So in some guides like ign and psnprofiles there seems to be collectible that when I go on YouTube I can't find any footage of even from channels doing all collectibles. Does this collectibles exist? Cause then I'd have to redo the chapter
PSN profiles says this Phoenix Feather #11 & Phoenix Feather #12 Just after finding the Artifact, you will need to bring a very large crate with a statue inside of it back into the hourglass room to complete a puzzle and progress in the story. Before you do, though, you can use it to collect two feathers: In the room where you fight the talos statues for the first time and find the crate itself, decay the platform so it drops, place the crate on it, then when time reverts back to normal the platform will raise the crate to the next level. Right before the door that leads back to the upper floor of the hourglass room, you jump on the crate and reach two red chests and a Phoenix feather (thanks to Chocolat_GiddyUp). From there, head to the hourglass room, and before completing the puzzle, put the crate on the switch in the middle of the floor toward the front of the room, and a gate will open in the far left corner, making this chest accessible.
Ign says Before using the gas, move the statue to the far door (the one that you can't open without using the gas) and jump on top of it. There is are two Red Orb Chests along with a white chest that contains a Phoenix Feather.

In hindsight, I should have known something was wrong with The Caeles Academy of Acting.
Maybe the fact that it doesn't exist to the outside world.
This place prided itself on famous alumni it didn't actually name, and a once in a lifetime opportunity to work with the best in the business.
It's what I wanted.
More than anything.
After enduring four years of high school with barely a semblance of a drama club (we met every month, and our teacher was an alcoholic), and countless failed auditions, I was ready to take my acting career seriously. I had one year.
According to my parents, I had one year to make a living from my passion.
If it didn't work out, I would be on the first plane back to Connecticut.
It's not like they didn't trust me. I think they were just scared I wouldn't be able to financially support myself. So, I got a job right out of high school and slipped a year. Drama schools are expensive, and college’s are cut-throat on who they take on. I found Caeles Academy by accident–or, I guess it found me?
After researching cheap drama classes, auditions, academy’s, literally anything to progress my career, an ad popped up.
Not exactly flashy.
Just a date, a time, and a promise that they only take the best. I ignored it, but throughout the week, I started getting more ads. Just the words, “IMPRESS US - - JOIN CAELES ACADEMY NOW.”
Followed by, “BE WITH THE BEST, AND BE THE BEST. JOIN THE S CLASS NOW.”
When I googled the academy, nothing came up.
I gave up, clicking on the ad, which sent me straight to an application form.
I filled in my details as more of a joke. But I wasn't expecting to get an email back. Again, it was a time, a date, and that exact same tagline: “Impress us.”
However, Caeles Academy was different from what I imagined.
I was expecting a university building, or at least some modern structure. Judging from their marketing and ads, I figured they could at least afford decent premises. Though I was mistaken. When I stepped out of the Uber, I found myself staring at what looked like an abandoned office tower, a red-brick monolith in the middle of nowhere.
Which was crazy, because I swore a girl wearing a bikini had strode through the doors, with nothing but her phone, and a coffee tucked under her elbow.
According to the text sent from the academy, the auditioning rooms were on the third floor.
Tipping my head back, the checkerboard of broken windows didn't exactly instil confidence. Neither did the clunky set of automatic doors that took a while to open. It was a summer's day, and the heat was already baking through my dress, sweat sticky on the back of my neck.
I wanted to make a good impression, but the heels were a little over the top.
Though I had also seen a girl casually walk in wearing a two piece bikini.
“Well?”
Freddie’s voice made me jump. I forgot I was on the phone to him. I was excited the whole car-ride, already high on five coffees, and now I was silent. If I perceived the ‘academy’ from an objective standpoint, it definitely looked like the perfect place to be brutally murdered. But my own personal opinion was it was.. okay.
“What's it like?”
I pretended not to see a rat scuttling under an old candy wrapper.
“It's… fine.”
“Just fine?”
I could hear the smirk in my friend’s tone. He couldn't wait to tell me it was a scam, and had been reminding me all week I was essentially willingly selling myself to the black market. I was stubborn, so, fine sounded better than my initial first impression. Which was to turn around, walk away, and completely block the place from my memory.
Unfortunately, at that moment, I valued my pride over my awareness.
“It's… okay.” I said, trying to find positives. I was staring at a looming grey building with shattered windows and a resident rat living near the door. I had a hard time figuring out how the girl from earlier had just casually strode inside, barefoot too. I glanced down at the ground, immediately regretting it.
Like there weren't bits of chewing gum and grime stuck to the concrete.
“Huh.” Freddie said, his tone creeping into teasing territory. “You're really selling it.”
“It just looks like a building,” I said, my gaze glued to the rat, who looked a little too comfortable. Maybe it was a pet.
I was getting progressively more infuriated the more I stared down this place. Judging from the decades old writing ingrained into the door, it used to be a dentist surgery. “What do you want me to say?” I wasn't even trying to hide the scorn from my voice. “It's a building that looks like an academy.”
“Can you send a picture?” Freddie asked, “Ooh, wait, I'll face-time you.”
“That's, uh, that’s not really necessary–”
I was cut off, suddenly, when a guy threw himself through the automatic doors, palms first. He took two stumbled steps forwards, one back, and lifted his head, half lidded eyes on the sky, before dropping to his knees and heaving up pinkish froth. I could see him trying to hold it in, slamming his hands over his mouth, only for it to splurge through his fingers, showering the ground in greyish pink froth.
Like he'd downed a bottle of Pepto Bismol.
Inching towards him, I realized it was Pepto Bismol.
The stink made my own stomach churn.
“Missy?”
I found my voice. “Uh, can I call you back later?”
Before my friend could answer, I ended the call, slipping my phone in my pocket.
The guy was still heaving, coughing up globules of pink.
“Are you okay?”
The sound of my heels click-clacking on concrete made me cringe. The guy noticed, flinching away. Closer, and I could see his scraggly blonde hair.
He was handsome.
Without the bile spewing down his chin.
Early twenties, wearing a fitted white shirt now covered in streaks of bright pink. Part of me wanted to make a half-hearted joke, but getting even closer, so close I could smell his pepto-breath, I noticed he was trembling, his hands clenched into fists.
When I attempted to awkwardly pat him on the shoulder, he twisted around, so fast, my morning coffee slithered its way back up my throat.
His eyes were wide, almost feral, studying me like a wild animal.
I noticed the whites of his pupils were red, like he'd burst a blood vessel.
Theatre kids were intense, though I had never met THIS kind of intense.
“Are you… going in there?” The guy’s voice was a child-like whimper I wasn't expecting.
It looked like he was slowly regaining clarity, staring down at his filthy shirt, his hands stained bright pink.
I nodded, uncertainly, offering him my water. “Yeah. Did you audition?”
He shoved it away, slapping himself in the face. “I… I don't know.”
“You… don’t know?”
Suddenly, it was like something had contorted in his expression, a switch being pulled. I wasn't expecting him to twist around so fast. The guy slowly cocked his head, his lips breaking into a grin. His eyes, however, stayed the same.
“Of course I've auditioned.” He said, with a laugh.
“It was the best experience of my life! His mouth formed an almost mocking frown.
“Unfortunately, I didn't make the cut. Which is a real shame. I'm sure Caeles would have benefited from my talents.”
What was weird, is that his mouth was moving, but he wasn't even looking at me, frenzied eyes caught in an oblivion I couldn't see.
When he did look at me, his expression crumpled all over again.
Pepto jumped to his feet, brushing himself down.
I couldn't take his over the top smile seriously, when his eyes were screaming, hollowed out caverns silently begging me to listen.
This guy was fucking crazy.
“Wait.” Pepto whispered, when I turned to walk away.
He pulled out his phone, tapping the screen before shoving it in my face.
“I HAD SO MUCH FUN AT THE CAELES ACADEMY AUDITIONS :)
When I could only stare at him in confusion, Pepto’s gaze flicked to his phone, swiping bile from his lips.
His eyes went cartoon wide, like he couldn't believe what he himself was typing.
“That… that's not what I was trying to say!” He tried retyping it, but the guy was just writing strings of emoji hearts.
I didn't know what to say. I had dealt with rejection before, but I had never gone this far. Pepto was having a full on mental breakdown, his body shuddering, teeth chattering, blinking eyes and lips parting as if to speak, but choking on his words. When he started clawing out his hair, I took the opportunity to make a quick getaway.
Before I could make it to the doors, though, Pepto jumped in front of me, waving his phone directly in my face.
“Just…” he pointed at the screen. “It won't let me…” Growing frustrated with himself, he let out a wet sounding sob, clawing his fingers through his hair. “Fuck, it won't let me…it won't let me type! It's not letting me type!”
By now, he had tufts of hair stuck between his fingernails. I don't know why his first reaction was to immediately try ripping his hair out.
A quick glance at my own phone reminded me of my own audition that was in five minutes.
Meanwhile, I was dealing with what I was pretty sure was delusion, denial, or a mixture of both.
I was considering pushing past him, when Pepto’s phone screen hit me in the face. Again.
This time, though, there was coherent writing.
“FIND LUKE.”
“Luke?” I said. “Who's that?”
“Luke!” The guy was bouncing on the heels of his feet. “He's my…” Pepto drifted off, his eyes going vacant, as if I could physically see his brain being plucked from his skull. Pepto dropped his phone, and I grabbed it before it could hit the ground. His hands went to his curls, clawing, scratching, until he was drawing blood across his forehead.
“I… I don't know! I can't… I can't remember. Luke. He was my… he was my… I don't know, I can't… I can't–”
I stumbled back when he let out a shriek, scratching at his face.
“Fuck!” He whimpered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Pepto grabbed my shoulders, shaking me, his fingers digging into my skin.
“I don't know who he is.” He gritted out, pink froth pooling from his lips.
Pepto broke out into a sob. “I don't… I don't know who he is, but you can find him, right? You can… you can find…”
Again, he trailed off mid sentence, his hands going limp around my shoulders.
I managed to side step him, swallowing a cry.
“Yeah, I'll, um, I'll find him for you.”
Pepto backed away, suddenly, stumbling over himself.
His gaze found mine, vacant, like a baby deer.
“Find who?”
I didn't wait around to answer him, pushing through the doors and stepping inside.
The interior was unsurprisingly even worse than the exterior.
The elevator was broken, so I had to run up three flights of stairs.
I expected at least an attempt at an academy, even in the dregs of an old dentist surgery.
What I got, though, was a never ending staircase, obnoxious photos of teeth greeting me on every level.
The third floor was… less clinical.
I strode directly into a waiting room filled with college aged students, either sitting on plastic chairs, or standing around, rehearsing.
The room itself was cosy enough, a navy carpet and a TV playing a random Twitch stream.
Situated in the middle, was a desk with a bored looking woman behind it.
Her smile was fake. I could understand her pain. She was stuck in a room with theatre kids all day.
“Sign here.” She prodded a sheet of paper.
I was convinced her voice was AI.
While I was scribbling my details, I took a moment to notice the stark difference from the kids entering the room, to the ones leaving. The kids entering wore wide, confident smiles and were social butterflies, chatting amongst themselves.
The kids leaving reminded me of pod people.
