• DISCLAIMER: I AM SAFE, I AM NOT A DANGER TO MYSELF OR ANYONE ELSE! *

that being said, I have a dark sense of humor and am in absolute agony so I might say something weird but I am in no way planning on leaving this world anytime soon!
When do you relent and go to the ER when you KNOW it isn't life or death, it just hurts THAT BAD, to where you understand why some people choose to take the train out ya know? My comment history has a TON of details but basically I have 2 problem areas that are both in FULL flare, my si joint (mainly the right side but the left has started having its own issues since the right is SO bad) and my right rib/shoulder blade/thoracic spine area. The si we are in the process of figuring out and even though it's awful I know my dr will send me for an mri of it on Thursday at my apt and hopefully from there to either ortho or neuro for more help since pain management has said they can't help anymore.
The other issue though with my right upper back/shoulder area has been a chronic issue for YEARS until it started flaring about 3 months ago (after a consensual night with hubby over stretched it we think, but not sure) and in the time since then I have gotten to the point of not being able to breath full breaths no matter how hard I try bc of the amount of pain it causes.
I have been vommiting daily from the pain I'm in. I have gone to 3 Dr's and they have ordered imaging for the wrong area, I went to urgent care last week after my family begged me and they did a chest xray finally but said there was too much inflammation to tell if there was a dislocation or fracture and recommended an mri. They gave me a shot of tordol which did help a bit. 3 days later (last friday) I asked pain specialist for an mri and showed them the report from urgent care. He said he would put in an emergency referal for a thoracic mri. Called thismorning and they hadn't even submitted it yet, then when I called this afternoon they said someone would call me back but that it was taken care of. No call back, called insurance and they haven't received the referal or whatever still.
I see my primary again Thursday morning. Do I keep touching it out and just hope she orders the RIGHT area this time-she ordered c-spine last visit even though I told her specifically it was NOT my neck for this issue).
I know they aren't going to do surgery, hell they probably won't even do imaging honestly but I AM IN SO MUCH FUCKING PAIN. A huge part of me doesn't want to go bc the fear of it being pointless (as it has proven to be every time before), along with the being treated like a drug seeker and all the other wonderful things that come with 18+ hrs in the er. My motto has always been ER IS NOT FOR PAIN (for myself, not for anyone else) unless I think I legitimately might die or need IMMEDIATE surgery. But there is a small part that is growing by the day as the pain continues that thinks MAYBE this is where we draw the line bc if it hurts THIS bad for THIS long then something is WRONG and maybe they will see it and be able to provide even SOME relief (like if it is a dislocated rib they could put it back? Idk).
When I got to this pain Dr I'm with now 2 yrs ago he took me off 99% of my meds and I've been going down hill much quicker since. About 6 months ago I started sprinting for the ground and have been begging at every apt for help, literally unable to talk without tears trying to explain JUST how severe everything has gotten. The pain I'm in now had me to a point of digging out a butrans patch from 5yrs ago just to be able to move enough to bathe......I have a couple days before this patch is toast and I am TERRIFIED of how bad that's going to be bc he will not budge on my meds (ZERO long acting, min muscle relaxer 1x a day, 3 Norco a day) bc of "practice policy "
I THINK* I'm rambling at this point... idk, would you go?
My plan as of now is to drop off the kids at school tomorrow and go into the er right after so it's shortly after shift change and I won't be in any rush at all (for at least 7 hrs lol) but also it will hopefully not be too busy bc I feel like an ass going in the first place.
Editing- besides the vomiting from the pain, I have also had tons of migraines (or one REALLY long one that lessens sometimes), extra numbness and tingling compared to normal in my face and arm,hand, fingers on the right, I have random "hot spots" under the skin, like as if I leaned against a stove burner for a sec but there is no change visually externally, and a low grade fever of 101 or less since yeaterday. I'm positive there's nerve and muscle issues bc of these but does that actually make it RISKIER or just more painful?

I'm 38M, 179cm tall, 80.2kg, white. Primary complaints are abdominal pain, constipation, fatigue, and dermatitis.
Currently use nicotine (vaping about 2/3 of a 1.8% Vuse cartridge a day). Currently take a multivitamin and magnesium. Occasional light cannabis use, and that's it at the moment. No current alcohol use. I take Miralax most days.
This has been a long road, and I fortunately have a new primary care physician and am getting a referral to a GI doctor. Hopefully I can get some answers.
I have been a nicotine user since 19 years old, switched to vaping about 3 years ago. I was a heavy kratom user from about 2016 to 2023, and have since kicked that habit. I was a light drinker, but have completely abstained from alcohol for over a year.
About 10 years ago, I noticed I was getting a lot of heartburn, and ignored it/took Tums as necessary. It got really bad when my kratom use started getting heavy. Since I quit kratom, it has mostly gone away.
I did have COVID in Feb 2022.
Anyway, in January 2023, I started getting REALLY constipated. I ended up not going for about a month, and went to the ER when stool softeners, laxatives, and enemas failed. A CT was performed, which showed a "moderate" stool load, and fatty infiltration of my pancreas. Lipase was slightly low at 12, I believe. I have read that kratom consumption can lower serum lipase levels. The ER I went to was really obvious that they thought I was drug seeking, and sent me home saying to keep taking Miralax and go to a GI doctor (4 months later).
Fortunately, the constipation magically resolved, and I was doing pretty well, but I noticed when the abdominal pain would flare up, I would get really bad dermatitis on my scalp, face, and fingers of my right hand. Constipation would come back, and go away. My primary care doc at the time ended up doing an upper abdominal ultrasound. This showed the same fatty infiltration of my pancreas, and several <6mm polyps in my gallbladder. Otherwise normal.
I was having a lot of side effects from the kratom, so I started tapering off that July. As soon as I did, I started having bad upper abdominal pain/cramping. This continued until now. The GI doctor pretty much wrote it off as IBS, then when I saw him again he said it might be pancreas, but the guy was a jerk (I couldn't get a word in to describe my symptoms). Evidently, I'm not the only person, as I have talked to two other people that said the same about that clinic.
So, since I was getting really fed up with that particular medical group, I didn't go back to them. I tried changing my diet in a myriad of different ways, with minimal results. Lost 40 pounds from my change in diet (I was obese, but no longer). Started noticing mucous in my stool. Lots of changes from day to day in my stool. Sometimes it's Bristol 2 or Bristol 6. Sometimes it's 1/2 inch diameter or 2 inch diameter. Sometimes it's tiny amounts or a huge volume. Very rarely has it been yellowish or floated. Usually it's medium brown. No visible blood.
The constant abdominal pain has made it hard for me to do anything outside of going to work and coming home. Some days it's horrible. I never have a fever, nausea, vomiting.
I took it upon myself to get some blood and stool tests this year to rule things out:

• CMP/CBC/UA: All totally normal and within reference range.
  
• H. Pylori breath test: Negative.
  
• Lyme disease: No antibodies.
  
• Syphilis: No antibodies.
  
• HIV: Nope.
  
• Fit test: No blood.
  
• Stool microscopy: No helminths or ova. A small amount of candida.
  
• Blood food allergy test: Mildly allergic to sesame, nothing else on the panel.
  

Then, I had an ANA run via Quest Diagnostics. At 1:80, it came back positive with a nuclear pattern, dense fine speckled. At 1:320, it came back positive with "few nuclear dots". The antibody panel it reflexed to was completely negative. Quest called me and said "get to a doctor."
So, my insurance changed and I could go outside the medical group I hated! I recently scheduled an appointment with a new PCP. He wanted to re-run the ANA, but through Labcorp.
That ANA came back as follows: At 1:80, positive with a homogenous pattern (AC-1), and a speckled pattern (AC-2,4,5,29). At 1:160, positive with a nuclear dot pattern (AC-6,7). Again, the antigen panel was negative.
I had also recently been noticing my tongue is white. I just went to the dentist, and she said that she's not concerned enough to biopsy, but we need to monitor it, and it may be from a nutrient deficiency.
I've been trying to supplement, but my iron consumption has been low, so I'm reintroducing beef to my diet.
Still waiting to get in to the new GI doctor.
Anyway, I'm not sure what to think. When my guts hurt, it feels like food/stool moves to a spot, and just stops and cramps. Then, 12 hours to 2 days later, it suddenly moves again, and gets stuck somewhere else. There are certain foods I'm not allergic to but can't tolerate at all (peanuts, sunflower, others). It doesn't seem to be related to fat content, though. I can eat fatty foods as long as they don't have peanut or sunflower oil. Wheat seems to be another trigger, but it's not exclusive (because I didn't have any for over 6 months and still had problems).
When I'm having BAD abdominal pain, my skin on my face and right hand flakes and itches. It can get bad. My phalanges on both hands have shiny skin, too. And the fatigue is terrible. This made me very sedentary, but lately I've been forcing myself to walk, shooting for about 10k steps per day. It's difficult. Also during bad flareups, my eyes get veiny/red, and my cheeks get flushed (sometimes my whole face). People tell me I look sunburned sometimes.
I am really suspecting my immune system is involved here, but don't know where to look. Maybe I just wait for the GI appointment. Maybe I encourage my new PCP to send me to rheumatology.
What's super weird, is that my (recently ex) wife was having almost identical symptoms, for about 2 years, 2 years prior to this starting with me. She got a similar runaround with doctors, told it was in her head, told they couldn't figure it out, etc. It started resolving on its own. That said, my symptoms are worse than hers. I'm honestly really concerned about my future at this point, because it's hard to function day-to-day.
Off the top of my head, I'm thinking systemic sclerosis (but I'd think there'd be positive antigens on the ANA reflex), or some kind of autoimmune cholangitis, or a mast cell disorder. Or a lymphoma. Whatever it is, it's scary.

