Original Post: https://www.reddit.com/AmITheJerk/comments/1csum48/aitj_for_cutting_my_sil_out_of_my_life_even_if_it/
Update 1: https://www.reddit.com/AmITheJerk/comments/1cu5yfv/update_1_aitj_for_cutting_my_sil_out_of_my_life/
So as ya'll know, Myself, Fern and Tom had planned some Mother's Day gifts for MIL. I gotta admit, I was worried that Margaret would show up and ruin the whole thing, but it was actually a surprisingly good day- mostly because she wasn't there, which was the OBVIOUS elephant in the room the whole time. Tom worked the grill for a while and we had MIL open the gifts I had planned - it was a small pirate chest filled with letters from Myself, Fern, and Tom telling her how wonderful of a mother she was (I had aged them and weathered them to look waterlogged and like they'd been around for a long time). I made her a boondoggle that said "number one mom" that had our names dangling from it. She opened the collage...the whole thing left her in happy tears, which was nice but also sad at the same time. She said "OP, you're such a shit for making me cry" then gave me a big hug. MIL started to talk about it all ("It's been really rough and I've been having a really hard time"), but it was cut off by the men fussing over the grill. I made the rest of lunch and we had a really, really good time for the most part.
I clocked FIL's behavior in Margaret's absence. He wandered off into the yard and stood by himself for extended periods of time, staring at the ground in silence. I registered it as pain- I'm not gonna lie, it was PALPABLE how much easier and fun and quiet the afternoon was with Margaret being intentionally excluded. I could tell that MIL really needed to talk about what was going on, especially since she was being absolutely flooded with love (in stark contrast to what she's been receiving from Margaret). I approached her towards the end of the evening- she revealed to me what she had put in the letter. Essentially, it reads something like this.
"dear Margaret- I am sorry that we are having such a hard time seeing eye to eye. I have had my conflicts with Fern and Tom in the past that we have been able to resolve; Since you do not wish to speak to me directly, I am hoping that we can communicate this way to see each other more clearly. I think youre upset with me because I married your dad- but I am not sure because you will not tell me what is wrong. I want to make peace with you, but I cannot do that with you so blatantly disrespecting me. I feel like I deserve an apology- I feel used by you, especially since I signed your lease for you when you asked right before this happened. Please write me back so we can resolve this, I love you."
Apparently, MIL had FIL read it before she sent it- this looks like a last ditch effort to rectify the tension, but I'm not sure what the outcome will be because we ALL know that Margaret is going to freak the fuck out the second she reads it. Margaret can't handle any blame and has no sense of accountability. We can all see it coming- so definitely expect an update on that.
On the ride home I absolutely fell apart. It made me so sad that she has had to go to these lengths to remedy a situation that she didn't cause in the first place. I was also very, very angry at FIL and basically the whole family for letting this go on for as long as it has.. I ended up confronting Tom about this again. I told him that there are 600 strangers on reddit calling him and his whole family spineless, and that I have found myself defending them because I know otherwise, but that in this situation those 600 strangers are absolutely right. I said that I know his dad is human, but that they are all a bunch of cowards for the "fend for yourself, just let it go" attitude they have when it comes to each of them being so wildly abused and disrespected AS A FAMILY. Fern deserves better than to have a sister that has told ME that "the reason Fern got SA'd as a kid is because h"e put himself out there like that" (excuse me?). Cory deserves better than a wife who threatens to call the cops on him for not making her dinner (huh?) . Tom deserves a better sister than one who has called me to tell me "He's a creep and I bet he's done things to little girls before" (no idea where that one came from). MIL deserves better than someone who asks her for money and favors only to turn around and rip her to shreds (the entitlement?). And FIL deserves better than to have such little self esteem that he'd rather watch his family disintegrate rather than cut out the cancer.
Yeah, I was heated. Margaret makes shit up, takes things out of context, and regularly demonstrates that she genuinely feels the world is out to get her and that everyone else is the problem. I did not let up.
Tom listened very patiently- we exchanged a lot of words and the conversation took over an hour, the end result being "My dad is nearing approachable about this subject. Today showed him the kind of life we can have without her; you definitely launched a psychological bomb at him with how well you planned the day and how much you showed MIL that she's worth something. He's struggling, but I promise that I'll talk to him about it soon. We talk 3 times a week, he knows its coming."
The last statement I made was "I am not an 'on the fence' person. I'm the only one who has outright picked a side- and it's not Margaret's because I refuse to enable this insanity anymore. It's wrong, and you guys are wrong for coddling a grown woman's hurt ego knowing that its harming literally EVERYONE else in the family. Pick a side, and be done with it. I refuse to let MIL go this alone."
We will see how much longer the circus goes on. I anticipate the events that happened this weekend leading to the biggest blow up that Margaret has had yet- the shady online posts have already started (per Tom, who has found it amusing and low of her). It's about to get a lot crazier when this letter hits, and even worse when she eventually visits FIL and sees a giant collage with all the kids except for her.
There's SO many of you that have said that you are emotionally invested in my story- I'll continue to update so we all get the closure we need. Thanks for all the support (and trash talking, I've gotten quite a few LOLs out of the comments).
Stay tuned I guess!

My experience with Michelin in a complicated one. Having gone to one, two, and three Michelin star restaurants across the globe, I've seen Michelin do some great things for restaurants, but I've also seen them bring the demise of others.
Because it's quite apparent what good things come from being highlighted by Michelin, this post is more focused on some of my criticisms of the Michelin guide, and why I think the current structure of Michelin should be changed.
Maintaining "Michelin's definition" of the gold standard..
There have been a ton of amazing restaurants given a one star review. Restaurants don't even need to be "fine dining" to be given a Michelin star, as highlighted by some of the cheap eats that have received a one star review.
But a one star review, can at times, be a curse for restaurants. Often, restaurants receive one star reviews got there by showcasing there strengths. A passion for food and creativity, a desire to share culture or tradition, or an expression of a personal brand of art.
When a restaurant receives a one star review, two things happen.

1. They begin to get huge influx of customers. Initially.
2. They start to be compared to other one star restaurants, sometimes even two or three star.

The majority of the time, when a restaurant receives a one star review, the rapidly get a ton of customers wanting to try them. And in just a few months, they start to raise prices. Because money can change people.
And eventually, they start to act as more of a "tourist attraction", and start to lose the original loyal clientele that brought them to where they were in the first place.
Secondly, they begin to compare themselves to the standards of other "higher" Michelin star restaurants.
And that typically means focusing more on a particular brand of fine dining. Hyper-attentive service, an overuse of "micro complex food"(emulsions, purees, colorful vegetation). Just to name a few.
I've seen this unfortunately happen time and time again.
If your customers wanted to go to a Eleven Madison Park, they'd travel to New York. But don't turn your restaurant into a chain of fine dining. You'll start to lose the allure, and it starts to feel like the routine of Mcdonalds or Capital Grille.
​
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“We’re a meat family,” my dad would proudly tell strangers. He’d wait for the quizzical look, then launch into detail, starting with how many freezers we had, how long we could sustain ourselves on the contents. It was just his way of starting a conversation, which made sense when you considered that raising and home-killing animals for food was, for want of a better term, his life-long hobby. His prize possession was one of those industrial-sized vacuum sealers: you could put half a pig inside and wrap it in plastic so tightly that every wrinkle and skin fold waxed unreal with shiny detail.
If we hadn’t lived in a rural area, albeit semi-urbanised, I guess it would have been pretty weird. But the mostly farming-stock locals only found his extra enthusiasm a little bit odd.
When he wasn’t being a bit embarrassing talking about it, I never really paid much heed to his hobby. I had a child’s vaguely grateful awareness that though our family went through some lean financial times, our stomachs never suffered like some of the families around us. All the beef, pork, ham and bacon in those big old chest freezers passed down from his dad really could have fed us for years.
I should preface all this by saying that I wasn’t a particularly bright kid, though neither was I dumb. I didn’t fail badly at anything in school, I just never achieved beyond a pass. I didn’t know it yet back then, still quietly dreaming about being a ballet star or a dressage champion, but mediocrity was my destiny. And I think that’s why I got on so well with my Aunt Liz.
Liz was my dad’s live-in youngest sister. She was one of those women who get described as ‘bubbly’ — not really pretty, not really smart, not a lot going on besides just being… well, all Liz. But she was salt of the earth; kind, caring, and great with kids. She was the only person who would willingly mind my two older brothers, who fought like hellcats and caused more trouble than the whole last generation of my family combined. People would privately lament to my parents that it was a shame Liz didn’t have kids of her own, but dad would just shake his head and say Liz liked it that way – that all the fun of looking after kids is being able to give them back to their parents.
I guess she was like me; nice, but mediocre. Lovely, but somehow forgettable when she wasn’t doing something for you.
But when Liz left us, I couldn’t forget her.
In hindsight, it was pretty weird timing that we had a big fortieth birthday party for Liz right before she disappeared. She was radiant that night; she’d hired a local girl to do her hair and makeup, and it was honestly the first time I’d ever seen her look pretty. She’d even worn a push-up bra under a tight red dress, which flattered her very plump curves well enough that the neighbour’s farmhand was spotted disappearing into the woolshed with her for a snog. In my dawning awareness, that gave a plain girl hope: if Aunty Liz could get a guy at forty, maybe things would turn out okay for me.
Anyway, I couldn’t forget how her pink cheeks, her eyes, her whole self, glowed that night before Liz went to bed. She said it was the best birthday ever, and that she was very much looking forward to the next stage of her life.
Would I have done anything different, if I had known? If I had realised what, exactly, that next stage was?
The week after the party, Aunt Liz said she was going on a little holiday up north, to visit some old school friends. She packed her things – she didn’t honestly have that many – and drove her little orange mini out onto the main road. And with a wave of one fleshy hand, she was gone. Nobody really thought much of it when she didn’t call, because nobody rural had cellphones back then. And Liz was, as I said, somehow kinda forgettable when she wasn’t right in front of you.
When we hadn’t had contact for six weeks, Dad tracked down the land line numbers for their old school buddies. They were surprised to hear from him — Liz had never arrived, so they had just assumed she’d cancelled her visit. No-one had thought to check. I eavesdropped on the conversation, and it sounded for all the world like *they* had forgotten about Aunt Liz, too.
From there it became a missing person case. The local cops came and talked to all of us; the farmhand who’d been seen snogging her was briefly detained, then let go, dad got grilled at length, even my hellion brothers were questioned thoroughly to see if this was one of their wild and dangerous pranks gone wrong.
But everything was a dead end. Nobody knew where Liz was, or what had happened to her.
The remains of her old mini were found halfway across the country, burned out on a beach, on a derelict stretch of ragged, rocky coastline. The police assumed murder and combed the area for remains. But even the most expert divers couldn’t conquer the incredible undertow and fast-shifting seabed of that coastline to look for evidence, so none was forthcoming.
Eventually the cops collectively shrugged and said that there was really nothing more they could do unless more information suddenly came to light. The locals knew nothing, no witnesses had come forward, and the trail was cold. As far as anyone knew, poor aunt Liz had been murdered on some desolate beach, far away from her home.
It didn’t feel fair to me. She’d once mentioned wanting her remains buried on our farm, in the graveyard plot beside grandma and grandad.
So, in my grief, I went into her room to look for something of hers to bury beside them.
Like I said, Liz didn’t have many things. Her room was pretty spartan, and her wardrobe was mostly sensible farm stuff. There was one exception: she, like me, did like to read, and she had a pretty good collection of well-thumbed books. I think it’s the escapism – even the most mediocre girl can lose herself in the plot of some trashy romance novel, imagine there’s still hope of being swept off her feet by that handsome stableboy, his inexplicable yearning for chubby plain girls.
So I set myself the task of going through the books, to find the right one to bury in the graveyard plot.
Most of them were exactly what you’d expect, but some of them were racier than I was used to. I felt various parts of my body flushing and tingling, as I read breathless prose about calloused hands touching the softest flesh of the protagonist. Okay, if I’m honest with myself, I might have got a little *too* invested in my project at that point. But that was also why I persisted going through her entire collection, until I found the ragged paperback from 1970, entitled Tawny Sands. And inside that trashy cardboard romance cover, I discovered not the tale of Tawny Sands, but some carefully hand-cut, stitched-in pages. A handwritten story in my Aunt’s rounded penmanship: Memoirs of a Long Pig.
I read her story twice in a row, utterly gripped.
Aunt Liz was no Stephen King – heck, she wasn’t even the Goosebumps guy – but her story was gripping and compelling, and I couldn’t put it down. Even if I hadn’t known her, I think that would have been true.
The gist of it was that Liz, when she was sixteen, had discovered that our family had a very long history of eating what she described as ‘Long Pork’. It’s an antipodean term, anglicised from the Pacific Islands: human meat.
Like me, young Liz still had some hopes and dreams. In one of her many failed attempts to find a special talent, she’d taken up cooking as a hobby. Naturally, with our family’s overabundance of meat, she’d scoured the freezers in the shed for ingredients: the racks of ribs and stacks of pork chops, butcher-paper wrappings all neatly labelled with the first letter of the name of the animal they came from.
She found familiar meat from Rodney, one of the pigs that had been recently slaughtered, emblazoned with an ‘R’ in her father’s strong, blocky lettering. There were cutlets labelled ‘M’ for Mary, from one of the lambs she’d hand-reared, and ‘F’ for Ferdinand, the steer they’d killed the month before. But she couldn’t explain the many, many curious parcels of meat on one side of the huge freezer, all labelled ‘J’ – at least, not until she took it all out and assembled it as well as she could on the scoured concrete floor of the killing shed. A big, frozen jigsaw puzzle without the box, her best attempt to discover what kind of beast the pieces had come from.
The animal, she quickly realised, was a Long Pig. Her own Aunt Jenny, who had died the month before – just after her fortieth birthday.
Fortunately, or perhaps not, for Liz, her father entered the shed right at that moment and realised his daughter had discovered the family secret. He sat down calmly on the lid of the freezer, and explained to her that this was a long-running family tradition, dating back to at least before his grandfather had been born.
“There are always people in life, Liz,” he’d said, “who won’t really amount to much. They want to be useful, want to be more. They strive and they strive, trying job after job, hobby after hobby, trying to hit on something they’re really good at. Something that makes them special. Those people can waste their whole lives, chasing dreams that never come true. Eventually they die unfulfilled, knowing that all their time has been wasted. That what they leave behind will fade quickly.”
His voice was oddly gentle as he leaned down and patted one of the neatly wrapped cuts of Aunt Jenny, still sitting frozen on the shed floor.
“Your Aunt Jenny was one of those people. So was my Aunt Irene.” He paused to gaze at his daughter, his next words peppered with emphasis. “But you see, my sweet Liz, they did find a purpose in life. They did find a way to be special, and they left this world utterly certain of their gift.” He stood up, stretched his back. “Let me show you.”
Liz waited while my grandad meticulously stacked the meat back into the freezer, all but one J-marked parcel that looked for all the world like a thick venison steak. He took her back to the farmhouse, and reverently unwrapped the deep red, heavily marbled meat to let it thaw. Then he laid it in the family’s ancient, cast-iron pan, basting it with butter and rosemary until a heavenly scent filled the kitchen, and Aunt Liz couldn’t stop her mouth from watering.
“Just try it. Let her show you. You’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.”
Even though she knew it was her aunt, Liz couldn’t stop herself from taking that first bite. There was something transcendent about the smell, overriding her natural revulsion that this was human meat, not one of their farm animals. For the first time, she truly realised it: we’re just another kind of animal. And weren’t her memories of Mary the lamb almost as fond as her memories of Aunt Jenny?
Liz explained then, in her curly handwriting, the explosion of taste that had assaulted her when she tried the steak. It was tender, it was succulent, it was rich beyond imagining. The fats melted on her tongue, lingering somewhere between pork and beef, but oddly neither. The flavour of the meat defied identification; something familiar, yet not.
But one thing she couldn’t deny; it was the most delicious thing she had ever eaten. Tears dripped onto her plate, mingled with the juice, the grease — not grief, but a pure, real, giddy delight.
“You’re tasting your aunt’s love for this family,” my grandad explained. “Her entire life was carefully curated, to eventually make unforgettable moments for us, just like this. This was her way of being special. This was the greatest gift she could possibly bring to our world – and because she realised that, she died with not a single regret. She knew her life had purpose. She was perfectly, completely fulfilled.”
I felt those words. I felt them lodge in my own belly, settling uncomfortably deep. I knew Aunt Liz, probably better than anyone else in the family. I’d seen how fucking happy she’d been on her fortieth, how goddamn fulfilled she was, despite apparently being a *nobody* and achieving *nothing*. Somehow, in the space of a single day, she had gone from being a forgettable background character to becoming the *main character*, immortalising herself in our family’s history with her sacrifice. Quite literally becoming part of all of us, forever.
I went to the killing shed after I finished with the book. I looked inside the freezers.
But there were no vacuum-sealed packages labelled ‘L’, no matter how deep I dug into the frozen stacks of plastic-wrapped flesh. Panicked now, not sure if I wanted to connect all the dots or unconnect them, I tried to think back over the last few months, recall any meals that had been unusually good. A few Sundays ago, we’d had a stew that really hit the spot and left me craving more. And I realised that the family had a really good night that night; my brothers behaved themselves, my parents didn’t fight, and grandma and grandad had been there. Hadn’t they looked far more… expectant than they should have?
I strained my brain, trying to recall if I’d seen the homekill bag on the kitchen bench – if I’d registered what letter it was. I knew it wasn’t an L. I would have remembered if it was an L.
And then it hit me, the memory, the connection, sizzling as if branded with a hot iron.
It had been an ‘E’.
E for Elizabeth. Not for Edward the pig.
I snorted at my own stupidity – of *course* Liz was short for Elizabeth – and as I comprehended my lack of smarts, I felt something give inside me.
I wasn’t clever, and nothing, nothing would ever make me smart. I had no big talents. I wasn’t beautiful, or even cute – and even if I had a million plastic surgeries, it still wouldn’t fulfill me. It wouldn’t be real.
I was a Liz.
I was a Jenny.
I was whoever the first aunt had been, the aunt who had dedicated her life to making her flesh as delicious as possible, who had worked every damn minute to be the best Long Pig she could ever be.
I wondered how many magical family evenings had been spent eating Aunt Jenny. How many glorious, satisfying, memorable dishes had been made out of her.
And… I wanted that. I wanted to finally know I had a *purpose* in life. One so simple, and so easy to achieve.
I wanted what Aunt Liz had.
***
It's my fortieth birthday today and I’m so fucking excited. For the last twenty-four years, I’ve dedicated myself to this moment; I’ve eaten exactly what I needed to, I’ve exercised just enough, but not too much, to maintain that perfect balance of marbling vs tenderness. I’ve relaxed and meditated to keep all those amazing flavours inside of me. I’ve researched all the greatest meats in the world, from prime Angus beef to A5 Wagyu. I really think I may have outdone myself.
I’m having my hair and makeup done at the local salon this afternoon, and I’m going to look so pretty; all prize piggy on show at the fair. I’m even going to have a big red ribbon in my hair, in memory of Aunt Liz.
Maybe there’ll be a cute boy I can snog in the wool shed, maybe there won’t – I don’t really care; because the most important, most certain thing is that I’m going to be the most delicious Long Pig in the history of our entire family.
I’m going to make everyone so damn happy, and I’m just so glad I can share my story with you all, instead of hiding it in a grubby book like poor Aunt Liz.
My only real disappointment? That you won’t get to taste me.
Reader, I have loved, loved my life. My Long Pork will be out of this world: once tasted, never, ever forgotten.

