FLAGGED FOR INVESTIGATION AND SECURITY RESTRICTED
Account from the squad leader of SH'azz squad on advanced long range assault scout mission in the Tz'urgal system. 3rd moon of the 3rd planet in system. Colony of "Deltamist" pirates.
Race: Inagoor, who are known as separatists. Noted for high crimes to include piracy, kidnapping, smuggling, murders and assassinations.
This is the true, and unredacted, original account.
SEC level set as Black 8 tier 12 restricted.
Account reads:

Journal log entry: T'zk 72:31 G'az 8
2nd leader, Expeditionary Assault Scouts: SH'azz squad.
We landed the stealth assault class (S.A.C) skiff 12 mektreks* from the pirate settlement with the determination to make final approach on claw, and from under cover of night with full stealth masking knowing that the Inagoor would easily spot the mirage haze and light warping of our stealth fields during the day. The gravity of the moon is comparable to ours, if slightly less, so it seemed like it would be an easy trek. I determined that only 2 rest stops would be needed instead of three. Our landing distance assisting in our stealth attempt, and thus adding to our chances of successful surprise attack.
Our intel determined that the pirates had recently raided the Tau shipping lanes, and had taken hostages for the purposes of ransom and slave sales. Our unit was tasked with forward observation and intel gathering of the pirates before termination of their operation, and to report all intel direct to command via secured subspace micro-pulse.
The Flora and Fauna scans determined that this moon was a Class 4 temperate world with no signs of natural life forms rated as sentient.
At our first predetermined rest location we discovered a burn mark cutting a path through the foliage as though a small vessel of some kind had made a controlled emergency landing. Scanners indicated that the craft was emitting power output signals, and was only a short distance from our location. We proceeded to rest and recuperate under the cover of the stealth fields with both live, and drone perimeter guards for security. The rest cycle was extended to insure that the guards could rotate so that all were rested and ready. I had decided that the investigation of the small craft could wait until after our main mission was complete when one of our forward scout drones sent my linkpad some images flagged for immediate review.
The images were of an Inagoor corpse. It was...dismembered. Torn limb from limb and the barrel chested, fur covered torso had chunks ripped out of it. (Images in file listed SET 1) The closeups of the
torso showed that the gaping rents and holes were not impact points of a projectile weapon nor were they of a beam, or energy weapon. No charring of flesh or fur, and no melting or blast marks on their suits armor plating. It simply looked as though an appendage had been grabbed and pulled off. The armor, as well as the flesh underneath, was simply torn off of the main corpse. The dismembered limbs were in the same condition, and save one other notable clue which was that there were obvious "gripping points" where the armor was crushed, and the bone beneath these areas was pulverized. The Inagoor's infra Red pulse rifle was found partially embedded in the trunk of a tree. Its "combat rated" frame had been crushed and wadded up as though it was a piece of waste paper. Its power cell was ruptured and leaking. The scout drone had marked it as a hazard zone out to 30 pace lengths and labeled as "lethal chemical hazard". I informed my second in command, and we reviewed the images together. He was as dumbfounded as I. What native beast could have done this kind of damage to powered assault armor?
(Addendum:)
The Drone was unable to locate the Inagoor's head in the immediate area.
(Addendum ends:)
My second and I resolved to scout this issue as a priority. We did not want to engage our current mission only to have an unknown element interfere and compromise mission success. As per command prerogative, I shared the drones information with the rest of the squad personnel, and reformed mission parameters around this element. Mission AI rated a 92% agreement with my assessment. Well within command parameters. We arrived at the location of the drones discovery in 4 hours. Our visors highlighted the chemical hazard of the leaking power module, and its set perimeter was also highlighted by our personal visor AI, and we all gave it a wide berth. The Inagoor was indeed scattered everywhere as the drones images had relayed with one exception. The smell was horrendous, and sickening. The stench of the Inagoor's "parts" indicated that it had been killed only 2 day/night rotations ago, and already some sort of fungus growth had begun to creep into the strewn dismembered parts and pieces. On every life bearing world, nature always has a cleanup crew. On closer examination of the "parts" we determined that the only explanation of this incident was that some creature had simply grabbed the Inagoor and ripped him apart, flinging the pieces in random directions in the process. The Inagoor's armor was their combat rated class, which is their equivalent to our front line infantry armor, powered of course. It was just torn apart as if it was a Tk'turka wedding veil. Armor that can withstand a pulse from an infra Red rifle at close range, or the puncture of a ballistic needler at point blank range had been torn apart, as if it were made of nothing sturdier than plant filament.
The grip points visible on the appendages did indeed look squeezed/crushed, and the separation points showed signs of literally being "pulled" apart. Not cut. Not chopped, but PULLED apart. The Inagoor are from level 9 temperate worlds and are thus pretty tough, and considered very strong even to a majority of other sentient species. Yet something far, FAR, stronger just pulled them apart. My visor AI showed the majority of my squad running "weapon ready" checks, and a few more scout drones were tossed into the air to begin new stealth patrols.
It wasn't long before another Inagoor corpse was found in the direction of the unidentified craft that
had "seemingly" crash landed.
This Inagoor's corpse was simply pinned to a tree. Its back was against the trunk, and the Inagoor's pulse rifle was pushed through its torso and into the tree trunk thus pinning it a pace off of the ground. Whatever creature did this to the Inagoor, had used the butt of the rifle to penetrate completely through the Inagoor's chest cavity, and further into the tree trunk, thus pinning the Inagoor. My visor AI noted more "Weapons Ready Checks" as well as one of the newer members of the squad using a dose of Stimcalm. My visor AI noted the dose as well within regulation, and I chose to flag it for review for his after mission performance evaluation. (Noted in File marked VA1. attached) I was actually considering using a dose of Stimcalm myself, as my second reoriented the stealth drones to a new scout pattern. Rather than taking the stim I began reviewing database information for "nearest Deathworld locations” from current location, and the AI promptly informed me that none were reachable within a standard week of FTL travel at NOK* 6 speed. I relayed this information to my second, and he reciprocated with a listing of the most dangerous lifeforms on this moon. None were capable of this level of violence by orders of magnitude.
I also noted that there were many burn holes in the vegetation in this area. Obviously the discharge of the pulse rifle was futile in halting the violence that occurred even if the Inagoor had made direct hits. The updated drone orientation revealed a new element to this mystery soon after. The visor alert from the drone was not unexpected, but still caught me off guard. I opened up the video footage, and saw a scene of carnage that staggered my rational mind. Many, MANY Inagoor corpses were strewn about a small clearing in the vegetation. All of them were not merely killed but ripped apart and scattered just like the first corpse we encountered. I am not ashamed to admit that I was so visibly sickened that my second inquired as to my health and mental state. As is my command authority to do so I relayed the drones footage to him. Then I too, took a regulation dosage of Stimcalm. As is noted in the file attached I also ordered my second to share the footage from the drone to the rest, and pre-authorized them to also take a regulation dose of Stimcalm, IF they felt they needed it after reviewing the drones footage.
Upon closer examination of the footage we could see the "fin" of a craft sticking up from the other side of a nearby hill. The site of the visceral carnage was a short distance from the crafts resting position. I, and my second reviewed the footage a few more times, and weighed the pros and cons of sending the drone over the rise, and within full sight of the downed vessel. I came to the conclusion that the possible loss of a stealth drone was far less costly, and far more prudent, than the loss than a squad member, and so I authorized the reroute. What the drone showed us next was intriguing to say the least.
The drone's path was kept slow and close to the foliage line so as not to expose too much of a blur signature, but, as it came into line of sight of our objective we saw that the craft was indeed, of some strange alien design. Its structure and air frame looked almost completely undamaged. Boxy though, and clumsy in appearance it had long airfoils sticking out from its sides and a tall one sticking straight up from its reatail. An enormous alien who was twice our height and bipedal was working on some component in an opened hatch in the side of the craft, and there were other aliens assisting it. A Craxx was handing it a tool of some kind, and a Piryllek was holding some illumination device next to it so that the enormous alien could see what it was doing. A Moorkha, with its brightly colored feathers, was working with a blue-green scaled Sithys. Together, they were making preparations for a meal of some sort. A black furred Glerff suddenly stood on its hind legs and looked straight at the drone. its yellow feather-patterned antennae quivering. We had been spotted!
The aliens that we could name registered in the operational AI as the abductees from the afore mentioned recent raids on the shipping lanes, and when the Glerff alerted the others they all stopped what they were doing, and started chattering wildly at the giant, who then reached for some sort of computational device and began fiddling with it. It did not look as the giant was concerned overly, but, simply curious. The suit it was wearing was scorched in many areas, and the hide that showed through the holes in its clothing was light brown with red splotches. These were definitely wound sites on the unidentified alien. If these were the wounds suffered from the infra Red pulse rifle fire, then they likely only caused this creature some mild irritation and inconvenience. Its face was hairy, as was its head, and the left mandible, hair burned away was swollen and blistered. A pulse rifle shot to his face perhaps? There were obvious signs of it being shot all over it’s limbs and torso, and yet it was still alive and breathing? Impossible! What was this thing?
It was apparent from the drone video that this alien was over twice our height. It stood head and shoulders taller than the Moorkha, and with triple its mass. The Moorkha quieted the others, and began cooing at the giant, making a visible sign to breathe deeply and calmly while stroking the giants fore appendages and digits, as we witnessed this process via the live feed. The fur above one of its ocular organs (it had 2, side by side, and front facing.) rose a bit but it otherwise seemed to relax and looked in the direction of the drone that the Glerff was still pointing at.
Based on this evidence I chose to drop the cloak on the drone and send it slowly to the Glerff as it was the closest. When the drone was within verbal communication distance I sent my voice through the drone to introduce myself.
"I am Ak'kik. Leader of SH'azz squad. We have come to investigate, and rescue you and your fellow abductees. Do you require assistance?", I said with as much authority in my tone as I am capable of. "Most assuredly Ak'kik, though we are no longer in danger thanks to our new friend that rescued us. Although I do not believe that he did so intentionally. The pirates that abducted us attacked it as soon as it’s craft crash landed. The pirates made the mistake of shooting it. That failed to kill it, and only made it angry. When they persistently kept shooting it, it subsequently became enraged." The Glerff shuddered, but seemed to regain control of its emotions quickly.
"The pirates are no more. The pirates that attempted to flee were pursued, and exterminated. The base the pirates held us in was likewise cleansed of the pirates by our rescuer. Our rescuer is very, very fast and very, very strong. Please do NOT shoot it. You would not survive should you do so. Also, it seems to be an omnivore. PLEASE! Do not anger it. I beg you!"
I responded with calm. "Please tell it that we will be there shortly and that we have no intentions of violence. We only wish to rescue the abductees."
"I can't." The Glerff replied quickly. "None of us speak its language and it does not know ours. We have no Data AI's to link to its technology to work out language algorithms. I think the aliens technology is also damaged. It keeps having to go to its’ ships control station to check for power readings.
Communicating with it has been a challenge, though oddly pleasant. It is quite patient and amenable, when it is not killing pirates in an excessively psychotic state. As terrified as I am of this creature, I cannot help but be curious about it. I am sure you will find it to be a pleasant, and respectful entity if you approach calmly, and with no hostility."
I thought for a moment. "Please try to keep it calm and we will try to make our approach as calmly, and respectfully as possible. We will endeavor at all costs, not provoke it."
"I should think not!" said the Glerff showing some alarm. “Since the extermination of the pirates I have personally observed it lifting enormous amounts of weight without strain. Seen it consume it’s rations which looked to be a combination of vegetable, AND meat with vigor. Much of which I am confirming was poisonous using an analyzer that once belonged to the pirates. The analyzer shows that some of its’ rations would be considered lethally poisonous to every species that I know of."
He held the analyzer screen to the drone for confirmation, as he continued speaking. "I am not an expert in the field of chemistry, so I would strongly suggest you scan whatever food he offers you before you eat it. Please note that refusing his "gift" of food does not insult him. Just hand it back to him if it is inedible, and then he will eat it himself."
The alien approached the drone that the Glerff was speaking to, and then picked up a silvery pouch from the makeshift table that the Moorkha was working over. It peeled the top off, and it ate the dark brown bar in 3 bites, then nodded to the drone, and went back to it’s repairs.
"What he just ate, by the way..." The Glerff said turning back to the drone. "...the analyzer states contains some alarming chemical chains. Theobromine, Phenylethylamine which look to be nearly lethal stimulants. Massive amounts of caffeine, Taurine, and Niacin as well. Oh dear, uh. By the nesting Gods! Leader Ak'kik, What it just ate could poison a small colony just on the amount of caffeine alone. But the amount of Capsaicin he just ate is even worse, FAR worse. PLEASE, please, refrain from angering it." he was still scanning the data in astonishment. "And, er, and this is most important, your weapons would be useless against it. It is incredibly fast, and can quite literally jump across this glade in a single bound. I think it came from a very high gravity planet. Maybe even a Deathworld. I vehemently recommend caution, and I strongly feel it necessary to reiterate, do NOT anger it, or incur its’ ire! Oh, and by the way, I did use the analyzer on it, it allowed me to do so, actually. the Analyzer data shows that there is probably nothing on this moon that it cannot eat, including us."
I replied, not through the drone this time as I was close enough in my approach that I no longer needed it. "Leader Ak'kik, at your service. Whom am I addressing?"
"Ah, apologies, I am professor Roonoomoo, and this is service master EEG'lix. That one there is Vorvert, and over there is D'rrr, and Higuv is just to the left of the table, and the two who are helping our rescuer are Woosk, and Rakk'n. It is a pleasure to meet you in return Leader Ak'kik."
"So you were saying some of the items on the table surface are actual foods that it eats? This is its’ food that it brought?" I said looking at the multitude of pouches and containers on the table.
“Oh yes. We made eating motions when we were trying to establish communications with it, to ask it for food, and he brought us this trove. He opened a package for us, and offered it, but, Woosk went into near panic when he saw that it was animal meat of some sort. After that he just spread everything out, and made a motion for us to inspect it for ourselves. All of us ate what the analyzer said was safe but that was not much of a variety. It turns out that there were only 2 packages all of us could eat. We saved the empty packages to show the alien what we ate once he is finished working. So that we do not risk angering it, you understand. Woosk and Rakk'n decided to offer what assistance they could after they ate, and have been doing so since then."
"May I be introduced to the alien now? I may have some tech that could help. If you will be so kind as to bring it here to us, as I would not want to trespass on its established area of operations, and be mistaken as hostile. We are obviously carrying weapons, and us approaching it...and its ship seems a questionable choice, at best."
"Very wise, Leader Ak'kik, I will see what I can do. I won't be but a moment. “Uh, er, you might want to hold on to that”, indicating the analyzer “and use it before you decide to touch anything on this table.", he said as he handed me the analyzer.
Professor Roonoomoo went to the alien ,and gently patted the joint in the middle of its lower appendage. The alien looked at professor Roonoomoo, who was pointing at us, and trying to explain us with hand signals and gestures, that we wished an introduction. When the alien looked at us we all, as a squad, showed it out empty hands as our weapons had been placed on the ground by our sides. it simply made a wave of one of its upper appendages, as if to say, “come here”. We approached with our empty hands plainly visible. As we approached it, it knelt. Not in surrender, or in supplication, but rather to level our mutual eye line. I realized that it was making an attempt to be polite.
I SLOWLY patted a stow pouch on my utility harness, and it nodded as though it seemed to understand, and motioned me to proceed. I held out the translator AI slate, "TAIS" and it took it, and then touched it to a device it wore on the wrist of its upper arm. (note that I am assuming proper body anatomy, based off of our own, although there are few similarities.) This alien was not only one of the largest I have seen, but also must be of a quite dense mass. As in its anatomy, and not its mental state, for it shook the ground around it with every step.
After a few moments there was a "chirping" sound from his device, and our coms alerted us to a new language file available. I allowed the exchange through my visor, and we were suddenly speaking to each other. I chose to make introductions first.
"I am Ak'kik. Leader of SH'azz squad. We have come to investigate and rescue these abductees. Do you require assistance?"
It held out it's hand as it spoke. "Bartholomew Wane Hatfield. Friends call me Bart." this aliens voice boomed at us.
"I was mining the asteroid belt in this system, when I caught a rogue asteroid right in the nads. Power plant was having a conniption fit after that so I figured I better set her down where I could patch her up. flying this old girl by wire is a bitch but, we got a thing so…"
This was the literal translation we initially received. As you can imagine, we were all quite confused.
"I beg your pardon unknown alien species, but the translation unit seems to be malfunctioning. We do not quite understand all of your words, we have no equivalent in our language for some, even though we seem to be communicating."
The sides of it’s facial orifice turned upward, revealing a multi-functional set fangs. Some pointed and some chisel shaped. Making it obvious it was an omnivore. Our visor AI stated that it “perceived” it was amused. It spoke into it’s wrist device, and it chirped in response. A second later our visor registered a "receive transmission" request. I allowed it, and this is what the visor AI showed us by way of "corrected translation".
"Bartholomew Wane Hatfield. Friends call me Bart.”
[REQUEST FOR FRIENDSHIP. THE USE OF "BART' ACKNOWLEDGES AND ACCEPTS FRIEND REQUEST]
“I was mining the asteroid belt in this system when I caught a rogue asteroid, right in the nads.”
[ASTEROID DAMAGED CRAFT IN CRITICAL LOCATION]
“Power plant was having a conniption fit after that so I figured I better set her down where I could patch her up.”
[POWER PLANT OPERATING WITH INTERMITTENT FAILURES. IMMEDIATE EMERGENCY REPAIR IS REQUIRED.]
“Flying this old girl by wire is a bitch but, we got a thing so..."
[LANDED SHIP WITHOUT COMPUTER ASSISTANCE OR ASSISTED CONTROLS. I AM EMOTIONALLY ATTACHED TO SHIP.]
I replied with, "AH, thank you for the subtext. Bart. I can see that your language has a vernacular art to it. I am culturally fascinated by such a language. Polite request. What is your power plant, and what is its power source? We may be able to assist with our spare component sets. Please feel free to not detail your technology to us, if it is security bound. We will not be insulted."
The alien again showed its fangs with a deep resonating, yet pleasant, vocal repetition. [LAUGHTEAMUSED]
"It's old tech stuff, by about 20 generations or so, but it's cheap, and reliable, common knowledge, and easy to repair. It’s a paired enriched uranium atom cracker.”
[DUAL/PAIRED NUCLEAR CORE POWER GENERATOR. EXTREMELY HAZARDOUS.}
"Chasing blinking lights mostly. When the asteroid hit, the core spiked, and caused a number of shorts and jumps."
[POWER SURGE CAUSED MULTIPLE SHORTS AND POSSIBLE INTERMITTENT ARC / SHORT IN SYSTEM.]
I nodded my understanding to the alien Bart. I then asked the engineer of my squad if he would be willing to assist. Corporal Zi'Kict accepted the challenge, though it looked as though anxiety, and fear
of "Bart" might overwhelm his current Stimcalm dose. "This is Corporal Zi'Kict. He is our designated engineer, and he has agreed to assist you. You can decline with no insult incurred."
He flashes us his fangs again. [HAPPY] His species, whatever it was, seemed to be fond of showing their teeth often.
"Hell, I never turn down a helpin' hand. Grab whatever it is y'all use, and let's get to chasin’ sparks."
[ASSISTANCE IS WELCOME]
"Uh, Bart. I must ask, what are your intentions with those that we were designated to rescue? If there is good will between us I would like to ensure that we, my crew and I, be given liberty return them to their families, and respective worlds. Will this be acceptable to you?"
"You go on right ahead, bless yer’ heart."
[ACCEPTANCE OF PROPOSAL WITH WELL WISHES TO YOUR CONTINUED EXISTENCE.]
“I'll miss these 'uns. Their nice and friendly."
[FONDNESS]
"Not like those other jackhole fecktards."
[REFERING TO PIRATES. INSULT INTENDED TOWARD PIRATES AND PIRACY.
{insult "jackhole" refers to anal orifice. "Fecktards" derogatory reference to mentally damaged or deranged individuals with severely limited mental capacity that act inappropriately.}]
"I understand and concur with your insult of the pirates, and thank you for your understanding, your patience, and your friendship. With your permission I would like to redirect my ship to your encampment so our medtech device can confirm their current health. If it is not offensive, I would like to offer our medtech device to scan you as well, and determine if it is capable of repairing your injuries also. Refusal will not be considered an insult. My squad engineer will will assist you as needed, and our spare components are at your disposal. Friend Bart."
"Well bless yer heart, that would be dandy with me. Much obliged!"
[ACCEPTANCE OF PROPOSAL WITH WELL WISHES TO YOUR CONTINUED EXISTENCE. IMMENSE THANKS]
I bowed to the alien I now called friend Bart, and went to co-ordinate the rescue operation, and sent the AI to bring the ship to my location. Since my priority was the health and safety of the of the abductees I spent the majority of my remaining time with them.
The alien required only a single spool of CronWire, and a span of shielded conduit, a simple enough repair. The abductees were tended to medically, fed, and shown to their racks. We allowed the abductees to contact their loved ones through our secured communications net. The alien allowed our medtech device to repair its burns, but it was unable to regrow the lost hair on its face. Friend Bart removed the rest of the hair around its mandible orifice with a small device, saying that he had to keep the balance. The squad medic timidly requested a full scan of Friend Bart, and Friend Bart was amenable to this.
We left Friend Bart, and watched him take off from orbit a few hours later. My squad medic started pouring over the MedTech device scans of Friend Bart, and quickly went into a fit of panic, and it took a questionable dose of Stimcalm to calm him down. I admit that I glanced at the data, but I am not trained as a medic so I understood nothing. The squad engineer simply handed me a collated list of intel he gathered while working with Friend Bart. They had a lengthy converse, and the engineer had actually formed a bond with Friend Bart. The list is as follows.
Name: Bartholomew Wane Hatfield
Species: Human
Origin: city of Austin in the state of Texas in the country of the United States of the planet Terra of the Sol star system
(system is far past the outer edge of our empire on the frontier side, opposite of coreward.)
Gravity: home normal +4 (4 times greater than our own gravity!)
Planet notes: frequent earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes, tornadoes.
Planet has multiple biosphere, and terrain hazards that are lethal.
Plague level viruses, and bacteria, Multiple predators in every biosphere.
(See files freely given by Friend Bart) [FILESTORE- FriendBart01a]
NOTE: great white shark, alligator, saltwater crocodiles, king cobra, wolf, pit bulls, and other canines, polar bears, poison dart frog, hippopotamus, killer whale, rhinoceros, box jellyfish, cone snail, hyena, stone fish, black mamba, grizzly bears, puffer fish, komodo dragon, death stalker scorpion, lions, leopards, brown recluse spider, black widow spider, Brazillian wandering spider, electric eel, etc.
Please note that this list is merely a VERY small fraction of the actual list. My understanding is that the home planet of Friend Bart is at least a level 10-12 Deathworld. He also states that many of the species on this list are kept as pets by his fellow humans.
The squad engineer states he will send in a request for allowance of continued discourse with Friend Bart, but understands if this request is denied. After careful deliberation with the squad medic, we strongly recommend that the details of this mission be put to the SEC level at Black 8 tier 12 restricted, or higher, if there is a level higher than Black 8 tier 12 restricted.
Captain Ak'kik. Leader of SH'azz squad
[END OF REPORT]
mektreks*Aprox. One Terran kilometer equivalent.
NOK* Measurement of warp travel. 1NOK = speed of light