So, if you’re just joining us, I work at a haunted zoo now. Since I’ve gotten some rest, it feels like I’ve got my head on straight, at least, so I’d like to continue where I left off.
I sat on the floor in the office after meeting the ghost until I’d settled my rattled mind (and realized I’d forgotten to ask her name, how rude is that?). I took a deep breath and got up off the floor. Walking over and falling into the rolling chair in front of the large screen of camera views, when I brought up the camera that covered the area in which I’d spotted her, she was still there, and it seemed she hadn’t moved an inch.
Sitting there, at a loss, I continued to watch her. The ghost hung around for another five minutes or so, appearing to look at a few things off-screen, though I’m not sure what. Then she walked off into the forest and left the view of the cameras. I wasn’t sure if she vanished into the ether or if she’d gone looking into the trees to look for something.
But that wasn’t the end of the job interview, so let me jump back there. It continued into what kind of animals the zoo had, with Andrew asking me how much experience I had with dangerous animals.
I took a moment to consider the question. “So, ah…I’ve been going hunting and fishing with a neighbor since I was sixteen,” I told him. “We always have to keep an eye out for gators, bears, and hogs. Then there’s snakes, of course…snapping turtles… Since I’ve lived here my whole life and been aiming for a job with wildlife for a long time, I know a lot about the animals in Arkansas in general. But good advice for all of the above is avoid them, so I’ve had encounters, but I don’t know if you’d say I have experience with them.”
“That’s fine,” Andrew said, nodding. “That’s an answer I’m satisfied with. Now, the ghost was the appetizer, Ripley; here’s the main course. To start with, the pay isn’t twenty-five an hour. It’s fifty.”
Staring in shock for a moment, I asked, “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. But that’d be weird to post online considering what applicants think we need, so I halved it.”
“That’s… Okay, why?”
“The animals are already here. You just can’t see them.”
I stared at him for a long moment, some disbelief worming its way into my expression, before saying, “Sorry, what?”
“There’s a chance you’d naturally never see them, or at least some of them,” he continued casually. “It depends on both your genetics and how long you stay on the job. I can naturally see six of them, but that’s it. Suzanne can see all of them, and more. Some are what people would label demons or ghosts. Or magic. Mostly you’d call them cryptids. The ghost was just a warm-up; I mentioned her first because it never takes more than a week to see her if you work the night shift. If you manage to handle her okay, soon you’ll be able to see the animals too. The more time you spend on the grounds, for weird reasons,” he said, wiggling his fingers in the direction of the back door, “the more you’ll be able to see.”
“So, this…this is a zoo for cryptids,” I echoed slowly. He nodded once, waiting to find out what kind of reaction I would have. I gestured vaguely around the room. “If this is a hidden camera show, will you cut me a check for showing up and participating?”
Andrew coughed out a chuckle and shook his head. “No joke. There are a ton of stories out there that have been written to death, pulverized until they’re not the Grimm stories of old and instead they’re Disney films. A lot of those stories come from what some humans have seen. There are dozens of other worlds pressed up against ours, and occasionally things come through by accident. If they’re smart, they’ll lay low and then make their way back when they can. If not, they become local folklore until someone helps them back. I’m just from London, but Suzanne is from somewhere else. She hires people like us for this zoo. Humans.”
Sighing, I shook my head. “That makes no sense. Why would she hire a muggle for a magic zoo?”
Andrew burst out laughing at that, and then waited to gather himself before he continued. “Fair point, but this is less about magic and more about animals, and you’re missing some information that will explain it. First of all, if I misjudge an employee, and they think they can make bank by outing the endangered and valuable animals we have, it’s easy to relocate the zoo.”
“Because magic?” I asked.
“Exactly,” he replied, ignoring the thread of skepticism in my tone. “That means it isn’t the end of the world if that happened, though it is a pain in the arse. But second…let me ask you a question. Speaking of reality shows, say the Discovery Channel put out a call to replace Steve Irwin when he passed. Imagine they had a line out the door,” he said with a gesture, “of people who thought they had the skill and natural talent to replace him, to take on everything he’d been doing his whole life. How many do you reckon would lose an arm, a leg, or their life, by the end of the day?”
My lips parted in surprise and I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re saying people from…wherever…they’re just as dumb as humans, but they’re worse, because they actually think they can handle these things.”
Andrew pointed the pen at me. “Things. Exactly. You called them things. Suzanne and her friends grew up with them and would call them animals. These animals have dispositions and temperaments that we’ve studied for as long as there have been scientists. Where Suzanne’s from, they know the weaknesses of these animals, and also they’re in enclosures here, even if you and I can’t see the walls because they’re invisible things called ‘wards’. If I hire someone who’s got magic on top of all that, they’ll have almost no instinctive fear.
“Everything here is nocturnal, and every one of them is a hunter. Some of these things? Humans see them and they pass out. Not that I want you passing out, but I need someone who is scared of these things, who knows to stay out of the enclosures no matter what. Not someone who thinks they can train them to do tricks, who gets close enough for them to grab a mouthful of hair and drown them. Once, we had a night shift manager injured, and once killed, because they didn’t take these animals seriously enough.”
Thinking back to the Sea World orca incident I knew he’d been referencing, I remembered wondering how someone at that level of her profession could be so careless as I watched the video on YouTube. It made sense when he explained it like that. I hesitated before mentally throwing my hands up and going all in. “So, why put this place here, then? If they’re endangered and also dangerous, why have a zoo at all instead of just a small reserve?”
He pursed his lips, looking disappointed in me. “Ripley. You know that already. You already said as much.”
Thinking back through our conversation, I said, “The rich humans who pay top dollar to see supernatural animals.”
“Not humans,” he told me. “But people, yes, and they are rich, and they’re making donations and spending their money on a ticket here because everything we have is endangered.”
“So…”
I just let my voice trail off and my mind started to drift. Andrew remained silent, letting me do so. There’s that thing people say, ‘I believe that you believe it,’ which is just a kinder way of saying, ‘Bullshit.’ Parents say it about closet monsters. Psychologists say it to people who say they’ve been abducted and probed by aliens. I wanted to say it to Andrew.
But I also wanted a job. If it meant working overnight at an empty zoo, that was fine. When it came down to it, especially when I took the tone of our conversation into account, this was a zoo specifically focused on preserving endangered ‘animals’, and it was allegedly doing important work. Also, if this turned out to be the real deal and I started seeing the animals, I would deal with it, just like I would deal with an enclosure that had a lion or tiger or gorilla. If it came with a ghost and invisible creatures, I really didn’t see what the difference was, if I couldn’t go in the enclosures either way.
On that note, I’d like you to imagine a kid who looks at a roller coaster, watching everyone screaming and grinning as they go up and down and all around and they’re like, ‘Heck, I could do that! That looks like a blast!’
Then they get on, the first drop hits, and they realize they’ve made a terrible mistake.
“All right,” I sighed. “I can’t say I’m going to turn down a job just because it’s going to be scary. Especially not one with this paycheck.”
Andrew smiled. “Awesome. There’s an adjustment process for anyone working here, similar to a dog that gets adopted, actually. I know the general guidelines of, ‘three days, three weeks, three months’ in terms of milestones, until they finally feel they’re where they’re supposed to be,” he told me, “and you can think of your time here along those lines. I really think you’re a great fit, and once you reach the milestone of working here for three months, I’ll officially consider you our new night shift guard. And I hope you’ll stay with us for many years.”
I nodded and smiled at the flattery of an employer wanting me to work a great job for them for a long time. I’d never had a dog, but those milestones were well-known among anyone who knew animals, especially dogs. The first three days, the dog is getting to know its new digs, exploring, and decompressing. At three weeks, they’ve gotten used to their environment and are starting to get comfortable with their surroundings and the routines of the humans they live with. By three months, they know the rules and follow them, they trust you, and they feel they are where they’re meant to be. I could only hope to be so lucky.
I saw the ghost two days ago and she has yet to make another appearance (for those who are curious, I asked, and her name is Leila), and I still hadn’t seen any animals. I did hear one, though, I feel compelled to note. A growling roar sounded from the lake on occasion, echoing across the vast zoo, sending a shiver down my spine. Whatever that animal was, it sounded gigantic.
Andrew said there was apparently a group that wanted to visit for a birthday and they were offering a huge donation, so he let me know they were making an exception and that this group would be walking through the park that night. That meant I’d be watching people watching animals that, as far as I could tell, weren’t there.
It was anticlimactic. Even the three people who came for the tour just looked like people, not like aliens or something eldritch from another dimension, and I stayed in the security office the whole time. Andrew was the one giving the tour. I watched them spend about five minutes at each enclosure, the hour or so that they were there passing without incident. It was clear that they were able to see all the animals, though, since they motioned excitedly at each enclosure and spoke to Andrew, who presumably answered any questions they had.
If they could see the animals, that was that. There was still that niggle in the back of my head, from my twenty-three years of life never encountering anything like ghosts or cryptids, telling me that this was ridiculous. Waiting for someone to knock on the door, a camera mounted on their shoulder, to tell me that it was a big joke and they wanted to see how long I’d play along. But from all I saw, this was a real place with real, invisible animals.
I do carry a taser and pepper spray in my capacity as a security guard. Though it isn’t for the animals, since they’re in the enclosures; they’re actually for the rare instance of a break-in. Andrew mentioned that it had happened several times it the past, someone trying to steal an animal in the hopes of selling it on the black market. They’d been successful before, but apparently my predecessor Roger was good at his job, and mostly they left in handcuffs.
I’ll be honest, I’m not a huge fan of confrontation, but my job was to call Andrew and then confront the person, not kick their ass. That’s what the police were for, or rather, the people Andrew would call in lieu of police in certain situations.
Fifty bucks an hour. That’s the key here.
Andrew hadn’t set up direct deposit, since he was sticking with a strategy of waiting to see if I’d continue to work there once I found out myself dealing with the animals (I’ve decided I am going to just call them animals). Instead, I got an old-fashioned check after my shift every Friday. The number on the first check was delightful. I went out that evening and had a big dinner at the local diner, order my most expensive favorites on the menu and a big slice of pie for dessert.
When it came to the paychecks in general, though, I had this weird feeling of not wanting to tell my dad and brother about the fact that it was actually $50/hr. I previously mentioned that my dad, his name’s Nathan if you’re curious, works at a local grocery store. Our town has a couple food franchises, but I think its size is just short of whatever threshold Walmart uses to decide where to open. He earns $14/hr. and that’s after the tiny raises he’s gotten over the past thirteen years.
That’s not to say he’d feel bad about not making as much as me. On the contrary, he would be ecstatic for me and really proud. But, like me, he’d be suspicious. That hourly rate was the biggest hint that this was more than just a private zoo for cryptids. And as soon as that fat check cleared without problems, my dad wouldn’t be satisfied with reassurances; he’d want to come visit the zoo and look around.
I’d told him it’s a private preservation with scheduled (expensive) visits only and that it had only eleven animals, so he’d been appeased by me brushing off the idea of a visit. Also, I took a few photos of my workplace; one of the security room, one of me sitting in my chair, one photo of the many screens I watched, and a selfie where I was feigning sleep out of boredom, slouched in my chair with my mouth open in a faux snore. That let him feel like he knew where I was and what I was doing, and that I was safe.
But if I told him I was making double what he thought, my father would practically order me to quit. No job was worth my safety, he’d tell me. I was quite of the opposite opinion, however, considering how crucial any and all conservation efforts were these days. Especially with the steep extinction levels due to humans competing with other animals for space, not to mention climate change. Working in any job that helped preserve species and keep ecosystems in balance, or put them back in balance, was so important.
Then again, my father would also point out something I had realized right away: the fact was that I was working with endangered species that were not from Earth. I wasn’t helping my planet. To be honest, though…that didn’t matter to me. Especially after that talk with Andrew about why he hired a human for this job, I figured whichever dimension these animals came from had the equivalent of us, razing forests to the ground, clouding the planet with pollution, and leaving the animals with no avenue of recourse when yet more land was taken from them.
I really do hope to keep working here for a long time, though, and not just because of the money. I can’t help it; I want to know what these things were, and I want to work with them, to do the job of a zookeeper. The same way you go up to the chain-link fence to get close to a carnivore on the other side who thinks you’d make a nice afternoon snack. You just want to be closer to them, to experience that incredible, daunting feeling of being in their presence.
Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t long before I got what I wanted.
The day after we had the tour go through, I was doing my sweep when I saw the ghost again. She was sitting on a small boulder in the same area I’d seen her the first time, looking identical, blood covering the front of her slashed shirt, the wounds visible underneath. I stopped and stood there for a moment before I decided to raise my hand in a small wave.
The young woman cocked her head at me and raised a hand in the air in an imitation of my gesture, her expression showing a bit of curiosity.
She was low-key, seemingly not concerned with my presence, looking at me as a novel phenomenon in her world. I wondered what that world consisted of. Was she always here, sometimes visible and sometimes not? Or did she have another world next to ours, in the ether, where she left everything in this world behind and floated in her disembodied form? Did she still feel emotions? Was that really curiosity on her face, or was I projecting? Did she feel happiness? Fear? Did she have the option of moving on, or was she stuck here?
Many questions that I might never get the answers too. And that was assuming Andrew knew the answers, since I’d never met Suzanne Cooper and he hadn’t even mentioned that possibility. This place was clearly her baby, but I’m sure running it was a lot of work. Plus, if she was rich enough to own it, she was rich enough to have other businesses and charities to run.
When it comes to the enclosures, they’re all wrapped by a barrier of some kind, though never one that seems adequate. There was not a single place with the ugly metal weavings of a chain-link fence, and no stretches of circular razor wire. Instead, there are nice fences. Black iron, or wrought steel fencing in a similar style to the one circling the perimeter of the zoo, just shorter and with different patterns. Or a spaced picket fence, the wood stained in some tone of brown, or a split two-rail fence. As if to say, ‘This is the border of your enclosure, but we’re just letting you know out of courtesy.’
When I started to pass enclosure number seven last night, a young woman’s voice spoke, “Hello.”
I startled, unaware that I hadn’t been alone. “Oh. Hi,” I said, staring at her standing a few yards in.
She had been next to a large tree and I hadn’t seen her. This enclosure was behind a picket fence, and she walked through the large area of wild grasses and flowers that stretched across the other side of the fence. There were fewer tall grasses closer to the fence, which I guessed was because it had been tromped down by her regular pacing along it when there were visitors, or if she wanted to see the various enclosures of the zoo. Her sudden appearance was a bit weird, considering I had been expecting to see a cryptid and instead I was looking at, it seemed, an attractive Asian woman.
She wore a black kimono, the soft silk robe draped gently over her body, with beautiful patterns of cherry blossoms, more so over her left side, and red and blue birds with their wings spread. A sash wrapped around her abdomen, she wore socks and sandals on her feet, and her hair was up in those rolls that gave volume to the style.
I was no expert on any fashion, much less that of another country, so I just assumed it was all traditional Japanese clothing. Most likely, the visitors who came liked to see a certain time-honored style and that’s what she stuck with. Or maybe she played on stereotypes. That would be amusing.
“I’m Yui. It’s nice to meet you,” she spoke, arriving at the border of the fence and holding out a hand for me to shake.
I’d been standing about three yards away from her, and I’ll be honest, muscle memory tried to kick in. But I only made it two steps, my hand starting to rise, before I froze, the hand falling limply at my side. “Nice to meet you, too,” I answered, my voice quiet.
Damn. I wonder how many times that honey trap works back where she comes from.
The pleasant look on her face faded, and she lowered her hand. “You won’t shake hands with me? Isn’t that rude?”
“I mean, I kind of like my hand where it is. You know, attached to me.”
Her demure smile widened into something more amused. “I would never do something so revolting.”
Looking her up and down, as if more visual information would give me more knowledge of what she was, I asked her, “What would you do?”
“I would be less wasteful,” she said softly.
A finger of ice trailed down my spine, and I had the sudden image in my head of her grabbing my outstretched hand in an iron grip and yanking me over the fence, leaving me to sprawl on the ground. Then killing and consuming me efficiently, without a single careless step, the same way humans slaughtered pigs, using everything from the hog but the squeal. I was struck with a shiver at the idea of her consuming everything from me but my screams.
Slowly, I took one step further down the path, then another. Just as I got to a walking pace, though, I realized the woman had started walking too, in the same direction. I’d have eventually gotten to the end of her enclosure and keep going, leaving her behind, but she spoke up. “Are you leaving?”
I came to a stop, meeting her gaze again. “My job is to walk the zoo every hour. Then I’ll get back to the security room and stay there until my next walk.”
“Have you met the others yet?”
I hesitated before saying, “Just Leila.”
She blinked languidly. “That means nobody welcomed you here.”
“Andrew did.”
She didn’t reply to that. Instead, she slowly started to lean forward, and I flinched backward a few steps further as I saw insect legs start curling out from her back.
No. Not insect. Arachnid.
The eight legs ended in small ‘paws’ with tiny claws, a layer of hairs covering the leg from top to bottom, like any typical tarantula. I took two more slow steps back and my mouth went dry as the jointed legs just kept lengthening, until they were large enough to lever her off the ground.
My gaze had been on the spider legs, but my heart skipped a beat as I realized her human legs had melded together and turned into a bulging an abdomen. Her skin was shifting to a carapace, eventually all the way up to her shoulders and down her arms, her fingers elongating and her nails stretching to claws. From there down, her body was that of a pale tarantula with pedipalps the size of my arms and piercing fangs in her jaws that looked like they could take my head off.
There was a moment, my vision blurring, where I was worried that I might piss myself. The part of my brain that still had its humor intact in that moment told me that I should keep an emergency set of clothes in my car, or at the very least, start wearing Depends to work.
“I show you my true form,” she said softly, her voice now raspy like an eighty-year-old after a lifelong smoking habit. “Welcome to Suzanne Cooper’s zoo. The night shift guard for many years was Roger, before he retired and the zoo moved, and I miss him dearly. What should I call you?”
I choked on my words. There was no way my throat was going to cooperate enough for me to clearly get a sentence out. Instead, I realized my legs had taken control of the situation themselves, unsatisfied with my conscious brain’s decision to stand and stare, taking steps backward. I backed up a yard, then five yards, then ten.
My mind focused on the fact that spiders don’t waste anything, and pictured my demise. I’d be wrapped in a cocoon, killed, and made nice and mushy before she had me for dinner.
The whole time, my brain was a frenzied mess, my pupils were probably the size of dimes, and I was staring at that tiny, pathetic fence between her and me. There was so much adrenaline pumping through my body that I felt like my bones were vibrating. The fence was, to my eyes, the only thing between us. The only thing keeping her from tackling and killing me. My only hope was that she’d do it quickly.
But she didn’t move. As I absorbed her innocent, polite words, the look on her face was calm, and I wondered if this was typically the way a conversation went before she devoured her prey. I wondered how many people she’d eaten. Not humans, not people from Earth, but the ones from where she came from. The fact that she doesn’t scare the shit out of those people means they’re staggeringly dumber than humans.
Finally, I rounded a corner, both relieved at having her out of my sight and worried that she would take that moment to come find me. When she’d been within eyeshot, I had at least known where she was and could run in the other direction. But I didn’t hear the sound of faint footsteps moving rapidly toward me. All was quiet, in that deep, smothering way that only an empty business in the middle of the night in small town America could be.
My hands trembling, I barely paid attention to anything but the confirmation that my surroundings were free of the colossal spider as I finally got back to the door. Grabbing the handle and letting my eyes dart around for about ten seconds and my ears prick for the slightest sound, I finally swiped my key card across the pad and went inside, shutting the door behind me and engaging the backup deadbolt.
Maybe that was why they had decided on keycards. If I was running from something and panicking, using an actual key or inserting the card like at a hotel would keep me from getting to safety considering my hands were shaking enough to mix a margarita.
Walking over to my chair, I fell into it, letting my body flush itself of terror as I looked up at the cameras. There she was, still in arachnid form, exactly where I’d left her behind that rinky-dink fence, casually looking around and slowly pacing back and forth. I stared at her as my racing heart gradually slowed, and a minute or so later she turned on her eight legs and walked back into the trees.
Whatever invisible fences the enclosures have apparently work, which is nice, because I wasn’t keen on getting killed by one of the creatures here. And that’s what brings me here, spilling out everything that’s happened so far. Because nearly passing out from terror isn’t something I wanted to deal with at work, obviously, but I keep going over what she did in my head again and again, and I feel like I reacted like a child who spotted a wolf spider on their bed. I started to worry for my overactive sense of self-preservation, at least in my capacity as an employee here.
The spider didn’t even try to hurt me, and so I was feeling a bit foolish. Even annoyed, actually, at the fact that I’d freaked out so hard and took off instead of trying to engage in at least basic conversation. I got the sense that she wasn’t at human-level intelligence, but I was never going to be able to hold any level of conversation with an alligator.
Sure, she did mention that she wouldn’t be so crass as to yank off my hand because she’d rather just have my entire corpse, but wouldn’t a wolf do the same if it was hungry? Wouldn’t any carnivore? Actually, they probably would’ve been satisfied with one of my hands. The fear here was from the fact that she turned into a giant spider. If she’d turned into Clifford, I would’ve reacted the same way, if not better than, meeting Leila.
With that, I decided I’m staying on the job. Considering how frustrated I can get with foolish people, it’s a bit hypocritical, and I’m being a bit of an idiot. But…there are definitely wards keeping them in their enclosures. Also, I signed up for creatures for another dimension, whether or not I believed in them at the time, and I will not let encountering my first one in an objectively boring way be the reason I quit.
The money is a factor, I’ll grant you. Of course it is. And I can’t spend it if I’m dead, but all signs point to surviving as long as I don’t do anything dumb. Also, yes, I’ll admit there’s a not-so-little voice in the back of my head that’s desperate to know what else is here. I never thought I’d do something like this, but finding out these things are real, I honestly do want to learn more about them.
Still, though, I decided to call Andrew at the end of my shift to ask if the pepper spray and taser I carried worked on a certain spider, as well as the other animals I’d yet to meet.
***
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When I was ten, I formed a junior detective squad.
Mom bought me the entire box set of What's New Scooby Doo, and I was inspired to start my very own detective gang. I held auditions outside the gymnasium at recess (serious enquiries only) after a number of kids tried to apply for the role of Scooby Doo despite me reiterating I was not interested in playing make believe.
When I was laughed at in class, I made posters strictly asking for SERIOUS wannabe detectives, even going as far as using my Mom’s printer to make flyers, sticking them all over the school.
Auditions were simple. I asked them to solve a simple riddle.
Whoever impressed me got to sign their name down, and I’d get back to them.
I spent three days sifting through kids who definitely had charm, but they lacked the intelligence of a junior detective. Most kids were only auditioning to make fun of me, anyway.
Still, though, I didn't give up.
My flyers had five requirements:
1). You had to be smart.
2). You were not allowed to be a scaredy cat.
3). You had to accept your inevitable death at the hands of our town’s evil villains.
4). You had to have a fully registered driving licence (I quickly changed this to a bike).
5). You cannot have a criminal record.
(I later scribbled this one out, writing over it. *“You cannot have any tardies.”
Narrowing the applicants down to three kids, all of whom failed to share my enthusiasm for solving cases. The kids I picked didn't even know how to make plans, and when I invited them to my house, they stole my Mom’s necklace.
I didn't even need to solve the mystery of who stole Mom’s necklace. The girl was wearing it at school. I punched her in the face, and was immediately sent to the principal’s office. When I was being given the mother all lectures, the door quietly opened, a head peeking through.
It was Ben Callows, a freckly kid with overgrown brown hair hanging in his eyes. Ben really needed a haircut.
He was always wearing the exact same baseball cap, and I found myself wondering if it was permanently glued to his head, stuck on top of unruly brown curls practically matted to his forehead.
In class, Ben was also known as Bloody Ben. In the second grade, the boy had a nosebleed in the middle of a spelling test, bleeding all over his paper.
It's not like he didn't try and detach himself from the name.
Ben brought in Digimon cards, so kids would call him Digimon Ben instead.
Then he “accidentally” spilled yoghurt down his shirt in hopes we would call him Yoghurt Ben. But no. The kids in our class were relentless in reminding him of his name. No matter what he did, he was still Bloody Ben, and when anything related to blood came up in class, fifteen pairs of eyes would swivel to him, like he had invented the concept of bleeding.
I feared the nickname would follow him to junior high.
Ben didn't wait to be let in. He didn't even knock, striding in with his arms folded. Over the years, Bloody Ben, had definitely soured his personality.
He smiled rarely, and when he did smile, someone was falling over or hurting themselves.
Which definitely strengthened the claims of him being a sociopath.
The rumor mill was churning, with the latest claiming Bloody Ben killed his cat. That wasn't true. Ben’s cat was seventeen with cancer, and that was why he was sobbing all the way through reading time.
According to Ellie Daly, however, Ben had killed and dissected his kitty, and buried her in his Mom’s flowers.
Now, my principal did not like being interrupted, especially when she was in the middle of screaming at me.
Principal Marrow was old old (like, thirty, in my ten year old mind) stick thin like a pencil, and always wore the same stained sweater.
She used to be pretty, but I was convinced she had kissed a frog and been cursed. After our old principal suffered a stroke, she stepped in as a temporary replacement, and since becoming principal, had banned my favorite book series, colored shoe laces, and hamburger helper, even officiating a uniform.
(vomit green shorts and a tee, and plain white sneakers).
Kids were convinced she was a witch, and I kind of believed it.
Principal Marrow’s whole existence was built on sucking the fun out of school.
I was already reprimanded for my mystery gang flyers.
Her office smelled of peppermint and she was definitely sneaking sips of whisky in her coffee cup. I could see the bottle sticking out of the trash.
She straightened up, folding her arms across her chest, squinty eyes narrowing at the boy. I had spent the whole time she was lecturing me trying not to cry, my fists bunched in my lap.
I took the distraction as the perfect opportunity to swipe at my eyes, allowing myself to breathe.
Ben Callows was her victim now.
I was right. The woman's voice was like a thunderclap in my ears.
“You better have a good reason for not knocking, young man.”
Ben wasn't fazed by her tone. “You took my Switch two weeks ago,” he said, “I want it back, or I’m telling my Mom.”
At first, I thought I'd misheard him.
No, I was pretty sure he'd threatened our principal.
I swore I heard all of the breath sucked from the room.
“I'm sorry,” Principal Marrow cleared her throat. Her soft tone was dangerous.
She wasn't being nice. The lady was about to explode.
I could see visible veins straining in her temples, her right eye twitching.
It was straight out of a cartoon.
“Did you forget something, Ben?”
Ben sighed, like she was inconveniencing him.
He held out his hand. “Please can I have my Switch back? It counts as stolen property. Give it back, or I'm telling my Mom.”
The kid put so much emphasis on the word please, I couldn't resist a smile.
I think our principal was too shocked to get angry.
“Get out.” She said, firmly. “I don't have your gaming device.”
“It's in your drawer.” Ben nodded to her desk, “Under your divorce papers and the restraining order ordered by Jake Willow, the seventeen year old boy you've been having math ‘tutoring sessions’ with.” He quoted the air, his gaze lazily rolling to me. “Tutoring”
Principal Marrow went deathly pale, her eyes darkening.
“Benjamin Callows–”
“The school already knows about the restraining order, but your uncle is the head of the Board of Education, so all you get is a slap on the wrist and a warning to leave the boy alone."
Ben continued, and I found myself mesmerised by his words. He was a natural, his expression stoic, mouth curved with satisfaction that wasn't quite a smile. “However.” He held up his phone, pulling it away at the exact moment the teacher attempted to grab it. “You were outside Jake Willow’s house at 6:12am, drunk, and trying to climb through his window, which, I think violates the restraining order, does it not?”
Ben pretended to think real hard, his gaze flicking to the ceiling.
“I mean, I'm just a kid, right?” His mouth curled into the hint of a smirk
“What do I know, huh?”
Principal Marrow’s expression twisted, her lip wobbling.
“Mr Callows, remove yourself from my office, or I am calling your father.”
Leaning comfortably against the door, Ben’s lip twitched.
“Why? Are you planning on telling my Dad about your relations with a teenage boy, or will I have to tell him instead?”
I was enthralled, and fully disgusted, making a move to inch away from the woman.
“But it doesn't end there.” Ben continued. He straightened up, taking slow, intimidating steps towards the woman's desk. “You don't even want Jake, do you? Because, once upon a time, you were in love with his father. Jason Willow. You despised him for rejecting you, so you decided to defile his son.” Ben leaned over the principal’s desk, slipping his hand into the drawer, and pulling out his switch.
Painfully slowly.
She stood there, speechless, her shoulders trembling.
Ben smiled, and I found myself liking it.
“Thank you!” He said, waving the console in her face. Ben mimed locking his mouth and throwing away the key.
“My lips are sealed.”
Ben’s half lidded eyes found mine. “Are ya coming, Panda?”
I forgot my own nickname.
Panda.
I wore my Mom’s eyeliner because I thought it looked cool.
It did not.
Finding my breath, I snapped out of it.
Jumping up, I followed him out of the office, and when the two of us were safely on the hallway, I burst into hysterical giggles. “How did you know all of that?!” I whisper- shrieked.
Ben surprised me with a splutter. “Wait. You believed me?”
Something very cold trickled down my spine.
I stopped walking. “You lied?”
He shrugged. “I had a dig around her office before she caught me a few days ago,” Ben swung his arms, a smile curling on his mouth. “There's no restraining order, but there is prescription anti-psychosis medicine, and an extremely detailed story on her laptop about a teachestudent romance, which I presume is a self insert.”
Ben shot me a sickly grin. “The school refused to make her condition public.”
He prodded at his own cotton shirt embroidered with the school emblem.
“Why do you think she's made all these dumb rules? The woman is a certified Looney Tune.”
I nodded slowly. “Wait. What about Jake and his dad?”
“I made them up.”
I choked out a laugh. “And… the video?”
Ben walked faster, pulling out his phone and shoving it in my face. The video was real. Principal Marrow was walking around in circles, draped in her nightgown. “It's her own house,” he explained. “She locked herself out.”
Nodding slowly, I was in awe. Bloody Ben was kind of fucking amazing.
“But the restraining order isn't real.”
Ben raised a brow, coming to an abrupt halt. It was his smile that cemented his place in my gang. His lack of empathy for a woman he had gaslit into being a disgusting human being. Ben Callows wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but he fascinated me. Maybe for the wrong reasons. “Her filing cabinets are filled with tinned cat food, Panda,” he said with an exaggerated sigh, “I’m not psychic, but I thiiiiink we’ll be okay.”
I turned to him, unable to stop myself jumping up and down with excitement.
“Will you be my first?!”
Ben inclined his head. “Will I be your what?”
I shook my head. “Sorry. I mean, will you join my mystery gang?”
The boy’s eyes lit up, and I shoved him playfully.
“To solve real cases,” I corrected myself. “Not make them up.”
Ben wore a real, proper smile. But there was something in his eyes, a darkness that was so hollow and polluted and wrong, I pretended not to see it for the sake of his smarts and intellect. “Well, if you insist, sure!” Ben held out his hand, and I shook it. I'll be your first.”
We found our second member, who was, ironically, looking for her glasses under the table in class. Lucy Prescott, the quiet girl, was born to be with us.
The class eraser went missing, and she found it in the blink of an eye.
When questioned, Lucy’s face turned as red as her hair. “I asked everyone in the class and followed the clues to the last person who had it,” she pointed to Chase Simpson. “Which was Chase, who was throwing it at Marcus Calvin.”
Twisting around in my chair, I aimed to get Ben’s attention. But he was already looking at me, chin resting on his fist, eyes ignited with excitement.
The two of us cornered Lucy after class, and when she motioned for us to get back, I dragged Ben (who was a little too excited) to my side.
Lucy looked mildly horrified when I said, dangerous cases, though her expression pricked with intrigue.
She agreed, her gaze lingering on Ben, cheeks smouldering.
Our last two members were a surprise.
Violet Evergreen was what you would call popular on the middle school hierarchy. Not just because her mother was the mayor, but because Violet could get away with murder. The girl refused to wear the school uniform, coloring a single purple streak in her hair to cement herself as the it girl.
She was also one of the girls who started the Bloody Ben rumor.
Ben, Lucy, and I were sitting on the grass during recess, trying to come up with a name for our detective service, when Violet came storming over, hands planted on her hips. She was copying how her mother held herself during town meetings.
“What are you doing?” Violet demanded.
Lucy opened her mouth to answer, Ben nudging her to shut up.
“Making a mystery gang.” I told her. “Why?”
Violet inclined her head. “Oh.” She folded her arms. “Well, can I join?”
Ben stood up, stepping in front of the girl. Violet didn't move, stubbornly standing her ground. “Sure.” Ben flashed a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. He stepped closer to her, his smile widening. “If you can pass the test.”
Violet’s lip curled. She took a single step back. “What kind of test?”
Ben nodded to me. “Meet us at the swimming pool at 8pm.”
To my surprise, Violet nodded. “Do I need to bring anything?”
“Nope!”
8pm. The four of us met outside the local swimming pool.
Violet was already on the other side of the fence, waving.
“Hey guys!”
I noticed Ben’s expression, his eyes darkening, lip curling.
Still though, he maintained positivity, vaulting over the fence.
“You made it!”
I followed him, helping Lucy, who was immediately freaking out. I didn't blame her. The pool looked cold and dark, a hollow oblivion carved into the ground.
Ben and Violet stood on the edge, the two of them shoulder to shoulder.
Violet Evergreen was braver than I thought.
Standing with her arms at her sides, Violet's hands clenched into fists.
“What's the test?” Violet said, her gaze glued to bleeding black depths.
“I don't know,” Ben said, his voice teetering on a giggle. He leaned forwards, arms spread out. “I didn't think you'd actually come and meet us.”
Violet hummed, stretching out her leg, teasing it across the surface. “Was that the test?”
The boy leaned back. I caught the glint of a grin under the floodlights. “Nah.”
Before I knew what was happening, he shoved Violet into the pool. The girl didn't scream or shriek, she just hit the surface, sinking into pitch dark nothing.
“Sink or swim,” Ben said in a low murmur, when Violet’s head bobbed under water. I could see her shadow under the surface, imagining the freezing cold depths pulling her down.
“Drown, and you can't join us.”
It was so quiet, suddenly. The three of us staring into rippling water.
A minute passed, and my tummy started to twist.
“Fuck.” Ben’s expression stayed stoic. I wasn't expecting him to say a bad word.
He cocked his head. “I thought she could swim.”
I hit him, holding in a cry. “You need to get our parents!”
But he didn't listen to me, taking a single step, and dropping into the pool.
I fell to my knees, scanning the water.
Lucy was crying. “Are they dead?!” she shrieked.
“Shhh!” I was watching two shadows lingering under the water.
Violet broke through. I expected her to be crying, but her expression was unwavering. She was silent. I thought the splashing underneath her was her legs trying and struggling to tread water, before Lucy shoved me. Hard.
“Panda! What do we do?!”
Looking closer, Violet was perfectly still, her gaze on the sky.
While she shoved Ben under the water, drowning him.
Violet’s eyes found mine, and somehow, I knew she belonged in my gang.
Her eyes found mine, glinting with that darkness, that poisonous streak I found myself drawn to. It was a starving, insatiable need to understand a fractured mind. Know your enemy.
“Do you want to see if Ben’s a witch?” Violet asked me, her tone something else entirely. This girl did not make sense, using barely her finger to drown Ben Callows. I knew she was wrong.
I knew there was something loose, something unlocked and unbridled and drowning inside her mind and heart.
But I wanted more of her. I wanted Violet Evergreen in my detective gang.
I think that is why I stood there, frozen.
When the thrashing stopped, Ben broke through.
He wasn't coughing or spluttering, his head inclined. “You didn't drown.”
Violet climbed out of the pool, offering her hand. “And you're not a witch.”
He declined her hand, taking the steps instead.
I asked Violet in a shaky voice. I was trembling with terror, but I was excited.
Exhilarated.
“Violet, will you join my gang?”
She didn't answer me until we were sharing hot cocoa in my house. I told Mom we fell in the pool, and she believed me. I should have told her that my friends were sociopaths, and I was kind of maybe in love. Violet sipped her cocoa, nodding with a smile I didn't recognise. Violet never smiled at school.
Well, she did. But it was always the prick of a cruel smirk.
I don't think her smile was genuine, but she was definitely enjoying herself.
Our last member came to us, instead of finding him.
Jules Howell, a straggly brunette pushed his way in front of me in the lunch line. I didn't really know the kid.
He sat at the back of the classroom and slept through most of class. I did like his accent though.
Jules had moved from Melbourne in the second grade. He didn't talk much.
When he did, I found myself enveloped in his voice, which sounded like water to me, a bleeding cadence to his tone.
Jules piled his plate with fries, smiling widely at the lunch ladies.
“I saw you last night.” He murmured through that perfectly moulded grin.
“Saw me where?”
“At the pool,” Jules said. “You, Bloody Ben, Violet Evergreen, and that Lucy girl. You were doing a suiciding pact.”
“That's not what we were doing.” I said, “What's a suiciding pact?”
“When you kill yourself together.” Jules said. “I saw it in a scary movie my Mom was watching.”
I grabbed a fork. “We weren't doing that.”
His eyes were strange when I took the time to notice them. The excited gleam had fizzled out. Jules’s hands tightened around the tray. “Then what were you doing?”
I didn't reply, making my way over to our usual table. Ben was already waving me over, Violet and Lucy holding up the flyers we were making.
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When I bothered turning around, the boy was lost in the crowd of kids.
We were on our first official case, searching for Mrs Lake’s missing mail, when Jules appeared seemingly out of nowhere. And with him, a golden retriever puppy he introduced as Arlo.
It took a dog jumping up at them for Violet and Ben to find their real smiles, their real selves slowly seeping through these facades they had built around themselves. Ben dropped to a crouch, ruffling the dog's ears, his smile faint.
“Who's a good boy?” He chuckled.
Arlo didn't move, tail wagging, eyes bright.
Ben motioned the dog towards him, but Arlo stayed put.
Jules joined us…quietly.
I don't remember asking him, or even him asking me.
He just became part of us, side by side with Arlo.
We soon came to quickly realize that our town was boring.
There were no monsters or thieves, or soul sucking demons. No criminals or serial killers. Not even one missing person. We did, however, get calls about missing cats. I turned eleven years old, patiently waiting for a murder or a kid going missing. But there was nothing.
All we did was chase cats, and the occasional dog. Maybe a budgie if we were lucky. Twelve years old, our detective club became a joke.
The five of us (and Arlo hiding under the table) were trying to pinpoint Mrs Tracy's lost hamster, when three girls came over, dumping their soda all over us.
We watched crime shows for inspiration on catching killers.
Ben’s favorite crime was one that happened in the 80’s in our town.
2 girls murdered.
Their intestines stuffed into envelopes and mailed to family members.
“That's what we should be solving,” he told me one night, “Not missing cats.”
Thirteen years old, we lay in Violet’s backyard under the cruel glare of the summer sun. We called it working and didn't like to admit it was hanging out, or that we were even friends. However.
That didn't stop us growing closer.
Even if it wasn't quite the way I’d expected.
I proposed a plan, standing up, wobbling a little off balance.
“I've got it.” I said, my voice kinda slurry from Violet’s special summer cocktail, which was just a random alcoholic beverages we found, thrown into a blender, and diluted with water.
The town wasn't taking us seriously.
So, we were going to make our own mysteries.
I ordered a full-scale assault on our small town. One that they could not ignore. Ben stamped on Mrs Mason’s flowers, and Lucy threw mud pies at people's cars. Jules trashed the high school gym, and Violet and I spray painted threats and warnings on every store window. Now, this did cause panic, but also an official curfew.
Thirty minutes before curfew, we met in our usual spot, deep in the forest near the lake. Ben yelled at me when I was three minutes late. He was real passionate about finding a real mystery.
“You're late.” Ben was sitting on a rock waving a stick in Arlo’s face.
The dog still wasn't going near him, whining softly.
I took my place, muttering an apology. “I had to lie to my Mom.”
Violet, sitting with her legs crossed, idly digging her manicure into the dirt, suggested we buy mannequins and masquerade them as dead bodies, hanging them from the school rafters.
Lucy, who had slowly grown out of her shell, becoming a lot more outspoken, nudged her. “That's a stupid idea.”
The girl groaned, leaning into her. “Urgh. You're right.”
Jules was the only energetic one, standing on the tireswing.
He jumped down, definitely twisting his ankle.
But his smile only widened, kind of like he enjoyed being in pain.
“Why don't we pretend to be kidnapped?” He said, pulling the hood of his sweatshirt over blondish curls growing out. Jules did a dramatic spin, his eyes shining. “We can ‘go missing’ for like a week, and then when our parents are really scared, we can turn up, and tell them we escaped a kidnapping.” His lips split into a grin.
“And then we solve our own kidnapping!”
Ben awkwardly patted Arlos head, only for the dog to pull away with a snort.
“I like it,” he murmured. “I'm in.”
Jules’s idea was stupid.
But.
It was worth a shot.
The five of us agreed to meet the morning after with enough food and supplies for a week. Then we were going to hike to the next town, and hide out for a week. It was an almost perfect plan, using ourselves as victims of our own mystery.
Packing as much as I could, I kissed my mother goodbye (I told her my pack was for a picnic) and set off to the rendezvous we agreed on.
When I arrived, I was the first one there. I checked and re-checked my pack.
I waited ten minutes, unable to contain my excitement.
Then 20 minutes.
It was getting kind of cold.
One hour.
I sat on a rock for enough time to watch the sky change color.
When the clouds were orange, I stood up and stumbled back home. They had gone without me. Mom lectured me when I got home, and I stuck to the plan of pretending my friends had gone missing, even if I they had betrayed me.
Ben said he'd text me when he arrived at the redervous. I at least expected him to text an explanation, but there was nothing. I was in the dark, and after three days of nothing, our town finally began to take us seriously.
“Our children have been kidnapped!” The adults were screaming.
Mom was crying in the kitchen, praying to a god I knew she didn't believe in that I wasn't taken next. I was interviewed and stuck with the exact same story I came up with when I was with the others. Our plan was to return after a week, claiming to be locked up in a dark room with a masked man.
I told my Mother and the other parents that I didn't know where my friends were, repeating the same thing over and over again until I was tongue tied.
“I saw them the day before they went missing, and… yes, everything seemed okay.” I slowly sipped my class of milk provided, looking the sheriff directly in the eyes. “No, I didn't notice anything suspicious, sheriff. Yes, I'm sure, sir. No, they didn't tell me anything.”
It was Ben’s mother who shattered my mask.
“Did I know about… what?” I whispered.
Something warm filled the back of my mouth, foul tasting milk erupting up my throat. I leaned forward, trying to look Mrs Callows in the eye. “No, I… I didn't know about Ben’s…condition.”
Mrs Callows was screaming at me about her son’s troubled past when I barfed all over myself, my eyes burning.
In the privacy of my own room, I sobbed until I couldn't breathe.
I tried to tell Mom, but we had come so close.
One more day, and the others would be back.
But that day came. I sat cross legged at our usual spot, which was now covered in police tape. I waited for their thudding footsteps, their laughter congratulating each other for coming up with a great plan. I waited, my face buried in my knees, for my friends.
It was dark when my phone vibrated, and I'd fallen asleep.
I wasn't scared, forcing myself to my feet.
“Where are you?” Mom sobbed down the phone, when I tapped answer.
“Coming home now.” I muttered. “Sorry.” I paused, holding my breath against a cry. “Mom.” I broke down, forcing my fist into my mouth to hide my sobs. “Mom, did they come back?”
Mom didn't reply for a moment.
“I'm so sorry, baby.” She whispered, ending the call.
I took my time walking home that night.
There were no stars in the sky.
When a hand clamped over my mouth, I could smell him.
When he dragged me back, stabbing a kitchen knife into my throat, I stared at the sky and looked for stars. His arms were warm around me, violently pulling me into the back of a pickup truck. The pickup truck he'd said he was bringing.
It was his grandfather's, and he could just about drive it.
Hitting the backseat, my body was numb, my thoughts in a whirlwind.
The pickup flew forwards, and I remembered how to move.
I rolled off the seat, my hands pinned behind my back.
Twisting around, blinking in the dim, I could feel something warm, something seeping across upholstery seats. Blood. It was everywhere, sticky on my hands and wet on my face when I struggled to get up. I was lying in someone's blood.
A scream clawed its way out of my throat.
The pickup flew over a pothole, and something dropped off the seat.
Arlo’s leash.
I screamed again, this time his name gritted between my teeth.
I didn't stop screaming until the jerking movement stopped. The doors opened, pale light hitting me in the face.
Flashlight. Warm arms wrapped around me, pulling me from the car, and then, pulling me by my hair, into our old tree house. It was always our secret place, our saving grace on the edge of town.
The flickering candlelight caught me off guard, illuminating my surroundings.
Two bodies slumped over each other, lying in stemming red.
I felt suffocated, like I was going to die. I screamed, and that warm hand cradled my mouth again, gagging my cries.
Violet and Jules.
There was something wrong with them. And it was only when I forced myself to look closer, when I realized their insides had been carved out, heart, stomach, everything, pulled out.
There was paper on the floor.
No, not paper. Envelopes.
Envelopes stuffed with gore, bright red leaking through white.
Shuffling back, my brain was too slow to react, while my body was trying to vault to my feet, only to be violently pulled back by my ponytail.
I felt his fingers twining around my hair, revelling in my screams.
With another tug, my head was forced forwards.
Orange candlelight felt almost homely, this time lighting up a third body.
Lying on their back, curled up, pooling scarlet dried into the floorboards, their wrists restricted with duct-tape.
I could feel blood underneath me, sticky, a congealing paste.
“Do you know what happened on October 3rd, 1987, in our town?”
Lucy Prescott stood over me, her arms folded across her chest.
I managed to shake my head, when she grabbed Ben’s legs, dragging him under the candlelight. I dazedly watched her stroke the blade of a carving knife, the teeth already stained scarlet. “The intestine murders.” Lucy hummed, tracing the knife down the floorboards.
“A man murdered two high school girls, carving out their insides and sending their pieces to their loved ones.”
Lucy's eyes found mine, ignited in a familiar gleam. I saw it in Principal Marrow’s office. Then the swimming pool. The cafeteria. “It was the sheriff's only murder case, Panda. Ever since then, our town has been boring. There's no mysteries to solve. Nothing to find.”
The girl jumped to her feet, retrieving a blood stained envelope.
She held it up, a smile curved on her lips. The girl turned around, and I heard a horrific squelching sound. Lucy held up a bright red sausage, ripped into it, and slipped it into the white paper.
“But I can change that.” she said, in a giggle.
“I can create a real serial killer, who we can hunt down together.”
Lucy stabbed the blade into the floor, laughing.
“Or! I can bring a fan-favorite back! I can bring the intestine killer back from the dead!”
Her gaze flicked to the others. “There are casualties, of course. The story is, I was kidnapped with Ben, Violet, and Jules. The scary intestine killer killed them, and I managed to get away.”
Lucy shuffled over to me, her eyes wide. “Then! He came back and struck again!”
With those words, she shoved me onto my back.
“First he took Violet,” Lucy hummed, tracing the blade down my shirt. “Then… Jules.” I squeezed my eyes shut, pulling at the restraints around my wrists. “Then Ben.” her breath tickled my cheek. “And finally… Panda.”
Lucy lifted the knife, and I accepted my death.
Until a low rumble in my ears.
Shouting.
Thundering footsteps, followed by the pitter-patter of paws.
“Lucy!” The sheriff was screaming, and the girl stumbled to her feet, the knife slipping from her fingers. Lucy stumbled, tripping over Ben’s body.
“He got away!” she shrieked. “He…he killed them! Oh, god, please help me!”
I don't think Lucy even realised the traces she'd left behind.
The blood slick on her fingers, her manic, grinning smile full of mania.
I was looking for stars when an officer crouched over me.
I couldn't understand what she was saying.
Her voice was white noise.
“Rachel? Hey, try and sit up, honey. You Mom is on her way.”
Instead of listening to her, I curled into myself.
My gaze found Arlo sticking his nose in Ben’s hair, trying to nudge the boy awake.
I didn't fully register the next few days.
They went by in a confusing blur.
Part of me tried to eat, and spent hours with my head pressed against the toilet seat.
I could still see the slithering, scarlet remains of my friends every time I closed my eyes. There was so much red, soaked in that hunting orange light.
Blood that I could still see, a starless sky that stretched on forever.
Weeks went by.
Then months.
I think I turned 14. I wasn't sure. I didn't feel alive anymore.
I stood at my friend’s funerals with a single rose I dropped into their casket.
Violet’s mother was quick to cover the whole thing up.
Lucy's plan didn't work after all.
Our town’s murder cases stayed stagnant at one.
It's been four years since my friends were murdered by our ’Velma’.
Now, at seventeen, Mom asked if I wanted to visit Lucy in juvie.
I'm not even upset or angry anymore.
I want to know why.
Ben picked me up. Arlo was at his side, wagging his tail.
Ben was…different. He'd dumped his baseball cap and gotten a haircut, swapping his old wardrobe of drab colors for an attempt at changing style.
That day, he looked awkward in a short sleeved tee and shorts.
At school, Ben is no longer Bloody Ben.
Now, he is Survivor Ben.
I’m still Panda.
Every time I was with him, I felt like my soul was being sucked out.
Guilt so deep, so fucking painful, I lost my breath.
I live every day knowing that I immediately assumed it was him that day. Ben was barely alive when I found him. Lucy had started to carve into him before remembering she needed me.
After admitting it to him, his lips formed a small smile.
“Can I tell you a secret?” He said to me, at sixteen.
Yeah?
Whatever the boy was going to say, Ben never told me.
Presently, I nodded at the dog’s new collar.
“Peppa Pig themed?”
The boy shrugged, ruffling Arlo’s ears. “FYI, he chose it.”
“It's cute.” I said. “Very… chic.”
We didn't speak the whole ride, but Ben did entangle his hand in mine.
We spent half an hour outside the detention centre. I was panicking, and Ben was trying to hide that he was panicking. In the end, we joined hands, and strode through the doors together.
Lucy greeted us with a wide smile. Just as psychotic.
The orange jumpsuit suited her, though I had zero idea why.
“Hey Arlo!” she giggled at the dog, and Ben pulled the pup onto his lap.
“Ben.” She sighed. “I wish I got to finish you. I would have loved to solve the mystery of your gutted corpse.”
Ben’s smile was wry. “Nice to see you too.”
Behind a glass screen, I asked Lucy one simple question.
“Why?”
Lucy didn't reply. Or she did, but it was just nonsensical bullshit.
But there was one thing she said has stuck with me, chilling me to the core.
I am fucking terrified of Lucy. Of what's she's done, and what she's capable of doing.
It was a throwaway line, and I don't even think Ben noticed.
Or he did, and was in denial.
Lucy's smile was wide, her eyes empty pools of nothing.
The exact same glint in Ben’s eyes.
Jules’s eyes.
Violet’s eyes.
Like something was gnawing away at their psyche, twisting and contorting it, filling them with darkness, poison, that was so vast, so endless, I had craved it as a child. I still don't know what it is.
But I'm going to find it.
Lucy's laugh was shrill, and next to me, Ben didn't move a muscle.
“I don't even wear glasses!”