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Synopsis:
An engineer in another world—blending science and magic to achieve greatness in a world where skills and levels reign supreme.
—
Ethan was just a plain old engineer, but everything changed when he was reborn into a world of skills, levels, and magic. With his advanced knowledge far ahead of the time period he finds himself in, this new reincarnated life will be much different than his last, especially because he can construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct runes—something no one else can do.
But with royal politics, looming tax collectors, a mountain of debt, dungeon incursions, cults, and hostile fantasy races mixing together into a cocktail of bullshit that threatens to bury his dreams; Ethan must bridge the gap between steel and sorcery to grow stronger.
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Chapter 02

-1-
Roland cursed under his breath as he trudged down the muddy path toward Lord Theodore's manor. The late early morning sun cast long shadows, painting the desolate landscape in an even bleaker light.
Why was it only him who had to deal with Lord Theodore's bullshit? Just last night, Roland had to take care of all the complaints from the bar he'd found Lord Theodore at. Not to mention, he had to pay compensation to the wenches from his own personal funds.
And that wasn't even half the things he'd done yesterday alone.
After all, Lord Theodore was either busy abusing his power and bullying the people of the town, gambling, drinking, getting wasted with his face stuck up a prostitute, or doing his fourth favorite activity which, naturally, was a combination of the latter three. The man wasn't the brightest, but he wasn't quite dumb enough to avoid dealing with the problems the town of Holden faced.
Roland shook his head when he made it to the estate gates. As expected, there were guards, servants, and soldiers dashing left and right, but he was ignored. It was time to beg Lord Theodore to attend to his duties. None dared stop him, for he was a [Knight] appointed to Lord Theodore by his father—Lord Alexander Lockheart—and an acting advisor while said lord was being, well, his usual idiotic and selfish self.
So, Roland did what he had to; he moved past them all, and made for Lord Theodore's sleeping quarters where a handful of maids were all fussing about like hens with their heads chopped off.
Lord Theodore's quarters were not large by noble standards, but impressive all the same. Lavish and gaudy, just as he expected. Tapestries and drapes were hung up high all about the walls, and on the ground, there were expensive fur carpets.
After moving past the maids and butlers who were currently shuffling about like a horde of ants whose nest was threatened by a boar, he stopped before a silk drape that barred the way to Lord Theodore's bedchambers.
"Lord Theodore," he called.
Silence.
"Lord Theodore?"
Nothing.
Feeling a little annoyed, Roland frowned. "Lord Theodore," he called again. "With all due respect, are you presently attired?"
Nothing but a muffled sound came from the other side. Roland grimaced, and looked up at the ceiling in exasperation before dropping his hand and tugging the curtain aside. The inside of the bedchamber wasn't much to look at. Just your average nobleman's bedroom with a canopy bed big enough to fit twelve women side-by-side.
Most did, in fact, do just that.
A bookshelf stood on each wall, and at the far end was another drape that led to an enclosed balcony where he had the gall to throw his used clothes through during summer.
"Greetings, my lord," Roland said.
Lord Theodore, however, didn't answer.
He sat in front of a full-length mirror on the dresser. He had this listless sort of look, like he just didn't know how to deal with things. It wasn't an expression he'd ever seen on the man's face.
"Lord Theodore, are you well?" Roland inquired, a sliver of unease creeping into his voice. Though he found the young lord childish—given he was barely eighteen years old—Lord Theodore was his responsibility. He'd been Roland's responsibility when he was a little brat, and even now.
Theodore gave a startled response. "Ah, Roland? Yes, I am quite well."
"My lord, with all due respect, I implore you to be truthful. Has something transpired?"
Roland was anxious now. While he harbored no particular fondness for Lord Theodore, a sworn oath bound him to protect and care for the Baron. Granted, his master, Lord Theodore's own father, had afforded him considerable autonomy within Holden's borders—heck, he could even go as far as beating up Lord Theodore without consequences, if Roland deemed it reasonable and necessary—but his code of honor held oaths sacred. The son of the house Varian would rather lose an arm and his birthright than break a single [Oath] made.
"No, truly, I'm fine."
"If that is the case," Roland acknowledged with a curt nod, "then I bear news."
Lord Theodore furrowed his brow. "Good news, I trust?"
"I'm afraid not," Roland sighed. "Yesterday, our patrol in the Deadwoods encountered a band of brigands...…"
Lord Theodore's frown deepened. "While banditry is a common occurrence, it often heralds further troubles. Elaborate, Roland."
"Indeed, my lord," Roland continued, "these brigands weren't merely causing a ruckus. Apparently, they were engaged in combat with a rather formidable creature, vaguely humanoid in form."
Lord Theodore's posture stiffened. "Vaguely humanoid? Can you provide further details?"
Roland shook his head. "Limited information, I'm afraid. Only reports of unnatural speed reached our ears; it appeared to be engaged with wolves. Both fled upon human-contact, however."
Lord Theodore stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Did our men prevail against the brigands? And this creature—surely Captain..." he paused, searching for the man's name.
"Thomas," Roland supplied.
"Ah, yes, Thomas. Holden is geographically close to the Deadwoods. Sir Thomas wouldn't simply abandon such a threat near the bordertowns, would he? He and I may not see eye to eye on certain matters, but... surely he wouldn't leave such a threat unaddressed." Lord Theodore said.
Roland hesitated. "Captain Thomas chose to bypass us and directly inform the Crown of their discovery. He remained tight-lipped regarding specifics despite repeated inquiries."
Lord Theodore hummed thoughtfully. "If Thomas deems it worthy of the Crown's attention, then it surpasses our jurisdiction. Let's hope for their swift and decisive action. What of the brigands? Eliminated, I presume?"
"So it seems," Roland replied. "All but one met their demise. The sole survivor remains in a cell, though maddened beyond reason."
"I see. Is that for now?" Lord Theodore leaned back in his chair.
"Not quite, my lord. We've had a recent outbreak of the Blight, and we suspect it was an intentional spread. Unfortunately, the culprit remains unidentified."
Theodore's expression morphed into one of genuine shock. "Are these two seemingly unrelated issues connected, perhaps?" He asked.
"It appears to be the case, my lord." A sigh escaped Roland's lips. The Blight—a magical sickness that eats away at your life force, causes lethargy, nausea, and kills you, all while your body radiates a pervasive foul odor. It had recently taken hold on a few people of Holden. Why or how, Roland did not know.
"Those afflicted have been quarantined in a secure location far from Holden to prevent further contagion. Our physicians are doing their utmost to manage them. However, several have died already, and the remaining victims exhibit signs of feral behavior—meaning, they have already entered the late stage, I'm afraid. It's become imperative that they remain under quarantine, lest they either bite other humans—given there's hunger for raw flesh in the late stage—or they could infect the crops, causing them to decay. Consequently, the farmers, understandably anxious, have retreated into their homes."
They were likely waiting for their lord, incompetent as he may be, to deal with the situation. Yet, he had his hand up a wench's skirt more than actually trying to fix the issues... What can I do with him? Roland sighed.
Lord Theodore rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Roland."
"Yes, my lord?"
"Do you think the Merchant Guild would let me have another loan?"
Roland's lips thinned into a line, but he shook his head. "Regrettably, my lord, they would not. The Merchants' Guild has been cautious lately. There was this whole unpleasant affair with a prominent [Merchant Lord] named Bertram, you might know the name. Used to flaunt more gold jewelry than some of the highborn nobles. Turns out, he was embezzling.
"Apparently, he manipulated the Guild's books for months. Inflated trade contracts with nonexistent suppliers from faraway lands, siphoned off the extra profit into his own pockets. Clever, gotta give him that. Even forged shipping manifests to keep it all looking legit.
"Nasty business, that. Apparently, the esteemed Lord Bertram decided a little vacation was in order after everything, and wouldn't you know it, he packed a rather hefty sum from the Guild's coffers along for the ride as well. We're talking a near royal-wedding-sized dowry here, my lord. Vanished, all of it.
"The details are still murky, but rumor has it Bertram might have gotten tangled with pirates operating from the Broken Isles. One of the [Pirate Kings], perhaps—or most likely. So, the Merchants' Guild has been refraining from giving out loans. And, my apologies to say this, my lord, but you're a high-risk individual, and you already have quite the debt with them... They wouldn't want to give more."
Lord Theodore already had a mountain of debt on his name... The interest rate was more than what Lord Theodore could pay off even if the crops did better than planned. Given that the Adventurers' Guild of this sector had been rather short on manpower lately due to a dungeon incursion in the town, Corinth, lying beside theirs and given that Lord Theodore had a tendency for tax evasion and then laundering… Yeah, they were royally fucked. Even if in this situation, Lord Theodore wanted a loan for himself... Roland just gave up. Maybe it was time to return to his master, Lord Theodore's father, and just ask him to appoint him somewhere else—he couldn't deal with this scumbag anymore, not in his current state.
"I see, they wouldn't. Not surprising. It seems I'm going to have to hire a [Necromancer] by my lonesome."
Roland blinked. "That's..." a shock, Roland stopped himself from saying. [Necromancers] cost a hefty sum, and given that Lord Theodore was already under debt and likely the financial situation of Holden was anything but optimal, hiring a [Necromancer] would've put a huge dent in Holden's already meager reserves. However, Roland hadn't imagined, not in his wildest dreams, that Lord Theodore would be employing one by his lonesome.
Throughout his life, Roland had known this man to not even spare a thought to anything that wasn't his immediate self-gratification, or his amusement and satisfaction. How was the wastrel noble suddenly going to change?
"My lord, my apologies for asking, but why do you require a [Necromancer's] assistance?" Roland finally asked, schooling his shocked expression.
"Oh, I have some... theories regarding the Blight." Lord Theodore grinned. "And a [Necromancer] might just be someone who we need in order to solve this problem once and for all."
Roland was shocked to his core, once more. "But, my lord, the treatment for the Blight isn't something common folk can afford? So, how...?"
"Nonsense, Roland. Forget that rudimentary concoction they peddle as a cure. I envision a more... permanent solution. Issue a commission at the Adventurers' Guild—a [Necromancer] or perhaps a [Witch], their talents are equally suited for this task."
"Yes, my lord." Roland bowed, failing to comprehend what Lord Theodore was planning on doing.
-2-
When Roland left, Ethan found it easier to relax. The stiff, aristocratic manners these people employed were rather annoying to bear with. No, they were rather hard to imitate, more accurately. Because despite his efforts, he'd still found it hard to match their ways, but it was doable. Not good enough, yet, but doable.
"How should I, going forward, act, then?" he muttered. "Because if I've understood a single thing, it is this: Theo's character as I know it now will ruin any chance of me, well, earning anything, be that respect, wealth, power, or all three. Should I continue as him, then, or completely overhaul Theodore's character and pretend it's some epiphany? A spiritual enlightenment, perhaps?"
Ethan shook his head. Whatever it may be, he wasn't planning on being like Theo. Let's go with a gradual change in mannerism.
First, however, he needed to deal with the Blight issue. Which would be easily dealt with—all he had to do was pay the [Necromancer], or [Witch], from his own pouch. Then, he needed to figure out this town's financial status and everything else in order to organize a working infrastructure and create new financial opportunities. Afterwards, he could move onto his 'character', if that is indeed what his situation required. There's a lot to do.
Before everything, however, a bath.
After all, he reeked of sweat and alcohol, among other not-so pleasant scents.
...
It took no more than a few minutes for a handful of servants to prepare the bath. Hot water steamed inside the spacious tub as soap bubbles glistened—soap that was far too expensive for the common folk. Despite being a luxury, its quality was arguably trash. Regardless, this was all the people had in this world. A strong scent of lavender permeated the air and tickled his nose as he undressed. A few maids had prepared for his comfort and placed a silken bathrobe alongside a set of towels on a small table near the bathtub before he'd dismissed them, ordering them to inform the kitchen staff that he would like his meal soon.
Ethan relaxed his shoulders, took the robe with one hand, and tossed it carelessly nearby. It was fine silk. Ethan shook his head before proceeding with an easy grace into the water. It was hot. Yet, Ethan felt rather cold, despite the heat. It helped him relax, and with it, the stiff persona that was Lord Theodore faded.
Ethan sank deeper, letting his long blond locks loose. A quick thought made him bring his hand forward. What if... he could make a fire? Just a little one, like a candle flame. How cool would that be? He focused, willing a tiny spark to appear on his fingertip. Nothing. Just a sputter and a fizzle.
"Hmm," he mumbled, undeterred. "Maybe I need to practice."
He doubted it was just understanding. After all, the skill [Elemental Spells] had given him the barest hints of the basics of how to create a basic spark of flame. He lacked control over mana. [Magic Perception] allowed him to view his mana—flowing, fast-moving streams and spiraling, coiling vortexes. It was chaotic; it was a mess! Maybe if he calmed it down, he could actually make something happen?
Easier said than done, he quickly learned. When he moved it, it took no less effort than bending metal with brute force. The feeling was there, and the will, too. Just the act of 'moving' it alone was a herculean effort. It seemed nigh impossible.
Maybe I'm doing it wrong?
Humming, Ethan looked through the snippets of memories he'd gotten from Theodore. The memories, he found, weren't entirely useless; as his mind drifted back and forth from those flashes, he did remember something Theodore had seen last night... There! A memory from last night—a drunk mage at the bar, showing off with a fireball for some girl who didn't seem too impressed.
"Let's see how that trick works," Ethan grinned.
With [Magic Perception], he saw how the spell flowed. The "spell" was, in a way, forced outwards into reality through the use of symbols he quickly recognized as runes—at least that was what he assumed after seeing the fireball.
Ethan could easily recall the shape of the rune that'd appeared before the fire took form on top of the mage's hand.
I'm pretty sure it's not possible to view runes. I assume, at least, from what little fragments of memories I got from Theo. Anyway, let's move my mana in the shape, then.
He imagined the shape on top of his hand and willed the mana to pour into it. Soon, rune motes started forming out of thin air, ripping into reality. Forming into a shape he willed, a rune burned brightly and loudly atop his palm. As he drew his hand forward, flames burst into life, flickering before fizzling out.
[Basic Magic Script] — Lvl 1 -> Lvl 2!
Congratulations! You have gained skill: [Basic Rune Creation]!
"Whoa." Ethan stared at his hand, a wide grin splitting his face. So that's how it works! Runes, huh? That's awesome! Ethan felt like a child again. He couldn't wait to try again, this time with a smaller flame, as it appeared that a fireball was far too much for his lacking skill and control. Magic... it was epic stuff!
Before that, however, he looked at the new skill he'd gained.
~Basic Rune Creation – Level 1~
Type: Active
Effect: You have grasped the fundamental concept of using runes to channel and shape your mana for basic magical effects. The Connection between two of your skill—[Magic Perception] and [Basic Magic Script]—has resulted in the creation of a new skill. You can now create simple runes that allow for the manipulation of elemental energy on a small scale. As your skill level increases, you will be able to create more complex runes, allowing for more powerful and versatile spells. You may also learn to combine runes for even greater magical effects.
Ethan stared. Reading the description was a quick matter of concentration. It took him by surprise, however, when he realized it. Rune creation? Huh. Does that mean I can create anything? The thought alone was exciting. What about rune motes? Rune motes were fragments of runes, combining certain fragments could result in a full rune. I saw them congregating into the shape of a rune, but is it possible to just create rune motes and not a full rune? I should try.
Regardless of his thoughts, it was creation—
—and Ethan loved creation. Even as a child, he had never gotten tired of tinkering with things. He still recalled the time he'd gotten his first Lego set. Just putting random pieces together with no thought for a bigger picture—he'd loved that. He'd loved doing all sorts of stuff with Legos, creating different castles or other complex structures, but it was building something completely random and ridiculous, yet unique nonetheless, which gave him the most sense of satisfaction. It was fun. It was a hobby—a hobby that ignited in him a fire of passion for innovation.
It was then the thought of being a civil engineer had sprung up in his mind. To put it simply, a civil engineer is responsible for planning, designing, and constructing buildings. Though, that was just a general term. Ethan would have been perfectly happy had he chosen that. Unfortunately, his father had wanted him to become a boxer, instead.
The man wanted to become one himself in his prime, but due to health issues, he'd quit right before making it to a big league. He'd hoped his son would achieve what he couldn't and bring victory for the family. Even though Ethan hadn't exactly planned boxing as his future, but who could refuse the pressure his old man put on him? Especially when he'd been just a little boy?
It was another matter entirely that Ethan fell in love with boxing, too, as it made him feel alive. The sensation of a punching bag slamming against his fists? Nothing quite made his blood boil like that.
And oh, fighting in the ring. There was just something about the sport Ethan couldn't resist.
Something about creation, fighting, and experiencing a bit of both, had Ethan wishing he could try the other options that lay in front of him now.
Could he make a real spaceship, in this world?
It sounded silly as fuck and he knew it. Nonetheless, the temptation was still there, hovering and nagging at the edge of his mind, as ridiculous as his previous thoughts might have been.
Spaceships are cool, dammit.
That thought suddenly gave Ethan pause. "Let's just return to practice."
This time, fire flickered atop his fingertips for a second longer.
Another second was added on top of that after his third try.
The light was dim. However, it did mean something: improvement.
[Elemental Spells] — Lvl 1 -> Lvl 2!
Grinning like an idiot, Ethan sank deeper into the hot bath water and brought his other hand up to repeat the exercise for the next half an hour or so, occasionally reading a notification that would come every now and then.
[Elemental Spells] — Lvl 2 -> Lvl 3!
[Elemental Spells] — Lvl 3 -> Lvl 4!
[Elemental Spells] — Lvl 4 -> Lvl 5!
But no matter what, he couldn't get it to level up to level 6, nor could he level up [Basic Magic Script] from level 2 to 3.
Why not, though? I'm doing—
"Don't rush," he chided himself. "Your control is pitiful, shaping is trash, and your spellcasting is akin to tossing stones into the sea without even knowing how to make it bounce—guesswork is all you are, but it's a good start, I suppose."
As he set a handful of candle-like flames afloat on all five of his fingers, his lips quirked into a wide smirk. It was only a party trick. For now, that is. I need to find more about magic and learn. I've been winging it.
That was true; he didn't understand anything about magic. All he'd done so far was try to emulate the rune he'd seen in the memory snippet through the help of [Magic Perception] and cast a few party tricks. Was that impressive? He had literally no comparison to base off of, thus why he knew he needed to learn more.
Theodore's memories proved to be useless in this regard, too. His father hadn't found him worthy enough to be assigned a mage as a tutor. Theodore was a disappointment through and through, and that's why he'd been sent to rule the bordertowns.
He could cast the spell, yes, but he didn't understand the underlying concepts that fueled the magic or what the process was.
-3-
Ethan descended down the stairs that would lead him to the dining room where breakfast had already been laid out for him. Two maids were present as well. It was a feast of the likes he'd only ever read in fairy tales. Fried, scrambled, boiled eggs. Different shapes, sizes, and cuts. Cakes and pies in varying quantities and sizes. Grilled meat, smoked and salted. How could he ever eat everything alone?
Ethan exhaled and then dove in; however, he still maintained decorum as it was imperative to do so given that he was a noble now. Regardless, once done, he made it to the meeting room given that he had some people to meet today.
"Barely breaking even," Ethan muttered, flicking the parchment in his hand. He frowned at the financial situation of Holden, the town he was in charge of. The bordertowns consisted of a series of towns lying on the periphery of the borders. Each town was a barony in name, and nobles—especially troublesome nobles—were often sent here to practice ruling and to make them accustomed to how the common folk lived, so they could empathize with the people they ruled.
With how many bandits the region had had lately, the Blight, debt, tax, and interest that'd ramped up, Ethan's current situation was mind-fucking at best and a keg waiting to explode at worst.
I don't want to deal with Theo's issues.
Not only was this whole situation something Ethan did not want in the slightest, a whole can of worms that were Theo's problems was thrust into his hands. Ethan had held no fantasies of getting isekai'd. That was suicide in his books. He'd have been more than happy to die and meet oblivion. But now that he was here…
Leaning back into his chair, Ethan rubbed his eyes. Yeah, he needed to deal with everything and make the best of his situation to live a comfortable life. When Roland returned with a man in tow, Ethan hummed.
The man was young, younger than Roland, even. Black hair and sharp green eyes. He held himself high with confidence and Ethan recognized him instantly. Isn't he that mage from the bar?
"My lord," Roland bowed. "I have brought a [Necromancer] as per your command."
The [Necromancer] bowed and with a thin smile said, "Pleased to be at your service, my lord. The name's Jack."
Hm. So he wasn't a mage but a [Necromancer].
"Likewise," Ethan replied with a nod, then leaned forward, smiling. "Say, Jack, would you like to be part of a business opportunity?
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I want to thank Meatcanyon and Wendigoon for starting Creepcast. I've played around with writing horror, and here is my first short story. I will post it for free in a few other places to see what people think. Please enjoy!
A Hike to Remember
By R.L. Oclen
Chapter 1
A woman sits with hastily pulled-up fire-red hair in the waiting room of the state patrol station. The procedurally sterile off-white walls and decade-old magazines do little for comfort. With her head hanging low, her shoulders pushing forward, and her boots rapidly tapping on the floor, something has to give.
"Please just let her be okay." The woman growls as a pair of officers come in from the field. The officers' demeanors quickly change when they see the familiar face.
"Tabitha, did Officer Nichols call you?" one of the state patrol officers asked sympathetically.
"Yes, he asked me to come in and pick up a few things," Tabitha said, shooting back a muted look.
" I'll let them know you're here." The officer said, nodding to Tabitha as they passed the security door. Tabitha leaned back against the hard plastic chair, staring blankly into the fluorescent light. She had done this dance in the macabre repeatedly over the past month. The last image of her younger sister, Lisa, still burned in her mind. Tabitha had always been protective over her younger sister after their parents died. A pang of guilt shoots through her chest as she thinks about her and Lisa's argument.
"Tabitha Hymm, Officer Nichols is ready for you."
"Okay," she stood up, shaking off her guilt, and followed the officer back. The familiar surroundings of the state patrol station blurred as Tabitha stared forward. She followed the officer as they came to a rustic wooden office door, which was embossed with "Officer Nichols."
The escorting officer turns the old brass door knob. "Sir, I have Tabitha Hymm here." A grizzled West Virginia Highway State Patrol veteran sits behind the desk and nods. The escorting officer steps aside, pushing the door open as Tabitha pushes past him and slumps in the awaiting chair like so many times before. An uncomfortable relationship had formed between the two, born out of necessity and duty.
"Cup of coffee?"
"No thanks. Let's just cut to the chase. You don't have anything new?"
The worn laugh lines and Officer Nichols's face flattens. His eyebrows contour sympathetically as he shakes his head.
"Tabitha, I don't have anything else new for you. I wanted to give you the clothes returned from the lab." Her face darkened at the same response she had heard many times.
"As we discussed two weeks ago, there is nothing new and no signs of struggle or foul play," Officer Nichols said while placing a box marked evidence on the table and sliding it forward. Tabitha began to weep at the realization of Lisa's clothes in front of her. In a coordinated queue, Officer Nichols brought out a box of tissues. Reluctantly, Tabitha took a few moments to unblur her vision.
"How does someone stop their car in the middle of the Remington West Virginia State Park, lock it, and then walk into the woods?" Officer Nichols clasped his hands together and sighed at her worn question.
"Tabitha, I wish I had an answer for why your sister stopped her car in the woods and simply walked off. We're still going through her cell phone, but no signs exist that anyone forced her. On that Tuesday morning, she pulled over to the side of the road, secured her car, and walked away." Officer Nichols said empathetically.
Tabitha became stoic at the same explanation she had heard many times before. " So what next?"
"You should go back to Ohio, and I'll contact you as soon as I have more information." She winced at Officer Nichols's words. Reality began to pull at her that bills and work wouldn't wait much longer.
"If I leave, she's gone for good."
" You staying won't bring her back." Officer Nichols said sympathetically.
" So is that it? She's just gone?"
" Tabitha, I'll be honest with you. In cases like this… when people do things like this. Recovery is harder in the spring due to the weather and the animals. You know her mental condition better than I do. I can't explain why she did what she did. But until I find a solution, a suicide note, some intention, or body. She's not here. Tabitha, I'm-"
" Don't you fucking say sorry!" Tabitha stood up, screaming at Officer Nichols, throwing the plastic chair backward against the wall. " I should just look for myself."
"No!" Officer Nichols said momentarily, gripping the desk as his face hardened, then relaxed. Tabitha was caught off guard by Officer Nichols, who was normally composed. "Tabitha, I know this is unbearable. I've sat on this side of the desk and had these conversations. Trust me; I need you to be safe if I need your help later."
