Sensation from chest into left arm

The night was bone-chillingly cold. The slightest whisper of a breeze nipped at my exposed ears and drafted unpleasantly within my overly large winter coat. The black, barren trees stood unmoving like sentinels bearing ominously down upon either side of the sleet-slick street, which was lit only by dim street lamps that, other than creating a dull yellow reflection on the otherwise unlit pavement, seemed to do nothing against the oppressing dark of this fateful December night.
I had passed through a wrought iron gate twenty minutes before, the gate that separated a cozy subdivision from this eerie, undeveloped stretch of road that seemed to be dropped in the middle of the forest. I could think only of my warm, lively hearth and a nice, hot cup of tea between my palms, which now, instead of being pressed against warm porcelain, were being stabbed by my untrimmed fingernails as I tightened my fist onto the leash and plunged the other still deeper into my coat.
This night was the culmination of weeks of investigation on a missing person’s case turned sour. A man named Arthur Smith had reported his four daughters missing, then hung himself three days later when we couldn’t find anything. Oddly, Arthur’s body went missing from the morgue shortly after. The only trace left was an incredible amount of flies, and we were displeased to see that every drawer was leaking a mixture of blood and embalming fluid because the refrigerant pipes burst. When we opened them up, the neck of every corpse had been slit.
Eventually, through good detective work, we were able to connect some dots, and that led us to where we were now: We were now on a manhunt for a suspect that was last seen at a gas station about a mile up the road, not two hours earlier. We checked a network of cameras to see that he had headed for the woods, grabbed the hounds, and here we were.
My colleagues and I were spread around in different parts of the forest with the police force’s seven bloodhounds. I got stuck with Old Ben, the force’s droopiest and most seasoned canine. He was partially blind and notorious for not obeying commands. He didn’t even respond to a dog whistle, which was why some of my colleagues thought his hearing was shot. I doubted this theory, though, because sure enough, when somebody whispered the word “biscuit,” Old Benny perked up and started wagging his tail.
Another ten minutes found Old Benny and I at the end of the once seemingly endless street, with the streetlamps and pavement stopping abruptly at the edge of the woods, which had not entirely swallowed up a bulldozer. Old Ben stopped and sniffed the air for a moment, then plunged down a path in the woods to our right. It was a dirt path, not two feet wide, overgrown and partially washed out, making it an unpleasant and muddy journey from here on out.
…
My flashlight was now the only source of light illuminating our way. Its beam slid over roots and rocks that jutted out of the path at odd angles and briefly swept over the nearest trees, bringing them out of the shadow for a moment. I felt claustrophobic as they bore down upon me and upon the path. The only sound was my deep breathing, my sloppy footsteps, and Benny’s blundering in the mud about ten feet in front of me.
The path turned in such a way that I could see faint moonlight up ahead, but a cloud soon covered the moon and removed the slight comfort its light had provided. I continued following the curve of the path, and pointed my flashlight up ahead. Suddenly, everything was pitch black, as my flashlight had just gone out without a flicker. I was especially annoyed because firstly, I had just replaced the batteries earlier that week, and secondly, I caught a glimpse of the dark outline of what seemed to be a small cottage up ahead, which was now invisible in the darkness.
To my surprise, Benny stopped as soon as the light went out, which made it easy for me to replace the batteries with the ones that I always carried around in my service belt. To my dismay, Benny did not continue walking when the light flickered back on, even when I started tugging on his leash. He simply sat in the mud and peered at the cottage in the distance, which I knew for a fact he couldn’t see. The cottage was incredibly run down, but I couldn’t see much more, as it was just at the edge of my flashlight beam.
I began feeling uneasy when Benny started whimpering and backing away, tail between his legs. Our dogs were trained to bark when they found something, not stand still, and certainly not whine and back away. Old Ben had never been a skittish animal; I had never seen him act like this before. I peered back at the cottage, suspecting something more sinister than I was originally prepared for.
I tied Benny loosely around a nearby tree, so he could pull away if need be, pulled out my handgun, and continued on. Not fifteen seconds later, I was hit with the smell of blood and wet dog, and heard whimpering to my left. I told Benny to stay, and turned to find him where I left him, about twenty yards behind me, looking at me like I was insane. I bent down and examined the source of the noise, only to find one of our bloodhounds laying just off the path and covered in a mixture of mud and its own blood. It was missing its hind legs and was shivering badly. I cursed and dispatched it with a quick slit with my utility knife, then unclipped its collar and stuffed it into my pocket before turning away. I did not want to alert the suspect of my position. I grew worried about the location of my colleagues, as our dogs were trained not to run off. I also wondered what kind of predator would have taken only the hind legs of an animal. I tried not to think about it as I continued on.
As the cottage grew nearer, I was able to make out a few broken windows reflecting my light back at me. Through these I was able to see that the inside of the cottage was pitch black, the darkest black I had ever seen. I walked closer still, and I couldn’t stop looking into the darkness of the cottage. The darkness was so potent it seemed to be spilling over the window sill into the crisp night air. I felt consumed. My heart began pounding within my chest, and I felt colder than ever as I stepped toward the gravel path that led around to the left of the cottage. The sudden change in surface and the sound of my feet crunching upon the gravel seemed to break my trance, and I shuddered.
I didn’t know why I had felt so trapped, and I didn’t like it. Something was definitely wrong with this situation, and my feelings of dread intensified as I followed the gravel path around to the front of the cottage.
A dripping noise interrupted my thoughts and temporarily washed the dread from my mind. I paused. I determined it was coming from the direction I was headed, but I couldn’t see the front door yet as the porch was draped with ivy. I was suddenly hit with the putrid smell I knew all too well: the smell of death. It hit my nostrils like a truck and returned my feelings of dread all at once. I shined my beam to the front steps.
There was a dark, red liquid trickling gently down the steps, pooling under the porch: blood. I looked up onto the front porch, now visible, and saw the torso of a man hanging from his neck about three feet away from the front door. His legs were nowhere to be seen, though there was a blood trail leading into the house, and his glistening entrails swayed sickeningly with the light breeze. Blood was pooling below him, trickling down the steps, and down through the cracks in the porch. It had begun coagulating, and dark swirling orbs rotated in the puddle each time a drop splashed down. I looked up again at the carcass and recognized the man as our suspect. There was frost beginning to form at the edges of his mouth and over his glassy eyes, but his exposed entrails were still steaming. Furthermore, the blood dripping from his wound was still deep red in color. The back of my neck prickled and I knew this man had not been hanging for very long. No, not very long at all.
I raised my pistol and nudged the front door open. I was again hit with the smell of death, though now much stronger, so strong I could scarcely draw breath. The inside of the cottage was unbelievably dank, and the darkness seemed to eat the quivering beam of light I pointed out in front of me, so I couldn’t see ten feet forward.
I heard a sharp crack and I bolted my gaze to my feet. I had just stepped on a human rib. Suddenly the cottage came alive with creaking and shuffling. I heard flies buzzing all around me. I heard a raspy rushing noise to my right. I shined my flashlight to where I thought the noise was coming from, but all I saw was a bloodstained floor and darkness out in front of me. I took a step toward the noise, and the beam of light revealed the glistening mangled corpse of a man, missing most of his skin, hunched in the corner of the cottage. His whole torso was heaving, and I saw the rushing noise was coming from the base of his throat, where a large gash was opening and closing with every breath, spraying flecks of fluid. Maggots wriggled out of his wound, and black purge fluid trickled from his soupy eye sockets, his missing nose, and his gaping mouth. He was missing most of his teeth, and one of his cheeks was rotted through.
I was frozen in place with fear, until, to my horror, the man’s mangled arm rose and reached out to me. At this I aimed and put a bullet through his partially exposed skull, splattering a putrid mist on the wall behind him. Instead of slumping over, as I prayed he would, the man slowly levitated into an upright position as though controlled by a puppeteer. Skin began regrowing around his legs, his torso, and eventually his skull, which sprouted two bloody horns out of his forehead. This being had the likeness of Arthur Smith, though I sensed it was no longer him. I placed two rounds into his torso, and the being staggered, but the bullet wounds simply closed with sickening squelching sounds. I backed away slowly, and he simply stood in the corner and leered at me with burning black eyes and a disconcerting grin.
I continued to back away slowly, placing one more round between his eyes. His head jerked back, but still it healed and he seemed unbothered. I bolted around and headed for the door. I jerked the handle but it wouldn't budge. I tried kicking it down, which was something I was very practiced at, but still, the rotten oak planks held fast against my will. I turned around, back against the door, firearm at the ready, and stared into the blackness. Everything was quiet once again. Despite the temperature, cold sweat beaded upon my brow and dribbled down my neck.
Suddenly I felt a rumbling that seemed to come from the very depths of the Earth. A splitting and splintering sound came from what I presumed was the center of the cottage, and I was soon showered with bits of wood and stone that nicked my exposed skin and drew droplets of blood. I noticed my back was no longer pressed against the back of the door, though I was not moving. The floor seemed to be carrying me slowly in the direction of the noise. I was frozen in place, and found that I could not change my trajectory.
My flashlight beam found the edge of a large hole in the floor. I saw dark, root-like tendrils sprout from the hole and rush across the floor with the sound of scraping and splintering. They then returned to the hole, and they had within their grasp six bare human bodies, which I horrifically realized were those of my now former colleagues. I watched in horror as their pale naked bodies were folded, torn, ripped, and broken in the churning earth. The sound of tearing flesh and cracking bone was deafening and filled the darkness of the cottage. The mass of mangled flesh formed into one chunky, glistening mound in the center of the hole. It began pulsing and rising, and horrible screams rang in my ears. I watched in horror as the mass formed a humanoid figure that rose up ten feet out of the hole and bent over against the ceiling. It was facing away from me, but its raspy voice seemed to mix seamlessly with the screams directly in my ears.
“The churning of earth, the tearing of flesh, the cracking of bone”
At this it let out a booming laugh that reverberated in my skull and shook the foundation of the building. The cottage once again came alive, but now more than ever before. Shutters were opening and closing, floorboards were rattling, flies swarmed in a huge mass around and around the room, blocking the beam of my flashlight and obscuring my view of the figure. I felt my legs quiver along with the rest of the cottage. I looked down at a red book with its pages fluttering in the still air. I dove for it and slammed it shut, and the cottage grew still. I paused for a moment, but the giant figure began turning towards me. I bolted around to see that the door was now open, but the hung corpse was clinging to the top of the door frame, now very much alive. Its entrails were still swinging freely from its short leap, and the rope lay severed and frayed upon the ground.
I paced towards the door, dumping the rest of my magazine into the corpse, which to my relief fell to the ground with a squelch. I hopped over the body and sprinted out the front door, away from the cottage, down the dirt path. I could still hear the screams of the damned faintly in the distance, and the earth began rumbling once again underneath my feet. I continued running back along the path, trying not to think about what I had witnessed. I paused for a moment to catch my breath, and shivered in the now relentless sleet.
The pounding of the earth became the distant rumble of thunder in the distance. By the time I had gotten back to the paved road, I was soaked to the bone in cold sweat and freezing rain, and I was covered up to my thighs in mud from the path. My coat was snagged and torn in places from the splinters of wood and from branches along the path.
When I finally got back to my car, I saw a leash leading underneath it, and found Old Ben, crouched below, tail between his legs. I scooped him up and plopped him in the passenger seat, entirely disregarding the former cleanliness of my car, as it was now covered in mud and dog hair. I cranked up the heat and sped off towards the station to report what I had witnessed.
…
We never did find that cottage again. Other guys went back to where I was and failed to find the path, but they did find the dismembered bodies of my colleagues hidden under the bulldozer at the end of the street. I was charged with the deaths of my colleagues and was thrown into a mental institute, but I don’t mind it much. There are people here that are far more insane than I am. The worst part is my occasional perception of a distant rumbling, and during thunderstorms I’m a whimpering mess.
I have been disciplined three times for writing symbols on the walls that I can’t get out of my head. I draw them in my blood so they stand out more and resemble what I see. I have found that once they are on the wall, they stay out of my head. Unfortunately, I haven’t finished writing them all out yet. The first time I started I got really close to finishing, but then I found myself strapped to a hospital bed.
The worst part of my new existence is the nightmares. I am plagued by images of my former colleagues: their pale dismembered bodies, the sound of cracking bone, their blood on my hands, their shrieks of pain, and the taste of flesh.

You notice a slight headache throughout the weeks of your stay in Kenya, you visited Kitum Cave Wednesday last week and ever since then you've been feeling.. off..
you go to a clinic Tuesday this week to see what is wrong, they say you have a raised temperature and a slight headache, might be a cold going around, they recommend headache relief and good rest,
the problem is.. you cant sleep, your mind is racing all the while it feels like its about to explode, suddenly its 7:00 AM. time to get up. you have a sharp pain in your chest and your muscles ache.
you look in the mirror.. your face.. its almost as if you are wearing a mask of skin with two beady beet-red eyes.
your stomach twists and turns in the most agonizing way, you turn to look at your watch, something isn't right, you have little bright red specks dotting from your arm to your wrist that itch and burn.
your frightened by this, and you know deep down this isn't the worst its going to get.
right now a strange organism is turning your internal organs into its own mushy playground, filling your cells with itself until the cells explode like an egg sac filled with spiders, the newly formed viruses burrow their way into more of your blood cells.
you call a doctor and schedule an emergency appointment to get you checked, your driving to the clinic twisting around a mountain.
you hear a strange sound in your gut as your insides drip out of your intestines in what feels like liquid fire.
your hit like a bullet with sudden nausea, you gag and retch trying not to vomit.. futile... black gunk pours out of your mouth like a high pressure tap.
your mind races to the point of extreme confusion.. you. cannot. breath... suddenly you go unconscious driving down from a mountain-top, your tires screech out of control, down you go.. its over for you...

I sat in our dark bedroom, the computer screen glaring with a harsh, white light. A banner flashed before my eyes: “Seek wisdom by understanding yourself.”
“Chloe, check this out,” I called over my shoulder to my girlfriend playing The Sims on her laptop.
She glanced up, her brow furrowing in confusion before giving me a bemused look. “What the hell are you looking at?” she asked.
“It’s some cult,” I replied, unable to hide my fascination. “I fell down a rabbit hole and found this local place downtown. It's a derivative of Aleister Crowley and Golden Dawn bullshit.” I pointed to the Google Street View image of a dilapidated storefront in an ethnic shopping center.
She smirked, a hint of amusement in her eyes. “I never pegged you as the religious type.”
“Check this out,” I continued, clicking through the site. “They have some photos.”
We spent some time going through the albums celebrating various solstices. Most were taken in an odd room with black and white checkered floors, adorned with Egyptian pseudo-artifacts, bathed in the glow of red and purple lights that transformed the scene into a surreal dreamscape.
The people certainly had an alternative vibe. Tattoos were plentiful, but other than that they looked like they came from all different walks of life. Many of them looked like they had their fair share of bullying in high school - no shortage of that. But most of them looked relatively normal aside from the occasional piercing.
One photograph in particular caught my eye. A woman, sitting in a bright red room, sat on an altar, holding a staff in her right hand, wearing nothing. A man was kneeled before her, his arms tied behind him, rope anchored to the ceiling. They were sliding a knife down his back, a small trickle of blood dripping to the floor.
“Damn,” Chloe started. “She’s butt-ass naked.”
“You wanna go?” I asked. “They’re having a get together tonight.”
“You know what, fuck it. Why not? It’s not like we’re doing anything.” she replied.
“Good,” I smiled, standing up. “Because I already ordered an Uber.”
She sighed before opening a drawer and pulling out a small pipe. “I’ll go, but i'm not going sober.”
It was a cold, shitty Seattle winter night. We got dropped off in the parking lot and spent a few minutes looking for the storefront. We finally found it next to a dog groomer and Pho restaurant with some pun for the name I can’t seem to remember.
We entered the shop, which consisted of two narrow isles separated by wood shelves barely big enough for me to fit down. We spent some time looking at the various items, my attention diverting to a vial of elk blood. I remember wondering if they were even allowed to sell this without some type of medical certification they definitely did not have while Chloe shuffled through a bowl of mix and match crystals.
“Can I help you?” I heard a woman say from the back as she emerged from a beaded curtain. She was a short, overweight woman wearing what I could only describe as a sports bra and hula skirt.
“Hi, uh,” I stuttered. “I’m George and this is Chloe. We’re here for the… winter solstice celebration?”
“Oh, goodie! Newcomers!” she said with an out of place, overjoyed expression as she clapped her hands. Chloe and I laughed nervously.
“The door is in the back, but you can come through here just this time.” she said with a smile, arm holding the beaded curtain open.
We walked through a dark hallway, somehow more cramped than the shop, into a rather large room. A gaggle of people were huddled in the back, which Chloe and I quietly shuffled into.
A bearded man paraded around the room, white robes and red headdress cascading into a cloak, knuckles adorned with several large rings gripping a spear, held vertically in front of him. Behind him, another bald man, white robes and yellow cloak, followed behind, white sleeves crossed over his chest.
I glanced at Chloe’s bloodshot eyes, THC clearly flowing through her system. I gave her a knowing look, as if to say Having fun yet? She returned a slow smile.
Without warning, the entire crowd clapped their hands together over their heads as a woman in blue robes walked past, waving a censure leaking white smoke. We awkwardly followed to match the group.
The blue curtains on the back wall opened to reveal an older Asian woman sitting perched on the altar I saw in the photos, again, completely naked. And before you ask, no. She wasn’t attractive. It’s never the ones you hope it is. The red robed man kneeled down and softly kissed her knees.
I glanced back at Chloe. Her smile was so big I was afraid she was going to laugh at any moment. I pinched her on the side and whispered into her ear “Do. Not. Fucking. Laugh”. Honestly, I think I just made it worse. Her face turned beet red as she bit her cheeks.
The ritual went on for another half hour or so. They must’ve said “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” at least a dozen times.
We were getting kind of bored and were ready to leave before the woman in the blue robes wandered in with a caged chicken.
"No fucking way" I thought. Surely enough, the man in the yellow robes held the chicken high in the air, before slitting its throat and draining blood into a large metallic basin. The man winced as the chicken flailed violently, scratching up his arms, before eventually succumbing to blood loss.
One by one, each person there stood between a white and black pillar saying love and intention in Greek before eating a piece of something, taking a sip of blood, and saying “There is no part of me that is not of the Gods.”
Chloe and I hung back, and politely declined when our turn came. Once all was said and done, they busted out some alcohol and started celebrating. We slipped out into the street, bursting out laughing. After we finally collected ourselves, Chloe whipped out her phone and showed me she took dozens of pictures of the ritual.
We laughed our asses off the entire way home. First thing she did was open her laptop and post the pictures on Twitter, tagging the lodge with the caption “me and the boys chilling right now”.
We returned to the usual rhythm of our lives. I went to work, conducting meetings and answering emails, while Chloe went back to her classes. A few days later, Chloe checked her Twitter and saw that she had gained a few thousand likes. The whole ordeal became a running joke between us.
I would eat fruit snacks and sip on my soda, saying, “There is no part of me that is not of the Gods”. A few weeks later, we had mostly forgotten about it, except for the occasional recounting as a funny story to regale our friends.
One night while Chloe and I were spending our evening the usual way with me on the computer and her on her laptop, I felt her furiously tap my shoulder while staring wide eyed at the window. Confused, I took my headphones off and walked over, pulling back the curtain to reveal 6 people standing in black robes and animal masks watching us from the hillside.
“What do we do, should I call the cops?” Chloe whimpered.
“No, they’re just a bunch of larpers. They’re not going to do shit! Just trying to scare us.” I said angrily as I closed the blinds and hopped back on my computer.
Chloe sat there for a few minutes in a tense pose with her arms folded together. She went to double check the door was locked, before we continued our night as normal.
The next day I got a text from Chloe frantically telling me to come home immediately. When I arrived, there was a squad car parked outside our building. I ran up the stairs to see two officers standing by Chloe in the doorway. I nearly shouted asking what was going on. They lead me inside to show me a massive black symbol drawn on our wall, a six-pointed star made from one continuous line.
We finished our police report and they told us they’d get back to us if they find anything. I’ve been robbed often enough to know that means they’re going to forget about this before they’ve even gotten back into their squad car.
Furious, I stormed over to the shop and banged on the window. The hula skirt woman came over and cracked the door open just enough for me to see one of her eyes.
“What the fuck do you think your little posse is doing!?” I screamed at her. “Breaking into my apartment like that!? You all are fucking psychos!”
“I haven’t any idea what you’re talking about”, she said with a sly grin.
“Oh, yeah?” I said pointing a finger in her face. “If anyone tries any shit like that again I’m going to burn your goddamn shop to the ground, do you hear me?”
She looked at the ground, clearly nervous. I have never blown up at a stranger like this but I could tell my threats were working.
After a moment of silence I stormed off again, back towards home.
“You meddle with forces you do not understand!” she called out from the shop.
I picked up a glass bottle from the sidewalk and chucked it, smashing against her shop window, forcing her to close the door and disappear into the shadows. I’m not particularly proud of how I behaved in this moment, but unless you’ve had someone break into your home and draw shit on the walls, hold on to your judgment.
The next few days passed without so much as a peep from them. Chloe and I began to relax, convincing ourselves that the cult had been scared off. Life seemed to be returning to normal, and the unsettling incident became just another story.

