I worked at Publix in Apollo Beach for about 8 months. I was hired in late 2020 after quitting my job at Dunkin’, which was nearby. I made some really good friends at Publix who I’m still friends with. I was hired by the produce manager because we sort of knew each other from Dunkin’ when he used to go there to buy iced tea. We’ll call him “Phil”. The job was okay, but later on Phil became more of a dick. He kept calling me out on how I wasn’t going fast enough with stocking the produce. I tried to get the morning shift, but he only let me cut the fruit for about 20 minutes before deciding that he didn’t want me to do it at all. I got along more with the assistant produce manager.
The more I worked there, the more I saw that Phil was a creep. There was this attractive mid-30s Puerto Rican woman named “Lucia” who worked at the front with the cashiers. Lucia would stop by the produce department because she had to sweep in the back, and Phil kept commenting to her that she’s cute and he really liked her pigtails.
While I was working there, I signed up for the Air Force and had to get interviewed for my secret clearance. The Department of Homeland Security had to send him a booklet that he had to fill out, asking questions about me, and he mentioned that to me, jokingly saying “your life is in my hands”. I laughed it off because I knew he was joking.
I quit Publix after working there for 8 months and became a contractor working with a company that assembles grills and outdoor furniture for Home Depot. Shortly after I quit, Lucia was texting me, saying that she filed a complaint against Phil because he kept hitting on her and wanted to start a relationship with her. Phil was at least 55 years old at the time. There was an investigation going on, and ultimately he was removed from that Publix. I’m sure he got demoted as well.
A few months after I quit, I had a phone call with an investigator for my secret clearance for the Air Force. The investigator mentioned that Phil wrote down that I wasn’t a “pleasure to work with”. I was furious and wanted to find Phil and tell him off. My girlfriend, who is now my wife, told me not to do it and that I shouldn’t risk anything where I can’t join the Air Force. I let it go, but I was really mad about it for about a week.
So yeah, if you work at Publix, just be careful and know when it’s time to quit if you have self-respect.

Ok so this happened a while ago, but I think it's funny now because of how obnoxious this woman was.
So this takes place when I was 8, yes, 8 years old. I've been a girl scout for a while so I've been used to selling cookies. The thing is, you have to order the cookies before you are finished selling them, so you order the pre bought cookies and then a few extras to sell when they arrive, like at cookie booths. That year, we got little too much boxes and needed to go door to door selling.
I should mention I was a tallish child, somewhere around 5 ft. And that was not the only time I was mistaken for a teenager while I was under the age of 10. But anyways I, my mom, and my little brother, who was 2, loaded up a little red wagon with some cookies, and started selling. Now I lived in a small town, so a lot of people know each other or at least reasonably friendly. I should note because people might be a little mean that I was wearing a girl scout vest, probably tight pigtails with my thin hair that made my forehead look massive but besides the point, and some pink shirt and neon yellow jeans. True fashionista right there. Now since I was 8 I don't remember much of the story so this part is mixed from what my mom heard and my memory.
We've been selling cookies for like over an hour, and we're tired, but I'm used to this and I'm trooping along. I've got my sales speech I know the cookies and prices I was on it. So we get to this house and it had some tall bushes outlining it, very important to remember. Now I go up and ring the bell, and my brother was next to the bushes sitting in the wagon, but within view of the front door. This woman answers and she was visibly annoyed. Now I was not great on social cues so I smiled and do the whole "Do you want to buy some cookies thing." Even I remember this absolute NASTY look on her face. Idk what happened to her but yeah. She then notices my brother who is sitting in the wagon. Then this woman, and I'm paraphrasing here because I don't remember exactly, called me a slut and how nasty I was for parading my son around and how teenage girls should just close their legs. I was just standing there awkwardly because 1. I was too young to understand what she meant thank goodness, and 2. Surprised and a little scared that this random woman yelled at me. She probably yelled a few more things but I was too confused to remember and my mom was so upset she couldnt hear what she was saying. I think my mom knew I didn't know what that woman called me because she didn't start yelling at her, but her face was very red. So this woman slams the door because I didn't respond, and I just go back to my mom and was like, "that was weird and she was mean." I don't remember what happened after but my mom definitely kept her cool and we pretty much finished for the day after that. I mean I sold a lot of cookies that day so yay?
For those wondering what I was thinking she meant, here you go because I remember this purely from how confused I was. First of with the closed leg thing I always stand weird from some leg issues I had so I didn't think much of that but here's the funny part. I thought this woman called me a slug. Yes, like the slimy little thing that doesn't like salt. I didn't know what a slut was and if that was even a word at the time so I thought this woman did one of those mild insults like I hope both sides of your pillow is warm kind of thing. You'd be surprised on what people say or try to pull on girl scouts, so support your local girl scouts because they've dealt with pretty much unpaid customer service yay.

This is a long read.
TL;DR: Drake is a creep with a clear pattern of predatory behavior towards many minors and I have the receipts to back it up.
INTRODUCTION
This is a comprehensive post regarding Drake's extremely questionable behavior regarding minors and young women in general. There's more than 70 links in this post to various sources and over 30.000 characters.
If you want to repost, make a YouTube video, an article, a TikTok or Twitter thread then do it - I do not need credit, I do not care - I only want this information to be spread.
This post will serve as an archive that people can refer back to or use as a source to back up their claims.
Let me be clear - I do not like Drake. I've thought the guy was a creep ever since the Millie Bobby Brown video and I despise him - but I'll still try to remain as objective as possible here, you know my bias now though.
This thread is partly based on this thread from 2022
Read this comment for edits I've made to the post.
OVERVIEW
This post is divided into sections:

• The 17 year old at a show
  
• Millie Bobby Brown
  
• Billie Eilish
  
• Kylie Jenner
  
• Hailey Baldwin (Now Bieber)
  
• Cydney Christine (Lil CC)
  
• Aaliyah
  
• Unconfirmed rumors
  
• Lyrics, references, tweets, pictures, ties
  
• (Dis)honorable mention
  
• Final Note
  

THE 17 YEAR OLD AT A SHOW
Drake is performing at a show in Ogden, Denver where he calls a girl up on stage. I really encourage you to watch this yourself, but since I know the majority of you won't watch it, I've described it for you below.
Video starts with her on stage, he asks her name, where she is from, asks the crowd to welcome her to the stage and tells her she looks great. He then asks her to give him two seconds because "I gotta be ready for you".
He wipes off his sweat with a towel and proceeds to take her hand, put it on his shoulder, his hand on her hip/back and they slow dance for a few seconds. He spins her around and stop her with her back facing him. This is when it starts to get.. really weird.
Drake says "I told you I like your hair, right, what is it, like herbal essence or something?" while he's caressing her shoulder and smelling her hair. He says something I can't hear properly, puts the mic down and exposes her upper back and neck by pulling her shirt collar down. The crowd goes wild. He then starts kissing her shoulder and neck, putting her arms around her and fondle her breast.
A few seconds later he picks up the mic again and says "you can't have me carried away again before I get in trouble - how old are you?" She responds "17". The crowd has a mixed reaction - Drake says something that is hard to make out, because of the crowd but when it's clear he says "I can't go to jail yet, man - 17? Why do you look like that? You thick - look at all this!"
It's hard to make out exactly what he says afterwards because of the poor quality (2011 zoomed video at a concert, it's bad..), but he says something about it bringing them (the 17 year old and Drake) to a close and follows it up with "I got one question for you (...) I just want to know if (something about women in Colorado), I should just take one opportunity to take one home?"
The girl nods "As a Colorado woman you'd enjoy that?" "Well, listen 17, I had fun - I don't know if I should feel guilty or not, but I had fun. I liked the way your breasts felt against my chest. I just want to thank you." He then puts the mic down again, grabs her hand and kisses it. You might think that was a little over the top, but he then immediately follows it up by putting his hand on her chin and kissing both of her cheeks, her forehead and then on her fucking lips.
I think he asks her to walk off stage, it's hard to make out, but then he says "It's okay. I'm only 23, I can do shit like that. It's all good, you know what I'm saying" and the video ends.
Addition: I know this girl has said she was not offended, violated, whatever you want to call it, but that's not the point. And I do not mean to sound like a complete dick, but it's not about her - it's about Drake and proving his pattern of behavior over many instances. If you stopped here because she denied it, you completely missed the point.
Drake's age: 23
MILLIE BOBBY BROWN
Now this video was what really made me do a double take on Drake. Now, there's one very important fact to establish here and that is that Millie Bobby Brown at the time of this interview (18. September 2018) is 14 (Born 19. February 2004). I'll quickly transcribe the interview here:
Interviewer:

What about your relationship with Drake, tell me about your friendship, how did this all come about?

Millie Bobby Brown:

I love him. I met him in Australia and he's honestly so fantastic and a great friend and a great role model. You know we text - we just texted each other the other day and he was like "I miss you so much" and I was like "I miss you more". He's coming to Atlanta, so I'm definitely gonna go and see him and I'm so excited.

Interviewer 2:

You and Drake? That's awesome. That's awesome..

Interviewer:

What advice does he give you? What does he say?

MMB:

About boys he helps me, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah he's great. He's wonderful, I love him.

Interviewer:

What's his advice with boys?

MMB:

Ehm, you know.. That stays in the text messages.

I'm sure it's obvious what is wrong here and I don't need to spell it out for any of you, but I do have one thing to add. If Drake is giving advice about boys and telling her "I miss you so much" they must have talked for a while. It's not something you say after knowing a person for a week. We are talking months at least. There's 7 months between her birthday and the interview - did Drake already start talking to her when she was 13? It would make sense that Drake was in Australia during their summer (Dec-Feb) for festivals/concerts/vacation.
Millie has only commented on this once which was a few days later in a story on Instagram
I don't want or mean to infantilize her, but she was 14. She would have no chance of knowing if Drake actually was grooming her. There's not a chance that she could understand the dynamic at play and why it's wrong at that age.
Drake also defended their friendship on the song Another Late Night when he raps:

Weirdos in my comments talkin' 'bout some Millie Bobby, look
Bring them jokes up to the gang, we get to really flockin'

Ironically enough that very same song is also connected to the next person
Drake's age: 33
BILLIE EILISH
The year after the Millie Bobby Brown controversy Drake gets caught texting a minor again and this time it's Billie Eilish. She does a yearly interview with Vanity Fair, and in the 2019 version she's asked who's her most famous contact in her phone. That's when she reveals she's been texting with Drake and that he's so very nice to her. Billie is at the time of the interview (released 25. November 2019) 17 (born 18. December 2001).
Billie did defend Drake and their texting in an interview with Vogue ~3 months later:

“The internet is such a stupid-ass mess right now,” says Eilish, who quit Twitter in 2018. “Everybody’s so sensitive. A grown man can’t be a fan of an artist? There are so many people that the internet should be more worried about. Like, you’re really going to say that Drake is creepy because he’s a fan of mine, and then you’re going to go vote for Trump? What the fuck is that shit?”

On the song Another Late Night where Drake mentions Millie Bobby Brown, Lil Yachty is featured (one of Drake's gho.. co-writers) and he raps the line:

I let her go, she fine as hell but baby wasn't stylish (Yeah)
She had big tits like Billie Eilish but she couldn't sing (Drip)

Now - I know this is not Drake, I just thought it was a 'funny' coincidence that these two women are connected through their shared experiences with Drake and this song. On another note some might say that Drake should have asked Yachty to omit this line if he really was a friend of Billie Eilish since she has been quite vocal about sexualization of herself and women in general.
Drake's age: 34
BELLA HARRIS
This one is pretty fucking bad in my opinion. Bella Harris is the daughter of Jimmy Jam who's a record producer, songwriter etc. and has been very successful. Through him she's been in and around the entertainment/music business her whole life and met Drake that way.
There's an archive of photos posted here that contains the old IG posts she had with Drake. The first one was on May 5th, 2016 - Bella Harris is born 20. April, 2000. She had just turned 16 at the time.
Objectively I think they are defendable since they are all music related - Rihanna concert, Summer Sixteen Tour (ironic name..) and the American Music Awards, but then two years later they reportedly start dating and that makes it really difficult to believe, especially with the last archived photo of them in 2018. Also the same photo that is referenced in this article talking about Drake renting an entire restaurant for an intimate dinner between them.
Note that E! have confirmed it and are not backing down on their claim despite Harris denying it on Instagram.
Her father liked this post on Instagram about the whole situation. It's not particular to the restaurant or previous potential dating it's more so a general declaration of support for Drake, but that includes the PDF-file allegations.
Him supporting Drake made me search for more information, because I wanted to find whether or not he had spoken about it at the time. That led me to this article where her mother, Lisa, is being asked a few questions regarding Bella.

I was surprised Jimmy Jam hasn't introduced Bella to Drake, Rihanna or anybody else in the music world she is interested in meeting.
"No," said Lisa. "She loves Rihanna, she loves Beyoncé. [Bella has met Bey; her brother Max has met Ri-Ri.] She hasn't met Drake. Too old."

Lisa Harris about a photo of Bella (included in the article) - Bella is 14, almost 15 at the time.

I think Drake would behave himself around a child, even one dressed like this, to wit: Mom doesn't think this photo is too sexy, in all its legginess?
"SHE'S WEARING A BATHING SUIT and a coat!" said Lisa. "Sexy? What? My point is it's a body business, so I don't look at it [that way]. It's a posed picture. She has a one-piece bathing suit on. It's artistic."

Drake's age: 29-31
KYLIE JENNER
Ever since the Kanye (also fuck Kanye for the record) vs. Drake beef we (or I at least) became aware of the fact that Drake has had a long relationship with the Kardashians/Jenners and known them for many, many years. In fact Drake performed at Kylie's sweet 16 back in 2013. You know what that Sweet 16 was specifically remembered for as well? Drake kissing Kylie on the cheek in front of everyone, including her then boyfriend Jaden Smith.
That's not out of the ordinary and would be 'normal', if it wasn't for the clear pattern that is going on here, because guess what - 6 years later Drake and Kylie reportedly start dating, well.. dating/fucking/whatever you wanna call it. Admittedly this article is easily dismissed as paparazzi journalism and clickbait, but what if I told you that Drake has rapped this:

Yeah, I’m a hater to society/Real shit, Kylie Jenner that’s a side piece/Yeah, I got 20 muthafuckas in’ Kylies.

You probably wouldn't have heard it, since it was on an unreleased track played on an Instagram Live back in 2020, but it does make it seem pretty likely that he did actually hook up with her, especially considering the response Drake posted

“A song that mark ran last night on night owl sound live set shouldn’t have been played,” he wrote, “It’s a song that leaked 3 years ago and got scrapped shortly after. He was just going too deep in the drake/future catalogue. Last thing I’d want to do is wake up having any friends of mine feeling disrespected so I just had to say that to start off the day.”

Kylie was 22 at the time they reportedly hooked up.
Drake's age at Kylie's Sweet 16: 26
Drake's age when they hooked up: 33
HAILEY BALDWIN (NOW BIEBER)
In 2016 there were reports that Hailey and Drake were dating. Apparently they hooked up at a party that Drake hosted, where another attendee is also mentioned that seems oddly relevant:

Drake and Hailey weren't the only ones getting close, with Kylie Jenner and rumoured new boyfriend PartyNextDoor were seen "making out" at the party.
"It was almost like she was trying to make a statement," an insider added.

Now again - there's nothing illegal in a 11 year age difference and dating a 19-year old as 30. It's weird, yes. But again we come back to the pattern. Why do Drake know Hailey? Through their similar friends and friend group (Kardashians/Jenners). How long has Drake known Hailey? Well, when Hailey was 19, she said they had known each other for a long time.
We can actually get even closer with certainty since we know that Hailey attended Kylie's Sweet 16 in August, 2013. Hailey is born 22. November 1996, so she was also 16 at the time. So it's another girl that Drake has known since she was a minor and started dating when he got the opportunity. This is not normal.
Another pattern that Drake also seem to follow is that likes to hook up with his friends girl. We know for a fact that he hooked up with Lil Wayne's girlfriend while he was in prison. He not only rap about it, but also admit it in an interview. It's not really hard to believe that he did the same with Bieber.
Drake's age at Kylie's Sweet Sixteen: 26
Drake's age when they hooked up: 29
CYDNEY CHRISTINE (LIL CC)
Cydney Christine is a beatmaker and model - she produced the Drake song Money In The Grave and in a Complex interview/roundtable she talks about it and Drake.

Really the only artist I reached out to is Drake. I'd never met him, never spoke to him, I don't know why, but he has been following me for the past like 6 years. I don't know why..

This interview was uploaded 17. December 2019, Cydney Christine's is born 21. July, 1997, meaning she was 22 at the time of the interview and 15-16 when Drake started following her. This is somewhat innocent but strange since Drake is 27 at the time. That's not what is really weird though.
In March 2023, Lil CC is on the No Jumper podcast and here she speaks about Drake and having her debut beat being a Drake single.
Lil CC: I played basketball, right, so he really was a fan or not a fan, sorry, supported one of my teammates at the time um..
Adam 22: And this is when you are in high school?
Lil CC: Yeah, in high school. So he was a fan of women's basketball - high school basketball - I was her teammate so he followed me because of her, and I was like "oh shit, bitch, you got Drake to follow me, like what the hell? Like that's so crazy". So he followed me and I lost it - I have to meet Drake, I love Drake, I've always loved Drake, still love Drake.
There's more to the conversation, but the relevant part is here is that it's just very, very strange for Drake to be a women's high school basketball fan. They are 16 at the time. He's a supporter of a 16 year old female high school basketball player as a 27 year old grown adult man. He has not hooked up with her, dated or anything of the sorts that we know of or that she has told - for the record.
Drake's age: ~27
AALIYAH
It's not like I have whole section for this, but his obsession with Aaliyah is just another part of the pattern. I don't have a lot to contribute here, but if you don't know Aaliyah's story I'd recommend reading her Wikipedia and specifically the section about her personal life. If you think that 'obsession' is too strong a word for how much Drake admires her, I think you should take a look at this Complex article from 2018 and reconsider.
UNCONFIRMED STORIES
(I will continuously update it whenever I find or get sent new information to add here.)

• Back in 2021 Drake was being exposed on TikTok for his 'private Tinder' where one of his guys would go out and the hottest girls in town, interview them and find the one that Drake would like the best.

“He finds the girls and then he interviews them, and out of all the girls he interviews, he picks the one that he thinks is the best,” she continued. “Then, he drives her to Drake’s place, Drake has sex with her, and then he drives her home. So, basically, Drake has his own private Tinder.”

• This girl explaining how her friend was invited by Drake's crew and she was brought along as a +1. No ID check, very young girls. Worth a watch: https://www.tiktok.com/@simonestrauss/video/7365696116085591304
  
• This reddit post - yes I know this is 'so easy to just say', but I think the poster was very right by pointing this out:
  

I'm sure you guys won't believe me, but this is the type of situation where someone vanishing and telling you is the best you'll get.

• This YouTube comment about a girl claiming to be a victim of trafficking in Toronto in 2015 and that Drake had ties in all these circles.
  
• This article from 2016, where Drake and his buddy get aggressive with an amateur photographer for taking pictures of Drake and two women. This isn't strange in and of itself, but then there's this post from 2018
  

From the article:

The mystery women were dressed identically in matching white parkas, skinny tan pants, tan boots and ponytail hairstyles.

From the post:

Maybe this foreign born one named A+ list singerapper should have told the whole story about his split with a fellow foreign born A+ lister. How she caught him more than once with another woman and his fascination for watching porn involving women wearing pigtails.

• This post

This foreign born A+ list singerapper asked for all kinds of photos from not only the 18 year old he is dating but at least two other 18 year old females and he didn't make sure they were 18 before he started asking.

• This post

That teen, who was topless in the dressing room of this foreign born A+ list singerapper last night was nowhere in the ballpark of being legal.

• This one is fucking WEIRD - some guy was jerking off and noticed something. Now there's plenty of reasons as to why they would do this, it's porn and they need a story. But then there's this post from 2017:

This one named foreign born A list rapper is going around telling porn stars he is starting his own porn company. It is just his excuse to have sex with them all and not pay.
Drake

• This Twitter post/video of UK rapper Potter Payper calling out Drake for messaging 'bare young girls in England'.
  
• This entire thread is weird to say the least. More CDAN rumors as well. Read the thread, it's too much to paste and explain here.
  
• Drake paid out $350K to sexual assault accuser - Drake initially filed a lawsuit against Layla Lace/Laquana Morris for civil extortion, fraud, defamation, abuse of process and intentional infliction of emotional distress strongly implying he's innocent - but why pay someone $350.000 then?
  

The former stripper and Instagram model wrote: "Drake forced me to perform oral on him. It wasn't your ordinary oral it was more so a fetish." She then describes how he told her to spit into a cup "until he had measured it."

• This comment about a model claiming Drake 'made girls puke in dog bowls for him'. Now that's a typical thing you can dismiss as a rumor, but the same guy commented 16 days ago and said this:

If Kendrick mentions anything about dog bowls or birthday parties in Toronto, then shit is more serious than we thought

• This interview of Aya (Born 24. April 2007) (a 'dancer' in Ice Spice - Deli and probably known for other things I just don't know her) where she's asked about having sex with Drake. She said she can't speak on it because of 'court'.
  
• This Tweet of a guy talking about his experiences in high school and the hottest girls posting from Drake's mansion and being followed by him "every single time".
  
• The Instagram page of Exclusive Artists Agency is strange and related to Drake. A dude on TikTok went in-depth on it and this is creepy in more than one way.
  

The woman who had a Twitter thread similar to this post that ended up deleting her account made an entire YouTube video out of it you can find here.
LYRICS, REFERENCES, TWEETS, PICTURES, TIES
(Again - Feel free to share with me and I'll add it.)

• On the song Nice For What Drake raps:

You got a baby Benz, you got some bad friends
High school pics, you was even bad then

• This Tweet

"If amazing was a young bitch I'd be going to jail...cause I'm fucking amazing" - Me

• This image of Drake and Malone from Drake's Instagram that's been deleted now. Malone is infamous for impregnating a 13 year old when he was 20.
  
• On the song The Heart Part 6 Drake raps:
  

Just for clarity, I feel disgusted, I'm too respected
If I was fucking young girls, I promise I'd have been arrested
I'm way too famous for this shit you just suggested

• Also on the song The Heart Part 6 Drake raps:

Only fuckin' with Whitneys, not Millie Bobby Browns, I'd never look twice at no teenager

• His connection to Baka Not Nice who Drake is very close with.

In 2014, Baka was arrested and charged with forcing a 22-year-old woman into prostitution and taking her money. In 2015, he pleaded guilty to assaulting the woman and an unrelated weapons charge.

• Adel Nur who has very close business ties to Drake. He's executive producing the show Euphoria together with Drake and they co-own some shady companie(s). Another user went in-depth on their connection here.
  
• J Mulan who's an entrepreneur and close with Drake. This entire thread about her being a trafficker - and especially OP's comments are worth reading .
  
• DJ Eric who's the owner of Area 29, a strip club in Houston. Drake shouts him out in songs and is allegedly also trafficking for Drake.
  

(DIS)HONORABLE MENTION
I know people say Jorja Smith, and I do agree that dating a 19-year old as a 30-year old man is weird and rather pathetic, but every other girl mentioned is related to minors. Their relationship if you can call it that was for sure toxic, and it seems like Drake was a piece of shit abusing the power dynamic between them. This is taken from the Drizzy subreddit, but I can't provide the source since that gets the post blacklisted as it's temporarily banned because of brigading.

In “Summer Games” Drake also says ”I kept it decent, even the secrets, kept it between you and I”. What secrets exactly? Well in Jaded, Drake says this woman “told him all her insecurities”.
It’s also interesting that the song “Summer Games” is about a woman who broke up with Drake right at the beginning of the summer. Drake and Jorja were dating in April of 2017 which is right before the summer starts and only lasted a couple weeks.

But that's all there is to it. I can't dig up anything else, so unless someone have something credible with sources, I don't think there's good enough reason to add her to the list further up.
FINAL NOTE
I know there's very real questions about the reliability of CDAN and that he was exposed, but in the very same article The Daily Beast refers back to one of their old articles on the subject which definitely confirms that he had/have industry ties and do know a lot. Another reddit user dove further in and made some compelling arguments, but remember to take it with a (big) grain of salt.
If you have anything to add, please post it in the comments and if credible/sourced I'll put it in the post. If I got anything wrong please correct me and I'll edit it. If you have sources that contradict anything in the post, please also share them with me and I'll include them.
Please share this anywhere you want. I don't care about credit. If any media outlets wants to use it for their article or whatever, please do - feel free. You do not need to ask permission.

This is a long read.
TL;DR: Drake is a creep with a clear pattern of predatory behavior towards many minors and I have the receipts to back it up.
INTRODUCTION
This is a comprehensive post regarding Drake's extremely questionable behavior regarding minors and young women in general. There's more than 60 links in this post to various sources and it contains almost 30.000 characters.
If you want to repost, make a YouTube video, an article, a TikTok or Twitter thread then do it - I do not need credit, I do not care - I only want this information to be spread.
This post will serve as an archive that people can refer back to or use as a source to back up their claims.
Let me be clear - I do not like Drake. I've thought the guy was a creep ever since the Millie Bobby Brown video and I despise him - but I'll still try to remain as objective as possible here, you know my bias now though.
This thread is partly based on this thread from 2022
OVERVIEW
This post is divided into sections:

• The 17 year old at show
  
• Millie Bobby Brown
  
• Billie Eilish
  
• Kylie Jenner
  
• Hailey Baldwin (Now Bieber)
  
• Cydney Christine (Lil CC)
  
• Aaliyah
  
• Unconfirmed rumors
  
• Lyrics, references, tweets, pictures, ties
  
• (Dis)honorable mention
  
• Final Note
  

THE 17 YEAR OLD AT A SHOW
Drake is performing at a show in Ogden, Denver where he calls a girl up on stage. I really encourage you to watch this yourself, but since I know the majority of you won't watch it, I've described it for you below.
Video starts with her on stage, he asks her name, where she is from, asks the crowd to welcome her to the stage and tells her she looks great. He then asks her to give him two seconds because "I gotta be ready for you".
He wipes off his sweat with a towel and proceeds to take her hand, put it on his shoulder, his hand on her hip/back and they slowdance for a few seconds. He spins her around and stop her with her back facing him. This is when it starts to get.. really weird.
Drake says "I told you I like your hair, right, what is it, like herbal essence or something?" while he's caressing her shoulder and smelling her hair. He says something I can't hear properly, puts the mic down and exposes her upper back and neck by pulling her shirt collar down. The crowd goes wild. He then starts kissing her shoulder and neck, putting her arms around her and fondle her breast.
A few seconds later he picks up the mic again and says "you can't have me carried away again before I get in trouble - how old are you?" She responds "17". The crowd has a mixed reaction - Drake says something that is hard to make out, because of the crowd but when it's clear he says "I can't go to jail yet, man - 17? Why do you look like that? You thick - look at all this!"
It's hard to make out exactly what he says afterwards because of the poor quality (2011 zoomed video at a concert, it's bad..), but he says something about it bringing them (the 17 year old and Drake) to a close and follows it up with "I got one question for you (...) I just want to know if (something about women in Colorado), I should just take one opportunity to take one home?"
The girl nods "As a Colorado woman you'd enjoy that?" "Well, listen 17, I had fun - I don't know if I should feel guilty or not, but I had fun. I liked the way your breasts felt against my chest. I just want to thank you." He then puts the mic down again, grabs her hand and kisses it. You might think that was a little over the top, but he then immediately follows it up by putting his hand on her chin and kissing both of her cheeks, her forehead and then on her fucking lips.
I think he asks her to walk off stage, it's hard to make out, but then he says "It's okay. I'm only 23, I can do shit like that. It's all good, you know what I'm saying" and the video ends.
Addition: I know this girl has said she was not offended, violated, whatever you want to call it, but that's not the point. And I do not mean to sound like a complete dick, but it's not about her - it's about Drake and proving his pattern of behavior over many instances. If you stopped here because she denied it, you completely missed the point.
MILLIE BOBBY BROWN
Now this video was what really made me do a double take on Drake. Now, there's one very important fact to establish here and that is that Millie Bobby Brown at the time of this interview (18. September 2018) is 14 (Born 19. February 2004). I'll quickly transcribe the interview here:
Interviewer:

What about your relationship with Drake, tell me about your friendship, how did this all come about?

Millie Bobby Brown:

I love him. I met him in Australia and he's honestly so fantastic and a great friend and a great role model. You know we text - we just texted each other the other day and he was like "I miss you so much" and I was like "I miss you more". He's coming to Atlanta, so I'm definitely gonna go and see him and I'm so excited.

Interviewer 2:

You and Drake? That's awesome. That's awesome..

Interviewer:

What advice does he give you? What does he say?

MMB:

About boys he helps me, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah he's great. He's wonderful, I love him.

Interviewer:

What's his advice with boys?

MMB:

Ehm, you know.. That stays in the text messages.

I'm sure it's obvious what is wrong here and I don't need to spell it out for any of you, but I do have one thing to add. If Drake is giving advice about boys and telling her "I miss you so much" they must have talked for a while. It's not something you say after knowing a person for a week. We are talking months at least. There's 7 months between her birthday and the interview - did Drake already start talking to her when she was 13? It would make sense that Drake was in Australia during their summer (Dec-Feb) for festivals/concerts/vacation.
Millie has only commented on this once which was a few days later in a story on Instagram
I don't want or mean to infantilize her, but she was 14. She would have no chance of knowing if Drake actually was grooming her. There's not a chance that she could understand the dynamic at play and why it's wrong at that age.
Drake also defended their friendship on the song Another Late Night when he raps:

Weirdos in my comments talkin' 'bout some Millie Bobby, look
Bring them jokes up to the gang, we get to really flockin'

Ironically enough that very same song is also connected to the next person
BILLIE EILISH
The year after the Millie Bobby Brown controversy Drake gets caught texting a minor again and this time it's Billie Eilish. She does a yearly interview with Vanity Fair, and in the 2019 version she's asked who's her most famous contact in her phone. That's when she reveals she's been texting with Drake and that he's so very nice to her. Billie is at the time of the interview (released 25. November 2019) 17 (born 18. December 2001).
Billie did defend Drake and their texting in an interview with Vogue ~3 months later:

“The internet is such a stupid-ass mess right now,” says Eilish, who quit Twitter in 2018. “Everybody’s so sensitive. A grown man can’t be a fan of an artist? There are so many people that the internet should be more worried about. Like, you’re really going to say that Drake is creepy because he’s a fan of mine, and then you’re going to go vote for Trump? What the fuck is that shit?”

On the song Another Late Night where Drake mentions Millie Bobby Brown, Lil Yachty is featured (one of Drake's gho.. co-writers) and he raps the line:

I let her go, she fine as hell but baby wasn't stylish (Yeah)
She had big tits like Billie Eilish but she couldn't sing (Drip)

Now - I know this is not Drake, I just thought it was a 'funny' coincidence that these two women are connected through their shared experiences with Drake and this song. On another note some might say that Drake should have asked Yachty to omit this line if he really was a friend of Billie Eilish since she has been quite vocal about sexualization of herself and women in general.
BELLA HARRIS
This one is pretty fucking bad in my opinion. Bella Harris is the daughter of Jimmy Jam who's a record producer, songwriter etc. and has been very successful. Through him she's been in and around the entertainment/music business her whole life and met Drake that way.
There's an archive of photos posted here that contains the old IG posts she had with Drake. The first one was on May 5th, 2016 - Bella Harris is born 20. April, 2000. She had just turned 16 at the time.
Objectively I think they are defendable since they are all music related - Rihanna concert, Summer Sixteen Tour (ironic name..) and the American Music Awards, but then two years later they reportedly start dating and that makes it really difficult to believe, especially with the last archived photo of them in 2018. Also the same photo that is referenced in this article talking about Drake renting an entire restaurant for an intimate dinner between them.
Note that E! have confirmed it and are not backing down on their claim despite Harris denying it on Instagram.
Her father liked this post on Instagram about the whole situation. It's not particular to the restaurant or previous potential dating it's more so a general declaration of support for Drake, but that includes the PDF-file allegations.
Him supporting Drake made me search for more information, because I wanted to find whether or not he had spoken about it at the time. That led me to this article where her mother, Lisa, is being asked a few questions regarding Bella.

I was surprised Jimmy Jam hasn't introduced Bella to Drake, Rihanna or anybody else in the music world she is interested in meeting.
"No," said Lisa. "She loves Rihanna, she loves Beyoncé. [Bella has met Bey; her brother Max has met Ri-Ri.] She hasn't met Drake. Too old."

Lisa Harris about a photo of Bella (included in the article) - Bella is 14, almost 15 at the time.

I think Drake would behave himself around a child, even one dressed like this, to wit: Mom doesn't think this photo is too sexy, in all its legginess?
"SHE'S WEARING A BATHING SUIT and a coat!" said Lisa. "Sexy? What? My point is it's a body business, so I don't look at it [that way]. It's a posed picture. She has a one-piece bathing suit on. It's artistic."

KYLIE JENNER
Ever since the Kanye (also fuck Kanye for the record) vs. Drake beef we (or I at least) became aware of the fact that Drake has had a long relationship with the Kardashians/Jenners and known them for many, many years. In fact Drake performed at Kylie's sweet 16 back in 2013. You know what that Sweet 16 was specifically remembered for as well? Drake kissing Kylie on the cheek in front of everyone, including her then boyfriend Jaden Smith.
That's not out of the ordinary and would be very normal, if it wasn't for the clear pattern that is going on here, because guess what - 6 years later Drake and Kylie reportedly start dating, well.. dating/fucking/whatever you wanna call it. Admittedly this article is easily dismissed as paparazzi journalism and clickbait, but what if I told you that Drake has rapped this:

Yeah, I’m a hater to society/Real shit, Kylie Jenner that’s a side piece/Yeah, I got 20 muthafuckas in’ Kylies.

You probably wouldn't have heard it, since it was on an unreleased track played on an Instagram Live back in 2020, but it does make it seem pretty likely that he did actually hook up with her, especially considering the response Drake posted

“A song that mark ran last night on night owl sound live set shouldn’t have been played,” he wrote, “It’s a song that leaked 3 years ago and got scrapped shortly after. He was just going too deep in the drake/future catalogue. Last thing I’d want to do is wake up having any friends of mine feeling disrespected so I just had to say that to start off the day.”

Kylie was 22 at the time they reportedly hooked up.
HAILEY BALDWIN (NOW BIEBER)
In 2016 there were reports that Hailey and Drake were dating. Apparently they hooked up at a party that Drake hosted, where another attendee is also mentioned that seems oddly relevant:

Drake and Hailey weren't the only ones getting close, with Kylie Jenner and rumoured new boyfriend PartyNextDoor were seen "making out" at the party.
"It was almost like she was trying to make a statement," an insider added.

Now again - there's nothing illegal in a 11 year age difference and dating a 19-year old as 30. It's weird, yes. But again we come back to the pattern. Why do Drake know Hailey? Through their similar friends and friend group (Kardashians/Jenners). How long has Drake known Hailey? Well, when Hailey was 19, she said they had known each other for a long time.
We can actually get even closer with certainty since we know that Hailey attended Kylie's Sweet 16 in August, 2013. Hailey is born 22. November 1996, so she was also 16 at the time. So it's another girl that Drake has known since she was a minor and started dating when he got the opportunity. This is not normal.
Another pattern that Drake also seem to follow is that likes to hook up with his friends girl. We know for a fact that he hooked up with Lil Wayne's girlfriend while he was in prison. He not only rap about it, but also admit it in an interview. It's not really hard to believe that he did the same with Bieber.
CYDNEY CHRISTINE (LIL CC)
Cydney Christine is a beatmaker and model - she produced the Drake song Money In The Grave and in a Complex interview/roundtable she talks about it and Drake.