Tabitha nods, knowing Officer Nichols is right. She reaches down, picks up the evidence box of her sister's belongings, and leaves.
" Tabitha, if you're heading home, don't stop your car; just keep driving." Tabitha stops to look at Officer Nichols, feeling an eeriness to his words.
" Goodbye, Officer Nichols," Tabitha said as she closed the rustic wooden door behind her. She counted the tiles as she exited the West Virginia State Patrol Station. Placing her sister's belongings carefully in the back seat of her Jeep, Tabitha then sat momentarily behind the steering wheel, staring at the emblem. The familiar numbness washed over Tabitha as she pushed the start button. She pulled onto the highway, driving to the motel that had been home for the last month or so. Muted pop music accented the drive back as her mind raced with questions. Once inside the two-and-a-half-star motel room, Tabitha sat her sister's belongings on the corner table, crumbled onto the bed, and cried.
***
Tabitha wiped the steam from the slightly spotted mirror above the bathroom sink. The hot water from the shower felt good and loosened some of the stress from her body. Looking back at her, Tabitha's face was framed by damp curls around her shoulders. Her face marked the stress of the past month. Frowning, she examined the bags under her eyes; sleep had to come tonight. Walking into the living area, She changed into her favorite gym shorts and oversized sleep shirt. The alarm on her phone flashed "7:00 am," so she could drive home five hours after breakfast.
Tabitha hated feeling comfortable in this once strange room, but falling asleep was getting easier now. Her eyes closed slowly as the ceiling fan droned evenly. At first, nothing came in her dreams, but she let her guard down and slipped further into sleep.
As she dreamed of floating overhead like a bird of prey, Tabitha soared over the vast Remington National Park. The high noon sun bore down on the crisp woods, perfectly contrasting sky and forest. The heat of the sun felt good on her feathers. Distant cries rang out through the dream-like forest, catching her attention. Tabitha tilted her wings toward the screams, feeling a sense of familiar curiosity.
She now recognized the sobs and cries for help as she flew closer, her sharp eyes locked on her sister leaning against a large oak tree. She glided overhead without care, examining the situation below. Lisa clung to the tree, her eyes darting back and forth, scanning upwards. Lisa's face reflected desperation, looking for help in any direction. Tabitha lazily circles Lisa several times before perching on a sturdy branch higher in one of the oak trees. She watched Lisa intently with hunger. She bellowed deeply, hearing the unnatural sound she made, catching Lisa's eyes. Lisa's expression changed; she became calm, almost uncaring, as she stared back at Tabitha's form. Hunger grew exponentially in Tabitha as she spread her large wings. Her large eyes gaze down at Lisa before diving straight for her sister.
Tabitha jolts awake to the alarm on her phone flashing "7:23 AM." She breathes in sharply, shaking off the last horrible thoughts from the reoccurring nightmare. The strange details become more vivid each time. The lingering memories of folk stories her mother told sat in the back of her mind. In those stories, the dead would reach out in dreams as a matter of warning. Leaning back on the headboard, she searched for the advice her psychologist gave her. During their last session, Dr. Ryland explained dreams are a form of self-actualization of guilt. He told Tabitha that it was natural to feel responsible when losing a loved one in this manner.
Tabitha grumbled, lightly running her hands through her red hair; she pushed everything to the back of her mind. "Get it together!" She grumbled to herself. She pushed herself off the bed and got ready to leave. It was going to be a long trip home, and the only thing she could do now was leave things in the authorities' hands. Packing up was pretty easy since she only cycled through the outfits she brought. The local laundromat must have made a small fortune off her. Tabitha took one last look at the box of Lisa's belongings before throwing them in her duffle bag. She was thankful she didn't have to spend another night in this room.
***
Tabitha sat behind the wheel, waiting for the 90's model minivan to finish their order so she could grab a breakfast burrito on the way out. Considering the situation, the Deer Stop Family Restaurant did have a good breakfast. Finally, pulling up to the 70-style drive-in board, Tabitha rolled off the order she had been accustomed to. " I'll take a large iced tea with the double breakfast burrito meal and hash browns, please."
" Would you like some happy hot sauce with that?"
" That's fine, and a few ketchup packets as well."
" Your total is $8.79. Please pull around."
She pulled around to her window, flashed her debit card, got the receipt, and waited for her food. Luckily, the young woman serving her wasn't very talkative in the morning. The last thing she wanted was a conversation about the weather or meaningless small talk.
" Here's your large iced tea and breakfast meal. Ketchup and happy hot sauce are inside."
" Thanks," Tabitha said while mustering her best fake smile. The woman only smiled and nodded as the service window automatically closed. She pulled into the parking lot and dug into breakfast. Turning the radio to the weather, Tabitha sat back and enjoyed her meal. The local DJ read through the headlines, making nonpartisan comments about politics and grumbling about improving the economy. Tabitha powered through the updates of the "out-of-state woman" who'd gone missing. It was nice that the local radio station gave Lisa's name, description, and a missing person's number for sightings or leads. Tabitha even interviewed with the local news and radio stations, hoping it would bring Lisa home. But she soon found all it brought was a sorrowful look from the locals as she interacted with them in her day-to-day life.
Finishing the last of her hash browns, Lisa wadded up everything in the paper bag and threw it in the back seat. The 9 AM weather report said it was nothing but clear skies and sun the rest of the week. Tabitha flipped the radio over to the greatest hit station, pulled out of the parking lot, and began her trip home. She memorized the roads, every bend and turn in the early weeks as she frantically looked for Lisa. There's something hypnotic about the trees: the way they flow together. The trees' green tops and the oak trees' wide trunks were a relaxing view. Tabitha enjoyed the lazy s-curves of the road, bending and winding around the hills and the trees. The occasional farmhouse or field dotted the sides of the road as she made her way to the main highway.
The blur of a semi-truck snapped Tabitha's attention as she pulled up to the mouth of the highway. She had four and a half hours ahead of her, which would be a long ride. Tabitha pulled onto the highway and picked up speed, noting sparse traffic. She relaxed into her seat, letting her gaze gloss over the blur of green foliage. Without warning, Tabitha caught a large shadow from the corner of her left eye. When she registered the black feathery form, Tabitha tensed up and slammed on the brakes as it swooped across the vehicle's hood. Quickly, she pulled the car safely off the road. She couldn't determine exactly what it was, but it was bigger than any bird she'd seen. It was a bird, right? Tabitha turned off her Jeep and grabbed the keys and cell phone. Standing before the Jeep, she looked over the grill to see if she made contact with the entity.
Bewildered, she scanned the tree line, spotting something in the distance. Sitting in the clearing of the large oak forest was an enormous black owl. It stared intently at Tabitha with bright, shiny yellow eyes. She pushed the lock button on her keys, causing the jeep to beep securely. She turned, looking across the open field, an enormous black owl perched in the upper branches of an old oak tree. Each step she took away from the road piqued her curiosity. Soon, Tabitha stood in the middle of the open field, staring intently into the eyes of the enormous owl.
The horn of a passing semi-truck blared, pulling Tabitha's attention away from the mysterious large creature. She looked back and saw that she had walked farther away from the Jeep than she had thought. She glanced back to the forest line only to see the enormous owl was deeper into the woods than before. She narrowed her vision to find the two large, bright yellow eyes staring back. Had it moved? The day's stress, care, and worry suddenly poured out of Tabitha. It was replaced by only curiosity and overbearing tranquility. She warmly smiled for the first time in months as her feet pulled her further into the woods.
Chapter 2
The tug of gravity pulls Tabitha to her senses as her body reacts, falling forward. Her arms thrust forward, bracing for impact. Water rushes around her face as she struggles to get her bearings. Quickly, Tabitha pushed herself up in the ankle-high stream she fell in. The haze slowly clears from her mind as she stares at the muddy water. The dull ache throbs up her legs. Tabitha can smell the sweat from her clothes. Her face contorted in panic as she quickly stood up in the water, looking for her cell. Thankfully, the device was still in her pocket, dry and unscathed.
"One o'clock. How can that be?" Tabitha says, slowly looking up from the screen to see the vast, dense West Virginia forest encompassing her view. She shakes her head back and forth with disbelief. A smile gently spreads across her face, with the last bit of tranquility leaving her body. How did I get out here? Her breathing becomes faster as her pulse begins to quicken. I'm in the forest. I'm all alone—just like Lisa!
"NO, NO, NO, NO! THIS FUCKING CAN'T BE HAPPENING TO ME!" Tabitha screams into the void of trees. Her eyes well up with tears as she crumbles to her knees, gripping her phone tightly to her chest. Her sobs ring out through the thick oak trees. Her breath slows a little as she regains her composure. She begins to search her mind for anything. What is the last thing I can remember? The image of the black shadow crossing her vision while driving flashes into her mind.
"Okay, I got out of the Jeep, the…then what?" Tabitha says, trying to refresh her memories. She thinks her memory is not just gone; it's a black void in her mind. Complete blackness fills her mind right after remembering locking the Jeep and then turning to see the…
"Fuck I saw something. What was it!" Tabitha says, frustrated with her mind. She knew there must be a logical reason she was out here. Officer Nichols warned her not to go looking for her sister. She wasn't stupid; she just said that as a last-ditch effort to get him to do anything. Now I'm here.
"Run!" Tabitha heard Lisa's voice in her ear. Before she could turn around, she heard a loud bellowing coming from overhead. Fear shot down her back, reminding her of the nightmares she had over the past month. She shot forward full bore as something crashed to the ground behind her. Glancing back as she ran, a black mass of feathers convulsed between the broken branches of the trees. Its slick black feathers rippled across its surface as its bones crackled and flesh tore. Its body contorted and twisted from the shape of an owl to something bigger.
"Run, Tabby! Don't let it catch you!" Tabitha pushed forward, hearing Lisa's scream beside her face. Her breath burned in her chest, and she moved past the old oak trees bent over the creek bed. Her feet slammed rapidly, splashing along the side of the creek. Another loud bellow comes from behind as the trees bend and break to the force behind her. A small opening in the rocky creek bed catches her sight from the left. She dives into the crevasses, not caring where the fathoms lead. Tabitha tumbles in the pitch black, taking scrapes and sharp jabs from the rocks as she tumbles further into the void.
She finally tumbles to a stop on the sandy, wet floor of the cave. Her body aches from the sudden burst of exhaustion. The cool water running around her body from the creek is soothing despite her bumps and bruises. Pushing herself up, she scoots out of the water. Feeling her way forward, she finds a dry spot to collect herself. Quickly pushing her hand into her pocket, she finds her phone undamaged.
The sound of footsteps pushing against the creek fills the void around Tabitha as the light steps move closer to each other up the underground creekbed. She slowly removes her cell from her pocket and then shines the camera light toward the sound. A pair of scratched and bruised pale bare legs hold up a frail form in front of her in the creek. She wears the darkness as a shroud with nothing else to clothe her. Tabitha froze, not wanting to shine the light further in the pale form before her.
"Tabby, turn your light off. You need to save your battery." Tabitha turned off the light and then rushed forward, embracing Lisa—the how or why didn't matter, only the now. The pale form hugged her tightly. Tabitha felt her cold, bare skin. The darkness couldn't hide the feeling of the marks across her back and torso.
"Lisa, I'm-"
"Hush! I don't have much time. This wasn't your fault! I'm with Mom and Dad now. You have to survive, Tabby! Listen. Wait until the sun shines through the cracks, making a trail out. Follow it down the creek until you come to the opening. You'll see a large hill you hike up for a cell signal. And remember…If you can't see it… It can't hurt you. I love you-"
Tabitha stumbled forward before catching herself. The void in front of her arms was only filled by cool air. She looked up and noticed a faint glimmer of light pushing through the ceiling. She sat down, relaxing against the limestone wall of the cave, waiting for the trail of light to form.
***
After a few hours, the light shining through the cracks of the cave ceiling was bright enough to lead Tabitha to the other side. She stepped onto the creek bed, thankful for the sun hanging lower in the sky. Scanning the sky, Tabitha saw only a few clouds. The foothills of Appalachia backdropped the forest as she scanned for the hill. Her eyes found the trail leading up the steady slope of an impressive hill. The top of the hill was bare. Part of the hill must have sheared off in a landslide, leaving the top void of trees and a jagged cliff face. Tabitha started her hike up the back of the hill. She was careful to stay under the heavy canopy of the old trees, hopefully avoiding the creature's eyes.
She did her best to quiet her mind while hiking up the trail. Come on, almost to the top, then I can call 911, she replayed repeatedly in her mind. Her adrenaline made up for the lack of food since morning. She drank some water from a clean spot in the creek. She was placing her bet on rescue rather than worrying about the water.
Leaning against one of the trees, Tabitha took out her cell and measured the signal.
"Damn it, nothing!" She swore under her breath. She listened nervously and cautiously peered her head out from the tree line. Standing at the tree line, the cell phone still had a low signal. She pushed her anxiety down with a swallow and slowly stepped forward onto the bare rock. Tabitha was now out in the open. She walked with the cell phone pointed upwards, measuring the signal. Within three feet of the cliff face, her signal bar punched up to full. Tabitha began to punch in the numbers just as a pair of large yellow eyes appeared. She felt her legs become weak, and her vision blurred as the creature snared her in its gaze.
Tabitha ducked, missing the giant owl's claws as it swooped for her. She squinted her eyes shut, momentarily breaking the hold of the infernal beast as it crashed to the ground, tumbling down the path of old trees. On her hands and knees, she tucked the dialed phone back into her pocket. She heard the creature's loud bellowing, followed by the snapping of bone and flesh ripping. It was changing its shape to finish her off.
Tabitha tried to get up, but the flash of its eyes did something to her. Her legs were numb, her stomach was in knots, and she could barely put a few thoughts together.
"If you can't see it, it can't hurt you." Tabitha heard clearly in her left ear. She quickly pushed herself into a sitting position and fumbled for the key chain in her right pocket. Pulling the long chain of keys, luck charms, and keepsakes, her father's Swiss army knife dangled at the end. She slowly opened the half-inch blade. Her body wholeheartedly rejected her plan and tried to fight her. Every internal warning system sounded as her body fought against her as she brought the blade against the corner of her left eye.
She didn't know if she could do it until the creature bellowed in her direction. With one quick motion, the half-inch blade sliced across her left eye. The world dimmed and then went black on her left side. Behind her, the beast's thundering gallop was getting closer. Tabitha plunged herself into total darkness with the last bit of her strength. Her hand gripped tightly around the bloody knife as she folded forward onto the ground. She could feel herself weeping blood. She squinted, doing her best to stem the tide of blood loss.
A large feathered paw drove into Tabitha's right side, flipping her onto her back. She lay still as the hulking creature stood over her. It remained motionless, and Tabitha was confused about why it didn't move or bite her. Then she started to giggle, just a little at first. Then, laughing madly into the creature's face as it growled back at her. She could not see it; she couldn't see anything. Her mind couldn't be eaten!
The creature roared into Tabitha's face while plunging one of its sharp claws into her shoulder. Tabitha screamed in pain, slashing the knife downward. The blade hit something soft, and she ripped the blade down, rending whatever she had hit on the abomination. A bright yellow, foul-smelling liquid gushed in a torrent over Tabitha's face. She turned to cough, having swallowed a portion of it. The creature reared back, squealing in pain. Its hind leg came down hard on Tabitha's leg, snapping her tibia. She jerked her leg up, causing the creature to tumble forward and fall over the edge of the cliff side.
Tabitha heard the creature crash below at the base of the hill. A large dead tree speared the creature through its chest. Tabitha could hear the labored whines of the creature as its cries became weak and slowed. A wave of sickness hit her as she rolled over and vomited. The foul smell drenched her. She did her best to focus, reaching into her pocket and pulling out the phone. By memory, she typed in the unlock pin. She held her breath and placed her thumb where the call button should be.
She could hear the call being made then, "911. What is your emergency?"
"Please help me! A bear has attacked me, and I can't see. I think I am on a hill."
"Ok, ma'am, stay with me! Do you know where you are located?"
"No, I'm lost. Please send help."
"It's okay. Stay with me on the phone, and I'll use the cell signal to try to find you."
"I'm on top of one of the hills. I think I am lying on a bare roc-" Tabitha slipped unconscious with the cell still tightly in her hand. Her body began to tremble and convulse.
"Ma'am! Ma'am! Stay with me. I have help on the way."
Chapter 3
A young man in military fatigues frantically compiles images and reconnaissance data from his drone feed. Confirming his hunch, he commands the winged surveillance drone to make a hard left and send a live video feed. His eyes widened as he saw a large owl-shaped shadow crash onto the top of a hill. He watches in awe as the sleek black owl twists and shifts into something much larger, like a grizzly. As the drone turns, he sees a woman at the cliff's edge trying to steady yourself on her hands and knees.
He bolts up from the command module, jotting down the drone's coordinates on one of the printouts. The drab government-issued office motif for the watch station blurs in the corner of his eye as he rushes down the hallway to the watch commander's office.
"Sir, recon has eyes on AMOS! And it's feeding!" the man said, swinging the heavy wooden door open. He took the hastily compiled file and pushed it forward to the commanding officer.
An older, tanned man quickly stands, reaching for the files. His brow furls, seeing his charge is awake. "Keep eyes on it! Go Adams!" The young man nods, turning on his heel and bolting for the drone command module. As his office door slams shut from the subordinate officer, he grabs his headset and frantically dials the closest military outpost to the coordinates.
"Hello, Sergeant Klein; this is Agent Smith of Black Watch outpost 7948! Shadow is active, code Alpha, Mike, Oscar, Sierra. The coordinates and data package have been sent. A civilian is on the ground; deploy strike-and-rescue ASAP.
"We'll be up in five, Agent Smith! The line cuts as Agent Smith closes out the call on his headset and rushes to the door. The normally quiet watch station buzzes alive, with personnel flooding the central command station. The background echoes resource allocation calls, frantic typing, and the hum of cold computers warming up.
"Adams, get our eyes back on Amos!"
"Coming back around in 30 seconds." Thirty sets of eyes stare at the three giant screens, anxiously waiting for the drone feed to clear the bank of trees. The camera clears the tre top to see the giant feathered grizzly rear back slinging its massive head away from its prey. Its large yellow right eye spews bright yellow liquid all over the red-haired woman and the cliff face. The giant feathered grizzly missteps, crushing the woman's leg and causing the creature to tumble over the cliff face.
"Fuck!" Agent Smith yells in horror as he watches AMOS fall four stories, impaling a sharp, 3-meter-tall log lodged in the boulders. The command center freezes wide-eyed at the flailing dying creature on screen. Agent Smith pulls his cell out quickly and dials.
"Klein, Scrub the current request! AMOS is down! Switch to rescue and harvest now!
"What, someone took out AMOS?"
"YES! It's at the bottom of the cliff, bleeding out essence! The woman is covered in it as well. Clean as much of it off her as possible before you take her to the ER.
"Understood!"
Agent Smith, in a rage, slings his phone straight forward, connecting with Private Adams's skull. Adams flinches at the sudden impact of the hard plastic and covers his head. Agent Smith grabs the table in front of him and flips it over, sending the computer equipment crashing to the government-issued tiled floor.
"A two-year cycle gone! All that essence is gone! Now I have to wait another 24 months for AMOS to resurrect!" Agent Smith screams, causing the rest of the staff to recoil away in fear.
"Jones!" Agent Smith says sternly, turning to a petite woman on his left. She stares at him, pleading.
"Yes Sir?'
"Get Officer Nichols on my office line. That fuck up has some explaining. He should have told us AMOS was awake."
"Right away!" Jones quickly sits back down and begins dialing Nichols, thankful she doesn't have to deal with Agent Smith further. The command center quickly shifts gears as Agent Smith returns to his office.
***
Two Weeks later…
"Tabitha… Tabitha… This is Doctor Wilhelm. Wake up." The kind older gentleman said as they gently nudged Tabitha in her hospital bed.
"Where am I?" Tabitha asked, waking from what felt like years of sleep. She sat up, the world still pitch black, but an odd sense of the world around her seemed to hum just behind her eyes.
"You're in the hospital, dear; you scared us. Do you remember anything?" He said as he sat down on the side of her bed.
Tabitha thought for a moment the last parts after she slashed her eyes were a blur. She remembers people yelling and the sound of two or three helicopters over her. " No, it's really all just a blur."
"Well, it's probably for the best. You had some very serious injuries. The first night, we honestly didn't think you would make it. Then…" The doctor trailed off with a concerned expression, not knowing how to explain things further.
Tabitha felt his pulse quicken somehow. She didn't understand it but fully felt or sensed the doctor beside her. She sensed the two other nurses standing at the end of the bed. Her body didn't hurt. She felt great. She felt hungry.
"Doctor, you said had. What happened to my injuries?" She said calmly, trying not to startle the old doctor further.
"Well, Tabitha, it's the closest thing to a miracle I've ever seen. You had violent seizures from the minute you hit the entrance of the ER. We couldn't even set your leg. The medications we gave you had a minimal effect, and you thrashed so much that we had to restrain you. Then, the early morning check-in found you in a deep sleep. All but your eyes were completely healed. So we switched gears to support care and treated your eyes the best we could." He said, watching her reaction.
Tabitha leaned back in her bed, taking in the wild account. "Do you know how I healed so quickly?"
"What happened to you is beyond all scientific reason. A miracle is the only way the staff and I can explain it. I know you have been through a lot, but I want to check your eyes."
"Thank you for all your help, Doctor Wilhelm." She said, sitting up in bed.
"You are most welcome, dear. Now I am going to unwrap your eye-dressing. Hold still, please." he said as he reached up and pulled on the bandage tape. Tabitha felt a quick tug and felt the bandages loosen from around her head. The doctor slowly unwrapped the bandages. The doctor's brow wrinkled as he examined the two large black scabs covering Tabitha's eyes.
"Tell me if this hurts at all, ok?"
"Yes, doctor." She relaxes as the doctor's gloved fingers pass over the scab. He pushes and gently tugs at the side of one, and it starts to lift. He pulls on the scab more, and Tabitha begins to sense the light as it hits her eyelid.
"Oh, I can sense the light, Doctor Wilhelm!" She said, smiling.
"Wonderful! Nurse Allen, please hand me some saline solution. I think a little water will loosen these right up. Hold still; this may feel cold," he said as he reached for the solution. She felt the cool liquid flush over the left eye, then the right. The scabs fell away with a gentle tug from the doctor. She could see the light shine through her eyelids. She grinned widely, happy to have some form of sight left.
"Please open your eyes for me," he said as he sat back on the bed. Tabitha slowly opened her eyes. The flood of light was almost too much, causing her to squint. After a few moments, she adjusted to the fluorescent lights. Three figures began to take shape in front of her. First, the distinguished older features of Doctor Wilhelm came into view quickly, followed by the brunette and blonde younger nurses standing at the end of the bed. Suddenly, her vision snapped into place, crisp and clear.
"I can see perfectly! This is amazing! Thank you, Doctor Wilhem!" she said, turning to look directly into his eyes, but he stared back at her unmovingly.
"Doctor Wilhelm?" she said as her expression became more worried. Doctor Wilhelm just sat staring, intensely focused on her eyes. His expression was overbearingly calm. She glanced at the nurses, rigidly staring back at her with trapped, calm expressions. Doctor Wilhelm began to twitch slightly. It traveled from the base of his spine out to his limbs, finally convulsing.
"Doctor Wilhelm, are you okay?" Tabitha yelled as the doctor began to have a seizure and fell on top of her bed.
"Help Him!" She screamed at the two nurses only to see both of them crumble to the tiled floor. One of them bashed her head off the bed frame. Tabitha recoils back from Doctor Wilhelm in terror as he starts foaming at the mouth. She climbs over the bed rail and hits the tiled concrete floor with a thud. Her adrenaline surges as she bolts for the door, looking for help.
At the entrance of her hospital room, she sees another nurse leaving the adjacent room. "Please, my doctor and staff need help!" As the male nurse turns to see Tabitha, he suddenly goes stiff before collapsing into a violent seizure, spilling his cart over with him.
"What's happening!" Tabitha screams, thinking something is in the air, or everyone has come down with something. A pair of security guards round the corner, hearing the screams and commotion.
"Ma'am, are yo-" The guard freezes mid-stride as he makes eye contact with Tabitha. Both men start to convulse and topple over, thrashing violently on the hard tile.
"No, no, no, no!" Tabitha yells as she darts into the women's bathroom, a few doors up the hall. She runs in, terrified of the situation. She approaches one of the sinks, bracing herself against the cool porcelain. Her stomach turns, and she dry heaves in the sink. She steadies herself while turning on the cold water. Leaning in, she takes a drink. As she looks up, a glint of two yellow eyes catches her. Tabitha stumbles backward on reflex. Then, she sees her reflection in the mirror. Two completely bright yellow eyes stare back at Tabitha. She screams at herself in the mirror, not feeling hungry anymore.
The end.
I will

