1st grade moon worksheet
I Accepted a Job to Film on the Dark Web pt1
2024.05.19 09:29 Secret-Tomatillo5044 I Accepted a Job to Film on the Dark Web pt1
I Accepted a Job to Film on the Dark Web
Man, I am pumped to tell you chronically online content addicts my story. Wait is that too mean of an intro? Will this get taken down for harassment since I painted too accurate a picture of the people on this site? Sorry, everyone, I’m sure you all smell like an expensive bakery and have touched grass this morning. Anyway, I promise I have something interesting. It even involves the dark web you uncreative writers cream yourselves over! I mean, totally real people speaking about their strangely similar experiences. Okay, fine I’ll stop bullying you through the screen before you click off.
This all started when I was seven years old and my parents were killed in front of me in an anti-indigenous hate crime, but let's be real you don’t care. I’m just some annoying Cherokee kid with dead parents so I’ll skip to the good parts. I spent years in an orphanage, gradually becoming more interested in death and violence. As bad as it is, I went out of my way to expose myself to that content in the hopes of desensitizing myself. Which ended up working too well, since now I’m obsessed with causing and viewing pain, though I don’t find any joy in hurting myself.
I got adopted at twelve and after a few months of staying at my new family’s home on the reservation, I went with them to a state sweatier than the average Reddit user, California. Long story short, both of my caretakers, whom I referred to as Uncle and Auntie because they could never be my parents, died. Leaving me in the care of their older son, who I call cousin. I’m not stupid enough to give up any real names, so I’ll call him Brick, cause he’s as dumb as one. He was in his early 20s when he was tasked with taking care of me and is the world’s worst excuse for a babysitter.
I’m almost always alone at the apartment, with him only coming by to drop off supplies and stay for a few hours so the neighbors don’t get too worried. Unless I get in trouble at school, then he’d suddenly give a shit. It's useful because he doesn't about the gory stuff I look at, but some display of interest would be nice. Oh well, ninety percent of the population sucks so he’s just part of the majority. Now, with that said, you’ll be able to understand the perfect storm that led me here. During my time on the deep web, I found a particular website that caught my eye. They had new footage relatively consistently and they were the easiest for me to access since I didn't go too far into the dark web, especially with all the honey pots lying around.
I even bought a couple of files for myself to study and admire. One thing irritated me though, the cameraman. He was always sobbing, breathing, shaking, or some combination of those. It seriously killed the vibe of the killings. Something I commented on under many videos, often saying I would do a better job filming. A choice that in hindsight was me asking to end up in one of those recordings. I didn't think anything of it at the time. I was mostly the only one who commented but I was sure they wouldn't care. I was embarrassingly wrong.
I was staying up like usual, but it was past one AM on a school night, and back then that was a lot so I tried to sleep. Closing my eyes, tossing and turning, the works. I had just started drifting off when I heard the front door open. I remained calm but immediately found it weird since Brick never showed up this late. The thuds of the individual's feet grew louder as they got closer to my bedroom. I tried to convince myself it wasn't a stranger, especially since they got in with ease, but I knew that was wishful thinking.
They hummed as they opened my door. My dumbass had left it unlocked. I remained on my side, trying to look like I was asleep. They turned on the flashlight of their phone, shining it in my face. It was hard but I stayed still while they traced it over my features. I could tell they were smiling as they clicked their tongue.
“Heh, I knew it was a brat,” they whispered to themselves, pulling tangles out of my hair. Something I struggled not to groan from. They pulled up the hair over my ear and got so close spit got on my ear lobe.
“I know you’re awake kid,” they murmured, putting a blade to my neck. I let them grab my shoulder and move me onto my back, I knew how to fight but I wasn't about to take that big a risk with the position they had me in.
“You think you’re so cool saying you can do better than our guy.” they snickered, kneeling, their flashlight still shining in my face.
“Do you seriously believe that?” they questioned, moving the light away.
“Yeah, I do.” I stood my ground, they might have been intimidating but I wasn't gonna let that stop me from being honest.
“I wouldn't sound like I’m gonna piss myself every time it gets gory. I’m confident I could get better footage too, getting up close is something I’ve fantasized about.”
They clicked their tongue again and ran their finger over the bridge of my nose.
”Well, I know you’re a big fan of what we do, and you’re confidence makes me think you got something to back those claims up, so how’d you like a deal?”
I was surprised by how civil they were being aside from the touching and weapon against my throat.
“What kind of deal?” I asked, for all I knew this guy wanted me to lick their feet or some weird shit like that. They placed a finger underneath my eye, tracing a half moon with their nail.
“You have till this Friday to film a video of you killing an animal and put it on a flash drive that I’ll pick up here. If it impresses me and the crew we’ll hire ya with a handsome salary.” They began, moving their hand down to my cheek.
“But if you don't show, or it doesn't meet our standards, then I’m fucking up one of the parts of your face.” They warned, pinching my skin harshly.
“And if I say no to this deal?”
They put their hand over my mouth, scratching my lips.
“That’s cute, if you say no I’ll just slit your throat.” they grinned.
“Or rip it open with my teeth if you got a preference,” they smirked, before running their tongue across their sharp teeth.
“Okay, since I have no choice I’ll go with it, but I’m telling you now I can give you something way better than what you likely expect of me.” I prefaced, looking into their sunken eyes. They scratched my scalp, including the side of my head that was shaved.
“Good choice, I’ll be back to pick it up and if you're not here I’ll assume you don’t have the video. I genuinely wish you luck, because you’ll need it.” they removed the blade from my neck and walked away. I sat still for a few minutes in the dark, processing what had happened and wondering how they got into my apartment with such ease. I was confident I could blow their sniveling excuse of a cameraman out of the water, but I was worried about the people I was getting caught up with.
Sure, I had been on a lot of gore sites over the years but I was always just watching and occasionally commenting. Compared to most in the scene I wasn't much of a threat. I could defend myself and have contemplated killing for years but I hadn't murdered anyone or worse. Plus, I am part of way too many targeted groups to not be constantly at risk. Teenage, fem-leaning, two-spirit, indigenous kid with trauma? Yeah, I might as well be walking sign screaming “Hate crime me”.
So yeah, there was a lot to worry about. Regardless, I couldn't let that fear hold me back. I had a job to do and a group of sickos to appease. The next morning was rough, I got no sleep cause I’d spent all night brainstorming. I barely mustered the energy to change and drank straight mouthwash instead of brushing my teeth. Slogging onto the bus with drool on my cheek, I went to the back like usual. No one sat there cause, the seats were extra worn down, and I scared off anyone who attempted to with my active, rabies-infected bitch face. That day was different though.
I blanked on his name and where I knew him from, but I recognized his wavy hair and prominent curved nose. He glanced at each seat on the bus, before somehow settling on my area. He tried to give me space but ultimately seated himself beside me after realizing it was the only spot that didn't look like it would give him cancer. I glared at him as I did with everyone, but it didn't phase him.
“You know you could pick anywhere else right?” I murmured. He stared at the floor, then at me.
“I’m aware, but a few months ago I started a mission to sit on every part of this bus, and this is the last place.” he smiled, his lips softly curving at the sides.
“What’s the point of that?”
His mouth moved into a more neutral position, but his eyes kept smiling.
“I just thought it would be neat to see the same place from a bunch of different perspectives.” he took out his phone and snapped a photo from the point of view where he was sitting. Maybe my sleepiness made my bitch face less effective, cause he hadn't shown a hint of fear, which kind of annoyed me.
“That’s cool I guess, but I wouldn't do that if I were you. I’ve done some back here alone that would make your skin crawl.” in hindsight my attempt at unnerving him just made me sound like a pervert, which is probably why he held back laughter. Trying to hide a chuckle by clearing his throat.
“Hey, it's not my business what you do, no matter how Haram it is. It’s your life so that’s between you and whatever you believe in. Just don’t shake hands with me.” he joked, playfully putting his hands up. Strangely, I remembered his name at that moment.
“Oh shit, you’re Abdul! We have art together.” I sat up, haphazardly slamming my hand down on my leg.
“Uh yeah, I’ve seen some of your paintings, they’re pretty cool. I like the way you texture them, I’m trying to work on that.” he complimented, seeming more weirded out by my sudden energy than my accidental insinuation. I felt a little stupid for yelling his name but decided not to dwell on it.
“Thanks, you’re stuff is nice, and you’re good at shading.”
He stretched his arms while thanking me. We talked for a few more minutes, taking jabs at each other throughout. Turns out he was better at being an asshole than his artsy charismatic appearance made me think. The thing setting our insults apart being that you could tell he was a loving person underneath. It was the nicest conversation I had with anyone in a while. Though he could tell I was tired so he quieted down, letting me sleep, waking me when we got to school. We went our separate ways until the last two periods we shared. All that time, I spent my remaining energy plotting how I was going to handle the video. What I’d kill, record with, and how to dispose of the evidence. It was a lot to consider, but through three classes I devised a plan.
I’d find a stray around my apartment complex and take it out in my room. Record it on a portable camera since I broke the ones on my phone, no, I will not be answering how that happened. Then once I had my footage I’d put the body in a trash bag, throw it in the complex’s garbage, and clean the blood off my floor. It didn't seem like Brick would come by so he wasn't a factor I thought I’d have to consider. The plan was almost too easy, but I decided to believe in Occam’s razor. I got so lost in thought that by the time I reached Art, which was my second-to-last period, I didn't process that we were moving seats.
“She called your name,” Abdul reminded me. Our teacher placed us next to each other at our four-person table. The two girls sitting with us were already friends, so I didn't bother to say anything, but I was interested in talking to him more.
“So, what do you think of this assignment?” He shrugged, taking out his sketchbook.
“I’m not that good at drawing people, but the idea of combining two people’s faces into a portrait seems interesting. Any ideas on who you’ll pick?”
“Probably the members of the music duo Brain Tumor, they’re my favorite artists and they both look weird as hell.”
“Wow way to talk about your favorites, if that’s what you say about them I can‘t imagine what you have to say about me.” he joked, pulling up reference pictures.
“First, it’s not an insult, second I don’t have anything to say about you. Brain and Tumor have features and styles that make them stand out. Sure they’re ugly, but it just adds to their visual charm. Hot people are boring, there’s nothing to pick at.” I explained, unzipping my bag.
“Oh, so you’re saying you think I’m hot.”
His comment wasn’t serious but it kind of got to me.
“Shit, that’s not what I meant, I was trying to say you’re boring. All hot people are boring, but not all boring people are hot, okay?” I explained, flipping to a clean page.
“Alright, but if I’m so bland then why talk to me?”
I hesitated, contemplating how much of a dick I was gonna be.
“Because it means you probably need some spice in your life, which I can provide.”
He began sketching a head on his paper.
“I like spices, but I feel like you’re the kind of person to dump a cabinet’s worth onto me.”
I flicked my pencil over to his side of the desk, putting on a mocking grin.
“Aww, you scared I’m gonna get you into trouble?”
He picked up the pencil and started using it, putting his on my side.
“No, ‘cause I’m good at setting boundaries. I’m more concerned that you’ll get annoyed with how unafraid of you I am.”
I stared at him for a moment, I hadn't expected to hear that.
“Jeez, man you didn't have to read me like that.”
He shrugged, observing the red paint from past projects that lay on my pencil.
“It's not hard to figure out, just this morning you were trying to push me away on the bus. Lucky, or unlucky, for you I want you to have a friend and you seem like a fun person.”
“Wait are you saying I have no friends?” I squinted at him.
“Well, do you?”
I didn't answer.
“If your response is silence I suggest you take up my offer.”
I was stunned, to be honest. No one had offered to be my friend since 6th grade, and that didn't last long. Of course, I accepted it, but for the rest of the period, there was an awkwardness in my mind. As pathetic as it sounds I wasn't used to others genuinely enjoying my company like he did. Which was partly by design cause I get joy out of scaring people away, but still. I forgot how it felt to have conversations about normal things like art. He had such a nice smile too, usually when I see a grin I want to slap it off, but I liked his. His voice was also nice, it’s hard to describe what in particular but it was easy on the ears.
Okay, I’m starting to get off-topic. I’ll skip to the important part. Toward the end of class, he started talking about how he was interested in filmmaking and got a portable video camera as a gift at last year’s Eid. He didn't have it on him, but he showed me a picture.
“Heh, that’s funny, I bought the same one a month ago.” I pointed out.
“Yeah, it's a popular model, I’m still getting the hang of it though cause I’m so used to using my phone.”
“Well, maybe I could bring you over to my place or vice versa after school and I can help you out.” I suggested.
He smiled, putting his phone back in his pocket.
“I thought you said you’ve only had it for a month? You know I can always look up tutorials from trained professionals.” he reminded me with a notable smugness that I'd used with him before.
“Well those guys are stuffy and I’m a fast learner.”
He redirected his attention back to his page, picking his pencil up.
“Alright, I suggest we go somewhere public instead. You’re not exactly the kind of person I want to bring home to my parents right away. Plus they always need to meet my friends and their guardians before I hang out at their home.”
I gave an exaggerated sigh, stretching my back.
“Aw man, looks like we can’t get high in my murder pit during our first hangout.”
He didn't respond for a solid few seconds.
“Wait, you do know I'm joking right?”
He shrugged, the smile in his eyes appearing again.
“I mean, one of those things is a little less believable than the other.” he snickered, and I laughed with him.
We set up a time and a date, which is where I screwed myself. He ended up being busy with projects from his other classes and family which just left us with Friday, the same day I had to submit the video. Now, did I tell him I wouldn't be able to make it? No, of course not, because I decided to be stupid and even more overconfident. I said that I’d one hundred percent be able to hang out with him after school like I didn't have a mutilator who was going to drop by my place at an unknown time.
The rest of the day went over fine but that bad timing led me to feel like a dick later. When I got home I was able to write out my plan, even sketching a few specifics of what I’d do. It was more exciting than when I’d been brainstorming, but this is when the gravity of the situation began to set in. When I said I’d fantasized about killings I meant it. I mean my teddy with twenty-five stab wounds should say enough. Regardless this would be the first time real blood was on my hands.
It made me feel powerful, but a little afraid. I’ve heard stories of people thinking that it would be an awesome experience and then feeling like shit. I doubted I’d be one of those people but still. Plus, I didn't exactly trust the guy who gave me this job. There was a good chance that this whole situation was rigged and they’d kill me no matter how good the video was. Or worse turn me into the feds and expose my collection. Honestly, if that happened I’d probably eat a shot to avoid going to jail. Wait, can I say that on this platform? Okay to the mods, that was a joke, I want to live a long life. Ugh, I’m doing a terrible job of staying on track. The point is there was a lot up in the air despite it being a matter of life or death.
I knew I’d go through with it but it was still a lot less straightforward than it initially seemed. I wracked my brain to remember where most of the cats stayed and tried to come up with a good way to lure one without raising suspicion. This also proved harder than first thought because I didn't think to account for the cat man, an old guy who lived alone and fed all the cats in our dingy complex while also housing a few. Knowing how obsessive he was he’d probably notice if one of them disappeared. Then again not all the cats return consistently or at all. It makes more sense that he’d think one of them was run over rather than slaughtered. It was getting late again so I rested my head for a moment, a bad move cause I ended up falling asleep at my desk. Not even changing out of the clothes I’d worn before, I woke up late and barely caught the bus the next morning.
I went to my usual spot but Abdul had already taken it. He patted the area next to it, which he’d covered in a towel, a smart move knowing how nasty it was. People gave me a few dirty looks as normal, which I smiled at. I stretched, my mind slightly less out of it than the previous morning.
“Uh, you do realize that-”
“Yeah, I know I’m wearing the same clothes.”
Abdul looked me up and down, his eyes remaining soft, but with a mix of concern and judgment. He set his backpack down and took off his sweater handing it to me.
“Dude what are you-”
“Look I don't know what led to you not being able to change but I think you should at least have a fresh top.”
I was surprised he was offering me something to wear but I took it.
“Uh, thanks, I’ll change into it later.”
He nodded as I put it in my backpack.
“You know you didn't have to do that.” I reminded him.
“Well there’s a lot of stuff I don’t have to do, but I do it because I want to, and I wanted to help you out.”
He smiled, his face still warmer than an Arizona summer. I got a strange feeling in my chest at that moment, I still can’t tell if it was good or bad.
“Well, thanks, I'll give it back to you tomorrow.”
We talked a little more and he mentioned something that caught my attention.
“Have you heard about all the animals that have been turning up dead?”
My eyes widened with surprise.
“No, I haven't, when did you hear about that?”
He pulled on his long-sleeve shirt.
“My sister said her friend who works at a shelter noticed a bunch of animals were getting adopted by people around the same time, and since then gore videos with them have been showing up. She found out through her co-worker who was emailed it by some random creep.”
I covered my mouth and looked away to hide the smile growing on my face. He had just given me the perfect cover-up without knowing. Now if I killed an animal people had an entire violent ring to connect it to instead of me! I stayed quiet for a minute because I could tell he’d likely see through any phony sad sounds I made.
“Oh wow, that’s awful, do you think they’ll ever find out the people behind it?”
He sighed, running his hand through his wavy hair.
“I hope so, for now, all we can do is pray that no more animals get hurt.”
I couldn't contain my grin as he said that so sincerely like animals and people didn't die constantly and that taking down one group would somehow stop the issue.
“Is there some joke I don’t get?” he furrowed his brow.
“Uh, no, sorry I smile when nervous.”
His gaze softened again, and he didn't press further.
His bringing up the animal killings ended up being the exact push I needed to get my hands dirty. I’d spent the entire day before planning so it was time to put that plan into action. I stole some cat treats that the cat man had laid out and spread them around my apartment which was on the bottom floor. Waiting for one of them to take the bate outside my window was pretty boring but one of them came after a few minutes. A scraggly brown and black cat with a tuft of fur missing on one side of his head. It's messed up but I felt like a little less of an asshole for taking him in since he looked like he was already struggling. I scooped him up and he didn't attempt to fight back.
“Hey there buddy” I waved, feeding him some more food. His eyes had a lot of crust on them, it was kinda gross but I don’t have the right to say with how often I wash my jeans. After a minute or two he let me pet him. I knew making any kind of attachment was bad but I thought it was the right thing to do so he’d fall into a sense of security. I was just about to take him into my room when the door opened.
“Hey, I’m back with groceries!” my shithead cousin announced with two plastic bags in his hands. He looked down to see me with the cat, his eyebrows raising.
“Aw come on, you know we can’t afford a pet.”
He groaned placing the bags on a table and unloading them.
“I know, but he doesn't look like he’s got a lot of life in him I at least want to help him feel better before he kicks the bucket!”
Brick rolled his eyes, putting the cereal box on top of the fridge
“Jeez, did you even think about what diseases he might have? His eyes look puffy what if he has something that can get you sick?”
He had valid concerns which was surprising since he’s usually stupid, but I was still annoyed with him.
“I’m sure he’s fine, I’ll even try to wash him, just please let me hold onto him for a little.”
He folded his arms looking down at us.
“Have you even named him?”
I froze for a second, before using the first thing that came to mind, which ended up being pretty awful knowing my plans.
“Cash cow.” I blurted, awkwardly patting his head.
“Honestly that’s better than what I was expecting. I was sure you’d pick ‘Hellspawn Mcgee’ or something else corny.”
He meant to make fun of me but honestly, I would have named him that if I had more time.
“Ugh, anyway I got those dumb chips you like.”
He then pulled out a bag of the wrong chips.
“Dude those are the wrong ones, this is the third time you’ve mixed up the flavors.”
He threw them at me, scaring the cat slightly.
“Well, I pay for it so you shouldn't be so picky. Anyway, while I was in line I picked up something you might be into.”
He then tossed me a trashy teen magazine. One of my least favorite sorry excuses for an influencer on the cover.
“This is a joke, right?”
I couldn't believe my own adopted brother gave such little shit in my interests.
“I don't know, you decided to start being a girl for real this time so I thought the makeup tips on page ten would help you out.”
I scrunched my face at his comment.
“Dude I’ve been this way for years, just because I started wearing more makeup and dresses doesn't mean I’m more of a girl than when I didn't. I know you won’t get the two-spirit thing but come on.”
He shrugged, seeing me done with me even though he’d just shown up.
“Yeah well hey I’m trying. Anyway, just so you know a friend of mine is coming here Friday.”
My heart stopped.
“Wait why here? You live elsewhere why can’t you assholes go there or their place!”
He slammed his fist on the table.
“Will you shut the fuck up!”
He screamed with a phrase I’d grown numb to.
“I don't know, to be honest, something about wanting to move into this complex and this being a way to scout it out. I’m just letting you know now so you don’t act like a complete freak.”
“Jokes on you I’ll piss in whatever shitty beer you bring just cause you said that!”
I yelled back raising my voice higher than his. He face-palmed before putting the plastic bags in the drawer under the sink.
“Whatever, you and your ketamine-addict-looking cat have fun,” he told me while seating himself on the couch. I picked up the cat and walked into the bathroom to clean it. I closed the door and placed him in the dry tub. Using a small disposable mouthwash cup I got a little bit of water. I hadn't had a pet before so I wasn't sure how to approach the task. I dipped my fingers in the water and carefully pet it while pouring s small bit down his back. Any other cat would fight back but he just made pissed-off noises without doing anything.
I scrapped my old shampoo bottle and kneaded it into his thin fur. His skin was bumpy and dry beneath the hair so scrubbing it was uncomfortable. I made sure to avoid getting soap in its eyes but I did pull away some of the crust on its lids. His pupils were so clouded I was surprised that he could see at all, making me feel even more sure that he would be on its way out with or without me.
After drying him I set him on a beat-up shirt I wore when modifying clothes. He sunk his claws into it a few times, playing with a loose string. I ignored him for the rest of the night, hopping into the shower and changing for bed. His meows woke me up a few times but I tuned it out after a while, reminding myself that he wouldn’t be my cat for long.
The next day was Thursday and there wasn't a second that passed by where the weight of the murder I’d have to commit didn't weigh on me. I seriously shot myself in the foot by taking care of that scruffy, pubic hair pile. I was supposed to be hyped about killing it, after all, I’d dreamed and seen way worse than what I was going to do. Yet once I got home and started setting up I felt grosser with each step. I decided to record it in my bathroom instead of my bedroom so it would be harder to connect to me. I set down a few fabric scraps and a worn-out beach towel, placing it all inside a tub for easier cleanup later.
“Okay, I guess it's time,” I mumbled to myself. I brought the cat in and placed it down, setting up my camera once it was comfortable. I also wore my most generic clothes in addition to a mask, putting my hair in a bun for sanitation. When I saw the flicker of red showing that the camera was on I felt I was dreaming. I smiled, excited that I’d get to live out my violent desires. Yet, when I looked down at its pathetic frame and confused expression those urges left me.
I rationalized what I was doing, reminding myself how many animals die all the time and that I’d been forced into this, but it didn't help much in the end. I won’t get into it but under the pressure of impressing the group Cash Cow didn't go out as fast as I would have liked for a first task. Getting rid of the evidence was especially rough, the textures were pretty nasty, to put it mildly. It was surreal watching the blood go down the tub drain and gradually drip off my hands as I rinsed them. I couldn't conjure a single thought the entire time I cleaned it up.
Whether I was wringing out the clothes or putting the remains in plastic bags, it didn't matter. All I could focus on was the task at hand, with hints of disgust along the way. I ended up finishing at three AM. My hands were wrinkled and shook once I settled. I won’t deny that during the murder I didn't hate it. Slashing into something was fun and it made me feel strong. Still, it wasn't nearly as fulfilling as I expected it to be. Part of it was guilt, but it was mostly disappointment. I’d built it up for years and it wasn't earth shatteringly good or bad.
Overall, I expected to feel more, but it just left me hollow with an uncomfortable itch. There was no way I’d ever be able to see the tub the same way, hell I don’t think I’ll ever use it again. Luckily I almost always shower anyway so it's not too big of a deal. I watched a few horror game videos, trashed everything, changed and went to bed.
My scalp hurt like a bitch the morning since I kept my hair in that stupid bun. Despite getting less sleep than the past two days I held myself together a bit better in the morning. I brushed my teeth, changed, and had some fried bread before getting on the bus. Regardless I looked like complete shit and struggled to slump into my seat.
“Rough night?” Abdul asked
“Uh, yeah.” I quietly responded looking to the floor.
He frowned, looking at me with concern.
“You can talk about it if you're comfortable,” he assured me. I contemplated giving him a thinly veiled metaphor or vague explanation so he'd comfort me but stopped myself before my mouth could run a muck. He wouldn't be able to do much of anything and I don’t like opening up.
“Uhm, thanks but it's something I have to deal with alone.”
He nodded, respecting my boundaries.
“You know, I understand if you can’t hang out today it seems like you have a lot going on.”
I avoided eye contact with him as he spoke. For once I was feeling hints of guilt toward a person. I wanted to spend time with him, but I knew that I wasn't in the state to do that.
“Yeah, I think it’ll have to wait, I’m-” I cut myself off before apologizing. A fact about me that should surprise no one is that I hate apologizing. Even when I do feel kinda bad the act fills me with embarrassment.
“You what?” he asked, his eyes telling me that he knew what I was going to say.
“I’m emotionally not great.” I spat out in an admittedly poor attempt to get out of saying sorry. As always he remained calm but I could tell he saw through me.
“Okay, like I said I understand, whatever it is I hope you feel better.”
I told him thank you and we didn't speak for the rest of the day. At home I changed into more comfortable clothes and brushed my teeth. Unfortunately, I wasn't bouncing back from killing nearly as much as I expected.
“It wasn't even that bad! That thing was on its last legs anyway.” I grumbled to myself, smacking my forehead. I was feeling worse than when I did it which is weird. I ended up spontaneously decorating a ratty tie from the bottom of an accessory drawer to distract myself. It helped me get my mind off things, for a little. I had zero plan, just wanting to make something needlessly complex. Hours that felt like minutes passed and soon it was covered in patches, frills, and beads. I just tried it on when I heard the front door open.
“Man, that shit was wild!” I heard Brick laugh groggily. I didn't have to see or smell him to know he’d gotten lit. I rolled my eyes, closing my bedroom door.
“Hey, who’s there?” his friend asked, seemingly referring to me.
“Oh, that’s my little sis, don’t mind her she’s just on her emo shit!” he joked, which pissed me off for the petty reason that I didn't even listen or dress emo.