While I did have fun establishing a beachhead in Ashlands, and generally I found fighting hordes of enemies to be a fun experience, as I pushed deeper into the biome I began to notice a number of underwhelming elements that left me scratching my head. This isn't about Ashlands difficulty, there is no solving these problems other than the biome needing even more time in the oven.
I understand that Valheim's development has always been slow, but there are things in Ashlands that just seem rushed:

• There is only one layout for the Fortress. Every single Fortress you encounter will be almost exactly the same (aside from slight variations in enemy types due to spawners)
• Reskins: Flametal Pillars are just reskinned Kraken, and suffer from the same sliding glitch that Kraken have for the last 3 years - except instead of harmlessly falling into the ocean, you get instagibed by lava
• Reskins2: While the new models are definitely awesome (Askvins, Voltures, Valkyrie, and Morgen), an unprecedented half the enemies are reskins (Serpents, Skeletons, and Blobs). Hell the miniboss is just a reskinned Brenna from Hildir's Quest without even a new attack animation.
• Putrid Holes are simply reskinned Troll Caves, and we don't even have a dungeon to explore either. The reason for no dungeons is because they apparently ran out of time to make them
• The INSTANCE COUNT is insane. Each 64x64 meter area (a zone) has between 5k-8k instances without laying down a single build piece.
• While some of the magic weapons / lightning axes are certainly cool, the rest of the weapons are pretty underwhelming. Upgrading them with gems only marginally increases their damage and functionality.
• The scarcity and RNG of gems means that playing with 2+ people equates to not everyone being able to build every weapon in the biome (without changing resource drops in World Modifiers). There's even a chance that you get only Flametal and no gems at all from Fortress chests.
• There can only be 1 Legendary Sword (The Dyrnwyn) per Seed, and frankly its not even better than the upgraded Krom anyways.
• Smallest biome thus far, when the terrain generation changes came through the biome shrunk by nearly half
• So many bugs - buggy mining, buggy sound, buggy Ashkvin behavior, random lava holes, frame rate drops and just so many damn bugs.

This is the first biome they've released where nearly half the enemies were reskins, and yet it still feels rushed out the door (even after 17 months) with all the bugs that litter the place. Its my understanding that Valheim has only two programmers on their entire Dev team, which certainly explains the speed at which content is made - but perhaps its time to get another programmer on the team, Iron Gate.

Species: Domestic medium hair - Age: ~1 year - Sex/Neuter: Male/Neutered - Weight: ~4.5 kg
Very long, so tl/dr: Skittish cat got very stressed by stranger staying at house overnight and I think felt trapped where he was (closet all night). Once found and isolated, kept intermittently panting for a little over an hour, slowly decreasing over time. Was acting fairly normal apart that (eating, drinking, litter box), and previous bloodwork/x-rays/pro-BNP were normal. Is this length of time after such a long stressful event normal, especially when there were pauses? Stranger is staying the night again (medical emergency) so I plan on putting him in a closed bedroom with Feliway.
Video link; https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pf39S6Bjcp74PQKf0b9nFltFvetzh1uV/view?usp=sharing
More details (but long);
Cat is extremely skittish around strangers. My father slept over last night on a mattress on the main floor of our townhome and of course, the cat hid under my bed but seemed fine when I went to sleep (had brought litter box, watefood in the room). Shortly after, he headed downstairs and only when I woke up did I realize he hadn't come back which was odd for him. Found him in the hallway closet facing the wall tightly wedged between two recycling boxes, so it looked like he spent the majority of the night terrified there (I feel AWFUL).
Ran back to the bedroom and after my father left, I was able to coax him out with a Churu and then noticed he was panting like a dog. It was sort of intermittent, where he would stop to eat, or drink, or groom himself, but then start again - so like 10-15 seconds on and then 10-15 seconds off. It is warmer in the bedroom but not all that hot and I did try to cool him down with water and a cold towel on his paws and ears. He had full bloodwork before he was neutered last October including a pro-BNP test (not the SNAP, the quantitative Cardiopet), which was within normal, as well as x-rays in January due to an unrelated event (gastro) that included the chest and abdomen and were clear so I felt this was more stress than a more serious issue? I've seen a cat go into respiratory distress, and the cat looked bad with strong abdominal breathing and clear distress, whereas he seemed pretty normal apart that and acting skittish and a bit, er, emotionally distressed. Didn't want to rush him somewhere and stress him more for no reason so I just stayed with him and monitored him and the panting slowed down becoming less frequent and in shorter segments but it took a little over an hour to completely stop at which he stayed under the bed for another 30 minutes and then he was out and pretty much completely acting like himself. Is that length of time to calm down normal if the stressful event was all night? I'm planning on putting him in the closed bedroom tonight from the start, setting up an A/C, and I got a Feliway Optimum plugin, but I feel absolutely terrible (and worried!). Just wondering if this sort of thing is still within the realm of "possible due to stress" or what.
Thank you if you read this and thank you for any comments.

Hi all, as the title says Hesychasm has "pushed" me towards leaving the EO Church. It may seem like a minor thing to leave EO over, but for me I've been torn between EO and RC for some time now and this issue is the "smoking gun" (imo). Let me explain my line of thinking and please correct me where/if I'm wrong or misinformed.
EO and RC split around 1054, RC proceeds to introduce some "new" additions to the faith (Purgatory, Immaculate Conception etc.) but nothing that is necessarily that impactful on a day to day basis. (E.g. whether or not Mary was immaculately conceived doesn't weigh on my conscious daily and doesn't really impact my prayer life or spiritual life in a meaningful way). I understand that there are obviously doctrines that do impact RC lives daily (e.g. indulgences) but I still believe this is on a minor scale compared to my next point. EO on the other hand, kept their traditions mostly the same after the split with a few minor additions of their own as well. That was UNTIL the Palamas/Hesychasm debates in the 14th Century. During this era of EO history, the EO monks began to embrace some very odd practices involving breathe work, postures (i.e. yoga), meditation, and supposedly began seeing the "uncreated light of God". These practices very obviously are identical to the pagan practices we see in yoga and Islam etc. and were foreign to The Faith until after the split when the EO embraced them. Barlaam the theologian/monk and scholar proceeds to condemn these practices as unorthodox and Palamas is considered a heretic until that decision is overturned and eventually EO embrace Palamas and his Hesychasm teachings, and I believe Barlaam went on to convert to RC afterward. That's a very abridged version, but all that to say, if EO fully embraced this teaching that by sitting in a certain yoga poses, tucking your chin in, breathing through the diaphragm, and navel gazing will provide Christians with the possible ability to "see God", isn't this a MAJOR erroneous development in our tradition? I get it, RC introducing Purgatory is a tough pill to swallow, but doesn't that at least stay within the parameters of Christian faith comparatively speaking to our "side" that accepted full blown demonically centered yoga? I think at the time in the 1350s all the Christian/Hindu/Buddhist/Islamic monks doing this practice were having experiences, but I think as the science has caught up in the 21st Century, we're kinda left with egg on our face as we now know it isn't "God" they were seeing, but was due to the blood flow and oxygen levels that are manipulated by meditative yoga. If an atheist can reproduce this identical experience as many do through meditation/yoga, then we know it wasn't a supernatural experience as Palamas and ultimately EO doctrinal defined it.
All that to say, if anyone has 15 mins to watch this clip from 2:06-17:26 (Youtub = Eastern "Orthodoxy" Exposed: Their Heretical Doctrine of God - by Vaticancatholic.com) outlining these practices in Hesychams and teachings of Palamas I'd love to hear a thoughtful rebuttal (FYI the content creator is uncharitable and difficult to stomach at times, but his historical account/quotes are spot on according to reputable Orthodox online resources I've found). I don't want to leave EO but feel as though if our fathers got it THIS wrong in this area and embraced full blown pagan demonic yogi practices and affirmed it in our "Spirit lead" synods/councils, then we are in grave error and thus prone to error in other areas as well (i.e. the Papacy perhaps?). Accepting the Pope has spoken infallibly 5-10 times over the last 2000 yrs has been much easier for me to accept then EO fundamentally shifting to a Palamas-ish theology. And honest question, if this has become part of the EO tradition, how many of you actually practice this? Seriously, if we can potentially "see God" tonight through breathwork and special postures, why wouldn't we do this daily? (I have a sneaking suspicion most of us don't participate in this practice because something within us knows better).
Thank you in advance! And if you don't have time to watch the clip, here are the major quotes that I see as being irreconcilable for the EO:
“Striking parallels exist between the physical techniques recommended by the Byzantine Hesychasts and those employed in Hindu Yoga and in Sufism” - Bishop Timothy (Kallistos) Ware
“It was Gregory’s achievement to set Hesychasm on a firm dogmatic basis by integrating it into Orthodox theology as a whole. His teaching was confirmed by two councils held at Constantinople in 1341 and 1351, which, although local and not Ecumenical, yet possess a doctrinal authority in Orthodox theology scarcely inferior to the seven general councils themselves.” - Bishop Timothy (Kallistos) Ware
“One of the most thoroughgoing attempts in the history of Christian spirituality to ascribe a positive and dynamic role to the body during prayer was made by the fourteenth-century hesychasts. As an accompaniment to the recitation of the Jesus prayer they proposed a physical technique that has obvious parallels in yoga and among the Sufis of Islam.” - Bishop Timothy (Kallistos) Ware
"How should such a one not gain great profit if, instead of letting his eye roam…he should fix it on his breast or on his navel, as a point of concentration?...he will also, by disposing his body in such a position, recall into the interior of the heart a power which is ever flowing outwards…” - Gregory Palamas, The Triads
“By fixing one’s gaze on one’s navel and resting one’s chin on one’s breast, one could make one’s breathing coincide with the repetition of the prayer.”- Hesychast Monk's instructions
“Just as the aspirant in Yoga is taught to concentrate his thought in specific parts of his body, so the Hesychast concentrates his thought in the cardiac centre.” - Hesychast Monk's instructions
"Rest your beard on your chest, and focus your physical gaze, together with the whole of your intellect, upon the center of your belly or your navel.” - Hesychast Monk's instructions

Brought our 2010 Nissan Murano into an AAMCO (a mistake, I know) for a new transmission. Got it back about two weeks ago and have had nothing but issues since, but they’re “technically” unrelated. When we brought it in everything except the transmission worked, they replaced the trans, put in a new wheel bearing on the front left wheel, and charged us an arm and a leg for it.
Since, we haven’t had AC despite the refrigerant pressure being very high (maxed out the pressure gauge), our wheels are out of alignment so the steering is crooked, there’s a weird rattling noise on acceleration from a cold engine, and to top it all off our power steering just went out.
They say it’s all unrelated to the replacement, but we have had 0 issues with this car and somehow after their replacement we have a ton of issues.
What are your thoughts?

Im a 31 year old female with endometriosis and ADHD. I weigh 45kg and 154cm in height. White, female, generally pretty healthy bar the endometriosis and physically active. Take ADHD meds during day and melatonin at night usually for ADHD related sleep onset issues.
Now on codeiene 30mg, Pregabalin 50mg x 3 times per day. Anti sickness meds from post op complications and suspected pudenal neuraglia.
I had a larsoscopy in January. My aterty was cut (unsure which bit likely a branch of lilo lumbar or espgatric) I bled into my pelvis and labia and crashed in the ward a few hours after surgery. I developed a grade 3 hematoma. The hospital discharged me with no follow up or aftercare plan so no one has physically assessed me since surgery bar my GP. My GP arranged an ultrasound 4 weeks post op to confirm blood has reasborded. I had a UTI around this time, which resolved. However the nausea, stabbing pains in hematoma site, reduced ability to open my bowels/bladder, reduced sensitivity on my left leg and labia have not resolved. My GP suspects nerve damage, and I am now on Pregabalin as a result to manage the burning sensation and pain in my groin. I can barely walk or sit some days due to pain. I've been on Pregabalin 2 months so fairly adjusted to it. It brings some relief.
However, Everytime I have a "pain flare up" my former hematoma site darkens and becomes bruised, this can be from as little as having sex or walking to trying to do more physical activity. This builds up over days until it is sore to touch and I begin to lose mobility due to pain. Opening my bowels and fully emptying my bladder becomes almost impossible, to the point I'm in agony just going to the toilet. I've started to manually evacuate (I've done this occasionally for many years due to IBS related to endometriosis) and notice how blocked my actual back passage feels, it feels like there is this bump pushing down into it from the part close to my vagina that I cant seem to adjust or move. I cannot tolerate insertion to my vagina that is at 12 o'clock (near my bladder) or six o'clock (near my rectum).
Yesterday I lost my footing due to trying to get off the toilet after weeing due to stabbing pain in surgery site after emptying my bladder. I noticed the entire area has developed patches of brown/blue markings, and I am experiencing loose bowel motions and today. The pain is so bad I can't sit anymore today and have been in bed most the day. My usual stretches and pain killers are bringing no relief.
My GP is concerned and has referred me to a urologist, endo specialist and rectal surgeon. My boyfriend is also a doctor (junior) and has no idea why the bruising appears and what causes these bad pain flares. All vaginal swaps and urine tests came back clear.
If anyone has any ideas or in this area, please let me know.

Synopsis
Resol’s IOT is a novel series about an attempt by the main character called Resol to make the world a post scarcity society.
Resol IOT: MAMA apartments is a novel about an attempt by the main character, Resol, to try and introduce a new housing model called MAMA apartments, to continue his journey of trying to make the world a post scarcity society.
MAMA apartments consists of houses connected by an elevator system to a food and clothes hub.
When people in these houses need food or clothes, they order from the food or clothes hub and they are brought directly into the mini elevator, inside the house, by small pods from the hubs through the elevator system.
When they finish eating or wearing the food or clothes, they use the pods to return the dirty dishes or clothes to the hubs for cleaning and storing.
These houses don’t require a permanent kitchen, closet, appliances etc. making them simple enough to be cleaned by autonomous robots.
But as Resol's dream takes flight, it encounters formidable obstacles.
Can he navigate the treacherous waters of bureaucracy, technological barriers and opposition to realize his vision? Or will the hurdles prove to be too strong and force him to abandon his vision?
"Resol IOT: MAMA Apartments" is a gripping tale of innovation, ambition, and the indomitable human spirit.
Join Resol on a journey that transcends the boundaries of imagination, and discover the true power of vision in a world teetering on the brink of change.