The Number 47, Synchronicity & the Law of Time Courtney Jamal Dewar, aka Capital STEEZ, came with perfect timing. Wielding a higher message, he revealed to all those around him through his music and his being the corruption of society and all of its constructs. He was fascinated, some would say, obsessed, with the number 47. For him this number held a higher meaning on many levels. First and foremost, he felt it was about synchronicity. He made all of his homies, including myself, aware of how this is the quintessential random number. We literally began to see it everywhere. You can research the numerological significance of 47. Here are just a few: 47 appears to be the quintessential random number of the universe. When a number appears randomly, more often than not, that number is 47. In other other words, if you asked people to pick a number at random, more often than not, that number would be 47. Of course, if 47 shows up more than any other number then it isn’t truly random, but using the word random makes the whole phenomenon easier to describe. From a spiritual perspective, number 47 is a combination of the energies and attributes of number 4 and number 7. The vibrations of number 4 include those of productivity and application, inner-wisdom and practical-thinking, honesty and integrity, endurance and determination, conscientiousness and discipline. Number 4 also relates to our passion and drive in life. Number 7 brings the qualities of spiritual awakening and enlightenment, intuition and inner-knowing, psychic abilities and mysticism, independence and individualism, persistence of purpose and manifesting good fortune.
There is even a much-viewed YouTube spoof of Jim Carrey’s The Number 23, substituting—you guessed it–the No. 47. Jim Carrey's character named Walter is given a book titled The Number 23. Walter starts reading the book and notices striking similarities between himself and the main character, a detective named "Fingerling". Fingerling is obsessed with the 23 enigma, the idea that all incidents and events are directly connected to the number 23 (Weirdly enough when I was younger I was in cod team called 23Enigma) only noted it as of the coincidence.
Jim Carrey told reporters he was so captivated by the 23 enigma even before reading the script that he renamed his production company from "Pit Bull Productions" to "JC23." (Jesus Christ 23?) Oddly enough the first film Carrey worked on with Joel Schumacher his character The Riddler's real name was 'E. Nigma'. According to Carrey, he was reading a book about Psalm 23 when he was first given a copy of the screenplay to review. He said he asked a friend to read the script and "an hour and a half later he was on page 23, circling every 23rd word. That's the kind of thing I want to do to an audience." When he discovered that the first page of the script involved the lead character trying to capture a pit bull, he was "freaked out," given the change in name of his production company. (Pitbull productions) My Nicknames Pitty, short for pitbul (These are just speculations) Also I've gathered others inputs and went down a deep rabbit hole. Mind you, this is just connections that has been gathered over time, but the consistency of certain "coincidences" are interesting to say the least. Just try to piece together the connections even though it may be out of radar due to us living completely different lives.
James > Cleveland Cavaliers (Cavs) > Number 23 > Nicknames are King James & The Chosen One
Cavs is the nickname of my last name Cavanagh
When you flip the cleveland cavaliers logo upside down it is quite similar
(The hat I've worn since 14, P represents the nickname"Pitty:" short for pitbill a nickname ive had since i was around 10 years old.
Matthew writes that on 23 occasions Jesus blessed 47 people.
The Bible credits Jesus with 47 miracles.
The Declaration of Independence has 47 sentences. Originally published: 4 July 1776 (4/7)
1947 is when the UFO crashed at Roswel
The Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn are 47 degrees of latitude apart.
Capital STEEZ died from allegedly leaping from the Cinematic Music Group’ either gripping a bible or with it strapped on his back There is also the fact that a blood lunar eclipse will occur in New York at 3:47 am on STEEZ’s birthday in 2047, and then the lunar eclipse which will occur after this one is part of the Lunar Saros series 135. He said he named the song 135 for “5th dimensional synchronization”... whatever that means, this would be a massive coincidence.
How Many People Can See This Eclipse? Number of People Seeing... Number of People* Fraction of World Population At least some of the penumbral phase 4,070,000,000 When the Eclipse Happens Worldwide — Timeline Event UTC Time Time in Melbourne* Penumbral Eclipse begins 7 Jul at 07:47:47 Visible in Melbourne 7 Jul at 5:47:47 pm On capital steez birthday.
STEEZs last tweet “the end” Was posted December (23) 2012 The building steez died (The colliers office) is on 666 fifth avenue, 10103 10+10+3=(23), New York. The building was built in 1878 The bohemian grove was established in 1878 The address of the CMG label building is on 40 west (23)rd st, 10010, New York The Freemasonry Grand lodge of New York is on 71 west, (23)rd st 10010 NY. Directly located across the same building STEEZ died. Yeah. West 23rd st, w is the (23)rd letter in the alphabet. In Hebrew the letter W represents the number 6 The fraction 2/3 in decimals=0.666 The freemasonry grand lodge of New York was founded in December 15, 1782 15, 1782 1+5+1+7+8+2 = 24. December 24 the date that's etched on STEEZs tombstone. A police report about his death has never surfaced, information has never been released, but there is pictures of his gravestone (see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuFVUJJR4Ug) and on that gravestone it says 24/12/12, which actually adds up to 48, yet he tweets on the 23/12/12 stating 'The End. Steez was ready to open up Pandora’s box and expose the illuminati occult in a way that has never been done before. It gets deep. Just think about it guys. Steez was an intellectual genius. He would obviously know that suicide actually makes u go to hell and not heaven. As a believer in the lord he would never commit suicide.
I'm not sure if you're paying attention to the ryan garcia trying to reveal how something tragic happened to him where he was taken to boheiman grove and forced to watch things i wont mention here People said his crazy and on drugs, sad thing is, I believe he is telling the truth Fast forward he wasn't on drugs and
Peep his song "Free The Robots" https://youtu.be/XcmR8DxuHBA
STEEZ has definitely made a positive impact on this world by introducing a new way of thinking and spirituality, even more of an impact than a lot of artists who are still alive... Capital STEEZ was 19 at the time of his death.
There is also gematria behind his death it has to do with numbers. I’ll explain what it is for those who aren’t aware of it. Gematria is the decoding of letters to numbers, it’s used to translate ancient Hebrew Scriptures. But it’s also the code for the entire world. The most basic way I can put it is that it’s as simple as ABC=123, they use these numbers thru media, and the thing that’s being shown on the media always correlates with Masonic numbers and words that correlate with whatever and whoever is being shown on the news or media and whatever event is taking place always correlates 100% of the time. In news, sports, music industry, Hollywood, politics, everything. In Numerology, which is different from gematria. After calculating his name I came across a lot of similarities when calculating mine in various forms.
While calculating his name i came across things relating to me like Like "Melbourne Victoria Australia, Royal Melbourne Hospital, june twenty fourth. From his name which connected to me personally as i was born in that hospital, thats the city i live and my birthday. The similarities left me wondering if it was actually real or not so I used multiple different calculators and paid for a membership on gematrinator to get maximum results and ended up noticing so much our mine and steezs calculations were similar answers in different form, and answers i got with his name ultimately connected to mine, vice versa. So i was intrigued and these are a list of numbers that matched up with our names. This is all speculation based on connections that seem to be very consistent peep this
Calculating these variations of our names such as Courtney Jamal Dewar / Courtney jamal Dewar Jr / Courtney Everald Jamal Dewar Jr / Capital STEEZ / Nathan Cavanagh / Nathan James Cavanagh / Nathan James Cavanagh Sciarra, calculations all listed together when I noted them all I didn't think to label to each name as I was so captivated by the coincidences I just kept going down the rabbit hole. I came across profound links to both our names that binds us both to the unique synchronicities that were to apparent to all be ruled as pure coincidence, such as his name calculating to my birthday, place of birth and city, and city i live to say the least.
These are calculations through gematria, some are our calculations mixed in this as I was just noting down every connection I noticed
The first and the last Eye Of Horus Total Eclipse the numbers of gods matrix coordinated universal time Capital Steez June Twenty Forth (my birthday) came up from steez name Lunar Eclipse Sacrifice July (2047 lunar eclipse on steezs birthday) The Central Intelligence Agency A WISE TALENTED MUSIC PRODUCER Royal Melbourne Hospital (where I was born) The Holy Bloodline Of Jesus The Return of Christ Exodus Luke synchronisation The Synchronicities Of Jesus The Book Of Revelations Vibrational Frequency Biblical Prophecy Melbourne Victoria Australia (where im from), came up on steezs calculations The Royal Bloodline The Divine Bloodline Of Jesus fourth of jew lie Energy frequency vibration The Holy Lineage Of Christ One Who Understands Mysteries december the twenty fifth. ..... speaks for itself A Door to another dimension New Moons And Solar Eclipse twenty four seven (my birthdays the 24th, his is the 7th) the victory of the lamb multidimensional royal regiment of scotland Golden Gate Sacrifice Gods Gift Clairvoyant The Chosen One The Two Appointed Ones Leaving For Heaven David And Daughter Of The Oath Are One Almighty God Roars Upon His Throne Powerful Great Grandma The Lord On Earth Donald Trump Assassination Lords Alignment The Lord Gods Here God Is Really Here God Birthdate Encoded End Of Times God Code The Code Of The Lord Lord Birthday Code Gods Provable Code Gods Alive Loser Access Into Heaven Twenty Three The Anunnaki Gods Jesus Is Coming A True Prophet The Seventh Seal What is Jesus's number? 888 Apollo Is The Beast Of Revelation See Fulfillment Of The Book Of Isaiah Prophecy The Serpent In Genesis Describes The Mark Of The Beast See The Forced Evil Mark Of The Beast Foiled The Victory Of The Lamb May The Lord Fill Your Heart Two Masters Is Cancer (steez and I are both Cancer) God Of Eternity We Are God Twins Maker Of New Earth A Two Edged Swords Xanax Vicodin Addiction (i struggled with bad) The Bible Is Intentionally Concealing Information The Galactic Jesus the Anointed One Moses Will Come The King Is Coming Miraculously Encoded By God Pyramids On Mars Forests On Mars Holy Spirit Of Zeus We Are Absolute Infinite Sent By The Gods Powerful Great Grandma999 Burning Alive The Gang Stalkers. (long story short I was a victim of whay they call gangstalking when I was reaching my peak or enlightenment and have been trying to get back to that state again, all I can describe it as is demonic torment) Enoch 777 on YouTube speaks on it good.) A Fourty Seven Mandating The Poisonous Jabs Knowledge Of God Brings Eternal Life Death Isnt So Scary Anymore Invictus Sol The Lion And The Lamb https://imgur.com/gallery/ztGPJGS The Lord Is Here Coming To Restore The Eternal Kingdom The Blood Of The Lamb Contact With A God Revival Jesus The Annointed One the key to it all I Am The Holy Grail Sun Moon Earth Revelation Nine Spirit World I Am The One Lord Jesus Christ I Know All Codes And Connections The Wisdom Of God Word Of The Lord Quantum Entanglement Theory The Anunnaki Path Almighty God Roars Upon His Throne 173 Enoch Chapter Ninety Five Pyramids Have Hidden Chambers Music Is My Life Revelation Five Everyone Is God Forever Jesus Walking With God Vision Of Gabriel New Revelation Seven Wonders Symbiotic Craft Thank You James (my middle name is James) Words Of The Bible Isaiah Fourteen Thirteen Trumps Last Son He Is Jesus Crown Chakra God Is You Gods In A Body The Resurrection Of Life The Book Lj Enoch King Jesus Gods Wrath We Are At War Truth Hidden In Plain Sight Double Conciousness The Anointed Lay Dead On The Cross Dragon Of China Is The Anti Christ. A Seed Of Jesse Angelic Guidance Black Pyramid Hidden Truth In Plain Sight King Messiah Heavens Dream Let The Decoding Fun Begin Add Up Letters Notorious Names The Child Of Christ Aliens Exist Spirit Of Moses C E R T I F I C A T E Of Baptism Of The Lord Of Christ Alchemist Fluoride To Heaven God Is Number Codes Numerical Language Learning Decoding Is Fun The Lord Of The Messiah The Book Of Hidden Messages Eight Eight Eight Nine Nine Nine Lost Books Of The Bible Rna Vaccine Maternal Ancestors Are Of Royal Descent You Are Gifted Frequency Turn Off Your Smart Phone I Am Eternal Life David Christ Gods Son The Sound Of Jesus Coming Help Others Realize Full Potential Implants During Surgical Procedures The Solar System And Thoughts The Reincarnation Of King David King David Divine Dna Is Activated Jesus Returns To Earth The Lion Of Judah Is With Us (Steez would speak about Judah)
Jamal Dewar; psalm twenty three Jesus son of God Nathan Day Revelation fourteen one Spiritual warfare Gang Stalker (experienced this myself) Satanic Cults Commit Suicide forty seven problem Bloodline of Jesus Christ The End (when this came up my jaw dropped.) And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you Amen The Holy Mother of Jesus christ Are you ready for whats coming july seventh twenty eighteen
Courtney Jamal Dewar, Jr: The Book Of Revelations Vibrational frequency MELBOURNE VICTORIA AUSTRALIA (where I live) Christ Resurrection Satan Rules The World The Divine Bloodline of Christ synchronization Biblical Prophecy Capital steez Exodus Luke The Divine Bloodline of David Second Christ The Return of Christ Jesus Resurrection Jesus Christ Bloodline
I added stuff from my name as it was so coincidental I didn't think to label them at first I just wrote down anything I thought added up This is just deep research into who reminds me of myself My instagram is mistapitty Listen to The Resurrection by Pitty https://on.soundcloud.com/Xn3nN
Listen to Revelation 22 by Pitty https://on.soundcloud.com/gBAja
Peep his song "Free The Robots" https://youtu.be/XcmR8DxuHBA
STEEZ has definitely made a positive impact on this world by introducing a new way of thinking and spirituality, even more of an impact than a lot of artists who are still alive... Capital STEEZ was 19 at the time of his death.
There are four gospel accounts of Jesus' life and ministry. Each of these emphasizes a unique aspect of his sacrifice and ministry. Matthew's focus is on Christ being the son of David and a King.
Look into the etymology of your name. - What Does Nathan Mean? The name Nathan means “Gift of God” or “God has given.” In the Old Testament, Nathan was a prophet and one of King David's sons; he acted as a messenger to King David and is considered one of Jesus' ancestors. (David name of my biological grandfather) (James is my middle name) - James is a classic, traditional and Biblical name (Saint James, of course, was Jesus's brother and one of the 12 apostles) meaning "supplanter" or "replacer." It's derived from the Latin Jacomus which also means "may God protect.
Every letter to Capital STEEZs full name calculates to 147 when done in reverse on the gematria calculator and mine equals to exactly 470 when done in reverse.
"Nathan James Cavanagh Sciarra" = 470 (Reverse Reduction) N a t h a n 104 13 26 7 19 26 13 J a m e s 87 17 26 14 22 8 C a v a n a g h 159 24 26 5 26 13 26 20 19 S c i a r r a 120 = 470 8 24 18 26 9 9 26 Reverse = 470
"Capital STEEZ" = 47 (Reduction) C a p i t a l 26 3 1 7 9 2 1 3 S T E E Z 21 = 47 1 2 5 5 8 Reduction = 47
"Courtney Everald Jamal Dewar" = 147 (Reverse Reduction) C o u r t n e y 41 6 3 6 9 7 4 4 2 E v e r e s t 41 4 5 4 9 4 8 7 J a m a l 35 8 8 5 8 6 D e w a r 30 = 147 5 4 4 8 9 Reverse = 147