“Hey, that’s alright with me, I went through one of those phases,” they responded, their words less slurred than my cousin’s.
I fucked up and forgot to lock it when I closed it so they were able to swing it open, almost smacking my desk.
“Hey emo girl!” they waved as Brick haphazardly pulled them back.
“Okay, man, seriously I think she wants to be left alone.”
The way his friend looked at me made me uncomfortable. Like they’d snap my neck if I pissed them off. They clicked their tongue while stepping through the door frame.
“Alright, but I gotta say calling her an emo is inaccurate, they look like they watch gore and most emos just say they do.” they flashed a sharp toothy grin. At that moment I began to connect the dots.
“Easy, she’ll get pissy with you dude, now come on.” Brick warned tugging their opened button pushed him away. They looked me dead in the eyes.
“I don’t think she minds, in truth, I feel like we’ll have a lot to discuss later.” they smiled again, finally walking back into the living room. A chill ran up my spine when I saw them. The sharp teeth, New York accent, unsettling gaze, that motherfucker was the person who recruited me! They were able to get into my place so easily cause my dumbass cousin probably gave them a spare key or the opportunity to make one, and now they were a room away from me!
I dug my hands into my pillow as I contemplated what to do, no matter what happened next, I knew it was gonna be a rough visit.
submitted by Secret-Tomatillo5044 to libraryofshadows [link] [comments]
Man, I am pumped to tell you chronically online content addicts my story. Wait is that too mean of an intro? Will this get taken down for harassment since I painted too accurate a picture of the people on this site? Sorry, everyone, I’m sure you all smell like an expensive bakery and have touched grass this morning. Anyway, I promise I have something interesting. It even involves the dark web you uncreative writers cream yourselves over! I mean, totally real people speaking about their strangely similar experiences. Okay, fine I’ll stop bullying you through the screen before you click off.
This all started when I was seven years old and my parents were killed in front of me in an anti-indigenous hate crime, but let's be real you don’t care. I’m just some annoying Cherokee kid with dead parents so I’ll skip to the good parts. I spent years in an orphanage, gradually becoming more interested in death and violence. As bad as it is, I went out of my way to expose myself to that content in the hopes of desensitizing myself. Which ended up working too well, since now I’m obsessed with causing and viewing pain, though I don’t find any joy in hurting myself.
I got adopted at twelve and after a few months of staying at my new family’s home on the reservation, I went with them to a state sweatier than the average Reddit user, California. Long story short, both of my caretakers, whom I referred to as Uncle and Auntie because they could never be my parents, died. Leaving me in the care of their older son, who I call cousin. I’m not stupid enough to give up any real names, so I’ll call him Brick, cause he’s as dumb as one. He was in his early 20s when he was tasked with taking care of me and is the world’s worst excuse for a babysitter.
I’m almost always alone at the apartment, with him only coming by to drop off supplies and stay for a few hours so the neighbors don’t get too worried. Unless I get in trouble at school, then he’d suddenly give a shit. It's useful because he doesn't about the gory stuff I look at, but some display of interest would be nice. Oh well, ninety percent of the population sucks so he’s just part of the majority. Now, with that said, you’ll be able to understand the perfect storm that led me here. During my time on the deep web, I found a particular website that caught my eye. They had new footage relatively consistently and they were the easiest for me to access since I didn't go too far into the dark web, especially with all the honey pots lying around.
I even bought a couple of files for myself to study and admire. One thing irritated me though, the cameraman. He was always sobbing, breathing, shaking, or some combination of those. It seriously killed the vibe of the killings. Something I commented on under many videos, often saying I would do a better job filming. A choice that in hindsight was me asking to end up in one of those recordings. I didn't think anything of it at the time. I was mostly the only one who commented but I was sure they wouldn't care. I was embarrassingly wrong.
I was staying up like usual, but it was past one AM on a school night, and back then that was a lot so I tried to sleep. Closing my eyes, tossing and turning, the works. I had just started drifting off when I heard the front door open. I remained calm but immediately found it weird since Brick never showed up this late. The thuds of the individual's feet grew louder as they got closer to my bedroom. I tried to convince myself it wasn't a stranger, especially since they got in with ease, but I knew that was wishful thinking.
They hummed as they opened my door. My dumbass had left it unlocked. I remained on my side, trying to look like I was asleep. They turned on the flashlight of their phone, shining it in my face. It was hard but I stayed still while they traced it over my features. I could tell they were smiling as they clicked their tongue.
“Heh, I knew it was a brat,” they whispered to themselves, pulling tangles out of my hair. Something I struggled not to groan from. They pulled up the hair over my ear and got so close spit got on my ear lobe.
“I know you’re awake kid,” they murmured, putting a blade to my neck. I let them grab my shoulder and move me onto my back, I knew how to fight but I wasn't about to take that big a risk with the position they had me in.
“You think you’re so cool saying you can do better than our guy.” they snickered, kneeling, their flashlight still shining in my face.
“Do you seriously believe that?” they questioned, moving the light away.
“Yeah, I do.” I stood my ground, they might have been intimidating but I wasn't gonna let that stop me from being honest.
“I wouldn't sound like I’m gonna piss myself every time it gets gory. I’m confident I could get better footage too, getting up close is something I’ve fantasized about.”
They clicked their tongue again and ran their finger over the bridge of my nose.
”Well, I know you’re a big fan of what we do, and you’re confidence makes me think you got something to back those claims up, so how’d you like a deal?”
I was surprised by how civil they were being aside from the touching and weapon against my throat.
“What kind of deal?” I asked, for all I knew this guy wanted me to lick their feet or some weird shit like that. They placed a finger underneath my eye, tracing a half moon with their nail.
“You have till this Friday to film a video of you killing an animal and put it on a flash drive that I’ll pick up here. If it impresses me and the crew we’ll hire ya with a handsome salary.” They began, moving their hand down to my cheek.
“But if you don't show, or it doesn't meet our standards, then I’m fucking up one of the parts of your face.” They warned, pinching my skin harshly.
“And if I say no to this deal?”
They put their hand over my mouth, scratching my lips.
“That’s cute, if you say no I’ll just slit your throat.” they grinned.
“Or rip it open with my teeth if you got a preference,” they smirked, before running their tongue across their sharp teeth.
“Okay, since I have no choice I’ll go with it, but I’m telling you now I can give you something way better than what you likely expect of me.” I prefaced, looking into their sunken eyes. They scratched my scalp, including the side of my head that was shaved.
“Good choice, I’ll be back to pick it up and if you're not here I’ll assume you don’t have the video. I genuinely wish you luck, because you’ll need it.” they removed the blade from my neck and walked away. I sat still for a few minutes in the dark, processing what had happened and wondering how they got into my apartment with such ease. I was confident I could blow their sniveling excuse of a cameraman out of the water, but I was worried about the people I was getting caught up with.
Sure, I had been on a lot of gore sites over the years but I was always just watching and occasionally commenting. Compared to most in the scene I wasn't much of a threat. I could defend myself and have contemplated killing for years but I hadn't murdered anyone or worse. Plus, I am part of way too many targeted groups to not be constantly at risk. Teenage, fem-leaning, two-spirit, indigenous kid with trauma? Yeah, I might as well be walking sign screaming “Hate crime me”.
So yeah, there was a lot to worry about. Regardless, I couldn't let that fear hold me back. I had a job to do and a group of sickos to appease. The next morning was rough, I got no sleep cause I’d spent all night brainstorming. I barely mustered the energy to change and drank straight mouthwash instead of brushing my teeth. Slogging onto the bus with drool on my cheek, I went to the back like usual. No one sat there cause, the seats were extra worn down, and I scared off anyone who attempted to with my active, rabies-infected bitch face. That day was different though.
I blanked on his name and where I knew him from, but I recognized his wavy hair and prominent curved nose. He glanced at each seat on the bus, before somehow settling on my area. He tried to give me space but ultimately seated himself beside me after realizing it was the only spot that didn't look like it would give him cancer. I glared at him as I did with everyone, but it didn't phase him.
“You know you could pick anywhere else right?” I murmured. He stared at the floor, then at me.
“I’m aware, but a few months ago I started a mission to sit on every part of this bus, and this is the last place.” he smiled, his lips softly curving at the sides.
“What’s the point of that?”
His mouth moved into a more neutral position, but his eyes kept smiling.
“I just thought it would be neat to see the same place from a bunch of different perspectives.” he took out his phone and snapped a photo from the point of view where he was sitting. Maybe my sleepiness made my bitch face less effective, cause he hadn't shown a hint of fear, which kind of annoyed me.
“That’s cool I guess, but I wouldn't do that if I were you. I’ve done some back here alone that would make your skin crawl.” in hindsight my attempt at unnerving him just made me sound like a pervert, which is probably why he held back laughter. Trying to hide a chuckle by clearing his throat.
“Hey, it's not my business what you do, no matter how Haram it is. It’s your life so that’s between you and whatever you believe in. Just don’t shake hands with me.” he joked, playfully putting his hands up. Strangely, I remembered his name at that moment.
“Oh shit, you’re Abdul! We have art together.” I sat up, haphazardly slamming my hand down on my leg.
“Uh yeah, I’ve seen some of your paintings, they’re pretty cool. I like the way you texture them, I’m trying to work on that.” he complimented, seeming more weirded out by my sudden energy than my accidental insinuation. I felt a little stupid for yelling his name but decided not to dwell on it.
“Thanks, you’re stuff is nice, and you’re good at shading.”
He stretched his arms while thanking me. We talked for a few more minutes, taking jabs at each other throughout. Turns out he was better at being an asshole than his artsy charismatic appearance made me think. The thing setting our insults apart being that you could tell he was a loving person underneath. It was the nicest conversation I had with anyone in a while. Though he could tell I was tired so he quieted down, letting me sleep, waking me when we got to school. We went our separate ways until the last two periods we shared. All that time, I spent my remaining energy plotting how I was going to handle the video. What I’d kill, record with, and how to dispose of the evidence. It was a lot to consider, but through three classes I devised a plan.
I’d find a stray around my apartment complex and take it out in my room. Record it on a portable camera since I broke the ones on my phone, no, I will not be answering how that happened. Then once I had my footage I’d put the body in a trash bag, throw it in the complex’s garbage, and clean the blood off my floor. It didn't seem like Brick would come by so he wasn't a factor I thought I’d have to consider. The plan was almost too easy, but I decided to believe in Occam’s razor. I got so lost in thought that by the time I reached Art, which was my second-to-last period, I didn't process that we were moving seats.
“She called your name,” Abdul reminded me. Our teacher placed us next to each other at our four-person table. The two girls sitting with us were already friends, so I didn't bother to say anything, but I was interested in talking to him more.
“So, what do you think of this assignment?” He shrugged, taking out his sketchbook.
“I’m not that good at drawing people, but the idea of combining two people’s faces into a portrait seems interesting. Any ideas on who you’ll pick?”
“Probably the members of the music duo Brain Tumor, they’re my favorite artists and they both look weird as hell.”
“Wow way to talk about your favorites, if that’s what you say about them I can‘t imagine what you have to say about me.” he joked, pulling up reference pictures.
“First, it’s not an insult, second I don’t have anything to say about you. Brain and Tumor have features and styles that make them stand out. Sure they’re ugly, but it just adds to their visual charm. Hot people are boring, there’s nothing to pick at.” I explained, unzipping my bag.
“Oh, so you’re saying you think I’m hot.”
His comment wasn’t serious but it kind of got to me.
“Shit, that’s not what I meant, I was trying to say you’re boring. All hot people are boring, but not all boring people are hot, okay?” I explained, flipping to a clean page.
“Alright, but if I’m so bland then why talk to me?”
I hesitated, contemplating how much of a dick I was gonna be.
“Because it means you probably need some spice in your life, which I can provide.”
He began sketching a head on his paper.
“I like spices, but I feel like you’re the kind of person to dump a cabinet’s worth onto me.”
I flicked my pencil over to his side of the desk, putting on a mocking grin.
“Aww, you scared I’m gonna get you into trouble?”
He picked up the pencil and started using it, putting his on my side.
“No, ‘cause I’m good at setting boundaries. I’m more concerned that you’ll get annoyed with how unafraid of you I am.”
I stared at him for a moment, I hadn't expected to hear that.
“Jeez, man you didn't have to read me like that.”
He shrugged, observing the red paint from past projects that lay on my pencil.
“It's not hard to figure out, just this morning you were trying to push me away on the bus. Lucky, or unlucky, for you I want you to have a friend and you seem like a fun person.”
“Wait are you saying I have no friends?” I squinted at him.
“Well, do you?”
I didn't answer.
“If your response is silence I suggest you take up my offer.”
I was stunned, to be honest. No one had offered to be my friend since 6th grade, and that didn't last long. Of course, I accepted it, but for the rest of the period, there was an awkwardness in my mind. As pathetic as it sounds I wasn't used to others genuinely enjoying my company like he did. Which was partly by design cause I get joy out of scaring people away, but still. I forgot how it felt to have conversations about normal things like art. He had such a nice smile too, usually when I see a grin I want to slap it off, but I liked his. His voice was also nice, it’s hard to describe what in particular but it was easy on the ears.
Okay, I’m starting to get off-topic. I’ll skip to the important part. Toward the end of class, he started talking about how he was interested in filmmaking and got a portable video camera as a gift at last year’s Eid. He didn't have it on him, but he showed me a picture.
“Heh, that’s funny, I bought the same one a month ago.” I pointed out.
“Yeah, it's a popular model, I’m still getting the hang of it though cause I’m so used to using my phone.”
“Well, maybe I could bring you over to my place or vice versa after school and I can help you out.” I suggested.
He smiled, putting his phone back in his pocket.
“I thought you said you’ve only had it for a month? You know I can always look up tutorials from trained professionals.” he reminded me with a notable smugness that I'd used with him before.
“Well those guys are stuffy and I’m a fast learner.”
He redirected his attention back to his page, picking his pencil up.
“Alright, I suggest we go somewhere public instead. You’re not exactly the kind of person I want to bring home to my parents right away. Plus they always need to meet my friends and their guardians before I hang out at their home.”
I gave an exaggerated sigh, stretching my back.
“Aw man, looks like we can’t get high in my murder pit during our first hangout.”
He didn't respond for a solid few seconds.
“Wait, you do know I'm joking right?”
He shrugged, the smile in his eyes appearing again.
“I mean, one of those things is a little less believable than the other.” he snickered, and I laughed with him.
We set up a time and a date, which is where I screwed myself. He ended up being busy with projects from his other classes and family which just left us with Friday, the same day I had to submit the video. Now, did I tell him I wouldn't be able to make it? No, of course not, because I decided to be stupid and even more overconfident. I said that I’d one hundred percent be able to hang out with him after school like I didn't have a mutilator who was going to drop by my place at an unknown time.
The rest of the day went over fine but that bad timing led me to feel like a dick later. When I got home I was able to write out my plan, even sketching a few specifics of what I’d do. It was more exciting than when I’d been brainstorming, but this is when the gravity of the situation began to set in. When I said I’d fantasized about killings I meant it. I mean my teddy with twenty-five stab wounds should say enough. Regardless this would be the first time real blood was on my hands.
It made me feel powerful, but a little afraid. I’ve heard stories of people thinking that it would be an awesome experience and then feeling like shit. I doubted I’d be one of those people but still. Plus, I didn't exactly trust the guy who gave me this job. There was a good chance that this whole situation was rigged and they’d kill me no matter how good the video was. Or worse turn me into the feds and expose my collection. Honestly, if that happened I’d probably eat a shot to avoid going to jail. Wait, can I say that on this platform? Okay to the mods, that was a joke, I want to live a long life. Ugh, I’m doing a terrible job of staying on track. The point is there was a lot up in the air despite it being a matter of life or death.
I knew I’d go through with it but it was still a lot less straightforward than it initially seemed. I wracked my brain to remember where most of the cats stayed and tried to come up with a good way to lure one without raising suspicion. This also proved harder than first thought because I didn't think to account for the cat man, an old guy who lived alone and fed all the cats in our dingy complex while also housing a few. Knowing how obsessive he was he’d probably notice if one of them disappeared. Then again not all the cats return consistently or at all. It makes more sense that he’d think one of them was run over rather than slaughtered. It was getting late again so I rested my head for a moment, a bad move cause I ended up falling asleep at my desk. Not even changing out of the clothes I’d worn before, I woke up late and barely caught the bus the next morning.
I went to my usual spot but Abdul had already taken it. He patted the area next to it, which he’d covered in a towel, a smart move knowing how nasty it was. People gave me a few dirty looks as normal, which I smiled at. I stretched, my mind slightly less out of it than the previous morning.
“Uh, you do realize that-”
“Yeah, I know I’m wearing the same clothes.”
Abdul looked me up and down, his eyes remaining soft, but with a mix of concern and judgment. He set his backpack down and took off his sweater handing it to me.
“Dude what are you-”
“Look I don't know what led to you not being able to change but I think you should at least have a fresh top.”
I was surprised he was offering me something to wear but I took it.
“Uh, thanks, I’ll change into it later.”
He nodded as I put it in my backpack.
“You know you didn't have to do that.” I reminded him.
“Well there’s a lot of stuff I don’t have to do, but I do it because I want to, and I wanted to help you out.”
He smiled, his face still warmer than an Arizona summer. I got a strange feeling in my chest at that moment, I still can’t tell if it was good or bad.
“Well, thanks, I'll give it back to you tomorrow.”
We talked a little more and he mentioned something that caught my attention.
“Have you heard about all the animals that have been turning up dead?”
My eyes widened with surprise.
“No, I haven't, when did you hear about that?”
He pulled on his long-sleeve shirt.
“My sister said her friend who works at a shelter noticed a bunch of animals were getting adopted by people around the same time, and since then gore videos with them have been showing up. She found out through her co-worker who was emailed it by some random creep.”
I covered my mouth and looked away to hide the smile growing on my face. He had just given me the perfect cover-up without knowing. Now if I killed an animal people had an entire violent ring to connect it to instead of me! I stayed quiet for a minute because I could tell he’d likely see through any phony sad sounds I made.
“Oh wow, that’s awful, do you think they’ll ever find out the people behind it?”
He sighed, running his hand through his wavy hair.
“I hope so, for now, all we can do is pray that no more animals get hurt.”
I couldn't contain my grin as he said that so sincerely like animals and people didn't die constantly and that taking down one group would somehow stop the issue.
“Is there some joke I don’t get?” he furrowed his brow.
“Uh, no, sorry I smile when nervous.”
His gaze softened again, and he didn't press further.
His bringing up the animal killings ended up being the exact push I needed to get my hands dirty. I’d spent the entire day before planning so it was time to put that plan into action. I stole some cat treats that the cat man had laid out and spread them around my apartment which was on the bottom floor. Waiting for one of them to take the bate outside my window was pretty boring but one of them came after a few minutes. A scraggly brown and black cat with a tuft of fur missing on one side of his head. It's messed up but I felt like a little less of an asshole for taking him in since he looked like he was already struggling. I scooped him up and he didn't attempt to fight back.
“Hey there buddy” I waved, feeding him some more food. His eyes had a lot of crust on them, it was kinda gross but I don’t have the right to say with how often I wash my jeans. After a minute or two he let me pet him. I knew making any kind of attachment was bad but I thought it was the right thing to do so he’d fall into a sense of security. I was just about to take him into my room when the door opened.
“Hey, I’m back with groceries!” my shithead cousin announced with two plastic bags in his hands. He looked down to see me with the cat, his eyebrows raising.
“Aw come on, you know we can’t afford a pet.”
He groaned placing the bags on a table and unloading them.
“I know, but he doesn't look like he’s got a lot of life in him I at least want to help him feel better before he kicks the bucket!”
Brick rolled his eyes, putting the cereal box on top of the fridge
“Jeez, did you even think about what diseases he might have? His eyes look puffy what if he has something that can get you sick?”
He had valid concerns which was surprising since he’s usually stupid, but I was still annoyed with him.
“I’m sure he’s fine, I’ll even try to wash him, just please let me hold onto him for a little.”
He folded his arms looking down at us.
“Have you even named him?”
I froze for a second, before using the first thing that came to mind, which ended up being pretty awful knowing my plans.
“Cash cow.” I blurted, awkwardly patting his head.
“Honestly that’s better than what I was expecting. I was sure you’d pick ‘Hellspawn Mcgee’ or something else corny.”
He meant to make fun of me but honestly, I would have named him that if I had more time.
“Ugh, anyway I got those dumb chips you like.”
He then pulled out a bag of the wrong chips.
“Dude those are the wrong ones, this is the third time you’ve mixed up the flavors.”
He threw them at me, scaring the cat slightly.
“Well, I pay for it so you shouldn't be so picky. Anyway, while I was in line I picked up something you might be into.”
He then tossed me a trashy teen magazine. One of my least favorite sorry excuses for an influencer on the cover.
“This is a joke, right?”
I couldn't believe my own adopted brother gave such little shit in my interests.
“I don't know, you decided to start being a girl for real this time so I thought the makeup tips on page ten would help you out.”
I scrunched my face at his comment.
“Dude I’ve been this way for years, just because I started wearing more makeup and dresses doesn't mean I’m more of a girl than when I didn't. I know you won’t get the two-spirit thing but come on.”
He shrugged, seeing me done with me even though he’d just shown up.
“Yeah well hey I’m trying. Anyway, just so you know a friend of mine is coming here Friday.”
My heart stopped.
“Wait why here? You live elsewhere why can’t you assholes go there or their place!”
He slammed his fist on the table.
“Will you shut the fuck up!”
He screamed with a phrase I’d grown numb to.
“I don't know, to be honest, something about wanting to move into this complex and this being a way to scout it out. I’m just letting you know now so you don’t act like a complete freak.”
“Jokes on you I’ll piss in whatever shitty beer you bring just cause you said that!”
I yelled back raising my voice higher than his. He face-palmed before putting the plastic bags in the drawer under the sink.
“Whatever, you and your ketamine-addict-looking cat have fun,” he told me while seating himself on the couch. I picked up the cat and walked into the bathroom to clean it. I closed the door and placed him in the dry tub. Using a small disposable mouthwash cup I got a little bit of water. I hadn't had a pet before so I wasn't sure how to approach the task. I dipped my fingers in the water and carefully pet it while pouring s small bit down his back. Any other cat would fight back but he just made pissed-off noises without doing anything.
I scrapped my old shampoo bottle and kneaded it into his thin fur. His skin was bumpy and dry beneath the hair so scrubbing it was uncomfortable. I made sure to avoid getting soap in its eyes but I did pull away some of the crust on its lids. His pupils were so clouded I was surprised that he could see at all, making me feel even more sure that he would be on its way out with or without me.
After drying him I set him on a beat-up shirt I wore when modifying clothes. He sunk his claws into it a few times, playing with a loose string. I ignored him for the rest of the night, hopping into the shower and changing for bed. His meows woke me up a few times but I tuned it out after a while, reminding myself that he wouldn’t be my cat for long.
The next day was Thursday and there wasn't a second that passed by where the weight of the murder I’d have to commit didn't weigh on me. I seriously shot myself in the foot by taking care of that scruffy, pubic hair pile. I was supposed to be hyped about killing it, after all, I’d dreamed and seen way worse than what I was going to do. Yet once I got home and started setting up I felt grosser with each step. I decided to record it in my bathroom instead of my bedroom so it would be harder to connect to me. I set down a few fabric scraps and a worn-out beach towel, placing it all inside a tub for easier cleanup later.
“Okay, I guess it's time,” I mumbled to myself. I brought the cat in and placed it down, setting up my camera once it was comfortable. I also wore my most generic clothes in addition to a mask, putting my hair in a bun for sanitation. When I saw the flicker of red showing that the camera was on I felt I was dreaming. I smiled, excited that I’d get to live out my violent desires. Yet, when I looked down at its pathetic frame and confused expression those urges left me.
I rationalized what I was doing, reminding myself how many animals die all the time and that I’d been forced into this, but it didn't help much in the end. I won’t get into it but under the pressure of impressing the group Cash Cow didn't go out as fast as I would have liked for a first task. Getting rid of the evidence was especially rough, the textures were pretty nasty, to put it mildly. It was surreal watching the blood go down the tub drain and gradually drip off my hands as I rinsed them. I couldn't conjure a single thought the entire time I cleaned it up.
Whether I was wringing out the clothes or putting the remains in plastic bags, it didn't matter. All I could focus on was the task at hand, with hints of disgust along the way. I ended up finishing at three AM. My hands were wrinkled and shook once I settled. I won’t deny that during the murder I didn't hate it. Slashing into something was fun and it made me feel strong. Still, it wasn't nearly as fulfilling as I expected it to be. Part of it was guilt, but it was mostly disappointment. I’d built it up for years and it wasn't earth shatteringly good or bad.
Overall, I expected to feel more, but it just left me hollow with an uncomfortable itch. There was no way I’d ever be able to see the tub the same way, hell I don’t think I’ll ever use it again. Luckily I almost always shower anyway so it's not too big of a deal. I watched a few horror game videos, trashed everything, changed and went to bed.
My scalp hurt like a bitch the morning since I kept my hair in that stupid bun. Despite getting less sleep than the past two days I held myself together a bit better in the morning. I brushed my teeth, changed, and had some fried bread before getting on the bus. Regardless I looked like complete shit and struggled to slump into my seat.
“Rough night?” Abdul asked
“Uh, yeah.” I quietly responded looking to the floor.
He frowned, looking at me with concern.
“You can talk about it if you're comfortable,” he assured me. I contemplated giving him a thinly veiled metaphor or vague explanation so he'd comfort me but stopped myself before my mouth could run a muck. He wouldn't be able to do much of anything and I don’t like opening up.
“Uhm, thanks but it's something I have to deal with alone.”
He nodded, respecting my boundaries.
“You know, I understand if you can’t hang out today it seems like you have a lot going on.”
I avoided eye contact with him as he spoke. For once I was feeling hints of guilt toward a person. I wanted to spend time with him, but I knew that I wasn't in the state to do that.
“Yeah, I think it’ll have to wait, I’m-” I cut myself off before apologizing. A fact about me that should surprise no one is that I hate apologizing. Even when I do feel kinda bad the act fills me with embarrassment.
“You what?” he asked, his eyes telling me that he knew what I was going to say.