 Episode 1 

Resol stood by the bedside, his tailored suit impeccable even in the soft morning light filtering through the curtains.
Wendy, his wife, lay nestled in the sheets, her curls splayed across the pillow, still caught in the gentle embrace of sleep.
" I'm off to the office for the inaugural meeting on the evaluation of MAMA apartments," Resol murmured, his voice breaking the peaceful silence of the room. Wendy stirred slightly, her eyelids fluttering open.
"Already?"
"Yes, I have been waiting for this day all my life," said a smiling Resol, “We used to say we want to build houses connected to a food and clothes hub, and now we have achieved that goal and have actually built them in real life."
"Just... don't push them too hard when things are not as you expected, okay? They've been working hard, too."
"I have to," Resol responded, his tone tinged with urgency. "You know the business might not produce as much revenue for long. We only have one shot at this."
Wendy nodded. Resol slipped out of the room, the door closing softly behind him.
Outside, the morning air was crisp as he made his way to his Range Rover, the engine purring to life beneath him.
As he navigated the streets toward the MAMA apartments main office, his thoughts swirled with the impending meeting.
After about a 30-minute drive, he finally reached the office building containing the MAMA apartments office.
He went inside and was greeted with warm respect and admiration by the secretary, Sharon.
She led him to the meeting room and as they entered, his eyes lit up at the sight of his friend, Daniel, seated alone.
A wide grin spread across Resol's face as they embraced.
"It's been long," Resol exclaimed, patting his friend on the back.
"Absolutely. I am always happy to meet the man who forever changed education by replacing writing with voice and lip sync commands."
Resol smiled and glanced around the room, then turned back to Daniel. "Where are the main project managers?"
Daniel, engrossed in his phone, looked up briefly. "I told them I'd let them know when you arrived."
"Why's that?"
Daniel smirked. "I didn’t want them anxious in here waiting for you. You know you are bigger than life, right?"
A chuckle escaped Resol's lips.
Daniel leaned back in his chair. "By the way, I tested the houses. They are just as we imagined back in the day."
Relief washed over Resol's features. "Really?"
Before Daniel could answer, two well-dressed gentlemen entered the meeting room.
Daniel greeted them warmly before he introduced them to Resol.
"Mr. Feli, meet Jeff, the project manager for construction, and Malik, the project manager for automation."
"Pleasure to meet you both."
Daniel excused himself with a nod and left the meeting room.
"Have you completed the MAMA apartment complexes in all three locations?" asked Resol.
"Yes, but there's both good news and bad news," said Malik.
Resol closed his eyes briefly. "Tell me the good news first."
Malik cleared his throat. "The good news is that we've successfully tested all three MAMA apartments, and they're functioning perfectly."
A small sigh of relief escaped Resol's lips. "And what's the bad news?"
"Unfortunately," Malik paused, "we couldn't finish the automations for the food and clothes hub."
Resol's shoulders slumped.
After a few seconds of silence, Malik continued, "We needed to ensure that the automation and systems we created were flawless before the deadline."
Resol ran a hand through his hair. "The selling point of MAMA apartments is the automation."
"The automations..." Malik began, but Resol cut him off with a wave of his hand.
"There's no need for further explanation. I'll see the reality for myself as we do the assessments. But if the amount of automation is not as we agreed on the plan, then I guess we will have to let you go."
“We are sorry boss, we tried our best,” said Jeff.
"That's enough explanation for today," Resol declared, glancing at his watch. "I have a meeting with the Education Minister in an hour. Tomorrow, I expect to start the on-site assessment of the apartments."
As he offered them a handshake, Jeff asked, "Which location would you like to do the assessment?" Resol paused for a moment. "I'll choose randomly in the morning."
Both Jeff and Malik looked startled by his response and they exchanged a quick glance.
"But, sir," Malik began, "shouldn't we plan the assessment—"
"They're all the same, aren't they?"
The two men nodded.
"Very well then," Resol continued as he straightened his tie. "I'll leave it to you to plan the assessment, and decide what you'll start showing me in any apartment complex I choose."
"Thank you, sir," they said almost in unison.
"Gentlemen, it was a pleasure meeting you both," Resol said with a nod, before exiting the room.
He headed to the headquarters of his main company, Mkufu.
There, he met with the education minister and spent the rest of the day working.
He finally returned to his grand mansion as the evening sun dipped below the horizon.
As he entered the living room, he found Wendy engrossed in documentaries on the television.
Her attention was focused, but she glanced up with a warm smile as Resol approached.
"Hey, how was your day?"
Resol managed a small smile in return. "It went okay. The project managers assured me that the houses are ready to house people now."
Wendy's eyebrows furrowed slightly. "But something's bothering you, isn't it?"
Resol sighed and sank onto the couch beside her. "They haven't finished all the automations we planned."
Wendy slapped her forehead gently and then slid her hands down her face. "I knew it. I told you we should have started with minimum automation and added more as time went on. Now we have lost time and we are still in the same position."
"We can't change what's already done. Let's not make conclusions or blame each other until after the assessment."
Just then, their four-year-old son, Zack, bounded into the room, his face lit up with excitement at seeing his parents.
Both Resol and Wendy's faces brightened instantly at the sight of their beloved son.
"Mom! Dad!" Zack exclaimed, running over to them. Wendy scooped him up into her arms, showering him with kisses. "Hey there, champ! Did you have a good day?"
Zack nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah!"
As Wendy carried Zack off to his room for some playtime before dinner, Resol followed behind, his heart feeling lighter at the sight of his family together.
Thank you. I will post the 2nd episode tommorow!

TDLR: Ex texted a bestfriend behind my back ending of last year ruining the friendship. Broke up with her, during that time I rekindled with someone else while occasionally texting my ex still not back together. Felt like I missed the warmth of my ex and dropped the new girl going back to my ex fully beginning of this year. Missed the support and love from my ex that I never truly got. Girl told me ex about our dirty laundry, causing trust issues in the whole relationship. Tried fixing them by removing girls, sharing location, etc. I felt scared my ex is gonna get revenge and started being distant at the end which pushed her away as well. We broke up beginning of May. I thought we would get back together as always, found out she’s been adding guys she removed a long time ago. I got upset and texted her ugly nasty shit, and texted her dad saying his daughter is nasty etc. I thought by doing this I’d move on quicker, he told me to leave them alone. I understand I fucked up and want to apologize to the parents for the lack of character I had but feel like it’s too late to backtrack on the stupid shit I said. Am I being selfish by sending a text?
Hello all, This is gonna be long. I really appreciate anyone who takes time to read and help with some words. I have no therapist or friends this seems like the best option.
I have never posted on here but seriously feel torn up. I know that I have been in the wrong in all this but I truly was dealing with a weed addiction till I finally sobered up and realized how fucked I am. This relationship has been a rollercoaster, but something I didn’t want to get off. She showed me many first things and it was my longest relationship of three years. She cared for me when I had no job, to every job, skinny fat, etc and I did the same with her struggles. To make a long story short back in August of 2023 I found my ex texting one of my bestfriends that worked with her at the time(I had quit that spot and found another job). No lust or crazy texts just work laughing but I confronted her about it it was jealousy and she said it was nothing.
After a few weeks come September I kept feeling this jealousy boil over. If she had texted anybody else I wouldn’t have said much but I felt like cause it was MY friend she should have brought up the convo they had even if it was light and funny. I was pestering her about him, she then decided to text him behind my back saying I’m being jealous. They text back and forth and he’s calling me a kid and disrespecting me even though he’s known me for longer, and she was laughing sending him laughing emojis and stuff. He then texted me asking me to fight because somehow she told him I threatened him. I got pissed she ruined a friendship and told her I’m done blocked her on everything. From September to December 2023 I was all alone focused on work and meeting new people. In December I rekindled with a girl I knew no feelings just stupid lust. While talking to the new girl, my ex sends me a heartfelt email since I had blocked her on everything, saying she’s sorry and understands I don’t want to hear from her but wishes me the best. I softened up and began texting her here and there, but still was talking to the new girl.
After a while in Jan/Feb 2024 I met with the girl I had rekindled with and we had done some things. However during this time I started seriously missing my ex and the way I felt comfortable around her. So I was talking to my ex again fully and wanted to make it work again. The problem came when my ex wanted to visit me since she’s long distance. She flew all the way to me and everything was good, till that new girl decided she wasn’t getting my attention anymore and texted my ex lying to her telling her I was begging for her etc. My ex broke down and asked why and I childishly said because of what she had done by texting my bestfriend and that we weren’t together. She cried in my arms and I balled with her cause I truly didn’t want to hurt this girl like this. I offered her to leave me and understood I fucked up. But to my surprise she wanted to stay and asked to fix our trust. I tried my hardest to fix it, I gave her my social passwords, she had my location, everything she wanted she got, even removed all girl friends to gain trust and she removed guys. However after some time around March 2024 I felt like all that I did wasn’t building up that trust again, and I began having flashbacks to trauma where I got left and cheated on within a week. I felt like my ex got back with me to seek revenge. So I started pushing her away scared.
During April she came again to visit me and booked a flight without asking me to pay or anything and genuinely asked to spend every minute of the day with me. I should have taken her coming to see me without me asking as her sign of true love but I ignored it.
Beginning of May 2024 came and our problems began. I started seeing her go out with friends to bars, even to houses I didn’t know and she would take a little longer to respond. I began thinking something is up due to my trauma and started being distant with her. She kept asking me to stop doing this, and cried a few times but I was truly scared of behind hurt and thought by being distant I’m protecting myself. She told me this once and it’s stuck with me “you’re gonna regret doing this”. After that convo she became cold with me too to the point where I didn’t even know who she was anymore. Our final convo was May10. We argued on the phone, and she blamed me for everything, I brought my ex bestfriend and her and how they hurt me she said she had already apologized and I said I did too for cheating but I knew what I did hurt more. She told me to leave her tf alone that I haven’t been the man she needs saying she’s seen better guys treat gfs better etc. That she wants time alone that she wouldn’t go around like I did with girls fucking randoms guys. I blocked her but I genuinely thought we would breakup and get back together as always.
However a week passed and I heard nothing. For some reason I felt like I deserved an apology cause during our arguments I was being more respectful and it felt like she kept saying stuff on purpose to hurt me. I saw she had logged onto my socials and I locked her out and logged out of her accounts cause I felt like it was better. However I was still stalking her Instagram following number and began seeing it go up fast. I started getting guys being suggested to me that follow her and I noticed it was all guys she used to work with and removed for “trust”. I felt broken cause it felt like she did what my first ex with the trauma did , just move on within a week. I felt sad, but the sadness turned to anger. I thought by burning bridges I could move on quicker. And I began blowing her up with calls to no answer, so I switched to texting and said some of the most heinous shit I’ve said to anyone. I then texted her mom telling her her daughter got a new type being childish but nothing too disrespectful to the mom. I texted the dad however and called his daughter names, which he got back at me with a threat and called me childish and that he’s happy his daughter isn’t with someone like me and to lose their numbers. I said lmao cool being even more childish.
I genuinely felt bad the same day I texted the parents this. I felt like bringing them into childish arguments and saying what I said made me look like a true child which I try not to be fast in situations but I was impatient and dumb. I felt like I was the one being stubborn in the relationship and pushed her away, then got upset when she did walk away I just didn’t appreciate her at the end and it hurts my soul I’ve felt this heaviness on my chest ever since like I lost the person for me. I know blaming it on the weed is childish but I feel like it game me that I don’t give a F feeling till it bit me in the ass. I spoke to my only friend and my parents who didn’t even accept the relationship at first due to culture, but they told me I had fucked up and told me with time they will heal, and that in time I can send a message to the parents if I wanted to to get my conscious clear and be able to move on with a better image.
Is it smart to reach back out to the parents to show respect as an adult or just let them be? I know this was a lot but it’s on my heart and brain everyday since. A part of me says apologize in the hopes of getting this girl back one day which I know is selfish, the bigger part of me just hates the image I left of myself cause I have never left a relationship in this manner

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/21/us/politics/trump-biden-fundraising.html

Mr. Trump’s advisers have said privately that his campaign, together with the Republican Party and all of their affiliated committees, raised $76.2 million in April. The Biden campaign said on Monday evening that it had raised $51 million in April with the Democratic National Committee — which was just over half as much as they raised in March, and also a touch less than they raised in February.
In filings with the Federal Election Commission on Monday, Mr. Biden’s campaign committee reported taking in $24.2 million in April, compared with $43.8 million in March.
Mr. Trump’s campaign still lags far behind in total cash on hand, the April filings show. Mr. Biden’s campaign ended April with $84.5 million on hand, holding roughly steady from the preceding month, while Mr. Trump’s campaign had $48 million in net cash on hand, up from $45 million in March.
Mr. Trump had been widely expected to close the fund-raising gap with Mr. Biden once he secured the Republican nomination, because he can now raise money in tandem with the Republican National Committee, collecting checks of more than $800,000 per donor. Mr. Biden has been gathering such large checks for months with his party, building an overall war chest with the Democratic National Committee and their shared accounts of $192 million.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/business/wall-street-donors-trump.html

When President Donald J. Trump left office, some of Wall Street’s biggest names, who had taken to him during his first term in the White House, swore they were moving on from him for good. They were fatigued by his leadership style, disappointed by some of his policies and shocked by the U.S. Capitol riot. Some of them even savaged him publicly.
Their stated distaste didn’t last. With Mr. Trump leading in the polls, big financiers on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are edging into his corner, according to interviews with more than a dozen people who sought anonymity because they didn’t want their personal views to be tied to their employers.
The motivations are manifold. In many instances, it’s less that they’re enthusiastic about Mr. Trump — “I still hate the man,” one hedge fund billionaire said — and more that they’re exasperated with the economic and immigration policies of President Biden. In other cases, the willingness to support a return of Mr. Trump reflects a growing dissatisfaction with what many big Wall Street donors see as the White House’s hardening stance against Israel in its war on Gaza.
A prominent example of the about-face is Kenneth Griffin, a hedge fund magnate and political megadonor who publicly derided Mr. Trump as a “three-time loser” less than two years ago. In recent weeks, the Citadel founder has been in communication with the former president’s campaign about potentially making a major donation, which would amount to millions of dollars.

