Guys, I really need help with this one!! I recently traveled to Sweden and I went through some small districts there, I spent a few days and nights hanging around bars and met a group of graffiti artists from Spain and we went "exploring" kind urbex/graffiti vibe... These guys were really into trap and dark rap, and as a punk/rock guy I loved it, it felt new and refreshing! They were painting and playing a specific song that I was obsessed with and I asked the name of it and I still didn't know the name or the artist. I found this very strange, but do I think the world of underground rap is like that? I immediately dived into Shazam, and nothing, I sent it to a rapper friend and he didn't even recognize the language... They sent me the song and the name of the song was just "€€€666€€€666..." What this means?? This is some kind of AI song or some obscure cult language, but what is it? Is this a new wave of underground trap? In the last few days I have wasted a lot more time than I would like to admit searching the internet for this song and nothing and specifically on soundcloud where I thought I could find some clue but nothing so far and I'M LOSING MY MIND OVER THIS SONG!!! I CANNOT DIE WITHOUT FINDING THIS ARTIST!!!

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Has anyone been keeping track of the graffiti on the main Rd heading towards the city, accusing someone of R*pe and naming them. No sooner is it painted over, it pops back up.

i can not find the name anywhere !!
it starts off with this girl and she sees an ad online for a sort of psychological horror house and she decides to sign up for it. her friend says it’s a bad idea. she drives to the place and when she arrives she gets kidnapped and put in the back of a van with a sack on her head. she arrives to the place and is instructed to change in a bathroom where she meets this other man who also signed up for it. there’s neon graffiti on the walls and mirror of the bathroom. the man and woman have to experience all of these “experiences” or something ex. getting chased by a clown carrying a chainsaw, almost drowning, stuff like that. the guy that controls it/ is the head of it wears a black mask and is also being interviewed by two korean or japanese journalists (one man one woman). the male journalist gets shot and the woman is freaked out but i don’t think they shoot her, they just let her go. two girls are a part of one of the last experiences and for it they shoot the other guy and then they get worries because it was supposed to be a fake bullet but it was real and he dies. the main girl is really scared because she thinks she’s gonna die too. the two girls who shot the guy chase her into the woods and eventually the main girl gets her hands on a gun and that’s when the girls reveal that everything was staged, the guy didn’t actually die and he was a part of the experience the whole time. they bring her back to the place and her dad who i guess she has trauma with is there and she goes crazy and starts killing everyone. that’s all i remember

Hi, I wanted to ask a few things as I've been thinking on and off about wanting to get a little into graffiti for a while now, just haven't really got to it yet.
Are there some resources about like the 'theory', like all the diffirent ways to write a letter and ways to stylize it. Or just a deep dive into all of it on like a 'theoretic' side
(if there is like a 'theoretic' and then the actual 'execution'/ the mechanical skill of holding a pen and writing, if that makes any sense. I imagine studying fonts from some website and calligraphy and learning to write in a decently readible handwriting would be useful?)
Also, how much does the 'name' or different words written mean? Is it just random stuff/ a word that looks cool/ does it actually mean something?
Thanks and sorry if these are dumb guestions.

When I was escorted to the group’s ship I saw a long forgotten memory.A Mahasavki war robot.
When the so called era of fairness began in warfare the great Mahasavki arms company was in desperate need of an idea that can save the company.The Mahasavki company produced everything from tanks to helmet.This chaos and desperation continued for months when one of the engineers realized a loop hole in the new treaty that forbidden the use of lot of military equipment that the company produced in the name of fair combat just like in ancient time.The treaty didn’t said that in hand to hand combat (sword vs sword)the participants needs to be human and that when the idea of the war or combat robot was created.The company developed robots before but they were only experimental.So they rebooted the program and gave them high-carbon steel swords that with the great power of robots could cut down a man with one swing.
I was only a corporal back then when in the new era the infamous “Bloody Balmuth war” began.My legion was deployed to Theractus the city of pearls.we stationed for two months when the Tekition forces sieged the city.The walls of the mighty city of Theractus were broken in the 3th week of the siege and so the enemy forces stormed the city.I was in the middle of fighting when I saw my first war robot in combat.The war robots were unstoppable swords couldn’t penetrate it’s layered armor they didn’t had sophisticated combat techniques they only could stike they were brute force of power.We had to retreat the once glamorous city was destroyed and it’s population massacred to set an example that with this new tech there is only defeat for Cascardia.I was a prisoner of war for 3 years in harsh conditions with other Cascardian war prisoners among us the war robots were a symbol of fear .After the war the states banned these war machines and the empire had to scrap them and that was the end of war robots. At least that's what I thought.
I couldn’t believed my eyes when I first saw it.It still had its battle scars the desperate attempts of Cascardians to survive but in vain.It had A graffiti like paint jobs all over its body it was the signs of different gangs and organizations that’s owned it after the war.It was a real treasure in the criminal world.The group given it a name Tenex and was an appreciated “member” of the group.Tenex could eliminate any target without serious injury and also intimidated other gangs and even the police so of course it was appreciated.They said that they gotten it after some serious trouble with a rival gang.

I got recently diagnosed of Schizotypal Personality Disorder because of my referring different mythology, deities, and religious concepts interconnected with each other.
I was suffering from depression from roughly around 2015 to 2019 then there would be moments when I would get a lack of sleep and I would feel better (hypomanic) this went on for a while me cycling depression and hypomania. It wasn't until 2018 that I was introduced to cannabis being high opened my eyes to new possibilities like I could be this happy. I realized I'm a highly anxious person and cannabis allows me to relax.
In 2020 I had a psychotic episode where I was walking with my mom to the subway and I was on my way to an interview with Equinox to become a Personal Trainer, I just wanted to help people get better. During the subway ride, I was happy as a peach, but then I heard whispering from the other side of the subway cart, it was a little who was just mumbling to herself and she was just looking around with a paranoid taste. I looked at her and sent her love and kindness and she nodded at me and closed her eyes. Then I received a text from Jude mentioning about Flushing Printer, but I interpreted it as I need to go to Flushing Hospital. I left the subway cart and I called an Uber, as my Uber lifted me up I had an internal monologue, I had a voice.
The voice said "Son you are worthy, to be King!", the worthy part I liked, but becoming a King I said "I don't know want to be a King and be burdened with responsibility" I asked the Uber Driver where he was from, Brooklyn = King so I said he can be king. Then I went to call two people who I had a crush at the time, one I would be referred to as a Lady Sif and another a Valkyrie, I just automatically assumed their title and they responded normally. I assume I was Thor.
I got to Flushing Hospital and I bypass the security and followed an old man going to see his daughter or wife, I still have no reason why I was there, I thought I was going to perform a miracle, and I was on the 4th floor by then. I was answering's doctor's call which were empty. Then the medical staff noticed I was there, there was another older gentleman who said "You have nice hair" and my Grandfather would say the same thing.
The security team arrived to escort me out and they were disappointed in themselves for missing me and allowing me to come in, they were annoyed by my presence.
Since then I've gone through many Archetype.
Marvel Thor was cast out of Heaven due to arrogance and to learn humility. I equate that to Lucifer, a lightbearer, and Lucifer is equates to a Dragon. I have this book call "An Initiate's Guide to the Path of the Dragon" which ties everything for Dragon path.
I went through a plethora of ArcheType I really thought I was God because I was able to create a pantheon a series of what I would call evidence.
Aang The Avatar: The Last Air Bender shares the same name as my Vietnamese Name "An" it's pronounced the same. An in Sumerian is number 60, I am also number 60 in my Kung Fu Lineage. Then I received the name "Samuel Wiest" and from there things started to get biblical. I have a degree in BTech Computer Information system so I started to see things as in codes.
I would mean "Daniel" would be "God is my judge" and Ingram "angel, raven, or ruler" the most recent archetype if Dream, and I would use his Family Tree mostly recognizing the different archetypes and characters around me.
I received a Hot Pink Umbrella that said Dream Hotel from a local park that has Graffiti "I LOVE YOU JESUS!" and "ELI" "MER" "SIL" and "SUPA" tagged on the billboard.
I've cycled through and attached to different archetypes, I still use Dream and N30 Morpheus as my "high self".
Anansi the Spider, King of Stories, and Loki, God of Stories has been resonating a lot.
I meant this clown named Spatz Donavan and he worked with Jim Carey to get into spirituality, he worked with performers like Michael Jackson. I called Spatz Merlin, but Merlin is also Odin and I'm Loki his blood brother.
There are just a lot of things that happened that connect to each other, like the show Mr. Robot and Raganarok the endings are the same where it was all in the character's head.
On Facebook, there a lot of people who seem to pick up on the Lucifer archetype and then Lucifer in the Netflix series becomes a boddhisatva of Hell.
There is a trend where Anti-Heroes or the An Thai Christ, I use my name as part of the equation.
An = Peace Shalom = Peace
Lately I've been exploring the Abrahamic religion because I want to learn more about the Holy Spirit.
I was wondering if this is a common thing to explore archetype.
I looked in Anansi the Spider because it contained "An" my name and my initial is AT = @
@ looks like O+a which reminds me of the Netflix Series The OA (Original Angel)
The most recent death Akira Toriyama's initial is AT, he is known for Dragon Ball and Dragon Quest. Dragon Ball characters such as Son Goku take after Sun Wu Kong, and Sun Wu Kong is Hanuman.
After watching the show Loki, I believe we are all variants of each other, so there is a say "view all as your mother", since people as variants from one another helps me navigate.
Journey to the West, Sun Wu Kong because a Buddha
I believe I connect with Chenrezig aka Avalokiteshvara the most, after watching ABC: American Born Chinese, I'm a firmly believer that my mother is Guan Yin and I'm learning the path back to Source.
I'm writing because it's the only thing that brings me joy and hopefuly opens to other who would like to share their story.
I personally don't subscribe to Schizotypal Personability Disorder, but I'll borrow the name because I do look at SchizoPoster's Memes.
I learned OM MANI PADME HUM Mantra from a group of Guan Yin' Disciples in California, ever since then my parents have taken on meditation practice and even setup an altar since I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder which I definitely do have since I've felt the highs and lows, writing because I feel low right now and didn't know where else where I would post and discuss besides Reddit.
Anyways I wonder if this has to do anything with the Arisings and Passings or has anyways gone though this Archetypal journey?

How I Wonder What You Are by Al Bruno III

I’ll know the time is right when the howling begins. It will be after sundown of course, the Mothers and Fathers of Jebsen only scream after sundown, and only on the clearest of nights.
There is no town of Jebsen listed on any map, even in its heyday of the 1940’s it was too small to be worthy of notice. It’s nothing more than a collection of buildings at the end of a dead end road. On one side it is bordered by long untended corn fields, on the other the swampy remains of Lake Campbell. The most noticeable of the town’s buildings is a red brick edifice with a wide domed roof of fractured glass. The rest is just barns and single story homes. Along the border of the swamp is row after row of barbed wire and bear traps.
I’ll let them scream for an hour or so, let them become tired. Even now it amazes me how I had learned to pick out the individual voices in the cacophony. The Widow Toth tires easily but the Garrets will be at it until dawn.
And what will I be doing while every able-bodied adult is on the rooftops? I’ll be slipping these pages into this mason jar and sealing it lid in place with the wax from a melted crayon. The Children of Jebsen won’t miss just one, especially not purple.
Twenty-five years ago a calamity befell the town of Jebsen. The authorities blamed it all on the after effects of an experimental insecticide but the Old Book the town elders read from every Sunday said otherwise. It told the citizens of Jebsen that a curse was carried by those twinkling dots in the sky. A malevolence traveling at 186,000 miles per second that would twist their Children into nightmares should a glint of it ever touch their skin.
That is why they scream at the starlight; hating it, cursing it, raging at it.
You can’t see what their Children have become and not feel the same way. The changes are heartbreaking and horrifying all at once but after you spend time with them you feel differently. There is mockery in the mis-set eyes that peer from those mollified skulls.
They know secrets. On quiet, cloudy nights I would put my ear to one families’ basement door or another and hear them murmuring and giggling as they writhe in their basement styes.
I think of their weeping mouths and soft teeth and remember that day half a decade ago the ill-advised shortcut and along the neglected county route 99. I remember approaching the train bridge and seriously considering turning around, it looked decades out of repair and I half suspected it would collapse as I passed under it.
But I didn’t turn back, my ego wouldn’t let me. I was right and the road was wrong so I drove under the train bridge, momentarily marveling at the strange and elaborate graffiti that covered it.
I was just past the structure when a small, bent figure ran out from the long grass.
The sounds are what I really remember; the squeal of the brakes, the thud of the body on the hood of my car, the thick crack of laminated glass.
I would later learn the name of the child I had hit was Julius McCarty but all I knew then was that there was an emaciated, bloodied shape lying halfway through my windshield.
Human instinct made me reach out, to see if the little boy was alive. When my fingers brushed his skin he twisted around to face me. His mouth lashed out proboscis-like and nuzzled into the flesh of my arm.
Pain bristled out from where the boy had latched on to me. I screamed, thrashed. I shoved the car door open and tumbled out onto the asphalt. The boy coughed once and died.
At first the wound held all my attention. How could it not? I had expected to see torn flesh and blood but instead the boy’s distended mouth had left behind a cluster of thick, festering ulcerations.
But then I became aware of the men making their way out of the tall grass. These were the Fathers of Jebsen understood immediately what had happened.
They had brought everything they might need to bring one of their Children back home to its basement; rope, bandages and cudgels. It was also everything they needed to make a captive of me.
They, dragged me away from the accident site, through the tall grass and over the collapsed remains of a chain link fence to leave me in the care of the Mothers of Jebsen. Those gaunt women had cudgels of their own and I was a mass of bruises and welts by the time the hole in the Earth had been made to their standards.
The menfolk returned carrying the child wrapped in a linen shroud. They dropped it roughly into the ground. There were no ceremonies, tears or headstone. It was well after dark by the time I had filled the grave back in.
Now here it is years later and I’ve had to dig a dozen more graves, one by one the Mothers and Fathers are dying out, it’s always a surprise when it happens. Every mother and father of Jensen is withered and white haired but every year a few more die in their sleep, or at work in the fields or at prayer in their red brick observatory.
The Children are dying too, not a one has ever lived past seventeen. One by one they waste away, except of course for the occasional accident like the one that trapped me here.
Despite these curse that has befallen them the people of Jebsen continue to reproduce, each mother convinced that this time she will give birth to the Great Redeemer as was foretold in the Old Book. Each time they fail and each time the result is locked away in it’s family’s basement.
You can’t imagine those basements, the smell of rotten meat, the ankle deep fecal matter and the perfectly clean toys. They draw equations on the walls, gold and silver crayons are their preferred color. Every Tuesday I have to visit each of those cellars and scrub the theorems and postulations away.
The youngest of the Children is a newborn, still angry from the womb, the oldest is seventeen and nearly rotted away. No matter the age they all taunt me as I work, sometimes with bites, sometimes with maledictions. Both have left unimaginable scars.
So many scars now, I’m marked, I could never walk among the people I’d known before. They’d refuse to recognize me and insist I was a stranger
The Widow Thoth says this is my penance for the death of Julius McCarty, she even went so far as to cite chapter and verse on the subject from Old Book itself. The Mothers and Fathers of Jebsen, base every aspect of their lives on that thick volume of prophecies and homilies.
I wonder if anyone will notice me as leaving. I doubt it, even when they’re not screaming their heads off a long dead suns they barely notice my comings and goings.
As I said before, the Mothers and Father’s of Jebsen have become so sure of me. Some families think I’ve become a true believer, the rest think the cinder block chained to my ankle is enough to keep me in my place.
I don’t know who you are or when you’ll find this message. My only hope is that you will believe me. If you do, please bring this document to the proper authorities. Don’t let my death be for nothing.
I go to the bottom of the swamp with two regrets. One is that I won’t be there when the town of Jebsen is discovered and burned to the ground.
The other is that six months ago I accepted Father Garett’s invitation to join in their celebrations. I went willingly with them to the old brick observatory. I prayed with them. I danced with them. I partook in all of their debasements.
And for a little while, perhaps an hour, I was happy.
They even asked me to give reading from the Old Book. I eagerly stopped up to the podium and began flipping through the thick volume.
Everyone waited for me to choose a passage and speak but all I did was shake and weep at what I beheld. My knees buckled. My mind shut down. I had to be carried out and put to bed.
You see, the Old Book was blank from cover to cover. You’re even holding some of those pages in your hands now.
I used them to write my story.