“I’m emotionally not great.” I spat out in an admittedly poor attempt to get out of saying sorry. As always he remained calm but I could tell he saw through me.
“Okay, like I said I understand, whatever it is I hope you feel better.”
I told him thank you and we didn't speak for the rest of the day. At home I changed into more comfortable clothes and brushed my teeth. Unfortunately, I wasn't bouncing back from killing nearly as much as I expected.
“It wasn't even that bad! That thing was on its last legs anyway.” I grumbled to myself, smacking my forehead. I was feeling worse than when I did it which is weird. I ended up spontaneously decorating a ratty tie from the bottom of an accessory drawer to distract myself. It helped me get my mind off things, for a little. I had zero plan, just wanting to make something needlessly complex. Hours that felt like minutes passed and soon it was covered in patches, frills, and beads. I just tried it on when I heard the front door open.
“Man, that shit was wild!” I heard Brick laugh groggily. I didn't have to see or smell him to know he’d gotten lit. I rolled my eyes, closing my bedroom door.
“Hey, who’s there?” his friend asked, seemingly referring to me.
“Oh, that’s my little sis, don’t mind her she’s just on her emo shit!” he joked, which pissed me off for the petty reason that I didn't even listen or dress emo.
“Hey, that’s alright with me, I went through one of those phases,” they responded, their words less slurred than my cousin’s.
I fucked up and forgot to lock it when I closed it so they were able to swing it open, almost smacking my desk.
“Hey emo girl!” they waved as Brick haphazardly pulled them back.
“Okay, man, seriously I think she wants to be left alone.”
The way his friend looked at me made me uncomfortable. Like they’d snap my neck if I pissed them off. They clicked their tongue while stepping through the door frame.
“Alright, but I gotta say calling her an emo is inaccurate, they look like they watch gore and most emos just say they do.” they flashed a sharp toothy grin. At that moment I began to connect the dots.
“Easy, she’ll get pissy with you dude, now come on.” Brick warned tugging their opened button pushed him away. They looked me dead in the eyes.
“I don’t think she minds, in truth, I feel like we’ll have a lot to discuss later.” they smiled again, finally walking back into the living room. A chill ran up my spine when I saw them. The sharp teeth, New York accent, unsettling gaze, that motherfucker was the person who recruited me! They were able to get into my place so easily cause my dumbass cousin probably gave them a spare key or the opportunity to make one, and now they were a room away from me!
I dug my hands into my pillow as I contemplated what to do, no matter what happened next, I knew it was gonna be a rough visit.
2024.05.19 09:12 burfenomeno 1st attempt on mineral moon
 | submitted by burfenomeno to astrophotography [link] [comments] |
2024.05.19 09:03 Euphoric-Bad2565 Made my enemy be nice to me and got her in trouble.
So in 1st and 2nd grade, there was this girl who we'll call June.
June was friends with some of the same kids as me and even friends with my best friend.
June never liked me for some reason and would be very rude to me all through 1st and 2nd grade, except one day in 2nd grade.
It was a day at school when the parents would come to hang out and do fun things with the kids. We were assigned groups and would rotate to the next activity with the rest of the group.
I was in June's group, while waiting in line for sign-in I was behind June and her mom. I said hi and she slightly turned, rolled her eyes, and ignored me. Her mom had also turned a bit and noticed I was the only kid without a parent, she did the nice in front of ppl mom scold and gave June the face, so June turned to me and said hi back.
At first, I was actually lonely and struggling because what we were doing for some of the activities was meant for two ppl (parent+child), and June's mom noticed and would have June help me or do the activities with me since there was usually time for two rounds. Then I started doing it on purpose or I'd try and interact with her so she'd be rude to me like always, she wasn't most of the time but when her mom's back was turned or when she thought her back was turned she'd be rude to me. Once throwing a ball at me not so playfully.
Her mom made her give up her popsicle to me at the end of the day.
The next day I heard from my best friend that she ended up in trouble and was grounded from the TV. She glared extra hard at me for her whole week of grounding.
The best feeling ever especially after finding out that June's best friend didn't hate me like June, and ended up being my friend.
submitted by Euphoric-Bad2565 to CharlotteDobreYouTube [link] [comments]
June was friends with some of the same kids as me and even friends with my best friend.
June never liked me for some reason and would be very rude to me all through 1st and 2nd grade, except one day in 2nd grade.
It was a day at school when the parents would come to hang out and do fun things with the kids. We were assigned groups and would rotate to the next activity with the rest of the group.
I was in June's group, while waiting in line for sign-in I was behind June and her mom. I said hi and she slightly turned, rolled her eyes, and ignored me. Her mom had also turned a bit and noticed I was the only kid without a parent, she did the nice in front of ppl mom scold and gave June the face, so June turned to me and said hi back.
At first, I was actually lonely and struggling because what we were doing for some of the activities was meant for two ppl (parent+child), and June's mom noticed and would have June help me or do the activities with me since there was usually time for two rounds. Then I started doing it on purpose or I'd try and interact with her so she'd be rude to me like always, she wasn't most of the time but when her mom's back was turned or when she thought her back was turned she'd be rude to me. Once throwing a ball at me not so playfully.
Her mom made her give up her popsicle to me at the end of the day.
The next day I heard from my best friend that she ended up in trouble and was grounded from the TV. She glared extra hard at me for her whole week of grounding.
The best feeling ever especially after finding out that June's best friend didn't hate me like June, and ended up being my friend.
2024.05.19 08:54 BOfficeStats Domestic BOT Presale Tracking (May 18). Thursday/EA+THU Comps: Furiosa ($4.49M), Garfield ($1.22M/$1.97M), Bad Boys ($3.64M/$5.30M) and Inside Out 2 ($7.66M).
BoxOfficeTheory Presale Tracking
USA Showtimes As of May 17
Presales Data (Google Sheets Link)
BoxOfficeReport Previews
DOMESTIC PRESALES
Furiosa Thursday Comp assuming $5M for keysersoze123: $4.49M
MAY
April 23
April 25
April 27
April 30
May 2
May 4
May 7
May 9
May 11
May 14
May 16
Note: I have removed most tracking data that has not been updated for 2 weeks. I think there is value in keeping data for a week or two but at a certain point they start to lose their value and should not be treated the same as more recent tracking data.
submitted by BOfficeStats to boxoffice [link] [comments]
USA Showtimes As of May 17
Presales Data (Google Sheets Link)
BoxOfficeReport Previews
DOMESTIC PRESALES
Furiosa Thursday Comp assuming $5M for keysersoze123: $4.49M
- abracadabra1998 ($5.46M Thursday comp. GxK obviously really propping the average up but for now I could see that settling at around $5 Million, still good pace! (May 12). Really good stuff in this market (May 9). Reallyyyyyy good day 1 here. I want to note that: NO I do NOT think preview numbers will be that high; it's just highlighting the fact that this is likely a movie that will be running hot in my market, as cinephile blockbusters usually do. Next update I will have T-14 comps, which will be a lot lower due to the short release window (May 8).)
- AniNate (Encouraging to see the weekend fill out a bit. Been seeing a lot of promotion during the basketball playoffs so general awareness has to be getting there now. (May 15). Skimmed through ThuFri and Valley View (Cleveland vicinity) has sold roughly 60 Furiosa tix so far while Tinseltown (Canton) has sold 40. I'm guessing the upfront audience does lean more toward the urban/cosmopolitan sensibilities (May 9). Presales show there's definitely some hype for this. Regal gonna irritate trackers again, offering no upcharge IMAX for Furiosa (May 8).)
- Charlie Jatinder ($3.05M Thursday comp.)
- el sid ($5.8M average Thursday comp (without Exorcist 2) (May 12). Furiosa continues its strong performance in "my" theaters. The movie yesterday had already 1.310 sold tickets (for Thursday, May 23). Up 15% in ca. 24 hours which isn't bad at all after the first rush. Already comfortably in front of The Fall Guy's final sales (it had 1.071 counted on Thursday for Thursday) and almost on par with Civil War's final sales (1.357) and also the Apes finally had not more than 1.657 sold tickets in my theaters (May 11). I also can't complain about Furiosa's presales in my theaters, not at all. Already 1,138 sold tickets (in all of "my" 7 theaters) for May 23. 14 days left. Promising start. Civil War on Thursday of the release week for Thursday had 1,357 sold tickets and The Fall Guy finally had 1,071 sold tickets (May 9).)
- katnisscinnaplex ($3.94M Thursday comp.)
- keysersoze123 (Definitely chugging along. I am feeling good about 5m+ previews (May 15). It has way stronger sales than Garfield and that is expected. I am thinking of 5m previews for now (May 14). I think this is a solid OD presales. With a short PS window its probably looking at 5m+ previews (May 9).)
- TheFlatLannister ($4.71M Thursday comp. Second straight day of weak growth. Not a great sign (May 18). First meh day since presales started (May 17). Keeps climbing at a strong pace (May 11). This continues to grow at an excellent rate (May 10). Really strong day 2. The short presales is for sure a factor (May 9). Not seeing much of a breakout. Still pretty solid start to presales (May 8).)
- vafrow ($3.5M Thursday comp. A bit of a step back today (May 18). It's starting to heat up (May 17). Comps are showing as steady since the last update, but it actually dipped quite a bit this week before rebounding today. Advance ticket buying has been so off in this market recently for some reason. Holding pace with Apes is a good sign (May 16). It had a good day (May 12). Mediocre day 2 (May 10). Not the hottest start. IMAX is the format of choice though, so, ATP will be high (May 9).)
- YM! (Southeast Wisconsin: Pretty solid I guess for Furiosa. Seems that most of it's business is in the Marcus Theaters in Mequon/Waukesha so not really expecting much a diverse showing but there seems to be a fanbase around it. Feel good in everyone's 4.5-5M previews range (May 17).)
- vafrow (Getting a theatrical release up here in Canada, and early signs are that it might get a pretty decent screen count. Not super wide or anything, but a pretty decent amount for a weekend that has a lot of other releases (May 14).)
- abracadabra1998 ($0.72M EA comp and $1.19M Thursday comp. The two comps that are most helpful, Wish and Trolls (not PLF, EA on a weekend, family movies) are both pointing to a lot lower than average, so I'm inclined to give those a lot more weight. I'm thinking $500-600k for EA (May 18). Still not really accelerating, and the EA is falling against comps (May 12). Good EA numbers, but many of these comps were PLF-only EA, which this is not, so I think the ATP will be quite lower and that should be adjusted for (May 9).)
- AniNate (EA screenings are pretty filled to the brim here now for what that's worth. Maybe a surge in family demand will present itself later next week (May 17). EA sales look decent now, but this does feel rather weak compared to the IF presales. Not 100% certain what's going on here but based on this I buy the trades' opening estimates over the forum vibes (May 15). I definitely haven't seen as much of a rush here with Garfield as with IF (May 11).)
- el sid (The very even sales are a good sign (May 7). For Sunday, May 19, I can already report that also in my theaters it looks very good for Garfield. They will for sure add shows soon. It has so far only 1 show/theater and the shows are almost sold out, between 1 and 4 seats are still available. So my guess still is that this movie if it's not totally bad (and first reviews here were quite positive) will become a (big) hit. Seems not much on Thursday but it's a step in the right direction (May 6).)
- katnisscinnaplex ($0.91M EA comp and $1.11M Thursday comp. Lightyear probably the best comp here size-wise for Early Access, probably ends around 750-800k (May 18).)
- keysersoze123 (4 days later. Almost no pace so far. Sunday shows are near sellout and so limited growth. Previews are like 35% of Panda 4 and Friday is under 1/3rd. That said this will under index in MTC1 as Panda also did that. Still struggling to see this as a breakout. Looking at the current state, it looks like half of IF as well !!! Of course that had Reynolds and did not finish that great (May 17). Its definitely weaker than even Elemental. That said these movies tend to finish strong and so I am not writing it off so early. Just that the long PS window is irrelevant for them. They could rather start presales like a week before release and it would be all the same. Meh. We have to wait until next week to gauge where its going to finish. It has very low ATP as well and actual would be even lower as its going to see tons of kids tickets (May 14). Early shows are regular digital shows at 1PM this sunday. So ATP will be very low. I think 500k ish at best. Preview let us see how things go in the final week. Presales at this point are almost non existent (May 13).)
- TheFlatLannister ($2.18M Thursday comp. Not much movement at all in the past week. Probably heading to $2M+ (May 17).)
- vafrow ($0.4M Thursday comp. Comps don't paint a pretty picture though. EA shows are doing okay (May 11). Still no sales for my core sample for previews. But I did the larger sweep, which shows the interest right now is the Sunday early access shows. Looking at sales patterns, it's mainly blocks of 3/4 tickets, so likely families grabbing some. It's worth noting that the May holiday in Canada is the weekend of May 17-20th, not the weekend after with Memorial Day. I can see families prioritizing getting out the holiday weekend when they have more time (May 4).)
- YM! (The combined previews total for Garfield is 35 tickets with 23 tickets coming from EA, which is pretty solid. Still thinking around 2-2.75m previews with EA as while not as widespread, the showings seem like they’re filling up nicely. Think Garfield does about the same as IF though OW as due to the likely lower ATP Keyser hinted at iirc and seemingly little screen space with no PLFs. Meh, kids animation doesn't really make much notion until the Monday for release and Garfield seems indicative of that. Thinking the 1.5-2M Thursday previews range folks were spitting out makes sense. Nothing screams breakout though and the fact it's getting one screen, maybe two at most for previews makes me feel like OW might be similar to IF (May 17).)
- abracadabra1998 ($3.78M Thursday comp. These numbers are from last Thursday, as per my post this morning. This is a more walk-up movie a la Aquaman or Apes so I think it's a pretty good start (May 18). Pretty good start for it honestly (May 16).)
- katnisscinnaplex ($5.30M EA+Thursday comp.)
- TheFlatLannister ($3.68M Thursday comp. Well, this is a pretty good start (May 17).)
- YM! (Again, another solid start-ish. I expect Bad Boys to have the most diverse audience. Can't really predict much on previews but I am feeling confident in the 55-60m OW range for the past few weeks (May 17).)
- vafrow ($3.45M Thursday comp. Comps are not the greatest. One, surprisingly hard to find a comparable film with similar start on sales. Plus, I think ticket buying patterns have changed pretty drastically in my market over the last few months. There's very little up front sales compared to late 2023. Dune was the exception (May 17).)
- BoxOfficePro (Fathom Events has also announced that select Regal Cinemas will present the films in 4DX on June 22/23/24 for Fellowship/Towers/Return respectively (May 14).)
- katnisscinnaplex (Up to ~1,400 shows now with new locations picking it up and others adding a second showing. LotR1 has sold 831 seats OD, LotR2 sold 715 seats OD, and LotR3 sold 735 seats OD. For comparison, Phantom Menace didn't break 800 tickets until T-3 and we're still over a month out. JW3 comp is currently around 9m (it was at 1,670 tickets sold at this point!) (May 6).)
- abracadabra1998 ($3.67M Thursday comp. Holy numbers of shows and seats! Multiplexes are really expecting a lot here. Sales off the bat not amazing here sadly, but we shall see where it goes (May 15).)
- AniNate (It is encouraging that Canton is already giving me something to work with with 12 Thursday preview sales. Same number for Fri-Sun. I do see nine sales for first Thursday at Canton now and I think that's a pretty solid start (May 15).)
- charlie Jatinder ($11.37M Thursday comp at MTC2.)
- katnisscinnaplex ($6.21M Thursday comp. Early sales just haven't been there lately except for the extreme fans. $12.27M Mario comp (May 18). Already at 180 shows for previews in my areas and still has a few theaters left to post. For comparison, Godzilla x Kong finished with 197, Kingdom of Apes 190, and Kung Fu Panda 205 (May 14).)
- keysersoze123 (At least the show counts show Plexes are expecting a big OW. I dont remember when we last had a animation movie start with so many shows. I wont count Mario as that was a fan driven movie. Definitely not great presales but this is not a fan driven movie. Let us see where things are in the final week (May 15). Too early to judge presales as ticket sales just started early this morning. Families dont book tickets on weekday mornings. Wait until evening today to judge it. From a release perspective its way bigger than all animation movies seen recently including Panda 4. Easily the biggest I have seen in a long time. Only movie which is not comparable is Mario but that was not just a family flick (May 14).)
- Porthos (VERY BAD COMPS: $8.06M Thursday comp. What a strange pre-sale pattern. Threw in Shazam 2 and Barbie simply due to having nothing suitable at T-27, and I wanted something that was backloaded in pre-sales. Was prepared to make a smart-aleck comment about the unsuitability of the pre-sale pattern of Barbie, but after today's update... Okay, yeah. Still no. But what a weird pattern. Was there some sort of promo that dropped today that I'm not aware of? Either way, just a great day (for this type of movie at this point in pre-sales) (May 17). Fairly strong day today, actually. Was concentrated at a couple of theaters (including a small group sale at one showing), but still, sales are sales (May 16). I really do not have good comps for this movie. Like, at all. Especially for D1. With that in mind, I did some digging and did manage to get the Elemental D1 numbers out of the old Tracking thread: IO2 = 5.45946x Elemental on D1 [13.10m]. Now will Inside Out 2 be as backloaded as Elemental? Well it's tough to literally sell 5.5x times the amount of tickets on the final couple of days that Elemental did, so perhaps not. But it does show how fracking backloaded purely kids animation is. Anyway, this is 30 days out and it isn't a CBM film (like AtSV) or CBM-adjacent film (like Incredibles 2). The Sonic 2 comp is perhaps a little concerning. On the other hand, nearly a weeks more of pre-sales so not exactly a great comp. 3.5% of presales are 3D and 40.1% are PLF (May 15). On the Saturday of release weekend (ie NOT EA) there is a special event screening for IO2: INSIDE OUT 2: FUNKO FAMILY EVENT! (2024) Sat June 15th. Might boost the OW slightly, depending on how wide this event is and how much more these tickets will presumably cost (May 11).)
- TheFlatLannister ($8.97M Thursday comp. Definitely the biggest rollout in showings since I've started tracking Florida. Bigger than even Dune 2 and it's only T-26 (May 18). This is a super super strong day 2. Probably just Orlando overindexing, but yeah starting to lean towards something big brewing. Florida presales are somehow even crazier. Sold 2357 seats and is getting a blockbuster rollout in terms of showing allocations. Kung Fu panda comp day 2: gives me $8.50M (May 15). Well, I can't really tell if this is a breakout or not yet. Looks very good especially in the first few hours. These are probably terrible comps, but might as well try something (May 14).)
- TwoMisfits (I'm kinda shocked at the opening set from my Cinemarks... 2 screens (1 PLF, 1 not) and 6 showings at my PLF 14 for Thursday (and 11 showings on the same screens once it runs full day - 7 PLF b/c 1 is 3d on the reg screen, 4 not)... 3 screens (.75 3d, 2.25 not) and 9 showings at the non-PLF 12 for Thursday (and 12 showings on 2.25 screens once it runs full day)... So, 2 and 2.25 screens for the weekend presale sets... Disney must be charging a huge % for themselves b/c this is an Elemental opening set at my PLF...a little more generous for Thursday at my non-PLF, but then they too drop to an Elemental opening set after the adult Disney base Thursday rush... (May 14).)
- vafrow (No new sales. Whatever glitches in the system on day 1 didn't push sales to day 2. I still think the lack of base ticket options will push families to wait. Cineplex has jacked up the cost of premium formats, plus they're throwing in an increase for opening weekend of major releases. It adds up quickly for families (May 16). With the site glitching yesterday, it might account for the slow start. But, what's interesting is the format breakdown. Nothing is being made available in anything close to a regular showtime. The one non 3D showing in Dolby is a matinee showing. Everything else is carrying a hefty premium. They'll likely release regular showtimes closer to release, but right now, it's priced to get eager fans to pay the premium formats (May 15).)
- YM! (Seems IO2 is playing more like a kid's animation than a family event in start of presales. However, it is pretty solid for what it is. Do not have comparisons for anything but I like that Majestic is healthy and it about 66% of Garfield T-6. Thinking anywhere from 75m-100m OW rn but can change as we go along (May 17). In fairness it's only been an hour but yeah sales are softer than I expected. However, it is a month out and will largely skew more towards kids than say TLM/Across so wasn't expecting a blitz like them. Here at Marcus theaters are going all out for IO2 with it having the lion share of PLFs with it getting both screens when there is two PLFs with tentpole like levels of screens (May 14). Was taking a look at Marcus Cinemas to see that they have preloaded Inside Out 2 showtimes which seem to start at 3:00 pm on a Thursday. It seems like Marcus is going all out on it as judging from showtimes it's taking away all of Bad Boys’ PLFs in that theaters that have two+ PLFs are giving all to IO2 (May 11).)
- keysersoze123 (Only number that matters is OD presales. after few days it will hit a trough and then it will plod along until social media reactions and reviews hit close to release. I think we can kind of predict its OW after its OD presales (May 18). RESPONSE TO PORTHOS: Captain Marvel had very strong sales on its OD despite early start. So OD is all about fans. It does not matter if you start 2 weeks before or 9 weeks. They will still book. So it would be interesting to compare OD sales not only with CM for @Porthos but also the big openers in 2022/23 period from MTC perspective. 1) DS2 - 230k ish. 2) Thor 4 - 136k ish. 3) Wakanda - 110k. 4) Ant 3 - 88K. 5) Guardians 3 - 70k ish. I wonder where Deadpool 3 will land. Anything is fine as long as it does pull in a Marvels (May 17).)
- Porthos (No point of comparison for a movie starting presales this early (60+ days before release). Only MCU entry which comes close was Captain Marvel back in Jan of 2019 (T-58 start date). Aside from that, the only other Disney release would be TROS starting at T-59. This is gonna be the longest pre-sale window for a major Disney release since The Last Jedi all the way back in 2017 (which looks to be around 70 days if a cursory check of when tickets went on sale is correct). Hell, it's gonna be the longest major release of any studio since Fast X's execrable 99 day pre-sale window. Have had some that came close-ish, but probably the most on-point recent comparison will be Jurassic World 3's 43 day pre-sale window, which is still over three weeks shorter than this one. I mention this because the sheer length of the pre-sale window will very likely depress the D1/D2/D3 sales somewhat. Maybe not much, but you can't tell me there'd be no difference between a T-21 launch, a T-29 launch, a T-35 launch and a T-65 launch. Sure, it's a matter of smaller degrees when comparing something like a BP2 (starting at T-38), but that extra month is probably gonna slice some numbers off the top of the pile, especially after the first day (May 17).)
MAY
- (May 19) Review Embargo Lifts [Garfield 9 PM EST]
- (May 20) Presales Start [Deadpool and Wolverine (9 AM EST)]
- (May 20) Opening Day [Monday: Spider-Man Homecoming Re-Release]
- (May 22) Presales Start [The Watchers]
- (May 23) Presales Start [Summer Camp]
- (May 23) Thursday Previews [Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga + Hit Man + The Garfield Movie + Sight]
- (May 26) Presales Start [Bikeriders]
- (May 27) Opening Day [Monday: Spider-Man Far From Home Re-Release]
- (May 30) Presales Start [A Quiet Place: Day One]
- (May 30) Thursday Previews [Ezra + Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle + Summer Camp + Robot Dreams]
- (June 3) Opening Day [Monday: Spider-Man No Way Home Re-Release]
- (June 5) Presales Start [Despicable Me 4]
- (June 6) Presales Start [Twisters]
- (June 6) Thursday Previews [Bad Boys: Ride or Die + The Watchers]
- (June 8) 1-Saturday Re-Release (1st day) [The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition]
- (June 9) 1-Sunday Re-Release (1st day) [The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Extended Edition]
- (June 10) 1-Monday Re-Release (1st day) [The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Extended Edition]
- (June 13) Thursday Previews [Inside Out 2]
- (June 15) 1-Saturday Re-Release (2nd day) [The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition]
- (June 16) 1-Sunday Re-Release (2nd day) [The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Extended Edition]
- (June 17) 1-Monday Re-Release (2nd day) [The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Extended Edition]
- (June 20) Thursday Previews [The Bikeriders + Janet Planet]
- (June 27) Thursday Previews [Blue Lock The Movie -Episode Nagi- + Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1 + A Quiet Place: Day One]
- (July 1) Presales Start [Longlegs]
- (July 2) Opening Day [Wednesday: Despicable Me 4]
- (July 4) Opening Day [Thursday: Possum Trot]
- (July 4) Thursday Previews [MaXXXine]
- (July 11) Thursday Previews [Fly Me to the Moon + Untitled New Line Horror movie]
- (July 18) Thursday Previews [Twisters]
- (July 25) Thursday Previews [Deadpool and Wolverine + Didi + Fabulous Four]
- (July 29) Presales Start [Alien: Romulus]
- (August 1) Thursday Previews [Harold and the Purple Crayon]
- (August 8) Thursday Previews [Borderlands + Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us + Cuckoo + The Fire Inside + Trap]
- (August 15) Thursday Previews [Alien: Romulus + Horizon An American Saga Chapter 2 + Ryan’s World the Movie: Titan Universe Adventure]
- (August 22) Thursday Previews [Blink Twice + The Crow + The Forge + Slingshot]
- (August 29) Thursday Previews [City of Dreams + Reagan + They Listen]
April 23
April 25
April 27
April 30
May 2
May 4
May 7
May 9
May 11
May 14
May 16
Note: I have removed most tracking data that has not been updated for 2 weeks. I think there is value in keeping data for a week or two but at a certain point they start to lose their value and should not be treated the same as more recent tracking data.
2024.05.19 08:06 Mantis_Shrimp47 The monster in the sand dunes turned my brother into a bird
"You gotta know that there's an art to it, Ezra," Hitch said, cutting another piece of duct tape.
The sleeves of his weather-beaten coat were shoved all the way up his arms, to stop the fabric from falling over his knuckles while he was working, and goosebumps lined his skin. He was strapping a rubber chicken to the back of his truck, over the lens of the shattered backup camera, with the legs pointing down so that they hung a couple inches above the ground. There were dents in the hood from the crash last week, and scratches along the door from scraping into a curb. The chicken, hopefully, would keep him from breaking anything else.
"You can't go cheap," Hitch said. "The cheap rubber chickens only make noise when pressure lets go. That's no good. As soon as I back up into something, I want this chicken to be screaming like it’s in the depths of hell."
