it was moving. Shifting.
Migrating.
I strained my vision, trying desperately to understand what I was seeing.
My blood ran cold.
It wasn't the snow melting. It was people.
There were people up there, thousands of people. Moving.
Somehow I made it back down. It's hard to remember what happened after that.
No one seems to want to listen to me. Even Naomi seems to be forgetting what we witnessed. Everyone wants to brush me off, or tell me I'm another conspiracy theorist, like so many of the people who live here. I don't know how to convince them of what I saw. But I saw it. I don't know what to do.
There are people up there.
There is something wrong with the mountain, something that calls to them. I don't know what it does to them, or how. It almost got me that night.
Every night I hear it breathe. And every day I see more tourists, staring. Walking towards the base.
If you're ever driving through the mountains of Northern California and you feel compelled to stop your car and walk, keep driving. And, I'm begging you, turn off your radio.

im 17 years old now, my mother has ME/CFS and my dad has arthritis, ive been dealing with chronic pain caused by hypermobility since i was 3, but honestly that was probably when i learned to communicate it. ive always been useless, i cant do shit, cant cook, cant clean my room, it takes so much effort to shower. everything is so. fucking. hard. i cant go for a tiny walk to the corner shop without crutches, cant go out normally without a wheelchair. im so fucked. i get so fatigued too, im dependant on weed and alcohol to stay sane. i dont know how i havent killed myself yet, all i know is that theres a lot of shit going on in my head that im blocking out, and when the flood gates break im not sure whats going to happen. i had big dreams. big fucking dreams. i wanted to be a chef, i wanted to open resteraunts and work in kitchens but that went right down the drain before it started, i dont know why i thought i could do it. i feel motionless, static. im watching the world go by while i sit here in my room and wait. im applying for apprenticeships, i pretend im okay but the truth is, i dont want a meaningless office job. i dont want to blow my brains out at 35 because of my job. i want to be passionate, but its so hard when your body was fucked from the start. i have lived every day in pain and i dont know how much longer i can go. watching all my peers surpass me, watching my little brother do more than me, its painful. so so painful. hes in a band, doing so much, and im the definition of a loser, but im genuinely doing my best, im trying so hard, im sober most days and i get through it, but im scared that my efforts wont pay off, im typing this right now and my shoulder hurts?? im not even using it. im cooked fellas, thats the truth, and i wont kill myself, but i will live the rest of my life an angry cripple, and im not sorry for it, my life is fucking miserable all because of a condition that i didnt ask for, im 17 and my parents are about to spend 1500 on a custom wheelchair for me, this is forever. how will i be at 30? 40? 50? probably hooked on pain meds that drain any remnants of personality from me, im already a husk of a man, things just dont look good for me, i dont care what happens anymore, i just want to feel comfortable, i cant forgive myself.

im 17 years old now, my mother has ME/CFS and my dad has arthritis, ive been dealing with chronic pain caused by hypermobility since i was 3, but honestly that was probably when i learned to communicate it. ive always been useless, i cant do shit, cant cook, cant clean my room, it takes so much effort to shower. everything is so. fucking. hard. i cant go for a tiny walk to the corner shop without crutches, cant go out normally without a wheelchair. im so fucked. i get so fatigued too, im dependant on weed and alcohol to stay sane. i dont know how i havent killed myself yet, all i know is that theres a lot of shit going on in my head that im blocking out, and when the flood gates break im not sure whats going to happen. i had big dreams. big fucking dreams. i wanted to be a chef, i wanted to open resteraunts and work in kitchens but that went right down the drain before it started, i dont know why i thought i could do it. i feel motionless, static. im watching the world go by while i sit here in my room and wait. im applying for apprenticeships, i pretend im okay but the truth is, i dont want a meaningless office job. i dont want to blow my brains out at 35 because of my job. i want to be passionate, but its so hard when your body was fucked from the start. i have lived every day in pain and i dont know how much longer i can go. watching all my peers surpass me, watching my little brother do more than me, its painful. so so painful. hes in a band, doing so much, and im the definition of a loser, but im genuinely doing my best, im trying so hard, im sober most days and i get through it, but im scared that my efforts wont pay off, im typing this right now and my shoulder hurts?? im not even using it. im cooked fellas, thats the truth, and i wont kill myself, but i will live the rest of my life an angry cripple, and im not sorry for it, my life is fucking miserable all because of a condition that i didnt ask for, im 17 and my parents are about to spend 1500 on a custom wheelchair for me, this is forever. how will i be at 30? 40? 50? probably hooked on pain meds that drain any remnants of personality from me, im already a husk of a man, things just dont look good for me, i dont care what happens anymore, i just want to feel comfortable, i cant forgive myself.

im 17 years old now, my mother has ME/CFS and my dad has arthritis, ive been dealing with chronic pain caused by hypermobility since i was 3, but honestly that was probably when i learned to communicate it. ive always been useless, i cant do shit, cant cook, cant clean my room, it takes so much effort to shower. everything is so. fucking. hard. i cant go for a tiny walk to the corner shop without crutches, cant go out normally without a wheelchair. im so fucked. i get so fatigued too, im dependant on weed and alcohol to stay sane. i dont know how i havent killed myself yet, all i know is that theres a lot of shit going on in my head that im blocking out, and when the flood gates break im not sure whats going to happen. i had big dreams. big fucking dreams. i wanted to be a chef, i wanted to open resteraunts and work in kitchens but that went right down the drain before it started, i dont know why i thought i could do it. i feel motionless, static. im watching the world go by while i sit here in my room and wait. im applying for apprenticeships, i pretend im okay but the truth is, i dont want a meaningless office job. i dont want to blow my brains out at 35 because of my job. i want to be passionate, but its so hard when your body was fucked from the start. i have lived every day in pain and i dont know how much longer i can go. watching all my peers surpass me, watching my little brother do more than me, its painful. so so painful. hes in a band, doing so much, and im the definition of a loser, but im genuinely doing my best, im trying so hard, im sober most days and i get through it, but im scared that my efforts wont pay off, im typing this right now and my shoulder hurts?? im not even using it. im cooked fellas, thats the truth, and i wont kill myself, but i will live the rest of my life an angry cripple, and im not sorry for it, my life is fucking miserable all because of a condition that i didnt ask for, im 17 and my parents are about to spend 1500 on a custom wheelchair for me, this is forever. how will i be at 30? 40? 50? probably hooked on pain meds that drain any remnants of personality from me, im already a husk of a man, things just dont look good for me, i dont care what happens anymore, i just want to feel comfortable, i cant forgive myself.

Hi all! I’m a high school pre-engineering teacher. I graduated with my undergrad degree in Mech.E ten years ago so it’s been a while since I was in your shoes. I’ve posted here before and gotten some great insight so I am back to ask for more of your opinions. I had no idea how to flare this so here we are!
I’m developing a new third-year class for high school students who have been with me for two years already and have learned about the different engineering disciplines, the design process (understanding that it’s not always linear like a lot of resources show!), documentation, and a good bit of professional soft skills. These kids will all be in algebra 2 or pre-cal at minimum, with some in AP calculus AB.
I’d like for this third year class to be a taste of some of the coursework they’ll see in the first part of their college coursework. Since the class is so small, my goal is to customize the work for each student depending on their areas of interest. For example, if a student’s interests lie in mechanical engineering, I would include some basic statics (2d only for now), basic algebra-based thermo, maybe a little fluids, some light mechanics of materials. You know, the mid-level weed-out classes we all had to survive before getting into the more substantial, focused upper-level coursework.