They left the room silent, in an orderly line with dazed smiles on their faces, like they weren't sure where they were.
I watched one guy walk directly into the wall instead of taking a left toward the exit, and a girl straight up just toppled down the stairs.
The kids waiting with me named them rejects.
I wasn't convinced until I glimpsed an empty bottle of Pepto Bismol sitting on the floor by the window.
Thinking back to Pepto, that made a lot of sense.
I was still dazedly staring at the bottle, when my name was called.
Jumping to my feet, I did my best to calm myself down, straightening my ponytail. Pepto had really screwed with my head. I could barely even remember the lines I had been rehearsing for a week straight.
I was muttering my lines to myself, when I stepped through the door.
The door that apparently turned you into a pod-person on the way out.
For a moment, I thought I was blinded by stage lights.
It was so bright.
The glow bathing me was clinical, stabbing into my eyes.
When I blinked, I found myself standing in front of three shadows sitting in front of me.
Their chairs were made of leather, far different from the plastic ones in the waiting room.
So, they did have filthy cash.
I was looking at one man, and two women.
They were… average?
I expected them to be more glitzier, but they were just regular people.
The man was in his late twenties, maybe early thirties, a stiff looking brunette wearing a suit and tie, one leg crossed over the other. His eyes were narrowed slightly, lips curved into the start of a smile. Like I amused him.
The women were polar opposites.
One of them was my Mom’s age, grey hair and floral clothing. She took a sip of water, her gaze burning into me.
Google told me not to be intimidated by their stares, but it was impossible.
These people were carving holes into my skull.
Sitting next to her, a younger girl who seemed to own the color red.
Her hair simmered, blood red, while she herself was sculpted in a dress, perfect cherry lips spread in a wide smile.
With a little too many teeth.
They studied my face like I was already theirs, drinking in every inch of me.
Freddie said I had to find a weakness in their expression and use it to my advantage.
If I could find the prick of a genuine smile, I could become their favorite.
“Hi!” I said. My caffeine intake was starting to take effect.
I didn't realize I was bouncing up and down until I caught myself.
Red’s smile stretched wider.
Maybe they liked my eagerness.
“My name is Misa.” I introduced myself, staying casual, keeping my arms by my sides. “I'm twenty one years old–”
I choked on my next words when Red spoke up. “Impress us, Misa,” Her voice was a smooth, almost seductive rasp, and I felt myself fall into it, enveloped in sugar that was too sweet, and yet I couldn't stop myself. She folded her arms across her chest, her gaze challenging me to do something different. To make her want me.
“Show us something we have never seen before.” She stood up, cat-like eyes narrowing, “Show us how desperate you are to join this prestigious class.”
I nodded, and began.
I had planned a whole monologue, practised it over and over again, forcing Freddie to judge me with a none biassed opinion.
I was three lines in, when Red started laughing.
“Stop.”
I did, my cheeks heating up, and she started clapping.
“Sweetie, oh, stop, you're adorable!” She said, her lips curving into a cruel smirk.
She leaned forward, like I was something that entertained her, jostling her heeled foot. “We don't take amateurs. I think you need to go back to school.”
This woman was definitely a psychopath.
Empty eyes sparkling with a gleam that definitely enjoyed humiliating candidates, and a twisted smile that was a little too wide. Red made me want to crawl into the ground. She made me want to turn around, leave the room, and quit my dream. I was aware of my own fury, my embarrassment turning my cheeks crimson. I matched her.
Maybe that's what she wanted all along. To wear the color of her victims.
Taking a shaky step back, I started to nod, started to agree, my mouth choking with the words, “You're right. I'm sorry for wasting your time.” I had never received proper constructive criticism from a professional standpoint. Which meant I really did suck. But I didn't move. I didn't want to move, and Red continued laughing, her companions sitting in silence.
The man rolled his eyes with a loud, exaggerated sigh.
Like I was boring.
The older woman pulled out her phone.
“Misa, you are…cute.” Red said. “But you're not quite what we are looking for.”
I wasn't sure I could admit it right there, but she made me feel things.
Like I was ignited.
Like I was going to prove this crazy bitch wrong.
I found my voice, strong and confident, despite my hammering heart.
“Give me another chance.”
Red’s lips curled. “So cute, Misa. Oh, sugar bear, It would be better if you left the room. Unless you want to embarrass yourself further! In that case, be my guest!”
She turned her attention to her nails, nudging the guy.
“Dinner?” She hummed. “I'm thinking of Italian. You are quite the wine connoisseur, Nicholas. Why don't you introduce me to your favorite?”
“Hey.” I blurted.
They ignored me, getting a little too close.
I don't know why I continued, reading my lines, screaming them, so I would be heard. I read them perfectly, and tweaking the genre from drama to romance, and then to horror. I became three different characters, a high school girl struggling with cancer, a final girl, and a woman going through a divorce.
I was fucking perfect.
But they weren't listening to me, caught up in their own conversation.
I tried again.
And again.
And again.
By now, I was on my knees, my fingers ripping into my hair. I was seeing red.
“We want originality, Misa,” Red said, sucking her teeth.
Her voice crawling into my skull was enough.
She still wanted me.
The thought polluted the back of my mind, taking a strangling hold. She still wanted me. When I lifted my head, Red wasn't looking at me, her gaze on the table grains. “Show us something new.”
I got to my feet, panting, my breath in my throat.
I became a screaming, strangled mess, a woman who lost her baby.
Red’s interest was piqued. Only slightly. Through my fraying vision, she slowly turned in her chair. “Again.” She clapped her hands, “Come on, Misa! We want new! We want never been fucking done before! Are you deaf?”
I couldn't stop the sobs escaping my mouth.
They lost interest again, right in the middle of my reading.
“Why can't you look at me?” I found myself spluttering.
When the man pulled out a bottle of water, I pulled off my heel and lobbed it at his face.
“Look at me!”
He did. Slowly. His gaze found me, for perhaps the first time.
Not as an amateur, but as a potential candidate.
Around the twentieth attempt, I started to laugh. Never been done before? I could feel my fingernails already in my scalp, clawing chunks of my hair out.
Reality contorted, and I felt myself drop to my knees. I was still laughing, spluttering, sobbing. I could still hear her in my head. Never Been Done Before. I started slowly, dragging my fingernails down my face until I felt the harsh sting.
“Again.” Red said, and her voice led me to stare down at my hands, at pinkish flesh glued to my bones, fleshy mounds.
So easy to tear. I didn't even feel it.
Only the sudden, unbridled euphoria of biting into my own skin, locking in my jaw, and ripping into myself.
When I tore it from the bone, warmth filled my mouth, and I was choking, guzzling down my own flesh, mulling it in my mouth and swallowing.
I can't remember how I got so deep, and why I didn't stop.
Why I didn't fucking scream.
But it didn't matter.
Red was standing up. She was clapping, her lips spread into a grin.
Her applause filled me with stars.
So, I ripped my hair from my scalp, a hysterical giggle escaping my lips.
She loved me.
I could see her jumping up and down, clapping.
Louder, and louder.
Her applause controlled me, twisting and contorting me into hers.
I didn't even think. I wanted to impress her, and doing this was doing just that.
My fingers were delving into my right eye socket, clawing my eye out. It didn't even hurt. Not with her thundering applause that was deafening, beautiful, an orchestra in my ears.
When I was semi conscious, my eye was crushed in my hand, but my vision was still mine, almost too clear. I could see streaks of red blurred between my lashes. My hair was caught between my fingers. But I wanted to do more.
When I stumbled to my feet, Red’s smile was so beautiful.
The man, however, looked horrified.
“Someone bring in the one of the successes,” Red’s voice was a shrill giggle, “Bring him in!” she clapped her hands together, and I spat out a fleshy thing. “I want to see them together! I want to see the future in front of us!”
Footsteps coming towards me in slow, shuddery thumps. I looked up, and a shadow was dancing around me.
When I slowly rose to my feet, I half realized I’d bitten my toe off. The shadow had a face, a boy who was younger than me. I think he used to have hair, but half of it was gone, half of it was still stuck between his fists. When I found his eyes, I found twin caverns instead.
Eyes that were still physically there, and yet there was no life.
No spark.
I was staring at a dead body, a flesh puppet who had lost his strings.
When he grabbed my hands, pulling me into a waltz, I caught a smear of scarlet trickling down the back of his neck. When I followed it upwards, his head was covered, slick, dripping with red.
Like me, he matched her too.
And he was beautiful, she told me, her push, her thunderous applause, guiding me into a waltz.
His feet moved, perfecting every step, and my foggy mind couldn't understand why. He matched my every move, the two of us floating across the floor.
My feet knew the steps before my mind.
How could he dance? I thought, dizzily.
How could he dance, when smeared scarlet followed his twisting, and turning and pirouetting feet?
Because underneath that swimming clinical light, the back of the boy’s head had been carved away, a perfectly sculpted cavern where his brain should have been. I could see the severed stem, where it had cleanly plucked out.
His fingers cradled in mine were wet. Swimming in blood.
His own blood.
Spinning round and around, I imagined myself as a princess.
I saw an 18th century ballroom lit up around us. Glittering smiles and glasses of champagne, long, flowing ball gowns.
I blinked, and my head was tipped back, gliding in blood once again.
When he pulled me to his chest, I stumbled, and a name came to light.
Luke.
I had found him.
Our finishing spin left me hard to breathe.
My body was broken, ripped into, and yet somehow not.
By the time we were finished, the two of us bowing, my mind was full of fog.
Cotton candy.
“Congratulations!” Red’s smile was inhuman, stretching right off of her face.
“You're in the S class!”
I was led through a door that wasn't the one I entered from. Inside the room were a dozen or so students, kneeling on the floor. They were missing parts of themselves, like unfinished puzzle pieces.
I dropped onto my knees next to a girl without a head. I could only see her torso, but I knew she was smiling.
Looming over us, was the goddess Athena drenched in blood that was still wet.
Dripping, pooling from every crevice of her dress.
Looking closer, this statue was moving.
Something sickly crept into my mouth.
Her right eye was human, a twitching eyeball sandwiched inside the stone.
It didn't match her. It was wrong, horrifying, like a painting, a real human eye struggling to focus on us.
And then, my own gaze found the statues head, where a real human brain had been forced inside perfect white, pink, greyish mush dripping down the sculpted, slender neck.
I could see where it had been pushed, pulverised through the stone.
The statue’s singular eye found me.
Its dancing pupil jumped up and down.
Before it blinked.
Next to me, Luke was on his knees, as if in prayer.
I can't remember leaving the room.
I just remember running.
Back down the stairs, stumbling, staggering over myself.
I was screaming by the time I reached the doors.
They opened, as usual.
But I couldn't get through. I tried, but I was slamming into something I couldn't see.
Pepto was still waiting outside. The sky was dark.
When he saw me, he stumbled over, slamming his hands into the glass.
I couldn't even understand myself. I was just fucking screaming.
Pepto held up his phone.
“DID YOU FIND HIM?”
I shook my head.
“No.” I lied.
I can't tell him the truth. I don't even know what it is.
“I can't get out!”
Pepto nodded slowly, typing something and showing me his phone.
I'm getting you both out of there. I think I know how I can get inside.
It's been 3 days, and Pepto is yet to return.
I’ve tried multiple times to cry out for the H word. But it won't let me type it.
Please H me. I need to get out of this place.
Fuck. Get me OUT OF HERE.
Classes start tomorrow.