Greetings!
I have a known hyperprolactinoma/pituitary adenoma since 2014. 32 yr old F, over the past 2ish years I have had worsening symptoms of hypothyroidism (endless exhaustion/fatigue, bizzare depression, intolerance to cold, hot, spicy foods; dry skin/mucous membrane (eyes, nose), hair loss, my resting blood pressure is consistently 80s/90s, heart rate 50s, exercise intolerance, stubborn weight gain, bloating, constipation, low libido). Below are my labs... My primary (who supposedly focuses on functional medicine) did not think anything was wrong with my thyroid levels. I begged to be put on Levothyroxine (after referencing evidenced based articles) and ALL my symptoms drastically IMPROVED. At my follow-up appointment after being on Levothyroxine she finally wanted to refer me to an endocrinologist. The endocrinologist told me Central Hypothyroidism is "too rare" for me to possibly have it and that my pituitary tumor of 8mm is too small to impact my thyroid function. I asked why all my symptoms improved with Levo and she said it's "like caffeine". I asked what could explain my symptoms and she kept asking if I take steroids...which I do not, at all. All the evidence I'm finding in research and UpToDate support low or low-normal TSH and low or low-normal Free T4 suggests a diagnosis of Central Hypothyroidism.
They want me to come off of levothyroxine despite it reversing all of my symptoms and giving me my life back. I finally feel like myself again.
Thoughts on my labs? Advice on how to approach my providers?
Any insights on low Reverse T3?
Labs PRIOR to beginning Levothyroxine:
TSH: 0.30-0.48 (normal range 0.27 - 4.2 uIU/mL)
Free T4/ Free Thyroxine: 0.92-1.09 (normal range 0.93 - 1.7 ng/dL)
Total T3: 1.0-1.2 (normal range 0.8 - 2 ng/mL)
Reverse T3/ Triiodothyronine, Reverse: 7 (normal range 9 - 27 ng/mL)
I interpret these as low/ low-normal Free T4, low-normal TSH, normal Total T3 and low Reverse T3.

I have had COVID twice before (once in January 2023 and in January 2024) and I think I have it again. For the past few days I’ve had pretty brutal body aches (which I chalked up to getting my period, but now I’m not sure), headache, mild diarrhea, and now a low grade fever (99.1). I took a COVID test and got a VERY faint positive line (so faint I don’t even know if I should consider it positive). The past two times I had COVID I was very sick with sore throat, body aches, sneezing, coughing, shortness of breath, etc. I’m just confused because the body aches feel exactly like when I had COVID! I’m 3x vaccinated as well. I’m just wondering if anyone else had a very mild COVID with no upper respiratory symptoms? Maybe it’s something else, but I’m just concerned about the “positive” line kind of showing on my COVID test.

Hello my gorgeous people! I hope this message finds you and finds you well. I am a 39/f who was suffering from C-PTSD most of my life-- since about age 6. I am writing this in hopes it will find someone who has been suffering from any type of trauma and is in need of a non-invasive, non-drug dependent solution. After I was diagnosed with C-PTSD in 2020 (yeah, it took that long), my health and body took a nosedive, and I developed many other forms of sickness. Every 2-3 months, another ailment was inexplicably popping up in my body. Western medicine felt like a dead end, and after many "conventional" attempts to heal with CPT, PE, and CBT, I was done with all of it. I wanted to heal, not mask, heal. I thought I was healing with natural alternative medicine for awhile when I used cannabis, but it was doing the same thing as the other drugs, masking the problem. I was still having triggers, panic attacks, and nightmares and was not getting to the core of it to find a solution. I spent the last four years researching and studying various forms of alternative healing.
It wasn't until I had finally found the most beautiful human on this planet (Dr. Eileen McKusick, the founder) who was healing people with a fascinating modality called Biofield Tuning. The only thing I really knew about tuning forks was that they were used to tune a piano or a violin, but I was ready to try anything. I watched videos on how to tune a person with the forks, and then I studied the map of the toroidal electromagnetic field that encompasses every body. There is an electromagnetic field about 5-6 feet around the body depending on what space you're in that stores every memory, thought, and experience that has ever happened to you. From gestation to birth (which is the outer rim of your field) and all the way to present day (which is closest to the body), and about halfway in our field is half the age you are. For instance, if you are 30, your halfway point will be at 15 years-old. I have read that if you're outside, your field could reach 2-3 blocks, but if you're in a normal-sized room, your field will shrink down to about 5-6 feet around you. This practice took me about a week to learn and about two days to show my husband. This modality of healing is extremely easy to learn and easy to teach. There is also past-life healing outside of your membrane, but I have not delved into that.
Before you lie down on whatever you're using, make sure you take an epsom salt bath for at least 20 minutes. If you cannot get into a tub, you can just soak your feet in epsom salt for 20 minutes. If you don't have any of these options, you can walk on the beach and allow your feet to touch the sand for 20 minutes. When you are ready, lie down on a bed or a massage table and relax. I tend to run cold so I used a blanket on top of me. The patient's ailments/trauma will determine how long each session takes and how many sessions you'll need. The suggested amount of sessions is three. The tuning fork we used was a 174 Hz unweighted tuning fork and a hockey puck to activate it. Eileen describes this tuning fork as the "workhorse" for this type of healing, and the only one you'll ever need for Biofield tuning. She has stated you can use just about any Hz in combing the Biofield, but she has found this one in particular to work the best. We used crystals to mark the Earth Star and Sun Star, and we then aligned crystals along the body next to each chakra point. You then activate your Earth Star (located below the feet) grounding you, and you'll do this a few times before you move onto the Sun Star (located above the crown chakra). You'll activate your Sun Star a few times until you feel it's necessary to move on (about three or four strikes for me). Once both are activated you will go back down to the Earth Star and move about 5-8 inches to the right, to activate the Ancestral Valley. You will stay here for a few minutes activating this line, which runs parallel to the body. One thing we both did that was very cool was walking each other through lighting up each part of our bones. For instance, I would ding the fork and say, "light up your feet," then "light up your shins," and so forth until you reach the top of the head. Once you are finished, you will then find the plasma membrane (the outer field) by striking the fork and using the combing process (gently waving the fork towards the body, a little at a time) to bring the energy into each chakra. You will start at the left foot and go around the whole body. Don't be discouraged if you can't hear the differences in the tones just yet. You want to base everything on what you feel. You will feel a resistance in the air (like a magnetic pull) and when you feel that resistance, that indicates a blockage. This is called a "hangout spot," and you will strike the tone again until the body autotunes to it. Then you'll be able to move forward. Eventually, you will get to the Ancestral Valley (about 10 inches from the body), which becomes very dense and difficult to get through. When you get about 4-5 inches away from the body you will take the energy and place it back into that chakra. We printed out the Biofield Map from Eileen's website and set it in the room where we did the tuning as a reference. That helped us see exactly where we needed to bring the energy back to. After you put the energy back into the chakra you will do another process (called columning) by striking the fork and pulling the fork up until you are about 3 ft above the body. This is a very difficult process for the person who is giving the tuning. It's very heavy, and it feels like you are fishing. Once that chakra is tuned, you will move on to the next chakra, starting from the membrane with each one. For instance, if you are looking at her map right now, you will drop the energy 'Mired, Stuck, Wanting to move away from stressor' into the left foot. Then you will drop 'Challenges with attachments and letting go' into the right knee. Next you will go to the outside membrane of 'Things we want to be doing, being, or having unmet needs' into the Root Chakra. And so forth, until you go around the entire body finishing with the right foot. When you are done, I like to activate the Sun Star once more, and then ground the Earth Star back to this plane and end the session there. You will wait 3-7 days before you have another session and you will see why. You also want to make sure you have a day off the next day, whether you are giving or receiving one because your body will need it.
After my first session, I noticed how thirsty I was, and how much energy I had. I have never had energy like this before in my life, and my husband said my eyes looked very bright and electric. We were mystified by this. I still remembered the events that happened to me, but there was no emotion at all connected to it, my brain just viewed it as an experience. I did not want this feeling to go away. All I was thinking is, this better stay! It was a very relaxing experience for me. When my husband was in my root on both sides, I could feel the energy coming back to me. When he was in my heart chakra on the left side, I could feel the energy being put back into my heart. The most intense one for me was my sacral on the right side. When he was bringing the energy or light in, it felt like my right ovary was turning, but not in a painful way. For some reason, I knew when that was happening it was fixing my Endometriosis. I know this because I started my period two days after my Biofield Tuning, and it was the first time I have had a normal period since I have been having periods. AGAIN, mystified. I currently have a meniscus tear in my right leg and IT band syndrome, and as he was going up my right leg, I could feel so much energy coming back to me I cried, but again, not painfully. You just know that your body is being restored so it's a very intense sensation. My husband said going through my root area was like wading through mud. When we were finished I sat right up, went to the bathroom, and drank an electrolyte. It will feel like you have been gone for a long time. It felt like that on both ends. And for the record, during this process you can meditate, you can fall asleep, or you can stay present and talk to the person who is doing it. We talked to each other throughout the process because it felt right to us. I was able to see within two days how many of my triggers were gone, and I can go into more detail if anyone needs me to. My symptoms after my first session were nausea, loose stool, lots of crazy farts, excessive laughing, excessive happiness, feeling euphoric, feeling electric, a lot of natural energy, but also a little tired too. You will literally feel like you can write a book or start that new business you always wanted to after your first session because you will have the motivation to do anything. You will feel a sense of wholeness that you have never felt before. I feel very childlike, like I went back in time and got the little me back, who was always supposed to be here with me-- the fun me. Your soul belongs with you always, and when you have it back, you will be the most powerful being that's full of so much love. You will be ready to give and receive love in a way you cannot explain.
Receiving this healing is amazing, but for the person who is giving the tuning, it's quite a journey walking through someone else's pain so let me go into some detail. It is a lot like Soul Retrieval in Shamanism where the Shaman travels back to the time you had the traumatic experience and brings a stuck part of your soul back to you. Eileen mentions that in one of her videos, and I loved that connection. When I was coming up through my husband's foot, I puked in my mouth. NOTE: Please make sure you breathe a lot. When you hit those energetic blockages, you want to discharge the physical feeling out of you. Trust me, you'll know what I am talking about when you do it. Physical manifestations in your body will be what they felt in their body. You also might start sweating profusely so wear something comfortable, and be barefoot if you can. When I came through his throat, it felt like my left leg was on fire, and his throat felt on fire at the same time. When you are walking through 33 years of someone's timeline, you are going to feel the emotions that they felt in that time, but you don't see exactly what happened. You are also going to be utterly exhausted. We both had to take an electrolyte powder after we gave each other a tune. I was tuned on the 4th of May (happy Star Wars day), and I tuned him the next day. Your body will be sore around your shoulders and back, and you will have a tiredness you cannot explain. Everything will go away once you wake up the next day, but it can vary from person to person. For the person receiving this process it is called detoxing. It's what happens when the body releases trauma and stress. It could manifest in a physical form like a headache or fatigue, but do not worry, as all these symptoms will subside. You will feel great afterwards. You also want to make sure you are in a safe space because you might feel a range of emotions coming through. I know for me, I laughed a lot and actually didn't cry at all. This reaction is just the emotions trying to come out of you that have been stuck for a very long time. For you, you might be very angry for a little while if that's an emotion that was stuck inside of you. It's okay, just let it out. Anything and everything that you're feeling is not wrong as it varies from person to person. I might have said this already, but I am going to say it again, please make sure you are in a non-judgmental safe space. My husband and I are journaling through this process and talking to each other about the emotions and things that arise. I think what's really important is to make sure you are releasing a lot of the emotions you are going through, and in journaling, you can jot it down so that you can process everything. It will help you see how far you have gotten in healing, and that's a beautiful process in itself.
I suggest watching Eileen's videos, and doing as much research as you can before you do it, but it really is so effortless and natural once you get started. She has everything on Youtube so type in her name (Eileen McKusick) and go straight to her channel. Eileen also states in one of her videos that she taught her own kids this practice. I believe if a 10 year-old can do this, then I have all the faith in you, my friend. Make sure you watch the detox, cautions, and guidance video that she has so you know what to expect afterwards and know what diseases/ailments can and cannot be healed. Everything in healing is also done with intention, but you honestly don't have to believe this is going to work, because once you do it, you'll see there's no denying the reality of this healing.
Eileen has her own website where you can purchase her tuning forks. I would be very careful where you purchase them. Do not buy anything from amazon except a rubber hockey puck. You want to make sure they are cut and not molded. You want aluminum alloy or space grade. I purchased my first set from the Sound Healing Academy. I bought the Harmonic set that includes the Otto weighed set (roughly about $200). Then I bought the 174 Hz separately, which was about $40. NOTE: You will only need the 174 Hz unweighted for Biofield Tuning, so you don't have to worry about all the other sets. You'll need to buy an activator, but honestly you can use a $6 rubber hockey puck or a $12 small 5lb rubber weight. I suggest buying from Eileen's website if you have the money because she has the best quality, and if you need something that costs less, but still is effective, the Sound Healing Academy has a website where you can purchase this and they ship very quickly. I wouldn't go crazy buying too much in the beginning because you really only need the activator of your choice and 174 Hz unweighted. Eileen likes to stick with the Solfeggio frequencies which I really like as well. Okay, my friends, so that's it, it will cost you less than $100 to cure so many ailments you are suffering from. This is not an expensive healing practice. Also, you don't need an elaborate space to practice in. We used a lawn chair and our guest room, where we had enough space to walk around the body. We did record the first session, but you can't see very well. The next session we are going to be in a much bigger space (our guesthouse) so we can record everything, and if anyone needs to see our video as a reference we would be glad to share it.
I will be posting another follow-up after my second session on Saturday, May 11th. I am not getting paid for this. I am not working for someone who is connected to this field. I am just a person who was struggling their entire life to heal. I so badly want to share this so you can have the same freedom that I am feeling. I love you people of the world, and I hope this is at least a starting point for healing. Please let me know if there is anything else I can do to help you. I wish you the best, and if you feel better talking behind closed doors, you can always DM me. I send you all the love and light.
P.S. Below I have a list of physical and psychological symptoms Biofield Tuning has already cured after one session not related to C-PTSD. I will also be sharing my other ailments that will be posted to other communities as well.
Physical Symptoms: C-PTSD (I know this is not part of the thread, but it also cured my Endometriosis & Insomnia).
Psychological Symptoms: Triggers, Anxiety, Panic attacks, Stress, Depression, Lethargy, Oversensitivity, Inability to trust, Victim mentality, Low self-esteem, Finding it hard to forgive, Harsh judgement of others, No sense of direction, and Carrying guilt or shame.

First Chapter Previous Chapter
Mrs. Vilonte stood alone in the bathroom. In her hands, she cradled the urn containing her husband's ashes. The weight of it was surprisingly light, almost inconsequential, like the flutter of a moth's wing against her palm.
There was a tinge of sadness that grazed her heart. She had spent years by his side, experiencing the highs and lows of marriage. And now he was dead. The memorial service had been sparsely attended, with only a handful offering their condolences.
One photographer seemed overly eager to capture a shot of the grieving widow shedding a tear. But Mrs. Vilonte despised tears—seeing them, feeling them trickle down her face. The moment she felt her eyes sting and tears threatening to spill, she brushed them away before they had a chance to fall.
Now, the house was quiet. But mixed with that lingering sadness was a sense of relief, a subtle liberation that whispered to her from the shadows. He had betrayed her. His infidelity had cut deep.
She unscrewed the lid of the urn. The ashes inside seemed to shimmer in the faint light. Without hesitation, she emptied the contents into the toilet bowl and pulled the lever, watching as they spiraled downwards, swallowed by the rushing water.
XXXXXX
She once cherished two joys during her drives to Gabrielle's violin lessons. One was soaking in the serene landscape while indulging in her beloved soft jazz on the radio. The other was the comforting presence of her daughter beside her in the front passenger seat.
Now, she glanced at the vacant seat, and a wave of melancholy washed over her. Shaking off the emotion, she turned her attention back to the road, gripping the wheel tighter as she accelerated. After a stretch of driving, she eventually arrived at the mansion.
She had often wondered how the maestro accumulated such immense wealth. However, after meeting his benefactor and experiencing the allure of that wealth herself, she began to understand the price he had paid–the soul.
Was striking a deal with such a malevolent entity truly worth it? This question haunted her thoughts daily, and still, she had no definitive answer. The allure of luxury was intoxicating like the addictive sweetness of sugar. The more she indulged in it, the stronger her craving became, leaving her caught in a cycle of desire and uncertainty.
The mansion was as elegant and grand as she remembered. In the front yard, a splendid water fountain glistened under the sunlight. Surrounding the mansion was a manicured garden bloomed with vibrant colors and lush foliage.
Before stepping out of the car, she pulled a handgun from the glove compartment and carefully concealed it in her purse. Today was the day she planned to confront him, intent on demanding him to undo the unfortunate turn her life had taken.
The front door was unlocked and it swung open effortlessly as she entered. It slammed shut behind her without her even touching it, and there was no wind to explain it.
“Ah, Mrs. Vilonte,” a familiar male voice greeted warmly, “It's been far too long since our last meeting. You look lovely as ever!”
She looked up to see the young Salerno, leaning casually against the railing at the top of the split staircase. His smirking face drew a scowl from her. She resented his mocking compliment about her looking “lovely as ever.” She wore the same black dress she'd worn since her husband's memorial, now creased from sleep and carrying a faint scent of dried scotch.
“You've had your fun, Salerno,” she retorted, her voice tinged with restrained anger. "I shouldn't have broken our agreement, and I've learned my lesson.”
“Have you?”
“Yes, and I assure you, it won't happen again.”
“So, what can I do for you?”
“I want my life back.”
Salerno's face was solemn, shrouded in silence. Unexpectedly, he erupted into mocking laughter.
“That's not the nature of consequences, my dear,” he remarked. “You must live with what you've done. Forgiveness is not in my nature.
“You've stripped me of my wealth–”
“It wasn't yours to begin with.”
“I have nothing left!”
“Oh, that isn't completely true. You still have your family.”
“You've torn my family apart! My husband is gone, my son imprisoned and now my daughter, too! You've taken her from me.”
“But soon you'll be reunited.”
“What do you mean?”
He motioned for her to ascend the stairs. “You've arrived just in time to witness something miraculous. Something beautiful!”
Confusion clouded Mrs. Vilonte's face until she heard an agonized moan coming from an upstairs room, followed by a cry she knew all too well.
“Gabrielle,” she gasped.
Salerno nodded. “You're about to be a grandmother to another child.”
The haunting images from the field of mirrors flooded back. The abomination—a monstrous entity—was on the brink of entering their world, and who knew what kind of hell it would bring. Suddenly, a powerful force propelled her towards the stairs, her movements no longer under her control. Before she knew it, she stood face to face with Salerno on the top landing. His grin exposed jagged, menacing teeth, and his eyes were pools of darkness. With talon-like fingers, he grasped her shoulders, their sharp points piercing her skin.
He led her into the master bedroom, where Gabrielle lay in a fitful sleep on a queen-size bed, her movements restless. Her eyes were closed, and sweat had matted her hair to her head. Beside her sat Victoria, whose skin showed signs of decay, and she moved with a robotic, disjointed motion as she wiped the sweat from Gabrielle's face with a cloth. When Victoria moved aside, Mrs. Vilonte shivered, finding herself staring into Victoria's empty, hollow eye sockets.
Salerno leaned in close to her ear, his voice a low whisper as he said, “My children are everywhere, and this newborn will join them, serving me in this world. You should feel honored to be part of something extraordinary, something greater than yourself.”
Slipping free from his hold, she quickly made her way to her daughter's bedside, sweeping aside stray locks from her face. The moment her fingers made contact with her skin, Gabrielle began to calm down.
“Gabby, it's Mom,” she whispered gently, a wave of relief washing over her as her daughter's eyes fluttered open in response.
“Did you enjoy the concert, Mom?” Gabrielle asked, faintly.
“Well, it was an unforgettable performance, that's for sure.”
“Didn’t I do a phenomenal job?”
“Let's talk about it when we get home.”
“Home?”
“Yes, you're coming home with me now.”
“I can't... the baby is going to arrive soon,” Gabrielle gasped, her voice strained with pain. "It hurts too much to move.”
“You’ll have to endure it! We need to get out of here!”
Mrs. Vilonte tossed aside the blanket and firmly grasped her arm, pulling her out of the bed. Gabrielle staggered and lost her footing, sliding down onto the floor. She reached for the edge of the bed, trying to soften her sudden fall.
“Run, run, but wherever you hide,” Salerno sang, “you'll never escape this hell.”
Mrs. Vilonte quickly drew the handgun from her purse, aiming it at him as he approached. Her eyes darted between Salerno and Victoria, the gun wavering between the two.
“Stay back! Just let us go.”
Salerno chuckled. “Mrs. Vilonte, really now? Violence won't solve your problems.”
A deafening bang echoed through the room. He staggered back, pressing a hand to his belly as blood began to seep through his white shirt. His mouth opened, releasing a plume of black smoke that coalesced into the silhouette of a large goat standing upright on its hind legs.
The creature glared at her with red eyes before the smoke dissipated. Then, as if the inevitable march of age had finally caught up to him within seconds, his vitality began to wane. His once smooth skin transformed into a web of wrinkles. His dark eyes dimmed, replaced by a cloudy haze. His jet-black hair turned a shocking shade of white, contrasting starkly with the pallor of his skin. His cheeks began to sink.
Salerno, aged and frail, sank to the floor, his hand stubbornly pressed against his wound as if hoping to halt the flow of blood. “Run, run, but wherever you hide, you'll never escape this hell.”
Mrs. Vilonte seized her daughter's arm, hauling her upright, all the while keeping the gun trained between Salerno and Victoria. Victoria lay collapsed on the floor, reduced to a heap of decomposed skin devoid of bones and muscle.
A deep rumble echoed through the room, causing it to tremble and sway. Cracks snaked across the walls, paint peeling away in tattered sheets. Twisting, blood-red vines crept from the fractures, weaving their way across walls and ceiling. Acting quickly, Mrs. Vilonte seized Gabrielle, who had collapsed to the floor, teeth clenched in pain from another surge of agony. She pulled her up by the arm, forcing her to her feet and pushing her towards the door.
The mansion, once a symbol of pride when she'd taken her daughter for the maestro’s lessons, was transforming into a nightmarish scene. Blood oozed from the decaying walls, while a noxious sulfuric odor filled the air, nearly suffocating Mrs. Vilonte and making each breath a struggle.
She didn't pause for rest or allow Gabrielle a moment to catch her breath until they were safely out of the house and speeding away in the car, putting as much distance as possible between them and the area.
“Mom, stop the car,” Gabrielle groaned in pain from the back seat.
“Hold on tight, honey. We'll go to the nearest hospital.”
“I can't wait anymore!”
“It won't be long. Twenty minutes.”
“I can feel the baby wanting to come out.”
Mrs. Vilonte looked up at the rearview mirror, where she saw Gabrielle's sweaty face scrunched up in pain, gripping her rounded belly with both hands.
“I know this isn’t easy,” she said, “but you need to hold out a little longer. We'll be at the hospital very soon.”
“STOP THE CAR!”
The car came to a sudden stop, jolting Mrs. Vilonte forward and almost throwing Gabrielle off from her seat.
“The baby is coming! Mom, help me!” Gabrielle cried.
“The baby…”
Mrs. Vilonte couldn't shake the thought that this creature couldn't possibly be human. The horrifying acts that it could be capable of frightened her, and the idea that it shared a bloodline with her sickened her even more. Her hand moved to the handgun resting on the passenger seat beside her, considering the one extreme solution she could think of for such an unusual situation.
It wasn't ideal, but she saw no other option.
She took hold of the gun and stepped out of the car, approaching the rear passenger side. Opening the door, she found her daughter propped on her elbows, lifting her dress to reveal the widening canal. Gabrielle let out a menacing growl as she pushed.
Mrs. Vilonte crouched to inspect closer, and instantly felt the unsettling, malevolent presence. The entity seemed to be trying to claw its way out from the depths of the abyss. It inched towards the light, its growls growing louder like a ravenous animal. As Gabrielle pushed further, its red, snouted face broke through, its eyes snapping open to lock onto hers with an intense, black-eyed glare.
Startled, she stumbled back, her hands grasping for the handgun that had slipped from her trembling fingers. As she aimed at the creature before her, an unseen force encircled her hands. She fought to maintain control, but the force twisted the weapon, redirecting it towards her. Suddenly, she found herself staring down the barrel of her gun.
The trees came alive with a flurry of motion as a group of birds took flight, their wings beating frantically against the sky. The once-quiet canopy echoed with the sound of panicked chirps and the movement of feathers, as the startled birds scattered in all directions, seeking refuge from the sudden disturbance caused by a blast.
XXXXX
In the forest of another realm, beyond the physical world, her skin melded seamlessly with the tree's bark, as vines snaked their way around her, ensnaring her limbs. Fungi blossomed from her mouth, rendering her voiceless as her tongue was entwined.
The goat-like creature approached her, brandishing a small mirror, coercing her to confront her distorted reflection. Little remained of her once recognizable features. Worms and roaches had taken residence in the hollow cavity where her nose and right eye had been. With her one remaining eye, she gazed into the mirror, waves of anguish coursing through her being as she beheld the grim reflection of what she had transformed into.
Then, as her ghastly reflection faded, a young man with dark hair and eyes as deep as coal materialized, wearing a black suit, standing with poise on a stage, holding up a violin. Upon closer look, she realized it to be the very violin Gabrielle had once owned.
“Behold what my child has become,” the entity proclaimed. “Are you not as proud of him as I am?”
XXXXX
A bright light beamed down on the young man standing center stage, his violin poised in his hands. His fingers glided over the strings, and with each passing note, the audience, their eyes fixed on him, was drawn deeper into his spell. It wrapped around the listeners' hearts and pulled them into a trance-like state. And as the last notes hung in the air, the audience were suspended in silence and left breathless. Then, they leaped to their feet in thunderous applause.
With a twisted smile, he relished the adulation. He knew he had sway over them, puppet master of their actions. He could simply issue a command, and they would eagerly comply, ready to enact his darkest fantasies. He imagined directing his willing servants to get up on the roof of a towering building and leap into the abyss below, willingly offering themselves as sacrifices.
He envisioned chaos unleashed upon the streets, cars overturned, windows shattered, and buildings engulfed in flames. All at his behest. The world lay at his fingertips, ripe for manipulation and destruction, as he thought about the countless ways he could bring about humanity’s demise.
After his final bow, the young man turned to face the audience, expressing heartfelt thanks for their attendance, eliciting both laughter and warm affection from the crowd. But, amidst the resounding applause, one figure remained still in the front row, confined to a wheelchair. He stared straight at her face which was hidden behind a thin black veil.
Though her body remained motionless in the chair, incapable of even the slightest movement, her one good eye was very much alive, fully engaged with her surroundings. And there was something else in her gaze. He could sense it from the stage, and it made him chuckle. It was an aroma he found intoxicating – the unmistakable stench of fear, seeping from every pore like primal pheromones.
The audience clamored for an encore, yearning to satisfy their insatiable thirst for more music. Their fervent cries echoed through tears. Lifting his violin once more, he hushed the audience with a single motion. The moment the red bow touched the strings, pandemonium broke loose. The spectators lost all self-control, leaping from their seats, clutching their heads, and tearing at their hair in a wild frenzy. They were completely entranced, surrendered to the power of the music.
As his crescendo intensified, a raging fire surged within them, mirrored by the frantic speed of his fingers on the strings. With each chord, they tore at their garments, sinking nails and teeth into one another's flesh. Chaos exploded, mingling with the scent of blood and the sound of rending flesh.
Mrs. Vilonte remained seated in her wheelchair, an impassive observer amidst the chaos, her voice silenced, her limbs still. She bore witness to the madness, her mind ensnared within its chaos, forever lost to its depths.

For starters I am on the autism spectrum. I also have a masters in biotechnology and work in clinical research. I am in NO WAY qualified to practice medicine, but I’m literate in some things and not completely ignorant. Also am aware I need to advocate for myself and my health which is what I attempted to do today (and got shut down).
I’ve been sick for 3ish weeks. Started as a typical cold, then progressed to low grade fevers. Sore throat, cough with nasty green mucus, sinus pain and headache that comes and goes.
I am also constantly EXHAUSTED. I’d sleep 12+hrs a day if I could.
Now, this has happened to me 2 times in the past 5 years. Each time it was walking pneumonia. Each time I supposedly had clear lung sounds but after failing to improve it was caught on the chest cray.
My regular NP wasn’t available short notice so I went to the other one in the practice. She said my lungs were clear and it was allergies.
I asked if I could have a chest xray to rule out pneumonia. Explained I have walking pneumonia present like this commonly. She said no because “my lungs were clear” and she didn’t see any suggestion of it.
I asked if she could look at my chart and see my records- how I’ve had pneumonia twice in the past 5 years that presented like this.
She said that her clinical findings didn’t support an cray and it would be “unsafe” to expose me to radiation that can “increase the risk of blood cancers” by doing a chest X-ray (which in my opinion is total bullshit. You sign an informed consent for a reason X-rays are safe. It sounded like a scare tactic to me).
She said to take 40mg prednisone daily for 5 days plus Allegra for my “allergies” that I now suddenly have and if that doesn’t work come back in a week and she’s going to give me an inhaler?
I’m over it. I have to be miserable for the next week now. I hope the prednisone works, but my hopes aren’t high. I just feel so gaslit.
I coughed so hard I peed myself yesterday. I have so much green mucus and I’m miserable.
Was I out of line asking for a chest X-ray given my medical history of walking pneumonia? I just want to get back to feeling good again I’ve been sick for 3 weeks and miserable.