How I Wonder What You Are by Al Bruno III

I’ll know the time is right when the howling begins. It will be after sundown of course, the Mothers and Fathers of Jebsen only scream after sundown, and only on the clearest of nights.
There is no town of Jebsen listed on any map, even in its heyday of the 1940’s it was too small to be worthy of notice. It’s nothing more than a collection of buildings at the end of a dead end road. On one side it is bordered by long untended corn fields, on the other the swampy remains of Lake Campbell. The most noticeable of the town’s buildings is a red brick edifice with a wide domed roof of fractured glass. The rest is just barns and single story homes. Along the border of the swamp is row after row of barbed wire and bear traps.
I’ll let them scream for an hour or so, let them become tired. Even now it amazes me how I had learned to pick out the individual voices in the cacophony. The Widow Toth tires easily but the Garrets will be at it until dawn.
And what will I be doing while every able-bodied adult is on the rooftops? I’ll be slipping these pages into this mason jar and sealing it lid in place with the wax from a melted crayon. The Children of Jebsen won’t miss just one, especially not purple.
Twenty-five years ago a calamity befell the town of Jebsen. The authorities blamed it all on the after effects of an experimental insecticide but the Old Book the town elders read from every Sunday said otherwise. It told the citizens of Jebsen that a curse was carried by those twinkling dots in the sky. A malevolence traveling at 186,000 miles per second that would twist their Children into nightmares should a glint of it ever touch their skin.
That is why they scream at the starlight; hating it, cursing it, raging at it.
You can’t see what their Children have become and not feel the same way. The changes are heartbreaking and horrifying all at once but after you spend time with them you feel differently. There is mockery in the mis-set eyes that peer from those mollified skulls.
They know secrets. On quiet, cloudy nights I would put my ear to one families’ basement door or another and hear them murmuring and giggling as they writhe in their basement styes.
I think of their weeping mouths and soft teeth and remember that day half a decade ago the ill-advised shortcut and along the neglected county route 99. I remember approaching the train bridge and seriously considering turning around, it looked decades out of repair and I half suspected it would collapse as I passed under it.
But I didn’t turn back, my ego wouldn’t let me. I was right and the road was wrong so I drove under the train bridge, momentarily marveling at the strange and elaborate graffiti that covered it.
I was just past the structure when a small, bent figure ran out from the long grass.
The sounds are what I really remember; the squeal of the brakes, the thud of the body on the hood of my car, the thick crack of laminated glass.
I would later learn the name of the child I had hit was Julius McCarty but all I knew then was that there was an emaciated, bloodied shape lying halfway through my windshield.
Human instinct made me reach out, to see if the little boy was alive. When my fingers brushed his skin he twisted around to face me. His mouth lashed out proboscis-like and nuzzled into the flesh of my arm.
Pain bristled out from where the boy had latched on to me. I screamed, thrashed. I shoved the car door open and tumbled out onto the asphalt. The boy coughed once and died.
At first the wound held all my attention. How could it not? I had expected to see torn flesh and blood but instead the boy’s distended mouth had left behind a cluster of thick, festering ulcerations.
But then I became aware of the men making their way out of the tall grass. These were the Fathers of Jebsen understood immediately what had happened.
They had brought everything they might need to bring one of their Children back home to its basement; rope, bandages and cudgels. It was also everything they needed to make a captive of me.
They, dragged me away from the accident site, through the tall grass and over the collapsed remains of a chain link fence to leave me in the care of the Mothers of Jebsen. Those gaunt women had cudgels of their own and I was a mass of bruises and welts by the time the hole in the Earth had been made to their standards.
The menfolk returned carrying the child wrapped in a linen shroud. They dropped it roughly into the ground. There were no ceremonies, tears or headstone. It was well after dark by the time I had filled the grave back in.
Now here it is years later and I’ve had to dig a dozen more graves, one by one the Mothers and Fathers are dying out, it’s always a surprise when it happens. Every mother and father of Jensen is withered and white haired but every year a few more die in their sleep, or at work in the fields or at prayer in their red brick observatory.
The Children are dying too, not a one has ever lived past seventeen. One by one they waste away, except of course for the occasional accident like the one that trapped me here.
Despite these curse that has befallen them the people of Jebsen continue to reproduce, each mother convinced that this time she will give birth to the Great Redeemer as was foretold in the Old Book. Each time they fail and each time the result is locked away in it’s family’s basement.
You can’t imagine those basements, the smell of rotten meat, the ankle deep fecal matter and the perfectly clean toys. They draw equations on the walls, gold and silver crayons are their preferred color. Every Tuesday I have to visit each of those cellars and scrub the theorems and postulations away.
The youngest of the Children is a newborn, still angry from the womb, the oldest is seventeen and nearly rotted away. No matter the age they all taunt me as I work, sometimes with bites, sometimes with maledictions. Both have left unimaginable scars.
So many scars now, I’m marked, I could never walk among the people I’d known before. They’d refuse to recognize me and insist I was a stranger
The Widow Thoth says this is my penance for the death of Julius McCarty, she even went so far as to cite chapter and verse on the subject from Old Book itself. The Mothers and Fathers of Jebsen, base every aspect of their lives on that thick volume of prophecies and homilies.
I wonder if anyone will notice me as leaving. I doubt it, even when they’re not screaming their heads off a long dead suns they barely notice my comings and goings.
As I said before, the Mothers and Father’s of Jebsen have become so sure of me. Some families think I’ve become a true believer, the rest think the cinder block chained to my ankle is enough to keep me in my place.
I don’t know who you are or when you’ll find this message. My only hope is that you will believe me. If you do, please bring this document to the proper authorities. Don’t let my death be for nothing.
I go to the bottom of the swamp with two regrets. One is that I won’t be there when the town of Jebsen is discovered and burned to the ground.
The other is that six months ago I accepted Father Garett’s invitation to join in their celebrations. I went willingly with them to the old brick observatory. I prayed with them. I danced with them. I partook in all of their debasements.
And for a little while, perhaps an hour, I was happy.
They even asked me to give reading from the Old Book. I eagerly stopped up to the podium and began flipping through the thick volume.
Everyone waited for me to choose a passage and speak but all I did was shake and weep at what I beheld. My knees buckled. My mind shut down. I had to be carried out and put to bed.
You see, the Old Book was blank from cover to cover. You’re even holding some of those pages in your hands now.
I used them to write my story.

How I Wonder What You Are by Al Bruno III

I’ll know the time is right when the howling begins. It will be after sundown of course, the Mothers and Fathers of Jebsen only scream after sundown, and only on the clearest of nights.
There is no town of Jebsen listed on any map, even in its heyday of the 1940’s it was too small to be worthy of notice. It’s nothing more than a collection of buildings at the end of a dead end road. On one side it is bordered by long untended corn fields, on the other the swampy remains of Lake Campbell. The most noticeable of the town’s buildings is a red brick edifice with a wide domed roof of fractured glass. The rest is just barns and single story homes. Along the border of the swamp is row after row of barbed wire and bear traps.
I’ll let them scream for an hour or so, let them become tired. Even now it amazes me how I had learned to pick out the individual voices in the cacophony. The Widow Toth tires easily but the Garrets will be at it until dawn.
And what will I be doing while every able-bodied adult is on the rooftops? I’ll be slipping these pages into this mason jar and sealing it lid in place with the wax from a melted crayon. The Children of Jebsen won’t miss just one, especially not purple.
Twenty-five years ago a calamity befell the town of Jebsen. The authorities blamed it all on the after effects of an experimental insecticide but the Old Book the town elders read from every Sunday said otherwise. It told the citizens of Jebsen that a curse was carried by those twinkling dots in the sky. A malevolence traveling at 186,000 miles per second that would twist their Children into nightmares should a glint of it ever touch their skin.
That is why they scream at the starlight; hating it, cursing it, raging at it.
You can’t see what their Children have become and not feel the same way. The changes are heartbreaking and horrifying all at once but after you spend time with them you feel differently. There is mockery in the mis-set eyes that peer from those mollified skulls.
They know secrets. On quiet, cloudy nights I would put my ear to one families’ basement door or another and hear them murmuring and giggling as they writhe in their basement styes.
I think of their weeping mouths and soft teeth and remember that day half a decade ago the ill-advised shortcut and along the neglected county route 99. I remember approaching the train bridge and seriously considering turning around, it looked decades out of repair and I half suspected it would collapse as I passed under it.
But I didn’t turn back, my ego wouldn’t let me. I was right and the road was wrong so I drove under the train bridge, momentarily marveling at the strange and elaborate graffiti that covered it.
I was just past the structure when a small, bent figure ran out from the long grass.
The sounds are what I really remember; the squeal of the brakes, the thud of the body on the hood of my car, the thick crack of laminated glass.
I would later learn the name of the child I had hit was Julius McCarty but all I knew then was that there was an emaciated, bloodied shape lying halfway through my windshield.
Human instinct made me reach out, to see if the little boy was alive. When my fingers brushed his skin he twisted around to face me. His mouth lashed out proboscis-like and nuzzled into the flesh of my arm.
Pain bristled out from where the boy had latched on to me. I screamed, thrashed. I shoved the car door open and tumbled out onto the asphalt. The boy coughed once and died.
At first the wound held all my attention. How could it not? I had expected to see torn flesh and blood but instead the boy’s distended mouth had left behind a cluster of thick, festering ulcerations.
But then I became aware of the men making their way out of the tall grass. These were the Fathers of Jebsen understood immediately what had happened.
They had brought everything they might need to bring one of their Children back home to its basement; rope, bandages and cudgels. It was also everything they needed to make a captive of me.
They, dragged me away from the accident site, through the tall grass and over the collapsed remains of a chain link fence to leave me in the care of the Mothers of Jebsen. Those gaunt women had cudgels of their own and I was a mass of bruises and welts by the time the hole in the Earth had been made to their standards.
The menfolk returned carrying the child wrapped in a linen shroud. They dropped it roughly into the ground. There were no ceremonies, tears or headstone. It was well after dark by the time I had filled the grave back in.
Now here it is years later and I’ve had to dig a dozen more graves, one by one the Mothers and Fathers are dying out, it’s always a surprise when it happens. Every mother and father of Jensen is withered and white haired but every year a few more die in their sleep, or at work in the fields or at prayer in their red brick observatory.
The Children are dying too, not a one has ever lived past seventeen. One by one they waste away, except of course for the occasional accident like the one that trapped me here.
Despite these curse that has befallen them the people of Jebsen continue to reproduce, each mother convinced that this time she will give birth to the Great Redeemer as was foretold in the Old Book. Each time they fail and each time the result is locked away in it’s family’s basement.
You can’t imagine those basements, the smell of rotten meat, the ankle deep fecal matter and the perfectly clean toys. They draw equations on the walls, gold and silver crayons are their preferred color. Every Tuesday I have to visit each of those cellars and scrub the theorems and postulations away.
The youngest of the Children is a newborn, still angry from the womb, the oldest is seventeen and nearly rotted away. No matter the age they all taunt me as I work, sometimes with bites, sometimes with maledictions. Both have left unimaginable scars.
So many scars now, I’m marked, I could never walk among the people I’d known before. They’d refuse to recognize me and insist I was a stranger
The Widow Thoth says this is my penance for the death of Julius McCarty, she even went so far as to cite chapter and verse on the subject from Old Book itself. The Mothers and Fathers of Jebsen, base every aspect of their lives on that thick volume of prophecies and homilies.
I wonder if anyone will notice me as leaving. I doubt it, even when they’re not screaming their heads off a long dead suns they barely notice my comings and goings.
As I said before, the Mothers and Father’s of Jebsen have become so sure of me. Some families think I’ve become a true believer, the rest think the cinder block chained to my ankle is enough to keep me in my place.
I don’t know who you are or when you’ll find this message. My only hope is that you will believe me. If you do, please bring this document to the proper authorities. Don’t let my death be for nothing.
I go to the bottom of the swamp with two regrets. One is that I won’t be there when the town of Jebsen is discovered and burned to the ground.
The other is that six months ago I accepted Father Garett’s invitation to join in their celebrations. I went willingly with them to the old brick observatory. I prayed with them. I danced with them. I partook in all of their debasements.
And for a little while, perhaps an hour, I was happy.
They even asked me to give reading from the Old Book. I eagerly stopped up to the podium and began flipping through the thick volume.
Everyone waited for me to choose a passage and speak but all I did was shake and weep at what I beheld. My knees buckled. My mind shut down. I had to be carried out and put to bed.
You see, the Old Book was blank from cover to cover. You’re even holding some of those pages in your hands now.
I used them to write my story.