TL;DR are my new dolls being spooky or am I crazy?
(Not all dolls are pictured) I found a bunch (18 total) of Blythe dolls at a thrift store. I found 7 the first day, 2 the second, 8 the third day, and 1 the fourth day. All were bought/given in a span of 2 weeks.
I guess things started getting weird on the fourth day when I found a look-a-like doll (same outfit, hair, eyes, piercings, tattoos) but I thought it was cool (my whole look is fairly common so I just thought it was a coincidence) instead of creepy.
I put a shelf up above my bed as a place for the dolls. They’re all stable, like the ones in the back are on a sturdy doll stand, the ones in the front are sitting. It’s now been about a month since I’ve bought the first lot, and 2 weeks since I got the last doll.
May 22nd things started getting “weird”. Through the following days;
-A doll fell off the shelf and was sitting perfectly on my bed (I thought my one friend who checked on my pets moved it so I messaged her when I got back, and she said no).
-my video glitched as I was exporting (and unfortunately got uploaded like that)
-their heads were facing the door when I got back from work, when they were facing the tv (straight ahead) before.
-dream catcher started moving without breeze/ air movement
-(4) dolls moved from shelf, 2 on doll net (to the left of shelf), 1 by the window (5ft away from shelf towards tv, and 1 standing upright on floor end of bed by tv. Other dolls sitting perfectly. (I actually called the police at this point (non emergency line) cause I was scared someone was sneaking in/living in my house. The house was was cleared from basement to attic to shed to garage)
-tv, vcr, dvd, laptop stops working in bedroom
-took a picture of the dolls and there was a red-ish haze over it (will include photo maybe)
-noises (banging, floor creaking, doors moving, footsteps, whistling, knocking on the front door at night)
-saw a dolls head move in the reflection of the tv (crt tv).
-shadow thingy moving in the hallway outside my room
I brushed everything off; maybe the doll was unstable, maybe the internet cut out for a minute, maybe the heads were always facing the door and I just thought they were straight, maybe there was a draft somewhere, they could’ve fallen off and my dog rearranged them, the weathers been temperamental and it’s effecting the internet/power, iPhones just acting up, just the house settling, maybe I’m overtired.
I had my friend come over (whos into the weird paranormal stuff and likes the spooky videos on social media). I didn’t tell her anything, and let her go upstairs to see her “little man” (it’s what she calls my tortoise). She said that there’s a weird energy upstairs and somethings definitely off. What’s weird is I have every type of old spooky doll, teddy bear, and paintings. Nothing has ever felt “off”. I have these dolls that were made in 2020-2024 and all of a sudden there’s this “weird vibe”. She wanted to do this emf looking thing, a spirit box, a some sort of L shaped stick thing, which I declined cause I just don’t mess with that stuff. She then mentioned that her mom and grandma both do this sage and spice cleanse thing and thought it would be a good idea. I declined as well.
Later that night after she left, she messaged me and said her mom (indigenous shaman) would stop by at 6am to do the cleansing. Great. I don’t personally believe in any of it but if it makes my friend feel better then sure. Her mom stopped by with a bunch of herbs and whatnot, and before she even stepped into the house she said something like “he means no harm, they are his beloveds”. The cleansing went on for about 4 hours. I let the house air out for the rest of the day (she started at sunrise, about 6am). I came home around 9pm, got my pets from the neighbour, and got ready for bed. I could hear moving above my head (attic maybe?). I messaged my friend that I’m still hearing/seeing shit and she asked me to make a list of everything I’ve experienced. So I did. She asked her mom and apparently “hes” not bad so he’s just gonna chill here? Like I just want my stuff back to normal, but I also don’t wanna get rid of the dolls.
Is there anything I can do? Is this actually paranormal? Or is there someone living in my house? Am I crazy? Can a doll that was made less than a year ago be cursed or whatever? My friend wants me to get cameras but 1, I can’t afford a camera for my front door let alone my room. And 2, I don’t wanna record myself sleeping/getting dressed especially if someone can get ahold of that. That’s creepy.
Is there any advice? I really don’t know where to go at this point.

bodyshots, not to the head

Founded by royal charter in 1660, the Royal Society is the world’s oldest continuous scientific academy. It was preceded by what was known as The Invisible College, which is mentioned in German Rosicrucian papers from the 17th century. A blueprint for the Royal Society was laid out in Sir Francis Bacon’s fictional House of Solomon. In 1710, it set up shop at Crane Court on Fleet Street in the City of London. It has since relocated to Carlton House Terrace in Westminster.
Its branches include the Royal Society of Chemistry, Royal Society of Medicine, Royal Society of Arts, Royal Society of Biology, Royal Academy, Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, Royal Aeronautical Society, Royal Anthropological Institute, Royal Astronomical Society, Royal Economic Society, Royal Historical Society, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, Royal Entomological Society, Royal Geographical Society, Royal Society of Literature, Royal Horticultural Society, Royal Meteorological Society, Royal Statistical Society, Royal African Society, and Royal Asiatic Society.
This is only a partial list and there are many others spread throughout the Commonwealth. As you can see, the seven sacred sciences are all covered here. Probably the most powerful of these is the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), also known as Chatham House. Founded in 1920, its stated mission is to provide commentary on world events and offer solutions to global challenges.
In fact, it is the driving force when it comes to the foreign policy of the UK and its Commonwealth underlings. Its US affiliate is the Council on Foreign Relations, which serves the same role in shaping US foreign policy. Other national affiliates do the same – including the Australian Institute of International Affairs, Canadian International Council, German Council on Foreign Relations, Netherlands Institute of International Relations, Pakistan Institute of International Affairs, and the Singapore Institute of International Affairs.
The current obsession at Chatham House is support for arming Ukraine in the war against Russia. Prior to that, it was instrumental in shaping Covid-19 lockdown policies and vaccination mandates around the world. It works closely with the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the world’s oldest defence and security think tank, founded in 1831 by Duke of Wellington Sir Arthur Wellesley, who descended from the old Venetian banker Welser clan. The current president of RUSI is Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, who openly backed Adolf Hitler.
While RIIA and RUSI shape and defend the imperialist policies of Britain and its allies, the Royal Geographic Society (RGS) is there to bolster those policies through its Malthusian views on human nature. Founded just one year before RUSI in 1830, RGSs mission was to keep tabs on the colonies and to absorb the Palestine Association, African Association, and Raleigh Club into its ranks. King William IV was the original patron, while the current royal patron is Princess Anne. In 1859, Queen Victoria granted it a royal charter.
RGS funded the expeditions of Charles Darwin, David Livingstone, Sir Edmund Hillary, and many other colonial explorers. Its mouthpiece magazines include Geographical and National Geographic. Within these pages, the reader often finds nature portrayed as a brutish place where competition and fighting are a constant theme.
RSG popularized the notion of survival of the fittest, skewing the central findings of Darwin’s travels, which were – if a species was to survive, there must be extensive cooperation within that species, rather than competition. This junk science is often employed to defend Crown capitalism, which is ostensibly more “fit” than the countries they pilfer cheap labour and resources from.
I grew up on a farm. I hunted, fished, and trapped. Later, I did extensive back-country hiking in grizzly bear habitat in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. I’ve travelled to fifty countries and encountered wild animals in many of them, including a self-guided safari in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. For most of my life I have lived in remote areas teeming with wildlife.
My scientific observation through it all is how little competition and fighting there is in both wild and domesticated animals. What I have seen is extensive cooperation, within species as well as across species. But this truism does nothing to defend the Crown’s bad behaviour, so the many scientists who have come to the same conclusion will receive no funding from the Royal Geographic Society.
It would have been easy in 18th-century London, having come through the Black Death and now in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, to view life as difficult and “brutish”. Persians and Arabs traveling to the UK were appalled at the squalor they found. But this was not the original human condition, rather a result of living under a greedy and acquisitive monarchy, which always required an underclass to maintain its lavish lifestyle.
Agriculture had disrupted the natural relationships that mankind held dear for hundreds of thousands of years. Now the Industrial Revolution in Britain would take humans even further from these bonds, as farmers were lured into the cities with the promise of better paying factory jobs.
ROYAL BLOODLINE WETIKO & THE GREAT REMEMBERING
In his seventh book, Dean Henderson tracks the royal Anunnaki bloodline from Sumeria through Babylon, Egypt, and Rome to their current power base in the City of London and deconstructs their methodology to keep humans enslaved and isolated during this relatively brief period of human history. Drawing upon ancient Lakota culture to remind us who we are, Henderson sees a great remembering unfolding which makes this royal bloodline very nervous.

Hey, thanks for looking. I’m going to try to sell some stuff.
I'm definitely open to questions and feedback.
The prices here include shipping. I'm open to offers, especially on bundles. I can bring some of these down quite a bit, especially the lowest value items, if I'm able to ship them together.
These will ship USPS Ground Advantage unless it’s cheaper to do Priority. Anything sold will be boxed safely, but I’m going to reuse supplies so something might show up in a box with branding or wear.
I’m only taking Paypal. F&F is preferred, but I’m up for G&S.
Here’s a timestamp: https://imgur.com/a/timestamp-5-27-24-tpBkBqv
Let me know if you have any questions.

Super Nintendo

• Ghoul Patrol Limited Run Sealed - $45 – This is unopened, but the box is a little warped. - https://imgur.com/a/TQZWjNj

GameCube

• Pokemon Colosseum MANUAL ONLY - $35 - The manual has heavy wear. There are some tears and marks. - https://imgur.com/a/EHRFuNT

Wii

• Disney Think Fast - $7 - This is the game, case, and manual. It works fine and the disc has some light scratches. - https://imgur.com/a/3MPZZE9

DS

• Resident Evil Deadly Silence loose - $45 - This cart played fine, but it took a couple of seconds for my 3DS to find, so the contacts might need to be cleaned. There's a notable stain on the label and the serial number stamp on the back is extremely faint. I was unable to see the stamp in most lighting. - https://imgur.com/a/tVNB22v
• 18 DS and 3DS manuals - 1-9 for $6, all for $11 - These are in good condition, but there are some marks and bends. America's Greatest Kitchen, Ghostbusters the Video Game, Imagine Master Chef, Jake Power Fireman, Mahjongg Mysteries, Mystery Case Files Millionheir, Mystery P.I. Portrait of a Thief, My Word Coach, Petz Dogz 2, The Naked Brothers Band The Video Game, Pictochat, Pogo Island, TouchMaster, WordJong Yard Sale Hidden Treasures Sunnyville, Nintendo DS Health and Safety Precautions Booklet, Asphalt 3D 3DS, Madden Football 3DS - https://imgur.com/a/09go5MX

Switch

• The Bridge Curse Road to Salvation sealed - $45 - This is a multilanguage import. - https://imgur.com/a/bridge-curse-road-to-salvation-switch-lMgHIKV
• Cardfight Vanguard EX Sealed - $20 - I believe that all releases of this game are Japanese language with English incorporated into the gameplay, but I'm fairly certain this game doesn't have a English language option. - https://imgur.com/a/CIciUj3
• Embers of Mirrim Sealed - $35 - https://imgur.com/a/vag9et7
• Fran Bow Sealed - $110 - https://imgur.com/a/m0JzD7d
• Gimmick Special Edition sealed - - - https://imgur.com/a/3HXwvQj

Dreamcast

• F1 World Grand Prix loose - $12 - I played this a bit, but it has heavy scratches and could use resurfacing. - https://imgur.com/a/web-browser-web-browser-2-0-f1-world-grand-prix-sega-gt-dreamcast-qwNgKg9
• Sega GT loose - $12 - I played this a bit, but it has heavy scratches and could use resurfacing. - https://imgur.com/a/web-browser-web-browser-2-0-f1-world-grand-prix-sega-gt-dreamcast-qwNgKg9
• Sidney 2000 Olympics loose - $12 - Played, but heavy scratches. - https://imgur.com/a/IpVrFnS
• Tee Off loose - $12 - Played, but heavy scratches. - https://imgur.com/a/IpVrFnS
• TNN Motorsports Hardcore Heat loose - $12 - Played, but heavy scratches. Stickers and stamps on the disc. - https://imgur.com/a/IpVrFnS
• web browser loose - $12 - This loaded, but it has heavy scratches and could use a resurface. - https://imgur.com/a/web-browser-web-browser-2-0-f1-world-grand-prix-sega-gt-dreamcast-qwNgKg9
• Web Browser 2.0 loose - $12 - This loaded, but it has heavy scratches and could use a resurface. - https://imgur.com/a/web-browser-web-browser-2-0-f1-world-grand-prix-sega-gt-dreamcast-qwNgKg9

PlayStation 2

• ATV Offroad Fury loose - $10 - I played this a bit, but it has heavy scratches and could use a resurface. - https://imgur.com/a/fZC31jR
• ATV Offroad Fury 2 - $10 - I played this a bit, but it has heavy scratches and could use a resurface. - https://imgur.com/a/aek5HFQ
• Cabela's Big Game Hunter loose - $10 - I played this a bit, but it has heavy scratches and could use a resurface. - https://imgur.com/a/fZC31jR
• Cabela's Dangerous Hunts loose - $10 - I played this a bit, but it has heavy scratches and could use a resurface. - https://imgur.com/a/fZC31jR
• Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 2 loose - $10 - I played this a bit, but it has heavy scratches and could use a resurface. - https://imgur.com/a/PWTpSaP
• Cabela's Outdoor Adventures loose - $10 - I played this a bit, but it has heavy scratches and could use a resurface. - https://imgur.com/a/PWTpSaP
• Call of Duty Finest Hour loose - $10 - I played this a bit, but it has heavy scratches and could use a resurface. - https://imgur.com/a/PWTpSaP
• Cars - $10 - I played this a bit, but it has heavy scratches and could use a resurface. - https://imgur.com/a/cars-ps2-VboRJee
• Cars damaged - $8 - This played for me, but it's not in good condition. The label is water damaged and the disc's grip has pieces broken off. Someone could do something with this if they were to put a protector on the grip and resurface it to clean it up (works, but pretty ugly). I would add this to a group only taking account of its weight if asked. - https://imgur.com/a/cars-ps2-damaged-5lS2AXw
• ESPN College Hoops 2K5 loose - $10 - I played this a bit, but it has heavy scratches and could use a resurface. - https://imgur.com/a/DeqF2Ed
• ESPN NFL 2K5 - $10 - I played this a bit, but it has heavy scratches and could use a resurface. - https://imgur.com/a/DeqF2Ed
• Final Fantasy X - $12 - Game, case, manual. The disc is scratched and there's some wear to the materials, but it didn't give me a problem when I tested it. - https://imgur.com/a/2JrXsUn
• Final Fantasy X-2 - $12 - Game, case, manual. The disc is scratched and there's some wear to the materials, but it didn't give me a problem when I tested it. - https://imgur.com/a/2JrXsUn
• Final Fantasy XI Chains of Promathia - $12 - Game, manual, case. There's some light scratches on the disc and some wear on the case and label. This is an expansion for a discontinued MMO, so it doesn't have the use it once did. - https://imgur.com/a/7IvyMRy
• Formula One 2001 - $10 - Game and case. Tested fine, disc has some scratches. - https://imgur.com/a/PKtmMad
• IHRA Professional Drag Racing - $11 - Game, manual, case. The game played well, but the disc is scratched and there's a fair amount of wear on the other materials. - https://imgur.com/a/NEJPm5v
• Jak 2 loose - $10 - The disc is pretty scratched, but it played fine. I would probably resurface it if I was going to keep it. - https://imgur.com/a/ZoyFMd6
• Medal of Honor European Assault loose - $10 - Disc tested fine, is scratched. - https://imgur.com/a/DeqF2Ed
• Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater loose - $10 - Disc tested fine, is scratched. - https://imgur.com/a/ZcjBTyv
• Need for Speed Carbon loose - $10 - Disc tested fine, is scratched. - https://imgur.com/a/bI32gla
• Need for Speed Underground loose - $10 - Disc tested fine, is scratched. - https://imgur.com/a/bI32gla
• World Championship Poker loose - $10 - Disc tested fine, is scratched. - https://imgur.com/a/bI32gla
• World series Poker Tournament of Champions loose - $10 - Disc tested fine, is scratched. - https://imgur.com/a/bI32gla
• AV Cable - $10 - This works fine. I think it's off brand. - https://imgur.com/a/pX20nRn