Really the only artist I reached out to is Drake. I'd never met him, never spoke to him, I don't know why, but he has been following me for the past like 6 years. I don't know why..

This interview was uploaded 17. December 2019, Cydney Christine's is born 21. July, 1997, meaning she was 22 at the time of the interview and 15-16 when Drake started following her. This is somewhat innocent but strange since Drake is 27 at the time. That's not what is really weird though.
In March 2023, Lil CC is on the No Jumper podcast and here she speaks about Drake and having her debut beat being a Drake single.
Lil CC: I played basketball, right, so he really was a fan or not a fan, sorry, supported one of my teammates at the time um..
Adam 22: And this is when you are in high school?
Lil CC: Yeah, in high school. So he was a fan of women's basketball - high school basketball - I was her teammate so he followed me because of her, and I was like "oh shit, bitch, you got Drake to follow me, like what the hell? Like that's so crazy". So he followed me and I lost it - I have to meet Drake, I love Drake, I've always loved Drake, still love Drake.
There's more to the conversation, but the relevant part is here is that it's just very, very strange for Drake to be a women's high school basketball fan. They are 16 at the time. He's a supporter of a 16 year old female high school basketball player as a 27 year old grown adult man. He has not hooked up with her, dated or anything of the sorts that we know of or that she has told - for the record.
AALIYAH
It's not like I have whole section for this, but his obsession with Aaliyah is just another part of the pattern. I don't have a lot to contribute here, but if you don't know Aaliyah's story I'd recommend reading her Wikipedia and specifically the section about her personal life. If you think that 'obsession' is too strong a word for how much Drake admires her, I think you should take a look at this Complex article from 2018 and reconsider.
UNCONFIRMED STORIES
(I will continuously update it whenever I find or get sent new information to add here.)

• Back in 2021 Drake was being exposed on TikTok for his 'private Tinder' where one of his guys would go out and the hottest girls in town, interview them and find the one that Drake would like the best.

“He finds the girls and then he interviews them, and out of all the girls he interviews, he picks the one that he thinks is the best,” she continued. “Then, he drives her to Drake’s place, Drake has sex with her, and then he drives her home. So, basically, Drake has his own private Tinder.”

• This girl explaining how her friend was invited by Drake's crew and she was brought along as a +1. No ID check, very young girls. Worth a watch: https://www.tiktok.com/@simonestrauss/video/7365696116085591304
  
• This reddit post - yes I know this is 'so easy to just say', but I think the poster was very right by pointing this out:
  

I'm sure you guys won't believe me, but this is the type of situation where someone vanishing and telling you is the best you'll get.

• This YouTube comment about a girl claiming to be a victim of trafficking in Toronto in 2015 and that Drake had ties in all these circles.
  
• This article from 2016, where Drake and his buddy get aggressive with an amateur photographer for taking pictures of Drake and two women. This isn't strange in and of itself, but then there's this post from 2018
  

From the article:

The mystery women were dressed identically in matching white parkas, skinny tan pants, tan boots and ponytail hairstyles.

From the post:

Maybe this foreign born one named A+ list singerapper should have told the whole story about his split with a fellow foreign born A+ lister. How she caught him more than once with another woman and his fascination for watching porn involving women wearing pigtails.

• This post

This foreign born A+ list singerapper asked for all kinds of photos from not only the 18 year old he is dating but at least two other 18 year old females and he didn't make sure they were 18 before he started asking.

• This post

That teen, who was topless in the dressing room of this foreign born A+ list singerapper last night was nowhere in the ballpark of being legal.

• This one is fucking WEIRD - some guy was jerking off and noticed something. Now there's plenty of reasons as to why they would do this, it's porn and they need a story. But then there's this post from 2017:

This one named foreign born A list rapper is going around telling porn stars he is starting his own porn company. It is just his excuse to have sex with them all and not pay.
Drake

• This Twitter post/video of UK rapper Potter Payper calling out Drake for messaging 'bare young girls in England'.
  
• This entire thread is weird to say the least. More CDAN rumors as well. Read the thread, it's too much to paste and explain here.
  
• Drake paid out $350K to sexual assault accuser - Drake initially filed a lawsuit against Layla Lace/Laquana Morris for civil extortion, fraud, defamation, abuse of process and intentional infliction of emotional distress strongly implying he's innocent - but why pay someone $350.000 then?
  

The former stripper and Instagram model wrote: "Drake forced me to perform oral on him. It wasn't your ordinary oral it was more so a fetish." She then describes how he told her to spit into a cup "until he had measured it."

• This comment about a model claiming Drake 'made girls puke in dog bowls for him'. Now that's a typical thing you can dismiss as a rumor, but the same guy commented 16 days ago and said this:

If Kendrick mentions anything about dog bowls or birthday parties in Toronto, then shit is more serious than we thought

• This interview of Aya (Born 24. April 2007) (a 'dancer' in Ice Spice - Deli and probably known for other things I just don't know her) where she's asked about having sex with Drake. She said she can't speak on it because of 'court'.
  
• This Tweet of a guy talking about his experiences in high school and the hottest girls posting from Drake's mansion and being followed by him "every single time".
  
• The Instagram page of Exclusive Artists Agency is strange and related to Drake. A dude on TikTok went in-depth on it and this is creepy in more than one way.
  

LYRICS, REFERENCES, TWEETS, PICTURES, TIES
(Again - Feel free to share with me and I'll add it.)

• On the song Nice For What Drake raps:

You got a baby Benz, you got some bad friends
High school pics, you was even bad then

• This Tweet

"If amazing was a young bitch I'd be going to jail...cause I'm fucking amazing" - Me

• This image of Drake and Malone from Drake's Instagram that's been deleted now. Malone is infamous for impregnating a 13 year old when he was 20.
  
• On the song The Heart Part 6 Drake raps:
  

Just for clarity, I feel disgusted, I'm too respected
If I was fucking young girls, I promise I'd have been arrested
I'm way too famous for this shit you just suggested

• Also on the song The Heart Part 6 Drake raps:

Only fuckin' with Whitneys, not Millie Bobby Browns, I'd never look twice at no teenager

• His connection to Baka Not Nice who Drake is very close with.

In 2014, Baka was arrested and charged with forcing a 22-year-old woman into prostitution and taking her money. In 2015, he pleaded guilty to assaulting the woman and an unrelated weapons charge.

• Adel Nur who has very close business ties to Drake. He's executive producing the show Euphoria together with Drake and they co-own some shady companie(s). Another user went in-depth on their connection here.
  
• J Mulan who's an entrepreneur and close with Drake. This entire thread about her being a trafficker - and especially OP's comments are worth reading .
  
• DJ Eric who's the owner of Area 29, a strip club in Houston. Drake shouts him out in songs and is allegedly also trafficking for Drake.
  

(DIS)HONORABLE MENTION
I know people say Jorja Smith, and I do agree that dating a 19-year old as a 30-year old man is weird and rather pathetic, but every other girl mentioned is related to minors. Their relationship if you can call it that was for sure toxic, and it seems like Drake was a piece of shit abusing the power dynamic between them. This is taken from the Drizzy subreddit, but I can't provide the source since that gets the post blacklisted as it's temporarily banned because of brigading.

In “Summer Games” Drake also says ”I kept it decent, even the secrets, kept it between you and I”. What secrets exactly? Well in Jaded, Drake says this woman “told him all her insecurities”.
It’s also interesting that the song “Summer Games” is about a woman who broke up with Drake right at the beginning of the summer. Drake and Jorja were dating in April of 2017 which is right before the summer starts and only lasted a couple weeks.

But that's all there is to it. I can't dig up anything else, so unless someone have something credible with sources, I don't think there's good enough reason to add her to the list further up.
FINAL NOTE
I know there's questions about the reliability of CDAN and that he was exposed, but in the very same article The Daily Beast refers back to one of their old articles on the subject which definitely confirms that he had/have industry ties and do know a lot. Another reddit user dove further in and made some compelling arguments.
If you have anything to add, please post it in the comments and if credible/sourced I'll put it in the post. If I got anything wrong please correct me and I'll edit it. If you have sources that contradict anything in the post, please also share them with me and I'll include them.
Please share this anywhere you want. I don't care about credit. If any media outlets wants to use it for their article or whatever, please do - feel free. You do not need to ask permission.

This is a long read.
TL;DR: Drake is a creep with a clear pattern of predatory behavior towards many minors and I have the receipts to back it up.
INTRODUCTION
This is a comprehensive post regarding Drake's extremely questionable behavior regarding minors and young women in general. There's more than 60 links in this post to various sources and it contains almost 30.000 characters - if you want to repost, make a YouTube video, an article, a TikTok or Twitter thread then do it - I do not need credit, I do not care - I only want this information to be spread. This post will serve as an archive that people can refer back to or use as a source to back up their claims.
Let me be clear - I do not like Drake. I've thought the guy was a creep ever since the Millie Bobby Brown video and I despise him - but I'll still try to remain as objective as possible here, you know my bias now though.
This thread is partly based on this thread from 2022
Read this comment for edits I've made to the post.
OVERVIEW
This post is divided into sections:

• The 17 year old at show
  
• Millie Bobby Brown
  
• Billie Eilish
  
• Kylie Jenner
  
• Hailey Baldwin (Now Bieber)
  
• Cydney Christine (Lil CC)
  
• Aaliyah
  
• Unconfirmed rumors
  
• Lyrics, references, tweets, pictures, ties
  
• (Dis)honorable mention
  
• Final Note
  

THE 17 YEAR OLD AT A SHOW
Drake is performing at a show in Ogden, Denver where he calls a girl up on stage. I really encourage you to watch this yourself, but since I know the majority of you won't watch it, I've described it for you below.
Video starts with her on stage, he asks her name, where she is from, asks the crowd to welcome her to the stage and tells her she looks great. He then asks her to give him two seconds because "I gotta be ready for you". He wipes off his sweat with a towel and proceeds to take her hand, put it on his shoulder, his hand on her hip/back and they slowdance for a few seconds. He spins her around and stop her with her back facing him. This is when it starts to get.. really weird.
Drake says "I told you I like your hair, right, what is it, like herbal essence or something?" while he's caressing her shoulder and smelling her hair. He says something I can't hear properly, puts the mic down and exposes her upper back and neck by pulling her shirt collar down. The crowd goes wild. He then starts kissing her shoulder and neck, putting her arms around her and fondle her breast. The girl on stage looks.. uncomfortable. A few seconds later he picks up the mic again and says "you can't have me carried away again before I get in trouble - how old are you?" She responds "17". The crowd has a mixed reaction - Drake says something that is hard to make out, because of the crowd but when it's clear he says "I can't go to jail yet, man - 17? Why do you look like that? You thick - look at all this!"
It's hard to make out exactly what he says afterwards because of the poor quality (2011 zoomed video at a concert, it's bad..), but he says something about it bringing them (the 17 year old and Drake) to a close and follows it up with "I got one question for you (...) I just want to know if (something about women in Colorado), I should just take one opportunity to take one home?" The girl nods "As a Colorado woman you'd enjoy that?" "Well, listen 17, I had fun - I don't know if I should feel guilty or not, but I had fun. I liked the way your breasts felt against my chest. I just want to thank you." He then puts the mic down again, grabs her hand and kisses it. You might think that was a little over the top, but he then immediately follows it up by putting his hand on her chin and kissing both of her cheeks, her forehead and then on HER FUCKING LIPS. I think he asks her to walk off stage, it's hard to make out, but then he says "It's okay. I'm only 23, I can do shit like that. It's all good, you know what I'm saying" and the video ends.
Addition: I know this girl has said she was not offended, violated, whatever you want to call it, but that's not the point. And I do not mean to sound like a complete dick, but it's not about her - it's about Drake and proving his pattern of behavior over many instances. If you stopped here because she denied it, you completely missed the point.
MILLIE BOBBY BROWN
Now this video was what really made me do a double take on Drake. Now, there's one very important fact to establish here and that is that Millie Bobby Brown at the time of this interview (18. September 2018) is 14 (Born 19. February 2004). I'll quickly transcribe the interview here:
Interviewer: What about your relationship with Drake, tell me about your friendship, how did this all come about?
Millie Bobby Brown: I love him. I met him in Australia and he's honestly so fantastic and a great friend and a great role model. You know we text - we just texted each other the other day and he was like "I miss you so much" and I was like "I miss you more". He's coming to Atlanta, so I'm definitely gonna go and see him and I'm so excited.
Interviewer 2: You and Drake? That's awesome. That's awesome..
Interviewer: What advice does he give you? What does he say?
MMB: About boys he helps me, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah he's great. He's wonderful, I love him.
Interviewer: What's his advice with boys?
MMB: Ehm, you know.. That stays in the text messages.
I'm sure it's obvious what is wrong here and I don't need to spell it out for any of you, but I do have one thing to add. If Drake is giving advice about boys and telling her "I miss you so much" they must have talked for a while. It's not something you say after knowing a person for a week. We are talking months at least. There's 7 months between her birthday and the interview - did Drake already start talking to her when she was 13? It would make sense that Drake was in Australia during their summer (Dec-Feb) for festivals/concerts/vacation. It's probably possible to figure out through social media posts, but I'm not digging that deep.
Millie has only commented on this once which was a few days later in a story on Instagram
I don't want or mean to infantilize her, but she was 14. She would have no chance of knowing if Drake actually was grooming her. There's not a chance that she could understand the dynamic at play and why it's wrong at that age.
Drake also defended their friendship on the song Another Late Night when he raps:

Weirdos in my comments talkin' 'bout some Millie Bobby, look
Bring them jokes up to the gang, we get to really flockin'

Ironically enough that very same song is also connected to the next person
BILLIE EILISH
The year after the Millie Bobby Brown controversy Drake gets caught texting a minor again and this time it's Billie Eilish. She does a yearly interview with Vanity Fair, and in the 2019 version she's asked who's her most famous contact in her phone. That's when she reveals she's been texting with Drake and that he's so very nice to her. Billie is at the time of the interview (released 25. November 2019) 17 (born 18. December 2001).
Billie did defend Drake and their texting in an interview with Vogue ~3 months later:

“The internet is such a stupid-ass mess right now,” says Eilish, who quit Twitter in 2018. “Everybody’s so sensitive. A grown man can’t be a fan of an artist? There are so many people that the internet should be more worried about. Like, you’re really going to say that Drake is creepy because he’s a fan of mine, and then you’re going to go vote for Trump? What the fuck is that shit?”

On the song Another Late Night where Drake mentions Millie Bobby Brown, Lil Yachty is featured (one of Drake's gho.. co-writers) and he raps the line:

I let her go, she fine as hell but baby wasn't stylish (Yeah)
She had big tits like Billie Eilish but she couldn't sing (Drip)

Now - I know this is not Drake, I just thought it was a 'funny' coincidence that these two women are connected through their shared experiences with Drake and this song. On another note some might say that Drake should have asked Yachty to omit this line if he really was a friend of Billie Eilish since she has been quite vocal about sexualization of herself and women in general.
BELLA HARRIS
This one is pretty fucking bad in my opinion. Bella Harris is the daughter of Jimmy Jam who's a record producer, songwriter etc. and has been very successful. Through him she's been in and around the entertainment/music business her whole life and met Drake that way.
There's an archive of photos posted here that contains the old IG posts she had with Drake. The first one was on May 5th, 2016 - Bella Harris is born 20. April, 2000. She had just turned 16 at the time. Objectively I think they are defendable since they are all music related - Rihanna concert, Summer Sixteen Tour (ironic name..) and the American Music Awards, but then two years later they reportedly start dating and that makes it really difficult to believe, especially with the last archived photo of them in 2018. Also the same photo that is referenced in this article talking about Drake renting an entire restaurant for an intimate dinner between them. Note that E! have confirmed it and are not backing down on their claim despite Harris denying it on Instagram.
Her father liked this post on Instagram about the whole situation. It's not particular to the restaurant or previous potential dating it's more so a general declaration of support for Drake, but that includes the PDF-file allegations.
Him supporting Drake made me search for more information, because I wanted to find whether or not he had spoken about it at the time. That led me to this article where her mother, Lisa, is being asked a few questions regarding Bella.

I was surprised Jimmy Jam hasn't introduced Bella to Drake, Rihanna or anybody else in the music world she is interested in meeting.
"No," said Lisa. "She loves Rihanna, she loves Beyoncé. [Bella has met Bey; her brother Max has met Ri-Ri.] She hasn't met Drake. Too old."

Lisa Harris about a photo of Bella (included in the article) - Bella is 14, almost 15 at the time.

I think Drake would behave himself around a child, even one dressed like this, to wit: Mom doesn't think this photo is too sexy, in all its legginess?
"SHE'S WEARING A BATHING SUIT and a coat!" said Lisa. "Sexy? What? My point is it's a body business, so I don't look at it [that way]. It's a posed picture. She has a one-piece bathing suit on. It's artistic."

KYLIE JENNER
Ever since the Kanye (also fuck Kanye for the record) vs. Drake beef we (or I at least) became aware of the fact that Drake has had a long relationship with the Kardashians/Jenners and known them for many, many years. In fact Drake performed at Kylie's sweet 16 back in 2013. You know what that Sweet 16 was specifically remembered for as well? Drake kissing Kylie on the cheek in front of everyone, including her then boyfriend Jaden Smith.
That's not out of the ordinary and would be very normal, if it wasn't for the clear pattern that is going on here, because guess what - 6 years later Drake and Kylie reportedly start dating, well.. dating/fucking/whatever you wanna call it. Admittedly this article is easily dismissed as paparazzi journalism and clickbait, but what if I told you that Drake has rapped this:

Yeah, I’m a hater to society/Real shit, Kylie Jenner that’s a side piece/Yeah, I got 20 muthafuckas in’ Kylies.

You probably wouldn't have heard it, since it was on an unreleased track played on an Instagram Live back in 2020, but it does make it seem pretty likely that he did actually hook up with her, especially considering the response Drake posted

“A song that mark ran last night on night owl sound live set shouldn’t have been played,” he wrote, “It’s a song that leaked 3 years ago and got scrapped shortly after. He was just going too deep in the drake/future catalogue. Last thing I’d want to do is wake up having any friends of mine feeling disrespected so I just had to say that to start off the day.”

Kylie was 22 at the time they reportedly hooked up.
HAILEY BALDWIN (NOW BIEBER)
In 2016 there were reports that Hailey and Drake were dating. Apparently they hooked up at a party that Drake hosted, where another attendee is also mentioned that seems oddly relevant:

Drake and Hailey weren't the only ones getting close, with Kylie Jenner and rumoured new boyfriend PartyNextDoor were seen "making out" at the party.
"It was almost like she was trying to make a statement," an insider added.

Now again - there's nothing illegal in a 11 year age difference and dating a 19-year old as 30. It's weird, yes. But again we come back to the pattern. Why do Drake know Hailey? Through their similar friends and friend group (Kardashians/Jenners). How long has Drake known Hailey? Well, when Hailey was 19, she said they had known each other for a long time.
We can actually get even closer with certainty since we know that Hailey attended Kylie's Sweet 16 in August, 2013. Hailey is born 22. November 1996, so she was also 16 at the time. So it's another girl that Drake has known since she was a minor and started dating when he got the opportunity. This is not normal.
Another pattern that Drake also seem to follow is that likes to hook up with his friends girl. We know for a fact that he hooked up with Lil Wayne's girlfriend while he was in prison. He not only rap about it, but also admit it in an interview. It's not really hard to believe that he did the same with Bieber.
CYDNEY CHRISTINE (LIL CC)
Cydney Christine is a beatmaker and model - she produced the Drake song Money In The Grave and in a Complex interview/roundtable she talks about it and Drake.

Really the only artist I reached out to is Drake. I'd never met him, never spoke to him, I don't know why, but he has been following me for the past like 6 years. I don't know why..

This interview was uploaded 17. December 2019, Cydney Christine's is born 21. July, 1997, meaning she was 22 at the time of the interview and 15-16 when Drake started following her. This is somewhat innocent but strange since Drake is 27 at the time. That's not what is really weird though.
In March 2023, Lil CC is on the No Jumper podcast and here she speaks about Drake and having her debut beat being a Drake single.
Lil CC: I played basketball, right, so he really was a fan or not a fan, sorry, supported one of my teammates at the time um..
Adam 22: And this is when you are in high school?
Lil CC: Yeah, in high school. So he was a fan of women's basketball - high school basketball - I was her teammate so he followed me because of her, and I was like "oh shit, bitch, you got Drake to follow me, like what the hell? Like that's so crazy". So he followed me and I lost it - I have to meet Drake, I love Drake, I've always loved Drake, still love Drake.
There's more to the conversation, but the relevant part is here is that it's just very, very strange for Drake to be a women's high school basketball fan. They are 16 at the time. He's a supporter of a 16 year old female high school basketball player as a 27 year old grown adult man. He has not hooked up with her, dated or anything of the sorts that we know of or that she has told - for the record.
AALIYAH
It's not like I have whole section for this, but his obsession with Aaliyah is just another part of the pattern. I don't have a lot to contribute here, but if you don't know Aaliyah's story I'd recommend reading her Wikipedia and specifically the section about her personal life. If you think that 'obsession' is too strong a word for how much Drake admires her, I think you should take a look at this Complex article from 2018 and reconsider.
UNCONFIRMED STORIES
(I will continuously update it whenever I find or get sent new information to add here.)

• Back in 2021 Drake was being exposed on TikTok for his 'private Tinder' where one of his guys would go out and the hottest girls in town, interview them and find the one that Drake would like the best.

“He finds the girls and then he interviews them, and out of all the girls he interviews, he picks the one that he thinks is the best,” she continued. “Then, he drives her to Drake’s place, Drake has sex with her, and then he drives her home. So, basically, Drake has his own private Tinder.”

• This girl explaining how her friend was invited by Drake's crew and she was brought along as a +1. No ID check, very young girls. Worth a watch: https://www.tiktok.com/@simonestrauss/video/7365696116085591304
  
• This reddit post - yes I know this is 'so easy to just say', but I think the poster was very right by pointing this out:
  

I'm sure you guys won't believe me, but this is the type of situation where someone vanishing and telling you is the best you'll get.

• This YouTube comment about a girl claiming to be a victim of trafficking in Toronto in 2015 and that Drake had ties in all these circles.
  
• This article from 2016, where Drake and his buddy get aggressive with an amateur photographer for taking pictures of Drake and two women. This isn't strange in and of itself, but then there's this post from 2018
  

From the article:

The mystery women were dressed identically in matching white parkas, skinny tan pants, tan boots and ponytail hairstyles.

From the post:

Maybe this foreign born one named A+ list singerapper should have told the whole story about his split with a fellow foreign born A+ lister. How she caught him more than once with another woman and his fascination for watching porn involving women wearing pigtails.

• This post

This foreign born A+ list singerapper asked for all kinds of photos from not only the 18 year old he is dating but at least two other 18 year old females and he didn't make sure they were 18 before he started asking.

• This post

That teen, who was topless in the dressing room of this foreign born A+ list singerapper last night was nowhere in the ballpark of being legal.

• This one is fucking WEIRD - some guy was jerking off and noticed something. Now there's plenty of reasons as to why they would do this, it's porn and they need a story. But then there's this post from 2017:

This one named foreign born A list rapper is going around telling porn stars he is starting his own porn company. It is just his excuse to have sex with them all and not pay.
Drake

• This Twitter post/video of UK rapper Potter Payper calling out Drake for messaging 'bare young girls in England'.
  
• This entire thread is weird to say the least. More CDAN rumors as well. Read the thread, it's too much to paste and explain here.
  
• Drake paid out $350K to sexual assault accuser - Drake initially filed a lawsuit against Layla Lace/Laquana Morris for civil extortion, fraud, defamation, abuse of process and intentional infliction of emotional distress strongly implying he's innocent - but why pay someone $350.000 then?
  

The former stripper and Instagram model wrote: "Drake forced me to perform oral on him. It wasn't your ordinary oral it was more so a fetish." She then describes how he told her to spit into a cup "until he had measured it."

• This comment about a model claiming Drake 'made girls puke in dog bowls for him'. Now that's a typical thing you can dismiss as a rumor, but the same guy commented 16 days ago and said this:

If Kendrick mentions anything about dog bowls or birthday parties in Toronto, then shit is more serious than we thought

• This interview of Aya (Born 24. April 2007) (a 'dancer' in Ice Spice - Deli and probably known for other things I just don't know her) where she's asked about having sex with Drake. She said she can't speak on it because of 'court'.
  
• This Tweet of a guy talking about his experiences in high school and the hottest girls posting from Drake's mansion and being followed by him "every single time".
  
• Shaye G who formerly dated Drake explains alleged threats on HOT 97 ~10 years ago.
  
• The Instagram page of Exclusive Artists Agency is strange and related to Drake. A dude on TikTok went in-depth on it and this is creepy in more than one way.
  
• The woman who had a Twitter thread similar to this post that ended up deleting her account made an entire YouTube video out of it you can find here.
  

LYRICS, REFERENCES, TWEETS, PICTURES, TIES
(Again - Feel free to share with me and I'll add it.)

• On the song Nice For What Drake raps:

You got a baby Benz, you got some bad friends
High school pics, you was even bad then

• This Tweet

"If amazing was a young bitch I'd be going to jail...cause I'm fucking amazing" - Me

• This image of Drake and Malone from Drake's Instagram that's been deleted now. Malone is infamous for impregnating a 13 year old when he was 20.
  
• On the song The Heart Part 6 Drake raps:
  

Just for clarity, I feel disgusted, I'm too respected
If I was fucking young girls, I promise I'd have been arrested
I'm way too famous for this shit you just suggested

• Also on the song The Heart Part 6 Drake raps:

Only fuckin' with Whitneys, not Millie Bobby Browns, I'd never look twice at no teenager

• His connection to Baka Not Nice who Drake is very close with.

In 2014, Baka was arrested and charged with forcing a 22-year-old woman into prostitution and taking her money. In 2015, he pleaded guilty to assaulting the woman and an unrelated weapons charge.

• Adel Nur who has very close business ties to Drake. He's executive producing the show Euphoria together with Drake and they co-own some shady companie(s). Another user went in-depth on their connection here.
  
• J Mulan who's an entrepreneur and close with Drake. This entire thread about her being a trafficker - and especially OP's comments are worth reading .
  
• DJ Eric who's the owner of Area 29, a strip club in Houston. Drake shouts him out in songs and is allegedly also trafficking for Drake.
  

(DIS)HONORABLE MENTION
I know people say Jorja Smith, and I do agree that dating a 19-year old as a 30-year old man is weird and rather pathetic, but every other girl mentioned is related to minors. Their relationship if you can call it that was for sure toxic, and it seems like Drake was a piece of shit abusing the power dynamic between them. This is taken from the Drizzy subreddit, but I can't provide the source since that gets the post blacklisted as it's temporarily banned because of brigading.

In “Summer Games” Drake also says ”I kept it decent, even the secrets, kept it between you and I”. What secrets exactly? Well in Jaded, Drake says this woman “told him all her insecurities”.
It’s also interesting that the song “Summer Games” is about a woman who broke up with Drake right at the beginning of the summer. Drake and Jorja were dating in April of 2017 which is right before the summer starts and only lasted a couple weeks.

But that's all there is to it. I can't dig up anything else, so unless someone have something credible with sources, I don't think there's good enough reason to add her to the list further up.
FINAL NOTE
I know there's questions about the reliability of CDAN and that he was exposed, but in the very same article The Daily Beast refers back to one of their old articles on the subject which definitely confirms that he had/have industry ties and do know a lot. Another reddit user dove further in and made some compelling arguments.
If you have anything to add, please post it in the comments and if credible/sourced I'll put it in the post. If I got anything wrong please correct me and I'll edit it. If you have sources that contradict anything in the post, please also share them with me and I'll include them.
Please share this anywhere you want. I don't care about credit. If any media outlets wants to use it for their article or whatever, please do - feel free. You do not need to ask permission.

V was completely and utterly awe-struck by the sheer number of exotic cars parked in the garage as the lights came on one after the other. Rolls Royce, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Aston Martins. They all clamored out of the Bentley, V taking slightly longer due to the Brit-Pole being more focused on the absolutely stunning cars in the garage instead of getting out of the car.

“Cars caught your eye, huh?” J asked, her voice lacking that taunting edge she had while she spoke with N, who was already making his way across the ceramic floor and out the garage door, into the manor without as much as a word. J’s Austrian-accented words were laced with genuineness, as she chuckled slightly. “You’ll get used to it.”

So the group made their way out of the garage and into the manor, and holy shit was this place huge.

The interior itself was something to marvel at on its own. The sleek lines, minimalist design elements, , it was a perfect mix of sophistication and sleekness. V was utterly starstruck at the glitz and glamor of it all. It was like stepping into a world that seemed all closed off just yesterday, something she could only glance at through YouTube videos and vlogs. A silver chandelier hung from a double-height ceiling. Two staircases akin to that of the Titanic’s grand staircase swept upwards to the upper floors. The glass railings shimmered under the chandelier’s light, and the marble floor below could damn well have been one gigantic mirror.

Under the right staircase, V caught a slight glimpse of a floor-to-ceiling window that allowed for a breathtaking view of the cityscape right before the sounds of footsteps filled the air. N and J both seemed to stop exchanging death glares and immediately turn their optics to the middle-aged woman slowly walking down the staircase, her eyes surveying every person there.

“James,” She began, her voice eerily soft and honeyed. The driver’s head raised up to meet the woman’s, a weary expression on his face as he mumbled a slight “Yeah, Louisa?” He walked over to the nearby coat hanger, taking off his coat and neatly hanging it before shuffling up the steps towards the bedrooms without waiting for a reply. The woman’s gaze fell to V, and the Brit saw Tessa’s expression go from a moderately jovial one to that of pity. She had far too much makeup on, particularly that of eyelash makeup, and she had noticeable bags under her eyes. She was gothically dressed in an all-black dress and hat.

‘Rather.... Stylish home clothes.’ V thought to herself.

Her eyes sharpened and narrowed, and her expression changed from one of neutrality, to one befitting of a rich woman's anger. Her face contorted in anger as she stared V down, before tearing her gaze away and fixating it on Tessa.

“Tessa James Elliot.” Louisa’s grip on the rail tightened as she loudly stated Tessa's name. Her voice did not raise nor lower, but the anger evident in her words made even N wince. J, however, was frozen in place, daring not to move a muscle. “N, J. You were supposed to pick up our cargo, and leave. Instead, along with our ordered cargo, you bring in another drone. How many times must I stress this to you three?”

She took one step down.

“We,”

Another step. V glanced over to N, who was now noticeably tense.

“Are,”

Another.

“No charity. We are not a homeless shelter. We are a prestigious family of humans that produce weaponry, and various other sciences for human use.” She said, emphasizing the word human while glaring at the three drones, as if they had never truly belonged. “As for you, Tessa,”

She descended the steps, walking past the three drones and towards the taken aback human. V turned around slightly, curiosity getting the better of her as she looked on. Louisa towered over Tessa, and she bent down to whisper something in Tessa's ear that made her freeze. J glared at the back of Louisa’s head, her fist clenched. N, on the other hand, quickly and quietly sneaked up the stairs, eager not to get caught up in what was happening.

‘Fuckin' hell, she's tall.’ V thought, inwardly laughing at her height. She must've been at least 5’11, and most of the doorways she had seen were low. Her child mind immediately went to work, drawing up countless instances of the woman bumping her head on low doorways.

She slowly slinked around Tessa with the deadly grace of a cobra, before strutting off into one of the rooms. Tessa lost her tense form, breathing a sigh of relief, though she looked incredibly shaken. J relaxed, looking at Tessa with a hint of solemnity.

“You okay?” She asked, quickly rushing to the human's side. J’s voice was laced with concern as she rubbed her friend’s back as the smell of cannabis and tobacco filled the air, and Tupac’s faint rapping coming from upstairs. J told Tessa something V couldn’t hear, but the overwhelming stench caused V to cover her face with her sweater as best she could. N growled in annoyance, looking over to V and gesturing upstairs. “Yeah, that’s Cyn. You’ll meet ‘er later. She’s a smoker, you’ll get used to the smell.”

“I could really go for a drink right now.” N mumbled, rubbing his temples and walking up the stairs, leaving V completely shocked at his words. He looked like he could be at least her age, and he was mumbling about wanting to drink alcohol?! V shook her head, trying to push that thought away. He could've meant anything by saying drink.

‘Don't overthink this, V.’ Taking two breaths, and rolling her shoulders in a vain attempt to calm herself down, and trying her best to ignore the frankly nauseating stench of cannabis that clung to her clothes as she walked away, wandering the house in an attempt to get familiar with her new home.

“We can talk about this over a drink, right?” J said, her voice soothing and below a whisper as she continued to rub Tessa’s back. Beading tears in Tessa’s eyes threatened to spill over before she quickly wiped them away. Tessa took two quick, sharp breaths before she relaxed and shook her head.

“Gotta check on Cyn. Make sure she isn't too high.” Tessa broke into a short but hollow chuckle before lightly pushing past J and proceeding up the stairs. The more steps Tessa trudged up, the louder the music was. The music itself wasn't abrasively loud, but it was very noticeable. Cyn must've turned up the music after Louisa left. Not that she would've cared that Louisa was upstairs in the first place. Cyn had a track record of being one of those no-fucks-given type of people, and it was probably the reason why Tessa and Cyn got along so well.

The closer Tessa got to her room, the more of the song she could hear. It wasn't obnoxiously loud, not yet at least. But the overwhelming smell of cannabis made her cover her nose in her sleeve and almost gag. Jesus, how much did Cyn smoke?! This is overdoing it, even for her. Trying to wave away the smell, she proceeded forward, suppressing another gag.

The feds is watchin', they all plottin' to get me, will I survive? Will I die? C'mon, let's picture the possibilities, givin' me charges, lawyers makin' a grip, I told the judge I was raised wrong and that's why I blaze shit. Was hyper as a kid, cold as a teenager, On my mobile, callin' big shots on the scene major, packin' hundreds in my drawers, fuck the law…

Tessa knocked on the walnut door twice, trying in vain to suppress another gag. “Oi, Cyn.” The music seemed to grow louder the moment Tessa called her name. And accompanying that, the Aussie girl could barely hear a muffled groan of irritation.

Say money bring bitches, bitches bring lies, one fucker gettin' jealous and motherfuckers died, depend on me like the first and fifteenth, they might hold me for a second, but these punks won't get me. We got fo’ brothas’, in low riders, in ski masks, screamin' “Thug Life” every time they pass, all eyes on me…

Rolling her eyes and sighing in annoyance, Tessa opened the door slightly. To the left was Cyn, sitting on the plush bed, a cigarette trapped between her fingers. Her optics were hollowed, and she slightly waved back and forth, a sign that she was most likely as high as a kite. The various other high quality furnishings were clean and kept in an orderly manner, a stark contrast to Cyn’s incredibly messy bed.

Relax and take notes, while I take tokes of the marijuana smoke, throw you in a choke—gunsmoke, gunsmoke! Biggie Smalls for mayor, the rap slayer, the hooker layer, motherfucker, say your prayers! Hail Mary, full of grace, smack the bitch in the face, take her Gucci bag and the North Face off her back, jab her if she act, funny with the money oh, you got me mistaken, honey…

Cyn's neon yellow eyes met Tessa's brown orbs, the drone quirking an eyebrow as she took another drag. “Hm?” Cyn slightly shifted in the hoodie she was wearing, exhaling the smoke into the already smoke-filled room. The edge of one of Cyn’s twin tails peeked out of the hood she was wearing. It nested comfortably in her neck, slightly drooping down to her upper chest. It had a slight braid to it, akin to what a Jedi Padawan would sport. Tessa sighed and dramatically rolled her eyes in a mix of irritation and a growing sense of concern.