Since my coursework was all geared toward Mechanical Engineering, I don’t have as good a feel for topics in other areas that may be useful for the kids to see. As an engineering student in any discipline, what are some areas of coursework that would have been most helpful for you to get a preview of before encountering them in college?

Hi everyone,
I've been experiencing extremely severe vss for almost 3 years. With palinopsia, static, trembling vision, migranes, dizziness and so on.
Yesterday I smoked just a bit of weed (i dont do it on a regular basis) and my whole vss except palinopsia was gone. Like completely.
I experienced a sense of mindfulness that has never happened to me. Everything made so much sense.
I am not saying that vss is not a neurological condition and we have little to do about it, but I felt that all of the sudden I was thrown back to when I was fine.
I am now aware that I have planty of anxiety, I am talking chronically. I am aware that 3 years of worrying about it made me fall into a void. Even though I was convincing myself I was fine, I was actually not. And rejecting a fact doesn't make it go away.
From this experience I deleted all my social media, willing to change my job that makes me stay a lot in front of screens, and spend the most time I can in nature. Stop worrying so much about symptoms and trying to change radically my lifestyle. Because if you don't change, things won't change, and Im positive about the fact that vss is just a reflection of my messy mind.
Will update you, stay positive.

Ever since I was little, death was a next-door neighbor. I mean, literally right next door, I could look out the window and see it. I could watch through my bedroom window as Mom walked towards it.
Every day she would wake up before the sun and make her brisk walk to work. It took me a long time to discover what she did, and even longer to understand it. She would pry bodies apart and put them back together, prettier than they were when they arrived. They arrive in dark vans, bruises all over their bodies and they leave with eyeliner and makeup.
That’s where I learned that one can measure life in shades of purple, whether it be bruises or makeup. Measured, mind you, not defined.
Naturally, that’s where I saw my first body. I’d try to sneak in now and then, and I guess I was never successful. Mom always thwarted me. But I wore her down and eventually I just wore her down. It was too much being the mortician and the security guard. So, there he was, a fairly innocent death. He looked so normal but just- a little less.
I always thought I would take after Mom and for a while I was on track too. I’m not even sure how I got so sidetracked. I enjoyed making Mom’s job look nice. She always kept it so dour, and I had wanted to spruce up the place. It felt fulfilling when it all came together. And I felt like I normally do, just a little more. I did it for my house, then I did it for moms, friends, and neighbors and before I even knew what was happening, I was trying to convince people to buy a house.
​
My houses sold, and people took notice of how I put things together. I guess, if I were to be poetic, that’s how I took after Mom. I took these houses, the remains of them, and dolled them up as best as I knew how. And made it look so nice that you’d never have known it was dead at all.
For a long time, i thought that when people died, that was it. No ghost, no heaven or hell. It was a snap, and you were gone. Like a house. When the furnace gives out, when the walls rot away and spiderweb cracks consum every window, I thought the house was gone. I know now that is wrong.
Despite working with my mom for many years, I never entertained the notion of ghosts. It wasn’t until the house on Wilbur Street that changed for me. I won’t go into too much detail, but that house- was its own beast. And if it weren’t for a strange but generous buyer, it might have been the end of my career. It was a weed, though. Something that sprouted in me, unwelcome but beautiful, nonetheless.
A world you might not have ever heard of. A world that probably if not for what I’m telling you now, you would likely go your whole life without it. In the housing market, there exists a small but dedicated sect reserved for the enigmatic, influential, and even nefarious.
The buying and selling of houses that have, in one way or another, been deemed “Haunted.”
​
Just like any realtor, I’ll get my hands on a house. Sometimes I find the house myself, sometimes it is off-loaded by a larger reality company. Regardless, I’ll go in and make the house look as nice as possible. Just like I would with unafflicted houses before I discovered this morbid market. Except, unlike an unafflicted home, I research and experiment.
With enough searches, I can gather information on who perished within the house and the cause of death. I also need to be mindful of people who lived in the home but had relocated, as spirits can travel back to where their emotions were the strongest. Like a magnet pulling in metal sand.
After gathering the information, I conduct my small experiments. The severity and nature of the hauntings need to be distinguished and defined before I can even list the house. Something you might not know about most hauntings is how consistent they are. Sure, the activity will alter, but it will happen over and over.
I’ve had houses you could set a stopwatch to.
I use a marker to outline cups and dishes in order to check if they have been pushed. I take pictures of each room every hour, on the hour, so I can meticulously comb through them. Something you may know about most hauntings is that they are typically boring. Rarely do you come across an outwardly aggressive home. And when you do, the type of people that buy those. It’s not my place but, it is troubling to think about what they might want the home for.
That’s neither here nor there. Haunted homes sell to many people, though. You have eccentrics and ghost hunters who want a place for entertainment. There are people who “practice” the dark arts, though you can typically sniff out the wannabe types. There are even people who just really need a home and try to get a cheaper deal. And depending on the haunting and its interest, sometimes they do.
Call it a loss at some point and lowering the price just below market value is how you got to do it. That’s what this house was, I thought. Another suburban home I was going to take a hit on. I was wrong. Of course, that’s how tales like these come to be. If I was right, if all I ever saw was a coffee mug move across the counter. Then you’d never hear a peep from me.
​
The house was on Carter Ave. If you don’t know which “Carter Ave” out of the hundred that likely exists, then yes, you’re not meant to. I got it for a bargain from my peers because it was a house that nobody had high expectations for. There wasn’t a history of violence or any mention of the occult. Just a younger couple that passed away in their sleep. A carbon monoxide leak.
To me, though, the house was lovely. If not for a small string of reported activity, the house could’ve sold on its merit. Quiet neighborhood, everything looked new and taken care of. It was a picture-perfect suburb.
So, I hedged my bets and thought I would just make the house look like a proper home for anyone looking to buy. It took a while, an uncomfortable amount of time before I had gotten a bite. While I toiled away, looking through photos of the house’s bedroom, my phone buzzed. And it was a buyer.
A young couple looking to buy their first home together. The woman on the phone beamed about starting a family of their own. So, we set a date to meet, and I plunged further into Carter Ave. As bizarre as it is to say, I wanted to make sure the haunting was child-friendly. No loud noises or aggressive movements.
The house was quiet, though. Sure, there were signs, but the haunting was so mellow, you’d almost never know it was there if you weren’t looking. A slight push would move a cup from its outline. Pictures on the wall would go askew and a penny was even pushed off the counter.
It was all so… just enough. It was just enough activity for it to make the difference between haunted and natural occurrences. Maybe I should have had my wits about me in that regard. Though I know, when I offer myself grace, there’s no way I could’ve known it was anything other than the run-of-the-mill.
The day of the showing plays in my head all the time now. I always go back to when I was staring down the hall. It was right before the couple was supposed to show up. I stopped at the top of the stairs and looked down the hallway. It led to all the bedrooms and had light bleeding in from each. The sun was gentle and warm; it created a vignette in the hall.
At the end of the hall, there was a picture hanging above a small table decorated with various books and a small fern. The picture was a small oil painting. A stark mixture of black and white. Upon seeing it initially, you’d assume it was nonsense. A Rorschach Test of sorts. If you took the time to soak it in, though, at least for me, I made out the picture. It almost looked like an animal, with a wide-open jaw, a howl of anguish. Once I made out the mouth, the rest followed suit. Maybe the face was meant to be beautiful, but it looked straight out of hell to me.