PlayStation 3

• Need for Speed Rivals - $10 - Disc and case. Disc looks great, plays fine. Some surface wear on case. - https://imgur.com/a/need-speed-rivals-ps3-1uKPBLD
• Resistance 2 - $10 - Disc and case. Disc looks great, plays fine. Some surface wear on case. - https://imgur.com/a/resistance-2-ps3-pTh14dI

PlayStation 4

• Dark Thrones / Witch Hunter Double Pack - $10 - Disc is like new. The case has a store sticker on it. - https://imgur.com/a/DwpZfcP
• The Missing JJ Macfield and the Island of Memories sealed - $60 - https://imgur.com/a/A2MjGhI
• Stray sealed - $20 - https://imgur.com/a/ayIBBbk

PlayStation 5

• Gigabash sealed - $50 - https://imgur.com/a/aN2jJq2
• Like a Dragon Gaiden The Man Who Erased His Name sealed - $50 - This is a multilanguage import. - https://imgur.com/a/814lpeS
• River City Girls 2 sealed - $40 - This is a multilanguage import. - https://imgur.com/a/p49SuAm

Xbox

• Armed and Dangerous - $15 - Game, case, label. The disc has several scratches. I was able to play this, but my Xbox's laser is failing so it took a few tries (as it does with everything I put in it). - https://imgur.com/a/armed-dangerous-xbox-zy4PoHn
• Zathura - $15 - Game, case, label. The disc has light circular scratches. I was able to play this, but my Xbox's laser is failing so it took a few tries (as it does with everything I put in it). - https://imgur.com/a/YCC1lv6

Xbox 360

• Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham - $10 - Game, case, manual. There are scratches on the disc and some wear to the case and label. - https://imgur.com/a/doR6dyB
• Medal of Honor Limited Edition - $10 - Game, case, manual. Light scratches on disc, light wear on materials. - https://imgur.com/a/tTyScLf
• Resident Evil 5 - $10 - Game and manual. Disc is scratched, some wear on the case. - https://imgur.com/a/kWI7GF5

PC

• Clifford The Big Red Dog Thinking Adventures MANUAL ONLY - $7 - This could be put into the DS manual group. - https://imgur.com/a/clifford-thinking-adventures-pc-32pts0G
• Hoyle Card Games - $14 - For Win XP/Vista/7, Macintosh OS X 10.411-10.6, may not work on anything else. Light scratches on disc and some surface wear on sleeve edges. - https://imgur.com/a/hoyle-card-games-pc-5-24-24-uaODbUl
• I Spy Spooky Mansion Deluxe - $14 - Disc looks good, some scratches on the jewel case. For Win 95/98/2000/ME/XP and Macintosh OS X 10.1.2, may not work on anything else. - https://imgur.com/a/i-spy-spooky-mansion-deluxe-5-24-24-vNSJ26R
• Lemmings - $12 - This is a 90s CD-ROM for DOS. I played it with DOSBox, but it wouldn't do anything on a modern OS. Both disc and case have scratches. - https://imgur.com/a/lemmings-dos-fGs6gSs
• Seven Kingdoms The Fryhtan Wars - $10 - This is for Windows 95/98 and may not work on anything else. Disc has some scratches. - https://imgur.com/a/tMYdwPs
• Star Wars Jedi Knight Academy - $10 - This is for Windows 98/ME/2000/XP. It may not work on anything else. - https://imgur.com/a/tA2GsoC
• Warlords Battlecry II - $10 - This is for Windows Windows 95/98 and it may not work on anything else. - https://imgur.com/a/o0eg3Pi
• Zoo Tycoon Complete Edition - $31 - Game plays fine. I booted it up and fed some visitors to a grizzly bear. Several light scratches, wear on sleeve's edges, bits of old tape on sleeve. Plays on my modern OS, but it's meant for Win 98/2000/ME/XP and may not play on something else. - https://imgur.com/a/zoo-tycoon-complete-collection-5-24-24-mbFy9Yo

Soundtrack

• Castlevania Symphony of the Night OST CD sealed - $40 - https://imgur.com/a/nlX1me2

What would the bear’s reaction be? Curious to know the reactions for a black bear, grizzly bear, and polar bear

When i first started playing, there were creatures that affected the game, creatures that had keywords, and creatures that were vanilla.... Everything is pushing towards a rube Goldberg style deck, while i do enjoy my interesing interactions, what ever happened to a 3 drop 1/5 armored crab or a 2 drop 2/2 grizzly bears, does EVERYTHING have to do something now, adding time or different ruels / interactions .... Idk, im not saying that it not fun to shoot for an epic win.... So am i alone in missing these type of creatures?

I am a hobbyist/enthusiast and can’t shell out money for L lenses. Here’s what I own:

• Canon R7
• Canon RF 100-400mm
• Sigma 150-600mm Contemporary (use with RF/EF adapter.) I used this with my previous DSLR, the Rebel T7.

After using the 100-400mm for a while, I don’t really love the Sigma anymore (it seems soooo heavy now and autofocus not as fast), so I was considering trading it for something else for reach beyond what the 100-400mm can do. I live in Montana, USA and will need to shoot from very far away to safely get grizzly bears, wolves, moose, bison, etc. I mostly shoot handheld. Should I get:
A) Canon RF 800mm f11 B) Canon RF 1.4x teleconverter for my 100-400mm C) Canon RF 2x teleconverter for my 100-400mm D) Just keep my Sigma and tweak my settings and work on technique. I do have the Sigma USB dock and changed settings per the advice of YouTuber Duade Paton already but still have some trouble. It very well could be operator error, so I am willing to just practice more if that's all I need to do. E) Something else I haven’t thought of? My budget is less than $1K USD.
Thanks in advance!

African Bullfrog, Chum Bucket of Dead Fish, Billy Goat, Blue Parakeet, Wolf Spider, Warthog, Indian Rhino, Spanish Fighting Bull, Large White Pig, Comet Goldfish, Black-Footed Ferret, Mute Swan, Common Chameleon, African Elephant, Mandrill, Edible Oyster, North American Raccoon, Killer Whale, Tuskfish, Blue Jay, Chan's Megastick, Slender Loris, Canadian Beaver, Atlantic Grouper, Bornean Orangutan, Tanzanian Cheetah, Thomson's Gazelle, Great Horned Owl, Reindeer, Striped Skunk, Wolverine, Red-Billed Oxpecker, Beef Tapeworm, Addax, Fire Ant, Giant Anteater, Western Lowland Gorilla, Nine-Banded Armadillo, European Badger, Giant Panda, Basking Shark, Sea Bass, Vampire Bat, Grizzly Bear, Arctic Fox, Betta Fish, Binturong, Caecilian, Giant Squid, Dromedary Camel, White-Headed Capuchin Monkey, Capybara, Asian Carp, Domestic Chicken, Rainbow Trout, Coyote, Common Cuttlefish, Red Deer, Dingo, Domestic Donkey, Bottlenosed Dolphin, Domestic Duck, Cattle Egret, Greater Flamingo, Flounder, Red Fox, Marsh Frog, Masai Giraffe, Red-Tailed Hawk, Hermit Crab, Nile Hippopotamus, Domestic Horse, Spotted Hyena, Red Kangaroo, North Island Brown Kiwi, Koala, Domestic Sheep, Medicinal Leech, Ring-Tailed Lemur, African Lion, Llama, Manatee, Praying Mantis, Scarlet Macaw, Meerkat, Striped Surgeonfish, Komodo Dragon, Geoffroy's Spidermonkey, Alaskan Moose, Gypsy Moth, Musk Ox, Narwhal, Atlantic Needlefish, Common Octopus, Ostrich, Holstein Cow, Black Panther, Military Macaw, Hyacinth Macaw, Indian Peacock, White Pelican, Chinstrap Penguin, Tokay Gecko, Red-Bellied Piranha, Platypus, Polar Bear, Shetland Pony, African Crested Porcupine, Porcupinefish, Green Tree Python, Bighorn Sheep, Brown Rat, White Rhino, Sumatran Rhino, Common Seahorse, Harbor Seal, Sea Lion, Bull Shark, Brown-Throated Sloth, Garden Snail, Eastern Gray Squirrel, Sugar Glider, Malayan Tapir, South China Tiger, Keel-Billed Toucan, Wild Turkey, Indian Vulture, Walrus, Sperm Whale, Grey Wolf, Wombat, Domestic Yak, Plains Zebra, Secretary Bird, English Bulldog, Common Chimpanzee, English Greyhound, Indian Mongoose, Aye-aye, Harp Seal, Rattlesnake, Emperor Tamarin, Cthulhu, Central Indian White Tiger, Common Crow Bird, Edible Crab, Red-Crowned Crane, Nile Crocodile, Atlantic Herring, Kissing Gourami, Bandicoot, Harpy Eagle, House Cricket, Wolf Eel, Australian Tree Frog, Hedgehog, Green Iguana, Atlantic Mackerel, Mole, House Mouse, Nighthawk, Virginia Opossum, North American River Otter, Pegasus, Sardine, Sasquatch, Dwarf Lanternshark, Pilot Whale, Yautja, & Bushdog.