Please help save my sanity.
I have three wires: white, black, and red. These control two loads: an outlet and a light.
If I connect white and black, the light goes on. If I connect white and red, the outlet goes on.
I have two switches with pilot lights. One has two screws on each side. The other has one and two, respectively.
I want each switch to light up if the load is powered. (Eg, If the light is on, the pilot on that switch is lit)
I’ve been banging my head against the wall trying every conceivable configuration, but I can’t seem to get this right. Please help!
Thank you!

“What?” Levi teased, hiding his smirk against Sebastian’s chest.
“Nothing… you’re just so gorgeous, my love,” Sebastian said, folding onto himself to plant a kiss on Levi’s forehead. “We should probably get to bed soon. Flight leaves early.”
“I know,” said Levi with a small sigh, pleased with Sebastian’s hand raking through his hair.
Their luggage was packed – Levi had packed both days in advance. Their items sat at the door like a small child that begs their parents to “hurry up, come on!” But the morning was many hours away and with the promise of their belongings packed, both men held each other, feeling themselves sinking deeper into the soft cushion of the mattress.
“Damn it!” Sebastian said in an annoyed tone, freeing his arm from Levi. “I knew I’d forget.”
Unplugging the spare phone charger from his side of the bed, he slipped out of the covers, wrapping the cord into a perfect circle with his hands. Unzipping the side of his backpack, he slipped the white cord inside, and rediscovered the patches of warmth under the blankets.
Levi clicked his phone off and tucked it under the down pillow that rested under his head. Sebastian in bed again, Levi’s body melted into him. The hand that was so familiar to Levi moved through the middle of his back, its warmth radiating Sebastian’s love for him.
“I think I’m ready now,” Levi said, sporting a comfortable smile.
“Okay,” Sebastian said, twisting his middle to reach the lamp. “Goodnight, my love,” planting another peck on Levi’s temple, “I love you.”
“Goodnight, Sebastian,” Levi said, feeling himself fall into sleep. “Love you more.”
***
I click the TV off, flicking the lamp off soon after: too tired for another episode tonight.
“Goodnight, Elliot,” I say aloud, cuddling the pillows that line the vacant side of the bed.

Hey love Reading Clementine centric fics especially with a focus on her developing a ruthlessness to survive while keeping her humanity. However I've developed an itch I can't seem to find an fic to scratch.
I'm looking for a decently long fic 50k or more but I will settle for less since I'm that desperate!
Where Clem from season 3 or 4 or in between runs into Lee. (I'm sure you can see why I would like this.)
If it doesn't exist then here's some inspiration. Imagine a Lee who spared clementine the pain of shooting him and wakes up a few days after she leaves realising he had succeeded in stopping the bite by losing his arm. He escapes the handcuffs and leaves savannah and over the next 2 years focuses on finding clementine while surviving.
He eventually hears a gunshot in the woods and sneaks over to see what was happening finding christa who had successfully shot one of the 3 men surrounding her. He goes in to help and as he kills the second the third is able to stab christa in the stomach. Overcome by rage Lee smashes his head into a tree "joel style" as he holds a dying christa she points in a random direction and with her final breath hears "clementine" reluctantly he puts her down and rushes forward his mind locked onto the one shred of hope he has to live through the end of the world.
However as he reaches an open area cleaved through by a raging torrent. He spots a man his face being used as a chew toy for a walker while others chase after... CLEMENTINE. He runs cleaving through walkers chasing after his little girl and he goes to yell her name, to draw attention away from her or just to make this feel more real He doesn't know. But as he does he watches as she slips a walker hidden from her view pushing her into the frothing current. And after 2 years of searching Lee finally broke watching the closest person he will ever have to a daughter fall to her death.
Lee drifted for the next 6 years. A dead man walking in a world of the walking dead. Hunt, kill, move on and repeat. The rotting hacked a part and the living swiftly shot. He wondered why he still lived most days, she was only a girl he knew for a few months sure he knew of her for longer but he only spent time with her for such a short blip in the span of his life. But when he though back to her in the barn innocently wondering what the smell was, to her drawings with duck or her smile when he gave her the last apple they had at the motel. It fed the dwindling flame of his person for another day, as it had the day before and the day before that.
He was in another forest now, the trees were different and it was warmer too, but it still dragged him back to his sole nightmare for the last few years. Her falling, and being swallowed whole.
He was a little too lost in his memories so when he felt a snag at his feet he thought nothing of it, that was until he was raised off the grown by a jerk so sudden he dropped hatchet he had taken from the corspe of a near frozen solid walker up north a few years ago.
He looked downwards or rather his new upwards towards his stretched out leg his ankle being slowly crashed by his weight as bore sole load of his person. His right left felt useless and the awkward angle was helping his aging hips. He tried to reach towards his weapon, noticed thinner than when he first found it after years of dulling and sharpening. But his fingers only brushed at the hilt and any extending he attempted only worked the agony of his ankle being constricted within the now clearly noticible homemade rope.
He was about to make another attempt knowing he was a dead man without a tool to dispatch of the dead but he heard it, a voice not to far in the woods.
"Your kidding right? There's no way you can do that, he'll how do you even find out how to do that?" A boy, a young adult at best. It was the kind of voice he would hear making a poorly timed joke in one of his university lectures. He could see through the foliage their figures atleast two though it might be three if the way something seemed to hover by their legs seemed to indicate.
"Well I taken once from my group by this crazy person who thought I was his duaghter or something. He took me to the other side of the city and the man who had been looking after me chased him down, he had killed so many walkers on his way to me that they started ignoring him. He figured out what happened and covered me in guts so we could escape together." A young women's voice, clearly around the same age which was weird, for the past few years now the only survivers he had met were his age maybe a bit younger but they were adults when he'll froze over and the dead migrated up top.
The kids and the teenages just died off as the years went by, as if the world was saying the apocalypse wasn't meant for children, for Clem.
They were drawing closer, Lee didn't know how to even react in this situation. He knew he had to try and talk them into helping him down and sparing him but there was a real possibility this trap was made for people rather than walkers, it was too elaborate for something as simple as refilling the dead. But he wasn't in any sort of position of strength his weapon was just out of reach and he didn't have an form of leverage to do anything but dangle while ensuring his leg didn't awkwardly dangle at an odd angle.
"That guy must have been a badass, I've killed my fair share of walkers don't get me wrong but NEVER enough to be mistaken for one and the fact he did that just to save you means he must have cared about you a lot."
It was only then when the story caught up to him, the boys words previously more akin to a white noise similar to the sounds of nature while he contemplated his options but as his mind registering how familiar it was. But as she turned around a larger trunk of tree and he saw that blue and white cap his world was shattered and made anew.
"Yeah... he was the best. Honestly I never would have made it if it wasn't for... LEE!"
(This was all off the cuff but please tell me what you think cuase I might just give up and wrote one myself xD)