It felt crooked. It, however, was a painting in the home that the haunting hadn’t affected. To the naked eye, the painting was perfectly straight, lined right up with the surface of the table under it. But it felt crooked. I could feel the painting making one side of my head heavier, craning my neck as if trying to see it from a new angle.
The hall itself felt as though it was stretching out, pulling the details of the painting further and further away from me. The once warm vignette igniting from the rooms, turning into static with the tunnel. So, it shouldn’t come as a shock when I say I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard the front door shut.
My arms rushed to my chest as if guarding me from an incoming attack. Even without my hands actually on my skin, I could feel my heart smacking around inside. A few breaths in and out calmed me and I gathered my senses. Quickly rushing down the stairs, I spotted the couple.
Sandra and Owen Wellings.
The door startled me, but I had informed them that upon their arrival they could come in, as the house wasn’t exactly booked for tours. Bounding down the steps, I immediately started into the usual pleasantries.
They looked as normal as can be. The woman had blonde hair just barely touching her shoulders. The man looked tired, almost like he had headed straight to the house from work. His brown hair haphazardly swooped to the side. I couldn’t help but notice he was sheepish, letting the woman take the lead and speaking up very little.
Admittedly, this annoyed me. They were a couple and while every dynamic is different; I found it odd he had so little interest in where he might build a family. It happens though and swings both ways. Suppose it's nothing more than a pet peeve, but it did inform me to pay more attention to the woman.
So, with her trailing closely behind me, I toured the lower floor. It felt almost like it used to, showing off regular homes. The activity in the house was so sparse that I’d rarely stop and talk about it.
In the kitchen, I informed them it’s best to leave cups and dishes a respectful distance from the edge. In the dining room, I informed them that sometimes they could hear a knock on the floor above. This knocking noise is not audible from anywhere else in the house. Which is probably the most peculiar haunt in the home, but even it is harmless.
She asked questions here and there, but it wasn’t until we began to ascend the stairs that she started delving deeper. In the first bedroom, she asked who the previous occupants were. I told her it was a young couple, though I only knew their names. We sometimes find photos left behind by the previous occupants. But most times, especially with younger folk, the families affected will snatch up photos before I ever get my hands on the house.
​
It might seem odd that I don’t go too deep into the lives of those who are supposedly haunting the grounds. I did earlier on. I’d familiarize myself with their faces and histories, but I found that doing so would cause a confirmation bias. I would see faces where there might not have been one, or I’d pick up smells related to the previous death and assume it was paranormal when it was just a clogged drain.
The woman stalled for a moment and rested her hand on the door frame. I could only see her back. The sun beaming through the window wrapped a glow around her thin figure. “It’s cold.” I hardly heard the words she spoke. They were distant like they were afraid to leave the room. She was right though; it was cold and noticeably so.
The house was monitored for temperature variations, but nothing so severe. The skin on my arm pricked. I thought the cold had made me shiver, but after taking in the new chill, I realized my pocket was buzzing. I ignored it realizing the man had drifted out of sight, though only barely. He stood in the hall, looking up at the same painting that had mesmerized me.
“This would make a great nursery.” The woman said, her voice louder this time, but still distant. I was watching the man though, his arms sheepishly jostling from side to side like he was fidgeting with something. A tension had built in my chest, partially from the cold gripping my lungs.
Reaching into my pocket, I quickly retrieved the phone, intending to ignore the call as the vibrating was audible. “Oh absolutely, it gets great sunlight in the morning,” I replied, glancing at her as I spoke, glimpsing the same silhouette before returning to my phone’s touch screen. And just like the painting had before, the illuminated screen stole all my attention.
It couldn’t have been more than a minute, though. Despite how long it felt, the clock in the upper right corner didn’t change. An incoming call, the sensation of the phone rattling in my hand, served as a warning bell. A siren of things to come.
“Incoming call: Sandra Wellings” The words couldn’t have felt heavier in my hands. And her voice when I picked up couldn’t have been any louder in my head. I listened to the woman on the other line apologizing. She was embarrassed. They had fallen asleep on the couch and had no alarm set. She was asking me if they could still come by or if I wanted to reschedule.
A reply, no matter how desperate I was for it, did not leak from my lips. And as Sandra continued bidding for my attention, I could only look down the stretching hallway. In the deserted hallway, the only objects present were a small white plastic disk and two batteries lying nearby.
Suddenly, I became horrendously aware of the figure that was in the doorway. I couldn’t see her as I stared down the hall, but God, how I could feel her. Her presence felt so stifling I thought I might fall through the floor. A soft whimper of denial weaseled its way out of my throat.
It felt like I was being told a story. Or rather, it felt like a story I had always known, but that had been pushed deep down. Someone else’s story. A story of a death much more sinister than the public knew.
“This would be a great room for a nursery.” The figure spoke, and as if those words manifested, I could feel strands of hair drip on the side of my face. She must have been as tall as she felt, hunched over with her head pressing against the ceiling, dark strands hanging like stalactites. She wanted me to look. I could feel it. Her gaze fixed on me and burned holes through my scalp.
Closer and closer, I could feel her warm breath wafting on the side of my face. The smell was more noticeable, though, or rather. The lack thereof. I could only watch the painting, the hallway once again tunneling as I pondered if it was safer to look at or ignore her. Hauntings can get bad, yes, this bad. I have experienced little myself, but this wasn’t the first time. Though my heart still bumped like it was.
When the retching began, the decision to focus on the hallway became the one I picked. A guttural and whining scrap lurched from the women through. It sounded like pulling marbles down from metal tubing. And after but a moment, something spilled from her mouth. I could hear small thuds smacking the floor, one after the other. Once again, the sound reminded me of marbles.
And she was gone. I released the breath that had been held down as her weight lifted off me, allowing my skin to loosen. Looking down, they were all splayed out at my feet. They must have rolled around quite a bit after hitting the floor. Or portraits drawn with AA batteries. A tale of heartbreak scored by the chiding of a baby.
A soft whine, much softer than the woman’s. That room really does get so much sun. It had rested such a lovely glow on the crib inside. I could hear the baby crying from within it. I’m sure I could’ve heard it from anywhere in the house. It was ethereal, something I couldn’t escape.
It echoed through the halls and bounced around the room as I took my first step into it. The batteries around my feet shuffled aside and rolled, clattering against one another. A game of electric billiards. The sound of the baby crying became less defined with each step I took towards it. Its cries being pulled further through the veil.
The white wooden slates of the crib ceased to be an obstacle, and I could peek over the edge. I didn’t intend to step further; the bile was already churning. The sides of the crib acted like a dam for the wet and sticky mess inside. All that white was painted freshly red. A crimson that glistened in the sun. My legs gave out, and I crashed to the floor.
Hardwood vibrated on impact. I felt my throat choke and scratch. Breathing came at awkward intervals. I was getting air but never catching my breath. A burning rose on my chest, nails dragging. Looking down at my shirt, I could see long and dark lines running along my skin. Like aged scratching marks.
“I’m sorry.” A whisper. Cowardly and pensive. Looking up, he was lying on the floor. The boyfriend. The man. He was clawing at his chest, and his body writhed on the floor. The veins in his eyes crept towards the pupil like vines. His eyes rolled up, his gaze reaching far above my head. This mess of a man. He was watching her. So scared of her now.