The area where we were heading in Eastern Europe was known for its radioactivity. We had received reports of strange animals, things that looked like they were hatched from a mad scientist’s laboratory. I didn’t know how much of it I believed, because some of the descriptions the survivors gave sounded more like wendigo and dogmen than any real animal. I figured that, in the heat of the moment and under attack, their minds had likely twisted the true form of the animals, horrifying as they were, into something truly nightmarish.
There were three of us heading into the dark Eastern European forests: my friend Dmitri, who was originally from the country and knew the language, his girlfriend Anna and myself. Everything seemed mundane enough as we flew into the country and handed over our passports. There was no sign of the horrors waiting ahead.
The first towns we encountered looked idyllic enough as we drove through them in a rental car. Isolated farmhouses with cows and chickens dotted the landscape. Plentiful fields of wheat, potatoes and corn stretched out on all sides of us. The black earth here was fertile, I knew. As we headed deeper into the radiation zone, however, the houses and farms all started to look abandoned and dilapidated, the fields barren and dead.
“Christ on a cracker,” I muttered, more to myself than to my friends, “this place looks like it suffered through the Apocalypse.”
“It did,” Dmitri said grimly. “A nuclear apocalypse. I feel like the Biblical one is far more optimistic than the true apocalypse will be. In reality, there will be no Rapture, no victory of light over darkness. If there is ever a World War 3, every major city will be consumed by nuclear fire. It will throw buses and cars thousands of feet into the air, spilling out bodies onto the burning skies. Entire streets will collapse, trapping countless millions under the rubble.”
“That’s a cheerful thought,” Anna commented, her dark blue eyes staring out the window. I saw the reflection of white eyes skittering through the brush outside, small animals that disappeared in front of the approaching roar of the engine.
“How far is it?” I asked, feeling carsick and anxious. The winding roads here curved through countless hills. It reminded me of driving through parts of Northern California before, when I had retched out the window. Anna and Dmitri seemed unaffected, though. I cursed my stomach, which was always turning traitorous towards me.
“It’s a while, man,” Dmitri said. “This country is huge. Probably another three or four hour drive. And then we have to start walking.”
“Good thing we left before dawn,” Anna said, stifling a yawn. She had a can of some cheap Russian Red Bull knock-off, some fluorescent green crap that smelled like chemicals. But she drank it as if it were the finest French wine. I gazed out at the dark forests that passed us on both sides, wondering what kind of sights lay ahead in this land of the damned.
***
The Sun rose early over the gently rolling hills and black earth of Ukraine, sending its rusty streaks of blood across the sky. The going had been easy so far, except for the constant car sickness I felt. I took a few pills of meclizine, wishing that I could have smuggled some weed gummies through customs. But here, cannabis was illegal, and I was not eager to see the inside of an Eastern European prison, where lunatics like the Three Guys One Hammer maniacs and the Chessboard Killer lived in hellish conditions.
“Holy shit, would you look at that?” Dmitri said with awe and wonder oozing from his voice as the car braked abruptly. I looked up quickly, my stomach doing flips. But what I saw laying across the road instantly brought me back to the moment. Dmitri pointed a tattooed hand at the sight.
“Is that real?” Anna asked. I could only shake my head as we all stared at the dead bear that was laying across the cracked road, its dead eyes staring straight through us.
I noticed immediately that the bear had extra paws on its arms. Blood-stained claws jutted sharply out of its four paws, each seeming to have seven fingers. Its feet looked stunted and twisted, like the roots of a tree. An extra arm stuck out of the front of its chest, a pale, white fleshy growth emerging from its sternum. The mutated limb looked malformed and boneless, causing a sense of revulsion to rise up as I gazed on it. It flopped gently in the heavy wind that swirled down the surrounding hills.
“Well, I guess the rumors are true,” Dmitri said slowly, his eyes as wide and excited as a child. “Can you imagine what other kinds of things must be lurking in these forests? This is going to make a really awesome documentary.” Anna nodded, playing with a small, hand-held digital camera she took everywhere with her. She wanted to make a video that would finally go viral on the internet and help her gain some recognition for her work.
“I’m going to record everything, including this,” she said excitedly, brushing a lock of blonde hair behind her ear as she opened the door of the car. Dawn had risen overhead, radiating the first warm rays of a bright summer day. After a long moment, I followed her out. Dmitri stood at her side, his dark eyes wide. He ran a trembling hand over his shaved head as he looked down at the enormous bear.
Anna zoomed in with the camera, kneeling down before the still beast. Her finely-formed fingers shook with excitement as she drew within inches of the corpse. I wondered how the bear had died, as I didn’t see any signs of injuries on the creature’s body. The next moment, I saw it blink.
I backpedaled away, giving a hoarse, guttural shout of warning. Anna was busy staring at the screen of the digital camera, scanning it across the bear’s extra fingers and limbs. But the panic that swept over Dmitri’s face showed me that he, too, had seen it. He grabbed Anna’s arm, dragging her back with sudden fury. She stumbled, her legs crossing under her. She crashed into him and they fell back together. A moment later, the bear came to life, its bones cracking as it twisted its head to look at the three of us.
It swiped a mutated paw at the place where Anna’s face had been only a moment before. I heard the sharp claws slice through the air like switchblades. The bear’s head ratcheted over to glare at us. It gnashed its teeth as silver streams of saliva flew from its shaking head. With a primal roar, it leapt off the ground. I turned to run back to the safety of the car, but I nearly tripped when a pale figure streaked out of the forest right in front of me.
It looked like something conjured up in a nightmare. It was naked and bloated, its skin white with bulging, pink cheeks. It looked to have a combination of human and pig features, and yet it ran upright like a person. Its irises were blood-red, its pupils huge and excited. Its beady eyes flicked over to Anna and a low, satisfied growl erupted from its wide throat. I watched the muscles work furiously in its porcine body as it sprinted towards her.
Before either Dmitri or I could react, the pig-thing grabbed Anna around the neck, its sharp, black fingers digging deeply into her skin. She squealed like a strangled rabbit as it dragged her away into the dark Ukrainian forests. Its pink lips pulled back in an excited grimace, revealing the sharp fangs underneath. I heard its guttural growls fade away rapidly. It sprinted much faster than a person, its hooves slamming the ground over and over at a superhuman speed.
“Hey!” Dmitri called excitedly, taking a step forward. “What do you…” A giant bear paw with too many gleaming claws smacked his leg out from under him, sending him flying. I only stood there, shell-shocked and amazed, as Anna disappeared into the trees.
A single moment later, the bear rose to its full height, roaring at us. Streams of spit flew from its mouth as its rancid breath washed over us, breath that emanated a smell like roadkill and infection. I put my hands up, flinching, expecting a blow that never came. When I looked up, the bear had gone back on all fours. It ran in the path the pig-creature had gone, its white, boneless extra limb hanging limply from its chest.
“What the fuck!” Dmitri cried on the ground, rocking back and forth. I came back to life, running over to his side. I saw deep gouge marks sliced through his blue jeans. Bright streams of blood lazily dripped from the claw marks on his left leg.
“We need to get help,” I cried, shaking him. His eyes looked faraway and confused, as if he didn’t fully realize what was happening. “We need to go back and get the police.”
“The police?” he asked, laughing. “The police here won’t do anything. You think they’re going to travel out into the radioactivity zone just for a missing person?” He shook his head grimly before reaching out a hand to me. “Help me up. There’s a first aid kit in the car. We need to bandage this up. Then we’re going after Anna.”
***
We had no way to call for help. The phones this far out in Chernobyl didn’t work, and there were never any cell phone towers built in the silent land. After Dmitri had disinfected and bandaged his legs, he rummaged through the trunk, looking for weapons.
“God damn, there’s nothing good here,” he said despondently. “Some bear mace, some knives… what good is any of that going to do against these mutated monsters? We need an AK-47.” I nodded in agreement.
“Too bad we’re not in the US,” I said. “The only guns you’re going to get around here are the ones you take off the bodies of Russian soldiers.”
“Yeah, if only,” he muttered sadly, handing me a large folding knife. “We have one canister of bear mace, three knives and a tire iron. Not exactly an arsenal.” I really didn’t want to go into those dark woods, but thinking of Anna being tortured or murdered made me feel sick and weak. I shook my head, mentally torn.
“Here, take the bear mace, too. I’ll take the tire iron and a knife,” he continued, forcing the black canister into my numb fingers. “You ready for this?”
“Absolutely not,” I said. “I think we should try to find help. If we both go out there and get slaughtered, no one will ever find Anna.”
“The nearest town is two hours west of here,” he responded icily. “By the time we get help, her trail will have gone cold. It will take at least five or six hours to get any rescue out here. No, we need to do this, and we need to do it now. If you don’t want to come…”
“I’ll come,” I said grimly, my heart pounding. “Fuck it.”
***
Dmitri had a sad history. As a child living in Ukraine, he had been kidnapped by an insane neighbor and kept in a dirt pit outside for weeks, wallowing in his own piss and shit, slowly starving. He said the man would throw down a stale crust of bread or a rice cake into the mud and human waste every few days. Dmitri would pull the food out, wipe off the feces and eat it. I shuddered, remembering the horror stories he had told me. I knew he had a personal reason for making sure Anna was not subjected to the same endless suffering, even if it meant his own death.
The bear and the pig-creature had left a clear trail of broken brush and snapped twigs snaking through the forest. Side by side, we moved cautiously ahead, constantly checking our backs. But we saw no signs of movement and heard nothing. Up ahead, the trees abruptly opened up, letting golden sunlight stream down. Blinking quickly, we left the forest behind.
We walked out into a field in the middle of a valley surrounded by tall, dark hills. Grass and weeds rippled in waves as the wind swept past us.
Formed in a semi-circle in front of us, human skeletons lay endlessly dreaming. They stared up into the vast blue sky with grinning skulls and empty sockets. Some still had putrefying strips of flesh and ligaments clinging to the bones. Animals had scattered some of the bodies, but others lay complete, like corpses in a tomb. Human skulls, leg bones and arm bones lay scattered haphazardly across the field, their surfaces yellowed and cracked with age. It looked like a bone orchard.
“What are we looking at right now?” I whispered, furtively glancing around at the field of bones. An insane part of my mind wondered if they might rise from the dead and come after us. Compared to what we had already seen in this place of nightmares, it didn’t seem that far-fetched.
“Dead bodies,” Dmitri said grimly.
“Victims of the nuclear accident?” I asked. He shook his head, pointing at some of the fresher corpses nearby. Their throats looked like they had been ripped out, the bones of their necks showing deep bite marks. The one nearest us had its skeletal fingers wrapped around a glass bottle with a piece of paper rolled inside and a cork inserted into the top.
I knelt down, prying the fingers back with soft, cracking noises. I uncorked it and took out the paper. It felt thick in my hands, like some kind of hand-crafted paper from the old days. The cursive flowing across the sheet looked like it had been written in a quill pen with actual ink. In confusion, I read the letter aloud:
“Rules to survive in the Helskin Nature Preserve:
“1. The cult known as the Golden Butchers has been kidnapping women to breed them with the pig-creatures. They worship the offspring that result from these unions as gods. If a member of your group gets taken, you will find them in the living farm at the end of the forest.
“2. If you encounter Mr. Welcome, the enormous pig god with the eyes on his forehead, you must not let him touch you.
“3. The red snakes can only see while you’re moving. If you encounter them, stay still. Don’t even breathe.”
“Breeding women with pig-creatures?!” Dmitri cried, horror washing over his face. “We need to find her! But where do we even start?” I looked through the field, trying to see any sign of tracks, but it looked like hundreds of animals had gone through this field recently. Paths of tall, crushed grass crisscrossed the enormous length of it, some of them worn down to black dirt and stones. I just shook my head, having no idea.
A distant scream rolled its way down the surrounding hills. It came from our left and sounded very much like Anna. Dmitri’s eyes turned cold. Without looking back at me, he started frantically running towards the sound. It faded away within seconds.
“Wait up!” I cried, sprinting as fast as I could. His freshly-shaved head gleamed as he disappeared into the trees. Gripping the open buck knife in my hand, my knuckles white with tension and fear, I followed after him.
***
We wandered for hours through the woods, never hearing a second scream to guide our path. We both hoped that we were going in the right direction. A small deer trail winding through the brush opened up, heading up rocky hills and clear streams of water.
Sweating and nervous, we traveled for miles and miles, rarely talking. A few times, I tried to get Dmitri to slow down.
“How do you know you’re going in the right direction?” I asked. “We’ve been walking this trail for five hours and haven’t seen a thing.”
“This was the direction the scream came from,” he said weakly. “Where else would they go? They would want to travel quickly with a hostage. They would take a trail.” I didn’t point out that there may be other trails, that we had absolutely no idea where we were going.
As we reached the peak of a mountain, I pulled a small, portable Geiger counter we had taken along for the trip. The radioactivity here was high, much higher than normal background radiation. I didn’t know how far we were from the nuclear power plant at the center of all this, but at a certain point, it would become too dangerous to keep moving forward.
Dmitri was next to me, chugging a bottle of water when a shriek rang out below us. It sounded almost animalistic but had a strange, electronic distortion. Amplified to an ear-splitting cacophony, it echoed through the trees. Much quieter roars answered from the forests all around us in response, the cries of bears and other predators. These sounded much closer, however.
“Pssst,” a pile of thick ferns said to my left, shaking suddenly. In Ukrainian, the ferns continued by whispering, “Hey, you!” I jumped, swinging the knife in the direction of the brush, watching the blade shake wildly in my hand as fresh waves of adrenaline surged through my body. Dmitri was by my side, his eyes wide and wild. He glanced over at me, nodding. He had the tire iron raised like a tennis racket, ready to strike. A moment later, a little boy crawled out.
He was scarecrow thin, his face smudged with dirt and filth, his dark eyes sunken and lifeless deep inside his small head. He had black hair and a nose like a little twisted lump in the center of his face. It seemed like it had been repeatedly broken. He didn’t look older than ten, but he looked so emaciated that it was impossible to say. The rags and tatters he wore barely covered his body, and the boy was almost in his Genesis suit.
“Come out,” I said grimly. Dmitri’s eyes bulged from his head.
“Don’t kill me, please,” the boy whispered in a cracked, choked voice, his accent giving all his words a guttural tone. “Take me out of here. My Mom and Dad brought me here, they were part of the Golden Butchers, but a couple months ago, they got sick and died from all the poison in the water and food.”
“Who are you, kid?” Dmitri said, reaching down and pulling him up to his feet. I watched the boy closely, the bear mace in one hand and the knife in the other, looking for any sign of sudden violence or betrayal.
“My name is Pilip. I come from the farm,” he said, pointing vaguely towards the tallest peak in the area. “You can’t see it from here, but it’s over there.” Dmitri kneeled down until he was eye-to-eye with Pilip.
“Can you take us there?” he said. Pilip’s eyes teared up, but he slowly nodded.
“If you will take me with you when you leave, I’ll show you,” he said, crying now, “but it is a horrible place. It is the place of Mr. Welcome.”
***
Pilip guided us to the living farm, saving us a great deal of time. He navigated the forest like an experienced hiker, seeming to know the entire area from the smallest clues: a split, fallen tree, or a tree with a whorl like an eye, or a sudden curve in a babbling brook. It saved us a great deal of time wandering through the woods, where everything looked exactly the same to me.
“There,” he said, pointing through a break in the trees to the farm. The entire top of the hill was cleared of trees and brush. In its place stood a nightmare.
The farm was the closest place to Hell I have ever seen. The top of the living building peeked over the tall trees surrounding it. It had something like a bell tower on the top of it, almost like a church might have. But instead of a bell, it had an enormous, blood-shot eye.
The eye had an iris as red as a dismembered heart. Its pupil was dilated and insane. From here, the eye looked to be about the size of a church bell and had no eyelids. Strange white filaments like those of a slime mold surrounded it, trailing down into the building. I wondered if this was the optic nerve for the great, staring eye.
The rest of the building was as black as eternity, windowless and imposing. It had a brutalist architecture, all sharp angles and steep slopes. I watched the building and the eye closely. To my horror, I realized that the entire thing was alive somehow. The eye constantly spun in its place, staring out over the surrounding hills like the Eye of Sauron. The building constantly breathed.
“Welcome!” a hushed, distorted voice cried. The words seemed to come from the breathing and living walls of the farm itself. “Welcome! Wellllll-come…”
“What the fuck is this, kid?” Dmitri whispered hoarsely. “Where’s Anna?” Pilip shook his head sadly.
“She’s inside with the other breeders,” he said, the fear and terror evident on his face. “They keep them chained in cages or bound in the basement until the time for the ritual comes.”
“And when is that?” I asked. He looked up at the sky and the fading light. We had somehow wasted nearly an entire day already. Night was coming, and we hadn’t even seen Anna yet.
“At sunset,” he responded. Dmitri nearly jumped up at that.
“Sunset?! That’s almost here! We need to go now!” he cried. I almost wanted to laugh.
“What are you going to do, stab that enormous building with your knife?” I whispered. “We need a plan. Maybe we can burn it down or…” But my words were cut off by the roaring of the building. Its scream echoed over the hills. It was immediately answered by countless others, including one that came only a few dozen feet behind us. I grabbed Dmitri’s shoulder, my panicked eyes flicking in that direction.
“There’s something…” I started to say when the brush cracked under a heavy weight. Looking up, I saw something horrible stalking us from behind.
It looked like a pig, walking on all fours with a fat, bloated body, but it was the size of an SUV. Its eyes were like the eye in the building, blood-red and dilated. All over its body, hundreds of sharp teeth grew out of its skin, covering the pink flesh like tumors. The creature almost looked like a porcupine with all the sharp points of fangs projecting from its body.
For a moment, its eyes widened as we stared at each other. They instantly narrowed as the pig roared again and gave chase. It gnashed its teeth, opening and closing its mouth in a frenzy of bloodlust. In its mouth, too, the teeth grew wild. Hundreds of razor-sharp teeth of different sizes grew from its gums, tongue and lips.
“Run!” I cried, grabbing Pilip’s arm and hauling him off the ground. The boy had a natural survivor’s instincts and immediately started running by my side, away from the approaching creature.
We broke out into the massive clearing where the living farm stood. I saw that the building had only a single door in and out, a black barn door that stood wide open. I heard Dmitri’s feet pounding the ground behind me. The heavy thuds of the approaching creature drew louder by the second.
“In the barn!” I cried, not having time to think. It was the only possible place of safety here. I sprinted faster than I ever had before towards those doors as if they were entrance to paradise itself. Without slowing, I ran into the building, trying to slam one of the doors shut behind me. Dmitri grabbed the other. With the creature only seconds away, they started swinging shut. Pilip’s small body pressed against my leg as he came forward, using his meager strength to help me.
The door was extremely heavy and hard to move. The building itself looked like it was six or seven stories tall, and the doors to the barn nearly a-third of that height. With a tortured creak, they slammed shut. A single breath later, something heavy thudded against the other size, as if it had been hit by a battering ram. But the door held. Quickly, Dmitri and I grabbed a large board leaning against the wall and stuffed it into the brackets on both sides of the door, locking it from the inside.
I noticed how cool and dark it was in here, as if I had walked into a cave. I turned, taking in the interior of the living farm for the first time. At that moment, I had to repress a scream welling up in my throat.
***
Hundreds of imprisoned women both lined both sides of the barn. They were stacked one on top of another like prison cells. Wearing filthy, blood-stained rags, most of them looked silently down on us with dead, haunted eyes. I noticed the majority were in their twenties or thirties, but their eyes looked centuries old.
Along the back wall, an enormous pig lined the wall, positioned like Jesus on the cross. It stood as tall as the barn itself. Extra eyes covered its face, a dozen of them positioned all over its cheeks and forehead. From the top of its head, I saw white filaments rising up into the bell tower. Its many blood-red eyes focused on us, as still as death.
“Welcome,” it hissed. “Welcome!” Its limbs were chained to the wall. Enormous rusted links intertwined around its body, preventing Mr. Welcome from moving.
“Anna?!” Dmitri cried, looking around frantically. There was no one else here that I could see except for Mr. Welcome and all the hostages. “Anna, where are you?!”
“Don’t scream,” Pilip said in a tiny, fear-choked voice. “Please, don’t scream…”
But it was too late. As Dmitri’s last words faded, trapdoors built into the black floor of the barn sprung open. Dozens of mutated bears and pig-creatures crept out, their predatory eyes scanning us with hunger and anger.
***
“Fuck!” Dmitri cried, running back to the door at my side. Frantically, the three of us pulled the board up and dropped it to the fleshy floor with a clatter. As hisses and growls erupted all around us and the predators creeped forwards towards us in a semi-circle, the barn door flew open.
It was night now, the darkness creeping in like a descending curtain. No pig creatures awaited us on the other side, but something worse seemed to be creeping out of the forest.
I saw snakes the color of clotted blood slithering ahead. Each one was the size of a tractor-trailer, yet they made very little noise. An occasional hiss would rip its way through the air, but they hunted silently.
As I stood in the field in front of the barn, a no-man’s land of hellish proportions, the certainty of death fell over my heart like grasping skeletal hands. I looked down at the little boy sadly. He gave me a faint smile, even though his eyes were terrified.
“I think we’re fucked,” Dmitri whispered by my side. I only nodded.
***
But at that moment, I remembered the rules, and an idea came to me.
“Just stay still,” I said. “Don’t even breathe.” Pilip and Dmitri looked at me strangely, then recognition came over their eyes. Dmitri only nodded, and then we all played statue.
The predators from the barn were only thirty feet behind us by now, crouched down and hunting us like a cat with a mouse. Yet the snakes also closed in, their black, slitted eyes gleaming with a reptilian coldness. As the mutated bears and pig creatures leaned down to pounce, I closed my eyes, waiting for the inevitable.
I felt a sudden rush of air all around me. The snakes flitted forward in a blur, their massive jaws unhinging. Two fangs swiveled out like switchblades, fangs big enough to impale a police car. Drops of clear venom fell lazily from the ends.
Keeping my eyes closed, afraid to even breathe or blink, I listened as the sounds of tearing flesh and screaming animals resonated all around me. After about thirty seconds of this, everything went deathly silent.
***
I don’t know how long we stood there like statues, but eventually, someone touched my shoulder. I opened my eyes, unbelieving. Dmitri stared at me intently.
“They’re all gone,” he whispered. “All except Mr. Welcome. It’s now or never.” I nodded, and together, we moved into the farm.
The trapdoors still lay open. I could hear very faint sobbing coming from under the building. Dmitri was afraid to make a sound. Together, the three of us went down to investigate.
We found a dark basement covered in hay. Torture tools covered the walls: iron maidens, brazen bulls, crosses and an entire universe of whips, saws, grinders, pliers, razor-wire and other blood-stained tools of the trade. In the corner, we saw Anna, her hands tied to the wall. More rope bound her feet and legs. We ran forward. When Anna saw Dmitri, she collapsed into a nervous wreck.
“Oh my God, you came! Please, get me out of here, right now,” she whispered. “They’re coming. The ritual will start soon.” Without a word, we started cutting the ropes, freeing her quickly.
“We need to be as quiet as possible,” I told Anna. “We can all get out of here. Let’s go.”
***
As we ascended from the basement back to the main floor of the living farm, the repetitive, metallic voice of Mr. Welcome kept repeating the same insane mantra.
“Welcome,” it said. “Welcome!” Once the four of us were all together, however, it changed.
“Welcome, thieves,” it hissed, its voice deepening and turning into a demonic gurgle. “That is my breeder. You will have to find out what happens to thieves.” I could only imagine all those blood-stained tools in the basement, and I shuddered.
Mr. Welcome inhaled deeply, his massive, fleshy body ballooning. With a predatory roar, he ripped the chains out of the wall of the living building. Orange pus and dark, clotted blood dripped from the holes. The barn breathed faster and deeper, the broken walls vibrating and shimmering as new life and pain flowed into them.
Mr. Welcome started moving towards us like a grinding juggernaut, walking on two legs like some sort of pig god. His many lidless eyes never looked away from us. The frayed optic nerves leading to the bell tower broke with a sound like snapping rubber bands. Dmitri looked at me with great sadness in his eyes.
“Get away,” he whispered. “I’ll distract it. Just get Anna home, no matter what.” Before I could respond, he ran forwards towards the abomination, the small, useless knife raised in one hand.
Mr. Welcome saw him coming. He tried to swipe at Dmitri with a sharp, black hoove, but Dmitri ducked, running around the back of him. He gave a battle-cry and started stabbing the monster in the back of the leg, which probably hurt it about as much as a toothpick.
But it provided a distraction. This time, Mr. Welcome spun his whole body, falling back to all four legs to deal with this nuisance. He used his massive snout to smack Dmitri hard, sending him flying across the barn. He hit the wall with a bone-shattering thud.
Dmitri’s skin immediately started to blacken, as if he were being burned alive. His eyes melted out of his face as he screamed, clawing at the dying patches of necrotic tissue spreading across his body. Within a few seconds, his screams faded to agonized groans. He tried to crawl back towards us as he died.
“Run!” I screamed, grabbing Anna’s hand and forcing her to sprint by my side. Pilip was already one step ahead of us, frantically trying to reach the shelter of the forest. I heard the ground shake behind me as Mr. Welcome drew near, moving much faster than we could ever hope to go. I knew we would never make it.
“Keep going, no matter what!” I yelled at Pilip and Anna. They kept running, the animal instinct to survive now foremost in their minds. I had to suppress mine. I turned to face the creature, the evil pig god known as Mr. Welcome.
***
In hindsight, I don’t know if God or some divine power had interceded, but the bear mace was probably one of the few items that could have saved us at that moment. Mr. Welcome had many eyes, and now that he was running on all four paws, his face was within reach. As my heart palpitated wildly, I raised the bear mace and sprayed at his dozen eyes. He didn’t slow, and I had to jump to the side to keep from being trampled. The air whooshed past me as if a subway car had gone by.
But a moment later, Mr. Welcome gave a roar- and not one of anger and hunger. This was a roar of pain and uncertainty. Blinded, Mr. Welcome frantically started running in circles, knocking down huge swathes of trees. The ear-splitting racket as he pulled the forest apart crashed over the surrounding landscape. Without a moment of hesitation, I turned to follow Pilip and Anna back to the car.
We told the police about the barn and all the hostages, but they claimed they couldn’t find it, and we never heard anything more about it.
***
Looking back on the experience, I now know why Chernobyl is a restricted zone, and it isn’t just because of the radioactivity. There are some things that hide under the surface, after all- things that grow in the dark, rotted places where no eyes roam.