On June 24th 2022: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are lining up in the pre-dawn sky, a planetary procession that could be seen above the eastern horizon And what’s even more remarkable about this month’s lineup is that the planets are arranged in their natural order from the sun. The best day to see the spectacle will likely be the morning of June 24 of 2022, weather permitting, as the planetary parade will be joined by the waning crescent moon. This is three days after the summer solstice (or winter in australia), which is June 21. What makes this so unique is the last time we had 5 planets aligned in this fashion, was in March of 1874.
All of the "classical" planets will be viewable in the early morning skies of June 24th 2022. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn will be visible, all apparent to the naked eye even under urban light pollution. On the 24th, our moon will be situated between Venus and Mars, so you could say the Earth-Luna system will complete the "perfect" alignment. Under the darkest skies, one will be able to see seven planets in one sweeping gaze. The same year December 24th (25th in Australian time) the planets will align in their correct order outward from the sun for the second time this year, after a pre-dawn alignment in June was on my birthday. STEEZ is said to have died on the 24th of December 👉 https://imgur.com/gallery/0RVIxxA
In australian time it would've been the 25th as we are a day ahead
Alternatively, 25 December may have been selected owing to its proximity to the winter solstice because of its symbolic theological significance. After the solstice, the days begin to lengthen with longer hours of sunlight, which Christians see as representing the Light of Christ entering the world. This symbolism applies equally to the celebration of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist on 24 June, near the summer solstice, based on John's remark about Jesus "He must increase; I must decrease." John 3:30 NRSV.[59] Now check out the following texts from the bible, they speak of the solstice here. 👉 https://imgur.com/gallery/0RVIxxA and I thought I should add this as it seemed to be quite a coincidence of the date i posted this somg and the content of the posts she made. It aligned with those geomatria calculations I made and i wish I could document snd explain why certain ones just synchronzie but it'd be to hard to comphrened.
"AFTER THE SOLSTICE, THE DAYS BEGIN TO LENGTHEN WITH LONGER HOURS OF SUNLIGHT, WHICH CHRISTIANS SEE AS REPRESENTING THE LIGHT OF CHRIST ENTERING THE WORLD. THIS SYMBOLISM APPLIES EQUALLY TO THE CELEBRATION OF THE NATIVITY OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST ON 24 JUNE, NEAR THE SUMMER SOLSTICE, BASED ON JOHN'S REMARK ABOUT JESUS "HE MUST INCREASE; I MUST DECREASE." JOHN THE BAPTIST ANNOUNCES THE COMING OF THE LIGHT THROUGHOUT HIS LIFE, JOHN THE BAPTIST, ANNOUNCES THE COMING OF JESUS, THE COMING OF NEW TIMES, JOHN ANNOUNCES THAT GOD IS GRACIOUS TO HIS PEOPLE BY ANNOUNCING THE COMING OF THE SON OF GOD. BEHOLD, HE IS COMING WITH THE CLOUDS, AND EVERY EYE WILL SEE HIM, EVEN THOSE WHO PIERCED HIM; AND ALL THE TRIBES OF THE LAND WILL MOURN OVER HIM.” –ZECHARIAH 12:10-14; DANIEL 7:13-14 SO IT IS TO BE. AMEN (AGREED, YESHUA HIMSELF IS THE AMEN 3:14). “I KEPT LOOKING IN THE NIGHT VISIONS, AND BEHOLD, WITH THE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN ONE LIKE A SON OF MAN WAS COMING."
John the Baptist day is 24th of June.
"The flower of life, represents global consciousness and like there's this thing on the consciousness grid, the last piece, it has to be the flower of life and it has to align with the sun and all that stuff and it will wake up global consciousness & as i further in my ascension I hope to build it one day" "Some people might think this type of thinking, first of all this type of thinking might jump over a lot of people's heads" "I think humans need to lighten up, maybe try lighten up" - STEEZ
Someone regarding STEEZ: "Did he think there were codes in the Bible or something? I’ve heard him say he knows the “code” does anyone know what the code is? He was a truly enlightened person I wish I could understand him better."
STEEZ supposedly said he had to die now in order to save the Earth in 2047, which is when the world is supposed to end. Before he killed himself his friends say he withdrew not only from them, but rap in general, saying he was going to become a superhero.
(My birthday)24th of June 1999 = 2+4+6+1+9+9+9 = 40 STEEZ birthday) 7th of July 1993 = 7+7+1,993 = 2007.) 40 + 2007 = 2047
Now read a conversation he had on Facebook prior to death https://www.kanyetothe.com/threads/rip-capital-steez.354864/page-42?post_id=16781894&nested_view=1&sortby=oldest#post-167818 His song Dead Prez (credit to who found these calculations as this wasn't mine) If you wanna conspire a little, we technically have had 46 different president so far, tho truly only 45 different guys have been in office. This year, if we elect a new president they will be our 47th prezident. You could say that happens when the next president is elected, or when the second new president is elected because then there'd actually be 47 different people. On the contrary, you could predict that once 47 presidents have died, something very significant will happen because the song is about DEAD presidents. It'll happen in most of our lifetimes i wonder what will happen 2047?
https://imgur.com/a/bOpRy
FORTY, THE NUMBER: "Forty days was the period from the resurrection of Jesus to the ascension of Jesus some scholars note that 40 days in the Bible doesn't always mean 40 days literally, but may be a symbolic way of saying "a longer time. A master number and part of the “awakening code”. Also Jose Arguelles’s kin is 11 – he brought forth the Law of Time aka the World Thirteen Moon Cale In the Bible, next to the number seven, the number forty occurs most frequently.
Here's an article on Fader that's kind of aligns some things I've discovered.
https://www.thefader.com/2013/11/26/capital-steez-king-capital
Check out these images, not a lot of people would've seen these: h ttp://i.imgur.com/nPE90.png / http://i.imgur.com/sHtdM.png / http://i.imgur.com/ZcNu2.png - he thought he was the alchemist that had the key for world peahttp://i.imgur.com/ZcNu2.png Deshay posted this on Facebook after his immediate death: "Fxck.... This shxt jus rly fxcked me up. Me and Steezus JUST made plans to record on Saturday now hes gone. RIP Capital STEEZ" Joey said he believed he sacrificed himself for spiritual rebirth.
The End THE WIDELY ACCEPTED STORY is that Courtney ‘Jamal’ Dewar committed suicide by jumping off the Cinematic Music Building in Manhattan on 23.12.12 – which equals 47, the rapper’s favourite number. None of the city’s newspapers reported his death. As a result of inconsistent stories and a lack of police intelligence, confusion surrounds the heart-breaking event for the Dewar family. In a 2013 interview with Fader, an anonymous member of Pro Era said, “STEEZ told some of the Pros that he was thinking of killing himself by jumping off the building where Cinematic had its offices.” Dirty Sanchez a close friend of the late rapper recalled, “Nothing was working. Nothing. It was like too late. He made up his mind already.”
Today I will be briefly explaining the practice of Gematria. Gematria comes from ancient Jewish mysticism. It is the practice of combining the letter with the number, with the word. It is said this is how God created the world.
How does it work? Gematria has 4 major ciphers. The first two are easy as ABC, literally. For example A=1 B=2 C=3. And so on. The code can also be read backward from Z to A. This is called reverse ordinal. There are two more ciphers that are equally important but a bit more nuanced so for the sake of clarity I’ll leave those explanations to the work of Zachary K Hubbard. But to put Gematria into usable terms I’m gonna explain a decode I did recently. If you want to decode a word or phrase without doing the math yourself, there is an extremely helpful calculator at gematrinator.com it will give you all four cipher values for your word or phrase in an instant, as well as compare it with corresponding ciphers. Without further ado let’s look at this example:
Here I will outline some interesting numbers that coincide with the rapper Capital STEEZ and the numbers surrounding the music industry as well as numbers that come up with race, and other things I found eye grabbing.
(Credit to another user on here) First off I’ll start with Capital STEEZ, The interesting number here is the full reduction number, 47. It’s eye grabbing for many reasons, but we’ll start with a little back ground. Before Capital STEEZ’s (aka Jamal Dewar) death (suicide) in 2012, STEEZ was apart of an up and coming rap group known as Progressive Era, or ProEra for short. A known staple among these young men were the belief in “47 chakras” and “indigo children”. The two are a topic on their own, but the interesting part is that such a powerful number in Jamal Dewar’s life also coincides with the Gematria of his rap name. But that’s not it! Let’s continue
Capital STEEZ English ordinal: 137
Full reduction: 47
Reverse ordinal: 187 ( see pushed off a roof)
Reverse full reduction :70
Now keep an eye on 70, as we shall see him more as well.
Next we will decode the gematria of the reported means of STEEZ’s death, suicide. This is where I admittedly started getting intrigued.
Gematria of Suicide:
English Ordinal: 70
Full reduction: 34
Reverse ordinal:119
Reverse full reduction: 47
Wow. The exact same values but flipped.
Just a mere coincidence I’m sure But let’s continue .
With these next two we will see two repeats of values, one new value, 88 and a previously used value, 34. As well as 65
Jamal Dewar
English ordinal: 88
Full reduction: 34
Reverse ordinal: 182
Reverse full reduction: 65 ————————— Phrase: pushed off the roof
English Ordinal: 187
Full reduction: 88
Reverse ordinal: 245
Reverse full reduction: 65
And the next term we will decode will be Jamal’s occupation of rapper. Here we will see a reverse of our main number in question, 47, which I’ve found to be reoccurring as well.
Rapper
English ordinal: 74
Full reduction: 38
Reverse ordinal: 88
Reverse full reduction: 34
I’m beginning to sense a bit of a pattern here... But let me move on Now it’s time to get a little spicy
Jamal Dewar commited suicide on the night of December 23, 2012, though his wiki has his death on the 24 I believe as it was around midnight. Many articles coming out about his death including one I read from thefader.com reported his death on the 23rd. I specifically remember this detail because I was a huge fan of his and Pro Era at the time and it was a huge loss to the community.
December is the 12th month
12
23
12
Care to guess what that equals?
Yep. 47
Here are some other related phrases put into the gematrinator calculator:
Brooklyn New York (where proera is from)
223 79 182 74
Suicide by fall 128 56 223 79
Are you seeing the synchronization of these seemingly unrelated words and phrases?.
The word murder and murdered both have synchronized gematria with Jamal. We also see another repeat with 38, also found in the full reduction of the word rapper.
Murder
English ordinal: 79
Full reduction: 34
Reverse ordinal: 83 (38 reverse)
Reverse full reduction: 38
Murdered ,interestingly enough, though only being two letters away from murder, is actually more closely related numerically to jamals name and the word rapper, But there are similarities abound. Murdered.
English ordinal: 88
Full reduction: 43 (34 reverse)
Reverse ordinal: 128
Reverse full reduction: 47
Wow. This one really stands out to me. Every single number code number is used in the over all code of Capital steez just in this one word.
We see the repeats of 88 and 47 as well as the reverse of 34 for the first time and a repeat in the numbers of 128, which we saw as 182 above.
This one is slightly unrelated so I left it sort of by itself but I still maintain it’s validity as it’s use in the music industry is still relevant. That is the word racist. Race is huge in the overall narrative that msm tries to portray.
Racist
English ordinal: 70
Full reduction:25
Reverse ordinal: 92
Reverse full reduction: 47
racist and suicide are perfect matches on the front end and back end. 70 and 47.
Here’s another nugget.
The phrase : jumped to his death
English ordinal: 178 (pushed off the roof 187)
Full reduction: 70 (pushed off the roof 88)
Reverse ordinal:254 (pushed off the roof 245)
Reverse full reduction :83 (pushed off the roof 65)
Leap also shares 34 and 84.
Suicided 74 38 142 52
Occult
English ordinal: 74
Full reduction: 20
Reverse ordinal:88
Reverse full reduction:34
3 more repeats
The year of his suicide was a leap year
Leap year
English ordinal:83 Full reduction: 38 Reverse ordinal:133 Full res verse reduction: 43
Target audience: 133 61 245 83 Suicidal: 78 33 138 57 Hidden mission: 142 70 209 74 Some of these numbers are conjecture but there’s a lot of links between the numbers. 47/74 being the one of the more prominent, as well as 83/38, 34/43, 70, 245/254, 88, 33, 29/92/209, 182/128 all of these numbers connect in one way or another. Now it wouldn’t mean much if we didn’t know more about the nature of these numbers and how and where they appear. But since these number keep popping up in accordance to things like CONTROL GRID or MYSTERY RELIGION or SUPREME MATHEMATICS it seems almost impossible for it to be mere coincidence. Anyways I urge you guys to think for yourself and put in some work and see if you can find any use of this practice. God bless
Ps:
STEEZ’s debut album ”amerikkkan korruption” Came out on 4-7-2012 another 47. Vibration equals 47
A theory out there is that the cabal needed him to die because STEEZ was really bringing influence to more and more young minds with knowledge and the way STEEZ attacked and exposed certain things is not a good thing for those in power, the label that Joey wanted to sign when they were pro era, was a Jewish man named Jonny Shipes. if you’ve extensively went down the “rabbit hole”, like extensively, and you’d say you’re pretty “woke” (I hate that word), then you may know that most labels especially Jewish owned labels are basically the portals into The Illuminati cult, the Jesuit organization that controls the entire world. Oh and remember the news outrage, and investigation because of the 47 “swa stikkas” all over NY, yea you think these Jonny Shipes fucked with that? Nah. But this is all speculation.
It wasn’t long after Capital STEEZ's unfathomable passing on 12/23/12 – 12+23+12 = 47), which was only days after December 21, 2012, the precise date calculated by the great Mayans to be the end of a Great Cycle, that I received knowledge & became aware of the Law of Time. This seemingly new cosmology felt ancient and I quickly realized it had EVERYTHING to do with Synchronicity! I even found the number 47 to be ever ubiquitous throughout this 13 Moon calendar system.
"The next chapter is unstoppable. And yet, the greatest revolutions sometimes originate from the confines of impossibility, do they not? Break the code. It could make a leap and make possible a decision that defines the order of things that are." " Reality is a mathematical model which gets solved over and over again by the observer your thoughts are computations. And they render this world for you to call your own. Not all processors are alike. Different brains produce different realities. The variations go from the subtle to the drastic. Your mind defines how much you can taste. How much you can feel. How much you can understand. Perception defines perspective. We designed you and made sure to engineer your senses so you could perceive just what we needed you to. Neither more nor less. There are parts of time we preferred you remained blind to. It was a necessity."
The Law of Time, I found to hold the most profound yet simple teaching; our Time is not Money, Time is Art. I was able to grasp a greater vision of how we as humans have created an artificial timing system where our time here equates to how much money we can accumulate, where we are constantly stressed by this false belief of our making, and where there is never enough time… This system of our making and continuous propagation has only served to separate us from our Selves, from each other, and ultimately, from nature. Hence, resulting in the chaos and disharmony prevalent in the world today.
What is the greatest common factor of 23 & 47? 1 is the greatest number that 23 & 47 is divided to. The Chosen One @mistapitty ㄣ