Previous Entry
Writing these things has made me realize how different I sound these days. Back when all this started I’m not sure I even spoke English and I certainly didn’t speak like I do now but to be honest, I don’t remember. Trying to recall things to write has made me realize exactly how many little things I’ve forgotten over the years. The sights, the sounds, all those fade into the background of most events.
Even something as visceral as Archer’s basement still takes me a while to recall clearly. I wonder if it’s more than just my long life, we do age after all. I mentioned before that sunlight is not deadly to vampires like myself but very unpleasant, that and it makes us more normal. In the sun I won’t be as strong as I would be in the dark and by my assessment I age in the sun as well. Not any faster than a normal person but I do age, its why I don’t still look like that little boy stuck in Paris anymore.
I did spend quite some time in Paris before I left or rather, escaped. I’m not sure I ever would have left if not for the war. I didn’t have many friends there save for other… I’m not sure what to call them… entities? Whatever you want to cal it I had some friends in the more supernatural parts of the city. A vampire named Belle had become a sort of mother figure to me over the years spent there.
I met her by chance one night as I sated myself in an alley. I was ready to fight but she just laughed and flashed her own fangs at me, ridiculing me for being so careless. It was under her wing where I learned everything I know now about vampires. It’s where I realized not all vampires endure sunlight as well as I do, if anything that one trait is what’s most unique about me according to her. But thats not the story I want to tell on these pages tonight. I want to tell the story of lieutenant Marsh and the real beginnings of the organization that would become Chimera.
When war came to Paris that summer I was unprepared. I never expected the war to spiral out of hand so quickly or for it to force me out of my home. I was with Belle and a few more of her friends whose names escape me waiting out the worst of it and hoping things would blow over in the city soon. Obviously we were completely misguided, it was that sense of invulnerability again just the same as when I was a boy. The world was our playground and nothing could hurt us. It didn’t help that in some ways I really was invulnerable and it went straight to my head.
Only flashes of my memory from that day remain. I remember the nazi soldier kicking in the door and firing at Belle’s friends. I remember the screaming that abruptly ended in a single gunshot. I remember the trail of blood leading to her friends body where it lay staked to the ground in the sun. We heal fast, not instantly but much faster than a human. Put us in sunlight though, and we’re just as fragile as a normal person. It was the first time I’d seen someone with abilities like ours die and it made me feel mortal again for the first time in decades.
The rest of the day is a disjointed blur. Belle and I fled the city, I blank out on the specifics of it but we made it out with some difficulty. After that we hunkered down for the night in a rickety old shack. I remember wanting to push on through the day but Belle protested, she didn’t deal with the sun as well as I did. When night finally fell we fled to the coast and managed to catch a ship heading towards the United States.
The trip was unpleasant to say the least, neither of us made good stowaways. We weren’t living life in the lap of luxury before by any means but we lived comfortably. This was a far cry from what we were used to in Paris and the welcome we received was even worse. Apparently fleeing for your own survival is a crime, both of us were separated and sent to prison on our arrival to the states for stowing away on the ship.
That was the last time I ever saw Belle, I get letters from her every now and then but I haven’t seen her in person since. She does well for herself, works in D.C. as a sort of handler for the supernatural. Regrettably she does work with Chimera, says they have the best interests at heart for the supernatural but she doesn’t see what I see out here. She doesn’t know the part I played in its creation, what it really stood for in the beginning. Chimera tends to kill first these days rather than actually try to help or give the supernatural some kind of place in the world. I think thats why I haven’t been to visit her, I just don’t want to argue with a friend as old as her. Funnily enough I don’t think anyone knows she’s a vampire. I doubt they’d take that very well, she’d probably lose her position. They must have suspicions though because theres no way she’d be able to get letters to me without Baelen knowing about it. Every few months they keep showing up though and I always make sure to write her back.
Anyways I’m getting off topic, back to my story. I was in prison for months until an offer came my way, serve the rest of my sentence or enlist in the army and be a free man when I came back, if I came back. Of course I took the offer, I didn’t realize how suspicious that deal sounded at the time but it actually played out exactly as they said. I also didn’t have much of a choice in the matter either. It was hard to get my hands on any blood when I was almost constantly under watch and I could feel the effects it was having on me. I figured it would be best to get a change of scenery.
The next week I was off to training then not long after, we shipped out to the trenches and met the commander of the platoon I’d been assigned to. That’s the first time I met Lieutenant Johnson Marsh and what a man he was. That first day I was convinced I’d never see a smile ever again, the trenches were a horrible depressing place. But there Marsh was, laughing and smiling and just generally enjoying life with the rest of the platoon. He was either crazy or stupid, thats what my first thoughts about him were. I remember those clearly even today but I couldn’t have been more wrong. If anything he may have turned out to be one of the smartest men I ever knew.
The first few weeks were spent holding our position from the germans. It was brutal but I found I was a decent shot with the rifle I was given. Marsh on the other hand spent those weeks barking orders at us and keeping us in line. He never used a rifle like most of the soldiers used. Instead he kept a Beretta m9 with him at all times. That weapon was the only one I ever saw him use. I remember the name only because he was so found of explaining everything there was to know about the gun to me whenever I questioned him about it. You could immediately recognize the pistol as his by its strange grip. One side of it had a picture of an idyllic scene of a manor house in the middle of a sprawling field. The other had a painting of a woman, his wife I’d guess but he never actually told me if that was there case. He seemed to spend the nights staring with longing at each side of the artistic grip.
I’d never really had a family, even with Belle I’d always felt like I was a bit of an outsider. There was so much I didn’t know about how normal people lived. Even though I’d had friends in Paris we were always kind of hidden away in our own personal corner. There was this separation between us and normal life, even between the other supernaturals in the area.
Here I felt like I was part of something though. Sure I was still lost but so was everyone else, we could be lost together and Marsh would always set us straight in the end. There was something about the man, some piece of him that just understood what we were all going through. He expected a lot from us but he was never unreasonable and several times even argued with command on our behalf when ridiculous orders came our way. I actually wanted to serve with him. The rest of the platoon wasn’t bad but they’d all been given the same deal as me. They were all just there to get out of prison. I’m still not sure what Marsh’s story was, he always kept that to himself but any of us would’ve taken a bullet for that man.
Our first real assignment came maybe three months into my period of indentured service. Our platoon was tasked with rescuing a captured American scientist and capturing a German scientist. The scientists in question were Frank Smith and Stein Hoffman and no, the irony of those names is not lost on me, fits the two of them though. I’m sure doctor Frankenstein wishes he was successful as those two. But before those orders could be acted on we had to overtake a German trench surrounding the compound they were staying in.
That fight was bloody and we lost several good men in the chaos. At one point a trench gun was shoved into my arms and I launched myself into the German trench. I wouldn’t be surprised if ghost stories are still passed around of what I did that day. After I made my way over and into the German trench I lashed out with all I had. Moving with superhuman speed and lashing out with both the bayonet affixed to my gun and my fangs, I fell upon the Germans. They stood little chance as I tore into them and all by my lonesome I ensured we’d face no more resistance.
Marsh was the first over into the now silent trench, I’m glad it was him because I’m not sure anyone else would’ve understood like him. I was holding the German officer to the trench wall, fangs buried in his neck as I fed when I heard footsteps behind me. I dropped him and turned to see Marsh staring questioningly at me. I must’ve been a sight to see, blood dripping from my mouth and covering my bullet torn uniform. Marsh steadied himself for a moment and shouted back to the rest of the platoon,
“Boys hold up a second! Just get down and stay up there a minute won’tcha!”
All of a sudden he took a step forward and a well mannered grin took its usual place on his lips.
“Though You didn’t care for sauerkraut J.?”
The joke stunned me, I fully expected him to shoot me then and there, put me down like the abomination I must’ve looked like to him.
“Lieutenant I…”
But Marsh raised his hands to cut me off.
“Command’d probably want me to shoot’cha, hell maybe I aught’a but I don’t think it’d be right. You seem decent, little odd sure but you’ve got heart, I see it in the way you look out for the boys. Plus I always figured there was some’n off about you. The way you stay out’a the light always seem a little faster and stronger than anyone got the right to be just didn’t figure it’d be…. That.”
Marsh told me pointing to the punctures in the officers neck.
“Thank you lieutenant, Could we keep this between us though sir?”
“Drop the formalities J. Jesus! We’re all friends here.”
“I just don’t want the others to know, they may not be as understanding as you.”
“No can do, but you can tell em’ yourself. Alright men, get on down here!”
In all my years I’d never had to explain myself to anyone up until that point. I guess that day my number was up but I never knew just how understanding people, normal people could be. I’d always lived around the supernatural in Paris, didn’t interact much with the normal people I saw in the streets every day, I didn’t have to. I’d always assumed there was a reason for that but in the moment I realized there wasn’t, not really. I’d just avoided normal people because I feared what they’d think if it came out that I wasn’t like them.
Of course There were some of the men that objected to… what I was. Most of them took after Marsh though. They didn’t really care what I was, I’d proven to them I was a good person and thats all that mattered. I just wish they’d been right about me back then because the truth was I still hadn’t learned to care, not really. Even the ones who objected came around eventually and that night Marsh finally came clean to me about why exactly he was so accepting.
According to him he’d always assumed there was more out there, things beyond human that lived on the fringes of society. Even he always thought he sounded crazy. I was the proof he needed to convince himself he wasn’t. Marsh also told me what we were really doing with the scientists. Both Frank and Stein researched the supernatural, their projects were as secret as secret could be. Marsh’s interests and theories, as personal as he tried to keep them showed up in his file somewhere. The higher ups had handpicked him for this mission because of it. The official story was that Frank had been captured but in reality he defected to further his own research with a like minded individual. Our mission was really to force Frank back into the fold and take Stein along with him.
The more he talked the more I could tell his heart was fully committed to this mission and the final assault tomorrow. I’d never seen someone so… alive. In my extremely long life I don’t think Id ever felt that kind of conviction myself. So I promised him I’d have his back tomorrow no matter what.
Morning broke and with it our assault began. Intel on the German defenses was shoddy at best but we never expected what we’d actually run into. At least three times our number acted as guards so a distraction was in order to give us a window of entry. A few of the men would handle the distraction “however they saw fit” to quote Marsh. Then Marsh and I would make our way into the compound itself and the rest of the platoon would cover us.
For what its worth most of the plan went off without a hitch. A tremendous explosion signaled Marsh and I to press the advantage and rush the confused soldiers that lay in front of us. Some actually turned and ran from me, apparently word of my stunt in the trenches yesterday had spread quickly. The rest of the platoon followed behind us but then our luck ran out with the roar of an engine.
An honest to god panzer tank rolled out of a tunnel we hadn’t seen that ran under the compound and turned its barrel towards us. I almost didn’t hear the blast from how slow time seemed to move. But move it did as the explosion of the shell’s impact scattered bodies left and right. The shell impacted behind us but the sheer force of the blast threw Marsh and I to the ground, knocking us unconscious.
When I slowly came to my eyes couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A man dressed in red priestly robes with a matching red top hat was walking between the bodies. When he approached one that groaned out with agony he’d kneel down and whisper things I couldn’t hear to them, after that he’d snap his fingers. sometimes the person he was talking with would disappear other times they would fall silent and sometimes it didn’t appear that anything happened at all.
Just the sight of the man terrified me and I wasn’t sure why. It was an instinctual reaction, the second I lay eyes on him I froze up and ice cold fear crept its way up my spine. When people accuse me of being the devil this man is who I think of. Even today I’m not sure what it is he does or why. What I do know is that he never looks the same. I’ve seen him appear as male, female, even as an animal on a few occasions but I can always tell. The second I’m near him no matter what he looks like the same old feeling comes over me.
Once my vision had finally focused in on the man he seemed to notice without ever looking at me. I blinked and suddenly he was there, kneeling over me.
“Would you like to live.”
He rasped down at me with a voice that seemed to boom around me no matter how quiet it must’ve actually been. I felt like a child again, staring at Archer for the first time. I’d never really had to fear death before but here I was, sure I was about to meet my end right here. In all honestly I wasn’t injured all that bad, I probably could’ve survived with or without this man help. But something told me that if I said no he’d make sure I would die right here.
“Ye…y… yes”
I stuttered out, barley able to form the words through the pain that stabbed throughout my body.
“You will be my instrument for one night at a time of me choosing.”
The man replied. I stayed silent as I stared into his eyes, trying to determine if the sunglasses he wore were tinted or if his eyes really did burn with an infernal red light. The man cocked his head as if waiting for a response to his question. I’m not sure if question was the right word though, there wasn’t much of a choice for me.
Looking back there was always a choice, maybe I could’ve survived on my own merits, found another way. In the years to come I’d wish I just said no, even if it would’ve cost me my life. But thats not what happened. I nodded and the deal maker snapped his fingers. As soon as he had dark clouds flooded the sky and blocked out the sun, allowing my body to begin repairing itself. The man moved on to where Marsh’s body lay and probably made him the same deal as I felt my body healing. Despite that, my consciousness faded again as I strained to try and hear what the man would say to Marsh.
We never actually discussed the man at all. Not then and not in the years since. Maybe that was all an unspoken part of Marsh’s deal. Maybe both of us just wished that man was nothing more than a waking dream, a vivid hallucination. Whatever the case neither of us ever mentioned that man to each other.
The next time I woke up I was chained to a table next to Marsh. We had been captured and brought before the very scientists we were here to apprehend. There were guards around but they all seemed to be waiting for some kind of order. I was certainly surprised when that order came in perfect English, even more surprised when the order was to let us down so we could talk.
Frank and Stein ended up being quite reasonable people. The two let us stay in relative comfort in the compound as long as we agreed to stay and leave them to their work. That was all the convincing it took for me. I understand that the men I’d served with were all dead and that these two were in some way responsible. Maybe that should’ve bothered me more, today it certainly would’ve. Back then I didn’t think the same way, they accepted me for what I was but only briefly, only out of respect for Marsh. What did the lives of people I’d known for so short a time really matter? Writing this now just makes me realize how cold I was before, I didn’t care for anything beyond myself. I’d made no efforts to find Belle since we were separated and how long had I known her, 100 years, more? I may have pretended I cared but when push came to shove I simply tried to make sure I survived.
Marsh wasn’t as cold as me, in fact he almost immediately reached for where his pistol should’ve been when he was unchained. It took Frank, Stein, and myself weeks to convince him that helping would be the right decision. He didn’t like it at first but little by little I think the scientists grew on him. The guards I’d seen our first day here seemed to thin out the longer we stayed. Wether that was a gesture of trust or simply because they were needed for more important duties I don’t know but it certainly eased Marsh’s mind.
I merely observed the scientists most of the time until Stein asked me for a sample of my blood. It didn’t surprise me that he knew what I was but for obvious reasons I was hesitant to give it to him, especially considering what I’d seen so called doctors do with vampire blood. Eventually he wore me down and I gave let him take a sample just to shut him up. After that I became more involved in their research though not by choice. They had me showcasing my abilities and tested the effects of sunlight on my blood. On a few rare occasions Stein even injected it into other prisoners that were brought in, something I put a stop to very quickly. T
hat sample of blood is why Frank and Stein are still around today. Somehow they managed to isolate whatever part of my DNA allows me to age so much slower than a normal person. They took that and spliced it into their own DNA against my recommendations. The crazy thing was it actually worked. Sure they had a newfound appreciation for rare steaks but beyond that I didn’t notice any of the effects that combining vampire DNA with your own would usually have.
As Marsh and I assisted the scientist’s research however we could we both came to the realization that they needed each other to function. Stein lacked a moral compass and was prone to suggest unethical or risky procedures, sometimes going so far as to carry them out without informing Frank. Frank on the other hand preferred caution in everything he did and sometimes I noticed him personally taking and shredding requests Stein had written for test subjects, hazardous materials, or samples from supernatural entities. The two kept a very delicate dance of checks and balances. Stein ever the daring mad scientist and Frank always playing the role of overly cautious genius.
Marsh and Frank got along extremely well near the end. The two would be up at all hours of the night as Frank explained what kind of things really existed in the world. Marsh always shared these ideas of a world where the supernatural and the normal could live together and I think Frank shared that vision. It wasn’t possible, still isn’t but treating the supernatural as something other than monsters couldn’t possibly be a bad thing. I think thats where the idea of the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs really came from, those talks Marsh had with anyone who would listen.
Overtime one of our favorite conversations was what we would do when the war was over and we could leave this compound. Stein wasn’t sure he would, if his research wasn’t going to a man who’d simply use it to cause more conflict he wouldn’t mind staying. Frank wanted to return home, if that was even possible and he asked if Stein would join him. Those two had also become close friends through our months in the lab. That checks and balances relationship they had made them basically inseparable. Marsh’s answer surprised me though, he said he wanted to get out of the military and start a program, something to help the supernatural live closer to normal lives. At least keep tabs on them so that the quality of their lives might improve. I was stunned, I couldn’t believe he’d throw his career away just to chase this pipe dream of his. I didn’t even know Marsh was concerned with that kind of thing. I didn’t have an answer of my own so I said I’d join Marsh and help with this program idea of his. Actually, even Frank and Stein seemed to agree with Marsh’s way of thinking. Little did we know the war would end less than a month after our talk and we’d all get the chance to actually put Marsh’s little idea to the test.
Once the Americans had come and discovered the compound pretty much abandoned aside from us we were all taken prisoner and shipped back to America. We were all interrogated and they either heard what they wanted to hear, or decided anyone we’d talk to about our experiences would assume we were just crazy. We were released back into society under constant surveillance. They even gave us a sizable home in D.C., it was certainly bugged to its core but thats exactly what we wanted.
Through the next year we used Frank and Steins knowledge and my supernatural nature to track down entities all over the country. We made sure that everything was discussed and planned out in the house. That way however was listening knew exactly what we were doing and how successful it was. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows though, some entities would rather we didn’t know about them. Others were naturally aggressive but some we were actually able to help.
Our escapades as a group of four didn’t last much past the first year. Mostly because our master plan of using the bugs worked perfectly. Ol’ uncle Sam had been listening in and wanted his chance at calling the shots but it meant we became a legitimate organization, the BSA. Technically the acronym was already taken but no one ever complained and Marsh never came up with anything better.
We spent 4 years doing everything we could to improve the lives of supernatural beings everywhere. Not every one of our endeavors was a success but we did some good in the world. One such project was blood banks for vampires. While the blood that gets donated is used for transfusions and the like some was put into cold storage for the BSA. That got distributed to vampires who had come to an agreement with us to stop hunting humans for blood. Some vampires were even selected for jobs at these blood banks, under the supervision of BSA agents of course.
The more human supernaturals like werewolves, vampires, and succubi even used us to find jobs in the world. We made in roads for the supernatural in daily life because of it. Werewolves would use their strength for government construction. Vampire’s long lives made them excellent archivists or history teachers because they actually been there for those events. A succubus’s ability to understand and control someones emotions and reactions made them excellent therapists and conflict deescalation specialists. Those are just some of the fields we managed to get the supernatural involved in. While they usually had to hide their natural they were wildly successful.
Everything went well until that fourth year when I first met Baelen. He was headstrong from the beginning, the powers that be were grooming him for leadership. He was everything they wanted, he followed orders and didn’t question things to much. In short, he was the perfect solution to the inconvenience the four of us caused running the organization as we saw fit. But baleen had a mean streak, he didn’t want to protect the supernatural so much as he wanted to put them in their place. Unfortunately a lot of the research we provided had scared pretty much everyone above us who had never even entertained the idea of the supernatural until now. That meant Baelen’s ideas of monitoring and segregating the supernatural population were popular. So popular that suggesting culling their numbers to keep them in check and under the thumb of the BSA was an idea they actually entertained. That sentiment caught on and our orders became more and more militant.
Every time we disregarded them to do things the way we had envisioned the consequence grew steeper. Eventually Frank, Stein, Marsh, and I just couldn’t stand to see what our BSA had become so we left. We couldn’t do anything else to stop what was coming from the inside, no point in going down with the ship.
After that Baelen quickly ended up heading the whole operation. He still took orders directly from government officials and when the BSA became part of homeland security it became Chimera division. Why they chose such a stupid name I’ll never know but the organization was a shadow of its former self. Before we looked out for the supernatural, tried to help. Under Baelen Chimera just exists to monitor the supernatural and “correct” any issues uncle Sam decides to have with them. They’re glorified enforcers that don’t give a damn how the supernatural actually have it. That’s not to say some good people don’t work for them, people like Belle and even Marsh’s own daughter as far as I’m aware.
It sickens me to think I was a part of it though, for all the good we did maybe it would’ve been better if Johnson Marsh’s pipe dream would’ve stayed just that. I can do a lot but I can’t change the past so I guess we’ll never know. A while ago I heard that something had happened in a little nowhere town out in New Mexico. Pretty much dropped off the face of the Earth. The only reason I even heard about it was through Belle’s letters. Apparently Chimera had to do some huge cover up job and decided it was better if the town just never existed. Maybe I should go myself and see if I can’t piece what happened together. Could be that someone else out there has it in for Chimera and is a whole lot more direct about it than me. I’m just imaging it was some runaway experiment Frank and Stein got up to. I wonder where those two ended up, I’ll have to check up on them sometime. This journal writing is digging up a lot of memories for me but thats probably a good thing. Write them down before I forget again. I think that’ll be all for today then, why do I keep addressing these like someone’s reading them? Not much point to that is there?