I had an experience after shopping at Petco recently.
Some backstory: I was given a parakeet last year. She was a rescue; previous owners were abusive, and when I got her, she was very shaken, traumatized, and couldn’t fly. It took work and effort on my part, but over time she became a very happy and lovely bird. I always took care of her, changed her food, gave her treats to encourage good behavior, and took her outside of the cage at least once per day to have her start flying. As of last week she officially was able to fly and land safely wherever she wanted, and I’ve never seen her happier. No matter where she was, she would always fly to me and perch on my shoulder and groom my hair. She was very intelligent, and could tell when I was happy or sad. Whenever I played guitar, she would always chirp along when I would play a song that she liked, and it was always in key. We had a bond and I loved her dearly.
Since I’m no longer going to be working from home soon, I figured that she needed a companion, and went to Petco to get her a boyfriend. I picked out a calm white male parakeet and brought him home. I took him out of the box, took my bird out of her cage, and put them both on my table so they could start communicating. In the meantime, I rearranged her cage furniture so that it would become neutral territory, and went to check on them. They were communicating, and seemed to be getting along. After a while, I decided that they were hungry, and put them both in the cage. They both ate, drank, and then started grooming each other, so I decided that a quarantine won’t be necessary. When night time came, they were both nestled together and sleeping. I thought it was adorable. The next day they were both chirping together when I woke up. I took them both out of the cage, and they walked around my table, playing with the things I had all while communicating with each other. They suited each other well, and I was happy with my choice. She was very energetic, and he was very calm, all in all, a good balance. The next few days went the same. My bid was the happiest I’ve ever seen her.
Four days after I bought the new bird, I went to the cage to take them out. Normally, my bird goes to the door whenever she hears me because she’s excited to get out, and the new bird retreats because he hasn’t warmed up to me yet. He only comes to the door after he sees her leave. Today, however, my bird didn’t come to the door. She was at the bottom of the cage and barely moving. I immediately took her out, and she was lifeless. She opened her eyes, and moved her head around a little bit, but it was clear that she was not well. I tried feeding her, and giving her some water, but she didn’t react. I drove to the vet. They took her, and put her in an incubator, but before an avian specialist could look at her, she died. I am devastated. I haven’t had the easiest life, and she brightened up my world. She was my only true friend. I took her to a park next to my house and buried her. I carved her name (Māori) into a stone nearby. When I got home, the new bird was very slow. He wouldn’t eat, or drink. After 2 hours, he was also dead.
My bird was young, not even a year old. I provided her with a good, and healthy environment. There was nothing wrong with her. Within four days of me getting her a mate, whom she got along with very well, they both died. There was no sign of sickness or head trauma. I’m beginning to think that Petco sold me an infected bird, and he infected my bird as well.
Has this happened to anyone? What can I do?
Thank you for your attention.

TLDR; I conducted a lot of tests based on community feedback after my first batch of test results (and recommendations) were perceived as controversial. I ran additional simulations and used chi square analysis to see if any equipment stood out.

• The polearm was observed to be the best except in very niche circumstances, where it still does well in general
• Assassin's Rags appears to be the best general armor in the game for melee
• Heavy Armor consistently loses to White Plate & Assassin's Rags
• In field battles you're probably better off not using ranged weapons at all
• For top tier characters KLR limbs remove the need to prioritize a shirt with high coverage; reducing damage to the chest & stomach may be more important even if limbs are less unprotected
• Crossbows don't appear to do very well in field battles

Introduction
Assertions about the best equipment in Kenshi are innumerable, but few of them are driven by data. A previous post based on repeated combat simulations and statistical analysis indicated that the Polearm outperformed other community favorites, sometimes by a remarkable margin.
Additionally, the recommendation to use crab armor was challenged and members pointed that other armor types not included in that round of tests would do better.
Other criticism of that group of tests included:

• The tests were only done with level 100 characters which doesn't reflect practical squad composition for normal players
• Very few enemies in Kenshi actually use heavy armor, let alone masterwork armor and it would make more sense to do weapon tests against more representative armor sets
• White Plate and Assassin's rags weren't considered and believed to outperform heavy armor
• The Shek were deemed the most effective race, but it wasn't clear if this was due to a bug in Forgotten Construction Construction set
• Sabres weren't considered at all, in particular for indoor combat
• Robotic limbs were not tested when determining the recommended equipment loadout or how that would affect how a character should be armored

These points were explored in additional testing. Also considered was how squads that were partially composed of crossbows and melee troops performed against pure melee squads.
Materials and Methods
The Forgotten Construction Set (FCS) is the defacto modding tool for Kenshi. Two squads were created and made to compete against each other many times to see if they differed in any significant way. Squads competed until all the members of one squad were knocked out, at which point the winner and loser were recorded. Fischer's Exact Test was then used to see if the results were significant.
Squads
Squads were composed entirely of Greenlander humans (except when explicitly testing other races). The rational for this was Greenlanders have no combat buffs or debuffs and that this would avoid potentially problematic discrepancies in stats that could be attributed to either a defect in FCS or stats so high that they would be utterly impractical to attain.
The stats of each member of the squad were identical in all simulations, with tests being done on squads all at either level 100 or level 50 depending on the test.
When robotic limbs were being considered all members had masterwork KLR arms and legs.
One squad was created as a starter squad which placed all members directly under the players control. The other squad was created in a modded town on the unamed island named "Chi Town", which was composed of a single building. In each new game, the squad in Chi Town would spawn in its building and begin patrolling the area.
Chi Town was set as a hostile faction to the player controlled squad. On a new game the player controlled squad would spawn in Chi Town adjacent to the hostile squad. Despite having hostile faction relations, Chi Town never initiated combat against the player controlled squad, allowing the player squad to have its members positioned in a variety of ways to ensure an even match up. Combat was then initiated by the player after setup.
Squad Size
To avoid a known problem with the AI in which knocked out members would revive mid combat and begin patrolling the town rather than continue fighting, the squad size was limited to 5 on each side for melee tests.
A squad size of 10 was used for each size when crossbows were being tested.
Initiating Combat
Squads were either loaded by a new game or quick load. After this members of the player controlled squad were positioned in such a way that when combat was initiated all opposing squad members would participate in combat at about the same time.
During combat soldiers were knocked unconscious, but frequently regained consciousness mid combat and rejoined the fight. Combat continued until all members of one squad were knocked unconscious.
When testing indoor combat the members of the opposing squad were spawned in a stationhouse. The player controlled squad then entered the building and initiated combat. If at any time battle caused a member to navigate outside the building the test was discarded and a new iteration conducted.
When testing combined arms a purely melee group was compared against a squad with both crossbows and melee members. The purely melee squad was positioned at maximum distance before initiating attack. This enabled the opposing crossbows to fire off multiple volleys in an attempt to give them maximum utility.
Each squad had 10 members. In the case of the combined arms group 5 had melee weapons and 5 had crossbows.
The crossbows used in the experiments were the Eagle's Cross and Junkbow. The rational for this is that the Eagle's Cross has a very high Damage Per Second when used by a level 100 user. However the humble Junkbow was also considered as some assert that it is superior, despite it's comparably weak damage.
When a player is hit by a crossbow bolt they stagger regardless of the amount of damage. Some postulate that the faster rate of fire with the Junkbow causes opponents to stagger enough that a comparatively smaller group of melee fighters can land more attacks. In other words the expectation is that the weak Junkbow would cause victory by stun-locking opponents.
Regular Soldier Testing
When testing combatants at level 50 mid level quality was used for weapons and armor (Catun No. 3). Additionally the armor set used was the standard kit used by Holy Nation Paladins.
It was speculated that more common, representative armor like this might yield different results for weapon testing. In particular, the abysmal performance of the falling sun in previous testing was attributed to it being used against very heavy armor which would prevent it from severing limbs.
Given that Kenshi's combat mechanics focus more on disabling an opponent, the ability to cause amputation may be more important than being able to do more damage. The Holy Nation kit was arbitrarily selected among the 3 major factions, but deemed suitable because the coverage of the Holy Chest plate is low enough to allow for testing amputation while still being high enough to represent what a player would likely encounter during a base raid.
Fischer's Exact Test
Chi-Squared analysis was done using an online calculator located here using a simple 2x2 contingency table. For all tests the default parameters of a two sided tail, 1:1 odds and a 95% confidence interval were used.
Version
Tests were performed on Kenshi 1.0.68

Animal Care Compliance

No bonedogs were harmed over the course of this research.

Data

Elite Soldier Tests
The following equipment was used in each test unless explicitly stated otherwise:

Factor Type	Factor Used
Helmet	Crab Helmet
Pants	Samurai Legplates
Shirt	Dark Leather Shirt
Footwear	Wooden Sandals
Robotic Limbs	Masterwork KLR arms & legs
Weapon	Polearm
Level	100
Race	Greenlander

Test	Group 1 Loadout	Group 2 Loadout	Group 1 Win:Loss Ratio
Crab Armor - Dark Leather shirt vs Chainmail	Dark Leather Shirt	Blackened Chainmail	24:6
Crab Armor vs Samurai Plate w/ Polearms	Crab	Samurai	9:21
Crab Armor vs Samurai Plate w/ Nodachi	Crab + Nodachi	Samurai + Nodachi	3:13
Crab vs White Plate Jacket	Crab	White Plate Jacket	0:30
Crab vs White Plate w/ Nodachi	Crab + Nodachi	White Plate + Nodachi	9:21
Crab vs Assassin's rags	Crab + Blackened Chainmail	Assassin's Rags + Dark Leather Shirt	3:27
White Plate Jacket vs Assassin's rags	White Plate	Assassin's Rags	7:23
White Plate Jacket vs Samurai	White Plate	Samurai	27:3
White Plate Jacket shirtless vs shirt	White Plate [no shirt]	White Plate [Dark Leather Shirt]	14:16
White Plate Armor, Skeleton vs Human	White Plate Skeleton	White Plate Human	25:5

Combined Arms Tests
The following equipment was used in each test unless explicitly stated otherwise:

Factor Type	Factor Used
Helmet	Crab Helmet
Pants	Samurai Legplates
Armor	Assassin's Rags
Shirt	Dark Leather Shirt
Footwear	Wooden Sandals
Robotic Limbs	Masterwork KLR arms & legs
Weapon	Polearm
Level	100
Race	Greenlander

Crossbows used a longsword as a sidearm in all cases.