INTRO

This post is very long so I decided into sections based on what they are, most of it is context on why I have the question's/thoughts I have, if you are not interested in a section but would like to see,and potentially respond to my questions (mostly opinion based questions PLEASE don't argue but I would like to see and understand different options.

Re-diagnosis and mis-diagnosis

So a few friends of mine think I should go try to get re-diagnosed as an adult due to the current label on my diagnosis And some people think it could all just be brain damage and a mis-diagnosis. I probably will go to see a doctor about it at some point.

My diagnosis

I was diagnosed at 4 years old as low-functioning autistic. That is what is in my medical records (I know the old system is abliest and outdated) withen a few years after my diagnosis they changed the diagnosis system. But my chart stayed the same.

Other illnesses as factors

I was diagnosed 2 months after I recovered from a severe kidney infection I spent 6 months in the hospital, and went in via life flight. With a fever of 110 F° and was sick mis diagnosed as the flu for several weeks. I did get brain damage for sure due the fever my brain was actually burning

Delayed milestones

I had very mild potentially autistic symptoms before the fever but I was really young so it was hard to tell, after the fever my development slowed significantly. I was late on almost all milestones, except talking. I didn't get potty trained until 1st Grade , I still don't know how to ride a bike, I wasn't walking until 5 or 6, I learned how to tie my shoes last year.

ADHD vs Autism

But socially I'm just a little behind and come off a little ADHD most people don't think I'm autistic in general situations only when I'm overstimulated and freak out do people think I might be autistic. I struggle with sarcasm and have special interests that I will go on about forever, but those are generally to my knowledge ADHD traits and a lot of people in my life think I might be just a lil ADHD.

Functioning labels

I do believe I am autistic don't get me wrong. But I do fully believe that "low functioning" should not be there, I function pretty well, I take care of myself I've lived alone in the past. I really hate the low functioning vs high functioning labels. I kinda feel like they restrict people and change how they are treated. When new doctors and Tharpists read that before they meet me there have been cases whare they have it set up with a fucking sand box an initial treat me like I'm stupid. And I'm sure thare have been cases like mine in the past.

Special Treatment from parent

Also my parents always texted me different than my siblings due to my diagnosis.they treated me like a baby always codling me. I felt humiliated by them. Witch is a factor in why huge spiral into depression as a young teen.And my sister's and I still barely talk because they don't like how I was given specal treatment and my other mental health problems.

I want your opinions

And all this brings up questions I am wondering about and would love to here other people's opinions about

The questions

Should people go check if they are autistic with more than one doctor?
Should people with old diagnosis from the previous system bother getting it changed?
Should autistic symptoms be written off if you have other possible causes?
Do milestones ages really determine how autistic you are?
Why do millennials matter at all?
What defines the line between autism and ADHD?
Why thy the fuck did the old system last as long as it did?
Should autism be diagnosed while that young?
Should parents treat autistic kids differently than thare other kids?why?

Hi everyone,
Long time listener, first time caller. A joke from calling into radio stations. Despite the dated joke, I am a man in my mids 20s. I was born right before the turn of the century so I got to grow up as the digital age was developing. I knew I was different growing up but I never really knew why until I was about twelve. I remember talking to Child Study professionals from ages 4-12. I got modified assignments, I got put into another room during tests and got extra time. It was only during a routine check up did I learn of my diagnosis. "So how's the Aspergers?" An awkward question that I had no answer to but my mom answered like it was nothing. I asked her on the car ride and that opened Pandora's Box. I started doing more research. I started connecting dots. I was happy I could make sense of why the world didn't seem to make sense through my eyes. The bullying sucked I will admit but I at least I knew why. The almost obsessive interests in Pokemon and Digimon, the tendency to hyperfixate on things, the random repeating of phrases. But my sudden clarity would become a blessing and a curse. Through the trials and tribulations of the American public school system, I slowly became more self-aware of my behavior. Why didn't I fit in quite as easily as others? Sure there are a lot of kids that are awkward and get made fun of for their character quirks that don't have ASD. But I wanted to be accepted. So I slowly took bits and pieces from friends who were in the cooler social circles. I used to laugh at everything, not knowing when a joke started and ended, and got made fun of. So I learned to look for the minor inflections in voices that denotes a laugh. I learned to use my dry manner of speak to my advantage. I copied mannerisms, became hyperaware of my body language. I started masking. I still made social faux pas but it was mitigated. I count myself lucky that I had a large, diverse group of friends I could be myself around. But along the way, I lost sight of who that person truly was. I spent so long with the mask up that I wasn't sure if there was a real person underneath. MAsking your quirks makes you hyperaware, hypervigilant. I developed social anxiety and became self-conscious about how I was being perceived at any given moment. I have since worked on this in therapy and am doing better but it has been a long road.
Growing up, my mom had to facilitate a lot of my friendships until about 5th grade. She wanted to make sure I was developing as much as I could. I was a hyperactive kid who would not shut up about my special interests. Luckily, the friends I made shared those same interests. I had a friend who I knew since kindergarten. We would go to each other's houses all the time. We would gush over Power Rangers. It was a particularly big special interest for me and it was freeing to be able to talk about. Unfortunately, as we grew older, we slowly grew apart. He became more interested in fitting in. He would often say "You are obsessed" and "that stuff is for kids" even though we were 8, 9, 10 years old. The things I was into became frowned upon. So I hid them. I would get made fun of but he never outwardly defend me. I still considered him my best friend. But I think I stopped being his. We are still friends but not as close as we used to be. My outlook on life is very simple and tends to be black and white. If we have a few decent interactions and connect on a single interest, I consider you a friend. Understanding the nuance between acquaintance and friend can be difficult at times. I don't do well with change. The people you think are going to be in your life forever may not be there in a few years. That hurt to learn. Learning that people grow and change into adulthood hurts too. Things aren't the same as they were when you were young. But I still want to just play video games, play with imaginary friends and just hang out like we did 10 years ago. It hurts that people don't share the same thoughts on consistency like me. But Individuals are allowed to be just that, individual. Again, I am lucky enough to have found people that like me for me. I played soccer at the collegiate level and met lifelong friends through it. I was able to find people that accepted me with all of my perceived flaws and quirks. I came to terms with the fickleness of human personality and understood that others are dealing with their own stuff too. Im still anxious but I feel more comfortable in my own skin.
Now, of course, if you expecting to hear something about romantic relationships, we have finally arrived. I just wanted to give some context. Of course, I did overexplain some things but I digress. Growing up, I was a romantic cynic on the outside, and a hopeless romantic on the inside. I always wanted love but yet never understood how to get it. I watched a lot of television and played a lot of games. I am naturally introverted and am often in my own head rather than reality. I used to daydream about being a relationship all the time. I would develop crushes and think I was going to spend my life with the person. Yes even at 8 years old. I would build up the courage and confess my affection through notes or through someone else. But I never really knew the other person. I was falling in love with a idea. I liked the idea of love. Someone who is there for you. To help comfort you when you're sad. They make you happy and you get to kiss all the time. But that way of thinking is selfish. You are taking the other person out the equation and you are constructing a person that will compensate your feelings of loneliness. It's not totally a bad thing. I can be nice to escape from reality from time to time. But at some point, you have to come back. Which sucks. But I learned this the hard way. And sometimes, that's the only way. Women, men or any person you are trying to date have their own thoughts, emotions, wants and needs. You can't expect a blank canvas. As a man, I was lucky to have female friends who could give me a perspective on life as a women. The do and don'ts of courting, be respectful and taking rejection in stride. I started college thinking every thing would be different. I would start dating with this new rubric. I met someone who seem to fit every category. She also played soccer, she was in the same major and I found her attractive (she wore glasses, that's a thing for me). I will say I had a very low threshold for attraction. We were snapchating, talking every day and we became pretty good friends. In retrospect, the relationship was a little one-sided as I was more a person to vent to, but I digress. I was convinced that things were going well. I confessed one night after mustering up all my courage (notice the pattern?). She said maybe. People, if you get a maybe, take it as a NO and try to move on. I latched on that maybe and selfishly thought 'She'll come around, eventually'. I made sure stay respectful. I asked her out a few times but did not a committal response. One night, I had helped her walk a friend home from a party. We ran into some friends of hers and they asked "is that your boooooyfriend", like a child. She responded with an "Ew no" and we moved on. After taking some time, I realized that I needed to exercise some self-respect. I sent a text explaining that I liked being her friend and I did not want to lose that. But I still liked her romatically so i needed time and space to work that out. I had been falling for the surface level things we had in common and we never connected any deeper. I grew from the experience and learned that, for me at least, a relationship should have a basis in friendship. Love your partner, but you should also like your partner too. Also, for all the young men who are attracted to women out there, you can be friends with the other sex without expecting sex or a relationship. As I stated, I benefitted by the different perspectives of the friends I had made. My first relationship ended up being with a women I had made friends with freshmen year of college.
I had a lot of bad luck with romance all throughout my schooling days. Most of it was my fault, given I never really knew the people i had crushes on. In college, it was more out of my control. I used dating apps (every one you could think of) and didn't have much success. I worked on myself and slowly improved my dating profile. I tried the direct approach, giving a personal description that almost exceeded the character count. I wanted to make sure the other person knew as much about me as possible. That didn't seem to work so I tried the witty line. That kinda worked but not by much. I got few matches that didn't go anywhere. I got a date once but the person on the profile didn't really look like it in real life. That and we didn't really have anything in common. I will say I did not deal with that the most mature way (ghosted). Don't do that, I'm not proud of it but live and learn. The next time I asked somebody out, they texted me the morning after at 3 am to tell me they are getting back with their ex and she subsequently tried to set me up with a friend out of pity. I could only laugh. At that point, I decided to give up on love. It wasn't meant for me. I got too many quirks and idiosyncracies. I don't deserve love. I'm just a wast...and the spiral continued. Funny enough, I decided to download Tinder for umpteenth time at the beginning of junior year. I swiped on a friend that I made freshman year who I had been attracted but never acted on it. She had a boyfriend at the time so I just let it go. She, her friends and I were often studying in the same common area and developed a rapport. They were Bio majors so I didn't have any classes in common with them my sophomore year. I would always say hi in passing and stop for small talk here and there but nothing major. I was surprised when she matched with me. It was a surreal feeling. Does someone that I like like me back? This was unprecedented. I felt like I made progress. Maybe people like me can find someone. But I didn't want to get my hopes up. She could have swiped because we knew each other (I don't know what that means either but it's what I thought). Then we talked. and talked some more. And some more. I never asked for advice from friends. I tried to be as authentic as possible. It turns out I am pretty witty over text. I was (and still am) oblivious to signs of attractions, given it had never been reciprocated before. She actually asked me to see a scary movie together. I made a comment about scarying easily and she said I could hold her hand if I get jumpy. Well that is the most obvious sign I could get. Date goes well, We start studying together. I actually initiated a snuggle as we watched a movie. RED ALERT, physical contact with a romantic interest. Wooooo! One day we are hanging out and tells me that her friends had said that they wished that they could find a guy like me back then. That helped my self-esteem immensely. I felt comfortable disclosing my ASD after she asked why I wasn't the party type of person. Too loud, too many smells, too crowded. She was receptive and understanding. I was estatic. I was doing the impossible, in my eyes. I had a lot of firsts in a short amount of time. Specifically, in the physical department. I got my first kiss, and some touchy-feelies of private parts in one night. Things were happening fast. I got asked to define the relationship AFTER my first time. That was a very awkward time to be asked this question. But I wanted to be with her so... yeah. I did everything I could to be a good boyfriend. Be supportive, try to hang out when I can, make time for her and make sure that I try to be the best person I can be. Unfortunately, some things are out of your control. After a month, there had been a bit of distance. I was oblivious to it; I was so focused on being the perfect boyfriend. One day, we were trying to pick something to watch and we couldn't decide on anything. She didn't like anime and I didn't want to watch baking shows. She asked me if something felt off between us. I didn't think so but she did. She essentially told me that she wasn't falling in love with and she didn't think she would. I was blindsided. I accepted it, I couldn't really blame her. I didn't do anything wrong. But those thoughts started to come back. "See, you don't deserve it and you never did", "the other foot was going to drop eventually", "too good to be true", etc. I spiralled. I was a mess for months. I finally got diagnosed with depression and anxiety. I started taking meds. I started therapy. Eventually, I got better and felt ready to try again.
I was a bit jaded butwanted to start putting myself out there, slowly. This time, I chose a combination of witty honesty for my Tinder profile. Something like looking for wholesome connections on Tinder may not be the best, but I am naive. Then I met HER. Oh man, what a looker. And would you believe she messaged me first? She was refreshed by my honesty and thought I was attractive. Woah. Now this is 4 months from when my first relationship ended. I wanted to take things slow. I told myself that I would make sure I truly connected with someone before getting into a relationship. So that's what I did. We talked every day, really getting to know each other. We had similar interests and some different ones. She is brutally honest and straightforward just like me. She is confident and funny, but she had such a capacity for empathy and understanding. They say you should never have your standards too high. I had always felt like mine were, given I spent years in my own head, crafting the perfect person. But, imagine, you meet someone who fits so closely to almost every criteria? We became good friends. I slowly opened up more. That includes complimenting her, believe or not. I tend to come on strong in most situations so I tried to be more reserved. She has such a beautiful smile. Anyway, i digress. I started to realize that I was falling for her. Hard. Not like before though. Like I wake up and think about her. Go to bed and think about her. We started talking over winter break while I was at home. We were long distance but I would come back every other week. Our first date was at....a movie (original I know). I was very nervous because I really liked her, I wanted it to go well..and we were also horny people in their early twenties who may or may not planned to do the deed in the parking lot. Which was not great because again, I was nervous. But things got better. She became my girlfriend. The bad thoughts went away. I fell in love. Let me tell you, it feels great. Plus, lockdown happened towards the beginning of our relationship. So we got to see each other super often. Inseperable. We knew that we would marry each other. We found our person. 4 years later, now its happily ever after. Except life isn't a fairy tale. Nothing to celebrate on my anniversary, no one to see on Valentine's Day. We went on a break in Spetmeber to work on ourselves. We became co-depepndent. She had mental health challenges that I couldn't fix. I couldn't make it better. No matter how hard i tried. We were our own support system. But she was the love of my life and I wasn't going to give up. But then she broke up with me in October. She fell out of love. She called me the next day and changed her mind. She made a mistake. I have a girlfriend again. Two days later, she broke up with me again. She made a mistake in making a mistake. Fast forward a month, her birthday is coming up. I still check up on her story on Insta. It would be the first I missed. I had sent her a letter to get closure. She responded. We talk. Im just happy to hear her voice. two days later, she misses me and wants to come back. I'm happy. My whole outlook changes. I can listen to music again. We plan on spend thanksgiving together. Things are gonna back to normal. I stayed up all night the night before I pick her up from school. I'm too excited. Then the text. "I think Im running away from my problems please don't come". She blocks me again. We talk. If she is going to come back, she wants to come back better. She doesn't want me to wait and if I find somebody else....I stopped her. I only wanted to be with her. I wont wait but I will always keep the door open for her. She is worth it. But I lied. I lied to her but more importantly, I lied to myself. I was telling myself I was getting better. I downloaded apps again. I started working out again. Im moving on. No, I waited. I put my life on hold. Waiting. For just one phone call. One text. I get the love of my life back. Today, I saw a picture of her kissing another guy. She was happy. She was better. He looked like I did when I was with her. I reached out. I wanted to scream. I wanted to yell. But I couldn't. Because love is unconditional. I love her and I always will. But with love comes loss. Love means being happy for her even if it's not with me. Love is not some emotion that makes you want to have sex and kiss. Love is commitment. Love is doing the little things. Love is being there even when you are mad at each other. Love is not standing in the way of your loved ones happiness. Love is hard. Love is not a feeling. I have a hard time with feelings. I can;t understand them half the time. But I know what love is. I had it and I lost it. It's soul crushing and it's not fair. But Love....is knowing when to let go. I hope I can find it again someday. But for now, I have to stop waiting.

The size of my mana pool used to be a point of pride until I had to spend an hour tinkering with four rune enchantments. Then, I realized how shallow it was. Four rune enchantments required twice as much mana as three rune enchantments, and after a few tries, I was sweating cold. I couldn’t even imagine how much mana the creator of Firana’s fluttering cape had to pour into the enchantment to make seven runes work.
I reexamined my notes.
The cape creates a small wind current.
The cape recognizes its user.
The cape recognizes movement.
The cape recognizes direction.
The cape recognizes the user’s intent to activate the effect.
Finding the Wind and User runes wasn’t particularly difficult. As soon as Astrid failed to activate the wind pebble in my hand, the entries were added to the Rune Encyclopedia, which piqued my interest. To learn a new rune, I had to engrave it successfully and know its particular function inside the circuit. The Encyclopedia would not index any rune I randomly added to the mix.
I sighed. The remaining three runes played hard to get.
I considered the best way to decode the remaining tunes. I could always ask Loki to assist me. The Rune Debugger would help me outline the enchantments, and Loki would help me test them without spending massive quantities of mana. Convincing Loki wouldn’t be easy. He preferred to doze off near the stove and play with the kids. Elincia and Ginz ignored if the long sleeping schedule was normal Changeling behavior.
I left the desk and sat on the bed with my legs crossed. I focused on my mana pool. The next time I opened my eyes, I was in the circular room with walls covered in runes. Most of the runes were still unknown, but I noticed the User rune repeated every few lines. I decided to ignore the implications and focus on the bottom of my mana pool, where the walls were still shattered by Corruption.
The fight against the group of assassins didn’t do any favors for the patch of black Corruption on my chest. Still, it was a small fraction of the initial wound. It would disappear eventually, as long as I were a good enough teacher to get more [Favorite Teacher] stacks.
I focused on the Fountain, grabbing small strands of golden mana and adding them to my mana pool. Suddenly, the walls of my mana pool came to life, and the Fountain mana slowly turned blue as I assimilated it into my reserves. The patch of Corruption blocking a bigger patch of the runes slowed the process.
I only recharged a fraction of my mana pool before someone opened the bedroom door.
“Mister Clarke, blonde Firana wants to talk with you!” Nokti said with a big smile on her snake-like face.
“Blonde Firana?” I asked, just to realize who the snake girl was referring to. “Oh. Corin. Thanks, Nokti. I’ll be there in a second.”
The snake girl waited for me in the doorway and offered me her hand. I gladly accepted it, and we walked down the corridor to the kitchen. Looking through the windows, I saw my class sparring under the gray sky. I had to stop to take a second look. Was Risha blocking their swords with his bare hands?
I sighed. So much for the safety measures I had been engraving in the kids’ heads.
“What do you think of Risha?” I asked Nokti now that we were alone. It hadn’t passed a week, but Risha and Astrid seemed to fit well into the manor’s life—at least with the orphans. Elincia didn’t seem entirely on board with having them around. Some wounds took time to heal completely.
The snake girl thought for a moment before answering.
“Risha is like Wolf but funnier, and his breakfast is good. I wonder if he likes potatoes,” Nokti happily replied.
“Yeah, I wonder,” I replied. The seven-year-old me would’ve pissed his pants at the sight of Risha, but the kids seemed accustomed to half-orcs. “It would be strange if he didn’t like potatoes, right?”
“Right,” Nokti nodded as we reached the kitchen. “I have to go back to play. Bye.”
I opened the door to find Elincia arguing with Astrid about the preserved fruits on Wolf’s birthday cake. I decided to ignore them. As much as they didn’t like each other, they had to find peace for themselves. In the corner of the table, Corin swiftly ate a bowl of gruel.
“You know you can chew, right?” I greeted her.
Corin jumped to her feet and swallowed without chewing.
“I have a message from Prince Adrien. It’s about the tournament,” she said. “I was told to inform you about a small change in the duel format. Prince Adrien decided to drop the point system and adopt the old imperial duel system to improve spectator attendance. That’s all.”
I blinked, confused.
“What is the old imperial duel system?” I asked, not sure if I would like the answer. Usually, there was an inverse correlation between the participants' safety and the audience's enjoyment.
Elincia stopped scolding Astrid and joined the conversation.
“The point system requires a referee, while the old imperial duel requires a Fortifier to set a certain amount of barriers around the participants,” she explained, biting her nails. “I’m afraid the change would disfavor the teams that can’t afford a Fortifier and haven’t trained under this ruleset.”
“Like us,” I pointed out. Only Ilya had fought with the Fortifier’s barrier around his body, which had happened once.
Elincia gave me a nervous look.
A smile crept onto my face. The secret technique I had taught Wolf and Zaon would be especially effective with the Fortifier barrier as a point system, but that wasn’t the main issue. I couldn’t help but smell foul play. As Elincia had pointed out, such a change in the rules would favor the richer families to the detriment of those who couldn’t afford a Fortifier.
“What’s the deal with that creepy smile?” Elincia asked.
“Don’t worry about it. The kids are ready,” I said. The changes in the rules weren’t drastic enough to worry about. “Corin, can you relay a message for me?”
The girl nodded.
“I need you to relay a message to Lady Lyra Jorn. She is currently staying at the Great Hall. Tell her we are worried about her delay, and she can turn to us if she needs anything,” I said.
I wasn’t really worried about Lyra’s well-being; she was the daughter of a duke and a guest of the Marquis at the end of the day. However, I couldn’t help but think that whoever held her back knew about the attack. It was one thing to attack an orphanage of commoners, and a completely different one was attacking the residence of a duke’s daughter.
I put a few bronze coins in Corin’s hand, a couple more than the usual rate, and excused myself, saying I needed to return to my workshop. Corin shoved a couple more spoonfuls of gruel into her mouth before speeding through the door into the backyard and around the manor.
Elincia grabbed my arm before I could leave.
“Do you think they changed the rules to reduce our possibilities of winning?” She asked.
Despite being a kid’s tournament, there was much at stake. Credibility, after all, was a heavy coin in politics.
“They are trying to improve their chances,” I replied.
Without us knowing, the tournament had already started.
It took me a couple of hours, Loki’s begrudging help, and a lot of Fountain Mana to figure out the rest of the runes. The three remaining runes were hard to grasp because they lacked an effect by themselves. Just as I had theorized, they worked as modifiers and conditions for the main effects.
The easiest to discover of the three was the Direction rune.
A Light-Direction-Gradual-Recharge circuit transformed a light stone into a flashlight. If I exchanged the Light rune for the Wind rune, I would have a hair dryer. I made a note to add a Fire rune to the mix to enchant a hair dryer that used warm air. Elincia would love to dry the kids’ hair in winter.
The last two runes were harder to decipher because they worked like logic gates. The Rune Encyclopedia tagged the first as Activation, which was nothing but an ‘if’ statement. The second rune was Movement, which was the condition for activation. It made perfect sense, considering how Firana’s cape worked. If there was movement, the effects activated.
I couldn’t yet comprehend how the Activation rune discriminated between regular movements, like walking or signaling, and the movements Firana made to activate the cape deliberately, let alone how it modified the Direction rune. I sighed, worried. If the System could read my memories, then it wouldn’t be surprising if it could determine people’s intent. As far as I understood, skills were activated by intent alone.
I stretched my back, and a wave of pleasure traveled through my body. A long day of work at the law firm never felt this good. My job at the orphanage was completely different. It had meaning.
Loki slept belly up on the desk, his whiskers and little feet moving as if he were having a bad dream. Much like the runeweaving process, Loki’s transformation also required a lot of energy. After several dozen failed attempts, Loki was exhausted, but we had a working prototype.
The cape’s circuit was Wind, User, Activation, Movement, Direction, Instantaneous, and Recharge. In other words, 'If the user activates the effect with a movement, create a wind current in the direction of the movement'. My prototype for the sling was Wind, User, Direction, Gradual, and Recharge. For starters, I didn’t think I could enchant more than five Runes simultaneously. Then came the problem of the ‘feel’ of the sling. As much as I wanted to power the shot, I also had to avoid making it uncontrollable.
“You did good work, buddy,” I said, scratching Loki’s belly.
He slapped my hand away with his little rat paw and grumbled something that sounded like his usual ‘damn beast’.
The excitement of the rune discovery slowly disappeared, and I couldn’t help but feel nervous. The Encyclopedia indexed the runes, yet the whole process still felt esoteric. In the worst case, I could delay Wolf’s gift and try the enchantment again tomorrow when I had more mana.
I grabbed my notes, put Loki inside my pocket, and exited the room.
Ginz was inclined over his workshop table, working on a piece of leather.
“The Ginz I used to know would have the order ready by now,” I taunted him from the doorway.
Ginz grunted.
“Knowing the idiot who commissioned this sling, I decided to make it as sturdy as possible,” he replied, applying a coat of dark liquid all over the leather. “It’s Skeeth oil. It will make the Laughing Fox leather even more resistant.”
“Sounds good, I guess,” I said.
As socially inept Ginz was, he knew craftsmanship backward and forwards.
“You should start respecting me, Robbo. My inventions have become so popular among nobles that I got an invitation to see the tournament from the VIP section,” Ginz added with a huge grin.
“Do you mean my inventions?” I laughed.
“Our inventions,” Ginz pointed out with a laugh.
I smiled back, and I sat by the sideline. Just like watching Elincia brewing potions, watching Ginz work was soothing.
“Corin brought the payments for the last shipment,” Ginz said, vaguely pointing toward the cabinet near the door with his brush. “Most of the nobles already commissioned their decks of cards, so we can move to phase two. Use crap materials and expand the market to commoners.”
On top of the cabinet was a leather pouch full of gold and silver. With that amount, Ginz could’ve been considered the breadwinner of the orphanage, but I avoided saying it not to overfeed his ego. I had to admit, Ginz had a good nose for business.
“I took some of it to pay my debt to the Odrac-Aias loan sharks,” Ginz added. “I thought cutting all ties with them would be best.”
“Good call,” I said.
Our alliance with the royalist faction had dissuaded Kellaren from attempting anything against the orphanage so far. Despite being the most obvious suspect, I was starting to doubt his participation in the last attack. If Kellaren were allied with the Osgirians, a direct attack on royalist allies would be too dangerous for the kingdom's cohesion. Whether I liked it or not, Osgirians needed the rest of the noble houses to fill their pockets with money. Without a seller and a buyer, there were no trade routes.
Ginz summoned a high-intensity white flame from the tip of his finger and passed it over the Skeeth oil-impregnated piece of leather. A pungent, acrid smell filled the room. My eyes teared up, and I had to cover my nose and mouth with my shirt.
“The fumes are toxic. I recommend you get to the window,” Ginz said, unfazed by the stench.
I opened the guillotine-style window and threw the entire top half of my body out of the workshop. Outside, the older kids were still training with Risha while the smaller ones ran near the farm plot. Elincia had loosened the rules about playing outside as the days became warmer.
The little ones waved at me, and I did my best to hide my tears.
After a minute, Ginz said, “We need a development fund. I want to start experimenting with magical materials. Maybe that way, we could bring your crazy ideas to life.”
“I’ll make sure to put some money aside when I review our books,” I coughed.
Ginz continued working in silence, unfazed by the putrid fumes, until, half an hour later, he announced the sling was ready. I left my position near the window and approached the working bench. I was left without words.
“The rope is made with braided Shrewmouse Flax, and the pouch is made of Laughing Fox leather treated with Skeeth Oil. You can probably tie up a Wendigo with it,” Ginz said, proud of his work. “I branded a wolf on the pouch. It’s Wolf’s name and his tribe’s guardian animal. I thought it was fitting for the occasion.”
Ginz craftsmanship was astonishing.
“I guess it’s my turn now,” I said. Elincia wouldn’t be happy when she knew Ginz was aware of my enchanting powers.
I grabbed the sling and hoped for the best.
I inscribed the runes' outline on the pouch's outer side, aiming the Direction rune in the opposite direction of the spin so it would speed the sling up instead of slowing it down. Then, I opened my mana reserves and poured a wave of magic into the circuit. The runes drank the mana like desert sand, and for a moment, I thought I wouldn’t have enough to complete the enchantment. I tapped into the Fountain to slowly replenish my reserves as the circuit continued to ask for more.
You have obtained Mana Depletion (Minor). Temporary
I brushed the prompt off, knowing a minor mana depletion stack would be gone by morning. A moment later, without announcement or fanfare, the circuit closed.
“Did it work?” Ginz asked, his eyes shining with amazement.
“I don’t know,” I replied. The runes were there, but the actual effect might vary from what I had in mind. “Do you know how to use a sling?”
“Please,” he raised an eyebrow and snatched the sling from my hands.
Ginz examined our creation as if he were trying to detect any difference in the materials. Then, he pulled a small metal ball from one of the drawers and put it in the pouch. As much as I wanted to keep the present a secret until the last moment, I wasn’t entirely on board with testing it indoors.
“What now?” Ginz asked.
“Make it spin and channel a little mana,” I said.
The sling started spinning, slowly at first, then faster and faster. I moved out of the way and crouched behind the desk. I noticed a small problem. The enchantment would have benefited from an abort mechanism, but I lacked the knowledge or the mana to implement it. Once in movement, one had to shoot.
The sling slipped through Ginz’s fingers, and the metal bullet flew across the room. A vase of wine that rested on top of the shelf burst into thousands of pieces, and the bullet ended up embedded in the wood. We exchanged a knowing look just to burst into laughter.
The wind-powered sling was a success.
New recipe achieved! Updating Rune Encyclopedia. Robert’s Wind Sling added to the recipes tab.
That looked good, but it will have to wait.
“I guess I’m going. I haven’t even greeted Wolf today,” I said, grabbing the sling and walking to the door.
Ginz gave me a quizzical look.
“You will help me clean up the wine, right?” He asked. “Right? Rob?”
I smiled, hoping that would help teach Ginz to warn me before gassing me out with toxic fumes. I closed the door behind me and whistled through the eastern wing and into the backyard. The enchantment, although crude in some respects, had been a success.
“Happy Birthday, Wolf!” I yelled across the backyard.
The kids stopped the light sparring session and came to greet me.
“Shouldn’t we be celebrating Wolf’s birthday instead of sparring?” I asked. During Ilya and Firana’s birthdays, we spent most of the time inside, eating, dancing, and chatting. Even if it was the day before the tournament, I didn’t see why we couldn’t have a lovely, relaxed celebration.
Firana jumped forward because anyone could reply. Her face told me she was discontent with the day's activities. “Wolf said he wanted to spar like any other day, so here we are. This is by far the lamest birthday ever!”
“It is,” Ilya nodded.
The sudden attack made Wolf all flustered.
“What?! I enjoy our regular training schedule. There’s nothing better than training the body and the mind to become stronger,” he muttered.
It was the first time I had seen Wolf so flushed, but that wasn’t enough for the girls to stop their attack.
“And here I thought Zaon was the teacher’s pet,” Firana sighed.
“I thought it was Ilya,” Zaon jokingly said just to earn a murderous glance from the girls.
“Enough of that. Firana, you are in charge of sorting today's training material. The sparring is over. You need to be well rested for tomorrow.” I interrupted the conversation. “If you don’t mind us, I would like to chat with Wolf. Just the two of us.”
Firana grumbled but ultimately obeyed. Before she could convince Zaon to help her, Ilya grabbed the elf boy and dragged him to the farm plot where the small kids were playing. Even Risha turned a deaf ear and walked away, leaving his wooden shield on the big stump.
“Alright, I understand; I’m sorry,” Firana grumbled as she grabbed the equipment.
I looked at Wolf and signaled the grove with my head. We both walked in silence until we reached the tree line. There, Wolf leaned against a tree and let out a long sigh.
“Not used to the attention?” I asked with a sympathetic smile.
Wolf shook his head. “I haven’t told them I plan to leave the orphanage after the tournament. They are talking about giving the Imperial Academy a try. Firana, more than anyone, wants us to stay together.”
“I’m sure Firana will understand if you explain it to her,” I said. “She might be an airhead sometimes, but she wants the best for every one of us.”
“I hope so. I don’t want to make anyone sad, but I probably will,” Wolf replied, defeated.
I remember the time I left my home to go to college. It wasn’t that far, but the goodbye was hard, even with cell phones and video calls being a thing. In retrospect, it was probably even harder for my dad.
“Wolf, listen. If returning to the tribes is what you want, we will be thrilled to help you. It’s your life we are talking about, and only you can make the final decision,” I said. “Of course, Elincia and I will try to give you the best advice possible. You are strong and smart, and the orcs will be fortunate to have you among their ranks, but the Imperial Academy is also a good option. The rank of Knight opens up many avenues. In the end, it’s your call. We will always be here for you.”
“Thanks,” Wolf muttered. “It means a lot coming from you, Mister Clarke.”
This day looked more like a funeral than a birthday, and it wasn’t the slate gray sky over our heads. I hoped the enchanted sling was enough to light up Wolf’s day.
“I saw your relatives using these, so we thought it would be a good present,” I said, offering Wolf the enchanted sling. “Happy birthday.”
Wolf extended his arms and grabbed the sling. He carefully examined the craftsmanship, and the more he looked at it, the more his lips curved up.
“It’s beautiful, thanks,” Wolf said. “Can I try it?”
“Be my guest.”
Wolf grabbed a stone the size of a tennis ball, and for a moment, I thought the leather pouch would be too small. Ginz, however, had gotten ahead of the problem, and the projectile fit perfectly. With their size and strength, it was no surprise orcs preferred bigger bullets.
The sling spun over Wolf’s head.
“Give it a bit of mana,” I said, stepping to the side.
“I don’t have a lot of mana. I’m not Ilya,” Wolf replied.
“Just do it! We have been working on meditation for months now!” I said.
Wolf’s eyes suddenly shot wide open as the sling gained more velocity. He pushed the little mana a classless person could muster into the sling and aimed for a low branch. He let go, and the stone hit right in the middle, splitting the branch from the tree. Unlike Ginz, Wolf was a great shot.
I smiled, not because of the enchantment's success but because of Wolf's gleeful expression. The young half-orc laughed to his heart's content as he prepared a second shot. With his arm, he could knock down a deer.
Loki peeked out of my pocket, looking as angry as a sleepy rat could be.
“Damn beast!”
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My Personal Ranking of Every Track Released In the Beef
14.The Tiny Potshot Tracks (Various Artists) - Future, Weeknd, Rocky, etc. all did zero damage to Drake with any of their verses and it looked corny as shit for them to try and get involved. Literally provide nothing to the beef but hurting their own side. Butt out.
Final Grade: NO GRADE
13.Seven Minute Drill - What hasn’t been said about this track already? I didn’t like it when it came out but I like it even less after the apology. J. Cole starts off with a mediocre beat and goes on to throw warning shots that essentially amount to ‘I think TPAB is overrated and ‘Kendrick doesn’t really drop very often’. I get that he was trying to frame it as him checking Kendrick and throwing warning shots, but this beef had been presented as mostly warning shots and every other warning track was better. This was the equivalent of being pushed, trying to swing back and tripping over your own feet before apologizing for even trying. I agree when Cole called it the lamest shit he ever did. While in hindsight his apology was smart, I think we would have all preferred he never released this track in the first place. Still tuned in for the Fall Off tho.
Final Grade: D-