Previous Entry
Writing these things has made me realize how different I sound these days. Back when all this started I’m not sure I even spoke English and I certainly didn’t speak like I do now but to be honest, I don’t remember. Trying to recall things to write has made me realize exactly how many little things I’ve forgotten over the years. The sights, the sounds, all those fade into the background of most events.
Even something as visceral as Archer’s basement still takes me a while to recall clearly. I wonder if it’s more than just my long life, we do age after all. I mentioned before that sunlight is not deadly to vampires like myself but very unpleasant, that and it makes us more normal. In the sun I won’t be as strong as I would be in the dark and by my assessment I age in the sun as well. Not any faster than a normal person but I do age, its why I don’t still look like that little boy stuck in Paris anymore.
I did spend quite some time in Paris before I left or rather, escaped. I’m not sure I ever would have left if not for the war. I didn’t have many friends there save for other… I’m not sure what to call them… entities? Whatever you want to cal it I had some friends in the more supernatural parts of the city. A vampire named Belle had become a sort of mother figure to me over the years spent there.
I met her by chance one night as I sated myself in an alley. I was ready to fight but she just laughed and flashed her own fangs at me, ridiculing me for being so careless. It was under her wing where I learned everything I know now about vampires. It’s where I realized not all vampires endure sunlight as well as I do, if anything that one trait is what’s most unique about me according to her. But thats not the story I want to tell on these pages tonight. I want to tell the story of lieutenant Marsh and the real beginnings of the organization that would become Chimera.
When war came to Paris that summer I was unprepared. I never expected the war to spiral out of hand so quickly or for it to force me out of my home. I was with Belle and a few more of her friends whose names escape me waiting out the worst of it and hoping things would blow over in the city soon. Obviously we were completely misguided, it was that sense of invulnerability again just the same as when I was a boy. The world was our playground and nothing could hurt us. It didn’t help that in some ways I really was invulnerable and it went straight to my head.
Only flashes of my memory from that day remain. I remember the nazi soldier kicking in the door and firing at Belle’s friends. I remember the screaming that abruptly ended in a single gunshot. I remember the trail of blood leading to her friends body where it lay staked to the ground in the sun. We heal fast, not instantly but much faster than a human. Put us in sunlight though, and we’re just as fragile as a normal person. It was the first time I’d seen someone with abilities like ours die and it made me feel mortal again for the first time in decades.
The rest of the day is a disjointed blur. Belle and I fled the city, I blank out on the specifics of it but we made it out with some difficulty. After that we hunkered down for the night in a rickety old shack. I remember wanting to push on through the day but Belle protested, she didn’t deal with the sun as well as I did. When night finally fell we fled to the coast and managed to catch a ship heading towards the United States.
The trip was unpleasant to say the least, neither of us made good stowaways. We weren’t living life in the lap of luxury before by any means but we lived comfortably. This was a far cry from what we were used to in Paris and the welcome we received was even worse. Apparently fleeing for your own survival is a crime, both of us were separated and sent to prison on our arrival to the states for stowing away on the ship.
That was the last time I ever saw Belle, I get letters from her every now and then but I haven’t seen her in person since. She does well for herself, works in D.C. as a sort of handler for the supernatural. Regrettably she does work with Chimera, says they have the best interests at heart for the supernatural but she doesn’t see what I see out here. She doesn’t know the part I played in its creation, what it really stood for in the beginning. Chimera tends to kill first these days rather than actually try to help or give the supernatural some kind of place in the world. I think thats why I haven’t been to visit her, I just don’t want to argue with a friend as old as her. Funnily enough I don’t think anyone knows she’s a vampire. I doubt they’d take that very well, she’d probably lose her position. They must have suspicions though because theres no way she’d be able to get letters to me without Baelen knowing about it. Every few months they keep showing up though and I always make sure to write her back.
Anyways I’m getting off topic, back to my story. I was in prison for months until an offer came my way, serve the rest of my sentence or enlist in the army and be a free man when I came back, if I came back. Of course I took the offer, I didn’t realize how suspicious that deal sounded at the time but it actually played out exactly as they said. I also didn’t have much of a choice in the matter either. It was hard to get my hands on any blood when I was almost constantly under watch and I could feel the effects it was having on me. I figured it would be best to get a change of scenery.
The next week I was off to training then not long after, we shipped out to the trenches and met the commander of the platoon I’d been assigned to. That’s the first time I met Lieutenant Johnson Marsh and what a man he was. That first day I was convinced I’d never see a smile ever again, the trenches were a horrible depressing place. But there Marsh was, laughing and smiling and just generally enjoying life with the rest of the platoon. He was either crazy or stupid, thats what my first thoughts about him were. I remember those clearly even today but I couldn’t have been more wrong. If anything he may have turned out to be one of the smartest men I ever knew.
The first few weeks were spent holding our position from the germans. It was brutal but I found I was a decent shot with the rifle I was given. Marsh on the other hand spent those weeks barking orders at us and keeping us in line. He never used a rifle like most of the soldiers used. Instead he kept a Beretta m9 with him at all times. That weapon was the only one I ever saw him use. I remember the name only because he was so found of explaining everything there was to know about the gun to me whenever I questioned him about it. You could immediately recognize the pistol as his by its strange grip. One side of it had a picture of an idyllic scene of a manor house in the middle of a sprawling field. The other had a painting of a woman, his wife I’d guess but he never actually told me if that was there case. He seemed to spend the nights staring with longing at each side of the artistic grip.
I’d never really had a family, even with Belle I’d always felt like I was a bit of an outsider. There was so much I didn’t know about how normal people lived. Even though I’d had friends in Paris we were always kind of hidden away in our own personal corner. There was this separation between us and normal life, even between the other supernaturals in the area.
Here I felt like I was part of something though. Sure I was still lost but so was everyone else, we could be lost together and Marsh would always set us straight in the end. There was something about the man, some piece of him that just understood what we were all going through. He expected a lot from us but he was never unreasonable and several times even argued with command on our behalf when ridiculous orders came our way. I actually wanted to serve with him. The rest of the platoon wasn’t bad but they’d all been given the same deal as me. They were all just there to get out of prison. I’m still not sure what Marsh’s story was, he always kept that to himself but any of us would’ve taken a bullet for that man.
Our first real assignment came maybe three months into my period of indentured service. Our platoon was tasked with rescuing a captured American scientist and capturing a German scientist. The scientists in question were Frank Smith and Stein Hoffman and no, the irony of those names is not lost on me, fits the two of them though. I’m sure doctor Frankenstein wishes he was successful as those two. But before those orders could be acted on we had to overtake a German trench surrounding the compound they were staying in.
That fight was bloody and we lost several good men in the chaos. At one point a trench gun was shoved into my arms and I launched myself into the German trench. I wouldn’t be surprised if ghost stories are still passed around of what I did that day. After I made my way over and into the German trench I lashed out with all I had. Moving with superhuman speed and lashing out with both the bayonet affixed to my gun and my fangs, I fell upon the Germans. They stood little chance as I tore into them and all by my lonesome I ensured we’d face no more resistance.
Marsh was the first over into the now silent trench, I’m glad it was him because I’m not sure anyone else would’ve understood like him. I was holding the German officer to the trench wall, fangs buried in his neck as I fed when I heard footsteps behind me. I dropped him and turned to see Marsh staring questioningly at me. I must’ve been a sight to see, blood dripping from my mouth and covering my bullet torn uniform. Marsh steadied himself for a moment and shouted back to the rest of the platoon,
“Boys hold up a second! Just get down and stay up there a minute won’tcha!”
All of a sudden he took a step forward and a well mannered grin took its usual place on his lips.
“Though You didn’t care for sauerkraut J.?”
The joke stunned me, I fully expected him to shoot me then and there, put me down like the abomination I must’ve looked like to him.
“Lieutenant I…”
But Marsh raised his hands to cut me off.
“Command’d probably want me to shoot’cha, hell maybe I aught’a but I don’t think it’d be right. You seem decent, little odd sure but you’ve got heart, I see it in the way you look out for the boys. Plus I always figured there was some’n off about you. The way you stay out’a the light always seem a little faster and stronger than anyone got the right to be just didn’t figure it’d be…. That.”
Marsh told me pointing to the punctures in the officers neck.
“Thank you lieutenant, Could we keep this between us though sir?”
“Drop the formalities J. Jesus! We’re all friends here.”
“I just don’t want the others to know, they may not be as understanding as you.”
“No can do, but you can tell em’ yourself. Alright men, get on down here!”
In all my years I’d never had to explain myself to anyone up until that point. I guess that day my number was up but I never knew just how understanding people, normal people could be. I’d always lived around the supernatural in Paris, didn’t interact much with the normal people I saw in the streets every day, I didn’t have to. I’d always assumed there was a reason for that but in the moment I realized there wasn’t, not really. I’d just avoided normal people because I feared what they’d think if it came out that I wasn’t like them.
Of course There were some of the men that objected to… what I was. Most of them took after Marsh though. They didn’t really care what I was, I’d proven to them I was a good person and thats all that mattered. I just wish they’d been right about me back then because the truth was I still hadn’t learned to care, not really. Even the ones who objected came around eventually and that night Marsh finally came clean to me about why exactly he was so accepting.
According to him he’d always assumed there was more out there, things beyond human that lived on the fringes of society. Even he always thought he sounded crazy. I was the proof he needed to convince himself he wasn’t. Marsh also told me what we were really doing with the scientists. Both Frank and Stein researched the supernatural, their projects were as secret as secret could be. Marsh’s interests and theories, as personal as he tried to keep them showed up in his file somewhere. The higher ups had handpicked him for this mission because of it. The official story was that Frank had been captured but in reality he defected to further his own research with a like minded individual. Our mission was really to force Frank back into the fold and take Stein along with him.
The more he talked the more I could tell his heart was fully committed to this mission and the final assault tomorrow. I’d never seen someone so… alive. In my extremely long life I don’t think Id ever felt that kind of conviction myself. So I promised him I’d have his back tomorrow no matter what.
Morning broke and with it our assault began. Intel on the German defenses was shoddy at best but we never expected what we’d actually run into. At least three times our number acted as guards so a distraction was in order to give us a window of entry. A few of the men would handle the distraction “however they saw fit” to quote Marsh. Then Marsh and I would make our way into the compound itself and the rest of the platoon would cover us.
For what its worth most of the plan went off without a hitch. A tremendous explosion signaled Marsh and I to press the advantage and rush the confused soldiers that lay in front of us. Some actually turned and ran from me, apparently word of my stunt in the trenches yesterday had spread quickly. The rest of the platoon followed behind us but then our luck ran out with the roar of an engine.
An honest to god panzer tank rolled out of a tunnel we hadn’t seen that ran under the compound and turned its barrel towards us. I almost didn’t hear the blast from how slow time seemed to move. But move it did as the explosion of the shell’s impact scattered bodies left and right. The shell impacted behind us but the sheer force of the blast threw Marsh and I to the ground, knocking us unconscious.
When I slowly came to my eyes couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A man dressed in red priestly robes with a matching red top hat was walking between the bodies. When he approached one that groaned out with agony he’d kneel down and whisper things I couldn’t hear to them, after that he’d snap his fingers. sometimes the person he was talking with would disappear other times they would fall silent and sometimes it didn’t appear that anything happened at all.
Just the sight of the man terrified me and I wasn’t sure why. It was an instinctual reaction, the second I lay eyes on him I froze up and ice cold fear crept its way up my spine. When people accuse me of being the devil this man is who I think of. Even today I’m not sure what it is he does or why. What I do know is that he never looks the same. I’ve seen him appear as male, female, even as an animal on a few occasions but I can always tell. The second I’m near him no matter what he looks like the same old feeling comes over me.
Once my vision had finally focused in on the man he seemed to notice without ever looking at me. I blinked and suddenly he was there, kneeling over me.
“Would you like to live.”
He rasped down at me with a voice that seemed to boom around me no matter how quiet it must’ve actually been. I felt like a child again, staring at Archer for the first time. I’d never really had to fear death before but here I was, sure I was about to meet my end right here. In all honestly I wasn’t injured all that bad, I probably could’ve survived with or without this man help. But something told me that if I said no he’d make sure I would die right here.
“Ye…y… yes”
I stuttered out, barley able to form the words through the pain that stabbed throughout my body.
“You will be my instrument for one night at a time of me choosing.”
The man replied. I stayed silent as I stared into his eyes, trying to determine if the sunglasses he wore were tinted or if his eyes really did burn with an infernal red light. The man cocked his head as if waiting for a response to his question. I’m not sure if question was the right word though, there wasn’t much of a choice for me.
Looking back there was always a choice, maybe I could’ve survived on my own merits, found another way. In the years to come I’d wish I just said no, even if it would’ve cost me my life. But thats not what happened. I nodded and the deal maker snapped his fingers. As soon as he had dark clouds flooded the sky and blocked out the sun, allowing my body to begin repairing itself. The man moved on to where Marsh’s body lay and probably made him the same deal as I felt my body healing. Despite that, my consciousness faded again as I strained to try and hear what the man would say to Marsh.
We never actually discussed the man at all. Not then and not in the years since. Maybe that was all an unspoken part of Marsh’s deal. Maybe both of us just wished that man was nothing more than a waking dream, a vivid hallucination. Whatever the case neither of us ever mentioned that man to each other.
The next time I woke up I was chained to a table next to Marsh. We had been captured and brought before the very scientists we were here to apprehend. There were guards around but they all seemed to be waiting for some kind of order. I was certainly surprised when that order came in perfect English, even more surprised when the order was to let us down so we could talk.
Frank and Stein ended up being quite reasonable people. The two let us stay in relative comfort in the compound as long as we agreed to stay and leave them to their work. That was all the convincing it took for me. I understand that the men I’d served with were all dead and that these two were in some way responsible. Maybe that should’ve bothered me more, today it certainly would’ve. Back then I didn’t think the same way, they accepted me for what I was but only briefly, only out of respect for Marsh. What did the lives of people I’d known for so short a time really matter? Writing this now just makes me realize how cold I was before, I didn’t care for anything beyond myself. I’d made no efforts to find Belle since we were separated and how long had I known her, 100 years, more? I may have pretended I cared but when push came to shove I simply tried to make sure I survived.
Marsh wasn’t as cold as me, in fact he almost immediately reached for where his pistol should’ve been when he was unchained. It took Frank, Stein, and myself weeks to convince him that helping would be the right decision. He didn’t like it at first but little by little I think the scientists grew on him. The guards I’d seen our first day here seemed to thin out the longer we stayed. Wether that was a gesture of trust or simply because they were needed for more important duties I don’t know but it certainly eased Marsh’s mind.
I merely observed the scientists most of the time until Stein asked me for a sample of my blood. It didn’t surprise me that he knew what I was but for obvious reasons I was hesitant to give it to him, especially considering what I’d seen so called doctors do with vampire blood. Eventually he wore me down and I gave let him take a sample just to shut him up. After that I became more involved in their research though not by choice. They had me showcasing my abilities and tested the effects of sunlight on my blood. On a few rare occasions Stein even injected it into other prisoners that were brought in, something I put a stop to very quickly. T
hat sample of blood is why Frank and Stein are still around today. Somehow they managed to isolate whatever part of my DNA allows me to age so much slower than a normal person. They took that and spliced it into their own DNA against my recommendations. The crazy thing was it actually worked. Sure they had a newfound appreciation for rare steaks but beyond that I didn’t notice any of the effects that combining vampire DNA with your own would usually have.
As Marsh and I assisted the scientist’s research however we could we both came to the realization that they needed each other to function. Stein lacked a moral compass and was prone to suggest unethical or risky procedures, sometimes going so far as to carry them out without informing Frank. Frank on the other hand preferred caution in everything he did and sometimes I noticed him personally taking and shredding requests Stein had written for test subjects, hazardous materials, or samples from supernatural entities. The two kept a very delicate dance of checks and balances. Stein ever the daring mad scientist and Frank always playing the role of overly cautious genius.
Marsh and Frank got along extremely well near the end. The two would be up at all hours of the night as Frank explained what kind of things really existed in the world. Marsh always shared these ideas of a world where the supernatural and the normal could live together and I think Frank shared that vision. It wasn’t possible, still isn’t but treating the supernatural as something other than monsters couldn’t possibly be a bad thing. I think thats where the idea of the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs really came from, those talks Marsh had with anyone who would listen.
Overtime one of our favorite conversations was what we would do when the war was over and we could leave this compound. Stein wasn’t sure he would, if his research wasn’t going to a man who’d simply use it to cause more conflict he wouldn’t mind staying. Frank wanted to return home, if that was even possible and he asked if Stein would join him. Those two had also become close friends through our months in the lab. That checks and balances relationship they had made them basically inseparable. Marsh’s answer surprised me though, he said he wanted to get out of the military and start a program, something to help the supernatural live closer to normal lives. At least keep tabs on them so that the quality of their lives might improve. I was stunned, I couldn’t believe he’d throw his career away just to chase this pipe dream of his. I didn’t even know Marsh was concerned with that kind of thing. I didn’t have an answer of my own so I said I’d join Marsh and help with this program idea of his. Actually, even Frank and Stein seemed to agree with Marsh’s way of thinking. Little did we know the war would end less than a month after our talk and we’d all get the chance to actually put Marsh’s little idea to the test.
Once the Americans had come and discovered the compound pretty much abandoned aside from us we were all taken prisoner and shipped back to America. We were all interrogated and they either heard what they wanted to hear, or decided anyone we’d talk to about our experiences would assume we were just crazy. We were released back into society under constant surveillance. They even gave us a sizable home in D.C., it was certainly bugged to its core but thats exactly what we wanted.
Through the next year we used Frank and Steins knowledge and my supernatural nature to track down entities all over the country. We made sure that everything was discussed and planned out in the house. That way however was listening knew exactly what we were doing and how successful it was. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows though, some entities would rather we didn’t know about them. Others were naturally aggressive but some we were actually able to help.
Our escapades as a group of four didn’t last much past the first year. Mostly because our master plan of using the bugs worked perfectly. Ol’ uncle Sam had been listening in and wanted his chance at calling the shots but it meant we became a legitimate organization, the BSA. Technically the acronym was already taken but no one ever complained and Marsh never came up with anything better.
We spent 4 years doing everything we could to improve the lives of supernatural beings everywhere. Not every one of our endeavors was a success but we did some good in the world. One such project was blood banks for vampires. While the blood that gets donated is used for transfusions and the like some was put into cold storage for the BSA. That got distributed to vampires who had come to an agreement with us to stop hunting humans for blood. Some vampires were even selected for jobs at these blood banks, under the supervision of BSA agents of course.
The more human supernaturals like werewolves, vampires, and succubi even used us to find jobs in the world. We made in roads for the supernatural in daily life because of it. Werewolves would use their strength for government construction. Vampire’s long lives made them excellent archivists or history teachers because they actually been there for those events. A succubus’s ability to understand and control someones emotions and reactions made them excellent therapists and conflict deescalation specialists. Those are just some of the fields we managed to get the supernatural involved in. While they usually had to hide their natural they were wildly successful.
Everything went well until that fourth year when I first met Baelen. He was headstrong from the beginning, the powers that be were grooming him for leadership. He was everything they wanted, he followed orders and didn’t question things to much. In short, he was the perfect solution to the inconvenience the four of us caused running the organization as we saw fit. But baleen had a mean streak, he didn’t want to protect the supernatural so much as he wanted to put them in their place. Unfortunately a lot of the research we provided had scared pretty much everyone above us who had never even entertained the idea of the supernatural until now. That meant Baelen’s ideas of monitoring and segregating the supernatural population were popular. So popular that suggesting culling their numbers to keep them in check and under the thumb of the BSA was an idea they actually entertained. That sentiment caught on and our orders became more and more militant.
Every time we disregarded them to do things the way we had envisioned the consequence grew steeper. Eventually Frank, Stein, Marsh, and I just couldn’t stand to see what our BSA had become so we left. We couldn’t do anything else to stop what was coming from the inside, no point in going down with the ship.
After that Baelen quickly ended up heading the whole operation. He still took orders directly from government officials and when the BSA became part of homeland security it became Chimera division. Why they chose such a stupid name I’ll never know but the organization was a shadow of its former self. Before we looked out for the supernatural, tried to help. Under Baelen Chimera just exists to monitor the supernatural and “correct” any issues uncle Sam decides to have with them. They’re glorified enforcers that don’t give a damn how the supernatural actually have it. That’s not to say some good people don’t work for them, people like Belle and even Marsh’s own daughter as far as I’m aware.
It sickens me to think I was a part of it though, for all the good we did maybe it would’ve been better if Johnson Marsh’s pipe dream would’ve stayed just that. I can do a lot but I can’t change the past so I guess we’ll never know. A while ago I heard that something had happened in a little nowhere town out in New Mexico. Pretty much dropped off the face of the Earth. The only reason I even heard about it was through Belle’s letters. Apparently Chimera had to do some huge cover up job and decided it was better if the town just never existed. Maybe I should go myself and see if I can’t piece what happened together. Could be that someone else out there has it in for Chimera and is a whole lot more direct about it than me. I’m just imaging it was some runaway experiment Frank and Stein got up to. I wonder where those two ended up, I’ll have to check up on them sometime. This journal writing is digging up a lot of memories for me but thats probably a good thing. Write them down before I forget again. I think that’ll be all for today then, why do I keep addressing these like someone’s reading them? Not much point to that is there?