“Sure thing,” I said in a monotone, leaning against the side of the truck.
There were scrambled electronic parts piled in the back of the truck, the innards of a radio, a broken computer, tangled wires, a couple loose pairs of earbuds. He found the parts in alleyways or bummed them off his friends for a couple bucks or stole them from the vacation homes that were left empty for most of the year. Then he sold them for a profit at the scrapyard. Hitch had bounced between minimum-wage jobs for a while after high school, spending a couple months as a bagger at the grocery store or as a seasonal worker at the farm two hours down the highway. He'd never stuck with it. At the very least, the scrapyard got him enough money to eat and occasionally spend a night in a motel when he got tired of sleeping in his car.
Hitch pressed the last piece of tape in place and grinned up at me. "I've got something for you, duck."
The nickname came from when I’d broken my leg as a child and waddled around in a cast until it was healed. I hated it with a burning passion, and I glared at Hitch with the ease of twenty-one years of practice. He had a duck tattoo at the base of his thumb that he’d gotten in a back-alley shop as a teenager. He said that he’d gotten it to remind him of me, and the fact that I hated the nickname was just a bonus. It was shaky-lined, with an uneven face, but he loved it anyway.
The handle stuck when Hitch tried to open the door, a consequence of the rust collecting in the crevices of the car and running down the sides like blood from a cut. The car groaned when the door finally popped open, a metal against metal screech that had me flinching away. Hitch dug through the cluttered fast food containers in the passenger-side footwell, eventually coming up with a crinkly paper bag. He waved away the flies buzzing around the opening of the bag and held it out to me.
The last time Hitch had brought me food, I’d gotten food poisoning because he’d left it out in the midday sun for two days. The donut was squished slightly, and the icing was stuck to the bag. I still ate it, grimacing at the harsh citrus flavor. Taking Hitch’s food was an instinct engraved from the days when Dad had given us a can of kidney beans for dinner and Hitch had drank the juice, leaving the beans for me.
I rarely went hungry anymore, three mostly square meals a day and granola in my pockets just in case, but habits didn’t die easy.
These days, Hitch only brought me food when he wanted my help, like when he saw a place he wanted to hit but was worried about doing it alone.
I got in the car, like I always did.
We drove past the cluster of seafood-themed restaurants with chipped paint decks, the beachfront park where there were always shifty-eyed men sitting under the slide, the single room library where all the books had been water damaged in the flood last year. The change was quick as we drove across Main Street, heading closer to the beach. The roads were freshly paved, the concrete a smooth black except where the sun had already started to pick away at it. The three-story homes lining the sides of the street were crouched on elegant stilts, with space underneath for a car or three. Most of the garages were empty, with the lights off and curtains drawn in the house. Come summer, the streets would be swarming with tourists and vacationers, but until then, most of the buildings nearest to the beach were unoccupied.
Hitch stopped as the sun started to go down at a house that was leaning precariously out towards the beach, tilted ever so slightly, the edge of its foundation buried in the shifting sand of the beach. It certainly looked deserted, with an overgrown yard and blue paint peeling off the door in sheets.
Hitch took his hammer out of the backseat, hoisting it over his shoulder. It was two feet of solid metal with rags wrapped around the head to muffle the sound of the hits. Hitch squared up, bending his knees and holding the hammer like a baseball bat. Before he could swing, though, the door creaked open on its own, the hinges squeaking. The house beyond was dark enough that I could only make out general shapes, glimpsing the curve of a sofa to the left, what was maybe the shimmer of a chandelier on the other side.
Hitch lowered his hammer, looking vaguely disappointed that he didn’t get to use it. “That’s…weird as hell.”
“Maybe the deadbolt broke, maybe they forgot to lock it, it doesn’t matter,” I hissed, checking our surroundings for other people again. “Just hurry up and get inside before someone calls the cops.”
Hitch flicked the lightswitch on the wall, and the lights flickered on. They were dim, buzzing audibly and blinking off occasionally. The walls were plastered with contrasting swatches of wallpaper and splattered with random colors. There was neon orange behind the dining table, a galaxy swirl in the kitchen, and on the ceiling there was a repeating floral pattern covered in nametag stickers. Each of the stickers was filled out with The Erlking. Chandeliers hung in every room, three or four for each, and rubber ducks sat on every table. A miniature carousel sat in the corner along with a towering model rocket.
Sand was heaped on every surface, at least a couple inches everywhere. It was piled in the corners and stuck to the walls, and it covered the floor in a thick blanket. Our hesitant steps into the house left footprints clearly outlined in the sand.
Hitch took a cursory look around and headed immediately for the TV mounted on the wall. “Look out the windows and tell me if anyone is coming.”
I shook the sand out of the blinds and pulled them open, then had to brush sand off of the window before I could see anything.
Hitch was quick, practiced at finding and appropriating the things that were worth taking. He came back to me with an armful of electronics and chandeliers, dumping it at my feet before turning to head deeper into the house again.
There was a thump, somewhere upstairs, and then footsteps, slow and deliberate. Hitch froze at the threshold of the room, then ran for the door with me just ahead of him, sand flying out from under our feet.
My hand was almost brushing the doorknob, close enough that I could see the light from the streetlamp outside streaming in through the cracks in the door. My fingers touched the wood and it gave under my touch, becoming malleable and warm. I yelped, stumbling backwards, and the door started to melt. The paint ran down in thick drops, pooling at the bottom of the door, and the wood warped like metal being welded. The soft edges of the door ran into the walls until there was no sign of an exit ever being there.
“Well, well, well,” said a cultured voice with just an edge of snooty elitism. “What do we have here?”
The man was well over eight feet tall, with long black hair covering his eyes. He was wearing a yellow raincoat with holes cut out of the hood to accommodate the deer antlers jutting upwards from his head. There was sand settled on his shoulders and hovering around his head like a halo.
“Who the fuck are you?” Hitch said, inching towards a window.
He smiled, just a little bit, and his teeth shone in the dim light. “I am the Erlking.”
Hitch nodded, and seemed about to respond. I grabbed him by the hand and pulled him towards the window. I could feel sand in the wind roaring against my back as the Erlking growled in anger, the grains scraping harshly against my cheeks.
We were almost to the window when Hitch was ripped away from me, and I came to a startled halt. The sand had formed long grasping arms that pressed Hitch against the floral wallpaper. His wrists were held tight, and as I watched, a sandy hand wrapped around his mouth and forced its way between his teeth. He gagged, and sand trickled out of the corners of his mouth.
The Erlking strolled towards him, not seeming to be in any sort of rush. “You know, I’m not very fond of your yapping.”
He made an idle gesture and the sand wrapped around my ankles, tethering me in place.
“I yap all the time,” Hitch said. “Three-time olympic yapper, that’s me. Best to just let me go now and save yourself some trouble.”
The Erlking tapped a manicured nail against Hitch’s mouth, hard enough to hurt, judging by the way he flinched away. “But why would I ever let you go when I’ve gone to this much trouble to catch you and your sister? It’s so hard, these days, to find people that no one will miss.”
Hitch struggled against the sand, trying to escape and failing. “What do you want with us, then? You just said it, we’re nobody.”
“I’m fae, dear one,” the Erlking said. “I get my power from my followers. And I think that you two will make lovely additions to my flock.”
He flicked Hitch's nose and Hitch gasped. Feathers started to form on his arms, popping out from under his skin in a spray of blood.
Hitch pushed off the wall, using his bound hands as a fulcrum, and his knees crashed into the Erlking’s stomach. The Erlking fell backwards, wheezing, and the sand around my ankles loosened.
Hitch made desperate eye contact with me as feathers shot up his neck and jerked his head towards the window. The message was obvious. Run.
The last thing I saw before crashing out the window and into freedom was Hitch’s body twisting, his arms wrenching into wings and feathers covering every inch of his skin. By the time I landed on the concrete outside, he was a small black bird, held tightly in the Erlking’s hands. The whole building was sinking into the ground, burnished-gold sand piling up over top and streaming from the windows.
Thirty years later, I saw Sam’s Supernatural Consultation and Neutralization written in neat, looping handwriting on a piece of paper taped to the door. The tape was peeling at the corners and the paper was yellowed with age, but there was obviously care put into the sign, in its perfectly centered text and looping floral designs drawn over the edges in gold marker.
I knocked, hesitantly, drawing my woolen coat closer around my shoulders. I’d bought it as a fiftieth birthday gift for myself, and I took comfort in the heavy weight of it over my shoulders.
“Coming!” someone called from within the depths of the office.
There were a couple crashes, and the sound of paper shuffling. Eventually, the door was opened by a young woman with ketchup stains on her shirt and pencils stuck through her hair.
“Hi, I’m Sam, I specialize in supernatural consultation and hunting, how may I help you today?” Sam said, customer-service pep in her voice. She stood in the doorway, solidly blocking entry into the office.
“My name is Ezra, I’m for a consultation. I emailed you but you didn’t respond?” I shifted in place, suddenly feeling awkward.
“Oh! Yeah, I lost the password for the email ages ago. Sorry for the bad welcome, I get lots of people thinking I’m crazy or pulling a prank and harassing me.”
She ushered me into the office, clearing papers off one of the chairs to make room for me to sit down. There was a collection of swords along one wall, all of them polished to perfection, several with deep knicks in the metal which indicated that they’d been used heavily.
“So what can I help you with?” Sam asked again, more sincere this time.
“Thirty years ago, my brother was turned into a bird,” I started. I’d told this story so many times that it barely felt ridiculous to say anymore. I was used to the disbelieving looks, the careful pity. But Sam just nodded along, face open and welcoming.
“I’ve almost given up on finding him, at this point,” I said. “But I saw your ad in the newspaper, and…here I am, I suppose.”
“Here you are,” Sam echoed, smiling. She pulled one of the pencils out of her hair and took a bit of paperwork off of one of her stacks, turning it over so that the blank side sat neatly in front of her. “Tell me everything.”
I told Sam everything, and she wrote it all down, pencil scratching along the paper.
The last part of the story was always the hardest to tell. “I left him there. I ran and I didn’t look back.”
I had been to dozens of detectives and investigators over the years, once the police had dropped Hitch’s case. I’d been to professional offices with smartly-dressed secretaries and met scraggly men in coffee shops. All of them had given me the same look, pity and annoyance all mixed up into a humor-the-crazy-lady soup. Sam, though, just seemed thoughtful.
Sam leaned forward and put a hand over mine, carefully, like she thought that I would pull away. “Sometimes you have to leave people behind.”
I tightened her hold on Sam’s hand and drew it towards me, like I could make Sam listen if only I squeezed tight enough. “But that’s why I’m here. I don’t want to leave him behind.”
“Okay then. I’ll do my best to help you.” Sam agreed, finally. Then she paused, and said softly, “You know…I think I met your brother once. He might have saved my life. He’s certainly why I started in this business.”
“Really? What happened?” I asked.
This is the story that Sam told me, related to the best of my abilities:
It was a new moon, so the only illumination came from the stars gazing idly down and distant porch lights shining across the scraggly brush of the dunes. Sam’s neighbors were decent people who cared about baby turtles, so the lights were a low, unobtrusive red, and the ocean sloshed like blood. Sam walked on the beach almost every night, drawing back the gauzy pink curtains and clambering out her bedroom window. She didn’t often bother to be quiet; her mama worked the late shift and came home exhausted. As long as Sam got home before the sun, her mama would never find out that she paced the shoreline and dreamed of inhaling sand until her lungs became their own beach.
The sky was lightening. The sun would come up soon, and that meant Sam’s time on the beach was over. She needed to get back to her real life, go to her fifth grade class and stop that nonsense, as her mother would say. Her mother loved to say things like that, pushing Sam into her proper place by implication alone.
“She’s a good kid, of course, but she’s a bit…” Her mother would trail off there, usually getting a commiserating expression from whoever she was talking to. Sam always wondered how that sentence would have finished. She’s a bit strange, maybe. She’s a bit intense. She’s a bit abrasive. She’s quiet enough but when Jason tried to steal her pencil in math class, she stabbed him in the hand so hard that the lead tattooed him.
Her mother was better, for the most part. The days of her stocking up the fridge, and leaving a post-it note on the counter, and leaving for days at a time were gone. But Sam still stepped around the place on the kitchen tile where her mother had collapsed and caved her head in, even though the bloodstains had been replaced with new tile.
“Your auntie got an abortion, you know,” her mother had said from her place on the couch, slurring her words. “Pill in the mail and then bam, no more baby.”
She had clapped her hands together to illustrate her point. Her mother jerked forward and grabbed Sam by the wrist, then, staring up at her until Sam met her eyes.
“I love you, you know? But sometimes I wonder…” She settled back onto the couch. “Yeah. I wonder.”
She’d gotten up, then, back to the kitchen. She’d been stumbling, a shambling zombie of a woman. The ground in the entryway of the kitchen was raised, ever so slightly, and her mother went down hard. Her head cracked against the tile, chin first, and she didn’t move.
Sam had been the one to call the ambulance. She had stared at the scattering of loose teeth on the ground while she waited, and considered what her life would be like with a dead mom. Not so bad, she thought, and immediately felt guilty for it.
Her mom was better, now, for the most part. But Sam still stepped around the place on the kitchen floor where she had collapsed. There was still a matchbox hidden under her bed with the gleaming shine of her mother’s lost teeth, two canines and a molar. It was nice, having a piece of her mom to keep. Even if she left again, Sam would still have part of her.
Sam sighed, and turned away from the ocean. As she faced towards the low dunes further up the beach, she saw a sandcastle sitting nestled among them. It was such a strange sight that her eyes skipped over it at first, almost automatically, disregarding it because it was so out of place.
Sam found sandcastles out on the beach sometimes, usually half-collapsed and on the verge of being washed away by the waves, but she had never seen anything like the sandcastle in front of her. It was life-sized, something that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Scottish highlands, with spires shooting up above her head and carefully etched out bricks lining each side. The front wall was dominated by an arched set of double doors, twice her height, with a portcullis nestled at the top, ready to be dropped. All of it was lovingly detailed, down to the rust on the tips of the towers and the wood grain of the door. It was made out of wet, densely-packed sand, held together impossibly. It had not been there two hours ago, when she had come to the beach.
There was a bird sitting on the overhang of the door, small and black.
As soon as she took a step towards the sandcastle, the bird shook out its feathers and swooped down towards Sam, landing at her feet with a little stumble.
“Hey, kid, get out of here,” said the bird.
Sam closed her eyes, very deliberately. When she opened them, the bird was still there. Sam considered herself a very reasonable person, so she immediately drew the most logical conclusion. The bird was, she was almost certain, a demon.
“Trust me, you don’t want to run into Mr. Salty, the queen bitch himself,” the bird said.
“Mr. Salty?” Sam inquired, polite as she knew how to be. She edged to the side, trying to get a good angle to kick the bird like a soccer ball.
The bird did something similar to a wince, all its feathers fluffing up then settling back down. “Ah, don’t call him that. He’d turn you into a toad.”
The bird gestured with its head, towards the looming sand structure. “That’s his castle. He’s in there, probably scuttling along the ceiling or some shit because that’s the sort of weirdo he is.”
Sam nodded, encouraging. She pulled back her foot and lined up her shot, the way she’d seen athletes do on TV. She aimed right for its sharp beak and let loose. The bird saw it coming, its beady eyes widening, and it cawed in distress. It flapped away, avoiding her kick only to fall backward into the sand in a scramble of wings.
“What’s your fucking problem?” it squawked. “I was trying to help you!”
“I don’t need the help of a demon,” Sam yelled, trying to remember the exorcism that her mama had taught her once, because her mama believed in being prepared for anything.
“I’m not a demon,” the bird said indignantly.
It was at about that moment that Sam gave up and just decided to roll with it.
“What are you, then?” Sam asked.
The bird shuffled its clawed feet, looking about as awkward as it could, given that it didn’t really have recognizable facial expressions. “Technically I’m a familiar of the Erlking, prince of the fae, but I prefer to be called Hitch.”
“You can’t blame me for assuming, though,” Sam said. “Ravens do tend to be associated with murder.”
“Hey, excuse you,” Hitch said. “I’m a rook, not a raven. Ravens are way bigger.”
“Sure,” Sam said, not really paying attention. Her eyes had caught on the details of the sandcastle, and she was transfixed by the slow spirals of the sand, the strange beauty of it. She found herself stepping towards the great doors, lifting a hand to knock, and as she did, the sand warped in front of her eyes, heaving itself towards her with bulging slowness. The door creaked open before her, revealing a vast, empty room. Just before she stepped inside, she felt a piercing pain in her foot, and she yelped, leaping backwards.
Hitch pecked her again, really digging his beak in. “Don’t be an idiot.”
Sam glared at him, rubbing her foot. About to retort, she finally really took in the room inside the sandcastle, and her words died in her throat.
There was a body just past the threshold of the door, face down and limbs hanging limp at its sides. Long hair splayed out in a halo around its head.
“Don’t,” Hitch warned, suddenly serious. “Just leave, kid, I mean it. I’ve seen too many people go down this road and you don’t want to be one of them.”
Sam ignored him. She made her way across the beach, slipping with every step. The sand felt deeper, piling up around her feet in silent drifts. She picked up the nearest stick and poked the body with it through the door, ready to leap back if anything went wrong, staying firmly outside of the sandcastle.
This close, Sam could tell that it used to be a woman. Her head wasn’t attached to her body. It hadn’t been a clean amputation, either. Her upper body was bruised, with chunks taken out of it, and the bones in her neck hung mangled, not connected to anything.
“Well, I warned you,” Hitch said, defeated. “I did warn you.”
Sam nudged the head with the end of the stick, nudging it over so that she could see the face. Her mother stared back at her, torn to pieces, breath still wheezing from her lungs. She wasn’t blinking, just gazing forward with glazed eyes. Sweat dripped down from her hairline.
Sam screamed and dropped the stick, tripping over herself in her haste to get away.
Her mother’s eyes were wide and pleading, and she was mouthing desperate words at Sam. Her vocal cords were broken to bits, and the only sound that came out was a strained groan.
The head rolled, inching closer to Sam like a grotesque caterpillar.
Her mother gasped for air, torn lips fluttering. Finally, comprehensible words came out. “Help. Help me, daughter.”
“That’s not your mother,” Hitch said, quiet.
Sam knew that. Her mother was sleeping back at home, and anyways her mom had never asked for her help. She had an aversion to accepting charity, as she put it.
“Okay,” Sam said, shaking all over. “Okay.”
She backed away from the sandcastle, not looking away.
“Failure,” her mother hissed as she stepped away. “I never wanted a daughter like you.”
The sun came up over the horizon. The sandcastle, Hitch, and her mom all disintegrated into sand as the light hit them.
The beach, the next night, was almost exactly how I remembered it. The beams of our flashlights sent light bouncing across the dunes, illuminating the waves, and I imagined faces in the foam of the waves.
“I’ve been back here a hundred times. There’s nothing left,” I said.
Sam took the car key out of her purse and pointed it at the sand, adjusting the sword slung over her shoulder in order to do it. The key had belonged to Hitch; Sam had requested an item of his, and it was the only thing I had left. She rested the key on the sand and drew a circle around it, inscribing symbols around the borders.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Sam shrugged. “Not much, really. I’m…I guess you could say that I’m knocking.”
The key laid inert on the sand for long enough that I was just about to give up and go home, admit to myself that Hitch was dead and that I was a fool to believe that Sam could actually help me. Then a building started to take shape, flickering in and out like it was struggling to get away. With a pop of displaced air, the sandcastle settled into existence.
Sam banged on the entryway. Nothing happened. She did it again, harder, and scowled when the door still didn’t open.
“We demand entrance, under your honor,” Sam yelled. There was a hard rush of wind, and I gripped Sam’s arm to keep my balance, but the doors cracked open reluctantly.
The inside of the sandcastle consisted of one enormous hall, the roof arching up out of sight. Rafters crisscrossed from wall to wall, and a cobbled path led further into the building, but other than that, it was completely empty, except for the birds. There were thousands of them, perched on the rafters or hopping along the ground. They parted in front of Sam and I, and reformed behind us, leaving us in a small pocket of open space. They were all black-feathered, with sharp beaks and beady eyes.
The Erlking sat on a throne at the end of the hall, lounging across it with his feet up on the armrest. He watched them as they came forward, the soft caw of the birds the only sound.
“I am here to bargain for the life of my brother,” I said, with as much dignity as I could muster, before the Erlking could say anything.
The Erlking ignored her, tilting his head to look at Sam. “I remember you. I almost got you, once.”
Sam glared at him but didn’t respond.
“You want your brother,” The Erlking said to me, and he almost sounded amused. “Then go get him.”
As if by some sort of silent signal, every bird in the room took flight at once, and their cawing made me think of screams. I covered my head against the flapping of their wings, and my vision was quickly obscured by the chaotic movement of them. I found myself on my knees, just trying to escape them.
A hand met my shoulder. Sam urged me to my feet, and together we ran for the edge of the room, where the swarm was the thinnest. We pressed ourselves into the corner and the swarm spiraled tighter and tighter at the center of the room. It went on until there seemed to be no differentiation between the birds, all of them fused together into one creature.
When the chaos died down, the birds had become one mass, with wings and eyes and talons sticking out of its flesh, thrashing and chirping. Human body parts stuck out of it, bulging out from the feathers. It was hands, mostly, with a couple knees or staring eyes. The bird amalgamation had no recognizable facial features, but there was one long beak extending from the front of its head. Most of the body parts were concentrated around the beak, and they peeked out from where the beak connected with muscle, or grew from the tongue, nestled between the two crushing halves of the beak.
It turned its beak down and crawled forward, using the hands to balance. The fingers scrambled over the ground. I was afraid of centipedes as a child, and I felt that same crawling dread when it started moving.
“Holy shit,” Sam whispered, which was rather disappointing, because I had been hoping that at least one of us knew what to do.
The creature turned, a lurching movement that crushed some of the hands underneath it, and started heaving itself slowly towards our corner.
“Better hurry up!” the Erlking called from his throne.
It was blocking the exit, by then. The shifting body of it had moved to block us off. It ambled towards us and I tried to sink further into the corner.
As it approached, getting close enough that I could smell the stink of it, I saw a flash of a tattoo on one of the hands. I leaned in, trying to find it again, like looking for dolphins surfacing in the ocean. And again, I caught a glimpse of a duck tattoo, the tattoo that Hitch had gotten on his hand as a teenager.
I ripped away from Sam’s death grip and ran for the monster.
I fell to my knees in front of it, wincing as I impacted the ground, and reached into the nest of hands. I could feel them tearing at my forearms and ripping into me with their sharp nails, but I kept going. I pressed further in, up to my shoulder in a writhing mass of limbs, aiming for the spot where I had last seen that tattoo.
The hands were tugging at me, wrapping around my back and hair. They were pulling together, trying to draw me completely into the mass of them. I was aware of Sam at my side, anchoring me in place and bashing any hand that got too close with her sword or the sparks that leapt from her hands with muttered words. But I didn’t think it would be enough. They were too strong, and there were too many of them.
I was up to my waist in the hands when something grabbed my palm. I felt the way it clung to me, and the calluses on its palm, and I knew that I had found my brother.
I flung herself back. The hands didn’t want to let me go, and they fought the whole way, but slowly, I made progress. I kept hold of Hitch’s hand in mine the whole time, gripping it as hard as I could. I finally broke free, Hitch with me, and Sam was immediately charging the creature, able to use her sword with much greater strength without being worried about injuring Hitch. She swung it forward, and it sliced through the wrist of one of the hands. It fell without a sound, red sand flowing out of it. It deflated until it looked like dirty laundry, just a piece of limp flesh. The creature shrieked, scuttling away enough that the door was finally accessible. The three of us ran for it, Sam and I supporting Hitch between us.
I looked back as I left and found the Erlking staring right at me.
“Interesting,” he murmured, his voice carrying impossibly across the vast space between us.
The sandcastle collapsed behind us, the great walls falling in on themselves. We were out in the morning sun, the sandcastle disappearing as we watched. Hitch was on the ground in front of me, as young as he’d been thirty years ago, when he was captured. He started laughing, feathers puffing out of his mouth. He laughed until he cried and I hugged him in the way that he’d held me when I was young, in the times when my life had been defined by hunger and fear.
Hitch left, afterwards. He scratched at the pinhole scars covering his body, where feathers burst through his skin, and pulled his long sleeves down around his wrists. He didn’t know where he was going but he told me that he needed time
I had spent thirty years worth of time without him. I wanted to grab my brother by the shoulders and beg him to stay. But he flinched when I hugged him goodbye and he refused to go near sand and he stared distrustfully at the birds chirping in the trees. Hitch needed to go away and I loved him too much to stop him.
I sat out on the beach every morning. I felt the sun on my face and I waited for Hitch to come home.
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The sleeves of his weather-beaten coat were shoved all the way up his arms, to stop the fabric from falling over his knuckles while he was working, and goosebumps lined his skin. He was strapping a rubber chicken to the back of his truck, over the lens of the shattered backup camera, with the legs pointing down so that they hung a couple inches above the ground. There were dents in the hood from the crash last week, and scratches along the door from scraping into a curb. The chicken, hopefully, would keep him from breaking anything else.
"You can't go cheap," Hitch said. "The cheap rubber chickens only make noise when pressure lets go. That's no good. As soon as I back up into something, I want this chicken to be screaming like it’s in the depths of hell."
“Sure thing,” I said in a monotone, leaning against the side of the truck.
There were scrambled electronic parts piled in the back of the truck, the innards of a radio, a broken computer, tangled wires, a couple loose pairs of earbuds. He found the parts in alleyways or bummed them off his friends for a couple bucks or stole them from the vacation homes that were left empty for most of the year. Then he sold them for a profit at the scrapyard. Hitch had bounced between minimum-wage jobs for a while after high school, spending a couple months as a bagger at the grocery store or as a seasonal worker at the farm two hours down the highway. He'd never stuck with it. At the very least, the scrapyard got him enough money to eat and occasionally spend a night in a motel when he got tired of sleeping in his car.
Hitch pressed the last piece of tape in place and grinned up at me. "I've got something for you, duck."