She was looming over me again. All her hate and grief sat like a ball in my neck, all her unbridled horror wrapped around me, and I felt it. I could feel the hot, stinging tears running down my cheek. All that horror, waking up in the middle of the night, feeling how weak your body is. She must have known, or maybe she saw him taking them out. He probably told her he was replacing them.
A depth of despair I could only understand when I looked into her eyes. Dying, knowing the life inside of you, would follow. I thought, truly, that her face would be horrific. A mangled mess of bones and flesh, red and pulse. Horrific, indeed, she was. But there was no blood, just tears. The streams disobeyed gravity; they twisted around her face and slipped around the curves of her nose.
Her very own soul, a Rorschach. Pain will paint our lives. It can shape the way we see things. It can change the feeling of a room. It can haunt the memories you once held dear. And no matter how many times you try to paint over that pain, it’s still there. And I felt it on my face that day. As a few of her tears relented, falling to mix with mine. I knew her more intimately than I knew myself.
That is the real ghost and I suppose it always will be. Pain.
We locked eyes, and although I understood her, the fear did not subside. A part of me felt like if I moved, she would change. If I broke off the conversation, as it were, then I would see something worse. The pain was a mask, and I could feel that whatever was under it was a torrent. I still think about it.
The man, was there in all his horror, face beat red and swollen, his throat ravaged with clawing marks as he gasped for air. Feeling as though he was being suffocated, regretting the decision he had made. Probably telling himself in his final moments that he could have just left. And he was right.
Of course, he likely died thinking of himself. And that was a moment of solace for me. That in his last thoughts, he realized just how stupid he was. Even as I heard his body writhe around, putters of liquid spilling out of his mouth. Even as he smacked the floor with what little strength he had left, begging for mercy, I watched her face.
Long and black curtain like strands of hair cutting off my peripheral so all I could see was her. I stared into her face, dread growing closer. My eyes started to lose focus as she looked down at me.
Her face appeared to stretch away from me like it was retreating down a hallway. She moved further and further, the guttural noise from before echoing around the collum of hair she created.
It got louder, growing as she shrank. Before too long her face appeared like a 2-dimensional object in the distance, just her misery, hanging solitary in a museum. At that distance, the noise was suffocating, a chirp layered on top of a thousand other chirps until I couldn’t stand it anymore. And my eyelids slammed shut.
The noise halted then, a quite returned. My breathing was deep and ragged and, after wrestling with the thought, I opened my eyes again. Staring down the hallway, I felt the phone in my pocket buzz. Reaching into my pocket, I read Sandra was trying to get a hold of me again. Only three minutes had passed since her first call.
Accepting the call, I heard her rambling. I only focused on what she was saying when she asked if I was showing other people around. My words came out before I thought of how to phrase them. I just asked, “You heard her too?”
Sandra chimed that she did, but hung up when the baby started crying as it was hurting her ears. She continued talking as I zoned out, hypnotized by the hallway once again. “This house isn’t a fit for you.” I cut her off, cold and direct.
This house was no place to raise a baby. Someone will buy it, but I will not sell it.
A damn shame, too.
​
The light coming through the window at the end of the hall really livens up the place.

Use this thread to promote yourself and/or your work!
(Descriptions of fictional crimes investigated by the story's main Character Max.)
Detective's Fate
It's august of 2008.....
Max is a detective living in Chicago He checks his pistol and puts on his police badge as he walks out his front door.
He has been searching for a serial killer known as the Caller for years and always been one step behind due to the red tape.....
More importantly the chief's lazy attitude towards getting search warrants and actions approved by the courts for raids. Twice Max had good intel on the suspect's locations and photo evidence showing him at the sites.
The department needs more vigilant, caring officers and leaders but no one steps up to do it, instead they just complain about the slow progress and officers. And hinder investigations.
Now Max has decided that it might be time to stop playing by the rules and catch this scumbag.... .... ....
Starting his car Max sets his GPS to the address that "The Caller" was last seen and pulls out of his driveway as the 50 miles of directions pop up.
The killer's nickname being for his signature of calling in as he is committing the crime.
As he drives he remembers his first case, five years ago now..... ..... .....
A woman, Joane Taylor, was found dead in an alleyway after going out for the night. She showed no signs of struggle leading the police to believe she had drank to much and expired from alcohol poisoning.... ...
The death was written off as a "party gone wrong".... That is until several more were found and the coroner decided on a whim to test for other substances.
Once it came out that the deaths were possible murders...
The calls started coming in, almost like the suspect wanted credit before revealing himself....
Then ways of the deaths began changing as the Serial Killer explored his twisted desires searching for his preferred method.
The last case being a young woman found stuffed in a dumpster after the killer apparently got scared off.... Max will never forget it.... .... ....
The GPS finishes and the car beeps its final direction, taking an exit off the highway. Ramps out here are always confusing... Which is funny since he has driven this one for five years now...
The chief says he should sit this one out but he can't... The latest victim 3 months ago.
Marie Spelner, a waitress out on her smoke break talking to her spouse on the phone.
Survived by her husband, no children or living relatives. ....
Max Spelner turns into the driveway of the house he was directed to... Stepping out of the car he walks up and knocks on the door. Looking at the house he knows the family must be doing well if they live here.... Raising his hand to knock again he hears a scream from inside....
A second later the door is answered by a middle aged butler holding a tray with wine glasses on it... "Hello Sir, I'm sorry but this house does not wish to partake in any offers at this time..."
Max calmly says. "I'm not selling anything."
The butler looks confused for a moment before his eyes dart over Max's shoulder seeing his unmarked cruiser and he nods.
Looking past the butler Max sees that a woman is cleaning up after their dog.
"Have you seen this man?" Says Max holds up a picture of the one suspected of being the killer.
The butler gives it a once over before replying. "I'm sorry sir, no I have not." His tone sounds like he is lying... ....
"Are you sure?" The detective asks.
"I would not lie about something like that, sir." He states, his eyes not meeting Max's.
The woman calls from inside "Fletcher, who are you talking too?"
"Some man asking about a killer" he calls back.
"The killer is an inside job!" The woman quickly states.
"What?!" Max says.
"The Killer, it's an inside job." She says again, louder this time. In the same Max also hears a child begin to cry in another room.
"We should start from the beginning, it will be easier to explain trust me." The woman says.
'She seems to know what is going on....
"How do I know your story holds water?" He asks out loud.
"Oh I wouldn't lie. I have been following the case myself and it seems like an inside job to me." She states, somehow sounding hurt.
"Is there anyone else in the house besides you two and the baby?" He asks noticing the baby isn't crying anymore.
"Just Fletcher and I live here, the baby is my cousins but he just stays the night sometimes." She replies.
Max draws his gun and enters the house upon reasonable suspicion of an emergency in progress or suspect on the premisses as the man seems to be deceiving.
While the woman still seems unconcerned that the child is now silent.
He pushes past the butler and rushes towards the area he heard the crying. passes the entryway, the dinning room, and a kitchen before finally finding a child in a playpen.
"There there..." He says in a sing song voice picking up the child. "I'm officer Max, do you know where your mommy is?"
The child just cries louder.
Then he sees the man from the photo walk out of the bathroom, upon seeing him he bolts for the door and Max sets the child down gently then gives chase.
He runs through the house, following the man as he can hear the woman screaming at him to stop but he doesn't."
"Stop or I'll shoot." The man doesn't even break stride.
Instead he runs out of the front door and jumps into his car.