Test	Group 1 Loadout	Group 2 Loadout	Group 1 Win:Loss Ratio
Polearms vs Polearms + Eagle's Cross	Polearms	Polearm + Eagle's Cross	17:3
Polearms vs Polearms + Junkbow	Polearms	Polearm + Junkbow	20:0

Regular Soldier (L50) Tests
The following equipment was used in each test unless explicitly stated otherwise:

Factor Type	Factor Used
Helmet	Bucket Zukin
Pants	Stout Hessian Uniform
Armor	Holy Chest Plate
Shirt	Cloth Shirt
Footwear	Plated Longboots
Robotic Limbs	None
Weapon	Polearm
Level	50
Race	Greenlander

Test	Group 1 Loadout	Group 2 Loadout	Group 1 Win:Loss Ratio
Polearm vs Falling Sun	Polearms	Falling Sun	26:4
Indoors 5v5- Polearm vs Desert Sabers	Polearms	Desert Sabers	13:17
Indoors 1v1- Polearm vs Desert Sabers	Polearm	Desert Saber	10:20

Results

All heavy armor tested lost substantially to both White Plate & Assassin's Rags. The polearm continued to outperform the falling sun. Desert Sabres either matched the Polearm in performance or outperformed it when micromanaging.
Additionally, the dark leather shirt outperformed blackened chainmail. This bolsters claims that when robotic limbs are used that limb coverage is less important than total damage reduced to the torso and stomach.
The Assassin's Rags were undefeated in any category. It seems that the stat malus of heavy armor is indeed quite significant and likely responsible for consistent losses. But even when put against medium White Plate armor which has very little stat malus the Assassin's Rags continue to dominate; this is likely due to the bonuses to dexterity, combat speed and melee attack that they provide.
When pitted against identically sized squads, combined arm crossbows squads were utterly defeated by monolithic squads armed with Polearms.
Level 100 Tests

Test	P-Value	Statistically Significant?	Better Equipment
Crab Armor - Dark Leather shirt vs Chainmail	0.0000114	Yes	Dark Leather Shirt

Level 50 Tests

Test	P-Value	Statistically Significant?	Better Equipment
Polearm vs Falling Sun	< 0.0001	Yes	Polearm
Indoors- 5v5 Polearm vs Desert Sabres	0.4389	No	Neither
Indoors- 1v1 Polearm vs Desert Sabres	0.0194	Yes	Desert Sabre

Combined Arms Tests

Test	P-Value	Statistically Significant?	Better Equipment
Polearms vs Polearms + Eagle's Cross	< 0.0001	Yes	Pure Polearm Squad
Polearms vs Polearms + Junkbow	N/A	Yes	Pure Polearm Squad

Discussion

Kenshi has a wide variety of equipment and a great deal of complex calculations behind it. Despite that, there exist god-tier equipment that appears to provide little choice or strategy for a player looking to outfit a squad to be competitive.
Using robotic limbs changed the ideal composition for armor. Previous testing with crab armor indicated that Blackened Chain Mail had an edge over the Leather Turtleneck. This was attributed to crab armor only providing 90% coverage which meant that stronger protection for the arms could change the tide of lengthy battles; A disabled arm was an extreme liability.
However the massive HP boost provided by KLR arms seems to be significant enough that additional coverage at the cost of dexterity penalties is a bigger hindrance than help. After HP becomes substantially greater than the heath of the stomach or torso it makes more sense to forgo that protection if it means you can hit faster.
Players are unlikely in the early game to outfit their squad with masterwork KLR arms. During this phase one could speculate over whether to use chainmail or a leather turtleneck over the dark leather shirt. Previous testing indicated that chainmail was better for crab armor users fighting other crab armor users with leather turtlenecks, but that experimentation never considered light or medium armor which was shown here to be more effective regardless.
This challenges the wisdom of using chain armor at all. The use of a shirt can be forgone entirely if the player chooses to use White Plate Jackets. This armor provides 100% coverage for the torso, stomach and arms making a shirt redundant. Given White Plate Jackets outperformed Crab and Samurai armor and is more accessible and affordable it is difficult to justify the decision to use heavy armor at all, let alone chainmail in combination with it. This refutes the conclusion to use Crab armor in previous testing.
Given the outsized impact Assassin's Rags had (presumably due to the status boons) it is probably inadvisable to use chainmail and its debuffs alongside it. The Assassin's Rags provide relatively poor coverage, so a shirt of some kind is likely useful. What the ideal shirt for an Assassin's Rags user without KLR arms would be is unanswered in this study.
The Assassin's Rags provided adequate protection when dealing with ranged opponents. One plausible weakness would be the scant protection they provide against harpoons, which was not tested. Even if they are unparalleled in melee further research should be done to see if a single shot from a harpoon could kill a character using them. If that turns out to be the case then White Plate Jackets would apparently be preferable to any heavy armor.
White Plate Jackets outperformed both Crab and Samurai armor when using Nodachis which deal purely cut damage and have a penalty against armor. This is perplexing because heavy armor appears to have been intended to be the best choice for mitigating cut damage, but the stat malus associated with it causes light armor to be a better choice (at least against the weapons tested in this study).
The Falling Sun continued to yield mediocre results compared to the Polearm. Oddly, the Falling Sun was noticed to cause amputation semi-regularly in the tests against Polearms. Despite this knocking out the Polearm user, the remaining Polearms managed to win most fights anyway and bandage their crippled comrade post victory. While limb loss after battle is fairly devastating, this has limited utility from the players perspective; there isn't a strong need to amputate an enemies limbs because it doesn't matter how you disable your opponent as long as they are disabled. It probably makes more sense to just use the Polearm because it wins way more often.
The Polearm appears unbeatable with very few exceptions. Previous testing indicated the only weapon observed to outperform the Polearm was the Paladin's Cross and that was contingent on using it against skeletons. This research indicates that the Desert Sabre can be more effective than the Polearm indoors, but only if the Sabre user is not subject to the Polearms area of effect damage; i.e., the Sabre has to fight the Polearm one on one which requires micromanagement.
A particular surprise was how the Polearm performed by level 50 users indoors against Desert Sabre users in squads. Here Polearms have a very strong malus and the Sabers have a strong boon. Despite this there wasn't a statistically significant difference between them.
The Polearm did lose against Sabres frequently when forced to fight one on one indoors. From the players perspective this means that defending indoors with Sabres is a viable strategy early to mid game, although attacking grouped NPC Sabres indoors with Polearms is also surprisingly viable.
Enemies that use polearms are typically the most high level squads in the game (e.g., the skeletal legion and southern hive). But these late game squads almost exclusively use polearms themselves. This means a player's late game Polearm squad would not have any disadvantage indoors as both squads would have the same penalty. Furthermore, by the time a player is encountering late game squads like this they've likely leveled up enough to avoid the need to micromanage regardless.
Whether such a niche use case justifies sinking experience into building up the Sabre skill when they could be leveling up the Polearm is a matter for players to decide. It's difficult to pronounce Sabre's categorically superior, particularly when they appear to break even with Polearms when forced to fight in groups indoors.
Crossbows/Polearm hybrid squads turned out to be unviable against pure Polearm squads. Every crossbow simulation ended with unfavorable results when the competing squad invested in a Polearm instead. Crossbows probably would perform better during sieges where they had a benefit of a wall, but a turret would likely be a better option at that point. The Junkbows ability to stunlock evenly sized forces was insufficient. This strategy is probably only viable when many weak characters are fighting a single strong character, assuming it works at all.
The lack of some rock-paper-scissors mechanics in Kenshi limits how the player can think strategically about squad composition. Modding could plausibly create more interesting, balanced relationships between equipment. For example, increasing the damage of weapons like Katanas while simultaneously increasing the penalty against heavy armor could make them a viable alternative to Polearms in many common situations.
The interplay of armor penetration and raw damage could create a better defined role for light, medium and heavy builds. Additionally, crossbows might be enhanced to have a viable role in the field as they do not appear to excel there or behind allied walls where they could use a turret instead.
Overall if a players goal is to outfit a squad for the highest combat potential, the data indicates the choice is mostly linear- outfit the entire squad the same way, preferring Assassin's Rags or White Plate Jackets along with a Polearm or Paladin's Cross (both weapons can be available via a backpack).
As far as choice of character goes, Skeletons were shown to significantly outperform humans despite having no head protection. No comparison was done between the Shek and Skeletons as it currently unsettled whether a Shek can actually achieve a strength of 120 in vanilla Kenshi or if that is a bug in FCS. Regardless, in Vanilla Kenshi it is impractical to obtain very many skeletons at all without modding. The higher health pool of the Shek would likely make them the most accessible, competitive recruits when trying to build a strong military squad. If creating a squad of 30 soldiers it would be unsurprising if the majority of them needed to be Shek.