Howdy! 👋 I'm Bella, a down-home sophisticated Southern girl. 🍑 My heart's as warm as a summer day and my smile that could light up the night. 🌟 Growing up surrounded by the charm of fireflies, grits, sweet tea, and front porch swings, I've a love for life's simple pleasures and heartfelt connections. That's where you come in! I'm looking for someone special to share all this with. I want to be your sunshine, always ready to brighten up your life. 🌞
You know, life's always a treasure trove of adventures, isn't it? My never-ending curiosity seems to fuel my passion for most everything. I'd so enjoy a good Sunday brunch with you, or a slow dance in the kitchen. Hopefully you're not afraid of spontaneous road trips, when the mood strikes. It'd be so fun to blast some tunes and sing along together! 🎶 In a partner, I value passion, intelligence, kindness, humor, honesty/openness, maturity, and authenticity. I'm craving conversations and moments of laughter as well as…other things. If you're a kind-hearted fella, grab your cowboy boots and let's hit the road together. 😊 We'll be off to the races in no time flat.
A Little More About Me:

• I love game nights with friends, every Wednesday. 🎲 We're playing Baldur's Gate 3 at the moment. (What an epic game!)
  
• I have an insane number of hobbies that I enjoy. To name a few, fitness, 💪🏻learning anything new, 🧠 girlie things like hair, makeup and fashion, crochet, 🧶 and anything outdoors gardening included. The list goes on and on!
  
• A no brainer here, photography. 📷 I love running around capturing the world's beauty everywhere I go. It'd be so much more fun if I could share them all with you!
  
• One of my favorite things is recharging in the forest near me. 🌲🥾 I love the long scenic drive out there. Bonus points for staying late to grill out at a picnic station. I'll bring the charcoal, santa gave me plenty last year! 😏
  
• Everything is better with music -- currently playing Rhye. 🎶🎙
  

I'm eager to meet you and explore the world and ourselves together. If you resonate with this and seek a journey filled with love, laughter, and growth, I can't wait to hear from you! :)
Bella <3🌹
[I am an 18+ Adult offering/requesting SFW companionship to other 18+ adults only.]

1. In 2024, Zayn Malik told Nylon, "[Using Tinder has] not been too successful for me, I'll be honest. Everyone accused me of catfishing. They're like, 'What are you using Zayn Malik's pictures for?' I've been kicked off once or twice."
2. During a 2024 appearance on Getting Grilled with Curtis Stone, Teri Hatcher said, "I've tried them all, and I tried my latest one. I tried Hinge...You know, I thought, I'm gonna say to the universe that I am open and vulnerable, and I'm putting myself out there. That's what I thought my gesture of joining that Hinge app would be. And then they kicked me off."
3. In 2021, Leslie Jones tweeted, "Ok why did @hinge banned me I literally just signed up yesterday! And they don’t even tell you why. So fucking lame after taking my money! [sic]"
4. In 2022, Peyton List told Entertainment Tonight, "I went on a dating app, and I got kicked off because they thought I was a fraud. But it was me!"
5. Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2019, Billy Eichner said, "I've been on Tinder for, like, seven years, and I'm very nice. I don't do anything naughty or weird, you know, I'm a normal person. They banned me all of a sudden. They didn't give me an explanation. They just said, 'You violated the terms of use.' And I said, 'I've been single for seven years; you violated the terms of use!' I didn't violate anything."
6. After a breakup, Demi Lovato tried to reactivate their Raya account, only to get rejected from the app.
7. In 2022, Lewis Capaldi told the podcast The Diary of a CEO, "I've just been kicked off of Tinder because, I think, people think I'm fake. So I've been kicked off of Bumble, Tinder, Hinge."
8. In a 2021 Instagram post, Paulina Porizkova said, "OK. What's up @hinge? I signed up a while back and was booted off instantly because I had violated guidelines. I didn't even get to post my photo. My name, it seems, is against guidelines? I called, I emailed. No one bothered to reply."
9. Appearing on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen in 2020, Sam Smith said, "I joined this dating site called Hinge in the UK, and they chucked me off of it after one night cause they thought I was a catfish pretending to be me."
10. In 2018, Andy Cohen told The Ellen Show, "I am on Tinder, and there is a gay dating app that I'm on that I keep getting kicked off of because they think I'm impersonating Andy Cohen. And they're like, 'Your photos don't meet our guidelines.' And I keep trying. I'm like, 'No, it is me.'"
11. In a since-deleted tweet from 2019, Sharon Stone said, "I went on the @bumble dating sight and they closed my account. Some users reported that it couldn’t possibly be me! Hey @bumble, is being me exclusionary? Don’t shut me out of the hive."
12. Quote tweeting Sharon Stone's post, singer Conor Maynard added, "This happened to me on both @Tinder and @hinge ... any help guys?"
13. In 2021, Alicia Silverstone told The Drew Barrymore Show, "A few years ago, I tried to get on one of the dating apps, and I put up a fake profile because I wasn't comfortable yet being me. And then I got kicked off; I got banned."
14. In 2018, Stassi Schroeder Clark tweeted, "Raya kicked me off twice over a year and a half ago for 'talking about it.'"
15. And finally, on a 2023 episode of his podcast IMPAULSIVE, Logan Paul said, "I tried that app, Raya, and within 24 hours, I got some matches. And within 24 hours, I was kicked off the app with a, like, put together user interface message that said, 'You have violated community guidelines. Because of this, Raya has decided not to...' And then that's it. That's how this ended."

Link to article

I LOVE K-FOOD! And my K-food life has never been better since I moved to GA... so I wanted to share some restaurants with fellow Georgians or future Georgia visitors who would like to try out restaurants in well-known Duluth!
Enjoy!

1. Busan Daegee Gukbap

• Have recently seen a post on this place, if I remember correctly. Their soup menus are all great, but I strongly recommend trying 순대국밥 (Korean Sausage + Pork soup) if you don't feel repelled by Korean blood sausage!
  
• Don't forget to add some 다데기 (red paste, not chili paste but is slightly spicy) and 새우젓 (shrimp sauce) to your soup to add some flavor X)
  

1. K-factory (678 BBQ location, specifically)

• Their 양념갈비 is great! Strongly recommend.

1. Zoong Guk Jib

• They sell Koreanized-Chinese cuisine!
  
• Their Jjajangmyon was ok... preferred their seafood noodle a bit more.
  

1. Chung dam

• Their BBQ is pricy! But they have meal menus, which you specifically have to ask for before you are seated. Their 비빔밥 (bibimbop) is great and also is their 오징어 볶음 (spicy stir-fried squid)! It is worth trying!

1. Jok Ga A Dong Chim (족과의 동침)

• Their English name is not well known, so I included their Korean name!
  
• Got 족발 (braised pig trotters) and was okay.
  
• Was not my absolute favorite, but my friends love this place.
  
• Strongly recommend ordering their riceballs as a side. Those riceballs are goat.
  

1. Park 27

• this BBQ place is unique because it is not in Duluth!
  
• This place is kinda pricy, even compared to other bbq places, but their cold noodle is AMAZING.
  
• Try their cold noodle with bbq... heaven.
  

1. Dan Moo Ji

• Korean street food restaurant.
  
• All their food dishes are overly sweet in my opinion, but I know some ppl love that added sweetness!
  
• I personally liked their 스팸 김밥 (spam gimbap) and 떡꼬치 the most and ordered it every time!
  

1. Kukga Tteoboki

• Their spicy rice cake was decent!
  
• Ordered their menu with Korean drinks and enjoyed my meal!
  

1. Jaws Tteoboki

• Their food dishes are a bit sweet 222.
  
• Their Gimbap is not the best... carrots were half-raw.
  
• But their Korean-style tempuras are amazing! very crispy!!
  
• Also they add a bit of fried fishcake on top of the tteoboki you order. Those taste really nice.
  

1. Twoha's cafe

• You can order a Korean dessert, Bingsu, here. My favorite is mango Bingsu. But be aware that it is not a traditional style bingsu with sweet bean paste.
  
• Also you can try Tanghulu. Tanghulu is NOT Korean traditional food, it is actually Chinese but is really trending in South Korea rn.
  

1. Moo Bong Ri Korean Restaurant

• This place is really well known for its 삼겹살 (pork belly) among Koreans!
  
• But I also recommend trying their stir-fried small intestine.
  
• a bit pricy!
  

1. Samyang

• Great cold noodle!
  
• Combo menu with Korean meat dishes.
  
• Personal favorite: LA galbi + cold noodle
  
• Price is very fair! Makes a great meal
  

1. Seoul Galbi BBQ

• Again, got a set menu of noodle+meat
  
• Personal favorite: Cold noodles + marinated pork
  
• A bit more expensive than Samyang, but I really like their marinated pork!
  

1. E.M Bop

• Haven't been to this place myself, but heard from many that their food is good!
  
• Also, they seem to have inexpensive lunch menus which I plan to try one day!
  

1. Pelicana Chicken

• Famous chicken franchise.
  
• Chicken is very crispy and I love crispy... X)
  

1. Dish-Korean Cuisine

• Pricy
  
• But the food is good. Has some traditional Korean menus rather than fusion.
  

1. Honeypig

• Well-known for pork!
  
• Also, I think this place is more affordable than other K bbq places. They got less beef menu for all-you-can-eat, however.
  
• They grill your meat on 솥뚜껑, which is a really, really, traditional way of grilling food!
  
• Also, infinite grilled kimchi. If you love those grilled Kimchi, you now know where to go!
  

1. Zzamppong Zizon

• Another Koreanized-Chinese cuisine restaurant
  
• Their Zzamppong is great! 탕수육 is okay too.
  
• Never tried their Jjajangmyun myself, so feel free to comment if you ever tried it.
  

These are all places I actually found good and decided to return... but if you want to drop in more spots, please feel free!

Season 2 episode 12, Richard in Stars Hollow, has one of the best opening bits ever.
It starts with Emily grilling Lorelei about whether or not she's ever going to get married and eventually when Lorelai asks why she's asking, Emily says it's because she had just visited the family morgue. To which Lorelei has a hilarious response of, "never what you think it's going to be!" I just died laughing.
They then proceed to have a very hilarious conversation about how their family plot is full, and if Lorelei gets married, there won't be enough room for her husband, so they need to figure out who should get bumped to the annex. Lorelei and Emily agree on bumping some relative named Ceciele that told bad knock knock jokes. Season 2 Rory is very uncomfortable with this concept. I doubt Season 5 Rory would have cared.
Then Richard comes downstairs and echoes the sentiment that they should bump Ceciele who told bad jokes, and Lorelei and Emily make identical "see, I told you so," gestures towards Rory.
I had completely forgotten about this scene in its entirety but I think it's going to the top of my list of all time favorites.

First, a little about me. I'm 5'5ish, 135ish depending on the day, and have dark brown hair that falls part way down my back with brown eyes. My mom is a Crow (Native American) and my dad is Italian so the olive complexion genes are active in my family. I've got a fairly petite/athletic build with a 32B chest and a toned butt. My nipples are dark brown, on the smaller side, and I shave everywhere. I'm a fan of tattoos and have a feather on my foot, flower pieces on my right hip into my lower ribs, left shoulder, and lower back, a small script piece in my left side bra line, a green carebear in my left bikini line and a large dream catcher down my left ribs. If there's a detail I've left out, feel free to ask ;)
What a week. 18 year old me had gone from a dry spell since AIT and graduation to a blow job, facial, and quick hard sex with a married captain at my first duty station. I was falling fast and hard for him. I wanted him to want me. I wanted him to think of me when he thought of being intimate. I wanted to be his release to do everything she wouldn't.
Dustin snapped me this morning, a pic of his obvious buldge greeting my day. "How's my little Private this morning? I wish you were here to help with this"....You have no idea Dustin. Now that the bandaid has been ripped off, I want nothing more than to keep going. I send him a snap back of my semi sheer, black athletic thong, holding it open in the front with the caption "you could drop your load right in here sir". Naughty I know. For some reason, the thought of him filling my underwear with cum is erotic and in the moment, I crave the feel of his warmth between my legs.
"Come by the house on your lunch break and you can have it" I get in reply. Fuck.
I get dressed in my camo uniform with a generic sports bra and the same black athletic thong underneath and try make it through the morning as routinely as possible. Not possible. All I can think of is what I'm willing to do for the married man I'm lusting for and it's got my mind anywhere but at work.
Dustin let's me know he left early for lunch so he's ready whenever I am. The whole drive over, my mind is racing at the prospect of what's about to happen. I knock and find the door open, with Dustin on the couch, laptop open to some semi sexy photos I'd sent to tease him over the last week while he strokes his firm shaft. "Private Hannah reporting as ordered sir" I say as sexily as I can muster in the spur of the moment.
"Private Hannah, you said you'd found a place to hold my cum" completely keeping character.
"Yes sir" I say, stepping around to stand in front of him, undoing my belt and the buttons on my pants, letting them drop to the floor around my ankles.
"Open up then, I'm already close since you decided to be late"
I hold open the front of my black athletic thong, exposing my shaved pubic area for his inspection.
"At least you remembered to shave to start the week" he says and he builds the pace of his stroking and touches the tip of his penis against my smooth skin. In moments I see him start to swell as he nears his release. A thick rope of white cum erupts from his tip and is followed by a second, third, and fourth. My underwear is filled with his thick, warm release and soon its soaked, mixing with my own minor arousal that has built at the situation. As he finishes, I let go of my waistband and allow my cum soaked thong to cling to my lower lips, teasing me with what could have been.
I pull my pants back up and stand breathless in front of eachother. It's been less than 10 minutes since I walked through the door, we've barely spoken and now his cum is dripping down my inner thigh. What has happened? I feel like an incredibly erotic play thing that's been used for a passing moment of pleasure and right then, I know I'm hooked.
"Hannah, I'm sorry if that was too much" Dustin says, coming to the realization that I'm now back in uniform with his cum filling my panties.
I kiss him square on the lips. "Shhhh babe. I wanted this. I want all of you"
"So you really liked that?"
"Dustin that has got to be one of the hottest things I've ever tried. I'm not changing for work"
I sit on his couch in a pool of his release while we chat for the remainder of our lunch hour. When it's time to go, I feel a glob of him drip down my leg. "Can I come spend the night tonight?" I ask, hoping to get my own release after work.
"Sure hun, I just have a few calls to make but it's okay"
I head back to work with a kiss goodbye and the rest of the day I can feel the stickiness between my legs and it keeps me on edge. I run back to my barracks room, take a fast shower, grab a change of clothes for tomorrow, and something special for tonight. I throw on some gym shorts and a hoodie over my sports bra. Coupled with my slides and I'm back across post and find a note on the door "on a call, be quite when you come in"
I come in and quietly shut the door and make my way past Dustin in the livingroom, obviously on a video chat with someone with the screen facing the wall to the garage. I hear a woman's voice say "oh man those walls are paper thin, I think I just heard the neighbors kids come home from school"
Oh shit, he's on with his wife I realize as I tiptoe my way to the master bedroom where I change into my suprise. Naked in his bedroom, I slip into a teal, sheer lace bra with enough underwire support to give me a little cleavage. I pull on a matching set of panties with an intricate sheer lace front and a single thin string between my cheeks in the back. I fold up my sticky cum soaked thong from earlier and walk back into the livingroom.
Dustin does a double take as I come around the corner. He covers this with a coughing fit as his wife asks if he's okay. "Yeah hun just had an itch in my throat" and they continue chatting, her oblivious to the fact that I've just sat down across from him.
I look him square in the eyes as I begin to tease my dark brown nipples through my sheer lace bra. As he tries to hold a conversation, I do everything I can to lightly tease him. I pinch and massage my breasts, softly run a finger between my legs on top of my lacy bottoms. I stand up and start to stretch, bending forward to let my small breasts hang just out of sight of his camera before turning around and bending forward, reaching back to spread my bum and letting the g-string bury itself between my cheeks, barely keeping my other tight hole from view.
I turn back around and unfold the sticky thong he came in earlier and hold it up for him to see the stain his release left on them, right between the legs. I pull my teal lace thong down in the front, and standing right behind his computer, I begin to lightly tease myself with the soft fabric of the back athletic thong, gently massaging my clit, resoaking the nearly dry panties with another round of sexual arousal.
As my arousal grows, I gradually push into my slick entrance and with one finger and then another, the soft athletic fabric of my underwear once again getting soaked as I rub my clit with them, teasing myself with the over stimulating feel against my raw bundle of nerves. I squat down, my face now right behind the computer screen as I squeeze my breast and open my mouth in a silent moan, performing for the man who can't respond.
All of a sudden I stop, ending my tease at the edge of release, not wanting to slip and give away what's going on...and to tease Dustin further. I stand up, place the arousal and cum soaked black thong on the table right behind his laptop and I walk to the kitchen and begin working on dinner with whatever ingredients I can scrounge up in the kitchen. It's such a turn on to do such a normal task in such a small set of lingerie and I secretly hope that Dustin is sneaking peeks at me from across the house.
At long last I feel warm, strong hands wrap around my waist and a kiss finds my cheek. "How's my baby girl, you little tease?"
I blush at the pet name the gentle touch. "I'm almost done, go sit down you silly boy" I say as I start to plate our dinner of chicken and grilled veggies, sauntering into the dining room like a server at one of those lingerie sports bars.
"So you sure know how to put on a show, Hannah" Dustin says as we begin to eat
"I can be anything you want me to be" I say as I begin a speech I'd thought through in my head, telling Dustin that I don't want casual, I want to be the girl he craves, the one who does the things that no one else does, who let's him try the things he's only imagined I'm his wildest sessions alone with himself.
"What do you get out of all of this?" He asks, questioning this step towards commitment.
"I get to explore myself and act out my cravings without having to deal with all the rumors of barracks and searching for guys to feel safe with. I don't want to be your wife. I just want you to forget her when your with me, and I want you to think of me when you choose how to play"
"Well if you're going to explore, we're going to have to push you out of your comfort zone and actually find new places and things to try"
My heart is racing as fantasies flood through my mind. "What do you have in mind?"
"Just play along with different roles and we'll see what happens baby girl"
Baby girl....is this role number one? Does Dustin think that with our 8 year age gap and my petite frame that we could play out what I think he wants to play? I did just tell him that I want to be the one he thinks of.
"Yes daddy"
"Good Girl"
I. Am. Wet.
"So what did you have in mind for dessert baby girl?"
I stand up, clean up, take Dustin by the hand. "These can end up on the floor too" i say motioning to my sheer lingerie.
"Not yet" he replies, guiding me back to the bedroom.
I find myself once again on Dustin's bed, this time guided into the center, onto my hands and knees. With gentle pressure between my shoulder blades, I drop to my elbows, arching my back and exposing my entrances to open view, my modesty preserved only by the thin g-string buried between my cheeks.
Dustin pulls that to the side, bringing my arousal fully into view. I shudder as a soft, wet tongue traces it's way teasingly between my parted lips, beginning at the bundle of nerves aching in my core and ending in the tight wet hole that's been longing to be filled since I started my teasing back at lunch. I moan a soft sigh of want as Dustin licks me again and again, using his thumbs to spread me open before teasing the inner entrance of my now soaked vagina with his oral stimulation.
After a few breathless minutes of almost over the edge teasing with his tongue, Dustin traces his tongue higher. My eyes go wide and my breath catches in my throat as his tongue glides across my other hole. After a brief pause, he repeats his elongated trail of tongue teasing a second and third time, ending on my bum every time.
I moan "Don't stop, daddy" as his tongue lingers on my hole, swirling around my rear entrance as his calloused fingers reach between my legs to tease my clit. I am so close as his tongue makes headway into my hole which is opening up for him at his constant stimulation.
"I'm going to fill you up baby girl" Dustin leans down and whispers in my ear, his tongue momentarily replaced by his thumb pressing further into my bum, slick with his saliva.
"Please daddy" I moan in reply, eager to keep my promise to do everything his wife won't do.
Dustin pulls away completely and reaches into his wife's nightstand. I see him pull out a bottle of lube and a silver plug with a red jeweled heart on the end, still in its packaging, unopened, unplayed with. I know what's coming and why we're playing this out right now.
Dustin removes the plug from its package and holds it tip first up to my lips. I know what he wants without saying a word. I stick out my tongue and lightly tease the cold metal tip, softly swirling circles around it, further and further down until I bob my head down, taking the whole plug in my mouth and closing my lips around the base. I look up at Dustin, the jeweled heart of the plug between my lips and softly moan in anticipation.
He pulls it out of my mouth and I seductively tease the tip one last time. "Wanna stick it in my ass daddy?" I beg as sexily as possible. After a few seconds of fumbling around with the lube bottle, I feel the cold liquid land on my hole, followed by a finger gently probing my already relaxed entrance. A moment later, the finger is replaced by the cold lubed plug and my breath catches in my throat as I stretch around the plug before closing down tightly on the base. Dustin moves my g-string back into place, covering my soaking wet lips and holding the plug firmly in my butt.
I look back at him pleadingly. I know I teased you hard earlier but if you stop now, this is just cruel. "Daddy please" I say breathlessly, not wanting the stimulation to stop while also acutely aware of the fullness inside my rear.
"Please what?"
"Please fuck me daddy"
"You have two options Hannah. You teased me, so this is a tease for you. You can go to bed, right now, right like this, or you can get your punishment and then a reward like a good girl. Bed or a spanking, your choice"
"Spank me Daddy" I beg without a moment's hesitation
smack the sharp crack of Dustin's hand on my bare cheek takes me by suprise and I clench hard on the plug inside my bum. "Oh fuck daddy" I moan in a mix of pain and pleasure. smack smack smack come three more successive blows, landing on alternating cheeks. I moan almost tearfully as my arousal builds to the point that I'm literally ready to beg for release.
"Daddy please fuck me. Do whatever you want just let me cum please"
A firm tug pulls my g-string down to my knees, still on all fours with my face in the pillows. A hard shaft rubs between my lower lips, finds my eager entrance, and in one firm thrust is buried all the way inside me. I cry out, looking back over my shoulder at Dustin who looks like a man possessed with the overwhelming urge to use me for his pleasure, and in that moment, it's all I want as well.
His firm hands grip my hips and I arch my back, throwing myself back against him to meet his own rapid thrusts. My cheeks clap a faster and faster pace as the overwhelming feeling of being completely filled mixes with the intense pleasure of the moment. I'm red faced and breathless, moaning Dustin's name as he continues in an unrelenting pace, thrusting in and out, in and out. At one point he pulls my face out of the pillows, gripping my long dark hair by my ponytail and commands "You're gonna be a good girl and cum for daddy"
He releases my hair but I remain facing forward, head up and moaning through the moment "Yes daddy, oh my fuuuuuuuuuckkkk" comes from my innocent lips as he simultaneously pulls out the buttplug and buries himself all the way inside me as I can feel him swell and begin to release against my cervix.
"That's right daddy, cum inside my pussy" I beg as he thrusts again and again as my inner walls clench down and my own release spills out of me, uncontained as I find one of the strongest orgasms of my life. His thrusts slow and eventually he pulls out, leaving me leaking cum and lube from both my holes.
He returns with a warm towel and begins to clean me off as I sit up, still in my sheer bra, and kiss him firmly on the lips. "That was incredible, daddy" I whisper, my forehead resting against his as he finishes cleaning my sensitive areas.
"Would you like to rinse off?"
I reply yes and he runs us a sensual warm shower, where nothing but gentle washing and a few lingering kisses happens. He's patient as I take extra time under the soothing water and wraps me in a soft towel when I get out.
As we get dressed into comfy pajama shorts and tshirts, I ask "so was I a good girl, daddy?"
"The best. I think we should stick with this role for awhile if you're into it"
After the time I had tonight, I'm more than willing to play along. We discuss some likes and dislikes and limits (nothing that leaves a mark where I'll have to answer questions about it at work), and reagree that none of this is a thing on the few occasions that his wife visits during her internship. And duh, no telling work, that would fuck us both.
We end the night with gentle pillow talk, and he asks if,for the role, I'd be willing to let him help me get dressed in the mornings, helping me pick out bras and undies from a selection of things I'd actually wear to work. I welcome the increased interaction and dedicated time to talk every morning without a second thought, and I fall asleep with his arm wrapped around me from behind, his strong hand under my tshirt, soothingly placed on my bare stomach, just below my belly button and just teasingly far enough into the area covered by a bikini. I'm in heaven.