Furious that the man might escape he fires at the car as it drives away.
The back window shatters and he hopes he got his tire, but he doesn't wait to find out as he runs to his car and initiates a pursuit....
He flips on his concealed lights in his cruiser as he reverses down the drive and into the street.
The suspects car is fast but he manages to keep up with it weaving in and out of traffic as people move over for the siren.
As they approach a red light there is heavy traffic in the intersection..... ....
The suspect slams on his brakes and Max's cruiser only just stops short of hitting it. Jumping out the Detective points his firearm at the vehicle running up beside seeing heavily tinted windows.
"Get out of the car and on the ground now!!" He shouts as he moves to the driver's side door.
After seeing no response....
Max throws open the door and the driver is gone with the passenger side open.
He quickly runs to the other side catching the man trying to sneak off tackling him to the ground and then takes his arms putting them behind his back.
Max grabs his radio and calls it in as the man cries.
As he is waiting he hears a noise that sounds like static.....
"Wrong guy moron.. Did you ever stop to think I wanted you close for this one. That I planned everything...Even framing the pothead..... I almost lost interest until you pulled in the driveway... The attic is kinda cramped tho... I think I'll go carve some meat. Maybe graduate to other things to. I'm not sure yet. Lets see if you can catch me before......" A familiar voice says over the radio then cuts off... ...
Max looks at the man on the ground. "Why did you run from me?" He asks.
"Cause I have like 19 grams of marijuana in my pocket." He replies...
"Do you know how stupid that is?! I don't care about that I'm looking for a killer."
Before he can answer Max hears the woman from the house screaming for her life and a child's cries on his radio.
Then from below Max. "He's in the house, he's in the house! My mom and the baby!" The man on the ground says crying.
Max uncuffs him and runs to his car heading back to the house as he lays down rubber on the road... ... ...
As he approaches and pulls into the driveway he notices the front door is open.
"Hold on I'm coming!" Max screams jumping out of his cruiser...
He runs into the house finding the woman's body arriving too late. Moving over to her he checks for a pulse but she is gone, a large gash in her neck.
As he stands up he slips in a fluid but gains his balance and tries not to think about what it is....
He rushes to the room the baby was in finding the play pen empty. He leaves the room searching the rest of the house and still doesn't find the child.
"Where are you!!!" He calls out....
"This is the Callers first kidnapping and the media would eat up the fact I failed to stop the man." He thinks as he blames himself.
Sirens begin to blare in the distance as backup is about to arrive... ... ...
"There's a woman dead and a baby missing! The woman is in the dinning room straight ahead of the front door, Hurry!" He yells into his radio...
Looking over at the mother seeing a piece of paper on the floor.
He walks over to it seeing writing.
"So close... Looks like I'm a kidnapper now.... Good luck finding me.... And... I so enjoyed killing that sweet wife of yours. Might do it that way again. Not to the kid tho....later Max. Ps. This game is so fun.." It says.
"He was here..." Is all he can muster as the team enters.
"He was right in this house and I missed it because her son freaked over weed and ran..." He says as another officer speaks to him gently.
"Don't beat yourself up Detective, it's not your fault. He must have hid before you got her and left after you arrived." The words do little to comfort him "First day back on the job and the killer escaped taking a child..." He says as he walks away.
The chief arrives in his new lexus with a screeching of rubber as he lurches to a halt.
He quickly exits and leaves his door hanging open as he rushes into Max's face....
"I told you to stay away from this case MAX!!!!....(takes a breath)...
"If I catch any flak from my superiors, I won't suspend you.... That'd be to easy. Desk duty and an entry level demotion. The new guy will have a higher rank than you if things go my way.... Now get outta my sight...". "(Sighs)...
"This job is gonna be the death of me..." He says walking away from Max and towards the Coroner's van..... ..... .....
On the way home the detective stops by the store close to his house which is unlike him because he usually follows the same routine.
He nears the front door and he hears a kitchen timer ding loudly from behind him as his car explodes throwing him through the storefront windows as they are blown out..... .....
Alarms around the lot and others nearby create a cacophony of noise. His head pounding as his body aches, Max pushes himself up and collapses as the store manager runs over to him telling him not to move as he dials 911.... .... ....
Waking in the hospital Max recalls the feeling of the Shockwave as he flinches in phantom pain.
"Who woulda thought its like holding a ringing metal bat that hurts your hands but all over and way more intense." He thinks.
He suddenly feels tired and falls asleep.... .... .... ....
The next time he wakes, he sees a breaking news story that Jane Saltani is reporting on....
"Young toddler Accidently Shoots Serial killekidnapper ending his life and Alerting residents in the Area." The news anchor says.
Sighing to himself Max thinks about how crazy that is and laughs.
Tho he really wanted to bring the guy in. He closes his eyes to get some much needed sleep as his door opens.
Max looks up to see a man with a silenced pistol pointed at him.
"Hm. Now they think I'm dead. Funny how they just assume they got the right guy. Just like.... You did Detect... ....." Max hears but then hears no more as his end comes at just over the speed of sound....
The Caller leaves the hair of another intelligent convicted murderer that he obtained in a spot that's believable and quickly leaves.....
He disables the surveillance system and sends a virus out to any device that has received video data from the hospital.
Erasing and corrupting the systems. Leaving a master hackers finger prints on a glass from his home....
"Sorry, no witnesses." He says to the security guard as he fires... ..... ..... .... ....

Sprinting through the tundra, FPS will drop from 60 to ~45 when new objects are loaded. Is this just the nature of the game engine? I'm not using Dyndolod or grass cache.
System specs:
i5 12600k
RX 7800XT 16GB VRAM
32GB DDR4 3600 RAM
Installed on NVME 1TB
1.5.97 btw
I'm using NAT 3 ENB and weathers and plenty of 2k/4k textures.
I've downloaded all the engine tweaks and display tweaks and CPU optimisation mods.
I want to use Dyndolod and grass cache but am afraid of more fps drops.
Standing still, with my fps unlocked I can reach 90+ on 3440x1440p.
Does anyone NOT experience fps drops when loading new exterior cells/objects?
Thanks in advance.