I tried to write down every single movie available on my flights in March 2024. I handwrote some of my notes to pass the 13 hours which is why there are ??? when I couldn't read my own writing/abbreviations. Note that not all titles were available on all flights, and my list is missing a chunk of them (especially titles beginning with "S" for some reason). Hope someone finds it useful! Maybe someone will get to creating a Letterboxd list of them all before me! [Posted this in movies and thought delta users might find it useful too]

10 Things I Hate About You
101 Dalmatians
12 Angry Men
13 Going on 30
17 Again
2001: A Space Odyssey
27 Dresses
500 Days of Summer
80 for Brady
A Beautiful Mind
A Bug's Life
A Cinderella Story
A Compassionate Spy
A Fantastic Woman
A Few Good Men
A Good Year
A Haunting in Venice
A League of Their Own
A Room with a View
A Separation
A Simple Plan
A Simple Wish
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Abominable
Adam's Rib
Airheads
Akeelah and the Bee
Aladdin
Alice Through the Looking Glass
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
American Graffiti
American Street Kid
Amores Perros
An Inconvenient Truth
Anatomy of a Fall
Angels in the Outfield
Aquaman
Assassin Club
Asteroid City
Avatar: Way of Water
Avengers: Infinity War
Back to the Future
Bad Company
Barb and Star: Vista del Mar
Barbie
Batman
Batman Begins
Batman Returns
Batman vs. Superman Dawn
Battle of the Sexes
Beauty and the Beast
Beetlejuice
Being Mary Tyler Moore
Bend it Like Beckham
Better Luck Tomorrow
Big
Big George Foreman
Billy Elliott
Birds of Prey: Harley Quinn
Birthright Outlaw
Blackberry
Blade
Blade II
Blade Runner 2049
Blade Trinity
Blended
Blinded by the Light
Blue Beetle
Bolt
Bottoms
Brave
Brazil
Bridesmaids
Bridget Jones' Diary
Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason
Bring It On
Brown Sugar
Buoyancy
But I'm a Cheerleader
Call Me by Your Name
Carmen Jones
Central Intelligence
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Cheaper by the Dozen
Chevalier
Chicken Run
Child's Play
Children of a Lesser God
Chinatown
Cinderella
Clifford the Big Red Dog
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Clueless
Colossal
Condor's Nest
Cool Hand Luke
Coraline
Couples Retreat
Crazy Rich Asians
Crazy Stupid Love
Creed
Creed II
Crooklyn
Cruella
Chr. G
Dark Waters
Darkest Hour
Dawnland
Dazed and Confused
DC: League of Super Pets
Dear White People
Dee. Boys
Delivery Man
Desperately Seeking Susan
Despicable Me
Despicable Me 2
Despicable Me 3
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Dret ard
Dr. Doolittle
Down with Love
Dr. Seuss Horton Hears a Who
Dr. Seuss The Grinch
Dr. Grinch The Lorax
Dreamgirls
Drop Dead Gorgeous
Drumline
Due Date
Dumb and Dumber
Dumb Money
Dune
Dunkirk
E.T.
Edge of Tomorrow
Eggs Over Easy
Elemental
Enter the Dragon
E????
Erin Brockovich
Eternals
Evan Almighty
Everest
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Evil Dead Rises
Expendables 4
F9: Fast Saga
Fallen
Fantastic Beasts
Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindewald
Fantastic Beasts: Secrets of Dumbledore
Fargo
F&F: Hobbes and Shaw
Fast X
Father of the Bride
Feramana???
Ferner????
Field of Dreams
Finding Dory
Finding Nemo
First Man
Focus
Following
Fools Rush In
Forrest Gump
Freaky
Freaky Friday
Freelance
Frida
Friday
Frozen 2
Frozen River
Game Night
Gangster Squad
Garfield
Garfield: Tail of 2 Kitties
Get Smart
Ghostbusters
Glass
Glory
Godzilla vs Kong
Going in Style
Good Morning Vietnam
Gosford Park
Grand Torino
Gran Turismo
Gravity
Grease
Grease 2
Gremlins
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3
Guy Richie's The Covenant
Hacksaw Ridge
Half Nelson
Hanna
Happy Death Day
Happy Feet 2
Harlan County USA
Harold and Kumar: White Castle
Harry Potter 1-8
Haunted Mansion
He's Just Not That Into You
Her
Hereafter
Hocus Pocus
Honor Society
Horrible Bosses
Hotel Transylvania
House Party
How to Be Single
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
How to Train your Dragon
Hypnotic
I Am Legend
I Didn't See You There
I, Tonya
Ice Age: Collision Course
Ice Age: Continental Drift
Ice Age: Dawn of Dinosaurs
Ice Age: Meltdown
Ice on Fire
If Beale Street Could Talk
In the Heart of the Sea
In the Heights
In the Name of the Father
Inception
Incredibles 2
Indiana Jones: Dial of Destiny
Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom
Insidious: The Red Door
Insomnia
Instructions not INcluded
It
Jerry & Marge Go Large
Jersey Boys
John Wick
John Wick 2
John Wick 3
Joker
Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Judas and the Black Messiah
Jules
Jumanji
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
Jurassic Park
Jurassic World
Just Married
Just my Luck
Kazaam
Kit Kittredge
Kramer vs Kramer
Kubo and the Two Strings
Kung Fu Panda
Kung Fu Panda 2
Kung Fu??????
La La Land
Labyrinth
Lady in the Water
Lakota Nation vs United States
Legally Blonde
Liar Liar
Life of the Party
Lightyear
Lilo and Stitch
Lion
Little Women
Living
Lo------
Lone Survivor
Love and Basketball
Love Again
Love Jones
Ma-d_____ ?
Madagascar
Madagascar Escape
Made of Honor
Mafia Mamma
Magic Mike's Last Dance
Malt------
Momma's Boy
Mamma Mia
Mamma Mia Here We Go Again
March of the Penguins
Mat------
Mean Girls
Meet the Parents?
Memento
Michael Clayton
Milk
Minions
Minions: Rise of Gru
Misery
Miss Congeniality
Missing Link
Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning
Mississippi Masala
Moana
Monster In Law
Monsters Inc
Monsters University
Moonlight
Mortal Enemies
Mr. Malcolm's List
Mulan
Mummies
Murder by Numbers
Murder on the Orient Express
Muriel's Wedding
My Animal
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
My Family
My Girl
National Lampoon's Vacation
Neighbors 2
Neruda
New Year's Eve
News of the World
Nights in Rodanthe
Nine Queens
No
No Country for Old Men
No Murches Frida??
Nomadland
Notting Hill
Ocean's 8
Ocean's 13
October Sky
Of tn age??
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Onward
Oppenheimer
Origin
Over the Hedge
Pacific Rim
Pandas
Pan's Labyrinth
ParaNorman
Paris is Burning
Past Lives
Paw Patrol: Mighty
Paw Patrol: More
Pee Wee's Big Adventure
Perfect Strangers
Persepolis
Phantom Thread
Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game
Pitch Perfect
Pitch Perfect 3
Planes
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
Practical Magic
Pride and Prejudice
Primal Fear
Priscilla
Psycho
Pulp Fiction
Puppy Love
Puss in Boots
Queen and Slim
Radical
RRadi--- Wwi?/
Raging Bull
Ra the Breata?
Rat Race?
Ratatouille
Ready Player One
Real Women Have Curves
Red Tails
Reforge
Renfield
Repo Man
Rocky
Ruby Gillman
Rumor Has It
Rush Hour 2
RV
Róise & Frank
Sacfint??
Saving Face
Saving Private Ryan
School Daze
Scoob!
Scooby Doo
Scrapper
Scream VI
Searching
Selena
Selma
Semi Pro
Seven
Shaft
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
Significant Other
?
?
Skyfall
Smallfoot
Smoke?
Snowpiercer
?
Something's Gotta Give
?
?
Soul Surfer
Space Jam
Space Oddity
Sp Ra ????
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse
Split
Spy Game?
Spy Kids
Stone and D????
Ste W s5t?
Stomp the Yard
Storks
Sweet Home Alabama
Tag
Talk to Me
Tangled
Tee as Go!??
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Tenet
The Adia Prse?
The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster
The Baby-Sitters Club
The Best Man
The Big Lebowski
The Big Short
The Biggest Little Farm
The Bird Cage
The Blind Side
The Blues Brothers
The Bodyguard
The Boogeyman
The Book of Life
The Boss Baby: Family Business
The Bourne Identity
The Boxer
The Breakfast Club
The Bucket List
The Caine Mutiny
The Campaign
The Castle
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Chronicles of Narnia 2
The Chronicles of Narnia 3
The Creator
The Croods New Age
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight Rises
The Dark Side
The Dead Don't Die
The Dry?
The Equalizer
The Exorcist: Believer
The Fabulous Filipino Brothers
The Fast and Furious (#1)
The S Heartbeats?
The Has???
The Gentlemen
The Good Nurse
The Goonies
The Great Wall
The Guard
The Harvest (La Cosecha)
The H????
The Hobbit
The Hobbit 2
The Hobbit 3
The Holdovers
The Hunger Games: Ballad of Snakes and Songbirds
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games 2
The Hunger Games 3
The Hunger Games 4
The Hunt for Red October
The Huntsman: Winter’s War
The Incredibles
The Intern
The Invention of Lying
The Iron Giant
The Island
The Jungle Book
The Karate Kid
The Kids are Alright
The Lake House
The Land Before Time
The Last Out
The Last Samurai
The Lego Batman Movie
The Lego Movie
The Lesson
The Lion King
The Lion King
The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid
The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship
The Losers
The Man from UNCLE
The Marsh King’s Doughter
The Marvels
The Matrix: Resurrections
The Mitchells vs The Machines
The Mummy
The Neverending Story
The Nice Guys
The Nun II
The Odd Life of Timothy Green
The Other Zoey
The Outsiders
The Peanuts Movie
The Persian Version
The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything
The Place Beyond the Pines
The Popes Exorcist
The Pre--?
The Purge: Election Year
The Replacements
The Ring
The Secret Garden
The Secret Life of Pets
The Silence of the Lambs
The S --------
The ?
The ?
The ?
The ?
The ?
The Take
The Time Traveler's Wife
The True Cost
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
The Un---- Country
The Usual Suspects
The ???
The ????
The ?????
The Wedding Singer
The Wizard of Oz
The Wood
The Zookeeper's Wife
Theater Camp
Them---?
There Will Be Blood
Thurs?
Titanic
To Kill a Mockingbird
Tooooo?
Tom ??
Tommy Boy
Top Gun
Top Gun: Maverick
Toy Story 2
Toy Story 3
Toy Story 4
Train to Busan
Training Day
Transformers Rise
Trolls
Trolls World Tour
Troy
Tully
Turning Red
Umami
Us
??
V for Vendetta
V????
VeggieTales: Abe and the Amazing Promise
VeggieTales: Merry Larry and the True Light of Christmas
Vindicta
Vivo
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
War Dogs
We Were Soldiers
We're the Millers
Wedding Crashers
West Side Story
Wet Hot American Summer
Where the Wild Things Are
Wildhood
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Winters Bone
Wonder
Wonder Woman 1984
Wonka
Wreck It Ralph
Yes, Man
Yesterday
Young Punx: A Punk Parable
Zombieland

I tried to write down every single movie available on my Delta flights in March 2024. I handwrote some of my notes to pass the 13 hours which is why there are ??? when I couldn't read my own writing/abbreviations. Note that not all titles were available on all flights, and my list is missing a chunk of them (especially titles beginning with "S" for some reason). Hope someone finds it useful! Maybe someone will get to creating a Letterboxd list of them all before me!