The area where we were heading in Eastern Europe was known for its radioactivity. We had received reports of strange animals, things that looked like they were hatched from a mad scientist’s laboratory. I didn’t know how much of it I believed, because some of the descriptions the survivors gave sounded more like wendigo and dogmen than any real animal. I figured that, in the heat of the moment and under attack, their minds had likely twisted the true form of the animals, horrifying as they were, into something truly nightmarish.
There were three of us heading into the dark Eastern European forests: my friend Dmitri, who was originally from the country and knew the language, his girlfriend Anna and myself. Everything seemed mundane enough as we flew into the country and handed over our passports. There was no sign of the horrors waiting ahead.
The first towns we encountered looked idyllic enough as we drove through them in a rental car. Isolated farmhouses with cows and chickens dotted the landscape. Plentiful fields of wheat, potatoes and corn stretched out on all sides of us. The black earth here was fertile, I knew. As we headed deeper into the radiation zone, however, the houses and farms all started to look abandoned and dilapidated, the fields barren and dead.
“Christ on a cracker,” I muttered, more to myself than to my friends, “this place looks like it suffered through the Apocalypse.”
“It did,” Dmitri said grimly. “A nuclear apocalypse. I feel like the Biblical one is far more optimistic than the true apocalypse will be. In reality, there will be no Rapture, no victory of light over darkness. If there is ever a World War 3, every major city will be consumed by nuclear fire. It will throw buses and cars thousands of feet into the air, spilling out bodies onto the burning skies. Entire streets will collapse, trapping countless millions under the rubble.”
“That’s a cheerful thought,” Anna commented, her dark blue eyes staring out the window. I saw the reflection of white eyes skittering through the brush outside, small animals that disappeared in front of the approaching roar of the engine.
“How far is it?” I asked, feeling carsick and anxious. The winding roads here curved through countless hills. It reminded me of driving through parts of Northern California before, when I had retched out the window. Anna and Dmitri seemed unaffected, though. I cursed my stomach, which was always turning traitorous towards me.
“It’s a while, man,” Dmitri said. “This country is huge. Probably another three or four hour drive. And then we have to start walking.”
“Good thing we left before dawn,” Anna said, stifling a yawn. She had a can of some cheap Russian Red Bull knock-off, some fluorescent green crap that smelled like chemicals. But she drank it as if it were the finest French wine. I gazed out at the dark forests that passed us on both sides, wondering what kind of sights lay ahead in this land of the damned.
***
The Sun rose early over the gently rolling hills and black earth of Ukraine, sending its rusty streaks of blood across the sky. The going had been easy so far, except for the constant car sickness I felt. I took a few pills of meclizine, wishing that I could have smuggled some weed gummies through customs. But here, cannabis was illegal, and I was not eager to see the inside of an Eastern European prison, where lunatics like the Three Guys One Hammer maniacs and the Chessboard Killer lived in hellish conditions.
“Holy shit, would you look at that?” Dmitri said with awe and wonder oozing from his voice as the car braked abruptly. I looked up quickly, my stomach doing flips. But what I saw laying across the road instantly brought me back to the moment. Dmitri pointed a tattooed hand at the sight.
“Is that real?” Anna asked. I could only shake my head as we all stared at the dead bear that was laying across the cracked road, its dead eyes staring straight through us.
I noticed immediately that the bear had extra paws on its arms. Blood-stained claws jutted sharply out of its four paws, each seeming to have seven fingers. Its feet looked stunted and twisted, like the roots of a tree. An extra arm stuck out of the front of its chest, a pale, white fleshy growth emerging from its sternum. The mutated limb looked malformed and boneless, causing a sense of revulsion to rise up as I gazed on it. It flopped gently in the heavy wind that swirled down the surrounding hills.
“Well, I guess the rumors are true,” Dmitri said slowly, his eyes as wide and excited as a child. “Can you imagine what other kinds of things must be lurking in these forests? This is going to make a really awesome documentary.” Anna nodded, playing with a small, hand-held digital camera she took everywhere with her. She wanted to make a video that would finally go viral on the internet and help her gain some recognition for her work.
“I’m going to record everything, including this,” she said excitedly, brushing a lock of blonde hair behind her ear as she opened the door of the car. Dawn had risen overhead, radiating the first warm rays of a bright summer day. After a long moment, I followed her out. Dmitri stood at her side, his dark eyes wide. He ran a trembling hand over his shaved head as he looked down at the enormous bear.
Anna zoomed in with the camera, kneeling down before the still beast. Her finely-formed fingers shook with excitement as she drew within inches of the corpse. I wondered how the bear had died, as I didn’t see any signs of injuries on the creature’s body. The next moment, I saw it blink.
I backpedaled away, giving a hoarse, guttural shout of warning. Anna was busy staring at the screen of the digital camera, scanning it across the bear’s extra fingers and limbs. But the panic that swept over Dmitri’s face showed me that he, too, had seen it. He grabbed Anna’s arm, dragging her back with sudden fury. She stumbled, her legs crossing under her. She crashed into him and they fell back together. A moment later, the bear came to life, its bones cracking as it twisted its head to look at the three of us.
It swiped a mutated paw at the place where Anna’s face had been only a moment before. I heard the sharp claws slice through the air like switchblades. The bear’s head ratcheted over to glare at us. It gnashed its teeth as silver streams of saliva flew from its shaking head. With a primal roar, it leapt off the ground. I turned to run back to the safety of the car, but I nearly tripped when a pale figure streaked out of the forest right in front of me.
It looked like something conjured up in a nightmare. It was naked and bloated, its skin white with bulging, pink cheeks. It looked to have a combination of human and pig features, and yet it ran upright like a person. Its irises were blood-red, its pupils huge and excited. Its beady eyes flicked over to Anna and a low, satisfied growl erupted from its wide throat. I watched the muscles work furiously in its porcine body as it sprinted towards her.
Before either Dmitri or I could react, the pig-thing grabbed Anna around the neck, its sharp, black fingers digging deeply into her skin. She squealed like a strangled rabbit as it dragged her away into the dark Ukrainian forests. Its pink lips pulled back in an excited grimace, revealing the sharp fangs underneath. I heard its guttural growls fade away rapidly. It sprinted much faster than a person, its hooves slamming the ground over and over at a superhuman speed.
“Hey!” Dmitri called excitedly, taking a step forward. “What do you…” A giant bear paw with too many gleaming claws smacked his leg out from under him, sending him flying. I only stood there, shell-shocked and amazed, as Anna disappeared into the trees.
A single moment later, the bear rose to its full height, roaring at us. Streams of spit flew from its mouth as its rancid breath washed over us, breath that emanated a smell like roadkill and infection. I put my hands up, flinching, expecting a blow that never came. When I looked up, the bear had gone back on all fours. It ran in the path the pig-creature had gone, its white, boneless extra limb hanging limply from its chest.
“What the fuck!” Dmitri cried on the ground, rocking back and forth. I came back to life, running over to his side. I saw deep gouge marks sliced through his blue jeans. Bright streams of blood lazily dripped from the claw marks on his left leg.
“We need to get help,” I cried, shaking him. His eyes looked faraway and confused, as if he didn’t fully realize what was happening. “We need to go back and get the police.”
“The police?” he asked, laughing. “The police here won’t do anything. You think they’re going to travel out into the radioactivity zone just for a missing person?” He shook his head grimly before reaching out a hand to me. “Help me up. There’s a first aid kit in the car. We need to bandage this up. Then we’re going after Anna.”
***
We had no way to call for help. The phones this far out in Chernobyl didn’t work, and there were never any cell phone towers built in the silent land. After Dmitri had disinfected and bandaged his legs, he rummaged through the trunk, looking for weapons.
“God damn, there’s nothing good here,” he said despondently. “Some bear mace, some knives… what good is any of that going to do against these mutated monsters? We need an AK-47.” I nodded in agreement.
“Too bad we’re not in the US,” I said. “The only guns you’re going to get around here are the ones you take off the bodies of Russian soldiers.”
“Yeah, if only,” he muttered sadly, handing me a large folding knife. “We have one canister of bear mace, three knives and a tire iron. Not exactly an arsenal.” I really didn’t want to go into those dark woods, but thinking of Anna being tortured or murdered made me feel sick and weak. I shook my head, mentally torn.
“Here, take the bear mace, too. I’ll take the tire iron and a knife,” he continued, forcing the black canister into my numb fingers. “You ready for this?”
“Absolutely not,” I said. “I think we should try to find help. If we both go out there and get slaughtered, no one will ever find Anna.”
“The nearest town is two hours west of here,” he responded icily. “By the time we get help, her trail will have gone cold. It will take at least five or six hours to get any rescue out here. No, we need to do this, and we need to do it now. If you don’t want to come…”
“I’ll come,” I said grimly, my heart pounding. “Fuck it.”
***
Dmitri had a sad history. As a child living in Ukraine, he had been kidnapped by an insane neighbor and kept in a dirt pit outside for weeks, wallowing in his own piss and shit, slowly starving. He said the man would throw down a stale crust of bread or a rice cake into the mud and human waste every few days. Dmitri would pull the food out, wipe off the feces and eat it. I shuddered, remembering the horror stories he had told me. I knew he had a personal reason for making sure Anna was not subjected to the same endless suffering, even if it meant his own death.
The bear and the pig-creature had left a clear trail of broken brush and snapped twigs snaking through the forest. Side by side, we moved cautiously ahead, constantly checking our backs. But we saw no signs of movement and heard nothing. Up ahead, the trees abruptly opened up, letting golden sunlight stream down. Blinking quickly, we left the forest behind.
We walked out into a field in the middle of a valley surrounded by tall, dark hills. Grass and weeds rippled in waves as the wind swept past us.
Formed in a semi-circle in front of us, human skeletons lay endlessly dreaming. They stared up into the vast blue sky with grinning skulls and empty sockets. Some still had putrefying strips of flesh and ligaments clinging to the bones. Animals had scattered some of the bodies, but others lay complete, like corpses in a tomb. Human skulls, leg bones and arm bones lay scattered haphazardly across the field, their surfaces yellowed and cracked with age. It looked like a bone orchard.
“What are we looking at right now?” I whispered, furtively glancing around at the field of bones. An insane part of my mind wondered if they might rise from the dead and come after us. Compared to what we had already seen in this place of nightmares, it didn’t seem that far-fetched.
“Dead bodies,” Dmitri said grimly.
“Victims of the nuclear accident?” I asked. He shook his head, pointing at some of the fresher corpses nearby. Their throats looked like they had been ripped out, the bones of their necks showing deep bite marks. The one nearest us had its skeletal fingers wrapped around a glass bottle with a piece of paper rolled inside and a cork inserted into the top.
I knelt down, prying the fingers back with soft, cracking noises. I uncorked it and took out the paper. It felt thick in my hands, like some kind of hand-crafted paper from the old days. The cursive flowing across the sheet looked like it had been written in a quill pen with actual ink. In confusion, I read the letter aloud:
“Rules to survive in the Helskin Nature Preserve:
“1. The cult known as the Golden Butchers has been kidnapping women to breed them with the pig-creatures. They worship the offspring that result from these unions as gods. If a member of your group gets taken, you will find them in the living farm at the end of the forest.
“2. If you encounter Mr. Welcome, the enormous pig god with the eyes on his forehead, you must not let him touch you.
“3. The red snakes can only see while you’re moving. If you encounter them, stay still. Don’t even breathe.”
“Breeding women with pig-creatures?!” Dmitri cried, horror washing over his face. “We need to find her! But where do we even start?” I looked through the field, trying to see any sign of tracks, but it looked like hundreds of animals had gone through this field recently. Paths of tall, crushed grass crisscrossed the enormous length of it, some of them worn down to black dirt and stones. I just shook my head, having no idea.
A distant scream rolled its way down the surrounding hills. It came from our left and sounded very much like Anna. Dmitri’s eyes turned cold. Without looking back at me, he started frantically running towards the sound. It faded away within seconds.
“Wait up!” I cried, sprinting as fast as I could. His freshly-shaved head gleamed as he disappeared into the trees. Gripping the open buck knife in my hand, my knuckles white with tension and fear, I followed after him.
***
We wandered for hours through the woods, never hearing a second scream to guide our path. We both hoped that we were going in the right direction. A small deer trail winding through the brush opened up, heading up rocky hills and clear streams of water.
Sweating and nervous, we traveled for miles and miles, rarely talking. A few times, I tried to get Dmitri to slow down.
“How do you know you’re going in the right direction?” I asked. “We’ve been walking this trail for five hours and haven’t seen a thing.”
“This was the direction the scream came from,” he said weakly. “Where else would they go? They would want to travel quickly with a hostage. They would take a trail.” I didn’t point out that there may be other trails, that we had absolutely no idea where we were going.
As we reached the peak of a mountain, I pulled a small, portable Geiger counter we had taken along for the trip. The radioactivity here was high, much higher than normal background radiation. I didn’t know how far we were from the nuclear power plant at the center of all this, but at a certain point, it would become too dangerous to keep moving forward.
Dmitri was next to me, chugging a bottle of water when a shriek rang out below us. It sounded almost animalistic but had a strange, electronic distortion. Amplified to an ear-splitting cacophony, it echoed through the trees. Much quieter roars answered from the forests all around us in response, the cries of bears and other predators. These sounded much closer, however.
“Pssst,” a pile of thick ferns said to my left, shaking suddenly. In Ukrainian, the ferns continued by whispering, “Hey, you!” I jumped, swinging the knife in the direction of the brush, watching the blade shake wildly in my hand as fresh waves of adrenaline surged through my body. Dmitri was by my side, his eyes wide and wild. He glanced over at me, nodding. He had the tire iron raised like a tennis racket, ready to strike. A moment later, a little boy crawled out.
He was scarecrow thin, his face smudged with dirt and filth, his dark eyes sunken and lifeless deep inside his small head. He had black hair and a nose like a little twisted lump in the center of his face. It seemed like it had been repeatedly broken. He didn’t look older than ten, but he looked so emaciated that it was impossible to say. The rags and tatters he wore barely covered his body, and the boy was almost in his Genesis suit.
“Come out,” I said grimly. Dmitri’s eyes bulged from his head.
“Don’t kill me, please,” the boy whispered in a cracked, choked voice, his accent giving all his words a guttural tone. “Take me out of here. My Mom and Dad brought me here, they were part of the Golden Butchers, but a couple months ago, they got sick and died from all the poison in the water and food.”
“Who are you, kid?” Dmitri said, reaching down and pulling him up to his feet. I watched the boy closely, the bear mace in one hand and the knife in the other, looking for any sign of sudden violence or betrayal.
“My name is Pilip. I come from the farm,” he said, pointing vaguely towards the tallest peak in the area. “You can’t see it from here, but it’s over there.” Dmitri kneeled down until he was eye-to-eye with Pilip.
“Can you take us there?” he said. Pilip’s eyes teared up, but he slowly nodded.
“If you will take me with you when you leave, I’ll show you,” he said, crying now, “but it is a horrible place. It is the place of Mr. Welcome.”
***
Pilip guided us to the living farm, saving us a great deal of time. He navigated the forest like an experienced hiker, seeming to know the entire area from the smallest clues: a split, fallen tree, or a tree with a whorl like an eye, or a sudden curve in a babbling brook. It saved us a great deal of time wandering through the woods, where everything looked exactly the same to me.
“There,” he said, pointing through a break in the trees to the farm. The entire top of the hill was cleared of trees and brush. In its place stood a nightmare.
The farm was the closest place to Hell I have ever seen. The top of the living building peeked over the tall trees surrounding it. It had something like a bell tower on the top of it, almost like a church might have. But instead of a bell, it had an enormous, blood-shot eye.
The eye had an iris as red as a dismembered heart. Its pupil was dilated and insane. From here, the eye looked to be about the size of a church bell and had no eyelids. Strange white filaments like those of a slime mold surrounded it, trailing down into the building. I wondered if this was the optic nerve for the great, staring eye.
The rest of the building was as black as eternity, windowless and imposing. It had a brutalist architecture, all sharp angles and steep slopes. I watched the building and the eye closely. To my horror, I realized that the entire thing was alive somehow. The eye constantly spun in its place, staring out over the surrounding hills like the Eye of Sauron. The building constantly breathed.
“Welcome!” a hushed, distorted voice cried. The words seemed to come from the breathing and living walls of the farm itself. “Welcome! Wellllll-come…”
“What the fuck is this, kid?” Dmitri whispered hoarsely. “Where’s Anna?” Pilip shook his head sadly.
“She’s inside with the other breeders,” he said, the fear and terror evident on his face. “They keep them chained in cages or bound in the basement until the time for the ritual comes.”
“And when is that?” I asked. He looked up at the sky and the fading light. We had somehow wasted nearly an entire day already. Night was coming, and we hadn’t even seen Anna yet.
“At sunset,” he responded. Dmitri nearly jumped up at that.
“Sunset?! That’s almost here! We need to go now!” he cried. I almost wanted to laugh.
“What are you going to do, stab that enormous building with your knife?” I whispered. “We need a plan. Maybe we can burn it down or…” But my words were cut off by the roaring of the building. Its scream echoed over the hills. It was immediately answered by countless others, including one that came only a few dozen feet behind us. I grabbed Dmitri’s shoulder, my panicked eyes flicking in that direction.
“There’s something…” I started to say when the brush cracked under a heavy weight. Looking up, I saw something horrible stalking us from behind.
It looked like a pig, walking on all fours with a fat, bloated body, but it was the size of an SUV. Its eyes were like the eye in the building, blood-red and dilated. All over its body, hundreds of sharp teeth grew out of its skin, covering the pink flesh like tumors. The creature almost looked like a porcupine with all the sharp points of fangs projecting from its body.
For a moment, its eyes widened as we stared at each other. They instantly narrowed as the pig roared again and gave chase. It gnashed its teeth, opening and closing its mouth in a frenzy of bloodlust. In its mouth, too, the teeth grew wild. Hundreds of razor-sharp teeth of different sizes grew from its gums, tongue and lips.
“Run!” I cried, grabbing Pilip’s arm and hauling him off the ground. The boy had a natural survivor’s instincts and immediately started running by my side, away from the approaching creature.
We broke out into the massive clearing where the living farm stood. I saw that the building had only a single door in and out, a black barn door that stood wide open. I heard Dmitri’s feet pounding the ground behind me. The heavy thuds of the approaching creature drew louder by the second.
“In the barn!” I cried, not having time to think. It was the only possible place of safety here. I sprinted faster than I ever had before towards those doors as if they were entrance to paradise itself. Without slowing, I ran into the building, trying to slam one of the doors shut behind me. Dmitri grabbed the other. With the creature only seconds away, they started swinging shut. Pilip’s small body pressed against my leg as he came forward, using his meager strength to help me.
The door was extremely heavy and hard to move. The building itself looked like it was six or seven stories tall, and the doors to the barn nearly a-third of that height. With a tortured creak, they slammed shut. A single breath later, something heavy thudded against the other size, as if it had been hit by a battering ram. But the door held. Quickly, Dmitri and I grabbed a large board leaning against the wall and stuffed it into the brackets on both sides of the door, locking it from the inside.
I noticed how cool and dark it was in here, as if I had walked into a cave. I turned, taking in the interior of the living farm for the first time. At that moment, I had to repress a scream welling up in my throat.
***
Hundreds of imprisoned women both lined both sides of the barn. They were stacked one on top of another like prison cells. Wearing filthy, blood-stained rags, most of them looked silently down on us with dead, haunted eyes. I noticed the majority were in their twenties or thirties, but their eyes looked centuries old.
Along the back wall, an enormous pig lined the wall, positioned like Jesus on the cross. It stood as tall as the barn itself. Extra eyes covered its face, a dozen of them positioned all over its cheeks and forehead. From the top of its head, I saw white filaments rising up into the bell tower. Its many blood-red eyes focused on us, as still as death.
“Welcome,” it hissed. “Welcome!” Its limbs were chained to the wall. Enormous rusted links intertwined around its body, preventing Mr. Welcome from moving.
“Anna?!” Dmitri cried, looking around frantically. There was no one else here that I could see except for Mr. Welcome and all the hostages. “Anna, where are you?!”
“Don’t scream,” Pilip said in a tiny, fear-choked voice. “Please, don’t scream…”
But it was too late. As Dmitri’s last words faded, trapdoors built into the black floor of the barn sprung open. Dozens of mutated bears and pig-creatures crept out, their predatory eyes scanning us with hunger and anger.
***
“Fuck!” Dmitri cried, running back to the door at my side. Frantically, the three of us pulled the board up and dropped it to the fleshy floor with a clatter. As hisses and growls erupted all around us and the predators creeped forwards towards us in a semi-circle, the barn door flew open.
It was night now, the darkness creeping in like a descending curtain. No pig creatures awaited us on the other side, but something worse seemed to be creeping out of the forest.
I saw snakes the color of clotted blood slithering ahead. Each one was the size of a tractor-trailer, yet they made very little noise. An occasional hiss would rip its way through the air, but they hunted silently.
As I stood in the field in front of the barn, a no-man’s land of hellish proportions, the certainty of death fell over my heart like grasping skeletal hands. I looked down at the little boy sadly. He gave me a faint smile, even though his eyes were terrified.
“I think we’re fucked,” Dmitri whispered by my side. I only nodded.
***
But at that moment, I remembered the rules, and an idea came to me.
“Just stay still,” I said. “Don’t even breathe.” Pilip and Dmitri looked at me strangely, then recognition came over their eyes. Dmitri only nodded, and then we all played statue.
The predators from the barn were only thirty feet behind us by now, crouched down and hunting us like a cat with a mouse. Yet the snakes also closed in, their black, slitted eyes gleaming with a reptilian coldness. As the mutated bears and pig creatures leaned down to pounce, I closed my eyes, waiting for the inevitable.
I felt a sudden rush of air all around me. The snakes flitted forward in a blur, their massive jaws unhinging. Two fangs swiveled out like switchblades, fangs big enough to impale a police car. Drops of clear venom fell lazily from the ends.
Keeping my eyes closed, afraid to even breathe or blink, I listened as the sounds of tearing flesh and screaming animals resonated all around me. After about thirty seconds of this, everything went deathly silent.
***
I don’t know how long we stood there like statues, but eventually, someone touched my shoulder. I opened my eyes, unbelieving. Dmitri stared at me intently.
“They’re all gone,” he whispered. “All except Mr. Welcome. It’s now or never.” I nodded, and together, we moved into the farm.
The trapdoors still lay open. I could hear very faint sobbing coming from under the building. Dmitri was afraid to make a sound. Together, the three of us went down to investigate.
We found a dark basement covered in hay. Torture tools covered the walls: iron maidens, brazen bulls, crosses and an entire universe of whips, saws, grinders, pliers, razor-wire and other blood-stained tools of the trade. In the corner, we saw Anna, her hands tied to the wall. More rope bound her feet and legs. We ran forward. When Anna saw Dmitri, she collapsed into a nervous wreck.
“Oh my God, you came! Please, get me out of here, right now,” she whispered. “They’re coming. The ritual will start soon.” Without a word, we started cutting the ropes, freeing her quickly.
“We need to be as quiet as possible,” I told Anna. “We can all get out of here. Let’s go.”
***
As we ascended from the basement back to the main floor of the living farm, the repetitive, metallic voice of Mr. Welcome kept repeating the same insane mantra.
“Welcome,” it said. “Welcome!” Once the four of us were all together, however, it changed.
“Welcome, thieves,” it hissed, its voice deepening and turning into a demonic gurgle. “That is my breeder. You will have to find out what happens to thieves.” I could only imagine all those blood-stained tools in the basement, and I shuddered.
Mr. Welcome inhaled deeply, his massive, fleshy body ballooning. With a predatory roar, he ripped the chains out of the wall of the living building. Orange pus and dark, clotted blood dripped from the holes. The barn breathed faster and deeper, the broken walls vibrating and shimmering as new life and pain flowed into them.
Mr. Welcome started moving towards us like a grinding juggernaut, walking on two legs like some sort of pig god. His many lidless eyes never looked away from us. The frayed optic nerves leading to the bell tower broke with a sound like snapping rubber bands. Dmitri looked at me with great sadness in his eyes.
“Get away,” he whispered. “I’ll distract it. Just get Anna home, no matter what.” Before I could respond, he ran forwards towards the abomination, the small, useless knife raised in one hand.
Mr. Welcome saw him coming. He tried to swipe at Dmitri with a sharp, black hoove, but Dmitri ducked, running around the back of him. He gave a battle-cry and started stabbing the monster in the back of the leg, which probably hurt it about as much as a toothpick.
But it provided a distraction. This time, Mr. Welcome spun his whole body, falling back to all four legs to deal with this nuisance. He used his massive snout to smack Dmitri hard, sending him flying across the barn. He hit the wall with a bone-shattering thud.
Dmitri’s skin immediately started to blacken, as if he were being burned alive. His eyes melted out of his face as he screamed, clawing at the dying patches of necrotic tissue spreading across his body. Within a few seconds, his screams faded to agonized groans. He tried to crawl back towards us as he died.
“Run!” I screamed, grabbing Anna’s hand and forcing her to sprint by my side. Pilip was already one step ahead of us, frantically trying to reach the shelter of the forest. I heard the ground shake behind me as Mr. Welcome drew near, moving much faster than we could ever hope to go. I knew we would never make it.
“Keep going, no matter what!” I yelled at Pilip and Anna. They kept running, the animal instinct to survive now foremost in their minds. I had to suppress mine. I turned to face the creature, the evil pig god known as Mr. Welcome.
***
In hindsight, I don’t know if God or some divine power had interceded, but the bear mace was probably one of the few items that could have saved us at that moment. Mr. Welcome had many eyes, and now that he was running on all four paws, his face was within reach. As my heart palpitated wildly, I raised the bear mace and sprayed at his dozen eyes. He didn’t slow, and I had to jump to the side to keep from being trampled. The air whooshed past me as if a subway car had gone by.
But a moment later, Mr. Welcome gave a roar- and not one of anger and hunger. This was a roar of pain and uncertainty. Blinded, Mr. Welcome frantically started running in circles, knocking down huge swathes of trees. The ear-splitting racket as he pulled the forest apart crashed over the surrounding landscape. Without a moment of hesitation, I turned to follow Pilip and Anna back to the car.
We told the police about the barn and all the hostages, but they claimed they couldn’t find it, and we never heard anything more about it.
***
Looking back on the experience, I now know why Chernobyl is a restricted zone, and it isn’t just because of the radioactivity. There are some things that hide under the surface, after all- things that grow in the dark, rotted places where no eyes roam.