“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Six.”

“Okay, now how many?”

“Eight.”

“Okay, you're not overly stoned.” Tessa muttered, stepping into the room and sitting down with Cyn. The stench of weed clung to her clothes, the bedsheets, and the music player next to the large mirror on the dresser. “You got a spare or…?”

“No. This is my last one. J smoked off most of them, being the consistent smoker that she is. Unless you are keen on sharing saliva, you are out of luck, Tessa.” She said, expecting a refusal from the Aussie girl. Her hollowed-out neon-yellow ovals distorted slightly as she once again took another drag, almost disappearing entirely before stabilizing. And like the drone had expected, Tessa shook her head in reply, not making any eye contact with her drone friend.

“I swear, you two are going to kill yourselves someday. Either the cancer sticks’ll send you down six feet, or ya’ll both will piss someone off while you’re as high as a kite, and you both get killed. Wouldn’t put the second one past J, though. You?” Tessa’s brown eyes met Cyn’s hollowed-out neon yellow optics as the question hung in the air for what seemed like a century.

“Yeah. She can be… Too direct at times.” Cyn replied, her gaze falling down to her legs dangling off of the edge of the bed, lost in thought. Her face changed from one of weed-induced relaxation to a more pained expression, though the expression quickly faded away, replaced by a forced smirk. “I….” She paused, as if to gather her thoughts. “Well, N keeps her in check. I doubt he would care if J expires one day.”

“I’m surprised you can speak this normally.” Tessa quipped, laying back on the bed, the smell of weed clinging to her whole body. Cyn, on the other hand, remained on the edge of the bed, taking another drag before flicking the cig away.

“Fuck that s’posed to mean?” The drone replied, shooting a playful side eye glare toward the human, who only shrugged in response, letting her hood fall back, revealing the rest of her silver twin tails. They were much slimmer than J’s, and they lacked the curls that the Austrian had, setting the two apart. “It is what’cha make of it, mate.”

The sound of two cars screeching to a halt in front of their home made both ladies look to the open window from the bed. The first one was a ‘54 Impala, Tessa knew the car by the sound of its engine, as she had heard it far too many times to count. It had to be an Impala. Hell, it was the generic gangster vehicle. What the hell were they doing here, though? Normally, they'd be out in the city shooting some poor bastard dead because they didn't pay on time, or holding up a rich kid that went off too far. The drill rap playing on the radio of the Impala loud enough for Cyn and Tessa to hear faintly. The other was a ‘57 BMW i4, the soft hum of its electric motor being overtaken by the rumble of the Impala’s engine. Their headlights lit up a portion of the road as they rolled down towards the house.

“Tessa,” Cyn said, her monotone and usually emotionless voice laced with a concern Tessa never knew she could display as she snapped her fingers at the Aussie twice, making the teen straighten up quicker than she’d ever done, concern written all over her face. “Do you have a weapon by any chance? A ranged one, preferably?”

“N-no, why?” She replied, her voice growing more and more concerned. The headlights of the cars once again glowed to life as they began to move, circling around the house like vultures surveying their prey. Cyn jumped off the edge of the bed with a quickness that could only be compared to a child trying to avoid a belting, straightening herself up as best she could from her usual slouched position. Tessa could tell that it probably hurt like hell, given the occasional wince and twitch of Cyn's optics, but she fought through it, like she always had. It was the only thing she knew how to do anyways: Fight, fight, fight. Hard to break offa’ something one grows up doing.

“Hell,” Tessa drawled, trying to suppress another gag by covering her mouth with her sleeve, despite the noise still escaping her lips. “This weed smell’s killing me. You sure you're not just high off your ass and seein’ things? Last time you got this high, you held up one of the rich kids on our block while he was on a late-night drive. If your nerves need this much steadying…” Tessa trailed off after she neared to the edge of the bed, and heard the rumble of the car engine slowly fading away.




The cool air almost calmed N and steadied his frayed nerves as he stepped into the dark cellar, flipping on the lights as the smell of various liquors filled the air. N stopped a moment to roll his shoulders, closing his optics and letting the combined sensations of the cold air and the smell of liquor wash over him before he continued.

N brushed his hand on a wooden pillar next to the open doorway before walking over to a neat set of brandy elegantly positioned on the various barrels full of liquors, he casually took one of the bottles of Hennessy from the set, pulling off the cork with no effort. The smell wafted out of the open bottle, flooding into N’s sensory receptors. It was a welcome smell, and one that N had grown accustomed to smelling, even though it gave him a burning feeling if he were to stick his head down to the top of the bottle. N took a swig, gulping down the brownish liquid without as much as a hitch. The phantom taste of vanilla and oak lingered on his tongue as he once again took another swig. He stuffed his hand in his pocket, brushing against a hand-rolled cigarette. A small smirk crosses his face.

“Well, someone's been trinken ihr Leben weg.” (Well, someone's been drinking their life away.) A voice N knew all too well echoed off the quiet walls of the cellar, and instantly wiped that smirk away. N once again gulped down the brown liquid before turning to the pigtailed drone leaning on the very wooden pillar beside the doorway, a smug smirk on her face as she watched the Canadian put the cork back on the drink and put it back as neatly as possible.

They made eye contact. “What do you want?” He asked, his tone exasperated and almost resigned as J just lightly chuckled in response. N raised an eyebrow, irritation written all over him as the Austrian continued. “How many times have I caught you drinking? Ten? Nineteen? No, forty times over?” N’s eyes narrowed as she cockily listed the times she had caught him drinking. “An eleven year old really shouldn't be drinking, much less a drone. What would that say about them? Gott weiß, Louisa würde doch nicht wollen, dass ein Straftäter im Haus herumläuft, oder? You know the risks, N. And we got a newbie runnin' around. Feel bad for her. We found 'er at a cargo ship, so she probably got sold off. Poor girl." J's tone changed from a cocky one to a more somber one as she tore her gaze away from N, instead finding the concrete very interesting. An almost pained look crosses her features for a moment, but before N could get a glimpse of it, it was wiped away.

(God knows Louisa wouldn't want a delinquent running around the house, now would she?)

“Don't you try to baby me, J.” Now it was J’s turn to bear an irritated expression, as her optics snapped back to meet N's. “Do I have to bring up all of the times I've caught you smoking half the world's supply of weed? Or the times where you've come home pockets lined after wiping some poor bastard’s nose for their valuables, so you can stock them up in your room like fucking trophies? You're not as innocent and impenetrable as you think you are, J.”

J’s only response was a dead silence and a death glare. N only sneered in response. “What's the matter? Got nothin’ to say? No snappy comeback?”

“She's going to know you've gone and downed some again. I mean, look at the thing, it's already at half.” She said, gesturing to the bottle, which was now at half. “She's never caught me smoking once in my life, and I'm her favorite child by far. Who will she believe? Me, or you? After all, you have the largest track record of drinking your pains away second only to Cyn.” She continued, rummaging through her pockets for her cigarette.

N held up a hand-rolled cigarette, a wry grin on his face as he presented it to the shocked drone. “Missing something?” He said in a condescending voice, watching as J’s expression morphed from a slightly irritated one to one of pure shock. “I wonder what Lousia’ll think if she finds this in your room. Nobody here's that much of a perfectionist to hand-roll a cigarette, besides a certain girl standing right in front-a’ me.”

The sound of tires on pavement broke their little spat.
Author's Ramblings: SIBLING FIGHT!!!!
I AM SO SORRY! I WAS SO LATE ON THIS! SCHOOL, AND OTHER STUFF HAMPERED ME FROM PUSHING THIS OUT ON TIME! I AM SO, SO FUCKING SORRY! I'll try to post more often, but until then, I'll catch ya'll later.

“Are you ready?” Yasmin Raiz places a MASSIVE bowl of fried rice onto the table. “Hi everyone, it’s Yasmin Raiz, your Season 4 Mx Congeniality, and I’m here to host our REUNION of Season 5 of Chronologica’s Drag Race!” Yamin stands to welcome the monarchs. “Welcome back the lovely contestants of CDR Season 5! Madam Maine!”
Madam Maine re-wears her finale look: a top hat, fitted black and white suit and a pair of silver boots with a cane. She bows and smiles broadly, looking nervous.
“Kaia K. Beauvoir!”
Kaia strides out confidently in an elaborate gold and silver pageant dress, with silver hair that glitters with metallic extensions.
“Cwunchie!”
Cwunchie is dressed as a little yellow plastic flower, with big petals and a tiny narrow stem. Her arms and legs are constricted at her sides in the stem and she hops along the runway towards her chair, grinning wildly.
“Now, let’s welcome the elephant in the room.” Yasmin smiles. “Bates Baghdashi, everyone!”
Bates arrives in a sepia-painted Agatha-Christie-esque detective look, with decadent shades of tan, brown, and black, an oversized magnifying glass, a briefcase, and a messy mop of Sherlockian curls.
“Oh, I love this.” Yasmin claps.
Bates lights an oversized origami faux cigarette, pretends to smoke from it, then flicks it away, where it unfurls into a bird, already aflame, and blasts away into the air, powered by a miniature firework.
Madam Maine looks very afraid for a moment, and starts to stand up.
“Before we continue, I want to let everyone know that their safety is assured! You are not in danger.” Yasmin smiles at Maine. Bates blushes.
Maine sits back down.
“Say hello, it’s Mermaid princess, Cleo Mertoris!”
Cleo wears a golden seashell bikini top stoned to the gods, showcasing some clear, recent work done on her chest, as well as a tight blue mini dress, as she flicks back her long luscious ginger hair with a smirk.
“Drag Princesita!”
Princesita waves in a sepia coloured maxi dress and bald head look, with bronze glitter on the top of her now shaved head, as she spins around with a smile on her face.
“It’s Briar Midnights!”
Briar walks out dressed quite similar to Ambrose’s traditional look- a tophat and sleek black trench coat, with jet black, wet hair and a half-smirk.
“Ms Stripes, Starzanne!”
The others look unimpressed as Starzanne walks out in an American Eagle style look, with feathers, glitter and fringe wrapped around her body.
“Ambrose NOIR!”
Amborse wears a black plaid mini skirt and white linen shirt, going for a rare fem drag look, with long black braids with hundreds of little pins wrapped into the braids.
“S-S-e-v-e-r-a!”
Severa rocks BODY on the main stage, wearing a bikini top and denim short combo, as well as a sensible pair of blue boots and pigtails to add the final touch.
“Magenta! Leigh! Simmons!”
Magenta gaps, wearing a Magenta coloured plaid look, wrapped around her body to create a fitted garment, along with a Magenta pair of sneakers.
“Jupiter Sterling!”
Jupiter rocks a head to toe, douchebag Vuitton look- jacket, shirt, pants, glasses and a backwards baseball cap.
“Apocalyptica!”
Apocalyptica looks slightly displeased- wearing a bright, toxic green look that appears to have toxic slime wrapped around her, in a similar vein to a past look.
“Lupe LaBelleza!”
Lupe wears a sensible pussycat wig, red coat and matching pencil skirt, with a black sheer turtleneck and a red fedora, along with a pair of black sheer socks being held up by garter belts and classic black pumps with a smile.
“And our winner, Nymphe d’Azote!”
Wearing her crown on her shoulders, her head too small for her crown, Nymphe is dressed in a glittering yellow robe, wearing a matching facemask looking ready for a spa moment, along with a wig, made entirely of bubbles!
Yasmin smiles, handing people plates of rice. “Now, today we're spilling ALL of the TEA. At the start of our season, we said goodbye to some girls that some fans really wanted to see more of. Say hello to Madam Maine, Miss Kaia K. Beauvoir, and…”
“CWUNCHIE!!!!” Cwunchie interrupts happily.
Severa rolls her eyes.
Cleo rolls her eyes.
Kaia rolls her eyes.
Severa glares at Cleo.
Cleo glares at Kaia.
Kaia glares at Severa.
Yasmin smiles. “Madam Maine. Once and for all, can you tell us why you’re named after a state you’re not even from?”
“Oh! Haha.” Madam Maine laughs nervously, eyeing the cameras. “I really like Maine. I have a French Canadian aunt who lives up there.”
“French Canada? Is she related to French Montana?” Magenta asks.
“Oh…no.” Madam Maine smiles awkwardly.
“A lot of our viewers this season questioned whether you were totally ready for the Drag Race experience. What’s your take?”
“I will be honest. I wasn’t.” Maine flushes. “I don’t think that I totally understood the caliber of some of these performers, and…I was in such awe of them. I feel really lucky that I’ve gotten to know some of my castmates, including all the first outs before me. Jupiter and Princesita especially, I really feel have shown me love.”
“You’re a sweetheart, honey.” Princesita smiles. “I hope you get your chance to come back someday too.”
“Are we going to do that every few seasons? Because it’ll get old, QUICK.” Severa responds. “Twists are only twists if we don’t see them coming.”
“Agreed.” Kaia says.
Princesita frowns.
Yasmin looks at Kaia. “Kaia, you represented, I believe, our first instance of a child of Drag Race–that is, your drag mom, The Mother Delilah, competed on season 2.”
“That’s right.” Kaia nods, keeping one eye warily on Severa and Cleo. “As a trans woman, it was important to me to be part of a legacy of successful trans women.”
“Delilah was successful?” Severa half jests with a smirk. “I think there have been plenty of trans women on the show who were more successful.”
Lupe looks like she wants to say something, but doesn’t.
“Whatever, I’m proud to be a daughter of Miss Delilah regardless and even more proud of having a healthy and kind relationship with the woman who inspired my craft.” Kaia says haughtily. “Not all of us can say that after all.”
“Ooooooooo…” the room roars.
Severa makes a displeased face and shrugs.
“One question about your time on the show, Kaia.” Yasmin looks around. “Why do you, in particular, think you ended up going home so early? A lot of fans were very surprised.”
“I think it’s quite obvious that Cleo’s leadership in that challenge was disastrous for me and everyone else on it. I’d assume that Cleo’s current appearance reflects how people received her during this season.”
“You mean my gorgeous knockers?” Cleo shimmies.
“I mean, your cheap bra and panty set.” Kaia snaps. “And-”
“You’re so smug.” Cleo interrupts. “As if you have anything to be smug about. Not with that mug, you don’t, mate.”
“At least I can still afford my makeup.” Kaia shoots back.
Cleo huffs and crosses her arms.
“Cwunchie! You were a force of nature for a short time with us this season.” Yasmin looks nervous to even speak to Cwunchie.
“WOOOOOOHOOOOO!” Cwunchie yells. “This show did NOT disappoint! I–”
It then cuts to an ad break.
~
“Welcome back to the Chronologica’s Drag Race Season 5 Reunion! Onto, the infamous, Bates!” Yasmin smiles. “You had one of the most DRAMATIC moments, ever in history. Let’s look back.”
Bates grins as the cast turns to watch the TV screen.
~
Will the following-
Wait.
Everyone looks concerned. For a moment, the stage is perfectly still, as the judges and racers wait with uncertainty.
In the distance, sirens are heard. The sirens get closer. And closer.
Suddenly, a group of police officers in full riot gear burst into the room through a production door. Crew members and producers look shocked and frantic. The police officers are led by a stern-faced man with a badge that reads "Officer Jeffery," who steps forward, his hand gripping a pair of handcuffs.
What?
Office Jeffrey points directly towards the racers. Everyone looks to see who he’s pointing at.
Bates stares back at the officer expressionless, blood still dripping from their look.
"Mahdi Hakimian?” The police officers crowd onto the stage towards Bates.
“Oh my god.” Magenta gasps.
Princesita starts to say something, and Jupiter reaches over to cover Princesita’s mouth.
“Yes.” Bates gulps.
Officer Jeffery reaches towards Bates. “Turn around and place your hands behind your back.”
Bates stands silently, his face expressionless.
“I am placing you under arrest in connection with the murders of Javad Tahmasb, Hamidreza Entezami, Mohamad Askari, Mostafa Shahi, Ali Reza Arjmand, Arman Nousari, Elahe Nousari, Setareh Tarokh, and Mohammed Tarokh."
Magenta falls to the ground in her bra and panty set, as everyone looks in stunned silence.
Bates slowly raises their hands as the police officers move closer, handcuffing them.
Everyone looks in disbelief. The judges look shocked and horrified.
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
Bates looks at Apocalyptica, still expressionless, and speaks softly. “Christian…I’m sorry.”
“You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand these rights?”
Bates gives a nearly imperceptible nod.
Apocalyptica’s eyes well with tears. “Batesy?”
~
“Traumatic.” Apocalyptica looks at Bates, who exhales.
“To explain this….” Yasmin looks over. “Rachelle Mirage!”
Rachelle walks in with a smile.
“You two have worked hard together- tell us, what happened?!”
“I am, as we’d all know, originally from Iran. And- I knew it was a risk.” Bates exhales. “And they found out, and tried to have me extradited back from the US, for an alleged murder.”
“You killed someone?” Magenta gasps.
“A set up. Some of my former schoolmates had reported to the government that I had been cast here. So they falsified police records to make it look like I had done something which… was just because I, a Queer person, was representing the country in a way that didn’t match their… image.” Bates nods.
“Then comes… me.” Rachelle grins. “I could not let this happen.”
“Thank you, Rachelle.” Bates smiles.
“I felt something was off. And, I served as a character witness in the International Criminal Court, where… Eventually, after little evidence, we were able to not only have this gorgeous artist freed- but, I pulled some strings…”
“And I am now living in Denver.” Bates responds, holding Apocalyptica’s hand.
“What a shocking story.” Yasmin smiles. “And Apocalyptica, I must ask- are you two…?”
“We live literally across the street from each other.” Apocalyptica smiles.
The two grin.
“Now next up! She was one of our famous RETURNEES- Ms Cleo Mertoris, who won her first challenge- then proceeded to go home. Cleo, how did you feel about your journey?”
“I think… I should’ve gone much further than I did, to be honest.” Cleo shrugs.
“Girl...” Severa stares at Cleo for a few seconds. “You deserve exactly what you got- because you weren’t talented enough to survive a lipsync.”
“Not Miss ‘Double Sashay’ talking.” Cleo gasps. “At least I could pay for my tits myself, and not resort to sugar daddies huh Sevvie… Fucking bitch!” In a flash, Cleo, angrily standing, throws her drink onto Severa, who yelps.
In a flash, Yasmin tries to pull Cleo away from Severa, but Cleo does her best to claw at Severa.
“The fuck?” Jupiter yells.
“Don’t fucking call me Sevvie ever again!” Severa yells, scrubbing at her ruined dress and crying while subtly drinking the cocktail on her face.
“I’ll call you whatever I fucking want! Coming for my fucking gig!” Cleo shrieks.
“Let’s stop this-” Yasmin raises her hand.
Cleo spits at Severa. “Fuck you, fucking whore. You only transitioned to copy me! I MADE YOU! I-”
“WE’RE GOING TO ANOTHER BREAK!” Yasmin yells.
~
Severa tries to shake cocktail out of her wet wig.
Lupe covers her mouth with one hand. Kaia is laughing.
Nymphe suddenly stands and aggressively wrings out Severa’s wig, as Severa winces.
“Well!” Yasmin says sharply. “Are you okay, Severa?”
“I’m fine.” Severa huffs, bent over as Nymphe wrings her wig out. “I started my transition because, since the season aired, I came to terms with a lot about myself. Including how some of my behavior on the season was…rash. I’ve definitely been hiding from this moment. And Cleo has nothing to do with it.”
Lupe apologetically speaks up. “Pienso que, Severa, that Cleo might just be jealous of you.”
“You know it, mami.” Severa sighs. “I also really want to express some sincere apologies to you.”
Lupe looks startled.
“I think that with our time on the show, I was often jealous of you. Unlike me, or Cleo, or Kaia, you have been confidently living in your womanhood for a long time. I’ve followed you for a long time…and I fucked up.” Severa nods. “I am sorry.”
“I accept your apology, darling.” Lupe smiles. “It’s all I ever needed.”
“Now, these two were our OTHER, non finalist returnees, and both have… wild journeys.” Yasmin smiles.
“Non finalist.” Princesita frowns.
“You did good, Mami.” Lupe smiles. “I know it was hard…”
“I lip synced- a lot.” Princesita nods. “And it was hard.” Princesita begins to tear up. “Because, I believed I could do better, you know?”
Magenta holds Princesita’s hand.
“But- you must keep going. You can never push yourself too far, and maybe this wasn’t my journey. I think… I think I've accepted that now.” Princesita sighs.
“Regardless of how it ends, know that you should be proud of yourself, girl.” Kaia shrugs. “Like, we can’t all win.”
“Like me.” Starzanne jokes.
Nobody laughs.
“Well, turning to you, Starzanne, you had a controversial moment this season, in your makeover moment….” Starzanne turns. “How did it feel, watching it back?”
“I feel bad.” Starzanne closes her eyes. “And… I’m learning, I’m working on what I know, how to do it better, how to…” Starzanne sighs. “Do more than what I did, and truly, I feel shame.”
“I kinda think it’s bullshit.” Severa looks at Starzanne. “Because I think you knew better.”
Ambrose and Briar nod in agreement.
“HOWEVER…” Severa shrugs. “Good for you.”
Starzanne pouts, before nodding. “I aim to really deliver, I p-promise.”
The others look uncertain.
Bates sighs. “As the Middle Eastern refugee here, I can’t speak for Mohammed, who it’s obvious you really hurt and mistreated…and I hope he never has to see or work with you again. Because I hope you do learn, Starzanne. But also know the work is on you, not people of color.”
Severa gulps.
“Moving onto a power couple, or power ex-couple, this season. Briar and Ambrose…”
Jupiter woofs.
“How are we going since the season?” Yasmin asks.
“We’ve reconciled.” Ambrose looks at Briar with a knowing glance.
“I think both of us felt intense pressure this season.” Briar nods. “We both wanted to exist separate, but were so intrinsically tied to each other…”
“Ultimately I did think it led to our failure.” Ambrose sighs. “And- that’s fair, because it was a lesson to learn.”
“The lesson, being?”
“We are powerful- together.” Ambrose smiles, holding hands. “But, we believe it’s important to make space.”
“So, where does that mean for you now?” Yasmin asks. “The both of you.”
The two look at each other.
“We’re creating space, yet, collaborating.” Ambrose nods. “And-”
“They’re fucking again, BUT not doing duo gigs. Only attending gigs together.” Magenta chuckles.
Everyone gasps.
“Well… true.” Briar shrugs.
“Now, finally- the shocking moment… right before the semi final.” Yasmin nods. “Let’s look.”
~
I’ve made my decision.
Jupiter Sterling, Shantay you stay.
“Thank you.” Jupiter exhales. “Thank you.”
Severa closes her eyes, whispering to herself. “Severa, shantay…”
Severa and Magenta Leigh Simmons…
The others look on.
Thank you for being here, and doing great work this season. Now, I must say… sashay away.
“Damn!” Magenta yells, as Chronologica chuckles.
Everyone in the back of the stage look flabbergasted.
“No, thank you for this.” Magenta bows.
Severa looks at the judges for a split second, before walking off without a word.
“...Damn!” Magenta says again, as the others laugh. “I’m strutting off with GRACE.”
Magenta raises her hands in the air, as she walks off with a cheer.
~
“First, you- Severa, how are you feeling with time?” Yasmin asks.
“I feel as if that’s a different girl. Kinda. She’s thinking she’s giving nothing, not caring- but she cares too much, she’s lost that war. I think of myself as effortlessly fierce- but I did get stressed. I wish I… walked off and stomped the stage.” Severa sighs. “Instead of that.”
“And that’s okay, because we all- get there, sometimes.” Princesita says. “It’s about what you do next.”
“I’m going to win, girl.” Severa jokes. “They gotta make another All Stars so this diva can take the title.”
Everyone chuckles.
“Magenta, how did you feel, about being the other half?”
“I am happy, because if I’m being damn honest, I didn’t expect to make it this far!” Magenta laughs. “And I was me the whole damn time.”
“I love you for being you.” Jupiter adds. “You’re real, Ms Simmons. We honor that.”
“And not everyone can say that.” Nymphe smirks.
Apocalyptica grips Bates' hands.
“Now, it’s time for us to celebrate… some titles.” Yasmin smiles. “First, our GOLD BOOT title of the Season- ugliest outfit. Winner of a $5000 grand prize….”
…
Starzanne Stripes and September Remembers arrive in what else, but red, white, and blue. September looks patchy- his face is painted red, white and blue, in an attempt to cover his beard. Starzanne and September are both wearing fringe dresses that look straight out of a car wash, and it’s the epitome of… awkward.
“Starzanne!”
Starzanne chuckles, grabbing the trophy.
“Anything to say, Starzanne?”
“I am now wearing a lot LESS red, white and blue.” Starzanne nods.
The others awkwardly chuckle.
“Now, our title of SHADE- The Shadiest C.U.N.T this season.” Yasmin smiles. “Can I have a drumroll?”
“Cleo?” Severa looks over at the empty seat laughing.
“SEVERA!” Yasmin cheers. “Condragulations, you’ve won $10,000!”
Severa chuckles, grabbing the sash. “Thank you,I’d like to thank Cleo, Alcohol, and the rest of you for being too boring to get confessionals!”
Lupe laughs dramatically.
“I’d say I’m surprised, but I’m not!”
Everyone laughs.
….
“Finally, MY successor.” Yasmin smiles. “This year, the Congenial title will win $20,000, sponsored by Virtue Beauty.”
Everyone looks excitedly.
“The Winner is… MAGENTA LEIGH SIMMONS!” Yasmin cheers, as everyone starts clapping.
“Yes, yes!” Magenta cheers, as Yasmin puts the sash on her.
“Do you have anything to say, my Queen?”
“I-” Magenta smiles. “Damn.”
Everyone cheers.
“She’s finally out of things to say everybody!” Kaia laughs.
“Ugh…” Apocalyptica whimpers, wiping her eyes, as the others look over.
“Popsicle, are you okay?” Lupe asks.
“I’m- I’m fine.” Apocalyptica sighs. “I just- am really happy for Magenta.”
Magenta smiles.
“Bullshit.” Nymphe looks over.
The room is quiet.
“You expected this win, and again, you’re inauthentic, you’re lying, and you’re not owning up to when you want something.” Nymphe responds.
“I-” Apocalyptica tears up, holding onto Bates. “I-”
“I do have a question to ask, actually, as the crowned Ms SHADE.” Severa smirks. “Ms, Popsicle- we noticed your lack of presence at the crowning. You weren’t at any of the cast parties we held to celebrate or any of the events we planned, so what’s really up?”
Nymphe looks over.
“What happened?”
“I didn’t feel up to it. I was a bit sad, and I really did want to be there- but I-I felt physically ill, and…”
“Bullshit, again.” Severa rolls her eyes.
“Alright, you guys can have your opinions on everyone’s actions, but we don’t need to gang up on her.” Bates says, raising their voice a little..
“I don’t know what any of you mean…” Apocalyptica sighs. “I just-”
“You wanted to win, so you’re bitter. You kept denying it- but clearly, you positioned yourself in a way to do well. And you lost. So, why not own up to it?” Nymphe asks.
“Ugh, Can you go fuck yourself?” Apocalyptica snaps.
“Woah.” Magenta says.
Everyone looks spooked.
“Popsicle… You don’t have to acknowledge them…” Bates whispers.
“Of course I wanted to win.” Apocalyptica exclaims loudly. “I wanted to prove alt drag, to prove myself, and I don’t think that trying to be nice while doing so is a sin. ” Apocalyptica says. “LIKE-”
“Because you weren’t being real.” Severa looks at Apocalyptica. “Not the sweet girl who always happens to copy others.”
“I- You can think whatever you want. I…Actually I’m not going to continue to engage with this narrative.” Apocalyptica stutters as she turns to hold onto Bates.
“If you owned being unoriginal, maybe you’d have won.” Nymphe shrugs.
“Okay hold up- I’m mad she didn’t show up to our get togethers either but unoriginal?” Kaia inserts herself into the conversation. “We all get inspired and learn and take notes from others, like that’s the point of drag families, Delilah taught me so much, does that make me unoriginal? Have none of us ever felt inspired after seeing a good drag show or look?”
“I learned a lot from everyone in my short time here, my drag has changed a lot from all of you.” Madame Maine smiles.
“Girl, there’s a difference between being inspired and trying to steal my signature move the week after I leave.” Severa turns back at Kaia and Madame Maine.
“And were you the first to ever do that move? You came up with it with absolutely no influence from anyone else.” Apocalyptica bites.
“I don’t remember getting any credit or even a shoutout.” Severa stares at Popsicle.
“Do you give credits to who helped teach you how to dip every time you do it?” Apocalyptica retorts. “Whatever, i'm just so over this conversation.”
“Cool.” Nymphe bluntly states.
Apocalyptica rolls her eyes. “Cool.”
A couple of seconds pass of silence.
“Well, thank you all for a lovely season.” Yasmin smiles breaking the tension. “Now, before we go… Here's a sneak peak of SEASON 6 of Chronlogica’s DRAG RACE, coming soon!”
~
This has been… magic.
“It sure has.” Nymphe nods, sipping her pink tea. “But the magic… lives on and continues, as does the journey of the forest. It is… eternal.”
It's magic, you know…
Thirteen figures flash, as someone grabs a potion labeled ‘IMMUNITY’.

7 years ago I met a guy who had 2 children. They were living with their Aunt and when they were 2 and 3yrs old they were placed in mine and my partners care due to abuse suffered in their aunts care.
2 years later we broke up and he disappeared, leaving the children with me.
I got a social worker and I fostered them. The intention was for them to stay with me until they were 18 but we were struggling to obtain an SGO as their aunt already had one which had not been revoked.
For 2 years we battled to have the aunts SGO revoked, social services tried for those 2 years to find Dad too but he left no trail.. it was a nightmare.
Then one day social worker came out and said Dad had been in contact with her.. he wanted to see his kids. He had gotten another woman pregnant and wanted contact with these children too.
Children were 7 and 8yrs old at this point and the older child didn't want contact. (Dad was very abusive and she sadly remembered a lot of it and would draw pictures of the abuse with her social worker)
Then a few months later, social said dad would have face to face contact on a Saturday.
The day before first contact, I picked older child up from school and she was poorly. So I took her to hospital. Turns out she had a severe asthma attack and they wanted to keep her in over night.
I had an almost 2yr old baby at this time and nobody to care for him and the hospital wouldn't allow baby to stay at the hospital with us.
Hospital had no choice but to ask her dad to stay the night with her.. no issue as he was due to have her the following morning anyway.
She was angry, scared, upset, begged me not to leave. Tears from us all, i had no choice and i didnt sleep that night at all.
The next morning, dad brought her home and she said to me as soon as she walked through the door, "I want to go live with my dad".
She would say things like, "you're not my real mam."
It turns out during the night in hospital dad had told her about the new baby, had allowed her to video call her aunt, painted a picture of an amazing life etc.
She went from being terrified of him to wanting to live with him in the space of a few hours.
The next 2 weeks were hell. She had never been placed on the naughty step before, or grounded before, never had tantrums.. but she spent the next 2 weeks throwing things, getting put on the naughty step, hurting baby and smirking at me after and then saying, "you gonna send me to my dad's yet then?"
She would go upstairs and scream as loud as she could and jump off the bunk bed ladders so hard to make as loud a bang as possible, so much so that my kitchen light doesn't switch on anymore.
She had me in tears every day. She was my little shadow and best friend for 5 years and now she didn't want to be here anymore and I was heartbroken.
Dad is an awful person and his new partner was no better. From what I hear they are the street tramps, her ex husband died of a drug overdose and she had 3 kids who were in her mothers care (albeit voluntarily)
Anyway after 2 weeks of this, i was driving with her in the front seat and she kept nipping and pulling at my arm and saying things like, "send me to my dads. Youre not my real mam." When telling her to stop hitting me she would keep repeating, "Dad said i dont have to listen to you, i can do what i want".
We were doing a little over 40mph on a country lane, coming up to a bend with plenty cars coming from the other way and she pulled my arm so hard we swerved.. just very little but enought to scare the life out of me.
I've never been so scared and i shouted at her. No.. i screamed at her. I SWORE at her.
"I'm fucking driving!!!! What the hells the matter with you you're gonna fucking kill us all!"
There was nowhere to stop for a few hundred yards, younger child was crying in the back seat, baby was also in the back seat thankfully oblivious as to what had happened.. then she went to grab me again so I slapped her hand away. Raised her hand again, I slapped it away a second time.
First time I have ever ever laid hands on her. It was definitely called for to stop a potentially fatal accident, but the shame I felt was like nothing I've felt before.
I finally got to the junction and pulled in to stop and I sobbed.
She was silent.. the shock of me slapping her had stopped her. I knew then that things were very very bad, id lost my cool for the first time. So I gave in to her and said I'd speak to her dad about her going to stay.
The following morning I took her to her dad's. I hoped that after spending a few days in that hell hole would make her realise what she would lose but once there, dad wouldn't let her come back even when she begged to.
Then he demanded money for her. He wanted £85 per week, "until he claimed for her himself".
Well he never had any intention of claiming himself because, little did I know at the time, I was sending way too much money. He wouldn't even get half of that if he claimed for her himself.
8 weeks went by with him making various threats to me (he's abusive, one of the worst people to grace this planet) and he knew I was too scared to stand up to him because his biggest threat in all the time I'd known him was to make sure I'd never see his kids again.
But then one day it came to a head and I stood up to him. I wish I hadn't.
I told him from now on I wanted all communication between me and him to go through our social worker. I told him I would be blocking him and.. stupidly.. I told him to put the claim in for the child because I refused to send any more money.
I had been asking him most days for 8 weeks if he had put the claim in because not only was I sending him money, but the DWP would also take it off me again because those 8 weeks of payments were classed as overpayment. So I'd be losing £170 per week in the long run.
Well next thing I know I have a text from a friend asking what was happening. There was a status on his partners Facebook saying I was withholding childs belongings (she had everything with her by this point, except her things in the shed but hadn't yet asked for. I was constantly sending belongings over, there was nothing else left here belonging to her except her bike and scooter etc)
The Facebook post said that I stopped her money so she couldn't have any nice things, then calling me a "fat, gummy c*nt" and that they would "have the last laugh".
I didn't respond but I showed the social worker.
By this point, social worker seemed a bit "off" with me.
For years all I'd had was praise over how well the children were progressing and the beautiful life i was providing them.. now it felt weird.. like they were siding with dad.
The following week, I took younger child to school and she didn't get to come home.
Social called me after i dropped her at school asking me to send some belongings into school because older child had made a allegations against me. So younger child couldnt come back yet.
The allegations;

• I had hit her - yes true, a smack to avoid a potentially fatal accident. I fully understand this allegation and I accept this fully. And I feel shame for this all the time.
  
• But then also a full lie - I had tried to drown her that summer when we went paddle boarding.
  