10 Things I Hate About You
101 Dalmatians
12 Angry Men
13 Going on 30
17 Again
2001: A Space Odyssey
27 Dresses
500 Days of Summer
80 for Brady
A Beautiful Mind
A Bug's Life
A Cinderella Story
A Compassionate Spy
A Fantastic Woman
A Few Good Men
A Good Year
A Haunting in Venice
A League of Their Own
A Room with a View
A Separation
A Simple Plan
A Simple Wish
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Abominable
Adam's Rib
Airheads
Akeelah and the Bee
Aladdin
Alice Through the Looking Glass
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
American Graffiti
American Street Kid
Amores Perros
An Inconvenient Truth
Anatomy of a Fall
Angels in the Outfield
Aquaman
Assassin Club
Asteroid City
Avatar: Way of Water
Avengers: Infinity War
Back to the Future
Bad Company
Barb and Star: Vista del Mar
Barbie
Batman
Batman Begins
Batman Returns
Batman vs. Superman Dawn
Battle of the Sexes
Beauty and the Beast
Beetlejuice
Being Mary Tyler Moore
Bend it Like Beckham
Better Luck Tomorrow
Big
Big George Foreman
Billy Elliott
Birds of Prey: Harley Quinn
Birthright Outlaw
Blackberry
Blade
Blade II
Blade Runner 2049
Blade Trinity
Blended
Blinded by the Light
Blue Beetle
Bolt
Bottoms
Brave
Brazil
Bridesmaids
Bridget Jones' Diary
Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason
Bring It On
Brown Sugar
Buoyancy
But I'm a Cheerleader
Call Me by Your Name
Carmen Jones
Central Intelligence
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Cheaper by the Dozen
Chevalier
Chicken Run
Child's Play
Children of a Lesser God
Chinatown
Cinderella
Clifford the Big Red Dog
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Clueless
Colossal
Condor's Nest
Cool Hand Luke
Coraline
Couples Retreat
Crazy Rich Asians
Crazy Stupid Love
Creed
Creed II
Crooklyn
Cruella
Chr. G
Dark Waters
Darkest Hour
Dawnland
Dazed and Confused
DC: League of Super Pets
Dear White People
Dee. Boys
Delivery Man
Desperately Seeking Susan
Despicable Me
Despicable Me 2
Despicable Me 3
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Dret ard
Dr. Doolittle
Down with Love
Dr. Seuss Horton Hears a Who
Dr. Seuss The Grinch
Dr. Grinch The Lorax
Dreamgirls
Drop Dead Gorgeous
Drumline
Due Date
Dumb and Dumber
Dumb Money
Dune
Dunkirk
E.T.
Edge of Tomorrow
Eggs Over Easy
Elemental
Enter the Dragon
E????
Erin Brockovich
Eternals
Evan Almighty
Everest
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Evil Dead Rises
Expendables 4
F9: Fast Saga
Fallen
Fantastic Beasts
Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindewald
Fantastic Beasts: Secrets of Dumbledore
Fargo
F&F: Hobbes and Shaw
Fast X
Father of the Bride
Feramana???
Ferner????
Field of Dreams
Finding Dory
Finding Nemo
First Man
Focus
Following
Fools Rush In
Forrest Gump
Freaky
Freaky Friday
Freelance
Frida
Friday
Frozen 2
Frozen River
Game Night
Gangster Squad
Garfield
Garfield: Tail of 2 Kitties
Get Smart
Ghostbusters
Glass
Glory
Godzilla vs Kong
Going in Style
Good Morning Vietnam
Gosford Park
Grand Torino
Gran Turismo
Gravity
Grease
Grease 2
Gremlins
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3
Guy Richie's The Covenant
Hacksaw Ridge
Half Nelson
Hanna
Happy Death Day
Happy Feet 2
Harlan County USA
Harold and Kumar: White Castle
Harry Potter 1-8
Haunted Mansion
He's Just Not That Into You
Her
Hereafter
Hocus Pocus
Honor Society
Horrible Bosses
Hotel Transylvania
House Party
How to Be Single
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
How to Train your Dragon
Hypnotic
I Am Legend
I Didn't See You There
I, Tonya
Ice Age: Collision Course
Ice Age: Continental Drift
Ice Age: Dawn of Dinosaurs
Ice Age: Meltdown
Ice on Fire
If Beale Street Could Talk
In the Heart of the Sea
In the Heights
In the Name of the Father
Inception
Incredibles 2
Indiana Jones: Dial of Destiny
Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom
Insidious: The Red Door
Insomnia
Instructions not INcluded
It
Jerry & Marge Go Large
Jersey Boys
John Wick
John Wick 2
John Wick 3
Joker
Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Judas and the Black Messiah
Jules
Jumanji
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
Jurassic Park
Jurassic World
Just Married
Just my Luck
Kazaam
Kit Kittredge
Kramer vs Kramer
Kubo and the Two Strings
Kung Fu Panda
Kung Fu Panda 2
Kung Fu??????
La La Land
Labyrinth
Lady in the Water
Lakota Nation vs United States
Legally Blonde
Liar Liar
Life of the Party
Lightyear
Lilo and Stitch
Lion
Little Women
Living
Lo------
Lone Survivor
Love and Basketball
Love Again
Love Jones
Ma-d_____ ?
Madagascar
Madagascar Escape
Made of Honor
Mafia Mamma
Magic Mike's Last Dance
Malt------
Momma's Boy
Mamma Mia
Mamma Mia Here We Go Again
March of the Penguins
Mat------
Mean Girls
Meet the Parents?
Memento
Michael Clayton
Milk
Minions
Minions: Rise of Gru
Misery
Miss Congeniality
Missing Link
Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning
Mississippi Masala
Moana
Monster In Law
Monsters Inc
Monsters University
Moonlight
Mortal Enemies
Mr. Malcolm's List
Mulan
Mummies
Murder by Numbers
Murder on the Orient Express
Muriel's Wedding
My Animal
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
My Family
My Girl
National Lampoon's Vacation
Neighbors 2
Neruda
New Year's Eve
News of the World
Nights in Rodanthe
Nine Queens
No
No Country for Old Men
No Murches Frida??
Nomadland
Notting Hill
Ocean's 8
Ocean's 13
October Sky
Of tn age??
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Onward
Oppenheimer
Origin
Over the Hedge
Pacific Rim
Pandas
Pan's Labyrinth
ParaNorman
Paris is Burning
Past Lives
Paw Patrol: Mighty
Paw Patrol: More
Pee Wee's Big Adventure
Perfect Strangers
Persepolis
Phantom Thread
Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game
Pitch Perfect
Pitch Perfect 3
Planes
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
Practical Magic
Pride and Prejudice
Primal Fear
Priscilla
Psycho
Pulp Fiction
Puppy Love
Puss in Boots
Queen and Slim
Radical
RRadi--- Wwi?/
Raging Bull
Ra the Breata?
Rat Race?
Ratatouille
Ready Player One
Real Women Have Curves
Red Tails
Reforge
Renfield
Repo Man
Rocky
Ruby Gillman
Rumor Has It
Rush Hour 2
RV
Róise & Frank
Sacfint??
Saving Face
Saving Private Ryan
School Daze
Scoob!
Scooby Doo
Scrapper
Scream VI
Searching
Selena
Selma
Semi Pro
Seven
Shaft
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
Significant Other
?
?
Skyfall
Smallfoot
Smoke?
Snowpiercer
?
Something's Gotta Give
?
?
Soul Surfer
Space Jam
Space Oddity
Sp Ra ????
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse
Split
Spy Game?
Spy Kids
Stone and D????
Ste W s5t?
Stomp the Yard
Storks
Sweet Home Alabama
Tag
Talk to Me
Tangled
Tee as Go!??
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Tenet
The Adia Prse?
The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster
The Baby-Sitters Club
The Best Man
The Big Lebowski
The Big Short
The Biggest Little Farm
The Bird Cage
The Blind Side
The Blues Brothers
The Bodyguard
The Boogeyman
The Book of Life
The Boss Baby: Family Business
The Bourne Identity
The Boxer
The Breakfast Club
The Bucket List
The Caine Mutiny
The Campaign
The Castle
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Chronicles of Narnia 2
The Chronicles of Narnia 3
The Creator
The Croods New Age
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight Rises
The Dark Side
The Dead Don't Die
The Dry?
The Equalizer
The Exorcist: Believer
The Fabulous Filipino Brothers
The Fast and Furious (#1)
The S Heartbeats?
The Has???
The Gentlemen
The Good Nurse
The Goonies
The Great Wall
The Guard
The Harvest (La Cosecha)
The H????
The Hobbit
The Hobbit 2
The Hobbit 3
The Holdovers
The Hunger Games: Ballad of Snakes and Songbirds
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games 2
The Hunger Games 3
The Hunger Games 4
The Hunt for Red October
The Huntsman: Winter’s War
The Incredibles
The Intern
The Invention of Lying
The Iron Giant
The Island
The Jungle Book
The Karate Kid
The Kids are Alright
The Lake House
The Land Before Time
The Last Out
The Last Samurai
The Lego Batman Movie
The Lego Movie
The Lesson
The Lion King
The Lion King
The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid
The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship
The Losers
The Man from UNCLE
The Marsh King’s Doughter
The Marvels
The Matrix: Resurrections
The Mitchells vs The Machines
The Mummy
The Neverending Story
The Nice Guys
The Nun II
The Odd Life of Timothy Green
The Other Zoey
The Outsiders
The Peanuts Movie
The Persian Version
The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything
The Place Beyond the Pines
The Popes Exorcist
The Pre--?
The Purge: Election Year
The Replacements
The Ring
The Secret Garden
The Secret Life of Pets
The Silence of the Lambs
The S --------
The ?
The ?
The ?
The ?
The ?
The Take
The Time Traveler's Wife
The True Cost
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
The Un---- Country
The Usual Suspects
The ???
The ????
The ?????
The Wedding Singer
The Wizard of Oz
The Wood
The Zookeeper's Wife
Theater Camp
Them---?
There Will Be Blood
Thurs?
Titanic
To Kill a Mockingbird
Tooooo?
Tom ??
Tommy Boy
Top Gun
Top Gun: Maverick
Toy Story 2
Toy Story 3
Toy Story 4
Train to Busan
Training Day
Transformers Rise
Trolls
Trolls World Tour
Troy
Tully
Turning Red
Umami
Us
??
V for Vendetta
V????
VeggieTales: Abe and the Amazing Promise
VeggieTales: Merry Larry and the True Light of Christmas
Vindicta
Vivo
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
War Dogs
We Were Soldiers
We're the Millers
Wedding Crashers
West Side Story
Wet Hot American Summer
Where the Wild Things Are
Wildhood
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Winters Bone
Wonder
Wonder Woman 1984
Wonka
Wreck It Ralph
Yes, Man
Yesterday
Young Punx: A Punk Parable
Zombieland