The nickname came from when I’d broken my leg as a child and waddled around in a cast until it was healed. I hated it with a burning passion, and I glared at Hitch with the ease of twenty-one years of practice. He had a duck tattoo at the base of his thumb that he’d gotten in a back-alley shop as a teenager. He said that he’d gotten it to remind him of me, and the fact that I hated the nickname was just a bonus. It was shaky-lined, with an uneven face, but he loved it anyway.
The handle stuck when Hitch tried to open the door, a consequence of the rust collecting in the crevices of the car and running down the sides like blood from a cut. The car groaned when the door finally popped open, a metal against metal screech that had me flinching away. Hitch dug through the cluttered fast food containers in the passenger-side footwell, eventually coming up with a crinkly paper bag. He waved away the flies buzzing around the opening of the bag and held it out to me.
The last time Hitch had brought me food, I’d gotten food poisoning because he’d left it out in the midday sun for two days. The donut was squished slightly, and the icing was stuck to the bag. I still ate it, grimacing at the harsh citrus flavor. Taking Hitch’s food was an instinct engraved from the days when Dad had given us a can of kidney beans for dinner and Hitch had drank the juice, leaving the beans for me.
I rarely went hungry anymore, three mostly square meals a day and granola in my pockets just in case, but habits didn’t die easy.
These days, Hitch only brought me food when he wanted my help, like when he saw a place he wanted to hit but was worried about doing it alone.
I got in the car, like I always did.
We drove past the cluster of seafood-themed restaurants with chipped paint decks, the beachfront park where there were always shifty-eyed men sitting under the slide, the single room library where all the books had been water damaged in the flood last year. The change was quick as we drove across Main Street, heading closer to the beach. The roads were freshly paved, the concrete a smooth black except where the sun had already started to pick away at it. The three-story homes lining the sides of the street were crouched on elegant stilts, with space underneath for a car or three. Most of the garages were empty, with the lights off and curtains drawn in the house. Come summer, the streets would be swarming with tourists and vacationers, but until then, most of the buildings nearest to the beach were unoccupied.
Hitch stopped as the sun started to go down at a house that was leaning precariously out towards the beach, tilted ever so slightly, the edge of its foundation buried in the shifting sand of the beach. It certainly looked deserted, with an overgrown yard and blue paint peeling off the door in sheets.
Hitch took his hammer out of the backseat, hoisting it over his shoulder. It was two feet of solid metal with rags wrapped around the head to muffle the sound of the hits. Hitch squared up, bending his knees and holding the hammer like a baseball bat. Before he could swing, though, the door creaked open on its own, the hinges squeaking. The house beyond was dark enough that I could only make out general shapes, glimpsing the curve of a sofa to the left, what was maybe the shimmer of a chandelier on the other side.
Hitch lowered his hammer, looking vaguely disappointed that he didn’t get to use it. “That’s…weird as hell.”
“Maybe the deadbolt broke, maybe they forgot to lock it, it doesn’t matter,” I hissed, checking our surroundings for other people again. “Just hurry up and get inside before someone calls the cops.”
Hitch flicked the lightswitch on the wall, and the lights flickered on. They were dim, buzzing audibly and blinking off occasionally. The walls were plastered with contrasting swatches of wallpaper and splattered with random colors. There was neon orange behind the dining table, a galaxy swirl in the kitchen, and on the ceiling there was a repeating floral pattern covered in nametag stickers. Each of the stickers was filled out with The Erlking. Chandeliers hung in every room, three or four for each, and rubber ducks sat on every table. A miniature carousel sat in the corner along with a towering model rocket.
Sand was heaped on every surface, at least a couple inches everywhere. It was piled in the corners and stuck to the walls, and it covered the floor in a thick blanket. Our hesitant steps into the house left footprints clearly outlined in the sand.
Hitch took a cursory look around and headed immediately for the TV mounted on the wall. “Look out the windows and tell me if anyone is coming.”
I shook the sand out of the blinds and pulled them open, then had to brush sand off of the window before I could see anything.
Hitch was quick, practiced at finding and appropriating the things that were worth taking. He came back to me with an armful of electronics and chandeliers, dumping it at my feet before turning to head deeper into the house again.
There was a thump, somewhere upstairs, and then footsteps, slow and deliberate. Hitch froze at the threshold of the room, then ran for the door with me just ahead of him, sand flying out from under our feet.
My hand was almost brushing the doorknob, close enough that I could see the light from the streetlamp outside streaming in through the cracks in the door. My fingers touched the wood and it gave under my touch, becoming malleable and warm. I yelped, stumbling backwards, and the door started to melt. The paint ran down in thick drops, pooling at the bottom of the door, and the wood warped like metal being welded. The soft edges of the door ran into the walls until there was no sign of an exit ever being there.
“Well, well, well,” said a cultured voice with just an edge of snooty elitism. “What do we have here?”
The man was well over eight feet tall, with long black hair covering his eyes. He was wearing a yellow raincoat with holes cut out of the hood to accommodate the deer antlers jutting upwards from his head. There was sand settled on his shoulders and hovering around his head like a halo.
“Who the fuck are you?” Hitch said, inching towards a window.
He smiled, just a little bit, and his teeth shone in the dim light. “I am the Erlking.”
Hitch nodded, and seemed about to respond. I grabbed him by the hand and pulled him towards the window. I could feel sand in the wind roaring against my back as the Erlking growled in anger, the grains scraping harshly against my cheeks.
We were almost to the window when Hitch was ripped away from me, and I came to a startled halt. The sand had formed long grasping arms that pressed Hitch against the floral wallpaper. His wrists were held tight, and as I watched, a sandy hand wrapped around his mouth and forced its way between his teeth. He gagged, and sand trickled out of the corners of his mouth.
The Erlking strolled towards him, not seeming to be in any sort of rush. “You know, I’m not very fond of your yapping.”
He made an idle gesture and the sand wrapped around my ankles, tethering me in place.
“I yap all the time,” Hitch said. “Three-time olympic yapper, that’s me. Best to just let me go now and save yourself some trouble.”
The Erlking tapped a manicured nail against Hitch’s mouth, hard enough to hurt, judging by the way he flinched away. “But why would I ever let you go when I’ve gone to this much trouble to catch you and your sister? It’s so hard, these days, to find people that no one will miss.”
Hitch struggled against the sand, trying to escape and failing. “What do you want with us, then? You just said it, we’re nobody.”
“I’m fae, dear one,” the Erlking said. “I get my power from my followers. And I think that you two will make lovely additions to my flock.”
He flicked Hitch's nose and Hitch gasped. Feathers started to form on his arms, popping out from under his skin in a spray of blood.
Hitch pushed off the wall, using his bound hands as a fulcrum, and his knees crashed into the Erlking’s stomach. The Erlking fell backwards, wheezing, and the sand around my ankles loosened.
Hitch made desperate eye contact with me as feathers shot up his neck and jerked his head towards the window. The message was obvious. Run.
The last thing I saw before crashing out the window and into freedom was Hitch’s body twisting, his arms wrenching into wings and feathers covering every inch of his skin. By the time I landed on the concrete outside, he was a small black bird, held tightly in the Erlking’s hands. The whole building was sinking into the ground, burnished-gold sand piling up over top and streaming from the windows.
Thirty years later, I saw Sam’s Supernatural Consultation and Neutralization written in neat, looping handwriting on a piece of paper taped to the door. The tape was peeling at the corners and the paper was yellowed with age, but there was obviously care put into the sign, in its perfectly centered text and looping floral designs drawn over the edges in gold marker.
I knocked, hesitantly, drawing my woolen coat closer around my shoulders. I’d bought it as a fiftieth birthday gift for myself, and I took comfort in the heavy weight of it over my shoulders.
“Coming!” someone called from within the depths of the office.
There were a couple crashes, and the sound of paper shuffling. Eventually, the door was opened by a young woman with ketchup stains on her shirt and pencils stuck through her hair.
“Hi, I’m Sam, I specialize in supernatural consultation and hunting, how may I help you today?” Sam said, customer-service pep in her voice. She stood in the doorway, solidly blocking entry into the office.
“My name is Ezra, I’m for a consultation. I emailed you but you didn’t respond?” I shifted in place, suddenly feeling awkward.
“Oh! Yeah, I lost the password for the email ages ago. Sorry for the bad welcome, I get lots of people thinking I’m crazy or pulling a prank and harassing me.”
She ushered me into the office, clearing papers off one of the chairs to make room for me to sit down. There was a collection of swords along one wall, all of them polished to perfection, several with deep knicks in the metal which indicated that they’d been used heavily.
“So what can I help you with?” Sam asked again, more sincere this time.
“Thirty years ago, my brother was turned into a bird,” I started. I’d told this story so many times that it barely felt ridiculous to say anymore. I was used to the disbelieving looks, the careful pity. But Sam just nodded along, face open and welcoming.
“I’ve almost given up on finding him, at this point,” I said. “But I saw your ad in the newspaper, and…here I am, I suppose.”
“Here you are,” Sam echoed, smiling. She pulled one of the pencils out of her hair and took a bit of paperwork off of one of her stacks, turning it over so that the blank side sat neatly in front of her. “Tell me everything.”
I told Sam everything, and she wrote it all down, pencil scratching along the paper.
The last part of the story was always the hardest to tell. “I left him there. I ran and I didn’t look back.”
I had been to dozens of detectives and investigators over the years, once the police had dropped Hitch’s case. I’d been to professional offices with smartly-dressed secretaries and met scraggly men in coffee shops. All of them had given me the same look, pity and annoyance all mixed up into a humor-the-crazy-lady soup. Sam, though, just seemed thoughtful.
Sam leaned forward and put a hand over mine, carefully, like she thought that I would pull away. “Sometimes you have to leave people behind.”
I tightened her hold on Sam’s hand and drew it towards me, like I could make Sam listen if only I squeezed tight enough. “But that’s why I’m here. I don’t want to leave him behind.”
“Okay then. I’ll do my best to help you.” Sam agreed, finally. Then she paused, and said softly, “You know…I think I met your brother once. He might have saved my life. He’s certainly why I started in this business.”
“Really? What happened?” I asked.
This is the story that Sam told me, related to the best of my abilities:
It was a new moon, so the only illumination came from the stars gazing idly down and distant porch lights shining across the scraggly brush of the dunes. Sam’s neighbors were decent people who cared about baby turtles, so the lights were a low, unobtrusive red, and the ocean sloshed like blood. Sam walked on the beach almost every night, drawing back the gauzy pink curtains and clambering out her bedroom window. She didn’t often bother to be quiet; her mama worked the late shift and came home exhausted. As long as Sam got home before the sun, her mama would never find out that she paced the shoreline and dreamed of inhaling sand until her lungs became their own beach.
The sky was lightening. The sun would come up soon, and that meant Sam’s time on the beach was over. She needed to get back to her real life, go to her fifth grade class and stop that nonsense, as her mother would say. Her mother loved to say things like that, pushing Sam into her proper place by implication alone.
“She’s a good kid, of course, but she’s a bit…” Her mother would trail off there, usually getting a commiserating expression from whoever she was talking to. Sam always wondered how that sentence would have finished. She’s a bit strange, maybe. She’s a bit intense. She’s a bit abrasive. She’s quiet enough but when Jason tried to steal her pencil in math class, she stabbed him in the hand so hard that the lead tattooed him.
Her mother was better, for the most part. The days of her stocking up the fridge, and leaving a post-it note on the counter, and leaving for days at a time were gone. But Sam still stepped around the place on the kitchen tile where her mother had collapsed and caved her head in, even though the bloodstains had been replaced with new tile.
“Your auntie got an abortion, you know,” her mother had said from her place on the couch, slurring her words. “Pill in the mail and then bam, no more baby.”
She had clapped her hands together to illustrate her point. Her mother jerked forward and grabbed Sam by the wrist, then, staring up at her until Sam met her eyes.
“I love you, you know? But sometimes I wonder…” She settled back onto the couch. “Yeah. I wonder.”
She’d gotten up, then, back to the kitchen. She’d been stumbling, a shambling zombie of a woman. The ground in the entryway of the kitchen was raised, ever so slightly, and her mother went down hard. Her head cracked against the tile, chin first, and she didn’t move.
Sam had been the one to call the ambulance. She had stared at the scattering of loose teeth on the ground while she waited, and considered what her life would be like with a dead mom. Not so bad, she thought, and immediately felt guilty for it.
Her mom was better, now, for the most part. But Sam still stepped around the place on the kitchen floor where she had collapsed. There was still a matchbox hidden under her bed with the gleaming shine of her mother’s lost teeth, two canines and a molar. It was nice, having a piece of her mom to keep. Even if she left again, Sam would still have part of her.
Sam sighed, and turned away from the ocean. As she faced towards the low dunes further up the beach, she saw a sandcastle sitting nestled among them. It was such a strange sight that her eyes skipped over it at first, almost automatically, disregarding it because it was so out of place.
Sam found sandcastles out on the beach sometimes, usually half-collapsed and on the verge of being washed away by the waves, but she had never seen anything like the sandcastle in front of her. It was life-sized, something that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Scottish highlands, with spires shooting up above her head and carefully etched out bricks lining each side. The front wall was dominated by an arched set of double doors, twice her height, with a portcullis nestled at the top, ready to be dropped. All of it was lovingly detailed, down to the rust on the tips of the towers and the wood grain of the door. It was made out of wet, densely-packed sand, held together impossibly. It had not been there two hours ago, when she had come to the beach.
There was a bird sitting on the overhang of the door, small and black.
As soon as she took a step towards the sandcastle, the bird shook out its feathers and swooped down towards Sam, landing at her feet with a little stumble.
“Hey, kid, get out of here,” said the bird.
Sam closed her eyes, very deliberately. When she opened them, the bird was still there. Sam considered herself a very reasonable person, so she immediately drew the most logical conclusion. The bird was, she was almost certain, a demon.
“Trust me, you don’t want to run into Mr. Salty, the queen bitch himself,” the bird said.
“Mr. Salty?” Sam inquired, polite as she knew how to be. She edged to the side, trying to get a good angle to kick the bird like a soccer ball.
The bird did something similar to a wince, all its feathers fluffing up then settling back down. “Ah, don’t call him that. He’d turn you into a toad.”
The bird gestured with its head, towards the looming sand structure. “That’s his castle. He’s in there, probably scuttling along the ceiling or some shit because that’s the sort of weirdo he is.”
Sam nodded, encouraging. She pulled back her foot and lined up her shot, the way she’d seen athletes do on TV. She aimed right for its sharp beak and let loose. The bird saw it coming, its beady eyes widening, and it cawed in distress. It flapped away, avoiding her kick only to fall backward into the sand in a scramble of wings.
“What’s your fucking problem?” it squawked. “I was trying to help you!”
“I don’t need the help of a demon,” Sam yelled, trying to remember the exorcism that her mama had taught her once, because her mama believed in being prepared for anything.
“I’m not a demon,” the bird said indignantly.
It was at about that moment that Sam gave up and just decided to roll with it.
“What are you, then?” Sam asked.
The bird shuffled its clawed feet, looking about as awkward as it could, given that it didn’t really have recognizable facial expressions. “Technically I’m a familiar of the Erlking, prince of the fae, but I prefer to be called Hitch.”
“You can’t blame me for assuming, though,” Sam said. “Ravens do tend to be associated with murder.”
“Hey, excuse you,” Hitch said. “I’m a rook, not a raven. Ravens are way bigger.”
“Sure,” Sam said, not really paying attention. Her eyes had caught on the details of the sandcastle, and she was transfixed by the slow spirals of the sand, the strange beauty of it. She found herself stepping towards the great doors, lifting a hand to knock, and as she did, the sand warped in front of her eyes, heaving itself towards her with bulging slowness. The door creaked open before her, revealing a vast, empty room. Just before she stepped inside, she felt a piercing pain in her foot, and she yelped, leaping backwards.
Hitch pecked her again, really digging his beak in. “Don’t be an idiot.”
Sam glared at him, rubbing her foot. About to retort, she finally really took in the room inside the sandcastle, and her words died in her throat.
There was a body just past the threshold of the door, face down and limbs hanging limp at its sides. Long hair splayed out in a halo around its head.
“Don’t,” Hitch warned, suddenly serious. “Just leave, kid, I mean it. I’ve seen too many people go down this road and you don’t want to be one of them.”
Sam ignored him. She made her way across the beach, slipping with every step. The sand felt deeper, piling up around her feet in silent drifts. She picked up the nearest stick and poked the body with it through the door, ready to leap back if anything went wrong, staying firmly outside of the sandcastle.
This close, Sam could tell that it used to be a woman. Her head wasn’t attached to her body. It hadn’t been a clean amputation, either. Her upper body was bruised, with chunks taken out of it, and the bones in her neck hung mangled, not connected to anything.
“Well, I warned you,” Hitch said, defeated. “I did warn you.”
Sam nudged the head with the end of the stick, nudging it over so that she could see the face. Her mother stared back at her, torn to pieces, breath still wheezing from her lungs. She wasn’t blinking, just gazing forward with glazed eyes. Sweat dripped down from her hairline.
Sam screamed and dropped the stick, tripping over herself in her haste to get away.
Her mother’s eyes were wide and pleading, and she was mouthing desperate words at Sam. Her vocal cords were broken to bits, and the only sound that came out was a strained groan.
The head rolled, inching closer to Sam like a grotesque caterpillar.
Her mother gasped for air, torn lips fluttering. Finally, comprehensible words came out. “Help. Help me, daughter.”
“That’s not your mother,” Hitch said, quiet.
Sam knew that. Her mother was sleeping back at home, and anyways her mom had never asked for her help. She had an aversion to accepting charity, as she put it.
“Okay,” Sam said, shaking all over. “Okay.”
She backed away from the sandcastle, not looking away.
“Failure,” her mother hissed as she stepped away. “I never wanted a daughter like you.”
The sun came up over the horizon. The sandcastle, Hitch, and her mom all disintegrated into sand as the light hit them.
The beach, the next night, was almost exactly how I remembered it. The beams of our flashlights sent light bouncing across the dunes, illuminating the waves, and I imagined faces in the foam of the waves.
“I’ve been back here a hundred times. There’s nothing left,” I said.
Sam took the car key out of her purse and pointed it at the sand, adjusting the sword slung over her shoulder in order to do it. The key had belonged to Hitch; Sam had requested an item of his, and it was the only thing I had left. She rested the key on the sand and drew a circle around it, inscribing symbols around the borders.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Sam shrugged. “Not much, really. I’m…I guess you could say that I’m knocking.”
The key laid inert on the sand for long enough that I was just about to give up and go home, admit to myself that Hitch was dead and that I was a fool to believe that Sam could actually help me. Then a building started to take shape, flickering in and out like it was struggling to get away. With a pop of displaced air, the sandcastle settled into existence.
Sam banged on the entryway. Nothing happened. She did it again, harder, and scowled when the door still didn’t open.
“We demand entrance, under your honor,” Sam yelled. There was a hard rush of wind, and I gripped Sam’s arm to keep my balance, but the doors cracked open reluctantly.
The inside of the sandcastle consisted of one enormous hall, the roof arching up out of sight. Rafters crisscrossed from wall to wall, and a cobbled path led further into the building, but other than that, it was completely empty, except for the birds. There were thousands of them, perched on the rafters or hopping along the ground. They parted in front of Sam and I, and reformed behind us, leaving us in a small pocket of open space. They were all black-feathered, with sharp beaks and beady eyes.
The Erlking sat on a throne at the end of the hall, lounging across it with his feet up on the armrest. He watched them as they came forward, the soft caw of the birds the only sound.
“I am here to bargain for the life of my brother,” I said, with as much dignity as I could muster, before the Erlking could say anything.
The Erlking ignored her, tilting his head to look at Sam. “I remember you. I almost got you, once.”
Sam glared at him but didn’t respond.
“You want your brother,” The Erlking said to me, and he almost sounded amused. “Then go get him.”
As if by some sort of silent signal, every bird in the room took flight at once, and their cawing made me think of screams. I covered my head against the flapping of their wings, and my vision was quickly obscured by the chaotic movement of them. I found myself on my knees, just trying to escape them.
A hand met my shoulder. Sam urged me to my feet, and together we ran for the edge of the room, where the swarm was the thinnest. We pressed ourselves into the corner and the swarm spiraled tighter and tighter at the center of the room. It went on until there seemed to be no differentiation between the birds, all of them fused together into one creature.
When the chaos died down, the birds had become one mass, with wings and eyes and talons sticking out of its flesh, thrashing and chirping. Human body parts stuck out of it, bulging out from the feathers. It was hands, mostly, with a couple knees or staring eyes. The bird amalgamation had no recognizable facial features, but there was one long beak extending from the front of its head. Most of the body parts were concentrated around the beak, and they peeked out from where the beak connected with muscle, or grew from the tongue, nestled between the two crushing halves of the beak.
It turned its beak down and crawled forward, using the hands to balance. The fingers scrambled over the ground. I was afraid of centipedes as a child, and I felt that same crawling dread when it started moving.
“Holy shit,” Sam whispered, which was rather disappointing, because I had been hoping that at least one of us knew what to do.
The creature turned, a lurching movement that crushed some of the hands underneath it, and started heaving itself slowly towards our corner.
“Better hurry up!” the Erlking called from his throne.
It was blocking the exit, by then. The shifting body of it had moved to block us off. It ambled towards us and I tried to sink further into the corner.
As it approached, getting close enough that I could smell the stink of it, I saw a flash of a tattoo on one of the hands. I leaned in, trying to find it again, like looking for dolphins surfacing in the ocean. And again, I caught a glimpse of a duck tattoo, the tattoo that Hitch had gotten on his hand as a teenager.
I ripped away from Sam’s death grip and ran for the monster.
I fell to my knees in front of it, wincing as I impacted the ground, and reached into the nest of hands. I could feel them tearing at my forearms and ripping into me with their sharp nails, but I kept going. I pressed further in, up to my shoulder in a writhing mass of limbs, aiming for the spot where I had last seen that tattoo.
The hands were tugging at me, wrapping around my back and hair. They were pulling together, trying to draw me completely into the mass of them. I was aware of Sam at my side, anchoring me in place and bashing any hand that got too close with her sword or the sparks that leapt from her hands with muttered words. But I didn’t think it would be enough. They were too strong, and there were too many of them.
I was up to my waist in the hands when something grabbed my palm. I felt the way it clung to me, and the calluses on its palm, and I knew that I had found my brother.
I flung herself back. The hands didn’t want to let me go, and they fought the whole way, but slowly, I made progress. I kept hold of Hitch’s hand in mine the whole time, gripping it as hard as I could. I finally broke free, Hitch with me, and Sam was immediately charging the creature, able to use her sword with much greater strength without being worried about injuring Hitch. She swung it forward, and it sliced through the wrist of one of the hands. It fell without a sound, red sand flowing out of it. It deflated until it looked like dirty laundry, just a piece of limp flesh. The creature shrieked, scuttling away enough that the door was finally accessible. The three of us ran for it, Sam and I supporting Hitch between us.
I looked back as I left and found the Erlking staring right at me.
“Interesting,” he murmured, his voice carrying impossibly across the vast space between us.
The sandcastle collapsed behind us, the great walls falling in on themselves. We were out in the morning sun, the sandcastle disappearing as we watched. Hitch was on the ground in front of me, as young as he’d been thirty years ago, when he was captured. He started laughing, feathers puffing out of his mouth. He laughed until he cried and I hugged him in the way that he’d held me when I was young, in the times when my life had been defined by hunger and fear.
Hitch left, afterwards. He scratched at the pinhole scars covering his body, where feathers burst through his skin, and pulled his long sleeves down around his wrists. He didn’t know where he was going but he told me that he needed time
I had spent thirty years worth of time without him. I wanted to grab my brother by the shoulders and beg him to stay. But he flinched when I hugged him goodbye and he refused to go near sand and he stared distrustfully at the birds chirping in the trees. Hitch needed to go away and I loved him too much to stop him.
I sat out on the beach every morning. I felt the sun on my face and I waited for Hitch to come home.
2024.05.19 08:00 redbird180 Is there such thing as an inpatient program, "camp," or some kind of intensive training for adults with ASD to learn basic life skills? Im a NT (F, 54) married to a ND (M, 56) @ wits end.
TLDR: Is there such thing as a life boot camp with ppl with high-functioning ASD? An intensive, hands on, and or immersive type "experience" where one could learn "simple" things like how to open your mail, pay bills on time, make checklists for yourself, keep your room clean (make a bed, fold laundry), etc? It would be such a great bonus if there was ANYTHING that could teach basic intimate relationship skills too either in addition or separately. I have been overcompensating for my husband for almost a decade and a half and Im getting worn out. I don't want to do it bc not only do I think it wouldn't work but it would have me "playing mommy" and no one wants to f*ck their mother. At least they are not supposed to ;)
My apologies if I am in the wrong place.
I love my husband, I do. I don't want to get divorced, we have 2 kids F 13 and M 12. Our parents got divorced and we never want to do that our kids. That said, I have been pretty unhappy for YEARS. I posted in the deadbedroom bc our sex life ground down to a halt and someone there thought my hubby sounded ASD. It made so much sense the more I looked into it. Both of our kids have been diagnosed ASD and ADHD (both my hubby and I are diagnosed ADHD-He takes meds and sees a psch, I don't bc I don't feel the need). Ive told him many times you are either ASD or an a$$hole? Which is it or is it both?
ITB his parents got divorced when he was 6 months old, he never had a romantic relationship that lasted longer than 5 months, and the fact that he is a "geek" (works in tech and has a master's in Physics-he got on a full merit scholarship), he has little to no life skills and or understands what is involved in a healthy happy intimate relationship.
When we 1st met, he was living in squalor. Like never cleaned his bathroom for 13 yrs, only owned 1 fork, had only a bed, a desk, and a book shelf in a 1200 sq ft apt. Stacks of books everywhere and piles of old clothes, shoes, etc. I tend to be a fairly "dynamic" person and had owned my own company for almost a decade. My profession requires a HUGE level of organization, people skills, etc and utilizes all my positive attributes of ADHD. It seemed at the time I could take the guy out of the squalor, give him a beautiful home, children and a great life. But I guess I did not understand that you cant take the squalor out of the guy?!?!