Social said 'child' had told them I had physically held her head under water to drown her.
Now, I fully believe social services made up the allegation so they could have a reason to send the younger child to her dads too. They had stated a few weeks before that because of the "logistics" they couldnt have one child with dad and one child eith me.
They had struggled for 7 years to close this case and if they could get both children back into their dads care they could finally close it.
One child was already there, they just needed a reason to get second child over. And that allegation did it.
So second child had to go to dad's while they looked into the "allegation"
Now dad's partner did say they would have the last laugh, but at 8 years old I don't think the child could be coached into saying something as big as that. And she certainly wouldn't have made it up herself.
But social services know we did a lot of outdoor activities and spent a lot of time on the water that summer. Are they corrupt enough to say something like this? Or perhaps purposely twist the child's stories of jumping in the water, splashing eachother, swimming etc to make it seem like she's said something to insinuate she was being drowned?
However I will say, never once did she ever come home with fully wet hair. Wet pigtails - yes.. but never a fully wet head.
Not once in all the time we went paddle boarding did she ever go under the water.
Even when jumping off the board, she would jump and do a sort of "half turn" so she could catch hold of the board so she wouldn't go fully under.
Part of my grief and anger is that this is the lie that took them from me forever, and I'll never get to know who said it.
Now, then because of the allegation they wanted to hold this really big meeting.. I can't remember what the meeting was called but it would include social, teachers, doctors, police (perhaps), and myself and their dad.
They then said my son could be affected by this - insinuating I could lose custody of my baby too.
At this time social were being very careful not to let me have any contact, knowing I'd try to ask who came up with this whole drowning thing and throw a spanner in their works.
But when they mentioned my son would be part of the case, I freaked out. I couldn't risk my baby.
So I told social worker, "fine, I give up, I won't fight to bring them home."
They called me back the next morning to tell me that I would no longer need to attend the meeting and my son would no longer be included in the case. When i asked why, she said "because youre not going to fight for the girls anymore. You're no longer part of this case".
OK so, I've been accused of attempted murder (effectively!) And you've removed the children from me and then also insinuated to might also remove my own child, but you're going to drop everything if I don't put a fight for my ex partners children???????
So social knew the whole drowning thing was made up (I do fully believe it was social themselves who made it up though)
It's very clear to me that they just needed a way to close the case as it had been open for way too long.
What was supposed to be a 45 day case turned into 4 years with still no end in sight , until finally dad popped him ugly head back up.
When I finally got a solicitor after their dad came back on the scene, social seemed to panic and they started acting strange with me.
It's clear they did all of this to cover their own backs. Destroying our family and our lives for their own gain.
Cruel.
I have now spent the past almost 2 years in a state of anger and fear against social services.
And now, the anger is dissolvong and full grief has taken hold.
I cry for them almost every day. If not every day.
I miss them. Life is poor without them. My little boy lost his 2 best friends in the world.
I lost the children I gave my whole heart to. Who I had intended to be Mummy to, for life.
They were my whole world.
They still are my world. And the grief is horrendous.
I've had no contact since the day the second child was not allowed to come home from school.
It's been almost 2 years. And I don't know how to get past it.
I've never told this whole story before because it's so long and confusing and hard for me to make sense of, not knowing the truth of who made all this up. So this is all word vomit.
If you've read this, thank you. I just needed to tell someone.
I don't know how to get over this grief. It feels as though they died that day and it's so, so hard. So hard.
I had a dream they came to stay and I played with their hair.. put some lovely clean white socks on them (I don't know why lol) spent the entire night with all the littles in my bed reading stories.
I cling to that dream. It does make me feel like they came back for a minute.
I can only hope they remember me and want to find me again when theyre old enough. I almost moved house not too long ago and I called it off so I could be here for them. I can never leave this place, just incase.
I love you H&M. I'll always be waiting here for you.
Mam.

It was the first Ellen O'Connell book I read, and upon first read I was like "Wow, I hate this." I read it and hated every single character except Anne. I thought they were all terrible people undeserving of my time. I immediately jumped to her other books, because I did like the writing, and loved them. I even have a gush post about BBM lol.
Anyway I was doing an O'Connell re-read and was like ... "what if...?" and I did. I read EOSEOG again.
It was so good. What book did I read the first time? Was I momentarily illiterate? Did my media literacy abandon me during that first read? What happened to me?
My first impression of the book was that Cord was mean and disrespectful, and didn't deserve Anne. Now, though, it couldn't be more further from the truth. Anne points out immediately that all his feelings are in his eyes, and his expressions and words don't at all match with his actions. He's constantly amused or smiling or laughing.... with his eyes. And I guess I just completely ignored that the first go around? No idea. And then in his point of view, the man is all but internally worshiping the ground she walks on. He's never mean or abusive towards her, always hears her opinions, and never lets her feel like she's to be nothing more than a submissive wife. Anytime he's distant, it's because he's terrified of losing her and having his heart broken (and of hurting Anne's social status), and he isn't used to someone looking at him as a person. Omg his family pissed me off so bad!!! The way they see him as nothing more than an animal, and don't believe Anne when she says she loves him and that he's kind -- because oh clearly that must mean she's undergoing some kind of psychosis from the enormous amount of abuse she's enduring from Cord.
FRANK WHEN I CATCH YOU!!!
I love how Ellen O'Connell paints her relationships as not being just husband and wife, or man and woman; they're equals, partners, friends. Before romance and lust, they're companions. I love that! You feel mutual respect and love.
Anyway TLDR: Cord is actually a very gentle and kind soul, deserves to give everyone in his family at least 1 punch, and absolutely deserves Anne. Eyes of Silver, Eyes of Gold is a beautiful and wonderful book! Also 2023 me was a moron! Thank you for your time.
..... P.S. I would LOVE to see a short story of Anne and Cord at 10. The way he fell in love immediately when he saw her come to his sister's defense by dragging that bully by her pigtails. Anne you will always be an icon.

“We need to talk, Ella.”
That was the last thing Alex ever said to me.
Five years ago, via text, before he cut me out of his life.
Now he wasn't answering his fucking phone.
“Hey, you've reached Alex!”
I met Alex Locke in the fifth grade.
I suffered from chronic headaches as a kid, and Alex lost time a lot, sometimes blanking out whole days. According to Alex, it was like being switched off.
Due to his condition, the boy fell asleep a lot, sometimes tumbling down the stairs during his episodes, which meant he was always in the nurse’s office with a head injury, or curled into a ball snoozing. I wasn't as sick as Alex, but I liked to sleep off my headaches in the nurse’s office and would wake to Alex playing Pokémon on the bed next to mine.
Other times, he would be sitting on the observation bed with his knees drawn to his chest. Alex wasn't a fan of shots.
I discovered that when I was torn from a headache induced sleep to his blood curdling wails.
I thought for sure he was dying, until I glimpsed the shot in Nurse Golding’s hand. Initially, I wasn't surprised the kid was screaming, she was trying to stab the thing into the back of his head.
Though, after reassuring me it was part of Alex’s treatment, she calmly told me to distract the boy while she administered his daily shot.
I panicked and attempted a puppet show with my hands. Alex was so confused by whatever I was trying to do, he stopped screaming, frowning at me like I had grown a second limb.
It worked! Kind of. Nurse Golding was ruffling his hair and calling him brave, when Alex’s eyes widened, his hand going to the back of his head. He started wailing again, but this time I was pretty sure it was for attention.
Alex definitely had his eyes on the tub of candy the nurse kept on her top shelf.
Alex made me feel better about my headaches. I found his company comforting, and we became sick-buddies. Sometimes, his other friends would slip into the nurse’s office to prod him and tease him, and I felt a little left out. The two of them paid no attention to me, focusing on annoying Alex.
Growing up, we both got progressively better. Alex’s episodes decreased to one a month, and my headaches were easier to tolerate. The two of us still ended up in the nurse’s office, but for different reasons. I accidentally shoved a needle through my finger during arts and crafts, and was too shocked to cry.
Alex had fallen over during gym, and had the tiniest scratch on his leg, which set off the waterworks.
When Nurse Golding was trying to rip the needle out of my finger with tweezers, Alex was demanding she replaced his bandaid.
Starting middle school, the two of us came face to face with Nurse Jane.
She was terrifying, as well as completely incompetent. There was no candy in her office, and her solution to a girl in my class breaking her arm, was “Put a wet piece of tissue paper on it”
Alex tried the, I'm sooo sick! thing, and Nurse Jane spent half an hour lecturing him about healthy food.
He returned to class miraculously cured, looking paler than he did before visiting her.
Neither of us dared enter Nurse Jane’s office, unless we were really sick.
We were ten when Alex threw a ball of paper at me, hitting me in the face.
I was about to throw it back, when the boy twisted around in his seat and motioned for me to unravel the paper.
He had scribbled a funny picture of Nurse Jane being blown up into a balloon.
Underneath, written in bright red crayon:
DO YOU WANT TO PLAY WITH US?
YES [ ]
NO [ ]
At first, I was hesitant.
I told him I'd think about it, so he came straight to my house himself.
I didn't even know he knew my address.
“Why don't you want to play?” Alex asked through a mouthful of chocolate chip cookies. Mom had given him a plate to take up to my room.
Hiding behind him were his two friends, Lucy Conrad, a curly haired brunette with ribbons in her pigtails, and Ki Jacobs, the foreign exchange kid from Australia. The three of them already seemed like a tight knit group in class, sending each other notes and giggling.
I wasn't sure I wanted to be the odd one out in their little gang.
Still though, Alex was insistent that I join them.
So, I did. The three invited me to the town’s summer festival, and I had so much fun I forgot why I was scared of ruining their friendship. Ki choked on his Coke float, which shouldn't have been funny, but it was his over-reaction that sold me. The rest was history.
Initially, I was kind of hesitant, only hanging out with them on select days, making sure not to be too invasive.
Mom warned me that joining an already established friendship group was dangerous, on account of me potentially being left out. She had horror stories from her own teenagehood, where she was the fourth member in a group of girls, who turned on her for their own entertainment, inviting her to slumber parties for the sole purpose of bullying her.
But that wasn't what we were. Mom’s warning scared me and I waited for Alex to start teasing me about my big nose, or my overly large front tooth.
He didn't even notice my tooth until I told him, so he opened his mouth and prodded at his own molars, teasingly calling them horse teeth. Alex said he didn't care what I looked like.
Eventually, the barriers I had built began to crumble, and I started to see these kids as real, proper friends.
I was invited to play every day, the four of us venturing across town to swim in the lake or hunt for buried treasure with a map Ki definitely didn't print off of Google. Mom was wrong.
I was never left out. If I didn't turn up to our secret spot in the forest, the three of them would walk straight through my front door— and when I was a little older, Alex grew brave, climbing through my bedroom window, dragging me out of bed himself. When I was sick with the flu, the three insisted on sitting with me (keeping a safe distance) and watching Disney movies with me all day.
They all got sick too, so eventually, the three crawled into bed with me.
With my Mom’s words still haunting the back of my mind, part of me expected them to blow me off one day.
In the summer before seventh grade, Ki invited me, along with the others, to his parent’s house in Thailand.
I think that is when it started to hit me.
The four of us getting stupidly drunk and lying on the beach, exchanging ghost stories that weren't remotely scary, sending us into fits of hysteria.
This wasn't whatever Mom talked about. I don't think Mom had friends.
This was best friends.
Entering teenagehood, we made that declaration, on my fifteenth birthday, drinking milkshakes at the diner and trying to hide our tipsy giggles from the booze Ki had taken from his father’s drinks cabinet. We went skinny dipping in the lake, and I had my first kiss.
I went to summer camp, returning to town three weeks later, not to my mother (who had forgotten I was coming home) but to my three idiot friends who made me promise I would never leave for camp ever again.
I wasn't planning on it. The other kids called me Wobbly Legs because I couldn't balance on the tree swing, and two campers were suspended for inappropriate behavior in the lake.
Mom and Dad treated the others like their own children, even giving them each a house key (so Alex didn't have to brave tumbling through my window).
He hit his head once, knocking the back of his skull on my new makeup table, and my Mother almost had a panic attack.
This didn't stop him, though.
I think my best friend had grown accustomed to slipping through my window at midnight, armed with a flashlight and my favorite candy bars.
I thought we were going to last forever, until we were old, reminiscing our childhoods under a late setting sun.
But that wasn't the real world.
Halfway through my senior year, I lost my parents to a seventeen year old drunk driver.
Jason Chatham, who already went to juvie for intentionally running over a cat, was the mayor’s son, so Jason got a reduced sentence and four weeks of community service. He gave me a bullshit ‘apology’ and was forced to beg for forgiveness, despite the fucker smirking through the whole court trial.
Jason was sent abroad to college, and my parents’ funeral wasn't even an open casket.
Apparently, there wasn't much left to bury. I couldn't even afford the fucking funeral, it was the town that paid.
I had no other relatives. There was just me, Mom, and Dad.
Alex, Lucy, and Ki stayed by my side the whole time, but I barely talked to them. I was numb, my body felt detached and wrong, like it didn't exist.
Time moved far too slowly. I was burying my parents, a shovel stuck in my clammy hands, and then it was pitch black, and I was sitting in a random alleyway, my head spinning, halfway through a bottle of whisky.
It tasted like poison, but it also stopped me thinking for a while.
Alex found me, still in his funeral attire. I wasn't sure why he had his tie wrapped around his head, though. He didn't hug me or tell me it was going to be okay.
Alex snatched the booze, took a long swig, and then threw it over his shoulder. I don't know why I found the sound of the bottle splintering on the ground so funny, but I burst into hysterical giggles that felt real and a relief. I didn't cry like I expected.
I stood up, throwing out my arms to keep my balance.
“You're a loser.” I told him, trying not to slur my words.
Alex nodded at my dress. Lit up in the glow of a nearby streetlight, I realized my best friend’s eyes were red from crying, his lip wobbling. The idiot was trying so fucking hard to pretend we were okay, and failing miserably.
His blondish brown curls were sticking up everywhere.
I could tell he had been running his hands through it.
Alex was far too empathetic, sucking up my emotions.
“And you're covered in barf.”
His voice was shaking, but Alex was still smiling.
He held his hand out for me to grab, and I hesitated, just like when I was a little kid. But I needed him. I knew that, even in my unstable mind full of black and white and a slowly spreading numbness threatening to swallow me whole. Mom and Dad were gone, and he was all I had.
The town would go back to their day-to-day lives, and I would break apart. I considered following them in a brief episode of psychosis. The only people who could pull my head from the fog were my friends. So, I grabbed Alex’s hand, clinging onto him for dear life like I was going to lose him too.
I expected the whole, I'm so sorry for your loss bullshit I had been suffocating in all day, but Alex talked about birds instead. I don't know why, and it's not like he was making any sense, trying to unsuccessfully name different kinds.
But it was enough.
Alex’s stupid rant about birds distracted me from drowning myself in poison.
He took me back to his place, ordered my favorite pizza, and pretended I didn't just lose my parents.
Ki and Lucy joined us, and at first it was awkward and I was still drunk, still demanding he give me back my whisky.
Then, though, the night devolved into our usual antics, and for the first time since my parent’s death, I was laughing.
That night ended however, and once the hysteria had died down and my hangover was gone, reality hit like a wave of ice water. The world bled into black and white, and not even pills could help, so shut myself away.
I finished my senior year with my diploma sitting in my mailbox with a letter from the school expressing how sorry they were for my loss. I tore it up, setting fire to the remnants. I was so fucking SICK of sorry. The word condolences didn't even sound real anymore.
Leaving town seemed like the best idea for a fresh start. The night before I left, I crept through Alex’s bedroom window.
I did tell him and the others I needed space, drunkenly shouting at them to leave me alone when they found me sleeping in our old childhood tree house. That night, I woke him up, wrapping my arms around him and thanking him for being my friend.
Alex was half asleep, mumbling at me to join him, and I did, keeping a tight hold of him all night.
It was supposed to be a goodbye. I wasn't planning on coming back to a town that had murdered my parents.
And protected their killer.
But it's hard to say a real goodbye.
When I left for college, Alex and the others promised they would text and call every day. Lucy expected daily updates, and Ki was obsessed with my roommate's secret hamster she was hiding under her bed.
We stayed in touch, initially.
I couldn't just let them go. I was planning on inviting them for drinks, and having one last memory.
I facetimed them during the campus tour, showing them my room and exploring the city.
I was waiting to declare some kind of friendship ending speech, but, I guess moving away was a natural killer.
I started ignoring calls, responding in one word answers to their texts.
Two months into college, I had new friends, new experiences, and I wasn't the girl who's parents died.
Alex proposed in a long paragraph text that they come visit and stay in my room, and I had to keep making excuses as to why it was a bad idea.
Listen, I was the bad friend.
I know that now. I don't blame them for being pissed, but ignoring me for five (5) years was taking it too far.
Presently, I had called Alex a grand total of 35 times.
He wasn't picking up the phone, and I was left to a robot voice telling me to leave a message, after Alex’s voice from five years ago called me a donut.
“Hey, you've reached Alex! Don't expect me to answer the phone. It's not 1993. Just text me!”
Which was ironic considering my texts weren't being delivered.
I had zero choice but to go down the boomer route.
Initially, I knew what I was going to say and how I was going to say it, but by the fifth attempt, my voice was shaking.
“Hey, me again.” I said through gritted teeth, kicking through leaves. “You probably didn't get my last, uh, thirty four calls, because you're busy, or…whatever…”
I trailed off, clenching my phone tighter.
“Anyway! How have you been? Uh, we’re both adults now, but I figured we should maybe, uhhh, talk… maybe?”
Alex was surely ignoring me.
Again, I didn't blame him. We were adults with our own lives. The problem was, I had zero idea what Alex had been doing the last five years because he was MIA. Alex’s social media hadn't been updated in years, and I was pretty sure he'd just made new ones.
The same went for Ki and Lucy.
His last text, (We need to talk) didn't even make sense without a follow up, and now I was back home in a town I didn't want to be in, stuck in a dead end job I hated, trying to pick up the splintered pieces.
I was aware of my colleague yelling my name, dropping my cigarette and stomping on the cinders. “I really need to talk to you,” I didn't realize I was crying until I was swiping at my eyes.
Sometimes, life doesn't always work out the way you planned it.
“I know it's been a while since you uh, stopped texting me or whatever…” I let out a choked cough. “Which is my fault, by the way,” my chest was aching,
“But I've actually come home!” I tried to laugh, but it was more of a sob. “Yeah, it turns out NY wasn't really my scene.”
That was a lie, though Alex was probably used to me lying.
Sometimes, life doesn't work out.
After graduating college, I was offered a job in New York, only for it all to fall through when depression hit. The world turned black and white, and I rotted in bed all day. I quit my part time job, packed up my stuff, and came home.
I had been staying in the motel on the edge of town for a while, planning to move back into my parents house.
But knowing my friends were still in town, and intentionally ignoring me, I was taking my time.
I wanted to hear his voice.
Five years was a long time.
“I'm staying at my parents' old house, so maybe come see me sometime?” I blurted out, studying the sky above me.
Cotton candy clouds we used to pretend to eat.
“You've still got the key my Mom gave you, right?”
It was unusually cold for April. I had to keep pulling my jacket around me.
“Alex, I really fucking miss you.” I whispered. I wanted to tell him that I needed him, just like when I was seventeen. That he was the only thing keeping me afloat. “I miss you, Ki, and Lucy, so call me, okay?” I paused. “I know you're mad, but we can talk it out, all right? Just text me, and I'll be there.”
“Eleanor.” My colleague was grumbling behind me, “Your break is over.”
I tapped my screen impatiently. “I’m coming,” I said, “Alex, I've got to go, all right? Call me when you get this.”
When the line went dead, I shoved my phone in my pocket and resumed selling coffee to dead eyed customers.
I recognised Mrs Morris, the lady who lived opposite Mom and Dad. She offered me a smile, but her eyes were so sad.
I could practically sense her knee-jerk reaction to say, I'm sorry for your loss.
I handed the woman her usual, a black coffee, trying to ignore the way she clasped her wrinkly hands around mine, squeezing for dear life.
Maybe her husband died….
“Have you seen Alex anywhere?” I asked, wiping down the counter.
The woman's expression crumpled. “I'm sorry, who, dear?”
“Alex.” I said, “Alex Locke? You used to give us candy when we were kids.”
Mes Morris inclined her head. There was something odd about her expression. “Oh, the Locke’s moved away a long time ago,” she hummed, “I haven't seen them in years, tweety pie.”
The nickname brought back memories. Mrs Morris used to call me Tweety Pie.
I nodded, pouring her a refill. “Is Alex still in town, though?”
“Hm?”
“Alex.” I said, growing slightly impatient, “Their son, Alex Locke?”
Her eyes darkened, suddenly hollow, like I was talking to a memory. She was looking straight through me like we were back at my parent’s funeral. Mrs Morris wore a rose in my Mom’s honor.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said softly, “It was… so terrible what happened,” her expression seemed to twitch, and a shiver creeped down my spine. “God rest their beautiful souls.”
I had grown accustomed to tuning out condolences.
“Yes, I miss them,” I said dismissively, leaning over the counter. “But have you seen Alex? What about Ki and Lucy? I've been in town for a while, but I can't get in touch with them.”
Instead of answering, the corners of her mouth curved into a small smile. “You look so much like your mother, Eleanor.”
“Thanks.” I gave up, forcing a smile.
“Eleanor.” her face crumpled, “Such a bright young girl.”
My stomach knotted. “No, Mrs Morris, you mean my Mom.”
She blinked, sipping her coffee. “Hm? Oh, yes, yes! My condolences!”
I got the same response from patrons I used to know.
Townspeople blatantly ignoring my question, throwing me a fucking pity party for a loss I hadn't exactly gotten over, but over time, the pain was getting easier to deal with.
Grief never leaves you, but time can force you to move forwards instead of dwelling on the past.
Halfway through my shift, my colleague plonked a basket of flowers on the counter, where I was trying and failing to perfect a foam heart for a teenage girl who was definitely judging my ‘art’ skills.
The basket of flowers was full of roses, my mother’s favorite.
Alex planted them in her yard when we were thirteen, surprising her for her birthday. There was a little card attached to the flowers, and I ripped it off, my heart beating out of my chest.
To my dismay, though, it wasn't Alex’s handwriting.
Unless Alex had taken up calligraphy in his five year absence.
Eleanor,
I'm so happy to see you again in town! I hope you like the flowers. I know they were your sweet late mother’s favorite. I have left a surprise for you inside your parents house. It's not a lot, of course, but I want you to know you are never alone, sweetheart. I will always be here.
Enjoy your surprise. You will never be alone again.
With so much love, and much needed hugs.
A friend.
“Who sent this?” I asked, re-reading the note. To my confusion, there was a box of headache pills. I hadn't suffered from headaches since I was a kid, but it was when I was sliding my fingers over the box, a dull thrum pounded across the back of my skull. I trashed the pills, dumping the basket in my work locker.
My colleague shrugged. “I dunno. Someone left it on one of the tables.”
“So, it wasn't a guy?” I said, gingerly rubbing my forehead.
He shrugged. “I don't know what they looked like, I didn't even see someone coming in.”
That night, following the note’s instructions, I returned home to an empty house, letters for repossession piled on the floor.
I broke down somewhere between walking into the kitchen and seeing five year old milk sitting on the counter, and exploring my childhood room, the marks I scratched into the wall to track my height progress. It was so cold.
So empty.
Without Mom and Dad, there was no light.
The house was just one dark, empty memory of what had been. Switching on the lights, I tried to make it at least a little homely. I ordered pizza and ate it staring at my phone, waiting for a text from Alex. When my phone did vibrate, I almost jumped out of my skin.
Just the Uber Eats guy requesting a tip, which I'm pretty sure wasn't allowed.
I was unpacking in my room when a voice came from downstairs.
“Ella! Holy shit, you didn't tell us you were coming home!”
Alex.
The crumpled pair of pants I had been folding slipped out of my hands.
I felt like I couldn't breathe, stumbling downstairs.
His voice sent pinpricks through me.
“Alex?”
The hallway was empty, a chill grazing my cheeks.
“Ella! I'm so glad you're home! Don't ever go away again!”
I froze.
“Where are you?” I managed to get out.
“We’re down here!”
The voice was coming from the basement.
It was when I was slowly making my way down the stairs, my phone vibrated with a text. I was reaching for it, when it vibrated again, and again, and again, buzzing in my pocket.
Pulling it out, I found myself staring at a multitude of text messages.
05/07/2019: We need to talk, Ella. Did you get my last text?
05/07/2019: I've been feeling weird lately. Like I did as a kid. I keep switching off, Ella. There's something wrong. I don't know what it is, but we need you here.
05/07/2019: Ella, please. The cops are brushing us off, but there's something going on. We need you here. NOW.
05/13/2019: Can you call your local sheriff department? Anyone?! STOP IGNORING MY CALLS!
05/16/2019: Ella, you're fucking killing me. Do you not care? Are you really going to abandon us?
05/16/2019: Ella, are you there? I'm really cold.
05/16/2019: It's dark.
05/16/2019: It's so dark, I can't see I don't understand what's happening Please can you come and help me? I'm so cold and it's dark and I can't can't I need you to take me home Ella please
06/05/2020: I like that you're so close to me. It's not cold when you're here.
06/05/2020: Sshshhh! She's coming! Act natural Sit up straight No, not like that Like this!
06/05/2020: wait where did you go? Ella where did you go Ella where did you go Ella where did you go Ella
For a moment, I was hypnotised by the texts, my hands trembling.
Alex did send follow up messages.
But I never got them.
“Ella, we’re wait... ING. Come on, we’ve missed you so much!”
Alex’s voice should have made me happy.
But I recognised it, phantom bugs creeping down the exposed flesh of my arms and filling my mouth.
Prom night, junior year.
He was standing at the bottom of my stairs wearing a suit and tie. Ella, we’re waiting!” was from that night.
When my phone flashed again, I ignored it, forcing my legs to move down the stairs.
My basement was exactly how I left it, a mess of boxes and my old bike.
Except, sitting in the corner were three figures drowned in shadow. There was a light, something illuminating the dim.
But I was already stumbling over to my friends, who looked exactly the way I left them, frozen at eighteen years old.
Their skin was pale, papery thin and wrong.
“There… you… are!”
Alex lifted his head, half lidded eyes finding mine. “Aren't… you… happy to see… us?”
His lips were barely moving. I glimpsed the start of decomposition melting into his face, eating away at his flesh, tiny holes where maggots had burrowed inside him. His hair was matted with old blood, where someone had tried and failed, and then tried again to violently force a device inside his head, long orange wires sticking from his spine.
I could see where he'd struggled, rusted handcuffs still coiled around his wrists, an unnatural light illuminating his iris.
Something warm crept up my throat.
The glow illuminating the room was emanating from his eyes. I could see straight through him, his body more of a science experiment where his skull had been forced open, an electronic device woven inside the dead flesh of his brain.
Whoever did this to him saw Alex as nothing more than arts and crafts, flesh and bone to cruelly mould.
I was too numb to scream, my body stiff.
He lifted his head, blinking at me, like he was still alive.
“Fi…nally,” he choked through a mouthful of oozing black, “You're…home.”
I knew his voice that had been cruelly stitched and knitted together.
He greeted me when I came back from summer camp with the exact words.
“Finally!” Alex had cried, wrapping his arms around me. “You're hOme!”
I could hear where his words had been cut and sliced, glued to each other to sound like a coherent fucking sentence.
“I've… been… wAiting for… you.”
The boy’s lips stretched into a grin. “For… you… tO see yoUR… big… sur…prise!”
Every word had been handpicked directly from his memories.
I took slow steps back, tripping over something on the ground.
A Macbook.
There was a sticky note attached.
Here's another surprise! There's a USB wire on the floor somewhere, sweetie! I forgot to update them, so feel free! I hope you enjoy your surprise as much as I enjoyed making them!
Feeling sick to my stomach, I switched the laptop on.
The USB was across the room. I could see the end stained vivid scarlet.
There were three folders.
2019.
2020.
2021.
There was another separate folder.
2007.
I clicked into it, a list of names coming up.
I was loading into Alex’s name, when Lucy spoke.
“What… are… you… waiting… for?”
Her giggle was half human, and half not, a crackle of laughter and static.
I knew her voice, and it fucking hurt.
My 12th birthday, Lucy stood at the table in front of a giant chocolate cake. “What are you waiting for?” she teased. “Blow out your candles!”
When she did lift her head, my best friend’s face was bruised and battered.
Ki’s grinning lips were skeletal, his head split in two, held together with duct tape. The way he was slumped, swaying back and forth, his head of thick curls glued to his head, made me sick to my stomach.
“UPDATE…us.”
Ki’s words had been ripped straight from years ago, when he yelled at me for annoying him to play Minecraft.
My computer is UPDATING! Jeez, be patient!”
Whoever did this to them made my friends suffer.
I cupped Alex’s cheeks, and his skin was ice-cold.
“Who did this to you?”
He responded with a smile.
“Not…telling...y–”
”I'm not telling you!” I remembered his tone from back in school. I begged him for answers to the chemistry test.
It was like talking to not just a corpse, but the corpse of a memory too.
I pulled out my phone to call the cops, when my phone flashed again.
Unknown number
Update them! I can assure you, if you don't, I will happily add you to my collection, Eleanor. This time I won't let you go. Check the second folder.
They were watching me.
I glimpsed a single red light blinking on the ceiling.
Taking the laptop, I left my friends, and called the cops.
“No, that's not how this is going to go.”
The voice was sugary sweet through my phone, intercepting the call.
I recognised her.
Nurse Golding, from Kindergarten.
“Update your friends,” she told me in a shrill laugh, “I made them very specially for you, Eleanor. I worked tirelessly, every day and night to make sure you came back to your friends.”
She paused.
“You're not lonely anymore, are you? Of course, if you don't want to be grateful, I can always revert you back–”
I ended the call, throwing up everywhere.
Somehow, I found myself back in the basement, my breaths heavy.
I planned to destroy the laptop, and set fire to the house, when something caught my eye.
I didn't notice until I was fully looking at my friends.
There were three of them, and four chairs against the wall.
Four rusted handcuffs.
I think I've been here before, but how? When?
How can I not remember it?
I keep thinking back to my childhood. Alex was losing time.
Is that what happened to me?
Edit: since writing the above, six townspeople have told me to update my friends. All of them are the older residents in the diner. I keep coming down here, but I can't fucking do it.
I can't do this.
The USB goes directly inside their heads. How does this thing even work?!
Please help me. Can this be reversed? What did Alex’s texts mean?
I don't know what to do!