Club Vlad sat near the confluence of Central Avenue and Washington Avenue, Albany’s two main thoroughfares. Two stories with blackout windows and a box office from when it used to be a movie theater, it was swarmed with people when Dom first spotted it ahead. He was somewhat familiar with it: He passed it every day on his way to work, and it was always busy around his time of evening, even on weeknights. Part of him always wanted to go inside and be a part of the scene, but he never did.
The man in sunglasses - his name was Joe - led Dom toward the club, and even before Joe spoke, Dom somehow knew that it was their destination. “There,” Joe said. “We’ll go around back.”
Dom and Joe had been walking for what seemed like an hour but couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes. Dom stuck as close to Joe as possible as if for protection, and had become accustomed to his pungent smell. It was noticeable only at extremely close range, part sickly sweet and part…something else, something Dom could not place but still somehow recognized. They were two blocks from the club, maybe three, and Dom could hear the pulsing techo/house/whatever music as clearly as if he were standing in the middle of the dancefloor. He could hear the chatter of the people inside, or at least he imagined he could. He could smell them too: Beneath the odors of perfume, desperation, and spiritual rot was something richer, something blissful. Dom realized for the first time that he was parched - so parched - and drool filled his mouth.
A crowd of people waited outside Club Vlad, talking and laughing; some vaped, some stared down at their cellphones like Gollum with his precious ring. Dom’s first reaction was to avoid them. Perhaps sensing this…or perhaps feeling it himself…Joe ducked into an alleyway two doors down from the club. “We’ll go in the back,” Joe explained.
The back entrance to Club Vlad was a single door underneath a bare bulb. The music was so loud that Dom’s head began to throb. Inside, a dark hallway terminated in an archway filled with throbbing white light. Dread filled Dom as they approached it - he didn’t want to be around people - but thankfully they went into a room off the hall instead. An office. A cramped desk, a filing cabinet. A set of stairs disappeared into shadows.
“Sit,” Joe said.
Dom obeyed, sitting in the swivel chair.
Joe went up the stairs and Dom was alone. The deep coldness that had long settled into his bones made itself known again, and Dom leaned forward, wrapping his arms around his chest for warmth. The muffled music vibrated in his skull, setting his teeth on edge, and the various smells wafting in from the main room assaulted his senses. He was alternately repulsed and aroused by the crashing din of scents: The good, the bad, and the mouth watering. A sharp pain cut through his stomach like the killing edge of a knife, and Dom hugged himself tighter. Had his throat always been this dry? His throat felt like sandpaper; his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and getting it unstuck hurt so badly that tears sprang to his eyes.
Dom rubbed his arms with his hands and tried to still his chattering teeth. He looked around for a blanket, a discarded jacket, something to cover himself with, but there was nothing. Only drifts of glitter on the floor and walls. He supposed it came from a party or something. He’d never been to a night club but it seemed fitting.
A sound drew his attention to the door leading back into the hall. A woman - no older than a girl - stood there, looking confused and unsteady. She was dressed in black, wore glow sticks around her wrists and neck, and held a red solo cup. “I have to pee,” she said drunkenly and laughed. “I thought this was the bathroom.”
A cold wind washed over Dom, and Joe was standing next to him. “The bathroom’s up here,” he said.
“Oh, good,” the girl laughed, “I thought it was here but I didn’t know. This is my first time here.” She held her cup aloft. “Take me to it.”
Joe glanced at Dom. “Come on.”
They formed a party as they climbed the stairs, Dom in the tear and Joe at the head. The girl stumbled and held onto the railing, talking incessantly. Her voice hurt Dom’s head, but the hot smell wafting from her was intoxicating. Drool coursed down his chin and his breathing came in short, hot bursts. Another sharp pain rent his stomach, and he winced.
At the top of the stairs, where the lights were cold and white, a woman in black stood by a doorway, her back ramrod straight and her eyes vacant. Her face was gaunt, her white flesh pulled tight across her skull. She wore a black dress and her black hair long and straight. Dom only caught a glance at her before looking away again.
She looked like a ghost.
“Show her the bathroom,” Joe said.
The woman’s eyes slowly, ponderles, went from Joe to the drunk girl. Her expression, like Joe’s, was dead. She had no expression. “This way.”
She and the drunk girl disappeared down the hall, and Joe led Dom into a room. Though it was pitch black, Dom could still see; not very well…but he could see. Suddenly, a blinding white light flicked on in front of him, causing him to stop and fall back a step. Ahead, through an archway, sat a vaulted chamber, at the center of which sat a man. To Dom’s light dazzled eyes, he seemed a proud king perched upon a throne, the skulls of his many enemies piled around him. Dom blinked and turned his head slightly to the side. His eyes began to adjust, and the world came into focus.
The man was not, as it had first seemed, sitting on a throne. Instead, he was esconded in a motorized wheelchair. The piles of skulls were actually various pieces of machinery, the kind you’d find in a hospital room. A clear tube extended from one of them to the side of the man’s neck: Yellow liquid flowed from the machine and into the man. Another tube, this one in the other side of his neck, filtered out a mixture of what looked like yellow pus and black sludge. An infected malodor filled the air, and the machines whirred softly as they worked.
As for the man himself, his appearance was normal at first glance, Dressed in a flowing red velvet robe, a blue and green blanket with a plaid pattern draped over his shoulders, he was portly, about fifty, and had shoulder length grayish hair with a bald spot in the middle. If the local theater put on a production of Hamilton, they could cast a worse Ben Franklin than him.
On closer inspection, he was not normal at all. His complexion was yellow and waxy, like a statue, and his body was lumpy, misshapen, resembling an overfilled trash bag stuffed with cotton. His eyes were sick and yellow, and something about his posture seemed…off. It didn’t make sense, but the only thing Dom could think was: He looks impossible.
Joe stopped at the edge of the shadows, where the line between light and darkness lay. He seemed to stand up a little straighter, a general greeting his king. “Here he is,” Joe said.
The man squinted slightly against the glare of the light and motioned with one gnarled hand. “Step into the light,” he said. His voice was soft and kind, that of a senile though loving grandmother. Dom imagined he felt a pull toward the man, and did as he was bidden, wincing as the light stung his eyes.
For a moment, the man stared at him, his waxen features frozen fast as stone. Then, a subtle look of compassion flickered across his face. Dom did not believe in God, but he suddenly felt like a man standing before God, his every thought, feeling, and transgression laid bare. He had never felt so naked in his life, so exposed. He had the sense that the man before him could see everything, knew everything.
“You’ve been through a lot,” the man said. It was not a question, but a statement.
Everything Dom had been through over the past couple of days came back to him in a rush, and hot tears filled his eyes. He nodded.
The man nodded slightly, more to himself than to Dom. “Kneel down,” he said, “I want to look at you.”
Dom knelt without question.
The man lifted one hand and touched Dom’s face, tilting Dom’s head from one side to the other like a farmer appraising a horse. His fingers were long and bony, his nails ragged and unkempt; his touch was like ice. He brushed his knuckles over the purple bruise on Dom’s cheek, and there was such gentleness in that one act that Dom broke down sobbing. He leaned into the man’s touch like a cat and gave voice to his misery.
“Shhh,” the man said, “it’s all over now.”
“W-What’s happening to me?” Dom asked.
In his heart of hearts, however, he already knew.
“You died,” the man said patiently. “And you came back.”
Hearing it stated so plainly, Dom cried even harder.
“Only a handful of people throughout history can claim to have defeated death,” the man said, stroking Dom’s hair, “and you’re one of them. You should be proud.”
“How?” Dom asked between sobs. “What am I?”
The man stroked Dom’s cheek. “You’re the same thing I am.”
At that, Dom looked up at the man. “What are you?” he asked.
A little, knowing smile touched the man’s lips, and when he spoke, his canine teeth were longer and sharper than before. “I’m a vampire.”
“No,” Dom moaned and shook his head, “no, no, no.” He grabbed the man’s hand and held tight, his tears coming faster. He trembled like a frightened animal and squeezed his eyes closed, as if by doing so he could escape the hell his life had become.
But there was no escape.
“You have a lot of questions,” the man said, monologuing now rather than speaking directly to Dom, “I had the same questions when I was your age. I have spent the last forty-two years of my life trying to answer them, but every answer I find leads me to still more questions. There’s one thing I’m certain of, though.”
Dom blinked the tears from his eyes. The last of them had been squeezed from his dead tear ducts and he had no more to give. He simply stared into space, trying to come to grips with his situation.
“There is freedom in death,” the man said. “Death is easy. It’s simple. Once it’s over, you feel no pain, no sadness, no grief. It’s living that’s hard.”
As he spoke, he brushed his long nails across Dom’s scalp. It was a soothing feeling, and served to calm him. “People have so many troubles.” A note of revulsion crept into his voice. “So many needs, so many desires. People are complex but we’re not. We’re easy to please. A vampire wants only two things: A little blood and one more night.”
The combination of his touch and his voice had pacified Dom to the point of almost tranquility. “I’m scared,” Dom heard himself mumble.
Nodding almost reluctantly, the man said, “Fear is one of the only emotions a vampire can’t escape. Everything feels fear. Do you want to know a secret?”
Dom nodded.
“I’m afraid too,” the man confessed. “I’m afraid of death. Well…death as it were. I’m terrified that my body will rot away and leave me a pile of bones somewhere, unable to move but still aware”
A shudder went through Dom.
“As I’m sure you’ve seen yourself, the movies lied. We rot just like any other dead thing. Our flesh decays, our organs turn to sludge, and we go from rational men to monsters whose only thought is feeding.”
Now it was his turn to shiver.
“But…you’re not like that,: Dom said.’
The man smiled. “I’m lucky, I guess” A thin yellow fluid began to drip from his nostrils. He did not seem to notice. “What is your name?”
“Dominick,” Dom said.
“I’m Merrick,” the man said, “and this is my family.”
Dom realized that they were now surrounded by others, ten in all. They stood ramrod straight, their eyes vacant and their faces devoid of humanity. They were mainly men, though one was a woman. Some were pale, others were blue or black, and one was little more than a skeleton clad in withered brown skin, a white button up and jeans hanging from its frame.
A thought occurred to Dom. “You said my brain was going to rot…”
“Not necessarily,” Merrick cautioned, “though it’s possible.”
“Am I going to be…?”
“Like them?” Merrick asked. “Braindead and staring?”
Sheepishly, Dom nodded.
“Maybe,” Merrick allowed. “But these people are free of everything that troubles humanity. You were human just a short time ago. I’m sure you remember all too well what it was like. The constant politics, the moral quandaries, the philosophical pontificating. Human beings - and make no mistake, we are humans - were not meant for all of that. We’re animals. We were made to hunt, fuck, and sleep. Somewhere along the way, we got pretentious and started complicating things.” He looked at Dom, sizing him up, seeming to read him. “Things that animals take for granted, people work their entire lives to achieve. If an animal wants to fornicate, it fornicates. If a man wants to fornicate, he needs to be tall, handsome, rich, funny, progressive when it suits women but traditional when it doesn’t. If a man wants a home, he has to work thirty years for it. An animal has only to dig a hole in the ground.”
Every word struck a chord with Dom.
Because every word was true.
“Unfortunately, the living won’t allow us to live that freely, so we have to hide. These people here - my children - need a guiding hand, a protector, someone who can lead them. And I, an old man, need help.” Here he smiled playfully and patted his bulging stomach. “My body is mostly sawdust and cotton balls at this point, so I can’t do much. I share my wisdom and my knowledge with them, and they take care of me.”
“Why haven’t you…rotted?” Dom asked.
“Embalming fluid,” Merrick said. “Blood doesn’t sustain you. Embalming fluid does.” He smiled at Dom. “It can sustain you as well. If you’ll stay with us. We’re not the most attractive bunch, but we’re a family, and we really wish you’d join us.”
A family.
Dom’s parents had broken up and he lived with his mother. He had never had a family before, and had always wanted one, a real one, like in the movies. Even as a grown man, he sought the love, acceptance, and belonging that a family brings. He sought it in the wrong ways, but that - and not sex, not romantic love - is what he had really wanted all along.
This is what he had wanted all along.
“I want to,” Dom said.
Working quickly, Merrick slashed his wrist open with his thumbnail. An ugly mixture of stale blood, siphoned from someone else, and embalming fluid leaked out. “If you choose to drink, my blood will be in you. You will be my son and I will be your father. You will obey me as your father. You will do whatever is asked of you for this family, as this family will do for you. You will not reveal the secrets of this family to anyone outside of it. You will protect this family from all threats, both inside and out. Do you accept?”
He held his bleeding wrist out to Dom.
Dom did not question, nor did he hesitate. He grabbed the hand of his father, brought it to his mouth, and drank from the seeping wound. The fluid was cold, thick, and vile.
It tasted like belonging.
“Have you fed yet?”
“No,” Dom said.
“Before you do, I have a question for you. Who did this to you? Who made you?”
Dom thought. Everything was hazy. “Was it someone in this room?” Merrick asked.
Dom shook his head. “Her name is…” he wracked his brain. “Heather.”
Merrick nodded. “So there’s another out there.” He looked at Joe. “Did you turn her?”
“Yes,” Joe said.
Merrick looked annoyed. “I’ve told you not to go out and feed on your own. You have no self-control. You drink too much and create others, which creates headaches for the family. Tomorrow night, I want you and Dom to find her and bring her here.” “Okay,” Joe said.
Merrick looked over Dom’s shoulder. “Jess? Can you come here?”
The black haired woman from earlier came out of the shadows, the drunk girl with her, arms tied behind her back. The girl looked dazed. “Max,” Merrick said to the skeletal corpse-thing, “help her.”
Max, Jessie, and another vampire named Matt tied chains around the girl’s ankles and hoisted her aloft via a pulley system. Upside down, she swung back and forth. Merrick instructed the others to leave the room. “Max,” he said.
On his way out, the corpse-thing produced a knife and dragged it across the girl’s throat, slicing her skin; blood spurted out. Max leaned in to taste it, but Merrick shooed him away. When he and Dom were alone, Merrick told Dom, “Go to her.”
But Dom was already on his feet, his eyes transfixed by the crimson life flowing from her pumping throat. The hot, rich smell filled his nostrils and tantalized his senses. Saliva filled his mouth and his stomach panged with hunger. Some small, human part of his decaying brain screamed at him to stop, but he did not listen to it. He had been human for almost thirty years, and he had been miserable. Now, in this chamber of the undead, he gave himself over to his dark thirst. Like a man in a dream, he shuffled to her, inhaled the sweet scent of her blood, and shivered. He was so lost in lust that he hardly noticed the strange, cumbersome feeling of his descended fangs.
“Drink,” Merrick said.
Opening his mouth wide, Dom sank his teeth into the girl’s neck. Her blood filled his mouth and splashed down his throat. Warmth thawed the ice in his marrow and spread through him. His dead heart began to flutter, then to pound. His knees shook, his body trembled, and his mind rolled away on a tide of ecstasy.
As it was his first meal, he couldn’t drink much. Before long, his stomach was hard and distended and his body burned with fire. He collapsed to a heap on the floor and twitched as random nerve endings, stimulated by the blood, began to misfire. He felt full, warm, and drunk. He closed his eyes and let himself drift.
Dominick Mason had died.
And this…
This was heaven.
***
With all that was happening in the city of Albany, the last thing Bruce Kenner needed on Thursday morning was a visit from Bertha the bitch, but that’s exactly what he got. She flew into his office like she owned the place and instantly started in on him. Young man this and have you talked to Joe Rossi that. You’d think she was his boss. And if she were his boss, he’d quit and find another line of work. He heard McDonald’s was hiring.
Bruce almost snapped at her. He’d been up most of last night riding around Albany and looking for Dominick Mason. He and Vanessa expected him to drop dead somewhere close to the medical examiner’s office, but if he had, he’d done so in a super secret location.
“I’ve been busy,” Bruce said, “but I’m going to go by his place of work today.”
Tired and still confused over that bullshit from last night, he had no energy to argue with the old crone. He could spare a few minutes to talk to Joe Rossi, he figured. He assumed that Jessie was safe but he owed it to her to check. If he found the girl, he’d take her back to her grandmother (sorry, kid, really) and try to avoid arresting the guy. Unless he came off as a creep, then he’d bust his ass. See, people assumed that an older guy with a younger girlfriend was some master manipulator hell bent on evil deeds. Sometimes they were, but hell, his grandparents married when his grandpa was twenty-one and his grandma sixteen. They were married for fifty-five years and loved each other to the end. Maybe it was innocent, maybe not. It wasn’t his job to judge either way. Just gimme the girl so I can get her grandma off my back and no one gets hurt.
“It’s about time you started doing your job,” Bertha said, “I heard on the police scanner last night that you people lost a body. What kind of town is this? Your coroner is a drunk who makes up stories about bodies walking away. He probably sold it to black people.”
Bruce couldn’t help it; he snorted laughter.
“Now what would black people want with a dead body?”
“Probably to use it as a prop in one of their rap videos.”
Bruce didn’t know much about music videos, but he was pretty sure that the people who made them didn’t like the smell of corpse any more than the rest of us. “I’ll be sure to round up all the local rappers for questioning. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Luckily for him, there was not, and Bertha left shortly thereafter. Alone and able to hear himself think, Bruce sat back in his chair and went over his mental checklist for the day. First order of business, go to Club Vlad. Second, find Dominick Mason. There were others, but that was the most important. He wanted the body found so someone could get to work explaining this whole weird thing. There had to be an explanation. The thought that there wasn’t, that a dead guy literally rose from the grave and disappeared into the night, deeply disturbed Bruce, and the more this whole thing remained ongoing, the more disturbed he would become.
Needing some fresh air, he decided to hit up Club Vlad.
Outside, the day was hot and sunny. Waves of heat shimmered from the pavement and not a single breath of air stirred in the whole world. Bruce slipped on a pair of sunglasses and drove over to Club Vlad. It occurred to him that the place might be closed during the day; it was the only place Joe Rossi was associated with. His address in the computer system was Glens Falls, far to the north. The messages he sent Jessie indicated that he lived onsite at Club Vlad.
The build, wedged between a corner store and a check cashing place, was as grimy and dumpy looking as it had always been. The front windows were blacked out and covered with posters and fliers for punk concerts, house bands, and far left political organizations: The Albany Social Justice Center, something called Bash the Fash 2025, and Bruce’s favorite. ACAB. He caught some kid spraying that on the side of the police station once, and under extreme police torture (ie, a good tongue lashing), the kid told him it meant All Cops Are Barnacleheads.
Bruce shot the kid on the spot and planted a gun on him.
How's that for barnaclehead?
Calm down, he didn’t really do that. He made him clean the graffiti off with a toothbrush. LOL he was out there for hours.
The sidewalk in front of the former theater was empty save for some little. The box office was abandoned. There was no open sigh, but then again, there was no closed sign either. He parked his cruiser at the curb, killed the engine, and got out, sweat instantly springing to his brow.
To his surprise, the door opened. Inside, a couple steps led down to a dance floor. A bar lined the wall to his right, and a couple more sets led up to a railed platform filled with tables. Above, a huge balcony looked down on him. A giant disco ball hung from the ceiling like a pair of glittery nuts and there were cages here and there. Presumably where girls danced go-go style. Oh yeah, nothing hotter than a woman behind bars. Why do you think Bruce became a cop in the first place?
Speaking of glittery nuts, there was glitter everywhere. On the floor, on the tables, on the bar. It twinkled like flecks of diamond and swirled around your feet when you walked. Bruce imagined big buckets of the stuff raining down on the dance floor at midnight and he shuddered. Imagine having glitter stuck in your hair. That shit would never come out.
Music played from the sound system, not as loud as it would be during operating hours. It sounded like ‘80s metal, not exactly what he expected from a place like this.
Some say life she's a lady
Kinda soft, kinda shady
I can tell you life is rich
She's no lady, she's a bitch
Being morning, the place was deserted except for a man behind the bar, busy at cleaning the countertop in anticipation for the night’s events. He was tall, Hispanic or Italian, and feminine, with a single earring and a tank top.
Bruce moseyed over to the bar and the barkeep looked up, missing a beat when he realized the fuzz was here. He sat down his rag and walked over. “Can I help you?” he asked in a whispy voice.
“Yeah,” Bruce said, “I’m looking for Joe Rossi. Is he here?”
“I don’t know,” the bartender said. He looked nervous. “I can check.”
Before Bruce could answer, he scurried off, leaving him alone.
They suck my body out
But friend there is no doubt
I'm gonna pay the devil his dues
Cause I'm sick of being abused
Bruce looked around, his fingers absently drumming on the countertop. Club Vlad was a clashing mix of grunge and glam that made his head hurt. He imagined what the place must be like at midnight, packed and noisy, and nodded to himself. Yeah, this was the spot, he guessed, the place all the cool kids went, if they went anywhere anymore. Hell, if he was thirty years younger, he might come here.
He had been waiting for almost twenty minutes when a voice spoke behind him. He turned with a start, and beheld the strangest man he had ever seen in his life. Short and plump - lumpy, even - he sat in a wheelchair, a red blanket draped over his shoulders and his hands resting on his knees. He was about fifty with sparse gray hair falling to his shoulders and a plastic-looking face. He looked like a wax statue of Ben Franklin come to life, and a deep sense of disquiet stirred in the pit of Bruce’s stomach.
Just can't fight the temptation
It's become my inspiration
Gonna get myself an axe
Break some heads, break some backs
It was only then that Bruce noticed the sickly sweet smell of death.
It seemed to come from the man in waves.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” the man said, “my name is Merrick Garvis and I own Club Vlad. Maybe I can be of assistance.”
Bruce grew up in the south where manners and saving face were paramount. His mother and his grandmother both taught him that it was impolite to stare. Maybe he'd been in New York so long that he’d forgotten himself, or maybe Merrick Garvis was just the strangest looking man in the world. Either way, Bruce couldn’t help gaping at his strange appearance. Recovering, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, I -”
Merrick smiled and waved one hand. Why was it so goddamn skeletal? “Don’t worry. I was injured in a fire a long time ago and this is the best they could do for me. To be honest, I’d stare too. What can I help you with, officer?”
“I’d like to talk to Joe Rossi,” Bruce said. “I understand he works for you.”
“He did,” Merrick said, “but I had to let him go. Did he do something wrong?”
Bruce sighed. “Well, yeah, he’s shacked up with a sixteen year old runaway.”
A look of concern crossed Merrick’s features, such as they were. “Oh, my, that is concerning. I haven’t seen him in several days. I assume he went home. He lives in Glens Falls.”
Bruce nodded, his mind working. If Rossi really was in Glens Falls, that meant the whole mess was someone else’s problem. He could send Bertha up there to bother some other poor barnacle head and be rid of her. Yet…he didn’t think Rossi was in Glens Falls. Bruce had a knack for knowing when people were lying, and he was certain that Merrick Garvis was doing just that. It couldn’t be a facial tick, as his features were largely unmoving, like clay. Maybe it was something in his cloudy eyes. Maybe it was the tone of his voice. Or maybe Bruce had the shining and knew things just for the hell of it. In any event, the certainty that Merrick Garvis was lying grew stronger with each passing second.
“Why’d you fire him?”
“He got drunk and hit one of the customers.”
“What did he do?” Bruce asked. “What was his position?”
“He was a bouncer.”
“Aren’t bouncers supposed to hit people?”
Merrick fumbled. “Well…not to punch them in the face for bumping into them.”
“How long did he work for you?”
“Six months.”
“Did you ever see him with an underage girl?”
“Of course not,” Merrick said, “you have to be twenty-one to get in. I make sure everyone’s ID is checked at the door.”
“What if she had a fake ID?”
“Then I guess she’d get in, but I’d assume she was of legal age.”
“You said he shoved someone, when did this happen?”
“Last week,” Merrick said.
“I thought you said he hit someone.”
Merrick again fumbled. “I did.” Now his face seemed to darken a little. A strange yellowish liquid, too thin to be snot, began to drip from his nostrils. Bruce barely suppressed a smear of disgust. “I understand you have a job to do but playing mind games with me isn’t going to solve anything. I can give you his address. Other than that, I can’t help you further.”
“Fair enough,” Bruce said. “But I’d like to see your ID please.”
Merrick glared at him. “I suppose you want my name, rank, and serial number as well.”
“Actually, yeah, I’d love that.”
Merrick drew a deep sigh. “Okay.”
In five minutes, Bruce had Merrick’s ID, social, and all other relevant information. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have bothered, even though he was well within his rights to ask for this information from someone he was questioning. But something about Merrick Garvis was off, and not just his weird face or strangely bulbous body. Bruce was just smart enough to realize that something was going on here, but not quite smart enough to even begin to imagine what.
When he had everything he needed and saw no reason to stick around, Bruce bid Merrick farewell and left the club. Before he could do anything else, he got a call from dispatch: Officer needed assistance in Pine Hills. Bruce slipped behind the wheel and went forth to help, momentarily putting Merrick Garvis out of his mind.
But soon or later, he would get back to him.
Oh yes he would.