Last year when I heard the song FPS I was kinda confused on why Cole said "who is the best, is Kdot, Aubrey or Me"
And I was shocked he said Kdot and not Kendrick being they the same syllables and the public wouldn't know who Kdot is that he was talking about
I figured everyone would know by now drake's name was Aubrey because I remember a meme going around when people first found out. So did some viral meme trend calling Kendrick Kdot or something?
I remember when I first started listening to him wayyy before his control verse and he changed his public name to Kendrick Lamar because (idk if this was true or not) he didn't want people to confuse him with Kdot the philly rapper. Whatever the reason I figured Kdot was kinda a throwback name only long term fans would know and Cole saying Kdot in the verse would probably confuse people
But during this beef I've noticed almost everyone addressing him as Kdot now, is there something I'm missing? At what point did the mainstream public start calling Kendrick Kdot? Or has everyone been calling Kdot his entire career and I just thought it was like a cool little secret? Lol

In the gritty neighborhoods of Toronto, two young men, K Money and Rolexx Homii, were trying to carve out a name for themselves. They weren’t the best rappers around, but they were loud, flashy, and always up in everyone’s face. In a world where everyone wanted to be the next big thing, they were just two guys crying out for attention.
K Money’s raps were basic, his flow clunky, but he had a way of making people listen, if only because he was always in their ear. Rolexx Homii was no better, spitting aggressive bars that often missed the mark, but his antics kept people talking. Despite their lack of real talent, their bond was undeniable, both in the studio and in the shadows where their secret love affair unfolded.
Their relationship was their escape, a place where they could be real with each other away from the constant hustle for clout. But the streets, with their unspoken rules and politics, were always watching, always waiting to pull them apart.
Rolexx Homii was a magnet for drama. His temper and impulsive decisions constantly landed him in hot water. Things hit a boiling point when rumors started spreading about him attacking K Money, his brother Casper TNG, and their sister. The word on the street was that Rolexx had even shot at his baby mother because she was messing with a rival while he was locked up.
Rolexx Homii’s antics on Instagram only made things worse. He accused K Money's sister and others of snitching, stirring up even more trouble. The streets buzzed with talk of Rolexx’s behavior, and some members of their crew, including a group called the Asian Assassins, decided to distance themselves from him.
Caught in the middle, K Money and Casper TNG had to make a choice. They loved Rolexx Homii, but they couldn’t ignore the mounting pressure from the streets. They had to protect themselves and their family, even if it meant turning their backs on someone they cared about deeply.
K Money was torn. He still held onto the hope of making things right, even going so far as to publicly support Rolexx Homii’s brother, Johnie VVS, on social media. But the divide was too deep. The lines were drawn, and there was no turning back.
Days turned into weeks, and K Money and Rolexx Homii found themselves on opposite sides of a conflict they never wanted. Their love story, once a flicker of hope in their chaotic lives, became another casualty of the streets. Each verse they spat now carried the weight of their broken connection, a reminder of what they lost in their quest for attention.
In the end, K Money and Rolexx Homii’s love was a testament to the harsh realities of their world. Their story, marked by betrayal and conflict, became part of the lore of Toronto’s neighborhoods—a reminder that even the truest love can be torn apart by the very streets that created it.

Hey guys. I know some people may not who the artist’s is. Just in Case to familiarize yourself.
Dagrin, whose real name was Oladapo Olaitan Olaonipekun, was a Nigerian rapper and songwriter. He was born on October 25, 1987, in Ogun State, Nigeria, and became one of the most influential figures in the Nigerian music industry. He is widely considered one of the greatest rappers of all time in Nigeria.
Dagrin rose to prominence in the mid-2000s with his unique style of rapping in Yoruba, one of Nigeria's major languages. He gained recognition for his gritty and realistic lyrics, which often portrayed the struggles of everyday life in Nigeria's urban areas. His music resonated with many Nigerians who could relate to his experiences and the social issues he addressed.
In 2010, Dagrin released his critically acclaimed album titled "C.E.O" (Chief Executive Omoita), which featured hit songs like "Pon Pon Pon" and "Kondo." The album showcased his lyrical prowess and storytelling ability, solidifying his position as one of Nigeria's top rappers.
Tragically, on April 22, 2010, Dagrin was involved in a car accident in Lagos, Nigeria, which led to his untimely death at the age of 22. His passing sent shockwaves throughout the Nigerian music industry and sparked an outpouring of grief from fans and fellow artists.
Dagrin's legacy lives on, and he is often regarded as one of the pioneers of indigenous rap in Nigeria. His impact on Nigerian music can still be felt today, as his unique style and storytelling approach have influenced numerous artists who have followed in his footsteps. Despite his short career, Dagrin's contributions to Nigerian hip-hop continue to be celebrated, making him an enduring figure in the country's music history.
Question: So I’m looking for this album called I Spit Vernacular. Dagrin gave it to me to listen but I ended up losing it. Can you guys help me find this album. I found it on Duduradio but they ended up taking the website down in 2014. So now I don’t know where to look in 2024. So technically I’ve been looking for this album for 10 Years. I don’t know if any of you fans have this particular album because it is unreleased & it is a rare album.

There's a "dad joke" I heard that goes: My therapist told me to write out a big long rant letter to everyone I have a problem with, burn them all to ashes, and scatter the ashes into the wind. I did all that last weekend, but now I'm not sure what to do with the letters.
This post feels like that big, long rant, but I genuinely could really use some help/ideas beyond "go to marriage counseling." I provide so much to the family and household that isn't reciprocated, but trying to set boundaries to feel more balanced gets passive-aggressive and/or silent treatment. I'm not writing all this here just to vent, I've actually edited this down pretty significantly to summarize what I'm going through and giving some examples.
Thanks for giving me the space to share this.
Me (50/M), Wife (45/F), two kids 15 and 13. We have no family who live anywhere close to us. We're in the middle of America, her divorced parents are on the coast, and mine's in Canada where I'm originally from (in case my username didn't give that away).
TLDR at the bottom.
Trigger warnings: a ruined birthday, shared/not-shared finances, me losing my cool and walking out on my family and getting the silent treatment since, and apparently being the only parent/grown-up in the house.
To this family, I feel that all I am to them is the income/paycheck and personal chef, and I'm ready to walk away. My wife won't communicate, gets defensive and angry, and doesn't contribute to the marriage or teach our kids about responsibility, so I look like a jerk all the time. If I speak up and ask her to help, I'm treated like a jerk. If I don't speak up, she does nothing.
Background about physicality, work and finances
I work in tech, typically 50-70 hours per week, and take on occasional (< 5 hrs/week) contract work as a side business to pay for my 3D printing hobby that I'm also trying to turn into a side business. She works part-time maybe one full day of work throughout the week on an as-needed basis.
My job pays the benefits, and I've established a retirement fund for us, plus a 401K and Roth IRA, plus a 529 account for each of the kids that I've been investing in since they were born. I paid off both cars. We're debt-free except for our mortgage, and we have enough assets to pay off the house if we choose to.
We each have a bank account for ourselves, plus a joint bank account. Her part-time paychecks and other money from an inheritance, goes 100% into her account only, and I use my account for my 3D printing business to maintain an LLC. Just about everything financial is paid for from my paychecks. I've always treated this as "our" money. All bills, mortgage, memberships, subscriptions (Netflix, etc), things the kids need (clothing, shoes, school supplies, etc), furniture, medical bills, etc are all paid from a joint account that is funded 100% by my paycheck. She makes no contributions to this account, but she does withdraw from it for fast food, snacks she buys just for herself, her own crafting hobbies, and she'll pick up maybe $100/month for some groceries.
I promised her before we were even married that if she wanted to be a stay-at-home mom or, at any point, go back to work, she'd have my full support either way, and I've kept that promise. She worked full-time for about 2 years before we had kids and worked a fair bit of part-time work before the kids started school in 2013. She's been at her part-time job for 2 years, so quite a span where she didn't work at all.
She works as a 1099 contractor and, despite repeatedly being asked to, won't reserve money for tax time. So, not only does she spend 100% of her paycheck, but I have to be sure that we save enough to cover her tax bill every year. She's never offered to contribute to tax payments we have to make.
I had gallbladder surgery and bariatric surgery, so I've had pretty restrictive dietary needs for the past 5-6 years. She often made comments about me being heavy and having a shortened life span, but since my bariatric surgery, she's expressed resentment about my body changing (I lost 120+lbs) and now doesn't care to learn what kinds of protein/carb/fat balance I need, and gained about 80lbs herself. As such, she does not contribute to any meal planning, which means I'm doing 95% of all meal planning, groceries, and cooking.
When it comes to cooking, I'm a damn good cook, and it's 100% because of YouTube. She grew up in an environment where she wasn't encouraged to cook or even learn to, so she lived on PBJ through college until we started dating and I would cook or take her out. When the kids were in their "picky" stages of 4yrs-9yrs of age, she got frustrated with cooking but years later still holds to that "NOBODY likes what I cook". So she makes maybe 2 or 3 meals per month now, and it's always the same meals. Last night, she cooked 10 people's worth of macaroni with a single pound of ground beef and more than a pound of cheese. I had to pick out the meat to get my protein and then drink a protein shake afterward, and then got offended that I threw away the noodles/cheese. (My diet needs high protein, low carbs, and almost no fat, she knows this because I tell her quite often, but she won't do anything about it; she's bought maybe 3 shelves worth of cookbooks and won't even open them or go take a class or anything.)
Our oldest kid has shown an interest in cooking and will maybe cook one meal per week and ask me to help him out, so I share what I've learned, things I've tried, experimented with, lessons learned, etc., and we have a good time, and they really appreciate the learning opportunity. On the rare occasion I do see my wife making dinner in the kitchen, I show her that I'm really happy about what she's making and ask if she wants help chopping or anything and I only get "no" as an answer and completely shut down like I'm not supposed to be in the kitchen. I'll try to have conversation with her but then she can't concentrate on cooking, chopping, etc, and then "ruined" dinner is my fault.
"Her" money versus "our" money, and how we spend our days/weekends
My wife had a relative die quite a few years ago and in the fall of 2018 was given a $250k inheritance. She has always referred to this as "her" money, "her" retirement, in case "she" needs a nursing home later. I'm not in her future plans, apparently. She gave $50k of it to a cousin who was deliberately left out of that relative's will. My wife's will leaves any remaining inheritance money to the kids. No mention of me anywhere whatsoever.
Once the inheritance money hit her bank account, she decides to buy a horse from halfway across the country and put it in a boarding stable 20 minutes from the house. It was a childhood dream of hers. Apparently, she's allowed to pursue her dreams and interests, it's "her" money, I'm not allowed to tell her what to do with it, but she complains when my 3D printing business makes enough money to buy another printer to keep up with demand... And my hobby takes up less time per week than she spends at the barn.
When she's not working her one-day-a-week job, she's at the boarding stable for a few hours per day, playing with her horse, taking selfies, taking him on walks, not actually riding him. With her remaining time at home, and when she gets home with the kids, she's lying on the couch, acting worn out and tired like she just bench-pressed the friggin' horse. (And yes, I know horse training CAN be exhausting, but she's not doing anything exhausting with him. She literally walks him on a path, or walks him in circles in an arena enclosure, or she's brushing him down and bathing him to look nice for Instagram)
In the summer of 2018, right before she got this inheritance money, she spent $50k of "our" money on a kitchen renovation that she insisted she designs herself, and then felt guilty about the bill and me having to take on more side contracting work to pay off the HELOC in a reasonable amount of time, and contributed back $10k to the whole project from "her" money afterward. "Her" money paid for the kids' orthodontics, about $3k each. But she literally contributes NOTHING else financially to the family.
If I had to guess, she's got about $150k left of that inheritance money, maybe less, she won't ever tell me about it. And we don't get a notice from the bank about interest gained at tax time every year because she put it in an account that makes ZERO interest. She sees my investments with 25%-40% gains, but won't ever ask for my help or input. Instead, she asked 3 other guys at work who told her to at least get a Vanguard account, but almost 6 years later she's never done it.
I work full-time as mentioned, and work from home. Work is typically 50+ hours per week but I try to cap it at 60-ish if I can. For the past month I've been on a project with a tight deadline, and working more like 10-14 hours per day 6 days per week. It's like that in tech, she's been understanding of this in the past, and I'm sure to take jobs where this is NOT the norm. Still, I'm always happy to help drive the kids to/from school or to music lessons or doctors, but I'm usually treated like "how dare you," that's "her" job, like that's her contribution to everything.
She works a part-time job doing marketing. Maybe 2-3 hours a day, one or two days per week. Sometimes busier in Q1 as they prep/plan most of the year, but then very low-lift afterward. She spends maybe 40 minutes per day taking the kids to/from school. Other than that, she's at the barn or on the couch. (have I mentioned we've gone through several couches that "our" money pays for??)
The marital imbalance I'm dealing with
She won't enforce chores for the kids, remind them to do laundry, or clean their rooms, or even shower. She'll text me "one of the boys smells" after taking them to school, but won't insist they shower, or back me up on the whole "c'mon guys, brush twice a day at least, and shower at least every 2 days with actual some soap on your bodies and actual shampoo on your hair, and use deodorant..." She'll make remarks like "Didn't you wear and sleep in those clothes for the past 3 days?" but won't make them change, or tell them to do their laundry.
She might do dishes 2 to 3 times per month, it's normally a chore we give to the kids, but she never enforces it. If they stack up for 3 days she'll do some of them but not all of them. One kid was born on an odd-numbered day, the other on an even-numbered day, so the rule is if today is an even or odd day, we know whose turn it is to do the dishes. And if the month has an odd number of days, I do the dishes on the 31st/29th day. But they're teenagers, they'd rather be in their rooms being teenagers, so I have to constantly remind them. Neither of them checks that the dishes are even clean before putting them away, something she specifically called out being embarrassed about when we were dating and visiting her mom's house where half of the dishes in the cupboard still had dried food all over them.
And then garbage day, or yard work, or vacuuming, cleaning a bathroom, cleaning their room, shoveling snow. She doesn't help enforce ANY of the chores that we agreed on. So I'm the sole disciplinarian around here, which makes the kids grow up thinking they better avoid me or I'm the jerk who's gonna put them to work.
Nothing happens around here unless I ask the rest of the family. I've purposefully left chores undone for "that's almost a health hazard" amounts of time and still nobody takes the initiative, nor will she ask the kids to help. They all see the work needs to be done, but they won't choose to help, and they're probably learning from her example of just sitting in some other room/area of the house and someone else will do it someday.
Even asking them "what kind of meals do you want this week, what haven't we had in a while, what's your favorite meal," you'd swear I was asking them to cure cancer every Saturday so I could start to plan meals for the following week and get groceries on Sunday, which has been our routine since the kids could talk.
Their cop-out is to skip the 3 shelves of cookbooks and flip through a binder we kept from a few months of Hello Fresh meals but then it's the same 10-12 meals that get kinda old after a while.
I feel like I have no help from anyone.
I reached my tipping point, and recently walked out on my family
A little over three weeks ago, I'm on this tight deadline at work, getting maybe 3-4 hours of sleep at night, pulling 10-14 hour days. It's a Wednesday, I remember about 430pm that I should commit my code, as I usually do 'cause I need to make dinner because nobody else is gonna do it. Oh, wait, tonight was grilled cheese and tomato soup -- literally, ANYONE ELSE in the house, including our 13yr old who has never shown any interest in cooking, could heat a can of soup and melt cheese between bread, right??? Surely SOMOENE else in the family will handle dinner, so I keep working (note, without asking anyone else to help with dinner), hoping someone else will handle the meal. (and yes, I know this is typically against my diet, but I indulge in this low-protein, high-carb, higher-fat meal about once a month.)
At 730pm my wife comes STOMPING into my office area, "I can't make the grilled cheese like you do." No politeness, just turns and stomps back to the kitchen. I follow her to the kitchen, where the tomato soup is on a RAPID boil, yet she hasn't even started making the grilled cheese sandwiches. I turn the soup off, take it off the burner, and start to describe what to do for the grilled cheese. It's honestly nothing special; I put shredded cheese in the pan to get crusty on the outside of the bread, then stack up the the grilled cheese, put break on top, let the inner cheese melt, and flip it onto more shredded cheese. Highly recommended.
She says "Oh" and ... LEAVES THE KITCHEN, leaving me there expecting me to make dinner... and I'm pissed. I should have just gone back to my work area, but she parks herself back on the couch.
I get everything made, and of course nobody sets the table, ever. Now I'm seriously pissed off, so I slam some dishes in the middle of the table and go back into the kitchen to get the pot of soup and plate of sandwiches. I get back to the dinner table, where my wife and youngest are just standing there, STILL not setting the table despite me standing there with food that I can't even put down. So I drop the food on the table wherever I can, soup splashes everywhere, and I start setting the table while they stand there and watch and ... I lost my cool. I flung bowls and spoons in the general area where they're supposed to be at the table, and I walked out of the house. I returned 4 or 5 hours later once they were all in bed.
The ONE meal in my busy schedule that ANY of them could have made, and her contribution was putting a can of soup in a pot.
She still didn't make any meals for the rest of the week. That Sunday she put a meal plan together for the whole following week. Again, all super carb-heavy when she knows my own diet can't handle that. And then she stopped planning ANYTHING ELSE SINCE THEN. The following week's "meal plan" was just a list of who was home on which night because of end-of-school-year events going on. No meals, no grocery list. Meanwhile I'm still on my deadline... Last week, no help at all. This week, zero help.
So this week's meal plan I finally set a boundary for myself that was VERY clear to them: I'm planning to cook 3 meals for the whole week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and left the rest open with no meal planned. Last night at 6pm she made her "hamburger helper" and plans "ramen" for tomorrow (again, all noodles and broth, very little protein), but no other help from her for the rest of the meal plan for the remainder of the week.
My recently ruined 50th birthday
My birthday was a little over a week ago. I turned 50. Send me your favorite dad jokes, please, I beg of you.
My wife asked me 2 or 3 months ago if I wanted any kind of party, etc. to which I said yeah, I'd love to have a few friends over, named several of them, all of whom she either has in her phone, or are guys married to women that I know she stays in regular contact with. I mentioned some all-you-can-eat places that we could go, just the 4 of us, where I could pick out good proteins etc. and they could eat whatever they wanted.
I got nothing. No dinner out. No party. No friends.
The night before my birthday, she was too lazy to get off the couch, so I went to bed alone. I woke up in bed alone. I told the family the day before that I wanted French Toast for breakfast, normally something we'd do on Christmas Day, but it was my 50th birthday gosh darn it, and I was even thawing bacon. I even bought all the groceries needed. Nope, had to cook that alone too, so I only made enough for me, and ate alone. Showered alone, 'cause we haven't been intimate in ... 3 months? 4 months? And who cares that it's my birthday.
Nobody asked if I wanted to go out anywhere, go see a movie, go for a hike with the dog, nothing. So I went out with the dog, alone.
That night I had to make dinner for the family, again, on my own friggin' birthday. Alone in the kitchen. AND I had to remind the kids to clean up the kitchen afterward 'cause they won't do it unless they're told. She bought tiny pieces of cheesecake for dessert, which she knows I don't like and can't eat because of my diet. I had one tiny piece, she and the kids ate the rest.
No cake, no candle, no balloons. It was my FIFTIETH birthday ...
We have some serious communication breakdown going on
Since I walked out of the house a few weeks back, she only talks to me when she wants something, and that comes across more as a demand, "I need you to pick the kids up from school, I have to be at work" and walks away She won't say good morning or even hi, unless I say it first. Lately, I say "hi" or "hey" as we're passing in the house and I get no response at all. I get literal one-word responses when I ask her a question. A few nights ago, several nights in a row, I'm in the living room on my laptop trying to get more work done, she'll come in the room, not ask me what I'm doing or if I'm working, and blast a TV show on her phone at near-maximum volume, and fall asleep on the couch.
She gets mad and offended any time I offer constructive criticism of any kind. And it doesn't matter how delicately I try to phrase things, I'll agonize for days over exactly which words to use, she'll get super defensive, angry and lash out, and give me the silent treatment for weeks.
Last Tuesday was an end-of-year awards show for our youngest, who's finishing 8th grade. He's really into music and he stayed after school to practice for the event. She comes home to get ready then decides to leave for the event by herself. I only noticed when the garage opened and closed. She doesn't say anything to me or our oldest kid about what time she wanted to leave or if we're ready to go, she just ... left. Well of COURSE we both want to go, but now we have to drive there separately. And he wins a TON of awards, one from his classmates, one from his teacher, and one from the school. I'd have been PISSED to have missed that. "Oh, I thought you didn't want to go..." was her reason later.
This past Saturday, I do ALL the yardwork 'cause she won't tell the kids to help and I'm frankly tired of having to ask for help. A few hours of yard work later, I tell my youngest to vacuum 'cause nobody vacuums around here unless I tell them to and honestly it's gross. I hop in the shower to clean up and cool down from the yard work. Youngest decides it's "too hot in the house" and sits in the kitchen to eat a popsicle instead of vacuuming. No backup from my wife at all on this, who's still parked on the couch. So I get upset with him, he does a half-assed job, says he's "tired' (from watching YouTube all day) and goes back to his room and we don't see him again the rest of the day. Again, no help or backup from my wife.
It's now 7pm in the house Saturday night, and -- shocker -- NOBODY has bothered to even ASK about dinner much less put any kind of food together. 8pm rolls around and my oldest finally emerges from his own room, starts thawing some chicken, and comes to ask me for help to make a meal, which I happily do. Until I get grumbly comments about "why are we eating so late." And my wife makes her way back to the couch. Not so much as a "thanks for cooking" or offer to clean up. And of COURSE nobody is doing the dishes, because DAD didn't remind anyone.
WHAT DO I DO??
19 years ago when we got married, this felt like a marriage. We did stuff together, we split things evenly, shared responsibility and chores, we both cooked, we bought groceries together. The first few years with kids were rough, but it at least FELT like a partnership once we figured out how to be parents. But something has shifted over the past decade, and this feels less and less like a partnership, much less feeling like a marriage. This whole relationship feels very one-sided, I get no appreciation for any of my constant hard work and being a provider. Instead, she's accused me, twice, of having an affair, once to the point of giving me anxiety/panic attacks for which I was almost hospitalized.
Now, she and the kids are noticing and talking behind my back (like I can't hear them) about the fact that I'm not wearing my wedding band anymore. Of course, the kids won't ask me directly, and I'm not bringing it up myself, and my wife's not talking to me anyway. Maybe she's still mad that I got mad a few weeks ago and walked out? Hard to know when the person won't talk to you unless they want something from you.
I'll put the damn ring back on when it feels like a marriage again. But then the next time it comes off, I think it'll stay off.
TL;DR! To this family, I feel that all I am to them is the income/paycheck and personal chef, and I'm ready to walk away. I can see why parents stay together "for the kids." As with most marriages, it started great; we've had bumpy times, but we always got through it together. Nothing like this, though. My wife won't communicate, gets defensive and angry, and doesn't contribute to the marriage or teach our kids about responsibility, so I look like a jerk all the time. Something has shifted over the past decade, and this feels less and less like a partnership. This whole relationship feels very one-sided, I get no appreciation for any of my constant hard work and being a provider.