When I was a child, there was a story about a dragon becoming a cat called the Dragon Tamers by Edith Nesbit, so here it is.
There was once an old, old castle--it was so old that its walls and towers and turrets and gateways and arches had crumbled to ruins, and of all its old splendor there were only two little rooms left; and it was here that John the blacksmith had set up his forge. He was too poor to live in a proper house, and no one asked any rent for the rooms in the ruin, because all the lords of the castle were dead and gone this many a year. So there John blew his bellows and hammered his iron and did all the work which came his way. This was not much, because most of the trade went to the mayor of the town, who was also a blacksmith in quite a large way of business, and had his huge forge facing the square of the town, and had twelve apprentices, all hammering like a nest of woodpeckers, and twelve journeymen to order the apprentices about, and a patent forge and a self-acting hammer and electric bellows, and all things handsome about him. So of course the townspeople, whenever they wanted a horse shod or a shaft mended, went to the mayor. John the blacksmith struggled on as best he could, with a few odd jobs from travelers and strangers who did not know what a superior forge the mayor's was. The two rooms were warm and weather-tight, but not very large; so the blacksmith got into the way of keeping his old iron, his odds and ends, his fagots, and his twopence worth of coal in the great dungeon down under the castle. It was a very fine dungeon indeed, with a handsome vaulted roof and big iron rings whose staples were built into the wall, very strong and convenient for tying captives to, and at one end was a broken flight of wide steps leading down no one knew where. Even the lords of the castle in the good old times had never known where those steps led to, but every now and then they would kick a prisoner down the steps in their lighthearted, hopeful way, and sure enough, the prisoners never came back. The blacksmith had never dared to go beyond the seventh step, and no more have I--so I know no more than he did what was at the bottom of those stairs.
John the blacksmith had a wife and a little baby. When his wife was not doing the housework she used to nurse the baby and cry, remembering the happy days when she lived with her father, who kept seventeen cows and lived quite in the country, and when John used to come courting her in the summer evenings, as smart as smart, with a posy in his buttonhole. And now John's hair was getting gray, and there was hardly ever enough to eat.
As for the baby, it cried a good deal at odd times; but at night, when its mother had settled down to sleep, it would always begin to cry, quite as a matter of course, so that she hardly got any rest at all. This made her very tired.
The baby could make up for its bad nights during the day if it liked, but the poor mother couldn't. So whenever she had nothing to do she used to sit and cry, because she was tired out with work and worry.
One evening the blacksmith was busy with his forge. He was making a goat-shoe for the goat of a very rich lady, who wished to see how the goat liked being shod, and also whether the shoe would come to fivepence or sevenpence before she ordered the whole set. This was the only order John had had that week. And as he worked his wife sat and nursed the baby, who, for a wonder, was not crying.
Presently, over the noise of the bellows and over the clank of the iron, there came another sound. The blacksmith and his wife looked at each other.
"I heard nothing," said he.
"Neither did I," said she.
But the noise grew louder--and the two were so anxious not to hear it that he hammered away at the goat-shoe harder than he had ever hammered in his life, and she began to sing to the baby--a thing she had not had the heart to do for weeks.
But through the blowing and hammering and singing the noise came louder and louder, and the more they tried not to hear it, the more they had to. It was like the noise of some great creature purring, purring, purring--and the reason they did not want to believe they really heard it was that it came from the great dungeon down below, where the old iron was, and the firewood and the twopence worth of coal, and the broken steps that went down into the dark and ended no one knew where.
"It can't be anything in the dungeon," said the blacksmith, wiping his face. "Why, I shall have to go down there after more coals in a minute."
"There isn't anything there, of course. How could there be?" said his wife. And they tried so hard to believe that there could be nothing there that presently they very nearly did believe it.
Then the blacksmith took his shovel in one hand and his riveting hammer in the other, and hung the old stable lantern on his little finger, and went down to get the coals.
"I am not taking the hammer because I think there is something there," said he, "but it is handy for breaking the large lumps of coal."
"I quite understand," said his wife, who had brought the coal home in her apron that very afternoon, and knew that it was all coal dust.
So he went down the winding stairs to the dungeon and stood at the bottom of the steps, holding the lantern above his head just to see that the dungeon really was empty, as usual. Half of it was empty as usual, except for the old iron and odds and ends, and the firewood and the coals. But the other side was not empty. It was quite full, and what it was full of was Dragon.
"It must have come up those nasty broken steps from goodness knows where," said the blacksmith to himself, trembling all over, as he tried to creep back up the winding stairs.
But the dragon was too quick for him--it put out a great claw and caught him by the leg, and as it moved it rattled like a great bunch of keys, or like the sheet iron they make thunder out of in pantomimes.
"No you don't," said the dragon in a spluttering voice, like a damp squib.
"Deary, deary me," said poor John, trembling more than ever in the claw of the dragon. "Here's a nice end for a respectable blacksmith!"
The dragon seemed very much struck by this remark.
"Do you mind saying that again?" said he, quite politely.
So John said again, very distinctly: "Here--is--a--nice--end--for--a--respectable--blacksmith."
"I didn't know," said the dragon. "Fancy now! You're the very man I wanted."
"So I understood you to say before," said John, his teeth chattering.
"Oh, I don't mean what you mean," said the dragon, "but I should like you to do a job for me. One of my wings has got some of the rivets out of it just above the joint. Could you put that to rights?"
"I might, sir," said John, politely, for you must always be polite to a possible customer, even if he be a dragon.
"A master craftsman--you are a master, of course?--can see in a minute what's wrong," the dragon went on. "Just come around here and feel my plates, will you?"
John timidly went around when the dragon took his claw away; and sure enough, the dragon's wing was hanging loose, and several of the plates near the joint certainly wanted riveting.
The dragon seemed to be made almost entirely of iron armor--a sort of tawny, red-rust color it was; from damp, no doubt--and under it he seemed to be covered with something furry.
All the blacksmith welled up in John's heart, and he felt more at ease.
"You could certainly do with a rivet or two, sir," said he. "In fact, you want a good many."
"Well, get to work, then," said the dragon. "You mend my wing, and then I'll go out and eat up all the town, and if you make a really smart job of it I'll eat you last. There!"
"I don't want to be eaten last, sir," said John.
"Well then, I'll eat you first," said the dragon.
"I don't want that, sir, either," said John.
"Go on with you, you silly man," said the dragon, "you don't know your own silly mind. Come, set to work."
"I don't like the job, sir," said John, "and that's the truth. I know how easily accidents happen. It's all fair and smooth, and 'Please rivet me, and I'll eat you last'--and then you get to work and you give a gentleman a bit of a nip or a dig under his rivets--and then it's fire and smoke, and no apologies will meet the case."
"Upon my word of honor as a dragon," said the other.
"I know you wouldn't do it on purpose, sir," said John, "but any gentleman will give a jump and a sniff if he's nipped, and one of your sniffs would be enough for me. Now, if you'd just let me fasten you up?"
"It would be so undignified," objected the dragon.
"We always fasten a horse up," said John, "and he's the 'noble animal.'"
"It's all very well," said the dragon, "but how do I know you'd untie me again when you'd riveted me? Give me something in pledge. What do you value most?"
"My hammer," said John. "A blacksmith is nothing without a hammer."
"But you'd want that for riveting me. You must think of something else, and at once, or I'll eat you first."
At this moment the baby in the room above began to scream. Its mother had been so quiet that it thought she had settled down for the night, and that it was time to begin.
"Whatever's that?" said the dragon, starting so that every plate on his body rattled.
"It's only the baby," said John.
"What's that?" asked the dragon. "Something you value?"
"Well, yes, sir, rather," said the blacksmith.
"Then bring it here," said the dragon, "and I'll take care of it till you've done riveting me, and you shall tie me up."
"All right, sir," said John, "but I ought to warn you. Babies are poison to dragons, so I don't deceive you. It's all right to touch--but don't you go putting it into your mouth. I shouldn't like to see any harm come to a nice-looking gentleman like you."
The dragon purred at this compliment and said: "All right, I'll be careful. Now go and fetch the thing, whatever it is."
So John ran up the steps as quickly as he could, for he knew that if the dragon got impatient before it was fastened, it could heave up the roof of the dungeon with one heave of its back, and kill them all in the ruins. His wife was asleep, in spite of the baby's cries; and John picked up the baby and took it down and put it between the dragon's front paws.
"You just purr to it, sir," he said, "and it'll be as good as gold."
So the dragon purred, and his purring pleased the baby so much that it stopped crying.
Then John rummaged among the heap of old iron and found there some heavy chains and a great collar that had been made in the days when men sang over their work and put their hearts into it, so that the things they made were strong enough to bear the weight of a thousand years, let alone a dragon.
John fastened the dragon up with the collar and the chains, and when he had padlocked them all on safely he set to work to find out how many rivets would be needed.
"Six, eight, ten--twenty, forty," said he. "I haven't half enough rivets in the shop. If you'll excuse me, sir, I'll step around to another forge and get a few dozen. I won't be a minute."
And off he went, leaving the baby between the dragon's fore-paws, laughing and crowing with pleasure at the very large purr of it.
John ran as hard as he could into the town, and found the mayor and corporation.
"There's a dragon in my dungeon," he said; "I've chained him up. Now come and help to get my baby away."
And he told them all about it.
But they all happened to have engagements for that evening; so they praised John's cleverness, and said they were quite content to leave the matter in his hands.
"But what about my baby?" said John.
"Oh, well," said the mayor, "if anything should happen, you will always be able to remember that your baby perished in a good cause."
So John went home again, and told his wife some of the tale.
"You've given the baby to the dragon!" she cried. "Oh, you unnatural parent!"
"Hush," said John, and he told her some more. "Now," he said, "I'm going down. After I've been down you can go, and if you keep your head the boy will be all right."
So down went the blacksmith, and there was the dragon purring away with all his might to keep the baby quiet.
"Hurry up, can't you?" he said. "I can't keep up this noise all night."
"I'm very sorry, sir," said the blacksmith, "but all the shops are shut. The job must wait till the morning. And don't forget you've promised to take care of that baby. You'll find it a little wearing, I'm afraid. Good night, sir."
The dragon had purred till he was quite out of breath--so now he stopped, and as soon as everything was quiet the baby thought everyone must have settled for the night, and that it was time to begin to scream. So it began.
"Oh, dear," said the dragon, "this is awful." He patted the baby with his claw, but it screamed more than ever.
"And I am so tired too," said the dragon. "I did so hope I should have a good night."
The baby went on screaming.
"There'll be no peace for me after this," said the dragon. "It's enough to ruin one's nerves. Hush, then--did 'ums, then." And he tried to quiet the baby as if it had been a young dragon. But when he began to sing "Hush-a-by, Dragon," the baby screamed more and more and more. "I can't keep it quiet," said the dragon; and then suddenly he saw a woman sitting on the steps. "Here, I say," said he, "do you know anything about babies?"
"I do, a little," said the mother.
"Then I wish you'd take this one, and let me get some sleep," said the dragon, yawning. "You can bring it back in the morning before the blacksmith comes."
So the mother picked up the baby and took it upstairs and told her husband, and they went to bed happy, for they had caught the dragon and saved the baby.
And next day John went down and explained carefully to the dragon exactly how matters stood, and he got an iron gate with a grating to it and set it up at the foot of the steps, and the dragon mewed furiously for days and days, but when he found it was no good he was quiet.
So now John went to the mayor, and said: "I've got the dragon and I've saved the town."
"Noble preserver," cried the mayor, "we will get up a subscription for you, and crown you in public with a laurel wreath."
So the mayor put his name down for five pounds, and the corporation each gave three, and other people gave their guineas and half guineas and half crowns and crowns, and while the subscription was being made the mayor ordered three poems at his own expense from the town poet to celebrate the occasion. The poems were very much more admired, especially by the mayor and corporation.
The first poem dealt with the noble conduct of the mayor in arranging to have the dragon tied up. The second described the splendid assistance rendered by the corporation. And the third expressed the pride and joy of the poet in being permitted to sing such deeds, beside which the actions of St. George must appear quite commonplace to all with a feeling heart or a well-balanced brain.
When the subscription was finished there was a thousand pounds, and a committee was formed to settle what should be done with it. A third of it went to pay for a banquet to the mayor and corporation; another third was spent in buying a gold collar with a dragon on it for the mayor and gold medals with dragons on them for the corporation; and what was left went in committee expenses.
So there was nothing for the blacksmith except the laurel wreath and the knowledge that it really was he who had saved the town. But after this things went a little better with the blacksmith. To begin with, the baby did not cry so much as it had before. Then the rich lady who owned the goat was so touched by John's noble action that she ordered a complete set of shoes at 2 shillings, 4 pence, and even made it up to 2 shillings, 6 pence, in grateful recognition of his public-spirited conduct. Then tourists used to come in breaks from quite a long way off, and pay twopence each to go down the steps and peep through the iron grating at the rusty dragon in the dungeon--and it was threepence extra for each party if the blacksmith let off colored fire to see it by, which, as the fire was extremely short, was twopence-halfpenny clear profit every time. And the blacksmith's wife used to provide teas at ninepence a head, and altogether things grew brighter week by week.
The baby--named John, after his father, and called Johnnie for short--began presently to grow up. He was great friends with Tina, the daughter of the whitesmith, who lived nearly opposite. She was a dear little girl with yellow pigtails and blue eyes, and she was tired of hearing the story of how Johnnie, when he was a baby, had been minded by a real dragon.
The two children used to go together to peep through the iron grating at the dragon, and sometimes they would hear him mew piteously. And they would light a halfpenny's worth of colored fire to look at him by. And they grew older and wiser.
At last one day the mayor and corporation, hunting the hare in their gold gowns, came screaming back to the town gates with the news that a lame, humpy giant, as big as a tin church, was coming over the marshes toward the town.
"We're lost," said the mayor. "I'd give a thousand pounds to anyone who could keep that giant out of the town. I know what he eats--by his teeth."
No one seemed to know what to do. But Johnnie and Tina were listening, and they looked at each other, and ran off as fast as their boots would carry them.
They ran through the forge, and down the dungeon steps, and knocked at the iron door. "Who's there?" said the dragon. "It's only us," said the children.
And the dragon was so dull from having been alone for ten years that he said: "Come in, dears."
"You won't hurt us, or breathe fire at us or anything?" asked Tina.
And the dragon said, "Not for worlds."
So they went in and talked to him, and told him what the weather was like outside, and what there was in the papers, and at last Johnnie said: "There's a lame giant in the town. He wants you."
"Does he?" said the dragon, showing his teeth. "If only I were out of this!"
"If we let you loose you might manage to run away before he could catch you."
"Yes, I might," answered the dragon, "but then again I mightn't."
"Why--you'd never fight him?" said Tina.
"No," said the dragon; "I'm all for peace, I am. You let me out, and you'll see."
So the children loosed the dragon from the chains and the collar, and he broke down one end of the dungeon and went out--only pausing at the forge door to get the blacksmith to rivet his wing.
He met the lame giant at the gate of the town, and the giant banged on the dragon with his club as if he were banging an iron foundry, and the dragon behaved like a smelting works--all fire and smoke. It was a fearful sight, and people watched it from a distance, falling off their legs with the shock of every bang, but always getting up to look again.
At last the dragon won, and the giant sneaked away across the marshes, and the dragon, who was very tired, went home to sleep, announcing his intention of eating the town in the morning. He went back into his old dungeon because he was a stranger in the town, and he did not know of any other respectable lodging. Then Tina and Johnnie went to the mayor and corporation and said, "The giant is settled. Please give us the thousand pounds reward."
But the mayor said: "No, no, my boy. It is not you who have settled the giant, it is the dragon. I suppose you have chained him up again? When he comes to claim the reward he shall have it."
"He isn't chained up yet," said Johnnie. "Shall I send him to claim the reward?"
But the mayor said he need not trouble; and now he offered a thousand pounds to anyone who would get the dragon chained up again.
"I don't trust you," said Johnnie. "Look how you treated my father when he chained up the dragon."
But the people who were listening at the door interrupted, and said that if Johnnie could fasten up the dragon again they would turn out the mayor and let Johnnie be mayor in his place. For they had been dissatisfied with the mayor for some time, and thought they would like a change.
So Johnnie said, "Done," and off he went, hand in hand with Tina, and they called on all their little friends and said: "Will you help us to save the town?"
And all the children said: "Yes, of course we will. What fun!"
"Well, then," said Tina, "you must all bring your basins of bread and milk to the forge tomorrow at breakfast time."
"And if ever I am mayor," said Johnnie, "I will give a banquet, and you shall be invited. And we'll have nothing but sweet things from beginning to end."
All the children promised, and next morning Tina and Johnnie rolled their big washing tub down the winding stair.
"What's that noise?" asked the dragon.
"It's only a big giant breathing," said Tina, "He's gone by now."
Then, when all the town children brought their bread and milk, Tina emptied it into the wash tub, and when the tub was full Tina knocked at the iron door with the grating in it and said: "May we come in?"
"Oh, yes," said the dragon, "it's very dull here."
So they went in, and with the help of nine other children they lifted the washing tub in and set it down by the dragon. Then all the other children went away, and Tina and Johnnie sat down and cried.
"What's this?" asked the dragon. "And what's the matter?"
"This is bread and milk," said Johnnie; "it's our breakfast--all of it."
"Well," said the dragon, "I don't see what you want with breakfast. I'm going to eat everyone in the town as soon as I've rested a little."
"Dear Mr. Dragon," said Tina, "I wish you wouldn't eat us. How would you like to be eaten yourself?"
"Not at all," the dragon confessed, "but nobody will eat me."
"I don't know," said Johnnie, "there's a giant--"
"I know. I fought with him, and licked him."
"Yes, but there's another come now--the one you fought was only this one's little boy. This one is half as big again."
"He's seven times as big," said Tina.
"No, nine times," said Johnnie. "He's bigger than the steeple."
"Oh, dear," said the dragon. "I never expected this."
"And the mayor has told him where you are," Tina went on, "and he is coming to eat you as soon as he has sharpened his big knife. The mayor told him you were a wild dragon--but he didn't mind. He said he only ate wild dragons--with bread sauce."
"That's tiresome," said the dragon. "And I suppose this sloppy stuff in the tub is the bread sauce?"
The children said it was. "Of course," they added, "bread sauce is only served with wild dragons. Tame ones are served with apple sauce and onion stuffing. What a pity you're not a tame one: He'd never look at you then," they said. "Good-bye, poor dragon, we shall never see you again, and now you'll know what it's like to be eaten." And they began to cry again.
"Well, but look here," said the dragon, "couldn't you pretend I was a tame dragon? Tell the giant that I'm just a poor little timid tame dragon that you kept for a pet."
"He'd never believe it," said Johnnie. "If you were our tame dragon we should keep you tied up, you know. We shouldn't like to risk losing such a dear, pretty pet."
Then the dragon begged them to fasten him up at once, and they did so: with the collar and chains that were made years ago--in the days when men sang over their work and made it strong enough to bear any strain.
And then they went away and told the people what they had done, and Johnnie was made mayor, and had a glorious feast exactly as he had said he would--with nothing in it but sweet things. It began with Turkish delight and halfpenny buns, and went on with oranges, toffee, coconut ice, peppermints, jam puffs, raspberry-noyeau, ice creams, and meringues, and ended with bull's-eyes and gingerbread and acid drops.
This was all very well for Johnnie and Tina; but if you are kind children with feeling hearts you will perhaps feel sorry for the poor deceived, deluded dragon--chained up in the dull dungeon, with nothing to do but to think over the shocking untruths that Johnnie had told him.
When he thought how he had been tricked, the poor captive dragon began to weep--and the large tears fell down over his rusty plates. And presently he began to feel faint, as people sometimes do when they have been crying, especially if they have not had anything to eat for ten years or so.
And then the poor creature dried his eyes and looked about him, and there he saw the tub of bread and milk. So he thought, "If giants like this damp, white stuff, perhaps I should like it too," and he tasted a little, and liked it so much that he ate it all up.
And the next time the tourists came, and Johnnie let off the colored fire, the dragon said shyly: "Excuse my troubling you, but could you bring me a little more bread and milk?"
So Johnnie arranged that people should go around with carts every day to collect the children's bread and milk for the dragon. The children were fed at the town's expense--on whatever they liked; and they ate nothing but cake and buns and sweet things, and they said the poor dragon was very welcome to their bread and milk.
Now, when Johnnie had been mayor ten years or so he married Tina, and on their wedding morning they went to see the dragon. He had grown quite tame, and his rusty plates had fallen off in places, and underneath he was soft and furry to stroke. So now they stroked him.
And he said, "I don't know how I could ever have liked eating anything but bread and milk. I am a tame dragon now, aren't I?" And when they said that yes, he was, the dragon said: "I am so tame, won't you undo me?" And some people would have been afraid to trust him, but Johnnie and Tina were so happy on their wedding day that they could not believe any harm of anyone in the world. So they loosened the chains, and the dragon said: "Excuse me a moment, there are one or two little things I should like to fetch," and he moved off to those mysterious steps and went down them, out of sight into the darkness. And as he moved, more and more of his rusty plates fell off.
In a few minutes they heard him clanking up the steps. He brought something in his mouth--it was a bag of gold.
"It's no good to me," he said. "Perhaps you might find it useful." So they thanked him very kindly.
"More where that came from," said he, and fetched more and more and more, till they told him to stop. So now they were rich, and so were their fathers and mothers. Indeed, everyone was rich, and there were no more poor people in the town. And they all got rich without working, which is very wrong; but the dragon had never been to school, as you have, so he knew no better.
And as the dragon came out of the dungeon, following Johnnie and Tina into the bright gold and blue of their wedding day, he blinked his eyes as a cat does in the sunshine, and he shook himself, and the last of his plates dropped off, and his wings with them, and he was just like a very, very extra-sized cat. And from that day he grew furrier and furrier, and he was the beginning of all cats. Nothing of the dragon remained except the claws, which all cats have still, as you can easily ascertain.
And I hope you see now how important it is to feed your cat with bread and milk. If you were to let it have nothing to eat but mice and birds it might grow larger and fiercer, and scalier and tailier, and get wings and turn into the beginning of dragons. And then there would be all the bother over again.

My(16f) parents are ex drug addicts who decided to quit when they found out they were having me. however, one thing they did not quit was their alcaholism, which became a problem and is still a problem in my life. During my childhood my parents would argue a lot and get drunk so i decided to isolate myself in my room and was left to my electronics. Over time, youtubers ended up becoming my parent figures and i would often wish i was living with them instead of where i was then. I would watch family channels and would cry because i wished my mom and dad treated me that way. When i started hitting puberty at about age 10-11, i noticed a change in the way my parents saw me. they would make comments about how i was becoming a woman and this scared me. I didn't wanna grow up, i wanted to stay a little girl forever and be cuddled by my mom and dad who would sing me to sleep. To cope with this, i began regressing. At age 10-11, i would dig for old clothes i wore when i was younger that would still fit me, put pigtails in my hair, would walk around the house with a stuffed animal, and would suck my thumb in hopes of trying to relive my childhood that i belived was being ripped away from me. This persisted and stopped when i was 13. Flash foreward to now and i am 16 and living with my mom. I spend most of my time isolated in my room because i dont have many opportunities to hang out with people (idk why). I was diagnosed with severe depression at the beginning of the year and was prescribed 20mg of anti-depressants which i take daily. I spend all day on my laptop watching videos and playing games, though sometimes ill just have meltdowns and cry for hours and hours. These meltdowns get especially bad when i accidentally forget to take my meds which makes everything worse. I get aggressive when i have these meltdowns and ill throw things, roll on the floor, pull my hair, and pick at my skin. I was supposed to be seeing a school couselor but i havent seen him in months. around the same time i got depression i developed an eating desorder which i am trying to recover from with help from a doctor but i decided to skip my last doctors appointment due to lack of motivation and havent rescheduled since. My weight has been decreasing. I don't know what to do. I need advice.

Doesn't the narrative of a trepidatious nine year old trekking down a dark, lonesome road in the early hours of the morning seem odd?
Let's remember some important details and facts about this case:

• The highway has no sidewalks, just mud and grass. There was a torrential rainstorm just hours before Asha allegedly began walking. Yet Asha left not a single solitary footprint. How could a young girl walking in complete darkness on dirt, muck and grass not leave behind even one shoeprint? Without a light source, it is so dark on that road that it is almost as though you are walking with your eyes closed. How could a child who surely could hardly see where she was going not leave a visible trail as she walked?
• It was reportedly 35 degrees on the morning that Asha made her walk. Yet she, according to eyewitness reports, was not wearing a coat - in fact, Roy Blanton reported that she was wearing a sheer white dress. Why would Asha, said to be a very intelligent and bright young girl, intentionally leave her house in February without a coat, jacket, pants or sweater?
• Iquila Degree claims that Asha was terrified of animals to the point where she was apprehensive about playing outside. Why would this same child leave during the middle of the night and dauntlessly perform this walk knowing that it is surrounded by open fields and wooded areas where animals might be?
• Asha's loved ones described her as a very shy, perturbed, and cautious young girl. Yet Jeff Ruppe described Asha as confidently walking down the road, almost to the point of aggressively powerwalking and completely ignoring him after he claims to have performed not one but three U-Turns in his twelve wheeler truck. Would a nine year old girl who was so petrified of strangers that she would answer the front door with an extreme wariness and hesitancy - even for her own family members - really bravely and daringly trek forward in pitch black conditions alongside a lonesome two-lane road while a large truck is repeatedly circling around her and trying to get her attention?
• Ruppe claims to have seen Asha change direction and begin walking towards the Turner shed. Keep in mind that the Turner shed is roughly two football fields length (600 ft) away from the highway and the conditions outside would've a created muddy, sludgy pathway to walk on while heading towards this shed. Yet, investigators recovered absolutely no footprints during Asha's alleged tread towards the shed. How could a little girl walk across such a large field and not leave behind even half of a footprint? Furthermore, how could Ruppe go from performing three elaborate, time consuming turns on a narrow two-lane road in his twelve wheeler truck in order to figure out why this girl was outside -- to suddenly see her switch paths and head towards a large field in complete darkness and now finding it appropriate to simply drive off? How did he go from "I absolutely have to see why this girl is out here by herself during such a strange hour of the day" to "she's walking across a field towards pitch black nothingness, nothing strange about that, guess I'll drive off now"?
• Roy Blanton described seeing what appeared to be an adult woman walking down the side of the road. He assumed that this woman was a battered housewife, fleeing from violence. Asha was 4’6, 60 lbs with colorful hairbows and clips dangling from her multiple pigtails. How could she possibly fit the description of a grown woman? Furthermore, how good would Blanton's visibility truly had even been, given that the speed limit on the road he was traveling down is roughly 55mph - 60mph, it was dark outside and possibly raining? Those aren't exactly stellar conditions to see something in detail.
• The Turner shed had dirt flooring and it had doors. Yet, once again, Asha left behind no fingerprints. How could a girl whose shoes were surely soaked or caked in mud not leave behind a footprint in a dirt shed? Police speculate that she was sitting down in the shed and pulled out hairbows and pencils from her backpack to play with. Yet no body print from her sitting on the ground? No scent from her playing with items inside of a contained shed? How could she have not left behind fingerprints on the doors if she both opened and closed them? The items found in the shed that the Turner's believed might've been Asha's were collected by authorities and sent off for DNA. In 24 years, law enforcement has not once confirmed a single item in there as being positively identified through forensic testing as belonging to her.
• Ruppe did not report his alleged "sighting" until a missing persons report was filed and broadcasted all of the case details as well as details about Asha. Missing persons reports typically give information such as the missing individual's race, age, what they look like, last reported location and what clothes they might've last been seen wearing. With key details such as this, it becomes incredibly easy to insert yourself as an eyewitness, does it not? Additionally, take into account that Ruppe claimed to have seen her walk in an area that the police had already closed and taped off due to a traffic checkpoint, so it is possible that he drove by this area assuming that it was crime-related, heard Asha's story on the airwaves, put two and two together and placed himself into her case as a witness. Roy Blanton did not report his sighting until a full two days after Asha disappeared. Why would these two individuals claiming to have been extremely upset at the sight of seeing a young woman out in the pitch black by herself not report this sighting to the authorities the day of? Why wait until important case details were released to the public?
• Tracker dogs could only locate Asha's scent to her driveway. Nowhere alongside the route that she walked nor in the shed that she allegedly sat in. Tracker dogs can smell a trail for more than 130 miles and their ability to smell actually increases from rainstorms because water molecules capture scents and hold them for longer. How did these highly trained, highly specialized dogs not recover any scents, especially given that it'd stormed just hours earlier which would've immensely heightened their ability to track her scent?
• Harold reportedly states in transcripts of his 911 phone call that he believed Asha ran away from home. Isn't that an odd conclusion for a parent to reach? Your child, who does not have a history of running away, is missing from your home at 6:00am and your immediate thought is that they voluntarily left? Imagine for a second that you have a nine year old child. A shy, anxious, smart kid. You go into their bedroom to wake them up for school and they are gone. Is your first thought going to be that they fled from your home in the middle of the night? That they left everything that they know to go out into the unknown in the middle of the night in cold, wet conditions? Furthermore, why did law enforcement jump to this conclusion so readily? Statistically, runaways tend to be a bit older than Asha, have a history of running away and often a clear motive, yet that wasn't the case in this situation.

Now let me also include in this my issue with the other theories thrown around.
- "Asha probably had a penpal or older man who she loved and trusted and they convinced her to meetup at night". Why would a grown adult put both themself and the child in such immense risk? Why would you tell a nine year old girl to specifically meet you at 3:00am as if there is not a long list of things that could easily go wrong with that? Such as: Asha not waking up that early in the night, sleeping through her alarm clock, making an excessive amount of noise while trying to leave, dropping something and waking her parents up or getting caught by a neighbor? Why tell a nine year old to meet you knowing that she could end up not properly reading directions and end up accidentally on the opposite side of town or caught by law enforcement, where she would end up spoiling everything and telling the cops why she was really out, out of fear? If someone wanted to see and be near Asha that badly, I don't believe that they were jeopardize her life by having her walk in the early morning hours by herself.
- "Asha may have been killed by a hit and run driver". So this driver runs Asha over, kills her, panics, picks up her body, throws her in the trunk, flees the scene of the crime and drives out to the woods to bury her yet magically leaves behind no scent, no tire marks, no eyewitness reports?
- "Asha may have crossed paths with a child murderer." The statistical odds of that must be something else. Because what are the chances that a nine year old girl out walking by herself on a lonesome two-laned road crosses paths with someone of this ilk? Keep in mind that not all murderers kill children and not all rapist molest children. Additionally, most killers kill within their race. How likely is it that she met someone who both kidnaps and kills little Black girls? Furthermore, the same questions apply in this scenario: Why was Asha's scent or footprints not recovered if she was abducted outside?
- "Asha might've been tired of her life or dissatisfied with how things were going in school or with sports. Maybe she wanted to simply start all over". At 3 o'clock in the morning? And why was this intelligent child so underprepared for such an adventure, given that she did not bring a coat or flashlight?
If it's TLDR; Eyewitness misidentification has been found to be the leading cause of known wrongful conviction, (contributing to approximately 70 per cent) and eyewitness reports should not be overly-relied on as they are in this case; statistically, when children go missing or end up dead it is by the hands of a loved one; the different theories presented as to why she "left" have multiple holes and contradictions in them; there is zero forensic evidence substantiating Asha Degree ever being outside; no evidence of a hit and run or groomer; not enough damning evidence presented to completely dismiss the possibility of her being met with foul play by a family member; not enough evidence leading to anything indicating that she wanted to runaway, let alone would do so in conditions that trigger multiple fears of hers.