The area where we were heading in Eastern Europe was known for its radioactivity. We had received reports of strange animals, things that looked like they were hatched from a mad scientist’s laboratory. I didn’t know how much of it I believed, because some of the descriptions the survivors gave sounded more like wendigo and dogmen than any real animal. I figured that, in the heat of the moment and under attack, their minds had likely twisted the true form of the animals, horrifying as they were, into something truly nightmarish.
There were three of us heading into the dark Eastern European forests: my friend Dmitri, who was originally from the country and knew the language, his girlfriend Anna and myself. Everything seemed mundane enough as we flew into the country and handed over our passports. There was no sign of the horrors waiting ahead.
The first towns we encountered looked idyllic enough as we drove through them in a rental car. Isolated farmhouses with cows and chickens dotted the landscape. Plentiful fields of wheat, potatoes and corn stretched out on all sides of us. The black earth here was fertile, I knew. As we headed deeper into the radiation zone, however, the houses and farms all started to look abandoned and dilapidated, the fields barren and dead.
“Christ on a cracker,” I muttered, more to myself than to my friends, “this place looks like it suffered through the Apocalypse.”
“It did,” Dmitri said grimly. “A nuclear apocalypse. I feel like the Biblical one is far more optimistic than the true apocalypse will be. In reality, there will be no Rapture, no victory of light over darkness. If there is ever a World War 3, every major city will be consumed by nuclear fire. It will throw buses and cars thousands of feet into the air, spilling out bodies onto the burning skies. Entire streets will collapse, trapping countless millions under the rubble.”
“That’s a cheerful thought,” Anna commented, her dark blue eyes staring out the window. I saw the reflection of white eyes skittering through the brush outside, small animals that disappeared in front of the approaching roar of the engine.
“How far is it?” I asked, feeling carsick and anxious. The winding roads here curved through countless hills. It reminded me of driving through parts of Northern California before, when I had retched out the window. Anna and Dmitri seemed unaffected, though. I cursed my stomach, which was always turning traitorous towards me.
“It’s a while, man,” Dmitri said. “This country is huge. Probably another three or four hour drive. And then we have to start walking.”
“Good thing we left before dawn,” Anna said, stifling a yawn. She had a can of some cheap Russian Red Bull knock-off, some fluorescent green crap that smelled like chemicals. But she drank it as if it were the finest French wine. I gazed out at the dark forests that passed us on both sides, wondering what kind of sights lay ahead in this land of the damned.
***
The Sun rose early over the gently rolling hills and black earth of Ukraine, sending its rusty streaks of blood across the sky. The going had been easy so far, except for the constant car sickness I felt. I took a few pills of meclizine, wishing that I could have smuggled some weed gummies through customs. But here, cannabis was illegal, and I was not eager to see the inside of an Eastern European prison, where lunatics like the Three Guys One Hammer maniacs and the Chessboard Killer lived in hellish conditions.
“Holy shit, would you look at that?” Dmitri said with awe and wonder oozing from his voice as the car braked abruptly. I looked up quickly, my stomach doing flips. But what I saw laying across the road instantly brought me back to the moment. Dmitri pointed a tattooed hand at the sight.
“Is that real?” Anna asked. I could only shake my head as we all stared at the dead bear that was laying across the cracked road, its dead eyes staring straight through us.
I noticed immediately that the bear had extra paws on its arms. Blood-stained claws jutted sharply out of its four paws, each seeming to have seven fingers. Its feet looked stunted and twisted, like the roots of a tree. An extra arm stuck out of the front of its chest, a pale, white fleshy growth emerging from its sternum. The mutated limb looked malformed and boneless, causing a sense of revulsion to rise up as I gazed on it. It flopped gently in the heavy wind that swirled down the surrounding hills.
“Well, I guess the rumors are true,” Dmitri said slowly, his eyes as wide and excited as a child. “Can you imagine what other kinds of things must be lurking in these forests? This is going to make a really awesome documentary.” Anna nodded, playing with a small, hand-held digital camera she took everywhere with her. She wanted to make a video that would finally go viral on the internet and help her gain some recognition for her work.
“I’m going to record everything, including this,” she said excitedly, brushing a lock of blonde hair behind her ear as she opened the door of the car. Dawn had risen overhead, radiating the first warm rays of a bright summer day. After a long moment, I followed her out. Dmitri stood at her side, his dark eyes wide. He ran a trembling hand over his shaved head as he looked down at the enormous bear.
Anna zoomed in with the camera, kneeling down before the still beast. Her finely-formed fingers shook with excitement as she drew within inches of the corpse. I wondered how the bear had died, as I didn’t see any signs of injuries on the creature’s body. The next moment, I saw it blink.
I backpedaled away, giving a hoarse, guttural shout of warning. Anna was busy staring at the screen of the digital camera, scanning it across the bear’s extra fingers and limbs. But the panic that swept over Dmitri’s face showed me that he, too, had seen it. He grabbed Anna’s arm, dragging her back with sudden fury. She stumbled, her legs crossing under her. She crashed into him and they fell back together. A moment later, the bear came to life, its bones cracking as it twisted its head to look at the three of us.
It swiped a mutated paw at the place where Anna’s face had been only a moment before. I heard the sharp claws slice through the air like switchblades. The bear’s head ratcheted over to glare at us. It gnashed its teeth as silver streams of saliva flew from its shaking head. With a primal roar, it leapt off the ground. I turned to run back to the safety of the car, but I nearly tripped when a pale figure streaked out of the forest right in front of me.
It looked like something conjured up in a nightmare. It was naked and bloated, its skin white with bulging, pink cheeks. It looked to have a combination of human and pig features, and yet it ran upright like a person. Its irises were blood-red, its pupils huge and excited. Its beady eyes flicked over to Anna and a low, satisfied growl erupted from its wide throat. I watched the muscles work furiously in its porcine body as it sprinted towards her.
Before either Dmitri or I could react, the pig-thing grabbed Anna around the neck, its sharp, black fingers digging deeply into her skin. She squealed like a strangled rabbit as it dragged her away into the dark Ukrainian forests. Its pink lips pulled back in an excited grimace, revealing the sharp fangs underneath. I heard its guttural growls fade away rapidly. It sprinted much faster than a person, its hooves slamming the ground over and over at a superhuman speed.
“Hey!” Dmitri called excitedly, taking a step forward. “What do you…” A giant bear paw with too many gleaming claws smacked his leg out from under him, sending him flying. I only stood there, shell-shocked and amazed, as Anna disappeared into the trees.
A single moment later, the bear rose to its full height, roaring at us. Streams of spit flew from its mouth as its rancid breath washed over us, breath that emanated a smell like roadkill and infection. I put my hands up, flinching, expecting a blow that never came. When I looked up, the bear had gone back on all fours. It ran in the path the pig-creature had gone, its white, boneless extra limb hanging limply from its chest.
“What the fuck!” Dmitri cried on the ground, rocking back and forth. I came back to life, running over to his side. I saw deep gouge marks sliced through his blue jeans. Bright streams of blood lazily dripped from the claw marks on his left leg.
“We need to get help,” I cried, shaking him. His eyes looked faraway and confused, as if he didn’t fully realize what was happening. “We need to go back and get the police.”
“The police?” he asked, laughing. “The police here won’t do anything. You think they’re going to travel out into the radioactivity zone just for a missing person?” He shook his head grimly before reaching out a hand to me. “Help me up. There’s a first aid kit in the car. We need to bandage this up. Then we’re going after Anna.”
***
We had no way to call for help. The phones this far out in Chernobyl didn’t work, and there were never any cell phone towers built in the silent land. After Dmitri had disinfected and bandaged his legs, he rummaged through the trunk, looking for weapons.
“God damn, there’s nothing good here,” he said despondently. “Some bear mace, some knives… what good is any of that going to do against these mutated monsters? We need an AK-47.” I nodded in agreement.
“Too bad we’re not in the US,” I said. “The only guns you’re going to get around here are the ones you take off the bodies of Russian soldiers.”
“Yeah, if only,” he muttered sadly, handing me a large folding knife. “We have one canister of bear mace, three knives and a tire iron. Not exactly an arsenal.” I really didn’t want to go into those dark woods, but thinking of Anna being tortured or murdered made me feel sick and weak. I shook my head, mentally torn.
“Here, take the bear mace, too. I’ll take the tire iron and a knife,” he continued, forcing the black canister into my numb fingers. “You ready for this?”
“Absolutely not,” I said. “I think we should try to find help. If we both go out there and get slaughtered, no one will ever find Anna.”
“The nearest town is two hours west of here,” he responded icily. “By the time we get help, her trail will have gone cold. It will take at least five or six hours to get any rescue out here. No, we need to do this, and we need to do it now. If you don’t want to come…”
“I’ll come,” I said grimly, my heart pounding. “Fuck it.”
***
Dmitri had a sad history. As a child living in Ukraine, he had been kidnapped by an insane neighbor and kept in a dirt pit outside for weeks, wallowing in his own piss and shit, slowly starving. He said the man would throw down a stale crust of bread or a rice cake into the mud and human waste every few days. Dmitri would pull the food out, wipe off the feces and eat it. I shuddered, remembering the horror stories he had told me. I knew he had a personal reason for making sure Anna was not subjected to the same endless suffering, even if it meant his own death.
The bear and the pig-creature had left a clear trail of broken brush and snapped twigs snaking through the forest. Side by side, we moved cautiously ahead, constantly checking our backs. But we saw no signs of movement and heard nothing. Up ahead, the trees abruptly opened up, letting golden sunlight stream down. Blinking quickly, we left the forest behind.
We walked out into a field in the middle of a valley surrounded by tall, dark hills. Grass and weeds rippled in waves as the wind swept past us.
Formed in a semi-circle in front of us, human skeletons lay endlessly dreaming. They stared up into the vast blue sky with grinning skulls and empty sockets. Some still had putrefying strips of flesh and ligaments clinging to the bones. Animals had scattered some of the bodies, but others lay complete, like corpses in a tomb. Human skulls, leg bones and arm bones lay scattered haphazardly across the field, their surfaces yellowed and cracked with age. It looked like a bone orchard.
“What are we looking at right now?” I whispered, furtively glancing around at the field of bones. An insane part of my mind wondered if they might rise from the dead and come after us. Compared to what we had already seen in this place of nightmares, it didn’t seem that far-fetched.
“Dead bodies,” Dmitri said grimly.
“Victims of the nuclear accident?” I asked. He shook his head, pointing at some of the fresher corpses nearby. Their throats looked like they had been ripped out, the bones of their necks showing deep bite marks. The one nearest us had its skeletal fingers wrapped around a glass bottle with a piece of paper rolled inside and a cork inserted into the top.
I knelt down, prying the fingers back with soft, cracking noises. I uncorked it and took out the paper. It felt thick in my hands, like some kind of hand-crafted paper from the old days. The cursive flowing across the sheet looked like it had been written in a quill pen with actual ink. In confusion, I read the letter aloud:
“Rules to survive in the Helskin Nature Preserve:
“1. The cult known as the Golden Butchers has been kidnapping women to breed them with the pig-creatures. They worship the offspring that result from these unions as gods. If a member of your group gets taken, you will find them in the living farm at the end of the forest.
“2. If you encounter Mr. Welcome, the enormous pig god with the eyes on his forehead, you must not let him touch you.
“3. The red snakes can only see while you’re moving. If you encounter them, stay still. Don’t even breathe.”
“Breeding women with pig-creatures?!” Dmitri cried, horror washing over his face. “We need to find her! But where do we even start?” I looked through the field, trying to see any sign of tracks, but it looked like hundreds of animals had gone through this field recently. Paths of tall, crushed grass crisscrossed the enormous length of it, some of them worn down to black dirt and stones. I just shook my head, having no idea.
A distant scream rolled its way down the surrounding hills. It came from our left and sounded very much like Anna. Dmitri’s eyes turned cold. Without looking back at me, he started frantically running towards the sound. It faded away within seconds.
“Wait up!” I cried, sprinting as fast as I could. His freshly-shaved head gleamed as he disappeared into the trees. Gripping the open buck knife in my hand, my knuckles white with tension and fear, I followed after him.
***
We wandered for hours through the woods, never hearing a second scream to guide our path. We both hoped that we were going in the right direction. A small deer trail winding through the brush opened up, heading up rocky hills and clear streams of water.
Sweating and nervous, we traveled for miles and miles, rarely talking. A few times, I tried to get Dmitri to slow down.
“How do you know you’re going in the right direction?” I asked. “We’ve been walking this trail for five hours and haven’t seen a thing.”
“This was the direction the scream came from,” he said weakly. “Where else would they go? They would want to travel quickly with a hostage. They would take a trail.” I didn’t point out that there may be other trails, that we had absolutely no idea where we were going.
As we reached the peak of a mountain, I pulled a small, portable Geiger counter we had taken along for the trip. The radioactivity here was high, much higher than normal background radiation. I didn’t know how far we were from the nuclear power plant at the center of all this, but at a certain point, it would become too dangerous to keep moving forward.
Dmitri was next to me, chugging a bottle of water when a shriek rang out below us. It sounded almost animalistic but had a strange, electronic distortion. Amplified to an ear-splitting cacophony, it echoed through the trees. Much quieter roars answered from the forests all around us in response, the cries of bears and other predators. These sounded much closer, however.
“Pssst,” a pile of thick ferns said to my left, shaking suddenly. In Ukrainian, the ferns continued by whispering, “Hey, you!” I jumped, swinging the knife in the direction of the brush, watching the blade shake wildly in my hand as fresh waves of adrenaline surged through my body. Dmitri was by my side, his eyes wide and wild. He glanced over at me, nodding. He had the tire iron raised like a tennis racket, ready to strike. A moment later, a little boy crawled out.
He was scarecrow thin, his face smudged with dirt and filth, his dark eyes sunken and lifeless deep inside his small head. He had black hair and a nose like a little twisted lump in the center of his face. It seemed like it had been repeatedly broken. He didn’t look older than ten, but he looked so emaciated that it was impossible to say. The rags and tatters he wore barely covered his body, and the boy was almost in his Genesis suit.
“Come out,” I said grimly. Dmitri’s eyes bulged from his head.
“Don’t kill me, please,” the boy whispered in a cracked, choked voice, his accent giving all his words a guttural tone. “Take me out of here. My Mom and Dad brought me here, they were part of the Golden Butchers, but a couple months ago, they got sick and died from all the poison in the water and food.”
“Who are you, kid?” Dmitri said, reaching down and pulling him up to his feet. I watched the boy closely, the bear mace in one hand and the knife in the other, looking for any sign of sudden violence or betrayal.
“My name is Pilip. I come from the farm,” he said, pointing vaguely towards the tallest peak in the area. “You can’t see it from here, but it’s over there.” Dmitri kneeled down until he was eye-to-eye with Pilip.
“Can you take us there?” he said. Pilip’s eyes teared up, but he slowly nodded.
“If you will take me with you when you leave, I’ll show you,” he said, crying now, “but it is a horrible place. It is the place of Mr. Welcome.”
***
Pilip guided us to the living farm, saving us a great deal of time. He navigated the forest like an experienced hiker, seeming to know the entire area from the smallest clues: a split, fallen tree, or a tree with a whorl like an eye, or a sudden curve in a babbling brook. It saved us a great deal of time wandering through the woods, where everything looked exactly the same to me.
“There,” he said, pointing through a break in the trees to the farm. The entire top of the hill was cleared of trees and brush. In its place stood a nightmare.
The farm was the closest place to Hell I have ever seen. The top of the living building peeked over the tall trees surrounding it. It had something like a bell tower on the top of it, almost like a church might have. But instead of a bell, it had an enormous, blood-shot eye.
The eye had an iris as red as a dismembered heart. Its pupil was dilated and insane. From here, the eye looked to be about the size of a church bell and had no eyelids. Strange white filaments like those of a slime mold surrounded it, trailing down into the building. I wondered if this was the optic nerve for the great, staring eye.
The rest of the building was as black as eternity, windowless and imposing. It had a brutalist architecture, all sharp angles and steep slopes. I watched the building and the eye closely. To my horror, I realized that the entire thing was alive somehow. The eye constantly spun in its place, staring out over the surrounding hills like the Eye of Sauron. The building constantly breathed.
“Welcome!” a hushed, distorted voice cried. The words seemed to come from the breathing and living walls of the farm itself. “Welcome! Wellllll-come…”
“What the fuck is this, kid?” Dmitri whispered hoarsely. “Where’s Anna?” Pilip shook his head sadly.
“She’s inside with the other breeders,” he said, the fear and terror evident on his face. “They keep them chained in cages or bound in the basement until the time for the ritual comes.”
“And when is that?” I asked. He looked up at the sky and the fading light. We had somehow wasted nearly an entire day already. Night was coming, and we hadn’t even seen Anna yet.
“At sunset,” he responded. Dmitri nearly jumped up at that.
“Sunset?! That’s almost here! We need to go now!” he cried. I almost wanted to laugh.
“What are you going to do, stab that enormous building with your knife?” I whispered. “We need a plan. Maybe we can burn it down or…” But my words were cut off by the roaring of the building. Its scream echoed over the hills. It was immediately answered by countless others, including one that came only a few dozen feet behind us. I grabbed Dmitri’s shoulder, my panicked eyes flicking in that direction.
“There’s something…” I started to say when the brush cracked under a heavy weight. Looking up, I saw something horrible stalking us from behind.
It looked like a pig, walking on all fours with a fat, bloated body, but it was the size of an SUV. Its eyes were like the eye in the building, blood-red and dilated. All over its body, hundreds of sharp teeth grew out of its skin, covering the pink flesh like tumors. The creature almost looked like a porcupine with all the sharp points of fangs projecting from its body.
For a moment, its eyes widened as we stared at each other. They instantly narrowed as the pig roared again and gave chase. It gnashed its teeth, opening and closing its mouth in a frenzy of bloodlust. In its mouth, too, the teeth grew wild. Hundreds of razor-sharp teeth of different sizes grew from its gums, tongue and lips.
“Run!” I cried, grabbing Pilip’s arm and hauling him off the ground. The boy had a natural survivor’s instincts and immediately started running by my side, away from the approaching creature.
We broke out into the massive clearing where the living farm stood. I saw that the building had only a single door in and out, a black barn door that stood wide open. I heard Dmitri’s feet pounding the ground behind me. The heavy thuds of the approaching creature drew louder by the second.
“In the barn!” I cried, not having time to think. It was the only possible place of safety here. I sprinted faster than I ever had before towards those doors as if they were entrance to paradise itself. Without slowing, I ran into the building, trying to slam one of the doors shut behind me. Dmitri grabbed the other. With the creature only seconds away, they started swinging shut. Pilip’s small body pressed against my leg as he came forward, using his meager strength to help me.
The door was extremely heavy and hard to move. The building itself looked like it was six or seven stories tall, and the doors to the barn nearly a-third of that height. With a tortured creak, they slammed shut. A single breath later, something heavy thudded against the other size, as if it had been hit by a battering ram. But the door held. Quickly, Dmitri and I grabbed a large board leaning against the wall and stuffed it into the brackets on both sides of the door, locking it from the inside.
I noticed how cool and dark it was in here, as if I had walked into a cave. I turned, taking in the interior of the living farm for the first time. At that moment, I had to repress a scream welling up in my throat.
***
Hundreds of imprisoned women both lined both sides of the barn. They were stacked one on top of another like prison cells. Wearing filthy, blood-stained rags, most of them looked silently down on us with dead, haunted eyes. I noticed the majority were in their twenties or thirties, but their eyes looked centuries old.
Along the back wall, an enormous pig lined the wall, positioned like Jesus on the cross. It stood as tall as the barn itself. Extra eyes covered its face, a dozen of them positioned all over its cheeks and forehead. From the top of its head, I saw white filaments rising up into the bell tower. Its many blood-red eyes focused on us, as still as death.
“Welcome,” it hissed. “Welcome!” Its limbs were chained to the wall. Enormous rusted links intertwined around its body, preventing Mr. Welcome from moving.
“Anna?!” Dmitri cried, looking around frantically. There was no one else here that I could see except for Mr. Welcome and all the hostages. “Anna, where are you?!”
“Don’t scream,” Pilip said in a tiny, fear-choked voice. “Please, don’t scream…”
But it was too late. As Dmitri’s last words faded, trapdoors built into the black floor of the barn sprung open. Dozens of mutated bears and pig-creatures crept out, their predatory eyes scanning us with hunger and anger.
***
“Fuck!” Dmitri cried, running back to the door at my side. Frantically, the three of us pulled the board up and dropped it to the fleshy floor with a clatter. As hisses and growls erupted all around us and the predators creeped forwards towards us in a semi-circle, the barn door flew open.
It was night now, the darkness creeping in like a descending curtain. No pig creatures awaited us on the other side, but something worse seemed to be creeping out of the forest.
I saw snakes the color of clotted blood slithering ahead. Each one was the size of a tractor-trailer, yet they made very little noise. An occasional hiss would rip its way through the air, but they hunted silently.
As I stood in the field in front of the barn, a no-man’s land of hellish proportions, the certainty of death fell over my heart like grasping skeletal hands. I looked down at the little boy sadly. He gave me a faint smile, even though his eyes were terrified.
“I think we’re fucked,” Dmitri whispered by my side. I only nodded.
***
But at that moment, I remembered the rules, and an idea came to me.
“Just stay still,” I said. “Don’t even breathe.” Pilip and Dmitri looked at me strangely, then recognition came over their eyes. Dmitri only nodded, and then we all played statue.
The predators from the barn were only thirty feet behind us by now, crouched down and hunting us like a cat with a mouse. Yet the snakes also closed in, their black, slitted eyes gleaming with a reptilian coldness. As the mutated bears and pig creatures leaned down to pounce, I closed my eyes, waiting for the inevitable.
I felt a sudden rush of air all around me. The snakes flitted forward in a blur, their massive jaws unhinging. Two fangs swiveled out like switchblades, fangs big enough to impale a police car. Drops of clear venom fell lazily from the ends.
Keeping my eyes closed, afraid to even breathe or blink, I listened as the sounds of tearing flesh and screaming animals resonated all around me. After about thirty seconds of this, everything went deathly silent.
***
I don’t know how long we stood there like statues, but eventually, someone touched my shoulder. I opened my eyes, unbelieving. Dmitri stared at me intently.
“They’re all gone,” he whispered. “All except Mr. Welcome. It’s now or never.” I nodded, and together, we moved into the farm.
The trapdoors still lay open. I could hear very faint sobbing coming from under the building. Dmitri was afraid to make a sound. Together, the three of us went down to investigate.
We found a dark basement covered in hay. Torture tools covered the walls: iron maidens, brazen bulls, crosses and an entire universe of whips, saws, grinders, pliers, razor-wire and other blood-stained tools of the trade. In the corner, we saw Anna, her hands tied to the wall. More rope bound her feet and legs. We ran forward. When Anna saw Dmitri, she collapsed into a nervous wreck.
“Oh my God, you came! Please, get me out of here, right now,” she whispered. “They’re coming. The ritual will start soon.” Without a word, we started cutting the ropes, freeing her quickly.
“We need to be as quiet as possible,” I told Anna. “We can all get out of here. Let’s go.”
***
As we ascended from the basement back to the main floor of the living farm, the repetitive, metallic voice of Mr. Welcome kept repeating the same insane mantra.
“Welcome,” it said. “Welcome!” Once the four of us were all together, however, it changed.
“Welcome, thieves,” it hissed, its voice deepening and turning into a demonic gurgle. “That is my breeder. You will have to find out what happens to thieves.” I could only imagine all those blood-stained tools in the basement, and I shuddered.
Mr. Welcome inhaled deeply, his massive, fleshy body ballooning. With a predatory roar, he ripped the chains out of the wall of the living building. Orange pus and dark, clotted blood dripped from the holes. The barn breathed faster and deeper, the broken walls vibrating and shimmering as new life and pain flowed into them.
Mr. Welcome started moving towards us like a grinding juggernaut, walking on two legs like some sort of pig god. His many lidless eyes never looked away from us. The frayed optic nerves leading to the bell tower broke with a sound like snapping rubber bands. Dmitri looked at me with great sadness in his eyes.
“Get away,” he whispered. “I’ll distract it. Just get Anna home, no matter what.” Before I could respond, he ran forwards towards the abomination, the small, useless knife raised in one hand.
Mr. Welcome saw him coming. He tried to swipe at Dmitri with a sharp, black hoove, but Dmitri ducked, running around the back of him. He gave a battle-cry and started stabbing the monster in the back of the leg, which probably hurt it about as much as a toothpick.
But it provided a distraction. This time, Mr. Welcome spun his whole body, falling back to all four legs to deal with this nuisance. He used his massive snout to smack Dmitri hard, sending him flying across the barn. He hit the wall with a bone-shattering thud.
Dmitri’s skin immediately started to blacken, as if he were being burned alive. His eyes melted out of his face as he screamed, clawing at the dying patches of necrotic tissue spreading across his body. Within a few seconds, his screams faded to agonized groans. He tried to crawl back towards us as he died.
“Run!” I screamed, grabbing Anna’s hand and forcing her to sprint by my side. Pilip was already one step ahead of us, frantically trying to reach the shelter of the forest. I heard the ground shake behind me as Mr. Welcome drew near, moving much faster than we could ever hope to go. I knew we would never make it.
“Keep going, no matter what!” I yelled at Pilip and Anna. They kept running, the animal instinct to survive now foremost in their minds. I had to suppress mine. I turned to face the creature, the evil pig god known as Mr. Welcome.
***
In hindsight, I don’t know if God or some divine power had interceded, but the bear mace was probably one of the few items that could have saved us at that moment. Mr. Welcome had many eyes, and now that he was running on all four paws, his face was within reach. As my heart palpitated wildly, I raised the bear mace and sprayed at his dozen eyes. He didn’t slow, and I had to jump to the side to keep from being trampled. The air whooshed past me as if a subway car had gone by.
But a moment later, Mr. Welcome gave a roar- and not one of anger and hunger. This was a roar of pain and uncertainty. Blinded, Mr. Welcome frantically started running in circles, knocking down huge swathes of trees. The ear-splitting racket as he pulled the forest apart crashed over the surrounding landscape. Without a moment of hesitation, I turned to follow Pilip and Anna back to the car.
We told the police about the barn and all the hostages, but they claimed they couldn’t find it, and we never heard anything more about it.
***
Looking back on the experience, I now know why Chernobyl is a restricted zone, and it isn’t just because of the radioactivity. There are some things that hide under the surface, after all- things that grow in the dark, rotted places where no eyes roam.