EDIT: added modlist
----MODLIST----
+Folkvangr Summer Tundra - Alternate Grass For Folkvangr
-Northern Grass Aliased Grass Fix
+(SKSE64) Havok Fix
-1_Northern Grass for ENB Complex Grass
-Northern Grass SE
-Tamrielic Grass 1
-Tamrielic Grass
+SSE FPS Stabilizer 1
-lodgen1
-lodgen
-DynDOLOD_Output1
-TexGen_Output1
+Lightened Skyrim - Base Object Swapper edition 1
-Rudy ENB NAT ADDONS and REQUiRED Files
+1_NAT.ENB - ESP WEATHER PLUGIN v3.1.1C - Fixed
+Skyrim Priority SE AE - CPU Performance FPS Optimizer
-xLODGen Resource - SSE Terrain Tamriel
+Rally's Solstheim AIO
+Tel Mithryn Overhaul - High Poly and Improved Meshes
+Solstheim Objects SMIMed - High Poly Dark Elf Furniture
+High Poly Trama Roots
+Reasonably Round Dunmer Lanterns - Lux Patch
+Reasonably Round Dunmer Lanterns
+Solstheim Mushrooms 2K-4K
-Grass Cache
+Northern Roads Grass Patch
+Northern Roads - Grass patch ULTIMATE 1
+ElSopa - Northern Roads Resculpted
+Northern Concept - Northern Roads
+Northern Roads - PATCHES 2
+Northern Roads Patch Collection
+Northern Roads
-Fantasia Landscapes Yellow Tundra Parallax 2k
+Fantasia Landscapes Parallax 2k
+Fantasia Landscapes 2k
+Environs - Riften Warehouse patches
+Environs - Riften Warehouse
+Container Item Distributor
+Environs - The Greenwood Shack
+Environs - Hroggar's House - Patch Collection
+Environs - Hroggar's House
+Environs - Abandoned Abodes patches
+Environs - Abandoned Abodes
+Environs - The Ruined Tundra patches
+Environs - The Ruined Tundra Farmhouse
+Environs - Kolskeggr patches
+Environs - Kolskeggr
+Environs - Master Plugin
-Folkvangr and Origins Of Forest Grass Patch
-Origins Of Forest - Too Much Grass Patch (OoF TMGP)
-Performance patches for The Grass Mod Your Mother Warned You about and Origins of Forest
-Origins Of Forest - 3D Forest Grass
-Cathedral - 3D Pine Grass
-Grass Sampler Fix
-Vinland Grass Patch
-Grass Cache Helper NG
+Cathedral - 3D Tundra Shrubs
+Another Nordic Imperial Stable Stonewalls Replacer
+Skyrim 3D Rocks Gray Retexture
+Skyrim 3D Rocks
+Whiterun City Stone Walls - Parallax 1k 2k 4k
+Cathedral - 3D Deathbell ENB-lights
+Cathedral - 3D Deathbell
+V2
+Grass Fps booster - Folkvangr twigs reduce
+Grass Patch
+Northern Roads - Grass patch ULTIMATE
+Folkvangr rocks, twigs and leaves remover
+No Grass In Objects
-Skoglendi - A Grass Mod
+CBBE 3BA Vanilla Outfits Redone
+Medieval Candlehorns and Sconces
+Skyrim 3D Furniture
+Skyrim 3D Misc - Barrels
+Skyrim 3D Misc - Buckets
+Skyrim 3D Misc - Butterchurn
+Skyrim 3D Misc - Chopping Block and Axe
+Skyrim 3D Misc - Dining Set
+Skyrim 3D Misc - Giant Mortar and Pestle
+Skyrim 3D Misc - Mammoth Cheese
+Skyrim 3D Misc - Markarth Cage
+Skyrim 3D Cooking
+Skyrim 3D Blacksmith
+Skyrim 3D Misc
+Medieval Silverworks
+Medieval Torch
+Skyrim 3D Docks and Boardwalks
+Falmer Blood Elixir Replacer
+Light Limit Fix
-Auto Parallax
+Whiterun Exteriors Patch Collection
+JK's Skyrim AIO patch fortified whiterun
+Fortified Whiterun
+CBBE 3BA Physics
+Patch for Lawless and Infiltration Quest Expansion
+Infiltration - Quest Expansion
+The Only Cure - Quest Expansion
+Face Sculptor Expanded
+The Heart of Dibella - Quest Expansion
+The Heart of Dibella - Quest Expansion RS children patch
+House of Horrors - Quest Expansion
+Unaggressive Dragon Priests Fix
+Missives
+Caught Red Handed - Quest Expansion
+Dragon Priest Retexture SE
+The Whispering Door - Quest Expansion
+The Innocence Lost - Quest Expansion
+The Notice Board SE
+Sidequests of Skyrim
+The Sinister Seven SSE
+Atlas Map Markers SE - Updated with MCM
+RUSTIC MAPS
+Rudy HQ - More Lights for ENB SE - Deathbells and Nirnroots
+High Quality Ivy for Tree Stumps and Logs
+High Quality Ivy
+XML SSE
+Bijin Skin and CBBE Muscle Solution Neck Seam Patch
+XP32 Maximum Skeleton Special Extended 1
+CBBE Outfits - No Rim Lighting
+Normal Map Options (CBBE)
+Juniper by Mari
+Jazbay by Mari
+JKs Guild HQ Interiors Patch Collection
+BnP teeth overhaul
+No Rim Lighting
+3BA Patch for CBBE
+Female Hands Redone
+Koralina's Makeup Tweaks - 4k 2k
+BiR's Remiel RaceMenu Preset - HPH
+A Huge RaceMenu Preset Collection
+The Eyes of Beauty - Ai Remastered
+Skin Feature Overlays SE - Freckles Scars Birthmarks Stretch Marks Moles and More for Face and Body RaceMenu Overlays
+Kalilies Brows for High Poly Head (and extras)
+Kalilies Brows
-Female Makeup Suite - Face - RaceMenu Overlays of Eyeliner EyeShadow Contours and Highlights - Special Edition
+The Eyes of Beauty Vampire Eyes SE AI
+The Eyes Of Beauty SSE
+Vanilla hair remake
+High Poly Head SE
+Rudy HQ - Falling Leaves and Needles SE
+Saints and Seducers Flora ENB Light
+Detailed Landscapes - Root Weeds in Morthal Swamp (BOS)
+Detailed Landscapes - Mushroom Trees in Morthal Swamp (BOS)
+Rudy HQ - More Lights for ENB SE - Glowing Mushrooms
+Nordic Stonewalls
+Cathedral - 3D Lavender
+Cathedral - 3D Tundra Cotton
-Fantasia Landscapes Yellow Tundra 2k
+Rally's Hanging Moss
+Nordic Stonewall Terraces
-Complex Parallax Texture for Northern Roads - 8K - 4K - 2K
+Midwood Isle patches
+Midwood Isle
+Fall Forest And Yellow Shrubs Redone
+Lod Model Library for DynDOLOD
-Northern Roads - NGIO Patch
+Happy Little Trees Add-On - DynDOLOD 3
+Aspens Ablaze Add-On - DynDOLOD 3
-Ancient Land - Ryn's Whiterun City Limits Patch
-Ryn's Whiterun City LimitsHalted Stream Camp PATCH
+Whiterun City Limits_Bleakwind Basin PATCH
+Natural Waterfall patch small update
+Window Shadows - Patches for JK's Interiors
+Markarth Outskirts
+Lux (patch hub)
+Ryn's Robber's Gorge - Lux Via Navmesh Patch
+Lux - Via (patch hub)
-RedBag's Rorikstead - Enhanced - Lux Exterior
-RedBag's Rorikstead - Enhanced - Lux
+HSWhiterun - Arcadia's Cauldron - LUX