1. Like That (Kanye Remix) - This track was ass. Kanye being a self important loser and inserting himself into the beef to do nothing but go ‘Look at Me!’ while saying nothing of substance is trash but it was pretty expected from me at least. He doesn’t even have a Drake line in the entire song other than saying that HE DOESN’T HAVE A DRAKE LINE! (And the Lucian bar) Maybe I’m just colored by everything that happened after Seven Minute Drill, but I rank this slightly higher just because that one shitty throwaway line about Cole music drying up pussies is funnier than anything on 7MD, and the fact that the beat was honestly amazing. Some of Metro’s best work.

Final Grade: D
11.The Heart Part 6 - This might end up my longest review of the list by far because it has a lot to unpack. I’m going to be honest, this song does have some genuine positives that unburdened by their flaws would likely see it around a high B or a low A. Drake for one sticks to his guns and doubles down on the Dave Free shit which (aside from the negatives I’ll talk about later) is a smart move since it puts the accusations regarding Whitney back in the mix and him pressing Kendrick for proof makes him look more credible by comparison. He also has some pretty nice bars in there like the whole “Whitney when I hit you back it’ll be a lot safer” and the A minor B sharp scheme as a response to Not Like Us. He also demonstrates that he’s willing to go even lower than he’d demonstrated in prior raps by making Kendrick’s “molestation” the punchline of a series of bars. I’m personally more impressed by his malice than disapproving. They’d both crossed the line a while back and willing to go dark is a positive IMO. But now comes the laundry list of issues with this record. They can be broken down into two major sections: 1. CREDIBILITY: Throughout the feud, a lot of very serious accusations have been made on both sides and most of them don’t seem to have much if any proof behind them. Proof may or may not come out in good time but until then they exist in a weird flux state of being not firmly true nor false. After all there’s no way to truly disprove the more serious accusations regarding pedophilia and domestic violence. The problem here is that Drake makes a laundry list of claims on this record that aren’t just unsubstantiated but noticeably shaky or even able to be debunked via publicly available information. The fake mole would make him look like an idiot if true because he let Kendrick overshadow Family Matters and if he’d simply provided the receipts after Meet the Grahams or just the DMs he would have likely won the beef right then and there. He waited days and let videos and posts with tens of millions of views circulate calling him a pedophile when he could have avoided it all. Also the song he mentioned on Mr. Morale has Kendrick state plainly that he WASN’T molested so that angle falls flat. Finally saying that being very rich or famous means you can’t be a pedo is funny considering almost every well known serial sex pest is one or both. 2. CONCEDING: Drake essentially says he’s done with the beef during this song and also doesn’t bring a lot of energy. It’s a big shift from the days of Push Ups and Taylor Made where he was begging Kendrick to drop and baiting him constantly over social media. It doesn’t look like he’s the bigger person, it makes him look exhausted and worn out. He was already in a position where most of the internet was saying he’d been destroyed so it doesn’t come across as him bowing out. Him taking a vacation could not have been timed worse. In conclusion a song with a lot of promised that’s the most flawed on the list.
Final Grade: D+
10.6:16 in LA - Same concept as Taylor Made Freestyle. A needling track made purely to antagonize Drake into making a response. I liked the beat on this but the first half is pretty filler filled and the jabs about Drake’s camp while strong are not too biting or even shocking considering how large Drake’s crew is. Not much to say here. Also whoever told Kendrick to sing here should feel bad about their decision making skills.
Final Grade: C
9.Taylor Made Freestyle - I’m not going to be one of those losers pretending this isn’t hard because it used AI. Nah this isn’t very hard because it doesn’t really do much. I get why of course. It’s a bait track to try and coax a response from Kendrick. The use of AI is certainly disrespectful and the angle is interesting but it doesn’t really say anything outrageous or even all that disrespectful towards Kendrick himself. It’s not a total abomination, but it falls noticeably flat compared to the dedicated disses and even compared to some of the one verse attacks that we’ll get into later. It gets the edge over 6:16 in LA for how much it pissed off Kendrick.
Final Grade: C+
8.Like That - Might be a little low for some people but we’re judging these as diss tracks more than as records (though there definitely is a bit of that involved too hence why this is even at five). As a pure song, this is easily top three and maybe even top 1 on the list. But the disses only come from Kendrick’s verse and Cole catches essentially nothing. The big 3/big me moment will be iconic for years to come and there were two pretty hard bars towards Drake with the Pet Cemetery line and the Prince Outlived Mike Jack. It also gets huge props for being the track that kicked off the official Drake Kendrick beef. But there’s one track that really kicked off the 2024 diss trend that nobody here wants to talk about…
Final Grade: B-
7.HISS - For whatever reason people don’t want to give Meg her credit here considering she released the first major diss of the year. She really gets in her bag here and comes out with so many different shots at so many different people. I think some people completely forget that she actually dedicated more bars to Drake here than she ever did Nicki. She actually brought up the whole surgery shit before anyone else and even gave the blue print for the higher ranked Euphoria’s ‘Drake’s an accent faking bad bitch’ angle. I can’t rank the track any higher in this specific list since it only comes at any of the beef participants for like four bars but this track is really underrated and managed to hit a lot of people decently hard.
Final Grade: B-
6.Champagne Moments - There are definitely people that are going to put this lower in their lists but personally I loved it. It’s not nearly as far behind the next two spots for me as it might be for some other people. I’ve never been the biggest Ross fan but the way he raps over this luxurious beat makes it feel like he’s beating Drake’s ass in a five star hotel. He definitely did focus a little too heavily on Drake’s race, but honestly it was super funny hearing the repeated “white boy’s” on the track. And while the track itself was ok, that outro was genuinely amazing and one of the most hilarious things I’ve heard in a long time. Plus there genuinely were some hard lines on the actual track.
Final Grade: B
5.Push Ups - Now THIS, this right here is how you respond to a diss track. Drake managed to shut down every single jab on Like That in masterful fashion before going on to expose Kendrick being allegedly extorted by his label, and clown him for being a midget. All the while he managed to throw shots at Future, Weeknd, freaking Jah Morant and most notably Metro over a song that is going to get played in the club with a fun refrain. Loved the energy here from Drake. My only criticisms of the track are ones he couldn’t exactly control for. Those being that he whule he neutralized a lot of Kendrick’s stuff he didn’t actually add much besides the extortion stuff with Top (which rings pretty hollow coming from Drake). I mean Drake didn’t really have time with how many people he had to address after all and the lines about his height were still pretty funny. Still a great diss track considering what he had to do during, but as you can probably tell by the spot I gave it, it wasn’t the best either artist could offer.
Final Grade: B+
4.Euphoria - Let me get the criticism out of the way first. Kendrick didn’t really say anything insane before the Melly line and the track covers publicly discussed topics. But holy crap this was a strong track. Everything from that Melly bar onwards was nasty. I don’t think I went four bars without a strong reaction from then on. Every topic that had been talked about previously was perfected by Kendrick here. From the way he tackled his identity issues to him being a snake he managed to phrase everything in a variety of vicious ways. Hell he even managed to flip the fact that he said nothing new into a body blow about Drake as a father. I also feel like the replay value critique is overblown if not altogether false. While I’m not going to be bumping this as much as a Like That or a HISS or even a Push Ups, there are definitely a good amount of pretty nice quotables and that second beat is super fun. (And about a week later it’s still top 2 on Apple Music and Spotify so it’s definitely got replay value). Plus for me I’ve been catching more bars on follow up listens to the point that I like it a lot more on my last listen then I did on my first. It’s also in retrospect a very accurate prediction of how Drake was going to try and play the rest of their beef from there.
Final Grade: A-
3.Family Matters - This track was amazing. This was essentially Push Ups but better in every facet. We start off with the best from the end of Push Ups and Drake gets to singing which I don’t like very much, but he is a self proclaimed singing nigga so it makes sense. He hits Kendrick from some NASTY angles. He portrays Kendrick as an insecure, colorist, midget, cuck. He also makes the very serious accusation of Kendrick being an abusive fiancé and trying to drive he and his family apart. Had me looking side eyed at Dave Free myself (Or should I say Dave Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee). All of this over three fire ass beats with a pretty nice music video. Drake said this was his red button and as far as red buttons go, this was a very strong one. It’s only even this low because there are a few stand out problems with the record. First, the whole thing about him being ashamed to be seen with Enoch thing seems odd considering Kendrick just generally doesn’t get photographed a lot in public and the fact that he was on the cover of MMATBS. Also Enoch and Adonis being the same shade is pretty disingenuous to anyone with eyes. Another issue is actually the same thing I praised Push Ups for a little, and that’s addressing a bunch of other people during the track instead of going straight at Kendrick. Because here it feels forced and more like an excuse to seem like he’s being jumped by the industry. While his responses here are solid, most of these people took shots at him before Push Ups and other than Ross haven’t said anything since. I still rate this higher than Euphoria because instead of having a good minute and a half of mid, this had about two minutes of strong but misdirected content.
Final Grade: A-
2.Not Like Us - Usually I’m not big on a song being a banger as a plus, but here it really is what makes Not Like Us rank so highly. Because it firstly thoroughly dispels a major criticism throughout the entire beef being that Kendrick’s songs have less replayability than Drake’s. And secondly, because unlike every track other than Push Ups (Drop and Give Me 50, Metro Shut Your Hoe Ass Up and Make Some Drums Nigga) and to a lesser extent Euphoria (We Don’t Wanna Hear You Say Nigga No Mooooooorrrrreeee), the quotables and refrains are all disses directed towards Drake. And there are more of them than any other song on this list. (Freaky Ass Nigga he the 69 God, Say OV-HOE, Say Drake….I hear you like them young, A Minoooooorrrrrrr etc.) It already has seen play during an MLB game and during the NBA playoffs as of recent. It’s the biggest hip hop debut in Spotify history as well. Super catchy and unlike Push Ups or Like That, it’s very focused on one person and hitting them with the most damaging accusation you can. Even better, this song is hilarious throughout while also containing a really good verse reframing Drake’s relationship with Atlanta rappers. It manages to both be a really good diss and arguably the best pure song on this list.
Final Grade: A
1.Meet the Grahams - Genuinely what the fuck. This might be the most vile, malicious, damaging track I’ve ever heard. Now obviously the validity of the claims in the track is very much up in the air. I definitely have my doubts regarding lil miss Adonia being real at the very least. But honestly just taking the first and last verses alone would have me put this at number one. Kendrick is evil as shit for making this but it’s a piece of art. It was a systematic character assassination that for a lot of people ended the beef. This will never be played in a club. It probably won’t be played by anyone more than once in most cases. It’s uncomfortable, dark, and menacing in a way the lower ranked THE HEART PART 6 attempts to be but fails at. He talks about Drake’s (alleged) drug addiction, sex addiction, gambling addiction, poor parenting, insecurities regarding his body, insecurities regarding his culture and masculinity, inauthenticity, insecurities regarding his parents etc. without even getting into the pedophilia/fake child stuff. I don’t think we’ll ever get a track this cruel and poignant for a very long time. This is a classic.
Final Grade: A+

30F, 5'5, 145, Caucasian, diet has been primarily vegetarian and vegan for over 5 years (started reincorporating chicken and turkey in the last couple of months due to fear of b12 deficiency), non-smoker, currently on amoxicillin for an infected cracked tooth that I had a root canal on today, recently off of Zyrtec after intermittent daily use for several years, no prior diagnoses, take b12 daily 1000 mcg daily, sometimes twice daily. Took a cycle of steroids that ended last week, from ENT for sinus pain.
Experiencing sudden onset of head pain/pressure, glandular dryness, gum disease, petechiae and weakness in legs after using a red/nir pain therapy device on knees, face, scalp.
Hi All - I am ashamed to write this but am desperately seeking guidance. I have a red light device that I got from my dermatologist for hair growth. I liked it, and looked into what other kinds of red light devices I could buy to help me, so I ended up buying one for knee pain on eBay. It's just called a red light therapy device and it uses Red and NIR light. I used it on my knee on a setting that heated up but didn't burn and it helped after a few weeks. I felt good. I was so excited that it worked that I figured, I could use it on other parts of my body. I used it on my scalp and face a handful of times for maybe 5 to 10 minutes at a time (5 minute sessions on face and 10 minute sessions moving it around my scalp). not thinking anything of it. Now, I'm thinking it may have gotten too hot and caused tissue damage. I didn't experience any outward signs of burns, just some slight tightness in scalp, and irritation around my eyebrow. I stopped using it and noticed eyes and sinus dryness, but it was not as extreme as it is now. I didn't otherwise have any worrisome symptoms for about two weeks, but now I have started to experience the following all in places where the light was used: numbness/tingling on the sides of my head above my ears, especially when I am alarmed, excited or stressed. I also have pressure in my head in the back, near the base. I have extreme dry mouth, dry eyes and sinuses. Extreme dryness was triggered by a big cry I had a week ago when I had to say goodbye to my elderly dog. My skin and scalp are extremely dry and overproducing oil. I have always had good oral hygiene (last cleaning in March), but now my gums seem infected. It looks like a necrotizing gingivitis based on the pictures I see online. I'm unable to sleep most nights, because of the head pressure, tingling and numbness in my head. My heart races randomly at rest, about 90-95 bpm, which is above my normal resting rate. I also have weakness in my left leg when doing minor activities, although I am typically very active. When I press on my legs there is a lingering blanching. I have also noticed bright red spots and faint bruising appearing on my hands and feet - it comes on suddenly without injury and can go away after several hours, sunken eyes.
I will note that I had recently experienced a period of prolonged stress, because I've been a caretaker for about 8 months. In that time I would wake up almost every night for several months, sometime several times a night in distressing situations. Plus, I just put my dog to rest. Stress could have triggered some of the symptoms, but I don't believe all of them.
I've just seen my doctor for these symptoms and got blood work done. At the time, I didn't mention the red light device, because it hadn't occurred to me that this could be the cause.

• B12 is high, 1536 pg/mL (I started supplementing recently, but shouldn't I pee out the excess? I did not supplement the day before the test)
  
• Folate is high, 18.2 ng/mL
  

-Ferritin is 26 ng/mL
-CBC all in normal ranges, but MCV is high, 98. It was 97 in Jul 2021, 91 in Jan 2023, and 97 in Dec 2023.

• MCHC is borderline low, 31.5. It was also actually low in July of 2021, 31.3
  
• RDW was high in Jan 2023,15.7%. Is in normal range now, 12.9%
  

-Cytes and Phils in normal ranges, but

• Lymphocytes down from 2.7 to 1.5, from 40% to 25%
  
• Eosinophils are down to less than half since December, 6% down to 1%, from 0.4 x10E3/uL down to .1
  
• Neutrophils are in normal range but elevated since December – up to 64% from 42%, 2.9 x10E3/uL to 3.9
  
• In Depth Thyroid panel all in normal ranges, but TSH is down from last year – from 2.02 to 1.12
  
• eGFR Creat is borderline low, and has gone down since December, from 121 to 117
  
• Bun/creatinine ratio is borderline low, 9
  
• C-Reactive Protein <1
  
• Sedimentation Rate 2 mm/hr
  
• Rheumatoid Factor <10
  
• Uric Acid level 3.3
  

What kind of doctor do I need to see and what kind of tests do I need to have done to check my head for nerve/vein/tissue damage from the red light device?
Thank you to anyone who is able to respond.

Part 1 // Part 2
I paced my bedroom floor wondering what I should do next. I’d already placed the leg back in the gun safe, then searched the entirety of my house looking for something Christian to place on top of it. It seemed to work in the movies and I didn’t really have any idea what else to do. I couldn’t find any religious paraphernalia of any kind, so I ended up fashioning a small crucifix out of two large carrots and hot glue with a little Jesus made out of raisins.
I needed a plan! I was thinking about who might know more information about the artifact I’d come into possession of, then it hit me – all of my competitors!
Surely not all of them were fakes like me!
One by one, I called them up and set up meetings for that afternoon – staggered appointments of course.
The first one to show up was a woman named Destiny. I sent her home immediately after she tracked dog shit into my house from the bottom of her shoes. I will not work with someone who is not only rude but completely oblivious.
The second one was a guy named Tiger, which I thought was a badass name and he was a pretty cool guy. Too bad he failed every test I threw at him. I sent him home, but kept his number in case I wanted to try to connect with him sometime to hangout.
The third psychic was a total nutcase named Psycho Jimmy. I’m honestly not even sure if he was a medium or if google search just lumped the words ‘Psychic’ and ‘Psycho’ into the same page due to a lack of results.
He didn’t say a word to me the entire time. He came into my house, drank a glass of water, walked a lap around the living room, stared directly into my eyes, unblinking, for a solid thirty seconds, then simply left. Total fucking psycho indeed. And yes, I did upgrade my security system shortly after meeting him.
Out of options I reluctantly called Destiny back, even if she did smell like dog poop.
To my surprise, she didn’t smell like shit when she showed back up to my house. She explained to me that it wasn’t her that smelled but it was, in fact, the ghost of her dead dog, Hercules, that followed her around. She further explained that last winter, her dog passed away peacefully in his sleep. She was distraught, but thought it would be in bad taste to leave a dead dog lying on her living room floor, so she loaded the carcass up into a cardboard box along with his favorite blanket and a few toys. Then she sealed the top of the box with packing tape so animals couldn’t get in, and left the box out on her front porch where the cold December weather would keep him fresh for a day until she could gather herself long enough to make arrangements.
Porch pirates showed up not an hour later and stole the box off of her porch thinking they just scored a nice heavy Amazon delivery. I can’t imagine how they must have felt to open it up and find a dead dog.
Now Hercules walks the Earth as a ghost, unable to rest until he has his revenge against those that stole his bones away from his loving mother.
“Uh, okay, that’s…” I had no idea what to say in response to hearing such an insane story, “Well, can you have Hercules stay outside please?”
“Yeah, no problem,” She replied before bending at the waist to pet an invisible dog and whisper loving comments into its ears before following me into my kitchen.
“So how do I know you’re legit?” Was the first question I asked her when we were both seated at the table.
“Because I can see the ghost that is standing in your bedroom door,” She replied calmly.
I spun around in my chair towards my bedroom door just in time to watch it violently slam itself shut.
“You’re hired!”
I re-capped the entire situation to Destiny, who asked to see the leg.
She recoiled as soon as I placed it on the table in front of her, “You didn’t tell me it’s upholstered in human flesh” she said, “Pretty big detail to leave out”
“It is?” I asked.
She pointed to a pinkish brown blemish on the leather that covered the back thigh of the leg, “There is literally a nipple on it”
Closer inspection showed that she was right. The leg did indeed have a nipple on it.
“And here is a tattoo,” she said pointing at a heart shaped blemish. If you looked closely, you could just barely make out the words, “Mommy’s Home”. “Look I don’t know what this leg is, but I know a professor at my old college who might know,” Destiny said, she couldn’t take her eyes off of the nipple. “He specializes in ancient pagan literature and has several books bound with human skin in his collection. If anyone knows anything about this, it has to be him.”
With no other avenues to go down, I agreed a talk with this professor would be a good place to start.
Destiny left my house promising to call me tomorrow to let me know if her old professor had replied to her request to meet. Once again, I was alone with the leg.
Looking at the leg filled me with a strange sort of terror that I hadn’t felt since I was kid. The kind of helplessness you would feel as a child when you lost your mom in the mall, or when you were so sure that the shadow in the corner of your bedroom was a monster lying in wait until the moment you cross from wakefulness into sleep.
I brought the leg back to the gun safe and locked it away before leaving my house for the day. I didn’t have much in the way of errands, but I didn’t even want to be in the same building as the leg.
I wasted the day trying to get my mind off the absolute shit storm of a week I’d had so far. Ghosts, monsters, demons and God knows what else is real. How is someone supposed to just accept that and move forward with their lives? What else might be out there? Is God real? If so, that might be the scariest thing of all.
I went to the movies, but couldn’t pay attention. I went to my favorite restaurant, but didn’t have an appetite. I tried to go go-karting, but couldn’t get over how strange it was to go go-karting by myself. I spent the entire day thinking about how my inbox was full of things I’d thought were fake but now would never fully get over.
Eventually the sun fell and I found myself standing on my front porch trying to come up with any excuse to go and spend money on a hotel room. I almost did, but realized I was too broke to get one even if I wanted to.
A creeping dread wormed its way up my back as I walked through the dark house flipping lights on as went. I checked each room to make sure nothing had moved the positions I had left them in that morning. Looking back, I’m not sure if at that point I was more afraid of a ghost or demon or Psycho Jimmy in my house. Everything seemed to check out.
Feeling slightly better, but still a bit anxious I went to bed.
I woke up in total darkness, in the early morning. I could hear the wind in the trees. I turned over to squint at my alarm clock when the sound of my bedroom door unlatching made my stomach drop. In a flash I shot up in bed and tried to flip on the lamp on my nightstand only to find the light bulb had been removed.
I grabbed my phone, turned on the flashlight and directed the light at the door. The door was, indeed, unlatched and cracked open just a sliver. I sat in total silence, watching the small black crack between the door and the door frame, my ears strained to pick up any noise other than the wind outside.
My jaw dropped as the door slowly creaked forward, opening itself just wide enough for a head to peek into the room, but no one was there, just the empty blackness of the dark hallway beyond. My hands shook as I stared at the doorway, hoping something would come through, anything – a monster, a zombie, Psycho Jimmy. Anything would be better than the dread of sitting there in anticipation, my imagination conjuring up the worst. My heart was pounding against my ribcage and my mouth went dry. I gripped my phone with two hands to try to steady the shaking, but still they trembled, sending shadows dancing across my bedroom walls.
Then the door closed, just as slowly as it had opened, the door pulled itself back into its frame and latched itself closed.
Realizing I had forgotten to breathe, I sucked in air like a dying fish. I licked my lips and loosened my grip on my phone but my hands were still trembling and I dropped it. The phone bounced off the corner of my nightstand, hit the carpeted floor and bounced again under my bed.
A whole new set of shadows filled the room as the bright, fluorescent white light of the iPhone flashlight emanated from under my dirty bed.
It might sound weird, but this was almost as bad as the door opening by itself. The loss of control was devastating in the moment and I lunged over the side of the bed and blindly flailed my arm around searching for the phone.
My thrashing arm sent a wholly new set of shadows dancing around my room pushing my pulse even higher.
I’d never regretted not cleaning my room harder. I was wildly grabbing things and flinging them out from under the bed as soon as I confirmed they weren’t a cell phone. Magazines, old electronics and a few rock-hard socks flew across the room as I shoveled them out from under the bed. I continued to grasp blindly when my hand came across something I didn’t immediately recognize. It was a mess of tangled stringy material that seemed to grab at my hand as I brushed past it. I gripped and tugged hard to bring it out onto my bedroom floor, but encountered resistance as whatever it was seemed to cling to its secret refuge under my bed. I reestablished my grip on the object and pulled again, harder this time. I engaged the muscles in my stomach and back and just as it seemed the object would never relent a loud POP! echoed through the room as the object came free in my hand.
Startled and thrown off balance, I fell off my bed and sprawled onto the carpet below with the object still in my hand. I looked down at it and my blood turned to ice as I realized I was holding a woman’s head, her face frozen in surprise, her mouth a wide ‘O”.
I dropped the head and scrambled backwards on my butt until my back hit the opposite wall. It was only then I realized it was the head of a sex doll I had ordered 4 years ago, but never used. (It was too weird. Maybe guys who like sex dolls, would also like fucking dead bodies. Not for me!). Her name was Cynthia. I had hidden her under my bed in shame shortly after bringing her home and had forgotten about her. It’s not like a life-size doll is something you can easily throw away without the neighbors asking questions.
I relaxed at that moment. A wave of relief and amusement washed over me and I made a vow to get rid of Cynthia that weekend. Even if that meant I had to cut her into pieces and dispose of her in separate trash bags thrown into separate dumpsters like some sort of mannequin serial killer.
I started to get back up on my feet when the shadows danced around the room again. I glanced toward the space under the bed and saw the light was moving. Something under my bed had control of my phone.
Blinded by the light which was now pointed directly at me, I squinted my eyes to try to make out what fresh new terror was about to befall me. Slowly a form came into shape. A contorted silhouette that writhed in the confined space. It banged against the bed frame above it as it tried to right itself. The light moved, left, right, up, down as the dark shape twisted violently, but it always pointed the light directly into my eyes without fail.
For a moment, the noises below the bed stopped and the light remained still. The only noises audible were my own breathing and the wind that continued to whip the trees outside. I used my hand to shield my eyes from the now stable point of light and the shape solidified into a new form. It was a person crouched low. A Headless person. It was Cynthia.
She began to slowly crawl towards me. My heart skipped a beat as fear paralyzed me for a half second. Cynthia moved closer, moving in a jerky, unnatural motion because I hadn’t opted for the RealGirl™ realistic joint package.
My heart skipped another beat as curiosity paralyzed me for another half a second. Would it really be so bad to let her get to me? What would she do? Fuck me to death? Then I remembered she had fully articulated hands and a skeleton made out of titanium which snapped me out of it pretty quickly.
Cynthia dragged herself along, now halfway out from under the bed, my cellphone in hand.
I leapt into action. I sprang to my feet, took a few steps towards her and kicked at her. Unfortunately, it was dark and I aimed where a head would have been had this been a real person, or a fully-functional sex doll, and broke a toe on my metal bed frame.
Cynthia grabbed for me, but I quickly took a step back and she narrowly missed, her silicone fingers just brushing the skin of my leg. I tried another kick and this time aimed for my cellphone. I connected and sent the phone sliding across the bedroom carpet where it collided with the wall with such force that it flipped itself over landing the flashlight side-down.
The room plunged into darkness with the exception of the small light of my iPhone lock screen. I needed to get to the phone before the lock screen went dark in about 10 seconds, otherwise I would probably never find it.
I made a dash for the phone, but Cynthia caught my ankle sending me crashing to the floor. I couldn’t look back. I needed that phone, that light. Even if it was only so I could see how I was going to die I needed it. Worst case scenario, if I decided I didn’t like what I was seeing, I could always just turn the light off.
Not even wasting the time to stand back up, I crawled for my phone. I could hear the joints in Cynthia’s arms and legs squeak as she emerged from the bed behind me and stood herself up. (When I ordered her, they said the squeaking would fade with use, but like I said, I never used her, I want to make that very clear!) Still, I didn’t look back, I crawled forward, not paying attention to the rug burn on my knees or the pain that radiated up my leg from my broken toe or the 6 foot (tall girls, call me!) murderous sex bot that was standing itself up a mere few feet behind me. I need that phone.
I slammed my hand on the phone just as the light from the home screen faded away and I turned and pointed the flashlight at Cynthia.
She stood tall on her two feet, wearing a tattered and dusty school girl outfit (I’m different now), one large pendulous breast hung outside of her brassiere.
I was done for. Toast. Stick a fork in me. I was lying on my back, looking up at a killer dominatrix with a titanium skeleton, no head and zero pain receptors. All she had to do was fall forward and she’d be on top of me, strangling me with her delicate, perfectly formed and articulated fingers. Maybe, if I was lucky, her other breast would fall out of her shirt in the fall – you know, at least give me something to look at as life drained from me. Fortunately for me, that isn’t what she did.
The killer doll took one-step towards me and faltered.
The thing about sex dolls is that they are mainly designed to sit in chairs, pose on all fours and do a lot of lying on their backs. No one buys a sex doll to have it stand around. That’s like buying a dildo to use as a Christmas tree ornament. Sure, maybe with a little practice and a couple hidden supports you could have it stand around your house like some sort of fucked up anime wax museum, but that’s just not what it is designed to do. Especially if you didn’t spring for the RealGirl™ realistic joint package. I honestly doubt a real human woman would be able to stand unassisted if you gave them the strange cartoony proportions most of these dolls have.
So, Cynthia took a step towards me, wobbled, top heavy. Tried to over-correct, then fell backwards onto my night stand and started squirming to get back on her feet.
I took the opportunity to run.
I got back to my feet and found the bedroom door. My hand hesitated on the knob for a millisecond as I considered what else there might be hiding behind this door, then I opened it anyway. I rushed out of my bedroom and sprinted down the hallway, hearing moans and clicking and growling from behind the doors of the bathroom and second bedroom as I rushed past. I came to the end of the hallway to the main living area and kitchen and turned to head towards the door when I took one last look down the dark hallway towards my bedroom.
Just barely visible through the darkness was Cynthia, crawling on all fours out of the bedroom. Her head was now re-attached but backwards so she faced the ceiling as she crawled forward, her nails making a click-clack sound as she crossed from the carpeted bedroom to the hardwood floor of the hallway.
I shuddered and made for the door.
My plan was to get in the car and drive away, but I left my car keys inside. Instead, I walked to Walmart, the one place on earth where you can walk around in boxers and a white t-shirt and no one bats an eye.
For the second time in 12 hours, I was trying to distract myself to take my mind off of the horrors the lifting of the veil had shown me and this time I was stuck in a Walmart - the epicenter of human horror.
It actually wasn’t too bad; I only had a few hours to kill before the sun came up. At that point, I’d head back to my place, get some clothes and catch up with Destiny to see if she had scheduled a meeting with her old professor yet. I supposed I’d be expecting a call from Pedro at some point as well, I did promise him an internship. I just hoped I could run faster than him.