Hey all,
I guess this is a showcase as I've enjoyed putting the build together, but, so this isn't just me tooting my own horn and given I'm sure you're all tired of seeing the letters 'CoC DD', in case it helps anyone, thought I'd also offer some thoughts on some of the issues that I've seen people have in what seems like daily help threads. The below is aimed at people who have followed Ventura's guide or seen Ruetoo's PoB and are wondering what they can do to finish off their build, take it to the next level, or finish off any challenges. Became a bit of an essay so only read if you're curious!
Showcase
Here's my PoB: https://pobb.in/x0M7xQsNZD2Q. Mostly crafted, I imagine would be multiple mirrors to buy (e.g. sold similar jewels for around 200 div each). Feel free to ask how I crafted (or tried to craft) gear.
Video of build in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRBVqAC7Beo
Shows how it plays at this gear level (the less than clean play shows the build's defences :))
Note the build performs extremely well at a much lower budget (indeed, I hit 40/40 many weeks ago), the only reason my build is how it is because I usually play one build per league and enjoy learning different crafts.
Build checklist / help
The last week or so, I've seen a number of posts where players have tried to copy end-game builds on poe.ninja without understanding some of the key things you need to have (and where you can use alternate solutions depending on budget), and are asking for help, so here's my quick attempt to lay some of these out. Think of this as a bit of a mental checklist with a few ideas for each depending on what stage you're at. The things I've seen seem to fall into four buckets:

1. Upgrading certain things too early
2. Not feeling tanky / getting one shot in T17s
3. Lacking expected damage and/or crit chance
4. Running out of ES/mana

Happy to help with any specific qs.
1. Upgrading certain things too early / in wrong order
The main issue I see is jumping to later stage gear and either choosing a less-than-ideal option (e.g. Blizzard crown with +2% crit or lacking AoE) and/or losing key fundamentals elsewhere (see below for what these are). Usually you're better off with a coherent set of cheaper gear and regular 6L than stretching your budget early on an 'endgame' item like a blizzard crown to get huge damage, or MB, then having sub-optimal gear elsewhere and getting one shot due to the problems that causes.
Re recommended upgrade staging, I wrote a comment on a help thread that people seemed to find helpful so I'll link here rather than re-hash again: https://www.reddit.com/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/1cm75vs/comment/l2yu0tf/
2. Not feeling tanky.
The following layers (ideally all) will help. 99% of the time when someone is saying they're not tanky they're missing one or more of these. Note this build is not an armor stacker so if you stack damage mods (especially penetrates elemental resistances) in B2B T17s there is a limit and you need to be careful with combining certain mods even with maxed gear, so bear that in mind.

• Spell suppression: Earlier on, you can use Evasion mastery + evasion gear to get 15%. With Incandescent Heart (IH), you can path to the ES/Suppress nodes up top (Instinct). Later, e.g. with Lightning Coil you can use tattoos, and path to the the ranger suppress nodes Quickstep and Intuition.
• High max resists for ele (88%+): This is the big reason to move from a rare chest to Incandescent Heart to convert ele to chaos. If using IH, you want to get to 86-88% max chaos res. Take the armour & ES mastery on left of tree to apply armour to chaos to mitigate both. If moving to LC, you want Melding of the Flesh so all your ele resists are beefy + chaos res at cap. Note IH is more tanky vs. ele pen as it cannot be penetrated due to conversion to chaos (so ubers will hit less hard using IH).
• Phys conversion / reduction: Early on and with IH, scale armour + convert as much as possible via Helm implicit + craft, Watcher's Eye, shield. Phys is a weakness of IH, so stack armogranite flask/determination/phys reduction. With Lightning Coil, no need for armour anymore, as you convert it. Aim for 80%+ conversion: you don't really need 100% (Ben in HC has 85ish% + Progenesis), and budget / slots are likely better spent elsewhere IMO, when you can already tank shaper slams (e.g. Progenesis to help with ele pen attacks, Lethal pride you can get life/regen/endurance charges which heavily reduce phys taken with Immortal call (I have all 3).
• Life: Life is key as it magnifies your other mitigation and means you survive big hits (e.g. Uber beams). People often complain about getting 1 shot but have <4.5K life (and no life on many gear pieces). Early on get this from tree & gear. Later on from Adorned + % life jewels also. Shoot for 5.5-6K+.
• Crit reduction: Good to have, especially for T17s. With IH, you can get this on a shield, but optional. Tattoos are a good idea all round (5-10x). Late gate, an armour corrupt + 10 turtle tattoos can make you crit immune.
• Endurance charges: You can get these early on from Red Dream jewel (see Ventura PoB: https://pobb.in/CobZvosw4dvp), then with IH you can use Enduring Cry. You don't need them when you swap to Lightning Coil, I really like using endurance charges + immortal call (reliable endurance charges on kill from Lethal Pride which gives a load of less ele/phys taken proccing very often for an extra layer of defence).
• Life recovery & regen: I love regen/recovery on builds, so I over-invest here. Vitality life gain on hit is awesome for this build, Regen on flask is big, another source on boots/gloves/shield is great, Fire damage leeched as life (gloves implicit or ring) also helps.
• Evasion / Dodge: Grace + on Gear. Evasion flask works early too (e.g. if dropping Grace for Purity of Elements in IH set up). Elusive boots can add another layer late game.
• Ailment immunity: Need to have it really. Purity of elements I think is best. You can also get Stormshroud or Ancestral Vision, but these don't work great with the Adorned and have specific gear requirements so I wouldn't build around them.

3. Damage / crit chance
Damage isn't usually a problem on this build. CoC DD scales with corpse life, trigger rate, crit, fire dmg, AoE, enemy damage taken (e.g. Yoke, Glacial Cage, Covered in Ash, Shock). The big hitter items are Awakened CoC (trigger rate), crit multi from adorned jewels, 100% crit chance (viatree, power charge ring for mapping, and/or adorned implicits), fire damage on shield/sword/rings, damage vs. chilled on gloves, and enough AoE.
Crit chance medium cluster (see PoB) and Power charge ring can get you to 100% crit chance endgame.
A mistake I see is people taking a Blizzard crown with Conc effect and no AoE (and no AoE from tree / adorned jewels), massively reducing their effective DPS vs. what it could be. Also make sure you have your T17 spectres and bleed/poison tattoos for Yoke.
4. Mana / ES
A common complaint I see is running out of ES, especially with a 8L crown and when lots of DD's are triggering. The main problem I see is not enough regen (I have 1400 regen vs. 740 ES/sec for example, I've seen some with 760/740). Inquisitor node means life regen becomes ES regen. I love regen on my builds so I always had it so never ran into any mana issues at any point. Also Level 21 DD uses more mana and doesn't do more explosion damage.
You also need enough ES to cast Haste with Divine blessing, so worth checking before any big changes too.
Realise it's a number of weeks into the league, but hope that helps anyone out who is looking to push their build to any goals they still may have for the league! Feel free to ask if you have any specific qs.
Cheers.
Edit: I think I have a few things lying around like adorned jewels so if you're still playing the league, drop your PoB and anything you're keen to improve or questions you have and I'll dm you.