On my first day at Monis Academy, a girl dropped out of the sky, straight onto the roof of my Uber.
At first, I don't think I fully registered what was happening.
There was a dead girl splayed out across the paintwork, willowy blonde hair glued to the windshield. I didn't think it was possible for the human body to splinter, coming apart completely.
But I was looking at it, her mangled limbs spread out like an angel.
She landed upside down, an unearthly grin splitting her mouth apart.
And yet somehow, all I could think of was my Uber driver's earlier warning.
I thought the man was screwing around when he handed me a mask before letting me in the car. I took it uncertainly, rolling it around in my hand.
We were four years into a pandemic, sure.
But I thought the world had returned to a kind-of normal.
“It's for the sickness.” My driver mumbled through his own mask, starting up the car. He must have noticed my confusion.
The guy was my Dad’s age, a stocky man in his early fifties who really liked Taylor Swift.
When I slid onto the backseat, he was blasting a love ballad. I could see her entire physical discography piled on the front seat. Maybe he had a daughter.
He didn't elaborate on his words, and I leaned back on comfortable upholstery, wearing my mask as instructed. I tried to open the window to let some air in, except they had been manually sealed.
I could see a thick paste-like substance glueing them shut.
What really set off alarm bells was the plastic screen between me and the driver. The thing reminded me of something straight out of a disaster movie.
You know, when patient zero is sealed into a plastic tent. I prodded it and he politely reminded me there was hand sanitizer on the seat next to me.
“For your hands.” He said, taking a right at an intersection.
The whole thing was giving me some serious 2020 PTSD. I had vivid memories of being fourteen years old, watching my dad set up a quarantine zone in our living room for visitors.
I understood. Dad was an ex soldier, but the whole quarantine thing terrified me.
“Excuse me.” I said, trying to swallow an uneasiness twisting in my gut.
“Hm?”
I leaned forward, trying to ignore his slight flinch, like I was carrying a disease. “What did you mean by sickness?”
The driver surprised me with a laugh, nodding his head to his playlist. “Oh, there's no sickness in here,” he twisted around, nodding to me. “I would keep that mask on if I were you, sweetheart.”
I nodded, a sour slime creeping its way up my throat.
“What do you mean?”
He didn't reply for a moment, tapping his fingers on the wheel. “You're the same age as my kid,” he said, “Do you have a phone?”
I held up my iPhone. “Uh, yeah.”
I could see the crease of a friendly smile in the folds of his mask. “Take a lot of pretty pictures, kid. The school grounds are beautiful, so just concentrate on that, all right?” my driver offered me a two-fingered salute.
“Just do not look up.
I nodded, responding with an awkward laugh.
An hour later, his words slammed into me.
Oh, I thought dizzily, my gaze following rivers of red streaming down the car’s windscreen.
So, this was what he meant by Don't look up.
Unfortunately, I have the memory of a goldfish. The Uber driver’s warning went in one ear and out the other, only making an appearance when I was admiring the school itself, a towering castle-like structure built like something from a fantasy novel.
I was drinking in the perfect blue sky, an Instagram worthy sunset, when she appeared in front of me, falling, plunging, a blur of blonde hair and pleated skirt, before crashing through the roof of my ride.
I don't remember screaming, only staring at streaks of scarlet spider- webbing down splintered glass, her mangled body sprawled across the windscreen.
I was still replaying the last fifteen seconds in my head, my expression still frozen, delayed.
I was still fucking smiling behind my mask.
She landed with a sickening crunch, her eyes still open.
Lips frozen, like she was laughing in glee.
Before I could scream, before I could make any noise, a voice came from behind me.
“Masks are not necessary here.”
I found myself face to face with Mrs Mayor, the principal. I already knew her face. I had my online induction several days earlier. Mrs Mayor looked nothing like she did on video chat. Through my screen, I was talking to a woman in her early forties, a pretty face haloed with rich, red hair. This woman was an imposter. The teacher’s smile was stretched a little too thin. She reached out and plucked my mask off of my face.
But I barely noticed. I was too busy dazedly watching the dead girl’s brains pooling between splintered glass.
I had never seen the human brain before.
I wasn't expecting it to look like a pinkish, veiny slime.
I was keenly aware of my stomach trying to violently erupt through my mouth.
“Welcome to Monis Academy,” Mrs Mayor said, two teachers appeared armed with buckets and mops.
They power washed the girl’s blood from the car, scraping her mangled body onto a piece of plastic. The male teacher dragged her away, and the female teacher started scrubbing the girl’s remains from concrete I was standing on.
I remember taking slow steps backward, shaking my head, because no this was not fucking happening.
Mrs Mayor’s hands grasped onto my shoulders, her fingers grazing my chin, strictly coaxing my eyes to her.
“Sera Ainsley was failing,” she murmured, her breath tickling my cheeks. The teacher’s lips pricked into a small smile.
Her eyes terrified me, hollow caverns I couldn't understand.
Mrs Mayor did not look like a teacher, more like a dishevelled mother with three kids. She was in disarray, matted red hair pulled into a ponytail, a crumpled dress glued to her stick-like figure.
I could smell her, sour body odour hitting my nose and throat.
“The girl was a lost cause,” her dead eyes sparkled, lips stretching into a sickly grin. “She was nowhere near the top.”
Her soulless gaze followed mine, intrigued.
She was drinking me in, studying every piece of me.
“Lucy Jun.” She said my name like I was an enigma, sharp nails digging into my chin. “You were the smartest student in your last school,” Mrs Mayor inclined her head, her expression almost childlike.
“What do you say, hmm?” her voice was like white noise, waves crashing in my ears. She both did exist and didn't, human and something else entirely, riddled in complexities I was too afraid to look into. When I was a child, I stared up at a starless sky, my gut twisting at the thought of that darkness, that pooling, unending oblivion stretching out forever.
Mrs Mayor gave me that same feeling, an existential terror creeping its way up my spine.
The more I was staring at her under the shadow of the setting sun, the teacher’s body was twisting and contorting in my blurry vision, morphing into a monster.
Her body was suddenly too thin, her head almost balloon shaped, like she had creeped straight out of my childhood nightmares.
Mrs Mayor prodded my chin with a long spindly finger.
“Will you be able to beat our current reigning champion and tear him from the top spot?”
Leaning back, the teacher's lip curled in disgust. In the corner of my eye, the female teacher was picking pieces of skull from her wire brush. “Or will you be another Sera?”
She scoffed, nodding at the ground.
I didn't realize I was standing in pooling red.
“Reduced to a pathetic pile of mush.”
Her words woke me from my trance, where I was following a stray streak of red down the Uber’s window. Now it made sense why his windows were sealed. How many students had plunged through the roof of his car?
How many mangled bodies were peeled from his windscreen?
I jumped when ice cold water from the power hose splashed my ankles.
Watching the dead girl’s blood run clear across the tarmac, I remembered how to move.
How to run.
“Welcome to Monis Academy.” Mrs Mayor said, again, when I stumbled back.
She folded her arms, regarding me with a small smile.
“As you can see, Lucy, our students take their grades very seriously here.”
“Hey!”
The voice was new, coming from above.
I lifted my head, my body already reacting, expecting another body to drop.
Instead, my gaze found an open window.
A brunette with a wide smile and eyes that did not match her frenzied grin.
“Run!” she screamed, cupping her mouth.
Another open window, this time a guy, waving manically.
His eyes were filled with mania, that exact same insanity drowning Mrs Mayor.
“Are you stupid?!” he yelled, his mouth stretched, moulded, into a laughing smile.
His voice however, was a warning.
“Get away from here!” the boy gestured behind me.
“Go!”
I followed his pointer finger.
The gates.
At first, my body confused running with throwing up. I was on my knees, heaving up my lunch, and then I was running, throwing myself into a sprint, cheered by the two students hanging out the windows.
When I risked a look back, Mrs Mayor was standing with her arms folded, lips pursed. She made no move to run after me. This school was psychotic.
I threw myself into a run, falling over my shoes, my head spinning.
I could still see her.
I could see the world stopping in front of me, the girl’s body landing with a sickening…
Crunch.
Her neck snapping on impact, her spine splintering through glass.
Throwing up again, I choked up slimy breakfast bile.
“Keep going!”
The two students were cheering me on, like it was a game.
I got as far as the main gates, panting, my hands on my knees.
Locked.
The sound of engines signalled my Uber leaving campus through a separate exit.
“Hey!” I tried to follow, when the gates slammed shut behind him.
I was trapped.
“Have you considered joining the drama club, Lucy?”
Mrs Mayor was standing behind me, holding my luggage. When I looked for the two kids, their windows were shut.
“I'm not staying here.” I told the teacher, threatening to call the police.
My phone was dead, but she didn't know that.
I told her I wanted to go home.
No, I screamed at her. I told her the school was psychotic, and I wanted to leave.
Mrs Mayor handed me my things, ignoring my freak out. Instead of scolding me, she smiled. “I’m expecting great things from you, Lucy.”
Great things.
The way she said it, the words twisted and snake-like on her tongue.
Like a melody, a hypnotising murmur lulling my mind.
Great things.
I found myself nodding.
“Good.” Mrs Mayor handed me my luggage, taking my hand and manually wrapping my fingers around the handle.
“Now, you should head inside,” her voice was like windchimes. “Your room number will be on your welcome email.”
The teacher's voice followed me inside the school, pushing me into autopilot.
“I am expecting great things from you, Lucy. You are going to excel at Monis.”
The academy itself was bland, like any other old building. I barely remember the main reception, a room resembling a hotel lobby. There were students mulling around. I dragged myself up a marble staircase to my dorm room.
The world didn't feel real.
I was pushing my way into the girls dorm, when a group of younger kids ran through, one of them holding a scary looking knife. The girls were giggling, talking in hushed whispers. When I sidled past them, the group burst out laughing.
Monis Academy was a school for psychopaths.
I was dazedly staring at our door, when it opened, a head poking through.
My roommate was a mousy blonde with pigtails.
She told me the devil lived among them, so the teachers were playing a game.
“I’m Thea.” She introduced herself with that exact same empty smile, vacant eyes that barely found mine. Thea was pretty. I focused on her face instead of the rapidly growing cavern in my mind.
I still wasn't sure how I had moved from A to B.
I was standing in front of the school gate, and then I was in the girl’s dorm, Mrs Mayor’s words still clanging in my skull. I had the potential to be great.
I had the potential to be the best.
Thea was kneeling in front of me, her head inclined.
“Hello?” she waved a manicured hand in front of my face, a frown curving on her lips.
“The brain fog should wear off after a while,” she murmured. “I smoked weed, though I'd advise against that. Unsurprisingly, weed makes it worse.”
I didn't respond. It was like being high, but at the same time, I was fully aware of my mind being contorted, rewired, which was kinda… ticklish.
Like someone was tickling the bare meat of my brain with a feather. When I lightly prodded my right ear, I could feel a certain pressure, like my mind was struggling, expanding in my skull.
There was something wet running down the curve of my neck, but I didn't care.
“Hey, new kid?”
My roommate's voice sounded like ocean waves.
Thea sighed, before slapping me across the face.
The world spun, and I blinked slowly.
I didn't remember sitting down, but I was cross legged on a plain single bed.
Thea loomed over me, her arms folded. “Lucy, right?”
I felt myself nod, drowning in Mrs Mayor’s voice.
I could be great. I had the potential to be… the best.
I could claw my way to the top, and take the Monis Academy top spot.
“Wow.” Thea’s voice snapped my thoughts to fruition. The girl’s hands were planted on her hips. “Mrs Mayor really did a number on you, didn't she?”
I found my voice, choking on words that were not mine.
“What did she do to me?”
Thea laughed, and I caught that same mania twitching in her eyes.
“She didn't do anything to you,” Thea rolled her eyes, tipping onto her side, burying her head in an impressive collection of plushies. “It's airborne. So, no matter how in denial you are right now, you have it,” she mumbled into a stuffed bear. “Like a virus, we're all infected with it the second we walk in here.”
It?” I managed to whisper.
“Sera.” Thea hummed, “The girl who dived out of her window. Think of her as a host that rejected the virus. She refused to comply, so it killed her.”
I felt sick. “And that's what I'm infected with?”
She nodded, mumbling into her plushies. “Yep. Mrs Mayor plants the seed with her witchy powers, and lures us inside like lambs to the slaughter.”
“But what is it?” I demanded.
Thea shrugged. She sat up, pulling her legs to her chest. “Think of it like a disease, but instead of illness, it's an obsession.”
“Obsession with what?”
Instead of replying, my roommate crawled off of her bed.
She held out her hand for me to shake, entangling her fingers with mine.
Her palms were warm.
Wet.
Bloody.
I could see reddish pink staining her fingernails.
Thea’s smile widened when I shuffled back, a screech clawing up my throat.
“Sorry.” she swiped her hand on her shirt. “It's from my latest attempt.”
“Attempt?”
I thought back to the girl plunging to her death.
“Yeah,” Thea said, “Nick was in the student lounge earlier, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I stabbed him in the chest, but he was, like, totally fine. He was pushed out the window last night, and again, he was okay.” her eyes found mine, “Nick is like, indestructible.”
Her gaze lazily skimmed the ceiling. “But he's also what we all want.”
A shiver skittered down my spine. “What you all want?”
Thea sighed.
“The sickness is an obsession with being the best,” she flopped onto her bed with a laugh. “It makes us crave him.”
My roommate turned to me, her lips splitting into an unnerving grin.
“Don't worry! You'll start craving him soon.”
Him.
Nicholas Cross, the smartest boy in school, who held the top spot reigning over the school. Thea was right.
Once I saw him, I couldn't get him out of my head.
It started subtly, a hollow thought at the back of my mind that wanted to get close to him. But once I was close enough, next to him in class, breathing in his scent and suddenly conscious of every movement he made, I understood what my roommate was talking about.
The parasite inside my brain planted on my first day began to slowly eat away at my thoughts until there was no-one else but him. Nicholas Cross. Rich brown curls, sculpted in the school’s prestigious uniform, a mind that I was ravenous for, a hierarchy position I needed to rip from him.
Obsession became infatuation, and then something more. I started to talk to him in class, trying to make conversation.
But I couldn't fucking think straight.
My hands were shaking, my gut twisting into knots.
His presence was suffocating, twisting infatuation to envy, and envy to hate.
Nicholas Cross was a target every day.
I walked into English class to find two boys pushing him out of the window.
He was fine, appearing an hour later, picking strands of grass out of his hair.
Two girls slashed him through the stomach in the cafeteria.
He ignored them, continuing to eat his sandwich.
The quiet girl sitting in front of us twisted around halfway through class, and stabbed him straight through the skull.
I remember watching his blood spatter on my paper, red droplets stemming across my desk.
I wanted to see more of it, my poisoned thoughts screamed.
I wanted to spill his blood myself.
That was the first thought that wasn't mine, spreading through me like wildfire until I was resisting the urge to lick the boy’s blood from my desk.
Again, Nicholas was fine. He calmly pulled out the knife, handing it back to the girl, who took it with trembling hands.
“Better luck next time, Ella.” he winked, and the girl started screeching.
The teacher didn't care, ignoring Ella’s mental breakdown.
When she slammed her head into the desk hard enough to burst her nose, he continued teaching.
I thought I could stay myself. I thought this so-called sickness wouldn't affect me.
But then I found myself falling in love with not just him, but his mind.
I wanted to understand it, to rip it open and study it myself.
So, I proposed a study session, which he laughed at.
“I'm good.” Nicholas said, raising a brow. “I'm not the one who needs a study session.”
Harsh, but I wasn't going to give up.
“How about we just hang out?” the words were spilling from my lips before I could stop them.
Nicholas shrugged. “Sure.” his lips formed a smile. “How about eight? Do you want to hang in your room, or mine?”
I told him my room, and we made plans to watch a movie.
Thea immediately suggested killing him, but I was more interested in getting to know the guy. There had to be a reason why he was the top student, why the whole school wanted him dead.
8pm came, and there was no sign of him.
I waited ten minutes.
Then 20.
Half an hour.
45 minutes.
As I kind of expected, he didn't turn up.
When I confronted him in class, he mocked a double take.
“Wait, you were serious?” Nick laughed. “Why would I hang with someone like you? Aren't you ranked, like, eighteenth?”
I was, but that didn't matter.
When I started to lose touch with reality, my grades did not matter.
When I started wanting to fucking kill this boy, my grades DID NOT MATTER.
What did matter was plucking Nicholas Cross off of the top spot, and taking it for myself.
Days blurred into one, and this sickness began to take hold.
I lost myself, sinking into a pit of envy that swallowed me up, polluting my thoughts with scenarios where I had the top spot. It was a craving I couldn't control, stronger than any black market drug. I stopped sleeping, using all my time to carry out the perfect murder.
Thea told me I was falling, drowning like her.
She told me sucking on candy helped.
Meditation.
Video games.
But I couldn't concentrate. Everything reminded me of him.
I wanted to be better than him.
Mrs Mayor said I could be BETTER than HIM.
I started losing time, and finding it, and losing it again. The academy became a prison. I forgot where the exits were.
I forgot there was a world outside this school. Sometimes I caught myself sleepwalking, my teacher's words stringing me along. The parasite in my head was in full control, and the drug I couldn't get enough of, had twisted me into a monster I could not recognise.
I found myself rocking back and forth in bed.
In my lost time, I killed Nicholas Cross three times.
I drowned him in the indoor swimming pool. I woke up when he was lying face down in the water. I should have felt something, but Mrs Mayor’s voice praised me. She told me I had done a great job, but I was yet to kill the devil.
The next morning, Nicholas came to class with a smile, his hair still damp and stinking of chlorine. He slumped down in his seat, still soaking wet.
“Morning, Lucy.” his grin snapped what little of my sanity I had left.
I suffocated him with Thea’s pillow, only for him to return it half an hour later, apologising for the blood stains.
Mrs Mayor told me to get creative, chastising me for being so stupid.
I stabbed him in the chest, only fully waking up when he was laughing, dying in my arms. Nick joined me for lunch the following day, offering me his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. When he slid the knife over too, I choked on my lunch.
Nick nodded at me, grinning through his sandwich.
“Isn't it a great day?” he said loudly, leaning his chin on his fist. “Don't you think so, Lucy?”
He cocked his head, his eyes bright. “Can I call you Luce? Like, Lucy Goosey.”
His eyes, Mrs Mayor whispered in my ear.
The eyes of the devil.
Nicholas Cross was not dying, and this thing was in full control. I tried to escape the school when I regained a semblance of my mind, but Mrs Mayor was waiting for me with those exact same words that bewitched me in the first place. She told me I could be better than him, that all it took was thinking outside the box. Her invisible tendrils were too deep, too ingrained into me.
I followed her orders, and like I was dancing, floating in a dream, I crept into Nick’s room, my teacher's voice moulding my mind into her puppet.
Taking the sharpest knife from the dorm kitchen, a butcher blade, I sliced Nicolas Cross into pieces when he was curled up in bed. It was the first time he looked human, and the sight of him almost woke me up. Almost stopped me.
What are you waiting for, Lucy? Do you want to be the best or not?
I did.
So, I cut into him.
When his blood splattered my face, I fought back, fought to stop, but Mrs Mayor told me to keep going.
You're doing so well! Sever the demon!
I continued, hacking him apart, forcing the blade through muscle and bone.
Nicholas’s roommate watched me with a dazed smile.
When I caught his eye, he started laughing.
“He’ll come back,” the boy chuckled. “Don't you think I've tried that?”
The knife slipped from my fingers, but Mrs Mayor’s voice was still in my head.
So loud, like claps of thunder.
I had to be the best.
Panicking, I grabbed a piece of Nick, and stuffed his flesh into my mouth.
I chewed, barfed, forcing it down with water.
My body worked like a marionette, my teacher cheering me on.
I snapped out of it when I was chewing my way through his torso.
“Yes, Lucy! What a creative idea!”
When I was on my knees, covered in Nicholas Cross’s blood, I waited for him to come back, to magically piece himself back together. But he didn't.
I walked into class, narrowly missing a girl trying to stab me through the eye.
Thea tried to asphyxiate me in my sleep.
I took Nick’s spot, immediately cementing myself into the minds of my classmates.
With him dead and gone, I was the top student.
But I was also free of the parasite in my brain, and fully aware of what I had done.
Mrs Mayor’s voice was gone, and I was a fucking monster.
It didn't take long for the students to crave me.
They want to take my spot, their frenzied eyes following my every move.
Thea tried to kill me last night again.
She apologised, but I know she's not going to give up.
I have my own problems, though.
I'm really gassy, and I can't stop throwing up.
This morning, I knelt on the bathroom floor for three hours, heaving up nothing. But I can already feel him.
He's been in my stomach for days, slowly stitching himself back together. His fingers are there, I can feel them.
He's clawing his way back up my throat, expanding in my mouth, phantom fingers protruding through my gnawing lips, trying to force them open.
Please help me. I'm at Monis Academy, and I just ate the top student. I know we don't exist on any Google search, but I promise you, we’re here and we need help.
I'm so fucking scared of what's inside me.
What I've done.
There's a sickness here that turns us into monsters, a devil who is playing games.
Nicholas Cross wants to retake his top spot.
I clamp my mouth shut, but he just laughs.
He wails at me, telling me I killed the wrong devil.
And so did the girl who held the top spot before Nicholas, an endless echo of top students. They're never going to stop, never going to leave me alone.
All of them, inside me.
Inside Nicholas.
Because no matter what I do, they are are always going to come back.

I’m angry. I’m absolutely livid at Kenzie for what she’s done. All of those people are dead because of her. She didn’t just kill them, she ate them. I can’t imagine how scared they were as Kenzie dragged them to her hideout. I sometimes wonder if she killed them before eating them or if she started feasting on them while they were still kicking and screaming. Most of all, I’m angry because she left me alone. Like the gazelle that befriends a lion, I had fallen in love with a demon.
Kenzie gave me a note before she vacated the officer’s body.
“It breaks my heart to leave you. However, I cannot take you with me. I will always be on the run. I will always be hunted. I do not want that life for you. I want you to live and be happy. Please forget about me, my love.”
Coming back home to our home without her in it was heartbreaking. I knew I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t afford this place on my own. I had to sell what I could and throw away what I couldn’t. I left the place I called home for years with nothing but a suitcase of clothes, some pictures and some DVDs. I had to move back in with my parents.
I was showered with kindness and sympathy upon my return. I appreciated it but I needed to be alone. I spent a few days in my childhood bedroom crying, not knowing what I would do next. I know Kenzie was a killer, but I couldn’t help but miss her still. She was the light of my life, the sun to my moon. We shared so much, only for it all to go down like it did. I missed those evil eyes of hers. I was lost without her.
I had to get her back, and I found a way to do it.
“On an old forgotten grave Sits a mansion, moonlight bathe Within is a spider of tricks Complete her games, get your fix Lose, you will become hollow Win, great fortune will follow Respect the spider of games Or you will never be the same”
I won’t go into detail about how I found this poem, nor about how I went about finding the mansion detailed within. I don’t want anyone else to attempt this. It’s too dangerous.
I first scoped out the area during the day. The forgotten grave is a hill on a lonely stretch of road. The mansion only manifests during the witching hour, and only if a specific ritual is done. Again, I will not detail the ritual here for fear of someone else attempting the game. The area looked rather nice in the daylight. I could have imagined taking Kenzie here on a picnic.
I returned that night. I will say about the ritual that it requires the sacrifice of the joint of one of your fingers. Hopefully that knowledge will deter people. Different fingers will determine what the great fortune is. Since I came for love, I gave the joint of my ring finger where my wedding band still resided. My finger was throbbing as I was driving towards the spot. A certain “what if” kept intruding into my mind. What if the mansion wasn’t there? What if I had performed the ritual wrong or perhaps the legend was just a legend. I would have disfigured myself for nothing and I would be back at square one.
I passed some trees and the hill was in full view. Bathed in the light of the full moon, the mansion loomed over me. It was a wooden structure standing three stories tall, probably built in the 1800’s. I slowly drove up to the front porch, my heart pounding in my chest. The glass of every window was broken, I could see little broken shards here and there. They had been boarded up. The door stood open as if inviting me inside. In the distance, I could see a few cars. They were abandoned. Many of them were old, others quite new. I could also see the bones of a few horses scattered around. These must have been left by previous contestants who had lost the games.
I stepped outside. The chill of the night air sent a shiver through me. It was my last chance to leave, I could go and never come back. However, the idea of leaving without doing what I could to get Kenzie back was more than I could take. I had to move forward. I stepped into the mansion. Everything was covered in dust and cobwebs. It was difficult to breathe. A grand staircase stood before me, covered in a moth-eaten rug that I think might have been red at one point. Doors surrounded me, shrouded in darkness. In the middle of the entrance hall, I spoke my wish.
“I wish for my wife to become human.”
If she no longer needed to kill, then we could settle down.
There was no dramatic acknowledgement of my wish. I heard no voices. There was no wind, or immediate danger. The door behind me didn’t even shut. I looked around, not sure what I was supposed to do. I took a deep breath and started ascending the stairs. The steps creaked with every movement I made. I pulled out a low-powered flashlight. Since the windows were boarded, little moonlight came in. I shone the light around as I came to a hallway lined with doors. I assumed the game had already begun, but I didn’t know what I was playing. I figured the game would make itself obvious sooner or later.
I opened the first door I came to. Inside was just a standard looking bedroom. I stepped inside. I spotted a couple moth carcasses scattered about, most stuck in webs. I remembered the line in the poem “lose, and you will become hollow.” If I was not careful, I could share the same fate as these moths. I looked to the bed. I could see a dress lying there. It was a deep, dark red with pink frills and bows. It was covered in dust, same as everything else. I walked over.
The dress looked like that of a child. I wondered if she had been a contestant, or if she had lived here before this place was what it is now. I shone the light around, wondering if I could get any other clues about the owner of this dress. I eventually came across a small photograph.
The girl had long curly pigtails, and held a small bear to her chest. She was wearing the dress currently on the bed. Her cheeks were sunken in and she was sitting in an old fashioned wheelchair. Her arms were thin as reeds. It looked like they would shatter from just the strain of hugging her stuffed animal. The bear looked pretty standard, and was wearing a sailor uniform. Perhaps this was the game, perhaps I had to reunite the dress with the bear.
I explored the room for the bear. It wasn’t there. I checked the closet, under the bed, everywhere. I even checked under the mattress. It must have been in another room. I promised the dress I would bring her the bear. I don’t know why, but I could almost feel a presence coming from the dress. It felt very faint. I would say it was just my imagination, but everything else hadn’t been so far, why would this? I began opening doors, and searching for the bear. I saw a game room, a small library, a toilet, none of which contained what I was looking for.
I nearly dropped my flashlight when I came across the stairs leading to the third floor. Sprawled on the steps was an old, withered skeleton. The body was wearing a varsity jacket from the fifties. It was stained in blood, long since dried up. There were three vertical slash marks up the back of the jacket. I stood there, staring at the body, my breathing heavy. I couldn’t imagine what had made this. I moved closer to the skeleton, half expecting it to reach out to grab me but it remained stationary.
I could hear creaking coming from upstairs. I backed away from the stairs slowly, shutting off my flashlight. I was in near complete darkness, with only a couple beams of moonlight coming in from the boarded up window. The creaking was growing louder and louder. A heavy breathing sent shivers down my spine. I held my breath, clutching my chest in a desperate attempt to try and silence my racing heartbeat.
I heard a loud crack. I flattened myself against the wall. Whatever was nearby was huge. I could hear the breathing above me, nearly reaching the ceiling. I was already in darkness, but I shut my eyes regardless. I tried to make myself as small as I could, hopefully it wouldn’t notice me. The steps drew closer, sending shockwaves through the floor. Whatever it was, it was heavy. I feared it would break the floor and send us cascading into the void. I thought about those golden eyes of Kenzie. I had to remember what I was fighting for.
The unknown beast paused by me. I had to stifle a gasp. There was cold radiating from the beast. I bit my lower lip, trying not to make even a little bit of a noise. I heard a little grunt from above me, before it made an unnatural noise.
“Mama…” It sounded like a child, possibly the same little girl from that photo. There was no way something this big could make a noise like that. Moreover, there was a slight reverb in the voice, it almost sounded mechanical.
It took another step before speaking again. “Mama…” It matched the exact cadence of before. If this was a normal voice, there would be some subtle differences. It sounded like a recording. It took another step, then another. It said that damned word over and over, slowly growing more distant. When I heard the heavy steps turn a corner and get a comfortable distance away, I shined my light on the skeleton. The skull had been shattered into pieces. Perhaps the beast had stepped on it.
I began to slowly ascend up the stairs, careful to tread on the tips of my toes. My heart skipped a beat whenever the steps would creak. When they did, I had to pause, and listen for that monster’s return with the flashlight off. When I knew it was safe, I continued up. It felt like it took an hour to go up those steps. Eventually, I reached another hall with yet more doors. There was a rather nice looking door at the very end. Perhaps that was the master bedroom.
I crept forward, peeking in each room. I saw a spiral staircase leading to the attic, an office with another skeleton sprawled over an open safe. The corpse was dressed in what looked like 1920’s gangster wear. There was an abandoned pistol nearby. The slide was pulled back, indicating it was empty. I looked behind me, wondering if the body had some spare ammo. Perhaps I could use that gun to defend myself. I decided against it. I doubted the weapon was in working order after all these years, even if the guy had extra bullets on it. Besides, despite being Texan, I had never fired a gun in my life.
Still, I didn’t know whether to check the office, or the master bedroom. The bear would probably be in one of those rooms. If the girl died young, which it looked like she may have, one of the parents could have kept the bear for themselves. It seemed like a very private trinket, so I guessed it might be in the office.
I heard the creaking again. I slipped into the office. I didn’t risk closing the door out of fear the creaking hinges would alert the beast. I tiptoed over to the body and reached in the pockets. I found the familiar rectangular shape of a switchblade. I hid under the desk, holding the knife to my chest. I shut the light off just as I heard the breathing in the hallway again. I tried to breathe as quietly as I could, but my heartbeat throbbed in my ears. It was so loud I thought the monster might be able to hear it. The creature had to know I was here.
The floors shook again as the beast drew closer. As one of the feet fell, I hit the button on the knife. I felt for the blade, but it wasn’t there. I put a hand over my chest to try and keep myself from hyperventilating. The creature could be heard just outside the office door.
“Mama…”
That echoing voice sent a shock through my system. I reached out slowly, feeling around the drawer of the desk. I peeked out a little. I could see a slice of moonlight shining in the hall from the open door. I took the useless switchblade, pulling it back. I lobbed it as hard as I could, careful not to make a sound. The handle flew, and smacked into the hallway wall. The creature began to move further down the hall, granting me a few precious seconds.
I slid the drawer open, and plunged my hand in. I felt something soft so I grabbed it. I could fear a round ear and two marble eyes. It was the bear. I found it. I had to get out of there. I heard the beast enter the master bedroom. Now was my chance. I turned the light on but kept my hand over the light. I only let a couple thin streams of light escape. I slipped into the hallway. The creature shuffled around in the bedroom. I started creeping towards the stairway. I was chewing on my lower lip at this point from the stress. Then, there was silence. It had spotted me.
I started rushing down the stairs. There was an explosion of sound as the creature took chase. It was making a beeline straight towards me. I didn’t bother hiding my light. I rushed down the steps three or four at a time. The monster was faster than me, but it wasn’t as agile. I felt the staircase shake as the creature slid to a stop. When I finally descended the stairs, I tore down the hall. I heard the beast crash down at the base of the steps.
It was getting closer. I could feel the breathing on the back of my neck. It was cold, sending shivers down my spine. I turned a corner into the girl’s room. I felt a sharp pain slicing into my calf. I didn’t have time to scream. I pulled myself in. The creature slid to a stop again, but the cracking from the doorframe told me it had caught itself. It was about to come inside.
I collapsed on the bed, placing the bear on the dress. There was silence. I looked behind me. There was a deep gash on the door frame made up of three vertical slashes, just like the body on the stairs. However, there was no sign of the creature, yet I could feel I was not alone.
I saw her in her full glory, despite the darkness. She wore a thin dress of spider silk. Her skin was black as ink, her joints were segmented. She had no hair on her head, but her face was dotted with many red eyes. Her fingers were long and spindly, and many threads extruded from the tips. I felt no evil coming from her, just an ancient aura that was far beyond my comprehension. She came to me, her feet making tiny clicks against the wooden floor, and bound my wound in silk. She didn’t speak a word, just gave me a knowing nod. My wish had been granted.
I left the house, and drove away from that place. I drove until I could no longer. I slept on the side of the road. When I finally got home the next evening, there was an unfamiliar car awaiting me in the driveway. Someone was sitting on the hood. She looked up as I drove up. Her eyes were dark. When I got out, she came up to me, tears running down her cheeks. She was a bit taller than me, long dark blonde curls flung over one shoulder. I couldn’t see her eyes, nor did I recognize the form she took, but I recognized the pink lip gloss she wore on our first date.
Kenzie and I held hands, not saying a word for a long, long time. There was so much she wanted to tell me, but there would be time for that later. She was only able to choke out two words that night. “Thank you.” We embraced, never to be apart again. Although I would always miss her golden eyes, I was thankful she was in my life again.
Update: Kenzie’s old vessel was released from prison. It didn’t make the news, but I received a photo of her on a beach in a red waitress uniform. On the back of the picture written in Sharpie was “Thank you for giving me my life back.” I felt a pang of guilt remembering what she had been through. I checked the logo on her shirt to see if I could find the restaurant she was working at. It looks like she’s living in California now. Additionally, the vessel Kenzie is currently in is a woman who’s been in a coma her whole life. Her spirit had long since passed on to the great beyond. Kenzie and I are getting remarried soon.

This Part will be longer than the last as I wanted to make it feel complete.

Part 9

Kamijou Touma found himself standing face to face with Rubedo, a being capable of turning his words into reality.
"What happened to the Anti-Skill outside?" Kamijou inquired, his tone edged with suspicion.
"I did tell you, didn't I? I wanted to finish playing soldiers," Rubedo replied casually, his crimson eyes glinting with mischief.
"You...didn't?" Kamijou questioned, his mind racing to comprehend the situation.
"Oh, don't worry. I wanted you to be a part of it too," Rubedo remarked with a chilling smile, his words dripping with ominous intent.
“Come.” With a mere utterance, Rubedo summoned the Anti-Skill stationed outside the hospital, transforming the surroundings into a chaotic warzone. Kamijou found himself surrounded by armed personnel, their guns seemingly trained on him.
As the barrage of gunfire erupted around him, Kamijou instinctively ducked, narrowly avoiding the hail of bullets. Yet, amidst the chaos, a realization dawned upon him.
"I'm alive? They aren't aiming at me?" Kamijou muttered incredulously, his mind struggling to grasp the twisted reality orchestrated by Rubedo.
But wasn't there something wrong here?
It became clear to Kamijou that Rubedo's sadistic game involved pitting the Anti-Skill against each other, with him merely caught in the crossfire. The seconds stretched into agonizing minutes as Kamijou watched in horror as the very organization meant to protect the city turned against itself at Rubedo's command.
"Oh," Kamijou muttered to himself, a grim understanding settling over him. "Rubedo still wanted to finish playing 'soldiers' and just wanted me to be in the middle. They're being ordered to kill each other like soldiers fighting soldiers. Not me."
In that chilling moment of realization, Kamijou comprehended the twisted game Rubedo was orchestrating. The Anti-Skill, mere pawns in Rubedo's cruel machinations, were directed to turn against each other, while Kamijou stood amidst the chaos, a reluctant observer in the deadly spectacle.
As the spiky-haired boy realized the grim reality, he understood that he had to bide his time until the Anti-Skill had finished turning on each other with their gunfire. It was the only way to avoid the onslaught of bullets that engulfed the hospital.
But that meant with every passing moment of helplessness, a bitter seed of hatred took root within Kamijou's heart. He watched in silent fury as Rubedo's twisted game unfolded, each gunshot fueling his growing rage.
When the opportunity for retaliation presented itself, Kamijou resolved that he wouldn't adhere to any notion of fairness. No, he would fight back with every dirty trick and cunning tactic at his disposal. Rubedo's childish cruelty would be met with a ferocity born of indignation and disgust.
"That's the spirit," echoed a voice within Kamijou's mind, a voice from another boy.
In the hospital's sterile corridors, the clash between Kamijou Touma and Rubedo unfolded.
As Kamijou braced himself for the onslaught, Rubedo's words wove through the air like tendrils of ethereal energy, shaping reality to his whims. The once-familiar surroundings of the hospital twisted and contorted, becoming a surreal landscape where imagination held sway over logic.
Columns of shimmering light erupted from the ground, their brilliance casting strange shadows that danced along the walls. Flowers of impossible hues bloomed from cracks in the floor, their petals shimmering with an otherworldly radiance that seemed to defy the very laws of nature.
Kamijou's senses reeled as he struggled to make sense of the kaleidoscope of imagery that surrounded him. Rubedo was invoking a sensory overload.
A cascade of shimmering waterfalls descended from the ceiling, their crystalline waters refracting the light in a dazzling display of color and motion. Bridges of woven starlight arched across the expanse.
As Kamijou Touma stepped deeper into the surreal landscape crafted by Rubedo's words, his senses were assaulted from all sides. The shimmering columns of light, the vibrant flowers, and the cascading waterfalls threatened to overwhelm the information his brain absorbed.
Kamijou's right hand remained his staunch ally. With each step, he used his Imagine Breaker to dispel the fantastical constructs that surrounded him.
The shimmering columns of light flickered and faded, dissolving into nothingness as Kamijou's hand brushed against them. The vibrant flowers wilted and withered at his touch, their petals crumbling into dust. The cascading waterfalls ceased their tumultuous descent, the crystalline waters vanishing into thin air.
But Rubedo was relentless, his words continuing to shape the very fabric of reality.
“Shards of glass”, Rubedo conjured forth a storm of razor-sharp shards of glass, each one gleaming with malevolent intent as they hurtled towards Kamijou with lethal precision. He’d negate most of them with his right hand but a few would scratch and cut him.
“Ergh” he expressed in pain.
But that wasn't the end. “Living quicksand.” The very ground beneath his feet began to shift and writhe, transforming into a treacherous maze of shifting sands that threatened to swallow him whole. With every step, the sands seemed to reach out with grasping tendrils, seeking to ensnare Kamijou in their suffocating embrace.
That boy would pull himself out of the quicksand and negate it. “If I negated the quicksand while I was in it…I might've cut myself in half.”
Undeterred, Kamijou pressed forward, his determination unyielding in the face of the relentless assault. Yet, as he moved to strike back, Rubedo's words twisted the air around him, summoning forth a tempest of raging flames that engulfed the corridor in a blazing inferno.
The heat was searing, the flames licking hungrily at Touma's skin as he fought to maintain his footing amidst the chaos. He placed his right hand in front of himself and with each passing moment, the fire threatened to consume him, its relentless fury heating up the hospital corridor.
With his Imagine Breaker to dispel the inferno that surrounded him. He shattered that illusion.
With a resounding crack, the flames flickered and died, the shards of glass turned to dust, and the shifting sands stilled to silence.
In the aftermath of Rubedo's fiery assault, Kamijou scanned the hospital corridor, alert to any advantage. Amidst the flickering emergency lights, his mind brimmed with strategy.
Spotting a nearby medical cart, Kamijou lunged forward, his footsteps echoing against the tiled floor as he closed the distance between himself and his opponent. With a swift motion, he seized hold of a tray of surgical instruments, the gleaming metal glinting ominously in the dim light.
I did say Kamijou will play dirty now didn't I?
Kamijou hurled the tray towards Rubedo, the sharp implements slicing through the air with deadly accuracy. Rubedo's eyes widened in surprise as he raised a barrier of twisted reality to deflect the projectiles.
Using the distraction to his advantage, Kamijou darted forward, his movements swift and calculated as he closed the gap between himself and Rubedo. With a deft maneuver, he sidestepped a surge of energy unleashed by Rubedo's words, the air crackling with power as it passed harmlessly by.
Drawing upon his surroundings once more, Kamijou seized hold of a nearby gurney, its metal frame creaking under his grip as he swung it towards Rubedo with all his might. The impact reverberated through the corridor, sending shockwaves rippling through the air as Rubedo staggered backwards, his defenses momentarily weakened.
“Dammit…no fair!” Rubedo would scream in agony.
“Who said anything about fair?” Kamijou would respond.
Seizing the opportunity, Kamijou pressed his advantage, his fists a blur of motion as he unleashed a flurry of blows upon Rubedo's defenses. With each strike, he chipped away at the barrier of reality that surrounded his opponent with that right hand called “Illusion Killer”.
But the Kamijou’s and Rubedo's rematch wasn't over. “Darkness.” With a snarl of rage, he summoned forth a torrent of darkness that engulfed the corridor, shrouding everything in its inky embrace. Touma's senses reeled as he fought to maintain his footing, the oppressive weight of the darkness bearing down upon him like a suffocating blanket.
Yet even amidst the darkness, Kamijou pressed Imagine Breaker against the very walls of the encroaching shadows as the darkness receded before him.
The darkness being negated had an opposite effect of a blinding light in the hospital corridor. That blinding light was exactly what Kamijou needed.
Kamijou's mind raced, searching for something to use. His eyes darted around the room, His gaze fell upon a nearby medical cart, its contents gleaming under the harsh fluorescent lights. With a quick, decisive motion, Kamijou seized the cart and hurled it towards Rubedo with all his strength.
The metallic clang echoed through the room as the cart collided with Rubedo's form, momentarily staggering the crimson-skinned foe. Seizing the opportunity, Kamijou lunged forward, his fist aimed squarely at Rubedo's face, Kamijou used his opportunity with a swift and decisive strike, he delivered a blow to Rubedo's vulnerable flank, his fist connecting with a force that reverberated through the room.
But that wasn't enough. He grabbed the small medical cart and smashed it over Rubedo's head. His head wasn't fatally damaged but it knocked his host Unabara Mitsuki unconscious. Rubedo didn't even have time to say “You're an infinite distance away from me.” like last time.
KO
Rubedo was knocked out. Kamijou had won.
“I know you were holding back when you smashed that cart over his head.” a voice in his head spoke.
“Like I said, I refuse to believe we only have the option of becoming monsters ourselves to defeat one. I'm just glad he didn't go after Anna.” he’d respond.
But
That boy had still given into the side of him that doesn't play fair.
It was only a matter of time until—
That answer would need to wait as Shokuhou, Mikoto, Kuroko and Konori had returned from saving so many civilians trapped in burning disaster shelters.
Kamijou would meet them and he’d explain the situation. Why are there so many Anti-Skill dead on the floor and gunshot marks on the walls.
The situation would appear grim from both sides as they actually came back because they had an encounter with CRC.
The floor littered with Anti-Skill corpses, walls scarred by bullet marks—the aftermath of a confrontation with CRC.
Konori Mii had a hole blown through her stomach and was bleeding to death and Kuroko Shirai was missing an arm.
As they were teleporting through multiple parts of Academy City and Christian Rosencreutz was disappearing and reappearing they by chance teleported to an area CRC was about to burn as Kuroko’s teleportation had a limited range so she’d teleport slowly until the desired destination was reached.
They met the man behind the Rose Cross Cabal and they suffered greatly. They managed to lose CRC and escape to the hospital in time to save Kuroko and Konori.
The gravity of the situation weighed heavily on Kamijou Touma as he grappled with the enormity of the threat posed by CRC. “Can I really save Rosencreutz? Can I save this monster?” he’d think.
Kamijou would then share that he defeated Rubedo and knocked him out and that his unconscious body is there so they need to restrain him again.
He recounted his encounter with Rubedo, his efforts to subdue him, only to find an empty silhouette where Rubedo once lay.
“Huh? All I see is a bloody silhouette.” Shokuhou's eyes widened in alarm as she absorbed the gravity of the situation.
“What?” he asked.
Rubedo was gone.
“Let's take this outside.” Rubedo would say.
In an instant the scene was shifted outside the hospital and Kamijou, Konori, Kuroko, Shokuhou and Mikoto were once again faced with Rubedo.
“Drive!” The XHsACV-15 Anacondas all aimed to run over the team.
Kuroko would teleport everyone except Kamijou away from that potential roadkill situation.
Kamijou had to sprint to avoid being hit by the oncoming vehicles. The narrow space and the vehicles' maneuverability meant that as long as they remained close, dodging was possible. Their sluggish backward movement, a consequence of the mechanics of their wheels, provided Kamijou with the opportunity to navigate the dangerous situation with swift footwork.
Meanwhile, Mikoto returned to Kamijou's side as Konori and Kuroko stayed in the hospital, her electrifying presence igniting the air. As the XHsACV-15 Anacondas approached, she tore apart the metallic behemoths and hurled the debris towards Rubedo.
"Switch," Rubedo commanded, his voice echoing with ominous authority, and in an instant, their positions were reversed. Now, the metallic wreckage hurtled towards Mikoto, but she met the onslaught head-on, harnessing her electromagnetism to repel the debris and maintain her ground against the encroaching threat.
"Pigtail girl, short black-haired girl, come- instantly heal."
But
Shokuhou returned as well, she had been spying from a distance. Utilizing her Mental Out once more, she manipulated Unabara, and consequently Rubedo, to alter their actions, impacting reality.
Kuroko Shirai and Konori Mii were fully healed, ready to join the fight. Kuroko's arm even regenerated.
“You're heavy.” A sudden weight overwhelmed Shokuhou. The gravity around her intensified to the point where she couldn't even stand. Pressing her remote became impossible under the oppressive force pressing her to the ground.
Then
"Metal wall," Rubedo commanded, and the wreckage from the XHsACV-15 Anacondas enveloped Misaka Mikoto. However, Kuroko and Konori appeared just in time to save her from what Rubedo was planning…but what was he planning?
"Freeze!" Rubedo's next order rendered Kuroko Shirai and Konori Mii motionless like mannequins.
Then came the devastating command: "Giant satellite rain down death." Academy City’s massive satellite unleashed its payload of the ultra-heavy tungsten alloy cylinder.
Academy City’s colossal satellite had already discharged its payload of ultra-heavy tungsten alloy towards Christian Rosencreutz. However, Rubedo managed to reload its ammunition by simply creating more of that toughen with his words that bended reality.
An artificial comet descended.
The force unleashed was immense.
Although the vectors were concentrated to some degree, the containment wasn't flawless. The residual force was sufficient to twist and hurl the scrap metal from the dismantled 70-meter Anaconda all-terrain armored combat vehicles. Kamijou narrowly avoided being crushed by the debris, but the outcome could have been far more dire. Had the protective wall not been present, the dense shockwave would have struck Kamijou and Rubedo directly, reducing them to mere masses of flesh.
Mikoto, Konori, and Kuroko were trapped within, their fate sealed by Rubedo's design.
In that moment, despair permeated the air as the realization of their impending demise sank in.
The three girls met their end.
As the dust settled and the echoes of destruction faded, Kamijou Touma stood frozen, his eyes wide with shock and horror. The weight of the moment pressed down upon him, suffocating him with the magnitude of the loss.
His breaths came in ragged gasps as he surveyed the scene before him, the realization of their deaths sinking in like a leaden weight upon his heart. Those girl's bad endings weighed heavily on his conscience.
"Isn't it beautiful?" Rubedo would say smiling at his supposed masterpiece.
For a fleeting moment, doubt clouded his mind, threatening to overwhelm him with despair. Could he have done more to prevent this tragedy? Was there some way to turn the tide and spare them from their fate?
“Of course there was, just kill him already.” that voice again.
"Are you fucking with me?!" he bellowed, his voice reverberating through the desolation like thunder. "I should've protected them, kept them safe from harm, and now…”
His words caught in his throat, choked by the weight of their loss. The sight of Mikoto, Konori, and Kuroko’s ashes, victims of Rubedo's merciless whims, fueled the flames of fury that raged within him.
"This... this wasn't supposed to happen!" he roared, his fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles turned white. "They didn't deserve this! None of them deserved this!"
The anguish of their deaths threatened to consume him whole, leaving nothing but a hollow shell in its wake.
"I won't let them die for nothing," he vowed, his voice trembling with emotion. "I'll crush him. I'll tear down every wall he's built, every illusion he's created, until there's nothing left but ashes.”
Was Kamijou Touma referring to Rubedo or Christian Rosencreutz?
Kamijou charged at Rubedo, but amidst the chaos, Rubedo's command echoed: "Reanimate: Misaka Mikoto as my monster." From the swirling ashes emerged an electrifying figure, taking the form of Mikoto herself.
Was Rubedo taking a page from his father Rosencreutz's playbook?