This is taken from and is copyright protected by globalsoup.net, a website that promotes flash Fiction with annual writing contests.
I am reprinting these Flash Fiction Prompts because they are outstanding ways to freewrite and offer plenty to work with for those who want to learn how to write Flash Fiction.
So check out these prompts and the article and work some of them into your journal! Post the best responses!
100 Awesome Flash Fiction Prompts - Plus Bonus Prompts!
We’ve put together 100 flash fiction prompts, each one designed for a very short story. These prompts will probably be best suited to a story of between 300-1,000 words. If you want to write a longer story using these prompts, you can easily expand these ideas to fit a story of any length.
What is flash fiction?
Flash Fiction is defined as a very short story that can be anywhere from just a couple of words to about a thousand in length. The beauty (and difficulty) of writing flash fiction lies in trying to tell a complete story in so few words. Great flash fiction is succinct, emotive, thought-provoking, and impactful.
What’s the difference between flash fiction and a short story?
The only difference between flash fiction and a typical short story is the word count. However, this scarcity of words means that writing flash fiction can feel like a completely new skill. Just like the short story is a different animal to the novel or novella; flash fiction is kind of unique.
When writing flash, you’ll need to use fewer characters, a simpler plot, and you’ll have to make each word count. This is why editing is so important. You have to be brutal. Cut out everything superfluous and really make sure each and every word is performing an important function in the story. If you’re interested in writing very short fiction, why not check out drabbles? Drabbles are stories of exactly 100 words in length, and they can be a great way to practice keeping your stories very, very short.
How to plot a flash fiction story
When you sit down to write flash fiction, you must begin by choosing an appropriate plot. You cannot simply use a short story plot and tell it using fewer words. A typical flash fiction plot is like looking at one part of a story under a microscope.
For example, let’s look at prompt #21 in our list of 100 Flash Fiction Prompts:

1. Two people on a sinking ship must decide who should take the last seat in the last lifeboat. If you were writing a novel about a sinking ship, you’d probably want the actual sinking to be the climax of the story. Of course, there are infinite ways to write a novel about a sinking ship, but this would structurally be the most obvious. You’d use the first part of the novel to introduce your characters and describe the voyage leading up to the sinking and the sinking of the ship would be the dramatic climax, leaving the last part of the book as the resolution.

The golden rule of writing short stories is to begin as close to end as you can. So, to turn the same story from novel to short story, you’d probably want to begin with the ship sinking. You haven’t got time to introduce the characters before the action begins, so you’d need to feed in exposition and backstory here and there during the events.
All stories need a good climax. So, you would find the most dramatic moment in the story and build up to it. Perhaps your climax would be the two main characters having to decide who will take the remaining seat on the last lifeboat.
Finally, you need a resolution. In a longer short story you do have time to bring in some kind of satisfying resolution at the end.
But, if you’re writing flash fiction and your story is only a few hundred words, you really need to zoom in on one tiny moment in that story.
You don’t have time to tell the entire story of a sinking ship, but you can turn one moment into a story.
We’ve chosen the lifeboat situation as the key moment in this hypothetical story. Two characters must decide which one of them will take the last seat on the last lifeboat. This is an appropriate plot for flash fiction because it’s simple, high-stakes, dramatic, and thought provoking.
Not all flash fiction will have a plot quite this dramatic, but all great flash fiction will have a plot that can be expressed in just one or two sentences.
If you have a plot in mind, but it seems more suitable for a longer story, you can sometimes find several flash fiction plots hidden within it. Just look for little stories within the story, like the lifeboat moment in our hypothetical tale of the sinking ship.
This brings us to our top tip for coming up with ideas for flash fiction stories:
if you’re ever stuck for ideas, you can find little stories within the story in books, movies, and TV shows. A full length feature film might have as many as 20 little incidents in it that could easily be flash fiction.
Don’t directly write a story based on the film, though. Just carefully pick out those little moments, write down what’s happening as a one or two sentence plot, and then use it to inspire your own, completely original flash fiction story.
One of our 100 Flash Fiction Prompts was actually taken from the movie Pulp Fiction!
How to write very short flash fiction
There are several reasons writers might start writing flash fiction. Of course, it could be that they just love and enjoy the form, but sometimes they’ll be a more strategic and practical reason at play.
Perhaps they want to practise the process of writing stories within the confines of a certain word limit. Maybe they are trying to develop a daily writing routine and they don’t have a lot of free time. It could be that they’re trying to break a habit of not finishing writing projects, or perhaps they are entering a flash fiction competition.
Whatever the reason, very often when we sit down to write flash, we must work under an imposed or self-imposed word restraint. We’ve set ourselves (or been set) the task of keeping the story under a particular number of words.
So, how do you plot a flash fiction story when you have to keep your story very, very short.
We’re not going to discuss stories of 100 words or fewer here. Technically, those stories are still flash, however, we prefer to categorise 100 word stories as drabbles and anything under 100 words as micro fiction.
But what if you have to keep your flash fiction story under, let’s say, 300 words? How do you write a flash fiction story that short?
The answer is: get your microscope out again. Remember earlier when we said writing flash fiction is like looking at part of a story under a microscope? If you have to write very short flash fiction, you’ll need to zoom in even further.
Let’s look at a couple of examples from our 100 Flash Fiction Prompts:

1. During a match, a young boxer must decide whether to throw the fight.

If you had 1,000 words to devote to the story, you could have time to tell the story of the entire fight. With only 300 words, it might be better to zoom in on the very moment when the boxer must choose whether or not to go down.
In a longer flash fiction story you might have time to go into detail about why he’s in this situation and why he’s so conflicted. In a 300 word story, you might only devote one or two sentences to his gambling debt and the large sum of money waiting for him if he goes down in the third round, as instructed.

1. A family must decide what to take and what to leave behind as a wildfire approaches their home.

If you had 1,000 words to devote to this story, you might be able to write about the whole process of choosing what to take and what to leave behind. You might be able to mention many different choices and have the whole family participate in the story. You’d be able to go into some details about certain choices and the stories behind individual objects or mementos, as well as the implications of choosing certain things over others.
With only 300 words, it would be advisable to zoom in on one member of the family and to focus on one profound and important choice.
How to write a flash fiction story
Now you have your mini plot, you still need to make sure your flash fiction feels like a complete story. It should still have a beginning, middle, and an end.
Just like a short story, you may need to bring in a little exposition here and there to give texture, context, backstory, and to bring some depth to the characters. But, unlike a short story, you won’t necessarily need to end with a full, detailed resolution. It’s quite common for a flash fiction story to end with a quick twist or plenty of ambiguity.
Flash Fiction is much more about eliciting emotions and provoking thought, than setting up and resolving a complex story.
100 Awesome Flash Fiction Prompts
A young ballet dancer chooses not to tell the other dancers in her troop about a loose paving stone outside their dance studio.
Two sisters realise they’ve both been on a perfect first date … with the same man.
On the car journey home, two parents realise they’ve left their child’s favourite teddy on a park bench several hours away.
A writer suffering from writers’ block looks for inspiration in a strange place.
Set 200 years in the future, a young man realises he’s too emotionally dependent on his robot assistant.
A young woman discovers she’s taken the wrong suitcase home from the airport. The contents of the case make her question her own life choices.
A murderer realises he has only 10 minutes to dispose of a body.
A child decides to walk home by themselves after their parent forgets to pick them up from school … again.
Your protagonist manages to talk the grim reaper out of collecting their soul.
Your protagonist suddenly realises they’ve been living in a simulation.
A young couple has chosen to spend the night in a haunted house to fix their marriage. Your story starts just as things get very weird.
Your protagonist finds a letter they wrote to themselves when they were a teenager.
Your protagonist must decide whether or not to drink from a fountain that erases all painful memories from the mind.
Your protagonist comes across a street called ‘Memory Lane’. They quickly realise the name is eerily apt.
A bride finds out something startling about her future husband an hour before the wedding.
Your protagonist finds an advertisement for a company that promises everlasting youth.
A youngest sibling shows up at a family reunion they weren’t actually invited to.
Your protagonist finds a piece of paper with a spell on it. If they say the words out loud they aren't sure if something terrible or wonderful will happen.
Your protagonist is watching a jazz band play when they realise they know the drummer from somewhere — but where? It takes a whole song for them to figure it out.
Your protagonist must meet their ex for lunch to tell them they’re now engaged. It’s been just a few weeks since they split up.
Two people on a sinking ship must decide who should take the last seat in the last lifeboat.
During a match, a young boxer must decide whether to throw the fight.
Your protagonist must pack their belongings before moving to a new colony on mars.
A pilot realises they have lost control of their aircraft.
Your protagonist doesn’t want to attend their 100th birthday party — and for good reason!
Your protagonist gets stuck in a lift with their ex … 5 minutes after breaking up with them.
A child says goodbye to the fairies in his garden before moving to a new home.
Your protagonist saves someone’s life … and then wishes they hadn’t.
Your protagonist arrives at a blind date. They’ve been set up with someone they actually know a little too well.
Set in a dystopian future in which public displays of affection are banned, your protagonist faces an agonising choice.
An agoraphobic must face their fear in order to save something important.
Your protagonist must make her partner fall out of love with them. Both their lives depend on it.
Your protagonist is hiking with her small children, they come face to face with a grizzly bear and her cubs.
Cinderella and Prince Charming realise they got married too quickly.
A message written in graffiti on a bathroom wall has serious implications for your protagonist.
Your protagonist finds a bag, looks inside, and realises the owner might just be their soulmate.
Your protagonist has been seeing the same stranger everywhere they go for months. They finally decide to confront them.
A couple realise their relationship is over during the trip of a lifetime. They’ve been saving up for the trip for years.
A public debate sees two previously married people letting their private grievances come into their arguments.
Your protagonist plans their escape from a retirement home.
A couple realise their fundamental beliefs are at odds with each other.
An artist develops an obsession with drawing a next-door neighbour.
Your protagonist finds themselves trapped in a cabin with a group of hikers during a heavy snowfall.
An ice skater must face going back on the ice after a dangerous fall.
A couple must decide their plan for New Year’ Eve. They both have secret reasons for their choice.
A family must decide what to take and what to leave behind as a wildfire approaches their home.
Your protagonist is waiting for someone important at the airport. They begin to think that person isn’t going to show up … and then they realise why.
Your protagonist must find their way through a maze. What they find in the middle of the maze is the last thing they were expecting.
An actor waiting in the wings has forgotten his first line.
Your protagonist is wrongly identified as a hero. Do they come clean?
Your protagonist realises their past is catching up with them.
Your protagonist overhears something that has serious implications for them while trying on clothes in a changing room.
Your protagonist is in a costume shop trying to decide what to dress up as for Halloween.
Your protagonist realises they’ve slipped into an alternate dimension.
A surgeon must make an impossible choice on the operating table.
A pregnant journalist interviews the mother of a missing child.
Your protagonist must ask his girlfriend’s father for his blessing, only to discover the father knows his deepest secret.
Your protagonist sees something on social media that will change their life forever.
Two work colleagues realise they’ve been dreaming the same dreams for weeks.
A reluctant daughter comes to terms with having to carry on the family business.
Your protagonist realises she must go on the run.
Two bank robbers disagree on their plan to rob a bank. This leads to a disastrous consequence.
A strange case of deja vous leaves your protagonist convinced of supernatural interference.
A sceptic begins to question their beliefs during a psychic reading.
Your protagonist uncovers a scandal at their workplace.
A hapless cook tries to recreate her late father’s favourite recipes in an effort to feel connected to him.
Your protagonist has a premonition that makes them certain they can’t visit their mother-in-law for Christmas. Now he must convince his husband.
A young backpacker discovers something unexpected in a cave.
An impulsive character and an indecisive character are brought together by chance. They must make an important choice.
Two characters cleaning up after a party discover an object that sheds light on something strange that happened earlier.
Two strangers are trapped together during a blackout.
Your protagonist must take a leap of faith in order to save something important to them.
Your protagonist discovers a huge part of their life has been a lie.
Your protagonist has set up an elaborate way to propose. Inexplicably, everything goes wrong.
Your protagonist must buy a dress for her mother’s funeral.
Your protagonist goes back to her favourite city in the world, only to find it has completely changed.
While stargazing, your protagonist realises the stars are forming secret messages in the sky.
Your protagonist hears a news story on the radio that will mean the world changes forever. However, she seems to be the only person who heard it.
Your protagonist is crossing a frozen lake. They see something under the ice that definitely shouldn’t be there.
A workaholic must come to terms with retirement.
An Olympic athlete must decide whether or not to report their teammate for doping.
A young mother feels isolated from her childless friends.
Your protagonist is about to realise their greatest ambition. Will it be everything they were hoping for?
Onboard a spaceship, a couple prepare to go into stasis for hundreds of years.
Your protagonist has an obsession with thinking about the past.
Set in a post-apocalyptic future, your protagonist meets an unlikely love interest.
Your protagonist visits a place from their childhood and realises their memories of that time might not be accurate at all.
A small child has decided to run away from home. Her parents watch on with amusement as she decides what to put in her backpack.
On a whim, a bus driver decides to radically change his route, much to the chagrin of his passengers.
Dystopian. A couple in love are only allowed to spend time with each other one day a year.
A shapeshifter begins to realise their powers are fading. They must decide what form will be the last one they take before they cannot change again.
The devil visits your protagonist with an offer on her soul.
Your protagonist suddenly has the ability to read minds. There’s only one place they want to go now!
Your very wealthy protagonist has designed a simple test to see who will inherit her estate.
An archaeologist discovers something that will change how we see the history of the world. It could be dangerous. Does he keep it to himself?
Your protagonist must clear out their late mother’s house. She discovers an incredible family secret.
Your protagonist is meeting his brother. They haven’t seen each other for 20 years.
Your protagonist develops the ability to see the world literally through someone else’s eyes.
Your protagonist starts to believe their partner might be a spy.
Your protagonist discovers a hidden camera in their living room.
Looking for a flash fiction competition? Check out our ‘Big List of International Writing Competitions!’ Looking for inspiration? Why not check out our list of the 20 Greatest Short Story Writers of All Time! Just received another short story rejection? Here’s our post about ‘How to Deal With Story Rejections’ Bonus Prompts! Two characters waiting by the side of the road realise they are both meeting the same person.
A woman loses her young niece in a busy shopping mall.
Three strangers must solve a riddle in order to gain entry to a secret club.
A poor woman must borrow ingredients from her neighbours to bake her husband a birthday cake.
A waiter finally finds out why an old man has been coming to the restaurant where he works every day at exactly the same time.
Two work colleagues must decide which of them is to take the blame for a terrible mistake at work.
Your disgruntled protagonist goes to confront the couple next door about the strange noises they’ve been hearing at night.
A family dinner party sees three characters make three very surprising announcements.
Two women argue over who should get to buy the last dress available in a store. How do they decide who should get it?
A young couple find out they knew (and disliked) each other vehemently as children.
Love writing stories? Register now for our free 7 Day Story Writing Challenges. Write a short story in a week, get extensive feedback on your entry, and compete for a prize of £500 in each round of the challenge. Register today!
Mastered the art of flash fiction? Now you can try submitting your stories to literary magazines! We’ve compiled a list of the best literary magazines that don’t charge a reading fee! Check out our Big List of No-Fee Literary Magazines.