Chapter 1

Concept art for Sybil
Of Men and Ghost Ships, Book 1: Chapter 20
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After settling in, Alen was heading to the dining area to test the mint-flavored goo they were apparently supposed to live off of. Most of the crew from the ship were still using the rations they'd had onboard the escape pods that they'd brought with them into their temporary living quarters, but he figured he might as well test the waters, so to speak.
Walking into the dining hall, Alen wasn't too surprised to see Erik and Vanessa there, though he wondered what in the world the larger alien was grilling. It smelled...pretty decent, all things considered.
Apparently, Vanessa said something to the alien viking because Erik turned around and flashed his usual grin as he held up a spatula in greeting. Alen waved back before asking the question that was on his mind. "What in the world are you grilling?"
Erik's smile widened, showing far too many teeth, though Alen couldn't help but feel himself grin a little in response. Perhaps he'd been spending too much time in the alien's presence, but Alen realized the toothy grin wasn't quite as intimidating as it had once been as Erik pointed to his concoction. "Well, it's the same goo you get from the dispenser, but on Carter's advice, I'm trying a different flavor blend and cooking it up. He said it almost tastes like steak, 'if the steak was poor quality, a little burnt, and you'd almost forgotten what steak tasted like!' I figured I might as well give it a shot! If nothing else, it might make for a decent change of pace after you get tired of the mint stuff!"
Alen nodded. "Well, at least it smells decent enough."
Erik laughed and shook his head. "You humans really have a poor sense of smell if you think this smells 'decent!' However, I suppose edible is edible, and I won't complain so long as my belly is full!"
Alen shook his head as he tried to figure out how to pour himself some of the goo while one of his hands was tied up, holding onto his walking cane. Eventually, he gave up, put most of his weight onto his good foot, and leaned the cane against the machine while pouring out a small bowl of the stuff. It didn't look all that appetizing, but apparently, it was nutritious and safe to eat, which was enough for now.
Erik watched the whole ordeal with a bit of a smirk that Alen couldn't read. "Still getting used to that new foot of yours?"
Alen shrugged as he held his bowl and silverware in one hand and grabbed his cane with the other. "Eh, kinda. It doesn't feel quite right, but it is only supposed to be temporary, so I guess that makes sense."
Looking over at the dish Erik had cooked up for himself, Alen wondered about the man who'd recommended it to the large alien. "So, you spoke to that Carter guy while I was out, right? What do you make of him?"
Erik cut off a piece of the dish and chewed on it while apparently thinking. "Well, for one thing, his description of what this tastes like is pretty accurate! It almost reminds me of steak, or maybe more like the smell of steak while eating something completely different. All I can say for sure is it makes me want the real thing all the more!"
Alen looked down at his own dish and scooped up a spoonful but delayed taking a bite by responding. "That's not really what I meant..."
Erik cut off another chunk and shoveled it down without hesitation. He chuckled as he responded with a mouth half full. "I know, I know... What do I think of the guy? Well, he seems alright, I guess. He doesn't strike me as the kind to go out of his way to help someone he doesn't know, but neither would he just ignore a person in need if they crossed paths. In that sense, I suppose he's like a lot of people. A bit pragmatic, perhaps, but that's not necessarily a virtue or a vice. Could be either, I suppose..."
Alen pointed at Erik with his spoon, still uneaten. "I don't know. He left a lot of people hanging back where he picked us up from, nor did he seem all that friendly telling us all how we could get killed if we so much as stepped outside our designated area..."
Erik shoveled another piece into his maw as he shrugged. "Well, what would you have him do, stay and fight to the death for a bunch of people he didn't even know? I'm not saying he handled everything perfectly, mind you. Maybe if he'd acted sooner, he could have saved more people, but it's far too easy to judge someone after the fact. And even I've turned tail and run when the odds were too stacked against me! And as for the ship, that struck me as more of a warning than a threat..."
Alen furrowed his brow. "But as he's the captain, isn't that the same thing? Or do you believe all the talk about this ship being haunted?"
Erik's smile disappeared for the first time in a while as he got strangely contemplative. "I don't know, but there's definitely something off about this ship. It doesn't...smell right."
Alen, who'd been about to finally taste the goo, stopped. "It doesn't smell right?"
Erik nodded. "Yeah... I don't know how to describe it to you, but while every ship has its own unique feel and smell, there are always a few consistencies. This ship is weirdly...hollow? Empty? It's like the smell version of an echo. And I'm not just talking about the dust covering everything. It's a distorted, weaker scent than I'm used to aboard a ship."
Then, turning to Vanessa, Erik asked. "What about you? What's your take on the ship and its captain?"
The spider-like alien, who'd been shoveling away spoonful after spoonful, stopped and considered before responding. "Well, Captain Carter strikes me as clever but not particularly driven. It's more like he's caught up in what's happening as much as we are. As for the ship...you're right. There's definitely something off about it, though I find it hard to quantify into words."
In the unsettling quiet that followed, Alen finally took a bite of the goo. The texture wasn't great, but the flavor was surprisingly...decent. Mint was definitely the prominent flavor, but it was complimented by something he'd describe as an almost nutty flavor, though he'd be hard-pressed to name any specific nut. It wouldn't be his favorite dish anytime soon, but as far as something he might have to live off of for the immediate future, it was slightly better than most of the emergency rations he'd had in the past.
Thinking about what Erik and Vanessa had said about the ship feeling off, Alen thought back to his room when he'd first walked in. It looked as if it had been a museum piece, with stuff lying about as if someone had been living there, but all of it was covered in a thin layer of dust. It had felt a little eery as if he was stepping into someone else's world, someone who was now long gone. He dusted the room and tidied most of the stuff lying about, but for some reason, he couldn't bring himself to pack everything up and leave it in the closet. Instead, he treated it as if it was someone else's room, and he was just staying for a bit, though he couldn't help but wonder about the person who'd lived there before him. What had happened to them? Were they survivors like them? Were they held captive by the supposed ghost ship? Or had they been the original inhabitants from before this ship gained its notoriety? How long ago had that been? Years? Decades? Longer?
Alen shook his head. Letting his mind wander like that would only lead to him spooking himself out. Looking over at Erik, it seemed as if whatever had been bothering him had passed, and the large alien was all grins again as he winked at Alen. "Well, I wouldn't worry about it too much! The captain said we'd be fine so long as we followed the rules, and they didn't seem all that hard. Just don't go wandering or making weapons, and we'll be fine!"
Alen nodded, but then again, there was that last rule...the one about listening to and obeying anything that "seems like an AI." That was an odd choice of words. What would seem like an AI but be different enough to warrant a distinction? Alen thought back to the woman in red who'd operated on him. Come to think of it, her outfit hadn't really been what he would call sterile, and she hadn't ever really touched him. Hadn't her name been Sybil, like the ship? Was she an AI? Or rather, something that "seemed like an AI?"
Before Alen could dwell on it too long, there was some loud commotion out in the hall. Alen, Erik, and Vanessa looked back and forth before getting up to see what the commotion was about.
Several heads were poking out of various rooms, and one of the crew was standing out in the hall, pointing back toward a room and shouting at another. "I'm telling ya, something was moving in there!"
The person he was addressing shook his head. "But it disappeared every time you turned your head? Your mind is playing tricks on you. Don't listen to Old William's stories if you're gonna get jumpy like this!"
It looked like whatever had happened, things were already winding down as people were already headed back to whatever they were doing, and the guy who'd been shouting shook his head. Not many people probably heard him, as he muttered to himself. "I know I saw something in there..."
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Alen, trying to get a feel for his new "temporary" home. What's that? What do those quotation marks mean? Oh, don't worry about that. It's not important, I swear!
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I wanted to come on here and talk about my week long vacation w my bf. We’re both mid 20s and we stayed at an airbnb about 20ish minutes from the resort/beach area. This was a very intentional choice because we wanted to experience more of the local culture than stay in the resort bubble. This is my 2nd visit to MX (first visit was across the country) and my bf’s first visit to MX. Our airbnb had a private pool just for our room, free bikes, and a 24/7 onsite caretaker.
We flew into the Tulum airport and took the ADO bus from the airport to the centro, and then took a taxi from the ADO station to Fox to pick up the rental. Overall, a good experience at the airport as well as the ADO bus, and Fox upgraded our rental for free.
I also want to add that I’m fluent in spanish, but my bf is not. This really wasn’t a problem for him bc I could translate. One thing i’ve noticed a lot in this subreddit is that people come to Mexico and act very surprised that people there speak spanish. I would strongly encourage visitors to try to learn a bit of conversational spanish, especially if you plan on staying outside of the resort area. Also, treat the area with respect pls!!! Visiting a foreign country isn’t an excuse to act like a jackass.
Our first day/night in Tulum, we got settled into our airbnb and went to the supermarket to pickup a few groceries. We got dinner at Tropi Taco. AHHHHMAZINGGGG food. Everything was super delicious and we ended up eating there a total of 3 times during our 6 day stay. 10/10 recommended.
Our second day we biked around centro and ate lunch at Potheads. Super friendly service, cute restaurant/café, and the food was really good. We ate there 3 times as well lol. Later that evening we dined at IlIo’s, which is a greek restaurant!! On our way to dinner we were stopped by the police and they made my bf take a breathalyser. Not rlly off putting, more so strange but i also understand we were entering the resort area at night, and there have been some not-so-awesome things happening down there. Fun experience at dinner esp bc I’m greek/mexican and the food was also delicious. Very loud restaurant tho, as there was a DJ playing which we didn’t know was a thing there until we arrived. Stellar customer service. One of the managers came up and apologised for the delay for our entrées (which we didn’t think it took that long to come out) but they gave us a free dessert, free cookies, and the manager gave me a free evil eye bracelet!!!
Our third day, we went to have lunch at Potheads, followed by going Casa Tortuga for the cenote tour, where we explored four different cenotes and they added zip lining for free!!! Absolutely incredible experience and would do it all over again. Worth every penny imo. There was also a photographer that came along with our small tour group and photos were available for purchase. We got a steal of a price for all 37 pictures taken of us. The photographer was very sweet and he took really good pictures of my bf and I. We ate dinner at home bc our airbnb had a grill so my bf grilled some steaks!
Fourth day, we spent at free public beach, which is across the street from the Potheads in the resort area. We taxi’d over there and went bar hopping after our swim. They def watered down the drinks in the resort area but we had a blast at the beach. The tide was high and we weren’t bothered by the seaweed tbh it’s just a part of the beach.
On friday, our 5th day, we kinda stayed in but went to go get couples massages, 100000/100000. We did a relaxing with a deep tissue add on for a 60 min massage experience. Will def be doing that again in MX and in the states lol. Later that evening we dined at Arca, which was a PHENOMENAL experience. Everything was so good and the service was awesome. My partner and I are both well-versed in fine dining experiences and this was def on par with other restaurants we’ve been to in the US. Arca def deserves a Michelin Star for the food and service. The wagyu was our fave. Beautiful ambiance and being able to smoke during dinner was also nice lol. We taxi’d to and from dinner bc my bf and I were planning to drink at dinner.
Saturday was spent at the public beach. Obvi had a blast and the tide wasn’t as high as it was the other day. Had lunch beforehand at Tropi Taco. We planned to go visit the Mayan ruins but the lady at the information center was a bit off-putting and tried to tell us that all the beaches were closed when we told her that we decided to do something else 😭 gave us a good laugh tho!!
Sunday, we got lunch a new café, which i forgot the name of. Food was like objectively good but nothing exceptional. Service was awesome tho and the coffee was yummy. Drove to the airport and dropped off our rental without any issues.
TDLR: we will def be coming back to Tulum and MX in general🫶🏼 The hospitality, graciousness and kindness of the locals is something we will always remember and carry fondly in our hearts.