I'm writing this in a fog; I've been crying almost non-stop all day. Still, I had to tag this "humor", just because of how utterly ridiculous it is from start to finish.
I work at an urban Title 1 middle school, and there are some positives but in all honesty the bad outweighs the good. I've been on the recieving end of physical aggression on many occasions, and I deal daily with the usual disrespect, eloping, work avoidance, theft, fights, and admin indifference. But, some of the kids are awesome and I really like most of my coworkers. So I grin and bear it, even though I'm exhausted and depressed a great deal of the time.
Last fall, I happened to run into a former student's mom, who worked as an admin assistant at one of the highest performing high schools in our city (and the state). She mentioned there was going to be a job opening up for next year, and asked if I was interested. This school is known to be one of the most coveted for teachers in our area, and it's hard to get into because there's barely any turnover. So of course I said yes, and started dreaming of how great it'd be to work at a place with a happy staff and respectful hard-working kids.
But right from the start, there were issues. I applied in January-- but HR literally lost my application. Wasn't in the system anywhere. The principal said she couldn't interview me if I wasn't in the system, so naturally I tried to contact HR. I called the # on the website, but an answering machine directed me to send an email instead. So I sent an email, but it bounced back with instructions to open a Zendesk ticket. Tried that, no response. Etc etc etc.
Now it's February, and I guess the principal got tired of the hold-ups so she passed me off onto the dept. head to sort it out. Now I'm trying to coordinate with this guy, but he's flaky as all hell. For every email I send him, it's at least 2 weeks and a follow up email before he responds. Eventually he brings me in for an informal interview, with my application still missing-- in mid-March. During the interview I'm told for the 1st time that it's only a part-time position, with the possibility of leading to full-time if all goes well. Me and my bank account aren't thrilled about this, so I go to my current employer and propose dropping to part-time next year in order to free me up to work part-time at the other school. Surprisingly, they agree to it-- even they recognize what an amazing opportunity this is, and how it benefits them to have a member of that school's staff working for them.
Interview goes well. Dept Head says he'll make sure my missing application is found and processed ASAP, which seems like a good sign they want to hire me-- but, unsurprisingly, that doesn't happen. It's crickets from everyone. I'm now resorting to having the mom track people down for me to get answers, but even she's getting nowhere. Then about 3 weeks after my interview, I get a rushed email from Dept Head saying he still can't find my application but offering me the job anyway. I readily accept, and he says to expect HR to contact me within a couple of days to begin onboarding. Bet you can guess how that went...crickets, again.
In the middle of all this, my current employer is preparing next year's contracts. I try to hold them off, but they need to know my plans. They've offered to work around my new schedule, but nobody, including myself, knows what my new schedule even IS.
April passes, and then the 1st week of May, all the while I'm desperately trying to get answers from ANYONE about my onboarding, to no avail. I have no proof of a job other than one informal email from Dept Head that he never followed up on, and not a peep from HR. My current job can't wait any longer and they take the part-time offer off the table. They tell me I have to sign a full-time contract or nothing at all, and with nothing from the new job, I feel I have no other choice but to do it.
2 days after I sign my new contract, 5 months after I initially applied, and 2 months after I interviewed, both Dept Head and HR reach out. Miraculously, they've found my missing application, and they're ready to onboard me. I have to respond and tell them I'm no longer available. That the delays left me with no choice but to stay where I was, and it's just not feasible to quit a full-time job to work part-time. They apologize, kind of, and encourage me to try again in 2025. IF there's an opening.
So, I just signed up for another year of abuse. Another year of kids who can barely function and indifferent parents and admin. Another year in a crumbling building. Another year of exhaustion. I feel like an escape hatch opened up and right as I was about to step in, it closed. And the worst part is, absolutely none of it was my fault.
I'm worried I'm going to spend the next year resenting the hell out of every single person I see, feeling constantly upset that I have to be HERE instead of THERE where I belong. I'm also experiencing a burning rage toward HR and the Dept Head (who, to twist the knife a bit more, just announced that he's LEAVING at the end of the year! ) for creating this mess.
If you've read this far, thanks. May your HR people be more on top of their shit than these ones were.

The Shimmer, I.
Quietly as a mouse, Ian crept through the hallway of his shared flat. He could see the faint bluish glow reaching out from under the crack under his flat mate's door. "One step to the right, two forward, far left," Ian thought to himself. This was the pathway through the creaky hallway so he would not alert his flat mates to his nightly escapes.
"It’s not that they would care," he deliberated to himself, "but knowing me, I'm definitely not sneaking a girl in here," and Ian didn’t want to have to explain that his nightly trips had nothing to do with booze, girls, or anything his flat mates would really understand.
No. Ian was on his way for the umpteenth time, to the campus apiary.
He had gotten quite good at sneaking through campus without being spotted. A near run-in with campus security on his first trip, and Ian quickly found out that black was the optimal color to wear when sneaking about, and his knees had now grown accustomed to the frequent crouching he would be taxed with, in order to earn his nightly prize.
The apiary was no short trip from his flat. It was situated far from the main campus on the outskirts of the property lines to the east of the lake and in the heart of a small clearing; a gateway to the 120 acres of forest that stood ominous and ancient behind it.
Finally outside, Ian closed the front door without making a sound, slowly allowing the doorknob to reset into the locked position. The warm, late summer air greeted him, tinged with the early crispness of fall. "Perhaps a sweater next time," he said to himself, making a mental note, and off he went along his well trotted path to the guardians of the forest.
The apiary tool shed housed the bee suits and Ian expertly slipped into his, his caution heightened, aware that he now stood out against the dark night, as an eerie white shadow against a canopy of darkness. He took careful steps to ensure he would not disturb any of the other winged residents on his way to the old trees at the edge of the forest, where he first witnessed it - the otherworldly shimmer of the great honeybees.
Noone knew this but Ian, because typically honeybees follow a normal circadian rhythm just like their mammalian counterparts - awake by day and asleep by night. But this hive was different. Ian had sensed it the moment his eyes locked upon it the day the beekeeper introduced his new obsession to him. These bees did not sleep by night. They were just as alive in the pale and quiet moonlight, as they were during the heat and busyness of the day. As he approached, he felt the bees could sense his presence, and to Ian, something extraordinary. As he slowly approached the great hive, he was greeted with a slow, deliberate shimmer, one that seemed to say, "Greetings, friend."
Ian slowly crouched and bowed his head, keeping his eyes locked onto the great hive, which seemed to respond to his gesture. As he gazed upon it, his heartbeat increased, he could feel the blood rushing through his ear as he tried to remain perfectly still, determined to not break his almost motionless position. Then, a new shimmer rippled out from the center of the hive, one that pulsed rapidly outward, as if the hive were becoming more alert. Ian knew that his was the sign he needed - permission. Ian kept himself low and ever so slowly, moved toward the almost inaudible pulse of the buzzing, until he was directly beneath the behemoth branch itself that the great hive loomed from.
Underneath the ancient arms stretched out toward the horizons, Ian places his back against the wide trunk of the great oak tree and slowly closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, allowing the low pulsing to enter his senses, lulling him into a state of calm he had never known before.
"Hello, Ian," said an insect-like voice inside his head.
Stay Tuned - The Shimmer, III.