+Lux Patch Palaces
+Lux Orbis
+ENB Light
+Embers XD
+Lux
+Lux - Via
+JK's Interiors Patch Collection
-Ryn's Whiterun CIty Limits
+Ryn's Saarthal - Nordic Ruins Patch
-JK's Whiterun Outskirts
+JK's Windhelm Outskirts
-JK's Markarth Outskirts
+JK's Riften Outskirts
+JK's The Bannered Mare
+JK's Fort Dawnguard
+JK's Solitude Outskirts
+JK's College of Winterhold
+JK's Septimus Signus's Outpost
+JK's Sinderion's Field Laboratory
+JK's The Bards College
+JK's High Hrothgar
+JK's Castle Dour
+JK's Jorrvaskr
+JK's Haelga's Bunkhouse
+JK's Temple of Talos
+JK's Temple of the Divines
+JK's Temple of Kynareth
+JK's Temple of Dibella
+JK's Understone Keep
+JK's The Hag's Cure
+JK's Arnleif and Sons Trading Company
+JK's Silver-Blood Inn
+JK's The Temple of Mara
+JK's Mistveil Keep
+JK's The Ragged Flagon
+JK's The Pawned Prawn
+JK's Elgrim's Elixirs
+JK's The Bee and Barb
+JK's Palace of the Kings
+JK's New Gnisis Cornerclub
+JK's Sadri's Used Wares
+JK's White Phial
+JK's Candlehearth Hall
+JK's Blue Palace
+JK's Radiant Raiment
+JK's Bits and Pieces
+JK's Angeline's Aromatics
+JK's The Winking Skeever
+JK's Sleeping Giant Inn
+JK's Dragonsreach
+JK's The Drunken Huntsman
+JK's Warmaiden's
+JK's Belethor's General Goods
+JK's Arcadia's Cauldron
+JK's Skyrim - Reduced Cut - Dragon Bridge
-Enhanced Textures Detail (UV-tweaks) 2023 Cut
+eFPS - Official Patch Hub
+Unofficial eFPS Patches
+eFPS - Miscellaneous Patches
-eFPS - Redbag's Rorikstead
+eFPS - Exterior FPS boost
-RedBag's Rorikstead - Enhanced - Northern Roads
-RedBag's Rorikstead - Enhanced - NGIO
-RedBag's Rorikstead - Enhanced
-RedBag's Rorikstead - JK's Skyrim patch
+PELTAPALOOZA - Special Edition
+Lightened JK's Whiterun
-Solitude Docks Updated
+SkyrimUnderground_Add-On
+Skyrim Underground SSE
+Nordic Jarl Longhouses
-Parallax Earth Floor Whiterun 1
+JKs Skyrim - AI Overhaul SSE Patch
+Unique Towns - Base Object Swapper
+JK's Skyrim AIO - Reduced Cut
-JK's Whiterun
-RYFTEN - Make Your Riften - Inner
+Lightened JK's Riverwood
-JK's Riverwood
-The Great City of Winterhold Patch Collection
+Lightened Skyrim - Base Object Swapper edition
+USSEP Patch
-The Great City of Solitude SSE
-The Great City Of Morthal SSE Edition
+Darkwater Crossing - A Great Towns and Villages of Eastmarch Addon
+Rorikstead Basalt Cliffs Patches
-Spaghetti's Great Towns AIO Patch Collection
+The Great Town of Karthwasten - Farmhouse Textures
-The Great City of Dragon Bridge SSE Edition
-The Great City Of Falkreath SSE Edition
-The Great City of Rorikstead SSE Edition
-Thuldor's Ivarstead Patches
-Thuldor's Ivarstead
+Trainwreck - A Crash Logger
-RedBag's Morthal - FOMOD
-RedBag's Rorikstead FOMOD
+HS Whiterun - Arcadia's Cauldron
-The Great City Of Dawnstar SSE Edition
+HS Resources
+The Great Village of Old Hroldan SSE
-The Great Town of Ivarstead - Notice Board Patch
+The Great Town of Shor's Stone Patch Collection
-The Great Towns and Cities - Missives Patch (Falkreath)
-The Great Town of Ivarstead Patch Collection
+The Great Town and Village - SMIM Patch
+Parallax Meshes for The Great Cities Towns Villages
+Kolskeggr Mine - A Great Towns and Villages of the Reach Addon
+The Great Town of Shor's Stone - Religion Mod Addons - Wintersun - Pilgrim
-The Great Town of Ivarstead SSE
-The Great City Of Winterhold SSE Edition
+The Great Village of Kynesgrove
+The Great Town of Shor's Stone SSE
+The Great Town of Karthwasten SSE
+The Great Village of Mixwater Mill SSE
-More Trees in Cities
-RedBag's Morthal - SE
+3D Riften Trellis and Roofs
-RedBag's Dragonsreach - SE
-RedBag's Rorikstead
-RedBag's Falkreath
-Medieval Lanterns of Skyrim Patch COTN DAWNSTAR
-Cities of the North - Morthal lanterns patch
-Dawn of Skyrim - AI Overhaul patch
-Dawn of Spaghetti's Skyrim
-Dawn of Skyrim (Director's Cut) SE
+Nordic Ruins of Skyrim SSE
-Spaghetti's Cities - AIO - Interior Holds Only Patch
+Spaghetti's Palaces - AIO
+Spaghetti's Faction Halls - AIO
+Spaghetti's Orc Strongholds - AIO
-Spaghetti's Solstheim - AIO
-Spaghetti's Cities - AIO
+AI Overhaul SSE
+Rorikstead Basalt Cliffs
-Spaghetti's Towns - AIO
-Obsidian Mountain Fogs Tweaked
-Obsidian Mountain Fogs
+Rudy - More dramatic Red Mountain Plume
+Skyrim - A Mountainous Experience
+Majestic Mountains - Simplicity of Snow Patch
-Fantasia Landscapes Yellow Tundra Parallax 4k
-Fantasia Landscapes Yellow Tundra 4k
-Fantasia Landscapes
+Simple Snow Improvements - Skyrim Fixes (BOS)
+Simplicity of Snow
-JK's Skyrim Patch COTN DAWNSTAR
-Cities of the North - Dawnstar
-Riften Docks Overhaul
-JK's Skyrim Patch COTN WINTERHOLD
-Cities of the North - Winterhold - JK's + Medieval Lanterns Patch
-Cities of the North - Winterhold
+FYX - 3D Stockades - Walls and Gate
+4K Tusks
+The Great Cities- Resources
-COTN JK's Skyrim and Medieval Lanterns Patch - MORTHAL
-Medieval Lanterns of Skyrim - JKs Skyrim Patch
-JK's Skyrim Patch COTN MORTHAL
-Cities of the North - Morthal
+Stones of Solitude - Better Blended Rock Piles
+Sepolcri - JK's Skyrim patch
+Sepolcri - A complete Burial Sites overhaul
+VIGILANT Voiced - English Addon
+VIGILANT SEAE
+UNSLAAD Voiced - English Addon
+Unslaad SE
+SIRENROOT - HD Texture Pack
+SIRENROOT - Deluge of Deceit
+Nilheim - Misc Quest Expansion
+Natural Waterfalls
-DynDOLOD_Output
-TexGen_Output
+Unmarked Locations Pack All In One - Patch Hub
+Unmarked Locations Pack - All In One
-Ryn's Sarethi Farm
+Ryn's Sven's and Hilde's House
+Ryn's Faendal's House
+Ryn's Alvor and Sigrid's House
+Ryn's Bleak Falls Tower
+Ryn's Bleakwind Basin
+Ryn's Alchemist's Shack
+Ryn's Hod and Gerdur's House
+Ryn's Broken Tower Redoubt
+Ryn's Lost Valley Redoubt
+Ryn's Mehrunes Dagon's Shrine
+Ryn's Mistwatch Folly