We met when I was turning 40 and he was 42 going on 43. I got pregnant the 1st time we had sex, so we got married, bought our 1st home and other amazing milestones happened easily and quickly for us. For the 1st 5 yrs we were married, it wasn't perfect but things worked and I was happy. I now realize that I just overcompensated for him in MANY ways, thinking that he would get the hang of SOME things and learn how to pitch in and or be more of a partner. We have tried marriage counseling through the yrs but nothing seems to have any effect on him. He goes through the movements or just says what sounds good at the time but just reverts back or doesn't do anything that would be or lead to meaningful change.
He operates on this lvl where if he thinks things are fair or good, they are...even though they so arent. He LOVES playing the semantics game where he will claim things like he IS "trying" bc he does X (that is a very small baby step type thing) for X amount of time and I guess I am supposed to understand and take whatever he is doing bc....reasons and he is "trying."
Besides doing his job that he was doing for years before we met (he is the same "lvl" and has not taken on ANY advancement in his career) to earn the $ that supports our family (we agreed I would give up my company and career until our youngest went to the 1st grade and I have made some savvy investments to bring in considerable $) he does practically NOTHING. He works from home since 2020/Covid and at 1st it was good bc it offered us more freedom in where we could live but now he is around 24/7. I would LOVE to return to my beloved career, but I have nothing left energy and time wise between our kids, the house, and him. He wont even get our mail out of the mailbox, let alone open it and or deal with LIFE.
He is seeing a psychiatrist and says he doesn't suffer from depression. He has terrible sleep hygiene and we sleep in separate rooms. We have cleaning people in once a week but his room is almost constantly dirty, disorganized, and cluttered. He constantly maintains that he doesn't really see what the problem is and plays the "semantics game" like "I empty out the dishwasher" ( a task that I have timed myself doing in less than 2 min) or "I take out the trash" when I bring up that I feel like Im drowning in a sea of tasks.
I have told him that I am unhappy. I have screamed and yelled. I have tried being sweet and accommodating to ask that he be at least semi-accommodating in return but he doesn't seem to care that our relationship is not mitigated. I have tried letting things get so bad that he would HAVE to do more but he just lets things get so bad like when our water gets turned off due to lack of payment, he goes to the store and bought a few gallons of water so "it buys us some time" getting the water bill paid the next day. It is NOT like we don't have the $, he just doesn't "like" paying bills and or "dealing with drudgery" LIKE I DO!?!?!
I have asked him to live in a hotel bc I told him that if he didn't, I would go to a hotel bc I need a break from him AND I want him to know I am SO SICK OF HIS SH*T. He agreed and is supposed to be trying to find help. He has tried life coaches (he simply did not do any work that they gave him to do and they charge 1k a month) and allegedly is trying procrastinators anonymous but I see no real effort. I have asked him to get diagnosed with ASD but he claims he spoke with a therapist that specializes in ppl with ASD and the therapist said that "it wouldn't matter" if he got a diagnosis. I asked if he is telling ppl that his marriage is on the rocks and he told me that he did say that his "lack of effort has put some strife in his marriage." Some strife in his marriage?!?! Did he elaborate and or tell them about how unhappy I am? No. He is "concentrating" his efforts on improving "executive functioning" and I guess this is supposed to help make the MEANINGFUL CHANGE I so desperately want and need him to make.
I think that something like boot camp or a life skill clinic or a halfway house for separated/divorced dads would stand the best chance of having him make the changes to his life he DESPERATELY needs to make. If not for me or even more for him but for our kids. They are picking up his bad and destructive habits. In his defense, he doesn't know how to do most things. Both of his parents were highly toxic ppl. His father died in his apt and it wasn't until his body started to smell that anyone noticed. The fire dept had to climb in through the window-fire escape bc the apt was so cluttered/hoarded. His mother is anorexic, keeps no food in the house, will sleep in her clothes on top of a made bed rather than "do all that laundry," and lives in squalor. So, he never learned it at home.
Is there anything where a grown man could learn basic life skills and or how to be a halfway (Id take 1/8) decent partner? Maybe if he could gain some life skills and or the ability to deal with life's demands, he would be happier, healthier in mind, body, and spirit, and in turn me and our family.
ANY suggestions besides "just get a divorce" or "put up with it bc you have for over a decade" it would be helpful. Thanks for reading my BOOK.
submitted by redbird180 to autism [link] [comments]
My apologies if I am in the wrong place.
I love my husband, I do. I don't want to get divorced, we have 2 kids F 13 and M 12. Our parents got divorced and we never want to do that our kids. That said, I have been pretty unhappy for YEARS. I posted in the deadbedroom bc our sex life ground down to a halt and someone there thought my hubby sounded ASD. It made so much sense the more I looked into it. Both of our kids have been diagnosed ASD and ADHD (both my hubby and I are diagnosed ADHD-He takes meds and sees a psch, I don't bc I don't feel the need). Ive told him many times you are either ASD or an a$$hole? Which is it or is it both?
ITB his parents got divorced when he was 6 months old, he never had a romantic relationship that lasted longer than 5 months, and the fact that he is a "geek" (works in tech and has a master's in Physics-he got on a full merit scholarship), he has little to no life skills and or understands what is involved in a healthy happy intimate relationship.
When we 1st met, he was living in squalor. Like never cleaned his bathroom for 13 yrs, only owned 1 fork, had only a bed, a desk, and a book shelf in a 1200 sq ft apt. Stacks of books everywhere and piles of old clothes, shoes, etc. I tend to be a fairly "dynamic" person and had owned my own company for almost a decade. My profession requires a HUGE level of organization, people skills, etc and utilizes all my positive attributes of ADHD. It seemed at the time I could take the guy out of the squalor, give him a beautiful home, children and a great life. But I guess I did not understand that you cant take the squalor out of the guy?!?!
We met when I was turning 40 and he was 42 going on 43. I got pregnant the 1st time we had sex, so we got married, bought our 1st home and other amazing milestones happened easily and quickly for us. For the 1st 5 yrs we were married, it wasn't perfect but things worked and I was happy. I now realize that I just overcompensated for him in MANY ways, thinking that he would get the hang of SOME things and learn how to pitch in and or be more of a partner. We have tried marriage counseling through the yrs but nothing seems to have any effect on him. He goes through the movements or just says what sounds good at the time but just reverts back or doesn't do anything that would be or lead to meaningful change.
He operates on this lvl where if he thinks things are fair or good, they are...even though they so arent. He LOVES playing the semantics game where he will claim things like he IS "trying" bc he does X (that is a very small baby step type thing) for X amount of time and I guess I am supposed to understand and take whatever he is doing bc....reasons and he is "trying."
Besides doing his job that he was doing for years before we met (he is the same "lvl" and has not taken on ANY advancement in his career) to earn the $ that supports our family (we agreed I would give up my company and career until our youngest went to the 1st grade and I have made some savvy investments to bring in considerable $) he does practically NOTHING. He works from home since 2020/Covid and at 1st it was good bc it offered us more freedom in where we could live but now he is around 24/7. I would LOVE to return to my beloved career, but I have nothing left energy and time wise between our kids, the house, and him. He wont even get our mail out of the mailbox, let alone open it and or deal with LIFE.
He is seeing a psychiatrist and says he doesn't suffer from depression. He has terrible sleep hygiene and we sleep in separate rooms. We have cleaning people in once a week but his room is almost constantly dirty, disorganized, and cluttered. He constantly maintains that he doesn't really see what the problem is and plays the "semantics game" like "I empty out the dishwasher" ( a task that I have timed myself doing in less than 2 min) or "I take out the trash" when I bring up that I feel like Im drowning in a sea of tasks.
I have told him that I am unhappy. I have screamed and yelled. I have tried being sweet and accommodating to ask that he be at least semi-accommodating in return but he doesn't seem to care that our relationship is not mitigated. I have tried letting things get so bad that he would HAVE to do more but he just lets things get so bad like when our water gets turned off due to lack of payment, he goes to the store and bought a few gallons of water so "it buys us some time" getting the water bill paid the next day. It is NOT like we don't have the $, he just doesn't "like" paying bills and or "dealing with drudgery" LIKE I DO!?!?!
I have asked him to live in a hotel bc I told him that if he didn't, I would go to a hotel bc I need a break from him AND I want him to know I am SO SICK OF HIS SH*T. He agreed and is supposed to be trying to find help. He has tried life coaches (he simply did not do any work that they gave him to do and they charge 1k a month) and allegedly is trying procrastinators anonymous but I see no real effort. I have asked him to get diagnosed with ASD but he claims he spoke with a therapist that specializes in ppl with ASD and the therapist said that "it wouldn't matter" if he got a diagnosis. I asked if he is telling ppl that his marriage is on the rocks and he told me that he did say that his "lack of effort has put some strife in his marriage." Some strife in his marriage?!?! Did he elaborate and or tell them about how unhappy I am? No. He is "concentrating" his efforts on improving "executive functioning" and I guess this is supposed to help make the MEANINGFUL CHANGE I so desperately want and need him to make.
I think that something like boot camp or a life skill clinic or a halfway house for separated/divorced dads would stand the best chance of having him make the changes to his life he DESPERATELY needs to make. If not for me or even more for him but for our kids. They are picking up his bad and destructive habits. In his defense, he doesn't know how to do most things. Both of his parents were highly toxic ppl. His father died in his apt and it wasn't until his body started to smell that anyone noticed. The fire dept had to climb in through the window-fire escape bc the apt was so cluttered/hoarded. His mother is anorexic, keeps no food in the house, will sleep in her clothes on top of a made bed rather than "do all that laundry," and lives in squalor. So, he never learned it at home.
Is there anything where a grown man could learn basic life skills and or how to be a halfway (Id take 1/8) decent partner? Maybe if he could gain some life skills and or the ability to deal with life's demands, he would be happier, healthier in mind, body, and spirit, and in turn me and our family.
ANY suggestions besides "just get a divorce" or "put up with it bc you have for over a decade" it would be helpful. Thanks for reading my BOOK.
2024.05.19 07:04 Ok_Start1379 Do you think therapy can help me (27F) and my (ex)fiancé (28M) repair our relationship?
My (ex)fiancé and I had been together for almost 6.5 years, engaged for almost 2.5. Over the last several months, my (ex)fiancé has sat me down to talk about our relationship about once a month. Before these conversations, he would shut down and barely speak to me for several days even when I would ask what was wrong. Then he would finally tell me he was ready to have a conversation and would express his frustrations with the relationship. By the time of our conversations, I would already be on the defensive from his recent behavior. I also generally do not receive feedback well. When he would try to tell me that he was unhappy in our relationship because I didn't compliment him enough, flirt with him enough, or tell him I loved him enough, I would shut down. I was not able to hear what he was really trying to tell me. Instead, I put up a wall and told him to love me for who I am. I basically asked him "If I'm happy in our relationship despite my frustrations, why can't you be?" I now realize that is not an appropriate or healthy response when your partner is trying to communicate with you.
I did try to hear him. I gifted him some lingerie for the first time and let him take a boudoir photo shoot of me wearing it. I started sending a few more cute messages. I tried to make more time to cuddle with him when he would ask. I tried to give him more hugs. I tried to thank him more for picking up around the house. I wrote him a cute letter and surprised him with a few gifts for Easter. However, about a month ago, we had another one of those conversations. Except this time the first things he brought up were 'wondering what else is out there' and talking about how other girls are always complimenting him. Again came the walls and extra defensiveness. I ended up writing him a letter talking about how I didn't know if I could ever be what he wanted me to be and that maybe he should think about calling things off. This was obviously a defense mechanism to try to beat him to the punch line and talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. Three weeks later he would sit me down and tell me he wanted to know what else was out there again and that he didn't know if he could go through with marrying me. My efforts did not feel like enough for him and I understand why. I was having a hard time connecting my emotions with my actions which made my actions seem reactionary and not genuine or provoked by love.
I have been through a lot more trauma in my life than I realized. My dad was in the Navy while I was growing up. We had to move every three years. A very pivotal point in my life was when we moved when I was in the 6th grade. I lived right next door to my best friend. I was finding my love for math and theater. I also played soccer and was a Girl Scout. When we moved, I became very depressed, though I didn't understand that's what it was at the time. I stopped all of my extracurricular activities. I stopped getting too close to people because I knew I would have to move or they would have to move eventually. I mostly stayed in my room and kept to myself, even from my family. I also have struggled with anxiety for as long as I can remember. Then, in my senior year of high school, I got my first-ever boyfriend. We were in a relationship for over 4 years. In that relationship, I would always be the one to try to talk about our problems. I would be the one who would always want longer hugs and more cuddles. But it was not a healthy relationship. We broke up and got back together many times. I found several illicit texts to other girls on multiple occasions and he would always gaslight me by saying his younger brother stole his phone or I misinterpreted the messages. I think this caused me not to want to show my emotions because it wasn't reciprocated and resulted in heartache. Then, three years ago my younger brother died in a tragic car accident at the age of 17.
When I realized I could lose the love of my life, I realized that he was right about me not being affectionate enough. I had built up walls to protect myself. I thought I had made progress on my anxiety and depression, but I realized I was wrong. I also realized that I have issues with communication, trust, and vulnerability. I was a great partner in other ways and I did express my love in other ways. I moved across the country, coast to coast, with him to a state where I didn't know anyone so that he could attend his dream school. I take care of the household. I get the majority of the groceries. I do all of the cooking. I do all of the maintenance cleaning. I take care of our 2 cats and 1 dog. I say all of those in the present tense because we currently still live together but are sleeping in separate rooms. I also financially supported him by lending him money and letting him pay less of the rent because I made more money. I accept all of him including that he has terrible time management skills, he can have a hard time controlling his emotions at times, and he is disorganized and messy. I also accepted that I would have to wait for marriage and children because of his school and accepted that he did not have a lot of free time between school, work, and his hobbies. I supported his love for his hobbies by accepting his purchasing of expensive equipment even when he owed me money, traveling to watch several events that were important to him, and traveling to see him win an award from his job. I would write heartfelt cards for every holiday. I also bought him dozens of children's books about love that I wanted us to read to our children one day.
When I realized I could lose him, I felt something change inside me. It was like I could feel a hole being blown in the wall I had built up. I felt all my love for him overwhelm me. I couldn't hug him, kiss him, or tell him I love him enough. I tried to talk to him to apologize for my behavior and how badly I'd hurt him. I tried to explain how I felt like a different person and how I really wanted to work hard on improving myself as a partner to make our relationship work. I tried to prove my words with actions. I wrote a list of things I needed to work on including communication and being more affectionate. I also wrote out a list of ways to work on those things and actually started doing the things on the list. Some of the items I had already begun to do like hug and kiss him more and tell him I love him more. I also tried to ask more questions about his interests/hobbies/day. I was more vulnerable and talked with him about my feelings more. I even initiated intimacy, something I had really only done once in a blue moon when I was intoxicated. I also set up my individual therapy sessions.
Despite all of my efforts, over the next two weeks, he continued to say he did not know if he could be with me and wanted to know what else was out there. He was very wavering and said multiple times "I don't know what the right decision is." He said he could not trust that my changes would last and that it was probably too late. I begged him to try couples therapy, but he refused and said "Therapy takes too long" and basically said it wasn't worth the time. He finally broke up with me after 2 weeks of going back and forth and I was devastated. He later talked to a mutual friend of ours and changed his mind about therapy. I was so happy to hear that he had changed his mind. However, now I feel like I can't even trust him anymore. He's turning into a person I don't recognize and I don't know what he's capable of anymore. I don't know if the man I love still exists. When he told me he was now agreeable to try therapy he said "We're still broken up, but I won't talk to any other girls." and then promptly said "And it will give me more time to find a place to live if things don't work out." He deleted several Instagram posts that had photos of me after he agreed to try therapy which makes me think he's not actually that open to healing our relationship. He complained to me about how he might have to take out student loans after I told him he needed to pay me for half of the rent while we're broken up and not decreased rate he had been paying me. He also "checked on me" on the night of the 3rd year anniversary of my brother's death when he heard me crying. Then he just sat on the end of the bed scrolling his phone while I cried as if he was checking on me because he felt like he had to and not because he wanted to. When I asked him if he had some sort of deadline in mind for the therapy, because he had previously mentioned that it takes too long, he said July or August and I have a suspicion that is because a girl he likes is leaving for summer break but will be back at the end of August for the next semester.
I just feel like the way he has been acting is not how you act towards someone you were in a relationship with for almost 6.5 years. Especially after saying you still love them and have no negative feelings towards them. That means even though you don't think you are a good relationship match, you should still want to treat them with respect. You should care that they are hurting during this time. You should want to comfort them in their grief of a separate event. You should mean it if you say you want to try therapy.
TL; DR : Do you think therapy will help?
submitted by Ok_Start1379 to relationship_advice [link] [comments]
I did try to hear him. I gifted him some lingerie for the first time and let him take a boudoir photo shoot of me wearing it. I started sending a few more cute messages. I tried to make more time to cuddle with him when he would ask. I tried to give him more hugs. I tried to thank him more for picking up around the house. I wrote him a cute letter and surprised him with a few gifts for Easter. However, about a month ago, we had another one of those conversations. Except this time the first things he brought up were 'wondering what else is out there' and talking about how other girls are always complimenting him. Again came the walls and extra defensiveness. I ended up writing him a letter talking about how I didn't know if I could ever be what he wanted me to be and that maybe he should think about calling things off. This was obviously a defense mechanism to try to beat him to the punch line and talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. Three weeks later he would sit me down and tell me he wanted to know what else was out there again and that he didn't know if he could go through with marrying me. My efforts did not feel like enough for him and I understand why. I was having a hard time connecting my emotions with my actions which made my actions seem reactionary and not genuine or provoked by love.
I have been through a lot more trauma in my life than I realized. My dad was in the Navy while I was growing up. We had to move every three years. A very pivotal point in my life was when we moved when I was in the 6th grade. I lived right next door to my best friend. I was finding my love for math and theater. I also played soccer and was a Girl Scout. When we moved, I became very depressed, though I didn't understand that's what it was at the time. I stopped all of my extracurricular activities. I stopped getting too close to people because I knew I would have to move or they would have to move eventually. I mostly stayed in my room and kept to myself, even from my family. I also have struggled with anxiety for as long as I can remember. Then, in my senior year of high school, I got my first-ever boyfriend. We were in a relationship for over 4 years. In that relationship, I would always be the one to try to talk about our problems. I would be the one who would always want longer hugs and more cuddles. But it was not a healthy relationship. We broke up and got back together many times. I found several illicit texts to other girls on multiple occasions and he would always gaslight me by saying his younger brother stole his phone or I misinterpreted the messages. I think this caused me not to want to show my emotions because it wasn't reciprocated and resulted in heartache. Then, three years ago my younger brother died in a tragic car accident at the age of 17.
When I realized I could lose the love of my life, I realized that he was right about me not being affectionate enough. I had built up walls to protect myself. I thought I had made progress on my anxiety and depression, but I realized I was wrong. I also realized that I have issues with communication, trust, and vulnerability. I was a great partner in other ways and I did express my love in other ways. I moved across the country, coast to coast, with him to a state where I didn't know anyone so that he could attend his dream school. I take care of the household. I get the majority of the groceries. I do all of the cooking. I do all of the maintenance cleaning. I take care of our 2 cats and 1 dog. I say all of those in the present tense because we currently still live together but are sleeping in separate rooms. I also financially supported him by lending him money and letting him pay less of the rent because I made more money. I accept all of him including that he has terrible time management skills, he can have a hard time controlling his emotions at times, and he is disorganized and messy. I also accepted that I would have to wait for marriage and children because of his school and accepted that he did not have a lot of free time between school, work, and his hobbies. I supported his love for his hobbies by accepting his purchasing of expensive equipment even when he owed me money, traveling to watch several events that were important to him, and traveling to see him win an award from his job. I would write heartfelt cards for every holiday. I also bought him dozens of children's books about love that I wanted us to read to our children one day.
When I realized I could lose him, I felt something change inside me. It was like I could feel a hole being blown in the wall I had built up. I felt all my love for him overwhelm me. I couldn't hug him, kiss him, or tell him I love him enough. I tried to talk to him to apologize for my behavior and how badly I'd hurt him. I tried to explain how I felt like a different person and how I really wanted to work hard on improving myself as a partner to make our relationship work. I tried to prove my words with actions. I wrote a list of things I needed to work on including communication and being more affectionate. I also wrote out a list of ways to work on those things and actually started doing the things on the list. Some of the items I had already begun to do like hug and kiss him more and tell him I love him more. I also tried to ask more questions about his interests/hobbies/day. I was more vulnerable and talked with him about my feelings more. I even initiated intimacy, something I had really only done once in a blue moon when I was intoxicated. I also set up my individual therapy sessions.
Despite all of my efforts, over the next two weeks, he continued to say he did not know if he could be with me and wanted to know what else was out there. He was very wavering and said multiple times "I don't know what the right decision is." He said he could not trust that my changes would last and that it was probably too late. I begged him to try couples therapy, but he refused and said "Therapy takes too long" and basically said it wasn't worth the time. He finally broke up with me after 2 weeks of going back and forth and I was devastated. He later talked to a mutual friend of ours and changed his mind about therapy. I was so happy to hear that he had changed his mind. However, now I feel like I can't even trust him anymore. He's turning into a person I don't recognize and I don't know what he's capable of anymore. I don't know if the man I love still exists. When he told me he was now agreeable to try therapy he said "We're still broken up, but I won't talk to any other girls." and then promptly said "And it will give me more time to find a place to live if things don't work out." He deleted several Instagram posts that had photos of me after he agreed to try therapy which makes me think he's not actually that open to healing our relationship. He complained to me about how he might have to take out student loans after I told him he needed to pay me for half of the rent while we're broken up and not decreased rate he had been paying me. He also "checked on me" on the night of the 3rd year anniversary of my brother's death when he heard me crying. Then he just sat on the end of the bed scrolling his phone while I cried as if he was checking on me because he felt like he had to and not because he wanted to. When I asked him if he had some sort of deadline in mind for the therapy, because he had previously mentioned that it takes too long, he said July or August and I have a suspicion that is because a girl he likes is leaving for summer break but will be back at the end of August for the next semester.
I just feel like the way he has been acting is not how you act towards someone you were in a relationship with for almost 6.5 years. Especially after saying you still love them and have no negative feelings towards them. That means even though you don't think you are a good relationship match, you should still want to treat them with respect. You should care that they are hurting during this time. You should want to comfort them in their grief of a separate event. You should mean it if you say you want to try therapy.
TL; DR : Do you think therapy will help?
2024.05.19 06:57 amithedrama89 Born on lunar eclipse?
 | Apparently I have an interesting chart.. I don’t even know where to begin. Lunar eclipse 2 hours before I was born, mercury and Venus both in 1st house, and moon at 29 degrees? I’ve done research for a few weeks now and the only conclusion I’m coming up with is that I’m a happy, control freak with parental issues. Any clarity on the lunar eclipse? Or possibly a point in the right direction as far as seeking help? submitted by amithedrama89 to AskAstrologers [link] [comments] |
2024.05.19 06:51 Suspicious_Seesaw_30 My Grey Alien Experiences
I was in the backyard one night with my freinds. They were chatting and looking at something on their phones and I heard a twig snap to the right of me. I turned to look and saw a very tall and skinny figure standing in the shadows just behind a tree towards the back of the yard. It was moving back and forth on its feet in a inhuman way and stood at least a foot and a half above the 6 foot fence. I could see it's slender body slightly through the tree and could tell it was in the backyard with us, and it seemed like it was looking right at me even though I couldn't see its face. I panicked and went inside to grab a flashlight, my boyfriend and his friend followed me to see what was wrong, I told them there was something out there but when we went back out we couldn't see any trace of it with the light.
About 2 years after moving to our new home my boyfreind was at his freinds house and would be home in a hour or two. I was getting ready to take a shower and locked myself in the bathroom. I lock the doors behind me becuase it makes me feel safer when I'm alone. So I'm in there getting things ready and I hear a weird sound. It sounded like the doorknob to the bathroom door was turning. I looked over at it kind of confused and sure enough I could see the doorknob moving. I kind of laughed to myself like "wow girl you've really lost it huh" like it was a joke. Well whatever was behind that door heard me and became very aggressive. It started making these aggressive clicking noises and shoving the door. I wasn't laughing anymore and realized that this was happening, something was here and it was trying to get in. My cat started going crazy, I could hear her out in the hallway hissing and growling and I wanted to know what was going on out there but I was so terrified it was like I was paralyzed. Whatever it was went quiet for a few minutes and then I heard what sounded like someone banging their fists on my living room window outside the bathroom then followed by banging on my kitchen counter. I was shaking and I didn't know what to do. I just stayed there, I fully expected whatever was out there to come through the door at any moment but it went silent and the banging stopped. All the doors and windows were locked, there was no way anything could've been in my apartment. Honestly I'd never experienced fear like that before and I didn't move at all the entire time until my boyfreind got home. He could tell something had happened and was concerned about my safety. Even after he had gotten home I was still shaking and couldn't help but feel whatever it was that tried to get in was still there and had never left and was watching us.
There was another time I was walking up the driveway around 1 in the morning and I saw a tall grey crouched outside the bushes next to my bedroom window. It was just staring at me and didn't move or say anything. I made eye contact with it and it freaked the shit out of me. Why was it just waiting there by my window??? Did it want me to see it?? I don't understand but I was scared so I went and sat on the couch and avoided going to my room.
One time when I was a kid I was having a dream about a hooded figure and I woke up to a pain in my lower left side. When I opened my eyes there was a being standing right next to my head about a foot from my face. It was incredibly short, like the size of a child. I looked at it for about 5-10 seconds before it vanished into thin air. Like it activated a cloaking device.
I'm scared honestly, I don't know what they want or if they want to hurt me. I've tried requesting contact or asking for information but absolute silence. I have no clue what's going on and I legit don't know what to think of all this. Anyone here have any perspectives on the matter? I feel like I'm being harrased or they want me to go insane. I've been having sleep paralysis too, feeling like someone is touching my side. The same side that the short being was doing something to when I was a kid.
I don't know if it's related but I had an out if body experience a couple years ago when I was meditating. My heart rate slowed down significantly and so did my breathing and I saw and felt myself from 1st person flying into the sky with other people. I wasn't my body, I was made if pure energy and geometry changing colors and form. Everyone else was too and we all felt and thought as one singular being. Then I was back in my body. My TV turned on by itself right afterwards and starting changing inputs. Like someone wanted me to know I had been shown something I don't know could be a coincidence.