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PPV FLO SPORTS TV 03 : 2024 Joliet Slammers vs Gateway Grizzlies start:2024-05-30 17:45:00 stop:2024-05-30 21:45:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 03 : 2024 Martinsville Mustangs vs Forest City Owls start:2024-05-31 00:30:00 stop:2024-05-31 04:30:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 04 : 2024 Staten Island FerryHawks vs York Revolution start:2024-05-27 20:00:00 stop:2024-05-28 00:00:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 04 : 2024 Randolph County Legion vs Asheboro ZooKeepers start:2024-05-28 01:00:00 stop:2024-05-28 05:00:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 04 : 2024 Wilmington Sharks vs Holly Springs Salamanders start:2024-05-29 00:30:00 stop:2024-05-29 04:30:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 04 : 2024 Southern Maryland Blue Crabs vs Hagerstown Flying Boxcars start:2024-05-29 17:00:00 stop:2024-05-29 21:00:00
Screwdatt, [5/27/2024 10:42 AM]
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 04 : 2024 Charleston Dirty Birds vs York Revolution start:2024-05-30 00:30:00 stop:2024-05-30 04:30:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 04 : 2024 OHSAA Outdoor Championships start:2024-05-30 10:56:00 stop:2024-05-30 14:56:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 04 : 2024 World Jiu-Jitsu IBJJF Championship start:2024-05-30 18:30:00 stop:2024-05-30 22:30:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 04 : 2024 Morehead City Marlins vs Greenville Yard Gnomes start:2024-05-31 00:30:00 stop:2024-05-31 04:30:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 05 : 2024 South Wake Shakes vs Holly Springs Salamanders start:2024-05-27 23:05:00 stop:2024-05-28 03:05:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 05 : 2024 Southern Maryland Blue Crabs vs Hagerstown Flying Boxcars start:2024-05-29 00:30:00 stop:2024-05-29 04:30:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 05 : 2024 New England Knockouts vs New Jersey Jackals start:2024-05-29 17:35:00 stop:2024-05-29 21:35:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 05 : 2024 Gastonia Baseball Club vs Long Island Ducks start:2024-05-30 00:35:00 stop:2024-05-30 04:35:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 05 : 2024 Southern Maryland Blue Crabs vs Hagerstown Flying Boxcars start:2024-05-31 00:30:00 stop:2024-05-31 04:30:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 06 : 2024 South Wake Shakes vs Holly Springs Salamanders start:2024-05-27 23:05:00 stop:2024-05-28 03:05:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 06 : 2024 Lancaster Stormers vs Staten Island FerryHawks start:2024-05-29 00:30:00 stop:2024-05-29 04:30:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 06 : 2024 Master International IBJJF Jiu-Jitsu North American Championship start:2024-05-29 18:30:00 stop:2024-05-29 22:30:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 06 : 2024 Lexington Legends vs High Point Rockers start:2024-05-30 00:35:00 stop:2024-05-30 04:35:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 06 : 2024 Charleston Dirty Birds vs York Revolution start:2024-05-31 00:30:00 stop:2024-05-31 04:30:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 07 : 2024 Toledo Walleye vs Kansas City Mavericks start:2024-05-27 23:05:00 stop:2024-05-28 03:05:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 07 : 2024 Charleston Dirty Birds vs York Revolution start:2024-05-29 00:30:00 stop:2024-05-29 04:30:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 07 : 2024 Florence Yalls vs Lake Erie Crushers start:2024-05-29 19:05:00 stop:2024-05-29 23:05:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 07 : 2024 Holly Springs Salamanders vs Tri-City Chili Peppers start:2024-05-30 01:00:00 stop:2024-05-30 05:00:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 07 : 2024 Lancaster Stormers vs Staten Island FerryHawks start:2024-05-31 00:30:00 stop:2024-05-31 04:30:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 08 : 2024 High Point-Thomasville HiToms vs Martinsville Mustangs start:2024-05-28 01:00:00 stop:2024-05-28 05:00:00
Screwdatt, [5/27/2024 10:42 AM]
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 08 : 2024 Florence Yalls vs Lake Erie Crushers start:2024-05-29 00:35:00 stop:2024-05-29 04:35:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 08 : 2024 Morehead City Marlins vs Wilmington Sharks start:2024-05-30 01:00:00 stop:2024-05-30 05:00:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 08 : 2024 Florence Yalls vs Lake Erie Crushers start:2024-05-31 00:35:00 stop:2024-05-31 04:35:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 09 : 2024 Lexington County Blowfish vs Florence Flamingos start:2024-05-28 01:00:00 stop:2024-05-28 05:00:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 09 : 2024 New England Knockouts vs New Jersey Jackals start:2024-05-29 00:35:00 stop:2024-05-29 04:35:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 09 : 2024 Florence Flamingos vs Macon Bacon start:2024-05-30 01:00:00 stop:2024-05-30 05:00:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 10 : 2024 Weekly Racing at Meridian Speedway start:2024-05-28 02:30:00 stop:2024-05-28 06:30:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 10 : 2024 Lexington Legends vs High Point Rockers start:2024-05-29 00:35:00 stop:2024-05-29 04:35:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 10 : 2024 Boone Bigfoots vs Martinsville Mustangs start:2024-05-30 01:00:00 stop:2024-05-30 05:00:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 11 : 2024 Gastonia Baseball Club vs Long Island Ducks start:2024-05-29 00:35:00 stop:2024-05-29 04:35:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 11 : 2024 Florida Everblades vs Adirondack Thunder start:2024-05-30 01:00:00 stop:2024-05-30 05:00:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 12 : 2024 Castrol FloRacing Night in America at Macon Speedway start:2024-05-29 00:45:00 stop:2024-05-29 04:45:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 12 : 2024 Schaumburg Boomers vs Quebec Capitales start:2024-05-30 01:05:00 stop:2024-05-30 05:05:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 13 : 2024 Sussex County Miners vs New York Boulders start:2024-05-29 01:00:00 stop:2024-05-29 05:00:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 13 : 2024 Windy City Thunderbolts vs Trois-Rivieres Aigles start:2024-05-30 01:05:00 stop:2024-05-30 05:05:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 14 : 2024 Greenville Yard Gnomes vs Wilson Tobs start:2024-05-29 01:00:00 stop:2024-05-29 05:00:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 14 : 2024 Joliet Slammers vs Gateway Grizzlies start:2024-05-30 01:30:00 stop:2024-05-30 05:30:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 15 : 2024 Peninsula Pilots vs Tri-City Chili Peppers start:2024-05-29 01:00:00 stop:2024-05-29 05:00:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 15 : 2024 Washington Wild Things vs Evansville Otters start:2024-05-30 01:35:00 stop:2024-05-30 05:35:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 16 : 2024 Forest City Owls vs Asheboro ZooKeepers start:2024-05-29 01:00:00 stop:2024-05-29 05:00:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 16 : 2024 Toledo Walleye vs Kansas City Mavericks start:2024-05-30 02:05:00 stop:2024-05-30 06:05:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 17 : 2024 Florida Everblades vs Adirondack Thunder start:2024-05-29 01:00:00 stop:2024-05-29 05:00:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 17 : 2024 Idaho Falls Chukars vs Northern Colorado Owlz start:2024-05-30 02:15:00 stop:2024-05-30 06:15:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 18 : 2024 Windy City Thunderbolts vs Trois-Rivieres Aigles start:2024-05-29 01:05:00 stop:2024-05-29 05:05:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 18 : 2024 Missoula PaddleHeads vs Ogden Raptors start:2024-05-30 02:30:00 stop:2024-05-30 06:30:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 19 : 2024 Schaumburg Boomers vs Quebec Capitales start:2024-05-29 01:05:00 stop:2024-05-29 05:05:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 19 : 2024 Boise Hawks vs Billings Mustangs start:2024-05-30 02:35:00 stop:2024-05-30 06:35:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 20 : 2024 Florence Flamingos vs Lexington County Blowfish start:2024-05-29 01:05:00 stop:2024-05-29 05:05:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 20 : 2024 Glacier Range Riders vs Great Falls Voyagers start:2024-05-30 03:00:00 stop:2024-05-30 07:00:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 21 : 2024 Joliet Slammers vs Gateway Grizzlies start:2024-05-29 01:30:00 stop:2024-05-29 05:30:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 21 : 2024 The Bears vs Pond Frogs start:2024-05-30 03:15:00 stop:2024-05-30 07:15:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 22 : 2024 Washington Wild Things vs Evansville Otters start:2024-05-29 01:35:00 stop:2024-05-29 05:35:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 22 : 2024 Weenerz vs Horse Men start:2024-05-30 03:30:00 stop:2024-05-30 07:30:00
Screwdatt, [5/27/2024 10:42 AM]
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 23 : 2024 Idaho Falls Chukars vs Northern Colorado Owlz start:2024-05-29 02:15:00 stop:2024-05-29 06:15:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 23 : 2024 Grand Junction Jackalopes vs Yolo High Wheelers start:2024-05-30 03:45:00 stop:2024-05-30 07:45:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 24 : 2024 Missoula PaddleHeads vs Ogden Raptors start:2024-05-29 02:30:00 stop:2024-05-29 06:30:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 24 : 2024 Blazers vs SB All Stars start:2024-05-30 03:45:00 stop:2024-05-30 07:45:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 25 : 2024 Boise Hawks vs Billings Mustangs start:2024-05-29 02:35:00 stop:2024-05-29 06:35:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 26 : 2024 Glacier Range Riders vs Great Falls Voyagers start:2024-05-29 03:00:00 stop:2024-05-29 07:00:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 27 : 2024 Hawks vs Yellow Jackets start:2024-05-29 03:15:00 stop:2024-05-29 07:15:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 28 : 2024 Grand Junction Jackalopes vs Yolo High Wheelers start:2024-05-29 03:45:00 stop:2024-05-29 07:45:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 29 : 2024 Brew Crew vs Comets start:2024-05-29 03:45:00 stop:2024-05-29 07:45:00
PPV FLO SPORTS TV 30 : 2024 Penticton Vees vs Surrey Eagles start:2024-05-29 04:15:00 stop:2024-05-29 08:15:00
Screwdatt, [5/27/2024 10:42 AM]
=== AUSTRALIA STAN PACK ===
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 01 Ruusuvuori V Kwon Mens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 10:00am // ET Mon 27 May 5:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 01 Fognini V Van De Zandschulp Mens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 3:00pm // ET Mon 27 May 10:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 02 Purcell V Squire Mens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 10:00am // ET Mon 27 May 5:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 02 Monteiro V Kecmanovic Mens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 3:00pm // ET Mon 27 May 10:00am
Screwdatt, [5/27/2024 10:42 AM]
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 03 Shevchenko V Karatsev Mens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 10:00am // ET Mon 27 May 5:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 03 Misolic V Virtanen Mens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 3:00pm // ET Mon 27 May 10:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 04 Nishioka V Augeraliassime Mens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 10:00am // ET Mon 27 May 5:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 04 Bellucci V Tiafoe Mens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 3:00pm // ET Mon 27 May 10:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 05 Shelton V Gaston Mens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 10:00am // ET Mon 27 May 5:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 05 Udvardy V Pavlyuchenkova Womens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 3:00pm // ET Mon 27 May 10:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 06 Eubanks V Sinner Mens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 10:00am // ET Mon 27 May 5:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 06 Starodubtseva V Bucsa Womens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 3:00pm // ET Mon 27 May 10:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 07 Baptiste V Day Womens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 10:00am // ET Mon 27 May 5:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 08 Samsonova V Linette Womens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 10:00am // ET Mon 27 May 5:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 09 Potapova V Rakhimova Womens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 10:00am // ET Mon 27 May 5:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 10 Saville V Paolini Womens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 10:00am // ET Mon 27 May 5:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 11 Masarova V Vondrousova Womens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 10:00am // ET Mon 27 May 5:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 12 Vickery V Jabeur Womens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 11:00am // ET Mon 27 May 6:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 13 Norrie V Kotov Mens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 12:00pm // ET Mon 27 May 7:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 14 Heide V Baez Mens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 12:00pm // ET Mon 27 May 7:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 15 Kovalik V Giron Mens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 12:00pm // ET Mon 27 May 7:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 16 Khachanov V Nagal Mens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 12:00pm // ET Mon 27 May 7:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 17 Arnaldi V Fils Mens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 12:00pm // ET Mon 27 May 7:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 18 Cerundolo V Hanfmann Mens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 1:00pm // ET Mon 27 May 8:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 19 Fucsovics V Tsitsipas Mens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 1:00pm // ET Mon 27 May 8:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 20 Tomova V Alexandrova Womens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 1:00pm // ET Mon 27 May 8:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 21 Kalinina V Osorio Womens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 1:00pm // ET Mon 27 May 8:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 22 Collins V Dolehide Womens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 1:00pm // ET Mon 27 May 8:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 23 Kalinskaya V Burel Womens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 1:00pm // ET Mon 27 May 8:00am
AU STAN SPORT AU EVENT 24 Swiatek V Jeanjean Womens Singles Round 1 Roland Garros 2024 // UK Mon 27 May 1:00pm // ET Mon 27 May 8:00am
Screwdatt, [5/27/2024 10:42 AM]
=== UK VIA PLAY PACK ===
UK VIA PLAY 01 NHL Nhl tonight // UK Mon 27 May 2:00pm ET Mon 27 May 9:00am
UK VIA PLAY 01 LALIGA Viva laliga // UK Mon 27 May 6:00pm ET Mon 27 May 1:00pm
UK VIA PLAY 01 NHL Edmonton dallas // UK Tue 28 May 1:35am ET Mon 27 May 8:35pm
UK VIA PLAY 02 LALIGA Laliga news // UK Mon 27 May 2:00pm ET Mon 27 May 9:00am
Screwdatt, [5/27/2024 10:42 AM]
=== USA PEACOCK PACK ===
US PEACOCK 01 TENNIS French open rd. 1 // UK Mon 27 May 4:00pm // ET Mon 27 May 10:00am
US PEACOCK 01 INDYCAR Indy 500 victory celebration // UK Tue 28 May 1:30am // ET Mon 27 May 7:30pm
US PEACOCK 02 GOLF Individual mens champ // UK Mon 27 May 11:00pm // ET Mon 27 May 5:00pm
Screwdatt, [5/27/2024 10:42 AM]
=== USA MILB PACK ===
US MILB 01 Aberdeen IronBirds vs Hudson Valley Renegades // UK Mon 27 May 6:35pm // ET Mon 27 May 1:35pm
US MILB 01 Omaha Storm Chasers vs Indianapolis Indians // UK Mon 27 May 11:15pm // ET Mon 27 May 6:15pm
US MILB 02 Columbia Fireflies vs Kannapolis Cannon Ballers // UK Mon 27 May 11:30pm // ET Mon 27 May 6:30pm
US MILB 03 Jupiter Hammerheads vs Daytona Tortugas // UK Mon 27 May 11:35pm // ET Mon 27 May 6:35pm
US MILB 04 Harrisburg Senators vs Binghamton Rumble Ponies // UK Mon 27 May 11:35pm // ET Mon 27 May 6:35pm
Screwdatt, [5/27/2024 10:42 AM]
US MILB 05 Hickory Crawdads vs Winston-Salem Dash // UK Tue 28 May 12:00am // ET Mon 27 May 7:00pm
US MILB 06 Montgomery Biscuits vs Mississippi Braves // UK Tue 28 May 12:05am // ET Mon 27 May 7:05pm
US MILB 07 Northwest Arkansas Naturals vs Tulsa Drillers // UK Tue 28 May 12:30am // ET Mon 27 May 7:30pm
US MILB 08 Fresno Grizzlies vs San Jose Giants // UK Tue 28 May 1:00am // ET Mon 27 May 8:00pm
US MILB 09 Modesto Nuts vs Stockton Ports // UK Tue 28 May 2:05am // ET Mon 27 May 9:05pm
Screwdatt, [5/27/2024 10:42 AM]
=== USA NBA PACK ===
US NBA LIVE 01 Pacers (IND) @ Celtics (BOS) // UK Tue 28/05 12:50am // ET Mon 27/05 7:50pm
Screwdatt, [5/27/2024 10:42 AM]
=== USA NHL PACK ===
US NHL LIVE 01: Edmonton Oilers @ Dallas Stars 8:30 PM ET ET
Screwdatt, [5/27/2024 10:42 AM]
=== USA MLB PACK ===
US MLB LIVE 01 Boston Red Sox @ Baltimore Orioles 12:55 PM ET
US MLB LIVE 02 Kansas City Royals @ Minnesota Twins 2:00 PM ET
US MLB LIVE 03 Toronto Blue Jays @ Chicago White Sox 2:00 PM ET
US MLB LIVE 04 Cleveland Guardians @ Colorado Rockies 4:00 PM ET
US MLB LIVE 05 Los Angeles Dodgers @ New York Mets 4:00 PM ET
US MLB LIVE 06 St. Louis Cardinals @ Cincinnati Reds 4:00 PM ET
US MLB LIVE 07 Washington Nationals @ Atlanta Braves 4:00 PM ET
US MLB LIVE 08 Chicago Cubs @ Milwaukee Brewers 4:00 PM ET
US MLB LIVE 09 Philadelphia Phillies @ San Francisco Giants 4:55 PM ET
US MLB LIVE 10 Miami Marlins @ San Diego Padres 6:30 PM ET
US MLB LIVE 11 Houston Astros @ Seattle Mariners 9:30 PM ET

Does the bear in Dutch's pipe cabin respawn?

I just had one of the coolest experiences. I was hunting for buck skins and I got attacked by a grizzly bear.
I had my bow out and poison arrows equipped but I was unpreparred. He was maybe 5 or 6 feet from me and I let off an arrow and the reason the experience was so awesome is because my crosshair wasn't on him but I still got a hit.
He ran off and collapsed. I went up to kill him and the kill command wouldn't come up. So I pulled out my revolver and put one in his brain. It went from 3 stars to 1.
How do I kill a struggling grizzly?

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is more than just a film about vengeance. Naturally, audiences might compare their experience to that of its successful predecessor, but Miller takes a completely different approach in this film, focusing on the complex relationship between the protagonist and antagonist and doing so with an anchoring object: the teddy bear.
The teddy bear, once belonging to a member of Dementus' family, represents his unresolved grief and emotional turmoil. It appears throughout the journey of their relationship, symbolizing a transition from grief to power and ultimately redemption. When Dementus first meets Furiosa, the teddy bear is strapped to his back. As he turns to face the camera, his expression shows a hint of sadness, signifying that he is still burdened by his loss and carrying the weight of his past.
Dementus could have tortured Furiosa to extract the location of the Green Place, but instead, he offers her protection. He forces her to witness the torture and killing of his captives, including her own mother, perhaps in an attempt to offer solace or recognition of shared suffering. He gives her the teddy bear, which for Furiosa becomes a symbol of her hatred and desire for vengeance. She remains silent after her capture, tattooing celestial navigation on her arm to remind herself a promise to her mother to one day find home.
As Dementus' desire for power grows, he begins to turn into a ruthless warlord. During his group's first attack on Immortan Joe's Citadel, he straps the teddy bear to his front, signifying that he is no longer hiding his grief; his sorrow has transformed into a desire for control and domination.
After capturing Gas Town, Dementus trades Furiosa to Immortan Joe without hesitation, driven by his hunger for domination rather than his possessive desire for a daughter. However, losing Furiosa, someone he may have cared for or seen as a link to his lost family, triggers him to reclaim the bear. For Furiosa, this is the beginning of her quest for vengeance, but her immediate focus is on survival.
In the end, when Dementus submits to Furiosa, he explains that they are similar people. Furiosa, perhaps agreeing with his comment, cuts the teddy bear loose, relieving him of his past before subjecting him to redemption.
One can't help but wonder, after the despair of discovering that the Green Place is gone in Fury Road, what path Furiosa will choose moving forward, knowing that it's not just Dementus; insanity has spread across the entire wasteland.