-Jack
Every kid growing up in Gympie in the early 90- 2000s knew about the Love Tunnel.
The love tunnel was located over the hill from the skatepark on the Riverbank. It was a massive storm water drain filled with spray paint and lore unbound throughout the generations; the glowing dick, whose name is the furthest in, the people who live inside, the bull shark that lived under the bridge just outside, all that fun stuff.
It collapsed in the late 2000’s in a flood and was eventually rebuilt, but it was all fancy, modern, safe and not the same. Back in the day it had decades of graffiti, crumbling cement, jagged metal pole framing bent and jutting out from the sides. You know, real character.
I remember when I was just a kid at the skatepark and I spotted a bunch of other kids at the metal grating of a drain. I joined them and gazed down a few metres to some older teenagers, they had trekked through this “love tunnel” under the massive hill all this way. Badass I thought. LEGENDARY.
I talked about it at school, about this mysterious “love tunnel”. It was in view from the road when I crossed the bridge everyday on my daily commutes from the backseat of mums car.
I would gaze down at the weir and see the top of the love tunnel, sliightly hidden from view by a hill. It fascinated me.
I learned all these mysterious tales; this person slept with this person there, someone took a dump at the entrance and some other girl stood in it and now she had a nickname, someone found needles, another found a homeless woman and she screamed at them. I was pumped for the next weekend. I was going to go see it for myself.
I saw too much.
Early Saturday morning I was riding my push bike through town and toward destination adventure! I started out at the skatepark, met up with a few of the regulars, a mix of 5-19y/o everyone on the half pipes and ramps had a code of comrady that I've never found in a public place anywhere else and you always had someone to hang with.
My usual crew slowly arrived through the morning, a bunch of other 10/11 year old misfits like myself and we headed on our first place on our journey, Hungry Jacks. Now we never technically stole, we found a loophole…
One or two would order a stunner meal, then we'd take privilege of the free refills and fill up the empty plastic 4L juice jugs that we all had prepped in our backpacks. Coke and red Fanta for days.
So we got our supplies and headed behind HJ, past the volleyball courts and headed down a bush track down to the river.
We walked along the banks to loop back down to where the bridge was, we passed a few teenagers fishing and a couple other groups of kids swinging from rope swings into the water or huddled in groups smoking things they shouldn't.
We eventually arrived at the weir and the stormwater drain that I had been so intrigued by. The Love Tunnel.
Climbing up the hill and seeing it up close when you were just a tiny human. It was like staring into the dark abyss of hell.
There was a small stream of water flowing out of the big grey cylinder and it was covered in multicolored quotes and crude pictures that was very eye opening at the time.
Our voices echoed as one by one we climbed up the grassy, eroding clay edging that was the makeshift path into the mouth that probably changed each time it rained. Each of us had pulled out clumps of grass that we thought were handholds. If you fell, you fell down an embankment of slippery jagged rocks poking out from the fast flowing river.
So were inside and began to walk a couple of metres in then around us the light abruptly disappeared into complete darkness. And I remember the way the sounds traveled you could feel it through your chest it was mesmerizing.
I remember bravely stepping into the darkness and taking five or six steps in. That thick darkness was something else, I ran myself back to that entrance and light, heart pounding from the adrenaline.
This turned into a game of who could go in the furthest. This stopped when one of the boys screamed out from the darkness in pain.
He was back in the light teary eyed a few moments later wet on one side and feigning a laugh. He'd slipped down and cut open his knee, it was hilarious. We teased him saying he was going to get gangrene and leprosy and a myriad of other ailments we had no idea actually was.
We decided to bail, we forgot torches, we didn't plan that part out too well, and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon being little menaces.
We met the next day with a game plan, we had an array of various sized torches, from small ones that didn't do anything, one of those giant rectangle ones that was our main light source, a couple of handheld ones, one which flickered and the other stopped working before we even got into the tunnel.
We got in safely and tested out our torches and began walking into the unknown. It was pretty much the same as before, but there were strange things, old makeshift bongs, shopping bags, random shoes, a shopping trolley, a mattress that was all moldy and rotted. I still to this day do not understand how people managed to get that shit in there.
We passed a section where someone had thrown a can of red paint all over the walls, the amount of those ‘S’ symbols was more terrifying.
We saw light up ahead, we were passing our first grate. It was kind of daunting looking up towards it. Even getting on each other's shoulders we couldn't reach. There was an array of broken beer bottles and glass was everywhere, under the grate was a dead snake amongst some debris.
We had a debate whether to go further, we ended up going on at least until the next grate, we came to a fork, one seemed like a smaller offshoot so we stuck to the bigger side.
There were more offshoots and we came to a part where the big pipes split off into three under another grate. We gazed up hoping to get an identifier of our location, but all we could see was blue. We called out to see if we could get anyone's attention.
“Cooooweeee” we shouted in unison, the sound echoing in all directions.
We were laughing and having a grand time until something shouted back, something that still shakes me to my core to this day.
Some yobbo crackhead chick in her fifties with this ratty pink tank top that was all stretched half showing her saggy titties. “What the fuck you think you little cunts doing down here.” This chick screeched at us through her few teeth or something along the lines of that. She just exploded at us with a barrage of threats.
We were shocked silenced moving together to make one mass.
One of the boys screamed when a skinny guy emerged from the darkness. He was covered in tattoos with scraggly hair and a beard, he was all crazy eyed and pantless.
Someone yelled out to run and it was all the motivation we needed.
We could hear them screaming and the guy ran after us, we heard glass shattering behind us, they must have thrown a bottle. We were legging it.
We got split up in our running, I fell down, tripping over some rubbish, one mate stayed back to help me, this left us without a torch. We came across the same kid who slipped over yesterday, he had slipped down again cutting open his other knee. He wore those with badges of honor at school, but he was blubbering like a baby at this point.
He had the flickering torch and it disoriented us more than helped, as it turned on and off every time he took a step. I thought we were lost but we found the other grate, then eventually the entrance.
The others were already climbed down, we were soon by their side panting in the grass and wiping away our tears so the others couldn't see.
We ran back over to the skatepark and immediately told every kid we saw.
That was the wildest shit we had ever experienced. Sure we’d seen crazy up on the street but to have it jump out at you from the shadows in a storm water drain was next level.
By that night one of the other boys had spilled to his parents about our escapades and a couple of other mums got phone calls, three got in trouble, two of us didn't, including me.
I never stepped foot back in that tunnel, I swam at the weir more times than I could count afterwards though and never encountered anyone else too sketchy.
I think only a year or two later I saw on the news people dying in storm water drains somewhere else in Aus, we never realized how dangerous they could be back then. Lol.
Every party or get together afterwards it was a crowd favorite to bring up. It was a good conversation starter and joined the tales amongst my friends of the weird shit that happens in ‘Helltown’.
Growing up and looking back they were probably just homeless drug addicts freaked out from a bunch of children's voices yelling out coooweee from the underground where they thought they were alone. That would have scared the shit outta me if I was them.
Good times.
.VJ - in 2012 two women tragically passed away when they were exploring the tunnels and got swept away when a wild storm cell hit. Pictures of the upgraded version of the 'love tunnel' can be found in corresponding news articles.

I know I said in my last update that I would not reach out to any new leads for the moment, but I couldn't resist!
So I won't go into too much detail, but I found a new lead that seems promising and I wanted you guys' opinion.
So I was looking up variations of "Belarusian indie rock before:2011" and "Minsk indie rock band before:2011" on YouTube (which as another user pointed out was how the Kenya Dance song was found). I stumbled upon this YouTube channel for an act called Dreamlin based on Minsk, whose title reads "Dreamlin: We have a band and sometimes film others." I thought, "Okay, what are these other bands?" In their videos, they have some songs by a man named Andre Karp and his bands including Pranayama.
Here is a live performance of a song by Pranayama called "What Am I Got to Do If I Love You?". If you ask me, I think the drums and the vocals sound similar to WMT (at least more similar than most others I have been listening to).
So I said "Why not?". I reached out to Dreamlin with a general inquiry via email, and to Andre Karp and Graffiti Bar Minsk (the venue where the live recording was made) via Facebook Messenger. Dreamlin responded to my email very quickly saying simply "no idea, sorry". I have not received replies from Andre or Graffiti Bar and I do not want a lot of people reaching out to them (especially since I messaged Andre's personal Facebook account).
So what do you guys think? Here's some more songs by Andre: "Like a Stone", "My Sweet Sister", and a documentary he was in called "Made in BY" about counter-culture in Belarus under Lukashenko's government. This very well may not be WMT, but either way I do like Andre's music.

Bit of a silly rant but it's been driving me NUTS the past few weeks.
Someone in my neighbourhood graffitied the suburb sign by randomly crossing out some of the letters with white spray paint.
I drive past the sign every day, and I keep looking for the pattern.
The letters left over spell OER The letters crossed out spell RSBY
The letters crossed out aren't in a pattern like x.x.x.x. or xx..xx.. or x..xx..x
There's no tag of someone's name, or a "bob waz ere" or a "Susan is a slut"
It is on a busy road and would have taken planning, buying the spray paint from a hardware store (closest one is 2 suburbs away), it's directly across from a grocery store so they would have had to do it at 2am or 3am and avoid the frequent police patrolling.
I know I'm perseverating here.
But I NEED it to MAKE SENSE and if doesn't make sense and my brain can't stop thinking about it trying to solve the puzzle..