Previous Entry
Writing these things has made me realize how different I sound these days. Back when all this started I’m not sure I even spoke English and I certainly didn’t speak like I do now but to be honest, I don’t remember. Trying to recall things to write has made me realize exactly how many little things I’ve forgotten over the years. The sights, the sounds, all those fade into the background of most events.
Even something as visceral as Archer’s basement still takes me a while to recall clearly. I wonder if it’s more than just my long life, we do age after all. I mentioned before that sunlight is not deadly to vampires like myself but very unpleasant, that and it makes us more normal. In the sun I won’t be as strong as I would be in the dark and by my assessment I age in the sun as well. Not any faster than a normal person but I do age, its why I don’t still look like that little boy stuck in Paris anymore.
I did spend quite some time in Paris before I left or rather, escaped. I’m not sure I ever would have left if not for the war. I didn’t have many friends there save for other… I’m not sure what to call them… entities? Whatever you want to cal it I had some friends in the more supernatural parts of the city. A vampire named Belle had become a sort of mother figure to me over the years spent there.
I met her by chance one night as I sated myself in an alley. I was ready to fight but she just laughed and flashed her own fangs at me, ridiculing me for being so careless. It was under her wing where I learned everything I know now about vampires. It’s where I realized not all vampires endure sunlight as well as I do, if anything that one trait is what’s most unique about me according to her. But thats not the story I want to tell on these pages tonight. I want to tell the story of lieutenant Marsh and the real beginnings of the organization that would become Chimera.
When war came to Paris that summer I was unprepared. I never expected the war to spiral out of hand so quickly or for it to force me out of my home. I was with Belle and a few more of her friends whose names escape me waiting out the worst of it and hoping things would blow over in the city soon. Obviously we were completely misguided, it was that sense of invulnerability again just the same as when I was a boy. The world was our playground and nothing could hurt us. It didn’t help that in some ways I really was invulnerable and it went straight to my head.
Only flashes of my memory from that day remain. I remember the nazi soldier kicking in the door and firing at Belle’s friends. I remember the screaming that abruptly ended in a single gunshot. I remember the trail of blood leading to her friends body where it lay staked to the ground in the sun. We heal fast, not instantly but much faster than a human. Put us in sunlight though, and we’re just as fragile as a normal person. It was the first time I’d seen someone with abilities like ours die and it made me feel mortal again for the first time in decades.
The rest of the day is a disjointed blur. Belle and I fled the city, I blank out on the specifics of it but we made it out with some difficulty. After that we hunkered down for the night in a rickety old shack. I remember wanting to push on through the day but Belle protested, she didn’t deal with the sun as well as I did. When night finally fell we fled to the coast and managed to catch a ship heading towards the United States.
The trip was unpleasant to say the least, neither of us made good stowaways. We weren’t living life in the lap of luxury before by any means but we lived comfortably. This was a far cry from what we were used to in Paris and the welcome we received was even worse. Apparently fleeing for your own survival is a crime, both of us were separated and sent to prison on our arrival to the states for stowing away on the ship.
That was the last time I ever saw Belle, I get letters from her every now and then but I haven’t seen her in person since. She does well for herself, works in D.C. as a sort of handler for the supernatural. Regrettably she does work with Chimera, says they have the best interests at heart for the supernatural but she doesn’t see what I see out here. She doesn’t know the part I played in its creation, what it really stood for in the beginning. Chimera tends to kill first these days rather than actually try to help or give the supernatural some kind of place in the world. I think thats why I haven’t been to visit her, I just don’t want to argue with a friend as old as her. Funnily enough I don’t think anyone knows she’s a vampire. I doubt they’d take that very well, she’d probably lose her position. They must have suspicions though because theres no way she’d be able to get letters to me without Baelen knowing about it. Every few months they keep showing up though and I always make sure to write her back.
Anyways I’m getting off topic, back to my story. I was in prison for months until an offer came my way, serve the rest of my sentence or enlist in the army and be a free man when I came back, if I came back. Of course I took the offer, I didn’t realize how suspicious that deal sounded at the time but it actually played out exactly as they said. I also didn’t have much of a choice in the matter either. It was hard to get my hands on any blood when I was almost constantly under watch and I could feel the effects it was having on me. I figured it would be best to get a change of scenery.
The next week I was off to training then not long after, we shipped out to the trenches and met the commander of the platoon I’d been assigned to. That’s the first time I met Lieutenant Johnson Marsh and what a man he was. That first day I was convinced I’d never see a smile ever again, the trenches were a horrible depressing place. But there Marsh was, laughing and smiling and just generally enjoying life with the rest of the platoon. He was either crazy or stupid, thats what my first thoughts about him were. I remember those clearly even today but I couldn’t have been more wrong. If anything he may have turned out to be one of the smartest men I ever knew.
The first few weeks were spent holding our position from the germans. It was brutal but I found I was a decent shot with the rifle I was given. Marsh on the other hand spent those weeks barking orders at us and keeping us in line. He never used a rifle like most of the soldiers used. Instead he kept a Beretta m9 with him at all times. That weapon was the only one I ever saw him use. I remember the name only because he was so found of explaining everything there was to know about the gun to me whenever I questioned him about it. You could immediately recognize the pistol as his by its strange grip. One side of it had a picture of an idyllic scene of a manor house in the middle of a sprawling field. The other had a painting of a woman, his wife I’d guess but he never actually told me if that was there case. He seemed to spend the nights staring with longing at each side of the artistic grip.
I’d never really had a family, even with Belle I’d always felt like I was a bit of an outsider. There was so much I didn’t know about how normal people lived. Even though I’d had friends in Paris we were always kind of hidden away in our own personal corner. There was this separation between us and normal life, even between the other supernaturals in the area.
Here I felt like I was part of something though. Sure I was still lost but so was everyone else, we could be lost together and Marsh would always set us straight in the end. There was something about the man, some piece of him that just understood what we were all going through. He expected a lot from us but he was never unreasonable and several times even argued with command on our behalf when ridiculous orders came our way. I actually wanted to serve with him. The rest of the platoon wasn’t bad but they’d all been given the same deal as me. They were all just there to get out of prison. I’m still not sure what Marsh’s story was, he always kept that to himself but any of us would’ve taken a bullet for that man.
Our first real assignment came maybe three months into my period of indentured service. Our platoon was tasked with rescuing a captured American scientist and capturing a German scientist. The scientists in question were Frank Smith and Stein Hoffman and no, the irony of those names is not lost on me, fits the two of them though. I’m sure doctor Frankenstein wishes he was successful as those two. But before those orders could be acted on we had to overtake a German trench surrounding the compound they were staying in.
That fight was bloody and we lost several good men in the chaos. At one point a trench gun was shoved into my arms and I launched myself into the German trench. I wouldn’t be surprised if ghost stories are still passed around of what I did that day. After I made my way over and into the German trench I lashed out with all I had. Moving with superhuman speed and lashing out with both the bayonet affixed to my gun and my fangs, I fell upon the Germans. They stood little chance as I tore into them and all by my lonesome I ensured we’d face no more resistance.
Marsh was the first over into the now silent trench, I’m glad it was him because I’m not sure anyone else would’ve understood like him. I was holding the German officer to the trench wall, fangs buried in his neck as I fed when I heard footsteps behind me. I dropped him and turned to see Marsh staring questioningly at me. I must’ve been a sight to see, blood dripping from my mouth and covering my bullet torn uniform. Marsh steadied himself for a moment and shouted back to the rest of the platoon,
“Boys hold up a second! Just get down and stay up there a minute won’tcha!”
All of a sudden he took a step forward and a well mannered grin took its usual place on his lips.
“Though You didn’t care for sauerkraut J.?”
The joke stunned me, I fully expected him to shoot me then and there, put me down like the abomination I must’ve looked like to him.
“Lieutenant I…”
But Marsh raised his hands to cut me off.
“Command’d probably want me to shoot’cha, hell maybe I aught’a but I don’t think it’d be right. You seem decent, little odd sure but you’ve got heart, I see it in the way you look out for the boys. Plus I always figured there was some’n off about you. The way you stay out’a the light always seem a little faster and stronger than anyone got the right to be just didn’t figure it’d be…. That.”
Marsh told me pointing to the punctures in the officers neck.
“Thank you lieutenant, Could we keep this between us though sir?”
“Drop the formalities J. Jesus! We’re all friends here.”
“I just don’t want the others to know, they may not be as understanding as you.”
“No can do, but you can tell em’ yourself. Alright men, get on down here!”
In all my years I’d never had to explain myself to anyone up until that point. I guess that day my number was up but I never knew just how understanding people, normal people could be. I’d always lived around the supernatural in Paris, didn’t interact much with the normal people I saw in the streets every day, I didn’t have to. I’d always assumed there was a reason for that but in the moment I realized there wasn’t, not really. I’d just avoided normal people because I feared what they’d think if it came out that I wasn’t like them.
Of course There were some of the men that objected to… what I was. Most of them took after Marsh though. They didn’t really care what I was, I’d proven to them I was a good person and thats all that mattered. I just wish they’d been right about me back then because the truth was I still hadn’t learned to care, not really. Even the ones who objected came around eventually and that night Marsh finally came clean to me about why exactly he was so accepting.
According to him he’d always assumed there was more out there, things beyond human that lived on the fringes of society. Even he always thought he sounded crazy. I was the proof he needed to convince himself he wasn’t. Marsh also told me what we were really doing with the scientists. Both Frank and Stein researched the supernatural, their projects were as secret as secret could be. Marsh’s interests and theories, as personal as he tried to keep them showed up in his file somewhere. The higher ups had handpicked him for this mission because of it. The official story was that Frank had been captured but in reality he defected to further his own research with a like minded individual. Our mission was really to force Frank back into the fold and take Stein along with him.
The more he talked the more I could tell his heart was fully committed to this mission and the final assault tomorrow. I’d never seen someone so… alive. In my extremely long life I don’t think Id ever felt that kind of conviction myself. So I promised him I’d have his back tomorrow no matter what.
Morning broke and with it our assault began. Intel on the German defenses was shoddy at best but we never expected what we’d actually run into. At least three times our number acted as guards so a distraction was in order to give us a window of entry. A few of the men would handle the distraction “however they saw fit” to quote Marsh. Then Marsh and I would make our way into the compound itself and the rest of the platoon would cover us.
For what its worth most of the plan went off without a hitch. A tremendous explosion signaled Marsh and I to press the advantage and rush the confused soldiers that lay in front of us. Some actually turned and ran from me, apparently word of my stunt in the trenches yesterday had spread quickly. The rest of the platoon followed behind us but then our luck ran out with the roar of an engine.
An honest to god panzer tank rolled out of a tunnel we hadn’t seen that ran under the compound and turned its barrel towards us. I almost didn’t hear the blast from how slow time seemed to move. But move it did as the explosion of the shell’s impact scattered bodies left and right. The shell impacted behind us but the sheer force of the blast threw Marsh and I to the ground, knocking us unconscious.
When I slowly came to my eyes couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A man dressed in red priestly robes with a matching red top hat was walking between the bodies. When he approached one that groaned out with agony he’d kneel down and whisper things I couldn’t hear to them, after that he’d snap his fingers. sometimes the person he was talking with would disappear other times they would fall silent and sometimes it didn’t appear that anything happened at all.
Just the sight of the man terrified me and I wasn’t sure why. It was an instinctual reaction, the second I lay eyes on him I froze up and ice cold fear crept its way up my spine. When people accuse me of being the devil this man is who I think of. Even today I’m not sure what it is he does or why. What I do know is that he never looks the same. I’ve seen him appear as male, female, even as an animal on a few occasions but I can always tell. The second I’m near him no matter what he looks like the same old feeling comes over me.
Once my vision had finally focused in on the man he seemed to notice without ever looking at me. I blinked and suddenly he was there, kneeling over me.
“Would you like to live.”
He rasped down at me with a voice that seemed to boom around me no matter how quiet it must’ve actually been. I felt like a child again, staring at Archer for the first time. I’d never really had to fear death before but here I was, sure I was about to meet my end right here. In all honestly I wasn’t injured all that bad, I probably could’ve survived with or without this man help. But something told me that if I said no he’d make sure I would die right here.
“Ye…y… yes”
I stuttered out, barley able to form the words through the pain that stabbed throughout my body.
“You will be my instrument for one night at a time of me choosing.”
The man replied. I stayed silent as I stared into his eyes, trying to determine if the sunglasses he wore were tinted or if his eyes really did burn with an infernal red light. The man cocked his head as if waiting for a response to his question. I’m not sure if question was the right word though, there wasn’t much of a choice for me.
Looking back there was always a choice, maybe I could’ve survived on my own merits, found another way. In the years to come I’d wish I just said no, even if it would’ve cost me my life. But thats not what happened. I nodded and the deal maker snapped his fingers. As soon as he had dark clouds flooded the sky and blocked out the sun, allowing my body to begin repairing itself. The man moved on to where Marsh’s body lay and probably made him the same deal as I felt my body healing. Despite that, my consciousness faded again as I strained to try and hear what the man would say to Marsh.
We never actually discussed the man at all. Not then and not in the years since. Maybe that was all an unspoken part of Marsh’s deal. Maybe both of us just wished that man was nothing more than a waking dream, a vivid hallucination. Whatever the case neither of us ever mentioned that man to each other.
The next time I woke up I was chained to a table next to Marsh. We had been captured and brought before the very scientists we were here to apprehend. There were guards around but they all seemed to be waiting for some kind of order. I was certainly surprised when that order came in perfect English, even more surprised when the order was to let us down so we could talk.
Frank and Stein ended up being quite reasonable people. The two let us stay in relative comfort in the compound as long as we agreed to stay and leave them to their work. That was all the convincing it took for me. I understand that the men I’d served with were all dead and that these two were in some way responsible. Maybe that should’ve bothered me more, today it certainly would’ve. Back then I didn’t think the same way, they accepted me for what I was but only briefly, only out of respect for Marsh. What did the lives of people I’d known for so short a time really matter? Writing this now just makes me realize how cold I was before, I didn’t care for anything beyond myself. I’d made no efforts to find Belle since we were separated and how long had I known her, 100 years, more? I may have pretended I cared but when push came to shove I simply tried to make sure I survived.
Marsh wasn’t as cold as me, in fact he almost immediately reached for where his pistol should’ve been when he was unchained. It took Frank, Stein, and myself weeks to convince him that helping would be the right decision. He didn’t like it at first but little by little I think the scientists grew on him. The guards I’d seen our first day here seemed to thin out the longer we stayed. Wether that was a gesture of trust or simply because they were needed for more important duties I don’t know but it certainly eased Marsh’s mind.
I merely observed the scientists most of the time until Stein asked me for a sample of my blood. It didn’t surprise me that he knew what I was but for obvious reasons I was hesitant to give it to him, especially considering what I’d seen so called doctors do with vampire blood. Eventually he wore me down and I gave let him take a sample just to shut him up. After that I became more involved in their research though not by choice. They had me showcasing my abilities and tested the effects of sunlight on my blood. On a few rare occasions Stein even injected it into other prisoners that were brought in, something I put a stop to very quickly. T
hat sample of blood is why Frank and Stein are still around today. Somehow they managed to isolate whatever part of my DNA allows me to age so much slower than a normal person. They took that and spliced it into their own DNA against my recommendations. The crazy thing was it actually worked. Sure they had a newfound appreciation for rare steaks but beyond that I didn’t notice any of the effects that combining vampire DNA with your own would usually have.
As Marsh and I assisted the scientist’s research however we could we both came to the realization that they needed each other to function. Stein lacked a moral compass and was prone to suggest unethical or risky procedures, sometimes going so far as to carry them out without informing Frank. Frank on the other hand preferred caution in everything he did and sometimes I noticed him personally taking and shredding requests Stein had written for test subjects, hazardous materials, or samples from supernatural entities. The two kept a very delicate dance of checks and balances. Stein ever the daring mad scientist and Frank always playing the role of overly cautious genius.
Marsh and Frank got along extremely well near the end. The two would be up at all hours of the night as Frank explained what kind of things really existed in the world. Marsh always shared these ideas of a world where the supernatural and the normal could live together and I think Frank shared that vision. It wasn’t possible, still isn’t but treating the supernatural as something other than monsters couldn’t possibly be a bad thing. I think thats where the idea of the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs really came from, those talks Marsh had with anyone who would listen.
Overtime one of our favorite conversations was what we would do when the war was over and we could leave this compound. Stein wasn’t sure he would, if his research wasn’t going to a man who’d simply use it to cause more conflict he wouldn’t mind staying. Frank wanted to return home, if that was even possible and he asked if Stein would join him. Those two had also become close friends through our months in the lab. That checks and balances relationship they had made them basically inseparable. Marsh’s answer surprised me though, he said he wanted to get out of the military and start a program, something to help the supernatural live closer to normal lives. At least keep tabs on them so that the quality of their lives might improve. I was stunned, I couldn’t believe he’d throw his career away just to chase this pipe dream of his. I didn’t even know Marsh was concerned with that kind of thing. I didn’t have an answer of my own so I said I’d join Marsh and help with this program idea of his. Actually, even Frank and Stein seemed to agree with Marsh’s way of thinking. Little did we know the war would end less than a month after our talk and we’d all get the chance to actually put Marsh’s little idea to the test.
Once the Americans had come and discovered the compound pretty much abandoned aside from us we were all taken prisoner and shipped back to America. We were all interrogated and they either heard what they wanted to hear, or decided anyone we’d talk to about our experiences would assume we were just crazy. We were released back into society under constant surveillance. They even gave us a sizable home in D.C., it was certainly bugged to its core but thats exactly what we wanted.
Through the next year we used Frank and Steins knowledge and my supernatural nature to track down entities all over the country. We made sure that everything was discussed and planned out in the house. That way however was listening knew exactly what we were doing and how successful it was. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows though, some entities would rather we didn’t know about them. Others were naturally aggressive but some we were actually able to help.
Our escapades as a group of four didn’t last much past the first year. Mostly because our master plan of using the bugs worked perfectly. Ol’ uncle Sam had been listening in and wanted his chance at calling the shots but it meant we became a legitimate organization, the BSA. Technically the acronym was already taken but no one ever complained and Marsh never came up with anything better.
We spent 4 years doing everything we could to improve the lives of supernatural beings everywhere. Not every one of our endeavors was a success but we did some good in the world. One such project was blood banks for vampires. While the blood that gets donated is used for transfusions and the like some was put into cold storage for the BSA. That got distributed to vampires who had come to an agreement with us to stop hunting humans for blood. Some vampires were even selected for jobs at these blood banks, under the supervision of BSA agents of course.
The more human supernaturals like werewolves, vampires, and succubi even used us to find jobs in the world. We made in roads for the supernatural in daily life because of it. Werewolves would use their strength for government construction. Vampire’s long lives made them excellent archivists or history teachers because they actually been there for those events. A succubus’s ability to understand and control someones emotions and reactions made them excellent therapists and conflict deescalation specialists. Those are just some of the fields we managed to get the supernatural involved in. While they usually had to hide their natural they were wildly successful.
Everything went well until that fourth year when I first met Baelen. He was headstrong from the beginning, the powers that be were grooming him for leadership. He was everything they wanted, he followed orders and didn’t question things to much. In short, he was the perfect solution to the inconvenience the four of us caused running the organization as we saw fit. But baleen had a mean streak, he didn’t want to protect the supernatural so much as he wanted to put them in their place. Unfortunately a lot of the research we provided had scared pretty much everyone above us who had never even entertained the idea of the supernatural until now. That meant Baelen’s ideas of monitoring and segregating the supernatural population were popular. So popular that suggesting culling their numbers to keep them in check and under the thumb of the BSA was an idea they actually entertained. That sentiment caught on and our orders became more and more militant.
Every time we disregarded them to do things the way we had envisioned the consequence grew steeper. Eventually Frank, Stein, Marsh, and I just couldn’t stand to see what our BSA had become so we left. We couldn’t do anything else to stop what was coming from the inside, no point in going down with the ship.
After that Baelen quickly ended up heading the whole operation. He still took orders directly from government officials and when the BSA became part of homeland security it became Chimera division. Why they chose such a stupid name I’ll never know but the organization was a shadow of its former self. Before we looked out for the supernatural, tried to help. Under Baelen Chimera just exists to monitor the supernatural and “correct” any issues uncle Sam decides to have with them. They’re glorified enforcers that don’t give a damn how the supernatural actually have it. That’s not to say some good people don’t work for them, people like Belle and even Marsh’s own daughter as far as I’m aware.
It sickens me to think I was a part of it though, for all the good we did maybe it would’ve been better if Johnson Marsh’s pipe dream would’ve stayed just that. I can do a lot but I can’t change the past so I guess we’ll never know. A while ago I heard that something had happened in a little nowhere town out in New Mexico. Pretty much dropped off the face of the Earth. The only reason I even heard about it was through Belle’s letters. Apparently Chimera had to do some huge cover up job and decided it was better if the town just never existed. Maybe I should go myself and see if I can’t piece what happened together. Could be that someone else out there has it in for Chimera and is a whole lot more direct about it than me. I’m just imaging it was some runaway experiment Frank and Stein got up to. I wonder where those two ended up, I’ll have to check up on them sometime. This journal writing is digging up a lot of memories for me but thats probably a good thing. Write them down before I forget again. I think that’ll be all for today then, why do I keep addressing these like someone’s reading them? Not much point to that is there?