My mother (62F) has been ill for 4 days now. She started with sore throat, cough (some secretions though not much) and a low grade fever. She was seen 2 days ago at an urgent care and they tested her for Covid/Flu and both came back negative. She did test positive for UTI. She did do spirometry while there. Also had BP of 142/82. HR was normal. Temp 99.9 (which only goes down due to 500mg tylenol). Prescribed cefdinir 300mg twice daily for 10 days. She declined steroids (prednisone). She has consistently had no appetite. She continues to test neg for Covid. So far little to no improvement. Could this be pneumonia? RSV? How long should she wait until seeking further treatment? Anything helps, thanks!

I've been dealing with a weird upper respiratory illness for 2.5 weeks now. It started with what I thought were seasonal allergies. Laryngitis, post nasal drip, dry cough. The cough started getting wet and persisted after the post nasal drip went away. Laryngitis continued. Low grade fever up to 37.8 C
5 days after this started, when I inhaled I'd feel a pop or like an air bubble in my upper back on the right side. It's behind my right shoulder blade near the bottom. It definitely feels like mucus or something bubbling. Then it's followed by coughing and some yellow phlegm. No pain. Maybe an ache.
I knew it was probably viral bronchitis and tried to ride it out at home. 1.5 weeks in I coughed up a bit of blood in the morning. I knew it was probably just irritated airways, but I should take a sick day or two from work. I had to go to urgent care to get a doctor's note for this.
When I was there, my temperature was normal but my pulse was a bit high. The pulse oximeter went off and said my blood oxygen was at 87. The doctor tried a different finger and it came back 89, then 93, then 88. The doctor said it could be their machine but to go to the ER anyway for more tests.
At the hospital my oxygen was normal. Blood pressure a bit higher than normal. They ran blood tests and did a chest x ray. The results came back within normal ranges. The x ray said my chest was clear. I was sent home with a week's worth of amoxicillin in case a bacterial thing was getting started.
My cough started actually clearing more mucus after I started the antibiotics. The laryngitis also finally went away a few days ago. I do still get that "pop" in my shoulder area and an intense urge to cough when it happens. It's a bit less frequent but brings up phlegm. There's an ache but feels more like a muscle ache. Temperature is still a bit higher than normal. My cough is less wet but more barky... if that makes sense. It's been almost 3 weeks of this now!
Background medical info: 31F. Hypothyroidism being treated with Synthroid. I also take Vyvanse 40mg and Alesse. I can provide my lab results if needed. I've had a dry morning cough for about a year now. Mostly just when I get up or dehydrated. Not like what I have now.
TLDR: Is this still bronchitis? How long should I wait it out before going back to a doctor? I already feel bad enough that I had to waste hospital resources last week. What could be causing the popping feeling if my chest x ray was clear? Ty for any advice!

When I seen the prompt for this booking, two ideas came to my head. The first was Samoa Joe, who would have went on a complete run of dominance similar to when he arrived in TNA. The man I've went for however is Christopher Daniels, who unlike the other big names in TNA at the time like Jarrett, Joe and Styles, never actually had a full run in the company. This then sparked my interest and as to what would happen if he did decide to jump over to the WWE in the Ruthless Aggression era.
To begin this booking, Daniels needs to be taken out of TNA somehow, and I've decided that his last appearance would take place at Destination X where he'd originally have won the X-Division title in a Fatal-4 way match and would be the start of his, at the time, longest X-Division title reign. Instead, Daniels would go on to lose in this match and news would soon break that his contract has expired with TNA as he looks for a new place to call home. Dirt sheets claim that Daniels looks for a return to Japan but this all changes once vignettes begin airing on WWE television after Wrestlemania, taunting the arrival of a "fallen angel" to WWE, which to casual fans means nothing, but to a certain percentage of wrestling fans, they know where Daniels is headed next.
Daniels makes his debut at Backlash, appearing at the top of the ramp following the opener between Shelton Benjamin and Chris Jericho for the IC title. Benjamin tells Daniels to get in the ring and come face to face with him but he opts to just stand at the entranceway, appearing to have his eyes fixated on Benjamin and not the title sitting on his shoulder, making the Fallen Angel's intentions unclear on his arrival in the company.
Daniels opens the RAW after Backlash, feeling glad to finally be at the promised land of wrestling, a place where he can be his best while wrestling the best. His promo is cut off though as the man he confronted the night prior, Shelton Benjamin, comes to the ring and ask Daniels why out of every man on the roster and every match on the show, he decided to come out after his match. Daniels is able to give Benjamin a real good answer, telling him that when he watches him wrestling, he sees something unique. A talent like no other. A talent that should be sitting where his OVW classmates, John Cena and Batista are sitting at right now. But no, Benjamin's not doing that at all, and the reason? He's lost. Benjamin looks at Daniels like he's a crazed man, telling him he's not lost at all and that's evident through the fact he's been holding the IC Championship for the past 200+ days. Daniels admires that he's been champion for so long, but what happens once he loses the belt? Daniels just wishes to give Benjamin some guidance, lead him onto bigger and better things in the company. Benjamin calls Daniels insane, instantly rejecting his offer and telling him he's gonna prove he's not lost in the Gold Rush Tournament, starting his run tonight with the first match against Shawn Michaels.
Daniels appearing near the end of this match, where it actually appears like Benjamin is going to pull off the upset but a Sweet Chin Music out of nowhere quickly fades his dreams to dust as Daniels enters the ring, approaching Benjamin in the corner with a mic and offering his hand out to him, telling him he can guide him in the right direction. Benjamin isn't wanting to hear any of it though and slaps his hand away before rolling out of the ring and walking up the ramp with shame on his face.
Daniels' debut match would come on the next episode of RAW, facing Val Venis and beating him in just over two minutes with the Angel's Wings. Daniels grabs a mic following this win and in a similar manner to last week, approaches Venis with his hand out who actually accepts it and makes it back to his feet. Daniels speaks, telling Venis that when he looks at him, he sees a sad, pathetic man who has no direction in his career. Daniels is fine with this though, and tells him that he is here to guide him to superstardom. Venis tells Daniels he's grateful for the offer, but declines it. Daniels looks at him with disgust on his face as he begins pummeling Venis, driving him into the corner and stomping down on him but Benjamin rushes to the ring as he comes to blows with Daniels for the first time, driving him out of the ring and raising the title up, essentially telling Daniels he has the belt and he can't have it.
Daniels and Benjamin come face to face once again on the next RAW, with Benjamin genuinely wanting to know what Daniels deal is. Why is he asking people to join him when he knows nothing about how to climb the ranks in WWE? Daniels says he might not know as much about WWE as most on the roster, but what he does know is how to lead. Take a good guy and make him a great guy. Take a great guy and make him a star. Benjamin isn't convinced, but tells him that if he wants to put his money where his mouth is then next week he should appear at ringside alongside Benjamin in his IC title match against Christian. Daniels and Benjamin shake on it, but the tension is clearly felt between the two men.
Benjamin and Christian have their match on RAW and as promised, Daniels is at ringside trying to guide Benjamin to a win. Things look rough for Benjamin in this bout, almost looking to feel pressure with Daniels at ringside. The win looks to be set for Christian, looking to hit the Killswitch but in a last gasp effort, Benjamin manages to push both himself and Christian through the ropes and out of the ring. Daniels goes over to check on Benjamin as Christian pushes him away, wanting to win the IC title desperately. He rolls Benjamin in the ring as the ref checks on him, giving Daniels the perfect opportunity to HIT A LOW BLOW ON CHRISTIAN!! He rolls him in the ring as he shouts at Benjamin to get the cover, who does so and retains his title in the process.
Benjamin thanks Daniels for the win on the next edition of RAW, but Christian has a bone to pick with the two of them, demanding he gets a rematch after Daniels' low blow cost him the match. Benjamin is confused, asking Daniels about it but he flat out denies it. Christian is able to show proof though as Benjamin comes face to face with Daniels, but Christian isn't going out that easy, telling both men that he wants them in the ring tonight. Benjamin doesn't seem so willing to be defending his title two weeks in a row, but Daniels is up for the fight, telling Christian that if he wins, he can get his match against the both of them next week for the IC belt. Benjamin doesn't like Daniels calling the shots but he reassures him it's gonna be alright.
RAW, 6th June 2005:

• Christopher Daniels vs Christian (If Christian wins, he faces Daniels and Benjamin next week for the Intercontinental Championship)

The first big match for Daniels here as he looks to silence Benjamin's competition and keep his protégé running strong. They go at it in the opener of the show for 11 minutes, with Daniels getting to show off his abilities in the ring unlike his debut match with Venis. Christian wrestles like a man on a mission though, wanting to add another IC title reign to his record and by the end of the match, he looks to be getting one step closer to that as he sends Daniels face first into the canvas with the Killswitch and pins him for the 3 count, getting his title match next week.
Result: Christian def. Christopher Daniels by pinfall (11:06) (As Christian won, he faces Daniels and Benjamin next week for the Intercontinental Championship)
We jump to the night of the triple threat match as Benjamin and Daniels confront each other backstage, with Benjamin clearly furious that Daniels couldn't get the job done last week. Daniels gives Benjamin some reassurance however, telling him that this is all part of the plan and with him making it a triple threat, there's no way things could go wrong. Benjamin wouldn't have it any other way as he walks away from Daniels, barging into him as the Fallen Angel lets out a grin before getting the last preps in for the match.
RAW, 13th June 2005:

• Christopher Daniels vs Shelton Benjamin (c) vs Christian for the Intercontinental Championship

We make it to the match and all three men are standing in the ring, with Daniels focusing on Christian whilst the other two competitors have their eyes on both opponents. The bell rings as they begin circling the ring, with Christian jumping out of the ring and telling Benjamin and Daniels to go at it. Benjamin looks ready to fight but Daniels rolls out of the ring, chasing after Christian who rolls in the ring and gets taken out by Benjamin. Daniels essentially watches on the outside, almost acting as a manager in the match despite being an official competitor, only getting involved when Christian finds himself on the upper hand.
Things would change however once Benjamin confronts him on the outside, pushing him repeatedly before launching a right hook which causes Daniels to snap, driving Benjamin into the barricade and the steel steps. The shackles appear to be off the Fallen Angel now as he takes the fight to both men for the rest of the bout, but his focus still doesn't appear to be on the Intercontinental Championship as he never seems to capitalize on his biggest opportunities. However, he does end up breaking up Christian's pin on Benjamin following a Killswitch, leaving everyone confused as to what his motives are in this match. The match would come to a head after 14 minutes, with Benjamin hitting Christian with a T-Bone Suplex BUT DANIELS THROWS HIM OUT OF THE RING AND GOES FOR THE COVER..1..2..3!! DANIELS HAS STOLEN THE IC TITLE FROM BENJAMIN!! HE HAS PLAYED HIM LIKE A FIDDLE!!
Result: Christopher Daniels def. Shelton Benjamin (c) and Christian to win the Intercontinental Championship (14:23)
A mighty impressive feat for Daniels despite only being in the company for just over a month, and one he feels the need to celebrate as he opens the next edition of RAW to a thunderous reign of boos. Daniels acknowledges the boos, and tells the Phoenix crowd that he did it. He exposed Shelton Benjamin as the fraud he truly is. Without his belt he's now nothing and once he comes out to the ring which he knows he will, he'll prove him right even more. Right on cue, Benjamin makes his arrival to the ring, clearly pissed off at Daniels for what happened the last week. He begins by telling Daniels he can't believe he fell for his stupid trick to gain the belt, but once the rematch rolls around he'll put it right back where it belongs. Daniels just begins laughing, with Benjamin asking what's funny. Daniels ends up calling Benjamin predictable, knowing that once he came to the ring the first thing he'd mention was his belt. He tells Benjamin that he never wanted the belt in the first place, he wanted to prove a point. That point being that Shelton Benjamin is nothing without something to cling onto. First it was being Kurt Angle's lackey. Then it was tagging with Haas as the "World's Greatest Tag Team". And now its the Intercontinental Championship. Essentially Daniels is telling Benjamin he can't be someone without clinging on to something else. He can't put himself first, there is always something that makes him relevant and now without the belt he's irrelevant. Benjamin is done with the talking, lunging at Daniels and displaying an aggression never seen before from him as he plants him with a T-Bone Suplex and tells him he'll see him in the ring on Saturday at Vengeance.
Vengeance 2005:

• Christopher Daniels (c) vs Shelton Benjamin for the Intercontinental Championship

Benjamin jumps Daniels in the corner right from the get-go, clearly showing his intentions of getting his title back. Daniels reverses the pressure onto Benjamin though, bringing him down to the mat and essentially toying with him, using his newfound aggression against him as he tries slowing the pace of the match down to a level he'll enjoy. It's a back and forth tussle in the opening minutes of the contest, with neither man really showing signs of dominance as they slip back and forth into reversals and agile moves that really impress the crowd. The match progresses on and it continues to look even throughout, although the intensity has increased significantly, with both men desperately trying to outmaneuver the other in an attempt to win the match.
They both attempt to put the match away on multiple occasions, with Benjamin coming closest following a Superkick for a 2 count. Daniels can't get close to hitting the Angel's Wings however, with Benjamin evading every time and even reversing it INTO A T-BONE SUPLEX!! 1..2..KICKOUT!! BENJAMIN WAS MILLISECONDS AWAY FROM TAKING HIS TITLE BACK!! Benjamin looks bewildered at this point, wondering what the hell he could do to keep Daniels down for the 3 count. He takes a second to himself but suddenly Daniels theme song plays. Benjamin looks up the apron in confusion as a cloaked figure begins walking down the ramp before standing on the apron, with the ref trying to get him away from ringside. Benjamin's focus shifts for a second, with this being just enough to cost him the title as ANOTHER CLOAKED FIGURE SMASHES THE IC TITLE OVER HIS HEAD!! Daniels crawls over to the cover as the cloaked figures run away, with the ref counting..1..2..3!! DANIELS RETAINS THE TITLE BUT THE BIGGER QUESTION IS WHO ARE THE MEN WHO HELPED HIM WIN?!!
Result: Christopher Daniels (c) def. Shelton Benjamin by pinfall to retain the Intercontinental Championship (12:49)
Daniels rolls out of the ring as the cloaked figures stand at either side of him, revealing themselves to be ELIX SKIPPER AND LOW KI!! TRIPLE X IS REUNITED HERE IN WWE!!
Triple X open the RAW after Vengeance, with a lot of mystery surrounding what the hell happened in the IC Title match. Daniels first of all gives gratitude to Skipper and Low Ki for their assistance at the event, and understands the fans are confused. Why did they help him retain the title? Daniels says his aim when he arrived in WWE was to guide a lost wrestler into becoming a star. Clearly he didn't realise the toxic atmosphere he was entering, with no-one accepting his calling. Luckily for him though, he had some friends on the outside who wanted in and were willing to leave everything behind to become the top guys in WWE. The first step in this path to glory is rebirth, and for Daniels he has decided to rechristen them as The Fallen Angels. He orders the fans to stand and cheer for the new stars of WWE but they get booed heavily instead. The crowd's reaction quickly changes though once BENJAMIN MAKES HIS ENTRANCE WITH A HEAVY LOOK ON HIS FACE!! He rushes the ring and begins taking on all three men, but quickly gets mauled down as the Fallen Angels make a statement on to the entire roster that they aren't to be messed with.
The Fallen Angels are then seen backstage the next week, interrupting Bischoff and Benjamin discussing a fair rematch for the IC Title. Daniels tries to dispute that the contest was fair but even a blind man could've seen what happened, with Bischoff deciding to book Benjamin and Daniels next week in a title rematch, and to ensure no outside interference, it'll take place inside of a steel cage. Daniels storms off as Benjamin is left with a big grin on his face, but will Daniels be able to wipe that off his face next week and keep the belt away from Benjamin?
RAW, 4th July 2005:

• Christopher Daniels (c) vs Shelton Benjamin II in a Steel Cage match for the Intercontinental Championship

If there's a time and place for Benjamin to win the title, it's here. A patriotic Sacramento crowd rally Benjamin on, who dawns the red, white and blue for Independence Day. Daniels however isn't feeling the festivities, opting to wear only black as he enters the USA themed steel cage, making sure the title stays a fair distance away from Benjamin. The bell sounds and they waste no time getting into this contest, throwing shots at one another before Benjamin takes the upper hand and begins throwing Daniels from one side of the cage to the other. He continues mounting pressure, not letting Daniels get an inch as our champ is clearly in trouble.
He uses his heel tactics to get through this bad spell though, throwing the occasional poke to the eye or even tying Benjamin up in the ropes to stop him from attacking. They would both have their big moments in this match, kicking out of each other's finishers and stopping each other from climbing out of the cage. The match would culminate with Benjamin and Daniels duking it out in the middle of the ring, showing heavy fatigue from the brutal 17 minute encounter. Daniels almost appears to get the advantage with a big rolling elbow BUT BENJAMIN DELIVERS A SUPERKICK OUT OF NOWHERE!! Daniels falls to the mat as Benjamin sees this as his opportunity to escape the cage, wanting to win the title in the most satisfying way possible. He makes it to the top of the cage, but Daniels is surprisingly willing himself up to his feet. Benjamin notices this and realises Daniels could still make it out the other side so he JUMPS OFF THE TOP OF THE CAGE BUT NOONE'S HOME!! Daniels managed to back up in time as Benjamin crashes and burns, with Daniels deciding to add the final touches with AN ANGEL'S WINGS!! 1..2..3!! DANIELS RETAINS THE BELT INSIDE THE STEEL CAGE!!
Result: Christopher Daniels (c) def. Shelton Benjamin in a Steel Cage match to retain the Intercontinental Championship (17:32)
Now with Benjamin in the rear view mirror, The Fallen Angels appear on the next RAW, with Daniels laughing at the fans who believed he wouldn't be able to retain in the Steel Cage. He admits that he did take the title off Benjamin to try make him into a better man, but now with the belt on his shoulder the past few weeks he's taken a liking to it and has decided he wants to keep it. Permanently. That's not the biggest topic of discussion though, as he promised Low Ki and Skipper that when they arrived in WWE, he'd turn them into stars. And with the IC belt on his shoulder, he's decided the best way for them to become stars is to get championships of their own. This leads to Daniels calling out The Hurricane and Rosey, telling them to get to the ring and defend their belts right now against the Fallen Angels. They don't get the answer they want, with the Heart Throbs coming out and claiming they should be the No.1 contenders to the belt, and not these ugly new guys. Lance Cade and his new tag partner Trevor Murdoch are out next, wanting to make a big impact and taking the titles off the champs right off the bat. The teams begin bickering, which eventually turns into fighting after Low Ki unleashes a deadly kick to Antonio, with everyone else fighting it out after as Daniels exits the ring and watches the carnage from the outside...
...or so he thought as BENJAMIN ATTACKS HIM FROM THE CROWD!! HE STILL ISN'T DONE WITH DANIELS AS THEY BEGIN BRAWLING AROUND THE OUTSIDE OF THE RING!! The tag teams eventually spill to the outside as Daniels and Benjamin take centre stage, continuing on from their match last week as security and Bischoff are forced to come out to stop the brawl. Bischoff looks around the ring and notices a load of people brawling, which gives him the idea. Benjamin clearly wants another shot at the belt, and Daniels wants him away from the belt full stop. So, next week, Daniels will defend his title against Benjamin once again IN A LUMBERJACK MATCH!! Daniels looks disappointed in this decision, but this look quickly changes once Bischoff announces that if Benjamin loses next week, he can't challenge for the IC title as long as Daniels is champion. Benjamin has a look of dread on his face as Daniels tries softening him up for next week but Benjamin manages to avoid and drives him down to the mat with a T-Bone Suplex before locking eyes with the IC title, knowing he has one last chance to take the belt back home.
RAW, 18th July 2005:

• Christopher Daniels (c) vs Shelton Benjamin III in a Lumberjack Match for the Intercontinental Championship (If Benjamin loses he can't challenge for the IC title as long as Daniels is champion)

Three seconds. That's all it's gonna take for Benjamin to either get his prized possession back, or lose and have no direction for his career. Daniels walks into this match with a heavy smug on his face, clearly feeling confident about his ability to beat Benjamin for a third time. Benjamin has determination on his face, but clearly masking the pressure on him to actually come out with the win in this match. Most of the RAW roster arrive next to take their spot at ringside as the match gets underway, with the two men locking up in the centre of the ring. Their athleticism shows in the early moments of the bout as they try wearing each other down early with holds and light strikes to pace themselves, but Benjamin decides to take it to a pace of his own liking, something which would eventually cost him control of the match as he'd get dumped to the outside and beaten by the Fallen Angels until they get driven away by Cade and Murdoch, allowing Benjamin to get back in the ring and continue to fight against the odds.
He would manage to turn the match on its head, taking control of the match and showing signs of promise as Daniels' cockiness quickly fades, with Benjamin outwilling him and showing a greater determination to win the bout. Daniels would end up having his fair share of run ins on the outside as well, but uses the Fallen Angels to protect him which leads to all hell breaking loose as the tag champs get caught in the crossfire when the Heart Throbs and the Fallen Angels are brawling, leading to almost everyone fighting on the outside. Daniels gets away from this chaos and enters the ring where HE GETS HIT WITH A T-BONE SUPLEX!! 1..2..KICKOUT!! Benjamin punches the mat in anger, wondering what on earth he can do to come away with this win. He takes a minute to think, but amidst the chaos a steel chair is thrown into the ring, with no signs of who did it. Clearly taking this as a sign from God himself that he should use it, he picks it up and looks set to use it, but can't seem to bring himself to do so, not wanting to win the title in a shady manner. Daniels capitalizes on this softness, hitting Benjamin with a low blow before PLANTING HIM ONTO THE STEEL CHAIR WITH ANGEL'S WINGS!! 1..2..3!! CHRISTOPHER DANIELS REMAINS IC CHAMPION!! BENJAMIN'S DREAMS HAVE FADED TO DUST!!
Result: Christopher Daniels (c) def. Shelton Benjamin in a Lumberjack match to retain the Intercontinental Championship (12:08) (As Benjamin lost, he can't challenge for the IC Championship as long as Daniels is champion)
Daniels is in a celebratory mood here tonight, but there is still some business to attend to, with The Fallen Angels being placed in a Fatal-4 Way match for The Hurricane and Rosey's tag belts. He cuts a promo before the match, telling the WWE universe that he's feeling confident in his protégé's abilities to take home the belts. He then shifts his focus to his own state of affairs, stating that now he's planning on keeping this IC championship, he needs challengers for it. However, when he looks at RAW and their roster, he doesn't see much talent. Despite this, he has been told by Bischoff that tonight there will be a No.1 contenders Battle Royal main eventing tonight to decide the next challenger to the belt. Daniels welcomes the challenge, knowing he can beat anyone in that locker room.
The tag team title match takes place first in the show, with The Fallen Angels, The Heart Throbs, Cade and Murdoch and Hurricane and Rosey all fighting for the tag belts. They stand out as the most technical wrestlers in the match, standing head and shoulders above the whole competition. Fate would not be on their side though, with Hurricane stealing the pin from Skipper in the dying moments of the bout.
As for the battle royal, it's every man for themselves as they all gear towards a shot at the prestigious Intercontinental Championship. A few names stand out in the match, including Kurt Angle, Carlito and Edge, but the match would surprisingly be won by Matt Striker, who pulled off the upset by eliminating Angle last. Daniels is impressed by this and enters the ring to congratulate Striker, but it quickly turns sour as Daniels hits him with the Last Rites, leaving him lying in the center of the ring as he walks up the entranceway with confidence oozing out of him.
RAW, August 1st 2005:

• Christopher Daniels (c) vs Matt Striker for the Intercontinental Championship

Daniels comes into the match cocky as ever, knowing a jobber like Striker won't do anything against him. He even offers Striker a free hit before laying a beatdown on him, telling him he's nothing and he never will be. Daniels decides that he wants to end this match quickly, attempting the Angel's Wings BUT STRIKER HITS THE GOLDEN RULE OUT OF NOWHERE!! Daniels manages to roll out of the ring before Striker can get to the pin. He goes on to the outside, putting his heart and soul into trying to beat Daniels, utilizing everything on the outside he can before bringing him into the ring before the 10 count. This would be the end of Striker's momentum though, with Daniels becoming more vicious than before, essentially toying with Striker before pulling out a BME to finish the match and retain his belt.
Result: Christopher Daniels (c) def. Matt Striker by pinfall to retain the Intercontinental Championship (4:31)
Daniels wouldn't stop after the match, bringing the Fallen Angels down as they initiate a 3v1 assault on Striker, using weapons to try and put him out of action permanently. The Hurricane and Rosey rush to make the save but at that point Striker's ankle was already shattered by a steel chair, with The Fallen Angels instead taking the tag champs out and holding all 3 belts in the air, showing what the future could potentially hold for the trio.
Next week, the Fallen Angels are out in the ring and clearly have a lot on their mind. They address the attack on Striker, labelling it necessary to show him he should stay away from trying to put himself in scenarios he doesn't belong. He then moves on to the tag champs, calling them out and telling them that his men will be getting a rematch after the shenanigan's involved last time. Bischoff comes out and announces that the Fallen Angels would be facing Hurricane, Rosey and a mystery partner. Daniels is not having this, telling him he wants the tag title match tonight, not a 6-man tag. Bischoff says he's saving the rematch for a later date which visibly makes Daniels angry. He asks Bischoff who the mystery partner is, but Bischoff won't tell him anything.
RAW, August 8th 2005:

• The Fallen Angels (Christopher Daniels, Low Ki and Elix Skipper) vs The Hurricane, Rosey and ???