“Arise, Alice Anotherbible. Cadaver though you may be, the vessel of flesh remaining in this mortal world can still drag that woman down into the gaping maw of the underworld.”

Mikoto now appeared as an electric demon, her form adorned with partially glowing iron sand wings, almost like a one-winged demon, horned, and her eyes blackened with a sclera that spoke of a power beyond the usual #3 of Academy City.
But such transformations held little sway over Kamijou Touma. Without a moment's hesitation, he moved forward, his resolve unyielding, ready to negate Mikoto’s lightning spears as he ran toward her to punch her and shatter that cruel disgraceful illusion of her memory.
“I'm sorry Misaka…” Kamijou would think but that thought wouldn't let him stop running to that crowned man with red skin and Phoenix wings.
Kamijou Touma, fueled by raw instinct, launched himself at Rubedo, the crimson fiend. "You're an infinite distance away from-" Rubedo's words were cut short as he bit his own tongue.
In that moment of vulnerability, Rubedo heard a familiar voice echoing in his mind. "Wait, what? That blonde bitch?!" Shokuhou Misaki's voice resounded through his thoughts.
"You didn't think I could only use Mental Out with a remote, did you?" Shokuhou's words rang clear, a chilling reminder of her controlling power. He heard her through his host Unabara Mitsuki.
Simultaneously, Kamijou heard that same malevolent voice, a harbinger of their shared hatred. "I gave you an opening. I know you can kill.”
Shokuhou and Kamijou would begin speaking here:
“If you think you can come to our city,” Kamijou's voice resonated with authority, his gaze unwavering as he addressed their adversary.
“Where the very pulse of life courses through its streets, where the echoes of countless dreams and aspirations reverberate in every corner,” Shokuhou's words dripped with icy resolve, her demeanor reflecting the depths of her terror.
“And threaten our lives for your own amusement,” Kamijou continued, his tone carrying the weight of unspoken fury.
“A callous disregard for the sanctity of existence itself,” Shokuhou's voice cut through the air like a blade, her words piercing like an ice cold queen.
“Then we'll show you the monsters inside us,” Kamijou's declaration thundered like the roar of a dragon’s inferno, a promise of retribution for the sins committed against them.
With a surge of primal wrath, Kamijou unleashed a devastating punch, the force of his blow knocking Rubedo to the ground like a raging tempest. But that wasn't enough.
Driven by a relentless violent determination, Kamijou straddled Rubedo's fallen form, raining down blow after blow with his right fist that contained Imagine Breaker, each strike aimed at breaking Rubedo's jaw and silencing his power once and for all.
With each strike, Kamijou sought to revoke Rubedo's ability to speak, to render him powerless against the city he threatened to engulf in chaos.
Yet, amidst the flurry of blows, Kamijou couldn't ignore the nagging doubt gnawing at the edges of his consciousness. Was this truly Rubedo's jaw he was breaking, or merely a vessel housing the malevolent entity?
What about Unabara Mitsuki?
“It's okay, Kamijou-san, this was the only way to permanently shut him up,” Shokuhou's voice whispered softly in his head, her words a soothing balm to his troubled mind. “He was a danger to the city and took so many lives. You did the right thing breaking his jaw. When we can remove the Rubedo parasite from that poor Esper, we can have him hospitalized. A broken jaw won't kill a person.”
“Right…thank you, blonde girl,” Kamijou's response was laced with a mixture of relief and regret, as he grappled with the weight of his actions and the consequences they would bring.
Shokuhou reminded him, “Remember what they said at the lab when we left Rubedo off? They mentioned that the host body experiences increased bone marrow production to boost blood generation. However, over time, this process acts like a cancer, slowly altering the physiology of the esper. So, instead of functioning like a real symbiote that supports the host's life, it behaves more like a parasite, mutating the body into essentially a blood-filled sack.”
Kamijou remarked bitterly, "It's infuriating how they refuse to spare even a sliver of efficiency to cooperate. Instead, they force everything to conform to their will, even when it inevitably backfires in the longer term.”
“They?” she’d ask.
“Christian Rosencreutz. I didn't want to think of the process he went through when creating this spell. He's a Cabal founder so he definitely made this himself,” Kamijou replied.
“? But anyhow my point was that since we made Rubedo stop talking, it can't change that poor esper’s body anymore, so breaking his jaw was a necessary evil,” Shokuhou interjected.
“Alright little miss witch. Let's get going,” Kamijou responded.
“Misaka-san is really gone, huh…Shirai too and that Judgement girl,” Shokuhou lamented.
“Yeah…dammit Rosencreutz…” Kamijou muttered.
“Is it my fault? I controlled Rubedo to say that both Shirai and Konori were healed so they wouldn't die or live without limbs but that just put them in danger when they came back to help us fight.” she questioned.
“No dammit. It's my fault.” he’d say
“How?” Shokuhou would ask.
“I just…I don't want to talk about it…” he’d quietly say.
“Help me up…” Shokuhou demanded.
“Ah okay,” he replied.
“Do you think we can still win, Kamijou-san?” she earnestly asked.
“The war isn't decided yet. This city isn't so weak that it'll fall to that zombie,” Kamijou resolutely responded.

Part 11

Ron felt weak and tired as his began to wake up, several voices speaking amongst each other as the man slowly opened his eyes. As his vision began to unblur, he heard the voices more clearly.
"...probably be at the factory down in the Mojave by now." A male voice said to the others, a female one replying shortly after.
"Well, let's grab our gear and load it up in the dropship. Those drones aren't going t-" The chatter lowered suddenly as Ron wiped his eyes, his vision now almost fully clear as he noticed a drone walking over to him. It was a disassembly drone, female, wearing a black leather business suit with two square pockets at the bottom of the uniform, a yellow undershirt and black tie visible at the drone's collar. As for the drone's head, she bore the usual yellow eyes on the visor, her silver hair bearing two pigtails tied with black bows.
Ron was immediately overcome with anger as the drone spoke to him. "Ah, good to see you up and about, Mr. Carter. We've got a lot of-HUAGH!" The murder drone wasn't given a chance to finish her sentence as Ron grabbed her by the neck, the other human and drone soldiers looking on in shock as a few even had their tasers ready.
"Whoa, whoa WHOA!" One of the other troopers exclaimed as he watched Ron take hold of his boss, the man pulling out a small pocket knife and pointing it at the others as he glared at the drone.
"Wo-Would you unhand me, Mr. C-Carter?!" The drone said as Ron tightened his grip on her neck, his anger boiling dangerously close to violent rage as he interrogated her.
"I'll unhand you once you tell me what the HELL you did with Wade!" Ron growled as he held onto the drone, the girl gripping his hand as she tried to pull him off.
"Ron, wait!" A familiar voice said amongst the soldiers, Ron turning to his left to spot the being whom the voice came from. It was Nathan, running into view of him as F followed after. The two drones looked to Ron in a pleading manner.
"Ron, please, let her go. She's with us." Ron was overcome with puzzlement as he looked to the gagging disassembly drone, finally releasing his grip as she held her neck while coughing lightly.
"THANK you." Was all she said as she gave an annoyed glare at Ron, who looked back to his work buddies as he walked over to them.
"Nathan, F... You guys made it back!" Ron said in quiet disbelief before joining the two in an embrace, the trio holding each other for a good long moment before breaking the group hug. Then, noticing one more member of the team missing, "Where's Kurtis?"
"He's in the transport there, he's okay." Nathan answered as he motioned to the large, bulky shuttle sitting on the hill not too far from the Carter residence. It was a large ship, the main hull consisting of a slim cockpit sloping upward slightly from the nose, then going flat as it went down to the back. The aft side bore two small wings at the tail, two fins on the dorsal section, and a set of four cylindrical engines sticking out from the tail end of the ship. At the top of the ship was a small bubble turret, similar to the ones on the ancient B-52 Fortresses from the first World War. Underneath the fuselage was a large, upside-down trapezoid section, the doors slid open to allow troops outside the craft.
Ron took in the sights of the ship for a good few seconds before turning back to Nathan and F. "How long was I out?"
"Judging by how long it's been since you got knocked out and when we got here, I'd say about two hours, at least." F answered as Ron gazed at the ground, disgruntled at the situation he was faced with.
"Mm-MM." The disassembly drone near the trio cleared her throat as they all faced her, the girl crossing her arms as she spoke to Ron and his friends. "I hate to interrupt your reunion here, but we have important work to do."
"Who the hell are you? What did your boys do with Wade?" Ron said, a hint of his previous aggression still present in his words as the drone replied.
"I'm Serial Designation J, just call me J." J muttered the latter part to Ron before continuing. "And if by 'your boys' you mean those traitorous maniacs to the company, I'm actually here to help stop them."
Ron raised an eyebrow to J before asking, "Wait, so this whole 'recall' thing is a big bunch of bull?"
"Pretty much." J motioned her hand to the other soldiers around her and Ron. "These people are from the Coalition, I'm sure you've heard of them before."
Ron glanced to Nathan and F as his mind clicked the pieces of the puzzle together. 'Coalition', 'theft', 'rare equipment'... It all came together more clearly now. "...You, you're the disassembly drone they stole from the company!" Ron stated with a finger pointed at J.
The drone in question shrugged as she replied. "Well, less 'stolen' and more like 'made a partnership with a third party'." J said as she flicked her hair, Ron looking to F and Nathan in a questioning manner.
"And you two, how did you get back here? What happened on Ceres?!" Nathan put a hand on F's upper arm as he explained.
"It all went crazy shortly after you two left, some shuttles came down carrying loads of workers, ARMED workers. They started taking some of the drones in the mines, but the others weren't having it with those corporate goons." The veteran drone looked down in sorrow as he continued. "A brawl started, humans and drones grabbed whatever was near and tried beating down those troops... A lot of people got killed." Looking up to the cloudy sky, Nathan continued. "Kurtis, F, myself and several others managed to fight our way to one of the evac ships the Coalition brought in to bring survivors back to Earth. Seems we got off easier than the rest."
F put her own hand on Nathan's back as she added, "It was an improperly handled recall, from what J tells us. I could've been on the side of the company, but... the way they just began disrupting the workforce, causing such a ruckus... I felt something was off." The two drones looked to each other for a moment, F continuing as they brought their eyes back to Ron. "I decided to help get as many people to a safe area as I could, even more so when one of those Coalition ships arrived, offered us a ride out."
Ron gave an uneasy chuckle as he took in Nathan and F's accounts of Ceres, a slight grin forming on his face as he spoke to F. "I guess the company considers you a traitor now, huh?"
F put her free hand on her hip joint as she replied. "I joined the Disassembly Division to protect others, not contribute to a slaughter. If it means disobeying corporate, I'll take the damn slip." She chuckled smugly as she glanced to Nathan. "You should've seen Nathan back there, he really helped clear us a path out."
Nathan blushed as he replied to the compliment. "Well, I wouldn't have been able to do it if you weren't covering me, you know."
Ron smiled at the warm moment of kindness in the cold air they stood in. Then, remembering J and her initial urgency, he returned his gaze to her. "So, you're helping me?"
"Yes, that's right. You see, my boss has kept a close eye on the Administrator, the fancy AI who helped JCJenson pump out some of those marvelous new tools people have been using for the past several years." J explained as she pulled up a holo-projector to show a depiction of a symbol, a hexagon with three arrows extending out from the center. "The Administrator, whom myself and the boss have identified as an old acquaintance of ours, Cyn, is using a highly suspicious program that we call the AbsoluteSolver. It's cause of this program that she was able to create the disassembly drone variant, among other designs and products."
Ron raised an eyebrow at J's explanation before asking her, "So you were made by her?"
J gave a frustrated look to herself, remembering what had happened all those years ago before answering the man. "Not exactly, more so... upgraded." Then, shifting the image on her projector, J continued as she showed an image of a basic disassembly drone chassis, male due to the legs. "As for your friend Wade, he and several hundred other worker drones were selected by Cyn to be added to the Disassembly Drone Division, regardless of their consent." J gave a glare at Ron as she finished her explanation. "AND did so in a manner unacceptable under company protocol."
Ron seemed a bit more confused by the end of J's sentence, remembering what F had said back on Ceres before crossing his arms. "Huh, so F was right. You do kidnap drones to recruit them."
J kept the glare aimed at Ron and his friends as she retorted. "ONLY in certain cases, Mr. Carter. We perform abductions to rogue drones we see with too much potential to send to the scrapyards." Then, standing firm with her hands to her hips, she continued. "This whole abduction you and the miners on Ceres went through is completely out of line."
Ron glanced to F, who simply shrugged at her fellow disassembly drone's response before the two looked back to J. "Okay, so what's your business with the Coalition?"
J glanced to the troopers behind her as she explained. "While they may not hold the same ideals as the company, they do hold the safety of Earth and its people quite well. And if what my boss says is true, we believe that Cyn is up to something much more problematic than just kidnapping a bunch of drones for the DD Division." Looking to Ron, she finished with, "And your friend Wade is one of those chosen to be a part of this plan."
Ron looked down to the dirt he stood on, confused and frustrated with how things were going. Taking a deep breath, he looked back up to J. "Okay, so what should we do?"
J seemed to brighten up at his question, readying her holo-projector once more before explaining her plan. "Well, first off, the Coalition has managed to track the drones taken by the company to several facilities spread out across Earth. The one we're heading to is down at the edge of Las Vegas, in the Mojave desert. We're gonna break in, get all the worker drones we find, then retreat from the area." The projection showed a large building, towering over several small buildings and structures far below the tower. The building was rectangular, several smoke stacks sticking out from the top. Around the walls of the structure were several landing pads, big enough for large transports to land with ease.
"So, we're gonna be able to rescue Wade? And the other drones?" Ron asked the disassembly drone for certainty.
"Exactly." J replied as Ron sighed in partial relief, then, hearing a beep from her visor, J swapped out her projector for a radio. "What is it?" The killer drone asked as she put the device to her face.
"We've reached the factory, Mrs. J! We've got several squadrons helping us clear out any hostile craft near the building, but the big guns won't be here for a minute!" A male voice spoke through the radio, J nodding in understanding before replying.
"Just hold on as long as you can, my team will be there to begin recovery ops. J out!" Swapping the radio back to a hand, J looked to Ron and his co-workers before addressing them. "Well, you heard them. Let's not keep them waiting much longer." Turning to walk to the transport, J stopped as she faced Ron again. "Oh, and I'm sure I don't need to ask, but you're coming with us, right? Your friend would probably be willing to listen to a face they know well."
Ron stood sternly, a determined look in his eyes as he answered the disassembly drone. "J, you could tell me not to come and I'd still be going along. Those asshats are nuts if they think they can take my brother from me and get away with it."
J seemed amused at the word 'brother' being used for Ron's drone, but didn't mock or laugh, only smiling at the man as she spoke to him. "Excellent, we've got plenty of room in the Chameleon, so get yourself ready."
Ron nodded to J before raising a finger. "Just one thing... You mind if I grab some things from the house? Might need them just in case."
"Be my guest, just don't take too long, we don't have all day to wait." Ron nodded in agreement before turning towards the house, Nathan following after him as he glanced to J.
"I'll help him out, we'll be back real fast!" As the two boys ran to the Carters' home, F looked to J before speaking up herself.
"Welp, if this is the only time I can make a visit, now's the time. I'll be back." The disassembly drone said before following after the two miners, J looking on in amusement as she observed the partially ransacked house.
"Well, they must've taken quite a liking to each other when they worked in the mines." J thought to herself before breaking her stare, turning around and taking flight towards the Chameleon transport on the hill, intent on awaiting the trio's return for the mission.
...
Location: Earth Orbit
The traffic near the JCJ Central station was calm as a flash of light heralded the approach of another starship, which zoomed into the open space not too far from the space station as it arrived at Earth. The S.S. Lovelock slowed in place as the bridge crew, Tina and Jasmine, began to hail the station.
Tapping a button on the controls, Tina moved the microphone on her headset as she spoke into it. "JCJ Central Control, this is civilian starliner S.S. Lovelock. Request permission to land."
"Permission granted, Lovelock. Welcome to Sol." The female control operator on the other end replied warmly as Tina smiled in satisfaction, looking over to the surface of Earth as she spoke once more.
"Thank you Control, Lovelock confirms. Out." Ending the transmission with a push of a button, Tina flicked a few switches before looking to her sister. "Well, good to be back home, isn't it?"
"Yes, I can't wait to stop by one of those McDowers, I could use some terrestrial dinner." The Fowleys laughed at their post-landing plans, then sighing as Jasmine continued. "Then again, I'm sure Wade'll be waiting for us too, so we should probably just hold off till we head there."
Tina chuckled as she steered the ship towards Earth. "Oh, please. I'm sure they wouldn't mind some pick up for toda-" Tina paused as she was interrupted by the communication panel. Pressing the answer button, Tina listened to the person speaking.
"Attention S.S. Lovelock, Station Commander Huang requests that you change course for the JCJ Central. She wishes to see your bridge staff in person as soon as possible. Control out."
Surprised by the order, Tina looked to Jasmine in confusion, the woman raising an eyebrow as her drone sister spoke. "The station commander wants us to land at the space station. Apparently, she wants to meet us personally."
Jasmine's eyebrow remained raised as she shared Tina's confusion. The two glanced off to the controls as they processed their new orders, then returned their focus to flying the ship as Jasmine replied to Tina's explanation. "Well, a little visit to the station won't hurt, will it?"
"Not at all. Besides, I kind of wanted to take a look at those work uniforms at the market. Wade could use some new mining attire, don't you think?" Tina said as Jasmine nodded in agreement, the pilots pressing a few buttons and flicking a switch or two before Tina gripped the steering sticks.
"All set, take her in." Jasmine said as Tina did so, steering the Lovelock down towards one of the JCJ Central's massive docking hangars. Tapping another button, Tina spoke into her headset's microphone again. "Attention passengers, this is the bridge. We're being redirected to the station for landing. The crews there will refer you to the nearest shuttles to Earth upon arrival. We apologize if there's any inconveniences."
Shutting off the intercom, Tina continued her focus on flying the starjet into the station's hangar. The hangar port was large, several people in suits and worker drones moving about as they kept the dockyard as tidy as possible. The Lovelock rolled slightly so it was able to enter the hangar at the correct angle, some of the workers stopping to admire the ship coming in as it passed over them.
The civilians present inside the station couldn't help but marvel at the ship as well, many people walking through the station stopping to observe the Lovelock as it began to descend. Getting close to the metal ground below her, the Lovelock's landing gear extended out, the sound of metal making contact with one another as the starjet touched down on the hangar floor.
With the ship landed, Tina and Jasmine began performing several system checks, all of them reading in the green as the drone pilot pressed another button. Outside, the side door of the Lovelock opened up, a long walkway folding out to the floor for passengers to walk out of the ship.
Having set everything up for the disembarking passengers, Tina began shutting down the main systems of the Lovelock, Jasmine doing the same until the cockpit lights dimmed slightly, indicating the ship was at minimum power levels.
The Fowleys stood from their seats, Jasmine looking to Tina as she spoke. "After you." Tina nodded with a pleasant smile before walking to the door, which opened to show a line of passengers still waddling out of the ship as smoothly as they could. Seeing that they'd have to wait, Tina and Jasmine decided to sit back down for a moment, waiting for the lot to leave and the path to clear for them.
They only had to wait a few more minutes before the walkway was clear, the two standing up as Tina walked out first. Stepping out of the ship and onto the walkway, Tina held the railing as she descended the steps, Jasmine close behind her.
As her feet touched the floor of the hangar, Tina stepped out of the way for Jasmine to join her, the two observing the large station for a calm minute. As they took in the sights, Jasmine held Tina's hand. "Well, we shouldn't keep the commander waiting now, should we?"
"Not at all." The drone pilot replied as she and her human sibling walked away from the ship, heading up to the clearance gate so they could enter the deeper areas of the JCJ Central.
...
"Damn, he's not answering." Tina said in light frustration as her smartcomm ceased it's low beeping, indicating a call was not answered. Tina and Jasmine had made their way from the hangar and up to the executive level, where the commander and several other key staff members resided. The halls conjoining the deck were surprisingly quiet and empty, with only a single person or drone, maybe two, traversing the passages and passing by the two pilots.
Jasmine seemed to share her sister's dismay. "You're not alone, Ron's not answering either. You think they're busy with something?"
Tina took a breath as she tried not to become emotionally heated over her love. "I hope so, I couldn't imagine what I'd do if something happened to them."
Jasmine nodded in agreement as she and Tina walked up to a door, a red trail on the right side with text printed on it, reading, "Jia Yi Huang, JCJenson Central Station Overseer - Main Office".
Pressing the doorbell at the left of the door, the speaker above it activated as a woman's voice spoke through it. "Come in."
The pilots did as instructed as the doors opened, revealing four beings residing at the other end of the moderately sized white room. two human bodyguards, black vests donned over their chrome suits, one disassembly drone, whom caught the eyes of Tina, unnerved by the appearance of such a drone within the office. Said drone looked to be female, black pegs holding the drone up on white, black striped hips. The drone's attire was of a black jacket with a red scarf at the neck, and her hair a full green mohawk, fuzzy specs covering the spaces around the mohawk and behind the black and yellow headpiece, its function being something Tina had no understanding of.
And in between all of them, was none other than Mrs. Huang herself. She was dressed in a white uniform, red covering the shoulders and outer facings of the sleeves. Three gold-colored buttons held the collar in place, and at the right of the overseer's chest was a badge, stating her name and position title as her office's door did.
The Fowleys walked in side by side, the commander standing up to greet them behind her table. "Good afternoon, Mrs. Fowley. I see your trip went well, yes?"
Jasmine nodded as she answered Huang. "Yes, but we'd probably be done for if it weren't for my sister here." She put a arm around Tina, the drone lady blushing slightly as her shyness began to overtake her. "She kept the ship steady and safe when we came across a rogue asteroid cluster."
Huang gave a proud smile to the two, eyeing Tina as she spoke. "Yes, that little bump in the road. I read your report just a half hour ago, it's not too uncommon for our scouting probes to suddenly catch clusters like those."
Tina shook off her shyness as she spoke to the overseer. "Just doing my duty, Mrs. Huang."
"Indeed." The station commander gave a hint of a frown as she continued. "And that's why it pains me to say that things are about to change immensely for the both of you after today."
Tina's eyes went wide, fearful circles of blue as she started to speak up. "Oh no, don't tell me I'm fired, please."
Jasmine defended her sister. "Yeah, she saved lives. You'd be fools to let her o-"
"Oh, no no no." Huang said to the sisters, both of them relaxing as the overseer continued. "We're not getting rid of her. In fact, the report you sent in impressed many here at the office. If I could, I'd recommend she apply for a promotion."
Tina quickly grew an eager grin at those words, but it slowly faltered as Jasmine asked Huang, "Oh? Then what are you saying about things changing from now on?"
Huang gave a stern look to the Fowleys. "Have you been hearing the news?" As the two pilots shook their heads lightly, the overseer explained. "Well, to put it simply, the company has been busy searching for several worker drones on this manifest, courtesy of our Administrator and her findings." Huang held up a tablet to the Fowleys, showing off part of the long list of drone targets noted on the manifest. "Among that list, your friend here, Tina, is one of the names written."
Tina gave a look of gratefulness and confusion, Jasmine merely looking confused as she questioned Huang. "So you want to have her added to one of your specialized services, I take it?"
Huang nodded in confirmation. "The Disassembly Division, to be exact. The Admin wishes for us to find new recruits in order to add to their ranks."
Startled at the mention of the Disassembly Drone Division, Tina rubbed the back of her head as Jasmine negotiated what to do next. "Well, Tina's my sister, so she sticks with me. I can help prepare her for a memory transfe-"
"I'm afraid that won't be necessary." Huang interrupted, more coldly than she initally came off as her bodyguards stood forward, the disassembly drone also standing sternly as Tina and her sister stood from their seats.
"What is the meaning of this?" Tina asked dreadfully, Jasmine holding her hand as they slowly backed up a step from the overseer.
"Mrs. Fowley, I understand your attachment to Mrs. Tina here, but she's coming with us. She will be taken to one of the factories on Earth, where we will provide the necessary upgrades she'll need for service."
The human pilot held onto Tina's hand more tightly now, shocked at the callous disregard for her sister's consent. "You wouldn't dare. Don't you realize she's her own person?!"
Huang shook her head in disappointment. "She's just a drone, Mrs. Fowley. You above all should know that."
Tina felt a pain in her core heart at those words, Jasmine growing even more frustrated as her sister pleaded. "Please, we can find a way to make both our days better! You don't have to do this!"
Huang once again looked to the two in mournful displeasure. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Fowley. But corporate's spoken. We can compensate you for Tina's loss, but orders are orders. Now... the drone, please."
Seeing that there wasn't going to be room for compromise, Jasmine sighed heavily. Then, glancing to Tina, she glared at the overseer, a futile but defiant plan forming in her head as she spoke. "Alright, you want Tina so bad?" Huang nodded, a bad feeling in her gut as she sensed suspicion in the angered pilot. "Well, there's something you should know when it comes to the Fowleys..." Remembering the defense pistol holstered at her leg, she finished her sentence. "We make ourselves hard fish to catch."
In the span of a second, Jasmine yanked out the pistol, the two guards attempting to take hold of their own pistols before she fired, one blue bolt of energy at the left unprepared guard and another at the right one, who was just about to take the shot at the human pilot as he was hit.
As both guards fell to the floor, Jasmine let go of Tina's hand, the disassembly drone at the wall readying his own stun blaster as Jasmine said one last thing to her sister. "RUN!"
That was all Tina needed to do so, sprinting out of the room as the sound of an energy pulse struck Jasmine, the woman yelping as she was knocked out. Changing her blaster to an EMP cannon, the disassembly drone raced out of the room, chasing after her target as she ran down the hall.
Running, Tina heard the sound of an energy pulse charging up, but didn't bother to look as she focused on fleeing from this place. She soon regretted not calling out for help as she felt a blast hit her back, the focused EMP having fired. Tina screamed in agony as the shock fried her systems, her screams turning to whimpering as she collapsed to the floor, the eyes on her visor completely black.
With her target stopped, the disassembly drone landed on the floor and walked over to Tina's body, picking her up and holstering her over her shoulder. Returning to the office, two more security guards and a doctor had arrived, the latter checking on the stunned officers as he looked to Huang. "They're alright, just need a adrenaline shot or two."
The overseer nodded in satisfaction before turning to face her drone servant, who walked over to her with Tina slumped on her shoulder. "Where do you want me to take her, Ma'am?"
"Head to the nearest docking bay, take a shuttle down to the Nevada factory, I hear they're in need of another batch of units right now."
The drone nodded obediently before marching out of the room, the doctor checking on Jasmine before looking to his boss. "And what of the woman, Ma'am?"
Huang sighed as she thought of how to handle this disruption to her office. "Bring her to medical, have some amnestics prepped. When she wakes, tell her she lucked out on an 'accident' during her flight home."
The doctor nodded as he and one of the new guards picked up Jasmine's unconscious body, both men lifting her up and carrying her out of the office together.
The walk from the office was long, both men holding Jasmine between them as they neared the elevator. Noticing the room near it, marked as "Storage Unit K-7", the guard faked a tired groan. "Ah, hold on. Let's put her down, try and pick her up more comfortably."
The doctor, confused as he was concerned, lowered the pilot's body alongside the guardsman. Shortly after letting Jasmine down on the floor, the guard hit the doctor in the face with his elbow, the man grunting in pain before receiving a strike to the chin, falling to the floor as he passed out.
With the doctor out of commission, the guard immediately entered a code into the storage bay's access panel. Said code was accepted with a green hue to the controls as the door opened, allowing the guard inside. Turning around and looking down the way he and the doctor came, the guard sighed in relief at nothing coming down the hall before he grabbed the doctor and Jasmine's body, pulling both into the storage bay. Once he and the bodies were in, the guard tapped the panel inside the room once more, the doors closing again so he was left alone.
Pulling out his radio, the guard spoke into it. "Percy to Elizabeth, I've got one of the pilots, the human one."
"Good work, Percy. What about the other one?" Elizabeth asked as Percy shook his head.
"They've got her, unfortunately. I saw that DD fly after her when I was heading to the office."
The woman on the other end sighed before speaking again. "Damn, they'll be heading to the factories soon. Do you know what hangar they're taking her to?"
"No Ma'am, but I did hear that they're sending her down to the Nevada factory with a bunch more other workers." Percy said as glanced down to the two bodies, then perking up as Elizabeth spoke.
"Better than nothing at all, Lieutenant. I'm all set at the starliner they parked down at the hangar. Get yourself a pilot's uniform and meet up with the med team down in Medbay E-11. They'll bring our pilot friend to the Vickers down on the surface. Once that's done, rendezvous with me so we can get down there too."
"Copy that. Just gotta hide the doc first, then I'll be on my way. Percy out." Shutting off the radio, Percy slipped it into his back pocket before moving over to the unconscious doctor. Picking him up, the Coalition agent pulled him over to one of the vacant storage units, setting him down as he turned to the control panel. Opening it, Percy picked up the doctor and set him inside, then pulling out of the unit before tapping the control panel again, shutting the door to the unit.
With the doctor taken care of, Percy walked over to Jasmine, the woman still unconscious as the agent picked her up, carrying her in his arms as he made way for the door. Tapping the buttons once more, the door opened to an empty hallway, Percy exiting the storage bay before turning to the elevator.
As the elevator doors opened, Percy stepped inside, tapping the elevator controls as the doors shut, the lift taking Percy to his desired destination.
...
Location: Drone Factory, Mojave Desert, Nevada
Wade's sight was lit up by a collage of red, lines of text going across the top left and bottom right of his screen stating various things. The top left read, "SERIAL DESIGNATION W - 0X0160110; STARTUP COMPLETE; FULL-CHECK DENIED (AUTO-RUN COMPLETE);->STRING 'Absolute Solver' BLOCKED BY ADMINISTRATION 'Cyn'; REBOOTING, PLEASE WAIT." Aside from the big "REBOOTING" in the front of his view, the bottom right block of text read, "DATA RESTORATION IN PROGRESS; ENTERING SAFE MODE...SUCCESS; PLEASE SEE A CERTIFIED TECHNICIAN IF ERRORS ARE DETECTED."
It only took a second for the text to flicker out of the darkness, Wade's visor coming to life as a new greenish-yellow HUD appeared over his formerly full green one. The drone rose up steadily, putting a hand on his head as he sat up on the metal table under him. Rubbing his forehead, Wade sat in silence for a moment, feeling like something was terribly off. He couldn't remember who he was, nor fully recall his memories of mining labor he had performed during his time as a worker drone.
Even stranger, there were...seemingly new memories he began glancing through, one showing him gunning down a group of hostile soldiers alongside several others, another of him cutting down a fellow worker drone with what looked like a sword.
So much felt off, so different... Wade wasn't sure how to process it all. Looking around, he saw several people, most of them garbed in chrome coats and black pants, while a few were wearing armored grey vests and carrying rifles in their arms. Observing a few other tables down the large room, Wade noticed a few other disassembly drones, some already up and either examining the room as he was or still getting up from their resting areas.
"Here they are Sir, they just started booting up." Said a guard at Wade's left, the drone looking to see three men, in similar attire to the other scientists, enter the room. The guard who spoke to the trio stood at attention as one of the men walked over to Wade, the other two going over to the other disassembly drones near him.
"Ah, good to see you're up W." The man approaching W said as the drone in question observed him. He looked to be bald, with white skin and blue eyes. At his right hip, a laser pistol of a model W couldn't identify rested in its holster, lines of pink light streaking the pistol's barrel.
Looking to the man's face, W listened. "I understand you're probably feeling a little disoriented at the moment, but we have important work to do here today, and very little time. So, allow me to give you the run down." Putting a hand to his chest, he began. "I am your superior, Dr. Edgar Halloway, Head Researcher of drone designs and development. You've been converted into a disassembly drone, so as to serve our needs in quelling unrest here at JCJenson's facilities."
W looked on attentively as he saw Edgar pull out what looked like a more advanced version of the civilian smartcomm, but it was bulkier and bore what looked like some kind of small projection module. Holding it up, Edgar activated the device's holo-projector, showing what looked like a large factory, several red objects moving around it as Halloway explained. "Today, you and your fellow recruits will be tasked with defending the factory from hostile agents attempting to steal vital property currently stored here."
W observed the hologram as he asked his boss, "How many of them are there?"
"From what we can gather, there are several transports making landing attempts at several of these cargo pads." The hologram zoomed in to what must've been the front of the factory, around five circular landing pads sticking out from the building. On three of these pads, around one to two transports were stationed on them, red-colored figures stepping out of the ships as they began their break-in attempt.
"How long has this been going on?" W asked as Halloway replied.
"Around the time you were being rebuilt and having your memory storage cloned, about two hours ago. Our boys here were just doing some finishing checks when my associates and I stopped by."
Lifting his arm up, W examined himself, the silver worker drone arms he had glimpses of in his memories were now replaced by a conical lower arm, hazard markings at the edge of the limb. Looking at his chest, he noticed the choices of attire he was wearing: a black jacket with dark grey double pockets near the waist, as well as another single pocket at the left of his chest. As for undergarments, he saw his waist and upper legs were donned with a set of black shorts, no pockets visible.
Edgar seemed to look proud of the recreated clothes W was wearing. "I'm certain you approve of the new look you have, yes?"
W nodded in agreement. "Reminds me of my time as a worker drone quite fondly, Sir."
The Head Researcher returned the nod before speaking again. "Indeed. Now, normally, we'd follow up on training procedures, but, again, we're short on time. Could you hold one of your arms up please?" W did as instructed, his hand flat and firm as he looked to Edgar. "Can you swap your hand for one of your weapons?"
Rather than speak, W answered with action, swapping his hand for a simple blade. Edgar was about to verbally applaud his new servant, but held his tongue as W shifted the blade out for a sub-machine gun, then a missile launcher, then a shotgun...
After swapping through about ten more weapons and tools, W finally swapped back to his hand. Looking to Edgar, he confirmed his capability. "I think I've got the hang of it, Sir."
"Perfect!" Halloway said pleasantly, illiciting a similar reaction from W as the former continued. "That should be enough to help you learn on the job." Looking to one of his returning comrades, Edgar asked, "How're the others, Doohan?"
"D and H are operable, they're ready to receive orders at your word." Doohan said as he motioned to the two disassembly drones behind him, both standing at attention as Edgar turned the other way to see his second cohort.
"Sir, Serial Designations E and L are all set for the job." The two drones in question walked over to the group, Edgar admiring his new minions as he looked over all of them.
"Excellent. You two may go, meet up with the Administrator and Mr. Hawk in the observation room." The two men nodded before walking to the door, which was opened by the guards as their superiors departed the drone bay.
With the Head Researcher and his Administrator's recruits now left to themselves, Edgar began. "Alright, now I'm sure you've all been given the briefing on the situation, yes?" All five murder drones nodded to their boss before he continued. "Good, well to start, there are five entrance ports to the factory. You will each take a route and clear it of any and all hostile forces present. Once you reach the landing zones, destroy their transports before they can flee." Giving a stern look to the five, he finished with, "Needless to say, you are authorized to use any and all force necessary to eliminate the enemy. Understood?"
"Yes Sir." The five drones said in unison, each saluting Halloway as he nodded in approval.
"Perfect. Now, you should have a layout of the factory on your HUDs, so there won't be a need to give you a tour." Holding up his advanced smartcomm again, Edgar directed the drones as he showed the hologram of the building's interior. "H, you'll have the North pad. D and W, I'll give you the easy ones, the Northwestern and Western pads haven't been settled yet. Get to them while you can. E, take the Southwestern landing area. And you, L. You are to hold the line at the South pad." Clear?"
The five nodded to Edgar, most without a word as W spoke up. "We won't let you down, Sir!"
Without allowing Edgar to speak further, W readied his wings, taking to the air as he swooped past his boss and flew out of the room, the guards diving away from the door in surprise. Edgar stood out of the way as the other drones followed suite, leaving the room as they went to carry out their violent duties.
Looking to the two shocked guards, Edgar shrugged. "Well, at least they're eager to serve." Was all he said before heading to the door himself, walking out so he could return to witness the conversion of his new units at the observation bay.