I'll start off by saying I don't want to sit here and write a post of another failed set of parents, but, alas, I have nobody else I can speak to about this that would really understand. I've found therapists do be rather unhelpful and I truly have trust issues with people. I've kept a lot of this inside for my life and at this point I think I just need to somehow let it out instead of punching holes in walls or screaming in anger randomly. Maybe writing it here would help me sleep a full night or be a little happier in life?
Either way, I would genuinely appreciate hearing your take on this for those who have experienced a similar past. I'm not looking for sympathy, but a possible path that I can take in getting rid of this hate I have inside of me for good.
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By the age of 13 I had already been living with different friends for months and months with no idea where or what my mother was doing. I went to school but only when I wanted to, otherwise I would wander around and skateboard on the streets until it was time to go 'home'. She would randomly show up in her beat up 80s Honda accord with everything she owned in the backseat to see me once in a BLUE moon. Never once did she speak with my friends parents or caretakers about me, just assumed I would worm my way into another family and their life and become another mouth to feed with no explanation. As a kid you don't really see it from an adults perspective, but as an adult you know there's a failed adult behind this child in your home.
I knew the situation wasn't ideal, but I was living with my best friend at the time for a while as a kid. Every night was video games with your best bud, how bad can life be?
My mother was 17 when she had me, and 16 when she had my brother both with the same guy. I never knew my brother, he was given away because either she was too young or she didn't want him. I spoke with him a few times on social media, but nothing more. I don't use any social media so any contact I did have is gone. He didn't know I existed until I had reached out and has never spoken with our blood parents.
Super mommy did it all. Drank whatever and whenever she could, frequently used drugs (even sold them to my friends who were in middle school for a couple of bucks), fist fought anyone that upset her (including men and myself at a certain age) and was always the victim in these scenarios. She hadn't been this way for as long as I knew her, but majority of the time it was. She had a temper like no other and felt like it was "her" superpower. When it reality it's just a weakness that everyone gets to experience firsthand, either verbally or physically depending on the day. "You can fuck with mean, but you can't fuck with crazy!" she'd say, moments before road raging with a stranger at midnight in the middle of nowhere.
When my 'step' father (the man who raised me most of my life and I love with everything I have) had heard of my situation living abroad, he didn't hesitate to pick me up and take me to a better place in an entirely different part of the country. He and my mother didn't see eye to eye on much after I was about 4 years old, but he always stuck around in the same town we lived in to be around me. Eventually he went back to his hometown when she severed communication between he and I. Only through the grapevine did he hear about me and what I was doing. A few days later he had driven across the US day and night to pick me up, give that family money, thanked them and took me away.
The last time I spoke with my mother was when she took me out for some new shoes for my 14th birthday making promises left and right, while again sitting in her car with everything she had in the backseat. It was just another day with this human who couldn't help but do drugs and lie to me. I already knew I wouldn't be here in a few days and when she came back to see me, I was gone.
I lived in this new home and it actually felt like one with my Dad (step dad but he was my DAD). A few years of having a HOME was surreal and I think I took it for granted, because that too came to an end. I was just starting college and that's when parent #2 came into my life.
Meet Bio-dad! He was once only a few blurry pictures from many years past and tales from my shaman mother. Naturally I was always curious about him, and one day we were in contact with one another. Somehow he managed to find me, even though he had been paying child support for most of my life. He flew out to meet me, and a few months later I somehow decided moving across the country to live with him was a swell idea.
I thought this might have been it, finally, the blood I thought I always wanted in my life. But just a few months in I realized he was no better than her. He was successful and worked hard, but that doesn't mean he's a good person let alone a father. I never called him Dad or Father purely because I was a young adult now and didn't need another figure like that in my life, let alone from someone I barely knew. He was on marriage 2 or 3 with step kids and I just felt like I was 13 years old again in another strange house. I was told he spent a long time trying to find me when he was paying child support but was never able to. I believed him at first, and sometime later many divorced fathers told me that probably isn't be true.
It felt like he was constantly angry or upset at something. His wife, the kids, the dogs, the pool, whatever he was annoyed with everyone else was obligated to agree or veer away. He often found ways to make himself out to be the hardest worker and nothing matters but how many hours you clock in your worksheet. He "wished he could work 40 hours a week". After a few months of everyone arguing, yelling and finger pointing over little nothings each day, I decided I didn't need this kind of stress in my life and left to live in my small truck for a few weeks until I found a room to rent on my own and start my adult life.
Over the years he's tried to stay in contact with me but I never really gave much back to him if at all. I have no interest in knowing him, but his insistent attempts to contact me with 'family is important' yada yada makes my blood boil. I have no blood family as far as I care to know. I'm on the latter half of this life and I simply don't see the point in trying to establish these relationships because we have the same grandparents or blood. Why would I EVER try to put myself into that situation again? For family? Something I really don't value or care about?
The last couple of years I went from never thinking about these humans to frequently finding myself shaking from anger and distracted in life from what I want to actually do and accomplish. I feel like I'm stuck on this chapter and I really, really need to move on from it. I thought just ignoring it would work, but alas as time goes on I get random phone calls and texts from people I used to know trying to get in contact with me. I know who they are, and I know who they're speaking for, but I don't ever give them the satisfaction of even responding.
So here I am, wondering what I should do. Do I call both of them (keep in mind I don't think they've spoken since the early 90s) and let each person individually know that I'd rather watch them suffer in life than to spend time with them? I don't even want them to know where I am, what I'm doing or what I sound like. Do I write them an email, pray they know what that even is and hope they understand I don't care for them?
I considered getting hypnotized so I can fully forget them. As ridiculous as that sounds I often wonder if I could completely remove them from my memory, would I be a better person? Would I finally feel this tension in my chest leave? Would I stop screaming internally when I'm alone out of anger towards them?
At this point in my life I just want to be happy with what I have and leave them in an old time capsule never to be opened again. As I get older the more I understand that childhood tremendously dictates who we are, and I'm learning that I don't really like who I am in some aspects, and I blame them for that. Whatever good and success I have in life is because of my 'step' Dad and how he raised me the best he could.
I don't know that I could be calm or mature enough to clearly state how I feel without emotions coming into the mix. Every time I imagine talking to them it quickly turns into a rage that takes a while to let go of.
If you read my rant, thank you. If you didn't, I don't blame you one bit.
tl;dr I need to completely remove my parents from my life so I can move on, and I'm not sure how to go about it.
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TDLR: Ex texted a bestfriend behind my back ending of last year ruining the friendship. Broke up with her, during that time I rekindled with someone else while occasionally texting my ex still not back together. Felt like I missed the warmth of my ex and dropped the new girl going back to my ex fully beginning of this year. Missed the support and love from my ex that I never truly got. Girl told me ex about our dirty laundry, causing trust issues in the whole relationship. Tried fixing them by removing girls, sharing location, etc. I felt scared my ex is gonna get revenge and started being distant at the end which pushed her away as well. We broke up begging of May this year. I thought we would get back together as always, found out she’s been adding guys she removed a long time ago. I got upset and texted her ugly nasty shit, and texted her dad saying his daughter is a sl*t childish. I thought by doing this I’d move on quicker, he told me I’m childish and to leave them alone. I understand I fucked up if I received a text like this from a a daughters ex I’d be fuming. I want to apologize to the parents for the lack of character I had but feel like it’s too late to backtrack on the stupid shit I said. Am I being selfish by sending a text?
Hello all, This is gonna be long. I really appreciate anyone who takes time to read and help with some words. I have no therapist or friends this seems like the best option.
I have never posted on here but seriously feel torn up. I know that I have been in the wrong in all this but I truly was dealing with a weed addiction till I finally sobered up and realized how fucked I am. This relationship has been a rollercoaster, but something I didn’t want to get off. She showed me many first things and it was my longest relationship of three years. She cared for me when I had no job, to every job, skinny fat, etc and I did the same with her struggles. To make a long story short back in August of 2023 I found my ex texting one of my bestfriends that worked with her at the time(I had quit that spot and found another job). No lust or crazy texts just work laughing but I confronted her about it it was jealousy and she said it was nothing.
After a few weeks come September I kept feeling this jealousy boil over. If she had texted anybody else I wouldn’t have said much but I felt like cause it was MY friend she should have brought up the convo they had even if it was light and funny. I was pestering her about him, she then decided to text him behind my back saying I’m being jealous. They text back and forth and he’s calling me a kid and disrespecting me even though he’s known me for longer, and she was laughing sending him laughing emojis and stuff. He then texted me asking me to fight because somehow she told him I threatened him. I got pissed she ruined a friendship and told her I’m done blocked her on everything. From September to December 2023 I was all alone focused on work and meeting new people. In December I rekindled with a girl I knew no feelings just stupid lust. While talking to the new girl, my ex sends me a heartfelt email since I had blocked her on everything, saying she’s sorry and understands I don’t want to hear from her but wishes me the best. I softened up and began texting her here and there, but still was talking to the new girl.
After a while in Jan/Feb 2024 I met with the girl I had rekindled with and we had done some things. However during this time I started seriously missing my ex and the way I felt comfortable around her. So I was talking to my ex again fully and wanted to make it work again. The problem came when my ex wanted to visit me since she’s long distance. She flew all the way to me and everything was good, till that new girl decided she wasn’t getting my attention anymore and texted my ex lying to her telling her I was begging for her etc. My ex broke down and asked why and I childishly said because of what she had done by texting my bestfriend and that we weren’t together. She cried in my arms and I balled with her cause I truly didn’t want to hurt this girl like this. I offered her to leave me and understood I fucked up. But to my surprise she wanted to stay and asked to fix our trust. I tried my hardest to fix it, I gave her my social passwords, she had my location, everything she wanted she got, even removed all girl friends to gain trust and she removed guys. However after some time around March 2024 I felt like all that I did wasn’t building up that trust again, and I began having flashbacks to trauma where I got left and cheated on within a week. I felt like my ex got back with me to seek revenge. So I started pushing her away scared.
During April she came again to visit me and booked a flight without asking me to pay or anything and genuinely asked to spend every minute of the day with me. I should have taken her coming to see me without me asking as her sign of true love but I ignored it.
Beginning of May 2024 came and our problems began. I started seeing her go out with friends to bars, even to houses I didn’t know and she would take a little longer to respond. I began thinking something is up due to my trauma and started being distant with her. She kept asking me to stop doing this, and cried a few times but I was truly scared of behind hurt and thought by being distant I’m protecting myself. She told me this once and it’s stuck with me “you’re gonna regret doing this”. After that convo she became cold with me too to the point where I didn’t even know who she was anymore. Our final convo was May10. We argued on the phone, and she blamed me for everything, I brought my ex bestfriend and her and how they hurt me she said she had already apologized and I said I did too for cheating but I knew what I did hurt more. She told me to leave her tf alone that I haven’t been the man she needs saying she’s seen better guys treat gfs better etc. That she wants time alone that she wouldn’t go around like I did with girls fucking randoms guys. I blocked her but I genuinely thought we would breakup and get back together as always.
However a week passed and I heard nothing. For some reason I felt like I deserved an apology cause during our arguments I was being more respectful and it felt like she kept saying stuff on purpose to hurt me. I saw she had logged onto my socials and I locked her out and logged out of her accounts cause I felt like it was better. However I was still stalking her Instagram following number and began seeing it go up fast. I started getting guys being suggested to me that follow her and I noticed it was all guys she used to work with and removed for “trust”. I felt broken cause it felt like she did what my first ex with the trauma did , just move on within a week. I felt sad, but the sadness turned to anger. I thought by burning bridges I could move on quicker. And I began blowing her up with calls to no answer, so I switched to texting and said some of the most heinous shit I’ve said to anyone. I then texted her mom telling her her daughter got a new type being childish but nothing too disrespectful to the mom. I texted the dad however and called his daughter names, which he got back at me with a threat and called me childish and that he’s happy his daughter isn’t with someone like me and to lose their numbers. I said lmao cool being even more childish.
I genuinely felt bad the same day I texted the parents this. I felt like bringing them into childish arguments and saying what I said made me look like a true child which I try not to be fast in situations but I was impatient and dumb. I felt like I was the one being stubborn in the relationship and pushed her away, then got upset when she did walk away I just didn’t appreciate her at the end and it hurts my soul I’ve felt this heaviness on my chest ever since like I lost the person for me. I know blaming it on the weed is childish but I feel like it game me that I don’t give a F feeling till it bit me in the ass. I spoke to my only friend and my parents who didn’t even accept the relationship at first due to culture, but they told me I had fucked up and told me with time they will heal, and that in time I can send a message to the parents if I wanted to to get my conscious clear and be able to move on with a better image.
Is it smart to reach back out to the parents to show respect as an adult or just let them be? I know this was a lot but it’s on my heart and brain everyday since. A part of me says apologize in the hopes of getting this girl back one day which I know is selfish, the bigger part of me just hates the image I left of myself cause I have never left a relationship in this manner