So I have to confess, sorry.
I knew the minute I saw 1999 video back 83 (ish) seeing a Dr on the keyboard, two super 🔥 women seductively also playing keyboard and this cool lad in lace and heels singing I knew this was for me
I was probably 10-11 yrs old.
I knew when I saw Purple Rain on VHS in 85 and saw the powder, paint and performance I felt this was TOTALLY my thing .. (Apollonia in Lake Minnetonka did me NO harm either)
Then every album, the psychedelic beauty of around the world in a day, the Parisian decadence of Parade, the grandness and audacity of Sign o the Times , the mystery of the Black Album, the beauty and horny LoveSexy
Then ... Batman I really liked, as I did the film.
1990 Prince was my FIRST gig Wembley Arena London (I saw INXS soon after)
By now I'm 17/18 , it's rave culture in England and times were a changing
I hated Graffiti Bridge seemed like Purple Rain II but without ANY of the wow or charm.
Diamonds and Pearls had moments, the hits were great (and one night I picked up a hot blonde from the club and we fucked to Gett Off, Prince would have approved she REALLY was a little red Corvette)
Suddenly I was out of touch with this man whose lyrics taught me about love, lusting, fucking and heartbreak
I was growing up and growing out.
The revolution was long gone, so it seemed was the sound of my taste.
Sexy MF seemed like he was trying too hard and I really hated My Names is Prince
All that Slave stuff did nothing for me.
There were moments again, but they were brief.
My 80s love for Prince (and the Revolution) was SO huge that I suppose it had to burn out, a mate of mine said same you could NEVER sustain that output and the nostalgia and the sound sit hand in hand
Eveey time a review said his best album in 30 years I sheeled out hoping to recreate them times and feelings, it never did, I list 3121 as an example at hand.
So please don't hate me, I sobbed buckets when he died.
In the 1980s I had all the vinyl, the US imports in the London record shops , I have recently shelled out huge money on the 1999 and Sign OTimes box sets , worth every penny.
But my love for Prince may only be momemty in his musical career but my god it was never bettered.

What am I doing? Dominick Mason asked himself for the hundredth time that night. It was late on a rainy Sunday evening and Dom, a tall, lanky man-boy of twenty-five with a prominent Adam’s apple and too big eyes, stared out the rain-slicked window of the 905. The big bus swayed and jostled as it lumbered down Central Avenue, the movements strangely comforting, conducive to reflection…and self-doubt.
As if on cue, his phone buzzed, and a pit opened up in his stomach. He fumbled it out with long fingers and read the text. Are u almost here
His thumb hovered over the screen, but he did not reply. Part of him wanted to block the number, slink back home with his tail between his legs, and forget the whole thing. He could boot up his PS4 and play Red Dead Redemption or GTA V like always. Safe. Familiar. The thought, however, stirred a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach.
It was dread.
Every night, he did the same thing. He came home from work to his tiny prison cell apartment. He had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He played video games until it was time to go to bed. The worst part of the whole night was when he turned off the TV and saw his murky reflection in the screen. Plaid. Scrawny. Disgusting. He hated being locked in that apartment, with its old smells and white walls, but he hated going out even more. At least in his hole, he was safe, like a mouse. No one hurt or lied to him there. No one gave him funny looks. No one rejected him. He was completely safe in his solitude, a wounded animal hiding in its den and licking its wounds.
He was wounded and he knew it.
And he hated himself for it. Hated that he wasn’t stronger or better. Hated that even though he tried so hard, everything he did fell apart…if it even came together in the first place, which it rarely did.
The phone buzzed again.
Just a question mark this time.
His heart began to race and a steely fist slowly closed around his lungs. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and took a deep breath. He pictured himself alone in his little apartment. He loved the image, but he hated it too. Most nights, he didn’t mind being alone. He had to not mind it, because he didn’t have a choice. Some nights…some nights he didn’t want to be alone. Some nights he wanted warmth, he wanted tenderness…some nights, he wanted to be human.
Every so often, Dom would get the urge to find those things. They came less frequently than they did before, but unfortunately, they still came. He would create an account on Plenty of Fish and OKCupid, maybe some of the other sites as well. He would agonize over his stupid intro and his stupid list of hobbies. He would spend hours - literally hours - writing and rewriting them, trying at first to be serious, then light and funny, then cool, then aloof, then vulnerable. He would take the best possible pictures from the best possible angles, then upload them, never lingering over them because he hated the way he looked. He didn’t think he was ugly - mid was more like it - but apparently, he was ugly. Too ugly for love, too ugly even to talk to.
The ugly barnacle. So ugly that everyone died. The end.
All of Dom’s pictures were all selfies, of course. Guys he listened to on YouTube said he needed action shots, shots with friends, shots that showed women he had a life, was valued by those around him, and knew how to have fun. Too bad for him, he had no friends and no one valued him, not even his own mother. On the surface, maybe, but she had hurt him so many times over the years in so many ways that even the most devout son would stop and think.
It had to be selfies.
When his profile was in order - or as much in order as he could get it - he would start to browse. Dom knew his place and never messaged women who were too beautiful. He used to, but they never responded. He eventually began to skip their profiles with a pang of loss and a quiet what if? Now, he barely noticed them. Blonde. Petite. Blue eyes. Maybe she was a cheerleader at one time, maybe she was the type of girl who looked down her nose at guys like him. Maybe she was a sweetheart. In any case, he would never find out, so who cares?
He went for women he could realistically obtain…the type of women he’d dated and hooked up with in the past. Some were attractive in their own way, others were hard to look at, he wasn’t picky; he couldn’t afford to be picky. One woman he saw was a good three hundred pounds. She was nice and he liked her enough, but he lapsed into depression while they were dating and he never messaged her back…not that she made a huge effort to message him. Another was a pre-K teacher in her mid-thirties. Overweight with a big nose, glasses, and a plain face when she wasn’t wearing make-up. He liked her a lot and wanted to be with her, but after a month of weekend hookups, she said she didn’t love him. She told him she wanted a family - three kids, to be exact - but “changed her mind.” No, she didn’t. She just didn’t want those things with him.
Now she was in her late thirties, single, and having regrets.
She still wouldn’t settle for him, though.
Another woman he’d seen recently (six months ago) was fifty, but not unattractive. They texted for weeks, hot and heavy. She outright told him that she wanted to have sex with him. Said all sorts of nasty and sexual things. Their first (and only date) was her coming to his apartment. Instead of tender kisses, loving caresses, and intense emotions, they shared an awkward two hours on his couch. When he tried to hold her hand and put his arm around her, she stiffened. Not much, just a little. She said she “wasn’t ready.” He sat there and watched the flowers he’d gotten her wilt as she talked about her ex for an hour and a half, his arms pointedly crossed. He even leaned as far away from her as humanly possible, trying to communicate with his body language what he didn’t have the guts to communicate with his words: I’m uncomfortable, please leave. He planned to take her to a nice restaurant after they made love. Instead, he ordered something after she finally got the hint and left, eating alone like always.
After her, he deleted his profile (again) and resolved to never bother with dating again. Obviously there was something wrong with him. He saw guys who were uglier and more awkward than him with girlfriends, some actually stunning, but there was something about him in particular, something that repelled women…and men too.
Everyone.
It repelled everyone.
Maybe it was his self-loathing. After all, no one likes a sad sack. But that’s the thing: He was like this because of those experiences. It was a what came first, the chicken or the egg situation. Looking back, he had almost normal confidence at one point. Then all of this happened. The hundreds of messages he sent on the dating apps staying on read, unanswered, like he never sent them at all, like he was garbage unworthy of even a hello. The awkward dates. The occasional “success” that eventually fell apart…sometimes because of him, and sometimes because of them. The one girl who ran away from him when he tried to walk her to her car after a date. They didn’t click, he knew that, but he didn’t say or do anything creepy. Why did she do that? The girls who lead him on, talking about sex and sometimes even love but always had a reason they couldn’t meet.
There were other examples - many others - but it was all the same. Who cared?
Dom wanted to crawl back into his hole and stay there, to stop poking his head out and getting hurt. He wanted it so bad…but he was only human. Deep down, buried beneath layer after layer of scar tissue, there was still hope. Hope for love, for companionship, for acceptance, for intimacy and human touch. It was only an ember now, but even an ember is enough to spark a fire.
Some nights, he wanted to be safe. Other nights, he wanted to take a risk.
And this night was one of the latter.
Be there soon, he texted. He swallowed hard and wetted his lips. His heart was pounding faster and his bowels were loose. He really hoped this worked out. He didn’t think he could handle another rejection. If she turned him down, he’d probably go home and kill himself. Why go on like this?
He’d had that thought before…but he never followed through.
Maybe one day he’d actually shut the fuck up and do it already.
Maybe.
Ok :)
Her name was Heather and she was fat. She was not unattractive in the face and she wore her weight well, not that that mattered - he would take what he could get. They started talking on OKCupid last week and very soon, the conversation became sexual. He didn’t start it, though, she did. She was ahem very excited, she said. He liked to think that she was lonely, desperate, and wanted intimacy - any intimacy - just like him.
That really turned him on.
They agreed to meet, and now here he was, on the bus to her apartment on the other side of the city, hoping against hope that she didn’t hurt him too.
He put the phone away and stared straight ahead. The bus was nearly deserted, save for an old bag lady up front and a few Mexican guys in the back. Lights lined the bus’s roof, providing a cold, impersonal light. Dom took a deep breath and forced his dark emotions away. It was all on him to make this work. He would accept her fat, ugly, poor, and crippled, but he had to work to earn her love. He could do it.
When the bus finally reached his stop, he yanked the cord and got off. There was a plexiglass shelter lit by a single, lonely bulb. Trash littered the ground. Beyond the shelter, a park lay in darkness. Behind him, on the other side of the road, a housing project not unlike his own towered into the sky, lit up like a ship at sail. Dom swallowed his nerves and crossed the street. He found the door that she had directed him to use, and climbed the stairs. He expected trash, graffiti, and winos passed out on every landing. Instead, the stairwell was clean and deserted. His nerves welled as he climbed but he forced them down again. On the ninth floor, he went down the hall, battered on all sides by the stale smells of cooking and the murmur of TVs and voices coming from every apartment.
Dom paused at Apartment 237.
Heather’s.
You got this, he told himself.
And really, he did. Their plan - well, Heather’s, really - was simple and straightforward. She told him that she would leave the door unlocked. He was to come in, go to the bedroom, and she would be waiting for him. She said it was a fantasy of hers.
On some level, he knew all along that the whole setup sounded fishy. Was he being set up to get robbed? Would he walk in and get jumped by a bunch of Crips? He hesitated, but his need for love - and, yes, release - pushed him on.
He opened the door.
Inside, the apartment was small and messy, a living room to the right and a tiny kitchen to the left. The only light on was the one above the stove.
Everything else was in shadows.
Dom’s heart skipped a beat.
This didn’t feel right.
That thought was overpowered by the smell, a sickly sweet odor that suddenly seemed to be everywhere. His stomach twisted and he turned his head slightly to one side, as if to spare his nose. It smelled like something spoiled.
A voice spoke from the darkness, startling him. “I’m in here.”
It was light, airy, and cute.
For the last time, Dom hesitated. Some primal sense told him to turn around and leave…
…but he wanted to be loved.
Dom entered and shut the door behind him.
The smell was stronger. The atmosphere darker.
Ahead, he could barely make out an open doorway in the shadows.
He crossed to it.
The smell was overpowering here and Dom felt like he was going to puke. Any desire he had felt was gone, replaced only by revulsion and claustrophobia. It was cold, he realized, so cold that his teeth chattered.
Okay, fuck this.
He started to turn around, intent on leaving, but a small, white hand reached from the darkness. Icy fingertips brushed his cheek and his heart blasted into his throat.
Then she was there, her body pressing against his and her lips fused with his. The smell, the freezer chill, both stronger than ever.
They were both coming from her.
Her tongue hungrily lashed his own, and she pushed him against the wall. Her hands slipped under his shirt and pressed flat against his chest. They were so cold that he almost cried out.
Dom wanted to push her away, to run, but he didn’t. Instead, he froze up and allowed her to push him onto the bed. Was he too gutless to tell her no, the way he’d been too gutless to tell the woman who went on and on about her ex to shut up and leave? Did he secretly want to go through with this? He didn’t know, and he didn’t have time to figure it out. She was on top of him now, straddling him, his legs caged between her ample thighs. She grabbed his hands and pressed them to her bare breasts.
They were as cold as the rest of her.
She leaned down and kissed him again. He hadn’t noticed it before, but her tongue was…dry. Her mouth itself tasted strange. Off.
Heather broke from his lips and peppered kisses on his cheek and forehead, assaulting him with an intimacy that Dom no longer wanted.
Through it all, she was as silent as a tomb. She wasn’t panting or rasping with excitement. In fact, he didn’t think she was even breathing.
She brushed her lips along the exposed curve of his throat, and tingles of revulsion shot down his spine. She found his pulse and kissed it. Trembles of excitement raced through her body and she started to lap his neck like a dog.
Without warning, a fiery pinprick of pain exploded over him and Heather began to shake and pant. Dom cried out and tried to fight her off, but she was too heavy, too much.
With a tiny, mouse-like squeak - a sound of pitiable fear and resignation - Dom blacked out.

[Request] Graphic Design Ultimate Frisbee Jersey
Please do submit link to portfolio.
Budget target 125
Budget range 75 - 150.
If budget doesn't fit, propose price and I'll evaluate.
Please DO NOT provide concept art expecting a fee, it is welcome but I feel guilty not paying and cannot pay extra fees.
Not all submissions/portfolios will be responded to.
I may take a day or two to review and respond to portfolios.
Goals/Needs/Design/Desires:

1. Graffiti Feel, mild anime or cartoonish OK.

• Is not Anime
  
• Is not Cartoon
  
• https://www.wallpaperflare.com/graffiti-letters-font-text-decoration-painted-wall-art-wallpaper-wvltu
  
• Please note the little guy in the image is off style and not desired.
  

1. Funky Vibes with the letters 'RMK' in Simple style, some elements of wild style

• Is Legible and clear
  
• Is not pure wild style
  
• Can have mild retro
  
• Is not strong retro
  
• Urban Feel
  
• Playful Feel
  

1. Orientation

• Consider names will be added to jersey in typical location
  
• Consider number will be added in typical location
  

1. 'Rosy Mound Kids'

• In Baseball lettering - somewhere tasteful.
  
• https://stock.adobe.com/search?k=baseball+font
  

1. Dive catch or otherwise

• https://cdn.ultiworld.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/ClubNats_2016_TNg_0930_3-33-35_PM_1054-ZF-2289-56204-1-001.jpg
  
• https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.477559047.6632/fposter,small,wall_texture,product,750x1000.jpg
  
• Google images ultimate dive catch
  

1. Darker overall color scheme when considering background. Jersey's will be worn inside out for lights vs darks.
   
2. Short Sleeve graphic
   
3. We prefer .AI (Adobe Illustrator), .CDR (Corel Draw) and .PSD ( Photoshop) formatted artwork.
   
4. Where we are ordering from.
   

• https://zonesportinggoods.com/pages/how-to-order-ultimate-frisbee-uniforms

A bit about the group; we are a pickup team, not a club team but may eventually be a club team. We are Co-Ed, inclusive and care much more about spirit of the game as a priority. Ultimately, this should have a fun vibe, chill atmosphere, but display a high level of competition (in the feel). It's not cutesy - but it is playful. Open to some creative freedom.
I will review portfolios that seem in alignment. Please let me know if you have experience with T-Graphic designs.