First / Previous / Next
Before anyone could say anything else, there was a blinding flash of white light. The Dreadnought appeared directly in front of them, impeding their progress. Stormy fired the thrusters and tried to duck underneath.
"Get back into your seats! I'm going to link away again." Northern and Zhe dove towards their seats and bucked back up, but before Stormy could link, there was a clatter and a shudder throughout the ship. New alarms sounded throughout the ship, a kind of wailing trilling noise. It was incredibly loud.
"What's that Stormy?" Zhe clapped her hands over her large ears. "Can you turn it down any?"
"It's... It's a grapple. We've been grappled!" Stormy's rage permeated her voice. "Those were banned centuries ago! I can't believe they used a grapple on us."
"Can we do anything?" Fen asked. She looked down at her screen. There were new spots of orange on the readout where the grapple was damaging the hull.
"Our options at this point are to allow us to be taken aboard, or blow the reactor." Northern shook her head. "They've got us."
"Stormy, might as well disconnect and come up here. I don't want them doing anything to you." Fen closed her pad with a snap. She looked at Zhe and Northern. "Sorry."
Zhe shook her head. "Nothing to be sorry about, Fen. We're in this together."
Northern nodded. "Despite myself, I do find that I like you two. I wouldn't be here if I didn't. It's not your fault Fen."
Fen sighed. "Yeah, but if I wasn't a clone of the first Empress..."
"There's no way these people know that Fen. They're just after their current Empress and probably think we know something about it. I'd say just answer their questions mostly honestly." Northern ticked off points on her long fingers. "We saw her on Picaresque, we went out drinking, we partied with her and her honor guard, and in the morning we left. None off that is a lie."
Stormy walked into the Command Deck and looked around. Finding a seat, she sat down and buckled in. "The four of us is enough to operate a frigate of this size without raising too much suspicion. They shouldn't ask about whether we have an AI pilot."
Zhe's ears flicked in surprise. "Really? Only four people?"
She nodded. "It's just about the bare minimum, but it's possible. It could be explained away that we're a new merc group and haven't taken on more crew yet. These kind of ships are meant to be run lean and mean anyway."
Fen wasn't so sure, but she couldn't do anything else.
They waited.
About 30 minutes later, there was a pounding on the airlock. Fen unbuckled and went to the lock. Peering through the window she saw three armored spacesuits. She toggled the intercom. "Yes?"
"Human Imperial Navy. Open up please. We have some questions for you."
Please? That was interesting. "Why did you grapple me? You could have used your radio."
"The Admiral wishes to speak to you in person."
They did not elaborate further.
The voice of the suited person sighed. "Look. If you just open the doors, it'll go better for you. We won't even restrain you. You just open up, we bring you to the Admiral and then we let you go once she's happy with the answers."
"And if I don't open the lock?"
"Then we force it open, capture you, restrain you-" They hold up some metal zip cuffs. "-and still bring you to the Admiral. Only now, your ship is damaged and you can't leave once she's finished speaking. Your choice."
Fen cut the intercom. "Fuck." she said to nobody, and pressed the purge button. Both airlock door snapped open and there was a puff of air as the pressures equalized. Fen's ears were pained for a moment, but she swallowed and her ears popped.
The guard lifted their helmet. It was two men and a woman who looked so similar they could have been related. The woman smiled. "Thank you, really. My name is Lieutenant Shelly Cooper. What's yours?"
"I'm Captain Fenchurch Whitehorse, but please call me Fen."
"Very well, Fen. Who else is aboard?"
"The rest of my crew. They're on the Command Deck. There are four of us."
That caused Lieutenant Cooper to raise an eyebrow, "Four? That's it?"
Fen smiled awkwardly. "I wasn't able to hire anymore crew than that. Believe me when I say I've been trying." It wasn't a lie, not really. Fen found that there weren't many people who were willing to sign on to an unproven merc company, even if they were a couple years old.
The Lieutenant turned to one of the men behind her. "What did the bioscan say?"
He looked down at a pad strapped to the arm of his suit and tapped at it with a gloved hand. "She's not lying. Ship is empty except for the command deck."
"Curious." Cooper stared hard at Fen. "Have we met? Are you from Sol? You seem familiar to me."
"I don't see how. I grew up in a Gren station, far outside of Colonial space." Again, it wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the whole truth. Of course people in the military would know what the first Empress looked like.
"Hmm. Okay. If your crew agrees to keep the reactor powered down and be powered by an umbilical, they can stay confined to the ship and you accompany us. Deal?"
"Yes, I agree to those terms. Let me go tell my crew."
Lieutenant Cooper nods. "You have three minutes."
Fen hurries back to the command deck. "The Admiral wants to talk to me. They said you can stay here so long as you agree to be powered only by their umbilical."
Zhe stood up and crossed her arms, her tail swishing irritatedly. "It won't matter, because we're coming too."
Northern looked to Zhe and sighed, but only a little. "We can't leave you out to dry, Fen. We'll come along too. How bad can it be? Plus, if we come with you we can't suffer "an unfortunate accident" in the hangar."
Fen exhaled. She hadn't realized she was holding her breath in. "Thanks Northern, Zhe." She turned to Stormy. "You're welcome to come along, but I also know this isn't your thing. We had just hired you after all."
Stormy looked at Northern who shrugged with her eyes. "Up to you."
She runs her hands over her face. "Fuck, me. I swear Northern, you know how to pick them." Stormy stands up and smiles. "I'll come along, what the hell. Sitting on the ship was going to be boring by myself anyway."
The four of them went to the airlock, and Fen went up to Lieutenant Cooper "I spoke to my crew, and they want to accompany me."
Lieutenant Cooper throws up her hands. "Fine, I guess we'll just give you the VIP tour on the way." She gestures out towards the hangar. "Here is the hangar, where we store our smaller ships and boats, as well as the frigate of a merc captain we captured that the admiral wants to speak to and offered to let her crew stay onboard but they want to follow their captain to the ends of the galaxy."
Fen crossed her arms, but said nothing.
"Come on then. We'll find you some more chairs or something." Lieutenant Cooper turned on her heel and walked out of the hangar, without waiting for them to follow. The two guards with her looked at each other and one of them gestured for them to follow.
Not too far from the hangar, Lieutenant Cooper came upon a small conference room. She opened the door and led them inside. As they sat, a steward came by with a small cart of drinks. Fen was offered and accepted a coffee, and they went around offering beverages. Lieutenant Cooper also took a coffee, but everyone else abstained.
Cooper took a sip and looked down at the comm on her wrist. "The Admiral will be here shortly. Please be respectful. She's... lived a long life and doesn't suffer fools. If you want to make it back to your ship, answer her questions quickly and honestly."
Fen wasn't halfway through her coffee with the door chimed. Lieutenant Cooper stood. "This is where I leave you. The guards will wait outside the door and - should you be able - will escort you back to your ship." Her face was odd. She looked worried, and also like she felt bad for them. Just what kind of person was this Admiral?"
The door whooshed open and the Admiral strode in. She was about the same height as Cooper, maybe a few centimeters taller than Fen. Her hair was blond streaked with grey and she wore it clipped very short on the back and sides and a little longer in the front. She wore her hat at an angle that probably was against regulations. Her uniform was immaculate and her chest bulged with medals. She had a hard, but not unattractive face, lined with time. As she entered, she looked down at everyone sitting, and as she passed over them she stopped at Fen, and her breath caught.
"You are dismissed, Lieutenant."
Cooper saluted sharply. "Yes, Admiral."
"Dismiss the guards as well. I will not need them."
"Admiral? With all due respect-"
The Admiral turned to face Cooper and stared at her. Without saying anything at all, Fen could feel her shouting at the Lieutenant. Her gaze was withering. Cooper swallowed and saluted again. "Yes, Admiral."
The door closed behind her and the Admiral's demeanor immediately changed. She shrank down a little, looked older, less hard. She strode around the room and glanced down at the carafe of coffee. She poured herself a cup and sat at the head of the table. While everyone watched, rapt. She took a sip and placed it down on the table without a clink. She looked at Fen.
"You look like her, you know? I can see that you're different. A product of your upbringing. It's your eyes, and the way you carry yourself. I can see so much of her though. It's a little spooky."
Fen blinked. Whatever she expected, it wasn't this. "You know I'm a clone of the first Empress?"
The admiral laughed. Her voice was surprisingly musical. "Fen, I knew Melody. I was friends with her. I... I was on a different ship when she was killed. I became Empress after her."
Stormy gasped. "No. No way. She retired to Venus, and let her daughter reign. She would be over five hundred years old. You're not her."
The admiral smirked. "If you know all that, then you know that the Nanites can extend life. I can't do the Voice anymore, and it's been more than two centuries since I carried a crown and wings, but I am still me.
Northern turned and stared at Stormy. "Who is it, Stormy?"
The admiral spread her hands wide. "I am Empress Helen Raaden, First of Her Name, Ruler of Sol - Retired."

Quietly as a mouse, Ian crept through the hallway of his shared flat. He could see the faint bluish glow reaching out from under the crack under his flat mate's door. "One step to the right, two forward, far left," Ian thought to himself. This was the pathway through the creaky hallway so he would not alert his flat mates to his nightly escapes.
"It’s not that they would care," he deliberated to himself, "but knowing me, I'm definitely not sneaking a girl in here," and Ian didn’t want to have to explain that his nightly trips had nothing to do with booze, girls, or anything his flat mates would really understand.
No. Ian was on his way for the umpteenth time, to the campus apiary.
He had gotten quite good at sneaking through campus without being spotted. A near run-in with campus security on his first trip, and Ian quickly found out that black was the optimal color to wear when sneaking about, and his knees had now grown accustomed to the frequent crouching he would be taxed with, in order to earn his nightly prize.
The apiary was no short trip from his flat. It was situated far from the main campus on the outskirts of the property lines to the east of the lake and in the heart of a small clearing; a gateway to the 120 acres of forest that stood ominous and ancient behind it.
Finally outside, Ian closed the front door without making a sound, slowly allowing the doorknob to reset into the locked position. The warm, late summer air greeted him, tinged with the early crispness of fall. "Perhaps a sweater next time," he said to himself, making a mental note, and off he went along his well trotted path to the guardians of the forest.
The apiary tool shed housed the bee suits and Ian expertly slipped into his, his caution heightened, aware that he now stood out against the dark night, as an eerie white shadow against a canopy of darkness. He took careful steps to ensure he would not disturb any of the other winged residents on his way to the old trees at the edge of the forest, where he first witnessed it - the otherworldly shimmer of the great honeybees.
Noone knew this but Ian, because typically honeybees follow a normal circadian rhythm just like their mammalian counterparts - awake by day and asleep by night. But this hive was different. Ian had sensed it the moment his eyes locked upon it the day the beekeeper introduced his new obsession to him. These bees did not sleep by night. They were just as alive in the pale and quiet moonlight, as they were during the heat and busyness of the day. As he approached, he felt the bees could sense his presence, and to Ian, something extraordinary. As he slowly approached the great hive, he was greeting with a slow, deliberate shimmer, one that seemed to say, "Greetings, friend."
Ian slowly crouched and bowed his head, keeping his eyes locked onto the great hive, which seemed to respond to his gesture. As he gazed upon it, his heartbeat increased, he could feel the blood rushing through his ear as he tried to remain perfectly still, determined to not break his almost motionless position. Then, a new shimmer rippled out from the center of the hive, one that pulsed rapidly outward, as if the hive were becoming more alert. Ian knew that his was the sign he needed - permission. Ian kept himself low and ever so slowly, moved toward the almost inaudible pulse of the buzzing, until he was directly beneath the behemoth branch itself that the great hive loomed from.
Underneath the ancient arms stretched out toward the horizons, Ian places his back against the wide trunk of the great oak tree and slowly closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, allowing the low pulsing to enter his senses, lulling him into a state of calm he had never known before.
"Hello, Ian," said an insect-like voice inside his head.
Stay Tuned - The Shimmer, III.