I saw a video recently of a waitress talking about how she gets more tips from men when she's wearing pigtails. The comments were filled with either waitresses attesting to that or other women talking about how their husbands/boyfriends really like when they wear pigtails and how they get more compliments when wearing them. This intrigued me, seeing as pigtails are usually associated with little girls, so I looked around and wanna talk about some things.
Since school uniforms are sexualised, a ton of women talk about how they got hit on more not only when they were minors, but when wearing school uniform. Why does the term "sexy SCHOOLGIRL outfit" exist? I myself had my adult neighbour hit on me and insist I give him my number even though I was in my school uniform.
I found that A LOT of porn has titles that involve terms like "barely legal", "student", "teen", "teenager", "after school", and "high school". Some times it would be genuinely difficult to tell whether or not the woman involved in the video was older than 18(she probably is, but they purposely use her youthful looks to get people off), yet those videos got hundreds of thousands to millions of views.
Labiaplasties are one of the fastest growing cosmetic surgeries. Labia are supposed to sag with age, as are most parts of the body, but men expect women to have the vagina of a 9 Yr old. They expect it to be pink and for the folds to be small when that's only possible via cosmetic procedures for most adult women, hence the popularity of labiaplasties.
A lot of men genuinely believe women shouldn't have hair on their bodies apart from on their heads. Even though the only people who don't have hair on their bodies are ppl with medical issues and CHILDREN. I've talked to a man who genuinely said to me that women weren't meant to have hair on their bodies and that it was a result of women becoming more "testosterone-filled"
Being attracted to things associated with children, mostly young girls, is a bit too normalised for my liking.

I enjoy breaking girls hearts the one woman I loved more than anything betrayed me savagely tore out my heart. I am done looking for love only to be played time to play the game myself I met 3 girls. One is fat I am not attracted to her I don’t care how good her personality is. I led her to believe I liked her back but I ended up ghosting her and when she talked to me about it I said we were done I never liked her she’s gross I don’t wanna look at her let alone hook up with her. That felt so good the second one was actually attractive very pretty I almost feel bad ALMOST I gave her hints and innuendos here and there and led her to believeI liked her I gave her my number and when she would message me I would make sure to leave her on seen and then I showed attention to other women in our circle more than her special attention eventually I dated the 3rd woman and told her about it. The third one was a nerdish type girl 5’0 making me look colossal compared to her glasses and pigtails I left her on read than blocked and ghosted her ignoring her virtually and in the real world. YEAH I AM A SCUMBAG. At least im honest and true to myself about it. She made me feel worthless and now that’s how I treat others im done searching for love nor do I accept love the only time ill accept it is if she is 7/10 and up and is my type. That honestly made me feel good no more being played instead I am playing now. All those nights of crying myself to sleep and being alone throughout the day watching everybody happy and content with their partners while I am angry paid off I feel godlike now.

I (20M) had always had an interest in the paranormal. I can still recall wearing out my Dad’s Ghostbusters VHS tape as a kid. I was transfixed on the paranormal growing up, but it wasn’t until my freshman year of High School that I decided that I wanted to be more hands-on with the paranormal. So all through High School I saved all my money from summer jobs, birthdays, and of course graduation, to buy a van and hit the open road.
Hell, I even started my own YouTube channel, and can proudly say that my little channel, Paranormal Inquisition, had up to about 600 thousand subscribers at that point. I had traveled to a lot of the popular haunted spots; Gettysburg Cemetery in Pennsylvania, Dudleytown in Connecticut, The Lizzie Borden House in Massachusetts, hell, I even got to check out The Amityville Horror House in New York.
I’d pass through state to state, town to town, and check in with the locals about if there was anything that was allegedly haunted in the area. Most of the time I’d get a side-eyed look, but there were a few times the locals would spill on the paranormal goings on nearby. And let me tell ya, it made some good content when something happened. At least I thought it must’ve been because, after about two years of scraping by, I had finally gotten monetized. So, I decided to keep the show going. I had just hit the Winchester House in California (a hotspot for activity lemme tell you!) when one of the locals told me about Stage 19A.
It was an old, abandoned studio in Hollywood that they had simply boarded up. Apparently, it used to be the home of an old children’s show that aired back in the 70s called Rosie’s Playtime. It was a typical kid’s show, kinda similar to Blue’s Clues or Barney but instead, starred a clown named Rosie. According to the Californian local I spoke with, after a few episodes, guests on the show began to go missing. And by guests, I mean the children that would randomly be selected to join Rosie on whatever adventure she was going on that episode. After the show was forced to shut down, they tried to clean it up to re-use it. But everyone who went in reported strange goings on. Children laughing and screaming, things are being moved or thrown, and some have even heard arguments in the studio. However, when they went to investigate it, no one was there. Eventually, the studio shut down 19A, but it was still standing.
I remember thanking the man for his time and packed up to head to LA. As I sat in my motel room after making the 5-hour drive from San Jose to Hollywood, I started to do some digging on the show. There wasn’t a whole lot to go on, but from what I found you could tell it was a cheaply made show.
All the images I had managed to scrounge up online showed Rosie as a young woman, about 19 or so, dressed as a clown. She wore a red and white short-sleeved dress that came down to her knees. She also wore black leggings, a black bowtie, and white boots and gloves. She fashioned her blonde hair into pigtails and was usually spotted with a small, old, black top hat. She wore simple clown makeup of course; white painted face, red lipstick with an exaggerated smile, a small red dot on her nose, and black diamonds over her eyes.
The local I spoke with had been right about the disappearances. The thing I found truly disturbing though, was that the police didn’t start getting involved until 6 kids had disappeared. Their first suspect was Gordan Daniels, the creator, producer, and director of the show. He also happened to be the father of the star of the show, Rose Daniels who portrayed the titular Rosie. When they tried to question him at his home, they found him packing his bags. A struggle had ensued and Gordan was gunned down after he grabbed one of the officer’s firearms. They looked throughout the house, but never found the missing children. They also found that Rose’s room had been thrown around and most of her clothes were gone. So, authorities concluded that she must’ve been an accomplice and fled the country. From what I could tell they never found the bodies of the missing children, there was a lot of push from the LAPD to simply close the investigation.
I remember finally managing to track down a clip of the show on a subreddit, and being an avid wrestling fan, I recognized the song Rosie opened and closed the show with as none other than the theme song to the Firefly Fun House. It was a gimmick about a dark kid’s entertainer one I had always been a fan of. It took some digging, but I eventually found the origin of the song. It appears that Gordan had originally written the song for the show and performed it while Rose sang the vocals. After his death, the ownership of the song went to some production company that ended up merging with another company, where it sat until it was re-recorded in 2018.
I drove my old van to the outskirts of the studio lot. By the time I managed to climb the fence, it was well past 9 pm. I looked around in the dark, fearing that my flashlight would draw unwanted attention until I finally found Stage 19A. It was a large white building with the number and letter painted on the side. I took out my lock-picking kit and made short work of the little padlock on the overhead door. After 2 years of being on the road and sneaking into abandoned places, I had become somewhat of an expert.
I held the door up just enough so that I could carefully crawl under it and then gently put it down. Now that the illegal act of breaking and entering had been done, I fired up my GoPro HERO6, took out my handy dandy flashlight, and began to shoot the opening I had memorized on the drive down.
“I’m here on Stage 19A where a popular children’s show once aired. The sounds of laughing children once bounced off the walls of this studio on the set of Rosie’s Playtime back in the 70’s. But with the show now being off the air for nearly 50 years, why are people still reporting the sounds of children? Join me tonight as I—” But suddenly, a feminine voice cut me off. It was as quiet as a whisper, but as sharp as a knife.
“Get out!” I rationalized that it was probably just something playing in a different studio. In my experience, the paranormal took some warming up before they made contact. I began walking further into the studio, making sure to light up all the props that had managed to gather cobwebs over time.
“Get out!” The voice rang out again. “Leave!” The voice had gotten louder and firmer.
“What’s your name, spirit?!” I had asked. Silence deafened the room for a minute as I eagerly awaited a response. But instead, I only heard the sound of laughter. Children’s laughter. At the time, I thought I had hit the jackpot. Ghosts that were eager to make contact. I remember getting jittery with excitement as I made my way down the hallway towards the dressing rooms.
“I quit!” A voice rang out. There was some loud banging coming from the dressing room at the end of the hall. I slowly began to approach it.
“Hello?” I called out. I began to get closer as I heard a man’s voice along with the woman’s But, he was talking too low, I couldn’t hear him at first.
“I can’t do this anymore! I’m leaving!” The woman yelled. As I listened closer, it sounded like the voice who had just told me to leave. “This whole thing is over!” I finally arrived outside the door of all the commotion. I put my hand on the handle, eager to spring into action but trying to eavesdrop more on the conversation.
“ITS OVER WHEN I SAY IT IS!” The man’s voice boomed through the walls of the stage. Out of pure instinct, I flung the door open expecting to walk into an argument. Maybe a homeless couple had set up shop here, but no one was there. I walked into the dressing room which was an absolute disaster. The place was musty as hell, a vanity was broken and on its side and there was garbage all over the floor. Upon closer inspection though, it wasn’t garbage at all. It was pages of a script. I wiped off some of the dust, revealing a script to an episode of Rosie’s Playtime. I continued looking through the papers, being sure that I didn’t cut myself on any of the glass that was all over the floor from the vanity, and ended up with a final copy of the script, along with a few kids’ drawings of a female clown. They were all of her holding their hands or playing with them. And since Rosie was an alleged accomplice to these disappearances, it made me eerie to think about it.
I looked and found a piece of glass that had old, dried lipstick writing on it. ‘Smile more’, it read. Funny enough, I saw the same note on the front of the script. I shined the light across the room and noticed an old, tan couch. Like everything else, it was covered in dust, but there were stains on it.
Smears as if someone had tried to clean something up. I remember noting out loud for the camera, thinking that it might have been blood.
This must have been Rosie’s dressing room. I thought to myself. As I backed away from the couch, I felt this force knock me back and onto the glass on the floor. I remember hearing laughter and running as I did my best to get to my feet.
“You’re it!” I snapped my flashlight all around, looking for my attacker. But I couldn’t find them.
Screw this. I thought to myself. None of the ghosts had ever gotten violent with me before. This was way out of my wheelhouse. Ignoring the sharp pain that my back was in, I dashed the door of the studio. And as crazy as it sounds… it wouldn’t budge. I kept trying the door, being slowly taunted with more giggling. Another force knocked me right on my back, again. The same child-like voice as before repeated,
“You’re it!” I got up and I ran. I went right into the nearest dressing room and barricaded the door with my own body. My arms were badly scratched up from the glass, and my back was in a lot of pain from the impacted falls. I looked around the room which appeared to be a children’s playroom. Discarded toys lay all around the room, and in the back was a handmade, wooden playhouse. The wood was primarily rotted, so much so that the ceiling had even caved in. But something about it…called to me. I slowly crawled to it, peeking inside over the collapsed roof. Aside from the expected debris from the roof, I found a brand-new rug. I gently moved the playhouse aside, trying my best not to break it any more than it already was. As I lifted the rug, wet cement began to slide down it. It was like someone had just poured it on the floor. I ran my fingers on it, I needed to feel that it was real. And that’s when it fell. I mean a whole glob of cement fell into what I suppose was a giant hole. Shaken, I grabbed my flashlight and pointed it down to where it had fallen. A little girl was sitting down inside this giant hole, she had this fiery red hair and was dressed in what looked like a blue dress. Oddly enough, I didn’t even wonder how she had gotten down there, or where there was. I just thought he was trapped.
“Do you need help?!” I asked. I put my flashlight in my mouth, planted one hand firmly on the floor, and reached down to grab her. But as my torso got halfway down the hole, I realized no one was there. Instead what I found was a large crawlspace filled with old children’s clothing. Clothing that had been worn out and tattered. Against my better judgment, I craned my neck down a bit more, which is where I saw bones lying in those children’s clothes. I jolted backward, back up to the floor. My flashlight dropped out of my mouth and began to roll. I made a dive to grab it before it fell down the hole, but there wasn’t a hole anymore. The whole ground was merely cement, the brand-new rug I had picked up earlier was now old and moldy. Sitting off to the side where I had left it. I began to panic…which is when I heard the giggling in my ear.
I looked over my shoulder and sure enough, there was the little girl. She was dirty and disheveled, bruised, cut, and discolored, and although her face looked as if she had been crying, she laughed when she saw me.
“Found me!” She giggled. I jolted back and rushed up against the wall. I looked around the room for others as laughter began to ring out, surrounding me. But no one was there, not even the little girl I just saw.
“We’re it! We’re it! We’re it!” I got to my feet and ran for the door, but just like the door upfront, it wouldn’t budge. I began to kick and throw my body against the door. I don’t know how long I tried, but at some point, I had been banging on the door for so long that I hadn’t even noticed that the children stopped laughing. I took a breath and tried the door again, relieved when it finally turned.
“Hey mister,” A voice called out behind me. I should’ve ignored it, but something made me turn my head towards the voice. Standing behind me, was this little boy. He was dirty, bruised, cut, discolored and his face looked as if he had been crying, just as the little girl had been. He was wearing a t-shirt and shorts and had brown hair that was styled into a bowl cut. I didn’t say anything to him. He gave me this wide smile, multiple of his teeth fell to the floor as if they had just been sitting in his mouth. “Run and hide,” He whispered. He started to laugh as I threw the door open and began to run through the main stage. The children laughed as I tried to open the overhead door again but to no avail. A large red rubber ball had bashed me in the hand. I gripped it in pain and tried to wiggle my fingers, but couldn’t. As I watched my broken hand begin to discolor, I heard the children scream at me.
“Cheater! Cheater! Pumpkin eater!” They continued repeating it as I desperately tried to find a place to hide, settling quickly on diving under what I had surmised to be an old craft services table. I cowered under there and prayed for the first time in my life. I used my good hand to lift the old, rotting tablecloth I was hiding behind. I needed to know how close they were and sure enough, I got my answer. I lifted the tablecloth and came face to face with another little boy. His overall appearance was the same as the others, but he was in overalls and a yellow t-shirt.
“Found you!” He laughed. The table flew up as if someone had thrown it, giving away my location. “You lose!” The little boy yelled. He began to kick and wildly throw punches at me. I tried to fight him off, but eventually, I was overpowered. Though I didn’t see them all at first, more children came in and joined him. They were pulling my hair and skin, kicking, punching and even biting me. I tried to shake them off. Hell, I even swatted at them, but they were persistent. They continued laughing, almost mocking me as they yelled “You lose!” over and over again.
I thought I was dead when I heard the music. At first, I didn’t recognize it from the ringing in my ears, but eventually… I heard the theme music from Rosie’s Playtime. The assault stopped. I looked out to see none other than Rosie herself standing at the entrance of the hallway that led to the dressing rooms. She was singing. But something wasn’t right. This Rosie was something out of a horror film. Her costume was dirty and tattered, her bowtie drooped around her neck as if it could hide the large gash that was covering her throat. She looked beaten on and discolored. Her face even had a large smile cut into it. Some of the skin had even been removed so that you could actually see some of her teeth and jaw. I looked on in horror as she held out her hand, the pinkie finger of the glove looked as if it was missing, revealing her broken finger.
She continued to sing the song, slowly getting down onto her knees. She opened up her arms in some kind of invitation. And that was the first time I heard the similarity. This was the same voice that had told me to leave when I first arrived. I watched the children run towards her as she continued to sing, a black liquid protruded from her eyes. It was almost as if she was crying. She wrapped the six children in a large group hug as she began to repeat the song. Now was my chance. I picked myself up and staggered towards the main entrance, praying that it opened. But before I could even grab the handle, the door began to open ever so slightly. I looked back to see Rosie who had just begun the third repeat of the song, but this time it seemed like…like she was singing to me. I dropped to the ground and painfully rolled out under the door, watching Rosie sing to the children as the overhead door slammed to the ground.
I must have passed out shortly after because the next thing I knew, I was in a hospital room. Apparently, I had crawled towards the guard booth, and he had found me when he went out to do his hourly rounds. The nature of my injuries led the police to believe I had been assaulted by a group of homeless people who were trying to get into one of the studios. My wrist was broken, I had 3 fractured ribs, a dislocated knee, a black eye, multiple cuts, scratches, and bite marks. I thought about explaining what really happened, but not wanting that pesky B&E charge or an involuntary hold at the psych ward, I merely told them I didn’t remember what happened or how I came to be inside the lot. I had originally planned to release the footage once I was out of the hospital, but that was until a lawyer came to see me. He was a man of average height and weight, with greying blonde hair that had been slicked back tightly. He had to be about 60 or 70 years old.
He claimed to work for the studio who was very sorry to hear about my encounter with vagrants on their lot. They were so apologetic in fact, they offered me a check. 1 million dollars for my pain and suffering. All I had to do was sign an NDA which stated I was legally never allowed to reveal the studio’s name…and my camera. I had asked why, but all the lawyer told me was that if the footage leaked out of my assault on studio grounds, it would lead to a load of bad publicity.
After all, I had been through, I had no interest in continuing with the channel or ghost hunting as a whole. So…I took the money. But as I handed over my camera, which was now cracked and probably broken from my assault, something came over me. I had to tell him about the hole in the dressing room.
“They’re still there,” I blurted out. “In the --,” But the lawyer cut me off.
“Mr. Michaelson,” He assured. “Our studio was found to not be at fault with any of the heinous alleged actions of Gordan Daniels and no evidence of these alleged actions were ever found on our property. Whatever it is that you believe you saw in Stage 19A was probably the result of a hallucination caused by a gas leak.” He tried to explain. “It was the reason we stopped using that particular building.” His cover was almost logical, I mean it made perfect sense. There was only one problem.
“I never told anyone that I went inside Stage 19A,” I told him. The lawyer smiled, put my camera in his suit jacket pocket, left the check on my hospital table, and then left without saying a word.
That was a little over a year ago, and I haven’t been ghost-hunting since. I even shut down the channel. With no new content, I was bound to get demonetized at some point. My body eventually healed up, but the psychological effects of my visit to Stage 19A remained. I get these panic attacks whenever I hear a child’s voice. It had gotten so bad that I stopped going out in public. But the worst part? The worst part is the dreams. In the hospital, they were frequent, over time they began to get less frequent but never less vivid. The memory of those final moments in Stage 19A still haunt me. I can see Rosie holding the group of children close to her, staring at me with her horrific smile as she sang to them. I can still hear her singing....
“We’re really glad that you’re our friend…and this is a friendship that’ll never ever end,”

As soon as the first rays of conscious awareness began to creep back into Camilla’s mind, they were accompanied by the stark realization that something was terribly wrong. Her surroundings were completely unfamiliar, albeit unsettlingly unthreatening at a glance.
She appeared to be in a large, luxurious, and well-appointed penthouse straight out of the 1950s. She was slumped over on a stool in front of an island counter with a speckled scarlet Formica countertop, across from a young woman in a red and white vintage dress. Camilla's attention was immediately stolen by the woman's vibrant blue eyes, raven pigtails, and wickedly insidious grin.
“Coming around then, are we Ducky?” she asked as she took a sip from a martini glass.
“What… what happened?” Camilla asked, her rising panic quickly overpowering her confusion and grogginess as she checked to see if she was restrained or hurt before looking around for any possible threats.
“You passed out. Nothing to be embarrassed about; happens to me all the time,” the woman said with a gesture to her martini.
“No, who are you? What am I doing here?” Camilla demanded as she stood up from the stool.
“Ha! Black-out drunk by mid-afternoon? If you weren’t such a lightweight, you’d make a good drinking buddy,” the woman chortled. “To refresh your memory, my name is Mary. Mary Darling. My brother James brought you here because you wanted to write an article about our collection of retro appliances, remember? Apparently, the Zoomies have quite a bit of cultural nostalgia for the post-war era. Per my duties as hostess, I offered you a drink, and I guess you’re not used to cocktails as strong as I make them because it put you out like a light.”
Though her memory was hazy, Camilla knew that Mary was lying. She wasn’t drunk, and she wasn’t hungover. She knew it wasn’t alcohol that had knocked her unconscious. She had spoken with James about writing an article, but other than that, she had no recollection of where she was or how she had gotten there.
While it was obvious that the Darlings had abducted her, until she had a better idea of exactly what it was they were up to, she decided that it was best to play along.
“Oh. Right. The article. I remember now,” she said uneasily. “I’m sorry. Yeah, that drink must have hit me harder than I expected.”
“Nothing to apologize for, Ducky. I’m in no position to judge you,” she said as she finished off her martini. “Mmmm. Any night when James isn’t here to put me to bed, I usually wake up sprawled out at whatever random spot I dropped at. Whelp, now that one of us is sober, on with the tour!”
“Is it alright if I record our interview?” Camilla asked, quickly checking to see if she still had her phone on her. She was relieved to find that she did, but to her disappointment saw that she had no reception or WiFi. “Shoot, I’ve got no bars here.”
“Oh, I assure you there are plenty of bars in this house,” Mary laughed as she gestured at the nearby cocktail bar. “I do apologize for the lousy reception, though. If your little doodad there can work without it, feel free to record away.”
Camilla nodded and began recording video on her phone, keeping the camera focused on her presumed captor as much as possible.
“Hello everybody!” Mary said energetically as she smiled and waved at the camera. “My name is Mary Darling, and welcome to my kitchen. We’re going to start our tour today with my main refrigerator, easily the most essential appliance of any modern kitchen.”
With a twirl of her skirt, she waltzed over to a broad, six-foot-tall, beach-blue refrigerator with chrome trim. It had a convex door, branded with a cartoon atom and the name ‘Oppenheimer’s Opportunities’ in a retro, calligraphic font. The door was partially covered with the usual accoutrements; a notepad, a small chalkboard, some odd bills and receipts, along with a few photographs of James and Mary Darling. Most of the photographs also included a dark-eyed preteen girl who bore a disquieting resemblance to the twins.
But what stood out the most was that just above the lever handle, there was a small analogue device with several knobs and switches that didn’t look like it had originally been part of the appliance.
“This right here is the 1959 Oppenheimer’s Opportunities twenty-one cubic foot single-door Nuclear Winter refrigerator,” Mary said proudly. Camilla was tempted to point out that the concept of Nuclear Winter didn’t really come about until the 1980s, but couldn’t work up the courage to interrupt her hostess. “When my brother and I first moved into our little playroom here full time, we knew we were going to need housewares that were sturdier than anything on the open market. You can imagine how delighted we were when we found Oppenheimer’s! They make a wide range of electronic appliances powered by atomic batteries so that you can count on them even if the grid goes down. This beauty here has been running non-stop for sixty-five years now and it’s got no thought of retiring. It retailed for a whopping $249.99 back in the day, and it was worth every penny! The body itself is made out of a proprietary titanium aerospace alloy that’s virtually indestructible.”
To demonstrate her refrigerator’s quasi-mythical indestructibility, Mary pulled out a butcher’s knife that she had been carrying in the sash of her dress and began slashing at the bottom half of the door with a violent ferocity that sent Camilla stumbling backwards out of fear for her safety.
“Enough! Enough! I believe you!” she shouted.
“You see! I didn’t even scratch the paint!” Mary bragged as she holstered her knife. “Nothing like a modern appliance; this thing was built to last! But it wasn’t just durability that sold us on this model. It’s functional too!”
She swung open the door, revealing six chrome shelves that were mostly laden with heavy packages of meat wrapped in butcher’s paper. The packages were all neatly dated and labelled in a feminine flowing script that Camilla suspected belonged to Mary. Though the cut of each meat was clearly marked, Camilla’s eyes jumped from package to package as she tried to find one that said what kind of meat it was.
But all she could find were human names.
“The height of each shelf is fully adjustable with the push of a button. Each one slides out for easy access, or detaches completely for cleaning,” Mary continued her presentation, pulling the shelves out to create a tiered staircase. “That’s an especially useful feature for my little Sara Darling. Even though she’s more of a daddy’s girl, she still likes to help me in the kitchen, so it’s important that everything’s accessible for her. And since everyone’s so concerned about accessibility these days, I suppose it would also be helpful for a cripple or a midget. As you can see, I’ve customized the interior to my family’s specific needs. We don’t have any need for a vegetable crisper when we’ve got plenty of organ meat. All the vitamins you could ever want in those, and no nasty ethylene gas or phytotoxins to worry about! Of course, keeping this much meat fresh is obviously the top priority, and it would be an absolute shame to risk freezer burn on grade-A cuts like these. That’s why in addition to an airtight seal and atmospheric control, the Oppenheimer 1959 Nuclear Winter uses radiation to keep its contents one hundred percent germ-free!”
“I’m sorry. Did you say radiation?” Camilla asked nervously. “Why would you use radiation in a refrigerator?”
“It was the Atomic Age. We put radiation in everything!” Mary explained with a manic grin. “It’s just like how you put AI in everything these days. What could go wrong, right? Oh, there’s nothing to worry about, Ducky. The radiation is only on when the door is closed. The titanium alloy is completely radiation-proof, plus the paint is lead-based! The interior of the fridge is exposed to beta and gamma rays from the atomic battery, penetrating any packaging or containers and completely sterilizing the food inside! It may be mild, but since it’s near-continuous germs can’t get a foothold, so our meat stays abattoir-fresh for months!”
Mary pushed all the shelves back inside the refrigerator and gave them a gentle shove to the left. They spun around as if on a carousel, despite there being no room inside the fridge for that to be possible. Mary stopped them when they reached a segment filled with ceramic baking dishes and tinfoil-covered platters.
“Now I’m the first to admit that I’m not always sober enough to cook, which doesn’t always stop me! But for the times it does, I keep lots of meatloaf, casseroles, and roasts on hand so that I have plenty of leftovers to serve my family. Luckily for me, even my good china bakeware is no match for the ionizing radiation of the –”
“Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait,” Camilla interrupted. “What did you just do?”
“Hmmm?” Mary hummed in mock confusion.
“You spun the inside of the fridge around like a Lazy Susan,” Camilla clarified. “How did you do that?”
“Oh, that! Yes, that’s one of the modifications my brother James made,” Mary explained. “As wonderful as Oppenheimer’s appliances are, James could always make them better! He was able to expand the interior space out into the hyperdimensional volume of our playroom, so I never have to worry about running out of space for all my savoury creations.”
“That’s… impossible,” Camilla said as she shook her said in disbelief. “Everything else you’ve said until now has been ridiculous, but that’s impossible.”
“Come in and take a look for yourself if you don’t believe me,” Mary suggested as she spun the shelves in the fridge around with a theatrical flourish.
Camilla adjusted her glasses as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing, tentatively approaching the fridge. As she tried to work out how the illusion worked, Mary stopped spinning the shelves when she arrived at a completely empty compartment.
“You want to know what really made me buy this fridge, though?” she asked. “I asked the salesman how many bodies he thought I could fit in it, and without any hesitation he said ‘at least ten if you pack them in tight enough’.”
With superhuman strength and speed, Camilla felt Mary shove her into the fridge from behind, slamming the door shut.
“Hey! Hey! What the hell?” Camilla shouted as she pounded at the door from the inside.
She tried to push or kick it open, but it wouldn’t budge. The seal was as airtight as Mary had said, and there was no way to open it from the inside. The instant the door had shut, the overhead lightbulb had gone out, replaced by the faint and eerie radioactive glow from the atomic battery below.
“Oh no. Oh no,” Camilla muttered, squatting down and trying to force its shutter back into place. Pipes that had already lived longer than some people began to creak as an old motor sluggishly pumped Freon up and down their length. A vent that ran along the top of the back wall of the fridge began to exude a pale yet heavy misty that slowly began to sink to the bottom of the compartment.
“Can you hear in me there, Ducky?” Mary’s voice asked over a crackling intercom.
“Let me out!” Camilla demanded as she furiously pounded against the door. “Let me out!”
“Don’t worry about the radiation. It’s too mild to be a short-term hazard,” Mary told her. “I don’t kill my victims with radiation anyway. It’s too drawn out… and it ruins the meat. No, I just want to see if I can kill you with the modifications my brother made before you run out of oxygen.”
Camilla felt the interior of the fridge start to spin as she watched the door slip out of sight.
“There we go. Not that I didn’t trust the door to hold, but I have some sauces and preserves in there that I’d really rather you didn’t smash,” Mary announced.
“You’re fucking psychotic!” Camilla screamed as she threw her weight against the side, trying to tip the fridge over. “Why didn’t you just put me in here when I was unconscious?”
“And how would I have shown you my beautiful Atomic Age refrigerator if I’d done that?” Mary asked in reply. “Sorry, Ducky, but you ran afoul of me when I was in the mood to play with my food. No quick death at the end of a knife for you. I mentioned that I can adjust the shelves with a push of a button, right?”
A sturdy chrome shelf came sliding out from behind Camilla, catching her off guard and shoving her against the wall.
“Fucking hell!” she cursed as she struggled to push against it.
After a few seconds, it retracted itself at Mary’s command. Camilla spun around, bracing herself to catch it when it came at her again. Instead, one of the lower shelves came flying at her, bashing in her shins.
“Christ!” she sobbed, collapsing onto her injured shins the moment the shelf withdrew. She clenched her teeth in rage at the sound of Mary’s sadistic cackling.
“Oh my god! Before we got started, I was seriously asking myself if the novelty of killing someone with a fridge would be worth it, and it absolutely is!” she declared as she fired off the middle shelf again, this time hitting the kneeling Camilla in the forehead. “I hope it doesn’t void the warranty though. Oppenheimer’s guaranteed that so long as the atomic battery lasted, they’d always be able to repair it.”
“The… battery,” the nearly concussed Camilla muttered as her eyes drifted down at the glowing green square in the center of the floor.
With the use of a hitherto useless Swiss army knife on her keychain, she slipped the blade in along the battery’s edge and frantically began trying to pry it out.
“Oh, you little… no respect for other people’s property, I swear,” Mary muttered.
With the press of a button, the shutter for the battery nearly closed all the way, but the knife’s blade kept it from closing completely. Taking great care not to let it slip, Camilla continued to pry away at the battery in the sliver of radioactive light that was left to her. A lower shelf came flying forward again, but this time she succeeded in ducking it.
Grunting, she tried to pull back the shutter to give herself more light, but the mechanism holding it in place was incredibly strong. She had succeeded in pulling it back only a fraction of an inch when its brightness suddenly flared.
The blinding pain caused her to drop the knife and jerk upwards in retreat. As she rose, a shelf slammed into her throat and pinned her up against the wall at full speed. Choking and gasping, she desperately tried to force the shelf back as it slowly but surely crushed her windpipe. She pulled and pushed and rattled it, tried to shake it loose or kick it free with her feet, but nothing worked. As she squandered the last of her oxygen fighting against a shelf and her vision began to fade, she realized with a grim irony that Mary had been right.
Oppenheimer’s really had built that fridge to last.
***
“Hello, Mommy Darling!” Sara chirped as she happily skipped into the main living area and towards the fridge to get herself an afternoon snack. Mary politely acknowledged her presence, but was too caught up in her soap opera to engage her in conversation.
As soon as Sara had the door open, she began spinning the inside to get to the desert compartment. She jumped back just in time to avoid being crushed by Camilla’s asphyxiated corpse. It hit the floor with a dull thud, bloated and blue, an expression of horror and agony etched into its face as it stared up at the ceiling with unseeing eyes.
Sara stared at it for a few seconds before overcoming her initial shock and turning towards her mother.
“Mommy Darling, this body is still good. Can I use it for my trolley set? Pretty please?”