+Ryn's Ustengrav
+Ryn's Azura's Shrine
+Ryn's Lund's Hut
+Ryn's Standing Stones Ryn's Farms PATCH
+Ryn's Skyrim Official Patch Hub
+Ryn's Crabber's Shanty and Titanclaw Lair
+Ryn's Secunda's Kiss
+Ryn's White River Watch
+Ryn's Anise's Cabin
+Ryn's Robber's Gorge
+Ryn's Halted Stream Camp
+Ryn's Goldenglow Estate
+Ryn's Bleak Falls Barrow
+Ryn's Valtheim Towers
+Ryn's Saarthal
+Ryn's Standing Stones
+Ryn's Farms
+Ryn's Dragon Mounds Collection
+Ryn's Karthspire
+Ryn's Western Watchtower
+Aspens Ablaze
+Ryn's Sleeping Giant Inn
+Ryn's Riverwood Trader
+Grass FPS Booster
-Whiterun Has Walls Patches
-Whiterun Has Walls
+Cathedral 3D Mountain Flowers - Alternate Textures
+Keyword Item Distributor
+SPID for Footprints
+Icy Mesh Remaster
+Animated Ice Floes
+Rainbows Remade
+Cathedral - 3D Thicket and Dead Shrub
+2K ENB Complex Textures
+Cathedral - 3D Solstheim Grass
+Cathedral - 3D Grass Library
+Major Cities Mesh Overhaul
+Flickering Meshes Fix
+Unique Map Weather
+Scaleform Translation Plus Plus NG
+Beyond Reach
+Beyond Skyrim - DLC Integration Patch 1.6.2
+Beyond Skyrim - Bruma
+Beyond Skyrim - Assets
+Papyrus Tweaks NG
+DynDOLOD DLL NG
+DynDOLOD Resources SE
+Wyrmstooth
+Fuz Ro D-oh - Silent Voice
+Happy Little Shrubs
-Dasinho's Grass Edit - Folkvangr (partially) Reimagined
+Untarnished UI 1.1.61
+Skyrim Character Sheet
+Target Focus
+ICFur's Improved Reach Fern
+Reach Shrub Redone
+Reach Bush to Rosemary
-Ulvenwald Lite - Vanilla Replacer
+ColdSun's Visions - NPCs AIO
+ColdSun's Visions - Asset Pack
+Sky Reflection Fix
+Locational Encounter Zones
+Camera Noise
+Better Combat Escape - SSE
+Wade In Water Redone
+Loki's Wade In Water
+Boreal Whiterun - 4k 2k
+Skyland AIO
-NORDIC UI - Miscellaneous Patches
-Nordic UI 32 by 9 and 21 by 9 aspect ratio patch
+Experience
-Nordic-Ish TrueHUD Recent Item Widget (Made by SwitchbackModding)
-Nordic...ish - A TrueHUD preset based on Nordic UI
+Base Object Swapper 1
+TrueHUD - HUD Additions Latest
-NORDIC UI - Interface Overhaul
+Dear Diary Dark Mode (white text)
+Realistic Skin And Hair Shaders - Giants
+Realistic Skin Shaders - Falmer and Hagravens
+Dust Effects by HHaleyy
+Animated Forge Water
+FleshFX
+Water Effects Brightness and Reflection Fix
+ENB Lights For Effect Shaders
+HD Local Map
+CBPC Equipment Physics
+Window Shadows RT (beta)
+Highlandcow HD by Pfuscher
+No more Radial Blur - Performance optimization
+Word Wall Transparency Fix for ENB
+Medieval Lanterns of Skyrim
-JK's Skyrim No Lights Patch
+Compass Navigation Overhaul
+Infinity UI
+Ruin Levers addon SE version
+Chests addon
+4K textures for the ruins chests urns and a wood
+Rudy HQ - Nordic Ruins SE
+Glorious Doors of Skyrim (GDOS)
+JS Unique Utopia SE - Daggers
+JS Purses and Septims SE
+JS Shrines of the Divines SE
+CC's Enhanced Ore Veins SSE - 2K - 9.0.1
+Security Overhaul SKSE - Lock Variations
+Draugr.by.Kajuan
+Storm Lightning for SSE and VR (Minty Lightning 2019)
+Andromeda - Unique Standing Stones of Skyrim
+SSE FPS Stabilizer
-Kempers Lavender Tundra - Folkvangr Patch
-Kemper's Lavender Field Tundra - Red Lavender FIXED
-Kemper's Lavender Field Tundra
+Cathedral - 3D Snow Berries
+-Skyrim 202X 10.0.1 - Other PART 3
+Skyrim Landscape and Water Fixes
+Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch
+Backported Extended ESL Support
+Scrambled Bugs
+Expressive Facial Animation -Female Edition-
+KS Hairdos - HDT SMP (Physics)
+EFM SE - Racemenu plugin
+Expressive Facegen Morphs SE
+-Skyrim 202X 10.0.1 - Architecture
+Bijin Skin - CBBE 8K Body Diffuse
+Bijin Skin - CBBE
+RUSTIC WINDOWS - Special Edition
+Vine Maple Redone
+Project New Reign - Nemesis Unlimited Behavior Engine
-XP32 Maximum Skeleton Special Extended
+CBBE 3BA
+Caliente's Beautiful Bodies Enhancer -CBBE-
+ENB Helper SE
+FSMPM - The FSMP MCM
+SMP-NPC crash fix
+Faster HDT-SMP
+CBPC - Physics with Collisions
+Sound Record Distributor
+Skyrim Immersive Creatures Special Edition
+Audio Overhaul for Skyrim (4.1.2)
+SSE Fixes
+More Informative Console
+Folkvangr for ENB Complex Grass
+Folkvangr - Grass and Landscape Overhaul
+SSE Display Tweaks
+High performance configuration
+FileAccess Interface for Skyrim SE Scripts - FISSES
+True Directional Movement - Modernized Third Person Gameplay
+Spell Perk Item Distributor
+Ruins Clutter Improved SE
+Footprints enb patch
+Immersive Sounds - Compendium
+Footprints
+Enhanced Blood Textures
+ConsoleUtilSSE
+.NET Script Framework
+Ancient Land Patches
+Ancient Land
+Only Pine Shrubs (BOS)
+RogueUnicorn - City Trees
-Seasonal Landscapes
+Better Blended Mushrooms
-Seasons of Skyrim SKSE
+Waterplants
+JK's Skyrim
+Cathedral - 3D Mountain Flowers
+Cathedral - 3D Stonecrop
+Cathedral - 3D Sword Ferns
+Cathedral - 3D Clovers - Hybrid 3D
+Cathedral - 3D Thistle
+powerofthree's Tweaks
+Cathedral - 3D Dragons Tongue
+Static Mesh Improvement Mod Improvement Mod
+aMidianBorn Book of Silence SE
+Static Mesh Improvement Mod
+Happy Little Trees
+Water for ENB
+Majestic Mountains Main
+RUGNAROK - Special Edition
+High Poly Project
+SSE Engine Fixes (skse64 plugin)
+SmoothCam - Modern Camera Preset
+SmoothCam
+Enhanced Volumetric Lighting and Shadows (EVLaS)
-Complete Widescreen Fix 219 for Vanilla and SkyUI
+Quick Loot RE
+UIExtensions
+Achievements Mods Enabler
-TrueHUD - HUD Additions
+SkyHUD
+RaceMenu
+Skyrim Unbound Reborn
+MCM Helper
+PapyrusUtil SE - Modders Scripting Utility Functions
+Address Library for SKSE Plugins
+SkyUI
*Creation Club: ccBGSSSE025-AdvDSGS
*Creation Club: ccBGSSSE037-Curios
*Creation Club: ccQDRSSE001-SurvivalMode
*DLC: Dawnguard
*DLC: Dragonborn
*DLC: HearthFires
*Unmanaged: _ResourcePack
*Unmanaged: ccBGSSSE001-Fish