The only answer I've ever heard was just a couple dreams I had. In one a rock being materialized in my living room and told me they were interested in me becuase I have the shard whatever that means. But it could just be a dream and not correlated. In another one I'm in a house and I go over to the window. Open the curtain and there is a grey looking at me, it's eye reflecting light like a cat. I flicked it off jokingly and it returned the favor. I sat down and it came in and sat next to me. It told me that it was me and it could see light everywhere. It said alot more but I can't remember anything. It then turned into the cat I had just gotten recently. So yeah like I said probably not very reliable lol.
I also had a dream that I was standing on a platform overlooking am ocean and the moon fell into the sea. A portal opened up in the water where it fell and a being emerged moving towards the platform. He was very tall, had blue green skin, an extremely long neck and long thin slit black eyes that wrapped around his head. He read my mind and showed me images of me sitting in a chair in front of a TV drinking. I felt like he wanted me to stop drinking. When I accepted this he gave me a slip of paper and a portal opened up on the wall. A human man greeted me and took me into his office. He was also telepathic and seemed like a doctor of sorts. He showed me pics of something but I don't remember what it was. He then told me my boyfreinds memory would be erased. I then was telephoned over the portal in the ocean and started falling into it from the sky. Someone I couldn't see said "ego death" and as I got closer I saw a place that looked alot like zion from the matrix. Rows and rows of metal walkways of people on them going down for miles. Then I woke up. Don't think that will actually happen but it was a weird dream. Haha I wish though
submitted by Suspicious_Seesaw_30 to Experiencers [link] [comments]
About 2 years after moving to our new home my boyfreind was at his freinds house and would be home in a hour or two. I was getting ready to take a shower and locked myself in the bathroom. I lock the doors behind me becuase it makes me feel safer when I'm alone. So I'm in there getting things ready and I hear a weird sound. It sounded like the doorknob to the bathroom door was turning. I looked over at it kind of confused and sure enough I could see the doorknob moving. I kind of laughed to myself like "wow girl you've really lost it huh" like it was a joke. Well whatever was behind that door heard me and became very aggressive. It started making these aggressive clicking noises and shoving the door. I wasn't laughing anymore and realized that this was happening, something was here and it was trying to get in. My cat started going crazy, I could hear her out in the hallway hissing and growling and I wanted to know what was going on out there but I was so terrified it was like I was paralyzed. Whatever it was went quiet for a few minutes and then I heard what sounded like someone banging their fists on my living room window outside the bathroom then followed by banging on my kitchen counter. I was shaking and I didn't know what to do. I just stayed there, I fully expected whatever was out there to come through the door at any moment but it went silent and the banging stopped. All the doors and windows were locked, there was no way anything could've been in my apartment. Honestly I'd never experienced fear like that before and I didn't move at all the entire time until my boyfreind got home. He could tell something had happened and was concerned about my safety. Even after he had gotten home I was still shaking and couldn't help but feel whatever it was that tried to get in was still there and had never left and was watching us.
There was another time I was walking up the driveway around 1 in the morning and I saw a tall grey crouched outside the bushes next to my bedroom window. It was just staring at me and didn't move or say anything. I made eye contact with it and it freaked the shit out of me. Why was it just waiting there by my window??? Did it want me to see it?? I don't understand but I was scared so I went and sat on the couch and avoided going to my room.
One time when I was a kid I was having a dream about a hooded figure and I woke up to a pain in my lower left side. When I opened my eyes there was a being standing right next to my head about a foot from my face. It was incredibly short, like the size of a child. I looked at it for about 5-10 seconds before it vanished into thin air. Like it activated a cloaking device.
I'm scared honestly, I don't know what they want or if they want to hurt me. I've tried requesting contact or asking for information but absolute silence. I have no clue what's going on and I legit don't know what to think of all this. Anyone here have any perspectives on the matter? I feel like I'm being harrased or they want me to go insane. I've been having sleep paralysis too, feeling like someone is touching my side. The same side that the short being was doing something to when I was a kid.
I don't know if it's related but I had an out if body experience a couple years ago when I was meditating. My heart rate slowed down significantly and so did my breathing and I saw and felt myself from 1st person flying into the sky with other people. I wasn't my body, I was made if pure energy and geometry changing colors and form. Everyone else was too and we all felt and thought as one singular being. Then I was back in my body. My TV turned on by itself right afterwards and starting changing inputs. Like someone wanted me to know I had been shown something I don't know could be a coincidence.
The only answer I've ever heard was just a couple dreams I had. In one a rock being materialized in my living room and told me they were interested in me becuase I have the shard whatever that means. But it could just be a dream and not correlated. In another one I'm in a house and I go over to the window. Open the curtain and there is a grey looking at me, it's eye reflecting light like a cat. I flicked it off jokingly and it returned the favor. I sat down and it came in and sat next to me. It told me that it was me and it could see light everywhere. It said alot more but I can't remember anything. It then turned into the cat I had just gotten recently. So yeah like I said probably not very reliable lol.
I also had a dream that I was standing on a platform overlooking am ocean and the moon fell into the sea. A portal opened up in the water where it fell and a being emerged moving towards the platform. He was very tall, had blue green skin, an extremely long neck and long thin slit black eyes that wrapped around his head. He read my mind and showed me images of me sitting in a chair in front of a TV drinking. I felt like he wanted me to stop drinking. When I accepted this he gave me a slip of paper and a portal opened up on the wall. A human man greeted me and took me into his office. He was also telepathic and seemed like a doctor of sorts. He showed me pics of something but I don't remember what it was. He then told me my boyfreinds memory would be erased. I then was telephoned over the portal in the ocean and started falling into it from the sky. Someone I couldn't see said "ego death" and as I got closer I saw a place that looked alot like zion from the matrix. Rows and rows of metal walkways of people on them going down for miles. Then I woke up. Don't think that will actually happen but it was a weird dream. Haha I wish though
2024.05.19 06:49 irl246 What sub after r/kindergarten?
Recently realized it was time to unsubscribe from preschoolers, and am now thinking about what to add after kid moves on to first grade in the fall. Is it just parenting or is there a better place for 1st grade?
submitted by irl246 to kindergarten [link] [comments]
2024.05.19 06:22 dflores20 Nervous about teaching 7th grade 🥴
I have been teaching 1st grade for 3 years, and I have never ventured out to any other grade. My school offered me a 7th grade position and I took it. I AM EXCITED but NERVOUS. 😬 Can anyone give me advice? Like what to even expect? Be aware of? Is the curriculum consistent of what? It’ll be a( multiple subject 7th grade class btw) My principal told me he was going to support me throughout the year. I don’t even know where to start. Thank you! 😊
submitted by dflores20 to Teachers [link] [comments]
2024.05.19 06:18 user4679072 Abyg dahil late akong nag sorry?
I'm a graduating SHS student from UST. Nung 1st term ng grade 12, nag ka line of 7 ako sa isang subject which is chemistry. Isang quarter lang naman yung line of 7 and ayos naman lahat ng grades ko sa ibang subject, sa chem lang talaga pumalya.
Wala akong excuses sa kapalyahan ko. Hindi talaga ako nag pursigi noong time na yon, burn out ako physically and mentally pero bumawi naman ako ngayong 2nd term.
Fast forward, sinabi ko sa mom ko na nag ka line of 7 ako. Hindi ako proud, I just told her the truth. She was very disappointed. Because back in elem and JHS I'm an honor student achiever ba ayun hahaha. Ramdam na randam ko pag ka disappoint niya. Well, I understand kasi naman naghihirap siya para ipag-aral ako dito sa UST eh. Talagang madidisappoint talaga sa line of 7 ko. Kaya it's understandable na magalit at mainis siya sakin kasi halos binigay na niya lahat for me and I couldn't even make her proud.
I have a dorm plus may allowance ako and hindi naman strict parents ko. So I have the freedom that I want. Don't get me wrong I'm not the type of student to party all night. Sadyang hindi ko lang ma-grasps yung subject na chemistry and hindi ko talaga forte ang Health Sciences. That's my biggest mistake I guess. Trying to pursue something that I'm not passionate about just to please my mother. Gusto niya kasi ng anak na doktor. Mahirap mama, masyado akong bobo para dyan haha baka in my next life.
Anyway, I took USTET. I passed my priority program, so it seems di naman ako bobo hahaha. When I passed, kahit one word of "Congrats" wala akong narinig from them. Hayst. Alam ko namang hindi na nila ako pag aaralin sa UST. One because the program that I'm qualified for ay hindi align with Medical field and two since nga nagkaline of 7 ako wala ng bilib sakin mga magulang ko. Tanggap ko naman na hindi na nila ako pag aaralin sa UST, pero syempre dahil medyo makulit ako parang biniro biro ko sila "Mama UST nalang ako ulit please". Yung tono ko biro biro lang pero I'm not sure how my mom took it.
After a few days, bigla akong minessage ng ate ko. Pinagalitan niya ako sa family GC. Sinabi niya na deserve ko talaga na di na mag aral ulit sa dream school ko dahil sa kapalyahan ko. At napaka selfish ko daw, hindi ko raw iniisip pag hihirap ng magulang namin. She told me na kahit anong gawin ko madidisappoint sakin si mama.
Masakit lang para sa akin, ikaw ba namang pagsabihan ng ganon. Pero I know na sinabi niya yon sakin para magising ako sa katotohanan which is gising na gising pa ako pero that added salt to the wound talaga. Parang napakalaki ng kasalanan ko for getting a line of 7 in one quarter in one subject.
Syempre hindi ko na nireplyan, nag seen lang ako. Ano bang sasabihin ko? Hindi ko alam nung mga time na yon what's the right word to say... Baka magalit lang siya pag nag reply ako. My sister is older and she's pregnant with her first child, ayoko namang dumagdag ako sa stress niya. Kaya hinayaan ko lang, baka naglalabas lang ng stress toh. For now I'll just be the punching bag. I can take it naman. Lagi naman silang ganito sa akin.
A few days after nag chat siya sa GC, "Bati na tayo" tas mention ng name ko. Akala ko nag jojoke lang yung message kasi ang sarcastic and finals namin nung chinat niya yon. Ayoko munang madistract at baka mag break down pa ako so hindi ko muna pinansin yung message sa GC. Pero I accidentally left it on seen. This is not on purpose and hindi ko rin alam irereply ko kaya hindi talaga ako nag reply. I was still processing everything and I felt kinda depressed that week. And a small part of me resent her dahil sa mga sinabi niya sa akin, fresh pa yung wound ganon.
So fast forward, this week gender reveal nila ate. And naturang mag ooverlap siya sa schedule ng graduation practice namin (Gragraduate pa rin naman haha). So tinanong ko sa isa ko pang kapatid paano ko pag sisiksikan yung schedule and nag chat si kapatid sa GC asking what time end ng gender reveal.
After nun nag reply si ate na kahit wag na daw akong umattend, di naman daw nila ako kailangan. Hindi ako nag seen sa GC pero nabasa ko sa notification bar yung reply niya. Then minutes after nun nag chat siya sa akin sa personal message naman. Sabi niya dadalhin ko daw lahat netong mga ginagawa ko hanggang sa pagtanda. She basically cursed me out. Asking bakit ko daw siya tinatarantado eh buntis nga siya. Nagkikipagbati siya tas ako I had the audacity to left her message on read.
After a day ng message niyang yon nag sorry ako sakanya sa personal message. Very sincere and genuine yung sorry ko. Tinanggap ko kahit it felt very unjustified nung pinapagalitan niya ako sa GC. Nagpakumbaba ako, I told her na syempre ayoko dalhin toh hanggang sa pagtanda ko and as expected hindi niya binuksan yung message ko. I deserve that for responding so late.
Ngayon sa tingin ko habangbuhay na siyang may sama ng loob sa akin. I don't even know what I did wrong (Maybe this is me being ignorant pero I'm genuinely confused) Bakit parang hindi ako pamilya sa sarili kong pamilya? Why do I have to walk on eggshells all the time? Bakit lahat nalang ng nakikita nila sa akin ay yung negative traits ko? Ansakit sakit lang. Naiingit tuloy ako sa mga kaibigan kong may healthy relationship sa family nila, bat pag ako parang stranger na trato sa akin.
Ako ba yung gago sa sitwasyon na toh dahil hindi ko nireplyan yung pakikipagbati niya sa GC?
submitted by user4679072 to AkoBaYungGago [link] [comments]
Wala akong excuses sa kapalyahan ko. Hindi talaga ako nag pursigi noong time na yon, burn out ako physically and mentally pero bumawi naman ako ngayong 2nd term.
Fast forward, sinabi ko sa mom ko na nag ka line of 7 ako. Hindi ako proud, I just told her the truth. She was very disappointed. Because back in elem and JHS I'm an honor student achiever ba ayun hahaha. Ramdam na randam ko pag ka disappoint niya. Well, I understand kasi naman naghihirap siya para ipag-aral ako dito sa UST eh. Talagang madidisappoint talaga sa line of 7 ko. Kaya it's understandable na magalit at mainis siya sakin kasi halos binigay na niya lahat for me and I couldn't even make her proud.
I have a dorm plus may allowance ako and hindi naman strict parents ko. So I have the freedom that I want. Don't get me wrong I'm not the type of student to party all night. Sadyang hindi ko lang ma-grasps yung subject na chemistry and hindi ko talaga forte ang Health Sciences. That's my biggest mistake I guess. Trying to pursue something that I'm not passionate about just to please my mother. Gusto niya kasi ng anak na doktor. Mahirap mama, masyado akong bobo para dyan haha baka in my next life.
Anyway, I took USTET. I passed my priority program, so it seems di naman ako bobo hahaha. When I passed, kahit one word of "Congrats" wala akong narinig from them. Hayst. Alam ko namang hindi na nila ako pag aaralin sa UST. One because the program that I'm qualified for ay hindi align with Medical field and two since nga nagkaline of 7 ako wala ng bilib sakin mga magulang ko. Tanggap ko naman na hindi na nila ako pag aaralin sa UST, pero syempre dahil medyo makulit ako parang biniro biro ko sila "Mama UST nalang ako ulit please". Yung tono ko biro biro lang pero I'm not sure how my mom took it.
After a few days, bigla akong minessage ng ate ko. Pinagalitan niya ako sa family GC. Sinabi niya na deserve ko talaga na di na mag aral ulit sa dream school ko dahil sa kapalyahan ko. At napaka selfish ko daw, hindi ko raw iniisip pag hihirap ng magulang namin. She told me na kahit anong gawin ko madidisappoint sakin si mama.
Masakit lang para sa akin, ikaw ba namang pagsabihan ng ganon. Pero I know na sinabi niya yon sakin para magising ako sa katotohanan which is gising na gising pa ako pero that added salt to the wound talaga. Parang napakalaki ng kasalanan ko for getting a line of 7 in one quarter in one subject.
Syempre hindi ko na nireplyan, nag seen lang ako. Ano bang sasabihin ko? Hindi ko alam nung mga time na yon what's the right word to say... Baka magalit lang siya pag nag reply ako. My sister is older and she's pregnant with her first child, ayoko namang dumagdag ako sa stress niya. Kaya hinayaan ko lang, baka naglalabas lang ng stress toh. For now I'll just be the punching bag. I can take it naman. Lagi naman silang ganito sa akin.
A few days after nag chat siya sa GC, "Bati na tayo" tas mention ng name ko. Akala ko nag jojoke lang yung message kasi ang sarcastic and finals namin nung chinat niya yon. Ayoko munang madistract at baka mag break down pa ako so hindi ko muna pinansin yung message sa GC. Pero I accidentally left it on seen. This is not on purpose and hindi ko rin alam irereply ko kaya hindi talaga ako nag reply. I was still processing everything and I felt kinda depressed that week. And a small part of me resent her dahil sa mga sinabi niya sa akin, fresh pa yung wound ganon.
So fast forward, this week gender reveal nila ate. And naturang mag ooverlap siya sa schedule ng graduation practice namin (Gragraduate pa rin naman haha). So tinanong ko sa isa ko pang kapatid paano ko pag sisiksikan yung schedule and nag chat si kapatid sa GC asking what time end ng gender reveal.
After nun nag reply si ate na kahit wag na daw akong umattend, di naman daw nila ako kailangan. Hindi ako nag seen sa GC pero nabasa ko sa notification bar yung reply niya. Then minutes after nun nag chat siya sa akin sa personal message naman. Sabi niya dadalhin ko daw lahat netong mga ginagawa ko hanggang sa pagtanda. She basically cursed me out. Asking bakit ko daw siya tinatarantado eh buntis nga siya. Nagkikipagbati siya tas ako I had the audacity to left her message on read.
After a day ng message niyang yon nag sorry ako sakanya sa personal message. Very sincere and genuine yung sorry ko. Tinanggap ko kahit it felt very unjustified nung pinapagalitan niya ako sa GC. Nagpakumbaba ako, I told her na syempre ayoko dalhin toh hanggang sa pagtanda ko and as expected hindi niya binuksan yung message ko. I deserve that for responding so late.
Ngayon sa tingin ko habangbuhay na siyang may sama ng loob sa akin. I don't even know what I did wrong (Maybe this is me being ignorant pero I'm genuinely confused) Bakit parang hindi ako pamilya sa sarili kong pamilya? Why do I have to walk on eggshells all the time? Bakit lahat nalang ng nakikita nila sa akin ay yung negative traits ko? Ansakit sakit lang. Naiingit tuloy ako sa mga kaibigan kong may healthy relationship sa family nila, bat pag ako parang stranger na trato sa akin.
Ako ba yung gago sa sitwasyon na toh dahil hindi ko nireplyan yung pakikipagbati niya sa GC?
2024.05.19 06:03 ashhhzz how to make friends????
How do y’all make friends or become closer friends with people??(like hanging out with people or something) I realized that since in my home country i was in the same school since 1st grade until 8th grade, I never really learned to make friends. It’s really hard for me to talk to people bc of anxiety, and i did manage to make some friends, but sometimes it feels like I don’t have any😭 most of the friends that I made at the beginning of grade 9 changed schools and graduated. And we were barely friends. i can’t really hang out with my best friends bc of the parents of one of them. They’re the only ones I’ve hanged out in my school but we can barely even do it that :( . I have other friends that are more recent but we just sit together at lunch. We barely even talk bc we don’t have anything in common apart of being from latam. I really suck at conversations so it just makes it worse. I don’t know how to talk with new people bc I feel that it’s gonna be weird if I just start being social bc I am always really awkward(like how do u know that someone wants to talk with u), and idk how to maintain friendships either lol. it doesn’t help that I always feel too tired to do anything but that’s another problem 😭
submitted by ashhhzz to teenagers [link] [comments]
2024.05.19 05:36 OccasionImaginary644 What should I do for not being picked as MOH
So about 2 weeks ago my best friend (22F) from middle school got engaged to her college boyfriend. Which is very exciting and I’m (23F) very happy for her since we’ve known for a while she’d be engaged this spring. I was the first person she called to announce her engagement and we cried / screamed on the phone about it.
Growing up, despite her moving states away, we always stayed in contact / had FaceTime calls. We cried, laughed, and shared everything together. Since about 3 years ago, our phone topics changed to talk more about marriage / engagement. She’s an only child, so she told me for a while (let’s say at least 2 years) that I would be her maid of honor as her best friend of 10+ years. Naturally, as a type A person, I started mentally preparing for the role under this assumption. I only took it seriously when she got engaged where, during finals, I was drafting budget sheets, brand deals, bachelorette party details, etc to make her day perfect because I thought the role was mine.
As you can probably tell, a week later, the day before i graduated which she knew, on a phone call she asked me to be a bridesmaid. Not her maid of honor. She said she picked someone else because they are physically closer to her and they have been more part of her relationship. She also said I was a second choice. She also asked me to help with budgeting because I’m great with spreadsheets. In that time I said yes to being a bridesmaid bc I was in shock but still want to be part of her big day. But I told her no to helping with the budgeting because, from my understanding and research, that is the job of the MOH and I’m not going to do part of the job of a MOH without the title. This was all in one 7 min phone call btw where there wasn’t really any time to process. More happened during the call but that was the meat of it. She just seemed rushed and a bit dismissive of my feelings.
Now, I live in Pittsburgh and she’s in Nashville. This is also our very first experiences with weddings / bridesmaid situations. Logically, her reasonings are somewhat fair in my opinion. I also jumped the gun under the assumption that I would be her MOH and everyone I told said I’m very likely going to be her MOH. So she doesn’t “owe me” anything there bc I did work she didn’t ask for.
Overall, I’m feeling everything under the sun. I feel gutted and I feel like crying every time I think about it. Mostly because I feel betrayed. I feel like I was groomed into a role or that she threw 10 years of friendship down the toilet because I’m not physically there and being told I’m 2nd hurts like hell. I don’t feel like someone who’s 2nd would be the first person she told her engagement to, but here we are. I feel like she rushed the situation (she plans on getting married in the fall of 2025), bc long distance MOH can work, we have FaceTimes, texting, and digital documents. Now that I’m a grad I’ll have more money to visit and spend on her wedding as well. At the very least I feel like she could have had 2 MOH to split the work instead of a false binary as she isnt necessarily the most traditional person. There are ways to make a long distance MOH work. Or that it’s more than just planning, which we both know I’m excellent at, but I can handle her family well since I’ve known them for forever. Which is important bc she has struggled, at times, with her relationship with her mom. Granted ik I can still do that as a bridesmaid. This is a lot of word vomit and idk the point but I’m upset, angry, and confused. Overall just going through the stages of grief. I haven’t talked to her since besides when she congratulated me on graduating, she hasn’t reached out (not that she has too). I don’t want to reach out atm because I don’t want to say anything I will regret if I’m this emotional.
But more or less, with my clouded thinking, I don’t know if I want to be a bridesmaid or attend the wedding. This is dramatic, I know, but I’m really hurt and not thinking straight. Or if I still take on the role of a bridesmaid can I not take the box she wants to send? Bc I feel like I would feel upset and uncomfortable with the box and knowing that I don’t feel as important or important at all as just a bridesmaid. Or being reminded of the rocky state of our friendship (from my pov) and how she sees me as 2nd. The only thing I can think of to do is to have a honest conversation with her of what I’m feeling, but even then what will come out of that? Besides maintaining good communication between us. She can’t go back on her 1st choice MOH, not that I want her too bc if she did I would still feel bad because it isn’t genuine. I’m just sad and at a total loss. I still value our friendship and I still want to be part of her wedding. I just feel like I’ll be resentful of the MOH. Any advice on how to move forward, should I accept the box and deal with it, or anything would be greatly appreciated. I haven’t dealt with something like this before and I feel awful on many aspects. :/
TL;DR- My best friend from 7th grade picked someone else to be their maid of honor because they’re closer physically to her / more involved in the relationship and I’m upset.
submitted by OccasionImaginary644 to Advice [link] [comments]
Growing up, despite her moving states away, we always stayed in contact / had FaceTime calls. We cried, laughed, and shared everything together. Since about 3 years ago, our phone topics changed to talk more about marriage / engagement. She’s an only child, so she told me for a while (let’s say at least 2 years) that I would be her maid of honor as her best friend of 10+ years. Naturally, as a type A person, I started mentally preparing for the role under this assumption. I only took it seriously when she got engaged where, during finals, I was drafting budget sheets, brand deals, bachelorette party details, etc to make her day perfect because I thought the role was mine.
As you can probably tell, a week later, the day before i graduated which she knew, on a phone call she asked me to be a bridesmaid. Not her maid of honor. She said she picked someone else because they are physically closer to her and they have been more part of her relationship. She also said I was a second choice. She also asked me to help with budgeting because I’m great with spreadsheets. In that time I said yes to being a bridesmaid bc I was in shock but still want to be part of her big day. But I told her no to helping with the budgeting because, from my understanding and research, that is the job of the MOH and I’m not going to do part of the job of a MOH without the title. This was all in one 7 min phone call btw where there wasn’t really any time to process. More happened during the call but that was the meat of it. She just seemed rushed and a bit dismissive of my feelings.
Now, I live in Pittsburgh and she’s in Nashville. This is also our very first experiences with weddings / bridesmaid situations. Logically, her reasonings are somewhat fair in my opinion. I also jumped the gun under the assumption that I would be her MOH and everyone I told said I’m very likely going to be her MOH. So she doesn’t “owe me” anything there bc I did work she didn’t ask for.
Overall, I’m feeling everything under the sun. I feel gutted and I feel like crying every time I think about it. Mostly because I feel betrayed. I feel like I was groomed into a role or that she threw 10 years of friendship down the toilet because I’m not physically there and being told I’m 2nd hurts like hell. I don’t feel like someone who’s 2nd would be the first person she told her engagement to, but here we are. I feel like she rushed the situation (she plans on getting married in the fall of 2025), bc long distance MOH can work, we have FaceTimes, texting, and digital documents. Now that I’m a grad I’ll have more money to visit and spend on her wedding as well. At the very least I feel like she could have had 2 MOH to split the work instead of a false binary as she isnt necessarily the most traditional person. There are ways to make a long distance MOH work. Or that it’s more than just planning, which we both know I’m excellent at, but I can handle her family well since I’ve known them for forever. Which is important bc she has struggled, at times, with her relationship with her mom. Granted ik I can still do that as a bridesmaid. This is a lot of word vomit and idk the point but I’m upset, angry, and confused. Overall just going through the stages of grief. I haven’t talked to her since besides when she congratulated me on graduating, she hasn’t reached out (not that she has too). I don’t want to reach out atm because I don’t want to say anything I will regret if I’m this emotional.
But more or less, with my clouded thinking, I don’t know if I want to be a bridesmaid or attend the wedding. This is dramatic, I know, but I’m really hurt and not thinking straight. Or if I still take on the role of a bridesmaid can I not take the box she wants to send? Bc I feel like I would feel upset and uncomfortable with the box and knowing that I don’t feel as important or important at all as just a bridesmaid. Or being reminded of the rocky state of our friendship (from my pov) and how she sees me as 2nd. The only thing I can think of to do is to have a honest conversation with her of what I’m feeling, but even then what will come out of that? Besides maintaining good communication between us. She can’t go back on her 1st choice MOH, not that I want her too bc if she did I would still feel bad because it isn’t genuine. I’m just sad and at a total loss. I still value our friendship and I still want to be part of her wedding. I just feel like I’ll be resentful of the MOH. Any advice on how to move forward, should I accept the box and deal with it, or anything would be greatly appreciated. I haven’t dealt with something like this before and I feel awful on many aspects. :/
TL;DR- My best friend from 7th grade picked someone else to be their maid of honor because they’re closer physically to her / more involved in the relationship and I’m upset.