The Fallen Angels wait to see who they have to face as the tag champs arrive first. They enter the ring with massive grins on their face as the Fallen Angels just want to know who they're facing. Everyone waits in anticipation as ROB VAN DAM IS THE MYSTERY PARTNER!! HE'S NOT MEANT TO BE BACK FOR MONTHS!! RVD rushes to the ring as the 6 men begin going at it, with the fans all chanting for RVD as this appears to be a genuine surprise for them all. Daniels and RVD take center stage in this match, putting on a show when they're both in the ring which leaves the fans wanting more as RVD would eventually pick up the win in this bout, hitting Skipper with the Five Star Frog Splash to win his return match.
Result: The Hurricane, Rosey and Rob Van Dam def. The Fallen Angels by pinfall (10:42)
Daniels is seen in Bischoff's office next week, complaining that they were disadvantaged because they didn't know about RVD's return. RVD interrupts, telling Daniels that he shouldn't just be worried about losing the 6-man tag last week because now he's back, he's coming for gold and he wants that IC title. They get in each other's faces, with Bischoff holding them back and telling them if they want to fight, they can do it tonight. Daniels agrees to it, but only if he doesn't have to defend his title. RVD is fine with this, not wanting to take things for granted immediately and says that once he beats Daniels in the center of the ring, he'll take his IC title match.
RAW, August 15th 2005:

• Christopher Daniels vs Rob Van Dam in a non-title match (If RVD wins, he gets an IC Championship match)

These two continue to steal the show as they both continue what they started last week. The match is fast paced and stacked with plenty of action which makes the fans only want more. We get a 12 minute match here as they are given enough time to put on a show, with multiple near falls and high risk maneuvers throughout the contest. In the end however, Daniels would spike RVD on the mat out of nowhere with a Brainbuster before dragging him to the corner and going for the BME...BUT RVD ROLLS OUT OF HARMS WAY!! They both make it to their feet as RVD HITS THE VAN DAMINATOR!! He climbs to the top rope as the roof has blown off the arena, with RVD HITTING A 5 STAR FROG SPLASH!! 1..2..3!! RVD HAS PINNED THE IC CHAMP!! HE'S NEXT IN LINE FOR THE BELT!!
Result: Rob Van Dam def. Christopher Daniels by pinfall (12:18)
Things may be looking down for Daniels, who now has to defend his title at Summerslam, but it's not all bad for the Fallen Angels, with Low Ki and Skipper having a confrontation with the tag champs, Hurricane and Rosey. They state their claim for the belts, wanting a rematch against them at Summerslam, which the champs are happy to accept before a brawl begins between the two teams, with Low Ki and Skipper standing out on top over the tag champs.
Summerslam 2005:

• Christopher Daniels (c) vs Rob Van Dam II for the Intercontinental Championship

Daniels is way more focused in this bout than on Monday, knowing there is a legitimate threat to his title reign. He takes control in the beginning of the bout as they perform a sequence of grapples before the fight is quickly taken to the outside with both men falling through the ropes. The pace picks up here, with RVD managing to one up Daniels by performing a unique crossbody off the apron. He tosses him in the ring following this and goes for a quick cover which only gets a 1 count. RVD mounts the pressure onto Daniels, although displays some signs of cockiness over the champ. This would cost him a tremendous amount of momentum as Daniels is persistent on wanting to retain his belt, upping the ante as the match becomes very level headed.
Entering the second half of the match and it's still not clear who's going to win this bout. Although Daniels shows a greater drive to win the bout, RVD comes closest to winning the bout, almost gaining a 3 count after hitting a Rolling Thunder. Daniels won't go down without a fight though, and becomes more ruthless with his attacks, even going deep into his arsenal to unleash a Koji Clutch to try and make RVD tap. He breaks out of it though, and drops Daniels with a Van Daminator. The crowd rally him on as he climbs up the ropes, doing his signature taunt before HITTING THE FIVE STAR FROG SPLA...DANIELS WITH THE KNEES UP!! RVD bounces right off his knees, rolling around the ring clutching his stomach as Daniels gets up to his feet and DROPS RVD WITH THE ANGEL'S WINGS!! 1..2..3!! DANIELS RETAINS HIS BELT IN A GREAT CONTEST!!
Result: Christopher Daniels (c) def. Rob Van Dam to retain the Intercontinental Championship (15:37)
Later on in the show, we see Low Ki and Skipper taking on Hurricane and Rosey for the belts. Daniels joins them at ringside as they appear to dominate, but all of a sudden something snaps in the champs and they take control of the match, completely flipping the match on its head and almost winning the match on numerous occasions. Daniels is forced to get involved in the match, but is eventually driven out as RVD rushes to the ring, brawling with his opponent earlier in the night and driving him into the crowd as the fight takes them away from the ring. With Daniels gone, you'd think The Fallen Angels would crumble, but they actually manage to comeback and in a massive moment, take the titles from Hurricane and Rosey, with Low Ki hitting the Ghetto Stomp on Hurricane for the win. Daniels rejoins them, grabbing his belt as the three men pose at the top of the ramp, all holding gold as part 1 comes to an end.

Would this story be acceptable for plausibility? If we say, "I made it out of there by ascending the silver spire" or whatever, and that it is a memory, does that suffice? The part 1 is below
​

I died and went to Hell. Next to the Lake of Blood, I found a list of rules [part 1]

Throughout my life, I was always a piece of shit. From an early age, I joined a gang and started selling drugs. Anything from weed to heroin to crack sold itself, but on the unforgiving streets of the city, a single mistake could be fatal. I always carried a cheap burner pistol that I could throw away after using it. I know quite a few friends and acquaintances who died from drugs I sold them- some overdosing, others crashing their cars while high. A couple of them committed suicide during opiate withdrawals. One got cut in half by a train while nodding off.
But by seventeen, I had committed my first confirmed murder- a rival gang member and drug dealer who pulled a gun on me first. I had probably killed people before, but I never watched the news after a shooting or a stabbing to see the result. I wasn’t interested in the slightest.
In this case, I had just been slightly quicker than my rival and, a fraction of a second later, his forehead imploded like a smashed pumpkin in front of me, spraying bone splinters and brains all over the sidewalk. He stumbled forward a step before falling forward. His pistol went off in his dying hand, but it went low, the bullet disappearing with a crack into the nearby street. He fell forward with a dull thud, his legs kicking as if he were seizing.
The sidewalk of the dead end street we stood on spun around me for a moment. The many abandoned, rotting houses of the city loomed over us like hanging corpses. My ears gave a high-pitched shriek of tinnitus from the gunshots.
Nervous, I looked up and down the side street. The entire place seemed silent and dead. Then I heard voices nearby and saw lights turning on in the front yards and windows of houses. Without a moment of hesitation, I took off, sprinting blindly away from the crime scene, not caring much where I was going. Someone a few houses down came out, an old black man in his boxers and slippers. He saw me running and called out something in a quavering voice. I didn’t slow down for a moment.
Not long after, I heard the wailing of sirens off in the distance. They were drawing closer by the second. When the street abruptly ended in a cul-de-sac of mostly abandoned and dilapidated houses, I chose one at random and cut across its back yard, jumped over the rusted metal fence and kept on running, cutting across random yards and jumping more fences until I started making my way back towards downtown.
After about five minutes, I got to a street with a lot more traffic and people. Covered in sweat, I walked casually back towards my tiny, cockroach-infested apartment.
I thought I had gotten away with it. I thought I had been able to kill this worthless scumbag without anyone noticing. But there were more eyes glittering behind the veil than I realized at that moment.
I went back home- and that was the night I died and went to Hell.
***
I lived on the first floor in a building with falling-down rafters and a flat black roof like an infected scab. The paint on the outside was the color of vomit, the windows cracked and broken. Moreover, the place always smelled like Mexican food and chemicals, and every night, I would hear gunshots and panicked screams outside.
I sat down at the table and opened a beer. The ancient CRT TV was on, showing some old horror movie from the 1970s. I took a deep breath, relieved. I didn’t expect a thing to happen at that moment.
Suddenly, my door burst open as if someone had fired a cannonball at it. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Standing there, I saw a dozen black police in SWAT gear holding rifles. The laser sights jumped and danced across the floor before they converged on my head and chest. Someone screamed something in a hoarse voice, but I didn’t understand. The words sounded garbled, like the whispering of a demon. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.
I fell back in my chair in surprise. A single breath later, one of them opened fire. I felt the first bullet crash through my left shoulder, felt the bone shatter and the flesh explode behind it, warm blood running down my back and chest.
The next moment, others joined in. I didn’t feel the bullet that smashed into my head and sent me to Hell. It moved fast, faster than my nerves. It must have moved as fast as death itself.
The blackness descended on me like a cloud.
***
I don’t know how much time passed. It seemed like an eternity, full of freezing darkness and screams that came from everywhere and nowhere. I remember coming awake suddenly, standing before a face formed from blinding white light. I was healed without any signs of wound or blood from the gunshots. I found myself standing naked and alone in the freezing winds.
I was shivering, my arms wrapped protectively around my chest as I stood on a flat plain of cracked, gray stone. The wind whipped around me as if I were in a hurricane, blowing sand and dust across the eternal plains. The features of the endless face constantly melted and shifted, spiraling out with bolts of lightning that cracked and sizzled all around the hurricane of light. The face seemed to stand miles high with eyes that spun like the Sun.
“Where am I?” I whispered in terror. The face of infinite light stared down at me with a blinding intensity. It seemed to see every thought, every feeling, every memory. I could feel it looking through me as if I were glass.
“You are in the Bardo,” the being said in a voice like an exploding nuclear bomb. “I am the one who sees. I am GOD, the creator of the universe and all who live within it. In the end, to Me you will always return. Did you not know you would one day have to stand here?” I shook my head.
“No… I… I…” I stuttered in terror, unable to respond.
“I have seen your evil, for indeed, I am closer to you than your own jugular vein, your own heart. Did you not see the suffering of those who harmed the innocent, those who murdered and stole and lived their lives wallowing in filth? Did you not see them get wounded, shot, stabbed, strangled and imprisoned? Did you not see them die in their evil and return to Me?”
“I did,” I admitted. “Many times.”
“And yet you have fallen into the sickness yourself,” God said in a voice like a rushing waterfall. Fury and anger seemed to seethe from him. Dozens of bolts of lightning flashed out from all sides of that radiant face. “For this, you must be purified. Your soul must be cleansed with fire. For that is the fate of those who harm the innocent- they fall down to the bottomless pit, to the blazing inferno whose fuel is men and stones. The flames eat them all greedily, and then the fires cry out to Me for more.”
My body felt like it was covered with stinging hornets. Excruciating pins and needles ran all up and down my legs and arms. I looked down, seeing a swirling dark hole opening up underneath me in the field of gray stone, spitting out drops of liquid blackness. They splashed upwards, burning through my skin like napalm, but no blood came out. It was as if my body were dissolving into dripping shadows that pulled me downwards. I felt myself slowly falling through the eternal stone plain as unseen hands dragged me away. As I descended, I heard the voice of God one last time.
“Down into the pit you will go, to the valley of wailing and the lake of flames where the damned scream for peace that never comes, to the city of shadows, to Naraka…”
***
Beneath me, the shadowy tunnel descended. I fell through it like lightning. Everything spun around me at an incredible speed. Suddenly, I broke through something, some invisible barrier in the endless darkness. I found myself falling through a cloud of suffocating smoke, and then the world opened up all around me.
A blood-red sky with thick black clouds extended out in all directions. I glimpsed a world of sharp cliffs and rivers of lava that wound their way down mountains of obsidian.
I fell through the middle of the sky at a tremendous speed, the wind whipping around my ears like a hurricane. A scream ripped its way out of my throat, but I was traveling so fast I could barely hear it as the echoes disappeared above me. Below me was what looked like a massive lake filled with blood about half a mile wide, and it was coming up to meet me fast. Many struggling bodies writhed in the currents, trying to claw their way out. I crashed through the surface at an incredible speed, going deep under the warm crimson waves.
The bloody water of the lake filled my mouth and nose with the overwhelming taste of copper and iron. I started trying to swim back up to the surface, frantically kicking and pushing with my arms and legs. I opened my eyes, and the salty blood stung them. It looked like I was peering through a translucent red film into a world of deep-sea abominations. Long snakes with two heads swam all around me, snapping and biting at each other and any legs or arms nearby. I saw them drag people down one by one, wrapping their slick bodies around their struggling victims as they drowned.
I broke through the surface, inhaling deeply. I was worried about the snakes and whatever else was slinking around down there. Thousands of people treaded water in the massive lake, trying to make their way to the shores. The nearest person to me was only ten feet away, a young woman with panicked eyes and wavy black hair. As I watched her, she gave a scream of terror and then was dragged under the surface, struggling and kicking. She never reappeared.
All around me, I smelled the fetid rot of decaying bodies. There must have been thousands and thousands of corpses at the bottom of this bloody lake. Some of them floated on top of the surface, rancid and swollen, their sightless eyes staring up at the fiery sky. The surface of the lake constantly bubbled and writhed, though whether this was from the rotting of so many bodies or from hidden monsters breathing under the surface, I didn’t yet know.
Frantically, I looked around for the nearest shore to get out of the danger. I saw that if I swam past the direction where the young woman had been, I would only have to go about two hundred feet. But my heart hammered in my chest as I remembered her being dragged under, her frantic, panicked struggling. What if the same creature was waiting over there, waiting for someone like me to try to swim over?
There were dozens more people between me and the nearest shore. Most of them climbed out, dripping drops of crimson onto the black volcanic sands of the beaches. I made my way as fast as I could in that direction, deciding to take my chances with the snakes. Otherwise, I would have to swim at least four times as far to get to the next nearest beach, which also swarmed with masses of naked people clawing their way out of the bloody lake.
A small group of people was concentrated only twenty feet away, three men who were swimming in the same direction I was. One started screaming suddenly. A purple tentacle the color of an old bruise broke through the surface of the water. To my horror, I saw it had black spikes that clicked and clacked together all along its massive arms. The spikes resembled long, hollow hypodermic needles.
The screaming man tried to swim in the opposite direction, but the tentacle wrapped around him, pulling him above the water. It tightened like a boa constrictor, the black spikes stabbing into his chest and stomach. Countless punctures opened up all along his body. The black spikes flexed, and his ribcage ripped open with a wet, ripping sound. The man’s screams abruptly cut off as his head lolled. With a sucking sound, the hollow spikes began drinking, consuming the man’s spurting blood with a sound like an inhalation of air. Slowly, almost lazily, the tentacle began dragging his limp corpse under the surface, back towards the main body of whatever monstrosity it belonged to.
The other two gave panicked sobs as more purple tentacles broke through the surface of the lake. Frantically, I started swimming around them, giving them a wide berth. Within seconds, the other two men were dragged under, deep stab wounds opening in their bodies as the hollow spikes drank greedily with loud sucking sounds.
“Fuck!” I cried, horrified. I felt something brush past my leg, something slimy and eel-like that writhed and slithered under the opaque crimson surface. In horror, I felt its slimy skin wrap around my leg, at first loosely slithering, then tightening. Two black faces with white, lidless eyes rose out of the water, the faces of serpents with fangs like switchblades. I saw both heads were connected to a single slithering body, one that wrapped slowly around my legs and arms, strangling me. Screaming, I felt its fangs dig into my neck. As the twin pairs of lidless white eyes stared at me, I tried to fight, tried to raise my arm, but it was far too strong. It dragged me under the surface.
Struggling against the beast, feeling its poison coursing through my bloodstream like lava, I drowned in the lake of blood. The experience of drowning is horrifying beyond all measure- the overwhelming fear and anxiety when you realize you have no air, the sensation of inhaling the bloody water, the sensation of dying. My vision turned black as a suffocating, clenching fist squeezed my heart. It felt like it took an eternity, but it was probably only a couple minutes at most. Death came over me then, cold and filled with small, suffocating agonies. That was the first time I died in Hell, but it would not be my last.
For in Hell, as I quickly learned, you never truly died, but were just thrown back to the beginning.
***
I felt myself falling again through the black clouds, the Lake of Blood beneath me. It all repeated like before. I screamed as I fell through the water at an incredible speed. Eldritch monstrosities were dragging people under the surface all around me. As quickly as I could, I swam towards the nearest shore. I dared not look down, didn’t dare slow for a single moment. A few times, I was nearly swiped by large, writhing tentacles, but they found other shrieking victims nearby to my immense relief.
I didn’t want to die ever again. It was a horrible sensation, though one that I would, sadly, become used to. Death followed me like a shadow, and starting over in Hell was always a nightmare.
I gave a gasp of joy when my feet touched bottom. Running through the rippling currents of blood, naked and gasping, I came upon the black sands of the shore. Looking around the lake, I saw there were four beaches, seemingly placed at each point of the compass underneath the spinning, blood-red sky.
At the end of each of the black sands lay a sparkling silver gate fifty feet tall and hundreds of feet across. The thin strands of silver intertwined like the fine filaments of a spiderweb, spiraling around each other in graceful, curving arches. Embossed over the top were the words, “ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.” No one seemed to pay the gate any mind. Naked crowds of struggling people stumbled through it onto the streets of Hell, streets that were paved with human bones and stretched off to the horizon.
Skyscrapers made of obsidian with spiraling windows like the murderholes of a castle stretched hundreds of stories up into the blood-red sky. As I staggered out, pressed body to body in the thick crowd of crying, wailing people, I saw ahead of us the second mortal danger of Hell.
There were countless gangs of mostly men gathered on the streets of bone, the desperate soldiers of this apocalyptic wasteland. They huddled together in groups of ten or twelve, attacking and murdering random people who tried to sprint past from the Lake of Blood. They wore crude leather tunics and pants that looked like they were made from human skin. Some wore crude masks of human skin on their faces, ragged patches of flesh that had been cut from the bodies of the dead. They stared out with cold, emotionless eyes through the holes in the dried, leathery skin, surveying the surging crowds like lions surveying their prey.
They held primitive weapons in their hands, clubs and maces made from bone, swords sharpened from obsidian glass and even wooden spears. The wood looked strange and dark, almost like mahogany. Next to them were fires with sharpened spits of roasting human meat. The fat dripped off the dismembered arms and legs sizzling over the flames. It gave off a smell like roast pork that permeated the area, rising up in thick, fragrant clouds.
I followed the surging crowds, watching in horror as the groups of armed men attacked and killed random passersby in the crowd, dragging their limp bodies next to the fires where they stacked the unconscious or dead people in stacks like cordwood. I figured they would inevitably roast their flesh for food or make pale leather armor from their dead skin. I felt myself being pushed over in the direction of the nearest group of armed thugs. A few of the nearest men wore masks made of people’s faces, though those behind them did not, only wearing the crude leather armor instead.
One of them standing only ten feet away met my eyes, his cold killer’s gaze boring through me. The mask of skin made him look like some monster from a horror movie, with its ragged, mutilated edges and garish black stitches. He took a step towards me, raising a short spear made from a human leg bone and sharpened to a blood-stained point.
In panic, I looked around, seeing a young woman in her early twenties standing next to me. She was looking straight ahead with panic and terror in her eyes, not paying any attention to me or the men that crept towards us. With all of my strength, I shoved the woman towards the masked killer. She stumbled back in surprise, falling into the man’s weapon. His bone spear stabbed through her stomach. She looked down at her naked body in horror when the point emerged from her navel, dripping rivers of blood down her trembling legs. As she spit up trickles of blood and collapsed to her knees, I ran. A sickening crack rang out behind me like a shattering of bones, and I knew they had murdered the young woman.
I sprinted away from the gangs of cannibal killers as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast considering how many naked, screaming bodies pressed in all on me from all sides. I felt myself being carried forward by the surging masses towards the silver gate. Hanging from the delicate silver threads, I saw signs written in many languages. I found one in English and started reading it with rapt attention, even as I was relentlessly pushed forward and elbowed and kicked.
I still remember what it said by heart.
“Rules for Naraka:

1. Those who are damned will be fed from the fountain of life. GOD will ensure your rebirth at the Lake of Blood. Though death may crush you over and over, there will be no rest.
2. Stay away from the Screamers, the faceless ones who roam the land. Those who are taken by the Screamers will know endless torment and madness in the caverns deep under the ground.
3. When the sirens in the center of Naraka wail, the firestorms are coming. Seek shelter immediately.
4. Those rare ones who ascend the silver spire at the end of Naraka may find salvation, even in the city of shadows.”

As I was pushed forward, I read the sharp, copperplate engraving scrawled across the silver signs in glowing red letters, trying to memorize every single word. At the time, none of it made much sense, but I instinctively felt that it was immensely important in some way I didn’t yet understand.
Immediately outside the gate, the beach turned into a road paved with bones. Leg bones and arm bones were laid side by side, yellowing and drying under the dark crimson sky. Skulls embedded in the center of the road grinned up at me, laughing at silent secrets I could never hope to comprehend.
Naked and barefoot, I sprinted down the road of bones between massive skyscrapers of black obsidian and gleaming red volcanic rock. People started to thin as the survivors scattered in all directions. I felt the sharp points of bone stabbing into the soles of my feet.
That was the moment the sirens began their eerie wailing, rising and falling in a dissonant cacophony, slower and deeper than any tornado siren I had ever heard. It sounded almost like a whale call, stretching out over the infernal city. They sounded from all around us, seemingly ringing out from thousands of speakers hidden throughout the obsidian towers.
I looked up suddenly. The crimson sky had changed rapidly, forming into a cyclone that swirled overhead in great black and red spirals. It met in a fiery eye at the center. As I looked up, I saw glowing orange hail soaring through the air, leaving behind streaks like thousands of comets. It fell towards the naked masses of tens of thousands of bodies pressed together on the streets.
At that moment, I remembered the rules. Some of the others apparently hadn’t read them during the panic and horror of the escape from the Lake of Blood, and they continued surging forward down the road as fire began to fall like drops of napalm all around us. Wails of agony rose up from those who were covered in the glowing lava. The people in the front of the crowd immediately fell under the heat and destruction of the firestorm. Their hair lit on fire, their skin melted and blackened, and still more fire rained down from the sky, sweeping relentlessly in our direction.
I saw an obsidian skyscraper with a great, open archway only a couple hundred feet away. The nearest of the crowd scrambled to find cover under the safety of the building. I sprinted along with them. As I reached the threshold, I felt the first burning drops of magma land on my back. I screamed as I smelled my own skin cooking and my own hair burning, and then I was through the archway. I fell, rolling on my back, trying to put out the sizzling fires that burned me like some corrosive acid.
I felt rivers of warm blood running down my back as more people ran past me, deeper into the hall. The skyscraper was massive, not only in height but in width. The hallway ran for hundreds of feet, disappearing into doorless thresholds on both sides cleaved out of the obsidian, as if the entire structure had been carved from one enormous piece of glassy stone. In the center of the hallway, it opened up into a spiraling staircase.
I looked up abruptly to see three men wearing masks made of human skin standing over me, each holding primitive bone spears in their filthy, blood-stained hands. They looked emaciated, wasted away, like the walking corpses of a death camp. To my utter astonishment, even through the layer of dried, ragged skin, I recognized one of them. It was in his gray eyes, and the twisting dragon tattoos that covered his arms and chest instantly brought a flash of memory.
“Shooter,” I said as they raised their weapons. “Shooter, it’s me. Remember me? It’s Richie.” He froze in place, looking down at me with widening eyes.
“Holy shit, Richie?” he said, tearing the mask off. “What are you doing here?” It was an absurd question, of course. What were any of us doing here?
The last time I had seen Shooter, he had been sitting a pile of blood in his car. He was one of the designated gunman for the Solid Ones, the gang we had both joined when we were young. The amazing luck of finding another Solid in this place of death was astounding. But, then again, I had known many people who had died, and I had a feeling the vast majority were here somewhere.
“I guess I died,” I said sheepishly, giving him a faint half-smile. The other two men standing by his side lowered their weapons. “Fucking pigs came in and shot me.”
“Ah, yeah,” he said, unsurprised. “They do have a tendency to do that.” He gave a low laugh. I took a long look at Shooter, who was wearing the pale skin of some unknown victim or victims of this place of agony. He reached a trembling hand down and pulled me up from the smooth surface of this strange skyscraper. More naked, scared people continued to stream past us as the sirens continued their infernal shrieking outside. Many of them had horrific burns all over their body, and a few were clearly on the verge of death by the time they had made it inside.
Farther down the hall, another ten men wearing the same garb as Shooter came towards us, holding sharpened swords of obsidian and thick clubs made of bone. Shooter put his hands up.
“Hey, I know this guy,” he said calmly, motioning over to me with an apathetic wave of his head. “He was in the same gang as me! We used to go around having a great time, I’ll tell you. Remember that time we shot at that cop and he pissed himself?” He gave a racuous laugh at that. I smiled as the memory flooded back. Shooter had definitely hit him, though I think I probably missed. I remembered the blood soaking over the arm of cop’s uniform as he lay there, gasping and turning white, his face looking bloodless and shocked. Shooter and I had run away, high-fiving each other and grinning like maniacs.
“Yeah, I do,” I said, grinning. The other men surrounded me in a semi-circle. Shooter knelt down and extended a hand to me, helping me off the ground.
“Well, you’re in good company,” he said. “Here, we can do whatever the fuck we want. What’s going to happen, after all? It’s not like we can be sent to Hell.” He laughed, and that laughter writhed with the insanity and bloodlust that seemed to be eating him from the inside like a cancer.
***
“We still need to take him to the Sergeant,” one of the masked men next to Shooter said. “We can see if he has the right stuff needed to fight with us.”
“What happens when you guys die?” I asked. “I mean, obviously, you restart at the Lake of Blood, but how do you find your way back to your gang?” Shooter shrugged.
“We always find each other again eventually,” he said. “It’s not like there’s any lack of time here. All we have is time- and fresh meat, of course. There’s always more fresh meat streaming in through the Lake of Blood. We can take whatever we need from them…” The wailing of the sirens suddenly ended as he spoke. I looked around, seeing burnt and dying people still struggling into the front hallway of the skyscraper. The smell of burning hair and searing flesh filled the entire area.
“Come on,” one of the men said. His voice was gruff, as if he had been chainsmoking five packs a day since he was a little kid. “The Sergeant is on the top floor. You’ll have to talk to him.” I nodded, knowing they would certainly kill me if I did not join their group.
But at that moment, something much worse than dying, blackened bodies crawled in through the archway. I saw it before the group of men did. Instinctively upon glimpsing it, I knew it was something terrible, something that could only live in the depths of a psychotic’s nightmare.
It stood nearly ten feet tall. Its skin was as pale as a writhing maggot. On its hairless face, I saw no eyes, no nose, no ears, just smooth, bone-white skin. It had thin lips tied together with black thread, the garish stitches poking out from the ragged, bloodless flesh. Its arms and legs looked inhumanly long and thin. Its ribs and spine jutted out as if it were a starving, rabid animal. From all around its body, an inhuman wailing started, as if dozens of demonic voices were shrieking in unison. Yet its mouth stayed firmly closed, still stitched shut.
Its fingers jutted out like railroad spikes, each a foot long. As its screaming intensified, it ran towards us, crushing the dying and injured under its naked, twisted feet. I stared into its pale, bloodless face, and even though it had no eyes, it felt like it stared straight back at me, looking into my soul.
“Don’t look at it!” Shooter screamed next to me, turning his face away. The rest of the men closed their eyes or turned away, backpedaling away from the abomination. “It will take on the shape of what you fear most! It’s a Screamer!” But it was too late. At that moment, something strange happened to the pale, naked body of the Screamer. It rippled like a mirage sizzling off the sands of a desert. Its body squeezed and contorted as the distorted shrieking around its pale, naked body grew louder and more insane.
Thin stalks of black, spidery legs began jutting out of the sides of its chest. Its face melted like wax as glittering compound eyes sprouted from the top of its head. Within seconds, it had turned into a massive spider, a black widow whose head nearly scraped the ceiling twenty feet above us. The red hourglass on its back shone brightly, as if in reminder of the imminent death it brought to anyone it touched.
I hate spiders. I’ve always hated spiders. When I saw that skittering, crawling monstrosity, something in me broke. I sprinted towards the group of men who were trying to do their best to escape without looking directly at the Screamer, hoping that the spider would choose one of them instead of me. But I heard its massive bulk following closely behind me. I could feel its insectile breath on the back of my neck.
Naked and frantic, I sprinted behind the nearest of the men and used the same tactic I had used escaping through the silver gate: I pushed the unsuspecting figure towards the abomination that rushed towards us in a blur, its eight legs pounding the glassy floor with reverberating thuds.
Drops of clear venom dripped from its fangs as it grabbed the struggling man. It bit deeply into his leg, and as the venom dripped onto his skin, it seemed to eat through his flesh like some sort of acid. The man screamed as red streaks rapidly spread up his leg throughout the rest of his body. His teeth began chattering and his pupils dilated as he stared at me accusingly. But he did not die.
The spider grabbed him and dragged him away down the hallway, down to wherever the victims of the Screamers go. I saw a dozen more of the pale, faceless monstrosities rushing in to take his place. The men looked up, and the Screamers erupted into monstrous shapes: giant, slithering snakes, a floating eyeball with black, squid-like tentacles writhing around its central mass, enormous brown recluses and black widows and faceless Grim Reapers who floated over the ground in black robes. The overwhelming sense of fear and panic I felt at that moment still stays with me to this day, and even though this happened a couple days ago and I did eventually make it out of that den of horrors, it still leaves a deep scar across my mind.
As visions from a nightmare approached us, I turned and ran.