Hi all,
As the title states I'm looking for some career advice, and maybe also an opportunity to get some things off my chest. So, I apologize in advance if this is a little long.
I started my career in market research by complete happenstance. I was fresh out of college with a Marketing degree and applied for a job for a large well-known market research supplier - mainly because the title had "marketing" in it. I honestly had little clue what the company did, but it was an entry level position, and they weren't expecting any experience. I worked at this company for 14 years, getting promoted every couple of years which kept me happy and content. We primarily focused on copy testing TV ads, and brand tracking work. I learned the basics of market research, writing q'res, checking data tables, populating reports, drawing insights from the data. But I would classify all this knowledge as very surface level. Since we had standard "solutions" I rarely, if ever had to write a survey from scratch. We had a data processing team, so I never learned SPSS, R, or other data processing tools. After around year 12 I started looking for other jobs, because I was burnt out doing the same research every day and because of our company’s direction - maximizing profits, cutting workforce, offshoring data functions, etc.
At this time, I tried to branch out of market research, but looking for adjacent type of work - think marketing/web analytics, etc. - but didn't have much luck. I either made too much money or was disregarded because I didn't have the exact experience the role was looking for. I finally ended up taking a job with a small UK firm that specialized in text analytics - basically automated coding of verbatim comments. The role was interesting, as we were using the text analysis to comb through hundreds of thousands of CX survey comments every month. Unfortunately, the company who was conducting the CX research offered our clients the text analytics for free or very little cost, making our services redundant. This was the company’s only US client, so there was nowhere for me to go even though I enjoyed working for the company. Luckily, I saw the writing on the wall early and was able to job hunt before we were officially let go from our contract.
Given the pressure of impending doom at the previous position, I wasn't too choosey about my next role. I took a position in the research department for a B2B trade magazine publisher. In hindsight this was a dead-end move from the beginning, as the company was in a dying industry (who reads magazines anymore?) The research role was split between doing industry research studies to provide editorial content for the 50+ publications and doing custom research using our vast subscriber base. Most of the studies we conducted just ended up being copies of the previous year’s study and required very little thinking. Even the "custom" studies were often repeat waves from prior years and were in areas I had little knowledge of (roofing materials, plumbing fixtures, industrial food manufacturing equipment, etc.). Again, I saw the writing on the wall, as the company's revenue declined year over year and the custom research group barely topped $1MM in revenue (it was basically the co-CEO's pet project). Back to the job search.
This time, I was able to use some connection to get in touch with the hiring manager for a private mid-sized research supplier that specialized in TV ad effectiveness research, which was right up my alley thanks to the experience at my first company. I was hired and was able to seamlessly step into the role. I mainly enjoyed what I was doing, even if it was a bit repetitive. I was good at it, and I liked the company and people I worked with. At this point in my career, I was less concerned about climbing the corporate ladder and more concerned about work life balance and job stability. My main hope was to ride out this job until I was ready to retire (~10 years). However, as is happening all over the research industry, our company was acquired by a private equity funded research company. Over the past 2 years since the acquisition, there have been multiple layoffs and restructurings as the private equity firm looks to squeeze every cent out of their investment. There is no more job stability, and I feel like it is only a matter of time before I'm let go, and I can’t ride out my time here to retirement.
I have again begun a job search but I am running into all the same issues I had when I left my first company. I don't have technical know-how (SPSS, statistical techniques, etc.) and my research expertise is in a small niche sector (ad/marketing effectiveness). There are very few mid-sized research firms left, as most of them have been consolidated into large firms. So I'm either left with these big corporately run firms that have all of the same issues my current companies have (only care about profits above all else), or they are small boutique firms that are looking for research experience (CX, segmentation, product testing, etc.) I don't have and/or technically experience with statistical/data tools.
I don't really want to go back to school to learn a new career, because by the time I finish a new degree I may only want/need to work for a few more years. I'd love to find something that is flexible, and stable even if it means I make less money than I do now. Most of the research firms don't seem to be hiring right now, and I don't know if I'm just trading one bad situation for another. I can't seem to break into any adjacent industries (marketing analytics, media agencies, etc.) I've investigated government jobs, but nothing seems to translate to my experience.
Any other places I should be looking at? Does anyone else feel trapped in this industry that seems to be getting worse every year as more and more consolidation happens?
TL:DR - Have 20+ years of supplier side research experience but in a very niche sector, which is preventing me from getting considered for other jobs/industries. Mainly searching for stability and flexibility (versus $ and career advancement) but that seems to be in short supply as the research industry is continually being consolidated and gobbled up by hedge funds and private equity.

I (19F) have been experiencing these awful intense intermittent pains in my groin area (ALWAYS on the right side, under my pelvic bone) since I was about 9-10 years old. I never have this pain happen on the left side area of my groin, just the right side.
Like stated, the pain is intermittent when it does happen (as I can go weeks or months without having this pain come) so it will usually come in ‘waves’ when it does happen. They last about 1-2 minutes, sometimes a bit longer but then go away for maybe 5-30 minutes before returning. A lot of the time it comes in these waves FOR HOURS. Sometimes the entire day.
The pain is like a sharp stabbing (and almost pulsing kind of feeling??) but incredibly deep in the area. It can get so bad that it can spread down the rest of my upper right leg or to my lower right backside - when I was younger I sometimes couldn’t make it to school because of the pain. It’s like the kind of pain that makes it a bit difficult to breathe and if I’m walking around while it happens, I usually have to sit and hover on the ground and wait before I can return back to sitting or laying down as that’s the best position to be during these waves. I find that stretching out my leg can give a tiny tiny bit of relief or sometimes putting pressure on the area.
I’ve never been pregnant, had any surgeries, or serious illnesses and I’ve had all of my shots since birth done (if this info helps) The only thing relevant is that a year & a half ago my spleen became enlarged due to an underlying condition - the doctors said celiac but I am almost certain that isn’t the full answer as no actual celiac tests were done (lazy doctors lol)
However, while I was in the hospital before they could figure out what was happening or that it was even my spleen that was enlarged (since I came in with symptoms of extreme pain from my stomach all the way into my chest, shoulders, and back affecting my breathing and body positioning) they were doing a bunch of random tests. One for pancreatitis, one for something to do with my kidney or gall bladder, of course some ultrasounds, and a test for Leukaemia. During these tests, they discovered a ton of white blood cells gathered all over my body but really around my right side in my abdomen and around my heart (which is why they assumed cancer initially) However besides that - my blood tests and other normal tests were completely normal, just low in iron so they just settled with Celiac?? (My spleen is no longer enlarged due to my knowledge but the whole ordeal caused a series of random minor infections in my eyes, teeth, and skin as well as losing 10-15lbs in a single month during the time)
Every. Single. Time. I ask my doctor, she just says it must be a normal cyst in my ovaries or for some reason keeps asking if I’ve ever had trauma to my right abdomen/pelvis area… which I have not. So I know Reddit isn’t the best place to go or anywhere online, but my doctor has been constantly insisting ever since I was a kid, even before all this spleen stuff, that it’s either one of those things sooo I’m hoping to hear of anyone that’s been or going through something similar?? I can’t find something that even sounds similar online to ask my doctor to check out and I’m at a loss. THIS PAIN IS NOT NORMAL!! Especially for 10 straight goddamn years in the exact same place with the exact same pain!!! Anything would be helpful, I just want some sort of insight or even relation or really any suggestions or advice!
Age: 19F / height: 5’5ft / weight currently: around 120lbs / location: Canada, BC. / race/ethnicity: 50/50 Italian & indigenous (native)

TDLR: Ex texted a bestfriend behind my back ending of last year ruining the friendship. Broke up with her, during that time I rekindled with someone else while occasionally texting my ex still not back together. Felt like I missed the warmth of my ex and dropped the new girl going back to my ex fully beginning of this year. Missed the support and love from my ex that I never truly got. Girl told me ex about our dirty laundry, causing trust issues in the whole relationship. Tried fixing them by removing girls, sharing location, etc. I felt scared my ex is gonna get revenge and started being distant at the end which pushed her away as well. We broke up beginning of May this year. I thought we would get back together as always, found out she’s been adding guys she removed a long time ago. I got upset and texted her ugly nasty shit, and texted her dad saying his daughter is a “sl*t” etc. I thought by doing this I’d move on quicker, he told me to leave them alone. I understand I fucked up if I had received a message like this from my daughter ex I’d be fuming too. I want to apologize to the parents for the lack of character I had but feel like it’s too late to backtrack on the stupid shit I said. Am I being selfish by sending a text?
Hello all, This is gonna be long. I really appreciate anyone who takes time to read and help with some words. I have no therapist or friends this seems like the best option.
I have never posted on here but seriously feel torn up. I know that I have been in the wrong in all this but I truly was dealing with a weed addiction till I finally sobered up and realized how fucked I am. This relationship has been a rollercoaster, but something I didn’t want to get off. She showed me many first things and it was my longest relationship of three years. She cared for me when I had no job, to every job, skinny fat, etc and I did the same with her struggles. To make a long story short back in August of 2023 I found my ex texting one of my bestfriends that worked with her at the time(I had quit that spot and found another job). No lust or crazy texts just work laughing but I confronted her about it it was jealousy and she said it was nothing.
After a few weeks come September I kept feeling this jealousy boil over. If she had texted anybody else I wouldn’t have said much but I felt like cause it was MY friend she should have brought up the convo they had even if it was light and funny. I was pestering her about him, she then decided to text him behind my back saying I’m being jealous. They text back and forth and he’s calling me a kid and disrespecting me even though he’s known me for longer, and she was laughing sending him laughing emojis and stuff. He then texted me asking me to fight because somehow she told him I threatened him. I got pissed she ruined a friendship and told her I’m done blocked her on everything. From September to December 2023 I was all alone focused on work and meeting new people. In December I rekindled with a girl I knew no feelings just stupid lust. While talking to the new girl, my ex sends me a heartfelt email since I had blocked her on everything, saying she’s sorry and understands I don’t want to hear from her but wishes me the best. I softened up and began texting her here and there, but still was talking to the new girl.
After a while in Jan/Feb 2024 I met with the girl I had rekindled with and we had done some things. However during this time I started seriously missing my ex and the way I felt comfortable around her. So I was talking to my ex again fully and wanted to make it work again. The problem came when my ex wanted to visit me since she’s long distance. She flew all the way to me and everything was good, till that new girl decided she wasn’t getting my attention anymore and texted my ex lying to her telling her I was begging for her etc. My ex broke down and asked why and I childishly said because of what she had done by texting my bestfriend and that we weren’t together. She cried in my arms and I balled with her cause I truly didn’t want to hurt this girl like this. I offered her to leave me and understood I fucked up. But to my surprise she wanted to stay and asked to fix our trust. I tried my hardest to fix it, I gave her my social passwords, she had my location, everything she wanted she got, even removed all girl friends to gain trust and she removed guys. However after some time around March 2024 I felt like all that I did wasn’t building up that trust again, and I began having flashbacks to trauma where I got left and cheated on within a week. I felt like my ex got back with me to seek revenge. So I started pushing her away scared.
During April she came again to visit me and booked a flight without asking me to pay or anything and genuinely asked to spend every minute of the day with me. I should have taken her coming to see me without me asking as her sign of true love but I ignored it.
Beginning of May 2024 came and our problems began. I started seeing her go out with friends to bars, even to houses I didn’t know and she would take a little longer to respond. I began thinking something is up due to my trauma and started being distant with her. She kept asking me to stop doing this, and cried a few times but I was truly scared of behind hurt and thought by being distant I’m protecting myself. She told me this once and it’s stuck with me “you’re gonna regret doing this”. After that convo she became cold with me too to the point where I didn’t even know who she was anymore. Our final convo was May10. We argued on the phone, and she blamed me for everything, I brought my ex bestfriend and her and how they hurt me she said she had already apologized and I said I did too for cheating but I knew what I did hurt more. She told me to leave her tf alone that I haven’t been the man she needs saying she’s seen better guys treat gfs better etc. That she wants time alone that she wouldn’t go around like I did with girls fucking randoms guys. I blocked her but I genuinely thought we would breakup and get back together as always.
However a week passed and I heard nothing. For some reason I felt like I deserved an apology cause during our arguments I was being more respectful and it felt like she kept saying stuff on purpose to hurt me. I saw she had logged onto my socials and I locked her out and logged out of her accounts cause I felt like it was better. However I was still stalking her Instagram following number and began seeing it go up fast. I started getting guys being suggested to me that follow her and I noticed it was all guys she used to work with and removed for “trust”. I felt broken cause it felt like she did what my first ex with the trauma did , just move on within a week. I felt sad, but the sadness turned to anger. I thought by burning bridges I could move on quicker. And I began blowing her up with calls to no answer, so I switched to texting and said some of the most heinous shit I’ve said to anyone. I then texted her mom telling her her daughter got a new type being childish but nothing too disrespectful to the mom. I texted the dad however and called his daughter names, which he got back at me with a threat and called me childish and that he’s happy his daughter isn’t with someone like me and to lose their numbers. I said lmao cool being even more childish.
I genuinely felt bad the same day I texted the parents this. I felt like bringing them into childish arguments and saying what I said made me look like a true child which I try not to be fast in situations but I was impatient and dumb. I felt like I was the one being stubborn in the relationship and pushed her away, then got upset when she did walk away I just didn’t appreciate her at the end and it hurts my soul I’ve felt this heaviness on my chest ever since like I lost the person for me. I know blaming it on the weed is childish but I feel like it game me that I don’t give a F feeling till it bit me in the ass. I spoke to my only friend and my parents who didn’t even accept the relationship at first due to culture, but they told me I had fucked up and told me with time they will heal, and that in time I can send a message to the parents if I wanted to to get my conscious clear and be able to move on with a better image.
Is it smart to reach back out to the parents to show respect as an adult or just let them be? I know this was a lot but it’s on my heart and brain everyday since. A part of me says apologize in the hopes of getting this girl back one day which I know is selfish, the bigger part of me just hates the image I left of myself cause I have never left a relationship in this manner

I don’t have a super specific question, but I am kinda new to the hybrid athlete world and figured I would just describe my background, where my head is at, and what I’m currently doing and just sorta crowdsource feedback from the community.
I’m a 29 year old male, 5’11 and weigh 180 lbs. Always been pretty active but never been a total stud or anything. Spent most of my teenage and early adult years going between getting into and out of shape. Did 6 years in the national guard and never had a problem with the PT test. I’m a firefighter now and soon to be girl dad and those two things give me a reason to take my fitness seriously. Plus I just hate being out of shape in general and I’ll be 30 soon. So I’ve been a lot more consistent the past year and a half or so and have recently cleaned up my diet a lot too.
I don’t have any super specific goals right now other than I just want to be strong and also have good cardio. My wife and I both enjoy running so naturally that’s kinda how I gauge my cardio.
Where I’m at now in terms of fitness level:
I ran my first marathon in February and came in at 3:48:00 despite bonking super hard at mile 21. I was holding a sub-8 minute pace for the first 20 miles. I haven’t been training for anything specific since then, but I’ve still been running approximately 20 miles a week with a mix of speed work and slower easy runs.
Some of my stats are as follows:
Bench press 1RM: 215-225 lbs Squat 1RM: ~235 lbs Deadlift 1RM (hex bar): 350 lbs Pull-ups: 12 good ones, 15 if we not being picky
One mile run: 5:45 Two mile run: 12:33 5k: ~20 flat (estimating, haven’t tested recently)
I know, my squat is weak. The highest it’s ever been is like 260 and that was 5 years ago when I was hanging out in Afghanistan with nothing to do but workout. I was doing more light weight/high reps and single leg stuff during marathon training, and I don’t have great balance at the bottom which kinda hinders me some.
I only deadlift on the hex bar because I don’t trust my form on conventional.
Like I said, I don’t have any super specific goals but something like a 250 lb bench, 405 deadlift, 275 squat, along with a 5:30 mile and sub-20 5k would be awesome. I might train for another marathon later this year and try to hit 3:30, but idk yet.
What I’m doing right now:
Running ~4 times a week, approximately 20 miles total. One of those sessions is speed work either intervals or tempo run. The rest are 4-5 mile easy runs. Usually do a 20 minute low impact plyometrics HIIT workout followed by 10 minutes on a stair climber once a week as well. And go on walks with my wife a few times a week.
For weight lifting, I recently changed up my split from push/pull/leg to more of a bro split.
Chest day: bench press, incline dumbbell bench, chest flies (usually using cables), push-ups
Back day: Pull-ups, pull downs, bent over barbell rows, face pulls, back extensions
Arms and shoulders: shoulder press (usually seated barbell, sometimes seated dumbbell), lateral raises, curl ups, bicep curls (alternate straight bar and dumbbell), dips, tricep extensions.
Leg A: barbell back squats, leg extensions, hamstring curls, hip thrusters, standing calf raises
Leg B: deadlifts, Bulgarian split squats (holding dumbbells), step ups/step downs, walking lunges (holding dumbbells), standing calf raises.
I work my core on my leg days. I don’t do speed work the day of or day after my A leg workout. I usually don’t run at all the day after it. I have two separate leg days so that I can do both heavy bi-lateral leg exercises and more running-specific single leg stuff. I also don’t know when else I would do deadlifts because i don’t want to do them with squats on the same day.
The main reason I structured my split this way is because when I was doing chest, triceps and shoulders on the same day I was 1.) in the gym for a long time and 2.) didn’t have as much energy for triceps and shoulders after hitting chest.
I generally take one day completely off per week and have at least one day where all I do is an easy pace run, so it takes me a little over a week to work all the way through my split. And I avoid doing chest or back day with arm day consecutively because I know I’m kinda hitting biceps and triceps twice.
So, based on what I’ve said here, is there anything that sticks out to you guys that is obviously terrible? Anything y’all would change? Anything y’all would tell me to make sure I do or don’t do?

This is basically my last hope in finding a diagnosis.
I’m a healthy 21 year old male. And have had a full body itch for nearly 6 months.
Age: 21 Gender: Male Ethnicity: British Location: West London Prior
Areas affected, listed from most affected to least:
1) Upper legs (pictured) 2) Front torso 3) Chest 4) Upper arms 5) Lower legs 6) Lower arms 7) Hands and feet 8) Back (very rare) 9) Anything from my neck upwards experiences no itch
Observations:
1) No dry skin 2) No signs of infection (blister, puss, spots) 3) Hair follicles seems irritated 4) About 5 red lumps with no opening (0.5cm diameter) 5) Some small white lumps with no opening, almost like a stinging nettle rash
Sensation: Ranges from a light itch like a feather, almost like my body hairs are being stroked, to sometimes a very aggressive stinging itch.
Things that make it worse:
1) Heat 2) Sweat 3) Wearing clothes
Things that help (but don’t eradicate):
1) Moisturiser 2) Showering 3) Steroids (prednisolone)
Events to be noted that might be credited:
1) I moved to a new location 6 months prior to itching beginning 2) I began using topical minoxidil on my head 4 months prior to itching 3) I have supplemented with protein powder and creatine for 3/4 years
Further comments:
1) My diet is varied, ie good balance of protein, carbs and fat (have not changed diet in 6+ years) 2) I consume fruit and veg daily and supplement zinc, magnesium and multivitamin 3) I do drink alcohol and smoke electronic vapes (weekend only) 4) I exercise daily 5)I am not stressed or suffer from anxiety/ any other mental disorder 6) I wash clothes regularly and shower twice daily
I have been prescribed scabies treatment 3 times and followed procedures but to no avail.
I have attached a picture of my thigh.
I am in ongoing assessment by doctors but they keep giving me basic answers and don’t seem to want to help me.
Would appreciate any tips or ideas to research as nothing I find online seems to agree to my situation.
Thank you!