I think this movie came out in the 2010s or later?? This girl decides that she wants to focus more on boys I think? Literally the first scene is her imagining the boys in her hs and all the different types of them lol. She eventually tries to get a job and is denied and then gets a job as an interviewer and interviews this older male singer (he's probably like 20s), they become friends and she gets famous somehow and starts to change and let it all get to her head. Eventually one of her friends? Or her family? I think? Gives her a reality check and leaves her for awhile, I think they were roommates and friends, it's a guy I believe. At the end she apologizes and gives up the fame gimmick and then talks to the singer guy again and he says if she was older they'd probably be together (she was crushing on him) and they remain friends. It's a UK movie and the main girl is a heavier set white girl with bushy brows and kinda buckteeth. I think it's like "a guide to.." or "how to.." and pink or red on the front?? I know this is summary is all over the place

Unfortunately haven't been well enough to so much as wash my face with soap more than once or twice a week for several months so I'm sort of starting from scratch.
My main concern is how congested, dry and unexfoliated my skin is as I want to avoid getting into a cycle of feeling like I need to extract pores or blackheads without expertise.
I have very dark and large sebaceous cysts and blackheads on my nose and chin area. I'm getting white heads and blackheads on my chin and deeper but small cystic spots along my jawline. I have the occasional big spot on my temples and closed comedones on my cheeks. Overall my skin tone is uneven and I suspect some mild melasma on my forehead and upper cheeks.
I only use vegan and plant based products and below I have listed what I currently have with me but I'm not sure where to begin again and what order to use or when.

• Cerave foaming cleanser
  
• Charcoal mild exfoliating cleanser
  
• The Ordinary glycolic acid
  
• Clean and clear blackhead tonecleanser
  
• The Ordinary salicylic face mask
  
• Dermatica personalised retinol and azelaic acid formula
  
• E45 moisturiser
  

I only use vegan and cruelty free products so feel free to suggest alternative or additional products and I definitely need a recommendation for a good suncream! I'm also wondering if a hydrafacial might be a good treatment to get me kick started?
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I'm in a bit of a shame spiral at losing the ability to function enough to wash my face but this is an opportunity to get back to basics and build good habits so when I'm feeling better I'll be able to look well too.

The tone of the title is definitely more pointed than intended, so I apologize for that. I'm genuinely asking - do you all genuinely like this game still?
I was a player on console (PS4) and worked my way up from very casually playing and enjoying the single player experience to figuring out how to parse to completing end game content (ranking number 2 Templar in vBRP when it first came out and completing vCR+3 are among my proudest achievements - that skin never came off my body after earning that one!) 2017 - 2019 was some of the most intense level up in my gaming that I look on fondly.
But life very quickly changed when my spouse and I adopted our amazing children and I had a change in careers. So I stepped away from ESO to handle my business and haven't touched in since fall 2019.
Now that things have become a bit more stable, I miss ESO so dearly. I came back briefly during 2020, but the Champion Point system changed so dramatically and it was hard to wrap my head around it so I very quickly bowed out.
I have a solid PC now and was thinking maybe I could start fresh there. None of my old friends still play this game so it seems like a prime opportunity to make some new online buddies. But for all its bumps and bruises, I'm wondering if ESO is still rife with bugs that make the game unenjoyable? Is content still coming out? Or is there another ESO-like game on the horizon I should hold out for?
Tell me of the past five years of ESO :)

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

Prompt: The Variants of Vampires. Think of an alternative vampire that survives on something other than blood. Write a story or scene based on this character.
As the sun faded over the horizon, Vlad’s eyes opened slowly. A sigh escaped his cold lips, and he stretched his long legs onto the red velvet lining of his coffin. Another day has come. He thought sadly, as he had everyday for last 206 years.
He checked his timepiece in the left chest pocket of his silk pajamas, 8:36 p.m. Thankful for the spring sun that set earlier than it would in the coming months, he pushed on the heavy hardwood lid of his resting place. With a creak the wood swung open, landing heavily to the side. While a modern coffin would no doubt be lighter, and easier to open every evening, this one was sentimental to him. As he had been buried in this exact coffin 206 years ago, at 35 years old.
With a heavy sigh, Vlad rose and climbed onto the step that sat beside his coffin. His stomach rumbled, and he knew he had no choice but to venture to the kitchen of his estate home. With his head hung low, he began to undress.
You see, Vlad was not like other vampires. His long life was full of loneliness, even for one who was undead. When he had first been turned by his Maker he was optimistic, excited even, for the wonders of the world he would be able to see. With no time limit, no fear of death, and an infinite supply of food walking the earth- the possibilities stretched before him like the vastness of the night sky.
However, Vlad was unable to satiate the hunger that filled him, that turned him into a ravenous beast, night after night. The mere thought of blood churned his stomach, much to his Maker’s chagrin.
Isabel was her name. Even the thought of her filled him with longing. Her had loved her once, and she him, until they learned the truth: Vlad could not be sustained by blood, but one of the things that all Vampires feared: Garlic. Of all things. The thought still flooded him with embarrassment, even after more than two centuries of living as a Vampire.
He climbed the steps from his dirt cellar, whose entrance lay hidden behind a false door that led into the Master bedroom of his estate. He lifted the heavy wooden lever that would propel the door open to his closet. The clever vault disguised by many shelves of his expensive leather shoes. He kept an armoire near his coffin for convenience, as sometimes he awoke before the sun had set. A terrible habit he picked up 50 years prior.
He wound his way from the closet into the room, down the long hallway, and the curved staircase to the first floor. His heavy footsteps echoed eerily in his quiet manse, as his staff had already left at the end of their workday, thinking that he was abroad on business. A ruse which was quickly growing thin. Soon I shall have to replace my staff again, how much easier this dreary life would be if I could simply drink from them. He mused.
Vlad had no excitement for the night, as even the mere smell of his skin repulsed those of his kind. He was unable to rejoin his coven, the one that he had briefly reveled in. Expensive goblets of crisp red blood he could not drink, dances and guests from around the globe each night, the women with their necks adorned with jewels, some thought long lost to the mortals of the world, but safely stashed in the secret rooms of the elites of the Vampire world. The men in their black tuxedos, fashionable hairstyles and long white teeth often exposed in laughter. His tenure in his coven had been short, merely days, but it had been a lifestyle he mourned. He and Isabel had tried to make things work… But this train of thought was far too painful, and his stomach panged once again, so he quickened his steps and focused once again on his coming meal.
He made his way into the back kitchen, not the formal kitchen he would have likely entertained Isabel in (if he was a “normal” Vampire), but into the staff kitchen where the fridges were, and food was prepared and stored. Rows and rows of dried garlic bundles hung from the exposed wooden beams, all harvested from the garden on the grounds.
Vlad once again rued his life, as he wished the preparation of his meal didn’t fall to him each night. But he reached up and took down a bundle, released a corm from its tight knot, and sat at the stool at the quartz countertop, grabbing for one of his Japanese Damascus knives that made his task of slicing his garlic head easy.
Briefly inspired, Vlad decided a garlic comfit would be nice, and he got to work.

I moved to another country where I mate people from same culture as me and we became friends. Now am starting to think that I really need to get some new friends. The reason for that is they my current friends are racist, they give nasty remarks every time they see an african/ asian or any person who isn’t white and keep in mind we are not white either. They are homophobic also. I really can’t stand that but in daily life, every time we go out together they keep looking at girls like they are absolute creeps and pervs. I tell them if you see a girl just go talk to her and ask her out but no they keep making scenarios in their heads. When we go out to a bar or a club of course they never drink and I understand that because they are muslims but all they do is brood in one place and look at girls. They don’t dance they don’t have fun it’s like they are complete aliens. The worst part is why move to another country and constantly speak your home language. I undestand they are more comfortable with that but how do you expect to make new friends if you don’t take any effort to speak to them. The least thing you can do is talk to people with a language they understand. Am just frustrated after coming back from a night at a club and I had a really bad time with them. I feel like they are holding me back from the life I want to live. I don’t want to be like them that’s the reason I left my home country in the first place.
What are your thoughts on this, thanks

Information upfront, this is my first story and it's not even finished yet, I have a couple ideas on how to finish it. I have not received any help from a person however I used "creative helper" from character.ai
For context: the story is about a woman being kidnapped by a man, she has no recolecction of the past. She is supposed to fall in love with him later on, how I end it, I'll have multiple ideas about it.
Now to the story, or at least the beginning of it:
I woke up in a room, it's cold, my vision is blurry. I lay on a metal bed covered in a thin white blanket. I stand up and notice the lack of natural light in the room, just a neon tube emitting sterile light. My head aches and as I walk to the heavy metal door I feel a pain radiating into my lower abdomen from below. I am shocked from the cold of the metal door, as I open it.
While I struggle through the door I look down on my body, I see that I wear a tight White crop-top, without sleeves and a white brief, both are revealing. I stumbled into a floor which feels surprisingly warm. This floor seems to be in the basement, I also notice that I am at the opposite end of the stairs. As I walk to the flight of stairs, I hold myself against the white walls, wondering about the anchors placed in the walls. I sigh a breath of relief as I look up, a window is at the upper end.
I stumble up the stair, even tripping a few times. I noticed I scratched myself while I look out the window. I see a deep forest. I then turn around seeing I must be in the main entrance. it's cozy, I can even hear a fireplace happily crackeling away. Then I notice the front door, I struggle my way towards it, hoping I could get out, but it was locked. As I tried to open the brown wooden front door I heard a voice, a deep voice of a man.
I immedeatly stopped, I felt my hard pounding, my breaths become frequent and heavy, my blurry vision went sharp, I might have even jumped and shrieked a Little. As I slowly turn around the man says "hey hun, you awoke. You've been sick lately I was worried." Scared to death I answered silently "I...I don't remember… anything." I finally turned around and saw two crystal blue eyes piercing me, they almost hurt.
And if you ask why I started writing, I told a close friend I started world building and thinking about stories and she encouraged me to write one, however this is not the genre I'm used to in terms of reading/watching. She also read, what I copied here, she loved it. I want feedback from anyone, be it positive or negative I also want tips on how to improve myself.
Edit: Spelling errors, at least those I've found