2024.05.19 05:32 Master_Plan_6354 help!!
 | i am newer to this and i’ve been trying to understand my placements and the houses they are in and what planet rules my chart and what it means!!! i’m attaching my chart!! i paid someone to read/explain my chart and all she said was i was very emotional which— while true 😭, was not what i was looking for. i am trying to lean into my placements and move towards what is meant for me. pls someone assist me <3 submitted by Master_Plan_6354 to AskAstrologers [link] [comments] |
2024.05.19 05:17 dj_babybenz I'm too dumb for college and having a hard time picking what I should major in.
I've never been good at school, and since elementary school my teachers have been having a hard time trying to teach me stuff and getting me to remember it. I'm terrible at basically every subject, especially math. I remember there was so many times my teachers had to talk to my parents about me not being able to add or subtract as fast as the other kids, and from 1st-5th grade i basically spent all of my time after school sitting at the table with my parents yelling at me trying to get me to understand my homework but for some reason i was just too dumb to understand simple math.
With stuff like reading and writing, I was pretty average up until sixth grade, now I have to reread things a couple of times to fully process it because it feels like I'm just looking at the words and writing things like essays is very difficult for me because I will get bored or find it too hard and get distracted.
I graduated high school a year late because I failed every single class sophomore year, passed 2/6 classes junior year, and I spent my senior trying to make up the classes I failed but couldn't complete them all on time because I found the work really difficult. Before the start of my senior year, I was sent to an alternative school that was supposed to make things easier for me but I never made any progress, so I got put in independent study as a second time senior. In independent study, you don't actually have a teacher so you have to teach yourself, I got very lazy and bored of having to do my classes so I ended up just cheating which is the only reason I didn't become a third year senior.
I've also never had any interests or hobbies. As a kid I would just play with my dolls when I had time during school breaks or the weekend, but I was never in any clubs. I have no hobbies because honestly I don't like anything, and I never really have. I secretly don't want to do anything with my life and would rather spend it rotting away in bed and on my phone, but I know that's just because I'm incredibly lazy and unmotivated.
I've had tutors, I've been put in support classes, and I've made no progress. I have no idea what I want to do with my life, or what career I could tolerate having. Most of my friends are in college and even if they've changed their majors they at least have had some idea from the start what they want to do, or they're not as dumb as me. Also, this isn't an insecurity thing where I just think I'm dumb, I literally am. Most people think I'm so dumb that I lack common sense and can't do things that anyone with a brain could do, like being able to order my own food or driving a car.
I don't think it would be a good idea to take a gap year because I'm already turning 19, and don't want to be a 20 year old freshman. I'm also incredibly embarrassed about this because my friends don't really understand how I could possibly not like anything or have literally no idea what I want to do with my life and everyone just thinks I'm lazy (which I am but I really don't want to be). I have no idea what to do because I don't want to waste my parent's money and end up dropping out because I'll be too stupid for the work, but they're making me go. My parents are acting as if this is an easy decision to make and keep saying I'm the only girl in the world who doesn't know what she wants to do.
tl;dr
never been good at school, never had any hobbies, i don't like anything, and i'm very dumb. i need to go to college, but i'm not sure what i should go for and i'm afraid of dropping out and wasting my parent's money.
submitted by dj_babybenz to CollegeRant [link] [comments]
With stuff like reading and writing, I was pretty average up until sixth grade, now I have to reread things a couple of times to fully process it because it feels like I'm just looking at the words and writing things like essays is very difficult for me because I will get bored or find it too hard and get distracted.
I graduated high school a year late because I failed every single class sophomore year, passed 2/6 classes junior year, and I spent my senior trying to make up the classes I failed but couldn't complete them all on time because I found the work really difficult. Before the start of my senior year, I was sent to an alternative school that was supposed to make things easier for me but I never made any progress, so I got put in independent study as a second time senior. In independent study, you don't actually have a teacher so you have to teach yourself, I got very lazy and bored of having to do my classes so I ended up just cheating which is the only reason I didn't become a third year senior.
I've also never had any interests or hobbies. As a kid I would just play with my dolls when I had time during school breaks or the weekend, but I was never in any clubs. I have no hobbies because honestly I don't like anything, and I never really have. I secretly don't want to do anything with my life and would rather spend it rotting away in bed and on my phone, but I know that's just because I'm incredibly lazy and unmotivated.
I've had tutors, I've been put in support classes, and I've made no progress. I have no idea what I want to do with my life, or what career I could tolerate having. Most of my friends are in college and even if they've changed their majors they at least have had some idea from the start what they want to do, or they're not as dumb as me. Also, this isn't an insecurity thing where I just think I'm dumb, I literally am. Most people think I'm so dumb that I lack common sense and can't do things that anyone with a brain could do, like being able to order my own food or driving a car.
I don't think it would be a good idea to take a gap year because I'm already turning 19, and don't want to be a 20 year old freshman. I'm also incredibly embarrassed about this because my friends don't really understand how I could possibly not like anything or have literally no idea what I want to do with my life and everyone just thinks I'm lazy (which I am but I really don't want to be). I have no idea what to do because I don't want to waste my parent's money and end up dropping out because I'll be too stupid for the work, but they're making me go. My parents are acting as if this is an easy decision to make and keep saying I'm the only girl in the world who doesn't know what she wants to do.
tl;dr
never been good at school, never had any hobbies, i don't like anything, and i'm very dumb. i need to go to college, but i'm not sure what i should go for and i'm afraid of dropping out and wasting my parent's money.
2024.05.19 05:09 champagnepapi111 Chance Me: MID GPA UPENN
Demographics: Male, Asian
Intended Major(s): Biology/Chemistry
ACT/SAT/SAT II: 1570 SAT
UW/W GPA and Rank: 3.6GPA (no rank) -> will be ~3.8 after senior year, 3.7 after first sem
Coursework: 8 APS/3 DE/2 Honors, all 5s so far
Awards:
Biotechnology and Research Sequencing at the University of Michigan (501c3 research organization) - Explored Nucleotide Hybridization, and led group research linking it to a real-world disease. Analyzed related Thermodynamics, PCR, Advanced Linux, and mapping genomes. Presented a business plan on Biotechnology and Next Generation Sequencing Technology (showing how genetic variation could lead to disease).
11th and 12th grade, 12hrs/wk, 4wk/yr
Medical Student Shadowing and Cardiac Medicine Exploration at the University of Brown Alpert Medical School - Completed a Medical Interview, a Cardiopulmonary Physical Exam with a patient, reviewed different medical careers, learned about the pathophysiology of the heart, and completed an ethics course on heart transplants.
11th and 12th grade, 10hrs/wk, 4wk/yr
Shadowed Primary Care Physician - Pediatrician has experience for 20+ years and ranked the #1 Care Physician out of 45 in my city. Worked in the Biomedical Lab analyzing samples and results for patients (in real-time). I shadowed the actual checkups as well
11th and 12th grade, 10hrs/wk, 3wk/yr
HOSA (Health Occupations Students of America) Competitor (all 50 states + 11 countries competed) (2yrs) - State Champion (1st out of 40 teams) in my 1st year, Only three teams are sent to ILC from Michigan, Qualified for ILC (International Leadership Conference), and placed Top 3 at ILC. Posted on 10+ nationwide news sites, as well as covered by the media. 260,000 members nationwide.
11th and 12th grade, 10hrs/wk, 30wk/yr
Co-Founder of Biomed Club (Only Student-Made Medical Club @ School) (4yrs) - Led in-school Biomedical-Based Medical Club focused on healthcare careers, connecting with licensed doctors and current medical students to inspire youth and teach them about the experience through the medical process. Expanded membership from 4 to 150 in 4 years by organizing talks for younger classmen about life as a doctor.
9th, 10th, 11th, 12th grade, 8hrs/wk, 35wk/yr
Joined SAT/Tutoring Help - Helps students increase their chances for college applications, as well as earn significant amounts of scholarship money. Was able to empower high school students through hackathons, college seminars, and a Cranbrook HUB Program which helped struggling students increase their SAT scores.
10th, 11th, 12th grade, 6hrs/wk, 10wk/yr
Swim Instructor (paid) - Worked for ~1 year, over 400 hours of work, about 8-10 hours weekly on school weeks, and closer to 15 hours during summer, CPR and Lifeguard Certified. Had several classes, weekly, with kids with disabilities, such as Down Syndrome, Autism, and ADHD.
11th, 12th grade, 8-10hrs/wk, 40wk/yr
Swim Instructor Summer Volunteer connected w/Hospital's Children’s Care Center (most vulnerable kids) - Instructed and taught children who have been impaired with neurological, social, and developmental challenges, as well as kids that have dealt with major trauma at a very young age to swim. Participated in a 3-week long program teaching them the basics of swimming.
11th, 12th grade, 8-10hrs/wk, 4wk/yr
Michigan Ref Certified - Participated in overall 50+ hours of ref-related activities, played soccer for 13 years and competed in competitive/travel soccer for 10 years.
9th, 10th, 11th, 12th grade, 2hrs/wk, 13wk/yr (for reffing)
9th, 10th grade, 8hrs/wk, 50wk/yr (for soccer)
VolunteeTutor Work - Volunteer Monthly at an Indian Cultural Program (10hrs/month), Math Tutor for struggling students (3hrs/week), Volunteer Monthly for Key Club (3hrs/month)
Essays/LORs/Other:
APES (7/10)
STEM Teacher (9/10)
Schools (in state for MSU/UMich):
MSU
UMich (EA)
Rice
JHU
BU
UPenn (ED)
Columbia
Chance Me: MID GPA UPENN
submitted by champagnepapi111 to chanceme [link] [comments]
Intended Major(s): Biology/Chemistry
ACT/SAT/SAT II: 1570 SAT
UW/W GPA and Rank: 3.6GPA (no rank) -> will be ~3.8 after senior year, 3.7 after first sem
Coursework: 8 APS/3 DE/2 Honors, all 5s so far
Awards:
- 1st in Hosa states medical event (out of 50 teams)
- 2nd in Hosa Internationals (2nd/200+ teams who qualified), about 2000 teams overall
- AP Scholar w/ Distinction
- National Merit Finalist
- NHS Award
- School award for 5s on both Econ Tests
- School Honor Roll (shit award lol)
Biotechnology and Research Sequencing at the University of Michigan (501c3 research organization) - Explored Nucleotide Hybridization, and led group research linking it to a real-world disease. Analyzed related Thermodynamics, PCR, Advanced Linux, and mapping genomes. Presented a business plan on Biotechnology and Next Generation Sequencing Technology (showing how genetic variation could lead to disease).
11th and 12th grade, 12hrs/wk, 4wk/yr
Medical Student Shadowing and Cardiac Medicine Exploration at the University of Brown Alpert Medical School - Completed a Medical Interview, a Cardiopulmonary Physical Exam with a patient, reviewed different medical careers, learned about the pathophysiology of the heart, and completed an ethics course on heart transplants.
11th and 12th grade, 10hrs/wk, 4wk/yr
Shadowed Primary Care Physician - Pediatrician has experience for 20+ years and ranked the #1 Care Physician out of 45 in my city. Worked in the Biomedical Lab analyzing samples and results for patients (in real-time). I shadowed the actual checkups as well
11th and 12th grade, 10hrs/wk, 3wk/yr
HOSA (Health Occupations Students of America) Competitor (all 50 states + 11 countries competed) (2yrs) - State Champion (1st out of 40 teams) in my 1st year, Only three teams are sent to ILC from Michigan, Qualified for ILC (International Leadership Conference), and placed Top 3 at ILC. Posted on 10+ nationwide news sites, as well as covered by the media. 260,000 members nationwide.
11th and 12th grade, 10hrs/wk, 30wk/yr
Co-Founder of Biomed Club (Only Student-Made Medical Club @ School) (4yrs) - Led in-school Biomedical-Based Medical Club focused on healthcare careers, connecting with licensed doctors and current medical students to inspire youth and teach them about the experience through the medical process. Expanded membership from 4 to 150 in 4 years by organizing talks for younger classmen about life as a doctor.
9th, 10th, 11th, 12th grade, 8hrs/wk, 35wk/yr
Joined SAT/Tutoring Help - Helps students increase their chances for college applications, as well as earn significant amounts of scholarship money. Was able to empower high school students through hackathons, college seminars, and a Cranbrook HUB Program which helped struggling students increase their SAT scores.
10th, 11th, 12th grade, 6hrs/wk, 10wk/yr
Swim Instructor (paid) - Worked for ~1 year, over 400 hours of work, about 8-10 hours weekly on school weeks, and closer to 15 hours during summer, CPR and Lifeguard Certified. Had several classes, weekly, with kids with disabilities, such as Down Syndrome, Autism, and ADHD.
11th, 12th grade, 8-10hrs/wk, 40wk/yr
Swim Instructor Summer Volunteer connected w/Hospital's Children’s Care Center (most vulnerable kids) - Instructed and taught children who have been impaired with neurological, social, and developmental challenges, as well as kids that have dealt with major trauma at a very young age to swim. Participated in a 3-week long program teaching them the basics of swimming.
11th, 12th grade, 8-10hrs/wk, 4wk/yr
Michigan Ref Certified - Participated in overall 50+ hours of ref-related activities, played soccer for 13 years and competed in competitive/travel soccer for 10 years.
9th, 10th, 11th, 12th grade, 2hrs/wk, 13wk/yr (for reffing)
9th, 10th grade, 8hrs/wk, 50wk/yr (for soccer)
VolunteeTutor Work - Volunteer Monthly at an Indian Cultural Program (10hrs/month), Math Tutor for struggling students (3hrs/week), Volunteer Monthly for Key Club (3hrs/month)
Essays/LORs/Other:
APES (7/10)
STEM Teacher (9/10)
Schools (in state for MSU/UMich):
MSU
UMich (EA)
Rice
JHU
BU
UPenn (ED)
Columbia
Chance Me: MID GPA UPENN
2024.05.19 04:58 Radiant-Proof-1386 Requesting Dental Community Opinions: 3 DAT Attempts, Ton of Exp
I've been reading numerous posts about dental school applications, but I haven't seen any that quite match my situation. Here’s my story:
DAT Scores: 1. 1st Attempt (2022, Junior year): - AA: 16, PAT: 18, Science: 16, Bio: 15, GC: 19, OC: 15, RC: 17, MAT: 16 - I didn’t study much except for the PAT section (2 weeks before exam), and this was a wake-up call.
Supporting Stats: - GPA: Overall 3.67, Science 3.61 - Shadowing: 400+ hours with a dentist - Dental Assisting: 2,000+ hours of paid experience - Community Service: 800+ hours - Research: 175+ hours in Organic Chemistry (including a university research award) - Teaching: Led, taught, and graded Freshman General Chemistry Lab solo (192 hours) - Tutoring: General Chemistry Teacher's Aid/Tutor (225 hours)
These are the main highlights of my application. There is some other stuff (Dental conferences, Fraternity Exec position, etc) as supporting stuff.
Background: - I’m from a rural area and currently work in one. - I’m a white male, and my family income is $100,000+ (Dad is a medical doctor).
What are your thoughts? I'd love to hear opinions and advice from the community. Cheers.
submitted by Radiant-Proof-1386 to predental [link] [comments]
DAT Scores: 1. 1st Attempt (2022, Junior year): - AA: 16, PAT: 18, Science: 16, Bio: 15, GC: 19, OC: 15, RC: 17, MAT: 16 - I didn’t study much except for the PAT section (2 weeks before exam), and this was a wake-up call.
- 2nd Attempt (January 2024):
- AA: 18, PAT: 22, Science: 18, Bio: 21, GC: 16, OC: 16, RC: 20, MAT: 17
- 3rd Attempt (May 2024):
- AA: 18, PAT: 24, Science: 17, Bio: 17, GC: 17, OC: 17, RC: 20, MAT: 20
Supporting Stats: - GPA: Overall 3.67, Science 3.61 - Shadowing: 400+ hours with a dentist - Dental Assisting: 2,000+ hours of paid experience - Community Service: 800+ hours - Research: 175+ hours in Organic Chemistry (including a university research award) - Teaching: Led, taught, and graded Freshman General Chemistry Lab solo (192 hours) - Tutoring: General Chemistry Teacher's Aid/Tutor (225 hours)
These are the main highlights of my application. There is some other stuff (Dental conferences, Fraternity Exec position, etc) as supporting stuff.
Background: - I’m from a rural area and currently work in one. - I’m a white male, and my family income is $100,000+ (Dad is a medical doctor).
What are your thoughts? I'd love to hear opinions and advice from the community. Cheers.
2024.05.19 04:56 Fishrito spring deferral
I got deferred for spring grades and it says to send them to the office of admissions by June 1st. Do I reupload my new transcript in AIS or do I have to go to the physical office and give them a paper copy?
submitted by Fishrito to TAMUAdmissions [link] [comments]
2024.05.19 03:37 MR_Dinglebottom District/State Placements
I have made 1st chair twice in districts since seventh grade (I didn’t participate in 6th and now I’m graduating to HS). I want to know everybody’s placement! Feel free to share.
submitted by MR_Dinglebottom to Clarinet [link] [comments]
2024.05.19 03:32 Zealousideal-Hat119 New to Fire, 36 Year Old Looking for General Advice Amongst Firehose of Info on What to Do Next ~800k Saved.
Using a new/"anonymous" Reddit account since my main one is easily identifiable :).
36, married, 2 young kids (5 and 2 years old), live in a high cost of living area. I've lurked here for a bit but am new to fire. Have been pouring over the info in the sub's FAQ/"start here" page and other links with the limited free time I have, there's an overwhelming amount of information. I haven't really considered doing FIRE before, but 3 years ago I laid out a "10 year plan" to reach $1 million in investments and am very fortunate to be ahead of schedule (so far). I started out a bit behind in that I mostly spent my 20's paying off student debt (both my spouse and I did) and didn't really contribute much to savings/retirement. That changed once I hit 30 and got a higher paying job, started maxing my 401k contributions etc. Now that things are going well it seems like I could realistically work towards a path of retiring early.
Here's my info:
401k's (mine and my spouse's): $458,000
Financial Advisor controlled investment portfolio: $358,000
Personal Fidelity account (mostly for doing my own personal stuff, all in ETFs except for some stock an employer gave me). This money is earmarked for a house downpayment, the intent was to move out of our first home to a better school district once the 5 year old started 1st grade, but with the housing market the way it is that probably won't be happening soon, so I'll just continue to leave this money alone: $109,000
HSA (this year will be the first year I max out my contributions, I never used it much before being young and someone who never goes to the doctor, and didn't realize what a great tax/investment vehicle it is): $8000
Emergency Fund: $25,000 sitting in a HYSA
529/College Savings for 5 & 2 year old - I don't actively contribute to these, I deposited $30,000 into both when each kid was born, hoping that 18 years of growth at ~6% interest should hopefully pay for a large chunk of school (with our income and student loans covering the rest). I also don't count this money towards my personal $1 million goal/net worth since this money isn't earmarked for our us, but is instead for the kids.
Liabilities:
Mortgage: $272,000
Personal & Auto Loans: $22,500
The personal/auto loan could be paid off at most any time, but they have sub 3% interest rates on them so I just make minimum payments and invest my extra money instead. The mortgage is a sub 3% rate as well.
So adding up the 401k's, the investment portfolio, the HSA, and the Fidelity account (though I don't normally "count"this since the money is earmarked for a house) minus the liabilities makes a net worth of ~$630,500.
We were fortunate enough to purchase our first home prior to the the housing market going crazy during Covid. A quick look at Google/Redfin/Zillow and what the county has assessed my latest property tax rate at suggests the house adds another ~$450-480k to my net worth.
In addition to making the max contributions I can to the 401k and HSA, I also invest an additional ~$3k-$5k per month into the investment portfolio and ETFs in Fidelity.
I'm just looking for some general advice on what "next steps" you FIRE experts would take :) - is there a different/additional vehicle I should use for the $3k-$5k I am kicking into generic portfolios each month? Is there something more efficient I could be doing to maximize those slow and steady gains?
The amount of info out there is a little overwhelming - it is sort of like I am already almost accidentally doing FIRE (just from being fortunate and disciplined already), but there still seems to be some next steps / more things I could be taking advantage of to get there faster!
submitted by Zealousideal-Hat119 to Fire [link] [comments]
36, married, 2 young kids (5 and 2 years old), live in a high cost of living area. I've lurked here for a bit but am new to fire. Have been pouring over the info in the sub's FAQ/"start here" page and other links with the limited free time I have, there's an overwhelming amount of information. I haven't really considered doing FIRE before, but 3 years ago I laid out a "10 year plan" to reach $1 million in investments and am very fortunate to be ahead of schedule (so far). I started out a bit behind in that I mostly spent my 20's paying off student debt (both my spouse and I did) and didn't really contribute much to savings/retirement. That changed once I hit 30 and got a higher paying job, started maxing my 401k contributions etc. Now that things are going well it seems like I could realistically work towards a path of retiring early.
Here's my info:
401k's (mine and my spouse's): $458,000
Financial Advisor controlled investment portfolio: $358,000
Personal Fidelity account (mostly for doing my own personal stuff, all in ETFs except for some stock an employer gave me). This money is earmarked for a house downpayment, the intent was to move out of our first home to a better school district once the 5 year old started 1st grade, but with the housing market the way it is that probably won't be happening soon, so I'll just continue to leave this money alone: $109,000
HSA (this year will be the first year I max out my contributions, I never used it much before being young and someone who never goes to the doctor, and didn't realize what a great tax/investment vehicle it is): $8000
Emergency Fund: $25,000 sitting in a HYSA
529/College Savings for 5 & 2 year old - I don't actively contribute to these, I deposited $30,000 into both when each kid was born, hoping that 18 years of growth at ~6% interest should hopefully pay for a large chunk of school (with our income and student loans covering the rest). I also don't count this money towards my personal $1 million goal/net worth since this money isn't earmarked for our us, but is instead for the kids.
Liabilities:
Mortgage: $272,000
Personal & Auto Loans: $22,500
The personal/auto loan could be paid off at most any time, but they have sub 3% interest rates on them so I just make minimum payments and invest my extra money instead. The mortgage is a sub 3% rate as well.
So adding up the 401k's, the investment portfolio, the HSA, and the Fidelity account (though I don't normally "count"this since the money is earmarked for a house) minus the liabilities makes a net worth of ~$630,500.
We were fortunate enough to purchase our first home prior to the the housing market going crazy during Covid. A quick look at Google/Redfin/Zillow and what the county has assessed my latest property tax rate at suggests the house adds another ~$450-480k to my net worth.
In addition to making the max contributions I can to the 401k and HSA, I also invest an additional ~$3k-$5k per month into the investment portfolio and ETFs in Fidelity.
I'm just looking for some general advice on what "next steps" you FIRE experts would take :) - is there a different/additional vehicle I should use for the $3k-$5k I am kicking into generic portfolios each month? Is there something more efficient I could be doing to maximize those slow and steady gains?
The amount of info out there is a little overwhelming - it is sort of like I am already almost accidentally doing FIRE (just from being fortunate and disciplined already), but there still seems to be some next steps / more things I could be taking advantage of to get there faster!
2024.05.19 03:13 molten_dragon Super proud of daughter's volleyball team today
My daughter is doing youth volleyball right now. She's on a team of 3rd and 4th graders and been playing for like 8 weeks. My wife and I are also coaching her team despite knowing nothing about coaching or playing volleyball.
The regular season was...not great. They only won one match out of five, and lost a couple by pretty large margins. But they showed improvement and they were working hard.
Today was their tournament and if I'm really honest I didn't expect them to do great. In the seeding round they were 3-1 and ended up 5th seed out of 6 teams.
But holy shit did they turn things around in the elimination part of the tournament. They got kind of lucky because the first two seeds got a bye in the 1st round so they were matched up 5 vs. 4. They won their first game and then something just sort of clicked for them. It's like the lightbulb turned on for all of them and they realized "Oh, we can do this"
They won their second game to eliminate the 4 seed and then were playing the 2 seed who had already beaten them pretty badly in the seeding round. They lost their first game, won the second, and then killed it in the tiebreaker game to move on to the finals.
The finals were, of course, against the Titans. This was the team that had kicked the shit out of them earlier in the season, and boy was the team aptly named. I don't know how it worked out that way but every girl on that team was huge. They were the same size as most of the 5th and 6th grade teams and they were good too.
I wish I could say they won, but they didn't. They lost their two championship games 25-22 and 26-24. But against a team that had beaten them by 15+ points earlier in the season it was an incredible showing.
There were tears, but at the end of the day they walked out with their heads held high and they were proud of themselves. And goddamn was I proud of them too.
submitted by molten_dragon to daddit [link] [comments]
The regular season was...not great. They only won one match out of five, and lost a couple by pretty large margins. But they showed improvement and they were working hard.
Today was their tournament and if I'm really honest I didn't expect them to do great. In the seeding round they were 3-1 and ended up 5th seed out of 6 teams.
But holy shit did they turn things around in the elimination part of the tournament. They got kind of lucky because the first two seeds got a bye in the 1st round so they were matched up 5 vs. 4. They won their first game and then something just sort of clicked for them. It's like the lightbulb turned on for all of them and they realized "Oh, we can do this"
They won their second game to eliminate the 4 seed and then were playing the 2 seed who had already beaten them pretty badly in the seeding round. They lost their first game, won the second, and then killed it in the tiebreaker game to move on to the finals.
The finals were, of course, against the Titans. This was the team that had kicked the shit out of them earlier in the season, and boy was the team aptly named. I don't know how it worked out that way but every girl on that team was huge. They were the same size as most of the 5th and 6th grade teams and they were good too.
I wish I could say they won, but they didn't. They lost their two championship games 25-22 and 26-24. But against a team that had beaten them by 15+ points earlier in the season it was an incredible showing.
There were tears, but at the end of the day they walked out with their heads held high and they were proud of themselves. And goddamn was I proud of them too.