Created a throwaway. I never knew I'd find myself in a position where I feel more comfortable seeking opinions and advice from internet strangers rather than speaking to the people in my life about something. But here I am. I'm on mobile. I am upset. Please try to be gentle, but honest with me. My sincerest apologies for any ramblings or nonsense that may incur. I will try to relay this as simple as possible and will update/edit if it seems to be missing information for context. Sorry for the long post.
For background: My husband and I are in our mid-late 30s. We have been married for a bit longer than a decade. We have had many struggles throughout our marriage, but never to a point where things got out of hand, never physically or emotionally abusive, never seriously contemplated or discussed divorce... until recently, but that's for a different post for another time.
As far as our "argument styles," I'll go ahead and just put myself out there and say that I am always the one in our relationship that raises their voice when arguments happen. It's usually starts out as a jolt of frustration and angry expression followed by a need to walk away, coming back to apologize and willing to make amends. My husband is the opposite. He says nothing, harbors it all in, and then weeks or months later, explodes, and everything comes pouring out all at once. Then, after he calms down, he acts as if nothing happened to avoid discussing it any further. So needless to say, we have major communication problems. We both are actively working on it.
We have a daughter. She is 2. She is speech-delayed, and we suspect she may be mildly autistic. We have not had her tested yet, but it's in the works and without going through a lot of details, are getting her set up with therapies and evaluations and hopefully get in sooner rather than later to be tested for a possible diagnosis.
As you can probably conclude, bad communication between parents in addition to a non-verbal toddler can be quite a formula for frustrating moments because we don't know 90% of the time what she wants, however, she shows us through actions, her desires for food and drink or help with a toy, etc.
She is an amazing child. She was an easy baby. Never had health problems as of yet, no sleep issues, was never colicky. She has a sweet and gentle temperament. If she ever fusses or has a tantrum, they never last more than 3-5 minutes. Other than the occasional meltdowns, nights with trapped gas, or figuring out what food she'll eat that day, all things to be expected of a toddler, we are so blessed to have such an easy-going, happy child. She loves to be loved and is also great at independent play, among other things.
Now, here comes all that leads up to my AITA moment. Our daughter has been running a high temperature/low fever for the past day and a half. She had a rough night last night, which means so did her daddy and me. She finally fell asleep in our bed at around 4:30 a.m. We slept until 9 a.m. when she woke us by crying. Boisterously crying. My husband should have started work at 9:30, but he is self-employed, so he has the privilege to start his day late. So I tried to tend to her while he immediately got out of bed to start getting ready for work.
Our daughter was uncontrollablely crying. Couldn't be soothed. Here I am, extremely tired and worn down from the night before, trying everything I could think of to get her to calm down to no avail. As he was still getting ready for work, I finally had to say, "I'm stepping outside for a minute. Just let her cry." He tried to take over.
I went outside for no longer than 3 minutes. I came back inside and heard that he was in her room changing her wet diaper. She was still uncontrollablely sobbing. I could hear him across the house. He wasn't shouting or yelling, but he was obviously angry and aggressive in his tone. I could tell he just couldn't handle it, so I went to intervene.
I walked into her room and he had her on her changing table/dresser, looming over her with his hand cupped over her mouth and very firmly, somewhat loudly and agressively asking and saying, "What is wrong? Why are you crying? What do you want? Stop crying!" I knew the moment I saw them that he wasn't hurting her. He wasn't suffocating her. He didn't even have his hand firm over her mouth. Just cupped over, I guess, to muffle the cries. But even knowing this, I freaked out. I rushed up to him and grabbed his arm, and shoved him away. I laid my hand on his chest and pushed him back, and yelled, "Get away from her! Get out of here! Don't you EVER do that to her again!" I glared at him, and he just stared back at me. I turned around to finish changing her diaper and stroked her face in more attempts to calm her down. He just stood there watching and finally said, "I didn't do anything to her!" Then left the room. I picked her up to take her to the living room to watch some Bluey to distract her while I held her and rocked her. He didn't say a word to me and stomped around the house finishing getting ready and just left without saying anything, peeling out of the driveway. We have not spoken since.
All this was 6 hours ago. I'm still fuming about it. She's just a small child. She doesn't have the capability to tell us what is wrong or what's hurting her. She shouldn't be muffled. She should have the comfort and freedom to express herself the only way she knows how and to know she is in a safe space. And to know that we will hear her cries and be there for her, and that we will try our best to comfort her. Protect her.
But please tell me if I overreacted or if I was in the wrong. Please humbly give me suggestions on how I could've handled this situation better. Please tell me if you think I should apologize when he gets home. Now that the dust has settled, I keep seeing his face and how hurt he looked. Reflecting back, I glared at him as if he WERE an abuser, but he is so far from that. I was so angry, but that didn't* excuse my actions.
Help me understand what just unfolded and help me hear some outside opinions on this situation.
TYIA.
*edited doesn't to didn't
ETA: I am respectfully reading all of your responses and taking into consideration all the proactive advice and situational awareness bestowed upon me. My husband is on his way home, and I informed him that I would like to discuss the happenings of this morning and that I would also like to apologize for my actions. Will update when I get a chance. Thanks to all.

I’m posting here because I have dysautonomia and you guys will understand.
So I’ve been sick for ~3 weeks. Started as a cold, then intermittent sore throat, low grade fever, green mucus, and developed into progressive fatigue.
I’ve ridden this horse before. Happen 2x in the part 5 years where I have clear lung sounds but end up getting a chest xray after 2 additional weeks of misery because I have pneumonia.
I sleep 13hrs a day. I’m grumpy and a misery to be around.
My NP’s diagnosis? Allergies. Friggin ALLERGIES! Allergies don’t make me cough until I pee myself!!!!
I’m ready to scream. She spent 5+ minutes telling me how unsafe chest X-rays are (BS. I have a masters in biotechnology) and said I had no basis for claiming it was pneumonia.
I asked what about my medical history of 2 instances of pneumonia with clear lung sounds in the last 5 years. She said I had clear lung sounds and no fever in office to point that out.
THATS THE POINT! I have a history of atypical presentation of walking pneumonia!!!!
Anyways I got to be miserable for the next week to make her even CONSIDER it when I’ve been sleeping 13hrs+ a day just to function.
Half this post is justified frustration and the other half is because I’m grumpy and miserable. She makes it sound like she’s not going to treat me unless I’m on deaths door and I hate it.

There are so many delicious foods to eat on Thanksgiving, and it can be hard to narrow it down to just one or two favorites!
If you’re a Thanksgiving newbie, check out this list of Thanksgiving foods that start with L and introduce your taste buds to all of the scrumptiousness that awaits you!
Whether you plan on eating them in a traditional Thanksgiving dinner or as part of your own personal feast, try these tasty treats on your holiday table!
If you’re wondering what to serve at your Thanksgiving feast this year, consider the following list of Thanksgiving foods that start with L.
Listed below, these healthy dishes are delicious and nutritious ways to give thanks this holiday season.

1. Lobster

The holiday season means that it is time to celebrate, relax, and enjoy the company of family and friends. What better way to celebrate than with a scrumptious feast?
If you are searching for a mouth-watering dish to serve for your feast this year, look no further than lobster!
Lobster is a traditional dish served on holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. However, its popularity has also made it an appetizer that can be served any day of the year.
Lobsters are available fresh or canned at most grocery stores or seafood markets. There are so many different ways to prepare lobster that it is hard not to find one that would suit your needs perfectly!

2. Linguine

Linguine is a type of pasta that is shaped like long, flat noodles. It can be served with various sauces or toppings, and it's a popular dish for the holiday season.
Served with butter, garlic, and olive oil, this dish is similar to clam sauce but has a more subtle flavor. Linguine can be served on its own as an appetizer or as part of a larger meal.
Cook linguine according to package directions. Drain and set aside in a serving bowl, reserving a cup of the cooking water in a small bowl.
Melt butter in a large frying pan over medium-high heat until foaming subsides; add garlic and cook, occasionally stirring, until fragrant but not browned (about 30 seconds), about 2 minutes.

3. Lima beans

Some people may not know that lima beans are traditional Thanksgiving foods that start with L. It's true! Lima beans (aka butter beans) are easy to make and taste delicious, especially when paired with ham. They're also high in protein, making a great side dish for vegetarians.

4. Lionfish

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and if you're looking for some new, exciting Thanksgiving foods that start with L to put on the table.
There are lots of options. One example would be lionfish. This delicious fish can be prepared in various ways and makes for a tasty alternative to turkey or ham.
It's easy to find at most grocery stores, so all you need to do is pick up your ingredients, get cooking and enjoy!

5. Lychees

Let's talk about lychees. This delicious fruit is often a staple in Asian dishes, but it has also become more popular in Western cooking.
It looks like a little yellow grape with a tough outer shell that needs to be peeled away before you can eat the flesh inside. A great way to start your day!

6. Lamb

A rich and savory dish that pairs well with all of your favorite fall vegetables. Lamb is one of the most popular thanksgiving foods that start with L, but it's common to serve lamb.
Lamb is healthier than ham because it contains less fat and cholesterol than other meats. Plus, it also tastes delicious with cranberries and mashed potatoes!

7. Lasagna

This dish is perfect for feeding a crowd and can be made in advance to save you time on the day of the feast for Thanksgiving foods that start with L.

8. Latkes

Crispy and delicious, these potato pancakes are a delightful side dish to any meal. The latke is a dish that is traditionally served during Hanukkah but can be served at any time of year.
Latkes are typically made from grated potatoes mixed with eggs, salt and onions. The mixture is then pan-fried in oil. A typical garnish for a latke might include sour cream or applesauce.

9. Lemonade

It's not a holiday without the traditional pumpkin pie, but some other Thanksgiving foods start with L to consider.
Which is Lemonade, Refreshing and comforting. However, Lemonade is a staple for many people during the warmer months.
Nevertheless, it's also an excellent drink to enjoy on cold winter days. Whether you enjoy lemonade with a little bit of vodka in it or prefer iced tea with a generous helping of freshly squeezed juice, this beverage can be enjoyed all year long.
Besides being delicious, lemonade offers some health benefits, such as aiding digestion and providing Vitamin C.
This tangy beverage should be at the top of your list when you're looking for something new to try this Thanksgiving holiday!

10. Loin

The loin is a meat cut that comes from a pig's back and lower part. It's usually roasted, grilled, or smoked. In French, it's called filet, which means a thin strip.
The loin lies between the backbone and ribs, as well as in front of the sirloin and behind the tenderloin. Another term for a loin is pork chop.
Pork chops are often eaten fried or grilled with bacon. They can be served with applesauce or caramelized applesauce.
When buying pork chops, it's important to look at them closely to ensure they're not too dried out or stringy.

11. Lynchburg Lemonade

• Ingredients include
• Sweet Tea
• Triple Sec
• Fresh Lemon Juice (tablespoons) Instructions: Mix all ingredients together until well combined. Serve cold over ice cubes and garnish with a lemon slice!

12. Leek

A leek is a type of onion with a milder flavor than other onions. Leeks are used in soups and stews and as an ingredient in making curry sauce, and they will surely serve you perfectly for your Thanksgiving foods that start with L. They also work well with potatoes, spinach, and cream.
Slice off the root end of the leek, cutting up to one inch away from where it starts to flare out into green leaves.
Rinse thoroughly under cold water or soak in boiling water for a few minutes until it is softened but not colored. Trim off any tough parts from the green leaves near the white part, then slice them thinly crosswise.

13. Lahana Sarmasi

Start by chopping onion and green pepper into small pieces. Please place them in a medium-sized pot with vegetable oil, then add tomato paste and salt to taste.
Add water to cover the vegetables, bring the pot to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
After cooking time is up, remove the pot from the stovetop and stir in sugar (to taste) before leaving it to cool for 30 minutes.
When cooled down, mix in raisins, almonds, and pine nuts before adding rice; ensure the rice is well mixed before returning it to the pot.

14. Lovage

Lovage is an herb that tastes like celery, with a flavor similar to parsley but more intense and more like celery. It's often used in French cooking.
The leaves can be eaten raw in salads or cooked as a side dish (often boiled, braised, or sautéed). The seeds can be roasted, ground into a powder, and mixed with water to make a refreshing drink of Thanksgiving foods that start with L.

15. Liqueur

The liqueur is often used to signify a special drink enjoyed on holidays and other occasions that you want to fill your tables with Thanksgiving foods that start with L.
However, Liqueurs are typically sweet and are often made from fruits, nuts, herbs, or spices. One of the most popular liqueurs is Amaretto, made from apricot kernels.

16. Latte

I love a good latte! I like to start my day with one in the morning or have one with an afternoon snack and then end it with a cup of hot cocoa after dinner. Lattes can be enjoyed any time of day.
I love that lattes are easy to make at home. All you need is some whole milk, a teaspoon of espresso, a tablespoon of hot water, and some sweetener if you want it.
Nevertheless, You can make them as strong or as weak as you want by adjusting how much water you add too.
I also like that latte's come in different flavors and combinations, so there is always something new to try when you want your occasion to be special with Thanksgiving foods that start with L.

17. Lakoocha

Lakoocha is a traditional Russian dessert made of dough, oil, and honey;

18. Limeade

The tangy limeade is a refreshing drink for hot summer days. All you need to do is squeeze some fresh lime juice into a glass of water and add sugar if desired.
Also, a few ice cubes will help keep it cold while you sip on this delicious drink. If you want to make iced limeade, place all ingredients in a pitcher and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Pour over ice and enjoy!

19. Lavash

Lavash is thin, unleavened loaves of bread that are usually baked in a large clay oven called a tandoor. They can be used as Thanksgiving foods that start with L for serving guests.
The word lavash is derived from an Armenian word that means bread. Like many other cultures, Armenians wrap their traditional dishes in lavash before serving them to guests.
Their cuisine often includes dishes like kebabs or kabobs wrapped up in lavash before being eaten.

20. Lumpia

The Filipino dish, Lumpia, is one of the Thanksgiving foods that start with L, an egg roll with a savory filling wrapped in a thin wrapper and deep fried to create a crispy exterior.
Lumpia is usually served as an appetizer or as part of the main meal. The word lumpia means spring roll in Tagalog, reflecting that this dish has been around since ancient times in Southeast Asia.
L lumpia is typically made with ground pork, carrots, onion, garlic, and chili peppers in Filipino cuisine.
The mixture is then rolled up into flour wrappers that have been cut into strips before being dipped into hot oil to fry them until golden brown. This cooking method makes for a crispy outside with a moist inside and flavorful filling.

21. Lollipop

The lollipop is one of the most iconic sweet treats in America. In fact, more than 100 billion lollipops are made each year in the United States.
However, did you know that this confection has been around since at least as early as 1796? Believe it or not, Thomas Adams is credited with being the first person to put a stick into a ball of candy!
In addition to being a popular treat for people of all ages and backgrounds, lollipops also make great props for wedding photos and party favors for birthday celebrations. Plus, they're perfect for stocking stuffers too!

22. Lingcod

The lingcod is a type of fish that lives in cold water. It has a light, delicate, and meaty texture. There are many different ways to prepare this as one of the Thanksgiving foods that start with L, and it can be used in soups or stews as well as baked on its own.
The skin should be removed before cooking because it can become tough after cooking. The lingcod can also be grilled or pan-fried with butter and herbs, which will help keep the meat from drying out.
The best way to cook this fish is by baking it at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 15 minutes per inch of thickness (when measured at the thickest part). This ensures that the flesh is moist and tender without being dry or overcooked.

23. Littleneck

A littleneck is a type of clam found in the Atlantic Ocean and used as one of the common and popular thanksgiving foods that start with L. The name comes from its small size, which is about half that of a cherrystone clam.
This small bivalve mollusk has a hard and shiny exterior shell. Littleneck is often eaten steamed or raw as sushi, but they can also be used to make clam chowder or pasta dishes.

24. Limburger

This cheese is perfect for those who love a strong flavor. It's tangy, salty, and slightly pungent. This cheese has been aged for at least six months to help develop its complex flavor profile.

25. Lard

Lard is an animal fat that can be rendered to make cooking oil and soap. Lard has a higher melting point than butter, so it’s also often used in frying food.
Lard is also often used in desserts, such as pies and biscuits because it makes them flaky and crispy. If you’re vegetarian or vegan, lard can be replaced with vegetable shortening.
But it’s important to read the labels of any replacement product before using it because some contain hydrogenated oils, which are high in saturated fats and low in trans-fats.
For healthier alternatives to lard, try coconut oil or margarine made from plant-based fats such as soybean or sunflower oil instead!

26. Loaf

Many different types of Thanksgiving foods start with L, including quick-bread loaves, yeast-bread loaves, and sweet-bread loaves.
It's possible to find traditional versions or versions with nuts or raisins for some added texture or sweetness.
Bread can also be shaped into a round shape instead of a loaf. This is called a bâtard or boule. The word loaf comes from the Old English word hlāf, meaning bread.

27. Liverwurst

This German specialty is made with a mixture of pork and beef liver, bacon, and spices. It's typically served as part of a charcuterie platter or on rye bread.
Liverwurst is best when it's cooked to an internal temperature of 170 degrees Fahrenheit. This will give it that nice brown color and a slightly crispy crust.
The taste of liverwurst depends largely on how much bacon is included in the recipe, which determines its saltiness.
A good rule of thumb is that if you want to make something sweet for your Thanksgiving foods that start with L, liverwurst is a go, and you must use less bacon than you would for something savory (or add sweetener ingredients).

28. Land Cress

A delicate green herb with a peppery flavor, land cress is not to be confused with watercress which belongs to another genus entirely.
The plants of land cress are delicate, so it is best when eaten raw in salads or sandwiches.
Another way to enjoy it is by mixing it into fish sauces and using it as a garnish on soups. It does not keep very long, so you should use this herb immediately.

29. Loquat

The loquat, or Japanese plum, is a small fruit with a sweet and sour flavor. It is usually available in late winter and early spring. The loquat has green, leathery skin and yellow flesh.
You can eat them raw or cooked; they are often used to make jellies, jams, chutneys, and pies. Loquats contain high amounts of vitamin C and antioxidants.

30. Lemongrass

I can't think of anything better to eat on a cold, wintery day than a big bowl of thanksgiving foods that start with L.
The zesty, citrus flavor is perfect for warming up your insides while also providing a nice little vitamin boost. It's such an easy recipe too!
However, you need some chicken broth, fresh lemongrass, peeled ginger root, lots of fresh cilantro, and some salt (and pepper if you want) to taste.
Just add everything to a pot and let it simmer on low heat until all the flavors are well combined. I like to make this with lots of toppings like fried shallots, chopped peanuts, or even basil leaves that I can stir before serving.

31. Limoncello

The word limoncello literally means lemon honey in Italian. This sweet, citrus-flavored liqueur is perfect for any occasion, but especially on Christmas and New Year's Eve!
Limoncello is made by infusing lemon peels in alcohol, adding sugar to sweeten it, and then letting it rest for months.
It's usually served chilled or over ice with a splash of water or club soda. To make limoncello even more festive, add some fresh cranberries to make a cranberry limoncello!

32. Lettuce

Do you need a quick way to make your Thanksgiving dinner better? Try adding some Thanksgiving foods that start with L to it!
Lettuce has many health benefits, so it's a good idea to include this leafy green as part of your traditional menu. Here are some of the best Thanksgiving foods that start with L.
When it comes to lettuce, there are many different varieties to choose from. Green and red leaf lettuce both have a slightly bitter taste with a more bitter flavor when they're older.
Romaine is crunchier and has a more peppery taste which goes well with heavy salad dressings. An iceberg is milder than other lettuce and is a great choice for those who don't like the stronger flavors of other types of lettuce.

33. Lobscouse

This traditional Newfoundland dish is made with salt beef, potatoes and onions. Cooked in a pot or kettle, it's simmered together until tender and then thickened with flour.
The word lobscouse comes from the French lobster as this dish will be perfect for selecting from Thanksgiving foods that start with L.
It was originally made with lobster meat before salt beef became popular due to its affordability.
Lobscouse also has many variations depending on where you are in Newfoundland: it may be cooked in a large pot or kettle over an open fire and boiled for at least 4-6 hours; it might be served without vegetables (because they were scarce); and it might include carrots, turnip or parsnips.

34. Loganberry

The Loganberry is a cross between a blackberry and a raspberry. It was developed in 1907 by John Watson, who was a plant breeder from New Jersey.
The Loganberry typically has three to four times more sugar than other berries, with an intense taste that ranges from tart to tangy.
In addition to being delicious, the Loganberry is easy to grow and can be easily stored for long periods of time because of its high sugar content.

35. Lekvar

The word Lekvar is a common name for a fruit preserve made from whole quinces peeled and cooked with sugar.
The finished product has a consistency similar to that of jelly and can be used as a dessert topping or spread on cakes.
It also makes an excellent sauce when mixed with chicken, game meat, or pork. The name Lekvar comes from the Hungarian word lekvár, meaning fruit preserve.

36. Lox

You can't go wrong with lox when it comes to Thanksgiving foods that start with L. This cured salmon is delicious and packed with nutrients that will keep you energized all morning long.
Plus, it's super easy to make! How To Make Lox. Rinse a 1-pound salmon filet under cold water and pat dry with a paper towel on both sides.
Season both sides of the salmon with salt and pepper and place in a large bowl or dish. Combine one cup of sugar, one cup of kosher salt, three tablespoons dried dill weed, two tablespoons crushed black peppercorns, and four whole bay leaves in a small bowl and mix well to combine.

37. Lutefisk

This traditional Scandinavian dish is a gelatinous mass made from dried cod soaked in lye. It has a long history and was popular as a meat substitute during fasting.
Lutefisk is served traditionally with boiled potatoes, melted butter, and ground black pepper.
The taste and texture can be acquired for some people, but there's no denying that it's as appropriate to serve on Thanksgiving as Thanksgiving foods that start with L!
This traditional Scandinavian dish is a gelatinous mass made from dried cod soaked in lye. It has a long history and was popular as a meat substitute during fasting.
Lutefisk is served traditionally with boiled potatoes, melted butter, and ground black pepper.

38. Linguica

This dish is an American-Portuguese sausage made from pork, garlic, and red wine. The Linguica is a popular choice for those who like spicy foods because it has a hot kick to it. It’s commonly served with rice and beans or on its own as a breakfast meat.
Plus, this food is also great for outdoor barbecues because of its long shelf life and low price point. Try Linguica in your next meal today!

39. London Broil

Are you in charge of planning Thanksgiving foods that start with L? If so, congratulations! It's a big responsibility.
You may not know it but in addition to choosing food that everyone likes and making sure there are enough plates, silverware, and napkins on hand, you also need to consider the order of service.
For example: should the London broil be sliced ahead of time, or will people want to carve it themselves?
Will guests serve themselves from an entrée table, or will they be seated at their places with all their dishes set out for them?
And what about drinks? Which beverages will people prefer while they're waiting for dinner—water or wine? As you can see, there are a lot of decisions to make. But don't worry. London broil will always serve your guest right.

40. Liquor

This is obvious and will be needed for some of your guests. There are many different kinds of alcohol to choose from. If you know who will be coming, pick a type of alcohol that suits their tastes, whether that's wine, champagne, or something else entirely.
The liquor store is also where you can find all sorts of mixing ingredients, such as mixers like sodas or juices to go with it.!

41. Lahmacun

It's typically served with yogurt on the side for dipping or as a sauce for dipping. The dough is also sometimes sprinkled with sesame seeds before baking it.
The origins of Lahmacun are not entirely clear, but some believe it originated in Central Asia. While others say, it was popularized by Ottoman soldiers who brought this dish back to Turkey from their travels to Eastern Europe centuries ago.
No matter what its origins may be, one thing remains true - lahmacun is delicious among Thanksgiving foods that start with L!

42. Limpa

It's officially falling. This means that it's time to break out the pumpkin spice, but also time to enjoy the last of summer produce.
One of my favorite things about autumn is that we can finally start making some of our favorite Scandinavian dishes, like Limpa bread.
Limpa is a white bread containing wheat flour, rye flour, and malt syrup. It has a light texture and a lot of flavor from the combination of grains in it.
It was first created in Sweden for Easter Sunday because it's a special type of bread that uses all three main ingredients in communion wafers: wheat flour, water, and wine; rye flour; and malt syrup or molasses.

43. Lalanga

The lalanga, also known as pomegranate, is a tasty fruit with a sweet and tangy taste. It's also one of the first fruits to ripen in late summer.
The name for this fruit comes from the Persian word for apple, and it was brought to India by traders, where locals called it lalang.
There are many different varieties of Thanksgiving foods that start with L, and lalanga is one of them, and lalanga are of different types too, but they all look similar with thin-skinned red or dark-purple fruit.
Lalangas are often eaten fresh or dried, but they can be made into jams and other desserts. Lalangas are high in vitamin C, making them an excellent food for the cold season.

44. Liederkranz

I love Liederkranz. It's a mixture of cheeses, apples, and nuts that is baked in a ring-shaped dish. It's traditionally served at Christmas but tastes great any time of year.
My mom makes it for me every holiday because she knows I love it so much. Nothing is better than biting into one of those thick slices with whipped cream on top.

45. Lupin Beans

This ancient legume, lupin beans, is relatively unknown in the United States. They are gaining popularity with chefs and heirloom food enthusiasts alike due to their meaty texture, earthy flavor, and ease of use.
Lupins can be used in many dishes, including soups, salads, or even rice replacement. Rinse and soak overnight in water to which you have added 2 Tbsp of salt.
Drain and rinse again before cooking for about 30 minutes until tender but not mushy. Flavor with butter, soy sauce, or garlic if desired (optional).

46. Lavender

The first letter of lavender is L for Lavender. Lavender is a perennial plant and can be found in many colors, including purple, white, blue, and pink. The leaves are used for cooking, but the flowers are also edible.
This herb has a gentle flavor that goes well with other herbs like thyme or rosemary. Adding it at the end of the cooking process is best because heat will cook away some of its flavors.
When making mint tea or iced tea, you can use lavender buds as a substitute for peppermint leaves.

47. Lady Apple

Mix one cup of apple cider with three tablespoons of brown sugar in a bowl. Peel and chop two apples.
Add the apples to the mixture and stir. Place in a pot over medium heat and bring to a boil, occasionally stirring until it starts to thicken.
Reduce heat to low, cover pot, and let simmer for 15 minutes or until it becomes syrupy. Serve warm or cold with vanilla ice cream as a topping if desired.

48. Lentils

Lentils are an inexpensive and healthy source of protein, iron, zinc, and B vitamins. Lentils are also a good source of fiber which can help lower cholesterol levels.
They are perfect Thanksgiving foods that start with L for people with diabetes because they have a low glycemic index and do not cause rapid spikes in blood sugar.
Lentils come in both green and brown varieties and can be served on their own as a side dish or mixed with other ingredients to make soup, casseroles, or chili.

49. Lemons

The quintessential lemon is a yellow citrus fruit that looks like a large, roundish lime. Lemons are high in vitamin C and low in calories; they contain both citric and ascorbic acid.
The juice of lemons can be used as a flavoring or as an ingredient in many Thanksgiving foods that start with L, including desserts like lemon meringue pie.

50. Limes

Lime is a citrus fruit that is round in shape and lime green in color, though they come in various shades of green, from yellow-green to dark green, depending on the ripeness of the fruit.
They are typically sour and juicy, with some varieties being sweeter than others. Limes are a great way to add some tangy flavor to your dishes.
Whether you want to use them for margaritas or want to squeeze a little juice on top of your dish, limes will give you that tangy flavor.
Juicing limes can be messy, which is more challenging than juicing oranges because they are much smaller.
Be careful when juicing limes because you can easily get seeds in your drink, and nobody wants that. If you don't care about the seeds, squeezing limes might be easier for you than any other citrus fruit.

51. Liver

This nutrient-packed and low-calorie food should be noticed. It is rich in Vitamin A, Iron, and Selenium. The liver is also a good source of Zinc, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Copper, and Potassium.
The consumption of liver can help build muscle mass due to its high protein content, which is perfect for Thanksgiving foods that start with L.

52. Lemon Basil

This recipe is a twist on traditional basil pesto. I wanted to use lemon because it's such an awesome flavor and in this recipe has that tart citrusy taste, which is perfect for fall.
It includes cilantro, garlic, olive oil, chili flakes, and basil. It's so simple to make and will be a great addition to your thanksgiving menu!

• Cup fresh cilantro leaves (leaves only) Cup fresh basil leaves (leaves only)
• Cup olive oil
• Cloves garlic
• Juice from one lemon
  
• A pinch of salt
  
• A few dashes of chili flakes
  

53. Lemon meringue pie

There is nothing more comforting or delicious to warm up with on Thanksgiving day than thanksgiving foods that start with L. Lemon meringue pie.
It has an airy, melt-in-your-mouth crust, creamy lemon filling, and a fluffy meringue topping that's baked to perfection.
You can make this dessert in advance and refrigerate it until you're ready to serve it. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Line the pie crust with parchment paper or foil and fill it with pie weights or dry beans so that it doesn't puff up while baking.
Bake the crust for 8 minutes, then remove from the oven and remove parchment paper or foil along with weights and beans before adding the filling.

54. Lamb’s Lettuce

This type of lettuce is a cross between romaine and butterhead lettuce and has an overall soft appearance. The leaves are green or dark red in color and grow to be about five inches wide.
It features a mild flavor that blends well with most salad dressings, making it a favorite among chefs.
The leaves are crisp and can hold up to heavy dressings without wilting or becoming soggy like some other lettuces do when mixed with creamy sauces.
Conclusion
I hope this post has helped you with your search for new thanksgiving foods that start with L. It's important to keep in mind that only some dishes work for some families.
So be sure to make a list and try it out before you commit to anything. And, of course, if you have any occasion, please feel free to use thanksgiving foods that start with L. Happy Thanksgiving!